Basil gave me a shove from behind, reminding me of his presence. I looked at him at last. He hadn't changed his appearance much since I'd seen him in London masquerading as Ernest Walling, except that he'd apparently got bounced around a bit when the Austin-Cooper went off the road: he had a black eye and a cut lip. I didn't grin, but he must have guessed I felt like it, and he pushed at me again.
"Move on, Helm. Don't try any of your tricks. These men would just love to shoot you. Human life means very little to them."
I looked at the two men he indicated. They were short, stocky men dressed in rough work clothes, like Scottish farmers or fishermen, so that at a distance they would have attracted no attention in this part of the world, except for the arms they carried-stubby machine pistols of the standard PPSh41 Russian pattern, the burp gun, that's been copied by a lot of Communist countries. The weapons were cheap and crude, no jewels of the gunsmith's art, but they were, I knew, reliable and effective. Well, as effective as any of those squirt guns can be. I still have the old-fashioned notion that there's something sloppy about killing a man with seventeen bullets when one will do the job.
The ugly weapons looked shockingly out of place against the sunny Scottish coastal landscape, just as the Oriental faces looked strange under the soft cloth caps. One of the men motioned imperatively with the barrel of his piece, and I turned and moved along after Madame Ling and her companion, but not fast enough to suit the man behind me. He shoved his gun barrel into my back to hurry me along. Off balance, I stepped into some kind of a hole and fell, wrenching my knee. Madame Ling looked back and called out an order, and the men yanked me to my feet and marched me, limping, up to where she had stopped to wait.
"You must be careful where you step, Mr. Helm," she said in her precise, liquid English. "This bluff is riddled with holes and caverns. One day it will all slide into the sea, as parts of it have done already. Once, I am told, that castle stood several hundred meters back from the edge of the cliff; now half of it is gone."
A shout from inland, where three men were systematically combing the heather for Vadya, made her look quickly in that direction. I wasn't in quite so much of a hurry. I figured they'd caught the girl, and I'd already heard the death sentence passed on her, and I didn't really want to see her again. I mean, what with one thing and another-like drugs and guns-we'd said about everything we needed to say to each other.
But it wasn't a wounded girl they'd found, but the big yellow ox. They seemed to find it impressive, even frightening, and they were covering it with their burp guns from a safe distance and, apparently, requesting permission to shoot it.
"No shooting," Madame Ling said to the man beside her. "There has been one shot here already, and the sound of machine-gun fire carries a long way. The beast is doing us no harm. Despite its barbaric appearance, it is presumably classified as domestic livestock, and some farmer may come looking for it. Let it live."
The dark man raised an arm and gave a wave-off signal, and the men, rather reluctantly, bypassed the shaggy ox and went on searching the heath. As we started on toward the castle ruins, a couple of good-sized birds flushed noisily from under our feet, probably grouse. They almost got me killed by one of the boys behind me; I heard the metallic sound as he released his safety, and I stood quite still until I heard him put it back on again. He didn't look like the nervous type, but he was a long way from home, and I guess it put an edge on his reflexes.
Then we were picking our way over the rubble that marked the walls of the ruin. Madame Ling gestured to her man Friday, and he poked around a bit on what seemed to be an old stone floor, well carpeted with damp moss. Surprisingly, he took this carpet and rolled it up like an ordinary rug, revealing a big stone equipped with a lifting ring. This seemed to be genuinely ancient, but it swung upwards at a pull with an ease that no centuries-old hinges would have permitted. Obviously the old trapdoor had been equipped with modern hinges and counterweights.
Madame Ling spoke to the two men behind me, and then to me: "They will cover our traces, and then join the search for the girl. We try not to use this entrance often, only when it is absolutely necessary to come here and the tide is unfavorable. It was the old escape door of the keep, to be used as a last resort when the enemy had breached the walls and resistance was no longer possible. I believe the room in which we stand was originally the main hall." She moved toward the opening, drawing her coat about her. "I will go first. I will be waiting below with a pistol. There is a sentry below as well. These men will cover you from above. Please do not force us to shoot. You will live longer that way. Not much longer, of course, but a little longer."
I could see no need to comment on that, and I just watched her feel for a footing on the ladder or stairway below. She had by far the smallest foot I had ever seen on an adult human being. I looked around. The ocean to the west was empty to the horizon, blue-green and glinting in the sunlight. Inland, the rough expanse of gray rock and gray-green heather rose toward a bunch of stony hills. It wasn't exactly a lush and inviting country, but I couldn't help feeling that it beat a hole in the ground.
The dark-faced man had a gun out; another of those pocket automatics. He looked as if he might know how to use it. He gestured toward the trapdoor into which Madame Ling had disappeared. Beyond him I could see the men hunting for Vadya and the yellow ox regarding us in a thoughtful way, as if it had not yet made up its mind about us and wouldn't let its judgment be hurried. It looked, I decided, like a Texas longhorn in a fur coat and a Beatle wig. On this thought, I made my way into the hole, finding a steep stone stairway that led to a kind of chamber in the rock. Madame Ling was standing there with a little automatic in her hand. Behind her stood a man with a submachine gun, and beside her was a chubby individual in a dirty white laboratory coat.
"Here is another guinea pig for you," Madame Ling said to this man. "You can have him as soon as I have finished questioning him, Dr. McRow."
chapter NINETEEN
In a way, it was a moment of achievement. I had gone the long way around the barn with the hatchet, but I had my chicken in sight at last.
Now all I had to do was figure out how to finish the job, alone in this cave with my hands tied. It would also be nice if I could manage to get out alive afterwards, but it wasn't, I knew, considered absolutely essential to a satisfactory operation. Mac had made that clear enough.
Madame Ling motioned me away from the foot of the stairs so the dark-faced man could descend. I moved back in a docile manner. I was careful not to look too long or too hard at the plump man in the white coat. I didn't want to scare him prematurely. It was McRow, all right, a little thinner both as to hair and figure than the description I'd been given-as if they'd been working him hard-but unmistakably the man I'd been sent to find.
"On second thought," Madame Ling said, "perhaps you had better inoculate him right away, Doctor. There is no time to waste. I would like to have our statistics as complete as possible when I send in my report."
McRow said, "We should wait six hours after administering the serum. And then we can't be sure of his reaction to the culture for two days, at least not if it should be negative."
She said impatiently, "I know all that. Cut the six hours to four; give him the culture just before we embark. We will take him on board the ship with us; we will bring along all the negative ones, so you can watch them for symptoms up to the last possible moment. I have arranged for a trustworthy courier to meet us at sea, but the ship is not very fast, and it will be a few days before we reach an area where he can safely make contact. Get what you need right away, and bring it down to my quarters."