There was a pause. A red light glowed on Nodd’s desk, giving Rackstall the stand-by; there was a microphone ready on the desk and as Rackstall got behind it Nodd took up the Astra. The red light went out, was replaced by a green one.
“On the air,” Nodd said.
Rackstall hacked at his throat, glared round at the rest of us defiantly, and said, loud and clear. “This is Rackstall. The bastard’s not —” That was as far as he got; we never did learn what he had meant to say. Nodd used the Astra while the other thugs held their assault rifles in our stomachs. There was no report from the pistol beyond a phut and a cloud of something coloured very faintly amber came out and enveloped Rackstall from head to foot and he started to melt then went brown, then black, then crisped into something like burned toast and went down flat in a cloud of powdered flesh, charred flesh, his emerging skeleton rattling on the floor of Nodd’s gallery.
12
Felicity Mandrake had passed right out, crumpling in a disorderly heap beside me as I stared down at what had been Rear-Admiral Rackstall, USN. His dreadful end, that charred skeleton that was now disintegrating into powder like the flesh, seemed to paralyse the lot of us. The US Navy men just stared like me, eyes wide. It was like something out of Dr Who; it couldn’t have happened, but it had. I looked at Nodd, who was still holding the Astra. His face was happy, as happy as flatness can ever be, an indication that he gloried in killing. He stirred at Rackstall with his foot; Rackstall, who had started to settle in a heap, rose again in a cloud.
“Now perhaps you begin to understand,” Nodd said.
I licked at dry lips — dry as dusty bone. “Understand what?” I asked.
“That it is not just the ozone layer — not just the ordinary UV, that is.” Nodd lifted the Astra, and stroked it with loving care and pride. “Six containers in place of the normal rounds, each one guaranteed lethal. Small, yes. But you have imagination, Commander Shaw.”
“Yes,” I said, feeling a constriction in my throat. Astras were small all right; field guns, bombs, missiles, rockets were not. And if Nodd’s filthy invention could be projected from his spinning satellites, down through the ozone layer … yes, I had imagination all right! I asked, “What is it, Nodd?”
“The name would mean nothing to you, but it is a liquid gas, and I discovered it and its properties whilst experimenting with the ozone layer penetration.” Nodd almost smiled. “If you wish, you may think of it as … concentrated sun. Ultra-violet that by scientific processes has been rendered into a usable and containable gas.” The smile, if smile it could be said to be, widened. “It makes me master of life and death, Commander Shaw. It is the confirmation that WUSWIPP has world power.”
“And China?”
Contempt showed briefly on that flat face. “China is a paper tiger. The power is WUSWIPP’s.”
I nodded: I’d thought it might be. The Chinese people were to be the dupes and in Nodd’s good time the weapon they had helped him forge would be turned ferociously against them. For Nodd is the kingdom, the power and the ultra-violet, for ever and ever, WUSWIPP. Nodd would use the Chinese military machine as his protection until he was ready to move against the West, and when the West plus Russia had been burned out, then the patient Chinese, People’s Republic and all, would need to stand from under. Nodd moved away, gesturing towards the US Navy men whose faces were still showing shock: I guessed Rackstall had been a good old guy as a CO, the sort men follow, and even if he hadn’t been, he’d been a living person minutes earlier and now was … what was on the floor of the gallery. A degree of numbness was to be expected, but Nodd broke it up. He said, “The world has heard now that Rear-Admiral Rackstall was present. It must hear more.” He pointed to one of the seamen. “You. Come to the microphone.”
Like a zombie, the man moved forward. Nodd said, “Take great care not to utter a word out of place, except that you will tell the Western governments what has just happened.” He gave a signal to his operators below the gallery and the transmitter, which had been cut as Rackstall died, came on again. Green light followed red, and the seaman swallowed nervously and started, his prepared script shaking in his hands like a cutter’s mainsail in a strong breeze. He said, “Rackstall’s dead. Oh, Jeez.” Then he burst into tears like a woman, and that was horrible in itself, for he was a tough-looking seaman with tattoos all the way up his arms, which bulged with muscle, and he had a nose broken, maybe, in some waterfront punch-up back home. He couldn’t go on but he’d have proved pretty effective already in my view and Nodd had him replaced by another man who dutifully read his spiel. My turn came and I refused point blank to make any bloody broadcast at all: I didn’t want to suffer instant cremation, but I didn’t believe I would have to, and I was right. Evidently Nodd had other uses for me and I was to be preserved. He looked angry but put another man on. I thought he was taking a risk — keep on the air for long enough and someone, somewhere, might pick up a radio fix on his whereabouts. It was slim, but it held a possibility. Not much of one, though, as I found out afterwards when I asked Nodd if he didn’t fear interception.
He gave me a flat look. “I fear nothing,” he said, “but I prepare for everything. The transmission is made from here by remote control, and comes in fact from the north of China.”
“Really,” I said. “And your transmissions to your satellites?”
“Those are not transmissions in the radio sense. They are merely electronic impulses for orbital and attack purposes.”
You just couldn’t win: to effect an unpickupable remote control system, land lines would need to be laid all the way, but I suppose that was a mere nothing to mighty WUSWIPP …
*
Back in my cell, I lay and thought, which currently was all I could do. I tried to get myself inside the minds of the White House, the Pentagon, the British Prime Minister, the Cabinet and the Trades Union Congress; quite a mixture and really it all came down to whose view from amongst that lot would prevail. The White House and the Pentagon, I guessed, would be for all-out nuclear attack, but they would have one hell of a job to know where to aim the ICBMs. The British Prime Minister and his Cabinet were still to some extent at one remove from the big threat, and the dead admiral hadn’t been British: for my money, London would advise a cautious approach. Then there was the TUC, without whose seal of approval no one in the UK could blow their nose. Well, the TUC was anti-war, some of it was anti-American, and all of it would be anti-admirals: America was too prosperous and admirals had too many privileges … all that was, of course, an over-simplification of attitudes, but broadly it held, and I fancied it was a fair basis to work on. Britain would never go it alone — if the PM made the smallest attempt to do other than urge conciliation on the White House, there would be widespread trouble, for it was very necessary to remember what WUSWIPP stood for: World Union of Socialist, and that was the first operative word, Scientific Workers, and that was the second operative word, for International Progress in Peace, and peace was the clincher if socialist workers wasn’t enough. Many would be the speeches, forceful would be the stabbing fingers essential to the making of socialist points, violent would be the marches: there would be no war meantime on WUSWIPP, and when WUSWIPP moved it would be too late for the West.
So it boiled down to this: Britain would waver and teeter without exactly backing right down, and the United States might retaliate massively if ever they could locate Nodd’s area of operations and in the meantime the world balance was in the hands of eight helpless people: six US Navy seamen, Miss Mandrake, and me.
I gave a very hollow laugh. It didn’t bear thinking about. So I tried to stop thinking and find restful sleep instead. I found only nightmare and the horrid loom of Nodd’s big head coming at me balloon-like through a cloud of chlorofluorocarbons and UV concentrate spreading upwards from the household cleaner shelves in Tesco’s, of which Nodd was manager until he burst with a splutting sound on the upthrust periscope of the USS Hampton Roads. On that note I came awake, sweating damp
ly and feeling ill but seeing a chink of light somewhere. The Hampton Roads would still be somewhere beneath the waters of the Gulf of Tongking not so far to the south, unless she had been ordered out by the Pentagon, or flushed out by hostile surface vessels. If she was around she might pick up radio broadcasts about Rackstall’s death. I had no idea what Darrell might do, or be ordered to do, but there was some comfort in that submarine’s location not too far off, and there was one more point too: Lin Fun Fang and Deputy-Premier Ch’en would not appreciate having been made suckers of by Nodd, and, once they knew the facts, might react. If I could persuade them of the truth. And if I could first get out of Nodd’s filthy base to tell them.
*
Not long after I had woken from that nightmare, I was fed, and fed not badly: some sort of rice wine, not strong but very welcome, and Chinese food, all rice and bamboo shoots and little meat balls. I felt better after it and hoped the others were getting similar nourishment. The meal finished, a piped broadcast came through to my cell: it was from London and it was very circumspect. News had been received of the death in strange circumstances of a US admiral and investigations had been put in hand by Washington. All this careful circumlocution was, to my mind, plain nonsense: Nodd’s messages had gone out en clair and all the world including probably some ham radio addicts inside Britain must know, but the British public were being coddled along so they could carry on playing, holidaying, boozing and striking without a care in the world, and the press was under muzzle like a rabid dog, though how long that could be kept up was anyone’s guess — for mine, a day or two at the most. Then a polite, emotion-free voice read out the next item: at noon the day before (so clearly they’d held this over) a tanker loaded with refined aviation spirit from the Persian Gulf for Finland, the British-manned Palm Merchant under a flag of convenience — Liberia — had met with disaster. Her radio had reported great heat that was blistering paintwork and burning woodwork on the bridge, and had later reported the plates themselves beginning to glow. A final desperate Mayday call indicated that the master had ordered the crew to abandon, then the Palm Merchant had gone off the air and the story had been taken up by a bulk-cargo carrier who had answered the Mayday call. The tanker had blown up with a tremendous and concussing roar, sprouting red flames and a billowing upsurge of thick smoke. Debris and shattered bodies had been found over a wide area and there were no survivors. And the very sea had seemed to boil.
Nodd, of course.
The man was incredible. Just as I put that thought to myself, his voice was fed through to me, saying simply, “Yes.”
*
“Cat and mouse,” I said.
Felicity glanced at my face. “Us?”
“Well, us too.” We had been brought together again, we knew not why, along with the six American seamen, to prowl at leisure but under many ready guns in the central enclosure that I’d seen earlier on Nodd’s TV screen: a sort of exercise area on the roof of the base-protective dome. Dead centre the dome was more or less flat and the enclosure had been built with concrete sides topped with electrified wires. It just was not on to attempt any sort of break-out. I said, “Really, I meant the big threat. Nodd’s not following it up, yet. He’s just piecemealing.”
“That checks with what he said, doesn’t it? He prefers the threat to the actuality.”
“But it’s not getting him anywhere.”
She laughed with bitterness. “Oh, the cave-in’ll come all right!”
“Maybe, but London and Washington may still not believe what can happen and they’ll just play it along by ear and hope Nodd’ll go away.”
“Then what?”
“Then,” I said, “the bugger’ll lose patience. Before he does …”
“Well?”
I said impatiently, “You know the answer, Felicity. Right now I haven’t an idea in my head how to stop him going for blast-off of his bloody gases!”
She said sombrely, “Never mind, I think I may have. I’ve been putting it off, but maybe I shouldn’t any longer.”
“What?”
“Early,” she said, grinning up at me.
“I don’t get it.”
“Nick Early, late the US Marine Corps.” She paused, then said, “In short, sex.”
“Sex?”
“Sex and Nodd.”
“Do they go together?”
“It’s a revolting thought,” she said, and shuddered a little. “But it’s conceivable —”
“I bet Nodd isn’t. He’s all head and brain, no energy to spare elsewhere.”
“I’ve noticed things,” she said seriously as we walked together past the impassive Chinese faces and the guns: I wondered if I couldn’t penetrate that impassivity and set the guards against the Nodd God, but of course I couldn’t without the language. Felicity Mandrake went on, “There were girls down below in that control room, right? I saw the way he looked at them, and at me too. Urges exist.”
“Then why doesn’t he fulfil them? He’s the boss.”
“Yes. I don’t know why he doesn’t —”
“Maybe he does.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I read it in his face and eyes. Suppression of natural instincts. A woman can tell.”
“So he’s inhibited sexually. Too much concentration on his work — too conscientious, never spared the time. Or is it just that he isn’t equipped?”
She said, “Yes, could be.”
“What I said: all head and no —”
“All right, all right,” she said. She looked kind of disgusted, as though she didn’t like to think of such things in connection with Nodd, though she was, she added, willing to have a personal go at his virginity if it would help.
“Guts,” I said admiringly, and I was genuine. “But how do you get through to him, Felicity?”
She chuckled. “So far, I’ve not really worked it out, but it shouldn’t be too hard — I said, he’s reacted already.”
“And if ever you do, then what?”
She walked on beside me and then for a moment we stood inside that electrified wire barrier and gazed out over south China and its forests and hills and deep valleys, all green and lush. In the distance a railway train chuffed, blowing smoke and steam as it ground along what was probably a single track for Yamchow. Felicity said in a low voice, “Snake in the grass, mate, that’ll be me. Once alone in bed … I’m pretty expert.”
“I know.”
“Not that. Unarmed combat. I’m no paper tiger. I can snap his neck like a matchstick.”
I stared in concern. “You’d risk that?”
“Yes,” she said with decision, “I’d risk that.”
Well, there was a lot at stake, that was dead certain; but again I admired her guts. A dead Nodd might very well do the trick, indeed all along I had planned to kill Nodd, but whoever did the deed was not going to live … not, that was, if he or she attempted it in the presence of Nodd’s armed henchman. But in the privacy of the bedchamber? I didn’t feel in the least frivolous, but it struck me that Nodd’s top-heavy cranium could bring undue stress on his neckbone when in the throes of sexual intercourse. Death by natural causes? Would that be acceptable to the henchmen?
Doubtful. But Felicity had a point and though I was reluctant to say the least to allow her to make it and thus do my job for me, I knew she wouldn’t be stopped and that really I should not try to stop her. 6D2’s orders and principles stood firm: success was all and agents were expendable and personal feelings were taboo.
“Miss Mandrake,” I said tenderly, putting an arm around her, “you’re bloody well named, aren’t you?”
*
A whistle blew and shrill orders were snapped: exercise was over and we all filed back down the steps that led into the dome itself and thence via a horizontal tunnel to the descent to the underground quarters. In the tunnel there was an observation window that I had not noticed on the way up — I believe it had been covered with a sliding steel panel — and I looked down into the body, the
guts, of Nodd’s great complex, right on to the hardened, reinforced silos from which, presumably, Nodd’s rockets would go up in fire and smoke at the master’s command. I was moved on by the guards towards a sliding steel door that was opened by the ubiquitous key, and passed into the thick main walls and the second flight of downward-leading steps … I thought about Nodd and wondered how Felicity had managed to find any expression at all, let alone a sex-starved one, in that dead flat face. Anyway, the more I pondered on the ploy of getting Nodd into bed, the less it seemed possible of achievement. However far that big head might be up in the clouds, or the ozone layer, or in scientific fantasy, Nodd was no fool and would have a reasonable awareness of what could happen to ordinary mortals if they bedded the enemy. It wasn’t really on: there had to be some other way.
But what?
Once again, I was locked into my cell. I sat with my head in my hands, filled with helplessness and hopelessness. I had a strong feeling Nodd was going to get away with this, that WUSWIPP was going to emerge as the world’s controlling factor, backed by China for as long as was necessary to the WUSWIPP aims, after which Nodd, Chairman Nodd by that time, would shift himself to Peking and take over and rule in WUSWIPP’s name from the Square of Heavenly Peace and God help everyone else on earth. And from the confines of my cell, what could I do about it?
The first priority was to get a degree of freedom within the bounds of Nodd’s base, and then proceed from there. Physical measures would never achieve that; a subterfuge, and a foolproof one, had to be found. I cogitated until I almost sweated blood.
Sunstrike_The next gripping Commander Shaw thriller Page 14