Tomorrow Is Too Far (17 page)

‘Yes, Joe.’

‘Good, I’m leaving now...’

He walked slowly past the patrol office, trying so hard not to run that he felt that he would fall on his face, and across to the car. As he moved away Daniels pulled in.

When he tip-toed into the flat half an hour later his telephone receiver was in its rest, the tape-recorder was switched off and loud cooking noises were coming from the kitchen. His disappointment was like a physical blow.

‘What
happened...! ‘

‘I’m not sure,’ said Jean over her shoulder. ‘We’ll probably find out during the playback, all I know is that they hung up on us about three minutes ago. I haven’t had anything to eat since taking off after that truck. Are you hungry...?’

A little later they took their trays into the lounge beside the recorder and ate as they listened. They listened so intently that when a fork scraped a plate or a cup clinked softly against a saucer they practically snarled at each other to be quiet.

But for the first ten minutes or so there was nothing but a hissing, over-amplified silence. Then there was the sound of approaching footsteps, of a door opening and closing several times and the rhubarbing of three or four conversations going on at once, and finally one voice louder than the others...

‘Settle down, please. George, sit in a chair and not on the edge of my desk--this will be a long session, believe me. Now, let’s get on with it. Parsons?’

‘No trace of the vehicle or Tillotson. The search was thorough even though they thought they were helping me look for an important, instrument package. Dammit, why is it that a stupid machine can make the minus trip and not a man ...?’

‘A stupid man might make it ...’

‘Pebbles isn’t stupid, just innocent. But what does that make us ...?’

‘All right, all right, guilty. But he’s quite happy about it all. There was no need to tell him that he is to make a minus trip like Tillotson because he is unlikely to run into the same trouble ... ‘

‘But we don’t know what the trouble was, so how ...?’

‘Because we are controlling everything from the ground. He is an overgrown child and he’s living the dream that most children--and a lot of adults, too--have these days. He’ll be in space, a real live astronaut, but without the responsibilities of having to manoeuvre his vehicle or reposition it for re-entry or do anything at all ... What the blazes do you mean by jumping up like that...!’

‘It’s my car! I’ve just remembered that it’s giving trouble again, sir. Can I take a minute to ring the mechanic I know in Transport to have a look at it during the meeting? It could be important to have it checked before our trip tomorrow ...’

‘Your blasted car, at a time like this! You should ... ah ... Oh, well, use my phone and be quick about it.’

‘Thank you, sir. Sorry, fellows ... Hello, Transport? Donaldson here. It’s happened again, I’m afraid. Do you think you could come along and have a look at it? That’s very good of you. About fifteen minutes. Thank you ...’

Carson refilled his coffee cup and said, ‘I didn’t know Bill Donaldson had such influence. Getting a Transport mechanic to check out a private car--during nightshift, too--is quite a trick ... ‘

‘Settle down, Bill. Stop worrying about it, there’s probably a very simple explanation. Dammit, I suppose we won’t get any constructive thinking out of you, or anyone else, until you know what is wrong with that blasted scrap-heap ..!’

‘Sir! You are speaking of the woman I love ...!’

‘Dreamy Daniels seems to have mellowed with age,’ Carson remarked. ‘This is an important meeting. I would have expected him to stamp hard on anyone who dared mention private troubles like sick relatives or cars. It doesn’t sound right, somehow. I wonder what could have happened to...’

He began by wondering, but as the aimless chitchat continued Carson began to feel a little anxious. He thought back on the conversation they had already heard--useless, inconsequential conversation which had, perhaps, sounded just a little bit forced--searching for possible double meanings.

He found them.

‘Joe,’ said Jean sharply, ‘what’s the matter with you?’ His anxiety had built up rapidly to a fear that was close to panic. His mouth was too dry to speak. Before he could reply the tape-recorder made the sounds of a door being knocked and opened the negative sound of a sudden silence falling in Daniels’s office.

‘I’ve traced the fault, Mr Donaldson,’ said a new but oddly familiar voice. ‘No need to worry about it any more. Good night, sir.’

‘Good night, and ... and thank you. I must say that was quick ... Hey, Bob! Your girl has left her phone off the hook again. I’ll rep ... ‘

The recording ended abruptly at that point. Jean said, ‘What is the matter with you, Joe? Why are you looking at me like that...?’

‘Nothing,’ said Carson harshly, ‘except for a belated rush of brains to the head. Get your coat and things, Jean, and leave at once. Make sure you don’t forget the scarf you left behind last week, or gloves or anything belonging to you. If anyone asks, and somebody surely will, you’ve spoken to me only during working hours. Stick to that story no matter what. Now get going! Walk home or catch a taxi--but don’t ring one from here, there isn’t time. I’ll explain tomorrow at lunch, if I can. You must get out of here quickly before ... ‘

He broke off suddenly as the realisation came that she was staring, not at him, but at someone behind him. Carson swung around.

He was not really surprised to see Donovan standing there.

‘I’d prefer for you both to sit just where you are,’ said Donovan quietly. ‘Don’t move. Don’t even talk ...’

Donovan was capless, his topcoat collar turned up to hide the collar of his tunic and both hands were in his pockets. One of the pockets, indeed the whole coat on that side, was pulled off balance and deformed by what could have been a length of pipe carried horizontally in the pocket. Carson thought of the movie equivalent of this scene where the baddie’s gun made a barely perceptible bulge in a coat which had been tailored with barely perceptible bulges in mind. He wanted suddenly to laugh, but then he reminded himself that Donovan’s pocket would have concealed the weapon from passers-by when it was being carried vertically, that it came obvious only when it was being levelled, and that to be as obvious as this one was it had to be a very large-calibre weapon fitted with a silencer.

‘This looks bad, Donovan,’ he said, trying to keep his voice from squeaking, ‘but it isn’t as bad as it looks. We were eavesdropping on that meeting--I’ve done it once before on the internal phone which, unlike this one, can’t be traced from the other end. That was the only risk I took and you were right on to it ... But the point I’m trying to make is that we are concerned over the security of your project, too. We are on
your
side...’

It was not so much that Donovan was not believing him, the other man looked as if he just did not care one way or the other. Carson doubted if he was even listening.

‘For God’s sake take that thing out of your pocket!’ Jean burst out. More quietly she added, ‘You look ridiculous.’

Too quickly for them to have done anything, even if they had considered doing it, he had the thing out of his pocket and levelled at them again. It looked as if it would stop an elephant.

‘I don’t want anyone to think,’ said Donovan, ‘that I was pointing a stiffened index finger at them.’

This was much better
, Carson thought. He laughed without overdoing it and said, ‘Doctor Marshall is involved in this because I needed professional advice--about a suspect, that is, not for myself. My own interest in the project stems from the fact that as the company’s chief security officer I considered it my job to protect this project even if the project had no official classification and only a few people inside the company knew it existed--the security officer not being one of them.

‘Maybe I was being over conscientious,’ Carson went on quickly, ‘but a security man is, well, a security man. When my suspicions were first aroused--by small, apparently unimportant and senseless things like irregularities in accounting, planning errors which weren’t caught until they had reached the very top and small, carefully set bonfires which were intended to burn more than waste paper--I began to dig. Gradually I began to turn up more and more information on this project that never was. A lot of it was guesswork, deduction on very slim evidence, but when I began to realise how big it was, that it involved no less than ... ‘

‘If you don’t stop talking,’ said Donovan, ‘I’ll kill you now.’

For a long time nobody spoke. Donovan’s eyes kept flicking to one side and back to them again, like a spectator watching a tennis match from one side of the court. There could be no doubt that he meant what he said but not, Carson hoped, exactly what he said. It was the subject, not talking itself, which was forbidden.

‘You don’t have to worry about an accomplice skulking in the bedroom or kitchen,’ Carson said. ‘There are only the two of us. But I don’t suppose you believe that, either. And as for the project, we have a right to have our explanation heard and I should have thought you would be curious enough to ... ‘

‘He isn’t curious, Joe,’ Jean broke in, an edge of desperation tinging the clinical calm of her voice. ‘He isn’t really listening to you. He doesn’t care what you say...’

‘That’s right, Doctor,’ said Donovan. ‘And you, Mr Carson, have no right to an explanation or anything else. But to save you wasting your breath and because I’m in a hurry to settle this business, I’ll explain very briefly. I am solely responsible for the security of a very important project, perhaps the most important project the world has ever known. That is all I have been told and that is all I need or want to know. The project consists of the people --not very many--who are actively engaged on it and one watch-dog, me, to advise on security matters and to act when and where indicated. Project activities take place in the open alongside the normal day-to-day work of the departments concerned. Paperwork originates, has very limited circulation and is destroyed without going outside. There is no code name, no classification grading, nothing known about it outside except for a remembered but not recorded conversation with someone very high in the administration which took place about five years ago. You see, Mr Daniels thought that naming and classifying the project would attract attention to it, first from the various security organisations engaged in protecting it and later, as the inevitable leaks occurred, from the other side. Mr Daniels went right to the top and his project was so important that the top man agreed to throw away the rules.’

‘I was
sure
something like that had happened ...’ began Carson.

‘And I’m really not listening to you,’ Donovan went on patiently, ‘because when something like this happens my job is not very pleasant, and for reasons which you will understand shortly I cannot afford to become emotionally involved.’

Carson looked at Jean and saw her begin to relax and felt himself doing the same. Donovan was something of a fanatic, obviously, an obeyer of orders without question, a my-country-right-or-wrong type, and an organic weapon which was always loaded and had only to be pointed at his country’s enemies and turned loose. But he was also emerging as a human being, a man who did not, apparently, like scaring people half to death by pointing guns at them.

‘I won’t mention the project to you again,’ said Carson briskly, ‘but I will have to tell what I know to someone. It’s important. I expect you’re going to arrest us, take us somewhere for interrogation to clear up any doubts you may have about our allegiance. That will give me a chance to tell...’

Donovan was looking impatient and a little annoyed. He said, ‘You weren’t listening to me, Mr Carson. I am all alone, I cannot arrest you and I don’t have the facilities for incarceration or interrogation. I’m sorry.’

Carson swallowed and said, ‘Herbie Patterson?’

Donovan nodded.

There had been a few times in his life when Carson had been really afraid, but they had been nothing compared to this. His stomach was one hard, sick knot of panic, and saliva suddenly flooded his mouth, the way it sometimes did during a very bumpy flight and he started thinking about brown paper bags. He wondered if it would hurt very much and for how long. No death, he was sure, was really instantaneous. He thought of the heavy calibre bullet smashing into his face, ploughing through his brain. He thought of what another just like it would do to Jean’s serious, finely boned, lovely face.

Sweat trickled down his forehead, cheeks and neck like fine, cold raindrops and he could not talk. He tried to say something, anything, that would stop or even delay for a few minutes what was going to happen. But his mind, like the small, tight circle of the gun-barrel which threatened them, was going around and around screaming No ...!

‘But we aren’t spies, Mr Donovan,’ Jean said desperately. ‘We, that is, he, stumbled on this almost by accident and felt that it was his duty to protect it ... ‘

‘If I believed you both innocent, which I don’t,’ said Donovan, ‘it still would make no difference. This project, I have been told, is too big for innocent by-standers to be considered important. I’m sorry.’

He sighed, then went on, ‘This will have to appear as a normal, understandable crime, of course--the murder of a girl followed by the suicide of her lover, something like that. I can set the stage afterwards. If there does happen to be a third party hiding in the flat, that would complicate things--but I’m not really concerned with what the local police do or think.

‘But there will be no unnecessary suffering,’ he added. ‘That is why I see no point in prolonging the agony ...’ The gun moved slightly and Carson realised that he had only seconds to live and that Jean had even less. Abruptly a cold fury shattered the tight circle of panic in his mind.

‘Don’t be so blasted considerate! Give yourself a minute to think, damn you! Just suppose we are spies. As the sole guardian of this most important of all projects, you should wonder who we pass our information to and if it is still possible to stop it getting out of the country. You should at least question us to see if ... ‘