by Ted Tayler
Details which should have been passed on to Phoenix by others in the loop had been discarded as unimportant. Checks on the Hindu couple at the safe-house had been sloppy. An error which Rusty was convinced could have resulted in Phoenix having his throat cut on the homeward journey before he could have saved him.
As they went through the events of the latest action against the Grid and prepared plans for next week’s, Rusty kept reminding himself Phoenix couldn’t continue to carry this burden alone for long. It was too much for one man.
He helped, as far as possible, but going forward Olympus needed others to step up to share the load. He resolved to talk to Athena on the matter when he caught her alone.
Two weeks ago, the pair managed an operation in the Portsmouth area. Agents from the Olympus cell based in Southampton were responsible for events on the ground. If they needed support from Larcombe, it was only a two-hour drive away.
Phoenix had rubbed shoulders with several of this team when the Titans were at large. He had been driving like a madman through the New Forest trying to avoid being killed by Hermes. Athena was with him, and pregnant. They had spent a Sunday afternoon in Lymington relaxing on Erebus’s yacht ‘Elizabeth’. The drive home was interrupted. The cell leader and a crew drove to their rescue.
Two of those same agents had been working undercover in Portsmouth for the past eight months. The nature of the work they undertook spanned a huge range, from risk-free to potentially lethal. The gang they infiltrated majored in immigrant smuggling and money counterfeiting. The head of the outfit was Albanian. Other senior roles were filled by fellow-countrymen, but the majority of the gang were British and hard-core. The agents understood from the outset, one wrong move could give them away.
The cover-stories and alibis they used had been carefully constructed by Giles and his team in the control centre. It was always a painstaking job. With similar plausible backgrounds needed for hundreds of agents across the world, Giles was well-versed in the art of deception.
Rusty knew criminals grew increasingly aware of their organisations being penetrated by undercover officers. There was no evidence, to suggest the gang traced a link between the men and the Olympus cell. If they had been police officers, then it was possible the gang could have watched cars going in and out of the area’s police stations. That was a potential weakness for the boys in blue, but not for an Olympus crew. They lived what appeared to be normal lives, on normal residential estates. If their cars had been followed home, the gang bosses would have learned nothing to make them suspicious.
The head of their cell talked to the men at least once a week. He appeared anonymous too, to anyone watching when they met up for a round of golf. Three hours hacking around eighteen holes, and a chat in the bar afterwards, was time enough to pass on any news. The leader wore a wire, so it could be recorded for posterity. The meetings provided a release valve for the agents. That constant sustained pressure of working undercover was difficult to manage. The regular debriefing and support those rounds of golf offered were essential.
Methods the gang used in smuggling illegals into the UK varied. Hundreds arrived from the continent in the backs of lorries on ferries. Similar numbers had been transported from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia in shipping containers. The price these desperate migrants paid ranged from five to ten thousand pounds per head.
Portsmouth was only one of the dozens of smaller ports being used since security at Dover and Folkestone had been tightened. In times of austerity, security could only be afforded in a limited number of places, despite the potential dangers of that policy. Rusty told Phoenix it conjured up the image of the little Dutch boy with his finger in the flood embankment.
Phoenix started to count the number of potential leaks around the coastline, and given up, “We would run out of little boys and sink under the oceans.”
The Southampton agents’ role within the gang had been to act as couriers. They drove the unmarried men to hand car-wash sites in towns from Bognor Regis to Bournemouth. The gangmaster in the town took control of them from there. He found accommodation, and they would be set to work ten hours a day, seven days a week. Phoenix and Rusty knew exactly what conditions they lived in, and who looked after their finances.
The undercover agents rarely dealt with families. They were moved by other gang members delivering them across the country in lorries. The network was well-established and trouble-free. Transport the gang used on these runs was maintained to a high standard. A cheapskate operation would soon be rumbled. Motorway police pulled over vehicles that looked overloaded, or dangerous. With the vast sums of money raised by the smuggling trade, it was worth spending money on keeping things running smoothly.
The rest of the courier work the agents covered involved single women. The young ones unwittingly ended up as sex workers in seaside resorts along the south coast, while the older ones found themselves little more than domestic slaves, trapped in a vicious cycle of work, sleep and no play.
Week after week, the agents passed details of the network on to their team leader. Olympus now possessed data on a comprehensive cobweb of crime that stretched from West Sussex to Devon. The plan was not to raid each individual property, but to cut the head off the snake.
An anonymous phone call to the authorities by Giles Burke or Artemis would provide a tip-off concerning the whereabouts of illegal immigrants. In time, they could be freed from the awful conditions they had fallen into, and in most cases, they would be deported. Always assuming the authorities found the manpower available to respond.
The call for urgent help in Portsmouth had arrived at lunchtime, ten days ago.
Phoenix and Athena were in their apartment. Rusty and Artemis were enjoying a rare day off. The cell team leader, Frank Bolano arrived at the golf course for their regular ten o’clock tee-off time. He waited an hour, but the agents never made contact. He called two of his colleagues. With ladders, squeegees and buckets of water, they visited the agents’ houses. There was no sign of either man, upstairs or down. There were no cars on the driveway, or in the garage at the first house. A car stood locked and empty in the carport of the second. They called their boss. He contacted Phoenix.
Phoenix and Rusty sped south to Portsmouth. Frank Bolano met them at Cosham, a suburb on the outskirts. The news was not good. The local radio station had reported a firearms incident near The Guildhall. As they approached the city centre, the sounds of sirens filled the air.
It was impossible to get any closer. A cordon had been hastily thrown around the immediate area. Traffic officers signalled for them to move on, away from the centre. Rusty saw officers with guns running up side streets. They drove to the car park for the designer outlet centre on Gunwharf Quays. The three agents then walked back towards the centre.
Rusty had run ahead and asked local shopkeepers if they knew what happened. He was told the bodies of two men were dumped near the Central Police Station on Winston Churchill Avenue. Five minutes from The Guildhall. The local radio said the shootings took place in Southsea at noon. The police received anxious calls from neighbours.
Rusty put the jigsaw together piece by piece, shop by shop. He filled in a few gaps they didn’t understand. The two agents had driven to meet Frank Bolano as arranged. The first agent collected his colleague and drove towards the golf course with both sets of clubs in the boot. They were intercepted by members of the gang.
Eye-witnesses phoned the local radio with details of a high-speed car chase. Two cars, a BMW and a VW Passat pursued a Ford Fusion along Victoria Road North. A third vehicle, a dark blue van, pulled across the front of the speeding Fusion at a crossroads. It was unclear at first whether this was deliberate or not. Two men with handguns leapt from the BMW and got into the rear of the Fusion. Shots were fired. Neighbours who called the police and eye-witnesses who contacted the radio station were uncertain how many shots they heard.
They agreed it was in double figures.
The driver and passenger in t
he Fusion had then been dragged from the car and their bodies were thrown into the back of the dark van. That vehicle’s role then became clear. The Passat had already left the scene. The BMW drove off towards Portsmouth. The dark van followed. At this stage, each of the three vehicles travelled under the speed limit.
Armed officers arrived in Southsea twenty minutes after the shootings. Within minutes there was a large police presence, but the only thing they found was the abandoned Fusion, with all four doors open, blood spatter throughout the front compartment, and two sets of golf clubs in the boot.
In Winston Churchill Avenue, the dark van slowed at a set of lights, and the rear doors opened. Two bodies were thrown out onto the pavement. The van then sped off. Police began hunting for the three vehicles.
Rusty found Phoenix and their colleague to relay the news.
“They must have been made,” said Rusty.
“We may never know what alerted the gang,” said Phoenix. “But we’re not going to let them get away with killing two of our own. We’ll take our revenge.”
“I want to be in on that mission, Phoenix,” said Frank. “I owe those lads that much.”
“I don’t attach any blame for this on what you’ve done, Frank. Rusty and I have overseen your actions every step of the way. It’s been handled extremely well. Textbook. No, something ridiculous lay at the bottom of it. No doubt, Henry Case will be able to extract it from one of the gang leaders in time.”
“If any of them live long enough to be transported back to Larcombe for questioning,” muttered Rusty.
“There aren’t many positives to take out of this mess,” said Phoenix.
“I can’t see any,” said Frank.
“The gang believed these two were undercover police officers,” said Rusty.
“Exactly,” said Phoenix, “dumping the bodies fifty yards from Police HQ is designed to send a message about who ran the show in town. That’s the only positive I can see.”
“Olympus security remains unscathed then,” said Frank, “until the bodies start piling up around here when we get busy.”
“We must be cautious, Frank, as ever,” said Phoenix, “vengeance will be swift, but not reckless. Our actions must not draw the attention of the police to our door. We were unable to prevent the bodies of those two agents falling into the hands of the authorities. The gang may have believed they were undercover cops. The police will know for certain they were not. The cover stories for our agents are excellent, and enquiries will hit a dead end. Our best hope is that as these two played the role of gang couriers, we can let the police find evidence they had their own scam running. Maybe I’ll ask Giles to plant regular cash amounts in their cover bank accounts, or we’ll hide cash in the houses they occupied. It won’t be difficult to convince the police these two were just casualties of the dirty game they were involved in.”
There was little more to be achieved that afternoon, so Phoenix and Rusty returned to Larcombe. Frank Bolano returned to Southampton to break the sad news to his team. Later that evening the three vehicles had been found burnt out on a housing estate in Fareham.
In the days that followed, the misinformation was scattered in places the police would be bound to search. Giles and his team made every attempt to cover Olympus’s tracks. So far, the Hampshire Police investigation had failed to throw up any cast-iron motive for the slaughter of two men on the city’s streets. The overall level of crime in the region continued to frustrate them, and resources were stretched. Two low-level gang members were dead. A dozen new cases involving the living arrived on their desks overnight. With each successive day, the case slipped further down the list of priorities.
At Larcombe Manor, when Phoenix told her the news, Athena shed a tear at the loss of two more agents. They knew taking the fight to the Grid would bring casualties. It didn’t make it any easier when the reality hit. She considered the problem for several days as Giles and Artemis weaved their magic.
Her orders at this Wednesday morning’s meeting were clear. The direct action against the Grid’s members in Portsmouth had been sanctioned by Zeus. It would take place on Monday. Five of the gang’s leaders were to be targeted. One was to be brought to Larcombe to be dealt with by Henry Case.
Now, late on Friday afternoon the thirtieth of May in the orangery, Rusty watched as his friend placed photos on the display boards Erebus deplored. Phoenix worked in silence; as if his friend wasn’t in the room.
Rusty waited as Phoenix worked on his plans with every addition to the boards. The whole layout took forty minutes. Phoenix stood back and viewed his handiwork. Headshots of the men who ran the operations; details of their roles, and their criminal records. Additional photos of the homes where they lived, their families if they had them, the cars they drove. Lists of potential sites where they could be on Monday. Maps of every street they used in their daily lives in the past eight months. Rusty was still working his way through the masses of information Frank Bolano and his team gathered.
“You told Frank this was a textbook operation,” he said, “the sheer volume of material they collected beggar’s belief.”
“Yet we still lost two agents,” replied Phoenix, without turning around. He was still running through every possible scenario. They had more than enough data, that was true, but was his interpretation of it, and the plan he devised going to be successful?
“Are you ready to take me through it, Phoenix?” asked Rusty.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Phoenix replied. “When I planned my personal crusades the only person who stood to get hurt if something went wrong, was me. Even so, when a mission didn’t go as planned, I was the only one in the shit. I thought on my feet, made my decision in an instant, and acted to get myself out of trouble These days I’m responsible for others, and I’m having doubts. Little niggles creep into my head, and I question every step I’ve planned, over and over.”
“I know,” said Rusty, “you can’t do everything, mate,”
Rusty was even more certain he should talk with Athena about getting her husband help.
They spent the next hour running through the various stages of the planned operation. Rusty had questions. Phoenix had the answers. When it ended, Rusty could find no fault with the logic behind his boss’s plans. Yet he could see a slight frown on his friend’s face remained. Even as they tidied up the mess they made in the orangery and walked back across the lawns to the main building, Phoenix still checked he hadn’t missed a vital step.
“Sleep well tonight,” said Rusty. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“I hoped for a break this weekend,” groaned Phoenix, “but we need to hear what Giles and Artemis have found out about this poor woman Prentice.”
Saturday, 31st May 2014
Athena awoke bright and early. Phoenix was no longer beside her. She sensed he was troubled last night when they went to bed, but he hadn’t been in the mood to talk. It was clear he didn’t sleep well. Hope, on the other hand, was sound asleep when Athena poked her head into the nursery.
Athena walked through to the kitchen Her husband had already eaten it appeared, and a coffee mug was missing from the shelf. He was at work in the meeting room, or the orangery. Athena saw to her own breakfast and then collected Hope soon after as she let her mother know she was awake. Maria Elena would be in this morning to look after her while they held a brief meeting. Until Maria Elena arrived, Athena could only spend time with her little princess, and brood over what troubled her husband.
At nine o’clock on the dot, Athena breezed into the meeting room, ready for action. Minos and Alastor sat together, smartly dressed as ever. Not suited and booted as on weekdays, but only one degree less formal. Athena could never imagine them attending in jeans and a t-shirt. They weren’t the sort of men to understand the meaning of a dress-down day.
Rusty and Artemis arrived. It was great to watch them, clearly in love, and totally at ease in each other’s company. They were kept apart so much by their various d
uties at Larcombe. Athena could tell that they grabbed every second they could be together and enjoyed it to the maximum.
Athena spotted Giles Burke and Henry Case through the window, walking side by side, from the stable-block. They would come through the door in seconds. Where was Phoenix?
“We’re still one short,” said Rusty, as Henry and Giles joined them, “is Phoenix having a lie-in?”
“He was up, and gone before I awoke,” said Athena with a rueful grin. “I’m guessing none of you has seen him?”
The sea of shaking heads greeted her.
“Phoenix will be in the orangery,” said Rusty, seizing his chance to raise the subject he had been mulling over. “He’ll be checking next week’s agenda for the ninety-ninth time. We discussed it in detail yesterday evening, and I couldn’t see any potential pitfalls. This Grid business is getting on top of him. He needs a release valve. Someone to share the load.”
“We each of us do what we can to give him the tools for the job,” said Minos, “and he’s the best I’ve seen at what he does. His success rate is higher than any agent we’ve ever had.”
“There have been a minimal number of occasions when the fall-out from one of his direct actions has threatened to expose Olympus as being the architect,” added Alastor. “He’s a genius. However, Rusty has a good point. An expert in operations planning from a combat background would be a tremendous acquisition.”
“I agree,” said Henry, “we need to find someone to do the groundwork. That would allow Phoenix to fine-tune prepared skeleton plans of proposed missions. He wouldn’t need to devote the extra man-hours he does at present covering every minute detail. The poor chap will burn out if we’re not careful.”
“I’ll introduce the subject gently,” said Athena, with a sigh, “but he won’t like it. As the joint leader of Olympus here at Larcombe, it is my duty to ensure we protect our asset. We can’t afford for him to burn out. As his wife, I’d love to have him here with Hope and myself more often. With luck, I can persuade him to see sense. Henry, do you have any contacts from the old days, who might fit the bill?”
