第 19 页

Dick Atkinson had pulled himself away from whatever had preoccupied him for the last few days to examine her chart.

'Her temperature is up quite badly, Peter. Whatever happened to her, she's picked up some kind of infection.' He shrugged. 'Oh well, it's your project.'

'Hey,' Morley started, but Atkinson was gone, back through the long strips of plastic sheeting that separated Morley's patient from anyone else in the basement area. Okay, he consoled himself it wasn't exactly Barts, but she was clean and sterile down here. Sir Marmaduke's obsession with hygiene had ensured that. Only Morley was officially entitled to go near her, but he had invited all of his team to make periodic visits if they wished. Atkinson, he guessed, did it to relieve boredom. Not of his job, but of having to work with people he considered no better than lab rats, with lower IQs. Griffin occasionally popped in, and his chirpy Newcastle accent was, at least, not as monotonous as Atkinson's Midlands drawl.

Of Cathy Wildeman, Morley had seen nothing for a couple of days. Jim Griftin said that she'd been down to work for a few hours but had done nothing but complain of a headache, and so had gone back to bed.

'Peter,' Jim had suddenly asked that morning. 'Peter, what are we doing here?'

Morley had continued examining the policewoman's charts - it was the question he had been dreading for the last few months. He was surprised it had taken three intelligent people so long to ask, but nevertheless, he knew from experience that geniuses were often so absorbed in their work that they never stopped to ask 'why?' Just look at Oppenheimer. Or Mengele.

'How do you mean, Jim?'

'What is Sir Marmaduke paying us for? All we do is research a few odds and ends he brings us, but we never see an end product. Why?'

Morley hated that word.

'Because,' he began, and then stopped. How much could he actually say? Was this a test? Was Sir Marmaduke stirring up the others to test his loyalty? 'Because he's paying us not to ask questions of him. Only science. Only those new and unique things he provides us with. Those are the only questions we're paid to think about.'

To Morley's total surprise, Jim Griffin seemed content with that answer and had wandered away. But should he be surprised? If this was a test, he might have given him the right answer and everything would be all right. Wouldn't it?

He returned to ministering to his latest charge.

'So who exactly are these Glasshouse people, then, Liz?' Jana was staring at Liz's guinea-pig, although Liz was not sure whether it was out of affection for small, furry animals, or incredulity that Liz could own such a worthless pet.

Liz was actually quite proud that she did. Having seen a life wiped out not an hour earlier, she was rather happy to arrive back at the flat to find Mrs Longhurst out shopping and the guinea-pig excited to see her. It had raced around its cage for a good fifteen minutes while she made coffee and Jana began flicking through their dead contact's papers and photos.

'Presumably they're not on this Channel Island?'

'No,' called Liz from the kitchen. 'No, they're somewhere in Gloucestershire, I think. I only went once. I'll give UNIT a call sometime and sort out that car.'

'Okay,' was Jana's response. Then: 'Are you sure you want to go on? I mean, if he's dead, well, what are we doing this for?'

Liz walked into the lounge with a tray and placed it on the occasional table near the sofa. She sat down. 'I don't know, really. I have some idea of a reason in my head, but I'm not convinced it's a good reason.'

'Air it,' said Jana.

Liz poured two coffees. After passing one to Jana, she took her own and slumped back in the soft. 'OK, stream of consciousness, so beware.

'I work for UNIT, a supposedly top secret organization, yet apparently everyone, including Dutch journalists, knows who they are.'

'Permission to interrupt,' interrupted Jana. 'I don't know what they are at all. I just know they exist. Part of my brief to myself when all this started was to find out what they are. Before our late informant contacted me, I had no idea they even existed.'

Liz nodded. 'OK. Granted, but nevertheless, having signed the Official Secrets Act, I'm not blowing my future by talking about them. Sorry.' Jana smiled, and Liz carried on.

'So, anyway, I'm feeling a bit under-used. I'm a quite well qualified research scientist. But, as more than one person has pointed out recently, the string of letters after my name are barely recognized at UNIT.'

'So? Leave.'

'To do what, Jana? I suppose all this' - she waved towards the photographs and letter - 'was my attempt to get involved a bit more. To do something of my own.'

'To impress your superiors at UNIT?'

'Not really. No, to impress myself, I think. To prove I still had it in me to research and follow things up, even if they're not strictly scientific.'

Jana swigged down her hot coffee in one gulp and replaced the mug on the tray. She leant over and grabbed the telephone, passing it to Liz. 'Seems a good reason to me. Let's get investigating. But we have a decision to make.'

'What's that?'

'Revert to Plan A - the Glasshouse. Or go with Plan B - the Channel Islands. Which I'd prefer.'

'Why?'

'I could do with a holiday. A bit of sea air. The Glasshouse, whatever it is, probably isn't going away. But things do leave small islands slightly more regularly. Let's go south.' Jana picked up the tray and took it to the kitchen. 'Book us a flight to Jersey. Use my company charge-card. It's in my handbag.'

Liz shrugged and began to probe Jana's bag.

Then she saw the pistol. Its unmistakeable outline was pressed against the thin cloth of an inside pocket.

'Jana?'

'What?' came the reply from the kitchen.

'Jana, why do you carry a gun?'

Jana hurried out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a tea towel. 'Oh God, that. I'm sorry, I forgot I even carry it now.' She smiled reassuringly. 'When I first said I was coming to England, one of my photographers gave it to me. It's a replica he bought in Rotterdam, I think.'

Liz stared at the outline of the gun. It was... familiar somehow. A strange design she was sure she'd seen before. 'So it's not real?'

'Good God, no. I wouldn't know what to do with a real gun. Horrible things, terrify me. No I keep it there to warn off muggers.'

Liz passed the bag to its owner. 'You'd better find your charge-card thingy. I don't like guns either. And after this morning...'

'Hey, yeah, you're right. I'm sorry, I should have warned you.' She rummaged in the bag and then passed Liz a small plastic card. 'My charge card. Just give them the number, my company will pay. She wandered back into the kitchen. 'Oh, and Liz?'

'Yes?'

'First class, if possible. If it's someone else's money, I want to go in comfort.'

The typically restrained English tourist guides merely described them as 'pleasant, rolling hills' that were 'ideal for all rambling enthusiasts'. That, and the 'charming, unspoilt beauty' and 'opportunities to view rare and diverse wildlife in its natural habitat' were usually enough to have the area swarming, during the summer months, with tourists from both Britain and abroad.

But what the tourist guides frequently forgot to mention was that the Cheviot Hills in Northumberland were also famous in English mythology for their connection with Arthurian history as well as the more fanciful folklore of the type Shakespeare had brought into his play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. The hills were famous for their sightings of faeries, goblins and unicorns. Many students of English legend flocked to the area to see if they could be the ones to finally photograph or paint members of the Otherworid community.

In the mid-sixties, however, a massive blot was built upon the landscape. The Darkmoor Experimental Nuclear Research Station was opened amidst a blaze of bad publicity and open hostility from nearby businesses. Partly funded by money from the private sector, the project took far longer to complete than the British Government had anticipated and after a serious assault by a terrorist gang known as the Reavers, the plant was closed down. The resulting publicity, organized jointly by the Northumberland Health Authority, CND and Greenpeace, was massive. Having been shamed, the Government agreed to leave their nuclear capabilities in the proven hands of Dungeness, Sizewell and Windscale. The plant was dismantled four years later.

The ground upon which it was built, however, was still owned by the Government. Nestling conveniently in the vale between two hills, with an entrance disguised by a tunnel between them, a new, far darker project was born.

In the late fifties Department C19 had been established. It was primarily a little brother to M15, an off-shoot of the Civil Defence programme instigated in the defence boom of the Cold War. As the decade progressed, C19 acquired a reputation for involvement in some of the less well documented paramilitary excursions. After what was referred to in ministerial papers, all marked Top Secret and Eyes Only, as 'The Shoreditch Incident', the responsibility for the Intrusion Counter Measures Group was handed over to C19 with a recommendation that it be used as the foundation for an entirely new organisation. An organisation set up to deal with those out-of-the-ordinary events which fell outside the remit of the regular army.

A decision was made to mix military and scientific measures and an experienced Air Force Group Captain, Ian Gilmore, was promoted and asked to lead the new unit. He in turn requested the scientific help of an advisor called Rachel Jensen whom he knew to have been pivotal in Turing's work with computers during the war, expanding upon the aborted Judson Ultima Machine.

Although she had retired to write her memoirs in Cambridge, Jensen agreed to help Gilmore, also suggesting the recruitment of a number of her Cambridge prot間閟, including Allison Williams, Ruth Ingram and Anne Travers. A few years later, London was evacuated, reportedly due to a nerve-gas explosion that froze the capital, focused on the area within the Circle Line of the Underground system. That incident was handled by an army officer, Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart who, on Gilmore's recommendation, was instrumental in setting up the organization known as UNIT - the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. As its moniker suggested, this set-up had a wider remit than the Intrusion Counter Measures Group, and was answerable not just to C19, but also to a central governing body in Geneva.

Throughout, the population of Britain, indeed the whole UN, remained blissfully unaware of the existence of these organizations. The few ministers aware of, or responsible for, C19 were sufficiently well briefed to remain silent. For most of them, all it took was a reminder of wartime slogans about careless talk costing lives to ensure their loyalty and discretion. That, and their signature on the Official Secrets Act, any breach of which was tantamount to treason.

What no one in the British Government, the United Nations or even Lethbridge-Stewart's UK branch of UNIT knew was that there was more to C19. Far more.

Like any organism, natural or social, it possessed a dark side: a cancerous, repressed side that made the light seem all the brighter. Only those who directly worked for C19's darker half knew of it. They were ensconced deep within those Cheviot Hills, reporting directly to someone who, on the rare occasions the matter was discussed, did not appear to possess a name. He was a pale young man with a vicious scar disfiguring his face. His eyes were forever hidden behind a pair of expensive silver-rimmed dark glasses and he always wore the same pale grey suit. Or perhaps he had a wardrobe full of identical ones.

On the whole, the people there turned a blind eye to the implications of their work. Most had been selected, signed up body and soul, and brought to the base because, apart from lacking family ties and loyalties, they also lacked two other things considered essential by the more public side of Cl9: morals and integrity.

Grant Traynor had once been such a person, and as the pale young man viewed Traynor's record of employment on the screen of a so-state-of-the-art computer that no one outside the Vault even knew it existed, he smiled broadly.

'Employment terminated. Benefits rescinded. Private pension payments reinserted into our funds, I think.'

'Don't get too complacent,' said a voice that seemed to come from just behind him.

'Complacency is the beginning of the end.'

The pale young man switched off his computer. 'Of course, sir.'

'And is the Doctor dead?'

'No.' The pale young man coughed slightly. 'Our agent claims that he succeeded but no body was found. I believe he's lying. The Doctor seems to have disappeared.'

'He's probably sharing lunch with the Reptile People. Knowing the Doctor, he'll try negotiating a peace settlement like last time. Ensure that his efforts fail. And ensure we get at least one of the Reptiles here. I haven't seen a good dissection in months.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Oh, and one last thing. I'm going away for a while. You might call it a round the world cruise, if you had a sense of humour.'

'I don't have, sir. Sorry.'

The voice laughed. 'No, that response was a joke within itself.'

'Was it, sir? I'm glad. May I return to work?'

'Yes. I will return in a few weeks. I expect to find lots of records about Reptile physiognomy when I return. One last thing.'

'Sir?'

'The Glasshouse. Questions have been asked within the House about its validity. Ensure those questions are answered to our, to my, satisfaction. I want it closed down until I'm ready to take it over.' The voice laughed. 'I can't stand private enterprise, unless it's mine. Goodbye.'

'Goodbye, sir. Enjoy your trip.'

There was no reply.

The pale young man switched off his computer and pressed a button under his desk. A portion of the desk slid back silently and the unique computer slowly lowered into the gap. Once it was out of sight, the hatch slid back seamlessly and only someone with exceptionally good eye sight, who knew exactly what they were looking for, would have spotted a slight mark on the mahogany. He shuffled a few papers around, then got up. He walked to the cabinet that had a tray of glasses and a whisky decanter on top and poured himself one. Bailey was due in exactly eighteen point six minutes, and they always shared a Black and White.