Three Faces of West (2013)

by Christian Shakespeare

  “What are you doing?!” He whispered desperately, “You can’t shoot him, you’re not authorised! There is no kill order!!”

  Ignoring him he pointed his weapon at the bearded man,

  “Relax I’m not going to kill them, I’m just going to wound so that they can’t flee.”

  John backed down given the situation, “Aim for his leg.” He said giving his partner some friendly firearm advice. West like John was already an accomplished firearms user. Closing one eye he lined up his vision with the barrel, correcting for bullet drop due to gravity he took aim at the drugged man’s left mid-thigh. Sweat began to drip from him, as he slowed his breathing, blocking everything out in a fog of focus and concentration. He placed his forefinger on the trigger and began to squeeze feeling the tension as the gun hammer began to pull back from the loaded cartridge. Just one more squeeze and the firearm would discharge the round. Just at the very moment the door of the room suddenly burst open, completely destroying West’s concentration. The smallest of split seconds later and he would have fired. Both West and Hudson instinctively went back into the shadows once more as the intruders rushed in, the whole room filled with police officers quickly apprehending the men with some struggle. Tables and chairs went flying as they made a desperate bid to escape out into the bar area but it was a futile attempt,

  “It’s a bloody drugs raid.” Said John

  “Yes, Scotland Yard must have been watching this place.”

  “Well it would have been on their radar if it was a front for drugs trafficking as you said.” Commented John, “Come on lets go.”

  “Wait a second.” Said Jack as an inspector walked in to confront the now tamed criminals,

  “Carl Smith, Jonathan Mays, I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Peter Finnin. You do not have to mention anything when questioned, but anything you do say may be used in evidence against you to something which you may later rely on in court. Do you understand?”

  They nodded, the officer continued, “Good, take them outside. Sargent, see what you can find about this place in terms of the cocaine dealing. I’ll report back to Waterson tell him we’ve pulled these two in for questioning.”

  Up in the balcony West and Hudson had seen enough, now was the time to leave. They slipped into the shadows once more toward a rear entrance to escape the police raid, dropping the keys he picked up earlier to get into the storeroom John made sure no fingerprints could be found and traced by cleaning them on his sleeve first.

  Exiting out of a rear window, into the outside drayman’s yard, they quickly decamped into a side street just as a couple of uniformed police officers thundered down the pavement. Not making eye contact again they rushed past West and Hudson with no idea where they had just come from. The police turned into the drayman’s yard slightly too late as both men arrived back in the high street just further down from the pub which by now was surrounded by police cars and vans. A maze of flashing blue lights and uniformed officers leading out people they wished to question. Now on the opposite side of the road they made their way back to the hospital, and their car just as West’s phone began to ring,

  “Jack, its Harvey. Look we’ve had some info we think will be useful to you. We’ve analysed the symptoms exhibited by David last night in Southampton, and they are consistent with delirium associated with scopolamine and also poisoning effects of arsine. So you were right in your assumptions. I understand you’re in Lewisham at the moment,”

  Jack confirmed the question posed by Harvey, “Yes we are.”

  Harvey continued, “Well you may run into some trouble. Apparently the police have confirmed there was a murder there yesterday, a man called Stephen Carey,”

  “Already done. He’s had an autopsy, found evidence of a liquid in his lungs, it’s possibly poison something like amounts of Scopolamine.”

  Harvey hesitated for a second sounding puzzled, “How did you come by Carey?”

  “Investigating the scalpel, we traced it back to the local hospital mortuary. Found Carey’s name on a list in there. Let’s just say I observed the results of his post mortem. John also investigated some building works opposite and a box had been found buried with a hammer inside. It was blood stained so we think it was used in the Finnin murder, most likely used to smash his hands during the act. I think if the police compare blood samples taken from Finnin and from the hammer, it would be a match.”

  After listening with some interest Harvey continued, “So since you already know so much about our friend I’ll not bore you with the details.”

  “Oh we don’t know the circumstances of his death.”

  Harvey then proceeded to reveal what he knew, “Well according to the police he was found dead a day ago in his flat nearby. The place was smashed but he did keep two dogs, they were mutilated,”

  “Would explain the wounds on his torso.” West thought to himself as Harvey continued,

  “The police also found military papers, seems like Carey was a former soldier who had be dishonourably discharged from the army for continual insubordination. Initial examinations indicate injuries to his body probably came from dog bites.”

  “This sounds familiar to the state Finnin was found in.”

  “Exactly. Do we thing there are poisoning similarities here?”

  “I think so” Replied West,

  “They also record saying that part of the flesh from his forearm was missing. It was bandaged so the police think it was done earlier, prior to the time of death. Of course they needed a pathologist to conform the findings, and I’m guessing that’s where you came across him.”

  This immediately struck a chord with West. He put something to his superior,

  “I’ll bet that if the police test the tissue found in Finnin’s teeth, they would find a match. We think we may have found the killers to Peter Finnin.”

  Harvey continued some more, “One more thing, the police found some drug taking paraphernalia in the property. Looks like your killer was a drug addict, they are testing it to find out the substance.”

  “I’m not surprised if they find Scopolamine or cocaine in his system.”

  “Why do you say that Jack?”

  “We’ll tell you in full when we get back. We’re on our way now.”

  Harvey instructed them to do so, “Well make sure you get back as soon as possible. There’s been a rather large development; I’ll explain when I see you. It definitely looks like this thing is deeper than what we thought.

  Hanging up the phone fed the curiosity of the two men. Urgently they made their way back to the car to deal with this development, eager and dreading to discover just how complicated and deep this thing is getting.

  Chapter 12:

  Back in Thames house the section office was even busier than usual, it was visibly clear that something was afoot. Both West and Hudson strode in to find Harvey standing over a desk occupied by a bearded computer operative. Accompanying him was a black haired youngish looking individual in a white shirt and tie,

  “What’s the news?” Asked Jack inquisitively,

  Harvey stepped up in reply, “Jack, John meet Aazim Farooque.” He gestured toward the young man in the collar and tie. Muslim in appearance he only looked around his early twenties,

  “He’s only just joined us from another section. Reason why you have not seen him before was because he’s just come back from a deep cover assignment.”

  “Linked to this?” Asked John,

  “Yes.” Was the reply from the young man.

  Harvey jumped in, “Remember in the wake of the Kings Cross bombing rumours flew about the internet about the incompetence of the intelligence services. We traced the source back to the London branch of an internet news service called BeeBee.org. They have been linked with extremist views before so we already have them on our radar. Aazim here was deployed as an undercover mole in their London offices for two days.”

  Aazim continued to tell the story on his own,

  “I was pl
anted as a mole undercover. I posed as an IT assistant to gain access to their servers. The cover story allowed me access to different parts of the offices, including the editor’s desk.”

  “Go on.” Asked West,

  “I once took the opportunity to go through the editor’s coat for clues. He’d been watched for quite some time that’s why I did it, it was just hanging up on a coat stand but I couldn’t find anything incriminating.”

  “Incriminating enough to link this BeeBee.org to King’s Cross?” Asked John,

  “Yes.” Interrupts Harvey,

  Aazim continued his report, “Personal possessions came up with a dead end, so I concentrated on my legend as an IT worker. As soon as I could gain access to his computer I was in. Once while he was out, I made an excuse that I needed to perform a backup on his system. So as soon as I was alone I inserted a flash drive and tried to extract his hard drive files but I got blocked by a firewall.”

  “So what happened?” Asked Jack,

  “I had to sneak into the servers to disable the correct firewall without causing a disturbance, but as soon as I did so the editor who by this time came back, noticed a change on his system settings. Thinking there was problems with the IT maintenance he came down to the servers, but I managed to give him the slip. Making my way back to his office I tried the system again, this time I could get access and just had enough time to extract and download a copy of all of his files before he came back.”

  John interrupted again, “So you got whatever was in this companies archives?”

  “Yes, as soon as I obtained the information, I got out as quickly as possible.”

  “And nobody suspected anything? Nothing collateral in terms of computer functionality?” Asked Harvey,

  “None at all.” Replied Aazim.

  Harvey then instructs the technician to call up the computer records based on what the young mole has procured. Sat at his desk, the bearded computer whizz danced his fingers at lightning speed across the keyboard causing the screen to display documents and records. He proceeded to brief on what he had found,

  “Looking through the records, there’s nothing all that unusual, despite the known extremist links. But if we look at a recent story draft, and this is the version posted on BeeBee’s website a few days ago we see a reference to something called APF Industries based in London.”

  Immediately Jack and John perked up. Already associated with APF in Southampton, now they discover there was a plant here in the capital. The technician continued further,

  “So if we look at the story it basically just talks about the owners, the Finnin family going into a silent partnership with an unknown person. But the deal was announced here, on the same day as the King’s Cross bombing.”

  “So there’s a link here.” Replied West,

  “Sounds like it.” Said Harvey, “But that’s not all, tell them if you will.”

  The technician began his revelation, “The real secret lies in the construction of the article, if we do a quick word count the length on both the draft and the posted article is 1500 words. If we run pattern recognising software and cross reference it with an online dictionary we see something strange happening with the first letter of every third word. It spells out a phrase.”

  “Do we know what this phrase is?” Asked West,

  “Yes,” Said Harvey, “We’ve managed to decode it. It spells out one very specific phrase, SCARLETT DAWN.”

  “What the hell is ‘Scarlett Dawn’?” Asked John,

  Harvey paused for a split second. With Jack and John looking on he had to reveal the truth now,

  “It’s a code used to initiate the commencement of an operation, usually including explosives.”

  “So we think this BeeBee.org is a front used to sanction the terrorist attack at Kings Cross?” Asked West,

  John also stepped in again, “Any idea by whom?”

  Harvey took the plunge, “Yes we think we know. You see ‘Scarlett Dawn’ is used only by one organisation in the world, the Central Intelligence Agency.”

  Jack froze looking stunned, “The CIA?”

  “Are you saying it was the United States who planted and detonated bombs in London?” Asked John alarmingly, “Our allies?!”

  Sensing the obvious tension, Harvey tried to diffuse the situation somewhat,

  “I know it sounds like grounds for a massive diplomatic row, but perhaps not. We did a bit of investigating on the silent partner against APF and we found something rather special. The silent partner is a half-Mexican man called Victor Bruenstein, he’s on our radar because of his links to extremist organisations in the past notably in Africa and parts of Eastern Europe.”

  “That would explain any potential terrorist connections, but what about the Americans?” Commented West,

  “Yes,” Replied Harvey, “But here’s the thing; Bruenstein was a known former CIA operative. So that would tie in with the code word.”

  “So he’s not directly working for the Americans?”

  “No we don’t have reason to believe he is. He left some time ago.” Said Harvey as an air of relief filled the atmosphere, “The rumours were that Bruenstein was involved in a large paedophile ring involving children as young as five.”

  “Sounds charming.” Replied West in a disgusted tone as the question of how all this fitted together loomed. Hudson tried a basic hypothesis,

  “If this Bruenstein was involved with the King’s Cross bombing, and given his known extremist and intelligence links, could he also be behind the Finnin murder? Could he be working in league with Maxwell Grey? Or even have recruited him?”

  It certainly was a plausible theory. Given everything that had happened so far and the subtle yet consistent ties between events, it was perfectly feasible that all of it was linked to some kind of larger plot. Harvey wanted to find out,

  “Given the nature of what has happened, and the poison leads we have uncovered in lesion with the police, I want this Victor Bruenstein traced. West, Hudson, tap into CCTV around known locations he is linked to, APF and places like that. Try and get some leads upon his known whereabouts, anything at all you can dig up. I want this man found so we can put a watch on him as soon as possible. Any delay could be fatal.”

  By now the clock was ticking. Knowing they had to find him, it wasn’t going to be easy in a city with millions of inhabitants. Starting in known frequenting places was the most logical step, but Harvey still had a trick up his sleeve,

  “Perhaps there will be someone who can tell me more about Victor Bruenstein.” He said while pacing out of the office. Leaving West, and Hudson with the computer technician they began the daunting task of trying to find their man. John occupied another desk as he wanted to gain any background information while West and the technician made their way toward a separate room. It was a dimly lit windowless facility with a console that looked more at home in a recording studio, yet banks of TV screens lined the wall, each displaying both colour and black and white images of busy streets in real time. As they sat down the first thing they did was to check the CCTV records around APF industries in London. The streets around the docklands both live and recorded images flashed up upon the screen but were just too many images to detect any potential suspect by eye, besides they had no idea what he actually looked like,

  “This is useless.” Said West, “Can we get access to Bruenstein’s records?”

  “Depends if we have on a shared intelligence file.” Said the engineer, “Hang on.” He began a search through public and private records. The system working as fast as the processor allowed until it found a name match,

  “Here we are, Bruenstein, initial ‘V’ 56 years old born in Monclova, in Mexico. Mexican mother, American father, joined the CIA twenty years ago, and is a former US Marine. That’s all we have, apart from the links to extremist organisations which he has been involved for the past ten years.”

  “That’s quite a lot for a foreign citizen.” Said Jack,

  “Not really.�
� Was the reply, “the basic info is nothing short of what one can find generally on the internet if you looked hard enough.”

  Jack probed further, “Do we have a profile picture?”

  The engineers tried to search the matching file a bit further, “Checking…Yes, here we are.” Clicking a key brought up a stark colour passport type photograph of their man. Staring at the screen Jack looked deep into the eyes of Bruenstein’s picture. Before then lay an average built chisel jawed man, mid-fifties, with short black-brown hair. His olive skin complimenting his dark eyes radiated through the screen almost seemingly piercing through anyone who looked at him,

  “Apparently he was dismissed from the CIA when it was discovered of his links to terrorism cells.” Continued the engineer,

  “Sounds like quite a character.” Commented Jack

  “Well at least we now know what he looks like. Still it won’t be easy spotting him on the busy streets of London.”

  Jack agreed but they weren’t finished yet, as the engineer tried something new. Inputting a few commands he uploaded some software to try and narrow the search,

  “I’m feeding the photograph into some facial recognition software. The computer will then try to match the image to the footage.” They watched the camera pictures as the system pointed out any individuals looking remotely like the profile picture. A few faces were highlighted but nothing special, until they struck gold,