Operation Hurricane: The Evan Boyd Adventures #1

by Benjamin Shaw

  So when the Home Secretary, Octavius Ogilvy, sent everyone home on a Monday afternoon, Roger knew something was very wrong indeed. Whatever was going on, it had something to do with that odious little toad, Percy Hoggsby, who apparently didn’t have the afternoon off and would remain glued to the Home Secretary’s side. This was not good news for Roger, not good at all. Roger and Percy were constantly competing for Ogilvy’s attention and recently, Percy had been winning. Roger couldn’t let that continue. So, whatever little scheme Percy was cooking up, Roger was determined to uncover it. He reminded himself that he wasn’t doing this to be a snoop. He wasn’t a bad person, it was just that Percy was a treacherous little slimeball and sometimes, the Home Secretary needed protecting from himself.

  The day had been drifting along a familiar course; Roger was sitting at his desk, working on a speech for Octavius, when Percy scurried from the lift, leading two unannounced strangers towards the Home Secretary’s office. Roger immediately stopped typing and watched with great interest. The two men made it as far as the waiting room outside Octavius’s office. Only a moment later, the Home Secretary came out, walked anxiously by the two men and told everyone to head off home, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Of course, most people packed up and headed out as quickly as possible. But with just one look at these two characters, Roger knew he couldn’t go anywhere until he had found out what was going on.

  One of the men was so tall, he had to duck to get through doorways. Roger had tried not to stare at him, but he looked like a reflection in a hall of mirrors; every feature, every limb looked like it was magnified to horrific proportions. He resembled the result of some kind of experiment. Roger had quickly looked away when the man’s shark-black eyes menacingly flicked towards him. The other man was smaller but also broad, like a rugby player, and he sported thin, slicked back black hair that shone almost wet against his pale skin, as if he’d swum here. Both were dressed head-to-toe in black and were far removed from the usual type of suited visitor they received here at the heart of the British government.

  Roger had packed his things, grabbed his jacket and headed towards the lift, but he only went down one floor. There was clearly no chance that Roger could get into Octavius Ogilvy’s office, but luckily, he didn’t need to.

  Roger had noticed a few months ago that good old Percy seemed to have a lot of information from meetings he hadn’t even been in. He also noticed that Percy liked to go on his ‘little walks’ around the building to ‘work on his daily steps’ – so one day, Roger followed him. Percy had headed down one floor to the stationary cupboard and disappeared inside. Roger had waited until the little reptile had left and then searched the room. On the bottom shelf, right at the back, behind a box of Post-it-notes, was a small box. Roger had opened it and found a small receiver with a set of headphones. The little rat had bugged the boss’ office and had been listening to every word the Home Secretary said! Roger hadn’t taken the evidence to Octavius because he knew it would come in handy some day; it seemed that day had arrived.

  Roger stood in the cubicle of the men’s toilet and popped the headphones into his ears just as Percy ushered the two strange visitors into the Home Secretary’s office.

  All Friends Here

  ‘Thank you, Percy. You can toddle off home now,’ Octavius Ogilvy said as he removed his reading glasses and put down the note his assistant had given him. He didn’t look at Percy Hoggsby; he was too busy staring at his visitors. Ogilvy’s chubby, sweaty face wobbled with indignation as he tried to act like a man in control. The Home Secretary was a large man who wore his pinstripe suit trousers high above his ample waist and held them in place with thick, red braces. His hair was almost gone but what was left was dyed black and manipulated into a hideous comb-over in a vain attempt to disguise his obvious baldness. He took out a handkerchief and dabbed carefully at his brow, ensuring he didn’t disturb the carefully crafted bird’s nest on his head.

  ‘I’ll stay, thank you, Octavius.’

  The reply from Hoggsby caught Ogilvy off guard but before he had a chance to question it, the man with the wet black hair stepped forward.

  ‘I see from your reaction to my note that we understand each other,’ he smiled, revealing a set of almost triangular, pointed teeth.

  Ogilvy flinched at the sight. The man had a chilling smile, like a piranha fish. ‘I understand nothing. Absolutely nothing,’ Ogilvy said, shaking his head. As he did, his plump chin swayed back and forth over the knot of his tie.

  ‘Come now, Octavius, neither of us has time for games,’ the man said again. His voice was low and scratchy, like he needed to clear his throat. ‘A one-word note, and you send the entire office home? You know what it means, you just don’t know why I am here.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you can help a chap out on that score – who are you?’

  ‘My name is Van Cleef and this is my colleague, Mr Bakker.’

  Ogilvy glanced quickly at the colossus of a man who was standing next to Percy Hoggsby. Percy was a tall, slim man with pale skin and a frizz of ginger hair. But next to Bakker, Percy looked like an infant of a different species entirely.

  ‘And what do you know about…’ he lifted the note from his desk… ‘this?’

  ‘Hurricane?’

  Ogilvy visibly shuddered.

  ‘Well, my information is vast and extremely accurate. I got it first-hand, in fact.’

  Ogilvy snorted in anger and turned to his assistant. ‘Percy, listen, I must insist, off you pop home now, please.’

  Hoggsby didn’t move.

  ‘Percy! I don’t want to get into disciplinary action, but I will!’ Ogilvy banged his hand on the desk.

  ‘Please, Home Secretary,’ Percy stepped forward, ‘don’t embarrass yourself.’ Hoggsby lifted the lapel of his suit jacket and underneath it was a solid-gold badge pin.

  Ogilvy stared at it in wonder; it was a large capital ‘T’, the bottom of which was sharp like a spike. He hadn’t seen that emblem in a very long time. As he turned back to Van Cleef, he saw that his visitor had pulled a necklace out from under his black shirt; on the chain was the same emblem.

  ‘You see,’ Hoggsby said. ‘There’s nothing to fear. We are all friends here.’

  Ogilvy’s shoulder slumped as he sank into his large, leather office chair and desperately tried to make sense of what was happening in front of him. The chair squeaked and creaked with every deep breath he took. ‘What is your interest in Hurricane? It was all a very long time ago. I was barely involved, truth be told.’

  ‘Tut-tut, Octavius. I know that’s not the case,’ Van Cleef said, a lizard-like smile stretched out across his face.

  ‘You can’t possibly know anything!’

  ‘But I do. A very dear friend of mine was there when it all unfolded, and he happily provided me with all the juicy little details.’

  ‘Oh, is that so?’ Ogilvy threw his hands in the air like a child throwing a tantrum. ‘And pray, what else did your dear friend tell you, hmm?’

  ‘He told me that if I came back here and spoke to you,’ Van Cleef said as he leant forward and put both hands on Ogilvy’s desk, ‘we could work together to build a power the likes of which most men can only dream about and the world will be ours for the taking.’

  Ogilvy looked into Van Cleef’s wide, maniacal eyes. ‘Who on earth told you that?’

  ‘You did Octavius, my friend. You did.’

  Except for his rapidly blinking eyes, Ogilvy sat perfectly still.

  ‘You see, you’re the man who gave me the account of what happened on Hurricane Island.’

  ‘Impossible! I never speak of it. And anyway, if I had met you before, I am fairly certain I would remember.’

  Van Cleef stood up straight. ‘You’re correct, we haven’t met before. Our conversation about Operation Hurricane doesn’t happen for another 20 years.’

  Ogilvy’s lips slowly parted as his chins dropped, covering the knot on his tie. ‘Do you mean to tell me that you�
�re here from… you’ve come back here…’

  ‘You will come to me many years from now and you will tell me everything. Then you will send me here with a simple message; we need to find the boy, today, right now.’ Van Cleef pointed to the phone on Ogilvy’s desk.

  ‘I suggest you make the call – we need to bring the Guild back together before we run out of time.’

  This is My Fight

  ‘So, who’s your mate?’ Skye asked him. They were still sat watching Aurora’s 4x4 on the monitor. Boyd had his chin on the desk.

  ‘Fitz? He’s not really my mate.’

  ‘You’re not exactly a warm and fuzzy type, are you, Boyd?’

  ‘I might have heard that somewhere before.’

  Skye laughed. ‘Well, whoever he is, you’d better be able to vouch for him. I’ve broken so many of my own rules in the last couple of hours, letting you into our world, and now I’m trusting this Fitz kid too. If either of you screw me over…’

  ‘You’ll end us, I know. I remember the speech. We won’t, you can trust me, and Fitz is as loyal as they come.’ Boyd let the words hang in the air for a moment. ‘I guess he is my friend; probably the only one I’ve got.’

  ‘Then do yourself a favour and don’t let him down.’ Skye finished a bottle of water she had on the desk.

  Boyd sat up and looked at Skye. She turned to face him. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ he said.

  ‘Depends what it is.’

  ‘Why do you take all these things on? You’re not much older than me but while I’m getting suspended for cheating on a maths test, you’re posting videos online about the government and being threatened by the Home Secretary.’

  ‘Ha! Yeah, old Octavius. Dude’s a charmer, isn’t he?’

  ‘Azima said he’s doing everything he can to try to find out who’s behind FrakeNews?’

  ‘Yeah, but our people are good, and we’re used to staying out of sight. He’s a slippery fish, and he’s very careful to make sure he doesn’t do any of his own dirty work.’

  ‘So just put something out there to show everyone what he’s like.’

  ‘Easier said than done. Like I said, he’s careful, but he’s a solid-gold douchebag, I’m sure of it. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he was up to his neck in all of this.’

  ‘I still don’t get why you bother. You’ve got tons of money, right? So, buy an island and get away from him; get away from everyone.’

  ‘Stick my head in the sand? That’s your answer for everything? Nah, not my style. See, I feel the exact opposite of everything you said earlier. This is my problem, because this is my world and it should damn well be a fair one.’

  ‘You think I don’t agree with that?’

  ‘It didn’t sound like it.’

  ‘No, I do. I just don’t think it’s our fight right now.’

  Skye tilted her head. ‘So, whose fight is it? The “adults”? What if they’re part of the problem? Like Ogilvy and his crew – how are they helping me or you? Can you trust your aunt? – or your dad? Maybe we leave it to them to sort the world out? No, the world is full of fakes who pretend to care and cowards who stand back and leave it to someone else to wade in and do something. Well, not me. I got given a voice, so this is my fight. It’s everyone’s responsibility to ask “why” and to shout “stop” if they see injustice. And if Azima is right about what someone is doing out there, then we need to stop it.’

  ‘But if Azima is right, then surely it’s a good thing? We could fix so much stuff if we had the chance to go back and do it all over again. Imagine a world without Hitler or Bin Laden – what would be so bad about that?’

  They had both turned away from the screens now, totally engrossed in their debate.

  ‘See, you’re immediately thinking that this would be like Back To The Future, or Indiana Jones taking on the Nazis, when it just won’t be like that, Boyd.’

  ‘You don’t know what it could be like.’

  ‘I do, trust me on that.’

  ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘Imagine the most hateful, corrupted person you can think of and now imagine they have the ability to travel through time. Do you really think they’re going to go back and stop bad things from happening? No. You can’t dream up what they’ll do because you’re a million miles away from being as twisted as they are. Something this heavy never ends up in the hands of good people. Trust me, if they succeed then the world is about to get a whole new set of problems. So, if I can stop it, damn right I’m going to.’

  They both turned back to the screen and sat in silence for a few minutes. Then Skye took her feet off the desk and clicked on the other screen, bringing up the images captured a few minutes ago by the café camera. There she was, Aurora, but not as Boyd knew her.

  ‘She looks like she could do some damage.’ Skye followed this with a whistle.

  ‘She looks so different,’ Boyd replied, confused.

  ‘You said she was a hippy, all baggy tops and beads.’

  ‘She is – or was – that doesn’t even look like her.’ Boyd leant forward, hit the space bar and the screen paused. He saw the sneering look Aurora was giving the café owner, like a predator toying with her prey. ‘That’s how she looked at me the other night.’ Boyd stared at the screen and narrowed his eyes. ‘I’d never seen her be like that before. Now the hair, the clothes; it’s like I don’t know who she is.’

  ‘I think we need to start working on the premise that maybe you actually don’t; maybe she’s never been who you think she is.’

  Both of them were suddenly drawn to the other screen as Aurora’s Range Rover slowly pulled away.

  ‘Sweet,’ Skye said. ‘Let’s go and do some breaking and entering.’

  Another Fine Mess

  Roger Tork had bought himself a white-chocolate Magnum in the newsagents on the way home from the train station because he figured he deserved it. He had made good his escape from the office toilet as soon as the man who called himself Van Cleef had told the Home Secretary that he had to make a phone call. Since then, Roger had spent his entire train journey trying to work out what on earth was going on.

  What was Hurricane? How would Octavius Ogilvy send these two characters to meet himself if he didn’t even know them; and how the hell had Percy Hoggsby managed to speak to their boss like that and not get himself fired? Whatever it was, it sounded like a heap of trouble that Roger didn’t need. He had never heard Octavius Ogilvy so scared – petrified, in fact. So he would keep an eye on it from a distance and leave it to Percy to get covered in whatever mess was coming.

  Roger sat in his car, ate his Magnum and tried to put it all out of his mind. Once he finished the ice cream, he headed for the house. As he opened the front door, the smell of paint hit him immediately. He set his briefcase down in the hallway and decided he might as well see how the poor lad was getting on – he might be ready for a tea break.

  He opened the door to the front room and slowly scanned the scene in front of him; his jaw dropped in sheer disbelief. All the furniture had been moved into the middle of the room and covered in plastic sheeting. There, on the floor, was a modified radio-controlled car. Fixed to its back was a wire basket containing an industrial-sized paint pot. There was a piece of hose trailing out of the pot and into a nozzle attached to the car roof. This nozzle was twisting and turning, spraying paint over the walls. Sitting behind the paint pot in a cradle was an iPad, the screen of which had a set of dimensions and calculations on it. Roger looked closer and saw that they were plans and measurements for the front room.

  He had to hand it to his son, it was an ingenious way of completing a truly hideous chore without actually having to be there to do it and, for the most part, the plan was working pretty well. The only problem, which Roger felt compelled to step in and sort out before his wife inspected the work, was that Fitz hadn’t factored in the windows. So, much like the walls, they were also now a very nice shade of yellow desert sunbeam.

  Break And Enter />
  Bishop’s flat was in a smart, modern-looking building called the Oxo Tower, which overlooked the River Thames. Boyd hadn’t stopped looking over his shoulder the whole way. Seeing Aurora turn up at the café like that had knocked him sideways and even though Skye had done her best to keep him talking, he felt like he wanted to be sick; his insides were twisting and turning. He couldn’t shake the image of his aunt from his mind. Skye was right, he was starting to believe he didn’t know her at all.

  They were standing by the railings, looking out at the river, when Fitz approached them. ‘I told you you’d need me,’ he said with a smile. He held out his fist and Boyd gave it a bump.

  ‘So, what did you tell your parents?’

  ‘I didn’t tell my parents anything. I’m grounded, remember?’

  ‘But they’ll freak when they find out you’ve done a runner!’

  ‘Nah, it’ll be fine. I’ll help you guys out and get back before they even know I’ve gone. Piece of cake.’ Fitz looked at Skye and gave her a suspicious smile. ‘And you are?’

  ‘A nobody. Shall we do this?’ She marched through the middle of them and headed towards the flats.

  They both followed. Fitz looked at Boyd and raised his eyebrows. ‘You seem to have a knack for associating yourself with such friendly people.’

  ‘She’s fine, give her a break.’ Boyd shook his head.

  ‘Oh, I see!’

  ‘What? What do you see?’

  ‘Hey, mate. Relax, I get it.’

  ‘What? Oh, you think that I… no, absolutely not.’

  ‘Hey, so she’s a bit old for you. Look, I didn’t say a word.’ Fitz smiled.

  ‘You didn’t need to, and, for the record, I don’t fancy her.’

  ‘Okay, that’s good.’

  ‘Yeah, exactly, because we need to stay focused on what’s important here.’