Doctor Who_ Atom Bomb Blues - Andrew Cartmel [3]
Henbest blinked in puzzlement, his too wet, too intelligent eyes magnified by his spectacles. ‘Grow roses? I don’t understand.’
Butcher sighed. ‘She was shovelling horse manure, Professor. And you seemed pretty eager to accept it, fresh and steaming.
‘Your rather vivid gift for imagery suggests some intriguing fixation with toilet training in your own no doubt fascinating infancy, Major.’
‘My toilet training?’ said Butcher in a dangerous voice.
‘But that’s neither here nor there,’ added Henbest quickly. ‘The real gist of the matter is that the girl, sedated as she was, was incapable of telling a lie.’
‘Sure,’ said Butcher. ‘Two moons.’ He turned and headed for the office door.
Henbest seemed upset that the game was over.
‘Where are you going?’ he said.
‘We have a bomb to build,’ said Butcher. ‘And I have a spy to catch.’
5
Chapter One
Three Days Earlier
Butcher decided he would drive down himself to pick up the newcomers. His role as security officer on the Hill allowed him the latitude to dress in civilian clothing when he chose. On this hot, pale desert afternoon he decided he wouldn’t put on anything that might disclose his military identity. Just a tee shirt, a pair of jeans and an oily leather jacket. He was mortified to discover that the jeans no longer fitted him. Indeed, they were so tight around the waist that he couldn’t even attempt to fasten them.
It was all the chilli and beer. They served a surprisingly good chilli locally and Butcher had succumbed to it. Kitty Oppenheimer’s cook was a Mexican girl and she was the chilli wizard. Butcher had become so thoroughly addicted to her creation that he had bribed the girl to prepare an extra portion every time she cooked it for the Oppenheimers and to sneak it out the back door to him.
Of course, the Mexican girl was also a useful source of information on Oppy, and Butcher’s visits to her gave him an excuse to snoop around.
But the chilli had done its damage. Butcher sighed as he surveyed the benign curve of his burgeoning pink belly. He discarded the jeans and instead put on some sun-faded dungarees. He finished dressing and gazed at his battered, exasperated face in the polished steel mirror over the sink and, as an afterthought, added a pair of aviator’s sunglasses he’d picked up in Formosa.
The black lenses stared back at him from the mirror, revealing nothing.
Perfect.
Butcher collected the car and set off to meet the new arrivals. He found them waiting on a lonely stretch of desert road, peering anxiously into the distance, watching for any passing vehicle. Butcher’s was the first they’d seen in several hours, from what he could glean by their conversation.
The newcomers sat in the back seat as Butcher drove.
They were a man and a woman. The woman was actually more like a girl really. She was wearing a belted white raincoat, or what locally was called a duster, since dust storms were more common than rain storms in this part of the world. She had dark hair, dark eyes and some nice curves.
The older guy was some kind of bigwig physicist from England, coming over 7
to join the programme. He was wearing a Panama hat, a chocolate brown suit, a white shirt and an indigo bow tie of some strange iridescent material.
His papers identified him as Dr John Smith. The girl was called, improbably enough, Acacia Cecelia Eckhart.
Butcher looked at them in the rear-view mirror as he drove. He wondered just how important the little man was. He hadn’t exactly arrived in VIP style.
But sometimes that was how the top brass liked it. The more important the egghead, the more low-key their arrival. There were all kinds of geniuses up on the Hill at Los Alamos, some of the most important brains in the world.
And, from what Butcher could glean, some of the most dangerous.
Still, the big shots tended to turn up with somewhat more ceremony than this dusty, weary couple, standing woebegone at the roadside where the bus had dropped them, waiting for Butcher to rescue them. They certainly hadn’t