Saint and the Fiction Makers (19 page)

‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ Simon said.

‘Good. If you forget, the consequences could be most painful … for you, not for us.’

3

Remembering Warlock’s words early the next afternoon, the Saint silently pondered the fact that the consequences of a slip-up in the Hermetico raid could be most painful for everybody concerned—Warlock included. And it was a slip-up he counted on to end the career of S.W.O.R.D. and its leader. But at the same time he was vividly aware, without Warlock’s needing to warn him, of the folly of trying to include a trap for the raiders in his and Amity’s plan for the theft. Warlock was no stupid man by any standards. He would undoubtedly spot the weak point in the scheme, keep the main part of the plan for immediate use, and simply eliminate the weakness and the two people who had conceived it.

Simon had no intention of being eliminated, but he had every expectation that Warlock would fall into a trap. Hermetico itself, even with no help from the Saint, was a trap. The chances of a party of men entering the place and leaving it without being detected—even with the best laid of plans—were approximately those of a party of arthritic rabbits making their way undisturbed through a kennel of greyhounds.

There were too many unpredictable elements. Merely getting the van (which would be necessary for transporting men and equipment, and later for removing the stolen metals) near the fence and leaving it there during the raid involved a tremendous risk of detection, even if Hermetico did not feel the need for human guards around the periphery. More importantly, Bishop’s and Jones’s check on the infra-red beams had revealed that while there were gaps through which men might enter, they were several feet in the air and so small that the slightest error would break a beam and set off an explosion.

Those problems were just the beginning. At any step a dozen different and deadly things could go wrong. The Saint felt sure that S.W.O.R.D.‘s expedition would fail quite easily enough on its own, without any special help from him. If Warlock was too much of a nut to see that, all the better.

‘I suppose that’s it,’ Simon said to Amity. ‘We’ve finished.’

He turned from the window of his room, from which he had been watching Monk complete the repair to the front gate Simon had wrecked two nights before. Amity was sitting at the worktable with a small dormant volcano of cigarette remains at her elbow and a pencil behind one ear. She was chewing a thumbnail and staring at one of the maps of Hermetico’s innards.

‘We still don’t know if there’s some kind of detection device inside the ventilation duct,’ she said.

‘We’ve done the best we can,’ Simon answered. ‘We can’t be expected to know more than we could possibly know. What happens now is up to Warlock.’

Amity tilted her head to listen.

‘What’s that?’ she asked.

She and Simon went to the window and watched a van move from behind the garage, where it had been parked since its arrival in the morning (Bishop had apparently gone out and bought or rented it), into the drive. A few hours before it had been a big bright thing of shiny aluminium. Now it was painted a dull, non-reflective black. Frug and Bishop opened its back doors, manipulated something inside, and an aluminium ladder-like projection moved horizontally straight out behind the van until it extended over twenty feet. Warlock came out of the front door of the building to watch as a pair of legs were automatically lowered from the extended end of the projection, forming a kind of bridge supported at one end by the truck and at the other by the legs.

‘That’s what they’ll try to get through the beams on,’ the Saint said.

‘Go across it, Bishop,’ Warlock called.

The bridge was about a foot wide and equipped with continuous parallel rows of rollers. To move along it, Bishop, starting at the truck, had only to lie on his large belly and scoot along the rollers like a seal on ice. In a few seconds he was at the outer end.

‘Don’t flap your arms about like that while you’re crossing or you’ll blow us all to kingdom come!’ cried Warlock. ‘And we can’t have the thing sagging like that in the middle.’

The leader went over to the contrivance and inspected it in detail, gave some inaudible orders, and as he turned back towards the house saw Simon and Amity at the window.

‘Have you finished?’ he asked from below their vantage point.

‘Almost,’ Simon told him. ‘We’d like to make a final check before I hand over the plan.’

‘Good!’ Warlock called back. ‘That’s fast work, Mr. Klein. I’ve got together all the equipment you suggested. You can give the whole group a briefing when you’re ready. We’ll meet in the planning room.’

Warlock went into the house. While her and Simon’s heads were still out of the window, Amity whispered to him.

‘Isn’t there anything we can do to stop this?’ she asked.

‘I think Hermetico will stop them,’ Simon replied. ‘Our best bet is to worry about escaping from here while most of them are gone tonight. I might even be able to follow them to Hermetico and be sure their plans get upset.’

‘What do you think he’ll do to us if we don’t escape?’

‘I don’t know … and I don’t like not knowing.’

The van was being moved back behind the garage. Only a few more seconds of whispers beyond the windowsill would be possible.

‘How do we escape?’ Amity asked.

‘If you have any ideas, we’ll dance.’ Simon let his voice rise back to normal as he pulled his head into the room. ‘We’ll deserve a celebration after all this work.’

Simon waited until four o’clock to call for the S.W.O.R.D. briefing. Half an hour later he and Amity were accompanied down to the planning room by Monk and Nero Jones; Monk carried the Hermetico model and Jones carried an armload of papers and rolled maps. In the oak-panelled meeting room Warlock and Bishop and Frug were waiting. A blackboard was set up at one end of the long table. Reddish afternoon sun streamed in through the high windows.

When everyone was seated at the table, Warlock stood and addressed them.

‘You are all aware that what we are undertaking tonight is one of the most difficult tasks a group of men have ever risked their lives to accomplish—but the rewards are worth the risk. After the work of this one night none of us will ever need to work again. Of course S.W.O.R.D. deserves to go on, and I hope we—or some of us—will be together on other adventures. However, no one will need to work, so those who want to can reasonably think of tonight as the gateway to an easy and luxurious future.’

Simon, who had no inclination to listen scornfully to praise of adventures and luxurious futures—two things he looked forward to confidently himself—nevertheless was amused by Warlock’s blithe propaganda. It set the tone perfectly for his own lecture which was to follow. The Saint’s plan was to radiate confidence and happy enthusiasm about the whole Hermetico scheme. The less guarded and apprehensive the raiders were, the more likely they were to run into trouble. Simon would mention only the more cheerful prospects, underplaying the dangers and not referring to certain pitfalls that had occurred to him as possibilities which he had somehow failed to include in the plans he was presenting to S.W.O.R.D.

Warlock was continuing his sanguine speech, looking from one face to another.

‘I’ve heard you all talk about your ambitions. Now’s the time to keep them in mind. Frug can have that stable of racehorses now. Nero can buy that wicked night club. Bishop can have his yacht. Monk can even have his harem, I suppose.’

There was nervous laughter around the table. Nero Jones licked his pale lips. Frug was clasping his hands so tightly in front of him that his fingers were like white knobby icicles.

‘And now, Mr. Klein …’

Simon stood up on cue and went to the head of the table. The plans lay in front of him and the blackboard was behind him.

‘You all know already how you’re going to get through the fence and the infra-red beams. There’ll be no problem as long as everybody does his job properly. Judging from the view from my window, the bridge you’ve made works like a charm. The truck will back up to the fence, then Frug will cut the hole, taking precautions to avoid the alarm going off when the mesh is clipped.’

Using the blackboard for illustrative sketches, the Saint showed them how that would be done. He described in detail the extension of the aluminium bridge through the barrier of infra-red beams to the walkway which surrounded the building.

‘The circular walk, directly next to the building itself, is unprotected,’ he said confidently. ‘The designers seem to have felt that nobody would ever be able to force his way through the fence and the infra-red mine field. Their next really strong line of defence doesn’t come until the bottom of the elevator shaft—which we plan to bypass completely.’

The Saint held up a chart of the surface area of Hermetico.

‘Briefly, when you’ve crossed the bridge, you go around to the left until you come to these two large ventilators. One is the intake and one is the extractor. The fan of the extractor is above the surface here, in the neck of the duct. You’ll cut the duct right at the ground level, below the fan, without severing the wiring …’

Warlock held up his hand politely.

‘The key to the operation,’ he interrupted, ‘is not to disconnect anything that might set off an alarm.’

‘Right,’ said the Saint. ‘But there’s nothing to worry about, really, since we’ve pinpointed all the danger spots already. In case an alarm should be set off, Nero will be staked out with a machine gun covering the front door. He should be able to keep the opposition inside until you can get away to the van.’

‘What about other doors?’ Bishop asked uneasily.

‘There’s only one other door, here on the left side. You’ll pass it on your way to the ventilators. From where Nero will be, he can get an angle on both doors. Remember, this place was built strictly with defence in mind. It’s made to withstand bombs and full-scale invasions. There’s just no way for the defenders to get out and mount an offensive.’

Bishop and the others looked satisfied, and Warlock looked downright smug. It was Simon’s own business if he did not share their lack of respect for Hermetico’s architect. The defenders did not need to mount an offensive. A close study of the plans had led him to believe that a series of very small square openings around the upper part of the dome of the otherwise windowless structure were intended for use as gunports. The guards could lay down a deadly barrage without leaving the protection of the building. They could not see the area immediately next to the building but anything near and beyond the perimeter of the outer fence was at their mercy.

‘After the ventilator is opened,’ Simon continued, ‘Frug will be lowered down it on a harness. He’ll arrive at the main vault, which he’ll be able to see through a large grating. He’ll knock out the two guards who’re stationed in the vault by shooting them with drugged darts. Then he’ll take off the grating and Bishop will join him in the vault. The object then is simply to take over the whole place. Using keys they’ll take from the vault guards, Frug and Bishop will get out of the vault and make a sneak attack on the control centre. Then they can shut down the alarm system, and the rest of you can simply walk in the front door …’

Frug did not look at all pleased with the plan.

‘Why not just hoist the gold and stuff up the ventilator shaft?’ he asked.

‘We thought of that,’ Simon answered. ‘But the vault is three hundred feet down, and you’d spend all night getting out just a fraction of the loot … assuming you had all night, and nobody discovered you in the vault. I think you’ll be much safer getting command of Hermetico in one quick stroke, then using their facilities for moving the heavy stuff up to the van.’

Warlock nodded approvingly.

‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘It’s the only way.’

‘It is unless you’re just after a few souvenirs,’ the Saint added. ‘As I understand it, you intend to empty the place.’

‘Exactly,’ said Warlock.

Bishop was wriggling in his chair.

‘What about guards up top?’ he asked.

‘There’ll probably be one in a booth by the elevator on the ground floor,’ Simon said. ‘But before he knows you’re in the building you’ll have taken control of the alarm and defence system, so it shouldn’t be much of a problem to handle him. We can go into details about all these things in a minute. There’s also a sleeping room for guards just off the entrance alcove. Probably there’ll be half a dozen men in there. The Hermetico defence plan seems to depend almost entirely on automatic devices for warnings of trouble. Most of the guards can sleep, since they don’t actually have to stand guard, but they do constitute a kind of defence force that can be called on by automatic or manual alarms at any second.’

The conference went on for over an hour and then, when Simon had answered every objection and explained every detail of the operation, moved to the basement laboratory and store rooms. There, for another hour, Warlock’s men brought together various pieces of equipment and discussed and tested them. Warlock, having followed the formation of the Saint’s and Amity’s plan on television, had foreseen most of the needs of the expedition and made certain they were on hand earlier in the day.

‘Everything seems to be in order,’ he said finally. ‘We’ll eat in a while and get some rest. Then we’ll have some rehearsals with the equipment at nine o’clock before we load it in the van. The last thing we’ll do is test all the weapons. We’ll leave for Hermetico before midnight.’

‘And what do we do?’ Amity muttered to Simon in the midst of the clatter and talk at the meeting’s end.

‘We’ll just relax here with our window open and listen for explosions off in the direction of Hermetico …’

4

But for once the Saint underestimated fate’s fondness for involving him in adventure—in this case adventure within adventure. He was not to be allowed to sit quietly in his room listening for the explosive demise of Warlock and his doughty band, nor even to spend the night engineering his own and Amity’s escape from S.W.O.R.D. headquarters. An explosion took place, and it involved Warlock, but it occurred in Simon’s own room.