The Final Flight by James Blatch (books to read in your 30s .TXT) 📗

something we can create a routine for in the future. However, we will need your help to identify what we found.”

“Just height readings, I assumed?”

“Not quite. Do you have a pen and paper? It’s rather a long list, I’m afraid.”

Millie hurried upstairs and retrieved a large jotter pad from the spare bedroom. He paused before heading back down and looked at the open door to the main bedroom. He eased it shut.

Back on the phone, he took down a long stream of numbers, none of which made any sense to him at first glance.

Belkin passed on his notes from the computer technician. “We see twenty-nine separate groups of digits. They call them fields, for reasons I’m not clear about. The first field is made up of ten digits, the second field is fourteen digits, and the following twenty-seven are all smaller, just five digits.”

“The’ll be the twenty-seven height readings.”

“I thought as much. What about the first two sets of numbers? Young Strangways, the technician, insists we’ll need to understand their role if we are to find what you are looking for.”

Millie looked at the numbers he’d scrawled across the pad. He’d only taken down one line of data so far. The ten-digit number was 0000127344, the fourteen-digit one was 15105550114922.

He asked Belkin for more rows and wrote down nine more lines of the first two mysterious fields.

The first field increased with each line, but the second number changed in what appeared to be a random order.

“I’m afraid I just don’t know what the first two sets represent.”

“Well, there’s no immediate rush, as we don’t have the rest of your tapes yet, but if you could have a think… I believe the routine we will create for you will take a day or two, so try to let us know what these mean a week before you deliver the remaining tapes. How does that sound?”

“It sounds very good indeed. I’ll do my best, and thank you, Professor. Honestly, this is more than I could have hoped for.”

“Very good, Mr Milford. I will await your next communication.”

The professor hung up. It would look odd if he went into work on a Sunday, but he was desperate to get to the Guiding Light files and make a start on identifying the fields.

He sat on the small bench by the phone, in his striped pyjamas.

It would have to wait; he’d displayed enough unusual behaviour for one weekend.

Millie and Georgina meandered through the married quarter patch into the village.

Sunday church was more a habit than a rite, although Millie enjoyed the quiet moments of reflection the service offered.

As they sang their way through hymn 233, Oh thou who camest from above, Millie cast his eyes around the busy congregation. Mary stood a few rows in front, in a blue cloche hat, with Rob presumably just beyond her, although a pillar obscured his view.

He smiled at his women’s hat identification skills.

Outside in the bright sunshine, Mille and Georgina waited for the Mays to appear. Eventually, the younger couple emerged, surrounded by a group of RAF colleagues. All smiles and handshakes.

“They look like minor royalty,” Georgina said.

At that moment, Mary caught his eye, and she and Rob walked toward them.

“Who would like some lunch?” Millie asked.

Rob grinned. “We were hoping you’d say that. We have dresses and hats in the house, but no food, apparently.”

“Just the essentials then,” Georgina said.

Back at the Milfords’ quarter, the women got busy in the kitchen while Millie took Rob through the firs to spy on the peace camp.

“What do you think of the new fence?” asked Rob.

The new structure was unmissable: four or five feet higher than the existing fence and topped with angry looking razor wire.

“Appropriately nasty,” said Millie. “Do you think it’s there to keep them out or has Kilton installed it to keep us in?”

“He’s not that bad, Millie. Just doing his job in the face of a serious threat to us all.”

“Well, maybe the fence is there to keep you in and me out,” Millie said, and watched for a reaction.

Rob didn’t respond.

They walked back into the garden and Millie enlisted Rob’s help in carrying the dining room table and chairs out onto the patio.

The more sherry Millie drank, the more he convinced himself that Rob was now a lost cause, sucked into Mark Kilton’s gravity well.

During dinner, the sound of singing drifted over from the camp, accompanied by guitar and tambourine.

Rob tilted his head and tutted.

“I’m afraid Rob is becoming grumpy about our new neighbours,” Mary said.

Georgina smiled at her. “I think it sounds rather gay. Brightens the place up. They don’t do any harm, do they?”

“Ah! I’m afraid my husband thinks quite the opposite.”

Rob looked grave. “It’s what’s underneath the gaiety that we should be concerned about, Georgina. They may look like a ragtag group of misfits who’ve failed to get a decent job, but believe me, they’re dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” Georgina raised her eyebrows.

“Yes, dangerous. And frankly, it’s a little disrespectful to the work we do to think otherwise.”

A short silence fell, broken only by cutlery scraping on plates.

Millie piped up. “It’s odd though, isn’t it? I watch them from a distance sometimes and wonder. I saw a pretty young thing—”

Georgina gasped. “Millie!”

“Don’t worry. It wasn’t in that way. I’m old enough to be her grandfather. But I can’t help thinking that people like her just want to rid the world of weapons that can destroy entire cities. I find it hard to see her as a secret Soviet agent.”

“Why then, does she only want us to disarm and not Russia?” Rob asked.

“I suppose she also wants the Russians to get rid of their weapons, but she doesn’t have any influence over them, does she?”

“If she was in Russia,” snapped Rob, “she’d be shot, or sent off to the gulags. They don’t think about that, do they? The peace they enjoy is created by us being strong, not weak. They abuse it and undermine it.”

“Gosh, it’s like having lunch with Mark Kilton,”