A Very Big Bang

by Philip McCutchan

  The cameras picked it up, glinting in evening sunlight. Hesseltine swallowed, began a nervous twitch of his eyebrows, caught the eye of the Commissioner. As he did so, telephones rang: two calls. Each was taken by a uniformed Chief Inspector. Hesseltine got to his feet, face expectant.

  “Downing Street, sir. The Prime Minister will talk to the terrorists.”

  “And if the talking doesn’t help?”

  “No surrender, sir.”

  Hesseltine’s eyebrows twitched again: he showed no other reaction as he turned to the second call. “Well?”

  “A woman, sir. No name, but she speaks for Power of Islam.”

  Hesseltine reached out a hand, and took the call.

  Nineteen

  Hesseltine, when the woman’s voice had given him the full picture, did his best to keep her talking, giving his experts time to put on their checks.

  “It’s not within my province, to —”

  “You are one of the Assistant Commissioners of Metropolitan Police,” the voice said: it was clear, young, decidedly attractive.

  “I still don t equate with the Prime Minister. This is a Prime Ministerial decision. What’s Power of Islam?”

  There was a laugh. “Exactly what it implies, Assistant Commissioner. Now, pass on my message without delay. The two men will remain aboard the aircraft at Heathrow until there is an answer. If they are interfered with, then the explosion will come. That is all for now.”

  “How do we contact you?” Hesseltine asked.

  “You do not. I shall contact you. I shall use you as my telephone exchange.” Another laugh, a confident sound of approaching victory: then the click in Hesseltine’s ear. He lobbed the handset towards the Chief Inspector, who caught it and replaced it. Hesseltine turned to the Commissioner.

  “They’re ready to go, sir. They’re in the system.”

  “Underground?”

  “Except for the woman, the caller.” Hesseltine’s face was grim. “We failed to stop them. This begins not to look too good.”

  The Commissioner didn’t comment. He said shortly, “There was a message, I gather. Better do as the lady said.”

  Hesseltine took up a phone and asked for Downing Street. He got a secretary but demanded the brass. The Prime Minister himself came on the line. Hesseltine reported: “Power of Islam’s contacted, sir. A woman. She gives you one hour for an affirmative. By six forty the two men from the VC 10 are to transfer to the TWA for Maracaibo. All security forces to be withdrawn from the vicinity of both aircraft. At the first sign of any counter operation, she’ll pass the word down into the tube network.”

  “I see.” The Prime Minister was calm, but to Hesseltine it sounded very forced, very brittle. “This woman … do you know where she is at this moment?”

  “No, sir. We didn’t get a chance … and she won’t be staying put. When she makes contact again, it’ll be from somewhere else.” With half an eye, Hesseltine was watching the TV screen, the view of the aircraft from Beirut. The passengers were disembarking, coming down the steps in an ordinary enough fashion. “I’ll call you as soon as she rings again, sir.”

  “Please do. And Hesseltine …”

  “Sir?”

  “When she does call again, say I’m willing to talk.” The Prime Minister hung up. Hesseltine caught the Commissioner’s eye.

  “He still talks of talk, sir. I don’t believe the lady’s in a talking mood. Why should she be? She holds all the cards.” The Commissioner gave no response to that; with Hesseltine, after the withdrawal order had been passed to Heathrow, he watched the camera-work from the airport. No time was being lost in compliance, in being very openly seen to comply. The uniforms withdrew: so, it seemed, did everyone else. The VC 10 was left in isolation, as though it were itself a bomb. There was a strange silence, as much as Heathrow could ever be said to be silent, in the immediate vicinity. Tracking up to the aircraft, the cameras showed two dark faces behind one of the cabin ports.

  *

  In the subterranean machinery room, one of the Arabs answered a telephone that connected with the main sewage control. He listened, saying nothing. Ringing off he spoke to Shard and Hedge. “The aircraft has landed. Your security forces are being withdrawn.”

  Hedge stared: he had been getting more and more glassy-eyed, but now there was a flicker of hope. “The Government’s giving in?”

  The gunman laughed. “Bravely said, Mr Hedge! If all your leaders are like you … but then, they are not down here like you, are they? No, your government has not yet given in. I think they will do so, however. Your Prime Minister wishes to talk, and talk is always good. Was it not your Mr Churchill who said jaw, jaw is better than war, war?”

  No answer from Hedge: he had sunk again, head down on his chest. Shard asked, “Suppose the talk doesn’t lead anywhere?”

  “You think it will not?”

  “I think it’s unlikely. The Prime Minister’s an obstinate man.”

  “Obstinate to the point of —”

  “Of what you intend to do? He may be. You know what governments are. London and Washington — Downing Street and the White House — a lack of comprehension that can creep in, mistakes on purpose.” Shard stared at the man, compellingly. “Do you see what I’m getting at?”

  “I think I do not!”

  “Then try harder. Those men are very badly wanted, and for plenty of very urgent reasons. Right now, they’re on a plate for the eating. The public here and in America, all over the world in fact — they’re sick and tired of gunmen, terrorists, getting away with it —”

  “Not tired to the point of personal sacrifice!”

  “Perhaps not. But governments are in a rather different position. By using a little unclarity … by being not too precise … they can gain their objective without incurring the opprobrium of intentional callousness. Something, in short, can go wrong. Now do you see?”

  The eyes glittered. “I see, yes. I do not think this will happen. Why do you put it forward?”

  Shard grinned tightly, a mere stretch of lips against teeth. “Because I think you should start to ponder your own death. I’ve already pondered mine.” He glanced briefly at Hedge: maybe it was the lighting but Hedge had already the appearance of death, and his face was blotched with fright. “I don’t say I want to die, but I can face a certain inevitability. Can you?”

  The Arab nodded. “So easy,” he said. It was simple and direct, the sincere statement of a soldier in battle, a soldier knowing the odds beyond doubt but having something beyond himself to hold fast to. Nevertheless, there was a new look in the dark eyes, a film of fresh sweat on the skin of the face: Shard had made him think again, face death again. The answer might well remain the same, the steadfastness not much dented, but it was a partial step forward, Shard felt, and he pressed.

  “All along, you’ve been prepared to die — I accept that. But equally, all along you’ve not really believed you’d have to. You’ve believed, and you believe still, that we won’t face the crunch. You believe, firmly, that we’ll cave in. I’m just asking, suppose we don’t?”

  No answer.

  Shard went on, “If there’s no cave-in, we do all die, don’t we? I mean you haven’t some brilliant safety device up your sleeve, have you?” He nodded towards the dug-out connexion to the tube tunnel. “When your nuclear device goes off down there, what stops it reaching back up here?”

  “Nothing.”

  “And right along the sewer?”

  “Nothing stops it.”

  “You’re a brave bastard, I’ll say that,” Shard said after a pause. “Am I right in supposing you intend to blow the tunnel roof, split the clay below the river … right through to the water?”

  “Yes.”

  “I doubt if you’ll succeed. The force of the blow-out will travel laterally.”

  “To some extent, yes. But in fact it will be held in enough to fracture the tunnel roof and the earth above it. Do you wish me to explain, Mr Shard?”

  “Yes.
I’m interested.”

  “Then this is how it will be: when one train has passed through the river section, and has reached the farther bank, the south bank, the next train is approaching the section at the north bank. If and when we down here receive orders to blow, the cases of plutonium bombs will be lowered at the right moment, lowered a little more — until they’re suspended for a depth of one foot into the tube tunnel —”

  “And the next train along —”

  “The next train that enters the section will hit the explosive and detonate the bombs on impact. They’re laid in the cases with the plungers sideways — so.” The Arab demonstrated with his hands. “The plungers plunge, the detonators detonate, the mass becomes critical, all the little neutrons hitting and multiplying, making heat to several millions of degrees centigrade. There is a tremendous explosion — in effect, carried before the train. The rail to roof height of the tunnel is twelve feet six inches. Each car of the train is twelve feet one inch high from rail level to roof — leaving a gap of five inches above and a little beneath also. The width is nine feet eight inches, leaving one foot five inches free on either side. This will provide at least some tamping —”

  “Enough?”

  “We don’t know. But we are very hopeful!”

  “Up in Yorkshire,” Shard said, “your people spoke of a need for more precise tamping, as I understood —”

  “There’s been a change. Originally we intended to operate differently, but your tunnel security has been good. We were lucky to find an alternative. I think the tamping will be good, but those who live will be the ones who find this out for certain. If it works, then much of the underground system will be flooded, and very quickly — oh yes, there are protections, watertight screens, but we have taken this into full account. The screening at this end — the vital end, you realise — will be blown up in the explosion itself. So, you see, the water will flood along the line to the north … irresistible, swelling, deepening … submerging subways and escalators, drowning your commuters, a catastrophe that will put London’s underground transport and many of her sewers and electric cables and gas mains out of use for many months …”

  The voice went on: Shard stopped listening to boastfulness. It was all precisely as he had dreamed it up for himself and his imagination was as good as the voice of fact. He dwelt for a space on the sheer technics: what the man had said, sounded feasible. Partington’s advices came back to Shard: each axle of the motor-unit cars carried a nose-suspended sixty horse-power motor that drove the thirty-six inch wheels via helical gears; braking was electro-pneumatic, the retardation control operating the two blocks on each wheel: there was a service retardation of 2.25 m.p.h. per second normal, three miles per hour per second emergency. And the designed maximum speed given sixty percent full field was sixty miles per hour. The impact would be perfectly adequate to detonate and the braking couldn’t help but be much too late. So it was all going to happen, and happen for what purpose? These people could have got their way with far less slaughter, it was a senseless killing: yet there was a certain logic. When they blew the system, when they flooded it, they would make a point in the biggest possible way. The world would be well able to assess the cost of attempting to frustrate terrorism: and the threat was so big that it might yet never have to be put into operation. Shard’s head whirled: but he forced himself to realise that it was a bigger thing than the mere weighing of two much-wanted terrorists against a city and its population. In a very real sense, the future of any viable government was now at stake. Whatever the factors in the balance might be, the basic truth remained even clearer than ever: it didn’t pay to give in to terrorism. Which was what the Prime Minister would have in mind.

  *

  “Hesseltine. Yes?”

  “This is the Prime Minister. Have you any further —”

  “I was about to ring you, sir. The woman’s just contacted again. She won’t talk, she sticks to her demands. It’s a simple yes or no.”

  “Is there any indication of the site of the threat?”

  “None, sir. I tried … but I didn’t expect much. She wouldn’t be giving that away.”

  “You’ve spoken to her. Do you think she can be fooled?” Hesseltine asked, “In what way, sir?”

  “Apparent agreement.”

  “No, sir.” Hesseltine, well into the eleventh hour, sweated blood. “The moment anything goes wrong, she blows. I’m sure about that, quite sure. That’s much too dangerous. It has to be clean — one or the other, a straight decision.” He waited, tensely, with no more to offer.

  “I suppose you’ve no word of Shard?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Any theories?”

  “He could have been taken, sir. We’ve nothing to go on.”

  There was a longish silence on the line from Downing Street. Then the Prime Minister, speaking heavily, wearily, said, “I’m handling this in the only way that seems left, Hesseltine. Tell the Commissioner, I’m ordering the two men to be given safe conduct to the Maracaibo flight. After that, it’s up to Washington — but I’ll be stressing to the President personally, we have one of our top men in their hands —”

  “And still London, sir! This threat lasts till the men reach Maracaibo safely.”

  “I know. But this is all that can be done. Except one more thing. I’m contacting London Transport personally. I want all power cut to the underground lines as soon as the men are aboard the TWA flight. Then a full-scale search by the army. These people are somewhere in the system. They have to be found.”

  *

  It was a compromise, and it was probably doomed to failure: but it was all that could be done. On that point there was agreement at the Yard. With the underground shut down, a large number of lives would be saved, though more troops would die if the explosion should still come. It just might not: there was good reasoning behind the Prime Minister’s decision. With the wanted men in flight, clear of Britain’s authority, the game would be considered at least half won: the shutting off of power might leave the terrorists merely undecided, unwilling to jeopardise the operation of getting their men safely landed in Venezuela, to play the trump card too soon. They might not precipitate.

  At least it was a chance.

  To Shard it came as victory for terrorism: the telephone from the man, the ally in sewage control, gave the word, received by the Arab spokesman in the power house.

  “We have a go.”

  A broad smile split the dark face as the Arab replaced the telephone. He passed the glad news to Shard, whose face remained impassive, not registering the tumbling, varied thoughts and reactions. Hedge appeared to be offering up a thanksgiving: Shard didn’t feel quite like joining him, disliking the sour taste of professional defeat. And also not yet seeing salvation: they were not yet free. He looked back at his gaoler.

  “Happy?”

  “Very happy, Mr Shard. And your government has been most sensible.”

  “And us? My chief and I?”

  “You remain — for now, at least.”

  “Hostages still?”

  The man nodded, caressing the gun. “Hostages, yes, in case your government, or the American president, should cease being sensible.”

  “You think that’s likely, do you?”

  “Who can say? We have only overcome the start, so far. There is much to go, much distance to Maracaibo, Mr Shard.”

  “Sure.” Shard looked at him sardonically. “You think the Americans might be … difficult?”

  “It is possible. But not likely, perhaps. You and America are still largely the same people. They would not, I think, be much worried about you and your Hedge, but for London, yes, for London they will have a regard.”

  “In other words, the threat’s still on?” As the Arab confirmed this, Shard looked again at Hedge and saw the result of prayer unanswered, of thanksgiving thrown cruelly back in his face. Hedge looked paralysed with hope cast down. In Shard’s mind was the thankful thought that Beth would be all righ
t now: she usually kept her visits to her aunt as brief as possible, and Maracaibo was a good few flying hours away. But now Beth was going to have anxiety to contend with: this thing could hardly remain out of the public eye for much longer. It was on the cards that it would be blown on the next news broadcast, and then Beth would guess, and again face the facts of being a policeman’s wife.

  The telephone went again: the Arab answered, smiled, rang off and looked at Shard. “We have lift-off,” he said. “The aircraft has left Heathrow.”

  Below the open end of the dug-out connexion shaft, another train rattled through towards Waterloo. After the echoes had died away, there was silence, a silence that lasted. For a while no one ticked over: Shard in fact was the first to do so. Too long an interval between trains: somewhere, somebody was moving into positive action. He watched the faces of the men with the guns, saw, at last, the dawning puzzlement, the beginnings of anxiety and doubt.

  “They have stopped the trains!”

  “Correct,” Shard said. “Now, I wonder why! And I wonder if it’s the whole system … or just this section?”

  “Just this section …” The dark eyes flashed. “What good will it do, to close in on us, if that is your suggestion?” The man pointed down the shaft. “We still have the upper hand, Mr Shard. Your people cannot doubt the facts: as soon as there is trouble, the explosion will come.”

  “It will — will it? Without a train to act as your detonator?”

  “The drop alone will be enough.”

  “A mere twelve feet?”

  The Arab smiled. “We can’t be certain. Neither can you. Which of us is going to back his belief?”

  “Don’t look at me,” Shard said. The gunman could be right. Possibly there would be little actual difference in impact.

  *

  Time passed: the gentlemen from the Middle East, Shard fancied, were growing edgy. They didn’t like the silence: they were imagining all kinds of things creeping up on them. Maybe, now their men were airborne, they were thinking more in terms of living on to enjoy the fruits of victory, the gratitude of their mates on the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean, or the Red Sea, or the Persian Gulf … when the heady imminence of glorious death receded, the mind could become a shade less euphoric. Shard, not losing sight of the fact that the threat still remained, felt a small shift in his direction. He tried to make a dispassionate assessment of the situation in the world above: the flight to Maracaibo might well be shadowed, either by the British or by the Americans. It would certainly be causing intense diplomatic activity in the capitals and along the transatlantic telephone cables: but what, in fact, could be done? If it was an acceptable risk to jeopardise the lives of the crew, the pilot could be given his orders to deviate to a U.S. airfield: the main risk was still only London’s. Much would depend on the assessment made by the President in person; his advisers might suggest a degree of bluff on the part of the subterranean gunmen. That could be an appealing argument, and one made more convincing by five thousand miles of water …