A vehicle came into view, wobbling in the distant heat haze. An army patrol. He had seen several of these. The perimeter had been thick with them, necessitating a frustrating wait in the undergrowth before making his dash for the short tunnel below the fence. Someone on Mitford’s payroll had dug the shallow tunnel at the only blind spot in the network of closed circuit television cameras, and Grant was thankful that no one appeared to have followed him into the heavily guarded area.
He eased himself back into the drainage culvert beneath the road. Down here he was invisible. The culvert was part of a system of ditches that ran like a dry moat around the raised fortress of the launch pad, and was designed to evacuate surplus water used in cooling the rocket exhaust during take-off. The water was supplied by a tower as high as the rocket itself. Grant peeked outside and looked up at it. The tower offered an unobstructed view of the rocket and point-blank range, but while the access route to the top was via an internal staircase, the chances of making it to the tower and forcing open the staircase door unseen were zero. A second army patrol vehicle was now approaching.
The level of security seemed far higher than Mitford had told him to expect. Grant retreated again. His mind clouded. A sense of impossibility overwhelmed him. Huxtable’s failure to control the Ballashiels clan surely meant that those soldiers were now looking for him. Did he really have the courage to go out in a blaze of glory? Of course not; it wasn’t in his nature. Never mind the theoretical knowledge that it didn’t matter who he killed or whether his own life were terminated so long as Keo was destroyed, the cold realisation that he was now running low on options and might have to take such a route was terrifying. It wasn’t that he wanted to abandon the operation – he still believed in its ultimate purpose – but achieving it in a messy and gory manner wasn’t his style.
He closed his eyes and considered the problem. A single-handed attack against dozens of highly trained soldiers would be foolhardy. It would be suicidal. The world deserved better. He had to sabotage the Ariane from a position of safety, but he had limited range with his handheld weapons, and the further back he positioned himself the more likely it was that he would miss. One shot and he would be discovered. There would be no second chance. If he couldn’t take his shot from close-range, was there a way to achieve his goal from a safe distance? He considered the ongoing process of removing fuel from the rocket, which he believed to be taking place at that moment. There were no tankers in the vicinity, so the fuel must be being piped directly from the rocket to a storage facility nearby. If he could follow the pipeline, he would arrive at the end of something akin to a long fuse. With the focus of security around the Ariane itself, the fuel depot might be a soft target. A spark in the holding tank could ignite fuel all the way along the pipe and into the heart of the rocket. The Keo satellite wouldn’t stand a chance atop such a bomb.
For a moment, he was convinced he had the answer, but then doubts took over. The designers of the supply pipe might have installed automatic safety valves that would shut off the supply to the launch pad in the event of a fire at the holding tank. And even without such valves in place, would the fuel successfully ignite along such an extended distance, or just burn at one end until it ran dry?
A suicidal charge towards the Ariane seemed the only option after all.
He peeked out from his hiding place once again and discovered that his face was inches from the barrel of a weapon belonging to the French army. Strong hands dragged him from his lair so rapidly that he didn’t even have the opportunity to appreciate the scale of his failure.
***
‘Why are they keeping us waiting?’
Ruby had broken the uncomfortable silence and everyone turned to her as if their frustrations could be laid at her feet. After the manic rush to bind and gag Huxtable securely in Ratty’s hotel room before piling into a taxi to the spaceport where they reported their concerns to the receptionist at the visitor’s centre, the lack of apparent action was deeply concerning. The young lady at the desk had made a couple of brief phone calls and invited the stressed and sweating group to sit calmly and fill out their guest passes, but several minutes later their state of agitation had worsened rather than improved.
‘They didn’t understand your French, girl,’ snapped Lady Ballashiels, forgetting the entente cordiale that she had previously shared with her companion. ‘Where did you pick up such an appalling accent?’
‘France.’
‘It’s a big spaceport,’ said Rocco, defusing the tension. ‘More than eight hundred square kilometres. That’s as big as Singapore. We’ve asked them to look for one man. We don’t even know who it is or what he looks like. I’ll go over to the security building to ask what’s happening. You wait here.’
‘Come on, Rocco, old boffin, why don’t you take us with you?’ asked Ratty. ‘Flash your wotsit at them and get us all in.’
Rocco stood up. ‘Follow me.’
He led the group out through the main doors and across the roasting concrete car park to a smaller building. He flashed his badge at the gendarme guarding the entrance, and the door was opened for them.
‘Hey guys, how’s it going?’ asked Charlie from the steel bench to which he was cuffed just inside the door. ‘I was trying to explain to these gooks that I’m on their side, but they’ve all run off. Besides, they don’t seem to speak any language known to man.’
‘Your American English is not a language,’ said Lady Ballashiels. ‘It is an abomination.’
‘Where did the police go?’ asked Ruby, ignoring the old woman’s belligerence.
‘No idea,’ said Charlie.
‘The room through there is where the security systems are monitored,’ said Rocco, pointing at a door that was marked ‘Private’. ‘Let’s go in and take a look at what’s happening.’
‘Are we allowed in there?’ asked Ruby.
‘You’re not. I am. So act like you’re on a visitor tour. And behave yourselves.’
‘What about me?’ asked Charlie.
‘I suggest you stay put,’ said Ratty, as Rocco opened a door through to the vast control room, where ten banks of monitors filled the wall, watched by a team of nine security experts. The system was connected to cameras around the space centre, but the staff were paying particular attention to a small area displayed on a cluster of monitors.
‘This is the hub of the spaceport’s security system,’ announced Rocco, slipping into the character of a tour guide. ‘Six hundred and seventy cameras all link to these ten banks of screens. You can see the launch control room, the visitor centre, the pads, the fuel production facilities, the rocket assembly building – all from this room. This spaceport is one of the most closely monitored patches of ground on the planet.’
‘So how come they didn’t spot Mitford on the rocket?’ asked Ruby.
‘Shush,’ Rocco replied. ‘Look,’ he whispered. ‘Nine staff. Ten banks of screens. One empty chair. Get it?’
‘Gone to spend a Euro, has he?’ asked Ratty.
‘It was an inside job,’ Rocco continued, keeping his group to the back of the room, behind the rope that cordoned off the visitor’s viewing area and ensuring that the security employees were out of earshot. ‘Either he turned off the cameras that could have shown Mitford on the launch pad, or he played a recording of a previous launch. Either way, he’s taken his money and fled. Mitford clearly has no further influence here.’
‘What are they all looking at?’ asked Lady Ballashiels.
One of the banks of screens displayed images of a man being dragged by soldiers across the ground, close to the launch pad. The incident was shown from several angles. A van pulled up and a dozen gendarmes jumped out. One of the screens showed soldiers plucking weapons from a drainage culvert. Ratty hopped over the cordon and strolled up close to one of the displays. Security staff yelled at him to retreat to the permitted visitors’ zone.
‘How do you do?’ Ratty asked, offering his hand. ‘Lord Ballashiels. Eighth Earl and
all that how’s your father. What are we all watching on the goggle box today? Blockbusters? Countdown?’
Urgent conversations spun around him in French too rapid for him to comprehend. He allowed the white noise to wash over him and peered even more closely at the screen.
‘Grant!’ he shouted. ‘It’s that rotter Grant. And he’s still wearing one of his ghastly suits.’
‘The butler?’ asked Lady Ballashiels.
‘The very same,’ her son replied, walking back to the others, to the obvious relief of the monitoring team. ‘But it appears that they’ve caught the cad.’
‘So this time it really is over,’ said Lady Ballashiels, her throat tight with emotion.
‘A less demanding process of resolution than we had perhaps anticipated,’ said the Patient.
‘Now we just have to get Charlie freed,’ said Ruby.
‘Do we?’ asked Ratty. ‘I thought he seemed rather content in his situation.’
‘Ratty, don’t be mean,’ whispered Ruby.
‘Girl, don’t keeping using that distasteful word,’ growled Lady Ballashiels.
‘And don’t keep calling me “girl”!’ Ruby retorted.
On some of the screens, Grant could be seen being loaded into the police van. The incident had drawn the attention of the entire security team in the monitoring room, but the Patient was observing a different display. It showed a wide view of the launch control centre: rows of desks and computers, and a huge projector screen at the front. The launch centre was deserted save for a single person, moving quickly amongst the desks as if unfamiliar with the environment, searching for something.
‘What is it, Patient chappy?’ asked Ratty. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘An appropriate assumption, I fear. What do you see in that display over there?’
Ratty followed the direction of his finger. Rocco, Ruby and Lady Ballashiels followed likewise, drawn by a sense of dread and disbelief to the image on the wall.
***
Range Safety Officer: the tidy plaque on the desk belied the true power of the individual tasked with sitting there during the dramatic first minutes of every launch. Alois Mitford ran his fingers over the textured letters of the sign. He sat down and sensed the comfort offered by the Vitra chair. He breathed the cool air blown down from the ventilation system above. These would be among the final sensations he experienced in his long life. A modest prelude to a blissful oblivion. It was all he wanted. It was time to destroy Keo.
Time was short. The emptying of the liquid oxygen tank would soon be completed; the smaller liquid hydrogen tank had already been drained. After that the technicians would disconnect the Ariane from its launch pad umbilicals and commence its journey back to the assembly building. Once disconnected, the computers at launch control would have no influence on the Ariane. The ability to activate the on-board detonation sequence would then be lost.
A wave of loneliness swept across Mitford. He felt detached from humanity. At peace and yet unsettled. Oblivion would not equal death, he reminded himself. He was not going to suffer. He would not die. He hoped his essence would drift to the outer reaches of the cosmos, to a hidden dimension where unborn souls waited for the spark of life to pull them from their eternal slumber. It would be beautiful. Painless.
So why did a knot of fear twist within his stomach? Mitford wondered if he was starting to doubt his beliefs. He looked at the detonation button. It was covered by a plastic safety shield, and required a key to unlock it before it could be pressed. His contact in the video control room had served him well. He took the key from his pocket and inserted it.
His pulse quickened. He withdrew his hand from the key. What if the refuge of the infinite void wasn’t there? What if he was immediately born again, to suffer another life of shame and guilt? He closed his eyes and breathed slowly, removing the negativity that powered his panic attack. The world, he reminded himself, deserved what he was about to do. It would be the single greatest thing an individual had ever done. He possessed the omnipotence of a deity. The button to reset the universe was at his fingertips. He was going to heal the planet.
He turned the key and activated the power supply to the switch. He placed his finger on the detonation button and felt its warm, indifferent plastic against his skin. This was the culmination of a life dedicated to making things right. This was the moment he would erase Keo, World War II, and himself, from history.
The lights above him flickered for a millisecond. It distracted him and he looked around. No one else was present. He had secured the door. A new sound was in the air, however. A soft purr from a deep throat beneath his feet. The back-up generators. Someone had cut the power supply to the room and the emergency diesel motors in the basement had cut in smoothly, as they were designed to do. It meant that he had been spotted, but that fact did not concern him as greatly as the hammering sound upon the door.
His anxiety returned. He moved his hand towards the button once more and was shocked to notice the severity of the shakes to which he had succumbed. He wiped a tide of sweat from his forehead and tried to concentrate.
‘I say, Mitford, old foundling, I think we’d all prefer it if you sort of bashed off and went to live on an island somewhere. What do you say?’
Mitford looked up behind him and saw the rodent-like features of Lady Ballashiels’ only son staring down from the visitors’ gallery, separated by a panel of glass. He had been speaking via the intercom.
‘Go, Justin. It’s over for you.’
‘I must say, we all thought it was curtains for you already. Had us rather fooled for a while, don’t you know? Sorry about that confounded banging, old chap. That will be the gendarme fellows trying to reach you.’
‘Impossible,’ snapped Mitford. ‘They are all at the launch site, wasting their time rounding up Grant. They can’t reach me in time.’
Ratty knew he was right. Somehow the threat of an elderly woman, a scientist, a philosopher and an archaeologist trying to break down a door didn’t seem so intimidating.
‘You obviously had an inkling that Rocco had switched the order of the flights,’ said Ratty.
‘I am not without influence myself, you seem to be forgetting. I knew of the situation. It seemed the perfect opportunity to put you off the scent by making you think I was dead.’
‘What was it? Shop mannequin? Guy Fawkes dummy? Inflatable night-time companion?’
‘A Dalí original, if you must know. One of the life-size golden figures that he created for the inner courtyard of his museum.’
Mitford moved his hand once again towards the button. The worsening tremors betrayed an inner conflict that was as yet unresolved. His head filled with memories of Dalí the man, the friend, the confidante. Pressing the button would not erase Dalí from history, since he had already been a successful and famous artist before 1937, but his works after that point would surely be affected: the war had been a powerful influence on his creative process. Perhaps the museum of his works would never be built? Perhaps his fame would diminish in later life instead of growing to the point of him becoming a legend? And that was just one man’s life that he was about to change. That change in direction after 1937 would be repeated across millions of lives, each with their own stories that would play out differently without the interference of Keo.
‘You don’t have to do this, old tyrant,’ Ratty continued. ‘No one is forcing you to change the world. Bad things do sometimes lead to good things, you know. It happens. What if that meteor hadn’t landed on that dinosaur’s bonce? Cleared the way for our little monkey ancestor fellows, didn’t it? As that chap who was in somewhat dire straits used to warble, there will be sunshine after rain, there will be laughter after pain and all that drivel. Seems to be the way of the world. Good and bad, hot and cold, wet and dry, debt and credit, anger and forgiveness. These things dance around each other, taking turns, keeping the planet spinning, keeping everything pirouetting like they’re doing some sort of bloody pas de
deux. Excuse my French.’
The shaking hand still hovered near the button, and the door sounded ready to split open under the beating to which it was being subjected.
‘You are a child, Justin. You were not there. None of this sits on your shoulders.’
‘And none of this is on yours either, old fruitloop. Let it go. You’re not your father. You’re not responsible. But if you press that button you’ll become as big a monster as your pops. You’ll wipe out as many people as he did. And you know what? You know why you really shouldn’t press that silly button? It’s because you simply don’t have the right. No one has the right to change the planet like that. I don’t know why we’re here, and I know it’s frustrating that we can’t mould the world to suit us, but I know we can all make a difference in a small way. And that’s what we have the right to do, to improve our little corner of the world. To try to go through life and leave this planet just a little better than it was when we first crawled onto it. That’s a goal that will never require the deaths of millions. It shouldn’t hurt anyone. But give it time, and the cumulative effect will be the same as the one you’re trying to achieve. Take it slowly. Let’s all make a small contribution. Let’s look forward, not backwards, and mould the future that we want without changing the past. I forgive what you did to me. I forgive what you did to Mother. Resentment won’t make it better. I accept my past and that means I can make the best of my future.’
There were tears on Mitford’s cheeks. He wiped them with his unstable hands and snivelled. He felt himself shrinking, a pathetic, dried-up shadow of the man he had once been. Ratty’s words had connected with him. They had initiated the emotional response that it was clearly their intention to trigger. Mitford was spiritually broken, but he knew what he had to do.
The Dali Diaries (The Ballashiels Mysteries Book 2) Page 29