Skydancer

by Geoffrey Archer

  He stood for a moment looking along the two rows of missile tubes, sixteen in all. Their white casings, over five feet in diameter, looked clean and clinical, and bore large red identification numbers on their sides. Inside each one was a weapon ten times as destructive as the primitive bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

  On this occasion however one tube did not contain a bomb. The one he would have to work on the following day held the product of his recent efforts, a warhead of dummies and complex electronic creations, the testing of which was of vital concern both to London and to Moscow.

  Satisfied that the equipment was safe, Peter escorted Jill up to the black steel outer casing of the submarine, and down the gangway to the shore. The US Navy driver was still waiting there to take them to their hotel.

  It was mid-evening Florida time, though three in the morning by Peter’s body-clock. Large convertibles cruised lazily up and down the boulevards, and the bars, motels and arcade houses competed for attention in garish neon. The air smelled of seaweed and grilled meat, and it still retained much of the humid warmth of the day.

  ‘It’s just like on television, only worse,’ Jill commented in surprise. ‘Do they only eat pizzas and hamburgers?’

  ‘Just about,’ Peter sighed.

  The Navy car turned into the driveway of the Cocoa-Beach Lodge, and pulled up by the hotel entrance. The two Britons climbed out, carrying their small suitcases, and arranged for the driver to collect them at eight the next morning.

  Peter entered the reception uneasily; American motels all looked alike to him, but there was something familiar about this one. It was only after checking in, and after he had bid Jill a weary goodnight, that he remembered. As he let himself into his room, he realised this was where he had stayed on his last visit, a year ago, the visit when Mary Maclean had accompanied him.

  He exhaled sharply, cursing the coincidence that was stirring memories he preferred to keep buried. It might even have been the very same room; above the king-sized bed was an identical cheap print of a space-shuttle launching from Cape Canaveral.

  Peter took off his sweaty clothes and lay back on the bed, listening to the surf pounding on the sand fifty yards away. His affair with Mary had begun in London, but it had been here in Florida in a room like this that it had become more than a casual flirtation.

  He had surprised himself that first evening of the train strike when Mary had joined him for dinner in London. He had not been looking for an affair, he was certain of that, but suddenly the opportunity was there. At the time, neither of them had expected the relationship to develop, but it had, and his occasional visits to America had given them the chance for a week on their own.

  He clearly remembered their first night here. They had both experienced a childlike excitement at being able to walk around together openly, without the constant secretiveness they had learned to practise back home. They had enjoyed shrimp and lobster at a restaurant on a tumbledown jetty, with a view up the coast to the launching towers of the Space Center, and then they strolled down the beach as the sun set. At the first onset of a chilly evening breeze, they had hurried back to the hotel.

  Once inside their room, they had looked at one another and hesitated. There was something unsavoury about this motel.

  ‘What’s this room smell of to you?’ he had asked, frowning. ‘They must spray it with something.’

  Mary had made much of sniffing the air.

  ‘No. It’s the smell of adultery!’ she’d proclaimed with a wicked smile. ‘Now stifle your conscience and get on with it!’

  He had snorted with laughter, and then nudged her attention towards the phallic photo of the space-shuttle above the bed. She had turned the picture to the wall.

  That week had changed their relationship irrevocably. Until then, neither of them had defined precisely what their affair meant to them. Peter had considered it little more than a flirtation, a compensation for the erosion of his relationship with Belinda. Not in any way an alternative to his marriage, he was determined it should not affect his family. But Mary had brought a new dimension to his life, and that week in Florida had turned the affair into something much more serious. For the first time Peter had realised he was deeply involved with Mary, and that she was intensely in love with him. But warning bells had soon rung in Peter’s mind, and he had known instinctively that the end was already in sight.

  On their third evening, Peter remembered, they had revisited the restaurant on the tumbledown jetty, and something he said had caused Mary to giggle uncontrollably. Suddenly she looked twenty years younger. All traces of spinsterishness had vanished. Her face had shed its worry-lines and her eyes shone softly.

  Peter knew she had not had many relationships with men; her inexperience was clear to him in the way her body had moved against his with hesitancy and uncertainty when they made love. That evening, however, when they returned to their motel, her reserve had evaporated, and she had given herself to him with a totality that was almost sacrificial.

  Suddenly everything had changed. His desire to be with Mary was becoming overwhelming. The possibility of leaving Belinda – separation and divorce – had begun to haunt his thoughts.

  In Mary’s heart a spark of hope had been lit. She had finally found the love that she had always been seeking, and it seemed to her there was now a chance that it could last for ever. In the months that followed their week in Florida, that spark had grown into a flame, eventually so bright and visible that Peter made his painful but inevitable decision. He could not inflict the misery of a break-up on his children. He had to extinguish the flame for ever.

  Now he was back in the very place where his real love-affair with Mary had begun – and where its end had first been signalled.

  Could Mary have taken the Skydancer blueprints in revenge, desperate to hurt him? It would be so unlike her, yet was it really impossible?

  Rising, he closed the glass door to the balcony, shutting out the sound of the sea, and began to unpack his suitcase. There was much to do the following day; he had to try to sleep.

  In London the following morning, John Black looked at the date on his newspaper to remind himself it was Wednesday. It was the third day of his investigation and he still had no clear leads. He was glad to see that the newspapers were turning cold on the story, with no fresh revelations to keep them going.

  His first cigarette of the day came before breakfast, and the second immediately afterwards, while he finished his coffee. That done, he set off for Reading – not far from the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston. It was easy driving out of London at that time of day. As he sped westwards and saw thousands of commuters jammed on the eastbound carriageway, trying to get in to the capital, he was relieved to be heading the other way.

  He drove directly to the main police station in Reading, where he had arranged to meet the local Special Branch man. Tom McQuade was an old mate; Black knew he would get help there. This part of Britain was a focal point for anti-nuclear activists, what with the Aldermaston complex and the Greenham Common cruise missile base as well.

  ‘Well, you old poacher, what are you after this time?’ McQuade asked suspiciously as they greeted one another. His voice bore the merest trace of an Ulster accent.

  ‘What, me? On the scrounge? Whatever gave you that idea, Tom?’ Black countered with a smirk.

  Though good friends, there had always been a certain reserve in their relationship. To some extent MI5 and the Special Branch were rivals as well as collaborators.

  With the door of McQuade’s cramped office firmly closed, John Black lit up another cigarette and slumped in a chair.

  ‘Got a little problem with Polaris, have we?’ McQuade needled.

  John Black explained the circumstances of his visit. He wanted information on the activities of one woman in particular. At the mention of her name, McQuade smiled wryly and reached for the drawer of a filing cabinet. Extracting a green folder, he opened it and browsed through the pages it c
ontained.

  ‘Ye . . . es,’ he mused, ‘we seem to know the name of Belinda Joyce quite well.’

  Without letting go of the file, for fear perhaps of losing the power over John Black that its information gave him, the Special Branch officer began to explain.

  ‘Quite a successful little operation this one,’ he said, tapping the folder. ‘Young woman detective on the force here – quite a star. Jenny Ward – good operator. A few months ago Jenny turned herself into a radical feminist, at my request. She signed up with a women’s militant anti-nuclear group locally, and penetrated their organisation pretty thoroughly. Usual set-up; you know the form. Lesbians most of them. Not our Jenny though – I can vouch for that personally!’ he concluded with a grin.

  ‘Tch, tch. Man of your age, you ought to know better!’John Black chuckled indulgently.

  ‘Well now,’ McQuade continued, smiling with self-satisfaction, ‘our Jenny made a very interesting discovery. The group in question is called ATSA – stands for Action To Stop Annihilation. And one of the leading lights turned out to be none other than the wife of one of Aldermaston’s most senior and respected scientists, Belinda Joyce. Quite a prize for ATSA. Make quite a fuss of her, they do.’

  ‘Now then, there’s an element in the group that I would call basically anarchist, a bit of a throwback to the 1960s. And one woman who fits into that category is called Helene Venner. Definitely a dyke, she is,’ McQuade added, wrinkling his nose in distaste.

  ‘We don’t know much about Venner. She doesn’t seem to be on record anywhere, but she’s certainly one of the prime movers in ATSA. It was she who recruited Belinda Joyce. There’s a craft co-operative in one of the villages – trendy-lefty sort of place where they make pots and country furniture. That’s where they met. They both work there.

  ‘Well, at one of ATSA’s evening meetings which Jenny Ward attended, Helene Venner came up with a plan which was a bit of a stunner. She wanted Belinda Joyce to get hold of some of her old man’s secret plans for the new Polaris warheads, and hand them over so that Venner could get them published in some left-wing newspaper. She argued that with the weapon’s secrets made public, they’d become useless, and they could successfully campaign for the missiles to be scrapped.’

  John Black whistled softly. None of this appeared on Peter Joyce’s security file. There had been an appalling failure of communication somewhere within the security services.

  The scheme itself, though dangerous, sounded absurdly naive – and rather like putting the paper on Parliament Hill deliberately to be discovered.

  ‘And Mrs Joyce went along with all this?’ he asked attentively.

  ‘Apparently not,’ McQuade continued. ‘She got pretty annoyed at the ATSA meeting when all this was suggested. Obviously those behind the idea were depending on her to get hold of the plans for them, but she insisted it was a ludicrous idea. She claimed her husband never brought secret documents home, and she was in no position to ask him to do so. Apparently she flatly refused to take part in anything illegal.’

  ‘Hmm,’ John Black mused, stroking his chin with a nicotine-stained hand. ‘This ATSA mob, do they discuss everything at these general meetings, or does the real action get decided by one or two individuals privately? I mean, could your girl Jenny have missed out on what was really being planned?’

  ‘It’s possible, although they certainly make a show of being ever-so democratic – you know the sort of thing: insistence on a full-scale debate and then a vote to decide what to do, with the result that they hardly achieve anything in the end. But perhaps that Venner woman continued to work on Belinda Joyce over at their craft workshop.’

  ‘Your undercover girl hasn’t tried to get a job there, then,’ Black pressed.

  ‘Not exactly arty-crafty, our Jenny. Bit clumsy with her hands, you could say.’

  ‘Clumsy hands, eh?’ John Black chuckled. ‘You want to watch that – she could do you an injury!’

  McQuade smirked.

  For nearly two hours the two men continued their conversation, with several other files being taken out of the Special Branch man’s cabinet, to be studied at length.

  It was nearly half-past eleven by the time Black swung his vehicle into the visitors’ car park outside the gates of Aldermaston. In the security office he proffered his pass, which identified him as an official from the Home Office.

  ‘Do you have an appointment with Mr Joyce?’ asked the guard, checking through the messages list to see if this visitor was expected.

  ‘No. It’s what you might call a surprise visit,’ Black answered. ‘But if you put me through to him on the phone, I’m sure he’ll be happy to see me.’

  The guard dialled Peter Joyce’s number, and spoke to his secretary. Then he put the phone down and looked up at Black coldly.

  ‘He’s not here. Gone away for a few days.’

  ‘That’s impossible!’ Black was irritated. ‘Put me through to Mr Dogson, the head of security.’

  Dogson was a man he had dealt with frequently in the past, and whom he had consulted when he was first assigned to this case. Reluctantly the guard dialled the new number, and then passed the phone across.

  ‘John Black here. Just arrived to talk to your Mr Joyce, only to be told that he’s away for a few days. Know anything about it?’

  Dogson did, and expressed astonishment that John Black did not. Peter Joyce’s visit to America had been sanctioned at the highest level, he said, and that must have involved MI5, surely?

  Black felt a hot flush colour his face, and he turned away from the guard so as not to be overheard.

  ‘But I’m in the middle of the investigation, for God’s sake,’ he hissed into the phone. ‘How the hell can he be allowed to go swanning off to America for a few days?’

  ‘It’s not – unrelated, shall we say?’ Dogson answered mysteriously.

  Black climbed back into his car and slammed the door angrily. He felt humiliated, and he hated that feeling more than anything else in life. It reminded him painfully of commencing his National Service, aged eighteen. He had been fat and breathless as a teenager, and had been thoroughly victimised during the start of his two years in the army.

  He picked up the receiver of his radio-telephone, with its built-in encryption device that prevented his words from being deciphered if the call was intercepted. On the keypad he punched out the secret direct-line code to the office of the MI5 director, Dick Sproat. When a secretary answered, Black identified himself and insisted that he talk urgently to his boss.

  ‘Yes, John, what is it?’ Sproat’s voice crackled in his ear.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but I’m down here at Aldermaston and have just been told that Peter Joyce has left the country for a few days. Seems a bit odd when he’s a central figure in my investigation. I gather you know something about it, sir.’

  ‘Oh,’ Sproat grunted. ‘He, er . . . he’ll be back in a day or two. You can talk to him then.’

  ‘But, with respect, sir,’ Black continued, his voice rising, ‘don’t you think that as investigating officer I should have known about this?’

  ‘Normally, yes,’ Sproat snapped back, ‘but this is not a normal case. Its secrecy classification is so high there are some things you don’t need to know, and this is one of them.’

  The line clicked, and a dialling tone returned. Sproat had hung up on him.

  ‘Bloody ridiculous!’ Black exploded, as he snapped the receiver back into its rest. ‘It’s like trying to fight a gorilla with one hand tied behind your back!’

  To console himself while deciding his next move, he sought a pub for some lunch. He did not have far to drive, and pulled into the crowded car-park of a half-timbered roadhouse advertising bar food.

  Following a couple of pints of bitter and a steak pie and chips, he felt reasonably more comforted. He had even positioned himself on a stool close to two young technicians from Aldermaston, so he could eavesdrop casually on their ill-informed speculation about the
stolen nuclear secrets.

  After relieving his bladder of most of the beer, he then returned to his car and took out his road atlas.

  It took him some time to find the Joyces’ house, which stood on the very edge of their village. Black stopped his car in the road a few yards from the gateway on to the drive, and he studied the building. It was an attractive red-brick house with a slate roof. A golden-yellow climbing rose covered a side wall, still bearing a few late blooms. In the garden stood a magnificent oak tree that had shed most of its leaves for the coming winter. The tree and the house might well be about the same age, he speculated; early nineteenth century perhaps.

  ‘Must be worth a bit,’ he pondered suspiciously.

  This part of Berkshire was prime commuter country. Could a government scientist afford to live here without earning a bit extra on the side? Of course, if they had bought the place some time ago, the price might have been more reasonable, he conceded.

  Tom McQuade had said Belinda Joyce worked at a craft co-operative, but he did not know whether that was just part-time. Black locked the car door and set off up the gravel drive to check if she was at home. An old, rusting Citroën 2cv stood outside the large garage, and some of the ground-floor windows were open. Through one of them he could hear the rumble of a washing-machine, and he saw the figure of a woman working in the kitchen.

  Belinda Joyce looked startled when he introduced himself, but Black was used to that.

  ‘I’m enquiring into some problems to do with your husband’s work, Mrs Joyce. It’s a matter of national security. I’d like to come in and ask you some questions, if you don’t mind.’

  The woman was exactly as he had pictured her, dressed in faded grey jeans and an oversized hand-knitted sweater of an indeterminate ‘country’ colour. Her oval face was framed by straight hair hanging down to her shoulders, brown hair that was streaked with grey and needed a wash. Her dark eyes showed an intelligent intensity, but radiated hostility when he asked to come inside. He had seen a thousand other women who looked like Belinda Joyce, middle-aged and losing their looks, women who had committed themselves fervently to a cause late in life and were now determined to change the world. He knew the way their minds worked and he did not like them much.