PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller

by J. T. Brannan

  It was true, too – she was sure that the Brits would have security for the event sewn up tight; they would be at their highest alert status, and absolutely determined to make sure that nothing like this week’s attack ever happened on their soil again.

  The procession itself would follow a loop from Westminster Palace, north to Trafalgar Square, then back southwest along the Mall, past Buckingham Palace on Constitution Hill to Hyde Park Corner, before heading back to Westminster on Birdcage Walk. It was expected that upwards of fifty world leaders would be there, led by Adam Gregory and key members of the British royal family.

  Members of the public had been invited to join them, and – although impossible to accurately gauge – it was estimated that over a million citizens would follow. Anti-terror protests and demonstrations had been organized throughout the city, with Hyde Park, Covent Garden, Regent’s Park, Trafalgar Square and St. James’s Park hosting the largest.

  After the procession itself, a memorial event had been organized that would extend into the evening, which would see a candlelit vigil and a combined Church of England and Jewish service.

  It had first been suggested that the mass be held at Westminster Abbey but – with so many people wanting to attend – it was decided to find a larger place to house the event.

  In the end, the decision was a no-brainer. Wembley had been the seat of the incident, its school and synagogue attacked; it was also home to Wembley Stadium, England’s largest stadium and one of the biggest in Europe with a seated capacity of ninety thousand.

  It was the perfect choice for the event, both practically and symbolically, and Abrams knew that she was in for an emotional evening. With the permission of relatives, the bodies of the dead would lie in their coffins right in the center of the stadium, a stark and horrifying reminder of what had happened, and something of a call-to-arms, an illustration of what Britain and her allies – America chief among them – were fighting against.

  Other rallies and marches were being organized in other UK cities, and all over the world too. There were going to be several here in DC, with the one on the National Mall – fronted by Vice President Clark Mason, in Abrams’ absence – expected to have a turnout of several hundred thousand.

  There were expected to be counter-protests too, of course – the usual thing, groups arguing against the west’s military involvement in Middle Eastern affairs, apologists for the terrorists and so on; and on the other side, there could therefore well be counter-counter-protests led by anti-immigration, xenophobic nationalist and neo-fascist groups. It could well be a recipe for disaster, of course – O’Hare certainly thought so – but Abrams was confident in the Brits’ ability to handle it. As well as using their own large police force, including recalling people off leave, they had also been sent reinforcements by France and Germany; their anti-riot police had apparently come over earlier that day, and had already started training and preparing alongside their British counterparts.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ O’Hare said, ‘I’ll get back to work then. I have a lot to do.’

  ‘Of course,’ Abrams said. ‘Thank you for your time, please keep me updated with the schedule I’ll be following.’

  ‘Yes ma’am,’ he said, and after they’d exchanged farewells and he’d left the room, she sat back down and poured herself a drink.

  She had no children of her own – despite a desire to have them, circumstances and her political career had too often got in the way – but she couldn’t help but be shaken to the very core by what had happened in London.

  A massacre of innocent children. What could be worse?

  And so her visit to London wasn’t purely a symbolic political stunt, or a wish to make up for Obama’s absence in Paris.

  She truly wanted to go there, in order to pay her respects to the poor, innocent dead.

  ‘I hear congratulations are in order,’ Colonel Manfred Jones said, extending a hand to Mason in the Vice President’s drawing room at One Observatory Circle.

  ‘Congratulations for what?’ Mason asked as he shook the colonel’s hand, placing a drink into it just a moment later.

  ‘I hear you’re the leader of Sunday’s memorial march,’ Jones said, ‘seeing as Abrams won’t be there.’

  ‘I guess I am,’ Mason said, ‘although I don’t feel too joyful about it, to be honest. With what happened, I’d sooner the opportunity had never been created in the first place.’

  ‘Of course,’ Jones answered quickly, ‘I’m not suggesting for one second that what happened in London was anything less than a tragedy. But sometimes,’ he said as he swirled the amber liquid of his brandy in the cut crystal glass, ‘a tragedy for one person represents an opportunity for another. I’d suggest you work hard on your speech, anyway. If it’s more inspiring than the president’s, all the better for you, I would think.’

  Mason looked into his own drink, and finally nodded in agreement. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is an opportunity I shouldn’t waste, no matter what caused it.’ He gestured for the chief of the military’s Joint Special Operations Command to sit down on the leather button-back Chesterfield sofa that was positioned adjacent to the open fireplace, before taking his own positon in the wing-back chair opposite.

  ‘Is that why you came?’ Mason said. ‘To offer advice about Sunday?’

  Jones laughed. ‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to give you some good news.’

  ‘More good news?’ Mason said, putting the drink down on the inlaid cocktail table that sat between them and rubbing his hands greedily. ‘I’m always open to good news. What is it?’

  ‘You remember the girl I told you about last time?’

  ‘The Japanese girl? Michiko?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jones confirmed. ‘We think she’s of major interest, but we don’t really have the resources to track her without some major questions being asked, remember?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mason said, his eyes narrowing as he thought back to their last meeting.

  Jones had decided to use the request for a JSOC Black Hawk helicopter as the basis for his initial investigations, the last ‘unofficial’ use of JSOC resources authorized by Jones’s predecessor, before the accident which took General Miley Cooper out of the picture and installed Jones in his place.

  It had been flown to Subic Bay in the Philippines for a brief mission; reports indicated that it had nine passengers on the outbound flight, ten inbound. Records didn’t provide names, or any hint as to the identity of the tenth person.

  The mission flight times, however, coincided almost precisely with a supposed gang shoot-out at a Yakuza safe house just outside Manila, not too far from Subic Bay. The gang shoot-out story was made rather hard to believe, however, by the fact that only the bodies of one gang – the Omoto-gumi – were found. It was far more like a military assassination squad had hit the place, and hit it hard.

  The Omoto-gumi name had rang a bell somewhere in Jones’s subconscious though, reports he’d read into Mason’s own research into the Paradigm Group. He’d looked back over the notes, and found details of another shoot-out, this one at an Arizona ranch housing a homegrown terrorist group known as Aryan Ultra.

  A Japanese national had been arrested on the scene, and it was felt that she was a sex worker. Without papers – except for a passport that identified her as Aoki Michiko – she had been shipped straight back to Japan by ICE; it later transpired that she was wanted in Japan for her connections to the criminal family known as the Omoto-gumi.

  And further digging showed that a Japanese national by the name of Aoki Michiko had been given US citizenship only a few short months ago, authorized directly by the president herself.

  Her current place of residence?

  Washington D.C.

  Her place of work?

  The Paradigm Group.

  He hadn’t put all of the pieces of the puzzle together yet, but it appeared that Michiko seemed to be a large part of it; and if they could get to the girl, they could start to break the Paradigm
Group wide open.

  She had reportedly often been seen in the company of Dr. Alan Sandbourne, expert in international relations at the Paradigm Group but the man Clark Mason believed was really an ex-government assassin codenamed ‘the ‘Asset’.

  What was the link between the two of them? There had been a man arrested alongside Michiko back at the Aryan Ultra ranch in Arizona, but he had never been booked, released without charge and never seen again. Had that been Sandbourne?

  Mason believed that the man was the head of a covert unit, using the Paradigm Group for cover, and it certainly seemed that it could actually be the case. But he was too hard a man to get to, as was Bruce Vinson, the think-tank’s devilishly clever director.

  But the girl? She was just seventeen, not even an adult.

  There was room for leverage there, for sure.

  But how to investigate her without drawing attention to themselves?

  ‘So don’t keep me in suspense,’ Mason complained. ‘What do you have?’

  ‘I had a phone call earlier today,’ Jones said, ‘from Director Noah Graham of the FBI.’

  ‘You what?’ Mason asked, stunned. ‘What did he want?’

  ‘Information,’ Jones answered. ‘You hear about the FBI agent involved in that chase through London today?’

  Mason nodded his head.

  ‘Well, it turns out that he may not have been a member of the FBI at all. Graham claims that his background doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny, and when he challenged the president about it, she pretty much told him to back off. He agreed, but he was pissed. Pissed enough to call me, inquiring if I knew anything about any of our special ops guys being used over in London.’

  ‘You think it’s Sandbourne?’ Mason asked, breathless.

  ‘Well, I did some checks, and it seems that the good doctor isn’t at work this week. Not at home either.’

  ‘So what did Graham say?’

  ‘Well, he is loyal to Abrams, I’ll give him that. But he’s also loyal to the Bureau, and doesn’t want to see its reputation damaged. I gave him a little taste of our suspicions, just to whet his appetite, see if he would be willing to help us.’

  ‘And?’ Mason asked impatiently.

  ‘And he has authorized a bit of off-the-books surveillance on this Michiko girl. He’s as anxious as we are to get to the bottom of this.’

  ‘And if he discovers something’s going on?’

  ‘Then he’ll do what it takes to protect the country, as he’s sworn to do. It’ll be up to us to convince him that the best way to do that is to impeach the president and arrest everyone involved at the Paradigm Group, Sandbourne and Vinson chief among them. Everything in Forest Hills, everything at their home addresses, will be impounded to be used as evidence.’ He paused, sipped at his drink. ‘Including any copies of that DVD you star in, copies that could well go . . . missing during the course of the investigation.’

  ‘That is good news,’ Mason said with a wide smile before throwing back his brandy and pouring another for both him and Jones. ‘Damn good news. So when do we start?’

  ‘Graham’s already started,’ Jones said, eyes glinting as he checked his watch. ‘Aoki Michiko is under FBI surveillance as we speak.’

  2

  Marseille was not at its best in November, Cole couldn’t help but notice. The sunshine for which the south of France was famed was not greatly in evidence, and the clouds were looking decidedly ominous, as if the London rain had followed them.

  It was warmer though, Cole supposed, although fifty degrees was a few degrees off being what he would regard as pleasant.

  But on the other hand, they were here for business, not pleasure, and he reminded himself of that as he watched the light stone exterior of Cristofanu Ortoli’s villa, situated within Marseille’s fashionable sixth arrondissement.

  He and Morgan had parted ways the night before to pack and get ready, then met up again bright and early the next morning for their four o’clock flight to Marseille, which brought them into the city at just after seven, local time.

  Cole hadn’t booked out of his hotel, and had left the majority of his things in his room; if anyone checked, they would just assume he was out sightseeing, especially as he’d used a different passport.

  He’d been forced to make contact with the friends that Vinson had mentioned, and he’d been glad to find out that they were indeed solid, reliable people – one an ex-SAS sergeant major, the other a retired SIS agent handler. His request for a new passport, driving license and credit cards had been acted upon instantly, despite the late hour, and by the time Cole had arrived at Heathrow for the flight to France the following morning, they had been waiting for him in the parking lot with everything he’d asked for.

  I wasn’t too likely that he would be searched for; Kelly and MI5 might not like him very much, but he was hardly a wanted man. And yet he used the new ID, in the name of Thomas Jameson, anyway; it never hurt to play it too safe, after all.

  Morgan had decided to use her own ID, to provide them with official cover if they needed it at any stage. She might have been involved in a shooting, but it had been in the course of work, and had therefore been authorized; there was obviously no directive that had been sent out restricting her movement, as she too had passed through security at the airport without being stopped.

  They’d eaten breakfast at the airport, hired a car, and driven straight for the address that Michiko had given him. There was not going to be the time for a protracted surveillance of this man, Cristofanu Ortoli. If there were others behind the London killers, it could well mean that other operations were afoot; and with the news media reporting that fifty world leaders were due in London on Sunday, time was of the essence. Cole didn’t know why, but he felt that whatever had been started by those three assassins was still far from over.

  They were parked up in a small, wealthy suburban avenue, half way up a zig-zagging hill that led down to Ortoli’s villa. The site offered a decent view of the house, while remaining relatively discreet. Still, Cole knew that if Ortoli was high up in the gangland scene here, there might well be bodyguards inside, watching for strangers; on their drive past the far side of the house they hadn’t seen anyone patrolling the gardens, but – visually at least – they had no idea how many people Ortoli might have inside.

  Luckily though, they didn’t have to rely on vision alone. Cole had told Vinson about what he was up to and where he was going, and had also told him about Michiko helping him. He had objected at first but, like Cole, Vinson was a pragmatist at heart and readily accepted that the ends justified the means in this particular case. Vinson would therefore give Michiko access to everything she needed, while keeping her involvement a secret.

  Cole was in touch with her now, having asked her to check on the number of cell phones active within the villa. Michiko had logged on to the network, accessed data from the nearest masts, and pinpointed the units bouncing off those masts to Ortoli’s house.

  Not including Ortoli’s, there were four cell phones on site. The background data showed that he had no wife or children, but Cole accepted that one or more of the phones could belong to visiting girlfriends; however, the fact that the cells were all untraceable pay-as-you-go units, with no user information available, indicated that they probably belonged to criminal acquaintances of Ortoli, at least some of whom would be bodyguards, probably armed.

  There was also the possibility that there were others inside, either without phones, or with their phones turned off.

  But Ortoli plus four others was as good a starting point as any, given the rushed circumstances. No matter how many it was, Cole knew he would have to act soon.

  On their way there, Cole and Morgan had stopped off at a twenty-four hour hypermarket, where they’d picked up a couple of cheap pairs of binoculars, along with a few other essential items that Cole thought they might need.

  Cole looked through those binoculars now, confirming the layout of the place. The information package th
at Michiko has sent him had, at his request, contained the original architect’s plans for the house. It was amazing what that girl would get her hands on, and he could see her becoming a real asset to the Force One team. Funny that when she’d called him, he’d already been thinking about bringing her into the fold.

  What he saw outside the house corresponded to the plans he had displayed on his tablet, and – as satisfied as he could be at this point – he put the binoculars down and turned to Morgan.

  ‘I’m going in,’ he told her.

  Cole pressed the doorbell and heard it chime loudly inside. He’d left Morgan back with the car, not because he was sexist – he’d seen some incredibly capable female combat veterans in his time, some of whom he’d recruited into Force One – but because he had seen her in action, and she hadn’t performed in a manner he could reply upon.

  She’d put up a fight with Khan, and he admired her for that; she just lacked the technique, and the experience, to make the right calls under pressure. As such, she would be a potential liability, and he would have to distract his own attention from the job at hand to keep an eye on her.

  He also couldn’t judge if the incident with Khan had damaged her psychologically in any way, and couldn’t take the risk that she’d undergo a complete meltdown if directly exposed to the same sorts of stress so short a time after.

  And so she just watched the scene from the car through her binoculars, connected to him by cell phone via the wireless earpiece he wore.

  He could hear footsteps coming toward him down the hall, and then Morgan’s voice in his ear. ‘There was a twitch at the window above you, a man’s face. Could have been Ortoli’s.’

  Cole didn’t respond, but took on board the information. Most criminals worked odd hours, and he wouldn’t be surprised if Ortoli had still been in bed mid-morning; it corresponded to the architect’s plans, which put the master bedroom directly over the front door.

  A moment later the heavy wooden door opened, and Cole saw a man in his forties stood in front of him; big and ugly, he looked like he’d been in the game his entire life, a career criminal through and through.