by John Creasey
“Yes,” Palfrey said. “You will indeed.”
He went back to the cabin where Philip and Stefan sat behind the emergency exits, watching the ball of fire which had once been an aircraft, as large and solid as this. Palfrey told them what he had learned, sat down, and fastened his seat belts. The others fastened theirs. The engine noise changed as they began the descent.
Fifteen minutes later, they stood alone on the side of a hill which had a natural landing strip. All about them and on their faces was the pink glow, but no human being and no building was in sight. A few sheep nibbled at the coarse grass. A few shrubs which looked hardy and wind-blown grew about the hillside.
The noise of the aircraft which had brought them here faded into the distance.
The pink glow was no longer about them but high above their heads, almost as if a sun, buried in the earth, was bombarding the sky with tiny, iridescent particles.
Palfrey, Stefan and Philip had no weapon between them; were isolated entirely from contact with the rest of the world. Palfrey had never felt a greater sense of impending disaster; never been in such a position that all he could hope for was to talk with the leaders of The Project and try to come to terms which would be acceptable to the governments of the world.
A small aircraft appeared, almost alongside; there had been no sound of an engine, only a shadow flitting across the hillside, sending sheep scampering; and then the aircraft landed, obviously a smaller variety of the vertical take-off machines. As it stopped, as Palfrey’s heart began to stop its furious thumping, doors opened and men jumped out. One of them approached, a tall, lean, fair-headed man who might develop into the image of Palfrey. His voice was that of an Englishman from a public school, pleasant, cultured, with hardly a hint of affectation.
“All aboard,” he called. “Sorry if I scared you, Dr Palfrey,” but in fact he looked as if he was mildly amused.
“You might as well cut my throat as frighten me to death,” Palfrey said, with grim humour. He limped towards the aircraft and was helped inside; the others followed, and in a few seconds they were taking off vertically. They did not climb very high, just followed the contours of the foothills, and then hovered; Palfrey saw an opening appear in the hillside, and the machine dropped down into a man-made hole.
It was like being in the bowels of a giant aircraft carrier.
As they went down in a shaft large enough for aircraft twice the size of this, on either side they saw were decks, or floors, where aircraft of all shapes and sizes were being worked on; they passed at least five floors, and fifty aircraft, perhaps five hundred men, before they reached a ‘deck’ which had only desks and computers and control panels, not unlike that at the headquarters of Z5.
The aircraft stopped.
On all sides, now, was a kind of quayside buried in the mountainside; there were small cars, cycles, aircraft, trains; and obviously each was driven by electricity, they were so quiet and moved so slowly. The quays led to brightly-lit tunnels, like highways leading from a great hub. Palfrey was helped out and into a small open car which had four seats but no driver. Philip and Stefan were also ushered in, and the pilot said: “You will be taken to the Leaders, Dr Palfrey.”
The car moved off, without any visible sign of power or engine. It ran smoothly, as if on a cushion of air, but without any of the roaring of hovercraft. It turned along narrow tunnels, all well lit. There were other cars, on a track which ran parallel, and ahead of and behind this one. Every few hundred yards they passed platforms or loading bays, at each of which they slowed down.
At one, they stopped; and men in dark trousers and pale grey turtleneck sweaters came to help them out. They were led to narrow doors which opened as they approached and then into a room not unlike Shakalov’s, except that this was smaller. There was a crescent-shaped table with six chairs around, and three chairs in front. They were ushered to these seats, and waited.
Philip said thinly: “Psychological terrorism, Sap.”
“I’m not terrified yet,” Palfrey remarked.
“Believe me, I am,” said Philip.
The words were hardly out of his mouth when a door behind the crescent opened and a man stepped through, followed by another and another, six in all. They took chairs at the crescent-shaped table, like the judges at a court martial or the courts of appeal.
Six in all—
The first man looked exactly like the President of the United States.
The second was the living image of the British Prime Minister.
The third was the double of the President of the USSR.
The fourth was the double of the President of the Republic of China, Mao.
The fifth was like the President of India.
The sixth was like the recently elected Secretary-General of the United Nations Association – Oboku.
Each of the six sat down.
Each of the six smiled.
The last man, so like Oboku, raised his right hand and said in his deep and arresting voice: “You are very welcome, gentlemen. We are as anxious as you to find a way to peace, and we have invited you here because you have already learned of our basic plan, and it seems possible that you are the men most likely to be able to bridge the gap between us and the nations of the world. There is little point in wasting time, since there is so much fear and uncertainty, and so much emphasis on the preparations for war when the world is in such desperate need of peace. So: you already know much; and may have guessed more. You may even have guessed that we have not yet perfected all our technologies. Silence was to have surrounded your aircraft on arrival, but the fire was not intended.” He raised his hands. “After our experience of you in London and England and the readiness with which the real Mr Wetherall as well as other national leaders have responded to you, we want to work with you. So let us tell you at once what we propose to do.” He paused and smiled very freely, a startlingly handsome negro. “It is very simple. Each of us has studied the leaders of the nations you see represented here. Each of us proposes to impersonate a national leader. Once we are at the helm of our respective nations, we propose slowly to alter the course of affairs, so that we have basically world government instead of national government.” He paused, and then asked with his beaming smile: “Isn’t that your chief objective also, Dr Palfrey?”
Palfrey said quietly: “Yes, Dr Oboku.”
“Can you tell us with any confidence that the world which you represent is on the threshold of an understanding; will switch almost immediately from a war orientation to a wholly peaceful one?”
“No,” Palfrey admitted. “I cannot claim this.”
“Then is there any reason why you should not work with us?”
Palfrey hesitated, battling with an aspect of the situation which hadn’t occurred to him when he had arrived. These men might believe that he had already discovered their fundamental purpose and their identities; yet he had had no knowledge of these at all. What had made them so ready to bring about this meeting?
He opened his lips to speak, but Philip spoke first in a passionate voice, revealing anger which seethed inside him. “There are a hundred reasons! A thousand. And the first one is that you will impose your bloody laws, you will dictate to the people, not consult them.”
“Dr Palfrey,” Oboku said in a rather patronising way, “do you and your agents really adhere to these outworn concepts of democracy?”
“We—” began Palfrey.
“They’re no more outworn than breathing is!” Philip cried. His face had gone pale, there seemed no difference between the colour of his lips and of his cheeks. “You don’t even begin to understand, you’re dealing with men, with human beings, not with machines or mindless creatures. Before I would allow Palfrey or Andromovitch to do a deal with you, I would kill them.”
Oboku’s smile grew broader. “And how do you respond to that? Dr Palfrey?”
“I want to know what you propose,” Palfrey said.
“Andromovitch?”
“
I would like to hear what you have to say,” Stefan replied.
“You mean, you will consider betraying everything you’re supposed to stand for – everything you’re supposed to believe in?” Philip shouted. “Haven’t you seen what these men have done, how they’ve tortured, slaughtered, spread radioactive dust over big cities? My God, I could cut your throats!”
“Philip,” murmured Palfrey, “you are contradicting everything you were saying only two days ago.”
“I wanted to try to find out what you were really made of, and now I know. You didn’t fool me, even then. When I pretended to believe in the benefits these megalomaniacs might bring to the world I could see what was going through your mind. You agreed with me. You argued but in your heart you agreed. And if you had your way you would come to terms with murderers, with tyrants who would trample on freedom. You can’t imprison the minds of people without destroying freedom and if you destroy that you destroy man himself. I thought you knew! I joined Z5 because I thought you were the one man who would always fight tyranny and dictatorship. Why, I could strangle you with my bare hands.”
In a low-pitched voice, Oboku said: “I should not try.”
“You know you are being very childish,” said the man who looked so like Wetherall, and now proved to speak in a voice startlingly similar to the Prime Minister’s. “You yourself would have freedom, Carr. Freedom from fear and want, freedom to worship as you wished, freedom to love—”
He paused, with a touch of drama in his manner; and on the instant the door behind the crescent-shaped table opened, and a woman came into the room.
She was Jane Wylie.
There was no shadow of doubt about her identity; and she looked at her loveliest and in glowing health.
She moved forward as all the men at the table stood up and smiled at her as at an old friend.
Then she went towards Philip Carr with her hands outstretched.
His arms went slowly out towards her, but there was anguish in his face, anguish in his manner when their fingers were almost touching. Palfrey and Andromovitch were acutely aware of her attractiveness and, even more, of her serenity.
Suddenly, Philip snatched his hands away.
“Don’t come near me!” he cried. “Don’t touch me.” And as her expression changed to one of ludicrous dismay, he went on: “There is no freedom if man is compelled to do what others want him to.”
Janey stood very still.
Philip, quivering from head to foot, stood in front of his chair.
“Gentlemen,” said Oboku, “what is needed is a little time.”
“What you have to understand,” the Russian impersonator said, “is that your methods, Dr Palfrey, are no better than ours. Haven’t you torture chambers? Don’t you control the minds of men when you think it’s for the common good? Don’t you use force and strategy, cunning and deceit to get what you think right?”
Palfrey, who could not say ‘no’, did not respond at all.
“And Palfrey,” said the man who could have convinced the world, by voice as well as by appearance, that he was the President of the United States. “You have to remember and Carr has to realise that by the time-honoured – or should I say time-dishonoured – democratic methods, the world is a cauldron of conflict, and a dust bowl in which millions starve. Isn’t that true?”
“Dr Palfrey,” said the man who looked so like the President of China, “is it not better that a man should be compelled to behave with goodness rather than allowed, even encouraged, to be bad?”
And Palfrey stayed silent, aware of Stefan’s absolute stillness, and Carr’s quivering, and the woman’s serenity.
“Dr Palfrey,” said the man who could have convinced the world that he was the newly elected President of India, “my people starve. Should we not compel the world to feed them? For we do not lack the means, only the will.”
And Palfrey bowed his head.
“Palfrey,” said the man who was impersonating Wetherall: “You are the one man trusted by the world’s leaders. If you call a meeting of all the leaders of the nations represented here – in London, in Moscow, in Washington, anywhere – they will come. And we will replace them, one by one. You can render the greatest service to mankind.”
“None will be harmed,” Oboku put in gently.
“But if you will not work with us,” ‘Wetherall’ said, “millions will be harmed. We would far rather win by subtlety than by violence, but we do have the means to get victory one way or the other. You have seen so many examples of our power. We can use the crystals, powdered crystals of great variety, to insulate the air against sound – against radioactivity. We have evolved rays which can be used as rockets to bring down aircraft, to sink great ships. We can create great areas which are safe from pollution as well as from contamination. In the process armies and air forces and navies will be pitted against us, but they cannot succeed, for we can approach them in the stealth of our silence, creep up on them with weapons of incalculable destructive power.
“And you can prevent the carnage, Palfrey. You can save the world. I doubt if any other man can.”
18: Time of Decision
The last words fell gently. No one in the room moved, even Philip’s trembling had ceased, and he was looking at ‘Wetherall’ with hopelessness in his eyes. He avoided Jane Wylie’s gaze. All the men at the crescent-shaped table were looking at Palfrey as if no one else was in the room.
Still he did not speak.
He heard Stefan move, draw a deep breath, and say: “We need time to consider, time to think.”
Oboku looked along the men alongside him. “Is that reasonable?” he asked.
Each man nodded, or said ‘yes’ in turn, while staring at Palfrey. And he was agonisingly aware of their gaze, of the weight of responsibility which they had thrust upon him.
“How long?” asked Oboku.
“Twelve hours at least,” Stefan answered quietly, and he looked at Palfrey. “Is that long enough, Sap?”
Palfrey moistened his lips but did not answer. He studied each of the men in front of him in turn, then turned to Jane Wylie until her gaze shifted towards him; she looked startled, almost afraid. He turned away from her and spoke at last, to Oboku.
“What made you so sure I knew what you were doing?” he asked.
“Made us so sure?” echoed Oboku, and shot a startled look at Jane Wylie. “We were told so. Did you not know we had been informed?”
“Ah,” Palfrey said. “Who told you?”
“But Sap,” Jane Wylie interrupted. “I told them. Who else could?” She moved towards him, now. “You always told me, as an agent of Z5, that I should hold out to the limit of my resistance, and only then give way. I did hold out; but at last I had to tell them I worked for Z5, that I had been able to send out a great deal of other information and was quite sure other agents had, too. I tried to make them realise that if there was any hope of avoiding world disaster, they had to confer with you.”
Every man in the room was hanging on to her words, none more than Palfrey, and he was so intent that he did not even wonder what Philip Carr was thinking.
He, Palfrey, was the only man in the room who knew that she was lying; knew that she was not a member of Z5 and never had been. But she had convinced these men that she was.
What an agent she would be!
And how much they owed to her, for whatever chance there remained.
He raised his uninjured hand and gestured with the other. “There will never be another agent like you,” he declared; and he was almost sure there was a spark of humour in her eyes.
“Gentlemen,” interrupted Oboku, quietly, “it is agreed that you should have not twelve but twenty-four hours in which to consider your decision. We shall now adjourn. We hope you will all join us for dinner, and after that you will be able to sleep on your deliberations. We shall expect you to tell us what you have decided here, tomorrow, at this time.”
He stood up, bowed slightly, and went out, and the ot
hers filed after him. Another door opened, and two men and two women stood in a room set for a buffet breakfast, with bacon and eggs and sausages on hotplates, some buckwheat cakes and maple syrup, coffee, tea, cocoa and chocolate.
Leading off this were washrooms and beyond these, single bedrooms rather like those in a good quality motel or hotel. The three men washed, Palfrey with some difficulty, and went back to the room which had off-white walls with the flags of all the world’s nations, in wooden panels about it. Jane was still there, and there was some constraint between her and Philip although much less than there had been. They sat at a table for four, served with quiet efficiency, and lingered over coffee – good, creamy American coffee.
A man in a turtleneck sweater came in with a letter for Palfrey. He opened it, read, and turned it so that the others could see. It read:
When you are ready you may go, if you wish, to a patio above ground, where the day will be pleasantly warm, and where you may talk without fear of being overheard.
Joku Oboku.
Even the signature was identical with the real man’s!
“Do you know,” Stefan said in a reflective voice, “I could grow to like that man.”
“I don’t know whether I ought to admit it, but I’ve come to like them all,” said Janey. She looked at Philip apprehensively, as she went on: “And I’ve come to admire and respect them, too.”
“They must be wrong!” cried Philip.
Palfrey didn’t respond, and Stefan finished his coffee and then stood up to his full height.
“We are all wrong, some of the time.” His tone changed. “I would like a bath and an hour’s rest before we go up to the surface. Would that suit you, Sap?”
“Very well indeed,” said Palfrey.
They went to their adjoining rooms, where Palfrey found a man in a white smock waiting, a Chinese who spoke in good if patchy English.
“I am to help you, sir, and also dress your burns,” he said. “We have in communication been with the doctors in Moscow and we know what is the best to treat. It will not be necessary to give you a local anaesthetic, today, the drugs which heal are most remarkable. No?” He went on chattering as he gave Palfrey a sponge bath on the bed, and Palfrey’s thoughts drifted from this man and his brightness, marvelling at the trouble that had been taken over him, trying not to think too much about Janey and the brilliant way she had convinced these men that she worked for Z5, trying desperately to come to grips with the problem.
