Corpse (Commander Shaw Book 15)

by Philip McCutchan

  I had stopped the car, and I turned round to Ogmanfiller. “No Ark,” I said. “Not unless it’s being built under cover.”

  “Well, gee.”

  “Anyway, we’ll go on, see what we find. Want to take any film shots from here?”

  “I guess not,” Ogmanfiller said. “It’s all too distant to make good film.”

  I shrugged: it was his business, but I would have thought a touring American would have come with the very best there is in film equipment. Maybe the Scottish ancestry had bred a frugal streak … I drove on, down from the heights into the broad sweep of the valley below. We met two trudging priests ahead, and I halted, and they gabbled at Felicity, and crossed themselves, and carried on towards the small cluster of dwellings behind us that formed Carena. Felicity said the heretic settlement was two miles ahead, just off the road to the left. We were on track all right. The sense of doom increased: this was wild country that almost certainly would hold bandits, and was well off the tourist routes. We were out on a limb and I thanked God for the Ogmanfillers: without them, we would stand out a mile as intruders rather than simple tourists bent on getting away from the package operation. Driving on, we found no more human life. Just donkeys and the odd mangy dog padding back, like the priests, towards Carena and giving us a wolfish grin in passing.

  “Oh, the poor thing,” Mrs Ogmanfiller said in regard to the first dog.

  “Poor thing my fanny. Edie,” Ogmanfiller said. “Guess it’ll have rabies,” and at once his wife withdrew a flapping white hand into the car’s safety. Humanity loomed, however, a little farther along: a homhre in a dirty black beret with filled cartridge belts over his shoulders and a derelict-looking rifle in his hand. He grinned at us, not appearing to be dangerous, and waved, and we went onward.

  “What’s he doing?” Ogmanfiller asked. I was glad he hadn’t used his movie camera.

  I said, “Could be a bandit, I suppose. Or he could be an extended guard on the Flood Fearers.”

  “Guard, gee!”

  “Well, I doubt if they’re popular with the priesthood, and what the priesthood doesn’t like, neither do the parishioners. If they didn’t take precautions against things closer than the Flood, they might end up with slit throats.”

  Mrs Ogmanfiller gave a little scream, but I think really she was enjoying it and so was her husband. Back in the States, he told me. they didn’t need to guard religion, they were broad-minded, all were tolerated.

  “Just the same,” he said, “I guess these people aren’t quite the same as ours.”

  “No Ark?”

  “Not just that, I guess. I don’t know … just a hunch that they’re a breakaway sect, another fractionising. It happens. Why come to Spain, though?”

  “Why indeed?” I murmured. At that moment we came round a large overhanging bluff like a cliff and seemed to reach journey’s end, or near enough for the car. Off the track another track ran to the left in the shadow of the bluff. Lines of ruts would be more accurate than track, and these un-negotiable ruts ran towards a long, low, white-washed building with a very tall steeple surmounted by a cross. To the right of this building, this church as it obviously was, rose another structure, square and high. Something big. I pondered on it as I stopped the car: a power unit to produce electricity for the organ and lights, or a landbound slipway for an Ark under construction? Maybe we would find out, maybe we wouldn’t.

  I said, “Right! All out.”

  We got out. Ogmanfiller stood looking all around and shaking his head in apparent amazement. “Nobody about,” he said. “Nobody at all.”

  “It’s not Sunday, Chester.” Edie looked hot and thirsty.

  “Why no, it’s not, but still.”

  I said, “Come on, we’ll go and take a look. Got your camera ready?”

  Ogmanfiller nodded. We trudged along the track, with me in the lead and Ogmanfiller behind me, then Felicity, then Mrs Ogmanfiller bringing up the rear and making heavy weather of the ruts. The Flood Fearers’ church looked as though it had been built simply of breeze blocks, but even so, it must have taken the volunteers a long while to construct. The steeple. I landed, was of steel and seemed to be at the wrong end. It was a curious set-up, what with its outbuilding, and inside it was even curiouser. The door was only on a latch, and I pushed it open and we went in. As I’d seen from the outside, there were few windows. What glass there was had a greenish tinge and there was a feeling of being under the sea, as in a bathysphere, with all that green light. The Flood idea again, I supposed. The floor was of plain wood planks. At the far end — beneath the steeple, unlike the Church of England or any other religion I knew of — was an altar. Over it loomed, not Christ, but Noah. It was fairly obviously Noah, though beards were pretty anonymous and fashionable then as now, because he was rising with accompanying angels from a miniature plastic Ark, which was surrounded by rough waters constructed, at a guess, from some sort of plastic foam painted green. Chips of it had dropped away and lay around the altar like confetti. Beside Noah was a woman, naked and well formed. There was no sign of an animal, thus it was not an accurate historical representation of the facts. There were no pews, as such, for the congregation: seating was arranged in a number of separate boat-shaped wooden structures complete with thwarts. Each ‘boat’ had one rowlock fashioned as a candlestick with electric candle. And suddenly I jumped a mile as tinned organ music clicked into Fierce Raged the Tempest O’er the Deep. As this happened, a figure came through the door. He was a tall man in a white cassock with a green cord around the middle and he had very long, dark hair. The cassock was really more like a monk’s garment, with wide sleeves in which the man’s hands were invisible as he held them clasped before his body. I hoped Ogmanfiller would start being a tourist, and up to a point he did.

  He aimed his camera at me and said, “Reach.”

  “What?” It didn’t strike me as funny.

  “Reach,” Ogmanfiller said, and there was a difference in his voice. “This is no camera, buddy, it’s a gun. Reach.”

  I didn’t reach. I had seen Edie Ogmanfiller come up behind Felicity, and I went to help her, but too late. A fist like a ham with a revolver in it came down on Felicity’s neck and she went out like a light, not uttering a sound. I made a dive for Ogmanfiller, wrapped my arms round his legs and brought the back of his head down with a crash that must have dented the wood planking, but it failed to damage Ogmanfiller. Up came the camera before I could get my hands on it, and a bullet zipped past my face so close I could feel the burn. It sped on and broke away a good deal of Noah’s beard and a window pane. A moment later the monk-like figure, uttering oaths, took off and landed on my chest like an all-in wrestler and before I could start to dislodge him Ogmanfiller, squirming clear, had me just where he wanted me.

  He was grinning widely. “Stupid bastard,” he said, breathing hard. “You got yourself right into this situation, didn’t you, came looking for it like a real goddam sucker!”

  *

  I felt that my lungs had burst. Under Ogmanfiller’s camera gun. I was hoisted to my feet by that athletic monk, who also now produced a weapon: a knife, very sharp, which he laid against the back of my neck and said it would go right through the first time I made a move he didn’t like. Felicity was lifted like a feather by Edie Ogmanfiller and held mother-and-babv-like in the fat arms. I was shoved out through the door by knife action and felt blood run. Ogmanfiller moved alongside me with his camera. Once outside, another man showed up, also with gun, this time a sub-machine gun standing out oddly against the clothing of his religion. His cassock or whatever was similar to the first man’s but his girdle was plain white. Green, the colour of Hood, probably distinguished the pastor, or boss. The Reverend Clay Petersen, seducer of La Ina? I was herded along towards the square building and the man with the sub-machine gun brought keys out from below his robe and unlocked a door, a wooden one and heavy, backed by steel.

  In we went.

  At the far end were vast double doors, currentl
y shut and doubtless locked, and in between were the makings of an Ark. Wood lay everywhere and there were piles of shavings, but no one was at work, and somehow the construction had the air of abandonment: it was probably just cover, in fact, and never mind the huge blueprint that hung on one wall with all the cubits and whatnot converted to metric. An irreverent hand had painted across the bottom in aerosol spray. Real Madrid olé. That brought a touch of normality, but the feeling didn’t last. The whole ambience of the Ark was against it. So was the fact that we were pushed into the bow section of the Ark and I almost fell over a lavatory pan, unconnected and lying on its side near a carton of tubes of Bostick. The cleric with the green rope, who was ahead of the procession, had obscured the thing from my sight with his flowing robe. He led the way for’ard, nearer to the bows, and stopped by a sort of hatch that in a normal vessel might possibly have given access to the double-bottoms. Lilting the hatch-cover, he revealed electric light that showed up a concrete base about a couple of feet below: the Ark was evidently resting in a hard bed in which, pending completion, it would await the Flood. At least, I supposed that was what the faithful, if there were any genuine faithful, would be told.

  We all dropped down the hatch, one by one. The pastor went down first and was waiting, with gun, to shepherd Felicity and me once we were through. The space was a little more than I had estimated from above, between three and four feet in fact, but progress was extremely difficult. It was worse than the orlop deck of Nelson’s Victory, but after a while the going grew easier, the headroom increasing as we entered a downward-sloping passage. It didn’t go far before it widened out into what looked to me like a natural cave. I had heard of the cave-dwellers of Andalusia, but so far as I knew they lived, not in totally underground chambers, but in caves opening to the fresh air from the sides of the mountains. And they were gypsies, mellow-hearted players of Flamenco music, plus of course a few’ bandits … not like this mob, CORPSE as I was now convinced they were, dedicated to power seizure on a grand scale. When we entered, the cave was empty but for its simple furnishings: two desks, one of them covered with what looked like radio equipment, and a big wall map showing the world’s seas and continents and with a number of tiny and currently unlit light bulbs dotted around the coasts, the vulnerable coasts, of Britain. It was not dissimilar from, though much larger than, those find-it-yourself town guides that show-a light saying ‘You Are Here’ and when you want to find the library, the police station or whatever you press a button and the relevant light comes on and tells you where it is.

  I was looking at this when from an area of shadow at the far end of the cave something familiar emerged: the man in purple, the chairman of CORPSE all the way from London, still hooded.

  “Ah, Commander Shaw,” he said. “You came to look for us. That was foolish, was it not?”

  I shrugged. “Apparently it was.”

  “Yet it was natural, and to be expected.”

  “So you arranged for the Ogmanfillers to be around.”

  There seemed to be a smile in the eyes behind the slits. “Quite so. It was better to have you safely where we wanted you, rather than chance you snooping around. We knew all your movements, you see — ”

  “And I walked right into the Ogmanfiller trap,” I said bitterly, to save him the trouble. “They didn’t need to play their hand at all. did they? What about Polecat Brennan, may I ask? Do I take it he defected from WUSWIPP?”

  “Correct. He saw CORPSE; as a more profitable enterprise. Commander. He was right to do so. The force of the political left is running down — ”

  “The signs haven’t yet reached me.”

  “They will do so. There is a turning in the tide.” The purple man seemed utterly confident and easy. “There is a turning in the tide also of all the official forms of government, all the establishments. The power base is shifting to the people, as a result of pressures from both Left and Right I admit, but the Left is beginning to be unsure of itself now. There has been a backlash, and the backlash will grow and grow until it is irresistible. You will see.” I recalled Max’s remark: that this was a backlash of the Right. Max had been spot on, and in fact I hadn’t doubted it when he’d said it. All the same, I knew the purple man had got it all wrong: the pressures he’d referred to had all been from the Left rather than the Right. His confidence was for show only: the power-emergence of the Right hadn’t started yet. It would do so when CORPSE went into action, and not before. That was what CORPSE; was all about. The fact that Polecat Brennan had defected didn’t mean WUSWIPP had the skids under it — far from it.

  The CORPSE chairman was continuing. He said, “The moment you began to grow inquisitive. Commander, you had to be brought in. I’m sorry … but your job lor us was done once you’d communicated our message — which you did very successfully. Whitehall has taken the point — ”

  “You mean they’ve started the strike-back.”

  “There is no strike-back, there can’t be.” The hand emerged whitely from the purple, and waved in the air. “What we plan to do is irresistible. The British may build booms across all their harbours yet our ships can still be fully effective when laid alongside the booms. If you open fire on the ships as they enter, you will only destroy yourselves the quicker. Our crews are dedicated men prepared to take the risks, those few of them that know the facts about their cargoes. To destroy all inward shipping out at sea would be a task far too great and too politically dangerous for any government to contemplate, as I know you will agree. There is, quite simply, no defence of any kind.” The man paused, weightily. “There is only surrender, after which Britain will be governed in the best interests of her people.”

  “By you?”

  “By a Directorate.”

  “CORPSE?”

  “The term CORPSE will disappear when the take-over is complete, and when all selective eradication has been done. If you wish a few names of persons to be eradicated, I will tell you.”

  He did so: his list was very comprehensive, and I dare say some of the politicians and union bosses back in Britain would have been surprised how highly they were rated, eradicationwise. by CORPSE. They were just the tip of the iceberg, too, the man said: total elimination of elements considered undesirable would take some time, for nominal rolls of persons as submitted to the Directorate would have to be examined carefully to ensure justice for all. These nominal rolls would cover the whole range of the British Establishment: after the politicians and union leaders would come the law officers of the Crown, the Civil Service, police, armed services, education — the universities in particular — the Church, local government, medicine, writers, artists and broadcasters, the industrialists and the City. The mass of the people were expected to be docile, cowed in advance by the immensity of the threat, ready to be led by the iron will of the newcomers. I decided that I’d been right in my initial belief that the man in purple was a German: few other races would make the crazy and dangerous assumption that the British people would sit down meekly under threat. The breed hadn’t changed all that much. Nevertheless, I took his point about the virtual impossibility of any defence against the threat itself.

  I gestured towards the wall map. “Your action chart?” I asked. “Quite so. It will not show the dispersals at this stage, but some of the ships are already at sea and moving towards your ports and estuaries.”

  “Largely from Japan, I suppose?”

  The hood nodded. “Largely, yes. Also from America, and other places.”

  “And the Ark? Is that involved?” I asked with heavy sarcasm. The man laughed indulgently; he explained that the Reverend Clay Petersen had a genuine congregation of expatriate Britons plus a handful of Americans, good Protestants now reached by the pastor’s words, for whom the Ark was a symbol and a hope for the future. They regarded Britain as a land of wickedness, rotten with strikes and layabouts and aborted teenage schoolgirls and vandals and muggers and Socialists, a land that God must surely hit back at soon while they were okay aboard Pet
ersen’s Ark. They had opted out of sin on their retirement pensions, be they DHSS, Paymaster General or Deferred Annuities for the self-employed, and they came from all over southern Spain, every Sunday, to worship. They knew nothing of the cave that was to be the operational HQ for CORPSE, they just loved their Ark and the impassioned fervour of Petersen, and they provided excellent cover for the comings and goings of the CORPSE executive. The parishioners didn’t come just on Sundays: there were flowers to arrange, odd jobs to do, and there were Bible readings, quite well attended. The local populace had got used to them, whilst any faces, strange to the parishioners, seen going into the big outbuilding could be explained to the faithful dodderers as those of Ark builders; and the steeple was a very fine transmitting and receiving aerial. The operational base of CORPSE was much more secure here than it would be in any big city, just so long, of course, as no one outside ever got to know about it till afterwards, afterwards being the big blow-up series in Britain. Of course, Sandra Shingler had been an embarrassment … Sandra Shingler, alias La Ina, had been hounded out by the righteous members of the sect, led by the wife of a retired brigadier, a forceful lady who had come upon sacrilege beneath the plastic beard of Noah. Miss Shingler had become a threat to security and so Polecat Brennan had been despatched on his killing errand. Petersen, reprimanded by CORPSE, had squared matters for himself with his congregation by saying that La Ina had been infiltrated by the Devil to sow seeds of discord within the sect, that he was himself blameless, and that to allow bad feelings to fester would be to play straight into the wicked hands of Lucifer. It was a matter of sheer luck that the brigadier, when a captain during the war, had been surprised in a similar situation with an ATS corporal in the back of an army truck and got away with it; also that he was a fair-minded old codger. He’d spoken up for the pastor and quelled rebellion in the ranks, thus doing unto others as he’d been done by himself.