My name is Brendan
Burgin. By day I’m Professor Burgin, I work in the archaeology
department at UCL. By other days (and sometimes night) I am also
Field Agent Burgin, Department of Metaphysics. I’m a Government Man
I suppose. I’d like to say I was bribed or coerced but in fact I
volunteered. My behind-the-scenes role has taken me further and, in
the case of the Welsh Atlantis, deeper, deeper than I wanted.
You see there always
was a civilisation beneath the waves, Cantre’r Gwaelod or the
Lowland Hundred or the Welsh Atlantis was a little kingdom that sat
where Cardigan Bay is now. We know there was land there, quite
recently. You can go to some beaches in West Wales and find tree
stumps in the sand. If you pad along the same shoreline, if you’re
lucky you might find a Roman coin or a rusty axe bob up at your feet.
But this is not quite
what’s there, which is where I come in.
The basic work of the
DoM is fringe science. We discover things that do not fit the
standard scientific and social set up, anomalies, cryptids etc. We
contain, we study and we even use some of these things. We make the
world work, sometimes for the better. I was recruited by the
Department to monitor the social sciences, particularly archaeology,
for any unusual signs, like a trawler bringing up a nineteenth
century hand-mirror. This is what sparked my interest in the case.
Of course it wasn’t
just the mirror. A number of out-of-place artefacts had turned up, in
nets, on beaches and, as a result, in local papers and trade
magazines and shipping inventories. Trawlers of course have to
account for everything they catch. The mirror ended up in the
particular trawlers Miscellaneous List when it returned to port in
Fishguard. I managed to recover the mirror, even speak to the captain
of the ship, who was helpful enough, though knew very little. I added
the hand-mirror to the three intact plant-pots holding anemones
brought up in another trawler-net, a box keeping the gypsum cylinders
that looked a lot like writing chalk hooked by a line-fisherman three
weeks earlier in Anglesea, the polished black metal runic tiles that
washed up in Aberystwyth back in January. A few days after adding the
case to my file list a red cap found by a snorkeler off Poppit Sands.
Something was definitely up, something worth investigating.
…
I wanted to get an
investigation going. Normally to do this I would contact my Line
Manager at Head Office. They were always the people we spoke to, at
the beginning and end of every mission. Line Managers work out of the
main office in Whitehall. We do not meet them. We do not know them.
We are never given their names, just codes. Mine at the time was
called Dr Kinch. I didn't know them as such but I got on with the
Doctor. They seemed to like my work and we got on well enough to even
use a bit of informal language in correspondence. We had an
understanding. If the evidence was strong enough they would authorise
a Containment Expedition and I wouldn’t hear about the case again
or I would be given leave and resources to investigate the potential
anomaly. So I was surprised when Dr Kinch sent the case ‘upstairs.’
I had to give a
presentation to the DoM Sub-Committee for Oversight, which shouldn’t
be a problem for a researcher/lecturer. I had two days to prepare. I
did some online research into Celtic Mermaid apocrypha, civilian
accounts. The red cap was a clue. I used it to hold up a hypothesis.
The legend goes that the Celts were guided to Ireland by an undersea
race, known as the Merrow. They were functional mermaids/men but with
a difference. They were fully humanoid but survived underwater thanks
to special, magical red caps.
I turned up things
like, 1797 - the Battle of Fishguard, where the defeated French
raiding party, fearing capture and execution, tried to escape to the
sea. They were allegedly ‘granted asylum’ by sea creatures.
During the 1910s there were regular reports of a family of mermaids
that liked to 'picnic' just off the beach at Aberystwyth. In 1978 a
teenage boy was washed out to sea during a storm. He was presumed
dead but found 24 hours later lying unconscious on the local beach,
in a fresh change of clothes, wearing a strange red cap. Of course
some of these sightings came before the Department was founded. Even
so, to my surprise, no one seemed to have followed these stories up.
Perhaps it was lack of time or resources. Perhaps it was because the
phenomenon was considered self-containing. But I could not access any
documents relating to this on the DoM mainframe. My search strings
turned up nothing.
I had expected the
meeting to be at the Whitehall offices. It would be my first time
there. I'd not seen it before. Very few people have. It's hidden in
some abspace between the FCO and Horseguards Parade. Those who have
seen it say it's a magnificent building. Anyway, I received an email
at the last moment. I was sent up to the Stanmore R&D Facility
instead. This was odd but I made my way. I made my case as best I
could.
The Sub-Committee was
four people, three men, one woman, impassive and grey. I was taken to
a windowless room in the core of the building. The room was small,
close and smelled of freshly laid carpet tiles. I waited for maybe
ten minutes, it was hard to tell. The Sub-Committee eventually filed
in, sat and listened while I stood and presented. None of them took
notes or asked questions, despite me leaving lots of temping pauses
after my hypothetical leaps or tendentious assertions, they just
listened. At the end, when I had to actually say:
“That’s
it, that’s the end of my presentation…” and for a moment there
was nothing, no response. Then one of the Sub-Committee, the Woman,
simply said:
“Thank
you, Agent, for your presentation. We shall adjourn and consider your
case.” The Sub-Committee stood in unison and started for the door.
“But…?”
The Woman turned to regard me while the men kept filing out. “When
shall I hear from you? When will I know?”
“You
will be contacted in due course” she said, adding “please
remember to put in any expense claims before you leave the facility”
before strolling quietly out as well.
I was very surprised.
…
I still expected some
kind of approval though. It was fairly easy for me to get the time
off work. I have fairly limited lecturing responsibilities. I asked
and the Faculty Head granted me a semester away. Twelve weeks would
be enough I thought. My Partner, Chandra, has been working for the
DoM on an away mission in Australia, off and on. I couldn’t tell
her what the mission was, she understood, or seemed to when I
explained it was a secret.
It took another two
days but I was indeed instructed to head to West Wales and to proceed
with investigations. Credit and ‘relevant documentation’ would be
sent ‘in due course.’ I was pleased, just about but there was
that phrase again. I wondered what the documentation would be.
And I was also given as
assistant. Dr Kinch emailed me. He/she told me to be in my office at
the university the following day, a Saturday, 11am. Sure enough, the
clock passed 11am there was a knock on my door. I opened. A young man
in a suit was standing outside.
“Good morning, my
name is Junior Agent Squires” he said, holding out a hand to shake,
very formal.
He was diminutive and
ostentatiously well-groomed.; a tech-expert, a recent graduate from a
feeder programme at Imperial College, though he didn't look twenty.
He’d sent me some written recommendations from Field Agents who
worked with him before. They said he was talented and conscientious.
Even so I want to see what he could do.
In
twenty-minutes of brisk, focussed work he'd rigged a net-vapour
detector, a four dimensional search engine; all completely
bewildering but it turned up a transcript of a three-year-old blog
post, now deleted, of a widow of a trawler captain, whose boat worked
out Fishguard. In it she said her husband’s boat was lost in a
storm five years prior. The boat was never recovered, however, about
a year after the likely sinking she said her husband came back to her
in merman form, and has been visiting regularly ever since. There
were no comments and there was no surface-level indication of who
this woman was or where she lived.
“But that shouldn't
be too hard to find.”
The documents didn't
arrive that day, nor was the credit transferred, but the following
morning we set off for West Wales.
…
I
say ‘we’ I drove up, I don’t know how Squires got there. We had
to ‘maintain confidentiality,’ Department Standard Practice. We
had to pretend to be other people with unremarkable interests, which
is perhaps the reason why we’re told to keep our regular jobs. It
always felt
silly though.
I checked into a B&B
near the seafront in Aberystwth. The town was central to the area we
wanted to cover. I got there late, about quarter-to-ten in the
evening. It was a long drive. The landlady was friendly enough, a
smiling veneer smoothed over understandable irritation.
“Thank goodness for
that, another ten minutes and you’d have been sleeping in your car”
she said with a soft smile, handing me the last key. “Breakfast is
seven ‘til eight. The showers are on the floor below you. Please be
out by half-ten so we can make your beds.” There was a porter, a
young man, perhaps a relative, on hand. The Landlady said something
in Welsh. I figured it out later, one of us, either me or the young
man, was an ‘arsehole.’ Even so he took my bags and showed me to
my room, an attic almost, it was at the very top of the house, up a
winding set of stairs. The room was hot. While settling in I turned
the radiators down and opened the skylight window to let some of the
heat out. I could hear the sea and smell the brine for the first
time.
It
had been a long day but I had to check something. I had a laptop with
me but I’d forgotten to ask about Wifi. There was
Wifi, that was something, but what was the password? I rung
downstairs, there was no answer. I had to get my phone out instead,
use some data and check my emails. There was nothing. I should have
had the documents sent. It had been a long day, plenty of time, but
nothing was sent. I’d have to call head office in the morning. They
probably hadn’t forwarded the credit either.
…
I had a dream that
night, a threshold half-awake event. I looked up from my bed. I could
see the Full Moon in the skylight, it looked huge, serene and a
bright. I had closed the skylight earlier but could still faintly
smell the sea. I couldn’t tell what time it was.
I then heard
squelching, slopping noises, getting louder. I couldn’t quite place
them to begin with but I realised they were coming from outside in
the hall. I could see the light seeping under my door. The sea-smell
got stronger. The wet sounds stopped and I heard voices, there were
two, a dialogue; one whispering, the other softly gurgling. I
couldn’t make out what the voices were saying. I tried to say
something like ‘do you mind…?’ but it came out as slurred
gibberish. The dialogue stopped, the squelching noises resumed,
faster this time and fading away, as did the sea-smell. There was a
shadow outside my door. My heart leapt.
I sat up again in my
bed, this time for real. I looked at the door to my room, the lights
outside were off and, of course, there was no hall. My room was an
attic. I looked at the skylight; no Moon. It was almost 3am. After a
moment to calm down I settled back in bed and quickly fell asleep
again.
…
Set to work the
following morning, Agent Squires and I met up in town, in a café,
quiet except for a gang of students, noisy and distracting. The most
annoying thing, apart from finding out Squires had checking into a
five-star hotel down the road, was that there were no scuba-diving
companies for miles around. We were too hasty. The nearest Navy bases
with minesweeping teams were in Devon. I had minimal contacts in the
armed forces, as you can imagine. I phoned head office for help but
everyone seemed to be busy. I fronted up, tried some of the Navy
bases, pulling as much rank as I could. I also sent emails to
lecturers in the Celtic Studies Department of the local university.
Instead of dwelling on
our problems, sitting on the phone/by the laptop all morning,
pleading and explaining, we resolved to do something useful. We drove
down to Fishguard to see if we could speak to the Fisherman’s
Wife.
We found the woman’s
address, a beautiful two-story cottage on country road at the edge of
town, very old it was, one of a kind. We parked out of sight and
walked up. Standing at the gate, I wondered out loud how a fisherman
could afford to live in a place like this, let alone a fisherman’s
widow.
“Old family home,
perhaps?” suggested Agent Squires.
“Maybe” I said. We
were really just delaying the inevitable with chatter. I opened the
garden gate. We went inside. We had tried contacting the woman
beforehand. We had a name, Imelda Ifans. Whoever she was she didn’t
have a social media profile but she did have a functioning email
address, no answer, and a landline that rang out. Cold-calling was
going to be hard but door-stepping even harder.
Knock, knock… We
stood and waited, hands crossed in identical poses. Some kind of
activity was going on inside.
I’d said earlier,
when I knew we’d be calling unannounced, “we need to put on a
show. If we can’t project sympathy we’ll have to use authority.”
Agent Squires, a resourceful fellow, mocked up some laminate cards
with plausible insignia and ID. I knocked again. There was a voice
behind the door:
“Oh dear” it said,
“please excuse me…” The door creaked open and a woman appeared.
She was short, early middle-aged and jolly-looking, wearing
splattered overalls. She flashed a quick smile, “can I help you
gentlemen?” The Woman had an upper class accent. “Only we are
rather busy at the moment…” They were. The house was full of men
in similar work clothes, the sound of hammering, sawing and chatter,
the smell of paint and fresh wood.
For a moment we were
taken aback. She was almost certainly not who we were looking for.
Even so I asked the Woman at the Door, “Mrs Ifans, we are here
about an important…”
“No, I’m afraid
you’ve got the wrong address, sorry, goodbye” she said quickly
and brightly. She started to close the door.
“Madam”
said Agent Squires. He stepped forward and put his hand on the door.
“We have the right address and we are here on a serious matter.”
He brandished his badge. He was
projecting authority, and it worked. The Woman stopped, almost froze.
“We need to speak to Mrs Ifans urgently. It is a matter of national
importance.”
“National
importance…?” They were right words, or seemed to be. The Woman
looked awed. She took a step back and let go of the door. Agent
Squires did the same. Some of the men had stopped work and were
watching.
“If she is no longer
resident here then we would appreciate your help in…”
“I can help you
there” said one of the Workmen, stepping forward. He was maybe
late-twenties to early-thirties, with short, bleached hair. “Mrs
Ifans used to own this place.” He had a local accent.
“Of course” said
the Woman, half to me, half to her (presumably) employee. “The
estate” she said, turning to us again, “my husband and I bought
it last year in an auction. We’re just doing it up now” she
added, smiling once more.
“She disappeared”
said the Workman, “Mrs Ifans. My Ma knew her a bit, from the
skittles club. She lost her husband at sea, quite a while ago now.
Got over it, I suppose; kept on living here, like. Then, three years
ago she walked out of the Royal Oak…”
“The Royal Oak…?”
Agent Squires queried.
“The pub in town”
said the Workman. He pointed at ‘town’ with his brush. He was
almost standing next to the Woman. “Anyway, three years ago she
walked home after the skittles club like, but never made it back. The
police couldn’t find nothing, no body or anything. You don’t look
like police” he added.
“We’re not police”
I said. “What do you think happened?” I quickly asked.
“I don’t know”
said the Workman. “But there’s a rumour. Some people say she
walked into the sea. Police didn’t follow it up. I don’t know
why.”
“That’s a shame”
” I said, shifting my weight, “thank you for your help.” It was
time to go. I started walking back to the gate, but I underestimated
the Young Man.
“Don’t just walk
away, you said this was a matter of national importance. Who are
you?” he said, following me. Agent Squires was about to speak. He’d
overplayed our hand. I’d get us out of this one. I made the only
play left, honesty.
“My name is Field
Agent Burgin of the Department of Metaphysics, secret service” and
flashed my badge. “We are here to investigate stories of undersea
mermaid activity. Mrs Ifans referred in a blog post to the fact that
her husband was lost at sea, presumed drowned, but had been revived
and now lived under the ocean, periodically visiting his Wife…”
While the Workman was looking at me I tugged at Agent Squires sleeve;
time to go. “Thank you for your help” I said. “Have a good
day.” We walked back to the car as quickly as we could. We had to
get away while the Young Workman was bewildered enough.
I drove us back to
Aberystwyth. Half the day had been wasted. I drove while Agent
Squires made up for lost time, making and receiving phone calls
about, well, I didn't really listen. He seemed to know what he was
doing and I fell into a silent funk. I let the montage roll past, the
grey/brown/green blur, the shifting plateau of the deep countryside
in early spring, depressingly uniform. It lured me into not noticing
how fast I was driving.
"Shit!" I saw
a police car suddenly in the rear view mirror. I slowed
immediately, in a guilty manner because the police car did not
overtake. It followed us for another mile or so along the A-road
until we reached a dual carriageway, when it pulled out and
alongside. I remember groaning "oh no..."
"What is it?"
Agent Squires asked. He was on the phone to somebody at the time.
"The police"
I explained. "They want us to pull over." We slowed.
"Why do they want
us to do that?" We stopped.
"We're going to
find out" I said.
"Excuse me please,
I have to go. Call you back... Yeah, thanks" said Squires to
whoever it was on the phone. We waited. I collected myself, my
thoughts. If it was just speeding well, I wasn't doing much more than
five miles over. Just admit it, cooperate and nod.
"Hello there, Sir"
said the officer who came to my window. "Can I see your licence
please?" He could. He had an odd look, this officer, thin, pale,
almost grey and very bald, little evidence of hair at all. He was
smiling though, seemingly relaxed, a good start I thought. He browsed
through my documents, making enough show of attention, before handing
them back. "So, right, you were going a bit fast there, weren't
you..." I was about to launch my apology when he added, "you
weren't trying to escape from something, were you?"
"What, I mean...?"
"You've come all
the way up from London" the Officer continued. "It's not
often that happens, is it?" He cast the question to his
colleague, who was also out of the car, lurking and frowning off
somewhere. He didn't response. "We might overlook the
little speeding-thing" said the First Officer, turning back
to me, "it you wouldn't mind helping me with some things, you
know, answer a few questions, like?" His smile dimmed for a
second, down to business. Pause then "I was wondering, see, what
all these calls I've been getting is. Folk from down the road getting
all excited about two fellas doorstepping people and asking
strange questions about mermaids and stuff...?" He grinned
again, a goofy, disarming smile. Even so, I wasn't sure where to
begin:
"Well, um..."
"The locals have
been talking about nothing else..." the First Officer ploughed
on. Really, I wondered, it had barely been an hour since we
left. "Lady Murkwood was most confused, I had to reassure her
nothing strange was going on."
"You wouldn't
happen to be those fellas by any chance would you?" said the
scowly Second Officer after sidling up to the window.
"We're secret
service" said Agent Squires, leaning in, "Department
of Metaphysics." He showed the pair our improvised, laminated
ID. It seemed to work until the First Officer said:
"So you're here
about the Ifans case? Terrible that was..."
"We're here on an
investigation into number of unusual sightings and reports..."
"Mysterious too"
said the First Officer to his partner.
I persisted, "we
didn't know anything about the... case you mention until yesterday. I
wasn't going to call it the Ifans case.
"That's odd"
said the Second Officer, "only the DoM was all over it at the
time, fat lot of good it did, they were mostly across
purposes..." and he laughed acidly.
"Where are you
fellas headed?" the First Officer asked.
"Back to
Aberystwyth" said Agent Squires. "It's our, uh, base of
operations I suppose."
"I know a
detective down in Swansea who'll be able to help you" said the
First Officer. His grin broadened further until it looked almost
manic, inhuman. "Detective Morforwyn, yes, he ran the Ifans case
from the police's side. Oh, he'll have plenty to say, I'll bet you
anything. I'll see if he can come up and talk to you." All sorts
of questions passed through my mind. "Don't worry" said the
First Officer, as if responding. "Report to the desk at
Aberwrystwyth tomorrow, middle of the afternoon, see if he's there."
He started walking back to his car. "Otherwise" he
said from over his shoulder, "he'll come and find you."
"But how?" I
asked.
"He's a detective,
you numbnut" the Second Officer. "He'll find you." He
strode off as well. We watched the officers drive away before
resuming.
"What was that all
about?"
"Perhaps someone
wants to give us a lead" said Agent Squires.
"But why didn't
Head Office tell us about this?" I asked.
…
“Well…” said Agent Squires eventually, “do you want to know the good news?”
“Really” I said,
carefully, “what’s that?”
“The Navy have got
back to us…”
“The whole navy…?”
I interrupted.
“There’s a base
down in Devon” said Agent Squires, “with a minesweeping team.
They’ve agreed to a loan of some equipment, sonar, boat, diving
equipment, maps etc.”
“That’s good…”
“And…” Agent
Squires hastened to add, “they are giving us two officers; a diver
and a pilot, to help.”
I thought about it for
a second. The road was empty; outside a misty, drizzly rain set in. I
nodded, “not bad…” There was a slightly briny tint to the rain,
though we were a few miles inland.
“They’ll be up and
in contact tomorrow afternoon” said Squires.
“Then we have the
rest of the day” I resolved. “You see if you can get through to
Head Office. Meanwhile, we need to pay a visit to the University.”
…
There was no luck with
Head Office. I said to Squires to ask specifically for Dr Kinch but
the line was either busy or we got some sub-bureau stonewalling us.
When got back to Aberystwyth it was raining hard. I’d not been to
the university before. Its campus was mostly old, castle-like, built
from light-brown sandstone. It stood out against the harsh, leaden
sky. I knew some staff, researchers mostly, from conferences. We only
had a few hours though. I wanted to speak to someone from the Celtic
Studies department and check out the archives.
We made out case at a
few offices and made, perhaps, good progress. It was half-term of
course but here was a Professor Thomas on campus. We spoke to a woman
who was his ‘secretary.’ She was a tall, imperious woman who
dominated the shoebox office they’d given her, halfway up a tower,
without ever getting out of her chair. She was able to talk and type
too. I’d not heard of him before but I figured he must be an
important man to have a secretary. She seemed reluctant but after
laying down our full DoM credentials the Secretary relented. She said
he’d be free at after five o’clock and we could meet him in his
office. I said that would be wonderful and she tapped something into
her PC. I pushed my luck a bit and asked could I get a pass to the
reference library. She said no and suggested we get something to eat.
The canteen was just downstairs.
…
The canteen was
actually a franchise coffee shop. Disappointed and hungry (there
wasn’t much on offer), Agent Squires huddled over coffee and
chatted. Squires told me about how he was recruited to the
Department. He said he was essentially pressganged.
A few years ago
responded to what seemed like an innocent ARG, a set of online
puzzles for people to solve using advanced cryptography,
steganography. The unnamed people running the game apparently wanted
to recruit “intelligent individuals” to their unknown cause.
Agent Squires was a student back then so had lots of time to go
treasure-hunting. He ended up in a pub in Greenwich near the Maritime
Museum. A mysterious man walked up to him handed him a document with
a GNU code and said:
“Please respond
within 48 hours…”
“Respond to what?”
I asked.
“That’s what I
said!”
“What did you do?”
Agent Squires used the
code to uncover a set of documents detailing a crucial state secret.
The last of the files just said ‘please respond within 48 hours’
with an accompanying phone number.
“They were
implicating me” said Agent Squires, “when the voice at the other
end asked if I wanted to join the department I had to say yes.”
“And you don’t mind
that?”
Agent Squires shrugged.
“The pay’s good” he said. “It’s a good job, good money with
promotion prospects. A lot of my friends are either pulling pints or
unemployed right now. Of course it could have been a bluff” he
said. “What about you?”
“Me?” I said. “I
answered an ad in the Guardian. So…?” pause.
“What…?”
“What was the
secret?”
“I could tell you”
said Agent Squires.
“But you’d have to
kill me” I said, laughing slightly.
“No” said Squires,
deadpan, “someone from the Rogue Asset MTF would do that.”
“I see” I said.
“Excuse me” came a
voice. It was Professor Thomas’s Secretary hovering over us with
suppressed anxiety. “Follow me…” she whispered sharply. “Now…”
I tried finishing my coffee. “Now…!” We stood up. She led us
briskly up and out of the building, through the campus on a
convoluted route, occasionally reminding us to “keep up!” It
might not have been obvious to a casual observer but the Secretary
was glancing around sharply, in way that seemed trained, a familiar
way. She ignored us any time we asked what was going on.
“What is going on?”
After having led us a merry dance she stopped suddenly and turned to
us, glaring, accusing.
“What…?” We were
under an archway, by a gnarled, old statue.
“I know why you’re
here” she hissed. “Why has the Department sent field agents?”
“The, what…? Are
you…?”
“We have successfully
contained this anomaly for the past fifteen years” said the Woman,
glancing around. I realised later why she picked this spot. We were
at a long intersection and could see in four different directions
with cover nearby.
“We…?”
“My team” said the
Secretary.
“Wait a minute”
said Agent Squires. “Are you Professor Thomas?”
“It doesn’t matter
what I am I want to know what game you think you’re playing” said
the Woman.
“How do you know who
we are?” I asked.
“I told you, I have a
team” said the Woman. “We do our job and we do it well.” She
folded her arms, satisfied but defiant.
“In that case” I
said, sensing a chance to needle, “why are we getting reports of
mermen visiting their land-wives and weird things washing up in
trawler nets?”
“If you have any
information you will hand it over” said the Woman.
“Or what…?” I
said.
The Woman seemed to
notice something out the corner of her eye. She turned and started
walking. “I’m warning you” she said from over her shoulder,
“stay out of this.” Agent Squires started to follow but I
restrained him.
“We have to follow
her.”
“She’s warning us”
I said. “That’s probably all she’ll do. Besides, we know where
to find her if we have to. Come on…” I was then I noticed what
the Woman must have seen, a group of students striding across the
campus, clutching books and talking loudly. “Wait…” They passed
us by without even acknowledging us. “Let’s try Head Office one
more time” I suggested.
…
“Hello…” It was a
hideous, synthesised voice. It was pleased to hear it though. “This
is Doctor Kinch speaking.”
“That’s good” I
said, “because one hand washes the other.”
“I fear nothing”
said the Voice, completing the code phrase. It had taken half an hour
of waiting on the phone and making bad noise whenever I spoke to
someone but I got through to my Line Manager at last.
“We are in West
Wales” I said, adding “we have set up and begun operations as
planned.” Outside the rain was easing off.
“Good” said the
Voice, “proceed as you were.”
“We have not yet
received all documentation referring to the case” I said.
“There is no other
documentation” said the Voice. “This is a new investigation. You
shall proceed as you were.”
“But there are
publically available examples referring to the phenomenon dating back
decades, centuries even. We have even encountered someone claiming to
be a DoM operative working on containment.”
There was a long pause
then the Voice said “who is this alleged operative?”
“Professor Thomas”
I said, “or his secretary, working at the local university in the
Celtic Studies department.”
There was another long
pause, until the voice “thank you. You will be reimbursed for all
costs. Proceed as you were.”
“What?”
“Good luck, Agent
Burgin” said the Voice. Then the line went dead.
“What do we do now?”
Agent Squires asked. A little sliver of evening sunshine was
beginning to emerge. “This is complicated.”
“It’s a tangle” I
said, “and we have to unravel it.” I sighed. “We’re committed
I guess. I’m hungry Let’s make our last stop for the day.”
…
It had been an
unsuccessful day. Things were even more confused, tantalising but
confused. Our friends from the navy would be arriving the following
day, as would Inspector Morforwyn. Maybe we could clean up the
mystery then, maybe.
Agent Squires and I
retired for the day. We went to where he was staying, a ludicrously
plush hotel with a good restaurant and bar, to get something to eat.
I’d been a fool all these years wanting to save on expenses. The
food was good too. We were just having our plates cleared away when a
concierge in a bright-grey suit approached our table.
“Sir, there is a
message for you” and he held out a folded sheet for Agent Squires.
“It was left with the reception earlier this afternoon.”
“Thank you” said
Agent Squires. The Concierge hovered for a moment. He was a young
man, clean shaven, with gelled hair, a thin, a little sallow closely
and wearing fairly strong aftershave.
“Sorry…” said
Agent Squires. The Young Man got his tip and scuttled away. Squires
unfolded the paper.
“What does it say?”
The paper was lined, an
A5 sheet from a notepad. The message said, “Poppit Sands Incident…”
then there was a web address.
“Unlinked…?”
“Probably” said
Agent Squires.
“This is a secret
message…?”
“But handwritten”
Agent Squires. He passed me the paper. “It could be the Concierge”
he said. We looked around, he was long gone.
“Have you spoken to
him?”
“Once” said Agent
Squires, “just when I was arriving. He’s not a contact or
anything.”
“It’s not headed
notepaper either” I added. “Shall we check out the address?”
“Here?”
“I don’t see why
not” I said, and fetched up the laptop from my travel bag. “Do
they have Wi-fi here?”
“Of course” Agent
Squires snorted.
Whoever made the site
wasn’t going to win any design awards. It looked like a wiki-page,
but there was no obvious way to edit it. It was an info dump, a set
of links leading to PDF scans and digital photos, followed by a
transcript of a conversation, under the heading:
“POPPIT SANDS
INCIDENT – JANUARY 31ST, 2014.”
The transcript ran:
Researcher Byrd: Where did the incident take place?
Agent Thomas: On and
around the area of Poppit Sands beach.
Byrd: When did it
begin?
Thomas: The incident
began approximately 15 minutes after dawn, which was at 7.07am
Greenwich Mean Time, which would put it at around about twenty past
seven. This and the fact it occurred out of the holiday season likely
accounts for the lack of witnesses. The incident lasted for
approximately 40 minutes.
Byrd: How did you learn
of the incident?
Thomas: Police radio
and twitter update. Two witnesses made 999 calls reporting what they
had seen.
Byrd: When did Captain
Jacket and yourself arrive on the scene?
Thomas: Shortly before
8am.
Byrd: Shortly after the
incident finished?
Thomas: That’s right.
We, uh, we did not see WA-1, although we did recover digital footage
of the incident from one of the witnesses. It is fortunate that the
nearest police station in Cardigan was not open at the time and the
calls were diverted to Haverford West.
Byrd: How many
witnesses were there?
Thomas: Seven known
witnesses, three women, three men, one child, all of whom were
detained, debriefed and given class B amnestics.
Byrd: How were they
detained?
Thomas: I managed to
commandeer a community hall at short notice. Four more people arrived
on the scene after we did, summoned by the original witnesses. They
were likewise detained. As of yet there no reports of the incident
have reached the local or national media.
Byrd: Describe what
happened.
Thomas: The incident
began approximately 15 minutes after dawn. They, the witnesses, saw
two humanoid figures emerging out of the sea near the Poppit Sands
beach. The figures were dressed in spacesuits similar to the ones
worn by the Apollo astronauts.
“Quick” I said,
“find that man, the Concierge.” Agent Squires leapt into action.
I continued reading.
Thomas: [continued…]
The astronauts stepped onto the beach, near the northern end. One
individual collected samples of various things, rock, sand, plants
etc, while the other appeared to take photographs. They also planted
a flag, a Celtic cross, gold on purple, which Capital Jacket later
identified as The Cross of Neith.
Byrd: What’s that?
Thomas: The flag used
by Princes of the Aberffraw dynasty, the last rulers prior to English
annexation… and a plaque in the sand. The pair moved on from the
beach, into a nearby field, where they continued their survey. They
were approached by a local farmer, a short encounter that drew no
response from the astronauts, save for them withdrawing to the sea
shortly after. The farmer described the figures inside the suits as
being human-like, with dark eyes and silvery skin. Their suits were
apparently filled with water. The flag and plaque were quickly
recovered. The plaque was small, heavy, made from a metal alloy and
engraved with two phrases, one in a language seemingly derived from
ancient proto-Welsh, the other in English. It read: “In the name of
the Kingdom of the Lowland Hundred we shall return and claim this
land.”
Byrd: Thank you.
Agent Squires returned,
almost bounding across the room. “He’s gone” he half-shouted,
“finished his shift, but I know where we can find him.”
...
“What… how…?” I
jabbered.
“He’s called James”
said Agent Squires, “he’s a student at the university, probably
IT and he’s probably going to the Frogman’s Ball tonight.
“What…?”
“I don’t know what
it is either but look at the bottom of the page.” I did. The paper
was torn at the top. I could see the lower half of what could have
been frogman’s ball. “It’s a student thing, apparently, though
they hold it off campus.
“Oh, aye…? So how’d
you get his name?”
“I asked at the desk”
said Squires, grinning.
“OK, I didn’t have
anything planned for these evening. Let’s go see what the Frogman’s
Ball is like.”
…
We couldn’t really
see much. It was in a community hall on the far side of town, near
the shore. We could see it and hear it and smell it again. We decided
on a stakeout. We wanted to speak to this young man, James Celliers,
to give him his full name, not anyone else. We were in the middle of
something complicated. That much was obvious. Someone, somewhere
along the line was withholding information. The only way out was to
get to the bottom of it all and keep a low profile. That was the
idea.
But there wasn’t much
getting to the bottom with the Frogman’s Ball. Neither of us had
done a stakeout before. We parked up as close as we dared, about
fifty yards down the road, still feeling exposed and obvious while
sitting in the dark. We didn’t see young James arrive. What we did
see was a steady trickle of mostly young people, excited and noisy,
pour into the hall. Muffled disco leaked through the walls, into the
night. The lights in the hall were blazing away. When our legs got
too stiff and/or we realised we weren’t doing much good we took a
couple of strolls up and down the pavement, past the hall. There was
security at the event, men presumably, bouncers wearing diving suits.
If that didn’t look odd enough (we were in a residential area)
after glancing inside I could see revellers wearing bright red caps.
Nothing much came out when we took pictures though.
“Perhaps James wasn’t
meant to be here? Perhaps he meant us to see this?”
“Because of a torn
fragment of paper…?” Agent Squires queried. “I doubt it… Then
again…” he seemed to reconsider. “Don’t worry” said
Agent Squires. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll get him tomorrow, and
the Professor. This is a small town.”
“That depends on when
the diving crew get here” I said.
…
Thanks to the Frogman's
Ball I almost missed closing time at the B&B again. The
Landlady was waiting for me, scowling a little ironically this time
it felt:
"Here comes the
straggler, just in time." She handed me my key. "You look
like you could use some rest" she added.
"Thank you, I,
uh..." I realised the Landlady was wearing a small red,
flapper girl-style hat. I said "I like your hat."
It didn't really go with what she was wearing though, comfortable
clothes, pastel colours.
"Thank you"
said the Landlady, not seeming at all pleased. "I'm going out
later."
"I see" I
said. I didn't. "Good night."
"Nos da..."
...
Upstairs, in my room I
took precautions. I knew basic self-security. All Field Agents are
shown bug-sweeping, trap-setting, how to build a fall-back in
orientation. Now I had to remember. I checked everywhere I could for
recording devices. I put a chair against the door and sprinkled
some broken glass on the floor, I'd have to remember that in the
night, the checked the lock on the skylight. I didn't have any
weapons on me, I wouldn't have been much use with a gun or a taser
anyway, but I had a crowbar. I kept it under my bed.
My mind was a whirl of
possibilities. It was difficult to fall asleep in such
circumstances. I didn't want to be here anymore. Something was up. I
was part of something. It felt like an elaborate deception, but what?
I lay awake for some time. The weather had cleared. Moonlight
filtered into my room from above. It felt like hours. Slowly my
mind started to ease. I was just on the point of dropping off when
I heard a scratching, thumping sound from the roof. I
realised suddenly. I looked up in shock. There was a face, a
hairless, grey face, a man wearing a cap. It was the First
Policeman, the one who spoke to us on the A-Road, glaring at me
through the skylight. I scrabbled for crowbar, falling out of
bed. Then I came to, sitting up with a jolt. I looked up; heart
pounding. The Man was gone. The sky was overcast. It was
2am. I had fallen asleep but now I
was really troubled.
…
I had a phone call just
after six, rendezvous 08:00 hours. The MoD was on their way. We would
have to smarten up, quickly. Agent Squires and I would also have to
divide our time. We met up, early, in the same café as yesterday. I
was bleary, grey as the morning. Agent Squires seemed fresh as a pink
edged daisy. We agreed he would get down to the police station, make
himself known so Detective Morforwyn could find us. Squires would
also get on to head office. Needed to find and sequester
Professor/Agent Thomas, find out just exactly what was going on.
Meanwhile I would have to meet the guys from the MoD.
…
Down at the marina, our
help had arrived.
“Sub Lieutenant Sarah
Corrigan, minesweeper…” Shake hands and a nod. “Lieutenant
Commander Michael Moore, pilot…” Shake hands again with a smaller
nod this time. I knew their names and their roles but was a bit stuck
for something to say. “Thank you for coming” I said. Neither
responded, they just looked at me. The Sub Lieutenant smiled a bit.
“It’s much appreciated” I added.
“Good” said the
Lieutenant Commander.
“So, what’s the
plan?” Sub Lieutenant Corrigan asked. She was the younger of the
two, maybe early-thirties, cropped blonde hair. She clapped her
hands. “What has the DoM got us out here doing?”
“Did you read the
brief…?” I asked, immediately regretting it.
“Of course we did”
the Lieutenant Commander shot back. He paused. His face, which was
oddly craggy and immobile for someone in their forties, shifted a
little. “It’s just…” He visibly considered his words. “It’s
rather unusual…” He had a deep, stern, upper-class voice.
“I’ll explain as we
go, perhaps…?” I said, diffident. “It’s going to be a bit of
an unusual day. We’ve got a berth reserved at the marina.”
“Good” said LC
Moore. He patted the boat they had brought with them, stacked on the
back of a trailer, evidently proud.
“But first” I said,
“you’re going have to teach me how to dive.” This prompted
laugher and some eye-rolling. They taught me though.
…
We were able to use a
bit of cloud down at a local swimming pool. It was a weekday, not too
busy, but I was able to flash some credentials and a fair bit of
money. It took over an hour to clear the pool. We talked for a while,
the three of us. I quizzed them mostly about military life, not much
in common there, but I wanted to get onto some personal basis. I
wanted to know if I could trust them. I had to trust them in
any case.
Corrigan was more
talkative than Moore. She was the diver, he was he pilot. I learned
that much. She told me a little about minesweeping in the Gulf of
Iran. I didn't know there were mines in the Gulf of Iran.
“Some of them were
left behind during the war thirty years ago.”
“Thirty years ago?”
“Iraq/Iran”
Corrigan explained.
“Really...?”
“Yeah...” But that
was the end of that.
We went over the basics
of the case as well, the facts a least, everything except for the
confusion of motives. They seemed to take it all in. Moore seemed a
bit put out when I said I'd be doing the ocean survey. But we got to
the end of that fairly quickly. In desperation I tried ringing Agent
Squires. His phone was off. It was concerning, but there was nothing
I could do.
Learning to dive was
easy, easy in that it was impossible. The equipment was cumbersome,
difficult to get into, Corrigan had to help me. We went through how
the equipment works, the basics of hand signals, the dangers and how
to avoid them, specifically decompression sickness and nitrogen
narcosis. It was finally time to go under. I couldn't do it. I had to
breathe through my mouth but I kept surfacing. It felt so unnatural.
It felt even stranger when Corrigan resorted to holding me under the
water, grinning and giving me mostly indecipherable encouragement
from above.
“You can do it. It's
easy just breathe.”
After much effort I
managed to keep my head under and eventually struggle slowly across
the bottom of the pool. LC Moore watched this, silent, disgusted but
probably also amused.
We had two hours. We
needed more time but it would have to do. We had to find Agent
Squires.
…
Agent Squires wasn’t
at the police station. Detective Morforwyn wasn’t there either and,
according to the Desk Sergeant, was never going to be there either.
“I remember him”
said the Sergeant. He was another bald, pale man, portly though, with
jowls like flabby gills. He was friendly enough but something
bothered me. “Poor sod died, how long ago was it?” he asked one
of his colleagues, lurking, apparently in the backroom, though I
couldn’t them. There was no answer. He didn’t seem to mind
though. He turned back to me. “It must have been two or three years
ago now. Heart attack I think it was. No surprise though, he went a
bit funny at the end…”
“Funny?”
“A funny case, it
made him a bit odd. Obsessed he was. What was it now?”
“The Ifans case” I
offered.
“I think that was
that was it?” the Sergeant asked the door. Again there was no
response.
“That’s right” I
said, “but, um, how do you know about it?”
The Desk Sergeant
seemed to struggle for a moment. “Oh, um, well… It was quite a
famous case you see, a mystery. See it looked like straightforward
insurance fraud. The boat was owned by someone on land. The crew were
just employees getting wages, not shares. But no one could get to the
bottom of who owned the ship…”
“You seem to know a
lot about the case” I said.
“You hear things”
the Desk Sergeant shrugged.
“You do indeed…”
The Sergeant seemed to
ignore my dig. “It was a bit of a mystery. Anyway, the case went
cold for a while but things got really strange when, later on, his
widow disappeared and our Detective’s back interviewing people
left, right and centre. He caused a bit of a fuss up at the
university if I remember right…?” There was still no answer from
the door. “It was all a bit of a mystery.” He seemed to like
mysteries. “So, anyway, what organisation did you say you were
from?”
“Department of
Metaphysics” I said.
“Not heard of that
before” said the Sergeant, grinning amiably.
“We deal in
mysteries” I said. I showed him some ID. “My name is Agent
Burgin. I asked a colleague of mine, Junior Agent Squires to meet
Detective Morforwyn here this… well, today.”
“I’ve not met this
colleague and our Detective’s dead now. Couldn’t make the
funeral, such a shame, I would have liked to have gone.”
There wasn’t really
time to stop and chat. Corrigan and Moore were setting up the boat
for me. I gave my excuses and headed off. On my way to the harbour I
tried ringing Squires, still no luck but I did manage to get through
to his answerphone. I left a message, antsy but polite: where are
you, call me ASAP, etc. By this point it was midday. I was in for a
long, boring afternoon.
…
Everything was settled.
We headed about a mile out in Moore’s boat (as it was fast
becoming) before we began the sonar search. I had it set up similar
to ground radar, two emitters attached to either side of the ship and
one receiver at the stern so, hopefully, we would get a good 3D
picture. The boat was good, a flat-hull designed to go fast, though
on this occasion we would have to take it easy.
We scanned the seabed
using the shoreline as a frame of reference. We had a computer on
board recording data but also converting it into an image. Corrigan
and I watched as it spooled on and on. The weather was good, mild
enough with no rain. The sea was fairly calm, a small swell with an
occasional spray. Moore was taciturn but I chatted every now and then
with Corrigan.
“You’d think we’d
know what was on the bottom of the ocean” I wondered idly.
“Not really” said
SL Corrigan, “there’s a lot of undiscovered country down there. A
lot of maps are perfunctory. It’s not as if you need to know much,
reefs, sandbars and so on; things for a ship to avoid.”
“That must be why you
like diving” I offered.
“Maybe” Corrigan
shrugged, “I suppose, that and the peace and quiet. Hey, can you
see that?”
I could. It was a long
cluster of cuboid objects. “Amazing… If what you’re saying is
true…” said Corrigan, “it might be more uncharted than we
think.”
I got a phone call
about an hour and a half into our search. “Hello…” I didn’t
know it was on. I didn’t think there would be reception out there.
“It’s me.” It was
Agent Squires.
“Where are you, you
were supposed to meet Detective Morforwyn?”
“I can’t do that
now, can I?”
“What happened?”
“I used my
initiative” said Agent Squires, “and dropped in on the Professor
unannounced…” There was a short, accusing science. “We should
have followed her” said Agent Squires, sounding anguished at
his first instance of dissent.
“Maybe” I said,
“but what happened?”
“I don’t know,
aneurysm, stroke, something…” It was a bit melodramatic I
thought, conveniently scripted. Then I realised the tone of fear in
Squires voice. “I found her like that in her office, collapsed.
Next thing you know they’ve bundled her into an ambulance and me
into a police car. We followed it down to Withybush…”
“Where?”
“Hospital, in
Haverfordwest” said Agent Squires. “The police have just let me
go. I’m not sure if they bought my story. They might be looking for
you now.”
I gave it some thought.
“Have you got the car?”
“No...” it was a
silly question.
“Get a taxi” I
said, “the police are nothing to worry about. Well…” I almost
reconsidered. “We’re running out of options on land, there’s
one more place we need to go, but I think we’ve found something out
here.”
“What, what is it?”
“We'll see...” I
said. “We'll see... Just get back as soon as you can.”
…
“Do you know why
scuba divers jump backwards into the water?”
I didn’t.
“Because
if they jumped forwards they’d smack their head on the deck,” SL
Corrigan smiled. She then bit down on her mouthpiece and fell
backwards into the water with a graceful splosh.
It helped calm my
nerves a bit, though not enough. I hesitated though I knew what I had
to do. We’d come back to the spot we’d found earlier, the sprawl
of unusual shapes found down below. I looked around, at the sea, the
sky, the thin blur of land to the east. Moore wasn’t paying the
slightest bit of attention. Corrigan surfaced again after a moment.
She looked at me as if to say ‘come on.’ I did as I was bidden. I
took a deep breath, put my goggles on, clamped down on my breather
and fell backwards.
Despite the humour,
despite my training, despite my dry-suit it was still a shock
entering the water. I had to get used to my breathing equipment all
over again. I also had to adjust to the new visibility. We were
diving in Cardigan Bay not a swimming pool. We could see ten metres
at most. I would have to stick close to Corrigan for the duration.
The
training kicked in and overcame the
panic. It wasn’t that far down. We soon found what we were looking
for. The murk cleared and we saw a network of stone huts, a village
under the sea, and shapes moving between them. It was not an
abandoned village, it was a living one.
The grey-green gloomy
world below resolved. It was incredible. It looked exactly like a
village under the waves, with houses, roads and streetlamps (though
they weren’t on). We were about five metres over the rooftops,
treading water. For a moment I didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t
actually thought this far ahead. We didn’t even have a camera on
us. I signalled to head down. We swam along a road for a while, which
was paved, there were occasional objects on the side of the road,
they looked like a cross between a torpedo and a pedalo. We saw
gardens with underwater flora. The houses were numbered.
The village seemed
empty. There were windows, curtains and, finally faces. I saw one, a
woman it seemed to me, peering out, looking at something, not us.
Over the road I spotted someone, a male-looking silhouette tending to
a small patch of seaweed stretching up from his garden. He looked at
me, right at me, then turned away indifferent. It was odd. It kept
happening as we explored. We saw men, women and even children,
grey-skinned natives of the Welsh Atlantis, each wearing a bright
red, tight-fitting cap. The aliens had landed, we had arrived, but no
one seemed to care. One of the torpedo-pedalos approached us and
passed. They were a kind of vehicle. It was all too odd.
The natives moved with
grace. They swam around is, paying no regard. Their clothes were
similar to what people would wear in land, thinner perhaps, less
florid and more tightfitting. We were conspicuous, frothing, bubbling
and struggling in our suits. We swam some more. We saw what looked
like municipal buildings, a shop perhaps, with people heading in and
out, carrying bags and signs, pictures and words and numbers, adverts
presumaby. We saw low, long building with parents and children
milling about in a yard outside, a school, it must have been the end
of the day. A little native child swam up to us.
It was
androgynous-looking, a boy perhaps. He or maybe was swimming along
with his/her mother across the other side of the road, holding hands.
I assume it was their mother. The child saw us and broke loose.
He/she seemed to be about five. The child swam up to me and smiled. A
brace of bubbles came from its gills. Its eyes were dark-black. Its
teeth were silver-grey and sharp like claws. I panicked, recoiled and
tried to swim away but the child followed me, playfully. It was
making some kind of gesture at me and grinning its evil-looking grin
again. Eventually the child’s mother caught up and tugged it away.
I signalled to Corrigan it was time to surface.
…
I came up into air. The
swell had grown somewhat. For a moment I could not see our boat,
which inflamed my panic even more. Then SL Corrigan surfaced next to
me. She took out her breather and yelled:
“What was that?”
“That was the
village, it…”
“What were you doing”
she continued, “you surfaced too quickly, are you alright?”
Only then did I realise
I wasn’t. There was a sudden hard cramp in my right thigh. It
worked its way up to my lower back. “Ah shit!” Another surge of
panic; for a moment it felt like I was being pulled down. “It’s
got me
“Newbies…”
Corrigan managed, somehow, in this situation to roll her eyes. “Let
me help you.” She swam up to me. “Where does it hurt?”
“Leg…” I said.
“Which bit, you daft
bastard?”
“And back…”
“Hold on…”
Corrigan put her breather back on, dived under and started massaging
my leg, though it felt like being punched. I heard the sound of a
motor. Moore had spotted us and was heading our way. He stopped and
we climbed back on board.
“What happened?”
I was out of breath,
gasping and clutching my leg. Corrigan filled in for me.
“We found it” she
said. “We found an underwater city with mer-people and red caps.
It’s all there.”
“Astonishing” said
Moore. He actually looked astonished as well.
“Then Office-Boy here
blew it and surfaced” said Corrigan with a snort. “Sorry, you
don’t like being called ‘Office-Boy?’” I didn’t. “Sorry,
Professor here blew it, flipped his lid and came up too quickly. Come
on” she added, “I’ve seen worse. Let’s get it out of you.”
Corrigan started bashing my leg again.
Back
on land, safe, my leg and back pummed free of pain, everything had
changed. Both Corrigan and Moore were enthused. They wanted to go
back out again as soon as possible. There might have been a chance.
There was about two and a half good hours of sunlight left but I
called it a day. I knew the bigger picture, a bigger picture. I still
didn't know
what was going on and I had one last shot at finding out.
…
“Agent Burgin...” I
got through to Dr Kinch almost straight away. “You have a
report...” still the same strange, modulated voice.
“Yes, I, uh, we found
it...”
“You have located the
anomaly?”
“That's correct” I
said.
“You have
photographic evidence?”
I sighed. I should have
brought an underwater camera. Then again evidence for what, who was I
supposed to prove it to? “No...” There was a pensive pause:
“Coordinates and
dimensions?”
“Yes, I do...” I
said, “and sonar data.” I was about to give it all over the
phone.
“Please don't,
Agent...”
“Sorry...” I was
forgetting basic procedure, standing there on the quay in my drysuit.
“Make the secure
document transfer as soon as you are able” said Dr Kinch, his/her
distortion modulated even lower than before.
“Of course” I said,
“but there are a few loose ends to tidy up. Junior Agent Squires is
out of town pursuing a...”
“Agent Squires has
been withdrawn from the case” Dr Kinch interrupted.
“What's happened
to... is he OK...?” A long pause, then:
“Agent Squires is
well” Kinch's voice was harsh. “He is no longer required.”
“He has been
essential to a line of enquiry that...”
“He is no longer
required for your investigation” said Doctor Kinch. The line oozed
static chill.
“Where is he?”
“He is being brought
to HQ for debriefing. You will please send the relevant data on your
discovery by approved secure channels then wait for further
instructions.”
“There is one more
witness I need to speak to.”
“ You will please
send the relevant data on your discovery by approved secure channels
then await further instructions.” Dr Kinch then rang off.
…
I wasn’t going to
have that. I don’t think Corrigan or Moore would have particularly
understood. Why drop the case now? I had been run ragged by…
whoever it was running these events seemingly for my benefit. The
first thing I did was try to contact Agent Squires. I got nothing.
The number I had for him didn’t even ring out. Perhaps I’d been
taken in by him as well. It was as if we weren’t supposed to find
whatever it was we were supposed to find. What had we found? The
natives’ indifference surprised me.
It surprised Corrigan
too. Both she and Lieutenant Commander Moore dwelt on it at length.
They wanted to talk about it with me.
“This is supposed to
be first contact, right” said Corrigan as we were packing away on
the marina. “We’re supposed to be the Martians.”
“Perhaps they’ve
encountered humanity before” said Moore. He was a totally
transformed man with a completely different demeanour, almost
childlike. He looked to me for an answer.
“They haven’t, I
mean…
“What…?”
“I don’t know…”
I said. “There’s nothing on record” which was possibly untrue.
“I don’t know what’s going on…” which was more like it.
They wanted me to come
with them, regroup, get something to eat and presumably talk some
more. I managed to placate them by insisting we would go back first
thing in the morning. I wanted to get away. I had some data to send
and one last person to find.
…
I went back to the
hotel, Agent Squires hotel, formerly, and asked at the desk for
James. It turned out he wasn’t due on shift until after the
weekend. It made my job a bit harder but at least he wasn’t daft
enough to turn up to work. I decided he was probably on the campus
somewhere. It was as good a place as any to look, and I really did
look.
Though I steered clear
of Professor Thomas's office I still probably threw caution to the
wind. I asked around all the departments, no luck, especially with
IT. I managed to find a Facebook account that looked like him. I even
uploaded a fairly good picture, printed it off a few times at an
internet cafe: “have you seen this man?” Nobody had. Darkness
turned. It was getting futile. I after a while I had to scarper. I
was being followed by a security guard. It was a bust. The means to
investigate any of this was disappearing fast. There was nothing left
to do but return to the B&B and await further instructions.
…
I got in my car. It
would be a short drive back, or so I thought. Something had changed
in this quiet town. The roads were busy, clogged even. There had been
a strange atmosphere People were milling around the town centre. The
campus had been fairly rowdy with clots of students forming at odd
points, loud chatter, some drunkenness, some play-fighting, the smell
of weed sifting here and there. In town I saw men dressed as knights
galloping around (pretending to) on mops, zig-zagging through
traffic. I saw billboard adverts splattered with Celtic crosses. On
one corner a man dressed as an astronaut handed out leaflets to
passers-by. It was as if a weird festival was underway. Of course
there were red caps everywhere.
I got back to the B&B
eventually. The Landlady was waiting for me as before though this
time she seemed happy.
“Nos da, Professor
Burgin” she smiled benignly. For a second I wondered how she knew
my name, such was my confusion and paranoia. “You’re early
tonight.” She handed me my key. I looked behind her on the rack.
There were lots of keys remaining.
“I need to get some
rest” I said.
“Good luck with that”
said the Landlady. I was preoccupied and didn’t realise what she
might have meant until later.
…
I knew I wasn’t going
to get much sleep. I was fairly isolated, up in the attic room. I
thought it through. I expected someone to come for me. Too many folk
were disappearing, people who knew or knew something about what was
going on. What was going? I couldn’t help it. I secured my room. I
sat up in a chair, or tried to, clutching my crow bar and waited,
thoughts scanned through my mind like a montage. I kept trying to
reconcile the detective with the policeman with the fisherman and his
with then bring in the professor with the student with the Poppit
Sands Incident and the Frogman’s Ball and, of course, the village,
all into one connected narrative. It wouldn’t go. Something had to
be false. I’d take one element out, maybe two, but each element was
necessary as well. Someone wanted to reveal the village. Someone else
wanted it to be covered up.
With a parade of
thoughts inside, outside I realised there was a parade of noises.
Even with the skylight closed I realised I could hear shouts, screams
and other sounds, rattling and crashing. I checked my watch. It had
been a few hours since I settled into my room. I couldn’t resist. I
shifted my bed to climb up to the skylight and put my head out.
The night sky was
clear. It was cool. In front of my eyes I could see rooftops,
streetlights and the black bay. I could smell the sea again, an
instant, strong hit, and I could hear voices, shouting in a language
I couldn’t understand, sometimes ecstatic and sometimes fearful.
There were loud musical blips, the sound of waves crashing from
impossible directions. I heard tires screeching, boots trampling and
then a sharp, loud rattling sound. Was that? I ducked in fear. Was
that gunfire? Surely it was not. The sounds stopped for a moment.
Then they resumed. I could hear low, booming noises and what seemed
like bursts of light. I looked out again. The sounds came from far
out in the black bay, deep, dim lights flashed. I couldn’t tell if
this was happening above or below the horizon. Was it thunder or
something else?
The chaotic noise on
land eventually resumed. The sounds became long and monotonous. I got
back down off the bed, closed the window, resumed my old pose and
tried to stay awake.
…
I got a call a little
after seven in the morning. I came to, looked around the room and
picked up the phone:
“Hello…?” I was
still here. Everything seemed to be in its right place.
“Agent Burgin…”
“Dr Kinch, Sir…”
“Madam” said Dr
Kinch. There was a pause. Even she seemed to be taking in the
significance. “Agent Burgin” she resumed. “Please assemble your
team and return to the coordinates sent in the packet yesterday.
Please acquire visual contact of the target. Afterwards please report
your observations to me…” Pause. “Good luck, Agent Burgin.”
…
Back on the marina,
9am, I ‘assembled my team.’ Corrigan and Moore were bright and
enthusiastic. I asked them both, tentatively, about the ‘noises
last night.’
“What noises?”
asked Moore.
“You didn’t hear
any noises” I said, “last night, banging and crashing outside…”
“I don’t know about
Corrigan” said Moore, “but I slept really well.” SL Corrigan
shrugged as if to agree.
“Where did you stay?”
I asked.
“The hotel up the
road” said Corrigan, meaning the one where Agent Squires stayed.
“You look shattered…” she added. “Are you going to be OK?”
“I’m sure” I
said. “Come on, let’s set up.”
…
We went out to
yesterday’s spot, as close as we could manage. Corrigan dived first
again. I watched her down, took a brief look again at the horizon and
the sky. It was a beautiful, clear, sunny day, windy but sunny. I did
not hesitate this time. I was not afraid. I clamped down on my
breather and fell backwards with aplomb. I was an old hand at it now.
The water was still
murky, perhaps a little more so, like a dirty, cold lime-green soda.
We had to pick our way down carefully. Down we went. The floor seemed
deeper this time. It took more than a minute but we found the bottom.
There was nothing, no life, no mermaids, no village and no buildings,
just rubble in dark piles, craters and rays, clotted weeds, scraps of
grey cloth and rolling sand.
It all fell into place
down there, at the bottom of this grey world, this shattered world.
We followed together, Corrigan and I. We explored the wreckage until
we came to a pyramid of detritus, odd wreckage about twenty metres
high, consisting of helmets, wires, tanks, harpoons and swords and a
flag, a Celtic cross, gold on purple. We had not discovered anything
new at all. We had been scouts, unknowing, in the midst of a war, a
secret war.
After just over
three-quarters of an hour we made our way back to the boat. Climbing
back inside was difficult. We were both exhausted and shocked and
there was a sharp swell now. The wind had got up. Before either of us
could speak Moore pointed to something on the horizon. “We better
get back” he said.
“What…?” I was
confused until I saw a huge, dark cloudbank blooming quickly in the
west.
“A storm’s coming…”
Of course it was.
ENDS.
Picture from here.