The Care of Time (32 page)

‘Of course,’ he said carefully, ‘not all these matters are secret. There is much that is common knowledge. For instance, have you heard of the group of organophosphorus chemicals called anti-cholinesterases?’

‘I can’t say that I have, Your Highness.’ I was watching his face intently, though, and had a feeling that if, at that point, I stopped and waited for him to explain he would get cautious again. So, I threw him a small joke at my expense. ‘Let me try and guess, though. Would I be correct in saying that they are,
where human beings are concerned, contra-indicated?’

He didn’t get it instantly, but when the bell rang I thought we were going to have another bout of hysteria. However, it turned after a few big laughs into snickers. ‘Oh my God, yes,’ he said eventually. ‘Very much contra-indicated. The American and British armed forces call them nerve gases and pretend not to recognize them as weapons for the battlefield. That is all my eye and Betty Martin, naturally – bullshit you would say – and they have stockpiles of one gas they call Sarin. They call it that because the chemical name is very complicated. Sarin is just a code name. They call the Soviet version of it Soman. That is supposed to be even stronger and more terrible. Why they should need anything stronger, I don’t know. They both attack the central nervous system. It is thought that a single one-milligram droplet of Sarin inhaled will paralyse a healthy adult and cause death in less than a minute. But it doesn’t have to be inhaled. Contact of a droplet with any part of the body will cause death. The death is just quicker if it is inhaled.’

‘You say that these nerve gases are
thought
to be so deadly, Your Highness. Yet you have studied the central nervous system yourself quite extensively. Are you telling us that there may be some doubt about the military value of these gases? Are you not
certain
that they are deadly?’

He hastened eagerly to set my mind at rest. ‘Oh absolutely certain, Mr Halliday. There have been tests. Sarin and Soman have both killed large apes, sheep and other test mammals pretty well instantly. Spasm, paralysis, death. That is the sequence. It is with human beings that we are lacking the controlled test results. So far, the only information we have about the effects on human beings has come as the result of accidents. And the information has been very sparse. Both in the United States and Britain the authorities were very successful in covering up. There were only leaks of information which were of little military value and of no use to the scientific mind at all. The major accident at the city of
Sverdlovsk in the Soviet Union was too big to cover up. Over a hundred people were killed by wind-borne droplets and many more made seriously ill. Soviet propaganda tried to say that it was a virus epidemic but no one believed that. It was a manufacturing accident. Yet again, no scientific information became available.’

‘You say that these substances can be absorbed through the skin? Does that mean that gas masks don’t work?’

‘Only complete covering will protect you, Mr Halliday, a special suit, something that can be sealed and later washed down to decontaminate it. The new tanks are being made with this need in mind, I believe. You need something that can be sealed for a time until it can be cleaned off with the proper chemicals.’

‘How about a pressurized plane. Could that be made safe?’

He pretended not to have heard that. ‘The best thing, of course, is an antidote.’

‘There are antidotes? They already exist?’

‘In secret, obviously, and they have not yet been tested on human beings. You must understand that substances like Sarin and Soman are invented chemicals, like modern insecticides. They are not found in nature. But, what can be made with chemicals can be unmade with other chemicals. Again, it is the know-how.’

‘I see, Your Highness. So, apart from sealed containers and people in sealed suits to wash the poison off for you from outside, protection will be chiefly a matter of having the right antidotes and knowing that they are still right, that the enemy hasn’t switched to some nastier droplets that you don’t know about.’

‘You are forgetting one thing, Mr Halliday. With antidotes, one must also know how exactly to use them, at what points and with what precautions one must apply them.’

‘Realistic tests must be made.’

‘That is obvious. You cannot teach apes how to handle antidotes.’

He was getting tired. It was nearly time to wrap it up.

‘Your Highness, in the course of your personal researches into the mysteries of the central nervous system in mammals, you must have witnessed some of these tests. When a one-milligram droplet of Sarin, for example, is inserted into the mouth of a large ape, what exactly happens? Can you tell us?’

He warmed to my appetite for eye-witness information. ‘Yes, Mr Halliday, certainly I can tell you, though you will not expect me to reveal where I was privileged to see these demonstrations.’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Well, the droplet is squirted into the mouth with an instrument that looks like one of those scent atomizers that western women carry in their handbags. Only it is at the end of a long rod and, naturally, is not made of gold. The one milligram is squirted. No sound. For a moment, nothing. Then, every muscle in the body seems to contract as they go into that state that the doctors call by some name of their own. Not spasm, though that I think describes it too.’

‘Fibrillation? Is that the medical word?’

‘Yes, that’s it. Fibrillation. The animal falls down, of course. Usually it starts to vomit and excrete at the same time. Then there are convulsions, a lot of that. The interesting thing is that the actual cause of death is usually simple asphyxiation. The muscles which control the lungs just cannot go on working.’

‘Of course, you have no way of telling whether or not human beings would react in exactly the same way.’

‘Not yet, no.’

‘A painful death, would you say, Your Highness?’

‘A little painful perhaps, but very quick. All over in less than a minute.’

‘Thank you, Your Highness. What you have had to tell us has been both instructive and helpful. I’m sure that viewers all over the world will be grateful to you for allowing them
to share your thoughts on some modern problems of living, and dying, that affect us all.’

I signalled to Kluvers to cut, waited until I had heard him say the word and then went forward quickly to shower The Ruler with congratulations. The Chief Secretary, I noted, was looking worried. That was understandable. The Ruler, also understandably, was looking pleased with himself. The ordeal was over. He had survived. He was being praised and flattered. The misgivings, if he ever experienced misgivings, would come later, when he tried to remember what it was exactly that he had said, or when the Chief Secretary plucked up courage enough to give him some quotes.

‘When will it be shown?’ he asked.

A standard question to which he received one of the evasive answers which are also more or less standardized.

‘The film should be processed and flown to New York within the next few hours, Your Highness. After that it’s up to the current-affairs producers and the programmers. I’ll see that you’re kept informed.’

The crew had switched the lamps off and started moving everything around for the set-up we were going to use on the pick-up shots. The Ruler must have concluded that they were getting ready to go. With a gracious nod all round, he rose from his chair and prepared to leave. The Chief Secretary drew me aside quickly.

‘His Highness has another appointment above the house,’ he said. ‘You will not be seeing him again. But before you leave, Mr Halliday, I would like to see you. This interview was, as we both know, a contrived occasion not to be taken too seriously. Your personal assistance in all this entitles you to a supplementary honorarium. I should not like you to leave without it.’

‘Whatever you say, Chief Secretary.’

He hurried away along the tunnel to the hoist. The Ruler was already there and becoming impatient. I turned to find Kluvers looking at me with a very odd expression.

‘Is that what you were commissioned to do?’ he asked. ‘A hatchet job?’

‘Did you think that any of the questions I asked him was unfair or irresponsible?’

‘I think that the only person allowed to ask that man questions should be a psychiatrist.’

‘There are lots of people who would agree with you. They don’t say it aloud though. Have you heard of some businessmen who call themselves Mukhabarat Zentrum?’

‘The murder gang, you mean? Rasmuk?’

‘His Highness has them on a multi-million retainer at the moment.’

That shook him. ‘We should never have taken this job,’ he said bitterly. ‘We should have gone straight home.’

‘Going straight home is still going to be a problem for some of us,’ I said. ‘How about getting the rest of the job done?’

‘We’re almost ready.’

‘Did Rainer tell you that I’ll be handing the exposed film over to him for processing?’

‘Yes, and I gave him a list of our credits. That all right with you?’

‘Sure you still want to be associated with me?’

He grinned. ‘I didn’t say it was a lousy interview. I just thought it frightening. I wonder how much of it will actually get on the air.’

‘So do I. Incidentally, I’d like the two cans packaged separately and numbered one and two. Okay?’

‘No problem.’

‘And I’d like a little extra help from you in the packaging area.’

‘What kind of help?’

He sighed a bit when I told him, but he agreed.

We did the pick-up shots the way the cameraman had wanted, against a background of wet limestone walls and dripping steel staircases. Of the questions I had asked The Ruler during the interview, I only changed the wording of
one when we came to do the shot of me asking it. That was the one question he had deliberately ignored, and I wanted to show why he had chosen to ignore it.

On the subject of protection against nerve gas attack, I had asked if a pressurized plane could be made safe. No reply. Why? Because he himself had a private plane that was pressurized, a Caravelle Super B according to Zander. So, I changed my question to: ‘How about a pressurized plane, like the private Caravelle that you have, Your Highness? Couldn’t that be made safe for a few hours during a nerve gas attack?’

It was cheating, I admit, and Kluvers rolled his eyes to show what he thought of my standards of professional ethics, but he didn’t try to stop me shooting the revised version. He just asked, when it was done, if there would be anything more. When I said that we could wrap it up, he nodded and told the crew to get moving.

Only then did I see Simone on the stairs. She had been up on the fourth flight listening to the interview. Her thin clothes were damp and she was shivering, but at first she didn’t seem to be troubled by her discomfort, or even aware of it.

‘If that interview is ever shown,’ she said, ‘he is finished.’

‘Does that bother you? He’s planning to
kill
you,
and
the patron,
and
the young people.’

‘He’s planning to try, yes.’ She was beginning to realize that she was cold and I led her over to a section of the gallery where the lamps had left behind them a patch of warm air.

‘Did the patron know,’ I asked, ‘that his price for Abra Bay was their letting him run nerve gas tests on human beings?’

‘Originally, no. But the patron knew that The Ruler was fascinated by these weapons, so he did what you did just now, only more gradually. He asked loaded questions, he debated a little and he encouraged The Ruler to get excited enough to talk. At one time the patron thought that The Ruler was only frightened and that all he really wanted was the secret
antidotes. But that was only a hope. He wants the gases themselves. He wants the power to kill as if by magic.’

‘Obviously, Nato will turn him down.’

‘Because he gives indiscreet interviews in front of television cameras? Perhaps. If so, he will try the Russians.’

‘Offering
them
Abra Bay? That’s crazy. None of his co-Rulers would stand for that.’

‘You don’t understand, my friend. Abra Bay was bait for the west. And it brought them to the table, didn’t it? They will have to think about the price, no doubt, but they will think very carefully and unemotionally. And it won’t be gentlemen like your handsome General Newell and your civilized Herr Schelm who make the decisions. The Ruler would have to think of a different bait for the Russians. Or maybe a different approach altogether. A frank and simple offer of the testing facility in return for a little friendly and neighbourly pressure on neutral Austria to let him keep his floodable old mine and build as he wishes to build above it? Yes?’

‘By testing facility you mean human guinea-pigs I gather. The prisoners in his jails?’

‘They’d sooner be dead anyway. And they wouldn’t care who killed them.’

‘How do you know that Nato wants these tests done?’

She smiled wistfully at my innocence. ‘My dear friend, everyone concerned with chemical warfare is always wanting human animal tests done. The difficulty is that nobody wants to be
responsible
for doing them, or even requesting the facilities. You see, just investigating unfortunate accidents doesn’t tell enough. There are always officious doctors interfering, trying to save life. If small experiments are tried, as there were in the Yemen, they turn into propaganda gifts for the other side. And The Ruler was right about one thing. Testing antidotes, which may have critical reaction times, is not easy to do with animals. You cannot tell them exactly what they must do to be safe, not in a way they understand.’

Kluvers came over. ‘We’re about ready to go,’ he said.

‘We’d better give you the film in our truck, don’t you think? Safer?’

On the way up in the hoist, I told Simone what I had arranged about the film. She seemed pleased. ‘You are learning,’ she said. She almost laughed.

When we came from the top of the hoist behind the museum we could see Zander down at the car-park talking to Jean-Pierre. As he had predicted, The Ruler’s second meeting with the General and Schelm was taking place without him. Simone went to report. I stayed with Kluvers and watched the film packed in the way I wanted. When the packages had been labelled I went to the door of the truck.