“The freeze-thaw cycle,” Will chimed in, then wished he hadn’t as Parry gave him a sharp look.
“So how does all this help us, exactly?” the old man asked.
“Time and water erosion wait for no man.” Drake smiled as he went back to the first window and dragged an image from it. “It helps us because if you overlay the geological report with the construction plans, the area of accelerated erosion is” — he pointed at the plan — “right next to the external wall at the end of Level 2.”
“So it’s the most vulnerable point in the Complex,” Eddie said. “And if we were to plant every last piece of explosive against that wall, there’s a slim chance we could blow a way out for ourselves.”
Parry whistled. “High-stakes stuff,” he said. As Parry leaned on a neighboring desk and began to tug his beard in thought, Will noticed that everyone’s eyes were on him. Stephanie even had her mouth open and was shaping words as if she was willing him to decide that the scheme was feasible.
Parry was shaking his head when he eventually spoke again. “I see what you’re saying, but the volume of explosive material in the arsenal will be a limiting factor. And even if we plowed ahead with every last stick, if the plan fails, all the remaining oxygen in the Complex will have been used up. We’d have brought forward the last curtain call.” With a sniff, he crossed his arms. “Besides that, what’s left of the Complex might just come crashing down on our heads.”
“Er . . . Commander,” Sergeant Finch began. “Aren’t you forgetting someth —”
“No, Finch, I’m not!” Parry snapped savagely at him.
Drake was looking from his father to Sergeant Finch and then back again as he tried to work out what their exchange had been all about. “If there’s something you two aren’t telling us, I think we have a right to know.”
Parry was on his feet in an instant. “No,” he barked. “There are some things that nobody has a right to know. And Finch here has spoken out of turn, when he doesn’t know the whole story.”
Mrs. Burrows’s voice was quiet and controlled as she joined the conversation. “Parry, we’re the only people in the world who are aware that the Phase might still be under way. And we’re the only ones who can do anything to stop it. So what can be so important that you’re prepared to let us all die in this place?”
Parry was looking at the ground and tensing a leg as if he was racked with indecision. He suddenly raised his head to his son. “Are you certain that we’ve got a chance with this cockamamie idea of yours? Are you absolutely certain?”
“Within the tolerances of the drawings we’ve seen, and on the assumption that more erosion has taken place . . . yes,” Drake replied. “The only real negative is that we could do with two or three times the amount of explosive to punch through the reinforced Complex wall and the mountainside.”
“You boys do like to use brute force, don’t you?” Parry said, then thought for a moment. “OK, you’d all better follow me,” he decided, giving Sergeant Finch a nod.
As Parry directed, they collected sledgehammers, coal chisels, and mallets on the way. The elevators were out of action, so the Colonel carried Sergeant Finch on his back, while Drake and Sweeney hauled his mobility scooter down the stairs.
Once they were all on Level 6, Parry led them past the water tanks and to the arsenal at the very end of the floor. He strode through one of the aisles between the racking shelves until he reached a large metal cabinet against the wall.
“Several of you get to work and move any explosives and incendiaries within a twenty-foot radius of here. Last thing we want is to ignite anything with a stray spark,” Parry said with a wave of his hand at the shelves. Then he supervised his son and Sweeney as they slid the metal cabinet out of the way. The wall behind appeared to be no different from anywhere else, but Parry took up a coal chisel and mallet and began to tap away at it.
It quickly became apparent that it wasn’t just a solid slab of reinforced concrete. He’d located an area at the bottom of the wall that gave off a different sound when he chipped at it. And he was working his way vertically up the wall when he stopped to address Will. “You’re good at this sort of stuff, laddie. Help yourself to some tools and find the other side of the doorway,” he said, pointing four feet or so along the base of the wall.
Will found that there was a wooden batten buried just below the surface of the concrete, and it didn’t take much effort to uncover it. As the two of them continued to work, a rectangle the size of a pair of double doors gradually revealed itself. Once they were finished, they both stood back.
“Open Sesame,” Parry said. “That’s our way in.”
Having checked that the surrounding shelves were clear, Parry turned to everyone. “Now we break down the concrete in the doorway.”
“What’s in there?” Drake said. “An explosives cache?”
Ignoring the question, Parry swung a sledgehammer at a bottom corner of the rectangle.
Sergeant Finch wasn’t so reticent. “Yes, the secondary store is ’idden there,” he said. “A top secret store.”
“And the rest,” Parry muttered under his breath as he kept swinging. Both Sweeney and the Colonel joined in. The concrete was gradually yielding, but not as quickly as Will had thought it would.
“Can I have a go?” someone asked, striding into the arsenal.
“Chester!” Will burst out, a big smile on his face. Elliott was following several paces behind, her expression one of concern.
“About time I did something,” Chester said as the Colonel passed his sledgehammer over and the boy set to work.
Sweeney was the first to break through, and stopped to take a look.
“No, carry on,” Parry said. “Better that we clear it completely.”
Some twenty minutes later the Colonel was attacking the last piece of concrete at the top of the opening. After it crashed to the floor, Parry used his flashlight to show the way. They all filed in behind him.
“There’s more than enough here for what we need,” Drake said, taking in the sheer number of wooden crates as Parry flicked his flashlight beam over them. “But this is nothing fancy — just your plain vanilla postwar explosive stock. So what was with all that melodrama earlier?”
“The best way to hide something is to hide it in something already hidden,” Parry announced as he spun around to face everybody. “You cannot under any circumstances breathe a word of what you are about to learn — not to anybody.” He drew himself up to his full height. “I am now going to ask you each to give your consent that, under the Defense of the Realm Act 1973, as revised 1975 and 1976, that you irrevocably and unreservedly yield to the powers contained within the act.” Parry then spoke their names in turn.
“Drake?”
“Whatever all that means, yes,” Drake said.
“Finch?”
“Yes, Commander.”
“Colonel Bismarck — you are hereby granted full British nationality. I need your answer.”
“Can Parry do that?” Will whispered to Chester as the Colonel indicated that he agreed.
“And, likewise, Eddie the Styx, you are hereby granted full citizenship of this country. Do you agree?”
“Yes, sir,” Eddie replied.
“Mrs. Burrows?”
“Yes, Parry,” she said gently. “Why ever not?”
“Elliott — sorry, I forgot that you also need to be granted British nationality. Answer me, please.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Sweeney?”
“Yes, boss.”
Parry then addressed Will and Chester, who confirmed their agreement.
“Stephanie?” Parry said.
“Like, yes,” she replied.
“Right,” Parry said. “You should be aware that if any one of you leaks information regarding this matter, under the Defense of the Realm Act, you will be liable to summary automatic execution without trial or any form of legal recourse whatsoever.”
“Execution?” Mrs
. Burrows said.
“I’d have full authorization to kill you,” Parry answered matter-of-factly. And from the tone of his voice, everyone knew he meant it. “After the nuclear disarmament treaty of 1972, it was resolved by a secret subcommittee within the Ministry of Defense that we were leaving ourselves at a howling dis-advantage. So . . .”
Parry directed his flashlight beam into the corner of the room.
There were ten metal containers there, shining dully.
“Huh?” Stephanie said, wholly unimpressed after all the buildup.
“We stuck a few TNDs away in here,” Parry said, “for a rainy day.”
“TNDs?” Will asked.
“Thermonuclear devices,” Parry explained.
“Nukes . . . he’s talking about nukes!” Drake said, staring at the containers. “And he’s got to be bloody joking!”
Parry and Sergeant Finch, armed with his ever-present clipboard, went around both the arsenal and the secondary cache, marking chalk crosses on the crates that contained the most potent explosives. Bit by bit, these were then loaded onto a trolley, which was pushed to the stairwell. Will and Chester took over from there, finding they had the unenviable task of lugging each crate up the eight flights of stairs to Level 2, where another trolley was waiting for them.
It was hard work: The wooden crates were heavy, and the boys were suffering from the lack of air. As they labored up the stairs with the umpteenth crate between them, Chester seemed to be oblivious to the rope handles cutting into his hands. They finally cleared the stairs with their crate and placed it carefully on the trolley with all the others.
Leaning against the wall and breathing heavily, Will caught his friend’s eye. Chester gave him a broad grin as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
“You OK?” Will asked him.
“Just pleased to be doing something,” Chester replied. Regardless of the way he seemed to be coping, Will was concerned about him, but there wasn’t much he could do right now.
Chester mopped his brow. “Where’s Drake got to? I say we take this load to him ourselves.”
“Sure,” Will agreed.
With Will pulling and Chester pushing, they wheeled the heavily laden trolley down the corridor. One of the wheels had begun to squeal plaintively. “Reminds me of when we were emptying the wheelbarrow on Highfield Common,” Chester remarked.
As they came to the end of the corridor, they steered the trolley through a doorway and into the utility room Drake had identified. He’d said it was their best bet to punch a way through the mountainside.
The room was already piled high with crates, and Drake was in the process of embedding pencil-sized detonators into each one, which were connected by a skein of cables.
“Cool,” Drake said, glancing at the trolley. “I’ll unload it myself if you want to get on.”
“How many more do you need?” Chester asked, looking at the stacks of crates beside Drake.
“Enough to fill this room, then the one next to it,” Drake answered. “I reckon that’s another twenty or so trips with the trolley.”
“Twenty!” Chester exclaimed, laughing in an exaggerated way. “Cool — we’ll keep ’em coming,” he added as he left the room. They could still hear his laughter as he passed down the corridor, slapping the wall and saying “More, more, more!”
“He’s not himself,” Drake pronounced in a low voice, frowning.
“Are any of us?” Will shot back.
“Well, keep a close eye on him, won’t you, Will?” Drake said.
It took the best part of a day to prepare the two rooms. Finally, Drake walked the distance up the stairs and into the Hub, a drum rotating in his hands as he played out a cable behind him.
Parry had been concerned that even if the explosion blew a way through, it might also bring down the ceiling of Level 2 in the process, sealing their way out and negating the whole exercise. There was no way of closing the blast doors to the level, but at Parry’s direction, everyone piled sandbags around the two rooms in a bid to contain some of the inward force of the blast. Parry still wasn’t satisfied that they were doing all they could on this front, so he oversaw the construction of another sandbag barrier halfway down the corridor.
The time had come. Everyone was waiting outside the small canteen off the Hub, where Chester had first noticed his mother behaving strangely. Drake and Eddie had picked it because they believed it would be a good place for them all to shelter from the blast.
“All systems go,” Parry said, and everyone trooped into the canteen, and the door was shut behind them. They watched as Drake untwisted the two glinting copper wires at the end of the cable, then connected them to the terminals on a detonator.
No one spoke. As Mrs. Burrows stroked Colly, there was a chorus of anxious meows from the row of wicker baskets along the top of the work surface. Stephanie and Elliott had had a devil of a job rounding up Sergeant Finch’s cats from their various hiding places in the Complex, but it was the least they could do for the old man.
Drake had told everyone to stow their Bergens in one corner, so they had their kits close by them. And in addition to the many fire extinguishers they’d brought into the room, Parry had ensured that there was enough food and water to last them a few days.
Drake tugged the wires to make sure they were firmly attached to the terminals, then nodded to his father.
Parry took a breath, and his voice was gentle for a change. “I don’t think there’s much to say except bloody good luck to every one of us. I sincerely hope God’s smiling on us today.”
“Amen,” said Sweeney.
Parry tapped his walking stick twice on the ground. “Now can we all assume safety positions, please?”
Sergeant Finch was helped out of his mobility scooter and then everyone did as they’d been told, finding a place on the floor. They bowed their heads, their hands clasped behind the napes of their necks.
Will was watching as Drake wound the handle on the detonator to build up an electrical charge. As it went faster and faster, the whirring of the dynamo filled the room.
“That’ll be enough,” he decided, hinging back the safety guard around the push handle.
“OK?” he asked.
“OK,” Parry replied.
“See you on the other side,” Drake said.
He rammed the handle home.
THE ELEVATOR ROSE through the levels of the Chancellery, the massive, monolithic, arched government building at the very center of New Germania. As it came to a stop, the doors slid open and a pair of Styx Limiters stepped from it. Their boots beat in perfect unison as they marched over the highly polished marble floors.
The Chancellor’s assistant was at her station, a Baroque gilded table with a telephone and a vase of wilted flowers on it. She was brushing her hair as she observed the two soldiers approaching. There would have been a time when she’d have been paralyzed with fear at the sight of these ghoulish men with their skeleton-thin faces and jet-black eyes. Men that reeked of death and destruction.
But now, as they paused in front of her table, she regarded them with a sleepy detachment.
“Is he in?” one of them demanded in a growl.
She nodded with that sheep-eyed look that spoke of intensive Darklighting — along with almost every other inhabitant of New Germania, she’d been subjected to exces-sive amounts of the treatment, and it had all but fried her brain.
And her appearance had changed considerably since the day, several months before, when Rebecca Two and the Limiter General had made their first visit to the Chancellery. She still wore her efficient blue suit, but the dark roots of her platinum hair were showing, and her makeup was carelessly applied.
She watched as one of the Limiters kicked open the large wooden doors to the Chancellor’s office and they both stormed in.
Still brushing her hair, she listened to the commotion inside the room. Then the Limiters emerged, dragging the corpulent Chancellor, Herr Friedrich, between them. They must
have caught him during one of his typically lavish lunches, since he still had a napkin tucked into his shirt.
“I’m going out for a while, Frau Long,” he managed to say before he was carted off down the corridor.
With two outriders blazing the way, the official limousine roared down Berliner Strasse, one of the grandest and usually busiest roads in New Germania. But other than this single vehicle, with its old-fashioned swept-back airflow styling and gleaming silver paintwork, there was no traffic now.
As the vehicle drew to a halt near the waiting delegation, the door opened. Placing a dainty combat boot on the chalk-colored road, Rebecca One emerged unhurriedly from the vehicle. And, just as unhurriedly, she made her way toward the delegation, inclining her head to listen to the forlorn drone of sirens resounding across the city.
Then she turned to survey the opposite side of the broad avenue across the central reservation with its palm trees, where a multitude of people were standing in several queues. There were so many New Germanians there that the lines wound up and down the baking surface of the road. And not one of the people spoke or made a sound, simply shuffling forward as the queues moved at an interminably slow rate.
Rebecca One blew through her lips. “Water . . . somebody bring me some water,” she said, flapping her long black coat open to circulate air to her body.
A Limiter soldier in the delegation immediately removed a canteen from his belt and passed it to her. She took several long gulps before handing it back. “This climate — it’s too much,” she said, squinting at the ever-burning sun directly overhead in the sky. She lowered her eyes to the Limiter General, who was waiting for his orders. She frowned slightly as she studied the sand-colored fatigues he and the other Limiters were wearing. “I leave you in charge and this is what happens. I know the heat is the reason you’ve ditched your uniforms, but I’m not sure I approve of the replacement. It’s not really us, is it? A little too beach party for my taste.”