'It used to be nicer,' Mrs Weatherby responded, leading them across the hall towards some closed doors,

  'when it was open to the public and was the same as it had been when its former owners, the Lewises, lived in it. It only had four bedrooms up here then, but they've since been divided up into smaller rooms to accommodate more guests. Mr Harbinson is only one of those guests and he's quite a handful.'

  'How do you mean?' Gumshoe asked.

  'You'll find out,' Mrs Weatherby replied, stopping in front of one of the doors and hammering on it with the knuckles of her clenched fist. 'Mr Harbinson!' she called out. 'Are you decent? You have visitors!'

  'What's that?' a quavering male voice responded.

  'I said you have visitors! A Mr Fullbright and a Miss Packard. Can I show them in? Are you decent?'

  'I never have visitors,' the man, Harbinson, replied, his voice quavering and rasping with age, 'and I don't want any now. Send them away . . . No, wait! Did they bring anything with them?'

  'Pardon?'

  'Any presents . . . Cigarettes? Whisky? Liquorice Allsorts? Oh, what the hell, I'm fart-bored again. Send them in anyway!'

  Rolling her eyes, the woman opened the door and nodded for

  Gumshoe and Bonnie to enter, which they did, finding themselves in a small room, practically touching the end of the bed upon which, propped up against three or four pillows, an old man in striped pyjamas was resting.

  'My office is in the drawing room downstairs,' Mrs Weatherby said. 'Please let me know when you leave.'

  'I will,' Gumshoe said.

  When Mrs Weatherby had closed the door, Gumshoe and Bonnie stared at the man propped up on the

  bed. He was gaunt and lined with age, but had clearly once been handsome. He still had a fine head of silvery-grey hair and surprisingly bright, searchingly perceptive blue eyes that, right now, were taking Bonnie in from tip to toe.

  'Mmmmm,' he said. 'Tasty ... If a bit on the odd side.'

  'What's that?' Bonnie responded, stepping forward to the end of the bed, about to give the old goat a sharp retort.

  'So,' the old goat said, turning his bright, questioning gaze upon Gumshoe, 'who are you? Did I know you once? Perhaps when you were children? Otherwise, I can't imagine who . . .'

  'I'm Randolph Fullbright,' Gumshoe said quickly, 'and this is my friend, Bonnie Packard. No, Mr Harbinson, you don't know us. We're just fans of your work and we heard you were here and decided to come out and see you. We thought you might tell us a bit about how you came to write your "Projekt Saucer" series and . . .'

  Fans?' the old goat interjected, smiling to reveal a set of sound teeth. 'Did you say you were fans?' Yes, sir,' Gumshoe said.

  Please, please.' Harbinson waved to the wooden chair beside the bed, indicating that Gumshoe should sit on it, then he patted the other side of the bed with the flat of his hand and nodded to Bonnie. 'And you sit here, my dear,' he said, his voice turning as oily as it could, given his advanced years. 'Right here, beside me.'

  Looking sceptical, Bonnie sat on the edge of the bed while

  Gumshoe took the chair at the opposite side. The old goat immediately patted Bonnie's bare thigh, saying, 'That's it, my dear. How nice to see you. What a sweet girl you are.' He studied the length of her bare thigh with his roaming gaze, then gave it a gentle squeeze. It's so nice to have visitors.' When Bonnie gently removed his hand from her thigh, he smiled and turned his bright gaze on Gumshoe. 'So, did you bring me any presents?' he said. 'Any cigarettes? Whisky? Liquorice Allsorts? I do love the latter, but they say they're bad for my cholesterol and they won't let me smoke or drink either. This place is a prison.'

  'Seems like a nice rest home,' Bonnie said. 'It was once a real fancy joint. How long have you been here?'

  'Five years,' Harbinson said, his bright gaze roaming lecher-ously over her body, his smile clearly wicked. 'I need to be looked after and I came here when my last woman left me. It doesn't cost much to stay here.'

  'How come you're here?' Gumshoe asked. 'I mean, you're British, right?'

  'Right,' the old guy said, reluctantly removing his gaze from Bonnie. 'From Northern Ireland, actually, which means I'm a British citizen. I was in New York, researching a book, when the cyborgs took over and, of course, then I couldn't leave the country: no one could. I was trapped in America.'

  'That must have been pretty rough,' Bonnie said. 'Losing your family and friends in England.'

  'We lose everything in life,' the old man responded, smiling, 'so I've made a point of never expecting anything to last and I don't miss anyone or anything — apart from booze, cigarettes and sweets.' He shrugged his shoulders, which were frail in the striped pyjamas. 'What did I leave behind me? I wasn't married at the time, my children were grown up, living their own lives, and I'd spent most of my life travelling anyway, so I was used to being alone. Of course, I always needed looking after. I mean, all writers do. We need to be royally fucked — in the most positive sense — and mothered and in general spoilt

  rotten. So, when I realized that I was trapped, almost broke, in a foreign country, I nosed around for an unattached woman who had her own income. The one I found was from Washington DC and I moved there to live with her, hopefully for good. But, of course, she let me down badly. She'd thought I was famous, you see — and what woman can resist that? — but then, when she found out that I was broke, that my career was virtually over, she used her influence to have me placed here, thus artfully removing me from her life. So, here I am . . . No Liquorice Allsorts?'

  'What are they?' Bonnie asked.

  'Candy,' Gumshoe explained. 'British candy. No, sir,' he added, turning back to the ancient scrounging author, 'we've got no Liquorice Allsorts.' ' 'Whisky?'

  'No.'

  The old panhandler pouted sulkily at him, then whined, 'It's not nice to visit someone in a hospital and not bring them something.'

  'This isn't a hospital,' Bonnie said.

  'It's a home for geriatrics,' the old guy responded, 'and that makes it the same as a hospital. No grapes either, I gather.'

  'No grapes,' Bonnie said.

  Looking even more disgruntled, the aged writer sank deeper into the pillows and gazed forlornly at the lithograph adorning the wall above Bonnie's head. The lithograph showed the French Marquis de Lafayette on a visit to Woodlawn m 1824. The old writer lowered his gaze until his eyes were travelling once more along Bonnie's bared thigh. That sight made him suck his breath in. He raised his gaze to smile at her, then reached out to squeeze her thigh again. 'Still,' he said, now practically ignoring Gumshoe, it was nice of you to come and see me. I miss the company of young women, even in my advanced years. My, what a nice, fleshy thigh you have!'

  Bonnie smiled, patted the old rogue's hand, then gently

  removed it from her thigh as Gumshoe distracted him with, 'You don't write any more?'

  'Of course not. I've written all I was ever meant to write and my time as an author is long past.'

  'Meant to write?' Gumshoe asked, recalling those Net speculations that Harbinson might have had an electronic brain-implant and been compelled to write his epic series about Wilson and man-made flying saucers as a form of disinformation to protect the real, extraterrestrial saucers and their alien occupants.

  Or, conversely, that Harbinson was a covert member of the NSC and had been spreading disinformation on their behalf to draw attention away from their supposedly ongoing interaction with these same aliens. In an insane world anything was believable, so both possibilities remained open and Gumshoe wanted the truth of it.

  'Yes,' the old man said. 'I wrote what I was meant to write — what came into my head — and then I ran dry and that was it. After that, I could only live off various women, as many male writers do. The women, you see . . .' Here he cast a lewd grin in Bonnie's direction . . . 'The women have always had a soft spot for writers, thinking of them as bad boys who can be converted, ho, ho, or as children who need looking after, so of course any writer worth his salt will not disappoint them. Don't you think that's wise, dear?' His hand crept back towards her leg.

  'You were probably a bloodsucking lecher,' Bonnie said. 'Now get your paw off my thigh.'

  'So sorry,' the sly old bastard said, unperturbed, though he did at least remove his hand. 'It went there of its own accord.' He turned back to Gumshoe, smiling brightly. 'So, no Liquorice Allsorts and no

  whisky. What about cigarettes?'

  'You shouldn't smoke,' Bonnie said. 'It's bad for your eighty-year-old heart.'

  'You don't smoke?' the former writer said to Gumshoe, ignoring Bonnie for now.

  'No,' Gumshoe said.

  'Too bad. I am perishing. I might as well roll over and go back to sleep.'

  'You wrote a lot of books,' Gumshoe said, hoping to appeal to the old bastard's vanity, 'not all of them about flying saucers. How did you get into that?'

  'It just seemed like a good thing to write at the time,' the old bastard said, now glancing uneasily about the room, as if the walls had suddenly started to close in on him. 'It was nothing mysterious. I mean, the subject was popular at the time, so I just picked up on it. God, I'd kill for a smoke!'

  'Books about extraterrestrials were popular at the time,' Gumshoe reminded him. 'Not books about man-made flying saucers. You were the only one who wrote about man-made saucers and your books soon disappeared. In fact, you wrote four massive novels on the subject, as well as a nonfiction book, and only the first and third books in the series were published here in the States. How did that come about?'

  The old man shrugged. 'Who knows about the ways of publishers, dear boy? They don't belong in the real world. They live in a world all their own and it defies comprehension.'

  'What I'm trying to say,' Gumshoe said loud and clear, 'is that I could understand it if they dropped the series halfway through because the first couple of books didn't sell enough. But why in hell would they publish the first and third book in a four-book series? That just doesn't make sense. Were those particular volumes suppressed?'

  I really can't say. I can't remember. It was so long ago . . . Are you sure you don't smoke?'

  What was in books two and four?' Gumshoe asked, ignoring the old goat's 'Let's change the subject'

  question. 'Did they include material that had to be suppressed? More detailed stuff about Wilson?'

  Wilson?' Harbinson's head suddenly jerked up, his gaze startled, his wide eyes flitting fearfully left and right. 'Wilson?' he repeated, licking his dry lips. 'What about Wilson?'

  'You wrote about him,' Gumshoe said. 'You wrote an awful lot about him. You wrote two and a half thousand pages of fact-based fiction about him, so I'd like to know if he existed in real life or not. Did he?'

  'Of course not. I wrote fiction — as you have, indeed, just noted — and Wilson was only one of the many characters in that fiction, another product of my rich imagination. Why think anything else?'

  'Because you claimed at the time to have based him on an historical figure of that name — the Wilson of the Great Airship Scare, remember? — and newspaper reports of the time support your contention.'

  'Never believe what you read in the papers,' the old man said dryly. 'Not even the papers of 1896 and 1897. Newspapers invent things.'

  'But you quoted those newspapers in good faith and also wrote a non-fiction book on the subject of man-made flying saucers, giving Wilson as the originator of them. Are you now saying that it was all a fabrication?'

  'A writer has to eat,' the venerable W A. Harbinson said, 'and Wilson was my meal ticket for a while . . .' At this point he yawned ostentatiously. 'I feel so tired. Can I sleep now?'

  He was starting to snuggle down deeper into the bed, obviously planning to pull the sheet up over his pale, craggily lined face and blot out the real world — but Gumshoe didn't let him. The sheet was practically up to the old goat's panicky eyes when Gumshoe jerked it down again and stared directly at him.

  'Wilson existed, didn't he?'

  'No!'

  Yes!'

  'No!'

  'Tell the truth!'

  Yes, yes! He existed! I want to sleep now! Where's Mrs Weatherby? She'll tell you I have to sleep.'

  'This old bastard's senile,' Bonnie said. You're wastin' your time talkin' to him, Gumshoe. He'll tell you anything you want to hear, but that won't mean it's the truth. You're wastin' your time here.'

  'Is Wilson still alive?' Gumshoe asked, ignoring Bonnie.

  'Of course not. He died years ago. Mrs Weatherby? Where are you, Mrs Weatherby? I want to sleep, Mrs Weatherby!'

  'Mrs Weatherby's in her office downstairs and can't hear a thing you say,' Gumshoe informed the increasingly disturbed old man. 'So why don't you just answer a few more questions. Like are you, in fact, Wilson?'

  'What? What? Are you crazy? Why should / be Wilson?'

  'Because you wrote two and a half thousand pages about Wilson and man-made flying saucers, yet no one ever found out where you got all that research from.'

  'Dear God,' W A. Harbinson — formerly successful author, now potential graveyard material — said despairingly. 'What are you talking about?'

  'I'm talking about two and a half thousand pages and an enormous amount of research about man-made flying saucers by a man who wasn't known by a single soul in the UFO-research community, who hadn't approached any UFO-research organization for assistance with his research, and who was never seen at any UFO convention or any kind of convention related to that subject. I'm talking about a writer who produced a tremendous amount of flying-saucer research and whose sources for that information remain unknown. So where did you get your information from, Mr Harbinson?'

  Libraries!' Harbinson snapped defensively. 'Read the bibliographies in my books. The sources are all in the bibliographies. I read hundreds of books.'

  Those bibliographies were bullshit,' Gumshoe said. 'They sure as hell were extensive, very impressive to glance at. But when examined more closely they turned out to be composed of books that gave no information about Wilson or man-made flying

  saucers. They were books on the Nazis, on aerodynamics, on rocketry, on so-called "extraterrestrial"

  saucers — but not one of them could be seen as a proper source for the facts that you cleverly disguised as fiction. That had to wait until you wrote your non-fiction book on the same subject. You wrote about man-made flying saucers for fifteen years without turning to any known specialists for help. So I ask you again, Mr Harbinson: where did that fifteen years of research come from?'

  The old man clutched his head in his hands and shook it from side to side. 'I don't know! I can't remember! My head hurts! Why won't you give me a cigarette?'

  Til give you something better than a cigarette,' Gumshoe said, 'if you answer my questions.'

  'What?' Harbinson's head jerked up again, his eyes wide and greedy. 'What will you give me?'

  'Why did you suddenly start writing about man-made flying saucers,' Gumshoe asked, 'when you were already successful as a writer of general fiction? And where did your information come from? Those two questions need answering.'

  'You said you'd give me something.'

  'Answer the questions first.'

  'Give me something first.'

  'No.'

  'Yes!'

  Gumshoe sighed. 'You have to earn it,' he said.

  The old man started whimpering, then he rolled away from Gumshoe, pulled the sheets up to his shoulders, stared at the opposite wall and said, whispering, 'I can't, I can't, I can't. I don't want to remember. I don't want them to come here and see me again—'

  'Who?'

  'The men in black ... I just want to be left alone and to die in this bed. That's not much to ask, is it?'

  'You get visits from men in black?' Gumshoe asked, aware that men in black, widely believed to be human beings with brain

  implants, were often seen in the company of cyborgs, going in and out of the White House.

  'I've got a headache,' the old man responded. 'That's because we're talking about it. I get headaches when I'm just thinking about it, so please leave me alone now . . . Who are you, anyway?' He back to gaze up at Gumshoe, his eyes now wide with fear. 'Are you one of. . . them?'

  'No,' Gumshoe said, realizing just how frightened the author was and knowing that there was only one way to get him to talk. 'No, I'm not one of them . . . and neither is she.' He indicated Bonnie with a nod of his head, then slipped his right hand into his jacket pocket and withdrew a capsule of methamphetamine. 'This is better than a cigarette,' he said, lying blatantly. 'It'll help you get rid of your headache and make you feel good. Just wash it down with some water.'

  'Ah, bless you, my boy, bless you,' the old man garbled, taking the capsule from Gumshoe, popping it into his throat, then washing it down with a tumbler of water and laying his grey head gratefully back on the pillows. 'I knew, from the minute I saw your face, that you had a kind heart. So what will it do to me?'

  'It'll get rid of your headache, make you feel good, and loosen your tongue.'

  The old man closed his eyes. 'Just what I need,' he said.

  Gumshoe glanced at Bonnie, who shot back a look of disgust at what he assumed she viewed as an immoral act. Then he studied the old man, the writer W A. Harbinson, sly and slightly crazy, perhaps becoming senile, but certainly very frightened by his own recollections. Gumshoe sat there by the side of the bed, waiting patiently for his victim to feel the rush of the methamphetamine. When he saw that the rush had hit him, when the old goat sighed and smiled, Gumshoe leaned across him to whisper into his ear.

  What started you writing about man-made flying saucers?' he asked him. 'And where did you get your

  information from?'

  The old writer sat up stiffly in bed, fixed his stoned blue-eyed gaze on Gumshoe — and told him everything.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Michael and Dr Lee Brandenberg took the lift down through the bowels of the mountain, passing the various levels of this great hidden complex originally created by Wilson, and emerged to the cleared area on ground level that had become a landing bay for the flying saucers. Here, beyond the parked saucers, the sky was a silvery-azure sheet that stretched over the flat, snow-covered plain and fell away to the distant ice-capped mountains farther along the zero meridian.