Bluebolt One (22 page)

“I see. And the defence system is . . .?”

“Perfectly adequate. I’m happy about it. You’ve seen the perimeter, I guess, and the gate guard can be reinforced at a moment’s notice by armed parties under the Duty Exec, when necessary. There’s an armed sentry on the control-tower itself. The telephone exchange is manned at all times, and we can contact Manalati or Jinda by direct lines. As you know, there’s a strict security check on all persons entering and that’s not just play-acting. The whole thing’s as good as we can make it. External defence, internationally I mean, that’s out of our hands. We’ve got long-range cover from the various anti-missile commands who’d be alerted by the Early Warning outfits.”

Shaw asked to be shown round the station and also to be given facilities to interview all African labour—just as a matter of routine, he said.

When he spoke to these men—who were numerically a small group—he couldn’t find anything in the least suspicious, although admittedly he had to rely to a large extent on Hartog as an interpreter. A few of the blacks were comparatively newly engaged, replacements for men off sick or for men who for one reason or another had simply packed up and gone back to their tribes. All the men shut up like clams the moment he touched on the Edo Cult, but that didn’t prove anything one way or the other. In the Cult or not, they naturally wouldn’t talk for fear of what would happen to them. None had the Cult marking, but again that was no indication, for obviously any men infiltrated into the station would be without the spider brand. By and large they were as surly and unhelpful as the men back in Jinda had been, but that was as far as it went.

Afterwards Stephen Geisler took him around the base, showed him the enormous generators which supplied the millions of volts needed to send out the impulses which, if ever the moment should come to bring Bluebolt’s load streaking down into the earth’s atmosphere, would beat out their diabolic electronic-brain messages from the bristling antennae of the beaming-mast in the centre of the station. He took the Britisher into the control-tower beneath that mast, showed him the complicated series of instrument-cluttered panels which would be operated during the transmission, pointed out the various checks and the method in which signals were received back initially from Bluebolt itself and then from the missile as, freed from its carrier-satellite, it began its controlled flight on to the target. Geisler explained the guiding procedure and pointed out the illuminated panel with its brilliant green dot indicating pictorially and at a glance the satellite’s exact positive relative to the earth.

Shaw asked, “Is it really foolproof—I mean, aren’t there any snags?”

“It’s foolproof to a trained operator all right, and there are no real snags. There’s what you might say is a limiting factor, that’s all.”

“Can you explain that?”

“Sure, but I don’t know if you’ll follow,” Geisler told him with a friendly grin. “Well now. . . she’s orbiting so as to circle the earth every seventy-six minutes, as I expect you know. She can’t go on to
any
target in the world at any time—see what I mean? Owing to the flattening at the poles, her relative position in space isn’t exactly the same at any given time in each orbit, if you follow that, and, roughly speaking, a particular target can be hit with exact precision only once in about each twelve hours. That’s her chief limitation—remember, Bluebolt One is the first of her kind. Subsequent models will have built-in compensating equipment which should eliminate that. Now—the angle of descent is fairly gradual, it’s bound to be the speed the carrier-satellite’s going at, so when you want to bring her down you’d have to send the launching impulse a good long time ahead, and in fact you’d begin the whole transmission procedure, making contact and all that, forty-five minutes or so before the actual launching.”

“Uh-huh . . . have you got your most likely targets already worked out, as to where and when and so on?”

Geisler said, “Why, sure we have! It’s all worked out for every conceivable target.”

“No possibility of error?”

“None at all, unless something goes dead wrong.”

“Hartog’s in charge of the actual operating, is he?”

Technically, yes. I’m in general charge, of course, and entirely responsible as C.O.”

Shaw nodded. “Quite.” He looked round. “It’s almost unbelievable, isn’t it. . . that this room’s got so much destructive potential, I mean.”

“You’re dead right there. When and if Bluebolt ever drops that load, wherever it lands . . . well, there’ll be devastation for thousands of square miles.”

When they got back to the office block Shaw said he would like a word with Julian Hartog—alone.

Hartog gave him a peculiar glance. He said loftily, “If you really want to, I’ll be delighted, my dear chap. But you’ll be wasting your time, of course. I don’t know anything beyond what I told you on the way in.” He gave an exasperated sigh. “Anyway, come along to my room.”

“Thanks.” Shaw followed the tall, lanky man down a passage and into a barely furnished office. Hartog motioned him to a chair and walked over to a cupboard.

He said, “There’s still time for a quickie before lunch. What’s it to be?”

“Gin, please.”

Hartog poured a gin and took it over to Shaw, who noticed that the man’s fingers were still shaky. Hangover, of course—or could it be something else now? For himself, Hartog poured a very stiff whisky and immediately took a big gulp at it. Then he sat down in a swivel-chair behind his desk and said, “By the way, Steve doesn’t know I keep booze on the premises. Well now—what do you want?”  

“There’s just one or two questions,” Shaw replied slowly. “One or two things puzzle me, Hartog.”

“As to what?”

“As to you, I’m afraid.”

“Oh?” Hartog grinned, lifted his glass. “Mean this, do you?”

“Not specifically. That’s really none of my business, is it?” “Not really.”

Shaw gave him a sharp look and leaned forward. “Listen, Hartog. You told me, didn’t you, that the Kamumba mine was near where the attack on my train took place last night. How can you pinpoint it so accurately?”

“I can’t, it was only a guess, that’s all. But don’t forget, I know this area very well. From what you told me of the distance out from Manalati and so on, I reckon I can place it within, say, two or three miles—knowing the lay-out of the country and where an attack would be most likely to succeed.”

Shaw nodded. “You were at the Kamumba mine yourself last night, weren’t you?”

Hartog’s mouth hardened and his hand jerked a little. “I never said so.”

“No—but you were, weren’t you?”

“How did you know that?”

“Let’s just call it—bush-telegraph.”

Hartog glowered. “I suppose it was that girl of mine.”

“It’s not really important how I found out,” Shaw said mildly. “The point is, you didn’t mention it yourself. I’m wondering why, that’s all.”

“Is there any particular reason why I should have mentioned it?”

“Perhaps not. Only I’d have thought you might have done, as we were talking about that area. Tell me, what exactly were you doing there last night?”

“Well, I’ll be damned!” Hartog gave a hoarse, grunting laugh and then took another gulp of whisky. His eyes glittered and his face seemed to hold a curious inward grin. Shaw had the idea he was enjoying this, though he couldn’t for the life of him make out why that should be so. The scientist went on, “If you really insist on knowing, I went to a party. A booze-up, I dare say you’d consider it. I happen to have some very good friends there.”

“Friends who’ll substantiate that you were in fact at the mine?”

After a short hesitation Hartog said, “At the manager’s house, to be exact.”

“And this party went on till after about six in the morning?”

Hartog grinned again. “Why the hell not? This isn’t Esher or Clapham. . . it’s the Manalati province of Nogolia. There is a difference, you know.”

Shaw smiled briefly. “I appreciate that. Now—would you mind telling me just how that accident happened to your arm?”

“A skid on a lousy, rotten road. You know that.” Hartog laughed shortly. “Hadn’t had quite enough to drink, that was the trouble!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Not enough, I mean, to steady my judgment. There’s a certain point, I find, when one’s more or less incapable. Go on a little longer, and you begin to improve again. I hadn’t got that far. . . anyway, the road’s a shocker at the best of times, soon as the rains start. It would have happened at any state of the alcoholic barometer, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“It’s just the arm . . . you’ve no other marks, no abrasions, scratches, bruises?”

“Not that I know of. Why? Should I have?”

Shaw murmured, “Not necessarily, I suppose. Only I’d have thought that a—forgive me—a man who’d had too much to drink and so had a skid on a bad road, a skid severe enough to result in an arm in a sling and a Gertain amount of blood, might have had a little more to show for it in the way of subsidiaries. That’s all- Hartog, would you object if I were to ask you to remove that bandage?”

Hartog stared at him and laughed in his face. He said, Yes, I’d call it bloody nerve, but I see from the look in your sleuthing eye that you wouldn’t let that stop you. Am I right?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Hartog slammed his empty glass down on the desk. “Very well, then.” Mockingly he extended his arms across the top of the desk towards Shaw. “Slip the bracelets on, Inspector, I’m coming quietly.”

“I think you’d better tell me anything you haven’t told me already, and skip the funny stuff.”

“Oh, all right.” Hartog shrugged and sat back again. “The arm wasn’t due to a skid—though for the record I did have one.” He held the arm up. “There’s been a bullet in there.”

“Which you got when my train was attacked?”

“Exactly—but don’t bother to reach for that gun under your shoulder, because it isn’t what you think.” Hartog jabbed a finger towards Shaw. “It’s a long story. But I got that bullet when I
followed
the natives who were mounting the attack. It was a stray shot, one that had gone over and wide, and I was just unlucky. It wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t get back to the car and drive it home, but it was bad enough. If you check up you’ll find that I didn’t go to a doctor, either here at the station or in Manalati. I got my wife to fix it.”

“Why was that—if you were only eavesdropping—”

“I couldn’t prove that, could I, and everybody would have known about the train hold-up and they’d have jumped to wrong conclusions. Anyway, there’s another and more important reason. It’s this.” Hartog leaned across the desk, bloodshot eyes fixing Shaw intently. “Steve Geisler doesn’t like me. He loathes my guts, in fact. He’d love an excuse for getting rid of me.” Gently, he tapped his arm. “This could give him that excuse, if he cared to stir up trouble and come to the wrong answer—like you’re doing now. Besides which, he’s already warned me that if I go on with this business he’ll shop me to London or Washington. That’d mean I’d be relieved double-quick, and I’m not ready for that yet. I don’t want everything mucked up now.”

“What do you mean by that? And what do you mean when you say ‘this business’?”

Hartog’s mouth twisted. “Look, Shaw, I’m not a fool. You’ve formed your own conclusions already, and you think I’m up to something pretty nasty. I believe that was the general drift of your remarks to Steve about some one signalling the missile down, or causing an accident. You meant me when you said that—didn’t you? Right, now let me do a little explaining. In the first place, you must have checked up on all of us by now. Did you find anything against me?”

“No. If there had been, you wouldn’t have been employed here anyway. But sometimes people’s loyalties change after they’ve been screened, you know, and no screening’s a hundred per cent, anyway.”

Hartog said, “I wouldn’t know about that. But my loyalties haven’t changed. Other things have, but not my loyalties.” “Can you elaborate on that?”

Hartog said slowly, almost wearily, “Yes, I can, but to understand it you’ve got to have lived in this bloody country really. You’ve got to have watched this thing building up, Shaw, you’ve got to have felt its effect, and seen the whole place degenerate into fear, terror of what’s going to happen.” He wiped beads of sweat from his face. “You’ve got to have watched a whole country gradually dying just because some bastard has got hold of the blacks’ imagination and worked on it through their own voodoo. You’ve got to have lived where you can’t trust anybody with a bit of colour in them—or rather, not many of them. Even those you do trust, you don’t feel absolutely sure of. The change that’s come to me. . . it stems from all of that.”

Hartog got up and went over to refill his glass, long legs moving in that loping stride. Coming back, he said, “There’s people here, Steve Geisler’s one of them, my wife’s another, who’ll tell you I am just an alcoholic—or going that way at least. Very sad, they say, to see a brilliant brain going to the devil like that. What the hell do they know about it, Shaw?” He ran a hand through his black hair. “There’s some who probably think I’m crazy. Well—in a way I am. Both. Drunk and crazy. Only that’s not all. Look, after the current troubles are over, they can send me home any time they like—and they will too, if Geisler can fix it that way. I shan’t care— then. But not yet, d’you see—not yet! I’ve got things to— finish.”

“What things?”

Hartog didn’t answer that directly. He said moodily, “I told you I was at the hold-up last night. As a matter of sober fact. . . I was part of it, I wasn’t eavesdropping at all—”

“You—-”

“Wait!” The man’s closed fist smashed down on the desk and his lips went thin, hard. “Let me finish. I didn’t try to stop it because I couldn’t on my own, and even supposing I hadn’t been killed out of hand as a result, I’d have lost months of patient work. Months of getting myself accepted on my own merits and therefore—
trusted
.” He paused. “You see, Shaw, I’m a member of the Cult of Edo.”

Shaw’s face was white. “Do you really mean that, Hartog?”

“Yes, of course I do. What’s more, Geisler knows it.”

“He does?”