by Nick Albert
We never met face to face; he always contacted me using an untraceable pre-paid mobile phone. One day he instructed me to go to London by train, see a show, and return home. He also gave me detailed directions about how to change some of the security settings on my mobile phone. When I returned home after seeing the show, I discovered that at some point during the day my phone had received a large file via Bluetooth. The file is called wreckingcrew.pdf, I have attached it along with this video, it is all of the information that he could gather.
A few days after my trip to London, I read that this brave man had died. He was an elderly man and in poor health, a widower. Apparently, whilst walking his dog deep in the woods near his house, he had a fall and broke his hip. Unable to move or raise the alarm, and soaked through by lashing rain, he soon succumbed to the cold and died of exposure. His body was discovered the following morning by a jogger; his dog was still waiting obediently by his side. Obviously, his death is disturbingly coincidental; I am convinced that it was the work of the Wrecking Crew.
I have discussed this information with Valerie Jenkins; she is the outgoing MP for my constituency area and a keen supporter of the concept of True Democracy. Like me, she feels that there is clear evidence that this Wrecking Crew have been used to undermine the democratic and legal processes in Britain and abroad. I have met with her at the House of Commons and she had agreed to back me if I decided to make this document public. We had planned to do exactly that at the beginning of my election campaign, she felt that such a public exposé would clearly demonstrate what a sham the current system of democracy was, while damaging the Wrecking Crew as an organisation.
Obviously, that plan has been derailed, although True Democracy will go on, my campaign obviously will not. I think you should speak to Valerie Jenkins to get her opinion, before you proceed any further. Our plan to expose the Wrecking Crew had merit, but contained one major flaw, as you will see. While the documents I received are clearly genuine and a compelling record of the activities of this dangerous organisation, the names of the people behind it, and even its location, remain a secret. Uncovering the identities of the Wrecking Crew’s key players, and killing them, is the only way to ensure that they can be stopped. Valerie will disagree strongly on this final point, but it is my considered opinion that we are way beyond a simple exposure — these people must die.
It is a lot to ask, particularly from beyond the grave, but I know that I will sleep the long sleep more soundly if these bastards are dead. As I said earlier, if you choose a different path, I will understand. If that is your decision, then with my blessing, please take the money and run. And if you do, then I sincerely wish you a long and happy life, my friend.
Should you choose to stand and fight — and I hope you will; the file Myteam.doc, contains a list of friends that I know you can trust. They are all good people with skills that you can use. If you ask in my name, I am confident that they will be willing to help. You cannot expect to do this alone, no one can. This is not some Hollywood thriller script Eric, this is real life, and you are just a man. In my experience, one man cannot find 100% of the answer, but ten people each with 10% of the solution will get the job done beautifully. This is just like a jigsaw puzzle; everyone has his or her pieces to add to complete the picture.
In my last will and testament, I have left you my farm, my car, and my other assets. Once the estate has cleared probate, do with them what you please. The file Money.doc, will tell you how to access the cash that I have put aside for you to use. It was legitimately acquired by selling my art collection; just don’t tell the taxman!
There is one other thing that may help. During the last week, I was sure that I was being followed. They are very, very good, but I could feel that itch on the back of my neck and I knew that they were there. During that time, I spotted the same person several times, and it was someone I recognized from a long time ago. At first, I couldn’t place him, but my old school teacher could. He was in the primary school class two years below me, his name is Darren Jeffers and he lives somewhere in Wethersfield. It could be a good place to start.
So that’s it my friend, it is time to say goodbye. I have left you a pretty problem and all of the help I can. The rest is up to you.”
Rathbone gave the screen a sad final wave, then he leaned forward with a finger extended and the recording ended. For a while, Eric Stone sat in the silent darkness of his kitchen, contemplating how his life had just changed. Finally, he spoke.
“Goodbye my friend, you can sleep well. I won’t let you down.” He slowly stood up. “Come on Stone, it’s time to get involved.”
FOUR
The Chameleon was stalking its latest prey. As always, it had carefully planned how this one would die. Everything was prepared, every possible eventuality had been calculated, every contingency considered, nothing would go wrong. Unlike other assassins, who were by comparison just crude killers, Chameleon was an artist. Each death was meticulously planned and precisely executed to look like an accident. Chameleon’s speciality was committing perfect, undetectable, murders —homicides hidden behind the innocence of an everyday tragedy.
There were actually two people living inside that one brain, like identical cerebral Siamese twins. One was just an ordinary person, unremarkable in every way. Someone with a normal job and a life, someone with ambitions and hobbies, the sort of person who may chat to you on the bus, rescue your cat from a tree, or help an old lady across the road. The other was called Chameleon; the shape changer, the invisible person, always there but never identified. The last person you will ever see, when your death is delivered with a smile and a wink.
The first person was born to loving parents in a happy home, in a small village near Sczopol, Bulgaria overlooking the Black Sea. A normal playful child destined to live an uneventful life, until tragedy tore the family apart, and condemned the child to a living hell of abuse and neglect in an institution. The second was planted and grown as part of an experiment, by an uncaring government, greedy for any advantage over the rich capitalists in the West.
Then, one day two men in dark suits came to the children’s home. The filthy and undernourished children were brought from their cells, cots, and dormitories, and forced to line up for inspection. Like farmers at a sheep auction, the men poked, prodded, and examined the wretched children. Incorrectly thinking that they were offering a better life, the children vied for their attention. The men threw some chocolate bars onto the ground and watched impassively as the children fought like animals to win the treats. Eventually one was selected; it was a strong child, with a good physique and obvious intelligence. That child was moved to an experimental Government facility, where the second child was to be implanted.
Look into the eyes of any soldier who has taken a life in battle and you will see a certain darkness, as if there is a hollow in their soul. Even in a time of war, it is natural for any person with an ounce of humanity to be haunted by the terrible things that they have seen and done. No matter how evil the enemy, no matter how just the cause, every soldier wears that badge of inner shame. Like an unwanted medal, a price must be paid by the victors and survivors, for the dead can have no shame.
However, an assassin must be different. He must kill to order. An assassin must kill for pay, and he must kill without just cause. An assassin must kill without feeling anything. Soldiers learn to compartmentalise their experiences. They are trained to put the dreadful things that they have seen and done into a box and lock it away, never to be opened — for fear of what may come out.
The men in white lab coats had told the men in dark suits that a perfect assassin would be someone with a dual personality. The first would be like a normal, happy, and well-adjusted person; and the second would be a heartless and unfeeling killer, without any conscience or remorse. With this is mind, the men took this orphan back to their facility, where they applied their drugs and psychological treatments until that poor child’s personality fractured and eventually split
into two. Then, to widen that split, the men gave the orphan two names, one for each personality.
The first personality was given an ordinary name, appropriate for such a normal and happy child. The second personality was named Chameleon, representative of someone who would learn how to change appearance to fit in with the environment. They treated each name differently, as if there really were two children living inside that handsome head — one good and one bad, one light and the other dark.
A friendly female companion was chosen to give the first personality nothing but love and affection; half of every waking day was filled with play, happiness, and creativity. The second personality had an unsympathetic male companion, who filled every afternoon with spite, fear, pain, and hatred. By the end of the second year, that unfortunate orphan had developed two fully formed personalities that existed autonomously within the same mind, and yet retained complete emotional separation.
Over the next few years, as the child grew to become an adult, the two personalities developed an emotional separation that soon became complete and irreversible. While the good half became well educated, witty, interesting, and intelligent, the dark half was trained to become an expert assassin, devoid of feeling, a sociopath, living its half of a life without any fear or conscience. Triggered by a single code word, the assassin learned to become like a Chameleon, changing face, colour, shape, and even gender, to blend in seamlessly with the background. Chameleon would be seen but ignored, spoken to and instantly forgotten, obvious and yet invisible — an expert killer, who cannot be identified.
However, there was a mistake in their plan, an error in the programming, which could not have been predicted. The first personality, the human part, had developed hopes and dreams, and a desire to have a normal life. Since entering puberty, the child that had once wanted to play soccer, climb trees, and make model aeroplanes, now had a healthy interest in the opposite sex, and a desire for meaningful companionship. The men in dark suits saw this and realized that their perfect assassin was flawed, and could no longer be trusted. They recognised that these human needs were so naturally powerful that in time, they could overwhelm the personality of the Chameleon. By then the Eastern Bloc had collapsed and Bulgaria had become a respected member of NATO and the European Union. Their employer now had little use for an unpredictable assassin. So the decision was made to close the project, all of the files were destroyed and the buildings demolished. All that was left to do was to terminate their creation.
The men in suits saw that their country had no further use for people with their particular skills, and they understood that their unique knowledge of this shady secret put their very lives at risk. Therefore, they decided to sell their creation to the highest bidder, buy some new identities, and retire somewhere a long way away. The winning bid came from a man known as The Fixer, so the men in suits brought Chameleon to England to make the exchange. At the last moment, their plan went horribly and violently wrong — leaving the two men dead in a car park in north London, and their creation in the hands of an even more evil person.
The Fixer kept their money, and with sole possession of the code word that enables Chameleon, he gained complete control over the assassin. Recognising that Britain was not an easy Country for an undocumented killer to operate in, The Fixer provided each personality with a new name and identity documents. Now, like a malevolent version of Superman and Clark Kent, while the good half of the personality lived an ordinary and respectable life in England, Chameleon worked exclusively as an assassin for the Wrecking Crew.
At that moment, Chameleon was stalking a Member of Parliament by the name of Valerie Jenkins. She was on her way to her London flat and had stopped at her local twenty-four-hour supermarket to buy some food for the weekend. Part of a larger retail chain, it was a smaller version of a supermarket, designed to suit the needs of the modern commuter. Like many retailers, the store had a loyalty card scheme that was popular with its customers, who benefitted from special offers and discount vouchers. The information collected from each purchase is stored in a central computer database and ‘mined’ with a computer algorithm to ascertain a customer’s shopping habits, and to identify any future sales opportunities. This particular retail chain outsourced its data mining to a specialist company call Dime, the very same company that was majority owned by a particular charity, linked with the Wrecking Crew.
Along with this assignment, Chameleon had received a substantial file detailing Valerie’s movements over the previous six months. This information was provided by Dime and collected directly from their database. Presented in an easy to read format, it cross-referenced data from her travel cards, credit, store and cash cards, her mobile phone, laptop computer, and her loyalty cards. Armed with this information, Chameleon could accurately predict what time this target would enter the supermarket, and what she would buy.
Tonight, Valerie Jenkins would unwittingly pay for, and ingest, the poison that would end her life. Chameleon knew that there was an 83% probability that Valerie Jenkins would buy her favourite treat, a twenty-two piece sushi box. Containing raw salmon, tuna, mackerel and squid, the sushi provided the perfect delivery method to hide the deadly poison.
The previous day Chameleon had purchased three live puffer fish from a local tropical fish store, and a twenty-two piece sushi box from the same twenty-four-hour supermarket where Valerie Jenkins liked to shop. Puffer fish are notoriously difficult to sex, so buying three fish at a cost of £380, discounted for cash, statistically guaranteed that at least one would be female; in fact, there were two. The ovaries of the female Tetraodontidae contain high levels of tetrodotoxin, considered to be around two-hundred times more deadly than cyanide.
In Japan, the meat of the puffer fish is considered an expensive delicacy. The dish is called Fugu, and because some parts of the fish are so extremely poisonous, it can only be prepared by a few highly skilled sushi chefs in exclusive restaurants. However, recent advances in research and aquaculture have allowed some farmers to mass-produce safe Fugu and this is now becoming more widely available throughout Europe and London. This ‘safe’ Fugu is frowned upon by sushi traditionalists, so the deadly fish is still used by some chefs to produce Fugu for discerning clients with deep pockets. Given that fact, Chameleon believed that an accidental contamination of some sushi with tetrodotoxin would be a conceivable explanation for the sudden death of Valerie Jenkins.
Earlier that day, in the back of a second-hand camper van, parked anonymously near the railway station, Chameleon had carefully slit the security seals and opened the clear plastic cover of the sushi container. Then, wearing a protective facemask and gloves, the killer had delicately dissected the two female puffer fish and gingerly extracted their tiny ovaries. These were carefully sliced with a scalpel to release the lethal juices before being wiped repeatedly along each roll of sushi. Once the packaging had been invisibly resealed and decontaminated, along with the work surface in the camper van, Chameleon bagged all of the waste and stuffed it into a dustbin. With the poison delivery system prepared, the rest of the day was spent working on a disguise.
After such a stressful day at the House of Commons, Valerie Jenkins was grateful that it was such a short walk from the supermarket to her London flat. She juggled her handbag, umbrella, and the shopping, to free a hand so she could unlock the door. Inside, she picked up the post from the doormat and after a token glance, dumped it on the hall table, hung up her coat, and took her shopping into the kitchen.
After putting away the bread and a few tinned items, she took a half-empty bottle of La Prendina Estate Pinot Grigio from the fridge and poured a large glass. After two long sips from the wine glass, she pulled the sushi container from the shopping bag and placed it on the marble work surface. She smiled as she remembered the elderly Japanese shop worker who was restocking the fresh food shelves. He had been so polite in that endearing Asian way, making a big fuss over her, smiling, and bowing as he gave her a fresh box of sushi. She had noticed ho
w delicate and smooth his hands were, for such an old man.
‘This stuff must be good for you,’ she thought to herself with a smile.
For a few seconds she considered sitting at the table and eating the sushi from a plate like a civilised person, but she was tired and ravenously hungry, so she sat at the breakfast bar and ate directly from the plastic container. Using her fingers, she ate one squid nigiri and then both salmon faux unagi, which were her favourite. Each delicious morsel was washed down with several more sips of wine. With her immediate hunger satisfied, she left the kitchen for a few moments and went into her bedroom to change her clothes.
After kicking off her shoes, Valerie removed her jacket and skirt and hung them in the wardrobe. Then she undid her blouse and bra and dropped them into the wash basket. As she reached under her pillow for her cotton pyjamas, Valerie became aware of a sudden feeling of heat in her lips and hands. The sensation quickly developed into a powerful numbness in her face that was reminiscent of being very, very drunk. Concerned that perhaps she was about to faint, Valerie sat heavily on the edge of the bed and then lay onto her back; leaving her feet still touching the floor. A few strands of hair had fallen onto her face and she reached up to brush them aside, only to discover that she could not raise her arm. Then she realised that she couldn’t move at all.
