“You bet your arse I do,” Lucie shouted back. “I’m ready to make the covenant.”
TWENTY-FOUR
It was many hours later that the shutter clanked and creaked upwards and the vile smugness of Adam Butcher was revealed, Lucie waiting in what had become her regular position to greet him.
“You took your time,” she spat.
“Well I do have a life outside of this, you know.”
“Cabinet meeting? Or something more up your street, like an interview with a brown-nosed journo, or sharing a stage with the EDL?”
There was no warmth in the man’s face, none of the political charm with which he had first made his name. His eyes were fixed unsettlingly on her and sweat was glistening on his brow, his tongue flicking against the back of his teeth as he relished the sight of his latest captive.
“Forgive me,” he said as Lucie continued to scowl, “I’d been told you were ready to make the covenant, but your words suggest otherwise. Perhaps my people got the wrong impression.”
“You know what they say about getting good staff after Brexit?”
Butcher gave a short, cruel laugh, never taking his eyes from hers.
“I must admit I was surprised to hear you’d broken so quickly, and you didn’t seem the type to beg. I hadn’t expected to have this conversation until the morning, but hey-ho. Which is it, Lucie Musilova of the Security and Intelligence Service for Cross-Boundary Affairs? Will you join my little harem, or join the French whore in the gutter?”
Lucie ground her teeth at his words, her eyes narrowing as she fought to maintain the control she had worked so hard to exert.
“You already know the answer to that.”
“Hmm,” he mulled, “pity. You might have been fun. Well, I’ll leave you to enjoy the company of my subordinates here. You know they were really quite close to that fellow you killed a few days ago, in fact I don’t think they’ve been quite themselves since. If I were you, I’d avoid mentioning it.”
“Before all that,” Lucie shouted, stopping the MP in mid-turn, “tell me what all this has to do with the Red Mako; what do you mean this is your ‘bung’?”
Butcher’s face creased into a mocking frown, as though he were being asked to demonstrate the tying of shoelaces by a stubborn child.
“Isn’t it obvious?” he laughed. “It’s how business has been done for centuries! The Saudi government wanted a product, the British government wanted the money, all the rest is just horses for courses; the public are informed of a tender process by papers which get a couple of days of nice headlines, and in the background the powerbrokers are busy thrashing out the real deal.”
“You’re saying this is a simple case of defence industry bribery?”
“Well, perhaps not ‘simple’,” Butcher conceded, “but the principle’s the same. Al-Khatani made it clear to me exactly what he wanted out of the contract, and I told him the same. As Defence Secretary I could bypass the tenders and choose exactly which company I thought would be able to accommodate us.”
Lucie grimaced at his blithe delivery and breathed deeply to push down the rage that was building with renewed vigour within her.
“And I’m right, aren’t I? The weapons systems aren’t included in the contracts because Al-Khatani wants to fire something onto Yemen that the papers might not report so kindly?”
“It’s not indiscriminate, if that’s what you think,” Butcher answered in continued nonchalance. “There are certain groups hiding out by the coastline, the Red Mako will help him pick them off, that’s all.”
“With chemical weapons.”
“No-one cares what happens in Yemen,” Butcher sneered. “Britain’s falling apart, and if dropping a handful chemical grenades on a few Muslims puts enough sticky tape on the economy to delay collapse a couple of years then no-one who does find out will even care.”
“Chemical warfare, and your own personal slaves,” Lucie spat in contempt. “And you say this is based on ‘principle’.”
“Of course,” Butcher objected. “The principle of the market.”
“And it’s as simple as that,” decried Lucie. “You used social media to target the women you wanted, the women who you thought had got above themselves, then you trapped them in here and broke them with psychological torture until they were yours to control. And thanks to a tame press and the ‘British services for British people’ crap you’ve been sewing everywhere, no-one even stops to ask where they’ve gone. You might think you can get away with this, you bastard, but think again. My superiors are on to you, and when I disappear, someone will come after me.”
Laughter echoed between them as Butcher almost doubled up with what looked like genuine hilarity
“You don’t get it, do you?” he scoffed. “It doesn’t matter how many scandals you uncover - and believe me there are far more than even you think you know about - it won’t make any difference. Aside from a brief flare on Twitter and some colourful placards on the next march, nobody cares. That’s the problem you have on your side; you think people still care about democracy when they don’t. All anyone cares about is getting their own dirty and perverted version of it over the line then battening down the hatches. People have agendas these days and they’re not just prepared, they’re happy to disenfranchise any group necessary to pursue them. And nobody even cares.”
What angered her most about his words was the fact that she knew there was truth in them. Since 2016 she had lost count of the number of people for whom she had laid out in detail all that was illegal and corrupt about the campaign and the wilful denial of voices to the five million and the young, but few had listened, instead shouting cries of ‘betrayal’ of a democracy they couldn’t even define. This was not a battle she would ever stop fighting, but she feared daily that it was one that may never be won.
“The government knows about all this?”
“Well, ‘knows’ is a subjective word. Let’s just say they’re not inclined to listen to rumours and aren’t too bothered about inspecting the minutiae. If anything ever came out about chemical attack, they have deniability, and with the economy on the brink, aside from anything else, it’s good business. At the cost of some dead Yemenis nobody cares about and a handful of missing euro whores, the future of Brexit Britain is signed, sealed and delivered.”
“Sealed with a death,” spat Lucie.
“The people have chosen this, they handed us a blank cheque; they can’t complain now about how we choose to cash it.”
Butcher was drunk on his own arrogance, and that was exactly what Lucie wanted him to be.
“And that’s that, is it?” she pressed. “You ride out to fortune and glory and leave me in the hands of the chuckle brothers back there?”
“You had your chance,” he dismissively spat, waving her a casual and insincere farewell.
“I know, it’s just…”
“Just what?”
“I just thought a man like you would take care of it yourself, not leave it to those idiots.”
Butcher’s smirk returned and Lucie saw him nod to someone out of her line of vision, butterflies playing in her stomach and adrenaline shooting through her as he took a long step towards her, the deafening siren remaining obstinately silent. The alarm was off…
“You?” he sneered as he stood barely feet away from her. “I wouldn’t even bother.”
Lucie merely smiled a wide, beaming grin and shook her head.
“And you know what? You’d never get near me anyway.”
In a second she was on him, flooring the MP with an uppercut to the chin and sprinting past him to the door, only to be rugby-tackled by two bulky figures who knocked her to the ground in a heap.
“Deal with her!” ordered a flustered Butcher as he strode through the shutter and disappeared up the corridor, a lacky in tow.
Lucie was struggling with her two assailants, and her sore muscles strained to resist her arms being spread out wide. The second man pulled away from her and she kicked
out, narrowly missing him, while the man kneeling behind her began to laugh in a voice she recognised as belonging to the infamous ‘Gary’.
“Go on mate, use it,” Gary was urging, “then I’m having first go!”
The other man was pulling the taser that had caused her so much pain and her stomach turned at seeing it again. Gary’s eagerness though was getting the better of him and as his friend levelled the taser, she wrenched herself free from his grip, wincing as the barbs penetrated Gary’s groin and he writhed on the floor screaming.
“Try taking back control of those,” she quipped, before ducking under the swinging arm of the second man and slamming the back of her hand against his head, knocking him cold.
Lucie ran at breakneck speed through the hated shutter and though the air in the corridor was stale and warm, it was the sweetest she had breathed in many a long year. A short distance down the hall stood an open door. She peered inside, finding its main wall resplendent with controls and monitors, upon which all the joys of the Playpen were displayed.
The room bore all the signs of well-worn untidiness, with unwashed plates, half-full mugs of tea and takeaway boxes galore strewn across the work surface and across the banks of monitors. Pulling the cables from the kettle and phone chargers plugged into sockets, Lucie bound the wrists of her felled opponents. Clutching a collar in each hand, she dragged them through the shutter door, her muscles bellowing in protest and demanding a rest she would not provide and deposited them in the middle of the Playpen.
“Enjoy yourselves, lads,” she said as she leant them together against the headless mannequin which she had decapitated on her first morning there. “I think you know the rules.”
Running back, she slammed down the shutter lever and scanned the control desk for the alarm switch, briefly savouring the adrenaline rush it gave her as she flicked it, before turning back to the monitors to search for her remaining tormentors.
Butcher she found quickly, the external monitors displaying his flustered journey to his official car outside, the MP brushing himself down as he stepped inside his vehicle. Of the other man there was no sign, and Lucie allowed her thoughts to return to her predecessors in the Playpen. Control was Butcher’s ultimate desire - of the project, likely too of the country - but certainly of those women caught in his perverted game. The purpose was conditioning through psychological torture; should any of his victims show signs of rebellion he would want them nearby where they could be easily dealt with, either through re-conditioning or the same fate which had befallen Ines. To have them too far away from the Playpen wouldn’t make sense, Lucie reasoned, they must be here.
A map of the complex was on the wall beside the monitor bank, and Lucie grimaced at how considerably larger it was than she had expected, encompassing not only the storage and warehouse section she had been kept in, but an office block and a dock hall by the water’s edge; where if the documents were to be believed, the Red Mako itself was being constructed. The playpen was in a building away from and apparently separate to the main complex, devoid of the security personnel who patrolled the rest of the site, suggesting to Lucie that Butcher’s private staff were concentrated in this one place.
“First thing’s first,” Lucie muttered to herself, resolving to find the women then focus on the Red Mako afterwards. Cameras covered the whole complex and Lucie despaired at first of finding any clue to the location of the women, who she was sure were there. The controls were simple enough to decipher, one button switching the view to the Playpen, where her erstwhile captors were cursing and writhing against their bonds, and another switched to the dock hall, in which she caught her first teasing glance of the military boat that had been the centre of so much trouble.
Resisting the temptation to admire it for too long, Lucie pushed the third button, images of the office block appearing on the monitors before her. Each image corresponded to a room on the complex plan and she frowned in frustration as she realised that each was empty, aside from the occasional guard. She swore and pressed her clenched fist against her head, damning herself for believing the veracity of her theory. Having been so sure she was right it cut deep to realise she wasn’t. Except… except…
Lucie went through each camera again, mentally checking them off against the chart on the wall. Each room was on the screen except for one. She felt a grin work its way onto her face as her hunch breathed new life within her. Noting the room number, Lucie spun around and ran out of the room, her mind composing plans for bypassing security and getting to the captive women, but in her haste she neglected to check the corridor and charged headlong into the trunk of a black clad figure heading the other way towards her.
Pushing herself away, Lucie clenched her fist, ready to slam it with what was left of her strength into the newcomer’s chin, but stopped in shock as her eyes fixed properly for the first time on the face of the figure.
“I bet Lake that you wouldn’t need my help getting out of there,” said Kasper Algers through his wrinkled grin. “Looks like he owes me a Toblerone.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Emotion engulfed her and she flung her arms around her friend.
“Kasper!”
“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Kasper replied as he untangled himself from her.
“It’s not okay,” she snapped back, her expression changing to one of intense concern. “What are you doing here? You can’t be well enough to be back in the field!”
“I’m well enough to come and look for you,” he answered, shooing away the question. “I came around a couple of days ago and I’m doing ok, really, just a bit weak.”
His face was gaunter even than usual, and there was an uncharacteristic weakness in his voice the belied his claims.
“Don’t lie to me,” she said, softly.
He smiled down from his great height and nodded.
“Well,” he said, “maybe I’m not quite firing on all cylinders yet but I’m 90% there. And when Lake told me you’d gone missing I couldn’t exactly leave you to it, could I?”
“But how did you find me? I’m guessing we’re in Portsmouth, right? At the WaterWhyte site?”
“Yeah, at the Shipyard; this building is away from the main complex but they’re building the Red Mako in the dock hall across the way,” he confirmed. “I guessed your disappearance might have something to do with the same bastards that got me.” He stared at one of the myriad screens behind her, projecting the struggle of the captors she had bested. “Looks like I was right.”
Algers looked as though there was something else on his mind, but there was still work to be done and people to save.
“It’s fantastic to see you,” she grinned, “but we have to get into the office blocks. I think the missing women are held up there, I’m sure of it. What’s the security like around here?”
“In this part not too bad but the main dock hall is well looked after and there’s no way of knowing who’s in on this and who isn’t.”
She started down the corridor, the adrenaline overcoming her exhaustion as she broke into a jog. After a few seconds she realised Algers wasn’t alongside her and she stopped to look back over her shoulder.
“Come on,” she said, “we need to get in there quickly before we find the Mako.”
Algers simply smiled back and walked up alongside her.
“I might be able to help there,” he said. “You see, I didn’t come here alone.”
⌖
When they had reached the edge of the warehouse, Algers stopped running and ordered Lucie to do the same, reaching into his pocket and handing her a plastic visitor pass on a lanyard.
“Put that round your neck,” he said as he unbuttoned the black jacket he had fastened up to the neck, revealing a shirt and tie beneath it. “And try and look presentable.”
She fixed him with a ‘look’ as they walked towards the blocks, which he acknowledged.
“What’s going on?”
“You’ll see.”
Reaching the office b
lock, Algers took his card and swiped it through a reader beside the main thick glass doors, which swung open before them. Pressing for the lift, they stepped in and Algers pushed for the top floor, cursing the flow of muzak as they rose.
“Do you mind telling me what’s going on?”
Algers turned and looked at her for a moment.
“You could do with a wash,” he said.
“I know.”
“I mean, would you like me to find you some deodorant or something…?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“It’s just that we’ve got a bit of a Pygmalion thing going on here right now…”
“I’m fine.”
“Ok, I’ll shut up about it then.”
“That’d be great.”
The lift stopped and Algers led the way down the corridor, Lucie frowning at his lack of explanation.
“Kasper!” she hissed at him. “Where are we going?”
“To see someone who’s feeling pretty bloody sheepish at the moment.”
They reached a grand set of doors and Algers barged through them without knocking, shepherding her in to a large, and well-furnished office in which stood a sharply suited and uncomfortable looking man, a clutch of papers in his hands.
“Ah, Algers,” he began, before looking up and seeing Lucie, blood draining from his face as his eyes settled on her.
“Jarvis Whyte,” Lucie spat.
“The very same,” Algers confirmed. “He’s not what you think, Lucie. He’s not in on all this, he’s been duped by Butcher. The only thing Jarvis here is guilty of is taking his eye far, far off the ball and letting himself be led a merry dance.”
“It’s true, Ms. Musilova,” a flustered Whyte insisted, keeping a diplomatic distance from her. “I’ve not had any hands-on involvement in my companies for some time now; I had no idea there was any substance in what I thought were your ravings. If I’d known…”
“And how do we know he’s telling the truth?”
“Because someone came to Lake with the details, and Lake went for a cosy chat with Jarvis here and ensured his cooperation in harvesting evidence, didn’t he Jarvis?”
Sealed With A Death Page 18