He advanced again, his eyes wide and gleaming, the left hand moving back as if ready to throw. Maybe I was wrong, maybe he was crazy. "Your gun," he screamed. "Now!"
I shook my head again, he said something in a high, wild voice and his left hand came arching over his shoulder, the back of his hand facing me instead of the front as I would have expected. Darkness flooded the cabin as his bunched fist smashed the single overhead light, a darkness momentarily illuminated by two stabs of orange flames as I squeezed the trigger twice, an illumination and reverberating roar followed by darkness again and sudden silence, and in the sudden silence a gasp of pain from Mary and Scarlatti saying, "My gun is in your wife's throat, Cavell. She is about to die."
He hadn't been crazy after all.
I dropped my gun on the composition floor. It clattered loudly. I said, "You win, Scarlatti."
"The main cabin switch," he said. "By the left hand side of the door."
I groped, found it and pulled it down. The entire cabin flooded with light from a dozen lamps. Scarlatti pulled himself up from the seat beside Mary where he'd flung himself as soon as he'd smashed the light, lifted the gun from her neck and pointed it at me. I lifted my bent arms and looked at his left hand. The vial was still intact, he'd taken a hellish risk, but it had been the only risk left to him. I noticed where the upper sleeve of his left arm was torn, I'd come pretty close to getting him. And pretty close to ending it all for us, too. If I'd have hit him, the vial would have been smashed. But then, I had thought it was going to be smashed anyway.
"Move back," Scarlatti said quietly. His voice was controlled, conversational, he'd won his Oscar for the night and packed in the acting. "Right to the back of the cabin."
I moved. He came forward, picked up my gun, stuck the vial in his pocket and gestured with both guns. "The pilot's cabin. Into it."
I went forward. As I passed Mary's seat she looked up at me and smiled through the tangle of blonde hair that had fallen forward over her face. Her green eyes were masked in tears. I smiled back. As actors, not even Scarlatti could show us anything.
The pilot was slumped forward over the controls. That explained the sound I'd heard just after Mary had exclaimed at the sight of me. Before coming to investigate, Scarlatti had made sure that the pilot wouldn't be giving him any trouble. The pilot was a big man, with black hair, and the part of his face I could see was tanned and sun-lined. At the back of his head a little blood oozed through the dark hair.
"Into the co-pilot's seat," Scarlatti ordered. "Wake that man up."
"How the hell can I?" Under the unwavering eyes of the two pistol barrels I eased myself into the seat. "You coshed the poor devil."
"Not hard," he said." Hurry up."
I did what I could. I'd no option. I shook the pilot, slapped his face gently and spoke to him, but Scarlatti must have hit him harder than he thought. In the circumstances, I thought grimly, he hadn't had much time for finesse. Scarlatti was becoming impatient and as nervous as a cat, staring out through the windscreens towards the hangar doors. For all he knew there was a regiment of soldiers or police out there in the darkness, he wasn't to know that I'd begged and pleaded with the General and Hardanger to be allowed to go alone, secrecy and stealth not only offering the only chance of saving Mary's life but also being far less liable to panic Scaratti into indiscriminate use of the Satan Bug. I'd certainly done a great job.
After five minutes the pilot stirred and awoke. He was as tough as he looked, for he came out of the unconsciousness fighting mad and it was all I could do to hold him off until the ungentle nudging on the back of his neck from Scarlatti's pistol let him know he was picking on the wrong man. He twisted round in his seat, recognised Scarlatti and said a few words to him that left no doubt but that he came from the other side of the Irish sea. What he had to say was interesting but irrelevant and unprintable. He broke off when Scarlatti stuck the barrel of a pistol into his face. Scarlatti had an unpleasant habit of sticking pistol barrels into people's faces, but he was too old to be cured of it by now.
"Get this helicopter airborne," Scarlatti ordered. "Now."
"Airborne!" I protested. "He's not fit to walk, far less fly."
Scarlatti prodded him again. "You heard me. Hurry."
"I can't." The pilot was sullen and savage at the same moment. "It has to be towed out. Can't start the engines in here. Exhaust fumes and fire regulations——"
"The hell with your regulations," Scarlatti said. "She can roll under her own power. Don't you think I checked, you fool? Get moving."
The pilot had no option and he knew it. He started his engines and I winced as the deafening clamour echoed back at us from the narrow metallic confines of the hangar walls. The pilot couldn't have liked it any more than I did: either that or he knew it was dangerous to linger. Whatever the reason he lost no time. He engaged the two giant rotors, moved the cyclic pitch to tilt the blades forwards and downwards and released the brakes. The helicopter began to roll.
Thirty seconds later we were airborne. Scarlatti, more relaxed now, reached for a rack above his head and handed me a square metal box. He reached again and this time brought down an ordinary close-mesh string bag.
"Open the box and transfer the contents into this bag," he said curtly. "I advise you to be careful. You will see why."
I saw why and I was very careful. I opened the box and there, packed in straw, lay five chromed steel flasks. Under his direction I opened each in turn and with infinite gentleness laid five glass ampoules inside the net bag. Two with blue tops — two vials of the Satan Bug. Three with red tops — three vials of botulinus toxin. Scarlatti handed me another blue-topped vial from his pocket. That made six altogether. I placed that in also, gingerly gathered up the string bag and handed it back to Scarlatti. It was cold inside that cabin but I was sweating as if I were in a steam bath and it took an effort of will to keep my hands steady. I caught a glimpse of the pilot looking at the bag and I can't say he looked any happier than I felt. He knew all right.
"Excellent." Scarlatti took the bag from me, reached back into the passenger aisle and placed the bag on the nearest seat. "You will be able to convince our friends that I am not only willing but ready to carry out my threat."
"I don't know what you are talking about."
"You will. I want you to make a radio call and get in touch with your father-in-law and then give him a message." He turned to the pilot. "You will keep circling above the heliport. We will be returning there shortly."
I said, "I don't know how to operate the damned radio."
"You've just forgotten," he said soothingly. He was getting too confident of himself for my liking. "You will remember. A man who has spent his life in his country's intelligence service and cannot operate a transmitter? If I take a walk back into the passenger cabin and you hear your wife scream do you think you will remember then?"
"What do you want me to do?" I asked savagely.
"Get on the police wave-length. I don't know what it is but you're bound to. Tell them that unless they immediately release all my captured men — and the money they have — I shall be compelled to drop botulinus and Satan Bug toxins over London. I have no idea where they will fall, nor do I greatly care. Further, if any attempt is made to follow, trace or capture me or my men I shall use toxin regardless of consequences. Do you see a flaw, Cavell?"
I said nothing at once. I stared ahead through the highspeed windscreen wipers into the rain and darkness. Finally I said, "I see no flaw."
"I'm a desperate man, Cavell," he said with quiet intensity. "When they deported me from America they thought I was completely finished. Completely. A has-been. I was laughed out of America. I was — and am — determined to show them all how wrong they were, to bring off the biggest criminal coup of all time. When you intercepted us in that police car this evening much that I said was false. But this one thing was true: I shall achieve this ambition regardless of cost or shall die trying. I am not acting now. Nothing is going to stop me, nothing on this earth is going to thwart me at this very last moment. They should not have laughed at Enzo Scarlatti. I am in the most deadly earnest, Cavell. You believe me?"