Doctor Who_ The Dying Days - Lance Parkin [105]
And he'd make it al look so easy.
A twig snapped behind me, but before I had time to turn, I was pushed down onto the floor.
'Don't move.' It was a lanky man in a tattered business suit. He was holding me down, and he had a knife. 'Stay still or I kill you. Keep quiet.'
I nodded. The man waved the knife a little closer, betraying his nervousness, rather than his resolve.
'Good morning,' I replied.
'I said shut - '
I grabbed his wrist, slammed it against a tree trunk and kicked his feet from under him. He toppled over, and I stuck my knee in the back of his neck. It had been a while since I'd had cause to use my Aikido, and so I was rather gratified that I could stil lift my leg so high.
'Let me go,' he screamed. 'Civilisation.'
'What?' I scowled.
'Civilisation. It's the end of the world. The end of everything. Ten days ago I was a civil engineer. Now look at me.'
I considered my options, then stood. 'You're talking about being civilised. So let's cut out all this knife and kung-fu crap and talk.'
The man scrambled to his feet. I held out my hand and we introduced ourselves. The stranger said his name was Raymond Heath.
'OK, Ray. You were a civil engineer. Where?'
The sound of boots crunching through undergrowth. Soldiers from the base were hurrying to my aid, taking up positions behind me.
'Are you OK, Professor Summerfield?' one of the lads asked.
'Yes thank you, private.'
The soldiers stayed alert, scanning the wood to make sure my assailant was on his own.
'Carry on,' I told Ray quietly.
'I worked at the EG refinery, just outside Reading.'
'The what?' I asked.
'EG. You know: one of the Greyhaven companies.'
So I listened.
95
***
Lethbridge-Stewart was slotting coins into the pay-and-display machine. While the mechanism whirred, he checked the car park. No-one was watching him, except a three-year old with a bal oon.
As far as he knew, neither he nor Benny's photograph had appeared in the press or on television in the last week.
Perhaps the authorities thought that they had died in Adisham. More likely, with the Doctor dead, they weren't considered a threat any longer. The Brigadier had reached that conclusion himself, but he'd rather hoped that UNIT would pose more of a threat.
Lethbridge-Stewart quickened his pace a little, passing through a row of trees to the main street. He used to live in Gerrard's Cross, so he'd been to Windsor his fair share of times over the years. The streets were as busy as he remembered, there was even a school party making its way over to the Castle. London was less than an hour away, just along the M4. The population of that city was living in fear, under curfew, with a kilometre long warship hovering over them. Here, people were going about their daily business. A quartet of Etonians passed him, moaning that the BBC had cancelled last night's episode of The X Files 'due to recent events'.
Lethbridge-Stewart could see the WH Smiths sign now. He continued towards it, pausing every so often to look into other shop windows. This was a simple technique. If anyone was fol owing you, they'd have to stop as well, or walk straight past you. You could also check the reflected image of the other side of the street, without having to look directly at a potential tail. As part of his basic espionage training, he'd walked down Oxford Street, from one end to the other. Half a dozen MI5 man were trailing him. His primary goal was to shake them off, the second was to identify as many of them as he could at the debrief afterwards.
The point was, of course, that he couldn't do either. If you walk down a street, people look at you. If you are going to Smiths, chances are a dozen others are too, so they'll be walking down the same pavements. At the debrief, he'd been honest enough to admit that he couldn't spot anyone who was definitely following him. He described a couple of the people he thought might have been MI5 agents, al of whom had been innocent passers-by. He got points for honesty, and realism. Despite all his weaving in and out of shops, he doubted that he'd shaken