The Man who Missed the War (46 page)

The bald man looked at Philip out of sharp, piggy, little eyes and said in excellent English: ‘My name is Zadok. The Lord Toxil, who is the chief among us, has never completely mastered the English tongue, so he has directed me to question you.’

He then interrogated Philip and Gloria for over two hours, translating all their replies to his companions, and occasionally being assisted in his questioning by a gaunt, bony, old creature—apparently named Rakil—who spoke good English with a strong American intonation. During this examination little was said about the war, but Philip and Gloria had ample opportunity to put over their story that they were both diehard Fenians who
detested the murdering English and everything for which Britain stood.

Philip was asked why he had shot the dog just before his capture, and his explanation was accepted, Zadok commenting that he could hardly be expected to know that the annual levy of pigmies was necessary to the continuance of their own race as well as for other purposes; and Gloria was thrilled to hear him refer to the pigmies as Leprechauns, thus confirming her own theory about their origin.

There followed some discussion among the seven, at the end of which the old man in the centre, looking straight at Philip and Gloria in turn with piercing eyes, spoke a few sentences, which were then translated by Zadok as:

‘The Lord Toxil has said that Rakil and I shall speak with you separately again after the midday meal. If we find no treachery in your hearts they will remain yours, but if treachery is found they will be offered to the Remorseless One.’

They were then taken back to their room, and shortly afterwards their servants served them with a meal, the excellence of which was lost upon them, owing to their very natural concern as to how they would come through the further examination to which they were to be subjected in the afternoon. Philip knew from the human sacrifice that he had witnessed in the Temple of the False Sun only the night before that the threat to offer their hearts to ‘the Remorseless One’ was meant absolutely literally and, although Gloria was not aware of that, she was quick enough to assume that the threat was synonymous with death.

The only thing they could do now was to use every moment they had left going over their individual stories again and reminding each other of various points in connection with questions that they might be asked. Having secreted the pistol under his robe, Philip made up his mind to shoot Gloria in the event of the verdict being given against them; then, endeavouring to put as good a face on the matter as possible, they wished each other luck and allowed themselves to be led away by the guides who came to fetch them.

The ordeal did not prove so severe as they had feared. The fact that it was now so long since either of them had been in Europe or the United States made it impossible for them to give much
of the information which their questioners were desirous of having, and it was soon quite obvious that they had no means of checking the veracity of any private history they were given.

After half an hour, Rakil, who was questioning Gloria, left her to go into a nearby room in which Zadok was examining Philip. The two old men consulted for a few minutes in the strange tongue-clicking language they used among themselves, then Zadok said to Philip:

‘Rakil finds nothing against your wife, and I find nothing against you.’

‘Thank you,’ sighed Philip in relief. ‘May I go and tell her?’

‘You may. Then bring her back with you so that she may listen to my words at the same time as yourself.’

When Philip returned with Gloria they all four sat down and Zadok went on: ‘You will find much that is strange to you here. We have no married couples in this city beneath the mountain; but as you are young and of a foreign race I will permit you to continue to share the room you occupied last night. You will on no account attempt to escape. If you succeeded you would soon die of the great cold outside. But you would not succeed, and when you were caught I should order your hearts to be offered to Shaitan. For a little time it would be best if you do not leave your room. Later the Lord Toxil will decide what use we can make of you. Then you will be free to move as you wish in this series of galleries. But beware of entering the Temple or loitering near it. The priests think of one thing only—the number of sacrifices they can make to Shaitan. To that end their whole life is devoted, and the Remorseless One is for ever crying out for more victims. I saved you last night because I thought it would be foolish to allow them to sacrifice you until we had at least found out if you could be of use to us. But the priests are always lying in wait for the unwary; so heed my warning.’

The memory of the half-naked, self-mutilated bodies and the glowing eyes of the blood-maddened priests was too recent in the minds of both Philip and Gloria for either of them to make light of Zadok’s words. After a moment Gloria said:

‘Would you be telling us something about yourselves now?’

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘I will satisfy your curiosity as far as I can. My race originated in the great semi-tropical island of Atzlan.’

‘Is that the same as Atlantis?’ inquired Philip.

‘Yes. In your language it is called so. You know our history then?’

‘We know only the legend that a great civilisation once flourished in a large island situated in the centre of the Atlantic; and that about eleven thousand years ago it was destroyed by earthquakes, and nearly all the people were drowned in a terrible Flood.’

‘That is so. We are descendants of some of those who escaped. They were in a ship and managed to survive even after being wrecked on this fearful coast. It was fortunately summer. Before winter came they had found the great cavern which is now the Temple. These rooms and hundreds of others have been made by the many generations that have lived here since. But do you know why Atzlan was destroyed?’

‘No. Not really. There is a vague idea that it was because the people had become evil and the Gods decided to wipe them out.’

Zadok shook his skinny, bald head. ‘There is only one god who has any power in the planet which you call Earth. We know him as Shaitan—or the Remorseless One. Atzlan was destroyed by Flood and Fire because its people forgot him and did not offer him enough hearts. He became angry. He warned us, but we heeded him not, so he tore apart the paradise in which we lived and sent the remnant of us into exile. Here we must remain until we have placated him by offering the full sum of the sacrifice that he requires. When that has been done he will free us from our imprisonment in this icy world and give us back all the rich, warm lands of the earth.’

‘I see,’ said Philip hesitantly. ‘That’s why your priests are so eager to make as many sacrifices as they can, I suppose?’

‘Yes. But here the numbers that we can afford to sacrifice are small; and we dare not take more than a few score of Leprechauns from their valley each year. They would die out. So our greatest offerings to Shaitan are made in other ways. In the meantime, we watch with interest all that happens in the outer world from which you come.’

‘You’re talking in riddles, now,’ said Gloria. ‘D’you really mean that you’re in touch with what goes on in places like the United States?’

‘Certainly we are,’ Zadok gave her a mirthless grin. ‘The Lords of the Mountain—that is the seven of us who rule here—are very powerful magicians. In America you would call us scientists, but it is the same thing. In your countries television is only in its infancy. Here we have perfected it to such a degree that we can make our screens show us any part of the world we wish. We can not only focus on a room in Berlin, Washington or Tokyo; we can also listen to all that the people in it say.’

‘In that case you must know how the war is going,’ put in Philip quickly. ‘Do please tell us all about it. We’ve had no news of the outside world since the end of October, 1942.’

‘That was just before the Anglo-American expeditions landed in North Africa,’ remarked Rakil, entering the conversation for the first time. ‘Unfortunately, the Germans were taken by surprise, so the Allies secured French Morocco and Algeria quite quickly; but we managed to hold them up in Tunisia all winter.’

‘The African landings marked the turning of the tide against the Axis,’ said Zadok, taking up the tale. ‘It was about that time that the Germans were held by the Russians at Stalingrad. Later they suffered a major defeat there. Since then the Russians have reconquered a great part of their lost territories.’

‘By jove!’ exclaimed Philip, and he was just about to add: ‘What splendid news!’ when he caught himself in time and substituted: ‘That’s pretty bad. But what about the Western Allies? Don’t tell me that those filthy British are going to come out top dogs after all?’

Zadok shook his head. ‘This war is a long way from being over yet. It is true that with the help of the new American armies the British now control all North Africa. General Alexander’s armies from Egypt joined up with the American General Eisenhower’s armies in Tunisia last May. Then on July the 10th they invaded Sicily. After conquering the island they went on to Italy, and the Anglo-Americans are now fighting about fifty miles south of Rome.’

‘All this must be pretty worrying for Mussolini,’ Philip murmured.

‘He has gone. His own Fascist Council turned on him soon after the landings in Sicily. They made him a prisoner but Hitler helped him to escape. He is now with the Germans who
took over as much of Italy as they could after Mussolini’s downfall; but he has no more power.’

‘The hearts of the Italian people never were in the war, anyway,’ Philip remarked.

‘Perhaps not,’ Zadok replied. ‘But there are forty-five millions of them. Their armed forces were greater than those of Britain at the time they entered the war and within a few days of that Britain was left to face the might of Germany alone. The additional burden of having to fight a second power with a larger population than her own would have meant the end for any people less pigheaded than the accursed British. How they managed to defend their island and at the same time defeat great Italian armies thousands of miles away in Abyssinia, Eritrea and Libya still remains a miracle.’

‘I suppose the explanation lies in the fact that the quality of the Italian troops and generalship was nothing like up to the standard of those produced by the Empire.’

‘True, yet the Italians outnumbered the Empire forces by at least six to one and individually many of the Italians fought with great gallantry. For instance in 1942 two Italian sailors sank two of Britain’s biggest battleships.’

‘Two
men sank
two
battleships!’ gasped Philip. ‘How on earth did they do that?’

‘They entered Alexandria harbour in a midget submarine, got out and attached two limpet bombs to the bilge keels of
Queen Elizabeth
and
Valiant
. The explosion of the bombs tore holes in the hulls of the two great ships and caused them to founder on the mud of the harbour. Both of them were out of action for many months.’

Gloria glanced at Philip expecting one of his usual outbursts on the lines of big ships now being as great a waste of effort in a modern war as equipping an Armoured Division with elephants, but he did not rise.

Instead he was thinking. ‘Well, anyway, that released their destroyer escorts to do useful work and British superiority in the Eastern Mediterranean was obviously not affected. Let’s hope someone has taken the lesson to heart. Those Italian sailors were probably paid about 8 lira a day and each of them rendered £8,000,000 of British war capital useless for many months. What
a commentary on our pre-war naval building programme!’ After a moment he said:

‘Tell us about the war at sea.’

‘Last April it was announced by Washington that in the year 1942 the Allies lost twelve million tons of shipping. The losses for 1943 have not been given yet, but we believe them to be heavier. The British Navy Minister—the First Lord, they call him—said in a speech last June that the losses for the previous month—May, 1943—were so far the heaviest for any month since the war began.’

‘Twelve million tons a year,’ said Philip. ‘That’s terrific. The whole British Empire only owned twenty-one million tons in 1939, and the United States less than nine million. But, of course, their navies weren’t planned to fight an anti-U-boat war, and they spent nearly all their money on types of ships that were no good for that sort of thing. It’s a marvel they’ve been able to find enough shipping to prevent Britain from being starved out.’

‘Once the United States started in you can bet they built plenty,’ remarked Gloria.

‘You are American yourself, yes?’ Rakil shot at her swiftly.

‘No, sir!’ she lied promptly, a look of surprised innocence in her bright blue eyes. ‘Why would you think that? I’m Irish, and I’d only been living for a year in New York before my husband came over. I hated the place. Roosevelt and his New Deal and all that sort of thing have no appeal for me. It’s just Socialism and Communism under another name. I’m all for the old countries like Spain and Italy where the Church still exercise an influence on the lives of the people. Quite apart from my family’s just hatred of the dirty British, I’ve a great admiration for Mussolini and General Franco. That’s why I’d like to see Hitler win.’

‘Of course,’ Rakil nodded. ‘I had forgotten that you are an Irish Catholic. It is just that having lived in the States you have some idea of what American production can do. You are right about their shipbuilding. Without it Britain would have been starved out long ago. It is almost as much of a miracle as some of the things we do here. For many months past they have been making ships in merely a matter of days. And the way in which they turn out aeroplanes …’ He left the sentence unfinished
and held up his long, bony hands with an expression of amazed despair.

‘How is the air war going?’ Philip inquired.

‘Not well for Germany,’ Zadok replied. ‘The R.A.F. bomber crews have proved as efficient as their tighter pilots did earlier in the war. For years now, with a force that gets bigger and bigger, they have been smashing at German cities. Hardly a night passes without an attack by them. And for the past year the Americans have been bombing Germany in daylight. That required great courage. They lost heavily at first, but their air fleets are now so large that the Germans can no longer effectively oppose them. By these great night and day attacks Hamburg, Cologne and Bremen have been almost wiped out. The industrial area of the Ruhr has been half-destroyed and the centre of Berlin reduced to little but a vast pile of rubble.’