I was told that the freighter – a rather larger ship than my fleeting impression of her – was bound for Cardiff with currants and wine and that she carried the crate as deck cargo. On the night when she entered the Bristol Channel it would be lifted off her directly and quickly by helicopter and carried to the waiting lorry.
Clotilde ordered me to take one of my partisans and drive an open truck to a lane near Kentisbury on the high grassland of Exmoor, arriving at 11.15 p.m. Two hooded landing lights should be turned on and off as soon as the sound of the helicopter was heard. The load would be slung beneath it and lowered directly on to the transport. We had only to unhook the cable. It was considered most unlikely that there would be any traffic in the lane during the few minutes of operation, but we should be supplied with Devon County Council notices of ROAD CLOSED to be planted at both ends. When the crate was on board we were to drive to Blackmoor Gate where the truck would be taken over by another team. A third member of my cell with a car should be stationed near the cross-roads so that my party could be driven home.
It was a journey of about two hundred miles from London, so I started early in the afternoon in case of delay. It was as well that I did, for the petrol feed gave trouble. Fortunately I had Mick with me who is a competent mechanic. He had been an International Marxist in the north-east, specialising in industrial sabotage. He once told me that he had been bored by the futility of it, that our industrial workers were as mischievous as a band of monkeys. All they wanted was to thumb a collective nose at management. They had never given a thought to the New Revolution – beyond cheering any mention of any revolution – and they supported Labour as enthusiastically as their football team; its job was to win. The idealist in Mick was disillusioned – unreasonably, I think. The picture he drew was that of a healthy, hearty, sly and cynical society waiting to be presented with an ideal worth working for.
We reached Blackmoor Gate at ten and I checked that the car for our return was waiting there, driven by my ever reliable Elise. She had backed off the road and it would have taken us some time to find her if she had not walked out to meet us. Although she and the car were invisible, well hidden behind a bank, she appeared nervous. A typical urban guerrilla. She could place a bomb with absolute coolness and courage, but to be alone on wild, high ground with no other companions than the soft wind from the Atlantic and the rustlings and silences of the grass were a bit much for her. I told her to drive down to Ilfracombe, have some coffee and a sandwich and be back by 11.15.
We, too, had to keep driving, for it was unwise to park in a town or the middle of nowhere and invite questions from any passing police. Our truck was pink with brick dust and marked with the name of Groads’ Construction Company. Mick noticed that the door panel and side boards could be quickly removed and substituted, changing the name and address of the firm without the necessity of repainting. He thought five minutes in a dark street or on a municipal tip would be enough.
At zero hour we were in the lane with lights out. Somebody at the top has an eye for country and, to judge by the perfect choices of this lonely upland and the Paxos cove, always does a personal reconnaissance. Open grass. High banks topped by straggling hawthorn on both sides of the lane. Not a light to be seen but the dim greying of the sky by a lighthouse beam, probably on far away Lundy.
We had a disturbingly long wait and it was after 11.30 when we heard the helicopter coming in from the northwest. At once we put out the ROAD CLOSED signs and began to flash the landing lights. That was the only risk I disapproved, but it was more apparent than real. If anyone did notice the narrow shafts against a dark background, we should be well away by the time he came up to investigate, leaving nothing behind us but a rumour to tantalise the interest of the Customs and the UFO fans.
The helicopter hovered over us, picked out the truck in its own flood lamp and lowered the crate. It was smaller than I expected and had French markings which described the contents as Graphite. We cast off the cable, gathered up signs and landing lights and in three minutes were off to Blackmoor Gate. The racket of the helicopter disappeared in the direction of the Welsh coast. I presume that there was no evidence that the pilot had ever left it. The flight across the water from, say, Swansea was about fifty miles so that he had only to account for an hour of his time which he could well do by faking engine trouble and coming down with no witness but mountain sheep.
At Blackmoor Gate a party of three were off the road with Elise. I knew none of them but two knew me, addressing me by my nom de guerre of Gil. Therefore they would not be partisans from another cell or group but members of the Action Committee. If I am any judge of faces one of them was the unknown planner. He was a tiger of a man with eyes that seemed to reflect light even when there wasn’t any and a pointed beard. His oil-stained overalls could not disguise a loose, prowling body built for endurance rather than athletics. I was sure that he, too, had had paramilitary training and would be happily at home on hilltops or at sea.
He took over command without question and thoroughly checked the truck. He was not in the least rattled when two cars passed and asked if he needed help. Meanwhile I calmed down the third man of their party – a tall, weedy fellow with strands of hair blowing out in the breeze. I thought that perhaps he came from some university as I had before the disaster and my sentence. He kept on telling me how essential it was to get away and babbled about packing as if the crate contained detonators. He evidently assumed that I knew what it did contain, and his indiscretion made it certain that he was not a member of any cell, was not trained in discipline and had never before been engaged in any active operation.
We drove away by different roads – they along the coast to Bridgwater and Bristol, my party to South Molton. I sat in the front with Elise and we allowed ourselves to admire or pretend to admire Clotilde. Elise quite rightly thinks she is the wrong woman for me but would not dream of saying so. A thousand years ago Clotilde would have made the perfect wife for a feudal baron and ridden to battle with him, the long, fair hair flowing from her helmet. I can imagine the pale, dark Elise staying at home and inspiring wistful songs from troubadours. A flame of a girl unselfishly prepared to be blown out – or up.
Her hatred of our society stems from experience of physical starvation in the Third World rather than the spiritual starvation of our own. As a medical student in her fourth year she joined a relief expedition to the southern edge of the Sahara. There was little relief they could give but revive the almost dead for a few short weeks until they were truly dead and desiccated. She once told me how, when she returned, it was the advertisements, the costly, lying, snob advertisements of the affluent society, which convinced her that there was no possible building on such a culture until it was utterly destroyed.
Elise tried to pump me. She, too, while waiting for us had talked to the wispy haired stranger and noticed that he fidgeted and chirped to himself. Her impression was that the crate contained something live. Biological warfare? But even allowing for the international strength of Magma we are not ready for direct confrontation with the State till we have aroused in the public a burning sense of its futility, and resentment followed by violent hatred.
My instinct that it would be as well to keep a very private record of events turned out to be right. Libya, Paxos, Exmoor, this whole caper for the sake of nothing but detonators or infected fleas to be planted on politicians – if anyone can tell the difference – simply does not make sense.
June 29th
Clotilde and two partisans have been arrested. My own cell was not engaged, so I know nothing about their attack on the Telephone Exchange. It looks as if the reconnaissance of the exchange was careless or else Special Branch have cleverly made security guards so inconspicuous that even Post Office supervisors do not know who they are. The urban guerrilla has still a lot to learn from freedom fighters in open country.
It was an ambitious job which would have interrupted communications all over the south-east, and evidently conside
red too big for a cell leader to direct alone. But what a risk to involve Clotilde! However, if it had to be taken there could be no better choice. She’ll refuse to talk and tell them to go to hell. The papers give me her real name which of course I never knew: Alexandra Baratov; secretary; British mother, Russian father. The Russian father is useful, implying Communist or Trotskyist intrigue.
The three of them will have thrown suspicion on the extreme left without a mention of Magma, probably claiming to be members of the Workers Revolutionary Party. I suspect that Special Branch know next to nothing of our existence, though they must be puzzled by an organising ability and a command of funds far beyond those of such incompetents as the International Marxists.
A long sentence is inevitable, for they were caught redhanded when concealing the charges. The only comfort is that we will get her out eventually. If escape and change of identity could be arranged for me, it can be for her. The taking of hostages for her release is out, now that no country, even Algeria, will receive prisoners rescued.
July 4th
I have been appointed Group Commander in Clotilde’s place and am responsible for eight cells. I am surprised to find that in London there are only three, the others being in the Midlands with the primary objective of disrupting production lines. Security at cell level turns out to be as faultless as I had thought. My cell leaders only know that the cover name of their Group Commander is Gil and how he will identify himself. All communication is person to person. I visit the cell leaders as Clotilde used to visit me. No addresses. No telephone numbers. The result is that a partisan in the hands of the police is unable to give anything away but the names of his cell members and its leader. The leader can only reveal the nom de guerre of his Group Commander – which is no more use than saying he occasionally descends from heaven.
As a critic of society I must confess a tendency to criticise. Speed of communication is sacrificed for the sake of security; as cell leader I could not contact Clotilde. When the time comes for us to challenge and disrupt the State instead of well-timed stabs in the back I believe we could adopt for the cells, without much loss of security, the link between Group Commander and Action Committee. I know by sight the four members of the Committee who interviewed and approved me. I know where the meeting took place but not where the next one will be. I do not know where the International Headquarters are. I do not know the true name of Rex who is to give me my orders, but I can in an emergency get in touch with him. That loose-limbed tiger of a man whom I saw at Blackmoor Gate was at the meeting. ‘Bearded like the pard’ comes to mind. I suspect that he is our delegate to the International Committee.
I have appointed Mick to take over the cell, chiefly because I am fond of him. Blind obedience is not his forte, but so long as he resists the temptation to show too much independence he may do better on his own than under me. He came to the New Revolution by way of the National Students’ Union, seeing them as the natural leaders of the proletariat – a mistake the French made – and found that in fact he could lead but not as a self-confessed student. The man is by nature an actor and quick to learn, so he studied two regional accents for his part. He can do you a fiery speech in almost unintelligible Newcastle or hideous Birmingham. Magma made use of him and took him on when sheer disillusion was beginning to affect his oratory. I have trained him in urban tactics, night movement and concealment so far as can be done with just the pair of us. Elise, so passionately militant, has not enough respect for him because he does not know one end of a detonator from the other – or didn’t until I taught him. I remember explaining to her that Mick could do more long-lasting damage to the consumer society than a ton of gelignite.
July 11th
The police have withdrawn the case against Clotilde and her two partisans on the grounds of mistaken identity. I cannot understand it at all, for the evidence against them must have been overwhelming. The press does not know what to make of it either. Some of the papers attack the police for too precipitate action, as if a store detective had arrested an absent-minded duchess for shoplifting. Two of the Establishment papers play the whole thing down – a paragraph in a back page. Editors must have been given a tactful hint of something the public is not allowed to know. We can’t possibly have been able to blackmail the Home Office.
Perhaps the Government believes that the criminals belong to some bunch of right-wing rats all smeared with fascist sewage who have crept out of a friendly bourgeois state to which we are heavily in debt. In that case the Home Office might hush it all up and the Foreign Office deal with the inexplicable lunacy through diplomatic channels.
July 13th
The regular rendezvous with Rex changes every week. This time it was an art gallery in Belgravia where one may walk around with feigned interest and get into casual conversation with the man or woman who happens to be appreciating the same picture at the same moment.
Rex could pass as almost anything he pleases according to his style of dress. In the art gallery he might have just strolled by from one of the Belgravia embassies. When I first met him he looked informal enough for an off-duty football manager. He has a full, craggy face framed in an untidy mane and plays, I think, the daily game of a respectable left-wing social democrat. It wouldn’t surprise me if next time he turns up as a convincing builder’s foreman. But I may be romanticising. The strength of Magma is that one is what one is and above suspicion.
We strolled into Green Park and sat down. I will try to reconstruct the conversation.
‘Any questions, Gil?’ he asked with a smile.
‘Only if it’s advisable for me to know the answers.’
‘It may be.’
‘Then how the hell did you get Clotilde off?’
‘The Government found it too – well, embarrassing to hold her.’
‘She said something to me about partisans being free from arrest.’
‘Yes. For the moment they are. The Committee want to know how much you have guessed. You were in it nearly from the start, you see.’
I replied that I hadn’t any reasonable guess at all and was naturally curious. I hoped some day to know how the Blackmoor Gate operation had been planned and why. Then I asked him whether Clotilde was safe, for it was certain that every step of hers must have been followed by Special Branch after she left the court.
‘Quite safe, but not in circulation. Outside the court was a crowd of reporters howling for her comments. One of them was a Magma partisan. A woman. Her paper had authorised her to offer ten thousand for Clotilde’s exclusive story. She took Clotilde along to Fleet Street and into a private office. Clotilde went to the loo – very natural after all that excitement. It was the men’s loo. That took very careful timing with all those sots rushing in and out for a pee. She came out as quite an imposing young man, hat on the back of her head and hair under it, and cleared off at the back of the building. Our girl raised hell very convincingly and was not suspected. I myself disliked having to risk her, for she’s too valuable. The disappearance of Clotilde need not have been so hurried.’
‘You were there?’
‘I sometimes have the run of the place.’
No wonder our inside information is so good! Rex cannot of course be a well-known figure, but he might be a leader writer or columnist. He has a slight provincial accent which suggests that he started on a local paper and made his way up to Fleet Street.
I waited for him to tell me the facts of Clotilde’s inexplicable acquittal, but evidently he was not yet ready or authorised to put me in the whole picture. So I asked him what orders he had for me.
‘A few draft manifestos. Imagine that the State is trying to claw itself out of the grave and explain what must be done to push it back! All your old philosophy, Gil, and at the top of your form. Out of chaos will come Justice and Humanity. Keep it simple for the simple!’
‘And no action?’
It was long since I had been limited to the intellectual side of the movement. I did not want to return to
theory and a typewriter.
‘We may have that for you too. Tomorrow. Same hour. At Watts’ statue of Physical Energy in Kensington Gardens. The Committee’s judgment of you is that you should know as much as Clotilde did.’
July 14th
This morning I met him by Watts’ rampaging horse. Too healthy and too openly powerful for a horse of the apocalypse. A concept of the last century. What would our own emblem be? An abstract unintelligible to the conservative masses. An abstract which might represent the pressure of one continent upon another till the silent Magma surges up between the tectonic plates and the cities steam, ready for us to rebuild mercy and justice on the rubble.
There was a summer drizzle of warm rain, so we could not take chairs without drawing attention to two eccentrics. We walked briskly east, worthy citizens not to be done out of their daily exercise by weather.
‘Did you notice,’ he asked, ‘that the theft of arms in Libya was published at once to the foreign press, the embassies, Interpol, the lot?’
I replied that I did and could not understand it. In any case nobody would put much trust in any Libyan statement.
‘Without strong confirmation, no.’
‘Where did it come from? Magma?’
‘Confirmation came direct from Paris.’
I asked what Paris had to do with it.
‘La Gloire, Gil. Always la gloire. Military glory; commercial glory – without them we should find so many objectives out of reach. You are aware of the motives which induced the French to offer a Nuclear Reactor to Libya?’
Vaguely I was, I said, and it seemed to me a useful step on the way to Nuclear Warfare and chaos. But I could not see why the French should be so obliging.
Rex replied that it was a very simple bargain. Australia and New Zealand were raising so much hell about Pacific tests of nuclear weapons that the French wanted a new testing ground. They asked for a desert site in the empty south of Libya. The Libyans agreed, on condition that they be given a Nuclear Reactor.
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