No one no window cleaner, no visitor, no one gets within fifty yards of the building without security clearance. The whole place is fully modified for at-risk personnel one-way windows, departure from an underground car park, the police a couple of minutes away in Lucan Place .
'He'll be checking the place out,' said Alex.
'Probably even as we speak.'
'I know,' said Dawn.
'And that's why we're checking out anyone who goes near it and pulling in anyone who can't be personally vouched for by a resident or security staff member. Believe me, the job is being done and done properly.'
'Does she live alone?'
'Drop it, Alex, please,' Dawn said sharply.
'Our job now is to find the wasp's nest the place he always returns to and kill him there.'
He nodded.
'OK. Just wanted to..
'I know. Let's go back in.'
For a couple of minutes Dawn's fingers raced over one of the keyboards on Angela Fenwick's desk and the large flat-screen display on the wall opposite them flickered into life.
First, an enlarged area of Ordnance Survey map came up, with the village of Hurley, Staffordshire at its centre.
'No National Park or particular tourist area nearby,' said Dawn.
'There's Blithfield Reservoir, but I don't think Meehan Senior would have driven a caravan halfway across the country to see that. Otherwise, the area on the screen is at the central point of a square formed by Stoke, Derby, Wolverhampton and Telford.
Not high on the list of tourist must-sees, I'd say.' She struck the keyboard and two small areas of red appeared on the screen. Vis-~-vis suitably sized MOD properties in the area, we've got an RAF storage facility here near Yoxall and an old TA depot outside Colton but neither of them is less than a couple of miles from the River Blithe.' She looked up at Alex.
'I'm assuming that the conclusion we're drawing is that he is staying beside the river and using it for drinking water, rather than gathering water from the river and drinking it somewhere else.'
Alex nodded.
'He's probably got some sort of filtration system, but obviously nothing too sophisticated. Could well be using standard issue Puritabs. In the UK you tend to allow for water-borne bacteria and pesticides but not for heavy-duty chemical toxins like these PCEs or whatever they're called. And yeah, he'll definitely be holed up somewhere with its own water source rather than transporting a heavy canteen several miles across country. He'll be on the river itself- we know he likes them.'
Angela Fenwick nodded grimly.
'Next possibility?'
Another section of map flashed up.
'Mynydd, Poxvys. Much more deserted, obviously. Area of outstanding natural beauty and definite tourist area in the summer months. Good for fishing, too, and we know Meehan and son enjoyed that. But no MOD properties nearby. The army and marines pass through the place pretty regularly on exercise but we don't actually own anything in the catchment area at all. Not so much as a Nissen hut on the Afon Honddhu.'
'Go on,' said Angela Fenwick.
'Beeston, Lancashire, on the Douglas, halfway between Wigan and Southport.
No MOD facility on or near the river. Nothing touristy about the area, particularly.'
'Go on.'
They went through all nine of them. For Alex's money there was one definite front runner a small tanning plant on a stream named the Hamble, which ran off Black Down on the western boundary of Dartmoor. This was the one he would have chosen this or the Mynydd one in Wales. Both were remote but served with metal led roads; both were close to popular tourist destinations; both offered vast areas of wild country in which, if need be, an experienced soldier could survive for weeks.
'It'll be one of the two, I'm sure of it,' he said.
'We've got nothing registered to the MOD on either river,~ said Dawn doubtfully.
'Suppose the MOD has recently sold the property,' suggested Alex.
'For the last hour we've been looking for MOD properties and for a small village with a church, because we know that Meehan specifically mentioned the existence of a church. But if the property was classified secret, at some point, and so not marked on any map, and was recently sold...'
Fenwick nodded.
'Yes, that's true. There's no reason to suppose that it's marked on current maps I can't believe the MOD bothers to inform Ordnance Survey whenever it sells and declassifies property. And of course it wouldn't be included in the MOD's current portfolio either.'
'From Meehan's story,' said Dawn, 'doesn't it sound as if this place, or at least its original purpose, has been forgotten? That nobody really knows why it was classified in the first place? It can't have been set up much later than 1940 and there's been a lot of inter-departmental paper shuffling since then.'
Fenwick reached for a phone, pressed the scramble button and dialled a number.
'Is that 1129? Jonathan? Angela Fenwick here... Yes, bless you for that, Jonathan. Look, I want you to do something further for me. Go back five years and check for top-security-rated but untenanted MOD properties abutting the following rivers and within five miles downstream of the following grid references. Got a pencil?' As Dawn scrolled back through the maps, Fenwick read out the tannery locations.
'And if five years doesn't throw anything up,' she continued calmly, 'then try ten and then fifteen .. . Yes, soonest, please. Ring me back the moment you find anything.'
Replacing the phone, she turned to the others.
'With a bit of luck he won't be too long,' she said.
'Shall we call up for some more coffee and some sandwiches?'
In the event, they finished the sandwiches before the call from Room 1129 came in. As she listened, Fenwick took notes.
'And that's the only one?' she concluded.
'Right. I'm grateful. Thank you.' She turned to Dawn.
'Can you get the Hamble map back up?'
Alex felt a sharp prickle of excitement.
From her chair, Fenwick aimed a red laser pointer at the screen display.
'Right,' she said.
'A
recent source of perchloroethylene pollution is this building here a small tanning plant presently engaged in litigation with the National Rivers Authority. One and a half miles downstream of the plant is Black Down House and its outbuildings, including the shell of a church, standing on some forty acres of land. Evacuated in August 1940 by order of the War Office for reasons pertaining to national security and later classified as a secret location under the Act in relation to Operation Gladio. For the last eighteen months, following sale by auction, Black Down House and its outbuildings have been the property of Liskeard Holdings, an Exeter-based property development company. Their present condition is unknown.'
The three of them looked at each other.
'What was Operation Gladio?' asked Alex.
'An anti-communist stay-behind network set up immediately after the war by SOE and MI6, and funded by the CIA. To be activated in the event of a Soviet invasion. The idea was that agents should be put in place and materials hidden at secret locations so that any Western European country that was rolled over would be in a position to resist, communicate with the outside world et cetera.'
'And Black Down House was one of those locations?'
'So it seems,' said Fenwick.
'So all that kit Meehan found as a kid has sat there for fifty years, waiting for an invasion that never came?'
