by James Blatch
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you speak about anyone like that before.”
“It’s not right, is it? And I think it’s all part of something else.”
Mary’s head turned to look at the understairs cupboard.
“Tread carefully, husband.”
“I’m minded to go to the dinner party tonight and hope Georgina comes.”
“The Brunsons’? It’s still on?”
“Apparently.”
“Yes, let’s do that.”
As they entered the Brunsons’ lounge, Sarah walked up to Rob, put a hand on his chest and kissed him on the cheek. “You OK, honey?”
Rob nodded, but avoided her eyes.
She squeezed his shoulder. “I’m sorry, hun. I didn’t mean to upset you. Come on, let’s get a drink in you.”
She found him a beer, Mary had a lemon and port.
They took their seats at dinner and talked about the warm weather, the protest camp, the new department store in Salisbury, and the evening’s glorious sunset.
Rob finished his beer quickly, and moved on to red wine.
Sarah cleared the main course away, and there was a gap in the conversation.
“Aren’t we going to talk about Millie?” Rob said. “And Steve and Speedy?”
Test pilot Rory Davies looked down at his lap. His wife smiled at him.
“Rob,” Mary said, with a hint of admonishment in her voice.
“No, it’s OK,” said Red. “Of course we can. What do you want to say, Rob?”
“I don’t know, but we can’t just chit-chat like nothing happened.” His words were slurred.
“Honey, it’s just our way of coping,” Sarah said. “God knows we’ve been here before, right? At Edwards we had some pretty bad days. It’s awful. And hard. But, y’know, I’m not sure dwelling on it is the answer either.”
“I don’t want to dwell on it, but it’s like it didn’t happen.” He drained another glass of wine. “I mean, where’s Georgina?”
No-one answered; Rob sensed he was missing something.
Sarah Brunson was the first to answer. “It’s not like it would have been appropriate, anyway. She lost her husband yesterday and she’s got family over.”
Rob looked at Red. “Don’t tell me you uninvited her?”
Red put his hands up. “We had no choice, buddy. Orders from the top.”
“What the hell? Why? Because Kilton’s trying to pin something on Millie even after he’s dead?” Rob raised his voice.
“Rob, we mustn’t discuss it,” said Red. “You know that.”
“Of course we mustn’t. We mustn’t discuss anything, right? We can talk and talk and bloody talk, but for god’s sake DON’T SAY ANYTHING!”
The guests shifted in their seats as Mary’s hand reached across the table toward him. Rob glared at the guests, one by one.
“Will none of you stand up for Millie?”
“It’s not a case of standing up for him, Rob,” said Jock MacLeish. “We simply have to let officialdom take its course.”
Rob continued to stare at Red.
“Do you agree with that? We sit back and do nothing?”
“We have no choice, Rob. We have to trust the system.”
Rob stood up.
Sarah Brunson got to her feet and walked around the table. “Honey, you’re still in shock. It must be so hard.”
Hands appeared on his shoulders; he turned his head and was surprised to find they belonged to Red Brunson, not Mary.
He whispered, “Buddy, now’s not the time, OK?”
“Then when will it be the time?”
“Why don’t you sleep it off tonight, huh? Let’s talk tomorrow, just the two of us.”
He lowered his head. “I just want to talk to Millie.”
Sarah produced a hanky and Rob dabbed his eyes.
Red patted his shoulders. “Come on, buddy. This is not good for you. Why don’t you get some rest?”
Mary appeared by his side.
“I think we both need to rest.”
“You know where we are, buddy.” Red stood in the doorway as Rob and Mary made their way out.
Outside, it was dusky, with the first stars appearing overhead.
They walked along Trenchard Close, arms locked together.
Mary stopped. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“Did you see a light in the house?”
Rob looked up at their semi-detached quarter. In was in darkness.
“No.”
They carried on and up to the front door. As they did so, a distinct torch light flashed across the window and they heard a noise inside.
“Someone’s in the house, Rob,” Mary whispered.
He stiffened next to her and took the key from her hand. He inserted it into the lock as quietly as possible. He eased open the front door and paused, listening.
Another noise.
“Who’s there?”
They waited for a response.
Another noise from the living room. Rob ran through in time to see a figure exiting through the back garden toward the firs and the fence at the end.
A slim woman with short hair.
“Hey!” he shouted and immediately set off after her.
He tripped on the door frame and went sprawling onto the patio.
“Rob!” Mary ran toward him, but he recovered and set off again.
Once through the fir, he ran along the path between the garden and a field of wheat. Beyond that, the orange sodium glow of RAF West Porton.
The girl was nowhere.
He stopped, panting at the sudden exertion.
She was gone, and he had no idea which way she’d turned down the track.
After getting to the end of the row of garages, he checked up and down the streets of neat lawns and brown fences.
Nothing.
The burst of adrenaline seemed to have sobered him up. He trudged back home, reappearing in the garden to see the house lights switched on and Mary opening the drawers to the Welsh dresser.
He entered the living room. She looked expectantly at him, but he walked straight past her to the understairs cupboard.
It took him a few seconds to confirm the worst.
He reappeared in the living room to see Mary scrutinising the fireplace, where a couple of silver candlesticks lived.
“She wasn’t after the silver,” said Rob. “She’s got what she came for.”
Mary stared at him. “The box?”
He nodded.
“It was a woman?”
“I’m sure of it. I recognised her.”
“What?”
“I don’t know her name, but she’s one of them, from the camp.”
In the gloom of her tent, Susie switched on a torch and shuffled through the contents of the open box.
She had given herself a few minutes to calm down; the couple had appeared home unexpectedly early.
Luckily it hadn’t taken her long to find the box.
“I hope you’re better at flying than you are at hiding things, Flight Lieutenant May,” she whispered as she leafed through the contents.
She read the title on one of the sheets.
GUIDING LIGHT.
She flicked through quickly. Lots of numbers, some sort of handwritten calculations, and what looked like a wiring diagram.
None of it meant much to her, though there were repeated references to a Vulcan bomber.
Susie reached the end of the box and examined two cardboard sleeves containing reels of magnetic tape.
She retrieved her notebook and wrote a description of the contents.
The key thing was the TOP SECRET stamp on virtually every sheet.
Highly sensitive military documents, in the hands of a junior test pilot, apparently retrieved from the house of a recently deceased engineer, currently the subject of a security investigation.
A recently deceased engineer who had contacted the British Security Service shortly before his
death.
It was getting late, and she was shattered. She piled the paperwork back into the box and covered it with some clothes.
She rested her pillow against the box and lay down.
Had May recognised her? Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to leave a lasting impression on him with her loose fitting top. At the time, she thought it might be useful.
She used the few minutes before she was ready for sleep to allow her mind to flow freely. It was a technique learned from an eccentric former MI6 type in training. She’d sensed the other newbie agents, including Roger, had dismissed him as a lunatic, but Susie felt the logic in his thesis that our minds hold more than we can readily access, and some things only rise to the surface when our thoughts are elsewhere.
A few minutes later, Susie reached for her pad again and made a final note.
May=Milford.
20
Sunday 26th June
Rob rose at 7AM, feeling jaded.
He sat alone at the kitchen table, mulling a course of action he had settled on in the early hours.
Back upstairs, he pulled on an old pair of beige trousers relegated to gardening duty. He also found the scruffiest short-sleeved shirt he owned and headed out in the car.
Instead of turning left onto the road that ran up to the West Porton main gate, he turned right.
He parked the car on a verge and walked on until he came to an old five-bar gate, adorned with a large white bedsheet with a painted fallen cross CND symbol.
He entered the field and walked as confidently as he could toward the collection of tents.
Although it was early, the peace camp was alive with movement.
Slowly, the occupants of the field noticed their uninvited visitor.
Two men and two women, in a loose formation, moved toward him.
“What’s up, mate?” called the hairiest of the men.
“One of your lot broke into my house last night.”
“We’re not thieves.”
More protestors joined the initial four.
“It was one of you. I recognised her.”
“Her?” said a woman next to the hairy man.
“Yes. And she has something of mine.”
“What?” asked the woman.
“I can’t tell you.”
“Oh, right. So, you came here for our help but can’t tell us who you need to speak to and you can’t tell us what she’s supposedly got. I think you need to leave, chap.”
“Look, I’m not with the police—”
“We know who you are,” the hairy man interrupted and Rob stared at him.
“No, you don’t.”
The woman who was behind the leader stepped forward.
“You’re one of them.” She gestured toward the airfield.
A movement behind the small group caught his eye.
A slim woman emerged from an orange tent, a few hundred yards away.
“Hey!” he shouted, and started to move forward. But the largest man blocked his path and put a hand on his chest.
The slim woman stared at him but stayed put.
“Wait here,” a woman in the group said, before moving off.
Rob stood in an awkward silence as the protestors stared at him. More joined the back of the crowd.
“Nice haircut,” said someone. Others laughed.
“So, what do you do?” one of the men asked. “You a pilot?”
“You the one who gassed us?” asked another.
He looked between the heads in time to see the slim woman disappear back into her tent.
The protestor who had spoken to her walked back, shaking her head. “She doesn’t know what you’re talking about, and she doesn’t want to speak to you. It’s time for you to leave.”
“She would say that, wouldn’t she? Please let me search her tent. It’s important.”
“Search her tent?” a woman in the crowd snapped. “I hope you’re joking. If it’s important, go to the police. Now, please leave, before we call them.”
Rob took a step backwards, staring at the group. No-one budged.
He turned and walked back to the car.
Mary was up and sitting at the kitchen table when he got home.
“Where have you been?”
“Futile attempt to recover the box.”
“You went to the peace camp? Are you mad?”
“What choice did I have? I lost the secrets, I have to recover them.”
He walked through the kitchen and headed upstairs to change. Mary followed.
“But it’s so risky, Rob. What if they report you? You said yourself no-one can know the box was here, so no-one can link it to you. Unless you suddenly go around asking for it back.”
He sat down on the bed; Mary stood in the doorway.
“What I don’t understand is how she knew.”
“The peace girl?”
“I mean, how on earth did she even know to come looking for it? And how did she know to come here and not Millie’s?” He looked up at Mary. “She must be watching me.”
“I don’t understand any of this, Rob. Who is she? Why does she know anything about this? You don’t think…” Mary trailed off and sat next to Rob on the bed.
“Think what?”
“You don’t think she was working with Millie?”
“Impossible.”
“There’s no chance Millie was passing something to her? To the peace protestors? Was he angry at the gas bombing? Trying to make amends?”
Rob shook his head. “No, of course not.”
“Then what’s going on?”
“I don’t know.” He dropped his head and stared at his fingernails. Black dirt, probably from the five-bar gate to the field. “I’m missing something, Mary. Something important. God, I just want to talk to him.”
Mary stroked his hair. “Why don’t you speak to someone you trust? Someone like Red?”
“I can’t. It’s too late now. I have to protect you. If anyone finds out I had the box and then lost it, then… I don’t know. It’s the end of my career for a start. Maybe prison.”
The paddock at Golygfa Fynyddig farm showed signs of its temporary role as a helicopter landing area. For the third time that day, a yellow Wessex settled into a hover twenty feet above the surface, before firmly dropping onto the worn grass.
A winchman slid open the side door. Mark Kilton emerged.
The TFU boss ducked under the rotor blades as the helicopter engine wound down.
The farm sat deep in a valley. Kilton’s eyes searched the surrounding hillsides for signs of the crash, but there were only specks of yellow flowers and white dots of sheep.
An officer in the uniform of RAF West Porton security police was waiting at the farmhouse gate.
“Just so you know, sir. The farmer, Davies, is chuntering about compensation. Says he’s had to move his horses into a nearby livery, which is, and I quote ‘not cheap’.”
“Naturally. He’s hoping the Ministry of Supply will buy the farm. Where’s the crash site?”
“You can’t see it from here, sir. It’s about a two-mile journey by Land Rover. Your guests are waiting in the farmhouse.”
They continued through a small kitchen garden toward the ramshackle grey-tiled home.
The farmer appeared in the doorway. “You in charge?”
“Don’t worry, Mr Davies. You’ll be recompensed for your losses and inconvenience.”
“I should hope so.”
Kilton waited for a moment before Davies invited him in. Sitting at the table in the dimly lit kitchen was Ewan Stafford, one of his technicians, and a man with Group Captain stripes on his day uniform.
Stafford introduced them.
“Mark, this is Group Captain Gordon McClair from Bomber Command.”
“Sir,” Kilton said and extended his hand to the senior officer. “I assume you’ve been appointed to the Board of Inquiry?”
“I’m chairman. I’m expecting a pilot from Boscombe and an engineer fr
om ETPS at Farnborough to join me from tomorrow. In the meantime, perhaps you’d like to tell me why I’m here?”
Kilton looked around and waited. It took a moment for the security officer to take the hint.
“Is it possible we may give the gentlemen some privacy?” he said to Davies.
The farmer did not look pleased at being asked to leave his own kitchen, but slowly withdrew and headed off toward the garden. The security man closed the door behind him.
Kilton turned back to the group. “The Vulcan was equipped with a highly secret system called Guiding Light. It’s classified as ‘Top Secret’. It’s a matter of national security that knowledge of its existence is confined to as few people as possible.”
“Yes, I’m aware of that already,” the group captain said.
“It’s also highly specialised. The panels require experience to install and remove correctly. Which is the subject of this meeting.”
“This is Stephen,” Stafford said, “he’s one of our technicians.”
The group captain nodded to the young man before turning back to Kilton. “You realise the bodies are still in the wreckage, Mark? Are you telling me that you want to pull out panels before recovering your fallen comrades?”
“Yes.”
“Right, well I also have to think about the integrity of the Board of Inquiry. The wreckage is now evidence. There must be a clear separation between TFU and the BOI. I’m content to allow Mr Stafford’s technician to help us identify what pertains to the system, provided the lead engineer at the site says it’s safe to do so. But we’ll keep all recoveries secure at Farnborough after that.”
“I want one of our security officers to guard it,” Kilton said.
“That won’t be necessary. We’ll organise the security. Don’t worry, Mark, we’re used to keeping things under lock and key at Farnborough.”
“Then you could examine it as a priority and return it to us for disposal.”
“Fine.”
“Right. Well, let’s get this over with.” Kilton stood up. The group trudged through the garden toward a pair of Land Rovers with blue lights on top.
The journey took fifteen slow minutes as they inched up the rocky path toward the site.
