The Tightrope Men / The Enemy (19 page)

She looked down at the straggly lawn. ‘I don’t suppose it matters,’ she said dispiritedly. ‘My husband says the grass doesn’t grow as well here as down south where we come from. Would you like something to eat?’

‘We brought our own sandwiches,’ said Carey gravely.

‘I’ll make you tea,’ she said decisively, and went back to the house.

‘Nice woman,’ commented Carey. ‘It’s midday, when all good workers down tools for half an hour.’

They ate their sandwiches sitting on the lawn, and drank the glasses of lemon tea which the woman brought to them. She did not stay to make small talk, for which Carey was thankful. He bit into a sandwich and said meditatively, ‘I suppose this is where Merikken and his family were killed—with the exception of young Harri.’ He pointed to the house. ‘That end looks newer than the rest.’

‘Was there much bombing here?’ asked Armstrong.

‘My God; this place was in the front line for a time—the sky must have been full of bombers.’

Armstrong sipped the hot tea. ‘How do we know the trunk is still here? Any keen gardener might have dug it up. What about Kunayev himself?’

‘Let’s not be depressing,’ said Carey. ‘It’s time you started to dig. I’ll give you a reading and then let you do the work, as befits my station in life.’ He walked across the lawn, searched
the area briefly with the detector, and stuck a pencil upright in the ground. ‘That’s it. Take out the turves neatly.’

So Armstrong began to dig. He laid the turves on one side and tried to put each spadeful of soil into as neat a heap as he could. Carey sat under the tree and watched him, drinking the last of his tea. Presently Armstrong called him over. ‘How deep is this thing supposed to be?’

‘About two feet.’

‘I’m down two and a half and there’s still nothing.’

‘Carry on,’ said Carey. ‘Meyrick could have been in error.’

Armstrong carried on. After a while he said, ‘I’m down another foot and still nothing.’

‘Let’s see what the gadget says.’ Carey put on the earphones and lowered the detector into the hole. He switched on and hastily adjusted the gain. ‘It’s there,’ he said. ‘Must be a matter of inches. I’ve just had my ears pierced.’

‘I’ll go down a bit more,’ said Armstrong. ‘But it’ll be difficult without enlarging the hole.’ Again he drove the spade into the earth and hit something solid with a clunk. ‘Got it!’ He cleared as much as he could with the spade and then began to scrabble with his hands. After five minutes he looked up at Carey.

‘You know what we’ve found?’

‘What?’

Armstrong began to laugh. ‘A water pipe.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ said Carey. ‘Come out of that hole and let me see.’ He replaced Armstrong in the hole and felt the rounded shape of the metal and the flange. He dug away more earth and exposed more metal, then he got out of the hole.

Armstrong was still chuckling, and Carey said, ‘Fill in that hole and go gently. It’s an unexploded bomb.’

Armstrong’s laughter died away thinly.

‘250 kilograms, I’d say,’ said Carey. ‘The equivalent of our wartime 500-pounder.’

They were grouped around Denison who lay prone on the ground. ‘Don’t move him,’ warned Harding. ‘I don’t know what he’ll have apart from concussion.’ Very carefully he explored Denison’s skull. ‘He’s certainly been hit hard.’

Diana looked at McCready. ‘Who by?’ McCready merely shrugged.

Harding’s long fingers were going over Denison’s torso. ‘Let’s turn him over—very gently.’ They turned Denison over on to his back and Harding lifted one eyelid. The eye was rolled right back in the head, and Lyn gave an involuntary cry.

‘Excuse me, Doctor,’ said Diana, and her hand went to Denison’s shirt pocket. She got up off her knees and jerked her head at McCready. They walked back to the middle of the camp. ‘The plan and the notebook are gone,’ she said. ‘He carried them in the button-down pocket of his shirt. The button has been torn off and the pocket ripped. The question is by whom?’

‘It wasn’t the Yanks,’ said McCready. ‘I saw them well off down-river. And it wasn’t the other mob, either; I’ll stake everything on that.’

‘Then who?’

McCready shook his head irritably. ‘By God!’ he said. ‘There’s someone around here cleverer than I am.’

‘I’d better not comment on that,’ said Diana tartly, ‘You might get annoyed.’

‘It doesn’t really matter, of course,’ said McCready. ‘We were expecting it, anyway.’

‘But we were expecting to use it to find out who the opposition is.’ She tapped him on the chest. ‘You know what this means. There are three separate groups after us.’ She ticked them off on her fingers. ‘The Americans; another crowd who is vaguely Slav—Russians, Poles, Bulgarians, Yugoslavs, take your pick—and now someone mysterious whom we haven’t even seen.’

‘It’s what Carey was expecting, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but it’s worrying all the same. Let’s see how Denison is.’

They went back to the rock where Lyn was saying worriedly, ‘It is just concussion, isn’t it?’

‘I’m not too sure,’ said Harding. ‘Lyn, you’ll find a black box in my pack about half-way down. Bring it, will you?’

Lyn ran off and McCready went down on his knees by Denison. ‘What’s wrong with him apart from a crack on the head?’

‘His pulse is way down, and I’d like to take his blood pressure,’ said Harding. ‘But there’s something else. Look at this.’ He took Denison’s arm by the wrist and lifted it up. When he let go the arm stayed there. He took the arm and bent it at the elbow, and again it stayed in the position into which he had put it.

McCready drew in his breath sharply. ‘You can mould the man like modelling clay,’ he said in wonder. ‘What is it?’

‘A form of catalepsy,’ said Harding.

That did not mean much to McCready. ‘Does it usually accompany concussion?’

‘Not at all. It’s the first time I’ve seen it induced by a knock on the head. This is most unusual.’

Lyn came back and held out the box to Harding. ‘Is this what you wanted?’

He nodded briefly, took out an elastic bandage of a sphygmometer and bound it around Denison’s arm. He pumped the rubber bulb, and said, ‘His blood pressure is down, too.’ He unwrapped the bandage. ‘We’ll carry him back and put him into a sleeping bag to keep him warm.’

‘That means we don’t move from here,’ said McCready.

‘We can’t move him,’ said Harding. ‘Not until I can find out what’s wrong with him, and that, I’m afraid, is mixed up with what’s been done to him.’

A bleak expression came over McCready’s face. If they stayed at the camp they’d be sitting ducks for the next crowd of international yobbos.

Lyn said, ‘Is he conscious or unconscious, Doctor?’

‘Oh, he’s unconscious,’ said Harding. ‘Blanked out completely.

Harding was wrong.

Denison could hear every word but could not do a thing about it. When he tried to move he found that nothing happened, that he could not move a muscle. It was as though something had chopped all control from the brain. He had felt Harding moving his limbs and had tried to do something about it but he had no control whatever.

What he did have was a splitting headache.

He felt himself being lifted and carried and then put into a sleeping bag. After a few minutes he was lapped around in warmth. Someone had tucked the hood of the bag around his head so that sounds were muffled and he could not hear what was said very clearly. He wished they had not done that. He tried to speak, willing his tongue to move, but it lay flaccid in his mouth. He could not even move his vocal cords to make the slightest sound.

He heard a smatter of conversation…‘still breathing…automatic functions unimpaired…side…tongue out…choking…’ That would be Harding.

Someone rolled him on to his side and he felt fingers inserted into his mouth and his tongue pulled forward.

After a little while he slept.

And dreamed.

In his dream he was standing on a hillside peering through the eyepiece of a theodolite. Gradually he became aware that the instrument was not a theodolite at all—it was a cine camera. He even knew the name of it—it was an Arriflex. And the small speck of blue lake in the distance became one of the blue eyes of a pretty girl.

He pulled back from the view finder of the camera and turned to Joe Staunton, the cameraman. ‘Nice composition,’ he said. ‘We can shoot on that one.’

Great slabs of memory came slamming back into place with the clangour of iron doors.

‘It’s no good, Giles,’ said Fortescue. ‘It’s becoming just that bit too much. You’re costing us too much money. How the hell can you keep control when you’re pissed half the time?’ His contempt came over like a physical blow. ‘Even when you’re not drunk you’re hung over.’ Fortescue’s voice boomed hollowly as though he was speaking in a cavern. ‘You can’t rely on the Old Pals Act any more. This is the end. You’re out.’

Even in his dream Denison was aware of the wetness of tears on his cheeks.

He was driving a car, the familiar, long-since-smashed Lotus. Beth was beside him, her hair streaming in the wind.

‘Faster!’ she said. ‘Faster!’ His hand fell on the gear lever and he changed down to overtake a lorry, his foot going down on the accelerator.

The scooter shot, insect-like, from the side road right across his path. He swerved, and so did the lorry he was overtaking. Beth screamed and there was a rending, jangle of tearing metal and breaking glass and then nothing.

‘Sorry about that,’ said Staunton. ‘This would have been a good one, but Fortescue won’t have it. What will you do now?’

‘Go home to Hampstead and get drunk,’ said Denison.

Hampstead! An empty flat with no personality. Bare walls with little furniture and many empty whisky bottles.

And then…!

In his dream Denison screamed.

He stirred when he woke up and opened his eyes to find Lyn looking at him. He moistured his lips, and said ‘Beth?’

Her eyes widened and she turned her head. ‘Dr Harding! Dr Harding—he’s…he’s awake.’ There was a break in her voice. When she turned back to him he was trying to get up. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Lie quietly.’ She pushed him back.

‘I’m all right,’ he said weakly.

Harding appeared. ‘All right, Lyn; let me see him.’ He bent over Denison. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Not too bad,’ said Denison. ‘Hell of a headache, though.’ He put up his hand and tenderly felt the back of his head. ‘What happened?’

‘Somebody hit you.’

Denison fumbled with his other hand inside the sleeping bag, groping for his shirt pocket. ‘They got the plan.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Lyn. ‘Giles, it doesn’t matter.’

‘I know.’ He levered himself up on one elbow and accepted the pills Harding gave him and washed them down with water. ‘I think I gave you a shock, Doctor.’

‘You were aware?’ asked Harding in surprise.

‘Yes. Another thing—I’ve got my memory back.’

‘All of it?’

Denison frowned. ‘How would I know? I’m not sure.’

‘We won’t go into that now,’ said Harding quickly. ‘How do you feel physically?’

‘If you let me stand up I’ll tell you.’ He got out of the sleeping bag and stood up, supported on Harding’s arm. He swayed for a moment and then shook himself free and took three steps. ‘I seem all right,’ he said. ‘Except for the headache.’

‘The pills ought to clear that up,’ said Harding. ‘But if I were you I wouldn’t be too energetic.’

‘You’re not me,’ said Denison flatly. ‘What time is it? And where are the others?’

‘It’s just after midday,’ said Lyn. ‘And they’re scouting to see if anyone else is around. I think the doctor is right; you ought to take it easy.’

Denison walked to the edge of the bluff, thinking of the perturbation in McCready’s voice when he discovered that, because of the attack on himself, the party was pinned down. ‘I ought to be able to cross the river,’ he said. ‘That might be enough.’

Armstrong was digging another hole. He had filled in the first one and left Carey to replace the turf. Carey did his best but still the lawn in that place was bumpy and uneven and, in the circumstances, he did not feel like stamping it down too hard. He looked towards Armstrong who appeared to be systematically wrecking a flower bed. ‘Found anything?’

‘Not yet.’ Armstrong pushed again with the spade, and then stooped quickly. ‘Wait! I think there’s some—’ before he finished the sentence Carey was by his side—‘thing here.’

‘Let me see.’ Carey put his hand down the hole and felt a flat surface. Flakes of something came away on his fingers and when he brought up his hand his fingerprints were brown. ‘Rust!’ he said. ‘This is it. Careful with that spade.’

He looked back at the house and thought it was fortunate that Mrs K. had gone shopping and taken her son with her. A bit of good for a lot of bad. Earlier in the afternoon she had been out in the garden hanging out the weekly wash to dry, and then she had come over and chatted interminably about the iniquities of the planning authorities, the ridiculous prices in the shops and other matters dear to the housewifely heart. A lot of time had been wasted.

He said, ‘If the trunk is corroded we might be able to rip open the top and take out the papers without making the hole any bigger.’

‘I forgot my tin opener,’ said Armstrong. ‘But this might do.’ He put his hand to the side of his leg and from the long pocket of the overalls designed to take a foot rule he extracted a sheathed knife. ‘Bought it in Helsinki; thought it might come in handy.’

Carey grunted as he saw the design. He took the knife from the sheath and examined the broad blade and the simple wooden handle. ‘The Yanks think Jim Bowie invented these,’ he said. ‘Don’t ever try to tackle a Finn with one; they’re better at it than you. And probably the Russians, too, in these parts. It’ll do quite nicely.’

He cleared earth from the top of the trunk until about a square foot of rusty metal was showing, then he stabbed at it with the sharp point of the knife. The metal was rotten and the knife punched through with ridiculous ease. He enlarged the hole and bent up the metal into a tongue which he could hold in his fingers. He gripped it and pulled and there was a tearing sound.

Within five minutes he had made a hole in the trunk big enough to take his hand, and he groped inside and touched a hard square edge. His fingers curled around what felt like a book but when he tried to pull it out he found he was in the position of the monkey gripping the nut inside the bottle. The book was too big to come through the hole so he dropped it and concentrated on making the hole bigger.

At last he was able to get the book out. It was a school exercise book with hard covers and, when he flicked the pages, he saw mathematical symbols and lengthy equations in profusion. ‘Jackpot!’ he said exultantly.

The next thing out of the lucky dip was a roll of papers held by a rubber band. The rubber snapped at a touch but the papers, long rolled, held their curvature and he unrolled them with difficulty. The first pages were written in Finnish in a tight handwriting and the first
mathematical equation came on the fourth page. From then on they were more frequent until the final pages were solid mathematics.

‘How do we know what we’re looking for?’ asked Armstrong.

‘We don’t—we take the lot.’ Carey dived into the hole again and groped about. Within ten minutes he had cleared the box which proved to be only half full but, even so, the books and papers made a big stack.

Carey took some folded paper bags from his pocket. ‘Fill that hole; I’ll take care of the loot.’ He looked at his watch with worried eyes. ‘We haven’t much time.’

He filled three stout kraft-paper bags with documents and sealed them with sticky tape. Armstrong said, ‘There’s not enough earth to go back. It’s filling the trunk.’

‘I’ll see to that,’ said Carey. ‘You nip along and fetch that wheelbarrow. You know where it’s planted.’

‘The empty house at the end of the street. I hope young Virtanen parked it in the right place.’

‘You’ll soon find out. Get going.’ Carey began to fill in the hole and, as Armstrong had said, there was not enough earth, so he took more from other parts of the flower bed and took care not to pack it too tightly. It took him quite a while but when he had finished Armstrong had not yet returned.

He took the brown paper bags from where they had been lying among the long-stemmed flowers and hid them more securely in some shrubbery. His watch told him that time was running out; they had to get back to the paper mill and smuggle the papers aboard the bus. That had been arranged for but it would take time and there was little of that left.

Impatiently he went to the front gate and was relieved to see Armstrong trudging back with the wheelbarrow. ‘What kept you?’

‘The damn fool
hid
it,’ said Armstrong savagely. ‘What did you tell him to do?’

‘To put it just inside the wall and out of sight.’

‘He put the bloody thing in the cellar,’ said Armstrong. ‘I had to search the house to find it.’

‘A misunderstanding—but we’ve got it. Come on.’

They put the documents into the wheelbarrow and covered the bags with dirty sacking. Armstrong put the spade and the detector on top and picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow. He was about to push off when he stopped. ‘Someone’s coming.’

Carey turned. A man was coming up the garden from the side of the house. His whole attitude was one of suspicion. ‘What are you doing in my garden?’

Carey stepped forward. ‘Grazhdaninu Kunayev?’

‘Yes.’

Carey reeled out his story, then said, ‘Your wife knows about it, of course. We’ve made very little disturbance.’

‘You’ve been digging holes? Where?’

Carey pointed. ‘There—on the lawn.’ He refrained from drawing attention to the flower bed.

Kunayev walked over and prodded at the turf with his toe. ‘You’ve been neat, I will say that.’ He stamped hard with his foot, and Armstrong winced, thinking of the bomb below. ‘Does this mean you’ll be coming in earlier?’

Carey frowned. ‘How do you mean?’

‘With the bulldozers.’

‘Not that I know of, comrade. That’s not my department. I’m concerned only with water pipes.’

Kunayev looked at the house. ‘I’ve liked living here; it’s a good place. Now they want to pull it down and put up another damn factory. I ask you; is that right, comrade? Do you think it’s right?’

Carey shrugged. ‘Progress sometimes means sacrifice.’

‘And I’m doing the sacrificing.’ Kunayev snorted. ‘I’m being transferred to the new housing development on the other side of town. A cheap, rotten, new house. Not like this house, comrade; those Finns knew how to build houses.’

‘Meaning that Soviet workers don’t?’ asked Carey suavely.

‘I didn’t say that,’ said Kunayev. He walked towards the wheelbarrow and picked up the detector. ‘Is this your water diviner?’

Carey tightened his lips. ‘Yes.’

‘Like the mine detector I used during the war. I was at Stalingrad, comrade. Fourteen years old I was then.’ He strolled towards the fence separating his garden from the one next door, still holding the detector. ‘Boris Ivanevitch, are you there?’

‘For Christ’s sake!’ whispered Armstrong. ‘What do we do now?’

A woman called back. ‘He’s just going on duty,’

‘Good afternoon, Irina Alexandrovna; ask him to come round here. I have something to show him.’

‘Let’s just leave,’ urged Armstrong.

‘We can’t leave without that detector,’ said Carey through his teeth. ‘It would look too suspicious.’

Kunayev came back from the fence. He had put on the earphones. ‘Seems to work just like a mine detector, too. Not as big and heavy, of course; but they’re clever with their electronics these days.’

‘It works on a different principle,’ said Carey. ‘But we’ve finished here, Grazhdaninu Kunayev; we must go about our work.’

‘No great hurry, comrade,’ said Kunayev carelessly. He walked over to the patch of relaid turf. ‘You say you found your water pipe here?’

‘A pipe junction,’ said Carey, gritting his teeth.

Kunayev nicked a switch and walked back and forth several times. ‘It works,’ he said. ‘I could find that junction blind-fold—see if I can’t.’ He closed his eyes and walked back and forward again. ‘Am I there?’

‘Right on the spot,’ said Armstrong.

Kunayev opened his eyes and looked past them. ‘Ah, Boris Ivanevitch,’ he said. ‘You’ll be interested in this.’

Carey turned around and felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. Boris Ivanevitch was a policeman.