Hostage (22 page)

We told him as much as Mick had discovered from Kevin without going into its sequel under the floor. Somewhere, possibly north of the Euston Road, was a sizeable non-conformist chapel, the front of which had been damaged and repaired at least a year ago. And there ought to be some unknown connection with Argyll Square.

‘Where was the school which the Mayor opened?’ I asked Mick.

‘Down by the docks. I should have got the actual place from Kevin but at the time it didn’t seem to matter.’

‘Assuming the driver of the lorry at least started of from the docks in the right direction for Kilburn, Islington is too far north. But we don’t know what he did any more than his load of drunks.’

‘Jim wouldn’t have said he thought it was Islington if it was,’ Mick remarked. ‘But Kevin knows his London and mightn’t be far wrong. Say, it was Camden Town or Somers Town or thereabouts – not far off a possible route from the docks to Kilburn and not far from Argyll Square.’

Sir Frederick asked how we knew that the building was a non-conformist chapel, not a church. Well, we didn’t; but Kevin had described it as ‘Bible-punching’ which seemed to rule out the Church of England.

‘Bible-punching, as you call it, was of great value in its time,’ Gammel lectured, ‘though I fear that the overemotional aspect of religion which once brought hope to the uneducated now does harm by arousing the derision of the half-educated. You, Julian, will have little sympathy for doctrinal differences between High and Low Church, so I will only express my doubts that this instrument of destruction is hidden in a Church Mission Hall or a Baptist or Wesleyan chapel. For one thing, the interiors are singularly bare. However, I will explore the district. It is fortunate that I know only too well the hard luck stories which appeal to ministers.’

Sir Frederick returned this evening with a list of possibles: two off Liverpool Road, some Church of England missions, the Salvation Army. Rather than any of these he is attracted – for the oddest reason – to a late Victorian Tabernacle off the Caledonian Road in the right sort of street. A truck could reverse into the front merely by mounting the curb, but it seems likely that it would hit one of the solid pillars on each side of the entrance and do little damage. There is no sign of any.

‘On the other hand,’ he said, ‘we have the clairvoyant.’

I had forgotten all about the tame clairvoyant sometimes employed by the police and the suggestion of the Chief Superintendent at Roke’s Tining that the bomb might be dropped from the air.

‘It was the police who jumped at that just because the clairvoyant gave them the word FLY,’ Sir Frederick said. ‘Outside this tabernacle is one of those puritanical blackboards and upon it in gold lettering: FLY FROM THE WRATH TO COME. Wrath, indeed! Because to our limited understanding the Purpose of Creation often appears cruel, must we forget the everpresent, everlasting graciousness?’

He never missed a chance to remind me that I admitted the glory of this universe and our unknown share in it, though I don’t know what Jim under the floorboards would have said about it.

‘But, dear me, I am preaching to impatient bellies like a missionary on the spit!’ the reverend baronet went on. ‘I entered this place, sang out Hallelujah and sank to my knees. Such hypocrisy may be forgiven for my prayer was sincere. A sort of caretaker or churchwarden – by his speech an Irishman and somewhat quick-tempered – saw through my over-pious pretence, gave me fivepence and expelled me.’

I asked where the churchwarden came from.

‘There was a considerable vestry at the back with its own entrance. Originally it may have provided simple accommodation for a missioner to the poor in what were then some of the worst London slums. Now the caretaker uses it as an office for some business of his own. The affairs of the Tabernacle can hardly account for so many papers and files.’

‘Closed cabinets?’

‘No, open shelves. I had plenty of time to examine the interior of this place of wrathful worship and I saw no conceivable spot where a large cylinder could be hidden. The heating was Victorian with boiler and pipes in full view. There was no organ, only a small harmonium. And I think we may exclude the altar.’

The visions of clairvoyants probably resemble our dreams in being full of vivid and incongruous details which show what sort of puppy-fun the subconscious is having with its memories. Here and there, if you train yourself to spot it, may be a truth unrealised by the conscious. I didn’t believe or disbelieve in the FLY.

‘I must also confess that I have taken certain matters into my own hands,’ Gammel went on.

I glanced at Mick. The presence of Jim could not yet be detectable, but Sir Frederick had a habit of disturbing a clear, or fairly clear conscience.

‘Come clean, Fred!’ Mick said.

‘I have been talking to the young woman whom you call Elise.’

That, as I saw it, was the end. I asked him bitterly if he had told her that he was the wanted Gammel, Rev. and Bart.

‘Bless my soul, I had no need to do that! She is an intelligent young woman and suspected me. She came up and said with authority that with my arthritis I should be in hospital. You warned me, I remember, of charitable busybodies. I could not avoid replying and when I spoke she recognised me at once.’

‘Where was this?’

‘Near the corner of the Euston Road and Argyll Square. I rashly assumed that among so many pedestrians I was safe.’

So had I. I could not blame him for that.

‘And then I persuaded her to cross the road and sit with me on a bench in St Pancras station. To me personally she was not ill-disposed. She told me that you were a traitor to your faith – she really did say ‘faith’ – and had tortured Clotilde. I replied that what she had admired in you was kindliness and consideration in command, but that she did not know you very well. I agreed that you were ruthless and I had little doubt that you would have killed Clotilde if you believed it necessary to save others; but you would not have tortured her.

‘At that she became excited and raised her voice, asking why you wouldn’t. I answered that you’d tear any mind to pieces, including your own, but not the body of a beautiful woman.’

‘And what did she say to that?’

‘That she hated you.’

It was the first hopeful sign and I began to relax.

‘I then asked her if she thought a Christian Anarchist such as I would lend himself to the internecine squabbles of terrorists. I fear she was impatient and implied that Christian Anarchism was a contradiction in terms, even going so far as to say that it was a pity the Russians had not invented psychiatric punishment in Tolstoy’s day, since a mental hospital was the right place for him and me. She added that I was on the verge of senility and a child could deceive me. A difficult and spirited young woman! I don’t wonder you were both reluctant to tell her too much.’

I must admit that I felt Elise’s judgment of him was not far wrong. So did Mick.

‘Don’t you see that Magma’s hired assassins will now be at the corner of this street?’ he asked angrily.

‘No, Mick. No, I think not. But Elise will be.’

I reproached him – but more gently – with forcing us to keep her a prisoner.

‘That will not be necessary, Julian. I explained to her that I sympathised with her. Whether one considers the lassitude of our own dear people due to frustration or the death of a million Africans from hunger, one rejects with blazing anger the affluent society. But is its destruction worth the death of four or five millions in revenge, I asked her, even supposing it would materially assist the survivors?

‘She did not know what I meant by my four or five million. She said that Gil’s policy had been to hurry on the New Revolution by creating chaos and exasperation. A few deaths were to be regretted but could not be avoided.

‘I noticed that she did not mention Magma. So to show her that senile or not I was fully informed, I did so myself. I could not remember the precise name of the place you mentioned to me, but Exmoor was enough. I asked her what she thought she had helped to land and she replied that the question should be put to you. I said that I had put it and learned that you had landed uranium for the manufacture of a nuclear bomb.

‘“He knew that?” she cried. The tone of her voice satisfied me that I had not been wrong in taking so much responsibility on myself.

‘I told her that you did not know. It was when you found out that you became what she called a traitor. She asked me why you and Mick had not trusted her. Because, I said, she had seen so much terrible suffering and felt so much anger that you could not be sure she wouldn’t consider the death of millions to be justice.

‘She answered that very finely: that she was proud to believe all she did and proud to obey, but she was not a robot. It was then that I invited her to follow me at a distance and see where I went. She was, I think, afraid but did not show it.’

I remarked that he was perhaps a little impulsive in sizing up characters quite unfamiliar to him.

‘It may be so. But have
you
any complaint?’

Elise was alone when Mick went out to fetch her and, he said, very lonely as well, pulling nervously at her skirt as if it would cover guilt as well as legs.

Down in the basement she stared at me in silence. When she had seen and recognised my face the day before, all the other revolting details of my appearance had not, I think, had time to sink in.

‘You should have told me. Are you sure it is true? It can’t be true,’ she said.

Sir Frederick intervened, reminding me that the girl was out of her depth.

‘Why does he call you Julian?’

‘Because it is my name. Only the Committee know it – and now the police.’

‘The trained …’

She swallowed the last word. Killer, it may have been. Her exclamation carried a coldness which showed she had come a long way from her over-romantic view of me. Torturer, too? Did a shade of doubt remain?

I knew that a rumour had been allowed to circulate among partisans after my escape. It was good for morale – an example of what could be accomplished for a prisoner and how a future for him could be assured. The fictitious – I hope fictitious – persona of Julian Despard was strong meat for Elise. She was like the counter-espionage agent who brings in the spy but averts eyes from the firing squad.

‘Trained to become Gil, yes, Elise. Now, what are your orders and from whom do you take them?’

‘The same man you ordered me to watch. I told Clotilde everything. They said I was to go back to the room in Argyll Square where Mick put me and I was already known. I was to watch for you and Mick. That’s how I came to spot Sir Frederick at the corner. And I have another duty: to report on a man McConnell who lives at No. 71 in a ground floor flat.’

‘What sort of report?’

‘His contacts. And to telephone urgently if any of you visit him.’

‘What are his contacts?’

‘Nobody interesting. Two middle-aged men who could be accountants, local managers of large firms or – well, you know the type. And a priest. In the morning McConnell can be seen having breakfast near the window. He’s very exact, always punctual to the minute. That’s why the tiger-man passed then: to make sure that he was well and not worried or in trouble.’

Only a little leap of imagination was needed to arrive at last at the importance of Argyll Square and who this McConnell was. I asked Elise to describe the man.

‘Thick-set with a large red face and very determined thin mouth. Pale, rather expressionless eyes. Always in a dark suit. I’d say – well, self-important boss of a department of the District Council perhaps. But not well enough dressed.’

Sir Frederick nodded, at once recognising the guardian of the Wrath to Come.

Everything fitted, or would have done if the Tabernacle had been Catholic. In that case the bomb could be masquerading as a cache of explosives for the IRA. But so far as my knowledge went we never used the IRA as a screen – easily infiltrated, mixed in their motives and a magnet for the attraction of police.

I asked Elise if the priest who visited McConnell could be a Catholic.

‘He doesn’t look it somehow. Too pompous and humourless.’

Mick was on to the solution. Had I considered an arms depot of Ulster Protestants? A church originally founded as a mission by some Bible-punching sect and now carrying on for the benefit of stern, middle-class fundamentalists? A fatuous and completely innocent pastor and a churchwarden or elder or caretaker who was a fanatic and considered a secret arms depot to be in the service of his Ulster Jehovah?

‘Gil, it’s the perfect set-up for Magma,’ he said. ‘A child could handle it.’

I am almost sure he is right, but we are far from the end of the road yet. We must not forget that Elise was ordered to report at once if Mick or I attempted to contact this McConnell. If we do and are detected, the Committee cannot risk delay. And if I am seen in or around the Tabernacle it would be still more dangerous to delay. Yet I must know what is there although Gammel, whose eyes miss little, thinks it impossible to hide anything large.

Let the police do it? Yes, if I could be sure that they would not raid and would go slowly, first establishing identities and never once arousing enough suspicion for the Committee to insert the detonators. And it could be a trap. Perhaps there is nothing there but a pound of plastic hidden in a hassock. I don’t underrate the ingenuity of Mallant, planning every step months ahead. The hounds fail at Hoxton, fail at Argyll Square, fail at this Tabernacle, and each time Magma learns a little more of what they know and what they are likely to do.

I am certain where it is and God knows what happens now. I am writing this up in the early afternoon, chiefly to clarify my mind and stop myself from useless fretting.

I decided this morning that it was safe to take a taxi so long as I dressed decently and sat far back. Sir Frederick had a dog collar with him – I thought he would – together with the black dicky parsons wear below it. So I slipped out of the squattery, bewigged and tee-shirted and with a parcel containing Herbert Johnson’s last remaining suit, and changed in a public lavatory. The parson then ordered a taxi to take him to Highbury and to drive past the Tabernacle. On arrival at Highbury and after a reasonable interval he took a second taxi and passed the place again for a second look.