Sean Gabb: The Churchill Memorandum

“Not so fast, Markham,” I heard Foot croak. I stared back from the lowest step. Still on the floor, he’d got hold of his revolver. I don’t know how he’d found a bullet so fast—perhaps he’d had some in his pocket. But he rammed the cylinder back into place and aimed at me. I looked at the bloodied, hate-twisted face. I stopped and put my hands up. Foot giggled and pulled the trigger. There was a click and nothing. He swore viciously and fumbled with the cylinder. With a few deliberate clicks, he twisted it into place and aimed once more. I tried again for the steps. As the shot rang out and ricocheted from somewhere above me, I tripped and sprawled forward on the steps. I forced myself to my feet. So far as I could tell, I was unhurt. Like an idiot, I looked back. I looked straight over at Foot. Still sat against the wall, he was using both hands to steady the gun as he took careful aim.

A strange ringing—it was as if someone was rubbing on the rim of a wet glass—made me look away. I found myself now looking at the sealed vat of acid. The ricochet had gone into the artificial ceramic. It had made a little hole exactly where the mouth should have been on the skull and crossbones. Through this, the dark liquid was running as if from a drinking fountain. Even as I looked, I could see a pattern of cracks forming all over the wall of the vat. They radiated out from the single bullet hole, They extended and joined up and branched out in new directions. And, all the time, the artificial ceramic sang at me in the loud, clear voice of its own dissolution.

I stared again at Foot. Oblivious to the noise that seemed to fill the whole room, his lips were parted in an anticipatory snarl as he took a now unwavering aim and pulled back the hammer. He might have had the trigger pulled half back when the wall of the vat suddenly burst, and, with a loud and mighty flood, perhaps a hundred gallons of sulphuric acid poured out into the room.

Did I hear Foot’s terrified shrieks above the corrosive hiss and slurp of the dark flood? I really can’t say. The spell was broken, and I had the presence of mind to stagger, tripping and blubbering, to the top of those steps, and get myself out of the cellar before those clouds of hideous vapour could reach me.

My candle was where I’d left it, perhaps seven minutes before, in the big wine cellar. I stopped myself from rushing forward in blind panic. I wiped sweaty, trembling hands on my trouser legs, and reached for the holder. There was another cellar beyond this one, and then more stairs before we were back to ground level. It probably was madness to suppose I could get everyone out into the drive without being cut down in the crossfire of what must be a battle at or near its height. But that was the plan. And it was the only plan I had.

As I took another step forward, the door in front of me opened, and I looked into the intense glare of another chemical lamp.

“Oh, it’s you!” Macmillan said impatiently. “I did hear that Edward had kicked you to death out in the drive. Now, I suppose I’ll have to do the job myself.”

“So Michael’s bomb is down there, is it?” Macmillan grunted. Keeping the gun in his left hand, he passed me the chemical lamp and looked at his pocket watch. “If what you say is right, there’s plenty of time to get up to the helicopter.”

“I suppose it will have to be the hero’s welcome for you in Moscow,” I said bitterly. Now I was out of the deepest cellar in the house, I could hear the rattle of the guns again outside, and the regular thump of the artillery.

“In God’s name, dear boy, not Moscow!” Macmillan cried with mock horror. “The problem with you historian chappies is that you spend so much time fussing about with the past that never understand what’s going on around you.” He laughed easily. He must have caught the look on my face, because he stopped his gradual progress towards the door and leaned against a wine rack.

“Oh, Anthony, Anthony,” he sighed. “It’s rather late for telling you anything at all. But a statesman’s plain duty is to inform those he would lead—even if the leading isn’t to be for very much longer. Listen, boy, did it never strike you as a little odd that I should be pressing on in a plot that had long since been about as confidential as the tips in The Racing Post ? For months now, we’ve had Powell sniffing about, not to mention those silly Americans. Yet there I was, still plotting away and hurrying things forward.

“Well, on the one hand, there always was the chance that I could outrun everyone else. Halifax is still out of England. I still have all the authority of a Foreign Secretary. On the other—and I did hear Michael telling you in the billiard room about Plan A—I have always had a Plan B. In a few minutes, I will get into my helicopter and have myself put down just outside what I judge to be the maximum blast area from Michael’s bomb. I shall have a pile of recovered nuclear secrets, and be the only survivor of a most dastardly plot that only I was able to foil.” He stared again into my face and laughed so that his moustache quivered.

“Halifax had my full explanation weeks ago—not that he bothered reading it—and there is a full, if slightly biased, account on my desk in London of all my doings on behalf of Queen and Country. It may not be something that can be written up in my own lifetime. For all that, those in the know will be aware how an elderly Cabinet Minister, single-handedly and with reckless courage, pulled his country back from the edge of catastrophe.”

“And you really think they’ll believe that?” I sneered. I moved the lamp forward slightly, so my face couldn’t be seen, and looked about for a weapon. Perhaps I could throw a wine bottle at his head….

“Do pull that light back a little,” he said quietly. “I know what you’re thinking. Whatever trick you pulled on Michael downstairs, you’ll not be repeating with me.” As he spoke, I heard a faint shuffling and grating behind me. I looked round. We were alone in the wine cellar. I thought at first it might be rats or mice. But the sound was becoming more distinct. It was coming from behind the door that I’d just closed. I swallowed nervously and let my mouth fall open.

“Help me!” came a ghastly croak from just the other side of the door. “Help me!” Because it had no latch, I’d only pushed the door to. Now, pushed from within, it swung open. I stepped further back to avoid the clouds of sulphur gas that were illuminated a dirty brown by the lamp still burning below. From those dense clouds emerged a tiny figure that crawled and dragged its way slowly across the floor.

“Help me!” it croaked again, moving with slow but desperate concentration away from the place of its utter shipwreck. I tried to look away from the blackened, hairless scalp and the claws, almost devoid of flesh, that served in place of hands.

“Oh, my poor, dear Michael,” Macmillan crooned. “You do look a mess.” He stepped past me and looked down at what had, just minutes before, been a cackling, triumphant Michael Foot. “You know, I can’t help but suspect that you’d been planning to shit all over me. Nevertheless, I forgive you.” He bent forward and pushed the barrel of his gun into the exposed neck. He pulled the trigger and the body jerked once. It was over.

“The punishment was just,” he said to me. “And it was a mark of my forgiveness. Michael was, after all, a most distinguished President of the Oxford Union. Such a loss when he fell in with those ghastly Moscow people.” He kicked the body and flipped it over. I tried to look away from the burned away face and the almost eyeless sockets. It was like beholding the face of an unwrapped mummy. But Macmillan pushed me with his weak right hand and pointed at the far door. “Come on, Anthony,” he said. “Time and tide wait for no man—not to mention Russian bombs.