Skydancer

by Geoffrey Archer

  For the next ten years or so she had devoted herself almost exclusively to motherhood, immersing herself in its ethos. Breast-feeding the three babies had come easy to her; she had studied manuals on child-rearing. She also turned her hand to horticulture, and a large corner of the garden had been cultivated to make the family self-sufficient in vegetables. She had baked bread enthusiastically, had woven and knitted. But this total involvement with creation had produced a traumatic and unexpected effect on her relationship with Peter. Originally they had seen eye to eye on most issues, but motherhood had changed Belinda; her concept of morality had grown radically different from her husband’s.

  The crunch had come five years ago when Belinda had grown bored and dissatisfied by her ‘earth-mother’ role and decided to find a job.

  As he drank his tea, Peter could still sense the surprise he had felt when she had confronted him with this. What a fool he had been for not anticipating it. He had been away for a few days attending a conference, and had returned home to find her in a state of obvious agitation.

  ‘Peter, we’ve got to talk,’ she had announced while he was still hanging up his coat. There was a tremor in her voice.

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’ he had answered instinctively. He feared some family catastrophe. The children were nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Where are they all?’

  ‘They’re staying with friends for the night – I thought it best.’

  ‘What are you on about, love?’ he pressed, seizing her by the shoulders and peering anxiously into her hostile eyes.

  Belinda had twisted herself from his grip.

  ‘I can’t go on like this anymore!’ she had burst out theatrically, tears brimming. ‘This lie! We’re living a lie, don’t you see?’

  Stunned, he had followed her into the kitchen.

  ‘Don’t be so bloody melodramatic! What are you talking about?’ He was tired and unready for a confrontation.

  ‘You . . . your work . . . what you’re doing at Aldermaston . . . it’s wrong, it’s criminal. It’s immoral! You’re planning genocide . . . mass murder. You spend your days working out how to do it. It’s evil, don’t you see?’

  Peter then shook his head in disbelief. His work had never before been an issue between them. They had hardly ever discussed it.

  ‘Don’t be daft!’ he had countered cautiously. ‘You know bloody well that isn’t true!’

  His wife had clenched her fists in a gesture of controlled fury.

  ‘Don’t you tell me what I do or do not know to be true! I’m not one of your damned computers! You haven’t programmed me, you know!’ She began to shout. ‘You’ve no idea what I think about most things – things that are really important.’

  ‘And that’s my fault?’ he snapped back.

  ‘Yes! . . . well, partly.’

  She had been thrown for a moment, then continued.

  ‘You gave up being interested in my views years ago. And I . . . well, I suppose I just kept them bottled up.’

  He had stared at her blankly.

  ‘Oh boy,’ he finally breathed. ‘What brought all this on? Have you joined CND or something?’

  She glared at him defiantly.

  ‘Yes. As a matter of fact I have.’

  Then he had begun to pace round the kitchen.

  ‘Okay, okay. Let’s talk then. Let’s get it over with. Firstly, let me make it clear that there’s nothing immoral about my work. Everything I do is aimed at preventing people from killing one another – stopping them going to war. I . . . I’m not planning genocide, for God’s sake!’

  ‘I know that that’s what you believe, Peter,’ Belinda answered, controlling her voice with difficulty. ‘But I am also very, very sure that you are wrong, terribly and fatally wrong. When a weapon gets invented, eventually it gets used. That, sadly, is human nature.’

  ‘Except the nukes! For over forty years the world has had nuclear weapons and never used them!’

  ‘Hiroshima?’

  ‘It’s because of Hiroshima that they’ve never been used since!’ he had shouted in exasperation.

  Belinda’s shoulders slumped. Her eyes had filled with a great sadness.

  ‘You’re wrong, Peter.’ Her voice trembled. ‘One day, perhaps not very far in the future, mankind will prove that you’re wrong. Millions will die, and you and people like you will be responsible.’

  Her words had felt like a kick in the stomach.

  Suddenly, though, her resolve had crumpled. She rushed towards him, flinging her arms around his neck and sobbing against his chest. For several minutes she clung to him, weeping uncontrollably.

  Eventually her tears had subsided.

  ‘I didn’t want to hurt you, darling,’ she stammered, strands of hair sticking to the tear-stains on her cheeks. ‘I love you, you see. I love you as much as ever. Which is why it hurts so much to feel what I feel.’

  She had begged him to change his job, to take up some other scientific work not involved with weaponry. But he had dismissed her appeal, and instead had sought to change her new-found attitude by reasoning – then by pouring scorn on her ideas.

  But soon he realised that to be self-defeating. She was not susceptible to his arguments any more. A deep rift seemed to have opened up between them, and as the ensuing days passed he realised it was permanently to affect their relationship. Worse still, the lack of consensus on this fundamental issue had spawned disagreements on other subjects too.

  They had nevertheless tried to be ‘adult’ about it, assuring one another there was no need for their relationship and their love to change just because of differing viewpoints That had not worked out either. Belinda had already set up for herself a job at a local craft workshop, learning to turn wood on a lathe. She had made friends there with a group of militant feminists deeply involved in radical anti-nuclear protest. The house had begun to fill with posters and books describing the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and they had soon begun to argue over the effect this dispute would have on their children.

  Peter was brought back to the present by the sound of car tyres on the drive, and the spluttering engine note of Belinda’s ancient Citroën 2cv. He walked to the front door and saw that their eleven-year-old son Mark was sitting in the car with her. She must have called in for him at the sports-field on her way home.

  ‘Just look at this creature,’ she called to no one in particular as she entered the house, holding the boy at arm’s length. ‘The school showers have broken down again. Ever seen anything so disgusting?’

  Peter could see the broad grin half-hidden by the mud on his son’s face, a grin that seemed almost attached to his prominent ears. The blue and white football kit was caked with mire.

  ‘Playing in goal again?’ he asked.

  ‘’Sright. Only let one through, too,’ Mark answered proudly, stripping off his clothes and dropping them on the kitchen floor.

  ‘Straight into the bath with you,’ his mother replied, pushing him towards the stairs.

  Belinda walked past her husband and headed for a kitchen cupboard.

  ‘Like one?’ she asked over her shoulder, holding up a bottle of red wine.

  ‘Why not,’ he replied, taking two glasses down from a shelf.

  Belinda found some peanuts in the larder and poured them into a bowl which she placed on the table.

  ‘Why the special treats?’ he asked with irony.

  ‘Thought you might need them. I have a feeling you’ve had rather a busy day.’

  His arm froze, halfway through lifting the glass to his lips. What did she know, and how did she know it?

  ‘You were seen leaving the base in a very great hurry this morning,’ she continued, smiling at his consternation. ‘Looking rather anxious, according to witnesses.’

  Her insistence in calling the research establishment ‘the base’ annoyed him intensely. It sounded so military.

  ‘I thought your lot were all washing their smalls at that time of the day,’ he counte
red. She raised an eyebrow warningly. ‘I had to go to London at short notice,’ he countered, wondering how much to tell her at this stage.

  ‘Trouble at mill?’ she asked flippantly.

  ‘You could say that. Security scare. I, er . . . ought to warn you,’ he went on hesitantly, ‘that we may get some security people coming round here asking questions.’

  Belinda stared at him in astonishment, a mouthful of wine unswallowed. She gulped hard, and placed her glass back on the table.

  ‘What sort of security scare,’ she questioned.

  ‘Papers,’ he answered vaguely. ‘Seems as if someone has copied some classified papers and left them lying around.’

  Belinda frowned. ‘Is that serious? And what do you mean “lying around”? Where exactly?’

  Peter hesitated. He was not supposed to discuss the matter.

  ‘In a rubbish bin,’ he stated flatly.

  Belinda eyed him thoughtfully for a moment, then she began to laugh.

  ‘It’s not funny, love,’ he growled.

  ‘Oh, yes, it is,’ she exploded. ‘I’ve been telling you to put your work there for years!’

  He stared at her forlornly. This woman for whom he still had so much affection, despite the distance that had grown between them, had no concept of the seriousness of the situation, no idea of the thunderstorm of unhappiness likely to burst over their heads at any minute. He agonised whether to tell her about Mary Maclean before she learned about his affair from someone else.

  Belinda stopped laughing abruptly. Peter’s face normally expressed a self-confidence bordering on cockiness, but there was no sign of that now. Instead she recognised an emotion she’d rarely seen there before. Fear.

  ‘Can’t you tell me more about it?’ she asked with sudden concern.

  ‘Not yet,’ he replied firmly.

  Anyone observing the MI5 man since he arrived at the Defence Ministry late that morning could have been forgiven for thinking that he did not seem to be reacting very quickly to the disastrous situation confronting the Strategic Nuclear Secretariat. Commander Duncan of the Ministry police had telephoned the Security Service as soon as that morning meeting in the Permanent Undersecretary’s office had concluded. John Black had arrived within thirty minutes of the commander’s call, and to Duncan’s annoyance, had insisted on turning one of the senior secretaries in the police section out of her office so that he could use her desk and telephone.

  It was as if Black was setting up camp, Duncan thought to himself as he watched the MI5 man unload the contents of his briefcase, including a plastic sandwich box, a vacuum flask and, most extraordinary of all, an ashtray.

  ‘Can’t stand those chipped-glass things the Civil Service provides,’ Black explained.

  His own had a porcelain base and a chromiumplated lid with a knob which, when pressed, spun the cigarette end out of sight.

  ‘If I conceal the evidence I feel less bad about the amount I smoke,’ he joked.

  Duncan reckoned Black was in his late forties. He had a square, featureless face, greasy hair cut short at the back, and skin of the grubby grey colour and dead texture that characterises a heavy smoker. His eyes were contemptuous and mocking.

  ‘How much have you uncovered so far, then?’ John Black demanded eventually, his lunch safely stowed away in a drawer.

  The Commander was senior in age and rank to the MI5 man, but now felt more like a junior constable as he reported all that he knew of the affair and detailed the investigations he had already set in motion.

  John Black was the head of a counter-espionage section at ‘C’ Branch in the Security Service, dealing with Government ministries. To his colleagues at the Curzon Street headquarters he appeared a bit of a loner and rather antisocial. A good investigator, they would concede, but he seldom drank at the pub after work or partook of the in-fighting that was normal life for MI5.

  Recently, Black’s reticence and secretiveness had even made him a suspect in an internal investigation at MI5. A defecting ‘trade counsellor’ from the Soviet Embassy in London had revealed the KGB had a highly placed agent in MI5. Circumstantial evidence had seemed to point to Black after three successive cases that he had been working on were broken by the Russians at an early stage. He had been suspended from duty for several weeks. Eventually Black’s name had been cleared, however. A Russian double agent in Moscow had identified Black’s own head of department as being in the pay of Moscow for over ten years. The affair had caused such political uproar that first the Home Secretary and then the Prime Minister had resigned.

  Early that evening Black sat on his own in his office at the Defence Ministry. Most of the thousands who worked there daily had left for home. He inhaled deeply from a cigarette whose glowing end was nearly burning his fingers, savouring the bitterness of the smoke, and then ground the butt into the ashtray. As he slammed his palm down on the knob, the metal plate spun unevenly; the realisation that the bowl was nearly full caused him to wince.

  The pocket notebook open in front of him had its pages half covered with untidy geometric patterns, subconsciously sketched as he had repeatedly pondered the circumstances of this curious case.

  There was nothing normal about it; it did not have the ‘feel’ of a professional espionage operation. Yet for copies of the missile plans to have been made at all, it must have taken organisation and a treacherous intent, he concluded. But a rubbish bin? Why on earth did one page of the plans turn up in a rubbish bin? And what about the other pages? Why weren’t they all together?

  He had not been at all surprised when Duncan informed him that the Ministry policeman watching the spot on Parliament Hill had reported no sign of anyone subsequently searching there for the file. The vital clue that could crack this case did not lie out on the ground – of that Black was certain. It lay in someone’s mind.

  In a space still left between the angular shapes on his notebook page, John Black wrote the name ‘Mary Maclean’, and underlined it. The woman had been as white as a sheet when she was summoned into his office for an interview, and desperately contrite. She clearly expected instant dismissal from the Civil Service for her carelessness with the secret file keys. Mary Maclean had given every appearance of wanting to co-operate, he remembered, and yet her answers to his questions had seemed hesitant and incomplete. There was something she was holding back, of that he was certain. The woman had a secret, and he did not care for people with secrets.

  Black took another pen from his inside jacket pocket. In ink of a different hue, he drew a frame round the name he had written, and then began to colour the letters, in such a way that the words ‘Mary Maclean’ cast a red shadow.

  For Mary Maclean the click of the door closing firmly behind her in her garden flat in Chiswick was the most comforting sound she had heard all day. She leaned her head against the door in relief at being home, and snapped the lock shut, holding her finger against it for several minutes as if afraid it might slip open again. She swallowed hard and clenched her teeth against the tears she could feel welling up – tears of anger and self-pity.

  Then pulling herself together, Mary Maclean headed for the kitchen. She reached up to the cupboard over the sink and took down a bottle of gin and then another of tonic. She was in a state of shock after the day’s events, and was finding it hard to think clearly. She had felt like such a criminal to be interrogated first by Commander Duncan and then by that sinister security man, John Black.

  Dropping an ice-cube into the full glass, she took it into the living room and collapsed on the small sofa facing the French windows. The leaves of the flowering cherry-tree outside were deep red and gold, and they were beginning to carpet the lawn. She loved her garden and could sit gazing at it for hours. The autumn colours were so beautiful, yet in a way she dreaded seeing them each year; they reminded her that time was passing and that she faced a lonely future.

  ‘How could I have been so stupid?’ she murmured bitterly.

  Keeping that key in her desk drawe
r had seemed sensible enough at the time. She had dreaded losing it if she had carried it around with her as she was supposed to do. Carrying the key to the desk instead had seemed a lesser risk somehow. If she lost that, at least the secret papers would still be safe – or so she had reasoned.

  The two policemen were clearly unimpressed by this logic, however, and had treated her with scorn and contempt. They had not actually accused her of stealing the documents, but had implied it was primarily her fault that someone else had been able to.

  She had mixed her drink with almost as much gin as tonic, and now felt the alcohol spread its comforting relaxation through her limbs.

  Mary Maclean was thirty-eight years old and had never married, though there had been a couple of opportunities when she could have done. Each time she had hesitated, unable to make the final commitment. The intensity of feeling she wanted had not been there. She longed for contact with men she could admire, forthright and intellectually dynamic, but those who actually approached her tended to be the opposite, looking to her to inspire and direct their lives.

  She had a pleasant face, more attractive for its character than for outright beauty. Her brown hair had a natural wave, and she had concealed recent grey strands by judicious application of henna. Her grey eyes had a look of intelligent intensity which some men found appealing and others unnerving. She wore bright, plain colours and she would not stand out in a crowd, but then she never wanted to.

  The beginning of her love affair with Peter Joyce had been totally unexpected. For several years she had known him only on an official basis, whenever he visited the Ministry for meetings. She had assumed he was already married, and had never particularly considered whether or not she found him attractive.

  But then, two years ago, Peter was in Whitehall for a routine conference one afternoon when a sudden drivers’ strike had paralysed the railways. He had come up to London by train, and in the chaos of the emergency the Ministry had no official car or driver spare to take him home. It was already late, and since he had to be in London again the following day, he had decided to find a cheap hotel for the night. By chance he had asked Mary to help him, and she had successfully found him one among those listed in the yellow pages. He thanked her profusely and was on the point of leaving her office when he turned back on impulse.