The Final Flight

by James Blatch

  “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reader anymore, but he couldn’t resist the details of a successful Lions tour down under, even if it was nearly a month out of date.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.

  He moved to the open fire and scrunched up the large middle pages.

  The travel section had a picture of a beach in Beirut. He stared at the image of the Bristol Hotel and wondered if twenty-four years in a row was enough for Lundy.

  He screwed up the sheet and pressed it into the fireplace. Eventually he came to the last of the paper: the inside of the first and last pages.

  Cricket scores on the right, news of a successful Gemini space rocket launch on the left.

  He screwed the sheet up without turning it over to look at the front page.

  The fire had a bed of old ash, which was perfect for building on. He pushed the scrunched up balls into a base layer.

  Finally, he added a few twigs before fishing out a small log from the basket, placing it on top of the pile.

  He rummaged in the wood basket for the packet of Swan Vestas matches.

  Holding the lighted match against the newspaper, the flames took hold. The paper curled up quickly with the heat, revealing an RAF hat and a pair of eyes looking out at him, before the fire quickly consumed it.

  Belkin paused for a moment, before using a stick to push the log further into the centre of the growing fire.

  Standing up was an Olympian effort.

  He put a hand out to the wall to help his balance, before sitting at the wooden dining table in the centre of the room. After balancing his strongest reading glasses on the end of his nose, he settled down to read of the Lions’ heroics down under.

  27

  Sunday 3rd July

  “You’re not authorised to contact anyone at West Porton.”

  Susie sighed. Roger hadn’t answered this time. Instead, she’d been connected with a more senior desk officer.

  “I had to initiate contact. May saw me leave the house. He also turned up at the peace camp, twice. He nearly compromised me.”

  “I see. And he was working with Milford?”

  “Sort of. They worked on the project together, but May didn’t share his concerns. So we are drawing a bit of a blank at the moment. But the tapes that went to Blackton will hold the answer.”

  The man paused. “The Service has someone there who will spot anything out of the ordinary with the mainframe computer. It’s a prized asset and under a great deal of scrutiny. Best keep your distance. They’re twitchy about this one.”

  “So I understand.”

  “This is your first field case, isn’t it?”

  “Second, actually.”

  “Well, be careful.”

  He hung up.

  Susie strolled around a quiet Sunday afternoon Salisbury, going over her training.

  Pay attention to anything out of place, however insignificant. Try to picture what’s considered normal, what routines people follow, then investigate anything out of the ordinary.

  Back at the B&B, a parcel was waiting for her.

  She broke the seal on the pouch and pulled out a set of personnel records.

  So, Mark Kilton had an MI5 file. A red flag.

  It dated from the BAC TSR-2 project cancellation. They observed Kilton to have had contact with Number Ten through back channels. It was a brief note and nothing came of it.

  Susie made her own notes.

  Ambitious and prone to step outside protocols?

  She read his official service record.

  Fighter pilot in the war. Battle of Britain, North Africa, Malta. By D-Day, he was at Bentley Priory.

  Early jet test pilot after the war, commanded one of the first squadrons to equip with Meteors. Went through the Empire Test Pilots’ School. Promoted to squadron leader. And then…

  Odd. His career faltered at that point. Desk jobs in London. Then, suddenly in 1965, he’s promoted and handed the Royal Air Force Test Flying Unit as its founder commanding officer.

  She checked the date on the MI5 note about TSR-2.

  So that was his reward.

  The personal side of the file was brief. Wife, two children. Son died aged eleven from sepsis, daughter married with a baby somewhere in Hampshire. Wife Margaret died in 1965. Last year.

  Still raw?

  But nothing else. No debt, no financial impropriety. None of the things she might expect to find in the circumstances.

  She lay back on the bed and let the information wash over her, allowing her mind to roam.

  A dead child, a dead wife. God knows how many dead pals from the war.

  That’s a lot of death to live with.

  After completing her coded notes, Susie moved the papers to the floor and lay back on her bed. She closed her eyes and allowed the sounds from the garden to float through her mind.

  She spent a few minutes shifting through her immediate thoughts, closing off the day-to-day until she was ready. In the quiet of a first floor room in a semi-detached B&B on the edge of Salisbury, she went through everything that had happened, moment by moment.

  Her eyelids glowed yellowy-orange as the diffused sunlight filtered through the net curtains and fell on her face.

  The answers lie in the shadows. Something that was said that was not quite right. Someone in a room who shouldn’t have been there.

  The ‘recall’ sessions in training had been marred by men giggling. An eccentric former MI6 tutor taught them a technique to pull memories from hidden parts of your brain. Most of the men dismissed it as hokey. But Susie liked the idea of something that could give her answers.

  The tutor had described it as a cro
ss between meditation and self-hypnosis, insisting that the subconscious memory held a vast amount of information hidden from conscious thought.

  He had urged them to let their minds roam freely.

  Don’t force it.

  Don’t try to remember anything specific.

  Let your mind think for itself.

  Susie often practised alone in her tent. She always came away refreshed, even if she hadn’t been searching for anything.

  She learned the trick was to follow rather than push. The instructor likened it to picking out the faintest of stars in the night sky by looking just away from them, allowing them to register in peripheral vision.

  Thinking about something else, when you were keen to learn more about a particular event, was counterintuitive, but it worked.

  She steadied her breathing, becoming conscious of her chest rising and falling.

  A van clattered in the distance, trundling over uneven cobbles.

  Susie allowed the man-made noise to mix with the birdsong until it drifted beyond her hearing range.

  Her mind felt cluttered and busy. She’d learned a lot in eight days.

  The newspaper where she’d first read of the crash floated into view. She went forward to conversations with May, then backward to the peace camp visits he’d made.

  That look on his face. Desperation? No, something else. Determination. Words, images, sounds, all floated by. She resisted the temptation to concentrate on any one thing, allowing the flow of thoughts to continue unfettered.

  After several minutes, she sat up and made two notes.

  Number. Who?

  Tapes off West Porton. How?

  She curled up, this time for a nap.

  The image of Rob May’s face was back in her mind.

  Frightened and weighed down.

  He was pinning much on her ability to help him. But she had so little to go on, and the man who knew everything was dead.

  The only thing she could see clearly was the A33 back to London.

  28

  Monday 4th July

  “Friday? Is that possible?” Red Brunson asked.

  Kilton turned over a piece of paper with a series of boxes. Each one represented a flight, concluding on Friday that week.

  Rob’s head spun.

  “Two flights a day until Thursday morning,” Kilton explained. “The final flight, Friday afternoon, with DF Blackton in attendance, will be ceremonial. Upon landing, we’ll hand over the signed documents to the Ministry and it’s done. Guiding Light can move into production.”

  “What about the required project hours?” Rob said.

  “You look pale. May. Are you feeling alright?”

  “Yes, it’s just I thought we had nearly a hundred hours left?”

  “That was before the break-in and before we discovered exactly what Millie was up to.”

  The room went quiet.

  “What I’m about to tell you stays in this room.” Kilton rose from his seat and closed the office door. “An audit of the blank tapes delivered from DF Blackton revealed more than sixty missing.”

  “Missing?” said Brunson.

  “Missing. They haven’t been returned to Cambridge. They’re not in our cabinets or safe. Every square inch of West Porton has been searched, but we’ve found only two of them, despite widening the search to Milford’s married quarter.”

  “Why would they be there?” Brunson asked. For the first time, there was a hint of confrontation in Red’s question.

  “Because the two we did find were hidden in Millie’s locker.” Kilton locked eyes with Brunson, as if challenging him to come back with another question. “The Blackton computer read one tape. It contained records that matched one of the project flights. And yet, the official reels for the flight are safely with the rest, signed in by Millie.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Brunson. “So, Millie forgot to log a couple of tapes? So what?”

  “Not just the odd tape, Brunson. Sixty reels are missing. That’s twenty hours of secret Guiding Light material that’s now… god knows where. We have to assume the worst. We have to assume it’s in the hands of an illegal third party. And so, with the project compromised, the Ministry has agreed to fast-track the remaining phase. We know the system was disconnected at the time of the crash, so there’s no reason not to proceed. There’s still a chance the UK can secure the export order to the United States before any of this becomes public.”

  “Why would Millie do something like that?” Red asked.

  “Misguided intent, at best. Financial gain, at worst.”

  Red leant back in his chair and shook his head.

  “Millie’s funeral,” Rob said quietly to himself.

  Kilton frowned. “What?”

  “Friday. The final flight and the handover. That’s the day of Millie’s funeral.”

  Kilton gathered his papers. “That’s why it’s scheduled for the afternoon, May. The funeral’s at 11AM.” He stood up and headed for the door. “One more thing,” he said, turning back to the room, “we don’t believe Millie was acting alone. Be alert. Anything out of the ordinary, any suspicions about anyone, you come straight to me.”

  Kilton walked out, closing the door behind him.

  Rob didn’t have to check the schedule; he knew he would be down to fly a Guiding Light trial. Possibly two.

  “It’s you and me, kid,” said Brunson. “Back in a Vulcan. You ready for this?”

  “What choice do I have?”

  “Listen, if you don’t want to do it, you need to say something.”

  Rob toyed with the tasking paper. “And then what happens? How do you think he would react?”

  “I’m not sure, but he can’t force you to fly.”

  “I’d be out of TFU by the end of the day.”

  “Probably.”

  He looked across at the row of oblong windows facing onto the apron. The newly equipped Vulcan sat in the distance, ground crew crawling around it.

  “Let’s go flying.”

  “Attaboy.”

  They moved to a spare desk and planned the route.

  After a couple of minutes, Kilton approached with Dave Berringer. Rob recognised the young air electronics officer from a few flights in the Shackleton earlier in the year, but they didn’t know each other well.

  “Dave’s been in the Vulcan and instructed on the procedures, so should be up to speed.” He turned to Rob. “Can I have a word?”

  Rob put his chinagraph pencil down and followed the boss toward his office. They stopped just outside and stood next to the doorframe.

  “I know Millie was a father figure to you, and I’m sorry. But sometimes our parents aren’t right about everything. Sometimes they hide things from us. My advice? It’s time to let him go. There’s more at stake here. Something bigger than both of us.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “We get these hours flown, no lower than one thousand feet. Blackton will scrutinise every moment of every flight. On Friday, we sign it off. You sign it off. It will be the biggest moment in TFU’s short history and it won’t be forgotten. You won’t be forgotten.”

  The first of the four Olympus engines wound up to deafening roar status.

  Dave Berringer interrupted the static whine on the intercom, muttering to himself as he struggled with the magnetic tapes.

  Rob isolated the rear bay, so they didn’t have to listen.

  He got a good start on all four engines.

  The jet was on the edge of the apron, away from TFU. It had been overhauled prior to the Guiding Light installation; it smelled like a new car.

  Rob called up ATC and requested taxi.

  Brunson, in the left hand seat, exchanged hand signals with the marshallers before shifting the jet from its haunches and swinging her around to head out to the active runway.

  Rob spotted Kilton in his day uniform standing on the apron watching them.

  They lifted off into the mainly blue sky and banked immediately right. Rob glance
d down at the remnants of the peace camp.

  Forty minutes later, they let down over Northumberland.

  Brunson held the aircraft steady at one thousand feet as they approached the Union Bridge. There was a familiar jolt as Guiding Light took over.

  Rob grabbed the control column.

  “Easy, buddy.” Rob looked across; Red stared at him.

  “I’m OK.”

  He stared ahead, watching every rise and fall of the nose.

  Poised to hit the cancel button.

  The flight continued across to Solway, where they climbed out.

  Rob took over the flying and wondered why he wasn’t receiving heading information, before realising he’d left the rear bay off the intercom loop. He opened it up.

  “Finally,” Berringer said. “I was about to climb up the ladder.”

  “Did you get the tapes done?” Brunson asked.

  “No problem at all. Piece of piss.”

  It was easy to imagine Millie a few feet behind him. He wanted more than anything to chat over the intercom about whisky, card games and to promise that he and Mary would be over for both tonight.

  After shutting down, they walked back into the planning room together.

  Rob queued at the equipment hatch along with the other returning crews.

  Kilton’s secretary Jean watched from her side office.

  When he emerged back into the room and sat down to complete his logbook entry, she made her move.

  “You’re to report to Squadron Leader Hoskins in the chart room,” she said.

  Rob looked at the office next to Kilton’s which contained shelves of charts covering the UK and the rest of the world. The security force had apparently commandeered it.

  He stood up and closed his logbook.

  “You’ll need that,” said Jean.

  With his stomach in a tight knot, he walked toward the office, leaden-footed.

  He knocked on the door and opened it.

  Kilton was leaning over the desk, with the security force squadron leader studying documents.