THREE

December 1969

Just a few weeks after my abruptly curtailed interview with Professor Cornish, the Mars Probe crisis exploded across the headlines. The round-the-clock live broadcasts from the British Space Centre generated incredible tension and soar-away ratings for the newly launched BBC3.

The nation seemed to stand still during the special broadcasts, as the Recovery 7 craft was sent into space to link up with Mars Probe 7. City streets were virtually empty and cinemas complained of a massive drop in attendances. They blamed the Mars Probe crisis - why should people go to the cinema to see simulated drama when the real thing was being beamed directly into their homes 24 hours a day? The event turned presenter John Wakefield into a television star overnight as his intelligent and thoughtful commentary gave simple explanations to the complex manoeuvrings going on behind the scenes.

Like most of Britain, I found myself transfixed by the pictures being sent back from space. I sat in front of the television long into the night, hugging Natasha, as we watched the flickering images.

I hardly need to recall the events in detail - the docking of Recovery 7 and Mars Probe 7, the loss of communications with Recovery 7 and its return to Earth. At the Chronicle, we were left to try and chase the story from the ground - talking to the wives of the missing astronauts, and sitting through official briefings that told us nothing we could not see by watching our own televisions.

Fortunately for us, there were some other newsworthy events taking place. The Government was still slowly falling apart after the plague fiasco, and around London there were a series of violent robberies of radioactive isotopes from nuclear facilities. We did our best to beat these stories up into a major scare about home-grown terrorists gathering parts to build their own nuclear bomb but the public were interested in only one thing - the Mars Probe.

Then the second recovery mission went up. It was while watching this that I spotted a familiar figure lurking at one side of the control room in the British Space Centre - Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart! What the hell was UNIT's involvement in this? Perhaps this was what Professor Cornish had been trying to tip me off about when he terminated our interview.

I telephoned the features editor at his home and urged him to reconsider including UNIT as part of the 'Frontier Science' series of articles I was still researching. Michael Dobbyn had been features editor at the Chronicle for little over a year. He had got his start as a cadet at the Chronicle a decade before, but defected to the Mail for five years where he gained a reputation for hard work and harder play. Still under thirty, he came back to the Chronicle as features editor. It proved a difficult assignment, especially as many in the department were more than twenty years his senior. Despite this, Dobbyn was staging a quiet revolution in Features and fervently hoped to never again be addressed as 'whipper-snapper'.

I told him I now had proof of UNIT's involvement in the Mars Probe - the authorities could hardly deny what was being broadcast on national television. Not to mention the whispers about UNIT's part in the events at Wenley Moor, nor the presence of UNIT in the Ashbridge area just before the terrorist attacks of Black Thursday.

Finally, Michael relented. 'All right, all right, you can look into UNIT. But be careful, for Christ's sake. If you've had this much trouble up to now trying to get any information about this cloak-and-dagger outfit, imagine how many doors will close once they know you're after them,' he warned. So, while the rest of the world waited for a world-wide television link-up about the Mars Probe mission that never came, I was back in the reference library, poring over the old files for any background I could find on UNIT and its origins.

Most intriguing were the links I discovered between UNIT and the so-called secret service ministry, C19. One of my sources, a highly placed member of the intelligence community, confirmed that C19 acted as the official liaison between UNIT and the British Government. I tried to follow this up, but C19 decidedly reluctant about discussing its functions.

I put in numerous requests to the Ministry of Defence, the Home Secretary's Office and to the United Nations itself for information about UNIT. The most helpful information I got was from UN headquarters in Geneva - they gave me the London street address for UNIT! I made my way to a suitably anonymous building near the high street in Ealing Broadway, expecting at any moment to be firmly rebuffed, or even arrested. Instead a small brass plaque was mounted on the wall outside, with plain block lettering engraved into it: united nations intelligence taskforce.

Inside sat a pleasant, smiling receptionist behind a plain desk, with just a simple switchboard the only thing visible on its surface. But I was aware of a series of small, remote-controlled cameras following my every move as I entered the office.

'How can I help you, sir?' asked the receptionist.

'My name's James Stevens; I'm a journalist with the Daily Chronicle. I'd like to speak to Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.'