Some of them were concealed by damp handkerchiefs. None belonged to Franks. None belonged to his brother, his counterpart, in whose name and for whose sake solely he had remained alive. Too late Martinson saw, from the right, the downward swing of the morningstar, a rock dressed in barbed wire; he could not avoid it, but rather it seemed as if he were drifting upwards into the blow. The blow that nothing could withstand.
The impact caught him squarely on the head. There was a fleeting bitterness, a sense of loss. The mystery had no conclusion yet. It remained unfinished. And because it would be going on, because it would continue hereafter, he knew at the last that he was wrong.
He had not been forsaken after all.
9
The four helicopters which arrived that afternoon were not at all like the familiar Prison Service M55 which at midday had returned to gather pictures of the aftermath, and which, before leaving, had ordered the Village to prepare for a visit from the deputy governor.
These four machines were much bigger and heavier, twin-engined Chinooks liveried in the black and grey camouflage of the Royal Marines. With a clatter that had emptied nearly every building, they had approached the island from the south-east. Franks, standing now in the precinct with Appleton and Routledge and thirty more, had heard them coming in over Beacon Point and Pulpit Head, passing directly above Star Cove where Thaine and Chapman were yet trapped with the ketch. Above the Village the helicopters broke formation and for half a minute hovered, making a formidable and effortless show of strength.
Franks did not want to look at Appleton. He felt too sick, too deeply exhausted. The Village had lost sixteen of its men. Twenty-three more were injured, some critically. Among the dead were Tragasch, Wilson, Flagg, Daniels. Among the worst wounded were Bryant, Phelps, and Fitzmaurice. Sibley and his assistants had already performed several emergency operations in the laboratory. He was still in there, covered in blood, working on Fitzmaurice, who had been speared while trying to defend the electronics workshop. Franks had been with him when the helicopters had arrived. So had Godwin, holding him down, comforting him as if he were his own son. But, despite all Sibley’s care, it looked as if Fitzmaurice was going to die too.
The fire in the workshop itself had gone out, although some of the larch trees had caught light and their remains were still smouldering. At several places on the peninsula isolated columns of smoke, more or less dense, continued to rise into the warmth of the afternoon. The windmill had been torn down and thrown over the cliff, the hut there set on fire. The chapel had burned away completely, as had two barns. The cows and horses and donkeys had been killed. Sheep and goats had been clubbed to death. The outsiders had stolen many more. Luckily they had not penetrated the precinct workshops, nor had more than one or two houses suffered any great damage. It could have been much worse. Without the gas attack it might have proved impossible to drive the invaders back, ragged and undisciplined as their onslaught had proved. And without Thaine’s flamethrowers, Martinson would certainly have won.
But then Martinson, his body now lying on the lawn with the others, had won anyway. The Village would never be the same again.
Converging on the springy turf above Vanston Cove, four hundred metres away, the helicopters prepared finally to land. The point had been made. The authorities were all-powerful. Everything, but everything, was on their side.
As, one by one, the Chinooks touched down, Appleton said something and nodded out to sea, where, previously unnoticed, both the grey, lean, Prison Service hydrofoils were waiting offshore.
On landing, each of the helicopters immediately disgorged thirty-five or forty marines in combat dress. When he saw how many had come, Franks felt his heart sink still further. There were more than enough to conduct a search of the Village, of the whole island. If they used metal-detecting equipment they would find evidence of the ketch; they would find the craft itself.
Even before this morning’s attack, he had given orders for the workshops to be cleared of all tools and materials related specifically to boat-building. Any tools whose presence could not be explained in terms of land-based work had been sealed in polythene and buried in the compost heaps, as had the construction diaries, schedules, plans, tide-tables, and copies of the charts Appleton had prepared of the reefs and currents in Star Cove. The fins and suits had been too bulky to hide in this way: there had not been enough watertight plastic sacks to accommodate them. Some had been concealed in the clothing shop, mingled with the goatskins, while the rest had been distributed among the Village houses.
The advance warning of the deputy governor’s visit had given Franks time to double-check these precautions. It had also given him some degree of assurance that a search was not being planned.
As the marines disembarked he looked anxiously for signs of the equipment boxes which might have contained sensors. He saw none. The marines were carrying only machine guns.
One group remained to guard the helicopters. The rest advanced on the precinct. In their midst walked a civilian in a green army-style windcheater.
Franks went forward to meet him.
“Is anyone in charge here?” the civilian said.
He was middle-aged, with spectacles and thick, brush-like grey hair. Under the windcheater he was wearing an office shirt and a tie striped in blue and red. This morning he had probably put on his suit as usual. His trousers looked like suit trousers. The windcheater was new, perhaps supplied by the military. His shoes were ordinary black lace-ups. Franks resisted the urge to stare at him, at his tiepin, at his flat, pasty, mainland features. And he resisted the urge to stare at the marines’ boots and caps and machine guns, their grimly fascinated expressions. For them this was an afternoon out of the usual routine, something to talk about in the mess.
“Are you in charge?” the civilian said.
“We’ve got wounded men. You must take them to hospital.”
“You would be Franks? Liam Michael Franks?”
“Yes.”
“Are you still in charge here?”
“Yes.”
“Then I want words with you, Franks.” He peered beyond Franks, beyond Appleton and the others, who had slowly approached, and briefly let his eye dwell on the bungalow. “My name is John Yates. I am the deputy governor. You wouldn’t remember me. You were before my time.”
“Did you hear what I said? We’ve got wounded men. Some of them are dying.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Will you evacuate them?”
“You know as well I do, I haven’t the authority to do that.”
“Radio the governor.”
“No one has the authority to take any prisoners off the island. You are in Category Z.”
Franks felt himself close to physical collapse. “Help them,” he said. “For pity’s sake, what sort of people are you?”
Yates’s face said “Not like you: not murderers and rapists and terrorists,” but he made no reply. Instead he turned to one of the marines. “Would your medics be prepared to have a look at them, Captain?”
“Might they have AIDS or HVC, sir?”
“Quite possibly.”
“They have neither AIDS nor HVC,” Franks said, with all the dignity he could summon. “No one in the Village has AIDS or HVC.”
“Where are they?” the officer asked Franks.
“In the house.”
“Bring them outside. Into the open there.”
“But —”
“We’re not going indoors to treat them.”
“Mr Appleton,” Franks said. “See if you can find some stretchers.”
“We have stretchers,” the officer said, and told two of his men to bring them. The stretchers were given to Appleton and Routledge, who, followed by several others, ran off towards the bungalow.
“Well?” Yates said.
“Well what?”
“I’m waiting for an explanation. Where did you get the flamethrowers?”
“We made them, of course.
What else did you expect us to do? Sit there and wait to get killed?”
“Where are they?”
Knowing full well that the flamethrowers would be confiscated, Franks had left them on the veranda in readiness. With the marines in close attendance, Yates sternly advanced and climbed the steps. As the wounded men were brought outside, he bent to examine the workmanship and manner of construction, the valves and hoses, the air-vents, the action of the stirrup pumps. Although each of the three flamethrowers had been built to the same pattern, only one had a purpose-made pressure tank. The other two tanks had been improvised from oil drums.
“So this is what you’ve been using the metalwork tools for, is it?” Yates said, straightening up. “You realize you won’t be getting any more paraffin, don’t you? Ever. And by way of punishment all other requisitions and privileges will be suspended for two months. That includes mail delivery.”
“I would remind you that the European Court —”
“Watch yourself, Franks. You’re in more trouble here than you can handle already. My God, to think we even placed some trust in you. Well, from now on we stick to regulations.”
“In that case I take it you were mistaken a moment ago and that you will continue to deliver paraffin. I also take it that you will be delivering the full quota of medicines we have never received, the vitamin supplements, the bedding and building materials and all the other supplies specifically itemized in Section Two of the Penal Colonies Act, 1991.”
Without hesitation, Yates said, “You clearly misunderstand the law.”
“Time-serving bastard,” Franks thought. But what angered him most was the motive for this visit. Previous fighting among the outsiders – even the original wars – had attracted no more than a single helicopter taking video pictures for the governor’s private consumption. Gas had never been used before, and there had never been a landing by troops. That was partly because the earlier fighting had been on a smaller scale, but mainly because none of it would have shown up on the routine satellite scans of the Americans, the Russians, or any of the EU countries besides Britain, a number of which continued to oppose the penal colonies. The sudden appearance today of flamethrowers operating at several hundred degrees centigrade must have plunged the Home Office into paroxyms of political terror: the fireballs would have been detectable far out in space.
Yates turned to the officer. “Please take these things away.”
“Very good, sir.”
Franks watched the flamethrowers – on which so much of Thaine’s time and ingenuity had been expended, and for which the men of the Community had denied themselves so much paraffin over the past months – disappearing in the direction of the helicopters.
“Do you have any more?”
“No. We do not.”
The gas had left him unable to think properly. He could not decide whether to placate Yates or to continue trying to annoy him. Which attitude would make him want to leave the island sooner? Talking law in front of the captain of marines might not have been such a good idea.
“You must realize, Franks, that mechanized warfare between the inmates of any penal institution cannot and will not be tolerated.”
“No one regrets this morning more than me. But you in turn, Mr Yates,” Franks said, placing a subtle emphasis on the “Mr”, “you must realize what we have had to put up with from those outside our Village.”
“Don’t think your achievements here have gone unobserved. We well understand that you have had problems with the other islanders. But, as my grandfather used to say, there’s a difference between scratching your arse and tearing it to pieces.”
“What then do you suggest? Negotiation?”
“All I’m saying is that, just because this is a Category Z settlement, you men don’t have carte blanche to murder each other.”
“I thought murdering each other was the general idea. I thought that’s why we’d been dumped on Sert, to economize on the government’s dirty work and earn the approval of the press.”
Yates evidently decided that this part of the conversation had become fruitless. He said, “The governor wishes me to carry out an inspection of some of the facilities you have provided.” He turned to the officer. “I’ll start by going in here, Captain. I don’t think there’ll be any trouble, but would you clear the building first?”
Was this the beginning of a search? What if they found the suits? What if they took metal detectors to the compost heaps? Franks’s vision momentarily dimmed. He felt giddy. He reached out and gripped the handrail. The head-noises had grown much worse since this morning. Was it the gas, the strain, or both?
“Off here,” a marine said, chivvying him and the others from the veranda, down the steps and onto the shale.
Franks saw Yates striding through the doorway into the bungalow.
Bryant, Phelps and Fitzmaurice had been laid on the shale and treated first. Five more wounded men, sitting or standing, were now receiving attention from three medics. Fitzmaurice’s loud groaning had been silenced immediately with an injection, his wounds doused with antibiotics and bandaged. Beside him crouched Godwin.
“How’s Fitz?” Franks asked Sibley.
With immense weariness in his eyes, Sibley turned and looked at Franks. “If they wanted to, they could have him in hospital within half an hour. Then he might survive.”
Franks grasped Godwin’s left shoulder and squeezed it. Godwin in turn grasped Franks’s hand. If Sibley and Godwin, both British, could forgive Fitzmaurice his crimes, forgive him the carnage at Knightsbridge Barracks, couldn’t Yates at least show a spark of humanity? But then Franks remembered the television pictures of the victims, the men and women and children transformed by blast and glass and shrapnel into so much raw meat, and he realized that no one could ever be forgiven for anything. What Fitzmaurice had done was still being worked out. No god could intercede on his behalf. No priest could recite a magic formula to wipe his slate clean. And what Franks himself had done, in Belfast, in Dublin, in London, in Libya, in Boston and New York and Pittsburgh, and yes, here on Sert, that too was still being worked out. And what Yates was doing today, even that would in due course have to be worked out, paid for, and settled. For Yates had a chance this afternoon to do right, to take the wounded men to hospital; but it looked as if he was choosing to do wrong, hiding behind those who called themselves his superiors.
Yates spent a long time in the bungalow. Franks became more and more afraid that he had found something to do with the ketch. Mentally he surveyed the location of all incriminating material and tried to imagine whether or not Yates would discover it. But when eventually he emerged, Yates’s expression was just as it had been before. He descended the steps and told Franks he wanted to see the workshops.
Accompanied by half a dozen marines, with more standing by, they toured the precinct. Yates seemed intermittently surprised and impressed. In Thaine’s workshop he halted at the lathe.
“Who made this?”
“A man named Thaine. Randal Thaine.”
“Did he make the flamethrowers?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he now?”
For the first time in five years, Franks was about to utter a deliberate lie. Then he said, “Under the ground.”
On the shelf below the bench, sticking up among the bits and pieces in a cardboard box, Franks noticed the gleam of a metal disc marked on its circumference with grooves numbered in increments of ten degrees. A compass card! A bloody compass card! Made for one of the prototypes which had never been finished. From its size it could be nothing but the disc of a steering compass. Even if Yates knew nothing whatever about boats he could not fail to guess its purpose. In today’s rush and panic it must have been overlooked.
“This drive belt,” Yates said, indicating the rubber belt which disappeared through the ceiling. “I take it this connects with the windmill on the roof?”
“Yes, that’s right. Shall I show you?”
Yates was looking
at him strangely, as though he had detected a change in his manner. Quickly and suspiciously he glanced from side to side. Then he said, “Is there something in here you don’t want me to see?”
Franks tried to remain calm. “Such as?”
“Such as more weapons. Such as another flamethrower made by the late Mr Thaine. Or a bazooka. Or a surface-to-air missile. After what I’ve seen here I wouldn’t put anything past you.”
“Why don’t you look for yourself?” Franks went to the storeroom and opened the door, then did the same for each of the cupboards.
Yates, still not satisfied, let his gaze rove over the earthen floor of the workshop. He turned his eyes to the ceiling. “Is there a roof space?”
“No.”
Yates took one of Thaine’s spanners and on the timber lining of the ceiling produced a dead, unresonant tapping. When he had finished he dropped the spanner on the bench. Franks replaced it in the rack.
Still Yates hesitated. He belonged after all to a species of policeman, with the same nose for evasion and deceit. But he could find no evidence to justify his misgivings, and a moment later he said, “All right, I want to see inside one or two houses now.”
Once the inspection was over, Yates delivered another lecture on the evil consequences of further misbehaviour by the Village. Finally, some two hours after their arrival, the helicopters and the hydrofoils departed.
Yates had refused another plea to evacuate the wounded. On a blood-soaked mattress laid on a table in the laboratory, Godwin beside him, and without regaining consciousness, Fitzmaurice died at six o’clock.
“I’ve decided,” Godwin said, later. “He’s about the same height and build. It’s what Fitz would have wanted. And it’s what I want.”
“Are you sure?” Franks said.
“Yes, Father. Routledge gets his place.”
10
Dominating Routledge’s emotions that evening was a contradictory mixture of exhilaration and fear, tempered with regret for the circumstances that had robbed Fitzmaurice of Godwin’s place and given it to him. Now that he was confronted personally with the dangers of the attempt, the promise of escape held far less allure; he understood all the more Godwin’s decision to drop out.
The Penal Colony Page 30