“All right,” I said, “now tell me what’s in it.”
He did, with relish and toothy grin. The pill was a tiny radio receiver in part, a radio that needed to receive one signal only: the signal, transmissible from the Sendar Maru, which would blow the other part of the pill, the pill that contained enough nuclear explosive to disintegrate not only me and anyone who happened to be with me at the time, but the building I was in also. While I hoisted in this horrible information, and started to learn to live with it. I was reunited with Miss Mandrake, who was brought in from another room in the medical section. I was delighted to see her but too shattered to express it. I could do no more than gaze at her glassily. She looked as bad as I felt, and I guessed why. It was a good guess. She asked, trying to smile at me, “Wired for sound, are you?”
I said yes.
“Me too,” she said, and I saw tears run. “For God’s sake, what do they want now?”
I was unable to answer that one, but all was to come clear. A Tannoy began fizzing and a voice ordered Commander Shaw and Miss Mandrake to be brought back to the interim government cabinet room, which I was already beginning to link with the House of Commons, and, still under guard, up we went for a briefing session. The whole circus was present when the man in purple went into his spiel. Like the little bugs in our innards, like the whole concept of the death-ships, it was really very simple: we were to be helicoptered direct from the Sendar Maru to the Plymouth area, where the authorities would be advised to have an aircraft ready to whizz us to the nearest RAF station for Whitehall. We were to impress the government with the crushing power of CORPSE and urge immediate surrender upon them: they would soon be facing internal chaos as the governmental computers went, by hand of CORPSE fifth column, into paralysis of the administration. To allow a little more time, the deadline would be extended until 1800 hours. The man in purple was certain we would be convincing; so was the whole interim cabinet. I could understand their certainty well enough: I kept feeling that internal bug in my guts. The CORPSE brass crowded round with their good wishes, heartily expressed, all smiles and handshakes. It was much as though we were the opening bats in a Test series. The one sour note came from the man in purple, who said gravely that if we didn’t succeed, everything would blow at once, including us. He had only to authorise the two separate signals, that was all. And, just to dispel any hopes that I might still nourish, he added that it would be advisable not to attempt any jamming. The British Government had already been advised that to do so would only precipitate matters. Any jamming would have the effect of tripping the explosive devices via the transmitting aerials of the Sendar Maru.
Five minutes later we were airborne, gaining height over the helpless frigates. Faces stared up from the deck at the helicopter. I didn’t see any way out now. I was myself coming round to the surrender view. Better perhaps to live to fight another day …
*
I felt that internal device digging. It was hellish uncomfortable in a physical sense, never mind the mental torment. When my body heat had brought the little fins out, it had grown worse. It was pressing into something. It was akin to an ulcer. I tried to put it out of my mind and failed. It was right there with me all the way; and my heart was bleeding for Felicity. She sat there beside me, tense and drawn as we watched the toe of Cornwall come into view. We came over the Lizard, raised Falmouth and the mammoth tankers laid up in the river. We had expected to touch down at Roborough, but having passed over the enclosed submarine pens in Devonport Dockyard with their entombed naval personnel, we were told to go on to Exeter instead. At Exeter airport we were pushed out on to the tarmac and the helicopter at once took off again, watched by grim-faced ground staff, and police, and a naval officer from the Plymouth command, and swung back towards the sea and the distant Sendar Maru. Felicity and I were taken to a waiting jump jet and as soon as we were aboard we lifted off for the capital. It was to be a direct flight, we were told, no time wasted: the word from CORPSE was being treated with respect. The jump jet’s pilot put us down skilfully in the middle of Horse Guards Parade, the Harrier dropping like a bird down past the government buildings. The area had been cleared by the police, and beyond the blue ranks and the barricades a large crowd stared tensely, and a rising murmur came as we walked through to Whitehall and across to the Ministry of Defence escorted by a major-general. The whole thing seemed totally unreal, but the nag in my guts gave the lie to unreality. As we walked quickly away from the crowds and their anxieties, the major-general had gloomy news; the Prime Minister could not attend, having suffered a heart attack.
“Sheer strain,” he said.
“I’m sorry. Who’s in charge?”
“Defence Ministry. Martial Law’s been declared.’’
“Since when?”
“Just an hour ago.”
I asked. “What’s the feeling. General? Surrender, or take what comes?”
“There’ll be no surrender, Shaw.”
We entered the building; whether or not the expressed opinion was that of the major-general personally, or of the Chiefs of Staff and politicians as a body, I knew not. I had a strong feeling that if the brass all had internals bugs fitted, they might find their outlook somewhat sharpened towards getting rid of them; but I determined that I would put self, and Felicity too, aside in the interest of giving the Chiefs of Stall an objective report and assessment. I could only make a guess at how many lives were in the balance throughout Britain; it could run into millions. I hey had to come first. Yet putting them first might well mean that my gut feeling about surrender was right on target. I had absolutely no doubt in my mind that CORPSE could do everything they’d said they would.
*
I faced the circle of faces, the current executive power in Britain; it was the Sendar Maru all over again. The same kind of faces, even down to the union men. Today you couldn’t run Britain, even under Martial Law. without the say-so of the TUC and there they were to prove it and very dour they looked: they didn’t like the military. However, they all listened intently to what I had to say and there was a gasp of horror when I told them about those internal bugs. That, I think, impressed them more than anything else had done with the ultimate determination of CORPSE. I could see those faces, or the brains behind them, thinking: at any moment a horrible disintegration could come and they would be too close for comfort.
A face asked, “What do you advise. Commander Shaw?” The speaker was the Minister of Defence.
I shrugged and said, “I’m not here to advise, sir. Only to report.”
“Oh come, don’t split hairs.”
“I can’t advise,” I said. “I’m by way of being too personally involved.” I patted my stomach. The Minister took my point. I said, “In any case I have no advice to offer. I see no way out.”
“But you believe these people will do as they say?”
“Yes,” I said flatly. “I know they will. At 1800 hours, if you don’t concede, they’ll blow. That’s fact.”
The faces looked frozen. Looked beaten, too. Very definitely I felt surrender in the air and never mind that major-general. Yet it was a decision so enormous that it beggared definition. Britain had never been attuned to the concept of surrender, even less to surrender without a fight. But this couldn’t be fought and they all knew it; the moment any fight-back started, CORPSE pressed the tit and that was it. The honourable members now in Lewisham Town Hall had better take a fast vote, I thought, feeling the stir in my stomach and noting the time: just gone noon, and six hours left. Six hours more of British democracy whichever way the vote went. All those on-site nuclear-loaded vessels flashed through my mind: the Clyde, Plymouth, the Tyne and all the others, not to mention the close-flowing Thames.
There was nothing more I could say. Beside me. Felicity burst into sudden tears. I took her in my arms, and the brass looked embarrassed. But the shakes in the girl’s body, and the knowledge of that wicked inset device that was tormenting and racking her as well as me, put the steel b
ack into me and I knew I had to fight on after all. I embarrassed the brass again. I said, “Balls to surrender, gentlemen! We’ll beat the buggers at their own dirty game. The risk’s high but worth chancing.”
I was about to put a proposition, one that would involve a lake surrender and would probably not have worked in tact, when a telephone rang. An aide answered it. He listened, then put a hand over the mouthpiece, and said, “For Commander Shaw.”
I asked, “Who’s calling?”
With an expression of puzzlement and alarm on his face, the aide said, “WUSWIPP.”
Feeling tense l went across to the telephone amid a profound silence. I said, “Shaw here.”
A thin voice said, “Listen carefully, Commander Shaw.” It was the voice of an old man, brittle and wheezy, and it was one I didn’t recognise, but I did recognise the name when he gave it. It was Zambellis. Mirko Zambellis, perhaps one of the most eminent physicists of his day and still going strong. A Yugoslav … a stalwart of WUSWIPP, one of their backroom boys, a dedicated communist who had fought Hitler, forsaking the test-tube and the retort or whatever for the sniper’s rifle and the hand grenade. And Mirko Zambellis was a very worried old Yugoslavian, it seemed, who didn’t like the direction WUSWIPP was taking vis-a-vis CORPSE. CORPSE, he said, was fascist. I said I knew that, and had been much surprised at WUSWIPP all along. Zambellis rambled a bit and I had to cut him short. Brought back to the point, he asked me a very pertinent question: did I have a device planted in my gut? I asked how the hell he knew that, and he said he was still active in the cause of WUSWIPP and he, Mirko Zambellis, had himself dreamed up that dastardly bug, so knew all there was to know about it …
“Are you willing to risk your life, Commander Shaw?’’ he asked. I said cautiously that such was part of my job, and he went on talking calmly as though I’d given him an outright yes. He wouldn’t tell me where he could be found, but assured me he would be in the right place at the right time, and he promised total success against CORPSE. That was all very well. When Zambellis rang off I found that my hands were shaking uncontrollably and the dreary political and military faces were swaying from side to side.
THIRTEEN
I took a grip and steadied. I glanced at Felicity, pale and tear-stained. I addressed the brass and told them who and what Mirko Zambellis was. I said, “Currently he’s dissatisfied, to use no stronger word, with the WUSWIPP leadership. He’s devastated to think they’ve chucked in their lot with CORPSE.” It was, I thought, a situation comparable with the Liberal Party during the Lib-Lab ‘Support Jim’ phase. “He has an idea to save WUSWIPP from the devil — ”
An interruption came. “We’re not here to pull WUSWIPP’s chestnuts, Shaw.”
“And,” I went on regardless, “to sink CORPSE at the same time. Take that in, gentlemen! This could be salvation at the eleventh hour. That is, if I’m willing.”
Clamour began, and was stilled as I lifted a hand. I felt lightheaded, pompous, in a unique position — which latter in fact I was. The odd light-headedness induced silly thoughts in me: I could demand the earth and it would be granted now. A peerage would be mere peanuts. I expounded Zambellis’s theory. Like all that had gone before, it was dead simple when put into plain language: Zambellis, father of the stomach bug, was currently in close contact with a transmitter that could blow it just as effectively as could the CORPSE directorate aboard the Sendar Maru. He had said that when it did blow, it would do much damage in its vicinity. Its vicinity would not be a pleasant place to be. If positioned right, it could blow the bottom out of the Sendar Maru and she would go down like a stone before CORPSE or the interim government of Great Britain could collect their wits. Once that happened, the threat was over. The big boys of CORPSE, plus Brigadier Bunnett, Ron Gudge and all the interim gentry, would be below the waves, either dead or ready to be picked up by the frigates on station. There were, I said, some snags: the blowing up of the Sendar Maru might, just might, trip the devices shipbound in our British ports. That, at any rate, was what CORPSE had threatened if the frigates, for instance, should open fire. But Zambellis believed that would not happen. The device-blowing equipment would not be attacked in itself; it would just sink, which was a different proposition from gunfire or such. A chance would have to be taken on that. The other snag was personal to me alone: Zambellis’s suggestion was that I with inset bug be sent back aboard the Sendar Maru on some pretext, that I get myself reincarcerated in the cell below the waterline, and that a little before 1800 hours he blew me up.
There was more clamour. Deep in thoughts of eternity, I let them rave. When the clamour subsided, the feeling was very obvious: they didn’t like to say it, but they all hoped desperately I would volunteer. Well, I would. I said, “To refuse would be churlish. I’ll go. If I didn’t, I couldn’t live with myself afterwards. There’s just one thing. A request.”
They couldn’t wait to say it: “Anything you ask, my dear chap, anything.”
“Right,” I said, and once again, and it would be for the last time so far as I could tell, I took Felicity in my arms. “Immediate contact with St Thomas’s Hospital. An examination of Miss Mandrake, and an operation to remove that filthy device.”
*
When I left the Defence Ministry we had everything sewn up. I wasn’t leaving it all to Mirko Zambellis. After Felicity had been rushed across the river to St Thomas’s, I went into further conference with the Chiefs of Staff and the top politicians. I was to go back aboard the Sendar Maru as an emissary or mediator on behalf of the current governing body of Britain. I was to discuss terms, and was empowered to negotiate even to the extent of outright surrender. If, as a result of that surrender offer, I was able to get CORPSE to switch off the threat so that interference would positively not trip the various devices, and if I was able to announce this to Whitehall, then the frigates were to be ordered to open fire and blast the Sendar Maru out of the water. That way, I just might survive. There were too many ifs but it couldn’t be helped. This decided, the Sendar Maru was contacted by radio and asked to pick me up at Exeter airport. Just before I left the conference, word came through from St Thomas’s: they hadn’t dared risk an X-ray in case it blew the device but an exploratory abdominal incision — a laparotomy — would be made and they would take it from there. It might be as simple as a partial gastrectomy or it might not: time would tell. The theatre staff deserved unstinting praise; it was impossible to say what might happen if the knife slipped, or even if it just touched against the device or its slide-out stoppers.
Back aboard my jump jet, I was hastened to touchdown at Exeter. The helicopter from the Sendar Maru had been hovering, and came down a few moments after I’d disembarked from the Harrier. I boarded into the guns of CORPSE and off we flew, no one speaking. When I reached the ship there was just a matter of two hours and a few minutes before the showdown came one way or the other. I was met by the man in purple and taken again to the cabinet room. There was still tremendous confidence in the air, which I found touching: in fact the bastards had had it, thanks to Mirko Zambellis, and their over-weening certainty was quite misplaced. Anyway, they welcomed me with courtesy: I was, after all, the ambassador for a country’s life and a valued negotiator.
Brigadier Bunnett brought me a brandy.
I asked if it was safe.
He raised his eyebrows. “Oh, you mean that little gadget? Yes, it’s safe enough.”
“Thank you,” I said, and took the brandy in a gulp. It went down like fire and I was grateful. If I was offered more I would take that too; it would be better to go out as tight as a drum, I decided, though I would need my wits about me a while longer yet. We got down to business under the aegis of the man.in purple. Once again I was apprised of what was arrayed against the British Government but I cut the exposition short. Whitehall, I said, was well enough aware by now.
“So?” the man in purple asked.
“As you’ve been informed, I’ve been sent to discuss terms.”
“Yes
. Terms of surrender?”
“Not surrender,” I said, showing for the sake of authenticity a tough negotiating front. “An accommodation, let’s call it. What’s CORPSE’S price for withdrawing the ships from our ports and rivers, gentlemen?”
“There can be no compromise,” the man in purple said flatly.
“Oh, come,” I said, speaking as it were over the head of the CORPSE man and trying to reach the lay persons who would form the government. There must, surely, be some grains of common-sense and reality amongst that bunch. “Nothing’s so final it can’t be discussed and moderated. The Prime Minister and cabinet are willing to meet you on certain points — ”
“What points?”
This was not easy; of course, I’d been briefed so far as time had permitted before leaving the Defence Ministry, but what points could in fact be met, or conceded, in a situation such as this? The man in purple had been dead right: a compromise was impossible, really. CORPSE couldn’t be given, say, Wales and Scotland, with Cornwall as make-weight in reserve if Wales and Scotland were not enough; nor could CORPSE be offered a share in government by the invocation of a kind of proportional representation. Nor, again, would the combined forces of WUSWIPP and CORPSE be bought off by the repealing of a handful of laws they didn’t like or the promise of legislation along the lines they did like. Anyway, I waffled on in general terms about co-operation and mutual understanding and a total willingness on the part of the British Government to meet CORPSE and have full discussions with the threat withdrawn in the meantime. A truce, in effect. It cut no ice at all with the man in purple.
He said as flatly as before, “No truce. We would stand to gain nothing. You are wasting time, Commander Shaw, and that is foolish for your people. Tell me this: are you empowered to offer surrender?”
Corpse (Commander Shaw Book 15) Page 15
