177128.fb2 The Romanov succession - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 47

The Romanov succession - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 47

13

“Really we need cloaks and beards, darling-we ought to be carrying black bombs with sputtering fuses.”

She sat up straight at the kitchen table and twisted her head to ease the cramped muscles. On the table the Clausewitz was dog-eared and the pad beside it was cluttered with pencil-printing and numerals in alternate lines; the numerals stopped two-thirds of the way down. That was as far as she’d got with it. It had taken nearly three hours to do that much.

“Oleg must have stayed up nights to dream this up. Nothing could be clumsier.”

“It’s secure,” he said. “Unless they know what book to use there’s no way on earth to break the code.”

He stepped behind her chair and kneaded the back of her neck. She tipped her face back and smiled, upside-down in his vision; he bent to kiss her.

Then he had another look at his wristwatch. Where the devil was Cosgrove’s radio man? It was getting on for eleven o’clock; the first contact with Vlasov was scheduled in something less than three hours.

She misinterpreted his gesture. “I deplore your lack of confidence,” she said mischievously. “I’ll finish it in time.”

“All right. But where’s that damned radio?”

A chill highland mist hung about the bungalow; he extinguished the parlor lights before he stepped outside for a breath of air. The night was total; the base was blacked out. He heard the disembodied growl of a vehicle moving across the tarmac not too far away; in the mist he saw nothing. If there was a gunman out there good luck to him.

He turned his head to catch the moving vehicle’s sound on the flats of his eardrums. It was on the runway itself and when it stopped it was by the main hangar. The engine idled for several minutes and then he heard it go into gear and start moving again. Back toward the main gate, changing through a couple of gears, never getting into high. It stopped briefly-getting clearance at the gate-and his ears followed it out to the high road. He heard it come forward in the night. The two slitted lights were ghostly emerging from the mist; he stepped back out of the drive.

The lights went out; the ignition switched off. He heard the door open and he spoke merely to identify his presence: “Hello?”

A brief but absolute stillness; then a heavy breath and a stranger’s voice: “Who’s that-who’s that?”

“General Danilov. Are you looking for me?”

“Cor, you gimme such a fright, sir!” A vague shape swam forward in the fog.

“You’d be Cooper?”

“That’s right, sir. Lance Corporal Arry Cooper. You want this rig inside the ouse?”

“I’ll give you a hand.”

It turned out to be a small van. Lance-Corporal Cooper opened the back doors and they manhandled the shortwave transceiver across the lawn into the house.

“Just set it down on the floor and stand still until I shut the door and get some lights on.”

When he switched the lamp on he saw he’d been fooled completely by the voice. He’d expected a weasel-faced little Cockney. Cooper was as wide and muscular as a Percheron draft horse. He had a handsome square young face with a thatch of yellow hair combed neatly across his forehead.

Cooper stood at attention but his eyes roved about the homey little room. I’m sorry I’m so late, sir. It was the fog and all. I lost me way three times. I’m not a native here.”

“I gathered that much, Cooper. Let’s set it up on this table, shall we?”

The wireless set was a bulky monster; it had to weigh a good hundred pounds. The case lifted off like that of a motion-picture projector. Cooper turned the empty case upside-down and it wasn’t empty after all: a thin wire was coiled neatly against the lid, snapped down with leather straps.

“Ave you a ladder then, sir?”

“There’s a stepladder in the pantry. Will it do?”

“Ave to, won’t it.” Cooper was attaching one end of the coiled wire to the antenna lead at the back of the set. Then he carried it toward the front door, paying it out as he went. He waited by the door, not opening it, until Alex brought the stepladder and switched off the lights. Then they threaded the wire out through the window beside the front door and Alex went outside with him.

“D’you mind steadying the ladder for me, sir?”

Alex jammed its legs hard down into the earth and braced it with one hand while he hooked the other hand into Cooper’s belt and boosted him up toward the low-sloping roof.

Cooper was gone a good five minutes; Alex heard the twanging rustle of the antenna wire as Cooper drew it along after him and pulled it taut before fixing it to the chimney.

They went inside. Irina had finished coding the message. Cooper pulled the telegrapher’s key out of its slot and began twisting wires around knurled connectors. “The weight of it’s in those dry cells, y’see, sir. We can’t trust the electric up here so we carry our own.”

Alex had a look at Irina’s pad: groups of numbers-each five digits separated from the next by an X. It would mean nothing to Cooper but that was how it had to be.

“Ave you got frequencies for me, sir?”

“Set to send and receive on five-point-six-two megacycles. Have you got a wristwatch?”

“No sir, sorry to say.”

“I’ll warn you when it’s time then. We’ve got about an hour.”

He took the pad and rolled the top sheets over until he came to a blank page; he glanced back at the list of notes Irina had made and then he jotted something on the clean page and tore it out and carried it to Cooper.

“This is the message you’ll receive first.”

On the sheet of notepaper he’d written: XXX30X21901X 63302X19016X33021X90163X.

Cooper had neat small white teeth. “Same word three times, in’t it, sir?”

It meant he knew his job and that was good. “It’s a recognition signal. If you don’t get that opening you don’t respond to the message.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Now here’s your reply to it.” He gave him the second sheet.

Cooper glanced at it and nodded. To him it didn’t say Condotierri three times; it was merely a string of twenty-seven digits separated by Xs. But it was obvious he understood the procedure.

“When you’ve broadcast that recognition code you’ll continue immediately without waiting for an answer. You’ll broadcast the message on these sheets. At the end of that transmission you’ll switch over to Receive and you should get an acknowledgment that looks like this one.”

KollinXCarnegie.

“There won’t be a message from your opposite number then, sir?”

“That’ll be tomorrow night.”

Cooper nodded. “Right, sir. Got it.” He displayed his fine teeth again. “All quite mysterious-like, in’t it.”

“When it’s all over you’ll find out what it was about, Corporal. You’re part of something very important.”

“Yes sir. That’s what Brigadier Cosgrove told me.”

Irina said, “Would you like coffee, Corporal?”

“I wouldn’t mind a cuppa, madam. If you’d show me to the larder I’ll brew it meself.”

“I’m sure Sergei will be glad to do it.” She left the room.

Cooper pushed his lips forward and lifted his eyebrows. He didn’t say anything; he grinned at the doorway where Irina had disappeared, transferred the grin to Alex and then went back to his key to test the circuits. Tubes began to glow in the ungainly apparatus and Cooper twisted the tuning rheostat; the brass telegrapher’s key began to tap out staccato rhythms, picking up incoming messages on the various bands. Satisfied it was working properly, Cooper shut it down and leaned back in the wooden chair. “Well then sir, I expect we’re ready to go to war, ain’t we.”