Twelve Hours To Destiny Read Free Page A

along the counter. He said something to his companion in a low undertone as Carradine picked them up and walked away. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw their curious gaze fixed on him. Shrugging, he left the building, noticed at once the tall man who came in his direction. There was a car parked at the kerb having the non-descript look he always associated with any of the cars used by Military Intelligence.
    “I’m to take you direct to Headquarters, sir.” The other took his cases and thrust them into the spacious boot.
    Carradine settled himself into the seat, grateful for the space which allowed him to stretch his legs out to the full.
    When they were moving smoothly into the stream of traffic, the driver said politely: “Not the best of weather to have to come back to, sir.”
    Carradine gave a brief nod. The beating rain which slashed at the windscreens defied the moving fingers of the wipers to do their damnedest to clear it away. The warm, mellow sun of the South of France seemed an eternity away at that moment. “I’ve known better,” he answered morosely.
    *
    There was no sound in the large room on the fifth floor of the tall building, although the rain and wind still beat down against the glass of the shuttered windows. Carradine met the gaze of the man seated at the desk, noticed the stillness of the face, the coldness in the eyes.
    Something was worrying the Old Man immensely, he decided. It was seldom he had seen him as preoccupied as this. The other said in a deceptively soft tone: “Sorry to have to recall you in this abrupt way.” He sat back, resting his hands flat on top of the desk. His tone belied the feeling behind his statement. “You ready to go back to work right away?”
    “Why yes, sir.” Carradine nodded. What was coming now, he wondered tensely? More trouble in some obscure corner of the world? Or a humdrum desk job here in the heart of London where nothing ever happened to break the monotony?
    “Good.” The other’s tone became abruptly business-like. He pulled the solitary folder towards him, flipped back the stiff cover. Carradine saw that it had been marked with a single red star, indicating that the contents were top-secret. The Chief tapped the folder significantly with his forefinger.
    “I’m expecting the Chief of Staff here in five minutes, but before he arrives, I want to put you in the picture as far as this affair is concerned. Our top agent in Hong Kong is a man by the name of Chao Lin. Ostensibly, he heads an export-import business dealing in fabrics. Contact is made with him every Friday night at nineteen hours Hong Kong time. A week ago he failed to acknowledge our call sign and all attempts to raise him have failed.”
    “There could be an innocent explanation of this,” Carradine suggested.
    “I doubt it.” The Chief shook his head emphatically. “There was no indication from his last message that anything was wrong.”
    “What kind of man was he, sir?”
    “Extremely conscientious. He was the man who passed on that information about activities around Sinkiang which put us on to their atomic tests. It seems he had discovered something else, something pretty big. He was looking into it and was supposed to send on anything he found as soon as possible.”
    “So naturally you suspect that the Communists got on to him first?”
    “In a single word—yes. In this job, you get the smell of a thing in your nostrils. This smells bad. As of now, we’re opening a file on Chao Lin. You are assigned to this case. I want you to—” He broke off as a buzzer sounded on his desk and the red light over the door went on. “That will be the Chief of Staff.”
    The other came in a moment later, gave Carradine a brief, friendly nod. Carradine had worked with him on several occasions in the past, knew the tall, grey-haired man intimately. Apart from the Chief himself, Benton possibly knew more about the running of Headquarters than anyone else. He was an extremely able man