Carey said, If youd contacted the Embassy as soon as it happened wed have been able to work all that out so damned fast that we could have been waiting at Copenhagen.
For Gods sake! said Denison. Would you have believed me any the quicker? It took you long enough to check anyway with your doctor and your tame psychiatrist.
Hes right, said McCready.
Do you think thats why it was done this way? To buy time?
Could be, said McCready. It worked, didnt it?
Oh, it worked all right. What puzzles me is what happened at the Spiralen the next day. Carey turned to Denison. Have you got the doll and the note?
Denison opened a drawer and handed them to Carey. He unfolded the single deckle-edged sheet and read the note aloud. Your Drammen Dolly awaits you at Spiraltoppen. Early morning. July 10. He lifted the paper and sniffed delicately. Scented, too. I thought that went out in the 1920s.
Diana Hansen said, This is the first Ive heard of a note. I know about the doll, but not the note.
Its what took Denison to the Spiralen, said McCready.
Could I see it? said Diana, and Carey passed it to her. She read it and said pensively, It could have been...
What is it, Mrs Hansen? said Carey sharply.
Well, when Meyrick and I went to Drammen last week we lunched at the Spiraltoppen Restaurant. She looked a little embarrassed. I had to go to the lavatory and I was away rather a long time. I had stomach trouble some kind of diarrhoea.
McCready grinned. Even Intelligence agents are human, he said kindly.
When I got back Meyrick was talking to a woman and they seemed to be getting on well together. When I came up she went away.
Thats all? asked Carey.
Thats all.
He regarded her thoughtfully. I think theres something youre not telling us, Mrs Hansen.
Well, its something about Meyrick. I was with him quite a lot during the last few weeks and he gave me the impression of being something of a womanizer perhaps even a sexual athlete.
A chuckle escaped from McCready. Did he proposition you?
He had as many arms as an octopus, she said. I thought I wasnt going to last out this operation without being raped. I think hed go for anything on two legs that wore skirts, with the possible exception of Scotsmen and I wouldnt be too sure of that.
Well, well, said Carey. How little we know of our fellow men.
Denison said, He was divorced twice.
So you think this note was to set up an assignation.
Yes, said Diana.
But Meyrick wouldnt have fallen for that, no matter how horny he was, said Carey. He was too intelligent a man. When you and he went to Drammen last week he checked with me according to instructions. Since you were going with him I gave him the okay.
Did Meyrick know Diana was working for you? asked Denison.
Carey shook his head. No we like to play loose. But Meyrick didnt find the note. He pointed his pipe stem at Denison. You did and you went to the Spiralen. Tell me, did the men who attacked you give the impression that they wanted to capture or to kill you?
I didnt stop to ask them, said Denison acidly.
Um, said Carey, and lapsed into thought, his pipe working overtime. After a while he stirred, and said, All right, Mrs Hansen; I think thats all.
She nodded briefly and left the room, and Carey glanced at McCready. I suppose we must tell him about Meyrick.
McCready grinned. I dont see how you can get out of it.
I have to know, said Denison, if Im going to carry on with this impersonation.
I trust Mrs Hansen and she doesnt know, said Carey. Not the whole story. I work on the need to know principle. He sighed. I suppose you need to know, so here goes. The first thing to know about Meyrick is that hes a Finn.
With a name like that?
Oddly enough, its his own name. In 1609 the English sent a diplomat to the court of Michael, the first Romanov Czar, to negotiate a trade treaty and to open up the fur trade. The courtiers of James I had to get their bloody ermine somewhere. The name of the diplomat was John Merick or Meyrick and he was highly philoprogenitive. He left by-blows all over the Baltic and Harry Meyrick is the end result of that.
It seems that Harry takes after his ancestor, commented McCready.
Carey ignored him. Of course, Meyricks name was a bit different in Finnish, but when he went to England he reverted to the family name. But thats by the way. He laid down his pipe. More to the point, Meyrick is a Karelian Finn; to be pedantic, if hed stayed at home in the town where he was born hed now be a Russian. How good is your modern history?
Average I suppose, said Denison.
And that means bloody awful, observed Carey. All right; in 1939 Russia attacked Finland and the Finns held them off in what was known as the Winter War. In 1941 Germany attacked Russia and the Finns thought it a good opportunity to have another go at the Russkies, which was a pity because that put them on the losing side. Still, its difficult to see what else they could have done.
At the end of this war, which the Finns know as the Continuation War, there was a peace treaty and the frontier was withdrawn. The old frontier was too close, to Leningrad, which had the Russians edgy. An artilleryman could stand in Finland and lob shells right into the middle of Leningrad, so the Russians took over the whole of the Karelian Isthmus, together with a few other bits and pieces. This put Meyricks home town, Enso, on the Russian side, and the Russians renamed it Svetogorsk.
Carey sucked on his pipe which had gone out. It gurgled unpleasantly. Am I making myself clear?
Youre clear enough, said Denison. But I want more than a history lesson.
Were getting there, said Carey. Meyrick was seventeen at the end of the war. Finland was in a hell of a mess; all the Karelian Finns cleared out of the isthmus because they didnt want to live under the Russians and this put the pressure on the rest of Finland because there was nowhere for them to go. The Finns had to work so bloody hard producing the reparations the Russians demanded that there was no money or men or time left over to build housing. So they turned to the Swedes and asked calmly if theyd take 100,000 immigrants. Carey snapped his fingers. Just like that and the Swedes agreed.
Denison said, Noble of them.
Carey nodded. So young Meyrick went to Sweden. He didnt stay long because he came here, to Oslo, where he lived until he was twenty-four. Then he went to England. He was quite alone all this time his family had been killed during the war but as soon as he arrived in England he married his first wife. She had what he needed, which was money.
Who doesnt need money? asked McCready cynically.
Well get on faster if you stop asking silly questions, said Carey. The second thing you have to know about Meyrick is that hes a bright boy. He has a flair for invention, particularly in electronics, and he has something else which the run-of-the-mill inventor doesnt have the ability to turn his inventions into money. The first Mrs Meyrick had a few thousand quid which was all he needed to get started. When they got divorced hed turned her into a millionairess and hed made as much for himself. And he went on making it.
Carey struck a match and applied it to his pipe. By this time he was a big boy as well as a bright boy. He owned a couple of factories and was deep in defence contracts. Theres a lot of his electronics in the Anglo-French Jaguar fighter as well as in Concorde. He also did some bits and pieces for the Chieftain main battle tank. Hes now at the stage where he heads special committees on technical matters concerning defence, and the Prime Minister has pulled him into a Think Tank. Hes a hell of a big boy but the man-in-the-street knows nothing about him. Got the picture?
I think so, said Denison. But it doesnt help me a damn.
Carey blew a plume of smoke into the air. I think Meyrick inherited his brains from his father, so lets take a look at the old boy.
Denison sighed. Must we?
Its relevant, said Carey flatly. Hannu Merikken was a physicist and, by all accounts, a good one. The way the story runs is that if he hadnt been killed during the war hed have been in line for the Nobel Prize. The war put a stop to his immediate researches and he went to work for the Finnish government in Viipuri, which was then the second biggest city in Finland. But its in Karelia and its now a Russian city and the Russians call it Vyborg. He looked at Denisons closed eyes, and said sharply, I trust Im not boring you.
Go on, said Denison. Im just trying to sort out all these names.
Viipuri was pretty well smashed up during the war, including the laboratory Merikken was working in. So he got the hell out of there and went home to Enso which is about thirty miles north of Viipuri. He knew by this time that no one was going to stop the Russians and he wanted to see to the safety of his papers. Hed done a lot of work before the war which hadnt been published and he didnt want to lose it.
So what did he do? asked Denison. He was becoming interested.
He put all the papers into a metal trunk, sealed it, and buried it in the garden of his house. Young Harri Merikken thats our Harry Meyrick helped him. The next day Hannu Merikken, his wife and his younger son, were killed by the same bomb, and if Harri had been in the house at the same time hed have been killed, too.
And the papers are important? said Denison.
They are, said Carey soberly. Last year Meyrick was in Sweden and he bumped into a woman who had given him a temporary home when hed been evacuated from Finland. She said shed been rummaging about in the attic or whatever and had come across a box hed left behind. She gave it to him. He opened it in his hotel that night and looked through it. Mostly he was amused by the things he found the remnants of the enthusiasms of a seventeen-year-old. There were the schematics of a ham radio hed designed he was interested in electronics even then some other drawings of a radio-controlled model aircraft, and things like that. But in the pages of an old radio magazine he found a paper in his fathers handwriting, and that suddenly made the papers buried in Merikkens garden very important indeed.
What are they about? asked Denison.
Carey ignored the question. At first, Meyrick didnt realize what hed got hold of and he talked about it to a couple of scientists in Sweden. Then the penny dropped and he bolted back to England and began to talk to the right people were lucky he was big enough to know who to talk to. The people he talked to got interested and, as an end result of a lot of quiet confabulation, I was brought in.