98.4

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  When Jack did get through to me his tone was co-operative. I didn’t know what he’d found out during the delay but I got what I wanted.

  This quiet fellow turned out to be a very courageous man. Without knowing any details he agreed to isolate two main power stations in the Greater London area. I knew something of what this involved ... a whole series of lies to Grid Control and at least two forged documents ... but he wasn’t deterred. I told him the timing needed and he said: ‘You won’t get a power breakdown for long. They can make this up in a matter of minutes.’

  I told him I hoped to dispose of 500 Megawatts locally.

  ‘Christ! Do you know what you’re doing?’

  ‘Yes. I’m breaking the back of the country’s electric supply.’

  *

  By 1600 hours — otherwise known as teatime — I had stumbled across the cornfields to a position on the shoreline where Duncan and I had agreed to meet later. I had with me an assortment of gear which would have seemed to the opposition a truly pathetic armoury for a major act of sabotage. But these days the weapons needed for such a purpose are strangely lacking in firepower.

  1 dual-standard mini-TV (the flashlight-televisor)

  1 pair service binoculars

  1 plan of Bishops Bight Nuclear Power Station

  1 luminous wristwatch

  1 hydraulic jack fitted with clamps

  1 electric torch (that really was a torch)

  1 mouth organ.

  I checked them over. The specially coded TV picture (not able to be received by a conventional set) which Group Three transmitted came through well in this area — as predicted by Mike Duncan. The channel which would carry Michael Nobody’s Spectacular was not quite so good but adequate for my purposes. On the former, there seemed to be a lull and I switched off. The apparatus ran off a fuel cell and earlier I had computed that it was only safe to use it for a total of thirty minutes in any four-hour period if I was to ensure adequate life in the battery.

  Using the ordnance survey map, Duncan had carefully estimated from the contour isomarks exactly what could be seen of the power station from this position. This checked out. The pair of concrete huts which stood next to each other to the south of the service road could clearly be seen. These were actually the entrances to the 275-kilovolt cable tunnels which ran alongside the reactors and gave access at the far end to an approach to the control room which was not visible from the guard house. The fact that there were two identical tunnels gave me a double chance of escape; though I hoped, in fact, that my retreat would be uneventful.

  The method I proposed to use in order to reduce steam flowing to the turbines was unspectacular. With luck, it should give me time to get clear of the area before the power failed. And my plan hinged on a deliberate ‘weakness’ built into all nuclear equipment for the safety of you, me and the gatepost. The weakness is called ‘fail safe’.

  The essential of ‘fail-safe’ is that you can switch off much more easily than you can switch on. In terms of the physical design of the reactors, this meant that the control rods which determined the heat output could be lowered faster than they could be raised.

  In a reactor, you stop the chain reaction by lowering them. If you lower them far enough you can’t haul yourself up by your own bootstraps, because by the time you’ve got them out again the reactor has gone to sleep ... very depressing but very safe. An innocent-looking lever — which looks like a car doorhandle — sticks out of the control console and you simply turn it one way to raise the rods and the other way to lower them. There’s no need for a crash shutdown using the sinister-looking red button near by — however spectacular the prospects. And if I’d used that on this occasion I would never have got out in one piece ... Engineers don’t like that sort of thing. And though my reluctance to do four million pounds’-worth of damage may make this chronicle less amusing I can only plead that I wasn’t thinking of its dramatic value at the time.

  Now, as the sun scorched from lower in the west. I went over Duncan’s notes of the previous day.

  During the very detailed snooping job he had done on Tuesday he had systematically interviewed the engineering staff in the guise of an author carrying out research. The result of this venture was twofold: First, he’d discovered exactly what I must do to achieve the necessary excuse to turn those vital handles; second, he’d been able to confirm that my international name was Joe Mud. I was not wanted, I was unwelcome, I was Public Enemy Number One — with lunatic tendencies thrown in.

  However, with typical Home Office red-tape-ology my photograph was not included among the pin-ups on the publicity office wall. The reason for this thoughtful restraint was a lovely piece of involved thinking on the part of the civil service. They did not want my photograph in the press; as any mention of my lunacy would, in their estimation, cause panic among the public and draw attention to secret installations in Somerset. The powers that be, unable to unravel the difference between press publicity and the clear need of the power station security boys to recognize me, had suppressed the police photograph which, though unflattering, would have rendered my intrusion virtually impossible. False moustaches and things — in case you don’t know — have very little effect on a trained eye.

  Lastly. Duncan had swiped a standard set of overalls which I was already wearing.

  As a result of the mirthful discussion between Duncan and the experts on the subject of systematically ruining a perfectly good power station, I now knew exactly what to do.

  The filthy stink from the phonebox still clung to my boots. I still couldn’t place it.

  *

  1700 hours.

  I had noticed for some time that the dialogue among the PV section of Group Three had been highly guarded and cryptic. Clearly they knew that I was around somewhere watching their every move. For the most part they verbally keyed predetermined steps in the plan which gave very little away to me. This greatly harassed them as it did me. Stergen, seen on the tiny screen, looked grim and anxious.

  But I wasn’t expecting Duncan’s bold move. I don’t know how he’d managed it but he suddenly came into view behind Stergen and handed across a mini-xv set identical with the one I was now viewing. He said: ‘This was found, sir.’

  Stergen — sharp, birdlike: ‘Where? Where was it found?’ He immediately checked the number. I couldn’t see it but evidently it carried the same number as mine. Stergen looked very thoughtful. Then the station abruptly went off the air. Clearly they were weighing the odds of this apparent gold brick.

  They took a long time to estimate the carats. I kept switching on but the transmitter was still off the air half an hour later. This looked really bad. Duncan was totally indispensable. If he could not succeed in killing Group Three’s internal electricity so they were forced to use the main supply I was sunk. It was a fat lot of good blacking out Britain and obliterating Michael’s show if Group Three could happily launch missiles anyway.

  Though I didn’t realize it at the time, the suspense and anxiety caused me by the unclear position over Mike Duncan had an unforeseen side-effect which was a positive advantage. For I was so bound up in this that thoughts of Louise were hardly possible. I just felt somehow that she was there beside me; that her magnificent sense of purpose — which I could only imitate on a lower level altogether — was a permanent source of strength to me personally.

  Once, when I focused the binoculars on a small tanker that had stopped a few miles out to sea, I could have sworn she was actually touching my body. In the near trance-state of high tension that I had by this time reached I must have been subject to hallucination. But that’s a mere technical term; I knew that she would wish me to feel thus and I fully accept the romantic view — that she planned for me to feel this way. There was the distinct sensation, not of any perfume out of a bottle, but the subtle scent in a woman’s skin close by, that which varies person to person and excites like nothing else I know. She was only a breath away. Perhaps it was because of this that I looke
d yet harder at the ship. She was some five miles off the Bight, and stationary. Probably at anchor — for the bow was the pivot for a slow, clockwise swing as the wind and tide gently brought the stern about.

  Could this be a mother ship for hidden subs? ... Certainly she had lavish radar equipment. One ... two ... three different scanners turned on their pedestals at different speeds. But in perfectly clear weather? — when at anchor?

  *

  1740 hours.

  With a brain-sickening thud the PV group came back on the air with the message I least wanted to hear on earth. State of Readiness had reached Flashing Red. And though I hadn’t the least doubt that in a sense the position had been manufactured on the lines Duncan had described — a brand of electronic trigger-happiness arising from the over-sensitivity of the circuits — this was irrelevant to the actions of Group Three. They wanted war. The unctuous computers were predictably satisfying a market. It didn’t make a blind bit of difference what the real intentions of their supposed adversaries amounted to in terms of reality.

  Stergen reacted like a stung tarantula. He leapt from his place at the communications console and in three strides reached another position where a large screen displayed what was clearly a Sonar-computed pattern showing submarine positions — an animated electronic map built up from sonic echoes under water.

  A man I didn’t recognize but who wore God knows how many badges of rank joined Stergen at the indicator, said something rapidly and turned to address the camera.

  ‘All units. Standby!’

  I couldn’t fully grasp it. Surely, it was still a private fugue, an armchair dream of power and hate? — Stergen’s intimate property and no one else’s?

  In denial, the first of the subs squished to the surface five miles out. My binoculars were not subject to mirage and the number on the hull baldly stated K-43.

  In a frantic, fumbling panic I seized the selector switch on the mini-TV and sought an answer from the BBC.

  But dog Dougal snuffed around puppet-wise on one of his usual missions and not by so much as a canine whimper did he show any sort of awareness to the incipient mass of death of world missile attack.

  The commercial channel was just as normal.

  Around me no sirens shrilled their dreaded wail; not a single aircraft overhead displaced the hot thrum of summer heat in the still air above. The tide below me washed peacefully over pebbles, cooling them. Birdsong intermittently signalled biological messages from trees inland but otherwise there was a silence truly grotesque in the frightful circumstances now apparent.

  The backfacing clock for a long countdown greeted me as I slammed the selector switch back to Group Three. And although Duncan and I had made some accurate guesses it was still a shock well nigh incommunicable to see how right we had been. Zero was 2310 hours ... Not the fortuitous, witching-hour of midnight but a carefully computed ten past eleven to suit compound factors of tides and winds and visibility and hundreds of other interlocked factors accessible only to the computers — both organic and electronic — somewhere down there in the underground complex. Far afield, tracking stations, like the one visible from here on the military airfield, would be locked on to an endlessly intricate system of warlike sensors ... ranging from seaborne spy ships crammed with automata to short-range pocket TVS within far-flung headquarters like this one.

  For one mad moment I was on the point of rushing straight to the entrance of the nuclear power station with evidence of undeclared war. Surely I had all I needed?

  As if in answer to this the fruit-salad laden military moron said tersely: ‘All systems to automatic. Repeat, all systems to automatic. Monitors closing as from now.’ The picture faded. A loud background hiss replaced the sound channel. The screen went doppled white as the video transmitters shut down.

  Hardly able to control my hand properly I fumbled the switch again and was in time for the news.

  But nothing. Nobody knew Duncan and I stood alone against the firepower of stampeding robots and the paranoia of severed heads.

  I felt embittered against the ostriches of Whitehall — then instantly realized I could not afford to wallow in tantrum. Yet the truth was that the demands on my credulity were formidable. I was still looking for excuses that would allow a rational explanation. I felt like the pacifist who, unable to bring himself to block the pure science behind the principles of the atom bomb, could not grasp the connection between his cause and their effect on seeing the first frightful flash.

  I don’t know how long this hesitation lasted. But when I suddenly noticed a line of beaters who had without warning appeared over the crest of the Pixie Mound behind me it was almost too late to act.

  My brain reeled into the mode for high-speed computing.

  I was positioned halfway down the shallow descent of a cliff which pronged out to sea in a barren area immediately to the west of the power station, whose two main towers comprised a glass fortress to my right. Before me a leg of rocks, slooshed over by the high tide, pointed towards Wales in the long sharp shadows of late afternoon sun.

  Sea water is a barrier to the scent on which hounds rely — and I could see at a glance that these were not police dogs but foxhounds.

  Then why me? A few couple borrowed from the local hunt could not miraculously turn killer.

  As I leapt up to make an abrupt farewell the simple answer hit me.

  Aniseed! The stink on my boots!

  I had only a few seconds. To reach me the pack would have to skirt around a wired-off area directly behind me and this would place them out of sight. The beaters, evidently unskilled in the deadly art of the manhunt, followed the hounds instead of holding their lookout position. Momentarily they moved out of sight.

  Somehow I heaved my gear in a desperate slide down the mud towards the rocks, crossed the intervening wet sand. My footprints disappeared three steps behind me all the time as I squashed forward. I gauged I had time to scale six more rocks. They were craggy and dangerous and my foot-control ran amuck as one missed foothold led in cascade to the next until I was forced to keep going forward to try and catch my own legs. This left me exposed for longer than I had bargained for and horrifically I heard the hounds in full cry as they rounded the headland.

  At last I dived down in a space and took the shock with bent knees as I hit low rock concealed just below the water line, sending up a splash that all but sogged the mini-TV. Then looked back.

  I couldn’t believe it. Evidently the hounds had picked up a scent much more to their liking. Baying from the joy of the hunt they tore clean past my old hiding place and passed within a few feet of the place. The beaters, not realizing what had happened, appeared abruptly in line abreast against the horizon. A whistle blew and a uniformed policeman swept an arm over his head towards the new line adopted by the foxhounds.

  In any other circumstances the result would have been hilarious. They totally misunderstood the situation to a degree truly profound. One man had a walkie-talkie radio. He stopped behind the others and sent a thrilling message. This must have been to the helicopter pilot, for the machine — out of sight till now — magnificently caught a flash of sun not fifty yards upwind of my position, then banked tight around an imaginary ripek in pursuit of the leading couple of hounds.

  I was left wet — and, I must say, smiling — in anticipation of the unseen moment when the unkempt huntsmen would find themselves in at the wrong kill. I revised my sour view of bloodsports, for the present. As far as I was concerned the fox who broke my scent was due for a posthumous VC.

  SIXTEEN

  Darkness. No moon showing through the menacing overcast.

  High pitched whine of electric blowers, distant roar of water pumped out into the sea, local sounds of mingled machinery servicing a huge station with power on its mind.

  Over my head, as I lay in my new position inside a ditch some twenty yards from the huts where the tunnels began, the crackle of tiny electric arcs zipped over the multiple collars of herring-spine insulato
rs dangling from concrete gantries standing in rigid rows. The deep-fry sparking sounded as if immense power was only just held in check before squirting down thick, doubled-up aluminium cables radiating outward from the massive power terminal to distant cities and further stations feeding the line.

  Close by, huge square tanks containing transformers linking up the 400,000 volt powerlines, hummed their A flat pedal-note. Fan-coolers whirred windshafts from warm insulation inside, so that hot oil smells and ionized gases tanged on the nostrils, then mixed in with the sea-fresh breeze blowing in from the northerly side of the main power houses opposite — where the tunnels led and where I had to be inside half an hour. The great packing cases made of metal and glass sat side by side, dwarfing everything in sight. Inside them, two identical reactors slumped within their concrete cases — invisible to me. They pulsed with the most basic energy in the universe — the eternal process of nucleonic change from which stars are made.

  Deep inside steel vessels were fuel-slugs, glowing from their own unseen combustion, which presumed to entrap, convert and harness the basic Matter/Energy equation, so that stubbly men could ruin their electric shavers and women could sit under the hair dryer ... and industry could press motor cars destined later for the scrap metal dump. But the reactors were hidden by the wrap-around of thickly wadded steampipes, which zigzagged fatly inside the glass frontage, climbing layer upon layer of decking, winding in among bulbous boilers, lit by a mosaic of naked lamps in 3-D.

  It was the energy surging inside these thickpadded monster-buildings that I now proposed to shut off.

  I took my time while I surveyed the area for possible assailants. Looking north across the car park towards the power houses, I saw a team of men were lowering a huge yellow flask on to a thug of a low-loader. The chain hoist dangled the lifting yoke and this engaged with trunnions sticking out from the flask. Inside this shielded container, spent fuel slugs would be conveyed to Windscale for reprocessing. Now that they had endured their holy hundred days in a decay tank, where lethal plutonium and gamma-producing minerals had thrown off the hottest of their waste, they were safe for transporting by road.