by S. G Mark
Nostalgia filled him. The last time he had been here was the beginning of the end. Alex had just been shot and Jack was barking orders at the others. In retrospect his appointment as public leader should have been expected. Still, it was strange being back.
“You can take off your blindfold,” he instructed Claudia.
“Is this it?”
Jack nodded as one of the guards opened the door for him and helped him out.
“We weren’t expecting you,” the guard said.
Jack didn’t recognise him, “What’s your name?”
“Danny, sir,” he said, proudly.
Jack smiled and patted him on the shoulder.
“Get back to duty,” he said, “I’ll be fine from here.”
He turned to see Claudia staring at him in casual awe. Jack shuffled her inside as quickly as he could before she could say anything.
The warmth from the fireplace smothered them immediately. A few heads looked up from the dining table and nodded at Jack, who returned an emotionless smile. He didn’t recognise any of them.
“This is your headquarters?” she whispered.
Jack took a pebble from the skirting board and dropped it down the hole. A moment later the door slid open and he held out his arm.
“After you.”
As they descended, the warm air abandoned them. At the bottom of the stairs, the two guards stood with candles by their chairs. They were already preparing for ShutDown.
“Oh my god,” Claudia gasped when she saw the extent of the basement, “How many people are here?”
“Right now? I’m not sure,” he said, “We have dormitories and a kitchen area. Anything you really need.”
“And you trust me with all this?” she said, “Knowing who I am? What I know? What I used to do?”
Jack caught her eye at this point and the wonder faded from her blue eyes.
“I’m not leaving am I?” she said, and there was a relief to her tone that he hadn’t been expecting.
Jack placed a comforting arm on her shoulder, but before he had a chance to speak a voice shouted his name down the corridor.
They both jumped and turned to see Alex staring angrily at them both.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he shouted, before his eyes fell to Claudia, “And what the fuck is she doing here?”
Claudia was staring between the two men, and Jack knew exactly what she was thinking.
Steering her away from Alex, Jack strode towards the dining area and grabbed a woman he vaguely recognised.
“Can you look after Claudia for a bit, please?” he asked her.
The woman nodded and immediately invited Claudia to take a seat next to her.
Meanwhile, Jack rounded on Alex.
“Kyle told me to come here,” he said, “Didn’t he tell you?”
“I haven’t heard from Kyle in weeks,” he said, “He’s fucking missing in action for all I know.”
“Fucking hell!” Jack said hushedly.
“Come with me,” Alex turned and strode into his office.
His desk was a sea of papers and maps. Jack closed the door behind him.
“So he’s alive then?” Alex said, “Thank fuck for that. I was worried. The reports coming in from London are chaos.”
“I don’t understand, he told me to come here - and he’s not arrived?”
“Well don’t look at me, I didn’t speak to him!” he shrugged.
It hit him like an avalanche. Ice cold realisation.
“I didn’t speak to him either,” he said slowly, “He spoke to someone else.”
Alex looked up from his paper hell, fear flashing across his face, “Who told you?”
“Katie Somerset, Colchester safehouse.”
“Colchester?” Alex nearly spat.
“What?”
“Five safehouses were burned to the ground today,” he said, “Colchester was one of them.”
Jack fell back into his chair, “They must’ve known I was there.”
“No,” Alex said forcefully, “It doesn’t make any sense. If that wasn’t Kyle who Katie spoke to, then why did they want you out of there before it was raided and torched?”
“Then it was Kyle who called, and he’ll arrive shortly?”
“Or…”
“What are you thinking, The Mole?”
“Five safe houses in one night isn’t the result of great detective work. It’s a snitch.”
“Then why save my life by telling me to leave?”
“Instruction was to come here?”
“Yeah,” Jack said, “You don’t think? I wasn’t followed.”
“And what about Lady Muck next door?”
“We can trust her,” Jack said, already annoyed that Alex was suggesting otherwise.
“We can trust the personal assistant to the former Prime Minister? The one who bloody introduced Martial Law, Curfew and ShutDown? Are you so dense?”
“I told you what intel we had on her! You were there the night I first made contact,” he spat, “We can trust her.”
“As far as we can fucking well throw her!” Alex slammed his fist on the desk, “Keep an eye on her I said, not invite her round for bloody tea and biscuits!”
“When are you going to learn to fucking trust me?” Jack yelled, his blood pulsating at his temple, “When are you going to actually fucking acknowledge that you’re the only one in this damn organisation who doesn’t have a little faith in me? It’s my name the public know. It’s my life on the fucking line, not yours. I trust her, so can you trust that I’m not going to fuck this up?”
“Oh piss off, Jack,” Alex snapped, “You think after a couple of months in the limelight that you actually comprehend what’s going on here?”
Jack stifled a laugh and folded his arms. He watched, delightfully, as curiosity twinkled in Alex’s eyes.
“What?” he smirked, “Do you really think you know the intricacies of what we are fighting here?”
Now openly laughing, Jack felt a rush of endorphins spill forth from his belly. It was a fantastic feeling to laugh again. His stomach muscles were knotted from underuse.
“You really are a childish wanker,” Alex spat, turning his back on Jack.
“There’s one man ruling this country,” Jack suppressed his laughter, “And it isn’t Cameron Snowden. And the one person who could even confirm what he looks like in the slightest… is sitting next door, frightened for her life and wondering whether she’ll live out the night.”
Alex’s cheeks hinged to shock, “What?”
“One man,” Jack repeated, “He controlled David White. He made him Prime Minister and he took it all away from him.”
“That woman told you all that?”
“She told me yes, but I had already surmised as much,” Jack clutched his side as the laugh exhaled the last of its life from his body, “I don’t know who he is or exactly what he does, but I am going to damn well find out.”
Alex collapsed into his chair. The mountain of paperwork breathed.
“I need a fucking drink,” he sighed.
“So you believe me now?” Jack asked.
His friend looked up at him and Jack caught a fraction of the young man he was underneath it all. Without the weight of the world on his shoulders, Alex Reader was just a boy in his late twenties who only wanted to get drunk and play video games.
“What about The Mole?” Alex replied, ignoring Jack’s question entirely.
“First we have to establish contact with Kyle,” he said, “Then I suggest we lure The Mole out. Set them a trap they can’t escape from. Give away false information. Tell them wrong safehouse addresses, see which ones burn.”
“You’re finally learning from me,” Alex said, stretching underneath his desk and retrieving two glasses and a bottle of whisky. “In case of emergency.”
“I really could have done with this about two years ago,” Jack said, reaching over and grabbing his generously filled glass.
Meanwhil
e, Alex raised his own and pondered for a few moments, “To the end.”
They both sipped quietly, both consumed in what the end meant. For Jack, the burnt taste of alcohol singed the back of his throat and he felt it drag him down. Was the end escaping this alive? That they would bring down the government and fuel the revolution? Or was it merely a sad acceptance that neither of them were coming out of this alive.
Jack looked up to meet Alex’s eyes and was met with a powerfully emotionless stare that he knew mirrored his own. He’d become the machine Alex had bred him to be, finally. Jack was but a voice in his head, calling him home.
“So what do you think, one man or a monster, or a whole organisation above the government we know and love?” Jack urged an answer from Alex.
“I’d need to know more,” he said, “The one man theory sounds ridiculous, but equally so does the whole puppet government. It’s all far too Illuminati.”
“That’s what I thought,” Jack said, “But we’ve been dealing with Orwell this whole time, and we haven’t questioned it. I believe her, Claudia. A woman like that doesn’t get to where she was by being weak, frightened. But on the night I first met her? She was terrified, but I don’t think it was the threat of having her Rations revoked, do you?”
Alex nodded, “So what do we do?”
“Like you said, we need to know more.”
“What does she know?” Alex gestured towards Claudia outside.
Jack sat back in his chair and recounted what she had told him earlier that day. Throughout, Alex continued to nod but remained silent. It was only when Jack had run out of things to say that he next opened his mouth.
“I think what we need to establish is if it was the same man visiting David every time, and indeed if this same person is now visiting Cameron Snowden,” he said, “Though Cameron seems a much stronger leader than David… Do you really think he’d let someone come in and trample all over his policies?”
“Unless…”
Alex raised an eyebrow as he topped himself up.
“How would you feel if you’d just gotten a job, and this man from the shadows who owned the guy whose job you just stole comes along and starts telling you what to do? You’d get rid of him, right?”
Alex nodded, “What’s your point?”
“Well it’s something you’d do, if you were the most powerful man in the country? You’d just get rid of them - sideline them or just plain lock them up. But there’s no way you’d do that if that person was already your friend?”
“Are you implying that this... this person knew both David and Cameron before either of them were PM?”
“They could have met at university together, or somewhere in the political career,” Jack said, “It’s crazy, but then what isn’t these days.”
“Either way it makes him untouchable,” Alex sighed, staring off into space.
Alex was right. In either case, this mysterious man was unreachable. Without a name or even what he looked like, he was just smoke in the breeze. Claudia was the only lead and without infiltrating the highest security clearance of the government itself, it was looking increasingly likely that they might never find out who this person was.
“The number of people who go in and out of Downing Street every day,” Alex said, “We couldn’t even track each one of them.”
Downing Street - something about Alex’s exhaustive tone had caught Jack’s imagination.
“Every evening, she said. The meetings were always in the evening,” Jack grinned, “How many do you reckon arrive and leave in the evening?”
“Probably just as many?”
“Why? Anyone who was important enough to leave late would have been there most of the day. It’s worth a shot, surely?”
“Maybe,” Alex said, “But London is practically in lockdown. You’d never get in. Not now.”
“Maybe we just need to distract them?”
Blueprints of a building in Newcastle slammed down on top of another set in York and Manchester. The light from the lantern focussed on them as the fringes of Alex’s room were abandoned to darkness. Smoke rose from candle that had withered into inexistence. For the past three hours they had been formulating plans. So far they’d arranged a kidnapping, the complete destruction of the M25 and Alex had even suggested that they make an attempt on Cameron Snowden’s life whilst he was on location. There were flaws in every single plan they could come up with. What they needed was something bigger, something better than they’d ever tried before. Their best hope rested in Jack returning to London and the only way that was going to happen was if the entire security forces shifted their focus from the capital.
Alex slammed his finger down on the Newcastle building.
“We have a guy in this office,” he said, “We recruited him last year. He’s been leaking his CRU tactics for months.”
“He’s good for this?”
“Absolutely,” Alex laughed triumphantly, “We can get guys out to the other buildings.”
“And how long before the bombs are built?”
“A couple of weeks, tops,” he said, “This has to be all done top secret, though. No one can know what the plan is. You need to be on your own for this. We can’t risk The Mole finding out.”
Jack nodded, “I agree. We only tell people on a need to know basis. Tell them half the story, if anything at all.”
“And once you’re in London,” Alex said, “You might only have a matter of days to find out more on this person.”
By morning they’d agreed on the plan. The entire bottle of whisky was drained and ShutDown ended with an explosion of light bursting from a bulb. Suddenly the candlelit planning seemed meagre and embarrassing, their plans ever so slightly tainted by the cold light. But it was agreed.
A few days later, Jack sat on the edge of the farm amongst the flowers. There were so many more now than when he’d first arrived. It was a colourful graveyard of memories. All those lost lives, and the families they’d left behind.
A summer breeze soothed his face. The Scottish temperature failed to impress again this year, but it was still nice to feel its familiar touch once more. Even a haze of heat managed to ripple above the far field, as Aiden pulled the plough across it. Beyond the boundaries of his land, the river sparkled in the sunshine, peeking through the lush forests that lay beyond the fencing. The mountains loomed up on either side of the valley and Jack looked on fondly at the hill he’d trained on. It hadn’t changed in all this time and there were a few new recruits up there at the moment being harassed to run faster, longer, to find strength where there was none and to find a reason to keep running when all was lost.
They hadn’t heard from Kyle yet, though it confirmed nothing. Being off radar was a skill to survival. If he hadn’t been in contact, it was most likely because he wasn’t able to. There were of course news reports filing in from the safehouse casualties. Katie Somerset, mother of two, was dead. Her husband personally condemned her actions live on television. At least Jack was able to draw comfort from the fact that Katie, at least, hadn’t been The Mole. One more suspect to cross of the list.
Their identity was driving Jack crazy. Whoever it was had wanted Jack to leave Colchester alive. There was still a chance that Kyle had been on the other end of the phone, but with Katie now dead there was no way to prove it; besides, Jack had already resigned himself to the truth. The Mole knew where he had been, and he supposed they knew where he now was.
Extra security had been added to the gates. Alex had round the clock surveillance on the nearby villages and junctions. If there was a chance of an attack, they would know about it well in advance. But there was nothing. Headquarters was secure, but it did not stop the niggling doubt in Jack’s mind that something wasn’t right.
As he looked up at the hill, he remembered the night he’d tried to run away, how Emma had stopped him and how he’d found the dying man. Nearly three years later, the same Mole was hounding them, evading them. Neither Alex or Jack believed that it coul
d be someone different. Whoever it was had access to high profile missions then, and had continued to leak information throughout the past few years. Had they been killed at any point during this time, the leaks would have stopped, at least for a while. How many deaths had this one person caused? And for what? What drove them to betray their friends? Jack couldn’t stomach it being someone he knew. To think that a possible friend had betrayed Lana, it ripped his heart apart. He might have pulled the trigger, but they had killed her. From the moment they’d located her safehouse she was dead. Jack merely shot a screaming corpse.
A pair of legs sat down next to him. Jack curtly acknowledged them.
“I never realised quite how beautiful Scotland was,” she said, “I’d only ever been here on business.”
Claudia was coping well with the isolation so far. He surmised that she was probably more grateful than anything to be locked away. She had made herself useful with supplies, gearing up any guards and relaying any messages. Jack was embarrassed to admit that she was coping far better than he ever had at the transition.
“I’ve been all over England,” he said, staring out at the glen, “But nothing beats home.”
“Were you brought up here?”
Jack shook his head, “No, not here specifically. It’s all home, isn’t it? Every tree, every peaceful loch and rugged mountainside. As a kid I used to look up at them and dream up wonderful adventures - I used to think I could be like Frodo Baggins, on an adventure just like Bilbo. I remember the thrill I’d get, right here,” he touched his chest, “That I was doing something worthwhile, that maybe I was important. It was never that I wanted to be, it was just that I wondered what it might feel like, to be a part of something bigger. And looking at this, at those mountains and feeling the breeze on my skin…”
To his right, Claudia smiled weakly, “Now you’re the most important man in the country.”