“You can’t stop the countdown, Anthony,” he cried triumphantly. “But you can reset the manual override. I still don’t have forever to dispose of you—but we are back where we should have been if you hadn’t made your brave but ultimately futile gesture.” He took off his spectacles and placed them on the bench. Without them, he looked younger and far less human. Though he blinked as he stepped forward, there was something low and predatory about him. I tried to stop shaking and stood up. I clenched my fists and tried to remember what I could of my last attempt at boxing. That had been in 1946, when I thought Briggs Minor had broken my nose. The oceans of drink I’d soaked up suddenly ebbed away, and exhaustion mingled with total clarity of mind. I could imagine how stupid I looked, as I bounced up and down and threw short punches at the air. In other circumstances, I might have joined in Foot’s mocking laughter.
But now he fell silent. He held up both hands to his chest and stretched their fingers wide and straight. He looked at his hands and rubbed them together. He put them close together as if he had them about a throat. Keeping hands held in this position, he stretched his arms in my direction. He put back his head and howled. It was like a wolf in the zoo—no, it was like the monster in the most horrid German horror film. He howled again and rushed at me, hands still held out as if they already had my throat cupped in them. Oh, forget German horror films—forget the worst childhood nightmares from which you wake up screaming uncontrollably. This was indescribably worse. I saw the mad eyes, the mouth pulled open tight, the outstretched hands. Across the fifteen feet or so that had separated us, he raced straight towards me. From the corner of one eye, I saw the shadow he cast from the cold brightness of the chemical lamp.
As he came close, I bounced aside. Still bouncing up and down, I lashed out with a parody of a right hook. I got him on the nose. Hardly thinking what I’d done, I got him a left on the upper jaw that spun him about. Uncomprehending, I saw him lurch back and overbalance onto the floor. Now squealing as he had with Pakeshi, he had both hands cupped over his nose. As he straightened himself and sat up, he took his hands away and looked at them. They were covered with blood from the vessel I’d managed to burst in his nose. He whimpered and scrabbled his shoes on the brick floor as he pushed himself back against the wall and looked again at his bloody hands. For one lunatic moment, I did think of walking over to him and telling him to get up and fight like a man. But, as said, the alcoholic tide had fully ebbed. I looked across the room. I was now on the far side from the steps. I had a thought—if I could get past Foot and up the steps, I could lock him into this cellar. Now he’d cancelled my own interventions, we must still have at least eighteen minutes till the bomb went off. In that time, I could arrange something with those scared, sobbing creatures up in the hall. I could try to make sure Foot had no more victims that night.
“Not so fast, Markham,” I heard Foot croak. I stared back from the lowest step. Still on the floor, he’d got hold of his revolver. I don’t know how he’d found a bullet so fast—perhaps he’d had some in his pocket. But he rammed the cylinder back into place and aimed at me. I looked at the bloodied, hate-twisted face. I stopped and put my hands up. Foot giggled and pulled the trigger. There was a click and nothing. He swore viciously and fumbled with the cylinder. With a few deliberate clicks, he twisted it into place and aimed once more. I tried again for the steps. As the shot rang out and ricocheted from somewhere above me, I tripped and sprawled forward on the steps. I forced myself to my feet. So far as I could tell, I was unhurt. Like an idiot, I looked back. I looked straight over at Foot. Still sat against the wall, he was using both hands to steady the gun as he took careful aim.
A strange ringing—it was as if someone was rubbing on the rim of a wet glass—made me look away. I found myself now looking at the sealed vat of acid. The ricochet had gone into the artificial ceramic. It had made a little hole exactly where the mouth should have been on the skull and crossbones. Through this, the dark liquid was running as if from a drinking fountain. Even as I looked, I could see a pattern of cracks forming all over the wall of the vat. They radiated out from the single bullet hole, They extended and joined up and branched out in new directions. And, all the time, the artificial ceramic sang at me in the loud, clear voice of its own dissolution.
I stared again at Foot. Oblivious to the noise that seemed to fill the whole room, his lips were parted in an anticipatory snarl as he took a now unwavering aim and pulled back the hammer. He might have had the trigger pulled half back when the wall of the vat suddenly burst, and, with a loud and mighty flood, perhaps a hundred gallons of sulphuric acid poured out into the room.
Did I hear Foot’s terrified shrieks above the corrosive hiss and slurp of the dark flood? I really can’t say. The spell was broken, and I had the presence of mind to stagger, tripping and blubbering, to the top of those steps, and get myself out of the cellar before those clouds of hideous vapour could reach me.
My candle was where I’d left it, perhaps seven minutes before, in the big wine cellar. I stopped myself from rushing forward in blind panic. I wiped sweaty, trembling hands on my trouser legs, and reached for the holder. There was another cellar beyond this one, and then more stairs before we were back to ground level. It probably was madness to suppose I could get everyone out into the drive without being cut down in the crossfire of what must be a battle at or near its height. But that was the plan. And it was the only plan I had.
As I took another step forward, the door in front of me opened, and I looked into the intense glare of another chemical lamp.
“Oh, it’s you!” Macmillan said impatiently. “I did hear that Edward had kicked you to death out in the drive. Now, I suppose I’ll have to do the job myself.”
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
“So Michael’s bomb is down there, is it?” Macmillan grunted. Keeping the gun in his left hand, he passed me the chemical lamp and looked at his pocket watch. “If what you say is right, there’s plenty of time to get up to the helicopter.”
“I suppose it will have to be the hero’s welcome for you in Moscow,” I said bitterly. Now I was out of the deepest cellar in the house, I could hear the rattle of the guns again outside, and the regular thump of the artillery.
“In God’s name, dear boy, not Moscow!” Macmillan cried with mock horror. “The problem with you historian chappies is that you spend so much time fussing about with the past that never understand what’s going on around you.” He laughed easily. He must have caught the look on my face, because he stopped his gradual progress towards the door and leaned against a wine rack.
“Oh, Anthony, Anthony,” he sighed. “It’s rather late for telling you anything at all. But a statesman’s plain duty is to inform those he would lead—even if the leading isn’t to be for very much longer. Listen, boy, did it never strike you as a little odd that I should be pressing on in a plot that had long since been about as confidential as the tips in The Racing Post? For months now, we’ve had Powell sniffing about, not to mention those silly Americans. Yet there I was, still plotting away and hurrying things forward.
“Well, on the one hand, there always was the chance that I could outrun everyone else. Halifax is still out of England. I still have all the authority of a Foreign Secretary. On the other—and I did hear Michael telling you in the billiard room about Plan A—I have always had a Plan B. In a few minutes, I will get into my helicopter and have myself put down just outside what I judge to be the maximum blast area from Michael’s bomb. I shall have a pile of recovered nuclear secrets, and be the only survivor of a most dastardly plot that only I was able to foil.” He stared again into my face and laughed so that his moustache quivered.