SECTION TWO


They realise now that they should have killed the old man. That would have been the logical course - to protect the secrecy of Alternative 3.

It is curious, really, that they did not agree his death on that Thursday in February for, as we have stated, they do use murder. Of course, it is not called murder - not when it is done jointly by the governments of America and Russia. It is an Act of Expediency.

Many Acts of Expediency are believed to have been ordered by the sixteen men, official representatives of the Pentagon and the Kremlin, who comprise the Policy Committee. Grotesque and apparently inexplicable slayings in various parts of the world - in Germany and Japan, Britain and Australia - are alleged to have been sanctioned by them.

We have not been able to substantiate these suspicions and allegations so we merely record that an unknown number of people - including distinguished radio astronomer Sir William Ballantine - have been executed because of this astonishing agreement between the super-powers.

Prominent politicians, including two in Britain, were among those who tried to prevent the publication of this book. They insisted that it is not necessary for you, and others like you, to be told the unpalatable facts. They argue that the events of the future are now inevitable, that there is nothing to be gained by prematurely unleashing fear. We concede that they are sincere in their views but we maintain that you ought to know. You have a right to know.

Attempts were also made to neuter the television programme which first focused public attention on Alternative 3. Those attempts were partially successful. And, of course, after the programme was transmitted - when there was that spontaneous explosion of anxiety - Sceptre Television was forced to issue a formal denial. It had all been a hoax. That’s what they were told to say. That’s what they did say.

Most people were then only too glad to be reassured. They wanted to be convinced that the programme had been devised as a joke, that it was merely an elaborate piece of escapist entertainment. It was more comfortable that way.
In fact, the television researchers did uncover far more disturbing material than they were allowed to transmit. The
censored information is now in our possession. And, as we have indicated, there was a great deal that Benson and the
rest of the television team did not discover - not until it been screened. And they did not know, for example, that Sir
William Ballantine’s freakish death - not far from his base at Jodrell Bank - was mirrored by that of an aerospace professor called Peterson near Stanford University at Palo Alt, California. Nor did they know of the monthly conferences beneath the ice of the Arctic.

Alternative 3 appears a preposterous conception -until one analyses the history of the so-called space-race. Right from the start the public have been allowed to know only what is considered appropriate for them to know. Many futuristic research developments - and the extent of information pooled between East and West -have been kept strictly classified.
There was a small but typical example in 1951 when living creatures were hurtled into the stratosphere for the very first time. Or, at least, the public were eventually told it was for the first time. Four monkeys - code-named Albert 1,2,3 and 4 - were launched in a V2 rocket from White Sands, New Mexico.

Remember White Sands? That’s where the Columbus Dispatch man photographed that strange craft - the one which a NASA official grudgingly admitted was known as “The Flying Saucer”.

The monkeys were successfully brought back to earth. Three survived. One died, shortly afterwards, of heat prostration.
Much later, when news did leak out, it was explained that Operation Albert had been kept secret for only one reason - to avert any possibility of animal-lovers staging a protest demonstration.

Most people accepted the official story - that the four Alberts really had been this world’s first travellers in space. But was that the truth?

By 1951 the V2 rocket, a relic of World War II, had been superseded by far more sophisticated missiles. So would it be logical, or indeed practical, to use an obsolete vehicle for the first launch of living creatures?

Is it not more feasible to argue that Operation Albert was no more that a subsidiary experiment which happened to slip through the security net? That the authorities were not too perturbed about having to confirm it - because it helped conceal the real and gigantic truth?

There is abundant evidence that by 1951 the super powers were far more advanced in space technology than they have ever admitted. Much of that evidence has been supplied by experienced pilots. By men like Captain Laurence W. Vinther...

At 8:30 p.m. on January 20, 1951, Captain Vinther -then with Mid-Continent Airlines - was ordered by the controller at Sious City Airport to investigate a “very bright light” above the field. He and his co-pilot, James F. Bachmeier, took off in a DC3 and headed for the source of the light.

Suddenly the light dived towards them at great speed and passed about 200 feet above them. Then they discovered that it had reversed direction, apparently in a split second, and was flying parallel to the airliner. It was a clear moonlit night and both men could clearly see that the light was emanating from a cigar-shaped object bigger than a B-29. Eventually the strange craft lost altitude, passed under the DC3 and disappeared.

Two months later, on March 15, thousands of people in New Delhi were startled by a strange object, high in the sky, which appeared to be circling the city. One witness was George Franklin Floate, chief engineer with the Delhi Flying Club, who described “a bullet-nosed, cigar-shaped object about 100 feet long with a ring of flames at the end”. Two Indian Air Force jets were sent up to intercept. But the object suddenly surged upwards at a “phenomenal speeds’ and vanished into the heights.

So, despite all official denials, sufficient advances had been made by 1951 to provide the basis for planning Alternative 3.
By the mid-Seventies there were so many rumours about covert information-swapping between East and West - with men like Professor Broadbent becoming progressively more curious - that the American-Russian “rivals” staged a masterpiece of camouflage. They would show the world, quite openly, how they were prepared to co-operate in space! The result was seen in July, 1975: the first admitted International Space Transfer. Television cameras showed the docking of a Soyuz spacecraft with and Apollo - and the crews jubilantly exchanging food and symbolic halves of medals.

Leonid Brezhnev sent this message to the united spacemen:

“Your successful docking confirms the correctness of technical solutions that were worked out and realized in co-operation by Soviet and American scientists, designers and cosmonauts. One can say that Soyuz-Apollo is a prototype of future international orbital stations.”

Gerald Ford expressed the hope that this “tremendous demonstration of co-operation” would set the pattern for “what we have to do in the future to make it a better world”. And at his home near Boston, Massachusetts, former Apollo man Bob Grodin switched off his television set in disgust. Grodin’s comment was more succinct than that of either leader. He said: “How they’ve got the bloody neck!” Then he poured himself another tumbler of bourbon.

Grodin had cause to be bitter that day. Bitter and also cynically amused. There’d been no television coverage, no glory of any sort, when he’d done the identical maneuver -140 miles above the clouds - on April 20, 1969. He’s shaken hands up there with the Russians and laughed at their bad jokes - exactly like Tom Stafford had just been doing - but there’d been none of this celebrity crap about that operation.

It was crazy...the way they were kidding people by making it all seem such a big deal! Christ! It hadn’t been a big deal even when he’d done it. There’d been all the others before him...

We now know, in fact, that this American-Russian docking technique was successfully pioneered in the late Fifties - with specially-designed submarines in the black depths of the North Atlantic. It was pioneered specifically because of Alternative 3. Because of the need for the ultimate in security. The system made it possible for men who were officially enemies, who played the charade of distrusting each other in public, to travel separately and discreetly to meetings far below the waves.

Thursday, February 3, 1977. A landmark. A Policy Committee meeting infiltrated, via the transcript, for the first time by Trojan. Information about earlier meetings, held in a variety of locations, still not available. Complete transcript obviously filed in separately-secured sections. Sensible precaution. And frustrating. Trojan obtained only small section. Enough to confirm murder conspiracy. Major break-through.

The venue: the wardroom of a modified Permit nuclear submarine. Thirty-five fathoms beneath ice of Arctic. Permit subs “seek out and destroy enemy”. So American tax-payers are told. Cold War concepts are readily accepted. They distract from real truth...

No names on transcript. No names, apparently, ever used. Only nationalities and numbers. Eight Russians - listed as R ONE through to R EIGHT - and eight Americans.

Procedure shown by subsequent transcripts - A EIGHT and R EIGHT alternate monthly as chairmen.

February 3. Chairman: A EIGHT. Transcript section starts:

A FIVE: You’re kill-crazy...you know that?... absolutely kill-crazy...
A TWO: No...the guys right...that old man is dangerous...
R SIX: I am reminding you that it was agreed...right from the start it was agreed...that expediencies would be kept to a minimum...
A TWO: And the old man, friend, is right there inside that minimum...the way he talks...he’ll blow the whole goddam thing...
R ONE: Who do you suppose ever listens to him? Eh?... nobody...that’s who listens. Come...he knows nothing...not after all these years. Theories...that’s all he’s got...theories and memories...
A FIVE: That just says it, doesn't it? Here we are wasting time and wetting ourselves because of theories that are twenty years old...Jeez!...if we start spreading expediencies so low because...
R FOUR: The theories have not changed so much in twenty years and in my considered opinion...
A FIVE: ...so low because of a semi-senile and garrulous old man...
A EIGHT: He’s not semi-senile...he’s not even that old ...I heard him lecture last year at Cambridge and, you take my word, he’s certainly not semi-senile... What, precisely, has he been saying?
A TWO: About getting air out of the soil.. about how the ice is melting...people at that university... they’re beginning to listen to him...
A FIVE: That’s no more, for Chris sakes, than he was saying in Alabama back in 1957...hell, I was right there at Huntsville when he said it...
R FOUR: The Huntsville Conference was like this meeting...the discussions there were not for outsiders and...
A FIVE: Yes...but not many people took him seriously even then...and now that he's over the hill...
R FOUR: It is still a serious breach of security... it is dangerous and it could start a panic among the masses...
A FIVE: So all right!...Kill him! He’s a harmless and doddering old has-been but if it makes you feel better...go ahead and kill him...
A EIGHT: Expediencies aren't to make us feel better... and our friend here was right...we have agreed to restrict them to the minimum...anything else against this man?
A TWO: Yeah...the real bad news...I hear he's been dropping hints...nothing specific but oblique hints about the big bang...about the earth-air thing
being cracked
R SIX: But it is not possible for him to be knowing that...
A TWO: Maybe he doesn't know...not know for sure... but he’s sure done some figuring
A ONE: You’re saying he's guessed...right? That’s what you're saying
R ONE: So it is as I said...theories and memories and now guesses! We sentence an old man to death because of his guesses? That is how you Americans wish us to work?
A EIGHT: Let’s cut the East-West stuff...we’re a team here, remember, and we’ve got a hell of an agenda to get through and we’ve spent quite long enough on this Englishman. So let’s vote...Those for expediency? Uh, huh...And against?...Well, that’s it...he goes on living. For a while, at least. But I suggest we keep tabs...agreed?...Right then...Now Ballantine and this character Harry Carmell...looks to me like there’s no room for question about either of them.
R SEVEN: This Harry Carmell...we are certain that he has stolen that circuit from NASA?
A EIGHT: Positive certain. And heads, I can promise you have rolled at Huston. We also know that he’s somewhere in England...probably London...so if he should link up again with Ballantine...
R SEVEN: I think we are all aware of what could happen if he should link up again with Ballantine...
A TWO: Especially with Ballantine’s contacts in Fleet Street...
R SEVEN: How was it possible for a man like Carmell to get out of America...?
A EIGHT: Don’t tell me...I can say it for you...he’d never have got out of Russia that easily...but there it is...our people goofed and now it’s down to us...
R SEVEN: As you say then, there is no room for question...both of them have got to be expediencies.
A EIGHT: All agreed?...Good...I suggest a couple of hot jobs...coroners always play them quiet...
R SEVEN: But first, presumably, we’ll have to find Carmell...
A EIGHT: We’ll find him...Londons not that big a town and he’ll soon be needing his shots.
A THREE: How hooked is he?
A EIGHT: Hooked enough...Now what about Peterson? Same deal?
R FOUR: We’ve all seen the earlier report on Peterson.. what is the latest assessment?
A EIGHT: He’s getting more and more paranoiac about the batch consignments...
R FOUR: You mean the scientific adjustments?
A EIGHT: Yeah...the scientific adjustments...he’s running off at the mouth about ethics...that sort of crap...
A TWO: Ethics! What the hell do some of these guys think we’re all at? Jesus! We’re smack in the middle of the most vital exercise ever mounted...with the survival of the whole human race swinging on it... and they bleat about ethics...
A EIGHT: That surgery bit...it really got to him...
A FIVE: They should never have told him...he didn’t need to know that...look, we owe Peterson...he’s done good work...couldn’t we just get him committed?
A TWO: No way...much too risky...he’d squeal his bloody head off.
A EIGHT: I endorse that. I’m sorry because I like the guy...but there’s no choice. Anyone against an expediency for Peterson?...okay...that’s carried... now for God’s sake let’s get down to the big problem...this stepping-up of the supplies-shuttle. Any word from Geneva?

That was where the transcript section ended. Three murders, quite clearly, had been agreed. No matter what they chose to call them, they were still talking about murder. But scientific adjustments? A great deal had already been published in the Western Press about strange experiments being conducted on inmates - chiefly dissidents and political prisoners - at the Dnepropetrovsk Mental Hospital in the Ukraine. They were barbaric, these experiments, but they had been known about and talked about for years. To push this Peterson to such agony of mind - to push him into risking and forfeiting his life - that surely had to be something new.

Trojan, by that time, had supplied us with information about that “something new” - for it was precisely that something which had decided him to make his dangerous break and talk to Benson. But he had nothing in writing. Nothing to document or substantiate his claims. We decided they were worth investigating but that it would be irresponsible merely to assume their accuracy.

We sought help from contacts in Washington. Contacts with influence in Senate and Congressional committees. And we were surprised by the speed with which those contacts achieved results. They didn’t manage to bring the full story into the open, not at that stage, but they did make it possible for the public to see a glimmering of the truth.
On August 3, 1977, The London Evening News carried this story:

Human “guinea pigs” have been used by the CIA in experiments to control behaviour and sexual activity.
The American intelligence agency also considered hiring a magician for another secret program on mind control.

The experiments over the past 20 years are revealed in documents which were thought to have been destroyed, but which have now been released after pressure from United States senate and congressional committees. The attempts to change sex patterns and other behaviour involved using drugs on schizophrenic as well as normal people. Hallucinatory drugs like LSD were used on students.

Another heavily censored document shows that a top magician was considered for work on mind control.
The give-away word was “prestidigitation” - sleight of hand - which appeared in a 1953 memo written by Sidney Gottlier, then chief of the CIA’s chemical division.

That story, we are convinced, would never have appeared if it had not been for the information supplied by Trojan. The “guinea-pig” facts would have remained as secret as the rest of the Alternative 3 operation.

The following day - August 4 - other newspapers developed the story. Ann Morrow, filing from Washington, wrote in the Daily Telegraph:

Some of the more chilling details of the way the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) tried to control individual behavior by using drugs on willing and unwilling human “guinea pigs” were disclosed yesterday by its director, Mr. Stansfield Turner. In a large wood-pannelled room, Mr. Turner, who likes to be known by his rank of Admiral, told the Senate’s Intelligence Committee and Human Resources Sub-committee on Health that such tests were abhorrent to him.

He admitted that the tests were carried out in “safe houses” in San Francisco and New York where unwitting sexual psychopaths were subjected to experiments and attempts were made to change sexual conduct and other forms of human behavior. At least 185 private scientists and 80 research institutions, including universities, were involved.
Mr. Turner went on to say that one man had killed himself - by leaping from an hotel window in New York City - after he had “unknowingly “ been used in a “CIA - sponsored experiment:. The report continued:

Senator Edward Kennedy asked some incisive questions, but like other members of the Senate Committee found it difficult to keep a straight face when asking about the CIA’s operations “Midnight” and “Climax”.

Questioning two former CIA employees about the experiments which began in the 1950s and ended in 1973, Senator Kennedy read out a bizarre list of accessories for the “safe houses” in San Francisco and New York where prostitutes organized.

In his flat Bostonian accent he reeled off, straight - faced:

“Rather elaborate dressing table, black velveteen skirt, one French Can - Can dancer’s picture, three Toulouse Lautrec etchings, two - way mirrors and recording equipment.”

Then he admitted that this was the lighter side of the operation. Mr. John Gittinger, who was with the CIA for 26 years, trembled and put a handkerchief to his eyes. He just nodded in agreement.

The Times, as you can check for yourself in any good reference library, carried a similar story from Washington that day. It described documents taken from CIA files and added:

Batches of the documents have been made available to reporters in Washington under the Freedom of Information Act, which guarantees the public access to Government papers. They are nearly all heavily censored.

That’s the give - away - there in that last line. Nearly all heavily censored. Alternative 3, right from its conception in the Fifties, has always been considered exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. And it is no coincidence that these controversial experiments also started - as is now openly admitted - in the Fifties.

The editors of these newspapers had no way of knowing that their stories, disturbing as they were, had a direct connection with Alternative 3. Nor that they had secured only a fraction of the truth about those CIA experiments. Information obtained from the complete experiments was pooled with that gained at the Dnepropetrovsk Mental Hospital. It was pooled so that factory - production methods could be developed to manufacture a slave species.

Remember that curious statement made by criminal investigator Ron Sutton in October, 1975 - after the disappearance of the “batch consignment” from Oregon?

“They were told they would have to give away everything, even their children. I’m checking a report of one family who supposedly gave away a 150 - acre farm and three children.”

That’s what he said. And now those words fit into perspective.

In the days before the American Civil War slaves had no right to a family, no right to keep their own children, and they had no property. They WERE property. That horrifying philosophy, we can now prove, has been adopted by the space slave - masters of the Seventies.

Alternative 3 needs regular consignments of slaves. It needs them to labour for the key people. For people like Dr. Ann Clark.

Three people unwittingly inspired that television documentary and, although they would be dismayed to realize it, they helped alert the world to the horrors of Alternative 3.

Dr. Ann Clark is a research scientist specializing in solar energy. Brian Pendlebury, a former RAF man, is an electronics expert. Robert Patterson is a senior lecturer in mathematics - or, rather, he was until the time of his disappearance. Today, almost certainly, Patterson no longer teaches mathematics but is working full - time for Alternative 3. So these people, then, were the catalyst for the entire investigation. That is why, although we have never met them, we have dedicated this book to them.

Ann Clark, a raven - haired and attractive woman who was just nudging thirty, made her big decision towards the end of 1975. She would never have made it - although her pride stopped her admitting as much on television - if her fiancé had not unexpectedly broken their engagement.

Her future had seemed all set. She’d intended to soldier on despite all the frustrations, at the research laboratory in Norwich until they got married. And then, probably, until their first child was born. Conditions at the laboratory were, as she’d often said, “pretty grotty” but she was prepared to tolerate them. After all, it wasn’t going to be for too long... Then Malcolm had shattered her with his news. He’d been astonishingly casual about it. Quite unlike the Malcolm she’d thought she’d known. He’d just told her, brutally, that their engagement was a mistake, that he didn’t “want to get tied down.” And then, only four weeks later, she’s heard he was talking about marrying some girl called Maureen... Suddenly the laboratory, and everything about it, had seemed intolerably depressing. Squalid and almost sordid. All the authorities admitted that their research was important. Particularly with the energy shortage and the climbing cost of oil. But apparently it wasn’t important enough to have money poured into it.

Experimental projects often took three times as long as they should because of equipment which was makeshift and, in some cases, almost obsolete. Certain projects could not even be started. “Maybe in the next financial year but, at the moment, there’s no budget available.” That was a stock answer from the administrators. And Ann Clark became progressively more frustrated.

She wanted, now, to throw herself harder than ever into her research, to immerse herself in it completely, but she was increasingly aware that - like the others - she was not being allowed to make full use of her training. She’s never have felt so strongly if it hadn’t been for Malcolm and his plan for marrying this Maureen... that’s what really decided her to start a new life.

Plenty of others were doing the same that year. They were getting out of Britain, heading for the big - money jobs in Europe and in the Middle East. And in America. They were doubling their salaries and picking up bonus perks like company cars and lavish homes. They were also being offered far better conditions in which to work.

The Brain Drain. That’s what it’s called. And it is an accurate label. In the twelve years up to December, 1975 - the month Ann Clark reached her decision - nearly 4 million people had evacuated from the United Kingdom. More than a third of them were from the professional and managerial levels of British society.

One of the department heads at Norwich had left for a top post in America at the beginning of that year and, as his occasional letters had shown, he had not regretted the move. His only regret, in fact, was that he’d not made it years earlier. Ann Clark decided to write to him.

To her amazement, he telephoned her from California as soon as he got the letter. There’d be no problem at all, he told her. Not with her ability and experience. She was exactly the type they needed and, if she wanted, he could certainly get her fixed with the right job.

If she wanted! She’d never imagined it could possibly be that easy. Excitement surged through her as she listened. Apparently there was a man in London who was recruiting scientists for the company in California and if she cared to contact this man...

She jotted down the name and address of the man in London, together with his telephone number.

“I’ll get in touch with him today,” she said. I can’t tell you how grateful...
“Let me call him first,” he interrupted. “I’ll put him in the picture about you.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you very much indeed.”

She met the man in London the following day and it was all settled within an hour. She drafted her resignation on the train back to Norwich.

That was the week, as we will explain later, that she was first contacted by Sceptre Television. And, at first, she was more than happy to talk to them about her plans. She didn’t mention Malcolm, of course, because the viewers didn’t need to know about him. However, it was important, she felt, for people to be told exactly why scientists were flocking away from Britain. She was flattered, in fact, to be given the opportunity and she told herself that, by speaking out, she might help get conditions improved for those she was leaving...

Now we reach a mystery which we still have not completely resolved. The information we have fitted together has come from Ann Clark’s friends and colleagues in Norwich. It almost provides an answer...but it also leaves questions.

Shortly after the Sceptre Television film unit arrived at the laboratory in January, 1976, for the first of a series of interviews - Ann Clark was visited there by a strange American. He’d made no appointment but just turned up and they assumed he was connected, in some way, with her new job. The American talked to her, privately, for a long time and afterwards she seemed upset. She refused to say what he’d wanted or what they’d discussed but she was obviously extremely upset.

That American, we have now established, went to her flat that evening and stayed for three hours‘ And after that evening her attitude to those around her, and to the Sceptre Television people, changed in the most extraordinary manner. She did her work as conscientiously as ever but she was oddly withdrawn. She refused to be drawn into any conversations. It was as if she had brought a shutter down all around herself.

There was also something else. One of her colleagues, an elderly man, told us: “I started noticing that she was sometimes looking at me - and at others - with a funny sort of expression in her eyes. It was almost as if, for some reason or other, she felt sorry for us. All a bit odd...

All VERY odd. Dr. Ann Clark left Norwich in a self - drive hired car on February 22, 1976. She left without working out her notice because, as she explained, the Americans were in a hurry to have her. So she became part of the Brain Drain. But she has still not joined that company in California.

Brian Pendlebury was thirty - three when he became part of the Brain Drain in July, 1974. His principal reason for leaving was that he disliked the climate, particularly the climate in Manchester. He was very much a sun person.
Since leaving university, with a degree in electronics, he’d acquired a taste for travel as a special - projects officer with the RAF.

The Air Force had shown him the world. It had also shown him that he wasn’t’ the type to settle down in any hum-drum routine. Certainly not in Manchester.

Five months after leaving the service he applied for a job with a major electronics firm in Sydney, Australia. And, to the acute disappointment of his parents, he got it.

They were, they now admit, disappointed for a selfish but very understandable reason. He was their only child and they absolutely adored him - having scrimped to get him through university and been so proud over his success - and for years they’d seen so very little of him. They had hoped that now he would live at home, for a year or so, at least. His mother also had this cozy vision of Brian marrying some nice sensible Lancashire girl and of herself becoming a doting grandmother.

“Maybe we can work out some compromise,” he’d made up his mind. He did promise, however, that he’d keep closely in touch. He’d write regularly and he’d send lots of photographs. Yes, he knew that he’d said all that before...but this time he really would.

He kept that promise. He kept it for five months after leaving Manchester. Every week they got a letter with news of his life in Australia. The job, it seemed, was going fine and he was really enjoying himself there. They also got photographs: Brian surfing... Brian with friends at a nightclub... Brian in front of Sydney Harbor bridge. That bridge picture was a particularly good one. They had it framed and they put it on the mantelpiece.

So everything was fine, absolutely fine, except for some disconcerting facts. Brian Pendlebury did not live at the address shown on his letters. The company for which he claimed to be working insist they have never heard of him. The truth, as far as we can establish it, is that Pendlebury never got to Australia.

Britain’s system of taxation was a favorite hate subject with forty-two-year-old Robert Patterson. And, as a mathematician, he always had the latest facts to justify his anger.His friends at the University of St. Andrews, where he was a senior lecturer, had become accustomed to a regular bombardment of figures:

“Do you realize that in Germany the most a man has to pay on the topslice of his taxable earnings is only 56 per cent! And in America...now that’s a country where they really appreciate the value of incentive...in America it’s only 50 per cent!”

Every one of his sentences, when he was talking tax, seemed to finish with a fiery exclamation mark.

“But what’s it here in Britain? You ask me that and I’ll tell you! Eighty - three per cent...that’s what it is here...83 per cent! And you wonder why people here aren’t interested in working harder!”

This sort of conversation - with Patterson supplying all the questions and answers - could go on indefinitely without anyone else saying a word. It was a hangover from his lecture - room technique and it made him quite intolerably boring.
Many people at the university were rather relieved when he eventually announced that he was going to follow his own advice. He and his wife Eileen were getting out of Britain. They were taking their two children off to a fresh start in America.

He was unusually reticent about what he was going to do in America, saying no more than that he’d been “invited on an interesting project”. It seemed obvious, despite his evasiveness, that he’d accepted some really plum post in America. And at the university, they weren’t surprised, for he was recognized as one of the most brilliant mathematicians in Britain. It was a pity that he was also such a bore.

Patterson broke his news at the beginning of February, 1976, and a paragraph appeared in the Guardian. One of the researchers at Sceptre Television - the one who’d organized the initial interview with Ann Clark - saw the paragraph and immediately contacted Patterson. He was offering Patterson the best platform he’d ever had to air his views on taxation for the program Science Report was networked right across the country.

“Thank you for the invitation ,” said Patterson.
“Normally I’d love to take it up but I’ve got a time problem. We’re flying at the end of next week and there’s so much I’ve got to do...
“We wouldn’t need all that much of your time,” persisted the researcher. He’d had trouble enough finding the right people and he wasn’t going to let a prize like Robert Patterson slip away too easily. “We could send a reporter and film unit up to Scotland and do it, perhaps, at the university or at your home.” Harman, he knew, would probably squeal about the cost of sending a unit all that way from London - just for one interview - but let him bloody squeal.
They couldn’t expect to hold a network slot without spending a few bob. Anyway, he thought, Chris Clements could fight that out with Harman. That’s what producers were for. His job was to get the right people and he was damned well doing it. “It wouldn’t take long, Mr. Patterson,” he said. “And we could do it almost any time to suit you.”

Patterson hesitated. “How about next Tuesday morning?” he said.
“Fine. What time?”
“Eleven o’clock?”
“Right. And where?”
“It would be more convenient here at my house.” “Then your house it is, Mr. Patterson. We’ll be there at eleven. And thank you.”

Colin Benson, now co-operating with us, was the TV reporter who went to Patterson’s home on that Tuesday morning. He found the house locked and obviously empty. The Pattersons, according to neighbors, had driven off in a hurry at lunchtime on the Saturday.

If you watched that particular edition of Science Report, you will probably recall that the family’s car was later found abandoned in London. But the Pattersons - Robert, Eileen, sixteen - year - old Julian and fourteen - year - old Kate - have not been seen since.

February 6, 1977. Sir William Ballantine kept looking nervously at his watch. He couldn’t understand why Carmell hadn’t telephoned. That, quite specifically, had been the arrangement. He should have telephoned - and fixed the meeting - as soon as he arrived in England.

From his study window, stark against the unseasonably bright blue of the afternoon sky, Ballantine could see the gigantic listening saucer of the Jodrell Bank radio telescope.

He stared at it now, trying to stifle the conviction that something had gone dreadfully wrong. For days he’d had this premonition that somehow they had discovered what he was planning, that time was draining fast away.

It had been a mistake, a terrible mistake, to have kept the tape a secret for so long. He should have told the public, months earlier, what was really happening in space. He should have done it that day when - at NASA headquarters in America - he saw the undeniable proof.. that men had achieved the impossible.

But, There again, who would have believed him? The facts were so fantastic that, despite his international standing as a radio astronomer, there would have been skepticism. Particularly if NASA denied the story - and Harry Carmell had warned him that NASA would deny it most emphatically.

Carmell had helped him. He’d been nervous about doing so but - without seeking permission from his superiors - he had helped. He’d played Ballantine’s Jodrell Bank tape through one of the NASA electronic decoding circuits. And then they’d seen, just the two of them, the astounding pictures which were suddenly flowing from the unscrambled tape.
Carmell, immediately, had been terrified.

“Don’t yap about this - not to anybody,” he’d said. “These bastards would kill us if they knew what we’ve seen. Take a word of advice, friend, and destroy that damned tape...”

We have those words, exactly as they were spoken, for they made a big impression on Ballantine. Enough of an impression for him to record them in his 1976 diary. Ballantine did not speak of what he’d seen at NASA. He tried to forget. But, of course, he couldn’t forget.

On Wednesday, January 26, 1977, Ballantine got an unexpected telephone call from Carmell in America. Most of Ballantine’s telephone conversations contained such a mass of technical information that he taped them for future reference. He taped this particular one and now, by permission of Lady Ballantine, we are able to present it:

CARMELL: Did you do like I said?.. Did you destroy that tape?
BALLANTINE: I haven’t told anybody about it...but I’ve still got it safe...
CARMELL: Thank Christ! Then we can burst the whole bloody thing...
BALLANTINE: I’m sorry...what are you talking about?
CARMELL: Batch consignments...that’s what I’m talking about...I tell you, friend, it’s incredible what these goons are doing...
BALLANTINE: Batch consignments?...I don’t know what that means...
CARMELL: Stinking atrocities...that’s what it means ...But I don’t want to say no more, not on the wire...I’ll tell you when I get to you...
BALLANTINE: You’re coming to England?
CARMELL: By the first damned flight I can...I’ve quit NASA and I’ve borrowed a baby juke - box...
BALLANTINE: I don’t think I caught that...
CARMELL: A juke - box...you know...a de-coder like we used last year...I’ve got one and I’m bringing it to England...
BALLANTINE: But what’s happened?...And what are batch consignments?
CARMELL: Wait till we meet, friend, and it’ll blow
your mind...Jesus, I knew these bastards were evil but I never imagined...look, I’ll ring you when I get to London, okay?
BALLANTINE: You expect to get here tomorrow?
CARMELL: Can’t rightly say...they know I've got this baby and they’re looking for me...so I gotta play it smart. I might get up through Canada and out that way...give me till...well, let’s say a week Sunday...I should have made it before then...
BALLANTINE: You know, I find this very hard to credit...you really are in some danger?
CARMELL: Not some danger, friend...the worst danger
possible....but I couldn’t stand by and just let them do what they’re doing...now, look, I gotta go...so a week Sunday at the outside, okay?
BALLANTINE: That’ll be February 6...
CARMELL: Yeah...but with luck it’ll be earlier...if you haven’t heard from me again by February 6 - let’s say by four in the afternoon - you’ll know it’s all screwed up...
BALLANTINE: And what does that mean?
CARMELL: That I’ll be dead, friend, that’s what it means.
BALLANTINE: Good Lord!...but if that were to happen... what should I do?
CARMELL: If you give a damn about decency or human dignity...you’ll go right ahead and expose the whole stinking shebang...there’s a guy in Geneva who’ll help you...his name is...

That was the core of the conversation. We are not printing the name mentioned at that stage by Harry Carmell for it is that of the man we now refer to as Trojan. In view of the way Trojan has helped in this investigation, his life would be in acute danger if he were in any way to be identified in this book.

So there was Ballantine in his study on February 6. It was nearly 4:45 in the afternoon. And there was still no call from Carmell. Maybe, he thought, Carmell had been caught. Maybe he’d been caught and killed. It all bordered on being outrageously impossible but, after what he had seen at NASA, Ballantine no longer considered anything impossible.

Obviously he ought to contact the man in Switzerland. He’d promised Carmell that he would. Well, he’d more or less promised him. But even that wasn’t as simple as it seemed. Carmell had given him no address or telephone number. Only a surname. And Geneva was rather a large place.

By 5:30 he was convinced that Carmell was dead. He was also convinced that there was serious danger for himself. Carmell’s words kept running through his mind:

“I knew these bastards were evil but I never imagined...” And now Ballantine’s own imagination was churning over. They probably already knew about his tape and about what he intended doing with it...”

He took the tape from the drawer, knowing that he had to get it to somewhere safe. That was when he realized there was one friend who might be able to advise him - John Hendry, the London managing editor of an international news agency.

Hendry, to start with, had a staff reporter in Geneva - and he would almost certainly trace the man named by Carmell. Hendry would also be able to tell him the best way to break the news - for it was essential to make as big an initial impact as possible. He’d pull the whole bizarre business right into the eye of the public. He’d also force a thorough investigation into the disappearance of Harry Carmell.

He checked his watch again. Early Sunday evening. Chances were that John Hendry was still at his office. They worked odd hours in Fleet Street. It was worth trying. He was lucky. He caught Hendry just as he was preparing to leave. Here, again with Lady Ballantine’s permission, is a transcript of that telephone call:

BALLANTINE: John?...This is William Ballantine...
HENDRY: Well. what a happy surprise! How are things a Jodrell?
BALLANTINE: I’ve got a problem, John...rather a serious problem...and I need your help...
HENDRY: Certainly, you know full well that any help I can give...what sort of problem?
BALLANTINE: Can I meet you this evening?
HENDRY: You in London?
BALLANTINE: I’m calling from home...but it wouldn't take me long to drive..
HENDRY: Well...I was just about wrapping up for the night...
BALLANTINE: It is important, John...and I promise you it’s the biggest story you’ve seen this year...
HENDRY: So how can I say “no”? You want to come to the office?
BALLANTINE: I’ll be with you as quickly as possible. Oh - and John - I’m also putting a package in the post to you...but I’ll explain that when I see you...
HENDRY: I don’t follow...why not bring it with you...?
BALLANTINE: Because I’ve got a feeling...a premonition if you like...that events are starting to move rather fast...and I want it safely out of my possession...
HENDRY: And that’s supposed to be logic? William, what is all this about?
BALLANTINE: Just wait for me...then you’ll understand everything.

The sequence of events which immediately followed the conversation have been described by Lady Ballantine. We met her on July 27,1977. Here is the statement she made then:

I entered the study just as my husband was replacing the receiver and I couldn’t help noticing, right away, that he was in a state of agitation. This extremely self - possessed man. He never allowed himself to get flustered. He had been behaving a little strangely, a little out - of - character, for about a week - ever since he had a phone call from some man in America. He wouldn’t discuss it with me - which, again, was unusual - but he seemed to be very much on edge.

However, I’d never seen him quite as he looked when I went into his study. I had the distinct feeling - and I don’t think I’m dramatizing with hindsight - that he was frightened.

I asked him what was troubling him, for it was obvious that something was, but he kept shaking his head and saying there was nothing.

He told me that he had to drive to London immediately for a meeting...

Lady Ballantine became rather distressed during this part of the statement and we waited for a while until she had composed herself. She apologize for crying and said she was anxious to continue because she wanted to assist. Our investigation, she pointed out, would have had the fullest endorsement from her husband. She went on:

He took a package from the drawer of his desk and sealed it into a large envelope which he addressed to Mr. Hendry in London. He put stamps on it and asked me to take it straight away to the post box. He said it was most urgent and, although I pointed out that there was no collection that evening, he was quite adamant that I should take it then.

He said that he would probably be back from London in the early hours of the Monday morning but, as you know, I never saw him again.

Why did Ballantine act so strangely over that tape? It would have been more logical, surely, for him to have taken it with him to London. Getting his wife to post it - so ensuring it would be delayed before reaching Hendry - seems to make little sense. We confess we do not have the answer. Unless there is one to be found in that transcript of his conversation with Hendry...
“I’ve got a feeling...a premonition if you like ...” That’s what he said. And it could be the key. We now know that the tape would never have reached Hendry if it had gone into Ballantine’s car. But then, borrowing an expression from Lady Ballantine, we do have the benefit of hindsight.

Ballantine’s death, as you may recall, made all the front pages. The splash headline in one of the tabloids read FREAK SKID KILLS SCIENCE CHIEF - and that seemed to sum it up. There was no obvious explanation for his car having careered off the road on that journey to London. Ballantine was a competent and steady driver who had travelled that route often before. He would have known about that awkward bend and about that terrible drop beyond the protective fencing.

And, even in an agitated state, he would almost certainly have approached it with caution. A freak skid. Yes, that seemed to say it all.

Only one photograph of the crash was made available to the Press and television. A whole series were taken by agency cameraman George Green but only one was ever released. It showed part of the wreckage - and a blanket - covered shape on a stretcher.

We asked Green what was in the other pictures. Why had they been confiscated?

“I’ve been ordered to keep my trap shut,” he said. “But I’ll tell you this...you ought to ask that Professor Radwell why he lied at the inquest. Now I’m saying any more...it’d be more than my job’s worth. He’s the boy you want to talk to.”

Professor Hubert Radwell was the pathologist who gave evidence at the Ballantine inquest. He had reported that the body had been “extensively burned”. That in itself was puzzling for there had been no fire - and Radwell had not been pressed for an explanation.

We checked back on Trojan’s transcript of the Policy Committee meeting - the one held only three days before Ballantine’s death. And we studied the words used about Ballantine and Harry Carmell:

R SEVEN: As you say then, there is no room for question ...both of them have got to be expediencies.
A EIGHT: All agreed?...Good...I suggest a couple of hot jobs...coroners always play them quiet...

“Hot jobs’ and “extensive” burns...and coroners “always playing them quiet.” And now this cryptic statement from cameraman George Green. It all had to add up to more than mere coincidence.

Professor Radwell, at first, refused to make any comment. “The Ballantine business is in the past,” he said. “Nothing can be gained by raking it all up.”

We formed the impression that he was under some pressure, that he had been given instructions to stay silent. And that he was uneasy about those instructions.

That impression proved right. We pressed him to specify the extent of the burning. And suddenly, to our surprise, it seemed as if he wanted to unburden himself. “It was uncanny,” he said. “Quite uncanny.” He paused before adding:

“They told me it would cause unnecessary alarm...that there was no point in people knowing...but now I’m not sure...I’ve always regarded the truth as sacrosanct.” Another pause. Then, obviously having taken a big decision, he talked quickly and at length. His statement, which we will be presenting later, provides an astonishing insight into what really killed sir William Ballantine. And into what the Policy Committee mean by a hot job”.

Harry Carmell first heard the news of Ballantine’s death on a radio bulletin. He heard it early in the morning on February 7 and it hardly registered. Very little was registering with Carmell at that time. The prolonged strain of dodging out of America, of knowing he was a target for execution, had pushed him back into a habit he thought he’d kicked for ever. He was back on drugs. Hard drugs.

He was in his mid - thirties but normally looked at least ten years younger. On this particular morning, in an hotel bedroom in London’s Earls Court, he was more like a sick man of sixty or more. He lay fully dressed on the covers of the unmade bed, his bleached blue eyes fixed unseeingly on a crack in the ceiling. His skin, too tight over his face, had the pallor of a shroud. And he felt as if he might once again start to vomit.

His girl, Wendy, was out getting the morning papers. He lit a cigarette, tried to will himself back to normality. But his head still seemed full of fog.

Ballantine. He could almost swear he’d heard that guy on the radio mention the name Ballantine. Or maybe it was a name very similar.

It made him remember, however, what he’d got to do. He’d got to contact Ballantine. He’d got to give him the juke - box. He checked the date on his watch and swore with quiet desperation. February 7. Jesus! That had to mean he’d been blown out of his mind for three whole days - ever since he’d said to Ballantine, he was in a panic. He’d told Ballantine, told him quite specifically, that he’d call by February 6 at the latest. And that if he didn’t call by then, Ballantine could assume he was dead.

He scrambled off the bed, started fumbling through his wallet. Where the hell was that bloody number? He found it on a slip of card just as Wendy returned. He sat on his pillow to start dialling and she handed him one of the newspapers. One glance at the front page made him drop the receiver as if it was suddenly white - hot. That guy on the radio...he had heard him properly. Ballantine had already been murdered.

Fear instantly cleared his brain.

“Throw your things together.” He was on his feet and his tone was decisive. “We’re pulling out - now.”
Wendy stared at him, bewildered. “What’s up?”
“I want to go on living - that’s what’s up.” Carmell was already bundling his clothes into a leather grip. “Now come on - shift.”

Twelve minutes later they’d settled their bill and were out of the hotel. And as they hurried away, he told her exactly why they were in England.

We should mention here that we are suppressing Wendy’s surname at her request. She fears retaliation from the Policy Committee and, although we consider those fears are not justified, we have agreed to respect her wishes.

We have interviewed her on three occasions and she has explained that she thought their furtive escape through Canada was somehow connected with Carmell having broken is contract with NASA.

She had not questioned him. And she certainly had no idea his life was in danger. Not until that morning in February. He told her everything that morning, as he bustled her along the pavements of Earls Court. He told her the lot.

“They’ll start scouring the hotels now,” he said. “So from here on we live rough. We find ourselves a squat somewhere and we live rough.”

And later, in the derelict house where they slept for the next two nights, he told her he was determined to go ahead with his plan. He was going to expose them and their atrocities. And he wasn’t going to be stopped by Ballantine’s death.

“Mabey I ought to go straight to the Press,” he said.
That’s the only way to play it now...”
“But what if they don’t believe you?”
“Of course they’ll believe me!” It’s the truth and I’ll damned well make them believe me!”
“ I was watching a programme on television the other night,” said Wendy. “While you were...you know...asleep. I was watching a programme called Science Report...
“So?”
“So it strikes me that a programme like that would have scientific advisers...and those advisers, dumbhead, might understand what you’re talking about...” Carmell immediately got enthusiastic. “You’re damned right they would...better than any newspaper reporter...Hey, I really think you’ve hit it. This Science Report...what station was it on?”
“I got the impression it goes out every week...but I can’t remember which station,” said Wendy. “I do know it had a plug - spot in the middle so it couldn't have been the BBC...”
“I’ll find it,” interrupted Carmell, “And I’ll give them the most sensational science report they’ve ever had...”

Science Report had a very successful thirteen - week trial on ITV in 1975. Ratings were food, surprisingly good for such a serious project, and Sceptre Television had little difficulty persuading the network to take a twenty - six week run in 1976.

That was tremendous for Chris Clements and his ego, for Science Today was his baby. He produced it and directed it. And he claimed, not without justification, to have originated most of its brightest ideas.

So the network’s decision was a great compliment to him. It was also an enormous challenge. Keeping up that standard for twenty - six weeks in a row - it really was quite an order. Clements had no doubts, however, about his ability to meet that order. It merely got his adrenaline going.

He was a wiry little man, who looked as if he might once have been a jockey, and he had sparse dark hair which always needed combing. He always spoke fast, in urgent staccato sentences, as if his tongue were in a permanent hurry. And he generated enthusiasm like Chris Clements. They were going to stockpile at least a dozen programmes. That was the plan. Then they’d do the last fourteen during the run.

By the middle of December, 1975, they already had seven in the can - so they were comfortably ahead of schedule - and the production team was considering which subject to tackle net. There were eight of them that day in Clement’s office which was across the corridor behind Studio B. He’d often protest that the office was too small to hold proper meetings and also that he disliked the cooking smells which drifted up from the canteen kitchen.

His protests had done no good. They’d merely brought curt little notes from Leonard Harman - Assistant Controller of Programmes (Admin) - pointing out that space was at a premium, that Science Report didn’t qualify for its own Production Office. Harman, of course, had a far bigger office. One with proper air-conditioning.

So there they were, the eight of them, in the office which was really too small. Clement’s production assistant, Jean Baker, was at the desk. She usually sat at the desk during these meetings because she did most of the note - taking and the referring to files and because Clements liked to think on his feet. He paced back and forth, his hands and arms dancing expressively, as they bounced ideas around.

The others included former ITN newscaster Simon Butler, the programme’s anchor-man, and reporters Katherine White and Colin Benson. Opposite them were the scientific advisers, Professor David Cowie and Dr. Patrick Snow, and in the corner nearest the door was researcher Terry Dickson.

“Wave - power,” suggested Benson. “energy from waves...”
“Been flogged to death, love,” said Clements. “Didn’t you watch BB-C2 either. And, reckoning it a good subject, he’d been quietly researching wave - power. He’d have to scrap that now. Clements, despite his habit of calling everybody “love”, was tough. When he said no he meant no.
“Newsweek have got an intriguing piece on robot servants,” said Cowie. “They’re now being built, it seems, to polish the floors and even make beds...”
“Now that I like!” said Clements gleefully. “Mechanical maids! Yes, we could really have fun with that one. Jean love...put that down as a possible...we’ll come back on it.”
“I think it’s time we took a really close look at the Brain Drain,” said Butler.
Clements stopped his pacing, looked at him doubt - fully. I don't know, Simon...strikes me as a bit heavy.” He cupped his chin in his right hand. “Is it really us?”
“Well if it isn’t, I think it ought to be,” said Butler. “We are a science programme and you consider the number of scientists who are leaving...and what it means to this country...”conceded Clements. “Maybe if we dressed it up with some good human stories...” He looked at Dickson. “How about it, Terry? Reckon you could dig up a lively selection of case -histories?”
Dickson could see his work-load growing fast. “It would take time,” he said guardedly.
“Of course it would, love. Getting the right people...I can see that. But it doesn’t have to be top priority. Say we were to think of it in terms of five programmes from now...then you could plod along with it when you’re not too hectic with the first four...”

It was as simple and as casual as that. None of them at that meeting had the slightest inkling that they were about to embark on the most astonishing television documentary ever produced - the one which was to explode the secrecy of Alternative 3.

Dickson knew there was only one satisfactory way to tackle this sort of problem - dozens of telephone calls. Probably scores of them, even. It was no use hoping to rely on local stringers because they never really came up with the goods. Not on this type of job.

He’d have to call head - hunting firms and the major professional organizations...universities and research establishments. He’d get told that people didn’t want to appear on the programme or he’d find that they were too damned dull to be allowed on the programme. And if he worked at it hard enough - and had a bit of luck - he’d finish up with a good varied collection. Of people who mattered and who mattered and who could talk.

He got lucky, as it happened, quite soon. One of his first telephone calls - made purely on spec - was to a complex of research laboratories. A helpful man in the Public Relations department told him that one of their solar - energy experts would soon be leaving for America. Her name was Ann Clark and she was aged 29.

The P.R. man pointed out that naturally he couldn’t say if Dr. Clark would agree to take part in the programme. If she did agree, however, there would be no objection from the management. He also told Dickson that Dr. Clark was “a real cracker” but quickly added that that was background information and that he did not wish to be quoted.

Ann Clark, to Dickson’s relief, said she’d be pleased to appear in Science Report. In fact, she was delighted that a television company should be planning to show the disgusting conditions in which British scientists were expected to work. She was, quite obviously, a very fluent speaker.

Clements usually liked to see a photograph and a biographical breakdown of people before committing himself to putting them on his programme. He’d made that rule, years before, after bling-booking an expert on beauty aids - only to find that she looked and sounded like the worst of the Macbeth witches. He’d had to record her, of course, and they’d junked the recording after she’d left the studio. And Harman had raised hell about the waste of valuable studio time.

Now Clements played safe. He had this rule. So Dickson arranged for a Norwich news-agency to call on Ann Clark. This agency came back with the whisper that she wasn’t going to America purely because of working conditions. The conditions were bad, very bad, but she’d also had some sort of romantic bust-up...

Dickson decided to forget the whisper. It only complicated matters. Clements approved the photograph. And Colin Benson, the young coloured reporter, set off with a film unit for Norwich.

Later there were suspicions that the assignment was sabotaged by somebody at Sceptre. Those suspicions could never be proved. So we can merely record that something happened to the film after it was taken back for processing - and that only a fraction of it could be used in the transmitted programme.

At the time, however, it seemed like a routine job. Benson says:

“Dr. Clark was not only extremely articulate and eager to co-operate but she had obviously also done a great deal of useful home-work on emigration. She pointed out that, apart from the frustrations facing her at the laboratory, there were many ways in which initiative and flair were being stifled in Britain.

“I remember her talking about how a man called Marcus Samuel started the Shell organization-in 1830, I think she said - as a small private company selling varnished sea-shells. Men of his caliber, she said, were now being positively discouraged in Britain - and that was another reason she was glad to be off to America.

“She was, in fact, a really good interviewee, a television natural, and I was delighted with what we’d got in the can.”

His delight died abruptly when they got back to the studios and the film was processed. Most of it - sound and vision - was completely blank. It had never happened before and there was no logical explanation for it having happened now. There had been more than forty-five minutes of interview which, after editing, would have provided about twelve minutes of screen time. All they could salvage was a fifteen-second segment.

Clements, naturally, was fuming. Sending a unit all the way to Norwich was damned expensive - and he knew how Harman would squeal about him going over budget. He quizzed Benson at length.

“You’re really sure that she is that good? That it’s really worth going there again?”
“It was a hell of a good interview,’ insisted Benson. “I say we should go back.”

He telephoned Ann Clark, explained the situation, and fixed a new appointment. He takes up the story from there:

“She was very sympathetic and she agreed quite willingly to see us again. But two days later, when we got to Norwich, it was all very different...
“She wasn’t at her flat, where we’d arranged to meet her, but after quite a lot of trouble we did find her at another address. She looked flustered and - I don’t think I was imagining this - a bit frightened. It seemed quite clear that, for some reason or another, she’d been hoping to give us the slip.
“She certainly didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to know at all. Later we discovered she’d even told the security people at the laboratories that we were pestering her and that they shouldn’t let us in. It was just a crazy-situation.
“I did manage to grab a few words with her at the gate the next morning - although she tried to duck away when she spotted us waiting there - and I asked her what was wrong.
“You know what she replied? She just looked at me sort
of queer and said - “I’m sorry...I can’t finish the film...I’m going away.”
“Then she scuttled inside and that was the last we ever saw of her.”

Benson, although he did not realize it at that stage, was just starting to get enmeshed in Alternative 3... Benson and the film team were travelling dejectedly from Norwich when Terry Dickson noticed the paragraph about Robert Patterson in the Guardian.

Dickson knew that this time he wouldn’t need to worry about getting a picture and a biography for Patterson, apart from being a leading mathematician, often appeared on television as a taxation expert. He was a fluent and impressive performer.

At first Patterson seemed uncharacteristically reluctant. He had a lot to do. He wasn’t sure if he could spare time for an interview. But finally Dickson persuaded him. They agreed that the unit should be at Patterson’s home at 11:00 a.m. the following Tuesday.

“Let’s hope we have a bit more luck than at Norwich,” said Clements sourly. “I’ve never known such a run of disaster...”

In fact, of course, it was even worse than at Norwich. Benson got no reply when he arrived at the house in Scotland. The downstairs curtains were partially-drawn and, peeping through the gaps, he could see that the rooms were untidy. There were bits of food and dirty dishes in the kitchen and on the dining-room table...books and oddments of clothing strewn across the floors. There were six pints of milk outside the front door and the garage as empty. The whole place looked as if it had been abandoned in a hurry.

Benson checked with the neighbors. The Pattersons, he was told, had left three days earlier. They had driven off at speed on the Saturday and they had not been seen since.

Benson went to the University of St. Andrews and there he was told by the vice-chancellor that Patterson had already gone to America. He’d had to go, apparently, a little earlier than he’d originally intended.

“He told me that they wanted him more urgently than he’d realized,” said the vice-chancellor. I’m terribly sorry you’ve had this wasted journey...and I must say it’s not like him at all...breaking an appointment like this. I can only assume that, in the rush, he completely forgot...”
They? Who were they?
The vice-chancellor shook his head apologetically.
“Can’t help you there either, I’m afraid. Patterson was rather mysterious about what he was going to do - and about exactly where he was going. Somewhere in America... that’s as much as he ever said.”

We have now checked with every university in America. Not one of them has any knowledge of any post having been offered to Robert Patterson. And no - one can suggest where he might possibly be. We have also checked with the American company which Dr. Ann Clark was due to join - the one which was “in a hurry to have her”.

They have confirmed that they did offer her a job at more than double her Norwich salary. They have also told us that they received a brief letter from her - regretting that, for personal reasons, she would not be able to go to America. Simon Butler, you may recall, explained the next step in the mystery during that television documentary. He went with a camera-crew to the car park of Number Three Terminal, Heathrow Airport, and pointed out the car which had been hired in Norwich by Ann Clark.

We quote the exact words he used in that programme:

“Whatever was going on brought Ann Clark here...she had told friends that she was flying to New York. And yet there is no record of Ann Clark leaving this airport on that or any other day. The only evidence that she was here at all is her abandoned car. Beyond that - nothing.”

There was another abandoned car nearby in the same park. A blue Rover. It belonged to Robert Patterson.

It was some time, however, before the television team found those cars. Months, in fact, after Benson’s return and the Alternative 3 programme might never have been produced - if it hadn’t been for the bizarre business of Brian Pendlebury. By April, 1976, the Brain Drain project had been almost completed. Dickson had found another batch of interviewees and work had progressed in double-harness with work on other subjects - including a revolutionary new method for “stretching” petrol consumption and the Mechanical Maids.

Butler merely had to do a couple of final studio links and the Brain Drain would be ready for transmission. They were, of course, baffled by the strange behaviour of Ann lark and Robert Patterson - and there’d been some caustic memoranda from Harman about the “reckless waste of film facilities” - but they were a science programme. And runaway people were hardly their concern.

So that’s how it would have been...if Chris Clements, in his local one evening, hadn’t heard and oddly disturbing story from one of his neighbors... This neighbor had relatives called Pendlebury who lived in Manchester. And it appeared that the Pendleburys’ son - an electronics expert - had completely vanished in Australia.

And, even stranger, it seemed that he’s been writing to his parents for months - from an address where he was not even known.

“Brian always was a selfish little sod, only interested in what was in something for himself, but this is just plain daft, isn’t it,” said the neighbor. “You know, he even sent them pictures and everything but now it seems he wasn’t even there...”
It certainly didn’t make sense to Clements. He mulled it over that night and mentioned it the next day to Colin Benson. “Seems to be the season for disappearing boffins,” he said. “Or, on the other hand, maybe he’s just playing some prank on his folks.”
“What if he isn’t?” Benson asked suddenly.
“Well what else could it be?”
“What if there’s some pattern here? What if Clark and Patterson and now this Pendlebury...what if they’re all connected in some way?”
“I fail to see how they could be...”
“Let me go up to Manchester and see the parents...”
“Look, love, please...we’re already a week behind schedule and we can’t afford to go bouncing off at
tangents...”
“Chris, I’ve got a feeling...don’t ask me why...but I’ve got a feeling we’re on the edge of something big here.”
Clements shook his head. “We’ve got a show to do. I know you’re still sore, Colin, over what happened in Norwich and Scotland...but nobody blamed you for those cock-ups...so do me a favor and relax.”
“Harman blamed me...”
“Harman blames everybody for everything. That’s the was Harman’s made. And, anyway, it was me that got the kicking - not you.”
“I’ll go on my day off,” said Benson. “And I’ll pay my own damned expenses.”
“Waste of time, love, “said Clements. “And don’t imagine I’m having the train fare swung on to my budget.”
“Couldn’t I put it down as entertaining contacts?”
Clements grinned. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody quite as persistent as you. All right - go ahead and do a bit of entertaining.”

We have presented that conversation exactly as it took place, with the help of the two men, because it emphasizes how there was nearly no further investigation...how Sceptre Television almost veered away from Alternative 3.

Benson’s decision to go to Manchester was the turning-point. It culminated in Sceptre Television abandoning a thoughtfully-balanced but unspectacular programme on the Brain Drain - and replacing it with one which was to startle the world.

Dennis Pendlebury was a milkman until his retirement in 1976. He and his wife Alice live in a terraced house in on of the shabby suburbs of Manchester. They are, as they say themselves, a very ordinary couple. They have never had much money and they made many sacrifices to get their son Brian through university.

Mrs. Pendlebury, in fact, worked as a charwoman - to help pay for extras - until Brian joined the RAF. Benson was in their front room, the one reserved for visitors and special occasions, looking through the colored photographs which appeared to show their son in Australia.

He recorded the entire conversation, with the Pendlebury’s permission, and they have agreed to us making use of the transcript in this book. The Pendleburys were together on the sofa, facing him over the tea-cups and cakes.

“So we were a bit disappointed, of course, when he stopped writing but we didn’t give it too much thought at first,” said Mr. Pendlebury. He re-lit his pipe, took a couple of reflective puffs. “Our Brian, he never was much of a one for writing.”
“So how did you find out?” asked Benson. “I mean, about him not being there...”
“It was Mrs. Prescott over at number nine,” said Pendlebury. “She was the one who found out. Her daughter Beryl emigrated out there...what would it be...five years ago now?”
“Six years,” said Mrs. Pendlebury. “Seven come September.”
“Well, anyway, five or six...makes no odds. Her daughter’s living out there...that’s what I’m saying...and Mrs. Prescott was going to visit her, see. So we said to her...why don’t you look up out Brian? We thought it would be a nice surprise for him. You know...someone from home. She’d known him, you see, since he was knee-high to that table...”
“Tell the man what she said...”
“That’s what I’m doing, woman...I am telling him.”
There was a trace of irritation in Pendlebury’s tone. His pipe had gone out again and there was a pause while he struck another match. “So she went to the address -the one on the letters and that - but the man there reckoned he’d never heard of him.”
“Who was this man?” asked Benson.
“What beats me is that we wrote to him there,” said Pendlebury. “And we know he had the letters because we got replies.”
“This man,” persisted Benson. “What did Mrs. Prescott say about him?”
“He was an American, I think she said,” said Pendlebury.
“I don’t think she said any more than that.”
“Perhaps he was the new tenant? Perhaps your son had just moved out?”
“No, I don’t think so. He’d been there for years, judging by what he said to Mrs. Prescott.”
“Well, that was it, wasn’t it. They said exactly the same...that they’d never heard of him.”
Mr.s Pendlebury prodded him with her elbow. “Show the man the letter,” she said.

“Oh yes, you’ve got to see the letter,” said Pendlebury. “It’s in the other room, mother - behind the clock on the mantelpiece.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice confidentially as his wife left the room. “It’s getting her down something awful,” he said. “The worry of not knowing.”
He offered Benson another cup of tea, which Benson refused, and poured one for himself. “We wrote to this firm to try finding out what was going on and...ah, here’s their reply. You just take a look at that.”

Benson accepted the letter from Mrs. Pendlebury and say from the letter - heading that it was from the Sydney office of an internationally - known electronics company. It was signed by the Personnel Director and it was addressed to Mr.
Pendlebury. It read:

Thank you for your letter which has been passed to me by the Managing Director. I am afraid that you have been misinformed for I have checked our personnel records for the past five years and I have established that at no time has the company employed, nor offered employment to, anyone by the name of B. D. Pendlebury.

I can only suggest that you are confusing us with some other organization and I regret that I cannot help you further in this matter.

Benson read the letter twice and frowned thoughtfully. “And you’re sure you’re not confusing them with another outfit?”
“Positive,” said Pendlebury. “Pass me that wallet, mother...” From the wallet he took a slip of paper bearing the name and address of the firm in Sydney. “See...there it is...in Brian’s own writing.”

Mrs. Prescott from number nine, a widow with a shrewd and agile mind, confirmed their story but had little to add.
She picked her words carefully, obviously not wishing to hurt the Pendleburys, but she gave Benson the impression that
she’d never really approved of Brian. It was all in her tone rather than in what she actually said. Benson remembered
what Clements had been told by his neighbour...about Brian Pendlebury having been a “selfish little sod”...and he wondered if Brian might be playing some cruel trick on his parents. Then he dismissed the thought. It was too ridiculous.

Benson borrowed the letter from the electronics company, together with the photographs, and Mrs. Prescott offered to show him a short - cut to the stop<for the station bus. As they turned the corner she suddenly spoke with quiet vehemence:

“You see...that’s the thanks they get for spoiling him.”
He glanced at her in surprise. “How do you mean?”
“He looks down on them, does Brian. Bit ashamed of them, if you ask me. Going to university...it gave him big ideas...”
“You surely don’t think he’s disappeared on purpose?”
She pursed her lips. “Not my place to say", she said.
“Look...there’s your bus coming...you’ll have to run if you’re going to catch it.”

He didn’t take her implied opinion at all seriously - not until months later. It seemed to him then, as the bus trundled through Manchester, that she’d merely been trying to squeeze the last ounce of drama from the situation. He spent a long time on the train studying the photographs, particularly those taken in the open. There was one detail in them which intrigued him, which didn’t seem quite right. And yet he could not be sure... Back at the studios he sought the help of a stills photographer who was attached to the graphics department. This man made copy - negatives of the outdoor photographs and then re-printed them as large blow-ups.

Benson was not concerned with the one which appeared to have been taken in a nightclub for that, he reasoned, could have been posed almost anywhere. In London. In Manchester even. And, anyway, it didn’t contain that one off-key detail...

He waited impatiently until the blow-ups were ready. Then he saw, quite clearly, that he’d been right. In every picture - including the one of Brian Pendlebury surfing and the one of him by the Sydney Harbor Bridge - there were three birds in the sky. Those birds were identical in every picture - and so were their positions.

There was also something else, something which had not struck him before: the pattern-formations of the wispy clouds were exactly the same in each picture.

The explanation was startlingly obvious: The “Australian” snaps of Brian Pendlebury had been taken against a painted backdrop. They were, without question, “studio jobs".

He scooped them up, raced along to Clement’s office behind Studio B.

“We’ve stumbled on one hell of a Brain Drain story here,” he said. “I can’t start to understand it yet but...Chris...we’ve just got to do some digging...”

This digging, as Simon Butler said on television, soon revealed on astonishing fact:

Twenty-one other people, mainly scientists and academics, had vanished in the same mysterious circumstances. They were among the 400 researched - ostensibly for an extended version of the Brain Drain program - by the Science Report team.

Some, as Butler explained, had disappeared entirely on their own. Others, like Patterson, had gone with their families. All had told neighbors or colleagues that they were going to work abroad.

However, as we have already indicated, only part of the story was presented on television. Many facts were still not known at the time of transmission. And much material which was known was censored from the program. The principal censor was Leonard Harman, Assistant Controller of Programs (Admin), who also tried to neuter this book.

Letter dated August 9, 1977, from Leonard Harman to Messrs. Ambrose and Watkins:

I have been given to understand that you propose writing a book based on one of the Science Report programs produced by this company and that you plan to publish certain confidential memoranda concerning this program which I originated or received.

You should know that I am not prepared to sanction such publication and that I would consider it a gross invasion of my privacy.

I suggest that the book you are apparently preparing would savour of irresponsibility for, as you are undoubtedly aware, my company has now formally denied the authenticity of much of the material presented in that program.

It is to be hoped that you do not proceed with this project but, in any event, I look forward to receiving a written undertaking that no reference will be made to myself or the memoranda.

Letter dated August 12, 1977, from lawyer Edwin Greer to Leonard Harman:

I have been instructed by Mr. David Ambrose and Mr. Leslie Watkins and I refer to your letter of the 9th inst.

My clients are cognizant of the statement made by your company following the transmission of the Alternative 3 program and, in conducting their own inquiries, they are mindful of the background to that statement.

They point out that any copies of memoranda now in their possession were supplied willingly by the persons who either received them or sent them and that they therefore feel under no obligation to give the undertaking you seek.

One of the first batches of memoranda we received related to a curious discovery made by researcher Terry Dickson in the middle of May, 1976. By that time, despite objections from Harman, the Science Report team had been enlarged and allocated its own production office. The Brain Drain program had by then been withdrawn from the series - with the intention of the investigation being presented, as it eventually was, as a one-off special.

Memo dated May 17, 1976, from Terry Dickson to Chris Clements - c.c. (for info only) to Fergus Godwin. Controller of Programs:

We have now established that relatives of at least two more of our missing people, Dr. Penelope Mortimer and Professor Michael Parsons, received letters which appeared to have come from them in Australia. In both cases the letters, which ceased after four or five months, bore the address used in the Pendlebury case.

Photographs of Dr. Mortimer and Professor Parsons, allegedly taken in Australia, show the backdrop used in the Pendlebury shots. The birds and clouds are all identical.

As you requested, I arranged for a Sydney freelance to check the address given in the letters. He reports that it is a two-bedroomed ground-floor flat near the waterfront which has now been empty for nearly a year. It was occupied, apparently, by a middle-aged American called Denton of Danton (he has been unable to verify spelling).

Neighbors say that Denton or Danton was remote and secretive. He was never known to have visitors. Our man says there are local rumors that he had connections with the CIA. Do you want him to pursue the Denton/Danton trail and do you want me to arrange still pix of the flat?

Memo dated May 13, 1976, from Leonard Harman to Mr. Chris Clements:

A copy of Dickson’s note concerning inquiries made in Australia, without my authorization, has been passed to me in the absence of the Controller of Programs.

I have already issued specific instructions that I am to be kept fully informed on all aspects of this project. Please repeat those instructions to Dickson and all other members of the Science Report team - and ensure that they are fully understood.

I am surprised to learn that, despite my earlier warnings, you are apparently still determined to waste company time and money. Let me remind you that Science Report is regarded by the Network as a serious program and that its credibility can only be damaged by this wild - goose course on which you are set.

The more I learn of this affair, the more obvious it becomes that you are losing your objectivity as an editor. Many people do disappear quite deliberately because, for personal reasons, they wish to break all contact with their pasts and make completely fresh starts. I will not tolerate this station turning that sort of situation in an excuse for silly sensationalism.
I had assumed that you were experienced enough to recognize that you are clearly being hoaxed over this business of the photographic backgrounds. Now, I gather from Dickson’s note (which, I repeat, should also have been sent to me), that you are apparently getting involved in “local rumors” - supplied by a freelance journalist we have never before used - about some man whose name you don’t even know having “connections with the CIA”.

Have you considered that some of your so-called mysteries might have been caused by incompetence on the part of your staff?

Did Dr. Ann Clark, for example, refuse to grant Benson a second interview because she found his manner offensive during the first one?

Did Dickson confuse the date fixed for the interview with Robert Patterson and so send an expensive unit on a fool’s errand to Scotland?

These are the questions which should be occupying your attention, not some nonsense at the other end of the world I am not prepared to sanction any further expenditure in Australia and I recommend, once again, that you resume the duties prescribed in your contract.

Memo dated May 19, 1976, from Chris Clements to Terry Dickson:

CONFIDENTIAL. I attach a copy of a rollicking I’ve just had from Harman. It’s self-explanatory and, for the moment, I’d like you to keep it to yourself. In future don’t send carbons to anyone before checking with me.

We’d better soft-pedal for the moment on Australia.

Will you line up Mortimer and Parsons parents to be interviewed by Simon or Colin?

Please ignore that snide comment about Robert Patterson. Not worth getting upset over. And please don’t mention that about Ann Clark to Colin. He sometimes gets a color-chip on his shoulder, as you know, and it isn’t like that. This is just Harman being Harman.

Six days later, on May 25, Terry Dickson gave Clements the bad news.

“We’re not going to get any interviews with the Mortimers of the Parsons,” he said. “They’ve changed their minds and are refusing to have anything to do with the program.”
“But why?” demanded Clements. “They surely gave you a reason.”
“None at all,” said Dickson. “They just say they’d sooner not.”
“You think they’ve been got at?”
Dickson shrugged, pulled a face. “That’s the impression I got but proving it...that’s another matter.”
“They’re important, love...have another go at them.”
Dickson did. But Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer were adamant.

So were Mr. and Mrs. Parsons. Not one of them, despite having agreed earlier, would have anything further to do with Science Report. We tried to contact them in September, 1977, but we were too late. Neighbors said they had gone to live abroad. And they had left no forwarding addresses.

This whole question of the staged photographs - and of the forged letters - was deliberately omitted from the television program. Clements admits that he now regrets having left them out for, as he now realizes, they were an intriguing feature of the Alternative 3 operation. He explains that he didn’t see what significance they could possibly have - and because of pressure from Harman.

He told us: “At the time I thought Harman was nit-picking. They didn’t seem important enough to merit all the aggro I was getting from him. Of course, if I’d known then what I know now...

We were equally baffled by those photographs and letters. We intended to mention them, just as we have, simply so that you would know all the circumstances. But as for offering any explanation...we were prepared to recognize that would not be possible. That was how it seemed until January 3, 1978, when we received an envelope from Trojan. The contents provided an unexpected insight into what they call The Smoother Plan.

Trojan’s covering note explained that he had discovered the attached document - an early directive to Alternative 3 cells in various parts of the world - in an otherwise empty archives file.

In fact, he had sent a Photostat copy of the document. It was dated November 24, 1971, and it had been issued by “The Chairman, Policy Committee.” It was addressed to “National Chief Executive Officers” and it read:

The recent publicity which followed the movement of Professor William Braishfield was unfortunate and potentially damaging. In order to avert and repetition, it has been agreed to adopt a new procedure in all cases where families or others are likely to provoke questions.

The procedure, to be known as The Smoother, is designed to allay fears or suspicions in the immediate post - movement period.

Department Seven will arrange for letters to be sent, in appropriate handwriting, to reassure those whose anxiety might constitute a security risk. It is usual for people to send home photographs of themselves in their new surroundings. Arrangements will therefore also be made for the dispatch of suitable photographs. These photographs will be taken immediately before embarkation.

A list of manned cover addresses will be circulated to National Chief Executive Officers by Department Seven. Officers will then allocate addresses t