The Dark Crusader (32 page)

First I opened the junction box on the inside of the outer casing and adjusted the timing devices on the rotary clock, then, checking that the hand-operated switch on the destruct box was locked at 'Safe', I took a quick look at the second break in the suicide circuit, the solenoid switch directly above the timing device. The solenoid, normally activated when its enveloping coil was energised, was held back by a fairly stout spring which required, as a quick tug informed me, about a pound and a half of pressure to close. I left the box open, the lid hanging downwards and secured by a couple of butterfly nuts, then again turned my attention to the destruct box: when pretending to check the action of the switch I did the same as I had done on the first Shrike, forced a small piece of wire between switch and cover. Then I called down to Hewell.

"Have you the key for the destruct box? Switch stuck."

I needn't have bothered with the wire. He said: "Yeah, I have it. Boss said we might expect trouble with this one too. Here, catch."

I opened the cover, unscrewed the switch, pretended to adjust it, replaced it and screwed home the rocker arm. But before I'd replaced it I'd turned it through 180°, so that the brass lugs were in a reversed position. The switch was so small, my hands so completely covered it that neither Hargreaves nor Williams saw what I was doing: nor had they any reason, to expect anything amiss, this was exactly, they thought, the same as they had seen me doing on the destruct box in the other rocket. I replaced the cover, shoved the lever to the safe position: and now the destruct box was armed and it only awaited the closing of the solenoid switch to complete the suicide circuit. Normally, the switch would be closed by radio signal, by pressing the EGADS button in the launch console. But it could also be done by hand ...

I said to Hewell: "Right, here's the key."

"Not quite so fast," he growled. He signalled for the lift to be brought down for him, rode up to the open door and took the key from me. Then he tried the destruct box switch, checked that it was impossible to move it more than half-way towards 'Armed', let it spring back to the 'Safe' position, nodded, pocketed the key and said: "How much longer?"

"Couple of minutes. Final clock settings and buttoning up."

The lift whined downwards again, Hewell stepped off, and on the way up I murmured to Hargreaves and Williams: "Stop writing, both of you." The hum of the electric motor covered my words and it wasn't any trick to speak without moving my lips, the left hand side of my mouth was now so puffed and swollen that movement was almost impossible anyway.

I leaned inside the door, the cord I'd torn from the blind concealed in my hand. To fasten one end of the cord to the solenoid should have taken maybe ten seconds but my hand was shaking so badly, my vision and coordination so poor that it took me almost two minutes. Then I straightened and started to close the door with my left hand while the cord ran out through the fingers of my right. When only a four-inch crack remained between the door and the outer casing of the rocket, I peered inside-the watching Hewell must have had the impression that I had one hand on either side of the door handle, trying to ease its stiffness. It took only three seconds for my right hand to drop a round turn and two half hitches round the inner handle, men the door was shut, the key turned and the job finished.

The first man to open that door more than four inches, with a pressure of more than a pound and a half, would trigger off the suicide charge and blow the rocket to pieces. If the solid fuel went up in sympathetic detonation, as Dr. Fairfield had suspected it would, he would also blow himself to pieces and everything within half a mile. In either case I hoped the man who would open it would be LeClerc himself.

The lift sank down and I climbed wearily to the ground. Through the open doors of the hangar I could see the scientists and some of the sailors sitting and lying about the shore, an armed guard walking up and down about fifty yards from them.

"Giving the condemned boys their last few hours of sunshine, eh?" I asked Hewell.

"Yeah. Everything buttoned up?"

"All fixed." I nodded towards the group. "Mind if I join them? I could do with some fresh air and sunshine myself."

"You wouldn't be thinking of starting something?"

"What the hell could I start?" I demanded wearily. "Do I look fit to start anything?"

"It's God's truth you don't," he admitted. "You can go. You two"-this to Hargreaves and Williams-"the boss wants to compare your notes."

I made my way down to the shore. Some of the Chinese were man-handling the metal casing for the rocket on to a couple of bogies, with about a dozen sailors helping them under gun-point. Reck was just tying up at the end of the pier, his schooner looked even more filthy than I remembered it. On the sands, Captain Griffiths was sitting some little way apart from the others. I lay on the sand not six feet away from him, face down on the sand, my head pillowed on my right forearm. I felt awful.

Griffiths was the first to speak. "Well, Bentall, I suppose you've just wired up the other rocket for them?" He wouldn't win many friends talking to people in that tone of voice.

"Yes, Captain Griffiths, I've wired it up. I've booby-trapped it so that the first man to open the door of the Black Shrike will blow the rocket out of existence. That's why I did so good a job on the other rocket, this is now the only one left. They were also going to shoot you and every other sailor on the base through the back of the head and torture Miss Hopeman. I was too late to stop them from getting at Miss Hopeman."

There was a long pause, I wondered if he had managed to understand my slurred speech, then he said quietly: "I'm so damnably sorry, my boy. I'll never forgive myself."

"Put a couple of your men on watch," I said. "Tell them to warn us if LeClerc or Hewell or any of the guards approach. Then you just sit there, staring out at sea. Speak to me as little as possible. No one will see me speaking in this position."

Five minutes later I'd finished telling Griffiths exactly what LeClerc had told me he planned to do after they had the Black Shrike in production. When I was finished he was quiet for almost a minute.

"Well?" I asked.

"Fantastic," he murmured. "It's utterly unbelievable!"

"Isn't it? It's fantastic. But is it feasible, Captain Griffiths?"

"It's feasible," he said heavily. "Dear God, it's feasible."

"That's what I thought. So you think booby-trapping this rocket-well, it's justifiable, you think?"

"How do you mean, Bentall?"

"When they get the Black Shrike to wherever it's going," I said, still talking into the sand, "they're not going to take it out to any remote launching field. They're going to take it to some factory, almost certainly in some heavily populated industrial area, to strip it down for examination. If this solid fuel goes up with the T.N.T. I don't like to think how many hundreds of people, mainly innocent people, will be killed."

"I don't like to think how many millions would be killed in a nuclear war," Griffiths said quietly. "The question of justification doesn't enter into it. The only question is-will the batteries powering the suicide circuit last?"

"Nickel cadmium nife cells. They're good for six months, maybe even a year. Look, Captain Griffiths, I'm not just telling you all this just to put you in the picture or to hear myself talking. It hurts me even to open my mouth. I'm telling you because I want you to tell it all to Captain Fleck. He should be coming ashore any minute now."

"Captain Fleck! That damned renegade?"

"Keep your voice down, for heaven's sake. Tell me, Captain, do you know what's going to happen to you and me and all your men when our friend LeClerc departs."

"I don't have to tell you."

"Fleck's our only hope."

"You're out of your mind, man!"

"Listen, carefully, captain. Fleck's a crook, a scoundrel and an accomplished rogue, but he's no megalomaniac monster. Fleck would do anything for money-except one thing. He wouldn't kill. He's not the type, he's told me so and I believe him. Fleck's our only hope."

I waited for comment, but there was none, so I went on: "He'll be coming ashore any moment now. Speak to him. Shout and wave your arms and curse him for the damned renegade you say he is, the way you would be expected to do, nobody will pay any attention except LeClerc and Hewell and all they'll do is laugh, they'll think it highly amusing. Tell him what I've told you. Tell him he hasn't long to live, that LeClerc will leave no one behind to talk. You'll find that LeClerc has spun him some cock-and-bull yarn about what he intended to do here, one thing you can be certain of, LeClerc never told him of the rocket or what he intended to do with the rocket, he would never have dared with Fleck and his crew calling so often at Suva and other Fijian harbours where one careless word in a bar would have ruined everything. Do
you
think LeClerc would have told him the truth, Captain?"

"He wouldn't. You're right, he couldn't have afforded to."

"Has Fleck ever seen the rockets before?"

"Of course not. Hangar doors were always closed when he called and he was allowed to speak only to the officers and the petty officer who supervised the unloading of the boat. He knew, of course, that it was something big, the
Neckar
was often anchored in the lagoon here."

"So. But he'll see the Black Shrike now, he can't help seeing it from where he's berthed at the end of the pier. He'll have every justification for asking LeClerc questions about it and I'm much mistaken if LeClerc will be reluctant to talk about it. It's the dream of his life and he knows that Fleck won't live to talk about it. Fleck might even then still have some doubts left as to what's in store for him, so just that he can understand exactly what kind of man he's dealing with, tell him to go-no, better tell him to send Henry, his mate, he himself better not be seen to be missing-to see what LeClerc really is capable of." I told Griffiths exactly how to find the spot where Hewell and his men had broken through the hillside, told him where to find the cave with all the dead men. "I wouldn't be surprised if there are two more dead men there now, Fijian boys. And ask him to find out if the radio in LeClerc's cabin is still there. After Henry comes back Fleck will have no more doubts."

Griffiths said nothing. I only hoped I'd convinced him: if I had I couldn't leave it in better hands, he was a wily old bird and sharp as they came. By and by I heard a movement as he got to his feet. I peered out of the corner of one eye and saw him walking slowly away. I twisted round till I saw the pier. Fleck and Henry, dressed in their best off-whites were just leaving the schooner. I closed my eyes. Incredibly, I went to sleep. Or perhaps not so incredibly. I was exhausted beyond belief, the aches in my head and face and shoulder and body merging into one vast gulf of pain. I slept.

When I woke up I'd yet another ache to add to my lists. Someone was kicking me in the lower ribs and he wasn't trying to tickle me, either. I twisted my head. LeClerc. Too late in the day for LeClerc to learn the more rudimentary rules of courtesy. Blinking against the sun, I turned round till I was propped up on my good elbow, then blinked again as something soft struck me in the face and fell on my chest. I looked down. A hank of cord-window cord-neatly rolled up and tied.

"We thought you might like to have it back, Bentall. We've no further use for it." No fury in that face, not the vindictive anger I would have expected, but something approaching satisfaction. He looked at me consideringly. "Tell me, Ben-tall, did you really think that I'd overlook so obvious a possibility-to me the certainty, rather-that you wouldn't hesitate to jinx the second Shrike when you knew there would be no further danger to yourself? You sadly underrate me, which is why you find yourself where you are now."

"You weren't as smart as all that," I said slowly. I felt sick. "I don't think you did suspect. What I did overlook was the certainty that you would take Hargreaves and Williams apart and threaten to kill their wives if they didn't tell you
everything
that happened. Separate huts and the usual menaces if their stories didn't tally exactly. Maybe I do underestimate you. So now you take me away somewhere quietly and shoot me. I don't really think I'll mind."

"Nobody's going to shoot you, Bentall. Nobody's going to shoot anybody. We're leaving tomorrow and I can promise that when we do we will leave you all alive."

"Of course," I sneered. "How many years practice does it take, LeClerc, to get that ring of conviction into your voice when you tell your damned lies?"

"You'll see tomorrow."

"Always tomorrow. And how do you propose to keep forty of us under control until then?" I hoped his mind worked as mine did, or I'd probably wasted my time in sending Griffiths to Fleck.

"You gave us the idea yourself, Bentall. The blockhouse. You said it would make a fine dungeon. Escape proof. Besides, I want all my men for the job of crating the Shrike tonight and I don't need guards for anyone inside the blockhouse." He looked at Hewell and smiled. "Incidentally, Ben-tall, I believe there is no love lost between yourself and Captain Griffiths. He was saying some pretty hard things about you for fusing up that first rocket."

I said nothing. I waited for it.

"You'll be pleased to hear he's met with a little trouble. Nothing serious. I gather he took it into his head to berate Captain Fleck-as one Englishman to another-for his treasonable activities. Fleck, one gathers, took exception to Griffiths taking exception. In age, height and weight the two master mariners were pretty evenly matched and if Captain Griffiths was a bit fitter Fleck knew more dirty tricks. It was a fight to see. Had to stop it eventually. Distracting my men."

"I hope they beat each other to death," I growled. LeClerc smiled, and walked away with Hewell. The world was going well for them.

It wasn't for me. The booby-trap sprung, Griffiths and Fleck at blows, the last hope gone, Marie finished with me, LeClerc winning all along the line and a bullet in the head for Bentall any hour now. I felt sick and weak and exhausted and beaten. Maybe it was time to give up. I rolled over on my face again, saw Griffiths approaching. He sat where he had been sitting before. His shirt was dirty and torn, his forehead grazed and a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth.