Skydancer Read Online Free Page A

the politicians’ involvement and the inevitable and damaging attention of the media that would follow.
    Bringing the meeting to an abrupt end, he instructed his officials to return to their duties, and to discuss the matter with no one other than the men from the security departments. After they left the sixth-floor office, Alec Anderson and Peter Joyce paused in the corridor outside to look at one another uneasily. Each recognised alarm and suspicion on the other’s face. Then they nodded at one another and walked off in different directions, without speaking.
    Peter Joyce hardly noticed the road as he motored back to Aldermaston. From time to time he touched his forehead to push back those strands of hair that stubbornly refused to grow any way but forwards. His usual air ofconfidence had largely evaporated that morning.
    He was driving back at only half the speed he had maintained on his journey up to London, his mind in turmoil as he began to assess what a devastating blow this security leak was about to deal him. For the moment he was less concerned by the critical national issue of the leakage of nuclear secrets; he was gripped instead by a personal foreboding, a fear that it could emerge that indirectly and unwittingly he himself had been somehow responsible for the leak – and that those closest to him would see this as just retribution on him.
    He vividly remembered the day, three months earlier, when he had first taken that set of vital documents up to London. They were to form the core of a top-level briefing of Government ministers who demanded to know in detail what this vast amount of public money had been spent on. He remembered the occasion with painful clarity, because it was the last time he had spent an evening with Mary Maclean – the night on which he had to tell her that their relationship was over.
    Their love affair had lasted two years. It had begun almost by accident, and had blossomed freely, without strains and complications, at a period when his marriage to Belinda was proving increasingly stressful. But eventually Mary had begun to make assumptions about their future together, assumptions involving steps he was not prepared to take.
    She had been devastated when he had told her their affair must come to an end. It was the night before the ministerial briefing; and he had visited her flat. Guiltily he remembered now that the top secret plans had been in his briefcase all the time. The crazy – but not so crazy – thought now passed through his mind, that she could have copied the papers later and given them to theSoviets in an act of revenge. ‘Hell hath no fury . . .’ But no – he could not really believe that.
    Peter stamped on the brake pedal and swerved into the left-hand lane, as he realised he was about to overshoot the turning off the motorway. He cut in front of a lorry which hooted loudly.
    â€˜Damn!’ the scientist hissed. He would end up crashing if he was not more careful. Heading for the country lanes leading back to Aldermaston, he slowed down further, and continued to ponder how events might develop.
    His secret affair with Mary Maclean was bound to be uncovered. The security men would question him closely on his care of those secret papers, and be alarmed by what they learned. They would also talk to his wife, and discover she was a confirmed anti-nuclear activist – and an associate of political groupings well to the left of the normal British political spectrum. They might begin to speculate whether it really was only now that those secrets had gone missing, and not months or even years previously.
    And what would they say to Belinda? Would the security men ask her how much she knew of her husband’s affair with Mary? She had not known anything – Peter was certain of that. But how would she react when she found out? Would she walk out on him? And what of the children, for whose sake he had finally chosen to reject his