The Touch of Death

by John Creasey

  “Hi, Banister,” he said, with a pronounced American accent. He looked young, and in spite of the danger, seemed eager, confident. “How you doing up there with the great men?”

  “I’m getting along,” Banister said, with an effort. “I haven’t broken anyone’s neck yet.”

  “Keep on not breaking them,” the American said. “I’m Ray Morgue. Isn’t that a name to be proud of?” He grinned; but his smile quickly faded, an anxious look came in his eyes. “Banister, do you know where Mick is?”

  “I—don’t.”

  “He’s disappeared.”

  “I’ve been here looking for him.”

  “They told his wife that he had been moved to one of the other cities for special work,” the American said. “I don’t believe it. But—maybe you could find out.”

  Banister told him what he thought.”I guess it could be,” Morgue said heavily. “Try to find out, Banister, it could be important. If Mick is coming back, we’ll wait for him. If he’s not coming back, we’ll have to make fresh plans. Can you tell us anything else?”

  “No,” Banister said.

  He could have told him about Anak’s hopes for a deal through Palfrey; but if this were a form of treachery it would be better if he kept that to himself.

  Morgue said: “Okay. It’s been nice knowing you! If you can find out what’s happened to Mick, let Doggett know.”

  “How?”

  “He’ll find a way to talk to you.”

  “All right,” Banister said.

  The young American ducked beneath the snow. There would be air-holes nearby, for him to breathe in as he made his way back to the chalet or to inside the mountain. One moment his eager, smiling face was there, the next there was just the silence and the snow and distant peaks with their awful grandeur.

  Banister stood up.

  Then he became aware of the drone of an aeroplane. As he made for the top of the run, he looked into the sky, and soon he saw the silver grey speck. It was coming nearer, but was very high; surely higher than it should have been if it were going to land.

  Then he saw something dark fall from its belly.

  Chapter 18

  Banister stood quite still.

  He was halfway between the outcrop and the chalet. A dozen or more people were near him. All turned and looked towards the aircraft. One man was within two yards, and Banister heard him muttering to himself, almost in supplication, as if frightened.

  Everyone had stopped moving.

  The aircraft sped on between the mountain peaks, a silver fish which appeared to go steadily and smoothly, not swaying from side to side. The black “thing” which had come from its belly was still a falling dark shape, but above it a parachute had mushroomed out, and the great silk envelope swayed gently in the wind, checking the fall of the man who came down.

  Was it a man?

  Banister’s jaws hurt because he was clenching his teeth so tightly; the palms of his hands were sore because of the same kind of pressure. He began to move forward. It was a man, there was no doubt about that; and soon he would be on the ground, buried in the snow that would break his fall. His chief danger was that he might strike a rock, but he seemed to be falling on to the ski-run.

  The silence and the tension in everyone around him troubled Banister most.

  Then someone screamed.

  The aircraft burst into flames.

  One moment it was flying straight ahead, with the sun glistening on its silvered wings and fuselage and showing the windows like tiny little black dots; the next, it was just a great ball of flame which seemed to hang in the air for a few awful seconds – and then fell, with a cloud of smoke ballooning upwards.

  It disappeared behind a ridge, and smaller balls of flame flew in all directions, the smoke became a huge black ball, which gradually began to settle and disperse.

  Now the people who were near Banister, and Banister himself, looked at the falling man. He was close to the ground. Some people started to move towards him, and that was a signal for everyone to start going forward. Banister went with them.

  The parachutist hit the ground and fell flat; he was dragged through the snow for a few yards, and then lay still. He was not still for long. Banister was some distance away, but others reached the man, and helped him up. These were quickly shouldered aside by the guards who had come from High Peak.

  Then Banister drew near enough to see the parachutist, who now stood between two guards.

  It was Palfrey.

  The sky was a bright blue and the snow virgin-white and sparkling; yet to Banister, everything was dark. Until this moment, he had not realised how much Palfrey meant; how powerfully the man’s image had been built up in his mind. Palfrey had become a legendary figure: Palfrey was the man who at once troubled, harassed and impressed Anak. With Palfrey “down below” there had been reason to hope. Now he was here, and the aircraft which had brought him had turned into a ball of fire; everyone else in it must have perished.

  Banister pushed past the others, shouldering some aside. Most of them were recovering from the shock of surprise, although it still lay upon them. The most natural man among them seemed to be Palfrey, who was smiling faintly as he looked at him.

  He saw Banister.

  “Hallo, Neil,” he said.

  “Sap, you fool!”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Palfrey. “After the last spot of bother, I thought I’d better come and see whether we could agree terms of some kind. How are you?”

  “I’m—all right.”

  “Good.”

  Palfrey and the others began to walk towards the main gates of the city. Banister took off his skis and caught up with them. Palfrey looked about him with lively interest. A crowd followed. The guards kept on either side of Palfrey, but did not object to Banister walking with them.

  “Have you heard about Morris-Jones?” Palfrey asked.

  “Yes. He’s here.”

  “I know,” Palfrey said. His smile grew broader. “We followed him!”

  That was the second time that Banister began to hope; the first time had been when it had seemed possible to him that he would be able to fool Anak.

  In a different way, Palfrey seemed to be as confident as the Leader.

  Banister found himself aching for the moment when these two men would meet. Everything else faded into insignificance; even the destruction of the aircraft, and all it meant.

  He wondered if he would be allowed to be present; he kept close to the guards as they went through the gates, and then stopped to take off their thick, outer clothes. One helped Palfrey off with his.

  Klim and Rita appeared.

  “How did you get here?” Klim demanded harshly.

  Palfrey looked at him.

  “Why, hallo! Rotorua last time, wasn’t it?”

  “I asked—”

  A television screen nearby began to flicker. Palfrey glanced at it, in surprise; it was the first one he had seen here. The shadowy figure of a man appeared, just head and shoulders; then Anak’s face.

  Banister saw Palfrey’s smile fade, saw his jaw set, guessed that he sensed the truth about Anak.

  “Bring Palfrey here at once, Klim.”

  “Yes—yes, of course. Come along,” Klim said to Palfrey.

  He had been rebuked, and showed that he felt it. He did not take Palfrey’s arm, but walked beside him, with guards on either side; Rita and Banister were just behind.

  Rita was staring at Palfrey’s back, with the same look of disbelief as Klim had shown; a kind of awed wonderment.

  They went into the house where Rita lived, and up a flight of stairs into a room where Banister had not been before. It was large and very plainly furnished; a big table, chairs round it, and maps, not pictures, on the walls. It wasn’t unti
l afterwards that Banister studied the maps, but he saw Palfrey’s gaze flickering over them.

  Anak sat at the head of the table.

  He pointed towards a chair at the far end, and Palfrey was led to it. Palfrey seemed to fall into the flow of events easily. He sat down, and smiled at Anak across twenty feet of polished table. Rita, Klim and Banister sat down about halfway along the table. There was a small machine in front of Anak, another in front of Palfrey; they reminded Banister of microphones.

  Anak said abruptly: “How did you get here?”

  “I flew,” murmured Palfrey.

  “I know you flew,” said Anak roughly. “You know what happened to the pilot and crew of the aircraft. We brought them down with a light ray, our Project Twenty-one – an unfailing means of destroying all aircraft which come into forbidden territory.”

  Anak seemed to be fighting for his self-control; to find it difficult to speak calmly. Palfrey’s arrival had shaken them down to the very foundations of their belief in themselves. Nothing was the same as it had been – and belatedly Banister began to realise why.

  Palfrey had known where to come; and if Palfrey knew, so did others.

  “How did you find out how to get here?” Anak went on brusquely.

  “We followed Morris-Jones,” Palfrey said. “You ought to know—”

  “That was impossible.”

  “Oh, no,” Palfrey protested. “Nothing is impossible, you ought to know that. You also ought to know—”

  “Palfrey,” Anak said harshly, “we have perfected practically every form of human behaviour, the good and the bad. You once thought that you would be able to persuade Rita to speak, by torture or torment. You know nothing about the methods we can use, if necessary. We don’t like using them, but—”

  Palfrey said gently: “So you don’t like using them.”

  That was all. He didn’t even sneer – and yet the words were one great sneer, might almost have been a whip slashing across Anak’s face.

  Banister found himself thinking, praying: “Don’t upset him for the sake of it, Sap, don’t anger him.”

  “But we shall use them,” Anak repeated.

  “Oh, I’m sure,” said Palfrey. He took a cigarette-case out of his pocket, a swift movement which brought the two guards forward, as if they were touched with fear because this was something which they could not understand. He lit a cigarette. “All the same, I followed Morris-Jones, by instruments. We took bearings, and discovered precisely where he landed. So I came to see what was going on.” He drew lightly on the cigarette, then glanced at the glowing tip. “The ‘plane I came in was guided by remote control. I didn’t fly it, there were no other passengers and no other crew. You didn’t really do much damage. Now that we have bearings and are quite sure where you are, we could blast this place to smithereens.” He smiled. “Remote control war-heads and rockets, all that kind of thing. Even an atom bomb.” He kept smiling, but there was no humour in his eyes, they were as cool and calm and deadly as Anak’s. “You might stand up to ordinary bombardment, but you couldn’t withstand the atom bomb, could you?”

  Anak was very pale, his teeth clamped together; Banister was alarmed by the expression in his eyes.

  Palfrey did not appear to be frightened.

  “But we’re all civilised people, aren’t we?” he went on. “We don’t want to talk about blasting each other to pieces. We’ll have to talk terms. We—”

  Anak raised his hands, and even Palfrey stopped, as if instinctively obeying a command. Anak stood up, slowly. In Rita’s eyes there sprang an expression almost of pleading, but in Klim’s it was nearer exultation.

  “I shall not come to terms with you or with anyone down below, Palfrey. Before doing that I would wipe out your silly civilisation. It would be quite easy. Quite easy. You and your threats of atom bombs and hydrogen bombs which cost a fortune in money and in men’s time – what do they mean? We could destroy New York overnight without affecting anywhere outside – we could destroy Manhattan and leave Brooklyn intact; or destroy Westminster and leave the City of London unscathed. You don’t know what destructive weapons are down there, you’ve only just begun to use them.”

  Palfrey didn’t speak.

  Banister felt himself losing that glow of hope, giving up all thought that he might be able to fool, to defeat Anak.

  “That is the big trouble down below,” Anak went on impatiently. He didn’t move away from the end of the table, looked as if he were addressing a multitude again; and the glow of exultation was in his eyes for Palfrey as well as for Banister to see. “You can’t control your weapons. We can. We shall want to clear away some cities and towns, as I’ve told Banister, but we don’t want destruction to be haphazard. This shall go, and that shall stand – look!”

  He strode towards the long wall, and pressed a bell-push. The map hanging there, of the southern hemisphere, rolled itself up. Behind it was a screen. Anak pressed another button; lights glowed in the screen, and then a picture gradually appeared – a picture of London.

  Banister held his breath.

  He saw Palfrey gripping the arms of his chair.

  There was the heart of London, on relief-map scale; St. Paul’s stood out, with the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace – all the famous landmarks showed, and the streets were there, the spacious stateliness of Whitehall and the Mall. There were people, too, and cars – it was a perfect scale model, and appeared to be bathed in sunlight.

  Anak pressed a third button.

  Banister found himself rising from his chair.

  Parts of London began to crumble. There was no noise, no sign of bursting bombs, nothing to suggest an explosion; but buildings just crumpled up. Some were in the middle of the city, others were on the outskirts. After a few seconds, a kind of dust or smoke rose above the ruins; gradually this spread, and the whole of the city was blacked out.

  They waited, in tense silence; but the end of Palfrey’s cigarette glowed bright as he drew at it.

  The smoke cleared.

  The greater buildings, nearly all the landmarks, remained.

  The Thames wound its way slowly and gracefully among other buildings, which had never been there before; a new concept of London. There were many open spaces; all the parks and many others, where there had been houses or factories or shops. Great areas near the stations, crowded if not overcrowded with factories standing cheek-by-jowl with homes, had vanished; and parks were there instead, or tall modern blocks of flats.

  The last of the smoke seemed to drift away.

  “That is what we can do,” Anak said. “Destroy the worthless and preserve the beautiful. Is there a weapon in the whole world below that can do anything like that?”

  The picture on the screen faded, and the light came on. Palfrey was stubbing out his cigarette and lighting another. He must have felt much as Banister had – touched with the horror of the realisation of what Anak could do. If he were, he didn’t show it.

  “Not yet,” he said. “Not quite.”

  “If it were necessary,” Anak said, “I could begin that destruction, the tearing down of your cities, tomorrow. Don’t talk to me about terms.”

  Chapter 19

  Banister dropped back into his chair and watched the protagonists; and wondered why, if Anak were so sure of himself, he had been shaken out of his usual almost contemptuous calm.

  It was a fleeting thought.

  At the back of Banister’s mind was the question – why had Palfrey come? He could see little chance that Palfrey would ever be able to escape. He had deliberately sacrificed himself – but why? What point or purpose could there be in it?

  Anak said abruptly: “Why did you come, Palfrey?”

  Palfrey answered promptly, and convincingly; at least, the others seemed convinced.

  “A
fter the death of the village in England, I had to try to make terms. It wasn’t a job I could let anyone else handle.”

  After a pause, Anak said raspingly: “I will see you later. Take him away.”

  He waved his hands, and two guards came forward. Palfrey stood up. Neither man laid a hand upon him. They went out, and the door swung behind them, soundlessly, until it came to a standstill. That was no signal for anyone else in the room to move or to talk. Rita looked at Anak as if everything depended on his next words; as if the fate of the world were in the balance.

  He said: “How did he get here?”

  No one spoke.

  He banged the table.

  “I say it is impossible, he could not have followed Morris-Jones!”

  Still no one spoke.

  Anak swung round on Banister, passed the table, gripped the lapels of Banister’s coat. The physical strength of the man was enough to put fear into Banister. The aggressive face with the magnificent features was thrust forward, and Banister could almost feel the burning power of those dark eyes.

  “You are a friend of his. You will find out. You will persuade him that you are still with him and tell us how he got here. Do you understand?”

  “I—yes,” Banister said, and could not find words to refuse. “Yes, I—”

  “And if you fail,” Anak growled, “you will know what pain can be. You will suffer more pain than anyone in the world has ever known.”

  He pushed Banister away from him.

  This was another room which Banister hadn’t seen before. There was the usual television screen – one on each side, in fact – a small table and several chairs. There were a number of instruments which he couldn’t identify on either wall, and one or two fixtures in the floor. The only thing which really meant anything was the ring fastened to the floor; it was obvious that men could be tied to that.

  Was this a torture chamber?