by Guy Roberts
‘And all because David was working on the Russian case?’
‘Exactly.’ Brice’s voice was now heavy with impatience. ‘And that’s why I’ve been sent from the PM’s office. We want this sorted out directly, without any blowback. We find Jack Starling and use him to prove to the world that Russia is breaking the rules.’
Sir Johnathon stared at the man for a moment, weighing the implications of Brice’s words. ‘Are you saying, Mr Brice, that the Prime Minister has expressly ordered you to assume control of this situation – to coordinate the COBRA response?’
A greasy smile answered his question before Brice had even opened his mouth.
‘That’s right, Sir Johnathon. The Prime Minister gave me, and I quote, ‘Total and complete responsibility for this crisis.’ Consultation was not necessary. I’m in charge and COBRA does what I tell it to.’ Brice collapsed heavily into a chair at the head of the table. ‘Once we sort out what’s going on, catch this character Jack and find out what the Russians paid him, we’ll let you boys sort out the rest.’
‘No doubt.’ Sir Johnathon stared at Brice carefully. ‘Is there any shred of proof linking Jack Starling to the Russian government?’
Brice glared at him for a moment. ‘We’ll find it,’ he declared, then stared intently into his iPad. This man is too confident, Sir Johnathon thought silently. He gritted his teeth in frustration and his eyes met those of Michelle Highgrove for an instant. He could see the same concern etched into Highgrove’s alluring brown eyes, but he was careful not to betray his inmost thoughts to the perceptive young officer. There was something about the situation which did not add up. But whatever else, it was clear that Jack Starling was in the country and David Starling was dead. Russian involvement or not, the sooner they could find Jack Starling the better – on that, at least, Sir Johnathon agreed with Brice. Find Jack Starling first, then make sure the right questions are asked.
He slid smoothly into a seat at Brice’s right hand side. ‘David worked for me. I know about his family and I know about Jack.’ Both comments were true. Brice leaned forward expectantly. He might have little patience for the eminent Sir Johnathon, but he knew the old man was well connected and had a reputation for results.
‘So, am I right? Do you think he’s working for the Russians?’
Sir Johnathon shook his head, unwilling to commit to Brice’s theory.
‘Not necessarily.’ Sir Johnathon spoke slowly, choosing his words with care. ‘Jack Starling was a highly trained, effective and lethal soldier, who performed outstandingly in covert actions in the Balkans and Afghanistan. Although I personally doubt it, there may indeed be a possibility that he is working for Moscow,’ Sir Johnathon paused delicately. ‘It’s far better than the alternative.’
‘Which is?’ Brice frowned at the possibility he could be wrong.
‘If he’s not working for the Russians,’ Sir Johnathon spoke calmly, ‘then he’s working for revenge.’
0600 hrs (0500 hrs GMT) 14 June 2015, Drontheimer Strasse, Berlin.
GR 52.561948, 13.377329
The Termite looked out in satisfaction across the graffiti-covered hall. He was standing in an abandoned warehouse, another East Berlin relic discarded after the collapse of East Germany in 1990, watching a handful of young men as they stared doggedly into their computer screens. The reunification of Germany at the end of the Cold War had promised so much, yet none had profited in the way he had. This hulking factory had been left to rot, like thousands of others – a grimy spectre of the past. It was a perfect base of operations for 21st Century crime.
Despite the early hour, the central hall was filled with the buzz of anticipation, two or three dozen young computer hackers kept awake with energy drinks and the lure of quick, easy money. Each one was a disaffected computer expert, each one wanting something of the wealth and prosperity which Hollywood had promised them as a birthright of the Western experience. The future had promised everything for these soft, spoilt children, but had delivered nothing – which had allowed the Termite to play on their disillusionment and pull them into his schemes.
The oil-stained floors of the abandoned complex were covered with snaking lines of electronic wiring, fibre optic cables and clusters of power boards. Computers were lined up on dusty tables, the ground underfoot covered with fast food wrappers and discarded soft drink cans. The young men – and they were all young men – sat at keyboards typing abnormally fast, hurling insults at one another with clockwork regularity. Each of these hackers had the power of a ghostly Roman legion, marching into the computer systems of businesses, government buildings and military bases across Europe and around the world, sacking them for information and leaving without a trace. For all his own computing skill, the Termite knew it was his psychological control of these misguided and impressionable young men that was the true source of his wealth and power. He sat back into a heavy 1970s arm chair and thought carefully, the request from Deschamps foremost in his mind.
The Termite let his gaze wander across the room. Which one will it be today?
His gaze settled on the nearest table, where a pimply-faced young Georgian man sat glowering over his computer. The Termite nodded to himself, then turned slightly and signalled to the tall, leather-clad Amazon standing to one side of the room.
‘Nyx.’ He called her name in a low voice. Manipulation of these young men required special skills and Nyx had those skills in abundance. The beautiful, austere psychology graduate of the Sorbonne was the perfect figure to play on their sense of sexual and social inadequacy. The sticky-fingered young computer hackers lusted after her sensual, athletic body, even as they recoiled and blushed at the scorn and contempt with which she usually treated them. Occasionally, however, that scorn was tempered with delicious friendliness and lingering touches – enough to rile them into competitive lust. It was a heady psychological mixture and the perfect prompt to ensure their ongoing obedience to the Termite and his criminal plans. If they did not want to show off for him, they could not help but try and show off for her – and once they had committed themselves to his projects, the Termite knew, they could often be blackmailed to work themselves still further into his machinations.
Nyx strode forward and leaned over his shoulder, close enough for her crisp, natural musk to envelop him. There was a slight creak as her skin-tight leather leggings accommodated to her new stance. The Termite knew that any of the young men looking up to the stage would be rewarded by a tantalising view of her cleavage as it disappeared into her tight black jacket, though he doubted whether any of them would have dared to meet her gaze. There was a slightly increased hum of activity from the floor. Each man in the room knew the Termite was about to choose one of them for a challenge. Each one, despite himself, wanted to be the one that Nyx would approach.
‘Vano Gilauri,’ the Termite murmured to his aide. Nyx nodded, then stepped out across the stage and down onto the concrete floor with majestic aplomb. She leaned seductively over the computer of Gilauri and began a whispered conversation. The Termite leaned back in his chair, watching her at work. For the Termite, the entire setup was a perfect scam. Each callow young man was brilliant at computer programming but, for various reasons, psychologically vulnerable to manipulation. It was inevitable that the Termite was able to exploit them and doing so gave him exactly what they actually wanted for themselves – power, influence and wealth.
The one called Gilauri pushed himself back from his chair and awkwardly clambered up the podium steps to stand in front of the Termite, Nyx stalking in his wake like a shadow. The Termite looked up at his sullen face and knew he had chosen correctly – Vano Gilauri was at that point of simmering resentment that could lead to confrontation and escape from the Termite’s plans. A small challenge like the request from Deschamps was exactly what would be needed to get Gilauri back on side – to let him prove his superiority by doing exactly what the Termite wanted. It was the simplest of psychological manipulations.
‘How are yo
u, Vano?’ The Termite spoke flawless Georgian, gesturing for the young man to take a seat in the plastic office chair that Nyx had wordlessly delivered. It was a triple act of diversion – fatherly politeness in Vano’s mother tongue, the sudden offer of a chair, like an equal and the too-late discovery that the chair was lower than the Termite’s own – completing Gilauri’s transformation from aggressor to supplicant. Seeming to take Gilauri into his confidence would be the next step. The Termite leaned forward, inviting Gilauri to do the same.
‘I’ve had a call from Paris.’ The Termite confided the words in a low-pitched voice. ‘A challenge has come up – to test our skills against the very centre of the British establishment.’ Gilauri was interested despite himself, his simmering resentment fading to the background.
The Termite leaned closer still. ‘The British Government is in pursuit of a man named Jack Starling,’ he murmured. ‘How can we follow this chase? And how can we change it?’
Gilauri frowned for a moment, deep in thought, then began to talk with animation. The Termite suppressed a smile and tilted his head forward to listen intently as the young hacker played himself into the Termite’s hands.
0600 hrs 14 June 2015, Bewdley Street, London.
GR 51.542316, -0.109222
Jack awoke at precisely six am, his head clear and senses sharp. He breathed out slowly, letting his eyes adjust as he considered his surroundings. The walls of a cheap hotel room looked down at him with a shade of exhausted institutional green and a distant hum of morning traffic reached his ears. Jack rubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin, reviewing the steps he had taken since scrambling to the ground behind his brother’s house. He had headed west, withdrawing the maximum amount – some £400 – from the first ATM he could find and ducking into a late night supermarket for some essential supplies, including a cheap hoodie. Once out of the store he cut north east, circling the centre of London in a great loop. It was a harmless manoeuvre, but deceptively simple. In a high tech, 21st Century city like London, evading surveillance was a game of data manipulation, misinformation and camouflage – every camera would be routed to a central database of the London Metropolitan Police, but a man wearing a hoodie was still anonymous. By 1 am his footsteps had finally carried him to the warren of streets behind King’s Cross and St Pancras, a seedy area filled with cheap and disreputable hotels. Most charged by the hour and preferred cash over credit. The small man in the tiny, metal-grilled office by the front door had barely even looked up from his paperback as he accepted Jack’s money and gave a green-tagged key in return. Once inside the building, Jack stalked up a series of steep, narrow staircases to find his room, a tiny chamber at the back of the third floor. Jack smiled when he saw that the space was so narrow that the door could not even swing open without hitting the side of the bed. The mattress groaned as he sank onto it and the old blankets had a certain mustiness, but the room was dry, warm and anonymous. He had slept soundly.
By 6.05 am Jack was in the small dining room on the ground floor, taking advantage of the breakfast included in the price of accommodation. The food matched the surroundings: dry toast, hard butter, undercooked bacon, greasy eggs. Jack ate quickly, eyes down. He tried to think of himself as a piece of furniture – unthreatening, part of the background, forgettable. It was strange, but such little tricks worked. Jedi mind tricks, his SAS instructor had called them. Even on a subconscious level people monitored their surroundings and something deep and primal in a person could sense if another person wished them harm. Thinking of yourself as easily overlooked, like a piece of background furniture, could actually trick people’s minds into ignoring you. Once his coffee was finished, Jack walked quietly out of the dining room, eyes down and shoulders hunched to reduce his size. No one even noticed he had left. Back in his room he packed up everything he had bought, pulled the hoodie over his head and slipped a pair of sunglasses onto his face. A moment later he was back on the streets of London.
The city slowly came awake around him and he moved unnoticed through the rushing commuter crowds as the early morning trickle grew into a rush hour torrent. It was going to be a sunny day. Staying in the back streets, Jack kept his eyes down, avoiding the people around him. He grabbed a newspaper and flicked through the pages as he walked. Nothing on the front pages about him and his brother at least; the news was dominated by the latest tensions between Russia, Latvia and Estonia as well as the French President’s complaints about Britain’s plans to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. British and German enthusiasts would be re-enacting the great victory in four days’ time, and the Élysée Palace was complaining the celebrations were a distasteful show of cultural insensitivity and divisiveness. The Prime Minister, just arrived in Washington D.C., had nothing to say. Jack snorted a breath of contempt – he knew the French would have been twice as ostentatious, had they any such victory to celebrate. He smiled for a moment, then pulled his mind away from Waterloo and focused on the question in hand. He had maintained his anonymity for a night, but now he needed information, a shelter when he could think carefully, review his strengths and weaknesses and find out how close behind him the authorities might be.
A few streets later, he found what he was looking for – a down-at-heel internet cafe, tucked between a laundrette and a row of council houses. The owner did not look up from his magazine as Jack entered but merely gestured carelessly to the row of computers at the back of the store. Jack took a seat in the farthest corner and quickly began scanning the news sites. The headlines showed some aspects of his brother’s death were public: ‘Academic killed in home invasion’, ‘Police trade shots with violent gang’ and, more disturbingly, ‘MET search for slain man’s brother’. Searches for Cleo Draycott came up with nothing. A search for Dr David Starling produced nothing but his profile on a university website and a long list of publications – David had moonlighted as a lecturer on the Napoleonic Era at University College London. Searching for Deschamps provided a little more information – a long list of newspaper articles, all in French, relating to business deals in Marseilles, Bordeaux and Paris. Several photos showed a strong, redheaded man dressed in well-cut suits. Jack’s school French and automatic translation services online were enough to show Deschamps was a successful businessman, though dogged by controversy. Yet there was nothing about hidden Napoleonic gold nor of any possible connection between Deschamps and David Starling. He pulled the poem from an inside pocket and typed some of the phrases into a search engine. Half an hour later he gave up, admitting defeat. The pin proved equally mysterious and searching for any reference of the ‘B&B’ emblazoned on its top only led him to countless reviews of bed and breakfast establishments around the world.
Jack reviewed his options. There was so little to go on; perhaps he should just go to the police immediately and stop playing the hero. His bag and passport had been left by his brother’s door, the police knew he was somewhere in the country. He had limited financial resources and was possibly in danger from the government’s more shadowy departments. Jack suddenly remembered the phone his brother had left hidden in the alcove alongside the gun and the poem. He slipped it out from his pocket and held it in his hand, looking at it carefully. With nothing to lose, he flipped it open and pressed the on button. The screen stayed blank for a moment, then activated in a sudden glare of illumination. The screen normalised and Jack spent a few minutes scrolling through the menus and options of the smart phone. There was nothing there. Jack could not understand – there were no call logs, no numbers saved in the contacts list, no internet browser history. It was as if the phone had just been delivered from a factory.
It was another dead end. Putting it down on the desk Jack took a deep breath, thinking carefully through all he knew. It seemed that David had been up to something – up to his neck – and it had cost him his life. But could it really be a pile of Napoleonic gold? His brother had been interested in French history, but that did not mean he had somehow uncovered a hidden treas
ure. Jack sighed in frustration.
There was an electric buzzing noise and Jack jumped in his seat despite himself. The phone was vibrating loudly. Jack looked carefully around the dingy cafe. It was empty, but for the bored cashier, lounging behind a rampart of sweets, telephone cards and bottled water.
Jack took a deep breath, settling himself, then flipped the phone open.
‘Mr Jack Starling.’ A deep voice spoke seductively into his ear. ‘It is you?’
‘Yes.’ Jack’s voice sounded rough even in his own ears. He recognised a hint of French accent.
‘I was a friend of your late brother.’ The voice bit the words off with the faint contempt of a Frenchman. ‘And now I am a friend of yours.’
‘Deschamps.’ Jack’s voice was grim.
‘Ah... you know who I am. That’s good.’ The voice was calm. ‘I am Pierre Deschamps. By now you must know that I am not one for idle talk, or idle threats. That is why I talk of business. You have something which is mine. I have something which is yours.’
Jack felt the hackles rise on the back of his neck and he bridled against the implied threat. ‘You’ve got nothing of mine.’
‘Incorrect, Mr Starling. I have your life.’ The voice was calm and matter of fact. ‘I have your life, just as I had your brother’s life. He did not cooperate with me and so his life was taken away. Do not follow in his footsteps. Tell me what you know about the gold, and I will give you back your life. The alternative is that I will tear your life into little pieces and you will die. Do you see?’