Mr. Calder & Mr. Behrens (20 page)

“Then this might have nothing to do with Mounteagle. It might be a revenge killing. By Tresham’s son perhaps.”

“I don’t think,” said Mr. Fortescue precisely, “that this is a case in which it would be wise to jump to conclusions. What about Cairns?”

“He’s a bachelor. We’ve telephoned his digs. No answer. The police are sending a car round.”

Mr. Fortescue digested this news in silence for some seconds. Then he said, “I’ll look into the Tresham case. And I’ll arrange for the police to monitor Mounteagle’s barge as it goes downstream tomorrow. There’s a lot to do. I suggest you go home and get some sleep. Be at the Bank by nine tomorrow morning.”

Mr. Behrens went back home to the Old Rectory in the sleepy Kentish village of Lamperdown, and he lay on his bed, but he did not go to sleep. The answer to a lot of their problems was under his hand, if only he could close his fingers on it.

The deceptive light of false dawn was in the sky, and the first cocks were beginning to crow across the valley when Mr. Behrens got up, pulled on his dressing gown, and made his way downstairs, walking quietly, so as not to wake his aunt, who shared the house with him and was a light sleeper.

He switched on the reading lamp in his study and searched the shelves for the book he wanted. In the end he found it among a complete set of the works of Charles Dickens.

“Are you suggesting,” said Mr. Fortescue, “that Colonel Mounteagle intends to blow up the Houses of Parliament?”

“That’s right.”

“And you found this in
A Child’s History of England?”

“It was the only book I could lay my hand on quickly,” said Mr. Behrens apologetically.

It was not yet six o’clock in the morning but Mr. Fortescue was dressed in the pinstripe trousers and black coat appropriate to a senior bank official. Also he had shaved, which was more than Mr. Behrens had done. He turned his attention to the book and read it once again.

“‘Lord Mounteagle, Tresham’s brother-in-law, was certain to be in the House; and when Tresham found that he could not prevail upon the rest to devise any means of sparing their friends, he wrote a mysterious letter to this Lord and left it at his lodging in the dusk, urging him to keep away from the opening of Parliament.’

So Tresham has nothing to do with our Norfolk fisherman?”

“Nothing at all. Tresham is probably something Calder heard the colonel saying when he shot Cairns.”

“Then you think Cairns is dead?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“The whole thing is unthinkable. Totally unthinkable. And yet—”

Now that he was getting used to it, Mr. Fortescue seemed to be finding the idea of the wholesale destruction of the legislature more interesting than shocking. “An outrageous idea. How would one set about it?”

“It’s some sort of automatic pilot with a receiver at the other end to guide it.”

“Then has something been planted in the House?”

“I fancy the receiver will be going there tonight. In Pocock’s car. That would be what the colonel was up to when Pocock heard burglars.”

“How could he be certain that Pocock would be there tonight?”

“It’s the debate on Common Market finance. His pet subject. He’ll be there early and stay late.”

“Well, we can soon see if you’re right. We’ll call on Pocock. And we’ll take Brackett with us. If he finds this gadget in Pocock’s car, do you know, I shall be almost inclined to believe you.”

“He could hardly have chosen a more appropriate day for it,” said Mr. Behrens. The calendar on Mr. Fortescue’s desk had not yet been turned from the previous day. It showed November 4th.

An hour later, as the milkman and the postman were delivering their wares, three men stood in Mr. Pocock’s garage and watched the fourth at work. Major Brackett, who looked like a dyspeptic bloodhound and was the top electronics expert in the Ministry of Defence, was lying on his back under the car. He said, “It’s here all right. Wired onto one of the cross-members. A very neat job.”

He eased his way out, stood up, and wiped a drop of oil from his nose.

“That’s all right then,”saidMr. Fortescue. “All we have to do is switch it off.” And when Brackett said nothing, “Well, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid not,” said the Major sadly. “Once this jigger’s set and on beam, if you turn it off, or interfere with it in any way, you activate the switch at the other end, and your barge load goes up.”

“I think, Major,” said the Home Secretary, “that if you could explain, in terms simple enough to be understood by someone like myself who knows nothing about electronics, then we might be able to see our way more clearly.”

Apart from Major Brackett, his audience consisted of the Police Commissioner, the head of the Special Branch, Commander Elfe, Chief Superintendent Baker in charge of River Division, and Mr. Fortescue. Mr. Behrens was sitting unobtrusively in the background.

“Well,” said the major, “there are a number of different ways of detonating explosives at a distance.”

“As we know,” said Elfe grimly.

“The simplest is a pair of linked sets. Master and slave, we call them. The master emits an impulse which increases in strength as the two sets come together. When they are a predetermined distance apart the stronger ‘kills’ the weaker one. This throws a switch, and the explosive goes up.”

“I’m with you so far,” said the Home Secretary.

“It can be linked to an automatic steering device. We’ve developed one recently, on the ranges at Bovington. It steers an old tank filled with explosive into an enemy strong point and detonates it when it gets there. In fact, if Mounteagle has managed to get hold of the latest box of tricks, there’s an additional jigger which not only keeps the tank on a predetermined course but allows it to side-step obstacles. It’s done with an ‘eye’ – a photocell connected with a microprocessor that registers changes of light striking the cell and takes the appropriate action.”

“Does that mean that Mounteagle need never go on board at all? Suppose he’s fixed the slave set to go off at – what? Fifty yards? That would be about the distance from the edge of the embankment to the car park under the House. Then he could leave it to steer itself downstream.”

“I doubt he’d do that,” said Baker. “The barge would call too much attention to itself, zig-zagging down the river like a pin-ball. He’ll surely take it down as far as he can by manual steering – at least until it’s dark. Any time after that, I agree, he could leave it to its own devices.”

For a moment the men in the room were silent. They were watching a steel craft, packed with enough explosive to tear the top off a mountain, sliding downstream in the darkness, steering under bridges, avoiding other boats, obedient only to the beckoning of its master in Parliament.

The Home Secretary said, “Where is it now?”

The Commissioner said, “Our last report was Bell View Lock below Runnymede. The colonel was certainly on board then. He was making about four miles an hour.” He was studying a map that Baker had produced. “Say it’s dark by seven. If he keeps up that speed he’d be ten miles above Westminster by then.”

“The tide’ll be against him when he gets below Teddington,” said Baker. “He won’t make more than three miles an hour after that.”

Everyone did some mental arithmetic.

Elfe said, “Then H-hour could be either side of ten o’clock.”

“Is there any chance,” said the Home Secretary, “of getting someone aboard
after
the colonel’s left and reverting to—what did you call it?—manual steering.”

“If you tried that,” said Brackett, “you’d almost certainly send the whole lot up. No. I’m afraid there’s only one answer. Put the master set from Pocock’s car into a police launch and lead the barge out to sea. Safe enough if the launch keeps two hundred yards ahead. Have an experienced man in charge.”

“I’ll take it myself,” said Baker. “That is,” he added with a grin, “if the major will come with me in case of any—er—technical hitches.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” said Brackett, looking sadder than ever.

“Very well, gentlemen,” said the Home Secretary briskly. “That seems to be the best plan. You have total authority to clear the river of craft, and take any other precautionary measures you think necessary. I assume that Mounteagle plans to bolt abroad. You’ll take the usual steps to block the exits.”

The Commissioner said, “It occurs to me, Home Secretary, that if we succeed in taking the barge out to sea and destroying it, we shall have very little real evidence left. Suppose he decides to brazen it out.”

“He’ll have to brazen out one murder and one attempted murder,” said Mr. Fortescue coldly. “Calder recovered sufficiently an hour ago to tell us what happened at Petheridge.”

“When you’re dealing with a madman,” said the Home Secretary, “it’s impossible to predict what he’ll do.”

Mr. Behrens disagreed, though he felt it was hardly his place to say so. He thought he knew exactly what the colonel was planning to do.

At ten o’clock that night Mr. Behrens was sitting, alone, on a bench on a hilltop on the northern fringe of London. In front of him, and below him, a million lights twinkled through the misty darkness. There were smaller lights, which were windows and lamp standards and motorcars, and larger lights which were bonfires. The nearest was a quarter of a mile below the point where he was sitting. He could see the dark figures congregated round it like priests at a ritual burning, and he could see, lashed to a stake on top, the grotesque parody of Guy Fawkes, the first great pyrotechnic.

A rocket sailed up into the sky and burst in clusters of red and yellow fights.

Mr. Behrens had chosen this particular place because he had remembered something Mr. Calder had once told him and he was convinced that Colonel Mounteagle, if he avoided immediate capture, would come there too.

A bronze plaque, set in a stone pillar beside the bench, was the reason for his certainty.

“Parliament Hill Fields,” it said, “so named because the conspirators who, in the year 1605, planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament, escaping to the north, halted their horses at this spot to observe the outcome of their device.”

With his strong sense of history, the colonel must surely come to that spot to observe the outcome of his own more powerful and sophisticated device.

Mr. Behrens was wondering exactly what the colonel had planned to do, and what he would have done but for the unfortunate contretemps at Petheridge. There were several ways in which he might have escaped detection. On the supposition that the original barge would be destroyed beyond any possibility of identification, he needed only to have a duplicate ready filled with explosive, of which he had no doubt already accumulated a stock at his works, waiting for him below Tower Bridge. He could then proceed quietly on his way with this and turn a bland face of innocence to the world. Suspicion, yes. But proof would turn on a number of imponderables, such as whether they could prove the acquisition by the colonel of the self-steering device.

It was at this moment that Mr. Behrens heard a car draw up and stop on the road above him. A door slammed. Footsteps came crunching down the cinder track towards the seat. Mr. Behrens had never met the colonel, but he had been shown photographs of him, and in the dying light of the rocket he had no difficulty in recognising him.

The colonel stood for a long minute, in silence, staring down at the scene below. Mr. Behrens stood up, and the movement caught the colonel’s eye. He turned his head.

“A magnificent spectacle, is it not?” said Mr. Behrens.

The colonel grunted.

“But I fear that the main attraction has been cancelled. Owing, you might say, to a technical hitch. When it does take place, it will be some miles offshore, and with a very limited audience.”

The colonel was motionless, a black figure outlined against the night sky. When he spoke his voice sounded quite easy. He said, “Who are you, little man?”

“I doubt if this is really a moment for introductions,” said Mr. Behrens. “I am a very old friend of one of the men you shot last night. Not Cairns, the other one.”

“The Government spy.”

“I suppose that’s as good a description as any.”

“And what do you propose to do about it?”

The colonel had swung round now, but both his hands were visible, hanging idle by his side. Mr. Behrens moved towards him until he was quite close, watching the colonel’s hands all the time.

He said, “It seemed to me that there was only one logical end to this matter, Colonel. You come up here to witness the success of your plan. Being disappointed in its failure – we may assume by now, I think, that it has failed – you decide to take your own life.”

So saying, Mr. Behrens shot Colonel Mounteagle neatly through the heart. He had removed the silencer from his gun, being confident that the noise of the shot would arouse no interest on this particular night. He stooped over the crumpled body, pressed the muzzle against the entry point of the bullet, and fired again. Then he wiped the gun carefully and pressed it into the colonel’s right hand.

A salvo of rockets soared up into the sky, and burst almost overhead with a loud crack and a shower of silver rain.

It was eleven o’clock, on a fine February morning when Mr. Calder’s car gave up the struggle and rolled to a halt on the outskirts of Winterbourne Vaisey.

Mr. Calder knew enough about cars to realise that whatever had happened needed expert attention. He was glad that the breakdown had occurred on the outskirts of a sizeable village. It looked the sort of place which might boast a garage.

He found both a garage and a helpful mechanic who ran him back in his own car to the stranded vehicle. Mr. Calder sat in the sun, smoked a cigarette, and waited for the verdict.

“It’s the petrol pump.”

“How long will it take to put right?”

“Depends. If I can fix it up, maybe two, three hours. If I can’t, and you have to have a new pump, maybe two, three days.”

Mr. Calder said “Humph”, and started rearranging his plans in the light of alternative contingencies.