Алистер Маклин - The Satan Bug

“Get this helicopter airborne,” Scarlatti ordered. “Now.”

“Airborne!” I protested. “He’s not fit to walk, far less fly.”

Scarlatti prodded him again. “You heard me. Hurry.”

“I can’t.” The pilot was sullen and savage at the same moment. “It has to be towed out. Can’t start the engines in here. Exhaust fumes and fire regulations–”

“The hell with your regulations,” Scarlatti said. “She can roll under her own power. Don’t you think I checked, you fool? Get moving.”

The pilot had no option and he knew it. He started his engines and I winced as the deafening clamour echoed back at us from the narrow metallic confines of the hangar walls. The pilot couldn’t have liked it any more than I did: either that or he knew it was dangerous to linger. Whatever the reason he lost no time. He engaged the two giant rotors, moved the cyclic pitch to tilt the blades forwards and downwards and released the brakes. The helicopter began to roll.

Thirty seconds later we were airborne. Scarlatti, more relaxed now, reached for a rack above his head and handed me a square metal box. He reached again and this time brought down an ordinary close-mesh string bag.

“Open the box and transfer the contents into this bag,” he said curtly. “I advise you to be careful. You will see why.”

I saw why and I was very careful. I opened the box and there, packed in straw, lay five chromed steel flasks. Under his direction I opened each in turn and with infinite gentleness laid five glass ampoules inside the net bag. Two with blue tops – two vials of the Satan Bug. Three with red tops – three vials of botulinus toxin. Scarlatti handed me another blue-topped vial from his pocket. That made six altogether. I placed that in also, gingerly gathered up the string bag and handed it back to Scarlatti. It was cold inside that cabin but I was sweating as if I were in a steam bath and it took an effort of will to keep my hands steady. I caught a glimpse of the pilot looking at the bag and I can’t say he looked any happier than I felt. He knew all right.

“Excellent.” Scarlatti took the bag from me, reached back into the passenger aisle and placed the bag on the nearest seat. “You will be able to convince our friends that I am not only willing but ready to carry out my threat.”

”I don’t know what you are talking about.”

”You will. I want you to make a radio call and get in touch with your father-in-law and then give him a message.” He turned to the pilot. “You will keep circling above the heliport. We will be returning there shortly.”

I said, “I don’t know how to operate the damned radio.”

”You’ve just forgotten,” he said soothingly. He was getting too confident of himself for my liking. “You will remember. A man who has spent his life in his country’s intelligence service and cannot operate a transmitter? If I take a walk back into the passenger cabin and you hear your wife scream do you think you will remember then?”

”What do you want me to do?” I asked savagely.

“Get on the police wave-length. I don’t know what it is but you’re bound to. Tell them that unless they immediately release all my captured men – and the money they have – I shall be compelled to drop botulinus and Satan Bug toxins over London. I have no idea where they will fall, nor do I greatly care. Further, if any attempt is made to follow, trace or capture me or my men I shall use toxin regardless of consequences. Do you see a flaw, Cavell?”

I said nothing at once. I stared ahead through the highspeed windscreen wipers into the rain and darkness. Finally I said, “I see no flaw.”

“I’m a desperate man, Cavell,” he said with quiet intensity. “When they deported me from America they thought I was completely finished. Completely. A has-been. I was laughed out of America. I was – and am – determined to show them all how wrong they were, to bring off the biggest criminal coup of all time. When you intercepted us in that police car this evening much that I said was false. But this one thing was true: I shall achieve this ambition regardless of cost or shall die trying. I am not acting now. Nothing is going to stop me, nothing on this earth is going to thwart me at this very last moment. They should not have laughed at Enzo Scarlatti. I am in the most deadly earnest, Cavell. You believe me?”

“I believe you.”

“I shall not hesitate to do exactly as I threaten. You must convince them of that.”

“You’ve convinced me,” I said. “I can’t speak for the others. I’ll try.”

“You had better succeed,” he said evenly.

I succeeded. After a few minutes twiddling and dial-twisting I managed to get through on the police wave-length. There was a further delay while the call was relayed and rerouted by phone and then I heard Superintendent Hardanger’s voice.

“Cavell here,” I said. “I’m in a helicopter with–”

“Helicopter!” He swore. “I can hear the damn’ thing. Almost directly above. What in God’s name–”

“Listen! I’m here with Mary and a pilot of the Inter-City Lines, a Lieutenant–” I glanced at the man beside me.

“Buckley,” he said harshly.

“Lieutenant Buckley. Scarlatti has the drop on us all. He’s got a message for you, for the General.”

“So you fouled things up, Cavell,” Hardanger said savagely. “God above, I warned you–”

“Shut up,” I said wearily. “This is his message. You’d better listen.” I told them what I’d been told to say and after a pause the General’s voice came through on the earphones. No reproaches, no time-wasting.

He said, “What chance that he’s bluffing?”

“Not one in the world. He’s in deadly earnest. He’ll wipe out half the city sooner than fail. What’s all the banknotes and bullion in the world compared to a million lives?”

“You sound as though you were afraid,” the General’s voice came softly.

“I’m afraid, sir. Not just for myself.”

”I understand. I’ll call back in a few minutes.”

I removed the earphones. I said, “A few minutes. He has to consult.”

“That is understandable.” He was leaning back negligently now, one shoulder against the doorway, but the guns as steady as ever. He hadn’t the shadow of a doubt about the outcome now. “I hold all the cards, Cavell.”

He wasn’t exaggerating any. He held all the cards all right, they couldn’t afford not to let him win. But far back in my mind was the first stirrings of hope that he might yet lose the last trick of all. A despairing one in a million hope, but then I was a man in the extremes of despair and willing to gamble on a one in a million chance. And it would all depend upon so many imponderable factors. Scarlatti’s state of mind, the confidence and fractional lowering of relaxation that might – just might – come with the knowledge that the day was finally his: Lieutenant Buckley’s acuteness, intelligence and co-operation: and my speed of reaction. The last was the biggest “if” of all: the way I felt, if Scarlatti could cope with an ailing nonagenarian, then he shouldn’t have much trouble with me.

The earphones crackled. I slipped them on and the General’s voice came through. He said without preamble, “Tell Scarlatti we agree.”

“Yes, sir. I’m most desperately sorry about it all.”

“You did what you could. That’s over. Our first concern now must be to save the innocent, not to punish the guilty.”

One of the earphones was knocked forward, none too gently, and Scarlatti said, “Well? Well?”

“He agrees,” I said wearily.

“Good. I’d expected nothing else. Find out how long the release of my men and money will take, when the police would expect to be clear of the area.”