by M G Leslie
It was clear from her answers that she remembered Mike and she definitely knew Lucy. But for some reason, he could not yet fathom, she suddenly became reluctant to say very much. As Price asked more and more specific questions, he couldn’t be certain, but she seemed almost scared.
One thing was certain though – she could hardly keep awake. The mixture of the cocktails in the bar and the red wine in the room, most of which she had drunk, had taken their toll. However, she did manage to confirm that Lucy was no longer working there and he believed her when she said she didn’t know where Lucy had gone.
Not wanting to create too much suspicion, Price decided to leave it at that for the night. He’d be back at the bar tomorrow and find out more, but for now, it was time to get some sleep, so he kissed the girl again and wished her goodnight. She kissed him back and they slept in each other’s arms.
CHAPTER 2 – Home From Home
The next day, on finishing his breakfast, Price made a call to London.
These calls were intended to appear random and didn’t occur at fixed times on fixed days, but they were a means of ensuring communication continued and of keeping tabs on officers working in the field.
Whilst Price was a true professional, his phone calls ‘home’, made under the guise of calls to a friend who was going to be travelling out to meet him, were very casual, so as to avoid any attention in case someone was listening in. The call this morning went as follows:
Price: Hey Pete how’s things?
Pete: Hey mate – not too bad – how are you doing?
Price: Not “How” mate – “who!!”
Pete: Yeah very funny, and bad English incidentally – in that case, it should be, “Whom are you doing?”
Price: Girls in bars on a road called EDSA mate – at least I think they were all girls.
Pete: I assume you checked?
Price: Oh yes!!
Pete: So you’re having a good time then?
Price: Well there’re worse things in life – although once you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all frankly.
Pete: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I feel sorry for the girls.
Price: Don’t bother – they have an easy time – except for my snoring obviously.
Pete: So any photos? You’re supposed to be there taking photos and I don’t mean of the girls!! I’ve seen the girl photos you keep emailing me!!
Price: Ha ha ha, not yet mate, but I did meet one girl last night who was really nice, so I’m going to explore more tonight – turns out, a friend of hers has, or had anyway, a British boyfriend.
Pete: Perfect, when I get out there you can introduce me to the other girl, especially if it’s “had” rather than “has” now we know she likes us Brits.
Price: Ha ha ha, yes maybe.
Pete: Anyway, let me know where you end up – I’m bringing a few friends of mine – so we can have a party!
Price: Absolutely. I’ll keep you posted.
Pete: OK, enjoy! Bye!
Price: See you!
Pete: See you!
Despite all the joking, Price was very pleased with the call. He hadn’t told his contact at the Firm anything that wasn’t already covered in his encrypted email update. The email had already informed London that he had met the girl, who’s name turned out to be May. And she had remembered Mike and the other girl, Lucy. She’d also said that Lucy had taken a holiday with a western guy, that Price had assumed was also Mike – certainly, the description seemed to match. Although, if Mike had gone on holiday, then why hadn’t he continued his reports? “Very odd indeed,” thought Price, “There’s something we’re missing here!”
Pete had, however, given Price some good news by confirming that he’d be coming out with friends. The word ‘friends’ was a pre-agreed signal that meant, if Price needed help, the Firm had been given clearance to get the SAS involved.
Price smiled to himself and wondered if he’d know any of the guys the SAS would send. Anyway, for the moment he had work to do. When he’d said, “See you” instead of “Bye”, that meant he was going to visit the embassy for a face-to-face meeting – he wanted to get the photos he’d taken of the girls ID checked out properly.
Last night’s pillow-talk with May, had also given Price a pretty good idea of when the other girl, Lucy, had stopped working at the club – in fact it was about the same time Mike had disappeared. And since she’d suggested Lucy had taken a holiday, he wondered if they were both being held captive and had been taken somewhere. There was of course the possibility that they had both ended up the same way as Kit, but in any case, he wanted flight records checked to ensure all angles were covered.
As he was about to leave the hotel room, Price went through a well-rehearsed routine. He was travelling light, but was meticulous in the way he left his belongings. He wanted to be able to determine if someone had searched the room whilst he was gone. With modern tools and techniques, it was virtually impossible to prevent someone searching if they were really determined. But that didn’t matter. As he started to ask more questions, he was conscious that he could create suspicion that ultimately could make him a target and put him at risk – so he needed to know if that was happening, and one rule of thumb was, suspicion normally starts with a search.
So when Price placed his satellite phone and camera in the room’s safe, he put them at seemingly random angles. However, in reality he had lined up joins in the plastic casings with small marks he could see on the bottom of the safe casing. If someone opened the safe and moved the phone to see if he had made any calls, or looked at the photos he’d taken, the chance of them putting them back in precisely the same place was very small indeed – so Price would know – and that was what mattered.
Price was similarly thorough in the way he left clothes in his suitcase – he’d know if it had been opened. These trivial, almost completely unnoticeable, subtle things were a complete waste of time 9 times out of 10. But that 1 in 10 time could save your life in his industry, and had done so for many of his colleagues over the years – so Price never cut corners when it came to the details – his training had drummed that in to his head – never forget the details.
Satisfied, he’d done all he could, Price picked up the room key, left the hotel room and went downstairs to reception.
On reaching the hotel lobby, he asked for a taxi to The Forte. The British Embassy is fairly close to the new restaurant and shopping district in the area of Manila called The Forte, but he wanted to go to the embassy discreetly. So he got the taxi to drop him near a Starbucks, which he entered and immediately ordered a Grande Café Latte.
As Price sat drinking his latte, seemingly playing with his mobile phone, he used his peripheral vision to look at people both inside and outside the coffee shop. He was looking for the faintest, shortest glance directly at him, that might suggest the person was watching him but didn’t want to be seen doing so.
Longer, more obvious, glances at him were actually less of a worry. This happens all the time – people think they recognise someone or they like the clothes or jewellery the person is wearing. So it was the subtle ones he was looking out for – or perhaps someone who didn’t fit in – perhaps they were wearing strange clothes or acting strangely or trying too hard to fit in and appear normal.
As part of the SIS training many years before, Price had been given a whole list of things to look for in these situations. And since then, he’d used those skills many many times – so much so, that he was able to do them almost subconsciously – which of course, was the aim of the training. Similarly, he was trained on how to be the person following someone else and not get caught.
Once he’d satisfied himself that nobody was following him, Price finished his coffee and walked out to the street, hailed a local taxi and went straight to the embassy. His British passport was sufficient to get him through security and into the extensive grounds of the new building.
Walking past perfectly manicured gardens, Price turned left and entered the white con
crete building – but instead of turning left again where the general public were steered, he quickly turned right and walked up to an unmarked door. Checking that nobody was behind him, he entered a 6-digit code on the numeric keypad, and the door clicked and unlocked.
Price pushed the heavy door open and walked in to a small anti-room about the size of a bathroom. Once the door behind him had closed with a solid click, he looked at a CCTV camera that was set in to the wall on the left of a large steel reinforced door that stood directly in front of him. After a couple more seconds he heard a reassuringly solid click, so he pushed the door open, walked through and heard the door close again behind him.
The large room before him had a small open plan communal area in the centre, with cubicles and offices around the perimeter and a kitchen in the far distance. As was the case in London, all the offices had their doors closed, none of them had windows in to the communal area and instead of names, they were marked only with numbers – in the intelligence community, officers often need to be able to speak privately and without colleagues hearing what they have to say.
As Price walked further in to the room he immediately recognised Pete, who he’d been speaking to earlier and had now emerged from the second office on the right.
They had spoken many times over secure video communication links when Price was in London – it had been decided that Pete would be his contact in the Firm and would be ‘logically’ in London. That way, when he called Pete, Price actually called a London phone number that was routed via private secure communications links back to the Philippines.
Whilst this might seem overly complicated, the idea was that Price had a good excuse to call a friend back in the UK, and that meant Pete would always be up to date on the case. However, since he was in reality, residing in the Philippines, he could also assist Price at short notice if he needed to.
It was in fact Pete who had unlocked the secure door and allowed Price in to the SIS part of the embassy. He was alerted automatically when Price’s passport had been scanned by security at the entrance to the embassy.
Walking over, Pete shook Price’s hand with a warm welcome, “Welcome to the Philippines, let me introduce you to some friends,” and with that he turned and pointed to 4 guys sitting in the kitchen who all nodded as if to say, “Hello.”
Price raised his hand in response. He knew the 4 guys were clearly the SAS friends they’d discussed earlier. But sadly, he didn’t recognise them as some of his drinking buddies. “Oh well,” he thought, “These are potential drinking buddies in the making, which is fine as well.”
“I need some flight details checked,” Price said. “The girl, Lucy, stopped working at the club around the same time Mike vanished. I’m wondering if they were taken somewhere. It’s a long shot, but can you get it checked out. Also, here’s copies of the ID the girl I met was carrying, plus some receipts in her bag. I doubt if it will lead to anything, but can you get it checked as well please.”
Then he took a piece of paper out of his wallet on which May had written Lucy’s full name. “Here’s Lucy’s full name – I don’t recall Mike providing that in his case notes.”
“No problem,” replied Pete. “Come this way,” and he led Price in to the building’s secure communications room.
Unlike the other offices, this room had thick lead-lined walls and a door that, when closed, completely shielded the occupants from radio frequency transmissions. Even the air-conditioning vents in the ceiling used specially designed filters to ensure that nothing could accidentally enter or leave the room. As soon as the door was closed and locked, both of their cell phones immediately lost connection to the cell phone networks.
Pete walked over to a desk and sat down in front of a communications terminal that used bespoke cryptographic equipment to ensure the secure transmission of messages to and from SIS in London. After keying in his personalised login details, Pete started typing Price’s request. He was asking GCHQ and SIS in London to search all the global flight databases and hotel booking systems and get the information back as quickly as possible. Then he scanned and sent copies of the ID and receipts with a similar covering message.
“Once I hear back, I’ll let you know. If I don’t have an opportunity to tell you in-person, I’ll email you a photo of some miserable weather in London. You should be able to extract and decrypt the message with your phone in the usual way,” Pete added.
“Thanks. I’ll be back at the club tonight and see what else I can find. I want to try and get that Lucy girl’s home address in case she went home. Have there been any more of those problematic transactions?”
“No,” replied Pete, “It’s a bit odd actually. They began all those months ago and appeared to be getting more and more frequent. Then, as soon as you were assigned to the case, they stopped.”
“Who told them?” said Price.
“Don’t go there,” said Pete, “That’s too horrible to think about.”
“Mate, nobody outside of a handful of people knew I was coming out here – so if they suddenly stopped, someone told them,” replied Price.
Pete just shrugged his shoulders, “What can I say? If they were told, we’re in big trouble.”
After agreeing, Price said, “I take it there’s no more news on Mike – no credit card receipts, mobile phone cell logins, satellite phone logins, Internet messages?”
“Nothing,” replied Pete, “There’s no change from the status we gave you in London. The last time his phone was switched on it was in Manila, and the last time he used his credit card it was to pay his hotel bill at the Mandarin. I’m afraid we may have to accept the worst – he may have gone the same way as Kit.”
“Yes, I know – that thought occurred to me,” replied Price.
“Anyway,” said Pete, “We’ll figure it out. How about some lunch before the restaurant gets too busy?”
Price nodded and they walked out towards the kitchen and a staff restaurant, briefly making small talk with the SAS soldiers who looked bored and were still watching TV.
As they entered the restaurant and started to make their selections from the buffet, Pete looked at Price and said, “You’ve become a legend in your own lifetime you know.”
“Oh dear, what now?” Price replied in a depressed tone of voice.
“That South American job a few months back – the case of the minister with the missing eyes?”
Price laughed, “You don’t really want to hear about that do you?”
“Well there are a lot of rumours going round…”
“What happened to the concept of ‘Need to know’?” Price retorted.
“You forget my friend – I’m a station chief now, so I’m on the list of people who review cases that included a fatality – and this one was sent my way, but I never got a chance to finish the review before the Chief closed the case himself.”
“OK,” replied Price, “But you’ll be disappointed, so don’t get your hopes up – it really is nothing interesting.”
“Try me?” asked Pete.
“Well, it started like this,” said Price, as he started to recount one of his most recent assignments in The Increment, as they sat down to eat.
“You probably know, I was sent down there to investigate a shipment of drugs that GCHQ reckoned was destined for the UK. My task was to find out where and when and provide details to enable Special Branch to intercept the shipment once it reached the UK. Then I was to call in the SAS to deal with the person or persons who arranged the shipment.
Now, unlike some of my colleagues, I don’t favour paying for information. I work on the basis that, most of these people are either corrupt, perverted, weird, sleeping with someone on the side, doing something else they shouldn’t be doing aside from the activity we’re hunting them down for, or potentially, and quite often, many or all of the above.
Anyway, it turns out, the communications GCHQ intercepted were from a church minister. I can’t remember which church and frankly, it makes no differe
nce anyway. Because, once I found out he liked to play around with little boys, his days were numbered – paedophiles are the lowest of the low– I think we all agree on that.”
Pete nodded in agreement so Price continued recounting the story.
“So armed with suitably obtained photos of the minister doing what he ought not do, I confronted him at the church.”
“What was he like?”
“He was a sleazy little shit quite frankly – although it was a beautiful church with one of the biggest crosses I have ever seen in my life. I’m not especially religious, but it was an amazing sight. Going slightly off topic, but have you seen inside Westminster Cathedral in Central London?”
“You mean the Abbey, right?”
“No, the Cathedral – it’s the Catholic Cathedral – not far from the Abbey actually, but very different and also quite beautiful on the outside with coloured bricks – not dissimilar to the brickwork on parts of the Natural History Museum in some respects – but on a much smaller scale of course – if you know what I mean?”
“I do,” said Pete. “And I didn’t know you were so interested in architecture.”
“I’m interested in everything my friend,” Price replied, “Everything that passes in front of my eyes gets recorded. But anyway, next time you’re in London, do go inside – it has one of the biggest crosses I have ever seen – it’s hanging from the ceiling, suspended by what must be huge steel cables. Well this Church in South America had a similar sized cross, but in a much smaller church – honestly – it was huge and completely out of proportion. But I digress – where were we?”