Midnight Never Comes - Jack Higgins [19]
'But Donner's a highly successful business man, a respected public figure?' Chavasse shook his head. 'What would he stand to gain? It just doesn't make sense.'
'Neither did the Gordon Lonsdale affair at first.'
'But Lonsdale was a Russian, a professional agent.'
'Who was a Canadian to all intents and purposes. Even now there is some doubt about his real name.'
'Are you suggesting that Max Donner might be another Lonsdale?'
'I'm not sure,' Mallory said. 'It's a possibility: that's all we can say for certain at the moment. Donner's parents were Austrian. He was born in Vienna in 1916 while his father was fighting on the Italian front. After the war, things were difficult and then his father came into a small legacy and they emigrated to Australia in 1925.'
'How did they fetch up in a place like Rum Jungle?'
'Like plenty before him, Donner's father fell into the wrong hands. With what was left of his legacy he bought what he understood to be a thriving cattle station. When they got there, they found a mud hole in the wilderness, a broken down shack and a handful of starving cows. Mrs. Donner wasn't built for that kind of life. She died in 1930.'
'When the boy was fourteen?'
'That's right. He and his father hung on for another year, then sold out for seventy-five pounds and left.'
'Where for--Sydney?'
'With a depression just beginning?' Mallory shook his head. 'They took to the road in the Outback following that great Australian custom like thousands of others. Donner's father died in 1933 at a place called Clay Crossing. We know that from the death certificate.'
'When the boy was seventeen?'
Mallory nodded. 'From then on, he was on his own. Just another swagman walking the Outback at a time when half the men in the country were out of work. He joined the army in Kalgoorlie the day after war was declared.'
'And you don't know what happened in between?'
Mallory shook his head. 'From the death of his father at Clay Crossing in 1933 to his enlistment in the army in 1939--a great big blank and I don't like it.'
'And what's he up to at this end?'
'I'm not sure, that's the trouble, but I could make a reasonable guess. For the past couple of years, we've been losing people in a steady trickle. People like Simmons. Not all that important, but important enough. Confidential clerks engaged on classified work, cypher clerks and so on. Thirty-eight in all.'
'Too many,' Chavasse said. 'Only a really efficient organisation could tackle such a number.'
'And an organisation that never misses. This is really classified information, Paul, but twice during the same period, we've been about to arrest a really big fish. In each case he's been spirited away.'
'Forty in all,' Chavasse said. 'That's really very good.'
'Add to those, eleven poor devils who having defected to this country and having applied for and been granted, political asylum, have also completely disappeared. And they've turned up again on the other side, by the way.'
'You're sure about that?'
'Certain. As a matter of fact we've just lost another this week. A rocket expert called Boris Souvorin. Even our American friends didn't know we had him.'
'And you think Donner's behind all this?'
'I'm certain of it. He's been hovering on the fringe in too many cases for my peace of mind.'
'Couldn't you pull him in?'
'On what charge?'
'What about that bearer cheque of his that Ranevsky cashed? Wouldn't that do for a start?'
'Not a chance.' Mallory shook his head. 'Everything would depend upon the bank clerk's evidence that the cheque Ranevsky cashed was Donner's. He wouldn't last ten minutes on the witness stand with a really good counsel having a go at him. Everything else is merely supposition and guesswork.'
'Which you happen to believe?'
'I've never been more certain of anything in my life.'
'Then what are you doing about it?'
Mallory applied another match to the bowl of his pipe. 'How well do you