Hostage (16 page)

It was an agony of frustration strolling up and down that damned dead street among damned dead people who would probably be both if I were unable to get hold of Clotilde. I assumed that Rex had smelt a rat. But even if he had he could not take the risk of refusing to telephone her. I wondered if he had laid on some unknown operation with some unknown Group Commander. But help might not arrive in time and he must know it.

Nearly twenty minutes had gone by when from the direction of the Cromwell Road I heard the siren of a police car tearing through traffic and I began to walk away. Then Mick signalled to me and at last I saw Clotilde stride very fast out of the mews, look round and cross the road. She had had no time for any attempt at disguise. She was dressed for the house in blue velvet trousers and a low-cut evening sweater with her fair hair loose on her shoulders – a most obvious Alexandra Baratov answering to perfection the description of the young woman who had appeared in court and been mysteriously released. Mick closed in on her and the pair were safely round the corner just before the first car arrived. The duty officer who took down my message must either have been sceptical or had temporary difficulty in contacting anyone of high enough rank to understand its importance.

With Mick and Clotilde safely away I recovered the estate car and set off for the rendezvous. In spite of success, my confidence was shattered. Far too much had depended on luck. Driving out of London I was desperately aware that we had had too little time to plan and none to reconnoitre. The whole pretended rescue seemed amateurish and inefficient. But so it had to be until we reached the ruined cottage which Sir Frederick had shown me.

Clotilde would expect a short journey within London, not a gangster’s drive into the country. As soon as her relief had worn off she was bound to see that the operation did not bear the typical Magma hall mark – quiet, unobtrusive, every move carefully worked out. With this in mind I had plotted a steady route to the northwest which should not give her any impression of panic or of a search for solitude since it ran from string to string of suburban towns and villages and took suddenly to wilder country where she could be quickly overpowered. Chesham, I remembered, about filled the bill. On the way there Mick was to say that he had been ordered – but how? – to take her straight to the Committee and that she would change cars outside Chesham. It was possible. Both she and I accepted that the committee might meet anywhere but did not expect to know all the possible places. In present circumstances a house at a safe distance from London would appear very natural.

Our rendezvous was to be in Pednor Bottom, a lane running from Chesham up one of the remoter Chiltern valleys. I had arranged with Mick that he was to drive slowly so that I could get there before him and choose a safe spot. There were no turnings and he could not miss me. But from that point on we should have to play it by ear.

I drove along Pednor Bottom soon after eight in the falling dusk. The long, straight lane was much as it appeared on the map. On the crests, both sides of the narrow valley, lights twinkled from houses rather too close for comfort. There was hardly any traffic, but enough to impress on me that whatever we did would have to be done fast. A belt of trees on the left of the road promised to be useful if we had to hide a helpless Clotilde in a hurry. I parked in a gateway on the right where I was partly off the road and Mick could see me clearly as he approached.

He arrived ten minutes later and pulled up under the trees well behind me, wisely leaving the engine running. I walked back to the car and opened the door for Clotilde. She got out with a little exclamation of surprise, apparently pleased.

‘You ran that close, Clotilde,’ I said. ‘You must have been glad to see Mick.’

‘Yes. I was drying my hair and I let the telephone ring,’ she replied calmly.

I did not question this. I was too fascinated by the fact that history could be affected by a woman refusing to answer the telephone because she was drying her hair. How well Clotilde knew me!

‘Lucky that Rex tried again!’

‘And then he had no time to say anything but: “run”!’

I was satisfied and relieved that as yet there was no need for violence. We could carry on with our plan of continuing with both cars so that Mick would return in his own and mine be left somewhere safe, not too far from the cottage.

‘I’ll drive with Gil now,’ she said. ‘God, I’m such a mess!’

She began to walk towards the estate car, then stopped in the beam of Mick’s headlights, drew a compact from her handbag and looked in the mirror. She put back the compact and her hand returned from the bag with a .32 automatic. My position was hopeless – not near enough for attack, not far enough away for her to miss. She made me clasp my hands behind my head and ordered me to walk across the road to the edge of the deep ditch on that side.

This was death and I knew it. She had had her orders, been convinced by the evidence and would obey. I felt that one way or another I deserved what was coming to me and tried – this is true and I am amazed at it – to concentrate on some great pleasure that I could carry with me if there was any.

I heard Mick start like a banger and was kissed by the breath of the bullet just under my ear. She turned, fired again and shattered the windscreen but missed Mick. Then he was on her as she jumped sideways and ran for the shelter of the estate car. He swerved and the right wing caught her and flung her into the hedge. He slewed back across the lane in an almost impossible effort to miss the estate car but did miss it and finished up with my car on its side and the bonnet stove in against a tree.

Two distant headlights were approaching from Chesham. We picked up Clotilde and her gun, laid her in the back of the estate car and were away before the oncoming driver could catch sight of our number. I sat in the back, holding her steady. She was unconscious. Mouth and cheek were bleeding. Right shoulder had taken a battering and was scored by the hawthorn, but the arm did not seem to be broken.

‘Why the devil didn’t she hold up both of us while she could?’ I asked.

‘I persuaded her that I was sent by you. I’ve never been told that you are no longer my Group Commander,’ Mick explained. ‘I know you are under some kind of cloud, but that’s all.’

‘She didn’t show any suspicion?’

‘No. A bit of luck for us, I thought. It looked as if we could drive over half England with her saying: thank you very much.’

I saw now that she had talked to Rex till the very last moment – a long conversation in which he had said in effect ‘I told you so’ and ordered her to do a better job than Vladimir. I was a fool to have embroidered my conversation with Rex by that bit about Clotilde’s address being found on Vladimir’s body. It was proof positive that I was in communication with the police.

It was a vile order to have given her, but I suppose she was able to take refuge in that military restraint which she had shown in all her earlier dealings with her favourite cell leader. One must remember, too, that she was fanatically proud and that I had been grossly unfaithful to her trust in me.

As soon as we were clear of the Chilterns, Mick stopped and I arranged seat cushions to make her as comfortable as I could while Mick boiled a kettle for hot tea. She came round and her colour improved. She was in no condition to move or yell but it now seemed that she was out of danger from serious shock.

An hour and a half later we were beneath Pen Hill and on a passable track with plenty of cover on both sides. In the darkness it took me some time to find the right route through the trees to the open, and even then it was hard to pick up the irregular outline of the ruin. That cottage had existence without presence.

After transporting the stores we carried Clotilde on the folding bed and took her down the steps to the well cellar. Cold and damp it was below ground on a September night, but at least we could safely show a light. When Mick left we arranged that he should park the car at any handy village lower down the valley and come back on foot early in the afternoon which would give me time to get in touch with the reverend baronet and to go to work on Clotilde.

She slept uneasily till dawn. Now that the bruises had come up she was a shocking sight, one side of her face swollen, striped by shallow scratches and with a round, blue lump. She could not move her right arm without considerable pain. She told me that a tooth had been knocked out and that she thought her collar bone was broken. I fed her with hot soup, for she could not take any solid food. We spoke with reserve, but quite amicably as if we were two strangers.

I left her alone while I set up the two stones for Sir Frederick to see, meanwhile putting back the heavy door over the cellar entrance. She was indomitable. When I returned I found her collapsed at the foot of the steps. She had tried to lift the door and escape.

‘You might just as well let me go, Gil,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where the bomb is so it’s no good twisting my arm.’

I could have told her myself that it was no use. If she did know she would never confess it whatever agony I caused her and would invent a convincing hiding place with a detailed description. Torture to my mind is a futile method of arriving at truth unless the interrogator is already in a position to know which gasping confession cannot possibly be fact; and if he knows that much he should not need torture at all. I can imagine it might occasionally be of value when the victim has no code of honour and nothing to lose but freedom from pain.

‘I have quite a different reason for rescuing you, Clotilde,’ I said. ‘You mustn’t believe all Rex tells you.’

I could see she was intrigued by this. There was a chance that if I kept interrogation on an even, friendly keel I might get a clue to what limited knowledge she had. She could not guess that my real intention in kidnapping her was merely to persuade Magma to delay the explosion while they forced the Government, as they supposed, to release her.

‘But you knew that the police had found out my address and were on their way.’

‘I did’

‘How?’

‘Some of the Committee have their own informants.’

‘And the police have theirs,’ she retorted.

‘No. No, I don’t think so,’ I answered peaceably.

‘Then what else are you?’

‘Rex should not have hired Vladimir to kill me. For some of us that was the last straw.’

‘You cannot use me to split Magma!’

So that was in her mind! She was half ready to accept that I might not be a police agent but an ambitious Group Commander who hoped to profit by the explosion rather than to prevent it. I had only been sparring for an opening, searching for the point where hatred of me ended and old friendship began. I decided to go along with her tentative theory which gave us something to talk about.

‘Do I have to be as ruthless as you and lock you up in London?’

‘We should arrive too late, my dear Gil.’

That was the first useful piece of information. I had assumed that the cells had been evacuated because the police were on a hot scent at Argyll Square. It was worse than that. The chosen date was now, or nearly now.

‘If we do, the mass grave will come in handy.’

She spotted that as a slice of unnecessary horror film and did not reply, asking casually:

‘Where are we?’

‘The Bomblayers Arms, let us say.’

‘Boy Scout camp?’

‘You forget, Clotilde, that I am still a Group Commander.’

‘You are not!’

‘You think Mick is the only one who accepts me? I always told you that we overdid security. The committee has a problem of communication, especially now.’

‘Gil, you’re a fool! A dreamer like you could never lead. It isn’t in you.’

There’s some truth in that, I admit, in the sense that I would never make a Chief of Staff. But I can lead partisans and I know it.

‘Not even a minor Trotsky to a Lenin?’

‘Where’s your Lenin?’

‘You don’t know the International Committee. I do. What about Mallant?’

‘Who is he?’

Her tone was so contemptuous that it was certain she had never heard of him under his own name. I described for her his eyes and his beard and could tell from her silence that she had at least met him and was giving nothing away.

‘You will know after the explosion.’

‘You don’t mean to interfere then?’

‘Certainly not. I know where the bomb is. Rex kept me out of the move from Hoxton, but I was connected with Argyll Square.’

‘God! William the Builder!’ she exclaimed.

Her surprise was genuine. It was plain that she did not know the site of the bomb, but now realised that if it was in or near Argyll Square this William the Builder had played some essential part.

I said that he was a natural choice and asked what his real name was. She replied that only the Committee knew that, which may or may not have been true.

So I let our talk go at that. Clotilde had not denied that I might be better informed than she was, and I did not want to spoil the impression by pressing more questions.

I wish I knew more of Rex and could have used him as a lever to force more indiscretions out of her. The man is only a ghost who told me at great length of an inferno to come. A ghost he remains and has to remain, for I cannot waste precious time in trying to discover his true identity. I think he is head of the British Action Committee and responsible for our exaggerated security – in his own interest as well as Magma’s. If ever I can loose Special Branch on the bomb or deal with it myself, the police can deal with Rex afterwards. At least I can tell them that he works or occasionally works for the newspaper office where Alexandra Baratov disappeared after she was released from arrest.

I shut her down again in the cellar advising her to have patience until my party was successful when I would decide what to do with her.

‘A woman who is prepared to execute an old friend without a qualm can be useful to us,’ I added.

The unexpected clue of William the Builder could be vital. However, speculation got me nowhere and still does not. Our transport at Blackmoor Gate belonged or purported to belong to a builder. The name on it was Groads’ Construction Company, certainly false and easily changeable. It’s a fair bet that William was also responsible for the moves from Roke’s Tining to Hoxton and Hoxton to the final site. So why Clotilde’s surprise? Who but a builder could convincingly dig up and prepare – perhaps some months ago – the underground nest for the bomb?