be a great showman without being a great businessman as well. It came to the stage that he began calculating that, even without the United States government backing, he could still, America to America, have made a handsome profit on the tour. Not, of course, that the United States government would be apprised of this. At least as happy were those of his artistes — over half of them — who came from eastern Europe. For them, especially for the Hungarians, Bulgarians and Romanians, whose circus training schools were the best in Europe and probably in the world, this was the long-promised home-coming. In front of their own people they excelled themselves, reaching heights of professional brilliance never attained before. The morale in a top circus is always high: even so, Wrinfield had never seen those people so happy and contented.
They swung through northern Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary then across the Curtain back into Austria. It was after the final show of their first day in Vienna, the finale of which had been greeted with the now standard rapturous ovation, that Harper — who had kept their contacts on the Continent to the barest minimum — approached Bruno. He said: “Come to my compartment when you are ready.” When Bruno arrived, Harper said without preamble: “I promised you I’d show you three things in one night. Here they are.” He undipped the bottom of his medical bag and drew out a metal container smaller even than a box of Kleenex tissues. “A little transistorized beauty. Earphones and mike. This switch is for power. This button is for a combination of preselected wave-length and call-up — the receiver in Washington is manned twenty-four hours a day. This spring-loaded lever is for speak-transmit. Simple.”
“You said something about a code.”
“I won’t burden you with that. I know if I wrote it out you could commit it to memory in nothing flat but the CIA has a thing about committing codes to paper, however temporarily. Anyway, if you do have to use this machine — which would mean, unfortunately for me, that I would no longer be around — you wouldn’t want to bother with code anyway. You just shout ›Help!‹ in plain English.
It’s on this machine that I received confirmation of our escape route instructions today — this evening, in fact. There’s a NATO exercise taking place in the Baltic in about ten day’s time. An unspecified naval vessel — they’re a very cagey lot in Washington; I assume it’s American but I don’t even know what type of craft it is — will be standing by or cruising off the coast from the Friday night until the following Friday. It carries an Air-Sea Rescue helicopter. It will land at a place I’ll show you when we get there — I don’t consider it wise to carry maps on me and, besides, I can’t properly locate it until we get there. The ship is tuned to the same wavelength as Washington. We press this top button on the transceiver here — just as simple as that — and the helicopter comes-a-running.” “All seems perfectly straightforward. You do seem to have this organized. You know, I’m beginning to think that the Government regard Van Diemen’s pieces of paper as very valuable indeed.”
“One gathers that impression. By the way, I’m curious. How long does your memory span last?”
“As long as I want.”
“So you’ll be able to memorize the contents of those papers and reproduce them, say, a year later?”
“I should think so.”
“Let’s hope that’s the way it’s going to be — that you’re going to be given the chance to reproduce them, I mean. Let’s hope nobody ever finds out that you got in there, did your mentalist bit and left unseen. Let’s hope, in other words, that you don’t have to use those.” From the breast pocket of his jacket Harper undipped a couple of pens, one black, one red. They were of the heavy felt-Biro type with the release button at the top. “I picked these up in town today. I don’t have to tell you where I picked them up.”
Bruno looked at the pens, then at Harper. “What on earth would I want to use those things for?”
“Whatever the faults of our science and research department, it’s not lack of imagination. They positively dote on dreaming up these little toys. You don’t think I’m going to let you cross two eastern frontiers with a couple of Peacemaker Colts strapped to your waist? These are guns. Yes, guns. The red one is the nasty one, the one with the anaesthetic tipped needles which are not so healthy for those with heart conditions: the other one is the gas gun.”
“So small?”
“With the micro-miniaturization techniques available today, those are positively bulky. The needle gun has an effective range of forty feet, the gas gun of not more than four. Operation is simplicity itself. Depress the button at the top and the gun is armed: press the pocket clip and the gun is fired. Stick them in your outside pocket. Let people get used to the sight of them. Now listen carefully while I outline the plans for Crau.” “But I thought you had already agreed to the plan — my plan.”
“I did and I do. This is merely a refinement of the original part of that plan. You may have wondered why the CIA elected to send with you a medical person. When I have finished you will understand.”
Some four hundred and fifty miles to the north, three uniformed men sat in a brightly lit, windowless and very austere room, the furniture of which consisted mainly of metal filing cabinets, a metal table and some metal-framed chairs. All three were dressed in uniform. From the insignia they wore, one was a colonel, the second a captain, the third a sergeant. The first was Colonel Serge Sergius, a thin, hawk-faced man with seemingly lidless eyes and a gash where his mouth should have been: his looks perfectly befitted his occupation, which was that of a very important functionary in the secret police. The second, Captain Kodes, was his assistant, a well-built athletic man in his early thirties, with a smiling face and cold blue eyes. The third, Sergeant Angelo, was remarkable for one thing only, but that one thing was remarkable enough. At six feet three, Angelo was considerably too broad for his height, a massively muscular man who could not have weighed less than two hundred and fifty pounds. Angelo had one function and one only in life — he was Sergius’s personal bodyguard. No one could have accused Sergius of choosing without due care and attention.
On the table a tape recorder was running. A voice said: “and that is all we have for the moment”. Kodes leaned forward and switched off the recorder.
Sergius said: “And quite enough. All the information we want. Four different voices. I assume, my dear Kodes, that if you were to meet the owners of those four voices you could identify them immediately?”
“Without the shadow of a doubt, sir.”
“And you, Angelo?”
“No question, sir.” Angelo’s gravelly booming voice appeared to originate from the soles of his enormous boots. “Then please go ahead, Captain, for the reservation of our usual rooms in the capital — the three of us and the cameraman. Have you chosen him yet, Kodes?”
“I thought young Nicolas, sir. Extraordinarily able.” “Your choice.” Colonel Sergius’s lipless mouth parted about a quarter of an inch, which meant that he was smiling. “Haven’t been to the circus for thirty years — circuses had ceased to exist during the war — but I must say I’m looking forward with almost childish enthusiasm to this one. Especially one which is as highly spoken of as this one is. Incidentally, Angelo, there is a performer in this circus whom I’m sure you will be most interested to see, if not to meet.”
“I do not care to see or meet anyone from an American circus, sir.”
“Come, come, Angelo, one must not be so chauvinistic.”
“Chauvinistic, Colonel?”
Sergius made to explain then decided against the effort. Angelo was possessed of many attributes but a razor-sharp intelligence was not among them.
“There are no nationalities in a circus, Angelo, only artistes, performers: the audience does not care whether the man on the trapeze comes from Russia or the Sudan. The man I refer to is called Kan Dahn and they say that he is even bigger than you. He is billed as the strongest man in the world.” Angelo made no reply, merely inflated his enormous chest to its maximum fifty-two inches and contented himself with a smile of wolfish disbelief.
The three-day stay in Vienna was by now the inevitable enormous success. From there the circus moved north and, after only one stop-over, arrived in the city where Sergius and his subordinates had moved to meet them.
At the evening performance, those four had taken the best seats, about six rows back facing the centre of the centre ring. All four were in civilian clothes and all four were unmistakably soldiers in civilian clothes. One of them, immediately after the beginning of the performance, produced a very expensive looking camera with a telephoto lens, and the sight of this produced a senior uniformed police officer in very short order indeed. The taking of photographs was officially discouraged, while with westerners the illegal possession of an undeclared camera, if discovered, was a guarantee of arrest and trial: every camera aboard the circus train had been impounded on entering the country and would not be returned until the exit frontier had been crossed.
The policeman said: “The camera please: and your papers.” “Officer.” The policeman turned towards Sergius
