"I don't think that's quite right either."
"Perhaps not. I'm not really on form today. I think I'll go and have a he-down on the sofa. Could you look in on James occasionally?"
"I'll sit by him, don't you worry."
Lucy took an illustrated magazine to Churchill's bedside, but she too was underslept, and in a few minutes she nodded off, half awakening from time to time and changing position in her chair. She awoke completely when two vehicles began to pull up below the window. The first, she saw when she looked, was Leonard's car, and Leonard was getting out of it. The second was an ambulance. The driver got out and went to the rear door. Very soon Catharine appeared, followed by a bespectacled young man in a dark suit who was glancing impatiently about. Lucy hurried downstairs.
"Darling," she said, embracing Catharine in the hall, "what's happened? Are you out or what?"
"Only for an hour or two. This is Dr. Galton, who's come to look after me."
The young man nodded briefly and turned at once to Leonard.
"You can have forty minutes," he said in a high-pitched but commanding voice, "after which I shall see to it that Mrs. Casement takes whatever suitable light refreshment is available here and then immediately returns to hospital."
"Thank you," said Leonard. "That's quite acceptable."
"It had better be. I hope you know what you're doing."
"So you said earlier, doctor. You can rest assured that I do."
"Can I see James?" asked Catharine.
"There isn't much time," said Leonard. "Seeing him may be more effective if you listen to what I have to tell you first. Let's go out on to the lawn. We can't be overheard there."
They went, leaving the doctor pacing the hall.
"How are you, Cathy?" asked Lucy. "How is everything?"
"Fine. No snags. Everything under control."
"How did he get you out? Brian, how did you get her out?"
"Never mind that for now. The important thing is James."
"He's not too bad, is he?" asked Catharine. "He's not really so awfully bad, is he?"
"He's sort of withdrawn into himself," said Leonard. "But I think you'll be able to get him out of it. I've got no experience of these things, but from what I gather from Lucy here and Willie Ayscue part of why James is like this is because of what's been happening to you, Mrs. Casement. I don't know how much-"
"Catharine."
"Catharine. Well, that's part of it. The other part comes from this thing called Operation Apollo he was getting ready to be sent on. I'm going to tell you about that now. It won't take long."
They reached the chairs under the oak-tree and sat down.
"This means I shall have to break the Official Secrets Act," he went on. "And if the information gets out there might be a war. So I want you both to promise me that you won't pass on what I'm going to tell you to a living soul."
The two women looked at each other.
"But aren't you terribly risking we'll break our promise?" asked Lucy.
"No. I want you to hear this so you can help Catharine, and I know you're all right. And James loves you, Catharine, so you're all right too. So there isn't any risk. Do you both promise?"
"Yes," they said.
He gave them a much edited account of his interview with Ross-Donaldson earlier that morning. At the end of it he studied Catharine, whom he had seen for the first time an hour before. He could find no trace of illness, pain or fear about her, only of tension under control. He admired the straightness of her mouth. Leaning forward in his chair, he said emphatically, but he hoped not too loudly,
"So the big point is, Catharine, that James would never have had to go and make all those people die. But he still thinks he's got to. So do the other officers in his position, just for the time being. We're supposed to wait for orders saying it's all right to tell them. But when the others are told, they'll listen, they'll understand. But James has taken the whole idea of Operation Apollo much harder than they have, because of you. I suppose it's as if he can't see anything but death anywhere. I think in that state any of us might get withdrawn. Anyway, the result is it's no use telling James the show's been canceled, because he won't listen. I've tried him. That's to say he won't listen to anybody ordinary. I think you're the only one he'll listen to, because he loves you. But if you're going to get through to him you've got to understand exactly what's in his mind, and that means you've got to hear exactly what he thinks he's going to have to do.
"Apollo was the Greek god of the sun, and of music, and of agriculture and other things. He was also the god of disease. The sender of plagues. I think calling the Operation after him was meant as some sort of twisted clue to the Chinese. What James and the others have been training to do was spreading a plague in the Chinese army, and probably in China too. Each man was going to be given a small party of local helpers and be stuck in a hideout near a Chinese line of communication. They were to wait until they could safely ambush just one Chinese soldier carrying mail, say, or a couple of chaps in a lorry, and knock them out with a gas that would keep them unconscious for three hours or so. Then they give them the plague and disappear. The Chinese blokes come to, feeling perfectly okay, and continue their journey to the fighting areas or back to their base. Nothing happens for about ten days, by which time scores of them have had the same treatment. Then they start their symptoms.
"It was decided that these symptoms ought to be as unpleasant as possible so as to have the maximum psychological effect. Ordinary plagues weren't good enough from that point of view. Fever, inflamed glands, delirium, difficulty in speaking and walking. Nothing much out of the way there. Our bacteriologists found they couldn't get as far as they wanted with just improving the existing plagues. But plagues are so handy, because they're so easily passed on. So they decided to start at the other end, with a more unpleasant disease that wasn't a plague that they'd tinker about with until it could be transmitted like a plague. Finally a scientist called Venables came up with something he'd managed to make just about as infectious as what's called pneumonic plague, and in the same way: in your breath, in droplets, like the common cold. They found this out two or three years ago, by the way, and kept it by them. It was all ready when they needed it.
"Well, what Venables had invented was a form of hydrophobia. That's what you get when a mad dog bites you. Only now you could get it off somebody's breath. Some people say it's the most extreme form of suffering. A man who's caught it starts off with feeling very depressed and frightened. There'd be plenty of that when you'd seen your friends die of it. Then the man gets very agitated and can't breathe properly. But the main point is that he gets very thirsty, only he chokes and has convulsions whenever he tries to drink. Or when he sees water, or hears it being poured, or thinks of it. Or when there's a draught or somebody touches him. Or a lot of other things. In between he breathes with a sort of barking sound and snaps his jaws. He has four or five days of that. Then he dies. It's an odd thing, but just before he dies he can breathe and drink and swallow perfectly well.
"Each detachment on Operation Apollo was to be issued with a number of small plastic tents just big enough for one person. The idea was that you put your unconscious Chinaman in there and sealed it up. Then you turned on a tank full of air which had water droplets in it, and the droplets had the hydrophobia virus in them. You gave the chap a couple of hours of it, took him out, stuck him back in the cab of his lorry, and moved off to another area. The chances of him developing hydrophobia were better than ninety per cent. Oh, there is an antidote thing, but they'd never have been able to get it made and distributed in time to make any difference.