by Ted Tayler
“Welcome back, Rusty,” said Athena, warmly, “is your partner arriving today now?”
“No,” said Rusty. “I’ve finished my tour of duty in London and wanted to get back, have a shower and feel clean again. I’ll hold my report over until tomorrow or Monday Athena, if that suits, this matter has to be your priority I’m sure. My partner arrives later tomorrow. It’s a decent drive south from Durham. In this weather, she’d be sensible to take a break, grab a drink and rest up for a while halfway through her journey.”
“We need to stop referring to the poor girl as your partner, Rusty. We have dozens of ex-military and ex-secret service people in the organisation who continue to use their given names. This is fair enough. We have to keep the illusion you are either recovering from PTSD or have been recruited after serving your country as part of that recovery. Those of us whose true identity it’s politic to hide away from the outside world have always been given a code name to use here and elsewhere. We look forward to Artemis joining us tomorrow; I’m certain she’s going to be a valuable asset to the intelligence section here at Larcombe.”
“Thanks, Athena,” said Rusty. “I’ll christen her Artemis tomorrow when she finally arrives. It would be great if I was able to tell her what her name means though. Give us a clue?”
Phoenix leant forward in his chair. He had done extra reading on the various gods and goddesses lately, in preparation for yesterday’s meeting. Phoenix wanted to see if the code name supplied to them matched their personality. He was amazed at the accuracy of most of them. Others had so many other explanations as to their meaning he found it impossible to decide.
“Relax, Rusty,” he said. “I should concentrate on the first attribution. Artemis was the goddess of the hunt.”
“That sounds perfect for the ice-house,” said Giles Burke.
“There are other things she was associated with then?” asked Rusty warily.
“Every breed of animal, the moon, archery, and virginity,” said Phoenix, somehow managing to keep a straight face.
“She loves her cats,” said Rusty, grasping at the first comment and ignoring the rest. “She told me she planned to leave Napoleon and Josephine with her parents after this week. It’s not practical for her to bring them here.”
“That’s settled then,” said Phoenix, “Artemis will join the hunt tomorrow.”
“Back to matters for today then, gentlemen,” said Athena.
Henry Case took his cue and started.
“We didn’t have too many problems with our guests once we got them settled. The car dealers had no idea where they had been brought to, or which organisation or government department had lifted them off the streets. They worried that we wanted to do them harm; we soon corrected that assumption. We told them that they need not fear us. It was stressed that the reason they had been invited to visit us had nothing to do with their current business. As soon as they told us what we needed to know they would be returned to trade in dodgy motors for as long as they wished. Once the preliminaries had been dealt with, we asked for details about anyone to the west of London, in the M4 corridor, that they supplied with numerous vehicles. One chap was adamant he only dealt in cars, never vans or trucks, and that his customers lived either on the continent or many miles from the capital. The second man was most cooperative. He said his business was split fifty-fifty between home and abroad. He moved any model of a vehicle a client wanted. Several groups of people took stuff off his hands who operated in the region we were investigating. We asked whether he had ever sold cars to the ram-raid gang. His eyes gave him away. The mere mention of the name made him nervous. I had to convince him that whatever he told us would be held in the strictest confidence and never spoken of to anyone. I felt it necessary to go back to stage one. I told him that when I said he didn’t need to fear us, I meant that when I asked a question, provided he told me everything he knew, then he had nothing to fear. I left what might happen if he didn’t comply with his imagination. This man finally admitted that he and his partners had enjoyed a good trading relationship with the members of the ram-raid gang. He stressed that at no stage did they ever suspect that the vehicles were being used for that purpose; I merely patted him on the knee and asked him to continue.”
“You’re all heart,” said Phoenix. Henry continued his report without comment.
“A couple of months ago they had received a phone call from a man with an accent. Their number’s ex-directory for obvious reasons, so it came as a shock to be contacted by a stranger. The man told them he had taken over the garage and its contents as their previous clients no longer traded. He wanted to continue the setup unchanged. The dealers began lifting cars and vans to order and delivered them to the site from which the ram-raid gang had operated. The men they saw there looked far more dangerous than their predecessors. I asked him to direct me to the site; once again he became agitated and reticent. I’m afraid I had to move to stage three. I returned to him after about forty-five minutes and asked again. The farm is near Eton Wick. I have the postcode. The farmer has several outbuildings he rents out that are remote from the farmhouse. It appears his business is strapped for cash, so he doesn’t ask too many questions of his customers. The new occupants of the outbuildings are Bulgarians. There are eight to ten of them as far as my chap knew and they live in or around Maidenhead, just five or six miles away. He said they were the meanest bunch of thugs he had ever come across in his life. He was scared to death of them. He said nobody from the ram-raid gang had ever contacted him since that day. He was certain the Bulgarians had killed them. He pleaded with me not to tell this gang that he had said anything. I told him not to worry. The gang would never hear a word from me. While he still felt chatty, I asked what he imagined these Bulgarians had been doing before they decided to trade in stolen cars. He thought they had started to gain a reputation in the region around two or three years back. Mainly it was drugs and girls with which they were reckoned to have connections. What they did with the cars and vans he sold them in the last few months worried him most. I asked him to explain; he talked to the floor. ‘You know,’ he said ‘don’t you? It’s them.’
CHAPTER 12
Athena thanked Henry for the speedy results he had gained, He passed her the exact location of the farm and a map showing the buildings associated with the property. There were aerial photographs too that an Olympus drone had supplied when it overflew the farm this morning at first light. The outbuildings looked deserted, The gang were at home in Maidenhead.
“What did you do with your guests?” she asked.
“I thanked them for their help and asked them to wait while we verified the information they had supplied. As soon as we were happy, we will arrange transport to take them home.”
“Are you happy, Henry?” Athena asked.
Henry nodded.
“Giles, what do you have?”
“I’ve left my team working on the new data that Henry supplied. Now we know the exact location of the gang’s hide-out we can start to use the data we have to track movements of vehicles. It might give us a clue as to the domestic arrangements of these devils.
Phoenix had been deep in thought.
“Do that, Giles. The more intelligence we have the better. You need to be very lucky to link the gang on the motorway to the actual farm by CCTV; then when they travel from the farm to their homes, we don’t know what cars they drive. They wouldn’t be so dumb as to use their stolen transport to drive around in locally. So far as direct action is concerned, we need to get as many of them as we can in one strike. We can’t pick them off individually. If we can isolate the gang members at the farm and remove them it gives us the best chance of completing the mission without drawing attention to Olympus.”
“I agree with you, Phoenix,” said Athena, “but we’ve got two issues to consider. What if yesterday was the last raid? When will the next raid be; are subsequent raids planned in any case? Can we afford to have agents surrounding the farm, hoping they’ll t
urn up, for an indeterminate time?”
“What do you think we should do then, Athena?” Phoenix asked.
“Why not have a chat with the farmer? Misdirect him into believing you are undercover police. Put him in the picture; ask him to contact the gang telling them there’s a small fire in one of their buildings. He could suggest to them they might wish to remove anything they wouldn’t want to fall into the wrong hands. They could be there inside twenty minutes from Maidenhead.”
“Okay, but what’s stopping the farmer calling the fire brigade anyway?” said Rusty.
“Maybe he could tell them he’ll leave the call until a quarter of an hour after he ends the call. Suggesting they have around fifteen minutes to get everything out they need to save,” offered Giles.
“That might work, but if Athena’s first premise was correct, namely that the last raids have taken place, we would end up destroying loads of evidence,” said Alastor.
“There wouldn’t actually be a fire, you muppet. We create lots of smoke by one of the outbuildings so they had to keep driving towards the farm when they see it,” said Phoenix.
Alastor had turned a shade of red that suggested he was about to blow a gasket. A mobile phone rang on the desk. Giles answered. He listened for a minute, then closed his eyes.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Have they found something, Giles?” asked Athena.
“We intercepted a transmission early this morning from a traffic cop and his HQ in Maidenhead; he had stopped a drunk driver just after he had left a bar. It was around two fifteen. We have carried out further checks and evidently, this guy failed the breath test and was kept in the cells overnight and will be released when he’s sober. His name is Georgi Bonev. He’s a Bulgarian national, aged 31, who arrived in the UK in 2011. His papers don’t suggest a criminal past, but they may have been forged. There’s no record of employment we can trace, yet he has a property in the town. Our agent on the spot has visited the district near the bar; he has located the vehicle, it was parked and tagged by the officer, for removal to the car pound this morning. When he sent the photograph of the car and the number plate, we had our first bit of luck. It’s a Toyota Prius that was used on an early ram-raid job, with a plate from a Vauxhall Zafira of the same vintage. Georgi Bonev is one of the gang members. A gang member that was dumb enough to use a pool car to drive home in yesterday after the Amesbury attack.”
“Bingo,” said Phoenix.
“The agent will be trailing Bonev as he leaves Maidenhead nick. We can lift him if you think it might assist us going forward,” said Giles.
“We could spook the whole gang if we bring Bonev here; we don’t want them going to ground. Let’s just keep him under surveillance for now,” said Athena.
Phoenix and Rusty were already poring over the maps, plans and aerial shots of the farm. Athena could tell they wanted to get the planning stage underway as soon as possible.
“Why don’t you two boys run away to the orangery? You can work on the plan of attack there. I’ll arrange refreshments to be brought over to you at lunchtime. Is there anything you particularly fancy?”
The two friends looked at one another. The pair recalled a similar occasion in the orangery with Erebus after a mission in the Cotswolds a few months back. In unison they replied: -
“Coffee and a stack of bacon rolls, please.”
Athena smiled briefly, then felt a little queasy. And so it begins, she thought. That conversation with Phoenix had to be sooner rather than later.
The two boys gathered up the relevant items from the table and headed out. They were in their element. The planning and preparation were so vitally important; it didn’t match the adrenalin rush they got from a mission, but the success of those furious seconds of action depended on the groundwork that had been done earlier. Nobody in their right mind tries to tap-dance their way through a firestorm.
Athena instructed Giles to return to the ice-house to start the long trawl through traffic movements in the M4 corridor. The start and finish point of each of the raids were known now; they had descriptions of a collection of vehicles used by both gangs and number plates they switched at will between them. Needles and haystacks sprang to mind, but knowledge was power. The more they knew about this gang the better.
Alastor was a healthier colour now, both he and his colleagues were waiting to hear what remained to be discussed this morning.
“Phoenix can be brusque at times; even so, he has the best interests of Olympus at heart so we must forgive his occasional odd turn of phrase. Moving on, you will recall last evening when we returned from London? You were all interested in the matters discussed at the meeting. Phoenix summed it up succinctly; he wasn’t being dismissive of you in that, he was merely paraphrasing what happened. Our organisation’s safety demands that the identity of the other ten Olympians sat around the table with is shrouded in secrecy. I would dearly love to use your skills to carry out background checks on every single one of them. Several of them are working together, against the principles prescribed by Erebus and others at the birth of the Olympus Project. Whether they are aiming for financial gain, personal revenge or a more far-reaching influence on the way this nation is governed, I don’t yet fully understand.”
“You suspect a coup, though, from what Phoenix suggested?” said Minos.
“Within Olympus, at first,” added Alastor.
“As the new faction grows in strength, you are afraid it might be bold enough to attempt to topple the government and take control. Surely, they would need to have infiltrated and coerced the armed forces to agree with their new vision?” said Thanatos.
“It’s not necessarily a new vision that’s needed,” said Alastor. “They could convince the armed forces, the police and security services that it was in the ‘interests of national security.’ It would be based on the American response to 9/11 taken to the next level.”
Minos used his smartphone to call up the relevant phrases.
“Homeland security is ‘the concerted national effort to ensure a homeland that is safe, secure, and resilient against terrorism and other hazards… so that our way of life can thrive… prevent terrorist attacks within our borders, reduce vulnerability to terrorism, and minimise the damage from attacks that do occur.’ That could be enough leverage to persuade the armed services to come on board. You would be surprised how little it takes to flip a country from democracy to dictatorship. In these troubled times, people want strong leadership. Kowtowing to Europe over every aspect of our daily lives, the abject failure of our ‘open door’ policy, austerity piled on top of austerity; these are the main ingredients that encourage an ambitious person to seek power. If that is what we’re facing then as they begin to nibble away at the foundations, sooner or later the whole pack of cards will fall.”
“A little dramatic, Minos,” said Thanatos, “don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” said Athena, “but we must be on our guard. I was listening to Minos and thinking it’s odd for us at Larcombe to be protecting the authorities from a possible breakdown in democracy. Olympus operates outside the law at times, while keeping our main principles intact, and it ensures people face justice when the current regime fails to act. We could not stand by and watch that ineffectual system be usurped by another faction; one which might not be acting in the best interests of the British people. No, we must stand firm on our principles and maintain the status quo, while encouraging the authorities to find the backbone it has lost over the last few decades. I’m positive that would have been the course of action Erebus would have advocated. Let’s return to my earlier topic; that of identifying those that may be plotting against us. What I propose is this, we share the task among the four of us. You are intelligent men; you know that our benefactors have always been among the richest people in the country. The list of possible Olympians could be slashed to less than three hundred if you set your mind to the task. For your own protection, I shall give each of you three descriptions, wi
th photographs where available. One of them is a current Olympian. The other two could conceivably be a member based on their wealth and lack of any criminal conviction or extreme political leanings. Don’t think that your research is of no import for the two ‘imposters.’ If our fears are justified then we will be faced with the removal of any cancer inside the organisation and fresh blood will be required. At least, if we need to approach such people we will know whether they have a clean bill of health.”
“I think I speak for all of us, Athena,” said Minos solemnly, “that we will carry out the research you ask for with due diligence and guard the information we uncover closely. Would you prefer that we report on our findings privately, restricting meetings on this matter to be held between just the four of us?”
“I think that it might be wiser to meet with each of you individually. The fewer people who know about each investigation the better. No disrespect to either of you; nor to Phoenix, Rusty and the others. They have more than enough on their hands. We will work on this alone. Once we have isolated the ‘enemy at the gate’ we can involve them and at that time we must act swiftly.”
“Understood,” said Alastor.
Athena closed the meeting and went to arrange those refreshments for Phoenix and Rusty. Life was going to be hectic at Larcombe in the future.
In the orangery, the plans for the attack in Eton Wick were being formulated. Phoenix and Rusty were contacting agents from around the country to bring them on board. Rusty rang the farmhouse and talked to the farmer of the Metropolitan Police’s suspicions concerning the people renting property from him. The farmer was soon convinced that the man he was talking to was an undercover officer working with a serious crimes unit; he was eager to help.
The coffee and bacon rolls had arrived and had soon been demolished, the two friends left the orangery and walked over to the ice-house. The pair descended in the lift to the second level. They needed to speak to Bazza and Thommo in the armoury. After describing the scope of the mission, they left the two ex-SAS men to prepare a suitable list of equipment to execute their plans.