Chapter 17

Rural Oxfordshire. May the same year.

“Hello John,” Sir Michael Neve picked up the phone to his friend and neighbour. Neighbour in this instance meant nearly five miles away on a neighbouring farm.

“Hello Mike,” laughed the man on the other end, “I see you’ve moved into the twenty-first century at long last and got yourself a phone that tells you who’s calling.” He paused and the laughter faded. “Sorry to interrupt at this time of the evening, but this is important.”

“Not a problem John, you know that. How can I help?”

“Someone came to visit me about half an hour ago, I’ve just sent him to you. It was your idea after all.”

Sir Michael was a little confused, but also a little concerned. “My idea?”

“I don’t want to say too much over the phone in case of prying ears. I’m damnably sure that I’ve been listened into at least once just in the last couple of weeks.”

“Because you’re an ex-parliamentarian?”

“I think so, yes.” Both men knew that just because the House of Lords had been abolished didn’t mean that ex-members would be forgotten about. Neither man was going to say such on the phone though.

“Okay. I think I understand.” Sir Michael’s puzzlement left, but his concern remained. “Is this good, bad or indifferent?”

“Oh good. Very good in fact.” The laughter in the other man’s voice returned. “Tomorrow I need you to come over and see my blacksmith.”

“What?” Sir Michael was confused again.

“You’ll understand shortly. Hopefully my visitor be with you in the next half hour or so.”

“Okaaaay,” said Sir Michael slowly, his thoughts racing. “No clues?”

“No, but I think you should get your manager, what’s his name? Tony? You should get him into the meeting at the very least.”

“Oh. Okay. Will do. Right. I guess I’d better go and prepare. Thanks for giving me due warning John. It’s appreciated.”

“See you tomorrow.” John hung up, leaving his friend and neighbour looking perplexed.

Sir Michael looked at the clock on the desk. It was just after nine in the evening. He frowned and then grimaced. Tony was out on night exercises with the forty odd people he’d recruited in the last two years. He dialled Tony’s mobile, and was mildly surprised when the man answered.

“Sir?”

“Sergeant, sorry about this, but I need you to get back to the house as fast as you can. If Corporal Coates is there, bring him as well please.”

“Yes sir. Do you need the men as well?”

“No, I don’t think so. Is Millie with you?”

“Private Neve? No sir. She injured her ankle this morning so she’s in the company office monitoring the radio.”

Sir Michael was silent for a moment. “All right, thank you. Be as quick as you can please.”

“Sir.”

Sir Michael hung up and redialled.

Millie answered. “Dad?”

“Can you come through into my office please?”

“Sure, anything you need?”

“Just yourself.”

“There in a mo.” She hung up.

Her father smiled slightly, then began to tidy away anything and everything directly related to his opposition activities.

“You okay Daddy?” Millie asked as she entered the room a few moments later.

“You decided to join then.”

Millie was silent for a moment. “Look. I knew you weren’t exactly happy about the prospect of me joining up, but I felt it was important.”

“And you don’t think helping me, even in a civilian role, is just as important?”

“Look Daddy, this is important. I’m twenty-six this month, I haven’t got very far with my life, these aliens are heading towards us at a high rate of knots, could be here any day now for all we know, and Thorn is hampering all efforts to prepare. I have to do something. I have to fight. I need this. Don’t stop me. Please?”

“I have no intention of stopping you, I just wish you could have spoken to me first. I could have arranged for you to do your training elsewhere rather than here.”

Millie frowned. “Why?”

“So that you’re not in the comfort of your own home. You’ve been sleeping in the house every night, even when I know the rest of the company is out on night manoeuvres.”

Millie blushed slightly. “Steve has a bit of a crush on me. I think...” she paused as her father held up his hand.

“You are a private in the...” it was Sir Michael’s turn to pause as he wondered, and not for the first time, what the organisation should be called. “This company,” he eventually concluded, not making a decision. “When we are in an official position, please refer to your officers and NCOs by their correct ranks. Corporal Coates you mean?”

“Er, yes, sorry Dad.”

“That’s Major,” snapped Sir Michael.

Millie’s jaw dropped for a moment, then as she understood what he was saying, she pulled herself quickly to attention. “Yes sir, sorry sir.”

“There are times, Private, when we can be informal. You are now a uniformed member, even if you are not currently in uniform, and this is company business. Understood?” The major’s voice had calmed to a more conversational tone.

“Yes sir. Sorry sir.”

“Good. Stand easy. Now. John Barrowdale from the Highmouth Estate has just been on the phone. We’re going to have a visitor shortly. I’m guessing from the little he said that this is good news somehow, though how exactly I’m not sure. You’ve been acting as my adjutant for a while now, so I thought you might as well be here.” He paused and glared slightly at her. “I think I’m going to have to get a proper adjutant now. I can’t really have a private doing the role, even if she is my daughter.”

“Yes sir.” Millie was saddened by that, though she understood his reasoning.

“Don’t worry, until I can find someone suitable, that’s your job, except when Sergeant Goodwin or Corporal Coates require you for your training. Your training must come first, understood?”

“Yes sir. About this visitor, no clues at all?”

“None. He told me to get Tony in here, and I’ve asked Tony to bring Corporal Coates as well. Now it’s just a waiting game.”

“Mmm. Both are out in the field somewhere, it’ll take them a while to get back here I expect. And it’s drizzling so they’ll be a bit cold. If you’ll excuse me sir, I’ll go put some coffee on.”

Major Neve nodded his agreement and Millie left the room again. He smiled proudly at her retreating back. “Good girl,” he thought to himself.

“Right,” said the major some twenty minutes later, after Tony and Steve had arrived. “I don’t know exactly what this is about, but I’m guessing it has something to do with our underground activities.” He explained briefly about the phone call from John Barrowdale.

John Barrowdale had not been one of the original fourteen officers, in fact he had never served in the military. Besides being a ‘gentleman farmer’ he had been a well known and successful businessman, and his highly successful business ventures had got him appointed to the House of Lords just a few months before Graham Thorn entered parliament for the first time. He was also a senior regional officer in the St John Ambulance Brigade, and between them all he had contacts of all sorts throughout the country. He was also known to be an outspoken opponent of Graham Thorn.

It was his business and political contacts that Sir Michael and the others had wanted to use, though in fact it was his St John contacts that had proved far more useful: it was amazing just what sort of person volunteered for the organisation. When Sir Michael had carefully approached him a few days after that initial meeting, he had been enthusiastic about the endeavour, and had in his turn managed to find a few more people, outside of Sir Michael’s circle of contacts, who could be relied upon for help and support, even if much of it was not directly military in nature. Some of Sir Michael’s best intelligence on the local Safety Patrol came from these people. He had turned out to be a most useful man indeed.

“Barrowdale didn’t tell me much, but it seemed important. For security however, I suggest we all use just our given names while this visitor is present. If it becomes appropriate to use anything else, then, well, we’ll see.”

The other three nodded their heads in understanding.

“In the meantime,” he gestured to the steaming coffee pot on the side, “Millie has sorted out some...” he paused as the great bell rang.

“I’ll go,” said Millie quietly, standing.

A few minutes later she ushered in an imposing looking young man. He was tall, just over six feet tall, and gave the impression of controlled strength. “Dad,” said Millie, “this is Lieutenant Colonel Carter. Mr. Carter, this is my father, Sir Michael Neve.”

“Major Neve, thank you for seeing me at such short notice.” There was a hint of a Welsh accent. Sir Michael smiled to himself and quickly managed to recall something his cousin had once taught him.

“Shwmae. Welcome to my home. These are my daughter Millicent, and my senior staff Tony Goodwin and Steven Coates.”

Lieutenant Colonel Carter smiled broadly. “Shwmae. You have some Welsh in you?”

Sir Michael shook his head. “No. Not even a tiny part. But I recognised your Welsh accent, and my cousin married a Welsh lad.”

Their visitor just nodded. “Look, I know this is late, so I’ll get straight down to business. My name is Llewelyn Carter, and I’m recruiting. I have been for a while now.”

“Who do you work for?” asked Millie.

Carter looked at Sir Michael.

“You can speak completely freely in front of all these people.”

Carter nodded. “I work for Confederacy Intelligence.”

“But you’ve been banned from the UK,” burst out Steve. “How can you be recruiting?”

“We have, but I’m not recruiting for the Confederacy. I’m recruiting for the Maquis.”

“The Maquis?” asked the major frowning in puzzlement. “What’s that?”

“You will probably know that the Chiefs of Staff were all arrested and disappeared last December. Well it was a setup, and they were rescued. They are safe, and they are starting to bring together a fighting force. For about eighteen months now I’ve been tasked with organising and recruiting people, bringing together organisations and groups that have formed themselves, and now that includes helping the Chiefs of Staff to co-ordinate the regular military and the underground.”

Everyone their looked stunned as they finally found out they were not alone.

“How did you find us? I thought we’d been very discreet?” asked Sir Michael.

“You had. We’d never have known about you if your neighbour hadn’t mentioned you. Many moons ago, when I was first tasked with this role, I was given a long list of organisations to approach. One of them, and to be honest I really thought it a complete waste of time so left it until one of the last, was St John’s, er no,” he smiled slightly. “I’ve been told off about this a few times now, St John Ambulance. John Barrowdale is a senior officer within that organisation, and he put me in touch with you.”

There was a long pause as people digested this information.

“So we’re not the only ones?” asked Steve Coates in wonder.

“Not by a long shot,” laughed Carter. “I and my people have now spoken with some one hundred and fifty different organisations and groups across the country. The Maquis, which is what we’re calling it, now numbers some twenty five thousand people. Many, indeed most, are ex-military, but there are a good number, maybe approaching twenty percent, that are non military.”

“So how wide spread is this organisation? And where would I and my people sit within it?”

“It’s nationwide. We’re not too good within the bigger towns and cities. Truth and Freedom mostly seems to recruit from the slums and er, well, the criminal elements. Also the extremists of left and right. Bigots, racists, fundamentalists, that sort. The sort that mostly reside in the cities just because they can find more people to impose their will on, or simply prey on, closer to home.

“As for you and your people, initially you will carry on exactly as now, but at some point you will be contacted, by someone who will try and fit your organisation into the bigger organisation.”

Sir Michael frowned. “What exactly did Barrowdale tell you?”

Carter frowned slightly. “Just that he thought I should come see you. That you had some men on your estate that were ‘in training’ and that you yourself were ex-military.”

“Oh. Nothing else?”

Carter shook his head slowly. “No. Should he have?”

“Hmm.” Sir Michael looked at Goodwin, smiling slightly. “Should we?” he asked with a hint of laughter in his voice.

Only Carter was not now smiling. “What’s up?”

“Barrowdale was being discreet.”

Carter frowned. “Oh?”

“Um. I think you might be in for a bit of a surprise. I’m now guessing that Barrowdale sent you to me so that I could have two ex para NCOs with me when I told you the news, just in case you were not who you appear to be.”

Carter looked at the other two men appraisingly. Both men looked calm and relaxed, but now that he really looked at them, both men also showed the controlled aggression that only highly trained and experienced professional soldiers could show. He hoped they didn’t realise that he wasn’t a professional soldier.

“Go on.”

“Can you prove you are who you say you are?”

Carter frowned in thought. “You know, I’m not sure I easily can. What do you know of the Confederacy?”

“Not a lot to be honest.”

“Are you aware of what we can do in medical tubes?”

Sir Michael shook his head.

“Hmm.” Carter looked at Tony and Steve. “Can I borrow one of your men just briefly please?”

“For why?”

“You’ll see. Nobody’ll get hurt. On my honour.”

Sir Michael nodded. “Steve?”

Steve Coates stood, as did the Colonel.

“Now I actually look at you, you are very obviously a soldier. Parachute Regiment, yes?”

“Yes sir. Corporal Coates, First Battalion.”

“Ah. Based at St.Athan? Just to the west of Cardiff?”

“Yes sir.”

Carter nodded. “Thank you for your assistance Corporal. Roughly what do you weigh?”

“Just on ninety-eight kilograms sir. That’s fifteen stone six.”

“Okay. How much can you bench press?”

“About one hundred and ten kilos.”

“Um. What’s that in pounds and ounces?” He looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “Oh. Two forty-three pounds, so seventeen stone five.” He looked down again. “Okay. I’m going to use you to bench press.”

To the astonishment of all present, he lay on the floor, had Steve lay across his upraised arms, and promptly bench pressed him six times, using just one arm. “Thank you Corporal.”

He stood, brushed himself down, and sat, a small smile on his face. “That one was a fairly obvious one. Even though I’m not a front line soldier, I have most of the additional strength that all Confederacy Marines have. I have improved eyesight and hearing. I also have an implant that allows me to contact the Confederacy computers.” It was easier to refer to the AIs as computers. Long experience had told him that most non-Confederacy people didn’t understand what an AI was. He smiled at them. “I had to ask it what the conversion from kilograms to pounds was.”

“All right,” said Sir Michael. “With reservations, I’ll accept your references.”

“Thank you Major. I daren’t carry anything obviously Confederacy around with me. I’m very careful, but if I were caught, I can act the part of a Welsh sheep farmer very easily, because I used to be one. But if I was carrying anything that identified me as Confederacy I suspect my life expectancy would be nil.”

“Understood. Well in that case, I’ll pass you on to the most senior person in the Light Brigade.”

“The Light Brigade?” asked Carter, a puzzled look on his face.

“Some of the men have started calling it that,” smiled Sir Michael, “simply because we are really rather light on weapons and equipment. And for want of a better name, I’ve decided that it’s as good as any for the time being.”

“Ah, understood.” Carter gave a soft laugh. “Sorry. Go on.”

“Well. You need to go and see Brigadier James Ashcroft. Lord Ashcroft is my cousin, and one of my very closest friends. He lives just south of Stratford-Upon-Avon.” He rifled quickly through his card index, and pulled out a card. “Here’s his address.” He held it out to the Lieutenant Colonel and then stopped. “What?”

“Do you trust him?” asked Carter, suspicion evident in his voice.

Sir Michael smiled. “Absolutely. I can advise him you’re coming, or I can let you just turn up. It’s up to you. Why?”

Carter nodded slowly, watching Sir Michael carefully, ‘reading’ him. “Because all the evidence we have is that he’s close to the TaF leadership.”

“That’s cover. His ex-wife is now with someone high up,” he paused and frowned. “Actually, so is my ex-wife, I recently discovered.”

“Oh?” Carter paused briefly. “Do you keep in touch with your ex at all?”

Sir Michael shuddered slightly. “No. Thankfully. I despise the man. I didn’t like him before he took my...” he stopped. “Millie here still regularly visits her mother.”

Carter turned to Millie. “Be careful. I’m sure you already are, but... , I don’t suppose on your visits to see your mother you have ever heard anything that could be of interest to us?”

Millie shrugged. “Dunno. I barely listen to the man. He was tolerable at first, but I avoid him now if I can.”

He nodded. “If I was to get you a couple of Confederacy listening devices, do you think you could plant them for us?”

“Bugs? Yeah, I guess so.”

“Thank you,” he turned to Sir Michael. “I hope that’s okay with you as well?”

Sir Michael shrugged. “As long as she’s careful, and they’re discreet.”

Carter nodded. “I’ll contact you when they’re available and we can sort out a convenient time for someone to deliver them.”

“Very well. If you can’t get in touch with Lord Ashcroft, then you could try contacting his adjutant. He was a Royal Navy Commodore. Nominally the same rank, but it was decided that as a land based organisation the naval officers would become support staff rather than line officers.”

“Okay. Who’s that?”

“His name’s Mark Taber.” He pulled out another contact card and handed it over. “He’ll be slightly easier to contact maybe.”

“Thank you. No. I don’t want you to let either of them know I’ve been here. I’ll contact them discreetly.” He didn’t add ‘if I deem it safe to do so’ which was what he was thinking, though he was fairly confident that Sir Michael was telling the truth about the trustworthiness of his cousin. “In the meantime however, I have a couple of things for you. First, there’s a second lieutenant kicking his heels just outside of Bicester.” He paused and gave a soft laugh. “I had an American try to pronounce that ‘Bysester’ the other day instead of ‘Bister’,” everyone smiled slightly. “The lieutenant was made redundant just after he passed out from Sandhurst. I understand he was second in his class.” He passed over a piece of paper. “Here’s his details. You might like to try and find him before Truth and Freedom do and he’s forcibly enrolled into the Patrol.”

Sir Michael looked at the paper, nodded, and passed it to Millie.

Millie looked at it. James Simnall. She would contact him first thing in the morning and arrange a job interview for him. It was the standard way they had contacted everyone: pretend to be a recruitment agency that had been given his name, find out what he wanted to do, pretend to do a quick computer search and find something, and then arrange and ‘send’ them for an interview. She’d done this eight times now, and knew exactly what to do.

“This Maquis thing.” Tony asked their visitor. “What is it exactly?”

“Exactly? It’s the same as you are. It’s doing the same things. It has more equipment than you have. We have made arrangements,” he paused and turned to Sir Michael. “That reminds me. If it’s at all convenient...”

Everyone paused and looked around as the main entrance bell rang loudly in the hallway.

“I’ll go,” said Millie, quickly standing.

Sir Michael nodded at Steve to accompany her, but to stand out of sight of the front door.

“Just quickly,” Carter said to Sir Michael. “Go see John Barrowdale as soon as possible. He has a Confederacy replicator than can produce arms and ammunition for you.”

“Ah. Right. Now I understand John’s amusement. That would be so useful.”

At that moment Steve re-entered the room. “Just a friend of Millie’s,” he announced. “She’s taken her into the kitchen.”

“Anyone you recognise?” asked the major.

“Yes sir. Don’t know her name, but I’ve seen her around a few times. Millie gave the impression it was a school friend.”

“Oh,” Sir Michael thought for a moment. “Quite a short, dumpy looking girl, long dark hair?”

“Yes sir.”

Sir Michael smiled. “Gemma. Yes. I know her. She’s one of Millie’s closest friends, and probably the only one from her school days she still keeps in touch with. Went to Brasenose College Oxford, now a PhD and researcher in one of their science labs. Lovely kid, and one of the sharpest minds I know, but scared of anything that has more legs than brain cells, especially if it moves faster than an arthritic snail.”

Everyone in the room chuckled at his description.

“Okay,” said their visitor, “well I’m really glad to have met you all, but it is a bit late, so I’ll just finish up by saying that you are not alone. Not by a long way. You need to keep recruiting, if you can, and you need to keep training. Don’t go out hunting for targets, at least, if you do, just observe, don’t take them out. You can take out people that get too close to you and start to become suspicious, start to investigate you, but otherwise just act normally. If you do have to take anyone out, you need to let us know, okay?”

“Sure,” nodded Sir Michael. “You said we would be contacted. Do you know who by or when?”

“No. Not exactly. I think I need to go see your, cousin did you say?” Sir Michael nodded and Carter continued without a break, “and see what else he has to offer. How many do you have here and now? On this farm? Estate?”

It was Steve Coates who answered the question. “We’ve forty-four people in the company itself. Nineteen, all men, are ex-military. Of the rest ten are women. We have ages ranging from eighteen to fifty-five. Of the ex military, we have one officer,” he nodded towards Sir Michael, “six NCOs including Tony and myself, the rest are privates.”

“We also have seven civilians,” added Sir Michael, “who for various reasons are not part of the company, but help, support and assist in other ways.”

“Okay. All that I can take to Sir Amjad, who has taken on the role of co-ordinating the Maquis as a whole. Presumably your cousin has other men?”

“I guess so. To be honest we’ve been trying to keep this as closely under wraps as possible, so I don’t know what he has, and he doesn’t know a great deal about what I have. Security you know.”

Carter just nodded, a pleased smile on his face. “Good. How much land do you have here?”

“Fifteen and a half square miles,” Tony Goodwin told him. “That’s about forty point one square kilometres. Nearly ten thousand acres or just over four thousand hectares.” Tony grinned. “We have a big spread here. Roughly twenty percent of that is natural woodland, mostly on the side of the Chiltern Hills, but we also have another nine-hundred acres of farmed woodland for logging and we have a small eleven acre wood at the north end that is a nature reserve and SSSI. Just over a third is arable farmland: mostly barley for the local brewers, and oats and hay for cattle winter feed, but also beets, potatoes and some brassicas. We have a large herd of cattle and a slightly larger flock of sheep and a few goats that use up about another third; the lake and adjacent wetlands take up nearly two hundred acres, another one of the three SSSI’s on the land. There’s a fifty-acre orchard for apples and plums, and we have some large greenhouses for tomatoes, peppers, chillis et cetera. Then there’s a few dozen acres of parkland of one form or another, including formal gardens and meadows open to the public most Sundays. We normally keep a small number of horses, usually owned by other people but stabled here. At the moment we’re down to three, but we can take thirty. With some changes, and a lot of care, we could probably hide about eighty people maybe up to a hundred. Even more if we are careful and were lucky. We would even feed them off the land, up to a point. It wouldn’t be exciting fare, but we could do it.”

Carter frowned slightly. “Your land is only a bit larger than John Barrowdale’s, how come you can have as many people as that on yours, but he can’t even take ten?”

“Because his is all intensive arable farming,” Sir Michael told him. “Much of my estate is on the Chiltern hills, so some of it is quite steep and unsuitable for anything other than woodland or sheep farming, or just leaving open for rambling et cetera. John has just one small patch of woodland on his farm, the rest is all grain or brassicas. It would be far more noticeable on John’s farm if he suddenly gave part of it over to the Light Brigade.”

“Ah. Okay. Fair enough. I think I’ve got everything I need. Do you gentlemen have any questions of me?”

“I don’t think so,” Sir Michael said slowly, looking at both Tony and Steve with raised eyebrows. Steve shook his head, but Tony nodded.

“Go on,” Carter nodded.

“How do we contact you if needed?”

“Ah, good point.” He took out a card and passed it to Sir Michael, before looking around again. “Any more?”

All three shook their heads.

“In that case, as it is late, I will bid you all good evening.” He stood, the others standing with him.

Sir Michael showed their visitor to the door, watching with a frown as he walked briskly down the long drive towards the main gate. The actual gate was out of sight of the front door, and it was a one mile walk, nearly, to the front gate, with nowhere to park a car apart from right in front of the house. There was only one additional car there, and that must belong to Gemma.

He closed the door slowly. “Steve?”

“Sir?”

“Our visitor is walking down to the main gate, it would appear. Do you have anyone on watch down there?”

“Yes sir. Do you want me to tell them to keep an eye out?”

“Yeeees,” said the major, slowly, “I think I do. If you can contact them, tell them to keep out of sight, and tell me how he departs? Then can you join me back in the study please.”

“Sir.”

Steve hurried off to the company office, where a small radio was kept hidden.

Sir Michael looked at the card he’d been given. On it were just three items. A name: Llew Carter, a title of sorts: Sheep farmer (Black Mountains), and a phone number. The phone number looked like a perfectly normal telephone number. “Where’s 01601?” asked Sir Michael.

Tony shook his head. “Not one I recognise.”

Sir Michael shrugged. “Nor me, but then, I don’t suppose I’d know more than a dozen out of hundreds.”

“Do you want me to look it up?”

“No rush, but yes please,” Sir Michael murmured as Steve re-entered the room.

“All done sir.” Steve frowned. “The men on the gate say they didn’t see him come in. They’re going to send someone up the drive to meet him.”

Sir Michael’s frown matched that of Steve’s. “But they saw Millie’s friend?”

“Yes sir. They say that ‘cos she’s someone they know and recognise and they know is trusted, they didn’t report her arrival. I’ve told them that from now on everyone must be reported, regardless. Even if it’s just the regular postman on his rounds.”

Sir Michael nodded slowly, his frown relaxing only slightly. The gate guards were hidden, not visible to people coming in and out. They were there to raise an alert, not to stop anyone from entering. None of the men particularly liked the fact that the front gate was only monitored, not guarded, but they all understood why it was currently necessary for it to be like that. “Thank you Corporal, that was a damn good idea.” He turned to Tony. “And find out about that phone number.”

“Yes sir.”

The major turned to his two men. “Well, that was a very interesting little visit and no mistake. What do you both think?”

“You notice he didn’t mention equipment or supplies,” Steve said. “It’s all very well...” he broke off at the look of puzzled surprise on Sir Michael’s face. “What?”4

“Ah, sir, he was out of the room,” said Tony, obvious amusement in his voice.

“Oh. Yes, of course, sorry. He’s given me, us, some information. I’m going to follow up on that tomorrow. We may yet get the stores we need.”

The three men chatted desultorily for about five minutes, but there wasn’t really a lot to be said until Sir Michael was contacted, so they said their goodnights, Steve Coates heading back to the night exercise, Tony Goodwin to his cottage and bed, and Sir Michael to his bed.

Sir Michael had only just got to his room when Millie knocked gently on his door and entered. She smiled. “Anything I need to know for tomorrow?”