Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book One - Lawrence Miles [16]
‘I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it,’ Sam heard an ugly man in a suit telling the receptionist on the other side of the floor. ‘It doesn’t bloody work, that’s what’s wrong with it.’
‘If you’re having trouble with the reception –’
‘Reception? The whole set’s knackered. Half the channels look like The bloody Exorcist.’
Finally, the targets walked into the foyer. And headed straight for the lifts.
Sam sauntered towards them, trying to look as though she’d been heading the same way herself. She made sure the binoculars were tucked under her arm, where they wouldn’t be noticed. The men stopped in front of one of the lifts, the short one glancing up at the floor indicator, the tall one staring straight ahead.
‘…thing called the DTI,’ the short one was saying, as Sam manoeuvred herself into position next to him.
The other raised his hand, in a ‘shut up’ kind of way. He still didn’t turn his head. Sam took the opportunity to study him in close‐up.
The man was black. Bald. Tough‐looking. Like one of those people you used to see in news items about African guerrillas, thought Sam – soldiers with shaved heads and leathery skins, fighting jungle warfare in countries nobody English could ever remember the names of. Sam wondered whether that was deliberate, whether the man had made himself up to look like some kind of veteran. There were heavy muscles under his suit, though, and his movements were slow, controlled. The sheer size of him gave his limbs a kind of inertia that would’ve been scary in a fight. Slow, yes. But slow the way icebergs were slow.
And his face was hard. Smoothed‐at‐the‐edges, computer‐aided‐design hard. Like he didn’t have any expression until he decided to switch it on.
The man from the promo video. Guest. No doubt about it.
Then he turned to face her.
Sam felt her mouth plop open, but she didn’t have anything to say. Guest just stared at her, his eyes not even flickering, as if he’d already worked out which part of her was the most important and didn’t have to look any further.
Wait. Wait wait wait. He shouldn’t know her, should he? They’d never met before, he’d never seen her –
But Guest knew things. Sam had found out that much at the UN briefing. He’d talked to people. Read files. Got involved in local politics.
Oh God. Her picture was in a file somewhere at the UN. Wasn’t it?
Wasn’t it?
Finally, Guest turned away again. The lift arrived.
The men stepped into the lift. Sam followed them, grinning inanely, the way innocent bystanders were supposed to. The shorter, paler of the two pressed the button for the third floor, and looked at Sam, expectantly.
‘What a coincidence,’ said Sam, trying not to spit through the grin. ‘That’s my floor, too.’
* * *
Earlier
The agreement they’d reached was quite simple. It had to be, seeing as they’d reached it without actually speaking to each other, more or less.
Sam was going to leave. Sam wanted to leave. Sam had decided to leave. Not one of those slow, creeping realisations, but an actual big, hard, no‐backing‐out decision. She’d drawn the line in the sand, she’d made up her mind, she’d written it in her diary, and yes, the diary in question contained only one entry and that was it, but it was the thought that counted.
Going. Definitely going. Going going going.
The question was, how was she going?
The Doctor had never wanted to talk about her departure from the TARDIS, not in all the time they’d been together. He’d probably hoped she’d find a new home, somewhere along the line. He’d probably hoped she’d fall in love with someone…
…with someone convenient…
…and spend the rest of her life on a nice quiet planet just off the edge of the Hubble telescope. Every now and then he’d acknowledge that