The Cult of The Enemy: The Dark Places Trilogy

by S. G Mark

  “What else can we do? We’re plastered all over the news, and any publicity is good publicity? We both know we aren’t going to persuade anyone to our cause by talking nicely to them. The time for playing nice is over. I was just the one brave enough to admit it.”

  “Do you even have a plan?”

  “No,” he said, “But then at least nothing can go wrong.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Bulging eyes stared at him from across the table, partly obscured by a stray fringe and framed by crow’s feet and taught skin. In return, the woman saw a drawn expression of desperation, isolation; pierced with a hardened stare and completed by exhaustion. Between the two of them sat two drinks - hers a glass of red, his a half drunk measure of whisky and ice. A cold light poured in from the window by their side as they sat, huddled in the booth; both with their jackets wrapped around them for warmth as well as ease, should they need to quickly leave.

  Rain battered the window, occasionally uplifted by the wind before crashing back down on to the sodden pane. The single pane breathed a cold draught. Jack rubbed his hands together, but the tips of fingers remained numb. Claudia reached across and gently touched them.

  Three weeks had passed since he’d last seen Alex. It was his first time in the open in a long time. His coordinated attacks had continued for another week after Alex had left, but then he abruptly stopped them. The death toll had reached ninety-two, and somehow Jack didn’t want to breach the hundreds barrier. It felt like crossing a line he wasn’t sure he could ever justify; not that he was sure he could for the lives he already had taken. Emma was against it, but his decision had been made. Though he hadn’t spoken to him, he knew that Alex had his back. It was the right time to end the onslaught - to keep them on their toes, and not cross that line.

  Colchester was an unfriendly city of concrete and chain restaurants. It hadn’t been his idea to meet here; it was more a place of convenience than anything else. London was in lockdown: a consequence of the bombings. Kyle was organising the evacuation of all its members into other safehouses around the country. He couldn’t go anywhere he’d been spotted or tracked to before, but it was Claudia who suggested this location.

  “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me,” he said, keeping his head low.

  “After the last time we spoke, I wasn’t sure,” she said, returning her hands to her glass of red, “And now that I’m here I’m still not sure if it’s the right thing. You’ve not done yourself in favours in the last few weeks.”

  Jack leant in, “Maybe, but what else can we do? Just sit back and let them destroy us?”

  “You’re killing innocent people.”

  “So are they,” he did not ask her here to listen to her reason. “What do you really think of me, Claudia? I mean me, specifically. Do you think I am hateful man, do you think I do this for fun, for some fundamental belief that everyone has to be like me?”

  She shook her head.

  “You know more than most what this is about,” he spoke slowly, as if coaxing a cat from a tree, “I didn’t arrange those attacks out of spite. They were warnings.”

  “For what? For who? You’re trying to get the people on your side, how is that going to help?”

  “The people don’t want this,” he said, “The people don’t care what is happening to their country so long as it’s not happening to them. So the past few weeks was a warning to them - it was their last chance. Wake up and fight, or be a victim to your own apathy.”

  “If you don’t have the confidence of the public, how can you even justify what you are doing?”

  Jack sighed and took a sip of his whisky. It ran down the back of his throat like medicine.

  “We have arrests being made for crimes not committed, we have people taken from their homes, we have Martial Law and guns on the street. We have the media breathing down our necks if we make the wrong choices, if we aren’t attending community services. We have Rations controlling how the people eat, we have the government burning crops to starve out the weakest. We have prisons being built to house all the ones who didn’t want to live like this. So the people don’t give a fuck, does that make it any less wrong?”

  Claudia stared hard back at him. She had no answer.

  “This is the revolution no one cared about,” he said, “But I’ll be damned if I’m going to not right the wrongs just because of that.”

  Her hard stare melted into the smallest of smiles, “Had you been anyone else, I would have called them into arrest you. But there’s something so… innocent about you that I can’t quite reject what you say.”

  Jack returned a warm gaze and gulped back the rest of his whisky. When he replaced the empty glass on the table, he stirred the solitary ice cube with his finger and sighed.

  “I need you to realise that I will protect you at all costs,” he said, “You can continue to live where you do, and you might not be in any greater risk than you are at the moment. But if you want total and complete security, I can take you somewhere safe. Whatever you feel comfortable with, but I want you to know that I look after those who help me.”

  “And those who don’t?”

  “I only harm those who seek to challenge me,” he said, “But I think we have long since passed that.”

  Tensions quelled for a few moments. Claudia delicately sipped her wine as the music in the background blared, obscuring the last of their conversation. Aware of the pressure he was exerting on the woman, Jack brushed away the determination. Claudia was still a woman caught in a mess, just as he was. Occasionally he forgot they weren’t tools to be used and cast aside at will.

  “Did you enjoy it?” he said, “Before it became like this, did you enjoy politics?”

  She nodded, “Very much so. I studied it at Cambridge and did the whole unpaid intern thing.”

  “And no family?”

  “What do you need from me?” she said abruptly, “I’m not here for a personal chat.”

  He leant in closer.

  “A name,” he said, “It’s a name I’ve been wondering for some time, and I’m not even entirely convinced that this person exists, but I am struggling to think of any other logical explanation. You see I am confused. Everything that’s happened to our country is a hallmark of a despot or a paranoid politician. But we’ve had two successive PMs and nothing has changed, it’s only worsened and not in any specific way either. It’s chaos. And after months and months of being on the run, hiding from the authorities and watching my friends die, it got me thinking. Exactly who wants to continue this chaos?”

  Claudia blinked, her eye contact faltered and Jack instantly recognised the expression of woman who knew more than she was letting on.

  “Who are they?”

  She shook her head slightly, “I can’t tell you.”

  “You know their name, you must do.”

  “No,” she shook her head even more violently. “I don’t. Not even David knew it.”

  Jack leant forward, “Tell me more.”

  “I can’t, I really can’t,” she said, “I only saw him once.”

  “He’s the one, isn’t he?” Jack asked, his heart sinking. It was as if he had found a key to a room he never wished to look inside. Even knowing the contents would break his heart.

  Claudia nodded, and Jack felt his mind throbbing with the knowledge. One man, puppeteering the whole show. He’d entertained the idea, seriously enough to question her about it. Never did he expect his nightmare to come true.

  “I can’t say he is alone,” she said, “I can’t say there aren’t more of him. Maybe there is, but I’ve worked with these politicians all my life. I’ve sacrificed having a family, having a life for them - for the chance to work in government and do what I love doing. But they are fucking idiots, and fucking idiots don’t coordinate things like this. Not on this scale. Not this well. Whoever is controlling this… this fucking genocide. It wasn’t David White… and it certainly isn’t Cameron Snowden.”

  “And you say y
ou only met him the once?”

  “No,” she said, “I never met him. It was after I’d handed in a speech for David, talked him through how to recite it and what questions he might expect from the press. I was just clearing a few things up in my office when I went to say goodnight to him, and then the man walked in. I only caught a glimpse of him, but I knew who he was instantly. He was always a presence in David’s life. I’d handled his calendar for long enough - there were times when David would schedule family time even though his wife and boys were out of London. For years I thought it was an affair. He was on edge the whole day leading up to these meetings and it wasn’t until I overheard the conversation they were having from the other side of the door that I realised it wasn’t anything of the sort.”

  “What were these meetings for?”

  “I have no idea,” she said, glancing furtively in either direction, “But David fiercely defended having them when I questioned them. He even so far as shouted at me - that it was conversations well above my pay grade. Well, he wasn’t even Prime Minister then.”

  “You think this was all planned out, even before David was in power?”

  Claudia nursed her wine and frowned. Jack took from her furrowed brow that it had been a question she had been marinating in her head for a while.

  “David… David was never very charismatic…” she hesitated before continuing, “He loved his job, but I don’t think he ever really had grand designs for his career until he was in his mid-thirties. I’d been with him for a couple of years by then. Something changed. At first I thought it might be a mid-life crisis hitting early or a sudden spurt of enthusiasm, but when he announced that he was running? Out of the blue there was a huge support for him amongst the party. For me, for someone that had been by his side throughout? I was surprised.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, something outside catching her eye, “But whatever reason David White made it to power, it had little to do with him.”

  “Do you think this man, or a group this man belongs to had something to do with it? There’s no way he could have rigged a whole election?”

  “No,” she rebuffed him instantly, “David won the election. He just wasn’t the person everyone voted for. They weren’t his policies, they weren’t his beliefs. Maybe I would have never suspected a thing, had every meeting David had with this man not resulted in a massive change in policy.”

  “So David was a puppet?”

  Claudia nodded curtly.

  “Did David know that you were aware of this?”

  “That isn’t what frightens me,” she said, “What if he, this man, knew? He got rid of David. Cameron must only be on a thread. If he fucks up again like he screwed up before, then that’s it.”

  “Screws up again? What do you mean?”

  “Something happened a few months ago, maybe a year back, Cameron changed policy last minute and it was a catastrophe internally. Gossip was rife that he wasn’t fit for the job. By this point I already had my suspicions. Cameron walked too easily into David’s shoes. They were good friends. If there was one person who knew the allegations against David were false, it was Cameron. And yet he just stood by and watched it happen.”

  “So you knew even then that there was something wrong? That this man might be manipulating multiple people?”

  Claudia wiped her damp eyes, “It wasn’t my job to interfere. It wasn’t my place.”

  Pausing to reflect on what he just learnt, Jack was astonished at how far back this conspiracy went. He knew there might be someone at the heart of the government that was pulling the strings, but to hear his mad notion confirmed? It both frightened and elated him. At least now, he had a true enemy to focus on; but it came at the price of the most impossible, impregnable target.

  Right now, there was nothing he could do to actively work against the government. Until he could truly define this man, he knew that Claudia’s safety was a priority.

  “You need to leave with me today,” Jack whispered, “It’s not safe for you. This man can dismantle governments - just think what he could do to either of us.”

  Tears filled Claudia’s eyes, but they did not trickle down her cheeks, rather they shivered on the cusp of crying, trembling with a sense of pride.

  “I have a safehouse here in town,” he said, “We can walk there within ten minutes.”

  Instead of leaping at the chance, she seemed to hesitate, caught up in the question rather than providing an answer.

  “You don’t stand a chance,” he said, “This man is doing an excellent job of pretending not to exist - don’t you think he’ll do whatever he can to make sure it stays that way?”

  She nodded, but still she did not feel safe in his hands.

  “I promise you,” Jack reached out to her shivering hands, “I promise you that you’ll be safe.”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she retreated her hands to her side.

  She was right. Jack couldn’t promise her that. He’d promised the same to Scar, and he had failed her. Lana was dead. So many countless others.

  “Can I tell you something?” he said slowly, she nodded, “A few weeks ago I had to kill a friend. A really, really good friend. They’d caught her. She was kicking and screaming trying to get free, and I watched. I knew she was dead the second I saw her being dragged away. But what torture she would be put through, just for information on me? It was unthinkable. An arduous journey of pain until she could stand no more. And I didn’t want that for her. If I could have saved her I would have, but I was surrounded as it was. So I shot her. I shot her right in the chest,” he gestured to his heart, “And she slumped to the ground. How about I promise to do that for you, before anyone else does?”

  Claudia grimaced, but there was a certain warmth to it, “Yeah. That’s a promise I can trust.”

  She necked the remainder of her glass and Jack was tempted by another, but knew that their priorities lay elsewhere.

  As they rose from the table, Jack felt weighed down by the new information. It was more than he felt capable to comprehend. Four years ago he was an ignorant self-deprecating sorting office worker, and now he held within his mind possibly one of the most vital pieces of information in the country. What made him feel even worse was that he did not know what to do with it. It was like he had peeled back another layer of a parcel only to find yet more packaging, and he was still ignorant to its contents. What did it all mean - and what were its implications to the future of The Resistance? There was a tough battle ahead of them, regardless of who they were fighting.

  Jack pulled his hood over his head as they stood in the doorway of the pub, rain battering them. Claudia was glancing in all directions. Taking her hand, he smiled gently at her, but offered her no comfort in words.

  “Keep pace with me and if I tell you to run, run.”

  Before she had a chance to absorb the information, he set off along the sodden pavement and into the brink of the storm.

  They arrived back at the safehouse, hair dripping wet but alive. It was dilapidated house built in the seventies that seemed itself surprised to have survived this long. Its walls were crumbling and several roof tiles were missing or scattered on the back lawn, evidence of a horrendous storm a few years ago. Consequently, upstairs occasionally leaked and the bathroom was infested with damp. Downstairs was a clutter of furniture and fading wallpaper. The kitchen overflowed with enough junk to service several car boot sales and the living room was a blanket of browns and beiges. But it was safe, and it would do for at least another night now that Jack had no reason to be here.

  Katie popped her head round the corner from the kitchen and smiled, wild eyed at them.

  “Just had a call from Kyle,” she said, “He needs to see you at HQ by Friday.”

  “He got out of London?”

  Katie nodded, “Yep, heading to a location near Manchester for the night before travelling North first thing. He sounded exhausted.”

&n
bsp; “He’s lucky to have escaped,” Claudia interrupted, “I heard they were opening fire in the streets again.”

  It was then that Katie acknowledged Claudia’s presence. She cocked her head curiously.

  “She’s with me,” he said, wanting to keep her identity a secret for now. Katie had been a lovely host, but with the current state of affairs, he could not trust anyone.

  It was an ever present concern. Some days it panicked him, others it merely irritated him like a suspicious lump under the skin. Though Kyle and Alex had been investigating in their own way, the identity of the traitor was still hidden. It made Jack question everything he had taken for granted before. Arriving at another safehouse without digging into the owner and its current inhabitants was completely out of the question. Trust was a fossil of the past. Anyone and everyone was a suspect. He had Emma vet Katie before he arrived and it was looking increasingly likely that he would now have to travel to Headquarters directly from Colchester. For that he would need a reliable driver, and right now he could think of no one better than Claudia herself.

  “Can we get her a new ID ready for tomorrow?” he asked Katie, “Name of Tanya Phillips.”

  Katie nodded, “Okay, will be ready as soon as possible.”

  Jack steered Claudia into the living room and sat her down.

  “Why do I need a new ID?”

  “Because I’m going to need you to drive me to Headquarters.”

  “I don’t know the way!” she flushed, and Jack appreciated the immensity of what he was asking.

  He brought himself back to the day he first accepted The Resistance into his life. It hadn’t been an easy task, and though he had been exposed to some of what they were up to, seeing it all in action for the first time was difficult to digest. For Claudia, that journey had only just begun. Though for months she had clearly toyed with the idea that something with the government was wrong, Jack was in no doubt that she never stopped to think for a second that The Resistance offered any solutions for the problem.