“We’re all good here” a voice they recognised from halfway around the world, “Signals coming in clear as a bell, shit. I thought they were in the next room!” it was Mildred on the radio,
“Good to hear from you, er boss?” Sandy didn’t really know what to call Mildred, technically she was running the show, but only because they made it plain, no one inside ‘6’ was to be trusted until they said so, and considering the huge amount of cash they’d just delivered, she was happy to spend some of it helping them out, besides, in the spying game, it’s always good to have your ‘allies’ owing you favours!
“What’s the news on the other two?” it was Joey asked, “Back on the beat yet?”
“Officially?” Mildred replied, “They’re on stress leave, really, they’re on their way to Manchester, as your backup, like we agreed, I’m sending you contact details so you can contact directly.”
“That figures” Mac broke in, “anyone spends a day with Joey needs at least a month off to recover!” a few laughs were heard on the net.
“Okay folks” Jacko cut in’ “sorry to be a sourpuss, but what’s the situation with the trackers?”
“They’re reading good, the car’s doing about fifty miles an hour down the street, we’re following using the CCTV cameras, should have a location for you within minutes of them parking up,”
“Don’t forget about the car switch” Smithy came back on the line, “They’ll probably switch at least once if not three or four times”
“Did I tell you how to do your job?” Mildred shot back, not angry, but clearly wanting to put him in his place, she knew what she was doing, switching cars is one of the first things that criminals think of, at least the smart ones do, and until the advent of the CCTV camera, it was a sure way of getting away, if you had enough space between you and the pursuing cops, today was a different story.
But this time, they wanted them to get away, these were the ‘small fry’ of the operation, and the team were after a much bigger prize. Hopefully the ‘small fry’ would lead them to the ‘bigger fish’ in the pond, but that was going to take some handling.
London has the dubious title of being the ‘most watched city in the world’. Literally every street corner covered by a blanket of CCTV cameras that stretch from one side of the city to the other, but what no one tells anyone, is that ‘blanket’ extends out much further than the security forces let on, right from one coast to the other, every junction, traffic light and intersection, and it’s all ‘off the books’
“They’re heading out of town” Mildred came back on the radio, looks like they’re heading for the ‘big smoke’ just like we thought!”
“What about the phones?”
“A couple of calls from the numbers we knew about,” one of the other operators came on the line this time, “seems like they’re pretty rattled!”
“I damn well hate this” Sir Michael spoke for the first time since the operation began, he’d listened in on everything, “Flaming foreign agents working on British soil, doing a job we SHOULD be doing” he almost threw the headset across the room, instead he tore it off and threw it into a pile on the desk where his laptop was, he was still connected, and on a secure frequency, but the anger was getting the better of him.
“Boss” it was Chambers spoke, they were in the same place, not far from the action, but far enough away that they couldn’t see any of the players, “we have a mole! If we try anything, they’ll know, we have to let it play out this way”
“I know, I know” he sighed, “but it doesn’t mean I like it!”
“Boss, we gave them a hell of a mess to clean up, and ours won’t be clean until we finish this, let the Kiwis do their thing!”
“Doesn’t mean I have to bloody well like it” he huffed as he sat down again.
Even Chambers wasn't going to correct him, and point out that the team was ‘all British’, it was just that control of the op wasn’t his, and it ate away at him, he paused, they both had coffee, and something to eat where they were, their computers linked to Skype, along with the radios they had everything they needed to listen in.
“Everything’s in place boss” Chamber tried to smooth things out, it only had a limited effect, we’re ready to go with the deception.
“We’re under fire” it was Sandy’s voice broke over the radio channels, they all knew GCHQ at Cheltenham was listening in on that radio frequency, hopefully they weren’t listening in to the secure chat over the system they’d been using, it was a gamble, but they were using encryption techniques that even if they were on the right frequency, they’d have to have the right settings to break the code, otherwise it’d be gibberish.
Jacko had started laughing when he first saw the radios they’d be using for the security line, an old style mobile phone, “is that a phone?” he’d asked, “or a bloody brick?” the thing was so big it looked like a huge bulge in his pocket.
“Old she may be boss” Joey replied as he cracked open the back of the phone, he took a few small packets out of his pocket, passing them round he carried on, “There are three papers I’ve colour coded for you uninitiated in the fine art of communication” he chuckled as he tore the end off the one he’d kept for himself, “Green first, then amber, then red, just like the traffic lights! Put them in the wrong order, and all you’ll get is static, by the way, I colour coded these before we left New Zealand, so there ‘ain’t no copies here!”
“So?” Jacko asked
“So, get the wrong order, and all you get is gibberish, get the wrong cards, and all you get is static, they’re unbreakable encryption, even Cheltenham can’t break the codes, unless they know which cards to use!”
“He’s right” Sir Michael cut in, “back in the day we used them to fool the enemy, you had a one in three chance of getting the first card right, a one in nine chance of getting two of the cards right and a bloody astronomically small chance of getting all three right, and that’s without knowing the frequency!”
To put all three cards in the right order was a one in two hundred and forty seven chance of getting it right, and that’s on a good day.
Sandy was talking on the ‘open’ system, the one that Cheltenham thought was their ‘secure’ system, they didn’t want the cops to pick up on anything until after MI6 had seemingly ‘cleaned the area’, that was all part of the ruse. “We’re taking fire, the package is down, repeat package is down, require immediate evac!”
“Roger that,” Jacko came on the line, “evac on the way, assistance on the way” Mac and him were in a car at the end of the street, Jacko turned the key gunned it and went screeching down the street.
All this was being picked up by the street cameras, by now Cheltenham would have heard the call, hacked the feed to the street cameras, put a few minutes time delay into the feed so that the cops got the details minutes later, enough time for either ‘5’ or ‘6’ to sort out a response, and hopefully get someone down here to ‘contain’ any damage to national security, all part of what they needed. The ‘mole’ had to think it’d been successful, hopefully, a few calls on phones would report it, and they’d have the location.
Paul was hurt, but he wasn’t shot, Joey’d hit him hard enough to knock ‘the stuffing’ out of him, he’d gone down hard and damn near ‘popped’ his knee cap, he howled with pain, but Joey’d thrown something damned heavy over his head, and was lying on it, holding him down, he was beginning to have trouble breathing, and was beginning to panic.
“Let me up, Let me umph”
“Shut up and lie down” Joey punched him in the back and screamed in his ear.
“Get this bloody thing off me!” he shouted. His ears were ringing with the noise, the voice sounded kind of muffled, he’d no idea a weapon could be so loud, he wasn’t even sure the firing had stopped.
“It’s a Kevlar vest” Joey shouted back, “Bulletproof, now lie still until we tell you to move” He pushed down harder.
“You’re clear” Smithy’s voice cut
over the secure channel, he was their ‘ace in the hole’ but this time ‘overwatch’ had been different, his job had been to just ‘spot’ the enemy, and keep track of them, they needed them to get away, this time!
Less than half a second later he was being physically lifted, whatever it was still over his head, bundled into the back of a vehicle, “Keep it on” Sandy was right beside him and pushing him down, “we’ve gotta make ‘em think you’re dead”
“What?” he was terrified.
“They want you dead, the only way to keep you alive is to make them think you are, now shut up and lie down!”
“Control, this is Scorpion Team,” Sandy began a ‘sitrep’ report over the official channel, “Two gunmen, dark Ford car registration Yankee, Charlie, Pappa, four two five Xray, heading north on Victoria Crescent. Am evacuating the package, damaged, but not destroyed, heading for the ‘Prince of Thieves’ over”
Chapter 13
“We got ‘im guv” the young detective shouted down the phone.
“Whoa, hold on Jimmy,” she reached over to turn the volume down. Billie was driving, so she was using the car’s Bluetooth tech with her phone, he was coming over the car speakers. “Now, whatcha got?” the Manchester slang slipping out.
“I’ve got him guv, found yer man!”
“Where?” she shot back, suddenly the traffic wasn't as important as before, “we’ve been looking for days, where was he?”
“I know boss” Jimny might be the youngest one on the team, barely in his twenties, but he was probably the brightest, “that's why I did some lateral thinking,” he stopped for the slightest moment, Billie was genuinely curious where he was going with this, but let him carry on. “You told us to search the river banks right?”
“Yeah” she began, by now she’d found a parking spot, she pulled over, “carry on”
“Well” he began again, “I remembered something from my school geography class”
“Not so long ago for you” she quipped, she just couldn’t help having a dig at his age, or lack of it, “but go on”
“You had us checking all the cameras upriver, cos rivers normally flow downhill right?” the comment wither went totally over his head, or he chose to ignore it.
“Yeah” she was genuinely curious, “carry on” she really wanted to see where this lead.
“Well guv, the Thames isn’t a normal river, it’s what they call a tidal river, it ebbs and flows with the tide, sure, mostly it flows downhill, or downstream, but what if the fella went in the river when the tide was coming in, he could have drifted from the east, possibly the east end.”
“Please don’t tell her he’s a sodding mobster!” she exhaled, speaking softly, yet the voice was full of fear, “that’s the last thing we need, a gang war in the middle of tourist season!” then again she thought to herself, ‘it’s London, when aren’t the tourists around?’ she switched the car ignition back on, “Listen, Jimmy, I’m heading right back to the station, have the whole team get together, you can brief us all when I get there!
“Tower Bridge”
“What?”
“Tower bridge, that’s where he went into the river”
“But now, it’s a river right, and they run downhill don’t they?” One of the others asked. It was Frank, he was number two on the team now that the ‘brass’ had decided the case wasn’t such a priority, though how you can go from ‘top priority’ to almost a ‘cold case’ in the space of a couple of days mystified BJ.
“Not the Thames” Jimmy replied, “at least not all the time, it’s what’s known as a tidal river, the tides can affect the way it flows,” he stopped and took a sip of the water he was holding in the plastic beaker, he was nervous, very conscious he was the ‘junior’ here and it’s meant to be the older more experienced cops showing him how to do stuff, “the Thames has tides, and they go all the way up as far as Teddington lock, you know, right past here” he pointed to the place on the map where the body was found, “and all the way to Hampton court, so flowing upriver isn’t a problem!”
“But how’d you work out it was Tower Bridge? that place is closed to traffic, and the public!” Frank came back, “Been closed for months, working on the drawbridge aren’t they?”
“Yeah they are” Jimmy replied, “but I asked the database for people who went in the river for that night, there were three altogether, one in Dulwich, he got rescued about five minutes after he went in, the second was down by Dartford, pulled herself out, and then there’s this guy, the only one I couldn’t account for getting out!”
“But if he fell in” Billie started, “How come no one noticed?”
“Like Frank said boss” Jimmy replied taking a sip of the water he was holding, “It’s a construction site, the weekend, no one really around to see it”
“But what about the security company?” the young female in the team, her name was Joanne, “aren’t there CCTV cameras? Wasn’t someone watching?”
“There were” Jimmy replied, “they’ve got cameras, and they’re working, but because it’s a construction site, they’re only really interested in when people nick stuff from the site, they only look when stuff’s gone missing!”
“Just great” Frank spat the words out, he’s got a coffee in his hand, standard practice for a cop with ten years ‘on the job’. “A deserted building site, no cameras worth a shit, and no one taking responsibility”
“Oh and that’s not all” Jimmy butted in, “we also got the time he went into the river wrong, he went in at eleven the night before, the high tide was at three, so the body drifted downriver, got stuck and was found where he was” Jimmy was a little more precise than me meant to be, getting carried away with the excitement of the moment, no one stopped him though.
“What did he get stuck on?” Frank asked, no one really noticed that Jimmy had switched from the personal of talking about the man to the impersonal of talking about the body.
“Not sure boss,” Jimmy addressed his comments to Billie, he wasn’t ignoring Frank, just following the protocol that everything ‘goes through’ the boss in these situations, “but there are a few ships moored nearby, the Pathologist says there’s paint, ‘Navy grey’ he called it” he made the two-fingered sign for inverted commas, “apparently it used to be known as Mountbatten pink, and only the Navy ever used it, and only during the middle of WW2, there’s only one ship that’s ever been painted that colour on the Thames. That’s HMS Belfast, but there are other boats that the body may have washed up alongside”
“This gets bleeding worse!” BJ was beginning to regret being given the case, not that she’d had much of a choice in the matter, you never do, she knew from the start it was a ‘make or break’ case, it , would either make or break her career, and right now it was looking like the latter, “what you’re saying, or at least seem to be saying” she went on, “is that the Royal Navy’s floating museum and two of London’s most iconic tourist attractions are our crime scenes! Sodding wonderful!!”
“Boss” Jimmy cut her off, he was about to deliver the biggest blow, “I’m not even sure there was a crime, take a look at this” he’d had his laptop with him, now he reached down, opened the laptop, turned it on and flipped it around so that everyone could see, three clicks on the inbuilt mouse pad and he was onto the camera footage from the time of the incident, they all watched with interest. “I managed to download what footage the construction company had, here take a look” he clicked the mouse a few times, brought up the footage and swivelled the machine around so they could all see.
Everyone could see the victim, there was something or someone seemingly glanced off him, but it happened so fast, and at such an angle they couldn’t see clearly, then they only saw about two steps before he fell from the bridge, but he was staggering, as if he was drunk.
“So” BJ was annoyed, really annoyed, she was trying to hold in the anger, but not succeeding very well, “what you’re saying, is we’ve been sent on a flaming wild goose chase through the b
leeding streets and cesspits of this sodding city just to come up with this bullshit?” Jimmy looked sheepish, they’d all done their jobs to the best of their ability, but all they’d come up with was the man was seeming as ‘drunk as a skunk’ fell over and pretty much drowned in an accident!
“Wait a minute boss” it was Joanne who stopped the flow, “We’ve got the pathologists to report, I put it on your desk an hour ago, figured you’d look it over when you got back, that should tell us if it was alcohol or drugs” she started for Billie’s office, fifteen seconds later she had the report and presented it to her boss, she already knew what Billie would find, but there was no way she was going to ‘steal her thunder’ she gave it over, “Here you are guv”
BJ snatched the report, she’d normally have the manners to say “thank you” but she was too frustrated at the wild goose chase, she studied it for a moment, “Wait a minute” she blurted out, she leaned back against a desk and read out loud, “Blood alcohol level was nil, no drugs found in his system,” she went through the rest of the report, “Nothing” she looked up, holding the rest of the team in her stare, she blurted out, “anyone care to explain how we can have a man ‘drunk as a skunk’ on video, yet no alcohol or drugs found in his system? Do we even know who he was yet?”
Everyone looked sheepish, it was clear, the answer was ‘no’ on both counts. Billie’s eyes were boring into each one, in turn, they’d done their jobs, yet it felt like they were naughty school kids being told off by the school principal. Nervous fidgeting was going on around the room.
Something clicked in her brain, she figured the same thing had either clicked in their brains too, or was about to, and that was someone out there, didn’t want the cops finding out who this guy was, and that someone was either in the government, or had connections very high up, and that made her very uncomfortable.
“We still need to find out who he was,” BJ ignored the stony silence, she knew she’d be pushing the limits, “a family had a husband and possibly a father who didn’t come home a few nights ago, they’re probably frantic with worry, we owe it to them to find out, and let them know what happened, we’ll use that angle to cover our arses with this” she pointed to the board where all the details of the case were, “meanwhile, I’ll get hold of the pathologist, and see if they can explain what we saw, that sound like a plan?”
Scorpion's Vengeance Page 7
