Fourth Bear (29 page)

He opened a small wooden box and took out a device that began giving off random clicks when he switched it on.

“This Geiger counter measures radioactivity,” he explained.

“The more clicks, the higher the levels—the odd clicking you can hear is just background radiation.”

He passed the instrument over the sample, and there were a few extra clicks, but nothing wildly dramatic.

“You see?” asked Parks.

“No.”

“The nuclear-blast theory
seems
sound until one looks for evidence of radioactivity—and there’s hardly any at all.”

“I’m no expert in nuclear weapons, Dr. Parks,” admitted Jack.

“Perhaps you can explain that in simpler terms.”

Parks took a deep breath. “Atom-
splitting
reactions are called fission devices: the A-bomb. Atom-
fusing
reactions are called fusion devices. A nuke small enough to do the limited damage you see here would have to be a fission device.”

“Why?” asked Mary.

“Simply stated, an A-bomb is the bringing to critical mass of a quantity of fissile material, say uranium 235. A lump of uranium 235 the size of a football would be critical; a lump the size of a golf ball would not.”

“I get it,” said Jack. “Just add two uncritical masses together and
bang,
right?”

“In essence. However, you can ignite even
smaller
lumps of fissile material by bringing them together very rapidly. In theory you could make an A-bomb to fit in a suitcase. A mini-nuke with limited destructive power.”

“And that was what hit Cripps?”

“No. A-bombs give off large quantities of radioactive fallout. There is nothing at the site, nothing downwind and only a small amount on this sample. This could
not
have been a fission device.”

“What then?”

“A
fusion
reaction with the heavy isotope of hydrogen as the fuel would give a waste product of only helium and a small amount of localized radioactivity caused by an excess of neutrons. However, there are problems here, too.”

“Such as?”

“To start a fusion reaction, you need a huge amount of heat—two million degrees or more. To get that you need either a plasma chamber the size of a house consuming vast quantities of power, a ball of gas the size of the sun or—”

“An A-bomb?” suggested Mary.

“Precisely. A fission trigger to set off the fusion device—but that would also leave large quantities of detectable radioactive fallout.”

He waved the Geiger counter over the fused earth again, and it clicked in a desultory manner.

“This is just mildly radioactive, so it
suggests
that it might have been a fusion blast of a very small size. Since nuclear fusion exists only in the heart of stars, an A-bomb or a plasma chamber, I think this was something else entirely—a ground burst of a type we have yet to fully understand.”

There was a brief silence as Jack and Mary tried to figure out just what Parks was talking about. As far as Jack could make out, Cripps and his garden were destroyed by a destructive force that Parks couldn’t explain and that the government was keen on hiding—they had removed nearly eighty tons of topsoil before allowing anyone in.

“Do you know the significance of this shape?” asked Parks, indicating the rectangular block of fired earth. Jack and Mary said nothing, so he continued. “If this
did
come from here, it was cut when the glass was still hot. There was only a time window of twenty-six minutes before the area was cordoned off. The first officers on the scene saw no one but confused villagers. If that’s correct, then we have a witness to the event. Find him and you’ll answer a lot of questions.”

Jack thought for a moment. Up until ten minutes ago, he hadn’t entertained the possibility of McGuffin’s being still alive
or
heavily involved at Obscurity, but now he was reasonably convinced of both.

“If you think of anything else, I’d appreciate a call,” said Jack, giving Parks his card, “but keep all this under your hat. It seems Goldilocks found a link between the explosions and McGuffin, and she’s dead.”

“Better and better,” replied Parks cheerfully. “No conspiracy is worth a button unless someone is murdered over it—preferably with clandestine overtones and just enough ambiguous facts to be tantalizing, yet not so many that it’s possible to resolve the thing one way or the other.”

They all stood and stared in silence at the bare earth that had once been Stanley’s property.

“A mess, isn’t it?” murmured Parks. “If this is linked to McGuffin, it would explain QuangTech’s interest.”

“QuangTech?” asked Jack sharply.

Parks looked at them both slightly oddly. “Yes. They undertook the initial investigation here. I thought that was common knowledge.”

“Not to me. Does QuangTech usually do investigative work for the government?”

“I have no idea. All I know is that their trucks and personnel were swarming over here for the first week after the blast. They were the ones that took all the topsoil.”

Jack thanked Parks and walked back along the road past the scorched hedgerows to the car. The presence of QuangTech might have been nothing except a coincidence, but it had to be looked into. Within ten minutes they were on the road again, the Vicar’s increasingly aggressive offers of scones and tea notwithstanding.

They were both silent until Mary had driven them onto the main road back to Reading, when she said, “That’s odd.”

“You’re not kidding,” replied Jack, who had been making notes since the moment they left. “I wonder if Parks was talking any sense at all when he thought Obscurity was an explosion of a type unknown to science.”

“No, I mean it’s odd that your odometer is going backward.”

“I noticed that, too. This is how I see it: McGuffin is still alive and conducting secret tests of some sort. In Pasadena, Tunbridge Wells, the Nullarbor—and now here. He’s going to reveal everything to Goldilocks, but then… something happens—and she has to be silenced.”

“Where do the cucumbers come into it?” asked Mary.

“I’d forgotten about them,” replied Jack with a frown. “Perhaps they don’t. In any event I think we need to start getting some answers out of QuangTech. Perhaps we should even try to speak to… the Quangle-Wangle himself.”

Biggest fictional multinational corporation:
Largest of all imaginary megacompanies is The Goliath Corporation, with an illusory net worth of 6.2 quipzillion pounds. Despite falling under the brief control of the Toast Marketing Board in 1987, Goliath resumed control of its own affairs and by the beginning of the fifth Thursday Next novel was once again ready to bully and cajole anyone who dared stand in its way. Claims that a larger and more oppressive fictional corporation had been dreamed up on a word processor in Oregon were dismissed by several illusory Goliath executives as “fanciful nonsense.”

—
The Bumper Book of Berkshire Records
, 2004 edition

The headquarters
of QuangTech Industries was a series of large and generally low-lying buildings built within the boundaries of an old airfield. They had been based there since the early fifties, and QuangTech’s rapid expansion had seen the company’s buildings, offices and manufacturing facilities spread in every direction on the seven-hundred-acre site, and then to satellite factories dotted around the Home Counties. When you factored in all the smaller companies that operated under the umbrella of QuangTech, it was easily Berkshire’s biggest employer.

Mary parked the Allegro, and they walked across to the reception. They announced themselves to an attractive receptionist, were given visitors’ passes and then escorted into the main office building, where they were met by Mr. Bisky-Batt himself. He called the receptionist by her first name, and the receptionist did likewise. They noticed that he was carrying a coffee from the vending machine in the lobby. Clearly, QuangTech’s reputation for egalitarian business practices was not without foundation: Bisky-Batt was second only to the Quangle-Wangle himself, and he fetched his own coffee.

The vice president was a tall, heavyset man with massive hands that enveloped Jack’s and Mary’s as they shook. “Welcome to QuangTech,” said the giant, whose voice seemed to rumble on after he had spoken. He smiled at them both, his heavy brow and large jaw reminding Mary of a model Neanderthal she had seen in a museum once. “How have you been these past few years, Jack?”

“I’ve been good.”

“Impressive work on the Humpty Dumpty inquiry,” said Bisky-Batt with another smile. “I was particularly glad the Jellyman came to no harm.”

“Us, too.”

“I always think our
lack
of association with the NCD is something we can be justly proud of,” he said after a moment’s reflection. “You haven’t questioned us since that unfortunate business concerning the Dong’s luminous nose.”

“Eight years,” said Jack. “How’s the Quangle-Wangle these days?”

“Still going,” replied Bisky-Batt, “although now
extremely
frail.”

He opened a door and led them into his office. They had visited vice presidents of other corporations in the past, but Bisky-Batt’s office was the most modest they had seen. Completely unostentatious, it was almost austere. A collection of old-fashioned dial phones sat on his desk next to the very latest Quang-6000 desktop computer, the only piece of modern or high-tech equipment that could be seen. He indicated chairs, and they all sat down.

“You’re very kind,” said Jack, “and I hope not to take up too much of your time, but QuangTech’s name has been flagged several times in a recent inquiry, and I was hoping you could offer me some information.”

Bisky-Batt held up his enormous hands. “Ask whatever you wish, Inspector. QuangTech has no secrets from the police, but you must understand that we are a vast company with subsidiaries in thirty-one countries and every major city of the world. The Quangle-Wangle has interests in food, wine, engineering, electronics, software and construction all over the globe. More than one million people worldwide are somehow employed by the corporation either directly or indirectly, and we can’t be held responsible for every one of them.”

“I understand that,” answered Jack, “but I have to ask. It’s about a woman named Henrietta Hatchett.”

“Ah, yes,” replied Bisky-Batt, “the unfortunate woman who was caught in the barrage up at SommeWorld. Most upsetting. Are you satisfied with the extra precautions we have taken to ensure that this sort of tragedy does not happen again?”

“I have heard that the Health and Safety people are more than happy with your efforts. I was just wondering if Ms. Hatchett had ever approached QuangTech Industries for information?”

Bisky-Batt frowned. “Indeed she did. She was most insistent about speaking to the Quangle-Wangle, but as you know, he sees no one. She was
so
forceful I agreed to see her myself.”

“What did she want?”

“She wanted to know about an ex-confederate of ours named Angus McGuffin.”

Jack said nothing, and Bisky-Batt continued.

“During the eighties the Quangle-Wangle waged a policy of funding projects on the very fringes of science on the basis that if they
did
work, then the profits might be very substantial indeed. He called it Project Supremely Optimistic Belief. We had a few mild successes. Pumpkin transmogrification was one of them, but in general the project was a failure. McGuffin’s time here at QuangTech was a particularly
expensive
failure. He arrived in 1984 with claims of being able to synthesize oil from grass cuttings; it was an idea the Quangle-Wangle found irresistible.”

“There are many people who say the grass-cutting story is a myth to cover his true intent.”

“If only it were.”

“So you’re saying McGuffin was a charlatan?”

Bisky-Batt shrugged. “‘Charlatan’ would be a polite term. Personally I would have had him drummed out ASAP, but the Quang calls the shots. We gave McGuffin a laboratory. He blew it up. We gave him another. He blew that one up as well. We rebuilt the lab for the third time a little farther away from the other buildings, and he blew that up, too.”

“He was making progress?”

“No, I think he just liked blowing things up. He destroyed at least two labs a year, until even the Quangle-Wangle began to see that he was pouring money down the drain, and McGuffin’s contract was terminated in 1988.”

“And his death?”

“The day before he was due to leave. A parting shot, we think, and although the coroner recorded an open verdict, we considered it suicide. It was his biggest explosion to date. Despite our having isolated his laboratory on the far side of the plant, he still managed to blow out all the windows in the village.”

“But you never found the body.”