by Gus Ross
“Fair enough. None of this can be easy for you and at least this part will be hard to keep under wraps when all is said and done.” Thomson let out a resigned sigh. “Your wife Dave, she is SVR, Russian intelligence. I am afraid you have been married to what we call a sleeper.”
“Russian what? My wife’s a spy? Are you serious?” It was at this point I was half expecting that Jeremy Beadle character to come bounding out of a wardrobe, or some false door, waving a microphone around like some sort of demented pop star, screaming “Gottcha” or whatever his annoying catch phrase was. I waited, looking from side to side in anticipation but that annoying little man failed to appear. I have absolutely no idea what Sternie and Thomson thought I was doing but I could not have cared less.
“Deadly serious I’m afraid. We have had her under surveillance for some time. Only now we have temporarily lost contact.”
Temporarily lost contact. What did that mean exactly? Even I was not so obtuse as to miss the euphemism, but here I was, at the nerve centre of Her Majesty’s security service and they were looking to me for assistance in tracking down my wife, the apparent Soviet Spy! I was pretty sure that had there been a window in interview room number 2, I would now be looking across a skyline that was filled with a large flying pink pig. I found myself letting out the sigh this time, although mine was incredulous. I was still shaking my head as I spoke.
“Fine, if you need my help to find my wife, you have it. I don’t buy all this James Bond / Nikita stuff, but tell me what you need and I’ll do it.”
Thomson thanked me and raised an eyebrow as he spoke to Sternie. “We need to debrief you properly. If you would come with me Stern. Dave if you could be so kind as to remain here I will ensure you are taken good care of.”
With that the two men left me alone in the room with only the buzzing in my head for company. Someone was lying to me, or had been lying to me. On the one hand there was MI6 and on the other my wife of the last five years. Neither seemed like a great option, but when someone tells you that your whole life is a sham your first reaction tends to be one of contempt. I thought I had hid that pretty well.
I would play along for now.
Chapter 13: The Set Up.
Stephan Meyer sat drumming his fingers rhythmically on the rosewood desk. He glanced at the shiny Omega sitting prominently on his left wrist for the umpteenth time. I have often wondered what predisposes men with fancy timepieces on their wrist to wear them either just a little too large, so that they are always hanging on display beneath the cuff, or to simply wear shirts with sleeves that are just a tad on the short side. Almost as if they feel the need to say, “look at me I’ve made it, I can afford a flashy watch”, and then shove it in your face. I never did like that, although Stephan Meyer was different. He simply had wrists that were as skinny as his lanky frame; he would have struggled to find a child’s watch that fitted him. And his patience was growing equally thin.
Ten past three.
He did not appreciate tardiness and his fingers were getting tired. Lucian Hendrick had first come to him a few weeks back and initially Meyer had been more than highly sceptical of the whole thing. Hendrick had been employed at C.E.R.N. for almost five years and had been as diligent as he had been capable, but that was nothing unusual, Meyer was used to working with the best minds in the business, or so he thought. But now Hendrick had introduced a whole new deck of cards to the game and, if there were even a hint of truth behind them, then they had the potential to blow the roof off of everything.
By three fifteen Meyer had had enough of waiting; he would go and find him himself.
It was actually three weeks to the day when Lucian Hendrick had first knocked on the door of the great Stephan Meyer...
“Come in. Please have a seat. What can I do for you Lucian?” Meyer was a very calm and methodical man, but one who hardly blinked as he spoke and, most disconcertingly, almost never broke eye contact. That, combined with his raging intellect, made many fearful of him and Hendrick was no different.
“I have just received a very interesting call Sir and I had to talk to you about it.”
“Do go on.” Meyer turned the palm of his hand as he spoke, inviting his visitor to continue.
“It was from a woman Sir. She would not tell me who she was, but she seemed to know an awful lot about us and what we do here.”
Meyer looked as if he might be on the verge of losing interest already, “Get to the point Hendrick, most of what we do is out in the public domain already. Any fool with a laptop and an internet connection can sound as if they know what they are talking about.”
“Yes Sir. Sorry Sir.” Hendrick felt like a nervous schoolchild who had been summoned to the head masters office for sticking chewing gum in a girl’s hair, or dubbing graffiti on the school shed, or something equally as punishable. But he went on, “It wasn’t just that Sir, she told me she had information, very valuable information. About the Higgs.” A flicker of interest fleeted across Meyer’s face and Hendrick pushed on. “She mentioned some things that I don’t think we even know yet, but that sounded very plausible, no, incredibly plausible.”
“Nonsense. We are the most advanced particle research facility in the world. Clearly you are not party to all the information we have at our disposal, perhaps she has merely divulged something above your clearance level.”
“With respect Sir, I don’t think that is the case. Let me tell you what she told me and then you can judge for yourself......”
And for the last three weeks that is exactly what Stephan Meyer had been doing with his time. Hendrick had been back to see him twice more, each time with further information that his contact had provided and that he could not possibly have known about. The content was now pushing the boundaries of even Meyer’s vast knowledge, but, at first, he had found himself resisting, he did not want to believe it.
Unbeknown to Meyer, on what was to be their third and final meeting, the information had been so compelling as to convince him that there was much more than a hint of truth in it and that this was something definitely worthy of further attention. But the implications were outrageous; if what he was hearing were to be proven he had no idea how he might keep a lid on it. But like all great scientists the science comes first, everything else, even if it leads to total chaos, would have to fall in behind.
He supposed this was not unlike some of the experiments they had been running of late; no one could place their hand on heart and categorically state that their attempts to create the first man made black hole were entirely safe, but on went the science regardless. If he could sanction an experiment that might threaten the very existence of the planet, and quite possibly a good deal more besides, then he could sure as hell follow this through.
Three weeks had seemed like an eternity for Meyer, the information that he was receiving was exciting him beyond his wildest dreams, but experience had taught him a degree of caution. He still could not comprehend where it was coming from, who the girl was, and how she could possibly know what she did, but it stacked up, or at least it seemed to; he had run some of the calculations himself, just to be sure, and he could only marvel at how their simplicity belied their brilliance.
And now he thought he could see where it was all leading to and that excited him even more. Hendrick had warned him that this had to be kept under wraps, that he could not tell anyone, and that if he did, his contact would know and all bets would be off. He hated that bit the most; trying to keep a secret is a tough call for most of us, but when it is the biggest secret of all then three weeks can seem like a lifetime. So it was without any hesitation that on his last session with Hendrick, Meyer had authorised the meet.
It was to be all very clandestine, no one was to have even the slightest hint of it, but that was what the contact wanted and although he was no spy, he knew that they had to be extremely careful, and that the fewer people who knew about it the better. Hendrick would travel to London and obtain the information, then Meyer would put i
t to the test properly and see just what they were dealing with.
Meyer, of course, would not find Lucian Hendrick, nor would he see him alive again, nor would he see any of the beloved science that had been dangled teasingly in front of his nose. It would only be another day before he received the call informing him of the sad demise of his colleague, who had apparently been on vacation in London, and that would set a whole other level of alarm bells ringing.
Big Mac sat playing with the contents of the plastic bag like a small child with a new toy that he could just not put down. It looked like nothing more than a fancy memory stick and took up no more than a few inches of his large palm. From such little things came such large power. He liked the sound of that thought.
Of course the detailed ins and outs of the information this little piece of dynamite held within it did not matter a jot to him it, the fact was that he possessed it. Yet sometimes it is funny just how often we drive home in a peach only to find out we have purchased a plum; sometimes it is delusion, sometimes it is illusion, and sometimes it is just plain ignorance. In the case of Big Mac he could easily be forgiven if his peach turned out to be purple; he was involved in something that was way above his head and it was only going one way. Yet, as he sat there rolling the small silver stick back and forth in his hand, Mac had no doubt that this was the finest peach in the world and that everyone else would just love a slice of it.
His men had drawn a blank so far on tracking the rat and he knew this had the potential to be dangerous, but now there were a series of events beginning to weave themselves together in a net, one he was not even aware of, yet one that if he did not find a way to put a hole in, was liable to tighten right around his fat neck.
Eva Richards sat with her Blackberry in her hand, this phone had continued to be active, but then she had only used it for one purpose and she was not in any way concerned that it could be traced or tracked to her.
She looked for the message that she had been expecting but it was not there. She double checked, turning the phone off then on again, in case the message had got lost somewhere in the ether and this simple act of power cycling would right the problem.
The strange thing was that sometimes this simple act did seem to work, but not this time. Something must have gone wrong with the drop; the confirmation text should have been with her by now. The sudden realisation that all she had sacrificed might have been for nothing hit her like the shock of an ice cold bath. She had planned things very carefully, she always did; even my fortieth surprise party had been planned with military precision without me having the slightest inkling. Perhaps, in retrospect, there was the clue to my wife’s real identity right in front of my eyes, but I think that would have been a bit harsh.
Most of us, when faced with such a realisation, would either fly into panic mode or wrack our little brains with about as much chance of stumbling on the answer as we have of winning the lottery. But not my dear wife / come soviet spy, no she simply, and very calmly, started to work through all the available options in her head, one by one, until she had eliminated the unlikely and settled on the most probable, or at least what she thought was the most probable.
The fact that her fellow Russians had tried to eliminate her was more than enough evidence that they were aware of her ‘change of plans’. She was annoyed about that one; she had been playing along with them just nicely before the full extent of what she was intent on handing over had become clear. After that, her decision had not been a difficult one to make. Her planned handover to her Russian counterpart was not scheduled until tomorrow, but they must have been watching her, which was not that surprising really. What was annoying though was that she had not picked up on it. There was, however, now a real doubt in her mind about whom she had passed her information onto. She continued to think and her mind turned to Boardman.
It never ceased to surprise her just how the male mind worked, but, like the path to six sides of a Rubik cube, once you learned the order of things, you seldom forgot. And she had played Alex Boardman like a fiddle. Of course it helped that he was infatuated with her, and for that she had a lot to thank genealogy for, but getting a man to tell you more than he should do involved something more than a tight skirt and a pretty face. Of course most men at the top of their game are only too keen to tell you just how good they are and how well they are doing, especially when they have someone they wish to impress, but Boardman would not be that easy.
She had studied his file endlessly, until she knew him better than he knew himself. She could recite the names of his family, his friends, even the ridiculous name of his first dog, Sphincter (which presumably he found amusing), and his nickname at school. She knew his academic record inside out and all about his induction to MI6. and his work at C.E.R.N, and she knew she would be dealing with a very smart individual, one who was as likely well trained as she was. What the files had quite deliberately failed to mention was anything to do with A.P.R.I.L. and what Boardman and co were really up to. This was information that was way above her security level.
Her brief had been relatively simple: get close to Boardman, find out what he was working on and feed it back, but she had not been expecting two things that happened; the first was the impact of the information she had obtained on her moral compass and the second was how she would end up feeling about her target.
She had worked her way into his heart almost from the get go, but regardless of how she fought against it, and she did fight it, she could not help but let him under her skin too. It was the classic mistake, but she was as powerless against it as he was.
Within a very short space of time she had a key to his townhouse and she would find herself longing to be ‘away on business’, longing to be with him and unfortunately, longing to be away from me. Her business trips had increased in frequency but not to the point where I suspected anything; just another of those incomprehensible projects at the bank that seemed to be more about job protection than delivering any kind of fundamental change, not that I really understood any of it, but there were more nights away than normal.
To be fair it might have helped if I had paid the slightest bit of attention to what she would tell me, or at least half as much as I did to the Sky Sports channel. But there you have it, sometimes you can be so close to something that you don’t even notice it slipping away, like the picture on the wall in your living room that you look at so often you are not even aware that it is there, until of course it is not there, and actually it was the black ring mark on the wallpaper that you noticed and not the fact your picture had gone. I could beat myself up a thousand times over things I did or didn’t do, but in the final analysis she was what she was, and nothing would have changed that.
Boardman’s townhouse was a pretty grand affair; a four storey Georgian mansion in Kensington with far too many rooms for a single bloke to occupy, but he came from a moneyed background and it was what was expected, it even had its own internal lift.
She had noted the button for the basement level the first time she entered it, but she also noticed the familiar opening in the panel above it; whatever resided down there required a key pass to access, and from her perspective the opening would have been as well having the words ‘No Entry’ emblazoned beside it. Obtaining the necessary tech to ‘fool’ the security would be the easy part, although most of the available gadgetry at her disposal was well beyond her understanding; getting in and out without being discovered and obtaining the information she required, that would be the real challenge.
It would take many weeks for the opportunity to present itself and she used that time as wisely as she could; getting to know him, getting beneath his skin. Boardman’s pillow talk was as astounding as the sex, almost as if he had the biggest of secrets and was just bursting at the seams to tell someone, and who better than the beautiful ‘Isabella’. She had mastered the art of making men feel intellectually superior to her, to the point where she would sometimes be treated more as a sounding board than anythi
ng else. He had mentioned C.E.R.N. almost on day one, but as things progressed he had more than hinted that he had discovered something astounding. She did not push, she had seen this behaviour before and eventually the outcome would always be as she wanted it, the complete six sides of the cube.
Patience was the key, but so to the masterful disinterest that she would feign whenever the topic was one she needed to know more about. And like most foolish men with their pants down and their dicks out, if their bait was not taken, they would up the ante. In the end they were all just too eager to elaborate.
And, of course, he had not let her down; before long he was slipping little snippets into his conversation; things he ironically would say he really could not discuss, things that to most people would mean nothing, but to her were priceless.
It was almost as if he wanted to confess, as if he wanted to open his heart to her, so that perhaps she could accept him warts and all. She simply let it flow, with just the correct level of disinterest and a strategically placed question or two. And once she had fully understood just what it was that Boardman had discovered, she suddenly found herself in a place she really had not seen coming; a place where she had to ask herself some very difficult questions, the answers to which would have some very serious consequences.