At this moment Marie made her appearance. She had dried and combed her hair and changed into slacks and T-shirt that fitted only where they touched, but they touched in enough places to show that it wasn’t the original owner who was inside them. She smiled at me and I smiled back but it was a pretty mechanical sort of effort on my part, the more I thought of it the more I suspected she must have known just how the land lay with Colonel Raine. Maybe neither she nor Raine regarded me as anything other than a lucky amateur, and in this business amateurs weren’t trusted. Not even lucky ones. But what hurt was not the lack of trust but the fact that if I were right then she’d fooled me throughout. And if she could fool me about that, then she could fool me about many other things, too. I was tired and weak and the thought was acid in my mind. She was looking at me with the kind of expression on her face with which I’d always dreamed that someone just like Marie would look at me, and I knew it was impossible that I was being fooled. I knew it for all of two seconds, which was all the time it took me to remember that she had survived five years in one of the most hazardous professions in the world simply through an extremely highly developed gift of fooling everyone all the time.
I was about to ask her some cunning leading questions when Dr Hargreaves came up to me. The others trailed behind him. They were now all dressed in their day clothes. They were worried stiff, all of them, and they looked it.
‘We’ve been talking, and we’ve no doubt left in our minds that our wives are captive and in great danger,’ Hargreaves began without preamble. ‘Our – our wives are our sole concern at this moment. What do you suggest we do?’ He was holding himself well in check, but the tight mouth, the straining tendons of his clasped hands gave him away.
‘Damn it all, man!’ The elderly butcher had the choler back in his face again. ‘We rescue them, that’s what we do.’
‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘We rescue them. How?’
‘Well –’
‘Look, friend, you don’t begin to know the score. Let me explain. There are three things we can do. We can let the Chinese break through the tunnel into the open, then a few of us nip smartly in there, go through to the other end, release your wives and then what? Hewell’s killers would be loose among the sailors here, and with all due respect to the Navy it would be wolves among chickens. And after they’d gobbled up the chickens they’d find we were missing and come back to finish us off – and your wives as well: and they might take some time finishing off your wives. Or we can blockade the tunnel exit and prevent them from coming out. We can prevent them for about an hour which is all the time it will take for them to go back and collect your wives and by either using them as shields or putting a gun to their heads force us to lay down our arms.’
I paused for a moment to let this sink in, but one glance round the tense still faces let me see that it had already sunk. They were looking at me as if they didn’t like me very much, but I suppose that it was what I was saying that they really didn’t like.
‘You said there was a third alternative.’ Hargreaves pressed me.
‘Yes.’ I rose stiffly to my feet, glanced at Anderson. ‘Sorry, Lieutenant, can’t wait any longer for your M.O. Time enough wasted. There is a third alternative, gentlemen. The only practicable one. As soon as they break through the mountainside – or as soon as we hear them trying to break through – a party of us, three or four, with sledges and crowbars to force locks and armed in case guards have been left behind to look after your wives, will go round the south of the island by boat, land and hope to get your wives clear before Witherspoon and Hewell get the idea of sending back for your wives to use as hostages. In this day and age I assume the navy no longer depends on oars and sails. A fast power boat should get us there in fifteen minutes.’
‘I’ve no doubt it would,’ Anderson said unhappily. There was an embarrassed silence then he went on reluctantly: ‘The fact is, Mr Bentall, we haven’t got any boats.’
‘Say that again?’
‘No boat. Not even a rowing boat. I’m sorry.’
‘Look.’ I said heavily. ‘I know there have been some pretty drastic cut-backs in naval estimates, but if you’ll tell me how a navy can function without –’
‘We did have boats,’ Anderson interrupted. ‘Four of them, attached to the light cruiser, Neckar, which has been anchored in the lagoon off and on for the past three months. The Neckar left two days ago with Rear-Admiral Harrison, who is in overall charge, and Dr Davies, who had been in charge of the development of the Dark Crusader throughout. The work on it –’
‘The Dark Crusader?’
‘The name of the rocket. Not quite in firing readiness yet, but we had an urgent cable from London forty-eight hours ago saying it was essential to complete the work immediately and ordering the Neckar to the firing range immediately – about 1,000 miles south-west of here. That’s why this particular island was chosen – all open water to the south-east if anything goes wrong with the rocket.’
‘Well, well.’ I said heavily. ‘What a lovely coincidence. A cable all the way from London. All the correct codes, hidden identification figures and telegraphic addresses, I’ll bet. It wasn’t the fault of your communication and coding boys that they fell for it.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand –’
‘And why should the Neckar leave if the rocket wasn’t in complete readiness.’ I interrupted.
‘It wasn’t much.’ Hargreaves put in. ‘Dr Fairfield had all his part of the job finished long before he – ah – disappeared, all that was required was that someone with a knowledge of solid fuels – I admit there aren’t many – should complete the wiring up and fusing of the firing circuitry. The cable giving the sailing orders said that a solid fuel expert would arrive on the island today.’
I refrained from introducing myself. The cable must have been sent off within hours of Witherspoon’s being told that Bentall was spending a wet and uncomfortable night on a reef out in the lagoon. There was no question but that the man was a criminal: but there was equally no question that he was a criminal genius. I was no criminal, but I was no genius either. We belonged in different leagues – the top and the bottom. I felt the way David would have felt if he had happened across Goliath and discovered that he had left his sling at home. I became vaguely aware that Anderson and the red-faced man, whom he addressed as Farley, were talking together and then the vagueness vanished. I heard a couple of words that caught and transfixed my attention the way a tarantula in my soup would have done.
‘Did I hear someone mention “Captain Fleck”?’ I asked carefully.
‘Yes.’ Anderson nodded. ‘Fleck. Chap who runs a schooner and transfers all our stores and mail from Kandavu to here. But he’s not due again until this afternoon.’
It was as well that I had risen to my feet, had I still been sitting in my chair I would probably have fallen out of it. I said stupidly: ‘Transfers your stores and mail, eh?’
‘That’s right, It was Farley speaking, his voice impatient. ‘Australian. Trader, mainly in Government surplus, but he’s also on charter to us. Rigorously investigated, security clearance, of course.’
‘Of course, of course.’ My mind was occupied with visions of Fleck busily transferring mail from one end of the island to the other and then back again. ‘Does he know what’s going on here?’
‘Of course not,’ Anderson said. ‘All the work on the rockets – there are two of them – is carried on under cover. Anyway, does it matter, Mr Bentall?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Not any more, it didn’t. ‘I think, Anderson, that we’d better go and consult with your Captain Griffiths. We have little time left. I’m afraid we may have no time left.’
I turned to the door and halted as knuckles rapped on the outside of it. Anderson said, ‘Come in,’ and the door opened. Leading Seaman Allison stood there, blinking in the sudden glare of light.
The Surgeon-Lieutenant is here, sir.’
‘Ah, good, good! Come in, Brookman, w
e –’ He broke off and said sharply: ‘Where’s your gun, Allison?’
Allison grunted in agony as something struck him from behind with tremendous force and sent him staggering into the room to crash heavily into Farley. Both men were still reeling, falling together against one of the cubicle walls, when the massive form of Hewell appeared in the doorway. He loomed tall as Everest, the gaunt granitic face empty of all life, the black eyes far back and hidden under the tufted brows – he must have forced Allison to go first to give his own eyes time to become accustomed to the light – and in his huge fist was a gun, a gun fitted with a black cylindrical object screwed on the barrel. A silencer.
Sub-Lieutenant Anderson made the last mistake of his life. He had a Navy Colt strapped to his waist and the mistake he made was trying to reach for it. I shouted out a warning, tried to reach him to knock his arm down, but he was on my left side and my crippled arm was far too slow.
I had a momentary glimpse of Hewell’s face and I knew it was too late. His face was as still and as motionless and as empty of life as ever as he squeezed the trigger. A soft muffled thud, a look of faint surprise in Anderson’s eyes as he put both hands on his chest and started toppling slowly backwards. I tried to catch him and break his fall, which was a foolish thing to do, it didn’t help either of us, all it did was to wrench my left shoulder violently and there’s not much point in hurting yourself trying to cushion the fall of a man who will never feel anything again.
CHAPTER 9
Friday 6 a.m.–8 a.m.
Hewell advanced into the room. He didn’t even look at the dead man on the floor. He made a gesture with his left hand and two soft-footed Chinese, each with a machine-pistol in his hand, came in through the doorway behind him: they carried their guns as if they knew how to use them.
‘Anybody here armed?’ Hewell asked in his deep gravelly voice. ‘Anybody here with arms in this room? If so, tell me now. If I find arms on any man or in any man’s room and he hasn’t told me, I’ll kill him. Any arms here?’
There were no arms there. If any of them had had toothpicks and thought Hewell might have considered those as arms, they’d have rushed to get them. Hewell had that effect on people. Also, there was no doubt but that he meant what he said.
‘Good.’ He advanced another step and looked down at me. ‘You fooled us, Bentall, didn’t you? That makes you very clever. Nothing wrong with your foot, was there, Bentall? But your arm isn’t so good, is it – I suppose the Dobermann did that to you before you killed it? And you killed two of my best men, didn’t you, Bentall? I’m afraid you will have to pay for that.’
There was nothing sinister or menacing about the slow sepulchral voice, but then it didn’t have to be, the man’s looming presence, the craggy ruin of a face made any further menace completely superfluous. I didn’t doubt that I would pay.
‘But it will have to wait. Just a little. We can’t have you dying on us yet, can we, Bentall?’ He spoke a few quick words in a foreign language to the Chinese on his right, a tall sinewy intelligentlooking man with a face as still as Hewell’s own, then turned back to me. ‘I have to leave you for a moment – we have the guards by the boundary fence to attend to. The main compound and garrison are already in our hands and all telephone lines to the guardposts cut. I am leaving Hang, here, to look after you. Don’t any of you try anything clever with Hang. You might think one man, even with a Tommy-gun, can’t hold nine men in a small room and if any of you think that and try to act on it that’s as good a way as any to find out why Hang was the sergeant-major of a machine-gun battalion in Korea.’ Hewell’s lips cracked in a humourless smile. ‘No prizes for guessing which side he was on.’
Seconds later he and the other Chinese were gone. I looked at Marie and she at me: her face was tired and somehow sad and the small smile she gave me hadn’t much behind it. Everybody else was looking at the Chinese guard. He didn’t appear to be looking at anybody.
Farley cleared his throat and said conversationally: ‘I think we could rush him, Bentall. One from each side.’
‘You rush him,’ I said. ‘I’m staying where I am.’
‘Damn it all, man.’ His voice was low and desperate. ‘It may be our last chance.’
‘We’ve had our last chance. Your courage is admirable, Farley, which is more than can be said for your intelligence. Don’t be a damned idiot.’
‘But – ’
‘You heard what Bentall said?’ The guard spoke faultless English, with a heavy American accent. ‘Don’t be a damned idiot.’
Farley subsided in a moment, you could see the swift collapse of the stiffened sinews of his resolution, the draining of the insular arrogance which had led to the bland assumption that the guard could speak no language other than his own.
‘You will all sit and cross your legs,’ the guard went on. ‘That will be safer – for yourselves. I don’t want to kill anyone.’ He paused, then added as an afterthought: ‘Except Bentall. You killed two members of my tong, tonight, Bentall.’
There didn’t seem to be any suitable comment on that one, so I let it pass.
‘You may smoke if you wish,’ he continued. ‘You may talk, but do not talk in whispers.’
There was no hurry to take him up on his second offer. There are some situations which make it difficult to choose an agreeable topic of conversation and this seemed to be one of them. Besides, I didn’t want to talk, I wanted to think, if I could do it without damaging myself. I tried to figure out how Hewell and company had got through so soon. It had been more or less a certainty, I’d known, that they were going to break through that morning, but it had come hours before I had expected it. Had they made a spot check to see if we were still in bed? Possible, but unlikely: they’d showed no signs of suspicion when we’d seen them after the fire. Or had they found the dead Chinese in the tomb. That was more likely, but even if true it was still damnably hard luck.
I suppose I ought to have been bent double under the weight of bitterness and chagrin but strangely enough it hardly crossed my mind. The game was lost and that was all there was to it: or the game up till now was lost, which seemed to be about the same thing. Or maybe it wasn’t. It was as if Marie had read my mind.
‘You’re still figuring, aren’t you, Johnny?’ She gave me that smile again, the smile that I’d never seen her give anyone, not even Witherspoon, and my heart started capering around like a court jester in the Middle Ages until I reminded it that this was a girl who could fool anyone. ‘It’s like the colonel said. Sitting in the electric chair, the man’s hand on the switch and you’re still figuring.’
‘Sure, I’m figuring,’ I said sourly. ‘I’m figuring how long I’ve got to live.’
I saw the quick hurt in her eyes and turned away. Hargreaves was regarding me thoughtfully. He was still scared, but he could still think. And Hargreaves had a good mind.
‘You’re hardly a goner yet, are you?’ he asked. ‘From what I gather neither your friend Hewell nor this man here would hesitate to kill you. But they don’t. Hewell said, “We can’t have you dying on us yet.” And you used to work in the same department as Dr Fairfield. Could you be the fuel expert that we’ve been expecting?’
‘I suppose I am.’ There was no point in saying anything else, I hadn’t known the bogus Witherspoon half an hour altogether before I’d told him that. I wondered if, anywhere along the line, there was a mistake I could have made and hadn’t. Looking back, it seemed unlikely. ‘It’s a long story. Some other time.’
‘Could you do it?’
‘Do what?’
‘Fuse up the rocket?’
‘I wouldn’t even know how to go about it,’ I said untruthfully.
‘But you worked with Fairfield,’ Hargreaves persisted.
‘Not on solid fuel.’
‘But – ’
‘I don’t know a single thing about his latest solid fuel development,’ I said harshly. And to think I’d thought he had a good mind. Would the damned fool never shut up
? Didn’t he know the guard was listening? What did he want to do – put a rope round my neck? I could see Marie staring at him, her lips compressed, her hazel eyes very far from friendly. ‘They’ve been too damned secret about all this,’ I finished. ‘They’ve sent out the wrong expert.’
‘Well, that’s useful,’ Hargreaves muttered.
‘Isn’t it? I never even knew of the existence of this Dark Crusader of yours. How about putting me in the picture about it? I’m one of those characters who believe a man should go on learning till the day he dies: this looks like the last chance to collect some fresh information.’
He hesitated, then said slowly: ‘I’m afraid – ’
‘You’re afraid it’s all very top secret.’ I said impatiently. ‘Sure it’s very secret – but not to anyone on this island. Not any longer.’
‘I suppose not.’ Hargreaves said doubtfully. He thought for a moment and then smiled. ‘You will remember the late and bitterly lamented Blue Streak rocket?’
‘Our one and only entrant in the inter-continental ballistic missile stakes?’ I nodded. ‘Sure I remember it. It could do everything a missile should do, except fly. Everyone felt this was very awkward. Considerable heart-burning when the Government dropped it. Much talk about selling out to the Americans, being absolutely dependent for nuclear defence on the Americans, Britain now a very second-rate power, if you would call her a power at all. I remember. The Government was vastly unpopular.’
‘Yes. And they didn’t deserve any of it. They dropped the entire project because one or two of the better military and scientific minds in Britain – we have one or two – kindly pointed out to them that the Blue Streak was a hundred per cent unsuitable for its purpose anyway. It was based on American-type models, such as the Atlas ICBM, which takes twenty minutes to count down and get under way from the moment of the first alarm, which is all very well for the Americans: with their new DEW-lines and advanced radar stations, their infra-red detectors and spies-in-the-skies to detect exhaust trails of launched ICBMs, they’re counting on getting half an hour when some maniac presses the wrong button. All the warning we can expect is four minutes.’ Hargreaves took off his spectacles, polished them carefully and blinked myopically. ‘Which means that if the Blue Streak had worked, and if the count-down had started the moment the warning had come through it would still have been wiped out of existence by a five megaton Russian ICBM sixteen minutes before it was due to take off.’
The Dark Crusader Page 18
