Алистер Маклин - Circus

‘Clear,’ he said. ‘No guarantee, mind you – but as sure as I can be.’

Bruno indicated the brief-case. ‘I know nothing about those things but I thought they were foolproof.’

‘So they are. On dry land. But on a ship you have so much iron, the hull being used as a conductor, magnetic fields from all the heavy power cables – well, anyone can be fooled. I can. So can my electronic friend here.’ He put out a hand to a bulkhead to steady himself as the Carpentaria , apparently forgetting all about its stabilizers, gave an unexpected lurch. ‘Looks like a nasty night coming up. Shouldn’t be surprised if we have a few sprains and bruises this evening. First night out, you know – people haven’t had time to find their sea-legs.’ Bruno wondered if he had seen a wink or not, it could have been imagination and he had no means of knowing how much the purser was in Harper’s confidence. He made a noncommittal remark to the purser, who thanked him politely, unlocked the door and left.

Precisely at six-thirty Bruno stepped out into the passageway. It was, fortunately, quite deserted. The foot of the companionway was only six feet away. Half-seated, half-lying, he arranged himself as comfortably as possible in the most suitably uncomfortable-looking position on the deck and awaited developments. Five minutes passed, and he was beginning to develop an acute cramp in his right knee, when a couple of stewards appeared and rescued him from his misery. To the accompaniment of much tongue-clucking they assisted him sympathetically to his stateroom and lowered him tenderly to his settee.

‘Just you hang on a minute, guv’nor,’ one of them said. He had a powerful Cockney accent. ‘I’ll have Dr Berenson here in a jiffy.’

It hadn’t occurred to Bruno – as it apparently hadn’t occurred to Harper – that the Carpentaria would be carrying its own doctor, which was an elementary oversight on both their parts: over and above a certain passenger capacity international law made the carrying of a ship’s doctor mandatory. He said quickly: ‘Could I have our own doctor, please – the circus doctor? His name is Dr Harper.’

‘I know his cabin, next deck down. At once, sir.’

Harper must have been waiting in his cabin, medical bag in hand, for he arrived in Bruno’s cabin, tongue-clucking and looking suitably concerned, inside thirty seconds. He locked the stateroom door after the stewards’ departure, then set to work on Bruno’s ankle with some extremely pungent salve and about a yard of elasticized bandage.

He said: ‘Mr Carter was on schedule?’

‘If Mr Carter is the purser – he didn’t introduce himself – yes.’

Harper paused in his ministrations and looked around. ‘Clean?’

‘Did you expect anything else?’

‘Not really.’ Harper inspected his completed handiwork: both the visual and olfactory aspects were suitably impressive.

Harper brought over a low table, reached into an inside pocket, brought out and smoothed two detailed plans and set some photographs down beside them. He tapped one of the plans.

‘This one first. The plan outline of the Lubylan Advanced Research Centre. Know it?’

Bruno eyed Harper without enthusiasm. ‘I hope that’s the last stupidly unnecessary question you ask this evening.’ Harper assumed the look of a man trying not to look hurt. ‘Before the CIA recruited me for this job–’

‘How do you know it’s the CIA?’

Bruno rolled his eyes upwards then clearly opted for restraint. ‘Before the Boy Scouts recruited me for this job they’d have checked every step I’ve taken from the cradle. To your certain knowledge you know I spent the first twenty-four years of my life in Crau. How should I not know Lubylan?’

‘Yes. Well. Oddly enough, they do carry out advanced research in Lubylan, most of it, regrettably, associated with chemical warfare, nerve gas and the like.’

‘Regrettably? The United States doesn’t engage in similar research?’

Harper looked pained. ‘That’s not my province.’

Bruno said patiently: ‘Look, Doctor, if you can’t trust me how can you expect me to repose implicit trust in you? It is your province and you damned well know it. Remember the Armed Forces courier service at Orly Airport? All the top-secret classified communications between the Pentagon and the American Army in Europe were channelled through there. Remember?’

‘I remember.’

‘Remember a certain Sergeant Johnson? Fellow with the splendidly patriotic Christian names of Robert Lee? Russia’s most successfully planted spy in a generation, passed every US-Europe top military secret to the KGB for God knows how long. Remember?’

Harper nodded unhappily. ‘I remember.’ Bruno’s briefing was not going exactly as he’d planned it.

‘Then you won’t have forgotten that the Russians published photocopies of one of the top-secret directives that Johnson had stolen. It was the ultimate US contingency plan if the Soviet Union should ever overrun Western Europe. It suggested that in that event the United States intended to devastate the Continent by waging bacteriological, chemical and nuclear warfare: the fact that the entire civilian population would be virtually wiped out was taken for granted. This caused a tremendous furore in Europe at the time and cost the Americans the odd European friend, about two hundred million of them: I doubt whether it even made the back page of the Washington Post .’

‘You’re very well informed.’

‘Not being a member of the CIA doesn’t mean you have to be illiterate. I can read. German is my second language – my mother was a Berliner. Two German magazines carried the story at the same time.’

Harper was resigned. ‘ Der Spiegel and Stern , September 1969. Does it give you any particular pleasure in putting me on a hook and watching me wriggle?’

‘That wasn’t my intention. I just want to point up two things. If you don’t level with me all the time and on every subject you can expect no cooperation from me. Then I want you to know why I’ve really gone along with this. I have no idea whether the Americans really would go ahead with this holocaust. I can’t believe it but what I believe doesn’t matter: it’s what the East believes and if they believe that America would not hesitate to implement this threat then they might be sorely tempted to carry out a preemptive strike. From what I understood from Colonel Fawcett a millionth of a gram of this anti-matter would settle America’s hash once and for all. I don’t think anyone should have this weapon, but, for me, it’s the lesser of two evils: I’m European by birth but American by adoption. I’ll stick by my adopted parents. And now, could we get on with it. Lay it all on the line. Let’s say I’ve never heard of or seen Crau and go on from there.’

Harper looked at him without enthusiasm. He said sourly: ‘If it was your intention to introduce a subtle change in our relationships you have succeeded beyond any expectation you might have had. Only, I wouldn’t call it very subtle. Well. Lubylan. Conveniently enough, it’s situated only a quarter of a mile from the auditorium where the circus will be held: both buildings, though in the town, are, as one would expect, on the outskirts. Lubylan, as you can see, faces on to a main street.’

‘There are two buildings shown on that diagram.’

‘I’m coming to that. Those two buildings, incidentally, are connected by two high walls which are not shown in the plan.’ Harper quickly sketched them in. ‘At the back of Lubylan is only wasteland. The nearest building in that direction is an oil-fired electric power station.

‘This building that abuts on the main street – let’s call it the west building – is where the actual research is carried out. In the east building, the one abutting the wasteland at the back, research is also carried out, but research of a different kind and almost certainly much nastier than that carried out in the west building. In the east building they carry out a series of highly unpleasant experiments – on human beings. It’s run entirely by the secret police and is the maximum security detention centre for the enemies of the State, who may range from a would-be assassin of the Premier to a weak-minded dissident poet. The mortality rate, I understand, is rather higher than normal.’