Circus

by Alistair MacLean

  Fawcett and Pilgrim sat together in excellent viewing seats, almost opposite the entrance of the main ring. Fawcett said: ‘Which is Wrinfield?’

  Without appearing to do so, Pilgrim indicated a man sitting only two seats away in the same row. Immaculately clad in a dark blue suit, matching tie and white shirt, he had a lean, thoughtful, almost scholarly face, with neatly parted grey hair and pebble glasses.

  ‘That’s Wrinfield?’ Pilgrim nodded. ‘Looks more like a college professor to me.’

  ‘I believe he was once. Economics. But bossing a modern circus is no longer a seat of the pants job. It’s big business and running it requires corresponding intelligence. Tesco Wrinfield is a highly intelligent man.’

  ‘Maybe too intelligent. With a name like that and on a job like this it’s going to be – ’

  ‘He’s a fifth-generation American.’

  The last of the elephants left the arena and then, to the accompaniment of a blare of trumpets and the suddenly amplified effects of the orchestra, a golden chariot, drawn by two magnificently adorned black stallions, erupted into the arena at full gallop, followed by a dozen horsemen. From time to time these horsemen retained some form of contact with their horses, but for the most part performed a series of acrobatic feats as spectacular as clearly suicidal. The crowd yelled and cheered and applauded. The circus had begun.

  The performance that followed more than bore out the circus’s claim that it had no peer in the world. It was superbly arranged and superbly presented and, as was to be expected, it numbered among its acts some of the best in the world: Heinrich Neubauer, an all but incomparable trainer with an uncanny power over a dozen very unpleasant Nubian lions; his only equal, Malthius, who treated the same number of even more unpleasant Bengal tigers as if they were kittens; Carraciola, who had no trouble at all in making his chimpanzees look a great deal more intelligent than he was; Kan Dahn, billed as the strongest man in the world, which, on the basis of his extraordinary one-handed feats on the high wire and trapeze while seemingly unencumbered by the presence of several attractive young ladies who clung to him with a touching degree of devotion, he might well have been; Lennie Loran, a high-wire-walking comedian, who would have made any insurance agent in the country jump on his pen; Ron Roebuck, who could perform feats with a lasso that a rodeo cowboy wouldn’t even dare dream about; Manuelo, a knife-thrower who could extinguish a lit cigarette at twenty feet – with his eyes bandaged; the Duryans, a Bulgarian teeterboard team who made people shake their heads in wonder; and a dozen other acts, ranging from aerial balletists to a group who climbed up tall ladders and balanced there entirely unsupported while they threw Indian clubs at each other.

  After an hour or so of this Pilgrim said graciously: ‘Not bad. Not bad at all. And here, I take it, is our star turn.’

  The lights dimmed, the orchestra played suitably dramatic if somewhat funereal music, then the lights came on again. High up on the trapeze platform, with half a dozen coloured spotlights trained on them, stood three men clad in sparkling sequinned leotards. In the middle was Bruno. Without his mandarin’s gown he now looked singularly impressive, broad-shouldered and hard and heavy muscled, every inch the phenomenal athlete he was reputed to be. The other two men were fractionally slighter than he. All three were blindfolded. The music died away, and the crowd watched in eerie silence as the three men pulled hoods over their blindfolds.

  Pilgrim said: ‘On balance, I think I would prefer to be down here.’

  ‘That’s two of us. I don’t think I want to look.’

  But look they did as The Blind Eagles went through their clearly impossible aerial routine – impossible because, apart from the occasional roll of a solitary drum in the orchestra, they had no means of knowing where each other was, of synchronizing their sightless movements. But not once did a pair of hands fail to smack safely and securely into another and waiting pair, not once did an outstretched pair of hands appear even remotely liable to miss a silently swinging trapeze. The performance lasted for all of an interminable four minutes and at the end there was another hushed silence, the lights dimmed a second time and almost the entire audience was on its feet, clapping and shouting and whistling.

  Pilgrim said: ‘Know anything about his two brothers?’

  ‘Vladimir and Yoffe, I believe they’re called. Nothing. I thought this was going to be a one-man job.’

  ‘It is. And Bruno has the motivation? The incentive?’

  ‘If any man ever had. I was making enquiries when I was in eastern Europe time before last. I couldn’t find out much from our man there, but enough, I think. There were seven of the family in the circus act – dad or mum more or less retired – but only those three made it over the border when the secret police closed in. I don’t even know why they closed in. That was six, maybe seven years ago. Bruno’s wife is dead, that’s for sure, there are witnesses who will testify to that – well, they would, if they didn’t live in the part of the world they do. He’d been married two weeks. What happened to his youngest brother, his father and his mother, nobody knows. They just disappeared.’

  ‘Along with a million others. He’s our man, all right. Mr Wrinfield is willing to play. Will Bruno?’

  ‘He’ll play.’ Fawcett was confident, then looked thoughtful. ‘He’d better. After all those weeks of trouble you’ve been to.’

  The lights brightened. The Blind Eagles were now on a wire platform some twenty feet above ground, the wire itself stretching to another platform on the far side of the centre ring. Both other rings were empty and there was no other performer in sight except one – and he was on the ground. There was no music and among the crowd the silence was absolute.

  Bruno straddled a bicycle. Across his shoulders was strapped a wooden yoke while one of his brothers held a twelve-foot steel pole. Bruno edged the bicycle forward until the front wheel was well clear of the platform and waited until his brother had placed the pole in slots across the yoke. It was totally insecure. As Bruno moved off, bringing both feet on to the pedals, the brothers caught hold of the pole, leaned forward in perfect unison and swung themselves clear of the platform until, again in perfect unison, they hung suspended at the full length of their arms. The wire sagged noticeably, but Bruno didn’t: slowly and steadily he pedalled away.

  For the next few minutes, balanced partly by himself but mainly by the perfect timing of Vladimir and Yoffe, Bruno cycled backwards and forwards across the wire while the brothers went through a series of controlled but intricate acrobatics. On one occasion, while Bruno remained perfectly steady for seconds at a time, the brothers, necessarily moving with the same immaculate synchronization, gradually increased their pendulum swing until they were doing hand-stands on the pole. The same extraordinary hush remained with the audience, a tribute that wasn’t entirely due to the performance they were witnessing: directly below them as they performed were Neubauer and his twelve Nubian lions, the head of every one of which was turned yearningly upwards.

  At the end of the performance the silence in the audience was replaced by a long and far from silent collective sigh of relief, then once again came the same standing ovation, as heartfelt and prolonged as the one that had gone before.

  Pilgrim said: ‘I’ve had enough – besides, my nerves can’t take any more. Wrinfield will follow me. If he brushes by you on the way back to his seat that means that Bruno is willing to talk and that you’re to follow him at a discreet distance at the end of the show. Wrinfield, I mean.’

  Without making any sign or looking in any particular direction, Pilgrim rose leisurely and left. Almost at once Wrinfield did the same.

  A few minutes later the two men were closeted in one of Wrinfield’s offices, a superbly equipped secretary’s dream, albeit somewhat compact. Wrinfield had a much larger if ramshackle office where most of his work was normally carried out just outside the arena itself; but that did not possess a cocktail bar as this one did. On the principle that he forbade anyone to have liquor on the ci
rcus site proper, Wrinfield accordingly denied himself the privilege also.

  The office was but a tiny part of a complex and beautifully organized whole that constituted the mobile home of the circus. Every person in the circus, from Wrinfield downwards, slept aboard this train except for some independent diehards who insisted on dragging their caravans across the vast spaces of the United States and Canada. On tour the train also accommodated every single performing animal in the circus: at the end, just before the brake-van, were four massive flat-cars that accommodated all the bulky equipment, ranging from tractors to cranes, that were essential for the smooth operation of the circus. In all, it was a minor miracle in ingenuity, meticulous planning and the maximum utilization of available space. The train itself was a monster, over half a mile in length.

  Pilgrim accepted a drink and said: ‘Bruno’s the man I want. You think he will accept? If not, we may well cancel your European tour.’

  ‘He’ll come, and for three reasons.’ Wrinfield’s speech was like the man himself, neat, precise, the words chosen with care. ‘As you’ve seen, the man doesn’t know what fear is. Like all newly naturalized Americans – all right, all right, he’s been naturalized for over five years but that rates as yesterday – his patriotism towards his adopted country makes yours and mine look just that little shabby. Thirdly, he’s got a very big score to settle with his former homeland.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Now. And then we speak to you?’

  ‘I’m the last person you speak to. For both our sakes you want to be seen with me as little as possible. And don’t come within a mile of my office – we have a whole battalion of foreign agents who do nothing but sit in the sun and watch our front door all the time. Colonel Fawcett – he’s the uniformed person who was sitting beside me and the chief of our East European Field Operations – knows a great deal more about it than I do.’

  ‘I didn’t know that you carried uniformed personnel in your organization, Mr Pilgrim.’

  ‘We don’t. That’s his disguise. He wears it so often that he’s more readily recognizable in it than in civilian clothes, which is why nearly everyone calls him “the Colonel”. But never underestimate him.’

  * * *

  Fawcett waited until the end of the show, dutifully applauded, turned and left without glancing at Wrinfield: Wrinfield had already given him the signal. Fawcett left the circus and made his way through the darkness and the steadily increasing rain, moving slowly so that Wrinfield might not lose him. Eventually he came to the large, dark limousine in which he and Pilgrim had arrived and climbed into the back seat. A dark figure was pushed up against the far corner, his face as deeply in shadow as possible.

  Fawcett said: ‘Hello. My name’s Fawcett. I hope that no one saw you arrive?’

  The driver answered: ‘No one, sir. I was keeping a pretty close look-out.’ He looked out through the rain-spattered windows. ‘It’s not much of a night for other people to be minding other people’s business.’

  ‘It isn’t.’ He turned to the shadowy figure. ‘A pleasure to meet you.’ He sighed. ‘I have to apologize for all this comic-opera cloak-and-dagger business, but I’m afraid it’s too late now. Gets in your blood, you know. We’re just waiting for a friend of yours – ah, here he comes now.’ He opened the door and Wrinfield got in beside them. What little could be seen of his face didn’t display a great deal in the way of carefree rapture.

  ‘Poynton Street, Barker,’ Fawcett said.

  Barker nodded in silence, and drove off. Nobody spoke. Wrinfield, more than a little unhappy, kept turning restlessly in his seat and finally said: ‘I think we’re being followed.’

  Fawcett said: ‘We’d better be. If not the driver of that car would be out of a job tomorrow. That car’s following us to make sure that no other car follows us. If you follow me, that is.’

  ‘I see.’ From the tone of his voice it was questionable whether Wrinfield did. He became increasingly unhappy as the car moved into what was very close to a slum area and unhappier still when it drew up in an ill-lit street outside a sleazy walk-up apartment block. He said, complainingly: ‘This isn’t a very nice part of town. And this – this looks like a house of ill-fame.’

  ‘And a house of ill-fame it is. We own it. Very handy places, these bordellos. Who, for instance, could ever imagine that Tesco Wrinfield would enter one of those places? Come inside.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  For such an unsalubrious place in such an unsalubrious area the sitting-room was surprisingly comfortable, although the person who had furnished it would appear to have had a fixation about the colour russet, for the sofa, armchairs, carpet and heavily discreet curtains were all of the same colour or very close to it. A smokeless coal fire – for this was a smokeless area – did its best to burn cheerfully in the hearth. Wrinfield and Bruno occupied an armchair apiece: Fawcett was presiding over a cocktail cabinet, one of the portable kind.

  Bruno said carefully: ‘Tell me again, please. About this anti-matter or whatever you call it.’

  Fawcett sighed. ‘I was afraid you might ask me that. I know I got it right first time, because I’d memorized what I had to say and just repeated it parrot fashion. I had to because I don’t really know what it’s all about myself.’ Fawcett handed round drinks – a soda for Bruno – and rubbed his chin. ‘I’ll try and simplify it this time round. Then maybe I’ll be able to get some inklings of understanding myself.

  ‘Matter, we know, is made up of atoms. There are lots of things that go to make up those atoms – scientists, it seems, are becoming increasingly baffled about the ever-increasing complexity of the atom – but all that concerns our simple minds are the two basic constituents of the atom, electrons and protons. On our earth – in the universe, for that matter – electrons are invariably negatively charged and protons positively charged. Unfortunately, life is becoming increasingly difficult for our scientists and astronomers – for instance, it has been discovered only this year that there are particles, made of God knows what, that travel at many times the speed of light, which is a very upsetting and distressing concept for all those of the scientist community – and that was one hundred per cent – who believe that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light. However, that’s by the way.

  ‘Some time ago a couple of astronomers – Dicke and Anderson were their names – made the inconvenient discovery, based on theoretical calculations, that there must exist positively charged electrons. Their existence is now universally accepted, and they are referred to today as positrons. Then, to complicate things still further, the existence of anti-protons was discovered – this was in Berkeley – again electrically opposite to our protons. A combination of positrons and antiprotons would give rise to what is now termed “anti-matter”. That anti-matter does exist no serious scientists seriously dispute.

  ‘Nor do they dispute that if an electron or positron or proton and anti-proton collided or both sets collided the results would be disastrous. They would annihilate each other, giving off lethal gamma rays and creating, in the process, a considerable local uproar and a blast of such intense heat that all life within tens or perhaps hundreds of square miles would be instantaneously wiped out. On this scientists are agreed. It is estimated that if only two grams of anti-matter struck our planet on the side out-facing the sun the result would be to send the earth, with all life immediately extinct, spinning into the gravitational orbit of the sun. Provided, of course, it didn’t disintegrate immediately on contact.’

  ‘A delightful prospect,’ Wrinfield said. He did not have the look of a convert about him. ‘No offence, but it sounds like the most idle science-fiction speculation to me.’

  ‘Me, too. But I have to accept what I’m told. Anyway, I’m beginning to believe it.’

  ‘Look. We don’t have any of this anti-matter stuff on earth?’

  ‘Because of anti-matter’s unpleasant propensity for annihilating all matter with which it comes into contact, that should be
fairly obvious.’

  ‘Then where does the stuff come from?’

  ‘How the hell should I know?’ Fawcett hadn’t intended to be irritable, he just disliked treading the murky waters of the unknown. ‘We think ours is the only universe. How do we know? Maybe there lies another universe beyond ours, maybe many. It seems, according to latest scientific thinking, that if there are such universes, there is no reason why one or more should not be made of anti-matter.’ Fawcett paused gloomily. ‘I suppose if any intelligent beings existed there they would consider our universe as being composed of anti-matter. Of course, it could have been some rogue material thrown off at the moment of creation of our own universe. Who’s to say?’

  Bruno said: ‘So the whole matter is speculation. It’s just a hypothesis. Theoretical calculations, that’s all. There is no proof, Colonel Fawcett.’

  ‘We think there is.’ He smiled. ‘Forgive the use of the “we”. What could have been, in the terms of human lives, a disaster of the first magnitude occurred in a happily unpopulated area of northern Siberia in 1908. When Russian scientists got around to investigating this – almost twenty years later – they discovered an area of over a hundred square miles where trees had been destroyed by heat: not fire but by instantaneous incineration which, in many cases, led to the petrification of trees in the upright position. Had this extraordinary phenomenon occurred over, say, New York or London, they would have become blackened cities of the dead.’