Wish You Were Here (34 page)

‘Is that the lot?' demanded one of the men in hats.

‘That's it,' Linda replied. ‘OK, then, I'll just—'

Before the words had cleared the gate of her teeth, the conning tower hatch slammed shut, and the submarine slid under the water with the speed and grace of a diving otter, until only a string of sparkling silver bubbles remained to suggest that it had ever been there.

‘Hang on,' Linda shouted, bewildered. ‘Wait for me!'

The cork-hats looked at each other. ‘You wanted to go too, huh?' they said.

‘Yes, of course I do,' Linda snarled, jumping up and down on the spot. ‘That's my evidence they've got in there.'

‘You should have mentioned it,' observed the first cork-hat, reaching into a plastic coolbox and pulling out a can of beer. ‘What a pity, eh?'

Linda stopped jumping for a moment and turned to him. ‘Well, don't just sit there, you moron,' she yelled. ‘Get on the radio and call them back.'

‘Can't do that. Sorry. Against regulations.'

‘The hell with - look, nobody'll know, couldn't you just—?'

The beer-drinker scratched the tip of his nose thoughtfully. ‘Tell you what,' he said, ‘for another three thousand—'

‘I haven't got any more money, damnit,' Linda growled. ‘I gave you every last penny—'

‘Bloody cheapskate,' observed the cork-hat to his colleague sadly.

The colleague nodded, and stroked his beard. ‘You wouldn't read about it,' he replied solemnly, as he retrieved a small yellow knob of chewing gum from the lining of his hat and began to chomp.

‘Hey!'

The cork-hats stared at her blankly, shrugged and turned away.When Linda made further attempts to communicate they shooed her off with hand gestures and threw beer cans at her, a hint that even Linda felt she couldn't really ignore. Accordingly, she left, trailing her dreams like a bird with a broken wing.

Once she was safely out of earshot, the first Australian nudged his mate in the ribs with his elbow. ‘Hey,' he said, ‘how are we off for time? Actually, I got my Indian outfit on under this coat, so that's an extra minute or two.'

‘So've I. Quick game of Goblins' Teeth?'

‘Why not? Right then, nearest the nose to start.'

Linda meanwhile had reached the tree-line and carried on walking into the wood. She wasn't looking where she was going; understandably, because not only had she lost her evidence, she'd also arranged for the loading and despatch of enough thermo-nuclear weaponry to blow up the world three times over. It's times like these, she told herself, I almost wish I'd stayed on the fashion page.

And, because she wasn't looking where she was going, she didn't see the cunningly disguised tripwire that released the bent-over sapling to which was attached the length of wire, the looped end of which Linda had just put her foot in. There was a twang, and a moment later she was hanging three feet off the ground, upside down, with reporter's accessories falling out of her pockets like heavy snow.

Any suggestions?

No?

Very well, she told her brain, in the manner of a teacher announcing that unless someone owned up she'd keep the whole class in after school, I'll just have to hang here till someone lets me go. She dangled, therefore, with the blood pumping through her head, like a solitary spider caught in a web put up secretly by the local flies' co-operative. One good thing, though; it gave her time to think before scampering off after that goddamned submarine.

There was a war in there; all neatly done up and packaged like sandwiches in a Tupperware box, but a war nonetheless. And it was thanks to her it was on its way, rather than just sitting beside the lake minding its own business.

She had to stop it. It wasn't just that the human race was only a matter of hours away from Armageddon. More to the point, that was her
story
in there.

First things first, however; there was the small matter of getting down out of this rope.

She considered her options and the resources available to her; which were? Difficult one, that. But, above all, she was a communicator, communicating was what she was good at. If she wanted out of here, it'd have to be a communication.

‘
Help!
' she communicated.

‘Hi,' said a voice below her. ‘What're you doing up there?'

Linda opened her eyes. She'd been calling for so long that her voice had been sandpapered away, and most of the rest of her was so full of pins and needles that if only she could get down she'd be able to put all the haberdashery stores in the US out of business in a week.

‘
Help
,' she whispered.

‘Hey,' chimed the voice. ‘Pleased to meet you, my name's Calvin Dieb.' Linda looked down and saw that Mr Dieb had stuck out a hand for a handshake.

‘Can't move,' she moaned. ‘Numb. Get me down.'

‘Sure,' replied Mr Dieb. ‘I'll need a ladder and maybe a knife or a pair of scissors. Haven't we met already?'

‘Get me
down
.'

Mr Dieb nodded. ‘No problem,' he said. ‘A chair'll do if there's no ladder.You see, I just turned over a new leaf. Yessir, a whole new chapter's about to open in my life. From now on, I'm gonna change my attitude towards other people, especially people less fortunate than myself.'

‘No chair. Please hurry. Going to—'

‘No chair, huh? Pardon me asking, but how in blazes did you get yourself up there, anyhow?' Mr Dieb jumped a couple of times, reminding Linda of a small, yapping dog. ‘Hey,' he said enthusiastically, ‘maybe if I pull on this rope I could bend the tree down so you could - no, that's no good. I'd need someone else to hold the rope while I untie you, otherwise you'd just go
boing!
up in the air again. Still,' Mr Dieb continued, smiling cheerfully, ‘there's gotta be a way, so if you'll just bear with me—'

Linda tried to move the pincushion that had once been her right arm; it was now so empty of blood, it would have served a vampire well as part of a rigorous calorie-controlled diet. ‘Pull - rope,' she groaned, ‘tie - to - tree.'

‘Hah!' Mr Dieb tried to smother a giggle. ‘Sorry, miss, I'm not laughing at you, don't do that kind of stuff anymore. You just reminded me of some red—Native Americans I ran into, is all. You sounded just like them, the way you were talking. Now, what was that you said? Pull on the rope and tie it to this tree here - hey, that's neat! Did I happen to mention I can see right up your skirt from here?'

Eventually, Linda hit the ground with a thump you could have felt through thick boots. Calvin Dieb got a substantial smack between the eyes from a branch of the sapling as it sprang back upright, but it didn't have much effect on his rate of speech or his born-again benevolence. Far from being annoyed, he blamed himself for being clumsy, and then helped Linda to her feet, nearly dislocating her shoulder in the process.

‘Thanks,' she said, thereby proving that force of habit is the most durable thing on earth. ‘Who are you, anyway? '

‘Me? My name's Cal Dieb, I'm a lawyer.'The phrase, so automatic as to be faster than any conscious thought, seemed to jar on Calvin. He frowned. ‘Well,' he said, ‘up till now I've been a lawyer, but right at this moment I'm considering a change of direction in my life.You see, just lately - well, I won't bore you with all the pesky details, but I died, and now I'm just beginning to see how little I've really achieved in my life, you know, vis-à-vis making the world a better place. Actually, as far as I can see, not actively making the world a lousier place would probably be a giant leap forward for me in terms of personality development and realising my true potential as a human being, which I guess is why as of now I'm giving serious thought to doing something else, you know, feeding the poor and the sick and all. What do
you
think?'

‘What do you know about the submarines?' Linda asked. As the words left her mouth, she wished she'd been really subtle and said it in an Australian accent, or Latin, just in case the guy replied in kind before he realised the implications. ‘Are you with the Vatican?'

‘Sorry?'

‘The submarines,' Linda repeated. ‘The big blocks of cement full of rockets. The Vatican.'

‘The Vatican?'

She scrutinised Dieb's face closely, as if looking for secret microphones hidden among the hairs in his nose. ‘You haven't seen any submarines?' she hazarded.

‘Sorry.'

‘Illegal arms shipments? Men in funny hats? Cool-boxes full of cans of beer?'

Dieb sighed. Here he was trying to help people, and his first effort was turning out to be a complete failure. ‘I really wish I could be more help,' he said, with heartbreaking sincerity, ‘but I guess the last thing you need is guys pretending to have seen submarines when they haven't, just because they think that's what you want to hear. Lawyers do that a lot, of course; you know, like, “Oh yeah, I think you've got some helluva case there,” or, “No, I don't think it'll be all that expensive.” Well, I'm through with all that from now on.When there's an unpalatable truth to be told, I'm just going to darned well out with it and tell it how it is. Like, really, what else is there in this life if to your own self you can't be true, huh? Don't you think so? Which is why, if I
do
decide to stay in the legal profession, I reckon I'm gonna start doing all that civil rights stuff, you know, oppressed minority groups and all?Take Native Americans, for example. You tell me, how many Native American judges are there in the whole of the City of New York?'

‘Seventy-two,' Linda replied, remembering the figure from a feature she'd been working on. ‘Sorry, how come we're talking about judges all of a sudden?'

Dieb hung his head. ‘My fault,' he said. ‘Sorry. There's me getting sidetracked when you're trying to ask me important questions. So I'll just shut up for a moment,' he said, settling himself comfortably against the trunk of a small rowan tree. ‘Do please carry on with what you were saying.'

‘What? Oh, er, right.' Linda wrinkled her nose, trying to remember. ‘Illegal arms shipments,' she said. ‘There was one here just a minute ago, but it went away. On a submarine.'

‘I see.'

‘I sent it, as a matter of fact.'

Dieb raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh, I
see
,' he said, enlightened. ‘You work for the Government.'

‘No!' Linda replied angrily, ‘I do
not
work for the Government, I just sort of accidentally got the arms loaded aboard the submarine.'

‘By accident?'

‘That's right.'

‘Sort of an involuntary reflex action? Like Pavlov's dogs or something?'

Linda shook her head impatiently. ‘I wanted to get the arms out of here so I could use them.'

‘Really.' Dieb pursed his lips. ‘How interesting.'

‘As
evidence
,' Linda replied in exasperation. ‘For the report I'm doing for the paper back home.You see, I'm a journalist.'

‘Right,' Dieb said. ‘So shipping arms is just a weekend job, then.'

‘No, of course not. Like I told you, that was an accident. A mistake.'

Dieb smiled. It was an I-don't-believe-you-but-I-like-you-anyway smile, the sort you see a lot around mental hospitals. Rather a lot of Calvin Dieb's clients were familiar with that smile; the category of his clients whom you wouldn't believe if they told you the time while standing under the town clock. ‘Ah well,' he said, ‘don't suppose there's any harm done, so I wouldn't worry yourself about it if I were you.'

‘Not
worry
about it!' Linda started to wave her arms about, as if she'd secretly always wanted to be a windmill but had never actually seen one. ‘Jesus Christ, you fool, they're going to start
WorldWar Three
with those weapons, and you say there's no harm done! We've got to stop them.'

‘We've?'

‘Well, who the hell else is there?' Linda stopped waving and flumped down on an anthill, her chin moodily cupped in her hands. ‘Only, I don't see how we can. That submarine's probably halfway up Lake Erie by now.'

‘Not unless it's really a salmon in disguise,' Calvin replied. ‘For a start, there's an awful lot of waterfalls between here and the Lakes. Can't say as I can see how it's gonna get round them.'

‘Waterfalls?'

Calvin nodded. ‘That's places where the river kinda falls off a cliff, you know? Don't reckon as how the crew's going to be able to get out and carry a submarine down one of them. Can't see how you'd manage it even if you had a fleet of helicopters.'

Linda's face collapsed. It was as if she'd looked up at the sky and had it fall in her face. ‘But that can't be right,' she said, ‘or how did the damn thing get this far in the first place?'

‘Don't know.' Dieb shrugged. ‘Maybe they built the thing here on the lake. I seem to remember the Germans built ships on site to sail up and down big lakes in Africa.'

‘But . . .' Linda watched as, in her mind's perfectly focused eye, little charred fragments of her theory rained down all around her, like the scene in a Western where the bank robbers have used too much dynamite to blow the safe, and suddenly it's snowing banknotes. ‘But I
saw
the sonofabitch thing, here, not five minutes ago. With my own eyes. There's got to have been a submarine, really.'

‘I believe you,' Calvin replied. ‘All I'm saying is, it can't have got far.'

Linda nodded; as if, in the Western scenario cited above, she'd just managed to catch one ten-dollar bill. ‘You mean,' she said, ‘the submarine's just for getting the weapons as far as the first waterfall?'