Zoë couldn’t go back onstage alone. “Get me three actors now,” she told the local CND organiser. “Men.” He said he knew no actors. “Ask the audience, for Christ’s sake!” she shouted. “There must be a dozen actors out there! Go, go, go!” He ran. She switched on the PA microphone, named six people she knew were in the audience, and asked them to come backstage at once: two doctors, a military historian, a retired general, a university lecturer, a journalist. All were friends or acquaintances. By the time she’d washed her face and gargled with mouthwash (good for the voicebox) they had assembled. “Russell can’t make it,” she told them. “I need your help so I can do another hour. I want thirty nuclear questions – ten from Kruschev, ten from Kennedy, ten from Macmillan. Can you do it? In five minutes? My goodness,” she said, turning and smiling at three men, “My most favourite actors.” She cast them there and then: “Harold Macmillan, Nikita Kruschev, Jack Kennedy. Can you do it?”
“Is there a script?” one asked.
“Just notes. I’m relying on a certain amount of improvisation. In fact, a hell of a lot.”
The questions were ready in eight minutes. Zoë dealt them out. “You three rule the world,” she said. “Be tough. Be ruthless. Be creative.”
“What’s your rôle?” Jack Kennedy asked.
“I play God. We’re on. Break a leg.”
She hoped for forty-five minutes. They did an hour. There was passionate dialogue, accusation, interruption. Zoë chaired the fight. It was brilliant, ragged, angry, briefly chaotic, hilarious, and above all surprising. Nobody – not the audience, certainly not the actors – knew where they were going next, until it happened. The only thing Zoë had planned was the end. All three actors were bawling at each other, all shouting: “Mine’s bigger than yours!” when she raised an arm and the stage went suddenly totally, black. Silence. Slowly the lights came up. “Thank you, everyone,” Zoë said. “All the nuclear bombs have exploded. You are now officially free to resume normal activities.” Tentative applause, swelling to hugeness.
She walked offstage, feeling both exhilarated and exhausted. Waiting in the wings was, of all people, Silk, wearing a foolish grin. “What a load of old crap,” he said. She punched him in the eye and he went down with a crash that raised dust ten feet away.
Backstage at a CND rally is a good place to get decked. There was no lack of doctors in the building. “He’s my husband,” Zoë told them. “He walks into things. Poor judgement. Wanders about.”
“She hit me,” Silk said, thickly.
“Then he rambles. He wanders and he rambles.”
By the time the doctors had decided he was fit to travel, the last London train had gone. That left a night in a hotel or a trip in the Citroën. “Sod hotels,” he said. Zoë drove.
He angled his seat back to its maximum and stared at the roof. Someone had given him an eyepatch. Now his injured eye was manufacturing a sequence of big, soft hairy stars. They changed colour, mauve to green to pink, and drifted left. He tried to watch one move, but it didn’t like being watched and it hid. Hid where? Whose eyeball was it, for God’s sake? He felt cheated. It was easier to close both eyes. He slept.
They stopped near Leicester, at a 24-hour transport café. The night was black as treacle. He clung to her sleeve and stumbled over the broken asphalt. “I’m blind,” he said. “The CO will kill me for this.”
“Show him the eyepatch,” she said. “It’s the height of fashion in Vulcan squadrons. Everybody’s got one.”
“What d’you mean?” He trod in a deep puddle. “Explain.” She said nothing. His foot squelched inside his shoe. He gave up.
Fluorescent lights were softened by a layer of blue-grey cigarette smoke. The jukebox was playing Rock Around The Clock. Silk’s nostrils twitched at the heavy aroma of fried onions. “Biological warfare,” he said. “And I’ve got trench foot. Not that you care.”
She ordered bacon sandwiches and mugs of tea. They sat at a wooden table. There was a catering-size flagon of brown sauce, loosely chained through the handle. “Here’s a question,” she said, and rattled the chain. “Is the bottle chained to the table, or is the table chained to the bottle?”
“Both. Neither. I’m not going to argue with an idiot like you. Why did you hit me? I only made a joke. Can’t you take a joke?”
She sipped her tea and studied him over the rim of the mug. “I didn’t hear a joke,” she said. “I heard a load of old crap. Was that you?”
He couldn’t think of an answer that would do him any good.
He ate only half his sandwich. She ate the other half, and steered him back to the Citroën. She drove without another break, all the way to The Grange. Freshly washed by the light of dawn, it was a welcome sight, even with one eye.
SEE ENGLAND AND DROWN
Silk got some sleep, had some breakfast, and felt just about fit to drive. He reached RAF Kindrick at midday. The sun was out, he was ready to annihilate Chernyakhovsk, a Soviet bomber base south of the Baltic and Quinlan’s allocated target of the week. Skull had said that Chernyakhovsk was like Kindrick with medals. Russian aircrew got awarded a lot of medals. Got taught a lot of Marxism, too. Medals and Marxism: an odd combination. Maybe they won a medal for listening to the Marxism. Silk wondered if there was a pilot at Chernyakhovsk right now, leaning over a map, tunic clinking with heroic medals, picking out his Aiming Point on Kindrick. The squash courts were pretty central. Don’t bother, Ivan. By the time you get scrambled, the Vulcans won’t be here. We’ll be at one of the dispersal airfields, far far away.
Silk was wearing his eyepatch. He lifted it, to see what he could see, and saw double, so he put it back. He didn’t want to go near the Mess or the Ops Block, where people would ask what had happened, so he walked onto the airfield and saw Group Captain Pulvertaft. Worse still, Pulvertaft saw him, and beckoned. Silk was still working on a reason for the black eye when Pulvertaft called: “Ever kept wicket, Silk? Innes Allen’s team needs a wicket-keeper.”
“Afraid not, sir.” Beyond the station commander, Silk saw airmen preparing a cricket pitch.
“I’d keep wicket myself, but the knees, you know, the knees…” Pulvertaft saw the eyepatch, and took a pace back. “Now that’s a bloody good idea. Why didn’t I think of it? Harry…” He turned to 409’s adjutant. “Why don’t we put all our Vulcan aircrew in eyepatches, right now, make ’em distinctive, d’you see? Let our American allies see the stars in the show!” His enthusiasm grew. “And it sends a message – Kremlin or bust! Bit of a gimmick, I agree, but…” He clicked his fingers.
“Hell of a good gimmick, sir.” The adjutant hurried off.
They stood and watched a small steamroller trundle back and forth, flattening the bumps between the stumps. “That reminds me,” Pulvertaft said. “How is Mrs Silk, MP?”
“Um… fighting fit, sir. We had a chat. Laid down our cards. She understands the situation we’re in. Nobody wants a scandal.” Silk frowned, pursed his lips, nodded.
“Good, good.” They strolled towards the steamroller. Smoke from the funnel, caught by the breeze, had a brisk tang of sulphur. “It lays low the mountains but it can’t fill in the valleys, can it? The ball’s going to fizz like a firecracker. Still, the Yanks know nothing about cricket, so they’ll think it’s quite normal. See if you can find a wicket-keeper, Silk. Someone fit and fearless.”
Silk saluted and left, looking purposeful. In fact he headed for the Vulcans, a good place to avoid senior officers. The bombers were all immaculately lined up, their anti-flash white undersides gleaming, and looking so big and so sleek that he felt a small, unexpected kick of pride. Then a flicker of colour caught his eye. On the parade ground, alongside the RAF ensign, flew the Stars and Stripes. People had been talking about an exchange visit from the nearby American air base. This must be it.