The Milieu Principle

by Malcolm Franks

“Matt, Matt,” shouted the woman’s voice.

  The slapping of the fingers against his cheek stirred him gradually into consciousness, back into life. His senses began to return, his eyes re-focus. The woman’s face loomed above him, her shoulder-length dark hair almost camouflaged by the darkness of the cold night.

  “Grace,” he grimaced in pain from his shoulder. “Thank God, thank God you’ve come to your senses.”

  “Matt,” replied the woman’s throaty voice. “Get up, there’s not much time.”

  He forced himself to obey the instruction, pushing his body away from the cold surface with his one healthy arm. The woman’s face was clearer now, the wide blue eyes revealing her true identity.

  “Rosa?”

  She helped him on to his knees. A man’s shape crouched behind her, looking at something on the floor and muttering quietly away.

  “Oh, Missy,” the figure said. “How could yur?”

  The realisation for Matt was more painful than his wound.

  “Grace, Grace,” he called, trying to haul his body over the ground to her prostrate form.

  Jack heard his friend’s cries and turned to prevent him from nearing. Matt fought like a tiger to get closer. They held him back, forced him away, until his energy was spent.

  “It was yur or her,” Jack said forcefully, trying to get the message through to the devastated Englishman. “Rosa had no choice.”

  Matt wanted to cry. He wanted to wail to the moon and curse the dark sky, bellow into the darkness. But he no longer had the strength. Instead he slumped back against the wooden post behind him, defeated.

  “Are yur okay, lad?” said Jack sympathetically. He nodded in weary response. Rosa checked his wound.

  “You’re lucky,” she said. “It went straight through.”

  Matt turned his head to look at her. There was no fire in his eyes, no rage at the precious life she had taken from him, only sadness.

  “Keep still,” she ordered.

  Powder fell from a plastic bag onto his wound. At first, he felt nothing. Then it hit him, like a red hot poker burning into his flesh. He gripped Jack’s shoulder and squeezed with all his might to try and contain the agony coursing through his system, his face contorted in pain. And then it was over, and he gasped in relief.

  “Grace,” whispered Matt softly, pointing to the lonely, prone figure.

  “It’s too late for her, lad,” said his Canadian friend.

  “No, that’s not what I mean,” replied Matt. “She’s got one of the memory sticks.”

  They raised him to his feet, Rosa using her body as a prop to support Matt as they made for the floatplane. Jack went to search Grace’s lifeless body. The bullet hole in her head was small and neat. Her facial features were still, almost peaceful, and the glasses remained in place. Jack saw the memory stick in her open hand and grasped it quickly before picking up Matt’s suitcase.

  “Goodbye, Missy,” he sighed, and turned away from the lifeless body lying on the cold surface.

  “Sandra Hayes was her real name,” said Rosa, as she eased the dressing away from Matt’s shoulder to examine his injury. “I met her about three years ago, on an op in Austria. She retired soon after.”

  Matt said nothing as Rosa gently prodded the wound with her fingers, preferring instead to absorb the information in silence. Her eyes glanced in his direction, trying to gauge his reaction. Three days had passed since he had last spoken, masking both his physical and mental pain.

  “Rumour had it she was having an affair with the head of section, and she was besotted with him. He dumped her when offered the top job at the CSIS (Canadian Secret Intelligence Service). He had to be respectable and Hayes had a reputation, so he took another woman for a wife and ditched her. The op lasted three days and he called after it finished. She never got over it.”

  “Grace was married,” insisted Jack, standing in the corner of the room, “to a guy called Mark.”

  “William Mark Francis was the head of section. Everyone knows him as Bill Francis.” answered Rosa. “He’s a tall, uber-confident man with one of the loudest voices on the planet. Only Hayes called him Mark. They were never married.”

  She glanced again at Matt and received a negative reaction, a cold and blank stare.

  “I don’t understand,” questioned Jack again. “Her name is Grace Amanda Fox.”

  “That was the name she took on retirement from active service. According to the files, Francis contacted her after Matt left Toronto. She wouldn’t play ball. They met up some weeks later, the day I arrived in Victoria. He finally persuaded her to sign up once she’d met up with Evans and Stoner on the cruise ship. Who knows what he promised her.”

  Rosa shrugged her shoulders in seeming disinterest as she continued to apply the dressing to Matt’s wound.

  The room felt confined to him, cabin like. There were only a small wooden table surrounded by four chairs, apart from the two bunk beds behind Matt. Jack was leaning against the wall in the corner, next to the tiny window with his arms crossed, watching Rosa set about her medical task in obvious admiration.

  “What’s the stuff yur put on his wound in Skagway,” he asked.

  “We use it in the field,” she replied, “for bleed wounds. It burns away any infections and cauterises the damaged flesh.”

  “Like a hot poker?” asked Jack

  “Yes,” she said. “We call it the magic dust.

  “Explains why my shoulder still hurts,” said Jack, referring to the vice like grip Matt had used on him when Rosa first applied the powder.

  “Evans and Chrissie Stoner are active agents,” continued Rosa, looking straight into the Englishman‘s eyes. “Tillman likes his teams to work in groups of three.”

  Matt’s head fell back and he closed his eyes, cursing with the realisation.

  “Evans,” he murmured. “He was at Kielder. And you’re the one he called milady.”

  They were his first words since the Skagway rescue. Rosa hesitated, unsure how he would further react.

  “Yes. That’s what the little shit used to call me behind my back,” she admitted, wary of Matt’s likely response to her confession.

  “Isn’t there anyone on this freaking, God forsaken planet who is exactly who they say they are,” he shouted angrily, contemptuously.

  “Says the man with two names,” quipped Jack in retort.

  Matt sighed in recognition of the irony of what he’d said, the craziness of the situation.

  “I need to call Jenna,”

  “No. Never,” said Rosa forcefully.

  “I have to warn her.”

  “No, Matt. No-one else knows about Jenna.”

  “You don’t know that,” he hissed.

  He looked into her eyes and could tell she wasn’t sure.

  “Try and contact Jenna and then they will find her, kill her too.”

  He knew she was right.

  “There,” she said. “Should do it for now,” discarding the soiled and bloody bandages.

  “Where exactly are we?” asked Matt.

  “Neets Bay,” replied Jack. “At the salmon farm I told yur about. Henry’s outside. If yur gonna start talking to people again, I’ll introduce yur both.”

  They offered to help him but he refused, preferring instead to struggle on his own. He cursed at the pain as he rose, arm held tightly in the makeshift sling.

  Stepping into the sunshine onto the wooden patio, he saw the dirt track spearing off to both left and right. No more than six feet wide, the other side of the path was thick with tall grass reaching up towards the trees lining their way. To their right, attached to the hut, a vast wooden structure sat several feet from the ground held up by wooden beams.

  “That’s where they grow the salmon,” advised Jack.

  Matt peered over the edge to look upon the mass of shiny skinned fish packed tightly into the wooden reservoir. “Around ten thousand of the slippery suckers are grown each summer. Very tasty they are too,” added the Canadian.


  The trio walked the fifty or so yards leading them to an open space where Matt could hear a river, or large stream, trickling into the huge expanse of water to their right. Further ahead, a man’s figure stood with his back to them. A long pony tail of light ginger hair hung from his neck over the back of the pink, short sleeved shirt tucked into khaki coloured short trousers.

  Henry was massive, as broad as he was tall with muscles to match. The thick beard of gingery greying hair complemented the colouring on his head, a truly fearsome sight. Like Jack he had grey eyes too; only his were more sunken into his face, and smaller, which made his wide nose appear flatter.

  His strong, articulate voice welcomed them openly to Neets Bay. Standing next to a large, open sided gazebo like structure placed on the river bank he smothered both Matt and Rosa in a hearty embrace. Jack and he had been friends since their army days, he explained, and they kept in regular touch.

  He told them the rest of the staff had gone into Ketchikan to celebrate a fellow worker’s fortieth birthday, returning later tomorrow. Although his job was to work on the salmon farm he had come to Neets Bay primarily for the bears. He adored the beasts.

  “Bears, what bears?” asked Rosa.

  Henry stood aside to reveal the sight of two great brown masses perched upon a circular plateau of large flat stones, right in the centre of the gently flowing river. They were watching the water intently, paying no attention to their human audience, eyes rapidly darting from one side to the other as they homed in on their prey.

  “The biggest one is Clarence,” said Henry. “That’s Willow next to him. They’ve popped down to the river for lunch.”

  “How many bears are there here?” questioned Rosa.

  “Around thirty I would think,” replied Henry, making them gasp. “This is a viewing station, where the tourists come with their cameras to take their holiday snapshots,” he added, referring to the gazebo.

  Matt and Rosa edged forward. A fish leapt above the surface and was snared in Willow’s powerful jaws. For a large, cumbersome beast she had moved with the swiftness of a bird in flight. Seconds later Clarence’s huge paw splashed into the flowing liquid and tossed a salmon from the safety of the water. The fish struggled madly, flapping its body wildly inside the mouth of the captor. The struggle was futile.

  The giant frames waddled to the shore, closer to where their human spectators stood, plumped themselves down on the bank and began to rip the skin from their prey. Neither animal feared or were disturbed by the human intrusion, their concentration fixed solely upon the meal at hand.

  “Why don’t they chase us away?” asked Matt, amazed by the indifference of the two beasts to the human spectators.

  “You haven’t got what they need at this time of year,” advised Henry. “It’s the skin they’re after rather than the meat. They need the oily nutrients to store in their bodies to help them through hibernation.”

  The two younger people stood quietly and watched, mouths agape, as a clutch of seagulls appeared and descended onto rocks close by the feasting giants. Once the skins of the fish had been devoured, the two beasts made their way back into the river and the birds feasted upon the spoils.

  It was nature at work, providing resources for every species on planet Earth. Matt thought back to the Milieu files and the potential carnage it would instigate. He wondered if scenes like this would survive the conspiracy’s effects.

  “Have you got a computer?” he asked and Henry nodded. “There’s something I have to show you all.”

  Matt’s three companions sat in stunned silence as he released the memory stick from the computer, disbelief etched all over their faces. He looked at each in turn. None seemed prepared to accept what they had seen. Jack was the first to speak.

  “Can they really do that?” he asked.

  “They can and they are,” responded Matt.

  “So the world is screwed!” was Henry’s observation. “And we can’t do a goddamn thing.”

  “Not screwed just yet,” said Matt, “and something can be done.”

  “What are you thinking of Matt?” were Rosa’s first words.

  “Officials from ten Governments are involved in this,” he said. “Meaning many other Governments are not involved and know nothing about the conspiracy. Somehow, I have to get these files into their custody and outmanoeuvre this supposed group.”

  “I don’t see how that’s going to help,” said Jack, “they’re hardly going to declare war against these bastards.”

  It was left to Rosa to try and be constructive.

  “Getting this information to them will not be easy,” she advised. “The UN will be impossible. Security is so tight and they’ll be watching. You’d never get through, either in New York or at their Euro offices.”

  “There is a way,” insisted Matt, “of getting the information to a large group of other Government officials, all at the same time.”

  “Yur gonna call a conference!” Jack exclaimed.

  “Don’t have to, Jack. The European Commission meets regularly and is much more open to outside contact. Dozens of other countries attend. And when they meet they all gather together in one place. Once word is out there’ll be uproar. It will kill this thing stone dead.”

  “What if they’re already in on it?” asked Jack. “Yur can‘t trust politicians, they’re all in it for themselves.”

  Matt shook his head in disagreement.

  “For the conspiracy to work, secrecy is everything. Tell too many people and the secret will out. Nature of the beast for someone to talk, nature of the beast for Government officials therefore to try and keep secrets,” he replied. “I’m convinced there are many still in the dark about this thing.”

  Matt could see they were considering his words, thinking through his outline plan. It was a daring, almost suicidal, plan they told him.

  “It’s a long shot, Matt,” said Henry after some additional thought. “You’ll need to be a genius to get through security at any one of these events, and you’ll need a helluva lot of luck. What makes you think you can pull it off, all on your own?”

  “I don’t know if I can. The alternative scenario is a life on the run watching every shadow, every stranger’s movement. That will be my life until the virus eventually catches up with me and everybody else.”

  “There must be another way,” said Jack.

  “I’m open to suggestions old friend,” he replied. “If there is a better way then I’d be more than happy to take that option.”

  The ensuing silence told him all he needed to know.

  “I might know someone who could help,” said Rosa eventually. “Someone with the resources and contacts you’ll need. We’ll need to get to Austria though.”

  “Austria, where’s that?” asked Jack, causing considerable mirth amongst the remaining three.

  “Did you say we?” Matt asked Rosa, suddenly dawning on him what she had said.

  “Of course, wherever the mood takes me, remember?” she grinned. “Besides, you’re going to need someone to watch your back.”

  “Why didn’t yur tell me this at Parry Bay? Why tell me now?” asked Jack.

  “Because I was naïve and stupid enough to think they’d leave you alone if you knew nothing. I was wrong.”

  “How do yur work that out?”

  “Grace,” said Matt. “She was going to finish us both at Skagway, even though I’d already told her you weren’t involved. These people don’t want any loose ends.”

  He looked across at Rosa and she nodded slowly, signalling her agreement to Matt’s assessment.

  “How much longer can we stay here?” he asked her.

  “You need to rest the shoulder for at least another couple of days, minimum,” she said authoritatively. “We should be okay for a while as long as Jack stops coming to visit.”

  “I’ve gotta check on my buddy,” complained Jack. “I’ve been careful.”

  “The world has changed since the black and white movie
s of the fifties, Jack,” Rosa responded. “These days there are all sorts of ways to follow someone, including Holly.”

  No sooner had Rosa spoke then Jack’s mobile rang. He looked at the screen to check the name of the caller.

  “Speak of the devil,” he said cheerily. “On my way love, should be back around ...”

  “Jack, there’s some Chinese men here,” said Holly.

  “Chinese men, I don’t know any Chinese men.”

  The comment made Rosa leap from her chair to prise the phone partially away from Jack’s ear, enabling her to listen in to the conversation.

  “They want to know where Matt is, and they’re scaring me, Jack,” Holly’s voice trembled.

  “Tell them I have no idea where the young buck is. Tell them I’m on my way back so they can ask me to my face ...”

  “Mr Carter,” spoke an oriental voice. “Your friend is not being very helpful to me. I hope you will fully co-operate.”

  “Who the hell are you? Put Holly back on the phone yur oriental scumbag!”

  Rosa snatched the phone from the burly Canadian and pressed the end call button.

  “What do yur think yur doing?” he yelled at her. “Give me the bloody phone before I snap yur pretty neck!”

  She stared back at him, her eyes catching his furious look with a steady unflinching gaze.

  “That was Jie Hsun, from Chinese Intelligence,” she said calmly. “Holly is dead now.”

  Jack lurched forward in the manner of an enraged bull to a red rag. Rosa, with a matador-styled turn to her side evaded his lunge, causing him to fall to the floor.

  “He was tracing the signal to get a fix on our location,” she added coolly. “Hsun only wanted to keep you talking for as long as he could to buy some tracking time.”

  Rosa’s spoke plainly, without emotion. The fury mounted in Jack’s eyes as he prepared for another assault, prompting Henry to stand between the two.

  “Listen to her, Jack,” he said quietly.

  “Jack. I’m sorry. Truly, I am,” said Rosa, sympathetically. “Jie Hsun leaves no-one standing. That’s his trademark, and he takes pride in it.”

  They could see the rage building inside the Canadian. Her unwavering gaze fixed on Jack’s eyes. He was crouched, motionless. Rosa prepared herself for another charge from the bull-like man. It never came. Instead he strode to the door and stormed out into the baking sun.

  “Are you sure about this?” asked Matt incredulously.

  She nodded, placed the mobile phone on the table and stepped towards the door.

  “No, I’ll go,” said Matt.

  Jack had walked the few yards to the viewing station. He was looking across to the other side of the river as if he’d spotted something important. Matt approached cautiously, deciding to stand a few feet behind the burly Canadian.

  “Jack,” he called, as if in request to join his friend’s side.

  There was no answer, a refusal to even turn and look at the younger man.

  “Jack, this is my fault,” said Matt softly. “All of this would never have happened if I hadn’t come to Victoria and entered your lives. Now we’ve both lost someone. I’m truly sorry.”

  The Canadian looked upwards to the bright blue heavens and exhaled deeply, his shoulders rising and then falling in slow motion. He could not respond.

  Matt stood quietly, not sure whether to add to his earlier words or simply return to the cabin. A few silent moments passed before he decided to leave Jack to his grief.

  “It’s not yur fault lad. Yur shouldn’t be thinking like that,” said Jack.

  Matt walked up level to his friend and they stood together and stared across the river.

  “I’ve been a bachelor all my life. Never been able to keep a woman for long, never been in love. Thought it was the way it was meant to be,” confessed Jack.

  He paused, trying to regain the strength in his voice, trying not to burst into loud sobs of despair.

  “Then, along came Grace. Thinking back, it was obvious to all but me we were no match for each other. It was down to yur to show me Holly. She’d been right in front of me all these years, and I never noticed.”

  He paused again, struggling to hide the inner emotions that were so painfully obvious to his friend.

  “Jesus, Matt ... I’d only just found her,” he blurted.

  A steady stream of tears started to roll down his rugged features. Jack made no attempt to hide them from his friend. Matt placed his good hand on Jack’s shoulder and squeezed gently. There was no point in further talk, or Matt would have cried too.

  They returned their attention to Clarence, and watched in silence as he ambled back into the centre of the river and fished for his next meal.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Canadian Courage