The Night of the Triffids (41 page)

    

    

    

    BUNDLED from the water's edge we were dragged deeper into the bushes. I felt the knife blade pricking my skin. I sensed that any stupid movement I might make would be my last.

    A hand grabbed my jaw, pulling my face up towards the light from the street filtering through the branches.

    'What should we do with these two lovebirds?' whispered a voice.

    'Kill them.'

    'But-'

    'And be quick about it. Use the knife.'

    From another direction came a third whispering voice. 'Wait. I've seen that guy's face somewhere before.'

    'So?'

    'Hey, it's the guy who flew us here… the English guy… ahm… Masen. That's it: Masen.'

    'Are you sure?'

    'Yeah, positive.'

    More muttered conferring took place. One voice whispered, 'Wait here. I'll be right back.'

    'Right back' seemed to take a good half-hour. Meanwhile, our captors kept a grip on us. I saw a glittering knife held to Marni's throat, too. Still soaking wet, I felt myself growing numb with cold.

    At last there came a rustling in the bushes.

    A voice whispered, 'Sacramento.'

    My captor replied with a hissed, 'Berlin.'

    More people pushed forward into the bushes. Then a familiar if surprised voice asked, 'David? What on Earth are you doing here?' The hand gripping my jaw released me. I turned to see Gabriel Deeds looking at both Marni and myself in astonishment. A slow grin spreading across his face, he added, 'And why are you naked?'

    Quickly, I told Gabriel what happened, including the grim news that the authorities had found our flying boats. As I talked I gratefully pulled my clothes from the sack and put them on. Marni did the same.

    Gabriel clicked his tongue when he heard about the planes. 'We'll have to find some other route home. But first things first. We'll get you to another safe house until all this is over.'

    'You'll do no such thing. I'm a participant in this venture now. A full and active participant. I'm going to find Kerris and get her out of this place.'

    'If she wants to leave.'

    'Well, I'm going to hear that decision from her own lips.'

    Gabriel nodded. 'OK. But we can't do anything until tomorrow afternoon. All our units are lying doggo until zero hour.'

    'Zero hour?'

    'That's when the fireworks start. I'll explain later.'

    I pulled my flying boots on over my still-damp feet. 'But how did you get down here past the wall?'

    'We went underground again.' He glanced at Marni. 'But I guess your guide didn't know about that particular route.' A small smile touched his lips. 'It would have saved you getting your feet wet… as well as sparing your modesty.'

    With that, he motioned us to follow him. 'Watch where you're walking. The sappers were setting charges down here when they saw you two frolicking in the river.' He nodded to a concrete block of a building not thirty paces away. 'Anti-aircraft installation, so
shhh
.' He put his fingers to his lips.

    Once we were clear of the bushes I saw that the sappers and Gabriel were wearing casual civilian clothes, enabling them to blend in with the ordinary New Yorkers. Gabriel glanced at Marni's ragged clothes and muttered something to one of the sappers who removed his sweater and handed it to Marni. She pulled it on over her own, concealing its rips and darned holes. The borrowed sweater was absurdly long but at least she looked less like an escapee from the slave camp.

    As it was, we didn't have much of a walk. We'd barely gone a block before Gabriel indicated a door beside a still brightly lit cafe. He tapped on the door. It opened an inch or so. Then, when the man on the other side had satisfied himself about Gabriel's identity, he opened the door fully.

    Beyond lay a flight of steps. Gabriel led the way downward to a large basement room. Bales of paper filled half of it. Elsewhere there were makeshift beds on a platform of bales. In one corner someone had stacked cases of canned food and bottled water.

    'Help yourself to supper,' Gabriel invited us with a wave of his hand. 'It's baked beans cold from a can, I'm afraid. But there's plenty of apple pie and cream.' He smiled. 'I thought we should buy in a good stock just in case Sam Dymes drops by.'

    'Where is he?'

    Gabriel gave a shrug. 'Away on business.'

    I looked at Marni. She'd recovered enough from the night swim to eat a hearty supper of cold beans.

    By this time it was three a.m. Over the next three-quarters of an hour more sappers returned from their missions. Straightaway they'd pull off their shoes, then retire to the makeshift beds.

    Gabriel handed blankets out to Marni and myself. Then he said simply, 'Big day tomorrow, David. You best get some rest.'

    I remember thinking quite clearly as I lay down on the lumpy mattress of paper bales that the one thing I wouldn't be able to do was sleep.

    But barely had I closed my eyes, or so it seemed, then I opened them to see Gabriel crouching beside me. Sunlight streamed in from a glazed grating set above my head.

    'There's some coffee,' Gabriel said, his face serious. 'Grab a cup, then come over to the table. There're a few details I need to share with you.'

    I joined him at the table. Above my head tramping feet on the glazed grille told me that the people of Manhattan were going about their business as on any other day. I glanced to a wall where a clock hung from a nail. Chalked beside it was a message to the unit bivouacked here:
Synch Your Watches To This Time.
The clock showed that the time was just a little before ten. I'd slept late. Marni smiled and waved to me from where she sat eating from a can. Pleasingly, she'd been given new clothes, while her long red hair shone from what must have been a damn good brushing. Apart from the scar running across her face she would easily have melted into the city's smart set.

    Gabriel unfolded a map. 'OK,' he said. 'It all happens this afternoon at five… that's the start of the rush hour. Cars will jam the streets. Workers will be crowding the sidewalks and subways as they head home.' He pointed at the map. It showed the characteristic carrot shape of the island of Manhattan. 'We're here, on the Upper East Side. We know that Christina Schofield and Kerris Baedekker are in the Empire State Building.'

    'Does Kerris knows what's happening?'

    'She knows that
something
will happen. But she has no details yet. Torrence has instructed her to be Christina's room-mate to make sure she's happy and entertained before her…' He grimaced. 'Operation.'

    'I saw girls being taken off the streets north of the Parallel yesterday. I guessed that was the start of it.'

    'You guessed right, David. Any woman capable of bearing a child will be impregnated. North of the Parallel it's mandatory. Down here in the city it will just be considered patriotic… but I figure any woman not volunteering to play host to one of Christina's embryos will be coming under lots of pressure to do so. Now… after the debacle of the last attempt to bring Christina out by submarine Torrence has gone all cagey on us.'

    'So Christina won't be moved out to a hospital?'

    'No. Torrence has ordered that a suite of offices near the top of the Empire State be converted into a clinic, complete with its own operating theatre. Once Christian's ovaries have been surgically removed they will be shipped to hospitals and maternity clinics ready for the implantation programme.'

    'So how do we get into the building to bring Christina out?'

    'Good question.' Gabriel assumed a thoughtful pose, his eyes troubled. 'A very good question. We know that it isn't going to be easy. Torrence is very sensitive about his own safety. In buildings immediately surrounding the Empire State he has the bulk of Manhattan's armed forces on permanent standby. They're backed up by tanks and armoured cars. Meanwhile he has his own bodyguard - the Guardsmen - based inside his building. They're a ruthless bunch of thugs who do his dirty work for him.'

    'We've got around sixty Marines. You think we're really going to be able to fight our way into what amounts to a fortress?'

    'No, we can't simply hammer our way in by brute force.' Gabriel tapped a hefty finger on the map. 'Sam Dymes believes our only chance of success is to draw the bulk of Torrence's army to the far south of the island, down here in TriBeCa and Lower Manhattan. He's going to use a strong detachment of Marines, sappers and undercover operatives to strike at the shoreline gun batteries to make Torrence believe this is the prelude to a big seaborne invasion.' Gabriel gave a grim smile. 'Believe it or not, one of our secret weapons is Manhattan's rush hour. The streets will be choked with cars when we launch the attack on the big guns down there on the river banks. Torrence's tanks and armoured cars will have to travel all the way down from Midtown to Lower Manhattan. The distance is no more than a couple of miles but with luck - and a little more mischief on our part - it will take them an hour to get through the traffic'

    'But even so, our Marines are only armed with machine guns at best. They won't stand a chance against tanks.'

    'That's why as soon as the Marines see them arrive they'll disengage their diversionary attack, then head back on foot to the Empire State Building. Oh, and the streets through Greenwich Village are a tad on the narrow side, and we'll leave a few sappers there to mess up the traffic a little more.'

    I looked at the plan. On paper it seemed sound. But something Gabriel had said came back to me. 'You told me that the rush-hour traffic was one of our secret weapons. What's the other?'

    'They don't call us The Foresters for nothing,' Gabriel said. 'For years we've used the triffids as an important line of defence against Torrence. Now we're going to use them again.'

    'How?'

    'See these bridges across the East River? Each one
is
sealed shut with a thirty-foot fence. We've set explosives to blow those fences sky-high at five o'clock sharp.'

    I gave a low whistle.

    Gabriel went on: 'Torrence's people are going to have to contend with a lot of mean triffid plants when they come stomping over the bridges into Manhattan. And every Torrence soldier we can draw away from the Empire State makes our prime objective that little bit easier.'

    'Gabe,' I said, 'there are tens of thousands of men, women and children on this island. They are innocent people who have nothing to do with Torrence's regime. You're going to have their blood on your hands.'

    Gabriel disagreed. 'New Yorkers have a contingency plan. When the alarms sound - and they will be screaming all over this damn city, just you wait and see - then folk will, if they're away from home, take to the subway tunnels for cover. Once the electricity for the rail system is cut off they can accommodate thousands. Trust me, David. The general population will be safe.'

    I took a breath. The idea of encouraging triffids to rampage through a hitherto safe area ran seriously against the grain for me. 'Anything else I should know?'

    'Only that there are a few more surprises in store.'

    'Such as?'

    'Ah, those, David Masen, are kept secret even from me.'

    Indeed, there were surprises to come. But not all of them were planned by the very able Sam Dymes.

    

    

    

    THE build-up to five o'clock that afternoon passed slowly. A painful slowness that the leaden ticking of the clock on the wall did nothing to alleviate.

    By midday most of the unit that had been camping in the basement had left for their respective destinations. I whiled away the time with Marni. She'd found a travel-chess set that had been left by one of the sappers. By the third game, when her queen, rook and bishop were again crowding my king into a corner, I didn't complain when Gabriel said, 'Right, David. Time to kit out.' He nodded towards a packing case from which an assortment of muzzles pointed at the ceiling. 'You know how to handle a sub-machine gun and grenades?'

    I told him I did.

    'Good. Take your pick. The Ingram's the lightest to carry but the old M3A1 packs more of a punch. Oh.' He'd remembered a detail. 'Later, when the balloon goes up, if someone you don't know shouts the word "Sacramento" at you, answer "Berlin". Otherwise they're likely to shoot you dead.'

    A useful bit of information. I hoped I'd remember it when the time came.

    

    

    Five o'clock. Rush hour. The sound of traffic grew louder outside. More feet pitter-pattered over the glazed grille. What I did not hear were any explosions. Nor the gunfire of Foresters attacking gun batteries down in the south of Manhattan.

    Gabriel Deeds must have read my thoughts. 'We're too far away to hear any of the bridge gates being blown. Which will make life easier for us for the time being. Ready?'

    I nodded.

    Apart from Marni, Gabriel and myself there were five Foresters. All carried weapons concealed in a variety of ways, either in bags or musical instrument cases. Gabriel carried a submachine gun and a satchel of grenades in a guitar case. My submachine gun found a snug but temporary home in a canvas holdall.

    Gabriel addressed everyone. 'OK. It's five. The attacks will have started. It'll take at least a few minutes for the news to be made public. So, for the time being, when we go up onto the street, spread out, walk in pairs… and I mean
walk.
Look as if you're just wanting to get home after a long day at the office.' He nodded to each of us in turn. 'And good luck. I want to see every one of you people going home. Right-oh, Benjamin, lead us out.'