The Power (11 page)

Tweed walked beside Paula, told her the gist of his talk
with Howard. They turned up St Edmund's Lane. Butler
was following several paces behind them, reeling as though
he was drunk. His right hand gripped the Walther inside
his windcheater as they plodded uphill and took the long way back, ignoring the short cut to the hotel. Paula was
relieved: the path which turned off the lane was a tunnel of
eerie darkness.

'What on earth is going on?' she asked. 'That business about not being able to reach the PM. I'm scared.'

'With good reason. Interesting that Washington busi
ness - and now Dillon turns up out of the
blue. My
thoughts are turning towards America.'

'Why America? Because of Dillon's arrival?'

'Not entirely. Something rather more sinister.'

'Sorry. Perhaps I'm being rather thick. Probably fatigue.
And I do want to drive with Bob Newman back to Bodmin Moor tomorrow to talk again to Celia Yeo. What is it about
the States which has suddenly grabbed your attention?'

'America,' Tweed repeated, half to himself, 'where
there is so much money and
power.
'

'Power?' Paula queried.

'Work it out for yourself.'

7

Feeling dopey when she woke the following morning in her
double bedroom, Paula bathed, dressed for the moor,
fixed her face in two minutes and only then pulled back the
curtains. She stared at the view in disbelief. Something
very weird had happened overnight. The River Camel had
disappeared!

She stared at the vast bed of sand, rippled in places,
stretching from shore to shore. When she
phoned Tweed

he said he was just ready for breakfast, so why didn't she
come down to the suite?

She was closing her door when another door opened and
Pete Nield appeared. He fingered his moustache and
grinned.

'Good morning. Just checking to make sure you're not
wandering off on your own.'

'Makes me feel like a ruddy prisoner,' she mocked him.
She liked Pete. 'I'm on my way to Tweed's suite. Come and
join us.'

'What on earth has happened?' she asked as Tweed
unlocked his door and ushered her inside. She went over to
his extensive bay window which gave a better view. 'The
river has vanished.'

'Leaving behind a vast sandbank,' he explained as he
joined her. 'There's a very high tidal rise and fall here. The
tide is out now.' He pointed to his left through a side window. 'That rocky cliff protruding at the edge of the
town blots out a view of the open sea. Straight across from
us is Porthilly Cove. No water there at all at the moment.
There is a narrow channel which remains along the shore of
that weird village over there.'

'Where is that?'

'Place called Rock. A small ferry shuttles back and forth
between Padstow and Rock. At low tide - now - the ferry
departs from a small cove at the base of the rocky cliff.
When the tide rises it departs from the harbour.'

'What a strange place. This is my idea of Cornwall.'

She gazed to her left, beyond Rock towards the invisible
Atlantic. The far shore was forbidding. Climbing up
steeply was a wilderness of boulders, scrub and heathland.
A sterile, inhospitable area. Yet further in past Rock there
were green hill slopes undulating against the horizon as the
sun shone out of a clear blue sky.

'You haven't heard that tape on the recorder I had
hidden in my pocket when I talked to Cook,' Nield pointed
out. 'It doesn't add much to what Buchanan later told
us.'

'Let's hear it quickly, then get down to breakfast,'
Tweed urged.

He stood with Paula staring out at the endless sand
bank. Nield placed his small machine on a table, ran throug
h the first part, then pressed the 'play' button.

'I spent time putting her at her ease,' Nield explained. 'Now, listen...

'Cook, can you tell me what you saw when the kitchen door was opened and closed again?' Nield's voice.

'It was an 'orrible shock, I can tell you ...' Cook's
voice quavered, then became firm. 'He was
standin'
there with this awful gun. A short wide barrel - bit like a
piece of drainpipe. He aimed at the floor, something shot out and the place was full of a greyish sort of
vapour.'

'The tear-gas,' Nield's voice broke in gently. 'But you
probably had a good look at him?'

'Like a nightmare. That woollen hood over 'is 'ead
with slits for the eyes. He moved gracefully, like a ballet
dancer. But those eyes - without feeling, without any
soul. A chill ran down my spine. Those eyes were blank
- like a ghoul's eyes.'

'What happened next?' Nield pressed, still gently.

'We're all choking. Tears running down our faces. Then this beast walks straight up to me and 'its me on
the 'ead with something. I just dropped to the floor and
didn't know what was 'appenin' till I came round ...'

'That's the relevant part,' Nield said. He switched off the recorder. 'There's more but nothing informative.'

'Interesting that reference to moving with the grace of
a ballet dancer,' said Tweed. 'Time for breakfast.' He
picked up a copy of the
Daily Telegraph
which had been
slipped under his door. The late edition. They must fly
them down.' He showed them the headline.

HUGE IRA BOMB DESTROYS LONDON
BUILDING

That's not the significant item. I'll show you in the dining-room.' Butler joined them outside and they took the lift to
the ground floor. Tweed held on to Paula's arm, keeping
up the fiction that she was an invalid.

In the dining-room Tweed sat with Paula at a table with
a panoramic view of the harbour over the grey slate
rooftops of the small port. After ordering a substantial breakfast of bacon and eggs he folded the paper, handed
it to Paula.

That's the intriguing bit,' he told her, keeping his voice down.

'GHOST' ROADBLOCKS IN WEST COUNTRY
LAST NIGHT

Paula read the text below the headline. The gist was that a series of roadblocks had been established on all the main
routes out of Cornwall. Motorists had been stopped and
told it was a census to check the amount of traffic passing
through. The strange twist was that no police force or
council office had any knowledge of them.