The Codex File (2012)

by Miles Etherton

  Michael frowned as the words reverberated around his head. He’d been so angry after their meeting. The man had said so much. Yet he couldn’t prove a word of it. He’d had his hopes raised of catching Colette and Clare’s killer only to have it dashed with not a shred of tangible proof. At the time he’d thought the whole thing was preposterous paranoia.

  Yet, a nagging doubt about the anti-net activists not just smashing up Colette and David Langley’s computers had persuaded him to take a simple precaution. His real intention in doing so had been to prove the anonymous man wrong. So, he’d decided to put Colette’s file back in the postal box for temporary safekeeping.

  He shook his head and frowned.

  The man couldn’t have been right in his twisted theories. Could he?

  Picking up a cracked crystal ornament from the carpet he heard a firm knock on his front door. For a moment his pulse raced as paranoia gripped him. Was he being watched as the man had predicted?

  Taking a deep breath he walked into the hallway. A silhouette of a man loomed in the frosted door panes.

  Slowly opening the door his paranoia receded as he recognised Jack Wilson, a recently retired accountant who lived opposite.

  “Sorry to bother you Mike,” Jack said in a strong Geordie accent. “It’s just that several of us in the street have had our houses broken into. I was wondering whether you might have seen anyone suspicious hanging around?”

  Despite his fury at the burglary Michael felt a sense of relief wash over him. This was no conspiracy. Nobody had been watching him, trying to find out if he knew anything about UKCitizensNet’s operations. It was just a bunch of local thieves who’d gone on the rampage.

  “I’m afraid they’ve done my house as well,” he replied, trying to sound angry rather than relieved.

  Jack sighed, his wrinkled face flushed with anger.

  “Oh Mike, I’m sorry. The bastards have obviously been busy. Yours is the fourth house in the street to have been done, then. I’ve called the police about it. When they turn up I’ll send them over. I’m sure…”

  Jack’s sentence trailed off as the telephone in the lounge began to ring.

  “Look, I’m going to have to go,” Michael said apologetically. “I’ll come over and we can talk about it later.”

  Closing the front door Michael jogged into the lounge in an attempt to answer the telephone before the caller hung up.”

  “Do you believe me now?” the voice at the end of the line asked.

  “What?” Michael said with slight trepidation as the familiar voice spoke again.

  “They’ve been to your house, haven’t they? Turned it upside down. Looking for something, anything you might know about them.”

  “Why don’t you just leave me alone,” Michael mumbled, pulling the net curtains in his lounge away from the window.

  He looked up and down the street in the hope of seeing where the man was watching him from. He could see no-one. And there were no vantage points. He felt his pulse begin to quicken. He hadn’t checked upstairs yet. Surely he wasn’t up there.

  “It’s just a burglary,” Michael said, raising his voice angrily. “It’s not your damn cyber-police you paranoid freak.”

  “That’s what they want you to think,” the anonymous man’s voice persisted. “Check with your neighbours. A handful of them will have been burgled as well. It’s how they work, to try and make it look like a spate of ordinary thefts. It’s what they did to us when they ransacked our houses.”

  Michael’s pulse wasn’t getting any slower as his gaze dropped to one of the sideboard drawers. The drawer he’d placed the meeting minutes Vera had given him.

  “Hold on a minute,” he said firmly, placing the receiver down on the sofa arm.

  A quick search of the drawer produced nothing. Dropping to his knees he rummaged through the pile of papers that had been strewn there, his heart racing. The minutes had gone. A thousand thoughts and endless theories, some his own and some the anonymous man’s, raced through his mind.

  Picking the receiver up again, Michael said slowly: “Are you still there?”

  “I’m still here. What have you found?”

  “It’s more what I haven’t found. You say you and your colleagues are good with computers and all that?”

  “We like to think so,” the man replied with a little more interest.

  Michael’s heart was pounding as he stood on the threshold of possible insanity and utter paranoia. But his mind was made up.

  “Good. Because I’ve got something I want you to look at.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Trevellion looked up from the stolen meeting minutes and smiled, if you could call the barely discernible change in his expression a smile. He’d been right about the Robertson woman and Langley. But he’d been wrong too.

  His belief that SW Technologies and ACE Solutions had been pooling resources and development ideas, just before the two of them had been taken care of, had been confirmed in the confidential minutes they’d retrieved from Michael Robertson’s house.

  His error had been in underestimating that Colette Robertson or David Langley realised the full potential of what they were developing. Although, even now, he doubted they’d really seen the whole picture, or had glimpsed the future. All it would have needed was a bit of fine-tuning of their companies’ plans. But it had never got that far before they’d been killed.

  Trevellion leant back, a deep frown crossing his sombre features. Despite this information, SemComNet still weren’t in a position to administer this fine-tuning either. And they didn’t seem to be getting any closer. The raid on Michael Robertson’s house had been intended to quicken the process. Colette Robertson’s previously hidden information had surely been the last piece of the jigsaw. But the search had yielded nothing. They’d turned the house upside down, but to no avail.

  Michael Robertson had obviously moved the important information for some reason. Perhaps he’d destroyed it because it evoked too many memories? Trevellion shook his head gently. He knew it hadn’t been destroyed. Robertson wanted to know why it happened to his wife. The files would not have been destroyed.

  The discovery of the confidential minutes had been a surprise though. Although they confirmed what he already suspected. The surprise had been that Robertson had been in possession of them. They were clearly marked as David Langley’s copy. He mulled this thought over for a few moments, suspecting Langley’s mother had perhaps given them to him. She was his only remaining relative. Perhaps they would have to pay Langley’s house another visit, ensure no other papers were still in possible circulation.

  Turning the pages of the minutes again, the telephone on his desk began to ring.

  Snatching up the receiver angrily, he snapped down the line.

  “I said no calls.”

  “I know sir, but it’s Mr Tate. And you did say if he ever he rang,” Mrs. Martin said quietly.

  Trevellion paused for a moment. It was fortuitous Sebastian Tate had rung. He would need an update.

  “Put him through.”

  There was a brief pause as the line went dead before clicking into life again.

  “Trevellion.”

  “Do you have any news for me, Vincent?”

  Tate spoke in his normal condescending manner, knowing the answer to the question already. It was a style he’d developed from 20 years of being Queen’s Council before entering the Civil Service. A good barrister never asked a question he didn’t know the answer to.

  After three years of working closely with Tate, Trevellion had learnt not to get riled by his manner and subtle, sometimes petty, psychological games.

  “We’ve received something of interest from Robertson’s house, but it wasn’t the files we were looking for. He seems to have moved these.”

  “That’s unfortunate. And the item you recovered?”

  “Robertson came into possession of a set of confidential minutes from a meeting held between his wife and David Langley, shortly b
efore they were dealt with. They confirm some sort of collaboration was being contemplated between SW Technologies and ACE Solutions. They also allude to a Java-based app that’s controllable from a remote server. One which would have wireless capabilities and that would be developed on the 5GSW platform. However, we didn’t find the documents referred to in the minutes. And they aren’t part of the information we retrieved two years ago.”

  “Presumably these are files in Michael Robertson’s possession? The files which he has thoughtfully stored elsewhere?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Robertson is proving to be more troublesome than we envisaged.”

  Trevellion always knew when Tate was holding information back. He enjoyed taunting him by holding the upper hand in a conversation, to make sure he knew who was in charge. A legacy of his barrister days he was quite sure.

  “I assume you’ve received some additional data on Robertson?” he dutifully asked.

  “On your suggestion we’ve been watching him for the past few days. It seems he’s been approached by one of our subversive friends.”

  “Which one?”

  “Brown. He approached Robertson in Kingston-Upon-Thames.”

  “Did your people apprehend him?”

  “Unfortunately he gave them the slip in the shopping centre.”

  “How careless. Your people don’t seem to be doing very well at the moment. Losing Brown and not knowing where Robertson has moved the files to. That won’t look good in your report to McCoy and Winston will it?”

  There was a long pause as Trevellion waited for a retort. There was only so much of Sebastian Tate’s supercilious ‘I’m a Cambridge Don’ attitude he would tolerate.

  Tate’s tone was a little more conciliatory.

  “Yes, well, my people are aware of what I think.”

  I’m sure they are.

  Tate could be an even bigger bastard than he could when he needed to.

  “The progress of this project greatly supersedes any bickering between us. I want to know how you propose to get these files from Robertson. Discretion is absolutely necessary now. Particularly as Brown will have filled his head with conspiracy theories that make Kennedy’s assassination look straightforward.”

  Trevellion thought for a moment, a thin smile crossing his lips.

  “Keep your people watching him. He might lead them to the files and to Brown and other sympathisers. I have another idea that I think might prove persuasive. Robertson’s close to the edge. It’s not going to take much to push him over it.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “I think it might be time to introduce Michael Robertson to ANNA. But a version of my making. And I know just what will appeal.”

  “Do whatever you have to. We need those files.”

  The line clicked dead. Trevellion’s gaze fell briefly on the confidential minutes before he turned to his computer touch-screen, neatly elevated at a 45 degree angle. He had a very special version of ANNA in mind for Michael Robertson.

  Tapping an icon on the left side of his desktop there was a brief pause as the application loaded.

  ‘Welcome to the Advance Nano Network Application (ANNA) version 2.01,’ the screen displayed. The message smoothly dissolved into a set of on-screen options. One of Trevellion’s team had developed ANNA the year before. The software was currently in beta-testing for further use on UKCitizensNet.

  Within SemComNet it had been described as a ‘very personalised and customisable animated 3D greeting card’, developed on the 5 generation semantic web platform. Trevellion doubted his developers ever had quite his own use for it in mind when they were programming it.

  Selecting one of the options a new message appeared on screen: ‘Please select gender of ANNA’.

  Trevellion slid his finger over ‘Female’ and tapped the screen. Beginning at the feet, an icon about three inches high began to form. The figure of a woman was slowly built in a parallel grid. Lines ran vertically and horizontally through the body outline. When the grid was completed he selected a fresh option.

  ‘Please select ANNA vocal and tonal capacity.’

  Selecting a flashing button underneath the woman’s figure a monotone female voice began reciting a pre-programmed phrase.

  “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog”, over and over.

  For a few moments Trevellion adjusted the tonal settings. The voice was as near as he could match to the one recorded on the video they had taken.

  ‘Please enter sample dialogue,’ the screen asked as he selected a further option. A thin smile formed as he rapidly typed a message into the provided box.

  Looking back to the screen he moved his finger over the final option and stroked the screen.

  ‘Please select designated ANNA image file.’

  Trevellion browsed his files for the desired image.

  ‘Do you want to preview ANNA settings?’ the program asked.

  Trevellion’s sombre expression spread as he leant back in his chair, tapping ‘Enter’ on the screen.

  A familiar woman’s image smoothly appeared on the screen and words began to fill his office.

  “Michael, is that you? Are you there, Michael?” the voice said, over and over again.

  And as the woman’s body turned on screen as she spoke, she had the face of Colette Robertson.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Michael shivered a little as he exited the quiet, rural railway station. The station merely consisted of two platforms and some covered seating either side. There was no ticket office or ticket inspector. The only other passenger departing the clunking slam-door train at Ash Vale was a tired, young-looking mother, who carefully negotiated the steep steps leading to the road with her pushchair.

  Pulling his jacket tighter Michael stood on the pavement outside the station and looked at his watch. It was a little before three. At least he wasn’t late.

  He was mildly surprised he was on time at all for his meeting with the mysterious man and his friends. He’d discovered the man who had approached him in Kingston was called Brown. He’d warned him that they, “the bastards at Fuck-the-CitizensNet” as he’d put it, would almost certainly be watching him. He had to ensure he wasn’t followed.

  Initially, he’d protested when Brown had told him where and how he was to come and meet them. It had to be by train, he’d insisted, a car was too easy to locate. Brown had also ordered him to go into London first, to lose anyone monitoring his activities. Michael’s complaints had quickly been drowned out in a sea of paranoid assertion.

  “We can’t risk exposure by you being careless and leading them straight to us. We’ve spent more than two years keeping ourselves concealed from the authorities. Besides, you now want our help. It’s in your interests to cooperate,” Brown had told him in no uncertain terms.

  In the end Michael had grown weary of arguing with the men who, despite their conspiratorial paranoia, might be the only people who could help him.

  Michael had followed the complicated instructions and walked to Hersham railway station, the nearest to his house. From there he’d taken a fast train to London Waterloo. Brown had told him to get off the train at the first available moment and run to one of the underground entrances on the platform. Instead of getting on the tube Michael was to come back out of the underground into Waterloo’s main concourse. The bustle of the concourse would give him sufficient cover if his assailants were still close by. He was then to catch a fast train to Wimbledon where he would change to the District Line and take the tube to Richmond. At Richmond he would finally pick up the train to Ash Vale.

  The whole journey had lasted almost three hours and Michael was certain nobody had successfully followed him. When he’d boarded the train at Hersham there were only two other passengers who joined the train with him and traveling all the way to Waterloo. And unless the woman with the pushchair was working for them, his presence here had been unobserved.

  Michael frowned as another chill wind b
attered him. He was beginning to think like Brown with thoughts of ‘them’ and ‘us’. He just hoped his trust in Brown, if it could be called that, wasn’t misplaced.

  As he shivered again a man emerged from a boarded-up shop doorway across the road. It was Brown, looking as furtive as ever, casting numerous anxious glances around him.

  “Did you follow my instructions?” he asked nervously, peering up the urine-smelling steps that led to the station platform.

  “To the word,” Michael replied tiredly.

  Brown, the stubble on his chin longer than the last time they met, didn’t reply. Instead, he scratched his chin in nervous acknowledgement, his head bobbing up and down in time.

  “Is that it?” he asked, his gaze dropping to the black canvas bag Michael was clutching.

  Nodding, Michael reached for the zip.

  “Not here,” Brown hissed. “Later.”

  Fifteen minutes later Michael had been driven to what Brown had told him was the outskirts of Aldershot. The car trundled into what could best be described as a derelict mobile home park.

  Michael watched as they slipped by an old stone warehouse that had once housed God knows what. Now, the doors hung limply from their rusted hinges, glass from the shattered panes decorating the surrounding park.

  Beyond the warehouse were about 20 dilapidated mobile homes, each in a differing state of disrepair and decay. Michael’s face quickly formed a contorted frown. The smell of the place matched its derelict appearance. An odour of damp rotting wood and stale toilets hung heavily in the air.

  “You’ve got to be joking,” he said, closing the car door.

  Yet, humour was the last thing he was feeling.

  “It’s this way,” Brown mumbled, striding purposefully across the mass of broken masonry and rotting weeds covering the area.

  Heading towards a deserted-looking caravan away to the left Michael dutifully followed. It was too late to back out now.

  The caravan itself was about 30 feet in length. The cracked, grimy windowpanes had all been blackened from the inside. Brown knocked firmly four times on the caravan’s stained door.