Fred Hoyle - A for Andromeda

They turned north again, up Baker Street.

“I think you should stay where you are,” he said. “But you should keep in touch with me.”

“How much?”

Kaufmann opened his eyes wide.

“Excuse?”

“If you want me to give you information.”

“Really, Dr. Bridger!” Kaufmann laughed. “You have no finesse.”

The intercom buzzed. Kaufmann picked up the phone.

“Kaufmann.... Ja, ja.... Das ist Felix?...”

They did two more turns round the park and then dropped Bridger off a few hundred yards from the Institute. Judy watched his return but he said nothing to her. He thoroughly distrusted her anyhow.

Half an hour later the taxi which had followed Kaufmann’s car drew up at a telephone box and Harries stepped out. His leg was still strapped and he moved stiffly, but he considered himself fit for work. He paid the driver and limped across to the phone box. As the taxi drove away another car drew up and waited for him.

The phone was answered by Watling’s P.A., a bored Lieutenant from the Household Cavalry, the Ministry of Defence being, by that time, what was called “integrated.”

“I see. Well, you’d better come round and report.”

As he hung up, Watling swept in, brisk and bothered from another meeting with Osborne.

“Jabber, jabber, jabber. That’s all they do.” He slung his brief case on to a chair. “Anything new?”

“Harries has been on.”

“And?”

Watling took possession of his desk, a severe metal table in a severe concrete room with fire instructions on the door. The P.A. raised a cavalry-trained eyebrow.

“He says Bridger has been seen with a Known Person.”

“Who? You can ditch the jargon.”

“Kaufmann, sir.”

“Kaufmann?”

“Intel. The international cartel people.”

Watling stared at the blank wall facing him. There were still a number of large cosmopolitan cartels in spite of the anti-trust laws and the administration of the Common Market. They were not palpably illegal but they were extremely powerful and in some cases they had very nearly a stranglehold over European trade. At a time when the West was liable to boycott by any or all of the countries it depended on for raw materials, there was a frightening amount of scope for unscrupulous trading agencies, and Intel was generally known and disliked for its lack of scruple. Anything which found its way into its hands was likely to be sold profitably in another capital the next time the market was good.

“Any more?”

“No. They did two or three circuits in Kaufmann’s mobile gin-palace and then landed back at base.”

Watling stroked his chin as he fitted pieces of thought neatly and methodically together.

“You think that’s what he was up to at Bouldershaw?”

“Harries thinks so.”

“Which is why Harries was hauled off and pranged and dumped?”

“Partly.”

“Well, they’re the last people we want genned up on this.”

Once anything got into the hands of Intel it was extremely difficult to trace. They had a perfectly legal organisation in London, registered offices in Switzerland and branches over at least three continents. Information slipped along their private wires like quicksilver and there was very little that could be done about it. There were no search warrants for that kind of operation. By the time you were ransacking a Piccadilly office, the thing you had lost was being swapped for manganese or bauxite behind some very unsympathetic frontier. Nothing was sacred, or safe.

“I suppose Bridger’ll go on feeding ’em stuff,” he said.

“He’s supposed to be pulling out,” his P.A. reminded him.

“I doubt if he will now. They’ll have crossed his palm.” He sighed. “Anyway, he’d get it all from Fleming. They’re thick as condensed soup.”

“You think Fleming’s in it?”

“Ach!” Watling pushed his chair back and gave the thing up. “He’s just a hopeless innocent. He’ll blow the gaff to anyone to show. how independent he is. Look at what happened last time. And now we’re going to have them in our midst.”

“How so?”

“How so? You ought to write a phrasebook. They’re moving into W.D. quarters, that’s how so. The whole boiling. Fleming wants to build his super-computer at the Rocket Research Establishment at Thorness.”

“Oh?”

“That’s Top Secret.”

“Yes, sir.” The P.A. looked languidly discreet. “Has it been agreed?”

“It will be. I can smell a nonsense when I’m down-wind of it. Vandenberg’s furious. So are all the Allies, I wouldn’t wonder. But Reinhart’s all for it and so’s Osborne, and so’s their Minister. And so will the Cabinet be, I expect.”

“Then we can’t keep ’em out?”

“We can watch ’em. We’d better keep Harries on it for one.”

“They’ve their own security staff at Thorness. Army,” the P.A. added with pride.

The Air Commodore sniffed. “Harries can work in with them.”

“Harries wants to come off it.”

“Why?”

“He says he’s sure they’ve rumbled him.”

“How? Pardon.” Watling flashed a smile at him. “How so?”

“Well, they beat him up at Bouldershaw. They probably think he’s on to something bigger than this.”

“He probably is. Where is he now?”

“Tailing them. He’s coming in later to report.”

But Harries did not report later, or at all. Judy and Fleming found his corpse the following morning, under the tonneau cover of Fleming’s car.

When Judy had been sick and they had both been to the police station and the body had been taken away and dealt with, they went back to the office to find a message for Fleming to go straight round to the Ministry of Science. Judy, waiting with Christine, was interviewed by Watling and felt frightened and miserable. Christine went on with her work, only stopping to give Judy two aspirin with the air of one who dispenses charity regardless of merit.

Before he left for the Ministry, Fleming had kissed Judy on the cheek. She smiled queasily at him.

“Why should they dump it on me?” he said.

“They didn’t dump it on you. They dumped it on me, as a warning.”

She went to the Ladies and was sick again.

Fleming came back before lunch cock-o’-hoop and bubbling. He pulled Christine out of her chair and held her to him.

“It’s through!”

“Through?” Judy remained dazed at the other side of the room.

“Authority in triplicate from Air Commodore Jet-Propelled’s superior officers. They’ve opened wide their pearly barbed wire stockade.”

“Thorness?” Christine asked, pushing him away.

Fleming bounced his behind on to the trestle table. “We’re graciously allowed in to use their beautiful, beautiful taxpayers’ equipment hitherto reserved for playing soldiers.”

“When?” asked Judy.

Fleming slid off the table and went across and hugged her.

“As soon as we’re ready. Priority A on the big computer—barring what is laughingly called a national emergency. We’re excused morning parades, we shall be issued with passes, we shall have our fingers printed, our brains washed and our hair searched for small animals. And we shall build the marvel of the age.” He left Judy and held out his arms to Christine. “You and I, darling! We’ll teach ’em, won’t we? ‘Is it proven?’ asks His Ministership. We’ll prove ’em! ‘Come the four corners of the world in arms, and we will shock them’—as the lady said in the strip club. Oh—and Silver-wings is coming to give us our marching-orders.”

He started singing “Silver wings among the gold,” and took them both out to a lunch which Judy could not eat. There was no sign of Bridger.

Watling called back in the afternoon, composed but severe, like a visiting headmaster. He made the three of them sit down while he lectured them.