Split Code

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘I think,’ Johnson said, ‘that after taking all the trouble, Joanna and I should have some of the fun . . . What the hell is that?’

  A burst of gunfire, echoing hollowly round one of the underground rooms, died away to the sound of running feet and men’s voices. We were brought up at the door by a man with blood on his face, breathlessly reporting, ‘He seems to have got a fresh weapon, sir. We can’t see what it is, because he’s shot all the lights out.’

  Johnson said, ‘Have you sent anyone else in?’ and when the man shook his head he said, ‘Well, don’t. I know the customer and you don’t. Joanna, stay behind. You, get some arc lights and cable. Set them all in the passage, but don’t switch on until I tell you. I may need back-up fire, but on no account follow me into the warehouse. This man is an exceptional shot. He can stay there and pick us all off till kingdom come if we let him.’

  I said, ‘He’s got to come out some time, or starve.’

  He said, ‘I know. But Panadek is a Yugoslav citizen, and we are in Yugoslavia. I want this finished tonight. It will be. He doesn’t want to lose his life any more than I do.’

  I don’t know why I found that so reassuring. Or I do, but the reasons are personal. I went with the others to the doorway of the big warehouse, and saw, through the open door, how the darkness transformed it into a place of shadowy racks and benches and shelves and tables. Then there was a flash of red and a crash and the combat man behind me pulled me violently back from the threshold where the light from the passage had betrayed me.

  A moment later the lights in both the adjoining passages went out and I heard the men beside me shuffle, blocking the door in the darkness. Then Johnson said, ‘All right. Let me through,’ and they parted.

  We waited. Presently, within the depths of the warehouse, Johnson’s voice spoke quietly. ‘I have a gun and twenty men. You’re going to get taken anyway.’

  Silence. Then, ‘No doubt,’ said Hugo Panadek’s impudent voice. ‘But we may as well have some entertainment, may we not, in the meantime? It has been one hell of a joke, my Britannic friend. It is worth one hell of a pay-off.’

  The bark of Johnson’s gun drowned the last words, but did not stop them. I heard the zing of a ricochet, and then a hissing sound, like a porcupine on an airbed. Without further warning, a dozen jets of pink light leaped up from the floor of the warehouse and wavered there, lighting up all the toys on the shelving; lighting up the dark shattered lights in the roof; lighting up the figure of Johnson, flattened against a row of shelving.

  I didn’t see Hugo, but I saw the spark from his gun, and heard the bang, and saw Johnson’s head jerk before the rosy lights died as if pinched by a snuffer. In the silence there was a small clatter, followed by the tinkle of broken glass.

  I waited, my hands clamped round the doorpost, for the sound of Johnson falling. Instead, after a moment, he spoke, mildly. ‘You bastard,’ he said. ‘But I will say you can shoot.’ And then I realized, of course, that Hugo had merely shot off his bifocal glasses.

  I had a gun. I also had perfect vision. I moved before anyone could stop me, through the door and into the warehouse. Then I halted, for I couldn’t see anything.

  I could hear something, though. A trundling noise, making its way in a straight line along a distant path between racks, from the sound of it. A noise which dwindled and then oddly became louder, as if, having rounded the racks, it was now traversing the next row. The sound, still at some remove, drew level with me, passed me, and dwindled to the right again. A moment later, I heard it coming back, a little louder and nearer. This time, as it drew level, it hesitated, picked up, hesitated again, and then resuming, made its way to the left.

  No one moved. The object, whatever it was, began to come back. This time it was nearer again: perhaps two rows of racks from where I was standing. And this time as it drew level it slowed down and nearly stopped.

  The silence was so ghostly that I jumped with fright when a booming voice spoke suddenly from the ceiling. It came this time from a loudspeaker and was relayed there, unmistakably, by Hugo. He said, ‘How very odd. Are there two of you? I could have sworn Johnson was up by the railway track . . . I want to introduce you to Fred. Fred is one of my favourite inventions. You remember the pool bug at Cape Cod, Johnson? Fred works the same way. with a sensor bar on his nose. If there is anyone human in this room, Fred will find him. Won’t you, my pet?’

  Whether spurred by his master’s voice or not, Fred had resumed his trundle and was now passing down to the right. I wondered where the microphone was that Hugo was speaking into. It not only disguised his position, it effectively covered any footsteps. On the other hand, it allowed Johnson to move as well. I wondered if he was by the railway track, and thought I might as well move that way myself, before I found Fred curled up at my feet, with Hugo no doubt behind him, if not riding howdah.

  Then it occurred to me that once I was free of the racks, the sensitive Fred would merely trundle straight for me. The game was to wait until he was half-way along, and then dash out at the opposite end of my row, and as far as I could get over the warehouse. Hoping not to collide with Hugo on the way, or even Johnson, without his glasses and with his revolver.

  I never did do it, because just as Fred got to the end of the row and started coming down the one next to mine there was a jangle and a buzz, and I saw that someone anyway was on the railway platform, for the trains had started to run. And very pretty too they looked in the dark, with their carriage windows flashing by, and the lights on in the stations and the signals. A troop train came into view followed by a rocket carrier. The train disappeared but the carrier halted, fizzed a little, and then without more ado, let fly a rocket.

  It was, I suppose, a small firework. It burst in the air, throwing sparks and black shadows everywhere. Johnson, who had set it off, was prudently out of sight. But there, clear in my line of vision, was Hugo Panadek at the end of my row of stacking shelves, with a dark shadow at his feet which must be Fred. And I, of course, was equally plain to Hugo Panadek.

  He fired without compunction straight at me, and from where I was lying on the floor, I fired back. That neither of us hit the other was due to the fact that he tripped on Fred’s cable, and that in any case, I fired at Fred. I hit him, too. I had hoped he would go up in a sheet of flame so that at least I could see where Johnson was, but he just crepitated mournfully and gave off a lot of disagreeable fumes.

  A voice from the ceiling said, ‘Get out, Joanna. Panadek, I think that’s enough. In a moment I shall ask them to switch the lights on. Before you can shoot them all out, they will have you. Throw your gun down.’

  So Johnson had found the microphone, which was foolhardy, for of course, Hugo knew where it was. Instead of throwing down his revolver he ran. I could hear the footsteps receding and knew he was crossing the room. I hoped Johnson had had the sense to move quickly. It came to me that now I had virtually stopped him from shooting. He would never know, when he saw or heard anything, whether it might be Hugo or me.

  I wondered fretfully just how bad his sight was. It was, I said bitterly to myself, a bloody silly trade for a man with bifocal glasses.

  Johnson’s mind, I suppose, was running along the same lines. At any rate his voice came again, this time without the microphone, and from somewhere on my right. He simply said, ‘Lights’, and all along the wall on our left, the white faces of high-power lamps sprang into dazzling being.

  No one shot them out. No one ran. No one moved. What the lights did show up, with merciless clarity, was a closing black square on the wall by the railway. This, of course, must be the door by which Hugo had made his entry. And by which he was hoping to leave - and might leave, if the sentry at the other end was less than watchful.

  Johnson reached the door just as it was closing and prised it open. It would have shut behind him if I hadn’t caught it and followed. If he hadn’t the sense to know when to give up, then I supposed I was stuck with my role as his guide dog.


  I followed him into warm darkness. Behind me the heavy door closed with a series of murmuring clicks. Then, in a white searing blaze, the lights came on to show me where I was.

  Not, as I thought, in a passage. But in a box: a small empty room whose walls and ceiling and floor were made of sheets of bright, glittering metal.

  In front of me was Johnson. And no more than ten feet away, his gun on the floor, stood Hugo Panadek.

  He was smiling. ‘If you were counting,’ he said, ‘you will know that it’s empty. May I hint that it was a fraction unfair, calling in quite so many minions? I much prefer one to one . . . or one to two: it makes little difference. You can see me, I hope?’

  Beneath his knitted black brows, Johnson appeared to be concentrating. ‘You’re either a distant bald man or a fingerstall. There’s an armed combat expert behind the door at your back, and another at the field end of the entrance. It would be nice if you just kicked the gun out of your way and came towards me, slowly, with your hands raised, as in the movies.’

  ‘But it wouldn’t be so nice for me,’ said Hugo Panadek. ‘Or so much fun. I know you don’t want to take your eyes off me - you can see me, can’t you? - but you might ask Joanna to look up at the ceiling. It’s the very last toy, Johnson; and the switch which operates that has also locked both the doors. I can’t get out, but neither can you. And when they do get in to fetch us, I doubt very much if either of you will be interested.’

  Before he had finished talking, I was gaping upwards. A trap in the ceiling had opened. I was prepared, I suppose, for something spectacular. The mouth of a machine-gun. A nozzle of gas. A spray of quick-lime or acid.

  I had forgotten Hugo Panadek’s unique temperament.

  Instead, there appeared in the ceiling an immense silver ball. For a moment it hovered there, in the frame of its trapdoor. Then slowly, paid out on a strong iron chain, it descended. Heavily, so that it reminded me of the weights used for house demolition. I was speculating about the unseen overhead girder that carried it, when it came to a halt, perhaps six inches, no more, from the floor; and hanging dead in the centre.

  With a low rumble the trapdoor above closed itself over, leaving only an eyelet hole for the ball-chain. We looked at it, and at Hugo, who was watching us. Then across the ball, I saw Johnson make a small movement.

  He had put his finger to his lips, in the universal signal for silence. His naked eyes were on mine. Their expression I couldn’t interpret. I shook my head in puzzled query, and looked at Hugo.

  The room was very small. He had retreated to the wall at his back and was leaning there, with his arms lightly folded. He looked quite at ease, and also expectant. The ball hung, without moving, between the three of us. Distantly, in the silence I could hear the sound of muffled banging. It stopped, and a voice shouted, ‘Mr Johnson! Sir! Can you hear us?’

  Johnson didn’t reply. I looked at Hugo. He was still smiling. When I looked at Johnson again he shook his head and again made the signal for silence. Then he opened his hands and began to speak in dumb language.

  It was a long time since I used it - at school, I think. I remembered the vowels, which are easy, but not too many of the consonants. He gave me the same letters several times before I got what he was trying to say. Don’t speak. And then he pointed to the ball.

  I knew then what he meant, and I wondered if he was right. If he was, it was Fred all over again. Except that Hugo was in the room with us, and therefore the ball had to operate on a basis to which Hugo could make himself immune. By, for example, staying silent.

  I nodded to let Johnson know that I understood and he smiled, and leaning back, folded his arms as Hugo had done. Distantly, we could hear voices still, first on one side of the door and then beyond the other door, in the corridor that led to the field. I realized as Johnson’s men talked that they didn’t even know there was a space between the two doors in which three people might possibly shut themselves. They had watched Hugo run through the door from the warehouse and they had seen it close behind Johnson and myself. Now it refused to open, and when they walked down the tunnel from the field end, the passage would seem to be empty. I could hear the guard at the other end distantly protesting that no one had passed him.

  Then I heard Donovan’s muffled voice say, ‘All righty: let’s blow the bogomil down. The workshop’s bursting with nitro. Go on, you. Get off your butt and go get it.’

  Opposite me, Hugo’s smile showed wide and white under his moustache. A smile of total enjoyment, for all he was no better off now than we were.

  For Johnson’s men were going to tape explosives to the door at our backs. And they had to be stopped. For between the blast and the ball, it would kill us.

  I beat Johnson to it by a fraction. Just as he drew breath, I opened my mouth and screamed ‘Stop!’

  The ball hung, sombre and silent, between us. As the first sibilant reached it, it stirred. Stirred, trembled, teetered, and then, polished and enormous, swung towards me.

  There was an image on it of myself, pinheaded and bloated. It advanced, wider than I could dodge: too vast to hope to slip under.

  From behind the ball Johnson’s voice, clear but not loud, said, ‘Repeat.’

  Before the word was half spoken, the shining thing had stopped its advance. It halted, shook, and then slowly began to recede. The pin-headed figure dwindled. Air and space came in its place. I watched the ball, mesmerized, pick up speed. It was on its way, hurtling towards Johnson when it came to me what he had said. I shouted ‘Stop!’

  The ball answered. It was uncanny. It was like calling a dog. In front of Johnson’s face it steadied, shuddering, and then began the return swing towards me. Voices outside exclaimed remotely. Someone said, ‘What is it?’ and someone else said, ‘There’s someone in there.’

  The ball loomed: I came face to face again with my image. Johnson said, quickly and loudly, ‘Johnson, Joanna . . .”

  I waited as long as I dared. ‘And Panadek,’ I added. The ball swung towards me.

  Johnson said, ‘Don’t explode!!’ and the ball turned again.

  Donovan’s voice shouted, ‘Got it.’ Insulated by the walls, sounds outside seemed to leave the ball quite impervious. The voice, stifled, continued, ‘What’s wrong? Can you tell us?’

  In five syllables? It was all we could risk, and even that made the swing longer than was comfortable. I watched the ball and shouted, ‘Demolition . . .’ As the ball left him, Johnson smiled. Then just before it reached me, he said ‘ . . . ball.’

  It was like bloody Scrabble. I waited, selecting and discarding, and came up with ‘Sensitive.’ The ball swung my way.

  ‘To sound,’ said Johnson; and as the ball was coming, made a fast drawing movement with his hand over the wall behind him.

  I thought I knew what he meant, but I didn’t want to blow it I said, ‘Try to . . .’

  And as the ball swung to me, Johnson finished it ... Cut wall’

  The ball receded. I stood there, limp with relief and exhaustion and actually watched Johnson’s eyebrows go up before I recovered my senses.

  Message received, over and out. Except that it wasn’t over and out. We had to go on talking.

  There was no time to think of words. I just screeched, and the ball stopped and came back to me. At the right moment, Johnson said politely, ‘Thank you,’ and grinned again. The ball turned towards him.

  ‘What now?’ I said. The ball turned.

  ‘Verse?’ he said. The ball left me. Something hit the wall behind us. I found I was smiling too. Verse, of course, with its regular beats, and its effortless feed-belt of words. I wondered what verses he knew. I said, ‘Incy . . .”

  ‘Christ. Wincey ...’ he said. I was right. Everyone knew that one.

  ‘Spider,’ I said portentously.

  ‘Climbing . . .’

  ‘Up the . . .’

  ‘Spout.’

  The ball swung like clockwork. The spider continued its saga. With time to think, I could hear the
hammering going on between words, and then the high-pitched sound of a drill. In his workshop Hugo had every tool anyone could conceivably need. I even had a moment, between words, to glance at Hugo.

  Leaning against the wall without moving, he really looked no different from all the other times I had been in his amusing, versatile company. In the gorilla suit in the Eisenkopps’ flat; shooting rustlers at Missy’s Golden American Wonderland: swimming out to save Johnson at Cape Cod in the little exploit which exposed Beverley so successfully. Inviting Simon to the party which reinstated me as a member of the Yugoslav expedition. Repairing the Brownbelly tape because it didn’t matter to him whether Vladimir was identified or not, because Vladimir was Gramps’s man, as all the men at the Wonderland had been . . . For Hugo all along had been the lone man, the jackal, the scavenger.

  He looked the same, except that the smile under the moustache had resignation in it, and perhaps even a shadow of admiration. He could not, of course, speak. He didn’t have to.

  We had got on to The Gondoliers, as I remember, by the time the oxy-acetylene cutter finally began to draw a line through the wall. Johnson, it turned out, had a moderately melodious tenor, and I had been one of the Kings of Barataria myself in my schooldays. It was a scramble to get some of the lines in, I distinctly remember, but we managed: ‘Replying we -’ ‘Say, as -’ ‘One indi -’ ‘Vidual. As I-’ ‘Find I’m a -’ ‘King, to my -’ ‘Kingdom I -’ ‘Bid you all. I’m a -’ ‘- Ware you oh -’ ‘Ject, to pa -’ ‘Vilions and -’ ‘Palaces, but you’ll -’ ‘Find I re -’ ‘Sped, Your Re -’ ‘- Publican fallacies ...’

  We didn’t have to go any further. At just that point, a section of the wall fell out. It drew the ball to the sound. And, well trained as I was, I shouted, briskly, to summon it back.

  I think Donovan must have thought Hugo, seen clear through the gap, was in process of torturing us. As, I suppose, he was. At any rate, he lunged through the opening and fired.