by Robert Wilde
As they came to a corner, Nazir stopped the car. The chainlink fence had been damaged here, deliberately, as someone had cut through the wire on both lines of fence and folded it back. Nazir turned the engine off and began to get out.
“We’re checking that?” Pohl said, following.
“I thought so.”
‘That’ didn’t refer to the fence, although Nazir did confirm it had been cut through. ‘That’ referred to the Lada car which was parked beyond the holes, gaps big enough to have driven the car through.
“It looks terribly rusty,” Pohl commented as they got close.
“It’s been out in the weather for a while, probably years, it’d collapse if we touched it.”
Pohl looked at a depression in the ground near the car. “Hard to tell what this is, whoever did this hasn’t been here for years.”
“But odd they didn’t take their car with them when they left.” He looked at Pohl, who looked towards the buildings. “Tricky, very tricky.”
With a sense of foreboding they got back into the car, and Nazir drove them round the rest of the road, until they came to an entrance, where a wooden guard’s hut had fallen into far greater disrepair than the concrete inside, and where the fences had large chain gates stretched across them. They were closed, with a chain and padlock fastening them.
“I wonder why they didn’t just cut in through here?” Pohl wondered, as she and Nazir got their bolt cutters and opened the entrance up.
“Maybe they wanted to sneak in, I don’t know. Too many questions…”
Soon they drove into the centre of the complex and parked up, climbed out, and readied their equipment. Nazir had the translation tablet and a crowbar, Pohl had torches and a backpack, both had cameras.
“Nazir,” Pohl said, putting a hand on his arm, “look, that door is open.”
She was right. While the rest of the complex seemed shut up and left nicely, one door was ajar. The concrete stretched out around them, all greys and the black of glass, but this door was an inky entrance into whatever lay inside.
With night falling, and with no need to ask if they’d start there and see what had happened, they walked towards it, and Nazir scanned the sign. “This is the reception area, oddly enough,” and they walked inside.
It was still light enough that the windows of the reception area gave a clear view of who was inside. There were three skeletons propped up against the back wall, their old clothes rotting around them, with bags of equipment lying around them.
“I think we found our Lada drivers,” Pohl whispered.
“I think we can talk loudly and not disturb them.”
“Oh, yes, silly me. What killed them?”
Both the living approached the dead. “I have no idea. If we have Joe here we could speak to them I guess, if they were still here, but as we are, well, we’ve no way of knowing.”
Pohl bent down and began looking at their clothes, switching into a mode of cool clinical interest. “I can’t see gunshots, or knife wounds, or broken bones.”
“They’re in one piece, can’t be a bear attack. Maybe they froze to death. Not exactly over dressed.”
“That seems likely. We’ll never know why they were here.”
“Odd, very odd.”
Pohl then stood, and she and Nazir looked around them.
“Do you want to wait until morning?” Nazir offered.
“You wound me Nazir,” Pohl joked, “let’s get searching and get going.”
They turned and looked at the walls around them. The good thing about a reception area was that it had lots of signage in it, and Nazir took a photo with the tablet and was reading a translation in minutes.
“Good thing I remembered to charge this puppy before we set out.”
“Do not even joke about that Nazir, do not even joke.”
“Sorry professor, but I wonder if there’s even power to this place?”
Nazir now walked over and flicked a light switch. For a second there was bright light, and then nothing.
“Well, congratulations, you’ve broken it.”
“The first rule of urban exploration is to leave things as you find them,” he said smirking.
“We are not hunting for the generator.” She switched a torch on. “Which corridor?”
“I think we’re heading down this one,” and walking side by side they ventured forth.
The building was dusty, with a thick layer on the floor, but the most disconcerting thing was how everything was just left. Chairs, tables, even a vase on the desk in reception that might once have held flowers was still sitting there. As they walked they passed a doorway that had a small pen on the ground in front of it, obviously dropped and left on that final day.
“Thinking about it,” Nazir said, “this really ought to be haunted.”
“You think people died here?” Pohl asked.
“Sorry, no, I meant, the way it looks, yeah, the aesthetics, mean it deserves to be haunted, and if not haunted made into some sort of horror film.”
“I suspect you could return here with a team and make a film and no one would know.”
“Except the three dead people, I bet that’ll put the actors off.”
“Well, you could tidy those into a cupboard.”
“Cold professor, cold.”
“I blame all that time reading archaeology.”
They walked on, taking photos of signs to guide them, until they paused outside a functional door.
“This should be it,” Nazir said.
Pohl looked at the passcode lock. “Any idea how we get past that?”
“Yes, I have developed a technique for those,” and he kicked the door so hard it flew open.
“Subtle but effective.”
They went inside, and found a lab space, with cupboards all around the sides and tables in the middle. There was a computer so old and huge it looked like a spoof stage set, and it sat sadly knowing Nazir’s phone had more computational power.
“Does your spider sense know where to start?” Nazir asked, pulling a torch out, the dusk having become too dark for natural light.
“I suggest we look in those filing cabinets…”
“Ah, yes, good idea. Right,” and they pulled it open, finding them full of files. Handily, the tablet was able to speed up reading them, as each was pulled out, the text on the front translated, and the file put to one side. Until they came to one labelled ‘Special Weapons Project: Spirit Gun: Final Conclusions.”
“Well fuck me,” Nazir exclaimed, “we’ve found it. We’ve actually found it.”
“You sound so confident in our mission.”
“Anyway, let’s have a read through this,” and as he began photographing all the pages they began reading the document. It was a summary of work done, of files presumably buried in the cabinet, a final explanation to be sent up the chain of command. It was, in short, perfect. It narrated the genesis of the project, the initial research, the theory, the design and…
Both looked up as lights appeared outside, and they flicked their torches off and ducked down. Nazir crept over to the window and peered out, to find two vehicles had pulled up in the ‘car park’ next to their own car, and people were getting out looking. People with torches and guns.
“Oh shit,” Nazir hissed back, “it’s the police.”
“We’ve got a bigger problem,” Pohl said from a few tables away, face still looking at the tablet.
“What?”
“I’ve got to the end of the report. They didn’t arrest the person in charge as a mole, that’s just the PR. They arrested him because he spent millions and several years on the spiritual weapons project, until he had to admit he had failed. He couldn’t do it.”
“Wait, wait, there’s no gun?”
“There’s no gun, no weapon, no basis for this report. Just a man with a dream who couldn’t admit to failure.”
“Do you think we could explain that to the police?” Nazir said, looking out. Only then did he
see into one of the cars, where a human being was sat in the back with a bag tied over their head.
“Double shit,” Nazir hissed again, “this isn’t the police. This is something far, far more problematic.”
By now Pohl had come over and joined him, at which point her phone led out a low beep.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” and she answered it to discover it was silently ringing.
“Hello?”
“Hello,” said the Array.
“I thought there was no signal here?”
“There isn’t, but those cars have a satellite connection and a wi fi cloud. I’m calling you through them.”
“And who are they?”
“Russian secret service.”
“And who’s tied up?”
“I have no idea. Do you have an exit strategy?”
Pohl looked at Nazir. “Do we have an exit strategy?”
“Err,” and Nazir looked into the darkness of the building. “Yes, yes we do.”
“We do?” Pohl didn’t cover her surprise.
“Oh yes we do.”
“And what is it?”
“We talk to ghosts right? We came here to a place that researched ghosts? Well, ghosts are going to be our way out of it.”
Pohl turned her attention back to the phone. “We have a plan.”
“Good. Ideally you don’t want to get shot.”
“I think we’ve already got that as our chief goal.”
“Good, so, what is the plan?” Nazir explained, and the Array continued “there is something very wrong about humanity. Very wrong indeed. Here’s a floor plan with absolutely no text on it.”
“Perfect.”
“But have you found the file, or the gun?”
“Oh, yes, about that…”
A heavily armed Russian man entered a room, gun up, torchlight coming off it, and he quickly swept the area for the Brits they were searching for. He found neither the man nor the woman, so turned and out of the corner of his eye saw… something. He was a big man, military trained, highly paid now, but he’d never seen something like that before. He’d never seen a fleeting appearance out of the corner of his eye of a white shape that then disappeared. He’d never seen a ghost before. He knew he was supposed to be hunting the Brits, but, well, a ghost? They said this placed studied ghosts, so he turned and went down the corridor, looked round and walked forward. Was that it there, again, a ghost?
In another point of the deeply connected buildings a woman with a similar gun was pushing open a door, when something moved to her left. She spun, weapon raised, but the light revealed nothing. What was odd was how her mind ran through what it detected: a fast moving, all white figure had been there and gone. The Brits? Or something else? All white, like a… ghost? Was there something left over on this base? Was that why they’d found three old corpses in the reception?
She turned, and walked down the corridor to see what she’d seen.
The agents crept through the buildings, guns ready, nerves growing frayed, as they chased what they thought were ghosts. This continued, them moving through new parts of the structure, seeing ghosts in the distance, until, fully hyped up and looking for what the hell was haunting this building, they turned corners and found something opposite them. Gunfire broke out, people were wounded, killed, people fell, as the agents shot at each other in the confusion and fear. Outside the guard of the vehicles rushed towards the building to join in the firefight, and was soon, wounded in the leg and leaning against a wall.
Outside, two ghosts emerged, rushing over to the cars. Both ghosts pulled off the white sheets they been wearing, having used a penknife to hurriedly cut holes out for their eyes.
“I can’t believe that worked,” Pohl said, stuck halfway between relief and shame.
“Let’s see who the Christmas present is,” Nazir replied, yanking open the door and cutting the bag loose from the prisoner’s head. The person who glared back at them, and then looked greatly surprised, was someone they knew.
“Peters!” Pohl exclaimed.
“Err, hello…what are you doing here?” He seemed unflappably calm.
“Looking for weapons.”
“I should have realised we’d have been chasing you.”
“Looks like we’ve saved you for a change.”
“Indeed,” and he blushed. “These weapons, did you find them?”
“No, they never worked.”
“In that case, perhaps we should leave before anyone comes back to find these vehicles. Knacker the engines of the other ones and then let’s get driving.”
“Does this mean we can really floor it and go crazy?” Nazir was grinning.
“Yes, it pretty much does.”
“Mexican wave.”
“Somehow I don’t think all the radio stations will play music if you crash us into something Naz.”
“Well professor, I’m pretty sure there are many British men who’ll be sad to hear of my passing.”
“Sad is different to relieved.”
“You’ve been hanging around Dee too long.”
With the car making distance between them, Pohl’s phone rang.
“How’s it doing that?” Peters asked, still massaging life into his recently bound hands.
“This car has a thingamabob.”
“The professor means the car is wired for anywhere access.”
“Excellent, I need to call my team and get us extracted.”
“Hello?” Pohl said.
“I see you’ve escaped and our moving swiftly away.”
“Yes. We took the car with the thingamabob in it.”
“Sensible. Please don’t tell Peters I’m involved in this.”
“Oh,” and Pohl looked in the rear view mirror. “Of course. We need to use the line anyway,” and soon the phone was shut off and handed back.
“I’ll ring my people, have them come in strength to meet us, in case someone else comes after us.”
“By strength, what do you mean?”
“Well professor, We’re not supposed to be here and they’re certainly not supposed to be armed, but we would win a small fight.”
“Ah.”
“I expect you have been looking for a way to stop what happened to Dee ever happening again?”
“Yes, yes we have.”
“In that case I really hope you bought the file with you.”
“Yes, we did as it happens, photos and paper.”
“If you’d be so kind as to give it to me, we can have our scientists look it over.”
“You think you can make a weapon?”
“No. The Soviets invested in it, we’ll have the finance to hold a coffee morning. But I want them to at least look. Being tied up tends to focus you on the positives once you’re free. We got the file, one tick in the win column.”
“So what happened to you?”
“A leak somewhere, I presume. Something to look into. Probably shouldn’t turn up to these things myself. Who was that on the phone?”
“Dee, her turn to play mother.”
“How’d she know to ring?”
“She’s in a hospital room, she’s bored enough to ring every half an hour and hope something has happened.”
“I can sympathise. I’d probably be tripping on painkillers.”
“Don’t you start about that.”
“What did I say?”
An hour later the car passed two large black vans sat at the side of the road, which immediately turned and followed the new trio.
“Don’t panic,” Peters said, holding a red wristed hand up, “that’s my group, that’s where the rendezvous is.”
“Aren’t we stopping?”
“No, we’re driving somewhere a little safer before we do that.”
“And then?”
“Well Nazir, we’ll have to get the pair of you out of Russia.”
“You’re staying?”
“No, I am very much leaving too.”
“Then we can go together?” Pohl smiled at Peters, who hadn’t expected such an offer.
“Err, well…”
“Would seem wrong to leave you behind now. We should all exit as one. Just in case.”
That did seem remarkably nice. Plenty of people would want the next new identify and BA flight out of the place.
“Okay, let me see what I can put in place. And thank you for your friendship. It isn’t the default position in any field I’ve worked in.”
Seven: The One You Were Waiting For
In theory, the hardest part was the start. From the moment he’d arrived with a handful of completely faked paperwork he was in danger, because one phone call would have rumbled him. However, the soldiers looked at the documents, signed at the work, and got to loading the truck with what the dockets required, until it was filled and ready. That was, however, only a section of the hardest part, because then the man had to get into the cab of the truck, drive it from the warehouse, through the base, and then come to the gates, where his paperwork was examined by people who did this every day and were trained to sniff out a fraud. But the man had been working on this for months, this was his pension and his escape, and he’d worked it so effectively that the paperwork was shown around, acknowledged, and soon the man had driven off a military base with a truck full of now stolen weapons and no desire to go back to his unit with them.
The easiest part was the middle, when the man just had to drive the truck through Britain until he reached the destination. He’d driven these vehicles many times before, and was confident he wouldn’t get himself involved in a traffic accident that might slow him, stop him, or involve the police. It was the easiest part, but he was increasingly worried by the finale, and once or twice took his mind off the road and had to snap back quickly. Always just in time though, always, and soon the middle part was finished, because the truck was pulled off the main road, down a side route, and then in front of a line of warehouses.