Fear is the Key (28 page)

I looked out at the smashed plane cabin for a
long time, or what seemed like a long time, and
when I turned away Vyland caught my right arm.
I pushed him off and he fell on the duckboard
floor, staring up at me with wide, panic-stricken
eyes. His mouth was open, his breathing coming
in quick, harsh gasps, and his entire body was
trembling. Royale was still in control of himself,
but only just: ivory knuckled hands rested on his
knees and his eyes were moving constantly about
the observation chamber, a hunted animal seeking
a way to escape.

‘I've waited a long time for this, Vyland,' I went
on. ‘I've waited two years and four months and
I don't believe I've ever thought for five minutes
about anything else in all that time.

‘I've nothing left to live for, Vyland, you can
understand that. I've had enough. I suppose it's
macabre, but I'd kind of like to stay here beside
them. I've stopped kidding myself about the point
in carrying on living. There's none, not any more,
so I might as well stay here. There's no point now,
because all that's kept me going was the promise
I made myself on the third of May, 1958, that I'd
never rest again till I'd sought out and destroyed
the man who had destroyed life for me. That I've
done, and there's no more now. It should spoil it
for me, I suppose, the thought that you'll be here
also, but on the other hand I suppose it's kind of
fitting. The killers and their victims, all together in
the end.'

‘You're mad,' Vyland whispered. ‘You're mad.
What are you saying?'

‘Only this. Remember that electrical switch that
was left on the table? The one you asked about
and I said “We won't be needing that any more”?
Well we won't. Not any more. That was the master
control for the ballast release switches and without
it the ballast release is completely jinxed. And
without releasing ballast we can never rise again.
Here we are, Vyland, and here we stay. For ever.'

The sweat poured down our faces in rivulets. The
temperature had risen to almost 120° Fahrenheit,
the air was humid and now almost indescribably
foul. Our hoarse rasping gasps as we fought for
oxygen was the only sound in that tiny steel ball
resting on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, 480 feet
below the level of the sea.

‘You jinxed it?' Vyland's voice was a weak
incredulous whisper, his eyes near-crazed with
fear. ‘We're – we're stuck here? Here, in this––'
His voice faded away as he turned his head and
started looking around with all the terror-stricken
desperation of a cornered rat about to die. Which
was all he was.

‘There's no way out, Vyland,' I assured him
grimly. ‘Only through that entrance hatch. Maybe
you want to try opening it? – at this depth there
can only be a pressure of fifty tons or so on the
outside of it. And if you could open it – well, you'd
be flattened half an inch thick against the opposite
bulkhead. Don't take it too badly, Vyland – the last
few minutes will be agony such as you've never
believed man could know, you'll be able to see
your hands and your face turning blue and purple
in the last few seconds before all the major blood
vessels in your lungs start to rupture, but soon after
that you'll –'

‘Stop it, stop it!' Vyland screamed. ‘For God's
sake stop it! Get us out of here, Talbot, get us
out of here! I'll give you anything you like, one
million, two millions, five millions. You can have
it all, Talbot, you can have it all!' His mouth and
face worked like a maniac's, his eyes were staring
out of his head.

‘You make me sick,' I said dispassionately. ‘I
wouldn't get you out if I could, Vyland. And it
was just in case that I might be tempted that I left
the control switch up in the rig. We've got fifteen,
maybe twenty minutes to live, if you can call the
screaming agony we'll know living. Or, rather, the
agony you'll know.' I put my hand to my coat,
ripped off the central button and thrust it into my
mouth. ‘I won't know a thing, I've been prepared
for this for months. That's no button, Vyland, it's
a concentrated cyanide capsule. One bite on that
and I'll be dead before I know I'm dying.'

That got him. Dribbling from a corner of his
mouth and babbling incoherently, he flung himself
on me, with what purpose in mind I don't know.
He was too crazed to know. He was too crazed
to know himself. But I had been expecting it, a
heavy spanner lay to hand and he'd picked it
up and swung it before he even touched me.
It wasn't much of a blow, but it was enough:
he reeled backwards, struck his head against the
casing and collapsed heavily on the floor.

That left Royale. He was half-sitting, half-crouched
on his little canvas stool, his sphinx-like control
had completely snapped, he knew he had only
minutes to live and his face was working overtime
making up for all those expressions it hadn't used
in those many years. He saw closing in on himself
what he had meted out to so many victims over so
long a time and the talons of fear were squeezing
deep, reaching for the innermost corners of his
mind. He wasn't panic-stricken yet, not completely
out of control as Vyland had gone, but his capacity
for reason, for thought, was gone. All he could
think to do was what he always thought to do in
an emergency and that was of using his deadly
little black gun. He had it out now and it was
pointing at me, but I knew it meant nothing, it
was purely a reflex action and he had no intention
of using it. For the first time Royale had met a
problem that couldn't be solved by a squeeze of
the trigger finger.

‘You're scared, Royale, aren't you?' I said softly.
It was an effort now even to speak, my normal
breathing rate of about sixteen was now up to
fifty, and it was difficult to get the time to force
out a word.

He said nothing, just looked at me, and all the
devils in hell were in the depth of those black
eyes. For a second time in forty-eight hours, and
this time in spite of the humidity, the foul and
evil-smelling air in that cabin, I could have sworn I
caught the smell of new-turned, moist, fresh earth.
The smell you get from an open grave.

‘The big bad hatchet-man,' I whispered huskily.
‘Royale. Royale the killer. Think of all the people
who used to tremble, who still do tremble, whenever
they hear the breath of your name? Don't you
wish they could see you now? Don't you, Royale?
Don't you wish they could see you trembling? You
are trembling, Royale, aren't you? You're terrified
as you've never been terrified in your life. Aren't
you, Royale?'

Again he said nothing. The devils were still
in his eyes, but they weren't watching me any
more, they were riding hard on Royale, they were
digging deep into the dark recesses of that dark
mind, the shift and play of expression on his
contorted face was evidence enough that they
were pulling him every which way but the overall
pull was towards the dark precipice of complete
breakdown, of that overmastering fear that wears
the cloak of insanity.

‘Like it, Royale?' I said hoarsely. ‘Can't you feel
your throat, your lungs starting to hurt? I can feel
mine – and I can see your face starting to turn blue.
Not much, yet, just starting under the eyes. The
eyes and the nose, they always show up first.' I
thrust my hand into my display pocket, brought
out a little rectangle of polished chrome. ‘A mirror,
Royale. Don't you want to look in it? Don't you
want to look in it? Don't you want to see –?'

‘Damn you to hell, Talbot!' He knocked the mirror
flying out of my hand, his voice was halfway
between a sob and a scream. ‘I don't want to die!
I don't want to die!'

‘But your victims did, didn't they, Royale?' I
could no longer speak intelligibly, it took me four
or five breaths to pant out that one sentence. ‘They
all had their minds bent on suicide and you just
helped them out of the depths of the kindness of
your heart. Isn't that it, Royale?'

‘You're going to die, Talbot.' His voice was a
frenzied croak, the shaking gun was lined up on
my heart. ‘It's coming to you now.'

‘I'm laughing. I'm laughing out loud. I've got a
Cyanide tablet between my teeth.' My chest was
hurting, the inside of the observation chamber
was beginning to swim before my eyes. I knew I
couldn't last out much longer. ‘Go ahead,' I gasped.
‘Go ahead and pull the trigger.'

He looked at me with crazy unfocused eyes that
had hardly any contact left with reality and fumbled
the little black gun into its holster. The beating
he'd taken over his head was now beginning to
take its toll, he was in an even worse state than I
was. He began to sway in his seat, and suddenly
fell forward on to his hands and knees, shaking his
head from side to side as if to clear away a fog. I
leaned across him, barely conscious myself, closed
my fingers over the control knob of the carbon
dioxide absorption unit and turned it from minimum
all the way up to maximum. It would take
two minutes, perhaps three, before there would
be any noticeable improvement, maybe the best
part of ten minutes before the atmosphere inside
that chamber was anything like back to normal.
Right then, it made no difference at all. I bent over
Royale.

‘You're dying, Royale,' I gasped out. ‘How does
it feel to die, Royale? Tell me, please, how does
it feel? How does it feel to be buried in a tomb
five hundred feet beneath the surface of the sea?
How does it feel to know that you'll never breathe
that wonderful, clean, fresh air of the world above
again? How does it feel to know that you'll never
see the sun again? How does it feel to die? Tell
me, Royale, how does it feel?' I bent still closer
to him. ‘Tell me, Royale, how would you like to
live?'

He didn't get it, he was that far gone.

‘How would you like to live, Royale?' I almost
had to shout the words.

‘I want to live.' His voice was a harsh moan of
pain, his clenched right fist was beating weakly
on the deck of the chamber. ‘Oh, God, I want
to live.'

‘Maybe I can give you life yet. Maybe. You're
down on your hands and knees, aren't you, Royale?
You're begging for your life, aren't you, Royale?
I've sworn I'd see the day when you were on
your hands and knees begging for your life and
now you're doing just that, aren't you, Royale?'

‘Damn you, Talbot!' His voice was a hoarse,
despairing, agonized shout, he was swaying on his
hands and knees now, his head turning from side
to side, his eyes screwed shut. Down there on the
floor the air must have been foul and contaminated
to a degree, almost completely without oxygen,
and his face was really beginning to show the first
tinges of blue. He was breathing with the rapidity
of a panting dog, each brief indrawn breath a
whoop of agony. ‘Get me out of here! For God's
sake get me out of here.'

‘You're not dead yet, Royale,' I said in his ear.
‘Maybe you will see the sun again. But maybe you
won't. I lied to Vyland, Royale. The master switch
for the ballast release is still in position – I just
altered a couple of wires, that's all. It would take
you hours to find out which two. I could fix it in
thirty seconds.'

He stopped swaying his head, looked up at
me with a blue-tinged sweat-sheened face, with
bloodshot fear-darkened eyes that carried far back
in them the faintest flicker of hope. ‘Get me out
of here, Talbot,' he whispered. He didn't know
whether there was any hope or whether this was
just a further refinement of torture.

‘I could do it, Royale, couldn't I? See, I've got
the screwdriver right here.' I showed it to him,
smiled down without any compassion. ‘But I've
still got this cyanide tablet in my mouth, Royale.'
I showed him the button, gripped between my
teeth.

‘Don't!' A hoarse cry. ‘Don't bite on that! You're
mad, Talbot, mad. God, you're not human.' Coming
from Royale that was good.

‘Who killed Jablonsky?' I asked quietly. It was
becoming easier to breathe now, but not down
where Royale was.

‘I did. I killed him,' Royale moaned.

‘How?'

‘I shot him. Through the head. He was asleep.'

‘And then?'

‘We buried him in the kitchen garden.' Royale
was still moaning and swaying, but he was putting
everything he could muster into his reeling
thoughts to try to express them coherently: his
nerve, for the moment, was gone beyond recall,
he was talking for his life and he knew it.

‘Who's behind Vyland?'

‘Nobody.'

‘Who's behind Vyland?' I repeated implacably.

‘Nobody.' His voice was almost a scream he was
so desperate to convince me. ‘There were two
men, a Cuban minister in the government, and
Houras, a permanent civil servant in Colombia.
But not now.'

‘What happened to them?'

‘They were – they were eliminated,' Royale said
wearily. ‘I did it.'

‘Who else did you eliminate since you've been
working for Vyland?'

‘Nobody.'

I showed him the button between my teeth and
he shuddered.

‘The pilot. The pilot flying the fighter that shot
down this plane. He – he knew too much.'

‘That's why we could never find that pilot,' I
nodded. ‘My God, you're a sweet bunch. But you
made a mistake Royale, didn't you? You shot him
too soon. Before he'd told you exactly where the
DC had crashed … Vyland give you orders for
all this?'

He nodded.

‘Did you hear my question?' I demanded.

‘Vyland gave me orders for all of that.'

There was a brief silence. I stared out of the window,
saw some strange shark-like creature swim
into sight, stare incuriously at both bathyscaphe
and plane, then vanish into the stygian blackness
beyond with a lazy flick of its tail. I turned and
tapped Royale on the shoulder.

‘Vyland,' I said. ‘Try to bring him round.'

While Royale stooped over his employer I reached
above him for the oxygen regenerating switch. I
didn't want the air getting too fresh too soon.

After maybe a minute or so Royale managed
to bring Vyland to. Vyland's breathing was very
distressed, he was pretty far gone in the first stages
of anoxia, but for all that he still had some breath
left, for when he opened his eyes, stared wildly
around and saw me with the button still between
my teeth he started screaming, time and again, a
horrible nerve-drilling sound in that tiny confined
metal space. I reached forward to smack his face
to jolt him out of his panic-stricken hysteria, but
Royale got there first. Royale had had his tiny
fleeting glimpse of hope and he meant to play that
hope to the end of the way. He lifted his hand and
he wasn't any too gentle with Vyland.

‘Stop it!' Royale shook him violently. ‘Stop it,
stop it, stop it! Talbot says he can fix this machine.
Do you hear me? Talbot says he can fix it!'

Slowly the screaming died away and Vyland
stared at Royale with eyes where the first faint
flicker of comprehension was beginning to edge
in on the fear and the madness.

‘What did you say?' he whimpered hoarsely.
‘What was that, Royale?'

‘Talbot says he can fix this machine,' Royale
repeated urgently. ‘He says he lied to us, he says
that the switch he left up top wasn't important.
He can fix it!'

‘You – you can fix it, Talbot?' Vyland's eyes
widened until I could see a ring of white all round
the irises, his shaking voice was a prayer, the whole
curve of his body a gesture of supplication. He
wasn't even daring to hope yet, his mind had gone
too deeply into the shadow of the valley of death
to glimpse the light above: or rather he didn't dare
to look, in case there was no light there. ‘You can
get us out of this? Now – even now you –'