Wasting no time, Irma had called up her team of civil engineers, a foreman and five men, based in Pitesti. Through Krakovitch, Kyle had put a question to the hardhat boss.
‘Are you and your men used to handling this stuff?’
‘Thermite? Oh, yes. Sometimes we blast, and sometimes we burn. I’ve worked for you Russians before, up north in Berezov. We used it all the time — to soften up the permafrost. Can’t see the point of it here, though . .
‘Plague,’ said Krakovitch at once, by way of explanation. It was an invention of his own. ‘We’ve come across old records that tell of a mass burial of plague victims right here. Although it was three hundred years ago, the soil deep down is still likely to be infected. These hills have been redesignated arable land. Before we let any unsuspecting farmer start ploughing it up, or terracing the hillside, we want to make sure it’s safe. Right down to the bedrock!’
Irma Dobresti had caught all of this. She had raised an eyebrow at Krakovitch but said nothing.
‘And how did you Soviets get involved?’ the hard-hat had wanted to know.
Krakovitch had anticipated that one. ‘We dealt with a similar case in Moscow just a year ago,’ he had answered. Which was more or less the truth.
Still the hard-hat had been curious. ‘And the British?’ Now Irma stepped in. ‘Because they may have a similar problem in England,’ she snapped. ‘And so they’re here to see how we deal with it, right?’
The ganger hadn’t minded facing up to Krakovitch, but he wasn’t going to go against Irma Dobresti. ‘Where do you want your holes?’ he’d asked. ‘And how deep?’
By just after midday the preparations were completed. All that remained was for the detonators to be wired up to a plunger, a ten minute job which for safety’s sake could wait until tomorrow.
Carl Quint had suggested, ‘We could finish it now. . But Kyle had decided against it. ‘We don’t really know what we’re playing with here,’ he’d answered. ‘Also, when the job’s done, I don’t want to hang about but get straight on with the next phase Faethor’s castle in the Khorvaty. I imagine that after we’ve burned this hillside there’ll be all kinds of people coming up here to see what we’ve been up to. So I’d prefer to be out of it the same day. This afternoon Felix has travel arrangements to see to, and I’ve a call to make to our friends in Devon. By the time that’s done the light will be failing, and I’d prefer to work in daylight after a good night’s sleep. So —‘
‘Sometime tomorrow?’
‘In the afternoon, while the sun’s still slanting onto that hillside.’
Then he’d turned to Krakovitch. ‘Felix, are these men going back to Pitesti today?’
‘They will be,’ Krakovitch answered, ‘if there is nothing else for them to do until tomorrow afternoon. Why are you asking this?’
Kyle had shrugged. ‘Just a feeling,’ he said. ‘I would have liked them to be closer at hand. But —,
‘I, too, have had a feeling,’ the Russian answered, frowning. ‘I am thinking, nerves — perhaps?’
‘That makes all three of us then,’ Carl Quint had added. ‘So let’s hope that it is just nerves and nothing else, right?’
All of that had been mid-morning, and everything had appeared to be going smoothly. And now suddenly there was this threat of outside interference. Between times Kyle had made his call to Devon, taking two hours to get through, and had arranged for the strike against Harkley House. ‘Damn it!’ he snapped now. ‘It has to be tomorrow. Ministry or none, we’ve got to go ahead with this.’
‘We should have done it this morning,’ said Quint, ‘when we were right on top of it. .
Irma Dobresti stepped in. She narrowed her eyes and said, ‘Listen. These local bureaucrats are annoying me. Why don’t you four just drive back to the site? Right now, I mean! See, I was perhaps alone when that call came in you men were all out there in the foothills, doing your job. I’ll telephone Pitesti, get Chevenu and those rough men of his back up there to meet you at the site. You can do the job — I mean finish it — tonight.’