“Good.” She smiled back and headed upstairs, turning off the hall light.
The kitchen light was dim; the midsummer sun had finally set. Orange sodium light from the street lamps filled the window. Millie turned the tumbler over in his hand and let the light glint off it. A beautiful piece of crystal. Such a shame they’d lost the others. But maybe it was a price worth paying for the fun they’d had.
He made a mental note to ensure this tumbler survived into retirement. Something to drink from and remember the glory days.
He drained the glass, suddenly remembering his morning appointment. Nobody came away from a Mark Kilton encounter without bruises.
A DRUNKEN TEST pilot played the piano, badly. Rob laughed, still huddled in among the senior pilots.
Kilton watched from the bar, as the pianist beckoned the men around Rob to join in with the song. Most of them sprung up, but Rob remained in his seat, enjoying the show.
The TFU boss picked up his drink and made his way over, choosing the vacant space next to his young prodigy.
“I’ve been thinking about this nonsense in the Vulcan. I don’t think we can let a single uncorroborated incident derail an internationally important project.”
He studied Rob, who nodded slowly.
“Its strategic importance cannot be underestimated, you understand that don’t you, May?”
The music grew raucous as the men sang a bad version of Cliff Richard’s ‘Livin’ Doll’.
Rob nodded again, staying silent.
Kilton had to raise his voice above the singing.
“Don’t you think there was a chance you could have overridden the autopilot with the stick?” Rob furrowed his brow, but Kilton continued. “It won’t disengage if you touch the stick. The computer will fight you for a bit until you let go.”
“I didn’t grab the stick until we cancelled,” he finally said.
“Maybe not grabbed it, but it’s a tight space, and you may have gently leaned on it or subconsciously pushed it forward while monitoring the flight. You wouldn’t have been the first to do that, May.”
Rob pondered.
“I mean,” Kilton continued, “it would be enormously helpful to me personally to hear that there might be some other explanation. And it’s possible. Isn’t it, May? You might have accidentally nudged it. That’s all it would take at that speed and height to cause a scare.”
Rob bowed his head.
“You’re not in trouble, May. This is what testing is all about. Now we know how she’ll react.” He paused and spoke slowly. “It’s important you agree that you may have nudged it.”
Rob’s head came back up and he turned to look at the boss. Kilton gave a small nod of encouragement.
“I suppose it’s always possible.”
2
WEDNESDAY 8TH JUNE
Millie’s burgundy Rover was a luxury car in 1951. Fifteen years later, life had taken its toll. The leather seats were scratched and torn in places, and adorned with occasional strips of black tape from his own running repairs. But it was comfortable, if a little tank-like in its handling. Either way, thanks to a misjudged pension investment and with retirement looming, Millie had little choice but to run it into the ground.
It rolled, rather than turned around corners. It creaked on the worn springs as he guided it along the narrow country road toward the RAF West Porton main gate.
He struggled with the stiff window handle but managed to wind it down enough to pass his identification card to the security guard.
The man in the strange West Porton Security Police cap studied the card carefully. The WPSP were a branch of the military police that appeared unique to this station, as far as Millie knew. He also knew questions about security arrangements were not encouraged.
The sound of jet engines drifted into the car over the breeze. Engine runs after maintenance. Hard working engineers, toiling all hours to ensure Mark Kilton’s TFU got a full complement of aircraft to play with every day.
The guard handed back the card, and Millie encouraged the heavy car to leave its moorings and continue on to TFU.
It was quiet in the planning room: no laughter, no excited chatter, just a few murmurs from the men at the tea bar.
He knew something was up and it could be only one thing.
Mark Kilton was in a temper.
He made his way over in search of information.
“Anything I should know about?” he asked Jock MacLeish, looking toward Kilton’s side office. The door had a glass pane and there was some movement within.
“Drama in the bar last night,” replied Jock in his soft Scottish lilt. “Never seen Kilton quite like it. He and Brian Hill at it full steam.”
“What was it about?” Millie asked, fearing he already knew the answer.
“Don’t know, as is the TFU way. They ended up in the car park. Obviously we all dived into the anteroom and tried to eavesdrop. All I can say is they had a fundamental disagreement about something. Hammer and tongs, they were.”
“The car park? It was physical?”
“Nearly.” MacLeish paused and had another look around. “Rumour has it, Brian’s gone.”
“What? Gone?”
MacLeish shrugged his shoulders. “That’s what I’ve heard. Gone. Persona non grata. No longer a serving member of TFU. Went too far with the boss and was shot before dawn, or at least turned away from the main gate and told to await his posting orders.”
Millie stared towards Kilton’s office.
“Where was Rob in all this?”
“With us. Why?”
“He wasn’t involved in the row?”
“Nope.”
“Milford. In here.” A shout from across the room.
Millie exchanged a brief look with MacLeish before heading to Kilton’s office; the boss had already disappeared inside after barking his summons.
Just as he got to the door, Rob arrived in the planning room.
“Are you OK?” Millie mouthed.
Rob nodded, but looked worried.
Millie shut the office door behind him and stood waiting while Kilton finished a memo with his black-inked fountain pen. Millie could just about make out Brian Hill’s name in the subject heading.
Kilton slashed out the words with short, sharp strokes.
Millie looked through the glass pane in the door; a few faces stared back. Everyone on tenterhooks.
Finally, the TFU boss looked up.
“This nonsense from yesterday is dealt with.”
“Nonsense, boss?”
Kilton leaned back and deposited the fountain pen on his desk. “Your attempt to ground the most important military project on the planet with an unrecorded and unproven incident is not appreciated.”
An image of Brian Hill’s car being pulled over at the security gate filled his mind.
“There were four of us on the jet, sir. I may not have been capturing data but I made notes and each of the other men will corroborate what happened.”
Kilton folded the memorandum and placed it in an envelope.
“There are now three of you. Hill overstepped the mark last night and I consider him unstable and unfit to fly.”
“Because he argued with you?”
“It wasn’t an argument, Millie. He stepped out of line. Whatever happened during flying, it had unnerved him to the point that he was refusing to fly and I don’t need pilots who won’t fly.”
“With respect, sir, was he refusing to fly or simply refusing to fly with Guiding Light?”
“It makes no difference. There’s no place for pilots who want to be selective about the trials they carry out.”
“With respect, sir, I still believe what I saw. The system fouled up, height readings displayed on the panel were incorrect and it placed the aircraft in a hazardous descent…” Kilton opened his mouth to counter him, but Millie pressed on. “And you are right. I didn’t record it and I suppose it’s true to say there is no firm evidence. But I’ve been thinking about this. What if it happened before, and we didn’t notice? What if we were at altitude and thought it was turbulence? Or maybe it happened before we had even started engaging Guiding Light with the autopilot? Unless someone was physically watching the entire time, we may easily have missed a similar event.”