by Guy Adams
Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also in the Torchwood Series
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Two years earlier…
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Nine months earlier…
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Book
‘Mr Matheson, I have cradled the leaking brains of presidents in my bare hands. Do you really think you’ve got what it takes to intimidate me?’
A CIA Special Activities Division squad goes rogue with a cargo marked ‘Torchwood’ that they’ve been escorting from somewhere called Cardiff. A very special shipment the UK’s new coalition government was suspiciously keen to offload at almost any price.
The Agency puts Rex Matheson on the case. But someone is obstructing him at every turn – each time he seems to be catching up with the rogue unit, something puts him off the trail.
Rex is the CIA’s golden boy – but has he met his match in the evasive Mr Wynter?
Based on the hit series created by Russell T Davies, The Men Who Sold the World is a prequel to Torchwood: Miracle Day starring Mekhi Phifer as Rex Matheson, with John Barrowman and Eve Myles as Jack Harkness and Gwen Cooper.
About the Author
Guy Adams is the author of Torchwood: The House that Jack Built and was a regular contributor to Torchwood magazine. He wrote the best-selling Rules of Modern Policing: 1973 Edition, The Future of Modern Policing: 1981 Edition and The Wit and Wisdom of Gene Hunt, along with a two-volume series companion to Life on Mars. His other books include The Case Notes of Sherlock Holmes and the fantasy novels The World House and Restoration.
New titles in the Torchwood series from BBC Books:
Long Time Dead by Sarah Pinborough
First Born by James Goss
The Men Who Sold the World by Guy Adams
100,000 BC
Bent Low sniffed the air and moved out onto the plain. The sun was dropping in the sky, and Bent Low knew the night chill would rob him of his breath if he stayed out much longer. It was colder these days than it used to be. The air made smoke grow in front of Bent Low’s face when he breathed. He would try and catch the smoke, squeeze the warmth from it. But the smoke was only the ghost of fire, and ghosts held no warmth for Bent Low. If he wasn’t back in the cave by the time the sun broke on the earth, back next to the fire that still lived, he would die out here. And that would feed his family no better than the empty pouch on his back.
Bent Low remembered when his father had brought home meat from the plain, there had always been plenty of it. Bent Low’s father had been a great hunter. Perhaps he had been too good. Perhaps his axe had killed all of the animals so that now, as Bent Low tried to feed his own family, there was nothing left to eat.
Bent Low kept his eyes on the dirt, reading the story of the earth, the route the animals had taken as they also came onto the plain looking for food. He saw the track of an ox, like two curled mouths. It was a sign of good food. But he did not trust it. He had followed the tracks of oxen for hours before and found nothing. The earth held the story of the oxen’s passing for too long since the last rain. They had been gone for many days. The ground told him things that were not so. The ground stole the food from his family’s belly. He took his knife and hacked at the ground. Sometimes, when you were angry enough, the earth gave up roots and bulbs. The ground feared your knife. It tried to make friends with you so you would not kill it. The gifts of the earth were not as good as meat but they were better than nothing at all.
As he cut at the earth there was the sound of thunder from the horizon. He looked at the sky, trying to decide whether it was angry or pleased with him. It was a cold sky and kept its feelings to itself. He looked towards where the noise had been. There was something there, a new shape on the horizon. He shouldn’t look, he had no time. If he waited any longer the darkness would come and kill him with its cold.
But Bent Low was curious. Bent Low wondered if the sky had given him a gift.
Bent Low ran towards the shape in the distance, forcing his tired legs to move fast so they gave him speed and heat.
As he got closer, he could see that the shape was a man, though not like Bent Low. This man’s skin was darker but almost hairless. He was bigger than Bent Low, a giant, and he wore strange, thin skins. He will be dead when the cold comes, thought Bent Low. Those skins will give no heat at all. Maybe he was dead already. For surely a man could not fall out of the sky and survive?
‘Please,’ the man said, though Bent Low could not understand the noise, keeping back in case the man was dangerous. ‘Please get help…’ the man continued, reaching out to Bent Low. ‘My name’s… Rex Matheson, and I’m with the CIA.’
One
Wilson had thrown up so often on the voyage out he was sure this must be soul he was picking from between his teeth. Though having worked eighteen years for the Department, it was unlikely he had any soul left.
There was a knock on his cabin door. He rolled his cheek from the lip of the toilet and went to answer it.
‘Yanks are here, sir,’ said the junior rating outside before offering a salute.
‘At ease sailor.’ Wilson smiled. Another six months and the boy would be spitting on the security services, not saluting them. ‘I’ll be right up.’
Wilson closed the door and headed back to the bathroom.
He looked at his face in the mirror. It was as grey and wet as offal.
Why couldn’t he just sit behind a desk? The last five years had been a gastric diary of seasick oceans, far-eastern belly pains and oriental fevers. He bet Yates didn’t have to put up with so much travel. But then Rick Yates was like most Foreign Secretaries: you had to explain the lingo to them the minute they were beyond the Central Line.
The cabin shook as the American boat pulled alongside, and Wilson stepped out of his cabin before the renewed rocking set his stomach off again. On these little boats you felt every damn wave.
It was beginning to get dark, but the evening held its heat. Climbing into the open air was like sticking your head under an electric hand-dryer.
‘Bloody wonderful,’ Wilson muttered as he felt his forehead erupt with sweat. ‘Absolutely bloody wonderful.’ He waddled over to Harris, the Navy officer in charge. ‘Evening, Commander,’ he said. ‘How many are there?’
‘Four above deck,’ Commander Harris replied. ‘If our intelligence is accurate, that would leave three more below. Typical covert vehicle, no insignia, non-military. Shows they’re being cautious, at least. How do you want to play this?’
Wilson shrugged. ‘Quickly. The sooner we’re bound for friendly waters the better. I’ll show off the cargo, you and your men keep an eye out up here.’
‘I’ll have a couple of men accompany you to the hold. You shouldn’t be on your own with Gleason.’
‘What’s he going to do? He’s a collection agent, nothing more.’ Wilson’s standing orde
rs were to limit the number of people who saw what they were carrying. That included the Navy. ‘You keep your men up here. The only threats that need concern us are gatecrashers.’
The Commander looked displeased but nodded, and the two men crossed the deck to where the boats were being joined by a gangway.
‘Good evening,’ said Wilson, as the four men climbed aboard. Dear Lord, he thought, look at them in their crewcuts and cargo pants, they couldn’t have looked more like soldiers if they’d turned up in dress uniform. He extended his hand to the man in front. ‘Glad you found us all right.’
The man stared at him, a scowl beneath a thin bristle of salt and pepper hair, but didn’t reply.
‘Fine,’ Wilson said. ‘I can dispense with pleasantries.’ He withdrew his hand and gestured beneath deck. ‘This way, Colonel Gleason.’ Wilson smiled at the faint surprise on the older man’s face. ‘We read our files,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t about to loiter here without having a good idea of who I was meeting.’ He gestured to each of them in turn. ‘Oscar Lupé, Owen Mills, Glen Shaeffer. I presume the rest of your unit is still aboard your boat? I believe in knowing who I’m dealing with, Colonel. You did the same, I’m sure.’
‘Actually,’ Gleason replied, ‘I didn’t bother.’
Touché, Wilson admitted, leading the Americans below deck.
When they came to the hold’s heavy iron door, Wilson tapped out the key-code to the lock. There was the solid clunk of an iron bolt withdrawing and a hiss of air as the door opened.
‘After you,’ said Wilson, ushering the Americans inside.
Stepping through the door after them, he pressed the button for the lights, and held back as the fluorescents came on. They illuminated four packing crates sat a neat distance from each other. Each bore a distinctive logo on them, a ‘T’ built from hexagons. Wilson took a crowbar from a hook on the wall and marched over, swinging it nonchalantly from one hand to the other.
‘Here you are, gentlemen,’ he announced. ‘Ordnance several light years beyond your current defence programme.’ He handed the crowbar to Lupé. ‘In fact, beyond anyone’s current defence programme. All guaranteed one of a kind. Certainly in this arm of the universe.’
Lupé prised the top off one of the cases and stood back so that Gleason could inspect the contents. He pulled out a gun made of a deep red metal.
‘Do be careful with that, Colonel,’ said Wilson. ‘That’s a Judoon firearm. At its highest setting it would punch a hole through the side of this ship and we’d all be swimming home.’
Gleason examined the gun and then tossed it back nodding for Lupé to open another crate. There was the squeal of nails wrenched from wood and then Gleason was poking through thin, straw-like packing material while Lupé opened the other two crates.
‘Obviously the manifest is as reported to your superiors,’ said Wilson, eager to conclude his business.
Gleason glanced at him. ‘It’s my job to make sure,’ he said. ‘That’s why my government didn’t bother sending an office clerk.’
‘Sir.’ Shaeffer was holding a large rifle that appeared to be encrusted in shellfish.
‘You had a leak?’ Gleason asked Wilson, stepping towards the other man.
‘It’s bio-organic,’ Wilson explained as Shaeffer began tugging at fronds of seaweed that hung from the rifle’s midsection. ‘It’s supposed to look like that. Look, do be careful, all of this equipment is—’
The rifle gave a small cough, and Lupé vanished. The crowbar he had been holding fell to the ground and bounced, the clang of metal against metal echoing around the hold.
Gleason pulled out his sidearm and pointed it towards Wilson.
‘Don’t you bloody point that at me,’ Wilson shouted. ‘Your man activated it by mistake.’ The rifle continued to hum. ‘You need to put that down!’ he insisted to Shaeffer who was now holding the rifle at arm’s length.
The soldier looked to Gleason, who nodded. Carefully, he placed it on the floor. It continued to hum, a faint orange light working its way up and down its length.
‘What do we do, sir?’ Shaeffer asked Gleason.
‘You back away from the crates,’ said Wilson, ‘and we figure out how your commanding officer is going to explain the disappearance of one of his men due to negligence.’
‘The negligence,’ said Gleason, ‘is in your people not storing the weapons securely.’
‘Your man started playing with it!’ insisted Wilson. ‘That’s hardly our fault.’ He sighed. ‘Look, this doesn’t need to get out of hand.’
Gleason stared at the sidearm in his hand. ‘Thing is,’ he said, ‘I don’t like being on the thin end of this deal. Under-informed and one man down, just because you guys like to feel superior. I got to think to myself: what’s the best way forward for me and my men?’ He nodded to himself. ‘Yeah, that’s what I got to think…’
He pulled the trigger and shot Wilson in the head.
‘Door,’ he said, nodding at Mills. He scratched at his grey crewcut as the soldier ran towards the heavy metal door and bolted it shut.
‘What the hell, Colonel?’ Shaeffer shouted.
‘Soldier,’ said Gleason, ‘I hear one more word out of you, you’ll be as dead as him.’ He gestured towards Wilson. ‘It’s down to you that I’m thinking on my goddamned feet here.’
‘How was I supposed to—’
Gleason charged at Shaeffer, grabbing him by the throat and slamming him against the bulkhead. He forced the barrel of his sidearm into the man’s mouth. ‘I’m serious, soldier!’ he bellowed. ‘Shut up, OK?’
Shaeffer nodded, his teeth clicking against the metal of the gun barrel.
Lieutenant Colonel Mulroney was sat below deck on the American boat, the remaining members of the platoon, Sergeants Joe Leonard and David Ellroy, alongside him.
When his radio crackled, Mulroney grabbed it quickly. ‘Sir?’
‘You’re on,’ said Gleason’s voice. ‘Assume you’re expected and mind the damn hold.’
‘Roger that.’ Mulroney grabbed his rifle and turned to Leonard and Ellroy. ‘OK, boys, we’re ball-deep even quicker than usual, let’s go to the rescue, shall we?’
When Commander Harris heard the gunshot he knew that his instincts not to trust the Americans had been right.
‘Be ready,’ he shouted, raising his rifle. ‘Sounds like our visitors have turned nasty.’
He detailed four of his men below deck while he led the rest of his limited company towards the gangplank adjoining the ships. Damn the security service and it’s bloody secrecy, he thought. I should have a full complement of men and the support of the Navy at my back. Not a handful of young ratings and no idea of what we’re defending. You’re defending your lives, came a quiet voice inside his head, just as he saw a small object sail above their heads. Oh God…
‘Grenade!’ he shouted, as its metal casing bounced off the side of the boat with a clang.
The explosion ripped out a chunk of the bridge and sent several men screaming overboard. Harris had run towards stern the moment he’d seen the grenade, hoping to outdistance the worst of the blast. He felt the heat lift him from his feet and push him through the air. He clutched his rifle tight to his chest and rolled with the momentum as he hit the deck. Skidding against the railings, he lifted his rifle with shaking arms and pointed it past the fire and smoke to the other boat. His head buzzed, ears whining. He could smell burning hair, probably his own.
A couple of shapes moved beyond the smoke, and a pair of zip-lines snaked across from the Americans’ boat to their own. Yeah, thought Harris, not that bloody clever, are you? Took out the gangway, you stupid, sloppy bastards.
As soon as a shape appeared on the line, he fired at it. His aim was off, his arms shaking, his vision blurred and unreliable. A spray of machine-gunfire came from the American boat. Mopping up, Harris thought. Killing my boys. He tried to aim his rifle again, sure he saw one of the yanks walking towards him. He blacked out for a moment. When he opened his e
yes, the setting sun was almost entirely blocked out by a figure standing over him.
‘Any survivors?’ an American voice called from the other end of the boat.
‘No,’ said the man standing over him. For a moment, Harris thought the man had mistaken him for dead. Then, as the shadow raised a handgun towards him and pulled the trigger, he realised the man hadn’t been mistaken at all.
Gleason was sat on the lip of one of the packing crates as the muffled noise of a grenade explosion above them was followed by gunfire. Shaeffer was still standing with his back against the bulkhead, apparently frozen by his commanding officer’s actions.
‘What are we going to do, Colonel?’ asked Mills, a young kid from the Midwest who was still new enough at this to think he was about God’s work.
From beyond the door came the sound of more gunfire. Three quick bursts then silence.
‘We’re going to take what we came for,’ Gleason replied as his radio crackled in his hand.
‘All clear, sir,’ said Mulroney’s voice. ‘What’s the code?’
‘JF323B,’ Gleason told him.
‘Check,’ came the reply, followed by three electronic bleeps and the clunk of the door unlocking. Mulroney stepped inside. ‘We’re good to go,’ he said.
‘Then let’s get on with it,’ said Gleason. ‘But treat the crates carefully, they’re not secure.’
‘Great,’ Mulroney replied. ‘Hey, where’s Lupé?’
Shaeffer looked nervously towards Gleason. The older man shook his head. ‘God alone knows.’
American Airlines flight AA2010 was two hours out of Fort Worth. Captain Roger Walker turned to his First Officer, Janice Albright, smiled, and imagined the two of them under Cancun sunshine. Then he imagined Janice’s husband sat on a sun-lounger between them, and the mental image turned sour.
‘About half an hour till we land,’ he said, brushing a few crumbs of tuna wrap off his chest. ‘Just catch happy hour.’
‘Every hour’s happy on your salary,’ Janice replied with a smile.
‘I’ll buy the first round then,’ said Roger, pretending not to notice the slight twinge of discomfort on Janice’s face as he leaned closer. ‘I know how to show a girl a good time.’