Doctor Who: The Enemy of the World (13 page)

Without taking his eyes off Benik’s perspiring face for an instant, Donald Bruce listened intently to the bizarre conversation coming out of the dangling speaker, desperately trying to visualise what was going on only a few metres away behind the impregnable doors.

Inside the Sanctum the Doctor was watching Giles Kent very carefully. He knew that he was on the brink of discovering all the evidence he needed against Salamander and also the truth about the wily Australian facing him.

‘The back door, Giles?’ he said quietly, smiling as if he and Kent were sharing a private joke or playing some game.

Kent laughed again, even more strangely than before.

‘I’ve been in this room too many times to have forgotten where it leads.’ He went to the console and quickly operated a sequence of touch-buttons before inserting his electronic key into the capsule system panel.

The Doctor’s face remained expressionless as he watched the section of wall behind Giles Kent swing silently open, revealing the narrow, empty shaft beyond.

‘Presto! Your little bolt-hole,’ Kent cried, without turning round. He spread out his arms like a magician performing a sensational trick. ‘And halfway down—the old mine-workings in the hillside, primed with enough explosive to seal you up for ever should I care to light the...’

Kent had turned round. He saw that the capsule was not in position where it should be if Salamander was in the Sanctum. He swung wildly back to face the Doctor, his mouth hanging open and his eyes suddenly seeming to lose their colour. His hands gripped the edge of the console as if they were about to tear it apart.

Dropping all his Salamander mannerisms and reverting to his normal voice, the Doctor leaned across the console.

‘How very interesting, Mr Kent. Why didn’t you tell me all this before?’ he exclaimed.

Kent’s veined temples began to bulge again as he stared dumbfounded at the Doctor. ‘It can’t be... the Doctor...

you...’ he stuttered, blinking the sweat out of his eyes.

‘And there’s another surprise for you, Mr Kent!’ the Doctor cried, pointing towards the shaft.

As Giles spun round, the capsule glided up and came to rest in the shaft behind him. Crammed inside were Astrid, Mary and Colin. The transparent shield whirred open and they all stepped out.

‘Giles Kent!’ Colin exclaimed. ‘We thought you were dead.’

‘It’s
him
. He’s the one who took us all down there!’ Mary cried.

The Doctor watched intently as Astrid took a few steps towards her associate. ‘I’ve realised the truth now, Giles You and Salamander were in this together right from the very beginning,’ she said. Kent stood there in stunned silence while she turned to the Doctor. ‘Giles built a so-called atomic shelter underneath here five years ago,’

Astrid explained. ‘He took a selected group of people down there as guinea pigs for a series of bogus endurance tests.

Then Salamander appeared and told them that war had broken out between the Zones. Those people have been down there ever since.’

‘A colony of subterranean slaves,’ the Doctor exclaimed, eventually rousing himself from his reverie. ‘Salamander needed a team to build and operate the ultimate secret weapon with which he could terrorise the world: a machine to create sham natural disasters and kill and injure innocent people.’

‘And to fool the world!’ Giles shouted defiantly at them.

‘We fooled you all.’

The Doctor shook his head and smiled. ‘Not quite, Mr Kent. You didn’t fool me. I soon realised that you did not merely wish to expose Salamander, but that you wanted to take his place, using me as your stooge.’

With a sudden jerk of his wiry body, Giles snatched the electrokey out of the console and threw himself backwards into the capsule. ‘And I will take his place. I will!’ he shrieked triumphantly, waving the vital electrokey in their faces. ‘No one can stop me now.’

Colin and Astrid rushed forward, but they were too late to prevent the shield closing. Safe behind the plastic glass, Kent laughed at them with manic derision, taunting them by holding up his own key and pointing to the one still inserted in the capsule’s control panel. Mouthing insults, he operated the mechanism and the capsule slid smoothly downwards out of sight.

At once the Doctor strode to the console and stood frowning at the array of instruments. ‘We must get out of here as fast as possible,’ he told the others, who were standing looking helplessly at one another in front of the gaping shaft. ‘If we don’t, that madman might blow us all to pieces.’ The Doctor stopped and glanced up at the Sanctum doors, sniffing the air and wrinkling his nose suspiciously. Then he hurried over and carefully put his hand near the hairline gap between the two sealed shutters.

‘It’s hot!’ he cried, jumping back in alarm. ‘Very hot.’ He turned and faced the others with a broad grin. ‘Somebody must be trying to cut their way in.’

Outside in the smoke-filled corridor Donald Bruce had been listening in grim-faced astonishment to the events taking place in the Sanctum and being relayed through the speaker. At the back of his mind lurked the constant fear that Jamie and Victoria had failed to contact his Deputy, Forester, and that Operation Redhead had therefore not been triggered. He knew that he was hopelessly outnumbered by Benik’s personnel and that the confusion over Salamander’s whereabouts and over the jamming of the Sanctum doors would not provide him with cover for much longer. Now he knew that Kent was threatening to detonate some of the installations, he was desperate to get the Doctor and the others out of the Sanctum.

All at once Bruce was overtaken by a fit of convulsive coughing. Instantly Benik twisted the pistol out of the Security Commissioner’s hand and began to back away down the corridor.

‘I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, Bruce,’ he croaked, slipping the safety catch. Bruce peered through the thick haze, trying to clear his vision and preparing himself for a desperate attempt to dodge the imminent hail of bullets.

Suddenly the far end of the corridor filled with running, shouting WZO police officers. Panicking, Benik threw away his advantage and swung round to find himself confronted by a dozen levelled rifles. All the fight instantly left his tensed body and lowering his pistol, he allowed himself to be disarmed by a tall, visored figure.

‘Forester, not a moment too soon. What kept you?’

Bruce exclaimed, still choking from the smoke. ‘I want all Research Centre personnel detained immediately, including Salamander himself, as soon as he is located.

And you can start with this miserable little worm.’

As Benik was led away, the Doctor’s voice suddenly came blasting out of the speaker connected into the circuitry beside the Sanctum doors. ‘If that’s you out there, Bruce, we have very little time,’ the Doctor yelled, trying to make himself heard through the thick doors and completely unaware that he was more than audible outside.

‘Unless you can get through in the next five minutes you had better evacuate the building. No sense in us all going up in smoke.’

Donald Bruce stared at the hissing beam of the laser torch through the billowing fumes. ‘Come on. Come on,’

he muttered anxiously. ‘We must get them out of there.’

10

When the capsule reached the level of the sloping tunnel, it ground to a shuddering halt. Uttering a string of vicious oaths, Kent opened the shield and stepped cautiously out into the dimly lit tunnel. As he began to examine the edges of the capsule and the shaft for some fault or obstruction, he heard a sudden movement behind him. Before he could turn round, an arm was flung round his neck and he was hurled sideways. Astrid’s pistol flew out of his tunic and slithered away down the loose scree littering the tunnel floor.

A dark, compact figure sprang forward and grabbed it.

Giles Kent found himself face to face with Salamander.

‘You always were such a fool, Kent,’ Salamander laughed, his eyes flashing with cruel amusement. ‘You have not changed at all, amigo.’

‘We’re both finished!’ Kent yelled at him, his voice ringing along the tunnels. ‘They know up there. They know.’

Salamander advanced slowly towards him, a mask of a smile settling over his face. The white of his eyes and his teeth seemed to glow in the half-light. ‘Really? And so what do you propose, Kent?’ he mocked disbelievingly.

‘Burying our differences? Forming a new alliance?’

Giles backed slowly up the tunnel. ‘We can bury the evidence,’ he pleaded. ‘We planned for this, you and me.’

Salamander shook his head emphatically. ‘Years ago I realised I did not need you, Kent,’ he snarled, quickening his step so that Giles was forced to scramble clumsily backwards.

Salamander fired point-blank. Kent was hit in the chest and he fell to his knees at Salamander’s feet. Salamander kicked him aside and walked away down the tunnel to the shaft.

Reaching underneath the capsule he removed the small wedge of flint he had earlier inserted in one of the grooved tracks in the shaft in order to disable it. Then he stepped in, closed the shield, and descended into the earth.

Clutching his shattered chest in agony, Giles Kent started to crawl up the tunnel. Eventually he managed to drag himself to his feet and to stagger up the relentless slope towards the ruined building where the supplies elevator shaft came out on the surface.

When the radiation hazard buzzer sounded in the cavernous chamber, the crowd of eagerly talking shelterers assembled round the staircase to the Control Suite turned and stared at the elevator hatch. They instantly fell silent at the sight of the bloodstained figure kneeling behind the glass panel and hammering on it. The man’s face was hideously contorted as he uttered desperate, inaudible cries, his twisted features bathed in the pink glow of the

‘decontamination process’ which Astrid had exposed as a fake.

At first no one moved. Then one of the technicians operated the hatch mechanism and retreated quickly to join the crowd of shocked and fascinated onlookers. Giles Kent rolled out of the hatchway and staggered towards the staircase. As he began to drag himself up the metal steps someone gave a shout of angry recognition.

‘It’s Kent, Giles Kent, the collaborator!’

Dribbling streams of blood and shivering feverishly, Kent reached the door to the Control Suite. It was shut.

Painfully slowly he fumbled for his own electrokey and then inserted it in the panel. The shutter opened and he stumbled into the Suite, making straight for the Console.

Salamander was standing by the capsule shaft, watching him with cynical amusement. ‘I told you there was no escape, amigo,’ he sneered.

With a final effort, Kent tottered forward and collapsed over the instruments. ‘I’ll damn well take you with me then,’ he gasped, frantically jabbing the electrokey into a sequence of small sockets outlined in red.

Salamander sprang at him with a shriek of warning, but he was too late. There was a series of massive explosions deep in the underground installations. Shock waves buffeted the Control Suite and the laboratory for several seconds. Then the console started to disintegrate, throwing showers of sparking debris and dense jets of smoke in all directions. Kent’s spread-eagled body was engulfed in searing flames and the chamber began to blister and melt around the defiant figure of Salamander.

In the Sanctum the Doctor and the others were thrown violently about as the force of the underground explosions roared up the capsule shaft. The console erupted in a spectacular firework display of blazing circuitry and the Sanctum doors were released. The technicians outside forced the heavy shutters apart and Donald Bruce came lumbering anxiously into the Sanctum.

‘Out of here before the whole plant goes up!’ he urged, helping the Doctor back onto his feet while his officers shepherded Colin and Mary to safety. But Astrid held back, hovering by the smoke-filled shaft. ‘Those people down there in the shelter!’ she protested.

‘What people?’ Bruce demanded, still confused and anxious to take command of the situation.

The Doctor forced back a fit of coughing and turned Astrid to face him. ‘They have almost certainly perished, my dear,’ he murmured. ‘I am so sorry.’

‘But I promised. I promised Swann I would set them all free,’ she cried, her face filled with anguish. ‘I must find out if any are still alive. We can’t just leave them down there now. I’m sure there are ways through from the ravine. We can at least try.’ Despite Bruce’s protests that the tunnels would have been destroyed, Astrid refused to move until he agreed to detail some of his men to attempt a breakthrough.

‘Very well. You can have ten men for twenty-four hours,’ he muttered, coughing and rubbing his watering eyes. ‘And I’ll come with you.’

Astrid nearly hugged the shambling figure as they hurried out of the Sanctum.

An hour later Donald Bruce and Astrid were standing in the Research Centre compound, shading their eyes as they watched the sleek white WZO helicopter rise into the spectacular evening sky. As it banked and flew away in the direction of Melville, Bruce turned to Astrid with a frown.

‘Strange, isn’t it? We never really found out who he was.’

They hurried back into the Administration Block where Bruce’s deputy was organising the takeover of the Research Centre by the WZO authorities. As they entered the building, Forester came up to Bruce.

‘We are in complete control now, Commissioner,’ he reported. ‘Benik is on his way to Geneva under full escort.’

Bruce nodded his approval. ‘Oh, and the Doctor sent his compliments to you. He flew out half an hour ago,’

Forester added, turning away to supervise the confiscation of tapes and cassettes from the Sanctum.

Bruce gripped Forester’s arm and swung him round again. ‘What are you talking about? I’ve just this minute seen him off!’ he exclaimed.

Forester returned Bruce’s disbelieving look. Then his face went very, very pale...

Jamie had been sitting on the sand outside the TARDIS, watching a glorious sunset over the sea and wondering anxiously about the Doctor. For some time Victoria had been fast asleep in the big armchair inside the silent police box. Jamie was on the brink of nodding off himself when the sound of a distant motor brought him scrambling to his feet. He watched a tiny speck come whirring over the bay. It rapidly took shape as a small white helicopter which flew swiftly overhead and then turned sharply before hovering and finally settling on the beach close to the water’s edge.