Rollerball (Commander Shaw Book 17)

by Philip McCutchan

  ‘'He won’t give any help,” I said. “I need some facts to use as pressure.” I knew that a full dig had been made into Seiko’s past. Max asked what sort of facts I wanted. I said, anything about ancestors. In particular, his parents, who had died in Britain.

  Max understood. It would all be put on telex to the York nick, he said. I asked him what the latest news was internationally and he said there was no relaxation in the state of readiness and Moscow was still making angry noises though they had tended to mellow slightly — very slightly — after getting word that Rollerball hadn’t entered the fissure. “But it may not last,” he said, and he didn’t really need to tell me that, especially as he added that it was now known that large-scale movements of Soviet troops had taken place, the armoured columns and mobile launching platforms moving in fast through Poland and Czechoslovakia to distribute themselves along the Iron Curtain. He rang off. Still leaving Seiko to ponder his future, I waited for the telex. Max had moved fast and the wait was not long. When I had the details I went back to Seiko.

  “Honourable ancestors,” I said. “Honourable father and mother.”

  “So?” The black eyes had taken on something extra: hate, and a touch of fear. The Japanese, ancestor worshippers to a man, honour the old and the dead. Especially the dead.

  I said, “You were a student at London University, back in 1960.”

  No comment: possibly he saw it coming. I went on, “Honourable parents died that year, in Britain. Both of them. In what appeared to be a road accident. In fact they could have been deliberately run over the edge of a long drop, though no other car was ever found. They were cremated at Woking and their ashes were buried together in an urn. No bodies. But ashes … they can be dishonoured just as much as bodies. And we know where the urn is.”

  The eyes gleamed. “You threaten this?”

  “Regretfully. The matter’s important.”

  “So typical of the British.”

  “It isn’t. But it’s going to be done. And you’ll be there to see it. The ashes will be dug up and scattered somewhere unpleasant.”

  He stared back at me, his face working. There was an inner conflict. Scattered and dishonoured, his parents would cease to rest peacefully with Buddha or Confucius as the case might be. He remained silent for a long while and then he turned the tables on me. He spat towards me, a long stream of saliva, and he said, “Ashes scattered in any case by Soviet missiles. Scattered, but not thus dishonoured. Another honourable effect of war.”

  You couldn’t win. I saw beyond doubt that he wasn’t going to be shaken. Now that his escape had been frustrated, dedication had returned, perversely. There was only one thing to be done: take him down to London and drop the whole weight of the British Government on his head. That, and the feelings of the public. Once the facts were known, there would be fifty-five million people screaming for his blood. So under a strong escort we were driven to Leeds airport and flown down on a special flight to Heathrow, then a helicopter lift to Focal House.

  I found that Max had other ideas. The situation was worsening again. Most alarmingly. The PM had tried to keep the lines open between Downing Street and the Kremlin, between Washington and the Kremlin as well. The dialogue had to be kept going; but suddenly it wasn’t. The lines had gone dead, both of them. Washington was still in touch with Downing Street, of course, but the noises coming along the line were unfriendly. Reason: Rollerball, blundering on south, had entered the earth after all. This had been while I was in flight from Leeds; and the entry point had been a totally unexpected one, though still on that direct line. Watched by the television cameras and a horde of brave rubbernecks and troops, it had stopped and swivelled and begun to vibrate and spin-on-the-spot at a point between Settle and Pately Bridge in North Yorkshire after ploughing a furrow of destruction through the little town of Grassington.

  After some fifteen minutes of this entrenching work, the earth had given up and caved in and Rollerball had vanished. Reports from the geological team in attendance indicated that as a result of soundings made, the sphere was moving a good deal faster than it had done on the surface.

  13.

  Max stabbed a finger at me. “Russia,” he said. “You’ve got to get there. With Seiko.” Seiko wasn’t present; he was being held in the rough-up room in the basement. “It’s the one thing left now.”

  I wasn’t quite with him; for one thing, I was dead tired and hungry. “To do what?” I asked, eyebrows raised. “The problem’s here, isn’t it?”

  “No!” he said, and said it loudly. “It’s not — not now. Rollerball’s down in that damn fissure, isn’t it, and en route for Russia. That’s where the problem is now, or soon will be — physically as well as politically.” He put his head in his hands for a moment; he looked as all in as I felt. “Look, I’ve been having a long session with the cabinet. A clean breast has been made to Moscow about Rollerball’s descent — no point in trying to conceal what’s been on television in any case. And we seek something vital: trust! Our honesty, and your presence in the Soviet Union with Seiko, are the only things we have left now. Don’t you see?”

  I did, up to a point. I asked, “Are you expecting me to stop Rollerball from the Russian end?”

  Max’s answer to that was simple and forceful. He said, “Yes.”

  “How?” I asked. It was largely rhetorical, since I knew he didn’t know any more than I did. And I didn’t get an answer. Max merely lifted his hands in the air. It was up to me, though not wholly. Diplomacy had to come into this, and I would be accompanied by a VIP from the Foreign Office, a Minister of State no less, with staff. It was to be a full-scale mission and no time was being lost: we were to leave from Heathrow that night.

  “You can sleep in flight,” Max said.

  “Thanks. Why are the Russians letting us fly in, at a time like this?”

  “A friend at court,” Max answered briefly. “Just one. Josef Demichevich. He’s one of the vice-chairmen of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He’s been sticking his neck out, arguing against sending off the missiles. He’s won us a respite. Make the most of it.”

  *

  I took Dr Seiko over and we were driven under a strong escort to Heathrow for our night flight. The VIP lounge was guarded like Dartmoor prison. The Minister of State arrived with his entourage and security men. The place was filled with briefcases and starchy secretaries to carry them. The Minister, to whom I was introduced, was the Right Honourable Sir Marcus Fawcett, MP. He was one of the outside-the-cabinet wets; I imagined that Comrade Demichevich was also a wet, or as close to a wet as would be permitted in the Soviet Union. Fawcett seemed a decent enough bloke, unassuming and friendly, but he kept his distance from Seiko: you couldn’t fraternise with villains. After we were aboard the jetliner I was sent for to sit with the Minister, who ejected his principal secretary to accommodate me.

  “You look tired,” he said.

  I said I was. “I’d intended to sleep on the plane, Minister.”

  “I’m sorry about that, but I won’t keep you longer than I have to. I need an amplification of the facts, a first-hand account of Rollerball and this man Seiko.”

  I gave it to him as briefly as possible. He didn’t interrupt; after I’d finished he asked some pertinent questions and listened intently to the answers. He was all there and I sensed a first-class brain. He pumped me about the Kola Peninsula’s years-ago threat. He’d read all about that but, again, wanted the first-hand account. Rollerball, I confirmed, would have no difficulty in distributing its bacteria and fungus spores once it reached the end of the fissure. Unless, I said, the Russian naval command blocked the exit off securely, which obviously they would.

  “We understand they’ve done that already,” Fawcett said. “But it isn’t quite the point any more. It’s the belief that we’re seeking an excuse to attack, that we’re provoking them. I’m sure you realise that, Commander.”

  I said I did, only too well, but I made a counter point. “Wou
ld we not be assumed to have started a strike already, if that was the case?”

  Fawcett shrugged. “Since it’s not the case, it’s hypothetical. We don’t know the Russian mind. What did Churchill call them?” He answered his own question. “An enigma wrapped in a mystery. As true now as it was then.” He sat for a few moments in thought, then said, “It’s going to take a lot of penetrating. We shall need stamina.”

  “A lot is going to be up to Seiko,” I said. “What my chief is after is the breaking of Seiko, the extraction of an admission. If he can’t be cracked — ”

  “The chances in that event are, the Russians still won’t believe us, our own unsupported word won’t weigh.”

  “Right,” I agreed.

  “And your estimate of Seiko?”

  “Implacable,” I said. “Like his bloody Rollerball. He’s still totally confident.”

  Fawcett asked about Seiko’s control system, his method of directing Rollerball. I told him I didn’t think it mattered any more now. Rollerball was already on her final run-in, circumscribed by the fissure itself. It just had to roll along that deep underground fault and arrive at the Kola end and that was that.

  “What about the self destruct?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t know any more than he did. He brooded again for a while and then I was sent off to get that sleep that I needed. I got it, nice and undisturbed, except for nightmares about Felicity. Before leaving Heathrow I'd contacted the hospital in Norwich and the reports had been good so there was no real need to worry and when awake I didn’t. The watch on her bedside was being maintained round the clock and as soon as she was fit Max would take her over until either this thing was settled or the world started to blow itself to fragments.

  *

  London had been far from warm; Moscow was a frozen hell swept by a bitter wind that seemed to have only just left Siberia. Our party was not accorded what I would call VIP treatment; we were met by some minor official who looked immensely hostile and who led us to a small, very cold room with one window looking, when one of the secretaries cleared away the frost with a gloved hand, onto the floodlit perimeter of the Sheremetievo airport. There were tanks around, and a strong concentration of guns and troops. Just like war already. We were left in that room until after dawn, growing colder by the minute; there was no heating of any description. Eventually the minor official returned. He was accompanied by another man, a uniformed officer, who introduced himself as Colonel Chevik and who spoke good English.

  He said, “Since your British Ambassador has been returned to London, there is now no availability of the British Embassy.”

  “I understand that,” the Minister said. His teeth chattered and his face was almost purple with the cold. “Embassy or not, we’d appreciate a fire, Colonel.”

  Colonel Chevik looked supercilious. “Come,” he said. It was too late to worry about a fire. He turned out of the door. We all followed like sheep, with Seiko in the grip of two FO security men. We were led to another cold and gloomy room where four Russian soldiers made a search for arms and, despite strong objections from the Minister and myself, all weapons were removed, leaving Seiko under no more than physical, fleshy restraint. After that we straggled across an icy expanse of open ground towards a forty-two seater coach. The non-VIP treatment was being kept up and I didn’t think it boded any good at all. As soon as we were aboard the coach started up and we were driven into the heart of Moscow. The driver didn’t take it fast; maybe this was due to the icy condition of the roads or maybe it was so that the early-to-work Muscovites could demonstrate their feelings, which they did. There were legends in Russian on both sides of the coach indicating that we were the British mission, and the crowds didn’t like us. There was a frightening sound like the baying of hounds, and clenched fists sprouted like a strike vote being taken at BL. I believe that if they’d had guns we would never have reached our destination. Even Dr Seiko began to look shaken. And I still couldn’t blame the Russians, even though I cursed them savagely for their disbelief. One would have thought the British still had a shred of credibility left.

  The coach turned into the courtyard of a grim, grey building in the very shadow of the Kremlin walls; those walls rose like a stone shroud around Churchill’s mystery-wrapped enigma as we got out. There were armed troops around and the feeling of a trap grew stronger. Led by Colonel Chevik, with the civilian official in rear, we entered the building. There was no indication of what it was but the atmosphere was prison-like. We were herded into a long room where at last there was a fire burning brightly beneath a marble chimneypiece at the far end.

  We made a somewhat disorderly and undignified rush for it, though the Minister was politely accorded the first thrusting out of hands to the blaze. That blaze brought some cheer, but we were not allowed long before we were called to order by Colonel Chevik, and we turned to see a portly person standing just inside the door.

  Chevik said loudly, “Comrade Vice-Chairman Demichevich.” Fawcett stepped forward and identified himself Demichevich said, “So,” and gave a bleak smile, not as friendly as I’d been hoping after Max’s spiel.

  Fawcett cleared his throat and returned the smile. “This is very accommodating of your President, Comrade Demichevich.”

  “We all work for peace. No stone is left unturned.”

  “Yes, indeed. We, too, wish peace — ”

  “It is said you make war.”

  “Wrongly said, Comrade Demichevich.”

  There was another cold smile and the fat man said, “Now you have your chance, or will have shortly. I speak for you, as perhaps you know, to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.”

  “Yes, I know this,” Fawcett said. “We in the United Kingdom are all very grateful to you personally.”

  “I have visited London,” Demichevich said. “It was a happy visit on both sides.” I suppressed a grin; I knew how happy it had been. Max, before I’d left Focal House, had filled me in on it. Demichevich had been treated as a hero by the TUG and more so by certain persons on the left of the Labour Party and he’d enjoyed both that and the food and drink with which he had been lavishly entertained. He had been cheered to the echo by the Yorkshire miners when he had waffled on and on about starvation wages and communism and brotherhood and the dignity of labour, all very old-fashioned stuff to men who after the speeches went back in their cars to their TV and hi-fi, steak supper and bottles of wine, but heady stuff and more palatable than Mrs Thatcher’s strictures about productivity. In Scotland the miners had enjoyed his rendering, all the way through, of Burns’ For ay that, and a’ that and the way he had tried to follow the singing of the Red Flag, beating out the turgid time with a pudgy fist. All that had been good, but had paled into insignificance beside Demichevich’s invitation to Buckingham Palace. He had met the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales and had kissed the hand of Her Majesty; and had taken tea with them, very informally, being offered an iced bun by the Queen’s own hand. (In deference to his proletarian views, no servants had been present once the tea-things had been brought in.) Demichevich had been much impressed, Max had told me, and had been charmed by the Queen’s smile and her friendly, democratic manner. He had been within no more than perhaps a mile of conversion to monarchy. Naturally enough, none of this was stressed on his return to Moscow and Max had learned through his network of 6D2 agents that Comrade Demichevich had squared his yardarm, kept it free of any possible innuendo, by increasing his personal communism in public and in meetings of the Supreme Soviet by inveighing heavily against the feudalism and decadence of the royals. Even the corgis were fed by gilded footmen, and from gold dishes, said the returned Demichevich, while miners, railmen and the workers at BL, plus any other downtrodden slaves he could think of, starved in gruesome poverty when they were not being arrested by the capitalist police. It had occurred to Max, as it now occurred to me, that the plea made, rather riskily, by Demichevich to the Supreme Soviet had been due to a secret desire not to be churlish to the extent of
making war — until it became inevitable — against his mate the Queen of England.

  But, of course, he didn’t admit to anything like that.

  He went on, “The man your Government accuses. This is him?” He pointed at Seiko.

  The Minister nodded. “Bring him to me, please.”

  Seiko was pushed forward by his escort. I went with them, after a jerk of the head from the Minister. Seiko grinned at Demichevich. Demichevich said, “Explain.”

  “Nothing to explain. British — ”

  “There are things to explain and you will do so. Do not attempt to deny what is fact. Rollerball has been seen on television by very many people. Earlier there has been disease — a child, an official person also. We know from our geologists the fact of the fissure. And we know too that Rollerball is now fast moving and is already beneath the sea. Rollerball is moving towards Norway.”

  This was news to me; I glanced back at Fawcett; he was looking shaken. Time was indeed growing short.

  Seiko said, “Admit fact but deny responsibility, which belongs to British Government.”

  “Explain.”

  Seiko shook his head. “Nothing further to explain. British Government put Rollerball into fissure. Force used to make Japanese co-operate.”

  Both Fawcett and I had expected something like this and were not too dismayed as yet. Fawcett, when Demichevich lifted his eyebrows at him, said dismissingly, “That’s all lies, Comrade Demichevich.”

  “You offer proof?”

  Fawcett said, “We hope to be believed. We’re a civilised nation. We don’t make that sort of war.”