The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [563]
“What’s in those trucks?” asked the guard with a certain degree of torpidity in his voice.
“You don’t need to look in the trucks,” I told him.
“We don’t need to look in the trucks,” echoed the border guard.
“We can go through unimpeded.”
“You can go through unimpeded.”
“You’re going to be nicer to your girlfriend.”
“I’m definitely going to be nicer to my girlfriend. . . . Move along.”
He waved us through, and we drove across the demilitarized zone to the Welsh border guards who called their colonel as soon as we explained that we had ten truckloads of Danish books that required safekeeping. There was a long and convoluted phone call with someone from the Danish consulate, and after about an hour, we and the trucks were escorted to a disused hangar at the Llan-drindod Wells airfield park. The colonel in charge offered us free passage back to the border, but I switched on the Ovinator again and told him that he could take the truck drivers back but to let us go on our way, a plan that he quickly decided was probably the best thing.
Ten minutes later we were on the road north towards the Elan, Millon directing us all the way according to a 1950s tourist map. By the time we were past Rhayder, the countryside became more rugged and the farms less and less frequent and the road more and more potholed until, as the sun reached its zenith and started its downward track, we arrived at a tall set of gates, strung liberally with rusty barbed wire. There was an old stone-built guardhouse with two very bored guards who needed only a short burst from the Ovinator to switch off the electrified fence, allowing us to pass. Bowden drove the car through and stopped at another internal fence twenty yards inside the first. This was unelectrified, and I pushed it open to let the car pass.
The road was in worse repair on the Area 21 side of the gates. Tussocky grass was growing from the cracks in the concrete roadway, and on occasion trees that had fallen across the road impeded our progress.
“Now can you tell me what we’re doing here?” asked Millon, staring intently out the window and taking frequent photographs.
“Two reasons,” I said, looking at the map that Millon had obtained from his conspiracy buddies. “First, because we think someone’s been cloning Shakespeares and I need one as a matter of some urgency, and second, to find vital reproductive information for Stig.”
“So it’s true you can’t have children?”
Stig liked Millon because he asked such direct questions.
“It is true,” he replied simply, loading up his dart gun with tranqs the size of Havana cigars.
“Take a left here, Bowd.”
He changed gear, pulled the wheel around, and we entered a stretch of road with dark woodland on either side. We drove up a hill, took a left-hand turn past an outcrop of rock, then stopped. There was a rusty car upside down on the road in front of us, blocking the way.
“Stay in the car, keep it running,” I said to Bowden. “Millon, stay put. Stig—with me.”
Stig and I climbed out of the car and cautiously approached the upturned vehicle. It was a custom-made Studebaker, probably about ten years old. I peered in. Vandals never came here. The glass in the speedometer was unbroken, the rusty keys still in the ignition, the leather from the seats hanging in rotten strands. There was a sun-bleached briefcase lying on the ground, and it was full of water-related technical stuff, now all mushy and faded by the wind and rain. Of the occupants there was no sign. I had thought Millon was overcooking it with all his “chimeras running wild” stuff, but suddenly I felt nervous.
“Miss Next!”
It was Stig. He was about ten yards ahead of the car and was squatting down, rifle across his knees. I walked slowly up to him, looking anxiously into the deep woodland on either side of the road. It was quiet. Rather too quiet. The sound of my own footfalls felt deafening.
“What’s up?”
He pointed to the ground. There was a human ulna lying on the road. Whoever had been in this accident, one of them never left.
“Hear that?” asked Stig.
I listened. “No.”
“Exactly.