Down: Trilogy Box Set (54 page)

“Haven’t a clue,” Trevor whispered back.

“Pig.”

Trevor stifled a laugh. “Can you imagine the stick he got at school?”

At the same time Campbell Bates was asking his counterpart at MI5 what he thought about Trotter’s involvement.

Lawrence whispered his answer. “As delighted as you would be if you were made second fiddle to the CIA.”

“Shall we begin?” Smithwick asked. “Dr. Bitterman and I will be co-chairing this meeting. We are now twenty-two hours into this present incident. This working group will meet daily to coordinate the response. The first order of business is introducing Anthony Trotter from the Intelligence Services. Mr. Trotter is the ACSS, the assistant chief of the Secret Service, and is an adviser to the Cabinet’s Cobra committee. He will, effective immediately, be taking over operational command of MAAC from Dr. Quint. I think we can all appreciate that the scientific mission of MAAC has taken a back seat to the security issues, which have come to the fore in a most alarming way. Are there any questions?”

Emily raised her hand.

“Please go ahead, Dr. Loughty,” Smithwick said.

Emily made no effort to sound diplomatic. She’d been through too much for that. “Do you have any background in science, Mr. Trotter?”

He had been doodling on his pad and looked at her from under his droopy eyelids. “I do not.”

“Who here thinks it’s a good idea to place a scientific installation in the hands of a non-scientist?” she asked. “Everyone here knows I am beyond livid that Dr. Quint exceeded the energy parameters of Hercules I and we have to deal with the disastrous consequences of that action. But solving our present dilemma will require the best possible scientific management, not a bureaucratic management.”

“Might I?” Leroy Bitterman asked.

“Please,” Smithwick said.

Bitterman warmly smiled at Emily and said in an avuncular tone, “First, I want to publicly say what I privately told Dr. Loughty yesterday, that I so admire the courage and tenacity she displayed under what must have been the most appalling circumstances. We owe her an enormous debt of gratitude for what she has done and what she has volunteered to do again. I want to assure you, Dr. Loughty, publicly and emphatically, that we will not compromise the scientific integrity of MAAC or diminish the work that needs to be done to solve the most pressing problem we have, namely plugging the inter-dimensional hole once all our people have been rescued. With your input, we will be convening a panel of international experts in particle physics and cosmology to assist the scientific staff at Dartford. Mr. Trotter is an expert in other matters and will not interfere with purely scientific and technical administration. He has the confidence of the US and UK governments in handling the complex security and secrecy issues which have arisen. I hope that addresses your concerns.”

Emily returned the smile. “Thank you, Dr. Bitterman. That was very helpful and yes, I have some names I’d like to suggest for this advisory panel.”

Smithwick then resumed her control of the meeting and dryly laid out an agenda as if this were a routine session about oil production quotas in the UK’s North Sea Economic Zone. Emily found her bloodless demeanor wanting and she squirmed in her seat.

“Hearing no comments on the agenda,” Smithwick said, “let’s begin with a review of the security response to the present situation. Perhaps Mr. Trotter might lead this discussion.”

Trotter cleared his cigar-irritated throat. He was not an imposing man, but he fancied himself Churchillian and to promote this image, he smoked Romeo y Julieta Havanas, the brand favored by the great man himself.

“Thank you, madam secretary. As you are aware, SIS has been asked to take the lead on this and to coordinate the activities of MI5, the military, the Metropolitan Police, and other relevant police and emergency services departments. Why the SIS, which is charged with foreign threats, rather than the domestic MI5 apparatus, you might ask? Well, it is hard to imagine any threat more alien than the one we now face.”

Emily cringed at the bizarre attempt at humor. Trotter took the stony silence around the table with the sour expression of a comedian whose joke had just laid an egg.

“In all seriousness,” he recovered, “the SIS is particularly well-suited to the task at hand given our analytics, information-processing, and communications capabilities. The PM has confidence in our leadership and we shall not disappoint. As I see it, the highest priority is dealing with the aliens who are at large.”

A deep, gravelly voice interrupted Trotter. “We’re not talking about Romanians or Chinese, you know. These are people from Hell, for Christ’s sake.”

With all eyes on Trotter, no one had noticed John Camp limping into the back of the room.

Emily and Trevor jumped up and went to him.

“What are you doing here?” Emily scolded.

“I got tired lying on my duff so I signed myself out.”

“You should go back to hospital, guv,” Trevor said, supporting him around the waist and helping him over to the only free chair. It was next to Henry Quint who flinched at John’s presence. His jaw still ached from their last encounter.

“Not a chance,” John said. “There’s too much work to do. They shot me up with antibiotics and whatnot. I’ll be fine.”

Emily couldn’t conceal her look of concern and was about to argue with him when Trotter spoke up. “This must be John Camp,” he said.

“I am. And you are?”

“Anthony Trotter, SIS. I’ve been made acting director of this facility.”

“You mean Quint’s not in charge any more?” John said with a grin.

“That is correct,” Trotter said.

“Well, that’s a bit of good news.”

The comment spawned muffled titters around the table. Quint looked ahead stoically.

Trotter finally addressed John’s comment. “We’re all aware where these people hail from. What is it they call themselves? Hellers?”

“Some do,” John said.

“MI5 has been tasked with leading the charge of rounding up these Hellers. Ben Wellington is the liaison with this committee. Mr. Wellington, could you give us a report?”

Ben had prepared some notes but decided to wing it and closed his leather portfolio. “Let me begin with the easier of the two groups, the men who appeared on site here, within the employee canteen. As you are aware, there are four of them, ranging in biological age from the thirties to the fifties, all of them hailing from the London and Kent areas, with stated dates of death ranging from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The dominant figure of the group is named Alfred Carpenter who claims he was hanged for various offenses in the early sixteen hundreds. I’d describe him as a thuggish sort with low intellect. He continues to believe, despite our explanations and demonstrations, that he’s the subject of some kind of black magic. His companions, particularly the more modern of the group, take their lead from him but once separated, seemed to accept the reality of their situation.”

“Are they still in this facility?” the FBI Director asked.

“They are,” Ben replied. “Our view is that this is as good a place as any to hold them and offers the best overall security parameters given the alternatives. Previously, we kept the young man, Duck, in the security dormitory …”

“And he escaped,” Trotter interrupted.

“While on an authorized outdoors walk in the compound,” Ben said. “A regrettable mistake. These men will not have the same opportunity. We are in the process of constructing proper jail cells on the dormitory level that will be ready for occupancy tomorrow. When members of the second group are captured, they will be housed here as well.”

“Guantanamo comes to Dartford,” Trotter said.

Trevor spoke up. “Is there anything John or Emily can tell us about these four men which might be helpful to their guards?”

“I didn’t have much to do with them,” John said.

Emily said that she hadn’t either.

“When we were waiting on our mark for the MAAC restart, Alfred was something of an alpha dog,” John said. “I’d describe him as menacing but he’s not the worst of the worst. He wasn’t a rover.”

“A rover?” Trotter asked. “What is that?”

“They roam the countryside looking for people to take down. They live rough, generally sleep during the day, and get vicious at night. They rob and maim. And if they’re hungry, they eat.”

“You mean they’re cannibals?” Bitterman asked in alarm and befuddlement.

“Yes, sir, that’s correct,” John said. “They’re universally feared, a special breed of evil.”

Bitterman muttered something under his breath.

Ben piped up. “This could explain something we discovered this morning on the estate in South Ockendon. It hasn’t been circulated yet to the working group because it’s too fresh. As you know, we evacuated the estate under the pretext of a terrorist threat with biohazardous material discovered in a house. In methodically working through a house-to-house search we found a murdered couple, an elderly man and woman. They’d been stabbed and hacked to death with kitchen knives and cleavers. And this is the particularly troubling part: there were bite marks on their arms and legs with flesh torn away.”

“Good God!” Smithwick exclaimed, momentarily burying her face in her hands.

“Rovers for sure,” John said. “Any sign of them?”

“None,” Ben said. “We initially established a perimeter with local police now supplemented with units of the 16
^th
Air Assault Brigade from the Colchester Garrison but the horses may have been out of the barn before the perimeter became non-porous.”

“Have there been no sightings in the general area?” Trotter asked.

“Nothing definitive,” Ben said. “The Essex police have responded to scattered reports within a five-mile radius of the estate of suspicious activity in people’s gardens, wheelie bins disturbed, that sort of thing. But no sightings.”

“Like I said, they’re nocturnal,” John said. “They own the night.”

“Have we no idea how many of them are extant?” Trotter asked.

John rolled his eyes at the word. Who uses words like extant, he thought?

Emily must have been on the same wavelength because she matched his gesture with her own, an upward curl of her lips.

Ben opened his portfolio. “The best handle on that is the number of people missing from the estate, assuming the previous principal of a one-for-one exchange is still in effect. That task is made difficult by our lack of information on who was present and who was absent from their houses yesterday morning at ten o’clock. We are holding the evacuees, nearly three hundred residents of the estate, in a pavilion at the Colchester Garrison and interviews are in progress but we still do not have an account of the number of missing. Undoubtedly, this will become clearer as the day progresses and I will circulate an update this afternoon.”

Trotter began tapping his fingertips together repeatedly. Whether it was a nervous tic or an expression of urgency was unclear to John. “Control of the press will be vital. The previous breach was well disguised, so well in fact that MI6 was kept in the dark, which, I must say, we do not appreciate. This breach is very much larger and less well contained so our challenges will be legion. Who is the press officer?”

Stuart Binford tentatively raised his hand and identified himself.

“Very well, Mr. Binford. Please enlighten us on how you plan to communicate the resolution of breach number one and your approach to breach number two.”

Binford sounded hesitant, as if speaking on these matters was above his pay grade. He essentially degraded himself as merely a press flack accustomed to taking his orders from Henry Quint, before giving it the old college try. Breach number one, as Trotter dubbed it, had been described as an armed intruder gaining access to MAAC who kidnapped and killed a journalist and subsequently several members of the public. Clearly, they could not invoke Brandon Woodbourne as the culprit since inconveniently, he’d been dead for almost fifty years. Binford suggested inventing a suspect out of whole cloth and declaring his apprehension and death at the hands of the security services. Could this be accomplished, Binford asked rhetorically?

Trotter shrugged and suggested that, while not a routine matter, he was certain his colleagues at MI6 could manage something like this.

On the larger issue of breach number two, Binford continued, “It seems to me that ascribing the South Ockendon incident to a terror plot involving biological weapons production on a residential housing estate, has been the best possible strategy. The press is, and will continue to be in a feeding frenzy, but I should think we would be able to stonewall them on national security grounds. Small, steady drips of misinformation ought to keep them at bay.”

“For how long?” Smithwick asked.

“It’s hard for me to say,” Binford said. “Undoubtedly the longer it goes on the harder it will be.”

“Right,” Trotter said, addressing the table. “It seems we have the outlines of a press strategy. I’ll have someone at my shop call Mr. Binford and begin working on a detailed implementation plan. Which leads us to the next agenda item. To put it rather unscientifically I’d call it plugging the hole.”

Emily bristled visibly. Her voice cracking, she said, “I don’t think that plugging the hole, as you call it, is the next item at all. The next item must be organizing a rescue effort for the people who’ve been transported to a very dangerous and terrifying place.”

Bitterman was about to answer her but Trotter cut him off. “I appreciate that you’ve been through the ringer, Dr. Loughty, and I also appreciate that your sister, niece, and nephew have been caught up in this business, and for that very reason, I think you need to recuse yourself from this discussion.”

She flew out of her chair in a rage. “I beg your pardon?”

John also tried to stand but caught himself and slumped back down in pain. “Are you out of your mind?” he said, pointing a finger at Trotter. “Dr. Loughty is the most qualified person in the room—no scratch that, on the planet—to understand the things these people are going through and the scientific issues involved in bringing them home and making MAAC safe.”