by Jon King
“I generally try to read the small print.”
He nodded. “As I figured. You and I are gonna get along just fine.”
He snuffed out his cigarette underfoot.
CHAPTER 13
Deserted Warehouse, Paris—April 1997
The black Mercedes S280 was now parked in a different place. But its number plate remained the same: 680 LTV75.
Both vehicle and plate were now parked at one end of a deserted warehouse on the outskirts of Paris, a mechanic in dark-blue overalls buried somewhere beneath the vehicle’s bonnet, as though he might be fixing a worn hose or changing dead spark plugs. But he was doing neither of these things. Instead his hands were busy removing a miniature circuit board concealed beneath an internal cover, and replacing it with another, seemingly identical one. Difference was, wired into this circuit board was a micro-transceiver tuned to override the vehicle’s steering and traction control.
Who needs a chauffeur when the vehicle can be driven by remote control?
As he finished fitting the new ‘parasite’ circuit board a second mechanic emerged from beneath the vehicle’s front end.
“Right, the Blockbuster’s in place,” the second mechanic said, wiping grease from his hands with a grubby rag. “That’ll take care of the brakes.”
“And this’ll take care of the steering,” the first mechanic said, replacing the internal cover over the parasite circuit board and dropping the bonnet shut. Then: “You boys about done?” he turned and said to the two other men there with them. They’d just finished loading concrete blocks into a false floor built into the back of a white Fiat Uno parked up next to the Mercedes. “Time’s moving on.”
“Done,” one of them said, closing the Uno’s hatchback door. “You could hit this thing with a tank now and it would still hold the road, no problem.”
“Good. Because this Mercedes coming at you at eighty miles an hour might just as well be a tank.” The first mechanic had peeled off his overalls and was now immaculately dressed in charcoal suit and tie of the kind a chauffeur might wear. He opened the Mercedes’ driver-side door and climbed in behind the wheel. “Now let’s get this death trap back to its rightful owner.”
He fired the engine.
Some forty minutes later the number plate 680 LTV75 pulled silently up at the side of the road, on Place du Marché Saint-Honoré, just along the way from the Etoile Limousine offices in the centre of the city. Dressed in charcoal suit and tie the vehicle’s ‘chauffeur’ climbed casually from the driver’s seat and transferred to a white Fiat Uno parked up some twenty or so yards back along the street. It was late, around 3.40 am as the Uno drove off with its extra passenger.
A little over six hours later, around 10 am, the Mercedes was spotted by one of the company’s employees on their way to work. Evidently the vehicle had been ‘abandoned’. Realizing it was the Mercedes that had been stolen at gunpoint some days previously the employee reported his find and following a routine mechanical examination and a forensic dust down the Mercedes was finally returned to its owners at Etoile Limousine a few days later. By the end of the week it was back in service, ferrying VIPs about town.
CHAPTER 14
Saturday, August 23rd, 1997
Not all my meetings with the American took place at Avebury, but this one, like the first two, did. As it turned out it would be our last meeting that summer. So far as I knew at the time, of course, it would be our last meeting, period.
On my way to Avebury I had to stop off at the magazine offices to pick up my Dictaphone: one of the few essential tools of my trade. I always kept it in my attaché case, but on the one day I needed it most, of course, it wasn’t there. I’d looked everywhere. I was late. I was starting to flap. Where the hell had I left it? Why was I always mislaying my god damn Dictaphone? As I rummaged desperately through the chaos littering my office desk in search of my precious recording device JB entered the building and appeared in the doorway behind me. Just what I didn’t need. I was in a rush. I knew he’d grill me about the American.
“Jon.” He looked surprised to see me. “I didn’t think you’d be in today. It’s Saturday.”
“Tell me about it. I promised to take Katie and the kids out for the day and then I remembered I had this meeting and then I realized I didn’t have my—yes!” My Dictaphone suddenly emerged from the clutter jamming up my desk drawer. I turned and held it aloft to show JB. “I was looking for this.”
He nodded. “You meeting that American guy again? The one who reckons he’s CIA?”
I knew it. “Ever the cynic,” I said.
“Well it’s unlikely, isn’t it? Why would the CIA want to feed secrets to the editor of a UFO mag?”
“Thanks, JB.”
“Well think about it.”
“I have.”
“And?”
“And … I’m really not sure what to make of him. He’s interesting, there’s no doubt about that. He’s given me some good information, too, stuff I’ve been able to corroborate, so he’s not all fob and fairy dust.” I paused, trying to find the words. “I do have to admit, though … I feel like … almost like I’m being—”
“Led a merry dance?”
“—Groomed, JB. Groomed.”
“For what?”
I shook my head. “That’s the thing, I don’t know. It’s like he’s drip-feeding me, like I’m forever waiting for him to deliver the punch line.”
“Well be careful. When the punch line comes it might not be what you were expecting.”
Ouch. JB had a way of cutting to the marrow, and more often than not he was right. Still turning his words over in my mind I set the Dictaphone back down on the desk and grabbed my jacket from the back of the chair JB was now occupying. I decided to change the subject. “What are you doing here anyway? Talk about me not working Saturdays.”
He sighed. “I just thought I’d do a bit of research, that’s all. Play catch-up.”
“On Saturday?”
“Is that a problem?”
“No, of course not.” I shrugged my jacket on. “You okay?” I said.
“I’m fine.”
“You just seem…”
“I’m fine.”
He wasn’t fine. I could tell that. I hadn’t known JB all that long at this point, a few years at most, but I knew him well enough to know he wore his feelings on the outside. If there was something bugging him a neon ‘HELP!’ sign started to flash just above his head, or it might just as well have done. He would also become cantankerous. He was one of the most deeply caring people I’d ever known—a people person, thoughtful and considerate, a man of the community who’d worked most of his life caring for the disadvantaged. In short, he was one of life’s single malts. But he was unable to contain his feelings. If there was a problem you could smell it on his breath.
“You sure you’re okay?” I said, one last time. “Only—”
“Jenna,” he finally blurted. It was the name of his girlfriend. “We had a fight. We’ve split up.”
“What again?”
“What do you mean again?”
JB and Jenna had parted company more times in the past few months than I could readily recount. But I knew I shouldn’t have said it quite like that. It just came out. “I’m sorry, JB. It’s just difficult to keep track. I didn’t know you were back together after the last time you split up. I didn’t know you were still together, period.”
“Well we’re not now.”
“No. So what happened this time?”
“She just wants me to be a certain way and—”
“You’re not prepared to compromise.”
“—I’m not prepared to change.”
“No, of course not.” This wasn’t going anywhere. “Look, if there’s anything I can do…”
“Not really.”
“Well maybe we can grab a pint when I get back.”
“I’ll be here.”
I checked my wristwatch. “Jesus. I really must make a move.
”
“Better not keep the CIA waiting.”
“Very funny.” I picked up my attaché case and started towards the door.
JB called after me. “Jon?”
I turned. A smug grin had worked its way onto JB’s face. He was reclining all the way back in my chair now, holding my Dictaphone in the air. “You’ll probably need this mate.”
“Right.”
A couple of hours later I was seated next to the American at a table outside Avebury’s famed wholefood restaurant, drinking coffee. My Dictaphone was placed discreetly in front of me, next to my coffee, recording the American’s words as he spoke them. Though I didn’t know it at the time, Lacey would later inform me that I wasn’t the only one recording our conversation that day, that the entire transcript had been filed back at GCHQ, the British government’s signals intelligence base: the eyes and ears of MI6. From there, he said, it had found its way into the hands of MI6 Special Operations Chief, Richard Mason, who in turn had shown it to Lacey at a meeting they’d had in a private members club in Whitehall. Whether an undercover agent had been secreted nearby, of course, covertly recording our conversation – or maybe that the American had had his own recorder tucked away inside his jacket – I would never know for certain. But of the fifty or so tourists seated there at the restaurant with us that day as I sipped my coffee and listened to the American’s tale, and the hundred or so others milling about, I couldn’t help but wonder which ones were the tourists, and which one the agent. To this day the memory of it makes me shudder.
“It’s all smoke and mirrors, Jon,” the American was saying between mouthfuls of filtered coffee, his tone perhaps darker than it had been at any of our previous meetings, more underground. “Psychological warfare. If we can make the Russians believe we have exotic technology it makes them more wary of our capabilities. Keeps them on the back foot.”
“And they believe that?” I said, slightly incredulous. “They believe America has alien technology?”
The American shrugged. “They believe we put a man on the moon,” he said, and forced a fake smile. Not a warm smile. More a challenging one. “See that’s the thing, Jon. We can make anybody believe anything.”
Again, something about the way the American said that found its way home. Not for the first time I felt decidedly uneasy. Not for the first time I tried not to show it.
Then, out of the blue: “You know why Kennedy was killed?” the American threw in as he flipped open his silver Zippo lighter and lit up a cigarette. “The real reason?”
Though slightly taken aback I managed to find a reply. “I always assumed it was because he threatened to pull out of Vietnam,” I said. “That he vowed to end the Vietnam War sooner than the military-industrial complex would have liked.”
“And there are those who would agree.” He breathed out a lungful of cigarette smoke. “Others, though, would say it was because he threatened to disenfranchise the Fed and print government money. Still others that he pledged to smash the CIA into a thousand pieces. Then there are those who say he was killed because he was determined to put an end to the arms race. So which was it?” He didn’t wait for me to reply. “Popularity,” he said, and threw me an unforgiving look. “Fact is Kennedy could have achieved all of those things, such was the extent of his popularity. And that’s the point, see Jon? When you hold public opinion in your hand like that – when your popularity is such that it enables you to influence the public mind and galvanize it against the status quo – that’s when you become a threat. JFK. Martin Luther King. John Lennon. Think about what I’m saying.”
I thought about it, but failed to make the connection. Of course, had I known then the real reason the American had sought me out I would perhaps have put two and two together and realized that the only other person in the world to hold public opinion in their hand in a comparable way to Kennedy – the only other person so popular they were able to win public opinion and turn it against the status quo; indeed, the only other person who was actually doing just that – was Princess Diana. But the thought never entered my mind. Why would it? At this stage Princess Diana didn’t exist in my world. Despite that she was the biggest media attraction we’d ever known, her face on every front page, her every move a news headline, at this particular moment in time Princess Diana simply wasn’t on my radar.
But that, of course, was about to change.
It was the fourth time we’d met, and the American had already indicated it would likely be the last. He’d told me pretty much all he’d set out to tell me, he said. Now it was up to me to use the information in whatever way I felt I could.
But he also said something else. He wanted to give me “one last pearl” of information that would substantiate his credential—he’d tell me something that was about to happen so that when it did happen I would know he was the real deal, at least in terms of his ability to access privileged information. It wouldn’t necessarily prove that the information he’d given me was genuine or accurate, of course; I knew that. But it would, as he said, prove at least that he was party to information unavailable to your average Joe, and in this regard his credential would be rubber-stamped. Little did I expect, though, that the “pearl” he was about to impart would be so deadly.
We’d finished up our coffees and headed back towards the stones, chatting as we’d walked. It was August; the restaurant was crowded, Avebury was buzzing with visitors and the table we’d occupied had been set among other populated tables with more tourists arriving for refreshments by the minute. Too many ears in too close proximity for the American to drop his “pearl”, he’d said, so we’d ambled back up to the stones where the tourists were more dispersed and, for the most part, on the move. Finding a relatively quiet corner we sat ourselves down on a fallen standing stone and I turned my Dictaphone on. If this was truly to be a “pearl of information” then I wanted to record it, verbatim.
“Remember I told you how certain people were taken out,” the American said, avoiding my eyes, staring grimly ahead. “People whose message was a threat because of their popularity, and because of their ability to mobilize public opinion—Kennedy, Martin Luther King, John Lennon and others?”
“I do, yes.”
He leaned over and switched my Dictaphone off at this point. “Well it’s gonna happen again.”
“What…?”
“Someone’s gonna get hit, soon.”
“Are you serious?”
“I’m telling you, Jon, there’s a plot to eliminate one of the most prominent figures on the world stage. I don’t know precisely where or when the hit will take place, but it’ll happen within days from now. They’ve been planning it for months.”
“Who? Who’s been planning it?”
“The people I told you about. MI6, the CIA. Whoever. I can tell you, Jon, this one will be bigger than Kennedy. Even my own sources are extremely nervous about this one, so much so that provision for public reaction has already been considered, very carefully. They have good experience of how to deal with public reaction. It’s being taken care of as we speak. The media is being primed, as we speak.”
“Jesus.”
Just then a small knot of tourists ambled by, some lost in conversation, others seemingly lost in thought. Momentarily the American fell silent. As the last of the tourists passed us by I wondered how people might react should the American’s information prove correct; should someone of global renown – President Clinton? the Pope? – truly meet an untimely end ‘within days from now’, the result of political assassination. Indeed, I wondered how I might react. The prospect was chilling, terrifying and electrifying, both at once. So much so that I was glad when the American finally spoke again. It snapped me back to the present and away from the growing sense of trepidation that now seemed everywhere in me.
“I was told that this person has to go for a good many reasons,” the American went on. “Not least because they’ve become ‘carcinogenic to the system’. That’s a quote, which basically mean
s they’ve become a threat to the stability of corporate government, just like John Lennon and the others before him, the others I’ve told you about.”
“How the hell do you know all this?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Well … who, then? Where…?”
“I can’t tell you that, either.” The American climbed to his feet and tugged his jacket across his chest, as though preparing to leave.
“No, wait!” Now I was on my feet, too, an instinctive response as panic started to run in me. The more the information sunk in the less sense it seemed to make to my hot-wired mind. “Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“You just expect me to take your word that someone big is about to be assassinated? I mean, why are you telling me anyway?”
“So you can tell everybody else. Isn’t that what a journalist does?”
“When there’s a story, yes. But I need evidence—a time, a place, a name.”
The American turned and fixed me in a way that he would do again, some years later, when I would finally learn the real reasons behind this unlikely charade and everything would suddenly make sense. Right now it made no sense at all.
“This is live intelligence, Jon. Read the papers. Watch the news networks. You’ll know who it is soon enough.” He paused at this point, as though to emphasize what he was about to say next. Then: “The media will tell you it was an accident. You’ll know it wasn’t.”
That said, he held my gaze for a further long moment before turning and heading back towards the car park.
CHAPTER 15
“Darren Adams, please.”
The switchboard put me on hold.
As I waited for the call to go through I couldn’t help thinking what a dumb idea this was. What was the point of calling Darren? Even before I did it, even before I fed my money in the pay phone and dialled the number I knew it was a dumb idea. Even before I jumped in my car and drove the six or seven miles from Avebury to Marlborough in search of an old-style phone box, every mile ruing the fact that I’d ignored Katie’s advice and still hadn’t bought myself one of those new technological marvels: a mobile phone. Even before that I knew this was a dumb idea. But I guess I was just desperate, mad to talk to someone about what had just happened, what I’d just been told. I had, after all, no more than an hour prior, been told that someone of global prominence was about to be eliminated and I needed to speak to an accommodating voice, even if it was a dumb idea: even if I had no real idea what to say or how to say it. Or indeed, what the accommodating voice might say in response. I just needed to talk.