Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [52]
‘G’day,’ said a cheerful Antipodean voice. ‘I believe you have a special delivery for Mr Goodfellow?’
‘Is Mr Goodfellow well?’ asked Burdon, his prearranged lines rehearsed many times.
‘He is, but Missus Goodfellow has been ill for some days. This delivery may help.’
Satisfied, Bunion ripped open the lining of his jacket and removed the package which was wrapped in clear plastic.
‘Please tell Mr Goodfellow that I hope his wife recovers soon,’ he said as he handed it across.
‘Don’t ad-lib mate,’ said the man in the jeep, baring a gap-toothed smile and taking the disk from Burdon. ‘It’s only supposed to be a walk-on part.’
Without another word, he swung the jeep through 180 degrees and drove off in the direction of Queensland.
100
Burdon remained for a few moments, watching until the jeep became a mere speck on the distant horizon, then turned and started the five-mile walk back to town.
So the chain of passage continued. Hand to hand. Pocket to pocket. Vehicle to vehicle. Down a myriad country roads and dirt tracks on a motorbike, through bushland and desert against the staggering backdrop of a bloodshot, starless sky and a burnt-orange rising sun half obscured by thin wispy clouds.
Through a small-town railway depot near Cairns in the early hours of a dusty, sweltering north Queensland morning with a heat haze that turned the horizon into a shimmering series of broken wavy lines. Along the tracks to a port on the Pacific Ocean Gold Coast where the fat, bearded owner of a battered old fishing vessel, wearing a dirty string vest and a perpetual scowl, took the disk from the previous carrier and tossed it, casually, into the boat’s filthy cabin.
Fifty miles off the coast of New Zealand a seaplane circled above the boat and then gently swooped down, settling on the calm sea almost without causing a ripple or a wave. The pilot was a strikingly beautiful young woman with the sort of Technicolor blonde hair that is rarely seen outside Grace Kelly movies of the 1950s. She was wearing a rubber diving suit and appeared at the entrance to the cockpit, then dived into the sea and swam the short distance to the fishing boat.
‘Missus Goodfellow’s condition is deteriorating,’ she said, spitting out the saltwater that lapped into her mouth. ‘The antidote is required. Urgently.’
‘You’d better give her this,’ said the boat man, throwing the package into the girl’s hands. She caught it and held it tightly, giving him a glare of contempt.
‘Relax,’ he said. ‘It’s waterproof.’
‘I know,’ she replied dismissively, turning back towards the plane. ‘And if anybody asks, you haven’t seen me, right?’
‘Pardon?’ he asked.
The girl reached the plane and spent a moment clambering awkwardly into the cockpit. She shook her wet hair and placed the package in the safety of a dashboard compartment. ‘All I’m saying,’ she shouted, turning with a flare gun in her hand, ‘is don’t breathe a word of this. To anyone.’
‘No,’ screamed the man as the girl raised the gun and prepared to fire. The cargo’s highly flammable, that thing could . . . ’
The gun fired and the flare streaked out across the short expanse of water, landing in the stern of the boat with a burst of bright light. Seconds later the deck was ablaze. Mere seconds after that, the boat exploded.
‘Blow it up?’ the girl asked. But there was no one on the burning ocean to reply.
∗ ∗ ∗
101
Ten hours later the girl, out of her rubbers and wearing in their place a flowing gypsy skirt and a loose summer blouse, walked into the Transamerica Pyramid building in San Francisco and headed for an office on the twenty-ninth floor.
‘So, let’s see what our friendly neighbourhood post person has brought us today,’ Control said to Greaves after the girl had put the package in his hands without a word and left. He removed the disk from its weather-beaten casing and put it into the CD drive.
‘This had better work,’ he noted, with a little half-smile that told Greaves he was convinced that