By a strange rebounding effect his mood soared to the heights of euphoria. He was alive, he had documentation in his pocket that gave him a place in the world—courtesy of the National Party! How long would the reprieve last before his name appeared on the Arrest List? He could not change whether that happened or not, all he could do was make the best use of whatever time he had.
In his mind’s eye he watched Nightminster’s flying boat climb away from North Kensington basin. This evening, The Captain would posture before parade in all his finery, lord of the lost men of his Value System: Spiderman, Mirror-Face and all the rest. They deserved better than that. The image brought Lawrence’s mind to balance. He was a man with one thousand eight hundred men’s lives on his shoulders—a far greater responsibility than he ever had as a cost-centre lieutenant. Assassinating Nightminster at North Kensington basin would not save those lives, appealing though the idea was. It was going to be harder than that—far harder.
He could not do it alone. It would require an expedition on a schooner or a big motor launch by a group of daredevils. Who in this republic of righteous radicals was going to help a stranger with mad tales to tell? Perhaps the crew of some tramp schooner laid up in Limehouse basin? Or a pirate gang wintering at Gravesend? Such scoundrels might savour the whiff of gold all the more if it wafted through curtains of danger.
An awkward, halting figure clumped down the steps not ten yards away and lurched off south towards the turnpike to Ladbroke fort.
Andrew Kalchelik.
As the cougar locks onto the grazing deer, so Lawrence trained his eyes on the limping form fading into the dusk. Andrew Kalchelik, the former section leader of a hygiene unit with commendations for ‘effective action’ in his personnel file, which of course, now lay in the archive of General Wardian headquarters just waiting to be examined by the Atrocity Commission, should a tip-off direct them to check a prominent member of its own ranks. How much detail would there be? Would gassing nests of infestation with smoke grenades be recorded, along with catching desperate escapees in fishing nets and ‘pacifying’ the young men with cracker pipes? Or the subsequent discharge of such-and-such a number of extracted infestations to the public drains? Even if the written record was discreet, the Atrocity Commission researchers would be well aware of the euphemisms in common use.
Probably none of it was bad enough to get Kalchelik on the Arrest List, but it was easily bad enough to disgrace him utterly before his Party comrades. President Farkas would shout him down in public and throw him out of the Party. He would be a shunned non-entity.
In short, he was vulnerable. He could be blackmailed. He could be squeezed to provide money, shelter and cover while Lawrence used the corporate archives to track down officers met along the way of his career who might have the gall and gold required for an expedition to the Value System. Extract half a dozen value from the system, have them debriefed by professional counsel... That was the end of Nightminster and his Value System.
That was a plan!
DEAR READER
Now read Book 3: The Church of Nuclear Science. Donald, Sarah-Kelly and Lawrence all have their own plans without the least suspicion that Tom Krossington has a plan too—for all of them. After the trap springs, they have to make dangerous journeys in pursuit of their hopes. Some will succeed, and some won’t. As always, Nightminster is watching, awaiting his chance to seize power.
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