Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book One - Lawrence Miles [30]
‘That’s stupid,’ said Sam. ‘You said these pictures were taken from a TV screen. There’s only, what, a few hundred lines on a TV –’
‘Six hundred and twenty‐five,’ said Sarah. ‘I checked.’
‘Right. So, after the first couple of blow‐ups, it should lose all its – what d’you call it? – its definition. You shouldn’t be able to see anything except fuzz.’
‘I know. Scary, isn’t it?’
Sam stared at her for a moment or two. ‘So you’re saying –’
‘Whatever these transmissions are, they’re not just nasty pictures. They’re changing the way the sets work. The televisions in this hotel are mutating to suit the pictures. And that’s not possible. Is it?’
Sam passed the prints back to Sarah. Sarah put them back into the envelope, and hid it in the drawer under a leaflet advertising something that was guaranteed to burn people’s eyes out with the minimum of mess and fuss.
‘I don’t think I trust you,’ Sam said.
Sarah smiled again, and indicated the bed. This time, Sam sat. Cautiously, though.
‘Same to you,’ said Sarah.
‘Who are you?’
‘I thought you said you knew who I was.’
‘I know your name’s Sarah Bland. I know you’re supposed to be on my side.’
‘Supposed to be?’
‘Supposed to be.’
Sarah chewed her lip. ‘And how do you know this, exactly?’
‘A friend of mine,’ said Sam. She paused after that, as if she hadn’t intended to say anything else, but then had decided she was overdoing ‘enigmatic’. ‘He went away. He told me to look after things here. He gave me a list of people I could trust, if I ran into them.’
‘Really?’ said Sarah. ‘Have you got it with you?’
Sam didn’t say anything.
‘You are supposed to trust me,’ Sarah added.
Sam nodded, then reached into the breast pocket of her jacket. The jacket didn’t suit her at all, Sarah noted. Neither did the serious‐looking blouse, the grey knee‐length skirt, the high‐heeled shoes, or the blotchy make‐up. In fact, the girl looked like she’d be more comfortable lounging around in a T‐shirt and a good pair of jeans. Perhaps this was her idea of going undercover. Sarah briefly wondered if she’d looked anything like that, back in the seventies. Or was it the eighties?
Come to think of it, did she look anything like that now?
Sam produced a scrunched‐up piece of paper from her pocket, and smoothed it out against her leg before she passed it to Sarah. Sarah squinted at the handwriting, absolutely determined not to let the girl know she was getting long‐sighted.
There was, indeed, a list of names at the bottom of the note. Sarah recognised a couple of them, and at least one was someone she knew from the UN. Her own name – or at least the name sarah bland (ms) – was the last on the list, overlaid with a dirty brown ring where someone had rested a coffee cup on the paper. Then she saw how the note had been signed.
‘Why aren’t I surprised?’ she muttered.
Sam held her hand out. Sarah passed the note back to her. ‘I’ve answered one of your questions,’ the girl said. ‘Now it’s your turn. Right?’
‘Right.’
‘So. Who are you working for?’
Sarah considered this for a moment. Finally, she turned back to the desk, took out a business card, and handed it over.
‘International Procurement Services,’ Sam read. ‘You mean, you’re an arms dealer?’
‘I mean, I’m trying to make everyone think I’m an arms dealer. Sorry, no. An internal security dealer. My mistake.’
‘So it’s a front? IPS isn’t a real company?’
‘Actually, it is. They specialise in getting stuff that’s almost but not quite illegal to governments who are almost but not quite barking mad. Half the customers at COPEX want torture equipment. Electric‐shock batons, that kind of thing. Electric weaponry’s been banned here since the late eighties, but COPEX is a great place for them to make connections. I don’t really work for IPS, though. And my name’s not Bland. It’s even more boring than that.’
Sam looked slightly puzzled. ‘Explain something to me. Is this thing supposed to be an arms fair, or what?’
‘COPEX? It’s a security fair. They have to be careful