Skydancer (5 page)

There was a click as the boiling kettle switched itself off. He stood up, dropped a tea bag into a mug, and extracted a milk bottle from the fridge. Giving the tea a few moments to brew, he looked through the window into the garden. He loved his home; it was peaceful, secure and permanent. Those early days with Belinda seemed like distant history to him now. They had been carefree in some ways, he supposed, but uncertain too. The relationship had begun so quickly that he always suspected it could end just as suddenly.

Life with Belinda had been fun then, and that fun had lasted for a long time. They had lived together for over a year before marrying. The ceremony had been brief and simple, one Saturday morning. They had invited only their closest relatives to the register office, and had not bothered with a honeymoon. They had felt no different after the wedding, which had somehow seemed wrong at the time, and they had spent the next few days fearing the marriage had been a mistake. Before long,
though, their relationship had developed a new sense of security. Peter went on to establish his career at Aldermaston, and Belinda decided to become pregnant.

For the next ten years or so she had devoted herself almost exclusively to motherhood, immersing herself in its ethos. Breast-feeding the three babies had come easy to her; she had studied manuals on child-rearing. She also turned her hand to horticulture, and a large corner of the garden had been cultivated to make the family self-sufficient in vegetables. She had baked bread enthusiastically, had woven and knitted. But this total involvement with creation had produced a traumatic and unexpected effect on her relationship with Peter. Originally they had seen eye to eye on most issues, but motherhood had changed Belinda; her concept of morality had grown radically different from her husband's.

The crunch had come five years ago when Belinda had grown bored and dissatisfied by her ‘earth-mother' role and decided to find a job.

As he drank his tea, Peter could still sense the surprise he had felt when she had confronted him with this. What a fool he had been for not anticipating it. He had been away for a few days attending a conference, and had returned home to find her in a state of obvious agitation.

‘Peter, we've got to talk,' she had announced while he was still hanging up his coat. There was a tremor in her voice.

‘Why? What's happened?' he had answered instinctively. He feared some family catastrophe. The children were nowhere to be seen.

‘Where are they all?'

‘They're staying with friends for the night – I thought it best.'

‘What are you on about, love?' he pressed, seizing her by the shoulders and peering anxiously into her hostile eyes.

Belinda had twisted herself from his grip.

‘I can't go on like this anymore!' she had burst out theatrically, tears brimming. ‘This lie! We're living a lie, don't you see?'

Stunned, he had followed her into the kitchen.

‘Don't be so bloody melodramatic! What are you talking about?' He was tired and unready for a confrontation.

‘You . . . your work . . . what you're doing at Aldermaston . . . it's wrong, it's criminal. It's immoral! You're planning genocide . . . mass murder. You spend your days working out how to do it. It's evil, don't you see?'

Peter then shook his head in disbelief. His work had never before been an issue between them. They had hardly ever discussed it.

‘Don't be daft!' he had countered cautiously. ‘You know bloody well that isn't true!'

His wife had clenched her fists in a gesture of controlled fury.

‘Don't you tell me what I do or do not know to be true! I'm not one of your damned computers! You haven't programmed me, you know!' She began to shout. ‘You've no idea what I think about most things – things that are really important.'

‘And that's my fault?' he snapped back.

‘Yes! . . . well, partly.'

She had been thrown for a moment, then continued.

‘You gave up being interested in my views years ago. And I . . . well, I suppose I just kept them bottled up.'

He had stared at her blankly.

‘Oh boy,' he finally breathed. ‘What brought all this on? Have you joined CND or something?'

She glared at him defiantly.

‘Yes. As a matter of fact I have.'

Then he had begun to pace round the kitchen.

‘Okay, okay. Let's talk then. Let's get it over with. Firstly, let me make it clear that there's nothing immoral about my work. Everything I do is aimed at
preventing
people from killing one another –
stopping
them going to war. I . . . I'm not planning genocide, for God's sake!'

‘I know that that's what you believe, Peter,' Belinda answered, controlling her voice with difficulty. ‘But I am also very, very sure that you are wrong, terribly and fatally wrong. When a weapon gets invented, eventually it gets used. That, sadly, is human nature.'

‘Except the nukes! For over forty years the world has had nuclear weapons and never used them!'

‘Hiroshima?'

‘It's because of Hiroshima that they've never been used since!' he had shouted in exasperation.

Belinda's shoulders slumped. Her eyes had filled with a great sadness.

‘You're wrong, Peter.' Her voice trembled. ‘One day, perhaps not very far in the future, mankind will prove that you're wrong. Millions will die, and you and people like you will be responsible.'

Her words had felt like a kick in the stomach.

Suddenly, though, her resolve had crumpled. She rushed towards him, flinging her arms around his neck and sobbing against his chest. For several minutes she clung to him, weeping uncontrollably.

Eventually her tears had subsided.

‘I didn't want to hurt you, darling,' she stammered, strands of hair sticking to the tear-stains on her cheeks. ‘I love you, you see. I love you as much as ever. Which is why it hurts so much to feel what I feel.'

She had begged him to change his job, to take up some other scientific work not involved with weaponry. But he had dismissed her appeal, and instead had sought to change her new-found attitude by reasoning – then by pouring scorn on her ideas.

But soon he realised that to be self-defeating. She was not susceptible to his arguments any more. A deep rift seemed to have opened up between them, and as the ensuing days passed he realised it was permanently to affect their relationship. Worse still, the lack of consensus on this fundamental issue had spawned disagreements on other subjects too.

They had nevertheless tried to be ‘adult' about it, assuring one another there was no need for their relationship and their love to change just because of differing viewpoints That had not worked out either. Belinda had already set up for herself a job at a local craft workshop, learning to turn wood on a lathe. She had made friends there with a group of militant feminists deeply involved in radical anti-nuclear protest. The house had begun to fill with posters and books describing the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and they had soon begun to argue over the effect this dispute would have on their children.

Peter was brought back to the present by the sound of car tyres on the drive, and the spluttering engine note of Belinda's ancient Citroën 2cv. He walked to the front door and saw that their eleven-year-old son Mark was sitting in the car with her. She must have called in for him at the sports-field on her way home.

‘Just look at this creature,' she called to no one in particular as she entered the house, holding the boy at
arm's length. ‘The school showers have broken down again. Ever seen anything so disgusting?'

Peter could see the broad grin half-hidden by the mud on his son's face, a grin that seemed almost attached to his prominent ears. The blue and white football kit was caked with mire.

‘Playing in goal again?' he asked.

‘'Sright. Only let one through, too,' Mark answered proudly, stripping off his clothes and dropping them on the kitchen floor.

‘Straight into the bath with you,' his mother replied, pushing him towards the stairs.

Belinda walked past her husband and headed for a kitchen cupboard.

‘Like one?' she asked over her shoulder, holding up a bottle of red wine.

‘Why not,' he replied, taking two glasses down from a shelf.

Belinda found some peanuts in the larder and poured them into a bowl which she placed on the table.

‘Why the special treats?' he asked with irony.

‘Thought you might need them. I have a feeling you've had rather a busy day.'

His arm froze, halfway through lifting the glass to his lips. What did she know, and how did she know it?

‘You were seen leaving the base in a very great hurry this morning,' she continued, smiling at his consternation. ‘Looking rather anxious, according to witnesses.'

Her insistence in calling the research establishment ‘the base' annoyed him intensely. It sounded so military.

‘I thought your lot were all washing their smalls at that time of the day,' he countered. She raised an eyebrow warningly. ‘I had to go to London at short
notice,' he countered, wondering how much to tell her at this stage.

‘Trouble at mill?' she asked flippantly.

‘You could say that. Security scare. I, er . . . ought to warn you,' he went on hesitantly, ‘that we may get some security people coming round here asking questions.'

Belinda stared at him in astonishment, a mouthful of wine unswallowed. She gulped hard, and placed her glass back on the table.

‘What sort of security scare,' she questioned.

‘Papers,' he answered vaguely. ‘Seems as if someone has copied some classified papers and left them lying around.'

Belinda frowned. ‘Is that serious? And what do you mean “lying around”? Where exactly?'

Peter hesitated. He was not supposed to discuss the matter.

‘In a rubbish bin,' he stated flatly.

Belinda eyed him thoughtfully for a moment, then she began to laugh.

‘It's not funny, love,' he growled.

‘Oh, yes, it is,' she exploded. ‘I've been telling you to put your work there for years!'

He stared at her forlornly. This woman for whom he still had so much affection, despite the distance that had grown between them, had no concept of the seriousness of the situation, no idea of the thunderstorm of unhappiness likely to burst over their heads at any minute. He agonised whether to tell her about Mary Maclean before she learned about his affair from someone else.

Belinda stopped laughing abruptly. Peter's face normally expressed a self-confidence bordering on cockiness, but there was no sign of that now. Instead she recognised an emotion she'd rarely seen there before. Fear.

‘Can't you tell me more about it?' she asked with sudden concern.

‘Not yet,' he replied firmly.

Anyone observing the MI5 man since he arrived at the Defence Ministry late that morning could have been forgiven for thinking that he did not seem to be reacting very quickly to the disastrous situation confronting the Strategic Nuclear Secretariat. Commander Duncan of the Ministry police had telephoned the Security Service as soon as that morning meeting in the Permanent Undersecretary's office had concluded. John Black had arrived within thirty minutes of the commander's call, and to Duncan's annoyance, had insisted on turning one of the senior secretaries in the police section out of her office so that he could use her desk and telephone.

It was as if Black was setting up camp, Duncan thought to himself as he watched the MI5 man unload the contents of his briefcase, including a plastic sandwich box, a vacuum flask and, most extraordinary of all, an ashtray.

‘Can't stand those chipped-glass things the Civil Service provides,' Black explained.

His own had a porcelain base and a chromiumplated lid with a knob which, when pressed, spun the cigarette end out of sight.

‘If I conceal the evidence I feel less bad about the amount I smoke,' he joked.

Duncan reckoned Black was in his late forties. He had a square, featureless face, greasy hair cut short at the back, and skin of the grubby grey colour and dead texture that characterises a heavy smoker. His eyes were contemptuous and mocking.

‘How much have you uncovered so far, then?' John
Black demanded eventually, his lunch safely stowed away in a drawer.

The Commander was senior in age and rank to the MI5 man, but now felt more like a junior constable as he reported all that he knew of the affair and detailed the investigations he had already set in motion.

John Black was the head of a counter-espionage section at ‘C' Branch in the Security Service, dealing with Government ministries. To his colleagues at the Curzon Street headquarters he appeared a bit of a loner and rather antisocial. A good investigator, they would concede, but he seldom drank at the pub after work or partook of the in-fighting that was normal life for MI5.

Recently, Black's reticence and secretiveness had even made him a suspect in an internal investigation at MI5. A defecting ‘trade counsellor' from the Soviet Embassy in London had revealed the KGB had a highly placed agent in MI5. Circumstantial evidence had seemed to point to Black after three successive cases that he had been working on were broken by the Russians at an early stage. He had been suspended from duty for several weeks. Eventually Black's name had been cleared, however. A Russian double agent in Moscow had identified Black's own head of department as being in the pay of Moscow for over ten years. The affair had caused such political uproar that first the Home Secretary and then the Prime Minister had resigned.

Early that evening Black sat on his own in his office at the Defence Ministry. Most of the thousands who worked there daily had left for home. He inhaled deeply from a cigarette whose glowing end was nearly burning his fingers, savouring the bitterness of the smoke, and then ground the butt into the ashtray. As he slammed his palm down on the knob, the metal plate spun
unevenly; the realisation that the bowl was nearly full caused him to wince.