His hands caressed the wheel as he drove along the long straight stretches of Forest Road. The headlights bored a tunnel through the twilight, throwing the trees along the roadside into sharp silhouette; beyond them there might have been nothing at all. The blood seemed to throb through his veins as if keeping in time with the roar of the engine. All too soon open road was left behind, and he was forced to cut his speed as he entered the East London suburbs and followed Harry’s directions towards his goal.
It was nearing seven-thirty by the time he reached his destination and glided to a standstill behind Harry’s van. He made a rapid final check of the automatic he had taken from Yakovitz before climbing out of the car and taking stock of his surroundings.
The district, in the grandiose language of the local authority, was scheduled for redevelopment, and consequently they had blitzed it more effectively than the Luftwaffe could ever have done, and then, for some reason known only to the planners who decide such things, had left it alone and apparently forgotten about it.
Acres of rubble now stretched where once there had been houses, shops, and a community of people. Fences made of old doors sectioned off what had once been blocks of buildings. The streets that ran between them were no more than continuous lines of potholes; the pavements were cracked and broken, and in some parts had ceased to exist altogether. What few buildings remained standing were often without roofs or windows, and no one had bothered to repair the street lamps that had long since been shattered by itinerant vandals.
Simon walked slowly around the next comer, keeping to the shadow of the fence as he waited for Harry to show himself.
“Psst!”
He stopped and looked around but there was no way of telling where the sifflation had come from.
“Over here,” croaked a hoarse voice.
This time he managed to locate its source, and stepped through a gap in the fence to where Harry-the-Nose was standing. Harry beckoned the Saint to follow him across to the far side of the site, where he clambered up to the top of a pile of rubble and the Saint joined him.
From there it was possible to see over the top of the next hoarding, and they had a clear field of vision on every side.
“You took your time, Mr. Templar,” Harry said aggrievedly. “I’m starving, I ain’t had nothing for hours.”
“My stomach bleeds for you,” commiserated the Saint. “Where are they?”
Harry pointed to a large building that the bulldozers appeared to have missed.
“Over there. I saw a light on the third floor about half an hour ago, but nothing since.”
“Any comings or goings?”
“Two of ’em left in a car about five minutes before you got ’ere. But the twist wasn’t with ’em.”
Simon Templar drew a deep satisfied breath.
“Okay, Harry, you’ve done a good job. I’ll recommend you for a Star of David.”
“That’s fine, Mr. Templar,” Harry said. “But what about me money?”
“Tomorrow night, usual place, same time. Now toddle off and get some food.”
The man needed no further prompting. The Saint waited until he had heard the van’s engine splutter into life before he swung himself over the fence and started towards the building Harry had indicated.
What had seemed at first like a profligate squandering of priceless time now justified itself; the dusk had finally deepened into dark, and the operation that he contemplated cried out for the co-operation of nightfall. Furthermore, now that two of the Ungodly had set off in plenty of time to meet the deadline on Waterloo Bridge, the numerical odds against him had been significantly reduced.
And it still wasn’t going to be easy.
The factory was a perfect example of Victorian utility architecture at its most hideous, but he needed only a brief look to understand its attractions for the terrorists. It stood four storeys tall, surrounded by high walls on three sides and flush with the canal on the fourth. Between the factory and its perimeter boundaries was a wide courtyard, the whole of which was clearly visible from any of the windows at the front. The building itself was flat-fronted and featureless except for the rows of small barred windows that marked the different levels of the floors, giving it more the look of a prison than a place of work. Not, he reflected wryly, that there was probably much difference between the two when the towering chimneys at either end of the building had belched smoke for the first time.
The only entrance to the courtyard was through a wide archway, and there was nothing between it and the factory that even a cat could have used for cover. The Saint considered the problem.
“Looks like we have to risk getting wet,” he decided.
He picked his way carefully between the piles of rubble and knee-high nettles, and followed the wall around the side of the factory until he reached the canal.
The water was blacker than the sky and smelt like an unventilated sewer. The bank was littered with chunks of rusting iron, rotting furniture, and heaps of assorted household refuse. The top of an old car was just visible above the top of the water.
The rear of the factory rose sheer from the water’s edge, except for the crumbling remains of a short wooden jetty in the centre and a narrow catwalk that linked it with each end of the building. Above it on every floor were doorways, each with its own hoist, that had once served to transfer the company’s goods to and from the canal barges.
The rear wall of the building looked ready to slide into the water the first time a stiff wind blew, but the chance of a fall was less uninviting than the probability of collecting a bullet in a frontal assault, and he saw little attraction in being the moving target in a shooting gallery. He stepped onto the catwalk, pressed his back against the wall, and started to edge sideways towards the jetty.
The stone under his feet had been worn smooth by the weather, and the subsidence of the building had caused the ledge to tilt downwards so that every step was an individual performance in the art of balancing that would not have disgraced a tightrope walker. The Saint pressed the flat of his hands against the wall, drawing an absurd sense of security from the feel of his fingers probing the shallow cracks between the bricks, in the same way that a soldier under shellfire hides behind a bush.
His progress was agonizingly slow, and all the while he was aware that time was ticking away. With every minute spent trying to find a way in, his chances of reaching Leila and getting out again before the terrorists arrived back diminished. At one spot a yard of the ledge had completely broken away, and he had to turn on his toes until he was facing the wall and search for crevices in the brickwork large enough for him to curl his fingers into. He stepped into space supported only by the fingertips of one hand while his other desperately tried to find a similar hold. A loose brick dislodged by his probing slid from the wall and landed with a splash in the water below, and then his foot touched the ledge again and he was able to take the strain from the muscles of his hand and arm.
The ledge widened as it reached the jetty and he was able to turn sideways onto the wall as he tested the strength of the planking by pushing out one leg and slowly lowering his weight onto it. The board creaked in protest but held. He glanced at his watch and was shocked to learn that it had taken him nearly fifteen minutes to travel twice that number of yards. It was a quarter to eight. Already the rendezvous would have taken place and in fifteen minutes, possibly less, they would have arrived back.
Two heavy doors led from the jetty into the factory. A thick iron chain and padlock had been passed through the handles and he swore swiftly as he knelt and examined the barrier. Despite the thick coating of rust it was still strong enough to resist anything short of a sledgehammer. The handles themselves offered brighter prospects. They too were of iron, but much older and more corroded than the chain, and the wood to which they were fixed was badly rotted. They moved slightly when he pulled against them with both hands, and he glanced around desperately for anything that could be used as a lever.