The Levelling

by William Mitchell

  “Come down now please sir,” one of the troops at the bottom of the ladder said. They still had their rifles trained on him.

  Howard climbed down, shaking from what he’d seen as he did so. His arms and legs were weak, and barely capable of supporting him. At the bottom he staggered forward, toward the soldiers with the guns. They formed a loose circle around him, as if unwilling to get too close.

  “What’s happening?” was all he could say.

  “That, Squadron Leader Shale, is a very good question.”

  The man who had just emerged from the back of the furthest army truck looked and sounded like he belonged in the salons of Mayfair more than the bare tarmac of an East Anglian air force station. He wore a tailored three-piece suit, an expensive looking coat with a cashmere scarf, a tie whose banded colours probably indicated allegiance to some high-class club or school alumni organisation, and a wide-brimmed hat probably made to measure along with the rest of the ensemble.

  “What’s happening is that your aircraft has suffered an in-flight mechanical fault, which caused toxic gases to leak into your respiration equipment rendering your navigator incapacitated and causing you to need immediate hospitalisation. That, at least, is the story as far as the rest of the Royal Air Force is concerned.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Howard said.

  “Let’s say I’m called Simon,” the man said. “I think that will do for now.” He approached Howard as he spoke, entering the circle of rifles and standing before him almost sneering with self-superiority. “I’m afraid your ‘gas leak’ is going to keep you inside for some time to come. So I wouldn’t get too used to this fresh air if I were you.”

  “That’s a lie,” Howard said. “That was no gas leak. I don’t know what happened to Teddy but if you do then you’d better start talking now.”

  He turned round to face the aircraft behind him as he said this, but immediately regretted it. Three of the troops had climbed the ladder and were now extracting Teddy from the rear cockpit. He was almost rigid, and they were having to manhandle him like luggage. They were wearing odd gloves as well, elbow-length gauntlets made of woven metal like fine chainmail. As they lifted him out of the seat he became agitated again, looking round wildly and beginning to struggle. He was making noises too, noises of fear and pain, but through his ruined face it sounded more like guttural animal sounds than anything a human could produce. One of the troops took a metal truncheon from a holster and jabbed it into him, pressing a button on the side. Teddy convulsed, and then became still once more.

  “What are they doing to him?” Howard shouted. He made to run over to the ladder but was stopped by two of the troops moving to block his way. “Leave him alone! He needs a medic!”

  “Squadron Leader Shale, please calm yourself,” Simon said. “A medic is exactly what he’s going to get. Several of them in fact.”

  Howard stood, watching helplessly while he was held at gunpoint and Teddy was lowered down the ladder. The men put him onto the cold ground where he lay, shaking, while others, also wearing those bizarre gloves, got a stretcher from one of the trucks.

  Then another two, similarly dressed, went to the portside outrigger and opened the access hatch for the heat camera’s recording device. They extracted the magnetic spool, as large as a cinema reel, and carried it to another truck. Howard noticed the camera itself as they did this, pointing aft on its movable turret. Whatever had perturbed Teddy when he looked down into that clearing had been behind them as they’d departed, and even as they’d made their escape, it seemed that Teddy had continued to watch.

  Then Teddy was lifted into the back of one of the trucks. Howard was directed into another. The outside of the truck was drab green canvas, but interior was like a cage, made of dense metal mesh, every join sealed with woven steel. He’d seen high voltage apparatus housed in similar containers. When they closed the cage and locked it, he was the only one inside.

  AMY

  HOWARD OFTEN SAW Amy when he slept. It happened so often he even knew he was dreaming, finding himself in the village they’d grown up in, walking through the garden of her father’s rectory, climbing into the treehouse that her father had built her, which soon became theirs as much as hers. They even called their first real house “The Treehouse.” It would be theirs for less than a year.

  They’d known each other since they were children, seeing each other almost every day, their childhood games turning into something deeper until they got married at just twenty, as so many did during those times when no one knew who they were going to lose next, and missed opportunities could be lost forever. Yet Howard had never once thought that it would happen to them.

  Now he only saw her when he slept. It was always comforting to see her, to pretend just for a while that she wasn’t gone, but every time he woke it was like losing her all over again.

  This time though he was somewhere else, somewhere he’d never seen before, a corridor in an old timber-framed building, with sloping beams and crooked floors, and Amy was there, running toward him with flames filling the space behind her. The faster she went the faster they followed, almost as if they knew she was there, and were pursuing her deliberately. And Howard was paralysed, able only to watch as they caught up with her, tendrils of fire curving round from both sides to block her escape before tightening around her in an embrace. He saw her face, saw the fear turn to agony, and then, finally, his mind had mercy on him and returned him to the real world.

  THE INTERVIEW

  HE WOKE TO a feeling of nausea, that final image of Amy fixed in his mind. He’d never had that particular dream before, never seen her die. He’d been two hundred miles away at the time, and wouldn’t even recognise the building she’d been in when it had happened. Yet somehow, he was certain that what he’d just witnessed was real. He sat up, trembling. Yet waking had simply thrown him from one scene of confusion into another.

  The room Howard had occupied for the last two days was either a hospital room or a prison cell, he couldn’t tell which. The walls and all the furniture were white, the bedding was pristine, and the smell was of pine and antiseptic. But the door was kept locked, and the single window high in the corner of the far wall had frosted glass, with bars on the inside and on the outside. All he knew of this location was that it had taken an hour by road to get there.

  The staff who brought him food wore military medical whites, and while they made sure he was clean and comfortable, they never answered his questions. He was no longer being pushed around at gunpoint, but already he was falling into a pattern of sleeping and sitting and waiting for the next mealtime. His anger had been replaced by routine, and he was starting to think the guns had been replaced by some kind of sedation.

  It was a far cry from the treatment he’d expect of the military he’d devoted his life to. Ten years ago he’d been risking his life to bring peace, and he’d been working ever since to maintain that peace. Yet he couldn’t shake the idea that maybe there really was a good reason for the way he was being held, that an explanation was coming that would make everything make sense.

  Radiation—that had to be it. The atom bombs that had forced an end to Japan’s atrocities were no longer unique in the world, and there had always been rumours that the Germans had been working on something similar before they were defeated. Had he and Teddy overflown some old test site? Some long-forgotten bomb factory now leaking uranium and God knew what else into the air, which he and Teddy had flown into? It would explain almost everything—the remote corner of the airfield they’d been directed to, the protective clothing the troops had worn, even the quarantine he was now in—but it didn’t explain what had happened to Teddy.

  Midway through the second day one of the orderlies came in to take his lunch tray away, but this time he wasn’t alone. Simon was back—different tailored suit, same superior smirk—and he loitered just inside the door while the other man vacated the room.

  “This way if you please, Squadron Leader Shale,” was a
ll he said before breezing out into the hallway.

  Howard followed. Simon led him down long, dimly lit corridors, with small slit windows high in the walls that gave no view outside. Then they got to a stairwell, and descended four floors. The corridors down here had no windows at all, and looked and smelled like the bunkers at Air Command. The room he was taken to next though was bizarre and baffling in equal measure.

  The space Simon led him into was like an amphitheatre, but the small stage at the centre held a reclining chair like something a dentist would use, while the five tiered rows surrounding it played host not to an audience, but to dozens upon dozens of radio antennae, some dish-shaped, some like conical spirals, all different sizes, all aimed at the central chair.

  Another man was there waiting for them, standing next to the chair. He was old, and also smartly dressed, but with the air of a university professor rather than a West End socialite. Nonetheless, he and Simon seemed to be at ease with one another.

  “Please, take a seat,” the older man said.

  Howard held back; the chair had metal clamps and leather straps attached, and looked more like somewhere torture would be administered rather than healing.

  “There’s no need to worry,” the old man said. “We’re not going to restrain you. Just take a seat, and try to answer some questions for us.”

  Howard sat down as directed, then Simon and the other man walked round behind the chair. Then Simon said “Oh, and don’t think about going anywhere,” before Howard heard a door click shut, and realised he was on his own.

  “Can you hear me, Squadron Leader Shale?”

  It was the old man again, talking over a tannoy.

  “Yes, I can hear you,” Howard said, looking out over the array of antennae with growing alarm.

  “I want you to answer these questions truthfully, and without hesitation. Do you understand?”

  Howard briefly thought of jumping from the chair and running for the door he’d come in by. He had no idea what he was doing there, or what they expected him to do.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Very well. Were you baptised as a child, Squadron Leader Shale?”

  “Yes, of course I was,” Howard said.

  “Where was it performed?”

  “Saint Laurence’s. Meriden, near Coventry.”

  “Do you remember it?”

  “No, of course not. I was a baby.”

  “Do you know if Squadron Leader Dawlish was baptised?”

  “I don’t know, we never talked about it. Why, do you sit round with your friends sharing baptism stories from when you were six months old?” The sarcasm fell flat, and he immediately regretted it. In addition he could feel a strange prickling sensation over his body, which was only adding to his unease.

  “What do you know about Squadron Leader Dawlish’s childhood?” the old man said.

  “He grew up in the Middle East somewhere, his father was posted there I think.”

  “And that was the site of his baptism?”

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  “Did he have any brothers or sisters?”

  “He mentioned a brother who died when he was young. I think there were others. Why? What does that have to do with anything?”

  “How did his brother die?”

  Howard had to think back; Teddy hadn’t talked about his early years much, but he had mentioned something once. “It was a storm I think. Some kind of freak storm in the desert. I don’t know anything else.”

  “And what about you? You were married I understand. Amy, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, I was. But what does she have to do with—”

  “Tell me what happened to her.”

  “You know full well what happened to her,” Howard said, his initial unease now turning to anger. “It’s all in my files. What the hell is going on here?”

  “Tell me what happened to her,” the old man repeated.

  “No! That has nothing to do with anything happening now. It’s done!”

  “I’d advise you to answer,” Simon drawled over the tannoy. “You’re in a lot more trouble than you think, you know.”

  “Trouble? What the hell am I supposed to have done?”

  “Failing to cooperate in an official investigation is a serious matter.”

  Howard sat back heavily, stunned at what he’d just heard. This was no longer a case of being treated in inexplicable ways by people on the same side as him; this was them against him. He was starting to feel nauseous as well, and the prickling over his body was getting stronger.

  “One last time, Squadron Leader Shale,” the old man said. “How did she die?”

  “She burned. In Coventry. When the Germans firebombed the city.”

  “Very well.” There was a note of satisfaction in the old man’s voice. “Tell me, what countries have you been posted to during your career?”

  More details that they must have already known. “South Africa. Namibia. Burma.”

  “Did you ever see any hostile action in those countries?”

  “No.”

  “What about anything else? Any damage to aircraft or installations?”

  “You mean sabotage?”

  There was a pause. “Yes, sabotage. Or anything else that seemed hostile to your presence there.”

  “No, nothing.”

  “Any sign that you or your aircraft were being hindered in any way? Like radar jamming? Electrical problems? Flight control disruption? Any kind of, ah, adverse electromagnetic effects?”

  Howard racked his brains, but the discomfort was head to toe now and was making it hard to concentrate.

  “What is this all about?” he said. “If you know what’s going on here, you need to tell me. What about Teddy? Where is he? Does his family know what happened to him?”

  Howard could feel himself getting angrier; if he really had been sedated, the rage he was currently experiencing was burning through the fog like a phosphorus flare.

  “One final question, Squadron Leader Shale,” the old man said. “Are your tropical inoculations up to date?”

  Howard had been pumped so full of vaccines prior to his Burma deployment he’d felt like a dartboard. “I don’t know, ask the medics,” he snapped.

  Then he heard the old man again, but fainter, as if he was no longer speaking into the microphone.

  “Well, at least we know what we’re dealing with now,” he said.

  “You think one of them was trying to get in?” he heard Simon say, similarly faint.

  “It was certainly taking an interest. Let’s get him out of here.”

  Simon came out less than a minute later. “We have a job for you,” he said. “Follow me.”

  “A job?” Howard said. Simon had left the antenna room and was already striding off down the corridor, and Howard was now trying to keep up. His legs were numb though, and Howard couldn’t tell if it was from the discomfort of the chair or something else.

  “We’re going to send you back into Germany. We want you to find someone for us.”

  “Who?”

  Simon paused, as if choosing his words carefully. “Someone who used to be one of our own, but who is now working against our nation’s interest.”

  “What is he doing? Helping the Germans?”

  Simon gave a grim laugh. “No, we’re fighting an enemy far older than that. In here please.”

  It was another windowless room, Howard saw when they went inside, this time set up like an interview cell. And this time he and Simon were alone.

  “Sit,” Simon said. Howard did so, and Simon took a place opposite him.

  There was a manila folder already on the table. Simon opened it and leafed through. The page Howard saw first had his own name at the top, but Simon turned past it too quickly to see anything else. He was sure he saw Teddy’s name on another page. The one Simon stopped at though was headed “John Erebus Ardent”.

  “Have you seen this man before?” Simon said, handing the page over, “or hear
d of him?”

  Howard studied it. The picture at the top was of a lean, middle-aged man with bright eyes shining through the wrinkles. He was wearing a battered fedora and a cravat. He looked like an adventurer in a magazine feature.

  “No, I’ve never seen him before.”

  “Good. Your job is to kill him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are being ordered to.”

  “You’re not in my chain of command.”

  “I am now. I could bore you with the paperwork, but rest assured you are my responsibility now.”

  “You can’t send me to assassinate someone though. I mean, why me?”

  “Why not you? You’ve killed plenty already from the safety of your high-flying aeroplane.”

  “There was nothing safe about the missions I flew. Not during the war anyway.”

  “Then you’ll be no stranger to the experience.”

  “What happens if I say no?”

  “Then you will face a court martial, which you will lose.”

  Howard knew what that meant. He would spend time in a military jail, and lose everything he’d worked for when he came out.

  “You’re a bastard,” he said.

  “It took you this long to realise that?”

  “Well here’s your chance to show some humanity. Before this goes any further, tell me, honestly—what happened to Teddy? Where is he now? And will he be all right?”

  Simon ran his hand over his face. “He’s in a hospital. A specialist institution. Whether he will be all right remains to be seen—right now I really don’t know. The doctors are working on his face and his arms, and will try to rebuild what they can. It will take time though.”

  “I asked you what happened to him.”

  Simon paused. “Your aircraft was attacked. What happened to him was the result of hostile action.”