Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [5]
‘They know nothing,’ Chung Sen interjected furiously.
‘Without Doctor
Shaw, Professor Chesterton or Doctor Sutton we’re stumbling in the dark.’
‘What we need,’ said Bois, ‘is someone who has interacted with extraterrestrials.’
‘Or, better still,’ countered another of the group, ‘an actual extraterrestrial.
The whole future of the project depends on it.’
A dull silence passed over the men as the implications of this sank in.
‘So,’ remarked the Frenchman slowly, ‘isn’t it about time we found one?’
10
Part One
All the King’s Men
‘ In the year 1999 and seven months, the Great King of Terror shall come from the skies. ’
An extremely bad translation of ‘Century X.72’ from The True Prophecies or Prognostications of Michael Nostradamus first translated by Theophilus de Garencieres (1672).
Chapter One
Yesterday’s Men
Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam: 3 July 1999
‘I was in a seminar with the surveillance crowd,’ said Paynter as he returned from the bar and put the two coffee cups on the smoked-glass table. ‘In Re-druth after all that palaver with the Cassuragian invasion. Strange bunch.
They always seem to know more than is good for them. About everything.’
The air was dry and stale with the pungent tinge of body odour and cheap aftershave. Paynter licked his lips, as though the taste of this place was as unpleasant as its coffee. He picked up the cup and took a sip, wincing as the bitter liquid threatened to strip the skin from his throat.
They were an odd couple. Paynter, the bigger, more muscular of the pair, gave the impression of being a stereotypical Northern hard-man with a short temper and the ability to say the most offensive, thoughtless things at the most inappropriate moments. With attitude. Those who knew him tended to conclude that he was a thuggish dinosaur. An all-singing, all-dancing bully and the unacceptable face of new laddism. Or, simply, ‘that bastard’. But Geoff Paynter was, nonetheless, beneath the nihilism and the wolf-whistle performances, fiercely loyal to his colleagues and friends. Especially Mark Barrington. Younger than Paynter but perhaps more cynical and worldly-wise Barrington, a wiry, tough man of medium build, had a melancholy depth to him that few could penetrate. And lots of people had tried over the years.
‘Example?’ asked Barrington.
Paynter instantly forgot about the rank coffee and warmed to his theme.
‘One of the Americans. Chap called . . . Do you know, I can’t even remember his name now? Bloody nice bloke anyway but, you know, American.’ Captain Paynter pronounced the last word as though it was the description of something he had just scraped off the sole of his shoe. ‘Wanted to tell me his life story. Not just his, his whole family’s . . . ’
‘Yes,’ replied Lieutenant Barrington. ‘A very confessional race, the Americans. And they’re surprised when everyone else isn’t.’
‘Exactly. That’s exactly my point. Lovely people. Give you the shirt off their backs so they would . . . But I hate all that touchy-feely nonsense. Always 13
telling you what their effing therapist’s said. Now, this fellah, he caught me on a bad day. You know what it’s like? You’re far from home and there’s a match on that you can’t see because the hotel hasn’t got Sky Sports. The drink in the bar is lousy and you’ve given up ciggies for the third time that month and you’d just kill for a Silk Cut.’ Paynter looked down at the cigarette burning slowly towards his fingertips and frowned, stubbing it out in one of the spotless glass ashtrays. Smoke billowed upwards and for a moment a dense choking cloud passed between the two men sitting in the almost deserted airport coffee bar. ‘Disgusting habit,’ continued Paynter with a bronchial wheeze.
‘I get sick of telling you that,’ replied Barrington, taking off his spectacles and cleaning them on his handkerchief. ‘You take half a minute off your life every time you –’
‘So anyway,’ interrupted Paynter, irritated by his colleague’s much-rehearsed mantra. ‘Chap seemed to have taken it