The Tightrope Men / The Enemy (50 page)

As we walked towards the buildings I looked around at Cladach Duillich. It was not very big - about a third of a mile long and a quarter-mile across. Life had a poor existence on this rock. What grass had managed to gain a roothold was salt resistant marram, growing in crannies where a poor soil had gathered, and even the dandelions were wizened and sickly growths. The seabirds appeared to like it, though; the rocks were white with their droppings and they wheeled overhead screaming at our movements below.

There were three buildings, all identical, and I noted they were connected by enclosed passages. To one side, on a level bit of ground, was a helicopter pad, empty. I was conducted around the corner to one of the buildings and ushered through the doorway, bidden to wait, and then taken through another doorway. I looked back and realized I had gone through an air lock.

We turned sharply left and into a room where a man in a white coat was sitting at a desk and writing on a pad. He was slightly bald, had a thin face and wore bifocals. He looked up and frowned as he saw me, then said to my escort, ‘What’s this, Max?’

‘I found him wandering about loose. He says he wants to see you.’

Carter’s attention switched to me. ‘Who are you?’

I glanced sideways at Max, and said smoothly, ‘Who I am is for your ears only, Dr Carter.’

Carter sniffed. ‘More cloak and dagger stuff. All right, Max. I’ll take care of this.’

Max nodded and left, and I stripped off the anorak. ‘I hope you don’t mind me getting out of this stuff,’ I said, as I began to take off the waterproof trousers. ‘Too warm for indoors.’

Carter tapped on the desk with his pen. ‘All right. Who are you, and what do you want?’

I tossed the trousers aside and sat down. ‘I’m Malcolm Jaggard. I’ve come to see Dr Ashton.’

‘Didn’t you ring me last night? I told you she wasn’t here - she’s on the mainland.’

‘I know what you told me,’ I said evenly. ‘You said she’d be back this morning, so I came to see her.’

He gestured. ‘You’ve seen the weather. She wouldn’t come over in this.’

‘Why not? I did.’

‘Well, she hasn’t. She’s still in Ullapool.’

I shook my head, ‘She’s not in Ullapool, and she wasn’t there last night, either.’

He frowned. ‘Look here, when I asked last night you said you were ringing from London.’

‘Did I? Must have been force of habit,’ I said blandly. ‘Does it make a difference where I rang from?’

‘Er…no.’ Carter straightened and squared his shoulders. ‘Now, you’re not supposed to be here. This establishment is, shall we say, rather hush-hush. If it became known you were here you could be in trouble. Come to that, so could I, so I’ll have to ask you to leave.’

‘Not without seeing Penny Ashton. She’s supposed to be here. Now isn’t that a funny thing. I’m where I’m supposed not to be, and she’s not where she’s supposed to be. How do you account for it?’

‘I don’t have to account for anything to you.’

‘You’ll have to account for a lot, Dr Carter, if Penny Ashton doesn’t turn up pretty damn quick. How did she get to Ullapool?’

‘By boat, of course.’

‘But this establishment doesn’t have a boat. All journeys are by helicopter.’

He moistened his lips. ‘You appear to be taking an unhealthy interest in this place, Mr Jaggard. I warn you that could be dangerous.’

‘Are you threatening me, Dr Carter?’

‘For any purpose prejudicial to the safety of the State, to approach, inspect or enter any prohibited place, or to…’

‘Don’t quote the Official Secrets Act at me,’ I snapped. ‘I probably know it better than you do.’

‘I could have you arrested,’ he said. ‘No warrant is needed.’

‘For a simple scientist you appear to know the Act very well,’ I observed. ‘So you’ll know that to arrest me automatically brings in the Director of Public Prosecutions.’ I leaned back. ‘I doubt if your masters would relish that, seeing that Penny Ashton is missing from here. I told you, you’ll have to account for a lot, Dr Carter.’

‘But not to you,’ he said, and put his hand on the telephone.

‘I hope that’s to give instructions to have Dr Ashton brought in here.’

A cool and amused voice behind me said, ‘But Dr Carter really can’t have her brought in here.’ I turned my head and saw Cregar standing at the door with Max. Cregar said, ‘Doctor, I’ll trouble you for the use of your office for a moment. Max, see to Mr Jaggard.’

Carter was palpably relieved and scurried out. Max came over to me and searched me with quick, practised movements. ‘No gun.’

‘No?’ said Cregar. ‘Well, that can be rectified if necessary. What could happen to an armed man who breaks into a government establishment, Max?’

‘He could get shot,’ said Max unemotionally.

‘So he could, but that would lead to an official enquiry which might be undesirable. Any other suggestions?’

‘There are plenty of cliffs around here,’ said Max. ‘And the sea’s big.’

It was a conversation I could do without. I said, ‘Where’s Penny Ashton?’

‘Oh, she’s here - you were quite right about that. You’ll see her presently.’ Cregar waved his hands as though dismissing a minor problem. ‘You’re a persistent devil. I almost find it in me to admire you. I could do with a few men of your calibre in my organization. As it is, I’m wondering what to do with you.’

‘You’d better not compound your offences,’ I said. ‘Whatever you do about me, you’ve already done for yourself. We’ve linked you with Benson. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Minister hasn’t already been informed of it.’

The corners of his mouth turned down. ‘How could I be linked with Benson? What possible evidence could there be?’

‘A letter dated the fourth of January, 1947, carried by Benson and signed by you.’

‘A letter,’ said Cregar blankly, and looked through me into the past. Comprehension came into his eyes. ‘Are you telling me that Benson still carried that damned letter after thirty years?’

‘He’d probably forgotten about it - just as you had,’ I said. ‘It was hidden in the lining of his wallet.’

‘A brown calf wallet with a red silk lining?’ I nodded and Cregar groaned. ‘I gave Benson that wallet thirty years ago. It would seem I tripped myself.’

He bent his head, apparently studying the liver spots on the backs of his hands. ‘Where is the letter?’ he asked colourlessly.

‘The original? Or the twenty photocopies Ogilvie will have already made?’

‘I see,’ he said softly, and raised his head. ‘What were your first thoughts on seeing the letter?’

‘I knew you were linked with Ashton because you brought him out of Russia. Now you were linked with Benson, too. I thought of all the odd things that had happened, such as why a gentleman’s gentleman should carry a gun, and why you tried to discount the fact he had shot Ashton when we had the meeting on my return from Sweden. It seemed hard to believe he was still your man after thirty years, but I was forced into it.’

Cregar lounged back in his chair and crossed his legs. ‘Benson was a good man once, before the Germans got him.’

He paused. ‘Of course he wasn’t Benson then, he was Jimmy Carlisle and my comrade in British Intelligence during the war. But he lived and died as Benson, so let him remain so. He was captured in a Gestapo round-up in ‘44 and they sent him to Sachsenhausen, where he stayed until the end of the war. That’s where he got his broken nose and his other brutalized features. They beat him with clubs. I’d say they beat his brains out because he was never the same man afterwards.’

He leaned forward, elbows on the desk. ‘He was in a mess after the war. He had no family - his father, mother and sister were killed in an air raid - and he had no money apart from a disability pension. His brains were addled and his earning capacity limited. He’d never be any good in our line of work after that, but he deserved well of us, and by 1947 I pulled enough weight to help him, so I offered him the job of shepherd to Chelyuskin - Ashton as he became. It was a
sinecure, of course, but he was pathetically grateful. You see, he thought it meant he wasn’t finished in his job.’

Cregar took out a packet of cigarettes. ‘Are you finding this ancient history interesting?’ He held out the packet.

I took a cigarette. ‘Very interesting,’ I assured him.

‘Very well. We switched him into the person of Benson at the same time we switched Chelyuskin to Ashton, then he hung around for a while. When Ashton got going Benson had a job in Ashton’s office, and then later he became Ashton’s factotum.’

‘And Ashton knew what he was?’

‘Oh, yes. Benson was the price Ashton had to pay for freedom. I knew that a man with that calibre of mind would not long be content to fiddle around in industry and I wanted to keep tabs on what he was doing.’ He smiled. ‘Benson was on to quite a good thing. We paid him a retainer and Ashton paid him, too.’

He leaned forward and snapped a gold lighter into flame under my nose. ‘When the reorganization came and I lost Ashton to Ogilvie I kept quiet about Benson. In fact, I paid his retainer out of my own pocket. He didn’t cost much; the retainer wasn’t raised and the erosion in the value of money made Benson dirt cheap. It was an investment for the future which would have paid off but for you.’

I said, ‘Did you know Ashton was into genetics?’

‘Of course. Benson caught on to that as soon as it started happening. His job was to
know
what Ashton was doing at all times and, being permanently in the house, he could hardly miss. It was an incredible stroke of luck - Ashton becoming interested in genetics, I mean - because after the reorganization I had moved into the biological field myself.’ He waved his hand. ‘As you have discovered.’

‘Ogilvie told me.’

‘Ogilvie appears to have told you too much. From what you have let fall he appears to have given you the run of
Code Black. Very naughty of him, and something he may regret. I was fortunate enough to be able to put a block on the computer to cover Benson, but evidently it wasn’t enough.’ He stopped suddenly, and stared at me. ‘Even I appear to be telling you too much. You have an ingratiating way with you.’

‘I’m a good listener.’

‘And I become garrulous as I grow old, a grave failing in a man of our profession.’ He looked at his half-smoked cigarette distastefully, stubbed it out, and put his hands flat on the desk. ‘I’m at a loss to know how to dispose of you, young Jaggard. Your revelation that Ogilvie has that letter makes my situation most difficult.’

‘Yes, he’s in a position to blast hell out of you,’ I agreed. ‘I don’t think the Minister will be pleased. I rather think you’ve put yourself on the retirement list.’

‘Very succinctly put. Nevertheless, I will find a way out of the difficulty. I have surmounted difficulties before and I see no reason why I should fail this time. All it takes is applied thought to the study of men’s weaknesses.’ He slapped his hands together. ‘And that is what I must do immediately. Put him somewhere safe, Max.’

I ignored the hand on my shoulder. ‘What about Penny Ashton?’

‘You will see her in my good time,’ said Cregar coldly. ‘And only if I think it advisable.’

In my rage I wanted to lash out at him but I couldn’t ignore that tightening hand. Max leaned over me. ‘No tricks,’ he advised. ‘I have a gun. You won’t see it but it’s there.’

So I rose from the chair and went with him. He took me from the office and along a corridor. Because the place was windowless it was almost like being in a submarine; everything was quiet except that the air shivered with the distant rumble of a generator. At the other end of the corridor I saw
movement on the other side of a glass partition as a man walked across. He was wearing totally enveloping overalls and his head was hooded.

I had no time to see more because Max stopped and opened a heavy door. ‘In there,’ he said curtly, so I walked through and he slammed the door, leaving me in total darkness because he had not seen fit to turn on a light. The first thing I did was to explore my prison and arrived at the conclusion that it was an unused refrigerated room. The walls were thick and solid, as was the door, and I soon came to the conclusion that the only way out was to be let out. I sat on the floor in a corner and contemplated possibilities.

It appeared to have been wise to tell Cregar of the letter. Up to then he had primarily been interested in discussing ways and means of transforming me into a corpse safely, but my disclosure that Ogilvie had the letter had put a stopper on that line of thought. But what a ruthless bastard he had turned out to be.

I don’t know what makes men like Cregar tick, but there seem to be enough of the bastards around just as there are many Carters eager to help them. Somewhere in the world, I suppose, is the chemist who lovingly mixed a petroleum derivative with a palm oil derivative to produce napthenic acid palmetate, better known as napalm. To do that required a deliberate intellectual effort and a high degree of technical training, and why a man should put his brain to such a use is beyond me. Supervising that chemist would be an American Cregar whose motives are equally baffling, and at the top are the politicians ultimately responsible. Their motive is quite clear, of course: the ruthless grasp of sheer power. But why so many others should be willing to help them is beyond me.

It’s hard to know who to blame. Is it the Lumsdens of the world who know what is going on but turn a blind eye, or is it the rest of us who don’t know and don’t take the
trouble to find out? Sometimes I think the world is like a huge ant heap full of insects all busily manufacturing insecticide.

I was in the black room for a long time. The only light came from the luminous dial of my watch which told me of hours ticking away. I was oppressed by the darkness and became claustrophobic and suffered strange fears. I got up and began to walk around the room, keeping to the walls; it was one way of taking exercise. The silence was solid except for the sound of my own movements and a new fear came upon me. What if Cladach Duillich had been abandoned - evacuated? I could stay in that room until the flesh rotted from my bones.

I stopped walking and sat in the corner again. I may have fallen asleep for a while, I don’t remember. The hours I spent there are pretty much blanked out in my memory. But I was aware when the door opened to let in a flood of light as glaring as from arc lamps. I put my hands to my eyes and saw Cregar at the door. He tut-tutted, and said, ‘You didn’t leave him a light, Max.’