Grant burst into the control booth and started to struggle with the operator. An instructor dived into the wind tunnel and glided up to help stabilise Ruby. She looked into his eyes and recognised Fred. He winked at her, as if to say everything would be OK. She smiled at him, which was challenging given that her top lip was trying to wrap itself around her nose. Fred gave her a hand signal which meant nothing to her, then took hold of her wrists to bring her down to a safer level. She looked out through the giant glass tube on the way down: there was no sign of Grant in the café area. She guessed the Patient’s ploy of making them too visible to shoot had worked. Fred indicated that he was going to take her to the door. She nodded approval. Just as they approached the exit, however, the wind speed increased dramatically and the three bodies were catapulted to the ceiling. Fred attempted to reduce the drag on his body by lowering his legs to a standing position, but the blast was too strong and he remained stuck at a dizzying height.
Down in the control booth an unconscious operator lay in a pool of crimson blood. Grant wedged the power lever to keep it at full strength and exited the booth, locking it and taking the key with him. While all eyes were staring at the commotion within the tunnel, Grant slipped outside to the rear of the building. Here were the generators that powered the fans, four diesel machines, providing redundant electrical power in case of failure. If one generator failed, another would kick in without missing a beat. Or another. Or another. He had to take them all offline, and he had to do so before anyone could break into the control booth and reduce the fan speed sufficiently to bring the three people down from the ceiling where they were currently pinned. A sudden and total loss of power might not be enough to kill them, but the sixty foot drop onto a tight grid of wires could cause the necessary damage that Mitford had requested. Broken bones, especially if they landed on each other. Possibly broken necks, too, if they landed headfirst. It wasn’t as dependable as a shooting, but it was the best he could manage under these improvised circumstances, and it avoided the risk of detection if he had stayed in the control booth and tried to cut the power from there.
Grant opened the panel on the side of the first generator and found the emergency stop button. He punched it and the machine died.
Now for the next one. He glanced up at the plasma screen several storeys above him on the outer wall of the wind tunnel building. It showed an empty tube, but he knew that was because the camera didn’t capture the very top of the tunnel. His victims were still there. He opened the panel and hit the button. Another generator died.
An alarm triggered within the building. He correctly guessed it signified that only two generators remained online. He rushed to the next one, opened it up and pressed the button.
Only one left.
‘I say! Servant chappy!’ called a voice that was as familiar to Grant as it was irksome. Grant looked round to see Ratty standing in front of the final generator. His former master was dripping with sweat, dressed in clothes that were peculiarly lumpy and ill-fitting. ‘I recognised your bulbous neck from the taxi. I don’t know what you are doing,’ Ratty continued, ‘but I have an inkling that a ne’er-do-well such as yourself is more than likely up to mischief and I want you to know that I shan’t stand for it.’
Grant took a long breath of frustration and produced the pistol that he had earlier hidden from the crowds inside the wind tunnel café.
‘You’re an arse, Ballashiels. There. I’ve said it. I’ve wanted to say it for years. Stand aside from the generator before you get hurt.’
‘I am not afraid,’ lied Ratty.
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ shouted Grant. ‘I have a gun and I have no qualms about using it. Things are different now. The old social norms and niceties don’t matter. The planet is about to change for the better and since you will never be part of that future it will mean nothing to me if I have to shoot you, and I will do so without hesitation if you don’t get out of my way.’
Ratty patted the latest incarnation of his home-made, bulletproof vest for reassurance, and continued his defiant stance.
‘Go ahead, butler. Engender my diurnal thingummy.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘Make my day, punk chappy.’
Grant’s hand was visibly shaking as he trained the gun on Ratty’s chest. For all his warring words, Grant struggled to see Ratty as anything other than the grieving child he had served decades before. He shouldn’t be in this situation. Stuart was supposed to have finished Ratty off. Even thirty years of prison life hadn’t hardened him to this extent. He pointed the gun at the gravel and fired a warning shot. Ratty flinched and wobbled as the muscles in his legs lost their strength, but he stood his ground.
‘Right now, your friends are trapped against the ceiling of this building by a jet of air,’ said Grant, deciding on a change of approach. ‘They are probably suffocating, or they may be hyperventilating. Either way, they are suffering. If I don’t turn off this generator they can’t get down.’
The old servant had to be lying, thought Ratty. If Ruby and the Patient really were pinned against the roof by the air blast, turning off the generator could be fatal for them. He would defend this machine until his dying breath. Or until help arrived. Preferably the latter.
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ shouted Grant, throwing the pistol to the ground and charging at Ratty, head-butting him in the stomach and knocking him backwards to the ground. Ratty found, to his immense surprise and relief, that his martial arts reflexes kicked in seamlessly. As he fell onto his back he grabbed his opponent’s sleeves and held them low whilst using his legs to accelerate Grant’s upward momentum, sending him in a spinning arc that resulted in a heavy landing. Grant was winded and shocked, giving Ratty enough time to return to his feet just as Ruby and the Patient rushed over to him.
‘Ratty, what on earth are you wearing now?’ asked Ruby.
She was standing alongside the Patient, and seemed to be dressed far more eccentrically than Ratty. A bundle of flight instructors, fresh from smashing the door to the control room to save their injured colleague and lower the air speed in the wind tunnel gently, charged at Grant and dragged him away from the generator.
‘I’m supposed to look like an American,’ Ratty replied. ‘Didn’t fool anyone.’
‘Promise me one thing, Ratty. Never go to a clothes shop unaccompanied again.’
‘I know it looks a trifle queer, but I have beneath my shirt an extra layer for reasons that Patient chappy will understand. Given that my former butler has developed a fascination with pistols and the like, it seems a not unwise stylistic choice to have made. Sorry you weren’t blown away by it.’
‘Why does everyone who was ever connected to your family want to kill you, Ratty?’ asked Ruby, ignoring his inappropriate pun and failing to notice that Grant had wriggled free of his captors and run off.
‘Jolly good question. The old man at the museum has good reason to kill everyone, actually. Drew a pretty rum short straw in life, born to Unity Mitford and her German lover.’
‘German lover?’ asked Ruby. ‘Who would that have been?’
‘There is but one possibility,’ said the Patient. ‘Unity had an affair with Adolf Hitler. When he turned his attentions to Eva Braun, Unity shot herself with the small pistol Hitler had given her as a present. She returned to England and was rumoured to have given birth. Therefore the old man could be the son of the Führer.’
TUESDAY 7TH MAY 2013
Flushing Meadows appeared drab and ordinary to Rocco, just a slab of parkland sandwiched between the highways and hardly a suitable site for a time capsule that was supposed to benefit the people of the future. His disappointment didn’t result from jet-lag or any other form of tiredness, for he had been pampered throughout his flight and had arrived refreshed and inquisitive. Rather, the almost childlike obsession and enthusiasm with which he approached matters of conspiracy and mystery – coupled with a variety of free cocktails – had served to elevate this unusual m
ission to a fantasy, a fairy tale quest, and now, facing the cold reality of something rather ordinary, he was temporarily deflated, returned to the corporeal state of rational scientist.
He strolled to the tatty wall of plywood panels that screened the New York State Pavilion, located the site entrance and rattled the lock. No one was operating the tunnelling equipment he could see through the gap in the gates.
Rocco felt a hand tapping him on the shoulder.
‘Coolsville Catalonia! What are you doing here?’ asked Charlie.
Rocco turned round to see someone very different from the young, rotund man he had been expecting. The bulk was still there, but it was wrapped stylishly in a dark suit, capped with a menacing black tie and sunglasses.
‘Charlie? What happened to you? You look like some kind of government agent!’
‘That’s what everyone thinks. Managed to get permission to dig here. Except I used the wrong machines and now I’m waiting for a drill.’
‘Did the old man say why he wants you to dig up that time capsule?’ asked Rocco.
‘Kinda. Something to do with that Dalí dude. The old man thinks Dalí put something into the capsule that wasn’t recorded in the official list of stuff.’
‘What kind of thing, Charlie? Did he say what it was?’
‘No. Just said that Dalí was working on another exhibit for the World’s Fair and would have had access to the capsule. If there’s something inside it that Dalí put there, the old man needs it.’
‘Why?’
Charlie shrugged.
‘There’s a connection,’ said Rocco. ‘Dalí painted the word Keo in the cave, and Keo is another time capsule. Dalí interfered with this time capsule too. This is as close to proving my theory as you can get.’
‘What theory?’ asked Charlie.
‘The Keo satellite gets launched. It’s been delayed for years, but it’s due for blast-off in a few days from Guiana Space Centre. The people of the future receive the time capsule inside it. They respond to the request to send a message back in time confirming receipt. Only the message arrives early and Dalí sees it. If Dalí wanted to reply to that message, what options does he have?’
‘His paintings?’ suggested Charlie.
‘Maybe. But a more secure method is to infiltrate another time capsule. The Westinghouse capsule is Dalí’s opportunity to send his own message to the people who were on the receiving end of Keo. Does that make sense?’
Charlie shook his head before asking, ‘Why bother?’
‘Dalí appreciated the sense of wonder in conversing with the unborn generations of a future world,’ suggested Rocco. ‘Perhaps he wanted to get a second message from the future? Dalí was also obsessed with immortality. Given the likely increase in life spans and medicine in the future, perhaps he was asking them for the secret of eternal life?’
‘Obviously didn’t get it, did he?’ pointed out Charlie. ‘The guy’s buried in a slab next to the female washrooms in his museum.’
‘Anyhow, we’ll find out as soon as you finish the extraction of the capsule.’
‘I’m supposed to bring it to the old man in Spain. Intact.’
‘Charlie, I’m working for the old man as well. He wants me to check up on your work. I’m kind of your boss,’ said Rocco. ‘And I’m telling you now that as soon as that baby is out of the ground, we’re taking it with us and going into hiding. That capsule is going to be red hot, and we need to prepare a place to take it apart.’
‘Hey, dude, that’s not cool. The old man has me by the balls. If I don’t deliver I’ll be going to jail. I’m only doing this stuff because he blackmailed me.’
‘What can he do to you while he’s in Spain?’ asked Rocco.
‘He said he’d turn me in to the cops.’
‘What have you done?’
‘Nothing! Just tried to get into his dumb museum without a ticket and a few donuts here and there that I forgot to pay for.’
‘Why would the cops over here care about that?’ asked Rocco.
‘The old man at the Dalí museum sounded pretty pissed about it. Said I’d go to jail if I didn’t do this thing for him. A guy like that has gotta have contacts. I don’t want him making that call and turning me in.’
‘Turning you in for what?’
‘Stealing stuff, I suppose,’ replied Charlie. ‘And breaking into the boring museum.’
‘Charlie, I’m no lawyer, but I shared a house with a couple of law students while I was studying for my doctorate, and have a sense of what’s right and what’s wrong from listening to their endless debates over legal cases.’
‘Law students, huh?’
‘Listen to me. I’m pretty sure that a misdemeanour or two committed in Europe means nothing in the States. Without an extradition warrant to take you back to Spain there’s nothing they can do anyway.’
‘Couldn’t they lock me up here while they wait for one?’
‘The old man must be bluffing. He hasn’t told the police about you and he isn’t going to. He has no evidence. He’s manipulating you, Charlie. It’s just another piece of this conspiracy that he’s running.’
‘You’re saying he doesn’t really have the hold over me that I thought he had?’
‘The guy has nothing on you,’ said Rocco. ‘Relax.’
‘Oh man, I’m outta here. This is great!’
Charlie ripped off his tie and threw it onto the grass. He took off his dark sunglasses and blinked as he marched in the direction of the exit.
‘No, Charlie, wait!’ called Rocco. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m done here. Going back to Europe. Back to Van Gogh and eating donuts and fantasising about Ruby’s ass.’
‘Don’t you care about the time capsule?’
‘Huh? Why would I give two shits about it?’
‘Don’t you see, Charlie, this is the ultimate conspiracy? A communication between Salvador Dalí and unknown people of the future! They might not even be people then. Maybe dolphins have evolved and taken over? Who knows what they might have been plotting with Dalí? Aren’t you in the least curious?’
‘Dolphins? Now that would make me curious. But I’ve been risking my ass every day out here for nothing. I’ve been watching over my shoulder expecting a raid at any time. I can’t live like that any longer.’
‘But I’ll watch your back.’
‘You sure?’
‘Sure.’
‘Coolsville. Listen up. There’s a new drilling rig coming tomorrow. The guy in the security hut is gonna ask questions. He knows my permits are false, but I got him convinced this is a top level government operation. You’re gonna have to dress in black like me.’
‘Really?’ asked Rocco. He beamed. His fantasy had returned for a split second until it was shattered by the phone ringing in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at the unfamiliar number.
‘Hello?’
Charlie watched his face as a wave of recognition washed over it. Rocco held the phone away from his head and whispered urgently,
‘It’s the old man. Say nothing.’ He pulled the phone back to his face. ‘How’s it going? Charlie? He’s working hard. Should have the capsule out in a day or two.’ Rocco fell silent as the old man spoke to him at length. Finally, he ended the call.
‘What’s the deal?’ asked Charlie.
‘I don’t get it. He’s pulled me off your case already.’
‘How come?’
‘He needs me for something more important. He’s accelerating his plans. Apparently, Lord Ballashiels has been causing problems and he just wants to complete his mission and get everything over with.’
‘Complete what mission?’
‘That’s what I want to find out. That’s why I signed up to this.’
‘What does the dude want you to do?’ asked Charlie.
‘He’s sending me to South America. To the European Space Agency launch site at Guiana. He knows I have access to the site from my real job. He needs some kind of favou
r when I’m there, but he won’t tell me what it is until I arrive.’
‘What about the capsule?’ asked Charlie. ‘Does he still want it?’
‘Guess so. I just don’t get him. And I’m not going to South America until I’ve seen what Dalí put into the time capsule, so I’ll be sticking with you for now, Charlie.’
***
The purchase of a dark suit and glasses seemed pointless with hindsight. Rocco was covered in thick mud, his new outfit ruined beyond recognition and repair. It looked as if he had been wrestling on the wet ground. But Charlie remained clean, relishing his directorial role which involved getting Rocco to do everything for him. Once he had been instructed on the workings of the computer-guided drilling equipment, and after the rental guy had sent the machine down almost as far as they needed to go, Charlie had sent all other workers home. Only his trusted colleague would be there to witness his triumph.
Charlie sat at a makeshift table watching the monitor. The scoping camera was sent down into the waterlogged hole after every few feet of progress. He wasn’t confident of being able to distinguish anything in the murky darkness, where visibility was no more than a couple of inches even with the powerful light attached to the camera. But when the lens bumped into the copper alloy side of a missile-shaped structure, he knew he had found it. Even with the blurry picture on the monitor he could tell that the capsule had been damaged by the massive drill bit. If water penetrated the seal, the contents could be ruined and Dalí’s private message to the future could be lost.
He looked at the book the old man had given him about the capsule. There was a ring at the top of the casing, which was how it was lowered into the ground, but they had reached it at forty-five degrees, and had hit the capsule halfway up its side.
‘Hey, Rocco, we got it. But we can’t get it.’
Rocco scrambled over to Charlie’s table, chunks of dirt falling off him as he leaned over.
‘Is that it?’ asked Rocco.
‘It has to be,’ replied Charlie. ‘But we have to drill again. There’s no way to retrieve it from here. We went too deep by a couple of feet. There’s a ring on the top of it. If we can drill directly there and get a cable hooked to it, we can drag it out of there with the winch.’
The Dali Diaries (The Ballashiels Mysteries Book 2) Page 21