Crisis

by Ken McClure

  The boat traced a large circle out of Inverladdie territory and round to the back of the power station where it was brought in to a small bay. The man at the tiller left it to the last moment to cut the engine, with the result that the boat coasted on to the shingle by virtue of its own momentum and slid to a halt on the shore.

  ‘Get out!’ rasped the first man out to Bannerman.

  Bannerman complied, introducing an air of resigned lethargy to his movements in an attempt to salvage his dignity.

  ‘Move!’ another man ordered, punctuating his request with the muzzle of his weapon in Bannerman’s back.

  Bannerman was marched up the beach and through the gates of the station. He was directed into a long, low building and put in a room devoid of furnishings, save for a table and two chairs. One of the armed men remained in the room with him until a new face appeared. The newcomer was in his thirties, clean shaven and dressed in a dark suit with what looked to be a college tie. Judging from the stiffening of his guard when the man entered, Bannerman guessed that the new man might be in charge of security.

  The man seated himself opposite Bannerman at the table and said, ‘Name?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’ replied Bannerman.

  The man leaned across the table and said, ‘Me.’

  ‘And who are you?’ said Bannerman, evenly.

  The man stared at Bannerman for a moment then brought out an ID wallet and put it down on the table in front of him.

  Bannerman looked down at it and read that the bearer was ‘C. J. Mitchell, Head of Security.’

  ‘I’m Bannerman.’

  ‘First name?’

  ‘Ian.’

  ‘Well, Ian Bannerman,’ said Mitchell sitting back in his chair. ‘You are in trouble.’

  ‘One of us is,’ replied Bannerman.

  Mitchell sized up Bannerman in silence for a few moments before saying, ‘What were you doing at the fence?’

  ‘I was on Inverladdie Farm property. I had permission to be there and what I was doing is none of your business.’

  ‘Is that where you left the Citroen?’ asked Mitchell.

  ‘What Citroen?’ asked Bannerman.

  The 2CV with “Save the Whales” in the back window and “Nuclear Power No Thanks” along the back bumper. That’s what all you buggers drive isn’t it?’

  ‘Who exactly are “all us buggers”?’ asked Bannerman.

  ‘The club,’ Mitchell sneered. “The lentil eaters, the organic turnip heads, the gay, vegan, lesbian, whale saving, league against nuclear power brigade.’

  ‘Oh I see, you thought I was trying to blow up the station,’ said Bannerman, making the notion sound so ridiculous that Mitchell’s mouth quivered in anger. ‘I’ll ask you again, what were you doing by the fence?’

  ‘And I’ll tell you again, it’s none of your business,’ said Bannerman meeting the security man’s eyes with a level stare.

  The impasse was broken by one of the men from the boat coming in and placing Bannerman’s Geiger counter on the table. ‘He had this with him, sir,’ the man announced before leaving.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ purred the security man. ‘What do you know, the boys’ own radiation monitoring kit. Just what the hell did you hope to find?’

  ‘‘I didn’t hope to find anything,’ replied Bannerman. ‘I wanted to know if there had been any leakage of radioactive material to the west of the station.’

  The security man seemed intrigued. He leaned towards Bannerman and asked, ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s my business.’

  ‘Your business?’ said Mitchell, putting a different inflection on the word.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A journalist? Is that it? A crusading investigative journalist. Isn’t that what you scaremongering busy-bodies call yourselves? Is that it Bannerman?’

  ‘You really have a problem don’t you,’ said Bannerman, quietly. ‘Have you ever thought about a career more suited to your personality, say, lighthouse keeper in the Arctic Ocean?’

  Without warning, Mitchell swung his fist at Bannerman and caught him high on his left cheek bone. The force of the blow knocked him backwards and his chair toppled over to send him sprawling to the floor.

  Bannerman sat up slowly holding his hand to his face and breathing erratically, partly through surprise and partly through shock. Mitchell got up to stand over him. ‘Wait outside,’ he rasped to the guard by the door. The man, who Bannerman could see was uneasy about what he was witnessing, complied immediately.

  ‘What now?’ asked Bannerman. ‘Electrodes on my testicles?’

  ‘You lot make me sick,’ sneered Mitchell. ‘Get up.’

  Bannerman got to his feet. He had recovered from the blow and was holding his temper firmly in check. He said, ‘I’d like to see the station manager please.’

  ‘He’s a busy man,’ said Mitchell.

  ‘So am I,’ said Bannerman. He enunciated every syllable with arctic coldness. ‘I am Dr Ian Bannerman, consultant pathologist at St Luke’s Hospital London, currently investigating the deaths of three local men at the request of the Medical Research Council and Her Majesty’s Government.’

  Mitchell looked as if he was about to lay an egg. His eyes suggested his brain was asking his ears for a recap on what they’d just heard. ‘ID?’ he croaked.

  Bannerman showed him identification.

  Mitchell looked down at the table surface as if it were to blame for everything. ‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place?’

  ‘Because I didn’t choose to,’ snapped Bannerman. ‘I was on private property when your men abducted me and brought me here. I pointed this out to them at the time and to you when I got here but you took no notice. Now get me the station manager.’

  Mitchell left the room and Bannerman lit a cigarette. His fingers were trembling slightly.

  Some ten minutes passed before the door opened and Bannerman was politely invited to follow one of the security men. He had suddenly become ‘sir’. He was taken to the main building of the power station and then by elevator to the top floor where he was shown into the station manager’s office. Mitchell was with the manager and Bannerman could see that the man had been fully briefed about what had happened.

  ‘Leave us, Mitchell,’ said the manager curtly and Mitchell walked past Bannerman with a small, uneasy smile.

  ‘My dear Doctor I don’t quite know what to say,’ said the station manager, coming round from behind his desk to usher Bannerman to a chair. ‘I’m John Rossman. I can only offer my most profuse apologies and ask you to understand some of the pressures my people have to cope with. Nuclear power stations are natural targets for every inadequate misfit in society who’s looking for a cause to crucify himself for. Constant vigilance is a must.’

  ‘Beating up anyone who comes within yards of your perimeter fence is a bit more than being vigilant,’ said Bannerman.

  ‘Well, yes but …’

  ‘And being against nuclear power doesn’t automatically make you an “inadequate misfit”.’

  ‘Well, no but we get so much negative publicity that perhaps we’re all just a bit paranoid in the industry. We are constantly portrayed as harbingers of danger rather than suppliers of cheap, clean power,’ said Rossman.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Bannerman.

  ‘I understand you were monitoring the ground outside the west fence,’ said Rossman.

  ‘That’s right. I wanted to see if there had been a radiation leak in the recent past.’

  ‘But if there had been we would have …’

  ‘Covered it up like last time,’ interrupted Bannerman.

  Rossman looked at Bannerman in silence for a long moment before saying, ‘‘I don’t think I understand what …’

  ‘My information came from the Cabinet Office,’ said Bannerman.

  ‘‘I see,’ said the manager, obviously wondering how to deal with him. He got up from his desk and walked over to a large map of the station which was mounted on the back wall of his o
ffice. ‘If I might ask you to join me, Doctor?’

  Bannerman walked over to the map and Rossman pointed to an area on the east side of the station. He said, ‘We had a problem with a pipe carrying cooling water from the reactor suite. There was a crack in it and we suffered a slight loss of fluid before it was discovered.’

  ‘How slight?’

  ‘About a hundred gallons.’

  ‘How big an area was affected?’

  ‘We think not more than two hundred square metres,’ said the manager.

  ‘You think?’

  ‘You’ve seen the ground round here. It’s hard to say for sure.’

  ‘You seem pretty complacent about it,’ said Bannerman.

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Rossman. ‘We cordoned off an area twice that size and dug trenches along the perimeter. Contaminated earth was removed and constant monitoring of the area was maintained for several months after the incident. Apart from that Doctor, no one lives to the east of the station. There was never any danger to anyone.’

  ‘Then why cover it up?’ asked Bannerman.

  Rossman adopted an exasperated air and said, ‘It wasn’t a question of covering anything up. We just didn’t publicize the affair and for the reasons I spoke of earlier. We would have been pilloried by those anxious to destroy the nuclear industry.’

  ‘Have there been other incidents that you didn’t publicize?’ asked Bannerman.

  ‘No. None at all. This station is perfectly safe, I assure you.’

  ‘Until a hundred gallons of radioactive cooling water goes for a walk,’ said Bannerman.

  That is exactly the kind of scaremongering we can do without in this industry!’ said the manager, going slightly red in the face. ‘We provide a lot of jobs in the area. You should think twice before putting them in jeopardy with that kind of talk.’

  ‘What I said was the truth,’ said Bannerman. ‘Not scaremongering.’

  ‘It was a one-off incident,’ insisted the manager.

  ‘But it happened! You can’t dismiss it as if it never really had!’

  ‘‘I don’t think you fully understand the benefits that nuclear power can bring to our country Doctor,’ said Rossman.

  ‘Oh but I do,’ insisted Bannerman. ‘I understand the benefits perfectly. What really gets up my nose is your industry’s reluctance to face up to the problems. You pretend that there aren’t any. You maintain that accidents won’t happen when everyone else knows that they will. You keep generating waste that you can’t deal with because it’s going to be dangerous for thousands of years and the best you can do is bury it in holes in the ground and keep looking for more holes.’

  ‘It’s not like that at all,’ said Rossman.

  ‘I think it is,’ said Bannerman.

  ‘Then I think we must agree to differ,’ said Rossman.

  Bannerman looked at his watch and said, ‘Time I was going.’

  ‘I will have someone drive you home,’ said the manager.

  ‘No you won’t!’ exclaimed Bannerman. ‘It took me three hours to get to the perimeter fence from Inverladdie, I’m not doing that hike all over again. I want to get on with monitoring the ground I was working on when your men got “vigilant”.’

  ‘But I’ve told you we’ve had no problem on that side of the station,’ said the manager.

  That you know of,’ added Bannerman.

  The manager took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ll have Mitchell’s men take you back there.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I have also instructed Mitchell to make a personal apology to you before you leave.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Bannerman.

  Bannerman was led away from Rossman’s office by a security man who had been waiting outside the door. Half-way along the corridor he paused at a window to look down at the huge generating hall and the figures clad in white plastic suits tending to the machinery. The constant whine from the turbines seemed to pervade every part of the building, despite the extensive use of soundproof double glazing. There was a surgical cleanliness about the whole operation, no coal dust or oil or furnaces, just silent, invisible power sealed in concrete silos, its presence only advertised by the constant yellow and black radioactivity symbols.

  Mitchell stood up when Bannerman was shown into his room. He had recovered his aplomb and his eyes were filled once again with self confidence. ‘‘I’m sorry for our little misunderstanding, Doctor,’ he said, ‘but I’m sure you appreciate just how careful we have to be.’ He held out his hand and said, ‘Shall we let bygones by bygones?’

  The self-satisfied look on Mitchell’s face was too much for Bannerman. He swung his right fist in a short sharp hook to Mitchell’s jaw and the man went down like a sack of potatoes. ‘If we’re going to do that,’ he said, ‘then let’s start even.’

  Mitchell sat on the floor holding his jaw with an expression of dazed bewilderment on his face. The security man who had brought Bannerman back moved in to grip Bannerman’s arms but Mitchell held up a hand. ‘Let him go,’ he said. ‘Take him where he wants to go.’

  Once outside the fence, Bannerman cursed himself for his lack of self control. Of all the stupid things to do! You had to go and behave like a headstrong schoolboy! You had to throw away the moral high ground and hit him! You’re no better than he is! Why do you do these things Bannerman? Are you ever going to act your age? His self reproach was total; he couldn’t find one redeeming factor in his behaviour; he felt utterly disgusted with himself. He stubbed out his cigarette and got up from the boulder he had been sitting on. Perhaps if he threw himself into the job at hand he might block out some of the bad feelings.

  During the course of the next three hours Bannerman moved up and down the ground between Inverladdie and the power station, meticulously scanning a two-metre wide strip each time. He was aware that he was being watched from the power station but no attempt was made to interfere with what he was doing. By the time he decided to call it a day his fingers were numb with cold and rain water had sought out several weak points in his waterproof clothing. He packed the Geiger counter back into his rucksack and set out on the long trek back. He had found no evidence of radioactive contamination of the soil at all.

  Back at the hotel, Bannerman lowered himself gingerly into a hot bath and slipped slowly beneath the suds. He breathed a sigh of appreciation as the warm water covered him up to his chin and started to work on the aches and pains. The fact that he had achieved nothing positive for all his efforts did not help the recovery process, but the prospect of a hot meal and several whiskies to follow counteracted any notions of failure for the moment.

  As he nursed his second glass of malt whisky in front of the fire in the bar, Bannerman wondered whether or not it would be worthwhile to continue examining the ground between Inverladdie and the power station. He had carried out a pretty exhaustive scan of the border strip — about sixty metres wide, he reckoned, but there were still other possibilities to take account of. He had gone for the obvious scenario of a leak occurring in the station and contamination spreading outside the wire through the soil but there were other possibilities.

  Contamination could have occurred from the sea. The station would have discharge pipes which would empty into the sea. Officially the discharge would be monitored and kept within agreed and legally enforced limits of radioactivity but what if an accidental discharge of high level waste had gone into the sea? Conceivably the tide could have brought it back on to the shore along the Inverladdie coastal strip. Alternatively there could have been aerial contamination from a discharge of radioactive gas.

  Bannerman decided that it was worth him checking out the coastal strip of Inverladdie because a two-metre scan along three hundred metres or so of beach should reveal any tide borne contamination. Checking for contamination from the air, however, was a different matter. A gas cloud could have come down anywhere and he couldn’t possibly hope to monitor the whole farm on his own.

&nb
sp; His decision to examine the coastline at Inverladdie meant that he had sentenced himself to another hard day. He pondered on whether or not to have a day off before going back but decided that that would be giving in to his age. The landlord had agreed to dry off his wet clothing and boots, so he decided he would have one more whisky and then have an early night. As he went to the bar to get his drink the quarry worker he had come to know entered the bar and Bannerman bought him a drink.

  As they sat down together at the fire the quarry man, now introduced as Colin Turnbull, said, The word is that you think the nuclear station had something to do with the meningitis deaths.’

  ‘Silly gossip,’ replied Bannerman, but he was unpleasantly surprised at how fast it had travelled. ‘I met your boss last night,’ he said. ‘He seemed a nice enough chap.’

  ‘Mr van Gelder? He’s OK and the job pays well. The only drawback is that there are no prospects.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Bannerman.

  ‘Search me,’ replied Turnbull. “The company seems pretty enlightened in every other way, good pay, conditions, health care etc. but absolutely no prospects of promotion. Senior posts are strictly for the Dutch.’

  ‘Strange,’ said Bannerman.

  ‘I’m thinking of taking them to the Race Relations Board,’ smiled Turnbull.

  Bannerman laughed and said, ‘What sort of post were you hoping for?’

  ‘I’ve been doing an Open University degree in geology. I should get my BA this summer. I was hoping for a job I could use it in but it’s no go.’

  ‘A pity,’ said Bannerman. ‘Maybe they’ll change their minds if you keep on at them.’