EIGHT
It was VIP treatment now: a special aircraft had been laid on to fly me into Gatwick, whence I was helicoptered to the landing pad on the roof of Focal House. For a moment after disembarkation. I looked around at London: I had a broad view. In amongst the skyscraper office blocks and things like the Post Office, lower old London could be seen yet. St Paul’s, diminished by new neighbours; the Tower of London; the Monument; Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. How much longer? In the vicinity of the blow-out the effects would be devastating and the damage might well spread way beyond we would have no means of assessing the potential explosive power unless CORPSE gave tongue on the point. But when the nuclear waste was broadcast on the wings of the bang, all London would become untenable. Was that what CORPSE wanted, to come to power over a useless capital? In the meantime, London looked as though it was carrying on as normal. Buses crawled like fat boiled lobsters, assailed by the black flies of taxis.
I went down to the suite.
Max looked grey-faced. With him was the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Stephen Carey, a tough copper from Northumberland who hadn’t quite lost the Geordie accent, which came across when I asked him if the coaster’s owners had been of any assistance and he said they’d flown the nest and taken all their files with them. The premises were blank. Carey’s face was deadpan, but I noticed a slight shake in his fingers: Scotland Yard was well inside the first danger circle, and the Met would be on duty to the end, come what might. If there was to be evacuation, they would be the ones to organise it along with the Home Office.
I made my report. I added, “With Miss Mandrake in their hands, they have a hostage. Not that it adds anything, really, to their bargaining position … not now.”
Max said heavily, “Agreed. But they’re trying it.”
“You’ve heard from CORPSE?”
“Yes.” Max caught the Commissioner’s eye. “That’s to say, the Yard has. A telephone call, very brief, no chance to intercept. The British Government has forty-eight hours as of one hour ago to concede. If they don’t, Miss Mandrake dies and proof of her death will be delivered. In the meantime, if anyone boards the coaster in the river, CORPSE sends a signal immediately to blow the nuclear device.”
“Which means they must have the vessel under surveillance. If so, it needn’t be close. There are any amount of vantage points where a man could watch through binoculars,” Carey said. “I have that in hand.”
Has he, I thought sardonically, visualising London’s beat men and CID stalking bird-watchers and Peeping Toms day and night for forty-eight hours … but I took one point: anyone glued to binoculars from an aloft position at this point in history might well stand out a mile. It was too crude, too unsophisticated. I suggested, “Electronic devices, a robot watch?”
“Much more likely,” Max said.
Carey asked. “Can’t they be jammed?”
“It’s being considered, but the current view of the experts yours, ours, and Defence Ministry is that the whole show could be triggered by any interference such as jamming.”
“Could be,” I said, and spread my hands wide. “So what do we do? Sit and wait? Has no one any ideas?”
Sir Stephen Carey came in again on that. “At this moment, there’s nothing anyone can do. We’ve thought of many things … towing out to sea’s one. That’s not on and we didn’t spend long thinking it might be. Putting a bomb disposal squad aboard another, hoping we can defuse before CORPSE gets the word. That might still be tried as a last resort, but we don’t pin many hopes on that either. We’ve thought of trying to scuttle her at high water, or flooding with fire hoses, but CORPSE will have taken precautions against that. Over-ridingly, we don’t want to precipitate the blow-out.” He paused. “It’s a hard thing to say, but I repeat, there’s nothing anyone can do right now, except perhaps to hope the whole thing’s bluff.”
I said, “I don’t think it is.”
“But what use is London going to be afterwards?”
“Quite. I’ve pondered that one too. I suppose London could always be written off. London’s not essential to government. Once, we managed with Winchester. In any case, I don’t believe they’re bluffing. Remember, I’ve met the boss. He may be mad, but he means what he says.”
There was a silence, while they took that lot in. I knew Max had realised it, but I had an idea Carey had been banking on a high degree of bluff, had possibly fancied the coaster in fact carried a cargo no more lethal than coal or curtain rods. There wasn’t much humour in the situation, but I could imagine CORPSE laughing their guts up if the government caved in and then that coaster went alongside to discharge tin trays made in Hong Kong. (As a matter of fact, Carey released the information that Cherbourg, contacted via Interpol in the Rue St Valery in Paris, had indicated her manifest: drums of oil.) I could imagine many people in high places wanting to believe the bluff theory, but they wouldn’t find me supporting them … I broke the silence by asking, in a general sort of way, what the chances were of the government conceding.
“Unthinkable!” Max snapped.
Carey said, “They’d never do that.”
“Has anybody asked the Prime Minster?”
Silence again: evidently no one had done that. I thought it might be worth trying, and said so. Max didn’t like me for that, I could see. It would be an impertinence. I let the matter drop: it would be raised again for certain, and by higher persons than me or Max or Carey, once the truth emerged into the light of public day. I did mention that aspect, and Max said what I knew he would say, and that was, the press would hereinafter be muzzled like a rabid dog and, indeed, already had been.
“The public won’t know anything,” he said flatly.
“Until CORPSE tells them, and don’t say you hadn’t thought of that too. That’s when the Prime Minster will have to make up his mind. A lot of pressure will come from our domestic non-democrats to cave in, and it won’t all be from the Right. As I may have said before, it’ll be a bloody fluid situation and all sorts of groups will see what they’ll think of as their chance to capitalise. And a lot of them,” I added, “will believe the threat itself, the blow-up, is bluff. They’ll take a chance.” I glanced at the Commissioner. “I’d hate to have your job. Sir Stephen, you and all the provincial Chief Constables … you’re going to need something not far short of general mobilisation of the forces plus NATO to help you keep order.”
The Commissioner threw up his hands. The shake was worse than ever. Even the Tyneside dockers hadn’t prepared him for this situation. He said, and there was a note of near despair in his voice, “Never mind what I said earlier … there has to be some way out.”
I said, “There is, or may be. I’m going to try it.” I turned to Max. “I’m going to contact WUSWIPP.”
*
When I left Focal House, I didn’t go with the whole-hearted blessing of Max or of Carey either. WUSWIPP were the enemy just as much as CORPSE and I was to remember this. I had no authority to deal or bargain and I was on no account to commit or compromise the British Government. To myself I said ha, ha to that one. Quite often in life, people are better for being committed without prior consultation, and right now so could governments be. In my view, we were facing life or death for a whole nation. In such a situation, anything went, anything that could help. I left Focal House with two determinations: one, to get in contact with the bastards of WUSWIPP just as soon as I could have the feelers out, and two, to prise Miss Mandrake away from CORPSE. I knew that CORPSE’S announced intentions re Miss Mandrake were strictly for my personal benefit. Partly an act of pure revenge, partly an attempt to get me to use my persuasive powers, as the man who’d met them, to bring about the cave-in and the handover. There was logic in that. But Miss Mandrake apart, I saw no advantage in my trying to re-establish contact with CORPSE and the Flood Fearers. It was obvious now that they could shift base at the drop of a hat and they could operate from almost anywhere. All they had to do was transmit the signal t
hat would blow the coaster and shatter parliament and with it the heart of Britain and then the domestic gauleiters would commute busily in from Ponders End and Knockholt Pound, Bishop’s Stortford and wherever, and take up the reins, and take up the gun and the whip at the same time. All the ground work had been done from under the noses of the Flood Fearers and that silly Ark, long, long since and from now on out CORPSE was highly mobile.
En route for my WUSWIPP contact, I proceeded towards Lambeth: old friends had their uses. I walked, because I wanted to take a look at the coaster — her name. Max had said, was Garsdale Head, British, registered in the port of Barrow-in-Furness. Her normal duties involved the carrying of general cargoes from the Continent to almost any British port as required. It could well be true that there were drums of oil aboard, but there would be drums of a very different sort somewhere in that cargo below hatches. ‘Flasks’ sealed in lead, stainless steel and concrete to hold the nuclear waste, so-called safe containers that would not withstand the force of a nuclear explosion when CORPSE pressed the button. Where had they come from? Cargoes can be transferred at sea, and it was highly significant that the Garsdale Head had taken an unduly long time from Cherbourg to the Downs. Back in FH, I’d suggested to Max that he might check the movement in the Western Approaches of any ships inward bound from Japan, which was Windscale’s best customer.
From Westminster Bridge I paused and looked up river. The coaster was not so far from the bridge: a copper could have chucked his helmet down her funnel if he’d had a strong arm. She looked at peace, though it was the peace of death. Utterly deserted … and I remembered something else about nuclear waste: the containers needed to be kept cool by a constant flow of water or they would boil. Then they might go up under their own steam as it were. CORPSE would have covered that one, though. The Garsdale Head would have been specially prepared for her last voyage, and her pumps would still be working — she would have enough power from her generators to last till the deadline and no doubt beyond. For a moment longer I stared down on Nemesis as the crowds hurried by. They didn’t know, so they didn’t care, possibly wondered idly why I was so interested in one of London’s common or garden sights. I looked across at St Thomas’s Hospital, filled with the sick and their attendant nurses. They would reap the full benefit; someone must soon make the decision whether or not to evacuate, and they hadn’t got long if Matron wasn’t to be caught with her pants down.
I moved on.
*
The man I wanted was a dirty little rat, a Senior Citizen who had once worked for the Central Electricity Generating Board as a machine minder or something. He’d been vaguely technical and he was, I happened to know from past days, still on the fringes of WUSWIPP. Low down in the hierarchy, but that didn’t matter, he was only to be a messenger. The name I knew him by was Cello Charlie, because one of his attributes, an unlikely one certainly, was playing the cello in some sort of works orchestra. He lived in Lambeth, in a high-rise council flat, but he was mostly to be found in a certain pub, and sure enough he was there today, drinking a mother-in-law, or stout-and-bitter. I bought him another and we chatted of this and that, then I produced a ten pound note and we got down to business. He didn’t like it much, but I uttered a threat or two concerned with his past life, and he gave in. My message would go through channels and he would ring me at my flat within the next three hours. This concluded, I left him, got a bus across the bridge, then a taxi to my flat, where I awaited developments. While I waited my thoughts grew’ more and more bitter: the flat I hated now, for it contained too many memorials of Felicity Mandrake. Pots of this and that in the bathroom, a discarded bra hanging desolately in my wardrobe. There was even the lingering smell of her scent from my pillow.
I wandered around feeling sad, with a glass of whisky in my hand. Also, I was very conscious of time passing: I kept looking at my watch and counting minutes.
Within the distance, my telephone burred. Cello Charlie’s voice said, “Nine-thirty tonight. Duke of York’s steps, at the bottom near the Mall.” That was all; he rang off the moment the words were out. Who the hell, I thought, do I look out for? But no doubt WUSWIPP would cope and I would be approached … I refilled my glass moodily, feeling strangely and unusually apprehensive, a sort of gut feeling that things were not going to turn out at all well. I went out for a meal in a Greek place, the handy-for-home one I used with Felicity often enough, and pecked at the food like an off-colour chicken. Then I went back to the flat, and it was lucky I did, because I found my closed line from Focal House burring softly but somehow urgently. It was Max himself: when trouble was on, the man never went off duty. Checks had revealed that at the relevant time a large Japanese vessel, the Sendar Maru by name, carrying nuclear waste for the Windscale ponds, had been reported off the Western Approaches. She had not entered any British port and had subsequently vanished. She was currently being sought by naval frigates out of Portsmouth and Plymouth and by aerial search.
“Now hold on to your hat,” Max said.
“Bad news, or could it be any worse?”
“Yes,” Max said briefly. “Just under forty minutes ago a small coaster entered Plymouth Sound and got past Devil’s Point into the Hamoaze before anyone ticked over. She crammed on speed and crashed the enclosed strike-proof nuclear submarine pens in Devonport dockyard before the doors could be shut. Two Polaris submarines are in there having just completed refitting. No missiles embarked, of course, but the nuclear power units are in place with the reactor cores ex Windscale, ready for sailing.”
*
I went to my rendezvous. The thing had started in earnest now and secrecy could surely be maintained no longer. All Plymouth would know come morning. Max had told me that the huge reinforced doors had been shut on the coaster after she had entered and her crew was imprisoned inside, and so were a number of naval officers and ratings and some dockyard workmen. Luckily leave had been given that night, so the naval personnel was not present in large numbers. Defence Ministry was deliberating the next move in consultation with the PM and cabinet. It had occurred to me that the doors might be opened up and an attack launched against the villains, but Max had squashed this: such tactics, he said, might precipitate the nastiness and in any case the coaster’s crew would be in a good defensive position and would clearly be heavily armed. If anything went wrong and the base was blown apart with its nuclear reactor cores, it would be goodbye Plymouth, and a lot of our defence capability was sited in that part of the country. The coaster’s crew had entered with kamikaze panache and it could be taken as read that they were prepared for the ultimate self-sacrifice … Max said, coming round to what I’d stressed at our last meeting, that a cave-in might well be in the air, or at least a compromise; but I was convinced that no compromise would be acceptable to CORPSE. Why settle for less when you can win it all? And surrender still struck me as grotesque, unthinkable, even now. The co-operation of WUSWIPP might turn the tide in time. That seemed more and more to be the only hope.
I approached the Duke of York’s Steps from the Piccadilly direction, past the Athenaeum with its erudite membership enjoying its after-dinner port and brandy and cigars. I recognised a man coming down the steps, wearing a dinner jacket: a Lord Justice of Appeal. Cigar smoke wafted, an arm was raised, and a taxi came alongside. All so peaceful, but the Garsdale Head wasn’t far away. There would be men inside the Athenaeum who would know about her cargo and who would be guarding their secret until CORPSE leaked the facts; or until the panic broke in Plymouth. I went on past the graven image of the mounted Duke of York and down the steps. Across the Mall, St James’s Park was dark, the lights of London from Admiralty Arch and Buckingham Palace seeming to leave the trees shrouded in night’s peace. I lingered under a street lamp and lit a cigarette. One or two other figures also lingered, back against the wall. Two men in leather jackets, belts studded with metal, and washed-out jeans and bovver boots. A girl, dressed like something out of Edward VII’s reign, but without the elegance. The gi
rl had a piercing laugh. Farther along the Mall, in shadow, also against the wall, a couple all but fornicated. I wondered why they didn’t go into the park to do it, joining the hundreds of others I assumed would be there. Too far to walk, perhaps, too much Mall traffic to cross. Up the Mall from the direction of the palace a policeman came; down the other way a mobile sped, blue light Hashing and siren bleating. There was a fair crowd of pedestrians but I failed to spot anything that could check with WUSWIPP. Naturally, WUSWIPP wouldn’t advertise, but I would know, all right, when the contact manifested. I looked at my watch: two minutes after nine-thirty now. Thirty more seconds passed and then I knew my man had come: not quite at the bottom near the Mall but near enough. Right by my lamp-post an Audi drew up and from the driving seat a large person leaned back and jerked the rear door open then spoke through his wound-down window.
“O.K., Commander, get in.”
I got in. The Audi U-turned into the traffic stream at once, no lingering, moving fast for Admiralty Arch. There were two men in front, both bulky men wearing dark hats: London could almost have been Moscow. Another man was in the back, sitting like the others in silence, back in his corner, also big, also hatted. As the lights of Trafalgar Square shone into the car, I saw the metal reflecting dully: the snout of a revolver, aimed at me and held steady. I also saw the man’s face, but I didn’t recognise it. Circumnavigating the massive roundabout of Trafalgar Square, the car exited up the Charing Cross Road, past the lit-up porn shops and the sex-aid establishments, and the strip and the massage in the side streets running off. An awful lot of enterprise was going to be atomised when the Garsdale Head blew. Half-way along, the passenger in front spoke without turning his head.
Corpse (Commander Shaw Book 15) Page 9