Rollerball (Commander Shaw Book 17)

by Philip McCutchan

  Jackson had filled me in on other matters. “State of readiness,” he’d said in his militarily-clipped voice. “We’re all on stand-by in Catterick and everywhere else come to that. I’m told the Chief of the Defence Staff has the jitters rather badly.”

  I hadn’t commented on that; I wasn’t too sure just how far down the chain of command the big threat had been released, though I had plenty of doubts about the effectiveness of security within the armed forces at a time like this. We could scarcely be closer to the brink and once Rollerball went down into the earth the country would have to be brought immediately to war stations. All that couldn’t have failed to cast its shadow down from the Defence Ministry.

  I drove into Reeth at two-fifteen. Ahead lay the great, empty stretches of Arkengarthdale. My map showed where the road ran through Langthwaite, last village until you were well into County Durham. About a mile north of Langthwaite was the right-hand turn I would take, signposted for Bowes and Barnard Castle. As I reached this road there was a bitter wind but the sky was clear of snow. The package was to be deposited off this road and there was time yet. I decided to make a recce. As I’d been approaching the turn two cars had come down from ahead; I wouldn’t be the only one crossing the moor and I wouldn’t stand out particularly. Later the road would be closed, but not yet. I crossed a small bridge and the road turned left and started to climb sharply, a narrow lane running between high stone walls with a ditch on the right. At the top of the climb I went over a cattle grid and out onto the open moor. Away to right and left were short stone hides that looked as though they might have been built as weather protection for the sheep. Approaching what I took to be Hope Moor I was intrigued to see a sign pointing to Shaw Farm. My idea was to find somewhere near the hand-over point from which I could watch without being seen, somewhere I could also hide the car. If I could do that, I would stay around. I know the north of England reasonably well; there was a fair chance of finding a derelict barn or some other distantly-situated farm outbuilding — and in fact that wouldn’t look too suspicious with a car parked. There are always shepherds around, after all.

  I was right. Within a mile of the target area I saw a barn only a matter of yards from the track. One end of it was open to the fresh air, with pieces of roof timber hanging down. I drove off the track and nosed the car right in and stopped. I was nicely hidden from all around, and from the air too. It couldn’t be better.

  But someone else had the same idea. I realised this too late. When I got out of the car I walked slap into chummy’s revolver.

  11.

  “Henry Kissinger,” I said. “Alias James Orris Donovan Broadley.”

  “I thought you’d find that registration document,” he said. He had the hammer of his revolver drawn back and looked as though he was going to shoot at any moment. There wasn’t much room for me to do a sharp fling aside when the moment came; there was only a couple of feet between my car and the barn wall. I looked around, a quick glance to fix my bearings. Half way along the barn a sort of half wall was thrust out from one side, extending only half way across, like a stall in a stable or cowshed. Just beyond it in the gloom I now saw another car, a small one. Later it turned out to be a Fiesta. Henry Kissinger had come down the scale, no doubt in the interest of anonymity.

  “What did you expect to find on the moor, Commander?” he asked.

  “The same as you, I imagine.”

  “That broadcast. Everyone was to keep away. You’ve only yourself to blame now.”

  I said, “I suppose you’re here to collect.” He didn’t answer that and I asked another question. “Where’s Miss Mandrake?”

  “Safe,” he answered, and that was all I could get out of him in regard to Felicity. I watched him closely; I felt I hadn’t long to go before he squeezed that trigger. The thing to do was to keep him talking for a while and hope to get him off guard, and this I did. I talked about the forthcoming collection of loot to start off with and a surprising fact emerged. Mr Broadley, to use his proper name — or for all I knew that could be just another alias for a busy man — was not the official collector. Oh, no. He’d gone into self-employment. He was going to make the grab and beat it for the Middle East, not cashing the credits because the bankers there wouldn’t be likely to admit his signature, but retaining them until Dr Seiko handed over a large sum in hard cash, a sum that was to be flown out to him in Beirut.

  I saw all sorts of snags in that and I mentioned some of them: Seiko’s revenge being the predominant one. Broadley wasn’t worried. He said Seiko would cough up because he, Broadley, knew all about the Jap’s plans for hiding himself away in Australia and these he would not wish known. As for the rest, Broadley could look after himself and wasn’t without friends. He was scathing about Seiko, whom he called a mean bastard.

  “But a trusting one,” I said.

  “Meaning?”

  “He trusted you,” I pointed out, “or you wouldn’t have known his Australian plans. Maybe you can tell me something else, having gone so far.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Is Seiko really going to push this thing all the way? Is he going to let a shooting war break out?”

  “Yes,” Broadley said.

  I believed him. That was another thing: he wanted to get out from under before the nuclear missiles started being hurled around and he had a suspicion that Dr Seiko didn’t mean to take him along. Extra hands could spell danger — chummy had worked that out for himself unaided — and this was strictly a Jap show.

  “Your usefulness is coming to an end, is that it?”

  He nodded. “Right, could be. Straws in the wind — you know?”

  “I don’t suppose you were all that important anyway,” I said. It needled him. I’d struck home. He blustered a bit and looked nasty; my estimate was that he’d got his Australia information from another of the Jap gang rather than from Seiko himself. They’d been in Scotland, after all; whisky might well have a tongue-loosening effect on saki drinkers, but of course all this was conjecture. I dug for a little more information. I wanted to know more about Felicity, though the information would be purely academic if Broadley used his revolver. I asked where she was being held and he said he didn’t know. He’d left her at a ‘safe house’ in Bishop Auckland whence she had been due for another shift that morning and he hadn’t been told where. I was about to ask him if he knew where Dr Seiko was when we were interrupted. A sound was heard in the distance to the south and this increased to a roar. Something passed right over us. I recognised the racket of a helicopter and it was almost certainly the one bringing the Government’s package.

  Broadley seemed to think the same. I fancied I saw his finger tighten on the trigger. I looked upwards and assumed an expression of intense alarm. I said, “Look up there!” and he did; he was a trifle thick. I flung myself at him and took him in the stomach with my head while the gun went off and the bullet scraped along my right side. We both crashed to the floor of the barn, with him temporarily on top. Not for long; as he scrabbled about I managed to get a grip on the revolver and in the struggle he shot himself in the thigh. There was a howl of pain and some oaths and then in trying to get to my feet in the narrow space between car and barn wall I had to lift the wounded man bodily. We rose, with chummy draped over my shoulders, legs in the air, and head down. I was aware of him grabbing around for the gun and reckoned I needed to act fast. I pulled on his legs, then shifted my grip to his middle and flung him bodily through the air. It was quite a cast: he cleared my car and vanished over the half wall ahead. I heard an almighty crash and a sudden snap of metal.

  I went round to look. It was horrible. There was what I took at first to be rusting farm machinery but I soon saw that that wasn’t quite the description. Somebody had left a heavy metal trap around; I believe it was a man-trap, probably something that had been there for generations gathering rust. And it had been left open, which was a criminal thing to do. Broadley had gone head first into it and the mechanism had operated.
Huge teeth bit right into the neck and blood was spurting. What little I could do, I did; I heaved at the metal but couldn’t get the teeth apart until I found a crowbar and that did it, at much risk to my hands and arms. But it was too late when I tried to stop the flow of blood from so many apertures. It was slowing already and the eyes were glazing over.

  With the very dead for company I listened to the fading sounds of the helicopter as it headed back for base. Somewhere out there on the moor was access to a paper fortune — even within the terms of reference of governments.

  *

  I had a long wait for the collection, keeping under cover. At last another helicopter, as I’d expected, came in. Looking through the broken walls of the barn I saw two men clearly in the light from the machine. The package had been placed on bare ground alongside a mound of stones, a sort of cairn, about a couple of hundred yards from the road and a milestone that had acted as a marker. When the men picked up the package I fancied I saw a gleam coming off metal. Sensible enough to put the drafts in something that a sheep couldn’t nibble at. The men didn’t linger and in no time the machine had lifted and was away northwards and I was left to guess where. It was a pity about the dead man; he just might have told me in the full flush of his confidence earlier.

  When I drove back into Langthwaite for the Muker road and Kirkby Stephen there was a policeman on duty where the moorland road entered the village.

  He stopped me.

  He wasn’t pleased. He said, “T’police down t’other end were supposed to stop all cars coming along, like I am this end. How did you manage it?”

  “I was there before they put the watchdogs on,” I told him. He nattered away at me and looked as though he had half a mind to apprehend me, so I brought out my 6D2 pass.

  “Commander Shaw, eh,” he said and immediately became co-operative. He’d heard of me, and recently at that. “There’s someone been asking for you.” He jerked a hand rearwards. “In t’car, like.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Wouldn’t give ’is name, but ’e’s one of your lot.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and got permission to proceed. There were quite a few rubbernecks around and they looked at me curiously as I came into the village itself, someone from the hub of current world events. There were several cars parked and to my surprise it was Max himself who got out of one of them and started walking towards me.

  I leaned from the window and said, “Well, well.”

  “Hold it,” he snapped. As I stopped he thrust his head in. In a low voice he said, “I suppose you saw it. Package gone?”

  I nodded.

  “Where are you going now?”

  “Kirkby Stephen,” I said. “Or more accurately, Nateby.” He said, “I’ll follow,” and immediately pulled his head out and walked back to his car. I drove on past and waited while he turned. Then I started off, back along the road’s desolation, back through Reeth and Muker and the long climb up the fellside while the wind blew strong and icy and my headlights beamed off snow and lonely sheep and the odd mournful cow in the lee of the stone walls. I heard the wind’s whine; it added dramatically to the ghostly effect of that drive, a ghostliness that had started on the high moor behind me as the light had gone and I’d been left with dead Broadley. I hadn’t reported that to the policeman on guard duty; it could have led to delay. The cop mind can be slow-moving and rule-book bound. Neither had I told Max yet. But Broadley would keep; it was cold enough outside.

  Max was keeping fairly close behind me and I cursed his dipped headlights. Maybe he was feeling the desolation too. We stopped in Nateby just after 1800 hours and I got out and walked back to Max’s car. There were some Army vehicles around and I saw the loom of light over the hill between us and the target area for Rollerball.

  Max pushed his front passenger door open. “Get in,” he said. I did so. Max looked at the luminous dial of the clock in the dash. “Seven hours,” he said. It sounded like the voice of doom.

  “Anything from Moscow?” I asked.

  “Yes. If Rollerball goes down into the earth, they’ll go into a strike.”

  I felt the reaction in my guts. “And Britain? What do we do?”

  “We go as well,” he said. He was silent for a few moments then he started bawling me out for having disobeyed orders: I hadn’t got Seiko.

  “My apologies,” I said, tongue in cheek. “There hasn’t been the opportunity. I see it as more important to stop Rollerball, frankly.”

  “That may not be enough.”

  “Why not?”

  Max drummed his fingers on the steering-wheel. “Moscow’s in a nasty mood. For my money they won’t withdraw in case we’re up to some further chicanery — which is how they see it. They don’t bloody well believe us — you know that. Seiko’s the proof!”

  “But one of their agents in this country will have heard that broadcast. Surely that clinches it?”

  “Not necessarily. That could be another of our little stratagems. We still have a need to produce Seiko to Moscow. In person.”

  “Is that why you’ve come up?” I asked. We didn’t often see Max in the field, in fact this was the first time I could recall. But he said it wasn’t that; he wanted to see Rollerball for himself and this was a good opportunity. I said that I thought his place was in Focal House at a moment when everything might blow; his answer to that was that he would be in immediate touch by radio and could be helicoptered south as soon as needed. He wasn’t satisfied with taking reports on the telephone, having it all at second hand, and I could sympathise with that. There was another silence while I listened to the howl of the wind, then he said abruptly, “That handover — the drafts. I assume you didn’t recognise the men?”

  “No,” I said. Then I told him about Broadley, now dead. “Who?”

  “The gunman we nabbed — remember? — when that attack was made after Heathrow. Said he was Henry Kissinger.”

  “Ah, yes. Any leads?”

  “No. He said Felicity — Miss Mandrake — had been briefly in a safe house in Bishop Auckland but he didn’t give me the address. It was only a change-over point. She was taken on and he didn’t know where.” I paused. There was no need to elaborate to Max on my anxieties about Felicity. He knew how I felt about her. I went on, “Broadley confirmed that Seiko’s heading for Australia. I assume they’ll be warned.”

  “Already done, on guesswork.”

  “Something else, not important now: Broadley intended nicking those drafts.’

  Max just nodded. It was a pity, I thought once again, that Broadley was dead. Max suddenly smacked a palm against the steering-wheel and said, “Well, we’d better go and take a look at that bridge.”

  *

  It was a busy scene and a strange one to find in that lonely landscape. There were a number of tracked vehicles — Max and I had followed the deep ruts that led right across the hill — and girders and supports and what-have-you were everywhere. There were two huge ramps for Rollerball to climb and hopefully to roll on again. The work was taking place under floods like at the trench and I didn’t doubt that by now Seiko was well aware of what was going on but that couldn’t be helped; in any case there was probably nothing he could do about it. He might even be confident still that there was nothing we could do about it either. Major Jackson was standing by one of the giant ramps as we came up. He swung round and introduced two men he was talking to; they were from a geological team sent in by Durham University. They said they had pin-pointed the intersection and the site had been clearly marked out for the sappers; and they confirmed what I knew already, that the ceiling was weak and the earth layer thin and that anything of the size and strength of Rollerball would probably have little difficulty in penetrating, especially if, as I’d told Jackson earlier, it used its flanges to batter away when stopped.

  I was still worried about whether the bridge would take its weight. Jackson was positive that it would. In any case all we could do was to stand around and see what happened; he couldn�
��t make it any stronger than he was doing.

  Max and I watched the work. I felt pretty useless. The bridge was taking shape now and it certainly began to look strong. When the ramps went into position I saw that Rollerball would have a fair amount of leeway even if it wasn’t dead on track; the ramps were wide. In any case it was a fair assumption that the wicked sphere’s brain would hold it accurate and steady for its plunge.

  When Jackson reported the super-strengthened bridge ready to take the strain the time was thirty-five minutes after midnight; and reports had come in by radio from police patrols that Rollerball, somewhat late on my estimate, was making its approach a little north of Brough.

  “Say six miles,” I said. I looked at my watch: something over an hour and a half yet to go. The delay could have been caused by a need for Rollerball to skirt the fells, take the easy ways that its brain reported to it. And there was always the worry that the brain might make a report about the bridge.

  We waited in that cold wind. Max walked up and down, beating his arms across his chest. There was little talking; everyone was too much on edge. The reaction could almost be felt as another radio report came in and was taken by a signaller. Rollerball was on the eastern outskirts of Brough and damage was being done. Now there were about five miles to go.

  I looked across at Max, standing in the light of one of the floods. I saw his lips move; I think he was praying.

  The minutes ticked away. I was seeing in my mind’s eye the sudden impacting of the Russian missiles, the SS4, SS5 and SS20 with their warheads all targeted on Europe, the terrible conflagration that would strike the capital and the ports and the industrial areas and the military concentrations. The British strike-back would be ready, of course, the strategic submarine fleet having moved out of the Gareloch with its own nuclear missiles trained on the Russian land mass.