The Doomsday Carrier Page 3

  At the top of the field the path turned sharply to the right and ran along the side of a garden which fronted a low thatched cottage. The garden gate was open and carried the sign—SPURBROOK. Charlie went through the gate, stood erect—when he did so he was just over three feet tall—and spat out his wad. The front door was shut. At its side a stout wisteria trunk ran up to the top windows and branched left and right along the face of the cottage. The righthand window had its middle section partly open set on a bar catch. Charlie pouted his lips and blew a series of soft hoos of content. He was enjoying his freedom. He shuffled slowly up to the front door, grasped the wisteria trunk and climbed up through the foliage to the open window and slipped inside.

  It was almost dark when Captain Brauning, Royal Navy retired, in his seventies, hard as oak, able to walk and drink plenty of men half his age off their feet, the man who had been fishing the chalk-stream, returned to Spurbrook Cottage. Leaving his rod on the rack in the hall, he went through to the kitchen to put the one small trout he had caught in the refrigerator. The fishing was useless, the weather too hot, the trout insolently indifferent to all artificial flies, there had been no evening rise and the midges had given him hell. It would take two large whiskies, he told himself, to put him back in good humour. No, maybe three. Plenty of time for that because his wife was out playing bridge and wouldn’t be back until late.

  He washed his hands under the kitchen tap and went into the large sitting room where, he knew, the table would be set with a cold supper left for him by his wife, but the supper could wait. The whisky decanter was on the sideboard.

  He switched on the lights to be met by a scene of disorder. Magazines and newspapers, many of them torn to pieces, were strewn about the floor. Two armchairs had been overturned and the cloth had been pulled half-way off the table. On the carpet alongside it lay plates and dishes and cutlery, some of the china broken. A half-eaten loaf of bread was still on the table, the lid was off the cheese dish and there was no sign of the large slab of ripe Gorgonzola which he knew had been under it. Nor was there any sign of the cold sliced ham which his wife had left, napkin covered, on his plate. Near the fireplace a small glass pickle jar lay on its side in a pool of vinegar, but there was no sign of the pickled onions which it had once held.

  Captain Brauning, not a man easily shocked by words or deeds, took a deep breath to ease his indignation and then began to swear. He swore long and with a rising anger, an anger only slightly mollified when a quick glance showed him that the sideboard was untouched and that the whisky decanter stood undisturbed, the room light striking bright gleams from its cut-glass sides. Anger somewhat eased, action followed. He turned and began to go quickly through the rest of the house.

  Nothing else had been disturbed except in one of the bedrooms. The half window was off its bar and wide open. A small single bed had been pulled away from the wall, its covers on the floor and one of the pillows torn open and the feather-filling scattered around the place as though a fox had been enjoying himself hammering at a couple of frantic geese. In one corner of the room was a toilet alcove. The cold tap had been turned on and the water was still running away through the waste pipe. A large tube of toothpaste, its bottom bitten off, lay below the basin, near it was a decorated drum-shaped toilet powder container empty, the powder thick across the polished boards like a heavy hoar frost. One large footmark was imprinted on the powder.

  Captain Brauning, advising himself to ease the pressure that was rising in him, relieved himself with a scabrous flow of lower-deck language as he turned the cold tap off and then clattered down the stairs to report the vandalism to the police.

  The duty officer, when he answered, seemed possessed of a stupidity deliberately designed to complicate a simple matter and to keep Captain Brauning as long as possible from his whisky decanter. He was given no chance to reply to Captain Brauning’s parting shots—“And I might add that the bugger who did this has damned bad table manners, doesn’t like whisky, and bloody well goes about bare-footed!” He slammed the receiver down and headed for the sitting room and the first of his glasses of comfort.

  Half-a-mile away in an open corrugated iron roofed barn Charlie lay on top of a tall stack of hay bales in a comfortable nest he had hollowed out for himself. He was sleeping, holding in one hand the chewed length of one of Captain Brauning’s club ties, softly whimpering to himself now and again as Gorgonzola cheese and pickled onions fought intermittently in his stomach, and clasping the other hand over the place where he had been injected that morning.

  * * * *

  Sitting on the teak table in the window of his office John Rimster looked out over St James’s Park and the sunbright London morning. London’s and the country’s mornings had been sunbright too long now. People—even those who normally talked nostalgically of the glorious summers of the past—were getting fed up with blue skies. Through the screen of hanging willows at the lakeside he watched a shelduck bully a mallard into water-frothing flight. Two girls walked up the far pavement towards Wellington Barracks, a Cadillac with a CD plate passed, momentarily truncating them, but the details it fleetingly obscured were in his mind and so were the details of the car as it disappeared. Over the years you learned to suck in everything, digest it with ease and throw it up like an owl’s pellet when needed. Two blackheaded gulls began to fight and scream over a floating bread crust. He lit a cigarette and went back to his desk and began to tap one finger absently on the locked despatch box which he had opened at eight o’clock that morning and closed ten minutes ago at nine. Nice stuff. It made you proud to be a member of the human race. He was used to such stuff. It no longer—since when, God help him?—gave him indigestion; and the human race . . . well, when he gave them up he would have to give himself up. If only they could be indecent efficiently. He smiled, this last was a favourite phrase of Grandison’s. But beyond everything he hoped that he was not going to be mixed up in it. It was far from his line of country. But it damned well looked like it. He bit the edge of his lower lip, frowning.

  He sat there frowning, thinking about Charlie and the Fadledean set-up. He was a man not far into his forties with close-cut, iron-grey hair. The craggy hardness of his build was in his face too, except when he smiled, furrowing and scarping it. His eyes were a dry slate grey and, although he was meticulously shaven, there was the faintest bloom of obstinate stubble at the sides of his chin. Everything about him was neat, trim and hard. His clothes were good, a hound’s-tooth check suit, a light blue shirt and a darker tie. He was neat and precise in everything he did. And he had done some extraordinary things, most of which he had learned to forget quickly.

  Grandison came in at quarter past nine precisely. He was a great pirate of a man—a wooden leg and a black eye-patch all that were missing. In the place of a patch he wore a monocle, its red silk cord looping over the lapel of his grey linen suit. His bulk was enormous, but never clumsy. He was black-haired, black-bearded and his broad red face was time-creased and experience-scarred from fifty years of hard, violent, devious and joyful living. There was now a warm, friendly smile on his face, but that meant nothing. When he wanted to he could make Privy Councillors and Cabinet Ministers sweat under the armpits. He had the ear and the confidence of all those who mattered and had dined once a fortnight with all the Prime Ministers under whom he had served in a highly confidential capacity which had never been precisely defined. The section he commanded, an unlisted and unpublicized offshoot of the Ministry of Defence, had an ambiguous mandate, and its members were all smoothly endowed with a variety of skills and—when necessary—an inhumanity which set them apart from most other people. Their training had been long and dedicated and the percentage of would-be members over the years who had been rejected was high.

  Grandison went to the window without greeting Rimster and looking out said, “Well?”

  Rimster said, “Doesn’t seem to be up my alley. Opposition—one male chimpanzee. I know he’s special, but . . .”

  Gra
ndison turned. “Three weeks? Mr Charlie no-can-do?” He grinned.

  “He could—by a miracle.”

  “They happen. That’s why he’s free . . . the time, the place, and the loved one altogether. Incidentally I met her once. She’s a nice-looking girl. You’ll enjoy holding her hand even if it’s only for a few days.”

  Rimster knew it was his moment to probe.

  “Why me? It’s not my kind of job.”

  Grandison was silent for a moment and then with a shrug of his shoulders said quietly, “You know better than that, Johnnie. You’ve known the answer for some time. Do you want me to put it in words? The moment comes for us all—sooner or later. If you don’t want to do this, you know the alternative. Appeal to you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Good. Then get down there. If Charlie stays out long the public are going to know he’s out. What they are never going to know is the truth about him. All the press stuff will be done this end. I just want you sitting there keeping an eye on things.” He smiled. “A nice rustic interlude for a change—and pleasant company. Enjoy yourself and keep an eye on things for me.

  Rimster touched the knot of his tie and smiled back. “Beagles smoking eighty cigarettes a day. The anti-vivisection-and-experiments-on-animals lobby. The Englishman and his dog. That can be handled. But if he stays out over the limit the balloon goes up plain for everyone to see.”

  “That won’t happen. But assuming it did . . . well, that’s where we pull out and others take over. How good are you on micro-organisms?”

  “Not too hot. But I get the drift. No doubt the charming, heart-broken Miss Blackwell will enlighten me further. What’s the brief?”

  “Watching. Full access to places and persons. And you stick by her side. People under stress often rediscover their consciences.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  Grandison chuckled and came to the desk. “I’m not worried about you. You never had one. Now get down there. Here’s your brief and all the trimmings.” He dropped a sealed envelope on to the desk, and then took out a cigar and began to prepare it for lighting. When it was going—no one interrupted him when he was lighting a cigar—he said, “Good security comes from having the right kind of outrageous imagination. Scientists don’t have that. He’s out—by a miracle. He could stay out by the same dispensation.”

  Rimster shrugged his shoulders. “Possible, but not probable. He’ll be spotted. The higher an ape climbs the more he shows his bare backside.”

  “Sure, my boy. Unlike clever man—he invented trousers on the way up. Now read that brief and off you get.” He nodded at the envelope and then picked up the locked despatch case and left the office.

  Rimster lit a cigarette and began to read his brief. When he had finished it—it was three pages long—he went to his safe and locked it up, but every fact, date, name and figure in it would go down to Wiltshire with him.

  * * * *

  Charlie woke at sunrise on his first full day of freedom. His digestion had settled over-night. He dropped down from the hay bales and ambled out into the sunlight which was throwing long shadows across the small bowl of land in which the barn stood. He squatted down and began to comb loose hay from his pelt. Over his head swallows flew in and out to their nests in the roof of the barn and above the centre of the hollow a kestrel hung on quivering wings scanning the ground below. On the far side of the hollow a few sheep grazed in the shadow of a small fir plantation.

  Charlie began to move towards the sheep, stopping now and again to raise himself to full height and watch them. They saw him as he neared them and began to move away, slowly at first and then breaking into a lumbering gallop. He chased them for a hundred yards screaming waa-waas and then broke off and turned towards the plantation. When he was a few yards from it a rabbit, lying in a patch of nettles, bolted from almost under his feet and headed, its white scut flicking, for the fir plantation. Charlie raced after it and the rabbit in its panic ran straight into the close-meshed wire fence that surrounded the firs. Charlie caught it and squeezed the fife from it.

  He sat down in the shadow of the firs and ate part of the rabbit. It was a long time since Charlie had eaten raw meat and he stopped now and again to roll and lick his lips and to make gentle hooing noises. Since his hearing was acute he heard the coming of the helicopter long before he saw it, its noise gradually drowning the buzzing of the bees and flies which worked the downland flowers in the grass of the bowl and the high, monotonous flighting song of the larks above. The machine came diagonally across the bowl, its awkward shadow flaying the ground behind it, and passed over the far end of the wood. The pilot and the observer missed seeing Charlie because his dark coat merged completely into the black background of the shadow of the firs. When it had passed Charlie threw what was left of the rabbit carcass to the ground and began to follow the line of the fence. He stopped once, picked up a dead branch and stood beating it quickly on the top strand of wire, grinning and barking with excitement.

  Half an hour later Charlie was seen for the first time by a human being since his escape. A motor-cyclist came fast round the corner of a narrow lane cut deep through the downland chalk and found Charlie in the middle of the road. The man braked and swerved violently. The machine skidded past Charlie and smashed into the road bank. The rider was thrown through the air and crashed into the hard white bank of the lane. His crash helmet saved him from death, but not from concussion. He was two days in hospital before his memory returned.

  Ten minutes later Charlie crossed the main Salisbury to Winchester road on all fours, leaving the downlands behind him and moving towards the lusher country of the valley of the river Avon. A lorry driver saw him from a distance as did a commercial traveller approaching the lorry. Both took him for a large sheep-dog.

  * * * *

  It was three o’clock before Rimster got to Fadledean. He had stopped at the Army Aviation Centre near Andover, where a communications centre for Operation Charlie had been set up and he stayed for lunch. During this time the radio telephone link in his car had been adjusted to the allotted army frequency and all the equipment checked over. He sat now talking to Armstrong in his office.

  He made Armstrong uneasy. He had met the type before, but not often. Rimster’s slow, easy smile and almost casual manner he guessed meant nothing. Underneath the man was prepared to be whatever the job and his superiors demanded of him.

  Armstrong said, “Do you want to be shown round . . . see the lab.? Scene of the crime?” His own jocularity almost stuck in his throat.

  “No, thank you. That’s not my business. I’ve just come to baby-sit. The man from head office. But don’t worry, I shan’t be staying here. You know Redthorn House?”

  “That’s the Army Command place, isn’t it? VIP guest house?”

  “That’s it. That’s where I’ll be—and let’s hope not for very long. That’s where Miss Blackwell will be, too.”

  “Why her?”

  “Because the bananas are there. She’s the one Charlie responds to best. This is no place to sit around and wait—not for a non-scientist like me, anyway. I might pick something up.” Armstrong smiled, but not at the mild joke. He was relieved to know that he was to be left alone. Unwisely, out of his relief, he said, “I give Charlie two or three days at the most because—”

  Rimster shook his head, interrupting. “That’s what you give. I hope you’re right. But Charlie might take more, the limit and perhaps far beyond. What happens then?”

  “Then the public must be warned.”

  “Nice situation for a government. But I imagine they would find some way of facing it. At the moment though the main concern is that the public know nothing—until they have to.” Armstrong scratched his bald head and shrugged his shoulders. “Well, nothing will leak from here. Only a handful of people know the full truth and they’ve all been vetted and know how to keep their mouths shut.”

  “I’m sure. But it’s none of my business if it does. I’m just here to
pass news back and to keep Miss Blackwell under my wing. Liaison man. Redthorn House is very comfortable they tell me. After London in this heat it’s nice to look forward to a few days in the country. I’d like to see Miss Blackwell now in here—and alone.”

  It was said with no change in the pleasant easy voice, but momentarily the smile was gone from Rimster’s face.

  “Do you want me to tell her anything before she comes in?”

  “Why not? I’m a liaison officer—civilian—from the Ministry. She’s the banana girl. We’ll be working together, amicably as far as I’m concerned.”

  With Armstrong gone, Rimster leaned back and lit a cigarette. He’d been a little jaunty with the man, for he could sense that behind all the bluffness there was nervousness . . . maybe less concern for Charlie than the beginning of a shrewd calculation about his own future. He needn’t have worried. That was nothing to do with him. All he had to do was to hold the girl’s hand and see Charlie safely back. Of his own future he decided not to think. Grandison never made his mind up in order to change it. There was no place for sentiment in official life.

  Looking out of the window and seeing part of the distant perimeter fence, he thought—Good old Charlie, over the fence and away into the good old summertime. That’s what everyone wanted. Over the fence and away. Nearly everyone, anyway.

  Jean came in and they made their introductions. She wasn’t what he’d pictured in his mind’s eye. But he had no complaints with the change.

  He said, “You’re moving quarters—to Redthorn House. We may, though I hope not, be there some time. I’ll run you down to Salisbury to your flat and you can pick up what you want there. Charlie-chasing clothes.” The weak edge of a nervous smile touched her lips, following his own broader smile. Nice smile it would be when given full life to break up the solemn, good-looking face. When she laughed she’d be a different woman. There was no temptation in him to speculate beyond that. “I assume there’s a telephone in your flat?”