Destination Unknown - Agatha Christie [62]
‘Yes, and you’ve changed, too, since you came here. You’ve lost that streak of bitterness–of hatred.’
But immediately his face grew rather grim.
‘Don’t count on that,’ he said. ‘It’s still there–underneath. I can still hate. There are things, believe me, that should be hated.’
II
The Reunion, as Miss Jennson had called it, took place after dinner. All members of the Unit assembled in the large Lecture Room.
The audience did not include what might be called the technical staff: the laboratory assistants, the Corps de Ballet, the various service personnel, and the small assembly of handsome prostitutes who also served the Unit as purveyors of sex to those men who had no wives with them and had formed no particular attachments with the female workers.
Sitting next to Betterton, Hilary awaited with keen curiosity the arrival on the platform of that almost mythical figure, the Director. Questioned by her, Tom Betterton had given unsatisfactory, almost vague answers about the personality of the man who controlled the Unit.
‘He’s nothing much to look at,’ he said. ‘But he has tremendous impact. Actually I’ve only seen him twice. He doesn’t show up often. He’s remarkable, of course, one feels that but honestly I don’t know why.’
From the reverent way Miss Jennson and some of the other women spoke about him, Hilary had formed a vague mental figure of a tall man with a golden beard wearing a white robe–a kind of god-like abstraction.
She was almost startled when, as the audience rose to their feet, a dark, rather heavily built man of middle age came quietly on to the platform. In appearance he was quite undistinguished, he might have been a business man from the Midlands. His nationality was not apparent. He spoke to them in three languages, alternating one with the other, and never exactly repeating himself. He used French, German and English, and each was spoken with equal fluency.
‘Let me first,’ he began, ‘welcome our new colleagues who have come to join us here.’
He then paid a few words of tribute to each of the new arrivals.
After that he went on to speak of the aims and beliefs of the Unit.
Trying to remember his words later, Hilary found herself unable to do so with any accuracy. Or perhaps it was that the words, as remembered, seemed trite and ordinary. But listening to them was a very different thing.
Hilary remembered once being told by a friend who had lived in Germany in the days before the war how she had gone to a meeting in mere curiosity to listen ‘to that absurd Hitler’–and how she had found herself crying hysterically, swept away by intense emotion. She had described how wise and inspiring every word had seemed, and how, afterwards, the remembered words in their actuality had seemed commonplace enough.
Something of the same kind was happening now. In spite of herself, Hilary was stirred and uplifted. The Director spoke very simply. He spoke primarily of Youth. With Youth lay the future of mankind.
‘Accumulated Wealth, Prestige, influential Families–those have been the forces of the past. But today, power lies in the hands of the young. Power is in Brains. The brains of the chemist, the physicist, the doctor…From the laboratories comes the power to destroy on a vast scale. With that power you can say “Yield–or perish!” That power should not be given to this or that nation. Power should be in the hands of those who create it. This Unit is a gathering place for the Power of all the world. You come here from all parts of the globe, bringing with you your creative scientific knowledge. And with you, you bring Youth! No one here is over forty-five. When the day comes, we shall create a Trust. The Brains Trust of Science. And we shall administer world affairs. We shall issue our orders to Capitalists and Kings and Armies and Industries. We shall give the World the Pax Scientifica.’
There was more of it–all the same heady intoxicating stuff–but it was not the words themselves–it was the power of the orator that carried away an assembly that could have been cold and critical had