by Duncan James
He and Dusty, far removed from civilisation, were gently loaded into one the waiting Swiss helicopters.
Within minutes, they were airborne, and shortly landed at the base at Payerne, taxiing to a halt to park alongside the RAF Hercules on the tarmac, which already had the two outboard of its four engines running, on the far side from where their helicopter had stopped. In double quick time they loaded Dusty into the aircraft, but only after they had put all their equipment on, so that he would be first off when they got back to England.
Lloyd had no time to say ‘goodbye’ or ‘thank you’ or anything to anybody; they were all in such a well organised and well-rehearsed rush to get airborne with their precious cargo. But Commander Nick Marsden did give a sort of salute-type wave, and shouted “be in touch” above the noise of the aircraft engines, before the ramp at the rear of the aircraft was closed. The other engines were already being started, and they were on their way almost before the ramp shut.
Roger Lloyd was transferred to a waiting ambulance and driven off, as his friends and rescuers taxied towards the end of the runway in the gathering gloom. The engines revved almost before they had turned on to the runway, and the aircraft sped off through the snow.
On their way home.
And that was that.
***
Dr. Roger Lloyd was feeling exceptionally depressed. More than that. Totally bewildered and depressed. Vulnerable and alone, too, not just bewildered and depressed.
His shoulder was hurting like hell, but that was the least of his worries.
Somehow, he felt that his life was no longer his own.
For good reason.
It wasn’t.
He was no longer Professor Jack Barclay, for a start. The British Government had taken that away from him, and re-created him as Dr. Roger Lloyd. It had sounded like a good idea at the time. He was rather keen to stay alive, so that he could keep working on his special nuclear fusion project, developing a sustainable energy source which was not dependent on fossil fuels. Even if he had to live abroad, in a ‘neutral’ country, they - the UK - also wanted to keep him alive for the long-term benefit of the country.
So that sounded like a good idea too.
But others had to be convinced that he was dead, so now he didn’t even look like his old self, or even his identical twin brother. He had mistakenly been assassinated by a British secret agent. Under orders from the Russians, perhaps, but it was still Alan Jarvis, a top MI5 spy, who had killed his brother. It might have felt a bit better and easier to come to terms with if the Russians had actually pulled the trigger themselves, but they hadn’t. They had blackmailed someone else to do it for them. Jarvis thought he had done what he had been told to do, but had killed Barclay’s identical twin brother instead. Jarvis wasn’t to know. Nobody knew. But they all thought it had been Jack who had been killed. Professor Jack Barclay. That’s who the Russians had wanted dead. Him, not his brother.
In effect, though, that’s what they’d done. The Russians had succeeded. Jack Barclay no longer existed as Jack Barclay. He was now Roger Lloyd, thanks to the British Government. It was a name he had chosen. And he was now Doctor, not Professor. That was his choice too. He had a new face, new hair style, a limp, new name, new nationality and a new job in a foreign country.
So just don’t ask why he was depressed, that’s all.
He thought he had every reason to feel sorry for himself.
And still they were after him. Someone, somewhere, probably in Russia, had believed that Professor Jack Barclay was still alive. Not even Jack Barclay believed that any more. But he had just been shot and wounded by a Russian agent in Switzerland who had attempted to kill him, and who obviously believed that Jack Barclay was not dead and remained a threat to his mother country. Once again, the British Government had somehow managed to save his life, although how they did it Lloyd would never properly understand. Even more of a mystery was why the Russians should have thought that Jack Barclay was still alive. After all, there had been an inquest into his death, and a service at the crematorium, but still they had not been convinced.
Was somebody telling them?
At least, this time, his friends in Whitehall had managed to save his life without having to give him yet another new name and identity.
But he had been left behind when the rescue team had gone back to England. Alone, isolated, bewildered and depressed.
His best - only - real friend had saved his life, and been taken home severely injured. How would he be able to keep in touch, to find out how he was? How could he ever thank him? He couldn’t just pick up the phone. Lloyd realized he could still be in some danger, but now he was far from home and from the people who had been taking care of him – keeping him alive. Who would do that now? Would anyone? There was nobody to ask anymore. Nobody around him he knew and trusted.
He was in the sick bay of the Swiss Air Force base at Payerne, near Lake Neuchatel, where he had been taken when his rescuers had left to return home to the UK with Dusty Miller. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he’d been there a couple of days now. He was tired and confused and in pain, but still alive at least. The medical team had looked after him well, and the military doctors and nurses had been more than attentive. Apart from the bullet wound to his shoulder which hurt like hell and had yet to be properly treated, he was comfortable. They had sorted out the flesh wound as best they could, but the X-ray had shown a splintered bone which would need surgery to remove or repair – he wasn’t sure which. But he was warmer now, thanks to all the warm drinks and heated blankets he had been given, and he had stopped shivering. Hypothermia, they had said, but not severe.
He had been found just in time.
He was still bemused and weary, and was still in shock and felt weak, so he was glad to be in bed. They had started to sort out the effects of hypothermia the minute he arrived. Once he had recovered from the cold, they would sort out his shoulder. Until then, it was pain killers. In a couple of days, he would have an operation of his shoulder, and they had told him he would be OK in a week or so. They thought he would be able to go home, wherever that was, ‘soon’.
So here he was in a mini-hospital on a military base in a foreign country. What next? There was nobody to ask. For all he knew, there was nobody within a few hundred miles who had the slightest idea who he was or why he was there, or even where he was. Or cared, probably.
Lloyd decided there was nothing he could do about it. He could do nothing about anything else, come to that. Nothing he could do until he was fit enough to get back to his new flat near the CERN research centre where he now worked. At least there, he knew a couple of people who understood. He had to be patient until he could get out of here. Wherever he was.
He was dozing off again, in spite of the noise outside from the jet fighters and helicopters based there, when there was a sudden bustle of activity in the small ward. As he stirred, men in uniform appeared who he hadn’t seen before; not the usual team of military doctors and nurses who had been looking after him. One was obviously quite senior judging from the badges of rank and medal ribbons on his tunic, and the others looked like more senior doctors and medical orderlies. He recognised some of them, but not all the usual ones.
“Dr. Lloyd, good afternoon,” said the man with the badges. “I am Colonel Schilling, Commandant of the Swiss Air Force base here at Payerne. I must apologise for not having come before, but you have not been well, and the British team who brought you here have been causing us some unusual and important work. Now; I hope you are comfortable?”
“Thank you Colonel. My shoulder is painful of course, but otherwise, I have been well looked after by your people.”
“Good. I hope you are well enough to be moved temporarily, because I have just had a call from London, and they want to speak to you urgently on a secure telephone. There is not one here in Sick Quarters, so we shall take you to my office.”
“I was wondering when I might hear something,�
� replied Roger Lloyd, struggling to sit up.
A nurse appeared with a wheel chair.
“I can walk,” protested Lloyd.
“But you will not,” said one of the medical team. “You are not yet well enough, and we need to keep you as warm as possible.”
“Fortunately, my office is near this building,” said the Colonel, helping him out of bed. “I gather from what I have just been told that you are something of a VIP,” he added with a smile, “and that I have to take good care of you.”
Lloyd was wrapped in blankets, and wheeled across a snow-covered courtyard into another building, which was obviously the base Headquarters.
“This is my office,” Schilling eventually announced. “My PA will connect you to London on this red phone, and we will then leave you for as long as you need. I will arrange for a coffee to be brought to you while the connection is made.”
“Thank you, Colonel. That would be welcome. May I ask who it is who has been trying to contact me?”
Schilling reached for a notepad on his desk.
“A senior British Government official, Sir Robin Algar, Secretary of your Cabinet in Whitehall, according to my notes. You know him?”
“Yes, very well. He may be able to tell me what is going on and what is to happen to me.”
“Nothing will happen to you until we decide you are well enough to leave here,” said the Commanding Officer. “You must have surgery on that shoulder of yours, after which you will return here. When you are eventually fit enough to leave, I will help as much as I can to do whatever your people in London decide is best for you.”
A steaming mug of coffee arrived, and almost at once the call came through on the red phone. Lloyd was left on his own.
“Roger? This is Robin Algar. How are you getting on?”
“Physically, not too bad apart from a shoulder injury, but I confess to feeling a bit abandoned and depressed,” he replied.
“Our fault entirely,” responded Algar. “I gather you’re on a secure line, so I can tell you that we’ve had a major crisis on here since our rescue effort, otherwise I can assure you I would have made contact with you sooner.”
“Well it’s good to be in touch again,” confessed Lloyd. “And I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done to save my skin. I was beginning to wonder, though, if it was worth it from my point of view, especially being so unsure of the future.”
“I can understand that,” replied Algar. “But you remain a most valuable asset to this country, so the effort was worth it from our standpoint.”
“Tell me first, how is my friend Dusty Miller?” demanded Lloyd.
“My latest information is that he is in intensive care in the Military wing of the hospital in Selly Oak, where all our casualties go from Afghanistan and elsewhere. He has only recently arrived of course, and he is in pretty bad shape apparently, but I’m told he will survive.”
“I very much want to keep in touch, and speak to him when he’s well enough.”
“I’ll arrange all that don’t worry. He’s in good hands – the best. And you are in good hands too, I am assured of that. I will be in touch with you again, and make arrangements as quickly as possible for you to contact your trusted friends and professional colleagues whenever you want, but that will take a day or so. From now on we will keep in touch with you, I promise. But now I’d like to speak to Colonel Schilling while I’m on the line. Meanwhile, you take care.”
Lloyd somehow managed to negotiate the wheelchair to the door, and Schilling returned to his office. He listened intently to what Algar was saying, with hardly a comment. Occasionally, he looked across at Lloyd, and a couple of times raised his eyebrows. Eventually the call ended, and he sat back in his chair.
“I have a better idea now of who you are and what has happened to you in the recent past,” he said. “I wish I could have been told sooner, but I now understand why that was not possible. I am told that your continued survival is essential, although the immediate threat to your life has probably passed. However, London has arranged for our Special Forces to keep you under constant guard while you are here, and a detachment will be arriving later today. I shall arrange for you to have a separate room, in the medical wing, with a telephone so that you can keep in touch with friends and colleagues. A secure phone will be specially installed so that you and your people in London can freely keep in contact whenever you wish. Once you leave here, a special unit of our police will look after you. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“This is all very kind, I’m sure, and I am most grateful to you, Colonel,” replied Roger Lloyd. “But don’t make me too comfortable, or I shall not want to leave!”
Schilling grinned. “I gather you have a flat near the CERN facility, at Meyrin. If there is anything you want from it, I shall arrange for it to be collected.”
“Thank you, but hopefully, I shall be fit enough to get back there soon and out of your way. But I have no clothes or anything else with me apart from what I am standing up in. I also have a few belongings at the small guesthouse in Paccods, where I was staying with my colleague who has been taken back to England,” added Lloyd. “It would help if that could somehow be recovered.”
“I shall do what I can as soon as possible,” promised the Commandant. “I assume we shall find there your built-up shoes and stick?”
“That’s where they are,” agreed Lloyd, “and I shall certainly need them to keep up the appearance of my new identity.”
“And from your flat?”
“I have only lived there a few days, so there is nothing I need from it, apart, perhaps, for my mobile phone. However my friend was staying at the Holiday Inn at Meyrin, so he will have things in his room there, which ought to be collected if that is possible.”
The Colonel grinned, and stood to leave.
“In a short time, you seem to have scattered your belongings quite widely around this part of Switzerland! Leave everything to me, and let me know if there is anything else I can do for you.”
Colonel Schilling looked down at him.
“I wish I had given all this information about you before you arrived, but your man in Whitehall was not able to make contact with either of us any sooner. I gather they had another major crisis, apart from your own, which they are still trying to deal with. Something to do with uncovering a spy who has been causing them, and you, a good deal of trouble, so he said.”
“I have caused everyone so much trouble,” answered Lloyd. “But I know they were concerned that there was a mole somewhere who could be passing on information about me and my whereabouts.”
“I know no more than I have said.”
“I will ask them on the red phone,” determined Lloyd, perplexed. “But my colleagues at the CERN facility will also need to know where I am and what has happened.”
“Someone from CERN has already been in touch with me. Your Director I think. London must have briefed him, I suppose. Anyway, I told him you were doing well and that you would contact him when you were fit enough. I have his phone number. I also told him it would be some time before you could return to work, but you will be able to contact him, and anyone else you wish, from your new room.”
“Thank you - that is encouraging, I must say. I had begun to think nobody was bothered about me.”
“Depression and confusion are symptoms of hypothermia,” said one of the doctors.
“However, I recommend that we explain things to anyone who may ask or be curious by saying that you have been injured in a hunting accident,” suggested Schilling. “A stray bullet from an unseen gunman. Hunters are always active in the area where you were found, after the wild boar. We shall need to move you temporarily to the local hospital for surgery on your shoulder, as soon as you are well enough in the next day or so, and questions are bound to be asked.”
“Agreed,” said Lloyd.
“I shall tell them, and your people in London, so that we all speak with the same voice. It can be used
as a cover story for your colleague as well, and also, if he should ever be discovered in the snow, the man who attempted to assassinate you. A Russian agent, I gather. We shall start looking for him when the weather improves, possibly in the spring. There seems to be no hurry. But there are wolves in the forest as well as wild boar, so, who knows, we may never recover his body.”
Lloyd shuddered, but it was not hypothermia this time.
***
News that Dr. Roger Lloyd had been injured in a hunting accident got around quite quickly, and he had a call only the next day from a fellow research scientist and Director on the ATLAS team at CERN. Lloyd was to work with that team of analysts, probing the mysteries revealed by the latest proton beam particle collision to have been carried out.
“We have hardly met, I know,” said his Director, “but I had to ring you to wish you well.”
“How kind of you.”
“I wanted to visit you, but the security where you are prohibits that, so they gave me this phone number. Tell me what is happening?”
“Well,” replied Lloyd, “I am due to have minor surgery on my injured shoulder tomorrow, as it happens, but I should only be away for a day or so. Then I come back here and stay until I’m fit enough to be discharged. I am feeling so much better already, so the sooner this is fixed, the better.”
“I agree,” said his colleague. “And we need you here as soon as possible, really. I realise there are nearly three thousand scientists working here just at the ATLAS detector, never mind other parts of CERN, but we specially need your particular diagnostic and mathematical skills. We have so much data after the last run that we cannot cope with it all, and we need your expert knowledge to help us sort through the results. Our data acquisition system seems to have worked overtime! As you know, we have just shut down for winter maintenance, so we have a bit of time, but until we see clearly what this latest particle collision has revealed, we cannot start planning for the next.”
“I am very keen to get there to help, as you can imagine,” said Lloyd. “As luck would have it, my right shoulder is the one which has been injured, and I am right-handed, so I may not be able to write well for some time. I shall need assistance at the board to write out the maths, but I should be OK on the computer. Perhaps there is a PhD student who could help?”