Marshall slumped down onto the sofa, leaving the lights off. Deborah watched him for a moment, then slipped out of her coat and went over to the cocktail cabinet. She poured whiskey into a glass, then splashed in soda and brought the drink over to Marshall, sitting down on the sofa next to him.
He took it from her, then reached out and put his hand on her thigh. Tucking her legs under her, she moved close to him and began to stroke his cheek and forehead with her fingertips, feeling the fine tracery of contused veins.
"I'm sorry about Musgrave," she said. Marshall 's hand rested in her lap, warm and strong. She took the glass from him and sipped at it, feeling the hot fiery liquid burn down her throat, brilliant and stimulating.
"Poor devil," Marshall commented. "Those Bethlehems are useless; the armor is too thin to hold a falling building." To himself he added: "Hardoon will want something tougher."
"Who?" Deborah asked. She had come across the name somewhere else before. "Who's Hardoon?"
Marshall waved airily. "Just one of the people I'm dealing with." He took his eyes off the fire and looked up at Deborah. Her face was only a few inches from his own, her eyes wide and steady, an expectant smile on her full lips.
"You were saying something about the Bethlehems," she said quietly, massaging his cheeks with the knuckle of her forefinger.
Marshall smiled admiringly. Cool passionate lover, he thought. I must try to remember to take you with me.
"Yes, we need something heavier. The wind's going to blow a lot harder."
As he spoke Deborah moved her face against his, then brushed her lips softly across his forehead, murmuring to herself.
Reflectively, Marshall finished his drink, then put it down and took her in both arms.
Maitland watched as the acetylene torch cut neatly through the steel buttress over the driving cabin. The whole section slipped slightly, and he helped the two mechanics raise it over the hood and put it down on the floor of the garage. Musgrave's body was still lying bunched up below the dashboard. He leaned over the wheel and felt for the pulse, then signaled the other two to lift it out.
They carried the driver over to a bench, stretched him out. A guard came out of the radio-control booth and walked over to Maitland. He was a tough, hard-faced man of indeterminate background, wearing the same black uniform as all Marshall 's personnel. Maitland wondered how large his private army was. The three members he had seen were obviously recruited independently; there were no service or rank tags on their shoulders and they treated the Bethlehem and himself as intruders.
"There's a big navy crawler on its way down from Hampstead," the guard told Maitland curtly. "They'll tow you back to the Green Park base."
Maitland nodded. He felt suddenly tired and looked around for somewhere to sit. The one bench was occupied by Musgrave's body, so he squatted down on the floor against a ventilator shaft, listening to the wind drumming in the street outside. Now and then the blades of the fan stopped and reversed as a pressure pulse drove down the shaft, then picked up and sped on again.
Apart from the Bethlehem there was only one other vehicle in the basement, a long double-tracked armored trailer being loaded by two guards from a freight lift. They brought up an endless succession of wooden crates, some loaded into the lift so rapidly that their lids were still waiting to be nailed down.
Out of curiosity, Maitland wandered over to the carrier when the guards had gone down in the lift. He assumed the crates would be full of expensive furniture and tableware, and looked under one of the loose lids.
Packed into the crates were six 3 1/2" trench mortars, their wide green barrels thick with protective grease.
The mortars were War Department issues, but there was no clearance seal on the sides of the crate listing their destination and authority. Turning the lid over, Maitland saw that it had been stamped in black dye: "Breathing apparatus. Hardoon Tower."
Most of the other cases were sealed, stamped variously with markings that identified them as oxyacetylene cylinders, trenching equipment, flares and pit props. Another open case, marked "Denims. Hardoon Tower." contained a neatly stowed collection of the black uniforms he had seen Marshall 's men wearing. Hardoon Tower, Maitland pondered. He repeated the name to himself, trying to identify it, then remembered a newspaper profile he had read years earlier about the eccentric multimillionaire who owned vast construction interests and had built an elaborate underground bunker city on his estate near London at the height of the cold war.
"O.K., Doctor?"
He swung round to see the big tough-faced guard who had arranged his transport step slowly across the floor, arms swinging loosely at his sides. Whether he was armed was hard to tell, but his battledress jacket could have hidden a weapon.
Maitland tapped the case full of trench mortars. "Just looking at this-breathing apparatus. Unusual design."
The guard scowled. "That's a useful piece of equipment, Doctor. Very versatile. Let's go, then." As Maitland walked back across the basement the guard pivoted on one heel and followed close to his shoulder.
"What's Marshall trying to do?" Maitland asked amiably. "Start a war?"
The guard watched Maitland thoughtfully. "Don't know what we might start. But let's not get too worried about it, Doctor. Sit down over there and take your pulse or something."
They wrapped Musgrave in a polythene shroud and lowered him into the turret of the Bethlehem. Maitland climbed in and wedged the body below the traverse, belting it down with the seat straps.
When he tried to get out he found that someone was sitting on the hatch, his feet obscuring the plexiglass window. For a moment he wondered whether to force it, then decided to take the hint. A few minutes later the navy crawler arrived and backed down the ramp. He felt it hook up to the Bethlehem, then move forward up into the street.
Powerful gusts of wind drove at the car, kicking it around. He gripped the traverse, swaying from side to side as the cabin plunged and bucked.
All around him, in the streets outside, he could hear the sounds of falling masonry.
4 The Corridors of Pain
Three times, on the way hack to the Green Park depot, the car left the roadway. Caught by tremendous crosswinds that swung it about behind the Centurion like a hapless tail, the Bethlehem plunged across the pavement, almost tipping over onto its side.
The streets were full of rubble and pieces of masonry, fragments of ornamented cornices from the older buildings, the remains of roof timbers strewn across the pavement, everywhere a heavy autumnlike fall of gray tiles.
They reached the depot at Green Park which housed Combined Rescue Operations, and entered the long tunnel of concrete sandbags that led them into the covered transport pool. A dozen other vehicles, Centurions and Bethlehems with a couple of huge M5 Titan personnel carriers, were unloading and refueling. Three of them had RN insignia; the navy, to whom Maitland was attached, shared the depot, but all the personnel in the pool wore the same drab uniforms. They looked tired and dispirited, and Maitland found himself sharing their despair. As he climbed out of the Bethlehem he leaned for a few minutes against the car, trying to free himself of the muscle and mind numbing weariness from the buffeting he had received all day.
He de-briefed himself quickly, then made his way toward the officers' quarters where he shared a small cubicle with a navy surgeon called Avery. Eager for a full role in the emergency, particularly with the RAF playing no part, the navy had put together a scratch operations unit. With Andrew Symington's help, Maifland had been assimilated with a minimum of formality. He had stayed with Andrew and his wife for a week, uselessly waiting for the wind to subside, and had been glad to be given a chance to do something positive.