Алистер Маклин - Fear Is the Key

‘In every detail.’ Vyland permitted himself one of his rare smiles. ‘Brilliant, you might call it?’

‘No. The only brilliant thing was stealing the bathyscaphe. The rest is within the scope of any moderately competent underwater operator. Just an application of the double-chambered submarine rescue diving bell which can fit in much the same way over the escape hatch of practically any submarine. And a fairly similar principle has been used for caisson work – sinking underwater piers for bridges and the like. But smart enough for all that. Your engineer friend was no fool. A pity about him, wasn’t it?’

‘A pity?’ Vyland was no longer smiling.

‘Yes. He’s dead, isn’t he?’

The room became very still. After perhaps ten seconds Vyland said very quietly: ‘What did you say?’

‘I said he was dead. When anyone in your employ dies suddenly, Vyland, I would say it was because he had outlived his usefulness. But with your treasure unrecovered, he obviously hadn’t. There was an accident.’

Another long pause. ‘What makes you think there was an accident?’

‘And he was an elderly man, wasn’t he, Vyland?’

‘What makes you think there was an accident?’ A soft menace in every word. Larry was licking his lips again.

‘The waterproof floor you had put in in the bottom of the pillar was not quite as waterproof as you had thought. It leaked, didn’t it, Vyland? Only a very small hole, possibly, and in the perimeter of the floor where it joined the side of the leg. Bad welding. But you were lucky. Somewhere above where we’re standing there must be another transverse seal in the leg – to give structural strength, no doubt. So you used this machine here’ – I pointed to one of the generators bolted to the deck – ‘to drive in compressed air after you’d sent someone inside the leg and sealed this door off. When you’d driven in enough compressed air the accumulated water was driven out the bottom and then the man – or men – inside were able to repair the hole. Right, Vyland?’

‘Right,’ He was on balance again, and there was no harm in admitting something to a person who would never live to repeat it to anyone. ‘How do you know all this, Talbot?’

‘That footman up in the general’s house. I’ve seen many cases. He’s suffering from what used to be called caisson disease – and he’ll never recover from it. The diver’s bends, Vyland. When people are working under a high air or sea pressure and that pressure is released too quickly they get nitrogen bubbles in the blood. Those men in the leg were working in about four atmospheres, about sixty pounds to the square inch. If they’d been down there more than half an hour they should have spent at least half an hour decompressing, but as it was some criminal idiot released the built-up pressure far too fast – as fast as it could escape, probably. At the best of times caisson work, or its equivalent, is only for fit young men. Your engineer friend was no longer a fit young man. And you had, of course, no decompressor. So he died. The footman may live long enough but he’ll never again know what a pain-free existence is. But I don’t suppose that troubles you, does it, Vyland?’

‘We’re wasting time.’ I could see the relief on Vyland’s face, for a moment there he’d suspected that I – and possibly others as well – knew too much about the happenings on the X 13. But he was satisfied now – and very relieved. But I wasn’t interested in his expression, only in the general’s.

General Ruthven was regarding me in a very peculiar fashion indeed: there was puzzlement in his face, some thought that was troubling him, but worse than that there were the beginnings of the first faint incredulous stirrings of understanding.

I didn’t like that, I didn’t like that at all. Swiftly I reviewed everything I’d said, everything I’d implied, and in those matters I have an almost total recall, but I couldn’t think of a single word that might have been responsible for that expression on his face. And if he’d noticed something, then perhaps Vyland had also. But Vyland’s face showed no sign of any knowledge or suspicion of anything untoward and it didn’t necessarily follow that any off-beat word or circumstance noted by the general would also be noted by Vyland. The general was a very clever man indeed: fools don’t start from scratch and accumulate close on 300 million dollars in a single lifetime.

But I wasn’t going to give Vyland time to look at and read the expression on the general’s face – he might be smart enough for that. I said: ‘So your engineer is dead and now you need a driver, shall we say, for your bathyscaphe?’

‘Wrong. We know how to operate it ourselves: You don’t think we’d be so everlastingly stupid as to steal a scaphe without at the same time knowing what to do with it. From an office in Nassau we had obtained a complete set of maintenance and operation instructions in both French and English. Don’t worry, we know how to operate it.’

‘Indeed? This is most interesting.’ I sat down on a bench without as much as a by-your-leave and lit a cigarette. Some such gesture would be expected from me. ‘Then what precisely do you want with me?’

For the first time in our brief acquaintance Vyland looked embarrassed. After a few seconds he scowled and said harshly: ‘We can’t get the damned engines to start.’

I took a deep draw on my cigarette and tried to blow a smoke-ring. It didn’t come off – with me it never came off.

‘Well, well, well,’ I murmured. ‘How most inconvenient. For you, that is. For me, it couldn’t be more convenient. All you’ve got to do is to start those two little engines and hey presto! you pick up a fortune for the asking. I assume that you aren’t playing for peanuts – not operating on this scale. And you can’t start them up without me. As I said, how convenient – for me.’

‘You know how to make that machine run?’ he asked coldly.

‘I might. Should be simple enough – they’re just battery-powered electric motors.’ I smiled. ‘But the electric circuits and switches and fuse boxes are pretty complicated. Surely they’re listed in the maintenance instructions?’

‘They are.’ The smooth polished veneer was showing a distinct crack and his voice was almost a snarl. ‘They’re coded for a key. We haven’t got a key.’

‘Wonderful, just wonderful.’ I rose leisurely to my feet and stood in front of Vyland. ‘Without me you’re lost, is that it?’

He made no answer.

‘Then I have my price, Vyland. A guarantee of my life.’ This angle didn’t worry me at all but I knew I had to make the play or he’d have been as suspicious as hell. ‘What guarantee do you offer, Vyland?’

‘Good God, man, you don’t need any guarantee.’ The general was indignant, astonished. ‘Why would anyone want to kill you?’

‘Look, General,’ I said patiently. ‘You may be a big, big tiger when you’re prowling along the jungles of Wall Street, but as far as the other side of the legal divide is concerned you’re not even in the kitten class. Anyone not in your friend Vyland’s employ who knows too much will always come to the same sticky end – when he can no longer be of any use to him, of course. Vyland likes his money’s worth, even when it costs him nothing.’

‘You’re suggesting, by inference, that I might also come to the same end?’ Ruthven inquired.

‘Not you, General. You’re safe. I don’t know what the stinking tie-up between you and Vyland is and I don’t care. He may have a hold on you and you may be up to the ears in cahoots with him but either way it makes no difference. You’re safe. The disappearance of the richest man in the country would touch off the biggest man-hunt of the decade. Sorry to appear cynical, General, but there it is. An awful lot of money buys an awful lot of police activity. There would be an awful lot of pressure, General, and snowbirds like our hopped-up young friend here’ – I jerked a finger over my shoulder in the general direction of Larry – ‘are very apt indeed to talk under pressure. Vyland knows it. You’re safe, and when it’s all over, if you’re not really Vyland’s ever-loving partner, he’ll find ways to ensure your silence. There would be nothing you could prove against him, it would only be your word against his and many others and I don’t suppose even your own daughter knows what’s going on. And then, of course, there’s Royale – the knowledge that Royale is prowling around on the loose waiting for a man to make just one slip is enough to guarantee that man putting on an act that would make a clam seem positively garrulous.’ I turned from him and smiled at Vyland. ‘But I’m expandable, am I not?’ I snapped my fingers. ‘The guarantee, Vyland, the guarantee.’