by Chris Ryan
The common room was a cosy but slightly shabby place. There were squashy old sofas that sank deep as you sat in them, and low coffee tables that had seen better days. A soft-drink vending machine hummed gently in the corner, and on one side there was a kettle and tea-making things. Ben made a cup of hot, sweet tea for them both, and they sat side by side on a sofa in a deserted corner of the room. Small groups of people sat together talking quietly; here and there was the occasional solitary guest, minding their own business. They were a mixed bunch – not many of them were particularly young, despite the fact that this was a youth hostel. Ben wasn't minded to make eye contact with many of his fellow guests – he felt subdued and not much like talking to anybody.
They were glad of the warmth of the room after the soaking they had received, but were halfway through their tea before either of them spoke. 'Pretty weird day, huh?' Ben offered. He knew it sounded stupid even as he said it.
'Weird?' Annie spat. 'Is that all you can say? It was horrible.' She slammed her tea down on the table in front of her, causing some of it to slosh over her hand.
'All right, Annie,' Ben snapped at her, suddenly infuriated by her attitude. 'It wasn't me that killed the birds, you know.'
She wiped her tea-moistened hand against her trousers in annoyance. 'No one said you killed the birds, Ben. I'm just saying it was horrible, all right?'
He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself down. 'You're right,' he said quietly. 'It was horrible.' Annie was clearly spoiling for an argument, and there was no point getting into one with her. 'Do you think we should tell someone? I mean, surely it's illegal, what we saw.'
His cousin shrugged. 'Yes, I suppose so. We can call the RSPB when we get back: they'd definitely want to know about stuff like this going on – shooting hen harriers is illegal, and it's important to notify the authorities. I just wish we could identify the guy who did it. He shouldn't be allowed to get away with this. He should be prosecuted.'
'I could contact my mum,' Ben offered, trying to raise Annie's mood a bit. 'As she's an environmental campaigner, I bet she'd know people who would take an interest in all this.'
'Yeah, I guess,' Annie replied sullenly.
'I just—' Ben hesitated because he knew that what he was about to say would touch a nerve. 'I just don't understand why the RAF would be involved. Why are they shooting rare birds? It doesn't make any sense.'
'It's not the RAF,' Annie said through gritted teeth. 'I know it's not. They go out of their way to look after the environment up at Spadeadam.'
Ben gave her an involuntarily sceptical look. He knew what he'd seen, after all, and it had been Annie herself who had identified the guy's RAF combat dress.
'Don't look at me like that, Ben,' Annie warned him. 'I know you think I'm only saying this because of my dad, but I'm not. Think about it – there'd be an outcry if that amount of land was given over to military training without any regard for the environment whatsoever. There's some other explanation. There has to be.' She stood up, and Ben was alarmed to see tears filling her eyes. 'I'm going to bed,' she said. 'And tomorrow, we walk in a different direction. I never want to see Spadeadam again.'
As she stormed out of the room, Ben realized that the other occupants had all stopped talking and were staring at them. Slightly embarrassed, he sat down again and went back to contemplating his cup of tea. Despite the fact that half of him wanted to follow and have it out with her, he knew Annie well enough to realize that continuing the row now would be the worst thing to do, especially as he was pretty on edge himself. Stuff would be better in the morning, he hoped. Besides, he didn't blame her for being angry – he'd been as shocked as her when they saw the birds plummet to the earth, and like her he didn't feel any desire to head back towards Spadeadam.
'Spadeadam?'
Ben jumped. The voice seemed to have come out of nowhere. He looked up sharply and couldn't see anyone – for a moment he wondered if he had been imagining it.
'Been up to Spadeadam, did she say? The girl? The girl who just left?' The words seemed to tumble nervously over themselves.
Ben realized the voice was coming from behind him. When he turned to look at its owner, however, he had to catch his breath.
He recognized him at once, of course. The long floppy hair; the hook nose; the piercing green eyes; the grey overcoat that he wore despite the fact that it was quite warm in the common room. The ghostly old man from the railway bridge the previous day did not look quite so sinister close up, but that did not stop him from being spooky. He did not take his wide eyes off Ben, and the tic on his face seemed metronomic, like clockwork. Ben found the sudden shock of his presence so surprising that he was unable to answer; he just watched mutely as the old man walked round and took a seat on the sofa next to him, his wild eyes fixed on him all the time.
'I was just going to go to bed,' Ben said uncomfortably, desperate to get away but not wanting to appear rude. At these close quarters the old man was distinctly fragrant – Ben wondered what he was wearing under his overcoat, and noticed that his slip-on shoes were soiled, the bottom of his thin trousers torn.
The old man acted as if he hadn't even heard him. When he spoke again, it was in a conspiratorial whisper. 'Strange things happening at Spadeadam,' he said, his accent a curious hybrid of dialects. 'Always have been, ever since I can remember, ever since Blue Streak.'
Ben shifted uncomfortably in his seat. 'What's Blue—?' he started to say, but the old man continued to talk as though Ben wasn't even there.
'They cover it all up, of course. Have to, don't they?' Suddenly his head twisted back over his shoulder as though he were looking for someone, or something, and his face started to twitch more frequently. He continued to look around, and his eyes even started darting up and down, as though he expected something to come at him from one of the top corners of the room.
Ben wanted to stand up and leave; but something about what the old man was saying had grabbed his attention. 'Cover what up?' he asked. 'What are you talking about?'
The old man seemed suddenly to remember that he was there. He turned his attention back to Ben, and slowly his lips curled into a grotesque mockery of a smile, displaying yellowing teeth with more gaps than there should have been. It was as though his face had forgotten what a smile looked like.
'Not a place for young 'uns, Spadeadam,' he whispered. 'Best to stay away.' The old man started looking up to the ceiling again.
This conversation was giving Ben a very uneasy feeling. Spadeadam was just an RAF base, wasn't it? There were plenty of them dotted around all over the country – what was so different about this one? Any other time, he would have dismissed this guy's comments as the ramblings of a crazy old man. Problem was, he seemed to be echoing all Ben's unspoken feelings about the place. Annie had been right – there had to be some sort of explanation for what they had seen earlier in the day. It was a long shot, but maybe this old man had the answer.
'Um . . . excuse me,' Ben asked politely, and the old man's eyes shot instantly back at him. 'Can I ask you a question – about Spadeadam, I mean?'
The old man didn't answer, but Ben assumed that his fixed stare was an agreement.
'We saw something earlier on, me and my friend. Two birds, being shot down by a guy in an RAF uniform.'
Suddenly the man grabbed Ben by the wrist. As Ben looked at his hand, pale and covered with prominent blue veins, he noticed that it was surprisingly strong. 'Rare breed, was it?' the man asked.
'Very rare,' Ben replied. 'One of the rarest.'
'Makes sense, doesn't it? Makes perfect sense.'
But it didn't make any kind of sense to Ben. 'Not really,' he started to say. But as he spoke, he sensed someone else approaching them. He looked up to see the friendly receptionist who had greeted them when they arrived the previous day. He was still smiling, but had a firm demeanour as he approached. The old man saw him too. Immediately he let go of Ben's arm and, as swiftly as a bird flying from a loud noise, he stood up st
raight and walked to the common-room door. Ben and the hostel worker watched him go, but before he left the room the old man turned round and fixed Ben with another of his piercing stares.
'Stay away from Spadeadam,' he called hoarsely, ignoring the fact that all the other guests were now looking at him. 'It's not safe.' And then, with a final twitch of his face, he was gone.
Ben blinked, then looked up at the youth hostel worker with a flicker of annoyance. He almost said something, but stopped himself at the last minute. 'Sorry about that,' he mumbled. 'He sort of latched onto me.'
'Mind if I sit down?' the receptionist asked. 'Name's Don, by the way.'
'Ben,' he replied shortly, shaking Don's hand.
'Was he bothering you, Ben?' Don asked.
Ben shrugged noncommittally: truth was, he didn't really know the answer to that question. The old man still made him feel a bit jumpy, and the idea of him creeping around in this old stone building didn't make Ben feel particularly at ease; but he had found himself drawn in by what he'd been saying.
'He arrived here last night, a few hours after you. Says his name is Joseph. I put him in a dorm on his own – didn't think any of the other guests would really fancy sharing with him, and we're not busy.' Don stretched out, put his feet on the table and clasped his hands behind his head. 'We get quite a lot of them round here, to be honest.'
Ben didn't understand what he meant. 'A lot of what?'
Don looked around to check he wasn't being overheard, then spoke in a softer voice. 'Nutters. Cranks. Spadeadam, you see. It attracts them. All the conspiracy theories – you wouldn't believe the stuff people make up about that place.' He rolled his eyes as if to indicate his disdain for such people.
'Right,' Ben replied, not wishing to let on that he was having his own doubts about the place.
'Anyway.' Don jumped up brightly. 'Part of my job is to look after any unaccompanied kids who stay here. Don't want you getting into any kind of trouble, do we? Let me know if he gives you any gyp.' With that he walked off.
Ben sat there in silence for a few minutes, deep in reflection and chewing on his fingernails. Conspiracy theories, he thought to himself. Don had laughed it off so easily, and under different circumstances no doubt Ben would have done too. But he couldn't get the image out of his head of the soldier shooting the two hen harriers earlier in the day. Whatever anybody said, that was a strange thing to happen, and the old man seemed quite sure he knew what was going on. He decided to try and find him, now, and ask him what he had been about to say when they had been interrupted. No doubt it would be nonsense, the ravings of a crazy mind; but at least Ben would be able to satisfy himself of that.
All the dormitories were on the first floor of the building, up a central flight of stone steps that clattered as he hurried up them. Turning right at the top of the steps led you to the dormitories that were in use – boys on the right, girls on the left – but Don had told Ben that the old man had been put somewhere else. Following little more than his instinct, Ben turned left.
In this direction, the corridor was less well lit – a single low-wattage bulb hanging from the ceiling was all the illumination it had. There were several doors on either side: tentatively, Ben tried them, but they were locked. Eventually, though, at the end of the corridor on the left, he found one that wasn't. He gently opened it. 'Hello,' he breathed into the darkness.
There was no reply, so he opened the door a little wider and stepped inside.
His hand fumbled for a moment for a light switch, but he couldn't find one. Instead he stood still and waited for his night vision to become accustomed to the darkness. It took a minute or two until he could see that he was indeed in a dormitory, but the beds were all empty. There was a general aroma of disuse about the place, and the large windows had no blinds or curtains: clearly this was not somewhere that was frequently used. Certainly there was no sign of the old man.
All of a sudden, Ben heard Don's overly cheery voice. For some reason he didn't want to be caught snooping around, so he closed the door behind him and stepped further into the room, crossing the wooden floorboards to the window. He looked out into the blackness.
Clouds were scudding past the almost-full moon, which was bright when it was in view. Mesmerized by their swift movement, Ben thought of the moonlit African nights he had seen in the Congo, and of the silent airborne majesty of the hen harriers earlier today. And then he thought of something Annie had said back in Macclesfield. 'We humans can do some pretty dumb things sometimes.'
Too right, Ben thought to himself. Like standing around in dark rooms looking for weird old men.
He was just about to turn and leave, however, when he heard a noise from outside. Looking through the window, he saw, in the half-light of the moon, a figure. He was unmistakable really, in his grey overcoat. Ben watched as the old man walked as hurriedly as his frail legs could manage away from the house and faded into the impenetrable gloom.
And as he disappeared into the night, Ben felt as if the room in which he stood had suddenly grown colder.
He shook his head and turned round. The old man had spooked him at the train station – that much was obvious. It all seemed too much of a coincidence, him turning up here the next night, full of warnings and veiled threats; but that's what it was. A coincidence. Nothing more.
But in a corner of his mind, a nagging feeling would not go away. No matter how much he tried to twist things, to rationalize them, to make sense of them, one fact seemed to Ben to be perfectly clear.
The old man might be crazy, but whatever anyone said, something strange was going on at Spadeadam.
Chapter Five
Ben was tired, but could not sleep.
Everything seemed to be buzzing around in his head as he lay in the darkened dormitory, listening to the heavy breathing of the other hostel guests sleeping around him. The rain had started again, and he thought of the old man out there protected from the elements only by his dark grey overcoat. No doubt Don would dismiss his midnight wanderings as the crazy actions of someone who had lost his marbles, but suspicions still gnawed away at Ben, suspicions he couldn't quite put his finger on, but which troubled him nonetheless. He found himself repeating the conversation he had had with the old man time and again, trying to squeeze meaning out of it that he might have missed.
'Strange things happening at Spadeadam,' he had said in his odd accent. 'Always have been, ever since I can remember, ever since Blue Streak.'
What did he mean? What was Blue Streak? Ben felt like he was trying to put a jigsaw together without knowing where all the pieces were.
Suddenly he remembered his PDA. Quietly, so as not to disturb any of his room-mates, he crept out of bed and rummaged among his things until he found it. Then, covering himself with his sleeping bag so that the glow from the screen did not wake anyone up, he switched it on. In seconds he had an Internet connection. He googled 'Blue Streak' and waited for the results.
What he discovered kept him reading for some time.
Blue Streak, he learned, was a rainbow code – one of a series of code names used in the middle of the last century to disguise the true nature of various British military research operations: code names like Black Arrow, a vehicle used to launch satellites, or Green Satin, an airborne navigation unit – but Blue Streak was more destructive than either of those. It was the secret name given to the development of a medium-range ballistic missile. After the Second World War, Britain had needed a nuclear deterrent in order to remain a world power. Blue Streak was to be it.
Ben blinked when he read where the central location of the Blue Streak project was. Spadeadam, just a couple of miles from where he lay at that very moment.
The Spadeadam test site was absolutely enormous. Before Blue Streak it was practically uninhabited, but soon large numbers of workers were brought in and a huge amount of construction work started: control bunkers, reservoirs, miles and miles of piping, engineering workshops and, most importantly, huge, concrete s
tatic test-beds. These giant structures were intended to test the missile engines which, when they were started, could be heard for miles around. Millions of gallons of water from a nearby river were pumped into the test-beds in order to cool the engines: as a result, enormous clouds of steam caused micro-climates far and wide over Spadeadam.
Blue Streak was always controversial, however, and MPs finally refused to allow the underground missile silos to be constructed because they were too expensive. In 1959, the Americans unveiled Skybolt, an aircraft-based missile, which made Blue Streak effectively redundant. The programme was never completed.
The end of Blue Streak did not mean that people stopped being interested in it, however; and for years, rumours circulated that there was more going on at Spadeadam than the government admitted to, or perhaps even knew about. Ben scoffed slightly when he read reports of mysterious personnel dressed in what looked like white spacesuits in remote parts of the base. More believable was the rumour that had apparently gone round the local villages that Spadeadam housed an enormous underground hospital. Whatever the truth, it was clear to him that many people believed there were more secret, sinister things going on there.
Of course, he knew that already. He had just met one of them.
In 2004, the conspiracy theorists were given ammunition to back up their claims. An area of trees in the Spadeadam site needed to be cleared. It was a routine procedure, but what was discovered was very far from being routine: there were found to be extensive excavations for an underground missile silo, of exactly the type that was never supposed to have been built in Spadeadam. Investigations showed that no official plans of this silo existed, nor any other records whatsoever.
Clearly it had been a very official secret. Something the authorities did not want the man in the street to know about.
What was it the old man had said? 'Stay away from Spadeadam. It's not safe.'
Ben furrowed his forehead. Everything he was reading about had happened so long ago, during the Cold War – surely nobody believed in this day and age that suspicious things were still happening there. Did they? He decided to research Spadeadam a bit further.