Circus by Alistair MacLean Page B

storeys high and the connecting walls are the same height. The whole upper perimeter of the walls is lined with closely spaced, outward curving metal spikes, the whole with two thousand volts running through them. There’s a watch-tower at every corner. The guards there have machine-guns, searchlights and klaxons. The courtyard between the two buildings, like the elevated glass corridor, is brightly lit at night – not that that matters so much: killer Dobermann pinschers roam the place all the time.’
    Bruno said: ‘You have a great gift for encouraging people.’
    â€˜You’d rather not know these things? There are only two ways of escaping from this place – death by torture or death by suicide. No one has ever escaped.’ Dr Harper indicated the other diagram. ‘This is the plan layout of the ninth floor of the west building. This is why the government is mounting a multi-million-dollar operation – to get you in here. This is where Van Diemen works, eats, sleeps and has his being.’
    â€˜Should I know the name?’
    â€˜Most unlikely. He’s almost totally unknown to the public. In the Western world fellow-scientists speak of him with awe. An acknowledged genius – the only indisputable genius – in particle research. The discoverer of anti-matter – the only man in the world who has the secret of making, storing and harnessing this fearful weapon.’
    â€˜He’s Dutch?’
    â€˜Despite his name, no. He’s a renegade West German, a defector. God only knows why he defected. Here you can see his laboratories and office. Here is the guards’ room – the place, understandably, is guarded like Fort Knox twenty-four hours a day. And this is his living quarters – just a small bedroom, an even smaller bathroom and a tiny kitchenette.’
    â€˜You mean he hasn’t got a home? It would make things a damn sight easier if he had.’
    â€˜He’s got a home, all right, a splendid lake-forest mansion given him by the government. He’snever even been there. He lives for nothing but his work and he never leaves here. One suspects the government is just as happy that he continues to do so: it makes their security problem comparatively simple.’
    â€˜Yes. To come back to another simple problem. You say that no one has ever escaped from Lubylan. Then how the hell do you expect me to get in there?’
    â€˜Well, now.’ Harper cleared his throat; he was putting his first foot on very delicate ground. ‘We’d given the matter some thought, of course, before we approached you. Which is why we approached you and only you. The place, as I’ve said, is ringed with a two-thousand-volt fence of steel. The power has to come from someplace: it comes from the electric power station at the back of the east building. Like most high-power transmissions it comes by an overhead cable. It comes in a single loop, three hundred yards long, from a pylon in the power station to the top of the east building.’
    â€˜You’re way out of your mind. You must be. If you’re so crazy as to suggest – ’
    Harper prepared to be diplomatic, persuasive and reasonable all at once. ‘Let’s look at it this way. Let’s think of it as just another high wire. As long as you are in contact with this cable with either hands or feet, and don’t earth yourself to anything such as the anchor wire for a pylon insulator, then – ’
    â€˜Let’s think of it as just another high wire,’ Bruno mimicked. ‘Two thousand volts – that’s what they use, or used to use, in the electric chair, isn’t it?’
    Harper nodded unhappily.
    â€˜In the circus you step from a platform on to the wire, and step off on to another platform at the other end. If I step off from the pylon on to the wire or from the wire on to the prison wall, I’ll have one foot on the cable and the other to