[At a second floor flat in Chelsea around 21:00 on a Monday evening.]
“Hello?”
“I’m sorry, there is no Roy Meier on this number. I’ve only just moved here so he might be a previous occupant.”
“Yes, I am sure that he does not live here.”
“No, I won’t give you my name. I don’t know who the hell you are. You could be a serial rapist for all I know.”
“Goodbye.”
I put the phone down. I was shaking like a leaf. I had been named this Roy Meier but in a previous life. If the caller really had put 2 and 2 together then I was well and truly up shit creek big time.
[At a second floor flat in Chelsea around 21:00 on a Monday evening.]
“Hello?”
“I’m sorry, there is no Roy Meier on this number. I’ve only just moved here so he might be a previous occupant.”
“Yes, I am sure that he does not live here.”
“No, I won’t give you my name. I don’t know who the hell you are. You could be a serial rapist for all I know.”
“Goodbye.”
I put the phone down. I was shaking like a leaf. I had been named this Roy Meier but in a previous life. If the caller really had put 2 and 2 together then I was well and truly up shit creek big time.
“Watch your back,” I said to my colleague.
Two of us were breaking into a warehouse in Southampton.
We were on the lookout for drugs or any other contraband that our target, Daniel Esteban and his organisation might have hiding or stored there. It had taken us three months from the first tiny bit of information to get this far and we wanted to see for ourselves what he was hiding before we returned with the cavalry and went through the front door.
My compatriot in our little adventure was Jemma Castle. Both of us worked for the British Government. Not quite MI6, James bond and all that but well, we are just about as close to that image as it gets. We don’t work for MI5 either or even MI something for that matter. We are attached to one section of a Government Department but if I told you I would have to kill you, and I mean it. What we do is totally off the books, records and anything else you might like to think of. This also gave our bosses total deniability should anything go wrong.
Jemma slowly prized open the warehouse roof-light and peered inside.
She flopped some rather special glasses over her eyes. These enabled her to see any Infra-Red beams that might be protecting whatever was below.
“No IR. Switching to UV.”
I afforded myself a small smile in the relative darkness. No modern city is ever really dark.
The floodlights from the nearby container port had made getting this far easy. The absence of IR beams didn’t mean that there were no IR detectors. We wore special clothing that gave off a very small IR signature but one could never tell if there was some new sensor mounted high on a wall that we hadn’t seen before. This was all part of the risk we took almost on a daily basis for HMG.
I heard Jemma say, “No UV.”
So far, so good, I thought to myself.
I handed her the knotted climbing rope we’d brought with us. Without a sound, she took the end and dropped it down into the blackness of the warehouse. Then she followed it into the darkness.
Just over ten seconds later I felt the rope go slack. Then I felt three small tugs on it. That was the all clear signal. She’d reached the bottom and had scanned for IR and UV sensors. Now it was my turn. I slipped over the edge of the sky-light and into the warehouse.
As I reached the bottom Jemma put her fingers to my lips.
She’d seen or heard something. She indicated towards the front of the building. As my eyes adjusted to the blackness, I saw a bit of light coming from around the edge of a door.
I led the way towards the door. That’s how we do things. Turn and turn alike. She’d gone down the rope first so it was now my turn to tackle the door and whatever was behind it.
I used a microphone device to listen to what was going on in the room. I could not detect any recognisable sounds or at least sounds of people talking or that of a Radio or TV. I gave Jemma the thumbs up. We both flipped up our night vision glasses and prepared to enter the room.
When the door opened both of us gasped in shock, amazement and then horror. The room was full of what turned out to be large dog cages. In every one of them was a young woman. Some of them looked very, very young. All the doors were padlocked shut. Many of the occupants were very dishevelled.
When they saw us, they all cowered back in their cages. They didn’t utter a sound. Then I saw the welts on many of their backs. These poor women were probably ‘sex’ slaves waiting to be sold to the highest bidder.
“Let’s get out of here and call the police?” I suggested to Jemma.
She touched my arm and pointed to another door off to out left.
I sighed, but nodded my head.
Inside this room there were more cages. This time there were two occupants to each. None of the occupants could have been more than 9 or 10 years old.
Jemma took a lot of pictures of the rooms and the occupants of the cages. With that done we made a fairly hasty exit.
Frankly, the place gave me the shivers. I was glad to see the clouds overhead when we climbed out of the skylight and onto the roof once more.
My joy was short-lived.
We’d used an extending ladder to reach the roof itself. I let Jemma go down before lowering myself over the edge and onto the ladder. I’d taken no more than three steps down when the ladder collapsed. I fell into the blackness.
I landed on something and immediately screamed out in pain. My gloved hands reached towards my crotch and became entangled in something sharp. Then the pain became so intense, I blacked out.
The next thing I knew was the vision of a bunch of people peering at me with a very bright light behind them.
“Am I dead yet?” I groaned.
“Not if we can help it,” replied a voice from somewhere.
Gradually my vision improved and I realised that I was in some sort of hospital.
Then the pain kicked in. Right from where it really hurts (for men) and down.
“Arrggghhhhh”
“It hurts then?” asked some wag.
If I could have killed them there and then I would have.
“What happened?”
There was silence.
“Where am I hurt?”
More silence.
“Won’t someone have the balls to tell me what’s wrong?”
There was a muted titter from one of the people around me. All were wearing surgical scrubs and face masks.
Eventually someone said,
“We understand that you fell off a roof.”
Then it started coming back to me.
“What happened then?”
“You landed on top of a fence. The fence was topped by razor wire.”
I sank back onto the bed. I knew then that I was in serious trouble.
“Won’t someone please give me the bad news?”
“If you would just lie back, we are trying as hard as we can to save it.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a nurse put a syringe into my IV feed and within a few seconds all went black again.
I could see that the sun was setting (or was it rising?) and I felt a numbness from my waist down.
I closed my eyes and tried to get my brain into some sort of order. When I opened them again, the sun was a bit lower in the sky. That told me that I’d probably been out for well over twelve hours.
I raised my head and could see two feet at the end of the bed. I moved them and they responded. Then I noticed the large bulge in the bed near my waist.
Immediately, my hand went to investigate. I couldn’t. My hands were restrained. Now I feared the worst possible outcome.
The arrival of a cheery nurse didn’t help my ever-deepening depression.
“How are we today then?”
“Go away. I want to die.”
“That is no way to behave. I’m here to make sure that you get better.”
“Then you can release my hands and tell me why I’m strapped down like this and more importantly tell me what has happened to me?”
Then my stomach let out a huge rumble.
“And you will want some food as well I take it?”
I just glared at her.
“The Doctor will be around soon. She can tell you what has happened.”
I just groaned at the thought of why might have happened.
I lay there for some time pondering my future. If my fears were correct then I’d lost all chance of being a father. Not that that in itself ever worried me, it didn’t but it would be nice to be able to if the circumstances… well, if the right woman came into my life.
Don’t get me wrong about sex. Jemma and I were intimate but not in that way. We used each other for pleasure but not love. Not that I didn’t love her but our jobs were, well not really suited to long term relationships. We both knew the risks of our job and had lived with it for a long time. Still, our job was never boring.
It was clear to me that from then on, my life would be very different. I allowed myself a little smile. So far, my life had been nothing like I’d planned at all.
I’d been recruited into the ‘organisation’ at University. At first, I thought I would be working for MI5 or MI6 but after the selection process had finished, it became abundantly clear that it wasn’t. If you think of the SAS as the elite of the Armed Services then my bunch (it didn’t have a formal name for obvious reasons) was the elite of the Security and Law Enforcement Services.
We did stuff that was on the whole very illegal but we got results and that was all that mattered. We also were often sent in to clean up the mess that other departments had made. Not very ‘James Bond’ with guns and explosions but an essential part of maintaining diplomacy and the semblance of a democratic government.
Modern day gangsters like Daniel Esteban were deliberately trying to destabilise governments all around the world. Economic Terrorists we called them. We had a direct order from the Prime Minister to go after them and do what was needed to bring them down. We didn’t play by the same rules that all the other departments had to and that’s what kept us going and on the whole very successful.
The past eight years had been fun, a lot of fun. Sure, it was not without its risks. The predicament I was in now was more than enough proof of that but as they say, ‘all good things must come to an end’. Laying there in this bed, was enough evidence that my luck had run out at last.
I drifted off to sleep with the big questions still unanswered but resigned that my time as a functioning male had reached the end of the line and
I was going to be heading in a new direction from now on. Quite what that direction is and where it would lead to are separate questions entirely.
[to be continued]
[Authors note]
This is a thriller and not strictly TG but I hope you enjoy it.
The revelation from my Doctor that I no longer had any ‘dangly bits’ as he called them was not altogether a shock but the realisation that I would have to ‘pee’ sitting down for the rest of my life was the real downer.
“There is an alternative to life as a eunuch you know?” he offered.
“Gee, thanks doc,” I replied slightly sarcastically.
“We could make… a vagina.”
“What to do you mean make a vagina?”
“We didn’t cut the remains of your penis off. All we did was repair the damage and re-route your waterworks. Your Penis was pretty badly damaged from a function point of view but the fleshy bits are not that bad. There is plenty of bits that still have a decent blood flow that can be used to make a very passable vagina. From my POV as a surgeon, it would be that different from a run of the mill sex change operation.”
I sank back onto the bed and started to weep.
“I’d end up looking like some poor tranny then, but for real?”
He smiled back at me.
“Your employers are willing to pay whatever it takes to make sure that does not happen. You aren’t some 6ft plus rugby prop forward with cauliflower ears and a nose that has been broken at least ten times, so with some work you will become a pretty decent looking woman.”
“Pull the other one Doc. In case you have not noticed it, I’m half bald already.”
He smiled back at me.
“Yes, that does present a bit of a problem but wigs and hair transplants have come a long way in recent years. You only have to look at the before and after photos of certain footballers and musicians to see how effective they can be these days.”
I thought for a while.
“How long before I have to make a decision?”
“We can leave it for up to a week. That will let some of the damage the razor wire caused to your thighs start to heal. Much longer and some of the bits of what is left of your scrotum might raise the white flag so to speak and I’ll need them for the operation.”
“Thanks Doc. I’ll give it a lot of thought.”
With that he left. A nurse popped her hear round the door a few minutes later.
“Are you up to having a visitor?”
“I suppose so.”
I wasn’t really but I’d have to face people sooner or later. I just hoped that it wasn’t my parents. They’d never really accepted that I was doing work that I couldn’t tell them about. They would have been happier with me in some boring nine to five job, gotten married and had a mortgage and children.
“I don’t have any bits left to be indecent,” I replied motioning her to come into my room.
“So, I heard. Bit of a bummer that.”
I took hold of her hand.
“Yes. No more sex for us. You are going to have to get a new partner as well.”
“Who says so? I don’t and as half of our team, don’t I get a vote?”
“Well, I won’t be climbing any ladders for a good while yet so unless you are quitting then you will need a new partner.”
She shook her head.
“Who says that I’m going anywhere?”
I sighed.
“We were a pretty good team, weren’t we? We are both going to have to find something else to do with our lives from now on.”
“Really? Who says so?”
“Don’t be silly Jemma, it stands to reason. You will find a new partner and I’ll… well try to get on with the rest of my life as a eunuch.”
She leaned over and kissed me.
“Don’t you know that I love you? I’ve loved you for a long, long time.”
“We had sex. That was all.”
She looked very angry.
“No, it fucking well wasn’t and you know it. It was at first but then it became a lot more than that.”
It was then that I knew I was well and truly Fsck’d.
“Even if I became a woman?”
“What do you mean, become a woman?”
“The Doc didn’t tell you everything then? My dick is so badly damaged that the only really viable alternatives are to cut it off entirely or… give me a vagina.”
A smile broke out on Jemma’s face. Then she started laughing.
“I can see you find the prospect of me becoming a woman very funny then?”
“No, it’s not that, she replied between giggles.
“What is it then?”
“I’m just trying to imagine you in a skirt and heels, that’s all?”
“Yeah, I’m just a tranny joke then? Besides, how often do you wear heels anyway? When you do, all you ever do is complain about ‘women stereotypes’ for weeks after…”
She stopped laughing and looked me in the eye.
“Did you ever… you know dress up in your sister’s clothes as a child?”
“I never had a sister. I am one of three brothers. You know that or had you forgotten?”
“Your Mother’s then?”
I shook my head.
“No. I’m not a closet tranny if that is what you meant. Why would you think that? Don’t you know me at all after all these years?”
“There has been the odd occasion that I doubted you.”
“Name one?”
“Well, for starters, you always seemed to know what would look good on me. Remember the Monaco Operation? You made me wear that white dress when I really didn’t want to. I had to admit I looked pretty good and it made our target take notice of me from the very moment I walked into the room. You knew what would work when I really hadn’t a clue.”
“I know what looks good on you because we have been partners for longer than most marriages last. I would not have a clue about what looks good on me.”
“Then let me try to help. I’ll be back tomorrow with some clothes and my makeup kit.”
“It is going to take a hell of a lot more than a bit of makeup to make me even remotely passable.”
Jemma laughed.
“Who does all of our prosthetics then?”
I didn’t reply because Jemma was an expert in making us look like someone else as well as blowing people up and then killing them in at least 57 different ways.
“This isn’t for a few hours, this is for the rest of my life,” I replied after a few seconds.
“Don’t worry, I’ll make it all right.”
“You sound like my mother when she wasn’t drunk.”
Jemma didn’t respond. She knew that discussing my parents was strictly off limits.
My mother was an alcoholic and had been ever since my baby brother got killed by a hit and run driver when I was ten years old. Dad was, well dad. He’d been a Major in the Household Cavalry but had since retired and was running a small printing business. Sadly, that in itself became a major complaint of my mothers’. She’d been accustomed to a certain life-style while her husband was in the army. Now she was severely limited in her spending power which made her drink even more. I’d not seen them for more than four years but as far as I knew that they were both still alive and living in Harpenden. I decided after that last visit that I wanted nothing more to do with them.
Jemma stayed around for a while but she could sense that my mind wasn’t really on her and what she was saying.
She was right. I had a lot of other things on my mind.
Jemma arrived in the middle of the morning, carrying her boxes of war-paint and applicators. She was full of cheer at the thought of turning me into a woman. I guessed it was payback time for all the times I’d chided her about taking forever to get ready.
Two and a half hours later, she pronounced herself satisfied. I’d been preened, moisturised, plucked and generally tortured into shape. During the process several nurses appeared and after having a good laugh at my expense, left with smiles on their faces. I wasn’t sure if it was because they were laughing at me or pleased at the work that Jemma was doing.
As she ‘did her stuff’, she updated me on the warehouse we’d broken into that night.
“The local Plod found eighty women and sixty-two children all locked up in cages. So far, we know that they have been transported here from Thailand, Malaysia, Russia, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. Some are refusing to speak to anyone because they are so traumatised. They also found more than half a tonne of high-grade as in 100% proof Cocaine and Heroin and also more than five hundred thousand, in forged Dollar and Euro notes plus close to a million in genuine bills. We did good, or that is what the higher ups including ‘Sam’ are saying. Oh, and there is a media blackout on the whole thing apart from the drug find. Sam thinks that will keep them happy.”
Jemma smiled.
“Apparently, the gossip is that both ‘5’ and ‘6’ are livid that we cracked the case wide open.”
I managed a smile back.
“Do we know who controlled the place?”
“Yes. Our suspicions were correct. There was a paper trail that led right to him. It was Daniel Esteban. Apparently, the word is out that he has personally come or is on his way to the UK to supervise, as the narks put it, the return of his assets and the elimination of those responsible for their loss.”
“I guess that puts us in the firing line then?”
“Only if someone lets on that it was us.”
“That’s going to be a tad difficult seeing that an ambulance and the fire service were involved in it all?”
“Yes. That’s why turning you into a woman is the perfect disguise.”
“What about you? Are they going to suggest that you become a man?”
Jemma laughed.
“Apparently someone in the organisation has it all planned out. Your transition I mean.”
She tried to make fun of it all but failed miserably.
At the end of her work Jemma pronounced me ready to face the world. She showed me her handy-work in a mirror.
“Well?”
I had to admit that it was having a job finding my true features in the face that starred back at me from the mirror. The wig that she’d fitted to my half bald head made all the difference. It was even better once she’d styled it a bit. She really had missed her true vocation. I could imagine her working her magic on TV Shows like Dr Who or Game of Thrones… Instead she was part of a team that risked their lives on a regular basis.
“Thanks,” I replied
Jemma smiled back at me.
“I sense a but coming.”
“There is. This is hardly practical for every day. There is no way I could do this on my own each and every day.”
Jemma grinned back at me.
“That is where some surgery would help, to fix that nose, give you a better jaw line and lip line, an eye tuck and that sort of stuff,” she said lightly.
“Some Surgery? What if is a lot then?”
“How about a full-face transplant? You could be an identikit Daniel Esteban…”
I groaned. I was not really looking forward to even the operation that I inevitably faced to my nether region. Then there was the daunting prospect of at least half a dozen more operation on my face and chest to turn me into a what I could only see as a poor excuse for a woman.
Jemma was in my eyes just about perfect in every department.
“It is easy for you to say all that but you don’t need anything done, now do you?”
She grinned back.
“Give it time Darling, give it time,” she replied in a very camp voice.
Just then, a head poked itself around the door to my room. It was Danny, our immediate boss cum handler, call him what you will, he was our only regular link to the organisation. We kept away from our HQ unless it was absolutely necessary that we go there. You never know who is keeping tabs on the comings and goings of an otherwise unassuming office block in central London.
Danny would come and meet us face to face when needed. In these days of encrypted communications much of what we did, could be done from pretty well anywhere in the world.
I’d wondered why it had taken him so long to appear and then he does so with me looking like some hooker from Kings Cross.
“Hey guys, what’s up?” he said cheerfully as he came into the room.
Danny was always the optimist. ‘Look on the bright side of life’ could have been written for him.
“Hi Boss,” I said slightly wearily.
He grinned back.
“You are looking well. All ready for your new assignment then?”
“Fuck off Danny. I still don’t know what I am going to do.”
“Well, it looks from here that it has been decided.”
“No, it has not and I would respect a little time to make up my own mind on the matter.”
“If it helps you make up your mind, our friend, Mr Esteban has put out a hit on you worth £250,000 each and that is just to find you and deliver you to him. Word is that he wants to make an example of you.”
“Gee thanks boss, just the news I could do without. I really don’t fancy my execution being streamed live on the internet in time for the ten o’clock news…”
The smile disappeared from Danny’s face. He knew what had happened to the last person who had been made an example of by Esteban.
That unlucky person was a CIA Agent who had infiltrated his organisation and was only discovered after a leak of data from one of the ‘satellite’ companies that the CIA uses to do a lot of its dirty work on the ground. It was not a pretty end for the man.
“Whatever you decide is ok with the department. Whichever way you go, we’d like to use that to trap Senor Esteban once and for all. He has been a thorn in our side for far too long.”
He saw the concern on my face.
“Don’t worry, we have a location already arranged that will make any attempt to capture you a rather forlorn hope.”
“I guess that must be the phantom moon base then? There can’t be many places on this planet that he can’t infiltrate with the resources at his disposal.”
Danny grinned back.
“From what I know, this place has really good security.”
“That’s not the point. We are a target and even looking like this it is not going to help all that much, now is it?” I replied with more than a tinge of sadness to my voice.
“That’s why we need to deal with him once and for all, so hurry up and get yourself out of here then we can lure him into our trap.”
“What about this place? How can we vouch for the staff here? One phone call is all it would take and I’m dead meat.”
“That is why there are armed guards outside your door.”
Something didn’t quite fit right with what Danny was saying and what Jemma had said earlier.
“If you don’t mind Danny, I’d like to rest now.”
He gave me a dirty look but nonetheless, he left me alone with Jemma.
“He’s gone and so have the guards.”
“That settles it, I need to get out of here and pronto.”
“I think so too.”
“Let’s get this goo off my face?”
Jemma laughed.
“I think that will be a very good disguise when I wheel you out of here”.
“But….” Then I thought about it and reluctantly agreed with her.
“I need to make a phone call first though.”
Jemma looked at me with a puzzled look on her face.
“I’m calling the ‘repair man’. We should head for that very private hospital we know and he can do the dirty deed there.”
“I take it you by ‘repair man’, you mean the doctor that patched me up after the Tashkent debacle?”
I nodded. Jemma had taken a bullet in her thigh just missing an artery.
“Good choice.”
It took us a little over three hours to get to our destination, a very private clinic deep in the Devon countryside. Neither of us said much during the journey but when Jemma stopped for fuel just outside Honiton, I asked her,
“What about you? Don’t you want to make a run for it, leave me behind and start afresh somewhere new?”
She laughed and smiled at me.
“Just what are either of us experienced at apart from a lot of Breaking and Entering, all manner of espionage and other nefarious and unmentionable skills? Nah, I’m here as long as you want me. We make a pretty good team, don’t we?”
I briefly squeezed her hand.
“Do you remember when we first met?”
She laughed.
“Oh yes. That dreary office in Chancery Lane. There were ten of us if I recall correctly?”
“We were so naive back then, weren’t we? All about to graduate from University and sort of desperate for a job, any sort of job.”
“Yeah, that first weekend in Northumberland soon sorted out a few though.”
Jemma went red in the face as the memory came flooding back.
“I hardly covered myself in glory now did I? I had to let you almost carry me the last 10 miles.”
“Yeah, I couldn’t let the woman I fancied something rotten get thrown off the course, now could I?” I replied with a grin on my face.
“And we’ve been together ever since. Strange that eh?”
Jemma put the car into gear and we were off once again, her face still red but smiling.
The clinic was well known to us. Apart from the injury to Jemma, I’d had similar cause to visit the establishment on a couple of other occasions.
Once I was settled in, Jemma said,
“I’m going to head back to London.”
My heart sank.
“I have a few people to see especially about where those guards went. When that’s done, I’ll park my car at my home just like I normally do. Don’t worry, I’ll take the very long, pretty and invisible route and enter London from the North. I know the form. ‘Don’t trust anyone’”.
“And then?” I asked hopefully.
She smiled.
“As ‘Arnie’ said, ‘I’ll be back’. But it will take a few days. I have to be a million percent sure that I am not followed. That’s why we came off the M4 at Chippenham and spent the next three hours getting here. I’ll do that again but taking an even more roundabout route.”
She saw my concern.
“Don’t worry darling, I’ll be careful. ‘JG’ is fully loaded.”
I managed a small smile in return. ‘JG’ referred to her Sig-Sauer that she’d named ‘Jemmas-Gunn’.
“I’ve left your Glock in the bottom drawer. It is inside your washbag. There is a spare clip as well.”
“Thanks.”
After a moments silence between us, Jemma sat down on the edge of my bed and proceeded to kiss me long and hard. She’d never kissed me with as much passion before.
As the door closed behind her, I could not help wondering if the kiss was a sign of things to come or a goodbye kiss and one that I’d remember her for.
With her gone, I had no choice but to get back to thinking about myself and what I should do next.
The staff at the clinic were very helpful in providing a ‘shrink’ for me to talk to the following day. Once I’d gotten over the surprise that one could be provided so soon, I realised that someone in the department was pulling strings behind our backs.
Naturally, no names were used in the sessions and from her accent, I suspected that she’d been drafted in from Northern Ireland just for this task.
The three sessions I had with the ‘shrink’ over the next week proved to be not only very informative but allowed me to come to the inevitable decision that Jemma had been alluding to right from the moment she’d found out about my injury that I’d be better off becoming a woman. I didn’t let on to the shrink about the price on my head but the shrink guessed that there was more that I wasn’t telling her. She responded,
“I know that there is a whole lot more that you could tell me but for all manner of reasons you can’t. All I want you to do is think carefully about everything we have discussed in these sessions and what it means for the long term.”
After the final session, I was left alone for the rest of the day but I knew that come the following morning, I’d have to tell the doctors what I wanted to happen. I fell asleep each night wishing that Jemma was here just to be with me and let me smell her scent.
There was still no sign of Jemma after nearly a week when the chief surgeon, a Dr Aspinall came breezily into my room.
“Well, I can see that you are pleased to see me,” he said stating the obvious.
Then his whole demeanour changed as he shooed the nurse that invariably accompanied him out of the room.
He sat down on the bed in much the same place that Jemma had done before… before she’d gone.
“What have you decided?” he asked quietly.
I didn’t respond right away but he was patient with me.
“After due consideration I think that I should have the sex change operation. At the very least, I’ll get my waterworks sorted out properly and thinking back to how I looked when I arrived here, I may have an outside chance of passing as a woman if something can be done about my hair.”
I thought that I detected a slight chuckle in Dr Aspinall.
“I’m glad that you have thought about this more than just your bits down below.”
“Yes,” I replied nodding.
“The sessions I had with the shrink were very helpful in laying out all the options in front of me. I spent a lot of the night thinking things through.”
The Doctor smiled.
“Then I’d better schedule the first of your operations for Friday then?”
“First?” I asked.
“As you say, we need to get your bits down below sorted. Then in a few weeks, we can start on the face and Adams apple and your breasts. You are going to be with us for quite a while longer. Once the first operation is done and you have recovered enough to get around on your feet again, we will move you to somewhere a little more comfortable.”
I remembered the Bungalows that were dotted around the grounds.
“That would be nice,” I replied still thinking about what was to come.
“You have a visitor by the way.”
“Who?”
“A Ms Jennings. Does that name mean anything to you?”
It did and my body language clearly told him that.
“I’ll send her in.”
With that he left and a few minutes later, Doris or was it, Daphne Jennings came into my room. I couldn’t remember but any meeting with her did not bode well for the future.
She was regarded as the ‘merchant of doom’ by almost everyone in the department.
[to be continued]
Ms Jennings came into my room with a smile on her face.
That made me very fearful given her reputation.
She worked for a Government ‘Special Services’ Department somewhere in Whitehall. A sense of foreboding came over me. Their normal function was to provide HR services to a number of departments but their real function was known to very few people. Everyone in her section had ‘Top Secret’ security clearance so if something a bit out of the ordinary was needed doing that wasn’t assigned to us, they did it.
The HR function meant that you generally only saw her or people from her Office when it was bad news and for us, that bad news invariably meant ‘we have no further use for your services’.
Her smile was the smile of the devil in our eyes and everyone in the department.
“Hello Roy, nice to see you again,” said my visitor the bearer of bad news from HR.
“How the heck did you find me? No one was supposed to know where I was?”
“Jemma told me when she came to see me and the director last night.”
I sank back into the bed. That was it, I was for the big ‘heave-ho’, to be cast adrift at my time of need.
“Jemma told us about the incident at the Hospital. The director made it clear that it was not in the plan. Those guards should not have been told to leave.”
“Yeah right. How many people knew who I really was and where I was?”
“As far as we know, only two apart from Jemma and yourself, Sam, a couple of his direct reports and your handler, Danny.”
She didn’t wait for the inevitable next question.
“We arrested the latter as he tried to get on a flight last night. He’s the leak. The guards confirmed that it was him who told them that you no longer needed security.”
“So, Danny was the rat? How much did he sell me out for?”
“He’s not saying anything. He’s claiming that he put in a leave chitty last week but nothing ever got to us.”
“What is going to happen to him? He knows too much to be put in a regular jail and I’m sure that Mr Esteban will be after his money now that I’m not there anymore?”
“Indeed. Mr Shaw will be taken to a place of safety for an extended period.”
“Ah, you mean Gitmo then?” I said hoping that the Yanks would take him off our hands.
“No, nothing like as comfortable. Let’s say, South Georgia is a very cold place out of the way place and people can get lost up there for a long, long time.”
For as long as he’d been working for the Government, there had been rumours of a very secret establishment well to the north of Hudson Bay. It was called South Georgia despite being at the other end of the world because Sir Ernest Shackleton was going to lead an expedition to the Beaufort Sea in 1902 but went to Antarctica instead. He became famous when he led the survivors of his second expedition to Antarctica to safety by going over the mountains of South Georgia to the Whaling Station. South Georgia became somewhere in the far north of Canada.
On the surface, it was supposed to be a winter training base for the Marines, the SAS and the Canadian Special Forces but as with most rumours, there was a grain of truth in them that made them plausible.
“So, no trial then?”
“No. If you had taken the trouble to read your contract before you signed it, you waived any rights to a trial if you broke UK law.”
I had to laugh.
“I have lost count of the number of times that I did that over the years.”
“That might be true,” replied Ms Jennings with a totally straight face.
“But the next clause said that this would not be the case if you were acting on direct orders. In every case that I know about you were acting on orders so you and your partner are in the clear.”
Then something hit me.
“If Jemma didn’t see you until late last night, how did you know about Shaw?”
This time she smiled.
“Anyone in a senior position in any Government Department that has to do with national security and who books a flight using their own passport gets flagged by the Home Office. They in turn contact ‘5’ and then a deputy Director of ‘5’ came to the Director and the deputy Director of our department. He alerted the border force and gave instructions to hold him pending further inquiries. The rest of the puzzle fell into place when Jemma told us about the incident at the Hospital. The standing orders around the alerting go back to the time of Kim Philby.”
“So, we got lucky then?”
“We did but Jemma was one the ball and got you out of danger in time.”
“But my Handler knows of this place. Wouldn’t he have tipped off Esteban?”
Once again, she smiled. Every time she did it, a shiver ran down my back.
“That’s why we have two companies of Marines surrounding the place. They will be in place until we have Mr Esteban in custody or you move to somewhere off the grid.”
“Putting him in jail won’t stop him. People like him have tentacles everywhere.”
“Indeed, they do but Mr Esteban will just disappear when we get our hands on him. I hear he does not like the cold.”
So, he was going to be taken to Canada but deep down, I knew that as long as he was alive and I was here and recognisable I would be in danger but they had to capture him first which was easier said than done.
“Now,” said Ms Jennings
“Let’s talk about the future.”
I groaned.
“Get it over with then. My services are no longer required?”
“Far from it. You two are our best operatives. Both ‘5’ and ‘6’ would love to have you working for them if we were to let you go but we aren’t going to do that. No sir. Sam took this up with the PM a at their regular weekly meeting yesterday. Sam said that the PM was adamant that we needed to hold onto the pair of you and that the oafs in ‘5’ and ‘6’ should be told to sling their hook.”
“Eh?”
“You and Jemma are far too skilled to lose. What we’d like you to do is first get better and get used to your new self. Then we’d like to use the two of you to train new operatives for a period of time before going back into operations. When you are back up to full fitness we will be glad to have you back on ops. That comes direct from Sam.”
If it came direct from the Director who we called ‘Sam’ then it would have to be implemented.
“How long?”
“How long what?”
“How long before you want us back on Ops?”
“As long as it takes.”
“Pull the other one Ms Jennings. There is no way that HMG are going to sanction an open-ended R&R period. You know as well as I do the Treasury would be down on you in a flash.”
This time her smile didn’t make me quiver.
“As you well know, the way your department is funded does not appear on any set of books in the Treasury. Call it recycling but you use the money you recover from operations to fund the operations your department conducts. No cost means nothing on the books, in the records or anywhere else. That will include your… your transition. ‘Sam’ has authorised it in view of the operation that you were on when you sustained these injuries. The wealth of information and money that we have obtained so far from your last operation far outweighs the cost of your treatment. The half million or so in genuine money will more than pay for your rehab.”
That fitted in with the way our small organisation worked. We were totally off the books and as I know knew, totally self-funding but it was not usual for an operative’s rehab to be funded directly from the proceeds of the operation that resulted in the injury in the first place.
For once our apparently unique status had saved my backside. Any ‘official’ department would be umming and ahhing at paying for my treatment. Not us and for that I was truly thankful.
“Now, onto other matters,” said Ms Jennings as she opened a folder that she was carrying.
“Have you decided on a name yet?”
“Eh? I only made the final decision a few hours or so ago.”
“Well, your partner was certain that you would agree to the change when we spoke last night.”
Mentally, I sighed. That was Jemma all over. That’s what made us such a good team.
“Well, I have not given it much thought but I sort of … sort of like the name Angelique.”
“Angelique it is then. You can always change it later. I’ll get your new records started.”
“New records?”
“Yes. Oh, didn’t I say. Sorry…”
“The other thing that alerted the Director to an issue was that someone, probably your handler, had marked you down as ‘Terminated’. To us that means killed in active service. With other departments, it means ‘left the service’. As the director had only just finished reading the latest report on your recovery he was surprised but then he realised that it was for the best.”
“If I was to leave, what would the records say?”
“Nothing. We don’t have a category for that,” came her matter of fact reply.
“Eh?”
“When an agent leaves the service, they are marked as ‘stood down’ but no one ever really leaves you know unless they retire… or die but you are not in that position are you?”
It was good to know these things.
“As I was saying, we will start your new file with the name Angelique. Angelique what?”
“Marceau. Angelique Marceau. Marceau was my great Grandmothers name. She came to London from Bergerac after was broke out 1939 and went to work in the foreign office where she was recruited into the SOE. She went back to France in late 1940 as Operative based in Bordeaux. She came back in late 1943 when things got a bit hot for her after the Resistance blew up three trains in one night.”
She smiled back at me.
“Excellent… Following in the family tradition. I will have the backroom boys work up a backstory for you. Once you get your face done, we can make it official. You know, a passport and such.”
“I’m sure I’m going to love it whatever it is.”
“That’s the spirit. Jemma asked me to tell you that she’ll see you tomorrow. She’s going shopping.”
And so, began my new life as Angelique Marceau.
I had a total of nine operations over the next five and a half months in order to create the new me. They were painful and inconvenient. I’d just be getting over one and before I knew it, it was time for me to go under the knife again. My face seemed to be permanently looking like I’d done fifteen rounds with a top heavyweight boxer.
Once I had been given a vagina, Jemma introduced me to the delights of dilation. When I was able to, we made light of my new sexual status by using a double ended vibrating dildo. It worked and we were able to be intimate again. That really helped with my recovery especially the mental side of things even though, there were times when I nearly gave up the whole thing.
Jemma was a total brick. She helped me through the bad times. When my jaw was re-shaped and I could not speak for nearly a month she fed me and … well we became far more than close.
At one point, I did ask her if we should just do a runner, get married and start life again but she soon reminded me of the price on our heads.
By the October of that year and to my immense relief, I was done with the operations and my face while nowhere near as attractive as Jemma’s was far more feminine than before. The Hair transplants had taken ‘root’ and I was starting to grow a decent head of hair for the first time in years.
Jemma had also demonstrated the patience of ‘Job’ in her work on making me not only look more like a woman but act like one. She schooled me for hours and hours in the fine art of walking and being a woman in a world where women watch other women with even more of a critical eye than men do.
However, she got really peed off when I took to walking in heels up to 3in like I’d been wearing them for years but in the end, we had a good laugh about it. That’s the sort of partnership we have.
We also started to get our fitness back which was harder than either of us had imagined.
Christmas was not that far away and we were pronounced ‘fit for action’ by the doctors.
Jemma and I knew that was a long way from the truth. We were nowhere near ready. I’d lost an awful lot of my stamina so we went to see our ultimate boss, the Director otherwise known as ‘Sam’.
“I wondered when I’d be seeing you again. Ready for an assignment?”
“No Sam, we are not and far from it,” said Jemma.
Sam was surprised that it was Jemma who was taking the lead.
“All the reports I’ve received tell me that you are more than ready.”
“Sam,” I said.
“Those tests are woefully inadequate for a team like us. For example, we had to run one lap of an athletic track in under eighty seconds. No problem but we were wearing running kit. When was the last time we apprehended someone wearing that sort of clobber eh? Then when it comes to operations, we are like putting a rank amateur into the ring with a world champion. Ring Rusty does not even begin to describe how we feel.”
Sam sat back in his chair.
Slowly a smile appeared on his face.
“Ok. I get it. You two were never ones for doing things the easy way. What do you suggest?”
I looked at Jemma who smiled and said,
“Sam, I know it was a bit before you came to the department but, when we did our initial training we had a sort of mini SAS Final Selection Exercise to do. It was dropped a couple of years later because your predecessor deemed it to be too tough and the drop-out rate was too high.”
“Really? I didn’t know that,” said Sam with a wry smile that said he knew exactly what I was talking about so I carried on with the story...
“We’d like to repeat that operation just so that we are clear in our own minds that we are ready to resume operational duties. As you know, a lot of the sort of operations that we carry out are not like all those Cop shows on TV where they go in all guns blazing less than a day after the crime was committed. Our last operation took us three months of painstaking research and observation before we went into that building where I had my accident.”
I did a small mental shudder as I remembered that event.
“We would like to go on a five or six-day operation to shall we say hone both our physical fitness and mental agility and importantly become used to working together again when under stress. As you have said before, we’ve lasted a lot longer than any other team because we look after each other. We seem to know intuitively what the other is thinking and feeling but at the moment, it is rather hit and miss.”
“More miss that hit if you ask me,” added Jemma.
Sam looked down at his desk and thought for long second.
“Ok. Leave it to me. In the meantime, welcome back to the Department. Light duties until I tell you otherwise. Understand!”
Sam turned his attention back to some report. Our time with him was over.
As we walked towards the door I turned around and said,
“Sam, any news on you know who that we should know about?”
Jemma added,
“All in the good cause of research you understand…”
Sam lifted his head up and a broad smile appeared on his face.
“About time too…”
He pushed a folder that was on his desk towards us.
“This is the latest sitrep. Read and digest but your eyes only understand. It comes back here before the end of the day. Remember, read and digest. No copies either and especially don’t go off on any wild goose chases or even the simplest internet search relating to information in this file. You never know who is watching for certain combinations of searches from a single IP address. This is for education purposes only… Got it?”
“Understood loud and clear Sam,” said Jemma as she stepped forward to pick up the folder.
Back in the little cubbyhole that we called an office we settled down to read the contents of the folder. It didn’t make for easy reading. It was clear that Esteban was back in the people trafficking business in a big way as well as spreading his drugs empire out to even places like the West of Wales. The term ‘County Lines’ was well used to describe how drug pushers in large towns and cities were extending their areas of operation right out into the countryside using mostly young people who often worked as fast food delivery operatives. This was the perfect cover for their operations. It was clear to us from the data in the file that one gang that was based in Birmingham was supplying small time dealers over most of Wales.
Jemma closed the file and sat back thinking.
The frown on her face told me that she was worried. I knew exactly why she was worried.
“Did we miss something?” she asked after almost a full five minutes.
“I don’t think we did. It seems that nothing has changed and his empire is even bigger than before.”
“On days like this, I wonder if what we do really matters or makes even one atom of difference,” she replied in a very ‘down’ voice.
“It does make a difference,” I replied.
“Have you ever added up how much stuff we have taken off the streets. Just the smack alone. Ignore the rest.”
“And you just happen to have all this to hand? Really?”
I laughed.
“Well, I have had plenty of time these past months to reflect on our careers with the department, now haven’t I?”
Jemmy just glared back at me.
“Go on then. I know you want to tell me…”
I sighed.
“Sixteen tonnes of Class A Drugs or as close as makes no difference.”
Jemma laughed and burst into song
“You load sixteen tons and what do ya get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store.”
“You may jest but the almost three hundred people we have rescued from the traffickers would probably want to shake our hands.”
“So, we ‘done good’ but Daniel Esteban is like a jippy stomach, it keeps repeating.”
I stood up and picked up the folder.
“I’ll give this back to Sam while you get the Coffee in. It is your turn after all!”
As I left the room, I swear that I heard Jemma growl.
When I returned Jemma had got us Coffee’s and was busy surfing the internet.
“What’s up?”
“You were just with Sam right?”
“Yes… Well, not to meet. He was busy with someone. His office door was shut.”
Sam’s door was only closed when something important was going on.
“Well, take a look at this email that he apparently has just sent to us.”
Jemma turned her laptop so that I could see it.
When I’d finished reading it I said,
“He does not hang about does he?”
Jemma snorted her disapproval.
“Sam never does anything in a rush unless we are in deep do-do. He’s probably been working on this for… Oh, at least a week.”
I had to agree with her.
“You didn’t have any plans for seeing in the New Year, did you?”
I got that look of hers that said,
“We are virtually joined at the hip so you must know that I don’t…”
“Well we do, now don’t we?”
“Yeah, Costa del Brecon Beacons in the depths of winter sounds great. Not!”
“Just give a small prayer of thanks that we aren’t going to Narvik in Norway.”
Jemma nearly threw her coffee at me but the smile on her face said that we were good.
[to be continued]
[The following January]
“Come on you laggards. Just because you are effing women does not mean that you can slack off. There is still six miles to go. Then it is only a few more hours then, you can have that hot bubble bath that you females all love so much!”
The owner of the voice was a small hard as nails PI Instructor. Former Regimental Sergeant Major Jock McCall was making sure that Jemma and I passed his apparently slimmed down version of the SAS Selection Test. We needed to do this to prove to ourselves that we were ready for real active duty again. We’d done a similar version when we were first trained. This version seemed a lot harder or was it that this time we were doing it in the first few days of a new year rather than those lazy hazy days you get at the end of summer.
Neither of us took issue with Jock and his language. He was doing a job and a difficult one at that. For us regaining our efficiency as a team was far more important to us than a bit of sexist language. Our lives would more than likely depend on how we worked together.
At the present moment, we were high in the Brecon Beacons and it was freezing cold. Well, it was just after two in the morning on the sixth day of January. Some ‘twelfth night this was’. There was some snow underfoot but ice everywhere. My cold nose told me that the air temperature was about -10C. There would be a heavy air frost before dawn as the wind was from the North East veering towards the East.
We’d been out on what he called his ‘wee test’ since 05:00 on New Years’ day. Five, nearly six long, long days and longer nights out in the cold and wet of the Welsh Mountains. We were dressed in full Army battledress and carrying a fully loaded assault rifle plus around fifty kilos in our Packs. Despite both of us being pretty fit, were finding this new exercise a lot harder than before. During these past few days, we’d both had had many, many thoughts about killing the RSM in the most excruciatingly painful ways known to man, but so far, we’d resisted the temptation to act on those thoughts. Jock laughed when we’d told him.
“That shows that this ‘wee walk in the hills’ as he called it, is working. I’d be more concerned if you didna wanna top me!”
With that, he fished a small flask out of his pack and we each took a small dram as reward. Then it was back to the march our moment of brevity gone like a snowflake in the wind.
None of us was saying much as we trudged along a farm track in the pitch black. We were all wearing night vision glasses so when a light temporarily blinded me I froze for half a second. Then for some reason, I tore my glasses off and saw a laser tracker light hitting Jemma right on her chest.
“Sniper! Down!” I shouted and grabbed for Jemma as I sank to the ground.
Thankfully both of them collapsed to the floor without question. It wasn’t a moment too soon as we all heard the zip of a bullet followed by a thud as it hit something behind me. Between two and three seconds later I heard the retort of the shot. That meant that the sniper was at least half a mile and probably more like three quarters of a mile away. That also meant that he was shooting something heavy like a .50 calibre. That sort of calibre would have ripped right through the standard issue body-armour that all of us were currently wearing. Only extra duty armour would stop a .50 calibre round but leave you with three or four broken ribs for your trouble. Someone meant business, real business and that business was to kill us.
For a moment, I wondered if this was one of Jock’s little tests but even his warped mind would not go as far as getting someone to fire a .50 cal round in our direction. Even a blank could kill such was the huge amount of energy it expended on impact.
The only conclusion I could come to was that we were in deep shit. No, make that up to our necks in alligator infested swamp. Thankfully a four-foot high dry-stone wall gave us some good cover. It if was a simple hedge then we’d still be very exposed. Anyone with IR glasses or such an attachment to their rifle would be able to see our heat signature through the hedge. Thankfully the stone walls blocked all of that. I gave a small prayer for the legions of men who had built and maintained these dry-stone walls over the years. Their skill had probably saved our lives.
“Did you see where it came from?” asked the RSM.
“Port 20 and up high,” I replied.
I saw a heavily shaded light go on just above a map. We were crouching down behind the stone wall so there was little danger of it giving our position away. The sniper must had been wearing Night Vision glasses so he or she knew where we were anyway.
“They are probably on top or near the top of Ban y Celyn,” said the RSM.
We were supposed to pass almost the top of this hill with summit in our left as we made our way to the pick-up point at Abernant, on the banks of the River Wye but the onset of the snow had made us divert to a lower elevation. Walking east up a hill in the face of a biting east wind and driving snow is no fun. That decision, may have just saved our lives.
“Is this one of your tests?” asked Jemma as she remembered some of the tricks that he’d played on us in the past few days.
“No lassie it is most certainly not one of my tests. I’m sure that that round was meant for you. Thanks to your partner, you are alive to tell the tale or rather we all are still alive thanks to your partner.”
I crawled over to join the RSM.
“Can we get out of this?” I asked pointing at the map.
“Aye lassie, I think we can.”
It had taken me a while for me to accept him calling me ‘Lassie’ but I was getting used to it now.
“We backtrack about one klick and take this path south west. I think we have to assume that our pick-up point has been compromised. We need to make our own way to base.”
Our current ‘Base’ was a barn in a farm near Sennybridge. This was at least fifteen miles away as the crow flies.
I looked at my watch. It read 02:48.
We had about five hours before daylight.
“Aye lassie and we need to be well away from here before dawn,” said the RSM clearly reading my mind.
I crawled over to Jemma. She was still in a state of shock.
“We need to move right now.”
She didn’t react but the tension in her body lessened when she saw me.
I gave her a brief hug. She relaxed a lot more. After some thirty seconds, she said,
“Ok, lets’ get out of here pronto!”
I smiled back at her in the blackness. Jemma was back in the groove for the time being at least.
“Now, we trot and walk. One klick each,” commanded the RSM.
We just grunted our acceptance and set off along what was now a very muddy track.
We’d done this version of ‘yomping’ a few days earlier. It was painful then but our packs were a bit lighter now and we were a lot fitter but even so, doing in the total darkness was another thing entirely.
We’d done two cycles of the trot/walk when we hit a tarmacked road. The RSM called a halt. As we crouched down behind a wall to recover and take a drink of water the RSM examined the map.
When he was done, he showed us the map.
“This is the B4520. We are here,” he said pointing to a bend in the road.
“We follow this south until we reach Upper Chapel. According to the map there is a phone box there. I’ll call base.”
I grunted my agreement. We all carried phones but there were switched off and wrapped in foil. They were only to be used to call in medical support. We had to rely on the phone box actually working. The last thing we wanted was anyone tracking us via our phones.
The not being tracked thing was part of the exercise but at that point in time, it may have saved our lives. I for one had learned a useful lesson for the future in this increasingly ‘always connected’ world.
The road was thankfully deserted and just under an hour later we ‘yomped’ into the hamlet of Upper Chapel.
Luckily for us, the phone was working and the RSM was able to make a call to our ‘base’. His conversation was brief and to the point. The RSM gave the coordinates of where we thought the sniper was and then where we were when we were shot at.
With that done he addressed Jemma and myself.
“We have a new rendezvous. Pont Rhyd-y-berry. That’s about six or seven klicks away. We have two hours to get there. It is all along the road so lets’ get going.”
Before either of us could ask questions, he set off into the darkness. We put on our night vision goggles and followed him. As we headed off into the dark, I realised that we were heading in the opposite direction from what we had been. As long as the ‘sniper’ was alone and on foot, there was little chance of him catching up with us. The wind had dropped in the last half hour. In the deadly quiet of a January night, we’d hear anything with an internal combustion engine a mile or more away.
I was still trying to work out who had discovered our route to the previous rendezvous and then zeroed in on our changed route. Apart from the three of us only two other people were supposed to know where it was and neither of them knew which way we were getting to it. The only conclusion I could reach was that we were being tracked and it wasn’t out phones that was leaking our location. Ergo, it had to be something else.
“I think that must have been tracked. I can only think that the last supplies that we picked up yesterday contained a tracker.”
“I thought about that too Lassie,” agreed the RSM.
“All the things we have left from that supply drop are in my pack,” said Jemma.
“Not quite,” Said the RSM, “I have a few of the energy bars”.
“Whatever it is, we have a mole in the team and I intend to dig them out. They are vermin and need to be exterminated without delay,” said the RSM.
“That sniper meant business. Do you think that he followed us?” asked Jemma.
“He might be following us but doing that is a lot slower than you might think. He probably knows that we are armed so he has to consider in the fact that one of us might sit and wait for him to follow in our footsteps. This isn’t the wild west where posse’s gallop after the bad guys in full view of everyone.”
That seemed to placate Jemma who began to search through her Bergen.
“Here it is,” she proclaimed a few minutes later.
In the palm of her hand was a small but clearly identifiable tracking bug.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
No one had an answer.
Then I had an idea.
“See that discarded Coffee Cup,” I said indicating a place close to the bridge parapet where there was some litter overflowing from a bin.
“Why don’t we put the bug in it and float it downstream? Then whoever is tracking us will see that we are still moving.”
“Lassie, that is a brilliant idea,” said the RSM.
Less than two minutes later the bug was inside the coffee cup and floating downstream. The RSM had produced some gaffer tape from his Bergen which we used to seal up the holes in the lid.
Once we were back at the base, we went through a full debrief not only of the incident with the sniper but the whole exercise. The van that had picked us up disappeared into the night. It would be just a few miles away in case it was needed.
Once it had gone, the RSM pronounced that,
“You two have passed. I can certify you fit for duty. I wouldn’t want to be the person who ratted on us when you two get let loose on them.”
“Do you have any idea who it was?”
“Yes, and all three of them should be arriving here within the hour… Unless... one of them has done a runner already. The driver of the van that picked us up sent the mission over message to them a few minutes before he left here.”
“We’d better get prepared for them then,” said Jemma who seemed to have fully recovered from being shot at earlier.
It didn’t take long for Jemma and myself to prepare a welcome for our visitors. The RSM just stood back and admired how we worked together.
We secreted our weapons at various points around the barn. We also made a couple of barricades in case we took fire from our visitors.
Over a ‘brew’ he said,
“You two really seem to know what the other one is doing. Watching that was a real education. Thanks.”
“Thanks. We have had a lot of practice. We have been doing it for years.”
“Eh? I thought that you were supposed to be a new team.”
We looked at each other with a grin on both of our faces. Jemma nodded.
“It is like this,” I said,
“I was once a bloke but I had this encounter with a load of razor wire.”
As I said the last bit, I looked down at my crotch.
The RSM visibly shivered.
“Och! That must have hurt.”
“It did and it has taken us an awful lot of work to get to where we are today.”
The RSM raised his Mug of tea.
“Here’s to the both of you. I’d have you both watching my back in an instant.”
We smiled at each other. Coming from the RSM that was just about the highest compliment possible.
Then my watch pinged.
“It is time to get into position. Our visitors are close by.”
“What just happened?” asked the RSM.
“The Van they are travelling in just passed the ANPR Camera at Penpont. That’s ten klicks away.”
Part of my preparations had been to use my phone to access one of our departments computer systems. All I needed to do was send a text containing the vehicle registration number to the system and it would notify me of where and then it passed an ANPR camera.
The RSM started to say something but stopped. He’d stopped being amazed by this team. He doubted that he could teach them anything that they didn’t already know. Once he’d realised this, he changed the operation from one of breaking in a new team to one of honing their finer skills. Every variation and test he’d set them they not only passed but exceeded his expectations.
As we suspected, there were only two people in the Van. They made no move to surprise us as they got out of the van.
I joined the four of them in the Barn.
“Where is Johnno?” asked the RSM.
“He told us that he would follow us here but as soon as we reached Brecon, he went a different way,” said one of the two men.
“What was he driving?” I asked.
“A black Audi A3. A ‘12’ plate if I recall correctly,” replied the other person. He’d been in the passenger seat of the Transit.
I saw Jemma rub her left ear. She didn’t think that this two were telling the truth. I was inclined to agree with her.
I tugged on my right ear and less than five seconds later the two men were on the ground with the two of us sitting on top of them.
The RSM came over and not for the first time in the days that he’d been with us, he was smiling.
“I think you might need these,” he said as he held up two pairs of handcuffs.
Once the two men were cuffed we separated them. I took one into a remote corner of the barn where I searched him. I also removed his trousers, boots and socks. Finally, I used some rope and tied him to a wooden post.
“You stay put or next time I won’t be so gentle. Understand?”
The man nodded.
The lack of complaints from him told me almost everything I needed to know.
I returned to Jemma and the RSM.
“He’s not complaining,” I remarked.
“Same here,” said Jemma who’d done the same to the other man.
“You two are something special,” remarked the RSM with a wry smile on his face.
“How did you time your moves like that?”
“We’ve been together for a long time. We have a number of these things in our repertoire. They have been useful to us in the past… Just like now.”
“What can I do?” asked the RSM.
“Find us some grub? I’m sick of that dried stuff. In the meantime, we will question our prisoners. It is probably best that you don't witness that as it might get a bit ugly.”
The RSM chuckled before disappearing into the night.
“Now sunshine,” I said to one of the prisoners.
“Spill the beans and you get to go free. Stay silent and end up in a very cold place for a long, long time. What’s it to be then?”
The three of us then sat down to eat the food.
“How did you know that they were lying?”
Jemma smiled and said,
“The other driver was not driving an Audi but an Astra, a silver Astra.”
Then I added,
“We saw Johnno at the second checkpoint two days ago. He was there with that one. Johnno was driving the Astra. Even a half blind person would notice that the interior of an Astra was different to an Audi.”
I was pointed at one of the two men.
“That’s when he slipped the tracker into Jemma’s pack.”
“I remember now,” replied the RSM shaking his head.
“One of them diverted your attention away from your packs with a ‘brew’. Mind you it was welcome and we didn’t suspect that one of our own would do that to us.”
“All part of their plan I suppose,” replied Jemma.
“Ok, what’s next?” asked the RSM.
“We get the hell out of here but we will leave these two here. They won’t be going far in this weather without any clothes. We can make a call later and get them picked up but we don’t want them with us as they will be baggage.”
“Does that ‘baggage’ include me?” asked the RSM.
“If you don’t mind Sir,” I said, “We’d like to drop you off at Abergavenny Railway Station? We need to be paying someone a visit ASAP now we that know what is going on and more importantly who is pulling the strings of these two goons. The visit is not for people outside the department to witness if you get my drift?”
The RSM looked at me and then at Jemma. Then he smiled.
“That will do fine. I can make my own way back north from there,” confirmed the RSM.
That was the signal for us to load up the Transit and disappear towards the brightening sky that heralded the dawn of a new day.
[to be continued]
Less than an hour after leaving the base camp, we said goodbye to the RSM outside Abergavenny Railway Station. He gave both of us a big hug and said,
“Watch your backs ladies. You never know who is really a bad guy in disguise.”
Jemma had a hard time keeping a straight face but we both gave Jock a kiss on his cheeks and then made a hasty exit.
I looked back at him in the rear-view mirror and saw Jock give us a wave. It made me go all gooey inside for a few seconds.
After leaving Jock, we headed towards Cheltenham and then London. Just before we reached the halfway point of the A419 between Cheltenham and Swindon, I turned off the main road and into a now closed Service Area.
At the back of the building, my car was waiting. We’d left it her on our way to the start of our little jaunt in Wales. It was well away from prying eyes which was exactly why we’d chosen this location for our transport switch. Jemma’s car was still in Wales but we’d get someone from the department to retrieve it in a day or so. We had more important matters to resolve first.
Neither of us said anything as we got out of the transit van we’d been driving.
Our minds were totally focussed on the task ahead. I stopped for a moment and looked at Jemma. Then I afforded myself a small smile. We were back in the groove. The last six days had done its job. I only wished that we’d been able to ease back into operations but the sniper who had tried to kill us had made that impossible.
I opened the boot of my car and both of us stripped naked. Neither of us had said a word since we crossed into England. Inside my car there was a full change of clothing for both of us, some food and importantly a number of weapons. We were not taking any chances. Having already discovered one tracking device, we were determined to avoid inadvertently bringing another one with us on the next stage of our mission.
This total clean break thing was a behaviour that we’d used for years and it had almost become second nature for us. It was not something that we broadcast and if we hadn’t needed to deal with a traitor, I’d have simply dropped Jemma off and we would have driven home in convoy. However, with the information that we’d discovered in Wales, we needed the fresh car as well as fresh change of clothing. We’d arrange for the other car to be picked up within the next few days.
The information we’d received earlier had made us even more determined to sort this out without delay. We’d found out who was involved from the two we’d captured at our mission base. Once we’d gotten over the surprise, it all began to make sense. Well, as much sense as anything had that day.
Along with the change of clothes in the back of my car, we’d left a number of phones. The Americans call them burner phones. Using this sort of device was SOP for us. The Quartermasters Stores of our department bought them by the dozen. ‘Burner Phones’ was a pretty apt title. Use once and that’s it. They were so disposable that we didn’t even have to account for them.
Once we’d changed our clothes and checked our weaponry for at least the third time, Jemma drove us south and into Swindon. She found a part of the old town that was busy with people and without too many CCTV cameras. We didn’t say much. That was not unusual for us at this stage of an operation. Our minds were fully focussed on the operation ahead.
Jemma stopped and let me out of the car. Neither of us said anything. We didn’t need to. We’d done this sort of thing many, many times before. She’d return to pick me up in fifteen minutes. If I wasn’t there then she’d head for a department safe house after destroying the car. That meant doing just the same as many criminals did these days, by torching the car. There was even a 5ltr can of petrol in the boot for this very purpose. Taped to the can was a box of matches. We left nothing to chance.
I ducked into the doorway of a now closed and boarded up shop and switched on one of the ‘Burner Phones’. When it was connected to one of the mobile networks, I made a single call.
When the call was answered, I punched a series of numbers into the keypad. The call was transferred to an operator.
They simply said,
“I am ready to take your message.”
No names. No ‘hello how are you’. This was business and not to be trifled with.
“For Sam, Eyes Only. Someone tried to kill Jemma and me last night with a 50 cal. We are on top of it but there are two traitors at the safe house in Sennybridge. They need dealing with. They gave up all we needed to know and will be acting on the information within the hour. They need to be kept on ice for at least seventy-two hours. They told us who was controlling them. That person is in the department. Yes Sam, there is a mole and they are at a senior level. We are going after the mole as they threaten the operation of the whole department and beyond. Repeat SAM Eyes Only.”
I didn’t wait for a response as I knew the person on the other end would know from the code that I’d punched into the phone who I was and that this was a priority message call. We had many other numbers that would identify who we were and the type of call this was.
My location when making the call would be attached to the message. That would help Sam identify who we were going after without actually identifying the person.
As soon as I ended the call, I switched off the phone. Then I removed the Sim Card and battery. The battery put went in my pocket. That could be re-used but the phone went into a nearby waste bin. I tossed the sim card into the back of a builder’s tipper truck as it drove by. The burner phone had been burned.
I looked at my watch. I had ten minutes before Jemma would return.
To use up some time, I headed for a ‘convenience store’ where I bought a couple of daily papers and some water. These would not only be useful but it would make me appear to passers-by that I was not doing anything out of the ordinary.
Right on cue, Jemma appeared in the car. She stopped and I got in. I gave her a simple thumbs up as she drove off heading east and then south towards the Wiltshire town of Marlborough on the A346.
We passed through Marlborough and carried on south on the A346.
Our destination was a house in the hamlet of Stibb Green, This, is about half a mile south of Savernake Forrest. This was where our target lived. It was not that far in both time and distance from Swindon but far enough to not be in the Town.
We came out of the forest, over two old railway bridges, the Kennet and Avon Canal and the Taunton to Reading railway line. Then Jemma turned left and left again onto Savernake Road.
Jemma slowed the car down as we went past the home of the mole. I scanned the property for signs of life but the house was well hidden from the road.
“Nothing visible. Too many trees,” I reported to Jemma.
“Ok, I’ll turn around. There is a junction ahead.”
Less than a minute later, we were back at the property. This time we stopped the car.
Jemma parked the car so that it totally blocked the driveway to the house. If our suspicions were correct then we didn’t have long to wait for something to happen unless we were already too late and our target had already fled the scene. The way we were parked, would appear other road users would think that we’d just pulled off the road for some reason. Looking at it from the other direction, the driveway was totally blocked. No car was leaving this house by this route and according to Google Earth there was no other road exit from the property.
Jemma grabbed her weapons and deployed off to the right of the driveway. There was some cover there. I stood in the undergrowth on the other side of the drive where I’d be on the right side of the car to talk to the driver when and if they appeared.
Sure enough, less than twenty minutes later, an almost new Porsche 911 GT2 came rapidly along the drive. As soon as it saw our car it quickly came to a halt with a little slide on the gravel drive. As it did so, I stepped out of the undergrowth an pointed my Sig-Sauer at the driver.
“Easy does it, Mr Farthing. No sudden moves. This SIG has a hair trigger.”
The driver looked at me and the colour trained from his face.
“Kill the engine there’s a good chap. I really don’t want to empty a whole clip into such a nice car.”
“Oh, and keep your left hand up on the dash. After almost six long days in the Welsh Mountains, I’m a little sleep deprived but there again, you know that don’t you?”
The tone of my voice told him that I was serious. He switched off the engine.
I eased the driver’s door open.
“Out you get and no sudden moves. My partner has you right in her sights.”
As if to illustrate that, she switched on the targeting laser. A red spot appeared on his chest.
He saw it and shuddered. His shoulders visibly sank. He knew that the game was up.
“Nice and easy and you won’t get hurt,” I said as I motioned for him to get out of the car.
Slowly, he emerged his face was still ash grey.
“How…?”
“How did we find you?”
“Simple really. Those two numbskulls you hired didn’t zero their phones after getting their orders from you. One look at their call history and we knew who had been behind the kill attempt on us. Once we’d confronted them with that information, they blabbed. You really should not have used your work phone to call them. A simple mistake but there again, you aren’t a trained agent, now are you? Still, you did pretty well for a failed pen-pusher.”
Jemma had joined us by now.
“Get moving,” she said as she used her sniper’s rifle to point back up the drive.
With an air of resignation, he began walking back up the drive with my Sig giving him the odd prompt in the back.
Once we were inside the house we could see signs of the speed of his flight everywhere. For someone who appeared to be the neatest of neat freaks in the office, this was well out of the ordinary but these were no ordinary times.
I fetched a chair and put it in the middle of the hallway. I noticed that it was pretty old. Eighteenth Century if my guess was right. It had been made by craftsmen and was as solid as the day it was finished. I chuckled to myself at how useless ephemera popped into my mind at the most off times.
“Sit,” I commanded as I switched back to the here and now.
He sat.
Jemma produced two pairs of handcuffs from her backpack. We used one of these to secure his ankles to the chair. Then I used the other pair to secure his hands behind him and to the back of the chair. A few plastic cable ties reinforced the bindings. We wanted to make an impression on our prisoner.
He wasn’t going anywhere in a rush.
“Tea?” asked Jemma with a smile.
“Later. I think we should clear the drive first.”
“Good point,” came her reply.
Without waiting for a command or even a discussion, she disappeared out of the house still carrying her rifle.
“Right Mr Terrence Farthing, you have a few questions to answer before…”
“Before what? You won’t kill me. It is not is your psyche. I haven’t been your boss for all these years not to know how you two work.”
I smiled.
“You don’t know half of how we work. You read our reports and think you are an expert. Those reports don’t contain the detail of how we work. You have no idea what I’d do if Jemma’s life was in danger and the same for her if my life was threatened. If you had any operational brain at all you would have targeted us on day one not just before the end of the operation.”
He just glared at me so I carried on.
“I don’t need to kill you. All I need to do is to give the evidence we have to Sam and the Minister and you will be on the next flight to South Georgia. You might have been an assistant director but you were never really our boss. You are nothing more than a PHB [1] and you know it. You have licked arse in various departments across all of Whitehall until you got to your current position. However, your arse licking days are well and truly over.”
He shuddered when I mentioned that rock in the South Atlantic.
“Your other boss won’t like knowing that you have not completed your mission. That’s why you were running wasn’t it?”
“What can I do? I have money?”
“Oh, we will be taking every penny you have. Rest assured on that.”
“But… You are nothing more than criminals.”
“Well, you trained us, or rather the department did. That’s how we work or didn’t you know that?”
He just glared at me.
“How much did he pay you?” I asked.
He didn’t reply but his eyes briefly flicked towards the dining room. He’d just told me where his safe was. I wondered if he’d had time to fully empty it before he fled?
I waited for Jemma to return before doing anything else. I knew that she wouldn’t be long.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, she returned carrying a large bag and a smile on her face.
“Both cars are in his garage. Did you know he has a Ferrari 308GT in there as well as an almost brand spanking new Bentley? A four-car garage as well! He must be getting a good wedge from Esteban.”
“Tut-tut and all of this on a Civil Servant’s salary?” I remarked.
“Was there anything of importance in his car?” I asked with a grin on my face as I knew the answer already.
Jemma smiled.
“A large bag full of Euros. It is safely locked away in our car. Then there was this little toy.”
She opened the bag to reveal a broken down 50 calibre sniper’s Rifle in a carry case and a pair of Night-Vision glasses.
“Tut-tut,” she remarked in a very school mistress voice.
“He was in such a rush that he hasn’t even bothered to clean it.”
“You have been a busy boy haven’t you. Too bad that you really don’t know how to use this thing in the dark. That takes a lot of training and even more practice. You should know by now that elemental mistakes invariably cost the lives of the people in the field. You lit up the target as if we were at Wembley Stadium. You didn’t think that we might be using Night Vison Goggles, did you? Then you fired an Infrared Laser at us? Doh! You really should have used an out of band laser but there again, you are a desk jockey, aren’t you?”
She looked at the rifle again.
“I think we’ll keep this handy,” said Jemma as she started to assemble it. You never know when there is a rat or two that needs exterminating…”
Then she smiled and removed a bullet from the chamber.
Jemma caressed it gently. She had a thing for guns and weaponry.
“You really were out to kill us weren’t you. Hollow Point is such an effective round at half a mile range. But… only rank amateurs leave a live round in the chamber of a disassembled rifle.”
He shuddered.
I smiled.
“Good. His safe is in there,” I said pointing at the dining room.
“My, my, you have been a busy girl and all without drawing blood. I am impressed,” remarked Jemma with a huge grin on her face.
“It was easy. He has not been trained in the same way that we have.”
Jemma laughed.
“The RSM would make mincemeat of him.”
“Indeed, he would and while doing so he’d thoroughly enjoy himself.”
“I’ll go rustle up some tea and something to eat while you keep watch on our prisoner,” I said.
“Then I’ll watch him while you crack open his safe.”
“Gladly,” replied Jemma as she pulled her Glock from its holster and carried on working on cleaning the rifle.
We had our own little specialities. Jemma could open a combination safe as quickly as anyone named ‘fingers’ in the criminal fraternity. That and guns made her a dangerous person. I loved blowing things up plus computers and electronics and the like.
An hour later, we had emptied his safe and examined its contents. It proved to be a veritable treasure trove of information and money. We photographed every page of every document before carefully putting them into plastic bags. Our host was very kind and had a large supply of plastic bin liners in his kitchen. These were ideal for this purpose.
“What are we going to do with scumbag? Shall I kill him now?” teased Jemma as she lovingly caressed her Glock. This was all designed to unsettle our prisoner.
“I think I have a better way out for him. CO poisoning in the back of his Bentley perhaps?” I replied.
“Oooohhhhh I like that,” said Jemma grinning like a Cheshire Cat.
Our prisoner was visibly shaking.
“You can help yourself by telling us everything. How did Esteban get you hooked and who else is involved? I mean everything. We will video your confession just to be safe.”
“I’m not saying a thing. I’m dead already and so are you two. Don’t you realise how big the price is on your heads now?”
“Oh, please do tell?” Asked Jemma in a Childs voice.
“Two Million Euros. One Million for each of you.”
That shocked both of us. We knew that we had to go deep, really deep.
I took Jemma outside for a brief conflab. She was as usual reading my thoughts. It didn’t take us long to decide what we should do next.
Once back inside, I said to our prisoner.
“We are going to expose your betrayal of us and god knows who else. You have clearly been on the take for a long time. In the meantime, we will leave you here all nice and safe. When we get to London, we will turn everything over to the chief and disappear.”
Then Jemma added,
“Enjoy your time in the cold and watch out for those hungry Polar Bears.”
We left Farthing securely tied up and locked in the Hall Closet. We put a chair under the door handle just in case he managed to get free. While Jemma got the car out of the garage I cut the phone line into the property and removed a large section of cable. She also disabled his cars for good measure. We hadn’t lasted this long in the business by not being thorough.
As Jemma drove us down the drive, I tossed the telephone cable into the undergrowth.
I felt good despite being sleep deprived, I felt back in the groove.
The smile on Jemma’s face told me that she was also feeling good. I knew that by the way she’d caressed the rifle that had so very nearly killed her.
As we headed east on the M4, Jemma said,
“I didn’t think that Esteban was able to put up that much money. Didn’t a huge amount of dosh get confiscated with that big bust last month?”
“He must have a lot more fingers in a lot more pies than we first imagined.”
Then something hit me and right between the eyes. How could I have missed it earlier.
“We need to stop at Reading Services. There is something that you need to see and it can’t wait until we get back to London.”
[to be continued]
[1] PHB = Pointy Headed Boss. Made famous by the Dilbert Comic Strip. A useless SOB who should be nowhere near management.
Just over seven minutes later we were parked in a quiet part of Reading Services near the Motel.
“Ok, out withi it... What’s so important that couldn’t wait until we got back to the office?” asked Jemma slightly impatiently.
“I’ll show you. Give me a moment.”
I flicked through the photos of the documents we had found in Farthing’s safe until I found one in particular.
“Here read this,” I said giving her the phone.
The document was in Spanish.
Jemma struggled for a few minutes before giving me the phone back.
“I’m confused. Your Spanish is better than mine.”
“What it says is that when Mr Farthing went to Portugal a month ago where he met with Daniel Esteban. It goes on to say that he came to a deal with Esteban to get us killed in return for the two million Euros.”
I flicked to another document that was dated some six years earlier.
“Then there is this…”
Jemma say it and went, “Oh Fuck. That long?”
“Yes. No wonder we never had any success nailing Esteban. It wasn’t until we stumbled upon those poor wretches in that warehouse that we had enough evidence that couldn’t be kept under the cover so to speak. That was too big to keep quiet about. All those other operations were shall we say, tailored by Farthing to make sure that there the successes we had were in reality, little more than a pimple on the skin of Esteban’s operation. We looked good in the eyes of the Government but thanks to Farthing, it was basically business as usual for Esteban’s business empire. Farthing controlled everything. So simple yet so effective yet we were barely touching the edges of his organisation.”
“All those busts were under the control of Esteban and his crew?”
“Yep. It looks like they have operated for years on the principle of ‘controlled losses’. Much like a shop operates knowing that a certain percentage of their good will go walkies.”
I sighed.
“I have to admit that he has had us swinging to his tune for years. He’s good, very good.”
Jemma didn’t say anything so I added,
“Thanks to Farthing’s obsession with keeping accurate records, we now know at least some of the influence he’s had on us for years. Esteban probably has the low down on everyone in the department. We’ve had a mole inside various Government Departments at the highest level for years. This is a long-term operation that makes the Russian Sleepers of the past seem like rank amateurs.”
“But why didn’t Farthing come after us before? As you say, he’s been in bed with Esteban for years,” asked Jemma.
“He did remember. Remember the time when our handler came to visit me and the guards suddenly left?”
“Daniel claims he knew nothing about it. That order had to come from someone higher but Daniel never got to the bottom of it. Now we know why.”
“So Farthing framed him and made it look like he was trying to flee the country. It didn’t click until just now but I remembered that Danny was due to fly to Dublin to attend a family wedding. He’s innocent and I’d expect we’ll find Danny’s leave request somewhere in his office.”
Jemma sat quiet for a few seconds.
“It really does look that way. Shall we go back and kill him now? I have a particularly nasty method I’d like to try and he’s the perfect subject being that he still has some dangly bits…”
I laughed for a second. Then I shook my head.
“There is really no time for that as much as I’d like to see you make him pay for what he’s done to us. But no, we need to disappear like pronto once we have updated Sam.”
Jemma’s body language told me that I was right.
“What about all that information we got from Farthing?”
“As we agreed, we deliver it to base, collect our things and walk out into the night.”
“Are you saying that we just put it all on Sam’s desk?
“Yeah I am but we also create copies for the heads of ‘5’ and ‘6’.”
“And then?”
“Then we can walk out with our heads held high with a number of cats well and truly in amongst the pigeons.”
“Where too then? Where can we drop out of sight without Esteban finding us? The dark side of the moon perhaps? That man has tentacles everywhere. Farthing has demonstrated that.”
I took her hand and smiled.
“I just happen to know of a nice secluded cottage on the Ardnamurchan Peninsular. Nice and quiet and well off the beaten track and where we can live quietly and simply.”
“You say the nicest things. It sounds delightful so why haven’t I heard of this Ardnamurchan place before? Where is it exactly?”
“Later. Let’s deal with all this information first.”
Jemma didn’t argue.
I sealed the deal by giving her a long kiss.
Then I spoilt it by telling her that we should at least tell ‘Sam’, our ultimate boss where we were going.
In the end, she agreed with me as long as it was for his eyes only.
We commandeered an empty conference room and spent more than an hour sorting out all the data that we’d seized from Farthing. Once it was all collated, I headed for the photocopier while Jemma wrote our report on the incident in the early hours of that morning. She also wrote up our report on Farthing.
Just before six in the evening, we were done. It was time for me to call Sam.
Sam appeared just over an hour later.
His first words were,
“This had better be good... I was looking forward to watching 'Call the Midwife' on TV...”
“Sam, you need to watch this,” said Jemma.
She played him the video of Farthing’s confession.
When it was over Sam sat for a nearly a minute before he spoke.
“We’ve been basically fucked dry by Farthing. You have to hand it to him. He was good at his job, working both sides of the coin. Did he give any indication as to when he was recruited by Esteban?”
“He didn’t but we now know that when that the Ferrari that was found in his garage was last sold, it went for just over nine hundred grand at Bonhams. With Commission and VAT and buyers premium that comes to well over one point one million smackeroos. There is no way that he could afford that car and that house on his salary. Unless he came from money he has been on the take for years and years.”
Sam remained silent so I carried on.
“As I said, that sale at Bonhams was almost seven years ago. I think that we have to assume that he has been in cahoots with Esteban for at least eight years. There is evidence of the two of them meeting in Portugal six years ago. That would make it just after he was transferred into the department. This goes deep and long. Very deep and very long.”
Sam saw the look on my face.
“Don’t say it. I know, I know. The only bright thing is that he came to us from ‘6’ on the recommendation of ‘M’. The PM will explode when she hears about it. His predecessor and the person who was ‘M’ at the time will have a few choice questions to answer. However, that is not your job. It is mine I’m afraid and one that I am not looking forward to at all.”
We then went on to explain all the evidence that we had gathered at Farthing’s.
When we’d finished Sam sat shaking his head. After a slight pause he said,
“You are right. The PM and both ‘6’ and ‘5’ need to see this intel. We really don’t know how far Esteban’s reach into the various departments of the Government has gotten. I would not put it beyond Esteban to have several other ‘Farthing’s’ in different departments.”
Neither Jemma or myself envied his job at times like this.
“Right, now what are we going to do with you two eh? Two million euros of your heads. He must really think that you are a threat to him.”
“We were sort of thinking of disappearing for a while,” said Jemma.
Sam smiled.
“Good idea. Somewhere a long way away I presume?”
“A very small hamlet on the West Coast of Scotland,” I replied.
“Good. That sounds off the beaten track so it might well work. Send me your contact details via secure means within the week ok?”
“Sure thing Sam. Eyes Only?”
“Naturally and encrypted if you please. The ‘602’ cypher please.”
Sam had a number of very secure private cyphers for use in situations like this. We knew of a website that held the public keys but only Sam
could decrypt it. These were not normal 1024bit encryption keys but uses six different 8192 bit keys. Even the best codebreakers at places like GCHQ or the NSA would have a hard time decrypting that message any time this side of the next century.
“Gotcha Sam,” said Jemma.
His final words were,
“Can you make sure that you get wherever you two are disappearing to completely off the Radar? The last thing I want to do is attend your funerals! Just stay quiet. Don’t even get your picture in the local newspaper… Understand?”
I looked at Jemma who smiled back at me.
“I think we can do that Sam.”
“Good. When we think it is safe to return I or my successor will come and find you.”
Then Sam did something totally out of character for him, he gave us both a big hug.
“You two did really well. You will be missed. I really mean that.”
We spent the night at my flat in Chelsea before heading north late on the Monday Night. A good portion of that time planning our exact route that would avoid as far as possible each and every ANPR Camera. It was our intention to get to our destination in Scotland as invisibly as possible.
As the Monday evening rush hour traffic started to die down we drove north out of London without bothering about who knew where we were going and stopped at a Supermarket just off the M.25 near St Albans where we stocked up with food and other essentials for the trip. Then we began the long and winding trip north.
I sighed and negotiated another rough section of the track.
“Unless they have put some new ones in in the past few days, we are done with them.”
“At last,” she said with a huge sigh attached to her voice.
“How far to go now?”
I thought for a second before answering.
“We’ll go to Mallaig first. Fill up the car and get some groceries in. Then it is about twenty-five miles to our final destination.”
“Are you still not going to let on about where we will be staying?”
“I want it to be a surprise. Not long to wait now.”
Jemma just gave me a look that said, ‘I really don’t believe you but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt’ for the time being.
I knew that it wouldn’t be much longer for her to wait. I only hoped that it would live up to her expectations.
Two and a half hours later and just as we entered the village of Acharacle, the main road makes a sharp left turn. Instead, I turned right onto a narrow lane.
“Almost there,” I remarked.
Jemma was suddenly alert again.
A mile or so down the lane, two buildings came into view on the left. To the right was a sea loch.
“That’s Kentra Bay and here we are, ‘Joys Retreat’”
I stopped in front of a typical cottage for this part of the world. A two-storey white painted building. The front door was centrally located with reception rooms on either side. Three windows on the front looked right out onto the bay.
“Come on,” I said almost leaping out of the car.
“Let me show you around.”
Jemma got out and looked around. She smelt the ‘sea’ or rather the copious amounts of seaweed that a recent storm had blown up onto the beach.
“How come you never told me about this place?”
“Until my accident there was never really a right time or place. Then… well we were both more concerned with other things but driving back to London the other day made me realise that this was the perfect place to drop out and I mean drop right out. If you want it, then this can be our home from now on.”
Jemma looked at me with a look that said, ‘you had better not be bullshitting me’.
“I’m deadly serious. Let’s face it darling, our time as agents is over. We are both well past our use by dates and with a price on our head we have to find other things to do with our lives and this is as good a place as any.”
“How…”
Then Jemma realised I’d used the ‘D’ word for the first time.
“You are really are serious about this aren’t you?”
“Yes I am. Marry me and I know that we can be happy here.”
Jemma took one step backwards clearly shocked.
“Are you proposing to me?”
I chuckled.
“I had intended to do it tonight but it sort of just felt right. Yes I am.”
“Look darling, we have spent more time together these past years than many a married couple does in their entire lifetime. We know each other better than any married couple I know.”
“Yet you kept this place a secret from me?” she replied with a slight tone of indignancy in her voice.
I sighed.
“I only knew that I’d inherited it a little over three years ago. My great aunt Joy retired here back in the early 1990’s. She was a principle with the Royal Ballet but injured her back when a movement went wrong. The injury meant that she couldn’t dance any more so she opened a ballet school in her native Edinburgh. Some years later her landlord torched the place to get the insurance money. The compensation she received allowed her to buy this place and retire. I visited her a few times much against the wishes of my family and she took a shine to me. She never had any children so when she died, it came to me.”
“When exactly was that and where was I when it all happened?” asked Jemma slightly indignantly.
“I only found out when I was recovering from that gunshot I took in Belgrade. You went off to Barbados with your then current boyfriend and we know how well that turned out. Anyway, a few days after you went off on holiday, the solicitors dealing with Joy’s estate phoned me to tell me the sad news about Joy and then the good news about this place. I took the sleeper to Fort William that night and came here the next day.”
Jemma glared at me so I carried on.
“You came back from Barbados in an awful state so the time wasn’t right to tell you about this place. Then we went back on operations and… well, we are here now aren’t we?”
Just then, we were interrupted by the arrival of a woman. She’d obviously come from the cottage next door.
“Can I help you?” she asked in a soft Scottish Accent.
I smiled.
“Hello Sara. Long-time no see eh?”
She looked at me and then realised who I was or rather had been.
“Roy? Is that really you?”
“Yes, Sara it is me. I’m now Angelique, Angelique Marceau. This is my partner Jemma Scott.”
“But…?”
“It is a long story Sara but I had a little accident with some razor wire.”
Sara winced.
I turned to Jemma.
“Sara was Joy’s partner.”
“R… sorry Angelique is right. Joy and I were both in the Ballet. But that is a long story that can wait for another day. What are you two doing here and why didn’t you call to let me know that you were coming? I’d have aired the place and got some food in.”
“Sorry Sara, we were not able to call and we bought some food at the ‘store’ in Mallaig.”
“Pah. Supermarket rubbish. Still it is nice to see you again. How long are you visiting?”
“We are staying,” I replied using the Scottish term for living in a place.
“What?”
“We are… well, why we are here is a long story but we are and we are not going anywhere soon.”
Then Jemma interrupted.
“Can we go inside? I’m getting a bit cold standing here.”
I turned to Sara.
“Is the back door open?”
Sara laughed.
“It is never locked. I don’t think that there is even a key for it.”
That night we ate a good meal at Sara’s while our cottage was warming up. No one had lived in it for several years so it was bound to be rather damp.
Over the next week, the three of us we got the place fit to live in. I introduced Jemma to the local shops and to the one place for miles around that you could get a drink, the local Hotel.
We’d been there almost two weeks when I said to Jemma,
“I need to get rid of the car. It can be traced to me.”
“Yeah, I was wondering about that. What do you propose to do?”
“I was thinking of taking the roundabout route to the edge of Glasgow and just leaving it with the keys inside.”
“Isn’t that too close to here especially if you leave it on the north side of the City? What about Edinburgh?”
I shook my head.
“There is only one road into the city that isn’t covered. With the Scottish Parliament and Holyrood Palace, they need the extra security.”
“Ah! I’d forgotten about that.”
“Perhaps I should drop it off on the south side? Somewhere like Motherwell. It is easy to get a train south from there.”
Jemma shook her head.
“If you are going to go that far then it is only a few more hours down to Newcastle. I'm sure that you can find a replacement for cash in the area?”
I laughed.
“Are you sure that you don’t want me to take it all the way down to London and park it outsde where we used to live?”
She just glared back at me.
“What are we going to do for transport? Having to rely on the Bus is not my idea of convenient…”
“I know. I was thinking about getting something a little more practical for this place. We’ve been lucky so far as it hasn’t snowed but the forecast for the next two weeks is not that good.”
“So, you want to go today?”
“Tonight, if that’s ok with you?”
Jemma laughed.
“You just want to get out of going to play bridge over at Sara’s?”
I just grinned back at her.
In the end, I dumped the car in a supermarket car park just outside Preson. I returned by train and bus the following day.
We slowly fitted into life in this small west of Scotland community. At first a few people were not that happy about two women living together s we were. From what Sara told us, with her and Joy living apart yet clearly a couple was frowned upon but in the end, they were accepted. Gradually the locals began to see us around the place and it helped that we took part in community activities. After a while, people began to call us by name and speak to us at the community gossip centre otherwise known as the Post Office cum General Store.
It helped that it was winter time and that 'Joy's Retreat' was going to be lived in again and not sold as a summer home to some outsider.
“It is good to be back in London,” I said as I raised a glass of wine to Jemma.
“Cheers,” she replied as we clinked glasses.
The shockwave that resulted from the information we had obtained from Mr Farthing, had gone through Whitehall and indeed Downing Street had almost brought down the Government. Three Junior Ministers and Six former Ministers from the Opposition party were implicated as being involved with the Esteban Cartel. All of those Ministers had worked either at the Home Office or at the Foreign Office. Only one thing was left unresolved and that was the location of Daniel Esteban. He’d gone to ground the day after we’d detained Farthing. There was almost no chatter at all about where he was and what he was doing for several weeks but eventually he surfaced in Ecuador where he tried and failed to take down the government. But his criminal enterprises just carried on as if nothing had happened.
Mr Farthing had been ‘disappeared’ on the direct orders of the Prime Minister. His house and contents confiscated by the Treasury. The money that we’d liberated went into our departments coffers. Mr Farthing was an Accountant by training and had kept copious records. It soon became evident that there was a very large mismatch between the amount we’d found in his home and what his books showed but despite intensive searching none of the missing money and property could be found but that remained an internal matter for the department.
The Treasury didn’t even bother to ask how much cash we’d found. That was the deal between us and them. We didn’t ask them and they didn’t ask us.
Eventually it was deemed safe that we could return to London. This was our first evening back.
We were onto our second glass of wine when the phone rang.
“I didn’t think that the phone would be back on yet?” remarked Jemma referring to the phone.
“Same here but it must have been done today,” I said as I got up to answer it.
“Hello?”
“I’m sorry, there is no Roy Meier on this number. I’ve only just moved here so he might be a previous occupant.”
“Yes, I am sure that he does not live here.”
“No, I won’t give you my name. I don’t know who the hell you are. You could be a sex maniac for all I know.”
“Goodbye.”
I put the phone down. I was shaking like a leaf. Roy Meier was my name but from before my accident. If the caller really had put two and two together then I was well and truly up shit creek big time.
Then it hit me. I knew who owned the voice on the phone.
“Bathroom NOW!” I shouted as I literally dragged Jemma up from the sofa.
I’d just slammed the door shut behind us when the apartment exploded.
[to be continued]
The dust had just about settled by the time I came to my senses. I realised that I was lying on top of Jemma. I felt her groan and move so I knew she was alive.
As my head cleared, I realised that Bathroom door had been blown off its hinges and was lying on top of us. The fact that it was solid had probably saved our lives.
For some strange reason, I remembered cursing the building inspector for insisting on it being a ‘fire door’ because the Central Heating Boiler was in the Bathroom. I moved a bit and didn’t get very far at all. The extra weight of the door would make getting out from under it a lot harder. You win some and lose some.
I chuckled to myself. It is strange what passes through your mind at times like this…
After a bit of searching, I found Jemma’s hand in the rubble and squeezed it. She responded.
“Can you move your left leg?” she whispered.
“Something is crushing my right boob.”
I managed half a smile as I moved my leg out of the way. The change in position also allowed me to move the door out of the way and then slowly get to my feet.
The ringing in my ears started to subside.
I began to hear the sounds of the emergency services heading our way. This spurred me into action.
I helped Jemma to her feet.¬ We were both covered in dust and debris.
“Someone tried to kill us. That was probably an RPG.”
Jemma carried on getting rid of debris from her hair but she grunted.
“We’ve got to contact base and arrange for extraction,” I said urgently.
Jemma didn’t reply but this time she just nodded her head. She just carried on dusting herself down. This was Jemma dealing with the explosion in her own way. I knew not to try to elicit any understandable comments from her until she’d got her mind in gear again. I also knew that if she was seriously injured she’d have let me know by now.
Thankfully my flat had a landline phone extension in the bathroom. I’d never used it but the relief I felt when I heard the sound of the dial tone when I picked up the handset was palpable.
I dialled a local number and as soon as it was answered, I entered a six-digit code from memory. That was followed by a three-digit code. The last one would alert the operator as to the severity of the call.
An operator came on the line immediately.
“Go ahead,” was all she said. I wasn’t expecting anything else.
“Someone tried to blow up Jemma and myself at my apartment. Probably with an RPG. We need a T2 extraction immediately. I think we are just shaken and not seriously injured.”
I heard the operator acknowledge the call and I hung up.
I went and sat by Jemma. She was still rather stunned.
“Let’s hope that they think that this is a terrorist act and put a security cordon around the area. We can’t risk whoever did this seeing us leave alive.”
Jemma nodded. She was shaking. Her deep level of shock was clear to see.
I held her in my arms. As I did so, I started to remember all the times we’d done this to each other over the years.
“Years!” I muttered.
“What?”
“Sorry love. Just thinking out loud,” I replied hurriedly.
Then I said to her,
“We need to get out of this game once and for all,”
“Yeah but how?”
It was indeed easier said than done but deep down inside, we both knew the answer to that question.
After what seemed like an eternity, I heard some movement in the main part of the flat. I really hoped that it was the Fire Service and not the same people who’d just tried to kill us.
“We are in here,” I called out.
Two fully suited firemen appeared.
“Please don’t call it in. We have to appear to have been killed. We work for MI5.”
The department was so off the books that we didn’t have a name or any sort of official recognition but there was an agreement with MI5 that in cases like this, we could use them as a cover story. Hopefully, my phone call would have alerted all sorts of people as to what had happened.
“Are you ok?”
“Minor injuries I think thanks to the door,” I said pointing at it.
“Do you know what happened?”
“RPG or remotely triggered bomb. The windows had bullet-proof glass in them.”
One of the men looked at the other for guidance.
“Rocket Propelled Grenade. I saw a lot of them in Iraq. It looks like you got off lightly.” said the other.
“We need to report to our senior officer.”
“Can you say that there are two deceased in the apartment where the explosion occurred?”
They looked at each other. They seemed unsure.
“You won’t get into trouble. MI5 will make sure that you are in the clear. Someone tried to kill us so why not make it seem that they did just that?”
The taller of the two shook his head.
“How can you be so logical at a time like this?”
“Training. You are trained to be logical and have clear thoughts when putting out fires and rescuing people. We are trained to stay alive, stay calm and logical at all times.”
“Just do it Les,” said the other Officer to the first.
He nodded.
“Come in Control, Foxtrot 1 reporting,” he said into his microphone.
“Control listening.”
“We have found two bodies close to the centre of the blast. No signs of life. Their injuries are considerable.”
“Control. Understood. Continue your Search.”
“Understood. Out.”
“Thanks Guys, we owe you one,” said Jemma.
The two Fire Officers went off to search the other apartments in the building.
“We wait,” I said in a matter of fact voice.
“The protocol says that the phone will ring twice when our people are ready. It may take them a few hours to rustle up two dead bodies that can be used to take our place for the view of the world. The Media will be all over this. You don’t start blowing up third floor flats in Chelsea without attracting an awful lot of column space in the media.”
“Yeah, but how will we get out?”
“Inside a fridge or something like that. I don’t know. We are in the hands of…? Well I really don’t know but you remember the drills we had in training for this very sort of thing?”
“I do but I never thought…”
“That we’d need to use them?”
Jemma nodded and then asked…
“Having second thoughts about coming back?”
“I don’t need to have them. The explosion has got rid of any doubts I might have had. Whoever it was needs to be taken down.”
“Same here. It has to be Esteban but how did he and his crew know that we were back?”
I almost blurted out that I knew that it was him. It was his voice as clear as day on the phone. I refrained from doing so given Jemma’s still shocked state.
“That my dear is the sixty-four-billion-pound question. Sam will have some explaining to do when we get out of this mess.”
I breathed a huge sigh of relief as we were both clearly getting a bit impatient. Jemma had a nasty gash on her forehead. I’d dressed it as best I could and the bleeding had stopped for the time being. She needed some proper medical treatment. She kept feeling her shoulder which worried me.
After the two fire orricers left, things in the building began to quieten down.
I’d crawled into the living room and retrieved my phone from the table that had once been right by the door to the bathroom. The table was well beyond repair but my phone was still working.
Back in the bathroom, we used it to follow what was happening outside. All the TV main channels were covering the incident. The Police were pushing the TV crews farther and farther back. They were resisting and some choice words from some of the ‘on the ground’ reporters that were being broadcast to the world.
Once the phone had rung, I did a total reset on the phone a couple of times and tossed it into the debris that was my former home. We had no idea where Jemma’s phone was so we’d have to take a chance that her phone had been destroyed in the blast. It had been a lot closer to the centre of the explosion than mine but that was pure luck. Our rescue was underway.
Half an hour or later a man in a Forensic White paper suit knocked gently on what remained of my front door.
“Hello? Germany Calling!”
I breathed a sigh of relief. The old and very corny WW2 Radio Call Sign was the codeword I needed to lookout for. The person I’d spoken to on the phone all those hours earlier had simply said to me, ‘Codeword is Germany Calling’. It meant that the owner of the voice was a friend.
I replied with the answer.
“This is the BBC from London.”
“Roger. Where are you?”
“We are in the bathroom,” I called out.
He appeared in the doorway with a smile on his face.
“It looks like you two have nine lives. Normal people would not have survived that blast.”
“Oh, John Smith at your service. My boss in ‘5’ has organised your extraction.”
He tossed two Forensic suits in our direction.
“Put these on and follow me. We have about ten minutes before the balloon goes up.”
We didn’t ask what the ‘balloon’ was but if pressed I would have said that some sort of diversion was planned in order to get us out.
I helped Jemma into her suit. It was obvious that her left arm was hurting. I didn’t think that she’d broken it but the grimaces on her face told me everything I needed to know.
As I zipped up my suit, ‘Mr Smith’ was looking anxiously at his watch.
“We need to go. Two minutes to Balloon time.”
He was obviously a man of few words but that didn’t matter at the moment. What mattered was that we were extracted from this location without delay and without putting others into danger.
Exactly two minutes later we heard the sounds of a commotion from outside.
Then a Siren sounded.
“That’s the sound of the Gas Alert. One of my colleagues has released some natural gas in the basement. The SOP for the Fire Service is to put Gas Detectors in many parts of the building just in case there is a mains Gas leak. They will evacuate everyone and that includes us. Two of my colleagues will hide out so that the count of people in and out of the building is good. They came in an hour ago suited up like you two are now.”
Neither of us answered.
“Ladies? Shall we exit the building?”
We left the building into a scene of mild but organised chaos. That was perfect for us. We headed for a Van that was marked ‘Home Office Forensics’. That would not be out of place to people dressed like us.
Two hours later, the all clear was sounded and people started to return to the building. The two MI5 agents would slip out close to dawn. That is the time when people are at their least attentive.
Again, and without a word, he started the engine and drove slowly away from the scene, away from my former home. I was certain that we’d never return to live there. The shortness of this one proved that beyond all reasonable doubt.
Our driver dropped us off outside St Mary’s Hospital Paddington. He still didn’t say anything but gave us the thumbs up when he drove off. We’d removed the Forensics Suits on the journey across London. The area around the Hospital and the adjacent Railway Station is busy day and night and is the perfect place for blending in with the crowd. As the protocol dictated, we were on our own for the time being. If one or both of us had been badly injured a very different extraction would have been performed.
I saw a clock on a bus shelter. It read 06:34. It also stated that a Number 27 Bus to Turnham Green was overdue. I smiled to myself as I realised how the mind gets thrown out of kilter at times like these. Normally, I would not have even noticed the overdue bus but for some reason I was trying to relate to things that were normal after the very abnormal events of the night. I looked at Jemma. She still wasn’t saying much but I saw her concentrating on a sign in a shop. It had a list of exchange rates. She looked exhausted. Shock hits people differently and at different times.
It had been a long night and it wasn’t over yet not, by a long chalk.
“Don’t worry love. We’ll be in the safety of HQ in twenty minutes.”
She managed a smile and squeezed my hand.
The street was as I’d hoped pretty busy. I flagged down a Taxi and we climbed in the back.
“Pall Mall at the Trafalgar Square end please?” I said to the driver.
He didn’t comment at our still quite dishevelled look but drove off. I only hoped that the small amount of money that was in my pocket was enough to pay the driver. The clothes provided by the extraction team contained a small amount of money. The idea was that the extraction team would have no idea where we went after they’d dropped us off. What they didn’t know they could not tell.
The driver made good time and the money was more than enough to cover the fare. I looked at the notes and for an instant, I could not concentrate on which ones were what value. In the end, I just gave him the lot. He didn’t argue so it must have been a very good tip.
At the bottom of the steps, there was a door marked ‘Staff A’ with a fingerprint reader on the wall at the side of the door. It responded to the little finger of my left hand and clicked open.
Once we were inside, I made sure that the door was firmly locked behind us and breathed a sigh of relief.
We were safe at last.
The emergency extraction plan that had been drilled into us all those years ago had worked a treat.
Jemma was strangely quiet. I guessed that the explosion had dome more damage than she was letting on. The way that she was holding her arm was evident that she was in quite a bit of pain. I didn’t worry too much as Medical Attention was not far away.
We had to wait for Security to let us into the main part of the building. That took a couple of minutes which was not that unusual.
Once inside, we went down a further flight of steps and along a tunnel that too us directly under Northumberland Avenue. At the end of the tunnel we went up a few floors in a lift and entered the main control room of the department.
The place was a hive of activity. That was unusual at the best of times but for this early in the day it was unheard of at least in our time with the department. As they say, ‘the cat was well and truly amongst the pigeons.’
We were greeted by the Director. He was always known as Sam. Just like ‘M’ was to MI6, Sam was to us.
“Jemma, can you please go and get yourself sorted?” said Sam.
There was no ‘hello’s’ or ‘how are you?’ with Sam. It was always direct and to the point.
I could tell that Jemma didn’t want to go. That was her all over. She never wanted to miss a thing.
“Go love,” I said softly.
“I’ll brief Sam.”
Reluctantly, she headed off to what we jovially called ‘Sick Bay’ but was actually a fully equipped ten bed hospital. It was also where injured operatives from ‘5’ and ‘6’ came for some off the record treatment. A secret Hospital right in the centre of London.
“Shall we go into my Office?” said Sam with a stern face.
“He’s back,” said Sam.
That explained all the activity in the department.
“We’ve been pouring over the CCTV from your place and the streets around since your call. It seems that Daniel Esteban decided that he wanted to take you out personally. Besides saving him several million Euros he wanted the satisfaction of getting his revenge personally.”
“I know. He made a phone call to the flat looking for the old me. I recognised the voice. That’s how I got us into the bathroom before the place blew up. Jemma does not know that and I’d appreciate if I was the one to tell her.
Sam nodded.
“I understand and agree. She needs a lot of rest. He made no attempt to hide. It was as if he was boasting that he is untouchable.”
He called up some CCTV and played it on the big screen that dominated one wall of his Office.
Normally the screen showed a live feed from a Camera overlooking the River Thames. As we were underground, there were many such screens in the department. Today it clearly showed Daniel Esteban picking up an RPG Launcher and firing it at our apartment.
“This was posted on Social Media less than five minutes after the blast. When we got your call we naturally started looking for things like this. Most sites took it down right away but one major one wanted a court order. I called the Home Secretary and he ordered their site to be blocked in this country until they took it down. They caved but it has gone viral as you would expect.”
I was surprised at his brazenness but admired him all the same. He was a worthy foe and had been for the last five years.
“This came in ten minutes ago,” said Sam as he selected another bit of Video.
“We put it out via the Police that two people had been killed in the explosion. We were keeping the fact that it was an assassination attempt under wraps for the time being but this latest Video may mean that we have to release it sooner rather than Later. ‘5’ and ‘6’ are in total agreement and ‘5’ will take ownership.”
The second video clip showed two bodies in body-bags being removed from the building. Then to my surprise, it showed someone who appeared to be a Police Officer stepping forward after pulling out what looked like a .38 revolver he put at least one bullet into the head of each corpse. Then he surrendered.
“Several media outlets including the BBC and CNN were live streaming at the time. The cat is out of the bag as regards the explosion being an accident. I just got off the phone with the PM. She is livid and the heads of ‘5’ and ‘6’ are not on her Christmas card list if you get my meaning. That should not have been allowed to happen. That clip will probably go viral very soon. Tonight has been a major coup for Esteban. The fact that he is shown firing the RPG shows to the world that you can’t mess with him and that he is very much back in control.”
I was stunned at what I was watching. Mr Esteban certainly wanted to make sure that we were dead and I mean really dead. He was aware that sometimes a body-bag was used to carry a live body away from crime scenes. He was not going to take any chances with us pulling that trick.
“Are ‘5’ taking full ownership? I mean full ownership?” I asked.
“Yes. As of now, you are both listed as long serving operatives with ‘5’. Under very different names naturally.
“Oh, the fake Police Officer has been identified as a contract hit man from Romania named Costel Chipciu. Just before you arrived, I found out that he is wanted for murder by both the French and German Police. We can hold him on charges of “defacing a corpse” until they decide who gets first go him. He’s with ‘6’ until extradition is granted. ‘5’ has not objected they will have enough explaining to the Commons Security Select Committee about how he was let into the country in the first place.”
“Thanks Sir. So, we will be ‘Terminated’ then?”
Sam nodded.
“Last night was it for both of you. We can’t afford to have you exposed again. Now that Mr Esteban thinks that you are dead, he’ll move onto other matters of his business. We need to dedicate resources to fighting that and not protecting you two.”
Suddenly I felt a shiver run down my back.
“Are we being cast adrift?”
Sam smiled.
“No. Far from it. But you two need new faces and totally new identities if you are going to live out your lives in retirement with him still on the loose. The PM has authorised full pensions for both of you at the rank of Deputy Controller.”
I was pleased and shocked. Pleased that we would not be just let go and made to fend for ourselves but shocked that we would get a Pension at such a high level. We could live comfortably on them for the rest of our lives.
But, I wasn’t happy. We had unfinished business to attend to.
“Sam! Sorry but we as in Jemma and I, need to get Daniel Esteban once and for all. I’m pretty sure that I am speaking for Jemma in that we could never live a happy life knowing that he was still free and clear.”
Sam smiled.
“I hoped that you would have that attitude. Both ‘6’ and ‘5’ want you to retire but we do not let things go. We have never done that since the PM created us in 1943. Our only brief then as you know was to never let go until the job was done. We are not letting this go despite that others may wish and I’m happy to say that the current PM is right behind me on this but the retirement offer still stands.”
I guessed that some long and often heated calls had taken place during the night. I also knew that the Prime Minister was on an Official visit to Japan for trade talks at the moment.
“Thanks Sam. What next?”
“Get a shower and some rest. At least a full day and that is an order. It is not every day that you survive an RPG attack so you need time to recover.”
“I’ll go and see how Jemma is before bedding down if I may?”
Sam just smiled at me. He knew just how close we were so he didn’t argue.
As ever she put up an impenetrable barrier and would not let me see Jemma.
“I’ve just come from a meeting with Sam. He gave the go ahead for me to see Jemma.”
That fell on deaf ears, totally deaf ears.
Then I heard a cry from within ‘Sick Bay’.
“Angie? Is that you?”
“That’s me!” I called out.
“I’m fine but they want me to stay for observation. Alpha Nine.”
I was happy to hear from her. The code ‘Alpha Nine’ meant that she was basically unable to leave the room where she was. She was probably connected to all sorts of equipment. It also meant that she didn't have any broken bones.
“Ok, see you tomorrow.”
“Now Angelique, don’t you have somewhere else to go?” said the Matron still with her arms folded. Her body language told me that I was going nowhere in her domain anytime soon.
“I do,” I replied.
After a hearty breakfast in the Mess, I headed for one of the bits of the department that were above ground. We had one floor of a building that overlooked ‘The Strand’. Real views of the city. There were six small flats where visiting agents could stay while in London or as in our case, homeless. I saw that Number 6 was free. This was the nicest one as it overlooked one corner of Trafalgar Square.
I had a nice long shower and then slipped into bed. It didn’t take long for me to fall asleep. It had been quite a welcome back to London.
Unbeknown to me, events were unfolding out in the real world that would have direct bearing on what we did next.
[to be continued]
As I lay fast asleep in my delightfully comfortable bed, a series of co-ordinated events sent the whole of the Police, Security Services and all parts of the Military into overdrive.
It all started with a successful attack on the head of MI5. His car was ambushed and he was assassinated in broad daylight very close to Tower Bridge. As his schedule was a carefully guarded secret, everyone went on Red Plus Alert. Red Plus means imminent threat of attack.
In other words, the UK went into total lockdown.
The broadcast of the enhanced level of security came just in time to thwart an attack on Dorney Wood. This is the country residence of several top-ranking Government Ministers that is located in Buckinghamshire.
The Foreign Secretary was hosting a conference there at the time. Those attending included several other Foreign Ministers from the close Allies of the UK plus their respective heads of Security. This conference was not one that gets announced to the media due to the sensitivity of the issues being discussed until the event was over. The journalists that had been invited for the press conference had just arrived when the alarm was raised. They too were underground when the attack came.
As a result of the warning, all the attendees were in the underground bunkers when six drones dropped grenades on the part of the garden where they were due to hold a photo call at that very moment. No one was injured apart from a few decapitated statues and a load of plants.
The third and final attack took place right in the heart of London. At least one shoulder launched missile was fired at the iconic MI6 building on the South Bank of the Thames at Vauxhall Cross. Whatever was fired exploded without causing any damage or injury. The missiles had been fired from a Jet-Ski that was on the river itself.
After letting off the missile, the Jet-Ski sped off in the direction of Hammersmith but the rider was caught on Chelsea reach by a river police launch that had been investigating the theft of that exact same Jet-Ski from a houseboat that was moored close by earlier in the day.
Being fast asleep, I knew nothing of any of these events. It was late afternoon when I woke up. After a visit to the toilet, I switched on the TV and saw that London and the Home counties were in total lockdown. The Media were concentrating on the assassination of the head of MI5 with fewer reports about the attack on the MI6 building.
The heightened level of security meant that no flights were allowed in or out of UK Airspace apart from overflies. All Ferries and Eurostar services were cancelled and there were armed troops on the streets of the Capital and in most major cities across the country.
Some sections of the media were having a field day with people complaining about missing a day or so of their holiday or business trip.
To my still sleepy brain, it looked like we’d had our own version of the 11th September attacks.
I sat on the edge of the bed and shook my head in disbelief that this was happening all around me and I had slept right through it.
Gradually, some of my training kicked in and I began to start thinking logically.
The only conclusion I could come too and despite reports that pretty well every terrorist group that I’d heard of and a few more besides was claiming responsibility for the attacks on the ‘Imperialist Zionist Pig Dogs’, ‘Capitalist Pigs’ and many other descriptions that there was one man behind the whole thing and that was none other than Daniel Esteban. The fact that these attacks had happened so soon after the one on us was no coincidence. It had to be him that was behind them.
He had a lot of scores to settle with the UK Security Services and this had all the hallmarks of one of his grand plans. Memories of his failed attempt to take over the Government of Ecuador sprang to mind. Here, he’d made several grand gestures and had assassinated the head of the Army but failed in an attack on the Presidential Residency.
I was sure that he’d kicked off the sequence of events the previous evening with the attack on my home. It seemed to me that the RPG he fired the previous evening was first move of his grand plan to take down or at least de-stabilise the UK Government. It also was the reason why he’d come to the UK. He wanted to personally supervise the events on the ground.
Then I started to work on the why. Why had he done it?
That turned out to be fairly easy. My department along with MI5, MI6, the FBI and a host of other countries security services such as the CIA, FBI, Mossad and even the FSB, had hit his empire pretty hard and repeatedly over the years. The haul of information we had obtained from the traitor in our midst, Edward Farthing had proved invaluable to us. That event was the first time we gotten anywhere even remotely close to the centre of his organisation. But I could not help wonder why he’d waited so long. It couldn’t have been because Jemma and I were out of the picture? Or could it?
Jemma and I were at the centre of that and with the help of ‘6’ and ‘5’ we’d basically shutdown a large part of his operation in this part of Europe. He wanted back in as he had a lot of ‘product’ to shift and therefore, to kill the head of MI5 would have been a huge coup for him. His reputation would be greatly enhanced by that action.
That would have given him the opportunity to open up again here big time. Any competition he might have had would more than likely take the hint and leave the market clear for him to dominate. I dismissed the attack on MI6 as being purely symbolic. The real targets were those hit in the first two attacks or three if you count the one on my home the night before.
Suddenly, a heavy weight fell on my shoulders. The attack on Jemma and myself had started the whole sequence of events. We should have never agreed to return to London. Life in Acharacle, with midges and all, never seemed so good as it did now. I wished that we were there now but we weren’t and we had a job to do.
There was nothing for it, I had to go downstairs and after checking on Jemma, I had to find out if I could help.
Once I was satisfied that she was being well looked after, I went in search of ‘Sam’.
As usual, the door to his office was open. I hovered for a few seconds. Then he said,
“Well my girl, are you going to come in or not?”
Slightly red in the face, I went inside.
“Please, close the door,” he commanded.
I did that and sat down.
“I take it that you have seen the news?”
“Yes Sam, I have. It looks pretty bad.”
He grunted.
“We got off lightly although the media don’t know that.”
He went onto explain about the drone attack on Dorney Wood and update me about the one on MI6.
“It could have been so much worse. We have to thank the former head of ‘5’ for that stroke of luck. He’d been in front of the press along with, the Home Secretary and the Met Police Commissioner explaining about the demise of you and your partner. The Press Conference was wrapped up quite a bit earlier than it had been planned to. If he’d been ten or more minutes later, then both attacks would have happened pretty well at the same time or his after the one on Dorney Wood. The head of ‘5’ had been at the conference but had left to deal with the events at your home. The Americans are livid by the way. The heads of both the FBI and NSA were in attendance. No one was supposed to know about the event until it was over but somehow it leaked and they are blaming us naturally. Dorney Wood is in Lockdown until 18:00. Their stance is that we can’t be trusted. Well fuck them I say. We will be ferrying the Americans and Canadians to RAF Lakenheath[1] by Helicopter later. They can make their own way back across the Atlantic.”
Then he took a deep breath.
“The PM has naturally cut short her trip to Japan. She flew out of Narita just over two hours ago. She is going to visit the POTUS on the way back but my guess is that she’ll get nowhere with him given his recent tweets that blame every problem in the world on anyone but the USA. So far, he’s been quiet on the events here thank God. I can only hope that his chief of staff has taken his phone away until he can be briefed by the people who were at Dorney Wood when they get back home.”
“Then we have to get Esteban and give them his head on a platter?”
“Easier said than done my Girl, easier said than done…”
I knew that but…
“Sir, I think I have an inkling of a plan. Nothing concrete as yet but with a few hours of work, I think I could come up with something workable.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I am. If it isn’t workable then I’ll say so. Besides if what I have in mind is to work we may need the services of a few select people from ‘5’ and ‘6’ so the plan will need their approval as well. Who knows Esteban better than Jemma and me eh? We might have been out of the game so to speak for quite a while but I’m sure that perusing the thick file you have on him would bring me up to speed pretty quickly.”
Then I took a deep breath.
“We will probably need the approval of No 10.”
This startled my boss.
“You aren’t going to put the PM in danger, are you?”
I managed a smile.
“No Sir, but we need a bit of a diversion and who better to create one that is believable other than the PM?”
“Anything like this may well need the approval of the Privy Council as well. We can’t have the opposition parties trying to get brownie points at the PM’s expense.”
“I’d forgotten about them.”
“No matter. It will be my job to brief the Politicians and ‘5’ and ‘6’ at a COBRA[2] meeting. If and it is a big if, we get the go-ahead then.”
He looked up at the clock on the wall of his office.
“On that point, I’m going to have to go to Downing Street. The PM has convened one in less than an hour. The Home Secretary will chair it but the PM will join in from the RAF plane that she’s using to fly to Washington.”
After handing me the file with the latest information on Esteban, he disappeared off to No 10. I took that as tacit approval to not only get up to speed but to start thinking about how to take down Daniel Esteban once and for all.
“Why didn’t you wake me when you found out that shit had hit the fan?”
“Matron said No! She was right. You needed the rest.”
Jemma smiled.
“What are you doing?”
“Working on a cunning plan to trap Daniel Esteban.”
“Oh Goody. What can I do?”
“Get us something to eat? And none of that rabbit food. You have not eaten in over a day remember.”
“Spoilsport!” said Jemma as she stuck her tongue out at me.
I laughed. We knew each other so well. Our banter could offend some others at times but it was all part of us being a team. We trusted each other implicitly which isn’t always the case with other pairs of agents.
Once we’d eaten and had something to drink, I explained my ideas to Jemma. Once she’d finished laughing and saw my straight face she calmed down.
“You can’t be serious?”
“I am and that’s why it will work. Those missing millions should get the interest Esteban. After all, he thinks they are his, doesn’t he?”
Jemma looked me right in the eye. She had a habit of doing this when she was unsure of my sincerity over something.
“Don’t go rogue on me, will you?” she said after a few seconds.
“Me? Go rogue? Not without you at my side.”
We both had a good laugh. Then we got on with planning the operation.
Our next step was to present the plan to our boss, ‘Sam’.
He listened to what we had to say in his typical noncommittal style. This was what made him such a great boss. He would always let us have our say before he even passed a single word in comment.
When we’d finished he closed his eyes and began to think. This was also his style and we were not unduly worried.
After nearly a minute he opened his eyes and a small smile spread over his face.
“I knew you’d come up with something spectacular but this really takes the biscuit. And, it does not put the PM at risk. Well done.”
His face remained pretty expressionless.
“But… It might just work. We will need something special if we are going to stop Mr Esteban and this could well be it.”
I looked a Jemma who smiled back at me.
“You two are my best agents it will be a shame to see you go but you are far too much of a target to be kept on the active list even with him out of the way.”
“Sam,” I said as I gripped Jemma’s hand.
“We are only too aware of that. Well, aren’t we officially deceased now?”
Sam nodded his head.
“But… this plan?”
“Yes, we know. It needs for us to come back from the dead albeit temporarily at least as far as he is concerned.”
“That’s the bit I am unhappy with.”
“Sam…” said Jemma in her best ‘I will get you to do this pretty please sort of voice’.
He smiled back.
“Don’t give me that sweet talk voice of yours. I know it of old.”
“Sam… If I may?”
He just sighed.
“We need to draw Daniel Esteban out of hiding. He knows that we have bottled up the country since the attack on us. He has a personal vendetta against us. That much is obvious.”
“There is one problem with the plan. How do we know that he’s still in the country? Perhaps he left right after firing the RPG on your home?”
“Sam, you know his MO as well as we do. He trusts no one but himself to lead this sort of operation. Anyone who fails to deliver gets dealt with on the spot. So far, his operation has been pretty successful. Yes, it failed at Dorney Wood but it took out the head of ‘5’. The US and the other nations won’t keep quiet about the incident at Dorney Wood for much longer. If we can show to them that we are taking active measures to apprehend Esteban they may hold off telling the media for a bit longer.”
Sam gave that resigned ‘I know, I know’ look.
“I’ll put it to COBRA when we meet in two hours. That’s the best I can offer at the moment.”
There was not a lot we could do in the meantime so we headed off to my room and tried to get some sleep even though it was still daylight.
One of the things you learn very early in this business is to sleep wherever and whenever the opportunity presents itself.
“Yes”
“Oh hello Sam. We were getting some sleep.”
“I can wake her if you want me to?”
“Ok.”
I looked at the still comatose Jemma. She was in a deep sleep.
“Sam, I don’t want to wake Jemma she seemed just about out on her feet just a few hours ago.”
“Understood. I’ll be there in half an hour.”
I ended the call and laid back down into the bed. It was nice and cosy and Jemma was right beside me. If I could have, I would have stayed here all day but I couldn’t.
I gathered my thoughts and slowly got out of bed. I didn’t want to disturb her if I could not help it.
Exactly twenty-three minutes after the call, I quietly closed the door to my room behind me. I tip-toed to the Lift and pressed the ‘call’ button.
Sam was waiting for me as I emerged from the Lift.
“Good Evening Sam,” I said.
“On-time as usual I see?”
“Habit of a lifetime, but you know that...”
“Shall we go?”
After the almost chaotic scenes in the Department, the atmosphere inside No 10 was serene and calm. People moved about with a purpose in their stride but it was as if we were stepping inside a well-oiled machine.
After a moment, I realised that was exactly the way that the centre of government should be working. I could not detect any sense of panic or uncertainty.
We were ushered into the COBRA meeting room. There were no external windows and the door was at least a foot thick. I guessed that it was not only sound proofed but blast-proofed and probably had a Faraday cage built into the walls. We were also two floors underground so Mobile Phones were useless which was perfect for frank and honest discussions
I recognised a few of the people around the table. No one said a word of greeting or ‘what the hell is she doing here!’. I concluded that I was expected and this was a place of work where there was no time for fripperies.
Sam showed me to a seat and almost immediately, the meeting began. The Home Secretary was chairing it.
“The PM should be joining us in a few minutes but we are having trouble establishing a stable video link to the aircraft so she has given me the authority to act in her absence.”
He paused for effect before continuing.
“As you all know, the PM is currently flying back from Washington and her plane is currently just over five hundred miles to the west of Ireland.”
He looked down at the papers in front of him. I realised that everyone apart from myself had a similar briefing pack in front of them. I probably did not have the required security clearance so it did not worry me.
“We have received some intel a little over two hours ago of a threat to the PM’s plane. This comes from NATO HQ in Brussels so we have to assume that it is reliable. Since we received that data we have confirmed information that no less than three fishing trawlers have been stolen in the last twenty-four hours. One from Newlyn in Cornwall, one from Campbelltown in Argyle and one from Galway in the Irish Republic.”
I mentally mapped them out in my mind.
“As you all know, the current threat assessment is code RED Plus. The thefts indicate that there is a credible threat to the PM. As a result, I have authorised the threat level be raised to RED Critical. We have not been at this level since the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The latest satellite images show that these trawlers are positioning themselves right underneath the three main West to East flight paths into UK Airspace. You don’t need me to tell you what this means.”
He paused for effect.
“We have to assume that there are several surface-to-air missiles on each of the trawlers. We have already notified the PM and the flight has been diverted off the published flight plan. The new route is for the plane to head towards French airspace and enter it off the Coast of Brittany.
Then it would head towards UK airspace after passing over Cherbourg.”
I began to feel relieved but he carried on.
“The latest intel we received from an American Satellite as it flew over the area some fifteen minutes ago, is that the trawler that was positioned forty-six miles West of Land’s End is currently steaming South at between fifteen and twenty knots. It appears that someone has leaked the change of plan already. That will need to be dealt with. We have to also accept that the UK is under attack from persons unknown but is more than likely to be Daniel Esteban.”
Most of the people around the table looked at me. I felt rather uncomfortable.
I was trying to think of something to say when the door to the room opened and a sheet of paper was handed to the Home Secretary.
He read the sheet and gave a nod. The person who’d delivered the note turned and left the room.
When the door was closed, the Home Secretary said,
“I have updates on two of the trawlers.”
“One of our Nuclear Attack Submarines has apprehended the Fishing Boat that was off of the Argyle Peninsular. It was returning from patrol and was our closest asset. It surfaced alongside the fishing boat which must have put the fear of god into those on the boat. All the people on board have been taken into custody. There are two Navy Helicopters on their way from the Naval base at Faslane to take the prisoners to the mainland. The Navy is dealing with the Six, yes Six Sam-7 Shoulder Launched Surface to Air Missiles that were on board. We have to expect that similar amount of ordnance is on the other trawlers.”
There were several sharp intakes of breath in the room. No one doubted the seriousness of the situation.
“The trawler that is off the Irish Coast is being chased by an Irish Navy Frigate and a Guarda Patrol Boat. The Dublin Government is very unhappy at their territory being used as a base for a terrorist attack on the leader of another nation. Dublin has also given their forces permission to shoot to kill. Thankfully, the provisions for co-operation in these events that are contained in the Good Friday Agreement has worked very well. They are confident that the Trawler will be stopped within the hour.”
“Finally, in view of the change of course by the remaining Trawler, RAF Command has instructed the Pilot of the A-330 carrying the Prime Minister to divert to the north and it will enter UK Airspace over South West Wales and will make a landing at Brize Norton shortly thereafter. Details of her return to London are not yet available.”
"Oh, and one final thing, on the advice of the head of the RAF, I have ordered the Commander of the aircraft carrying the PM to turn off their IFF beacon. I am given to understand that allows some websites to track the aircraft. We don't want the route of the aircraft to be in public domain at this time. NATO and the Irish Government have been informed and have agreed with the decision."
He turned his attention to me.
“Now Ms Marceau. We have considered the outline to your plan and frankly, it is head and shoulders above anything anyone else has proposed. If you need any help all you need to do is ask.”
I was stunned. I expected a modern day ‘Spanish Inquisition’ before a ‘we shall consider the plan and let you know’ result. Then I realised that this was a time for action.
“Thank you, Sir. In view of the latest developments, we do not require any additional assistance other than that laid out in the original plan.”
“In that case,” said the Home Secretary,
“Ladies and Gentlemen, Operation Caldicot is a Go.”
My heart was beating at twenty to the dozen.
Before I knew it, the room was clearing and only three of us remained. Sam, myself and the head of MI6. Then someone I didn’t recognise arrived.
“Sorry I was late, there were some reports of sightings of Esteban in Docklands. They came in just as I was about to leave to come here. Sadly, they turned out to be false.”
We knew that as he’d phoned through to explain his absence.
Sam said,
“Angelique, meet Sebastian Downs. Seb, is acting head of MI5 pending confirmation by the PM when she returns.”
Sebastian smiled back at me.
“Pleased to meet you Ms Marceau,” he said.
“I have read your dossier and have to say that we all owe you a lot. I will make sure that you my department gives you all the assistance you need to make whatever you are planning a success.”
His voice was thin and distinctive. I’d heard it before but I could not work out where it was. His name was also jogging some memories from somewhere but I could not place when and where it was.
I put those concerns to the back of my mind as we got down to discuss the details of the plan and what resources would be needed.
The detailed planning took us almost three hours. At the end, I was satisfied that we had covered all the bases.
With everyone in agreement, we adjourned and returned to our respective departments.
“Where have you been?” she asked with a very concerned voice.
“COBRA,” said Sam.
Nothing more needed to be said.
“We have a ‘Go’ for 18:00 tomorrow,” I added.
Jemma’s eyes bulged from their sockets.
“Really?”
“Yes, replied Sam. ‘5’ were especially helpful for once. Perhaps their acting head wants to mend the bridges with us and hopefully get the job on a permanent basis? He’s called Sebastian Downs. He was very helpful with the planning.”
Both ‘5’ and ‘6’ were envious of us in that we answered directly to the PM. They were subject to Parliamentary scrutiny of their budget and operations. We weren’t and that was sometimes the cause of a lot of infighting. Because of our goal to remain invisible, we often let them have the credit for a successful operation. That usually helped smooth over the gaps between our departments.
Jemma and I headed for the Cafeteria and something to eat.
We’d just finished our meal when Jemma said,
“Ok, out with it. Something is bothering you. You can tell me you know that.”
I looked at Jemma and her expression told me that she wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
“This is it for us isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Us. When this is over what’s next for me, for you and for us?”
I took hold of her hand and looked in her eyes.
“Us is what I want and apart from the Midges, would ‘Joy’s Retreat’, be so bad as a place to retire to?”
“You say the sweetest things… Or is it your boat and the fishing that you love? Do I get a look in as well?”
I squeezed her hand and looked her in the eye.
“Everything. You have grown to love the place just as much as me. You even won the best ‘Terrine’ at the local show last year. I caught the trout and you made waved your magic wand in the kitchen. We are a team. Always have been and always will be. Besides, neither of us have anywhere else to go now do we? Our other place of residence is hardly liveable and besides it is or rather was, a department flat.
“I’m just being a silly woman, aren’t I?”
“No, my darling you are not. We have a big day ahead of us and the outcome is by no means clear to anyone.”
“I guess so.”
Then after a sigh she added,
“We need to get some sleep. We are going to have a long day tomorrow.”
“Don’t forget that we have a few seeds to sow tonight? Are you ready to drop the hint that we are alive on FaceBook?”
Her face brightened up considerably.
“All ready my dear. I’m using the Sandy White account. One of their followers is a known informant to Daniel Esteban’s Florida Organisation.”
I smiled and took her hand as we headed for the lift and the short ride down to Level 3 Comms. This was the one part of the building that had direct and non-firewalled access to the Internet Backbone. The Security was even tighter than usual but we didn’t mind as we knew that it was essential. The rules were simple. No media in and no media out. We could take things in on paper but that was it. We could print out things and remove the copy. The room was shielded just as much as the COBRA Room was.
Jemma hit the keys and put up a post on FaceBook saying that the fake person, Sandy White had seen me getting on a train to Bristol at London’s Paddington Station. Sandy’s alias worked at the Foreign Office. There was a Higher Admin Officer on the staff at the Foreign Office called Sandy White just in case anyone did any checking. They even had their own office with Sandy’s name on the door. There was even an address in Queens Park in her name. This was the sort of lengths we went to, to make an alias work.
We seeded another few items of information thanks to a couple of Officers from Special Branch and their Informants.
With that done we returned to the apartment at the top of the building.
I made a single phone call to someone I knew that we could rely on. After the call, I texted the details to him. He’d be in position the following lunchtime.
Then we hit the sack.
“Wha… what’s the matter?” I asked still very much asleep.
“I know where we heard that name before!”
“What name?”
“The acting head of ‘5’. Sebastian something…”
“Sebastian Downs. Where have we heard it before then?”
[to be continued]
[1] RAF Lakenheath is actually a USAF base.
[2] COBRA is the British Government’s emergency response committee set up to respond to a national or regional crisis. Standing for Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, the COBRA Committee comes together in moments of perceived crisis under the chairmanship of either the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary.
“Exactly where have you heard that name before?” I said as I wiped the sleep from my eyes.
“Savernake Forest,” exclaimed Jemma.
The trouble with my partner was that when she was overly tired or woken up in the middle of the night, sometimes she spoke total gibberish. I’d learned to handle it but many people we had to work with couldn’t handle her without losing their patience pretty quickly.
My brain was slowly starting to work and as I tried to remember the last time I’d or rather we’d been to Savernake Forest. This is an area of ancient woodland to the South East of the town of Marlborough in Wiltshire. Then it came to me.
“Oh, you must mean Farthings home?”
“Yes, that’s it. He left his home very much in a hurry, didn’t he?” reasoned Jemma.
“Yeah, we stopped him as he left in his Porsche. If I recall you lit him up with your target light and his face turned to ash. But what else did you remember?”
“He left in so much of a hurry, that he forgot to erase all the messages on his answering machine. I’m sure that Sebastian Downs was one of the callers. I didn’t think much of it at the time. The message had not been totally played before it was cut off. I think that is his name on the tape. At least it is someone calling himself ‘Seb’…”
“So? Could there not be a perfectly valid reason for a deputy director of ‘5’ to call someone from our organisation?”
Jemma sagged back into the bed.
“I’m sure that it was him who tipped off Farthing.”
The realisation of what she’d just said hit me hard.
“But Farthing was the sniper so he knew that he’d missed his target so it would be natural for him to want to ‘leg it’.”
“Yes but… Why or how would ‘5’ know about our movements?”
“Our car must have passed at least one ANPR Camera between where we’d left it near Cirencester and Farthings. We also went into Swindon remember! What if Farthing tipped off ‘5’ about the registration number of your car and when it was spotted not that far away from Farthings home… It is more than likely that ‘5’ has the same system we use for ANPR targeting? Well you can guess the rest.”
“That is an awful lot of ‘What if’s’ you know…”
“But how else can you explain what I remember?”
“Are you sure that you remember it? There has been a lot of events and also time between then and not. Oh, and don’t forget about a certain RPG that came our way not that long ago?”
What she’d said was perfectly true.
“We never told anyone about going into Swindon yet… And very, very few people knew about us being back in London. Sam would be able to tell us if ‘5’ also knew about us returning.”
“We may never know the full truth but, it might also mean that he’s the one who tipped off Esteban about the PM’s flight plan couldn’t it?”
“It looks that way. All circumstantial but all the fingers are pointing in his direction.”
“But we have to prove it don’t we and fast,” I commented.
“Isn’t that Answering Machine downstairs in the ‘Evidence Department’?”
I let out a groan. Our short period of rest was over.
“We’ll need Sam’s say-so to get at it though.”
“Well? Get him on the phone then!” said Jemma as she made a dash for the bathroom.
Half an hour later we took the lift down to the bottom of the department. I’d only been down this far once before and that was when I was shown where the entrance to our Nuclear Bunker was.
Sam was waiting for us. He had a really stern look on his face.
“This had better be good. If it was anyone else I would have told them to get lost especially at this ungodly hour.”
“Sam, Jemma is sure that it is Downs’s voice on that machine.”
“Well why don’t we go and see for ourselves?”
Ten minutes later, we had our hands on the machine. I plugged it in and breathed a huge sigh of relief as the stored message counter showed ‘1’.
Without delay, I pressed play.
We listened and sure enough we heard the voice of Sebastian Downs tipping Farthing off of our impending arrival. There was a sort of code but what he was saying was perfectly clear. He even identified himself at the end.
“Once more please?” said Sam.
We listened intently to the recording once more.
“Right. You two need to come with me. Bring the machine with you.”
“Where are we going?” asked Jemma.
“No 10.”
He didn’t need to say any more.
Sam called Downing Street and after some discussion, the PM was summoned to the phone.
“Prime Minister, we think we have discovered the mole who leaked your travel plans.”
“Yes, we have evidence.”
“Prime Minister, please do not convene a COBRA meeting under any circumstances. The person responsible for leaking is one of the members of COBRA. A Senior member.”
There was a silence on the phone. That revelation could well have stunned the PM.
“Yes, Prime Minister. We will leave within five minutes.”
He put the phone down and through slightly gritted teeth he said,
“That has put the cat amongst the pigeons. This is huge believe me.”
I had no doubts that it was going to cause a few earthquakes inside the Government before the day was out. This wasn’t the first time that we’d done that so I was sure that a lot of people in a lot of offices all over Whitehall would cheer when they find out that we’d retired. If there was one thing that we’d learned over the years is that Civil Servants don’t like change.
We were ushered downstairs and into the same room where I’d been for the Cobra meeting. The Prime Minister was waiting for us.
“Good morning Prime Minister,” said Sam as we were shown in.
“Come in Sam and take a seat,” said the PM.
“Prime Minister, this is Jemma and Angelique. They are my top Agents but you know that of course.”
“Good morning, please sit down and tell me what you have?”
The PM was a woman of few words.
“We think … well, please take a listen for yourself,” said Sam.
He switched on the answering machine and played the message.
At the end he said,
“That is the voice of the current acting head of ‘5’, Sebastian Downs tipping of Farthing of the impending arrival of these two agents of mine at his house near Marlborough. Farthing was, as you know working for Esteban so we think that it is reasonable to assume that Downs is as well.”
Sam paused but the PM said nothing so he carried on.
“SOP dictates that your flight plans from DC to here were strictly on a need to know basis. Only a few people knew about them. That few includes all the COBRA members which includes Downs. He also knew that due to the remnants of storm Elijah coming across the Atlantic, that when your flight reached a certain point the plane would choose one of three routes into UK airspace. There can be no other explanation as to how Esteban knew of that information especially given the theft of the three trawlers.”
“Oh, and no one in my organisation knew about the pending visit that these two agents made to Farthings house. All we knew was that someone had taken a pot-shot at them in the early hours of that morning in Wales and that they were heading back to London. Farthing was legging it and here is the evidence that tells us who tipped him off.”
The PM thought for a moment before saying to me,
“Why didn’t you raise this yesterday?”
“I knew that I’d heard the voice before but could not work out where. I told Jemma when we returned to the department and it came to her in the middle of the night. He has a very distinctive thin voice.”
Then I added,
“With the assassination of the head of ‘5’, Downs was always next in line for the position. What would the Russians, the Chinese, or any foreign power would give for a spy at this level of Government? It is Kim Philby, Donald McLean and Anthony Blunt all rolled into one and doubled. It seems to me that Daniel Esteban has clearly invested an awful lot of time equal amounts of money in getting people at this sort of level into the depths of our Government. We all know how he uses this Country as the entry point to Europe for his criminal activities. With someone at the top of our Intelligence Services he would be free carry on almost at will.”
The PM looked at me before nodding her head.
“I’m inclined to agree with you. Please stay here for a few minutes. I need to get a document.”
Without waiting for any response, the PM left us alone in the COBRA room.
“What is she going to get?” asked Jemma.
Sam let a small smile appear on his face for half a second.
“I think I know what it is. If I’m right, I’ve seen the folder she is going to get but not what is inside. Oh, I know what is there in general but in detail? No chance.”
Sam’s words hit me hard. I could tell that Jemma was equally stunned.
The PM returned less than five minutes after she’d left us alone. She was carrying a large buff envelope that was clearly marked ‘Top Secret’ but the lettering was in Red and Black. This was ultra-ultra secret.
She sat down and opened the envelope and pulled out the contents. She put her hands on top of the contents and said,
“As you know Winston Churchill founded your department in 1943. This file contains the articles of engagement for your department. I know that you know the basics but in order for us to take the next step, you need to know everything.”
None of us moved an inch.
The PM took a sheet of paper from the pile.
“Everyone who sees the contents of this file has to sign and date the log first.
She looked at the names on the list.
“You three are the first people who are not a PM or Deputy PM to see the contents since the rules were formalised in early 1944. Please take your time and fill in the details. If you feel that you can’t look at them then you may leave and no one outside those of us here will ever know. This is one of the rules of engagement that I can tell you about. This is much like the rules of ‘Fight Club’ but these came a long time before that bit of fluff from Hollywood came along.”
Sam took his chance.
“Are you sure about this Prime Minister?”
“Sam… I’ve never been more sure about anything in my life. The very existence of our society as we know it is at stake.”
She didn’t wait but handed Jemma the log. She glanced at the names and then added hers to the list. Sam did the same and passed it to me. As I read the list, I was shocked by how few people had viewed the contents in over eighty years. I added my name to the list. Sam did the same.
“Thank you for doing that,” said the PM.
She handed Sam another sheet of paper from the file. From the flimsiness and just how it looked told me that this was a document that was created during WW2.
Sam read the page and passed it to Jemma and myself. We read it and I at least began to understand how deep in the shit we are.
“That document gives you three the power to do whatever is needed to take down one of our security services. This is the backstop that Winston hoped would never have to be implemented. Sadly, it has given the level of infiltration that we have at the moment.”
She let those words sink in.
“To reinforce the words on the paper, you now have the authority to do whatever is needed to rid our government and security services of traitors. If that needs someone to be taken out then you are authorised to do it. Shoot on sight if needs be. Obviously if that sort of sanction is needed then the anonymity that your department has enjoyed could well be at an end.”
Again no one said anything.
“Sam, what do you plan to do next?”
“Prime Minister, as you know Operation Caldicot is underway. The exposure of Downs as a traitor puts that whole thing in jeopardy.”
“I agree. Is it too late to call it off?”
“Prime Minister, if we do that, that will alert Downs and as a result Esteban would probably escape our clutches.”
“What do you propose then?”
“A few changes to the plan that should enable the arrest of both Downs and Esteban.”
“I’m guessing that you don’t know what they are yet?” asked the PM.
“That is correct. We have your approval to use whatever means we think fit to apprehend both of them but we will may well need your help in a peripheral capacity in order to maintain credibility.”
The PM smiled.
“Call a COBRA meeting perhaps?”
“Exactly what we were thinking Prime Minister. That should tie up Mr Downs and he won’t be able to update his boss of what is going on without arising suspicions. The changes I think we will make to the operation will not involve ‘5’ in any way shape for form so he has no excuse to leave the COBRA meeting on the pretence to update his people. We will cut them out of the loop entirely. If he does not attend COBRA then we will get special branch to arrest him. Due to the current security threat level he has a special branch unit with him at all times which is on your direct order.”
“And Mr Esteban?” asked the PM.
“Now that we know a lot of what he knows, we can compensate for that and grab him as … well as he thinks that he is about to finally kill these two.”
“Sam, I have great faith in the three of you to get this sorted out with the minimum of fuss.”
Then she said,
“What time do you want me to call the COBRA meeting for?”
“Prime Minister, we are not quite sure but the schedule for the operation indicates that it should come to conclusion around 16:00 today. That is two hours earlier than what we’d planned for the operation which leaves less time for Downs to tip off Esteban.”
“Good. Then I’ll call the meeting for an hour before that on the pretext of monitoring the progress of the operation. That should seem perfectly normal and not arouse any suspicions.”
With that the PM stood up and walked towards the door. Then she hesitated and turned to look at us.
“Good luck today. Get the bastard. The former head of ‘5’ was a good friend to me… and an honourable servant to the nation. It will be hard to find a decent replacement.”
Then she said to Jemma and myself.
“Please be careful. I’ve seen your records and no one in ‘5’ or ‘6’ even comes close to yours but even the best of you sometimes… well, their luck runs out. I don’t want… The nation does not want that to happen understood!”
We all felt humbled by her words.
“Now you two,” said Sam when we were back in the department.
“The PM has given you carte-blanche to bring this whole thing to a satisfactory conclusion. However, that does not mean shoot on sight even if she said it does but, you are to bring me his head on a platter but alive so to speak. Understand?”
“Sam, you know that isn’t our style.”
He smiled.
“But I have to say what I did. Rules is rules is rules and all that. But if you have to take the final shot then do it. Do not hesitate for even one nano-second. Understood?”
Neither of us said anything but we nodded our heads in agreement.
“Right, what tweaks to the plan are you making?”
“Sam?”
He put his hand up to stop me.
“Don’t tell me. The fewer people who know the details the better. However, is there anything you need from me in order to make the operation work better, now is the time to let me know?”
I looked at Jemma and she shook her head.
“I think we are good to go Sam.”
After a check with me, Sam said,
“Ok and good luck. I’ll be here until the COBRA meeting. I’ll let you know if Downs is attending it or not when we assemble at No 10. He’ll get a bit of a shock when he finds out that it is several hours earlier than scheduled.”
“Thanks Sam. If he does a runner then you’ll keep us informed?”
“Yes. SB owe me more than a few favours after the Luton Airport incident last year and the PM is right behind us so no one will complain. I’ll get onto them right away and brief their Commander.”
After a quick breakfast, I made a phone call while Jemma went to prepare our gear for the day. She’d taken on the role as Armourer to our team very early on in the relationship.
“Hello Jock”.
I was on the phone to someone who’d become a good friend of ours during our sojourn in Scotland. He’d called me while we were in my bombed out flat. We tried to talk him out of coming south but he would not take no for an answer. Now, we were glad that he did come. He was the one person we could trust to watch our back literally.
“No just confirming that you are on schedule?”
“Great. There has been a slight change of plan. We need to bring forward the operation.”
“A dirty great mole on top of the heap. We aim to get them out in the open in daylight.”
“I’ll text you the new time when we get an update. It should be around one at the latest. Other than that, everything is still a ‘go’.”
“Thanks Jock. See you soon.”
Then before I hung up I added,
“We will have all the kit you need with us.”
“What?”
“No, I won’t ask where or how. As long as they are properly disposed of when this is all over. And I mean totally disposed of.”
His response made me laugh.
“Yes, that is a good place.”
I texted the change of plan to Jock and went to find Jemma.
She smiled as I entered the Armoury.
“I have got everything we will need,” she said as she pointed at a large black holdall.
“Jock won’t be needing his stuff. Apparently, he’s acquired some from somewhere.”
Jemma shook her head.
“That’s Jock through and through. It is really nice to have him on our side.”
“I told him that he needed to dispose of the weapons he has acquired after the operation.”
Neither of us would disagree with that.
“He said that they’d end up in the sea somewhere between Rhum and Eigg. I agreed with his disposal point.”
“Great. We are good to go then,” said Jemma.
Her face was expressionless. We both knew that we had a lot on the plate and if it went wrong we would more than likely not be coming out the other side. The downside for us was that we were as they say in Boxing, rather ‘ring rusty’. Months and months of not being on operations had taken its toll with us. While we were fit neither of us had fired a weapon other than on the range for almost two years. We could have done with another exercise in the Brecon Beacons with Jock but there really was no time for extravagances like that. Scores needed to be settled right now.
Twenty minutes later we climbed into in the back of what looked like a normal Transit Van that belonged to a National Delivery Company.
This was the perfect cover that would allow us to leave the city undetected at least by casual observers.
The driver headed for the Delivery Company depot in Brentford. There were literally dozens of similar vans operating in the area so we’d not look out of place.
There we transferred to a plain white Peugeot Boxer van. We put on the ‘de-rigeur’ yellow jackets and red baseball caps. We looked like any other team that was leaving to deliver goods.
I got in the passenger seat. Jemma was just as good a driver as me and being the passenger gave me some more time to go over every little detail of the plan in my mind.
A few minutes later we were on the M4 heading west. Our destination was the former home of Terrence Farthing. It was due to be sold at Auction in a month or so but was perfect for what we hoped was the final chapter in our seemingly never-ending fight against Daniel Esteban and his organisation.
As we passed Heathrow I felt a sudden urge to jack it all in and take off to somewhere warm and safe with Jemma but those thoughts soon passed and I began to concentrate on the job ahead.
[to be continued in the final part 10]
It was just after one in the afternoon when we arrived at the house in Wiltshire. We’d taken a pretty roundabout route just in case we were being followed but a diversion through some very narrow lanes in South Oxfordshire and West Berkshire had made it next to impossible for any vehicle to follow us without us seeing them.
Jemma got out at the top of the drive to do a quick reconnoitre of the property and the surrounding land. She checked her Glock and then smiled at me as she disappeared into the undergrowth.
I moved over to the driver’s seat and waited for her to return. I had my Glock in my hand but well out of sight.
She returned almost twenty minutes later and got into the van.
“All clear. The Crime Scene tapes have not been tampered with so no one is in the house.”
We drove down the drive and after unloading our gear, I parked the van in the garage with it facing outwards and with the keys in the ignition just in case we needed to make a quick getaway.
I left the garage and closed the doors behind me. The garage that had held over a million pounds worth of cars just over a year ago now was home to just a used and decided tatty looking white van. It might look tatty but it was mechanically perfect. The highly tuned engine and suspension would allow the van to travel at double the national speed limit if needed. I’d been assured by our technical people that it could go from zero to sixty mph in under five seconds if needed. I hoped that we would not need that sort of performance today.
Jemma had removed all the crime scene tapes and gone inside the house to begin seting up our gear while I did a check of the perimeter. As I neared the far rear of the property my phone vibrated. A text had arrived.
“That is a really fetching yellow jacket you are wearing. It is stag hunting season yet?”
It was from Jock. I smiled as I put the phone back into my pocket. I gave him a thumbs up before heading back to the house. I was sure that he was watching my every movement.
As I approached the house, I removed the yellow jacket that I was wearing. It was not needed any longer. I did wonder how he’d got in place but that was a question for a later time.
“Jock is in place as planned,” I said to Jemma who had finished unpacking our gear.
“Eh? I looked for him but there was no trace?”
“That’s Jock down to a ‘T’. He probably saw us arrive and you start off on your recce. If I was him, I’d have retreated until you’d gone before getting back into position. Remember day three of our little jaunt in Wales?”
Jemma just smiled back at me as she put on her body armour and weapons belt.
“Any word from George?”
‘George’ was our general term for people and places outwith of our current location. It meant that if we were overheard, the eavesdroppers would assume that we were talking about a specific person. This was another of the little quirks that we’d put into our behaviours while on operations.
“Not as yet. He isn’t due to call yet.”
Again, my answer was non-specific.
“Right, we sit and wait?”
“Not quite. I still need to go dig up the lawn. We have to make it look as if we are searching for the missing booty.”
Jemma nodded. Like me, in times like this, she was a person of few words. I was the same when I was in what we jokingly called ‘Mission Mode’.
I picked up the foldable spade from the holdall that had contained our weapons and went out into the front garden. It didn’t take me long to dig half a dozen small holes in the grass lawn. My final job was to setup a small infrared trap at the entrance of the drive. That would give us a few seconds warning when our visitors arrived.
When I returned to the house Jemma was on the phone.
“Yes, ok got that. Thanks. Bye.”
She ended the call.
“That was George. Their watchers near Slough have reported two SUV’s using stolen number plates are moving fairly rapidly west along the M4. One of George’s friends tailed them at a distance to junction thirteen where they turned off as ordered. The SUV’s carried on westwards. George estimates that there are nine or ten occupants in total but could be more.”
George or more accurately a Terrorist Watch Group within Special Branch had come up trumps for us. I made a note to thank Sam for getting their help at very short notice.
I looked at my watch and did a quick estimate.
“That means we have between twenty-five and thirty-five minutes to wait. This depends on the traffic between Junction Fifteen of the Motorway and here or a bit longer if they turn off at Fourteen,” I replied.
I texted the update on the targets to Jock. He replied with a simple ‘GAT’. That meant, ‘Gotcha And Thanks’. He’d soon switch his phone off after that and make sure that it wasn’t trackable. Jock was that sort of person. By choice, he didn’t have any internet at his home in Glasgow. Like us, he had zero social media presence. That had helped us gel as a team during our little sojourn in Wales.
Jemma smiled at me before picking up her Sig-Sauer, a Glock-19 and a semi-automatic 9mm rifle with a sniper-scope, tripod mount and a silencer attached. I could tell that she had several spare magazines inside her flack-jacket. Jemma was never one to go lightly armed. Her reasoning for always using two different types of hand-gun was that if one jammed then it was highly unlikely that the second would do the same. I’d never had a Glock or a Sig jam but she would not be moved on that particular habit. At times like this being a creature of habit is a big plus. We had probably lasted as long as we had by knowing instinctively what the other one would be doing at any moment of an operation. For an instant I felt a pang of regret that this time would be our last not matter how it turned out.
“I’ll get into position then,” she said bringing me back to reality.
She came up to me and gave me a long kiss.
“Hang on in there ok. No getting smart eh?” said Jemma when we broke apart.
“Would I do that?” I replied grinning.
She gave me another peck on the cheek and whispered.
“Just be careful. For me!”
Then she was gone. The position we’d planned for her was outside the house at the front. There was an old shed in a bad state of repair about fifty metres away from the house. Our plan was that Jemma would be in a sniper’s prone position just to one side of the shed. The virtual ruin would hide her from any vehicles that came up the drive. Her first targets were the tyres of the SUV's. Then she’d switch to disabling any ‘heavies’ that were obviously carrying weapons before they got into the house.
I got myself ready for the engagement and left the house at few minutes before the SUV’s were due to arrive.
I’d just arrived at my position when my phone vibrated. There were two texts waiting for me.
The first was from Sam. The acting head of MI5 wasn’t going to attend the COBRA meeting. He’d sent his apologies stating a toothache for his absence. The second was a follow up from Sam stating that the tail that Special Branch had on him was still in place and that he was in a car apparently heading for his Dentists offices in Wimbledon.
That in itself was not an issue but he was in my opinion acting suspiciously. In a time of national emergency surely, a dentist could be found to attend him while he was at No 10.
I put those thoughts to one side and settled myself into place and checked my watch. I estimated that we had only a few minutes to wait before our guests were due to arrive.
I used the time to clear my mind of other thoughts. I knew that Jemma would be doing the same. What we did was almost meditation but it worked and allowed us to concentrate on the matter at hand without worrying about other things.
By the time I was ready, it was also time for them to arrive. It was quiet apart from the sound a train going along the nearby railway line. That was to be expected given the location. Then it was just a few Jackdaws chattering in the nearby trees.
I heard at least four ‘pops’ from some distance away. These were to my trained ears, from a silenced semi-automatic rifle. The rapidity of them also told me that they came from a single weapon. My hopes went up and then came crashing down. It might not have been Jock letting off those shots.
It was still quiet at the front of the house.
My phone vibrated. I took a brief look at it.
The text was from Jock. I smiled when I read it. He’d disabled four people who emerged from an SUV close to where he was positioned. He also said that they were heavily armed.
I guessed that they hadn’t expected anyone to be guarding the rear of the house. One up for the good guys.
I let out a sigh. So far so good. I was very pleased that one of the two vehicles and its occupants, was out of action before events had even properly started. That evened the odds considerably.
The alarm in my pocket went off. Someone or something was coming up the main drive. Jemma would know that as well as she had an identical alarm in her pocket.
A few seconds later, the other SUV arrived in a cloud of dust and gravel as it rapidly came to a halt in front of the house.
As the dust settled, I saw that five heavily armed men had already emerged from the car. They spread out keeping low as they approached the house.
These were obviously well trained and from the way that they moved, probably ex-military. Each of them had a machine gun and a sidearm and probably a knife or two secreted about their body. They were also all wearing body armour. It was clearly the sort that special forces use. They clearly meant business.
They’d gone only a few yards when both of the tyres of the SUV on the side where Jemma was positioned started to deflate. That vehicle was not going anywhere for a while.
One of the men noticed this and alerted the others. They all turned in the general direction of Jemma.
As they now had their backs to me, I let off four shots in rapid succession. Two of the men fell over. I’d effectively kneecapped them from behind. I’d targeted both knees just to be sure. They cried out as they fell over. Like the SUV, they would not be going very far or very fast anytime soon.
It was clear that these people were not working as a team. That evened the odds even more.
Two more shots aimed at their lower body made sure that they would not be moving very far at all. If they failed to get the message then the next shot would certainly be fatal.
Jemma took out two of the others in the same way.
That left one target that was fully mobile.
To my dismay, before he could be disabled, he lobbed what looked like a grenade in Jemma’s direction before I could take him out. It exploded on impact with the roof of the shed.
For a split second, I wanted to go to Jemma’s aid. Then my training took over as I realised that if Jemma had been positioned where she’d said that she would be then she’d pretty well be beyond my or anyone else’s help.
I turned my attention back to the man who’d lobbed the grenade.
I didn’t want to disable this one because of Jemma, so I aimed a lot higher. He took two rounds in the chest. They knocked him flat onto the ground but it didn’t stop him. He was still able to move.
I aimed again. This time at his head and squeezed off another round. This time he collapsed onto the floor and didn’t move. A head shot is like that.
Now that he was silent, I looked over at where Jemma was supposed to be. The shed was in a thousand bits. I could not see Jemma due to the debris.
Then my brain clicked back into action and I looked back at the car. I needed to check it over before even thinking about Jemma.
I got up from the where I'd been lying prone and cautiously approached the SUV.
Moving slowly and as quietly as I could, I moved around so that I could see inside. Luckily one of the rear doors was open and I could see that there was no one in the back. I needed to check the front but the side windows of the car were heavily tinted. Definitely illegal but with this sort of occupants, it would have to be a brave policeman to challenge them.
I slowly moved towards the left rear of the vehicle with my Glock at the ready. Hand guns are my weapon of choice for this part of the operation.
I saw the silhouette of someone moving in the front passenger seat.
“You in the front seat! Come out with your hand up!”
They didn’t move.
I switched to Spanish
"Usted en el asiento delantero! Salir con la mano hacia arriba!”
They still didn’t move.
“Move yourself or I open fire! I don’t care who you are, I will fire!”
To make them think long and hard about not complying, I let off a round. I’d aimed it at the ground close to the vehicle.
The occupant called out.
“You English don’t shoot unarmed people!”
“I have the authority right from the top to shoot on sight. Your comrades have given me plenty of reason to shoot you right now. You are all that is left uninjured. At least one of them is dead. You will be too if you don’t comply with my commands.”
“Now what is it to be eh?”
I looked over at two of the wounded. One was trying to crawl away. Both of his legs were useless so I let him go as he would not get very far. However, another one was trying to reach for a gun. I let off another round and he dropped back to the ground. He’d taken a shot to the head. He would not be bothering us again.
I looked back into the car.
“That’s two of your men down for good and everyone in the other vehicle has been disabled so it is time to give up!”
“I’m coming. Don’t shoot.”
“Open the door slowly and step out with your hands so that I can see them.”
To reinforce my order, I let off another single round into the ground close to the car.
The door swung open and Daniel Esteban slowly emerged. I tried hard but failed to stop a smile from appearing on my face for a second or so.
“Down in the floor… Slowly!” I commanded.
He sank down onto his knees. The look on his face told me that he was not a happy camper. Then he looked up and saw me. He said a lot of very bad curses in Spanish.
“You should be dead. I fired the missile myself. I saw your home explode!”
“But we aren’t,” I replied hoping that Jemma had somehow survived the grenade.
“How does it feel to be the last man standing? No one will be coming to rescue now.”
His shoulders sagged.
“You should be dead!” he repeated.
“Yeah but I’m not and nor is my partner.”
I hoped that I was right in that statement.
“Your partner is finished. That grenade took her out!” he said quite triumphantly.
“Really!” came a familiar voice from the other side of the car. It was Jemma.
I felt really relieved. She didn’t look injured at all.
Our prisoner looked aghast.
“I will get you two if it is the last thing I do!” he muttered.
“You won’t have a chance when we send you to South Georgia!” countered Jemma.
Esteban laughed.
“Do you seriously think that we don’t know exactly where that is? A team of mine will be dealing with it shortly.”
That worried me immensely. I wondered if he was bragging or if he was telling the truth. Either way, I needed to escalate this ASAP.
“Cuff him please?” I asked Jemma.
“It will be my pleasure,” replied my partner as she pulled out several plastic cable ties.
With our prisoner’s hands and legs secured and thoroughly searched, I pulled out my phone and called a London Number. I added my security code to the number as it started ringing.
“Code Black, COBRA Interrupt,” I said to the operator when it was answered. They were expecting a call from us.
This was a signal for my call to be put through to Downing Street.
After what seemed an eternity, the call was answered by a familiar voice.
“Hello Sam. We’ve got him. He’s uninjured,” I added for good measure.
“Yes, Daniel Esteban. Up to eight hostiles need medical attention. At least two are fatal. Several of the others will have difficulty walking again if they ever recover.”
I listened to Sam relaying what I’d said to the rest of the people in the room.
“Sorry boss, there is something else.”
“Yes, it is important, very important.”
“I don’t know if he was bragging but Esteban says he knows where South Georgia is and that his people will be as he put it, ‘dealing with it shortly’.”
“Yes sir, that’s exactly what he said.”
“Thanks sir. Understood.”
I ended the call and gave a thumbs up to Jemma.
We’d collected the wounded men and cuffed them by the time three Special Branch cars arrived and took over the situation.
“There are at least four more about 100 meters to the rear of the house. One of our people is there. He’s a fairly trigger-happy former special forces RSM, so extreme caution is recommended,” I said to the leader of the SB team.
“Understood,” he replied as he dispatched three of his team to retrieve them from Jock.
I took Jemma aside for a word.
“I thought that you were done for with that grenade?”
She grinned back at me.
“When I got into position, I didn’t think that it would give me a wide enough zone of fire so I moved about thirty metres away.”
“There isn’t much left to that shed now!” I remarked.
“Yeah. I got lucky.”
We were shooed out of the way by Special Branch so we wandered over to the ruins of the shed. We both saw the wreckage and I thanked our maker that Jemma had decided to move position. There really was not much left of the building.
“What’s that?” remarked Jemma as she pointed at something in the middle of the wreckage.
“I don’t know?”
We both moved forward and pulled a few bits of the wreckage away.
Neither of us said anything when we saw what was there.
“Was this place searched when we arrested Farthing?” I asked.
“It must have been,” replied Jemma.
I noticed some tattered remnants of a carpet and some linoleum flooring.
“Perhaps that was covering the floor when it was searched?”
Jemma grunted. She was obviously deep in thought.
“Let’s walk away and get this all wrapped up. I think whatever is beneath that trap-door needs investigating but not with SB around. If it is what I think it is then this then it might just contain all the items that were not accounted for in Farthing’s records?”
Jemma as usual made perfect sense.
“We’ve got public enemy No 1 and may have found all that missing millions. Good days work I’d say,” said Jemma.
I was not going to argue with that.
With a smile on our faces, we went back into the house to retrieve the rest of our gear.
When we emerged, we found Jock telling the Special Branch Detective Inspector in a loud but firm voice that he was working for us and that he wasn’t a terrorist. He was accompanied by a Soldier in full camouflage.
“I’ve seen more terrorists than you have had hot dinners laddie!” he said in his finest ‘East End of Glasgow’ accent. That really only came through when he was getting angry.
The Soldier said,
“I can vouch for this man. I’m Captain Brooks and he trained me and many like me when he was in the Army.”
“Oh Yeah? What regiment are you in Captain?” demanded the DI.
“I’m not at liberty to say. All I can say is that I am here on the direct order of the Prime Minister as are these three.”
“Detective Inspector, what Jock is saying is perfectly true. He was covering our rear. He works for us.”
“And who exactly is ‘us’?”
“That Detective Inspector is, as they say in the movies, beyond your pay grade.”
“Pull the other one! Do you work for MI5?”
“No, we don’t and… Well, let me make a phone call and we can resolve this matter quite easily.”
He was obviously from a bit of Special Branch that had never taken part in one of our operations before. My guess that he was based in either Bristol or Southampton.
Thankfully, he let me make a call. After a bit of explanation, the call was transferred, I handed the phone to him.
“DI Johnstone here. To whom am I speaking?”
“Sir! Sorry Sir.”
He looked at me with daggers for his eyes.”
“Yes Sir. I understand. Every Assistance. Message Understood.”
He handed back me the phone.
“Sir?”
“Yes understood. Can you put Sam on please?”
“Hi Sam. We are fine. Situation Thirty.”
I used our code for ‘we made a discovery but don’t want to talk about it in clear’.
“Understood. Bye.”
I looked at the DI.
“Apparently that was the Home Secretary?”
“It was him. I met him and the PM earlier today. He is in a COBRA meeting with the PM right now. That is how high up this goes.”
He replied with a slight nod of the head.
“Look Detective Inspector. This is your crime scene. We won’t interfere. Some of my colleagues will be arriving by Helicopter within the hour. They will take Mr Esteban off your hands. He will not be your concern any longer.”
“What will happen to him?”
I smiled.
“What do you expect? He is the brains behind the recent attacks in London. He will be dealt with. He was the one that fired that RPG on the Block of Flats. He won’t be going anywhere but a dark deep dungeon for the rest of his life. Any more than that I can’t say.”
“I know, above my pay grade.”
I managed a small smile.
“And mine for that matter so don’t worry about it.”
Ok, so I was lying through my back teeth but I needed him on our side.
Jemma was talking to Jock and the Captain when I joined them.
“Everything ok with Special Branch?”
“Yes. Bleeding Idiots. More concerned with me than with four heavies armed with Mak-10 machine guns, sawn off shotguns and snub nosed .38’s. Talk about getting priorities mixed up.”
I laughed.
“That’s Special Branch in a nutshell I’m afraid. We have all sorts of very uncomplimentary names for them in the department.”
“What’s next?” asked Jock changing the subject.
I could tell that he wanted to be away from here ASAP. We wanted to do the same but knew that we had to stick around until we were given the all clear.
“Our boss is on his way from London to take the prisoner away. The others will be taken to a very secure military site for medical treatment and interview.”
“So, we are done here?”
I smiled. I could tell that Jock really, really wanted to be off back to Scotland.
“Sorry Jock, but once we’ve handed everything over and been debriefed then we can disappear into the night. Until then we have to hang around.”
“Captain, I can guess where you are from so I won’t ask. My guess is that you were a backstop in case we messed up?”
“Yes Miss. I saw what you two and Jock did and…”
He smiled.
“I can say that you didn’t need our help. My men were very impressed indeed.”
“Thanks Captain. It is nice to know that basically, ‘we did good’.”
We all laughed.
I turned to Jock.
“Sorry Jock, you can’t disappear and chew over the fat with the Captain. Another time maybe.”
He nodded his understanding but the sagging of his shoulders told another story.
“In that case, I’ll take my leave and return to my men. My job here is done,” said the Captain.
He started to move but turned back again and said,
“I am very glad that you two are on our side. You are very, very professional. What I and my men saw here today will stay with us for a long time. I'm sure that one or two of them learned a lot from today. Thank you.”
He saluted us and then disappeared into the undergrowth.
I felt humbled by his words. I looked over at Jemma who appeared to be reacting in much the same way.
“Can I have a quiet word in your ears?” asked Jock.
“Sure,” I replied.
The three of us moved about twenty metres away from the house. We were in full view of the SB people and they were not as heavily armed as we were so they didn’t get in our way but it was obvious from their glances at us that they didn’t fully trust us. That wasn’t unusual for that bunch of ‘Silly Bozos’.
“What’s on your mind Jock?” asked Jemma.
“Are you two coming back north when this is all over?”
I chuckled and looked at Jemma. She was also smiling.
“Yes, we are. We don’t have anything holding us here after the other night.”
“How would you feel if I became your neighbour? Not right next door but close enough but not that close to get under your feet.”
“Eh?” exclaimed Jemma.
“There is a cottage in Kentra for Sale. I saw in advertised in last week’s West Highland Free Press.”
Kentra, was a small hamlet of three or four houses about a mile as the crow flies from our little hideaway.
“Jock, we’d love to have you as a neighbour,” said Jemma with a smile on her face.
“Could this be related to a certain person from the Post Office?” I asked also smiling.
Jock looked down at the ground.
“You got me. Yes, it is,” he replied obviously embarrassed which for him was a rarity.
Jemma took hold of his hand and squeezed it.
“I know she likes you. She told me so a few weeks ago and wondered why you had not been around for a while.”
Jock was pretty red in the face by now.
“No need to feel embarrassed Jock. She’s a fine woman, and she needs a good man in her life,” I said.
“If I didn’t have this one by my side, you might have had some competition…”
Jemma hit me on the arm but grinned.
Jock sighed.
“I know I’ve said it before about you two, but they sure broke the mould when they put you two together.”
At the same time, Jemma and I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.
“Now stop that!” said Jock as he went rather red in the face.
We all laughed.
Sam arrived by RAF Helicopter less than fifty minutes later. Several people we knew from the department were with him. They took control of Esteban while Sam headed in our direction.
“Sam, this is Jock. He’s our number three on this mission.”
Sam shook Jock’s hand.
“I’ve heard a lot about you from the episode in Wales. Pleased to meet you at last.”
“Thanks, but it was nothing. These two are very special agents of whatever organisation it is that you work for. Look after them or you will have me to answer for!”
“Sam, about that,” I said.
“We are done with the department. Once all the loose ends are wrapped up we are retiring. This time for good.”
Sam held up his hand.
“I know and reluctantly, I have to agree but there are some loose ends that need tidying up aren’t there?”
He took a deep breath.
“The tip about South Georgia is being worked on. Our allies in the area are mobilising their special forces. There is a detachment of SBS[1] on exercise in the area. They will be leading the operation from our side.”
“Now, what did you find here? I thought our people had almost torn the place apart after Farthing was arrested?”
“Sam, one of the bad guys lobbed a grenade at an old shed. It looks like there is a trap door under the floor.”
“Ah, I see. There is a team on their way down from London. Once they are here and Special Branch have cleared off you can call it a day. No one is going to want to investigate this any further. We have our man in custody and he’s going somewhere where he can’t get away.”
“Not South Georgia? That seems to not be a secret any longer?”
“I agree. No, we have an alternative place of residence for Mr Esteban and his ilk being prepared as we speak.”
He wasn’t going to give any more information away. What we didn’t know, we could not divulge.
He started looking around. I guessed why.
“Looking for the backup team?”
Sam chuckled.
“I see that they have made themselves known to you.”
“Yes, a Captain Brooks. From Hereford I presume?”
Sam smiled.
“I can’t possibly say.”
“Jock knew him from his time in the Army."
Sam just grinned.
"Well, they were not needed but he was quite complimentary about our actions.”
“Well done and that comes from the top if you get my drift?”
“Thanks Sam.”
Shortly after, six vehicles that were obviously former ambulances arrived and sorted out the wounded and the dead. They left within thirty minutes taking their passengers to somewhere safe and secure to get medical treatment.
We hung around until the department’s search team arrived. They soon discovered a large underground room that contained a lot of money and works of art as well as a considerable quantity of gold. It appeared that the stairs led down to an old Air-Raid shelter.
I knew that Sam would be pleased. There was at least two if not three years of operating expenses for the department in that cache.
As it was getting dark, Jemma Jock and myself climbed into the Peugeot and left the crime scene.
“Where too now Miss Jemma?” asked Jock as we headed for the M4 Motorway.
“I think we all deserve a good meal and a good night’s sleep. I know a nice quiet place near Stratford where we can spend the night. Then we can drop this off at our depot in Birmingham tomorrow morning. Then we can all take the train north. Is that ok for you?”
“That’s fine by me. I’ll leave you in Glasgow if that’s all right. There are a few people I need to see before… Well, there are a few loose ends that need resolving before I come out west.”
“Don’t worry Jock, we will see you when you are good and ready. I would not delay in putting in an offer on that cottage it I were you. We don’t want some outsider buying it as a holiday home now do we?”
We all laughed. We encountered some resistance when we first moved to the area but that softened considerably when we made it clear that we were going to live there all the year and that I ws related to the previous occupant. The next week we'd attended a Ceilidh and made fools of ourselves trying to perform a ‘Dashing White Sergeant’ dance with two local men. That had really broken the ice with the locals.
“I know Miss Jemma. That’s one of the things that I’ll be sorting out in Glasgow.”
Jemma and I both sighed at his use of the word ‘Miss’ again.
“Sorry Jemma force of habit. I’ll try to do better in future,” said a slightly embarrassed Jock.
“Don’t worry Jock, it will be fine and Miss Siobhan will forgive you as well.”
“Is that everything?” Jemma asked Jock as we finished unloading a small rental van that he’d driven up from Glasgow in.
“Yes, that’s the sum total of all my worldly goods I’m afraid,” he replied slightly reluctantly.
“Too many years in the Army I’m afraid. I never married so I was always in barracks. After I left the Service, I stayed in a two-room hoose in Glasgow. There really was not much room their either.”
“You have plenty of space here.”
“Och, I know that Lassie. That’s the problem. Too much space.”
Just then Siobhan, the lady from the Post Office emerged from the cottage.
“Dinner is ready,” she called.
A little later, we left them to sort out the cottage. Jock and Siobhan looked pretty happy together.
We never found out what happened to Daniel Esteban but Sebastian Downs had been apprehended trying to get into a small plane at Fairoaks Airport in Surrey. He was clearly trying to flee the country. He was charged with espionage, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit mass murder and a number of other crimes. He got a whole life sentence[2] that was to be served in the same place as his boss.
Life for us in Scotland revolved around growing our own food, fishing, sailing and being part of the community. Jemma was even learning Gaelic at classes in the nearby village of Strontian.
Our days as secret agents for the unnamed department were well any truly over. After a year or so, we really didn’t miss it one bit. The locals were not the inquisitive sort of people which suited us down to the ground. As far as they were concerned we’d been civil servants in London and had more than enough of the big city which, was good enough for them.
They’d all have a fit if they knew what was hidden in various parts of our house. Sam had insisted that we have some weaponry for defensive purposes in case we had some unwelcome callers. He said that this was SOP for former MI6 and MI5 agents so we had little choice but to accept them. Apart from giving the weapons a regular cleaning, our former life was history and one that we had no intention of returning to in the future.
Jock’s reply was very appropriate.
“I always knew that there was something very special about you two but sometimes, you keep too many secrets from people who care about you.”
We all laughed. He was right of course.
Jemma said,
“We are done keeping secrets from anyone apart from Angelique’s best Sea Trout fishing spots.”
I tugged my ear which told her that she was telling porkies.
She responded by sticking her tongue out at me. She’d never done that before which pleased me no end.
We all raised a glass of an exceptional 20 year old Islay Single Malt Whisky with just a little added water, to that.
[the end]
[Authors Note]
I hope you enjoyed my attempt at a Thriller.
I started writing this in 2016 but got as far as the ‘Ouch’ moment and could not really decide where to go next with.
Then, while on holiday in early August 2018, I visited the Ardnamurchan Peninsular and the Isles of Mull, Skye and Iona. While enjoying the sunshine and the views out to sea (yes it does shine in Scotland) from Ardnamurchan Lighthouse, the plot for the rest of the story came into my mind. Ardnamurchan Lighthouse is the most westerly point on the UK Mainland. I’ll be returning in 2019 when I ride the ‘Four Corners’. This visits the most southerly, easterly, northerly and westerly points on the UK Mainland.
[1]SBS: Special Boat Service. The Royal Navy equivalent to the SAS.
[2]A whole life sentence in the UK means you will spend the rest of your life in prison without the chance of parole.