Authors: Alistair MacLean
"I see." He turned to me. "The stiff upper lip, the best traditions of the Secret Service. What do you say, Bentall?"
"The same as Miss Hopeman. You're wasting your time."
"Very well." He shrugged, turned to Hewell. "Take her away."
Marie gave me another smile, clear enough proof that she couldn't see my battered face in the shadow, and left. Her head was high. LeClerc paced up and down, head bent like a man lost in thought, and after a time he gave some order to the guard and left.
Two minutes later the door opened and I saw Marie, with Hewell and LeClerc on either side of her. She had to have them there because she couldn't walk. Her feet trailed on the floor, her head lay far across her left shoulder, and she was moaning softly, her eyes shut. The frightening thing was that she bore no mark of violence, not a hair of her head was out of place.
I tried to get to LeClerc, there were two carbines and Hewell's pistol on me, I never knew they were there, I tried to get to LeClerc to smash his face in, to lash out, to maim, to kill, to destroy, but I couldn't even do that right. On my second step one of the guards tripped me with his carbine and I crashed heavily and full-length on the stone floor. I lay there for some time, dazed.
The guards hauled me to my feet, waiting one on either side of me. Hewell and LeClerc stood as they had done. Marie's head had now fallen forward, so far forward that I could see where the fair hair parted on the nape of the neck. She was no longer moaning.
"Do you fuse the Shrike?" LeClerc asked softly.
"Someday I'll kill you, LeClerc," I said.
"Do you fuse the Shrike?"
"I fuse the Shrike," I nodded. "Then someday I'll kill you."
If I could carry out even half my promise, I thought bitterly, it would be a change for me.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Friday 1 P.M.-6 P.M.
I'd said to LeClerc that I could close up the wiring circuitry and fuse the Black Shrike in fifteen minutes. In point of fact it took me exactly an hour. Bentall wrong as usual, but this time it wasn't Bentall's fault.
It wasn't my fault because my arm and face hurt so violently that it was impossible to concentrate on the job. It wasn't my fault that I was mad with anger, that my vision was so blurred and indistinct that I could scarcely decipher my own notes, that my right hand-I did practically everything with my right hand-was shaking so badly that I had great difficulty in adjusting the time clock, in feeding cables through their allotted grooves, in fitting the fuses into place in the bases of the solid fuel cylinders: it wasn't my fault that, when arming the sixty pound disruptive charge, my sweating hand dropped a fulminate of mercury, detonator that went up with so white a flash and so loud an explosion that it was touch and go whether Hewell, who was supervising the operation, pressed the trigger of the pistol he had lined up on me.
And it wasn't my fault that LeClerc had insisted that I work on both rockets at once, or that I was hindered by the fact that he had appointed Hargreaves and another scientist by the name of Williams to check on every move and write it down in their notebooks. One on either side of me on the narrow gantry platforms, they got in my way with nearly every move I made.
I could see the logic of LeClerc's insistence on the simultaneous wiring. He'd certainly warned Hargreaves and Williams that if they as much as spoke to each other they would be shot and probably warned that the same thing would happen to their wives if their notes did not compare exactly at the end of the day. Thus, if the first firing of the Shrike was a success and the compared notes for the wiring up of both rockets were absolutely the same, then he would have a guarantee that the second rocket would also be perfectly wired.
The simultaneous wiring, of course, also served notice of sentence of death on me. Had he been intending to take me with him along with the others, he would hardly have had me wire up both rockets at once, especially in view of the urgency: the most recent message from the
Neckar
spoke of seas so high that there was a possibility of having to abandon the test. Not that I needed any notice of this sentence. I wondered when I was slated to die. Immediately after I had finished the wiring or later, along with Captain Griffiths and his men, after the scientists and their wives had been embarked? Later, I thought, even LeClerc wasn't likely to embark on a blood bath with so many witnesses watching. But I wouldn't have spent a penny to gamble on it.
A few minutes before two o'clock I said to Hewell: "Where are the keys for the destruct box?"
"Are you all ready to go?" he asked. The last move before the rockets were in final firing order was to make the switches in both the propellant and destruction systems, but the switch for the latter that completed the circuit to the 60 Ib. T.N.T. charge couldn't be made without a key which operated a safety lock on the handle of the switch.
"Not quite. The switch in the suicide box is sticking. I want to have a look at it."
"Wait I'll get LeClerc." He left, leaving a watchful Chinese in charge, and was back with LeClerc inside a minute.
"What's the hold-up now?" LeClerc demanded impatiently.
"Two minutes. Have you the key?"
He signalled for the lift to be lowered, told the two scientists with their notebooks to get off, then climbed up beside me. When we regained working height he said suspiciously: "What's the trouble? Thinking of pulling the last minute fast one of a desperate man?"
"Try the switch yourself," I snapped. "It won't move across."
"It's not supposed to move more than halfway before the key is turned," he said angrily.
"It won't even move at all. Try it for yourself and see."
He tried it, moved it less than a quarter inch, nodded and handed me the key. I unlocked the switch, undid the four butterfly nuts that held the switch-cover in position and as I eased the switch-cover off over the switch I managed to dislodge with the tip of my screwdriver the copper core of a piece of flex which I'd forced in between switch and cover to make the former stick. The switch itself was of the common type with the spring-loaded rocker arm where, when the switch handle was pushed over to the right the two copper lugs jumped over from the two dead terminals on the right to the live terminals on the left. As quickly as my blurred vision and shaky right hand would permit I unscrewed the central rocker arm, lifted out the switch, pretended to straighten out the copper lugs and then screwed the switch back in place.
"Fault in design," I said briefly. "Probably the same in the other." LeClerc nodded, said nothing, just watched carefully as I replaced the cover and nicked the switch from side to side several times to demonstrate how easily it worked.
"All finished?" LeClerc asked.
"Not yet. I've got to set the timing clock on the other one."
"That can wait, I want this one on its way-now." He looked up to where Farley and an assistant were fussing around with the automatic guidance and target location systems. "What the hell's keeping him?"
"Nothing's keeping him," I said. Farley and I made a pair, both of us with great red and purple welts down the left hand sides of our faces: his was even more angry-looking and rainbow hued than mine, but that was only because it had had more time to develop: give me twenty-four hours and nobody would even notice his. Twenty-four hours. I wondered who would give me twenty-four hours. "He finished days ago," I went on. "He's just a last minute fusser, wondering if he turned all the taps off before he left home."
If I pushed LeClerc hard enough, I mused, he might break his neck on the concrete floor ten feet beneath: on the other hand he might not, and then I wouldn't have twenty-four seconds left me, far less twenty-four hours. Besides, Hewell had his cannon pointing at me.
"Good. Then we are ready to go." LeClerc turned the key in the switch cover, pushed the switch to the 'Armed' position, withdrew the key and closed and locked the door of the rocket. The lift sunk down to the ground and LeClerc beckoned to one of the guards. "Go tell the wireless operator to send a message. Firing in twenty minutes."
"So where now, LeClerc?" I asked. "The blockhouse?"
He looked at me coldly.
"So that you can hide there in safety while the rocket blows itself up because of some fix you made on it?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about you, Bentall. I have no illusions. You are a highly dangerous man." Sure I was dangerous, but only to my friends and myself. "You have the ability to jinx the firing mechanism so that only you would know. Surely you were not so naive as to imagine that I would overlook the possibility? You, the scientists and naval men will remain out here in the open while the rocket is being fired. They are already assembled. We shall go to the blockhouse."
I swore at him, violently and viciously. He smiled.
"So you had overlooked the possibility that I would take precaution?"
"Leave men out in the open, you damned murderer. You can't do that, LeClerc!"
"Can't I now?" The slaty milky eyes stared into mine, as he went on softly: "Perhaps you
have
jinxed it, Bentall?"
"I've done damn all of the kind," I shouted. "It's just that this solid fuel is inherently unstable. Read Dr. Fairfield's notes and you'll see that. No one really knows what's going to happen. The fuel has never been tried before on this scale. Damn you to hell. LeClerc, if that thing goes up not a single man within half a mile has the ghost of a chance of survival."
"Exactly," he smiled. He smiled, but I became gradually aware that he wasn't feeling like smiling. His hands were out of sight in his pockets, but I could see they were knotted into fists: he had a nervous tic at the corner of his mouth and he was sweating more than the heat of the sun justified. This, for LeClerc, was the most crucial moment of all, the moment when all could be won or all could be lost. He didn't know just how ruthless I could be, he suspected I'd go to the limit and stick at nothing, that I'd even sacrifice innocent lives to stop him, after all I'd already told him that he could shoot every officer and seaman on the base as far as I was concerned. Maybe he thought I wouldn't be so willing to sacrifice my own life, but he wouldn't lay too much stress on that, he knew that I knew that I was going to die anyway. All his staggering plans, his hopes and his fears depended on the next few moments, would the Black Shrike take off or would it blow itself to bits and all his schemes and dreams along with it. He had no means of knowing. He had to gamble, he just had to gamble: but if he gambled and was wrong at least he wasn't going to let me know the satisfaction of winning.
We walked round the corner of the hangar. A hundred yards away, sitting in two ragged rows on the ground, were the naval and scientific personnel of the base. But no women, I couldn't see any women. Two Chinese were standing guard with automatic carbines at the ready.
I said: "How do the guards feel about having to stay there when the rocket is fired?"
"They don't; they come to the blockhouse."
"And do you seriously imagine we're just going to keep on sitting there like good little boys once the guards are gone?"
"You'll sit there," he said indifferently. "I have seven women in the blockhouse. If one of you stirs, they get it. I mean it."
The last three words were completely superfluous. He meant it all right. I said: "Seven women? Where is Miss Hopeman?"
"In the armoury."
I didn't ask why he hadn't shifted her also-I knew the bitter answer to that, she was probably either still unconscious or too unwell to be moved-and I didn't ask that she should be moved. If the Black Shrike exploded she would have no more chance than we had, the armoury was less than a hundred yards from the hangar, but better that way than to survive in the blockhouse.
I sat down at the end of one of the rows of men, Farley beside me. Nobody looked at me, everyone was staring fixedly at the doors of the hangar waiting for the Black Shrike to emerge.
They hadn't long to wait. Thirty seconds after LeClerc and Hewell had left us the two big gantry cranes with the Black Shrike between them rumbled slowly into view. Two of the technicians were at the controls of the gantries. The bogies of the gantries were spanned by two connecting bars that spanned the rocket bogie, so ensuring that the gantry clamps holding the Black Shrike remained in exactly the same relative positions. After about thirty seconds the bogies stopped, leaving the Black Shrike planted exactly in the centre of the concrete launching pad. The two technicians jumped down, removed the connecting bars and, at a gesture from one of the Chinese, came and sat beside us. Everything was now radio-controlled. The guards themselves left for the blockhouse at a dead run.
"Well," Farley said heavily. "A grandstand seat. The murderous devil."
"Where's your scientific spirit?" I asked. "Don't you want to see if the damn thing works?"
He glared at me and turned away. After a moment he said significantly: "My part of it will work, anyway. It's not that I'm worried about."
"Don't blame me if it blows up," I said. "I'm only the electrician around here."
"We can discuss it later on a higher plane," he said with heavy humour. "What are the chances, you think?"
"Dr. Fairfield thought it would work. That's good enough for me. I just hope you haven't crossed any wires and that it doesn't come down straight on top of us."
"It won't." He seemed glad to talk as everybody around seemed glad to talk, the strain of just sitting and waiting in silence was too much. "Worked before, often. Never a failure. Our latest infra-red guidance system is foolproof. Locks on a star and stays there."
"I can't see any stars. It's broad daylight."
"No," Farley said patiently. "But the infra-red cell can. Heat detection. Wait and see, Bentall, 1,000 miles and it will be bang on target to a yard. To a yard, I tell you."
"Yes? How's anybody going to pinpoint a yard in the South Pacific?"
"Well, eight foot by six," he conceded magnanimously. "A magnesium raft. When the rocket re-enters the atmosphere the stellar navigation unit is switched off and an infra-red homer in the nose takes over. The rocket is designed to home in on a heat source. A ship, of course, especially a ship's funnel, is also a heat source, so a magnesium raft, a source of tremendous heat, will be ignited by the
Neckar's
radio ninety seconds before the missile arrives. The rocket will make for the greater source of heat."