Goodbye California - Alistair [71]
‘You will tell me, you know.’
‘And how do you propose to set about making us talk? Torture?’ Burnett’s truculence had given way to contempt. ‘We can’t tell you anything we don’t know about.’
‘Torture. Oh, dear me, no. I might – in fact, I shall be needing you later on. But torture? Hmm. Hadn’t occurred to me. You, Abraham?’
‘No, Mr Morro.’ Dubois considered. ‘It is a thought.’ He came to Morro and whispered something in his ear.
Morro looked shocked. ‘Abraham, you know me, you know I don’t wage war on innocents.’
‘You damned hypocrite!’ Burnett’s voice was a hoarse shout. ‘Of course that’s why you brought the women here.’
‘My dear fellow –’
Bramwell said in a weary voice: ‘It’s a bomb of some sorts. That’s obvious. It might well be a blueprint for a nuclear bomb, a thought that immediately occurred to us because of your propensity for stealing nuclear fuel. Whether it’s viable, whether it will work, we have just no idea. There are hundreds of nuclear scientists in this country. But the number of those who can make, actually make, a nuclear bomb is severely restricted. We are not among the chosen few. As for those who can actually design a hydrogen bomb – well I, personally, have never met one. Our science is devoted to exclusively peaceful nuclear pursuits. Healey and I were kidnapped while working in a laboratory where they produced nothing but electricity. Burnett and Schmidt, as we are well aware, were taken in the San Ruffino nuclear reactor station. God’s sake, man, you don’t build hydrogen bombs in reactor stations.’
‘Very clever.’ Morro was almost approving. ‘You do think fast on your feet. In your armchair, rather. Enough. Abraham, that particular excerpt we selected. How long will it take?’
‘Thirty seconds.’
Dubois put a tape-recorder on a fast rewind, his eye on the counter, slowed and finally stopped it. He pressed a switch, saying: ‘Healey first.’
Healey’s voice: ‘So we are in no doubt then?’
Schmidt’s voice: ‘None. I haven’t been since the first time I clapped eyes on those hellish blueprints.’
Bramwell’s voice: ‘Circuitry, materials, sheathing, triggering, design. All there. Your final confirmation, Burnett?’
There was a pause here then came Burnett’s voice, strangely flat and dead. ‘Sorry, gentlemen, I need that drink. It’s the Aunt Sally, all right. Estimated three-and-a-half megatons – about four hundred times the power of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. God, to think that Willi Aachen and I had a champagne party the night we completed the design!’
Dubois switched off. Morro said: I’m sure you could even reproduce those plans from your head, Professor Burnett, if the need arose. A useful man to have around.’
The four physicists sat like men in a dream. They didn’t look stunned: they just weren’t registering anything. Morro said: ‘Come here, gentlemen.’
He led the way to the window, pressed an overhead switch and illuminated the room in which the scientists had examined the blueprints. He looked at the scientists but without satisfaction, gratification or triumph. Morro did not seem to specialize very much in the way of feelings.
‘The expressions on your faces were more than enough to tell us all we wanted to know.’ If the four men had not been overcome by the enormity of the situation in which they found themselves, the ludicrous ease with which they had been tricked, they would have appreciated that Morro, who clearly had further use for them, was doing no more than establishing a moral ascendancy, inducing in them a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. ‘But the recordings helped. That’s the first thing I would have expected. Alas, outside your own arcane specialities, men with abnormally gifted minds are no better than little children. Abraham, how long does the entire edited version take?’
‘Seven and a half minutes, Mr Morro.’
‘Let them savour it to the full. I’ll see about the helicopter. Back shortly.’
He was back in ten minutes. Three of the scientists were sitting in their chairs, bitter, dejected