by Ted Tayler
Hayden told him that before transferring to Larcombe, Hugh had worked out of Edinburgh. His old team would be at his disposal while in Scotland. Whatever he needed was available. Orion thought Hugh seemed one of those super-efficient military types with a permanent can-do mentality. A typical Olympus agent from head to foot.
Orion was met at the station by Dougal McLeish, the new Edinburgh team leader. Dougal asked how Hugh was faring in his new role.
Orion shrugged, “I’m the mushroom guy, Dougal. I’m kept in the dark.”
Dougal had smiled at that and took Orion to meet the other three team members. Dougal drove the dark blue van to Whitecraig, a few miles from Musselburgh. As they stopped by an estate agent’s board by a gateway, Dougal said: -
“James Grant-Nicholls owns this sprawling forty-acre country estate. The main house is late-Victorian, a seven-bedroomed affair that has been extended to provide a large conservatory, and an indoor swimming pool. He put it up for sale when he married last month. It’s on the market for two million. The locals believe someone is interested in buying the place to develop it as an equestrian centre. We’ve got plenty of ground to search, Orion.”
“We have to start somewhere, Dougal. Fiona disappeared a decade ago. I’m convinced her body has been on this estate since then. We aren’t looking for recent signs of a shallow grave being dug. It’s almost lunchtime. Let’s find a pub, get a meal inside us, and come up with ideas on where he buried her.”
The reaction inside the van told Orion he had found common ground. The world looked brighter when they returned to start the search. The five men split up, and three agents checked patches of ground hidden from the nearby roads and tracks. Orion and Dougal avoided areas visible from the house. Nobody believed Sir James vindictive enough to want to look out on his wife’s grave every morning.
There was no disputing the couple argued. All four agents agreed with Orion that James had lost his temper, hit out once too often and Fiona had died. It may have been deliberate, more likely accidental. He wanted to hide the body and then stick to his guns when people asked what happened to her. To this day, James said Fiona never returned to the house after she left the off-licence.
It was dusk before Orion heard a shout from an agent in the distance.
“There’s something here,”
Orion and Dougal joined the others under an oak tree by a dry-stone wall. There was a sunken spot that looked out of place when compared to the surrounding grassland.
“What do you think?” asked Dougal.
“We dig but take it steady,” said Orion.
In less than ten minutes, they uncovered small bones near the surface.
“Fingers of a hand?” asked Dougal. “Scrape away the earth above that. Let’s find the rest of the arm.”
Orion called a halt when an arm, ribcage and hip bone became visible.
“Time to notify the police,” he said, “have either of you got a dog?”
“Take your pick,” said Dougal, as a show of hands revealed three dog owners.
“Tell them, your dog was off the leash enjoying a run and must have scratched away at the earth. You called out, but by the time you found him, he’d unearthed the bones. You couldn’t stop yourself and carried on until you were certain it was a skeleton.”
“No problem,” said the agent with the most inquisitive dog.
“That’s it for us then, Orion?” asked Dougal.
“The police will take it from here,” said Orion, “they’ll have heard of Fiona’s disappearance. It won’t take them long to identify these remains. Sir James will be implicated, and his new wife will be spared the prospect of being physically abused.”
The men returned to the van and set off back to Edinburgh
“Short but sweet,” said Orion, “I thought I might be up here a while. If you drop me back at Haymarket, I’ll catch the late train home to Bath.”
“I wish our missions were always this easy,” said Dougal.
“I’d ask you to elaborate,” said Orion, “but you Olympus people are tight-lipped.”
They spent the rest of the journey in silence. At Haymarket, Orion shook hands with the four men, and with a brief nod, they got back in the van and left.
*****
Monday, 27th to Friday 31st October 2014
Orion arrived at Larcombe to start a new week. Hayden Vincent had been pleased with his Scottish mission. When he handed him the file of new cases on Friday afternoon, he told Orion an arrest was imminent.
While he and Erica watched the news on Sunday evening, they saw Sir James Grant-Nicholls, captain of industry, hustled into the back of a police car under a blanket. He was handcuffed. The arrest was said to be regarding the disappearance of his wife Fiona, and the discovery of a body in the grounds of the house they shared.
In the main house, Athena opened the morning meeting with an update on the news.
“I called Aphrodite last evening,” she told the others, “she was devastated. I explained about the domestic abuse Fiona suffered throughout their marriage. In time, she will come to realise she may have had a lucky escape. For now, she’s heartbroken.”
“To think I had Heracles pegged as one of the good guys,” said Phoenix. “He fooled me.”
“I called Zeus this morning,” said Athena, “we are scheduled to meet again in early January. I told him we needed to select two new names to bring our complement up to twelve, not one as we thought. He suggested one male, one female.”
“Two women would balance the Gods at six apiece, I take it?” asked Rusty.
“There were three candidates listed at the last meeting, two men and one woman,” said Athena, “we haven’t vetted them yet. We may need more candidates by January.”
“We must choose the best two candidates from the three proposed,” said Phoenix, “that’s the only choice.”
“If we can return to our agenda,” said Athena, “what have you learned, Henry?”
“Julian Kneiss, known as JK, the make-up artist was picked up in London on Friday. He was blindfolded and brought to the ice-house. I questioned him for two hours on Saturday afternoon. I have the names of the three men for whom he prepared the prosthetics and wigs. They are Albanians, from Tirana, and have been living in the UK for several years. Rusty and Phoenix worked on a plan of action in the orangery yesterday morning.”
“Did we release Kneiss?” asked Minos.
“Of course,” said Henry, “we’re not barbarians. We returned him to Pimlico late last night.”
“What do we plan to do with these jewel thieves?” asked Alastor.
“We have to find them first,” said Rusty. “We only know their names and their criminal records in their own country. We’re still searching.”
“I’ve always maintained the Grid has an agenda,” said Phoenix. “One that includes a super crime to make the jewel robbery look tiny. These men are in hiding at present and will only surface when they are due to strike. Next weekend is crucial. Friday night is Halloween. If they favour disguises, then they will be hard to spot. Giles is helping us in the search in the meantime. We can only wait and hope.”
“Giles, what else have you been monitoring?” asked Athena.
“Another drone passed over the estate last night around midnight. No attempt was made to disable it. It was clear from its path they targeted the ice-house. The drone was more sophisticated than the one used the previous Sunday. This one carried thermal imaging cameras.”
“The Grid may have been able to determine numbers of people in the stable block, but they ignored the other outbuildings and the main house,” said Artemis. “That’s significant.”
“Exactly,” said Henry, “the ice-house has a protective shield which masks our underground activities. Any attempt to gauge our numbers there will have been hampered.”
“Good,” said Athena.
“Or worse,” said Phoenix, “they may think our defences weak and they can attack us at will.”
*****
In London, Simon Gonzalez was at work on the dark web. Last night’s sortie with the drone revealed nothing. Whatever that odd mound was it held no secrets, and the Olympus defence systems didn’t appear to be as vigilant in hours of darkness.
His first task after he met with Tyrone had been to use the charity registration number he gathered. He hacked into the Charity Commission’s files to extract everything they held on the Olympus Project. He took seconds to locate the Olympus website.
The Project set it up in 2007. Erebus hadn’t been keen, but Athena and Alastor convinced him a modest site added credibility to the claim they were a charitable organisation. The paperwork Gonzo retrieved from the Commissioners supported that view. Tyrone believed there was much more information hidden from public view.
Hacking into the administration area at Larcombe proved simple as predicted. Gonzo was soon studying a management structure. There were eight managers. The titles of the positions they held were vague. Of these eight, three were Trustees, whose names appeared on the website and every Charity Commission report.
Annabelle Grace Fox-Bailey (Chief Executive Officer);
Sir Julian Langford, (Executive Director);
Michael James Purvis (Chief Financial Officer).
None of the other managers was named in any document Gonzo found. There was no record of what they were paid either, and yet their charity accounts received a clean audit report every year. As for the others who lived there, he found records for hundreds of men and women who had passed through Larcombe. Every piece of paper supported the public view that the charity was a terrific asset to service personnel returning from war zones with PTSD.
Athena, Minos, or Alastor could have saved Gonzo a headache. Everything tallied with how the world perceived Olympus. The real accounts lay in the ice-house, deep in the security systems that Giles and Artemis operated. Erebus wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Gonzo scratched his head. There was nothing for it. He couldn’t go back to Tyrone and say he’d failed. He must dig deeper. Was there another system somewhere at Larcombe? Could that be what the odd-shaped mound was hiding?
Time to launch an all-out cyber-attack.
Wednesday 29th October 2014
Security had always been the watchword for Erebus. The man who envisaged the Olympus Project understood the need for its presence to be felt rather than seen.
When Simon Gonzalez accessed the data files in the administration area of the main building, Giles was alerted in the ice-house. He understood the limited value of such data, so he remained patient. Giles sat and watched. He could learn a lot from how the hacker operated. It would identify his methods and enable him to establish a signature.
This knowledge would then add to the Olympus security shield. If Gonzo tried to attack the main computers, he opened himself up to a reciprocal attack. Giles and Artemis could discover where the attack emanated, without Gonzo realising he had played with fire.
Patience is a virtue. The attack came at eleven o’clock at night.
Giles had finished his shift and was asleep next to Maria Elena in the stable block when the call came. He rushed back underground.
The system was holding firm. Like a game of chess, as the hacker made a move, the system countered it. The move was far from being defensive. Giles knew minute by minute the hacker was being identified. If the identity had been in the form of an image, Giles would have seen an identikit picture of his opponent form on the screen in front of him. At three-fifteen the game ended. The attack had failed, and on the printer next to him Giles watched as it revealed the source of the attack.
“Got you,” he said. It was time to get another Olympus agent out of bed. Why should he have all the fun?
Rusty Scott joined Giles in the ice-house.
“This is who has been causing us the problems on behalf of the Grid,” said Giles.
He handed Rusty a name and address.
“Simon Gonzalez, twenty-four years old, former Google employee. It seems I’m off to Lewisham in the morning to collect a computer nerd.”
“As soon as, Rusty,” said Giles, “take him straight to Henry on Level 3, We need to learn everything we can from Gonzalez. He must have knowledge on the Grid, and perhaps on that next big robbery.”
Thursday, 30th October 2014
Bridie Carragher started another day doing what she did best. The Wishing Well café on Kilburn High Road was a magnet for customers who couldn’t give a toss about their waistline. People who enjoyed generous portions, whether from her all-day breakfasts, her snacks, or her legendary cakes.
Regular clients visited the café at different times during the day to sample all three, washed down with good-sized mugs of tea or coffee. The place was always busy, and the gossip-mill did a fine trade.
This morning, Wayne Sangster took his usual chair. To watch his partner at work, and to keep his ears open for a hint of business. The lone Triple S investigator was ready to help if required. There had been a lot of gossip on the jewellery robbery five miles up the road, three weeks ago now.
Nobody had ever been arrested for that. In fact, nobody was even in the frame. Around here, it wasn’t uncommon to hear things that had fallen off the back of a lorry being offered for sale. Bridie warned Wayne that it was cigarettes, dodgy designer watches, and perfume. She didn’t hold with anyone dealing drugs in her café, so they gave it a wide berth.
As he scanned the newspaper and took a sip of his steaming-hot coffee, Wayne caught a snatch of a conversation behind him. A foreign accent, Eastern European. He glanced at the mirror on the end wall. A pair of men sat at a window table. One was wiping up the last scraps of his runny egg yolk with a piece of toast. The guy opposite him only drank tea. A newspaper lay folded on the table between them.
The tea drinker lifted the paper to reveal what was underneath. The man opposite him choked. Wayne was too far away to tell what he had seen, but it hadn’t been a cartoon or a Page Three model. He was itching to find out. The conversation had ended. The tea drinker was unsuccessful. His potential buyer wasn’t interested. Whatever it was, it must have been too rich for his pocket.
Wayne’s ex-copper’s nose twitched. He smelled money. Could this have something to do with that robbery? Did that guy try to off-load a pricey bit of bling once stored away in someone’s safe-deposit box in Hatton Garden?
He left his coffee on the counter and as the door closed on the seller, he said goodbye to Bridie and followed him.
Januz Goga wondered where to try next. This necklace burnt a hole in his coat pocket. Aleks said it was worth five million in a posh Mayfair boutique. A fence would take it for a pittance. Januz had wanted the piece for himself. Ndrita had been his girlfriend for six weeks before the robbery. Januz hoped the necklace convinced her to move in with him. Ndrita took one look at it and knew it was stolen. She threw it back in his face. He heard language from her he never expected. They had broken up that night.
Now, Januz would take ten thousand for it. Just to get rid of it before Aleks discovered he had brought an identifiable item from the bank against his wishes.
Wayne followed unnoticed at first. Januz was careless. His mind distracted by the necklace and the loss of his girlfriend. Januz stopped at a crossroads. Which way should he turn? Who could he ask for help? Aleks and Zamir had taught him what to do to stay safe. His natural instincts took over. As he moved further up the High Road, Januz realised he had a tail. The man looked like a cop. The big guy sat at the counter in the café.
He phoned Zamir.
“Are you busy? Can you pick me up? I’ll be in the Wishing Well. Do you know it?”
Zamir agreed to collect him in fifteen minutes. Januz turned and headed back the way he had come. Wayne stood fifty yards away on the opposite side of the road. He decided to make a phone call too, in case the guy thought he was following him. He rang his old boss.
“I may have a lead on that jewellery robbery, boss,” he said.
“Are you serious, Wayne? Shouldn’t you be telling the police?” said Orion,
“I thought the people you’re working for might be interested,” said Wayne. “The police up here aren’t making any headway.”
“Wayne, call it in, mate,” said Orion, “Stick to missing persons and security advice. That could be dangerous.”
“Fair enough, boss. I’ll give you a ring next week, maybe.” Wayne ended the call as the tea drinker passed by on the other side.
Januz reached the café and went inside. Bridie came over to take his order.
“Are you ready to eat now? I saw you in here earlier.”
Januz shook his head.
“Tea, please,” he said.
They both looked up as the doorbell rang. Wayne was back. The two men stared at one another. Bridie gave her partner a hug and kissed him on the cheek.
“You can’t keep away from me, can you?” she said, “pop upstairs to your office, I’ll bring you a meal once I’ve sorted this gentleman out.”
Wayne went upstairs to the flat. He was sure he’d been rumbled. If this was one of the robbers, he knew about him and Bridie now. It could mean trouble.
Downstairs, Bridie took the mug of tea to Januz.
“That man has an office upstairs?” he asked.
“Triple S, he runs a security firm,” said Bridie, “it’s not a proper office. We live together.”
Bridie then returned to her cooking. Zamir entered the café and nodded to Januz, who got up and left at once.
“Why did you need me to get you?” asked Zamir.
“I was followed from that café by a fat guy who runs a security firm upstairs. He may have seen me trying to sell a piece of jewellery.”
“You fool,” said Zamir, “don’t tell me you carried a piece out despite what Aleks warned.”
“It was for Ndrita, but she chucked me,” said Januz.