“For goodness sake, Foreign Secretary, as I’ve said before, if you cannot talk sense, shut up.”
*
Hedge was frozen with fear, with horror. He had to restrain himself from screaming, from uselessly attempting to run out of the dungeon to which, with Brosak, he had been taken. The dungeon was in the very bowels of the Lubyanka Prison, deep below the earth. Like the one he had been taken to earlier it was dank and smelled of torture, of humans put to the extremes of endurance, smelled of blood and urine and God alone knew what else. The thick stone walls were slimy and damp and mouldy and strange creatures crept upon the floor, white-looking slugs and worms and other denizens who had never known the light of day.
Foreign Minister T M Voss was there. So were a number of the armed guards, including the woman who had been one of Hedge’s own escort earlier — how long ago now he couldn’t have said. Four other men with the aspect of executioners were grouped around Brosak, who was lying prone upon a structure of heavy wood and metal, a structure that included a big wheel and a long metal pole with a thread like some gigantic screw. Brosak’s shoulders were securely roped down to one end of the structure, his ankles to the other. There was an occasional squeak of machinery (it needed oiling) when the wheel was fractionally turned, and when the squeak came Brosak screamed and his body ran with sweat, clearly visible because he was naked.
Brosak was on a rack.
What primitive people, Hedge thought. This was right back to the Middle Ages and it was absolutely horrifying. Hedge could feel the dreadful rack pulling his own body apart and he quaked every time Brosak screamed.
It was, not unexpectedly, the gaunt man who was conducting the interrogation. He stood with the other two men at the feet end of the rack. “Speak,” he said. “About the botulin bags.”
Brosak’s voice was now faint but high with pain. “Heil Hitler,” was all he said.
The gaunt man gestured to the men at Brosak’s head and the big wheel was turned a little more. The squeak came and Brosak screamed as the metal pole’s thread moved. The gaunt man was patient. “Speak,” he said again. “You know what we wish to know. How is the bagged botulin to be removed from the British reservoirs?”
There was no reply and the wheel was turned again.
*
Rowland Mayes was being deliberately tormented now. He realised that but knew that the Prime Minister was under very great strain and couldn’t really be held responsible for her goading of him; basically she needed his support, his loyalty. So he put up with it when, having told him to shut up, she wouldn’t let the matter drop.
“I prefer to leave it all to this man Sedge rather than you, if you can’t co-operate sensibly, Foreign Secretary.”
“Hedge, Prime Minister, not —”
“That’s what I said — Hedge. Do try to listen.”
“I’m sorry, Prime Minister.”
“A deaf Foreign Secretary’s no use to anyone.”
Rowland Mayes fell silent. Mrs Heffer was a very difficult person to serve. A moment later she went to the security line, the one that connected her with Buckingham Palace. There was a pause while she waited for the instrument to be answered, then she spoke rather sharply. “The Queen, please. And quickly. This is the Prime Minister.”
*
Mrs Heffer had barely finished briefing Her Majesty and not apparently listening to a word that was said to her in return when another of her battery of telephones rang. This was a further report from what she called the field. No more plastic bags. But at any moment they might become time-expired and shed their lethal contents. The matter was desperate, had really been desperate all along, but now it seemed more desperate because that man in Moscow was reported to be about to work miracles but evidently hadn’t worked them yet. So near and yet so far, and already the element of surprise vis-à-vis the Russians had gone, or largely gone anyway — they might yet be lulled into a false sense of security because of the fact of their co-operation and it might be possible to make use of that. Suddenly Mrs Heffer brought herself up with a round turn. She had been brooding angrily on what Rowland Mayes had had the cheek to say about conceding and now she believed she had seen the point. What was the use, now, of attacking the Soviet?
None. Mrs Heffer scowled across her HQ.
Then another call came in. This time it was from Moscow. It was the Foreign Office man, the one whose name she simply couldn’t remember.
*
Brosak, stretched to his limit — a hip bone had been pulled from its socket — had done his own conceding; he had agreed to speak. The wheel was at once turned the other way and Brosak, in response, seemed to sink back into himself, resuming more or less his normal length.
“Now speak,” the gaunt man said.
Brosak spoke; he spoke about the botulin and what he said didn’t sound good. When he stopped speaking he was told to go on again. Instead of going on he cried. He cried like a child might for its mother. When he didn’t stop crying the wheel was patiently turned again, the stretching way. Brosak stretched and screamed, and a whole leg came loose.
Hedge closed his eyes. He could take no more. But he couldn’t shut his eyes to the screams. To his great relief the screams stopped and were replaced by a curious gurgling sound from Brosak’s throat. A few seconds later Brosak died.
*
“Prime Minister, this is Hedge. In Moscow.” The line was pretty clear considering the distance and the fact that the call was coming from a country where everything mechanical and electrical was said to be continually breaking down. “I have a report. The man Brosak, you know —”
“Yes. What is it?”
“Brosak has talked, Prime Minister. Unfortunately he’s now dead —”
“Torture, one supposes.”
“Oh no, Prime Minister.” T M Voss had been adamant on this point and was currently listening in on the conversation on another telephone. “Natural causes.”
“Well, never mind that, what did he say?”
“He revealed the whereabouts of the botulin bags, Prime Minister —”
“For heaven’s sake, we know that. The reservoirs.”
“Yes — no — yes indeed, Prime Minister. The reservoirs, as you say. But only three of them, you see.”
“Three of them? What about the rest?”
“Bluff, Prime Minister,” Hedge said. “In fact he considered three to be ample, quite sufficient to make, er, Britain give in to his demands —”
“Did he name the three?”
“He named Siblyback and Ladybower —”
“Which we’ve found — the bags, I mean. What a relief! They must have been more accessible than he’d thought … What was that? Say again.”
Hedge said, “Before he could name the third one, Prime Minister, he died.”
There was an impatient sound along the line. “Damn the man. Where does that leave us, I’d like to know! Well?” Hedge didn’t answer that, having nothing to offer. But there was something he had to say, a very important point. “Prime Minister, I have assured the President of the Supreme Soviet that there is now no longer any danger of an attack. No danger of war. He is immensely pleased to hear that. He was in fact ready to respond. In all respects. That, I have managed to avert. I trust I did right?”
Mrs Heffer paused before replying. She knew very well that the untrustworthy Russians would be listening in and she knew she had to be very, very careful — there was also the press and the electorate to be considered. Having thought deeply she said, “Of course you’ve done right. You’ve behaved splendidly, so brave, as of course one would expect of a Briton. I’ve had you in my heartfelt prayers all the time, Mr —” There was another pause, during which Hedge’s ears caught the prompt of Rowland Mayes, “Sedge. You have my heartiest congratulations on duty well and nobly done and you may be sure I shall bring your name to the attention of Her Majesty.” Hedge gave a great sigh of relief. Now he should be in the clear as regards the Russians, the Lubyanka, the gaunt man
and both kinds of custody. He couldn’t wait to see London again … then he remembered the kidnappers. They had wanted the delivery of Logan. Well, they couldn’t have him now, of course. He hoped they would prove civilised enough to understand …
In Downing Street, Mrs Heffer had turned to the agog members of her Cabinet. “You heard all that,” she said crisply. “Of course, it was for the Russians’ benefit. We’re not out of the wood yet — but they did behave splendidly which is really quite astonishing for such barbarians. Now — a determined effort is to be made to find that remaining plastic bag. All police, all the armed forces, everybody. The public everywhere to continue taking full precautions until the thing’s been found. Just the one — we shall prevail, I don’t doubt that for one moment.”
She turned away to make one more telephone call, this time to Defence Ministry. She passed the word for the stand-down. The patrols, of strike aircraft and nuclear submarines, would continue as they had done around the clock day in, day out, year in, year out; the public would notice no difference. But now the word for the pressing of buttons would not go out.
The assembled ministers noticed a strange expression on Mrs Heffer’s face as she made that call. It was a curious mixture of relief — tempered relief in the circumstances of one more bag — and intense disappointment that the Soviet Union would now go on being. But at least the election looked like being won.
*
When Shard returned to London and the FO he had a long yack with his DI.
“It’s no use, Harry. You can’t win. Not against the Hedges of this world.”
“I expect he gave them a load of old codswallop in Moscow. Right, sir?”
Shard grinned ruefully, and sighed. “Didn’t do too brilliantly myself, did I? But I’m sure you’re right. Whatever he told them or didn’t tell them — he’s due for the next Honours List.”
“You reckon?”
“Yes. And so, I’ll bet, does Hedge.”
He went home to Ealing. He was dead tired; not much sleep for too long. Mrs Micklem was still in residence but was packing — he’d rung Beth as soon as he’d hit the UK from West Germany. Mrs Micklem gave him a sour look. “Back again,” she said, with a hint of the bad penny in her tone. “Missed all the bother, didn’t you,” she went on. “All that poison in the water — and we still don’t know what’s safe to drink. It’s all right for some, Simon. Come back when it’s all over.”
“Didn’t you just suggest it’s not all over yet, or did I mishear you, mother-in-law?”
He got a sharp look for that: she didn’t like it when he addressed her as mother-in-law since it carried certain quite decided undertones. “There’s no need to split hairs,” she said. “Just like you, that is. I don’t know how Beth puts up with it.”
Shard left it at that. There never was any point in arguing with Mrs Micklem. She always managed to twist things round her own way. Like Hedge.
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The Logan File Page 19