Part 28 (1/2)

I smiled at him, trying to put him at his ease. 'But if all you were doing was making fertiliser ... '

Ray became more animated. 'But we weren't. The project changed when the Martian arrived. Now we were growing some bacteriological weapon. A red gas.'

I stepped forwards again. 'This is the poison gas that the Martians used on Adisham - it's what kil ed the Doctor.'

The members of the audience that had known the Doctor s.h.i.+fted in their chairs, Lethbridge-Stewart included. I continued: 'Adisham was just a test. I think the gas is the weapon that the Martians will use to destroy humanity.'

Ray nodded. 'They were testing the gas on prisoners. They would turn up in Prison Service vans and be led into the - ' he broke off. 'This was happening in Berks.h.i.+re. It still is. They forced us to do it, at gunpoint. I - ' he was having difficulty speaking now. I put her arm over his shoulder.

'They were ga.s.sing prisoners?' Captain Ford asked quietly.

I nodded. 'Fifteen miles away from here, and then burying the bodies in ma.s.s graves. Ray managed to escape, he's been wandering the countryside ever since.'

'But how did the Martians manage to set all this up without anyone knowing?'

'The Home Office must have helped set it up,' Bambera said. 'They must co-operating with this. People knew.'

'And now we know,' I said quietly. 'So do we stay here and let it carry on?'

There was fire in Lethbridge-Stewart's eyes. 'No. We fight it,' he said. 'We fight it and we stop it. In twenty four hours, the last Martian will have left British soil.'

'How, exactly?' Bambera asked.

The Brigadier broke into a broad smile. 'I'm glad you asked me that question ... '

98.

Chapter Thirteen.

Earth Attacks!

Friday, May 16th 1997.

'What's the latest from Portsmouth, Simon?'

'Our boys have picked up about a hundred survivors, Prime Minister. There are some photos on your desk.'

Greyhaven found the pictures next to the proposed new designs for banknotes. He stared at pictures: piles of rubble where buildings once stood, s.h.i.+ps pitched over onto their sides, with great cracks and punctures in the metal. More victims to Xznaal's brutal efficiency. He'd never done it himself, but Greyhaven knew that some small children poured water over ant nests, to watch them suffer. The ants wouldn't be able to comprehend what was going on. Perhaps they had ant religion, with a complex set of beliefs regarding divine behaviour. Even if they found a way to communicate with their destroyer and asked him 'why?' they wouldn't get a proper answer. The best they could hope for would be 'why not?'

He hadn't been back to the Greyhaven Building overlooking the Thames since the night the Martian s.h.i.+p had arrived. The cleaner would have made the bed, and removed every single trace that Eve had ever been there, except perhaps for an empty jewellery box. Watching banks of red fog rage around Adisham, Greyhaven could have destroyed Xznaal then and there, but he decided to wait. The Martians still had their uses. Xznaal had told him that he would not be manufacturing any more of the Red Death - although Greyhaven suspected that the decision had more to do with the fact that the Martians couldn't predict or control the behaviour of the gas.

'Are there any of the leaders?'

Simon flipped through the report. 'None. We've found the bodies of a couple of Admirals and Generals, but no sign of the resistance command staff. They must have been in one of the other strongholds.'

'A package for you, Prime Minister,' a man announced. He had come into the room without knocking.

When the Prime Minister looked up, he saw why. It was Alexander Christian, clean-shaven in a neat blue suit, holding a smal parcel.

Simon lunged for him, and then fell back, unconscious, dragging a tea service onto the carpet with him. The sound of the crash brought a quick response, but the large man who came through the door was dealt with equally swiftly, slumping to the floor with a gruff groan.

Christian had kept the parcel in his right hand the whole time. Now he handed it over to the Prime Minister.

Greyhaven didn't even try to reach for the pistol or panic b.u.t.ton in his desk.

'Good morning, Lex. Is that an axe in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?'

'You deserve to die for what you did to my crew, and what you did to me.' Christian said curtly. 'I spent twenty years in a cell because you sold Britain out to the Martians. You're not the only one who's spent twenty years making plans.'

He pul ed out a handgun, held it up.

'Believe me, if I was going to kill you, you'd be dead by now. Open the envelope.'

Greyhaven tugged out the videotape that had been slotted snugly inside. There wasn't a label on it, or a note. It had come from Crawley, according to the postmark. The delivery address had been scrawled out, but it wouldn't take a forensics team long to uncover it.

'A picture speaks a thousand words, Prime Minister Prime Minister,' Christian said in a low voice.

Greyhaven moved over to the little television and VCR in the corner of the room. The television screen rippled with thick diagonal lines.

'The tape's blank,' he said. Then a thought occurred to him and he flicked a little switch on the back. It was a couple of seconds before the picture flashed up. When it did, it showed a flat expanse of concrete. The tape was an NTSC recording. He didn't look back over his shoulder.

Instead, Greyhaven concentrated on the tape, trying to work out what he was watching. There was a timecode along the bottom: 5/14/97 09.05. It had been taken the day before yesterday.

The picture was jerky, the cameraman was trying to move it around in a tight circle. He was probably undercover.

There wasn't a soundtrack. The Martian s.h.i.+p was drifting overhead, like a storm cloud. The cameraman kept it in shot for five or six seconds, then brought the camera around. Greyhaven could see now that the s.h.i.+p was floating over a runway. He glanced down at the envelope again. If it was sent from Crawley, it seemed logical that this was Gatwick Airport. But Gatwick had been closed since the Martians arrived. Al the airliners had been transferred over to Heathrow to help with the repatriation of the tourists.

The picture jerked again, and there was a disorientating zoom to a row of blue Transit vans parked by a hangar building. There were policemen there, opening up the back of the vans. It was blurred, a little too far for the camera to pick out many details.

The cameraman must have realised. The picture flickered, and now the timecode read 9.12. He had moved to within a hundred yards or so. There were about a hundred men lined up, all in blue and grey overalls. There must have been two dozen policeman watching over them, all of whom carried pistols or rifles.

There was another zoom. The front of one of the Transit vans now filled the screen. The white lettering was very clear: HM PRISON SERVICE. The first two letters had actually been sc.r.a.ped away, but their outlines were stil visible.

The picture now panned back up to the underside of the Martian craft, and it took a moment for the cameraman to adjust the focus. A hatch was retracting at the front of the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p. As the red light began creeping out from the 99 opening, Greyhaven could make out a dark shape the size of a large house. The shape detached itself, and began drifting downwards. It was boomerang-shaped, and built from glistening dark green metal. It was a shuttlecraft of some kind, and only took ten or fifteen seconds before it had descended the short distance to the runway. The picture panned down with it.

The policemen were ushering their prisoners forwards towards the shuttlecraft.

The picture dissolved into static. Greyhaven tried fast-forwarding the tape, to see if there were any more clips. The rest of the tape was blank.

Greyhaven's face was ashen. 'What are they doing with those prisoners?'

Alexander Christian watched him carefully. 'You don't know, do you?'

'No.'