Goodbye California - Alistair [94]
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 naïve, 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 those are in the vaults of the Atomic Energy Commission. You must know that they are still there, so I could have obtained those plans from only two men in America. They are both with me now. Do you understand?’
Burnett was still having difficulty with his breathing. ‘I know Professor Aachen. I know him better than anyone. No one could have made him work for you. No one! No one!’
Lopez broadened his ever-genial smile. ‘Perhaps, Señor Morro, if I had a friendly little chat in my room with Professor Burnett here. Ten minutes would suffice, I think.’
‘I agree. That should be sufficient to convince him that anyone on earth would work for me.’
‘Don’t, don’t, don’t!’ Aachen was close to hysteria. ‘For God’s sake, Andy, you’ve got to believe Morro.’ He looked in loathing at Lopez. ‘This monster knows more awful, more fiendish tortures than any sane man can conceive of. In the name of heaven, Andy, don’t be mad: this creature will break you as he broke me.’
‘I’m convinced.’ Healey had stepped forward and taken Burnett by the arm just as Dubois released his grip. He looked at Schmidt and