Hostage

by Geoffrey Household

  Magma International at the top of their form! Kind of them to use London rather than a continental capital for their first experiment! A compliment to our efficiency, I hope.

  I asked him if there was any chance that it would fail to explode.

  ‘Not the slightest,’ he replied with a shade of professional pride.

  ‘How would you dismantle it if you could?’

  ‘Very simple. Unscrew the cylinder head. The thread goes deep, and it will take a little time. Remove time device, detonators and charge, which should be handled with care. Then slide out No. 1 container. No. 2 container can be left in place since the amount of fissile material is too small ever to become critical.’

  ‘Protective clothing?’

  ‘For dismantling only? Quite unnecessary! Do these people intend to use the bomb on … on … well, on land?’

  ‘They intend it as a threat. The threat may be enough to gain such concessions as they require. If it is not – if, for example, the threat is considered a bluff – they will prove that it is not a bluff.’

  ‘Oh, my God! I must go to the police. I must go to the police at once.’

  ‘You have already done so, Dr Shallope.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Special Branch are by no means bad at infiltrating subversive groups.’

  ‘But I’ll get a life sentence. I deserve it for utter folly!’

  ‘You will if you mention this meeting to your associates. If you do not, we shall do our best for you.’

  That, I reckoned, would keep him quiet. There was no longer any necessity to kill him. I was taking a slight risk, but at no time could I have been seen from the road and I was not expected. There was no reason why they should suspect that he had talked to anyone and interrogate him before they got rid of him.

  I saw that he was doomed as soon as I spoke to him of the threat being considered a bluff. Sometimes one’s own casual words accidentally illuminate a truth till then unrealised. What was his value to them any more? They had their bomb. Their immediate problem was to make the fact credible. Now they had the means. On the death of Shallope it was certain that Sir Frederick Gammel would at once communicate with the police. Examination of the basement at Roke’s Tining must reveal to experts on what Shallope had really been working.

  ‘Am I to continue to come here every morning at the same hour?’ he asked.

  I thought that over. He could not help police with any vital information; he did not know where the bomb was hidden. His death must prove that the bomb existed, thus removing any temptation to prove it more horribly and giving me more time – more time than young Grainger ever had – to interfere with an unknown future. Meanwhile conscience could obey that amoral maxim: ‘thou shalt not kill but need’st not strive officiously to keep alive.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think you had better.’

  August 13th

  A restless day. I expected orders. At some point the Action Committee must need man power. I hope they have not found it in another Group. That would leave me without any clue to the final firing position.

  The strike at the Hoxton Redevelopment Consortium still drags on with the militants of the International Marxists refusing all access to the site. The men think they are striking for higher wages. The Marxists don’t give a damn about wages; their attack is against the financiers who waste resources of the people in pulling down and building up without any necessity and for the sake of profit. Since the Marxists are producing anger, discontent and a degree of social chaos, one of my industrial cells is in it up to the neck with propaganda and some money.

  Ever since the day when Julian Despard decided to oppose and Gil reluctantly agreed to assist him I have been forced, logically, to repudiate all forms of terrorism because I repudiate the most effective. This has involved deep questioning of my political beliefs. Is there a label which still fits me? I think not. Labels only help those whose sympathies are emotional rather than reasoned. Accept a label and you get your thinking done for you free of further charge on the intelligence.

  For me Libertarian Communism is probably the nearest, though it makes no more economic sense than the teachings of Christ. You have eggs. I need them. I have bacon. You want it. So why don’t we exchange without bothering with money and markets?

  Ridiculous, of course! But in fact there is far more barter, very contented barter, than we realise among groups of friends in factories, villages, residential estates. And that is the point. Men who know one another, work together or live together often practise Libertarian Communism unconsciously. It is in such small, devoted groups that liberty and justice can be established. It is there that tyranny can be fought whether it comes from Marxist left or capitalist right.

  I have firmly believed that only the Commensals of Death and the collapse of society can produce the seminal groups. Now I am no longer so sure. It is conceivable that Libertarian Communism could grow naturally. The stinking dung of our society is already decomposing and becoming ready for the roots.

  August 15th

  I was right. FAMOUS NUCLEAR SCIENTIST FOUND DEAD IN AVON GORGE – and a very accurate report beneath the headline except for that ‘famous’ which Shallope was not. His body was found yesterday evening exactly where we had talked by an unfortunate boy and girl. He had been strangled about ten hours earlier with something broad like a strip of cloth. It would have been a scarf. The friendly approach and lightning attack of the former Indian thugs has, I know, been studied.

  How much of what the Government now knows for certain is it going to release?

  August 16th

  I was at the Hoxton site and found savage police activity with no public explanation of it. All pickets were arrested and all known or suspected militants. What a howl there will be from left wing socialists and the liberal do-gooders! My own cell had been called off the day before, but not by me. It must have been by-passed.

  What has happened is obvious. Sir Frederick has said that Shallope’s heat engine was in the shape of a drain pipe or packed in one when removed from Roke’s Tining; so every building site is being inspected, especially Hoxton with a bitter strike in progress.

  Of course the bomb is not there now, but I am sure it was and moved out before Shallope’s death. We had enough influence with the militants to ensure that drain pipes were allowed in through the gates and out again. At the beginning of the strike I was ordered to see that the pickets permitted deliveries of material, and I explained to my cell leader that the more stuff on site and the worse it was stacked, the more chaos and overtime when the men went back. Now I understand the true reason for the order which at the time I thought was mere ingenious mischief.

  Proof will be found that the bomb was on the site even if it demands some instrument more complex than a Geiger counter. I wish I had more than the most elementary knowledge of physics. Reference libraries are valuable, but I am sometimes beaten by the jargon and always beaten by the equations. Ability to read Plato with perfect ease does not help with alpha radiation.

  Parliament and the Law Courts are not sitting, but the Stock Exchange and Fleet Street carry on and are well informed. Those who pooh-poohed our planted rumours will now be thinking twice about them. I wonder if a larger number of commuters than usual have had sudden illnesses and stayed away from the office.

  August 17th

  I think I am in trouble. It was folly to employ Elise on the road check just because I was so obsessed by the need for quick results. But it was no time for following my golden rule of patience.

  Elise asked for a personal meeting at the same rendezvous we used when I was her cell leader. She had no right to communicate with the Group Commander directly, though it was I who had started it.

  Shallope’s death was worrying her. She wanted to know what she was to say if it ever came out that I had asked her to watch his movements. I could not see why she should suspect that my orders had been in my personal interest, not strictly in the line of duty. She seemed to be as
suring me that I could count on her loyalty anyway.

  I pretended not to understand, telling her that it did happen, though rarely, that a Group Commander picked a member of one of his cells for a special job and that what she knew was top secret and must not be discussed.

  ‘There won’t be any inquiry?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Not from Clotilde?’

  ‘What has Clotilde got to do with it?’

  ‘I recognised her when she was in the car with Shallope.’

  ‘You should have told me that you recognised her.’

  ‘I didn’t want to upset you.’

  I nearly asked her why on earth it should have upset me and then, remembering her silence when I drove her to Oxford, it dawned on me at last what she was thinking and why she was anxious. More coldly than I had ever spoken to her before, I accused her of daring to believe that I would use Magma to keep tab on the fidelity or infidelity of my supposed mistress.

  ‘Well, you’re only human. At least I sometimes think so,’ she retorted.

  ‘And you dreamed up this fantastic idea that I killed Shallope? Or was it Clotilde?’

  ‘You told me you wanted to know how he spent his evenings and whether he was away for the night.’

  ‘Have you mentioned to anyone that Clotilde had taken to a false beard?’

  ‘I may have done.’

  ‘Have you or haven’t you?’

  ‘Just within the cell.’

  ‘Did you say how you knew?’

  ‘Of course not, Gil.’

  ‘Then forget the whole thing! You have enough sense to realise that the Blackmoor Gate operation must have been planned at the highest level and that Shallope’s death must be accepted without question. I was instructed to obtain certain information about him. That was all. It now appears that we could both be reprimanded for a breach of security.’

  So stern a superior officer was out of character for me. She must have known I was alarmed. So I was. I gave her a formal order that she was to say nothing of Shallope, Bristol and Cheltenham if asked – simply that I had told her as a joke that Clotilde after her acquittal might be going about as a man and that she repeated it without a thought.

  ‘My own offence is mild,’ I went on, ‘but I may be censured for choosing you without a word to Mick, your cell leader.’

  ‘Why did you choose me?’ she asked.

  ‘Because you knew Shallope by sight.’

  That was half truth but I think she hoped for another half. And so we very formally parted.

  I don’t like it. What she has given away would be of no importance if Clotilde habitually used disguises. But the only time I have ever known her do so was when she was monitoring Shallope. Rex also told me she did so when slipping out of the newspaper office. However he said nothing about a beard. I wish he had.

  Clotilde considers disguise crude and infantile. By arrangement of hair and varieties of make-up she can become an attractive, grubby student with a head of flowing gold or an earnest, spectacled, sex-hungry librarian of forty odd with a severe bun at the back. She must use a wig sometimes because I have seen her with dark curls. That is the limit of her extraneous aids. The change of eye is of course invaluable. What I might call her business eyes are steel coils, hooded by the lids and long lashes. Yet on the street they are wide open and of appealing innocence.

  The fact that one of my cells was told to clear out of Hoxton without reference to me begins to look sinister. Am I already suspected as a possible agent of Special Branch? I do not want to be sent to hell with Shallope quite so soon, even if we get there before the crowd arrives.

  August 19th

  A most important entry. I must have a record of everything that was said while it is fresh in my mind.

  Clotilde arrived at my flat as soon as I was back from an afternoon spent with Herbert Johnson’s sales manager. I mentioned to him that I might have to take a few weeks off as my sister was very ill with no one to look after her.

  ‘Not an official visit, Gil,’ Clotilde said. ‘I’m bored and lonely.’

  ‘Are you safe?’

  ‘Yes. I have been given a secure flat, but I leave it as little as I can.’

  ‘All this trouble for me?’ I asked, referring to the craftsmanship which she had created from herself a very ordinary and unnoticeable woman.

  Her eyes were tired. Her head was covered by a scarf tied under her chin and her hair was cleverly restrained by vulgar hair curlers. She was wearing a cheap, rather dirty summer coat. Nobody could have taken her for anything but an overworked mother of five who had just stepped out to the supermarket.

  ‘All for you,’ she replied, sweeping scarf and coat and letting loose her hair.

  So that was to be the game. After long and easy collaboration in which sex had been ignored rather than considered out of the question, some relaxation was perfectly natural. Anyone who has worked in an office alongside a woman potentially attractive but treated merely as an agreeable colleague will know how that situation may be suddenly transformed when the two meet outside the conventional environment.

  I say that it was perfectly natural. What I mean is that she intended me to think so. It was to be an intimate duel in which I had one advantage. I knew what she had learned and why she had come, but she was not aware that I knew it.

  However, a second advantage was all hers. I was far from sure that after long and dedicated celibacy body was going to obey brain. Impotence might be taken as a sign of guilt; so might an excitable, artificial enthusiasm. She knew my character well enough to sense any possible signal of panic. I had to be careful not to appear as the cunning but too callous spy trying to disarm the policewoman by his show of athletics.

  The preliminaries on her part were surprisingly tender and hesitant. She was not at all the masterful Viking that I expected. I called up desperate memories of one of my students whom I had passionately desired but considered too young and ivy-clinging for the risk to be taken. Imagination failed to work. Then I remembered that Elise the day before yesterday had savagely flicked away a tear from her set face. Sheer sadism, I suppose. Yet the thought of Elise was highly approved by the wretched, offending instrument. I made love to Elise gently, long-lasting and repeated.

  With my arms around Clotilde and her hair over our shoulders – I admit that once the ice had been broken I found the hair an aphrodisiac – we talked slowly and easily as old comrades with a surprisingly new interest. Whatever approach she intended when I was relaxed and off my guard, it was now she who was softened. It is possible that all the time she had been less cynical and more genuinely fond of me than I assumed.

  ‘You can always ask me or Rex anything you feel you ought to know,’ she said.

  Possibly. But only after very precise explanation of my reason for asking.

  ‘I’m quite content so long as I know enough to act.’

  ‘A machine, Gil?’

  ‘With specialised skills.’

  ‘It’s true that when I was your Group Commander you never showed any curiosity. Why was Shallope killed do you think?’

  ‘If he was our nuclear physicist I can guess. Because he knew too much and was no further use. If he wasn’t the man, a desperate Government could have thought he was. But I don’t expect to be told. My group was not engaged.’

  ‘Did you ever tell your little Elise that when I escaped from the newspaper reporters I was dressed as a young man?’

  ‘I remember repeating to her what Rex told me: that you did.’

  ‘With a beard?’

  ‘I may have invented that as a joke. It was a casual, off duty meeting and there was no harm in telling her you were safe.’

  ‘I thought so. But the Committee is nervous about all of us, Gil. The planning is intricate, and one slip here or abroad …’

  ‘They haven’t any doubts about me, I hope?’

  ‘Not real doubts. And I can easily put it right. Can you let me know where you were between the fifth
and the ninth of this month?’

  ‘Yes of course. Herbert Johnson was staying at Witney and doing the rounds of Oxford booksellers.’

  ‘Names?’

  The slightest hesitation could be fatal. I wrote down the names for her. I had not been near any of them. It was a grave mistake not to have done so. I ought to have established better cover in case of trouble.

  She was not so ungracious as to say that the booksellers would be visited and questioned, but I knew they would be. One or two might reply that they did not remember. Inconclusive but fairly damning. Some would be sure that I had not called recently.

  The best I could hope for was that it would not occur to anyone that Witney was convenient for Gloucester as well as Oxford; if it did Ian Roberts would talk to the casual inquirer for quarter of an hour, saying what a nice chap I was and that he had sent me up with a book to Roke’s Tining.

  Clotilde left, promising to return some other evening. She won’t find her Gil if she does. Even without Ian Roberts, there will be strong suspicion that I managed to identify Shallope and followed him to Roke’s Tining, I might be able to talk my way out of that, but when asked why I did it I have no answer which would stand up to ruthless interrogation.

  I must leave at once. It’s unlikely that my movements will be watched while they are waiting for Clotilde to report. I don’t know what to do. My only hope of finding out where this abomination has been hidden was to exploit the trust the Committee had in me. The job is impossible alone. Fortunately Elise is safe. There’s no reason for them to suspect she was in Bristol and on the Cotswold roads with me if she keeps her mouth shut.