The Depths Read online

  “What do you think could have caused it?” the old lady went on. “An earthquake, perhaps? Or an underwater explosion? Or—”

  “We really mustn’t guess, my dear,” the old man said. “Let us go and see whether we can help.”

  Chapter Three

  THE SILVER STREAK

  Palfrey was in his office.

  He was planning to go up to street level, simply to walk through London on what he had been assured was a beautiful summer evening, with less traffic than usual about. It was ten o’clock. The day had been busy but not oppressively so; some cables from Moscow had arrived rather late, and he had stayed to help to decode them. They were not of major importance but it was never possible to be sure, and he liked to use every available moment.

  He was more yawny than tired.

  He was lonely, too. It was years since his wife, Drusilla, had died in that disaster which had killed so many, but from which the world had slowly recovered; the disaster by drought.[1] He had never since met a woman who stirred his interest, still less desire, and on these lonely nights he would remember the deep contentment of life with Drusilla, and would wonder what his future held. His son, thank God, had lived. He was on the other side of the world now, doing some research work on Australian aborigines – as if he wanted to help make sure that whatever posterity came into being, they would at least have a full history of mankind in Australasia.

  Yes, Palfrey was lonely.

  He opened his door, walked along a narrow passage, and opened the Secretary-General’s. Merritt was not there. A youngish woman, who had become Merritt’s right-hand man as it were, and might one day become even more to him, was sitting at the big plain desk. She was Joyce Morgan. On the wall by her side was an instrument panel, which was connected with the operations room next door.

  She looked up, and smiled brightly.

  “Hallo, Sap. Going up for air?”

  “Think you could spare me for an hour?”

  “Of course,” she said. “I wish you would go upstairs more than you do.”

  “And you wish Alec would, too!”

  She laughed. She was attractive, nicely made-up and well dressed in a summerweight suit of pale red. She had come into Z5’s service at the time of The Terror, when her father and her brother had been among those who, having been corrupted, had ranged themselves against the national interests. In the past year she had become absorbed in her work; anyone who stayed long in Z5’s service did. It had to become a form of dedication, or one was useless.

  “Yes, I wish Alec would go and look at the sun sometimes,” she admitted. “Sap, will you try to make him take a holiday this summer?”

  “I’ll do more. I’ll make him.”

  “Don’t let him realise that it is a holiday,” she warned, as an afterthought. “He’ll enjoy it much more if he thinks he’s working.”

  How well she knew Alec Merritt! Palfrey went out, and walked along a narrow passage to one of the exit shafts. There were no staircases here, only lifts and shafts. The lifts were large enough only for three people at a time; they were really tiny automatic lifts, fitted with hand-operated pulleys so that if there was at any time any serious breakdown in electricity or any failure with the electronics system under which headquarters operated, individuals could go up to safety in the street, or to higher levels in the underground building. Palfrey had reached Shaft 17 when a white light shone above it – and a white light meant a call for him. He moved to the telephone which was built into an alcove at waist level; telephones were placed all about the intricate system of passages and offices so that no one need be out of touch for more than a few seconds.

  “Palfrey.”

  “Sap, come back, will you?” It was Joyce. “I’ve just had a flash that something has happened on board the Seafarer.”

  “I’m on my way,” Palfrey said quickly.

  He had been used to this kind of situation for years; it seemed sometimes as if he had never known the day when emergency did not threaten. He ought to be inured to it. Instead, his heart began to thump as he strode back towards the Secretary-General’s office and the control room. He had a mind picture of the man who mattered on the ship: Professor Corvell. Then he reminded himself of the Z5 agents who were also on board. “Something has happened” could mean anything, and he did not try to imagine what.

  He turned into the office. The door was open, and a junior official was standing-in for Joyce, who must be in the control room. Palfrey stepped inside. Half a dozen operatives were on duty, each wearing ear-phones. Messages from all over the world arrived here, minute by minute – in a way it was like the Information Room at New Scotland Yard, except that there was seldom the same sense of urgency. Now, there was. Joyce had ear-phones at her head, but as Palfrey entered she took them away, and said:

  “Broadcast, please.”

  Immediately, a voice sounded from one of the loud speakers set round the walls. The voice sounded tinny and remote, but the words were crystal clear. It was a man.

  “Our position is Latitude 42° 55’ JV. Longitude 06° 25’ E. We are not damaged below the waterline and apart from incidental damage and injuries to crew and passengers there appears to be no damage above the waterline. The cause of the incident is not known. Hold on, please.” There was a pause.

  Joyce said clearly: “They were hit by a giant wave, something like a tidal wave. Several passengers and some members of the crew were swept overboard, and there is little hope of saving them.”

  Palfrey asked stiffly: “The Professor?”

  “I don’t know, yet.”

  Palfrey nodded, and his gaze strayed to one of the panels set in the wall on his right. This was a map record of disappearances. Most of the men and women named on the board were agents of Z5, a few were people who were to have been protected, some were scientists, chemists, physicists and mathematicians, experts in many fields. All had vanished. At one time, such a vanishing trick would have carried the assumption that the man – or woman – had deliberately crossed beneath the iron curtain, or else had left Russia for the West. This was no longer so. Men like Professor Corvell worked under conditions of great strain. Their minds were already tuned to such a pitch of nervous tension that collapses were commonplace, loss of memory was almost as frequent, and short-term disappearances not unremarkable. Yet some of the disappearances in recent months had become more than short-term; some men and women as important in their sphere as Corvell had been missing for a long time.

  Palfrey had been checking on some, and had asked Merritt for more reports.

  One common factor was revealing itself in these reports; a surprisingly high proportion of those who disappeared had last been seen at or near a coastal resort; some had last been seen swimming, or in a small boat. None of them had been traced.

  He put this out of his mind and began to wonder why there had been no report from the Admiralty.

  The voice came over the air again.

  “This is the master of the S.S. Seafarer calling London. I am now in a position to give a preliminary list of casualties and of disappearances. Twenty-seven passengers are suffering from broken limbs, two of them are seriously injured. One hundred and ninety-eight are suffering from cuts and bruises. Some members of the crew are missing. Eleven members of the crew have suffered broken limbs, the total slightly injured has not yet been computed. There is no damage in the engine room, and conditions now appear to be normal. The sea is calm. One moment please ... I am now able to give you the names of seven passengers known to be missing. Each was on deck at the time we were struck by the wave, and none has been seen since.

  “Mr Timothy Chitty …”

  Palfrey’s hands clenched. Joyce Morgan moved to his side, as if she understood what he was feeling. He forced himself to listen, for there were three Z5 agents on board that ship, each looking after Chitty; o
ne or more should have been near him.

  The master was continuing: “Miss Muriel del Spiro, Mr Juan Fernando, who were known to be together on the sports deck. Mr Paul Henson, Mr Henry Gibson, Mrs Jennifer Townsend, Mr Maurice Owen. Reference to the passenger list is recommended for further details.

  “I am making for Nice, to disembark the seriously injured passengers, and will report again each hour on the hour.”

  The loud speaker fell silent. The control room operatives, some of them listening on their ear-phones to messages from other parts of the world, all watched Palfrey; everyone here knew that Corvell was the most important charge the organisation had; it would be impossible to receive worse security news than this.

  Palfrey thought exactly the same.

  There was a chance, of course, that Corvell would be picked up, but it was very slim. He took a sheet of paper from Joyce. It showed the time of the great wave, the time of the first report from the ship, and times of other messages; so far no bodies had been discovered. The Admiralty as well as the Naval Squadron on manoeuvres in the Mediterranean must have had this message by now. Why—

  Joyce looked up.

  “Admiral Correson is on the line, Sap.”

  Palfrey took the telephone.

  “Thanks. Hullo, Corry. What news have you got for me?”

  “None you’re going to like,” the Admiral told him. “That wave was the result of an underwater explosion. There is some evidence of radiation-clean particles in water and the air. We had ships within fifteen miles, but had no warning. Our radar reported some small craft near the Seafarer, and one of them showed more clearly than most – as if it had a very bright surface. Certainly no large surface vessels and almost certainly no submarines were in the vicinity.”

  “What chance of survivors?” asked Palfrey.

  “Poor – especially at night.”

  “All right, Corry, thanks,” Palfrey said bleakly. “You’ll put in your reports that I asked you to keep your eyes open, won’t you?”

  “Sap – what do you know about this?”

  “Nothing,” answered Palfrey. “I don’t even know what I fear.”

  He rang off, nodded to Joyce, and went into his own room. He did not let himself admit it to anyone else, but he was frightened.

  He opened a drawer in his desk, and pulled out a chart, rolled up to save space. He spread this out on the desk, and weighted the corners with a paperweight, a pen, a book and an inkstand. Then he studied it closely. It was Geographia’s Oceans of the World, and was completely incomprehensible to a layman, but he had studied it too often and too long to be puzzled by it now. All about it were little red dots, and among the places indicated with such dots were Tristan da Cunha, the coast line of Texas where a hurricane had struck with fiendish force not long ago, the north coast of Japan, the coast of British Honduras. There were many more red dots, and each represented what might loosely be called a ‘tidal wave’. In most cases the cause was known, or believed to be known.

  Was it?

  Some were known beyond doubt, of course; three hurricanes had been traced far out in the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans and followed all along their course. Two earthquakes had taken place on the known fault areas, and there was no reasonable doubt about them. But there were others which it was impossible to be sure about; small waves which might be due to some form of natural phenomena, and which could be man-made. Palfrey brooded. Years ago, he had worked against a group of power-seeking men experimenting with underground atomic explosions, and creating ‘earthquakes’; at that time, before the full might of nuclear explosions had been known, a hundred-megaton bomb had not been thought of. Underground tests had become so commonplace these days that none but the angry or the frightened gave them much thought.

  Z5 agents had checked, with experts, in every case. Seven of the waves had no known natural cause, and each of these had been what Admiral Correson called local.

  Someone could control the seas, at least to some degree.

  Palfrey had completely forgotten his decision to go ‘up’ to London’s surface. There was too much to do. Whitehall, Washington and the Kremlin had to be informed, and he put in radio telephone calls to his agent in each distant city. Each took the news calmly, each promised to pass it on. He called 10 Downing Street on a private line; the Prime Minister was out, but his first secretary said:

  “This is going to upset him badly, Palfrey. Corvell is one of our most important cards.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Palfrey said.

  “Is there no chance at all that he’s alive?”

  “I suppose there’s a chance,” Palfrey conceded. “It’s a slim one, but it exists. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “I certainly hope you will,” the first secretary said. “Thank you for calling so promptly.”

  Palfrey rang off, reflecting almost sourly that everything essential had been done – except the hard thinking. He pulled the chart and reports towards him and began to study them. He was still deeply troubled. When he had absorbed all there was to learn from the details he crossed to another filing cabinet, and took out reports of a different nature; of men who had vanished off the face of the earth or the oceans.

  Like the Professor—

  Then Palfrey began to wonder why Julia Shawn had not reported. He was beginning to worry when a light flashed on his desk. He lifted the telephone, and was told: “A call for you from SKJ, sir.” This was Julia.

  Chapter Four

  PHENOMENA

  “Yes, I was actually on deck,” Julia Shawn said. “I saw him just before he was swept off the ship. I don’t think there is really any chance at all that he will be picked up. I don’t see how he can be.”

  She was in a small cabin next to the radio office, with ear-phones clipped over her head. Apart from a faint droning sound, all she could hear was Palfrey’s voice; there was no interference from atmospherics. The ship was moving with almost unbelievable smoothness which made the awful wave seem like something which had happened in a nightmare. She was feeling much more in command of herself, over the worst of the emotional effect of what had happened. Above everything else when talking with Palfrey, she had to be objective and detached; there was no room for the luxury of emotion, one had to force that aside when working for Z5.

  Palfrey’s pleasant voice had an engagingly casual tone; nothing could be more calculated to ease tension.

  “So you saw everything happen, you really were on the ball. Can you describe it to me?”

  “Yes, vividly,” she said, and did so. When she talked of the silver streak which had looked rather like a tiny rocket missile or a midget submarine, the picture came back. She could almost hear the hiss and roar of the water.

  When she had finished, Palfrey said: “I’ll come out and see you.” Something in his voice told her that he thought what she had said was of utmost importance. “I want you to take extreme precautions, personally. Are the other two all right?”

  “Simon is badly bruised. Morris seems perfectly all right.”

  “Tell them what I say,” said Palfrey. “You are to take extreme precautions. Stay on board until I arrive. I’ll make sure that the ship stays in Nice long enough—”

  “From what I hear it will be staying for several days. There’s hardly a piece of unbroken crockery left on board,” Julia said. “All right, I’ll be careful.”

  “Julia,” Palfrey said softly, “take very great care.”

  After a pause, she answered: “Yes, I will. Is that all?”

  “I’ll see you in about four hours’ time,” Palfrey said, and hung up.

  She took the ear-phones off, slowly. Palfrey’s quiet, calming voice had changed so much that he had alarmed her; he had meant to, of course. In some way he had read acute danger for her into what had happened. Her mind, trained to follow such reas
oning, trained not to overlook any indications which might help to answer a problem, was blank for a few seconds. She did not go out of the cabin, where there was a small desk, two chairs, and some filing cabinets. What made him think that she was in danger? What had she said—

  She began to smile, her lips stiff and taut. It wasn’t very difficult to find the answer. She had seen that silvery streak, seen the whole incident – and as far as she knew, no one else who had been on deck was alive. It was like Palfrey to see the possible significance of that so quickly.

  She lifted a ship’s telephone, and called for Simon – the engineering officer on staff. It was several minutes before he came to the telephone. She told him precisely what Palfrey had said, and she could not rid her mind of the fear which Palfrey had put into it.

  Simon was brisk, young, assured.

  “The best thing is to lock yourself in your cabin,” he said. “I’ll come up for you. Don’t see why there should be any danger on board, but if the great man says do a thing, we do it. I’ll be up in a few minutes. Stay put, won’t you?”

  She sat in the little bare room, able to hear the droning beat of the engine. Now and again, she also heard squawks and squeaks from the radio room next door. There had been a regular stream of passengers who had sent off radio telegrams, and everyone on board had been excessively busy for the past two hours. A great deal of tidying up had already been done, but the main lounge was rather like the waiting room of a hospital after a big train crash. She did not know how many people had been seriously hurt, but there were a great many. She opened her bag and lit a cigarette. Simon was a long time, but any number of things might have delayed him. She found herself brooding over Z5 and its organisation. There was hardly a ship afloat, there was no airfield of consequence, no city of any size, no railway station, no big factory, in which there was not a Z5 agent. Comparatively few were full time; most, like Simon, did their normal daily job, and worked as observers (and in emergency as active operatives) in their off duty hours. Simon could switch from spare to full time at any moment, she knew; the Captain almost certainly believed that he was in the British Secret Service; the Captain doubtless thought she was, too.