Day of Deliverance Page 3

  “No.”

  Jack rolled his eyes.

  “All I can say is it’s a bit weird that this guy’s up here and maybe we shouldn’t hang around too long. He might come back. I don’t want to bump into some hobo living here all on his own who reads Shakespeare and Maths books for fun…”

  “So who sent the text – do you think it was the guy who’s been hanging out here?”

  “It’s all too creepy. I think we should go.”

  They turned to leave. As they did so, they noticed an envelope pinned to the inside of the wooden cabin door. Jack’s heart leaped when he saw what was written on it. It was in an italic scrawl and read simply: ‘Jack Christie’.

  Jack pulled the envelope down and ripped it open. Inside was a letter:

  Jack,

  I had hoped to be able to meet you in person and have time for a proper talk. However, I fear that VIGIL may soon learn of my location and therefore I have had to leave in haste. This is a sad time for me. You already know about my exile from my former colleagues in VIGIL. It grieves me that, because of this, I have not been able to see you or your mother over the past nine years. But now, I also find myself in disagreement with my friend Pendelshape and the Revisionist team. We were once so unanimous in our opposition to VIGIL. But now…

  Some months ago we started work on a new timeline simulation – one that aims to bring about great good for humanity. However, I could not accept further development of this simulation before I knew that you could be safely isolated from VIGIL and brought over to our side. Pendelshape and my Revisionist colleagues have become frustrated by my attitude, to say the least. We have argued and now, fearing their retribution, I have left them. Furthermore, with your safety in mind, I have, as of today, taken the unprecedented step of warning VIGIL of what I know of Pendelshape’s plans. I now find myself alone in the world – a fugitive.

  I never wanted to put you in this position or to expose you to all you have experienced. However, I live in hope that we can one day meet and that you will join me in my mission.

  Dad

  Jack stared at the letter in stunned silence. It all came together in his head – the strange books in the tower… the man on the track…

  “Your dad… he’s been here?” Angus said, incredulously.

  “Yeah. And I think that was the guy we nearly ran down. I thought I sort of vaguely recognised him. He was running away…”

  “From what?”

  “From just about everyone, I think.”

  Suddenly, in the distance they heard a faint mechanical whirring. Jack and Angus peered out from the front of the fire tower in the direction of the noise.

  “And probably from that thing…”

  The whirring rapidly crescendoed into a pounding whup, whup, whup as, below them, a large helicopter skimmed the tops of the trees and headed up towards the fire tower. In seconds, the helicopter was hovering right above them. The noise was deafening and it shook the wooden structure of the tower to its foundations. The pilot circled once before descending, the thrashing rotor blades throwing up a maelstrom of dust and debris. Finally, it touched down on a flat patch of ground near the tower and the pilot cut the engine. Jack and Angus opened the door of the cabin. Speeding along the forest track they could see three Land Rovers driving in convoy. As the noise from the helicopter engine subsided and the Land Rovers pulled up near the tower, Jack could hear loud barking from the back of the vehicles. Dogs.

  Two figures stepped down from the helicopter. They crouched low to avoid the rotor blades that were still spinning at a dizzying speed. One was a tall man in his forties with fine features. He had an air of distinction and authority about him. It was Councillor Inchquin. The Councillor was Chairman of VIGIL and oversaw all its operations. Next to him was another tall figure – slimmer than Inchquin with a bald head fringed with thinning wisps of grey hair. By day he was Soonhope High’s headmaster – the Rector – and he was still wearing his trademark black gown. The Rector was VIGIL’s second in command.

  Mr Belstaff and Mr Johnstone, the school games teachers, who also formed part of VIGIL’s security and response team, stepped from the leading Land Rover. All members of VIGIL had day jobs that belied their second life as key members of the VIGIL network. The four men converged on Jack and Angus who stood nervously at the bottom of the fire tower.

  “Is he in there?” the Rector said, aggression in his voice.

  “He’s gone.” Jack replied.

  “Damn.” Inchquin hissed. “No sign at all?”

  “He left this letter.” Jack handed the letter they had found inside to the Rector who scanned it quickly.

  “Well – it confirms the message we received earlier,” the Rector said. “You saw nothing else?”

  Jack was torn. The dogs cooped up in the Land Rovers were in a frenzy. Was Jack really going to admit that he and Angus had nearly run down someone they thought to be his father, only for VIGIL to release a pack of hounds on him in some brutal manhunt?

  The thought had not even crossed Angus’s mind. “We think we might have seen him.” He nodded down the hill. “But I don’t think you’ll find him now.”

  Inchquin looked at Jack sympathetically. “Sorry, Jack – we have to try. He’s too important just to let go.” He turned towards Belstaff and Johnstone. “Take the other men and the dogs – see if you can track him down. He might not have got far. Hurry.”

  “What’s going on, Sir, how did you know he would be here?” Jack said, “… and… what does the letter from Dad mean?”

  “We intercepted your mobile message. And then the tracker alarm indicated you were exiting the Soonhope safe zone. Sorry, Jack – you know we can’t take any chances.” The Rector waved the letter in the air. “And this letter basically means trouble. We will explain back at HQ.” He nodded at the helicopter. “You need to come with us. We have very little time.”

  “Hey – what about my bike?” Angus said.

  “The men will take care of it. I can assure you we have much more important business to attend to. Now, let’s go.”

  *

  The sun was in the west and hanging low in the sky. Angus and Jack peered from the helicopter as it swooped in above Soonhope High’s extensive playing fields. Jack was pretty sure no one had arrived at school in quite such style before. Pity there was nobody there to see it. They had a bird’s-eye view of the austere Victorian school building which sat in secluded grounds some way out of the town. Until ten years ago it had been empty. It was then redeveloped by an endowment from a charitable trust, which they now knew, of course, had been a front for VIGIL. Since its purchase, the building had spawned a number of modern appendages around its Victorian core: the Science block and the gym and also the theatre, of course, where Jack would be appearing in Hamlet in two weeks’ time. It all seemed very normal. Just like all the other schools in the Borders, against which Angus regularly played rugby. There was one difference. Soonhope High housed the most advanced technology known to man: a working Taurus. A time machine. As a result, the site had tighter security than a US nuclear missile base. But it was completely unobtrusive. And that was the idea. Only a select few knew of the astonishing secret within the school walls.

  The helicopter touched down and Jack, Angus, the Rector and Inchquin climbed out.

  “Keep your heads down,” warned the Rector.

  In the distance, two familiar figures stood waiting to welcome them – their old friends, Tony Smith and Gordon MacFarlane. They waited at one of the school’s side entrances. Tony took up almost the entire doorway. Gordon stood beside him. He was shorter but still built like a tank. Officially, they were the school janitors. But Jack and Angus had learned their true identity six months before. Along with Belstaff and Johnstone, they were part of VIGIL’s elite security squad.

  “Gentlemen, please escort these two through Entrance B to the Situation Room. We will join you shortly.”

  “An escort? Good.” Angus replied. “You two should have
blue flashing lights on your heads.”

  “That’s funny, Mr Jud. Look,” Gordon clutched his stomach with both hands, “I’m in stitches.”

  The Rector scowled. “Gentlemen, I would advise less levity. We have an extremely serious situation here. Do I make myself clear?”

  Gordon looked at his toes, sheepishly. “Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir.”

  Jack and Angus followed Tony and Gordon into the old Victorian part of the school.

  “Right, here we are,” Tony announced.

  They had reached a store cupboard halfway along one of the main corridors and Tony proceeded to take a large set of keys from his belt, jangling them loudly as he searched for the right one.

  “Isn’t that a bit low tech for VIGIL?”

  “Now, son,” Tony replied in a hushed voice, “you know better than to mention that name in an open corridor, even if no one else is here. Anyway, it’s all part of our image. You’re not supposed to see all the high-tech stuff.”

  Tony located the key, inserted it into the lock and opened the door. The cupboard smelled of, well… school. That stale, dusty smell of textbooks, old bits of computer equipment and stationery. Tony reached inside his pocket and pulled out a thin piece of plastic, a bit like a pocket calculator. He gently pressed a button on the device and the cupboard door closed automatically.

  “That looks more like it,” Angus said, knowingly.

  “I think this procedure will be familiar to you all. Step to the back, please,” Tony said, pressing the device in his hand a second time. Without warning, an aperture formed in the floor. Soon the entrance had opened completely and a steep spiral staircase appeared, leading downwards. It was lit by a ghostly blue glow, just bright enough to make out the position of the steps.

  “Okay – all clear – on you go.”

  One by one, they stepped onto the spiral staircase. The steps began to descend automatically. As they dropped beneath floor level, the aperture above them closed silently and after a couple of minutes they came to a gentle halt. Ahead of them was a door. Tony pressed the device again and it opened onto a short metal-clad corridor illuminated by the same dim blue light. At the end of the corridor was a circular door like the entrance to a bank vault. It had five letters etched on it: ‘V I G I L’.

  The door opened without a sound, revealing a tubular passageway that curved off symmetrically both to the left and to the right. Jack noticed that there were no markings on the passage walls – no rivets, no seams – it was perfectly smooth.

  “Round to your left, please,” Tony said. They followed obediently and as they walked, the passageway bent away from the entrance, which resealed itself silently behind them. They had only taken twenty or thirty paces when Jack noticed a strange marking on the wall at about head height. It appeared like the outline of a figure – a stylised hominid figure of some sort. There was something other-worldly about it. Jack stopped and turned to Tony.

  “What does that symbol mean, Mr Smith?”

  Tony approached the figure on the wall. He turned to Gordon. “Have you seen this, MacFarlane?” he said apprehensively.

  Gordon moved closer and inspected the strange marking, running his fingers tentatively over it. “Mmmm – the latest experiments must be more advanced than we thought.”

  Tony turned back to Jack and Angus. “VIGIL have been using their wormhole technology to experiment on new applications…”

  The boys’ eyes widened.

  “Yes – the figure on the door is indeed a symbol…”

  “The alien symbol,” Gordon added reverentially.

  “Signifying a portal to a whole new universe.”

  Angus’s eyes were on sticks, “You mean… space travel?”

  Tony put them out of their misery, “No, you plonker, that’s the Gents toilet – and the Ladies is opposite – look. Do either of you need to go?”

  Gordon laughed raucously and the boys shuffled on their feet self-consciously.

  “We’re fine, thanks.”

  The party moved on, Tony and Gordon buoyed by their joke at the boys’ expense.

  Finally Tony announced, “Right, here we are.”

  The passageway had continued to curve round and they had reached a point where the grooving on the wall indicated another doorway. Jack reckoned that if they continued on they would eventually arrive back at the point where they had originally entered the underground complex. Essentially, they were in a giant subterranean doughnut from which all the various VIGIL control rooms and annexes could be accessed.

  Jack read the lettering on the door:

  ‘Situation Room’.

  He felt his heartbeat tick up a notch. This was it.

  Tony pressed the device in his hand and the door slid open.

  *

  On each wall of the large underground room there were screens – some showed maps, some complex-looking historical timelines and others just row upon row of computer programming language that Jack could not even begin to understand. Some of the VIGIL team were already seated around a large central board table. They looked like a war council. Others manned computer terminals, or scientific equipment, at pods in separate areas of the room.

  Jack spotted a number of familiar faces: Miss Beattie, their English teacher, was involved in an animated conversation with, of all people, Gino Turinelli, from the café in the High Street. Jim De Raillar, who ran the mountain bike shop two doors down from Gino’s, was also there and, finally, Jack’s mother, Carole, was sitting at one of the computer terminals. In fact, as Jack looked around, he recognised everyone. They all either worked at the school or in the local village of Soonhope. Since their inauguration into VIGIL, Jack had learned that VIGIL’s network was quite pervasive. It made sense. Clearly, you would need a lot of different skills to create and maintain a working time machine – especially if you ever happened to need to use it. Each member of VIGIL had their everyday persona: teacher, shopkeeper, janitor and so on. Then they had their other, secret, role in the VIGIL organisation – scientist, analyst, technician or security guard. For example, Jack had learned that Miss Beattie was not only an expert on Shakespeare, but also had a first class degree from Cambridge and had done stints at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the European Organisation for Nuclear Research – CERN. Gino – actually Professor Turinelli – was a computer expert, and Jim De Raillar and Jack’s mother were analysts.

  *

  Just then, the Rector and Inchquin came into the room through a separate entrance. Soon a tense discussion was under way, facilitated by Inchquin who sat gravely at the head of the table.

  “Jim, can you give us an update on the analysis of the message Tom Christie sent to us a couple of hours ago, please?”

  “Certainly. To recap, the message confirms that Christie and Dr Pendelshape have fallen out. It also explains that following their failure to stop the First World War they started to work on a new timeline simulation some months ago…”

  “What period does the simulation focus on?”

  “Late Elizabethan.”

  “Interesting…” Theo Joplin, the historical analyst, interjected, and the Rector flashed him an angry glance for interrupting.

  Jim De Raillar ignored the comment and continued. “Anyway, it appears that the Revisionist team have refined the computer simulation software so they can make much more precise recreations of the interventions they plan to make in history, and the potential consequences of the action. Christie’s message referred to it as ‘surgical’ historical modelling. It seems that the Revisionist team were very excited about these advances… but then Christie got nervous when Pendelshape started to talk in terms of progressing the simulation to the implementation phase – an actual intervention in history. Pendelshape wanted to target the late sixteenth century using their replica Taurus. Of course, it was clear from the message that Christie’s greatest concern is for Jack’s safety. He does not want the Revisionists to do this…” De Raillar looked at Inchquin and then at Car
ole and Jack uneasily. There was an edgy silence in the room.

  “Carry on.”

  “Well, it appears that Pendelshape and the rest of the Revisionists do not share these concerns and it looks like they have decided to go it alone. Christie felt that the Revisionists had moved against him and he decided to leave them some weeks ago. Concerned that they would quickly refine the simulation and we might think him responsible, he took the unprecedented step of sending us a warning message today – and then contacting Jack directly by phone. It was a big step to take. Christie knows he is risking his life – betraying his own team in such a way. He is now isolated from both VIGIL and the Revisionists.”

  Inchquin arched his fingers in front of him, deep in thought. “So – Pendelshape has usurped Tom Christie as the leader of the Revisionists. He has a plan to make some intervention in history – in the sixteenth century. Okay, two things to check. First, Carole, what is the latest forecast on time signal availability?”

  Carole looked up from her terminal. “We have had no time signal availability for a number of weeks now, but as you are aware, we are forecasting the availability of carrier strength time travel signals over the next forty-eight hours. Of course, forecasts are not accurate – in terms of timing, duration or strength.”

  “Time signal forecasting – it’s worse than the weather forecast…” Joplin moaned.

  “Shut up, Theo, you’re not helping,” the Rector said. “This is why Christie has chosen to contact us now. The Revisionists will also know that we are entering a period of potential time signal availability… so Christie must think they will use this opportunity to carry out their plan.” He paused. “Do we have any details on the actual intervention in history that they are planning?”

  “No. Apparently when Christie left them, there were a number of open scenarios still being analysed, but they were not complete. He had no final detailed plans.”