Target, page 34
“Well?” she said.
“A clever assembly,” Bohler improvised.
Aware of his difficulty, Gerda said, “It seems they’ve been lucky in locating the fault.”
The Project Director turned at the noise from the work bench. A man was holding up a transistor section, indicating where the break had been.
“Shall we go across?” invited Hannah, coming back to him.
“Of course,” said Bohler. A feeling of frustration suffused him, bringing a physical weakness to his legs. He almost stumbled as he moved back out of the satellite pod to walk around to where the two women stood waiting. He avoided looking at Gerda.
By the time they reached the bench, work had already begun re-assembling the command equipment. Hannah had a brief conversation with the men and then turned back to him. “Seems it won’t take hours after all,” she said. Her excitement at the news was immediately apparent; she seemed to have lost any suspicion of Bohler.
While they were watching the radio being re-installed and the further electrical check run to establish there was no longer any malfunction, Dr. Muller came into the room. He had a vague, distracted appearance and Hannah turned away from the satellite pod, towards him.
“What is it?”
He straightened, as if he were trying to discard the feeling physically. “Some trouble with the Africans,” he said. “It happened before in the early months here, but now it seems worse. Over a hundred have not reported for work today. The tribal elders are saying that this place is causing some evil.”
Bohler felt Gerda looking at him.
“What are you doing?” asked the Project Director.
“Sent the Africans who have remained loyal out into the villages to discover what the trouble is.” He smiled, apologetic at discussing administrative problems in’ front of strangers.
Hannah looked back towards the main chamber. “I don’t think there’s any point in delaying the final assembly any longer,” she said.
“Then let’s put the satellite into position,” agreed the Director.
The feeling of helplessness again swept through Bohler as he watched the metal petals closing over the operating equipment and the final piece of the rocket moving easily down the tracked runway towards the silo. They watched from the larger room as the television picked up its arrival in the storage vault. Technicians appeared ant-like on the screen as they operated the gantry cranes to swing the satellite into position to form the nose cone of the rocket.
When it was finally secured into position there was a smattering of applause and an isolated cheer in the control room. Muller patted Hannah Bloor’s shoulder, a congratulatory gesture.
The Project Director looked at the digital countdown. “Two days and twelve hours,” she recorded. The pride in her voice was very obvious.
“It’s going to be a resounding success,” said Muller confidently.
It was a further two hours before Bohler and Gerda could get away from the control room and the closeness to Muller and Hannah Bloor. The American walked dejectedly to his room. Gerda followed, conscious of his despair. He entered ahead of her, appearing unaware of her presence, and hunched immediately into a chair. She came to him, putting her arm around his shoulders.
“I failed,” said Bohler, pumping his hand against the chair arm in his frustration. “I had the chance and I fouled the whole thing up.”
“You didn’t,” argued the woman sympathetically. “I said it would be impossible.”
Bohler took the screwdriver from his pocket, frowned at it and then cast it disgustedly upon the daybed.
“I was actually at the gyro!” he said, awash in exasperation. “I had the damned thing located into a screw, but I wasn’t strong enough to undo it!”
“It was probably power-inserted,” she said, trying to help him. “If it were tightened with a machine, there would have been no way you could have got it out.”
“I was there!” said Bohler, appearing unaware of what she had said. “If I had been able to loosen it, the spin wouldn’t have corrected and it would have gone into a maverick orbit.”
“But you didn’t,” she said. There was a change in Gerda’s demeanor, a gradual refusal to go on accepting the self-pity.
“No,” he agreed. “I didn’t.”
“So now it’s my turn.”
“You saw the number of people in the satellite room today,” said Bohler. “What the hell do you think it’s going to be like tomorrow, around the silo?”
“Difficult,” she said. “But what other chances do we have to abort?”
“We should have been in here weeks ago. Maybe then we’d have had a proper opportunity.”
“Stop it!” she demanded, allowing her irritation to show. He looked up at her, suddenly aware of her feeling.
“You’re being defeatist,” she said. “Since we’ve been here we’ve done extraordinarily well. Today was our first attempt and it failed. So next time we’ve got to do better. And there is some success to report.”
“What?”
“The effect that the bogus priests appear to be having in the field. Muller said over a hundred Africans have stayed away.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, belatedly embarrassed. “I was behaving like a child.”
“Yes,” she said unrelenting. “You were.”
“Do you want to know something?”
“What?”
“The thing that worries me most is that now you’ve got to expose yourself.”
“It’s the job we were sent here to do.”
“Why can’t I attempt it?” he said unexpectedly.
“Do what?”
“Try to interfere with the fuel supply. Why must it be you at all?”
“Because Dr. Bloor was suspicious.”
He shook his head. “Initially, perhaps. But that was predictable. The feeling went, very quickly.”
“No,” she refused. “She might have accepted something odd just once. If you start trying to enter the silo and are found around the fuel lines, then she’ll blow the whistle.”
He reached out, finding her hand. “You’ll be as exposed as hell! The whole bloody area is televised.”
“There’s nothing else that can obviously be attempted,” she reminded him.
He got up from the chair and pulled her close to him. She was about two inches shorter; her nose came level with his lips. He kissed at the very tip and she moved her head back, wanting more. “I don’t want you taking any risks,” he said.
She laughed aloud at the illogicality of the words. “Then what am I doing here?”
“You know what I mean,” he said, dismally.
“I know what is necessary,” she said. “I know I’ve got to create some imbalance in that fuel. I know it won’t be easy but I know it’s our best chance, and I know I’m going to be terrified every single moment.”
“I want to do it,” he said, the determination surfacing.
“It wouldn’t work, after today. And you know it it.…” She reached up to kiss him. “You said we should be adult,” she said. “That we couldn’t allow what has happened to become a hindrance.”
“I know what I said.”
“Then let it remain as it is.”
“I don’t want to lose you,” he said.
She smiled up at him. “If we achieve the most spectacular success here, we’re still going to lose each other,” she said.
“Yes,” he accepted miserably.
“Do you think you love me?” she asked hopefully.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly.
“I think I love you.”
“We’re not going to win, whichever way it goes, are we?” he said.
“No,” she agreed. “We can’t win either way.”
There had been pictures of the woman, one clearer than the rest when the photographer had obviously surprised her; she had looked shocked and distraught and her husband, alongside, had appeared bewildered. Finally there had been an attempt at a television interview and they had responsed to every question with a “No comment.” Walter Jones had winced at this, because the questions were phrased precisely to elicit that sort of response, so that they appeared to confirm the suggestion that the foreign affairs advisor had had an affair with one of his teenage students.
It was two days after the television coverage that the Deputy Director met Herbert Flood, at the Sans Souci this time.
“I’m being hounded!” protested Flood, who had previously always cooperated with any press coverage. “The bastards are camped outside my house … they chase my wife to the market and photograph the kids on their way to school.”
“It can’t be pleasant,” sympathized Jones.
“Pleasant!” echoed Flood. “It’s fucking agony.”
“I’m sorry for you.”
“I’m not interested in your sympathy. I want results. The President and the Party are getting anxious: I know they are.”
“It hasn’t been easy,” said Jones.
“Nothing’s easy,” answered Flood irritably. “Who’s behind it?”
“I’m not sure,” said the Deputy Director.
“What do you mean, you’re not sure? With the facilities you have, you must know.”
“It’s a clever campaign,” said Jones. He had watched the irony without any satisfaction; like a pendulum, the innuendo and suggestions about James Peterson had subsided in almost perfect blance to the stories about Flood.
“I think it’s close to home,” ventured Jones cautiously.
“What’s close to home?”
“There’s no friendship between you and the Secretary of State, is there?” said Jones.
“Moore!” exclaimed Flood, stretching the word as if he had just received confirmation of something he already knew. “The bastard. The unmitigated bastard.”
“I’m not saying it’s him,” retreated Jones. “There are just one or two pointers.
“I’ll fix him,” vowed Flood. “I’ll fix the son-of-a-bitch for this.”
“I’d be careful,” warned the Deputy Director. “There isn’t a scrap of proof.”
“Bugger proof. I’ll fix him.” Flood sat at the table, the food before him forgotten. He roused himself. “You got access to the IRS files?” he demanded.
“In certain circumstances,” said Jones. “And this isn’t one of them.”
“Make it so,” instructed the man. “I want all the details of the tax returns he’s made over the last ten years. He lives well — too well. There’s bound to be a disparity. We’ll get his figures and then get an accountant to check them out against his known sources of income.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” promised Jones.
“I’ll get him,” repeated Flood, with bitter vehemence. “Christ how I’ll get him.”
31
They had established camp about ten miles east of Mao, towards Rig Rig. It had been an easier night than the previous one, because they had allowed more time for the insect vapor to clear the tent and then taken care with their mosquito netting. Blakey awoke to hear Makovsky humming. The Russian smiled at him through the tent flap, water already bubbling before him on a primus stove. Blakey crawled out and then perched on the bumper of the jeep, accepting the coffee that the other man handed him.
“We could drive on to Rig Rig,” suggested Makovsky.
The American shook his head. “You heard what Peterson said on the radio last night: the Africans are refusing to go near the installation. We’ve done what we were set to do.”
“Straight back to N’Djamena then?”
“Peterson said he wanted the villages we’ve been to visited again, to reinforce the fears,” reminded Blakey.
“I suppose it’s necessary,” said the Russian reluctandy.
They packed slowly, each aware that today they would confront the effects of what they had been doing and wanting to postpone the moment. Blakey’s legs were sufficiently recovered for him to drive, and Makovsky sat in the passenger seat, not talking. Occasionally he raised the field-glasses to his eyes, checking things that attracted his attention in the grass or scrub. Blakey navigated by the compass mounted in the dashboard, heading south to keep a distance from Mao and then after about ten miles turning west, to bring them to the village where they had encountered the witch-doctor.
Because he had the glasses to his face, Makovsky saw it first. “Jesus Christ!” he said, drawing the expression out.
“What is it?” demanded Blakey.
For several moments Makovsky didn’t reply, scanning left and right with the binoculars.
“What is it?” insisted the American, slowing the vehicle.
“Defoliation,” said Makovsky simply, handing the glasses across the vehicle.
The American fumbled to adjust them to his vision and then stared towards the village. It was the season when anything struggling for life was normally bleached and stunted by the sun, except immediately around the lake, but now the area ahead appeared seared, as if some enormous fire had swept across it. There was no breeze and therefore no movement and from a long way off everything looked desolate and empty.
Blakey handed back the binoculars without a word and began driving again. The defoliation was evident many miles from the village. Great swathes were cut through the savannah and the vegetation was so sparse that it was very easy, now that they were closer, to see the birds and small animals rooting and poking through the dead area: they seemed disorientated and confused. Blakey stopped at the first outcrop of trees. Bark was already flaking off, like skin scorched from a bone. There was no foliage anywhere.
“It never grows again,” said Blakey softly. “In Vietnam you could fly over the greenest, lushest jungle imaginable and then suddenly come upon something like this. I always thought of those places as a graveyard: a graveyard where all the space had been used up and abandoned.”
“They must have done it quite indiscriminately,” said Makovsky, as if he found it difficult to believe. “Just upended the containers in some disposal device and let it pour out, as they flew over.”
The vehicle stopped. They could see the carcasses of several small birds who had been directly deluged by the defoliant. They were almost atrophied blackness; the ants had already swarmed over what had died. By some freak of wind or flight-path, half the fields surrounding the village had been destroyed and half spared: the line across was almost mathematically accurate, as if it had been drawn by a ruler. Where the defoliant had fallen everything was dead — millet, sesame, even the crouched cotton bushes. The wailing was audible above the sound of the engine before they got to the village, the strange tongue-clicking yet gutteral lament of the African in times of grief. As they drove past the first set of hutments, they could see the womenfolk shuffling slowly around the village square in a prayer-line. Some of them had put dust and dirt over their hair and bodies, and where they were weeping there were bright track marks down their faces.
“Dear God, what have we done,” murmured Blakey.
During their first visit there had been an arrogance obvious in the witch-doctor, even when the rains he had forbidden had begun to fall. Now, beneath the facade he was still attempting to maintain, there was a bewilderment about Miburu, a man whose function was to protect against evil, yet who was unable to comprehend the evil that had befallen them.
Before he had waited for them to approach him, but today he came from the shade of the long hut, eager to reach them. Blakey detected two further squares for spells, in addition to that which Miburu had created to repel the rain.
“There was a wetness from the sky after the rains, “said the African. “Our crops began to die as we watched. Our skin was burned.”
Now that he was closer, Blakey could see sores on the bodies of the naked children and on the exposed arms of some of the men and women, where the defoliant had fallen directly on them. Cratered burn marks were forming; some were already festering.
They entered the long hut and assembled as they had done before, with Miburu squatting on his earth dais and the other elders grouped about him. In a voice almost without inflection, something like a chant, the African recited the destruction that had occurred: from his account, it appeared that the defoliation was very widespread. Men he had despatched to discover the extent of the damage had still not returned, but stories bush-tele-graphed from village to village talked of it having no end. There were even reports from Mao of the effect of their poisoning the water supply. Miburu talked of many deaths before the awareness that they were being caused by the river. Now the people living there were having to rely upon animal water-holes, the nearest being two miles from Mao itself. Both Blakey and Makovsky sat dully, listening to the African speak. The American’s reaction had gone beyond revulsion and horros. He had a lightheaded hallucinary feeling of unreality: it was as if he were a spectator, aware but in no way responsible. Makov-sky’s control was just slightly better. He was talking, haltingly, but still managing words, promising to inform the authorities in N’Djamena and even, despite the self-disgust that was evident to Blakey, intruding the innuendo about the complex. As soon as the conversation touched upon the rocket installation Miburu’s attitude altered, became more positive. The men who worked there had been ordered home. The messengers sent to recall them journeyed with a complete account of the devastation and Miburu’s belief that the establishment was responsible. Other witch-doctors were preaching the same conviction.
They had antiseptic cream in their first-aid boxes and, before quitting the village, Makovsky and Blakey treated as many children as they could, conscious even as they applied the dressings that the medication they had would do little to help those who had been injured. They left repeating promises to get assistance sent from the capital. It was Makovsky who broke the silence in which they travelled for several miles.
“I mean it,” he said, with tight-lipped determination. “We must get as much help for them as we can.”
