Hostage (12 page)

Mick disappeared behind a group of three smooth boles, too far away from me to hear if there was whispering, but everything pointed to it. After half a minute he returned cautiously over the leaf mould more or less on the route by which he had come. I waited for his companion. He slipped out an angle and I could only see that he was a big, heavy man with a belly who moved as lightly as a boxer – a far more formidable opponent than Mick.

Padding down on a parallel course I caught sight of him at frequent intervals. When he was above and close to the clearing I saw him stop, take from his pocket a corked phial, pick out a dart with a pair of tweezers and load an air pistol. Paralyse or kill? Whichever it was, the effect of the dart had to be nearly instantaneous, working so fast when it pierced the skin that the victim keeled over while still wondering whether the prick was caused by thorn or insect.

Somewhere he had had more training than that of an urban guerrilla. He waited near the edge of the long strip of pasture in the valley bottom, summing up for himself the lights, the patrol and the general activity. He must have seen, as I had, that the only hope of reaching Roke’s Tining was to wait and wait for a chance opportunity. Waiting, therefore, was what I was doing when Mick spotted me.

He took up his position some ten yards back from the open. I couldn’t see him since he had a tree trunk behind him, but I knew which tree. Escape never occurred to me. I was obsessed by the necessity of keeping my appointment with Gammel and gorged with an absolute loathing of this murderer without any creed, public or personal.

Everything about him – expression, build, method – cried out that he was not one of our partisans but a hired assassin killing for money, a spiritual monstrosity. Attack the State, yes. Accept loss of life if it cannot be avoided, yes. And yes, exposure and execution of the infiltrator. But it fouled Magma to recruit a butcher from the terror bank as if we were drug runners or a crooked industrial Mafia. Looking back on that night I detect some hypocrisy in my indignation but it was real enough at the time.

I wanted my more honest Mick to be well away, but had now no idea where he was. He might be more or less in line with us and advancing just inside the trees to drive me towards his companion, or above me hoping to close in if I were seen or heard climbing up the wood. All was dead silent, so I decided that the dog should be allowed to look at the rabbit again. I left the killer to go on contemplating nothing, reached the lower end of the clearing and deliberately tripped. That brought Mick out of hiding at once and fixed him on the spot.

Then downhill once more. I was aiming for the last rank of the trees rather beyond the point where my enemy was, and too confident. I overlooked the fact that all this time I had been guided by their movements rather than by remembering small details of the ground. There were few. I could see the limit of the wood from quite a distance inside it because of the lights in the valley. I could feel the angle of slope and be sure where the clearing was, but to recognise a pattern of tree trunks in darkness irregularly stippled by patches and stripes of moonlight was difficult.

I chose the wrong clump and my mistake was made still more deadly by one of those long, low beech branches searching for light. Instead of going round it I ducked under it. When I raised my head he was close enough to spot the movement of the pale face. I hurled myself sideways and heard the phut of the pistol and the tap of the dart as it hit the branch. Then he was on me and I went down under his weight. My only chance was the old, possum trick of limpness. My right hand was already on the hilt and I had the sense to cross the other arm over it as I fell, as if hugging myself in a position of utter terror. He never bothered to see what either helpless hand was doing and picked up the wretched bundle by the collar about to strangle it or deliver a knockout blow which would give him time to reload at leisure.

I couldn’t breathe and held what breath I had while I smoothly, almost lovingly, inserted the knife till I felt the muscular resistance of the heart, then cut downwards to the tight waistband which reminded me that I might have to pick up and dispose of what it let loose. A savage reaction, panting with fear, pain and fury. I could understand those Moslem primitives who stuff the victim’s mouth with his penis.

He had only time to utter a high-pitched, half-voiced gasp. The police patrol heard it, turned round but made no move. They may have taken it for the strangled hoot of that owl with his mouth full, or any of the tremulous mealtime comments of fox or badger to which they no longer paid attention. There was no noise at all as I lowered his body to the leaves.

I stood back until the beat of my heart had slowed and the animal was again relaxed. I found unfathomable Mick on the far side of the moonlit glade, anxiously listening either for me or for a repetition of the curious sound he had heard. From the cover of two overlapping trunks behind him I asked.

‘Your orders are to kill me, Mick?’

He swung round. The voice was very close but he could see nothing.

I told him to go forward into the clearing and drop his gun. He obeyed without a word, still not knowing where I was. To my surprise he was not armed.

‘Who was the man with you?’

‘He’s foreign. That’s all I know.’

‘Was foreign, Mick. Go down and look and keep just as silent as you have. You did as well as could be expected without more training.’

He started down while I kept behind him and directed him to the body.

‘You devil!’ he whispered.

‘I’ve heard you say that before. Yet I’d never killed anyone then.’

‘Did you have to do that?’

‘Unless I wanted to be killed myself. What were your orders?’

‘Committee orders. Direct. They said you had buggered off and might be dangerous. Nervous strain, like. We were to find you and bring you in quietly.’

That at least is the gist of what he told me at greater length and incoherently.

So as to stun him with still more surprise, I asked him if he knew who I really was.

‘Herbert Johnson.’

‘I am Julian Despard. Is it likely he would become a police informer? And from all you know of Gil would he betray his cell or his Group?’

‘What’s happened?’

‘I’ll tell you. But we must get rid of this. What were you going to do with me?’

‘Carry you away. I didn’t know exactly. This one did, and the two up there.’

‘Where are they?’

‘In a car about a mile away.’

‘And you were going to carry an unconscious man through this wood, over the wall and a mile across country without being seen or heard?’

‘This place – what is it? I didn’t know it would be crawling with cops.’

‘Well, now you do. They led you up the garden path, Mick. My body was to be left here.’

‘But it would be found.’

‘I doubt if that would matter. A dead Despard adds to mystery and fear. But I don’t want to leave this one. Put that stuff back, take off his coat and button it round him lower down!’

He did what he was told. When the patrol was at the far end of its beat we carried the body up to the bank of leaves and buried it deep. It’s unlikely to be found for a week or two and by then, unless I can alter the future, courts and police will be only a turbulence. God, how desirable! But not at that atrocious and intolerable cost.

Mick looked me over with his untidy half-grin and said he couldn’t see much sign of the nervous strain.

‘I might play your game with you if you’d tell me the rules,’ he added.

‘Sit down and I will. It starts from Blackmoor Gate. I didn’t know any more then than you do now.’

He only interrupted when I came to my interview with Shallope.

‘So you didn’t kill him?’ he asked.

‘No. He was killed next day. It was well calculated – the best way of convincing the Government that the bomb existed and we had it.’

Mick’s reaction was very like my own. The objective for which we had suffered and fought and dreamed and destroyed was in sight, but should come in its own time.

‘It’s too … well, too sudden for me,’ he said. ‘I can’t accept this weapon but I can’t argue why not. I don’t know what you mean by your Purpose. Arrangement in blue and olive by Gil and bloody God! There’s no object whatever in life beyond what we pack into it and you know it. It’s a nasty chemical accident. But whatever the hell you did mean, this is
my
revolt – your voice, the night and all the poor devils lost in night like that Grainger you’ve reminded me of. You split this bastard up for yourself, Gil, but I know you well enough to be sure you killed him for our beliefs, yours and mine. What’ll I tell them when I go back?’

‘How did you get here?’

‘Hung around with the newspaper blokes.’

‘Then just say that you did see someone enter the wood and followed. But you never saw him again and couldn’t find out whether he was Gil or not.’

‘And the late Guts?’

‘You lost touch in the dark and waited but never heard a thing. So you cleared off before it was light and couldn’t find the car.’

‘It’s a fact I couldn’t, alone.’

‘Bad organisation and you can say so.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better to tell them I heard him cry for help?’

‘Too hard to explain. Let it stay a mystery till the police find the body if they ever do. But you can cry for help yourself now.’

‘What for?’

‘To draw off the patrol and give me a chance to reach Sir Frederick.’

He thought that over and came up with a far better suggestion.

‘I’ve got a torch on me. Suppose I start flashing it on the ground near enough for the patrol to see the fairy lights. That’ll bring ’em into the wood after me.’

‘Are you sure you can get clear?’

‘How much noise did I make?’

‘Almost none except when you were in the leaves here.’

‘Well then! Where shall I find you, Gil?’

‘I’m taking no chances. But I’ll be in London and I know where to find you.’

When the patrol had reached the mill pond and turned back on their beat Mick slipped away ahead of them. From where I was I could not see the pool of light flickering over the ground in and among the tree roots, but, its effect on the police was immediate. As soon as I heard them charging after the will-o’-the-wisp uphill I raced across the grass and into the pitch-dark stream under the poplars. There I dipped coat and right sleeve into the water to wash out or at least disguise the bloodstains.

Gammel had merely said ‘up the hedge’ without specifying which side of it. It had to be the near side. To reach the far side I must pass across a semicircle of lawn at the foot of the hedge shining in a naked light over the footbridge. It was a high wall of yew, shadowed from the moon, along which I crawled and walked without fear of detection, but it was thick enough to stop a charging bull – so facing me with an awkward problem, for it ended not at any rose bed or herbaceous border but slap up against a balustraded terrace: yards and yards of gleaming white flag-stones flooded with light from two open french windows.

Inside the room – probably the communal dining-room – six men and two women were seated with their papers at a polished table, half of them facing the terrace. I gathered that it was an important and contentious conference of nuclear scientists but the little I overheard was too unintelligible to be of interest. I dared not climb the balustrade and get round the yew hedge, nor was I going to risk returning to the stream and passing round the lower end of the hedge under the light over the bridge. But the power of quick decision breeds on itself. Still excited by my discordant efforts of successful violence and peaceful persuasion I took a chance which I would never have considered in any cold, preliminary planning and called out in the firm voice of a passing security officer:

‘Draw the curtains if you please, gentlemen!’

It worked. Somebody got up and drew them. I was able to nip up and down the balustrade, round the end of the hedge, into the rose bed and thence behind tall delphiniums till I was opposite the open study window. I need not have bothered to wash in the stream. Gammel’s eyes would only notice on me the imperial purple of his Cotswold earth with a sprinkling of well-rotted manure.

I tapped on the window and crouched beneath it. A second later all the house lights went out. Voices at varying distances joined in an oratorio of curses, leaving no doubt of a Roke’s Tining swarming even at near midnight with busy investigators. We ourselves preserved absolute silence. Gammel quickly brushed off the loose earth from the sill, shut the window, led me into the adjoining bedroom and motioned to me to get under the bed.

They did not take long to change the fuse. As soon as there was light again he went to work on the remaining traces of my passage and had barely finished when a security officer came in to find him sitting at his table with an open book. I heard Sir Frederick apologising profusely for his carelessness and showing with a display of senile inefficiency exactly what he had done – which of course fused the lights again.

The security officer flashed a torch round the bedroom and cleared off. After that we were left in peace. Gammel had taken to heart my warning that his study might be bugged and took no chances even with the bedroom. He lay on the floor with his head under the valance of the bed and close to mine. A curious position for a vital interview.

I told him that I had evaded police but had been seen above the valley by unknown, possibly interested persons. That was all he needed to know. He was a little cold to start with, no doubt wondering why on earth he had accepted my integrity on the strength of so short a talk together.

‘And so, Mr Johnson, you believe you can do better than the police?’

‘I know I can, since I have more knowledge of the background than they have.’

‘Then you should share your knowledge with them at whatever risk to yourself.’

I replied that I was very willing to share and could do so anonymously with little risk to myself.

‘Impulse sent me to you, Sir Frederick, and impulse made you receive me kindly. Believe me, we are both right.’