57
The farm buildings stood empty of human existence. The outbuilding, I made out the shifting and slow chomping of the cows. But they completed the evening milking. Wheatley rejected the byre. Proceeded past the dairy, and a stable, converted to a tractor building. Paused over an extensive, concreted pig-stye and a sugar-beet store. Surveyed the barn before discovering what was required. I must concede it served his purpose.
An elongated stone construction with head-high embrasured windows.
It prompted a glance for crenellated battlements.
More than an old chapel. Its correct role couldn't have been more diverse.
It was an apple house, with a heavy traditional-fashioned oaken press at the far end, a long wall adorned with duckboard shelving for apples. They lined the other with bunged casks and covered vats of produced cider. They made the door of solid oak. With the drop-bar on the outside, was in position. Take a battering-ram to break it.
We didn't have that, but we'd even better. We had desperation, ability, and intelligence. Wheatley couldn't imagine this place should hold us? He wasn't so insane as to suppose that passers-by on the road might not overhear our shouts. The farm's inhabitants are less than a hundred yards away.
With a sudden dread of conviction and heart-chilling finality that paralysed reasoning, I recognised he was indeed not crazy.
He guessed no assaults on the exit can happen.
Or shouting for help.
He understood beyond reason that none of us should ever leave the cider-house again.
Except in a body-bag.
Somebody with super-chilled icicles instead of fingers started playing Beethoven on my spinal column.
"Get to the far end. Stay there while I lock the door from the outside," Wheatley ordered. "Time does not allow farewell speeches. In fifty-five days, I will be back in the motherland completing my ultimate plan to destroy our enemies' economy. I shall remember you. Goodbye!"
"No magnanimous gestures towards a defeated enemy?"
"You beg? The man who had cost me so much and ruined my plans.
He stepped forward, jammed the automatic he held in his left hand into my stomach. With the gun on his right, he raked both sides of my face. I felt the skin tearing in thin lines of white-hot pain, and the warm blood trickling.
Clarissa expressed something unintelligible in a threatening expression.
Tried to run to me, but Constable Smee caught her and held her till her futile struggles ceased.
Wheatley stepped back and declared, "That is for beggars!"
I nodded. I didn't even raise my hands to my face.
"You might take Miss Azul with you."
"No!" Her voice was a sob, anguish in it, a cruel and hurt sound of stricken despair. "What are you saying?"
One of the police officers swore, and Smee looked at me in dumb incomprehension.
Wheatley stood still, dark expressionless eyes looking into mine. "It is my turn to beg. Forgive me. I did not realise that you guessed. I hope when my opportunity comes…"
He broke off and turned to Mila.
"It will be unfair. A Ukrainian spy used as a bargaining chip for what I have planned. Yes, improper. Come, Miss Azul."
She came instead to me and dabbed my face. "What is it?" she whispered. No reproach in her voice. Only wonder and compassion. Maybe a hint of love. "What is so wrong?"
"Goodbye, Mila," I said. "The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs doesn't want to be kept waiting. I'll see you soon."
Made to speak again, but Wheatley grabbed her by the arm. Leading her towards the exit, while Sheena Ryder watched us with mad eyes and a pistol in either hand. The door closed. The heavy bar dropped into place. Left there staring at each other.
"Fucking bastard!" One of the police officers shouted out. "Why…"
"Shut up, for fuck's sake!" My expression was low, urgent, and desperate. "Spread out. Watch those embrasures. Quick! Hurry!"
Something in voice might agitate Tutankhamun. With swiftness and silence, we spaced out. I whispered, "He's going to throw in a grenade any second."
A few moments to remove the pin. "You must catch it and try to chuck it out of the other windows. We'll have fifteen seconds max. If that goes off in here, we're dead."
Even as I finished outside, I detected sudden movement. A grenade flew. Followed straightaway by another.
Appearing, thrown at such a downward angle, we didn't have a chance. Spinning across, struck at the precise junction of wall and floor, and exploded.