Hostage (5 page)

I answer that it is the wrong question. Gil does not wish to break away. It is Julian who is determined to oppose, to prevent, to become the stray neutron which causes fissile material to cremate itself before the chain reaction can take place.

My reading also tells me that stray neutrons must be eliminated. I am sure Rex and the committee would agree.

The first panic which led to the release of Clotilde seems to have died down. Since knowledge of the threat is evidently confined to the Cabinet and their top advisers, it is impossible to judge what may be going on in Whitehall. Civil Defence has not been alerted, and one can only guess what is behind the apparent lack of interest in the media. Does it mean that the Government has decided that the threat is a bluff or that front pages are fully and hysterically occupied by a couple of murders on an oil rig – more to do with matrimonial trouble at home, I think, than mysterious assassins. Magma may have had a hand in that as well. As was discovered in the last war, lies about the infidelity of wives can be more destructive of morale than a bomb down the street.

Rumours are often more effective than explosives. You can’t knock twenty pence off the value of the pound or bring out a car factory on strike by acts of terrorism. My latest orders are to set rumours going in pubs – Fleet Street pubs included – that an atom bomb has been stolen and is hidden in London. My cells have of course no idea that it is true or nearly true.

When Rex gave me my orders I could safely put a few more questions, for I seem to be marked down by the Action Committee as a man of the future. Meanwhile they need partisans and it looks as if I am to provide them. I doubt if any other Group Commanders are in the secret.

I wanted to know, as a point of security, whether the master of the ship could guess what he had delivered. Impossible, Rex replied. The master was told that it was a crate of opium from Turkey destined for America. Being a Turk himself with the usual profound contempt for anyone who was not a Turk he had no moral scruples about rotting American youth. An interesting point is that we do have. I used to impress it on my students that those who drug themselves for the sake of release from the established system release themselves also from the lucidity of thought which is to change the established system.

As for the helicopter pilot, he had no moral scruples either. He was convinced that he had picked up a shipment of arms for the Ulster Protestants. As a staunch upholder of the infallibility of the Free Kirk of Scotland a few more Papists in hell were all right with him. Neither master nor pilot had any reason to connect their smuggling with Libya. They believed what they wanted to believe.

Security questions led without any discontinuity to the
Chaharazad
and its crew, who must have got ashore on the coast of Greece and out of the country unnoticed. They had been touring Epirus by car, Rex said. It was nobody’s business to inquire exactly where they stayed and for how long.

‘Perhaps they were camping among olives like you in Paxos.’

I remarked that the voyage and its timing must have called for an experienced navigator and asked whether he was hired or one of ours.

‘The Committee is satisfied,’ Rex answered, cutting me down to size.

‘And our nuclear expert knows what he is doing?’

‘Yes, but from a different angle. He believes the public has forgotten what the bomb is like; they accept it as they accept earthquakes and air disasters. They read of tests in Nevada and in the Pacific and see the thing as tameable. They think that the deterrent will never be used but is essential. By God, some of them would stroll up to a man-eating lion and coo: “pussy, pussy, is it hungry then?”’

‘That might work,’ I said.

‘It might, given absolute fearlessness and not sheer ignorance. That’s our friend’s point – ignorance. Just once, he says, they should know what the fire storm is like. A hundred lives lost now will save a hundred million later.’

‘He’s so certain nuclear war will happen?’

‘That’s why he is working with us. Conscience-stricken and unbalanced.’

I said that he sounded as if he might take his own line, not ours.

‘We thought of that, so he does not yet know where it is. When he does, his mood will be closely monitored.’

‘He didn’t go all the way with you from Blackmoor Gate?’

‘Not all the way. He wasn’t far from home.’

That was a useful clue. It may limit the search for him. They started off from Exmoor in the direction of Bristol.

So he does not know where it is. But U235 cannot be loosed off without preparation. You can have too much or too little of it. Minimum is about 11/2 kilos, divided into two parcels too small to start chain reaction until they are brought into contact. Our expert has ten kilos to play with – what a phrase! – which, according to the public sources which I have consulted, is a lot less than the maximum, but enough to make an all-devastating weapon much larger than that which was dropped on Hiroshima. He must have a tricky job ahead of him with that steel tube and the firing mechanism. He and his materials have to be taken to a spot where it is safe to work. How much time does he need? A Sunday of or a fortnight’s leave?

I shall have to employ one of my partisans to find and identify him. Risky, for if the committee came to hear of it they would want to know why. But the cells report only to their Group Commander; they may question the method of carrying out an order but not the reason for the order itself. In any case none of them will ever suspect that Magma has the makings of an atomic bomb. I did not. I never dreamed that the release of Clotilde had anything to do with the well-publicised story of the
Chaharazad.
The Government has still given nothing away.

The reactor at Oldbury-on-Severn is not far from Bristol and seemed the obvious place for him to be employed. But discreet surveillance has got me nowhere. Tall, nuclear technicians who look as if they suffered from stomach ulcers are not uncommon, and one cannot keep up a continuous watch or start asking who does what without arousing the interest of security officers. My likeliest candidate turned out to be a water engineer, knowing little more about nuclear fission than I do.

I’m no good at this sort of investigation. An intellectual with a taste for action has not the qualities of a private eye. Only now has it occurred to me that the Action Committee would never have chosen a mere nuclear physicist in a power station. He must have had experience in weapon production and his operational centre should be Aldermaston. Say, he puts in so much time at Oldbury that he finds it convenient to live in or near Bristol. He might be seconded to Oldbury to keep an eye on the quality of the plutonium or the management of waste. In that case he is going to visit Aldermaston fairly frequently for conferences or to report. Quickest route, whether he starts from home or Oldbury, is M4 to Newbury.

And the hell of a lot of good that is! For the police it would be child’s play to check registration numbers of cars from the west leaving the M4 for Newbury and Aldermaston, but for me it’s quite impossible to lay on an operation of that size. Also – which I am continually forgetting – I dare not use my cells.

Triumph! The simplest old trick though it’s right against the rules to leave a trail of telephone calls behind. But I can imitate a vague, scholarly manner to perfection. Even if the call was monitored, it would appear too straightforward to be suspected.

For the record, here’s how it went:

‘Radcliffe Infirmary. Doctor (unintelligible) speaking … Can I have a short word with Mr … hang on a minute damn, where’s his card … A tall, thin man. Travels a lot between Oldbury and Aldermaston. It’s about the irradiation of antiparasitic vaccines.’

‘Oh, you must mean Dr Shallope.’

‘Yes, of course! Of course! Memory, my dear lady, is …’

‘He’s in Aldermaston today, I’m afraid.’

After a bit more pointless conversation she said, the helpful girl, that what I really wanted was the biological section of the Atomic Energy Commission and gave me the name and number of the right man to call.

So that was that. Shallope, having a guilty conscience, may possibly wonder if the inquiry came from some undercover police agent, but he won’t think of it – to judge by the little I know of his fidgety, self-centred character. When he hears that the Radcliffe Infirmary wanted to talk to him about irradiation of vaccines he’s the sort of man to answer impatiently that it is not his speciality. At a guess the helpful girl will reply that she put the Infirmary on to the right department and he needn’t bother.

He had not been long at Oldbury, for no telephone in the Bristol district was listed under his name. When I had managed to get from Directory Inquiries his number, which didn’t matter, and his address which did, I put Elise on the job. She talked to him longer than I at Blackmoor Gate and can identify him with certainty. She does not of course know that I personally want to be sure that Shallope is the right man.

I must remember what I have told her. I allowed her to believe that he was an outside expert who had been ‘persuaded’ to assist Magma. We know all about his contacts at his place of employment – the nature of which I did not mention – and his movements out and back. Those she need not report. I did want to know, however, how he spent his evenings and whether he was away for a night.

Elise has identified him. He goes for brisk walks before breakfast on Clifton Down. He would. She has not been able to find out anything about his evenings because the day after her arrival Dr Shallope left for a short holiday in Cheltenham. She has even found out his hotel.

A most improbable spot! Has he an aged parent there? Is he taking the waters or interested in music or being shown at last where to exercise his skill? I shall cautiously follow him. The Committee have to know where their Group Commanders are to be found, but I can get around that. Herbert Johnson has business in Oxford. That is far enough away to avoid suspicion, yet only an hour’s drive from Cheltenham. I intend a dawn to dusk watch if it can safely be done. A big if. Some of that Korean training may be useful at last.

I am back at my inn earlier than I expected. Last night I settled in at Witney – a reasonable place for a country lover like Herbert Johnson to stay while he does his round of the Oxford district, and twelve miles nearer to Cheltenham. It has been on the whole a successful day. How I wish I had a cell to help me! But the risk is prohibitive – quite bad enough as it is.

Shallope’s hotel could not have been more convenient, or at least it seemed so at first sight early this morning with no one about. It turned out to be a former country house with extensive grounds, of the London Road and in a district which was half village, half residential suburb. After a brief inspection I left my car up an obscure lane a mile away and returned on foot to make a circuit of the place. I found that the hotel grounds had not enough cover to allow a continuous watch on the building and that the movements of gardeners and guests were likely to be incalculable.

I was tempted by a handy and climbable cedar which could be safely approached by way of the main gate and a shrubbery, but it only commanded a view of the entrance from the road and the drive, not of the hotel itself. Then I wandered past neighbouring gardens and the hedgerows where town met country, looking for a secure observation post from which I could see the front door of the hotel. There wasn’t one. Too many high brick walls, too much passing traffic, too many windows.

The best bet seemed to be to return to my car and drive straight into the hotel garage as if I had business there. That would give me a glimpse of the grounds from another angle. If any cell was under orders to keep an eye on Shallope, it was not one of mine and would not know my car number. I sometimes think our security is overdone but it has unexpected advantages.

I drove in, observing on my way up the gravelled drive that the garage had once been a range of stables and that under the gabled roof was an upper floor, evidently little used since the window was cobwebby and two panes were broken. Inside the garage a ladder attached to the wall led up to a trap door. One of the rungs had rotted through showing that indeed the upper storey was seldom or never visited. I took a quick look round and climbed up.

There was nothing in this loft but scrap iron and wisps of hay. Through one window I could see the front of the hotel and through the other a flagged terrace on the south side. I settled down to watch, though by no means at ease. If anybody did come up I was caught without any reasonable excuse for being where I was.

Soon after nine Shallope came out on to the terrace, strolling back and forth with his hands behind his back. He was putting on an absent-minded professor act or he may really have been lost in thought. He certainly had plenty to think about. The hotel struck me as a restful spot with deck chairs and books much in evidence.

There was no point in keeping him under observation. The other window was more promising. On the drive was little traffic – a few visitors’ cars leaving, a few tradesmen’s vans arriving. Two young men came in through the main gate and mysteriously became one young man without my spotting what had happened to the other. I thought that perhaps the nearest pub or public lavatory was far away and that the two had thankfully turned into the drive after seeing the convenient belt of laurels which bordered it. But the first man went on and into the hotel and the second did not reappear. It seemed possible that my movements had been observed and that I might have to leave an intruder unconscious on the floor of the loft – a clumsy nuisance which would prohibit any return. I looked for him to the left of the gate, caught a glimpse of him nipping across an open patch of grass and eventually spotted his legs disappearing among the green fans of the cedar which I had rejected.

While my attention was occupied his companion had passed through the hotel and out on to the terrace. He was now going down the steps with Shallope into the garden – a young man with a fair, wispy, studentish beard. Something about his walk was familiar; he kept his hat on; he seemed heavily dressed for so warm a day. It was Clotilde. Poor girl, that bra must have been most uncomfortable! Her figure was that of a Greco-Roman Diana, but it was not slight. The man who had so quickly and elusively climbed the tree could now be explained. He was one of our own partisans making sure that her disguise still held good and that she had not been followed.