The Dark Crusader (29 page)

"Damn you, Hewell, let me go!" LeClerc's voice was hardly more than a whisper, the trembling whisper of anger out of control. "Take your hand away, I tell you!"

"Stop it, boss." The deep authoritative boom brought normalcy, everyday sanity, back into the blockhouse. "Can't you see the guy's half-dead already. Do you want to kill him? Who's going to fuse up the rocket then?"

There was a few seconds' silence, then LeClerc, in a completely changed tone, said: "Thank you, Hewell. You're quite right, of course. But I had provocation."

"Yeah," Hewell said in his gravelly voice. "You had at that. A clever-clever alec. I'd like to break his goddamned neck, myself."

I wasn't among friends, that was clear enough. But I wasn't worrying about them at that moment, I wasn't even thinking about them, I was too busy worrying and thinking about myself. My left arm and the left side of my face were engaged in a competition to see which could make me jump more and the competition was fierce, but after a while they gave it up and joined forces and the whole left side of my body seemed to merge into one vast agonising pain. I was staring down at the launch console and the various buttons were swimming into focus and out again, one moment gone, the next hopping around like a trayful of jumping beans. Hewell hadn't exaggerated any, if there was one thing that was certain it was that I couldn't take much more of this. I was just slowly coming to pieces. Or perhaps not so slowly.

I heard voices, but whether the voices were directed at me or not I didn't know. I stumbled against a stool and sat down heavily, clinging to the launch console to keep myself from falling.

The voices came again, and this time I could distinguish LeClerc's. He had advanced to within a couple of feet of me, the cane held in both hands, the backs of his thumbs gleaming white as if he were holding himself in check with an effort, as though he were trying to snap the cane in half.

"Do you hear me, Bentall," he said in a low cold voice that I liked even less than his hysterical outburst of a moment ago. "Do you understand what I'm saying to you?"

I stared down at the blood dripping to the concrete floor.

"I want the doctor," I mumbled. My jaws, my mouth were swelling, stiffening up already and I found speech difficult. "My wounds have opened up again."

"The hell with your wounds." The Good Samaritan to the life. "You're going to start on that rocket and you're going to start on it now."

"Ah!" I said. I forced myself to sit straight, and half-shut my eyes until I had him more or less in focus, like an image and six ghosts on a badly-adjusted TV screen. "How are you going to make me? Because you'll have to make me, you know. How? Torture? Bring out the old thumb screws and see if Bentall cares." I was half out of my mind with pain, I didn't know what I was saying. "One turn of the rack and Bentall is
in
a better world. Besides, I wouldn't feel it anyway. And a hand like mine, trembling like a leaf!" I held it up to let him see it trembling like a leaf. "How do you expect me to fuse a tricky-"

He gave me the back of his hand across my mouth, not lightly.

"Shut up," he said coldly. Florence Nightingale would have loved him, he'd exactly the right touch with sick men. "There are other ways. Remember when I asked that stupid young lieutenant a question and he refused to answer? Remember?"

"Yes." It seemed about a month ago but it had been only a few hours. "I remember. You shot a man through the back of the head. The next time the lieutenant did what you wanted."

"Just like you're going to. I'm having a sailor brought here and I'm going to ask you to fuse that rocket. If you won't, I'll have him shot." He snapped his fingers. "Like that!"

"You will, eh?"

He didn't answer, just summoned and spoke to one of the men. The Chinese nodded, turned away and hadn't gone five steps when I said to LeClerc: "Call him back."

"That's better," LeClerc nodded. "You're going to cooperate?"

"Tell him to bring all the other ratings with him. And all the officers. You can shoot the lot of them through the head. See if I care."

LeClerc stared at me.

"Are you quite mad, Bentall?" he demanded at last. "Don't you realise that I mean what I say?"

"And I mean what I say," I answered tiredly. "You forget what I am, LeClerc. I'm a counter-espionage agent and humanitarian principles don't matter a damn to me. You should know that better than anyone. Besides, I know damn well that you're going to murder them all before you leave here. If they shuffle off twenty-four hours ahead of schedule, then what the hell? Go ahead and waste your ammunition."

He looked at me in silence while the seconds passed, while my heart thudded heavily, painfully in my chest, while the palms of my hands grew moist, then turned away. He believed me all right, it was so exactly the way his own ruthless criminal mind would work. He spoke quietly to Hewell, who left with a guard, then turned back to me.

"Everybody has their Achilles' heel, Bentall," he said conversationally. "I believe you love your wife."

The heat inside that reinforced concrete blockhouse was sweltering, over-hot, but I felt myself turn as cold as if I had just stepped into an ice-box. For a moment all the fierceness of the pain left me and all I could feel were goose-pimples running down my arms and back. My mouth was suddenly dry and I could feel deep in my stomach that hellish incapacitating nausea that can spring only from fear. And I was afraid, afraid with a fear I had not before known: I could feel this fear, I could feel it in my hands, I could taste it in my mouth and the taste was the taste of all the unpleasant things I had ever tasted: I could smell it in the air and the smell was an amalgam of all the evil odours I had ever known. God, I should have known this was coming, I thought of her face twisted in pain, the hazel eyes dark in agony, it was the most obvious thing in the world. Only Bentall could have missed it.

"You poor fool," I said contemptuously. It was hard to get the words past my dry mouth and swollen lips, far less inform them with the appropriately scornful tones, but 1 managed it. "She's not my wife. Her name is Marie Hope-man and I met her for the first time exactly six days ago."

"Not your wife, eh?" He didn't seem vastly surprised. "A fellow-employee of yours, one assumes?"

"One assumes correctly. Miss Hopeman is fully aware of the risks involved. She has been a professional government agent for many years. Don't threaten me with Miss Hopeman or she'll laugh in your face."

"Quite so, quite so. An agent, you say. The British Government is to be congratulated, the level of pulchritude among female agents is apt to be dismally low and Miss Hopeman does much to correct the balance. An astonishingly lovely young lady and one whom I, personally, find quite charming." He paused fractionally. "Since she is not your wife you will not mind so much if she accompanies the other ladies towards our destination?"

He was watching me closely to get my reaction, he didn't have to spell it out for me, but he didn't get the reaction. He had a pistol in his right hand now and what with that and the guard's automatic carbine pointing at my middle, there was nothing to be gained by reacting in the only way I felt like, so I said instead: "Destination? What destination would that be, LeClerc? Asia?"

"That should be obvious, I thought."

"And the rocket? Prototype for a few hundreds more?"

"Exactly." He seemed ready to talk, as all men are ready to talk about their obsessions. "Like many Asiatic nations my adopted country has a genius more, shall we say, for refined imitation than original invention. In six months we shall be turning them out in quantity. Rockets, Bentall, are today's bargaining counters at the table of world politics. We need lebensraum for what the papers of the world are pleased to call our teeming millions. The desert of Australia could be made to blossom like a rose. We should like to move in there, peacefully, if possible."

I stared at him. He'd gone off his rocker.

"Lebensraum? Australia? My God, you're mad. Australia! You couldn't catch up with the military potential of Russia or America in a lifetime."

"By which you mean?"

"Do you think either of those countries would stand by and let you run wild in the Pacific? You
are
mad."

"They wouldn't," LeClerc said calmly. "I quite agree. But we can deal with Russia and America. The Black Shrike will do it for us. Its great virtues, as you are well aware, are its complete mobility and the fact that it requires no special launching site. We fit out a dozen vessels-not our own, oh dear me no, but flags of convenience, ships from Panama or Liberia or Honduras-with two or three rockets apiece. Three dozen missiles will be enough, more than enough. We dispatch those vessels to the Baltic and the Kamchatka Peninsula, off the Russian coast, and off Alaska and the Eastern seaboard of the United States: those off the Russian coasts will have their rockets zeroed in on ICBM launching sites in America, those off the American coasts zeroed in on the corresponding sites in the USSR. Then they fire, more or less simultaneously. Hydrogen bombs rain down on America and Russia. The advanced radar stations, their long-range infrared scanners, their electronically relayed satellite photographs of intercontinental missile exhaust trails will show beyond dispute that those rocket-borne hydrogen bombs come from Russia and America. Any doubts left in their minds will be resolved by Moscow and Washington receiving radio messages apparently from each other, each calling upon the other to surrender. The two great world powers then proceed to devastate each other. Twenty-four hours later there will be nothing to prevent us from doing exactly as we wish in the world. Or do you see a serious flaw in my reasoning?"

"You're insane." My voice was strained and hoarse even in my own ears. "You're completely insane."

"If we were to do exactly as I have outlined, I would tend to agree with you, although it may come in the last resort. But it would be most foolish, most ill-advised. Apart from the cloud of radioactive dust that would make the northern hemisphere rather unpleasant for some time, we wish to trade with those two rich and powerful nations. No, no, Bentall, the mere threat, the very possibility will be more than enough.

"Both American and Russian observers will be asked to attend highly convincing tests of the Shrike's-we shall probably rename it-power, pay-load, accuracy and range. Then we shall leak the information that those dozen vessels are strategically placed and also leak our intention of triggering off a war in which the two nations will devastate each other. Then we move on Australia.

"Note, then, the extremely interesting and delicate situation that will develop. One or other of the two great powers may move against us. Immediately it does, hydrogen bombs will fall on that country's territory. Say it was America that moved against us. Bombs devastate their 1CBM launching sites, their Strategic Air Command airfields. But where do those bombs come from? Do they come from us, because America has moved against us? Or do they come from Russia, who sees in this the heaven-sent moment to destroy the United States without the possibility of immediate retaliation against it, knowing that the Americans have no proof that the hydrogen bombs came from Russia and assuming that the Americans will think that the bombs really did come from those strategically placed vessels of ours of which they have heard? But note this further: whether America really believed the hydrogen bombs came from us or not they would be forced to launch an all-out assault against the Soviet Union, for the bombs might just as possibly be coming from there and if they are and the Americans wait too long before launching their counter nuclear assault, the United States will be wiped out of existence. The same would happen, even more certainly, if we launched the missiles against Russia. What it comes to in effect, Bentall, is that both the great countries will know that if either of them moves against us, they will be forced to engage in a nuclear holocaust that may destroy them both. Neither of them will move an inch against us: instead they will combine to use their power to stop other countries like Britain or France moving against us. Or, once again, do you see a serious flaw in my reasoning?"

"You're insane," I repeated. "Completely, hopelessly insane." But they were only words, all conviction had left my voice. He didn't look like a man who was insane. He didn't talk like
&
man who was insane. It was only
what
he said that sounded insane, but it only sounded insane because it was so preposterous, and it was only preposterous because of the gigantic, the unprecedented scale of the blackmail and bluff involved, of the unparalleled deadliness of the threat that backed up the blackmail. But there was nothing insane about blackmail and bluffs and threats, and if a thing is not insane on a normal scale there is no necessary element of insanity introduced when the normal is multiplied to unimaginable proportions. Maybe he wasn't insane after all.

"We shall see, Bentall, we shall see." He turned as the outer door of the blockhouse opened and quickly switched off all the lights except a small bulb burning above the console.

Marie, with Hewell by her side, came into the semi-darkness. She caught sight of me standing there with my back to the light, smiled, took a step towards me then stopped abruptly as LeClerc lifted his cane to bar her passage.

"Sorry to bring you across, Mrs. Bentall," he said. "Or should it be Miss Hopeman? I understand you are not married."

Marie gave him the sort of look I hoped I'd never see coming my way and said nothing.

"Shy?" LeClerc asked. "Or just uncooperative? Like Ben-tall here. He's refusing to cooperate. He won't agree to fuse the Black Shrike."

"Good for him," Marie said.

"I wonder. He may be sorry. Would you like to persuade him, Miss Hopeman?"

"No."

"No? But we might persuade him
through
you, if not by you."

"You're wasting your time," she said contemptuously. "I'm afraid you don't know either of us. And we hardly know each other. I'm nothing to him nor is he anything to me."