“By which you mean?”
“Do you think either of those countries would stand by and let you run wild in the Pacific? You are mad.”
“They wouldn’t,” LeClerc said calmly. “I quite agree. But we can deal with Russia and America. The Black Shrike will do it for us. Its great virtues, as you are well aware, are its complete mobility and the fact that it requires no special launching site. We fit out a dozen vessels-not our own, oh dear me no, but flags of convenience, ships from Panama or Liberia or Honduras-with two or three rockets apiece. Three dozen missiles will be enough, more than enough. We dispatch those vessels to the Baltic and the Kamchatka Peninsula, off the Russian coast, and off Alaska and the Eastern seaboard of the United States: those off the Russian coasts will have their rockets zeroed in on ICBM launching sites in America, those off the American coasts zeroed in on the corresponding sites in the USSR. Then they fire, more or less simultaneously. Hydrogen bombs rain down on America and Russia. The advanced radar stations, their long-range infrared scanners, their electronically relayed satellite photographs of intercontinental missile exhaust trails will show beyond dispute that those rocket-borne hydrogen bombs come from Russia and America. Any doubts left in their minds will be resolved by Moscow and Washington receiving radio messages apparently from each other, each calling upon the other to surrender. The two great world powers then proceed to devastate each other. Twenty-four hours later there will be nothing to prevent us from doing exactly as we wish in the world. Or do you see a serious flaw in my reasoning?”
“You’re insane.” My voice was strained and hoarse even in my own ears. “You’re completely insane.”
“If we were to do exactly as I have outlined, I would tend to agree with you, although it may come in the last resort. But it would be most foolish, most ill-advised. Apart from the cloud of radioactive dust that would make the northern hemisphere rather unpleasant for some time, we wish to trade with those two rich and powerful nations. No, no, Bentall, the mere threat, the very possibility will be more than enough.
“Both American and Russian observers will be asked to attend highly convincing tests of the Shrike’s-we shall probably rename it-power, pay-load, accuracy and range. Then we shall leak the information that those dozen vessels are strategically placed and also leak our intention of triggering off a war in which the two nations will devastate each other. Then we move on Australia.
“Note, then, the extremely interesting and delicate situation that will develop. One or other of the two great powers may move against us. Immediately it does, hydrogen bombs will fall on that country’s territory. Say it was America that moved against us. Bombs devastate their 1CBM launching sites, their Strategic Air Command airfields. But where do those bombs come from? Do they come from us, because America has moved against us? Or do they come from Russia, who sees in this the heaven-sent moment to destroy the United States without the possibility of immediate retaliation against it, knowing that the Americans have no proof that the hydrogen bombs came from Russia and assuming that the Americans will think that the bombs really did come from those strategically placed vessels of ours of which they have heard? But note this further: whether America really believed the hydrogen bombs came from us or not they would be forced to launch an all-out assault against the Soviet Union, for the bombs might just as possibly be coming from there and if they are and the Americans wait too long before launching their counter nuclear assault, the United States will be wiped out of existence. The same would happen, even more certainly, if we launched the missiles against Russia. What it comes to in effect, Bentall, is that both the great countries will know that if either of them moves against us, they will be forced to engage in a nuclear holocaust that may destroy them both. Neither of them will move an inch against us: instead they will combine to use their power to stop other countries like Britain or France moving against us. Or, once again, do you see a serious flaw in my reasoning?”
“You’re insane,” I repeated. “Completely, hopelessly insane.” But they were only words, all conviction had left my voice. He didn’t look like a man who was insane. He didn’t talk like & man who was insane. It was only what he said that sounded insane, but it only sounded insane because it was so preposterous, and it was only preposterous because of the gigantic, the unprecedented scale of the blackmail and bluff involved, of the unparalleled deadliness of the threat that backed up the blackmail. But there was nothing insane about blackmail and bluffs and threats, and if a thing is not insane on a normal scale there is no necessary element of insanity introduced when the normal is multiplied to unimaginable proportions. Maybe he wasn’t insane after all.
“We shall see, Bentall, we shall see.” He turned as the outer door of the blockhouse opened and quickly switched off all the lights except a small bulb burning above the console.
Marie, with Hewell by her side, came into the semi-darkness. She caught sight of me standing there with my back to the light, smiled, took a step towards me then stopped abruptly as LeClerc lifted his cane to bar her passage.
“Sorry to bring you across, Mrs. Bentall,” he said. “Or should it be Miss Hopeman? I understand you are not married.”
Marie gave him the sort of look I hoped I’d never see coming my way and said nothing.
“Shy?” LeClerc asked. “Or just uncooperative? Like Ben-tall here. He’s refusing to cooperate. He won’t agree to fuse the Black Shrike.”
“Good for him,” Marie said.
“I wonder. He may be sorry. Would you like to persuade him, Miss Hopeman?”
“No.”
“No? But we might persuade him through you, if not by you.”
“You’re wasting your time,” she said contemptuously. “I’m afraid you don’t know either of us. And we hardly know each other. I’m nothing to him nor is he anything to me.”
“I see.” He turned to me. “The stiff upper lip, the best traditions of the Secret Service. What do you say, Bentall?”
“The same as Miss Hopeman. You’re wasting your time.”
“Very well.” He shrugged, turned to Hewell. “Take her away.”
Marie gave me another smile, clear enough proof that she couldn’t see my battered face in the shadow, and left. Her head was high. LeClerc paced up and down, head bent like a man lost in thought, and after a time he gave some order to the guard and left.
Two minutes later the door opened and I saw Marie, with Hewell and LeClerc on either side of her. She had to have them there because she couldn’t walk. Her feet trailed on the floor, her head lay far across her left shoulder, and she was moaning softly, her eyes shut. The frightening thing was that she bore no mark of violence, not a hair of her head was out of place.
I tried to get to LeClerc, there were two carbines and Hewell’s pistol on me, I never knew they were there, I tried to get to LeClerc to smash his face in, to lash out, to maim, to kill, to destroy, but I couldn’t even do that right. On my second step one of the guards tripped me with his carbine and I crashed heavily and full-length on the stone floor. I lay there for some time, dazed.
The guards hauled me to my feet, waiting one on either side of me. Hewell and LeClerc stood as they had done. Marie’s head had now fallen forward, so far forward that I could see where the fair hair parted on the nape of the neck. She was no longer moaning.
“Do you fuse the Shrike?” LeClerc asked softly.
“Someday I’ll kill you, LeClerc,” I said.
“Do you fuse the Shrike?”
“I fuse the Shrike,” I nodded. “Then someday I’ll kill you.”
If I could carry out even half my promise, I thought bitterly, it would be a change for me.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Friday 1 P.M.-6 P.M.
I’d said to LeClerc that I could close up the wiring circuitry and fuse the Black Shrike in fifteen minutes. In point of fact it took me exactly an hour. Bentall wrong as usual, but this time it wasn’t Bentall’s fault.
It wasn’t my fault because my arm and face hurt so violently that it was impossible to concentrate on the job. It wasn’t my fault that I was mad with anger, that my vision was so blurred and indistinct that I could scarcely decipher my own notes, that my right hand-I did practically everything with my right hand-was shaking so badly that I had great difficulty in adjusting the time clock, in feeding cables through their allotted grooves, in fitting the fuses into place in the bases of the solid fuel cylinders: it wasn’t my fault that, when arming the sixty pound disruptive charge, my sweating hand dropped a fulminate of mercury, detonator that went up with so white a flash and so loud an explosion that it was touch and go whether Hewell, who was supervising the operation, pressed the trigger of the pistol he had lined up on me.