The Cult of The Enemy: The Dark Places Trilogy

by S. G Mark

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The bright lights burned his retinas. Five long, arduous hours of travel, and he finally arrived a location he felt safe in. The cramped lorry had numbed his legs, the darkness had cleansed his mind. Back in London, there was only the mission to behold.

  As he stepped out of the depot and into the street, he took out the piece of paper Alex had given him. Scribbled on it was an address in central London: a safehouse where he was the only visitor. Paid in full, the landlord had been a donor to the organisation and Alex said he had been more than willing to help in any way he could.

  It was now one in the afternoon, and for the past five hours, there had been continuous bombings in the opposite side of the country. Manchester. Bradford. Cardiff. Sunderland. Darlington. York. Sheffield. Broken bridges, slaughtered civilians, panic on the streets, paralysed commuters consumed in a morning of massacre: serving only to get Jack into London safely. With the security teams focus on the North, few would be looking south to the capital when the coordinated attacks broadcasted a loud and clear message. By now, Alex would have sent out rumours revealing sightings of Jack near each of the locations. Whispers would trickle through the close knit communities, eventually reaching the prying ears of the police and the CRU. Even if one person spotted him on the streets of London, who would believe them when there were so many other sightings up North?

  Hailing down a bus, Jack hopped on and sat at the back. The grumbling engine muted all other noise and he allowed himself to settle into a deep trance as the concrete jungle passed by in intervals of bus shelters and traffic lights. Turkish barbers, greasy cafes, dilapidated pubs followed by grimy flat entrances, stumbling old men with cracked walking canes, carrying a week’s worth of shopping in a stretched out plastic bag, drooping at their ankles.

  The safehouse was a basement apartment, with a preceding grotty staircase and piles of discarded rubbish clinging to the steps. Inside was every bit as dark as he had imagined. The cold seemed to breathe. The wallpaper in several rooms had been scraped back, but the job never finished. The decor was seventies chic with an air of eighties flare. Everything seemed to be at least thirty years old, from the sofa right down to the electrical wiring - the lights flickered worryingly from time to time.

  With the curtains already drawn, he scouted the house for other security flaws. The back door had nearly rotted away, so much so that the rusty chain lock was hanging on by a few splinters. Still, the main lock appeared reassuringly solid. All the windows were barred - burglaries were clearly a way of life around this part of town. In one of the windows in the spare bedroom, there was a small hole. Glass had scattered around the carpet, amongst which Jack found the stone culprit that had broken the window. Kids, probably, bored to death and prowling the streets in an attempt to stretch their mischievous minds. Jack made a mental note to repair it.

  Security checks complete, Jack sat in the darkness on a horrid armchair. He faced a television that appeared to no longer work. With no phone, no access to the internet or connection with the news networks, he felt completely isolated. This was it. He was on his own and he knew that he needed to abandon all other thought and to turn his attentions to the goal of the mission.

  Searching through the dresser, Jack found some old letters, envelopes and pens with which to scribble down everything he knew so far. Kneeling on the carpet and poised over the coffee table, he began to visualise everything he had learnt from day one, from the very first moment that his life had changed.

  Suicide bombers in Princes Street Gardens - government ordered. Why cause terror when it was already happening through other means? Introduction of the CRU - essentially a replacement for the police, but the police still operational. Why create a division when the powers of the other could be changed? What was the purpose of the increased security - as a means of control? As a way of instilling fear? As a way to manipulate how people felt about terrorism? As he added the themes and recreated the world on ink and paper, he struggled to see the goals behind it. If there was a master plan, Jack failed to see what it was. This man that Claudia had seen, what did he want - infamy clearly wasn’t it.

  Why did this man want David White to ascend to power, when everything about his personality read that he wasn’t capable of the job? Was David’s weakness advantageous to this man’s plans? But what then happened - David was deposed, replaced by Cameron Snowden. Did The Man have links to him? Had he always been the reserve candidate, should David fail him anyway? It sounded all too much like conspiracy for Jack to feel comfortable with a solid idea. Whatever was going on, he needed hard evidence to stand a chance of tackling it; there was no room for speculation in the game he was now playing. Too many deaths had been tallied - it was time to strike and the days of fumbling around in the darkness were numbered.

  Sitting back, he rested against the ugly armchair and sighed. The candles he’d lit flickered in the gentle draught. Outside, sirens wailed. In the darkness he almost forgot it was still daylight outside. A bright summer’s day, nearly September but it would be easy to forget in the warm rays. Sunglasses and skirts, shorts and suncream - through the blackout curtains, he could imagine the world passing by without a care of what lay behind the murky windows of the flat beneath their feet.

  With no access to the news, he could only imagine the devastation that had been caused in the North. Alex and Jack had planned the whole thing; planning the bombs for the most impact. Their plan had worked in the short run. He’d made it to London, to the safehouse. Now he was on his own and couldn’t rely on the skill of others to help him out. It was a daunting position to be in, and yet somehow strangely liberating.

  Food had already been delivered to the safe house - presumably by the owner himself on Alex’s behest. There was no reason for Jack to leave the flat until he had a lead to follow. As evening settled in and a few stray rays of sunset scattered through the curtains, Jack set about making himself a pathetic dinner of baked beans on toast before returning with the steaming plate to the living room to make further progress on his plan.

  His brain circulated around the core concept of The Man. What did he stand to gain from a relationship with the Prime Minister? What were his motivations for being this secretive? The more he thought of it, the more odd he found the whole scenario. An unknown player, investing so much energy into ensuring a weakling like David White came to power? Who had he been before he was the party leader - just another MP? There was nothing unique about his upbringing as far as Jack was aware. Even his degree wasn’t remarkable. David White by all accounts was not a hugely intelligent man, and combined with his uninspiring and uncharismatic approach to politics, the idea of him rising through the ranks to become the country’s leader seemed dangerously farfetched. Staring at the mass of paper he had spread out across the table, he was enveloped with David as a character. What had been so special that this man had chosen him?

  And then it weirdly struck him. What if it had nothing to do with David? What if David was just the one who made it happen? Whatever plans The Man had whilst David was in power, they were certainly being carried over for Cameron’s term. What if it was planned - Cameron’s ascension to the throne? What if he had always been lined up to follow in David’s footsteps? And if that was the case, was there another one just like Cameron now - being primed and prepared for his or her eventual ascension? Someone else must have met this man, and finding out who could only be a long and arduous task.

  Morning dawned. Jack had slept on the mattress in one of the bedrooms, but it hadn’t been comfortable. The wind was rattling the back door more frequently than he’d like. All night he struggled to sink into an easy sleep, only to be awoken by another noise in the dark, a sinister thought or a heart wrenching pang of guilt and regret as another dream of Eliza and her daughter disappeared like wisps of smoke into the sky.

  As he forced himself through a bowl of breakfast cereal, his unsettled stomach was a reminder of the move he was about to make. In a little
under an hour, he would leave the front door, calmly and without drawing attention. He should be as a ghost, another face in the crowd to forget as quickly as it was passed. He would then stalk the streets around Whitehall, shielding his face from the cameras, never lingering too long. He would repeat this every day until he became familiar with the pattern of life around there; recognising the frequent bodies that bumbled down the streets, analysing their movements, taking note of when they went for lunch, where they went and who, if anyone, accompanied them.

  Even before he had left the house, it seemed like a futile exercise. Gathering intelligence on a seemingly random state of events and a cohesion of people was a task altogether too much for one person alone, let alone a fugitive who could be shot dead at any moment. Regardless, he left the house and walked to Whitehall, focussing on the end game of his mission. On his way in he caught glimpses of newspaper headlines detailing the attacks that had occurred the previous day. Two hundred dead and counting: just for one man to proceed with his mission. Had Jack allowed the guilt to eat away at him, he never would have made it down the street, let alone Whitehall.

  As it was, he reached the political crown of the city by lunchtime, just as a wave of city workers flooded the streets. Ducking for temporary cover, he found a little park behind Westminster Abbey in which to gather his thoughts and find strength. The trees, caressed by a gentle breeze, smothered him from sight as he stood in the far corner of the park, leaning against the wall and staring out across the Thames. The river sparkled like quartz and he found it therapeutic to simply stare at the incoming tide. Following an aimless circle of Whitehall, he had learnt only that politicians and civil servants were busy people, too stressed to notice the most wanted man in the country wander past them.

  Already he was disheartened, but as he focussed on the soothing water, he knew he could do this, but starting with an entirely blank canvas was the hardest thing he’d ever done. This was no rescue mission. There was no target to follow or kill. Patience was the only weapon he had.

  The next day he retraced his steps, altering the route slightly. Day after day with no real information found, he repeated his actions. It was a fruitless and exhausting effort and his resolve was wearing thin by the end of the week. He hadn’t learned anything significant and he hadn’t heard from anyone in The Resistance. Not that he had been expecting to - from the very beginning of this plan, Alex and Jack had agreed that the mission be completely secret. Still, he felt cheated by the plan - as if Alex had robbed him of company purely out of spite.

  It wasn’t easy. The fate of the country seemed upon him and he wasn’t ready to carry that burden. He wasn’t a scholar of politics, he had barely followed it before he’d been drafted into The Resistance. By no means was he an intelligent person, able to distinguish the subtle intricacies of a government or global ambition. He was just a boy, fresh out of blaming his parents for his mistakes.

  Every day he woke alone, and every day he slept alone - barely uttering a word to anyone, if at all. Only habitual manners blurted out when doors were opened for him, or people stepped out of his way. It wasn’t conversation, it wasn’t even dialogue. Isolation, in its purist form.

  By night he wrote his summaries, changing his synopsis more frequently than he wanted to. Some days he believed The Man didn’t exist; others, Jack thought he knew his every move. It was heartbreaking, to reiterate the same steps every day without hope that they would ever achieve anything.

  Above all, he felt under equipped for this mission. Jack had spent so long under Kyle’s wing, helping those in need and distributing funds amongst the lower ranks, that he now felt he wasn’t skilful enough to be privileged with this mission. But Jack was the only one who could do this. As smart and as savvy as Alex was, his face didn’t carry the threat that Jack’s did. People feared Jack, people on all sides were intimidated by him. That was why it had to be him, Jack just wished he had a little help.

  After a few days of venturing into Whitehall, he soon gave up on his pathetic scheme. He had learnt nothing there, not even a few vaguely recognisable faces. It waste of his energies and a threat to his life that he couldn't maintain. Instead, he sat in the living room, pouring over his notes. He began to form a picture of The Man, and who he might be.

  He had to be single, a lone figure of which few knew his name. Such a manipulator would be found out and he clearly did not crave the attention that he surely deserved. Jack began to even revere him, as he masqueraded his identity so exquisitely that he found himself envying The Man. To have that ability to blend into the background, to never be seen and to manipulate at will those around him - they were skills Jack could only dream of.

  As he delved into The Man’s mind, he tried to pull apart what was at the core of his drive. Was it money? Was it a vision of how the country should be run? Jack grasped at any inkling he had and drew it up on the wall. His pieces of paper had evolved and he had begun drawing on the walls itself. The ancient wallpaper hadn’t taken kindly to his ink work, but he cared little for the decor.

  Every branch of his mad theory contained little twigs of ideas. He had even dared to think that Claudia had been lying all this time - that there was no Man to chase and she had been pandering to his pathetic idea all this time. But still, Alex had faith that he was right and that gave him the stamina to continue.

  Ten days had passed since he had arrived and from the small gathering of newspapers he had collected in the living room, neither he nor The Resistance had achieved anything. The headlines were plump with The Resistance bombings, but hungry for any meaningful content. The bombings had continued but no outcome had resulted from it. It was just death and pain, misery and tactics. Jack read and re-read every line to ascertain any subtext he thought he might be missing: all in vain. There was nothing he misunderstood. It was just plain journalism, end to end. The photographs illustrated the contempt. With scenes like the ones Alex created, the media needed no hateful words.

  And so Jack was resigned to isolation. It was draining, like a malevolent headache for which there was no cure. His meagre meals, he ate alone. His spontaneous acts of frustration, he embarrassed only himself. Jack soon became, and rapidly so, low and increasingly miserable with his situation. Days merged into weeks and still he had not made any progress. His food supplies had been replenished, always when he was out. And there was no reason to leave his house on days where he lacked the will or drive.

  On more than one occasion he dwelled, sitting on the corner of the sofa and facing the small crack in the blackout blind as he wondered what his life would have been like now. If he could but abandon his duties, what we he now do? His mind grew blank at the prospect. All his life he’d searched for a purpose and now when he strove to think of one, it was just a sea of grey. An empty ocean and desolate lands: that was what was left of Jack Blackwood and his grand ideas.

  Autumn’s clutches were snatching already. From glorious sunshine to a chilling breeze that made summer seem like a lifetime ago, Jack was stalking the streets again amid another lunchtime rush. Every day he revelled at how little anyone looked at him - too absorbed in their own problems to notice who they’d bumped into or waited with at a traffic light. Or maybe they never expected anyone like Jack to be among them, strolling freely without threat or menace. Did the wealthy and privileged think they were so far from danger that it might never walk amongst them?

  Every day Jack overheard the same complaints about work, the same dull recitals of the weekend they’d just had or the one they had planned. Nothing of what they said amounted to any hint of a government conspiracy, or even the oppressive one that was currently in charge. It was all just boring rhetoric. Middle aged woman’s affair, young couple’s wedding plans, retirement hopes were all underpinned by the thin film of hopelessness Jack knew all too well. It was misery; a gentle but blanketed misery.

  And as every day was the same for them, so it was for Jack. Passing the same monuments that iconised his struggle, his fear. Hide
outs bookmarked for when a patrol ventured too close, or if a shooting broke out. Places he could go to when he needed a rest from the constant barrage of paranoia. It wasn’t remotely easy - this was a task beyond anything he’d been asked to do before. There wasn’t a deadline to adhere to. The goals changed on a daily basis, and sometimes even Jack forgot what he was doing out on the streets in broad daylight. He was the most wanted man in the country and here he was in the heart of government, preying on its weakest links in the off chance he could topple it.

  How he had survived this long, braving the most dangerous locations, he had no idea. Jack hadn’t put any special effort into his appearance, it was almost as if he wanted to be caught. Maybe a small part of him thought it would be easier if he did, or maybe he had just given up. Too many nights had he returned to find his motivation lost, and the cause he was fighting for crying feebly in the corner.

  Realistically it could be another year before he overheard or saw anything significant, if there was even a chance that might happen. But Alex and Jack had discussed this before he left headquarters. Under murky candlelight they had yawned over the principles of their fight and the same conclusions swirled around like dust in a water glass.

  “This is our last shot, I think,” Alex said, his features anchored with severity. “If we can pull this off, then we can break the cycle. It’s been going on for too long. We aren’t achieving anything with our current tactics, only proving to the people that would be our allies that we are incapable of winning this. Right now the CRU outsmart us. As many moles as we have in their organisation, they have the single best in ours. They are killing us and unless we do something, we are going to be wiped out. Every last one of us.”