‘Tell me what?’
‘I told them this morning and nothing’s changed,’ Gabriel said sounding irritated.
Gabriel was obviously not the friendliest of people. Stratton wondered if this was his permanent mood or if a night’s sleep would reveal a more gracious side to him. As for the information Gabriel had given ‘them’, Stratton could only wonder what he meant.
‘Why don’t we sit down and talk for a moment,’ Stratton suggested. ‘Get to know each other a little. Whatever it is you told them you can tell me,’ he continued, waiting for Gabriel to sit on the side of the bed before he took the seat by the door.
Gabriel remained standing looking unsatisfied with Stratton’s suggestion, or perhaps it was the patronising tone in which he spoke to him. ‘I can’t work here,’ he said. ‘That’s why I don’t like being away.’
‘Away from where?’
‘Virginia. I work better there.’
‘You live in Virginia?’
Gabriel gave him a look as if Stratton should have known the answer. ‘You
Stratton could sense Gabriel’s discomfort with him but he was no stranger to being underestimated because of his looks. ‘I was brought on to the job in a bit of a hurry,’ Stratton said. ‘They told me a little, but who better to tell me about the job than you?’ He now wished he did know more about Gabriel and thought it was unlike Sumners not to brief him thoroughly, but since he had not, there was probably a reason behind it. Still, it had made his introduction appear amateurish. ‘Why don’t we take a moment and you can tell me everything I need to know.’
Gabriel frowned, disappointed this man was to be his ‘assistant’, but he was used to disappointment in this business. His own intelligence agency did not impress him at the best of times, and although he had never worked with the British before he did not expect they were likely to do so either. If this character was anything to go by, the Brits looked like they would prove to be dismally worse. When he heard British intelligence was sending over one of their people to assist him, he assumed he would be like the type he had met in abundance at CIA HQ, Foggy Bottom,Virginia. Normally he had nothing to do with the ‘labourers’ as his department referred to the CIA’s regular field agents. They occasionally sat in on meetings, usually in the form of familiarity briefings at the wacky spooks or psychic department, part of the tour for new agents. They came in all shapes and sizes and nearly always smartly dressed, but Gabriel had never met one like this before. He was not what Gabriel would have described as a big man, by American standards, although he did have an aura of toughness about him. Add to that his battered leather coat, dishevelled hair and a day’s growth on his face, overall, his look was unkempt to say the least. There was something else about him though, something Gabriel had never been so keenly aware of in a person before, agent or otherwise, not at first glance. If he were pushed to describe it, he would have to say there was a darkness around the man that his forced smile could not disguise.
‘Why’d you come to England then?’ Stratton breezed on. ‘If you work better in Virginia, that is?’
‘Too much interference. I couldn’t see clearly. Distance shouldn’t make a difference, but location sometimes does . . . my location . . . Sometimes where you are, the atmosphere and surroundings, are not conducive . . . The danger is here, anyway. I know that. This is the best place to be.’
‘Danger?’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘What danger?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I mean, is it—’
‘I don’t know,’ Gabriel said, cutting him off brusquely as he went back to packing his things. ‘As soon as I got into the taxi at the airport and headed into London, I saw the air base as clearly as if I was there myself.’
‘What air base?’
‘I told them all about the air base,’ Gabriel said, looking at Stratton with unguarded suspicion. ‘What
‘Look . . . I just came in from the outside. There wasn’t time for a proper brief. Let’s just accept I know nothing about you, what you do, or what this is all about. In fact, I don’t really have much of a clue what my part is supposed to be in this operation.’ If that’s what it is, he thought to himself. ‘So can we just cool it a little and accept I know nothing?’ Stratton’s sullen, unmoving eyes remained fixed on Gabriel’s.
Gabriel could sense the Englishman was no pushover and decided he liked being here as little as Gabriel did. If the Brits worked anywhere near the same way as the agency, they were stuck with each other, for the time being at least, and so to that end Stratton had a point. Gabriel was aware he was acting irritable and short tempered but he was never very good at dealing with pressure even when he was aware of all the mitigating circumstances. He was not naturally an ill-tempered man and did not like feeling that way.
Gabriel took a breath and made an effort to bring himself down. ‘I saw an American air base,’ he said, somewhat slower and calmer than he had been speaking previously. ‘I’m certain of that. There was a large wood nearby, a forest I should say. Soldiers use it. There are open spaces in the woods and I could see soldiers with guns and in combat fatigues.’
Stratton suddenly felt awkward listening to Gabriel as if he was providing serious information. It was one thing to try and accept that there were people who could see things as if they were able to transport themselves to another place on the planet, but to actually have to communicate with one as if everything they said was a fact made Stratton feel self-conscious, as if he was having a conversation with a mad person just to humour them.
‘You’re saying this American air base is in England?’ Stratton asked, ignoring his discomfort and doing his best to take this seriously.
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean, why? Why they put it in England?’
Stratton added another mental note about Gabriel. He was literal. ‘No. Why do you think it is an American air base in England?’
‘I can’t see signposts. It doesn’t work like that. If you were to think of a place, anywhere in the world, that you have been to, or even just heard or read descriptions of, a beach, a mountain range, a living room, whatever the images you had in your head, that’s what I would see. I can’t hear voices or the words in a person’s head, just images and emotions. Do you understand?’ Gabriel was beginning to sound like a teacher talking to a young student.
Stratton did not, but at least Gabriel was talking. ‘You can read anyone’s mind then?’ he asked.
‘It’s not mind reading. I don’t know who I can access or why I can access them. In this case it seems to be connected with something very evil.’
Stratton didn’t know what to make of Gabriel. Clearly the man believed in himself, and obviously several people high up in British and American intelligence did too. That negated whatever Stratton thought of all this. All he could do was get on with his job, once he had identified what that was. ‘So why an American air base in the UK?’ he asked.
‘Because it was filled with American personnel, soldiers, airmen, US flags.’
‘But what puts it in England?’
Gabriel went back to his packing. ‘The vehicles, the trucks and the cars, were driving on the left side of the road,’ he said as he neatly folded a shirt before placing it into another compartment of his holdall.
‘Why not Japan?’
‘Red phone boxes,’ Gabriel said. ‘There are some things I am able to work out for myself,’ he sighed. ‘You ever decoded remote viewers before?’
‘No.’
Gabriel shook his head. This was becoming more amateurish by the second. ‘Decoding is everything. You’re here because of your local knowledge. Your job is to interpret what I see.’
‘And you don’t have any hint of what the danger is?’ he asked.
