I shook my head.
‘Not that easy, LeClerc. I must go to the blockhouse first.’
‘The blockhouse?’ The blind-seeming eyes looked at me for a long moment. ‘Why?’
‘You have the launch console there, that’s why.’
‘The launch console?’
‘The little box with all the knobs and buttons for remote radio control of the various circuits in the rocket,’ I explained patiently.
‘I know it,’ he said coldly. ‘You don’t have to examine that before fusing up the rocket.’
‘You’re not the best judge of that,’ I said loftily.
He had no option but to give in, which he might have done with better grace. He sent a guard to the captain’s office for the keys while we walked in silence across the intervening half mile, and not a very companionable silence either, but it didn’t worry me. I didn’t feel like talking, I felt like looking, looking at the white glitter of the sands, the shimmering green-blue of the lagoon, the cloudless blue of the sky above. I took a long, long look at all of them, the look of a man who suspects that that look is going to have to last him a long, long time.
The blockhouse had all the strength and solidity of a medieval fortress with the notable difference that it was so deeply sunk in the ground that only the top two feet were visible. There were three radar scanners mounted on the top and three radio aerials and, what I hadn’t seen before, the tops of four periscopes which could be tilted on a vertical axis and swung on a horizontal axis.
The entrance was at the back at the foot of a short flight of steps. The door was a massive steel affair mounted on equally massive hinges that must have weighed close on half a ton. It was designed to keep more than the flies out, the possibility of the sock of the equivalent of a hundred tons of high explosive detonating just over a thousand yards away was something that made such a door very essential indeed, even although it was at the back.
The Chinese arrived with two keys, heavy chromed flat-sided jobs like enormous Yale keys. He inserted one, turned it twice and shoved the door slowly open on smooth oiled hinges. We passed inside.
‘My God!’ I muttered. ‘What a dungeon.’
It looked exactly like that. A ten by twenty room, concrete floor, concrete walls, concrete roof, the heavy door through which we’d just come and another only just less heavy door in the opposite wall. And that was all, except for wooden benches round the wall and the tiny glow-worm of a lamp near the ceiling.
Nobody took me up on my conversational gambit. The Chinese crossed the dungeon and opened the other door with the second key.
This part of the blockhouse was about the same size as the other, but brilliantly lit. One corner of the room, about five by five, was partitioned off with plywood, and it was an easy guess that the idea was to screen radar scopes from the bright light outside. In the other corner was a softly-humming petrol-powered generator with its exhaust pipe disappearing upwards through the roof. There were two tiny ventilators, one high up on either side. And in the middle, between the radar cabin and the generator, was the launch console. I crossed and looked down at it.
It wasn’t much, just a sloping metallic box backed by a radio transmitter, with a number of labelled buttons set in a straight line, each button with a telltale lamp above it. The first button bore the legend ‘Hydraulics’ and the second ‘Auxiliary’ – those would be for the last-minute testing of the oil and electricity circuits: the third said ‘Power-Disconnect’, that would be for cutting off the battery-feeding external electricity sources: the fourth read ‘Flight-control’, a radio signal to alert the guiding mechanism in the Crusader’s electronic ‘brain’. The fifth, with the legend ‘Clamps’, would, when pressed, show by lighting up the tell-tale that the gantry clamps supporting the missile were ready for instantaneous withdrawal when the missile took off. The sixth, ‘Gantry-Ex’, would move back the gantries leaving only the extension arms of the clamps in place; the seventh, the ‘Commit’ button, started up the power intake fans. Two seconds after that, I knew, the revolving clock drum would trigger off the first four of the nineteen cylinders; ten seconds after that, another circuit would close and the suicide circuit would be ready and waiting, waiting only for the moment when something went wrong and the launch console operator pushed the eighth and last button.
The last button. It was set well away from the other seven. There was no possibility of mistaking it, for it was a square white push set in the middle of a six-inch-square patch of red, and labelled EGADS in steel letters – Electronic Ground Automatic Destruct System: and there was no possibility of triggering it by mistake for it was covered by a heavy wire mesh that had to be unclipped at two sides, and even then the button had to be turned 180° on its axis before it could be depressed.
I gazed at this for some time, fiddled about with the radio behind, took out my notes and consulted them. Hewell loomed over me, which would have made it very difficult for me to concentrate if I had had to, which fortunately I hadn’t. LeClerc just stood there looking at me with those blind white eyes of his, until one of the guards murmured something to him and pointed in the direction of the back door.
LeClerc left and was back in thirty seconds.
‘All right, Bentall,’ he said curtly. ‘Hurry it up, will you? The Neckar has just reported that she is running into gale conditions which will make observations of the test impossible when and if the weather deteriorates any further. Seen all you want to?’
‘I’ve seen all I want to.’
‘You can do it?’
‘Sure I can do it.’
‘How long?’
‘Fifteen minutes. Twenty at the most.’
‘Fifteen?’ He paused. ‘Dr Fairfield said it would take forty minutes.’
‘I don’t care what Dr Fairfield said.’
‘Right. You can start now.’
‘Start what now?’
‘Wiring up the firing circuits, you fool.’
‘There must be some mistake somewhere,’ I said. ‘I never said anything about wiring up those circuits. Can you recall my saying I would. I’ve no intention of touching the damned circuits.’
The gentle swinging of the malacca cane stopped. LeClerc took a step nearer me.
‘You won’t do it?’ His voice was harsh, blurred with anger. ‘Then what the devil was the idea of wasting the past two and a half hours pretending you were figuring out how to do it?’
‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘That’s the whole point of it. Wasting time. You heard what I said to Hargreaves. Time is on our side. You made a recording of it.’
I knew it was coming and I saw it coming, but I felt about ninety that day and my reactions were correspondingly slow and the vicious lash of that cane with all LeClerc’s fury and weight behind it across my left cheek and eye was a razor-edged sword splitting my face in half. I choked in agony, staggered back a couple of paces, then flung myself at the blurred figure before me. I hadn’t covered a foot when Hewell’s two great hands closed over my bad arm and tore it off at the shoulder – later inspection showed it was still there, he must have stuck it back on again – and I swung round lashing out with all the power of my good right arm, but I was blind with agony and missed him completely. Before I could regain my balance one of the guards had me by the right arm and the cane was whistling towards me again. I somehow sensed it was coming, ducked and took the full weight of the blow on the top of my head. The cane swung back for a third blow, but this time it didn’t reach me: Hewell released my left arm, jumped forward and caught LeClerc’s wrist as it started on its downward swing. LeClerc’s arm stopped short as abruptly as if it had come to the limit of a chain attached to the roof. He struggled to free himself, throwing the whole weight of his body on Hewell’s hand: neither Hewell nor his hand moved an inch.
‘Damn you, Hewell, let me go!’ LeClerc’s voice was hardly more than a whisper, the trembling whisper of anger out of control. ‘Take your hand away, I tell you!’
; ‘Stop it, boss.’ The deep authoritative boom brought normalcy, everyday sanity, back into the blockhouse. ‘Can’t you see the guy’s half-dead already. Do you want to kill him? Who’s going to fuse up the rocket then?’
There was a few seconds’ silence, then LeClerc, in a completely changed tone, said: ‘Thank you, Hewell. You’re quite right, of course. But I had provocation.’
’Yeah,’ Hewell said in his gravelly voice. ‘You had at that. A clever-clever Alec. I’d like to break his goddamned neck, myself.’
I wasn’t among friends, that was clear enough. But I wasn’t worrying about them at that moment, I wasn’t even thinking about them, I was too busy worrying and thinking about myself. My left arm and the left side of my face were engaged in a competition to see which could make me jump most and the competition was fierce, but after a while they gave it up and joined forces and the whole left side of my body seemed to merge into one vast and agonizing pain. I was staring down at the launch console and the various buttons were swimming into focus and out again, one moment gone, the next hopping around like a trayful of jumping beans. Hewell hadn’t exaggerated any, if there was one thing that was certain it was that I couldn’t take much more of this. I was slowly coming to pieces. Or perhaps not so slowly.
I heard voices, but whether the voices were directed at me or not I didn’t know. I stumbled against a stool and sat down heavily, clinging to the launch console to keep myself from falling.
The voices came again, and this time I could distinguish LeClerc’s. He had advanced to within a couple of feet of me, the cane held in both hands, the backs of his thumbs gleaming white as if he were trying to snap the cane in half.
‘Do you hear me, Bentall?’ he said in a low cold voice that I liked even less than his hysterical outburst of a moment ago. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying to you?’
I stared down at the blood dripping to the concrete floor.
‘I want the doctor,’ I mumbled. My jaws, my mouth were swelling, stiffened up already and I found speech difficult. ‘My wounds have opened up again.’
‘The hell with your wounds,’ the Good Samaritan to the life. ‘You’re going to start on that rocket and you’re going to start on it now.’
‘Ah!’ I said. I forced myself to sit straight, and half-shut my eyes until I had him more or less in focus, like an image and six ghosts on a badly-adjusted TV screen. ‘How are you going to make me? Because you’ll have to make me, you know. How? Torture? Bring out the old thumb-screws and see if Bentall cares.’ I was half out of my mind with pain, I didn’t know what I was saying. ‘One turn of the rack and Bentall is in a better world. Besides, I wouldn’t feel it anyway. And a hand like mine, trembling like a leaf!’ I held it up to let him see it trembling like a leaf. ‘How do you expect me to fuse a tricky – ’
He gave me the back of his hand across my mouth, not lightly.
‘Shut up,’ he said coldly. Florence Nightingale would have loved him, he had exactly the right touch with sick men. ‘There are other ways. Remember when I asked that stupid young lieutenant a question and he refused to answer? Remember?’
‘Yes.’ It seemed about a month ago but it had been only a few hours. ‘I remember. You shot a man through the back of the head. The next time the lieutenant did what you wanted.’
‘Just like you’re going to. I’m having a sailor brought here and I’m going to ask you to fuse that rocket. If you won’t, I’ll have him shot.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Like that!’
‘You will, eh?’
He didn’t answer, just summoned and spoke to one of the men. The Chinese nodded, turned away and hadn’t gone five steps when I said to LeClerc: ‘Call him back.’
‘That’s better,’ LeClerc nodded. ‘You’re going to co-operate?’
Tell him to bring all the other ratings with him. And all the officers. You can shoot the lot of them through the head. See if I care.’
LeClerc stared at me.
‘Are you quite mad, Bentall?’ he demanded at last. ‘Don’t you realize that I mean what I say?’
‘And I mean what I say,’ I answered tiredly. ‘You forget what I am, LeClerc. I’m a counterespionage agent and humanitarian principles don’t matter a damn to me. You should know that better than anyone. Besides, I know damn well that you’re going to murder them all before you leave here. If they shuffle off twenty-four hours ahead of schedule, then what the hell? Go ahead and waste your ammunition.’
He looked at me in silence while the seconds passed, while my heart thudded heavily, painfully in my chest, while the palms of my hands grew moist, then turned away. He believed me all right, it was so exactly the way his own ruthless criminal mind would work. He spoke quietly to Hewell, who left with a guard, then turned back to me.
‘Everyone has their Achilles’ heel, Bentall,’ he said conversationally. ‘I believe you love your wife.’
The heat inside that reinforced concrete blockhouse was sweltering, oven-hot, but I felt myself turn as cold as if I had just stepped into an icebox. For a moment all the fierceness of the pain left me and all I could feel were goose-pimples running down my arms and back. My mouth was suddenly dry and I could feel deep in my stomach that hellish incapacitating nausea that can spring only from fear. And I was afraid, afraid with a fear I had not before known: I could feel this fear, I could feel it in my hands, I could taste it in my mouth and the taste was the taste of all the unpleasant things I had ever tasted: I could smell it in the air and the smell was an amalgam of all the evil odours I had ever known. God, I should have known this was coming, I thought of her face twisted in pain, the hazel eyes dark in agony, it was the most obvious thing in the world. Only Bentall could have missed it.
‘You poor fool,’ I said contemptuously. It was hard to get the words past my dry mouth and swollen lips, far less inform them with the appropriately scornful tones, but I managed it. ‘She’s not my wife. Her name is Marie Hopeman and I met her for the first time exactly six days ago.’
‘Not your wife, eh?’ He didn’t seem vastly surprised. ‘A fellow-employee of yours, one assumes?’
‘One assumes correctly. Miss Hopeman is fully aware of the risks involved. She has been a professional government agent for many years. Don’t threaten me with Miss Hopeman or she’ll laugh in your face.’
‘Quite so, quite so. An agent, you say. The British Government is to be congratulated, the level of pulchritude among female agents is apt to be dismally low and Miss Hopeman does much to correct the balance. An astonishingly lovely young lady and one whom I, personally, find quite charming.’ He paused fractionally. ‘Since she is not your wife you will not mind so much if she accompanies the other ladies towards our destination?’
He was watching me closely to get my reaction, he didn’t have to spell it out for me, but he didn’t get the reaction. He had a pistol in his right hand now and what with that and the guard’s automatic carbine pointing at my middle, there was nothing to be gained by reacting in the only way I felt like, so I said instead: ‘Destination? What destination would that be, LeClerc? Asia?’
‘That should be obvious, I thought.’
‘And the rocket? Prototype for a few hundreds more?’
‘Exactly.’ He seemed ready to talk, as all men are ready to talk about their obsessions. ‘Like many Asiatic nations my adopted country has a genius more, shall we say, for refined imitation than original invention. In six months we shall be turning them out in quantity. Rockets, Bentall, are today’s bargaining counters on the table of world politics. We need Lebensraum for what the papers of the world are pleased to call our teeming millions. The desert of Australia could be made to blossom like a rose. We should like to move in there peacefully, if possible.’
I stared at him. He’d gone off his rocker.
‘Lebensraum? Australia? My God, you’re mad. Australia! You couldn’t catch up with the military potential of Russia or America in a lifetime.’
‘By which you mean?’
�
��Do you think either of those countries would stand by and let you run wild in the Pacific? You are mad.’
‘They wouldn’t,’ LeClerc said calmly. ‘I quite agree. But we can deal with Russia and America. The Dark Crusader will do it for us. Its great virtues, as you are well aware, are its complete mobility and the fact that it requires no special launching site. We fit out a dozen vessels – not our own, oh dear me no, but flags of convenience ships from Panama or Liberia or Honduras – with two or three rockets apiece. Three dozen missiles will be enough, more than enough. We dispatch those vessels to the Baltic and the Kamchatka Peninsula, off the Russian coast, and off Alaska and the Eastern seaboard of the United States: those off the Russian coasts will have their rockets zeroed in on ICBM launching sites in America, those off the American coasts zeroed in on the corresponding sites in the U.S.S.R. Then they fire, more or less simultaneously. Hydrogen bombs rain down on America and Russia. The advanced radar stations, their long-range infra-red scanners, their electronically relayed satellite photographs of inter-continental missile exhaust trails will show beyond dispute that those rocket-borne hydrogen bombs come from Russia and America. Any doubts left in their minds will be resolved by Moscow and Washington receiving radio messages apparently from each other, each calling upon the other to surrender. The two great world powers then proceed to devastate each other. Twenty-four hours later there will be nothing to prevent us from doing exactly as we wish in the world. Or do you see a serious flaw in my reasoning?’
‘You’re insane.’ My voice was strained and hoarse even in my own ears. ‘You’re completely insane.’
‘If we were to do exactly as I have outlined, I would tend to agree with you, although it may come in the last resort. But it would be most foolish, most ill-advised. Apart from the cloud of radioactive dust that would make the northern hemisphere rather unpleasant for some time, we wish to trade with those two rich and powerful nations. No, no, Bentall, the mere threat, the very possibility will be more than enough.
The Dark Crusader Page 22
