The Boy Who Liked Monsters (Commander Shaw Book 19)

by Philip McCutchan

  Anyway, it was a car. Perhaps it was too much to hope that the keys had been left in the ignition, but we couldn’t pass up the chance.

  I said, “We go for it, fast. All right, James?”

  He said he was. I bent and picked him up. Over the last days he’d lost a lot of weight; he was as light as a feather. He clung to my neck, almost strangling me, as we began to run for the car. We had covered just a few yards when the beam of a torch came on from behind us, wavered a little, then steadied. A fraction of a second later there was a stutter of automatic fire and bullets zipped across the cemetery, inches above our heads.

  I heard Perro’s voice: “You are not so clever as you think you are, Commander Shaw.”

  Then I saw that not all the bullets, either from poor aim or with intent, had gone overhead. Felicity had bought it; she was down on the grass, and lying very still.

  *

  We were taken to the central control room, where again there was the subdued hum of electrics and of air conditioning. We went down via the hall and the stone steps to the pit below the gravel, and once again through the sealed compartment where the body of the English nanny still lay in its forlorn attitude. Seeing her, James gave a heart-rending cry and then was silent, white-faced and trembling. There was, I thought, no bastard as big as Perro. Felicity was carried with us; she was alive but unconscious. She’d taken a graze on her head, along the side. For her sake I wished the bullet had gone in clean, giving her a clean death. God alone could tell what was going to happen to us, probably quite soon now.

  I asked Perro about the coffins. Yes, he said, they were those of the diplomats.

  “Why put them there?”

  He laughed. “There was much, what you would call, hue and cry. It is not always easy to dispose of bodies, Commander Shaw. When there is a massive search, you understand.”

  I suggested sewers, rivers, blocks of concrete built into motorways: I was trying to get him to tell me the reason why, as it seemed, he wished to preserve the bodies. But he just laughed again and said bodies could turn up at unexpected times and he hadn’t wanted that to happen. And he added, with a strong degree of logic, that the last place anyone would look for bodies would be in a cemetery. Anyway, beneath it. “Especially a very old cemetery, with no earth disturbed.”

  I asked him the question direct. “Why did you want to keep them, Perro?”

  Once again he laughed. “A hold on Louis Leclerc,” he said. “Also, something else.”

  *

  Felicity came round; she looked sick and white. She had a foul headache, she said weakly. There had been a good deal of bleeding and her T-shirt was soaked down one side; her hair was a congealed mess, still sticky. But basically she was all right. Perro seemed anxious to preserve her and I could guess why: simply because he was the most sadistic man I’d ever come across. He sent a man to fetch brandy and it seemed to buck her up. After the brandy, a cup of tea and a packet of aspirins. He may have regretted his action later on.

  We were sat, Felicity, Marcus, James and me, in a row of chairs under guard and facing a big television screen, which was blank at first. Beyond the screen, in a corner of the control room, I saw a television camera with a mass of plastic-covered leads connected to some sort of junction box in the ceiling. There was a clock on the wall to our right: the time was 1935 hours at our time of entry. The minutes dragged past: we were obviously going to be there until the midnight climax. We sat mostly in silence now and James became very fidgety, his spirits at a low ebb, and began whining a little.

  “Stop him,” Perro said.

  Felicity put an arm around the boy’s shoulders and whispered in his ear, but this did no good. Perro moved across towards us, his face angry. He lifted a hand to smack the boy’s face, but I grabbed his arm. I said, “That won’t do any good. Use your head, Perro. He’ll be worse. Leave him to me.”

  Perro looked murderous for a moment, then relaxed and nodded. He didn’t want to make James even more irritating. He said shortly, “Very well. It is up to you. You will keep him quiet.”

  I spoke to James. “What about telling me a story?” I knew he liked telling stories; he’d made up stories while we’d been in the rubber dinghy, before being picked up by the Zonguldak. He had a vivid imagination. Currently, however, he was lackadaisical about stories. He asked, “What about?” in a rather dreary voice.

  “Monsters,” I said, unable to think up anything else.

  “Which one?”

  I said, “Well, let’s say the Loch Ness Monster, shall we?”

  He nodded. “All right,” he said. He took time to get under way and I had to prompt him. I said it must be a lonely life for the poor old monster, all by herself in Loch Ness.

  “It’s a him,” he said rather crossly. I apologised. However, it got him started. The Loch Ness Monster, he said, wasn’t lonely at all. He had a friend called Haggis MacTavish, who lived in the south, in England, but preferred Scotland and visited there frequently, taking bottles of whisky to drop in the loch for consumption by his friend. The whisky, he said, was the monster’s medicine; the monster had horny things on his back that broke open the bottles as they were dropped by Haggis MacTavish. I suspected the grandfather of being the originator of this story. Haggis MacTavish, James said, was real. He was a fat little man with pop eyes and a tartan body and a Highlander’s bonnet on his head. Whilst in flight to the north he hummed a tune.

  I asked which one.

  “I don’t know the words, Mr Shaw.”

  “Can you hum it?”

  Yes, he could and did. Quite tunefully; I recognised I Belong To Glasgow. Ross Mackenzie again, a kindly man taking time off from affairs of state to humour a loved grandson. But within a few hours’ time there wasn’t going to be any humouring allowed to Mackenzie. Or James Jervolino.

  In the meantime Perro was looking impatient. “Such nonsense,” he said, moving across. “So wrong to fill the child’s mind with nonsense about monsters that do not exist.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said. “You exist, don’t you, Perro?”

  I had gone too far. Or almost. Perro’s face said he wanted to kill me right then and there, but he held back because he wasn’t finished with me yet.

  Soon after this Perro gave an order to an overalled technician and the television screen lit up and came alive.

  *

  It was an extraordinary scene of elation before the event, a case as I was seeing it of counting chickens that were never going to hatch. The TV cameras switched from Washington and the professional commentator’s prognostications to many parts of the United States – the Texas oilfields and the ports such as Galveston on the Gulf of Mexico where crowds had gathered in a spirit of hope and joy, from there to the Naval Operating Base at Norfolk, Virginia where a vast aircraft-carrier was alongside, her warplanes ranged on the flight deck and looking anything but peaceful; but the aircraft-carriers were not of much account these days – it was the missiles that the talks were chiefly about, the land-based missiles and the deadly shards of destruction released by the NATO and Soviet nuclear-powered submarines to break through the surface of the waters, targeted on London, Paris, Bonn, Moscow, New York, Washington and many other places. I saw no submarines on the TV screen: it might not have been tactful to show them just then. If the talks succeeded, then those submarines would no doubt be demilitarised and sent to the breakers’ yards.

  A lot more of America came up. The wheatlands of the north and west, mile after mile after mile of golden corn; the cow country, the enormous ranches, the hands riding the range like the cowboy films; the deserts of Arizona; the great urban districts, the manufacturing centres, Detroit, Chicago; the cotton and tobacco belts of the old south with its romance of civil war. But it was peace now, not war. The TV cameras showed the optimism and reported the views of the American people, avid for a nice long period of glasnost and disarmament.

  I saw New York filled with hopeful faces and the preparation for a ticker-
tape send-off for Comrade Kulachev, a drive of triumph to come for Ross Mackenzie. Ditto in Washington: views of the White House with the drum majorettes already prancing behind their leader, the music loud and proud and extravagant, Souza predominating.

  I saw Ross Mackenzie: so did James. I watched the boy’s face. He was going up and down in his seat and again he had begun to cry, seeing his grandfather, so close as it seemed, yet a world away. Ross Mackenzie seemed to have shrunk since I’d last seen him on television or in the newspapers. The face was strained, haunted. The newsmen tried to raise a comment from him, but he wasn’t having that.

  “At this stage,” he said, “I have nothing to say. I’m sorry, folks.”

  They persisted. “Mr Secretary – ”

  I said, no comment.” The voice was suddenly almost savage; Mackenzie was reaching the end of his tether. I wondered what the celebrating crowds would make of that. Would they now suspect a snag at the last ditch? The cameras showed Mackenzie and his delegation turning away to enter the White House, then showed Kulachev and his entourage, complete with iron-faced security men, also entering for the final meeting, the time when the signatures would be appended and the deal concluded.

  As the VIPs disappeared, the cameras shifted to show yet more of the USA. Men and women were picked out to give their views and express their hopes. They were all enthusiastic: Mackenzie and Kulachev were the world’s salvation. Then, after some ten minutes of this, it was back to Washington and the conference chamber. Mackenzie and Kulachev were sitting alongside each other, with secretaries hovering and the thick pile of documents and duplicates ready on the table. The cameras caught Mackenzie: he was staring straight at us, almost as though he could see his grandson, almost as though he wished to make some sort of explanation, an apology … an appeal for forgiveness?

  That was how it struck me, anyway. Mackenzie was going to sign.

  I looked at Perro. His face was formidable, angry; he’d seen the same, I believe, as I had. Mackenzie’s face was a study now, a study in misery. He was rising as if to say something, some brief speech before the signing. I heard him say, “It gives me great pleasure … ” and then Perro had moved fast across the compartment and was taking up an instrument, a telephone, and was speaking into it, urgently. Mackenzie was rambling on, and at this stage rambling was the word, about the enormous advantages that were going to accrue to the world, and so on and so forth; it was as though he was reluctant to get to the point of putting his signature to the treaty, and I could understand why. Then the cameras showed a secretary approaching him, and there was a conversation that the cameras didn’t pick up. Mackenzie began to shake; he passed a hand over his eyes and then, with the secretary, left the chamber after mumbling something about an important telephone call. A moment later, as a buzz of conversation came from the various delegations, the cameras switched again, back to the brashness of the drum majorettes and their short skirts.

  Perro was speaking now, on the phone.

  “Your last chance,” I heard him say. “The boy will speak to you now.” He put down the handset and came across to us. He laid hold of James and took him across to the telephone. He said, “Speak to your grandfather.”

  “Wh-what shall I say?” James was almost whispering, his face like a ghost.

  “It does not matter what you say. Just speak.”

  I knew, of course, what Perro was after: any contact now with the grandson would have a terrible effect on Ross Mackenzie. Truly it didn’t matter what the boy said, but in any case he would speak the truth. He did, in a voice of utter despair that could scarcely be heard because of his tears. He said he was with horrible men, all except two whom he didn’t name. He was very frightened and he wanted to come home but he didn’t think he would be allowed to. His nanny had been killed; he’d seen her body. He’d seen other dead men, in coffins. He cried himself to a full stop, and then Perro told me to take up the phone. I was to tell Mackenzie that the boy had spoken the truth. I was to give my identity; I was well known to the White House. What I said would carry weight. If I said anything out of turn, then I knew who would suffer for it.

  I knew well enough. I looked at the boy, saw the way he looked back at me. Full trust: somehow I would make things all right. Trust is for the young: you lose a lot of it in adulthood. None but the young would have put so much faith in me after the times I’d been bested by Perro. I spoke on that telephone. I said, “Hello, Mr Mackenzie.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The name’s Shaw. Commander Shaw – 6D2 London.” There was a pause, then Mackenzie said, “Say, where are you, Commander? I have to know the truth.”

  I looked at Perro; he was listening on an extension. If I spoke the word Montignac … but for the boy’s sake I knew I couldn’t. So I said, “I’m with your grandson, Mr Mackenzie. I have to tell you that what he said to you was the truth. We’re all in danger – ”

  “Unless I do what that bastard wants.”

  “Those are the facts,” I said. “What you decide to do with them, that has to be up to you, of course. I’m desperately sorry.”

  There was a pause, then Mackenzie said, “Perro must surely know the lines are tapped, so surely it follows that his god-damn schemes – ”

  That was all. Perro cut the connexion. He was smiling; he’d already told me, he said, some while before, that taps didn’t worry him; somewhat in line with Felicity’s postulation to me, it would all be laid at Kulachev’s door by the men in the Kremlin. Perro gestured at two of his thugs, who left the control room. He went across to the TV camera that I’d seen earlier, and fiddled about, making some switches. Then once again he flicked on the screen, which came up to show Ross Mackenzie re-entering the conference chamber and looking really sick. I saw him walk to his place and stand there, looking down at the documents, not facing the camera’s eye, not facing anyone. The atmosphere was electric, on a knife-edge of curiosity and suspense. Kulachev’s face was a blank, a closed-up look: he was suspecting, if he didn’t know, what his enemies might be up to. Ross Mackenzie seemed unable to speak, perhaps even now trying to make up his mind. He must have known, as I did, that whatever his decision the boy and all of us would die in any case. But that was one thing: to sign his grandson’s death warrant himself was quite another, and in any case he might have hopes that a successful Perro would after all spare the little boy. I knew what I would have done in his place; treaties could always be resurrected. There was always another day. But as I’d reflected once before, the boy could die once only.

  Again I looked at Perro, at the smug look on his face as he stood in front of his own TV camera, now alive. What did he intend to do with that, for God’s sake? Show Mackenzie a shot of the boy? Ross Mackenzie began at last to speak.

  He said in a heavy voice, “I’m sorry to say there’s been a – a fresh development. In the interest of the security of the United States I have to ask leave for an adjournment for further talks … ”

  Perro gave a sound of joy, of success. He turned towards his TV camera and reached out, perhaps to switch it off as being no longer required. His back was towards me: in that instant all the past days came back to me full force, all the fear he’d instilled into James Jervolino, and without really thinking I went for him, a hard rugby tackle that got him right where it was intended, just below the knees. He went down like a felled ox and his head took the floor hard. Blood reddened the concrete; and as his technicians came for me I got hold of his automatic and squeezed the trigger, weaving the snout across the men as they closed in. Three of them went down; Marcus Bright, who had picked up one of the chairs, brought it down with a smashing blow on the fourth man. As the two men Perro had sent out a little earlier ran back in, I got them with another burst of the automatic. Then there was a yell from Felicity and I turned in time to see Perro getting to his feet, streaming blood, and coming for me in a staggering rush.

  I side-stepped him and as he blundered past I got a hold on his shoulders. I slewed the heavy bo
dy round, shifted my grip to his jacket collar and the seat of his pants, and threw him bodily towards the TV camera, which he hadn’t managed to switch off. He crashed into it, smashing it flat, and there was a brilliant bluish-white flash and a stench of burning flesh. Fire sparked along Perro’s body, burning his clothes, burning face and hands, and fire spread upwards from somewhere behind. Smoke began to billow out as Perro burned but he didn’t feel any of it because he was dead.

  I went to the phone. I got the White House and demanded Ross Mackenzie pronto. On the screen I saw him being approached again, saw him leave the chamber. When I heard him I said it was all okay now. James was safe, and everything could go ahead. Glasnost was on, and drum majorettes could do their stuff. And God Bless America.

  *

  We got out fast. As we left the control room we saw an astonishing sight: the five coffins, Villiers-Smith still visible through his broken lid. They were upright, tilted back against the wall of the passage beneath the cemetery. I had no idea what they were doing there and I didn’t wait to find out: Perro could have other thugs lurking. But I had an idea that maybe Perro could have meant to use them as a last resort if Mackenzie hadn’t caved in initially. He could have lined them up, and given their names, with the boy standing in front of them, all of this picked up by his TV camera’s eye, a scene of horror to make jelly of any grandfather. We cleared away from the passage, through the chamber where the dead woman still lay, up into the hall, and out.

  The car we’d seen earlier was still there. But it was locked and there was no key in the ignition.

  I said, “We’ll have to run. Fast. We’re somewhat exposed.”

  I picked James up and we beat it for the road where we could hope to find cover in the trees. I expected a stream of gunfire at any moment. But it didn’t come. What did come was an immense explosion behind us, and a high, hot wind that blew us flat to the ground just before we reached the gate to the road. Perro’s promised explosion, coming just a little late. Either something had triggered itself automatically or there had been someone left behind who preferred to obey orders and face his own personal fry-up rather than face French justice. Whatever the facts, the blow-up was total. When we got to our feet after being bombarded by flying fragments, there was nothing left of the house but smoking, flaming rubble. The explosion seemed to have travelled along the underground passages and chambers to the cemetery, and had blown it from below. The sad cypresses, those that still stood, wept over shattered, opened graves, and I saw ancient coffins spilling their bony contents amid heaps of earth and debris.