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

them. She’s helping me now. She works for…” He hesitated. If Mary was determined to leave, what if she told the Laverstocks? What if they told someone else and it got back to Kilton?

“I’m waiting, Rob.”

“Look, I can’t say too much and you mustn’t say anything to anyone. But Mary, please trust me. Please.”

Mary glared at him. “How old is she? Twenty? You expect me to believe a bloody twenty-year-old girl is somehow helping you? And by the way, you don’t tell me anything anyway, Rob. Not one thing and now…” She sobbed harder. “And now you’re telling this twenty-year-old everything?”

Rob knelt down in front of her. “I don’t know what to say, Mary. I know it looks bad, and I can see how that’s hurt you. But please believe me. I haven’t told you to protect you—”

She stared at him. “I’m hurt, Rob. You’ve betrayed me. But even before this, I was unhappy. I don’t suppose you noticed, because you were never here, but things haven’t been right for a long time. I thought you’d changed after the crash, but all you’ve done is create another life that doesn’t involve me.”

She walked to the front door and placed a hand on the suitcase.

“It’s time to reap what you’ve sown, Rob. You had your chance to involve me, you chose someone else.”

“Mary, no. You’ve got this wrong. She’s helpful to me and I need help at the moment. It will be done this week, I promise, and then I’ll be back. I’ll never see Susie again, I promise.”

Mary’s face changed. The hand holding the suitcase was shaking.

“‘Susie’. How lovely. I hope you and that little slut will be very happy together. How could you, Rob? How could she? Does she know what she’s done?”

He moved toward her; she flinched and took a step back.

He was crying now. “Please don’t back away. I’m not going to hurt you. Don’t leave me. I love you, Mary.”

She opened the door. This time Rob held back.

“You know what hurts the most, Rob? That’s the first time you’ve told me you loved me in two months. Something happened to you when you joined this place. First you dumped Millie and now you’ve dumped me.”

“That’s not fair. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I don’t know anything, remember? Perhaps I should ask Susie what my husband’s thinking.”

Before he could respond, Mary disappeared into the night. He watched through the small window next to the front door as she walked to Laverstock’s car. She pushed her suitcase onto the back seat and climbed into the front passenger side and held her head in her hands.

As he pulled away, Laverstock glanced back towards him.

29

Tuesday 5th July

“You’re planning what?” Roger asked.

“It’s the best way,” said Susie. “He retraces Milford’s steps. There’s a limited number of places he could have got to from an aeroplane on the Tarmac at Abingdon.”

“This is irregular. You’re supposed to be keeping it low-key. You know they’re jumpy about this. I can’t see them going for it.”

“Well, your job is to persuade them, Roger. There’s something rotten here. Milford got the evidence before he was killed. We just need to identify who he was working with and the whole thing’s blown open.”

“Blowing the whole thing open is precisely what they’re trying to avoid, Susie.”

“Even if there’s corruption at the centre of a UK arms project?”

“Obviously not. If that’s the case, then bring it in, but you’ll need irrefutable, solid evidence. Nothing less will do.”

“We’ll get it, if we retrace Milford’s steps.”

She heard shuffling at the other end of the line and then a muffled conversation. Roger must have his hand over the phone.

Eventually he came back on. “I’ll ask. That’s the best I can do. But don’t expect them to say yes. When exactly are you planning this little jaunt?”

“Tomorrow, hopefully.”

“Bloody hell. You are a firecracker.”

TFU was the last place Rob wanted to be.

He pulled over while they searched his car. Guards shuffled around the Austin Healey.

Sleep had come to him eventually, in the early hours. But it was fitful and he ached with exhaustion.

“You can go, sir.”

He sat motionless in the driver’s seat, staring ahead.

“Sir!”

At TFU it was business as usual. Pilots and air crew hunched over charts and flight planning paperwork.

Men in orange vests and light blue coveralls heading out to shiny jets.

“Hey, Buddy. Wales OK?”

Red held a chart in front of him. He’d drawn a familiar line through the central valleys to Aberystwyth.

“Fine.” Rob turned away.

“Don’t be too enthusiastic,” Red called after him. “It might catch on.”

Like a robot, he pulled on his coveralls, dressed for the Vulcan and headed out.

He was co-pilot for the trip, which suited him.

At the aircraft, he waited for a member of the ground crew to open the hatch. While he did so, Rob walked around, pausing at the glass-covered laser mounted under the nose. He peered in at the swivel head, noticing for the first time an intricate series of small mirrors set inside the mechanism. A delicate system that decided their fate.

Arriving back at the hatch, he climbed in. Red strapped into the left hand seat, the mirrored visor on his USAF helmet and oxygen mask giving him the look of an illustration on the front cover of an Isaac Asimov novel.

He pulled the mask away to speak.

“All good?”

“Sorry?”

“The walkaround, Rob. All good?”

“Oh, yes.”

Red’s stare lingered. “You OK?”

Rob pulled on his straps. “Yes. Let’s get going.”

“OK, then.”

Rob busied himself with procedure: checklists, radio calls, liaison with Berringer in the rear bay.

Brunson got them airborne and put the Vulcan into a smooth ascending turn to the west.

By the time they’d let down over the borders, Rob had taken the controls, glad of the distraction.

As they handed the jet over to Guiding Light, he monitored the ground ahead, noting every approaching rise and fall of the green and brown landscape.

Ready to disengage.

If something went wrong now, even at the relative safety of one thousand feet, it would save a lot of trouble. With testimony