The Final Flight

by James Blatch

  “Now let’s take you somewhere specific,” Susie said, in a soft voice. “Let’s start with the flight.”

  His mind filled with the sound of tearing metal, of chaos and blood. Of Millie, forlorn and dying.

  He sat up, panting.

  She put a hand on his back.

  “It’s OK, it’s OK. Calm down. I’m sorry, that wasn’t very clever of me. It’s too raw. Let’s leave it. Lie back down. Let’s try after the flight. When you first realised something was up. Go back then, put yourself in the room and let your mind explore.”

  He lay down. For a while he didn’t think about the moments after the flight. Instead, he listened to the birdsong again. The talking woman was gone, but the boys were still kicking a ball about.

  He found himself back in TFU after the crash.

  Red’s squeeze of his arm.

  Buddy, tough situation…

  Other men avoiding eye contact.

  Kilton.

  Officious. Efficient. Barking orders.

  We drink tonight for the men. You need to be there. So, come back. Understood?

  He drove to Georgina’s.

  Georgina’s.

  The house.

  The shaft of sunlight. The dust. Georgina being brave, but with sore, red eyes.

  Mary, kind and tactile. Her hand on his shoulder the whole time.

  And someone else. A man in a sports jacket.

  Charlie.

  In his father’s hand-me-down.

  The dining room.

  A word floated into his mind.

  Oxford.

  Charlie said something about…

  He sat up suddenly.

  “Charlie.”

  “Who’s Charlie?” Susie said, raising herself up.

  “Oxford.”

  “What about Oxford?”

  “At the Milfords’ after the crash, I said to Charlie, their son, ‘I am so pleased you got to see your father a couple of weeks ago’, because I knew Millie had visited him. But Charlie said he hadn’t seen him since Easter. It was odd. I double-checked with him and he looked at me like I was mad, questioning when he last saw his father. But Millie had been very clear. He went to Oxford to see Charlie. He missed a day out with us for it.”

  “And that was unusual?”

  “It was. I think Georgina was taken by surprise that he suddenly went off to visit their son. Then Charlie tells me he never even saw him.”

  “This could be it, Rob. It sounds like a cover story. So, where did he actually go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Susie patted him on the knee. “See, I told you this works. Let’s do some more.”

  Rob felt exhausted. “I’m worn out.”

  “We don’t have time to schedule a session for next week.”

  “Fine.” He lay back down and closed his eyes, allowing his mind to wander a second time. But the adrenaline rush from his first discovery made everything cloudy.

  He sat up. “It’s no good. My mind’s too busy now.”

  “OK, well, let’s think this through. Millie fibs to his wife and disappears for a day using a cover story about visiting Charlie. Is this the day he delivered the tapes? When was it?”

  “Quite a while ago. I remember it being not long after the first incident. I think that makes it far too early to have delivered the tapes. He wouldn’t have had time to record sixty of them.”

  “It must be connected, though. We need to know where he went. You have literally no idea?”

  Rob cast his mind back. He couldn’t remember much about the morning. He thought maybe Georgina had told them Millie wasn’t coming…

  But then there was the evening…

  “We went to a cocktail party that night. Millie drove. He acted odd.”

  “What do you mean exactly?”

  Rob shook his head when he remembered. “The guards stopped us. He was nervous. Really nervous.” His eyes widened. “Christ. He must have had the tapes in the car.”

  “Why on earth would he have the tapes, going into West Porton for a cocktail party? Wasn’t he trying to get them out of there?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Rob thought through the evening. The crowded room, the heat. The mayor’s wife.

  “He went off at one point. Said he left his watch in TFU.”

  “Right, so he was returning something. Tapes, maybe. This is good, Rob.”

  “But that’s it. I didn’t question him.”

  “Did he ever talk to you about it? Did he ask for your help?”

  Rob studied the grass. “Yes, but I closed down the conversation pretty quickly.”

  “Was there anyone else at TFU he would confide in?”

  Rob shook his head. “No. Everyone liked Millie, but I think I was the closest. Funnily enough, Kilton was probably the next nearest. They served together in the war. At Tangmere, I think.”

  Susie offered Rob another cigarette and held out a lighter. He leaned forward and spoke with the cigarette in his mouth.

  “He served everywhere, actually. All the old boys knew him. Even the graveyard—”

  Rob stopped lighting his cigarette and looked up.

  “What is it?” Susie asked.

  “There’s a man, an ancient fossil from the Maintenance Unit. We call it the Graveyard. JR. Nice bloke. Friendly, just Millie’s sort. He said something odd to me. Something about Millie, but I can’t for the life of me remember what.”

  “When, Rob? When did he say something?”

  “The night of the crash in the bar. I was drunk. And upset. I remember being confused. Damn it, what did he say?”

  Susie let him rack his brains in silence for a minute before speaking again.

  “Well, why don’t you ask him?”

  “Is that safe? I’ve avoided saying anything to anyone at TFU.”

  “He’s not at TFU, is he? And anyway, all you’re doing is asking what it was he said to you.”

  Rob looked at his watch. “He lives in the mess. I could even catch him tonight.”

  “Then let’s fly, flight lieutenant.”

  The mess bar was busy for a Monday night.

  Rob surveyed the room.

  At the bar; a white-coated steward regarded him expectantly.

  “Is Squadron Leader Richardson in?”

  Without answering, the steward pointed to the far wall where JR sat with two others Rob recognised from his few dealings with the Graveyard.

  As he approached, the three men stood up, as if he was a senior officer or a woman.

  “Hello, Rob.” JR reached out his hand, followed by the two other pilots who gave him a warm greeting.

  “JR. Do you mind if I borrow you for a moment?”

  JR gave the others a look, and they headed off to the bar.

  “When we spoke on the night of the crash, you said something to me about Millie. Do you remember?”

  Although JR’s eyes were sunken well into his head, with bags that looked like rolled up carpets, he still had a twinkle. Just like Millie.

  “I wondered when you would come to me.”

  Rob stared at him for a moment. “You’re the accomplice?”

  “Ha! I’m not sure I’m that. But, just to be clear, this isn’t an official visit on behalf of Wing Commander Kilton, is it?”

  Rob shook his head. “No, it absolutely is not.”

  “Good. You know what this place is like. What it’s become since your lot moved in, anyway. Careless talk costs lives, and all that.”

  “Yes, sorry about that.”

  “Not your fault. Anyway, I know you and Millie were close.”

  “We were.”

  “And yet, it appears he kept something from you?”

  “I think so, probably for my own good. But now I need to know.”

  JR looked more serious. “Is it true Millie’s name is being dragged through the mud by that oaf Kilton?”

  “It’s nonsense, of course, what they’re saying about him.”

  “We al
l know that.” JR picked up his drink and looked around the bar. “But this is not a place to raise doubts about the truth unless you’re well-armed.”

  “So, you were helping him?”

  JR waggled his head. “Sort of. Just one trip. He’d officially asked to go to Wyton for some meeting, but he asked us to take him to Abingdon instead. He obviously didn’t want the visit on any official log.”

  “Abingdon? When?”

  JR screwed up his face, which became a sea of wrinkles. “Early last week. Monday, I think.”

  “What did he do there? Who did he meet?”

  “No idea, I’m afraid. Like with you, Millie didn’t want to involve anyone else unnecessarily. I just waited for him.”

  “Abingdon…” Rob said to himself.

  “He was there for nearly three hours, from memory. We decided not to make any logbook entries, so I can’t be certain.”

  “Did he have anything with him? A large bag, for instance?”

  JR thought again. “Yes. Like a holdall.”

  Rob sat back.

  “I’d look through a list of units at Abingdon if I were you,” said JR. “He must have met with someone there?”

  “We will, thank you.”

  “We?”

  Rob looked around the room and thought for a moment. JR was the picture of a trustworthy man. But he knew he couldn’t take any chances.

  “I probably shouldn’t say too much. The same reason Millie didn’t involve you more than he had to. You’ve been very helpful. Can I buy you a drink?”

  “No need. The bar’s about to shut. To be honest, Robert, if you’re helping a cause that’s close to Millie’s heart and it pulls the rug from under Kilton, I’m happy. He’s bad news.”

  “It’s taken me a long time to see that.”

  They stood up. JR shook his hand. “It’s not your fault, it’s the way the system works. But Robert...”

  “Yes?”

  “Tread carefully.”

  Susie sat in her car, exactly where she said she would be, opposite the church in Amesbury. Rob could see the red glow of her cigarette as he approached.

  He opened the back door and climbed in.

  She looked around in surprise.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I thought it would be better?”

  “Well, it looks odd. Get in the front.”

  They both laughed.

  “We’ll make a field agent out of you yet, Flight Lieutenant May. But there’s a way to go.”

  Once he was in the passenger seat, she drove off.

  “Too suspicious, sitting in a parked car in the middle of the night. So, what did you find out?”

  “The Maintenance Unit helped him, but just once. Last Monday. The old boy I mentioned. JR. He took him on an unrecorded trip to RAF Abingdon. And he had a large bag.”

  “Well done, Rob. Who did he meet?”

  “They don’t know. It was pretty much an air-taxi service. They waited for around three hours and then took him back. JR suggested I look up a list of the units at Abingdon as a starting point.”

  “And then what? We call them? That’s fraught with danger.”

  “What else can we do?”

  “Where’s RAF Abingdon?”

  “It’s an old station near Oxford.”

  They looked at each other.

  “Oxford!” Susie said.

  “A coincidence?”

  “My organisation doesn’t believe in coincidences, Rob.”

  “So, Millie drove there at the beginning of June and then flew in with a large holdall last Monday.”

  “The tapes?”

  Rob nodded. “Has to be. It was so clever of Millie. He flew the bloody things out. No-one searches us when we fly. Quite brilliant.”

  Susie smiled.

  “What’s funny?”

  “My prodigy’s outstanding work.”

  The car briefly mounted a verge and swerved back onto the Tarmac.

  “Forget this. I can’t drive and talk.” She pulled over into the entrance to a field and parked the car completely off the road, masked by a break in the hedge.

  “Let’s have a walk and work out our next move.”

  She opened a five-bar gate and immediately recognised the field.

  “Huh?”

  “What?” Rob asked.

  “Don’t you recognise it?”

  Rob looked across toward the airfield double fence. Pieces of discarded tents lay on the ground, along with the odd piece of litter.

  They began walking toward a circle of logs in the centre. “What exactly did you do here?” Rob asked.

  “What you might imagine. Listening, mainly. The services get an instinct for groups that can threaten national security, and the first thing is knowledge. We need to know what’s going on. But, as you’re finding out, we don’t really intervene very much. It’s more a case of tipping off the local police, which is what happened here.”

  The blackened remains of a bonfire sat in the centre of the log circle.

  They sat down on the largest log.

  “So, it was you who returned the Guiding Light material that was stolen?”

  “Well, first I helped steal it, but then… Yes, I made sure it didn’t go very far.”

  He laughed.

  “It was wild. We cut the fence, scrambled across the airfield, and broke into the toilets. Took us a while to work out they were a dead end. It was a bit of a farce, but it was a pretty good job in the end, and well targeted. So, worth me being there.”

  “Like special forces, behind enemy lines,” Rob said.

  She lit a cigarette.

  An eerie orange glow from the airfield lights softened her features and cast dim, elongated shadows along the ground.

  “I’ve enjoyed it more than anything else I’ve done,” she said. “Mind you, this is only my second year.”

  “At MI5?” Rob asked, still not sure she’d ever confirmed it.

  “Yes, Robert. MI5. We tend to call it Box Five Hundred. Box for short, or the Security Service. They say MI5 in books and films, so we don’t use it.”

  “Box Five Hundred?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t ask me. I’ve no idea where it comes from. No doubt one of the boys I trained with would be happy to lecture me on it if I ever asked. But I’d rather be here in a field than sitting in a cramped office in Mayfair with them. Even if they do know every second of the Service’s history.”

  “Why did they choose you to send out?”

  Susie shrugged. “I’m a young girl who looks like she might be a hippie peace campaigner. That’s the sole reason. Still, it’s worked out well. I’m on to my second job now, thanks to you. Thanks to Millie, to be precise.” She looked around before stubbing out her cigarette. “Right, to business. We know Millie has a contact in the Abingdon area. If we find that person, we can learn whatever it was he found out. We may then have the evidence needed to blow the whistle.”

  “I can get a list of units from an Air Force directory tomorrow.”

  Susie shook her head. “No. We can’t just start calling and using Millie’s name. As soon as that gets back to Kilton, we put him onto the same trail. That would be a world of complication we don’t need.”

  “Then what?”

  She faced him. “You have to retrace his steps.”

  “What?”

  “I’m serious. It’s the best way. The most accurate, and the one that involves the fewest other people. Could you land at RAF Abingdon? Would that be a normal thing to do?”

  Rob exhaled. “Maybe. If I was in a single seater. Something like a Hunter. I could call it a practice diversion. The trouble is, I’m down to fly the Vulcan this week. Every day.”

  “What about JR? Can he fly you in? That would be better. He can take you exactly where Millie went. That’s what you need to do. You need to stand where he stood. You’re bound to find something. Some clue to where he actually went.”

  “But how would I do that? I’m e
xpected in work every day, all day.”

  “Aren’t you ever sick?”

  He put his head in his hands. “Christ, Susie, you’re asking a lot. You’re asking me to call in sick, then sneak onto the station, fly off with a Maintenance Unit pilot, land at another RAF station and then… god knows what.”

  “It’s no more than Millie did. Alone. Without your help or anyone else’s at TFU.”

  He sat in silence for a while.

  Susie touched his hand. “Rob, why are you doing this?”

  “For Millie, I guess.”

  “And for you, right? You’re also doing this for yourself.”

  “What do you mean? I’m being selfish?”

  “Not at all. I’m just pointing out that you’re carrying a lot of guilt and I think this is a way out, at least I think you’ve convinced yourself it is. Try to imagine for a moment that you back down now, before we’ve tried everything. You’ll have the rest of your life to reflect on that decision and, believe me, that stuff can eat away at you.” She gestured to the remnants of the peace camp. “There was a woman here who had some sort of regret inside her. Something she didn’t want to think about. I was never sure what it was, but I think she lived with it every day. She was cold and distant most of the time. You could mistake it for confidence, but when that gas bomb hit, she crumbled. Unable to cope. Funnily enough, it was the most human I ever saw her. And let me guess, it’s the same for Mark Kilton? Cold and distant? His generation, from the war, they bury so much that after a while they bury themselves. It’s no way to live, Rob. This choice today, it could affect you for the rest of your life.”

  “It’s such a gamble. So much could go wrong,” Rob said quietly.

  “It could. True. But living with the consequences of doing nothing and letting Kilton walk all over Millie’s name and reputation might be worse for you. Save yourself from a lifetime of not being able to think about Millie and your role in his death.” He winced in the shadows. “Rob, trying and failing is very different from not trying at all. You can stand up high and tell Millie you did everything in your power to honour his legacy, but giving up… That’s another matter. You would be choosing to comply with an authority you know to be wrong. You’d find it hard to look in the mirror ever again.”