Hunting the Wrecking Crew: An Eric Stone Novel

by Nick Albert

  It is my idea you see, the idea of True Democracy. The simple little idea that means the public can finally have real influence over how the country is run. That idea is such a threat to some people that it just had to be stopped. They had hoped that it would simply lose momentum, and for a while, it seemed that it would. Then they became impatient and tried to kill it with that game show, but they miscalculated and suddenly it was too late. So, they had a problem. How do you stop an idea? How do you make people un-think a thought? Then they realized that dear old Charles Rathbone was the public face of True Democracy. To stop the idea, they had to stop me.

  Of course, killing me would create a martyr. No… that would not work. That would only make things worse for them. Then they struck on what seemed like a perfect plan — discredit the man and you discredit the idea. Comprehensively discredit the man; convincingly convict him of something so heinous, so monstrously shocking, that nobody in their right mind would want to be associated with his politics ever again. Do that and the idea is dead in the water — cold, lifeless and sunk to the bottom, never to be discussed again. They planned a killer headline — ‘Charles Rathbone, paedophile, and child molester!’”

  Stone found that he had involuntarily jerked back in his seat with the shock of what he was hearing. He tapped pause on the video player, so he could take a moment to splash his face with cold water from the tap in the kitchen. Then he paced up and down the hallway for a full minute in an attempt to cool his rising anger. He splashed his face a second time, dried off with a hand towel, grabbed a bottle of orange juice from the fridge, and returned to his seat. To help clear the tension that he was feeling, Stone shut his eyes, took a deep breath through his nose, and slowly breathed out through his mouth. He repeated the exercise three more times, until he felt that he had his emotions under some semblance of control. He leaned forward and tapped the screen to resume the video playback.

  “Dearest Eric,” Charles continued, “you must believe me when I say, that these allegations are a hideous lie, totally untrue, just fabricated propaganda based on planted evidence. I don’t know how they did it; I just know that they did.

  A dear friend in the police put herself in terrible danger, both professionally and physically, to warn me of what was about to happen. She told me that the British police had been given a copy of a report, recently filed by the Afghan police. The report stated that three unnamed Afghani children, two boys and one girl, were claiming to have been raped by one Charles Rathbone while he was serving in Afghanistan with the Royal Engineers. There was no explanation as to why the accusers had waited so long before making a complaint, or how they had originally named their attacker. The report did claim that an investigator had positively confirmed the identity of the alleged rapist, with the use of a photograph.

  The report made difficult reading, particularly the graphic details of what was allegedly done to these poor children. Worse still was the casual footnote stating that the accusers were no longer available for interview, as they had been killed along with eleven others when their school bus was blown apart by an IED landmine. Obviously, I found this dreadful accusation to be deeply upsetting, but there was more to follow.

  The next day, investigators at the Paedophile Unit of the Metropolitan police, received evidence from the FBI showing that a credit card in my name had been used to make purchases from several online purveyors of child pornography. Although I have never owned or applied for such a card, or accessed such web sites, the next day a payment to that credit card company was traced to my bank account. Faced with such compelling evidence, the police applied for a warrant to search my house and computers.

  Yesterday I received another call from my friend. She told me that initial scans of my computer and tablet had revealed substantial quantities of child pornography, along with evidence of regular visits to web sites known to sell such dreadful materials. My friend was kind enough to reiterate her continued confidence in my innocence, stating that even the investigating officers had thought the trail of evidence to be too convenient and easy to follow. Nevertheless, such evidence could not be ignored; steps must be taken. The police were planning to make an arrest within days, to be followed with an immediate press conference. At that point, all hope of protecting True Democracy would be gone forever. I knew then that the only way to save True Democracy was to sacrifice myself.

  Of course, there is a risk that they will still try to publish these allegations, but I believe that risk is acceptably small. For their plan to work, Charles Rathbone needed to be publicly exposed and humiliated. Any attempt to besmirch my name and reputation posthumously, or attack my successor, would probably have the conspiracy theorists climbing out of the woodwork to join the party.

  I have nominated Sally Field to take over as leader of True Democracy. Sally was my most vocal supporter. She is an intelligent and charismatic girl, if she decides to contest the election, I am confident that she will win her seat.

  Now that I am dead and True Democracy is in safe hands, I can reveal the truth. In doing so, I must ask you to put yourself and others in grave danger. It is my hope that you will see the need to eradicate the evil menace that has directly caused my death and that of many others. Please consider what I have to tell you very carefully and with an open mind, before you decide how to act. Eric, I have left you a considerable amount of money to fund this endeavour, but should you decide against it, please, please, take the money and run as far away as you can.”

  Charles leaned closer to the camera.

  “I do not know how the evidence against me was planted. Nor do I know the identity of the person who gave the order for my reputation to be destroyed, or the person who paid for this foul and cowardly act. That is something that I hope you will be able to discover. However, I am confident that this devilish deed was perpetrated by an organisation so secret that almost nobody knows of their existence and yet they have contracts with Governments throughout the world. They are a group of people that take no sides, offer no favours, show no conscience, and lack any moral compass; they simply work for the highest bidder. They must be stopped.”

  Charles’s face filled the small screen.

  “They call themselves ‘The Wrecking Crew’.”

  THREE

  The Wrecking Crew operated from an anonymous building in the centre of an uninteresting field in a quiet corner of the British countryside. In a large room at the rear of the building, the man known as ‘The Fixer’ sat at the head of the conference table. He was impatiently tapping his pen as he read a report about the death of Charles Rathbone. Casually leaning against the wall behind and slightly towards each side of The Fixer stood two enormous men who acted as his bodyguards and enforcers; they were identical twins. With typically ironic humour, The Fixer called them ‘Kitten’ and ‘Bunny’ — although nobody else would dare to, particularly if they wished to avoid a slow and painful death.

  Born in the former USSR and trained as Olympic wrestlers, both men were over six and a half feet tall and as wide as a door. They both wore identical dark suits that stretched ominously over their distended muscles. Their shaven heads emphasized their bulging foreheads and eyebrows, and added additional darkness to the cold dead eyes that were carefully watching the other occupants of the room. There were five other people around the table. They were the key team members of the Wrecking Crew. The Fixer, Kitten, and Bunny, were all voluntary members, but the other five were more like draftees; unwillingly called into action because of some past indiscretion.

  To the right of The Fixer sat Becka. Petite at five-foot tall, and just twenty-seven years old — but with her bright orange hair, facial piercings, and tattoos on her arms and hands — she looked much younger. Becka was the Wrecking Crews’ computer hacker. A gifted mathematician and a graduate in computer science, Becka was steadily building a successful career with a top internet security firm when her rebellious nature and interest in accessing government secrets brought her to the attention of the a
uthorities.

  After a month in the remand centre, Becka was staring at the wall and contemplating the depressing prospect of a long jail term without any recreational drugs, or computer access to break the boredom, when a handsome and extremely well dressed woman walked into her cell. With the prison guards standing at a respectful distance, the nameless woman made Becka an offer that was simply too good to refuse. The woman said that if Becka agreed to work for the Wrecking Crew, doing the very things that had just put her in jail, they would pay her an obscene salary, and the charges would simply get lost in the back of a filing cabinet.

  Now five years later, aided by access to substantial resources, the latest computer equipment, and a backdoor pass into the British Government’s Intelligence Agency, GCHQ, Becka had become one of the best hackers on the planet.

  Sitting to Becka’s right was Norris Halpin founder and Chief Executive of ‘Dime’, one of the largest data mining and banking companies in Europe. Halpin was an unremarkable man to look at. At around fifty years old, he was overweight, and balding, with thick eyeglasses and the pale complexion of someone who had spent too much time looking at computer screens — but he was also a visionary. Towards the end of the 1990’s, as the internet started to engage with every aspect of our lives, Norris Halpin was one of the first businessmen to recognize that our data history could have a value.

  One day as he was stuffing yet another handful of pointless, unwanted, and irrelevant junk mail into his dustbin, he had a true ‘Eureka moment’. Although he had a real interest in computing, and money to spend, he had never received any offers or advertising from people who sold computer equipment. On the other hand, his mother had been sent several flyers by a local computer store, even though she was ninety-two years old, and frequently confused the television remote control with the telephone. Halpin suddenly realized that companies would be happy to pay for accurate marketing information, which was based on people’s actual interests and activities.

  With the help of his flat mate Felix, an unemployed university dropout, he wrote a rudimentary computer worm containing a simple algorithm that returned basic contact details for people showing an interest in computers. Armed with a 3.5-inch floppy disc of unsorted data, he approached the marketing manager of a large computer retailer. Although he clearly recognized the benefits of such targeted data, initially the marketing manager was resistant to this new idea, but in the end, Norris Halpin successfully closed the sale with the line, ‘Or if you prefer, I could sell it to your competitors?’

  Even though his first sale earned only a few pounds, Halpin was convinced that he had hit on a sure-fire winner. The next morning he withdrew his savings, sold his collection of vinyl records, quit his job, and in partnership with Felix, founded DataMine. Five years later, with the name changed to the snappier ‘Dime’, the company’s turnover exceeded £1 million for the first time. To celebrate, Norris and Felix threw a party at a top Mayfair hotel. Inevitably, the festivity soon degenerated into a monumental three-day bender of booze, drugs, and prostitutes. On the fourth day, whilst inspecting the wreckage with the hotel manager, Halpin discovered his business partner slumped beneath the grand piano. Felix had died from a massive overdose of heroin; his body had lain unnoticed for two days, while the party raged on.

  Norris Halpin was sitting in a waiting room at the police station, facing a damaging enquiry and possible jail time for supplying drugs and manslaughter, when a smartly dressed woman stepped into the room, and in a clipped and precise voice, made him an offer that was too good to refuse.

  “I have some good news for you, Mr Halpin. It seems that you were not at this party after all,” she said reading from the pages in a manila file, “it seems that you were playing golf in Scotland at that time. It seems there will be several witnesses to your golfing prowess. It seems that while you were playing golf in Scotland, poor Felix died from a massive heart attack. A tragic death in one so young, don’t you think? So this whole sordid affair can simply disappear, and you can get on with your life.”

  Halpin stared at the woman in utter disbelief.

  “I don’t understand, I…I…I don’t understand, I can’t even play golf, and I have never been to Scotland.”

  The woman gave Halpin a gentle smile, as if she was explaining something to a child. She waved the manila file she was holding.

  “Of course you were in Scotland, Mr Halpin. It’s all here in this file, although there isn’t actually any mention of your prowess as a sportsman. Nevertheless, any minute now the charges will be dropped and you will be free to leave.”

  Halpin looked at the woman with renewed interest.

  “Go on,” he said cautiously, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “And in return for this little act of kindness, your company will undertake to conduct extensive covert data mining on behalf of a certain charitable organisation,” the woman said. “This will prove to be a convenient arrangement because, after tomorrow’s reading of Felix’s last will and testament, that charitable organisation will own a 51% share of Dime.”

  She gave Halpin a hard look and a cold smile.

  “Do I make myself clear?”

  With just a nod of his head and a resigned sigh, Norris Halpin became another unwilling member of the Wrecking Crew.

  Sitting next to Halpin was Gordon McIntosh. Born and raised in Scotland, he still spoke with an almost unintelligibly heavy Glaswegian accent. A short man at just over five and a half feet and incredibly thin; unshaven and with a head thinly covered with grey hair, he had the unhealthy pallor of someone who ate too little and drank too much. To even the untrained eye he radiated the appearance of someone with a history of drug abuse and mental illness. With his shoulders hunched and eyes down, he sat uneasily at the table, constantly moving and twitching as if he were itchy or uncomfortable. His arms and hands carried the tattoos and scars that recorded every bar fight and prison term of his forty hard years, while his nicotine stained fingers constantly manipulated the matchbox that had earned his seat at the table. Gordon McIntosh was the Wrecking Crew’s arsonist.

  Directly opposite Becka sat a serious looking woman; she was holding the latest model of computer tablet, and staring intently at the screen. She wore a modest dark wool suit, along with a perfectly pressed blouse and a carefully knotted tie. Although she wore some make up and nail polish, it was understated. Her long brunette hair was tied back in a simple bun that along with her black plastic framed eyeglasses, added to her professional, business-like appearance.

  Now aged in her mid-forties and still unmarried, Helen Atkins had been a successful city girl, making heaps of cash as a futures trader in the London stock exchange during the boom years. Like many others, she and her employers fell foul to the deadly combination of high commissions and lax financial controls, and when Barings Bank was declared insolvent in 1995, she lost her job. Under-qualified, over-paid, and tainted by the legacy of a few disastrous trades, she struggled to find work in an environment where suddenly opportunities were scarce and the competition was intense. Fortunately, she had invested her own money more wisely than she had that of her employer, so Helen Atkins put the enforced sabbatical to good use and retrained as a forensic accountant.

  Fifteen years later, she was working for an insurance company and forensically examining the financial background of a man whose business had conveniently burned down, saving him from certain bankruptcy. The trail had been difficult to follow and the money hard to find, but she was making good progress and had finally amassed enough evidence to be sure of a conviction. Clearly, the businessman was crooked and incompetent. His business was recycling cardboard; it was a stable and profitable business with several long-term contracts and almost no competition. However, he had a gambling addiction that had devoured the company’s profits and after a disastrous trip to Las Vegas, he no longer had the cash to pay his staff, the bank loans, or the loan sharks. Clearly, the wolves were at the door and he had decided to take the cowards’ way
out by torching his warehouse and defrauding the insurance company.

  As she continued her forensic investigation, one particularly suspicious group of transactions had caught her attention. Why would someone in such extreme financial difficulties suddenly decide to make two large contributions to a charity? Even more suspiciously, the two payments were of identical value and made on either side of the date of the fire. Suspecting some collusion in the fire at the warehouse, she switched her attention to the financial affairs of the charity. Her investigation was making good progress when she had a visit from the handsome and extremely well dressed woman.

  Physical threats are realistically only effective as a deterrent, and although Atkins had no skeletons in her closet that could be used as leverage, she did have a certain moral flexibility combined with a fondness for collecting money. In the end, her visitor found that it was surprisingly easy to win Helen Atkins as a new recruit for the Wrecking Crew.

  She quickly became a trusted employee, using her unique blend of knowledge and training to manipulate financial reality. To meet the needs of a client, she could remove or alter records and information, lay false financial trails, or when necessary, subtly influence the markets to undermine a competitor’s share price. By simply reversing her forensic accountancy skills and applying the computers and other resources available to the Wrecking Crew, Helen Atkins had become a deadly financial assassin.

  The final team member present at the conference table was Peter White. He was a tall, lean man in his early sixties who usually wore a fine Harris Tweed jacket to complement his distinctive goatee beard. White had always wanted to be a successful actor. However, he lacked the good looks, talent and luck required to make it big, and eventually became disillusioned and dissatisfied with a succession of bit parts and crowd scenes in ‘B’ movies. For a while, he made some decent money in California playing an English gentleman in soft-core videos, but his lack of essential equipment precluded any chance of big money in more hard-core films. He was also a competent magician, but lacked the flair and presentation skills to become a successful entertainer.