Yesterday's Spy (27 page)

When the second man stamped his feet, a third sentry moved. This one was up the slope to the rear of the house. I swung the night-scope to see him. He'd unbuttoned his overcoat and, after a considerable search of his clothing, he brought out cigarettes and matches and lit up.

‘That lame-brain is asking for it,' whispered Schlegel.

It was true that he'd offered himself as an easy target to anyone within range. For a moment I was puzzled by his action.

Even an imbecilic sentry should know enough to step behind cover while he strikes a match, if only to keep it secret from his sergeant. And then I understood. ‘They're not sentries,' I told Schlegel. Each one of them was facing the wrong way, which was probably why we'd got so close without being detected. ‘They're
guards
.'

I crawled forward to get under the shelter of the low stone wall that separated the yard from the long meadow. Would they patrol, I wondered, and which side of the wall did our fellow keep to?

I waited while Schlegel moved up to me. ‘Champion is in there,' I said. ‘They are holding him.'

He didn't answer for a moment or two. Then he said, ‘The imbecile would be our best chance.'

The kitchen door opened, making a bright-yellow smoke-filled prism. Out of the kitchen came a man. A smell of burning fat confirmed that he was the cook. To be that indifferent to the police patrols they must obviously be about to pull out.

‘Champion is a prisoner in there,' I told Schlegel.

‘I heard you the first time,' he said.

‘I want a closer look.'

He thought about it for a moment or two. ‘Give me that night-scope.'

‘I'd better look inside the house,' I said. He didn't reply. I wondered if he'd heard my whisper.

He stretched forward to hand me a Walther P.38 and four magazines of bullets. I pushed it into the waistband of my trousers.

I waited until the nearest guard moved down to exchange a word with the man who was still coughing his heart out in the back yard. I vaulted over the low stone wall, lost my balance on the dew-wet stones, and slid down the incline, to land in a heap against a neatly stacked log-pile. I remained dead-still, hardly daring to breathe, but the lung-racking coughs were loud enough to prevent the clatter of my fall from reaching the men in the yard.

I looked back to where Schlegel lay hidden. The lens of his night-scope caught the light from the kitchen window, and flashed like a searchlight. Seen from this end, it was a dangerous toy, but I could do nothing to warn Schlegel now.

Beyond the stacked logs there was the door to the dairy. I crawled forward, and pressed gently against it. It was ajar and swung open with hardly a sound. There was a smell of cheese. A glimmer of light, from the kitchen at the other end of the hall, glinted on the big stone crocks that held the separated milk. I could hear the cook still coughing, and I could feel the draught of air that was clearing the kitchen of smoke.

If I was to get to Champion's study, I would have to get through the kitchen while it was still empty.

I peered into the smoke. The spilled fat was still burning with fierce flames on the coal-fired cooking stove. I held my breath but the acrid fumes made my eyes water, and took a layer off the back of my throat. I ran into the smoke.

I remembered the two steps down to the scullery, and the slippery mat that was at the bottom of the back stairs. When I reached the entrance hall, I planted myself in the recess under the stairs and listened. Someone was coming. I heard unhurried footsteps on the upstairs landing. The balcony creaked as someone put his weight on the rails, and looked down into the hall. There was a whirr of clockwork and then the longcase clock struck the half hour. The footsteps moved away.

Before I could move, the front door opened and one of the guards came into the hall. He was a huge man, an Algerian, in raincoat, helmet and gumboots. He wiped his feet on the doormat, plucked the chinstrap loose, took off the helmet carefully, and placed it on the hall table. Then he discarded the raincoat, too, leaving it in a heap in the hall, like the skin shed from some shiny black insect. Under the policeman's coat and helmet, he was dressed in blue overalls. He came past me close enough for me to smell the garlic on his breath, but he looked neither to right nor left. He stopped in front of Champion's study. He sorted through a bunch of keys, then opened the door and went inside. I waited. Soon there was a noise that I'd always associated with the generator that supplied electricity for the household. Now I had another theory.

I looked at my watch. Fifteen minutes had already passed. I stepped across the hall and to the door of the study. I put my ear to it. No sound came from inside and I leaned forward to look through a crack in the door. As far as I could see it was empty. I pushed the door and went in.

I walked through Champion's large study. I looked behind the curtains and behind the inlaid Sheraton bookcase. There was no sign of the Algerian sentry and there was only one other door. It was open, and I stepped into a small ante-room, in which Champion kept filing cabinets, typewriter and office materials of a sort which might make his elegant study unsightly. I stepped inside. The second of the filing cabinets was unlocked. I slid the drawer open and found inside, not documents, but a phone and a panel with buttons marked ‘open doors', ‘close doors', ‘top floor' and ‘lower level'. I pressed the last button. The sliding door closed. A motor mechanism whirred, and the lights dimmed. This was the sound that I'd mistaken for that of the generator. Very slowly at first, the whole room began moving. It was not a room at all: it was a lift.

It stopped at what I guessed was about fifty feet below ground level. I pushed against a heavy metal door, keeping flat against the cabinets, but when the door was fully open I saw only a short corridor, brightly lit by fluorescent lights. There was no one in sight. I pulled the gun out of my waistband and moved warily along the corridor until I reached a large office-like room. It too was empty. I breathed a sigh of relief, and tucked the gun away again.

It was a square room, with cheap wall-to-wall carpet, and a plastic sofa arranged to face an office desk, swivel chair and telephone switchboard. It could have been the reception office of any penny-pinching little company, except for the notice that said ‘No Smoking' in both French and Arabic.

But now I knew what to look for, I had no difficulty noticing the tiny gap that ran down the mirror from floor to ceiling. And then – on the telephone switchboard – I found a switch around which the paint was exceptionally worn and dirtied. I pressed it. The mirrored doors slid apart.

This was another shaft, but quite different to the one behind me. This was a part of the original nineteenth-century workings. From up the shaft there came the draught that is the sign of an active mine. And the draught smelled sour, as the dust it carried hit my face.

The Tix mansion was built on a rise that brought its ground floor level with the old winding gear. The lift from Champion's study had brought me down to the level of the old fan drift. This was the upcast shaft, which had been built only for the filled tubs to come out.

This was not a lift – it was not a padded box with concealed lighting, Muzak and seats for the elderly – it was a cage. It was an open-fronted cage, with rusty chain-link sides, a wire-netting top, to catch falls of rock from the roughly hewn shaft, and an expanded-steel floor, through which I could see a glimmer of light a thousand feet below me. I stepped inside and the cage jiggled and clanged against the stay-wires. The sound echoed in the dark shaft, so loud that I expected some reaction from below, but I saw none. I locked the safety bar in place in front of me, and swung the crude lever mechanism to close the outer doors. For a moment I stood in the pitch darkness, listening to the whirr of engines and cables. Then, with a sickening lurch, the cage dropped, gathering speed as it went. The winding mechanism screeched loudly, the pitch of its cry growing more shrill as the speed increased.

The cage stopped suddenly, so that it bounced on the springing. I was at the bottom of the mine. It was dark. There was a steady beat of the pumps and the hum of fans. I reached forward, to touch the rocky face of the shaft but a crack of light showed that I faced doors with a crush-bar opening device.

I could hear the pumps somewhere close at hand, and under my feet, in the bottom of the shaft, there was the sump and its running water. I opened the doors, and found the shaft-landing brightly lit with fluorescent light. This must have been one of the earliest shafts sunk. The landing was a large one, with concreted walls and lockers and safety notices, and a time-keeper's box that contained all the comforts of a ramshackle home. These ‘No Smoking' notices were only in Arabic. From here stretched three galleries, forming a junction at the corner of the landing. One gallery was sealed. The other two had rails for the tub-trains. One gallery's tracks were rusted and dirty, but the other's were shiny bright and slightly oiled, like a guardsman's rifle.

Keeping close to the wall, I moved out of the light into the gallery that seemed still in use. Its walls were wet, and there was the steady drip of water, its sound magnified by the narrow confines of the tunnel. For illumination there was only the dim yellow glow of a few safety lights, recessed into wired and armour-glassed fittings. The line of bulbs showed me the inclines and curves of the workings, but there was not enough light to prevent me stumbling into pot-holes and falling over outcrops of rock. More than once, I went ankle-deep into the syrupy liquid that the dust and water made. Times without number I barked my shins and ankles upon the uneven sides of the gallery. There were rats everywhere: pairs of tiny green lights that stared at me, before disappearing with a scamper of feet that sometimes disturbed the litter of paper and tin cans.

I was a hundred and fifty yards along the gallery when I heard the train start. I looked around for somewhere to hide. The dim wall lights glinted on the sides of the gallery. I could see no recesses or cross-cuts ahead, and I'd certainly not passed anywhere that could conceal a man.

The sound of the train grew louder. I guessed that it was pulling a train of empty tubs, for there was a metallic rattling as the trolley wheels bounced on the poorly made track. It moved slowly, and as it turned the curve the diesel loco and its driver obscured the safety lights. I pressed myself flat against the wet rock-face.

The train was only fifty yards away by now, and its noise was almost deafening. I sank down on to my knees, and then went flat. It was a gamble, for if they did spot me, I'd have no chance to defend myself. I turned up my collar to hide the whiteness of my neck, and tucked my hands out of sight. The locomotive roared close to my ears, and its diesel exhaust scorched my arm. One of the tubs had been left in the inverted dump position. The edge of it struck my arm. I bit back an involuntary yell, and then the noise of the train overwhelmed my gasp of pain.

I remained still for several minutes after the train passed. When I got to my feet again, it was out of sight, although I could hear its rumble as it crossed the junction at the shaft landing. I heard voices, too, as the driver exchanged greetings with someone. The winding gear started again.

I moved forward, and this time I kept the gun in my hand. Now I heard other voices from the distant shaft landing. There were lots of men, and even my lousy Arabic was enough to tell me that a new shift of workers was coming on duty.

I hurried forward. Behind me I could hear the voices of the men as they climbed aboard the train. There were curses, and cheers, and the unfunny jokes that men exchange at moments of tension. The men's voices were amplified by the narrow mine workings, and for a moment I panicked. I ran forward, hammering my fist against the rock, and desperately praying for any small niche in which to hide. My prayer was answered and I groped my way into a low tunnel that gave off the main gallery. It was wide, but there was so little head-room that I was almost bent double. I realized that it was not a gallery: it was a working face. I stumbled, banged my head and fell heavily. I felt the blood trickle down the side of my cheek and reached out to help myself to my feet. It was then that I touched the chilly surface of a steel rail. The tracks ran along this working, too. I went cold with fear. I realized that the train – filled with the workers – would not return along that same gallery down which I'd seen it go. The mine would be sure to work a one-way system, so that the unloaded trains could complete a circuit, to return the empty tubs to the work-face.

The train was coming up this road to meet me.

I turned and ran along the tunnel, now crouched even lower to avoid hitting my head. To my left there was the ancient conveyor and to my right what had once been the working face. The face was not flat, like a wall, it was an endless series of ‘rooms' eaten out of the rock. Some of them were no more than a few feet wide, while others were just a black void. But that side of the workings was closed off with wire fencing. Several times I almost lost my balance as I tripped upon the loose uneven surface. I grazed my hand on the sharp edges of the conveyor-belt, with all its pulleys and rollers. Growing panicky, and ever more careless, I blundered into a wooden pit-prop and momentarily was knocked senseless. I doubled up over the conveyor, and heaved deep breaths that took the sharp dust deep into my lungs.

I looked back. The tunnel shone yellow. The driver was using the headlight on the locomotive. When it turned the corner this time, they surely must see me.

Desperately, I decided to crush myself into the space between the conveyor-belt and the bench over which it ran. I got my legs inside but only the great beam of yellow light, and the noise of the locomotive, persuaded me to cram myself into a space far too small.

I held my breath as the train approached with agonizing slowness. On it there were a dozen or more men. Most of them were dressed in the same dungarees that the others had been wearing, but four of the men were differently dressed. I blinked in amazement to see that they were wearing the leather helmets and goggles of old-time aviators. And, in case I was still in doubt, each of them was nursing on his lap the heavy canvas harness and unmistakable brown canvas pack of a parachute.