Chapter 8 – But exposing only the Dark

They supplied a high chair for Merilyn and we sat with cool drinks until I saw Gwen speak to the maitre’d. He pointed us out and she came over and sat down. “It’s good to see you, Morgan” she said “And this must be little Merilyn?” Merilyn looked into her eyes and she relaxed and said “So cute!”

She waited until the waiter had brought her a drink before saying “Thank you for the heads-up this afternoon, here is your phone back. Good move, by the way.” She gave me the phone and then Merilyn said “Four watchers but some way off. They are following Sir Lionel. Oh, there are two on Lancelot as well.” I’ll give Gwen her due, she got up and told us to get going and to go and sit on the steps of the Albert Memorial and wait for a car to stop. I got up and paid the bill, saying that my companions could not make it.

Gathering Merilyn and my bag we slowly walked over the bridge and along the West Carriage Road and then followed a lawn that led to the Albert Memorial. We sat on the steps and looked across the road at the Albert hall. After about fifteen minutes the phone that Gwen had given back rang. When I answered she said “Blue Jag, get in the back. I am certain I am clear.” We stood and got to the kerb of South Kensington Road as a blue Jaguar pulled up beside us and Gwen was driving. We got in the back and she was away.

We were going east and suddenly both Merilyn and I ‘felt’ something. When it happened again I said “Gwen, this car has a tracker, I think it is under the boot somewhere. Can you get under cover so we can get rid of it?” A little further on she dived into the underground car-park at One Hyde Park and parked in a spare spot. We got out and she looked under the car and when she was back on her feet she said “It is there but it is glued tight. What do we do now, walk?” I looked around and spotted a nice new Audi a couple of spaces over and Merilyn grinned, saying “This one is yours, Mummy.” I walked up to it, feeling for the electricity and radio waves that I had been practising with and sorted out the correct one that would open the car and disable the security. I got in and started it up, pulling out of the spot and pulling up next to the Jaguar.

Gwen was looking very odd as we unloaded everything from the Jaguar and put it in the Audi. Merilyn and I got in the back and she got into the driving seat, adjusted it to her size, and we left the car park, doubling back the way we had come, until we reached Exhibition Road and she turned left to head south. She was still trying to figure out what we had been able to do but kept concentrating on the driving. At Cromwell Road we turned right and headed west. We kept on the same road as it became the Great West Road and she did not stop until we reached Heston Services where she pulled into a remote space and turned the car off, relaxing with a big sigh.

“Right” she said, eventually “You can steal cars without any tools at all and Merilyn hears radio chatter. Am I close?” I laughed and said “You are close but you don’t know the half of it. We can both ‘feel’ radio and electrical waves in the air. Merilyn can only hear radio chatter when it is close but can hear the normal radio whenever she wants. We both can harness electricity in a small way so all I did with this car was to find the frequency of the keyless entry and sent a pulse as if I was walking up to it with a key in my pocket. The car did the rest, thinking that the owner was close. With the tracker we both felt it send the pulse to the base station at the same time. That was actually the first time I had detected a radio wave.” “You did well, Mummy, it was only a short time but was pretty strong.”

“Did you identify the team that was following you?” I asked and she gave another sigh and said “Yes, it is attached to one of Sir Lionels’ colleagues.” “Vincent Melehan, I expect” I said and she started. “How the hell could you know that? Can you read my mind as well?” I said “It is a long story that started over fifteen hundred years ago and I doubt if you will believe it if I told you. Now, how are we going to cut Sir Lionel and Lance away from the watchers? They have your phones tapped and your cars tracked and I think that Melehan would not stop at killing any one of us to get his way, especially me and Merilyn.” I took the phone that she had given me back, opened it and shook out the little bug, handing it back to her, saying “Nice try but I felt it there as soon as you gave it to me.”

She thought a bit and said “He and I would meet sometimes in Saint Austell and go to the Dozmary Pool on Bodmin Moore for some sex in the grass at midnight. It was a bit of fun but we both wondered about Lancelot and Guinevere as we did it. He was living with his wife in Plymouth at the time.” “Perfect” I said “You will come home with us for a few days. Ring him from one of these burners of mine and tell him you will meet him by the pool next Saturday night but to make sure he is alone.” I put together a burner and she rang his mobile. She did not give him any chance to speak before saying her piece.

We took the battery out, snapped the SIM card and got out of the car to put the phone on the ground, stamping on it to make it useless. We did the same with hers after finding the bug in it. Both ex-phones went into the bin and the bug was tossed onto the bed of a truck parked nearby. We then went into the restaurant to have our evening meal. When we left we came off the M4, went a little way on the M25 and picked up the M3 to go west. We detoured into Southampton where we found the theatre district and swapped the Audi for a near new Mercedes. As an insurance seller my mind was aghast at the claims that would be coming in once the crooks had developed the technology to steal them, it was too easy. We left the Mercedes at Exeter Railway Station and left there in the Volvo with me driving. “This is the one that Griff had” she exclaimed “You were living with him the whole time?”

“That’s me” I said “Mrs Jeffrey ever since the day we escaped. He was a lovely man and taken too soon. Who were the other ones killed?” She looked sad when she said “Poor Eric and Tristan. It was an ambush, pure and simple. Since you have told me about Melehan I now think he had set them up. Eric had been suspicious of Melehan for some time I think, especially his involvement with the AA crowd.” I drove us home and it was after midnight when we arrived. I showed her where the spare room and bathroom were and loaned her a nightdress. We all slept soundly; it had been a very long day.

Next morning, being Sunday, we were up and showered and off to church after a light breakfast. We were all pretty stylish and I introduced her to the villagers as Gwendoline, a colleague of my poor husband. They were all properly sympathetic and we were invited to a lunch that one of my customers was putting on for his eightieth birthday. It was quite surreal to be sitting around with tea and cake after the events of the previous day. On Monday we went into Launceston and bought Gwen enough clothes to see her through the week and then we scouted the tracks that led to Dozmary Pool. I wanted to point out to her that this really was not the site where the Lady of the Lake presented Arthur with Excaliber, that pool was now in the middle of the Colliford Lake Reservoir but this would not sit well with her beliefs. I couldn’t tell her that I knew the truth because I had been there in a previous life.

We could still get to where she and Lance had met but it was a bit of a cul-de-sac these days because of all the farm development. We would need to park some way away and walk in so that we did not advertise our presence with a car. Actually, I thought that it would be easy because I could now levitate things and had been trying out with Merilyn. I didn’t tell Gwen of this as I did not want to spook her too quickly. We did, however, show her a few of the lesser tricks we could do with light and electricity, creating some balls of light energy and moving them around. Merilyn and I had found out in our own experiments that these balls of energy could also be used as weapons and there had been a few scorched remnants of old bits of furniture that had gone out into the woodshed.

On the Saturday evening we dressed in jeans and boots and went to Jamaica Inn for an evening meal; then we took the road behind it towards Dozmary Pool. The track ran up to a farmhouse which we approached with the lights off and me driving with the night-vision goggles. At the farm gate the track took a left turn and ran alongside the water before doing another left to end at a gate. I turned the car around and switched off. We walked to the place where she said they had met and she declared it to be unchanged. I spread a blanket on the ground and we sat and let our eyes get used to the dark. The sky was beautiful in the summer night and it was a joy to be there. Merilyn whispered “Just like the old days” as she cuddled close to me.

Eventually we saw lights of a car coming our way. It stopped where the track went up to our parking space and the lights went off. There was the sound of the door closing and we waited for Lance to find his way to us. Suddenly I felt a small electrical pulse and realised that he had been tracked. “Stay quiet” I whispered to Gwen “He has followers.” ”Oh shit” she said,” this could be bad if they are armed.” I patted her shoulder and smiled “Merilyn and me will protect you, never fear.”

Lance finally arrived and Gwen fell into his arms and they hugged. He said “What the hell is going on, I have had to shrug off followers all week just to do my job. The other guys in the team don’t know what the problem is but I can’t tell them anything. Sir Lionel is getting frustrated that he doesn’t have access to you, Morgan, but could not bring himself to believe that we were being tracked in Hyde Park. I saw at least three guys I had met in and around Whitehall and all of them are in the service. And then Gwen disappears and all I get is a message to meet here, of all places. This is where my life changed and my marriage disintegrated.”

“Well, hello to you as well, Lance” I said “Now if you will just shut up and let us concentrate we may find out who you brought to the party.” “What” he exclaimed “I’m sure I’m clean!” Gwen gave a small chuckle and said “You are but none of our cars and phones are. We have been tracked for five years and didn’t know it. Some agents we are!” Merilyn then said “Three radios. They must have got out of their car near the farm.” Gwen looked at Lance and whispered “Don’t fret it, lover, these two are one-man listening posts.” We tried to blend into the ground as we could hear the odd sound of someone stepping on animal crap, the road being the usual way they moved the sheep around. Then Merilyn said “They are talking to someone else but they are not near enough to hear the reply yet. Wait! One of the guys has spoken to a chap called Leeson and has told him that he had an open shot if he saw any of us, seeing that we are so far away from any sightseers.”

Gwen said “This is real war then, Leeson is a sharpshooter with an impressive record.” I pointed west across the Pool and said “Well, this is where his record comes to an end.” As the helicopter came closer I could see a guy sitting in an open door on the side with night-vision goggles on. I could also feel the heat-seeking unit on the chopper. I knew they had us cold so, when the helicopter swung to leave the shooter face-on to us, I sent a good size ball of energy his way. It would have blinded him in the goggles but that would have been the last thing he saw. The ball of energy went into the cabin and the helicopter spun out of control before hitting the water and going under in a spray from the blades before there was an explosion as the cold water flooded the turbine. Lights went on in the farmhouse but there was nothing left to see as the ripples dissipated.

Marianne G © 2021