The Tightrope Men / The Enemy (34 page)

So Chelyuskin got exactly what he asked for.

A REME soldier called George Ashton had been killed in a traffic accident in Germany. He was twenty-seven and had been brought up in a foundling home. Unmarried and with neither kith nor kin to mourn him, he was the perfect answer. Chelyuskin was flown to Germany, put in the uniform of a private in the British Army, and brought back to England by train and sea, accompanied discreetly at all times. He went through a demobilization centre where he was given a cheap suit, a small amount of back pay and a handshake from a sombre unrecruiting sergeant.

He was also given an honorarium of £2000.

He asked for, and was given, something else before he was cast adrift. Because of the necessity for scientific study he had learned English in his youth and read it fluently. But he never had occasion to speak it, which might have been an advantage when he was put through a six months’ total immersion course in conversational English, because he had no bad habits to unlearn. He came out of it with a cultured generalized Home Counties accent, and set out to sink or swim in the capitalist world.

£2000 may not seem much now, but it was quite a sizeable piece of change back in 1947. Even so, George Ashton knew he must conserve his resources; he put most of it in a bank deposit account, and lived very simply while he explored this strange new world. He was no longer an honoured man, an Academician with a car and a
dacha
at his disposal, and he had to find a way of earning a living. Any position requiring written qualifications was barred to him because he did not have the papers. It was a preposterous situation.

He took a job as a book-keeper in the stores department of a small engineering firm in Luton. This was in the days
before computers when book-keeping was done by hand as in the days of Dickens, and a good book-keeper could add a triple column of pounds, shillings and pence in one practised sweep of the eye. But there weren’t many of those around and Ashton found himself welcome because, unlike the popular myth, he was an egghead who could add and
always
got his change right. He found the job ridiculously easy if monotonous, and it left him time to think.

He struck up an acquaintanceship with the foreman of the toolroom, a man called John Franklin who was about 50 years of age. They got on very well together and formed the habit of having a drink together in the local pub after work. Presently Ashton was invited
chez
Franklin for Sunday dinner where he met Franklin’s wife, Jane, and his daughter, Mary. Mary Franklin was 25 then, and as yet unmarried because her fiancé had been shot down over Dortmund in the final days of the war.

All this time Ashton was being watched. If he was aware of it he gave no sign. Other people were watched, too, and the Franklin family came in for a thorough rummaging on the grounds that those interested in Ashton were
per se
interesting in themselves. Nothing was discovered except the truth; that Jack Franklin was a damned good artisan with his brains in his fingertips, Jane Franklin was a comfortable, maternal woman, and Mary Franklin had suffered a tragedy in her life.

Six months after they met, Ashton and Franklin left the engineering firm to strike out on their own. Ashton put up £1500 and his brains while Franklin contributed £500 and his capable hands. The idea was to set up a small plastics moulding shop; Franklin to make the moulds and the relatively simple machines needed, and Ashton to do the designing and to run the business.

The small firm wobbled along for a while without overmuch success until Ashton, becoming dissatisfied with the
moulding powders he was getting from a big chemical company, devised a concoction of his own, patented it, and started another company to make it. After that they never looked back.

Ashton married Mary Franklin and I dare say a member of some department or other was unobtrusively present at the wedding. A year later she gave him a daughter whom they christened Penelope, and two years later another girl whom they called Gillian. Mary Ashton died a couple of years later in 1953, from childbirth complications. The baby died, too.

All his life Ashton kept a low profile. He joined no clubs or trade associations; he steered clear of politics, national or local, although he voted regularly, and generally divided his life between his work and his home. This gave him time to look after his two small girls with the help of a nanny whom he brought into the small suburban house in Slough, where he then lived. From the record he was devoted to them.

About 1953 he must have opened his old notebooks and started to think again. As Chelyuskin he had never published any of his work on catalysts and I suppose he thought it was safe to enter the field. A catalyst is a substance which speeds up the chemical reactions between other substances, sometimes by many thousands of times. They are used extensively in chemical processing, particularly in the oil industry.

Ashton put his old work to good use. He devised a whole series of new catalysts tailored to specialized uses. Some he manufactured and sold himself, others he allowed to be made under licence. All were patented and the money began to roll in. It seemed as though this odd fish was swimming quite well in the capitalist sea.

In 1960 he bought his present house and, after fifteen months of extensive internal remodelling, he moved in with his family. After that nothing much seemed to happen
except that he saw the portent of North Sea oil, opened another factory in 1970, took out a lot more patents and became steadily richer. He also extended his interest to those natural catalysts, the enzymes, and presumably the sketchy theory presented in the early notebook became filled out.

After 1962 the record became particularly flat and perfunctory, and I knew why. Authority had lost interest in him and he would exist only in a tickler file to remind someone to give an annual check. It was only when I set the bells jangling by my inadvertent enquiry that someone had woken up.

And that was the life of George Ashton, once Aleksandr Dmitrovitch Chelyuskin—my future father-in-law.

What I have set down about Ashton-Chelyuskin is a mere condensation of what was in the computer together with a couple of added minor assumptions used as links to make a sustained narrative. Had I been able to use the printer it would have churned out enough typescript to make a book the size of a family bible. To set down in print the details of a man’s life needs a lot of paper. Yet I think I have presented the relevant facts.

When I finished I had a headache. To stare at a cathode ray screen for two and a half hours is not good for the eyes, and I had been smoking heavily so that the little room was very stuffy. It was with relief that I emerged into Ogilvie’s office.

He was sitting at his desk reading a book. He looked up and smiled. ‘You look as though you need a drink.’

‘It would go down very well,’ I agreed.

He got up and opened a cabinet from which he took a bottle of whisky and two glasses; then he produced a jug of iced water from a small built-in refrigerator. The perquisites of office. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think Ashton is one hell of a man. I’m proud to have known him.’

‘Anything else?’

‘There’s one fact that’s so damned obvious it may be overlooked.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Ogilvie, and handed me a glass. ‘A lot of good men have checked that file.’

I diluted the whisky and sat down. ‘Do you have all of Ashton in there?’

‘All that we know is there.’

‘Exactly. Now, I’ve gone through Ashton’s work in some detail and it’s all in the field of applied science—technology, if you like. All the things he’s been doing with catalysts is derived from his earlier unpublished work; there’s nothing fundamentally new there. Correct me if I’m wrong.’

‘You’re quite right, although it took a man with Ashton’s brains to do it. We’ve given our own top chemists photocopies of those notebooks and their attitude was that the stuff was all right from a theoretical point of view but it didn’t seem to lead anywhere. Ashton made it lead somewhere and it’s made him rich. But, in general, your point is good; it’s all derivative of earlier work-even his later interest in enzymes.’

I nodded. ‘But Chelyuskin was a theoretician. The point is this—did he stop theorizing and, if not, what the hell has he been thinking about? I can understand why you want that bloody vault opened.’

‘You’re not too stupid,’ said Ogilvie. ‘You’ve hit the nail smack on the head. You’re right; you can’t stop a man thinking, but what he’s been thinking about is difficult to figure. It won’t be atomic theory.’

‘Why not?’

‘We know what he reads; the magazines he subscribes to, the books he buys. We know he’s not been keeping up with the scientific literature in any field except catalytic chemistry, and no one thinks in a vacuum. Atomic theory has made great strides since Ashton came out of Russia. To do any original work a man would have to work hard to keep ahead of the pack—attend seminars and so on. Ashton hasn’t been doing it.’ He tasted his whisky. ‘What
would you have done in Ashton’s position and with a mind like his?’

‘Survival would come first,’ I said. ‘I’d find a niche in society and look for security. Once I’d got that perhaps I’d start thinking again—theorizing.’

‘What about? In your struggle for survival the world of thought has passed you by; you’ve lost touch. And you daren’t try to regain touch, either. So what would you think about?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said slowly. ‘Perhaps, with a mind like his, I’d think about things other people haven’t been thinking about. A new field.’

‘Yes,’ said Ogilvie thoughtfully. ‘It makes one wonder, doesn’t it?’

We sat for a few moments in silence. It was late—the light was ebbing from the summer sky over the City—and I was tired. I sipped the whisky appreciatively and thought about Ashton. Presently Ogilvie asked, ‘Did you find anything in the file to give you a clue about where he’s gone?’

‘Nothing springs to mind. I’d like to sleep on it—let the unconscious have a go.’ I finished the whisky. ‘Where does Cregar fit into this?’

‘It was his crowd Ashton approached when he wanted to leave Russia. Cregar went into Russia himself to get him out. He was a young man then, of course, and not yet Lord Cregar—he was the Honourable James Pallton. Now he heads his department.’

I’d come across the name Pallton in reading the file, but I hadn’t connected it with Cregar. I said, ‘He mishandled Ashton right from the start. He approached him with all the sensitivity of a fifty-pence whore. First he threatened, then he tried to bribe. He didn’t understand the type of man he’d come across, and he put Ashton’s back up.’

Ogilvie nodded. ‘That’s one element in the mixture of his resentment. He always thought he could retrieve Ashton;
that’s why he was so annoyed when the Ashton case was transferred to us. That’s why he’s sticking his oar in now.’

‘What steps have already been taken to find Ashton?’

‘The usual. The Special Branch are on the watch at sea ports and airports, and they’re checking passenger lists for the past twenty-four hours. You’d better liaise with Scotland Yard on that tomorrow.’

‘I’ll do that. And I’ll have a go from the other end. There’s one thing I’d like to know.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Who threw such a scare into Ashton? Who threw that bloody acid?’

I was overtired that night and couldn’t get to sleep. As I tossed restlessly Penny was very much on my mind. It was evident from what she had said that she knew nothing of Ashton in the larval stage, before he changed from Chelyuskin. Her account of his early life fitted that of the REME soldier killed in Germany.

I wondered how it would be with Penny and me. I had been damned insensitive that afternoon. Her room had to be searched, but if anyone had done it then it ought to have been me, preferably in her presence. I didn’t blame her for blowing her top and I wondered how I could retrieve the situation. I felt very bad about it.

Most people, when they have had a burglary, are not so much concerned about the articles stolen as about the intrusion into the heart of their lives, the home which is so peculiarly their own. It is the thought that strange hands have been delving among their innermost secrets, rummaging in drawers, opening doors in the private parts of the house—all this is profoundly shocking. I knew all that and ought to have applied it to Penny.

At last I sat up in bed, checked the time, then stretched for the telephone. Although it was late I was going to talk
to her. Mary Cope answered my call. ‘Malcolm Jaggard here; I’d like to talk to Miss Ashton.’

‘Just a moment, sir,’ she said. She wasn’t away long. ‘Miss Ashton isn’t in, sir.’ There was a hint of nervousness in her voice as though she thought I wouldn’t believe her. I didn’t, but there was nothing I could do about it.

It was early morning when I finally slept.

I spent most of the forenoon at Scotland Yard with a Special Branch officer. I had no great hope of success and neither had he but we went through the motions. His crowd had been busy but even so the reports were slow to come in. A lot of people leave from Heathrow in twenty-four hours and that is only one exit from the country.

‘Ashton and Benson,’ he said morosely, as he ticked off a name. ‘Bloody near as bad as Smith and Robinson. Why the hell do people we’re interested in never have names like Moneypenny or Gotobed?’

Six Bensons and four Ashtons had left from Heathrow. Half could be eliminated because of sex and the Ashtons were a family of four. But two of the Bensons would have to be followed up; one had gone to Paris and the other to New York. I got busy on the telephone.

Heathrow may be large but it is still only one place and there are other airports, more than the average person realizes. And there were the sea ports of which islanded Britain has a plentitude. It was going to be a long job with nothing but uncertainty guaranteed.

The Special Branch man said philosophically, ‘And, of course, they may have left under other names. Getting a spare passport is dead easy.’

‘They may not have left at all,’ I said. ‘Tell your chaps to keep their eyes open.’

I lunched in a commissary at the Yard and then went back prepared for a slogging afternoon. At three o’clock
Ogilvie rang me. ‘They’ll be opening that vault later today. I want you there.’

A drive to Marlow would be a lot more refreshing than checking passenger lists. ‘All right.’

‘Now, these are my exact instructions. When that door is opened you will be present, and the head of the safecracking team. No one else. Is that clear?’

‘Perfectly clear.’

‘Then you send him out of the room and check the contents. If they are removeable you bring them here under guard. If not, you close and lock the door again, first making sure we can open it again more easily.’

‘How long are you staying at the office?’

‘All night, if necessary.’ He hung up.

So I drove to Marlow and to Ashton’s place. I was wearing grooves in that road. Simpson was the gate man and he let me in and I drove up to the house. I met Gregory in the hall. ‘Found anything useful?’

He shrugged. ‘Not a thing.’

‘Where’s Miss Ashton?’

‘At the hospital. Jack Brent is with her.’

‘Good enough.’ I went up to Ashton’s quarters and found the safe-cracking team at work. I don’t know where the department kept its experts when not in use, but they were always available when needed. The chief safecracker was a man I’d met before by the name of Frank Lillywhite. ‘Afternoon, Frank,’ I said. ‘How much longer?’

He grunted. ‘An hour.’ He paused. ‘Or two.’ There was a longer pause as he did something intricate with a tool he held. ‘Or three.’

I grinned. ‘Or four. Is this a tricky one?’

‘They’re all tricky. This is a twenty-four hour safe, that’s all.’

I was curious. ‘What do you mean?’

Lillywhite stepped away from the vault door and an underling moved in. ‘Safe manufacturers don’t sell security—they sell time. Any safe made can be cracked; all the manufacturer guarantees is the length of time needed to crack it. They reckon this is a twenty-four hour job; I’m going to do it in twenty—with a bit of luck. The tricky part comes in circumventing the booby traps.’

‘What booby traps?’

‘If I do the wrong thing here, twelve bloody big tungsten steel bars will shoot out all round the door. Then only the maker will be able to open it.’

‘Then why didn’t we get the maker on the job in the first place?’

Lillywhite sighed, and said patiently, ‘The whole vault would have to be ripped out and taken to the factory. They’ve got a bloody big tin-opener there that weighs a thousand tons. Of course the vault wouldn’t be good for much after that.’

I contemplated the awful possibility of taking the whole vault out. ‘Neither would this house. I’ll stop asking silly questions. Don’t open the door unless I’m here.’

‘Message received and understood.’

I went down to the cellar where I found a couple of studious-looking types being baffled by Ashton’s contraption. Their conversation, if you could call it that, was in English, but that’s to use the word loosely; it was technical, jargon-ridden and way over my head, so I left them to it. Another man was packing tape cassettes into a box ready to take away. I said, ‘What are those?’

He indicated the little computer. ‘Program and data tapes for this thing. We’re taking them to the lab for analysis.’

‘You’re listing everything, I hope. You’ll have to give a receipt to Miss Ashton.’ He frowned at that, and I said acidly, ‘We’re not thieves or burglars, you know, It’s only by courtesy of Miss Ashton that we’re here at all.’ As I left the
cellar he was taking cassettes out of the box and stacking them on a table.

An hour and a half later Gregory found me in Ashton’s study. ‘They’ll be opening the vault in about fifteen minutes.’

‘Let’s go up.’

We left the study and encountered Lord Cregar in the hall; with him was a big man with the build of a heavyweight boxer. Cregar looked brisk and cheerful but his cheerfulness, if not his briskness, evaporated when he saw me. ‘Ah, Mr Jaggard,’ he said. ‘A fine mess has been made of things, I must say.’

I shrugged. ‘Events moved faster than we anticipated.’

‘No doubt. I understand there’s a vault here which is being opened this afternoon. Has it been opened yet?’

I wondered where he’d got his information. ‘No.’

‘Good. Then I’m in time.’

I said, ‘Am I to understand that you wish to be present when the vault is opened?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘But I’ll have to take that under advisement.’

He looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Do you know who I am?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Make your telephone call.’

I jerked my head at Gregory and we went back into the study. ‘There’s no need for a call,’ I said. ‘Ogilvie’s instructions were very precise, and they didn’t include Cregar.’

‘I know that big chap,’ said Gregory. ‘His name is Martins. A bad chap to tangle with.’ He paused. ‘Maybe you’d better check with Ogilvie.’

‘No. He’s told me what to do and I’m going to do it.’

‘So what if Cregar won’t take it? A bout of fisticuffs with a member of the House of Lords could have its repercussions.’

I smiled. ‘I doubt if it will come to that. Let’s tell his lordship the bad news.’

We went back into the hall to find that Cregar and Martins had vanished. ‘They’ll be upstairs,’ said Gregory.

‘Come on.’ We ran upstairs and found them in Ashton’s room. Cregar was tapping his foot impatiently as I stepped forward and said formally, ‘My lord, I regret to inform you that you will not be permitted to be present when the vault is opened.’

Cregar’s eyes bulged. ‘Did Ogilvie say that?’

‘I have not spoken to Mr Ogilvie recently. I am merely following instructions.’

‘You take a lot upon yourself,’ he commented.

I turned to Lillywhite. ‘How much longer, Frank?’

‘Give me ten minutes.’

‘No—stop work now. Don’t start again until I tell you.’ I turned back to Cregar. ‘If you would like to speak to Mr Ogilvie yourself you may use the telephone here or in the study.’