boozing. It's time he came back.'
'You're going to put him on to this?'
Loomis nodded, then glanced quickly at Grierson.
'Not jealous, are you?'
Grierson said: 'No, sir.' He meant it.
'Just as well,' Loomis grunted. 'He'll need help on this one. But he's the only fellow who can sort this mess out.' He sighed. 'You get on with your homework, sport. I'm going to Greece to reform a boozer. It's ridiculous. A man in my position. I'll end up in the bloody Temperance League.'
* Chapter 2 *
-Schiebel finished off his dinner with a couple of fines, and thought as he drank the second that the Swiss were Germans with a talent for French cooking. He looked from the restaurant's windows to Lake Leman, and observed how punctually the steamers ran, how meticulously the pleasure craft obeyed the rules, and then, remembering his dinner, considered his judgment correct. Switzerland was too small to conquer the world, he thought, but it had a right to be smug, even more smug than it was. He called for his bill, and when it came, he over-tipped, because tonight, he was sure, was a night to celebrate. As he left the restaurant, he passed the cocktail bar. Above it was a mirror. He hesitated, then looked at his watch. He still had twenty minutes to kill. Schiebel ordered another fine, then sat down at the bar to drink it, and look at his face in the mirror.
What he saw was an English aristocrat, the head long and narrow, the nose copious yet elegant, the thin- lipped mouth wryly, fastidiously comic, the skin, tanned brown by ultraviolet lamps, stretched tight across the cheekbones. Looking at his new self gave Schiebel infinite amusement. He savored the last brandy with conscientious pleasure, winked at the mirror face that winked back at him, then set off to keep his appointment. After a bottle of Clos de Vougeot and three brandies, he still walked straight. Perhaps he swaggered a little, but the swagger was excusable. It isn't every day a man finds a new substance for blowing up the world.
He passed the discreet baroque of the Temple Neuf, and the flower stalls and caf6s of the Place du Molard. Schiebel hated the cafes that were filled with intellectuals arguing about Camus and Genet and Henry Miller, and waving their copies of
The thought took him up the long, weary climb to the H6tel de Ville. He walked steadily by its unemphatic facade, and turned a corner into a poor, dimly fit quarter, dismissed in the guidebooks as of no interest to tourists. No one famous or notorious had died there, or even lived there. Schiebel walked on, then deliberately broke the rhythm of his stride. There was someone following him. Schiebel tensed, then moved a little farther from the shelter of the houses toward the edge of the pavement. His follower increased his pace as he neared an empty building, but Schiebel continued to saunter. This was a rough area by Geneva's standards, and if he ran he might be shot at and nobody in this part of the town would be rash enough to interfere. Schiebel slowed a little more, waiting for the sound of running footsteps behind him, and when it came he managed very nicely, very nicely indeed. He felt quite pleased with himself.
The man moved fast, but Schiebel waited until he'd almost reached him, then whirled round, crouching low, swinging one hard-muscled leg like a solid bar at his attacker's shins, chopping down with his hand as the other man fell past him; seeing the iron bar in his hand, kicking at once for the ulna bone, grinning in satisfaction as he heard the man scream. A tricky shot, that one, but he'd broken the wrist. Bloody good show, old boy. He grinned again, and hauled the other man to his feet, rammed him against the wall.
'Who are you?' he asked. 'What do you want?'
The other man hesitated and Schiebel hit him, once. The attacker gasped and said, 'Bloch, Ludwig Bloch. I—I was going to rob you.'
'You were unlucky,' said Schiebel. He looked at his attacker, staying himself in the shadows. A cheap crook. Cheap suit, cheap shoes. Cheap cigarettes in his pocket and twenty Swiss francs, and nothing else. A small man with small ideas, and an iron bar. Then the moon came out and shone full on Schiebel's face.
'You really are unlucky,' said Schiebel, and his right hand moved in a blur of speed to bis pocket, a knife blade flicked out, a pale gleam in the moonlight, and Bloch, too late, tried to scream as Schiebel spun him round, struck under the rib cage and up, and Bloch was dead, still pressed against the wall, till his knees started to sag and he slid down, very slowly, as Schiebel pulled the knife free, wiped it on Bloch's jacket (a dead man isn't fussy) and examined his own clothes for bloodstains. There were none. There rarely are, if you strike from behind correctly.
Schiebel walked on, to an old, battered house with 'T. K. Soong—Souvenirs and Curios,' painted on its window. Schiebel decided he would say nothing to Soong about the man he had killed. Soong would consider such conduct incorrect, even though it had been successful, and a bottle of wine and three brandies would not excuse it.
He rang the bell, and a short, heavily built Chinese opened the door. Schiebel tried a phrase in carefully learned Mandarin, and the Chinese sneered, then stood aside and motioned him in. Schiebel walked along a corridor, the Chinese behind him. The Chinese, he was sure, was holding a gun.
He reached an open door and went inside. Soong was there, waiting for him, a tall, elegant North Chinese in a dark, Italian-made suit with a rosebud in the buttonhole. He stood up at once, hesitated, then went to meet SchiebeL
'My dear fellow, how splendid you look,' he said, and dragged him into the light. 'An out and out imperialist. I really do congratulate you.' He took the photograph Schiebel had sent him, looked at the portrait, then at the man himself, and shook his head in amazed delight. 'Utterly fantastic,' he said. 'You look so British. Spot of whiskey, old man?'
Schiebel said: 'No. Brandy,' and his voice was cold.
'Sorry, old man,' Soong said. 'But if you will go around looking like a Kipling hero—' He broke off then, and spoke to the squat Chinese in Mandarin. The bodyguard went out, came back with a bottle and glasses, then left them alone. Soong poured two big ones, and motioned Schiebel to a chair. The two men sipped, then Schiebel sat, waiting.
'That little thing you sent us,' Soong said. 'We've had a couple of our chaps look at it—flew them over specially from Peking actually.' He broke off and looked at Schiebel, who continued to sit, and sip his cognac. Of the two men, he was by far the more inscrutable. 'They loved it,' said Soong. 'It's exactly what we need.'
'Really?' Schiebel said.
'You've no idea,' Soong said, 'the way they went on. Quite shatters one's image of the scientist. Not that I can really blame them.' He stood up and rummaged in a cupboard, lifted a heavy lead canister on to the table, then rummaged again, and produced an instrument like a clumsy torch.
'Geiger counter,' he said.
He opened the box then, and held the Geiger counter a couple of feet from its contents. At once it chattered like an infuriated monkey, and the chattering increased as he brought the instrument nearer, and the sound it made was almost unbroken; a pulsing, metallic click without pause, until Soong pulled it away.
'Cobalt shot with uranium,' Soong said. 'What a clever chap you are. May one ask where you found it?'
'On a mountain in the Haram,' said Schiebel. 'One of my men was there for a while. He's moved to the Greek islands now. Nice and close to Naxos. He'll have the emir of Haram's daughter with him soon to negotiate the deal. The emir wants to sell the stuff.'
'That's absolutely perfect,' said Soong. 'I suppose you've no idea how soon we can get our hands on a piece of it?'
This time it was Schiebel who said nothing, and the young Chinese made an abrupt, nervous gesture, and the Geiger counter chattered again, until he dropped the box lid into place.
'It's very, very important,' Soong said. 'The uranium is of a special order of richness, superior to uranium 235. That means a bigger charge for a smaller bomb. It is also an excellent trigger for a new device our people are working on now. For that we need the cobalt. With it we could make a fallout so great that we could kill every living
