"I hope you have a very pleasant Pesach," he said.
The young man stared. "You Jewish?"
"No," answered Robin, uncertain whether the question related to his nationality or to his religion. If the latter, he would have to reply that his father was an atheist, and his mother went to church once a year on Christmas Day. "No, I come from Little Bletford in England, but I do know that today is the 14th day of Nisan and that you have a public holiday tomorrow."
This, in fact, was the reason for so much traffic, he supposed, and the reason why the city itself had been so crowded. He hoped the young man was suitably impressed by his knowledge.
"It's your Feast of Unleavened Bread," he told him.
The young man smiled again, showing his row of white teeth, and, laughing, he called something over his shoulder to his companion with the drill, who shouted in reply, before applying his drill to the surface of the road again. The earsplitting sound began once more, and the young man cupped his hands to his mouth and called up to Robin, "It is also the Festival of our Freedom," he shouted. "You are young, like us. Enjoy it too."
Robin waved his hand and began walking towards the New Gate, his hand clenched tightly round the piece of rock in his pocket. The Festival of our Freedom... It sounded better than the Passover. More modern, more up-to-date. More suitable for, as his grandmother would say, this day and age. And whether it meant freedom from bondage, as it did in the Old Testament, or freedom from the rule of the Roman Empire, which the Jews hoped for at the time of the Crucifixion, or freedom from hunger and poverty and homelessness, which the young men digging in the road had won for themselves today, it was all one and the same thing. Everyone, everywhere, wanted freedom from something, and Robin decided that it would be a good idea if Pesach and Easter could be combined throughout the world, and then all of us, he thought, could join in celebrating the Festival of our Freedom.
The bus took the road north from the Mount of Olives before sundown. There had been no further drama. Bob and Jill Smith, having searched the precincts of the Holy Sepulchre in vain, had turned their steps in the direction of the New Gate and had come across Robin, perfectly composed, entering the city behind a group of singing pilgrims from the coast. The bus had been late departing because of Miss Dean. The ambulance had taken her to hospital, where she had been detained for a number of hours suffering from shock, but luckily with no external or internal injuries. She had been given an injection and a sedative, and then the doctor had pronounced her fit to travel, with strict injunctions that she should be put straight to bed directly they were back in Haifa. Kate Foster had become nurse in charge of the patient.
"It is so kind of you," Miss Dean had murmured, "so very kind."
It was decided by all not to mention her unfortunate accident. Nor did Miss Dean allude to it herself. She sat silently, with a rug over her knees, between the Fosters. Lady Althea was silent too. Her blue chiffon scarf masked the lower part of her face, giving her the appearance of a Muslim woman who had not relinquished the veil. If anything, it added to her dignity and grace. She too had a rug over her knees, and the Colonel held her hand beneath it.
The young Smiths held hands more openly, Jill sporting a new bangle, an inexpensive one that Bob had bought for her as they passed near one of the souks on their return earlier in the day after finding Robin.
Babcock sat beside Robin. Like Miss Dean, he also wore a change of clothing--a pair of trousers borrowed from Jim Foster which were a shade too large for him. No one passed any remarks, and for this he was unspeakably thankful. No one looked back at the city of Jerusalem as the bus skirted Mount Scopus--that is to say, no one but Robin. The ninth hour of the 14th day of Nisan had come and gone, and the thieves, or the insurrectionists, whichever they were, had been taken down from their crosses. Jesus too, his body perhaps in a grave deep in the rock below where the young laborers had been drilling. Now the young men could go home, and wash, and meet their families, and look forward to the public holiday. Robin turned to the Rev. Babcock at his side.
"It's rather a shame," he said, "that we couldn't have stayed two more days."
Babcock, who wished for nothing more than to be safely back on board ship so that he could shut himself in his cabin and try to forget his shame in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, marveled at the resilience of the young. The boy had been dragging round the city all day, and had nearly lost himself into the bargain.
"Why, Robin?" he asked.
"Well, you never know," Robin replied. "Of course it's not very probable in this day and age, but we might have seen the Resurrection."
The Breakthrough
My part in the affair started on September 18th, when my chief sent for me and told me he was transferring me to Saxmere on the east coast. He was sorry about it, he said, but I was the only one with the necessary technical qualifications for the particular work they had on hand. No, he couldn't give me any details; they were an odd lot down there, and shut themselves up behind barbed wire at the slightest provocation. The place had been a radar experimental station a few years back, but this was finished, and any experiments that were going on now were of an entirely different nature, something to do with vibrations and the pitch of sound.
"I'll be perfectly frank with you," said my chief, removing his horn-rimmed spectacles and waving them in the air apologetically. "The fact is that James MacLean is a very old friend of mine. We were at Cambridge together and I saw a lot of him then and afterwards, but our paths diverged, and he tied himself up in experimental work of rather a dubious nature. Lost the government a lot of money, and didn't do his own reputation much good either. I gather that's forgotten, and he's been reinstated down at Saxmere with his own handpicked team of experts and a government grant. They're stuck for an electronics engineer--which is where you come in. MacLean has sent me an S.O.S. for someone I can vouch for personally--in other words, he wants a chap who won't talk. You'd do me a personal favor if you went."
Put like this, there was little I could do but accept. It was a damned nuisance, all the same. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was to leave Associated Electronics Ltd., and its unique facilities for research, and drift off to the east coast to work for someone who had blotted his copybook once and might do so again.
"When do you want me to go?" I asked.
The chief looked more apologetic than ever.
"As soon as you can make it. The day after tomorrow? I'm really very sorry, Saunders. With any luck you'll be back by Christmas. I've told MacLean I'm lending you to him for this particular project only. No question of a long-term transfer. You're too valuable here."
This was the sop. The pat on the back. A.E.L. would forget about me for the next three months. I had another question, though.
"What sort of a chap is he?"
"MacLean?" My chief paused before replacing his horn-rims, always a signal of dismissal. "He's what I'd call an enthusiast, the kind that don't let go. A fanatic in his way. Oh, he won't bore you. I remember at Cambridge he spent most of his time bird-watching. He had some peculiar theory then about migration, but he didn't inflict it on us. He nearly chucked physics for neurology, but thought better of it--the girl he later married persuaded him. Then came the tragedy. She died after they'd only been married a year."
My chief replaced his spectacles. He had no more to say or, if he had, it was beside the point. As I was leaving the room he called after me, "You can keep that last piece of information to yourself. About his wife, I mean. His staff down there may not know anything about it."
It was not until I had actually packed up at A.E.L. and left my comfortable digs, and the train was drawing out of Liverpool Street station, that the full force of my situation hit me. Here I was, lumbered with a job I didn't want in an outfit I knew nothing about, and all as a personal favor to my chief, who obviously had some private reason for obliging his one-time colleague. As I stared moodily out of the carriage window, feeling more bloody-minded every minute, I kept seeing the exp
ression on my successor's face when I told him I was going to Saxmere.
"That dump?" he said. "Why, it's a joke--they haven't done any serious research there for years. The Ministry have given it over to the crackpots, hoping they'll blow themselves to pieces."
A few discreet offhand inquiries in other quarters had brought the same answer. A friend of mine with a sense of humor advised me over the telephone to take golf clubs and plenty of paperbacks. "There's no sort of organization," he said. "MacLean works with a handful of chaps who think he's the Messiah. If you don't fall into line he ignores you, and you'll find yourself doing sweet F.A."
"Fine. That suits me. I need a holiday," I lied, hanging up with feelings of intense irritation against the world in general.
It was typical, I suppose, of my approach to the whole business that I hadn't checked thoroughly on timetables, and therefore an added annoyance to find that I had to get out at Ipswich, wait forty minutes, and board a slow train to Thirlwall, which was the station for Saxmere. It was raining when I finally descended upon the empty windswept platform, and the porter who took my ticket told me that the taxi which usually waited for this particular train had been snapped up five minutes before.
"There's a garage opposite the Three Cocks," he added. "They might still be open and could run you over to Saxmere."
I walked past the booking office carrying my bags and blaming myself for my bad staff-work. As I stood outside the station wondering whether to brave the doubtful hospitality of the Three Cocks--it was close on seven, and even if a car was not available I could do with a drink--a very ancient Morris came swerving into the station yard and pulled up in front of me. The driver got out and made a dive for my bags.
"You are Saunders, I take it?" he asked, smiling. He was young, not more than about nineteen, with a shock of fair hair.
"That's right," I said. "I was just wondering where the hell I'd raise a taxi."
"You wouldn't," he answered. "On a wet night the Yanks swipe the lot. Anything on wheels that will take 'em out of Thirlwall. Hop in, will you?"
I'd forgotten about Thirlwall being a U.S. air base, and made a mental note to avoid the Three Cocks in my leisure hours. American personnel on the loose are not among my favorite companions.
"Sorry about the rattle," apologized the driver as we swerved through the town to the accompaniment of what sounded like a couple of petrol cans rolling under the backseat. "I keep meaning to fix it, but never find time. My name's Ryan, by the way, Ken Ryan, always known as Ken. We don't go in for surnames at Saxmere."
I said nothing. My Christian name is Stephen, nor had anyone ever shortened it to Steve. My gloom increased and I lit a cigarette. Already the houses of Thirlwall lay behind us and our road, having traversed a mile or two of flat countryside consisting of turnip fields, suddenly shot up onto a sandy track across a heath, over which we proceeded in a series of bumps until my head nearly hit the roof.
My companion apologized once more.
"I could have taken you in by the main entrance," he said, "but this way is so much shorter. Don't worry, the springs are used to it."
The sandy track topped a rise and there below us, stretching into infinity, lay acre upon acre of wasteland, marsh and reed, bounded on the left by sand dunes with the open sea beyond. The marshes were intersected here and there by dykes, beside which stood clumps of forlorn rushes bending to the wind and rain, the dykes in their turn forming themselves into dank pools, one or two of them miniature lakes, ringed about with reeds.
Our road, the surface of which was now built up with clinkers and small stones, descended abruptly to this scene of desolation, winding like a narrow ribbon with the marsh on either side. In the far distance a square tower, gray and squat, stood out against the skyline, and as we drew nearer I could see beyond the tower itself the curving spiral of the one-time radar installation, brooding over the wasteland like a giant oyster shell. This, then, was Saxmere. My worst forebodings could not have conjured up a more forbidding place.
My companion, sensing probably from my silence that I lacked enthusiasm, gave me a half glance.
"It looks a bit grim in this light," he said, "but that's the rain. The weather's pretty good on the whole, though the wind is keen. We get some stunning sunsets."
The laugh with which I greeted his remark was intended to be ironic, but it missed its mark, or was taken as encouragement, for he added, "If you're keen on birds you've come to the right spot. Avocets breed here in the spring, and last March I heard the bittern boom."
I choked back the expletive that rose to my lips--his phraseology struck me as naive--and while admitting indifference to all objects furred or feathered I expressed surprise that anything in such a dreary locality should have a desire to breed at all. My sarcasm was lost, for he said, quite seriously, "Oh, you'd be surprised," and ground the Morris to a halt before a gate set in a high wired fence.
"Have to unlock this," he told me, jumping out of the car, and I saw that now we had come to Saxmere itself. The area ahead was bounded on all sides by this same fence, some ten feet in height, giving the place the look of a concentration camp. This agreeable vista was enhanced by the sudden appearance of an Alsatian dog, who loped out of the marshes to the left, and stood wagging its tail at young Ken as he unlocked the gate.
"Where are the tommy guns?" I asked, when he climbed back into the driving seat. "Or does the dog's handler watch us unseen from some concrete dugout in the marsh?"
This time he had the grace to laugh as we passed through the barricade. "No guns, no handlers," he said. "Cerberus is as gentle as a lamb. Not that I expected to find him here, but Mac will have him under control."
He got out once more and locked the gate, while the dog, his head pointing across the marsh, took no more notice of us. Then all at once, pricking his ears, he dived into the reeds, and I watched him running along a narrow muddy track in the direction of the tower.
"He'll be home before we are," said Ken, letting in the clutch, and the car swerved to the right along a broad asphalt road, the marsh giving place now to scrub and shingle.
The rain had stopped, the clouds had broken into splintered fragments, and the squat tower of Saxmere stood out bold and black against a copper sky. Did this, I wondered, herald one of the famous sunsets? If so, no member of the staff appeared to be taking advantage of it. Road and marsh alike were deserted. We passed the fork to the main entrance and turned left towards the disused radar installation and the tower itself, grouped about with sheds and concrete buildings. The place looked more like a deserted Dachau than ever.
Ken drove past the tower and the main buildings, taking a side road running seaward, at the end of which was a row of prefabricated huts.
"Here we are," he said, "and what did I tell you? Cerberus has beaten us to it."
The dog emerged from a track on the left and ran off behind the huts.
"How is he trained?" I asked. "A hi-fi whistle?"
"Not exactly," answered my companion.
I got out of the car and he heaved my bags from the rear seat.
"These are the sleeping quarters, I suppose?"
I glanced about me. The prefabs at least looked wind-and watertight.
"It's the whole works," replied Ken. "We sleep, feed, and do everything here."
He ignored my stare and led the way ahead. There was a small entrance hall, and a corridor beyond running right and left. Nobody was about. The walls of both hall and corridor were a dull gray, the floor covered with linoleum. The impression was that of a small-town country surgery after hours.
"We feed at eight, but there's loads of time," said Ken. "You'd like to see your room and have a bath, perhaps."
I had no particular desire for a bath, but I badly needed a drink. I followed him down the left-hand corridor, and he opened a door and switched on the light, then crossed the floor and pulled aside the curtains.
"Sorry about that," he said. "Janus likes to bed us down early before going
through to the kitchen. Winter or summer, these curtains are drawn at six-thirty, and the covers removed from the beds. He's a stickler for routine."
I looked around. Whoever designed the room must have had a hospital training all right. It had the bare essentials. Bed, washbasin, chest of drawers, wardrobe, one chair. The window gave onto the entrance front. The blankets on the bed were folded hospital fashion, and a military hospital at that.
"O.K.?" asked Ken. He looked puzzled. Possibly my expression surprised him.
"Fine," I answered. "Now what about a drink?"
I followed him up the corridor once more, across the entrance hall, and on through a swing door at the far end. I heard the light clack-clack of ping-pong balls, and braced myself for frivolity. The room we entered was empty. The sportsmen, whoever they were, were playing in the room beyond. Here there were easy chairs, a table or two, an electric fire and a bar in the far corner, behind which my youthful companion installed himself. I noticed, with misgiving, two enormous urns.
"Coffee or cocoa?" he asked. "Or do you prefer something cool? I can recommend the orange juice with a splash of soda."
"I'd like a Scotch," I said.
He looked distressed. His expression became that of an anxious host whose guest demands fresh strawberries in midwinter.
"I'm frightfully sorry," he said, "we none of us touch alcohol. Mac won't have it served, it's one of his things. But of course you can bring your own supply and drink in your room. What a fool I was not to have warned you. We could have stopped at Thirlwall and brought you back a bottle from the Three Cocks."
His distress was so genuine that I controlled the floodgates of emotion that threatened to burst from me, and told him I would settle for orange juice. He looked relieved, and splashed the nauseous liquid into a tall glass, deftly sousing it with soda.
I felt the time had come for further explanation, not only about him, the acolyte, but about the rest of the establishment. Was the Order Benedictine or Franciscan, and at what hour would the bell sound for Vespers and Compline?
"Forgive my ignorance." I said, "but my briefing before leaving A.E.L. was somewhat short. I don't know the first thing about Saxmere, or what you do here."