The Satan Bug (31 page)

"Don't touch him!" I shouted hoarsely. "Touch him and you'll die too. He must have picked up the toxin when he brushed his shoe with his hand then touched his mouth. Nothing on earth can save him now. Stand back.

Keep well clear of him."

He took twenty seconds to die, the kind of twenty seconds that will stay with a man in his nightmares till he draws his last breath on earth. I had seen many men die, but even those who had died in bullet and shrapnel-torn agony had done so peacefully and quietly compared to this man whose body, in the incredibly convulsive violence of its death throes, twisted and flung itself into the most fantastic and impossible contortions. Twice in the last shocking seconds before death he threw his racked and tortured body clear off the ground and so high in the air that I could have passed a table beneath him. And then, as abruptly and unexpectedly as it had begun, it was all over and he was no more than a strangely small and shapeless bundle of clothes lying face downwards in the muddy earth. My mouth was kiln-dry and full of the taste of salt, the ugly taste of fear.

I can't say how long we stood there in the heavy cold rain, staring at the dead man. A long time, I think. And then we looked at each other, and each one of us knew what the others were capable of thinking only one thing. Who was next? In the pale wash of light from the lamp I still held in one hand, we all stared at each other, one half of our senses and minds outgoing and screwed up to the highest pitch of intensity and perception to detect the first signs of death in another, the other half turned inwards to detect the first signs in themselves. Then, all at once, I cursed savagely, perhaps at myself, or my cowardice, or at Gregori or at the botulinus virus, I don't know, turned abruptly and headed for the byre, taking the lamp with me, leaving the others standing there round the dead man in the rain-filled pitchy darkness like darkly-petrified mourners at some age-old heathen midnight rites.

I was looking for a hose and I found one almost immediately. I carried it outside, screwed it on to a standing plug and turned the tap on full: the results in the way of volume and pressure would have done justice to any city hydrant. I clambered awkwardly on to a hay wagon that was standing nearby and said to the General, " Come on, sir, you first."

He came directly under the earthward-pointed nozzle and the jet of water on head and shoulders from a distance of only a few inches made him stumble and all but fall. But he stuck it gamely for all of the half-minute that I insisted he remain under the hose, and by the tune I was finished he was as sodden as if he'd spent the night in the river and shivering so violently that I could hear his teeth chatter above the hiss of the water: but by the time he was finished I knew that any toxin that might have been clinging to face or body would have been completely washed away. The other four all submitted to it in turn and then Hardanger did the same for me. The force of the water was such that it was like being belaboured by a non-stop series of far from lightweight clubs and the water itself was ice-cold: but when I thought of the man who had died and how he had died a few bruises and the risk of pneumonia didn't even begin to be worth considering. When he had finished with me Hardanger switched off the water and said quietly, "

Sorry, Cavell. You had the right of it."

" It was my fault," I said. I didn't mean my voice to sound dull and lifeless but that was the way it came out, to my ears anyway. " I should have warned him. I should have told him not to touch his mouth or nose with his hand."

" He should have thought of that himself," Hardanger said, his voice abnormally matter-of-fact. " He knew the dangers as well as you—

they've been published in every paper in the land to-day. Let's go and see if the farmer has a phone. Not that it'll make much difference now.

Gregori knows that the police Jaguar is too hot to hang on to for a second longer than is necessary. He's won all along the line, damn his black soul, and nothing is going to stop him now. Twelve hours he said.

Twelve hours and then he would be done."

" Twelve hours from now Gregori will be dead," I said.

" What?" I could sense him staring at me. " What did you say?"

" Hell be dead," I repeated. " Before dawn."

" It's all right," Hardanger said. Cavell's mind had cracked at last, but let's play it casual, let's not any of us make a song and dance about it. He took my arm and started out for the lamp-lit rectangles which showed where the house stood. " The sooner this is over the sooner we'll all get the rest and food and sleep we need."

" I’ll rest and sleep when I've killed Gregori," I said. " I'm going to kill him to-night. First I get Mary back. Then I'll kill him."

" Mary will be all right, Cavell." Mary in that madman's hands, that was what had sent Cavell's last few remaining grey cells tottering over the brink, he thought. " He'll let her go, he'll have no reason to do anything to her. And you had to do what you did. You thought that if she stayed there with us in the cider house she would die. Isn't that it, Cavell?"

" I'm sure the superintendent is right, my boy." The General was walking on my other side now, and his voice was quiet because loud voices excite the unhinged. "She won't be harmed."

I said rudely, to both, " If I'm round the bend, what the hell does that make you two?"

Hardanger stopped, tightened his grip on my arm and peered at me. He knew that those whose minds have gone off the rails never talk about it, for the simple reason that they are unshakably convinced that their minds are still on the track. He said carefully, " I don't think I understand."

" You don't. But you will." I said to the General: " You must persuade the Cabinet to go on with this evacuation of the Central London area.

Continuous radio and TV broadcasts. They'll have no difficulty in persuading the people to leave, you can believe that. It shouldn't cause much trouble—that area's pretty well unlived in by night, anyway." I turned again to Hardanger. " Have two hundred of your best men armed.

A gun for me, too—and a knife. I know exactly what Gregori intends to do to-night. I know exactly what he hopes to achieve. I know exactly how he intends to leave the country—and exactly where he will be leaving from."

"How do you know, my boy?" The General's voice was so quiet that I could hardly hear above the drumming of the rain.

" Because Gregori talked too much. Sooner or later they all talk too much. Gregori was cagier than most, even when he was convinced that we would all be dead in a minute he still said very little. But that little was too much. And I think I've really known ever since we found MacDonald's body."

"You must have heard things that I didn't hear," Hardanger said sourly.

" You heard it all. You heard him say he was going to London, if he really wanted the bug set loose in London to have Mordon destroyed he'd have stayed in Mordon to see what happened and have had some stooge do the job in London. But he has no interest in seeing Mordon destroyed, he never had. There's something he has to do in London. Another of his never-ending red herrings—the Communist red herring, of course, was purely fortuitous, he'd no hand in that at all. That's the first thing. The second—that he was going to achieve some great ambition to-night. The third— that he had twice saved Henriques from the electric chair. That shows what kind of a man he is—and I don't mean a criminal defense lawyer of the U.S. Bar Association—and what kind of ambition he has in mind: I'll take long odds not only that he's on the Interpol files but also that he's an ex big-time American racketeer who has been deported to Italy—and the line of business in which he used to specialize would make very interesting reading, because the criminal leopards, even the biggest cats in the jungle, never change their spots. The fourth thing is that he expects to be clear of this country in twelve hours' time. And the fifth thing is that this is Saturday night. Put all those things together and see what you get."

" Suppose you tell us," Hardanger said impatiently.

So I told them.

The rain still fell as vertically, as heavily as ever, just as heavily as when we had left that farmhouse some hours previously, where the torrential rain in conjunction with the quick evacuation of the area had robbed the botulinus toxin of all victims other than the unfortunate policeman who had died so terribly before our eyes. Now, at twenty minutes past three in the morning, the rain was ice-cold, but I didn't really feel it. All I could feel was my exhaustion, the harsh stabbing pain in my right ribs that came with every breath I took and the continuous rending worry that, in spite of the confidence I'd shown to the General and Hardanger, I might be hopelessly wrong after all and Mary lost to me for ever. And even if I were right, she might still as easily be lost to me. With a conscious and almost desperate effort of will, I turned my mind to other things.

The high-walled courtyard where I'd been standing for the past three hours was dark and deserted, as dark and deserted as the heart of London itself. Evacuation of the centre of the city, the temporarily homeless going to prepared halls, ballrooms and theatres, had begun shortly after six o'clock, just after the last of the offices, businesses and shops had closed: it had been hastened by radio broadcasts at nine o'clock saying that, according to the latest message received, the time for the release of the botulinus toxin had been advanced from four a.m.

to half past two: but there had been no hurry, no panic, no despair, in fact there would have been no sense of anything unusual happening had it not been for the unusual number of people carrying suitcases: the phlegmatic Londoners who had seen the City set on fire and suffered a hundred nights of mass area bombing during the war weren't to be stampeded into anything for anybody.

Between half past nine and ten o'clock over a thousand troops had combed their methodical way through the heart of the city checking that every last man, woman and child had been moved to safety, that no one had been inadvertently overlooked. At half past eleven a darkened drifting police launch had nosed silently into the north bank of the river and put me ashore on the Embankment, just below Hungerford Bridge. At midnight troops and police, all of them armed, had completely sealed off the entire area, including the bridges across the Thames. At one o'clock a power failure on a large scale had blacked out the better part of a square mile of the city—the square mile cordoned off by troops and police.

Twenty past three. Fifty minutes after the timed release of the botulinus toxin. It was time to go. I eased the borrowed Webley in its ill-fitting holster, checked the knife that was strapped, handle downwards, to my left forearm, and moved out into the darkness.

I'd never seen a picture of, far less visited, the new helicopter port on the North Bank, but an Inspector of the Metropolitan Police had briefed me so exhaustively that by the time he had finished I could have found my way up there blind-folded. And that, to all intents and purposes, was exactly what I was. Blind-folded. Blind. In that blacked-out city and oh that weeping overcast night, the darkness was just one degree short of absolute.

I had been told that there were three different ways up to the heliport, perched on the roof of the station, a hundred feet above the streets of London. There were two lifts, but with the power failure those would be out of operation. Between those lifts was a glassed-in circular staircase without a shred of cover from top to bottom, using which would be as neat a way as any of committing suicide if there was a reception committee waiting and I could not see Gregori as a man who would leave his main line of approach unguarded. And then there was the third way, the fire-escape on the other side of the station. That was the only way in for me.

I walked two hundred yards from the courtyard along a narrow cobbled lane. When the wall gave way to a high wooden fence I reached for the top, pulled myself up, slipped quietly down on the other side and set off along the railway tracks.

The reference book compilers who assert that Qapham Junction has more sets of parallel tracks than any place in Britain wouldn't go around making silly statements like that if they'd tried this lot on a pitch black October night with the sleety rain falling about their ears. There wasn't a single piece of ironware in the whole interminable width of those tracks that I didn't find that night, usually with my ankles and shins.

Railway lines, wires, signalling gear, switch gear, hydrants, platforms where there shouldn't have been platforms —I found them all. To add to my discomfort the burnt cork that had been so heavily rubbed into my face and hands was beginning to run, and burnt cork tastes exactly as you would expect it to taste: and when it gets in your eyes it hurts. The only hazard I didn't have to contend with was live rails— the power had been switched off.

I found the fence on the other side of the track easily enough, just by walking into it. Once down in the lane on the other side I turned left and made my way towards the fire-escape which came down, I had been told, into a small recessed court. I found the court, crossed the entrance and flattened myself against the far wall. The fire-escape was there all right, just barely discernible twenty feet away against the fractionally lighter darkness of the sky, gaunt and stark and angular and zigzagging upwards out of sight. The first two or three flights of the fire-escape were invisible, lost against the darkness of high walls beyond.

For three minutes I stood there, showing as many signs of life as a wooden Indian. Then I heard it—even above the drumming of the sleet on my sodden shoulders and the sound of water running in the gutters, I heard it: the slight shuffle of a shoe on the pavement as someone changed his cramped position. The sound didn't come again, but then I didn't need to hear it again. Once was enough. Someone was standing directly under the lowermost platform of the fire-escape and if he turned out to be true soul of innocence doing it for his health's sake it would be surprising, to say the least. It was also going to be unfortunate for him, but he wouldn't be caring much when he was dead.