William Hill - Department 19

The young flying officer looked out across the base and to the moors beyond. The giant pale blue golf balls that had hidden Fylingdales’ Cold War radar dishes were gone now, but the vast three-sided phased array pyramid that replaced them rose up from the top of Snod Hill, silent and still ominous even after a year stationed here.

The Blacklight outpost was at the western edge of the base, away from the roads that carried busloads of tourists to Whitby during the summer months, away from the RAF personnel and their families, a nondescript gray concrete square with a heavy steel door set into it that led down into a small bunker, one square room with two desks set into the walls and a tiny bathroom at the rear. The barracks was a short distance away along the route of the fence, linked to the front of the bunker by a gravel path. The low brick building was dark; the rest of Elliott’s unit were asleep in their beds.

Beyond the fence that ran past the bunker were the empty moors, the bracken and long grass undisturbed by ramblers and hikers who knew better than to approach the base. Across the moors, in the hills above Harrogate, was RAF Menwith Hill, the NSA listening post that was sovereign US territory.

Elliott had been there a couple of times, had eaten a burger in the diner and drank Coors Light and lost forty dollars in the bowling alley. The Yanks had made themselves right at home, building an authentic American small town in the shadows of the vast radar fields that scanned the world’s airwaves for the words and phrases that threw up red flags on the Echelon database.

Before he joined Blacklight, Elliott had thought the people who believed in things like Echelon were crazy loners who spent all their time wearing tinfoil hats and feverishly posting on the Internet. Now he knew things that would make them weep into their keyboards.

Something crunched the gravel softly behind the bunker.

Instantly, Flying Officer Elliott drew his Glock from its holster and pulled his radio from its loop on his belt. He keyed his ID code into the pad and held it to his ear.

“Code in.” Commander Jackson’s voice sounded tired and grumpy.

“Elliott, John. NS303-81E.”

“What’s going on, Elliott?”

“I heard something, sir. Behind the bunker.”

“Did you investigate?”

“No, sir.”

The commander swore heartily. “Go and check it out. I’ll be there in three minutes.”

“Sir, the protocol-”

“Three minutes, Flying Officer. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

Elliott placed the radio back in his belt and wrapped his left hand around his right. Treading softly, he stepped along the side of the bunker. Experience told him it would be an animal of some kind, a badger burrowed under the fence from the moors, or a seagull come inland from the coast and too tired to fly back. But the protocols existed for a reason. No one came near the Blacklight bunker without authorization, and any unusual noise was taken very seriously.

He reached the corner of the bunker and steadied his Glock in his hands. He took a deep breath, then stepped around the corner.

Nothing.

The wide space between the wall of the bunker and the fence was empty, the gravel track undisturbed. Elliott lowered his weapon and reached for his radio to let Commander Jackson know it was a false alarm.

Thunk.

Adrenaline splashed through Elliott’s nervous system. No animal had made the heavy noise that had come from the front of the bunker. He raised his pistol again and stepped sharply round the corner and against the long wall of the bunker. Before him, RAF Fylingdales glowed brightly with amber yellow light, and Elliott wished for the first time that the flat expanse of grass that separated the Blacklight bunker from the rest of the complex didn’t exist.

He checked his watch as he inched along the concrete wall. Forty-five seconds since he had spoken with Commander Jackson. Just over two minutes until backup arrived.

Elliott crept along the wall, the nose of his gun steady in the cool evening air. Then he heard a noise that chilled the blood in his veins, and he saw the muzzle of the pistol start to tremble involuntarily.

It sounded like a laugh.

A high-pitched, almost childlike laugh.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and his whole body began to shake as a second huge dose of adrenaline crashed through his system. He inched forward, took a deep breath, covered the last two feet to the corner of the bunker, and swung himself around the corner.

There was a figure standing in front of the door.

Everything moved in slow motion. Elliott stifled a scream, his eyes bulging in terror, and he began to pull his finger back against the feather-light trigger of the pistol. The figure was wearing a white T-shirt, and it was this detail that sank into Elliott’s brain just quickly enough to halt his finger. He took a second, closer look and then lowered the gun, panting, his breath coming in sharp hitches.

It wasn’t a person.

It was just a T-shirt, fastened to the door of the bunker. There was something dark sticking out of the middle of the chest, and there were words printed on the white material. He stepped forward to take a closer look, then a hand fell on his shoulder, and this time he did scream.

“What the hell’s wrong with you, Elliott?” barked Commander Jackson, spinning the young flying officer around to face him. “Are you…”

He trailed off as he saw the T-shirt flapping gently in the night air.

The two men stepped forward, and Commander Jackson took the heavy torch from his belt and shone it on the bunker door.

The T-shirt was pinned by a heavy metal bolt, at least a foot long, that had been driven through the material and several inches into the steel bunker door.

How much force does it take to do that? Elliott wondered.

Printed on the T-shirt was a line drawing of an island with a single word below it in cheerful yellow type.

LINDISFARNE

Below that, across the stomach, in a dark red liquid that turned Elliott’s stomach, five words had been scrawled: TELL THE BOY TO COME

“Issue a proximity alert,” Commander Jackson said, in a low voice. “And wake the rest of the unit.”

Elliott pushed open the heavy door, noticing with slightly numb horror that a small pyramid of metal now emerged from the inside of it.

It almost went right through.

He sat at the communications desk and punched in the command to issue the proximity alert. This signal would be sent to every military base within a fifty-mile radius, ordering them to check their radars for any unexplained aerial phenomenon in the last thirty minutes. The radar operators in the bases would not know what they were looking for, or why, and would delete the record of their search as soon as the results had been transmitted back to the Northern Outpost, as the protocol dictated.

Elliott was about to key in the command to wake the rest of their unit, when something on one of the monitors caught his eye. It was a BBC News 24 feed, and the words Breaking News were scrolling along the bottom of the screen.

“Better let the Loop know about the message,” Jackson called through the open door.

Elliott didn’t take his eyes from the screen as he replied. “I think they already know, sir.”

Jamie shoved open the door to the Ops Room. Frankenstein and Thomas Morris were exactly where he had left them; the two men were not looking at each other, and Jamie doubted a word had been said in the time he had been underground. They looked up as he entered, and he sat in a chair in front of them.

“She didn’t do it,” he said.

Both men opened their mouths to protest, but he didn’t give them the chance.