Morro said: ‘Well spoken. Interesting but, if I may say so, merely amusing observations. You have quite finished?’
When Burnett made no reply Morro crossed to a large steel plate let into one wall and pressed a button by its side. The steel plate slid sideways with a muted whine to reveal a square wire-meshed door. Behind the mesh were seated six men, two watching TV, two reading and two playing cards. All six men looked towards the mesh door. Their faces were pale and gaunt and held expressions of what could be called neither hatred nor fear but were compounded of both.
‘Those may be the men you are looking for, Professor?’ Again there was neither satisfaction nor triumph in Morro’s voice. ‘One template-maker, one pattern-cutter, two lathe specialists, one machinist and one electrician, or perhaps I should say, a specialist in electronics.’ He looked at the six men and said: ‘Perhaps you would confirm that you are indeed the skilled practitioners of the arts that I have claimed you to be?’
The six men looked at him and said nothing, but their tightened lips and the loathing in their faces said it for them.
Morro shrugged. ‘Well, well. They do get like this occasionally — an irritating, if momentary, lack of co- operation. Or, to put it another way, they simply never learn.’ He crossed the chamber, entered a booth-like office and lifted a phone. His voice was inaudible to the watchers. He remained inside till a newcomer, a stranger to the physicists, entered the chamber. Morro met him and together they approached the waiting group.
‘This is Lopez,’ Morro said. Lopez was a short tubby man with an appropriately chubby face, a low hair-line, dark moustache and what appeared to be a permanently good-humoured smile. He nodded and kept on smiling as Morro made introductions but said nothing.
‘Lopez, I am just a little disappointed in you.’ Morro spoke severely but his smile matched Lopez’s own. ‘And to think I pay you such a handsome salary.’
‘I am desolate, Senor.’ If he was he didn’t look it; the smile remained firmly in place. ‘If you would let me know in what way I have fallen short —’
Morro nodded at the six men behind the mesh. Fear, not hatred, was now the dominant expression on their faces. Morro said: ‘They refuse to talk to me.’
Lopez sighed. ‘I do try to teach them manners, Senor Morro — but even Lopez is no magician.’ He pressed another button and the mesh gate slid open. He smiled with even greater good humour and beckoned. ‘Come, Peters. We’ll go to my room and have a little talk, will we?’
The man addressed as Peters said: ‘My name is John Peters and I am a lathe operator.’ There was no mistaking the abject terror in his face and his voice shook. The four physicists looked at one another with a dimly comprehending shock on their faces.
A second man said: ‘I am Conrad Bronowski. I am an electrician.’ And in a precisely similar fashion each of the other four in turn gave his name and occupation.
‘Thank you, gentlemen.’ Morro touched both buttons in succession and looked enquiringly at the four scientists as both gate and door closed. But they weren’t looking at him, they were staring at Lopez.
Schmidt said: ‘Who is this man?’
‘Lopez? Their guide and mentor. You could see how well they responded to his friendliness, his kindly good humour. Thank you, Lopez.’
‘My pleasure, Senor Morro.’
With considerable difficulty Burnett removed his eyes from Lopez and looked at Morro. ‘Those men in there. They — they look like men I have seen in a concentration camp. Forced labour. And this man — he is their guard, their torturer. I have never seen such fear in men’s faces.’
‘You are both unkind and unjust. Lopez has a deep concern for his fellow man. Those six men, I have to confess, are here under restraint but they will be —’
‘Kidnapped, you mean?’
‘As you will. But, as I was about to say, they will very shortly be returned unharmed to their families.’
‘You see?’ Burnett turned to his three colleagues. ‘Just as Mrs Ryder said. Kind, considerate and thoughtful of others. You’re a goddamned hypocrite.’
‘Sticks and stones, Professor Burnett, sticks and stones. Now, perhaps, we can get on with this recording?’
‘One minute.’ An expression of puzzlement had replaced the revulsion in Healey’s face. ‘Accepting that those men in there are what they claim they are or what this monster made them claim to be’ — Lopez continued to smile his genial smile: he was clearly as impervious to insults as Morro himself — ‘it’s still impossible that they could have assembled this mechanism without the guidance of a first-class nuclear physicist. Which leads me to believe that those men in there have simply been brain-washed into saying what they have just said.’
‘Astute,’ Morro said, ‘but only superficially so. If I just wanted six men to say what those six just have then I would surely have rehearsed six of my own men who would have required neither persuasion nor incarceration to play the parts. Not so, Dr Healey?’ Healey’s crestfallen expression showed that it was indeed so. Morro sighed resignedly. ‘Lopez, if you would be so kind as to remain in the office?’ Lopez smiled, this time as if in anticipation, and walked across to the booth from which Morrow had telephoned. Morro led the others to a second steel door, pressed a button to open it then another to open the cage gate behind.
The cell was dimly lit but bright enough to show an old man slumped in a tattered armchair, the only item of furniture there with the slightest semblance of comfort. He had frizzy white hair, a haggard and unbelievably lined face and wore shabby clothes that hung loosely on a frame as emaciated as the face. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be asleep. Were it not for the occasional twitching of thin blue-veined hands he could equally well have been dead.
Morro gestured towards the sleeping man. ‘Recognize him?’
The four men studied him without recognition, then Burnett said contemptuously: ‘This is your trump card? This your mastermind behind the alleged nuclear weapons? You forget, Morro, that I know every top-ranking nuclear physicist in the country. I’ve never seen this man before.’
‘People can change,’ Morro said mildly. He shook the old man by the shoulder until he started and opened his eyelids to reveal clouded and bloodshot eyes. With a hand under a thin arm, Morro persuaded him to his feet and urged him out into the brighter light of the assembly room. ‘Perhaps you recognize him now?’
‘What kind of try-on is this?’ Burnett peered closely and shook his head. ‘I repeat, I have never seen this man.’
Morro said: ‘It’s sad how one can forget old friends. You know him very well, Professor. Imagine if he were, say, seventy pounds heavier. Imagine if the lines had gone from his face and his hair was as black as it now is white. Think, Professor, think.’
Burnett thought. Suddenly his searching gaze changed to a stare, his face drained of expression just as his complexion drained of blood. He seized the old man by the shoulders.
‘Jesus Christ Almighty! Willi Aachen! Willi Aachen! What in God’s name have they done to you?’
‘My old friend Andy!’ The voice matched the appearance, a voice old and faint and quavering. ‘How good to see you again.’
‘What have they done to you?’
‘Well. You can see. Kidnapped.’ He shivered and tried to smile at the same time. ‘They persuaded me to work for them.’
Burnett flung himself on Morro but didn’t get within halfway. Dubois’s great hands closed on his upper arms from behind. Burnett was a powerful man and his fury gave him a momentarily berserker strength, but he had no more chance of freeing himself from that monstrous grip than the wasted and shrunken Aachen would have had.
‘It’s no use, Andy.’ Aachen sounded sad. ‘No use. We are powerless.’
Burnett stopped his futile struggling. Breathing heavily, he said for the third time: ‘What have they done to you? How? Who did it?’
Lopez, certainly in answer to some unseen signal from Morro, appeared at Aachen’s elbow. Aachen saw him and took an involuntary step backwards, flinging up an arm as if to protect a face suddenly contorted with fear. Morro, still holding him by the arm, smiled at Burnett.
‘How naive, how childlike and unthinking even the highest intelligences can be. There are in existence, Professor Burnett, only two copies of plans for the Aunt Sally, drawn up by yourself and Professor Aachen, and
