Strike a Match 2

by Frank Tayell

  “Really? How? Why?”

  “Why do I think that, or why was he rescued?” Mitchell replied. “There’s not much left of the man who was wearing that suit. There is an arm, and on it is a tattoo. SS Britania, spelled with only one ‘n’. The Britannia is the ship from which the Marine escort on that train all came. I imagine it won’t take long to find out which of them had a tattoo with that unfortunate spelling, but we don’t have the time. During the ambush, they could have fired that grenade into the train the moment we stopped. They didn’t. They risked their lives to go on board. Not to kill Fairmont, but to free him. He took off the suit and put it onto a Marine. An explosive device was strapped to that Marine. It was detonated. All that remains are a few charred lumps covered in a singed orange suit. They risked everything to rescue Fairmont. For whom would you risk your life, Perez? Close the door and lock it. I want to see it as Fairmont did.”

  Ruth closed the door and turned the key. She stood by the small window, watching Mitchell.

  “Can you hear me?” he called.

  “Yes, sir.”

  She watched as he tapped the back of a cupboard, then the next, and then the third. He nodded.

  “I have the lamps,” Clarke said.

  “Hang on,” Ruth said. She watched as Mitchell took out a knife and slammed into the back of the cupboard. The wood cracked, and the knife seemingly went into the wall up to its hilt.

  “What’s he doing?” Perez asked, and then added, in a panicked tone, “Open the door!”

  Ruth pulled the key from the lock, dropped it, and kicked it down the corridor.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” the ambassador said. Mitchell had pulled away the remains of the cupboard’s back. He leaned forward and seemed to disappear into it. Into a hole, Ruth realised. One that must have been hidden by the cupboard, and which led into the next room.

  “What’s in there?” she asked.

  “It’s top secret,” the ambassador said. “No one goes in there.”

  Ruth gestured through the small window. Only Mitchell’s legs were now visible. “I think the captain just did.”

  The ambassador sighed. “Open the door, Clarke.”

  There were two women and a man inside the room, all wearing plain shirts, and pocket-less trousers. They’d been sitting at desks in the middle of the room. What they’d been doing with the strange equipment and sheaths of paper, Ruth didn’t know, but now they were staring, horrified, at Mitchell.

  “Fairmont didn’t have access to this room,” Mitchell said.

  “No,” Clarke said.

  “Who did?” the captain asked.

  “Myself and two of my deputies,” Clarke said. “The staff are locked in here during their shift.”

  “Ambassador, you don’t have a key?”

  “No,” Perez said. “For operational reasons there’s only one copy.”

  “So the only way for Fairmont to get inside is to steal Agent Clarke’s key, or to break in.” Mitchell gestured at the cupboard and the hole in the wall beyond. “I think it’s clear which one he chose.”

  “What is this room?” Ruth asked.

  “That’s classified,” Clarke said.

  “I think your staff here should take a break,” Mitchell said. There was an ominous silence broken only by the slow grinding of Mitchell’s teeth.

  “Go,” the ambassador said to the staff.

  “What is this place,” Ruth asked again once they’d left.

  “Clarke’s right,” the ambassador said. “We can’t tell you. It’s classified.”

  “It’s a wire tap room,” Mitchell said. “Quite literally this is where they tap into the telegraph. That’s right isn’t it?”

  Clarke stared straight ahead.

  “I’d remind you,” Perez said, speaking with deliberate caution, “that we are on American soil.”

  “And I’d remind you,” Mitchell growled, “that Sergeant Riley’s in the hospital, and Sergeant Davis is in the morgue. Do you really want to try matching me threat for threat?”

  “I don’t understand,” Ruth said, speaking in the hope of dampening the suddenly dangerous atmosphere. “How do you tap into the telegraph?”

  “The central telegraph office is next door,” Mitchell said. “The wires come in underground. Each message is a series of electrical impulses.” He gestured at the equipment on the table. “All of this is so they can listen in, and write down the messages. Every shipment of coal south, and of food north. Every price promised, and deal made.”

  “That has to be illegal,” Ruth said.

  “No,” Perez said. “This is American soil.”

  “I always thought it was an odd place for you to set up your embassy,” Mitchell said. “Next to Parliament would have made more sense. Instead, you chose one next to the telegraph, and your new one is next to the radio antenna. Well, this might be American soil, but I’d say that all adds up to espionage.”

  “I’m protecting American interests,” Perez said.

  “Sure. What was it you said? What are Britain and America if not friends? And what was that line that politician used? Friends don’t spy on their friends?”

  “An ally today could be an enemy tomorrow,” Perez said.

  Mitchell picked up the sheet of paper a clerk had been writing on. “It’s the amount of food being shipped to the mines. This must be so much easier than having people count the trains. This tells you what’s in demand. That information goes back to the US. You get to work out what food is worth growing for export. This is economic warfare. I prefer it to the other kind, but it’s not the act of a grateful friend.”

  The atmosphere had sunk beyond dangerous and was heading toward violence.

  “So Fairmont dug a hole through that wall to get access to the telegraph?” Ruth asked.

  “No,” Mitchell said. He pulled out a chair and sat down. “Each night that I’ve been in Twynham, and when the weather permits, I’ve taken a walk down by the hulks on the coast. Few people go there. To me, the ships are a reminder of how a lot of us, literally, got here.” He sighed. “On one such night a few weeks ago, whom do I see but Lucas Fairmont selling information to two of the conspirators. I was so focused on the conspiracy that I failed to notice a coincidence too large to be anything other than a setup. Who knew I walked that particular beat? Commissioner Wallace, the man who gave me my very own unit in the police department. Fairmont wanted to be arrested, and to be caught selling American documents. He would have known your procedures. Perhaps he even wrote them. That gave him access to that cell. However, you have people in here, twenty-four hours a day, right?”

  “As long as the telegraph is running,” Perez said.

  “Precisely, and as the messages run three hundred and sixty-five days a year, he needed a way of stopping them. The Luddites. He created an anti-technologist political movement purely so he could find the most zealous of believers. Talk about dedication to the crime. He had them cut the telegraph. There were no telegrams coming in to Twynham, and so no staff on duty in here. He broke through the wall, stole what he was after, and covered the hole. Then he had to escape.”

  “That’s why he gave us Frobisher,” Ruth said. “When we raided the house on Windward Square, that was the signal to Emmitt that he was ready to be rescued.”

  “Precisely,” Mitchell said. “Frobisher and those people were there to make us think Fairmont had information of value. Specifically, the locations of groups of men and women, armed with automatic weapons, and all waiting for some mysterious deadline. That information was worth us giving into his demand that he be moved somewhere far away from Twynham.”

  “But he couldn’t have known you would have taken that train north,” Perez said.

  “No,” Mitchell said. “And if we search, we’ll probably find other ambush sites on the tracks leading east, and to Wales, but the thing about a train is that it has to stay on the rails. There are a limited number of railroads, and so he would only need three or four ambus
h sites. The truck was ready to depart as soon as they learned to which direction we were going. That information probably came from Simon Longfield, the spy within our department. But then they needed to let Fairmont know that the rescue was imminent.”

  “That’s why the telegraph was cut again,” Ruth said.

  “Because how else can you get a message to someone who’s a prisoner on a train?” Mitchell asked. “You do something so catastrophic that everyone on that train is talking about it. Hell, I think I told him myself it had been cut. We’ll never know, but I think he might have had a key to that cage, perhaps even a weapon. After the shooting began, I think that he got out and killed at least some of the Marines. That element of surprise was why none of his followers were killed during that part of the rescue. Then there was the explosion. It destroyed almost all the evidence. The rest, well, they knew it would be destroyed when the tracks were cleared, because a resumption of normal service is more important than a few dozens deaths.”

  “That’s absurdly elaborate,” Perez said.

  “Not really. In fact, most of it only required money or time. Thugs like Turnbull, Lyons, and Frobisher only needed to be paid. Organising the Luddites required time. Six months. Perhaps a year. Of course, that leaves the question of what in this room is worth that level of dedication. It’s not the telegrams. It’s something else. A safe? Ah, yes.” Mitchell stood. “It’s the most secure room in the building. Clarke keeps looking at you, and you are desperately trying not to look over here.” Mitchell crossed the room. There was a small cupboard. He tried the door. “Locked. I take it the safe is in there?”

  “Nothing is missing,” Perez said.

  “Of course not,” Mitchell said. “You made the man change his clothes. He knew you would. He was banking on it. I expect he thought he’d end up in some prison jumpsuit, but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to take anything away from here. Nothing written down, at least. But in there is something that he memorised. There is something, the knowledge of which is worth the sacrifice of a year or more of his life.”

  Mitchell stared at Perez. The politician stared back.

  “Blackmail,” Ruth said. Perez blinked.

  “What?” the ambassador said.

  Mitchell smiled. “We learned that they were blackmailing some British politicians. That’s a far easier way of running a country. Get someone else to worry about whether the trains will run on time while basking in the knowledge that any policy you want will come into law. So Fairmont has something on you, or on someone else?”

  Silence.

  “A better question is how he knew the combination,” Ruth said.

  Silence.

  “Fairmont found the safe,” Perez finally said. “It was his idea to install it in here. I had no key to this room, and Clarke didn’t have the combination to the safe. An extra layer of security, you see.”

  “When was that?” Mitchell asked.

  “Almost two years ago,” Perez said.

  “Two years? It’s got to be something big,” Mitchell said. “I need to know if it’s going to cause immediate problems for the country.”

  “You mean are they missile launch codes? No,” Perez said. “The documents all came from the old U.S. Embassy in London. They were CIA and NSA files on individuals who were influential in the old-world, and who are still alive today.”

  “Active in politics, you mean?” Mitchell asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Like you, Congressman Perez,” Mitchell said. “You were in Congress before the Blackout.”

  “I was. But I’m not the only one. I won’t tell you what’s in there, nor the names of the individuals concerned. Suffice it to say that the information could cause more than one presidential candidate to drop out of the race.”

  “Or to control them after they won the election?”

  “Yes,” Perez admitted.

  “And that is a big prize. Control of Britain and a newly reunified United States. As those are the only two functioning nations of any significant size, that means control of the world. I’d say that was worth a couple of years of planning.”

  Silence returned, but this time absent of all earlier threat.

  “What now?” Perez asked.

  “I’m going to catch him,” Mitchell said. “But first I want you to open that safe.”

  “I won’t show you the documents,” Perez said.

  “And I don’t want to know what’s in them. Just open it.”

  Perez did. Inside were a few brown and red envelopes, and a lot of plaster.

  “It came from the hole in the wall,” Mitchell said. “Since Clarke doesn’t know the combination, and you don’t have a key to the room, he knew it would be a long time before it was found.”

  Chapter 18

  Counterfeit Conspiracy

  9th October

  “Tomorrow?” a voice asked.

  “The next twenty-four hours are critical,” another replied. “Many things can go wrong, but I’m hopeful.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ruth opened her eyes. She saw Mitchell shake hands with a doctor before coming to sit down on a chair opposite.

  “How is she?” Ruth asked.

  “The surgery’s over. She survived that, and now… now we wait and see. I brought you some soup. It might be cold by now.”

  Ruth picked up the large cup. It was cold, but she was ravenous.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “About two,” Mitchell said. He looked at his watch. “No, four.”

  Ruth looked around. “In the morning?”

  “You were tired. You snore, by the way.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologise,” he said with a brittle attempt at a smile. “It kept everyone else away.” Mitchell stood, paced a few uncertain steps, and shrugged as if the movement confirmed that there was nowhere to go, and nothing to do but wait.

  “I hate hospitals,” he said. “They’re a place I associate with death.”

  “I suppose that’s the same for most people,” Ruth said.

  “And they all look the same,” he said, clearly not listening. “British, American, before the Blackout and after. The easy-to-clean, hides-the-blood paint. The smell. Even the doctors, none of it changes.” He sat down. “This, here, the waiting, it reminds me of when my father died. I was about your age. There had been a road accident. It was one of those stupidly tragic accidents for which no one was to blame. A driver had a heart attack while he was behind the wheel. The truck he was driving ploughed straight into my father’s car.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Ruth said.

  “Thank you,” he murmured automatically. “I was in school at the time. We were sitting a test. Math. I was struggling over this problem of angles. I remember that. The principal came in. He told me the news out in that corridor. I raced to the hospital as fast as I could. Too fast, considering the nature of my father’s accident. Then I had to wait. After twelve hours, I knew he wasn’t going to make it. No one said it, but there was something about how the nurses came to keep me updated. He’s still alive, they said. Still fighting. I knew he was dying, so I sat by his bedside and tried to think of some appropriate last words to say to him. You see, I thought that they’d take out the tubes, and we’d have one final moment together. We’d each have an opportunity to say all those things that we’d thought but never said. Those words had to be perfect because I knew the memory of our last moment together would stay with me for the rest of my life. And it has. Except, we didn’t say anything to each other. He died without regaining consciousness.”

  “What were you going to say?” Ruth asked when the silence began to stretch.

  “Some variation on thank you and I love you, though I never really settled on anything.”

  “Maybe thinking it was enough,” Ruth said.

  Mitchell smiled. “Maybe. After all, the words were for me, not for him. Ours was a complicated relationship. It was just the two of us and… well, afte
r he died, he didn’t leave much. I sold what was left. I went to Boston because that was where a TV show I liked was set. I got a place at college. For the first few months I was so full of anger I didn’t realise that studying, or at least that kind of studying, wasn’t for me. I didn’t want to drift from one thing to another, nor did I want to waste any more time accruing student debt that I’d be unable to pay back. I’d made up my mind to quit, and the choice was either the police or the military.”

  “A bit like mine,” Ruth said.

  “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” Mitchell said. “I’d decided on the police because, perversely, I thought there would be fewer rules. But I wasn’t ready for it. So I looked for a job. Nothing permanent. I wanted something where I could meet some different people. Maybe get a new perspective on the world. I saw an advert on campus. A professor was looking for an assistant. No qualifications were required, so I applied. She called me in for an interview. It was a series of mathematical puzzles. I didn’t have a clue what the questions meant let alone how to guess the answers. She kept on asking them. I figured she was having her fun, proving her own superiority. But she wasn’t. At the end of it, she gave me the job because, out of all the applicants, I was the only one who didn’t understand the first thing about what she was doing. That was Maggie.”

  “Maggie? You mean you were her assistant too, like Isaac?”

  “I was nothing like Isaac, and I wasn’t an assistant, not really. She needed someone to carry her bags from America to England for her presentation. But she wanted to make sure that that person wasn’t going to be able to steal any of her research.”

  “That’s how you ended up here?”

  “I often think about the past, trying to work out if I was somehow destined to be here, at this time and in this place. Destiny doesn’t exist. If any one of a hundred events had played out differently, I wouldn’t have come to Britain. Whether I’d have survived the Blackout is another matter. But I do know that this corner of Britain would look very different.”