Slave of Sarma

Chapter Four

Richard Blade found that by concentrating on the oriel window at the far end of the long barren room, and by trying to count the acanthus leaves twining on the supporting corbel, he could in some measure resist the milder of the two drugs he was given. During the long hours he came to regard that oriel window as the eye of Cyclops, of God or the Devil, even as a possible orifice of escape should he get the chance. There did not seem much likelihood of this.

And yet he had the means to escape any time he chose. There was only one drawback. To escape he would have to blow up his captors - and himself along with them. He waited.

Not that he was given much choice as matters stood. He was seldom left alone. There were a lot of them and they worked in shifts. They all spoke English and, indeed, seemed to be English. This did not surprise him. Every nation has traitors for sale.

He lost all track of time. When he regained consciousness he was naked on a long table in the barren room. In darkness except for four brilliant lamps trained on his massive body, \bullet so helpless now because of drugs and straps and chains. His captors were only shadows and voices beyond the fringe of the lights.

He knew they were running a Bertillon on him. He was well drugged, yet he understood this. It gave him hope. Credit his own brain power, or Lord Leighton's brain stretching machines and psychological regimes; whatever, it meant that he could fight off the drug meant to keep him unconscious and docile.

Blade feigned unconsciousness. It was the only weapon he had at the moment, other than the lethal capsule he carried in his bowels, and he might not get a chance to use that.

They were very methodical. He felt the occasional touch of a pencil on his flesh as a voice droned out the sum of his scars, moles, warts. His arms and legs were measured and graduated clamps affixed to his skull.

"Dolichocephalic," a voice said. It went on to register a cephalic index of 70 odd. So he was a long head - Blade could have told them that.

Along with the Bertillon he was given a thorough physical search. They stuck wooden blocks in his mouth and examined every tooth for false caps. Blade had none. His teeth were perfect.

He was turned over and had one hell of a time to keep from squirming as a greased rubber glove searched his rectum.

"Nothing concealed on him," a voice said. "Absolutely nothing. I'll swear to that."

Not on me, Blade thought. In me! Waiting to blow you bastards to hell. As soon as I can figure a way to do it without killing myself, too.

After a long time they left him alone. Still naked, still strapped to the long table, Blade opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was the oriel window at the far end of the room. A round bar of moonlight leaked through it. Blade adopted it as a talisman, a refuge, something to cling to. A window was symbolic of a world beyond. It led to freedom. All he had to do was get through it. And as long as he knew it was an oriel window, could count at least some of the acanthus leaves, he was not a total loss, not a mindless thing. He waited patiently, not trying to snap his bonds. Useless, that. They were much too strong. And he did not particularly want his freedom yet - not until he knew more about his situation and about the number and disposal of his enemies. Knew where he was. As of the moment he had not a clue other than the quiet and the hourly chime of a far off bell. He was in the country and not too far from a church. That was all he could be sure of.

He was disappointed when they did not drug him again that night. The stuff was wearing off and so he must face them, fully conscious and deprived of his only weapon. Other than the death he carried in his guts.

When morning came he was given a light breakfast. His right hand was set free and a tray placed on the broad table. Two men served him, one with the tray and another lurking in the background with a pistol in his hand. Neither man would speak. Blade, after the first rebuff, watched the man with the pistol and soon understood that they were all being watched. There was a peephole.

When he finished the meal his right hand was manacled again and the men left. Blade, conscious that he was being watched, lay and stared at the oriel window. The weather was changeable. First a pale beam of sun, then a light flurry of rain, then gloom and, finally, more weak sun. He cared nothing for the weather - the fact that he could see it was important. The oriel window led to the outside.

A man came into the room. He stopped by the door and looked at Blade. Blade stared back. Behind the man the door closed and a bar fell noisily into place.

The man was tall and thin. He wore a well cut suit of blue with a tiny red stripe. Black shoes. Discreet socks and tie. His head and face were covered with a black sack-mask of nylon or silk that made him look like an overdressed executioner. He took a few steps nearer the table and halted, staring at Blade. The eye slits were narrow. All Blade could see was a flash of white cornea.

The voice was impersonalized, void of intonation or accent, as near a mechanical tone as the man could purposely make it.

"You are Richard Blade?"

The big man on the table nodded. "You know that."

"Of course I know it, Mr. Blade. I want to hear you admit it."

A tape recorder hidden somewhere. Along with the peephole. They were running a last check on the real Blade \bullet before they put the phony into circulation.

Blade gave the masked man a cold smile. "So I admit it. I am Richard Blade."

The man nodded slightly. "You are J's man? You work for MI6?"

They did not, then, know about MI6A.

Blade played along. No point in doing otherwise. They knew all about him and about J. Just as J, and Blade, knew all about them and about TWIN. All this was pointless preliminary, a mere skirmishing of pawns.

"What is the object of all this?" Blade said petulantly. "You know all the answers. We are both professionals and you just happen to have won this round. So come off it, eh? I'm cold and I have to go to the bathroom. How about it?"

Blade thought he heard a chuckle from behind the mask. "You will be allowed to go to the bathroom. Not just yet. First I want to put your mind at ease - we are going to drug you again, very shortly, and we have found that an absence of fear increases the potential of the drug. So let me reassure you now, Mr. Blade - you will not be harmed physically in any way. No torture or compulsion of any sort. We do not, er, operate on so crude a level."

"That is nice to know," said Blade. But not exactly surprising, he thought. They didn't want to harm him, rough him up. They intended to smuggle him out of England and ship him to Russia. There the real experts would take over and start working on him. Brainwash him. Milk him of everything he knew. Maybe even make a good Communist out of him. It had happened before.

The masked man's tone was nearly genial. "Yes. I thought you would enjoy knowing that you have nothing to fear in the, er, physical line. I am not even going to question you without drugs. You would only lie to me."

Blade nodded. "You are so absolutely right."

A nod. "Yes. Whereas under the drug you will not be able to lie, no matter how desperately you try. Drugs are a marvelous thing - they make life so much easier for all concerned.

Blade stared at the oriel window. He counted acanthus leaves. The bastard was right, of course. They were probably going to use sodium pentathol on him, or some variant of it, and if they knew their technique he would soon be babbling like a babe in a crib. Yet there might be, must be, some technique by which he could fight back. But what?

He was deliberately vulgar. He said: "You may be right, whoever you are, but right now I have to take a shit. Right now! Unless you do something fast I will have shat, past tense, and your people are going to have a mess to clean up."

Blade did not really have to go to the toilet. In any case he was not ready to pass the deadly bomb he carried in his entrails - not until he saw a way out of the place. But he wanted to know where the bathroom was, and he wanted to start setting a pattern.

"I'm not kidding," Blade said harshly. "I ate breakfast a long time ago. I can't hold it much longer."

"Very well," said the man. "I will send someone for you."

He went to the door and rapped. There was a whispered conversation. In a few minutes the men who had given Blade his breakfast appeared. Both carried pistols. A third man stood near the door, cradling a Sten gun in his arms, as the two men loosed Blade and tossed him a rough blanket to drape over himself. They were still not talking. They pointed to the door.

As Blade walked stiffly past the Sten gunner - he was cramped and sore from the long hours on the table - he grinned and winked and said, "You want to watch those old Stens, chum. They are very nasty things to blow up."

He was ignored. They took him down a short hall, distempered in scabby green, and across an open cobbled court. They had made their first mistake, in not blindfolding him, and Blade hoped they wouldn't think of it. He stepped out briskly before them, three guns on his back, and using his eyes for all they were worth.

He was in an old stable. There was still a lingering odor of horse and leather in the dank air. There were stalls and tack pegs and an exercise post in the middle of the court. The open side of the court was hedged by a crumbling red brick fence with a rusty iron gate. Beyond the fence, along a road deep in mud and bordered by yews, Blade caught a glimpse of a Georgian manor house. It looked deserted.

A pistol jammed into his back. "Get along with it, mate. No use to gawk about - you won't be coming back here."

The toilet, filth encrusted, was in a narrow cubby. No door and no windows. There was a scant roll of paper and a thin piece of soap for the brown stained lavatory. The three men watched him from a safe distance.

Blade draped the blanket over a hook and squatted. He pretended to defecate, thinking that in his profession you had to do a lot of crazy things. Things that never got written up in the spy books or put on the telly.

Who would have believed, for instance, that if he wished to do so - which he didn't - he could here and now shit a bomb?

The men watched. Blade put on his act. Thinking hard. By the time the man with the Sten got impatient and told him to come off the throne, Blade had an idea how he was going to defeat the truth serum. How he was going to try to defeat it. Tell them the truth! A carefully edited, skillfully confused truth. They would never believe him. But could he manage it?

He washed his hands in a thin stream of rusty cold water, donned the blanket again and was hurried back to the long bare room. As they crossed the cobbled area he heard the church clock booming somewhere in the distance.

There were two masked men awaiting him now. The new arrival was short and round, not so well dressed as the taller man, and was pulling a pair of rubber gloves over broad spatulate fingers as Blade entered. A doctor, Blade thought. Near the table was an old tea cart with an array of bottles and trays and a box of cotton fluffs. A short piece of rubber cord and three glistening hypodermic needles. Ampoules of some dark fluid.

Blade firmed his mind for the ordeal.

Concentrate, Blade! Tell them the truth. Easter that way. But only part of the truth. Tell them what they cannot possibly believe. Confuse them, gain time, no real harm done if you kill them in the end.

Cold of alcohol on his arm. Frosty ring. Nice of them to do that. Rubber tourniquet twisting and binding. The sly incisive bite of the needle. Intruder in the vein. Pain slight. Dark liquid flowing into his big body. Flowing - flowing - flowing -

He was in a spinning coracle on a blue-black sea. Far ahead on jutting white rock a phallic lighthouse.

Voice from lighthouse: "Can you hear me, Mr. Blade?"

"Yes."

His own voice? Amplified and distorted so? He must believe it. Believe in himself.

"Good. Can you understand what I am saying?"

"Yes."

Summon now all will and strength. Fight. Concentrate every last bit of power, brain, guts. Cling. Hold on.

"We know, Mr. Blade, that some new installation has been built under the Tower of London. We think it has something to do with MI6. Is this true?"

Truth still easier. "No."

"Come, Mr. Blade, come now. You must tell the truth, you know. You cannot help but tell the truth. Now again - what has MI6 to do with the new construction beneath the Tower?"

"Nothing."

So sly. So true. Blade laughed and laughed in the dreamland where he roamed. Truth paid. Best policy. MI6 didn't have anything to do with the Tower or the computer. It was MI6A. But they didn't know about - about - about -

Voices now. Not addressed to him. One voice a bit irritated.

"It isn't working. Are you sure you gave him the right dosage?"

"Positive. He is a big man, tremendously powerful. Sometimes it takes a bit longer with that sort. Don't worry. I know what I'm doing."

"For what we're paying you had better know!"

The cave was huge and dark. Bats floated like bad dreams. Dim light. A hag on a throne of stalagmites. Crone. Crone crooning. Sibyl.

Voice from high vault of cave: "What is hidden in the Tower, Blade?"

Must answer. "Machine."

Chuckles. Nudges. Nods. He could not see them. He felt them.

Coaxing voice: "What kind of a machine?"

Must lie now. Fire exploded in cave. Flames writhed to form letters. LIE. No good. Couldn't. Drug too powerful.

"Comp her."

Silence. Respite. Blade sailed a yellow sea.

Voice: "Repeat that, Blade. Try to speak more distinctly. What kind of a machine?"

"Pute her."

Voice off stage, sibilant, triumphant: "Computer! That's what he is saying. Go on. Keep after him."

Voice: "A computer? Explain that to me, please. What sort of computer? What does it do? How are you connected with it?"

Tell truth. Sleep now. Leave alone. No! Lie a bit. Lie - lie - Truthful lie. Try - try -

"Skull wire. Wire skull. Explode brain and send out - out - all brain molecular structure torn, scrambled, put back in new place - new place - go Alb see Taken - kill Horsa - Horsa - "

Voice, bitter: "This is sheer nonsense! He's talking about horses. And that bit about the computers doesn't make much sense, either. You must do better."

"Give it time. The drug is just beginning to work. And you mustn't expect miracles. He is resisting the drug - I have never before seen such resistance!"

"You mean he could be lying? Even drugged?"

"I don't know, The possibility is there. I told you not to expect miracles with a subject like Blade. All you can do is make notes and try to sort it out later."

Voice: "Tell us more about what the computer does, Blade. Do you like to work with it? Does it make you feel good? Talk, Blade. Just talk. Empty your brain. You will feel so much better then and you can sleep for a long time. Talk - talk - "

"Pute her. Brain wire. Fly and sink - pain - hurt - pain - no clothes and cold find sword axe - wall so long never ends and did not believe but was so and not true for did end and Mongs and Caths fight fight forever and big cannon shoot and - "

"Sheer gibberish!"

"Sshhhh - you never know."

"Heads falling all time like tree apples - love perfume smell death of women - women - thighs and breasts rub together thighs so silky and smooth hair gone and skin like lemons and lemurs - ha-hah - that is good - lemurs and lemons - axe-redbeard and Beata come cage - I - I - Taleen - I - "

"Absolute nonsense, I say. He is foxing us."

"Shhhh - I don't think so. Not now. He is deep under. He is talking out of his subconscious now."

"Alb bronze axe jade - warrior horse tharn - tharn - the power gone - the power gone - "

"This is no good at all to us. A waste of time."

"Maybe not. Get it all down anyway - you can use it as a guide when you question him again under torture."

"Not me. That is their job."

"Shut up, man, and do your job. Copy down every word he says."

Blade groaned deeply. "I slaveface am - the gorge - towers and the gorge - rain pink sun never - kill the head - head ball bouncing into wine - poison redbreard dru drusilla did always did cold lady maiden could suck suck suck life from suck me - "

Voice, querulous: "This is a failure. No point in going on with it. I am not interested in his fantasy life - I want hard facts. We may as well stop now. How long before he comes out of it?"

"Several hours. Four or five at least. And I wouldn't call it a complete failure. You have some interesting notes."

"Hah! That's because you aren't in my shoes. You don't have to face them with a dozen pages of insane raving. No - I shall just have to do it the hard way. It's all laid on. I only have to make a phone call."

A thick blanket of purple fleece settled over Richard Blade. He smiled and slept. The voices were gone, he was alone in the universe. Peace. Sleep.

Blade came awake feeling weak and sick. Still on the table, still bound to it, still naked though the blanket had been tossed over him. He stared at the oriel window. Dark outside.

A man cleared his throat. Blade swiveled his eyes. It was the same guard, the silent man with the pistol, sitting on a camp chair and nodding a bit, fighting sleep, the pistol drooping into his lap.

Blade felt a surge in his bowels. This would be it, then. The time was as good as any. Night. Sleepy guards and himself coming weak and dazed out of a powerful drug. They would not expect him to give trouble. That might give him just the slight edge he needed.

He strained up against the straps and chains. "I have to go to the bathroom again. Hurry up. And I feel sick - like I'm going to vomit any second. You want me to do it here?"

The man stood up. He had been expecting this. He waved the pistol at Blade. "Hold it, mate. Just hold on to it for a \bullet few bleeding seconds."

He went to the door and tapped on it, then came back to cover Blade with the pistol. A minute or so later the other two men came in, one with a pistol and the other with the familiar Sten gun. Blade noted that the Sten was on safety, the cocking handle in the lock slot. He grinned at the Sten gunner. "That thing hasn't blown up in your face yet?" His answer was a grunt.

They herded him along the same passage and over the cobbled area to the toilet cubby. A fine rain greased the cobbles and it was so dark that Blade could not see the brick fence to his left. Coming back it would be to his right. He didn't care about the gate. He would have no time for gates.

As they approached the toilet he began to pray silently that the single rusty razor blade would be on the washbowl. He needed it. He was planning on it. He had spotted it on his previous trip and now all his hopes of success hung on it still being there.

It was there. As he squatted and let himself spew he cast an eye at it. Ancient, eaten with rust, staining the already dirty porcelain, it might have lain there for years. Awaiting this moment.

Blade strained and groaned. He put his head in his hands. "I'm sick at both ends," he complained. "What did those bastards shoot into me, anyway?"

One man grinned. Another spat. All regarded him like a clinical specimen. Nothing to do with them. They did their job, got paid, and asked no questions. And yet the rhetorical question had value. Patter. Patter to distract the audience.

Blade put his head in his hands again, groaned louder, and" peered down between his legs at the toilet bowl. Nothing. Panic flared in him. Suppose he didn't pass it? Suppose it was tucked away somewhere in his guts and refused to come out? Then he must find another way.

There it was. A shiny aluminum capsule that shielded yet another inner capsule. Between the two capsules was a thin buffer of acid. Acid that would be activated by air.

Now the tricky part. His three guards were becoming impatient.

Blade got partially up, groaned hideously, then sank to the seat again. He tried to smile at the men. They stared blankly back at him.

"Be just half a mo," Blade said. "Ohhhhhh - now my guts are cramping. Ohhhhhh - "

He raised, turned, put his hands on the sides of the bowl and began to retch miserably. It was a convincing performance. One of the men said, "He is a sick bloke, all right. Glad it ain't me."

Blade reached down into his own excreta and palmed the capsule. Done. He retched for another minute, acting out his part, then staggered weakly to the washbowl. The razor blade lay waiting. This was also tricky. The capsule was the size of three aspirins - he had swallowed it with oil - and he held it between his left thumb and first finger as he washed his hands. His guards watched.

Blade retched again, bent over the bowl, groaned. He brushed the razor blade into the bowl and waited. Had they seen it?

"Get a jump on," one of them said. "You think we want to fool with you all the bleeding night?"

Blade washed his hands. He gashed the thin shell of the capsule with the razor and dropped the capsule and blade into the bowl. He ran a thin stream of water, saw the capsule vanish down the drain. The acid was at work. Two minutes.

Blade dried his hands on toilet paper as he began to count to himself. Nothing could stop the explosion now. The RXD 1, cyclonite hexogen, T 9, was a liquid plastic that was the latest thing. Only atomic fission exceeded it in fury. In the tight space of the drains it was going to tear everything to hell.

A minute and a half now. The acid was eating away at the inner capsule. It was precise. Two minutes and the acid would eat through and activate the explosive. The explosion, Blade thought, would be mainly upward. But there would be a fringe effect and he would just have to take his chances. He kept counting.

He slowed his steps. Not too fast. He set the training post in the courtyard as his marker. Beyond that he could not go. The rain had thickened. That might help.

Blade listened for the Sten gunner taking the cocking lock off. That he didn't want. That would mean that he took a burst in the back as he ran for the wall. He did not hear the snick he dreaded. They were approaching the training post now. The rain wept and the cobbles were like dirty glass under his bare feet. He began to pull the blanket around him with one hand, bunching it.

They were at the post. For the first time he thought of it as an executioner's post. Stop thinking. Time to go.

Blade stopped and pointed. He screamed, "Rat! Look at that big rat!"

The man behind him bumped into him. Blade whirled and flung his blanket at the Sten gunner. It fluttered and folded over the man's head. Blade butted hard into the man behind him and hurled him back into the third man, who had just raised his pistol. Blade ran.

For the wall on his right. He ducked and he ran, not trying to zig-zag - too slippery for that - and he put on a burst of speed that he had not known he was capable of. Behind him a pistol snapped and the bullet whirred past, smacked the wall and disintegrated. Fragments stung his bare legs. Another shot.

Blade lunged at the wall. It was six feet high and he caught the top with one mighty bound, getting his elbows over and pulling himself up. His spine was an icy rod. Where was the Sten?

A nasty chatter told him. Part of the brick wall exploded at his left elbow. Then Blade was over and falling into the soft earth of a flower bed and running into darkness. Roots and weeds and branches caught at him and clawed and dragged and slashed his flesh. He fell. He got up and kept running into nothing. He held his hands outstretched to keep from braining himself on a tree or another wall. He slipped down an incline and rolled through gravel and rock, punctured himself a few more times and ended up against a thick hedge. Dark. He was as good as blind.

The sky lit up behind him. A huge red flower blossomed in the wet night sky. It turned yellow at the edges and before the blast knocked him into the hedge he saw that a lane ran just beyond it. He was flung painfully into the hedge and half through it, wedged into it, while a great G force slammed at his belly and he watched dark objects rise and Soar over what had been the stable. Strange shrapnel pattered down about him as the first sharp flame began to die.

Richard Blade forced his way on through the hedge, came out on the narrow muddy lane and began to run as best he could. He hurt all over.

Thomas Chatters, of the Salisbury Fire Department, never forgot that night. He was to tell the tale a thousand times in the pubs, while his friends stood him pints, and as an old man he told it to his children's children.

He would say: "Got this call to Nine Yews Manor, we did. Lord Hale's place, only the Lord wasn't living there since his divorce. Empty, it were, or supposed to be.

"Engines from St. Giles got there first, you see, and we come along after. Right when we're turning into the lane there comes this great bloke walking out of the woods. Naked as the day he was born, I swear. All cut and bleeding, too. I swear, and don't mind saying he give us all a bit of fright. Great huge lad, he was, and as cool as ice. Walks right up to Ned, as was Captain then, and asks for a slicker to cover him. When he gets that he takes Ned aside and whispers to him. We was all watching, like, and could see poor Ned was puzzled and maybe a little afraid. We see Ned shake his head. Then this big bloke - dark man he was with a stubble, dark, too, and a mean look - this bloke reaches out and shakes Ned like he was a baby and yells something at him and Ned he sudden agrees to whatever it was and the next thing we know Ned puts me in charge. Just like that. And Ned is driving away with the stranger in his own car, turning back to Salisbury. Strangest thing is - Ned never would tell what the stranger said to him."

Blade was dropped off in Salisbury at a police station near Poultry Cross. He whispered a code word to the Sergeant and was given a private room and a phone. The Sergeant left him to rustle up some hot tea and a drop of something to stiffen it.

J was not at Copra House. The night duty man said that he could be reached in Prince's Gate.

Lord Leighton answered the phone himself. His Lordship wasted no time. He congratulated Blade on being alive and, he hoped, well, and turned him over to J.

J sounded ravished. Like a man in shock and drawn so fine that he might go over the edge any moment. After listening to Blade's brief explanation J said: "Stay there. I'll start a man down immediately for you. Any emergency needs?"

Blade said that he could do with some clothes. All of the local coppers were small men. Or so it seemed.

J would see to it. He sounded so apathetic that Blade said, "I get the feeling that something has gone badly wrong, sir. Aside from the whole plan, I mean. They made fools of us. But there will be another time. And there are a few of them that will never bother us again."

J was silent. Blade said, "I know something is wrong, sir. You haven't asked me for positive identification yet. How do you know I am the real Richard Blade?" He laughed.

J did not laugh. He said, "I don't have to, dear boy. I know who you are. I should, damn it all! We just sent the fake Blade through the computer."

Blade could think of nothing to say. He was not sure that he had heard correctly. The connection was not too good.

"And you," J continued, "are going after him. Get up here as fast as you bloody well can."