by Gabriel Kron
I suggested that Lee did the presentation but apparently, it was important that I did it. The Foundation was interested in the people as much if not more than the project.
Early afternoon Becs returned with food. She smelt fragrant and sweet, and had obviously taken full advantage of the hotel facilities.
“Let’s book into the hotel for a couple of nights, please,” Becs begged as we ate the fish and chips from the chip shop in town.
“We’ve a lot to do before Friday,” I said, but was more aware of the actual cost.
“Come on, the rest will do you good,” she pleaded.
“I don’t know—”
“Come on Dan, it’ll do you good. You deserve it and I don’t mean to be rude, but you need it. We’ll cover the room, you two just enjoy it,” Lee said.
What could I say, other than, “Thank you.”
Westminster Palace, Parliamentary Archives. Day 54.
Mark had booked another session in the Parliamentary Archives. He didn’t have Beth with him this time as he no longer needed cover now that he knew exactly where he was going and what he needed to do.
Mark waited fifteen minutes before the Parliamentary Archives search room was empty, then he quickly left by the fire exit door and made his way back to the meeting room where he had installed the hard-wired dongle into their network. The meeting room was still empty and open, and even more pleasing, the dongle was still installed.
It took only a minute to uninstall it and when he returned to the Archives search room, it was still empty.
Once the data was downloaded, Mark did a quick scan through it. The data-set was vast and would need careful filtering to highlight the relevant information but it had worked.
Mark felt one of his phones vibrate in his jacket pocket. Mobile phones were supposed to be turned off in Westminster Palace, but the search room was empty, so Mark quietly answered it.
It was Colin Mundy, asking to meet for coffee.
“Where?” Mark asked.
“I’m in Legoland at the moment, are you in the City?” Colin said referring to the SIS building at Vauxhall Bridge.
“I am.”
“Cleopatra’s needle, twenty minutes,” Colin suggested.
“Okay,” Mark hung up as he scanned the raw data.
Cleopatra’s needle was only a few minutes walk from Westminster along the embankment of the river Thames. Mark decided he would email the data-set to Daniel’s Hotmail account. As his laptop connected to the Parliamentary free Wi-Fi and started sending the data-set a new email arrived, sent from one of his own accounts. It was an automatic email from the computer that was running the decryption software. It had made a breakthrough.
Mark quickly checked the contents of the results file, recognising only that the text was in German, which probably explained why it had taken so long to crack. He hadn’t thought to prioritise for the German language. He shot another email to Daniel, then went through his folders and deleted all traces of the Locke cipher, its translation and the dongle data-sets.
~~~
Twenty minutes later, Mark approached the Victorian monument from Egypt. It was a huge, twenty metre plus tall granite Egyptian obelisk flanked by two bronze Sphinx.
Colin was waiting at the base of the monument. He’d already bought two large coffees and handed one to Mark.
“Thank you,” Mark said as he took a sip of the bitter sweet steamed milk.
Instead of the usual routine of meeting and relocating, Colin walked around the obelisk and leant against the granite wall overlooking the river Thames.
“First time I’ve really looked at this.” Mark said as he looked up at the hieroglyphics carved into the red granite. “It’s a bit out of place.”
“Depends. It was a gift from the ruler of Egypt back in 1819 to commemorate Lord Nelson’s victory in the Battle of the Nile,” Colin said.
“Into your history then?” Mark said, impressed with Colin’s general knowledge.
“Details Mark,” Colin responded. “It’s all in the details.”
Confused, Mark continued to drink his coffee. “Details? Sorry you’ve lost me.”
“Detail Mark. The truth is always in the detail, the finer the detail, the more reliable the truth,” Colin said.
“Meaning?”
“Did you think we wouldn’t notice?” Colin said shaking his head.
“Notice what?” Mark was beginning to feel anxious, his heart rate had increased to the point where he could hear it beating in his ears and the pit of his stomach was beginning to churn.
“You rooting around our systems and networks is what we’ve noticed. We know what you’ve been doing. Tell me who it is for,” Colin’s voice was dead pan, no emotion.
“I’m sorry Colin, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s me that was hacked remember.”
Had they discovered his UnderNet protocol, he wondered.
“I think you do. I think you’re just hoping that we’re taking a stab in the dark. But we know. We know you better than you probably know yourself. Who else are you working for Mark? Tell me and this will be easy.”
Mark looked out across the Thames. He felt exposed, naked and foolish. Why had he come? He’d been complacent and ignored the alarm bells he should have heeded when Colin called. He wanted to run, get away from here, away from Colin. How had they discovered him? He looked down at his cup of coffee and saw it slide through his fingers and drop several yards to the murky waters below. As it splashed down he tried to look at Colin. His voice was muffled and Mark couldn’t understand. What was he saying?
As Mark's legs buckled and without being able to do a thing about it, he watched as the world collapsed around him, his vision jarring as his head hit the large granite flag stones of the pavement. He didn’t feel the impact, but then the effect of the M99 tranquillizer, Etorphine Hydrochloride, Colin had slipped into Mark’s coffee cup would do that.
Sure that darkness would engulf him soon, Mark was aware that Colin was shouting at passers-by, “Call an ambulance! He’s had a heart attack. Please someone! Call 999!”
When Colin saw that someone had finally called 999, he leant close to Mark, whose eyes were still open and clear and whispered, “You were too clever for your own good you fucking idiot.”
Within what appeared to be only a couple of minutes, an ambulance, with sirens and lights, stopped by the side of the road and two paramedics climbed out, leaving the lights flashing. They grabbed the stretcher trolley from the rear and hurriedly pushed it over to where Colin was attending to Mark.
A small group of rubber-necking tourists had gathered by the steps of the monument. They were silent as one of the paramedics placed his fingers to Mark’s neck, then looked at his colleague and shook his head. They pulled the white gurney sheet over Mark’s head and lifted him onto the gurney.
Once Mark was loaded on board the ambulance, the sirens started up again and it pulled away into the morning traffic along the Embankment.
Anyone who had seen the incident had long dispersed when the second ambulance arrived, responding to the call from a member of the public about a collapsed man.
The Yard. Day 55.
After two productive days Lee had prepared a series of note cards for my presentation and Clive and I had managed to build the three Bosch starter motors into three different units showing differing stages of the build. The third unit was ready to receive a set of brushes when and if we were able to make them.
I had accepted Lee’s offer of a couple of nights in the Travelodge and had spent an extraordinary amount of time relaxing in the hot bath, though I couldn’t relax fully. Images and memories of my parents kept appearing and at times I felt angry because I couldn’t make myself cry and hadn’t since the day of their murders.
“It’s perfectly normal,” Becs reassured me. “There are stages of grieving and none should be rushed, as hard as they are to experience. You’re still in the first stages and coping with it really well I’
d say. Tomorrow’s a big day, so you’ve plenty to focus on at least.”
Being at the hotel meant that I had access to the internet, something that I rarely used since this whole saga started. Considering it had been my career before Stuttgart, I now didn’t miss it. Using Lee’s laptop and his logon I opened my new random Hotmail account.
I was surprised to see two emails from Mark Stacey. Neither had subject lines and they were lucky not to have been classed as spam. Both had attachments.
The first email contained a large data file. It was in plain text. There were no headers or notes. Just columns of numbers and names. The format of two of the data columns I recognised as being IP addresses. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of IP numbers on this list. Some were in bold text.
I saved the text file to Lee’s hard drive. I would have to talk to Mark later to know what this was showing me.
The second email from Mark had a far more interesting attachment.
Again it was a text file, but much smaller. I felt excited as I clicked to open it.
It was a page of German, some of which I recognised from having translated the notebooks by hand. Words and terms I recognised, such as: Teilenummer for Part Number, Bohren Sie zwei Löcher for Drill two holes, and Sie zwei Standard-Bosch-Anlasser Bürsten meaning take two standard Bosch starter brushes.
Mark had succeeded in cracking the Locke Cipher. There were no notes as to how it was encrypted or how he cracked it, but it was obviously correct.
I copied the text file and pasted it into an on-line German translation website.
Before me on the screen was the secret to the Lockridge device. The final piece of the puzzle. We had the construction details, a materials list and now the methodology.
“Hey Becs!” I called to her in the bathroom, where she was enjoying another overly-deep bath. The nurses’ digs only had showers, and not good ones at that.
“Mark’s done it. He’s decoded the Locke Cipher!” I rushed in and over to her lying completely flat in the bath. I kissed her forehead, and admired her submerged body, just barely covered by bubbles. “Got to go and tell Lee and Clive. We’ve got it, we’ve got the whole bloody thing now!”
I rushed to Lee’s room, which was on the next floor and hurriedly knocked on his door. I began talking before he had fully opened it.
“Lee, they bake the brushes to grow the crystalline Radium Chloride.”
“Huh?” Lee responded sluggishly, “Sorry I was asleep.”
I looked at my watch and was shocked to see it was gone 1 am.
“Shit, sorry, didn’t realise the time, but this is worth it. Mark cracked the Locke cipher, we’ve got the key to getting this to work.”
“Shh. Come in. What does it say?”
I showed Lee the German text and then the on-line translation.
“So we need a pressurised kiln and two days? We’ll add this into the notes in the morning. It’ll go a long way I think towards securing some funding. Right now, though, I’d suggest trying to get some shut-eye.”
I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping much tonight.
Becs was already asleep when I crept back into our room. Before I even tried to join her, I read through the instructions several more times.
Travelodge. Friday morning Day 56.
Friday morning we all met in the hotel dining room for breakfast. We were in good spirits considering the risk the knowledge we now had presented. The news about the Locke cipher being cracked was indeed something to feel good about but it did mean that this was now approaching our most dangerous hour. Dangerous to our adversaries as well, for we now held the knowledge to bring about a technological revolution. Something the big companies did not want. They wanted incremental technology that they could make a profit from at each increment of its evolution. Revolutionary technology made the increments redundant, wiping out their potential profits.
A car was being sent to the hotel to pick us up and take us to London’s City Airport. We hadn’t been told our destination, only to be ready by ten o'clock to be collected. I was nervous, I didn’t like airports any more, they posed too much of a risk.
I assumed that the first data file Mark had sent was the audit trail of communication data from within the Palace of Westminster. Amongst the thousands of entries were the details of those that were orchestrating the suppression of this and probably many other technologies that could benefit mankind and revolutionise the way we lived.
I needed to talk to Mark to not only thank him, but to find out if he had narrowed down who our mole was yet. Whilst waiting for the car to arrive, I tried phoning him, using yet another of the new mobiles. There was no answer. I tried again, letting it ring and ring until it cut itself off.
I was about to try again when my phone began to ring. Mark’s number flashed onto the screen so I answered.
“Mark. Well done,” I said.
There was no answer, no-one answered.
“Hello, Mark?”
After a few seconds an unfamiliar voice answered me back, “Hello. Who is this please?”
I didn’t answer, I just hung up the phone, popped the case and removed the battery.
“Shit. Who was that?” I said and immediately began to feel anxious about our location. Why didn’t he answer his phone?
I joined the others and explained what had just happened as two large metallic grey Range Rovers pulled up outside. We loaded the boxes of materials into the boot of one of the luxury 4x4’s. With Clive and Brenda in the lead car, Lee, Becs and myself followed behind.
At the City Airport the cars drove straight passed the usual entrance and entered through a private security gate. We stopped a little under a hundred yards from a Bombardier Learjet 60XR.
As our luggage was unloaded onto a motorised cargo trolley and taken to the rear of the jet, a young man dressed in a sharp dark blue suit exited the jet and walked over to greet us.
“Good morning. I’m James, please follow me,” he shouted over the noise of the Learjet’s engines starting.
“No lack of money here then,” I heard Brenda say to Clive as we climbed up the few steps into the private jet.
The interior was the same luxurious white leather with black trim as the Range Rovers.
“Please take a seat,” James said to me as the door of the jet was closed and the whine of the twin engines began to increase.
“Excuse me, James. Where are we going? We weren’t told to bring passports or anything,” Lee asked as he buckled his seatbelt.
“Aberdeen, Mister?” James answered.
“Gregson. Doctor Lee Gregson.”
“Doctor Gregson, yes, I spoke to your wife yesterday,” James looked around at Brenda and Becs.
“Yes, she couldn’t make this trip unfortunately. I know she would have enjoyed this.”
“Never mind. Maybe another time. It’ll only take us an hour to get there.”
I looked around the cabin of the high-end luxury private plane. Everyone I was close to was here, except Wendy who was actually responsible for this connection. They were all pre-occupied taking in their surroundings. All except Becs. Becs was watching me. She smiled, “You look worried,” she said.
“Dad would have loved this. They’d be so proud—” It was then that it hit me. I wanted to say more, but the tears started to flow and there was nothing I could do to stop them. I turned to face the window and let my sobs get drowned out by the roar of the twin Pratt and Whitney jet engines.
Becs understood and rested her head on my shoulder. Lost in my grief I didn’t hear Clive comment, “If they knew we were all on this one jet, they’d be able to wipe us and the knowledge out in one hit.”
SIS Operations Room. Day 56.
Entering Mark Stacey’s property didn’t pose a problem to the four man Entry Team. Tasked with retrieving all computer related equipment from his flat, they used Mark’s own keys to open the front door.
All four men, dressed in typical black tactical uniforms spread through the rooms
before all converging on the high security metal door of the computer room. Each of them wore vest-cams, relaying visual and audio back to the Operations room at SIS.
“Cut it open,” General Rourke instructed through their ear pieces. One of the four men started using a cutting torch on the four heavy duty hinge points. It took the best part of an hour before heavy door was ready to be opened. Large crowbars eased it outwards from the frame and it finally crashed against the wall opposite.
“We’re in,” came the report.
As the first man climbed over the door and entered Mark’s den, he failed to notice the concealed PIR sensor opposite the door. Something went click and the green LED on the sensor changed to red. Immediately there was a faint electronic whistle in the background, rising in tone.
“Everyone out! Sir, I think we’ve tripped some sort of—” his report suddenly cut off, as did all video links from the vest cams.
“What’s happened?” Rourke asked of the Ops room technician.
“Don’t know sir.”
“Get them back online. Phone alpha lead, now!” Rourke ordered wondering if they had just lost four more men.
“Sir, all their GPS trackers have gone off line as well.”
“Shit. Get another team there now.”
After several minutes waiting, the second team arrived and reported in.
“Alpha team are fine sir. The place was rigged with an EMP bomb. Totally fried all the electronics for god knows how far, including their radios, phones and all his equipment.”
General Rourke was relieved and not only because he hadn't lost any more men.
Although he had wanted sight of any intelligence Mark had gathered, he had intended to destroy it. Mark’s bomb had saved Rourke the effort and the need to cover any unwanted evidence that Mark may have uncovered.
A knock on the Operations room door marked the end of Rourke’s relief.
“Sir, we’re into his hand-held,” A slightly out of breath technician said as he entered. “It took a bit of retrieval, but he sent two emails just before leaving the palace. Both to a Hotmail address.”