The Locke Cipher

by Gabriel Kron

  Lines Foundation, Aberdeen. Day 56.

  There was no time to be lost. Richard was worried that one of his board members would feel compelled to report me to the police, putting us on the back foot and bringing the authorities to the Foundation's doors. I explained that my worry went further than that.

  “Yes I risk getting arrested, but my experience so far is that I risk being assassinated first, so if you feel that someone here is going to screw us over, then I think we’re better off leaving now,” I said, feeling frustrated that we had been bought all this way and not even given a full opportunity to state our case. All the knowledge and those that held it were here in this remote, isolated location. The sudden feeling of the vulnerability of us all was almost tangible in the air.

  “Please, Daniel, do not worry. I told you earlier that I have something up my sleeve—”

  “Yes, your clause eighteen. A veto?” I interrupted.

  “No. Clause eighteen would allow me to veto whatever decision they make, yes, but it would also invoke other possible scenarios that could cause much damage to the Foundation. No, the cards up my sleeve Daniel are my connections. People I know, and the resources they command. If my Foundation can’t officially fund you, then it can at least protect you. Please excuse me, I need to make some calls. Kate will look after you, so you’re in good hands.”

  Kate whispered something in Richard's ear as he left before addressing us.

  “There are guest rooms upstairs that you are all welcome to go and use to refresh yourselves. This could take a while and if the weather gets much worse, we can’t use the helicopter, so it maybe an overnighter I'm afraid. Richard is making some arrangements to try and get his legal team here today. He is really fired up by this. I haven’t seen him this engaged on a single project for years,” Kate said, then added, “It’s good to see some of his old self back. Please make yourselves at home, you can use the telephones if you need to, but we must ask you not to reveal who we are or our location. If you need anything at all, dial zero and ask for me. Please, this way.”

  We thanked Kate and assured her we wouldn’t be making any calls anyway, other than Lee to call Wendy and she already knew.

  We followed Kate up the scrolled marble staircase, with iron balustrades and a highly polished English oak banister rail. Kate took us to the top floor where we were offered three double guest rooms. The rooms were exquisitely decorated in the same stately home period décor as the rest of the mansion. King size beds with satin sheets were already turned down for us and deep pile bath robes had been folded neatly on each bed. There were en-suite bathrooms and walk-in wardrobes.

  “Wow, this is what you can have if you give it all away?” I said as I opened the two large French doors to the balcony.

  “Only if you’ve got it first. Money attracts money,” Becs said and joined me on the balcony. “It’s cold out here,” she whispered as she slid an arm round me.

  It was cold and the sky was so dark with clouds that it was as if the sun had vanished, but somehow, the scene seemed right. It was an intimidating landscape, but the beauty of the loch and the high peaks buried in the clouds felt almost comforting. If they want me, they’ve got to get past that lot first.

  Although it was mid-afternoon, the peace and comfort of the Lines Foundation surroundings meant I found it easy to soon start drifting off to sleep whilst Becs took advantage of the power shower cubicle. It was one of those that shot jets of hot and cold water from all directions whilst Niagara Falls emptied itself through an oversized shower head. I smiled as I heard her scream when the shower program changed and needle like jets of cold water started their pulsed massage setting.

  ~~~

  I awoke with the usual feelings of having been attacked and strangled, the images fading quickly. Becs was asleep next to me on the bed wrapped in one of the bath robes.

  As I lay there, I realised it was now night outside. A bright light flashed through the window and caught my attention. The doors to the balcony were still open. I could hear the wind outside, but there was something else within the wind, a sound that until today I may have recognised but wouldn’t have paid attention to.

  I went to the balcony and looked out across the gardens. The sound was that of two helicopters, the first, having just landed, was now taking off — the passengers having quickly jumped off. Keeping their heads low they ran to one side carrying their luggage. I looked closer as the lights from the second helicopter lit up the heli-pad.

  “Shit!” They weren’t carrying luggage, they were carrying guns.

  “Shit, shit, shit! Becs! Becs! Wake up,” I shouted. “Becs, come on get dressed, we’ve got to go! Get dressed!”

  Becs sat up in bed and watched me frantically pulling on my shoes.

  “What, what’s happening?” Becs said as she started getting dressed.

  “Armed SWAT or something. They’ve just landed outside. Come on we’ve got to go! Bring your shoes...We’ve got to tell the others. Grab a coat!”

  “Okay okay, I’m coming.” She grabbed her jacket and shoes and we quickly left the room, checking that the hallway was clear.

  “Go get Lee, I’ll get Clive and Brenda,” I said.

  Lee was ready straight away, whilst it seemed Clive and Brenda had had the same idea as ourselves and were napping.

  Whilst we waited for Clive and Brenda, I went with Lee to the stairwell looking down into the large entrance hallway.

  As we approached the banister rail I could hear voices. Carefully, I peeked over and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Richard Lines was standing in the entrance hall and was pointing up towards us on the first floor. One of the men, all dressed in black combat attire, gave two of the others a series of commands. They promptly disappeared back out of the front door. The remaining two started ascending the stairs.

  “We gotta go, now,” I whispered to Lee and darted back down the hallway. Clive and Brenda were just coming out of their room.

  At the end of the hallway was another door with the familiar Fire Exit sign above it. I shoved the push bar and the door swung open into a service stairwell.

  As quickly as we could we started descending the stairs. I had no idea where they were taking us, but I hoped being a fire exit that it would eventually take us outside. Then what? We were in the middle of a bloody Scottish moor. Where the hell were we going to go?

  Before I had time to think that far ahead we had reached the ground floor. Double fire doors stood in front of us, beyond which we hoped was the outside and an answer as to what to do next. Maybe we could steal one of the cars?

  I pushed the bar and opened the door.

  “Freeze! Do not mo—” I saw the armed man before I heard what he was saying, but all I saw was him raising the barrel of his HK MP5a sub machine gun, a flash light attached to the underside of the barrel glared in my face. Before he finished his warning I reacted, more out of instinct than by decision. I slammed both my hands upwards under the barrel of the gun and rushed forwards shoulder butting him as hard as I could. He reeled backwards but didn’t fall over. I had to stay close and keep him off balance, before he could bring the gun crashing down on me. I elbowed him hard in the ribs and stamped on one of his legs, just behind the knee. This broke his balance and he dropped to one knee grunting with pain.

  Two shots rang out.

  I froze. Had someone just been shot?

  “Stop right there!” someone commanded. “There’s no need to run. Just calm down please.”

  I looked around to see another of the combat attired men with a handgun. It wasn’t pointed at me. He held it aimed into the ground by his feet. “Please, we are here to protect you, not harm you, we’re working for the Foundation,” he said.

  I looked around. Everyone was still standing and unharmed. Shaken, but unharmed. Backing away from the first guy who was still on one knee, I began to relax slightly. They were armed and could have easily finished us off, but they hadn’t.

  From behind us, out of
the fire exit rushed Richard Lines. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, please. Oh my —” he said when he saw one of his body-guards disabled on the ground. He turned to me and said, “Daniel, I am so sorry, I should have given you warning of what was happening. It was remiss of me not to think how this might have looked. I’m sorry.”

  Richard bent down and picked up the body-guard’s gun and handed it back to him. “I hope you lost that because you knew who he was? I am obviously pleased you did not shoot him.”

  “So these goons are supposed to be our body guards?” Brenda said, her voice shaking from shock. “Lot of bloody good they are.”

  “I thought someone had betrayed us again,” I said and hugged Becs.

  Richard gestured towards the fire exit doors for us all to go back inside. “And I can see why you would have thought that. No, after analysing the data and doing some background checks on your friend Mark Stacey, I decided we needed to tighten up our security. I should have warned you all, sorry. Please let’s go back into the warmth and I will explain further.”

  Once inside, we were shown to the library again where our presentation was still set up and Richard told us what his people had found and the possible implications.

  “Before I tell you what Mark Stacey had started to uncover I’m afraid there’s bad news. We tried to vet Mr Stacey and discovered that he had died of a heart attack on the Embankment, London.” Richard was watching us intently as he gave us the news.

  “What! No way. There is no way he had a heart attack, he was younger than me by at least ten years. No way!” I protested.

  “Well, we can’t prove it, but the data dump and your decrypted instructions were sent to you less than half an hour before he died, from Westminster Palace itself, literally a few hundred yards up the road.”

  “So you’re saying he was assassinated as well?” asked Clive.

  “Coincidence that a healthy young man drops dead thirty minutes after exposing something so huge, that the ramifications of it being exposed could be so great as to bring down the government?” Richard took out his mobile phone as he spoke and dialled a number and simply asked “Are you ready?” and then hung up. “Right, Daniel. The second helicopter you saw arriving was our legal team. They’re ready to start some of the preliminaries. Ready?”

  “I guess so, but Richard, what was in the data dump from Mark?” I asked.

  “Okay, it appears that the data was collected over a short period of a few days, but if the references, names and titles that are appearing are correct and the inter-relation between them verified then we are talking about implicating very senior politicians, judges and military command, both here and abroad.”

  In the short time Richard’s people had the data, they were producing the results Mark had hoped it would.

  I gave Becs another quick hug. “Be back soon,” I whispered in her ear and followed Richard out of the library and towards the back of the house.

  “We need a game plan for this, and if we play it just right, then the media outlets will do most of what really needs doing. We just have to make sure we get the order of events right so as to prevent your incarceration being too long,” Richard said so casually that it almost passed me by.

  I stopped. “Incarcerated. In what way?”

  “At some point Daniel, you are going to have to face the judiciary.”

  “Only if I get caught.”

  “Or give yourself up,” Richard said and opened a door to a large open plan office. There were four people in the room, two men and two women, and maybe because I knew they were Richard’s legal team, I thought they were all dressed like lawyers. White shirts and blouses, dark grey or black suits.

  “Why would I give myself up?” I followed Richard into the room.

  “We will explain in a minute. First, please meet your legal team.”

  Richard introduced me to each of the team: George Barnes, was in his late fifties, a criminal barrister; Louise Littlewood, forty-something, a patents lawyer; Dennis L'Carte, maybe late forties, an investigator; and Emma Collinson, mid-twenties, a legal secretary.

  “Good,” Richard said. “No time to waste. These guys are the best there is. I have told them the bare minimum of what we are faced with so far. They know only of the troubles you’ve had and what you are accused of, but not why. Answer all of their questions honestly, it will save time.”

  Richard left me with the legal team, in particular the imposing figure of George Barnes, the barrister who was asking most of the questions.

  Bit by bit, I told them what had happened since meeting Jack Welch for the first time at Owlbeech Lodge Care Home and learning that there was a working Lockridge device still in existence.

  When I had finally finished going through the sequence of events, George Barnes began his drill down into different aspects of events.

  “You used to work for Bankers Trust?”

  “Yes, I was their Networks Manager.”

  “And you would take leave to travel to Germany? How often was this?”

  “Three to five times a year. Sometimes less.”

  “Did you and Sophia Locke argue at the restaurant?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “Were you and Sophia Locke intimate?”

  “Not really. We kissed, just once.”

  “What made you think that the attacker at the Locke household meant to kill you?”

  “The gun pointing at my head.”

  “How do you suppose the attacker knew you were going to be there? Who else knew?”

  “Don’t know. No-one else knew.”

  “Where is the hand gun now?”

  “Don’t know. It fell to the floor.”

  “You said someone helped you overcome the attacker, who and what did they do?”

  “Clive Sinclair. He managed to disarm him of the knife.”

  “What was the nature of the assault on Miss Taylor?”

  “What do you mean exactly?”

  “How was she assaulted? What happened to her?”

  “Whoever it was, was sick. They kind of, partly undressed her and put a message for me in her bra is what she told me. That was after they killed my parents.”

  “How do you know the Friedmanns?”

  “They’re friends of Clive's, they helped me.”

  “So, going back to the first time you went to the Locke’s place, who else knew you were going there?”

  The questions went on and on, and were repetitive. At one point the secretary set up a tripod with a camera and I was asked to remove my top and trousers so the scars from the gun and knife attacks could be photographed.

  As the interview went on, the pin boards around the room started to fill up with reports, articles, logs, and anything related to me and anyone involved.

  After several hours of intense questioning, I was released and I made my way back to our room. I felt absolutely knackered by all the questions and found it hard to stop myself from yawning.

  I flopped on the bed next to Becs when the telephone rang.

  Following directions from Kate, we found Richard in his study with Clive, Brenda and Lee. The study was dark, with wooden panels lining the walls in between tall book shelves. Everyone was sitting in leather arm chairs in front of the blazing fire place.

  Richard stood to welcome us. “I was just telling everyone just how embarrassed the body-guard you took by surprise is. His ego is hurting more than his knee,” Richard said gesturing for us to pull up a chair.

  “I’m sure he would have shot me if he thought I was a real threat,” I said as I pulled one of the armchairs slightly closer to the fire and offered it to Becs. She shook her head and sat on the rug leaning herself back against the chair.

  “You would like to think so, but he admitted that the gun wasn't cocked and the safety was still on. I think that might be hurting his ego as well,” Richard said.

  Richard got up and poured us a generous shot of Scotch into cut crystal glasses. The liquid hit the back of the throat wit
h a kick, the vapour filling my head with its warming cut.

  “As remarkable as it may appear, things are moving very fast. There is an urgency to this Lockridge Project because of the implications of such technology. If we don’t move fast then we won’t be able to capitalise on it or prevent it being legally suppressed.” Richard remained standing as he spoke. “Now, for what it’s worth, I believe everything you have told me. I mean everything, including what you saw this technology do.

  “I think I should ask you directly though, if you are okay with my team and me dealing with how to manage the Lockridge Project?”

  “Depends on what you’re going to want to do with it?” Clive said.

  “We want this to be available for everyone to be able to build them if they can, so it’s an open source project, that can’t be hidden or suppressed again,” I offered.

  “Yes, yes, I understood that and applaud it. It appeals to the true spirit of philanthropy as it itself is philanthropic. Today’s venture philanthropy is little more than investment banking, rarely does the Foundation not make a profit on the projects it backs, even when they fail. It does this by maybe helping to start four or five other businesses to support the main project. For instance, earlier today you experienced three forms of travel, each a successful business in its own right, and each available to the Foundation.

  “So, Daniel, I hope the interviews are going well and aren’t too tiring. The more preparation we do, the better our chances,” Richard said as he put another log on the fire. Orange sparks crackled up the chimney.

  I said I was doing well and that the interviews were actually helping me to clarify and remember certain things. They also put into perspective just how lucky I had been. Lucky to have friends around me who had sacrificed so much. Dominik Becker had been so good to me over the years and I hadn’t even managed to speak to his wife Maria since having to go on the run and Dominik getting shot. They believed in me and knew I hadn’t killed the Lockes, and had paid the ultimate price to help me. My parents had paid the same price and didn’t even know why. So many people dead, killed, murdered in cold blood. All in the name of the Lockridge Device.