MAMista. Len Deighton

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СКАЧАТЬ ping as it ignited and then the room was illuminated with intense pink light. Two venerable typewriters had been put on the floor in a corner. A china washbowl and jug had been set out on an office desk, together with bars of soap and a pile of clean towels. On the next desk sat an enamel jug of hot water, and alongside it a can of kerosene. ‘Is it as you wanted?’ Chori asked Inez. She looked at Paz: he nodded.

      Paz was able to see Chori in more detail. He had a wrestler’s build, a tough specimen with dark skin, a scarred face, and clumsy hands the fingers of which had all been broken and badly reset. He was wearing a blue blazer, striped shirt and white trousers: the sort of outfit suited to a fancy yacht. He saw Paz looking at him and, interpreting his thoughts, said, ‘You don’t think I’m staying on, after this thing explodes, do you?’

      ‘I could tie you up and gag you,’ said Paz.

      Chori laughed grimly and held up his fingers. ‘With this badge of articulate dissent, the cops won’t come in here and sit me down with a questionnaire,’ he said. ‘And anyway they know the MAMista don’t go to such trouble to spare the life of a security guard. No, I’ll run when you run and I won’t be back.’ His stylish clothes were well suited to the Plaza at this time of evening.

      Paz was already getting into his coveralls and gloves. Chori did the same. Inez put on a black long-sleeved cotton garment that was the normal attire of government workers who handled dusty old documents. She would be the one to go to the door if some emergency arose.

      ‘You made the booster?’ Paz asked.

      ‘Yes,’ said Chori.

      ‘Did you …’

      ‘I was making bombs before you were born.’

      Paz looked at him. The big fellow was no fool and there was an edge to his voice. ‘Show me the target,’ said Paz.

      Chori took him along the corridor to the Minister’s personal office. It was a large room with a cut-glass chandelier, antique furniture and a good carpet. On the wall hung a coloured lithograph of President Benz, serene and benevolent, wearing an admiral’s uniform complete with medals and yellow sash. The window shutters were closed but Chori went and checked them carefully. Then he switched on the desk light. It was an ancient brass contraption. Its glass shade made a pool of yellow light on the table while colouring their faces green. Chori returned to the steel safe and tapped on it with his battered fingers. Now it could be seen that three of his fingernails had been roughly torn out. ‘You understand,’ he said, ‘this baby must go. There must be enough explosive to destroy the papers inside. If we just loosen the door it will all be a waste of time.’ Chori was bringing from a cardboard box all the things that Paz wanted: the explosive and the wires and the clocks. ‘We found a little plastic,’ said Chori proudly.

      ‘What’s inside the safe?’

      ‘They don’t tell me things like that, señor.’ He looked up to be quite certain that the woman was not in the room. ‘Now, your comrade Inez Cassidy, she is told things like that. But I am just a comrade, comrade.’

      Paz watched him arranging the slab of explosive, and the Mickey Mouse clocks, on the Minister’s polished mahogany desk.

      Emboldened by Paz’s silence, Chori said, ‘Inez Cassidy is a big shot. Her father was an official in the Indian Service: big house, big garden, lots of servants – vacations in Spain.’ There was no need for further description. Trips to Spain put her into a social milieu remote from security guards and night-watchmen. ‘When the revolution is successful the workers will go on working: the labourers will still be digging the fields. My brother who is a bus driver will continue to get up at four in the morning to drive his bus. But your friend Inez Cassidy will be Minister of State Security.’ He smiled. ‘Or maybe Minister of Pensions. Sitting right here, working out ways to prevent people like me from blowing her safe to pieces.’

      Paz used the tape measure and wrote the dimensions of the safe on a piece of paper. Chori looked over his shoulder and read aloud what was written. ‘Sixteen R three, KC. What does it mean?’ Chori asked.

      ‘R equals the breaching radius in metres, K is the strength of the material and C is the tamping factor.’

      ‘Holy Jesus!’

      ‘It’s a simple way of designing the explosion we need.’

      ‘Designer explosions! And all this time I’ve just been making bangs,’ said Chori.

      Paz slapped the safe. ‘Make a big bang under this fat old bastard and all we will do is shift him into the next room with a headache.’ He took the polish tins and arranged the explosive in them: first the Japanese TNP, then the orange-coloured plastic and finally the grey home-made booster. Then he took a knife and started to carve the plastic, cutting a deep cone from it and arranging the charge so that none was wasted.

      ‘What are you doing?’

      ‘Relax, Daddy.’

      ‘Tell me.’

      ‘I’m going to focus the rays of the explosion. About forty-five degrees is best. I want it real narrow: like a spotlight. Here, hold this.’ To demonstrate he held the tins to the sides of the safe. He moved them until the tins were exactly opposite each other. ‘The explosions will meet in the middle of the safe, like two express trains in a head-on collision. That will devastate anything inside the safe without wasting energy on the steel safe itself.’

      ‘Will it make a hole?’

      ‘Two tiny holes; and the frame will be hardly bent.’

      ‘I’ve never seen anything like that.’

      Paz looked at him. ‘The man who showed me how, would have put tiny charges in a line all round, focusing them at the centre. But he was an artist. We’d be up all night trying to do that.’

      ‘It’s great.’

      ‘It’s not done yet,’ said Paz modestly, but he glowed with pleasure. This man was a real comrade. From the desk Paz got a handful of wooden pencils and fixed them round a tin, holding them with a strong rubber band. ‘The charge has to stand-off at least the distance of the cone diameter. That gives the charge a chance to get going before it hits the metal of the safe.’

      ‘How would you like to write down everything you know? An instruction manual. Or make a demonstration video? We’d use it to instruct our men.’

      Paz looked at him and, seeing he was serious, said, ‘How would you like one hundred grams of Semtex up your ass?’

      Chori laughed grimly. ‘I’ll do this one,’ he said.

      ‘Okay. I’ll wire the timers.’ Paz took a Mickey Mouse clock and bent the hour-hand backwards and forwards until he tore it off. Then he jammed a brass screw into the soft metal face of the clock. Around the screw he twisted a wire. Then he moved the minute-hand as far counter-clockwise as it would go from the brass screw. He wound up the clock and listened to it ticking.

      ‘It’s a reliable brand,’ said Chori.

      ‘It has only to work for forty-five minutes,’ said Paz. He fixed the other clock in the same way and then connected it.

      ‘Two clocks?’

      ‘In case one СКАЧАТЬ