1. Characters
John Cranswick, an aspiring rock star and later sonokinetic. (Played by Chris Potter.)
Simon Jones, a postgraduate pharmaceutical chemist and later telepath. (Played by John Dallman.)
Megan Gwen Thomas, a language student and clairvoyant. (Played by Owen Smith.)
Sharon O'Keefe, a modern historian and telekinetic. (Played by Phil Masters.)
Ray Cohen, a dropout and teleporter. (Played by Ceri Harrison.)
2. Events
2.1. When I'm Dead and Gone
[12 October 2011]
Tuesday, 11 April 1967
Our heroes have all signed up for a drug test, being conducted by Dr Paul Brown at the School of Pharmacy in Brunswick Square. The substance is apparently something to do with treatment of psychiatric patients; they're to do a series of tests every hour or so for 24 hours, but there's little advance briefing so as not to bias their experiences.
Things seem fairly boring at first, until suddenly the walls roll up, and the various hospital beds they're lying on seem to be whirling through space. They see various apparitions: Megan sees herself teaching a classroom full of adults, but is able to read the notes being written by someone in the back row; John sees himself on stage, giving a concert, but he's not carrying an instrument; Simon sees himself having a conversation with someone, but neither of them is talking out loud. Then things get odder: a man in Cossack clothes is riding through the streets of London, jumping from one horse to another at the gallop; a man stands in front of a burning building, laughing; the Earth, seen from space, is covered with a growing crystal; and then everything stops.
The next sensation is waking up in a dark stuffy space. The three of them gradually realise that they're in black plastic bags, in a moving vehicle of some sort; they unzip and look around. They're in a van on a motorway at night, surrounded by body bags much like the ones they've just climbed out of (though the bodies in the others are dead - having bled copiously from nose, eyes and ears, and indeed the survivors seem to have done so a bit too), and there's something odd about their minds; they don't quite seem to fit inside their heads any more...
Wednesday, 12 April 1967
After some quiet discussion, Megan projects her senses to spy the van's driver and his mate, and to try to read the number-plate. John reaches out with a carefully-crafted shout to try to make the van's instruments show a problem; in fact, the interior lighting goes out. The driver takes the next junction and pulls into a garage; the students get out quietly while the driver and his mate open the bonnet and try to find the problem, but they're spotted. The driver looks pretty scared; John shouts hard at him, and he falls over clutching his head. The other man runs off. So now they're running away from a garage in what turns out to be Dunstable...
After some discussion, they walk to Luton, get a bus back to London and retire to John's flat for the night. In the morning, a policeman knocks on the door, and politely takes them to the local station, though without arresting them; he clearly hasn't been told the whole story by whoever it is they're all waiting for, and Simon persuades him to let Simon phone his parents and get his father, a solicitor who does civil work, to come down. (He also discovers that his parents had been informed he was dead...)
First, though, Mr Smith and Mr Walters arrive. Smith is clearly a civil servant of some type; Walters probably is too, though he has the build of a successful prop forward and must have paid an awful lot to get a suit that fits him. Smith is more supercilious, clearly not wanting to have anything to do with these scruffy student types. He makes their situation clear: two stories start in this interview room. One of them involves signing the Official Secrets Act. The other... is less pleasant.
Simon makes something of a fuss and manages to hold his own, getting a chance to talk to his father before signing, though he's cautioned not to say anything to which anyone might take exception. They all do sign, at which point they are welcomed to Bureau D8 of the Security Service and advised to write to their parents and friends saying that they'll be out of circulation for a bit.
D8 deals with psychic research. It doesn't have any psi talents of its own - or rather, it hasn't until now - but it's aware that other people do, and has been looking for ways to counter them.
They're moved into a temporary lodging near Whitehall, and explore their new powers with various tests. (Megan sneaks into the Ladies to smoke a surreptitious joint, and is mildly surprised when someone else there asks to share.) The first actual mission happens a little over a week later.
Saturday, 22 April 1967
A senior government figure is meeting someone in the Hilton on Park Lane. The Service would like to know what's said in that meeting, but can't get an electronic bug in. The team's got into a room a few floors down, with Mr Walters along to keep an eye on them; Megan projects her senses up, while Simon listens in telepathically and John records everything they report.
The Minister for Health, Kenneth Robinson, is meeting three well-dressed (if rather square-looking) young people, two men and a woman. They have briefing folders with a familiar photo on them; it looks rather like the laughing man the new psis saw in their visions, and Megan recognises him as L. Ron Hubbard, leader of Scientology, a fairly obscure new religion that's recently been making some progress in the UK.
Simon realises that someone else is telepathically invading Robinson's mind, at much the same time that the other person spots him. The woman turns to leave, and the team decides that it's time to get away.
They head downstairs at speed, hearing the sound of high-heeled shoes coming down after them. Walters draws a pistol and stays behind, telling the others to move across to one of the other staircases and get out; they hear two gunshots, and then the fire alarms go off.
They retire to the nearest police station and call for help.
[26 October 2011]
Some anonymous MI5 support arrives, and they're got back to home base. Mr Walters is badly burned, and will be spending some months in hospital; meanwhile, the team will be working with Mr Dennis. (He looks like more of the fast sort of rugby player, probably a winger.)
Monday, 24 April 1967
The Scientologists have a headquarters on Fitzroy Street, and the team's sent to see what can be found - if burglary is indicated, it can be done, but that leaves evidence...
They set up in Fitzroy Square, with John busking and keeping an eye on passers-by. Megan senses someone using telepathic powers in roughly the right direction, though her psi-sense switches briefly to someone possibly in the square (also using telepathy, or having it used on him) before jumping back. She moves her clairvoyant viewpoint through the building, though at this range she can't keep it up for long; she arrives in an empty and apparently unused office, though it's being kept ready for someone.
Moving out, she hears a lot more American accents than she's used to, and sees several auditing sessions in progress; she also spots one of the men from the meeting at the Hilton, apparently persuading one of his underlings to come away on a dirty weekend with him, but doesn't recognise anyone else she sees. As she's withdrawing, her psi-sense switches again, this time to someone moving across the square while a telepathic ability is active. Simon, observing, can later confirm that one particular man stumbled shortly after he'd come in, walked across the square, and stumbled again just before he left to go into one of the offices nearby.
That man can be identified without too much trouble, though MI5 has no file on him; the team pays him a visit that night and Simon eavesdrops, but it appears that he knows nothing about psi, Scientologists, or anything else.
Tuesday, 25 April 1967
With a dentist a couple of doors down from the Fitzroy Street headquarters, and a temporary office rental available at the top of the same building, the team can be got a bit closer. Megan spends longer watching and listening: later consideration suggests that for a "World Headquarters" these people are being sidelined, and somewhat resent it. It seems that most of the money is going to Saint Hill Manor, and into two specific areas: the Sea Project, and Mental Tech, though the people talking about them don't know what either might be. They seem to be a pretty paranoid lot - always concerned about loyalty, examining themselves and each other for incorrect thoughts.
Simon projects blindly into a mind, and meets some surprisingly disordered thoughts - whoever this is, apparently the telepath, he's constantly having and suppressing ideas that he considers unacceptable. It's not quite hearing voices, but it's still quite disturbing. The church's organisational structure, apparent in the paperwork he's doing, is deliberately obscure and confusing. He's planning to go to Saint Hill tonight for something to his advantage.
The team gets a briefing on what's known about Scientology - it's not very much.
Getting into Saint Hill may present something of a challenge. The eventual plan is to tranquilise the loose-roaming dogs and get over the fence while not carrying anything too incriminating - if the team's caught, they'll claim to have been planning to graffiti something. On the other hand, the West Sussex Police will be nearby, in case it's possible to arrange something to which they can legitimately respond. And Mr Dennis will be standing by with a rifle.
The team goes in shortly after sunset to avoid the full moonlight expected later. The main house is surrounded by portacabins, though they're dark at the moment; the only lights are from the house, and some from the construction site off to the left. (It seems that they've applied for planning permission to build a mock-Norman castle there.) There's also a generator running on the site, which is enough to get the team to look there first.
Megan spies into the portacabins closest to the generator, and strikes lucky: one of them contains a man sitting in something like an electric chair, gripping two electrodes which look like larger versions of the E-meter cans. Pointed directly at his head, at very short range, is a radar emitter or something like it. Benches of electronic equipment surround the chair, and there are three other people in there - two of them being the telepath spotted earlier, and the probably-pyrokinetic woman seen on Saturday. John puts his hearing perception into the room, and transmits the soundtrack live back to Mr Dennis.
Capacitors are charging, and the telepath asks the man in the chair "are you quite sure you want to go through with this?". He is, and the telepath throws a lever; the capacitors discharge, and the lights flicker, revealing a slight blue nimbus around the man's head. He slumps, unconscious; the others touch him cautiously with a heavily-insulated cable, then shake his shoulder. "Can you hear us, Bill?"
Bill wakes up, and looks around. "I can hear... everything." Megan's psi-sense is going off very strongly, and the team starts to retreat, particularly when the cabin and everything in it catch fire simultaneously. Three burning figures stagger out, then drop and roll to put themselves out; Bill rises out of the wreckage, still glowing.
The team concentrates on running in the dark, but somewhere behind them there are a couple of gunshots and the psi-sense impression winks out. They find the van they arrived in backed through the fence, letting them get away easily; Mr Dennis is ready with his rifle, but it wasn't he who fired.
They drive round to the front gate, where some police cars "just passing by" are responding to the fire and reports of gunshots. The telepath has got down here already, and seems to be doing a decent job of persuading the lead policeman that there's no problem that can't be dealt with internally; Simon jumps into the man's head, and manages to push out the other telepath, at least for long enough to get the cop to wave the others in and get things started.
Max, the telepath whose name the team finally learns at this point, is arrested, though it's not clear how long a normal prison can hold him. Apart from the burning wreckage and the newly-dead body, the police find evidence that someone's built a neat little crematorium setup - and it's certainly been used.
2.2. All The Pretty Little Horses
[30 November 2011]
Tuesday, 2 May 1967
Sharon O'Keefe has been caught, and shot, breaking into "a certain military facility in Wiltshire". As far as she's concerned, she was having a pleasant evening out, and next thing she knew was waking up handcuffed to a hospital bed with a cast on her leg and a dour WPC keeping an eye on her.
MI5 has built a number of machines that may be psi detectors, and some of them twitched when Sharon was brought in, so they send Simon and Megan (with Mr Dennis) to talk to her. (John is helping with tests elsewhere.)
Simon and Megan dance around the subject, testing the limits of Sharon's patience, but eventually reveal their psi abilities with a demonstration of telepathic communication and another of ESP. She's persuaded to sign the Official Secrets Act (Mr Dennis has a copy with him) rather than be locked up for breaking into a classified place, and manifests cryokinetic powers. The cast is cut off, and her leg seems in rather better shape than expected for someone who's been shot twice...
It's not clear how Sharon's psi powers may have come about; she doesn't remember any hallucinations like those the others had. Simon probes her memories; she was out on Saturday night in Earl's Court, and Tony, someone she's vaguely seen about the place, was passing out free samples of a new hallucinogen; peer pressure did the rest. She remembers starting to have hallucinations, but the rest is a blank; she works with a police artist to produce a sketch of Tony.
The group heads for that pub, and asks around; Tony hasn't been in today, but he's been around. One of Sharon's acquaintances says that after she took the pill she sat around admiring the wood grain of the table for half an hour or so, then got up and left. The group waits, Sharon planning the horrible things she'd like to do to Tony while Simon tries Australian beer (carefully cooled by Sharon). When Tony does arrive, he's clearly dealing; Megan buys a joint, and a couple of the new pills, which he calls "Knight's Move" (and the tablets do seem to have a crude impression on them that might be a chess knight). Tony spots Sharon, and nods to her in an unconcerned way; either he's a good actor, or he has no idea what she's been up to.
When Tony leaves, Simon follows, concealing himself from observation; the others further back track him via Megan's psi-sense. He visits several other pubs and clubs, and heads home (to one of the cheaper parts of Kensington) around 12.30.
Wednesday, 3 May 1967
Megan projects her vision into Tony's flat, as Tony does some basic accounts, then stows his remaining stock of pills - enough for another two or three days at this rate of sales - except for one, puts on a copy of Revolver, and takes the final pill before lying on his bed. Simon confirms that he starts to have hallucinations within about ten seconds, much faster than LSD; they last about twenty minutes.
Megan managed to spot a full name and phone number on some of Tony's letters, and Mr Dennis arranges for a tap on the phone. The pills Megan bought are analysed over the course of the day; there are some similarities to LSD, but it's not a known substance (technically it's not even illegal yet).
A casual conversation reveals that the van with the body bags wasn't being operated by MI5 - it's not clear what was going on there. Dr Paul Brown thought he was dealing with a pharmaceutical company that wanted a human test; the paperwork seemed to be in order, but the company doesn't know anything about it.
Thursday, 4 May 1967
Megan manages to contact Dominic, her usual dealer, who's actually quite worried: Knight's Move is cutting the heart out of the (limited, at this point) LSD market, since it seems to be all over London and it's rather cheaper. It's also not coming in through the usual channels; he doesn't know anyone who's involved in its distribution.
The team spends the evening searching for Tony, but don't locate him before he returns to his flat shortly after midnight.
Friday, 5 May 1967
Tony telephones "Len", and arranges to meet the next day in Hyde Park for a resupply. (Megan was only able to hear Tony's side of the conversation, and Simon didn't manage to get his telepathic listening in place, but the tap comes through.)
After resting, and with some minor changes to their appearances, the team observes the meet. They don't have an exact location, but Megan's able to eavesdrop when Tony shows up. He and Len (Tallant) exchange briefcases in a reasonably subtle way, and chat for a few minutes before heading off in separate directions. Len goes back to his flat in Queensway, which Megan confirms is full of packets of pills - all Knight's Move, he seems to be a specialist - and bundles of cash.
Len puts some of the cash into a bag, then heads out, catching an eastbound bus. Simon and Mr Dennis get onto the same bus, with Megan and Sharon on the next one a few minutes later. He gets off on the eastern section of Oxford Street, and heads into the alley behind some shops. Simon keeps up, and sees Len tucking his bag into the lid of a big dustbin; he opens another, and takes out another similar-looking bag.
Keeping an eye on this seems to be the best bet, though it turns out to be quite a few hours of watching; the team members spell each other, warming up in a cafe nearby between shifts.
Saturday, 6 May 1967
Around 4am, a car pulls up and the driver gets out; he collects the bag of money, then drives off. Simon makes a note of the car's make, model and licence plate (and the CD plate that shows it registered to the Soviet Embassy). Megan follows the car with ESP, and indeed it heads back to Kensington Palace Gardens; the driver hands off the bag to another man, who's wearing a pork-pie hat... indoors, which is rather odd at least by Western standards. This man takes the bag and starts to walk away... then looks around curiously, and Megan's ESP suddenly stops working.
2.3. Play with Fire
[14 December 2011]
The team retires to get some sleep, while other MI5 agents follow up on some of the details. Len's phone gets tapped. The driver is one of the Embassy's drivers; the man in the hat is Mstislav Dmitriev, a "cultural attach&:eacute;" who's pretty certainly KGB.
The archivists will comb military and police reports for any break-in attempts that sound like Sharon's - this will take a little while.
With a certain amount of evasive talk, Mr Dennis conveys the impression that MI5's history of psychic capability is a short one - acting on information received, they've become aware of the possibility only within the last year or so.
There's been some analysis of the spare samples of Dr Brown's drug, and Megan spots a very slight psychic trace on about half of them (it does seem to fade with time). Simon looks at the structural details, and reckons that this and Knight's Move are products of different research efforts: they're both hallucinogens, but they don't really have any more in common than that. Brown's drug seems very likely to be fatal to pretty much everyone who takes it.
A raid is arranged for Tony's flat on Saturday night; the MI5 operatives make it look like a burglary by a rival dealer.
Sunday, 7 May 1967
Some of the new samples of Knight's Move show psi activity to Megan's perception. Megan persuades Sharon to move some of the pills around with telekinesis, but the residue from that isn't at all the same. Simon feeds both sets of pills to some experimental rats, then tries to read their minds; Knight's Move certainly seems to make them easier to read, while Brown's drug kills them (though one of them wakes up a few hours later, scampers around briefly in mid-air, then dies of a massive cerebral haemorrhage).
News comes that Max has vanished from custody, before MI5 could finish the paperwork to get him transferred to their control. None of the police is quite clear on how it happened.
Monday, 8 May 1967
Simon has a disturbingly realistic dream: he's picking up a prostitute, cutting her throat, then throwing her off Waterloo Bridge. He immediately calls this in; a couple of hours later, around 5 am, the police pull a woman's body out of the river near the Isle of Dogs (though it's badly burned, particularly around the head and neck, rather than cut). The body can be identified: it's Sally Jones, a prostitute who mostly worked in Soho.
The team heads for Waterloo Bridge, and Megan immediately senses a strong and disturbing signature, primarily pyrokinetic. She also picks up a second psi-senser, out of sight among the people walking along the bridge. Mr Dennis tries to track this person, but without success; Simon reads the mind of a random passer-by, and someone further up the bridge dodges sideways. Before anyone can follow up, Megan catches fire and falls to the ground, barely conscious; Sharon cools her to minimise the long-term damage, and Simon scans the crowd to spot the Scientology pyrokinetic. He points her out to Mr Dennis, who draws a pistol and takes aim.
Simon gets into the woman's mind - she's mostly worried about her present situation - and Sharon keeps cooling Megan. Dennis shoots, but his bullets are retarded or deflected by a shield of some kind. Simon charges, keeping Dennis' sightline clear; Dennis falls over, on fire. Sharon makes several unsuccessful attempts to chill the woman, while Simon tries to distract her by slamming into her, but she's mobile enough to avoid this at first. However, Dennis manages to get a last pair of shots off, which seem to do some damage; Simon grabs her from behind and carries her to the ground as Sharon's cryokinesis finally cuts in. The woman is knocked unconscious, and Sharon chills her to make sure she won't wake up immediately.
All this has attracted a certain amount of attention, and policemen and ambulances arrive in short order. Simon's theory is that this was a trap for the psis, though it seems a pretty extreme length to go to.
With Mr Dennis at least temporarily out of action, Mr Smith is forced to descend from the heights to sit in on the woman's interrogation (for which she's kept semi-conscious). Simon, who's been reading a little about interrogation techniques, realises he's in the presence of a master - and reads the woman's mind, as backup.
The results of this are somewhat surprising. She's Jessica Benson, and she's been working with Cyril Ransome, the other Scientologist psi (they haven't heard anything from Max since his arrest). Ransome got wind of strong psychic activity on or near Waterloo Bridge, and they went there to try to find out what was going on. Then she spotted Megan and the others, and lost her presence of mind... The Bridge Centre got started about three months ago, and seems to have been Ransome's idea - he was the first Scientologist psi. He claimed to have got the ideas from studying Hubbard's writings, but this is something one's pretty much required to say. They've had eight "failures" (cremated) as well as the three successes.
Jessica will be kept unconscious for the moment, and shipped to a specialised prison when one can be set up.
Thursday, 11 May 1967
Since the burned body of another prostitute shows up in the river a few days later, it seems possible that Benson was telling the truth.
Tuesday, 16 May 1967
The third burned body is that of Chris Willows, and the police start to draw some connections: he's a club owner in Soho, and thought to be involved in the production of pornographic films. They start to try to trace the other people who might be involved, but for obvious reasons nobody's talking much.
Megan and Mr Dennis are out of hospital, largely thanks to Sharon's quick cryokinesis, though still moving a bit gingerly. The team takes to hanging around Soho in the afternoons and evenings, doing their best to blend in (easier for Sharon and Megan than for Simon or Mr Dennis).
Thursday, 18 May 1967
(In the background... Syria mobilises against Israel, and President Nasser of Egypt demands the UN Emergency Force be withdrawn from the Sinai. Also, NASA announces the crew for Apollo 7, the first flight mission of the programme: Walter Schirra, Ed White and Walter Cunningham. This is widely seen as an attempt to get back on track after the Apollo 1 fire in January, when Roger Chaffee died.)
Saturday, 20 May 1967
This pays off a few days later, when Megan catches a psi sense around 2am. She follows it, and finds a burning, screaming man in an alley. There doesn't seem to be anyone else around; she tries to fine down the psi sense, and reckons the origin of the pyrokinesis is standing right next to the victim - but not visible. Sharon cools the victim; there's still heat being poured in, but she manages to hold things steady. Simon reads blindly, and gets a sense of "revenge" and "burning" - but this mind is very simple, and probably rather less than human. He puts his hand into the space where the thing seems to be, and sends an impression of calm; it blinks out.
Simon applies first aid, keeping the man alive until the ambulance arrives.
Sunday, 21 May 1967
When "Lucky" Fisher is conscious enough to be read, he seems to be flashing back to an accident on-set at the start of the month - a fire got started among the film stock, and one of the cameramen was killed. The team visits Nat Carver's grave - which is slightly scorched, but the psi residue is quite old, certainly older than the murders. The team theorises that they have a psychic ghost, but don't really have any means of dealing with it...
Fisher gives up the other two (surviving) people who were involved, and they're arrested - largely for their own good.
2.4. A Face In The Crowd
[11 January 2012]
Monday, 22 May 1967
More rats are experimented on. Barely sub-lethal doses of rat poison, combined with Knight's Move, make them easier to read but they don't become psychic; using LSD instead of the Knight's Move also doesn't make them psychic.
Dmitriev would be followed, but he doesn't appear ever to leave the Soviet embassy.
Tuesday, 23 May 1967
An exhumation order is obtained for Nat Carver's grave. His body is present, burned more or less as expected; there's also substantial charring to the coffin. This seems to confirm the team's theories. They decide to hang on to the body for a while in case further ideas occur to them.
Thursday, 25 May 1967
There's a report of a break-in - well, probably a break-in - where the Sussex Constabulary were storing the evidence from Saint Hill. Nobody is entirely clear what happened (which is starting to be a familiar pattern, and the group suspects Max was involved), but nothing seems to be missing.
Saturday, 27 May 1967
Megan takes the others along to the first gig by a new folk-rock group, Fairport Convention. A good time is had.
Monday, 29 May 1967
Megan's smoking companion from her first days in D8, Jane Perry, turned herself in on Sunday night for abstracting classified materials. She reports that she "came to herself" while walking out with components from the Saint Hill helmet, which she'd intended to tuck into a dark spot under Waterloo Bridge. Megan spots the residue of a psychic suggestion, though Jane doesn't recognise a picture of Max. New procedures are put in place: access to classified materials has to be by teams of three rather than individual operatives.
A high-frequency electronics specialist, Reg Willis, is brought in from the BBC to take a poke at the evidence, since it seems likely that it's valuable to somebody.
Wednesday, 31 May 1967
Willis reports that he can't get much detail, but that the helmet seems to be an amplifier and shaper for very high-frequency electromagnetic fields; there's no known physiological interaction. But since the "radar emitter" seems to have been quite simply a microwave projector, there's clearly something a bit unconventional going on.
The Bureau starts to work on tracking down the companies that supplied parts to Saint Hill. The Scientologists seem to have had habits of paranoia, ordering from a variety of small suppliers, as well as Farnell and Radio Spares for some of the more obscure stuff.
Thursday, 1 June 1967
Megan buys a copy of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on release day.
The painstaking money tracing has finally paid off. The people claiming to be from Glaxo, who funded Dr Brown's drug trial, rented an office and phone line. That money has been traced back through a variety of accounts, and finally to a slush fund run by the Daily Mirror for paying freelancers and informants.
The Bureau could borrow the Inland Revenue and go in for an audit, but that risks tipping people off. Instead, Simon and Megan are found jobs - Simon as an internal messenger, Megan in the typing pool (she doesn't have the skills to back this up, but it's leaked that she's the daughter of someone rich who wanted her to have a summer job - she's far from unique in this).
Over the next few days, they conduct psychic surveillance of the accounts department. Simon gets the impression that it's all pretty chaotic, with very little in the way of formal oversight, and a lot of tension between the Mirror staffers and the management layer at IPC.
Megan - whose pencilled-in replacement eyebrows seem to be starting something of a fashion trend among the girls in the pool - overhears some conversations which mention a sum of money equal to the one they're interested in - a manager's telling off someone else for authorising it, and the other man says that he wasn't even in the office at the time. Later on, the manager explains that he's been told from up above not to poke into this any further. Megan also casually dates Jim Bates, a junior accountant, who confirms that people frequently fake each other's signatures in order to keep things moving quickly.
Monday, 5 June 1967
As they're waiting for more information, Megan's psi-sense goes off: a power she hasn't encountered before is active nearby, a few hundred yards away in fact. She moves around, first in the building and then across the road, to try to pin it down; it goes on for around half an hour, long enough for her to localise it to Martlet House, an five-storey office building on the north side of High Holborn - and on a high floor.
As she's turning away to tell Simon about this, she gets another psi-sense flash: a Suggestion. She turns round just in time to see a disguised Max entering the building. She calls this in; after about twenty minutes, two unmarked cars turn up, bringing Mr Dennis and three heavies. Simon also joins her stealthily. Meanwhile, she's been tracking Suggestion moving gradually up the building.
Megan sits in one of the cars, and projects her sight through the windows - there's no sign of anything unusual in the offices on the lower floors, but the windows on the top floor have been blacked out. She blind-projects her view in, finding what most closely resembles a physics lab - there are lots of crystals mounted in padded clamps, many with electrodes attached, and a lot of electronic equipment that doesn't make sense to her. Max is standing by while a man in a lab coat searches through a filing cabinet; Megan looks in more closely, but it seems to be a bunch of near-identical test reports identified only by numbers.
The scientist looks up and says "I think this one ought to do", then dismounts a large quartz crystal from its clamps and hands it to Max. A telephone rings; he answers it, and then tells Max "apparently the police, or someone, have arrived".
Megan locks her viewpoint onto Max, and Simon follows him on the physical level. Max bails out down the fire escape, and tells the MI5 people at the back of the house that he isn't the person they want, then heads for the Underground. Simon keeps up with him as far as the westbound Central Line platform, but eventually has to choose between being spotted and losing Max, and opts for the latter.
Megan can still track him, though, as he heads out to Perivale, and into a house there. He's met by Cyril Ransome, who's clearly in something of a panic - he tells Max that Max is being tracked. Max hands him the crystal, and they split up; Megan chooses to follow Max, as the greater threat. He heads back into London; the team just misses him at King's Cross station as he gets onto the Inter-City service for Edinburgh, but Mr Dennis calls in to get the train slowed - but not stopped - as much as possible en route. Meanwhile the two Bureau D8 cars head up the A1 at top speed; one of them falls behind, but Mr Dennis' driving is up to the task, and they get to Peterborough station just before the train pulls in. Megan has been giving a running commentary, and confirms Max's position - she's still blind and deaf as she maintains her psychic link, and Simon steers her out of the car and into the station.
The team enters the train, moving up on Max from outside his line of sight as it pulls out of Peterborough station. Mr Dennis moves in quickly, a handcuff already closed, on his left wrist, and slips the other cuff onto Max. Max tells him that he'd really like to undo that cuff. He replies "Yes, I would, but unfortunately I left the key in the car."
Simon moves in to throw Max's influence out of Mr Dennis' mind, and Max claims, fairly unconvincingly, that he's surrendered. Mr Dennis knocks him out with a hypodermic (looking as though he'd rather use his fists) and the team returns from Doncaster to London.
Simon probes Max's mind while he's unconscious. The Martlet Group, as far as he's concerned, is doing very basic psi research, but has some useful components. The crystal was to help him control the world. (Raised eyebrows all round.) Cyril Ransome was planning to use it to build an amplifier; Max doesn't know where Cyril will have gone now.
There are other psychic Scientologists, but Max doesn't know of any in the UK - he gives the names of the Americans he knows, and they certainly include more persuaders. Ransome's powers are object-reading and psi-sense, but he also understands the electronics better than anyone else.
Cyril will need more equipment to finish his amplifier, but it'll all be fairly conventional electronics - "and then of course he'll need to get into the earth station". More prodding suggests that the plan was to amplify Max's suggestion power, layering it on top of a satellite signal by getting into Goonhilly Downs... because later in the month, there's a plan for a live international satellite broadcast, that's likely to be watched by hundreds of millions of people.
2.5. Do You Want To Know A Secret
[25 January 2011]
Tuesday, 6 June 1967
The detector has gone off again, pointing to a drug overdose victim found near Waterloo Bridge. Ray Cohen is cagy at first, even giving a false name, but Simon convinces him of the reality of psi powers and Mr Dennis persuades him to sign the Official Secrets Act (the MI5 salary won't hurt). It seems he'd taken some ibogaine, acquired dishonestly from a tray at University College Hospital; he teleports his overcoat into his hand, and thinks he can move himself short distances too.
A lot of information has been got out of the Martlet raid. The people outside the lab seem to be ignorant of the dodgier goings-on, and are being processed by other branches, but Bureau D8 has kept the three scientists from the lab. There does seem to be some push-back from the House of Commons, though; the Martlet Group's nominal job was to disburse charitable funds, and shifting around that much money can't help but gain an organisation some political clout. It's not clear for how long MI5, or at least D8 specifically, can hang on to the prisoners.
The experimental notes suggest that the main focus of activity is crystals, mostly made of alum but with some gemstones being tested too: tuning a pair of them to resonate in synchrony over a long distance (they've managed twenty miles, but they drift out of synch quite fast), using them to transmit energy to each other, and so on. They've found a way to use a third crystal to disrupt the resonance between others, but making things not work isn't their major concern. There are also notes on two drug experiments, under the heading of "death experiences and mental powers"; the first one appears to have been the one that Simon, John and Megan participated in, and it's written up as a failure (they were expecting the deaths, indeed slightly more deaths than actually happened, but the early revivals seem to have taken them by surprise). The second experiment involves tampering with hallucinogenic drugs being supplied to hospitals for therapy purposes, and they're trying this at UCH...
(An MI5 team swoops on UCH and removes all their supplies of hallucinogens, citing contamination concerns. They do seem to have been contaminated with the same poison used in Dr Brown's drug.)
Instructions to the scientists have come on typewritten sheets, delivered by courier, and take the form of fairly directed suggestions: "try dosing the subject with hallucinogens and just barely killing it", for example. Although they're all written on the same or a similar machine, Megan reckons they have different authors, and some at least seem to have been translated from Russian.
The chief scientist, Dr Friend, is in his late forties and isn't talking; when Simon probes, this seems to be because he's much more scared of the people he's been working for (one of whom he's seen casually snapping someone's neck) than he is of MI5. The two junior men talk a bit more readily, but don't have much to add to the notes; it's clear they have essentially no ethnical sense, and the team considers recruiting them if it's possible.
Some background checking reveals that Friend's record starts rather suddenly in 1946, which is suggestive. Simon reads Friend in his sleep; he's dreaming of medical experiments, but they shade rather sharply into torture and sexual considerations. Probing, he confirms that Friend was a junior Nazi doctor; since he got out, he's been taking various low-level jobs suitable for a medically-qualified researcher, until Martlet found him late in 1964.
He knows several of the people in charge of him; Simon sends images to Megan, who sketches them and recognises one of them as Cecil King, head of IPC. As far as Friend is concerned, he's working on some new form of energy: the crystals don't interest him much, the drugs rather more, and he reckons the neurosurgery is entirely impractical.
(There's a typewritten sheet on neurosurgery, suggesting some fairly major brain modification, combined with crystals.)
Friend reckons that, wherever he's sent, if he betrays his bosses they'll kill him - probably by choking him to death over around six hours, as he's seen happen to someone else.
Friday, 9 June 1967
Ray signs up for a firearms course, under the mistaken impression that this will rapidly lead to the issue of a gun. Willis starts to look at the disruption effect of the crystals.
Monday, 12 June 1967
Meanwhile, D8 has a job: one Stephen Vickers is suspected of being a foreign agent, and the team is asked to try to discover the truth of this without alerting him. Material that could be used in a conventional way would be most welcome. Vickers is a barman at the Bunch of Grapes in the City of London, and he's one of several people who might be a conduit for leaked information which appears to have been on its way to China.
Sharon talks herself into a job doing two lunchtimes a week at the pub, which is just down the road from Lloyd's of London. It's mostly an evening trade, but she meets Alan Blake the landlord, and sees Vickers briefly. The pub is quite small, basically one room full of tables with the street door at one end and the bar at the other.
Tuesday, 13 June 1967
In the evening, Simon and Megan go in; it's mostly a male crowd (and judging by the conversation mostly from Lloyd's), so Megan's a little out of place, but she poses as Simon's girlfriend, and Simon's appropriately dressed. Ray, Sharon and Mr Dennis are in a car nearby.
Simon spots one of the customers handing over an envelope to Vickers; he's reasonably subtle about it, and Vickers tucks it into his jacket pocket. Megan scans the contents; it's a highly numerical analysis of shipping routes and risks, marked as confidential.
Simon probes Vickers, who's planning to tape the envelope inside the lid of a specific litter bin when he goes home. He also probes the donor, one Michael Henderson, whose thought on how he's being paid is "they won't tell my wife" about the affair he's having.
The place clears out a bit as the evening goes on. A man who's been at the bar for most of the evening, getting progressively maudlin, gets into a bit of a huddle with Vickers; Megan scans the conversation, which is mostly about how hard-done-by he is. Vickers is listening sympathetically and asking occasional questions - perhaps slightly pointed ones, but the fellow's too drunk to notice. Simon picks out his name (Gerald Morris), and scans Vickers, who's running through a checklist of things about which it might be possible to blackmail him.
At last orders, Simon and Megan leave as Vickers starts to clear up, reporting to Mr Dennis and the others. Megan plans to spot the envelope when Vickers deposits it, then follow it for as long as she can stay awake, and Simon will watch Vickers, getting ready to follow him on foot if necessary.
2.6. I'd Love to Change the World
[8 February 2011]
Vickers tapes the envelope to the bin. Megan psi-senses some telepathy in a group of people walking along the road; one of them breaks off, and starts shadowing Vickers. Simon and Ray follow him into Bank station, while Megan checks the package via ESP.
Vickers, his shadow, and Simon and Ray all get onto a northbound train. The shadow gets off at the next stop; Simon follows him, while Ray stays with Vickers. The shadow waits for a southbound train, returns to Bank, leaves the station and stands looking confused for a moment; Simon reads him thinking that he's already walked down this road once this evening. Must be working too hard...
At King's Cross, two other passengers - a man in his thirties and a woman in her fifties - step up as if to get off, then move to grab Ray as they're passing him. He slips away from their grasp and punches the man, who reels back onto the seats opposite - rather more of a reaction than Ray expected, in fact. The woman gets hold of him, and he punches her too, yelling for help all the time. An off-duty policeman asks what's going on, and both his attackers are confused, claiming not to have any idea. Ray moves to the other end of the carriage, near Vickers, and chats to him, though Vickers mostly ignores him.
Vickers gets off the train at Chalk Farm, and Ray confirms that he's gone home, then calls in and heads back to the City.
Wednesday, 14 June 1967
Megan, Sharon, Simon and Mr Dennis have been sitting around for a while when Megan gets another flash of telepathy - this time it's an office cleaner, who picks up the envelope and puts it in her bag. Simon reckons she's being mind-controlled. Megan follows her through her very boring overnight shift.
Half an hour later, a youngish man comes past the bin and seems surprised that there's nothing there, but hides it well and walks on. Simon follows him onto a bus, but loses him; either he got off very sneakily, or he turned invisible himself.
Megan, boosted by Mr Dennis' amphetamines, tracks the woman as she cleans all night, then heads home around 6am. She leaves the envelope on an Underground train, and the young woman sitting next to her picks it up. It passes through several more hands before it's left near the Soviet embassy, and a familiar driver picks it up. Megan shifts her powers to make them harder to detect as the package is brought into the embassy, then handed over to the pork-pie-hatted man - who appears to have two friends similarly equipped. They discuss matters briefly, and one of them asks "but will he be happy to work for us instead?"; they all laugh. The envelope is stowed in a filing cabinet, and Megan gets a look at a variety of Russian code names.
The team gets some sleep; Vickers is pulled in. After he got home, he had a rather worrying visit from Russians, who pointed out that he'd much rather be working for them than for the Albanian Sigurimi, which is what he's been doing so far (the Albanians at this point being the arm of Chinese influence in Europe). He started doing minor things for money, but is now being blackmailed; he doesn't seem to have any special powers. The Russians took all his notes, but he reconstructs what he can remember. He describes "Januz", who looks like the man Simon lost on the bus; he's not an official Albanian diplomat, so if he can be found he can be arrested.
Saturday, 24 June 1967
After several days of training and normal life, the team heads for Goonhilly Downs - in a smoke-filled Transit van with several MI5 operatives, with conversations ranging from octane ratings of petrol to the nasty new guns they're being issued instead of proper reliable Webleys. (Megan headed down a couple of days earlier to get in some beach and free love time.)
The MI5 people will patrol the perimeter, while the team has been got in as engineering students observing the historic live broadcast. There's frantic preparation going on amid the usual work; the MI5 people get the perimeter fence mended where the sheep had got through (this is not normally a high-security installation).
The local pub is more congenial to some than to others, with Sharon overindulging in apple products.
Sunday, 25 June 1967
Some news comes in from Birmingham - the local police didn't think much of it, so they didn't pass it on straight away, but on Friday night four radio hams died suddenly, apparently of strokes, while at their sets.
Around sunset, several of the team spot a figure working at the back of the main dish. Sharon chills him while Simon and Mr Dennis head up the ladder; he pulls a pistol and fires a couple of shots before he falls unconscious. He's not Cyril, though he has a box of radio parts. He's hauled down.
Meanwhile, Megan psi-senses some telepathy from an equipment shed. She and Ray head in, the latter stopping to grab the dropped pistol, followed by Mr Dennis. There's nobody immediately visible, though there's an open suitcase crammed full of valve electronics (and a reel-to-reel recorder, and various crystals, and other materials) hooked up to the hardware here.
Ray starts teleporting valves out of the suitcase, and it starts to spark and smoulder. Cyril Ransome pops out from where he'd been hiding behind an equipment rack - "You idiot, you're ruining it! This is years of work!" He waves a pistol, which Ray teleports to his own hand, then hands to Megan. The equipment flares up with a burst of - ESP, Megan thinks - and when the team can see again a couple of seconds later Ransome is no longer visible. They close the door and search, but to no avail.
The other fellow is Frank Newman, a radio ham from Birmingham whose memories since Friday night are distinctly fuzzy; he vaguely remembers coming down here on a train but isn't quite sure why he did.
The equipment is repaired, and the broadcast goes off without visible incident.