Part 14 (1/2)

Works in the reptile house. He got me the job. I'd like you to meet him.

'What about girlfriends?' asked Ace, fis.h.i.+ng.

He shrugged again and blushed.

They'd strolled across Regent's Park in the dark and into the zoo. His room was amazing a stone bunker underneath the primate house, simply furnished with a single mattress, a rug and a lamp, a trunk in the corner and a picture of a silver Porsche on the wall. Apart from that the room was bare. The window was set high, a dark slit against the ceiling.

Jimmy had been a perfect gentleman that night. He'd kissed her hand and gone to sleep on the rug, insisting that she take the mattress.

When, briefly, she awoke around dawn he was next to her fully clothed curled up and fast asleep. The smells and sounds of the wakening zoo wafted in on the suns.h.i.+ne, and Ace drifted back to sleep and dreamed of riding bareback through the Serengeti with Jimmy.

She'd woken later to find a pot of coffee and a note - he'd got the afternoon off. She wandered about the zoo all morning in a sort of daze, hoping for glimpses of Jimmy. The morning was bright and wonderful, and unbearably long.

75.The Doctor's cell was not uncomfortable it had hitherto been a bedroom but he couldn't relax with the two guards stationed in there with him. There were another two outside the door, and one on the balcony outside the window. They obviously considered him important.

He'd had one visitor an American major called Bill Collins who'd asked if he had everything he needed.

'Not really, you've locked me up,' the Doctor replied. 'And your General Crawhammer is planning to have me dissected.'

Major Collins had looked uneasy.

'Why isn't there a British officer in charge?'

'We run the show now,' he had replied. 'Are you a Soviet augment?'

'I don't even know what a Soviet augment is,' the Doctor had replied. But I can only surmise... you're meddling in something very dangerous. Not that that's anything new, of course...'

The major had gone, a.s.suring the Doctor that Crawhammer wouldn't actually wield the knife. An hour later the guards received an order and escorted him downstairs, to the cellar.

There a team of men in white gowns and surgical masks had taken over, while the guards stood behind them with their guns aimed at him.

In silence, and ignoring his howls of protest, they had weighed him, taken his pulse, temperature and blood pressure, taken a blood sample, X-rayed him thoroughly and listened incessantly to the beating of his two hearts.

Now he lay strapped to an operating table, wearing a hospital gown and feeling woozy from a needle someone had stuck in him. The room was empty.

The doors swung. Major Collins.

'I never thought he'd do it.'

'You must stop him! This isn't just about me! We're all in terrible danger!'

'The general's got clearance from the top and your government's not complaining. They're on a war footing no one gives a d.a.m.n about the little stuff now.'

'I do,' said the Doctor. 'Particularly when I'm the little stuff in question. I'm not a Soviet spy, you know.'

Collins looked uncomfortable.

'You're an unauthorised presence in a top security military base on the brink of a war.'

'All right,' said the Doctor. 'If you can't do anything else, at least get a message to a man in London for me. His name is Cody McBride.

Tell him I failed, and tell him to take refuge with Ace in the TARDIS.

76.Will you remember this? And also, if you will, tell Miss Rita Hawks.

She's a journalist. An American.'

'You know Rita? I know Rita.'

The doors swung again and Crawhammer entered.

'Major Collins, ain't you got anywhere to be?'

'Yes, sir!' Collins shouted in instant response.

'Then be there.'

'Yes, sir!'

And he marched from the room.

Crawhammer rubbed his hands together. Behind him the brotherhood of the white masks was filing silently back in.

'So, Mr Augment...'

'You can't do this...' the Doctor hissed. 'It's against every international law and protocol.

'So sue me. Mr Augmentski, we're gonna find out exactly what they done to you. We already know they changed your blood... But you know what puzzles us... No artificial components. We knew you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds had an augmentation programme going, but this... whew!'

'You're insane...'

'War's a whole nest o' hornets, boy.'

'We're not at war yet.'

'Oh, we will be. You Reds screwed with us once too often. When you downed that s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p you screwed with me! You know, back home where I come from we lynch Commies... But hey, that's Alabama fer ya. Yup, I'm a G.o.d-fearin' son o' the South, and we don't take no bullsheeet from no one.'

'If you really fear G.o.d, ask yourself why you're condemning His creation to nuclear Armageddon.'

'Why, 'cos I know G.o.d's on our side,' Crawhammer beamed.

Rita had searched the house from top to bottom. She hadn't found much. A packet of 'self-seal envelopes' that she'd practically taken her tongue off experimenting with, strangely shaped electric sockets in the walls...

She hadn't found a way out. None of the windows were going to break.

Eventually she'd gone to the refrigerator and made herself a beef sandwich, then another. She was still hungry.

Then Emily returned, as she had presumably departed, through the kitchen door, slipping the key into her cardigan pocket.