Gibraltar Road

by Philip McCutchan

  A little self-importantly Mr Ackroyd spoke to the technician who was still studying the various dial readings. He said, “Well, there we are, lad. She’s working fine now, she is. Keep your eye on ’er, though.”

  “Okay, Mr Ackroyd.”

  The physicist took a last look round. “I’ll be back in the morning as usual,” he said, “and if you want me before, ring me.” There was a phone to the Dockyard Exchange in the power-house. “Ring me at once if she doesn’t seem to be going right, eh, lad? She’ll have to be stopped if she over-’eats again, and we may ’ave to strip ’er down.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good night, then lad.”

  Mr Ackroyd, enjoying as usual—even now—the sensation he always got when he was called ‘sir,’ picked up a towel and a bathing-costume, the sort that covered him completely, and walked out of the almost airless compartment which drummed with heat and AFPU ONE’s reverberating dum-da. The technician watched him go, a slight smile on his lips. He thought: Poor little beggar, he’s dead nuts about this machine, and he’s so full of brain he doesn’t know how to relax properly. . ..

  Mr Ackroyd, handing in the film badge which he had pinned to his shirt, and which when developed would show up any radiation, turned to the right out of the side-passage into Dockyard Tunnel proper, walked down towards the Sandy Bay end, came out along the narrow-gauge railway track under the stars, took in draughts of cool, fresh air gratefully. Making to his left, he called good-night to the dockyard policeman on the gates and went out into the roadway strictly according to his unchanging nightly routine. After a day’s work in the close confines and stuffiness of the tunnel power-house, Mr Ackroyd looked forward immensely to his nice swim in the dark from Sandy Bay. A swim, and then a noggin in the Bristol or the Yacht Club, where he enjoyed the sensation of being regarded as a big-shot even if the nobs didn’t exactly make him feel one of themselves.

  Walking down to the beach, Mr Ackroyd put his little bundle in the same spot as he always put it—in the lee of a nice big rock where any chance passer-by—not that there was likely to be many of these—couldn’t see his skinny frame entering the bathing-costume. He was about to start undressing when with terrifying suddenness a man appeared from the darkness behind the rock and pinioned his arms behind his back. Mr Ackroyd felt his heart thudding away. He was about to utter a frightened scream when a second man pressed a hand tightly over his mouth; while a third thrust a knife into his ribs just hard enough for the tip to penetrate the shirt and draw blood. Mr Ackroyd felt the warm trickle of his own gore down his skimpy chest and quivered for an instant.

  Then he fainted.

  The man with the knife withdrew his weapon, the hand came away from Mr Ackroyd’s mouth, and the little physicist was tightly gagged with a dirty strip of cloth. Then he was picked up and carried down towards the sea and pushed into a rowing-boat which had grounded on the sand. This boat took him and the three men out to a felucca which was lying off to seaward. All the men were transferred to the felucca, which, when the rowing-boat had been made fast astern, hoisted sail and made to the northward for the fishing quarter of La Linea, to the east of the town.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Shaw’s statement about the possibility of the Rock going up had, not surprisingly, shaken Staunton rigid. The Defence Security Officer stared at Shaw and demanded, “What in hell d’you mean by that?”

  Shaw tried to explain, to put across what he’d been told by Carberry; and all the time he was talking he was conscious of the pain in his guts like a small, red-hot pill. For Debonnair was coming out to Gibraltar; admitted, Carberry had warned him of AFPU ONE’s defective performance, but it had never been imagined that they might not be able to switch off, so of course he hadn’t thought anything of it when he’d got that cable from the girl. Though presumably the danger was not immediate, he wanted to get away and send that message which would—might—stop her . . . but he forced himself to forget his private worries.

  He said, “I’m told that a few days before he started up the fuel unit for this demonstration, Ackroyd ran it for test and found it wasn’t behaving quite as expected.”

  “I gather that’s right. Hardly surprising, surely—the thing’s only a prototype, isn’t it, really?”

  “Well, it’s not perfected yet, certainly. I suppose anything could have gone wrong, but what I gather from you has happened now—I mean this overheating business—is precisely what Ackroyd had in mind might happen after that last test. It was all in a report which he sent to the Admiralty. I dare say it would have been all right if the thing could be stopped—but you say it can’t.” Shaw hesitated, rubbed a hand across his long chin.

  Staunton lit a cigarette, offered Shaw one which the agent took. Shaw’s fingers were shaking a little as he lit up; he went on, “To put it in a nutshell, Major, if this fault isn’t corrected AFPU ONE will get like . . . like a hen that’s egg-bound.” He frowned. “I’m no expert, and that’s the best way I can put it.” He broke off, biting his lip, then leaned forward and went on grimly, “I’m not a physicist any more than you, and I’m only repeating what I’ve been told— which is this; when that fuel unit starts producing under excess heat there’ll be a build-up in the ejection duct.” His eyes were bright now, staring into Staunton’s face. “When that jam-up reaches, let’s call it, x proportions, and when the machine gets to y temperature—and obviously no one knows quite when that stage’ll be reached—the algalesium product will react on what I call the H-bomb automatic power unit inside AFPU ONE—and then it goes up. Unless it can be switched off meantime, of course.”

  There was a silence, and then Staunton said briefly, “My God.”

  He got up, walked about the office. Shaw watched him. There was a cold feeling running along Shaw’s spine; he’d had experience of explosives—ordinary explosives like T.N.T.—and he could visualize only too well what that explosion in a confined place almost in the dead centre of the Rock would do to the structure, to the very foundations upon which Gibraltar stood—to Gibraltar’s very stuff of existence itself. Split it asunder, send those millions of tons of rock and earth and stone and fortifications and big fortress-guns flinging down on that little, clustering, overcrowded town, on the inhabitants . . . and after that, if there was anyone left to know about it, the atomic mushroom-cloud and the fall-out, the radiation spreading over the Straits, over the gap where Gibraltar once had been. The end of the dockyard, of the fortress, of Project Sinker, of all that the fortress-rock—for so long the key defence outpost of the Commonwealth—had ever meant to England; the end of everything.

  From Staunton’s expression Shaw could see that the Defence Security Officer had that picture in his mind as well. Staunton asked, “Is there any estimate of—how long?”

  “I was told that if the fuel unit overheated it would probably be safe for about a week—not more—after starting to produce the AGL Six. Of course, then it was never dreamed that it wouldn’t be possible to switch the thing off, so the time-limit wasn’t really important—and anyhow no one really knows, probably not even Ackroyd.” Shaw rubbed the side of his nose with a brown forefinger and frowned. “Look, I’ve seen photos of Ackroyd and I’ve also heard quite a lot about him from my department. But I’d like to know how he struck you. Can you give me a word-picture of the man?”

  “Yes, I can.” Staunton went back to his desk, perched on a corner of it, nervily hunched. “He’s a funny little geezer in appearance, rather like the popular idea of a pre-War foreman plumber but without the authority and assurance. You know—bowler hat, droopy moustache, off-the-peg blue serge suit, very shiny—till it rotted off him with the sweat, since when he’s gone into open-necked shirts. Actually arrived out here from England wearing the bowler. Yorkshire accent, quite pronounced. He’s rather pathetic, really—never quite found his level in a garrison like this. He’s not assured enough to mix with the brass away from the job, and he’s too brainy for his own sort—regular egg-head, though you mightn’t
think it to look at him, and awfully standoffish—shy, really. He can be bloody pig-headed and awkward, and yet he’s an awful little coward too—oddly enough, considering his job. Runs a mile at any sudden noise, and is like a child if he cuts his finger.” Staunton drew deeply on his cigarette, stubbed it out, and lit another. “And how do I know all this? Simple. People talk, and anyway it’s my job to sort these chaps out. One thing I don’t know—how the devil did the Admiralty allow it to happen that he’s the only one who understands this damned machine, Shaw?”

  Shaw shrugged. “We can’t disguise it, there’s been a first-class blunder somewhere. Blit it seems he showed a certain amount of astuteness in arranging his own training programme so that no one man knew too much and got into a position of being able to steal his thunder. It’s just one of those things that only get highlighted when a crisis happens—and it’s easy to be wise after the event.” Staunton scowled. “So England stands to lose the most important link in the chain of these bases, to say nothing of all our lives ... in fact the chances are if this lot goes up the whole damn scheme’s done for, at least for a good many years. Without Ackroyd, they won’t be able to get any other bases going.”

  Shaw sighed. Rather helplessly, he asked, “Has anything been done so far to try to stop the fuel unit?” He thought: It’s auto-powered, and the power-supply can’t be cut out independently of the normal stopping process, so there can’t be any question of turning off the juice from outside. . . .

  Staunton answered him impatiently. “I’ve had my hands full investigating the Ackroyd business and that body, and I’ve had very little information about the fuel unit, Shaw. The technicalities are nothing to do with me, and I don’t know anything about the damn thing—but so far as I gather they’re completely flummoxed and likely to remain so.”

  “Unless we find Ackroyd,” Shaw said quietly.

  “Exactly. Unless we find Ackroyd. All we know for certain is that he was seen to leave Dockyard Tunnel for his usual swim at Sandy Bay. That was last night, and to-day we found that body near Europa.” Staunton began getting himself ready for his meeting with the Governor. “My guess is that Ackroyd is in Spain right now, though, that that body’s just some poor bastard they knocked off in Spain and brought in as a red herring.”

  That was Shaw’s guess too. He said, “They probably got Ackroyd off by sea, while he was swimming. That’d be easy enough.”

  Staunton went off to the meeting of Gibraltar’s top brass after that, but Shaw didn’t go with him—instead, the D.S.O. gave him a car and a security policeman as driver, telling the latter to take the Commander to Dockyard Tunnel and then to the mortuary to have a look at the body.

  The car swung into the dockyard’s Ragged Staff gate and turned left for the entrance to the tunnel, where it stopped. The driver said, “Might as well walk it, sir. It’s rough going for a car.”

  Shaw nodded and the policeman led the way in beside the narrow-gauge railway track which ran right through the tunnel beneath the rock. Only dimly lit, the tunnel was eerie and cool; stores and workshops opened off it; down here, during the War, the North African landings—Operation Torch—had been planned and directed, the H.Q. operating within the living rock, safe from enemy bombs. Drips of water coming through the porous limestone fell on Shaw as he walked along; and after a while he heard a curious drumming sound, a kind of dum-da, dum-da in the now close air, a sound which seemed to echo through the rock and fill the tunnel with its low, regular note. A little after that the guide turned off into a side-tunnel to the right past two armed security guards who checked their passes; and they were issued with the radiation film badges. As they went along the narrow passageway Shaw heard that dum-da noise more loudly; and when they entered a compartment leading off the side tunnel and came into Ackroyd’s workshop he saw AFPU ONE, a vast structure seemingly shut in under a lead casing. Behind the dome-shaped pile the control panel on the rock-face showed a multiplicity of dials and lights which dimmed and rose again as Shaw watched. The air in this compartment, whose roof seemed lost in dimness, was musty and stale, and that pulsating in the air drummed uncomfortably on the ears. It gave Shaw the feeling of being under high pressure—a nasty, claustrophobic feeling which made his flesh tingle with a sudden desire to be out of the place and into the clean upper air again.

  The white-overalled technician on watch—quite a youngster, red-haired and fresh-faced and keen—came forward, raised an eyebrow at the security policeman.

  “All right, mate. Gentleman’s been sent by Major Staunton.”

  “Oh . . . okay, then.” The technician looked at Shaw, who smiled in a friendly way, shook his hand, and established his Admiralty status. He asked the man one or two questions, the answers to which, horrifyingly, confirmed the theories which he’d put to Staunton. The technician looked a reliable sort—and the Old Man back in London had told him that all the men on this job had had a severe screening and were all first-class hands. Shaw cut into the man’s technical explanations and asked:

  “Is any help being requested from home, now Mr Ackroyd is—gone?”

  “Yes, sir. The Admiral’s asked for a team of experts to be flown out from London, but if we can’t stop her I reckon they won’t either.” The youngster opened a panel in the side of AFPU ONE after raising a lead ‘curtain,’ and pointed to a small red button. He said, “That’s what ought to do it —see? Just press that and off she goes. But it won’t work.”

  The young man’s face was troubled, as though in some way his own efficiency was at fault. Shaw stretched out a hand and pressed, hard. The red button went right in, quite freely, as though it had no resistance behind it, as though something wasn’t engaging somewhere; it hadn’t the touch of a button which has merely gone a bit screwy as it were, a button which might have jiggled a little in its socket like a faulty bell-push.

  Shaw’s face puckered up. In natural bafflement, he said, “Feels almost as though something’s missing somewhere.”

  It was just a shot in the dark really, but it brought a response.

  The man’s eyes lit up and he said, “Well, sir, that’s just exactly what I’ve been thinking. But I don’t see how it could be . . . unless—” He broke off, uncertainly.

  “Go on,” Shaw prompted. “Unless what?”

  “Well, sir, Mr Ackroyd, he was—always very touchy about the fuel-producing unit, if you know what I mean.” The youngster spoke awkwardly, hesitantly, a little diffident that he should be critical of his chief.

  Shaw helped him out. He said, “Yes, I know, lad. Well—what’s your theory?”

  “I was on watch when he was in here last—before he disappeared, see? I don’t think he realized it, but—Look, sir, you come over here a minute.”

  Shaw followed him to the remote-control panel. The technician pointed to it. “See, sir? It’s very highly polished; you just look into it. You can see the machine reflected in it.”

  “Yes,” Shaw agreed. “You certainly can, and very clearly.” He could see beyond that lead curtain, right to the panel where the red button was. “Well?”

  “Well, sir, Mr Ackroyd, he was messing about with the primary starting-panel last night. He didn’t know I was watching, and I wasn’t, not all the time. I was looking at the dials. You have to most of the time when she’s just started up, see. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t be at the starting-panel, of course, but I did think he was—well, sort of edgy, and he kept looking in my direction . . . almost as though he was doing something he didn’t ought to.”

  “Uh-huh.” Shaw looked searchingly at the man, blue eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “You mean he may have done something to the starting-mechanism?”

  “Yes, sir, I do, and that’s honest. I think he may have removed a bit of it. That’s the sort of thing he would do, as you’d see if you’d worked with him. He’s—he was as nice as anything to work for if you kept on letting him see you knew he was brainy, like . . . but he wouldn’t put up with any of what he called interference. I
don’t know if you follow, sir? He’s—”

  “I think I follow all right. But so far as I know, nothing was found on the body.” An idea had come to Shaw and, though he felt certain that the body wasn’t Ackroyd’s, he knew that it would be just as well if the impression got around that he did believe it was, for this impression would, with any luck, reach Karina through her contacts and help to give her a false confidence. “Didn’t any of this occur to you last night—while Mr Ackroyd was here?”

  “No, sir. Wouldn’t have been up to me to say anything if it had, come to that.” He still looked puzzled. “I’ve just been putting two and two together after all this happened and we couldn’t stop her, and a short while ago I remembered what I’d seen, see?”

  Shaw nodded. “Told anyone else?”

  “Well, I talked it over with my mate.”

  “Natural enough,” Shaw murmured. “But for the time being, I want you and your mate to keep dead quiet about this, and in the meantime I’ll see it’s passed on to the proper quarter. Right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Shaw went back to the fuel unit. “When these London experts get here, won’t they be able to make a spare, if that is what’s happened?”