by Gabriel Kron
I felt as though I was moving in treacle, the exit was so close, but I felt so slow. I pushed a table over as I made the last few strides.
Then something hit my back. Something wet. Painfully wet. Extreme pain.
The pain rushed through my whole body, I looked down and saw a lot of blood, my blood.
Then I saw the ground rising and could hear myself screaming in agony, but it sounded distant and echoed.
I rolled onto my side, the movement causing a crescendo of lightning bolts of pain as I tried to get up but collapsed instead.
As I blacked out I knew this was bad, I was going to die. This was it.
Palace Gardens. Monday 12:00noon Day 4.
Clive stopped when he heard Daniel scream. He turned and saw him on the ground. Blood had drenched his jacket and was already forming a pool under him.
Walking towards them was the gunman, the BKA detective. He looked straight at Clive, but aimed his silenced gun down at Daniel who had now stopped screaming and worryingly, had stopped moving.
Clive heard the crack of the shot and was about to try and run. Instead he saw an explosion of blood, bone and brain from Mueller’s head as it jolted to one side. Mueller stopped dead, literally, and slumped to the ground. The shot hadn’t been from Mueller’s handgun, it had come from elsewhere, somewhere from the other side of the lake. Whoever had shot Mueller had just saved his and Daniel’s life.
Daniel was coming around. He needed help. He needed help right now, and Clive knew he was the only one who could do that.
Daniel was conscious again, and although not screaming, the pain was obviously unbearable.
“Daniel, I know this hurts, I need to take a look okay,” Clive heard himself going into automatic First Aid mode and started to act through the standard first aid everyone had to learn for the workplace. Except getting shot wasn’t a normal workplace injury.
He needed scissors to cut the shirt away, but he didn’t even have a plaster. Carefully, he pulled the shirt up to reveal the wound. Or was it wounds? The bullet had passed straight through Daniel’s left lower back, exiting the front.
There was little blood in comparison coming from the entry wound. Clive guessed the bullet had cauterized it, but the exit wound was much larger.
Clive quickly took off his coat and shirt. Folding the shirt tightly he pressed it firmly over the wound with one hand and put his coat back on with the other.
Daniel tried to stifle a scream. “Arrhhhhgg! Fuck mmmme that h—hurts!” Daniel hissed through gritted teeth.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry. I need you to hold this here,” Clive said and took one of Daniel’s hands and placed it firmly on the shirt.
“I’ve got to get you to hospital,” Clive said. Looking around for anyone to help, he wondered where the café staff had gone. Could they be dead as well, and who shot detective Mueller?
“No... N—Not hospital,” Daniel managed to say. “They’ll find me.”
“You need urgent medical attention Dan. Please, I’ll get help, we’ll sort it out, but you need an ambulance now.” Clive looked around again. Why was this park so damned quiet?
“Daniel. I’m going to go and phone for help, I’ll be straight back okay?” Clive said.
Detective Mueller lay dead just at the entrance to the decking, his gun was on the ground beside him and just by the telephone stand was Dominik’s lifeless body, the floor beneath him pooled in congealing blood.
Clive chose the telephone furthest from where Dominik lay. As he lifted the handset, one of the café staff came through from the back of the shop and cautiously walked towards the front. When she saw Dominik’s body in a pool of blood she took a sharp intake of breath. She looked at Clive at the telephone, saw his bloodied hands, screamed and ran back through the shop. It was now only a matter of minutes before the police would turn up.
Clive fed several Euros into the pay phone and dialled a number he had jotted down in the back of his pocket diary. It rang three times before a woman answered.
“Hallo.”
“Hello Karin, it’s Clive, Clive Sinclair from the Imperial College.”
“Clive, hello, it has been too long—”
Clive interrupted, “Karin, sorry, I need your help if you can, desperately.”
“Ja, yes, of course. How?”
“I’m by the Nil Café am See in the park by the station. Can you drive here now? It’s urgent Karin. My friend here is badly hurt, please bring a first aid kit.” All the while Clive kept looking around.
“You’re over here in Stuttgart? Yes, yes okay I’m coming, but why not call an ambulance?” Karin asked.
“Can’t do that ... he’s been shot.”
“Ach herrje Clive, what have you got yourself into? I’m on my way. I’ll be there in five minutes,” she said before hanging up.
Clive went back to Daniel, who was still conscious and was breathing faster now.
“Okay, Dan. Hang in there. Help is on its way,” Clive said as he looked at the main wound. It was still bleeding heavily.
“No ambulance,” Daniel said looking up at him.
“No, it’s alright. I called a friend of mine. She’s coming to get us,” Clive said, but Daniel was losing a lot of blood, and he looked a pale sickly grey. “She may have to take you to hospital.”
Daniel just shook his head.
In the distance, sirens could be heard. Clive hoped that Karin would get here first. If the police did, then their options would be much reduced.
After the longest five minutes in the world ever, Clive saw Karin running towards them carrying what was obviously a first aid kit. The sirens were much closer now.
“Oh thank god,” Clive said as Karin knelt beside Daniel. “We need to get him out of here now. I’ll explain in a minute.”
Between them, they supported Daniel’s two hundred pound frame and made their way as quickly as possible away from the scene and back to Karin Friedmann’s car.
Clive glanced back to the Nil Café am See and saw several police officers arrive. Luckily the crime scene distracted them from Daniel being helped away.
With Daniel unconscious on the back seat of the car, Karin turned to Clive as she drove away from Stuttgart Station. “Keep pressure on it and tell me why we can't go to the hospital.”
Using a large gauze compress from Karin's first aid kit, Clive applied more pressure. He had never seen so much blood before. He feared that there was no way Daniel would survive this, even if they did get him to hospital.
London, House of Lords, Derby Room. Monday 12:30pm Day 4.
General Rourke had sat through hours of discussion and debate amongst the twelve Committee members. The combined wealth of the 1945 Committee exceeded some countries GDPs, and the available funds were more than most global corporations could muster. Rourke was doing well, having inherited his father’s portfolio; he had controlling shares in many of the UK’s leading industries. He had no interest in these industries other than their worth, and his interest now was only to increase it, for himself and for the Committee.
The Committee was able to position itself in the markets in such ways that they could make or break corporations should they desire. This was becoming more frequent since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the growing emergence of Chinese and Indian industries.
It worried Rourke that he hadn’t heard from his lone operative Mueller. Did it mean he had failed? Mueller wasn’t answering his mobile phone or texts either. It didn’t look good, especially considering Mueller’s faultless track record.
The discussion around the table had moved onto the next item on the agenda.
The Chairman, Lord Francis Copeland, handed the table over to Justin Smith-Taylor. “Gentleman, please, we have a report regarding Fracore Limited.”
Justin Smith-Taylor was a little over fifty, but he looked younger. As he looked around the room, he felt younger still, when compared to the old faces opposite him. Old and powerful faces. These were the faces that out lived gove
rnments. Faces that had toppled one or two governments in their time and had installed many.
“So what’s the hold-up then?” asked Senator Wilson. “When can they start drilling?”
Justin Smith-Taylor stood up, straightened his tie and opened a loose leaf folder before answering.
“We’re having a delay and that is all. Ground tremors were supposedly felt in villages around the first test site. The delay is to satisfy the tree huggers that it has been fully investigated and tested. It is time to start—”
A mobile phone reverberated the table. This was unusual given those present and their usual insistence on security measures. What followed was even more unusual.
From the far end of the table, Liang Kim, whose phone it was, interrupted Justin Smith-Taylor.
“General Rourke, I do not think you will get that call from your operative. Unfortunately, it seems that our Ministry of State Security had surveillance in place — they were shadowing your BKA detective — they felt that your man had failed and was out of control.” Liang Kim’s command of the English language reflected his Oxford education. His invitation to the 1945 Committee wasn’t anything to do with politics or government. Liang was an industrialist, the likes of which the West hadn’t seen yet.
“And what of my operative?” Rourke asked.
“He was dispatched,” Liang said bluntly and looked General Rourke directly in the eye.
“That was not necessary,” Rourke felt angry but he kept his voice relatively constrained. He couldn’t, however, hide his body language. He stopped short of thumping the table as he spoke, but the gesture was there as he leaned forwards to confront Liang.
“Oh I am afraid it was General. Without this committee’s knowledge, you instigated high level sanctions. The body count was already up to five. Your operative overstepped the boundaries,” Liang said and never broke eye contact.
“And what of the primary target, Bateman?” Rourke asked.
“Shot, but gone to ground. Maybe he did not survive, maybe he did? If he has, he will be blamed for all four murders in Stuttgart and will be on every wanted red list. As drastic as it has been, this unfortunate incident is now closed. Any objections?” Liang looked around the table. There were no objections.
The Den Monday 9:15pm Day 4.
The information that Colin Mundy had received from GCHQ told Mark little and had allowed him to only partially identify two of the three hack attempts on his system. Unsurprisingly, Colin had said that they were from the United States, with a high probability of it being one of his counterparts, hence the commercial IP address.
It also appeared that the Chinese had similar intercept systems set-up for monitoring internet traffic and filtering keywords, including The Lockridge Device.
Mark’s curiosity was too great. He had to investigate further. He had upgraded his set-up to a level he thought he would never have to use, even doing the extra contract work for Colin. He was now effectively set-up as three full-blown Internet Service Providers and what this allowed him to do was beyond what he had previously thought possible. He could navigate the internet and any computer system on it invisibly and without trace.
He wanted to know why there were so many others interested in this device called the Lockridge. His instructions before were to follow the threads and cause disruption. There were several forum groups around that had thousands of posts from a lot of people trying to find the secret not only of the Lockridge Device but also of any other device making claims of free or even just cheap decentralised electricity. No-one was close to getting a working device yet, and those that were dedicating a fair amount of time and money into researching it were not reporting any verifiable results that even approached breaking the 100% efficiency benchmark.
Mark scanned over his hack-logs, so he could investigate further the one post that had been caught by his own Echelon type Dictionary:
To:[email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: RE:-Lockridge, The hunt is on.
Good Evening Guys,
I have found the device! It is real and was exactly where Jack said it would be, although I clocked up well over 700 miles in two days getting here.
I have uploaded just a couple of photos and a short video for you guys to start analysing. More measurements tomorrow. Although I haven’t stuck a meter on it yet, this is definitely a SELF-RUNNER! There appears to be no other source of power.
Please DO NOT Distribute outside of the OTG. Not yet anyway, let’s get some data first.
Regards
Dan
PS. Got to try and get some sleep now, but feeling toooooo excited...
This was the type of claim that Mark was expecting to find. So whilst he waited for an action order from Colin, he would do a passive investigation first as a data collection exercise.
The post had come from a Yahoo Tech. group called the OTG. Mark started entering the relevant search strings into his system.
BKA Headquarters,Wiesbaden, Germany. Day 5.
Sebastian Wolf stood in Director Werner’s office, while he was reading the incident report for the day of detective Mueller’s killing.
“According to this, your current case was Bateman, wanted for multiple homicides in Stuttgart. You were at home when Mueller got shot?” Director Werner asked.
“It appears that Mueller received a tip off. I was off-duty at the time so Mueller went alone to investigate.”
“Do you think Bateman shot Mueller?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sebastian, I want you to take on Mueller’s case file. We need to know what is going on and what has gone on. If you need more personnel, that won’t be a problem.”
The folder Director Werner handed Wolf was quite thin in comparison to the usual case files they handled. Wolf opened it to reveal a single photo of Daniel Bateman and an A4 sheet containing a basic data drilldown on all known information, from date of birth to place of work and next of kin details.
“Is this it?” Wolf asked.
“I’m afraid so. This is why I’ve assigned you to the case. You were on Mueller’s team at the time.”
“I was, but only at the last minute, we were called in by Detective Mueller for the raid on the Hotel Wartburg,” Wolf said, knowing that this case had been unusual from the start. There had been no crime reports or briefings, but somehow Mueller had managed to mobilise the local police and BKA resources.
Wolf continued without prompting, “Unfortunately, because Detective Mueller tried to deal with the tip off from the Café on his own, we didn’t have any backup in place. The trail to Bateman has gone cold. The last that was seen was when he was being helped away from the scene. That was by one of the Café staff. The local police apparently arrived just after and locked the scene down.”
“You probably want to know why I’ve waited till now to assign this to you,” Director Werner said.
“I do.”
“Simply put, the local police seem to think that something is amiss and believe that we have something to do with it. I want to know if that is true. Mueller was one of our best. Find out what you can,” Director Werner said. “Talk to London, talk to whoever you need to. If we’re involved in some way then I want to know right away.”
Half an hour after his briefing with his director, Wolf had taped up onto the incident room white board every piece of paperwork that existed on the Bateman case. Or to be more precise, late detective Mueller’s case on Daniel Bateman.
Missing was the beginning of the case itself: the original crime reports, departmental cross references and even an originator’s reference. It appeared that the case had started with detective Mueller issuing Red Notices with Interpol against Daniel Bateman for the Locke Farm murders and arson. Had Mueller been tipped off? How did Mueller get assigned to the case?
Exhibition Road, London, Thursday 8:50am Day 7.
There was nothing more that Clive could have done in Germany. The tragic
events that had unfolded over the weekend had left him feeling hollow. He returned to work on Wednesday, without really knowing why. He knew that he should be recovering, from shock if nothing else, but he knew that he needed to stay occupied so the memories of Daniel and Dominik being shot weren’t all that played on a continuous loop in his head.
Walking up Exhibition Road towards his office at the Imperial College, he sheltered his face from the cold drizzle, but was in fact grateful for its refreshing cold sting.
His office was almost a welcome sight. Books stacked everywhere with various pieces of equipment scattered around. His desk was by contrast clear other than a desk lamp. He even kept the telephone off the desk.
He hadn’t even closed his door before the telephone rang. The last time that phone rang and he answered, it was the beginning of the nightmare he found himself in now.
“Sinclair,” Clive answered.
“Morning Clive,” said the familiar voice of Mrs. Julie Walker, PA to Professor Simon Bannister.
Julie briefly asked how Clive’s trip had gone, to which Clive lied, and then she delivered her message.
“Professor Bannister has asked that you come to his office,” she said.
“Okay, when, after this morning’s lecture?” Clive asked.
“He said now, Clive, sorry,” she said before hanging up.
Clive wondered if Bannister was wanting an update.
Before leaving to visit Bannister he opened the high security filing cabinet bolted to the office floor designed for exam papers and various sensitive documents and placed a cloth bound package containing the three notebooks Daniel had been given and an envelope with several USB Memory sticks inside. Clive spun the combination dial three times, then left his office locking the door behind him, something he didn’t usually do.
He looked nervously up and down the corridor before walking up to the offices of Professor Simon Bannister. Julie ‘the talker’ Walker, a nickname she’d earned when working in the HR department, told Clive to go straight in. Not much talking today.