Part 24 (1/2)

'I a.s.sume you're the woman who I talked to yesterday?'

Anji nodded. 'Sorry about this '

He was shaking his head. 'Wouldn't have missed this for the world.' He leant in a little closer. Anji could barely hear the next thing he said, so there was no chance Baskerville could.

'You're with the Doctor, right?'

She nodded. 'You know him?'

'I knew him, yeah. More than twenty years ago. He must be getting on a bit now?'

Anji smiled. 'He doesn't act his age.'

'Did he see his daughter again, do you know?'

Anji blinked. 'He's never mentioned a daughter.'

'I bet he never mentioned hijacking the s.p.a.ce shuttle, either?'

Anji laughed. 'He's mentioned it once or twice. I think he's proud of that.' She paused. 'You'd think he'd be proud of his daughter, too.'

'He is, miss, don't worry about that.'

The helicopter was coming in to land by a small hangar, covered in logos and signs in Russian. Or Cyrillic script, at any rate.

Baskerville had radioed ahead. There were three men on the tarmac, with a large medical*style gurney. Anji got down from the helicopter, and the three of them set to work covering the alien in a tarpaulin and lifting it out.

Baskerville and Dee ushered Cosgrove, Mather and Anji herself towards the hangar. The main doors were inching open.

'Where are we going?' the President asked.

'Somewhere we won't be disturbed,' Baskerville said. He was carrying the silver case containing the coffee machine. Dee had a bag that looked like it had that laptop of hers in it.

'Baskerville, I'm the President of the United States, you can't just '

'Mr President, if all goes to plan, then by this evening you'll be the President of Time. It's worth the risk.'

Cosgrove watched the exchange, looking amused. 'Don't worry, Felix, I've told you: I'll look after you.'

Anji looked ahead. The hangar doors were open enough to see inside now.

A black Concorde sat there, a set of steps set up alongside it.

'What the h.e.l.l?' Cosgrove asked.

'Isn't she a beauty?' Baskerville said.

'I flew on Concorde plenty of times, but '

'But you thought the last one went out of service when BA went bust? Well, it did. But I bought one, and made certain modifications.'

Cosgrove watched him carefully. 'How long is it since you arrived from the future?'

'My time machine landed several years ago. Making money is not that difficult with the knowledge and science of the future at your disposal.'

Anji couldn't help but admire Baskerville's ability as a liar. Or his taste in aircraft. She'd never ridden on Concorde before. She'd seen it sitting on the runway at Heathrow a couple of times. The matt*black colour scheme he'd picked made it look even more like some designer item like the Porsches and hi*fis Anji had grown up wanting in the eighties.

They headed up, inside the plane.

It wasn't the tallest building in the world any more.

If you cast your net a little wider, it was practically a stump the Lunar Tower, built in lower gravity, was four times taller. But the tourists still flocked to the CN tower.

The Doctor and Malady joined them. It was as good a place as any to start searching Toronto for a nuclear bomb.

The CN Tower might have been designed as aversion therapy for those suffering from vertigo. You got to the lookout level via gla.s.s*sided elevators... and the floor of the observation deck was also made of gla.s.s.

Malady didn't have a hint of vertigo. She'd climbed mountains, abseiled, flown in hang*gliders. But the gla.s.s floor was enough to make anyone a bit nervous.

Except the Doctor, who apparently hadn't noticed the floor was transparent. They'd gone outside on to the observation gallery.

'Ah... Toronto in the summer,' the Doctor sighed.

It was a beautiful city. From up here it looked like a giant Lego set. They were looking out over the new lakeside development. The lake itself was dark, flat.

'Where would you hide the atom bomb?' the Doctor asked.

'It's a civil nuclear device,' Malady explained. 'A clean nuke.'

The Doctor snorted.

'Relatively clean,' Malady conceded. 'Safer than traffic fumes or industrial waste.'

The Doctor was shaking his head, clearly not impressed by that line of logic. 'So... what are they used for?'

'Well, their use is still relatively rare. Big engineering projects, mainly. If there's a mountain in the way of a new road, that sort of thing.'

The Doctor looked around.

'No mountains,' he noted quietly. 'Perhaps they've all been levelled. Haven't the CIA told the Canadian authorities about the Prophecy?'

'They have, and they've had a security clampdown and run a whole set of safety checks on the device, to make sure it's functioning normally.'

'But they won't tell us where it is.'

'Nope. Because there's a security clampdown, they aren't telling anyone.'