3
Remembering Warlock’s words early the next afternoon, the Saint silently pondered the fact that the consequences of a slip-up in the Hermetico raid could be most painful for everybody concerned — Warlock included. And it was a slip-up he counted on to end the career of S.W.O.R.D. and its leader. But at the same time he was vividly aware, without Warlock’s needing to warn him, of the folly of trying to include a trap for the raiders in his and Amity’s plan for the theft. Warlock was no stupid man by any standards. He would undoubtedly spot the weak point in the scheme, keep the main part of the plan for immediate use, and simply eliminate the weakness and the two people who had conceived it.
Simon had no intention of being eliminated, but he had every expectation that Warlock would fall into a trap. Hermetico itself, even with no help from the Saint, was a trap. The chances of a party of men entering the place and leaving it without being detected — even with the best laid of plans — were approximately those of a party of arthritic rabbits making their way undisturbed through a kennel of greyhounds.
There were too many unpredictable elements. Merely getting the van (which would be necessary for transporting men and equipment, and later for removing the stolen metals) near the fence and leaving it there during the raid involved a tremendous risk of detection, even if Hermetico did not feel the need for human guards around the periphery. More importantly, Bishop’s and Jones’s check on the infra-red beams had revealed that while there were gaps through which men might enter, they were several feet in the air and so small that the slightest error would break a beam and set off an explosion.
Those problems were just the beginning. At any step a dozen different and deadly things could go wrong. The Saint felt sure that S.W.O.R.D.’s expedition would fail quite easily enough on its own, without any special help from him. If Warlock was too much of a nut to see that, all the better.
“I suppose that’s it,” Simon said to Amity. “We’ve finished.”
He turned from the window of his room, from which he had been watching Monk complete the repair to the front gate Simon had wrecked two nights before. Amity was sitting at the worktable with a small dormant volcano of cigarette remains at her elbow and a pencil behind one ear. She was chewing a thumbnail and staring at one of the maps of Hermetico’s innards.
“We still don’t know if there’s some kind of detection device inside the ventilation duct,” she said.
“We’ve done the best we can,” Simon answered. “We can’t be expected to know more than we could possibly know. What happens now is up to Warlock.”
Amity tilted her head to listen.
“What’s that?” she asked.
She and Simon went to the window and watched a van move from behind the garage, where it had been parked since its arrival in the morning (Bishop had apparently gone out and bought or rented it), into the drive. A few hours before it had been a big bright thing of shiny aluminium. Now it was painted a dull, non-reflective black. Frug and Bishop opened its back doors, manipulated something inside, and an aluminium ladder-like projection moved horizontally straight out behind the van until it extended over twenty feet. Warlock came out of the front door of the building to watch as a pair of legs were automatically lowered from the extended end of the projection, forming a kind of bridge supported at one end by the truck and at the other by the legs.
“That’s what they’ll try to get through the beams on,” the Saint said.
“Go across it, Bishop,” Warlock called.
The bridge was about a foot wide and equipped with continuous parallel rows of rollers. To move along it, Bishop, starting at the truck, had only to lie on his large belly and scoot along the rollers like a seal on ice. In a few seconds he was at the outer end.
“Don’t flap your arms about like that while you’re crossing or you’ll blow us all to kingdom come!” cried Warlock. “And we can’t have the thing sagging like that in the middle.”
The leader went over to the contrivance and inspected it in detail, gave some inaudible orders, and as he turned back towards the house saw Simon and Amity at the window.
“Have you finished?” he asked from below their vantage point.
“Almost,” Simon told him. “We’d like to make a final check before I hand over the plan.”
“Good!” Warlock called back. “That’s fast work, Mr. Klein. I’ve got together all the equipment you suggested. You can give the whole group a briefing when you’re ready. We’ll meet in the planning room.”
Warlock went into the house. While her and Simon’s heads were still out of the window, Amity whispered to him.
“Isn’t there anything we can do to stop this?” she asked.
“I think Hermetico will stop them,” Simon replied. “Our best bet is to worry about escaping from here while most of them are gone tonight. I might even be able to follow them to Hermetico and be sure their plans get upset.”
“What do you think he’ll do to us if we don’t escape?”
“I don’t know... and I don’t like not knowing.”
The van was being moved back behind the garage. Only a few more seconds of whispers beyond the windowsill would be possible.
“How do we escape?” Amity asked.
“If you have any ideas, we’ll dance.” Simon let his voice rise back to normal as he pulled his head into the room. “We’ll deserve a celebration after all this work.”
Simon waited until four o’clock to call for the S.W.O.R.D. briefing. Half an hour later he and Amity were accompanied down to the planning room by Monk and Nero Jones; Monk carried the Hermetico model and Jones carried an armload of papers and rolled maps. In the oak-panelled meeting room Warlock and Bishop and Frug were waiting. A blackboard was set up at one end of the long table. Reddish afternoon sun streamed in through the high windows.
When everyone was seated at the table, Warlock stood and addressed them.
“You are all aware that what we are undertaking tonight is one of the most difficult tasks a group of men have ever risked their lives to accomplish — but the rewards are worth the risk. After the work of this one night none of us will ever need to work again. Of course S.W.O.R.D. deserves to go on, and I hope we — or some of us — will be together on other adventures. However, no one will need to work, so those who want to can reasonably think of tonight as the gateway to an easy and luxurious future.”
Simon, who had no inclination to listen scornfully to praise of adventures and luxurious futures — two things he looked forward to confidently himself — nevertheless was amused by Warlock’s blithe propaganda. It set the tone perfectly for his own lecture which was to follow. The Saint’s plan was to radiate confidence and happy enthusiasm about the whole Hermetico scheme. The less guarded and apprehensive the raiders were, the more likely they were to run into trouble. Simon would mention only the more cheerful prospects, underplaying the dangers and not referring to certain pitfalls that had occurred to him as possibilities which he had somehow failed to include in the plans he was presenting to S.W.O.R.D.
Warlock was continuing his sanguine speech, looking from one face to another.
“I’ve heard you all talk about your ambitions. Now’s the time to keep them in mind. Frug can have that stable of racehorses now. Nero can buy that wicked night club. Bishop can have his yacht. Monk can even have his harem, I suppose.”
There was nervous laughter around the table. Nero Jones licked his pale lips. Frug was clasping his hands so tightly in front of him that his fingers were like white knobby icicles.
“And now, Mr. Klein...”