Rule 53

by Elaine Nolan

“Chip off the old block?”

  “I’d have to say a replica of the old block, even shot her brother to save him. But you didn’t tell me she’s an officer now.”

  “She’s a what?” Another disturbing reaction from the other end which didn’t assure McGregor.

  “Commandant, apparently. When you said they trained her I assumed it was just the basics. And it’s not an idle appointment either, she attended the Senator’s hearing dressed as an officer. Why didn’t we know?” he demanded.

  “Anything we’ve found out we’ve given you. Were you responsible for the snipers at the embassy?” the voice asked, and McGregor narrowed his eyes at the question.

  “Maybe,” he answered, confirming it in reality.

  “And sending in US Marshalls after Rainey?”

  “I may have suggested it to the right people.”

  “Why?”

  “Because yet again another Harte is attempting to thwart us. She led me to believe she would hand him over to the authorities, especially with her already established connections to the Senator, and then we’d retrieve the information he stole. But she seemed a little slow in delivering on her… assurances.” He was about to say promise until he realised she hadn’t.

  “She played you?” The surprise sounded genuine, and shocked. “Everything we have on her, know about her says she’s a straight arrow, even Jürgen said so.”

  “Perhaps his training wasn’t as effective as he thought.”

  “It worked well enough to use her programming skills while she was still in college, and for all the other projects they later hired her for. But you think she’s a danger to us?”

  “She’s the one who took down Lantry.”

  “All she did was finish her father’s work. He had all the evidence, and that was what they built the case against Lantry on. All she had to do was find it and get it to the right, or in our case, the wrong people.”

  “I still think you’re underestimating her.”

  “You’ll get your chance to find out.”

  “Oh.”

  “It seems history is about to repeat itself. We think Walters has tried passing information to Harte.”

  “I thought you had a handle on that?”

  “We did. What we didn’t expect was Walters, of all people, going rogue.”

  “Maybe Harte is the bad influence, first Rainey, now Walters. What information did she try to pass on?”

  “That’s where you come in. You need to get your people to intercept it.”

  “And how do you propose I do that? We’ve no one inside the embassy, we never could get anyone in.”

  “You have one. You convinced your grandson to work with you once, I’m sure you’ve ways of persuading him to do so again. If not, perhaps his sister might be more willing than you think to save him again.”

  The call ended and McGregor pinched the bridge of his nose. Another Harte to contend with, and somehow he didn’t think this one would be as easy to remove from the playing field, and it was obvious she couldn’t be swayed as her father. He called out to this personal assistant.

  “Get me Bradford. Now.”

  CHAPTER 56

  Any summons to a meeting was never good, but an official summons by your sister and her cohorts was a bad sign. While the embassy was not a residential one, they had assigned him a box of a room not much bigger than Leigh’s office. It felt like the prison he was hoping to avoid even though he could wander around the unsecured parts of the embassy. The rear courtyard however was off limits to him, for his own safety. While it was secure with its high walls, they took no chances since the incident at the front entrance with snipers potentially waiting to take a shot at him.

  His access to the world at large was also restricted. Leigh had taken his personal devices from him, shutting him off from any external contact. Scratch that, she’d demanded them with no explanation, nor did he question it. He didn’t dare. The TV was his only view of what was going on in the outside world, but he soon bored with that doom and gloom, so he delved into the reading material she’d given him on their father. He kept her comment in mind about not knowing someone just because you read a file on them, no matter how detailed it may have been. She was a living proof, never expecting her to be such a hardass, or so much more complex than the file led him to believe. He’d misinterpreted the information in the file the old man gave him.

  The old man, his grandfather. He still struggled with that newfound knowledge, with that connection. He struggled with knowing the old man was prepared to have him killed. What scared him even more was his sister was prepared to do it, but in hindsight he preferred to think of it as her unorthodox method for saving his life.

  Now this summons, and he had an army escort to the meeting, coming face-to-face with the four of them, each as stern as the rest, and he wondered if they would finally give him an update on what had happened the previous day at Swayne’s hearing. What worried him was Adam and Leigh were back in their formal uniforms, not combats.

  “Am I being court martialled?” he asked, trying to lighten the mood. It didn’t work. Adam’s scowl grew darker. Leigh remained quiet, unimpressed with his flippant remark.

  “We had to endure an inquisition because of your ridiculous and grandiose scheme. You should be grateful we’re not handing you over to the Americans,” Adam told him.

  “It’s that bad?” Nate asked.

  “Swayne thinks you’re the one responsible for what happened and accused us of harbouring you, so if you can’t back up your claims then for the sake of diplomatic relations, we’re inclined to hand you to them, with or without an extradition warrant,” she told him, in a tone harder than he’d heard from her. It was scarier than the tone she’d used during her interrogation of him, and given she’d shot him without qualm, it terrified him. “Not to mention,” she added, “McGregor knows by now I haven’t handed you over, so that’s two very pissed off people gunning for you.”

  “Gunning for us, if we keep him, or keep standing in their way,” Tom corrected. “I say let them have him and be done with this mess.” They left Nathan with no doubts he was now on his own, and he couldn’t rely on Leigh to continue bailing him out. It was time to show the cards he held in this game. Leigh gave a start at a jingle he recognised, and pulled a phone from her pocket, his phone.

  “That’s been ringing all morning,” she told him and slid it across the meeting table to him. “Answer it and put it on speaker.” Nate caught it, surprised to see Mark’s name on the screen.

  “Hey Mark,” he answered, trying to sound as conversational as possible.

  “Are you on speaker?” Bradford asked.

  “Nah man, just the room I’m in, it’s not exactly the Hilton.”

  “Can you talk?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “No one’s listening?”

  “Like who?”

  “That bitch of a sister of yours, for a start.”

  Nate glanced across to her, but found her smirking.

  “Yeah, so I’ve discovered,” he answered Mark, receiving a cool glare in return, which was back to what he expected from her. “So, what’s up Mark?”

  “Where the hell are you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “She knocked me out, I woke up in some dungeon.”

  “She do that pervy shit on you?”

  “Yup.”

  “Twisted bitch,” Mark sounded disgusted.

  “Yup,” Nate agreed, smirking at her, but receiving a handwritten note she scribbled and handed to him across the table, asking if he wanted another round. It was enough to knock the smirk from his face, while hers grew instead.

  “And they let you keep your phone?” Nate heard suspicion creeping into Mark’s voice.

  “No, but they left it on a table and forgot about it. I swiped it when they weren’t watching.”

  Leigh read the note Tom wrote for her: he’s as good a liar as you. Not quite, she scribble
d back, but tried to rein in grins that unsettled Nate. “What do you want Mark?”

  “Why didn’t you call one of us for help?”

  “Because it’s my mess. You know what the old man’s like, we’ve got to clean up our own shit.”

  “Yeah, he’s pissed with you.”

  “Any idea why?” Nate fudged.

  “Depends. What did you do?” Mark asked and Nate saw four expectant faces across the table waiting on his answer.

  “Everyone thinks I did it,” he answered.

  “Did what?”

  “Set up the ambushes during that exercise,” he answered.

  “Didn’t you?” Mark challenged.

  “No, I did not,” Nate shouted back, standing over the phone, surprising everyone.

  “Well, for what it’s worth, the old man believes you, and he wants to help. He’s willing to help.”

  “Did the old man tell you who he is? To me?” Nate’s temper continued to get the better of him and he ignored the notes on the table in front of him advising him to calm down.

  “He’s what he’s always been to us. He’s our Obi-Wan, our mentor and the man who gave us a leg-up at the start of our careers when we needed it.”

  “He’s my grandfather Mark. I’ll bet he left that key piece of information out. He’s been using us.”

  “I know,” Mark answered, stunning Nate into silence. “But we’re the ones who’ve been using him, not the other way around. He invested in us when we needed to get off the ground and now you throw that away, walk away from the one man who cared enough about you to help you, and instead you go running off to some two-faced, double-crossing bitch because she claims she’s your sister. The old man’s not angry with you Nate, he’s disappointed, and you’re throwing your life away over some stupid bitch who doesn’t give a shit about you.” Nate pressed his hands onto the table top and glared at the phone, his face betraying his emotions and thoughts.

  “Someone’s coming, Mark, I’ve got to go.” Without waiting for a reply he ended the call and sat back down. He couldn’t bring himself to look at the other four, didn’t dare for fear of what he’d see on their faces, but they remained quiet as they waited on him.

  “I’ll give you everything I have,” he said.

  “Which is?” Donal spoke for the first time.

  “I told you, it’s on an encrypted hard drive, in a secure location. It’s got everything, construction records, land deeds, records of payments to all the right people, information to blackmail all the wrong people.”

  “And the key?” Tom asked.

  “In a different location, but both of them are in the city. I couldn’t get away long enough to go further afield,” Nate answered, taking a breath and looked across to his sister. Her features had softened and she gave him a hint of an encouraging smile.

  “Why are you doing this?” Donal asked.

  “Because my life’s work, my ideals have been used against me. It was never about the money. It was supposed to be about helping people, making life better, making services and access easier and better, not for some old man’s greed and power.”

  “What got you so angry?” she asked him.

  “I just realised how much Mark is in on this, and the old man is using him to get to me, using you. You never claimed to be my sister, I threw that at you, not the other way around, that’s when I realised just how much Mark and Garrett twist everything. And I fell for it, every time. It’s difficult to accept when you’ve been stupid.”

  “What else are you thinking?” Donal put to Leigh, and she played with her pen while pulling her thoughts together.

  “Bradford expected me to listen in, and that message was as much for me as it was for Nate, that all will be forgiven if I hand him over, and it won’t matter whether it’s to Swayne, or back to McGregor.”

  “Do what you have to do,” Nate said, surprising her with such a defeatist attitude.

  “We’re going to,” Tom growled at him. “But first we need that hard drive and encryption key.”

  “They’re all yours,” he said.

  CHAPTER 57

  “Hell no,” she told Adam.

  “It’s too dangerous. You’ll be in the line of fire,” he argued back.

  “So will he, and I’m the one who brought him in, he’s my responsibility,” she answered, echoing Walter’s words about her.

  “You’re not a real soldier,” he said, regretting it as her features hardened. Tom chuckled.

  “Bad move, army boy,” he said, stoking the fire and the interdepartmental rivalry between Justice and Defence. “You didn’t have any qualms when you included her on the exercise.”

  “That was until she put a live grenade in her hands,” he retorted.

  “That alone proves I’m more than capable of being a real soldier,” she fired back.

  “And getting injured and caught by McGregor’s team?”

  “And sometimes bad things just happen,” Tom answered. “Simple answer, we need her so she’s coming, but we assign her to Rainey, where you and I and the team can watch her.” As much as he hated to admit it, Adam couldn’t find a flaw in his thrown-together plan, and he hated Tom’s ability to do that, just throw it together at a moment's notice. Harte had that ability too, so maybe, it would be useful to have them both along for when it went horribly wrong, and the signs all pointed that way.

  “Civilian dress,” Adam ordered them. “We can’t rock up at a cemetery in fatigues, the locals will think it’s another foreign invasion.”

  “You’ve to give him his due, it’s a clever place to hide it. No one would ever look twice at someone going to pay their respects at a graveside,” Tom admitted.

  “It makes us conspicuous and wide open if anything goes wrong,” Adam countered.

  “Maybe we should check if there’s a funeral there today,” she offered, making them both stop.

  “Bad move,” Adam said.

  “Good idea,” Tom answered at the same time, and both men glowered at each other.

  “We’d blend in if there is,” Tom argued.

  “And civilians are at risk if we’re followed and a fire fight breaks out,” Adam countered.

  “There’s none,” Leigh told them, having checked on her phone. “That puts that argument to bed. Has anyone ever told you, you sound like an old married couple with this bickering? It’s sweet.” They gave her a sour look in reply, but returned to their preparations and Tom peeled his velcroed Garda badge and insignia from his own body armour, removing any official identification, his dark blue in contrast their tan-green ones. The colours didn’t matter, all that counted was they worked and saved lives. Tom handed her a spare de-badged Garda one for Rainey to wear.

  “I don’t know why we have to bring him, why he can’t tell us what to look for and where,” Adam said. “Only one or two of us, like me and Tom would make much more sense.”

  “Because it’s been a while, and it was dark when he hid it, he’s not a hundred percent sure, and we need him to get the encryption key,” she reminded them. “And you two floundering about won’t draw even more attention? What if the two of you get into trouble? Who’ll rescue you?”

  “We’re not some wimpy little computer nerd,” Tom shot back and she laughed.

  She left them to their preparations and found Nate back at his assigned room, deep in thought. She tossed the body armour at him, jarring him from his dark musing.

  “You know how to put that on?” she asked him, and he shook his head. She made him stand and helped him into it.

  “Why are you helping me?” he asked.

  “It’s my job,” she answered.

  “Do you always put yourself in danger for your job?” he asked as she pulled the armour tighter around him before securing it.

  “No, sometimes it happens naturally.”

  “You are like him,” he said and she paused, glanced up at him.

  “So are you,” she answered.

  “Really? How?”


  “Trying to do the right thing,” she said. “Your moral outrage is too strong to be faked.”

  “Oh, thanks.” It came out sarcastic, but she smirked and handed him a jacket. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry for what I did to you at the start. I built this image in my mind of you as a spoilt little diva.” She gave him a perplexed expression before shaking her head and laughing.

  “Where the hell did you get that idea? I’m not a social butterfly. Actually, I’m not social.”

  “You were right; a file can tell a lot of things but doesn’t tell you who the person is. And our… bumpy start aside, irrespective of what happens, it’s been a privilege to get to know you.”

  Her expression was indecipherable, impassive, but she straightened.

  “If you hadn’t been such a bollocks, I might say something pleasant too,” she answered, and he smirked, causing another flashback to her dad and she turned to the doorway and indicated he leave first. “I want you a step behind me but on my left side every step of the way,” she began her instructions to him. “If you’re hit in the body, the armour should save you, but it’ll hurt. If you go down, stay down, you’ll be less of a target. Don’t try any heroics but if we give you an instruction, you do what you’re told, no questioning, no second-guessing, no hesitation. Do you understand?” He nodded in reply, trying to hide nerves, and he tugged at the body armour, trying to get comfortable in it.

  They joined Tom, Adam and a handful of other squad members in the foyer, all in civilian clothing.

  “The plan is simple,” Tom began. “We’re playing a version of the shell game and thanks to the weather pissing down out there, we can make this work. Our target is a hard drive hidden somewhere at Oak Hill Cemetery.”

  “That’s a lot of ground, do we have anything more specific?” one guy asked.

  “Yes, twenty-two acres,” Tom answered, having done his own research on the place. “Target is to the left of the chapel, accessible from the main gate, and… buried at the base of a statue?” He checked with Nate, who nodded.

  “It’s a small statue, of an angel I think, I don’t know the name on the tomb,” Nate told them. Another hand raised.