28th March
Joan Stanford topped up the coffee cups of those of us sitting around the large wooden table in Duck’s kitchen.
As she was doing so, Helen walked into the room.
‘Good morning, Helen. How are you?’ Joan Stanford enquired.
‘Strangely, Joan, I feel fine and quite normal,’ Helen replied, sitting down next to me and reaching for some breakfast cereal. ‘I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel after what happened five days ago, but I expected more of a reaction in some way or other.’
‘There may not be one.’ Etienne de Bethune contributed his professional opinion.
Joan Stanford had arrived at the farm a few hours after Helen had returned. She had flown herself by helicopter and had brought Etienne with her. He was the psychologist assigned to this case by MI5, and his current role was to assist Joan with Helen’s debriefing and advise on any psychological support that Helen might need.
‘The really damaging thing in kidnap situations,’ Etienne continued, ‘is the loss of self-determination and personal control. That never happened to you after you arrived in the crypt. You were in control from the moment you took your hood off. You controlled that conversation with Harris, and you were certainly taking the lead after that.’
Joan smiled. ‘You were indeed,’ she added. ‘Let that be a warning to any crazy religious group that’s thinking of kidnapping a defenceless, middle-aged woman. I’m glad you’re on our side,’ she concluded with a smile in which I detected both warmth towards Helen and admiration.
‘You may joke, Joan, but I still killed two men.’
‘You didn’t though,’ interrupted Etienne. ‘You had no intention of killing anyone. Those deaths were accidents. You know, deep down, that you don’t have any guilt to deal with. That’s another reason why it all feels so normal.’
‘But I can’t believe there are no official consequences,’ said Helen. ‘OK, I accept that no court would convict me, but there’s not even going to be a police investigation.’
‘No crime has been reported,’ Joan confirmed. ‘The group to which Harris and the others belonged wouldn’t want to risk any police involvement, and we’ve dealt with the bodies as we would for our own agents. Someone may report them as missing persons, but it’s as if they never existed.’
‘The final thing that leads to your state of mind,’ concluded Etienne, ‘is that these were not innocent people. We know now, for certain, that they had killed others before – bodies have now been found – and we don’t want to think about what they might have done to you.’
I reached for Helen’s hand and held it tightly as we all sat in silence for a few moments.
‘What’s happened to the one that was still alive?’ Helen asked Joan, breaking the silence.
‘We’ve passed him to our colleagues in the CIA for interrogation,’ said Joan.
‘The CIA,’ I repeated in surprise.
‘Yes, Swan,’ Joan replied. ‘That’s to do with the laptop you recovered. An email received by Sam, in the small hours of the morning on the day of the meteorite, contained letters and numbers that represented a PAL, or Permissive Action Link code – that’s what the Americans call their nuclear missile launch codes. Those letters and numbers also included the presidential password for launching missiles on the sixteenth of January.’
‘Why would Sam have that information?’ I asked.
‘We don’t know yet,’ Joan admitted. ‘We know that the data in that message could have launched a dozen US missiles on that day. There was also something else encrypted in that message. It said: “Betelgeuse – sixteenth of January or …”’
‘Or thirteenth of September,’ I interrupted on a hunch.
Joan stared at me. ‘Would you like to explain how you know that?’ she said.
‘In Sam’s book of predictions, the thirteenth of September was the only date that was in the future,’ I clarified.
‘What was predicted?’ asked Joan.
‘On the day before he died, Sam said something enigmatic about a significant event happening fairly soon in the constellation of Orion,’ I answered. ‘The date in his predictions book was associated with just one word, Betelgeuse – which is the red giant in the constellation of Orion.’
Everyone was silent.
Sam had data that could have launched US nuclear warheads, I thought to myself. It was a remarkable coincidence that he was killed by a meteorite on the very day to which that data applied.
‘Has the last kidnapper said anything?’ asked Helen.
‘Nothing about the nuclear stuff, but he has admitted to being part of ARK,’ Joan replied. ‘He says that the secrecy within ARK meant that he had only met the two men that died in the crypt, together with David Butler and Bishop Horatio Rycroft. He says that the bishop was the link between their group and the senior figures in ARK. He also says that he doesn’t know the identity of Arkangel.’
‘Do you think he’s telling the truth?’ I asked.
‘It’s very early days in this sort of interrogation,’ Etienne commented. ‘It would be normal for a suspect to provide information that we already know, and some other things of little consequence, in the hope that it would be accepted as all there was to tell. The Americans have a lot of experience in finding out if there is more.’
‘What about the place I was taken to?’ asked Helen.
‘You mean Meadowcote Estate in Dorset,’ said Robert.
Robert had returned to Duck’s farm late on the previous evening, having spent three days as part of the MI5 team investigating and securing the church site on the Meadowcote Estate.
‘We’ve done extensive forensic tests, cleaned the place up after Helen’s activities and secured the church and crypts,’ Robert continued. ‘The reference to Fortescue that Helen overheard referred to a seventeenth century grave in the church – the grave of Captain Augustus Fortescue. We removed the slab and found the bodies of six people. Three were individuals who we suspected had been abducted by Harris and his team. We haven’t been able to identify the other three so far.
‘Tests in the torture chamber seem to indicate that they died there under rather unpleasant circumstances.’
Everyone sat in silence once more for many seconds.
‘There was that big house that was up on the hill,’ noted Helen, finally. ‘Who lives there?’
‘It’s the home of the fifth Earl of Meadowcote,’ Robert replied.
Joan poured herself another cup of coffee. ‘That’s particularly interesting,’ she said. ‘Tom Meadowcote, the current Earl, was one of our best cryptographers at GCHQ – a brilliant mathematician. We thought he was on a par with Alan Turing.’
‘You said was,’ I questioned. ‘What happened to him?’
‘We don’t know,’ explained Joan. ‘He vanished about two years ago. We don’t think he was kidnapped though because he left a letter for his solicitors giving instruction for Meadowcote Hall to be mothballed and for the estate grounds to be maintained. That implied that he had planned his own disappearance.’
‘So, what happens now?’ asked Helen.
‘I think you and Swan should move to a safe location. I can fly you to one of our bases this morning. I think Swan may also be able to help with some interviews.’
‘In what way?’ I asked.
‘Those associated with ARK have got it into their heads that you have supernatural powers from possession of Sam’s secret texts,’ Etienne explained. ‘We may be able to make use of those beliefs in any interrogation process.’
‘There may also be more interest in the farm.’ Joan continued to explain her plan: ‘So I’d like Jenny to stay here with Duck, just in case.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Duck. ‘She’s been so helpful with the sheep. It’s going to be really useful having her here during the rest of lambing.’
Jenny turned to me. ‘Do you mind if I carry on doing some work on Sam’s books and papers?’ she asked. ‘There are a few interesting things about those documents that I’d like to follow-up.’
‘That’s fine,’ I agreed.
‘Do you think there’s anything in those documents that relates to this investigation,’ Joan asked Jenny.
‘Maybe,’ Jenny replied. ‘I’m not sure yet. I’d like to look into it all further before I talk about it.’
‘Where will we be going?’ I said to Joan, looking out of the kitchen window towards the meadow in which her Bell 206 helicopter stood.
‘Bovington Camp in Dorset,’ she replied. ‘It’s like a small town, so you’ll find all the amenities there. MI5 also detain suspects at Bovington for interview, so it’s a good base for this operation. It’s about one hundred miles from here,’ she added. ‘If you, Helen and Etienne pack after breakfast, we’ll be there by late morning.’