Destination Unknown

by Agatha Christie

  "I can't think. It's just as though everything in me has dried up."

  Yes, she thought, Tom Betterton, being a real genius, needed liberty more than most. Suggestion had failed to compensate him for the loss of freedom. Only in perfect liberty was he able to produce creative work.

  He was a man, she thought, very close to a serious nervous breakdown. Hilary herself he treated with curious inattention. She was not a woman to him, not even a friend. She even doubted whether he realised and suffered from the death of his wife. The thing that preoccupied him incessantly was the problem of confinement. Again and again he had said,

  "I must get away from here. I must, I must." And sometimes, "I didn't know. I'd no idea what it was going to be like. How am I going to get out of here? How? I've got to. I've simply got to."

  It was in essence very much what Peters had said. But it was said with a great deal of difference. Peters had spoken as a young, energetic, angry, disillusioned man, sure of himself and determined to pit his wits against the brains of the establishment in which he found himself. But Tom Betterton's rebellious utterances were those of a man at the end of his tether, a man almost crazed with the need for escape. But perhaps, Hilary thought suddenly, that was where she and Peters would be in six months' time. Perhaps what began as healthy rebellion and a reasonable confidence in one's own ingenuity, would turn at last into the frenzied despair of a rat in a trap.

  She wished she could talk of all this to the man beside her. If only she could say: "Tom Betterton isn't my husband. I know nothing about him. I don't know what he was like before he came here and so I'm in the dark. I can't help him, for I don't know what to do or say." As it was she had to pick her words carefully. She said,

  "Tom seems like a stranger to me now. He doesn't - tell me things. Sometimes I think the confinement, the sense of being penned up here, is driving him mad."

  "It's possible," said Peters drily, "it could act that way."

  "But tell me - you speak so confidently of getting away. How can we get away - what earthly chance is there?"

  "I don't mean we can walk out the day after tomorrow, Olive. The thing's got to be thought out and planned. People have escaped, you know, under the most unpromising conditions. A lot of our people, and a lot your side of the Atlantic, too, have written books about escape from fortresses in Germany."

  "That was rather different."

  "Not in essence. Where there's a way in there's a way out. Of course tunnelling is out of the question here, so that knocks out a good many methods. But as I say, where there's a way in, there's a way out. With ingenuity, camouflage, playing a part, deception, bribery and corruption, one ought to manage it. It's the sort of thing you've got to study and think about. I'll tell you this. I shall get out of here. Take it from me."

  "I believe you will," said Hilary, then she added, "but shall I?"

  "Well, it's different for you."

  His voice sounded embarrassed. For a moment she wondered what he meant. Then she realised that presumably her own objective had been attained. She had come here to join the man she had loved, and having joined him her own personal need for escape should not be so great. She was almost tempted to tell Peters the truth - but some instinct of caution forbade that.

  She said goodnight and left the roof.

  Chapter 16

  "Good evening, Mrs. Betterton."

  "Good evening, Miss Jennsen."

  The thin spectacled girl was looking excited. Her eyes glinted behind the thick lenses.

  "There will be a Reunion this evening," she said. "The Director himself is going to address us!"

  She spoke in an almost hushed voice.

  "That's good," said Andy Peters who was standing close by. "I've been waiting to catch a glimpse of this Director."

  Miss Jennsen threw him a glance of shocked reproof.

  "The Director," she said austerely, "is a very wonderful man."

  As she went away from them down one of the inevitable white corridors, Andy Peters gave a low whistle.

  "Now did I, or did I not, catch a hint of the Heil Hitler attitude there?"

  "It certainly sounded like it."

  "The trouble in this life is that you never really know where you're going. If I'd known when I left the States all full of boyish ardour for the good old Brotherhood of Man that I was going to land myself in the clutches of yet another Heavenborn Dictator -" he threw out his hands.

  "You don't know that yet," Hilary reminded him.

  "I can smell it - in the air," said Peters.

  "Oh," cried Hilary, "how glad I am that you're here."

  She flushed, as he looked at her quizzically.

  "You're so nice and ordinary," said Hilary desperately.

  Peters looked amused.

  "Where I come from," he said, "the word ordinary doesn't have your meaning. It can stand for being just plain mean."

  "You know I didn't mean it that way. I mean you're like everybody else. Oh dear, that sounds rude, too."

  "The common man, that's what you're asking for? You've had enough of the genius?"

  "Yes, and you've changed, too, since you came here. You've lost that streak of bitterness - of hatred."

  But immediately his face grew rather grim.

  "Don't count on that," he said. "It's still there - underneath. I can still hate. There are things, believe me, that should be hated."

  The Reunion, as Miss Jennsen had called it, took place after dinner. All members of the Unit assembled in the large lecture room.

  The audience did not include what might be called the technical staff: the laboratory assistants, the corps de ballet, the various service personnel, and the small assembly of handsome prostitutes who also served the Unit as purveyors of sex to those men who had no wives with them and had formed no particular attachments with the female workers.

  Sitting next to Betterton, Hilary awaited with keen curiosity the arrival on the platform of that almost mythical figure, the Director. Questioned by her, Tom Betterton had given unsatisfactory, almost vague answers, about the personality of the man who controlled the Unit.

  "He's nothing much to look at," he said. "But he has tremendous impact. Actually I've only seen him twice. He doesn't show up often. He's remarkable, of course, one feels that, but honestly I don't know why."

  From the reverent way Miss Jennsen and some of the other women spoke about him, Hilary had formed a vague mental figure of a tall man with a golden beard wearing a white robe - a kind of godlike abstraction.

  She was almost startled when, as the audience rose to their feet, a dark rather heavily built man of middle age came quietly onto the platform. In appearance he was quite undistinguished, he might have been a business man from the Midlands. His nationality was not apparent. He spoke to them in three languages, alternating one with the other, and never exactly repeating himself. He used French, German and English, and each was spoken with equal fluency.

  "Let me first," he began, "welcome our new colleagues who have come to join us here."

  He then paid a few words of tribute to each of the new arrivals.

  After that he went on to speak of the aims and beliefs of the Unit.

  Trying to remember his words later, Hilary found herself unable to do so with any accuracy. Or perhaps it was that the words, as remembered, seemed trite and ordinary. But listening to them was a very different thing.

  Hilary remembered once being told by a friend who had lived in Germany in the days before the war, how she had gone to a meeting in mere curiosity to listen "to that absurd Hitler" - and how she had found herself crying hysterically, swept away by intense emotion. She had described how wise and inspiring every word had seemed, and how, afterwards, the remembered words in their actuality had seemed commonplace enough.

  Something of the same kind was happening now. In spite of herself, Hilary was stirred and uplifted. The Director spoke very simply. He spoke primarily of Youth. With Youth lay the future of mankind.

 
"Accumulated Wealth, Prestige, influential Families - those have been the forces of the past. But today, power lies in the hands of the young. Power is in Brains. The brains of the chemist, the physicist, the doctor... From the laboratories comes the power to destroy on a vast scale. With that power you can say 'Yield - or perish!' That power should not be given to this or that nation. Power should be in the hands of those who create it. This Unit is a gathering place for the Power of all the world. You come here from all parts of the globe, bringing with you your creative scientific knowledge. And with you, you bring Youth! No one here is over forty-five. When the day comes, we shall create a Trust. The Brains Trust of Science. And we shall administer world affairs. We shall issue our orders to Capitalist and Kings and Armies and Industries. We shall give the World the Pax Scientifica."

  There was more of it - all the same heady intoxicating stuff - but it was not the words themselves - it was the power of the orator that carried away an assembly that could have been cold and critical had it not been swayed by that nameless emotion about which so little is known.

  When the Director had ended abruptly:

  "Courage and Victory! Goodnight!" Hilary left the Hall, half stumbling in a kind of exalted dream, and recognised the same feeling in the faces around her. She saw Ericsson in particular, his pale eyes gleaming, his head tossed back in exultation.

  Then she felt Andy Peters' hand on her arm and his voice said in her ear:

  "Come up on the roof. We need some air."

  They went up in the lift without speaking and stepped out among the palm trees under the stars. Peters drew a deep breath.

  "Yes," he said. "This is what we need. Air to blow away the clouds of glory."

  Hilary gave a deep sigh. She still felt unreal.

  He gave her arm a friendly shake.

  "Snap out of it, Olive."

  "Clouds of glory," said Hilary. "You know - it was like that!"

  "Snap out of it, I tell you. Be a woman! Down to earth and basic realities! When the effects of the Glory Gas poisoning pass off you'll realise that you've been listening to the same old mixture as before."

  "But it was fine - I mean a fine ideal."

  "Nuts to ideals. Take the facts. Youth and Brains - glory glory Alleluia! And what are the youth and brains? Helga Needheim, a ruthless egoist. Torquil Ericsson, an impractical dreamer. Dr. Barron who'd sell his grandmother to the knacker's yard to get equipment for his work. Take me, an ordinary guy, as you've said yourself, good with the test-tube and the microscope but with no talent whatever for efficient administration of an office, let alone a World! Take your own husband - yes, I'm going to say it - a man whose nerves are frayed to nothing and who can think of nothing but the fear that retribution will catch up with him. I've given you those people we know best - but they're all the same here - or all that I've come across. Geniuses, some of them, damned good at their chosen jobs - but as Administrators of the Universe - hell, don't make me laugh! Pernicious nonsense, that's what we've been listening to."

  Hilary sat down on the concrete parapet. She passed a hand across her forehead.

  "You know," she said. "I believe you're right... But the clouds of glory are still trailing. How does he do it? Does he believe it himself? He must."

  Peters said gloomily,

  "I suppose it always comes to the same thing in the end. A madman who believes he's God."

  Hilary said slowly,

  "I suppose so. And yet - that seems curiously unsatisfactory."

  "But it happens, my dear. Again and again throughout history it happens. And it gets one. It nearly got me, tonight. It did get you. If I hadn't whisked you up here -" his manner changed suddenly. "I suppose I shouldn't have done that. What will Betterton say? He'll think it odd."

  "I don't think so. I doubt if he'll notice."

  He looked at her questioningly.

  "I'm sorry, Olive. It must be all pretty fair hell for you. Seeing him go down the hill."

  Hilary said passionately,

  "We must get out of here. We must. We must."

  "We shall."

  "You said that before - but we've made no progress."

  "Oh yes we have. I've not been idle."

  She looked at him in surprise.

  "No precise plan, but I've initiated subversive activities. There's a lot of dissatisfaction here, far more than our god-like Herr Director knows. Amongst the humbler members of the Unit, I mean. Food and money and luxury and women aren't everything, you know. I'll get you out of here yet, Olive."

  "And Tom, too."

  Peters' face darkened.

  "Listen, Olive, and believe what I say. Tom will do best to stay on here. He's -" he hesitated, "- safer here than he would be in the outside world."

  "Safer? What a curious word."

  "Safer," said Peters. "I use the word deliberately."

  Hilary frowned.

  "I don't really see what you mean. Tom's not - you don't think he's becoming mentally unhinged?"

  "Not in the least. He's het up, but I'd say Tom Betterton's as sane as you or I."

  "Then why are you saying he'd be safer here?"

  Peters said slowly,

  "A cage, you know, is a very safe place to be."

  "Oh no," cried Hilary. "Don't tell me you're going to believe that too. Don't tell me that mass hypnotism, or suggestion, or whatever it is, is working on you. Safe, tame, content! We must rebel still! We must want to be free!"

  Peters said slowly,

  "Yes, I know. But -"

  "Tom, at any rate, wants desperately to get away from here."

  "Tom mayn't know what's good for him."

  Suddenly Hilary remembered what Tom had hinted at to her. If he had disposed of secret information he would be liable, she supposed, to prosecution under the Official Secrets Act - That, no doubt, was what Peters was hinting at in his rather embarrassed way - but Hilary was clear in her own mind. Better to serve a prison sentence even than remain on here. She said, obstinately,

  "Tom must come, too."

  She was startled when Peters said suddenly, in a bitter tone,

  "Have it your own way. I've warned you. I wish I knew what the hell makes you care for that fellow so much?"

  She stared at him in dismay. Words sprang to her lips, but she checked them. She realised that what she wanted to say was, "I don't care for him. He's nothing to me. He was another woman's husband and I've a responsibility to her." She wanted to say, "You fool, if there's anybody I care about, it's you..."

  II

  "Been enjoying yourself with your tame American?"

  Tom Betterton threw the words at her as she entered their bedroom. He was lying on his back on his bed, smoking.

  Hilary flushed slightly.

  "We arrived here together," she said, "and we seem to think alike about certain things."

  He laughed.

  "Oh! I don't blame you." For the first time he looked at her in a new and appraising way. "You're a good-looking woman, Olive," he said.

  From the beginning Hilary had urged him always to call her by his wife's name.

  "Yes," he continued, his eyes raking her up and down. "You're a damned good-looking woman. I'd have noticed that once. As it is, nothing of that kind seems to register with me any more."

  "Perhaps it's just as well," said Hilary drily.

  "I'm a perfectly normal man, my dear, or I used to be. God knows what I am now."

  Hilary sat down by him.

  "What is the matter with you, Tom?" she said.

  "I tell you. I can't concentrate. As a scientist I'm shot to pieces. This place -"

  "The others - or most of them - don't seem to feel like you?"

  "Because they're a damned insensitive crowd, I suppose."