Алистер Маклин - Athabasca

“You were in charge of the night-shift?”

“Nominally. Tonight there was no night-shift. The plant’s closed down.”

“I know. So how many of you were here tonight – yourself apart?”

“Just six people.” He glanced down at the wounded man. “Mr Grigson was asleep in his private room along the corridor there. Then there was Hazlitt – charge-hand of the night security shift – and four security guards deployed around the plant.”

“Tell us what happened.”

“Well – I was patrolling, reinforcing the security team, as I had nothing else to do. I saw a light come on here in Mr Reynolds’s room. First I thought it must be Mr Grigson – he’s a very active, restless person, and an erratic sleeper. Then I got to wondering what he could be doing, because he’d already spent a couple of hours with Mr Reynolds yesterday. So, quiet as I could, I came along the passage to Grigson’s room.

“The door was closed, but not locked. I went in, and there he was asleep. I woke him, told him there were intruders in the plant, and asked to borrow a gun. I knew he had one, because he used to practise on a little private target range he’d set up here.

“He’d have none of it. He produced his automatic, but kept it himself. He said he’d had it for years and knew how to use it. I couldn’t argue with him – after all, I’m only twenty-eight, and he’s crowding seventy.

“Anyway, in here we found a man with the door of that safe open. He’d smashed Corinne’s desk open with a fire-axe to get at the keys. He was wearing a stocking mask and examining a bunch of keys he had in his hand.

“Mr Grigson told him to turn around, real slow, and not to try anything, or he’d kill him. Then suddenly came two pistol shots, right close together, from behind, and Mr Grigson pitched headlong to the floor. He was wearing a white shirt, and blood from his right shoulder and arm was pumping through it. I could see he was hurt real bad.

“I dropped to my knees to help him. The man who’d fired the shots probably figured I was going for Mr Grigson’s gun. Anyway, he fired at me too.”

Dawson was breathing quickly, his distress evident. Brady poured him a Scotch and handed the glass over. “Take this.”

Dawson’s smile was wan. “I’ve never had a drink in my life, sir.”

“Maybe you’ll never have another,” said Brady agreeably. “But you need this one, and we need your story.”

Dawson drank, spluttered and coughed. He screwed up his eyes and drank some more. He clearly detested the stuff, but his system didn’t, for almost immediately some colour began to return to his cheeks. He touched his bandaged forearm.

“Looks worse than it is. The bullet just grazed me, wrist all the way to elbow, but very superficial. Stung, more than anything. One of the masked men forced me to help lug Mr Grigson to the armoury. On the way out I picked up two first-aid kits – they didn’t object. They pushed us into the armoury, locked the door and left.

“Then I took off Mr Grigson’s shirt and staunched the wound as best I could. It took a lot of bandages – there was so much blood coming. I thought he was going to bleed to death.”

“He could have,” Saunders said with certainty. “No question, your quick action saved his life.”

“Glad I was some use.” Dawson shuddered, looked at the doctor and went on; “Then I bandaged my own arm and had a go at the door, but there was no way I could get it open. I looked around and found a box full of detonators, each with a fuse attached. I struck one and dropped it out through one of the ventilation grilles. It went off with quite a bang. I must have let seven or eight of them off before Hazlitt came hammering on the door and asked what the hell was going on. I told him, and he ran off to fetch a duplicate key.”

Dawson drank some more, spluttered, but less than before, and put his glass down. “I guess that’s about all.”

“And more than enough,” said Brady with unaccustomed warmth. “A splendid job, son.” He looked round the assembled group, then asked sharply; “Where’s George?”

Until then no-one had noticed that Dermott was missing. Then Mackenzie said: “He slipped out with Carmody some time back. You want me to go find him?”

“Leave him be,” said Brady. “I have little doubt our faithful bloodhound is pursuing some spoor of his own.”

In fact the bloodhound was pursuing a fancy, not a line. He had taken Carmody aside and whispered in his ear that he urgently wanted to question the girl, Corinne. Where was she?

“In the isolation ward, like I said,” Carmody replied. “But I doubt you’ll find it on your own. It’s way out by itself, near Dragline One. Want me to come with you?”

“Sure. That’d be real kind.” Dermott swallowed his disappointment. He wanted to go alone. The instincts at work inside him made him feel uncomfortable: nothing like this had happened to him in years. But he had better be realistic and accept the offer of guidance.

By then the wind had increased, as it often did late in the night, and was whistling across the flat, open site with a deadly chill. The noise made it almost impossible to talk in the open – not that anyone in his senses would remain in the open for more than the minimum time.

Carmody had been reunited with his damaged Cherokee. Shouting an excuse into the wind, he got in first at the passenger door and slid across behind the wheel. Dermott heaved his massive frame in close behind him and slammed the door.

Carmody drove steadily across an apparently unmarked plain. The film of drifting snow had obscured the road, and the flat ground all looked the same.

“How the hell do you know which way to go?” Dermott asked.

“Markers – there.” Carmody pointed as a small stumpy, black-and-white post went past, with the number 323 stencilled on it in bold figures. “We’re on Highway Three. In a minute we’ll turn onto Highway Nine.”

Altogether they drove for nearly ten minutes before lights showed up out of the darkness ahead. Dermott was amazed once again at the sheer size of the site: by then they were four or five miles from the administration buildings.

The lights grew to a blaze of several windows, and they pulled up outside a single long hut. As they went through the door the heat hit them like a hammer as did a smell of disinfectant. Dermott at once began to wrestle his way out of his outdoor clothes: he felt he would stifle if he kept them on for one more second.

They found Corinne propped up on a pile of pillows, looking pale but (to Dermott’s eye) very sweet in a pair of pea-green pyjamas. Contrary to Carmody’s predictions, she was wide awake. She’d been asleep, she said, and had woken up thinking it was already morning.

“What time is it, anyway?” she asked.

“Four o’clock, near enough,” Dermott answered. “How d’you feel?”

“Fantastic. Not even a bruise, as far as I can tell.”

“That’s wonderful. But my, were you lucky!” Dermott began asking routine questions, to which he didn’t really want the answers. He wished to hell Carmody would go away someplace and leave him alone with the girl. What he would say to her if that happened, he didn’t quite know: all the same it was what he wanted.

“You’ve given us a real good lead, you know,” he said enthusiastically. “Can’t say just what it was, but it may be the breakthrough we needed. Mr Brady’s delighted…”

His voice tailed off as a heavy rumble suddenly shook the building. “Jesus!” he looked up sharply. “What was that?”

Carmody was gone already, out of the room and down the short passage. Dermott caught up with him at the outside door.

“Helicopter!” Carmody snapped. “Made a low pass right over the building. There he is, burning now.” Way out in the blackness a red and a green light converged and then separated again as the aircraft swung round. As the two men stood watching a pair of car headlamps snapped on from a point about a hundred yards in front of them. The vehicle moved forward, turned and stopped, with its headlights steady on a patch of snow.