The Lure

27 Siege

A scrawny hand, all skinny grey talons and sharp nails, was stretching over the castle, and black clouds were rolling down the hills on the horizon like an advancing army. But even at half a mile, in the dull light, there was no mistaking Shtyrkov’s oblate form. He was moving at a fast waddle, as if trying to escape from the approaching claw.

Svetlana, looking out over the parapet, watched his approach curiously, but with a touch of alarm. He cut across the grass, puffing and wheezy, his eyes fixed on the ground ahead of him, and toddled briskly under her before disappearing from sight round the corner. She went into the building and stood at the top of the marble stairs. In a moment he appeared at the foot, breathless. He looked up at the stairs helplessly. Anxiety showed in his eyes.

‘Stay down there,’ Svetlana called to him. ‘I’ll get the others.’

A few minutes later she had herded the scientists into the computer room. Gibson entered carrying a tray of coffee and biscuits. Petrie was unshaven and his eyes were red-rimmed. He was carrying a bundle of papers as if reluctant to let go of them.

‘Where’s Hanning?’ Gibson wanted to know.

‘I can’t find him,’ Svetlana complained.

Gibson poured coffees. He looked at Shtyrkov, who had collapsed into one of the blue armchairs. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘I go for a walk, to think. I meet soldiers in the woods. They turn me back. Ladies and gentlemen, they will not allow us to leave the castle. They intend us to die here.’

Gibson said, quietly, ‘That’s a bit dramatic, Vashislav.’

‘But I tell you, they turn me back!’

‘Maybe there’s some military exercise going on in the woods,’ Petrie suggested.

‘Not an exercise.’ Shtyrkov shook his head vigorously. ‘An operation. To keep us here. We are prisoners in the castle.’

‘Prisoners?’ Freya giggled nervously. She was stirring coffee with brisk little movements, the spoon jangling in the china cup.

Petrie stood up. ‘We can test this.’

‘Spoken in the best scientific tradition,’ said Gibson. ‘Take a walk in the woods. I’ll give you five minutes and then stroll out the front gate.’

‘I tell you we’re prisoners,’ Shtyrkov said. ‘We will die here.’

Into the woods.

The black clouds are now overhead and the light is fading by the minute. Petrie tries to look like a man out for a stroll, tries not to peer into dark corners.

Stop, stretch, glance behind. All very casual. The castle is still visible in outline through the trees, a dark silhouette against a white misty patch of sky. The air is damp. Rain will come at any minute. The witch’s fingers are at ground level now, little tracers of mist creeping through the trees on either side of him. In Petrie’s imagination they are purposeful, enclosing him in a pincer movement.

And there are shapes, lurking in the shadows.

Tricks of the light: be rational. He turns up the collar of his fleece jacket and walks further into the forest, his mouth dry.

Somewhere ahead, a dog barks. It’s a big dog, heavy on the low frequencies, and it’s more of a howl than a bark. Maybe a mile ahead, maybe less. His breath is misting in the cold, and his footsteps are muffled; the acoustics remind him of a tomb inside a pyramid.

The path still easily visible, but dark shapes are now everywhere. More tricks of the light. Of course.

A low whistle, off to the right, on the limit of hearing.

Nonsense. Just a sound in his head.

Petrie feels his nerve going. He thinks he must be a mile from the castle. He wonders where the path ends: at a lodge house? Or does it wind into …

‘Stŭj!’ Stop!

The voice, all Slavic intonations and deep-chested, cuts into the stillness. He freezes. Suddenly, half a dozen soldiers in camouflage gear are emerging from the trees. They look like sixteen year olds. They are carrying rifles which resemble black plastic toys. Petrie thinks a burst from one of them would probably cut you in half.

One of the soldiers approaches to within a couple of feet of Petrie. He is older than the others, maybe in his late twenties, with a grey, thin face. He smells of stale nicotine. ‘You are not allowed here, Englishman. Get back to the castle.’

Petrie knows the answer but he tries it anyway. ‘Why should I? These woods belong to the Academy of Sciences. I’m their guest and I have every right to be here.’

The officer’s expression becomes one of amazed disbelief. He gives some order without taking his eyes off Petrie. Two of the teenage boys step forward. They are plainly nervous, but their expressions are heavy with truculence. Then: ‘Turn back now while you can. Rozumíte mi?’ Understand me?

Somewhere, in some magazine, Petrie has read about the best response to an armed opponent: don’t discuss, don’t argue, do what you’re told. He shrugs, says, ‘Rozumím,’ understood, and turns back on the path. A simple fact fills his mind: he has his back to half a dozen nervous teenagers with rifles. His mouth is parched and his shoulder-blades ache with tension.

Stroll. Don’t run.

A light glimpsed through the trees; lights have been switched on in some of the castle rooms. He glances back, casually. The path is empty; he is alone in the woods. Petrie wonders about another experiment: leave the path, take off at some angle, run clear to God knows where. But then his imagination sees dogs unleashed, the chase through the woods, kids with nightscopes and black plastic toys that cut you in half. Rain starts pattering on leaves.

The dog again. A lot closer, maybe half a mile behind him, maybe a couple of hundred yards. The castle is half a mile ahead. The temptation to break into a run is becoming irresistible, but he keeps strolling, his nerves at breaking point and a light sweat inside his gloves. His ears strain for the sound of running dogs but the rain is now battering noisily on the leaves.

By the time Petrie reaches the glorious front door of the castle it is dark, the rain is teeming down, and he is shaking with fright.

‘They intend to kill us.’

Shtyrkov was putting together something which he had described as ‘monastery stew’. A handful of finely chopped carrots went into an outsize frying pan. It sizzled as it hit the oil, and he stirred it with a big wooden spoon.

It fitted.

‘You can’t mean that.’ Worry lined Svetlana’s face, but she had clearly followed the same logical route as the fat Russian. ‘I mean, governments don’t do things like that. Not nowadays. Not in civilised Europe.’ She turned to Hanning as if for reassurance. The civil servant was draining water away from diced potatoes and pretended not to notice her anxious gaze.

‘Pass me the mushrooms, Svetlana, and don’t be so naive.’

‘You can’t be right,’ Petrie said, but he had already made the same deduction. It must have been a multinational decision, taken at the highest level.

‘Why not? It fits like a coffin.’ Shtyrkov was now waving a big pepper mill over the frying pan.

‘But why?’

‘Now the onions and the olives, please. Fear of the unknown, Svetlana. The fools think the signallers are trying to flush us out, to see if we have reached a level of technology where we might threaten them in a century or two.’

Svetlana brought two Pyrex bowls over to the Russian. She seemed close to tears. ‘Why don’t we confront them?’

Hanning, at the sink next to Shtyrkov, emptied a big saucepan of water and rice into an orange colander. Steam was rising. ‘You really are being absurd.’

‘We have to give it fifteen minutes.’

‘How can you think of food?’

‘We need to keep our sugar levels up. This is no time for slow thinking.’

Potatoes and rice were transferred over to the brew. Shtyrkov sprinkled salt, and then half a bottle of wine was going into the mixture. Back at the kitchen table, he poured the remaining wine into glasses. He seemed almost euphoric, as if he was involved in some sort of game. Then Petrie caught him looking in the wine glass, reflecting light from the overhanging chandelier.

Freya broke the tense silence. ‘What now?’

Petrie said, ‘We have one advantage. They think we don’t know.’

She swept long blonde hair back over her shoulders.

Gibson rubbed his chin. ‘The fact is, we don’t know. Maybe we’re getting steamed up over nothing.’

Automatically, the scientists looked over at Hanning, the insider in the counsels of government, the man who would know about things like this.

‘This place must be getting to you. These things just aren’t done.’

‘How would you see it from Lord Sangster’s chair?’ Petrie asked.

Hanning sighed. ‘If, as a matter of policy, it was decided that knowledge of the signal poses an unacceptable risk to humanity — or even to the country — then yes, we pose a problem. An awkward problem.’

‘All present and correct?’ Gibson said to nobody in the administrator’s office. The office was brightly lit with standard lamps commandeered from alcoves and corners. The video camera atop a computer terminal stared at them from the polished teak table.

He tapped at a keyboard. Snow appeared on the terminal.

‘We’re cut off?’

‘Nonsense, Svetlana.’ Hanning typed in a string of numbers again slowly, with one finger. Then a mature, white-haired female, all cashmere sweater and pearls, appeared. ‘Lord Sangster’s office.’

‘Sandra? Jeremy here. I’d like to speak to Lord Sangster, please, on the video conference circuit.’

There was a hesitation. Then: ‘A moment, Mr Hanning.’

The face disappeared. They sat in silence, watching the background of bookshelves on the monitor. Shtyrkov started to strum his fingers noisily on the table. Hanning gave him a look and the Russian finished his strumming with a defiant roll. Then suddenly a round face appeared on the screen. Sangster’s smooth, plummy voice came over clearly: ‘We’re secure, Jeremy?’

‘We are.’

‘Who is with you?’

‘Just the scientists.’ Gibson panned the camera around the little group. Petrie, at the corner of the table, studied Sangster’s face closely; it was serious, sagging, his cheeks tinged a little red which might have told of an outdoors life or an excessive love of alcohol. The expression gave nothing away. Hanning, on the other hand, had just a touch of anxiety in his expression. Or so Petrie thought; it was hard to be sure.

Hanning said, ‘Simon, we have a strange situation here.’

Gibson swivelled the camera slightly to centre on Hanning. Sangster’s face had acquired a grim look. Petrie felt his own face going pale, began to feel nauseous.

Hanning was saying, ‘We can’t get out of the castle, Simon. The Slovaks have put a brigade of soldiers round it. Do you know anything about this?’

‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

Petrie’s nausea intensified. He wondered if he would have to flee the table.

‘I think you owe us an explanation.’

‘It’s a simple security precaution.’

Shtyrkov muttered, ‘Yob tvou mat.’ Svetlana gasped. Then, unaccountably, Shtyrkov laughed. ‘They want us to die and the secret with us. That is what they want for humanity. To live in slime for ever.’

‘Who is that?’

Gibson swivelled the camera.

Hanning said, ‘Vashislav Shtyrkov. A Russian citizen.’

‘You do not intend to let us leave the castle. We are to die here and the signal with us.’

Sangster’s expression was one of incredulity. ‘That really is nonsensical of you, Mr Shtyrkov.’

‘What about my country?’ Shtyrkov asked. ‘Was Ogorodnikov consulted? Did he push for it?’

Sangster’s head was shaking at the absurdity. ‘Please, be realistic. Perhaps the isolation is doing things to you. We are dealing with civilised governments, not gangster states.’

Shtyrkov giggled. ‘You are a very simple organism, Lord Sangster. You want the knowledge about an intelligent life form out there to be buried. You know that we won’t be gagged. The conclusion is inevitable. And of course you lie to us, to keep us pacified.’

Petrie was startled to find that he was daydreaming, fantasising about Colditz-like escapes from the castle. He forced the absurdity out of his mind, dragged himself back to reality.

There was silence round the table. Then the camera lens was zooming to give Sangster a panoramic view. He adopted a sorrowful tone. To Petrie, he was hamming it up like a third-rate actor. ‘I’m deeply sorry that you are suffering from this delusion, Mr Shtyrkov. All I can do is repeat that the Slovaks have kindly agreed to put soldiers round the castle as a simple security precaution. The stakes are just too high for, let us say, agents of another state getting hold of the signal you are deciphering.’

Gibson’s tone was despairing. ‘The signallers are extending the hand of friendship. And we’re too steeped in barbarity to—’

Sangster interrupted. ‘Possibly, even probably. But decisions on such issues are not your domain and further discussion is pointless. We shall require additional progress reports from you. I suggest we make contact at noon tomorrow, your time, and then again at midnight.’

For a moment uncertainty was flickering across the face on the screen, as if Sangster wanted to add something. But then he gave a little nod of finality and his image dissolved into snow.

Svetlana rushed out of the room.

Gibson dived over to a computer and started tapping briskly. Then he slapped the keyboard angrily. ‘I can’t get out.’

In a minute Svetlana returned, out of breath. She was holding a small mobile phone. ‘It’s dead.’

Petrie buried his face in his hands. Then he heard:

‘My oh my oh my oh my

Here we stay until we die.’

He looked across the table at Shtyrkov. The Russian caught the look, grinned ghoulishly back. ‘My temporal lobe damage, it progresses, does it not?’