Alistair MacLean - Circus

He said: “A rather nice touch, don’t you think, to lock all the Wildermanns up together?”

The three doors opened almost simultaneously and three people made their way, two with very faltering footsteps, out into the passageway. The two who could not walk too well were old and stooped and grey, one who had been a man, the other who had been a woman, their prison pallor faces lined with suffering and pain and privation. The third figure had been a young man but was no longer young, except in years. The old woman stared at Bruno with dull lack-lustre eyes.

She said: “Bruno.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“I knew you would come some day.”

He put his arm round the frail shoulders. “I’m sorry I took so long.”

“Touching,” Dr Harper said. “How very, very touching.” Bruno removed his arm and turned round unhurriedly. Dr Harper, using Maria Hopkins as a shield, had a silencer pistol in one hand. Beside him, smiling wolfishly, Colonel Sergius was similarly armed. Behind them stood the giant Angelo, whose preferred form of weapon was a giant lethal club the size of a baseball bat.

Harper went on: “We’re not interrupting, are we? I mean, you weren’t thinking of going someplace?” “We had that in mind.”

“Drop that machine-pistol,” Sergius ordered. Bruno stooped, place it on the ground, then, as he came upright, moved with lightning speed, grabbed Van Diemen and held him before him as a shield. With his other hand he got the red dart pen from his breast pocket, depressed the knob, and pointed it over Van Diemen’s shoulder at Harper’s face. At the sight of the pen Harper’s face widened in fear and the finger tightened on the trigger of the silenced gun. Sergius, no longer smiling, said viciously: “Drop that. I can get you from the side.” Which was an accurate observation, but, unfortunately for Sergius, he had transferred his attention to Bruno while he was speaking, a period of about two seconds, and for a man possessed of the cobra speed and accuracy of Manuelo two seconds was a laughably long time. Sergius died unawares, the knife buried to the haft in his throat. Two seconds after that both Van Diemen and Harper were on the floor, Van Diemen with the bullet intended for Bruno buried in his chest, Harper with the dart buried in his cheek. Angelo, his face contorted in fury, made an animal noise deep in the throat and leapt forward, his huge club swinging. Kan Dahn, moving forward even more quickly, and with astonishing agility for a man of his immense bulk, avoided the downward blow, wrenched the club from Angelo and tossed it contemptuously to one side. The struggle that followed was as titanic as it was brief, and the sound of Angelo’s neck breaking was dial of a rotten bough shearing under the woodsman’s axe. Bruno put one arm round the violently trembling girl, the other round the stunned, terrified and uncomprehending old woman.

He said: “Fine. Termine. It’s all over and you’re all safe now. I think we should leave this place now. You won’t really mind will you, Father?” The old man gazed at the prostrate figures and said nothing. Bruno went on, to no one in particular:

“About Van Diemen I’m sorry. But perhaps it’s best. He’d really no place left to go.”

Kan Dahn said: “No place?”

“In his world, yes. In mine, not. He was completely amoral — not immoral — in devising so fiendish a weapon. A totally unheeding, irresponsible man. I know it’s a very cruel thing to say, but the world can well do without him.” Maria said: “Why did Dr Harper come for me? He kept saying something about his transmitter and tapes being missing from his railway compartment.”

“Yes. It had to be something like that. Roebuck here stole them. Can’t trust those Americans.”

“You don’t trust me very much. You don’t tell me very much.” There was no reproach in her voice, just a lack of understanding. “But perhaps you can tell me what happens when Dr Harper comes to.”

“Dead men don’t come to. Not on this planet, anyway.”

“Dead?” She had no emotions left to register. “Those darts were tipped with lethal poison. Some form of refined curare, I should imagine. I was supposed to kill some of their own men. Fortunately, I had to use it on a guard dog. Now a very dead guard dog.”

“Kill their own men?”

“It would have looked very black for me — and America — if I’d killed some of the guards here, then been caught red-handed. Their own men. People like Harper and Sergius are men without hearts, without souls. They’d shoot their own parents if it served their personal political ends. It was also slated, incidentally, that you should die. I had, of course, been instructed not to use the dart gun on Van Diemen on the pretext that he had a weak heart. Well, God knows he’s got a weak enough heart now — Harper put a bullet through it.” He looked at Maria. “You know how to operate the call-up on the transmitter — Roebuck has it in his bag there?” She nodded. “Right, send the signal now.” He turned to Kan Dahn, Roebuck and Manuelo. “Bring my folks down slowly, will you? They can’t hurry. I’ll wait below.”

Kan Dahn said with suspicion: “Where are you going?” “The entrance is time-locked so someone must have let them in. Whoever that was will still be there or thereabouts. You’re all still in the clear. I want you to stay that way.” He picked up the Schmeisser. “I hope I don’t have to use this.” When the others joined him on the ground floor some five minutes later, Bruno had already done what he had to do. Kan Dahn surveyed the two bound, gagged and for the moment unconscious guards with considerable satisfaction. “By my count that’s making thirteen people we’ve tied up tonight. It’s certainly been an unlucky number for some. So it’s up, up and away.”

“Indeed.” He asked of Maria: “You made contact?” She looked at her watch. “It’s airborne. Rendezvous in sixteen minutes.”

“Good.” He looked and smiled at Kan Dahn, Manuelo, Roebuck, Vladimir and Yoffe. “Well, it’s the van for us while you five make your own discreet way back to the Winter Palace. Au revoir and many thanks. See you all in Florida. Have a nice night at the circus.”

Bruno helped his elderly parents and youngest brother into the back of the van, climbed into the front with Maria and drove off towards the rendezvous with the helicopter. He stopped the van about thirty yards beyond the wooden bridge spanning the narrow fast river. Maria looked at the trees closely crowding on both sides.

“This is the rendezvous?”

“Round the next corner. In a clearing. But I have a little chore to attend to first.”

“Inevitably.” She looked and sounded resigned. “And is one allowed to ask what it is?”

“I’m going to blow the bridge up.”

“I see. You’re going to blow the bridge up.” She registered no surprise and was by now at the stage where she wouldn’t have lifted an eyebrow if he’d announced his intention of razing the Winter Palace to the ground. “Why?” Carrying his clutch of amatol explosives, Bruno descended from the van. Maria followed. As they walked on to the bridge Bruno said: “Hasn’t it occurred to you that when they hear the chopper’s engine — and you can hear a chopper’s engine an awfully long way away — the police and army are going to come swarming out of town like enraged bees? I don’t want to get stung.”

Maria was crestfallen. “There seem to be an awful lot of things that don’t occur to me.”

Bruno took her arm and said nothing. Together, they walked out to the middle of the bridge, where Bruno stooped and laid the charges together between two struts on the side of the bridge. He straightened and surveyed them thoughtfully. Maria said: “Are you an expert on everything?” “You don’t have to be an expert to blow up a wooden bridge.” He produced a pair of pliers from his pocket. “All you require is one of those to crimp the chemical fuse — and, of course, the sense to walk away immediately afterwards.” He stood there thoughtfully and she said: “Well, aren’t you going to crimp the fuses, then?”