Doctor Who: The Enemy of the World (8 page)

The Doctor jumped to his feet, his face filled with admiration. ‘Excellent work, my dear!’ he cried, eagerly stretching out his hands for the file. ‘At last. Evidence.’

Outside, Benik’s security forces were silently taking up positions all round the building which, apart from Kent’s office, was still empty for the New Year holiday. Armed men were concealed in the surrounding gardens, on the fire escapes and even on the roof by the time Benik’s turbocar whined to a halt some distance away. He went straight to the courtyard, where he found their Lieutenant crouching in some huge ferns around an ornamental fountain, muttering urgently into his walkie-talkie.

‘Just sealing up the gaps, sir,’ he said, as Benik dropped down beside him. ‘There are four of them in there now, on the third floor.’

Benik’s eyes widened and he stared hungrily up at the third-floor windows as he sensed the chance to trap a nest of conspirators red-handed and so impress Salamander on his return.

A garbled message suddenly crackled from the radio.

‘Ready now!’ the Lieutenant muttered.

‘If anyone makes a break for it, order your men to shoot on sight,’ Benik instructed him coldly.

The Lieutenant looked appalled. ‘But I can’t take that responsibility, sir,’ he protested. ‘If the Zone police...’

‘You’ll lose
all
responsbilities if you fail to obey!’ Benik snarled. ‘Those people are terrorists. Give the order.’

Reluctantly the officer obeyed, speaking rapidly into his radio.

Benik stood up, his eyes bright with the prospect of a coup. ‘Now,’ he breathed, leading the way into the silent building.

6

Upstairs Giles Kent was crouched down by the window.

and was peering intently over the sill. ‘Come and look at this little lot,’ he muttered.

The others joined him. Below them the security forces were closing in on the building.

‘Benik’s bully boys. We were followed,’ Giles snapped.

He turned to the Doctor, but the Doctor had already read Kent’s thoughts. He shook his head vehemently. ‘No, Kent. I haven’t time to prepare myself. We must find a way out of here,’ he cried, furious at his own helplessness.

‘Quick. The fire escape,’ Astrid cried. But craning her head to look along the outside wall, she saw three or four guards already perched on the iron staircase. ‘Too late.

They’ve cornered us.’

At that moment the thud of boots came from the lobby.

Giles rushed across and locked the outer door. For a second or two nobody moved.

‘What can we do now?’ Fariah murmured.

Suddenly the Doctor strode to the inner office door and yanked it open. ‘Kent, I remember there’s a kind of service panel in here.’

Giles struck himself on the forehead with his fist. ‘Main air-conditioning duct. Of course. But it’s three floors.

Quite a drop,’ he warned, hurrying over.

Just then there was a violent hammering on the outer office door. ‘Kent, you’re completely surrounded,’ Benik’s voice shouted from the lobby. ‘Let us in. It will save so much unpleasantness.’

The Doctor had found the jewelled clasp from his Salamander disguise in one of his pockets and was frantically using it to try and unscrew the large metal panel set into the wall of the inner office. As he worked, the onslaught on the outer door increased as Benik’s guards started laying into it with their rifle butts. ‘We’ll just have to hope for a soft landing, my friends,’ he muttered, grimacing with the effort of turning the tightly secured fixings, while the others watched anxiously over his shoulder.

‘You cannot possibly escape!’ Benik screamed at them.

‘This is your last chance to give yourselves up.’

At last the Doctor managed to pull the panel free. ‘Use your arms and legs against the sides of the duct and it should break your fall,’ he whispered, motioning Fariah to go first.

‘The file!’ she gasped, diving back into the office to retrieve the precious papers.

Astrid urged the Doctor and Giles to go first. ‘You are both more important,’ she insisted, taking out her pistol.

The Doctor squeezed her hand encouragingly and clambered into the duct. He disappeared from sight, his hands and boots squeaking against the metal sides as he slid rapidly downwards. Taking a deep breath, Kent followed, then Fariah with the rolled up papers gripped between her teeth.

Astrid ran back into the main office and trained her gun on the door into the lobby. ‘Get away from that door, Benik!’ she shouted. Another barrage of rifle butts thundered against the thick hardwood. Astrid fired a short burst high up near the frame, and the attack on the door immediately stopped amid shouts of warning as the guards took cover. Astrid glanced at her watch, estimating how much of a start to give the others before she followed them into the duct. Then she raced into the inner office and scrambled into the duct just as a second burst of gunfire blew the locks off the outer door. It flew apart in a hail of splinters as three guards followed by Theodore Benik thrust their way in. They found the room deserted.

As Benik stared around him, his astonishment gave way to white hot rage at being cheated of his prey. He rushed into the inner office. ‘The air ducts!’ he fumed, hurling the metal panel aside. ‘Alert the men outside. Tell them to shoot on sight.’

As the officer muttered orders into his radio, Benik rubbed his hands together with relish. ‘They will be trapped in the air-conditioning plant perhaps. It’s a muggy day and I think we should turn it on.’

Her hands and knees raw and burning from rubbing against the welded sections of the duct, Fariah forced herself through the narrow opening into the daylight.

There was no sign of the Doctor or of Giles Kent in the deserted yard behind the building.

With cat-like stealth, Fariah ran along by the wall.

Turning a corner, she saw Kent’s motor caravan parked among some trees. She waved frantically and called out as she saw Giles scrambling into the driving seat.

Simultaneously there was a crackle of shots behind her. A series of bright red holes exploded across the back of her white tunic and she was hurled against the wall. A security guard ran up and stood over her writhing body with his pistol levelled. The Lieutenant reached them a few seconds later, just as Kent’s caravan roared away through the trees.

‘Idiot!’ he shouted. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

The guard prodded the bloodstained girl at his feet.

‘You gave orders to kill, sir.’

The Lieutenant shoved him aside. ‘Go and report to Mr Benik that you carried out his orders and consequently allowed the most important suspects to escape!’ he rapped, with a glare of contempt.

As the puzzled guard stamped away, the Lieutenant knelt down and tried to sit Fariah up. Her eyes flickered open and she clutched at her side with a desperate moan as Fedorin’s bloodstained papers dropped out of her tunic.

‘I’m sorry. You should have stopped running,’ the officer murmured gently, supporting her as she fought for breath.

A moment later, Benik arrived. ‘You lost them!’ he snarled.

The shadow of a smile passed over Fariah’s anguished face. Benik crouched over her, thrusting his pistol brutally against her forehead. ‘Who is the other man with Kent and the Ferrier girl?’ he demanded, elbowing the Lieutenant out of the way.

Again Fariah tried to smile. ‘You... you’ll know soon enough,’ she gasped.

‘Who is he?’ Benik screamed, shaking the dying girl by the hair. Fariah’s body arched in agony and the Lieutenant protested to Benik in a shocked voice. ‘Shut up,’ Benik snapped. He twisted Fariah’s curly black hair in his thin claw-like hand. ‘Who is the stranger?’ he repeated, shaking with rage. Then he pressed the barrel of his pistol between her eyes.

‘You can’t threaten... me, Benik... I can only die once...

and someone’s beaten you... to it...’ she whispered.

As Benik’s finger squeezed the trigger, the officer pushed the gun aside. ‘Sir! She’s dead!’ he cried.

The shot ripped harmlessly into the ground beside her head.

Wiping the sweat from his eyes with a vicious slash of his sleeve, Benik thrust his pistol into his tunic and gathered up the bloodstained papers scattered beside Pariah’s motionless body. As he glanced quickly through them, a cunning smile began to creep over his thin, glistening face.

Two hours later Benik walked smugly through the heavy metal-alloy doors into Salamander’s Sanctum in the heart of the Kanowa Research Centre. The armoured walls of the large, softly lit chamber were lined with orderly racks of documents, cassettes, microfilms and computer spools. In the centre was an extensive semi-circular console containing videophone, telex machines, television monitors and a vast array of electronic instruments.

Salamander himself was sitting in a comfortable reclining chair behind the console talking to Donald Bruce who was facing him with his back to the doors.

‘I always said we should finish Kent once and for all,’

Benik said sharply as he entered, carrying the blood-spattered documents under his arm.

Bruce’s bulky figure stiffened. ‘What you mean is that you’ve failed miserably,’ he said acidly, without turning round.

‘A fiasco, Benik,’ Salamander crowed in his menacing tenor, ‘in public and in broad daylight.’

Bruce sighed and shook his head. ‘You’ve exceeded your authority, Benik. A woman’s been killed.’

‘Resisting arrest,’ Benik retorted.

The Security Commissioner’s bushy eyebrows shot up.

‘Arrest?’ he echoed incredulously. ‘Outside the Research Station perimeter you have no powers whatsoever. It was a gross violation.’ He turned to Salamander, flushed with rage. ‘This was a matter for the WZO!’ he protested.

Benik sniggered insolently. ‘Don’t worry, Bruce. There was no one about in Melville today. You won’t get any bad publicity.’

Salamander rapped sharply on the console with his fist.

‘Kent and his associates are a menace to security,’ he reminded them coldly. ‘What action are you taking?’

Bruce shrugged. ‘He hasn’t broken any laws that I know of.’

Salamander laughed. ‘Always the policeman, are you not Bruce?’ He leaned towards them, an obsessive gleam in his dark eyes. ‘Kent is known to associate with this stranger who impersonates me,’ he murmured. ‘The dangers are obvious. If they got in here, they could ruin everything.

They must be found quickly. The safety of the Sunstore system may be at stake.’ He paused significantly.

Donald Bruce grunted in agreement. ‘Leave it to me,’ he said briskly. Then he turned to Benik and beckoned him to follow. ‘I’ll review your internal security arrangements for a start.’

Benik did not move. He eyed Bruce with burning resentment and slowly held up the documents from Fedorin’s file. ‘This was found on the dead girl.’

Immediately Bruce put out his hand to take the papers, but Benik turned abruptly away and handed them to Salamander with a challenging stare in his saucer-like eyes.

Salamander recognised them at once. ‘Excellent, Benik, excellent!’ he exclaimed, pretending to glance through them.

Bruce cleared his throat deliberately. ‘What is that?’ he inquired with a suspicious frown. ‘Any material evidence must...’

‘Top-security technical data,’ Salamander hastily interrupted him, slipping the papers quickly into a drawer beside his chair. ‘The Deputy Director has performed a remarkable service to the Centre by recovering it intact.

Thank you, Benik.’

Bruce glared and then stamped out of the Sanctum.

Benik gave Salamander a knowing smile and then followed him.

As soon as they had gone, Salamander muttered some terse instructions into the intercom in front of him. ‘I am not to be disturbed until further notice. I shall engage the electro locks now.’ He took a small electronic key from his jacket and inserted it into a series of small sockets set into one of the panels of instruments ranged along the angled front of the console. A few seconds later there was a succession of soft whirring and clicking sounds as the heavy doors were electronically sealed.

Sighing with satisfaction, Salamander swivelled his chair and busied himself at another panel. He adjusted its cluster of switches and touch-buttons, inserted the key into another socket and behind him a section of the wall swung smoothly open, revealing a kind of cylindrical capsule with a curved transparent shield over the front. Behind the shield hung a plastic radiation suit and helmet.

Salamander opened the shield with the key, took down the protective suit and hurriedly pulled it on over his clothes. Stepping into the capsule, he closed the shield over himself and inserted the key into the control panel in the wall of the cylinder. Immediately the capsule began to glide smoothly downwards inside its slim shaft.

Donald Bruce stood in the security control room of the Research Centre shaking his head in amazement.

‘You’re telling me that Salamander has shut himself away in that Sanctum of his and that he can’t be reached?’

he exclaimed.

The Duty Officer nodded. ‘Correct, sir. All locks and communications are controlled from inside.’

‘It’s absurd!’ Bruce cried. ‘Suppose there’s an emergency; how do you make contact?’

‘The Kanowa Centre does not have emergencies,’ Benik retorted with staggering complacency.

Bruce stared at the large, detailed plan of the Centre displayed on the wall. ‘What goes on in this Sanctum anyway?’

Benik gestured at the plan. ‘Classified area. I can only tell you that the Leader often works there in total isolation.

No one gets in.’

Donald Bruce lost his temper. ‘Suppose I ordered you to let me in there—in an emergency?’ he thundered.

Benik shrugged. ‘Really, Bruce, you charge in here like a bull in a china shop. But you won’t get into the Sanctum.

The electronic locks, once they’re engaged, only open from the inside.’

The Security Commissioner looked long and hard at Benik through his small wire-rimmed spectacles. ‘I don’t like mysteries,’ he said frostily, ‘any more than I like people trespassing on my territory.’