Goodbye California - Alistair [93]
‘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, Señor.’ 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, Señor 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, Señor 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