Colonel Munro shook his head. 'Doubt it,' he said.
'A personal appeal,' said Lazenby. His face brightened with hope. 'An entirely new sphere of influence. The Chinese...?'
'Nor the Chinese,' said Colonel Munro. 'But you know there's been a big revival in Neo-Fascism in Germany.'
'You don't really think the Germans could possibly...'
'I don't think they're behind all this necessarily, but when you say possibly - yes, I think possibly they easily could. They've done it before, you know. Prepared things years before, planned them, everything ready, waiting for the word GO. Good planners, very good planners. Staff work excellent. I admire them, you know. Can't help it.'
'But Germany seemed to be so peaceful and well -'
'Yes, of course it is up to a point. But do you know, South America is practically alive with Germans, with Neo-Fascists, and they've got a big Youth Federation. Call themselves the Super-Aryans, or something of that kind. You know, a bit of the old stuff still, swastikas and salutes, and someone who's running it, called the Young Wotan or the Young Siegfried or something like that. Lot of Aryan nonsense.'
There was a knock on the door and the secretary entered.
'Professor Eckstein is here, sir.'
'We'd better have him in,' said Cedric Lazenby. 'After all, if anyone can tell us what our latest research weapons are, he's the man. We may have something up our sleeve that can soon put an end to all this nonsense.' Besides being a professional traveller to foreign parts in the, r?le of peacemaker, Mr Lazenby had an incurable fund of optimism seldom justified by results.
'We could do with a good secret weapon,' said the Air Marshal hopefully.
Professor Eckstein, considered by many to be Britain's top scientist, when you first looked at him seemed supremely unimportant. He was a small man with old-fashioned mutton-chop whiskers and an asthmatic cough. He had the manner of one anxious to apologize for his existence. He made noises like 'ah', tirrumph', 'mrrh', blew his nose, coughed asthmatically again and shook hands in a shy manner, as he was introduced to those present. A good many of them he already knew and these he greeted with nervous nods of the head. He sat down on the chair indicated and looked round him vaguely. He raised a hand to his mouth and began to bite his nails.
'The heads of the Services are here,' said Sir George Packham. 'We are very anxious to have your opinion as to what can be done.'
'Oh,' said Professor Eckstein, 'done? Yes, yes, done?'
There was a silence.
'The world is fast passing into a state of anarchy,' said Sir George.
'Seems so, doesn't it? At least, from what I read in the paper. Not that I trust to that. Really, the things journalists think up. Never any accuracy in their statements.'
'I understand you've made some most important discoveries lately. Professor,' said Cedric Lazenby encouragingly.
'Yes, so we have. So we have.' Professor Eckstein cheered up a little. 'Got a lot of very nasty chemical warfare fixed up. If we ever wanted it. Germ warfare, you know, biological stuff, gas laid on through normal gas outlets, air pollution, poisoning of water supplies. Yes, if you wanted it, I suppose we could kill half the population of England given about three days to do it in.' He rubbed his hands. 'What you want?'
'No, no indeed. Oh dear, of course not.' Mr Lazenby looked horrified.
'Well, that's what I mean, you know. It's'not a question of not having enough lethal weapons. We've got too many. Everything we've got is too lethal. The difficulty would be in keeping anybody alive, even ourselves. Eh? All the people at the top, you know. Well - us, for instance.' He gave a wheezy, happy little chuckle.
'But that isn't what we want,' Mr Lazenby insisted.
'It's not a question of what you want, it's a question of what we've got. Everything we've got is terrifically lethal. If you want everybody under thirty wiped off the map, I expect you could do it. Mind you, you'd have to take a lot of the older ones as well. It's difficult to segregate one lot from the other, you know. Personally, I should be against that. We've got some very good young research fellows. Bloody-minded, but clever.'
'What's gone wrong with the world?' asked Kenwood suddenly.
'That's the point,' said Professor Eckstein. 'We don't know. We don't know up at our place in spite of all we do know about this, that and the other. We know a bit more about the moon nowadays, we know a lot about biology, we can transplant hearts and livers; brains, too, soon, I expect, though I don't know how that'll work out. But we don't know who is doing this. Somebody is, you know. It's a sort of high-powered background stuff. Oh yes, we've got it cropping up in different ways. You know, crime rings, drug rings, all that sort of thing. A high-powered lot, directed by a few good, shrewd brains behind the scenes. We've had it going on in this country or that country, occasionally on a European scale. But it's going a bit further now, other side of the globe - Southern Hemisphere. Down to the Antarctic Circle before we've finished, I expect.' He appeared to be pleased with his diagnosis.
'People of ill-will -'
'Well, you could put it like that. Ill-will for ill-will's sake or ill-will for the sake of money or power. Difficult, you know, to get at the point of it all. The poor devils themselves don't know. They want violence and more violence. They don't like the world, they don't like our materialistic attitude. They don't like a lot of our ways of making money, they don't like a lot of the fiddles we do. They don't like seeing poverty. They want a better world. Well, you could make a better world, perhaps, if you thought about it long enough. But the trouble is, if you insist on taking away something first, you've got to put something back in its place. Nature won't have a vacuum - an old saying, but true. Dash it all, it's like a heart transplant. You take one heart away but you've got to put another one there. One that works. And you've got to arrange about the heart you're going to put there before you take away the faulty heart that somebody's got at present. Matter of fact, I think a lot of those things are better left alone altogether, but nobody would listen to me, I suppose. And anyway it's not my subject.'
'A gas?' suggested Colonel Munro.
Professor Eckstein brightened.
'Oh, we've got all sorts of gases in stock. Mind you, some of them are reasonably harmless. Mild deterrents, shall we say. We've got all those.' He beamed like a complacent hardware dealer.
'Nuclear weapons?' suggested Mr Lazenby.
'Don't you monkey with that! You don't want a radio-active England, do you, or a radio-active continent, for that matter?'
'So you can't help us,' said Colonel Munro.
'Not until somebody's found out a bit more about all this,' said Professor Eckstein. 'Well, I'm sorry. But I must impress upon you that most of the things we're working on nowadays are dangerous.' He stressed the word. 'Really dangerous.'
He looked at them anxiously, as a nervous uncle might look at a group of children left with a box of matches to play with, and who might quite easily set the house on fire.
'Well, thank you. Professor Eckstein,' said Mr Lazenby. He did not sound particularly thankful.
The Professor gathering correctly that he was released, smiled all round and trotted out of the room.
Mr Lazenby hardly waited for the door to close before venting his feelings.
'All alike, these scientists,' he said bitterly. 'Never any practical good. Never come up with anything sensible. All they can do is split the atom - and then tell us not to mess about with it!'
'Just as well if we never had,' said Admiral Blunt, again bluntly. 'What we want is something homely and domestic like a kind of selective weedkiller which would -' He paused abruptly. 'Now what the devil -?'
'Yes, Admiral?' said the Prime Minister politely.
'Nothing - just reminded me of something. Can't remember what -'
The Prime Minister sighed.
'Any more scientific experts waiting on the mat?' asked Gordon Chetwynd, glancing hopefully at his wristwatch.
'Old Pikeaway is here, I believe,' said Lazenby. 'Got a picture - or a drawing - or a map or something or other he wants us to look at -'
'What's it all about?'
'I don't know. It seems to be all bubbles,' said Mr Lazenby vaguely.
'Bubbles? Why bubbles?'
'I've no idea. Well,' he sighed, 'We'd better have a look at it.'
'Horsham's here, too -'
'He may have something new to tell us,' said Chetwynd.
Colonel Pikeaway stumped in. He was supporting a rolled-up burden which with Horsham's aid was unrolled and which with some difficulty was propped up so that those sitting round the table could look at it.
'Not exactly drawn to scale yet, but it gives you an idea,' said Colonel Pikeaway.
'What does it mean, if anything?'
'Bubbles?' murmured Sir George. An idea came to him. 'Is it a gas? A new gas?'
'You'd better deliver the lecture, Horsham,' said Pikeaway. 'You know the general idea.'
'I only know what I've been told. It's a rough diagram of an association of world control.'
'By whom?'
'By groups who own or control the sources of power - the raw materials of power.'
'And the letters of the alphabet?'
'Stand for a person or a code name for a special group. They are intersecting circles that by now cover the globe.
'That circle marked "A" stands for armaments. Someone, or some group is in control of armaments. All types of armaments. Explosives, guns, rifles. All over the world armaments are being produced according to plan, dispatched ostensibly to under-developed nations, backward nations, nations at war. But they don't remain where they are sent. They are re-routed almost immediately elsewhere. To guerrilla warfare in the South American Continent - to rioting and fighting in the USA - to Depots of Black Power - to various countries in Europe.
'"D" represents drugs - a network of suppliers run them from various depots and stockpiles. All kinds of drugs, from the more harmless varieties up to the true killers. The headquarters seem likely to be situated in the Levant, and to pass out through Turkey, Pakistan, India and Central Asia.'
'They make money out of it?'
'Enormous sums of money. But it's more than just an association of pushers. It has a more sinister side to it. It's being used to finish off the weaklings amongst the young, shall we say, to make them complete slaves. Slaves so that they cannot live and exist or do jobs for their employers without a supply of drugs.'
Kenwood whistled.
'That's a bad show, isn't it? Don't you know at all who those drug pushers are?'
'Some of them, yes. But only the lesser fry. Not the real controllers. Drug headquarters are, so far as we can judge, Central Asia and the Levant. They get delivered from there in the tyres of cars, in cement, in concrete, in all kinds of machinery and industrial goods. They're delivered over the world and passed on as ordinary trade goods where they are sent to go.
'"F" stands for finance. Money! A money spider's web in the centre of it all. You'll have to go to Mr Robinson to tell you about money. According to a memo here, the money is coming very largely from America and there's a headquarters in Bavaria. There's a vast reserve in Africa, based on gold and diamonds. Most of the money is going to South America. One of the principal controllers, if I may so put it, of money, is a very powerful and talented woman. She's old now: must be near to death. But she is still strong and active. Her name was Charlotte Krapp. Her father owned the vast Krapp yards in Germany. She was a financial genius herself and operated in Wall Street. She accumulated fortune after fortune by investments in all parts of the world. She owns transport, she owns machinery, she owns industrial concerns. All these things. She lives in a vast castle in Bavaria - from there she directs a flow of money to different parts of the globe.
'"S" represents science - the new knowledge of chemical and biological warfare - Various young scientists have defected - There is a nucleus of them in the US, we believe, vowed and dedicated to the cause of anarchy.'
'Fighting for anarchy? A contradiction in terms. Can there be such a thing?'
'You believe in anarchy if you are young. You want a new world, and to begin with you must pull down the old one - just as you pull down a house before you build a new one to replace it. But if you don't know where you are going, if you don't know where you are being lured to go, or even pushed to go, what will the new world be like, and where will the believers be when they get it? Some of them slaves, some of them blinded by hate, some by violence and sadism, both preached and practised. Some of them - and God help those - still idealistic, still believing as people did in France at the time of the French Revolution that that revolution would bring prosperity, peace, happiness, contentment to its people.'
'And what are we doing about all this? What are we proposing to do about it?' It was Admiral Blunt who spoke.
'What are we doing about it? All that we can, I assure you, all you who are here, we are doing all that we can. We have people working for us in every country, we have agents, inquirers, those who gather information, and bring it back here -'
'Which is very necessary,' said Colonel Pikeaway. We've got to know - know who's who, who's with and who's against us. And after that we've got to see what, if anything, can be done.'
'Our name for this diagram is The Ring. Here's a list of what we know about the Ring leaders. Those with a query mean that we know only the name they go by - or alternatively we only suspect that they are the ones we want.'
