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to himself. As the car moved on to Mulholland Drive, he looked out of the window at the flashing images of Americana that sped by him. Green-boxed street signs with exotic, exciting place names. Towering palm trees lining the road. Neon shop fronts, delis, 7-11s and grocery stores. Yellow school buses. Bright, gaudy, plastic and utterly alien to him. The ramrod-straight six-lane freeway seemed a perfect metaphor for his inability to find an exit and get back on to the side roads where some answers might be hidden. And meanwhile, all around him, the buildings towered ever upwards blocking out the light.

The Brigadier looked at the collection of papers in front of him and tutted loudly as he read about yet another Chinese satellite being launched. ‘That’s about four this week,’ he exaggerated. ‘If they keep going up at this rate, there’ll be nothing of space left for anyone else!’

‘Do you ever wish that you had never started something, Brigadier?’ the Doctor asked, changing the subject completely.

‘Frequently,’ replied Lethbridge-Stewart drily. ‘But if we never start anything, we never achieve anything, do you see?’

‘Sadly, Brigadier, I do. And there’s the irony.’ The Doctor was clearly troubled. ‘I’d like you to do something for me that neither of us is going to find very palatable.’

‘If it helps to stop the killing, then, yes, I’ll do it and damn whether I can stomach it or not,’ replied the Brigadier.

But the Doctor still looked unhappy at the situation into which he and his friends had been forced. ‘When I alluded to wishing I had never started something, I wasn’t just referring to this particular assignment. In my time, I have made certain alliances that . . . ’ The Doctor paused. ‘That do not stand up to close scrutiny.’

‘Meaning?’

The Doctor looked away from the Brigadier once more. Out of the window and into the real world. ‘That I’m not proud of them,’ he said simply, still unable to face his old friend.

119

‘We all find ourselves sleeping with the enemy at times, Doctor. That’s just a fact of life. What do you want me to do?’

The Doctor sighed. ‘I’d like you to set up a meeting . . . ’ Again he paused.

‘A meeting with the CIA.’

120

Chapter Thirteen

Strange Town

‘Poor Mark,’ Natalie said to Tegan as they approached Geoff Paynter’s hospital room. ‘He was the sweetest man. You’d never think of him as a soldier. Kind, thoughtful, a humanitarian. Always trying to help others. Not to mention being drop-dead gorgeous.’

‘Not perhaps the most appropriate phrase,’ said Tegan as they reached the door.

Natalie flung a hand up to her mouth. ‘I’m such a dimwit,’ she said, embarrassed tears filling her eyes.

‘Come on,’ said an irritated Tegan, grabbing the UNIT woman’s shoulders.

‘You don’t want to let that sexist windbag Paynter see you like this?’

‘Captain Paynter’s a complicated man,’ Natalie replied, with a faint smile.

‘But he does pinch my bum with monotonous regularity.’

‘The swine,’ mocked Tegan. ‘He must be stopped!’

They found Paynter sitting up in bed wearing the worst pair of hospital pyjamas that Tegan had ever seen. He was smiling, but this obviously belied the way he was truly feeling.

‘Hello girls,’ he said brightly. ‘You didn’t manage to sneak a bottle of Jack Daniels under the radar by any chance did you?’

‘’Fraid not,’ replied Natalie. ‘And we didn’t bring you any grapes either.’

‘Every cloud has a silver lining,’ noted Paynter.

‘How are they treating you?’

‘I should be getting out tomorrow,’ he replied. His false jollity was evident in the awkward silence after he stopped talking.

‘I’m sorry about your friend,’ said Tegan, sick of the pointless small talk.

‘I’ve seen someone close to me die and I know what you’re going through if that’s any consolation.’

Now she saw another side of Paynter, briefly. A deeply hidden side. ‘It’s like having a part of you ripped away,’ he said softly. The shattering loss was clearly there, inches beneath the surface. He hid his feelings well, she gave him credit for that much, but the veneer was in danger of peeling away and allowing the