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Treasonable Intent

Page 6

by C Shaw Hilton


  Only a few months ago this had seemed to be the pinnacle of his career and on the back of it he had persuaded his American backers to invest in developing it further. It would be a lucrative venture, for only the very wealthiest could afford it. Haller saw it as a springboard to his ultimate ambition to free the mind from the physical mortality of the body. He couldn’t suppress a smile to himself at the memory.

  Then it all began to go wrong. The thrilled tycoon, apparently drunk at a private dinner party celebrating the family returning home, had shared her positive news with close friends. Within hours Chinese State Security had put two and two together. They were not amused at the breach of security nor the unauthorised application of the technology. They had now insisted that Haller give over all the notes and records of his work. They also wanted him to undertake further work with their military on cellular level coding. As if to emphasise their intent, the property developer, her son and all her immediate family disappeared. Haller had miscalculated. Wealth in China was no defence against the state.

  Now they had come after him in his own city. In his own office. His only option was to flee into the protection of his American backers. The arrangement with Nazar was a form of extra insurance. His latest work was encrypted onto the laptop and would be kept safe in return for a fee. Nazar was one of the few people Haller trusted, not least because any illicit attempt to access the materials on the laptop would result in its destruction and the loss of 2000 Euro a week transferred to his account. If needed he could access and trade it later. He would offer it to whoever could keep him alive and in the luxurious lifestyle he had become accustomed to. As he ate he discreetly uploaded the 250 gigabytes of information on his two memory sticks into the replacement laptop. It now had enough information for him to continue his work and the same level of encrypted security as the original. Once emptied each memory stick automatically wiped itself.

  He finished his salad and washed it down with a mineral water. Having paid his bill he left carrying the substitute lap top case. He thought about getting a taxi but decided that the walk would be better for him and the weather was still crisp and sunny. As he crossed the bridge over the canal on the way towards the main shopping centre he stopped as if to admire the view and dropped the two empty sticks into the water below. What he failed to notice was the tall Dutchman buying some seeds at the market stall some thirty metres away who immediately began to follow him. Nor did he see the Chinese girl carrying a basket of flowers ahead of him with her discreetly held camera phone capturing his every step.

  Chapter Eight

  Nia Williams woke with a start. She had grabbed a couple of hours sleep on the bench seat at the front of the RV in the middle of the afternoon. It was the hand of the young signals officer that shook her awake: “They are on the move. Shall I get you a cup of coffee Ma’am?” Nia nodded and went straight to her seat to view the screens in the rear of the van.

  The images showed three of the suspects leaving the cottage and driving off in the Renault just after 5pm. “Li is staying behind again” said the signals officer. Nia looked at the footage carefully. Li was watching television. The camera in the garden gave a view from behind his chair but she could make out he was watching the BBC news channel. Nia asked to review the footage for the half hour before they left in case there had been something to prompt their departure. “Maybe, they have just gone for some fish and chips?” said Assistant Chief Constable Mark Daniels.

  Nia paused: “Maybe… but I thought they bought groceries for a homemade meal?” She looked at the live feed of the car being tracked by a military drone. “Where are they going?”

  “They are on the A417 heading for Gloucester. The traffic is pretty heavy.” The signals officer zoomed in on the car. “It’s a long way for fish and chips...” she trailed off.

  Nia was on her feet. ”I want every piece of footage and audio from the time they left and loaded the car, I want it examined immediately with forensic care.” She snapped. “Check if they took those two bags with them.” For twenty minutes the three of them looked at all the footage frame by frame.

  They were interrupted by a terse message from one of the cars following the suspects. “They have gone into the Longsmith Street multi-storey car park. We are four cars behind at the entrance barrier. Our back-up car is making its way to the other side of this block of buildings.” Seconds later the audio picked up several loud reports.

  The next thirty seconds were a frenzy of air traffic. “Shots fired, shots fired!” came the voice from the forward control car.

  “Give me eyes on this!” shouted Mark Daniels. The drone and ground camera feeds leapt onto the screens. It was a picture of chaos. Smoke was billowing from the car park and from the adjacent shopping area. Fire from an automatic weapon could be heard strafing vehicles in the street and flames were seen from windows of an adjacent office building. “Oh my god” he cried. Nia picked up the hand microphone.

  “This is operational control, Nia Williams. SAS units under Captain Ellis you are to seize and secure the cottage and detain the suspect Li. I want all our ground troops organised to form a secure cordon around the city of Gloucester. Nothing in or out. ACC Daniels will co-ordinate the operation within the cordon. Activate the two helicopters to provide air cover. All armed officers are authorised to use lethal force.” She took a deep breath.

  They had made their move but why now and why Gloucester and not Cheltenham? Mark had a bad feeling about this. He looked across the screens at the unfolding carnage around the car park. Nia decided it was time to tell Whitehall.

  Two minutes later four SAS soldiers entered the cottage from the rear and four from the front having thrown stun grenades through the window where Li was sitting in the small living room. What faced them came as a complete shock. The chair facing the television was occupied by a lifelike mannequin dressed exactly as Li. “Shit” exclaimed the Sergeant leading the assault. “Unless he is upstairs he’s not here. The ground floor is empty. They fooled us. All four must have gone.”

  Nia took the news with a hard face that betrayed no emotion. This had been carefully planned. Somehow they had sneaked Li into the car. Now they were apparently engaged in shooting and bombing their way through central Gloucester. “Any idea why Gloucester?” She uttered.

  Mark Daniels replied, “I’m not sure what is happening, let alone why.” He had a gut instinct that all was not as it seemed. After the initial fireworks, it had gone quiet around the car park. “A lot of fire and fury signifying very little. We don’t appear to have any casualties other than a couple of cars and a derelict office building. He continued: “I need to get access to any CCTV around that part of Gloucester.” The signals officers worked with their police counterparts to obtain the feeds but it took another fifteen minutes before they came through. By that time armed police and MI5 officers had entered and searched the multi-storey.

  Mark listened closely to the reports from his officers in the city centre as he watched the car park footage. The Renault had entered and sped up the ramp to the first floor. The driver had not bothered to park it but left it blocking access to the ramp. As he ran off, carrying what looked like an Uzi machine pistol, he fired on the cars below. Strangely none had been damaged. Something was very odd. Could the gunman have been firing blanks? Seconds later a small explosion blew up the Renault and turned it into a fireball. The driver then ran to the opposite side of the building throwing a stun grenade across the street which went through a derelict office window opposite and a second one was rolled under a row of empty parked cars setting off a number of explosions as their petrol tanks went up. The figure then fled down the stairwell and ran across the top of the public covered causeway before disappearing across the roofline to a fire escape. When he descended to street level he threw a smoke grenade into an adjacent building doorway and walked away as part of the crowd fleeing towards the railway station. Mark checked the images of the driver again. It was Leon Keller. He hadn’t even bothered
wearing a mask. It looked like this was a diversion but for what?

  Nia was following events back at the cottage and having to deal with a whole series of issues around the cordon. It had turned into a logistics headache with thousands of people seeking to get home from work and the trains and roads paralysed. Even river traffic was being detained as every boat was searched. Mark Daniels caught her attention as she went through another agonising conversation with the local MP who was less than happy with how this was being handled. Eventually she made her apologies and put the phone down.

  “We have established a new Gold control at the police station in Cheltenham so we should up sticks and move there” he said in muted tones. Nia nodded. “I think we have lost them” he continued. She looked questioningly at him. He went through the scenario at the car park. “Somehow, somewhere, Keller let the other three out of the car, probably before Gloucester. They must have been picked up in another vehicle by an accomplice. Keller continued on to create the diversion so they could get away. He himself is at flight but probably has no intention of re-joining them. In short they have accomplices and now could be anywhere.” He could see the concern on her face.

  “Go through every metre of the car trip to Gloucester” she barked at the signals officer. “Find where they jumped ship and track every vehicle that might have taken them elsewhere.”

  Mark felt sick. He just hoped the search at the cottage might turn something up but knew he was clutching at straws.

  In accordance with the operational protocol the SAS lead, Captain Ellis, ordered his teams to pull back in case the rest of the cottage was booby trapped and in order to seize as much evidence as they could. After ten minutes the sergeant and one corporal went back in as support for two army bomb disposal experts. It was these two officers who entered the cottage first, just after 18.00 hours. Both had served in Iraq and Afghanistan and dealt with modern high tech explosives as well as improvised devices. They examined the ground floor windows and, carefully checking for wires, trip switches and optical devices, edged around the furniture. They carried stick mirrors and optical fibre cameras which they sneaked under doors to look at the other side. Every lock and handle was carefully inspected and every move recorded on their headsets. They took particular care around the pantry area but the two holdalls had gone. Every movement captured on their body cameras was watched on screen by Ellis some 50 metres away in a neighbouring farm kitchen.

  The heavy protective suits made movement difficult in confined spaces and so one followed the other as they moved slowly from room to room. After almost an hour they had covered the whole of the ground floor, the garage and the small outside store and found nothing. Even the under stairs cupboard and basement had no evidence of anything unusual. Ellis took the decision to gather what they could from the ground floor before proceeding. Four Security Service officers went into the house. They searched the ground floor collecting waste from the inside bins, fibres from seats and carpets and dusting for fingerprints. After a further two hours of this they withdrew leaving the two army officers and their SAS escorts to climb the stairs and check out the two bedrooms and bathroom on the upper floor. It was at 21.07 that they opened the door to the second bedroom and saw the cellophane wrapped box on the bed. The wardrobe door was slightly ajar and from inside there was the reflection of flickering green and orange lights and the faint hum of a computer. The leading officer peered cautiously around the door. “I think we have something…hang on.” Peering through his visor he could just make out something reflective on top of a PC tower at the back of the cupboard. He looked harder and felt a sudden rush of nausea. It was a motion sensor.

  In that same instant the roof disintegrated in a massive fireball. The blast was designed to blow the roof upwards creating a rain of tile, brick and timber. Amazingly, although everyone within 20 metres was engulfed in debris, no one was killed. Gashed, dazed and with broken bones and some crush trauma, the troops staggered out of the wreckage. Ellis and his team were sprawled on the floor of the farmhouse kitchen covered in glass from a shattered window but otherwise with only minor cuts and bruises. The pile of burning wood and smashed masonry that fell to earth engulfed the site in a cloud of dark grey smoke. From across the village people began running to the scene and the emergency services in Gloucestershire were suddenly flooded with panicked phone calls.

  From their new location in Cheltenham police station the command team looked at the one remaining live camera feed from a wounded soldier outside. No one spoke other than Nia Williams who could only utter the words, “I hope to God they survived.” Mark Daniels looked at her. “How did we let this happen?” He knew this was probably an ignominious end to a distinguished career for both of them, whatever they could salvage from the mess. He also knew that both of them had to find the four suspects to prevent further disaster. He was interrupted by a signals officer reviewing footage of the Renault’s last journey. “Ma’am, Sir, I think I have spotted the switch.”

  It was clever, Mark had to confess. There were two accomplice vehicles, a grey van and a white truck. The first had slowed the traffic as the Renault approached the M5 junction. The second had come up behind it creating a space under the M5 motorway bridge that allowed the three suspects to jump out and run to board the first vehicle hidden from view. The grey van had then headed round the junctions again and south on the M5 whilst the truck headed north. In a co-ordinated move they each left the motorway when they had put half an hour between themselves and the Gloucester lockdown. Then they switched onto minor roads heading east before disappearing along with their occupants. Descriptions were issued but the ANP recognition revealed both plates were false clones of similar vehicles from Yorkshire. Mark Daniels had a long briefing from traffic police but it was the final blow in an awful day. Eventually he had to say the obvious. “Well we know there are at least six of them now but that is all we know. The vehicles have gone to ground, one in the Stratford-Upon-Avon area and the other in the Swindon area. The possibility is they have transferred to other transport, having securely hidden them. They could be anywhere.”

  The BBC Ten O’clock News opened with dramatic pictures from Gloucester and Bourton-on the-Water. The sonorous tone of the newsreader described as “breaking news” a terrorist attack and related explosions which were the subject of an unprecedented lock down by the military.

  Fawzia and Ray had arrived at the barracks in Plymouth about half an hour before and saw the images on the television in the officer’s mess. No one in MI5 had thought to keep them in the loop as events developed in the Cotswolds. Both stared open mouthed at the footage.

  Alicia and Olsson had just arrived at the safe house in the village of Backwell near Bristol. They had travelled in complete radio and communications blackout as was the protocol for transfers to a safe house. One of her officers switched on the TV and caught the first headlines before shouting the others to come and watch.

  Sir Alistair was forced to watch it with the Prime Minister. She had flown to Brussels and back during the day to undertake a series of pre-planned and critical meetings with European allies and NATO leaders. They stood in number ten with a handful of political and security colleagues. Her expression was stony. Even the Foreign Secretary was ashen and passive. As the news moved on from the main story she turned to the room.

  “Forty eight hours you asked me for.” Her tone was bitter and the emotional outrage apparent. “It is just twelve hours and you have let this happen. A Cotswold cottage has been blown up with soldiers injured. Gloucester is locked down in fear following a gun and grenade terrorist assault. MI6 has been compromised by one of its former officers and MI5 is looking incompetent. Our forces are floundering around without the leadership they need from the Ministry of Defence. It is a disaster and I have no choice but to act.” She turned to her Cabinet ministers. “The lead for our response to this will transfer to the Cabinet Office with immediate effect. All major decisions will be cleared by myself and the National Se
curity Council. Dame Maude Kennet, the Head of the Civil Service and Chief Secretary to the Cabinet will act as the lead civil servant for this.”

  She glared at Sir Alistair and strode past him to confront the Secretary of State for Defence. “You appointed Benning. You authorised Operation Lightening. I’ll expect your resignation overnight” she snapped. “I will deal with the Head of MI5 later. We should have arrested them and now they have disappeared!” With that she turned on her heel and left the room. As the door closed behind her you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.

  Chapter Nine

  It was 6.35 pm Central Time when the private charter jet carrying Lauren Esterhazy and Trent Powell touched down in Chicago. As it rolled to a halt on its allocated stand, a silver limousine pulled up alongside. Within a couple of minutes both of them were sitting on the back seat, being whisked away into the city. The rear compartment was opulent, soundproof, and surrounded with dark grey privacy glass.

  Lauren extracted a coral coloured lipstick from the Louis Vuitton handbag that nestled between them. With practised ease she applied it to her naturally full lips. She had given her phone to Trent, who was busy flicking through her texts and e-mails, weeding out the junk. Suddenly, he paused and let out a slow, deliberate breath. She glanced up from her compact mirror to see his eyebrows raised.

  “What’s wrong?” Her velvety voice was a little sharper than usual.

  “It’s our friend Haller. He is coming over to Boston tomorrow. ”

 

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