Circus (23 page)

The silence was very loud.

‘You haven't left me much choice, have you? So what would you have me do? Execute him in the sacred name of patriotism?'

There was no immediate answer to this because he'd left them without the option of an answer. Then Kan Dahn said: ‘You have to take him back home.'

Van Diemen's door was locked. Ran Dahn leaned on it and it was no longer locked. It crashed back against its hinges and Bruno was the first in, Schmeisser levelled – it had occurred to him, not, fortunately, too belatedly, that, without some recognizably offensive weapon, they were at a distinct disadvantage – a wandering guard, seeing them apparently unarmed, would be sorely tempted to cut loose with whatever weapon
he
might possess.

The startled man, propped on one elbow and rubbing sleep from his eyes, had a lean aristocratic face, grey hair, grey moustache and grey beard: he looked the exact antithesis of the mad scientist of popular conception. His unbelieving eyes switched from the intruders to a bell-push on his bedside table.

‘Touch that and you're dead.' Bruno's voice carried utter conviction. Van Diemen was convinced. Roebuck advanced to the bell-push and sliced the flexible lead with the wire-cutters.

‘Who are you? What do you want?' Van Diemen's voice was steady, seemingly without fear: he had about him the look of a man who has suffered too much to be afraid of anything any more.

‘We want you. We want the plans of your antigravity invention.'

‘I see. You can have me any time. Alive or dead. To get the plans you'll have to kill me first. They're not here anyway.'

‘You said the last two sentences the wrong way round. Tape his mouth and tie his hands behind his back. Then we look. For papers, keys, perhaps even one key.'

The search, which lasted perhaps ten minutes and left Van Diemen's quarters in an indescribable shambles, yielded precisely nothing. Bruno stood in momentary indecision. For all he knew, time might be running out very fast indeed.

‘Let's try his clothes.'

They tried his clothes. Again they found nothing. Bruno advanced on the bound and gagged figure sitting up in bed, regarded him thoughtfully for a moment, then reached down and gently lifted the gold chain he wore round his neck. No crucifix for Van Diemen, no Star of David, but something that was probably even more precious to him than those could have been to a Catholic or Jew: dangling from the end of the chain was a bright and intricately-cut bronze key.

Two whole walls of Van Diemen's main office were lined with metal filing cabinets. Fourteen in all, each with four sliding drawers. Fifty-six holes. Roebuck was unsuccessfully trying his thirtieth. Every pair of eyes in the office looked at him intently. All except Bruno's. His did not leave Van Diemen's face, which had remained expressionless throughout. Suddenly there was a tic at the corner of his mouth.

‘That one,' Bruno said.

That one it was. The key turned easily and Roebuck pulled the drawer out. Van Diemen tried to throw himself forward, which, if an understandable reaction, was a futile one, for Kan Dahn had one massive arm around him. Bruno advanced to the drawer, started leafing quickly through the files. He picked out one sheaf of papers, checked the other files, double-checked them and closed the drawer.

Roebuck said: ‘Yes?'

‘Yes.' Bruno thrust the files deep inside the inner pocket of his garish suit.

Roebuck said complainingly: ‘Seems like a bit of an anticlimax.'

‘I wouldn't worry about that,' Bruno said encouragingly. ‘The climax may still be to come.'

They descended to the eighth floor. Van Diemen had his mouth taped and hands bound behind his back, for the prison staff lived there and it seemed highly likely that Van Diemen might have wished
to call attention to their presence. There were no guards here, either asleep or awake, and no reason why there should have been: guards were expendable but Van Diemen's papers were not.

Bruno headed directly for the door at the foot of the stairs. It was not locked and neither were the filing cabinets inside, and again there was no reason why any of them should have been. Bruno began opening filing drawers in swift succession, extracting files, leafing through them rapidly and discarding them in turn by the elementary process of dropping them on the floor.

Roebuck looked at him in some puzzlement and said: ‘A moment ago you were in one Godalmighty damned hurry to get out. What place is this anyway?'

Bruno looked at him briefly. ‘You forget the note you passed me?'

‘Ah!'

‘Yes, ah. “4.30. West entrance. No question. My life on it.” They keep the prison records here.'

Bruno offered no further explanation to anyone. Suddenly he appeared to find what he wanted, a highly detailed schematic diagram with rows of names printed on one side. He glanced briefly at it, nodded in what appeared to be some satisfaction, dropped it to the floor and turned away.

Roebuck said: ‘We are doing our mentalist bit again?'

‘Something like that.'

They eschewed the elevator, walked down to the fifth floor, and crossed to the detention block by way of the glass-enclosed passageway. There was an admitted element of risk in this, but slight: the only people who might reasonably have been expected to have a watchful eye on that goldfish bowl corridor were the watch-tower guards and they were in no condition to have their eyes on anything.

Bruno halted the others as they reached the closed door at the far end of the passageway. ‘Wait. I know where the guardroom is – just round the corner to the left. What I don't know is whether the guards will be patrolling.'

Roebuck said: ‘So?'

‘There's only one way to find out.'

‘I'll come with you.'

‘No. Nobody's recognized you yet. I don't intend that anyone shall. Don't forget that true trouper Roebuck is performing tonight. And Kan Dahn. And Manuelo. And not forgetting, of course, Vladimir and Yoffe.'

Manuelo looked at him in something approaching stupefaction.

‘Your brothers?'

‘Of course. They're here. Where else do you think they would have been taken?'

‘But – but the ransom demands?'

‘Courtesy of the secret police. So my brothers can perform with impunity. Nobody's got anything against them. How can they? They were just
pawns, hostages for my good conduct. And do you think the police are going to admit they abducted them and sent ransom demands? Now that
would
cause an international uproar.'

Manuelo said complainingly: ‘You do play cards pretty close to the chest.'

‘It's one of the better ways of surviving.'

‘And how are you going to survive any longer?'

‘I'm getting out of here.'

‘Sure. No problem. You just flap your arms and fly away.'

‘More or less. Roebuck has a little gadget in that bag of his. I just operate it and a whirlygig should be here in about twenty minutes.'

‘Whirlygig? Helicopter? From where, for God's sake?'

‘American naval vessel lying offshore.'

There was no ready answer to this. Then Roebuck said: ‘Very, very close to the chest. That means that you're the only one of us who's leaving?'

‘I'm taking Maria. The police have recorded evidence that she's up to her ears in this.'

They stared at him in complete incomprehension. ‘I think I forgot to mention. She's a CIA agent.'

Roebuck said heavily: ‘Very, very, very close. And how do you propose to get her?'

‘Go up to the circus for her.'

Kan Dahn shook his head sadly. ‘Quite, quite mad.'

‘Would I be here if I weren't?' He depressed the top knob of the black pen, slipped off the safety catch on his machine-pistol and cautiously eased open the door.

It was a prison just like any other prison, rows of cells on four sides of the block, passageways with four-feet-high railings bordering the deep well that ran the full vertical height of the building. As far as Bruno could see there was no one on patrol, certainly not on that fifth floor. He moved out to the railing, glanced up and then down the fifty-foot drop to the concrete below. It was impossible to be certain, but there appeared to be no one on patrol, nor could he hear anything. And prison guards, especially military guards, are not noted for the lightness of their steps.

Light came from a glass-fronted door about twenty feet to his left. Bruno pussy-footed his way towards it and peered in. There were two guards and two only, seated one on either side of a small table. Quite clearly they weren't expecting any senior officers or NCOs around on a tour of inspection, for they had a bottle on the table and a glass apiece. They were playing the inevitable cards.

Bruno pushed the door open. Both men turned their heads and looked down the uninviting muzzle of the Schmeisser.

‘On your feet.'

They complied with alacrity.

‘Hands behind your necks. Close your eyes. Tight.'

They wasted no time over this either. Bruno pulled out the gas pen, squirted it twice, then whistled softly for the others to join him. While they were immobilizing the two guards, Bruno inspected the rows of numbered keys hanging on the guard-room wall.

On the seventh floor, Bruno selected the key numbered 713 and opened the cell door. The two brothers, Vladimir and Yoffe, stared at him in open disbelief, then rushed out and hugged him wordlessly. Bruno pushed them smilingly aside, selected more keys, opened up 714 then 715 and 716 in succession. Bruno, standing outside 715, smiled without mirth at his two brothers, companions and Van Diemen, who had moved up to join him.

He said: ‘A rather nice touch, don't you think, to lock all the Wildermanns up together?'

The three doors opened almost simultaneously and three people made their way, two with very faltering footsteps, out into the passageway. The two who could not walk too well were old and stooped and grey, one who had been a man, the other who had been a woman, their prison pallor faces lined with suffering and pain and privation. The third figure had been a young man but was no longer young, except in years.

The old woman stared at Bruno with dull lack-lustre eyes. She said: ‘Bruno.'

‘Yes, Mother.'

‘I knew you would come some day.'

He put his arm round the frail shoulders. ‘I'm sorry I took so long.'

‘Touching,' Dr Harper said. ‘How very, very touching.'

Bruno removed his arm and turned round unhurriedly. Dr Harper, using Maria Hopkins as a shield, had a silenced pistol in one hand. Beside him, smiling wolfishly, Colonel Sergius was similarly armed. Behind them stood the giant Angelo, whose preferred form of weapon was a giant lethal club the size of a baseball bat.

Harper went on: We're not interrupting, are we? I mean, you weren't thinking of going some place?'

‘We had that in mind.'

‘Drop that machine-pistol,' Sergius ordered.

Bruno stooped, placed it on the ground, then, as he came upright, moved with lightning speed, grabbed Van Diemen and held him before him as a shield. With his other hand he got the red dart pen from his breast pocket, depressed the knob, and pointed it over Van Diemen's shoulder at Harper's face. At the sight of the pen Harper's face widened in fear and the finger tightened on the trigger of the silenced gun.

Sergius, no longer smiling, said viciously: ‘Drop that. I can get you from the side.' Which was an
accurate observation, but, unfortunately for Sergius, he had transferred his attention to Bruno while he was speaking, a period of about two seconds, and for a man possessed of the cobra speed and accuracy of Manuelo two seconds was a laughably long time. Sergius died unawares, the knife buried to the haft in his throat.

Two seconds after that both Van Diemen and Harper were on the floor, Van Diemen with the bullet intended for Bruno buried in his chest, Harper with the dart buried in his cheek. Angelo, his face contorted in fury, made an animal noise deep in the throat and leapt forward, his huge club swinging. Kan Dahn, moving forward even more quickly, and with astonishing agility for a man of his immense bulk, avoided the downward blow, wrenched the club from Angelo and tossed it contemptuously to one side. The struggle that followed was as titanic as it was brief, and the sound of Angelo's neck breaking was that of a rotten bough shearing under the woodman's axe.

Bruno put one arm round the violently trembling girl, the other round the stunned, terrified and uncomprehending old woman.

He said: ‘Fine.
Terminé
. It's all over and you're all safe now. I think we should leave this place now. You won't really mind will you, Father?' The old man gazed at the prostrate figures and said nothing. Bruno went on, to no one in particular: ‘About Van Diemen I'm sorry. But perhaps it's best. He'd really no place left to go.'

Kan Dahn said: ‘No place?'

‘In his world, yes. In mine, not. He was completely amoral – not immoral – in devising so fiendish a weapon. A totally unheeding, irresponsible man. I know it's a very cruel thing to say, but the world can well do without him.'

Maria said: ‘Why did Dr Harper come for me? He kept saying something about his transmitter and tapes being missing from his railway compartment.'

‘Yes. It had to be something like that. Roebuck here stole them. Can't trust those Americans.'

‘You don't trust me very much. You don't tell me very much.' There was no reproach in her voice, just a lack of understanding. ‘But perhaps you can tell me what happens when Dr Harper comes to.'

‘Dead men don't come to. Not on this planet, anyway.'

‘Dead?' She had no emotions left to register.

‘Those darts were tipped with lethal poison. Some form of refined curare, I should imagine. I was supposed to kill some of their own men. Fortunately, I had to use it on a guard dog. Now a very dead guard dog.'

‘Kill their own men?'

‘It would have looked very black for me – and America – if I'd killed some of the guards here, then been caught red-handed. Their own men. People like Harper and Sergius are men without hearts, without souls. They'd shoot their own
parents if it served their personal political ends. It was also slated, incidentally, that you should die. I had, of course, been instructed not to use the dart gun on Van Diemen on the pretext that he had a weak heart. Well, God knows he's got a weak enough heart now – Harper put a bullet through it.' He looked at Maria. ‘You know how to operate the call-up on the transmitter – Roebuck has it in his bag there?' She nodded. ‘Right, send the signal now.' He turned to Kan Dahn, Roebuck and Manuelo. ‘Bring my folks down slowly, will you? They can't hurry. I'll wait below.'