Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book One - Lawrence Miles [89]
It’ll feel good, thought Sarah, to rescue him for a change.
She found herself wondering what he looked like these days. Whether she’d know him if she saw him. And how she was going to explain all this to Paul, if he came over this week and found the house being used as a base for a Time Lord and the entire Ogron fifth column. She wasn’t sure which of them she’d feel more embarrassed for, Paul or the Doctor. What would the old sod make of her current bit of stuff, anyway? What did little human romances look like to someone who – the last time she’d asked him – claimed to be over seven hundred years old?
She wondered what it’d be like to have a love‐life, if you could see things in all four dimensions. If you could lie in bed with somebody and see them as they’d look in forty years’ time, when their bodies were coming apart at the seams and their hair was falling out. No wonder the Doctor had never had a relationship while he’d been on Earth.
Ugh.
Anyway. While the Ogron was busy stabbing his ‘users’ in the back, Sarah had a mission of her own to carry out. She’d seen the warehouse, the crates of Cold ready to be shipped across the world, and she knew how the Remote were planning to do the shipping. At COPEX, Llewis had given her his card, complete with the address of his office. He was the conduit Guest was going to use to supply the Cold to Earth, so he was, logically, the weakest part of the operation.
She had to sabotage the plan somehow. To stop the distribution process, or at least delay it until they rescued the Doctor.
It was midday by the time she got to Barnes Road. The office was a quiet‐looking place, a sign in the top‐floor window the only indication of what the building was being used for. Getting past reception was going to be the hard part, Sarah decided. She fiddled with her wig as she crossed the pavement, making sure none of the darker, redder hairs were sticking out around the ears. When she finally walked into the building, she walked in with a big smile on her face, and deliberately didn’t look at any of the cheap works of art in the lobby. Real businesspeople, she told herself, never care about the decor.
She gave the receptionist her name and company – not the real ones, obviously – and told the woman she was here to see Mr Llewis. The receptionist phoned the office upstairs, then casually announced that Mr Llewis wasn’t in yet, but that Mr Morgan would be down to see her straight away.
Sarah met Morgan as he stepped out of the lift. A man in his late thirties, Sarah guessed, his hair black and thinning and gelled down to his scalp, his Concorde‐shaped features making him look like some kind of vulture in a suit. Which, all things considered, wasn’t entirely inappropriate.
Morgan insisted on shaking her hand. Hard.
‘Peter Morgan,’ he said. ‘You’re from IPS, right?’
Sarah nodded. ‘I met Mr Llewis at COPEX. I’m also in negotiations with Mr Guest –’
‘Fine.’ Morgan started ushering her towards the lift, which made Sarah suspicious. He hadn’t even asked for any ID. ‘Alan hasn’t come in yet. He’s been busy the last couple of days. Heavy work schedule.’
Sarah got into the lift, without much confidence. Even the lift was shag‐pile‐carpeted, she noticed.
‘I’m kind of glad you showed up,’ Morgan went on, once the doors had shut. Sarah thought he sounded nervous. Not the kind of nerves you got when you were running away from Cybermen, but the kind you got when you were trying to run a company and everything was falling to bits around you. ‘We’ve been having trouble getting hold of Alan. Some kind of communications glitch between here and Sandown Park.’
Sarah got the distinct impression he was lying. ‘Oh yes?’
‘Yeah. We got the call from him yesterday afternoon, saying he’d finished the deal with Guest. Everything