1. Just One Damned Thing After Another (27 page)

Izzie Barclay.

I didn’t waste time thinking about how she got there. The main issue seemed to be what she was going to do now she was here. As if she read my mind, she scrabbled one handed and came up with a rock.

She looked bad. Her nose was a funny shape and she bled from deep gashes on her head and arms. Blood ran into her eyes and every now and then, she shook her head to clear them. Despite this she never took her eyes off me and her intentions were very, very clear. I’d never seen such blind, vicious hatred. I wasn’t going to get out of this.

She said something. I saw her lips move.

I said, ‘I can’t hear you,’ and watched her look puzzled. She was deaf too.

She raised her arm and brought the rock down. At the last moment I turned my head and she missed. It wasn’t a powerful blow – she was all over the place, but sooner or later, she wouldn’t miss and she would beat my face to a pulp. Her lips were moving continually. I guessed she was telling me how much she’d always hated me. She pulled herself up until she sat astride my chest and held her rock with both hands above her head. This really wasn’t the way I wanted to die.

And, as it turned out, it wasn’t.

I became aware of a cooling breeze drying the sweat on my face. I sighed in relief. I was dead.

Mrs Partridge sat on a rock and regarded me impassively. Her dark hair was bound up in loose ringlets secured by a silver clasp. She wore an exquisitely draped robe. Her feet were bare. She held a scroll.

I said, ‘I’m dead, aren’t I?’ Which is not a phrase you get to use that often.

She shook her head.

All right, maybe hallucinating, then.

I tried to lift my head, but nothing was moving. Everything had stopped. I felt no pain. The ringing in my ears translated into a small musical noise, as if someone was running a finger around a wine glass.

Suddenly, I knew. It was all there. I knew exactly who Mrs Partridge was. I couldn’t believe it had taken me this long. The blow to my head must have shaken things into place. Not Cleo – Kleio! She was Kleio. Kleio, the Muse of History. Who was always around at vital moments? Who prevented me asking Barclay to join us at Rushford? Leon Farrell would certainly not have come to my room if she had been there. Who advised a change of scenery? Who kept telling me to do my laundry so I could discover the fir cone? Who guarded my Horse and kept it safe until exactly the right moment? Who tried to keep the Boss out of harm’s way? And now I had an idea who Sibyl De Winter was as well. No wonder she had laughed at King Dave Superbus. I was lucky she hadn’t boxed my ears.

‘
You
told me to wait. It was you.’

She nodded.

‘You saved my life.’

She nodded again.

‘Why?’ She hadn’t saved Jamie, or Markham, or Murdoch. Why me?

She didn’t answer me.

‘Why are you at St Mary’s?’

A faint voice whispered down the centuries.

‘History is important. Far more important than most people believe. And it is under attack. Something is happening.’

Well, I knew that. It was happening now. Most of St Mary’s finest were either shot or buried under a mountain of burning manure.

The familiar expression of exasperation crossed her face. She was referring to something else.

‘What is happening?’

‘It is under the fourth step.’

‘What is?’

‘The anomaly.’

‘What anomaly?’

But she was gone and I was back.

The sun came up over the mountains, bright and eager. A brilliant shaft of light caught Barclay squarely in the face, causing her to screw up her eyes.

I made a huge effort to dislodge her, but to no avail. I really couldn’t move at all. And then, out of my view, something went ‘thunk’. Her eyes slid upwards and she fell forwards across my face. I fought to breathe.

I thought I heard Mrs Partridge say, ‘I never liked you, Isabella.’

She’d never liked me either, and now it seemed she’d killed two birds with one stone. Literally.

I twisted my head to try to get free. I could hear Helen’s report now. Despite extensive burns, blast damage, crush injuries, head trauma, shock and loss of limb(s), Miss Maxwell managed to die of suffocation.

Someone heaved Barclay away. I sucked in a huge breath and squinted up at Ronan. One side of his face was burned and so was his hair. He should have kept his helmet on. And still the frightening lack of expression, even though he must have been in agony.

He said simply, ‘You,’ and levelled his blaster at me. I was staring at the afterlife again.

Another rattle of gunfire and I heard someone call his name. His blaster was still whining; not charged up yet. I heard another shout. More urgent this time. He looked over his shoulder and then back at me. People were staggering to their feet. Shouts rang out. He could wait those extra seconds for the charge to build and risk capture or he could do the sensible thing. He did the sensible thing. He turned and ran. I said faintly, ‘No,’ and tried to roll over and grab his ankle. I missed.

Our camp was a ruin. The pods were intact, but burning debris and people lay everywhere. All the awnings were down, shredded, and burned.

Thus it was that for the first time, I saw TB2 without its canvas coverings. Some joker had stencilled ‘THUNDERBIRD TWO’ across the side, in yellow paint. I stared at it, feeling my blood congeal. Suddenly, I was back in the Cretaceous, running for my life and seeing a twisted sheet of metal with the letters RD T written across it.

And then I knew what Chief Farrell and Dieter had been doing in Hawking for three days. I knew why they wouldn’t – couldn’t – let anyone in and I knew that scene between Farrell and the Boss had all been a put-up job. But what a risk. What a huge, crazy, unbelievable risk. When I thought about what could have gone wrong …

I opened my mouth, but someone clamped a hot, rough hand across it and said, ‘Quiet.’

I struggled as much as I could, which was not very much at all and Farrell said again, ‘Shut up. Don’t say a word. Keep still.’

I watched Ronan take three men into TB2. The rest had dispersed back to their own pods. The ramp went up. For long seconds nothing happened. I felt the familiar hot air rush and TB2 disappeared. They’d got away.

Slowly, he let me go and helped me to my feet. I took a deep breath and prepared to murder him on the spot.

He said to me, ‘Are you hurt, Max?’

I said, tightly, ‘You bastard.’ And then all the mountains blurred and I fell forwards into darkness.

Chapter Eighteen

Twenty-four hours later, I lay in the blessed cool of Number Six, along with all the other walking wounded. They’d found my arm. It was between my shoulder and my wrist, exactly where it should have been. I’d been lying on it. I felt a bit silly.

Jamie, Murdoch, and Markham had made their final journey back to St Mary’s. The Boss accompanied them. The rest of us were having our bits and pieces patched up and being re-hydrated. I leaned my head back against the wall and tried to make sense of it all.

They’d gone off with TB2. Eventually, they’d take it to the Cretaceous period. We’d turn up, fire the EMP, thereby initiating a countdown to the explosion that would destroy TB2 and take a large number of Ronan’s people with it. Maybe even Ronan himself. We knew we’d be all right, because it had already happened to us. Our past. Their future.

And Barclay. Was she dead? She’d been slugged by a vengeful goddess, but with my luck …

And bloody Leon Farrell. Who’d built a bomb and not told me. And I was speaking as his mission controller now. He would have allowed us to live and work in a bloody great bomb. It’s all very well to say it was harmless until triggered, but anything could happen to disrupt the power then the whole bloody lot would have gone up.

No, it wouldn’t. We already knew – it exploded back in the Cretaceous. We’d been perfectly safe. And he’d done his best to prevent Ronan slaughtering the unit wholesale, without completely giving the game away. He must have been beside himself expecting me to do something stupid. Which I nearly had. And whose fault was that? I was back to being pissed because he hadn’t told me.

And what about Mrs Partridge who had stopped me from doing that stupid something? Was she indeed the Muse of History? The daughter of Zeus who sat quietly at St Mary’s, manipulating people and events? Did she work for St Mary’s? Or did St Mary’s work for her?

I opened my eyes to see someone put a chair for the Boss. He was back. Although he still looked desperately tired, he looked a million times better than the last time I’d seen him.

‘Miss Maxwell, how are you?’

‘I’m fine, sir. Another hour and another bottle of glucose drink and I’ll be back out there. Doctor Dowson tells me they’d already unloaded the pots and the Professor says he can still make pitch, although apparently, we all now have to make – personal contributions.’

He seemed amused by that. ‘I have some good news for you. When I last saw Mr Markham, he was attempting, somewhat groggily, to persuade Nurse Hunter to engage in a game of cards, the purpose of which, I understand, is to cause the loser to divest herself, or himself, of course, of various articles of clothing. He seemed very determined. I should not be at all surprised if he is successful in his endeavours.’

That news did me far more good than anything the medical team was doling out.

‘He’s alive?’

‘Very much so. His reputation for indestructibility is untarnished.’

I leaned back and closed my eyes, feeling the treacherous prick of tears.

He smiled. ‘You’re about to have another visitor. Be gentle with him.’

And he left.

‘Don’t you come near me you devious, double-dealing, underhand, rat-bastard. I’m going to gut you with a rusty breadknife and then stake your honey-covered arse over an anthill in the noonday sun.’

‘You’re very grumpy today. And after I picked you up out of the sand and brought you into this nice cool pod. How ungrateful are you?’

‘I’ve been shot at, blown up, covered in shit, brained with a rock, and lied to. You’re lucky I’m only grumpy.’

‘I haven’t lied to you. Did you ever say to me, “Have you rigged TB2 to explode?” No, you did not. And as for the rest, you’re bullet-free and everyone was blown up, not just you, so stop making such a fuss. And I don’t know what you did to Izzie Barclay but she was in a much worse condition than you when she left, so why are you complaining?’

He was calm and soothing and had a reasonable explanation for everything. No woman should have to put up with that.

‘Well, answer me this. How did she get free in the first place?’

‘I let her go.’

I took a deep breath.

He took a step backwards.

People were edging out of the pod.

‘Hold on. Before you go up like the Professor’s manure heap, I had to let her go.’

I would have raised an incredulous eyebrow, but my face hurt too much. I had to content myself with sipping my drink in a disbelieving manner.

‘There’s someone else out there. Someone recruited Sussman and put that money in his account. Someone got Barclay into St Mary’s. Someone’s providing a safe haven for Ronan to operate from. We – I – thought that if I let Barclay go then she might lead us to him. Or her. Or them.’

‘Really,’ I said with awful sarcasm, because I’d come to exactly the same conclusion and without unleashing Barclay upon the world. ‘And how did that work out for you?’

‘Well, obviously it could have gone better. We didn’t quite get the information we needed.’

‘You mean she gave you the slip, somehow managed to meet up with Ronan and this mysterious X and you still don’t know who or how. And now they’ve escaped with TB2. And a good part of our equipment. And the pods they came in on. In fact, this could be a new St Mary’s definition of the words “total fuck-up”. And don’t tell me that he’s probably plastered all over the Cretaceous by now because I don’t want to bloody hear it.’

‘You’re feeling a bit under the weather,’ he said soothingly. ‘I know it’s natural for historians, but try not to dwell so much on the past. This operation’s going to be a huge success. We’ll be heroes when we get back and Edward’s already scheduling new assignments, so really, you’ve got a lot to be positive about.’

I remained unimpressed.

‘I’ll admit to a nasty moment when our two lovable scamps and their home-made flamethrower nearly saved the day, though. Who ever thought we’d live to be grateful for methane?’

The pod was empty by now. An amazing number of sick people had picked up their beds and walked. People obviously preferred the blazing sunshine to the blazing row I was trying to have – and failing.

He moved in for the kill. ‘You know I love you, don’t you?’

‘I know nothing of the sort. You just hurled me across the car and went at it like a crack-crazed rhino.’

He smirked. ‘I did, didn’t I?’

I sighed in frustration.

He took my battered hand and kissed it. ‘I have to go. When this is done – when we’re all finished here, I’d like to take you away for a few days. What do you think?’

‘Not more camping?’

‘Well, this time I was thinking there would be soft beds – big, soft beds and good food and plenty of alcohol. And decent plumbing, of course. Will you come?’

Many, many times, was probably the correct answer to that, but I pretended to consider.

‘Somewhere cool.’

‘Well, you won’t be getting out of bed, far less going outside, so it’s not really that important, but yes, somewhere cool if that’s what you’d like. Now, are you going to lie there all day?’

After all that, packing the scrolls into pots was comparatively easy. Just hard, hot, back-breaking toil.

We worked inside as much as we could, sorting the scrolls under Dr Dowson’s guidance. It was a slow business, mainly because Peterson and I kept unrolling them to look at the contents. I found some kind of a bestiary with some pretty good drawings of lions and crocodiles and a beautifully rendered drawing of some technical device which meant nothing to me but Professor Rapson nearly swooned over, prophesying a world-wide sensation when that was discovered.

We laboured over the hot pitch in the hot sun, but the worst bit came when we lugged the pots up into the rocks and then carefully lowered them down into the cave. We broke a few in the process, but nothing serious. We were in no rush and there was no point in everyone dropping from heat exhaustion. This had to be done exactly right. People had given their lives for this. Imagine if Thirsk and Egyptian archaeologists broke through and only found a load of dust and shattered pottery simply because we’d cut corners.

They lowered the last pot down to me. I stacked it with care, making sure it lay wedged safely amongst the others, straightened up slowly, and thought about the price we had paid for this. Was it worth it? I had been prepared to sacrifice myself to save the pods. Dave Murdoch and Jamie Cameron had actually made that sacrifice. I gave the pots a small nod of acknowledgement and thanks.

And then it was done.

All we could do now was keep our fingers crossed that no one stumbled across them in the meantime. Or the cave didn’t collapse. Or flood. Or that the scrolls themselves would stand the test of time …

It took a week to do the FOD plod. We did it once and then I made them do it again. We had to use metal detectors. I got quite paranoid about shell casings, shrapnel – everything. Archaeologists would be all over this site like a rash. The last thing they needed to find was two-thousand-year-old bullets.

All that remained now was for the cache to be discovered. Safe and intact.

The Chief laid in our final co-ordinates. We were returning to St Mary’s some six months after we left and nearly three months after Thirsk’s expedition set out.

We all went back together. It had been a team effort. We went back as a team. I paused in the doorway to Number One and looked around one last time. We were probably the most exciting thing that had ever happened here. Well, give it a couple of thousand years … I stepped back into the pod, Peterson closed the door and the world went white.

It was announced on the day we returned. The Boss had promised us a surprise when we got back and he delivered big time. He had the big screen on in the Hall. Thirsk had done us proud. World-wide headlines announced their breakthrough into the cave and the discovery of the treasures we had so carefully buried there nearly two thousand years ago. Or last week, depending how you looked at it.

We filed out of the pods; burned, baked, barbed-wire hair and with sand in all our nooks and crannies. The whole building was decked out with medieval banners, strobing lights, flags of all nations, tinsel, paper chains, Chinese lanterns, reindeer with flashing noses, glitter balls, bunting, and very loud music. It was just like us – noisy and gloriously tasteless.

We watched TV all day as the news reverberated around the world. No one was quite sure what they’d found yet, but everyone knew it was going to be big. Just for once, we knocked the Space Programme off the top news spot.

The Chancellor had rung the Boss personally with news of the discovery.

‘What did she say?’ I asked him.

‘No idea,’ he said, sipping his champagne. ‘She was incoherent. For all I know she was reading me her shopping list.’

We drank. We ate. We drank some more. We sang. We danced. We did The Time Warp – many times. We may have drunk a little more.

Leon and I moved carefully away from the buffet with an armful of good things to eat and searched for a quiet spot in which to eat them and talk. What we did find were Markham and Hunter apparently playing cards in one of the old lecture rooms off the Hall.

She was more than fully clothed. Apart from a large wound dressing, he appeared to be stark naked.

Leon stepped back. ‘I’ll never eat another chipolata again.’

He greeted us with his usual sunny smile. I kept my eyes firmly on his face.

Hunter grinned. ‘He wanted to play cards. We’re playing cards.’

Leon put down his plate and picked up the deck. ‘These cards are marked.’

‘Of course they are,’ said Hunter. ‘I marked them myself.’

Markham smirked.

‘Go away,’ said Hunter. So we did.

We sat in the Hall and watched the security and technical sections challenge each other to the traditional tray race down the stairs. As usual, both teams came to grief halfway down, tumbling gracelessly to land in the Hall with a huge crash which made the building tremble. We were lucky nothing was dislodged. Not like the time … not like the time …

I looked up to see Mrs Partridge looking at me from across the room with her ‘
Finally!
’ expression. At her side, Mrs De Winter smiled slightly. I thought I heard a small musical noise, which, given the racket around me was just impossible.

… Not like the time Dieter and I had bounced Number Eight and we’d dislodged one of those decorative pineapple things from above the front door and it had cracked … it had cracked one of the steps outside.

Exactly which step outside?

I stepped over groaning bodies. They’d be OK. The internal application of even more alcohol would soon have them back on their feet again – albeit very briefly.

I weaved my very unsteady way around similarly unsteady groups of people; past Doctor Dowson and the Professor who were amiably discussing whether it was actually possible to die of a surfeit of lampreys and how to set about it, slipped through the front doors and stood for a moment, enjoying the cool evening air. This last assignment had certainly taught me the value of cool. I would never again moan about being cold.

The fourth step was cracked. Web-like fractures radiated outwards from the small, round impact crater at the centre. The Boss had followed me out.

‘Ah,’ he said, looking down at the damage. ‘Yet another result of your unscheduled visit to the Cretaceous.’

I waited to hear how much would be docked from my pay but he seemed in a fairly amiable mood.

I prodded with my foot and a bit of stone came away. I stared hard at it. He watched me in some amusement.

‘We should get this fixed,’ I said, eventually. ‘Hazardous work environment.’

There was a loud bang from inside the building, the sound of breaking crockery and some ironic cheers.

‘Yes, indeed,’ he said. ‘We wouldn’t want that, would we? However, you’re right; it should be fixed. Now we have a moment to draw breath, I’ll inform SPOHB.’

The Society for the Protection of Historical Buildings was the official body whose task it was to oversee repairs and maintenance to our beloved but battered listed building. We had them on speed-dial. They had us on their black list.