Алистер Маклин - Circus

‘I suppose it’s my turn to say that you are very well informed.’

‘We don’t send a man in blindfolded and with his hands tied behind his back. This, crossing the courtyard here, is an elevated fifth-floor corridor connecting the two buildings. It is glass-sided and glass-topped and kept brightly illuminated from dusk to dawn. It is impossible for anyone to use it without being seen.

‘Every window in both buildings is heavily barred. All are nevertheless fitted with burglar alarms. There are only two entrances, one for each building, both time-locked and heavily guarded. The buildings are both nine storeys high and the connecting walls are the same height. The whole upper perimeter of the walls is lined with closely spaced, outward curving metal spikes, the whole with two thousand volts running through them. There’s a watch-tower at every corner. The guards there have machine-guns, searchlights and klaxons. The courtyard between the two buildings, like the elevated glass corridor, is brightly lit at night – not that that matters so much: killer Dobermann Pinschers roam the place all the time.’

Bruno said: ‘You have a great gift for encouraging people.’

‘You’d rather not know these things? There are only two ways of escaping from this place – death by torture or death by suicide. No one has ever escaped.’ Dr Harper indicated the other diagram. ‘This is the plan layout of the ninth floor of the west building. This is why the government is mounting a multi-million-dollar operation – to get you in here. This is where Van Diemen works, eats, sleeps and has his being.’

‘Should I know the name?’

‘Most unlikely. He’s almost totally unknown to the public. In the Western world fellow-scientists speak of him with awe. An acknowledged genius – the only indisputable genius – in particle research. The discoverer of anti-matter – the only man in the world who has the secret of making, storing and harnessing this fearful weapon.’

‘He’s Dutch?’

‘Despite his name, no. He’s a renegade West German, a defector. God only knows why he defected. Here you can see his laboratories and office. Here is the guards’ room – the place, understandably, is guarded like Fort Knox twenty-four hours a day. And this is his living quarters – just a small bedroom, an even smaller bathroom and a tiny kitchenette.’

‘You mean he hasn’t got a home? It would make things a damn sight easier if he had.’

‘He’s got a home, all right, a splendid lake-forest mansion given him by the government. He’s never even been there. He lives for nothing but his work and he never leaves here. One suspects the government is just as happy that he continues to do so: it makes their security problem comparatively simple.’

‘Yes. To come back to another simple problem. You say that no one has ever escaped from Lubylan. Then how the hell do you expect me to get in there?’

‘Well, now.’ Harper cleared his throat; he was putting his first foot on very delicate ground. ‘We’d given the matter some thought, of course, before we approached you. Which is why we approached you and only you. The place, as I’ve said, is ringed with a two-thousand-volt fence of steel. The power has to come from someplace: it comes from the electric power station at the back of the east building. Like most high-power transmissions it comes by an overhead cable. It comes in a single loop, three hundred yards long, from a pylon in the power station to the top of the east building.’

‘You’re way out of your mind. You must be. If you’re so crazy as to suggest–’

Harper prepared to be diplomatic, persuasive and reasonable all at once. ‘Let’s look at it this way. Let’s think of it as just another high wire. As long as you are in contact with this cable with either hands or feet, and don’t earth yourself to anything such as the anchor wire for a pylon insulator, then–’

‘Let’s think of it as just another high wire,’ Bruno mimicked. ‘Two thousand volts – that’s what they use, or used to use, in the electric chair, isn’t it?’

Harper nodded unhappily.

‘In the circus you step from a platform on to the wire, and step off on to another platform at the other end. If I step off from the pylon on to the wire or from the wire on to the prison wall, I’ll have one foot on the cable and the other to earth. I’ll be frizzled in a second flat. And three hundred yards long – have you any kind of idea what kind of sag that entails? Can you imagine what the effects of that sag combined with whatever wind may be blowing would be like? Has it occurred to you that, at this time of year, there might be both ice and snow on that wire? God’s sake, Dr Harper, don’t you know that our lives depend on the friction coefficient between the soles of our feet and the wire – the cable, in this case. Believe me, Doctor, you may know a lot about counter-espionage but you know damn all about the high wire.’

Harper looked even more unhappy.

‘And should I ever live to cross that cable how do I ever live to cross that courtyard – that illuminated courtyard patrolled by Dobermanns – or cross over that transparent aerial corridor, assuming I could ever get to it in the first place? And if I do get to the west building, how am I going to get past the guards?’

Harper was now looking acutely unhappy.

‘And if I do manage that – I’m not a gambler but I’ll lay a thousand to one I never make it – how am I going to locate the place where those papers are kept? I mean, I don’t suppose they’d just be lying around on a table. They’ll be locked away – Van Diemen may just even sleep with them under his pillow.’

Harper studiously avoided Bruno’s eye. He was distinctly and understandably uncomfortable. He said: ‘Locked filing cabinets or safes are no problems – I can give you keys that should open any commercial office lock.’

‘And if it’s a combination?’

‘Looks as if you’re going to need a little luck all the way.’

Bruno gazed at the deckhead, considered the enormity of this understatement, pushed the papers away and relapsed into speechlessness. After quite some time he stirred, looked at Harper, sighed and said: ‘I’m afraid I’m going to need a gun. A silenced gun. With plenty of ammunition.’

Harper went through his own speechless act then said: ‘You mean you’re going to try?’ If he were experiencing any feelings of hope or relief he didn’t show them: there was only a dull disbelief in his voice.

‘Once a nut, always a nut. Not a gun that fires bullets. A gas gun or one that fires anaesthetic darts. Possible?’

‘That’s what diplomatic bags are for,’ Harper said, almost absently. ‘Look, I don’t think I’d properly appreciated the difficulties myself. If you think it’s outright impossible–’

‘You’re mad. I’m mad. We’re all mad. But you’ve got the whole damned circus at sea now – as far as I’m concerned we’re at sea in more ways than one – and if nothing else we owe it to your murdered colleagues. The gun.’

Harper, clearly, was searching for suitable words and failed. He said: ‘You will keep those diagrams and pictures in a place of absolute safety?’

‘Yes.’ Bruno rose, picked up papers and photographs, tore them into little pieces, took them to the bathroom and flushed them down the toilet. He returned and said: ‘They’re safe now.’

‘It would be difficult for anyone to get their hands on them now. A remarkable gift. I’d be grateful if you didn’t fall down the stairs – genuinely, this time – land on your head and give yourself amnesia. Any idea how you’re going to set about this?’

‘Look, I’m a mentalist, not Merlin the wizard. How long have you known about this?’