Nucleus

by Rory Clements

  Where better to go if they needed space? The barn at Hawksmere Old Hall was no longer safe, so they had to go somewhere else. What did they have there? Were they keeping Hellquist prisoner? Was the boy, Albert, there, too?

  Wilde accelerated down Trumpington Street. The Rudge purred beneath him.

  There was still a grey light as Wilde dumped the Rudge against a wire fence, half a mile from the airfield, and began to edge his way across open land. Ahead of him he could see the hangar and the other buildings, lights showing through doorways.

  His right hand gripped the stock of the Walther hard. He knew the weight of the trigger now and he knew the kick the gun would give when fired. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it.

  In a few minutes he was at the hangar. The big main doors were closed, but a small postern door was wide open, yellow light flooding out. First he wanted to investigate one of the the admin blocks. He moved towards it, and flattened himself against the front wall. He moved closer to the open doorway and could hear voices: American voices. Dexter Flood and Milt Hardiman. He was in no doubt the others would be there, too: Hardiman’s wife, the drivers from Old Hall, the ones who had hunted him in the woods less than twenty-four hours earlier. And Clarissa? He couldn’t hear her, but whatever they were up to, she surely had to be a part of it.

  He heard footsteps and shifted away fast, into the cover of the second administrative building. He watched and waited, but no one was coming out. Not yet.

  To his right, he noticed a van. A very ordinary-looking delivery van, except for the badly dented front bumper and the smashed headlight. It would be interesting to do a fingerprint test of the interior of that vehicle – and a forensic examination of the bumper and the headlight. But that was something for another day.

  Wilde edged closer to the doorway of the admin building, tried to listen again. This time the voices were clearer but still difficult to follow. The voices came in and out of focus. He heard ‘Berlin’ and ‘Cavendish’ – and he thought he caught his own name.

  Once more he heard footsteps. He loped back to the hangar and listened for a few moments, straining for sounds. No voices. With the gun up, alongside his cheek, primed to swivel, aim, fire, he advanced into the postern doorway and looked inside.

  The taller of the two drivers was standing not six feet away from him, back turned, facing a small table where a woman sat, writing slowly on a pad, surrounded by papers. Eva Haas.

  She looked small and lost in this large space, full of yellow light and shadows

  The man guarding her had a gun in his belt, on his right side.

  Eva stopped writing, arched her back and yawned. A natural break. She looked at the man, then past him and her eyes widened at the sight of Wilde. He put a finger to his lips.

  Wilde touched the muzzle of the pistol to the stubbly hairs at the nape of the guard’s neck. ‘If you turn around or try to do anything,’ Wilde said, ‘I will fire.’

  Wilde’s gun was in his left hand. His heart was thundering. Blood surged through him. He reached his right hand forward, removed the pistol from the guard’s belt and thrust it in his own pocket.

  ‘Raise your hands where I can see them.’

  The man did as he was told, said nothing.

  ‘Down on your knees.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  Wilde kicked his calf muscles. The man stumbled and staggered. Wilde grabbed his shoulders and forced him down. He stepped in front of him and put the Walther to his right eye. ‘Do you think I haven’t killed a man before?’ He fished out a handkerchief from his pocket. ‘Open your mouth.’

  ‘Fuck y—’ the guard began. He didn’t finish the word. Wilde’s fist crunched into his face. A boxer’s punch. Blood flew from the shattered nose. The guard gasped as he fell backwards. Wilde followed him down. This time he hammered the face with the pistol. The guard was gasping for air, but Wilde pushed the handkerchief into his mouth.

  There was none of the elegance of the boxing ring about this. This was brutal, visceral and very messy.

  Wilde stood up and looked around for something to bind the man. That was when he saw the corpse of Torsten Hellquist. ‘Oh, Jesus Christ, what have they done?’ He felt faint with horror. ‘What in God’s name has been happening here?’

  ‘They tortured him to make him answer questions.’ Eva spoke in a flat voice.

  ‘What bloody questions?’

  ‘Questions about fission, Professor Wilde.’

  ‘And you went along with this barbarity?’

  ‘I had no choice. They have my son.’

  The guard was trying to struggle to his feet. Wilde kicked out at his chin and the man’s head smacked with brutal force into the concrete floor.

  Wilde went over to Hellquist and looked down into his pitiful, mutilated face, his gouged eye. He couldn’t look at the rest of the body: they had made an obscenity of a decent, kind man. As quickly as he could, he unpicked the cords that had tied Hellquist to the door and went back to the guard. Not caring how tightly he pulled, he bound the man’s hands and feet, then wound a cord around his face to ensure he could not spit out the gag.

  ‘Come on, Dr Haas, we’re getting out of here.’

  She hadn’t moved from the desk.

  ‘Come on, get up!’ He grasped her upper arm and tried to pull her to her feet, but she resisted.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you mean, no?’ He pointed to the corpse. ‘You’ll end up like Hellquist if you stay here.’

  ‘I can’t go with you,’ she hissed. ‘They have my son. They will kill him.’

  ‘We have to go. They could come over any moment.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Professor Wilde. Not even Lydia understands. I am a mother. A mother will do anything for her child.’ She picked up a scrap of card from the table, almost lost among the papers scribbled with complex equations. She held it up so that Wilde could see it. ‘That is why I cannot leave this place.’

  It was a photograph of a boy with metal-rimmed spectacles. There was something about the child’s face. For a second, two seconds, he tried to place it. Then he knew: he had seen this boy. He had seen him not far from here, in the company of three other children – children he had assumed to be the boy’s siblings. Four children in the front room of a poky two-up two-down in a Cambridge back street.

  ‘This is Albert?’

  ‘Yes, that is my son.’

  ‘I’ve seen him. I know where he is.’

  ‘This cannot be so.’

  ‘I swear it. He is at Number 16, Swaffham Lane, Cambridge. We must go.’

  Eva’s hand went to her mouth. ‘Is this true?’ She rose, and then gestured at the papers.

  Wilde scooped up the scattered pile, folded them into a rough bundle and thrust them into her arms. ‘Bring them.’ He raised the gun. ‘I need my hand free for this.’

  CHAPTER 37

  Fanny Winch trudged through the streets of Cambridge. A sudden flash of fireworks at a May Ball lit the darkening sky, from the direction of the river and the Backs. With luck, the children would have seen it. She had left them in the backyard, told them they could watch out for fireworks, but that they had to be in bed by ten thirty, no later.

  Near Emmanuel College, she spotted a policeman. He was in his thirties, well-built and not bad looking. He smiled at her, the way men usually did when they fancied you.

  ‘Evening, love.’

  ‘Evening, constable.’

  ‘Where you off to, then? One of the May Balls, eh?’ He eyed her up appreciatively.

  ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’

  ‘You’d be the prettiest lass there, you would.’

  ‘Cheeky bugger.’

  ‘No, straight up. You got the looks.’

  ‘Then why haven’t I been snapped up by a duke? My lot in life’s charring. I char for the young college gentlemen at the Cavendish after their day’s work’s done and they’re off supping champagne and what have you. Bloody messy lot they are. Mind my l
anguage.’

  ‘Don’t fancy a quick cuppa before you start, do you? There’s an all-night caff not far from here.’

  ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘Ten. Come on, love.’

  ‘Ah, no, I’m on me own tonight. Perhaps another time.’

  She left him and turned into Downing Street, shopping basket in her right hand.

  At the Cavendish, the night porter told the duty officers that Mrs Winch was authorised to be in the building. ‘You’re late tonight, Mrs W.’

  ‘Couldn’t get the little one to drop off, Mr B. I think she’s caught something.’

  ‘And no sign of Mavis neither.’

  ‘Still got the bug? Ah well, I’ll just have to work twice as hard. A woman’s work is never done. I’ll be glad of a little overtime, truth be told. Three kids at home – that’s a lot of mouths to feed.’

  ‘You’re a saint, Mrs W.’

  ‘And you’re a married man, Mr B – so keep your sweet talk for your missus.’

  ‘I’m just brewing up. Would you like a cuppa?’

  ‘I won’t say no. Just go and leave my bag. I’ll be with you in a mo.’

  *

  She had the whole laboratory complex to herself. She went into one of the offices, put down her bag and lit a cigarette. She didn’t want to open the bag just yet. It contained five sealed quarter-litre bottles and a rough map of the layout of the Cavendish with five Xs marked.

  Each of the specially constructed bottles had a timer, detonator and a very small amount of explosive attached. Just enough to fracture the glass and release the contents into the air. It was a brand new poison gas called sarin, she had been told, devised by chemists in Germany.

  First things first. She was dying for her cuppa and she always enjoyed Mr B’s company down in the porter’s lodge. There was plenty of time, because she had already decided she couldn’t be arsed to do any cleaning this evening.

  *

  Wilde did not knock at the door of Number 16. He turned the handle and it opened. He had his right hand in his pocket, clasping the butt of the Walther PP.

  Eva was just behind him, her small, slender figure quivering with anticipation.

  ‘Is he really here?’

  ‘I hope so. He certainly was.’

  Behind them, the Rudge was parked at the kerb, the scientific papers Wilde had gathered up stuffed in the saddlebag. He and Eva had managed to creep from the hangar and make their way across the airfield undisturbed. It wasn’t until they reached the Rudge that they heard the distant sounds of discovery. Within seconds they had been speeding along the road back to Cambridge.

  Now Wilde stepped inside the house, followed by Eva. The twelve–year-old who had answered the door when Wilde first came around, was in the front room.

  ‘What the hell?’ He looked up, startled.

  ‘Is your mother here?’

  ‘What’s it to you? Oi – I’ve seen you before . . .’

  ‘My name’s Mr Wilde. What’s your name, lad?’

  ‘Michael.’ He was a tousle-headed boy with intelligent eyes. ‘Now sod off, mum’s out working.’

  ‘Where’s the German boy?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about, mister. Just the three of us here. Now, piss off or I’ll call a copper.’

  Eva had had enough. She walked past the boy and peered along the narrow corridor towards the tiny kitchen. On her left was a steep flight of wooden steps.

  ‘Albert,’ she called out. Then louder: ‘Albert!’

  The boy Michael shot up from his perch at the front room table and tried to wedge himself between Eva and the staircase. ‘You can’t go up there, missus!’

  For a moment, Wilde thought the woman and boy were about to fight, but then he heard a small voice from above.

  ‘Mutti?’

  A bespectacled face appeared at the top of the stairs.

  Eva Haas pushed Michael out of the way and held out her arms as her son ran down the stairs, two at a time, and threw himself into her embrace.

  Elbowing Michael aside, Wilde touched Eva on the shoulder. ‘Frau Haas,’ he said urgently. ‘We have to get out of here. It’s too dangerous to stay a moment longer.’

  Clutching her son to her as if she would never let him go, Eva followed Wilde out of the mean little hall and into the night.

  *

  Fanny Winch laid the first of the bottles at the top of the building, in the attic room the young scientists referred to as ‘The Nursery’. It was here the new recruits were taught the basics of dealing with radioactive substances. She, too, had had to learn a little about them when she arrived; they didn’t want the charladies burning their hands touching things they didn’t ought to touch. The young men – and a few young women – who had to spend their first few weeks there looked like a load of snotty swots to Fanny; playing with string and sealing wax and rubber bands.

  But the word was that these kids had big brains. Word had it that they might have the wherewithal to build a weapon that would stop the Germans in their tracks. Fanny didn’t give a fig for Hitler and his unpleasant bunch, but they were supplying arms to the IRA and they had promised that if war came, they would liberate the six counties and make Ireland whole again. And that, after all, was what she had been fighting for every waking hour of her adult life.

  The timers had already been set for 9.15 a.m. All Fanny had to do was activate them and then place each device in its allocated place. In the Nursery, that would be at the top of the cupboard set against the wall opposite the window. ‘This substance is colourless and odourless,’ Hardiman had told her. ‘The small explosive device on each bottle will release it and turn it to vapour. Being heavier than air, the droplets will drift down through the building. It is a great deal more toxic than cyanide – and a few drops will kill a man. Or woman.’

  She had no idea if the death it brought was painful. Why should she care? Who in England had cared when the firing squad’s bullets ripped into her father’s body in Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin, in 1916? Him and the other brave martyr boys from the Brotherhood and the Volunteers . . .

  She had been a girl of nine. In her head she could still hear the screams of her mother and aunties, and then the horror of discovering that Daddy would never come home. She hadn’t cried or screamed, but she had sworn vengeance; she had sworn that she would complete her daddy’s work.

  Her mother took her to Liverpool. But Fanny never forgot. She might have lost her Irish accent, but she never lost her Irishness or the fire that burned within her heart. At seventeen, she had met Diarmuid Winch; they were of one mind.

  Now Diarmuid was in Dartmoor Gaol, serving time for carrying explosives, and it was up to her to continue their work. She would fight until her last breath to avenge her daddy and the other bold boys, whatever it took; even dealing with the Nazi devils. And if some members of the IRA thought they would be dirtying their hands by dealing with such men, then so be it. She was the Scavenger – and scavengers had to do the foulest of work in the filthiest of places. Clearing up stains of humanity like that traitor Henty O’Gara. Jesus, it had been easy seeing him coming. The boys in Galway had marked her card about that fellow.

  She lit a cigarette and consulted her pencil-drawn sketch plan of the labs. She had worked it out to achieve a nice spread of the gas as it floated down through the stairwells and ducts. Mr Hardiman had said the Germans were almost certain the gas would be effective, but it was unproven under such conditions. Fitting that the experiment should be carried out in a place where other potentially deadly experiments were already being carried out. Well, they’d find out soon enough if it worked.

  *

  Cambridge. A civilised town in a civilised country. Yet how was Wilde to keep Eva and Albert safe? He would have to go to the police in time, of course: they would have to be told of the murder at Boldbourne airfield. But he had little faith in the police’s ability to understand the mag
nitude of what was at stake. Nor was he certain about the Special Branch man. He called Wilde ‘amateur’, yet Northgate, the so-called ‘professional’, hadn’t found Boldbourne and hadn’t seen through Fanny Winch and her invented story about the black car and the two men abducting Dr Birbach. The truth was clear now: Birbach had never left Old Hall that night. He had been taken to the outbuildings, tortured and murdered for what he knew.

  Wilde couldn’t go home because Hardiman and Flood knew where he lived. There was one place, however – one place he doubted they would consider.

  From Trumpington Street, he rode north along King’s Parade, then up Trinity Street into the lee of St John’s College, Albert and Eva huddled together behind him on the pillion seat. A few drunken revellers in evening dress staggered along the centre of the road, but he wove round them without difficulty. He stopped outside the gates, looked around for watchers, then killed the engine.

  ‘Geoff Lancing has his rooms here,’ Wilde said as he dismounted and helped Eva and Albert to climb down. ‘Do you trust him, Frau Haas?’ He set the Rudge on its stand, in the shadow of the ancient walls.

  She bowed her head. ‘Yes.’ She stood there, arms around Albert, stroking his hair.

  ‘Good. So do I.’

  She hesitated. ‘Professor Wilde, there is something I need to say. I have seen terrible things. I have deceived you. When we were at that house for the tennis, I had to pretend to be a stranger to those people – but the truth is they knew me already. I saw Dr Birbach die and then that poor man, Dr Hellquist, tortured like that . . . but what could I do? I was trapped. Would they not do the same things to my son?’

  ‘Why you?’

  ‘Because I speak German – and because I understand their work. I was also ordered to go into the Cavendish and find other secrets for them and other scientists who might hold the sort of information they desired. But I told them there was no one else, not even Geoff Lancing. I hope I saved them . . .’

  Wilde said nothing. Who was he to judge her?