“Sorry,” Jack said, with genuine repentance in his voice. “That’s OK buddy,” said the man.
The man had a thick American accent. Although not an expert on
that part of the world Jack pegged the accent as belonging to one of the Southern States of the US.
“I think everyone has had a bit too much to drink,” the man continued. “One hell of a bash. Damn shame it’s taking place in the asshole of nowhere.” Jack smiled warmly.
“When it’s free it would be rude to say no,” said Jack.
The American slapped Jack on the back and then he threw his head
back and he laughed.
“Ain’t that the truth,” said the American. “I’ll see you back inside.” “I will be looking out for you,” Jack returned.
With the American gone from the toilet block it gave Jack the
space that he needed to act on the plan that he was still in the process of forging. He quickly scanned the ceiling in the main part of the toilet block. There was nothing. Jack then opened each of the cubicle doors and checked the ceiling from inside. When he opened the door to the last cubicle, the one closest to the far wall, he found what he was looking for. In the ceiling there was a small maintenance trapdoor. Jack put the seat of the toilet down and he then stood on it, distributing his weight cautiously for fear that the cheap plastic might give. The trapdoor was firmly jammed into place, swollen by the unseasonal damp of the leaky building and sealed with a poor distributed layer of thick white paint. It took a couple of hard pushes using both hands to free the trapdoor and the sound its liberation caused alarmed Jack. He jumped down from the toilet seat and dashed across to the main door. After listening carefully for a few moments for any signs that the trapdoor opening had alerted someone, Jack contentedly concluded that it had not.
He moved back to the cubicle and hopped up on the toilet seat. Jack’s head disappeared into the dark unknown of the opening. It was not going to be easy. He returned to the light. Jack looked around to fix in his mind a mental map before he pulled himself into the darkness through the
located the
opening. Jack groped around in the darkness until he
hatch which he quickly put back into place. Although there wasn’t a lot of light penetrating the darkness through the opening, Jack instantly missed that light once it was gone. In pitch darkness Jack knew just how vulnerable he actually was. If he knocked something over, or slipped and put a foot through the plasterboard between the ceiling joists, then he would be instantly discovered and just as instantly executed—if he was lucky. There was also the great danger, in spite of the careful mental map that he had made, that he would get lost in the darkness. He could hear the voices beneath him—the voices were diffused and it was hard for Jack to pinpoint the exact source. The various ventilation shafts which opened into the space that Jack occupied, as well as water pipes, with their unusual acoustic properties, caused him disorientation as voices came at him from all around. His brain eventually identified the ghost sounds coming from the infrastructure of the building, and he began to focus on what he assumed was the true source of the voices. With that audio landmark fixed he began to move once again.
At a snail’s pace and adopting the posture of the same, Jack crept his way across the joists until he reached a wall. If Jack was correct in his blind orientation then the wall would be part of the room where the group had congregated. With even more care than before, as he was now merely yards from those who would have him killed, Jack crawled along the un-plastered wall. The un-plastered surface was festooned with sharp edges formed from cement that had not been cleaned off during construction. The webbing from an infestation of spiders tickled his face and left him to guess just how large and nasty the owners of those webs that he was so carelessly destroying actually were. Eventually several small shafts of light cut across his path. Dust particles danced momentarily in the illuminated stage before moving on to be replaced by others, moving in their own particular way—it was a hypnotic sight. The light that was slicing through the darkness entered through a small, metal, ventilation grill in the wall. Jack took up position next to the grill. His view of the large room below was far from complete, but such as it was it gave him some sense of what was taking place. It was a canteen. Given the condition of the rest of the building that Jack had so far viewed, it was clear that the room below him had been freshly painted and cleaned. The practical hard wearing tables
round, wooden,
of a normal workers’ eatery had been replaced with
dark stained tables. There were six people sitting at each table, for the most part. The opening also allowed sound to pass through to Jack’s hiding place, even if only the busy hum of speculation and the telling of nothing more committal than old war tales told with competitive zeal, which made homing in on any one conversation for more than the briefest of
moments an impossible task. In that moment Jack was less interested in listening in on a particular conversation, and more concerned to fix his eyes on her; he needed to confirm that she was more than an apparition that his tired mind had conjured up to console him in his time of stress and dire emotional need. That was not such a farfetched idea as he often turned to her whenever things at work got tough, and she would enter his dreams and give him comfort almost every time when he had to take a life. Even in her absence she provided him with more comfort than any professional head shrinker back in London. She was nowhere to be seen. A mild panic punched him in the stomach as he returned to the tortured men in the office—what if the building had many such rooms, with the contorted dead in each of them? What if she was one of the victims? An unseen critter scurrying over his left hand broke the run of pessimism that had gripped his mind. In that same moment his mood turned right around—he knew that she was alive. He just knew it.
Suddenly calm quickly followed by hush fell across the crowd below him and all eyes in the room turned to face in Jack’s direction. Jack took in a sharp breath of dusty air that almost caused him to sneeze. Had he been spotted? Had some plaster come free from the wall or ceiling in the room because of his movements above their heads? Relief punched him giddy as the unmistakable form of Deeley came into view. Although Deeley had his back to Jack it was not hard to identify him, not least from the dark suit that he was wearing. Deeley held up his hands to call for complete quiet—a redundant act as the crowd of over fifty had already settled to hear what he had to say. The audience may not have been bejewelled and in their socialising best, but they were by no means typical of the dusty mercenaries who Jack often encountered. They were dressed for an informal barbeque rather than for a dinner party. The entire scene was somehow bastardised by the scene of torture and murder that had played out earlier a short distance away.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Deeley began. “I cannot express just how happy I am to see so many of you here tonight. For some of you; most of you; just being here was a struggle. I hope that you will find the struggle has been well worth the effort. While I am gratified that so many of you have made it this far I am also mindful that there are
many others who did not make it here tonight. If you would like to raise your glasses.”
Deeley raised his glass and the crowd followed his lead. “To absent friends,” Deeley said. “Still, less of them means more for the rest of us.”
A wave of cynical laughter oscillated around the room.
“But seriously,” Deeley continued. “There are a few gaps left in our organisation and hopefully during the course of this evening some of you will be able to suggest suitable replacements for the folks we have lost. As you are well aware, the success of this enterprise relies on our network remaining intact. We need to fill those gaps, soon, and with people that we can rely on.”
There was a buzz in the room as the guests turned to one another for a moment of quick discussion—as if getting their say in early on who should fill the positions that Deeley spoke of would somehow make their claim more le
gitimate. Deeley afforded them the time to indulge in that speculation and debate before raising his hands again. Soon the room fell silent once more. Deeley had their full attention and he was basking in every glorious moment of it. As he continued to speak his confidence and conviction grew. The plans, the schemes, the murders, they were only the first step. Deeley was not at the moment of truth—the point where the crowd before him decided if they were going to continue with him down whatever road he was leading them, or would they turn on him now that he was there before them, in the flesh? As he read their faces and their body language he knew that he had them; for the most part.
“We can address those matters later. And I have to talk with some of you about other matters as well. But for now I want to let you know where we stand and what our plans for the next ten years are. It is hard to believe that it has been almost ten years from our last general meeting. Time flies when you are having fun.”
The grin, again. The crowd laughed politely.
“In those ten years we have moved this project on at a rate that we would have not thought possible just a few decades ago. You have brought so much change to the world and you have ensured that all of what we have planned will eventually bear fruit. In many countries we
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have established the sham of a democracy andtheformer Soviet Union will soon join their number. This will be our most important success so far and it will ensure all of our other plans can take place. With the military might and political willpower of Russia at our side we will rule the planet. Within the decade America will be a democracy in all but name, and the same will be true of my own country. Our latent dictatorships will soon touch every part of this world and those nations who refuse to bend to our will shall be forced into accepting our will. The people will have their elections. They will believe that they have freedom, yet at the same time they will gladly hand that freedom over to us, all in the name of national security. This entire project was born when a few good men during the Second World War decided that the world must never engage in total war again. The nightmare of industrialised ethnic cleansing born out of irrational prejudice must never again stalk the planet like some dark carnivorous beast in search of human misery and sacrifice. We owe it to the memory of those who died so needlessly and we owe it to ourselves.”
A pause.
“The Nazis taught us how to induce a nation into giving up its freedom through terror, and in the UK, at the height of the war between the Crown and the IRA, we saw just how easy it was to get the public to give up their right to freedom and civil liberties when we introduced internment. With enough motivation, with the right level of terror, I am confident that a country as great as America will also go down that route. Our friends from the Middle East are already making plans to help the great democracy loving American public come to the right decision as far as their own security is concerned. And our friends in Ireland will strike a blow against the greatest symbol of American power in the world once he sets foot in Ireland to accept all credit for a process that he had very little to do with personally. Vanity gets you every time, ladies and gentlemen, and the vainer the man the easier he is to get. And I would like to thank all of you for providing our men with the resources and intelligence that they need to carry out their mission. The UK and France are so closely tied in with America, as are a number been attacked and she enacts those other countries will fall into line. Though in the case of the UK and
of other nations that once the US has freedom-suppressing laws, then Spain, that have been subjected to terrorist violence for many decades, it may take a little nudge to get the result that we want. Again, our friends from the Middle East and their associates have agreed to lead that charge, and again I would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to them for all that they have done in the name of our cause.”
Deeley paused once again as he raised his glass. A contented murmur radiated around the room. Jack listened intently to what Deeley had to say. It was simply incredible. Was he really saying that the small group of people from all parts of the world were in the middle of a global coup d’état? Was he really suggesting that force had been, and would be used on innocent populations by their own governments in order to get them to fall into line? It was beyond ambitious—it was ludicrous. Utter madness.
Jack shifted as he made himself more comfortable. His mind turned back to the safe house in the countryside back in England. It was the place of legend. It was spoken of as the centre of some attempt at a
knew many
new world order, but only as a joke amongst spies. Jack of the officers that were assigned to the house and none of them were in any way remarkable—certainly not great leaders. Then again, the leaders of Nazi Germany and their fanatical death units were unremarkable men in Germany before they took power. History was riddled with the unremarkable taking power and using it to instil fear and perpetrate inhuman crimes. How many of those despots were mocked before they took power? How many were dismissed as lunatics? In times of great crisis, be it military, financial or natural, normal people will turn to men who can offer them a solution to their ills, regardless of the price that came with that association. And Deeley was right about the UK; the IRA campaign, though deadly and terrifying to the public, it was not so terrible that people feared for their lives in their own homes. In fact, life in England went on as usual even when the IRA was at its most dangerous and the public still kept quiet when people were being rounded up without trial. What other rights could be wrestled away from the population in the wake of an even greater threat? That debate would have to wait until a later date, but it was a debate that Jack felt sure he would be a part of, assuming he survived his current mission.
Jack pressed his face up against the grill as he tried to see into all corners of the room below. He could not see her. He could not see Barry. He could not see Robert, although he couldn’t be certain that Robert was in attendance—it was more a feeling that he had—he just knew that he would be mixed up in this in some way. Something that large could not take place without Robert’s say so. Try as he might Jack simply could not see anyone that he recognised and he thought that he knew all of the major players in his world. Perhaps that was how they managed to pull the whole scheme together? Using operatives of little or no importance so that they could move under the radar? Jack didn’t have an answer. Jack didn’t have any answers and that’s what annoyed him most. Then it struck him. He was assuming that the crowd in the room below him were made up of agents from various countries.
What if they were not agents betraying their countries to Deeley’s mad cause? If that was the case then the people in the room below could have been criminals, politicians, businessmen and businesswomen. Hell, they could have been just about anyone. It didn’t help him in any strategic sense but it
better about not recognising any
did at least make him feel a little of them. Every month, and more regularly in times of heightened threat, Jack and his fellow spies would be recalled, if active operations permitted, and they were briefed on current threats to the UK. This included information on missions that they were not directly involved with. Such briefings always involved a file of photographs of suspects. The men at the top knew that there were tentative links between many of the UK’s enemies and that agents needed to be aware of that wider picture. Unfortunately Jack always found those briefings tedious. His missions were much more intense and a lot more focused than most other agents and so the information in the monthly briefings was never relevant. If the people in the room below him were unknowns then he would be off the hook. If they were in those monthly briefing files then he had screwed up in the worst possible way. One way or the other Jack felt as if he was entering into a situation that he could have been better prepared for. Alexa could have told him of her involvement for a start!
If what Deeley said was true then Jack was certain of two things: even if they didn’t take over the world as Deeley had said, they would certa
inly take out a lot of innocent people as they chased after their dream. And the second thing that Jack knew with certainty was that
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this would be the best opportunity for the next ten years to take the entire network out—or at the very least, to take out the leadership, if they only met that infrequently. He would have given anything for an automatic weapon or a hand grenade at that time. In one swift action he could have ended the madness then and there.
“My friends, we are fast approaching the point where we are going to have to take some hard decisions. None of us is ever going to get exactly what they want. There will have to be compromise. We must stop thinking along national lines and start thinking about what is best for our global government. Old enmities will have to be set to one side for the greater good. With this in mind I have been looking at all of the conflicts that have existed, or which may arise between member nations. I have set up a council comprised of those countries that have no conflicts of their own, and who as far as possible, are neutral. I have asked them to look at all existing conflicts in a fair fashion. I will call on those representatives to sit down with nations in conflict and explain their proposals. Please note, and this is where I need everyone to be grown up, the decision of the council is final. There is no room for negotiation. It will be a fair settlement and you will simply have to abide by it.”
Deadly States (Seaforth Files by Nicholas P Clark Book 2) Page 22