by Ted Tayler
The remaining chairs that had stood at the elegant table for its eight place settings when Colin first entered the room now stood against the wall. No late arrivals were joining this happy band. The pecking order of this group had been decided in advance.
Colin casually tried to assess the people around him as the waiters served up their starter dish. By his estimation, the three men to his right could be in their mid to late fifties. The man to his host’s left appeared to be a civil servant or a professional. The other two showed every sign of being ex-military. While the waiter attending to him poured a small glass of Cedar Creek Chardonnay, he looked across at the lady and felt his face redden. She looked at him with a stern intent. A look that without a word being spoken told him she knew he was sizing up his companions, and that she disapproved.
Colin switched his attention to his plate. He felt uncomfortable under the gaze of the lady he was convinced had to be the second-in-command of this outfit. His comfort didn’t improve when he saw the warm squash veloute, with soft poached egg and pink grapefruit jam. Colin hadn’t eaten in ages and his stomach ached for a full English breakfast. When he had been with his late wife Sue Owens in The Gambia, they ate well enough, although in general, they preferred simple food. He wasn’t a total stranger to fine dining though. Heaven knows they could afford it with the money she’d made when selling her home and business.
As soon as he tasted that first mouthful, Colin had to revise his opinion. It tasted fantastic. He forgot his fellow diners and his dream of a big fry up for the time being and savoured every moment of this first lunch at the manor house. The main course of young Welsh lamb arrived with crushed broccoli, sheep’s curd, Provencal figs, and toasted hazelnuts. It was even more delicious. A large glass of Cabernet Sauvignon was a more than a welcome companion. Later the wild honey ice cream proved the ideal dessert for the warm summers’ day. As the stewards cleared away the last few dishes away and served coffee, Colin leant back in his chair and relaxed. He looked up to find the eyes of his fellow diners, who had remained silent throughout the whole proceedings turned towards him.
“That was excellent,” he said, “I’m looking forward to the grand tour more than ever now. The exercise is essential.”
“I shall take my coffee on the patio,” said the lady, “I want to enjoy this sunshine while I have a few minutes to spare. There’s work to do later. Good afternoon gentlemen. Mr Bailey.” With that, she swept out of the room. A waiter placed a coffee pot on a silver tray and added other necessary items for her excursion. When he had finished, he trotted off in her wake. His destination was her sun-kissed and sheltered haven a few steps from the door to the rear of the main building.
“Reminds you of a galleon in full sail, doesn’t it old chap?” said his host, with a conspiratorial grin. He looked at the three men on his left-hand side. “No doubt you have things to attend to this afternoon? Don’t let us detain you. I propose six reconvene at 1900 hours. There is much to get through this evening. Mr Bailey will have a far better idea of The Olympus Project by then. He’ll appreciate how his particular skill set fits into our organisation.”
As soon the others left the room, the old man beckoned Colin to join him with his coffee in more comfortable seats in front of the large fireplace. “Right you are then,” he said, “let’s finish our coffees in peace and then we’ll be on our way.”
Colin and his host sat in silence, savouring their drink and that excellent three-course meal. Colin could sense his eyelids growing heavy, indeed, the old man had his head on his chest and was dozing peacefully. The period French clock on the mantelpiece struck two o’clock. The elderly gentleman stood up stiffly.
“Time to go Mr Bailey. Let me take you through the delights of my family home and show you what we’ve done to update the old place. I’m sure the changes will interest you.”
The two men entered the hallway and the grand tour began.
CHAPTER 3
“Larcombe Manor is a Grade One Listed Manor House lying in a secluded spot eight miles outside Bath. It has been my family’s home, without a break, since 1550. Queen Elizabeth the First stayed here for two nights in 1585. I’ve searched high and low for a written account of her thoughts on the place, but to no avail. So, I can’t tell you whether she was enamoured enough to stay an extra day. Nor that she intended to descend upon the place for a week but skedaddled back to London in high dudgeon. The eleven bedrooms, the seven-bathroom house comes with three and a half acres of gardens. We have both a formal garden you can see from your bedroom window and a walled kitchen garden to the side. That’s where we grow our own vegetables and flowers. The reception rooms are full of character and keep many original features from the major extension and overhaul my ancestors carried out in the middle of the nineteenth century.”
His host was warming to his task and Colin strolled alongside him as they moved through the main building. The grandeur of the building was plain to see at every turn. Here and there they paused as the old man commented upon the décor, the artwork or the period furniture. Colin had a question.
“If this is your family home, do you have them living with you, and the members of The Olympus Project I’ve met so far?”
The old man stopped and emitted a long sigh.
“My wife is in a nursing home nearby. She suffered a breakdown a few years back old chap, there’s no one else here; not anymore.”
Colin didn’t pursue that line of questioning any further. It had raised a painful memory for his host. The next few minutes of the grand tour continued in a far more sombre mood. As they went outside into the gardens, the old man’s mood brightened. Colin looked across to the patio but any lingering signs of the galleon had gone. She must have returned indoors to her work and the ever-efficient staff had tidied up behind her.
The two men walked across the lawn. Colin could only wonder at the immaculate greensward, with trees planted with such precision they protected the house from nosy passers-by in the far-off adjoining fields. Yet, when he looked back towards the main building, the magnificent edifice always remained visible as you walked towards the other estate buildings laid out in front of you. His reverie was broken by his elderly companion speaking: -
“The orangery, of course, is over there to the right.”
“Of course,” said Colin under his breath.
“Just here in front of us to our left is where the old stable block stood. When the idea for Olympus took shape, we converted that into the staff accommodation. The building you can see one hundred yards further on is the ice-house. Let’s wander over and take a look, eh?”
Colin had read about ice-houses. He knew they were in common use before the refrigerator was invented. Most comprised man-made underground chambers, within yards of a water source and the winter ice and snow was taken inside and packed with insulation. This allowed the wealthy owners of manor houses on estates such as this to store perishable foods, chill their drinks or prepare ice-creams and sorbets. Oh, how the other half lived.
As they approached the door to the building, Colin prepared himself to see a grill covering a brick-lined forty-foot pit. Perhaps the decaying signs of a drain to take away any water. Once they agreed that little remained worth seeing, then they could move on towards the remaining buildings. From his current vantage point, Colin thought those resembled a terrace of two-up, two-down cottages.
As soon as they stepped through the outer door of the ice-house, Colin gasped.
“That was a shaker Mr Bailey, wasn’t it?” chuckled the old man.
After he pressed the call button. Colin heard the lift rise for a few seconds and then the steel doors opened.
“Shall we?” said his tour guide.
Colin followed his host into the lift and watched as the old man selected the button for the first level of three. A few seconds later they stopped. When the doors opened, they walked into a room where a computer nerd would have believed Christmas had come early.
“This is our c
ommand centre. We have operatives in this facility monitoring the movements of our identified criminal targets. They track every possible terrorist threat yet undefined and keep us abreast of any potential global catastrophe. That may be a tsunami, an earthquake, a volcanic event, everything that has the potential to threaten our social equilibrium. If we walk further on through this room, the corridor leads to recreation rooms, a dentist’s surgery, and a fully functional operating theatre. We have a few sleep pods at the far end for operatives to use, on those occasions when the criminal fraternity keep us extra busy. This is not a bunker in the old style of the Burlington near your neck of the woods at Shaw Park, but more of an enlarged foxhole. Did you enjoy your wine at lunch today?”
Colin nodded. The old man continued: -
“We have a constant relative inside temperature in this foxhole and the insulated hull surrounding it makes this environment ideal for storing our wine. I think we’ve seen enough here for now. Let’s drop to level two, shall we?”
On the next level, they met two armed personnel. They wore no uniform of any sort, just a white t-shirt with Olympus on the left breast, black combat trousers, and boots. Each carried a gun in a holster at the hip. Both had a physique that looked as if they used the recreation rooms to good effect. Colin recognised his rescuers from last night. These two had manned the dinghy.
“Good afternoon, men. You’ve met Mr Bailey. I’m delighted to tell you he is joining our group.”
Colin looked at the old gentleman. He couldn’t recall being asked if he wished to join whatever set up this was, let alone tell anyone he had agreed to do so. The locked windows in his bedroom. The distance between himself and his fellow diners earlier led Colin to believe his host was used to giving orders. To say ‘No’ was inadvisable.
The old man continued, patently aware of Colin’s feelings over what he had said to the two guards. “I’m sure he will be in to visit you from time to time. Can I show him what we have available?”
The two men moved aside and one entered an access code on a pad to the side of the main door. Once inside the room, Colin could see this was the armoury. There were racks of assault rifles which his host informed him included several varieties of AK and a WASR3. They had a range of Heckler and Koch rifles that various police forces and even special forces preferred. The racks contained several items Colin had seen before, mostly in films. He spotted M4 Colt Carbines that had been everywhere in Iraq and Afghanistan when the US forces were in action. The ubiquitous Uzi was in amongst several light machine guns and the weaponry wasn’t confined to rifles. The armoury even stocked hand-held rocket launchers.
Below the racking lay drawers containing handguns and knives; H&K, Browning, Glock and Sig Sauer models were in abundance. The latter’s P226 came as no surprise since the SAS had favoured this model for years. The elderly gentleman moved from the racks to the drawers with obvious pleasure. Now and then he picked up a gun and spent a moment or two in contemplation. Colin wondered whether he was reliving an occasion when he had used it in action.
“I don’t have the key for the other drawers, but they contain our supply of gas canisters, flash bombs, and incendiary devices and of course, hand grenades.”
“Of course,” replied Colin, allowing himself a brief smile. If you want to wage war on someone or protect your organisation against attack, you may as well have something of everything he thought.
“The rest of this level includes a shooting range, where I expect you to improve your accuracy. To Olympic standard if possible, although, now you’re one of us you’ll never represent your country in competition.”
The two men walked along the corridor which ran along the side of the range. There were no operatives honing their skills this afternoon. The door at the end was locked. The old man turned on his heel and encouraged Colin to walk back with him towards the armoury.
“That’s the ammunition store; something for everything. Once you’ve seen one magazine, you’ve seen the lot I find, old chap. Rather boring to stand around inspecting bullets. Much more fun firing them at the enemy, eh?”
With a nod to the two guards, his host led him from the armoury to the lift. A bony hand hovered over the button for the third level.
“Well, we’ve come this far, you might as well see the rest,” he sighed.
The final level was dark and eerily quiet. A long corridor stretched away to the left and low wattage security lighting highlighted them as they moved past various rooms to their right. The old man pointed a finger. He informed Colin that they were passing the cells, then the interrogation rooms. At the far end where the quiet was joined by a slight odour Colin was familiar with, lay a windowless room.
“To add to the information we gather in our command centre, it’s necessary, on occasion, to invite people to stay with us for a while. They arrive using the same transport as yourself, with no knowledge of where they are. We encourage them to answer our questions and if they give useful data, they leave us unharmed and return to their loved ones.”
His guide began the long walk back to the lift. As Colin hurried to catch up with him the old man shook his head and glanced back along the corridor towards the final room.
Wearily he added, “If they get that far then it’s not likely they’ll see their families again. I’m afraid those visitors’ final destination is a plot in the family pet cemetery we have in the woods on the outskirts of the estate.”
“I wondered why someone had pinned a small card to the door with ‘Hotel California’ printed on it,” Colin muttered under his breath.
Colin and his host rode back up to the surface in silence. The sun still shone brightly when they emerged from the ice-house and Colin automatically headed towards the final group of buildings, the terraced cottages.
“We can give that place a miss. Everything is not as it might appear. We converted the worker’s cottages to incorporate a staff canteen, a cinema and swimming pool.”
As he walked back towards the main house, he added, “Of course.”
He laughed at his little joke at Colin’s expense. Colin drew level and saw that his host was smiling.
“I think you’ll fit in well here Mr Bailey. Let’s find a place to rest our weary bones. I’ll chase up a pot of tea and then I’ll tell you the history of the Olympus Project.”
Their walk across the lawn to the house was followed from an upstairs window by the woman. No doubt the old gentleman knew she was there, but he gave no sign. Colin spotted her and hung back as they climbed the steps onto the patio. He gave her a friendly wave and a smile. The woman stepped back from the window and disappeared from view.
CHAPTER 4
Twenty minutes later the two men sat in one of the elegant drawing-rooms. Their wing chairs faced towards the enormous windows that gave full access to the sweeping panorama of the Larcombe Manor estate. The sun continued to beat down on the grounds, but here in this sanctuary, it was cool, peaceful and serene. Colin had forgotten the chill he felt as the old man showed him the lengths to which this organisation was prepared to go.
After they had returned indoors and taken a chance to freshen up, Colin sought and rejoined his host. Erebus summoned a steward. In no time, they had cups of tea, tiny triangular sandwiches and a tray of fancy cakes to refresh them after their long walk.
“I know you are eager to discover the nature of the work The Olympus Project carries out Mr Bailey. I have tested your patience long enough. My entire career was in the Royal Navy as I’m sure you deduced. I believe I served my country well. As each successive decade passed, each one quicker than the last, I stood by, unable to help, as my superiors lost their moral courage. I watched them abandon their comrades to political correctness. Governments of whatever colour have continued to shrink the fleet to a level that is totally unacceptable. The country is at the mercy of bands of brigands, let alone massive navies. My comrades in the army and air force have suffered the same humiliation. The quality of our armed forces is still among th
e highest anywhere in the world Mr Bailey, have no doubts on that score, but the numbers are far too low. We are vulnerable to attack as a nation in a way we haven’t been for five hundred years. The armed services are being stripped of their effectiveness in four corners of the globe. At home, the police and judiciary are falling into the hands of the same weak, hand-wringing milksops. They have stepped away from tackling crime with a big stick and meaningful sentencing. They are now reaping the wind, as organised gangs, drug cartels and people traffickers operate carte blanche the length and breadth of this once great country. I had my own personal reasons for wanting to redress the balance. One man alone could achieve little. Even one with a large family fortune such as mine, so I placed an advert in The Times personal column four years ago. It stated: - Help required. Anyone eager to prevent Britain from going to hell in a handcart. Write Box 1815 etcetera. I soon weeded out the time-wasters. I found a handful of people who thought the same and possessed the intelligence, will and access to added funding to help bring my ideas to fruition. A few of our backers have remained as silent partners and they do not live here at Larcombe Manor. The four people you met at lunch today are the founder members of Olympus. What do you know of Greek mythology Mr Bailey?”
“I’ve heard of the Gods, Zeus, Achilles and um…”
“No matter. There are just six names you need to remember. While we are here at Larcombe, we use these names and these names only when we speak of one another. Do you understand?”
Colin nodded.
“It’s for our protection old chap. In case you fall into the hands of a terrorist group or the bumbling fools that pose as our police force while on one of our direct actions. Then you can only reveal your own identity, hours of interrogation or torture are rendered futile. You don’t know the names of your masters. So, you have nothing to tell.”
