The Tightrope Men / The Enemy

by Desmond Bagley

  ‘I’ll give it another run,’ said Carey. He went through his act again and paused in front of the house, then took a notebook from his pocket and scribbled in it.

  Armstrong lounged after him just as a small boy came out of the house. ‘What’s he doing?’

  ‘Looking for a water pipe,’ said Armstrong.

  ‘What’s that thing?’

  ‘The thing that tells him when he’s found a water pipe,’ said Armstrong patiently. ‘A new invention.’ He looked down at the boy. ‘Is your father at home?’

  ‘No, he’s at work.’ The boy looked at Carey who was peering over the garden fence. ‘What’s he doing now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Armstrong. ‘He’s the expert, not me. Is your mother at home?’

  ‘She’s doing the wash. Do you want to see her?’

  Carey straightened up. ‘I think it runs through here,’ he called.

  ‘Yes,’ said Armstrong. ‘I think we do want to see her. Run inside and tell her, will you?’ The boy dashed into the house and Armstrong went up to Carey. ‘Kunayev is at work; Mrs K. is doing the wash.’

  ‘Right; let’s get to it.’ Carey walked up to the front door of the house just as it opened. A rather thin and tired-looking woman stepped out. ‘This is the…er—’ Carey took out his notebook and checked the pages—‘the Kunayev household?’

  ‘Yes, but my husband’s not here.’

  ‘Then you’ll be Grazhdanke Kunayova?’

  The woman was faintly alarmed. ‘Yes?’

  Carey beamed. ‘Nothing to worry about, Grazhdanke Kunayova. This is merely a technicality concerning the forthcoming demolition of this area. You know about that?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do.’ The faint alarm turned to faint aggression. ‘We’re having to move just when I’ve redecorated the house.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ said Carey. ‘Well, under the ground there are a lot of pipes—gas, water, electricity and so on. My own concern is with the water pipes. When the demolition men come in there’ll be bulldozers coming through here, and we don’t want them breaking the water pipes or the whole area will turn into a quagmire.’

  ‘Why don’t you turn off the water before you start? she asked practically.

  Carey was embarrassed. ‘That’s not as easy as it sounds, Grazhdanke Kunayova,’ he said, hunting for a plausible answer. ‘As you know, this is one of the older areas of Svetogorsk, built by the Finns just after the First World War. A lot of the records were destroyed twenty-five years ago and we don’t even know where some of the pipes are, or even if they connect into our present water system.’ He leaned forward and said confidentially, ‘It’s even possible that some of our water still comes from over the border—from Imatra.’

  ‘You mean we get it free from the Finns?’

  ‘I’m not concerned with the economics of it,’ said Carey stiffly. ‘I just have to find the pipes.’

  She looked over Carey’s shoulder at Armstrong who was leaning on his spade. ‘And you want to come into the garden,’ she said. ‘Is he going to dig holes all over our garden?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Carey reassuringly. He lifted the detector. ‘I have this—a new invention that can trace pipes without digging. It might be necessary to dig a small hole if we find a junction, but I don’t think it will happen.’

  ‘Very well,’ she said unwillingly. ‘But try not to step on the flower beds. I know we’re being pushed out of the house this year but the flowers are at their best just now, and my husband does try to make a nice display.’

  ‘We’ll try not to disturb the flowers,’ said Carey. ‘We’ll just go around to the back.’

  He jerked his head at Armstrong and they walked around the house followed by the small boy. Armstrong said in a low voice, ‘We’ve got to get rid of the audience.’

  ‘No trouble; just be boring.’ Carey stopped as he rounded the corner of the house and saw the garden shed at the bottom of the garden; it was large and stoutly constructed of birch logs. ‘That’s not on the plan,’ he said. ‘I hope what we’re looking for isn’t under there.’

  Armstrong stuck his spade upright in the soil at the edge of a flower bed, and Carey unfolded a plan of the garden. ‘That’s the remaining tree there,’ he said. ‘One of the four Meyrick picked out. I’ll have a go at that first.’ He donned the earphones, switched on the detector, and made a slow run up to the tree. He spent some time exploring the area about the tree, much hampered by the small boy, then called, ‘Nothing here.’

  ‘Perhaps the pipe runs down the middle,’ said Armstrong.

  ‘It’s possible. I really think I’ll have to search the whole area.’

  Which he proceeded to do. For the benefit of the small boy every so often he would call out a number and Armstrong would dutifully record it on the plan. After half an hour of this the boy became bored and went away. Carey winked at Armstrong and carried on, and it took him well over an hour to search the garden thoroughly.

  He glanced at his watch and went back to Armstrong. ‘We have two possibilities. A strong reading—very strong—on the edge of the lawn there, and a weaker reading in the middle of that flower bed. I suggest we have a go at the lawn first.’

  Armstrong looked past him. ‘Mrs K. is coming.’

  The woman was just coming out of the house. As she approached she said, ‘Have you found anything?’

  ‘We may have found a junction,’ said Carey, and pointed. ‘Just there. We’ll have to dig—just a small hole, Grazhdanke Kunayova, you understand. And we’ll be tidy and replace the turf.’

  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 hi
t 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.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  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 v
oice. 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.’