'Oh! Right. Well, that's simple. You see, I knew we weren't revolutionaries. I knew we hadn't set out from Sophie's house to blow up the mast. And when all this occurred to me, I'd just rung up Sophie to ask her who I could talk to in the company about the new aviation metamaterials. I guessed that this contact would be pinged to Baxter, or he could find out if he was given a reason to enquire. So I decided to give him a reason.'

'You what? Why?'

'Look,' I said, 'Baxter's been messing with my head half my fucking life. For years I had nightmares arising from that fucking flying object descending on me. So yeah, I wanted to give him some payback. I rang up Calum, whom I haven't been speaking to since he ran off with my ex-fiancee, and asked him some innocuous question about StrathSpace's involvement in the Rammie project. Then after a wee wait to let that sink in I set up a meeting with Baxter, who agreed right away. When we met the following morning I told him-'

'We know what you told him,' McCormick interrupted. 'And why you told him a so he'd take up that ridiculous theory of yours and discredit himself for racial demagogy.'

'No, no,' I said. 'That was what I wanted him to think was the reason I told him. The real reason was that I wanted him to think he was being messed with by the revolutionaries. Well, by the supposed revolutionaries me, Calum, and Sophie.'

'Why?'

'To mess with his head, to see how he liked it. And also ... I suppose part of it was I wanted to see if he would take the bait. To test him, you know? But mainly I wanted him to feel that just for a change he was the one being watched and having his chain jerked.'

'I see that,' said McCormick. 'Oh, aye, I can see that. But if he were to take this seriously, it would bring the attentions of the security services to bear on your friends.'

I shrugged, and immediately regretted it. 'They're being watched already. I couldn't see it doing Sophie any harm, because she's not involved in anything of defence significance, she's just a frock-fabric designer.'

'That doesn't apply to your friend Calum. He's in the space industry. Having any suspicions against him a I'm not saying there are any a hardened could have quite serious consequences.'

'He's not my friend.'

'Ah,' said McCormick. 'So that's what this is about! Personal revenge against Baxter for a as you put it a messing with your head, and against Calum for running off with your girlfriend. And if Baxter were even privately to take seriously your tale about a secret race, and pass the evidence on to his supposed handlers or superiors, then maybe your girlfriend's family would face some unwelcome attention themselves. That about it?'

'Yes,' I admitted.

'You really are a piece of work.'

I had to agree.

'And now your little ploy has come down on your head, just like the Rammie nearly did on everyone's.'

'Yes.'

'Because suddenly it's not a game any more. Suddenly you have a lot of powerful interests scrambling to find, or hide, the truth about what happened today. Suddenly any trace of an advance diversionary operation by the revolutionaries a or anyone a becomes a matter of grave significance. Your friend Sophie works in the company that supplied the metafabric. Your former friend Calum works in the company that supplied the telemetry. And you've done your little bit to make sure that today's events had a global audience, you've been feeding disinformation to Mr Baxter, and you blurted out a theory at the press conference just plausible enough to look like a deception operation. Your little ploy doesn't seem like such a clever idea now, does it?'

'No,' I said, miserably.

'Baxter is raging,' McCormick said. 'Without in any way endorsing your, ah, interesting theory about what he's been up to, he's a well-informed and astute politician, and well versed in the ways of people like us. He knows all about sleepers and double agents and false-flag ops and all the rest. He might think a he might very well think a that it's not the revolutionaries but elements in the security services themselves that are behind the sabotage, and behind your diversion.'

I couldn't help but laugh, hurt though it did. 'You mean Baxter thinks I might be a spook?'

McCormick nodded. 'The thought has crossed his mind. He feels that his chain has been jerked, all right. As he told you, privately he was most enthusiastic about the Rammie, so he takes its sabotage quite personally. Even if a especially if a it's what you might call his own side that's behind it. He's in no mood to believe anything coming from inside the state, no matter who tells him. He feels betrayed. He's ranting to everyone who will listen, stomping the corridors of Holyrood and prowling the bars of the Royal Mile. As far as we're concerned, he's off the reservation.'

'Good,' I said, finding at last a flicker of defiance and hope. 'I've got nothing to hide. Neither do Calum and Sophie.'

'That won't prevent their lives and yours being turned upside down by people who want to make damn sure of that, and by people who do have something to hide and who are quite capable of framing people who don't.'

'Speaking of lives being turned upside down,' said Humphries. 'Did you know the lassie's three months pregnant?'

It was like a dash of cold water on my chest. 'What lassie?'

'You know fine what lassie. The lassie you're stalking.' He snapped his fingers. 'Gabrielle.'

I felt a surge of guilt and self-loathing at the jealousy and vengefulness that had let me smirk at the thought of Gabrielle, Calum and their families becoming objects of malign attention.

'Shit,' I said. 'Shit, shit, shit.'

'Wouldn't want her to lose another, would you?' Humphries said. 'Even if the bairn's no yours this time.'

I was on my feet without being quite aware of how I'd done it. Humphries jabbed me in the solar plexus without leaving his chair, caught my shoulders as I doubled up, and shoved me back. I toppled again onto the sofa and spent the next couple of minutes gasping and groaning. The two spooks watched in silence until I sat back up.

'Let's get back to business,' said McCormick, with an expression of mild distaste. 'There is another possible outcome to this imbroglio. One that would be very much in your interests, as well as in ours. Because there's one other place where the Rammie project might have gone pear-shaped, one simple alternative explanation of what went wrong. A single point of failure that bears an innocent, if embarrassing, interpretation. Well, to be precise that plus one ad hoc, shit-happens freak event that can be shuffled out of sight in the general relief at finding the main explanation. One that gets Baxter off our backs, the big players off the case and you and your ... acquaintances off the hook. And above all, one that gets us off the hook. Leaves our activities uninvestigated and leaves all the other serious players a agencies, companies and states a satisfied that there's nothing to see here, move along.'

'Aren't you forgetting something?' Humphries asked.

McCormick gave him a puzzled look. 'What?'

'The aliens,' said Humphries.

McCormick smacked his own forehead with the heel of his hand. 'The aliens! Of course! I was forgetting. Funny that, how one can forget about the little Grey bastards for long stretches of time. Must be a psychological coping mechanism, or something.' He stared into space for a while. 'Nah,' he said at last. 'I reckon they'll be happy with it too.'

His attention snapped back to me. 'Interested?'

26.

In the morning everything still hurt: knee, hip, elbow, chest, and all the muscles I'd contorted trying not to lie on any of the bruised parts. The whisky I'd downed after the two spooks had left me to it had dulled the pain enough to let me get undressed and into bed, but it had come round like a loan-shark's heavy to take repossession on that unpaid debt. I rolled out of bed, knocked back painkillers, vaped Bliss and drank juice while I brewed coffee and burned toast. After a while I began to feel more able to face the day, or at least the daylight. The sun was bright and the sky was blue.

The time was nine thirty, a late start for me. I checked the news. It was all Rammie this and conspiracy that and investigation the other. My own articles were clocking up the page-views, which made me no money directly but should count for something next time I pitched a story. I set that aside, and laid out a plan.

I called Baxter and got through to his office. He wasn't in. I left a message. He took his time about calling me back. I'd allowed for that, and got on with working through my encrypted email folder, whose contents had more than doubled at around six that morning. By eleven I had pulled together enough evidence to sway him. It was good evidence, or so I hoped. It had damn well better be, I thought. It had been faked and planted by professionals. But as I well knew, mistakes could be made in any rushed overnight job, however skilful.

The phone flashed. Baxter. I picked it up. He didn't waste time.

'What do you want?'

'First of all, Mr Baxter, I want to apologise for what I did a few weeks ago. I'm very, very sorry about that and if we could talk privately I could explain what it was all about, even if I can't excuse it.'

He made some kind of inarticulate snorting noise that was difficult to interpret on the phone. I took this as encouragement, and ploughed on.

'And, ah, rather more pressingly I've received some information about what happened yesterday which I think might concern you and that in all fairness I think you should have the chance to comment on before it goes further.'

'Why does it concern me?'

'It's about BAS, Mr Baxter.'

'I have no connection with BAS any more.'

'Yes, I appreciate that, but all the same I think it might be of interest because it relates to the area you worked in and some of your former colleagues. There's ... quite a bit of documentation going back to when you were there yourself.'

'Documentation?' Now he sounded interested, and suspicious.

'Yes,' I said. 'I really think you should see it.'

Long pause. I could imagine him racking his brains and scrabbling about online.

'Very well,' he said at last, as if making a huge concession. 'Why don't we meet for lunch in an hour and a half, at the pizza place? Outdoors, if the weather holds?'

'Very good, Mr Baxter,' I said. 'Thank you. I'm on my way.'

'You're walking?' He sounded surprised and amused.

'Yes,' I said. 'I need the fresh air.'

Confess everything, they'd told me. Except about our visit, obviously. Breathe a word about that and ...

You're dead, Humphries had said. No one will believe you, McCormick had said, rather more credibly. Either way, I assured them, I had no intention of talking about it. And I haven't. Until now, of course, but I think they'll let that pass.

As I hirpled up Leith Walk and over the Bridges and down the Royal Mile to Holyrood, I accepted the pain in my knee and hip as penance. I resolved to confess everything, not just to Baxter, but to the others I'd dragged into this and endangered: Calum, Gabrielle and Sophie. Even if my approach to Baxter failed a and the spooks had warned me that its success was in no way guaranteed a the others deserved to know why whatever was going to happen to them was happening. They would at least know whom to blame.

I quite liked and had often used the pizza place with the courtyard beside the Tun on Holyrood Road. Just beside the BBC and across the road from the Scotsman's offices, and a few minutes' walk from the Parliament, it's convenient for politicians and journalists alike. Although far from private, the al fresco dining area is at busy times noisy enough to make any but the most blatant eavesdropping difficult. Surveillance, of course, is a given.

Not that I cared who might overhear me this time. I grabbed an aluminium outside table for two, ordered juice and plenty of water, and waited. The sun was high, the air was warm, the place was busy. I sipped, vaped, and people-watched. Baxter turned up on the dot of 12.30 and sat down with barely a nod for acknowledgement. His face looked more haggard than mine had been when I woke up. He hadn't shaved or put on a tie.

He looked blearily at the menu, then looked up.

'Two bruschetta, antipasto to share, two peroni a does that work for you?'

I thought about it, especially the beer.

'Hair of the dog, bit of grease to restore the stomach lining,' Baxter coaxed.

'Seeing you put it like that ... Yes, thanks.'

'Oh, we'll split the bill,' Baxter said. 'Rules.'

'Fine,' I said.

He tapped the order onto the menu, and sat back. A waiter shimmered up with the beers.

'Ah,' Baxter said, after a sip. 'That's better.'

'Yes.'

He jerked the bottom of his bottle towards me in an ironic token toast. 'So. Out with it.'

Though I told him more than I'd told the spooks, I got through the gist before the food arrived ten minutes later. The encounter, the abduction experience, the dreams, Baxter's first visit, the UFO obsession, Calum's claims about a secret race, my private conspiracy theory about electrical stimulation of the brain, how I'd lost faith in it under Sophie's mild questioning, and my subsequent meeting with Baxter. I told him about my inability to conceive with Gabrielle, and how she and Calum were now together. I told him about how I'd connected meetings with him with meetings with Sophie, and my theory of why he had done this. I left out the whole thing about watching Gabrielle, but that was just too embarrassing and in any case not germane.

Baxter listened without comment, beyond the occasional interjection to ask me to clarify something. Now and again his eyebrows twitched, but that was as much of a response as he gave.

The food arrived. Baxter looked at the waiter, waited for a nod from me, and signalled for two more beers.

'Well, well,' he said, ripping a chunk of bruschetta and cramming some salami into a fold. The rest of the conversation took place between bites, which at least gave me time to think. 'I had no idea. No idea at all.'

'About what?'

'About any of this. Especially of course the abduction experiences, and the dreams and the strange lines of thought they led to.' He shook his head. 'I'm sorry to hear of what you went through.'

'It wasn't your fault. And I shouldn't have-'

'No, but I can see now ... It never crossed my mind,' Baxter said, 'that you or any of your friends were revolutionaries. When you came to me with your story, I was suspicious of course, but I suspected some little sting might have been set up by a news outlet or by one of the other parties a you know, I wouldn't put it past half the people around us at the moment. It was only when you came out with that nonsense yesterday that I suddenly saw it in a more sinister light.'

'So what were you doing when you were "Reverend Baxter"? I know you won't admit that, but ...'

'All right,' he said, 'all right. I've examined my conscience, I've examined the rules, and a I won't go on the record, or even off the record, but I think I can couch a satisfactory answer in hypothetical terms. You OK with that?'

'Let's hear it,' I said, not willing to concede any advance acceptance.

He sighed. 'All right. Let's suppose that, some unspecified time ago, in some unspecified country an unnamed company was carrying out unspecified R and D towards a type of device whose precise nature shall be left to the imagination. Let's suppose, furthermore, that they're alert for possibilities that the competition, to put it very generally, might be a little more advanced in that research than them. One fine Monday morning a I think it's safe to be specific about the day a the said company receives confused, fragmentary reports of an incident that weekend on the other side of the country, reports that suggest the involvement of ... a more advanced form of the imagined device. Worse, two young male civilians have had ... some physical interaction with it.

'Now, this company has friends in high places, among them an institution whose name we dare not breathe and whose very initials are classified information. Let us call it the Non Existent Agency. This NEA can sift millions of messages and images in moments, and do far more with their content than users of keyword searches and semantic parsers can dream. It has no difficulty in identifying the two individuals involved. From their web searches and conversations it has no problem at all in recognising that the hapless lads are interpreting their unfortunate experience in the classic template of a close encounter. The company is fully briefed, and left to sort the matter out, resources being limited, as always. So a certain young engineer, whose name we need not mention, and who happens to have the appropriate clearances if not quite all the acting talents one might ideally wish for, is sent to investigate and, not to put too fine a point on it, to sow confusion.

'You can imagine how he might have gone about it, and what conclusions he might have drawn. He could, you may imagine, have exploited the Man in Black scenario. He could have used his real name a any searches on his name and his face, or even his face alone, would have shown who he really was, but that didn't matter, because the searcher might conclude that the advanced machine was in fact a product of our unnamed company, which in the circumstances is itself useful disinformation. Some years later, one of the subjects a still under low-level surveillance by the NEA a is heard broaching some interesting topics in conversation. The engineer, now somewhat older and wiser, is hurriedly despatched to have a word, and to see whether or not the subject seems likely to do or say anything embarrassing, or indeed to have something useful to say. As it turns out, he doesn't.'

'And why,' I asked, 'might this hypothetical engineer urge the subject to study Divinity, of all things?'

Baxter frowned and looked down at his plate. 'The engineer might have genuinely have had the subject's interests at heart, perhaps because his own conscience was troubling him. He might have thought that he owed the subject some ... reduction of confusion, shall we say? And that same troubled conscience might, just possibly, have later induced the engineer to go into politics in the cause of the small state and open government.' He looked up, grinned, and spread his hands. 'And that's the end of the scenario. I can't say more about that. I can say this, though: your seeing me outside the Parliament during the Forum was a complete surprise and happened by sheer coincidence, and not too improbable a coincidence at that.'

'Oh, I can believe that,' I said. 'And your scenario sounds plausible enough.'

'Do you believe it, though?'

I hesitated. Baxter looked, at that moment, so open and honest that I had to remind myself not just that he was a politician, but of what the spooks had told me. He knows, they'd told me. He knows. That's why he might accept our story. And that's why you have to confess and apologise first, to set him up for that.

'I can accept it,' I said. 'It more or less fits what I thought was going on at first, before I made all these other connections.'

Baxter smiled. 'Good. Well, I'm glad we've got that cleared up. No hard feelings on either side, I hope. Now a you have something more urgent to tell me?'

He knows. He knows. I had to keep reminding myself of that. Just as I'd been confident in telling him what had happened and what I'd thought had happened, because I knew Calum and I hadn't had any sinister purpose in walking up to that microwave mast, so how Baxter responded to what I had to tell him now hinged on what he knew. What he knew and hadn't said a hadn't so much as hinted at a and that I couldn't hint at either.

'Yes indeed,' I said. 'It's probably best if ...' I took my phone out, thumbed up the document folder, and looked at Baxter. He nodded, took out his phone and laid it on the table. I picked up the folder from my phone and placed it on his.