The Satan Bug. Alistair MacLean
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A vaccine against this virus has been developed, after two years of the most intensive research, but the only supplies in the world are in Mordon.” He paused, hesitated, then pushed the flask across the table to me. “A statement that is no longer quite accurate. This flask was removed from Mordon three days ago. The contents can be cultured to produce sufficient vaccine to immunise any nation on earth. We are our brothers’ keepers, Mr. Cavell.”
I stared at him. I said nothing.
“Please take this at once, to this address in Warsaw.” He pushed a slip of paper across the table. “You will be paid a hundred pounds now, all expenses, and a hundred pounds on your return. A delicate mission, I realise, perhaps even a dangerous one, although in your case I should not think so. We have investigated you very carefully, Mr. Cavell. You are reputed to know the byways of Europe as a taxi-driver knows the streets of London: I do not foresee that frontiers will present you with much difficulty.”
“And my anti-war sympathies,” I murmured.
“Of course, of course.” The first trace of impatience. “We had to check most carefully, you realise that. You had the best all-over qualifications. You were the only choice.”
“Well, now,” I murmured. “This is flattering. And interesting.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said brusquely. “Will you do it, Mr. Cavell?”
“No.”
“No?” His face became very still. “You say ’no’? This, then, is the extent of your precious concern about your fellowmen? All this talk in Mordon——”
“You said yourself that my business wasn’t very brisk,” I interrupted. “I haven’t had a client for three weeks. For all indications to the contrary, I won’t have one for three months. And,” I added, “you said yourself I was the only choice.”
The thin mouth twisted in a sneer.
“You don’t positively refuse to go, then?”
“I don’t positively refuse.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred and fifty pounds. Each way.”
“Your last word?”
“That’s it.”
“Mind if I say something, Cavell?” The man was losing his manners.
“Yes, I mind. Keep your speeches and moralities for your council. This is a business deal.”
He stared at me for a long moment, eyes hostile behind thick glasses, then reached again into his brief-case and brought out five flat packets of treasury notes, laid them neatly on the table before him and glanced up at me. “Two hundred and fifty pounds. Exactly.”
“Maybe the London branch of the council should get itself a new secretary,” I suggested. “Was it myself or the council that was to be defrauded of the extra £150?”
“Neither.” The tone came with the eyes, glacial both of them. He didn’t like me. “We offered a fair price, but in a matter of such importance were prepared to meet extortion. Take your money.”
“After you’ve taken off the rubber bands, stacked the notes together and counted them out, fifty fivers, in front of my eyes.”
“My God!” The cool meticulous speech had gone and something almost savage came to take its place. “No wonder you were kicked out of so many jobs.” He ripped off the bands, stacked the notes and counted them off separately. “There you are. Fifty. Satisfied?”
“Satisfied.” I opened my right-hand drawer, picked up the notes, address and flask, dropped them into the drawer and closed it just as Martin was finishing the securing of the straps on his brief-case. Something in the atmosphere, maybe an extra stillness from my side of the table, caused him to look up sharply and then he became as immobile as myself, except for his eyes, which continued to widen until they seemed to take up all space behind the rimless glasses.
“It’s a gun all right,” I assured him. “A Japanese Hanyatti nine-shot automatic, safety-catch off and indicator, I observe, registering full. Don’t worry about the scotch tape over the mouth of the barrel, that’s only to protect a highly delicate mechanism. The bullet behind will go through it, it’ll go through you and if you had a twin brother sitting behind you it would go through him also. Your forearms on the table.”
He put his forearms on tbe table. He kept pretty still, which is the way people usually do when they’re peering down into the barrel from a distance of three feet, but his eyes had gone back to normal quickly and he didn’t seem all that worried that I could notice. This troubled me, for if any man had the right to be worried it was Henry Martin. Maybe this made Henry Martin a very dangerous man.
“You have an unusual way of conducting business, Cavell.” No shake in the voice, just a dry contempt. “What is this, a hold-up?”
“Don’t be silly—and don’t you wish it were. I already have your money. You asked me earlier if I took you for a fool. The time and circumstances didn’t seem right for an immediate answer, but I can give it to you now. You are a fool. You’re a fool because you forgot that I worked in Mordon. I was security chief there. And the first job of any security chief is to know what goes on in his own bailiwick.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“You will. This vaccine here—it’s designed to give immunity against which particular virus?”
“I’m only an agent for the Council for World Peace.”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that all the vaccines, up till now, have been made and stored exclusively in Horder Hall, Essex. The point is that if that flask came from Mordon it contains no vaccine. It probably contains one or other of the viruses.
“Secondly, I know that it is normally impossible for any man, Council for World Peace sympathiser or not, to take top secret viruses out of Mordon, no matter how clever or surreptitious he is. When the last man has left the laboratories fourteen hour time clocks come into operation and the opening combination over-riding those is known to only two men. If anything has been taken it has been taken by force and violence. That demands an immediate investigation.
“Thirdly, you said the Foreign Office was solidly on your side. If that’s the case, why all this cloak-and-dagger approach to me to smuggle vaccine through? The diplomatic bag to Warsaw is the obvious answer.
“Finally, and your biggest blunder, my friend, you forgot the fact that I have been engaged in one form or other of counter-espionage for quite some time. Every new body or organisation that’s set up in Britain automatically comes under the microscope. As did the Council for World Peace when it set up its headquarters here. I know one of the members, an elderly, stout, bald and short-sighted character who is the complete antithesis to you in every way. His name is Henry Martin and he’s the secretary of the London branch of the council. The real one.”
He looked at me steadily for a few moments, not scared, his forearms still resting on the table, then said quietly, “There doesn’t seem to be much more left to say, does there?”
“Not much.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Turn you over to the Special Branch. With you goes a tape of our conversation. Just as a routine precaution I switched on a recorder before you came into this room. Not evidence, I know, but the address, flask and your thumb-print on fifty fivers will be all the evidence they require.”
“It does look as if I made a mistake about you,” he admitted. “We can do a deal.”
“I can’t be bought. Not, at least, for fifty miserable fivers.”
A pause, then softly, “Five hundred?”
“No.”
“A thousand? A thousand pounds,