The Tightrope Men / The Enemy

by Desmond Bagley

  Cregar took out a packet of cigarettes. ‘Are you finding this ancient history interesting?’ He held out the packet.

  I took a cigarette. ‘Very interesting,’ I assured him.

  ‘Very well. We switched him into the person of Benson at the same time we switched Chelyuskin to Ashton, then he hung around for a while. When Ashton got going Benson had a job in Ashton’s office, and then later he became Ashton’s factotum.’

  ‘And Ashton knew what he was?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Benson was the price Ashton had to pay for freedom. I knew that a man with that calibre of mind would not long be content to fiddle around in industry and I wanted to keep tabs on what he was doing.’ He smiled. ‘Benson was on to quite a good thing. We paid him a retainer and Ashton paid him, too.’

  He leaned forward and snapped a gold lighter into flame under my nose. ‘When the reorganization came and I lost Ashton to Ogilvie I kept quiet about Benson. In fact, I paid his retainer out of my own pocket. He didn’t cost much; the retainer wasn’t raised and the erosion in the value of money made Benson dirt cheap. It was an investment for the future which would have paid off but for you.’

  I said, ‘Did you know Ashton was into genetics?’

  ‘Of course. Benson caught on to that as soon as it started happening. His job was to know what Ashton was doing at all times and, being permanently in the house, he could hardly miss. It was an incredible stroke of luck - Ashton becoming interested in genetics, I mean - because after the reorganization I had moved into the biological field myself.’ He waved his hand. ‘As you have discovered.’

  ‘Ogilvie told me.’

  ‘Ogilvie appears to have told you too much. From what you have let fall he appears to have given you the run of Code Black. Very naughty of him, and something he may regret. I was fortunate enough to be able to put a block on the computer to cover Benson, but evidently it wasn’t enough.’ He stopped suddenly, and stared at me. ‘Even I appear to be telling you too much. You have an ingratiating way with you.’

  ‘I’m a good listener.’

  ‘And I become garrulous as I grow old, a grave failing in a man of our profession.’ He looked at his half-smoked cigarette distastefully, stubbed it out, and put his hands flat on the desk. ‘I’m at a loss to know how to dispose of you, young Jaggard. Your revelation that Ogilvie has that letter makes my situation most difficult.’

  ‘Yes, he’s in a position to blast hell out of you,’ I agreed. ‘I don’t think the Minister will be pleased. I rather think you’ve put yourself on the retirement list.’

  ‘Very succinctly put. Nevertheless, I will find a way out of the difficulty. I have surmounted difficulties before and I see no reason why I should fail this time. All it takes is applied thought to the study of men’s weaknesses.’ He slapped his hands together. ‘And that is what I must do immediately. Put him somewhere safe, Max.’

  I ignored the hand on my shoulder. ‘What about Penny Ashton?’

  ‘You will see her in my good time,’ said Cregar coldly. ‘And only if I think it advisable.’

  In my rage I wanted to lash out at him but I couldn’t ignore that tightening hand. Max leaned over me. ‘No tricks,’ he advised. ‘I have a gun. You won’t see it but it’s there.’

  So I rose from the chair and went with him. He took me from the office and along a corridor. Because the place was windowless it was almost like being in a submarine; everything was quiet except that the air shivered with the distant rumble of a generator. At the other end of the corridor I saw movement on the other side of a glass partition as a man walked across. He was wearing totally enveloping overalls and his head was hooded.

  I had no time to see more because Max stopped and opened a heavy door. ‘In there,’ he said curtly, so I walked through and he slammed the door, leaving me in total darkness because he had not seen fit to turn on a light. The first thing I did was to explore my prison and arrived at the conclusion that it was an unused refrigerated room. The walls were thick and solid, as was the door, and I soon came to the conclusion that the only way out was to be let out. I sat on the floor in a corner and contemplated possibilities.

  It appeared to have been wise to tell Cregar of the letter. Up to then he had primarily been interested in discussing ways and means of transforming me into a corpse safely, but my disclosure that Ogilvie had the letter had put a stopper on that line of thought. But what a ruthless bastard he had turned out to be.

  I don’t know what makes men like Cregar tick, but there seem to be enough of the bastards around just as there are many Carters eager to help them. Somewhere in the world, I suppose, is the chemist who lovingly mixed a petroleum derivative with a palm oil derivative to produce napthenic acid palmetate, better known as napalm. To do that required a deliberate intellectual effort and a high degree of technical training, and why a man should put his brain to such a use is beyond me. Supervising that chemist would be an American Cregar whose motives are equally baffling, and at the top are the politicians ultimately responsible. Their motive is quite clear, of course: the ruthless grasp of sheer power. But why so many others should be willing to help them is beyond me.

  It’s hard to know who to blame. Is it the Lumsdens of the world who know what is going on but turn a blind eye, or is it the rest of us who don’t know and don’t take the trouble to find out? Sometimes I think the world is like a huge ant heap full of insects all busily manufacturing insecticide.

  I was in the black room for a long time. The only light came from the luminous dial of my watch which told me of hours ticking away. I was oppressed by the darkness and became claustrophobic and suffered strange fears. I got up and began to walk around the room, keeping to the walls; it was one way of taking exercise. The silence was solid except for the sound of my own movements and a new fear came upon me. What if Cladach Duillich had been abandoned - evacuated? I could stay in that room until the flesh rotted from my bones.

  I stopped walking and sat in the corner again. I may have fallen asleep for a while, I don’t remember. The hours I spent there are pretty much blanked out in my memory. But I was aware when the door opened to let in a flood of light as glaring as from arc lamps. I put my hands to my eyes and saw Cregar at the door. He tut-tutted, and said, ‘You didn’t leave him a light, Max.’

  ‘Must have forgotten,’ said Max indifferently.

  The light was quite ordinary light shed from fluorescent tubes in the ceiling of the corridor. I got up and went to the door. ‘God damn you!’ I said to Max.

  He stood back a pace and lifted the pistol he held. Cregar said, ‘Calm down. It wasn’t intentional.’ He saw me looking at the pistol. ‘That’s to warn you not to do anything silly, as well you might. You wanted to see the girl, didn’t you? Well, you can see her now. Come with me.’

  We walked along the corridor side by side with Max bringing up the rear. Cregar said conversationally, ‘You won’t see any of the staff because I’ve had them cleared out of this block. They’re scientific types and a bit lily-livered. The sight of guns makes them nervous.’

  I said nothing.

  We walked a few more paces. ‘I think I’ve found a way of confounding Ogilvie - there’ll be no problem there - but that still leaves you. After we’ve seen Dr Ashton we’ll have a talk.’ He stopped at a door. ‘In here,’ he said, and let me precede him.

  It was a strange room because one wall was almost entirely glass but the window looked, not upon the outside, but into another room. At first I didn’t know what I was looking at, but Cregar said, ‘There’s Dr Ashton.’ He pointed to a bed in the next room.

  Penny was in bed, seemingly asleep. Her face was pale and ravaged, she could have been a woman twice her age. Around the bed were various bits of hospital equipment among which I recognized two drip feeds, one of which appeared to contain blood. I said, ‘In God’s name, what happened?’

  Cregar said, almost apologetically, ‘We had…er…an accident here last week in which Dr Ashton was involved. I’m afraid s
he’s rather ill. She’s been in a coma for the last two days.’ He picked up a microphone and snapped a switch. ‘Dr Ashton, can you hear me?’

  His voice came amplified and distorted from a loudspeaker in the next room. Penny made no movement.

  I said tightly, ‘What’s she got?’

  ‘That’s rather hard to say. It’s something nobody has ever had before. Something new. Carter has been trying to run it down but without much success.’

  I was frightened and angry simultaneously. Frightened for Penny and angry at Cregar. ‘It’s something you brewed up here, isn’t it? Something that got loose because you were too tight-fisted to have a P4 laboratory as she wanted.’

  ‘I see that Dr Ashton has been chattering about my business.’ Cregar gestured. ‘That’s not a proper hospital ward of course; it’s one of our laboratories. She had to be put somewhere safe.’

  ‘Not safe for her,’ I said bitterly. ‘Safe for you.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Cregar. ‘Whatever she’s got we can’t have spread about. Carter thinks it’s most infectious.’

  ‘Is Carter a medical doctor?’

  ‘His degree is in biology not medicine, but he’s a very capable man. She’s getting the best of attention. We’re transfusing whole blood and glucose, as you see.’

  I turned to him. ‘She should be in a hospital. This amateur lash-up is no good, and you know it. If she dies you’ll be a murderer, and so will Carter and everybody else here.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ he said indifferently. ‘About the hospital, I mean. But it’s difficult to see how we could put her in a hospital and still maintain security.’ His voice was remote and objective. ‘I pride myself on my ability to solve problems but I haven’t been able to solve that one.’

  ‘Damn your security!’

  ‘Coming from a man in your profession that smacks of heresy.’ Cregar stepped back as he saw my expression, and gestured to Max who lifted the pistol warningly. ‘She’s having the best attention we can give her. Dr Carter is assiduous in his duties.’

  ‘Carter is using her as a guinea pig and you damned well know it. She must be taken to a hospital - better still, to Porton. They understand high-risk pathogens there.’

  ‘You’re in no position to make demands,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’ He turned his back and walked out.

  I took a last look at Penny, then followed him with Max close behind. He walked up the corridor and opened a door on the other side. We entered a small vestibule and Cregar waited until Max had closed the outer door before proceeding. ‘We do take precautions, in spite of anything you’ve been told,’ he said. ‘This is an air lock. The laboratory through there is under low pressure. Do you know why?’

  ‘If there’s a leak air goes in and not out.’

  He nodded in satisfaction as though I’d passed a test, and opened the inner door. My ears popped as the pressure changed. ‘This is Carter’s own laboratory. I’d like to show it to you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’ll see.’ He began a tour, behaving for all the world like a guide in one of those model factories where they show you what they’re proud of and hide the bad bits. ‘This is a centrifuge. You’ll notice it’s in an air-tight cabinet; that’s to prevent anything escaping while it’s in operation. No aerosols - microbes floating in the air.’

  We passed on, and he indicated an array of glass-fronted cabinets covering one wall. ‘The incubating cabinets, each containing its own petri dish and each petri dish isolated. Nothing can escape from there.’

  ‘Something escaped from somewhere.’

  He ignored that. ‘Each cabinet can be removed in its entirety and the contents transferred elsewhere without coming into contact even with the air in the laboratory.’

  I looked into a cabinet at the circular growth of a culture on a petri dish. ‘What’s the organism?’

  ‘Escherichia coli, I believe. It’s Carter’s favourite.’

  ‘The genetically weakened strain.’

  Cregar raised his eyebrows. ‘You seem well informed for a layman. I don’t know; that’s Carter’s affair. I’m not the expert.’

  I turned to face him. ‘What’s this all about?’

  ‘I’m trying to show you that we do take all possible precautions. What happened to Dr Ashton was purely accidental - a million to one chance. It’s very important to me that you believe that.’

  ‘If you’d listened to her it wouldn’t have happened, but I believe you,’ I said. ‘I don’t think you did it on purpose. What’s so important about it?’

  ‘I can come to an accommodation with Ogilvie,’ he said. ‘I’ll lose some advantage but not all. That leaves you.’

  ‘Have you spoken with Ogilvie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I felt sick. If Cregar could corrupt Ogilvie I wouldn’t want to work with him again. I said steadily, ‘What about me?’

  ‘This. I can do a deal with Ogilvie all right, but I don’t think I could make it stick if anything happened to you. He always was squeamish. That means you have to be around and able to talk for some time to come which, as you will appreciate, presents me with a problem.’

  ‘How to keep my mouth shut without killing me.’

  ‘Precisely. You are a man like myself - we cut to the heart of a problem. When you appeared in the Ashton case I had you investigated most thoroughly. To my surprise you had no handle I could get hold of, no peccadilloes to be exploited. You seem to be that rarity, the honest man.’

  ‘I won’t take compliments from you, damn it!’

  ‘No compliment, I assure you, Just a damnable nuisance. I wanted something to hold over you, something with which to blackmail you. There was nothing. So I have to find something else to close your mouth. I think I’ve found it.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It will mean my giving up more of the advantage I have achieved over the years, but I’ll retain the most of it. I’ll trade the young lady in the next laboratory for your silence.’

  I looked at him with disgust. He had said the solution to his problem would lie in the study of men’s weaknesses and he had found mine. He said, ‘As soon as you agree, the girl can be taken to hospital, in carefully controlled conditions, of course. Perhaps your suggestion that she be taken to Porton is best. I could arrange that.’

  I said, ‘What guarantee would you have that I won’t talk when she’s well? I can’t think of anything but no doubt you can.’

  ‘Indeed I can - and I have. In Carter’s office there’s a document I want you to sign. I should say it’s a carefully constructed document which took all my ingenuity to concoct. Quite a literary gem.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘You’ll see. Well, do you agree?’

  ‘I’ll need to read it first.’

  Cregar smiled. ‘Of course you may read it, but I think you’ll sign it anyway. It’s not much to ask - your signature for the life of your future wife.’

  ‘You sicken me,’ I said.

  A telephone rang, startlingly loud. Cregar frowned, and said to Max, ‘Answer it.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’ll have the pistol. I don’t trust him yet.’

  Max gave him the gun and walked to the other end of the laboratory. Cregar said, ‘Sticks and stones, etcetera. I don’t care what you think of me as long as I get my way.’

  ‘Show me what you want me to sign.’

  ‘We’ll wait for Max.’

  Max talked in monosyllables in a low voice, then hung up and came back. ‘Carter’s got his knickers in a twist. He says a lot of men are landing. He reckons there are twenty boats out there.’

  Cregar frowned. ‘Who the hell are they?’

  ‘He reckons they’re local fishermen.’

  ‘Damned Scots peasants! Go and shoo them away, Max. Put the fear of God into them with the Official Secrets Act. Get rid of them any way you can. Threaten them with the police if you have to.’

  ‘Just threaten or actually send for them?’

  ‘You can s
end for them if you think the situation warrants it.’

  Max nodded towards me. ‘That may not be entirely safe.’

  ‘Don’t worry about Jaggard,’ said Cregar. ‘We’ve reached an agreement.’ As Max left he turned to me. ‘Is this your doing?’

  ‘How could I start a popular uprising?’ I asked. ‘They’ve probably got wind of what you’re doing here, and remembering Gruinard, are determined not to let it happen again.’

  ‘Ignorant bastards,’ he muttered. ‘Max will put them in their place.’

  I said, ‘I want Penny in hospital fast. How do we get off here?’

  ‘A phone call will bring the helicopter in two hours.’

  ‘You’d better make the call, then.’

  He looked down at the floor, rubbing the side of his jaw while he thought about it. It was then I hit him in the belly, knocking the wind out of him. The gun went off and a bullet ricocheted from the wall and there was a smash of glass. I grabbed his wrist as he tried to bring up the gun and chopped him across the neck with the edge of my hand. He sagged to the floor.

  When he painfully picked himself up I had the pistol. He glanced at it, then raised his eyes to mine. ‘Where do you think this will get you?’

  ‘I don’t know about me, but it’ll put you in prison.’

  ‘You’re a stupid, romantic fool,’ he said.

  ‘What’s the number to ring for the helicopter?’

  He shook his head. ‘You don’t know how government works, damn it. I’ll never go to prison, but you’ll be in water so hot you’ll wish you’d never heard of Ashton or me.’

  I said, ‘I don’t like hitting old men but I’ll hammer hell out of you if I don’t get that number.’

  He turned his head and froze, then a weird bubbling cry came from him. ‘Oh, Christ! Look what you’ve done!’ His hand quivered as he pointed to the wall.