The Devastators mh-9

by Donald Hamilton

  chapter NINETEEN

  In a way, it was a moment of achievement. I had gone the long way around the barn with the hatchet, but I had my chicken in sight at last.

  Now all I had to do was figure out how to finish the job, alone in this cave with my hands tied. It would also be nice if I could manage to get out alive afterwards, but it wasn't, I knew, considered absolutely essential to a satisfactory operation. Mac had made that clear enough.

  Madame Ling motioned me away from the foot of the stairs so the dark-faced man could descend. I moved back in a docile manner. I was careful not to look too long or too hard at the plump man in the white coat. I didn't want to scare him prematurely. It was McRow, all right, a little thinner both as to hair and figure than the description I'd been given-as if they'd been working him hard-but unmistakably the man I'd been sent to find.

  "On second thought," Madame Ling said, "perhaps you had better inoculate him right away, Doctor. There is no time to waste. I would like to have our statistics as complete as possible when I send in my report."

  McRow said, "We should wait six hours after administering the serum. And then we can't be sure of his reaction to the culture for two days, at least not if it should be negative."

  She said impatiently, "I know all that. Cut the six hours to four; give him the culture just before we embark. We will take him on board the ship with us; we will bring along all the negative ones, so you can watch them for symptoms up to the last possible moment. I have arranged for a trustworthy courier to meet us at sea, but the ship is not very fast, and it will be a few days before we reach an area where he can safely make contact. Get what you need right away, and bring it down to my quarters."

  "Yes, Madame."

  McRow turned quickly and hurried out of the chamber, his dirty coat flapping about his knees. The dark-faced man signaled to the men above, and the shaft of daylight was cut off as the trapdoor settled into place solidly, like the lid of a well-made coffin.

  "This way, Mr. Helm," said the Chinese woman. "Be careful. These passages were not made for people your height. The McRows-McRues as they were then called- have apparently always been short men, like our scientific friend, whom you obviously recognized."

  She gestured toward the opening through which McRow had vanished. I moved that way, bending over so as not to crack my skull. An electric conduit had been strung along the rocky roof of the tunnel-presumably not by the ancient Mckues-with a neat glass globe every fifteen feet or so: a gasketed, damp-proof installation, I noticed. The lights gave adequate illumination, but I had to be careful not to scalp myself on them.

  I said, without looking around, "Then he really is descended from the chiefs of Clan McRue?"

  "Oh, yes," the woman behind me said. "That is not a fantasy, although he has many of them. There are a great many mad Scotsmen, you know. I think the damp climate must affect the brain. Certainly it would drive me to insanity if I had to endure a lifetime of it."

  She was getting quite chatty. I decided that she must have a reason for trying to establish friendly relations- well, friendly for the circumstances-and that I might as well cash in on it, whatever it was.

  I said, challengingly, "There's no record of an American branch of the family. I checked in a library in London."

  "I know. They were all supposed to have been wiped out in a bloody feud, were they not? But apparently, when the castle was about to be overwhelmed, the young McRue sent his wife and baby to safety down these passages and went back to conceal the trapdoor and fight to the death beside his father. The wife never dared to reveal herself. She fled to America, taking the boy with her. The family name became corrupted over there as the family fortunes fell. But the story was passed on. He told it to me one night, boasting of his ancient lineage. Ancient!" Madame Ling laughed softly. "A mere two or three centuries! But his description of this place, as he had heard it, interested me, and I investigated and found that the ruins and caves actually did exist, almost unknown, and were suitable for our purposes… Just a moment. Stop, please. Open that door to your right."

  I glanced at her, shrugged, and pulled the door open. It moved sluggishly, not so much because it was heavy, as because it seemed to be hooked onto a lot of machinery. There was a fine-mesh screen door beyond. The first thing I noticed was the smell. It reminded me of my childhood, when I'd raised white mice for some reason I can't recall.

  Then I saw the cages, rows upon rows of them, on each side of the long, narrow room. Above them, down each side of the room, ran a long rod in bearings, geared to an electric motor at the end nearest the door. On each rod, above each vertical stack of cages, was a pulley, and from each pulley a chain ran down to the upper cage door, which in turn was linked to the one below it, and so on clear to the bottom.

  That was the mechanical part of the display. The rest was just rats-or maybe I should say rodents. The cages held big rats, little rats, big mice, little mice, moles, ground squirrels, and real, honest-to-God squirrels, both gray and red, with fine bushy tails. There were other small ratty animals I couldn't identify, and I may have got some of the first ones wrong, since they didn't seem to be the American varieties with which I was familiar.

  "I would not go any closer, Mr. Helm," Madame Ling said quietly. "You have not yet received your inoculation. In theory, the disease is transmitted from rats to humans by fleas, and we have tried to make sure there are no fleas here, to simplify the matter of control. We are assuming that a rodent will eventually pick up suitable fleas wherever he may be transported. However, there have been a few unfortunate occurrences indicating that Dr. McRow's hyper-active variety of the disease manages to find other means of transmission-perhaps fleas or mosquitoes, we are not sure-when there are no fleas available. So I would not open the screen door if I were you."

  I hadn't the slightest intention of opening it. I looked at the collection of twittering, scratching, nose-twitching, stinking rodents. I drew a long breath, wondering if I were breathing death, and said, "They are all infected?"

  "Of course." She laughed softly. "You have been wondering why I have been telling you so much, Mr. Helm. This is our secret weapon, and our insurance. If Colonel Stark should manage to locate us before we make our escape tonight, I want you to be able to confirm what I radio him about this. You have noticed the motors? There is a switch in a room below. It can be actuated either manually or electronically. If there is any threat to this place before we leave, or to the ship afterward, I will close that switch-either by hand or by remote control-and all these cages will open. They will also open automatically, after we have departed, if anyone disturbs certain warning devices hidden throughout these caves, which I will energize as I leave."

  "Tricky," I said.

  "Very tricky, Mr. Helm. You will note that the room narrows at the far end; it is actually only a crevice in the rock, which we have widened. The crevice goes on into the hill and meets other crevices, which come to the surface in various holes, like the one into which you fell. The switch also opens this door, allowing the animals to find other tunnels throughout the bluff. To accelerate their dispersal, a harmless gas is released that they find most unpleasant. Once they are loose, do you think anyone will ever catch them all? And if one, just one, escapes with the disease it carries, the population of Scotland is doomed. The population of Britain is doomed. And only rigorous quarantine measures will prevent the plague from spreading over the water to the Continent and further. And that is what will happen if the Colonel should act rashly. I am sure that, if the occasion arises, you will be glad to help me persuade him to be reasonable."

  I said, "What if you release the plague and it spreads clear to Asia?"

  "Ah, but we have a serum. It does not, as yet, give full protection-we are still checking its effectiveness, as you heard-but we are realists, Mr. Helm. We know that we can afford losses approaching forty per cent if the rest of the world suffers ninety-five to one hundred per cent. Besides, by the time the disease reaches us, we may ha
ve perfected the serum, with Dr. McRow's help."

  "It's quite a threat," I said. "If you get away successfully, what demands are you going to make? I assume your country is not backing this project just to enrich Dr. McRow."

  "Demands?" She seemed amused, for some reason. "Oh, yes, demands. Political demands. That is the logical next step, is it not? Blackmail. Worldwide political blackmail, such as you Americans have tried, and the Russians also, not very successfully, with your big bombs. It is an intriguing notion." She gave her soft laugh again, dismissing the subject, and murmured, "Close the door, Mr. Helm, and proceed. We call that the upper animal room. Now we pass the observation ward. I will not show it to you now, since you will see it soon enough."

  I glanced at her over my shoulder, to see what she meant by this, but she was answering the salute of an armed man at the door in question, inclining her head slightly, and her expression told me nothing. I moved ahead, feeling a draft of cool air coming to greet me.

  Her voice checked me. "No, turn right, please. That one is a blind corridor ending high above the sea. We go down here. Be careful, this portion is quite steep and low. Stop at the light at the bottom. The stairs you see ahead lead down to the lower animal room-where other rodents are being prepared for shipment-to the personnel quarters, the laboratory, and the cove where boats can land at low tide. As you see, we have quite an installation. Here are my quarters. Please enter."

  The rest of the place, as far as I'd seen it, had been strictly business, wired for light as necessary, but with the bare rock showing, wet here and there with the usual trickles of underground water. In Madame Ling's quarters, the rock was concealed behind wallboard and wooden paneling, and there was carpeting on the floor. The furniture wasn't fancy, but it wasn't cheap, either. There was indirect lighting. There were, however, no pictures on the wall, no old Ming vases, no art objects or decorations of any kind. Obviously, while Madame Ling intended to be reasonably comfortable, she wasn't trying to set up a home away from home inside this Scottish rock..

  An efficient-looking mass of electronic equipment was installed in one rear corner. Beside it, a door led into a further room, presumably her sleeping quarters, since there was no bed here. I looked for the switch she had mentioned. It wasn't hard to find, located above and behind the big wooden desk near the radio stuff-but there were two switches. One had a red handle. The other handle was black.

  Madame Ling saw me looking, and said, "Yes, that is it. Black for the Black Death. Appropriate, don't you think, Mr. Helm?"

  "And the red one?"

  She hesitated, and shrugged. "That actuates the destruct circuit manually, Mr. Helm. Naturally we do not want your scientists poking and prying among what we leave behind. When we are through with this place, entirely through with it, we will blow it sky-high, using a remote-control device in the same circuit."

  "Rats and all," I said, watching her.

  "Yes, of course." She laughed quickly. "Rats and all, Mr. Helm. Now please come over here and sit down. I have a few questions to ask you."

  chapter TWENTY

  It wasn't much of a question-and-answer session. At the start, at least, she asked nothing that I couldn't readily answer. I'm not a Hollywood hero, and I'm not about to get beat up just to prove how tough I am. I've never subscribed to the theory that you've got to refuse to tell a Communist something just because he-or she-asks.

  If Madame Ling wanted to know what message Walling had conveyed to me through Nancy Glenmore, if I had reported this information to Washington, and if they'd had any luck with it, I saw no reason not to tell her-particularly since she'd probably already got the dope from Vadya, over the phone, the night before. She was just checking us against each other. When she got to the exact purpose of my mission here, the situation got a little tougher. I hadn't yet decided what was the best way to handle that.

  "I came to find Dr. McRow," I said, stalling.

  "We know that," Madame Ling said. "My question concerned what you are supposed to do when you find him."

  "Didn't Vadya tell you?"

  "The Russian girl can hardly be considered a reliable source of information, Mr. Helm, either as to her own motives or as to yours…

  There was a knock at the door. The dark-faced man, stationed against it, glanced at Madame Ling. When she nodded, he turned to open. It occurred to me that he was getting on my nerves a little. I wished she would at least call him by a name, so I could have a handle to think of him by. I wished he would express an opinion on something. After all, I knew he could talk if he wanted to. I'd heard him. Well, maybe he just had nothing to say right now.

  He pulled the door open, and McRow entered, carrying a couple of flasks, a jar of absorbent cotton, a pair of tweezers, and a hypodermic needle, all neatly arranged on a folded white towel on a stainless steel tray.

  "You can put it on the desk, Doctor," Madame Ling said. "Go right ahead. You might explain to Mr. Helm the nature of the experimental program in which he is participating."

  McRow didn't look at me. He used the tweezers to extract a wad of cotton, which he dunked in a liquid that was presumably alcohol.

  "We are trying to determine the efficacy of a serum," he said, coming over to me and shoving the sleeve up my left arm with his free hand. "I'm about to inject… This man has already received an injection of some kind today, Madame," he said quickly, looking up. "There's a puncture, and slight inflammation of the surrounding tissue."

  "Well, use the other arm," she said. "It was only an antidote to a drug he'd been given."

  "It could affect his powers of resistance."

  She shrugged. "Use him anyway. We have too little data as it is." She glanced at me. "You understand, Mr. Helm, right now you are being inoculated against the disease. In a few hours you will be infected with the culture. You will then, if our previous experience is a guide, have about sixty per cent chance of surviving."

  "Sixty point five," McRow said, "according to our present figures, which however cannot be trusted beyond the first digit, since they represent a sample of only twenty-eight."

  I made the calculation in my head. "That means that seventeen have lived and eleven have died so far."

  Madame Ling smiled approvingly. "You are quick with figures. Of course, we are speaking only of those who were inoculated. Of our first control group of twenty-those who were infected without first receiving the serum-none have lived, but Dr. McRow estimates that, with adequate medical attention, five out of one hundred could possibly recover. These are the figures I mentioned to you earlier."

  Well, people were dying all over the world, one way or another. I wasn't about to break into tears because a few more had succumbed to a cold-blooded medical experiment; but a small show of indignation seemed advisable.

  "Twenty and twenty-eight is forty-eight," I said. "Where did you get all these human subjects?"

  I was speaking to the woman, but it was McRow who answered, nastily: "You might say they volunteered. They were nosy-parkers who tried to interfere with my work, like you. I warned them! I warned everybody! I'm not going to spend my whole life working for pennies and having other people make millions from my discoveries!"

  Under other circumstances, he would have sounded ridiculous: a peevish little boy complaining that life was unfair.

  I said, "Forty-eight nosy-parkers is a lot of nosy-parkers. Are you sure Madame Ling didn't round you up a few strays on the side, people who weren't doing anything to harm you but just happened to be handy?"

  He didn't say anything, but jabbed his needle into my right arm harder than seemed necessary. He knew damn well that all of his subjects hadn't been hostile agents, but he wasn't admitting it, even to himself.

  His attitude gave me a hint of how to handle him, and I said, "Well, you might as well be getting used to it, I guess. After all, you're going to murder millions before you're through, aren't you?" His head came up angrily. I grinned, and went on smoothly, "Oh, hell, I'm not criticizing, man. I make my living
at it myself. As a matter of fact, I came here to kill you."

  I was glad I had waited until he'd got the hypo out of my arm, because he'd undoubtedly have broken it off, the way he jumped. His reaction told me I was on the right track: this wasn't a man to be tricky with, this was a man to lean on hard, just like Basil. Madame Ling and her Eastern cohorts, and the silent, dark-faced man were tough enough, but apparently they'd had to make do with some fairly mushy Western help.

  McRow licked his lips. "But I… I thought you were an American agent!"

  "So?"

  "But surely… I mean, we don't employ assassins, do we?"

  I laughed. "Look who's calling who names! And who's this 'we' you're talking about? Surely you don't still consider yourself an American citizen?" I grinned at him. "You, my friend, are a fool. What do you think is going to happen to you? Are you figuring on making a hundred million dollars with this lady's help, and restoring the old family plantation-well, castle-and settling down to be a wealthy Scottish laird in kilts and sporran?" His eyes wavered, and I knew I'd hit close. As Madame Ling had said, he had his fantasies. I said harshly, "Let me give you some advice, Doc, as one murderer to another. I see our taciturn friend has put the stuff he got from my pockets right there on the desk. There should be a nice little knife, about four inches in the blade. It's good and sharp. I don't see my gun anywhere, so why don't you just take that knife, Doc, and cut your throat, and save everybody a lot of trouble?"

  He snapped: "Save you a lot of trouble, you mean!"

  "Me," I said, "or the guys who'll come after me, if I fail. I figure there'll be about ten million of them."

  "What do you mean?"

  I said, "Well, I was just using your figures, Doc. You estimate your stuff will kill around ninety-five per cent, isn't that right? There are about two billion people in the world. After ninety-five per cent of them are dead, there'll still be around ten million left. And every damn one of them will be looking for Dr. Archibald McRow with a gun in his hand, or a knife, or a stone club, or nothing at all but the bare fingers and the homicidal impulse. You'll be the most unpopular man on this depopulated planet, amigo."