“You wanted to talk. We’re listening.”
I said, “I’m asking for help.”
“That’s unusual.”
“Yes, isn’t it,” I said as pleasantly as I could. “I’m not suddenly seeing WUSWIPP as a bed of roses, but if you want Progress in Peace, now’s your chance. You won’t get far in a dead world.” I paused; the threat was only to Britain, but I could see it extending in the fullness of CORPSE’S time. I said, “Today Britain, tomorrow the world … and I think you know what I’m talking about.”
“Yes. Go on.”
“What else is there to say? You know about the threat. I’m asking for WUSWIPP’s help in putting a stop to it, that’s all. Also, I’d be interested to know why you haven’t reacted already. I imagine you and CORPSE don’t see eye to eye, do you?”
The answer was a laugh in which the two men in front joined forces: the man next to me concentrated, in a humourless way, on his gun. The front passenger said, “You should not assume we haven’t reacted, Commander Shaw. Soon you will see something.”
“See what?”
“Patience.”
The tone was final, and I was in WUSWIPP’s hands now. I asked no more questions. The car moved on through the night traffic, the lights throwing flickering shadows on the three big men. Like my back-seat companion, or guard, the driver was unknown to me: the third man’s face I had yet to see, but I didn’t recognise the voice. We kept on going north and after a longish while we stopped in an unfamiliar street, a poorly-lit street of high-rise flats. Council, obviously. Once there had been some grass, but no longer. Bangers were parked haphazard among Hasher vehicles, from somewhere a noisy musical instrument played loudly, even rising over the muted sounds of transistors and the telly from a thousand open windows: it was a balmy night. A few children played, preferring the street to bed. On the walls of the nearest block slogans had been sprayed, advertising the National Front, the Socialist Workers Party, Trotsky, Marx, and Blacks Out. All on its own another urged ‘Tories Thatch Off’. On the gritty concrete in the shadows a girl fought two men for her virginity, but the giggles indicated that she didn’t mind really. In the car, the three men stared ahead intently, waiting. After we had been in situ for ten minutes there was a wild scream from above and I caught a glimpse of something flashing past the lighted windows: a body, arms and legs whirling. The screams lasted almost till it hit the ground. After that, an uncanny silence set in for a space until the awed persons still abroad began to approach the jammy mess in the road. As they did so the WUSWIPP driver started up and moved ahead towards the remains. I saw the face clearly in the headlights: Polecat Brennan, with fixed stare.
We drove on past.
*
Brennan, the front passenger told me, had flown in from Spain during the afternoon. His intention, under CORPSE orders, had been to get me. WUSWIPP, in acting so promptly, had saved my life. I should be grateful. I said I was, but could have coped on my own if necessary. They didn’t respond to that, but went on to say that Brennan had in fact been planted in the CORPSE outfit to get the information required after the first word had come through to WUSWIPP that the rival show was about to take the road. Having been planted, it seemed, Brennan had taken root and grown into CORPSE ways. CORPSE had treated him as something of a big shot, which he wasn’t used to. There was no knowing what he might or might not have revealed about WUSWIPP, though on that point it was hoped he’d talked tonight before being pushed into space: there would be information about that shortly, the man said. Brennan had had to be eliminated for the better maintenance of WUSWIPP discipline, an example to others. He had been lured to the high-rise flat, all very much undercover, and there would be no come-backs. There would be a whole-block search and questioning, naturally, but no one would have been able to identify Polecat Brennan from life, and the couple who rented the flat from the council, long-service WUSWIPP lower-echelon members, would by now have packed and flown to a safe nest.
I said. “So thanks for ridding the world of Polecat Brennan by anonymous means. But what now? Do I get your further help?”
The man said. “Be precise. What help?’’
“Use your influence,’’ I suggested. “You have a big membership in all countries. You can prevent the sailing of any more ships carrying nuclear waste.’’
“How?”
“Use your loaf, and for God’s sake don’t stall, there’s not much time left.” I had broken out into a sweat by now. “Strikes, refusals to handle dangerous cargoes, stoppages by tugmen — you know as well as I do! If the ships are at sea, they can be contacted by radio … it’s not beyond WUSWIPP’s ingenuity to pass a safe-sounding code message. Bring the crews out, or such of them as are WUSWIPP’s paid lackeys.”
“Mutiny on the high seas?” There was a laugh in the voice. “Risky for those involved!”
I began to lose patience. “Whose side is WUSWIPP on?” I asked sourly. “Do I take it you mean to share the spoils with CORPSE?”
“That is not so,” the man said, and now the voice was sharp. I’d trod on a toe. “We are of the Left, CORPSE is of the Right. There will be no sharing, no accommodations offered, Give us credit for consistency. Commander Shaw. And in case you are thinking of doing so, do not use the word expediency. There is no expediency in obliteration and WUSWIPP does not wish to see a take-over of Britain by the Right.”
“Then
“It is too late, Commander Shaw, that is the point.” For the first time the man in the front passenger seat turned round and looked at me directly. I didn’t know him, but I read truth in that face, truth and sincerity, or I believed I did. plus a desire to help if at all possible — which, it seemed, it was not. “The Garsdale Head lies ready in the Thames and that is a fact of current life that is impossible to reverse. No one, not even WUSWIPP. can prevent what is already irrevocably set up.”
I told him, then, about the ship that had crashed the nuclear submarine pens in Devonport Dockyard. It merely confirmed his opinion, and he added that WUSWIPP’s information was that other nuclear-waste carriers were already approaching British shores. There was only the one way: strike at CORPSE’S operating base and get control before the man in purple could make the final signal. I said how right he was, but no one would locale the base in time, not short of a miracle anyway. CORPSE had the whole world to use.
“I agree with you,” he said.
“Can’t you help through your agencies? WUSWIPP has many ears to the ground.”
He made a gesture of impatience. “You are teaching your grandmother. Our agencies are doing all they can, but CORPSE is elusive. As you have said by inference yourself, what now remains for them to do is implicitly itself, child’s play that calls only for a transmitter.” There was a massive shrug. ‘A room in an attic, a field, a tree-top even. And CORPSE will have alternatives. If one should go, the others will remain. There is just one possible but not very useful hope. Commander Shaw, and that is that Polecat Brennan will have talked before he died.”
I said bitterly, “It’s a pity you were so bloody hasty, isn’t it? A little more time — ”
“A fast example was imperative. WUSWIPP is currently under strain, and many of our members could be tempted by CORPSE. And the persons who dealt with Brennan are clever at extracting information. I have every confidence in their abilities … but I have one reservation.”
“Well?”
“Whatever Brennan has said, if he has spoken, cannot be relied on. Why?” There was a harsh laugh; I knew the answer before he gave it to me: once they learned of his death at WUSWIPP hands, CORPSE would be expecting Polecat Brennan to have squealed, and all they had to do was shift berth to somewhere else. The places indicated by Brennan could be relied upon as being where the man in purple would not be found. The most we could hope for was that an investigation of the revealed places might yield clues.
And time did not stand still.
NINE
Dropped by the WUSWIPP ear right outside Foc
al House, I reported at once to the suite. Max was there, chewing at a cigar and sipping a glass of brandy amongst busy telephones. I told him about my useless evening and his response was sour and bitter.
“Haggling with the enemy is always useless, Shaw.”
“WUSWIPP’s with us on this,” I pointed out.
“So’s my backside.” Another telephone burred and Max listened in silence, said “Yes,” into the instrument, then banged it back on its rest. “Downing Street. Still yacking the cabinet. They can’t agree on evacuation of any part of the metropolitan area, but Devon port’s different.”
“Because the news will break in the morning?”
“Because it’s broken already, as it was bound to. You don’t crash bases, as you should know — ”
“Sorry!”
“ — with total damn secrecy. All the Plymouth area’s in something bordering on panic and it’s feared the armed services and police will lose control shortly. A lot of people are getting out already and the roads are in chaos. The cabinet’s on the brink of ordering official evacuation. By tomorrow morning, the press will be carrying it nationwide. You can’t put a clamp on this sort of thing — ” The same telephone as before burred again. Having answered it. Max said, “That’s it. Plymouth area to be evacuated except for armed forces, police, and essential persons to maintain civil government. There’ll be a Prime Ministerial announcement on television, time yet to be decided.”
“London?”
“No decision yet, and when it comes it’s bound to be no. Ever tried to evacuate London?”
“Is the government,” I asked, “going to concede, do you suppose?”
Max threw up his hands; I didn’t like the inherent despair in that simple gesture. After that, the messages came in from all directions and they were far from happy: the roads out of Plymouth were blocked solid, and the harbour was filled with boats of all sorts beating it across the Tamar or through the Sound for the open sea. Looting was going on, the vandals risking their lives for a wonderful opportunity. Already the political extremes were mustering, and marching on the Lord Mayor. From the submarine pens there was total silence; no contact had been made with the world outside. Families had besieged the dockyard gates and were being held off by a reinforced naval guard with rifles, and Ministry of Defence police. A senior naval officer was doing his best, trying to reassure them that all would be done that could be. Out at sea an over-stretched frigate force plus smaller craft had intercepted a handful of inward-bound ships in the Western Approaches and in Scottish waters also; searches were being carried out. It would be a drop in the ocean, clearly. More messages following closely indicated just how small a drop: entries followed by crew abandonments to presumably prepared funk-holes had been made in a number of places, some obvious choices, others unlikely but no doubt effective morale-wise: one off Shellhaven in the lower reaches of the Thames, a potentially devastating threat to Canvey Island with its stored liquefied petroleum gas, oil and chemicals. Others off Greenock in the Clyde, in the Mersey, in the Tyne. One in Great Yarmouth … one in Whitby. One in the mud slap beneath the Severn bridge, another similarly situated beneath the Forth road bridge. One anchored in Cowes Roads off the Isle of Wight. There was just one piece of good news: the Navy had located the suspect Japanese mother-ship Sendai Maru she was being kept under surveillance. Then another good news item: in the Clyde the port authorities had been right on the ball and the entire crew of the vessel off Greenock had been apprehended as they came ashore.
Max said, “I suggest they be put back aboard and left to fry. They just might decide to talk.”
I said that wouldn’t be good enough; they wouldn’t talk, if talk they did at all, until it was much too late. I told Max I was going up to the Clyde right away. He wished me luck.
*
I went north in a 6D2-chartered aircraft from Heathrow and was put down at Glasgow airport. The plane’s pilot was under orders to remain and await my instructions. A police car met me and rushed me down the upper reaches of the Clyde to Greenock, lying peaceful beneath the moon whose light fell starkly on the Tail o’ the Bank, on the Polaris submarine base at Faslane, and on the hills around Loch Lomond to the north-east. Another nuclear submarine base under threat, this time in the Gareloch. It looked as though the whole of our sea strike force, or anyway its effective part, was locked in. The submarine service was today’s effective Navy: the rest was of small account. NATO needed those submarines. However, I need not have worried on that score; also present when I reached the police station, where the danger vessel’s crew were being held, was a Captain RN from the staff of Rear-Admiral Submarines at Fort Blockhouse in Portsmouth dockyard, and a Captain USN. They told me the NATO Polaris fleet, British and American — the latter in fact carrying Poseidon missiles — was being moved to sea from the Gareloch and would not enter port until further orders. To enter the Tail o’ the Bank for the passage past Cloch Point to the Cumbraes and the Firth of Clyde, they would need to squeeze past the abandoned vessel: she had been left swinging at anchor between Roseneath Patch, a somewhat nasty submerged bank, and the entrance to the Gareloch.
I went with Greenock’s police chief, and a little short man from the Foreign Office who’d just beat me to it, to interrogate the merchant seamen. They were all Dutch except for one man. the cook, who was a Norwegian. They hadn’t much English between them and I had no Dutch nor Norwegian, so the Foreign Office man came in handy. He spoke both. I just listened while he interpreted their conversation for me, and in point of fact he wasn’t overworked: those men, interviewed singly, had clammed right up. They admitted the cargo content and they admitted the explosive device that would scatter the load, and that was their lot. They simply shrugged off everything else. The muster was a real tough nut, so was the first mate. They had dangerous faces, hard as iron, and a formidable way of speaking. Maybe they were part of the overseas gauleiter delivery; CORPSE would need some men with sea experience to run the ports, or such as would be left afterwards. When the man from the Foreign Office had got through five of the twenty, I spoke into his ear and suggested he might remove the velvet gloves and drop the hint that we could always put the crew back aboard their death-ship till they talked and shoot any man who tried to make it overboard before the end. He nodded, whispered back: “Good wheeze,” and said he would try it on. Thereafter I noticed no change in the expressions of the crew. All the same, after the interrogations had been completed with a nil result, I decided Max might be right and asked the Foreign Office man if he would in fact authorise the order to have the bastards put back aboard and the ship surrounded with a seaborne guard.
He didn’t like that. To actually do it would be crude. He pursed his lips and held his head back, a short-arse trying to look down his nose. He said, “Good heavens, no, my dear chap!”
“Why not?”
“Well, think of the trouble it would cause in Europe. Surely you’ve heard of Human Rights? We’d never get away with it. never!” He was quite indignant.
“Uh-huh.” I said, musingly. “Cruelty, degradation, lack of respect for the dignity of the person … that sort of thing?”
“Exactly. The threat was simply that a threat. I’d never dream of putting it into effect.”
I nearly burst a blood-vessel. I said, “If I were you I’d go back to London. There’s — what — thirteen million or so people there, waiting for the Garsdale Head to blow. When it does, you’ll see all the cruelty and degradation and whatnot that you need … you might even send a memo about it to the Human Rights people if you have time.”
*
I decided I’d wasted my time: the Foreign Office is impervious to everyone, a law unto itself. Max might get the wheels in motion, but what we did not want at this delicate stage was interdepartmental friction. Also it was all too possible that those dedicated seamen wouldn’t open up wherever they were put, though there was the chance that the crew contained a weaker member who would break, and when the deadline was all b
ut run even the Foreign Office might change its tune. In the meantime an idea came to me as, going out to the police car for the drive back to Glasgow airport, I felt the cold night breeze coming off the Tail o’ the Bank: the vessel — herself she was the Dutch-registered Johann Klompé — could well speak louder than her silent crew. If I could get aboard … the risk was great in theory but, I felt, not necessarily in practice. True, CORPSE had threatened to blow if anyone boarded their death ships, but I didn’t believe they would react so strongly to a first probe. They stood to gain all they wanted from just the big threat which might induce the British Government to surrender, and why lay waste so much of a country they wished to take over until they were convinced surrender would not come? Besides, they had plenty of other ships on station.
I reckoned it was worth the chance, but I knew I had to do it on my own responsibility and not involve 6D2 or the Foreign Office. In the nick I’d been told that the Johann Klompé was under surveillance from a circling naval cutter, and somehow I had to get past that cutter. As I was pondering, and keeping my police driver waiting, the US Navy Captain emerged, chatting to the officer from Fort Blockhouse. I heard him say that his gasoline gig was standing by to take him back to the Gareloch. and I reached a decision.
“I’d like to take a look at the Gareloch, and the Johann Klompé in passing,” I said. “I’d appreciate a lift. Captain.”
“Sure,” he said at once. I dismissed my driver: I would make arrangements later with the nick. In company with the USN I went out across the dark waters of the Clyde, approaching but keeping clear of Roseneath Patch and the silent coaster beyond. She was a compact little ship and looked very clean in the moonlight. Living quarters aft, also the engine-room, leaving all the fore part for her cargo. She carried a deck cargo in addition to what lay below’ hatche s— on deck were cased goods of so-far unknown content. I noted that her starboard accommodation-ladder was down: the crew would have come off that way and there would be no one to restow the ladder. As we approached I chatted-up Captain Jefferson, USN, who happened to be one of the top controlling brass from the Poseidon fleet. As a matter of fact he’d been yacking all the way across, being a friendly man. He’d sure hate to think, he said, of New York harbour having such a threat in it. All Manhattan, Brooklyn and New Jersey would go up.
Corpse (Commander Shaw Book 15) Page 10