Black Champagne

by George B Mair

  But Krystelle could be ruthless when need arose. She had the ‘power’ and she had chosen to use it for selfless purposes. The Gods had given her strength, and she had repaid by giving Grant strength. So that now, after one week of complete absence from strain he was a new man. His failure to think about Winston would sometimes puzzle him in the future. It might even worry him. But for sure he would never discover why he had missed out on something which he rated important.

  And she hadn’t been kidding when she asked for the door to be closed or drilled Jo Go-Go in use of his gun, because people topside were bound to be suspicious when no contact came from base. The man from U.N.O. must have left people who knew that he was visiting Ferguson, and when he didn’t return they would ask questions. For that part most of U.N.O. might now be asking questions. And there was a limit as to how long any diplomatic lie could be made to survive. Journalists had a keen nose for stories and someone, sooner or later was going to ask where Mr. Big had taken himself off to. So she hadn’t been surprised when Jo told her that he had shot two men on different days. Or to be more accurate two different pairs of men on two different days. They must have been sent down to see what was cooking. And it was a sure fire bet that the next lot would come in force through one of the least expected entrances. So it looked as though seven days must be the limit to their honeymoon in a vacuum. As it was, both were now practically back to normal, and she too had her problems. Where were Harry and Frank? They too couldn’t have been idle and she must hope only that they had managed to stay alive.

  One thing which interested her about the place was a total absence of telephones. There wasn’t even a hint to date of a radio telephone or short wave transmitter. They were out of the world, almost literally.

  But she had a deep seated hunch that it wouldn’t be for long.

  The place was now strangely silent after a week of listening to Grant’s familiar voice or the whining singsong of Jo Go-Go, the rattle of plates or the tinkle of glasses, the shuffle of feet against rock or the hum of central heating which somehow had kept going and occasionally rattled the pipes which ran round the skirting of the room. They had been living in a world of small noises but she felt alone. And the place was almost frightening. She hadn’t even a gun if any prowler were to pin-point the room and break in.

  Nor was she imagining things. The place was suddenly cold.

  Central heating! The pipes were now chilling and room temperature had crashed. She had begun to shiver. The place would soon be like an ice box and cold alone would soon force her out. But the door was locked.

  And then she remembered Grant. He too would be feeling the cold, because it was impossible to imagine that someone had switched off a vital circuit to only one small suite of living quarters.

  Or at least not unless they knew, actually knew, that someone due to die was living in them.

  She lifted the blanket and sheets from the bed, wrapped them around her shoulders and slipped on a pair of sandals. She could keep control of her nerves better than most, but for some reason she was now beginning to panic. And then she heard the soft tinkle of metal as the lock began to turn. It seemed to turn slowly. There was a hitch, and then abruptly the tumblers jerked round. The handle moved with painful hesitation as the door slowly began to open. The whole thing must have taken only fifteen or twenty seconds. But it was enough for her to feel chilled with helplessness. There wasn’t even a knife with which to defend herself. And she felt naked.

  But it was only Jo Go-Go. His eyes were rolling wide and the whites were painted right round his bulging brown pupils, while his lips sagged in a vacuous sort of grin. ‘Mistah Grant says yo’ come quick topside. I show.’

  She followed him through a twisted series of corridors, most of which were fresh ground, to a solitary room cut from the rock. Grant was sitting in one corner, Winston was lying on a couch and the place felt like an ice box.

  Grant raised his hand in greeting. ‘We’re going to be frozen out, honey. But I’ve found Winston. He had enough chow and water to keep him going. Especially water. Basin over there and fresh stuff laid on. But he’s not as spunky as we’ve seen him. A week of solitary does things to a man, especially when he’s been given a belting like that.’

  He gently turned Winston over. ‘Easy, boy. Just let the lady see.’ The man’s back was a mass of weals and he had been flogged, she guessed, with a birch.

  ‘I wondered what went wrong,’ he said at last. ‘I knew they meant to put on an act. I was to fight some kids or something. But they loaded the dice by leathering me first. Nice friends we had down here, but Dr Grant wanted to wait till you arrived before telling me what the Hell’s been going on. I just gather that you two run the show and that all these kids have disappeared. How come?’

  Krystelle stared curiously at Grant. It was the first time they had raised the matter since that incredible minute when two hundred teenagers had followed a world statesman over the cliff into the lake. The subject had been taboo. But the time had now come to talk . . . a little. And clearly Grant was leaving it to her.

  She shrugged her shoulders. There was no use putting on an act with Winston. ‘You wouldn’t believe it if we told you. So let it go at this, the whole lot were tricked into committing suicide.’

  Winston stared at her suspiciously. ‘You kidding?’

  She shook her head. ‘I told you that you wouldn’t believe it. But we tricked them into doing something silly, and I’d rather not talk about it.’

  The man stared at her curiously. ‘You tricked them into doing something silly,’ he repeated. ‘But you don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Grant’s voice was edged with command. ‘Let it ride. Maybe tell you one day. But right now we’ve got to find a way out.’ He turned to Jo. ‘You go show way seaside.’

  Krystelle hesitated. ‘Why seaside? There’s no boat. If we go through the sea bed we could be worse than ever. There are shark and barracuda around these parts. Why not make landfall through an atoll? Remember how they said there was a lift shaft?’

  Grant paused. ‘And if there’s a deputation waiting for us at the top? Personally I’d rather take a chance on the sea. I can swim three miles or more. Winston is good, even now, for at least two. And between us we could manhandle you along. Safer by the sea.’

  ‘And Jo here?’

  The boy rolled his eyes. ‘Ah go up lift side, Missie. Den go tellem what’s cookin’ down heah.’

  Grant made up his mind. ‘You know men topside lift, Jo?’

  The boy nodded. ‘Shuah.’

  ‘Then how far seaside gate from land?’

  The boy shrugged his shoulders and shuffled his feet helplessly. ‘Maybe one mile. Maybe two. Maybe half. Not far.’

  Grant smiled broadly towards Krystelle. ‘Put on the “fluence”, honey, and winkle the know-how about this lift thing out of young Jo. We want to know how many to expect at the top, what he knows about how the thing works and . . . honey girl . . . get the works. Pump him dry. I don’t need to tell you.’

  She bowed with mock thanks and then turned to Jo.

  Hypnosis had interested Grant ever since he became involved in it during a monumental battle against S.A.T.A.N. in Switzerland. And he did know that the more frequently a subject was ‘put under’ by the same person the more swiftly command could be asserted until the victim would be under control within seconds, but even so he was astonished at the speed with which Jo went flat out at a command.

  Krystelle simply pointed her finger and said one word. ‘Sleep.’

  And the boy froze into an automaton which answered questions with the impersonal efficiency of a computer. Ferguson had said that Jo Go-Go was ‘reliable’. Though it seemed to Grant that this was the understatement of the year. The boy seemed to have most of the gen on a complicated set-up and he admitted on questioning that he had been one of the ‘top’ commandos.

  The question session continued for over ten minutes and then Krystelle snapped
her fingers: the boy relaxed self-consciously and touched his head in perplexity. ‘Sorry, Ma’am. Jo done go sleep.’

  Grant almost laughed. The picture was now beginning to fit, and he guessed they could cope.

  It would be the lift shaft.

  The thing came down on pressing a button. There would be at least five men topside, but he would go up wearing skin-diving kit and carrying a snorkel. He would also carry a gas bomb from the armament store which Jo had pin-pointed and he figured that the skin-diving rig would keep the men topside surprised for long enough to enable him to use it. With the opposition out of action he would send the lift down again and Krystelle would surface with Winston. The thing made sense and offered a reasonable chance of survival.

  ‘Reasonable,’ said Krystelle sourly.

  He nodded. ‘Sure. Why not?’

  ‘We want certainty. Not a good chance,’ said the girl abruptly. ‘This is too big a thing to run any sort of risk. So we’ll all go up wearing skin-diving rig. And Winston and I can use guns if necessary in case your gas bomb misfires because these babies aren’t going to stand quietly around while you lob a load of gas at them. Be your age, David.’

  Another thought crossed her mind. ‘Why did the central heating dry up on us?’

  Grant shrugged his shoulders. ‘Probably ran out of fuel.’

  Winston stood up and his voice was very soft. ‘Dr Grant, sir. You’ve often got away with fantastic odds against you. But this time I’ve got a hunch. Things don’t feel right.’

  ‘How.’ Grant was becoming irritated. He hated the cold and he hated wasting time.

  A shot cracked out as he spoke and Winston clutched his chest. It was over in seconds and Grant turned to see two women standing in the doorway. There were a few men behind, but it was the women who filled his eye. He had actually forgotten about both Mary Ferguson and her sister Rita. Krystelle had known only that Rita set off eight days earlier with a snorkel and skin-diving rig. For all he knew they had been ‘inside’ the grotto ever since.

  He held up his arms and dropped the gun which he had been carrying in his left hand. But his voice was very gentle and if he was surprised he covered up well. ‘We wondered when you two would heave up,’ he said easily.

  ‘Well, now you know.’ Mary Ferguson was almost a beauty, but sorrow had made her face haggard and her eyes were like flint, while her voice was flat neutral as she spoke. ‘Line up against the wall. This is where you go out.’ Her dry, sour smile was edged with death. ‘I heard you say the professionals don’t waste time.’

  He moved towards one wall of the room and then threw out a question. ‘You know what happened?’

  The woman cocked her Sten gun and nodded. ‘The T.V. shows up topside as well. But I was in the grotto when that man from Asia killed my husband. After that I hardly cared and did nothing until you started that ghastly scene with the children. And then,’ she added sourly, ‘I could do nothing. There was nobody to help but Rita.’

  Krystelle looked again at the other woman. She too was holding a Sten gun and her face was expressionless. ‘You one of the executioners?’ she said quietly.

  The woman nodded briefly. But in the same second she let out a brief burst which spattered the ground at their feet. Grant felt one bullet ricochet and caress his thigh, and he involuntarily jumped aside with pain. ‘Careful,’ he snapped. ‘These things can even bounce back against yourselves.’

  The younger woman stared at him coldly. ‘To the wall, Doctor.’

  Grant saw her finger tense on the trigger and as she fired he threw himself forward in a rugger tackle which caught her round the knees and jerked the spray of bullets against a ceiling fifty feet above their heads. The bullets zipped like hornets as they ricochetted from wall to wall and then he felt her teeth sink into his hand. But he also had a glimpse of Krystelle darting forward like an arrow to strike Rita straight in the mid-riff with her outstretched arms. The woman gasped and fell to the floor while the men behind began to rush forward as Krystelle scrambled to her feet, slammed the door closed and dropped the sneck of a Chubb lock. ‘Down, David,’ she screamed, and in the same second systematic bursts of fire ripped through the door.

  Both Grant and Krystelle were now moving like two synchronised streaks of greased lightning and though it went against the grain for Grant to kill a woman he clipped Mary Ferguson on the side of the temple with a blow which crushed the bone to splinters and pulped the side of her head while Krystelle took Rita round the neck and throttled the last breath of life from her heaving body.

  They were now moving almost as one. Each was a professional and each knew what must be done. They picked up the Sten guns and let out a shriek of agony while Krystelle darted a hand upwards along the lintel of the door to open the Chubb. The first men to cross the threshold would be shot down. And if the gag worked or if they had estimated reactions accurately the opposition would come in a rush. But for Grant and she there could be only one safe place, the wall behind the opening door: and together they slithered to the floor and stood up again only behind the door to await developments.

  There was a long silence and then one final burst of fire which ripped through the lock. Seconds later five men bashed the door open and rushed in. Grant fired a split second before Krystelle and the running figures toppled forward, the last crashing his head on the wall at the opposite side of the room before he dropped dead on the floor.

  Grant’s ears were pricked for danger and as the echoes of shots died down he heard the pad of running feet in the corridor outside.

  He slithered through the doorway to fire a long burst at three figures in the distance. They were almost at extreme range, but he got all of them before his clip of ammunition ran out and he returned to the room. Jo Go-Go was dead in a corner, ripped almost in two by the first burst of fire through the wooden door panels. Four of the five men were dead and the other vomiting or coughing out his life blood beside them. He looked at them dispassionately. Krystelle was alive. And for him nothing else mattered. Though it served them all right for having forgotten the Ferguson women.

  ‘Remember that line from Kipling,’ he said at last. ‘“The female of the species is more deadly than the male.”’

  Krystelle smiled slightly, though her eyes clouded with sadness. ‘They both loved Ferguson. I lip-read that on the first night. But there’s something disagreeable about having to kill women. Some sort of taboo that affects even niggers like me.’

  Grant gathered her into his arms. ‘You ain’t no nigger, honey chile,’ he said at last, ‘yo’ jes’ a fifty-seven variety multi-caste and I love you.’

  The girl stared at him for a long minute while she cupped his face in her hands and studied every fleeting expression in his eyes. ‘You mean that, man?’

  He nodded. ‘Mean it.’

  ‘You would never be ashamed of me?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Or think back on how I killed all these people?’

  He shook his head. ‘It was in the line of duty. No alternative.’ And then a thought crossed his mind. ‘But how did you do it? How did you know that some of these boys had made a humfo down here? How did you get on to the voodoo angle?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Just what I told the U.N.O. man. With so many coloured boys from Central America it was a cinch that some had practised voodoo, and since Jo was a psycho, a head case, there was a good chance they had made him a pti-cay-yo. It was just a matter of knowing the ropes, as you would say.’

  ‘And how did you know that Mr. Big had attended services in New York?’ This was the angle which had bothered Grant most in fact he hadn’t even known that there was a voodoo temple in New York.

  Krystelle became serious. ‘My people keep tabs on everybody who really matters. Our records are pretty good and Mr. Big was clearly due for full treatment. The man was an Asiatic playing with Western politics, so it was a cinch he could cause trouble. And it was certain even by 1967 that he was going to crucify the West. Now we a
ren’t all that patriotic, but we’ve an instinct for self-preservation, and sometimes Harry feels that a big man needs to be put down if he shows signs of getting too dangerous—because the last thing any of us want is war. So tabs were kept on him and I remembered bits of his dossier. He attended Youruba Temple in New York several times a month. Which meant that he was a pretty devout vodoun. So clearly I could get at him through voodoo and fear of the Gods. But it was a big bluff.’

  Grant laughed aloud with genuine relaxation. It was the first second of peace he had known since stumbling upon Winston, and Krystelle’s comment was the understatement of the year. A big bluff indeed.

  He took her by the arm. ‘We’ll carry the guns, but this time there’ll be no funny business. A straight ascent to the top and come out shooting if necessary. Agreed?’

  The girl smiled. The dice seemed to have been loaded in their favour so it was a time to play for big odds. ‘We’ll come out shooting,’ she said softly. ‘And if we make it St. Thomas is due for a ball.’

  Grant paused only for long enough to straighten Winston out and lay him once more on the bed which he had used for over a week. The man had died, but life must go on. And in his own way Winston would go down in history. Not in school history books, but in departmental archives which remembered everything and which would help others to acquire his own particular skills. He had been a brave man. And he had died when death was least expected. He had probably known the worst for less than a second. And it was the only way to go out when one came to think of it! A release that was both fast and merciful.