Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [61]
Hayley sauntered back into the bedroom and Newton shook his head. ‘Wanders round here butt-naked like a whale all day if you let her,’ he noted.
‘I didn’t know you and her were . . . You know,’ said Bill standing up, still rubbing the small of his back.
‘Well we are,’ snapped Newton. ‘Want to make something of it?’
Bill Quay shrank backwards, feeling the cold, clammy touch of fear running her fingers up and down his spine. ‘No,’ he replied hurriedly, ‘I’m happy for you both. Really.’
‘Shut up, Bill,’ said an irritated Sam. ‘We’ve come with some news that might improve your temper,’ he told Newton.
Newton turned, two glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice in his hands.
‘“In the palace of stone and windows, the two little royals shall be carried”,’
he quoted.
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‘Which means . . . ?’ asked Sam.
‘Use your imagination. What’s the story?’
‘Bomb-type news,’ said Bill eagerly. ‘We got us a soldier boy. Nearly two.’
‘I like this news,’ said Newton with a manic grin. ‘You know what the prophet said about this, don’t you?’
‘No,’ replied Sam, ‘but you’re going to tell us, right?’
Newton opened a book on the breakfast bar and began to read. ‘“The London Chief, under the rule of America shall appoint a King who is the false Anti-Christ. He shall join them all together in discord.”’
‘Which means?’ asked Hayley emerging, clothed, from the bedroom.
‘Which means, my love,’ replied Newton, ‘that it’s time I made a phone call because there’s somebody that you all really need to meet.’
‘I don’t like hospitals,’ said the Doctor as he left Paynter’s room with the Brigadier. ‘People die in them.’
Lethbridge-Stewart was, however, preoccupied with more specific thoughts.
‘Fine man that,’ he said, glancing back at the door. ‘One of the finest I’ve ever served with. I had him as a private and watched him go through the ranks like a rocket.’
‘Yes,’ agreed the Doctor, sharing the Brigadier’s appreciation of Geoff Paynter’s qualities. ‘He always struck me as a very dedicated man. A bit rough around the edges, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.’
The Brigadier nodded. ‘It takes a particular sort of man to be able to watch his best friend burned alive and still come back for more. Which he will.
But those chaps were thick as thieves, he and . . . ’ Lethbridge-Stewart paused and, despite the many men that he had seen die over the years in similar (and different) circumstances, seemed unable to say Barrington’s name.
‘I’m sorry about Barrington,’ the Doctor added helpfully. ‘Another good man.’
‘It’s never easy to lose someone under your command,’ the Brigadier said at last as they reached reception and headed for the car park where Milligan was waiting for them. ‘Paynter’s first partner Paul Foxton was killed on active duty too, a decade ago. Captain Paynter always felt he was responsible.’
‘What happened?’
Lethbridge-Stewart looked away from the Doctor as he remembered another death on another continent. ‘They were in Baghdad infiltrating a Black Star cell. Foxton was inexperienced. He was a decent chap, very useful with a weapon, but he lost his nerve during a fire storm with the terrorists. It’s Paynter’s private hell.’
‘We’ve all got them,’ the Doctor noted. ‘Locked rooms, shuttered and dark where we hide our secrets and our emotions.’ He paused as they reached the 118
car. ‘This is getting out of hand. It’s becoming something of a bloodbath, Brigadier, people are getting killed.’
‘Indeed,’ conceded the Brigadier. ‘And now I have to make a phone call to a mother to tell her that she no longer has a son. That’s the reality of the situation, not aliens in the boardroom.’
‘I think we might have stumbled into something in which the stakes are far higher than either you or I can imagine.’ said the Doctor as they drove out of the dark car park and into the blinding Los Angeles sunlight.
‘That isn’t going to be of much consolation to Mrs Barrington,’ replied the Brigadier.
If the Doctor agreed with this sentiment he kept his thoughts