After that it went off perfectly.
Within half a minute of reaching the car Triska was driving along the northern road for Godov’s house, while Shaw sat in the back with Lawrence Carew. The unconscious bodyguard was slumped in the front seat alongside Triska; and Shaw, who had removed the man’s gun, was on the alert for trouble as soon as he came round. The Luger was held right into Carew’s side, and the scientist was looking deathly white and frightened.
As they cleared the town’s outskirts Shaw asked, “What about Bronsky, Triska? Still no trouble?”
“No, I have not seen him, Peter.”
“I dare say he’s genuinely forgotten about the whole thing after all.”
Triska didn’t answer and Shaw turned his attention to Carew. He said harshly, “Now, Carew. You’re going to talk and you’re going to talk fast and fully. You’re going to talk about that tower in the sea, and the tunnel leading off it. I’ve been down there myself, so there’s no point in holding anything back now. In fact, Carew, you’re going to tell me the whole story behind what’s building up in Moltsk and what your people intend to do. If you don’t talk, you’re a dead man. I can soon lose a body in the marsh out there.” He nodded out at the bleak swamp to the left of the road. “On the other hand, if you help me, I’ll promise to do my best to get you out of the country so that your current bosses won’t liquidate you when I’ve done with you.”
“You couldn’t get me out and you know it.” Carew’s voice was still high but somehow he gave Shaw the impression of being less scared now, of having command of himself again. “Besides, I don’t want to go back to England, if that’s what you mean.”
“It’s what I mean all right, but would you just like to tell me why you don’t want to go back, Carew?” When Carew didn’t reply, he asked, “Is it because you’re scared to face your own countrymen — or because you don’t want to walk into a nuclear attack of some kind? Because you can set your mind at rest about that. I’m here to stop it taking place — and as soon as you’ve told me all I want to know, that’s what I’ll be doing. Now…” He jabbed the Luger savagely into the man’s body and Carew gave a grunt of pain. “Come on. I haven’t got all night. I might shoot in… let’s say the next thirty seconds.”
Carew turned his head and looked into Shaw’s eyes. He flinched at what he saw there; and then he muttered, “It won’t make the slightest difference now, anyway. You’re too late. Much too late.”
“I’ll risk it, thanks. Just start and I’ll form my own conclusions. If it won’t make any difference, you won’t lose anything by talking, will you…”
Carew gave a sudden cynical laugh and said, “How right you are.” He began talking soon after that and once he’d started he showed all the confidence, the convinced confidence of the Party fanatic. He clearly had no fears that anything could possibly go wrong now. He said, “I expect you’ve heard of Kazenadze.”
“No.”
Carew said, “He’s a geologist. A big man — the biggest, as a matter of fact, world famous. He’s got all the Western experts licked into a cocked hat and his papers are studied in universities all over the world”
“Cut the blurb,” Shaw snapped, “and give me a summary.”
“Oh — very well.” The car rushed on, touching sixty-five and expertly handled by Triska. “Kazenadze was concerned with the drillings for oil off the Peninsula. There’d been a report, you see, that there was an oil-bearing stratum below the sea-bed, but it turned out to be a false hope. Kazenadze hadn’t been called in at the start, he was rather too big a man for that, but when they found they hadn’t any oil to speak of, they got him along to carry out a fresh and much fuller geological survey. Well — as a result of that, he found a natural tunnel, a kind of fissure, a flaw if you like, in one of the strata of the earth’s crust, fairly deep down or comparatively so—”
“That’s the tunnel I mentioned just now, the one I was in?”
Carew nodded. “Yes. Well, there wasn’t any more oil anyway, so it was decided to abandon the project. The workings remained unused for quite a while and then the authorities thought they should make some use of Kazenadze’s fissure, since it was there waiting. Seeing how deep it is, they approved a scheme to use it as one of a series of deep stores for nuclear devices, ballistic missiles, and so on—”
“Yes, I know about that. Do I take it that as far as the legitimate government in Moscow is concerned, it’s still in use as a store — and that all that part of it was quite genuine?”
Carew nodded again. “Yes, that’s entirely so. Well now — the first thing they did after that was to build that tower over the spot where, according to Kazenadze, the fissure starts, which as it happens was near where they did the first oil-drillings. That end of the fissure was blocked off solid by rock — the tower itself is bedded in rock. For various technical reasons it was more practical to have the store entrance there, rather than bore down to the fissure on land — for one thing, a cylinder had already been sunk and it was largely a question of extending it. The air-shafts were sunk later on. Well, the fissure was used secretly as a store for quite a time and then not so long ago Kazenadze, who apparently had been carrying out large-scale geological researches on the fissure in the meantime, came up with a brand-new theory, a startling theory altogether — and he got in touch with certain people in Moscow who asked him to keep his ideas to himself until a more propitious time.”
Carew paused and Shaw said, “Well — go on. What was this theory?”
“I'm coming to that.” Carew smiled faintly; he showed no trace of embarrassment for what must have been his own part in the plan. “Kazenadze had a theory that the fissure went quite a long way through the earth, and he plotted its course right across the Kola Peninsula and then across Finland, and found that it continued roughly in a south-westerly direction. From there on, of course, he couldn’t get any more readings himself, and he had to accept a long delay. But eventually, with the help of teams of agents working in the West, who were themselves helped by fellow-travellers and so on — I was able to put him in touch with some of them myself, as a matter of fact — he plotted the course of the fissure as closely as possible from on-the-spot checks and readings… right along Scandinavia and the North Sea to England, where it runs from north to south fairly close to the surface until it blocks off somewhere below Winchester.” Carew paused, his spectacles gleaming at Shaw. “So there’s your fissure: Moltsk in North Russia to Winchester in Hampshire and running, as it happens, pretty well down the length of Britain. Much of the ground below which it runs has been excavated by coal mining, which means an even thinner ceiling in places. Now, as to Kazenadze’s actual plan, which is based on this theory… I’ve told you he went to certain people in Moscow, including the Minister of Defence and my own Minister, rather than to the Council of Ministers as a body — he did this because he knew the State as such would never back him, and in this he was quite right—”
“So he had to get his pals to arrange a coup d’état?”
“In a sense, yes. I prefer to call it pressure, rather than a coup d’état. You see—”
“Don’t bother.” Shaw kept all emotion out of his voice. “Let’s have the plan itself, Carew.”
Carew smiled. “Oh, but surely you’ve guessed, haven’t you?”
“Perhaps.” Shaw felt nausea, disgust. Carew’s very matter-of-factness had pointed up the horror of what he now had to suspect. “I’m getting there, but let’s have it in full, then I’ll be sure, won’t I?”