Haggopian and Other Stories

Over cheese and crackers we carried on, and Crow took up his tale once more by hinting of the awesome power of Magruser’s “secret” weapon.

“Henri,” he began, “there is a tiny island off the Orkneys which, until mid-1961, was green, lovely, and a sanctuary for seabirds. Too small and isolated to settle, and far too cold and open to the elements in winter, the place was never inhabited and only rarely visited. Magruser bought it, worked there, and by February ’62—”

“Yes?”

“A dustbowl!”

“A dustbowl?” I repeated him. “Chemicals, you mean?”

Crow shrugged. “I don’t know how his weapon works exactly, only what it produces. Also that it needs vast amounts of energy to trigger it. From what I’ve been able to discover, he used the forces of nature to fuel his experiment in the Orkneys, the enormous energies of an electrical storm. Oh, yes, and one other thing: the weapon was not a defense system!”

“And of course you also know,” I took a stab at it, “what he intended to do with this weapon?”

“That too, yes.” He nodded. “He intended to destroy the world, reduce us to savagery, return us to the Dark Ages. In short, to deliver a blow from which the human race would never recover.”

“But—”

“No, let me go on. Magruser intended to turn the world into a desert, start a chain reaction that couldn’t be stopped. It may even have been worse than I suspected. He may have aimed at total destruction—no survivors at all!”

“You had proof?”

“I had evidence… As for proof: he’s dead, isn’t he?”

“You did kill him, then?”

“Yes.”

After a little while I asked, “What evidence did you have?”

“Three types of evidence, really,” he answered, relaxing again in his chair. “One: the evidence of my own five senses—and possibly that sixth sense by which I had known him from the start. Two: the fact that he had carried out his experiments in other places, several of them, always with the same result. And three—”

“Yes?”

“That too was information I received through government channels. I worked for MOD as a very young man, Henri. Did you know that? It was the War Department in those days. During the war I cracked codes for them, and I advised them on Hitler’s occult interests.”

“No,” I said, “I never knew that.”

“Of course not,” he replied. “No man has my number, Henri,” and he smiled. “Did you know that there’s supposed to be a copy of the Necronomicon buried in a filled-in bunker just across the East German border in Berlin? And did you know that in his last hour Hitler was approached in his own bunker by a Jew—can you imagine that?—a Jew who whispered something to him before he took his life? I believe I know what that man whispered, Henri. I think he said these words: ‘I know you, Adolf Hitler!’”

“Titus,” I said, “there are so many loose ends here that I’m trying to tie together. You’ve given me so many clues, and yet—”

“It will all fit, Henri,” he calmed me. “It will fit. Let me go on…

“When I discovered that Magruser’s two-million-pound ‘order’ from the MOD was not an order at all but merely the use of two million pounds’ worth of equipment—and as soon as I knew what that equipment was—then I guessed what he was up to. To clinch matters there finally came that call from the British Museum, and at last I had all the information I needed. But that was not until after I had actually met the man face-to-face.

“First, the government ‘equipment’ Magruser had managed to lay his hands on: two million pounds’ worth of atomic bombs!”

IV

“What?” I was utterly astonished. “You’re joking!”

“No,” he answered, “I am not joking. They were to provide the power he needed to trigger his doomsday weapon, to start the chain reaction. A persuasive man, Magruser, and you may believe that there’s hell to pay right now in certain government circles. I have let it be known—anonymously, of course—just exactly what he was about and the holocaust the world so narrowly escaped. Seven countries, Henri, and seven atomic bombs. Seven simultaneous detonations powering his own far more dreadful weapon, forging the links in a chain reaction which would spread right across the world!”

“But…how…when was this to happen?” I stammered.

“Today,” he answered, “at ten o’clock in the morning, a little more than five hours from now. The bombs were already in position in his plants, waiting for the appointed time. By now of course they have been removed and the plants destroyed. And now too, Britain will have to answer to the heads of six foreign powers; and certain lesser heads will roll, you may be sure. But very quietly, and the world as a whole shall never know.”

“But what was his purpose?” I asked. “Was he a madman?”

He shook his head. “A madman? No. Though he was born of human flesh, he was not even a man, not completely. Or perhaps he was more than a man. A force? A power…