Circus

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Circus Page 8

by Alistair MacLean

It hadn’t occurred to Bruno – as it apparently hadn’t occurred to Harper – that the Carpentaria would be carrying its own doctor, which was an elementary oversight on both their parts: over and above a certain passenger capacity international law made the carrying of a ship’s doctor mandatory. He said quickly: ‘Could I have our own doctor, please – the circus doctor? His name is Dr Harper.’

  ‘I know his cabin, next deck down. At once, sir.’

  Harper must have been waiting in his cabin, medical bag in hand, for he arrived in Bruno’s cabin, tongue-clucking and looking suitably concerned, inside thirty seconds. He locked the stateroom door after the stewards’ departure, then set to work on Bruno’s ankle with some extremely pungent salve and about a yard of elasticized bandage.

  He said: ‘Mr Carter was on schedule?’

  ‘If Mr Carter is the purser – he didn’t introduce himself – yes.’

  Harper paused in his ministrations and looked around. ‘Clean?’

  ‘Did you expect anything else?’

  ‘Not really.’ Harper inspected his completed handiwork: both the visual and olfactory aspects were suitably impressive.

  Harper brought over a low table, reached into an inside pocket, brought out and smoothed two detailed plans and set some photographs down beside them. He tapped one of the plans.

  ‘This one first. The plan outline of the Lubylan Advanced Research Centre. Know it?’

  Bruno eyed Harper without enthusiasm. ‘I hope that’s the last stupidly unnecessary question you ask this evening.’ Harper assumed the look of a man trying not to look hurt. ‘Before the CIA recruited me for this job – ’

  ‘How do you know it’s the CIA?’

  Bruno rolled his eyes upwards then clearly opted for restraint. ‘Before the Boy Scouts recruited me for this job they’d have checked every step I’ve taken from the cradle. To your certain knowledge you know I spent the first twenty-four years of my life in Crau. How should I not know Lubylan?’

  ‘Yes. Well. Oddly enough, they do carry out advanced research in Lubylan, most of it, regrettably, associated with chemical warfare, nerve gas and the like.’

  ‘Regrettably? The United States doesn’t engage in similar research?’

  Harper looked pained. ‘That’s not my province.’

  Bruno said patiently: ‘Look, Doctor, if you can’t trust me how can you expect me to repose implicit trust in you? It is your province and you damned well know it. Remember the Armed Forces courier service at Orly Airport? All the top-secret classified communications between the Pentagon and the American Army in Europe were channelled through there. Remember?’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘Remember a certain Sergeant Johnson? Fellow with the splendidly patriotic Christian names of Robert Lee? Russia’s most successfully planted spy in a generation, passed every US-Europe top military secret to the KGB for God knows how long. Remember?’

  Harper nodded unhappily. ‘I remember.’ Bruno’s briefing was not going exactly as he’d planned it.

  ‘Then you won’t have forgotten that the Russians published photocopies of one of the top-secret directives that Johnson had stolen. It was the ultimate US contingency plan if the Soviet Union should ever overrun Western Europe. It suggested that in that event the United States intended to devastate the Continent by waging bacteriological, chemical and nuclear warfare: the fact that the entire civilian population would be virtually wiped out was taken for granted. This caused a tremendous furore in Europe at the time and cost the Americans the odd European friend, about two hundred million of them: I doubt whether it even made the back page of the Washington Post.’

  ‘You’re very well informed.’

  ‘Not being a member of the CIA doesn’t mean you have to be illiterate. I can read. German is my second language – my mother was a Berliner. Two German magazines carried the story at the same time.’

  Harper was resigned. ‘Der Spiegel and Stern, September 1969. Does it give you any particular pleasure in putting me on a hook and watching me wriggle?’

  ‘That wasn’t my intention. I just want to point up two things. If you don’t level with me all the time and on every subject you can expect no cooperation from me. Then I want you to know why I’ve really gone along with this. I have no idea whether the Americans really would go ahead with this holocaust. I can’t believe it but what I believe doesn’t matter: it’s what the East believes and if they believe that America would not hesitate to implement this threat then they might be sorely tempted to carry out a pre-emptive strike. From what I understood from Colonel Fawcett a millionth of a gram of this anti-matter would settle America’s hash once and for all. I don’t think anyone should have this weapon, but, for me, it’s the lesser of two evils: I’m European by birth but American by adoption. I’ll stick by my adopted parents. And now, could we get on with it. Lay it all on the line. Let’s say I’ve never heard of or seen Crau and go on from there.’

  Harper looked at him without enthusiasm. He said sourly: ‘If it was your intention to introduce a subtle change in our relationships you have succeeded beyond any expectation you might have had. Only, I wouldn’t call it very subtle. Well. Lubylan. Conveniently enough, it’s situated only a quarter of a mile from the auditorium where the circus will be held: both buildings, though in the town, are, as one would expect, on the outskirts. Lubylan, as you can see, faces on to a main street.’

  ‘There are two buildings shown on that diagram.’

  ‘I’m coming to that. Those two buildings, incidentally, are connected by two high walls which are not shown in the plan.’ Harper quickly sketched them in. ‘At the back of Lubylan is only wasteland. The nearest building in that direction is an oil-fired electric power station.

  ‘This building that abuts on the main street – let’s call it the west building – is where the actual research is carried out. In the east building, the one abutting the wasteland at the back, research is also carried out, but research of a different kind and almost certainly much nastier than that carried out in the west building. In the east building they carry out a series of highly unpleasant experiments – on human beings. It’s run entirely by the secret police and is the maximum security detention centre for the enemies of the State, who may range from a would-be assassin of the Premier to a weak-minded dissident poet. The mortality rate, I understand, is rather higher than normal.’

  ‘I suppose it’s my turn to say that you are very well informed.’

  ‘We don’t send a man in blindfolded and with his hands tied behind his back. This, crossing the courtyard here, is an elevated fifth-floor corridor connecting the two buildings. It is glass-sided and glass-topped and kept brightly illuminated from dusk to dawn. It is impossible for anyone to use it without being seen.

  ‘Every window in both buildings is heavily barred. All are nevertheless fitted with burglar alarms. There are only two entrances, one for each building, both time-locked and heavily guarded. The buildings are both nine storeys high and the connecting walls are the same height. The whole upper perimeter of the walls is lined with closely spaced, outward curving metal spikes, the whole with two thousand volts running through them. There’s a watch-tower at every corner. The guards there have machine-guns, searchlights and klaxons. The courtyard between the two buildings, like the elevated glass corridor, is brightly lit at night – not that that matters so much: killer Dobermann pinschers roam the place all the time.’

  Bruno said: ‘You have a great gift for encouraging people.’

  ‘You’d rather not know these things? There are only two ways of escaping from this place – death by torture or death by suicide. No one has ever escaped.’ Dr Harper indicated the other diagram. ‘This is the plan layout of the ninth floor of the west building. This is why the government is mounting a multi-million-dollar operation – to get you in here. This is where Van Diemen works, eats, sleeps and has his being.’

  ‘Should I know the name?’

  ‘Most unlikely. He’s almost to
tally unknown to the public. In the Western world fellow-scientists speak of him with awe. An acknowledged genius – the only indisputable genius – in particle research. The discoverer of anti-matter – the only man in the world who has the secret of making, storing and harnessing this fearful weapon.’

  ‘He’s Dutch?’

  ‘Despite his name, no. He’s a renegade West German, a defector. God only knows why he defected. Here you can see his laboratories and office. Here is the guards’ room – the place, understandably, is guarded like Fort Knox twenty-four hours a day. And this is his living quarters – just a small bedroom, an even smaller bathroom and a tiny kitchenette.’

  ‘You mean he hasn’t got a home? It would make things a damn sight easier if he had.’

  ‘He’s got a home, all right, a splendid lake-forest mansion given him by the government. He’s never even been there. He lives for nothing but his work and he never leaves here. One suspects the government is just as happy that he continues to do so: it makes their security problem comparatively simple.’

  ‘Yes. To come back to another simple problem. You say that no one has ever escaped from Lubylan. Then how the hell do you expect me to get in there?’

  ‘Well, now.’ Harper cleared his throat; he was putting his first foot on very delicate ground. ‘We’d given the matter some thought, of course, before we approached you. Which is why we approached you and only you. The place, as I’ve said, is ringed with a two-thousand-volt fence of steel. The power has to come from someplace: it comes from the electric power station at the back of the east building. Like most high-power transmissions it comes by an overhead cable. It comes in a single loop, three hundred yards long, from a pylon in the power station to the top of the east building.’

  ‘You’re way out of your mind. You must be. If you’re so crazy as to suggest – ’

  Harper prepared to be diplomatic, persuasive and reasonable all at once. ‘Let’s look at it this way. Let’s think of it as just another high wire. As long as you are in contact with this cable with either hands or feet, and don’t earth yourself to anything such as the anchor wire for a pylon insulator, then – ’

  ‘Let’s think of it as just another high wire,’ Bruno mimicked. ‘Two thousand volts – that’s what they use, or used to use, in the electric chair, isn’t it?’

  Harper nodded unhappily.

  ‘In the circus you step from a platform on to the wire, and step off on to another platform at the other end. If I step off from the pylon on to the wire or from the wire on to the prison wall, I’ll have one foot on the cable and the other to earth. I’ll be frizzled in a second flat. And three hundred yards long – have you any kind of idea what kind of sag that entails? Can you imagine what the effects of that sag combined with whatever wind may be blowing would be like? Has it occurred to you that, at this time of year, there might be both ice and snow on that wire? God’s sake, Dr Harper, don’t you know that our lives depend on the friction coefficient between the soles of our feet and the wire – the cable, in this case. Believe me, Doctor, you may know a lot about counter-espionage but you know damn all about the high wire.’

  Harper looked even more unhappy.

  ‘And should I ever live to cross that cable how do I ever live to cross that courtyard – that illuminated courtyard patrolled by Dobermanns – or cross over that transparent aerial corridor, assuming I could ever get to it in the first place? And if I do get to the west building, how am I going to get past the guards?’

  Harper was now looking acutely unhappy.

  ‘And if I do manage that – I’m not a gambler but I’ll lay a thousand to one I never make it – how am I going to locate the place where those papers are kept? I mean, I don’t suppose they’d just be lying around on a table. They’ll be locked away – Van Diemen may just even sleep with them under his pillow.’

  Harper studiously avoided Bruno’s eye. He was distinctly and understandably uncomfortable. He said: ‘Locked filing cabinets or safes are no problems – I can give you keys that should open any commercial office lock.’

  ‘And if it’s a combination?’

  ‘Looks as if you’re going to need a little luck all the way.’

  Bruno gazed at the deckhead, considered the enormity of this understatement, pushed the papers away and relapsed into speechlessness. After quite some time he stirred, looked at Harper, sighed and said: ‘I’m afraid I’m going to need a gun. A silenced gun. With plenty of ammunition.’

  Harper went through his own speechless act then said: ‘You mean you’re going to try?’ If he were experiencing any feelings of hope or relief he didn’t show them: there was only a dull disbelief in his voice.

  ‘Once a nut, always a nut. Not a gun that fires bullets. A gas gun or one that fires anaesthetic darts. Possible?’

  ‘That’s what diplomatic bags are for,’ Harper said, almost absently. ‘Look, I don’t think I’d properly appreciated the difficulties myself. If you think it’s outright impossible – ’

  ‘You’re mad. I’m mad. We’re all mad. But you’ve got the whole damned circus at sea now – as far as I’m concerned we’re at sea in more ways than one – and if nothing else we owe it to your murdered colleagues. The gun.’

  Harper, clearly, was searching for suitable words and failed. He said: ‘You will keep those diagrams and pictures in a place of absolute safety?’

  ‘Yes.’ Bruno rose, picked up papers and photographs, tore them into little pieces, took them to the bathroom and flushed them down the toilet. He returned and said: ‘They’re safe now.’

  ‘It would be difficult for anyone to get their hands on them now. A remarkable gift. I’d be grateful if you didn’t fall down the stairs – genuinely, this time – land on your head and give yourself amnesia. Any idea how you’re going to set about this?’

  ‘Look, I’m a mentalist, not Merlin the wizard. How long have you known about this?’

  ‘Not long. A few weeks.’

  ‘Not long. A few weeks.’ Bruno made it sound like a few years. ‘And have you worked out any solution yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you expect me to do it in a few minutes?’

  Harper shook his head and rose. ‘I suppose Wrinfield will be along to see you in a short time – he’s bound to hear of your accident any moment and he doesn’t know it was rigged, although you can tell him that. How much do you propose telling him?’

  ‘Nothing. If I told him this suicidal scheme you have in mind for me he’d have this ship turned round in less time than it could take him to wash his hands of you.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The days passed uneventfully enough, if somewhat unsteadily: the Carpentaria’s stabilizers didn’t seem quite to understand what was expected of them. For the circus crew there was little enough to do other than feed the animals and keep their quarters clean. Those performers who could practise their esoteric arts practised them: those who couldn’t possessed their souls in patience.

  Bruno spent sufficient time with Maria to lend credence to the now almost universal belief among the circus people that here indeed was a romance that was steadily blossoming: what was even more intriguing was that there seemed to be a distinct possibility that there might be two romances getting under way, for whenever Bruno was not with her Henry Wrinfield was solicitously unsparing in the attentions he paid her. And, as Bruno spent most of his time with Kan Dahn, Roebuck and Manuelo, Henry lacked neither the time nor the opportunity; he made the most of both.

  The lounge bar, a large room that seated well over a hundred people, was invariably well patronized before dinner. On the third night out Henry sat at a remote corner table, talking earnestly to Maria. On the far side of the lounge Bruno sat playing cards with his three friends. Before the game, Roebuck and Manuelo spent their ritual ten minutes bemoaning the fact that they had no opportunity to practise their arts with lasso and knife respectively. Kan Dahn was in no way concerned about himself: clearly he was of the belief that his ma
ssive strength wasn’t going to drain away from him in a matter of days: it was a belief that was widely shared.

  Poker was their game. They played for low stakes and Bruno almost invariably won. The others claimed that this was because he could see through their cards, a claim that Bruno stoutly denied, although the fact that on the previous night, wearing a blindfold, he had won four consecutive hands put a query mark to his assertion. Not that he was ever in pocket at the end of a game: the winner paid for the drinks and although he, Roebuck and Manuelo consumed very little, the capacity of Kan Dahn’s three-hundred-pound frame for beer was awesome.

  Kan Dahn drained another uncounted pint, glanced across the room and tapped Bruno on the arm. ‘You’d best look to your defences, my lad. Your lady-love is under siege.’

  Bruno glanced across and said mildly: ‘She’s not my lady-love. Even if she were I don’t think Henry is the type to snatch her and run. Not that he could run very far in the middle of the Atlantic.’

  ‘Far enough,’ Roebuck said darkly.

  ‘His fair-haired dear one is back in the States,’ Manuelo said severely. ‘Our little Maria is here. It makes a difference.’

  ‘Somebody,’ Roebuck said, ‘should tell her about Cecily.’

  ‘Our little Maria knows all about Cecily. She told me so herself. Even knows the kind of engagement ring she wears.’ Bruno glanced at the couple again, then returned to his cards. ‘I do not think that they are discussing affairs of the heart.’

  Maria and Henry were not, indeed, discussing affairs of the heart. Henry was being very very earnest, very intense and very genuinely concerned. He suddenly broke off, looked across to the bar, then back to Maria again.

  ‘That proves it!’ Henry’s voice held a mixture of triumph and apprehension.

  Maria said patiently: ‘What proves what, Henry?’

  ‘The fellow I told you about. The fellow who’s been following you. That steward that just entered and went behind the bar. The chap with the weasel face. He’s no right to be here. He doesn’t work here.’

 

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