Levels of Power

by Mike Gilmore

  Her mother made numerous trips to the table to ensure the food met their expectations and to keep their drink cups full. Constance kept a close watch on the time and mentioned she needed to get back to Scotland Yard when 1:30 p.m. approached. Randy thanked the parents, who insisted the lunch was on the house. BookReader also offered their sincere thanks for the great lunch.

  The foursome had just stepped out onto Abby Orchard Street when two women popped out of a small car illegally parked along the street curb and quickly rushed to them.

  “Senator Fisher … Senator Fisher, may we have a moment of your time?”

  Agents Booker and Reader quickly put their bodies in front of Randy and held up their hands to indicate the women should stop and keep their distance.

  One woman was about five foot eight inches tall, maybe thirty-five years old, with long brown hair tied into a ponytail. She held a digital camera and brought it up to take Randy’s picture. The other woman was in her early thirties, with short curly hair. Her head came to the top of the other woman’s shoulders. “Senator Fisher. We are from CNN here in London. Our office in Washington told us you were missing and thought you might be in London.”

  Randy recovered quickly. “Well, you can see I’m not missing. I’m just here on some business.”

  The woman wrote in her notebook and came back with another question. “Senator, what do you know about the increased level of security we are experiencing in Central London? We watched you leave your hotel this morning and enter Scotland Yard, where you were all morning until you came out for a lunch break.”

  Randy looked both ways down the sidewalk. Londoners out for their own lunches were walking past them, some having to step out into the street to get past the small group. This was no place to discuss national security.

  “Ladies, I am afraid I cannot talk about something I know very little about. I am not in any way a security expert. I suggest you contact the public information department within Scotland Yard.”

  The younger woman would not yield in her quest for information. “Senator, only a fool would be taken in by that statement. You have a bandage over your right eye and another one wrapped around your right wrist. Somehow, I think you know a lot more than you are willing to tell us. Do we report that you are holding back information about a security situation that has Scotland Yard all in an uproar?”

  Randy’s expression turned hard. “I think you’d better make sure of your facts before you upset a lot of the people in London by talking about things you have little information about. Now if you will excuse us, we have work to do.” He started to move toward Victoria Street.

  The young reporter called his name once more. “Senator Fisher, please speak with us.”

  Randy stopped and turned back to the CNN reporters. The woman flipped to a new sheet of paper in her spiral notebook and wrote down some information.

  “Senator, I’ve given out all of my business cards. Here is my name and telephone number. If there is any information you can discuss, please contact me. Please call. Day or night.”

  She carefully tore the page from the notebook using the perforation along the edge next to the wire core. Randy noticed her handing the sheet to him, but his eyes remained glued to the page under the sheet where she had written her contact information.

  “May I see your notebook?” he asked. He stretched his hand toward the reporter.

  She hesitated for a moment, but he had asked his request so very softly. She felt compelled to hand the notebook over.

  Randy carefully took the notebook in his left hand. He opened it to the page after the sheet she had just torn from the notebook. He could read the information she had written on the page torn from her book. The indentation from her ballpoint pen was clearly impressed into the paper and easy to read.

  Placing his right index finger inside the notebook so he could find the page again, he flipped the notebook closed to look at the cover. The Clairfountaine logo was in the lower right corner, exactly like the notebook in the evidence room taken from the backpack.

  Randy swallowed and handled the notebook back to the reporter. He looked at the sheet of paper she had handed to him. Her name was Jasmine Ainsworth.

  “Thank you, Jasmine. If I can, I will contact you before I leave London. Now you must excuse us. Something important has just come to light.”

  Chapter 39

  London

  Thursday, December 3, 2015

  1:30 p.m.

  Randy, BookReader, and Constance Langhorne hurried off the elevator into the fourth floor lobby and continued to the evidence room at the end of the hallway. Constance used her four-digit security code to open the door.

  Randy’s companions were following him with blind faith. He had only told them during their fast walk from the restaurant that he needed to see the actual notebook from the backpack.

  They entered a good-size room filled with rows of shelving. The actual part they could access was very small and separated from the rest of the room by a heavy wire-mesh screen and a steel counter. A small opening in the center of the counter allowed small parcels to pass through to the evidence clerk. At the evidence counter, Randy told the clerk he needed to see the notebook. The clerk shook his head and informed the American senator that only CSI technicians or case investigators could see and handle the evidence.

  Randy tried to keep his cool. He had spent two days poring over the photographs. He was the person to discover the second cell phone was not the one used by their suspect and was perhaps a plant to divert the authorities from finding the real target. He was rapidly losing patience with the clerk.

  He leaned close to the heavy wire mesh installed over the Formica countertop. “I want the head of your CSI division here right now!”

  The man stepped back. “We call it Forensic Science over here, Senator Fisher.” He seemed to get a little pleasure from correcting Randy.

  Randy stepped back. He wanted to grab the mesh screen and rip it from its mounting. Instead, he looked at Constance. “Please call Deputy Commissioner Shepard and have him come down here right this very moment.”

  Constance Langhorne stepped up to the counter and pointed to the telephone on the counter next to the clerk. The clerk’s nametag read Reginald Cloves. “Reggie, hand me the telephone immediately.”

  Grabbing the phone, Reggie set it inside the open hole at the bottom of the screen and pushed it through to the other side of the counter. “No need to be snippy, Senator. You know very well, Ms. Langhorne, I don’t like to be called Reggie.”

  Constance pulled the telephone set closer. She hesitated for a few seconds to pull the number she needed from her memory and pressed a line button on the phone to dial an inside number.

  The clerk took a step back from the counter. He curled his hands into small fists and placed them against his waist at the beltline. “You can call DC Shepard, but I’m just going by the department rules.”

  Constance heard the phone on the other end of her call ring twice and then a deep voice answered. She recognized the voice. “Dr. Kiley. This is Constance Langhorne.”

  She hesitated a few seconds as the man spoke back to her. “Yes … it’s a pleasure to talk with you as well. Sir, something has come up here in the evidence room. We need someone from your department to come here immediately to bring a piece of evidence out of storage. This is regarding the possible terrorist plot.”

  Silence.

  “Yes. It is very important. Thank you, sir.”

  She hung up and pushed the set back through the screened opening. She gave Reggie a firm look. “Dr. Kiley will be here in a few minutes. I would strongly urge you to have the evidence box ready and waiting for him.”

  Reggie looked as if he was going to remind her once again about his proper name but changed his mind. He turned without another word to walk down one of the aisles created by rows of metal shelving th
at held hundreds of cardboard boxes of evidence from cases under investigation by Scotland Yard.

  He arrived back at the counter less than a minute before another man walked into the evidence room. The new arrival, in his late fifties, had only a thin halo of mixed brown and gray hair. He sported a thick mustache; his sideburns were longer than the current style. He was dressed in a long-sleeve white shirt, tie, and black wool pants. He wore a cardigan sweater instead of a suit coat.

  Constance quickly made the introductions and then told the chief of Forensic Science for Scotland Yard they needed to look at one of the pieces of evidence inside the box on the counter.

  “Which piece?”

  Randy answered; he was the only one who knew what he needed to see. “The notebook, please.”

  Kiley nodded and looked at the clerk. “Reginald, open the door and bring the box out here.”

  The clerk did not hesitate this time. He pulled a set of keys from his pocket, selected one from the batch, and stepped toward the heavy wire-mesh door. Inserting the key into the lock, he opened the door next to the counter and brought the box through the doorway; he placed it on a small table next to the main door into the evidence room.

  Kiley removed the cardboard cover and lifted the plastic evidence bag containing the notebook. He looked at the evidence tag taped to the plastic cover to check the identity of the last person who had handled the plastic bag. He looked back to Randy. “I can’t let you touch the notebook, Senator, so you will have to tell me what you are looking for.”

  He was reaching into his front pants pocket for a pair of thin latex gloves as Randy explained what he needed to see. “From the photographs, I can tell each page in the notebook has a series of small perforations in a line directly next to the holes for the wire coil. In addition, I noticed there were several pages torn from the book after the last page they used to record notes. The narrow strip of paper for those sheets was still in the notebook. I want to look at the first blank pages in the notebook. There might be impressions from what was written on the last page torn out of the notebook.”

  Kiley gave his mustache a little side-to-side twitch and put the gloves on. He carefully opened the seal on the bag and removed the notebook. He set the bag aside and carefully laid the notebook on the tabletop. Still using great care, he opened the notebook one page at a time.

  Randy could appreciate the thoroughness the laboratory chief was using, but the slowness was maddening. Finally, Kiley reached the last sheet with writing still in the coiled-wire notebook, pages the notebook owner had not removed. He turned the sheet over to the next blank page. In between the final page with writing and the first blank page, several narrow borders remained from pages torn out of the notebook. Kiley left the notebook lying on the table and took a half step back to look at the first blank sheet, allowing the overhead florescent lighting to shine on the page from different angles.

  Charlie Reader stepped in closer and reached inside his winter jacket for a flashlight inside a leather holster attached to his belt. “Here, Doctor. Try the light from my torch.”

  Randy and Agent Booker looked at Charlie. They each shook their heads slightly because he had used the English term for a flashlight. He noticed their looks and gave a little sheepish grin in return.

  Taking the offered torch, Dr. Kiley bent at the waist and turned the beam on. He moved it around the page, letting the light beam strike from different angles. He carefully lifted the page to shine the light beam through the underside of the sheet. The lengthy process wore heavily on the patience of Randy and his cohorts. Finally, the scientist straightened his back.

  He turned back to the clerk. “Reggie, I’m taking the notebook back to the lab. You can put all the other items back into storage.” Reggie kept his mouth shut about the shortened name and produced a clipboard with a form attached. He noted the evidence number on the outside of the plastic bag that had contained the notebook and offered it to Dr. Kiley for his signature. Kiley was taking responsibility for the piece of important evidence.

  Kiley handed the clipboard back to the Reggie. He picked up the notebook and put it back inside the evidence bag. “All right, why don’t we all go back to my laboratory? We can take a closer look at that page.”

  The group of five left the evidence room. They followed Dr. Kiley down the hallway past the elevators and turned right at the first intersection. They came to a pair of white steel doors. One door was solid; the other had a small rectangular double-pane window, a sheet of wire reinforcement between the two panes of glass. Kiley stopped long enough to enter his own four-digit number into the wall-mounted locking mechanism and pushed the door open when he heard the buzz as the solenoid released the lock.

  The group walked into the heart of Scotland Yard’s Forensic Science Division. The room must have been nearly sixty feet square with several glass-enclosed offices or smaller laboratories off to one side. Kiley did not take time to explain what any of the other people in the room were working on but walked about halfway down the right side of the room until he came to a wall-mounted light box used to read X-rays.

  Randy first thought it was similar to the light box his own doctor had used when he went in for check-ups for his wound from the terrorist three years earlier; however, this light box was a little different. His doctor used a rocker switch to turn the power on and off to the light panel. The light box in front of the group had a dial knob to allow adjusting the light to different levels.

  Dr. Kiley took the notebook out of the plastic evidence bag and laid it down on a table under the light box. Very carefully, he removed the blank page from the notebook, using the line of perforations to separate the sheet and leaving only the narrow paper stub.

  Still wearing latex gloves, he carefully secured the top edge of the sheet of paper under a metal clip along the top of the light box to hold the paper in place. He turned the small black plastic knob on the light panel to the right one click, and the light behind the glass front panel came to life.

  The light was too dim. He turned the knob two more clicks and the light increased. When he had the light intensity at the mid-level position, they could see indentations appearing on the sheet. He took a few more moments to adjust the lighting up and down until the writing on the paper was readable.

  The words appeared to be another Arabic list. The group as a whole tried to step in closer to the sheet of paper, but Dr. Kiley blocked them with his raised right hand.

  “Hold on. Let me take a picture of this.”

  He reached for a special digital camera next to the light box attached to the wall by a pair of long, heavy-duty stainless steel hinges that allowed the operator to place the camera in front of the light box. The equipment moved smoothly on the hinges. Kiley aligned the camera in front of the sheet of paper and pressed the power button. The viewing screen built into the camera came to life; the sheet of paper was visible through the camera’s lens.

  He adjusted the camera lens to enhance the image on the sheet of paper and then pressed a button on the side of the camera. A few seconds later, a high quality digital printer a few feet away started making some clicking noises, and they could hear the rollers in the paper storage bin grab a sheet of paper and start the printing process.

  Slowly the sheet of paper rolled out of the printer and slid to a stop in the plastic paper tray. Kiley picked up the paper and gave it a quick look. Shaking his head at the Arabic writing, he handed it to Randy Fisher.

  Constance moved next to Randy while BookReader moved to look around his shoulders at the list. None of the four could make out the words.

  “Where is your translator, Constance?” Randy asked.

  “That would be the language expert in our Middle East section. That department is on the ninth floor. We share intelligence with both MI5 and MI6.”

  The original four hurried out of the room and back to the bank of elevators. Several minute
s later, they were on the ninth floor, passing through another secure locking device at the Middle East department.

  Constance led the way into the secure intelligence section of the Yard. Large three-sided cubicles divided the main room from private offices off to each side. Gray cloth-covered partition walls five feet high enclosed each cubicle. Six desks made up a mini section, three to a side. With swivel chairs, the desk occupants could work at their stations or turn to face each other. A narrow table used for group meetings divided the cubicle. Members of the unit currently occupied four of the desks.

  Constance led her group into the nearest cubicle, stopped at one of the empty chairs, and looked over the cubicle wall and around the room for its occupant. The person assigned to the workstation kept the desktop very orderly. A computer monitor and keyboard rested on top of a full-size desk calendar pad showing the month of December. All the usual supplies—pens, pencils, notepads, and stapler—were neatly stored out of sight. Only the computer monitor showed any activity; the Scotland Yard logo slowly moved to different positions on the screen. Not seeing the person she was looking for, Constance finally spoke to an elderly woman at one of the desks inside the cubicle.

  “Where is Mr. Sloane?”

  The woman looked at the empty desk next to her own; she seemed to realize the man in question was not there. She rolled her swivel chair over to the desk and looked at his desktop calendar. “Ah yes. Extended lunch. He has an appointment with his dentist. I am not sure if he will be back today. Depends on how the procedure goes, you know.”

  Constance slapped her right hand against her thigh through her wool skirt. Frustration showing on her face, she turned to look at Randy Fisher. “Blimey,” she muttered quietly through clenched white teeth.

  Randy held the paper from the printer. He suddenly reached into his pocket for his own smart phone. He scrolled through his contacts and found Marion Bellwood’s cell number. In a minute, he had his friend on the phone.