Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [117]
Light flooded into the cell. The prisoner blinked, her eyelids cutting out the stinging pain.
223
After many hours in the isolated darkness the change was sudden and brutal.
‘Good evening,’ said the black man. ‘My name is Melvyn Tyrone and I’d like to ask you some questions.’ He paused and turned to his left. ‘This is Sergeant Natalie Wooldridge who is here to observe this little chat. I apologise for keeping you so long but Sergeant Wooldridge has just been promoted and we’ve been having a bit of a celebration.’ Tyrone smiled, charmingly. ‘Every cloud has a silver lining,’ he noted.
The prisoner said nothing.
‘So, Ms Stonebringer. If that is, indeed, your real name. I’d like to start with a simple question about your orientation.’
Still, the prisoner said nothing.
‘What are you?’
Tyrone sat and placed a cup of steaming coffee on the table. He glanced at Natalie who took up a position beside the door to the cell. It was clearly going to be a long night.
‘We have all the time in the world,’ said Tyrone, removing his spectacles and cleaning them. ‘At UNIT we have many years of practice at acquiring the information we need. Silence is only a locked door. All that we require is the key.’ He placed a pocket tape recorder on the table next to the coffee and switched it on. ‘20:14. Interview one. Ms Stonebringer, perhaps you’d like to start by telling us how you were recruited to InterCom?’
The door marked ‘silence’ remained locked. For the moment.
Back at UNIT headquarters the Doctor was pleased to find that Corporal Murphy and his capable men had found the TARDIS and hauled it across Los Angeles from its resting place on Sunset Boulevard. The graffiti would wash off, the Brigadier assured him.
Discussing the war’s aftermath was a more problematical business. ‘We’ve been here before,’ noted the Brigadier, after he had informed the Doctor that the mopping-up operation on surviving Jex and Canavitchi agents would take a long time. ‘There may be hundreds of them out there, under deep cover.
The ones with connections to InterCom should be easy enough to arrest, but who knows how many more spies are active right now? They might be all over the world, some in positions of great power.’
The Doctor was silent. He had seen the world tipped to the brink of destruction again. And again, it had survived. How many more times would he be in the right place at the right time?
‘Get the CIA to help you,’ he told the Brigadier cryptically, as he went looking for Tegan and Turlough so that they could say their goodbyes.
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Second Epilogue
Complete Control
The sun was setting over the Golden Gate Bridge.
San Francisco in late July commanded an awesome view at sunset, Control told himself as he watched the last rays of the sun from his office window.
‘So,’ he said, turning round, ‘we were discussing alien infiltration, were we not?’
Greaves looked unhappy. ‘Doesn’t any of this bother you?’ he asked.
Control seemed to have been expecting the question. ‘Tommy Bruce asked me the same thing many times Frank. He was always looking for a way out.’
‘Who?’
‘One of your predecessors. A fine man but, you know, weak. That’s what I like about you, Frank. You’re strong like me.’
Frank Greaves took this as a compliment, although with Control one could never be too certain. ‘So,’ he said at last. ‘What’s next on the agenda?’
‘We have a lot coming up in the next few years,’ Control said. ‘A whole bunch of invasions and attempted invasions, infiltrations, time anomalies. We have many games to play. And to win.’ Control stood up and picked up the case file for the Jex that Greaves had carefully compiled. He walked over to a massive filing cabinet and placed the file in its correct chronological position.
‘But what happens if we don’t win next time?’ asked Greaves.
Control seemed amused by the question. ‘We will,’ he said simply. ‘With the Doctor on our side, we can’t lose.’
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Thank You (Fallettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)
There are many people who, literally, wouldn’t quit bugging me until I wrote