The Watchers (18 page)

– 23 –

RAF Brawdy, St Davids, Pembrokeshire

Five minutes later I was on the single-track dirt road that led to Brawdy’s main gate. Alone. Randall had refused to leave the car. The sky was the deepest shade of purple and the stars were sparkling. Suns far distant, light years away, but they had never looked so close as they did to me at that moment out in west Wales.

I focused on the brightest point of light and visualized my mother’s face. I’d forgotten about Ravenstone Farm and its mysteries and spent three exhausting years in Parliament fighting her war. Why? It wasn’t as if I was obligated. Yet I felt obligated. I felt guilty. Why should I feel guilty? Why?

Unless
, I reasoned,
there really is more to all this that I don’t remember
. The morning of the day they died Mum and Dad hadn’t just argued about his military work. They had argued about me.

I walked steadily, straining into the winter darkness and keeping to the edge of the road. Glancing at my watch, I saw it was almost ten o’clock. Only half an hour before Frobisher said things usually got interesting out here.

I was chilled to the marrow as I approached the base perimeter fence. I cursed myself for not buying a warmer jacket, then remembered with dismay that I couldn’t really afford one now anyway. Through the fence, across the flat and barren land, I could see the shapes of the base – huts, hangars and towers arranged in rows around the enormous runway.

The base was sleeping. But I could remember it from childhood: the way the ground rumbled under the roar of the jets coming into land, the airmen swarming onto the runway. And Mum, tight-lipped, increasingly unhappy, pleading with Dad. Not pleading. Begging.

I groped for my torch, then thought better of it.

I looked up into the inky Welsh sky. No sign of any aircraft activity. I remembered Frobisher’s warning:
The airspace above Brawdy has been completely restricted since the Americans moved in. No one’s allowed near.

A figure in uniform emerged from the guardhouse.

I dived for the ground and lay face down in a ditch by the roadside, twigs and stones scratching my face. After what seemed like an eternity, I dared to raise my head. The soldier was back in the guardhouse.

I had to get past. I got to my feet and, staying close to the perimeter fence, walked quickly to the end of the road, so that I was now to the left of the guardhouse and outside its direct line of sight. Straight ahead was a narrow road, and at the end of that another security post, which guarded the entrance to the US facility. Crouching in the shadows, I scanned the contours of the facility: the huge lookout tower rising from the ground, a two-storey building crowned with rotating radar dishes. I was close enough now. I waited, tense but excited. Far away, on the opposite side of the fence, I heard men’s voices. The sound of something heavy rolling back.

The control tower blinked, and the runway lights flashed on. They were too bright for me to see anything through the glare, but soon, I was sure, would come the sound of thrumming engines or beating propellers.

Nothing.

Then the runway lights blinked out and I was left in near-total darkness. Frobisher had been telling me the truth; something was amiss here, something probably connected with the nuclear warheads hidden on base.

I turned to find a better vantage point. And froze. There was a humming in the air. The same sensation I had encountered on the road into Broad Haven when it had rained black fish. I saw a light. Brilliant orange, rising slowly from the ground. Higher and higher it went. Then stopped. And hung there in the sky over the base, like a bulb suspended from an invisible cord.

No sound of any engines, just a low vibration.

It’s just not possible
.

It then accelerated so fast that within a second it had travelled right across the sky and was hanging over St Brides Bay.

Behind me I heard voices just as another light appeared, this one not from below but above. It swooped down out of the clouds like a fiery falcon – circled, rose and dived. The other light, emitting sparkles like rays from a diamond, joined it, and together they revolved swiftly in an aerial waltz, turning sharply, skimming and darting, reversing course. A dazzling display. No aircraft could perform such manoeuvres – no
known
aircraft. The G forces must have been astonishing, and even if these were state-of-the-art secret aircraft, I struggled to see how any human pilot could survive them.

Suddenly the lights pulled apart and plunged so rapidly I braced myself for an explosion.

But they vanished.

I caught my breath, too stunned to move.
Did I actually see that?

‘Hey, you!’

I spun round. Two men were running at me. Soldiers.

– 24 –

I ran. Tripped and stumbled and splashed through ditches.

Suddenly, about two yards to my left, an arm appeared from out of the fence and beckoned urgently. ‘Come with me,’ a voice said. ‘Quickly!’

The arm disappeared back through the fence and I realized there was an opening here. I scraped through, feeling the soggy ground beneath my feet on the opposite side, and allowed the stranger to help me. He took my arm and guided me through the darkness onto firmer territory.

‘Now for God’s sake, run!’ he said. ‘This way.’

My heart was slamming as I struggled through the field and came to another fence. Barbed wire. He pulled up a section and crawled under. I stood peering at him as he glanced wildly about. He was wearing jeans, clumpy trainers and an ill-fitting black leather jacket that had known better days. I saw now he was young, much younger than me.

I looked back and thought I could see the distant lights of the runway, deep inside the base. Some secret aircraft preparing to take off, maybe? And then I heard the soldiers’ voices.

‘Is that yours?’ said my rescuer, but I was busy squeezing under the fence, and only when I was standing at the edge of the road, catching my breath, did I see what the lad was looking at, some twenty yards away.

‘Yes, my car.’

The passenger-side door was opening, and a hunched form in a long coat was climbing out. Randall.

‘Let’s go!’ I shouted and pushed him back inside.

Minutes later the three of us were speeding away along the coastal road.

‘You saw them, didn’t you?’ I was glaring into the rear-view mirror at the teenager in the back seat. ‘Tell me you saw them.’

He grinned. ‘Sure. Why else do you think I was out there?’

‘Saw what?’ Randall wanted to know.

‘You’re kidding me!’ I said, exasperated. ‘How could you
not
have seen them?’

‘Robert, who the hell is this?’

‘Martin Marshall,’ came the response. ‘Keep driving!’

I was feeling light-headed, would rather have pulled over, but I accelerated harder, my heart still beating furiously at the thought of us being pursued. Maybe arrested.

‘Do you live in the Havens, boy?’

‘No,’ Martin answered, still catching his breath. ‘But my uncle does.’ He grinned at me, looking relieved now. ‘I thought you were a bloody soldier. You should have seen your face.’ He laughed.

He actually thought this was funny!

‘What were you doing out there? At the base?’

‘You been drinking, boy?’ Grandfather interrupted.

Martin shook his head.

‘Liar! I can smell it on you.’

‘One pint,’ he admitted. ‘All right, two. But that doesn’t change what we saw.’ The lightness in his voice faltered.

I glanced across at Randall and in a strained voice said, ‘Probably . . . some sort of . . . state-of-the-art aircraft. Unmanned. It had to be . . .’

‘Welcome to the Holy Grail for conspiracy theorists,’ Martin said from the back. ‘They’ve been flying spy planes in and out of here for eight years. But that’s not what we saw.’

Randall didn’t wait to hear the rest. ‘Pull over!’

As I did, my memory was replaying the scene: the soldiers’ voices, the sound of something rolling back, the runway lights flashing on, the globe of light swooping and dancing with its partner, the speed, the way they had
vanished
 . . .
It had been an incredible sight. Otherworldly. Could I really have seen a . . .

‘UFO,’ Randall said grittily as we got out of the car. ‘It was flying and you couldn’t identify it.’

‘That doesn’t make it an alien spacecraft.’

‘I didn’t say it did,’ he replied irritably. ‘Evasive motion ability, indicating the possibility of being manually operated, or by electronic or remote control; extreme manoeuvrability and ability to hover; the ability to disappear at high speed or through complete disintegration. All features referenced in the CIA’s
Air Intelligence Guide for Flying Saucer Aircraft
.’

‘How the hell do you know all this?’ I asked, just as he averted his gaze.

An odd dark look had fallen onto Randall’s face that made me almost as curious as it did nervous. My grandfather was beginning to sound like an expert or obsessed or both.

I wondered exactly how much he
did
know. Which was an unsettling question.

Martin Marshall, who had gone to relieve himself behind a nearby wall, emerged and came to join us. I had parked the car and it occurred to me then that I hadn’t been here since I was a child. It was a dramatic location on the eastern cliffs of St Brides Bay, with sand dunes on all sides that eventually merged with the beach. In the distance, behind the castle, were woods. They made me think of the woods behind the Haven Hotel. Something bad had happened in those woods once. The wind through the trees made wheezing noises that hinted at it, but I could only remember snatches of a conversation with my father; it had involved something to do with a lighthouse.

Somewhere . . . We went somewhere . . .

‘Come closer,’ Randall said, peering carefully at Martin.

I studied our companion in the poor light and briefly registered a lean face and fair hair.

‘Closer.’

Randall’s leathery face was immobile as he kept the young man fixed in his gaze, and then he abruptly extended an open hand in my direction and said, ‘Torch.’

Reluctantly I fished it from my pocket and dropped it into his hand. I didn’t want to be here. The air was sticky and heavy with the scent of rot and wet branches and leaves. A fine spray was blowing in off the sea and I was damp and cold. My socks and trouser legs were wet and I was covered in mud.

‘Your face?’ said Randall in a concerned voice, and now, as the harsh torchlight flickered across Martin’s expression, I saw with some alarm that the boy’s eyes were inflamed and swollen almost shut. There were blisters on his face and head. And just above his right ear a small patch of hair was missing.

‘What the hell happened to you?’ I blurted out.

He looked at me. ‘Saw the same as you, that’s all.’

The teenager turned and produced a battered box of cigarettes from inside his leather jacket. There was the scratch of a match as he crouched down behind a bank of sand, knees close to his chin.

‘When you’re a child,’ he began when his cigarette had burned halfway to the filter, ‘you hear stories about monsters in the night, and you forget them. You’ve heard of the bogeyman? Well, I’ve met him.’ He hesitated and looked up at me. ‘Those children at the school are telling the truth. What they saw wasn’t from this planet. I know it.’

And so, in the shadow of a ruined castle, we heard Martin Marshall’s story. It began, as did so many stories of the area, with a strange light in the sky, and by the time he was done I could feel a worm of fear twisting in my gut.

– 25 –

In November – four months earlier – Martin was with his girlfriend in his car, parked in a lay-by that flanked the road leading to RAF Brawdy. The pair argued. Though Martin didn’t tell us what about, I had a strong sense from the way he averted his eyes guiltily that it had something to do with sex. Perhaps he’d gone further than she was willing, perhaps he’d raised his voice when she refused him, but whatever the reason for her getting out of the car and striding off into the night, Martin was left alone with only the radio for company.

‘I sat there for a while listening to Johnny Rotten,’ he told us. ‘Had a cigarette, you know, to calm myself down.’

But he didn’t stay calm for long. Something disturbed him. It showed its presence firstly though distorting the radio signal, grinding it into a grainy static, and then through pulsing vibrations that made the hairs on his arm prick up.

Martin told us that when he opened the car door and looked about him, he wasn’t afraid. Just interested. He certainly didn’t believe in ghosts. As the dark trees creaked around him, he began to wonder if his girlfriend was OK. Would she find her way home all right? These were the questions, he told us, that drew him back towards the car. He got in and drove off.

‘I stopped next to a gate overlooking the fields, near the spot where I found you tonight. I got out and leaned on the gate to see the lights of the base. That was when I realized there was something blocking my view.’

‘You mean,’ Randall said, ‘that something was on the ground in the field, obstructing your view?’

‘Exactly. Well, I lit a cigarette and watched for a few minutes.’

‘Can you describe it?’ Randall asked. ‘What shape was it?’

‘Well, it was like a dome,’ Martin said slowly. ‘I could just see the top of it on the horizon, and it had a faint light around the outside.’

‘Around the periphery – the edge?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘It must have been rather large.’

He nodded. ‘It took up a good bit of the field, like a small house.’

‘I see. So you were leaning against the gate and watching this thing. Then what?’

‘I heard a branch snap. That was when I realized I wasn’t alone.’ Those last three words came out in slow, measured lengths. ‘I didn’t see it at first. I heard it. Something in the bushes behind me, rustling. It was some sort of being . . . A silver figure.’

‘A soldier?’ I ventured.

Martin shook his head firmly. ‘It was standing behind the gate. So bloody tall. Not human, more . . . humanoid.’

Humanoid. That word made me think of old horror films and the aliens from
Star Trek
.

‘This figure, what was it wearing?’

He shrugged. ‘Hard to say. Something glittery, you know? And I could sort of see through it.’

Randall’s mouth had curled down into a grimace. ‘What then?’

‘My feet had turned to concrete boots,’ he answered. ‘I just stood there, staring at this thing, and it looked back at me. No, I can’t really say it was looking, because there weren’t any eyes, you know?’

‘I don’t,’ I said.

‘Well, it was like it had a helmet. Square. And there was this thing in the mouth, like divers have. Breathing apparatus.’

The boy’s face was taut, dead white, and his hand was trembling. That might have been from the cold but I didn’t think so.

There are giants, Robert. Giants in the ground.

When Selina and I had first discussed the Broad Haven Triangle I had laughed and had expected her to laugh with me. But I didn’t feel like laughing now. There were just so many stories, surely they couldn’t all be lies?

‘What happened then, Martin?’ I asked.

‘It came nearer, right up to me, and I swung a punch.’

‘That was rather brave,’ Randall said.

‘Would have hit it too, only it just sort of blinked out. Disappeared! And appeared next to the fence that surrounds the secret American base. And then . . .’ He shook his head. ‘I know how this is going to sound . . . but I swear it’s true . . . It drifted straight through the fence. Like a ghost.’

Drifted through the fence?
Wasn’t that exactly what had happened at RAF Croughton in 1963, the night of the protests?

‘After that,’ Martin said in a listless voice, ‘all hell broke loose on the base. An explosion. The ground shook. Men bellowing at each other. And then a siren.’

‘Robert?’ Randall asked. ‘You all right?’

‘Yeah.’ I pulled in a ragged breath. ‘Go on, Martin.’

‘I found my girlfriend down the road. She had to drive me home. The state I was in.’

‘Did she believe you?’ I asked.

‘Only when I drew it for her. I sat down and smoked about twenty fags and I got a pen and paper and drew that figure.’ His eyes went distant again, and he shook his head from side to side. ‘Some sort of fucking monster.’ He rubbed at his swollen eyelids. ‘The next day three men came to my house. Hats, no eyebrows. Men dressed all in black.’

Men dressed all in black?
I tried reaching for the memory, but it was blurry.

‘After that a woman came – called Selina – said she wanted to help. But she lied!’ he said, suddenly excited. ‘She took my drawing of the . . . the
thing
, away. All she wanted was information – about what I saw, and that couple who were murdered on the cliffs. Wanted me to go and see her at that hotel in Broad Haven.’ He began backing away from us.

I held up a hand. ‘Now calm down. All we want to do is h—’

‘There’s no time, don’t you see? What if they come back?’ Martin’s face was twisted, his eyes glittering furiously. ‘I think about doing things sometimes,’ he added in a whisper. ‘Hurting people. Hurting myself.’

Randall glanced at me and our eyes met.

‘I think it would be a good idea for you to stay away from the base from now on,’ Randall said gently, but Martin was shaking his head. Before we could say another word, he turned and ran away into the shadows of the ruin.

‘There goes a haunted man,’ Randall said huskily. From under his fierce eyebrows he gave me a worried stare. ‘Robert, do you believe in evil?’

‘Of course.’

‘What about the devil?’

‘No.’

‘I’m not talking about a little red man with a fork. I mean the force of evil that is ancient and for ever, the cosmic powers in this present darkness, the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.’

In anger and confusion I turned away as a gust of freezing sea air struck my face. His mention of evil had affected me in a way I didn’t understand, pricking the back of my mind, and my legs had a strange, loose feeling.

‘I have to go back to the Haven Hotel,’ I said.

‘Fine, I’ll come with you.’

‘No.’

He watched me. There was no anger in his face, only deep concern. ‘We are but children in the wilderness. Robert, my boy, for the love of God, leave the village. Go now.’

I heard him and I didn’t. All his talk of the devil had opened a pit in my mind, and all sorts of troubled thoughts were pouring into it.

Martin’s words:
All she wanted was information – about what I saw, and that couple who were murdered on the cliffs. Wanted me to go and see her at that hotel in Broad Haven.

I stopped, looked briefly across the bay to the Haven Hotel on the cliff edge. What had Selina found there? I voiced the thought, and Randall nodded as if this was no more than he expected. ‘You think there’s a connection between Selina, the hotel and the Jackson murders?’

‘That,’ I said, ‘is one of the things I intend to find out.’