The Lure

29 Freya

‘I wonder what it will be like?’ Shtyrkov wanted to know. The metal grid protecting the bar had proved impenetrable but the men had used an antique stool as a battering ram on the door. Both stool and door now lay in splinters and an impressive array of bottles was spread over the coffee-table in front of them. He was cradling a tumbler of some green liquid.

‘What?’ Gibson, having downed four large J&Bs, spoke the word with exaggerated care. The hands of the big clock were pointing to just before midnight.

‘The slaughter. How will they do it? Will they smother us? Shoot us? Slit our throats?’

‘Cut that out. Think of the ladies.’ It came out chauvinistic but Gibson was too far gone to care.

Svetlana giggled. From time to time she rubbed her nose, as if the bubbles from her champagne were tickling it.

Hanning said, ‘I really don’t know what’s got into you people. Sangster went blue in the face telling you the soldiers are there as a simple precaution. To keep unfriendly people out.’

Shtyrkov finished his tumbler of green liquid and reached for the half-empty bottle. ‘But they’re keeping us in.’

Petrie looked round at his drunken companions, sunk in the blue armchairs: Shtyrkov, Gibson, Svetlana, Freya, Hanning and himself. Six of us. ‘Can we go over it again? The escape possibilities?’

‘What’s the point?’ Hanning asked.

‘The point is survival.’ Freya’s voice was tense. ‘There must be some way out of this. Didn’t you say the place reminded you of Colditz, Jeremy? Well, people escaped from Colditz, didn’t they?’

‘You’re clutching at straws,’ Gibson said, pouring his fifth whisky with immense care.

Hanning spoke gently. ‘Say I go along with this ridiculous fantasy for the sake of argument. Colditz was master forgers, tunnelling engineers, teams of specialists. Colditz was months of planning. Above all, Colditz was before night-vision optics.’

Freya waved an arm around. ‘Look at the brainpower in this room. We can think of something.’

Hanning shook his head. ‘You’re imbeciles in these matters. You have a few hours and we’re surrounded by a brigade of troops. There’s clear grass all the way around the castle and no way whatsoever of crossing it undetected. There are no tunnels. You can’t disguise yourselves as cleaning staff. You can’t hide in the trash cans. And you can’t fight your way past a hundred Kalashnikovs with kitchen knives. I’m sorry, Freya.’

Something wrong. Something about Hanning.

Through his alcoholic haze, Petrie analysed Hanning’s words. You have a few hours. You’re imbeciles in these matters. Not We have a few hours. We’re imbeciles in these matters. Was Hanning excluding himself from the imminent killings? Was it a slip of the tongue, or a case of in vino veritas?

‘There is no prospect of escape.’ Shtyrkov said it with emphasis, almost with a tone of triumph.

Petrie listened to the Russian’s words and his heart sank. Come on, Vash, you’re the sharp one. Think of something! Until now he had hoped, even believed, that Vashislav would find a way out. If there was a way out, some lateral thinking to be done, some trick, Vashislav would have come up with it. A sense of nausea washed over him. He said, ‘Still, “It is a sweet and seemly thing to die for one’s country.” Seneca. Right, Jeremy?’

Hanning raised a tumbler unsteadily. ‘Right. To Seneca.’

Petrie added, ‘Oh, God.’ Nobody paid any attention.

‘What’s that green slime?’ Gibson nodded at Shtyrkov’s glass.

‘Charlee, it is alcohol. It is called Green Slime and when I have finished this bottle I will start on another one.’

‘Well, you may have given up, pal, but I’m thinking survival…’

‘To the British!’ Shtyrkov raised his tumbler ironically.

‘… and I can’t do it with a spinning head. I’m for bed.’ Gibson stood up, steadying himself on an armchair.

‘Me too,’ said Petrie.

Gibson turned at the door, swaying. ‘Would any of you ladies care to join me?’

Svetlana giggled again. It was that or burst into tears.

A tap on the door. Petrie, his head still groggy with wine, dragged himself into a sitting position. He switched on the bedside lamp.

Freya, carrying an opened bottle of white wine and two glasses. She put them down on the table and sat on a chair, pushing Petrie’s clothes to the floor. ‘I can’t believe things like this happen.’ She was wearing her red sweater and long dark skirt, and was bare-footed.

‘All the rules are off,’ Petrie said, pulling his knees up. The headboard was cold on his back.

‘We think, when the cleaners come in the morning, we’ll take their van and ram our way out.’

‘Don’t be silly. Anyway the cleaners won’t come.’

‘How can they not? There’s a conference on Monday. But if that doesn’t work, we’ll hide until the conference people turn up. The castle is full of hiding places and we only need to hide for a day.’

‘They’ll sniff us out with dogs.’

Freya blew her nose. ‘I love dogs. Have you given up, then? The great pattern finder, the man who boldly goes where no problem solver has gone before?’

‘No way have I given up. I just need to sleep on it. So you love dogs?’

‘And life. I don’t want to go at age twenty-three. I want to go when I’m ninety, drinking and smoking a cigar and watching the northern lights. So sleep well, Thomas, and waken up with an idea.’ She moved over to Petrie’s bed, and sat on the edge. He caught a light whiff of eau de cologne, felt a sudden, sharp pang of attraction. Bloody hormones!

She asked, ‘Have you seen the aurora?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Oy! Oy! Oy! To die before you have lived! When you see them from the roof of the world, in their full glory, then you will believe in Thor and Odin.’

‘You’re a poetic sort of creature, Freya.’

‘And you’re a miserable, disembodied computer, a pale imitation of a real man.’ She poured two glasses. Petrie took a sip; the wine was cold.

‘Freya, I’m a bundle of inhibitions. I can’t sing or dance. But I’m in love with your hair.’

‘I see you have hairs on your chest.’ She touched his chest; Petrie wondered if she could feel his heart hammering.

‘They go all the way down.’

‘I wonder if the signallers dance? And what they would sound like, singing?’

‘I didn’t see any music in their signal.’

‘I wonder if they make love? What about you, Thomas, have you ever made love?’

‘Freya!’

‘Ha! I thought not.’ She snorted scornfully and sipped wine. ‘Do you know where the name Freya comes from?’

‘Of course not.’

She put her glass on the table and smiled again. ‘My little inhibited computer, Freya is the goddess of love and fertility. And we could be dead tomorrow.’

We could be dead tomorrow. ‘What a wonderful chat-up line!’

She touched his chest lightly again. ‘They go all the way down, you say?’

At first, Petrie thought they had come for him. He was being shaken roughly by the shoulder. Then he smelled the green slime on Shtyrkov’s breath and saw his massive bulk in dark outline. ‘Tom! Tom!’

He felt Freya’s leg taut over his own. She was stretching. A bedside lamp clicked on and then she was hiding under the sheet, only the crown of her head visible on the pillow.

Petrie sat up. The Russian’s face wore an intense expression and he had a finger to his mouth. ‘Get dressed. Come and see this. Be very quiet. No shoes.’

Suppressing his embarrassment, Petrie stretched out for underpants and in a moment was dressed in plain T-shirt, jeans and socks.

‘Freya. Put the light out.’

A slim arm appeared from under the sheet and groped towards the bedside lamp, and then they were back into darkness. Petrie followed the Russian to the door, sensing rather than seeing his frame.

Along the narrow carpeted corridor and down the broad staircase. A faint light was coming from below. Shtyrkov’s wheezy breath was loud in the silence and there was an occasional crack! from his arthritic knee.

Into the atrium. The light was here; it was blue, and it was coming from under the door to the administrator’s office. They crept past the armchairs and settees, and stopped at the oak door. Shtyrkov tapped Petrie on the shoulder. He whispered in his ear. ‘The keyhole!’

On his knees, Petrie had a good view of half the room. He looked, and was appalled.

Hanning was talking quietly. The light was coming from the monitor he sat at. The screen was edge-on to Petrie and he could neither make out the face on it nor hear the words. From Hanning’s body language the conversation seemed to be coming to an end. Suddenly the civil servant leaned towards the monitor. He switched it off.

In a near panic, Petrie jumped up and collided with Shtyrkov. They set off quietly and as fast as the near-blackness would allow, Shtyrkov gasping for air. They reached the marble stairs but it was too late, the door was opening. Petrie pulled at Shtyrkov and they were down, crouching, behind a chair a few feet past the steps.

The door to the library closed, very quietly. Hanning was padding straight towards them. He was making almost no sound. At the foot of the stairs they heard him stop.

Dead silence.

Hanning no more than six feet away.

Shtyrkov holding his breath.

A distinct crack! Shtyrkov’s arthritic knee.

Somewhere in the distance a dog barked.

Shtyrkov still holding his breath.

Petrie wondering if they had been seen: two figures, one of them bulky, trying to hide behind an armchair.

Silence, except for the dog going wolf and the hammer-hammer in Petrie’s chest. And Shtyrkov still holding on, his eyes beginning to pop.

Green slime! Shtyrkov was reeking of alcohol. It had to be a giveaway. Hanning could surely smell their presence.

Then footsteps were padding quietly up the stairs and Petrie was mentally saying, Hold on, Vashislav, don’t blow it now, don’t breathe, just seconds more.

The footsteps were gone and Petrie was shaking all over and Shtyrkov was taking in air in deep, shuddering gulps. He was trying to do it quietly but without much success.

They made their way slowly up the stairs, following Hanning’s direction, with the Russian bent double and gripping the balustrade. After every few steps he would pause and wheeze. Back to the corridor. Petrie counted the doors on the right. One, two, three, four, five. He turned the handle and the door was unlocked. Good for Freya: she’d had the presence of mind to keep the room dark. So far as Hanning knew, the condemned scientists were sound asleep.

Shtyrkov found a switch and they blinked in the sudden light. Freya had pulled on her skirt and sweater but Petrie thought there was no bra underneath it. She was sitting on the broad window ledge, hair tousled and her face showing strain and tiredness. Eau de cologne lingered in the air.

Petrie sat on the edge of the unmade bed, and they waited, wordless, while Shtyrkov leaned against the door, slowly regaining his breath. Finally: ‘Hanning is a traitor.’

‘He was on the conference circuit just now,’ Petrie told Freya.

‘What does that prove?’

‘That he was communicating without our knowledge.’

‘So? Maybe he was trying to bargain for our lives.’

‘No.’ Shtyrkov’s voice was quiet but emphatic. ‘I heard him earlier. He was talking to Sangster. He was informing his lordship that we are deeply suspicious, that we would like to flee the castle but can see no way out and that we are nevertheless continuing to work on the signal.’

Freya said weakly, ‘That makes him a traitor? It’s no more than the truth.’

‘Oh, young Freya, I love you for your innocence.’ Shtyrkov managed a grin, but his face showed pain and there was a purple rim round his lips. ‘If I were thirty years younger … But no, Hanning’s tone was that of an informant. He is reporting back to Sangster and that has only one interpretation. The man is what you call a mole.’

Petrie said, ‘Damn. 158 Rock Walk.’

Shtyrkov looked bewildered, and Petrie continued: ‘Somebody sent me a warning. It reached me in London on my way here.’

‘I remember. It worried Charlie.’

‘It was lightly encoded, I cracked it in minutes but it wouldn’t have made sense to a casual reader. Vashislav, it can only have come from someone in the UK government who had access to your ET suspicions.’

‘More than that, my friend, someone who anticipated the possible reaction of your government. Someone close to your Prime Minister.’

‘That settles it,’ said Petrie. ‘Hanning’s a traitor in our midst.’

Freya asked, ‘Does it matter now?’

‘It matters very much, my dear, if we think of a way to escape. He tells your fine English lord, the lord tells your Prime Minister, he tells the President of Slovakia and then…’ Shtyrkov made a throat-cutting gesture.

‘But even if you’re right, what harm can he do? We have no way out. You said it yourself.’

‘I gave a good performance, did I not? “There is no prospect of escape.” I spoke with such bravura, such conviction!’

Petrie’s heart lurched. ‘What are you saying, Vashislav?’

‘Englishman, your life may depend on keeping your voice down.’ Shtyrkov flopped down next to Petrie on the bed. The mattress sagged under his weight. He took some breaths before continuing: ‘There is a way out, just possibly. Very likely to be terminal, and only for the desperate.’

‘Vashislav, stop playing games.’

‘Games, my friend? With the signallers waiting for our answer?’

Freya said, ‘Vashislav, for God’s sake, we’re condemned prisoners. A desperate plan will do nicely.’

‘Yes, young Freya. But listen, here is the word on my escape route. One. It is very dangerous. Two. It cannot work if Hanning knows we suspect him. And Three, the worst bit.’

They waited while Shtyrkov once again caught his breath. Then, ‘The route can only be taken by two of us. We will have to decide who goes and who stays.’

‘Well?’ Freya asked.

‘In the morning, young lady. This must be discussed by all of us together.’