Amber Nine

by John Gardner

  ‘I’ll vouch for Oakes,’ said Mostyn, back to the weary note and slipping a wait-till-I-get-you-alone look at his underling.

  ‘I’m a scientist by trade.’ The professor briskly took the pass-port and opened it. ‘But I’m getting used to your cloak and dagger ways. Let me see. Page four. Valid for all parts of the Commonwealth and for all Foreign Countries. Special Security you say? The s in Countries should be out of alignment—which it is. Thank you Colonel.’

  The passport was returned.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve got some rather serious news.’ Mostyn doing his best to be polite.

  ‘It’s a rather serious world. Shoot.’ Skidmore was surprisingly hip.

  ‘First of all, sir, I’d better tell you that the Director of Supreme Control’s not too happy about Amber Nine.’

  ‘He will be when he gets my report.’

  Boysie considered how small Mostyn looked next to the giant superbrain.

  ‘Maybe, sir. But you didn’t mount the operation through the normal channels, did you?’

  That’s a laugh, thought Boysie. A remark like that coming from Mostyn—biggest red-tape trimmer in the business.

  ‘Oh dear, have I slipped up somewhere?’ Skidmore’s wide-eyed innocence was blatantly fake. ‘NATO people seemed happy enough.’

  Boysie was mentally cheering the Prof. He’s sending him up, he thought, sending Mostyn up rotten.

  ‘Yes, but you didn’t get clearance through anyone else did you.’ It was impossible for Mostyn to keep that edge of menace out of his voice.

  ‘No, I suppose not.’ The old boy chuckled to himself.

  ‘It is usual to go through Supreme Control. All Departments should be advised of a major operation like this.’

  Mostyn would do himself an injury if he went on like that. ‘Why?’

  ‘People ought to be put in the picture.’

  ‘Absolute bloody nonsense. More people who know about it less chance there is of pulling it of.’ It must have been galling to Mostyn. Skidmore was purposely playing the stiff-necked genius steamrolling authority with homespun logic.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘Old Fuffy Greenhaugh knew about it.’

  ‘Chief of Training Command? Yes, of course he knew.’

  ‘I was in a fix. Wanted a place in the right geographical location. Mentioned it to Fluffy—at school with my brother you know. Said he’d just the spot. Here. Ideal. Couldn’t be better.’

  ‘Yes, I gather that, sir. But, actually, Training Command have been in error as well. This school operates on neutral territory. You’re about to pull a stunt—a rather large stunt—on neutral territory.’

  ‘Point taken. Old Fluffy on the mat, eh?’ He looked benignly round the room. ‘Couldn’t put it through normal channels anyway. Nobody would’ve allowed me to do it. Had to play it chilly.’

  ‘Thought you should be warned anyway, sir.’

  ‘Good of you. Good of you. You will be remembered.’ The last sentence ambiguous.

  ‘There is more, sir. Serious developments I’m afraid.’

  ‘Go ahead.’ Skidmore eased himself into a chair and took out a clean, polished briar which he filled and lit with considerable care. The man fascinated Boysie. It was as though some great nursery teddy bear, a symbol of normality, had entered the half-world of confused fantasy which, until now, had clouded the experiences of the past two days.

  Mostyn was lucid. Sticking to essentials, he outlined the situation which had brewed since Boysie had lumbered on to the scene. There was a full minute’s silence after he stopped speaking.

  ‘It’s a blow.’ Skidmore puffed on his pipe—a bloom of smoke obscuring the relief-map face. ‘Can’t deny it’s a blow.’ He held the bowl of the briar in his right hand and tapped his teeth with the stem. Boysie could see, by the look on Mostyn’s face, that the mannerism irritated the Second-in-Command. ‘Two obvious courses of action. The group—what d’ye call ‘em? Assault One? They won’t be so bothered about this.’ He swung his hand in a semi-circle indicating the whole underlake complex. ‘They’re more likely to make for us—in the island villa. Knock out our control.’

  ‘You needn’t worry about that.’ Klara from the desk. ‘I’ve told the Colonel and Mr Oakes, if they come from the lake they won’t get very far.’

  ‘Good. But if by any chance they’ve got the information back—I mean right back—there are many things that can go wrong. They can alter frequencies. Change the vehicle. All our stuff will be useless.’ He smacked his knee with the flat of his hand. ‘Eight million quid’s worth of electronics up there in the island villa, and if they simply alter the frequency it’ll be about as much use as a transistor radio. Pchaach!’ A sort of spitting noise. ‘Less use than a transistor, at least you’d be able to get the top ten on that.’ He sat in silence for another minute. ‘Press on regardless. That’s all we can do. Fireworks. Dramatic assaults. Commando raids. Guts ache. I just have to press on. Fingers crossed.’

  ‘And prayer wheels at the steady turn.’ Mostyn jaded.

  ‘I wish somebody ...’ Started Boysie.

  ‘Shut up,’ muttered Mostyn.

  ‘Tush now.’ The big man like a scolding nanny. ‘What is it, lad?’ Playing the kindly uncle.

  ‘Well,’ said Boysie, almost belligerently. ‘I just wish someone would put us entirely in the picture. Amber Nine I mean.’

  ‘Ah.’ Skidmore beamed. It was like asking an egotistical gardener to talk about his chrysanths. Amber Nine was built into the man’s cardiac system. He shifted to a more comfortable position in the chair. The whisper of a sigh from Mostyn, then Skidmore was off.

  ‘It begins,’ he said, as comfortable as a children’s storyteller. ‘It begins with a question of tactics. We all know the tactical situation in Europe—developed into nothing more’n a brainy game. I know it. You know it. This fellow at the Hudson Institute—where they waste their time thinking about instant disaster. Kahn. Herman Kahn. Nuclear strategist. Invented escalation and plays war games with the top brass. Games. He’s got sense that chap. Reduced the whole damn thing to a game of chess. And that’s all it amounts to. A bloody great game of nuclear chess. H-bombs. Missiles. Weapons. They’re no more than a threat than my arse—if you’ll pardon the expression, ma’am.’ A gracious look towards Klara who giggled. ‘They may terrorise the man in the street—almost certainly do, judging by their faces when the Press yells crisis. But, in my opinion, the true value of nuclear weapons is negative and as out-dated as the battering ram. It’s checkmate. They all know it. Lyndon Johnson knows it. That fellow what’s his name? Fellow in Downing street?’

  Mostyn mentioned the name of the Prime Minister.

  ‘That’s the chap. He knows it.’ Skidmore lifted himself out of the chair and took the centre of the floor. ‘Point about nuclear weapons—the nuclear arms race—is that it has balanced power too finely. And in order to live within that balance we exist in a continual state bordering on Condition Blue. You’ve heard of Condition Blue?’

  ‘Lowest state of readiness.’ Boysie had read Fail Safe, and seen the movie.

  ‘Lowest state. It means the missile bases are on a twenty-four hour alert, that the NATO V-Force can get into the air in a matter of minutes; and it means that prescribed areas are patrolled by Strategic Air Command—little men in big aeroplanes carrying the real thing. The Bomb.’ He made a gesture with his hands.

  Miming the Bomb, thought Boysie, was very close to miming the contours of a beautiful woman. Skidmore was speaking again.

  ‘And, of course, the same applies to the opposition. The DA—Dalnaya Aviatsiya their equivalent of SAC—patrols strictly delineated air corridors. Carrying the Weapon as well.’ He allowed the point to sink home before coming to his big punch. ‘Only, in the last year there has been a subtle swing in the balance of power. Every hour of every day the DA has exactly sixty aircraft, airborne and on patrol. Twenty of those aeroplanes do not carry the Bomb. Their load is something quite different. Something our resea
rch teams have been working at since Hiroshima. Something which so swings the balance of power that the Herman Kahns of this world haven’t yet taken it into account.’

  Though Klara and Mostyn already knew what was coming, Skidmore’s total involvement, his command and manner, held them in complete concentration. The Professor rummaged in the vast pockets of his baggy hopsack and unearthed a silver ball-point, holding it in front of him delicately in his vast paws, the pipe stem between his teeth making little noticeable difference to his speech.

  ‘Physically, it’s like a large version of the old Nazi V1—the Doodle-bug. The Flying Bomb. A pilotless aircraft. Delivery vehicle. Rocket power in the tail, stubby delta wings, long bullet-shaped body.’ The pen was a stand-in for the weapon. He walked over to Klara’s desk—shifting a piece of paper: a white oblong centred on the polished surface. ‘Target.’ With a nod towards the paper. His eyes skimmed the desk again and he pounced on a paper clip.

  ‘The thing,’ he waggled the pen, ‘just fits nicely underneath their Tupolev TU-20. The Mark B—the one we code Bear-B. Carries it where they normally sling the Kangaroo stand-off missile. With their usual flair for dark humour they call this one ostraye zabalevaheeye—roughly translated means Chronic Illness. We know they have at least forty such weapons. Twenty of them always in the air.’

  ‘Chronic Illness ...’ Boysie was on the edge of his chair.

  ‘Nose-cone holds computer and electronic brain. Fuel in the rear—dramatic system that gives it a range of over 1,500 miles. Five times as great as the Kangaroo. Small centre section is the guts. Whole thing’s an absolute triumph. When they release it, the vehicle soars straight up to around 60,000 feet—normal operational height till it approaches the target.’ He held the pipe and pen close together, moving them along—the aircraft in flight. One hand dropped away with the pen then moved upwards, the hand with the pipe continuing in simulated level flight. ‘Aircraft keeps on course for ten minutes, then turns away. Come to the reason for that later.’ His eyes rested on the pen, held high in his right fist, the thumb and forefinger lightly clamping the paper clip.

  ‘It’s going at a speed of around 6,000 mph, reducing slightly as it vectors on to the target, drops and passes over at about 20,000 feet.’ He brought the pen down over the desk.

  ‘Immediately over the target it drops its own weapon.’ The pipe was back in his mouth, left hand coming up to grab the paper clip which he pulled away, slowly bringing it down over the piece of paper.

  ‘Delivery vehicle lifts its nose and goes straight up at speed and finally disintegrates. Tiny pieces. Phhuff.’ The pen raised in the right hand and then disposed to a pocket. Attention now on the paper clip. ‘It has dropped a canister about the size of an oil drum which bursts open at around three to four thousand feet. Inside there are three smaller canisters. The contents of these canisters amalgamate just before the explosion, under pressure, and the resultant particles are shot away—in all directions—at an extraordinary velocity. Billions, trillions, quadrillions of them. A cloud finer than dust. Undetectable to the human eye.’ He dropped the paper clip into the middle of the paper, puffed on his pipe and blew a mouthful of smoke down on to the desk. ‘Depending on weather conditions and height of release, the particles can spread over a radius of two hundred miles.’ The big hand inscribed a circle round the desk. ‘Two hundred, and that’s an optimistic figure. In our favour.’

  ‘What do they do for crying out loud?’ From Boysie.

  ‘That’s exactly what we want to find out.’ Skidmore was back in his chair. His manner changed to that of a scholarly lecturer. ‘Strange, the other day I came across a passage written by Thomas Willis—seventeenth-century surgeon. Actually writing about ‘flu in 1659. What he said was: Suddenly a Distemper arose, as if sent by some blast of the stars, which laid hold on very many together: that in some towns, in the space of a week, above a thousand people fell together. The Chronic Illness is a bit like that but more so. We know it’ll cause a tremendously virile fever. We know it attacks at great speed—matter of ten or twenty minutes after contact. We know it is both highly infectious and contagious. The Asian ‘Flu epidemic of 1957 was probably a very mild try out of a similar, though less violent, virus which got a little out of hand. We know they’ve perfected protection against it—a vaccine. And we know, positively, that it will spread like the proverbial forest fire. For instance, one exploded over Birmingham would cripple the whole of the Midlands in a matter of hours; the whole of Britain in a day. Just imagine a country where ninety-nine out of every hundred people were sweating, with temperatures around the 104 mark, and blinding headaches. Total paralysis. Transport, industry, government, defence, everything.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it have been easier to go for the jack-pot?’ Mostyn a shade too suave. ‘Get the vaccine?’

  ‘You think we haven’t tried?’ Dismissive.

  ‘It seems strange that you’ve been able to get hold of so much information on the weapon and yet not latch on to the really important thing.’

  ‘You are a professional security man?’ asked Skidmore patiently.

  Mostyn managed to keep back his anger. ‘Since the beginning of World War II.’

  ‘Then you know about strategic leaks—information let out deliberately?’

  Mostyn took a deep, rage-impregnated breath.

  ‘Ninety per cent of the stuff we’ve already got has been handed to us on a plate.’ Skidmore making the words into short jabs at Mostyn’s stomach. ‘We know practically everything there is to know about this damn thing, except the ingredients—the contents of those three canisters, and how they fuse together, and what they make when mixed. There’ve been one or two inspired guesses, but they’ve turned out to be bloody nonsense.’ He leaned forward, emphasising his point by shaking the top half of his body in a slow jerky rhythm. ‘Mind you we are not completely au fait with all the technicalities—fuel system’s a bloody miracle to begin with. But it’s in their favour that we should know. And of course they don’t want us to know the structure of the canisters—the virus, bacteria, or whatever is formed. But now ...’ He rubbed his hands smartly together with a sizzling sound. ‘But now we have ‘em by the hip.’

  ‘The hip.’ Repeated Boysie, hypnotised by the scientist’s easy manner of one-upMostynmanship.

  ‘The opposition also has their form of fail safe,’ continued Skidmore, his face beaming with intrigue—a small boy counting a secret hoard of goodies. ‘Particularly with this weapon. For instance, the disintegrating device is built into the metal. It goes off at a certain height to destroy after the main canister has been dropped. It also destroys—with the canister—if approached by a missile. What’s more important, it’s computer-controlled from the ground. They won’t even allow their pilots the responsibility of launching.’

  ‘All done by tape,’ murmured Mostyn.

  ‘As you say. Each weapon has its own frequency and reacts to taped bleeps fed onto its electronic system from a VI-IF transmitter. The pilot only knows he’s carried out a mission when the aircraft suddenly gets lighter and a bulb flashes on his instrument panel. Not going into all the technical difficulties—much too complicated—but what happens is that the bleeped orders are transmitted from their ground control, through electronic equipment to the aircraft, to the weapon’s brain. The pilot holds his course, at a set speed, for ten minutes after launching in case of emergency changes. And I can tell you they’ve got all emergencies taped—literally. If there’s an accidental launching, ground control switches to another tape and either sends the thing up to disintegration height, or re-routes it out to sea. It’s happened as well. Six months ago some fellow threw the wrong switch in their ground control and the Chronic Illness was heading for Rome. My God. Virus in the Vatican. They’d have screamed for the Pill.’ Skidmore stopped, took out his matches, slowly relit his pipe, looked at the burning match for a moment then extinguished the flame by throwing it over his shoulder, immediately stuffing his fingers into his ears
and grimacing, like one expecting a bomb-blast. Boysie hooted and the Professor joined in—Friar Tuck, Father Christmas and the Jolly Miller all rolled into one. Mostyn forced a smile. Klara looked amazed.

  ‘Didn’t reach Rome, of course. They ran the emergency tape, locks went on—they have safety-locks for the main canister—and the Chronic Illness ended up slap bang in the middle of the Adriatic.’

  ‘And ...?’ asked Boysie.

  ‘And what?’

  ‘And how have we got them by the hip?’

  ‘Oh, that. We’ve picked up a bunch of control tapes.’ Skidmore chuckling. ‘One of our more enterprising operatives—chap called Phentos—took a risk which paid off. Three months ago we got the control tapes for Chronic Illness UR/39. Deciphered them. Made our own control tapes for UR/39 and put eight million nickers’ worth of bloody complicated equipment into Doctor Thirel’s attic. Tonight UR/39 will be on patrol along the Yugoslavian corridor between Dubrovnik and Split. We transmit the release signal and target instructions. Target Five: Genoa—just as though the weapon was being unleashed by their control. Within ten seconds of release we send a second series of signals, changing the operating frequency—putting their ground control right out of the picture. For a minute or so, Chronic Illness UR/39 will be all set to worry Genoa’s Medical Officer of Health. Then our final series of signals puts the locks on and redirects the vehicle for a splash-down here. On Maggiore.’ He beamed at Boysie. A child who knows it has said something cute. ‘If our tapes are accurate, it should end up around six hundred yards from the Isole di Brissago.’

  As a technocrat Boysie Oakes was no great shakes. He could mend a fuse, but would be unable to tell you what part the fuse played in the system of things. Innocently he accepted the march of scientific progress as magic. If they told him a missile could be activated from a control two, three, four, five thousand miles away, and brought down on a pin point he would believe them—and remain unhappy. Boysie lived mainly on a physical plain, and Skidmore had so fascinated his jumbled mind that it now held a series of highly coloured, vivid pictures. Trains standing in lonely stations with passengers lolling out of the windows; deserted highways; silent cities, a door banging in the wind with nobody to close it; milk turning sour on the cat’s saucer; whole countries lying on the rack of suffering; a plague leaping from the stars, riding an invisible beam, straddled on the back of a long black craft. In these terms, Boysie could see the dangers. He could even smell the scent of destruction. He knew why Skidmore cut corners and how important it was to get the canisters. Now he could see Chronic Illness UR/39 in slow motion against dark mountains, swooping like a diseased black swan on to the lake.