“That break. Is it where the original exit was?”
“I — I don’t know. That is, I think so, but I can’t be sure.”
“I’m going to assume it is. There’s a passage. Do you know the way?”
“Not really.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, Hedge?”
“It means there are a lot of cross-passages and forks.”
“We’ll chance it. You lead, Hedge, you’ve been here before and you may pick up some landmarks. I’ll be right behind you. Then you, Aurora, with Harry in the rear. All right? If you pick up a direction, Aurora, just let me know.”
They moved on out, with Hedge picking his way carefully in the lead and seeming more and more reluctant with each advancing step. Water swirled still along the passage and in fact appeared to be deepening a little; but after a while they came to a raised ledge with the water mainly confined to a channel running alongside and just slopping over at intervals. Hedge gave tongue. He said. “I think we’re going the right way. I recognise this channel.”
“Good,” Shard said. “Keep going.” He looked at his wrist-watch: the hands were now moving onto the army’s deadline, at any moment Uthman should be faced with frontal attack. Shard wondered again about the break in the chamber wall behind. There had been no lingering smell of explosive, but the rushing water could have been responsible for that; though quite apart from the absence of smell Shard had his doubts about an explosion.
The fracture hadn’t had the look, the feel of having been caused by explosives in the vicinity — it was more like a natural cave-in as a result of mighty water-pressure, though against that theory had to be set the fact that the chamber would have filled right up countless times before over its long history. But, again, any structure could presumably be gradually weakened over millions of years and had, one day, to reach its limit of stress; if so, it was a monumental coincidence … too monumental to satisfy Shard. Somewhere, somehow, someone … there just had to be a human factor. They moved on in file along the ledge, hearing the rush and tumult of the underground river loud in their ears. Probably that river would be flowing right through the system ahead, out of the cave mouth and down the fellside into the dale below. Uthman could be marooned in some passage above the flood level or he could have been forced already into the open, straight into the hands of the troops waiting with their automatic weapons and armoured vehicles: he wouldn’t stand much of a chance either way. Yet whatever happened to Uthman, Mackintosh remained the vital key. They went on and on, bending, crawling through the low sections. It was a long slog: Hedge was tiring badly; he was not a man given to exercise. He was dragging himself along where it was possible to stand, using the rock walls as a support; in the low-overhead sectors he inched forward like a sick tortoise. Shard urged speed upon him without much success. Time was all.
*
Rounding a bend in the passage they caught at last a sound: a distant sound, that of a voice calling out.
Shard ordered a halt. “Quiet,” he said. “Quiet, and listen.” He squeezed past Hedge and went on, moving silently: the voice was too far off to make out the words. Shard called back to the others to close: Kenwood and Aurora came up behind him, by-passing the slower, more ponderous Hedge. A few minutes later the words came to them, evidently a repeat of the original message. The voice, funnelled along towards them, was sharp, the voice of authority and command. “The mouth of the cave is ringed with troops and armour. I say again, I advise everyone inside to come out immediately with their hands clasped behind their heads.”
There was a pause, a deep silence. Drips of water broke it, descending from the roof around Shard’s party. Then the voice came up again, sharper, louder, losing its patience, meaning all it said: “I shall now give you five minutes to make up your minds. At the end of that time I shall open fire into the cave with artillery. I have FH-70 field support guns firing 155mm shells, rocket assisted. Heave the rest to your imagination.”
The voice stopped. From his position in the rear of the line Hedge said hoarsely, “My God. What have you got us into, Shard? It’ll shatter the cave, bring the lot down on top of us!”
“Move,” Shard said. “Move bloody fast for the entry!” He ran ahead, footsteps echoing back. Kenwood and the girl were close behind; Hedge began to lose distance. He panted and puffed and hurried as best he could, determined not to be buried alive in an utterly appalling upheaval of earth and rock and re-channelled flood water. He hurried a little too much, a little too carelessly, with too little regard for the overheads: he fell a victim to a familiar adversary, a pendant stalactite that the torch given him by Shard failed, somehow, to reveal. He went slap into it, painfully, and in jerking away from it brought his head into sharp contact with another projection, this time from the side of the passage. Light shot blindingly for an instant, all colours of the rainbow, and then he tumbled into a heap on the rock floor. Unheeding because they were unknowing, the rest of the party continued ahead, going fast for safety. In the lead, Shard saw light ahead, reflecting off the walls of the tunnel, probably from the cave’s entry section. There was less than a minute to go now, and he was calling out, shouting for the army to hold off. He heard Harry Kenwood and Aurora coming along behind. With no more than twenty-five seconds to go to blast-off, he came suddenly out of the tunnel into the blinding brilliance of searchlights. He could see nothing in the sudden tremendous glare but called out again.
“Hold your fire! For Christ’s sake hold your fire!”
The voice came to him from behind the lights. “Who’re you?”
“Shard, Foreign Office Security. I’m taking charge. Would you mind putting those searchlights out?”
There was a pause, then the lights died. Blindness again: Shard flicked on his torch and when his eyes were accustomed he went forward and joined a group of officers and other ranks mustered just inside the cave entry behind two artillery pieces with their hostile-looking snouts pointed inwards. A brigadier with his hands on his hips said shortly, “Well, I hope you know what you’re doing, Mr. Shard.”
“I do, sir.” Shard turned as he heard footsteps. “Here’s the rest of my party. If you wish, you can resume the threat — though I’d prefer it if you kept it at the threat stage. May I suggest you fire warning shots only, using small arms?”
“Why?”
“Because,” Shard said, “we have a need of Mackenzie Edinburgh Castle Mackintosh, and he’s somewhere back there. Or I hope he is. You didn’t know that, sir?”
The brigadier smiled. “I did, as a matter of fact. I’ve been doing a bit of bluffing, frankly. And I’ll tell you this: I’m surprised it hasn’t worked.”
“So am I! Which gives me to think —” Shard broke off as Kenwood and Aurora Lindeman approached, “Where’s Hedge?”
“Right behind —” Kenwood looked round. He said in surprise, “No, he’s not, is he?”
“What have you done with him, Harry?”
“It’s a question of what he’s gone and done with himself, sir. I assumed —”
“All right, Harry. Go back and look. He can’t be far. Quick as you can — I’ve a feeling we’re stymied again.” As the detective sergeant turned back towards the tunnel entry, Shard put a hand on Aurora’s shoulder. “I believe they’ve skipped — with Mackintosh. I doubt if they’d have got past the troops. What do you think, brigadier?”
“I guarantee they haven’t.” The brigadier looked at his watch. “I’ve had my chaps manning the perimeter since your message came through. Keeping out of sight till your deadline, but keeping very much on watch.”
“And no-one’s come out?”
“No-one.”
“In that case, either they left earlier or they had a funk-hole. Aurora, do you know of any other exits?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t. That’s positive, there aren’t any, not anywhere around this actual system, that is.”
Shard cocked an eye at her. “Meaning?”
“There’s
a link with the Ingleborough system, but that’s miles away.”
“How many miles, Aurora?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Well … twenty, thirty. Thereabouts.”
“Do you know the route?”
“No,” she said. “But I’ve heard it’s a fast passage, you can move upright nearly all the way.” She looked pensive. “Should I have told you this earlier, Simon?”
“It might have helped,” he answered shortly, “but we won’t hold an inquest at this moment —”
She said, “I’m sorry. I never thought about it, it’s so far off this system, and the chances of this Uthman knowing about it were pretty remote.”
“Unless he has a tame potholer, which if he has any savvy he’d have seen to.” Shard turned away and paced up and down, watched by the girl and the soldiers. Then he swung round and came back to the red-tabbed brigadier. “I’m taking a chance, sir. I believe the birds have flown, and I’m assuming they’ve flown to Ingleborough. They’ll attempt to come out there, and make their break with Mackintosh. It’s my job to stop them, and I propose doing it from the surface. Can you let me have some men and transport?”
“Certainly.” The brigadier beckoned up an officer and gave his orders, then turned back to Shard. “You’d like the watch maintained here, I take it?”
“Yes, sir. And a message to my surface party at the top entry — they’re to remain in position too, just in case. And another message if you will: troops and armour to be concentrated, just like here, around Ingleborough —” Shard broke off as Kenwood came up at the run, looking worried. “Hedge, Harry?”
“Gone, sir. Completely vanished. I went back well beyond where I saw him last — which was just before you went on past. No sign. Only blood, under a stalactite.”
Shard swore. “Knocked himself out, and got up the wrong way round?”
“I don’t think so, sir. He’s not as fast as me. I’d have overtaken him.”
“Then what, for God’s sake?”
Kenwood held out a torch. “This, sir. It had been left behind. Mr Hedge wouldn’t have done that, would he? Someone’s nabbed him again.”
Seventeen
SHARD HAD GONE back on Hedge-reconnaissance, but with no result. Rage rose in him as he returned to the entrance: he thought, trust Hedge! Kenwood’s assessment was probably spot on, and since this was a time when assumptions had to be made in the larger interest, Shard decided to accept the premise that Hedge had been nabbed again; he would have to remain nabbed for a while. “For my money,” Shard said, “they’ll be taking him on to Ingleborough. And that’s where we’ll hope to pick him up again. Not before.”
“Very good, sir.” Kenwood hesitated. “If they’ve only just started for Ingleborough —”
“It gives us a good start, doesn’t it.”
“Yes, sir, but what I meant was, they won’t be far ahead of us underground, right now.”
Shard said irritably. “It doesn’t help, does it? None of us knows the way, so I’m sticking to the surface — I don’t propose to get lost again. I’ll tell you something else: that rumbling explosion that breached the water chamber — that could have been Uthman, sealing off his escape route to Ingleborough after he’d spotted the troops and armour moving in —”
“But Mr Hedge, sir! He vanished a good while after that.”
“Yes. I’ll stop theorising, Harry. What I said, stands.” Shard swung round on the brigadier. “I suggest you confirm to Uthman that you’re still here. Just in case he’s not actually en route for Ingleborough, I think he should be hastened — don’t you?”
“You’re suggesting I fire after all?”
Shard nodded. “Right! He mustn’t suspect bluff, or he could hole himself up where we can’t get at him — and he still has Mackintosh so far as we know. Have you something smaller, something that won’t bring the whole mountain down?”
The brigadier pulled at his moustache. “I’ll find something to fill the bill,” he said.
*
With a strong concentration of troops and armour left to cover the cave mouth, and gunsmoke pouring out from the entry in an acrid-smelling cloud after the light artillery had gone into action, Shard, embarked in an armoured personnel carrier, swayed and tilted down the rough fellside towards a waterlogged track running south-westerly to join a main highway. Kenwood and Aurora were with him: according to the girl it would take Uthman all of six to seven hours underground slog to reach the Ingleborough complex; thus there was no great urgency for speed. The drive along the surface would take only an hour or so although the roads provided a much less direct route than the underground passage, which, Aurora said, went in a dead straight line for most of the way. The vehicles would have to be left in Clapham village at the foot of Ingleborough: there was no access for road transport from there to the cave mouth, and if they wanted to avoid a long walk, they would need to be lifted in by helicopter.
“And Uthman?” Shard asked.
“He won’t come out by the main exit, that’s a small opening with a metal door that’s kept locked all the time, even when a guided party’s inside.”
“Uthman’ll know this?”
“You said he’d have a potholer with him. Any potholer would know.”
“So where does he emerge, and what does he do when he does?”
She shrugged. “Does he have to emerge, Simon? I don’t know all that’s going on, but I have ears. I’ve taken in that the important bloke is this Mackintosh, that he’s the key to the attack being mounted from Murzuq, right?”
“Right.”
“So all Uthman has to do is lie low till the attack comes in —”
“Wrong. He wants his own particular pound of flesh, in that Swiss bank.”
“Yes, well … he could still lie up in more safety there than back in The Hangman system. That is, so far as he knows. Then kind of bargain his way out.”
Shard shook his head. “Wrong reckoning. If the attack comes in, Mackintosh loses his value to Uthman. That’s the whole point. He’s using Mackintosh as the attack-stopper — or put it this way: he’s trying to sell Mackintosh to the British Government so they can use him as the inhibitor. If he lets the deadline pass, he’s had it. My assessment is, he’ll head for out, for the open air, just as soon as he can, now he’s been flushed.”
“So he’ll be ready to hop out of the country before he’s arrested. That makes sense, I suppose.”
“Yes, it does. So where does he come out, Aurora?”
She said a little defensively, “I don’t know. I believe there are other ways out, but I’m not too sure.” She added, “There’ll be someone in Clapham who’ll know.”
*
The rain had continued beyond the dawn but then a lightening had come, a lifting of the blanket so that sun peeped through the general overcast and began to disperse it. By the time the military vehicles had left the B6255 road through from Hawes and rumbled into the small village of Clapham, the morning was brightening fast and a wind had come up to clear away the cloud. And now there were people about, holidaymakers, climbers and walkers, none of them knowing as yet what was threatened from the distant Libyan desert. For certain operational reasons, Shard had suggested the lifting of the entry ban around the western fringe of the Dales National Park: the cave-bound villains had to be lulled, a vital first priority in which there was an acceptable if regrettable risk to people who could get hurt. The ground was soaked but the tourists were on the move again, numbers of them walking up a lane beside a swollen stream, making for Ingleborough.
As Shard’s personnel carrier turned into this lane it was halted by a bombardier of the Royal Artillery, who spoke to the driver and then turned to Shard.
“Mr Shard?”
“That’s me.”
“Message, sir. Telex, from London.” The bombardier unzipped a pocket in his camouflaged combat dress and handed an envelope up. Shard ripped it open. It had come in Defence Ministry cipher and had been broken down by an officer of t
he Royal Signals whose initials were attached. It was brief and pointed: Shard was to make contact immediately with his boss the Head of Security, using the nearest available scramble line to the Foreign Office. His face grim, Shard asked the bombardier where this would be found: the answer was North-Fast District Command at Catterick, and a helicopter had already been made available. Shard looked at his watch: Uthman wouldn’t come through for at least five hours yet, but he had half a mind to turn the Nelson eye. The other half of his mind won out: the Head of Department was not the man to give unnecessary orders. Shard got down from the personnel carrier.
“Take over, Harry. I’ll be back soonest possible. Find a potholer — if you can — with a detailed knowledge of the Ingleborough system. Make your dispositions to his advice. All right?”
“All right, sir.”
Shard went off with the bombardier: he asked about the troop and armour availability on the spot and was told that an infantry battalion had been ordered in and would be dropped from helicopters on the 2373-foot high summit of Ingleborough, from where the men would be spread out but concealed. More troops together with artillery would be dropped by the main cave entry and held in cover. Reaching the end of the lane, now a sea of mud, the soldier led the way left. Farther on and just outside the village Shard saw a helicopter waiting on a piece of high ground in a field. He climbed aboard fast; when the machine lifted over Ingleborough hill he saw the infantry already coming in for the drop. Swinging away to the north-eastward, the pilot had him down in Catterick in quick time: a staff-sergeant was waiting to take him to the offices of the major-general commanding. Within minutes of touchdown he was in contact with the Head of Department.
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