"Do you know Long Shadow?" Rick asked Bradley.

"Yes. I'd never met him, but I knew him by reputation."

Charlie stood up. "Got to take care of the customers. See you later."

As he left, Bradley continued, "Next step was to get a line on the
source of the heavy water. We had the name of Korse Lenken, but that was
all. I assumed it was being produced industrially somewhere on the
Tibetan border. But that would take equipment, of course, so I put the
consulate commercial section to work finding out if Long Shadow had been
dabbling in industrial equipment. That's routine for a consulate. Well,
he hadn't. But what turned up but the fact that he had imported some
Nansen bottles."

"I begin to see how it shaped up," Zircon said.

"It wasn't difficult, really," Bradley admitted. "Just took plugging. At
that time, Chahda arrived from Singapore, bringing Long Shadow with him,
although he didn't know it."

"Unhappy me," Chahda complained.

Bradley smiled at the Hindu boy. "Don't be unhappy. Long Shadow is the
best in the business. Well, I told Chahda to go to Korse Lenken, then
dropped my disguise. As I had hoped, Long Shadow started following me,
dropping Chahda. Once Chahda was on his way, I ditched Long Shadow and
became the Eurasian once more. We had given Charlie instructions about
you. He got in touch with me the moment you showed up, but I was
delayed. Meanwhile, you had been spotted, probably when you asked for
Chahda. Long Shadow must have figured the odds were piling up. He'd lost
me, so he probably decided to keep the odds down by removing all of
you."

He nodded at Keaton-Yeats. "Thanks to our young British friend, we found
you before you'd been knocked in the head. Then I took off after Long
Shadow, as you know. Somewhere between times I'd gotten the consul to
get a Nansen bottle, a rubber boat, and that other stuff for you. I
didn't know why you'd need the rubber boat, but I figured a Nansen
bottle meant water and you'd better be prepared."

"If we hadn't been trapped in the caverns, we could have used the rubber
boat," Rick said. "But it was at camp with Sing when we needed it."

"Fortunes of war," Bradley said. "Well, while you were sneaking around
through the caves, I kept busy. You probably know that the Far East is
the happiest spying ground in the world. There are so many spies they
have to spy on each other." He turned suddenly to Keaton-Yeats. "Isn't
that right, colleague?"

The young Englishma