Operation Snowflake: A Tombs Novella Read online

  Operation Snowflake

  Robert Scott-Norton

  Published by Robert Scott-Norton, 2017.

  Operation Snowflake

  Copyright © 2017 Robert Scott-Norton

  ebook Edition, Licence Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  (20170903)

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Operation Snowflake

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  What Happens Next?

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  Also by Robert Scott-Norton

  Further Reading: The Face Stealer

  For my cousin, Helen

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  1

  20th October 1983

  Alice Linwood pulled her car into the boatyard and saw that Andy Lewisham was already up and working hard on the boat in his shed. She checked her watch. Damn. How could she be late after being up half the night with her head spinning?

  The Director General had rung her last night whilst she was at home, settling in with a glass of wine and a good book. His news had surprised her, and she’d drunk more of the bottle than she’d intended as a result.

  “Morning Andy,” she called as she approached the carpenter. He beamed as he saw her. Old enough to be her dad yet he always seemed a teeny bit awkward around her.

  “Morning.” Never anything else to say. She walked to the office beside the lake, unlocked it, stepped inside and locked the door again.

  A plain office with sparse decoration and no charm. A desk with a typewriter. A filing cabinet that looked somewhat worn; and a phone on the desk. She picked up the handset, defied the urge to twirl the cable around her fingers, and dialed the entrance code.

  A beep told her she’d entered it correctly and there followed a gentle jolt. The plastic flowers in the beige vase jostled then were still.

  You can do this. You’re the best person. Be a shark.

  But she didn’t feel like a shark. She felt like a fraud.

  Opening the same door she’d come in through, she stepped out into the Tombs complex and closed the door. The entrance room would return to the surface. There were no other exits. The Tombs was one of the most secure installations the security service owned.

  She understood the complex’s history. Knew that it was a relic of the Cold War, but why did they have to build such a wretched structure? Building it under the largest man-made lake in Europe was bold, but again, it only added to her uneasiness about being down here. Linwood wasn’t naive enough to think that there was water on the other side of these walls. The compound had been built into the ground beneath the lake, but she’d still had one or two dreams where she’d been trapped under the lake with rising water.

  On the second level, she met Emma and said “Hi”. Emma was rushing somewhere and gave a perfunctory smile.

  “Have you seen Thadeus today?” Linwood called after her.

  “In his office. Been there since he’s got in.” Then Emma vanished around a corner.

  So, perhaps the DG had spoken to Thadeus already. The DG had told her she could break the news to Thadeus but maybe he’d changed his mind.

  His office door was closed, but she heard the hammering of keys on his typewriter. She knocked gently.

  “Come in,” a gruff voice answered.

  Linwood pushed open the door and stepped inside. Thadeus was behind his desk, focused on his typing.

  “Sorry to interrupt.”

  “Not a problem,” he replied, glancing at her before returning to the paper in front of him. She couldn’t make out what he was working on.

  “Can I have a word?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  Tap tap tap.

  Please don’t make this any more difficult than it is already.

  “Thadeus, Steven Lyles called me last night.”

  He mistyped a key then swore under his breath before reaching for the small bottle of Tippex he kept in reach.

  Just look at me why don’t you?

  Thadeus stuck his tongue between his teeth as he painted over his mistake. Waiting for the fluid to dry, he put his hands in his lap and shifted to look at her.

  “I’ve just got off the phone with him,” he said, his tone level and hopeless to read.

  “And what did he tell you?”

  The points of his mouth curled.

  “I think you should have the pleasure.”

  Linwood resisted the urge to sigh. This was part of the problem. The attitude didn’t endear him to anyone.

  “I applied for the section leader role and I was successful.”

  “Congratulations.”

  He looked like he was being sincere but that was the thing with Thadeus, it was impossible to tell.

  “Are you okay with this?”

  “The team needs stability. You’ll be a great section leader.”

  Linwood began to feel uncomfortable standing in the office. She was expecting more resistance from Thadeus, an argument even. Not this quiet acceptance.

  “I’ll call a meeting in the boardroom, in five minutes.”

  “I’ll be there,” he said, and then he returned to looking at the paper in his typewriter.

  Linwood waited a moment in the doorway before nodding and leaving him in peace.

  Maybe today would be easier than she’d expected.

  2

  20th October 1983

  Half an hour later, Linwood looked at the departing team from the boardroom. Her MI18 team all seemed pleased—genuinely so.

  This compensated somewhat for Thadeus not showing up. It had been noted by Charlie that he wasn’t there, and she considered sending someone to fetch him but she decided against it. She guessed Thadeus may be a little embarrassed, to stand there and hear her explain that she was now in charge, instead of him.

  Emma and Dean had been the most enthusiastic, their faces lit up at the news and that made Linwood feel like she’d made the right decision in taking the job.

  And now, sat in the empty boardroom, there was a sense of relief that she’d told the team, and there hadn’t been a mutiny. Everyone had jobs to do, so she had a bit of time to herself. There were no immediate cases, no threats that needed countering.

  She headed back to her office, wondering how much she’d be able to tell her parents. They both knew she worked for the civil service, but neither of them was aware of MI18. The clandestine organisation had existed since Winston Churchill had opened the base under the Marine Lake at Southport. A military intelligence branch that had been established to investigate the rising number of UFO reports after the Second World War. Largely because of the Luftwaffe, Britain’s skies had been placed under intense surveillance by the public who’d been encouraged to notice the unusual, and they needed a place to report it to. Churchill of course, never expected the department to deal with anything more than the scared accounts of disturbances in the sky, and he believed all of these were of earthly origin. The unit at that time was all about administration, reading reports and examining witnesses. How times have changed.

  On her way back to her office, she passed Thadeus’s office, his door wide open. She halted in the doorway and saw Thadeus piling his belongings into boxes.

  “I missed you at the briefing,” she said.

  “I’m sorry. I got distracted.”

  “I see that,” she said, watching him as he opened his desk drawers and picked out objects to place in the box. “What’s going on Thadeus? What are you doing?”

  He frowned but didn’t meet her gaze. “This office is bigger and belongs to the section chief. I’m moving out.”

  Linwood sighed, not sure how to respond to Thadeus. He was right, this room was bigger, and was usually assigned to the section chief, but she’d never asked him to move. She was happy with her office down the corridor. It was big enough, and she’d arranged everything perfectly. She didn’t want to move along the corridor for the sake of a bigger office.

  “Thadeus, you don’t have to move. I wasn’t going to take the office.”

  “You’re not taking anything. It’s yours. I’m giving it to you.”

  “I don’t need it,” she said softly.
br />   He muttered something under his breath that she didn’t quite hear.

  “Thadeus?”

  He said nothing. Linwood lingered a moment longer before giving up and walking back to her own office. This was Thadeus in spoilt child mode. Being petulant was one of his less endearing qualities. Most people on the team had learnt to tiptoe around him when he was like this, and she wondered whether she should do the same. But she had learnt to pick her battles, and this was his last attempt to wield some authority over her.

  Sitting in her own office, with the door closed, she leaned back in her chair and shut her eyes. She had a lot of things to get done today, beginning with a team evaluation report that the Director General was expecting by lunchtime. And there was the request for supplementary funding that had stalled over the last two months, but now that she was in charge, she was determined to push this through and get MI18 the resources it needed.

  She was disturbed in her thoughts by the phone ringing.

  “Hello.”

  It was an administrator, from the Director General’s office. He told her in very dull tones, about an incident that had been relayed to them by an RAF crew in Scotland. Something had entered United Kingdom airspace, near the Isle of Arran, and Linwood was to assemble a team and investigate.

  After all the instructions had been relayed Linwood hung up and leaned forward, her arms steepled, her chin resting on her hands. The timing could have been better. She thought the team might have the luxury of a few days getting used to the change in the command structure, but that wasn’t to be. Oh well, perhaps a new operation would pull them together.

  She grabbed her notebook and flipped it open to a clean page. And writing on a new page, she wrote today’s date, a quick summary of the conversation she’d had on the phone, and then on a new line she wrote the words:

  Incursion?

  3

  21st October 1983

  Without knowing exactly what had happened on the Isle of Arran, Linwood didn’t want to commit more than a couple of people to the mission. She thought now would be a good time to spend time with Thadeus and cement his place on the team—dispel any notion he may have that he was not needed any longer.

  On the journey up to Scotland, they talked mainly about previous cases; Thadeus rarely spoke about anything other than work, and she still didn’t know much about his personal life. He’d mentioned a brother once, and she thought his parents were alive, but beyond that, nothing.

  To many people then, Dominic Thadeus came across as rather a cold individual, but that was not completely true. Over the last three years, Linwood had got on well with him, and learnt to appreciate his dry wit and sense of humour. He in turn, seemed to appreciate her abilities and dedication to work. Whilst the rest of the team enjoyed going out on a Friday night to get plastered in town, Linwood most often declined the invitations to join them, preferring to plan for the week ahead.

  As they arrived at RAF Heathside, Linwood was tired of driving and had run out of things to talk to Thadeus about. She displayed her credentials to the guard on the main gate, and he indicated where to park and how to find the commander’s office. The commander wasn’t there to meet them but they were met by a young aide who showed them into an empty office where they were politely asked to wait.

  Linwood stood by the window and looked out across the base. They were on the far side of the complex away from the runway but from here she could make out an open hanger and the aircraft within. Men in uniform walked along the paths, chatting on their downtime but still carrying the authority of the military.

  The door opened and a thin young officer entered. He was clean shaven with very short fair hair and he flashed a nervous smile at his visitors.

  “Lieutenant Dowling?” she asked.

  “Yes, sorry to keep you waiting.” His accent placed him from the midlands, Leicester, perhaps. He shook Thadeus’s hand and then took Linwood’s, before standing before the pair of them a little awkwardly.

  “Perhaps we should all sit down,” Linwood suggested. Dowling nodded, glancing at the commander’s chair on the far side of the desk before settling on one of the guest chairs. Linwood took another and brought it around to sit beside Thadeus where the pair of the them sat opposite Dowling.

  “To be honest, I’m not clear on why I’ve been asked to talk to you, nor who exactly you are.”

  “I’m Alice Linwood, and this is my colleague Dominic Thadeus.”

  “And what department do you work for?”

  MI18 was a classified operation, and she didn’t know whether Dowling had clearance, so she played it safe. “We’re civil servants working for the Department of Defence.”

  Dowling still seemed unsure. “My team already filed their reports. I’m not sure what else to tell you.”

  “You could start by telling us about last night. What happened?”

  “It all sounds a bit crazy, to be honest. Have you read our reports?”

  “Not yet. But I’m as interested in what you’ve left out of your report as what you’ve put in it.”

  Dowling nodded. “We got the instruction to scramble at 22:15 last night.”

  “How many planes?”

  “There was two of us, me and Lieutenant Bill Franks. Someone had put a call through to the Whiting Bay police station on the Isle of Arran about there being lights in the sky. The policeman on duty was bothered enough by these lights that he referred it to the mainland police station, who in turn referred it to RAF Heathside, asking whether there were any flight exercises in operation over the island. We assured him that there were no operations taking place but at that point it behoved us to send a reconnaissance flight over. We took about thirty minutes to get there, and when we did we were in for a shock.”

  “What did you see?” Thadeus asked.

  “Am I under investigation?”

  “No,” Thadeus replied. “Why would you think that?”

  “This is not usually what happens after a mission. I’ve never been debriefed by your department.”

  “This is just a chat. You’ve nothing to worry about,” Linwood said.

  He was still hesitant, and he glanced at the door.

  “We’re a special team in the security service,” Thadeus said.

  Linwood narrowed her eyes.

  “You’re spooks? MI5?” Dowling asked.

  “Not quite. MI18,” Linwood said.

  “There is no MI18,” Dowling replied.

  “We like to be discrete. We were set up to investigate events like you’ve experienced. Trust me, nothing you can say will shock or surprise us in the least.”

  Whether he believed her or not, it was difficult to say. What she saw in him was a relaxing of the shoulders and a lessening of tension. He wanted to share his story and all he needed was the freedom of knowing he could tell it without being judged.

  “We saw the lights. There were three of them. And they moved so quickly that I knew we weren’t dealing with aircraft—at least not conventional aircraft at any rate. My first thought was that this could be some strange natural effect, ball lightning maybe. But the light would stop and start, change direction then accelerate at impossible speeds. It wasn’t anything natural.”

  “So what did you think it was then?” Linwood asked, already anticipating his answer.

  “I think you know the answer to that already. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? I think we saw UFOs.”

  He looked at them then for some kind of reaction, a clue he was on the right track with his thinking. Linwood gave nothing away, but she glanced at Thadeus to see his reaction. He remained as impassive as ever.

  “Tell us what happened next,” she said.

  “The lights stopped being lights and I saw that it was three aircraft moving through the sky. The light was some kind of energy, a distortion like a fire that dragged through the surrounding air before burning off I suppose.”

  “Did you attempt communication?” Thadeus asked.

  “Of course. We were listening for any chatter between the vessels but heard nothing. They didn’t respond to our hails either. I got the impression that they were experiencing flight difficulties. The erratic flight patterns weren’t deliberate—the ships were out of control.