“Yes.”
“OK.” Susie took a deep breath. “Let’s say you’re Millie, coming to me with … what, exactly? That sheet of notes? Is that the evidence I need to take upstairs at my place? I can tell you the burden of proof for corruption is pretty high when you’re dealing with a national security project that reports directly to Whitehall.”
“The answer’s in there somewhere, I’m sure of it. I just need to decode it. Where is the box now?”
“Back at the B&B, but they strictly forbid visitors of the opposite sex after 6PM. It’s Saturday tomorrow. How about you come to me in the morning?”
He nodded.
“There’s one more thing, Rob. I can’t promise I’ll be here next week. Even telling them the project’s running again might not change their minds. As a matter of fact, I think they’re scared of this one. It’s a huge deal. We go in guns blazing, making serious accusations… We would need to have solid gold evidence.”
“I can’t let him down again.”
“I know. But the focus is now on your black-and-white evidence. Nothing more, nothing less. It can’t be about your remorse, Rob.”
26
SATURDAY 2ND JULY
The B&B was a red brick Victorian semi. Rob found a parking space close by and walked the short distance, feeling self-conscious in his RAF uniform.
An elderly woman opened the door; she wore a pinny and had rollers in her hair. Her eyebrows raised as she took in the uniform.
“Mr Attenborough?”
Susie appeared behind her.
“Hello, Robert.”
“You didn’t tell me your brother was an RAF pilot, my dear,” Mrs Holleroid said.
“Oh, did I not? He’s the family hero.”
Rob followed Susie upstairs to the first room on the left. She shut the door and then put her finger to her lips and whispered. “The old bat will listen for a bit.”
Rob nodded.
“How was dad when you saw him?”
“Fine, yes. On excellent form.”
“Right. So making a good recovery from the heart attack?”
Rob nodded. “Yes.” He whispered. “I’m not very good at this.”
She switched on a small transistor radio. A man was reading a tennis match report from Wimbledon.
Standing by the bed, Susie lifted the mattress and retrieved two black leather pouches. She spread the contents of Millie’s box over the bed.
“Why the bloody uniform? It’s Saturday.”
“I had to tell Mary something. I told her I had to work.”
Rob created separate piles for the papers.
The technical documents, the most damning to possess outside TFU, were straight from the project folders. But they contained no obvious clues.
The data sheets were more promising. Two large printouts containing lines of numbers, some of them were circled.
“I remember these. We saw them early in the project. They came back from DF Blackton.”
“What do the numbers mean?” Susie asked.
“They’re height readings from the laser. They’re sent to some sort of magic box that sits between Guiding Light and the autopilot. If I remember rightly, just one reel of tape produced a foot-high pile of paper, so this is just a few seconds’ worth.”
“That’s a lot of numbers for a few seconds.”
“The only fact I really remember is that the laser reported half a million height readings every hour.”
Susie picked up the sheet of Millie’s handwriting and placed it between the two of them.
Rob stared at Millie’s equations and notations.
Again, his eyes went to the bottom of the page and the underlined 8.75.
“This looks like a conclusion. The summary of what he was looking for. I just don’t know what kind of conclusion.”
Susie walked around the room. The radio now played classical music.
“Explain something to me. These tapes…” She pointed at the two cardboard sleeves. “You mentioned Millie recording something yesterday, when you talked about the first incident.”
“That’s how we got all these height readings. Millie recorded the numbers on the reels. We sent them off to DF Blackton and they checked everything. But that was more at the start of the project. In the early days we didn’t engage the autopilot. We just flew about with the laser running, collecting readings so the technicians could look at them.”
“Look at them? What does that mean? Did they play them?”
“Sort of. They have a powerful computer which looks at them and makes sense of it all.” Rob picked up one sleeve and tipped the reel onto his hand. “Millie definitely became more interested in these after the incident.”
“Rob, is it possible Millie was creating tapes for his own assessment of Guiding Light? Is this them?” Susie held up the two reels from the box.
“It’s possible, but those two tapes would hold a maximum of forty minutes’ flying time. Doesn’t seem like a lot.”
“Could there be more tapes? Somewhere at West Porton?”
“I doubt it. Firstly, he’d have to have dozens for anything meaningful and secondly, what’s the point of having them at West Porton? We can’t read them. As far as I know, only the DF Blackton computer can do that.”
“So, he must have had some help on the inside. That must be it. Someone at DF Blackton, outside the official channels.” She picked up the sheet of handwritten notes. “And this was the result.”
“You think that’s possible?”
“I’ll make inquiries at HQ, see who we have close to DF Blackton. There’s usually someone on the inside for us when it comes to weapons manufacturers. Meanwhile, you sniff about inside TFU. We need to stay one step ahead of this Kilton person. It would be useful to know what he has on Millie.” Susie moved to the bed and shuffled the papers together. “Are you ready for this next phase, Flight Lieutenant? It may run counter to everything you’ve been taught about following orders.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are.”
Susie slipped the first batch of sheets into the pouch.
“Still, something’s not quite right, is it?” She turned over the next batch.
“What?”
“Why hasn’t this mystery person helping Millie said anything? I mean, they must have heard the news, but they haven’t come forward? They know something’s wrong. They’ve seen men killed, but they haven’t raised any alarms.”
PROFESSOR LEONARD BELKIN looked out across the Atlantic Ocean. It was overcast and grey. In the distance, plumes of rain swept across the sea from the low cloud. For the first time since his arrival a week ago, the westerly breeze brought a distinct chill.
He would light a fire today.
Heading back toward the cottage, he used a stick to keep steady on the uneven ground.
He wore a pair of binoculars on a leather strap around his neck; they bumped on his chest as he ambled up the gentle slope. At the top of the plateau, he paused and caught his breath before heading to the cottage by the old lighthouse.
After removing his binoculars and outer layers, he looked around for kindling and spied a newspaper.
As he unfolded The Daily Telegraph, something caught his eye.
Lions Thrash Out of Sorts Australia.
He fished out his reading glasses and checked the date of the paper. 6th June 1966. He wasn’t much of a newspaper reader anymore, but he couldn’t resist the details of a successful Lions tour down under, even if it was nearly a month out of date. He left it on the kitchen table, and rummaged in the bag Callum had handed him on the mainland. Inside, he found Saturday’s paper.
He picked it up and leafed through, sticking to his routine of avoiding the day-to-day ructions of politics and crime that seemed to pervade every page.