The Penal Colony (41 page)

Yates turned to the officer. “Please take
these things away.”

“Very good, sir.”

Franks watched the flamethrowers – on which
so much of Thaine’s time and ingenuity had been expended, and for
which the men of the Community had denied themselves so much
paraffin over the past months – disappearing in the direction of
the helicopters.

“Do you have any more?”

“No. We do not.”

The gas had left him unable to think
properly. He could not decide whether to placate Yates or to
continue trying to annoy him. Which attitude would make him want to
leave the island sooner? Talking law in front of the captain of
marines might not have been such a good idea.

“You must realize, Franks, that mechanized
warfare between the inmates of any penal institution cannot and
will not be tolerated.”

“No one regrets this morning more than me.
But you in turn, Mr Yates,” Franks said, placing a subtle emphasis
on the “Mr”, “you must realize what we have had to put up with from
those outside our Village.”

“Don’t think your achievements here have gone
unobserved. We well understand that you have had problems with the
other islanders. But, as my grandfather used to say, there’s a
difference between scratching your arse and tearing it to
pieces.”

“What then do you suggest? Negotiation?”

“All I’m saying is that, just because this is
a Category Z settlement, you men don’t have carte blanche to murder
each other.”

“I thought murdering each other was the
general idea. I thought that’s why we’d been dumped on Sert, to
economize on the government’s dirty work and earn the approval of
the press.”

Yates evidently decided that this part of the
conversation had become fruitless. He said, “The governor wishes me
to carry out an inspection of some of the facilities you have
provided.” He turned to the officer. “I’ll start by going in here,
Captain. I don’t think there’ll be any trouble, but would you clear
the building first?”

Was this the beginning of a search? What if
they found the suits? What if they took metal detectors to the
compost heaps? Franks’s vision momentarily dimmed. He felt giddy.
He reached out and gripped the handrail. The head-noises had grown
much worse since this morning. Was it the gas, the strain, or
both?

“Off here,” a marine said, chivvying him and
the others from the veranda, down the steps and onto the shale.

Franks saw Yates striding through the doorway
into the bungalow.

Bryant, Phelps and Fitzmaurice had been laid
on the shale and treated first. Five more wounded men, sitting or
standing, were now receiving attention from three medics.
Fitzmaurice’s loud groaning had been silenced immediately with an
injection, his wounds doused with antibiotics and bandaged. Beside
him crouched Godwin.

“How’s Fitz?” Franks asked Sibley.

With immense weariness in his eyes, Sibley
turned and looked at Franks. “If they wanted to, they could have
him in hospital within half an hour. Then he might survive.”

Franks grasped Godwin’s left shoulder and
squeezed it. Godwin in turn grasped Franks’s hand. If Sibley and
Godwin, both British, could forgive Fitzmaurice his crimes, forgive
him the carnage at Knightsbridge Barracks, couldn’t Yates at least
show a spark of humanity? But then Franks remembered the television
pictures of the victims, the men and women and children transformed
by blast and glass and shrapnel into so much raw meat, and he
realized that no one could ever be forgiven for anything. What
Fitzmaurice had done was still being worked out. No god could
intercede on his behalf. No priest could recite a magic formula to
wipe his slate clean. And what Franks himself had done, in Belfast,
in Dublin, in London, in Libya, in Boston and New York and
Pittsburgh, and yes, here on Sert, that too was still being worked
out. And what Yates was doing today, even that would in due course
have to be worked out, paid for, and settled. For Yates had a
chance this afternoon to do right, to take the wounded men to
hospital; but it looked as if he was choosing to do wrong, hiding
behind those who called themselves his superiors.

Yates spent a long time in the bungalow.
Franks became more and more afraid that he had found something to
do with the ketch. Mentally he surveyed the location of all
incriminating material and tried to imagine whether or not Yates
would discover it. But when eventually he emerged, Yates’s
expression was just as it had been before. He descended the steps
and told Franks he wanted to see the workshops.

Accompanied by half a dozen marines, with
more standing by, they toured the precinct. Yates seemed
intermittently surprised and impressed. In Thaine’s workshop he
halted at the lathe.

“Who made this?”

“A man named Thaine. Randal Thaine.”

“Did he make the flamethrowers?”

“Yes.”

“Where is he now?”

For the first time in five years, Franks was
about to utter a deliberate lie. Then he said, “Under the
ground.”

On the shelf below the bench, sticking up
among the bits and pieces in a cardboard box, Franks noticed the
gleam of a metal disc marked on its circumference with grooves
numbered in increments of ten degrees. A compass card! A bloody
compass card! Made for one of the prototypes which had never been
finished. From its size it could be nothing but the disc of a
steering compass. Even if Yates knew nothing whatever about boats
he could not fail to guess its purpose. In today’s rush and panic
it must have been overlooked.

“This drive belt,” Yates said, indicating the
rubber belt which disappeared through the ceiling. “I take it this
connects with the windmill on the roof?”

“Yes, that’s right. Shall I show you?”

Yates was looking at him strangely, as though
he had detected a change in his manner. Quickly and suspiciously he
glanced from side to side. Then he said, “Is there something in
here you don’t want me to see?”

Franks tried to remain calm. “Such as?”

“Such as more weapons. Such as another
flamethrower made by the late Mr Thaine. Or a bazooka. Or a
surface-to-air missile. After what I’ve seen here I wouldn’t put
anything past you.”

“Why don’t you look for yourself?” Franks
went to the storeroom and opened the door, then did the same for
each of the cupboards.

Yates, still not satisfied, let his gaze rove
over the earthen floor of the workshop. He turned his eyes to the
ceiling. “Is there a roof space?”

“No.”

Yates took one of Thaine’s spanners and on
the timber lining of the ceiling produced a dead, unresonant
tapping. When he had finished he dropped the spanner on the bench.
Franks replaced it in the rack.

Still Yates hesitated. He belonged after all
to a species of policeman, with the same nose for evasion and
deceit. But he could find no evidence to justify his misgivings,
and a moment later he said, “All right, I want to see inside one or
two houses now.”

Once the inspection was over, Yates delivered
another lecture on the evil consequences of further misbehaviour by
the Village. Finally, some two hours after their arrival, the
helicopters and the hydrofoils departed.

Yates had refused another plea to evacuate
the wounded. On a blood-soaked mattress laid on a table in the
laboratory, Godwin beside him, and without regaining consciousness,
Fitzmaurice died at six o’clock.

“I’ve decided,” Godwin said, later. “He’s
about the same height and build. It’s what Fitz would have wanted.
And it’s what I want.”

“Are you sure?” Franks said.

“Yes, Father. Routledge gets his place.”

Dominating Routledge’s emotions that evening
was a contradictory mixture of exhilaration and fear, tempered with
regret for the circumstances that had robbed Fitzmaurice of
Godwin’s place and given it to him. Now that he was confronted
personally with the dangers of the attempt, the promise of escape
held far less allure; he understood all the more Godwin’s decision
to drop out.

At dusk, entering the candlelit clothing shop
with Godwin, the weaknesses of the scheme loomed larger than ever.
Even if the ketch and her sonar worked perfectly, there was still
the question of whether the men in the water could survive several
hours of immersion. Except close inshore, the sea temperature in
this part of the Atlantic never rose much above sixteen degrees
centigrade. At eleven degrees, the present temperature, an
unprotected man would last, at best, thirty minutes before
unconsciousness set in. No more than an hour later he would be
dead. A wet-suit could not provide adequate protection in water as
cold as that. The only solution was a dry-suit, worn over several
layers of woollen clothing, sealing in an insulating layer of
air.

In some ways, the exposure suits Thaine had
designed were even more daring than the ketch herself. They were
certainly the critical element in the whole plan. If they leaked,
the escape would fail and everyone would die. It was as simple as
that.

There were ten suits, individually sized, and
they had been made with wonderful skill by Caldecote, a short,
dour, bald man who in mainland life had worked as a cutter in a
firm of London furriers. In normal times Caldecote and his helpers
were responsible for making the villagers’ leather and sheepskin
jerkins and jackets, as well as all the other garments and objects
fashioned from animal hides. For goatskin Caldecote had perfected a
tanning process, using fish gruel, oak bark, salt, and human urine,
which left the leather soft, supple, and virtually indestructible.
His workshop in the precinct held a large supply of these skins:
the finest had been selected to make the suits.

Goatskin, impregnated with grease to render
it waterproof, was the best available substitute for the rubber or
neoprene material of commercial exposure suits. Tight backstitching
with dressed twine fastened the seams, which were welted and sealed
with fish-glue. The suit incorporated mittens and bootees; it was
donned by means of a slit from neck to navel which was then to be
sewn up and sealed. The high collar fitted under and would be glued
to an outer collar made from a ten centimetre section of inner-tube
rubber – saved from the front wheels of the tractor. There was also
a hood, unsealed, consisting of a layer of aluminium foil
sandwiched between two layers of goatskin: this was likewise
intended to minimize heat loss and hence reduce the chances not
only of hypothermia but also of detection by the infrared
system.

Fitzmaurice’s suit was brought out for
Routledge to try on. Almost black in colour, the outer surface of
the leather was a mass of welts and seams, so arranged as to allow
free movement of the limbs; inside, the suit was entirely smooth.
The smell of the pig grease used in the waterproofing process
mingled horribly with a residual stink of the tan-liquor.

Routledge was already dressed in the woollens
he would be wearing on the night itself. As he struggled into the
suit, as it encased him from the toes upwards, he began to feel
more and more like a monster in a horror film.

“Stand up straight, please, Mr Routledge,”
Caldecote said, drawing together the temporary fastener at the
throat. He looked over his shoulder at Godwin and back at
Routledge. “It’ll do,” he said.

“No alterations needed?” Routledge said.

“Maybe a little tighter here on the
neck.”

“It’s not going to leak, is it?”

“Eight hours. That’s the longest Mr Thaine
says you’ll need to keep dry. We made up a test piece and it stayed
dry for a fortnight. Mind you, you’ll be swimming, and we couldn’t
really test the neck seal, so I suppose your guess is as good as
mine, Mr Routledge.”

Routledge allowed him to fit the hood.

“This wants to come in a bit.” Caldecote
removed the hood and gestured at a stool by the wall: creaking
softly, Routledge sat down. “Now we’ll see about the fins.”

These were frogman’s flippers unlike any that
Routledge had ever seen before. Shoes made of marine plywood fitted
over the bootees of the suit and were held in place with straps.
The toe of each shoe was produced into a plywood paddle, to which
was fastened a longer and broader flap of rubber. This rubber had
come from the legs of wellington boots, cut down the back seam and
opened out. Laminated, shaped and feathered to form a swimming
vane, the laminate had been fixed to the shoes with rivets and, for
additional strength, sewn through with dental floss.

The fins were the right size for Routledge’s
feet. With minor adjustments to the straps, they would fit him
exactly.

Putting on the suit and flippers, finding
that they fitted, had raised Routledge’s eligibility for Godwin’s
place from the provisional to the certain. This was the crucial
moment. Unless he spoke up now, he was committed. Unless he spoke
up now, he would have to play his part along with the others.

He remained silent. Caldecote removed the
fins and suit.

Godwin gave a barely perceptible nod of
approval.

“Can you come again tomorrow at noon?”
Caldecote said, as Routledge, preceded by Godwin, thanked him and
left the clothing shop. “We’ll have it all ready then.”

“Yes, I’ll be here.”

Crossing the precinct, Godwin said, “When you
get back on dry land, open a bottle of champagne for me. And for
Fitzmaurice.”

“And for Fitzmaurice. I won’t forget either
of you.”

Godwin gave an embarrassed shrug, staving off
further talk along these lines, and continued towards the bungalow,
where an emergency Council meeting was shortly to be convened;
Routledge first went home to change his clothes.

After the meeting Routledge called on King,
who had been sitting at his table, writing a long letter to his
sister.

“Well?” King said, anxiously. “Are you
going?”