October Skies (21 page)
Authors: Alex Scarrow
Shepherd noted, with satisfaction, a bank of cameras at the back. Not just local press photographers, but some network camera crews too. The town of Munster, home to one college, a cereal processing and packing plant, one shopping mall and at least seventy churches of different denominations, was just the third stop in his tour of Utah.
The state was easy territory. Everyone knew him now, and it was obvious already that neither Republicans nor Democrats were going to get their foot in here. His message was a fresh message that was coming right out of the blue and wasn’t tainted with the tit-for-tat baggage that the other two parties were burdened with. His message didn’t have the shrill sound of a party frantically hanging onto power, nor the hectoring ‘Doubting Thomas’ tone of a party impatient to get into power.
Shepherd knew that he didn’t sound like the other candidates, and more and more polls were beginning to show that was going to be just about enough to cajole tentative support from the soft conservative centre.
Shepherd bowed again to the ecstatic audience’s delight, and then strode defiantly off the podium, flanked by a pair of security men from his ministry. They walked him briskly through changing rooms that reeked of body odour and the sort of cheap aftershave that young men like to douse a little too liberally. They led him out of a rear door to where a dark-windowed Humvee waited patiently for him, engine already idling.
The door was opened for him and Shepherd slid inside. One of his minders slipped into the front passenger seat; the other climbed into the limousine waiting behind.
Alone, Shepherd opened the laptop on the seat beside him and accessed his mail.
There it was - a message he was expecting, a no-questions-asked favour from a sympathetic face in the department of Homeland Security.
As requested,
The ISP number was traced to an address in London, England. The address is 59 Lena Garden Road,
Hammersmith, London, W6. The name against the ISP number and the address is Julian Francis Cooke.
Cooke is/was a minor media personality presenting some current affairs programmes, investigative programmes. His media profile is lower than it used to be, but he is still a recognisable name and face. He runs a small production company called ‘Soup Kitchen Studios’ that makes low-cost documentaries. Recent programmes made by them include one on a radical Islamic imam, Mohammad Al Bakti, released from US custody a few years ago. The association with this Muslim cleric was for a period of two weeks. For some reason, this has escaped a Homeland Security flagging. (By the way, I can have this guy, Cooke, pulled in. It’s something I can easily do for you if he’s causing you any problems.)
You might want to know, fifteen days ago he passed through immigration at Denver International. The same day he connected on a flight to Reno. He then flew back from Denver to London thirteen days later and is currently at his home address in London.
You should also know that he flew over here with an associate, Rosemary Whitely, who also flew on to Reno with him, and has not returned to the UK. So she’s still in the US.
As requested, I’ve authorised a tap on Cooke’s phone and an intercept on his internet connection. Not difficult justifying that because of his past association with Al Bakti, and it’s relatively painless burying the paperwork since we’re only dealing with British intelligence, and those guys will bend over backwards for us.
They’ll ask . . . but I don’t need to give any reason.
All intercepted emails will be copied to your encrypted account. All intercepted calls will be recorded and uploaded to the secured ftp site you listed.
Hope this helps.
Your friend in the Big Building
Shepherd looked out through the smoked glass of the window. The town of Munston, little more than a highway flanked on either side by big-box retailers fronted by acres of tarmac parking, slipped past forgettably.
It was useful information. Useful to know exactly who was sniffing around. Perhaps he had nothing - perhaps he’d found something.
The thought triggered a tingle of excitement.
Perhaps he’s discovered them?
Maybe there was some sort of mutual exchange he could do with this Mr Cooke; information for information.
CHAPTER 33
23 October, 1856
I have slept poorly, worrying about Sam and Emily’s mother. I can understand, for certain types of people, their faith is everything. Hers has been shaken. I have no idea what Preston’s story is . . . whether he genuinely believes he is on a mission for God. I suppose that’s irrelevant. What matters is what Mrs Dreyton believes.
Or should I say, believed. Past tense.
What worries me more is whether she will sow seeds of doubt amongst the others. Whilst I am no fan of peculiar and strict religious sects like Preston’s, it is their faith in him that seems to hold them together. And thus far . . . I have myself found Preston to be a rational and reasonable man.
I am troubled by this situation.
Ben put down his pen and rubbed his hands vigorously together. Even with a woollen scarf wrapped tightly around his writing hand, it was stiff with the cold.
The usually sullen grey sky was broken today, allowing the heartening sight of scant patches of blue - a dash of colour to their monochrome world that he much missed. A weak ray of sunlight speared down from the scudding clouds, dappling the clearing momentarily before racing away across the trees.
His gaze fell upon the pitiful sight of their dead oxen. Under Keats’s supervision, the first few of the dead oxen had been towed a short distance away from the others and butchered for meat. The well-trodden snow around their carved-up carcasses was pink and, amongst the exposed ribcages, a pile of inedible purple and grey organs was steadily growing. Ben wondered how long it would be before that offal was no longer considered inedible.
For the while, food was not going to be a problem. But the collective mouths of over a hundred and twenty people made short work of each carcass as it became available. The mathematics of the situation was inescapably obvious to him already. There weren’t enough oxen to keep them all going through the winter and into spring. At some point, they were going to have to find other food to subsist on to supplement the oxen. Or perhaps reduce their numbers.
It occurred to him that he might not be the only person already making that kind of calculation.
He blew on his hands, cursing the aching stiffness of unrelenting cold. Around the campfire and tucked up in his shelter at night, with the flap sealed tight and the shared body heat of Keats and Broken Wing building up a fug of warmth inside, it was tolerable. But outside, away from any cooking fire, the bitter chill, compounded by the occasional icy gust, was a miserable experience. Ben vowed to travel to warmer climes come the spring and the end of this unfortunate ordeal, and to never again stray from a temperate latitude.
He gazed at the small world of their clearing, like an island amidst a dark, forbidding ocean. There were a few people stirring. Several meagre fires were heating water for a morning bowl of stewed oats. Most families still had barrels of cornmeal and oats previously used as packing insulation for fragile family possessions, but now gratefully being consumed each day for breakfast.
Giles Weyland was offering to share with him a special treat this morning; the last of his coffee beans. There was enough, he said, for a canteen of it. Enough for him and Ben and his girl. They would savour it together, then fill their tummies with stewed oats. Weyland had only himself and his Negro girl to feed and had many boxes of fragile china stuffed with cornmeal packing to get through.
Ben put away his writing things, slipping them back inside his travel trunk in the shelter. He wrapped his poncho around himself and squeezed out again into the scudding sunlight, enjoying a fleeting moment’s warmth on his shoulders and back as a sunbeam raced over him, then up through the trees, towards the craggy peaks above them.
Making his way towards Weyland’s shelter, he noticed that the Negro girl was up already building their campfire, whilst Weyland was spreading out the last of his coffee beans to be roasted and cornmeal to be stewed.
The question had yet to be asked by anyone, and Ben was surprised that no one yet had the answer . . . . . . Is this girl your property?
It was something Ben felt he should have already asked on principle, but had yet to find the right moment and the right way. Whilst he admired Weyland’s southern charm and his unflappable manner, Ben doubted he could, in all good conscience, sit down and eat with a man who believed in the institution of slavery.
As he crossed the ground between shelters to join Weyland for breakfast, and was working out the wording for this delicate question, he caught sight of Emily and Sam on the far side of the clearing.
Both were being led by Mrs Dreyton up into the tree line. By the look of the small canvas sack slung over Sam’s shoulder, they were off to gather firewood together. But there was something about their manner that caught his eye. It seemed to be a furtive departure, Mrs Dreyton and Sam looking back over their shoulders. A terrible thought occurred to him.
They’re not leaving, are they?
They’d die out there, for certain. He stopped in his tracks, and half turned to race across the clearing to them, to plead with Mrs Dreyton to stop this craziness, when he realised neither she, nor Emily were carrying anything and Sam had just the small sack and his gun slung over one shoulder.
Mrs Dreyton might have been quite mad enough to head out into the woods with nothing but the clothes on her body and the shawl around her head, but Sam was quite sensible. At the very least, Sam would have called over to talk to Ben first.
Relax . . . they’re after some firewood, that’s all.
He watched them as they climbed up the slope into the trees. Just before they were lost from sight behind the dense firs, he saw Sam look anxiously back towards the camp. Ben wondered what Sam was glancing at when he noticed Preston and Vander standing side by side just outside their church, silently watching the Dreytons go.
It was an odd tableau that had Ben puzzling over it as he arrived beside Weyland, squatting over a foil-lined wooden box in which nestled no more than a fistful of dark coffee beans. The rich aroma of the box wafted across to him seductively and his mouth moistened in anticipation. Savouring it with a deep breath, the odd scene was for the moment pushed far from his mind.
‘Morning, Mr Weyland.’
‘Ah, Mr Lambert,’ said Weyland, looking up. ‘A promise is a promise. Take a seat and I shall roast us these beans.’ He turned to the Negro girl, ‘Violet, bring me the skillet will you, my dear?’
Violet was busy nursing the first flames of their cooking fire. She shook her head. ‘Giles, get it yo’self, you lazy man. Cain’t you see I got my han’s busy tendin’ to this?’
Giles turned to Ben and shrugged with a world-weary flicker of his eyebrows. ‘Pfft, women, eh?’
Ben smiled with relief, glad that he could sit down and join them with a clear conscience. Violet was no slave; that much was for sure.
CHAPTER 34
23 October, 1856
The sun was on the way to its zenith, shining through a gap in the grey sky when he heard the scream. The young man was unsure of the noise at first. Unsure because it was not a sound he normally associated with these woods; a woman’s cry, or a child’s cry in this place was as strange as a bear’s call out on the plains. These wooded peaks were not a place for womenfolk, nor children, nor the old - especially not in the dead of winter.
He heard it again. This time he was certain it was a woman’s cry, not a child’s. The first time had been a sharp shriek of surprise; the second was protracted and drawn out and made the fine downy hair on his forearms rise. The scream endured, a terrible blend of pitiful agony and abject terror, causing him to grimace and adrenaline to instantly flood his body, entreating him to flee like a startled rabbit or stand firm.
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