Ben Stoddart, after a quick consultation with Quentin White before he had to appear on the BBC 2 news, had agreed that gallant defiance was the appropriate image for him especially after White's remark about 'the front rank of the hosts of God'; so Stoddart, while being careful not to contradict his colleague on the question of the reality of the powers of darkness, told his BBC viewers that he doubted whether 'these people could raise enough magical power to fry an egg' and challenged them to do their worst. His statement was printed next morning alongside White's, and most of the picture editors reinforced them with White looking like Savonarola and Stoddart looking like St George.
In Beehive, Harley needed to do nothing except sit back and smile. 'How about your associative links now, Sir Walter?' he asked Jennings triumphantly. 'These Angels of Lucifer have played right into our hands. They've branded every witch in Britain as a potential black-magic murderer.'
'Poor sods,' Sir Walter said. 'If you could take a referendum among witches today, ninety-eight per cent of them would condemn the Angels of Lucifer by every rule in their book. You do know that, don't you?'
'Of course I do – but the public doesn't.' He chuckled. 'And all achieved by one five-second pirate broadcast. Marvellous, isn't it?'
Sir Walter looked at him.thoughtfully. 'You didn't set it up yourself by any chance, did you?'
'No, I didn't. But if I'd thought of it, I might have done.'
Sir Walter said nothing; he still wasn't altogether sure.
Five people, at least, were sure. Moira and Dan's coven had not heard the original pirate broadcast, but the BBC, having the tape in their possession, had naturally re-run it as part of their 10.40 news report. The coven, listening, had gasped simultaneously. They all recognized the voice as that of Bill Lazenby, a member of John Hassell's coven. He had never been publicly active so his voice was unlikely to be on file anywhere; but to the few who knew him, it was unmistakable. 'Oh, God,' Rosemary had cried. 'So they really meant it! It's that bitch Karen. What's she done to John – to all of them?'
'John was a ripe plum after Joy was murdered,' Sally said. 'Someone a lot less clever than Karen could have made him go black. And Karen is clever. She won him over and swept the rest along with them.'
'All the same, I never expected this – an all-out public attack, so soon’
‘Have they the power?'
They all looked at Moira, who said: 'Frankly, I don't know. She is powerful – and harnessing John's bitterness – plus all the others…They might do it.'
'I know it sounds crazy,' Rosemary said, 'but since we know where the attack's coming from – shouldn't we work to protect Stoddart?'
'Him?' Dan snorted.
'I know what Rosemary means,' Greg put in more calmly. 'Ben Stoddart's a bastard, of course – but if they managed to kill him, think of the repercussions. The Crusaders would go berserk.'
They thought, they discussed, but as usual it was Moira who had the final say. 'Greg's got a good point but I'm afraid we'll have to stay clear of it. One of these days -I'm sorry, dreadfully sorry, but it's true – one of these days we're going to have to fight John and Karen head on. They've put themselves beyond the pale and Gods knows what they'll let loose. But when we do, we've got to win -and that means all the allies we can get. This isn't the time. We must wait for it – and meantime, no skirmishes with them. At the moment, we're too vulnerable. Karen's highly clairvoyant and she'd pick us up at once and turn on us. Right now we've got other things to concentrate on. Ben Stoddart must look after himself.'
Dr Friell knew the outlines of the plan and many of the details – after all, he had suggested it in the first place and had provided all the inside information the Angels would need. The only thing he did not know was the timing of the raid; it had not been possible to finalize the date or the hour during their discussions in Savernake Forest, and they had agreed that any more communication between the Angels and Friell, once he had returned to Banwell, would be unwise. They had not even been certain, then, how the public threat to Stoddart's life would be made. John Hassell had merely said he had 'an idea about that' -an idea which had apparently borne fruit as the pirate broadcast. The threat had been made and all Stanley Friel could do was wait for the raid which might come any day, any hour… It was always possible, he realized, that the Angels of Lucifer did not entirely trust him; he doubted if that slant-eyed vixen Karen, who was clearly the driving force of the group, trusted anyone. Friell didn't resent it. Mistrust was sound procedure in guerilla operations. Outside the Savernake Forest group, Friel was the only one who knew the part the Banwell Emergency Unit was to play or even that it entered into the picture at all. They were right to be wary of him; if they had not been, he would have thought them naive and feared for the success of the plan.
As it was, he had confidence in their ability to carry out the practical side of the plan; there were by now about thirty witches in their group, most of them young and determined and fit-looking. One of them, a little older, was an ex-Sergeant of the Royal Marines and he had been organizing and training the others from the moment they arrived in the Forest. It was clear that John and Karen did not intend their group to survive on magical weapons only.
Yet as far as the Banwell raid was concerned, it was the magical operation that mattered; the military operation was merely to make it possible. And about the magical success Friell had no doubts whatever. He was satisfied, from his studies and his own experience, that psychic attack worked given sufficient emotional force and a capable directing will. He knew what a psychic volcano smouldered at Banwell and he knew that Karen and John had the nerve and the knowledge to harness and direct it. It could not fail… and he, Stanley Friell, was both instigator and observer in an experiment few psychic researchers would ever have the possibility – let alone the courage and freedom from scruple – to conduct or even contemplate.
He was tense with anticipation and his tension was aggravated by the impossibility of knowing when the action would be launched. Being a sensitive, he felt the tension as an increasing static charge, a potential which must be released – and he released it in a very practical manner, by responding at last to the silent invitation which his assistant, Nurse Parker, had been directing at him ever since she was allocated to him and which he had so far been too preoccupied to bother with. Jenny Parker had an average figure and a rather plain, unsmiling little face, so the temptation had not been great. But when he did take her to bed, with the minimum of preparatory gallantry and nothing more in mind than the release of tension, he found to his surprise and pleasure that she was a dedicated sensualist of considerable ingenuity and stamina, as impersonally hungry as he himself. They suited each other very well and in Friell's bedroom they took advantage of the fact in periodic fierce encounters whose intensity no one could have inferred from their professional relationship.