by Tim Heath
One Year Ago
On the morning of the second day of talks, a small team of three agents had been tracking a number of essential Chinese personnel. It was a Black Ops MI6 operation. The twelve high profile Chinese personnel were from a wide range of backgrounds and industries, though three were also known to be spies. They were all of great value to the Chinese State. They were entirely unaware that MI6 was taking their photographs and recording their details and so they just carried on their usual routine.
At eleven the photos were delivered by courier to a London newspaper with UK coded security alerts, threatening the lives of the Chinese personnel photographed, which included those currently at the ongoing talks that the British were hosting. The newspaper, having long since been used as a contact point for the IRA to give coded warnings of attacks on the mainland during the time of the Troubles, had immediately passed what they had onto MI5, the UK based Security Service. A call was made to the Chinese embassy in London, and an agent was on his way with the photos and a strong suggestion that all personnel be removed until the threat got dealt with.
The Chinese had been grateful for the information but included within the list, as well as spies of their own, were high-level business leaders, a diplomat, as well as the team currently meeting with the various space agencies trying to get to the bottom of this UK/US cooperation. They were, therefore, reluctant to move everyone out, instead insisting on greater security, the time to work on things themselves, and assurances from the UK that everything was being done to stop this threat. The MI5 agent had been unhappy at this, but she assured them they were doing their best; she was unaware of what was going on. They would do their job to the best of their ability but were frustrated at the Chinese reluctance in the face of a known threat to this group of high profile Chinese nationals currently in the UK. MI5 knew enough about the potential targets to realise they were all of great value to China.
With the situation unchanged at the talks, the Black Ops team, working on orders given before, had located their first target, a sleazy Chinese businessman, currently in London to finalise a takeover, but also there to sign an arms deal with an Afghan contingent. There was a lot they had on him, and he was shot dead just before one o'clock as he left his hotel in West London. MI5 had yet to locate him but were on their way as soon as they got the call, worried now that this was an ongoing terrorist operation against a number of high profile Chinese targets in the UK. Calls were made and pressure applied by the British government to the Chinese. It was ordered that all the identified targets be pulled into hiding immediately, for their own safety. MI5 jurisdiction prevailed and the calls were made to all those under threat including the ones in the ongoing negotiations. An American voice answered the phone and after clearance was confirmed, the details were quickly relayed to the people concerned. An MI5 car was waiting at the venue, and with their Chinese bodyguards, the small Chinese team were being taken away at speed, running from this unknown, but apparently deadly threat.
“I don't know what you did,” said the head of the American delegation to his British counterpart, as he leaned over and quietly whispered into his ear, “but it worked.”
He smiled at this, but only briefly, before raising his voice to the whole table.
“I do hope they will be okay and maybe join us again at a later point, but for now, I suggest we get on with this session, as time is pressing and we have a lot to discuss.” With that, he turned to his American counterpart, who opened up the files in front of him and started the detailed look at finances, as planned. With the Chinese now away from the table, it was at least going to be a less complicated afternoon session.
Present Day
Lorna was grabbing five minutes of air, as her patient was reading another book in bed. They'd found an old stash of novels stored away in what must have once been the hospital's attempt at a library. John had been delighted. He loved to read, though couldn't tell if that was just now because he had nothing else to do, or if he had always loved reading. Regardless, John had already worked through one book and was well on his way through a second.
Earlier, they'd talked for a long time about what John had seen. About how it had made him feel, the emotions and connections produced between what he was seeing and his readiness, his willingness, to do what was being asked of him. About what was being demanded of him, and what he needed, no, what in fact he wanted, to now do himself. It had been a poignant moment, all kinds of thoughts racing through Lorna's mind, but she did well at not showing them, only occasionally breaking eye contact as she listened, and this just for a brief second, desperate as she was not to give John a hint of her inner turmoil.
Now outside, she was struggling to come to terms with everything in her head. The ethics of the situation were not clear, had never been clear, and therefore she was striving for total peace in what she was involved. On many levels, it just felt wrong, and yet for so many people, millions and millions of people, it would mean everything could be made right. In her moments with John, she could push the thoughts, as best as she could, to one side, but in the crisp air outside, and on her own, they were waging war with her conscience. She'd been raised better, she told herself again and again. But this was another level, and this was not just for her now. It was for everyone else. But as a nurse, every natural instinct was to take a patient out of danger, not to keep him in a place, a situation, that would lead to his death. And in John's case, a willing end, a sacrifice, he thought, but then he didn't know all the details. No, he was being fed a cocktail of drugs to keep his body and mind subdued while being shown things that looked so real he assumed they were. It was telling him he was someone that he wasn't. And by assisting with all this, by being aware and yet going along with it, she was by definition agreeing to it. So at that moment, she was questioning a lot of things in her life. True, it had to be said, she had not been given much choice in the matter, her grief and the loss of her husband originally clouding her responses early on so that she was in the program before she knew what it was all about. But she also couldn't stand up in court and deny she made an active choice to stay in it. There had not been any threats to her, neither had she attempted to get out. Maybe if she had, if she'd forced the situation earlier on, she would have been threatened and made a prisoner herself in the role. That way she could have shifted blame, and therefore the guilt, onto others. But she had not done that, nor felt like she had the resolve to do that now. If she was honest with herself, although she had many misgivings about how it was being done, she was in a way glad that at least something was being done.
Her loss aside––which she hadn't started to deal with––there had been far too much death and injury already. If the reports were to be believed, those who had lost their lives would be nothing compared to the millions who would die if the situation escalated out of all control, as it was threatening to do. Some were saying that it was an end of the world type scenario, as most knew it. Like something out of a Hollywood blockbuster and yet sadly not. It was going to happen unless something changed.
Lorna had thought back to the Vicar that married her and James. She had not been a church goer but had gone along to their local Church of England church to get married. Their banns were being read, and as a result, they needed to attend for six months before. It seemed a right way for the church to get young couples into the congregation that mainly consisted of pensioners, and they'd enjoyed the experience, for the most part. He was a younger clergyman, and this was his first job as Vicar. He'd been a good listener, getting to know them both as they approached marriage, and then he took the wedding service himself. What Lorna was now thinking was that she wished she could now speak with this guy again, to talk through life and the decisions she was making. Lorna wasn't a religious person, though she felt in herself she was not a bad person. The words of that Vicar came back to her; sitting in the cold, but friendly church building on Sunday, he'd addressed everyone as bad people. That the church was for bad people,
and in fact no one was good. Everyone made bad choices. He'd talked about another man, the Jesus from the Christmas story and what he had done. How he had been the only one to live a good, sinless life.
How funny, she felt. At that moment, when faced with life and death, and the ongoing consequences of the decisions she now had to make daily, that at that moment she had wanted to talk to this guy. Someone from a church that she didn't understand, and had only been a small part of for six months so that they could get married there. They'd said about going back again after they were married, but hadn't ever done so. Life seemed to take over, and even when they did have a Sunday off, it never really crossed their minds to get up and go. Neither of them had been particularly religious, and yet here she was, now, and this was the one person she wanted to talk with.
Of course, the chances were high that he was already dead; or would indeed die soon. And what would death mean? She had many questions. Even for a nurse, the reality of death as a certainty for all, at some point in life, had only recently come home to her. Before the loss of James, she'd never faced the loss of anyone she knew, and even now was not dealing with the matter. But it was apparent now. Death was certain. No one could live forever. If John was to make this sacrifice, at some point in time everyone he saved was going to die anyway. Maybe from natural causes instead, granted, but it would only postpone the inevitable. It was a strange thought. Did the fact that, what they were doing would just buy people a little more time on Earth but ultimately not save them from death, mean it was all futile anyway? That seemed ironic for Lorna, in the mood in which she was. She had never indeed contemplated life and death as much as she had recently, and understandably so. People don't talk about the things they don't understand. As her five minutes' break ran into ten, she had started opening her mind to one of the most significant questions of them all: what was the meaning of life and is death the end?
After thinking nothing for nearly a minute, a silence in her head as she just pondered the weight of those questions, she laughed out loud, a brief outburst, but releasing all the same. She was amused at how serious she'd become in her thinking. The air was doing nothing for relaxing her mind, but the thinking was doing something to move her along emotionally.
She did want to talk with the people from the unit monitoring her and her patient. She wanted to raise these questions, ones of ethics, with them. To sound them out, to make her thoughts known, even recorded, in case at a later point this would come back to hurt them all. Walking back towards the hospital, she sent a message to the one contact she had, asking to have some time to talk with them. Before she got back to the room, she'd had a reply, setting up a time and place to chat things through, once the patient was comfortable. It could happen straight away if she wanted, so once she checked in on John, who was enjoying the latest novel, well over half way through it already, she went on to meet with two people from the training program, while another monitored the patient for her on the screen.
Twenty minutes later, she was on her way back to John; it was time he ate. She'd shared her concerns, wanting to go on record to state her position. If anything, it had gone a long way towards building relationship between her and them. Communication had improved vastly, it felt they were all on the same page now, and they'd appreciated her honesty and boldness, her willingness to work on something even while she had her own concerns. She was putting professionalism over individualism. They'd congratulated her for that, though she wasn't there for their praise.
They'd finished by thanking her for raising a real issue, something they too were working through, and they would certainly use her thoughts as they started to draw up an ethics policy for not only John but the entire program. They encouraged her to continue to talk with them, to make time for it. They were there for her to talk to, though they cautioned her from saying too much, indeed in this regard, to the patient. It wasn't her place to find out where John stood on these issues of faith and the questions of his view on life and death.
Walking back into the room, Lorna felt that a lot of emotional baggage had been shifted in the last hour or so. It was far from being got rid of, but well on the way. John put his book down, folding the corner of the page he was on in the process, nothing more than about fifty pages left to read, it seemed.
“Good book?” Lorna asked.
“Yeah, I'm enjoying it. You can read it after me if you like. I think I'll be finished with it this afternoon.”
Lorna brought over some food.
“Here, take this,” she said, placing a tray in front of John, who positioned it in front of himself and took a look at the day's offerings.
“Looks good,” he said, a little too sarcastically.
“You know hospital food. We have a reputation to maintain.”
They both smiled. John started to eat slowly, as Lorna took away some dirty towels and made herself useful. The hard part was almost done. Her patient was healthy, improving all the time, physically recovering. He was dealing well with what he was seeing, his heart rate after each vision was almost unchanged, there was less stress on him. In all regards, he was doing well. The most critical part was yet to come. Could he do what was being asked of him, and could she watch him do it without saying anything she shouldn't?
12
Twenty Three Days Ago
It was the end of the first week with the news crew. They'd been learning a lot from the base over the last two days, and there was a noticeable increase in communications to work through. It was clear, that as the launch dates approached and intensity increased, people were becoming surprisingly less guarded, maybe even saying things they shouldn't have in their internal memos. These were deemed to be a safe form of communication, unaware as they were of the prying eyes of this intrepid news team. John had shared some of the highlights from the last few days with his boss at the paper and, unknown to John, draft stories were already being worked on. It seemed everyone wanted a piece of the action.
If they were correct, the launches were to be in the coming week and, with no real releases from the base to the various news agencies, and it made the nature of these launches all the more intriguing. They'd picked up some of the details for the probes now too, as changes in the probes' make-up meant a late revised plan was sent around. It was picked up by the spying device and greeted with stunned silence by the crew. It was bigger than they thought. They'd also nearly been hacked, or at least the army base had. They'd monitored the response and the securing of the attempted pathway that the would-be hackers had tried to use. From their end, they were left unnoticed. It was not clear who the hackers had been. The news crew had no way of knowing since they were not on the inside. But the fact someone else was looking in, made them all the more alert. They could only speculate as to who it was. Another government, another group from the UK, maybe even another newspaper? Ironically enough, that last option made them more nervous. It was their story, their effort and handiwork. For another crew to sneak in at the end and see everything, grabbing their own story and ruining all that they'd been working for, was unthinkable. The team's work prioritised, extra resources made available and people were on hand at the head office to be called on as and when needed.
John was now under a lot of pressure to produce results, to bring this through into a fully formed story. They would break it the day the launch was made. It had the potential to be massive and was undoubtedly an exclusive. They had just three days. Having worked seven days solid, he had allowed the crew to stagger their days off, each member of the A-team having had a day off in the last three, and that day it was Bradley's turn. John himself had not taken any time off. He dared not risk losing this one, like a fisherman battling with some monster catch, he knew he couldn't let up for one moment. John was in this until the end. He wanted his capture. To let it get away was unthinkable.
Bradley––a day to himself––was far from resting, however. He'd got everything he needed, and had copied what he could. Bradley had pieced together
what was happening when and he had already written half of a draft of his own exclusive story. Using a pre-paid mobile phone as he was naturally the very cautious type, he'd arranged a meeting with another national newspaper. He'd flashed his credentials around in an email to the owner and claimed to be bringing with him the biggest story of the decade. It was the type of story that paper specialised in and was far from the first time they'd coaxed a juicy story from a journalist jumping ship from a rival newspaper. They'd let it be known, not publicly of course, that they were in the market for such stories, and paid well for those who ran that particular gauntlet. It was dirty work, but then again it was an industry, indeed at that level, that lived for dirty. And someone had to do it, Bradley told himself, as he walked into the paper's London office. Now it was his turn to shine, to make the kind of breakthrough that would elevate him to where he wanted to be, where he needed to be. It was his moment. However, his nerves were shot. Looking always over his shoulder, he was starting to fear his own shadow, sure that someone was on to him, that his magic moment would get stolen from him. He made it to the lifts and selected the twelfth floor, getting into the lift alone. No one was following him, but in his head, he was now a walking target, vulnerable at any moment, and sure to be found out.