Doctor Who_ Trading Futures - Lance Parkin [37]
‘It looked like it was part of the fabric of the building – I saw huge power cables. Even if we just find out the power source, it could be important.’
They were outside now, in the Square. The water was deeper, here. It lapped over their ankles. There was near‐silence – no traffic noise, no people in the streets, not even birdsong. In the distance, Malady could hear helicopters. There was also a sound like a tarpaulin flapping – the water, she realised.
‘Baskerville’s building is on the other side of the city,’ Malady told the Doctor.
‘How did you get me from there to the safehouse?’
‘A car. I left it in the underground garage at the safehouse.’
‘Every basement and cellar in the city will be full of water,’ the Doctor told her.
‘The Plaka is mostly pedestrianised, but there’s a car park a few streets away. We should be able to find a four by four, or some other car that can use these roads.’
The Doctor nodded. He looked around. ‘I could have prevented this,’ he told her. ‘If you’d believed me, if you hadn’t knocked me out.’ He hesitated for a moment, clearly sensing what she was thinking. ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to make you feel guilty. I… this wasn’t your fault.’
‘It wasn’t yours, either.’
The Doctor sighed. ‘Perhaps not. Perhaps this was no one’s fault.’
* * *
Cosgrove passed around the identipics.
He’d warned them about the probable involvement of the CIA, now he was briefing them on the third party.
‘There are at least two of them,’ he told them. ‘This one is a little older, and he seems to be the leader. He neutralised two Service men, immobilised me, stole my property and blew up a Manta. And he did it with a rubber ball. This one – he’s some sort of operative, working for the other one. He managed to escape me in California.’ He looked up. ‘Now, I know what you’re sniggering at. You think I’m old. Past it. That they outfoxed an old fool who’s spent too long behind a desk. I’ve been in the Service over sixty years. Think about that. You think I did that by getting soft? If you think that, you just start running, and see if you can get away from me.’
He let that thought sink in. ‘But this man did get away. Now – I want these people found.’
‘If they were in the city when the tidal wave hit…’
‘…then they’re dead, and I want to see their corpses. Now, I don’t think this one’s had time to get back from California. I’ve only just arrived, and I was travelling about as fast as it’s possible to travel. This one, on the other hand, the leader, he’s here. He’s here and I want him stopped.’
‘Killed, sir?’
‘I want to do it. But I want you to beat me to it, if you possibly can. Dismissed.’
* * *
The Doctor had insisted on driving.
The Landrover Espial had started first time. The prometheus wasn’t working, though – the city traffic computers must be down. The Doctor didn’t seem to need it anyway.
The roads were passable, some were even beginning to dry out in the afternoon sun. Some telegraph and power lines were down, some walls and facades of buildings had collapsed. The surface was uneven. Debris. Not bodies. It was macabre, but Malady had thought they were driving over bodies at first. Until she turned a corner, and she’d seen very visible proof that bodies float.
This was horrible.
There were helicopters in the air – a lot of them. A couple were small newscopters, but the others – oddly – seemed to be RAF. Since they’d sorted out Cyprus, there hadn’t been much of a British presence in the area. But now there always seemed to be one visible, whichever way she looked.
There might have been a carrier nearby in the Med, out on exercises. But she thought she was au fait with EZ deployments in the whole area. Monitoring them had been her original assignment here, after all. They couldn’t have sneaked a carrier, even a submarine one, past her, and the nearest was the Mandelson, in the Gulf.
The Doctor seemed preoccupied with something. The fate of the Asian girl she’d seen him with at the airport and getting out the car at Baskerville’s office block?
‘Navigating,