“Dear me, no, Michael!” Macmillan said with a horror that might have sounded more convincing if he hadn’t been waving his glass about. “You told me yourself when we were hatching this plot that provenance and verification were everything. Tucked safely away upstairs, we’ve now got the world’s leading expert on Churchill. And he really is timid as a mouse. If you wheel him out at the right moment, no one will doubt the genuineness of what you get your friends to publish. I’m certainly planning to use him in my Saturday evening pep talk.”
“And you think you can get some hyper-patriot to do that?” came Foot’s rather obvious question. “Timid or not, you’ll be asking rather a lot of someone whose political writings make Billy Bunter sound like Machiavelli!” Macmillan laughed now, and stood fully up. The slightly dotty old Edwardian gent had vanished. In his place stood someone taller and younger and much, much more ruthless. He cackled and rubbed his hands.
“Leave that one to me, old chum,” he said. “I think I have already effected an introduction for our repressed young Indian that will turn him about very smartly—yes, very smartly indeed. A night of young Edward’s embraces, and I might have him singing The Internationale!
“Now, would I be mistaken if I thought you had a message for me from Comrade Beria himself?” Foot laughed again and began walking back towards the door—wasn’t that where he’d dumped his bag. Before he could get there, though, Macmillan began to laugh again. He caught hold of Foot by the hands, and they began a slow, capering dance about the room. Gasping and laughing, they danced together, looking out only to avoid crashing into the furniture.
“My darling Harold,” Foot croaked on their second circuit of the room, “it will be a marriage made in heaven. Even if he couldn’t himself see the shining future just ahead, old Winston himself would surely have approved.”
I’d registered without fully noticing that Krellburger had been prodding my neck with increasing urgency. Now he began pulling on the hair above my left temple. I relaxed my whole body and looked up.
“You’ve seen enough,” he whispered. “It’s time to get out of here.” I wanted to go away somewhere and cry at the horror of it all. But I also knew I couldn’t stay under this roof another five minutes. Whatever happened to me, I had to get to the authorities. I didn’t know the nature of this “bargain” between them. Even so, treason was treason, and we had days at the most to stop it. I got up and followed Krellburger noiselessly back to my room.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Our shoes crunched on the gravel as we walked from a side door of the house into the grounds. It had left off raining, and the night air had about it the fresh, silent chill of late winter. As I’d been told, I took shelter behind some bushes, and Krellburger continued forward towards the car that had brought both me and Foot to the house.
“The Master requires your immediate presence in the kitchen,” he said in a surprisingly stately English accent. “There will be much driving shortly after dawn, and he would have you refreshed for it.” The driver looked up from his newspaper and nodded. He switched off his reading light, and I heard the heavy thud of the car door closing. This was followed by the diminishing sound of the driver’s own progress across the gravel. Once he was round the corner of the house, Krellburger jumped into the driving seat. I got in beside him and closed the door. The key turned twice in the lock before the engine started. It was the same soft, expensive purr as I’d known on the way here. Now, with Krellburger driving, its movements were jerkier. Still, he got the car turned and then accelerated through the open gates of Birch Grove into the silent darkness beyond.
I turned and looked back at the house. All was still in darkness. Krellburger had assured me that even Macmillan could only run a single car. Would he dare report the car to the police as stolen? Probably not. Since he couldn’t follow us, we’d surely have all the head start we needed. So far, this had been a remarkably easy escape. I hugged myself as I thought of the bitter argument that would break out once my bed was found empty.
“There will be a police station in Haywards Heath,” I said firmly. “From there, we can get in touch with Inspector O’Brien—I think at Scotland Yard. He can arrest the pair of them. A search of the house will give him all the evidence he needs to stop this plot, whatever it is.”
Krellburger ignored me, and gripped the wheel tightly as he drove quickly along a stretch of reasonably smooth road.
“I think Haywards Heath is to the south,” I added with greater firmness. “You seem to have got us onto the London Road.” With a crunch of gears, Krellburger slowed the car and then stopped. He rummaged about in the glove compartment and pulled out a book of maps.
“We aren’t going to the police,” he said shortly. I opened my mouth to protest. But he turned and pulled a sour face.
“Give me one of your cigarettes,” he demanded. Automatically, I reached into my breast pocket and took out my silver case. Whoever had collected stuff from my flat had made sure to refill it with Capstan Super Strength. There were ten left. They would last me and even someone else for any reasonable car journey. I offered one to him and took one for myself. He held the paper tube between forefinger and thumb and took no notice of the lighter I held up. I lit my own and relaxed in the car seat.
“I like to think of fire held in a man's hand,” he said as if quoting from memory. “Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind—and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression.”
I remained silent. But whoever’s words those were had spoken pretty well. Krellburger looked out of the driver’s window. Far over in the east, the pale light of the dawn showing behind, I could see the five great towers of the Colemans Hatch power station. It had been finished just as distributed power began to go out of fashion, and its nuclear reactor had never been fully brought into service. But great clouds of steam rose still white from the two central towers. He turned back and smiled at some inner joke. I lit his cigarette and prepared to urge him again to make for Haywards Heath.
I was unprepared for the coughing fit the moment he breathed in. Michael Foot’s own attack had nothing on this. He coughed and spluttered until tears ran down his face. Indeed, his face went pale and then a darker shade that, in better lighting, might have shown as green. He leaned forward and clutched desperately at his chest. I patted hard on his back, and bent down to recover the cigarette from where it had fallen beside the pedal. I thought he’d even vomit, and reached back to get his hat ready. But it was only severe coughing.
“How old are you?” I asked once the main fit was passed.
“Sixteen,” he groaned. I nodded wisely and put his hat back on the seat behind us.
“Well, at your age,” I advised, “you’ll be better off with Passing Clouds, or something with a filter. I started with Samovar Smooth Blend—but those really are for boys,” He nodded and looked suspiciously at the still lit cigarette I held out to him. He took it and sucked the smoke gently into his mouth before spitting it out again. I rolled my own window down and took another long draw on my cigarette. I blew the smoke out into the gathering light and watched it disperse in the gentle breeze. I turned and looked back along the road. As expected, it was empty. If there was to be a problem, it would come from ahead.