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“I rather think Lenin only discovered that capitalism leads to war,” I said sweetly, “after the Great War had broken out. Nothing is inevitable until it’s happened.” Foot cut me off with a peal of scornful laughter. He lit another cigarette and blew smoke towards me. He picked up his remote control killing device and played again with the buttons. I lit another cigarette for myself and tried not to look worried.

A Great War was inevitable,” he said flatly. “A socialist revolution was inevitable. Equally, a second great war was inevitable after about 1930. If the crises at the end of that decade didn’t end as Comrade Stalin infallibly predicted, it was a delay—nothing more. When a house is built on sand, it may not fall down at once. And its continuation from one year to the next will be taken by fools as evidence that foundations are not necessary. But fall down it inevitably must. There was no war in 1940. Believe me, Dr Markham, there will be a war in 1960.”

“You seem very certain,” I said.

“I know,” he replied with a loving stare at his control box, “because I will help to start it.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

One of the candles now began to splutter as it burned down. I turned away from Foot and watched as it dimmed and went out. There were a dozen other candles in the room. But its failure brought a perceptible darkening of Macmillan’s study. I could no longer see the titles of the books in the case beside the fireplace. The faces in the paintings had faded from view. But I could still see Foot. A look of triumph on his face, he blew out a smoke ring and watched as it grew larger and dispersed.

“If you were to listen to his speeches as he heaved his obscene body about his empire,” he continued, “you’d think Goering was a second Alexander or Napoleon. It is, of course, plain, after twenty years of this, that he’s as terrified of war as any of the black-coated Ministers he’s allowed to take power from him. The world since Hitler’s death has been held in a calm that reflects only the cowardice of a few dozen ageing men. How long has this country and Germany had possession of the atom bomb? How typical of the German and British Governments that it has never—aside from a single controlled explosion deep underground—been tested. But I put it to you, Dr Markham, that whoever controls the power of the atom has the world in the palm of his hand.

“There is one country on this planet where the government is not made up of frightened old women. Let that country have the power of the atom, and the world will awake from its long slumber and rub its eyes in the brightness of the dawn that has been prepared for it.”

“Oh,” I said. I stretched my arms and smiled. “Oh—so your pay-off is that Russia gets the Bomb. If Stalin and Beria hadn’t murdered all the scientists, Russia might have got it years ago. Now, it will be Big Mac who hands it over on a plate.” Foot smiled and flicked ash with the theatrical gesture made famous by his television programme. “Can I ask against whom the Russians will use the Bomb? Surely, it won’t be us or the Germans.”

“It will be the Japanese, you fool,” he replied. “Vicious, bandy-legged creatures, all of them,” he spat. “It will be imported into Japan one piece at a time in the Soviet diplomatic bag. It will then be reassembled in Tokyo. Comrade Beria will declare war at the moment of his choosing. As the Soviet diplomatic mission looks back from the ship on which it departs, the flash of the explosion will light up the horizon. This will be their punishment for the fire-bombing of Pekin and their germ attacks, and for their abduction of Mongolia from the Socialist Family.”

“I see,” I said. I thought quickly. I thought back to the conversation I’d had in my flat with Pakeshi when the Memorandum had first come to sight. “If Japan is taken out by Russia, this unbalances the world. We and the Germans must then either consider nuclear war with Russia, or we must bring America out of retirement. I suppose that America will come out anyway once the Memorandum is published. That leaves us with the option of formal alliance with Germany against America, or Macmillan’s understanding with America. But, with a nuclear Russia, and then eventually America, it’s hard to see exactly how things would work out.

“Can I ask how Russia is to be equipped with atom bombs?” Foot smiled again.

“The reason Harold was unable to send his helicopter out to collect you this afternoon,” he said, “is that it is already filled with microfilmed documents and sufficient nuclear materials for Russia to have its own Bomb before Christmas. You are wrong that every prominent scientist in Russia has been unmasked as a spy or other class enemy. The Socialist Homeland is richly provided with every variety of genius. If the secret of a chain reaction has so far eluded our scientists, everything is ready for the transfer of British technology to cut short the need for ten years of further development.”

Finally, this part of the plot was making sense. Macmillan was making a gigantic gamble. Publishing the Churchill Memorandum might bring him to power. Foot’s part in this was less to supply heavy muscle—useful as this might be—than to help release Macmillan from a diplomatic system that would otherwise have held him tight. Whether he would survive the multiple revolutions he was planning to unleash, and where these might leave England, were matters impossible to predict. It was like trying to give complete answers to Foot’s question about the Great War. One thing, though, was certain. Behind that pipe and that carefully-designed mask of aged Edwardian fop, there lurked the world’s most desperate and unprincipled gambler since the car accident in Prague twenty years before. To become Prime Minister, and to stamp his name into all the future history books, there was no limit to wickedness of Harold Macmillan.

“There are—or should be—two questions in your mind, Dr Markham,” Foot continued after another cough. “The first is why, if I now have everything I need, I am still here. The answer to this is easy. Harold’s helicopter has a range of sixty miles. This will not get me to Russia, but will get me to a Russian submarine that will surface five miles from Selsey at 1am.

“The second question is what the British authorities will do to stop me. Don’t try telling me you aren’t working for Enoch Powell, and that this house will not be raided the moment Harold’s dinner party reaches its climax. With his present eminence, not to mention the time he spent at Eton, Harold seems to believe that he can’t be touched by anyone short of Lord Halifax himself. We both know better than that—don’t we, Anthony?” He paused dramatically. I said nothing, and waited for him to continue. He laughed and took a long drag on his cigarette. “It is because of this, not my acid, that Harold’s generators are not working,” he said, his laugh trailing off into a giggle that ended in the ghost of a cough.

“But Michael,” I asked with what I desperately tried to make a knowing smile, “why are you telling me all this? You did insist earlier to Harold that I wasn’t to be told a thing. Now, you’re spouting away like a pantomime villain to his audience.”

“Because, Anthony,” he flashed right back at me, “I like you.” My smile faded and I looked rather doubtfully at the insane scarecrow before me. It didn’t look as if he’d washed his hair since his disposal of Jones and Rutherford. But Foot was now laughing with a semblance of good humour. “Oh, Anthony, Anthony, I can read your mind as if its contents were being shown on a computer display. Harold, no doubt, fancies the arse off you. Since his whore of a wife went mad, he’s been turning more and more into a proper old queen. As with Tiberius on Capri, foul urges long suppressed have shown through at last. Why else do you suppose he employed that American boy without even checking his references?