Helix Nexus

by Chris Lofts

  ‘Negative,’ Sofi replied.

  ‘There’s nothing coming, Finch, it’s a bluff.’ Sofi would have it covered. She’d be scanning all military channels and positioning herself with the 50 cal. Anything incoming would be met with a Raufoss round or two. ‘I told you to walk away. You should have listened. Did you really think you’d be able to take me on your own? If you knew what you were doing, you’d have had a bigger team, or were you trying to create a good impression with the boss?’

  ‘As usual, you think you know it all.’ Finch sneered.

  ‘Actually, I don’t. How did you know where to find me?’

  Finch shrugged and started to sing. ‘Follow the yellow brick road. Follow the yellow brick road. Follow, follow, follow, foll—’

  ‘Mason?’ Helix clenched his teeth. Not so much at the singing, which was bad enough. Had Mace sold them out? It would also explain why Sofi hadn’t been able to contact him to arrange the return trip.

  ‘We’ve been watching him for months. Him and anyone else who visited via his back door, if you get my drift.’ Finch clapped. ‘It didn’t take a lot. We’d only got one electrode attached to his ball-sack and he sang like the pantomime dame he is. He gave us his entire network. I’ve had you in my sights for a while, until you or your lady friend discovered the nano-tracers I’d laced the water with. All I had to do was follow the yellow brick road to Bristol, pick up his local contacts and voila!’

  Helix and Ethan weren’t Mace’s only off-the-books clients. Helix turned to Wheeler. ‘So that’s who arranged all of this then?’

  Wheeler raised his eyebrows. ‘As I said, Major, it’s not what you know. That said, thanks to Captain Finch, I’m not sure my life is going to be as comfortable as it once was.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry. You won’t be here for much longer.’

  ‘Is that your plan, Major Helix, to kill us all? How many more are you going to slaughter?’

  ‘Anyone who stands in between me, my brother, your ex-wife and anyone else I care about.’

  Wheeler stroked his chin. ‘Why are you returning to London? Gabrielle almost let something slip back in the village before you silenced her.’

  ‘I’d be surprised if you didn’t see your friend, the Home Secretary’s, appearance on the news last night,’ Helix said, slumping into an armchair. He rested his weapon on his thigh. ‘The letter Ormandy claims to have is a complete fabrication. Gabrielle wants to clear her name and I need to do the same.’

  ‘Why should she care?’ Wheeler scoffed. ‘She’s retired from public life. And with your skills, what’s to stop you both from disappearing completely?’ He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. ‘No, Major, there’s more to it. A lot more. If you were so certain that it was a fabrication and that you could easily disprove it, you would have allowed her to be picked up and you could have pleaded your case together, your redoubtable brother providing supporting evidence. He’s rather good at—’

  Helix exploded from the armchair. The punch landed to the right of Wheeler’s mouth, his attempt to duck as useless as it was late. He loomed over him ready to hit him again. In the corner of his eye, the countdown timer on his sleeve display was below the 24-hour threshold, its digits having changed from green to amber. Red would come with the last 12 hours. With Mace out of the game, things were about to get a lot harder.

  Wheeler gathered himself. ‘I can help,’ he said, tonguing his spit lip. ‘Whatever it is, I can call her off.’

  ‘You?’ Helix snorted, backing away towards the chair. ‘Why should I trust you?’

  ‘Your reticence is understandable,’ Wheeler said, looking at the blood on his fingertips. ‘But if you listen to what I have to say, you might change your mind. You and my ex-wife aren’t the only things that Julia Ormandy is desperate to get her hands on.’

  25

  22 Hours

  Rain replaced the snow, rendering the pristine landscape in muddy shades of grey and brown. Those rooftops still visible through the burgeoning vegetation defrosted, the meltwater and slabs of slimy snow spilling over the edges of detritus-filled guttering. Two weak fingers of smoke rose from the castle through the deluge. The one issuing from the stables gasped its last as the flame faltered and died, its fuel spent. The chimney set into the roof of the gatehouse tower belched and coughed, growing in confidence, winning the battle with the elements.

  With Wheeler and Finch sitting on the oak flooring, cuffed to either side of the four-poster, Helix holstered his weapon. He prodded the poker at the extra logs he’d placed into the hearth as he listened to Sofi’s update. It was brief. Everything was quiet. ‘OK. Secure the weapons. Deploy your nano-cams to the approaches and come up here. It’s show time.’ He poured himself a generous measure of Wheeler’s brandy, pausing with the bottle over a second glass, about to pour Gabrielle one. Maybe he should have been more worried about himself remembering that Gabrielle was actually Sofi, rather than the AI forgetting. Although their relationship hadn’t been all roses and chocolates, Wheeler was the one person alive who knew Gabrielle best. He poured a second measure. ‘And don’t forget who you are. Any slip ups and Wheeler—’

  ‘Fear not, Major,’ she replied. ‘See you on the other side.’

  ‘OK. You can come up,’ he called, ignoring the shiver that ran up his back. He turned with the glasses in his hands. A faint disturbance in the shadows on the stairs took form. Any concern he might have been harbouring evaporated.

  Wheeler leaned around the door as far as the handcuffs would allow. ‘Hello, Gabrielle. Good of you to join us.’

  She ignored him, fixed her eyes on Helix and crossed the room. She brushed the offered glass gently aside, reached up on tiptoes and kissed him.

  Helix caught himself just in time, going with it, relaxing, allowing her – its – tongue to slip between his lips. ‘Don’t get carried away.’

  Their lips parted. She winked at him, accepted the glass and took a sip. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked, gesturing towards Finch with her glass.

  ‘Captain Elias Finch,’ Helix said. ‘Wannabe member of the special forces, out for a day trip, trying to impress his boss.’

  ‘You’re looking well, Gabrielle,’ Wheeler interrupted. ‘Every inch the digger it seems.’

  ‘Get lost, Justin.’ She slumped into an armchair, tossed aside her poncho and crossed her legs. ‘Nice shackles, they suit you.’ She nosed the brandy. ‘Two armchairs, a double bed and matching wardrobes,’ she said. ‘Expecting company?’

  ‘One lives in hope, Gabrielle.’

  ‘Yes. But I can’t imagine Julia Ormandy wanting to get her Gucci shoes dirty coming down here.’ She took a sip of her drink. ‘Oh, don’t look so surprised, Captain Finch. Didn’t you know about my ex-husband and the Home Secretary? Quite the scandal. Of course, it was before the inconvenience of his incarceration. But that didn’t last long. Did it, Justin?’

  Finch’s eyes darted at Wheeler.

  Helix raised his eyebrows. ‘Start talking,’ he said, nodding at Wheeler. ‘Apart from us, what is it that Ormandy is so keen to get her hands on?’

  Wheeler cleared his throat. ‘Do you know what happens to people in halo-confinement, Major?’

  ‘Not a lot. They while away their time in some kind of suspended animation, plugged into life support systems, in tubes stacked ten high.’

  ‘Hmm. Good summary,’ Wheeler said, pulling his knees up. ‘Ninety-eight percent of them die before the completion of their sentence and not even the great Gaia knows why. She doesn’t know when they’ll die or how. They are there one minute and poof, gone the next.’

  ‘Explains why the prison population is shrinking,’ Helix said, swirling the brandy around in his glass.

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘And this is relevant how?’

  ‘The commuting of my sentence to banishment for life wasn’t born out of sentimentality on Ormandy’s part—’

  ‘Aww, sad.’ Sofi pouted. ‘Nobody loves poor Justin.’

 
; ‘Very amusing, Gabrielle.’

  Helix put his hand on Sofi’s arm. ‘So, she didn’t want you dead.’ He finished his drink. ‘What happens if you die?’ He sat forward, elbows on his knees.

  Wheeler tongued his busted lip. ‘Certain information is released into the public realm.’

  Helix interlaced his fingers. ‘Information that Ormandy would rather remained private?’ He allowed the silence to bloom. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Come on, Major.’ Wheeler laughed. ‘I could tell you but without the evidence you have nothing other than hearsay.’

  ‘So show me the evidence.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  Helix pulled one of his guns. ‘Can’t or won’t.’ He painted a targeting dot on Wheeler’s head.

  ‘Wait, Helix,’ Sofi said.

  It was a nanosecond slower than Gabrielle would have reacted but he let it pass. ‘Well, which is it?’

  ‘I would, but alas, I can’t.’

  ‘Yawlander ordered the seizure and audit of all of your parliamentary and private data. All of your grubby little secrets have been rifled through by the best military analysts. Apart from confirming your dealings with Valerian Lytkin there was nothing else of note.’

  Wheeler sniffed a laugh. ‘That’s because it’s not kept in some anonymous data centre or elsewhere in the ether, Helix. Even the great Gaia doesn’t know where it is. It doesn’t exist as stored qubits, bytes or bits.’

  ‘Paper,’ Sofi murmured.

  ‘Paper?’ Finch said.

  ‘Shut up, Finch,’ Helix said. ‘We know the only paper you’re familiar with is the stuff you wipe across your arse.’ He slid to the edge of his seat. ‘Spit it out, Wheeler. Where is it?’

  ‘It’s safe. As soon as my death is announced a number of processes I have established will verify the details and autogenerate a notification to my lawyers giving the whereabouts of the information.’

  ‘So there is information stored somewhere. The programme runs upon the announcement of your death. A stored message that is sent at the end of the process. And you think that Ormandy won’t be able to find all of that. Who set it up? I’m bloody sure it wasn’t you.’

  ‘General Yawlander.’

  ‘No way,’ Helix scoffed. ‘Yawlander was smart, but with all due respect he wasn’t that smart.’

  ‘He had help.’ Wheeler cleared his throat. ‘From your brother.’

  Helix nailed him with a stare. ‘Does Ethan know what you have on Ormandy?’

  ‘No. Yawlander told him that the programme was for himself. He asked Ethan to set it up and then handover the administration functions. He passed those to me so I could set up the messages to be sent. That’s why it’s never been found.’

  ‘Because Ethan built it,’ Helix said. He pushed up from the armchair and helped himself to more of Wheeler’s brandy. Sofi waved away his offer of a refill. Ethan wouldn’t have said anything, given that Yawlander had said it was for his own use. He’d have built it and forgotten about it. Speculating if Yawlander knew about Ormandy or not was pointless. He was gone. ‘Do you believe him, Sofi?’

  ‘I’m scanning Ethan’s software repositories,’ the AI replied via his implant. ‘If it’s there, I’ll find it. But if he handed it off to Yawlander before it was configured, there’s not a lot we can do. It will have been like a virus, mutating periodically, otherwise I might be able to match the code but the chances—’

  ‘OK. I get it. Let’s move on.’ He turned from the drinks cabinet. ‘You said you could call Ormandy off. How do we make that happen?’ he said to Wheeler, handing him the glass.

  Wheeler nodded his thanks. ‘Before we get to that I need you to help me with something.’ He took a sip of the drink. ‘The information is in London. That’s as close as I am prepared to go with the location.’

  ‘A mere 600 square miles, give or take,’ Finch said, slouching onto the floor.

  Helix pointed the P226 at him. ‘Say one more word, Finch, and I swear it will be your last.’ He looked back at Wheeler. ‘Get on with it.’

  ‘Thanks to my untimely arrest, prosecution and subsequent banishment I didn’t have the opportunity to recover the information.’ He finished the brandy. ‘Get me into London without my head being blown off so that I can recover it and I’ll call Ormandy off.’

  ‘No. You call her off and then we go to London,’ Helix said getting to his feet. ‘Over to you, Sofi.’

  Sofi put her glass on the small table next to the armchair. ‘Maybe I can remove them,’ she said moving towards Wheeler. ‘I need to see your neck, Justin.’ She crouched beside him. ‘But if you touch me, I will kick you in the balls. Understood?’ She acted out the routine that she and Helix had agreed. Having confirmed she couldn’t safely remove them, she recovered the device IDs and went to work on reconfiguring them to ensure that Wheeler wouldn’t be dead before he could be of any use.

  ‘OK. If we can’t remove them, there’s another option,’ Helix said, continuing the charade. ‘I’ve got a contact in Justice. Assuming she can reset the boundary parameter or deactivate them we should be good to go.’

  Finch sniggered and mouthed ‘Boom!’ pinging his clenched fingers outwards to illustrate his point to Wheeler.

  Wheeler swallowed. ‘And if you can’t?’

  ‘We should be fine, but I guess we’ll soon find out.’

  Sofi stepped behind him. ‘Just going to use the loo,’ she said, turning to Wheeler.

  Wheeler gestured upwards with his thumb.

  Helix nodded, returning to the drinks cabinet. If Wheeler’s spirit collection was anything to go by, his contacts were good. Well, they were good until Finch and Ormandy had wiped them out. He wrung his hands in silent contemplation. ‘Finch!’ he snapped, spinning back from the drinks. ‘Your turn. What was your plan. Assuming you had one.’

  Finch cowered, knocking his head on the carved oak panel against which he was leaning. ‘There’s a team on standby in Bristol at Filton. Two quad-copters, eight guys. They’re waiting for my signal.’

  ‘Does Ormandy know you’ve located us?’

  Finch shook his head.

  Helix strode across the room. ‘You better not be lying to me, Finch. Who made the satellite call? Was it you?’

  Finch glanced at Wheeler.

  ‘It was Wheeler. There are a number of calls to the same number,’ Sofi reported into Helix’s ear. ‘Jesus. You should see this place and I don’t just mean the gold-plated toilet. Well-connected is an understatement.’

  Helix put his hands on his hips. ‘Who were you calling, Wheeler?’ he said.

  ‘It was Ormandy’s residence.’ Sofi replied.

  ‘Call recordings?’

  ‘Quantum encryption. Going to take a while.’

  ‘The call didn’t connect, Major,’ Wheeler said, glancing at the window. ‘I was distracted.’

  ‘I didn’t ask if the call connected,’ he said, turning as Sofi came back in. ‘I asked who you were calling.’

  ‘As a concerned citizen—’

  ‘Ormandy.’ He smoothed a wrinkle in his jacket sleeve. ‘Don’t look so disappointed. You’re not likely to call it in to the local nick. Whatever. It makes no difference now. It just gives me one more reason to shoot you when the time comes. OK. Here’s what we’re going to do.’

  26

  22 Hours

  Sofi’s recce of the upper floor had revealed a study in addition to the bathroom. The steps continued to the roof which was littered with plant that serviced Wheeler’s accommodation, including a military-grade satellite array. There were no other means of access.

  The Glock quivered in Sofi’s hand as Wheeler and Finch made their way up the stairs towards her. Helix followed from behind, taking a moment to glance into the bathroom. The AI hadn’t been joking about the luxury. He snorted and followed the men into the study. Bookcases lined half of the curving wall. He made a mental note to ensure the collection made it to the village once this was all over. He’d already earmarked the bed f
or Gabrielle. A wing-backed reading chair with a small table alongside stood next to the library.

  Wheeler sat in his office chair, his hands folded in his lap. ‘Sorry. Were you waiting for me, Major?’

  ‘Your handprint,’ Helix said, the blade springing from between his knuckles.

  Wheeler’s free hand slapped to the surface of the smoked-glass table that sat incongruously amongst the antique wooden furniture and fittings. Three wide holographic screens materialised above the desk, the cursor moving as it tracked Wheeler’s eye movements. He adjusted the camera angle as Helix instructed to ensure they were all visible on screen. Sofi sat in the reading chair; Finch was handcuffed to the door handle.

  ‘Call her,’ Helix said, glancing over his shoulder at Sofi.

  She nodded back. She was ready.

  Ormandy’s PA, the same one who walked Helix to the Home Secretary’s office in the MoHD building, answered the call without eye contact. ‘Julia Ormandy’s office,’ she said, boredom dripping from her glossed lips.

  ‘Hello, Gemma. May I speak with the Home Secretary, please?’ Wheeler said.

  She stopped filing her fingernails, the multi-tasking of speech and nailcare a skill she’d yet to master. ‘She’s not to be disturbed.’ The filing recommenced.

  ‘Open your fucking eyes, Gemma-ginger-bun or whatever your name is and get Ormandy. Now!’ Helix barked.

  The PA flinched, her eyes springing to the screen. ‘You,’ she gasped. ‘Please hold.’

  ‘Thank you, Major,’ Wheeler said. ‘I should try that approach myself.’

  Julia Ormandy appeared on screen. Charcoal grey suit, cream silk blouse, hair tied tight. ‘Justin,’ she said. ‘And Major Helix, Doctor Stepper, oh and Finch,’ she sneered. ‘Goodness. What are you wearing, Justin?’

  ‘Never mind what he’s wearing, Home Secretary, you should smell him,’ Helix interrupted. ‘We’d love to chat about wardrobe choices and personal hygiene, but we have more pressing matters.’