The Sterling Directive

by Tim Standish

  ‘Mac,’ I shouted. Laid my hand on his shoulder in case he didn’t hear. He looked up at me, dazed. He shook his head then nodded, let the soldier down gently to the ground and stood. ‘Move him to the van if you can. Keep everyone back. If the police turn up, keep them out. If they get shirty send for me.’

  ‘Sir.’

  I clapped him on the shoulder again and took a look at the man on the floor. He looked like he was breathing, just, but his breath was flecked with blood. Trusting Mac to be the best judge of how to look after his men, I walked through the smoke into the house. Once past the doorway it was surprisingly damage free though the air was thick with dust and fragments of glass and china littered the floor from a broken display cabinet on one side of the hallway.

  ‘It was a shaped charge.’ Church, shouting from where he stood in a doorway off the hall. He looked uninjured.

  ‘What?’ I shouted back.

  ‘It blew the door out.’

  ‘What happened?’ I shouted.

  ‘Bastards had wired in a hidden trigger. We both missed it.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  Church nodded. ‘I’m fine.’ As he spoke Kelly pulled himself through the doorway opposite. Both of them looked bruised and grazed but didn’t seem to be otherwise injured.

  ‘Kelly!’ I shouted. He looked at me, trying to focus. ‘Go and help Mac. You’ve got a man down out there.’ Kelly nodded and headed out through the wreck of the doorway.

  ‘Is this all of it?’ I asked Church.

  He nodded. ‘This was it, nothing else.’ He was wheezing as he spoke and paused for a moment to cough loudly before he continued. ‘We searched all the rooms down here. There’s an engine upstairs. We need to get Patience in here. See what she can find.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s safe?’

  ‘It is now.’ He coughed. ‘I’ll go and get her and check on the others.’

  ‘Tell her I’ll wait here. Have you called Collier?’

  Church nodded. ‘The telephone was still okay. He’s coming himself with another squad of Jays. I told him to get an ambulance over here as well.’

  ‘There’s neighbour out there, Mrs Edwards,’ I said. ‘Sharp as anything. Make sure she gets home okay. And get someone to question her about the man who lived here. I think it was our pilot.’

  Church nodded again and walked unsteadily down the hallway, kicking debris out of his way. Somewhere in the distance I heard the faint wail of a siren. There was shouting outside as the first onlookers arrived and were told to stay back. I looked around at the hallway and the spread of haphazard destruction. Nearer the blast the patterned tiles were scorched and broken, while further back they were unscathed. Only a few of the banister posts on the wooden stairs were split while beyond them the display cabinet’s contents were almost completely disintegrated and near the door an oil painting of naval battle scene was merely hanging slightly askew. I straightened it, the crunch of glass under my feet as I stepped back to judge it level.

  ‘Up a bit on the right.’

  Patience stood in the doorway, hunched into a too-large black overcoat. I nudged the picture lightly.

  ‘Perfect. Shame you can’t do the same with the garden, eh?’ She walked towards the stairs. ‘Upstairs, Church said the engine was.’

  ‘Is he alright out there?’

  Patience stopped and looked back from halfway up the first flight. ‘Church? He’s surrounded by chaos, barking orders at men with guns. He thinks it’s Christmas come early.’ She turned the corner and walked up the next set of steps. ‘Come on.’

  I followed her up the stairs to first floor where a thick bundle of wiring ran along the bottom of the wall and disappeared through a doorway into one of the rooms. Patience ran ahead and disappeared inside. I heard a whoop of delight from the room and followed her in to see her caressing a large, covered engine that stretched across the width of the room, half blocking the windows at the end. ‘This is amazing!’ she said.

  ‘What is?’ I asked.

  ‘This engine. It’s brand new, top-of-the-line equipment. I’ve been asking for one for ages but Collier just kept telling me to make do. Look at it!’ she turned round, her face bright with excitement. ‘800 kilodrum mill. Electric memory. Hi-speed data cylinders.’

  ‘Good?’ I ventured.

  ‘Sterling, this is choice.’ She pulled the cover off the engine, threw it on the floor and started flicking switches. The engine whirred into life, cylinders humming up to speed and, deep within its caged form, cogs whirred and span. The tiny squares of the screen rippled into life as strings of numbers and letters stuttered upwards. Patience pulled out a wheeled piano stool that was tucked under the desk and sat down. She held her hands a few inches above the keyboard for a moment, pausing like a concert pianist, then began to tap away.

  I heard footsteps in the corridor outside and my gun was in my hand as I turned to face the door.

  ‘Thought I’d find you in here.’ Church was breathing more easily but his voice still sounded ragged.

  ‘How are things outside?’ I asked.

  ‘Under control. Couple of uniforms just turned up, full of vim and outrage, why weren’t they told etcetera etcetera. I flashed the badge which shut them up, but I hope Collier turns up before their Inspector does.’

  ‘How is Mac’s team?’

  ‘Few scrapes and scratches for most of us. Coulter was nearest the door so he’s the worst. Mac bandaged him up and we’re waiting for the ambulance. Should be okay.’ He took a long breath and looked at me. ‘I should have seen that second trigger.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We were all pleased with ourselves, Kelly and me. We knew what we were dealing with. They’d wired three anti-personnel charges together, then set them all facing outwards. Should have been easy to disconnect and disarm but they’d hidden a tamper switch in there. Kelly cut the first one and the whole lot went off. Luckily the blast on those things is designed to go forward so the two of us were pretty unscathed.’ He shook his head. ‘I should have seen it.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Maybe not. Either way, let’s debrief later. Focus on finding them. What have you got, Patience?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What do you mean, nothing?’ Church said. He and I walked over to stand behind Patience, looking at the screen.

  ‘I mean it’s blank, they cleared it out before they left. Overpunched the cards, cleared the memory and wiped the cylinders.’ She tilted her head back to look up at us. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Did you say that you thought the pilot was here?’ Church asked me, as Patience got off the chair and had a look around the engine.

  ‘Did you meet Mrs Edwards?’

  ‘I did. Wily old bird,’ said Church.

  ‘Her description of the chap who lived here, Baxter, matches the airship pilot who worked for K17. She told me about a tattoo that he had. Royal Aerial Navy.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Positive,’ I said, briefly remembering my brother Gus unveiling an identical tattoo after a drunken night in Hong Kong. ‘She said he’d been here since early ’89.’ Patience was back in her chair now, reaching underneath the engine for something.

  ‘The year after the Ripper murders,’ said Church. ‘They paid him off, hid him here. But why not just kill him.’

  ‘In case they needed him again?’ I guessed. ‘I read some of the papers on organ transplants that Green got hold of. Even when the process is successful it only lasts for a few years. Seven years is the record. So even now they might decide to keep him alive.’

  ‘But where? That’s the problem,’ said Church. ‘Added to which, when I spoke to Collier just now he told me that the bloke running K17, Fuller was his name?’

  ‘Sebastian Fuller,’ I recalled.

  ‘Well they sent a couple of Jays round to see him this morning but he’d gone. Wife had no idea where, only that he’d packed a suitcase.’

  ‘So we’re in the dark again.’

  �
��Au contraire,’ said Patience. ‘Because luckily for you, I’m on hand to save the day. Again.’ She spun her chair round, pointed at the screen with one hand and with the other typed out a rapid sequence of letters. ‘Voila.’ The page suddenly filled with information.

  ‘I thought you said that it was empty,’ I said.

  ‘I did say that,’ she replied. ‘And that’s what it looked like. What it was arranged to look like. Old tapper trick called drum-splitting. You section off part of the engine.’

  ‘Like a false bottom in a drawer?’ asked Church.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so, a bit like a false bottom in a drawer. I mean, not really, but close enough.’ She was hurriedly typing as she spoke now. Next to the engine a printing machine came to life and started its slow journey back and forth along the paper.

  ‘So why would they have one?’ I asked.

  ‘I think their tapper put it there for us to find,’ she said.

  ‘Leonora’s throwing her boss overboard,’ said Church.

  ‘What information is there?’ I asked.

  ‘It looks like telegrams, telephone call logs, telemessage transcripts. Thousands of them.’

  ‘Can you tell if she made a copy?’

  ‘Erm. Wait a sec.’ The screen rippled and another set of data took its place. ‘Yes!’ Patience exclaimed. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘It’s insurance. She’s sending us a message,’ I said. ‘This will stay secret as long as we go after her boss and leave her alone. What’s the most recent document?’

  The screen rippled again. ‘Rather dull really,’ said Patience. ‘It’s a telegram requesting the use of a private room in an inn somewhere called Warehorne.’ Patience read some more. ‘It says to take the train to Ashford?’ She pronounced the name uncertainly as if half-doubting its existence and the need to ever visit it. She tapped through the document. ‘The booking is in the name of Sebastian Fuller.’

  ‘What the hell is he doing down in Kent?’ asked Church.

  ‘He’s leaving the country,’ I said. ‘And he’s got his own insurance with him.’

  ‘But where’s he off to?’ asked Church.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘where would he find an easy, no-questions-asked market for secret information that would bring down the Queen, the British government and possibly the Empire?’

  Church stared at me for a moment, then his face suddenly darkened in grim realisation. ‘He’s selling us out to the French.’

  19. Local

  We made slow going on our way out of London so that, by the time we got near the village, a clear night was beginning to fall across the countryside, the air sharpening with the promise of frost. We had left the mail van behind for Collier to take care of, one of the many incongruous additions to suburban London that he was using his skills to smooth away. Instead we were driving in a large motor car, a sort of half-sized coach that reminded me a little of the military transports that we used to sometimes be carted around in in Canada, though a much more civilian version thereof, with sleeker lines and a finer finish. There was plenty of room inside for me, Church, Mac and the three Jays who, least affected by the blast, were coming with us. Besides the seating there was a rear luggage compartment that now held a number of plain wooden crates along with the kit from the van, hurriedly ferried across while Collier ran interference. A local inspector had arrived just after Collier had, keen to reassert his authority, and a semblance of normal life, on his patch. Thanks to Collier’s unmistakable aura of senior officialdom, and some suitably heavy name-dropping, we slipped away without a problem.

  One of the Jays, a short, wiry fellow called Curtis, drove us. He was out of uniform now and dressed instead, like the rest of them, in more casual, dark-hued clothes of the sort that a workman might wear. It was odd, I thought, but in some way changing out of police uniforms had made them seem more, rather than less, professional.

  No one had talked about what happened in Sydenham on our way down to Kent. The Jays sat in the back of our vehicle in patient silence, with the occasional burst of low-toned conversation. They seemed to have put earlier events out of their mind for now, focusing on what might be waiting for us when we arrived at our destination. Church hadn’t mentioned the bomb again and, as I didn’t feel that there was much to say that we hadn’t already said, I didn’t bring it up. Instead, once we had left the final outskirts of London behind and were well into the Kentish countryside, we talked through ideas of how K17 might have functioned and discussed Fuller’s motives for defecting.

  France had had a reputation for espionage for as long as I could remember but under Napoleon V the craft of spying in the New French Empire had been elevated to a new level. An ex-military officer, of no relation to the Bonapartes but wisely seeing the advantage in taking their name, this Napoleon sought to rekindle the grand idea of empire-building possessed by the first of his name but with one key difference. While the race to colonise Africa was being fiercely contested by the other European powers, Napoleon V chose not to take part. Instead, the old Republic’s Committee of General Security was reinstated with a new brief; to focus on the on-wire world of engines, telecommunications and data and to make it theirs. The result was that, though possessing a smaller empire geographically than the other major powers, its reach in the realm of information ensured that France punched well above its weight when it came to influence and intrigue. Paris became the pre-eminent location for the purchase and trading of secrets, and gained the reputation of being the sort of place where pretty much anything or anyone was available for sale. A senior agent like Fuller, with what he knew of the Bureau of Engine Security and its systems, would hold a high value in the Parisian spy markets. In addition, his knowledge of K17, and the proof that he carried with him in the shape of the missing airship pilot, would, if played well, assure him a new place of honour within the intricate pantheon of French espionage.

  ‘He might decide to aim higher, of course,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Church.

  ‘Well, as I understand it, France isn’t the only purchaser of information to ply its trade in Paris,’ I replied. ‘So if Fuller was feeling particularly confident he might decide to cut out the middle man, as they say, and go directly to one of the other major powers. Prussia, for instance, or the Confederate States.’

  Church nodded. ‘Dangerous though, as an independent. You would have to put the word out in such a way that avoided tipping off the Security Committee. They really hate people going behind their back. And if he went to the Americans, they might grass him up to the French anyway.’

  ‘So why take the risk?’ I asked.

  ‘Because he worked out who we are,’ he said.

  ‘That’s what I’ve been thinking,’ I replied. ‘It’s the only reason that makes sense. If he thought that we were reporters or even private investigators of some kind, he would have simply trumped up some charges and arrested us. Who knows about the Map Room?’

  ‘There’s a minister that oversees us,’ said Church, ‘at bargepole’s length of course. But no one else at cabinet level, not even the prime minister, knows any details in case we do something terrible,’ he rubbed the flat of his palm across his stubbled chin, ‘without a good enough reason.’

  ‘But people have heard of you?’ I asked

  He shook his head. ‘Had you? We tend to keep ourselves to ourselves. Some people in the business might guess that something like us exists, and they might have heard rumours about what we’ve done, but it’s in everyone’s interests not to guess too hard otherwise they wouldn’t get to act all shocked and deny all knowledge when something like this morning happens.’

  ‘I think someone like Fuller would make it his business to know who else might be operating in his arena,’ I said. ‘Even if he didn’t know the name, he may have formed an idea of the kind of organisation you are. Then after last night, he and his tapper do some rapid adding up and come up with an answer they don’t like. They check all the obvious suspect
s, MO5 and so on, but you and I aren’t listed anywhere so that leaves only one other organisation, which, rumour says, doesn’t play by the rules and isn’t shy of expedient and robust problem solving.’ I paused. ‘So Fuller tells her to destroy all the evidence that’s on their engine and, while she is doing that, he’ll take care of the physical evidence.’

  ‘And instead, they both betray each other,’ said Church.

  ‘Exactly. She disappears and Fuller makes a dash for France,’ I said.

  ‘Makes me wonder what other cleaning up he has stopped to do on the way,’ said Church, ‘or asked her to do? Maybe get rid of the two that actually carried out the crimes, the surgeon and the lunatic they used to cover up his work?’

  ‘They might be dead already,’ I said, seeing Edgar in my mind, blood on his chest and surprise on his face as he pawed at the air on the platform at Waterloo.

  ‘They might be. It will have slowed him down though, so we might be still in with a chance of catching him,’ Church said.

  As we were talking we turned off what in my head I had been thinking of as a narrow country lane, which I now realised was a capacious thoroughfare compared to what we now found ourselves driving down. ‘Here you are, boss,’ said Curtis, deftly avoiding a tree trunk that jutted into the road, ‘we just passed the sign for Warehorne.’

  ‘Right, slow down and pull over before we get to the pub,’ said Church. Behind us the other Jays started gathering their gear. ‘What’s it called again?’ he asked me.

  ‘The Woolpack Inn,’ I replied.

  ‘Right,’ said Church, remembering.

  ‘All we like sheep have gone astray,’ I sang quietly. ‘Church looked at me as if I’d gone mad. ‘Messiah,’ I said. He stared at me blankly. ‘Handel?’ I added.

  ‘If you say so,’ he said. ‘Any good is it?’

  ‘That does seem to be the generally held opinion,’ I said. Church made no reply.

  We came to a halt at a point where the lane widened and where we could leave the van concealed under a cluster of trees. We all got out, and Mac set Curtis and another Jay to stay with the vehicle, though to bring it up quickly if they heard any kind of trouble. Church and I then walked towards the village while Mac and the Jay he had brought along, a hard-faced Scot called Baker, flanked out wide in front of us and on either side of the road They were in the same ballistic waistcoats they had worn in Sydenham but instead of automatic rifles they were both carrying squat, black pistols fitted with large silencers. Their dark clothing, gloves and blackened faces meant that, even in the full moon that shone down out of a clear sky, I kept losing sight of them. Church and I by contrast were dressed in suits, coats and hats as we walked down the road, our pistols holstered out of sight.