‘What was the commission?’ asked Theo.
There was deadly silence.
Pete placed his mug back on the table. ‘If someone has leaked what the commission is, it’s not going to stay secret for long, and you never know, with all the publicity it might create it could resurface.’
‘The internet is saying it has something to do with MI5,’ Pippa added, looking at her dad’s text again.
Horace drew in a long breath. ‘The commission,’ he said slowly, ‘was for MI5, yes, and unlike anything we’d been asked to produce before. The Vale Brothers had always designed remarkable timepieces, you know that. But this was different.’
Pippa looked at Theo and he discreetly widened his eyes at her.
Horace continued. ‘We had to sign enough paperwork to fill a lorry. It was 1965. The Cold War was at its peak. Espionage, counter-espionage, political leaks… The government was convinced enemies were listening in on every conversation from London to Edinburgh. They wanted a device that could capture conversations discreetly; something no one would ever suspect.’
‘A watch?’ questioned Pippa.
‘A watch,’ Horace confirmed. ‘Elegant, pocket-sized, with a recording device that was impossible to detect. It recorded through micro-reel technology, miles ahead of anything else at the time. Andrew designed the mechanism and engineered the internal gears. Arthur…’ He stopped, just long enough for everyone to glance at Arthur. ‘Arthur liaised with MI5. We were visited by officials, proper suits, serious types. I remember one, a man called Donovan, who never smiled. He talked about the Soviets, leaks in local government, suspected double agents. They wanted our watch to be used during diplomatic meetings to detect corruption and gather intelligence. It felt… well, it felt important.’
Theo glanced at his grandfather. ‘You never mentioned any of this. MI5 officials? Actual spies?’
‘I’d signed contracts forbidding me from speaking about it. I’m a man of integrity, honour and loyalty,’ Arthur said firmly.
The glance he sent Horace made it clear he didn’t think those qualities could also be attributed to him.
Horace kept going, his voice steady. ‘It was revolutionary. The first of its kind. The prototype worked, though not perfectly. We were improving it. MI5 already had plans for where it would be deployed first– meetings with suspected sympathisers, people leaking information to foreign agencies. The stakes were enormous. If that watch fell into the wrong hands… It wasn’t just a trinket; it was a weapon of information.’
He paused, then added, ‘The watch was powered by a magnetic trigger. That was Andrew’s genius idea. When the watch was brought near a small magnetic field, it activated the internal recording mechanism. There was one tiny switch inside, no obvious moving parts. It looked like an ordinary pocket watch, but the magnet essentially woke the device. In the finished design, the magnet would have been built discreetly into the clasp of the strap so it could activate automatically when worn. But in the prototype, we kept the magnet separate. Once triggered, the mechanism would stay active within a limited range of the magnet, but without that initial magnetic field the watch did nothing at all. With it, the device came to life. We just hadn’t built the magnet into the strap before it went missing.’
Pippa was intrigued. This was revolutionary for its time. ‘So the magnet was like… the “on” button, but hidden?’
‘Exactly.’ Horace nodded. ‘Completely invisible to anyone who didn’t know what they were looking for. It had to be subtle, or the whole thing would have been pointless.’
‘So when it disappeared?’ Theo said quietly.
‘MI5 shut the whole thing down. Buried it. They didn’t want the public knowing a classified device existed, let alone that it had gone missing. But it worked. We were just about to build the strap when Andrew overheard a conversation between me and Walter about how much we were getting paid, and that’s when the situation changed.’
Pippa caught a strange look in Arthur’s eyes. Something about this was touching a nerve.
‘What does this watch look like?’ asked Pippa.
Pippa listened intently as Horace began describing the watch in more detail, and something cold began to creep up the back of her neck. Her fingers tightened around the arm of the sofa as she felt the colour drain from her face. Horace’s next words confirmed her growing suspicion.
‘It had no Vale stamp on it,’ he said. ‘Instead there were diamonds around the bezel. It looked like a pocket watch, but was designed so the strap could be fitted later. And there was a tiny dent in the back casing where I accidentally dropped it, though that piece was meant to be replaced.’
Pippa’s stomach flipped as her eyes locked on Theo’s.
Theo placed his hand on her arm. The shock on his face mirrored hers perfectly.
She swallowed. Hard. ‘That… that watch sounds like…’ she said slowly. ‘That description…’
Theo nodded.
Horace was still speaking, but Pippa barely heard him. Her heart thudded too loudly.
Theo cleared his throat, steadying himself. ‘Horace,’ he said carefully, gesturing towards Pippa, who reached down and pulled the watch from her bag. She slowly placed it on the table.
Everyone’s gaze fixed on the pocket watch, everyone asking a hundred questions in silence.
Finally, Horace spoke. ‘Where the hell did you get that from?’
