Алистер Маклин - Circus

At 6.15 p.m. Bruno, magnificently attired in what he privately thought of as his Pierrot’s suit and the magnificent pseudo chinchilla, left the hotel. He walked with the unhurried measured gait of one for whom time is not a matter of pressing concern: in fact he did not wish to disturb the fulminate of mercury in the six explosive devices that were suspended from his belt. The voluminous nylon coat concealed those perfectly.

As befitted a man with time on his hands, he wandered at apparent random, following what would otherwise have been thought to be a devious twisting route. He spent a considerable amount of time in stopping and apparently examining goods in shop windows, not omitting the side windows at shop entrances. He finally sauntered round a corner, quickened his pace for a few steps, then sank into the dark shadow of a recessing doorway. A dark raincoated man rounded the same corner, hesitated, hastened forward, passed where Bruno stood concealed, then sagged at the knees, momentarily stunned, as the edge of Bruno’s right hand caught him below his right ear. Bruno held him upright with one hand, went swiftly through his pockets with the other and came up with a snub-nosed automatic. The safety catch clicked off.

‘Walk,’ Bruno said.

The hijacked furniture van was about halfway down the south lane abutting on the Lubylan, the last of five parked trucks. Bruno saw it at once when he halted, arm apparently cordially in arm with his erstwhile shadow, at the corner of the main street and the south lane. Bruno had deemed it prudent to halt because a guard was coming up the other side of the lane, machine gun shoulder-slung. From his general appearance the weapon was the last thing on his mind. Like the guards of the previous night he wasn’t walking with a brisk military step, he was trudging along, wallowing in the unplumbed depths of his own frozen miseries. Bruno dug his automatic deeper into his companion’s side, just above the hip-bone.

‘Call out and you’re a dead man.’

Clearly, the idea did not appeal to the prisoner. The combination of fear and the cold gave him the impression of one who was frozen stiff. As soon as the guard had turned the corner into the main street – he did not have the appearance of one who was about to glance back suspiciously over his shoulder – Bruno marched his captive down to the line of parked trucks: once safely abreast of these they were hidden from the sight of anyone on the other side of the lane.

Pushing the man in front of him, Bruno moved out cautiously between the third and fourth parked trucks and glanced to his right. A second guard had just appeared round the south-east corner and was on his way up the south lane. Bruno retreated to the pavement. There was no guaranteeing that his captive would not suddenly screw his courage to the sticking point and, moreover, it was now safe, because free from observation, to have an unconscious man on his hands, so Bruno repeated the earlier blow, although this time with considerably more force, and eased the man to the ground. The guard passed unwittingly by on the other side. Bruno hoisted his captive to his shoulder and carried him to the rear of the van just as one of the doors opened: someone had been keeping a good watch through the windscreen. Kan Dahn had the unconscious man inside in a second and Bruno followed.

‘Is Roebuck on his way? To get that little toy for me from the train, and the cassettes?’

‘On his way.’ Kan Dahn jumped down followed by Manuelo, who hid behind the end of the van. Kan Dahn lay down in the middle of the lane, produced a bottle of Scotch from his pocket, poured a liberal amount over his face and shoulders and lay still, the bottle still clasped in his hand. His arm covered his face.

A guard came round the south-east corner and saw Kan Dahn almost immediately. He stood stock still for a moment, looked around warily, saw no danger and broke into a run towards the prostrate man. As he approached he unslung his machine-pistol and advanced slowly and cautiously, the barrel trained on the massive bulk. At fifteen feet it was unthinkable that he should miss. At twenty-five feet it was equally unthinkable that Manuelo should miss. The hilt of the knife caught the guard squarely between the eyes and Kan Dahn, courteously breaking his fall, had him inside the van in five seconds.

In another ten seconds Manuelo had retrieved his knife and retreated into his former hiding position while Kan Dahn resumed his recumbent position. Such was Bruno’s faith in the two that he did not even bother to watch the painful proceedings but concentrated instead on the process of immobilizing, gagging and blindfolding the prisoners. Within six minutes there were five men lashed to the side of the furniture van, completely helpless and silenced, three of them already conscious but none of them able to do anything about their circumstances. The people of the circus are past masters in the art of tying knots: their lives too often depend on this very expertise.

The three men left the van. Kan Dahn had a pair of canvas shoes in a pocket and carried a finely chiselled but massive crowbar, Bruno carried a pocket flash, three bound poles slung from his shoulder, and a polythene-wrapped and very peculiar packet in his pocket; Manuelo, in addition to a variety of throwing knives, carried a pair of rather fearsome-looking and heavily insulated wire cutters. The amatol explosives Bruno had left behind in the van.

They walked eastwards along the lane. Occasionally the moon shone through and their presence there was readily to be seen by anyone with eyes to see. Even so, they had no option other than to carry on as unobtrusively as they could – although it was questionable whether any close observer would have found anything unobtrusive about the crowbar, wire-cutter and poles. By the time they had reached the power station, some three hundred yards distant from the prison side of the Lubylan, the moon had slid behind some barred cloud again. There were no guards to be seen or heard, and the only form of protection appeared to be a heavy steel mesh mounted on ten-feet hollow steel tubes, with one cross-railing at the top and one six feet up. The top railing was liberally festooned with very unpleasant barbed wire.

Bruno took the crowbar from Kan Dahn, pressed one end firmly into the earth and let the other fall against the mesh, at the same time taking two prudent backward steps. There was no pyrotechnical display, no blinding coruscation of arcs, sparks and flashes. The fence was not electrified nor had Bruno for a moment thought it would have been. Only a madman would put two thousand volts through a fence at ground level; but Bruno had had no guarantee that he wasn’t dealing with madmen.

Manuelo began to snip his way through the mesh. Bruno took out his red pen and thoughtfully pushed down the end button. Kan Dahn looked at him curiously.

‘Left it a bit late to write your last will and testament?’

‘A toy Dr Harper gave me. Fires anaesthetic darts.’

One by one they stooped and passed through the hole Manuelo had made. Five paces they took and then they discovered that the lack of human guards was compensated for by the presence of canine ones in the form of three Dobermann Pinschers that came at them out of the gloom. Manuelo’s knife flickered forward in an underhand throw and the leaping dog died in mid-air, the blade buried to the hilt in its throat. The dog jumping for Kan Dahn’s throat found itself with one iron forearm under its lower jaw and the other behind its ears: one effortless twist and the vertebra snapped. The third dog did succeed in knocking Bruno down but not before the steel dart had lodged in its chest. The dog landed heavily, rolled over twice and lay still.

They advanced to the powerhouse itself. The door was made of metal and was locked. Bruno put his ear to the door and moved away quickly: even on the outside the high-speed whining of turbines and generators was an assault on the eardrums. To the left of the door and about ten feet up was a barred window. Bruno glanced at Kan Dahn, who stooped, caught him by the ankles and hoisted him effortlessly: it was like going up in a lift.