Diana's Altar Page 28

  “Prof. Cartright is in the employ of Metrovick. He was here earlier. You missed him by ten minutes. Anyone who’s interested enough to ring up the factory and ask will be told Cartwright is unavailable—he’s away in Cambridge. It should hold up.” Struck by a disconcerting thought, “Crikey!” he said. “Who’s going to go to such lengths? Who or what exactly are you up against that the arrival of a crate of bubbly can send you into a blue funk? What’s going on?”

  “I wish I knew. You can sometimes get a raw response from someone under unexpected pressure. That man reacted badly to officer bluster and couldn’t resist retaliating with sarcasm and veiled threat.”

  Joe looked doubtfully at the boxes.

  “They don’t normally drop them off here,” Page offered. “They’re supposed to go straight down to the cellars under the main building.”

  “Better safe than sorry. Shall we?” Joe invited, moving towards the crates. “Shall I bother to say: Let’s watch our step? That bloke wasn’t bragging. He was indeed an explosives expert and his last recorded caper was to blow up half of northern France. He and his fellow sappers rearranged the landscape of the river Somme. The contents of one of these crates could blast your new machine up through that specially light roof you were telling me about! I’ll have that screwdriver back. That should do it.”

  “So that’s what it’s all about? Sabotage! Who’d go to such lengths? We’re in something of a race with Oxford to produce the first liquid helium, but I can’t see Lindemann sending someone over to nobble us. A huffy letter to Nature is more his style . . . No! Wait! We’re not plunging in without an examination. We’ll do this with all proper precautions. There’ll be tools we can use in the work boxes over there. Now, Sandilands, would you like to check there’s nobody about in the courtyard or the corridor? And then you should probably retreat to a distance while I carry out the examination.”

  The pacifist father of two quietly took off his jacket and stood, white-faced but determined, in his shirt sleeves, sizing up the boxes.

  Ten minutes later both men stood upright again, sweating with tension and staring blankly at the contents of two completely innocent cases. “Two dozen, best Bollinger,” Joe said. “Just as it says on the delivery chit.”

  “Does it, though?” Page said. He had unfolded the paper he’d taken from Jennings and was looking at it in puzzlement. “Says here: three cases. Where’s the third case and what’s it got in it?”

  “Well, whatever was in the surprise parcel—he’s now driven off with it!”

  “You went off at half cock, Sandilands. Now he’ll have to try again. I say—do you think he will? Or did your snarling put him off? If he’s planning to blow up the unmanned machine on a quiet Sunday morning, there’s plenty of time for him to arrange a further delivery. We’ll have to tell Director Haraldson to set a guard.”

  “I’d guess he’ll be back when we’ve left the coast clear. He won’t want to waste the opportunity. I agree—the director must be made aware. But Haraldson should know that it’s worse than sabotage . . . Far worse. I’m going to share an awful thought with you, Page. It’s not the metal beast they’re going for. It’s the scientists collected together in a tight bunch around it, drinking a toast, they’re out to destroy.”

  Page’s voice was slightly hysterical when he was able to speak. “You mean there’ll be metal and glass and champagne and helium and human limbs raining down on Cambridge? Why, Sandilands? Why us?”

  “I thought your deputy director was a good chap. Shall we go and warn him and see if he can shed some light? Oh, and while we’re gone—let’s leave a guard on the door, shall we? Nip out and find two strapping lads and set them to refuse and report any unwanted special deliveries.”

  Haraldson was looking over a sheet of paper in a marked manner when Joe returned to his office.

  “I should like Doctor Page to stay for a discussion, if you don’t mind, sir.”

  “If you wish, Sandilands. Sit down, both of you. Now, look here, Commissioner. This is as far as I’m prepared to go to meet your demands.” He handed over a typed list of names. “No state secrets there. Names only and they are publicly available to all, though the taxman is the only one who ever shows an interest in us. I refuse—and Page will witness my words—to make any statement or even guess as to the political affiliations of my staff. None of your damn business!”

  Joe’s approving smile came as a surprise. “I hadn’t expected that you would. It’s quite all right, sir. I was merely gaining entry to the building and supplying you with a perfectly credible reason for allowing me a police inspection of the labs if anyone asks. My true motive in scrambling aboard is a much more serious one.

  “I’ve discovered something disturbing on my tour—we’ve discovered—Doctor Page was with me and will bear witness. But before I go any further . . . A necessary formality.”

  A stunned and awkward silence accompanied the signing of the Official Secrets Act documents he handed to each man.

  “Now, Haraldson. Page and I have just disrupted a plot to blow up the Mond Laboratory and all who sail in her at the champagne launch on Monday.”

  Having fixed the scientist’s attention, he filled in the details of the encounter with the delivery man.

  Haraldson heard him without interruption and examined the delivery docket. “Three dozen . . . 1926 vintage? What a waste that would be! Pertinax, eh? You’re telling me that one of our most generous sponsors—a man who contributed a thousand pounds to the building of the Mond—has now changed his mind and wishes to blow it to bits?”

  “Yes. At the very highest level of government, he has been suspected for some time now of being the Russians’ prime spy in our country. He’s been planted here for years—generations—biding his time. All the signs are that he is about to make his play. His quarrel is not with the architecture. Nor yet with the production of helium. His aim is to kill off the cream of the British scientific establishment at one fell swoop. The crime would never be exposed as a crime because the authorities and the public are predisposed to expect a tragic incident of this nature in this place. ‘An accident waiting to happen,’ was the local paper’s prediction when the news of the splitting of the atom was announced last year. The good folk of Cambridge wonder that you’ve got away with it for so long.”

  Joe ignored the slight smile of disbelief creeping across Haraldson’s craggy features and passed back the list of names. “I’m not asking for political affiliations, but perhaps we should know precisely which people on this list will attend the ceremony on Monday? Will you mark them for me?”

  “Certainly. I have a ticket myself for a ringside seat and so does Humphrey so we’d better get this right.” He looked again closely at the list. “We haven’t sent out invitations—it’s not that formal an arrangement. More of an omnium gatherum with fizz. All welcome. But we can eliminate the nonstarters. I think I told you our director and a selection of staff and students had gone off on a jolly jaunt to Germany?”

  Joe nodded, frowning.

  “In his party are three Germans, an Italian, a New Zealander and five British, if you count the Scots. I’ll put a line through their names.” He did so. “Now I’ll mark with a cross (believe me I intend no pun) the twenty or so who will be in the lab. That leaves us the star of the show of course, Professor Kapitza, his two Russian assistants and a selection of others (of mixed nationality, if that is important to the powers that be). We’re left with a group whose principal interest is in magnetism and cryogenics and their use in the smashing of the atom. Hmm . . . I summarise and simplify, of course.”

  Joe nodded his thanks for being let off a lecture.

  “A good number of these men—shall we call them the Helium Group?—have Communist Party cards in their wallets. Kapitza makes no secret of his sympathy, though he has never been a member.”

  He looked up at Joe, startled and challenging.
“You’ve got this arsy-tarsy, man! Upside down and back to front! If the nightmare you describe comes to pass, the left wing of not just British but world physics would be obliterated. The left wing! A goodish number of couldn’t-care-less chaps like me are in the lineup, but predominantly these are the socialists and the communists among us. At least four men who will be in this group are geniuses and I don’t use the word lightly. There are two potential Nobel Prize winners here. Russian science, which I think you must be seeing as the ultimate beneficiary of such a plot—yes?—is already years behind everyone else and would be blasted back to the Middle Ages by the loss. Moscow is relying on Kaptiza to design and run their version of the Cavendish in St. Petersburg. Two gifted Americans of undisclosed political affinity would be caught up in the blast, a Norwegian, a Dutchman . . . Yet you tell me that the would-be perpetrator of this devastation is a Bolshevik agent? I judge your theory not proven. Back to the bench and think again!”

  “I believe you’re right.” Joe was reduced to embarrassed silence. “Though it does begin to look like a good day for German science,” he said, voicing all their thoughts. “Perhaps we’re looking in the wrong place? Is the new Nazi government recruiting? Already?”

  The two men looked at Joe in some discomfort. After a moment, Haraldson nodded at Page.

  “Göttingen has been building up a stable for some years now,” Page said. “It’s a three-horse race with Germany vying with us here in Cambridge and Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. If someone nobbles the favourites before the race, those lads are going to have a straight run down the course.”

  Haraldson spoke decisively. “It’s not as uncomplicated as Page makes out. It’s not a prep school sack race! Things are changing rapidly. In the political world even faster than in the scientific one. How do you judge form anyhow? By the Nobel awards? It’s one indication, though occasionally a baffling and unreliable judgement of achievement. A coarse evaluation might be: of the one hundred Nobel prizes awarded since its inception to the present day, thirty-three have gone to German scientists, eighteen to the British and six to the USA. There can be no doubt that in maths and physics, Göttingen University has reigned supreme for years.”

  He paused, eyebrows converging in heavy disapproval. “Until very recently. The scientists who have led the world from that city are almost entirely Jewish. The new power in the land does not like Jews. Hitler and his heavy brigade have found ways of persuading the likes of Einstein to resign their posts and flee the country. Albert escaped last year. Got away to the United States and I doubt he’ll be back. Göttingen’s loss has been our gain, of course. This would seem to be a propitious time to . . .”

  “Go fishing?” Joe said. “What a short-sighted chump Herr Hitler must be!”

  “The man has a very high view of his own ability.” Haraldson shrugged. “They say it approaches the messianic. When someone dared to suggest to him last year that his mathematicians and his physicists were leaving their posts and asked, ‘Where, mein Führer, are the brains of our country?’ he replied: ‘I’ll be the brains!’ Such an idiot deserves to lose his best men. But—surely you would know, Sandilands—does your chump have anything so sophisticated as a spy system established in our country?”

  “I couldn’t possibly say. But I’ll bear it in mind. I know, as well as you do and the whole country does, that the Bolsheviks have an extensive and well-funded organisation in place.”

  Haraldson smiled at the tact and the innuendo. “Whatever the twisted thinking behind all this, we can’t let it go ahead, and we must take all possible steps to confound the villain. Look here—I think this is all nonsense. Special Branch has got its knickers in a twist, but I’m not prepared to risk lives by dismissing it out of hand. Let’s think like scientists, shall we? Or even detectives? Devise and perform a test. Acquire evidence. Assess and interpret. I don’t know about you, Sandilands, but I never accept a theory—it’s the same as opinion as far as I’m concerned.

  “What have we got? A couple of wine crates, innocent in themselves but delivered by a known villain with puzzling theatricality—am I getting this right? A possible third astray somewhere. We can put them safely away in the cellar they were destined for anyway and watch out for the missing one . . . No! Wait! This is barmy!”

  His exclamation disturbed his audience.

  “The champagne delivery was a distraction! Evidence: see how we have been distracted and for how long! Let’s return to your premise that for some reason Pertinax wants to destroy a company of twenty scientists. The target: One of them? A selection? All?”

  “It’s their work,” Page said. “It’s the one thing they have in common. They all have special knowledge of or contribute to work on smashing the atom. We all know what’s behind this and, as usual, we’re tiptoeing around it. It’s war work. What’s that German factory called? Krupps? Are they still in business? You should rake through Pertinax’s bank statements for Deutschmarks, Sandilands. We pretend there are no such dirty compulsions but out there in the real world, there are. Ostriches! We’re ostriches.”

  “Or—to explore another option—an anti-war faction that’s decided eggs and paint aren’t really making a strong enough statement?” Joe suggested lightly to relieve the intensity. “Funded by Pertinax, they’re going to make a bang the whole world will hear.”

  Two pairs of eyes looked at him with derision.

  “Are you sure you understand this man and his loyalties, Sandilands?”

  “No. I doubt if anyone does. I shall have to go back and check my workings. I’ve only met him twice and I can’t express a valid opinion on the state of his mind. Though . . . the state of his brain . . . I think I may be able to get information on that by twisting an arm or two.”

  “Good luck with that then!”

  “It may be, sir, that what we have to deal with is a type of madness. We’re looking at vicious unreason and the vaunting ambition of a Roman Emperor.”

  “Mmm . . . Madness, you say? Sir Gregory may have Viking looks but he’s every inch the English gentleman. I have heard no reports that he goes off berserking down the High Street on the night of the full moon. I’m not sure how your diagnosis of madness sits with the rather careful planning that you claim has gone on. We’ll wait for further evidence on that score. But you’ve both failed to notice the truly disturbing part of this scenario,” Haraldson announced. “If the crates were a distraction—what have they been successful in distracting us from, gentlemen?”

  “Oh, my God!” Page leapt to his feet, breathing in noisy excitement and dread. “It’s in there already, isn’t it? He’s already fixed the explosive in place! And we didn’t spot it! No wonder the bugger was laughing at us.”

  Chapter 24

  “It’s an old peterman’s trick,” Joe said. “Fix up an obvious—but not too obvious—distraction and everyone drifts away from the scene with relief, having resolved a phantom problem—only to be caught out by the intended blast when it comes. The old safe-crackers in my patch like to have a quiet time while they’re manipulating the tumblers or drilling the weak spot. Nothing they like quite so much as to hear the klaxons of the Flying Squad tearing off up the road a mile away. Whenever I hear a suspicious package has been found in a florist’s shop, I check out the bank round the corner as well.”

  “What do you propose?” Haraldson asked.

  “Subtlety and discretion! I want this kept quiet. I want no invitations revoked. The Helium Party will take place. We’re not pressed for time at least. It can’t have been armed yet. He’ll probably go for a twenty-four-hour fuse or detonator mechanism, assuming the eventual trigger man is not one of the group and intent on suicide—planning to press the plunger as he raises his glass. So—he’ll get back in to set the timer sometime after lunch on Sunday in a conveniently empty lab. I’ll arrange a little champagne reception of my own.”

  “Never mind the fisticuffs and the manacles, Commissio
ner. I’m not running the risk of leaving that bomb—if bomb there is—hidden away in the laboratory for a minute. It has to be removed. At once.”

  “No rush, but I understand and share your concern, sir. There’s an army unit out in barracks down near Duxford airfield. I’ll make a phone call to check whether they have a bomb-disposal outfit they can deploy.”

  The eyes were now staring at him with disbelief.

  “Sandilands,” the director said, “you forget where you are! This place is teeming with men with the skill and knowledge to perform the task. Pure scientists they may be, but all, from the day they enter, are trained in using their hands to make their own equipment. For the very good reason that the special apparatus they require is not generally available as a manufactured item. You don’t ring up a supplier in Birmingham and say, ‘I’m intending to split an atom next Tuesday. Send me the appropriate equipment, will you?’ Our boys can design systems, reform metal, solder joints . . . they have all the practicalities at their fingertips and all the instincts for safety you could wish for.” He smiled grimly. “Our intact roof stands witness to that.”

  “I had to blow my own glass tubes when I first came here.” Page nodded in support. “Removal will be a doddle—it’s finding it that will be the hard part. That’s a big space and they’ve given some thought to it. It occurs to me they might even have had some inside information, but that would be one for you, sir,” he finished, smiling blandly at Haraldson.

  Page was having a good morning on the whole, Joe decided. Scoring all around the wicket.

  “I’ll make a phone call,” Haraldson announced. “But I won’t have any Keystone Cops or Major Disaster stomping about wrecking my lab! One call will do it. To the best engineer in the world! To Piotr Kapitza! If he can’t do it, it can’t be done.”

  “Problem there, sir,” Page said. “He’s gone to the zoo. I had assumed Regent’s Park in London as there isn’t one locally.”