“Look I know this is going to sound a little weird, but it’s something that Flackyard said when I had my cosy fireside chat with him at his house in Dorset. While we were talking he made a throw away comment about belonging to a secret society, I think he said something like the New World Order, or something very similar anyway.”
Vince spoke as he wiped his mouth with his handkerchief, “Jake, let me tell you, that stuff about a New World Order is not fiction, you know. He’s not invented it and seriously, it really does exist. Those who have studied this say it’s a conspiracy that originated from an ancient order started in Bavaria in 1755 called the Illuminati. Both Five and Six know all about these guys. If you want my advice I’d leave well alone if I were you, my friend.”
“Well I’m not you, Vince, and if I want your advice
– I’ll give it to you.” Although looking a little put out Vince asked, “So what about this report you had back from London of the images you sent. I liked that. What did the message really say?”
I took the folded piece of paper from my inside jacket pocket and handed it to him.
I watched his expression as he unfolded the white A4 sheet.
“It’s blank! You crafty bastard,” he said.
Jason Stewart pulled up in a cloud of dust at the end of the narrow street. I helped Vince carry his luggage to the car. He squeezed his seventeen stone frame into the front seat of the small saloon. Winding the window down he said, “I’d love to see the face of that Hassan.”
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid,” I said. “I’ll see you when we get back to England.”
In the café, I opened the leather rucksack that Vince had left for me. Fiona and I looked at the small digital transmitter that could recall the underwater lobster pot. I made a mental note to look up as much information on the Illuminati, when I returned to London
Chapter 41
The long flexible blades of the Sea-king helicopter cut the air above our heads. I tapped the pilot on the arm. “Just one more sweep,” I said, “then we’ll return to base and try again tomorrow.” He nodded.
We dropped towards the heavy sea and I watched the wave-tops, flattened by the downward draught of air from the rotor blades.
“OK, Chief,” I shouted over my shoulder. Chief Petty Officer Redfern of the Air-Sea Rescue watch at Portland in Dorset leaned through the door and watched the ocean top.
“Keep her steady, back a bit.” Redfern spoke to the pilot through the microphone in his helmet. The pilot obediently brought the helicopter along a reciprocal course.
“Just a floating piece of wood,” Redfern’s voice came over the intercom.
We moved on to the next square of the search area. Three miles away on the starboard side I could see the English coast around Kimmeridge and Dancing Ledge. Through the grey sea ran black veins as the light fell across the contours of the water. “Too dark now,” I said, and Vince switched off the transmitter. The interior of the cabin glowed with the green light of the instrument panel.
It was two long days before our effort was rewarded. We had hours of ‘forward a bit’ over foamlashed pieces of flotsam and sliding over for a closer look, only to find a shoal of fish, their scales shimmering in the sunlight just below the surface of the water.
When we made contact, the radio transmitter set on Vince’s knees – the one we had stolen from Flackyard’s safe in Marrakech – gave a high pitched ‘pulse’ of response. The pilot held us steady. The wave-crests were inches under us. ‘Beep beep’: it was emitting a signal to us. Vince was talking over the intercom and I grabbed the diver’s rubber-clad arm and tried to go through his instructions all over again in thirty seconds flat.
Redfern tapped my arm and said, “It’ll be OK,” then like a pantomime genie he disappeared. Hands crossed, face lowered, he hit the water with a splash. Only now did I see the target that he had dived towards.
The specially adapted lobster pot was floating amid the waves, green vegetation from the seabed covering most of it. C.P.O. Redfern had the cable lashed around the large brown cage within a minute. The winch operator began to haul it up and brought it splashing and dripping into the cabin of the helicopter. A number of small crabs and seaweed spilled out onto the floor as it rolled around the cramped cabin.
LJ had done his stuff with the top brass. When the helicopter got back to base everything was ready and waiting – even a ration of rum for the still wet C.P.O. Redfern. Vince and I were housed in one of the Air-Sea Rescue workshops with the inner cylinder laid out on the bench when the Station Commander came in to ask if there was anything more we required.
Four bolts had to be cut off, but that was only to be expected after being submerged for prolonged periods of time in salt water. The light alloy panel came free to reveal a large compartment and gave access to two small ballast tanks the propulsion motors and the remote control circuitry.
Vince took a closer look around the compartment using a fibre optic camera linked up to his laptop so as to make sure that the cylinder wasn’t booby-trapped.
“Very interesting,” he said. “Bloody clever, this,” he added.
“What is it?” I asked impatiently.
“It looks like whoever designed this cylinder decided to build in a nasty little explosive device, I’d say just enough to blow the front of your face and hands off, but not enough to kill you. Obviously anyone tampering with it, and who didn’t know the correct procedure for dismantling the thing. Would I’m afraid get a very nasty surprise.”
“Can you deactivate it?” I asked.
“Give me two minutes, after which I’ll either be lying in a pool of blood on the floor or wiping the sweat off of my brow and supping a large glass of that rum over there,” said Vince with a thin smile.
He rendered it safe within minutes.
“Well, that was easier than I’d expected.” Vince held up the flat piece of plastic.
“What we have here, mate, looks like a common or garden processor chip.”
“For your laymen’s mind, that means that it has been programmed with a number of prearranged instructions. Nothing unusual about that, I hear you say, but then this little chap here,” he pointed to a part of the microprocessor.
“I’ve only seen this once before, and that was onboard a Russian nuclear missile.” He saw the look on my face. “Oh don’t worry, it’s nothing sinister – well, not now anyway, all it does is allow it to think for itself once activated.”
“But what the hell is it doing in a lobster pot? Anyway, what they’ve done by the looks of it, is configure it so that every twenty-four hours it would relay a simple message to the motors and ballast tanks to take it to the surface.”
“Then once on the top it would transmit a signal, now the signal is unique to this processor only. When it’s sent its message it simply refills its ballast tanks and then sinks to the bottom again.” He continued to prod around inside the compartment for another ten minutes before proclaiming it absolutely safe.
“So every twenty four hours this metal cylinder had surfaced inside the lobster pot and its unique signal had told Flackyard that it was still “alive and well” as well as giving its exact position, before returning to the bottom,” I said.
“Spot on, old son.”
So George Ferdinand had tried to ‘home in’ on the signal, but failed to spot it before it descended to the seabed again.
Harry Caplin knew that his boat had travelled ten miles on each of Flackyard’s trips.
“Down the coast” he had said.
I reached inside to where a small circular cover was; I could only just get a finger hold to twist the quarter turn required to release it. Once open I found the compact mini-disc stored in an aluminium case, along with two envelopes inside one of those seal-top document bags. Before we opened the CD, we sent for a large jug of coffee and anything that could be rummaged up to eat.
Vince held up the compact mini-disc in one hand and his well earned tumbler of rum
in the other, “Based on the trouble we’ve had finding it, I think this is going to be a tough one to get into!”
I agreed. The man, who had successfully concealed Constantine’s List for many years, had not wanted anyone except himself to view its contents.
This was going to take a long time.
Chapter 42
Perhaps I was expecting the typical type of letters inside the cylinder. I spread both of them out on the tabletop. One was type written on official Whitehall headed paper. The other was hand written on a heavy embossed woven paper. But, why were they in the cylinder together?
I shook the small bag of silica gel crystals that had helped keep the documents dry, and threw it into the waste bin. After examining both letters under the bright light of a desk lamp for watermarks or anything unusual, I read the typed letter from Whitehall. It had been sent to a Russian diplomatic attaché in the commercial department of the London Embassy. His name was Alexandr Vladimirovich Donskoy. It read.
Thursday 7th October 1998 Dear Alex, I shall ask you to destroy this the moment that you have read it.
Tell Uzbekistan that they will have to supply anything from the factory that you ask. Remind them that it wasn’t the Chinese that have supported them financially for the last nine months.
I want the production increased by twenty per cent by the end of the month or I will sell the whole plant. Would your people in Moscow be interested in buying the place? I will leave this with you. Should you be interested, the usual rate will apply. I think the investors here are beginning to realise which way the wind has blown with the bureaucrats and are already becoming restless. You can mark my words that should your fellows actually come into conflict with the hard line fundamentalists, the British will not be long in understanding what must be done.
I am in the process of forming a think-tank group of like-minded people, who see eye to eye with me on certain points regarding this volatile region, so that when the time is right we will be in a position to do something about it.
Your intelligence people are right about the British Prime Minister. Because of his stance on the Iraq war, he won’t survive in office much past this term, if indeed he lasts that long. The weenies in London are already speculating and about to welcome his successor to Downing Street with open arms.
If the worst does happen, then we can expect to have a backlash from Government towards this region of the Middle East and Asia. Demand for farm machinery though, will go through the roof!
Burn this now,
Yours, Oliver
Before reading the other letter, I thought back to my meeting with Adrian Vass at the Central Archive Depository and the subsequent fireside chat that I’d had with the Right Honourable Oliver Hawkworth MP.
Wednesday 27th October 1998
Dear Robert, What a pleasure it was to see you here in London last week. We really must get together more often and not only when there is a trade conference in town! I will come straight to the point, as we are both busy men. The present owners are about to shut down the factory in Uzbekistan, so I am reliably informed. I advise that you instruct our associates in Georgia to take over total control immediately, by force if necessary. Please call me on my number to confirm.
This would of course be a private matter between us and I feel it would be for the best in the long term. The usual procedures apply. I also have pleasure in passing on to you a gift from your Uncle Constantine, who sends his warmest regards, and hopes that your cause benefits greatly by being the guardian of it. He asked me to tell you that he is well, and living a charmed life in the sun.
Your friend, Vladi
* * * Why did Flackyard keep these letters on the seabed? He was definitely a blackmailer of that there was no doubt. Hawkworth had been like a puppet on the end of the puppeteer’s string, ‘persuaded’ to ensure those valuable construction contracts came his way. Hawkworth appeared to be a traitor and was also so corrupt and in so deep that he had been ‘persuaded’ to involve Ferran & Cardini with the counterfeit currency that he so enticingly dangled like a carrot under the Partners’ noses. He was also ‘persuaded’ to have me re-called from the assignment in Dorset away from Flackyard’s business dealings. How many other people on Constantine’s List were ‘persuaded’ to do things?
George Ferdinand always spoke with respect about Flackyard and straightened to attention whenever Flackyard came near to him. He answered him in the short monosyllabic tones of an army subordinate, but which army?
Like a lot of well-educated and wealthy Russians whose families had defected to the west, Flackyard was privileged and able to master accentless English from a very early age. Ferdinand knew about the cylinder and of the existence of Constantine’s List. How much he really knew is difficult to decide, but he was told enough to blackmail at least one person named therein
– Hawkworth. The one man he hated more than anyone else in the world. Ferdinand, however wasn’t interested in construction contracts or anything like that. What he wanted from Hawkworth was large sums of money to finance his drug business with Harry Caplin.
Although Ferdinand went with Flackyard to check the condition of the lobster pot every fourth week, until our voyage together he had made no attempt to retrieve the cylinder from the ocean bed. Ferdinand had only a radio receiver from Flackyard, while we had stolen a transmitter, which would summon the cylinder from the seabed rather than just receive a signal from it every twenty-four hours. Ferdinand had rushed to try and get the cylinder when he discovered that Flackyard had fled the country (just as Harry Caplin guessed he would).
* * * I pulled the file marked FULCRUM - a pivot about which a lever turns. I placed the two letters and the minidisk containing Constantine’s List and placed them inside the file, putting it and the ‘POSEIDON’ file on LJ’s highly polished maple desk along with a small mountain of other files all waiting for his signature.
“So this is the lot?” LJ asked. He sniffed contemplatively.
“Yes, this is everything relating to the ‘Poseidon’ assignment. I’d guess that most of the people on Constantine’s List have in some way donated large sums of money to Robert Flackyard at one time or another.”
“Good work,” said LJ, “I always knew you would be able to cope.”
“Well, so good of you to think so” I said sarcastically, “especially when you wanted to close down the whole assignment mid term!”
LJ got up and started to pace around his office, which can get to be very irritating.
“And what’s more,” I said, “you knew from the outset that Fiona Price was employed by a special Government department or whatever it is, and you thought it best not to tell me.”
“Yes,” said LJ blandly, “but she was pushed upon us from above and I had no wish to inhibit intercourse among the group.” We looked blankly at each other for just a moment or two. “Social,” LJ added!
“Of course,” I agreed. LJ took out a cigar and lit it.
“Tell me – when will Flackyard and Hawkworth be arrested?” I asked.
“Arrested?” said LJ. “What an extraordinary question old son; what on earth gave you the notion that they would they be arrested. Surely you’ve been in this business long enough to know better?”
“Yes, but they should be arrested because they’re both involved up to their necks in, let’s see, international arms trading, drug trafficking, and possibly the murder of Charlie McIntyre. That’s just for starters. It just so happens that one is a Parliamentary Cabinet Minister.” I said it with as much patience as possible, even though I knew that LJ was deliberately leading me on.
LJ said, “You surely can’t imagine, old son, that they can possibly put everyone who answers to that description in jail - can you? Hell, where on earth would we ever find room for them all, and besides, where would we get another Civil Service from?” He gave a sardonic smile and patted the pile of documents.
“Don’t look so indignant, old son, you know I’m only pulling your leg. These two
are most certainly going to get what’s coming to them. Have no doubt about that. As a matter of fact,” LJ glanced at his wristwatch, “Robert Flackyard should have already been picked up in Marrakech by Hassan. Who has personally seen to it that he is to be held in one of their finest prisons, until our boys from Scotland Yard arrive.”
“They’ll then sort out the paperwork and bring him back to the UK for questioning. Of course he’ll immediately face a number of charges relating to aiding and abetting the drugs operation in Dorset, as well as those relating to illegal arms dealing. Forensics are hoping to be able to match weapons that were carelessly left behind at Flackyard’s residence in Canford Cliffs, with those found by Hassan in the cellar of Flackyard’s Riad in Marrakech. I’d say, that any judge worth his salt, will certainly be able to lock him up and throw away the key for a very long time.”
“And Hawkworth?” I asked
“Hawkworth. MI5 want to have a little chat with that gentleman. After which they’ll decide whether to simply lock him up somewhere remote or hand him over to the police and make him a public domain. Either way, he’ll be finished. Personally I like the latter option, its far more messy and the ultimate end for someone like him. Thankfully, gone are the days, when the establishment simply turned a blind eye to keep everything quite and brushed under the carpet, so to speak. No, I wouldn’t want to be in Hawkworth’s shoes at this present time. Not for all the tea in China.”
He got up and went over to the large filing cabinet in the corner of his office. Opening the top drawer he produced an even more enormous file full of documents. Across the front it said “SIS - SPECIAL INVESTIGATION”, and was bulging with months of work that LJ had never even thought necessary to mention to me. “If you’re to stay with Ferran & Cardini, and in particular my department, dear boy, you must understand your role,” he said this in his smug voice. “We didn’t send you down to Dorset just to go diving and have lots of fun, as you well knew. Constantine’s List was always your priority. The official assignment was never to stir things up with Flackyard and Hawkworth and definitely not to discover anything illegal that was going on down there.
Constantine Legacy (Jake Dillon Adventure Series) Page 24