15
He stood for a moment at the cottage door, his hands in the pockets of his towelling bath-robe as he looked up at the grey sky. It was the first skylark he had heard that year and it was barely the end of January. But it was mild enough to walk down to the front gate and see if the boy had delivered the Sunday papers.
The Sunday Times was there. Three sections and the comic. But no Observer. “Britain protests to S. Africa over petrol supplies to Rhodesia” the headline said. He wondered what Alan Watkins would have had to say about that. And then he saw it. There were small droplets of dew on the spiky fur around its neck, and it had obviously been run over by a car in the night. Its guts had burst from its open belly, and as he bent slowly to lift it from the edge of the road the cat’s body was stiff, and lighter than he expected. The girls would be upset if they saw it.
He sacrificed the Business News as a shroud and walked over to the small cedar-wood toolshed. The ground was hard and, with only slippers on his feet, the digging was uncomfortable and inexpert. At about eighteen inches deep he stopped, unwrapped the corpse and laid it in the rough grave. The hole was too short and it was when he was adjusting the position of the cat’s head that his fingers disturbed the thin filament of wire. His eyes followed it to the thick fur at the cat’s neck and as he pulled on it gently the filament loosened and then caught for a moment. With his right hand he diffidently parted the dank fur and saw the gaping wound in the cat’s skull. A jagged sliver of broken bone was holding back a small plastic ball about the size of a large marble. As he tugged at the filament the ball came free and swung gently on the end of the thin wire.
Slowly he wiped the ball free of the blood and tissue clinging to it. It was made of a clear plastic that gave slightly to the pressure of his fingers and as he turned it to the light he saw the cluster of what looked like tiny, various coloured pin-heads embedded inside it. He stood up, turned to look at the cottage, and after a moment’s hesitation walked back to the open door. Everyone was still asleep upstairs and he spoke quietly when he asked the emergencies operator for the police.
“Police. Can I help you?”
“A cat was run over near my cottage. When I was burying it I noticed it had some kind of device in its head.”
There was a pause at the police end.
“What d’you mean, a device? What kind of device?”
“I don’t know. It looks like something scientific.”
“Can I have your name and address, sir?”
“My name’s Phillip Cruickshank and my address is Lindens, Sandy Lane, Petchford.”
“Somebody’ll come out, sir.”
“How long will they be?”
“Not long, sir. Five or ten minutes.”
The man in the white jacket sat alongside the table, his glasses pushed up on to his forehead.
“There’s nothing more I can say, Tony, unless I cut the damn thing up.”
“There’s no indication of what it does?”
“Not a sausage. I assume that it’s from some animal research laboratory. The components are obviously highly miniaturized electronics but I’ve never seen anything like them before. Even the plastic covering isn’t any material I’ve come across before.” The man looked at his colleague. “There’s only one sensible thing you can do, Tony.”
“What’s that?”
“Send it to Special Branch. Either that or just send it to Victoria Street and let the Yard forensic people sort it out.”
“Why Special Branch?”
“Because there are two devices inside, and my guess is that one of them must be a radio. That’s what the filament is for. It’s probably an aerial of some kind.”
It was handed over to the senior Special Branch officer at Newcastle who was ordered to take it personally to New Scotland Yard.
The device was photographed from every angle, with black and white, infrared and colour film, and finally, before it was opened, a technician produced a hologram for reference. The cutting open of the device was filmed, and it took almost two hours to remove the outer sheath without damaging the components.
Despite two months of careful examination it was not possible to determine the function of the device. Photographs were circulated to the Royal College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, commercial and government laboratories and two or three university physics research laboratories. No components were identified, and suggestions about the device’s function were no more than speculation. The material of the outer sheath was identified, by spectography, as a derivative of an inert material manufactured by a Swiss drug company for use where capsules taken by mouth in research experiments needed to be recovered. A four-line summary was passed to Regional Special Branch offices, MI6, the CIA in Washington, the BfV in Bonn and the SDECE in Paris. The summaries were acknowledged but there was no additional information in response. Only the CIA asked to be put on the circulation list for any subsequent information.
The three of them, the girl, Symons and Maclaren flew in to Ireland on a TWA flight from Prestwick to New York via Shannon. Symons, with a US passport, hired a car from Ryan’s and they were in Dublin in mid-afternoon. They booked in separately at the Hibernian.
Maclaren had taken a suite and that evening they ate together. After the waiter had cleared away Maclaren went into his bedroom and left Symons alone with the girl. He lifted the slim leather briefcase on to his lap and took out a fat, brown envelope, placing it carefully by his chair as he snapped closed the briefcase and moved it off the table.
Symons turned to face the girl, his eyes
