The Watchers (17 page)

‘I heard something once, from some guests,’ Araceli interrupted. ‘About Brawdy. They were Americans who worked at the base. Two men and a woman. They only stayed with me for a week at a time, twice last year. They said they worked for some telecommunications company. Nice people, kept themselves to themselves. I liked them because they always telephoned to let me know what time they’d be back, so I could start dinner.’ She shook her head. ‘One night they phoned to say they were delayed, that they would be very late and not to wait up. But I did wait up. Tessa wouldn’t settle and the radio was all fuzzy again with static. There was a rumble in the sky. Every window in the hotel rattled, and I could see across the bay that something was happening at Brawdy – lights flashing.’

‘Your guests came back?’ I asked, and Araceli nodded slowly.

‘It must have been about two in the morning when I let them in. I expected them to go straight to bed, but the woman was sobbing. I got her a drink and asked if she was all right, but the men seemed to want to shut her up. I stole a moment with her on the stairs on her way up to bed, asked her what was wrong.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Her face was deathly pale,’ Araceli answered. ‘She whispered to me, “Nobody knows how close we came tonight . . . We almost destroyed the world.”’

I felt my face tighten. That was all I had needed to hear.

‘Robert!’ Randall called after me, but I was already pacing into the gloomy hall. I looked around and found myself face to face with a mannequin attired in a full suit of armour.

The telephone was on a rickety old table that was supposed to pass for a reception desk. As I dialled the number I still had for Frobisher, my eyes alighted on the room keys dangling from their hooks. One was missing. Room 12. Araceli had not mentioned that there were guests staying. In fact, hadn’t she said on the phone that she was closed for the season?

At that instant the line connected. ‘Robert! How are you? Are they all right?’

‘In a manner of speaking. Listen . . .’ I told him what I intended to do.

‘Security up there is tight. If you’re spotted at the main gate, they’ll arrest you.’

‘Then I won’t be spotted.’

I asked him what I wanted to know, then hung up and dialled the number for the admiral at his office in Whitehall. The message I left for his private secretary was short: ‘Robert is on his way to Brawdy.’ If the worst did happen, at least I had taken precautions.

Then I returned to the dining room, where Randall and Araceli were waiting in silence.

‘Frobisher says if we’re going to go, then now is the best chance we have of seeing something.’

‘I have one question,’ Araceli told me, ‘that’s all. And I want you to answer honestly.’

‘All right.’

‘Is there anything else? Anything you haven’t told us?’

She waited. So did Randall. I could feel his gaze on me. I didn’t know whether I could trust either of them – I pretty much knew I couldn’t trust my grandfather – but some of my mother’s passion surfaced then and compelled me to admit what I had learned back in London. As long as they told no one, it wasn’t going to jeopardize the admiral’s mission, and at this point I had no idea what lay ahead.

‘Nuclear weapons?’ I heard Araceli draw breath. ‘Oh, dear God.’

‘You need to get the hell away from this village,’ Randall said. ‘Both of you! You’re fools if you stay.’

‘Let’s go.’

– 22 –

The road was wide and smooth – a new road alongside a wide stretch of fields on one side and St Brides Bay on the other. A road sign flashed by:
BRAWDY 3 MILES
. It had long grown dark, and that suited me just fine. What was it Dad used to say? That the most interesting things on military bases always happened at night.

‘What do you honestly hope to see?’ Randall asked.

‘Maybe nothing. Maybe something.’

He frowned. ‘You’re as arrogant as your father.’

I pressed down on the accelerator, and the speedometer needle crept towards sixty. On the car radio a news reporter was announcing exactly what I hadn’t wanted to hear.

‘The Pembrokeshire cliffs nearest Stack Rocks Fort. Bleak and unforgiving and long associated with legends of witchcraft, sorcery and Celtic curses. And now, following a decision by the village’s parish council to close its primary school, where a flying saucer allegedly landed last week, the people of the Havens are collectively turning their eyes to the heavens in a group sky watch for “the sky spectres” that have haunted their village. The sky watch is to be led by Headmaster Howell Cooper right here at Giant’s Point in Little Haven, this Tuesday night, coinciding with the most anticipated event in astronomy this year – the lunar eclipse.’

I looked over at Randall, who was frowning into the windshield.

‘From eight o’clock this Tuesday evening observers could be treated to the rare sight of a blood moon, a rare celestial event in which light from the sun, having passed through the earth’s atmosphere, causes the moon to take on a red, or blood-like appearance.

‘There is something very . . . unsettling about this part of Pembrokeshire,’ the journalist continued. You could hear the wind snapping around him. ‘These wild and mysterious cliffs were a favourite destination of the infamous occultist Aleister Crowley. It’s here that many people have reported strange lights in the sky. And it was near here that an English couple were brutally murdered.

‘Local man Randall Llewellyn Pritchard has warned against the sky watch, believing that the strange sounds and sights in the Havens are dangerous and should be left alone.’ A pause. ‘I must confess, standing on this lonely spot looking out over the sea, I am beginning to wonder myself—’

‘Turn that bloody thing off.’

We sat in silence for most of the journey, the way people do when they have argued and neither quite knows how to begin the conversation again. It was a silence that spanned ten long years. I was thinking about the hotelier’s extraordinary story.

‘You trust Araceli?’ I asked.

‘Why would she lie?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to work out. Her life does seem quite empty,’ I said carefully. ‘Uneventful. Some might say boring. The same is true of the Havens. These sightings bring thrills, excitement.’

Randall was still frowning, but at me now. ‘You think she’s doing it for attention? You believe the giant silver figures she saw were local pranksters, dressed up?’

‘What do you think is affecting Tessa?’

Randall was silent.

He definitely knew more than he was willing to say. ‘How much have you told Araceli about your –’ I paused ‘– interests?’ I asked.

‘You think
I’m
responsible for her beliefs?’ He sounded offended. ‘You think I’ve led the witness?’

Yes
, I wanted to shout. Instead I said, ‘We crave patterns and reasons and answers, no matter how badly they rebel against our logic. Araceli is searching.’ I paused. ‘Perhaps you’ve been feeding her the wrong answers?’

He said nothing. Had I gone too far? Keeping my gaze on the road, I asked another question: ‘How did you do it?’

No answer.

‘How did you predict the sightings?’

No reply.

‘I’m waiting.’

‘Do not talk to me about waiting.’ His tone was bitterly hollow.

Remembering the admiral’s suspicions, I tried again. ‘Some people think the Americans are testing secret aircraft in the area, that the Russians are concerned. Taking action. You know they have spies all over the country, just waiting and—’

He gave me a look so sharp it would cut diamonds. ‘You think I’m a spy?’ He laughed doubtfully. ‘Well, well, I must have gone up in your estimation.’

Maybe he was telling the truth. But I couldn’t afford to rely on him. Partly because by then my neurosis was running on autopilot, but mostly because I hadn’t forgotten about the nuclear weapons under wraps nearby and how much was at stake. Even if I determined what was behind the Happenings there was no guarantee I would avert the international incident the admiral had said was hanging over the Havens like a shadow.

In the distance waves crashed against the cliffs. Above the sky bore down on us, heavy and black. I decided to probe a little further.

‘It’s possible that the lights people have seen are due to ships at sea,’ I said.

‘Possible.’

‘And the weather we’ve been having, these storms? Strange lightning, perhaps?’

‘Perhaps . . .’

‘And as for the school, the headmaster’s a believer. The children are impressionable. He’s clearly feeding them.’

‘Clearly.’ He glared at me to reinforce his sarcasm. He shook his head. ‘Robert, what makes you so determined not to believe?’

I remembered all the crap about giants in the ground that he had poured into my ears when I was a boy. Warnings like that can affect a youngster in the wrong way. They can make you sceptical, make you always demand proof. ‘What makes
you
so certain?’

He straightened against the passenger seat. ‘I’ve investigated these sightings in all parts of the country and in many parts of the world. Did you know that in France and Spain there are seventy-two caves with drawings from 13,000
BC
showing a variety of oval and disc-shaped objects? Granite carvings in a mountain cave in China’s Hunan Province showing helmeted humanoids with large torsos standing upon cylindrical-shaped objects in the sky?’

I didn’t know this. Even if true, I didn’t see what it proved.

‘The only UFOs that people are seeing are secret military aircraft,’ I said with confidence. ‘And I’ll prove it. Tonight.’

We were a short distance inshore now. Up ahead was the turning to the quarry from which the megalithic builders of Stonehenge had taken sandstone blocks to replace the many
Carn Alw
stones lost during transportation from the Preseli Mountains to Stonehenge.

‘All these years,’ Randall said, his voice low, ‘I thought I might have heard
something
. I waited. When your graduation came, I thought I might have received an invitation, or . . . something. Perhaps a letter . . .’

I found these words surprising from a man I had thought incapable of emotion. Except towards animals of course. Jasper’s mutilation was the only time I had ever seen him cry. Is that why he had become a recluse? To avoid having to show concern for people?

‘Did you hear what I said, Robert?’

I evaded his question by pulling over. ‘I need to check which way we’re going.’

‘But you already know the way!’

‘Just let me check the map, all right?’

I had lost my temper. Randall looked bemused. He lowered his voice. ‘Robert, the base doesn’t appear on any maps.’

I cut the engine. For a moment there was no sound. Then from above came the squall of a seagull.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

I closed my eyes. ‘I used to come here with Mum,’ I said distantly, feeling Randall watching me. ‘Do you ever think about them?’

A long pause. ‘There isn’t a day when I don’t think about your mother.’

‘What about Dad? Didn’t he matter?’

Randall seemed not to hear me; he just said, ‘Your mother didn’t deserve what happened the night of the flood. Neither did you.’

‘It wasn’t Dad’s fault.’

‘Oh, you think so?’

A ghost memory of my parents surfaced, the two of them arguing on the morning my mother went to the protests at Croughton, my father shouting at her not to go.
You’re putting me in an impossible situation!
Dad had yelled.

Two weeks later – the night of the Great Flood – they were dead.

‘Listen, if you know something, then why don’t you just
tell
me,’ I said. ‘What were they doing at the farm that night? On the coastal path?’

His face grew serious again. ‘Your mother made him take her out.’

‘But why?’

‘She’d grown sick of his lies.’

‘What lies? Jesus! What are you talking about?’

No answer.

‘This is important, Goddamn it. This is who I am!’

‘And who is that exactly, boy? Obsessive and paranoid, these are weaknesses that leave you vulnerable.’

‘Vulnerable to what?’

‘You must trust me. You must put on the whole armour of God to stand against the devil. There are certain things about your past and yourself it is better not to know.’

‘Like my parents and how they died?’

‘Yes.’

My fear turned to anger. ‘You’re a sad little man,’ I said. ‘Does your superior knowledge make you feel significant, powerful? You’ve made yourself an expert, preaching warnings to a paranoid village.’

‘Because I knew what would happen.’

‘If you knew, why didn’t you stop it?’

‘I tried!’

‘Then explain it to me!’

He bit his lip. ‘Wait, you think
I’m
doing this?’ he said suddenly, studying my face.

‘You do seem to know a lot about them!’ I spat back.

Randall looked at me for a long moment. There was something powerful in that silence. Gripping. Eventually, he said, ‘Let’s go. Do what you came to do.’

The turning to the base was on a high coastal road that led away from the village of Brawdy, and a high metal fence with a sign stating that photography was prohibited signalled that we had arrived at our destination.

The car headlights picked out another sign:

WARNING

THIS IS A RESTRICTED MILITARY INSTALLATION

NO TRESPASSING

USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED

I killed the ignition, slammed the car door and headed into the darkness.