The Final Flight by James Blatch (fastest ebook reader .TXT) 📕

stiffened next to her and took the key from her hand. He inserted it into the lock as quietly as possible. He eased open the front door and paused, listening.

Another noise.

“Who’s there?”

They waited for a response.

Another noise from the living room. Rob ran through in time to see a figure exiting through the back garden toward the firs and the fence at the end.

A slim woman with short hair.

“Hey!” he shouted and immediately set off after her.

He tripped on the door frame and went sprawling onto the patio.

“Rob!” Mary ran toward him, but he recovered and set off again.

Once through the fir, he ran along the path between the garden and a field of wheat. Beyond that, the orange sodium glow of RAF West Porton.

The girl was nowhere.

He stopped, panting at the sudden exertion.

She was gone, and he had no idea which way she’d turned down the track.

After getting to the end of the row of garages, he checked up and down the streets of neat lawns and brown fences.

Nothing.

The burst of adrenaline seemed to have sobered him up. He trudged back home, reappearing in the garden to see the house lights switched on and Mary opening the drawers to the Welsh dresser.

He entered the living room. She looked expectantly at him, but he walked straight past her to the understairs cupboard.

It took him a few seconds to confirm the worst.

He reappeared in the living room to see Mary scrutinising the fireplace, where a couple of silver candlesticks lived.

“She wasn’t after the silver,” said Rob. “She’s got what she came for.”

Mary stared at him. “The box?”

He nodded.

“It was a woman?”

“I’m sure of it. I recognised her.”

“What?”

“I don’t know her name, but she’s one of them, from the camp.”

In the gloom of her tent, Susie switched on a torch and shuffled through the contents of the open box.

She had given herself a few minutes to calm down; the couple had appeared home unexpectedly early.

Luckily it hadn’t taken her long to find the box.

“I hope you’re better at flying than you are at hiding things, Flight Lieutenant May,” she whispered as she leafed through the contents.

She read the title on one of the sheets.

GUIDING LIGHT.

She flicked through quickly. Lots of numbers, some sort of handwritten calculations, and what looked like a wiring diagram.

None of it meant much to her, though there were repeated references to a Vulcan bomber.

Susie reached the end of the box and examined two cardboard sleeves containing reels of magnetic tape.

She retrieved her notebook and wrote a description of the contents.

The key thing was the TOP SECRET stamp on virtually every sheet.

Highly sensitive military documents, in the hands of a junior test pilot, apparently retrieved from the house of a recently deceased engineer, currently the subject of a security investigation.

A recently deceased engineer who had contacted the British Security Service shortly before his death.

It was getting late, and she was shattered. She piled the paperwork back into the box and covered it with some clothes.

She rested her pillow against the box and lay down.

Had May recognised her? Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to leave a lasting impression on him with her loose fitting top. At the time, she thought it might be useful.

She used the few minutes before she was ready for sleep to allow her mind to flow freely. It was a technique learned from an eccentric former MI6 type in training. She’d sensed the other newbie agents, including Roger, had dismissed him as a lunatic, but Susie felt the logic in his thesis that our minds hold more than we can readily access, and some things only rise to the surface when our thoughts are elsewhere.

A few minutes later, Susie reached for her pad again and made a final note.

May=Milford.

20

Sunday 26th June

Rob rose at 7AM, feeling jaded.

He sat alone at the kitchen table, mulling a course of action he had settled on in the early hours.

Back upstairs, he pulled on an old pair of beige trousers relegated to gardening duty. He also found the scruffiest short-sleeved shirt he owned and headed out in the car.

Instead of turning left onto the road that ran up to the West Porton main gate, he turned right.

He parked the car on a verge and walked on until he came to an old five-bar gate, adorned with a large white bedsheet with a painted fallen cross CND symbol.

He entered the field and walked as confidently as he could toward the collection of tents.

Although it was early, the peace camp was alive with movement.

Slowly, the occupants of the field noticed their uninvited visitor.

Two men and two women, in a loose formation, moved toward him.

“What’s up, mate?” called the hairiest of the men.

“One of your lot broke into my house last night.”

“We’re not thieves.”

More protestors joined the initial four.

“It was one of you. I recognised her.”

“Her?” said a woman next to the hairy man.

“Yes. And she has something of mine.”

“What?” asked the woman.

“I can’t tell you.”

“Oh, right. So, you came here for our help but can’t tell us who you need to speak to and you can’t tell us what she’s supposedly got. I think you need to leave, chap.”

“Look, I’m not with the police—”

“We know who you are,” the hairy man interrupted and Rob stared at him.

“No, you don’t.”

The woman who was behind the leader stepped forward.

“You’re one of them.” She gestured toward the airfield.

A movement behind the small group caught his eye.

A slim woman emerged from an orange tent, a few hundred yards away.

“Hey!” he shouted, and started to move forward. But the largest man blocked his path and put a hand on his chest.

The slim woman stared at him but stayed put.

“Wait here,” a woman in the group said, before moving off.

Rob stood in an awkward silence as the protestors stared at him. More joined the back of the crowd.

“Nice haircut,” said someone. Others laughed.

“So, what do you do?” one of the men asked. “You a pilot?”

“You the one who gassed us?” asked another.

He