by Ted Tayler
“That’s fine by me sir,” replied Colin.
Erebus ended the call.
Colin finished dressing and walked across the manicured lawns towards the manor house. You could not help but be impressed by the magnificence of the old building. Especially on a bright morning such as this. The Georgian edifice towered over him as he climbed the slope towards the patio. The secrets of the outbuildings had to stay hidden away from prying eyes but the manor house deserved to be open to the public. What a shame they could never wander unaccompanied in the grounds, or go on conducted tours to see the exquisite furniture and paintings that graced the interior.
“A penny for your thoughts mate!” called Rusty, running to catch him.
“I was thinking how beautiful this place is,” said Colin.
“Woah! Something’s perked you up and no mistake.”
“Yeah, well,” said Colin, a little flustered.
Rusty tapped him lightly on the shoulder.
“Only kidding Phoenix. Whatever has made you think this world’s a beautiful place long may it last. Personally, I reckon things will get worse before they get better, but then again I always was a miserable bleeder.”
The two agents covered the last few yards into the meeting room in companionable silence. Colin respected Rusty; he was a tremendous ally. You would not want to be on the wrong side of him, that was a certainty.
Rusty respected Phoenix too. When he arrived at Larcombe Manor, he had been wary of what Erebus saw in him; he questioned why the old man had brought him into the fold. Everyone else who worked for Olympus was ex-service personnel. Most field agents were ex-SAS with a proven track record. Even Giles and the intelligence people wore a uniform for part of their careers.
Phoenix had a dark and troubled past. Rusty knew little or nothing of much of it. Erebus and the others at the top table kept quiet about what exactly he had been involved in before he arrived. Rusty knew he was a killer.
As the months passed, he had grown to appreciate just how good Phoenix was at his job. He did not take pleasure in killing, or glorify what he did. Phoenix simply believed that when the system failed the victims, it was only right and proper that an agency such as Olympus should exact the punishment.
He’s a perfect fit for the organisation, Rusty thought. Erebus had found the final piece of the jigsaw. The Olympus Project may have considerable adversaries ahead to face, but with Phoenix on board, they were well equipped to conquer them.
The two men entered the room. Stewards moved back and forth, with cups of tea or coffee. A folder for each of the attendees waited for them on the table in front of their chair. On a side table, Colin saw a large black tin box.
Colin wondered who was looking after the ‘swingometer’ this morning. It was like election night on TV. He and Rusty bid good morning to the colleagues that were already in place. It was one minute to nine.
Erebus and the rest of his inner sanctum swept through the furthest door and the morning’s business was set to get under way.
“Good morning. I hope you have given the matters we discussed yesterday a great deal of thought. When you open your folders, you will find a ballot sheet. Please indicate which of the two options you wish Olympus to pursue. Fold your sheet in two and place it in the box provided. Minos will not vote. He will be responsible for the count.”
A rustle of papers and a scramble of feet duly followed as the people around the table followed Erebus’s instructions. In little more than a minute, everyone voted and Sir Julian Langford QC unlocked the black box and tipped its contents onto the table.
Colin did a quick check around the table to see how many Olympus people there were at the meeting today. He counted twenty. Bloody typical! No sign of ‘Head’ Case and the rest of the intelligence section people.
Minos handed Erebus the result. The old man read it out.
“Votes cast in favour of Option A. As supported by Athena, ten. The number of votes cast for Option B, as proposed by Phoenix, also ten.”
Colin had feared that this might happen. He did not know whether Henry or the others would have gone with his idea or not. But Erebus was now in a spot. He held the casting vote; surely, he would go with his future successor Athena?
Erebus sat at the head of the table, his thin, elegant hands steepled in front of his lips. His elbows rested on the arms of his chair. Eventually, he spoke.
“After due consideration, I have determined that I shall vote for Option B.”
Colin was stunned. There were several gasps around the table as people realised the old man had gone against the wishes of his second in command. He had done so to follow a course of action proposed by the newcomer.
“Let us move on to the next item on our agenda,” said Erebus.
Colin looked across to Athena, at the right-hand side of Erebus. She smiled briefly and gave an imperceptible shrug of her shoulders. She has class in spades, Colin mused; it must hurt like hell, but she will never show it.
They dealt with the remaining items on the agenda in their usual brief and efficient manner. There was an update on the terrorist cell activity and the latest report from the mole. Further details had been uncovered concerning the proposed movement of high-security prisoners. A report covering the preparations for London 2012 by the authorities was in the folder, for future reading and analysis.
Colin tried hard to concentrate, but he was fighting a losing battle. Erebus wrapped everything up before a quarter to ten. Everyone then left the room except Athena and the Three Stooges. They stayed behind with Erebus.
Colin had hoped to talk to Athena, to clear the air. Not about last night, that could wait a while longer. He was more concerned about the result of the vote, with Erebus siding with him as opposed to maintaining a united front.
Colin and Rusty walked back to the stable block together.
“Never saw that coming Phoenix!” Rusty said, “I mean, yes, your idea was superior but when it was tied at ten apiece, I thought the old man’s vote would go for Athena, for sure.”
“So did I” replied Colin.
“What are you going to do now mate? I’m going for a swim.”
“I’m going to take a rain check, Rusty. Erebus has summoned me. He wants another get together in the orangery in thirty minutes.”
“You are fast becoming his blue-eyed boy, Phoenix! Athena will be miffed.”
Colin let Rusty have that one. He didn’t want to be drawn into a long conversation about the relationship between him, Erebus and Athena. That was dangerous ground. Rusty was not daft, it would only take one ill-advised comment and he could add two and two together to make ‘relationship’.
“See you later,” said Rusty and sauntered off to his quarters.
Meanwhile, in the manor house, Erebus, and his colleagues finished their discussions on the likely itinerary for action on Option B.
“I have another meeting now. I know I can rely on your total support for the strategy we have chosen. I suggest we meet again this evening, after dinner, to finalise our detailed plans.”
Alastor, Athena, and Thanatos stood up and left the room.
Minos lingered behind on the pretext of tidying up the ballot box and sheets until he and Erebus were alone.
“Why did you give your casting vote in favour of Phoenix? Your ballot sheet in the box carried a vote for Athena. The way you fold a piece of paper is so distinctive. It could not have belonged to anyone else.”
Erebus smiled.
“Caught out, by one of my trusted colleagues,” he said, “you are right. I weighed up the likely number of votes for each option, based on people’s comments and body language yesterday. I felt sure that if Henry Case and the others been here then Phoenix would have won the day convincingly.
By voting for Athena, I hoped that I could allow her to save face, losing by a narrow margin. In the end, I had to use my casting vote and given that scenario I hoped she could reconcile her loss as a ‘toss of the coin’. I needed her to believe i
t could have gone either way. I am a sentimental old fool, Minos. She will still succeed me as leader of Olympus in time. But it will do her no harm if now and then she does not automatically get her own way. She will be a better leader if she learns from the experience.”
Minos nodded sagely; he wanted Erebus to think he understood completely, but in all honesty, it flummoxed him. Interesting times lay ahead.
At half past ten, Colin left the stable block and went to meet his boss. Colin found Erebus in the orangery awaiting his arrival. The old man sat in a chair holding a sheaf of papers. He gave a deep sigh as Colin approached.
“Take a pew, dear boy,” he said, without looking up from the material he had been studying.
“Am I needed for something Erebus?”
“I have a job for you Phoenix; something that requires your particular talents. Despite other pressing matters that need our attention, this nest of vipers is too much of a menace for us to ignore any longer.”
“May I?” asked Colin, leaning forward and offering to take the papers from his boss.
“Certainly Phoenix” sighed the old man. “Just holding these sheets of paper makes me feel unclean. I despair of the depths to which a few depraved members of our so-called society can descend.”
“I’ll study this and plan our response as soon as I finish,” said Colin.
Erebus stood; he rested a bony, liver-spotted hand on Colin’s shoulder.
“Plan, by all means dear boy; it’s what you do best. But make sure the bastards suffer please.”
Colin nodded, “Understood, sir.”
When he returned to his quarters, he started reading. Just over two years ago, Tanya Norris ran away from her family home in Oxford. Tanya was fifteen. She stayed with a school friend locally for a while and then drifted from town to town seeking temporary work. She ended up homeless on the streets in Swindon.
Tanya was vulnerable. In a few weeks, a sadistic gang who manipulated and controlled a crop of underage girls in the sprawling Wiltshire town had groomed her and sold her for sex.
The Olympus Project investigation team had uncovered a staggering amount of background detail. It impressed Colin. It did not make for pleasant reading, but there was no denying its thoroughness. Tanya’s mother had reported her missing, but the police had few resources available to find a delinquent teenager. They were far too busy filling in forms and persecuting motorists to hit their traffic offence quotas.
There were four men involved in the grooming and abuse; two sets of brothers. It appeared they had preyed on pre-teen and under-age teenage girls in the town for the past five years at least. A month or so back, Tanya Norris became pregnant. The gang attempted to make her miscarry. Her condition went into a rapid decline. One of the gang drove her to a local hospital, not out of concern for her safety, but to dump her on someone else’s doorstep. They had no further use for her. Hardly slowing the car, he shoved her through the front passenger door and onto the pavement in front of the entrance. Tanya was very sick; without quick action, she may well have died.
Fortunately, staff spotted her and hurried her into the emergency room, where they treated her immediate injuries. The doctor looking after her noticed other scars and bruising, plus the all too frequent demeanour and pallor associated with a habitual drug user. She interpreted this as indicative of her young patient suffering abuse over a long period, whether self-administered or by a third party. She became concerned for Tanya’s welfare, but Tanya had shut down. Months of abuse, the frequent misuse of alcohol and drugs and the Svengali-like control the gang members exerted over her left her afraid of her own shadow. She trusted no one.
As Tanya recovered in the hospital, the doctor spent as long as she could, often in her own time, building up the young girl’s trust. There was no mention of police or social services; the doctor did not interrogate her about her family or friends. She gently probed, trying to get the youngster to open up to her more on each visit. Eventually, the dam broke. Tanya cried, and the entire sad story tumbled out in between the sobs and the tears.
Once the full horror of Tanya’s treatment at the hands of the gang became clear, the young doctor made a phone call. That first call was to a national newspaper. Giles and his team at Larcombe intercepted that call and opened a case file. A male and female field agent drove to Swindon and took steps to relieve the young doctor of any further responsibility in Tanya’s case.
Tanya Norris had gone when the doctor reported for her next shift. She discovered that Tanya’s ‘parents’ had arrived from Newbury. The friendly reporter due to meet the young doctor to get a ‘scoop’ on what happened to these vulnerable girls was now working on another political scandal. He had been notified by a ‘concerned senior colleague’ at the hospital that his informant was a stressed out young NHS doctor. A medic working incredibly long hours, prone to flights of fancy.
Tanya was in a safe house in Devizes where a nurse looked after her, ensuring that her physical wounds continued to heal. Someone else would need to be with Tanya over the coming months to help her back to something approaching ‘normality’ because her mental state would take far longer to heal. Over the next couple of days, the male and female agents who posed as her ‘parents’ interviewed her and the sheets of paper that Phoenix now read, contained Tanya’s tale.
Colin read what was becoming a familiar pattern across the country. The four men came from Muslim backgrounds, in their early to mid-thirties. Their victims almost exclusively white. Over the past five years, people with suspicions about what was happening on their streets contacted both the police and social services. No one had followed up on those suspicions. Colin shook his head.
“Here we go again! I can hear the conversation. ‘We will be racists if we accuse them of something’. Either that or because of their backgrounds they wouldn’t have believed that the girls might be telling the truth; the authorities discounted any rumours or complaints as unreliable.”
He continued reading.
These girls were aged between twelve and fifteen. Most of them came from broken homes; some had run away from home like Tanya Norris. Others were already in the care system and were frequent absconders. In a matter of weeks after they met the men, they received presents, then alcohol followed soon after by coke and heroin.
They were ferried to the town in expensive cars and lulled into believing that the men really cared for them. It was easy to see why they fell for these tactics. They never had much love at home. For a few it was the first time in their life that anyone had shown them any affection.
In time, the drugs made Tanya and the others dependent on the gang, it soon became impossible for them to leave. That was when Tanya’s nightmare began. She described her ordeal to the Olympus agents; page after page detailing where, when and how the rapes and torture took place. If she showed any sign of resistance, her punishment was severe.
Colin had only read a few pages and he understood why Erebus reacted as he did. He felt the same disgust. The same wish to punish these men without mercy.
After the four men had used and abused her for days on end, they set her to work for them. Tanya travelled in the same expensive cars she enjoyed so much in those first innocent days. Now those journeys took her to various addresses around the town where dozens of men paid hundreds of pounds over to her captors to have sex with her.
Inevitably, Tanya became pregnant. Her treatment at the hands of the brothers was horrendous. The gang blamed her for being stupid not to take precautions. The beatings and verbal abuse continued until the bodged attempt at a miscarriage and that final car ride to the hospital. They still carried on as before, exploiting the remaining girls under their control, without a single thought for Tanya.
Colin closed the file. He took it back to his quarters and locked it in a drawer. He took a shower because he felt unclean. Colin then dressed in casual clothes and visited the gym. He knew that he needed to keep active; he always found that punishing his body allowed him to forg
et his own pathetic little problems. He used the time that he lifted weights and rained blows on the punchbag to start planning his response to what he had read. It was time for the four brothers to be brought to account.
CHAPTER 6
Colin was shattered after his workout. He showered yet again and threw on a sweatshirt and jeans. He rested on his bed going over the file yet again and awaited the knock on the door. It never came. He spent the evening putting the final touches to his plans; once he was satisfied that he had covered everything, then his last task was to email the armoury listing the requirements for his mission. Colin decided to turn in early; he was that tired, he was asleep before his feet touched the pillow.
He was out of bed early the next morning. When he looked out of the window, he saw that overnight the clouds had rolled in and it was murky, with the threat of rain. Luckily, he was not spending the day on the high ground, because he could feel that the temperature had dropped fast. Any rain that fell could fall as sleet or even snow in parts of the West Country today.
His first visit was to the armoury in the icehouse. Barry Longdon the ex-SAS Sergeant was on duty. ‘Bazza’ had been on hand to pick the most appropriate weapons for Colin over the past few months for his missions. He had been there to help pick him out of the waters below Pulteney Weir.
“As you can see from my email from yesterday evening, I need a selection of tools to take out four bad guys in Swindon ‘Bazza’. What do you recommend?”
“Where did you have in mind? There’s the County Ground, the railway museum or perhaps you prefer somewhere quiet? There isn’t an awful lot of choice, compared to the lovely city of Bath Phoenix.”
“These guys drive around at night in flash cars. They ferry young girls to pubs and clubs, show them a good time, then have them turning tricks later. That means moving them around the town in the daytime too. Sometimes they even pop into the country if a bloke living in a big house fancies underage company.”