The Partridge Kite (31 page)

‘Who was this “finest man”?’

‘Richard Lemmings.’

‘How did they get him?’

‘He skied away from here two years ago. . . almost to the day. He was a very expert skier but there wasn’t as much snow then as there is this winter and he had to backtrack many times, and eventually they caught up with him. They sent in a helicopter to follow him at a distance, chasing him as if they were hunting a stag. They knew he had no chance but they let him think he had. They played a game with him for more than two hours and then they dropped two of their trained killers who broke his neck. The helicopter took the body up towards the Cairngorms and dropped it close to one of the ski runs so that it would be found and seen as an accident. But they dropped it short of the runs and nobody did.’

‘So they sent up a woman to bring it down to Aviemore?’ Tom said.

‘Yes.’

‘Elsa Pilkington.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you try yourself to get out?’

‘No.’

‘Not even in the summer?’

‘Mr McCullin, there’s no way out of this place. Since Lemmings was killed no one has even been allowed outside of the house. But nine weeks ago, just before the countdown was due to begin, the computers without any warning threatened to abort. For reasons that were explained to us on the Board, they were not convinced of the dependability of certain key members. As soon as I heard that, I saw the opportunity, a way of getting out and with their permission. I put up the idea of defecting.’

‘But,’ Tom asked him, ‘once you’d got away from here why didn’t you go straight to the police or MI or to us? Why go on with the phony defection?’

‘Because I wouldn’t have lasted an hour. Where would I have gone to? Who could I speak to and be certain he was not CORDON? I was directed to Cannon Row police station, simply, I thought, because it was the most convenient to Whitehall. What I didn’t know was that a CORDON member was already highly placed there, had been for years, and I had been sent to him because he would be able to ensure I did exactly as I’d been instructed.’

‘Menzies?’

‘Yes, Menzies. You see, as a Board Director I knew we had people placed everywhere, at all levels, but I didn’t know their names. That is CORDON’S strength at all strata; nobody knows the next. So there was nowhere I could safely go to and there was too much at risk to make mistakes.

‘In that first interview with Kellick,’ he continued, ‘I did exactly as I had been told to do but I tried to give just a little more than I was supposed to. You got some of it but not enough and I hoped that, given time, kept safely by you, I could give you more, bit by bit. I wanted to meet you or Fry or anyone on their own so that I would be able to judge whether you were CORDON or not. But Kellick never let anyone see me unless he was present. And the Chairman had already warned me of him.

‘If only you had kept me longer I could have given you everything in time. But CORDON came for me just as it had been arranged they would.’

‘Are you suspect here?’ Tom asked.

‘No. I’m certain of that. The Chairman wouldn’t have let me back into Board meetings if he had been suspicious.’ ‘And the computers?’

‘They suspect everyone except the Chairman.’

Sanderson slowly raised his hands to his face and pushed his fingers hard into the sockets and began rubbing his eyes hard.

A minute passed before Tom spoke.

‘Is that the computers?’ he asked.

‘What?’

‘That hum. Is it the machines?’

‘Yes. They’ve taken over most of this floor; that’s why everything’s white-tiled and sterilised.’

‘How are they powered?’ Tom asked.

‘Diesel generators.’ Sanderson looked at his wristwatch. ‘I must go,’ he said, ‘the meeting is in two minutes.’

‘Then you’ll bloody well give them to me!’ Tom suddenly sounded very urgent. He shouted at Sanderson. ‘Where are the generators?’

‘On this floor but at the opposite end of the house. Their exhaust is drawn out through underground pipes and air is brought in by parallel system.’

‘Are the computers powered directly from them?’

‘No, I don’t think so. The house lights and house power are, but I think for safety and to make sure they have an uninterrupted current they’ve got their own batteries powered by the generators.’

‘Where are the batteries?’ Tom asked. ‘Stop looking at your watch and tell me, quickly.’

‘On the floor above us. . . almost the entire floor. They’re kept away from the generators because of the fire risk. The batteries are kept away from the computers because of contamination by fumes.’

‘Okay,’ Tom said. ‘Now get off to that meeting but for Christ’s sake come back. And find out this, Sanderson. Find out how the batteries are regulated and find out where that regulator is housed.’

‘You mean to damage them?’

‘Damage them? For Christ’s sake! Destroy them! Kill them and you kill CORDON. You just find out how you can get to the regulators, Sanderson, and I’ll show you how those batteries will blow this place sky high.’

Sanderson said nothing. He looked at Tom and began unlocking the door.

Tom stood up and moved to within six inches of Sanderson’s face. He could smell the man’s sweat.

‘I’m telling you this,’ he said, ‘because if you’re genuine you’ll come back. If you’re not then it doesn’t matter because there’s nothing I can do without you.’

Without a word Sanderson eased open the door and left. The key turned twice in the lock as Tom went back and sat on the bed and listened to the computers humming in their antiseptic room along the white-tiled corridor.

Sanderson left at nine. Breakfast, a jug of black coffee and a saucerful of biscuits, came at ten. The tray was taken away at eleven. At twenty minutes past one, Sanderson came back and as soon as Tom saw his face he knew it was on. There was a chance.

‘I’d given you up,’ he said.

Sanderson sat down on the bed by him. ‘You can’t
imagine
how hard it is to move around outside this room,’ he said. ‘It’s only because I’m a Director that my movements are not queried, at least not immediately. They will be later, no doubt.’

‘There won’t be a later,’ Tom said.

Sanderson looked at him.

‘I’ve got what you want,’ he said quietly, ‘and I think we’ll get away with it, too.’

‘Is this room bugged?’ Tom asked.

‘No, I don’t think so. . . no reason why it should be. It’s normally used as a rest room for computer staff. There are more upstairs.’

‘Go on.’

‘For a start there’s no security to speak of on the battery floor. The regulator housing is off the battery room and the power cables from the generators run between this ceiling and the floor above. The battery room is hermetically sealed because of the air conditioning and control of the acid fumes.’

‘Is it locked?’

‘No. I’ve just been in there. No problem.’

‘They let you in?’

‘No reason why they shouldn’t. There is only one man on every shift, two-hour shifts round the clock, and I know this one. I recruited him.’

‘How big is the battery room? Tell me what it looks like.’

‘I paced it out, not too obviously of course. It’s about a hundred strides . . . a hundred yards long and about half as wide. The batteries are two feet square and three feet high, banked in sets of three and in rows.’

‘Filling the room?’

‘Yes. I’ve never seen anything like it. There must be something like two and a half thousand batteries in there, give or take a hundred.’

‘What were they in? What kind of containers?’

‘Looked to me like white compressed rubber or hard plastic.’

‘Could you see the shadow of the plates inside?’

‘Yes, very easily defined. And something else that’s also working for us,’ Sanderson said. The Board Room is immediately above the battery room and for the rest of today the Board will be in session almost continuously.’

Tom didn’t seem to hear. He sat. elbows on his knees, his hands cupped over his mouth and nose. Sanderson waited. ‘How will you do it?’ he asked.

Tom looked up. ‘Very simple,’ he said. ‘Overcharge them. Put such a bloody voltage across them they’ll blow up. Once you’ve got me to the regulators I’ll make every one of those batteries a bomb.’

For the next ten minutes Sanderson described the corridor and the stairs that led to the battery room and every other detail of the room itself. Essential geography if Tom was to walk from his room on his own and not fail in that final act of sabotage.

‘How long will it take to overcharge them, McCullin?’ ‘Depends how much power’s available. Possibly an hour. Maybe a little more.’

Then we had better start immediately after the next change of shift at two. The next is at four and we can’t afford an overlap of men.’

Tom looked at his watch. ‘Okay, we’ll go in ten minutes. As soon as the new man takes over send him here, any excuse you like. I’ll look after him when he comes in.’

At six minutes past two the man came in. At eight minutes past two plus forty seconds he was unconscious on the bed, tied down with strips of sheet and gagged with his own handkerchief. He was covered up to nose level with a blanket and turned on his side, facing the wall. A casual visitor might easily think he had seen Tom asleep. Hopefully there would be no visitors.

At nine minutes past two, dressed in the man’s white overalls, Tom left the room, locking the door after him. Just before he did, unable as always to resist temptation, he picked up the hip flask and the little whisky left in it and put it in his overall pocket Guided by Sanderson’s instructions, he turned left towards the stairs, went up the first half flight, turned right and up the second to an identical white-tiled corridor. He could faintly hear the generators at the far end. The smell of antiseptic was on this floor too and he could feel the fast movement of cool air as he passed the air-conditioning louvres in the ceiling.

The door was not marked but as he opened it he knew it was the right one. He could feel the pressure of the rubber door seals and the snap as they broke apart. And the smell, the unmistakable acid smell of the batteries.

The room was exactly as Sanderson had described. Enormous. The batteries in their square white plastic shells were stacked nine feet high, back to back in rows running the length of the room. In between them, shoulder width, were narrow inspection alleys, and suspended from the ceiling was a system of pulleys and lifting gear on roller bearings for battery maintenance and replacement.

‘Here, McCullin.’ Sanderson beckoned from one of the centre rows.

Tom followed him into the maze, left and right and then left again, his sense of direction suddenly lost, following Sanderson’s back. They came out to what must have been the far side of the room, possibly thirty feet lower down from the door. A bench, two chairs, rows of twenty-gallon plastic containers stencilled DISTILLED WATER stood at the side of a small low square door marked DANGER.

Tom stood inside the regulator room on a hard black rubber grid raised from the floor. The room was crammed on every wall with racks, switches, meters and coloured cables neatly paralleled in brass clamps. It looked like a giant’s fuse box. Dials the size of dinner plates were grouped in sets of eight, and red markings on them indicated maximum charge.

There was no master regulator, as Tom had expected. In stead, the racks were duplicated, each one governing its own grouping of batteries, each one with its own automatic failsafe system hidden way back inside the body of the racks.

So there was no single switch that would sabotage the system. Every one of the fifteen racks would have to be jammed. And there just wasn’t the time to do it.

But as he got used to their geometry he saw, set into a recess three inches deep, top centre of each rack, a small black square switch. Written in a semi-circle under each was HIGH RATE BOOSTER. A chrome locking-pin went through the switches’ centres and attached to them were red plastic discs with BOOSTER TEN MINUTES MAX embossed on them.

Quickly, one by one, Tom pulled out the fifteen locking pins and fifteen times he turned the booster switches to MAXIMUM. Needles on the dinner plate dials swung round beyond their red danger markings and began bouncing at the end of their clockwise travel.

Tom looked at his watch. Twenty past two. He left the regulator room and jammed open the door marked DANGER.

‘Right,’ he said to Sanderson, ‘now we start looking for the air-conditioning control.’

On the floor every ten yards for the length of the inspection alleys were steel grids, and directly above them, in the ceiling, identical ones made of aluminium. Tom could feel the cold draught of air pushed in from the grids underneath him and sucked out through the ceiling. A constant flow of fresh air was an essential safety feature.

‘But surely,’ Sanderson said, ‘the control needn’t be here?’

‘It has to be,’ Tom replied. ‘Men wouldn’t work here otherwise; these batteries are dangerous bloody things. There’s probably two separate controls, one for air temperature, the other some kind of sensor to detect any escape of gases. In about ten minutes’ time when the batteries begin to overcharge, that sensor will pick up the first traces of gas and it’ll set off its own alarm.’

He looked around him. ‘Start that end of the room and I’ll go off this way. They’ll be on the ceiling or high up on the wall.’

Separately they moved backwards and forwards in the maze, their eyes searching above the white banks of batteries. Six minutes later Sanderson found them, two plastic boxes, a little over a foot square, suspended in the right angle where the ceiling met the wall midway along the room.

Tom climbed the racks that held the batteries. The plastic covers on the control boxes were not screwed in but held in position by spring clips. He pulled them away. A circuit diagram was printed on the inside of the cover, and as he’d hoped for, the air conditioning was quite independent from the rest of the house, with its own ducting fan and thermostat. Fresh air was drawn in from outside at ground level by the fan, filtered, humidified and pumped through the grids into the room.

The amount of fresh air was governed by a fresh air damper control which was marked on the control box. It opened or closed the louvres at ground level as the temperature of the room varied. If it was too warm they opened, too cold they closed. In the closed position a second control, a return air damper, merely recirculated the air in the room.