"O.K., Doctor?"
He swung round to see the big tough-faced guard who had arranged his transport step slowly across the floor, arms swinging loosely at his sides. Whether he was armed was hard to tell, but his battledress jacket could have hidden a weapon.
Maitland tapped the case full of trench mortars. "Just looking at this-breathing apparatus. Unusual design."
The guard scowled. "That's a useful piece of equipment, Doctor. Very versatile. Let's go, then." As Maitland walked back across the basement the guard pivoted on one heel and followed close to his shoulder.
"What's Marshall trying to do?" Maitland asked amiably. "Start a war?"
The guard watched Maitland thoughtfully. "Don't know what we might start. But let's not get too worried about it, Doctor. Sit down over there and take your pulse or something."
They wrapped Musgrave in a polythene shroud and lowered him into the turret of the Bethlehem. Maitland climbed in and wedged the body below the traverse, belting it down with the seat straps.
When he tried to get out he found that someone was sitting on the hatch, his feet obscuring the plexiglass window. For a moment he wondered whether to force it, then decided to take the hint. A few minutes later the navy crawler arrived and backed down the ramp. He felt it hook up to the Bethlehem, then move forward up into the street.
Powerful gusts of wind drove at the car, kicking it around. He gripped the traverse, swaying from side to side as the cabin plunged and bucked.
All around him, in the streets outside, he could hear the sounds of falling masonry.
4 The Corridors of Pain
Three times, on the way hack to the Green Park depot, the car left the roadway. Caught by tremendous crosswinds that swung it about behind the Centurion like a hapless tail, the Bethlehem plunged across the pavement, almost tipping over onto its side.
The streets were full of rubble and pieces of masonry, fragments of ornamented cornices from the older buildings, the remains of roof timbers strewn across the pavement, everywhere a heavy autumnlike fall of gray tiles.
They reached the depot at Green Park which housed Combined Rescue Operations, and entered the long tunnel of concrete sandbags that led them into the covered transport pool. A dozen other vehicles, Centurions and Bethlehems with a couple of huge M5 Titan personnel carriers, were unloading and refueling. Three of them had RN insignia; the navy, to whom Maitland was attached, shared the depot, but all the personnel in the pool wore the same drab uniforms. They looked tired and dispirited, and Maitland found himself sharing their despair. As he climbed out of the Bethlehem he leaned for a few minutes against the car, trying to free himself of the muscle and mind numbing weariness from the buffeting he had received all day.
He de-briefed himself quickly, then made his way toward the officers' quarters where he shared a small cubicle with a navy surgeon called Avery. Eager for a full role in the emergency, particularly with the RAF playing no part, the navy had put together a scratch operations unit. With Andrew Symington's help, Maifland had been assimilated with a minimum of formality. He had stayed with Andrew and his wife for a week, uselessly waiting for the wind to subside, and had been glad to be given a chance to do something positive.
Maitland closed the door and sat down wearily on his bed, grunting to Avery, who was stretched out full length, his black wind suit Unzipped.
"Hello, Donald. What's it like outside?"
Maitland shrugged. "A slight east wind blowing up." He took a cigarette from the silver case Avery passed to him. "I've been over at the Russell most of today. Not too pleasant. Looks like a foretaste of things to come. I hope everybody knows what they're doing."
Avery grunted. "Of course they don't. Reminds me of Mark Twain's crack about the weather-everyone talks about it, but no one does anything." He rolled over and switched on the portable radio standing on the floor below his bed. A fuzzy crackle sounded out eventually, almost drowned in the noise of people continually tramping up and down the corridor.
Maitland lay back, listening to phrases from the news bulletins. The BBC was still transmitting on the Home Service, half-hourly news summaries interspersed with light music and an apparently endless stream of War Office orders and recommendations. So far the government appeared to be tacitly assuming that the wind would soon spend itself and that most people possessed sufficient food and water to survive unaided in their own homes. The majority of the troops were engaged in laying communications tunnels, repairing electricity lines and reinforcing their own installations.
Avery switched the set off and sat up on one elbow for a moment, staring pensively at his wrist watch.
"What's the latest?" Maitland asked.
Avery smiled somberly. " London Bridge is falling down," he said quietly. "Wind speed's up to 180. Listening between the lines, it sounds as if things are getting pretty bad. Colossal flooding along the south coast-most of Brighton sounds as if its been washed away. General chaos building up everywhere. What I want to know is, when are they going to start doing something?"
"What can they do?"
Avery gestured impatiently. "For God's sake, you know what I mean, Donald. They're going about this whole thing the wrong way, just telling people to stay indoors and hide under the staircase. What do they think this is-a zeppelin raid? They're going to have the most fantastic casualties soon. Let alone a couple of typhoid and cholera epidemics."
Maitland nodded. He agreed with Avery but felt too tired to offer any comment.
There was a familiar tattoo on the door, and Andrew Symington put his head in. He was off duty at eight, and came over in the communications tunnel across St. James's Park to take his meals in the civilian mess at the depot before going over to the Park Lane Hotel. His wife's baby had still not arrived, at least a fortnight overdue. Dora was unconsciously holding the child to herself.
"We were just cursing these damn silly bulletins you people are putting out," Avery said. "Are you trying to convince yourselves it's a calm summer's day?"
"What's the real news, Andrew?" Maitland pressed. "I got in half an hour ago and it sounded as if the Russell wasn't the only place coming down."
"It isn't," Symington told him. His face looked drawn and tired. He lit a cigarette, inhaled quickly. "Everything I've heard indicates that we can expect the wind strength to go on increasing for several days more at least. Apparently localized areas of turbulence have to appear first, while the over-all wind strength continues to increase, and they've shown no signs of doing so. Whatever happens, it's bound to go up another fifty at least."
Avery whistled. "Over 230! God Almighty." He tapped the wooden wall partition which was springing backward and forward as air pressed its way past. "Do you think this place will stand it?"
"This building probably will, even if it loses the roof, but already most of the domestic houses in the British Isles are starting to come down. Roofs are flying off, walls caving in-not all that many modern houses are fitted with basements. People are running out of food, trying to leave their homes to reach the aid stations. They're being sucked out of their doorways before they know what's hit them, carried half a mile within ten seconds." Symington paused. "We aren't getting much news in now from the States and western Europe, but you can imagine what the Far East looks like. Governmental control no longer exists. Most of the radio stations are just putting out weak local identification signals."
For half an hour they talked, then Symington left them and Maitland slipped off to sleep, still wearing his wind suit. He was vaguely aware of Avery's getting up to go out on duty, then sank into a heavy restless sleep.
Six hours later, as they listened to their briefing in one of the lecture rooms at the far end of the depot, the sounds of collapsing masonry thudded dimly in the distance. The walls shifted uneasily, as if one end of the depot were seized in the mandibles of some enormous insect. An outside wall carrying the stairway up to the roof at the windward end of the barracks had collapsed, dropping the stairway like a pile of plates. Luckily the internal walls that divided the stairway from the remainder of the barracks held long enough for them to extricate themselves and most of their luggage, but five minutes after they retreated to the adjacent building the barracks toppled in a whirling cloud of dust and exploding brickwork.