Fox stepped down towards the door. I moved to get up.
‘No. Stay where you are.’ The muzzle of the tiny derringer that Fox had drawn from the folds of his towel gazed indifferently at my umbilicus. Fox reached for the door handle.
‘Where was I? Oh yes. What a waste – and not only you, but also the delectable Captain Hodgson.’
‘Where is she?’
‘She is currently seated quite comfortably on a chair in the centre of my gazebo.’
‘You’re holding her?’
‘Not at all. She is unrestrained. No weapon threatens her. She is free to move at any time. But unfortunately for her she will not move. You see, she is a prisoner of her own fear. She has been made to understand that the grassy radius surrounding the gazebo has been mined. Ironically, of course, this is quite untrue. But the belief in it will be a sufficient constraint. For the time being, she is quite safe. I have, however, despatched Herr Kramer – a man for whom I know you have considerable regard – with somewhat open-ended instructions regarding her disposition. I expect he will take his time. Herr Kramer’s predilections tend to the exotic. As for you, doctor, I won’t try to persuade you any further into my employ. You have quite convinced me that you are a man of integrity. I can see that I would never be able to trust you. Goodbye, Dr Cameron-Strange.’
Fox stepped swiftly through the door. There was an audible click. And then there came the sound of a bolt sliding into place.
CAUCHEMAR
I
What follows is the stuff of nightmare.
I leapt off the pine bench and tried the heavy glass door. It was locked fast. I tried to force it with my shoulder. There was absolutely no give. I tried to kick my way out. No good.
Shaun O’Driscoll. The yomping soldier who had succumbed to malignant hyperthermia. He had been in this hellish box.
The window. I searched for an implement. I took the wooden spoon from the water bucket and hammered on the glass of the tiny aperture in its corner high above the brazier. It was as solid as reinforced concrete. The stem of the spoon snapped and its bowl bounced on the floor. I thumped the red panic button with my fist. I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled for help through the reinforced glass as loudly as I could. Within the confines of the sauna my voice was dull and muffled. The place was soundproofed. I paused to listen. Quiet as a mausoleum, as still as a bank at midnight.
Now I was soaked head to foot in my own sweat, and the heat of the sauna which before had seemed merely pleasant and cleansing to the skin was now smothering me and enshrouding me. The terrible panic of claustrophobia had entered the ghastly little cubicle and was sitting with me, seemingly occupying the bench where Fox had sat, silently mocking me.
The bucket. Would it be a useful battering ram? I picked it up. It contained two inches of lukewarm water.
Think. Slow down and think. What was the natural history of this gruesome environmental insult? What physiological defences did the body have against the awful, pervasive heat? Precious few. I could divest myself entirely of clothing. I loosened the towel from my waist and let it fall to the floor. Now I was completely naked. I could stay absolutely quiet and still and not exert myself. I sat down on the floor.
Was there a temperature gradient? Hot air rises. Was it my imagination, or was there perhaps a one- or two-degree difference down here? And was that not, tantalisingly, the vaguest hint of cool air from without, creeping under the narrow aperture beneath the door? Maybe. But not enough to make any real difference. If I lay still it would be an act of surrender. Sooner or later I would lose consciousness and die, just as a mountaineer caught out in a blizzard would die if he sat down and gave up before he had found shelter.
And I could sweat. It was the only natural defence I had. But already my mouth and throat were dry, and the sensation of thirst was developing.
I retrieved the broken ladle bowl and drank from the bucket, ignoring the unpalatable, woody taste of the warm water. Drink it all down. Soon it will be too hot to swallow.
How long could I survive in here? How long would the physiological defence mechanisms hold out? An hour? Two hours? What would happen? I would sweat maximally in an effort to retain a core body temperature around 37 degrees Celsius. What would the limiting factor on sweating turn out to be? Dehydration. I would simply run out of fluid. Then two things would happen. My blood volume would deplete and then my circulation would collapse. Before that, the failing systems would no longer be able to maintain the core temperature of the milieu interieur. I would develop heat exhaustion and then I would rapidly go on to succumb to heat stroke. The temperature would begin to creep up – 38, 39, 40 … After 40 degrees had been exceeded all the feedback mechanisms would pack in and the inexorable progress of the patho-physiological process would begin to develop a life of its own. I would stop sweating altogether. I would turn into a poikilothermic or cold-blooded animal. I would develop irritability, confusion, then altered consciousness, delirium, and maybe fits. Forty-one … 42 … I would, literally, cook my own brain. Then the long slide down the coma scale, knocking off the brain hierarchical structures at first piecemeal, and then more globally. I would become decorticate, decerebrate. The terrifying clinical jargon buzzed around my head. The brain stem would be the last thing to go. It would carry on functioning, in a desperate last-ditch effort to survive, a citadel under siege. Then the primeval centres of very existence, the respiratory centre, the cardiovascular centre, would begin to send one another confused and conflicting signals. And the fried brain cells would swell and the systems of the struggling engine would strive to keep them alive. If the irreversible shock condition had not set in, the blood pressure would rise, the pulse fall. Then the breathing would become sporadic and bizarre as the apneustic and pneumotaxic centres fell to pieces. I would be lying in a puddle of my own sweat. Cheyne-Stoking. By now I would have fallen into the delicious arms of total oblivion. Extinction would follow shortly thereafter.
But not yet. I still had options. I gave the red panic button a few more desperate thumps, knowing there would be nobody listening. I grasped the bucket firmly in two hands and for fully one minute subjected the window to a relentless pounding. I stopped when the bucket fell to pieces.
Could the fire be extinguished? I got down on my hands and knees and examined beneath the brazier. There was a stout electrical cable passing from the brazier through a tiny aperture low down on the wall. There was no switch. I grasped the cable and pulled. There was no give, either from behind the wall or from within the brazier itself. Surely I could detach the cable from the brazier! But the structure, held within a stout wooden trestle framework, was difficult to access, and also unbearably hot to the touch. Shaun had found that out too, Captain O’Driscoll with the full thickness burns to his fingertips.
Now I was finding it difficult to breathe. Ignore it. Ignore the fluttering wings of the spectre of defeat and concentrate on what you have to do.
Could I start a fire? The smoke alarm and the water sprinkler. Would they be working? Surely there was something I could do here. And if they weren’t working? Then I would die of smoke inhalation, be immolated in my own self-constructed funeral pyre, or even conceivably drown under the cascade of the sprinkler. Better that than being slowly basted alive.
What could I set alight? The handle of the wooden spoon? I retrieved it and examined the top of the brazier. There were artificial coals made of an inert graphite material and, beneath them, the glow of several heavily insulated electric elements. I jammed the ladle handle down beneath the coals.
What else? Of course! The towel! That might smoulder away. I grabbed it off the floor and used the remains of the bucket to push it down beside the spoon. What could I do with the dilapidated bucket? Its wooden slats were barely held together by narrow steel ribs. Maybe I could fashion an implement from one of the ribs. I might not be able to hack my way through the window. But could I hack the electrical cable in two? Could I somehow insulate myself against pos
sible electrocution?
Now an acrid stench was exuding from the towel. Its dampness would help to make smoke. Sure enough, a slim silver streak emerged from above the brazier and snaked its way towards the ceiling. I leaned over the coals and, ignoring the fierce blast of heat on my face, blew downwards through cupped hands to encourage the effect. Suddenly the damp towel ignited and within a minute clouds of foul, acrid, stinking black smoke were billowing to the ceiling. I stood it for as long as I could and finally, in a paroxysm of coughing, snatched the blazing towel from the brazier and held it up towards the smoke detector and the sprinkler. Would the smoke set off an alarm? Was there a flame sensor attached to the sprinkler?
There was no response. I was burning my fingers. Abruptly I threw the remnant of the towel into the dilapidated bucket. Could I deliberately start a fire and burn my way out? I dismissed the option. By the time the walls or door were sufficiently destroyed, I’d be a charred fragment. No. Uncontrolled fire in this environment would be as disastrous as a fire on board a ship at sea.
Now it was difficult to see as well as to breathe. No exhaust outlet. The heavy smoke hung in the air. I slipped down on to my hands and knees, like a wounded animal. I struggled to the doorway, head hanging, put my nose and mouth as close as possible to the narrow slit under the door, and tried to control my breathing.
I might stop down here, now. It might not be such a miserable death after all, if I could only stop panicking and rest quietly. It might be like drowning. After the initial panic, and when the first involuntary gasp had filled the lungs with water, it was said to be a not unpleasant, even a euphoric mode of demise. This might be the same, slumped here against the door, punch-drunk.
No. I would give myself one minute more, gather my strength, gather my wits. I must not allow myself to become confused. I must retain the will to survive and, with it, a sense of indomitable purpose. With what remaining strength was available, I had one last and final option. For this, I needed the charred remnant of the towel. Inside the bucket, it had stopped smouldering. Good.
I would go berserk. I would use the towel as an oven glove and, quite simply, tear the brazier to bits, ignoring the searing, blistering pain of the burns on fingers and palms. I would destroy the fire literally with my bare hands. I might be immolated or electrocuted. Even if I managed to cut off the heat source, survival was far from guaranteed. It would take hours for this place to cool down. But much better to have an option. I would accept the fall of the cards.
Wooden trestle first. Ready. I sat up on the bench immediately behind the brazier and wedged myself into the corner of the cubicle. Next I wrapped the remnant of the towel around my right foot. Then I started kicking at the trestle with all my might. Ignore the heat, ignore the searing pain on the sensitive sole of your foot. Kick kick kick! Break, damn you, break. Ignore the splintering sound of shattered bone.
Not shattered bone. Shattered pine. The trestle was buckling. I leapt back down on to the floor, wrapped the towel over both hands, grasped the brazier, and pulled with all my might. It tilted, poised, leaned crazily against the broken struts of the trestle, and collapsed through on to the floor with a deafening crash. It revealed itself as a squat aluminium canister, excruciatingly hot to the touch. The cable connecting the element to the outside world was still intact.
Now there wasn’t much left in my armamentarium. I was running out of ideas just as I was running out of strength. I picked up the bucket again and began to flog the brazier indiscriminately. I stopped, panting, when the bucket fell to bits. One of its steel ribs was hanging loose like a flail. I tore it loose, lacerating my palm on its sharp edge.
Sharp edge? I stared dully at the electric cable. Would the towel provide any insulation? I wrapped it like a bandage round my bleeding palm and picked up the newly fashioned metallic weapon. Not long to go now. With all this exertion, I would pass out soon. I grabbed the cable. What the hell …
An invisible vice-like clamp gripped me by the entire length of my right arm and seemed to hurl me diagonally across the cubicle. My last sensation before I lost consciousness was of the sweet aroma of roast pork and crackling. And above my sweat-stained, drooping head, the strip lighting, between the inert sprinkler and the smoke detector, flickered uncertainly and then went out.
II
I was stumbling, as if in a dream, back down the stairway from the mezzanine floor to the main hallway. I was dressed, but I had no recollection of either retrieving my clothes or putting them back on. My right arm was on fire. It felt as if it had swollen to twice its normal size and it was filled with an intense and persistent ache. My hands were swollen and blistered. Yet I seemed detached from the pain. The pain occupied a different universe. Which was real? Was Elspeth Duckmanton substantial, or an apparition, sprawled across the red leather top of the reception desk? Her dead hands still held the squat stubble of a semi-automatic weapon. The skull-like features had frozen in the scream of the death agony. I flitted through the house and out on to the moonlit back terrace. I was puzzling over the montage of frayed, tattered images that was the sum total of my memory of the last moments in the sauna. There had been a click, a movement at the door, and an unbelievably delicious draught of cold air. I had half fallen through on to the pool’s edge. At the far end, the deep end, the enormous body of the Tongan named Hemidemisemiquaver lay floating, face down. Air trapped in the cavernous black funeral suit lent the corpse buoyancy. The arms and legs splayed out from the prone hulk like the extremities of an amphibian. It was the posture of a skydiver. Hemi was in freefall.
I slid gratefully into the pool and stayed there an age.
Then I dragged myself out and collapsed on the marble mosaic beside the spa pool. I may have slept. When I woke it was to find myself filled with an unnatural serenity. My head had found a soft pillow. It was a thigh. Mary was cradling my head. She was dressed in blue surgical scrubs, as if she’d just come out of theatre. Always, blue was her colour. The original air blue gown. She used to come back to me like this, after the event. She was stroking my hair.
‘It’s okay, it’s okay.’
I said nothing. I closed my eyes again. I would stay in this position, with Mary stroking my hair, for ever. I may have slept again. When I woke, she was talking to me.
‘You need to go now. Nikki needs you. And you need her. But she is paralysed by fear. You need to help her, just as she needs to help you.’
‘You don’t mind?’
‘No. Not at all. You might not see me again. Because you are caught up in the affairs of the world. But that is as it should be. Now go. Quickly! Go.’
I stumbled out into the night.
There was something different about the approach to the Big Push. What was it? Did the dense January night afford the familiar apparatus a gloomy disguise? Something else. The heavy silver chains and padlock entwining the wrought iron portals had vanished. I pushed the gate open. It yielded with a soft creak. Above its bow tie of crossed bones, the grotesque black and white skull of the Jolly Roger grinned toothlessly.
And something else again, which altered the significance of the scene dramatically. The flag which was fluttering above the warning sign was not white, as it had been before. It was red. The mine field had been activated. I backed off, turned right, and headed for the arboretum. Better take the easy route. I stopped before an evergreen. Under the moonlight the tree seemed so bizarre as to be hardly a living entity at all, more a grim, metallic, robotic machine. Araucaria araucana – Southern Chile and Argentina. The monkey puzzle. Abel sat at its base, grinning toothlessly at me. He was completely immobile. I went over and gave his shoulder a gentle push. The gnarled, twisted body, seized in the iron clamp of rigor mortis, fell awkwardly to one side. The grin remained fixed. I stepped over the corpse and walked past the monkey puzzle to enter more deeply the abysmal arboretum.
The Kahikatea or White Pine, Dacrycarpus dacrydioides. Cadbury, still in tails, hung from its lowest branch. His exquisitely polished bl
ack shoes, at eye level, gently rotated, clockwise, then anticlockwise. On the other side of the tree was the scrunch of a tread on dead leaves. Was it to be another Wide Game? No, thank you. I turned abruptly and headed back for the Big Push. I stepped through the gate and under the red flag. Better not slip! Just work your way calmly through each station. Each step, carefully chosen, would lead ever closer to Nikki. I cast my mind back to my avoidance of this course on my previous visit. Why the hell hadn’t I paid closer attention? Why hadn’t I taken the opportunity of a rehearsal when offered it? It had just been a bit of a joke then, an afternoon’s diversion playing Boy Scouts with the army. What came up first?
It was Loos, the series of narrow rickety duckboards over a mud bath. I spread my hands in a messianic posture to keep balance and started to tiptoe over the mud. Half a dozen planks zig-zagged out across the grey gelatinous no-man’s-land. Now I was compelled to inch forward agonisingly like a wounded soldier blinded by phosgene.
And on the sixth and final board I lost it, missed my footing, and found myself floundering in the dank, earthy, bottomless viscous soup. Quicksand. I clutched desperately at the planking, found a hold, and began hauling myself by a great effort back on to the duckboard. But the mud was sucking me back. Keeping my grip on the slippery wooden planking, I let myself sink back momentarily into the disgusting goulash, and collected my strength. I was going to have to dig deep into my dwindling capital of resilience. One single, superhuman effort. I hauled with all my might. The mud sucked and sucked and suddenly delivered me up with the expedition of a champagne cork.
I was free, spreadeagled across the board. The mud smacked its lips.
I took the last ten metres painstakingly, in the prone position, wriggling forward like a worm. The plank gave way to dear hard earth. Safety. I was in ‘Ploegsteart’. I was covered head to foot in filth. The ache in my right arm had returned, intensified. The moon had slipped behind a cloud and it was getting darker. If only there were more light.
The Seven Trials of Cameron-Strange Page 19