by Greg Elswood
NO REFUGE
NO
REFUGE
GREG ELSWOOD
NO REFUGE
ISBN: 9781798859346
Copyright © Greg Elswood 2019
Greg Elswood has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either used fictitiously or are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
For Elaine and our girls
Inception
The train growled into Euston as Paddy roused himself from his disagreeable slumber. Like the yawning commuters around him, he stretched, then wiped his aching eyes, knowing full well that it would do nothing to ease his extreme exhaustion. He’d endured a long, rough, overnight trip, punctuated by numerous train changes designed to shake off any potential pursuers. Not that Paddy thought he was being followed, it was simply a habit he had developed from years of covert operations. An easy but tiring precaution.
He took out his phone and looked at the message from Donovan, the Brethren’s leader and a person of few words:
Get to London Mon morning. Meet Michael @lockup. Delivery Tues.
Michael, his comrade-in-arms, had been lying low for months, awaiting orders, and would be refreshed and ready for the challenge. Lucky man. Paddy picked up his bag and sank to the platform behind the other passengers. He trudged towards the London Underground and joined the teeming mass of humanity, the very people he was sworn to kill in just a few days’ time.
1
This was without doubt the best time of the morning. The air was clean, the hordes hadn’t yet arrived, and everything was silent.
From his vantage point high above the City, Jacob could see clearly in every direction. The first shafts of light were breaking out over the eastern horizon, creating a kaleidoscope of colour that would lift the spirits of even the most despairing soul, and he breathed in powerfully, eagerly, seeking intoxication. Cold air flooded his lungs, heightening his senses and magnifying every detail of the view. This was it, the best thing in his life, right here in front of him.
Little else moved Jacob so deeply and nothing gave him such a sense of freedom and ascendency as standing here, high above everyone else, beholding in silence a dazzling display he was convinced few others appreciated. But Jacob knew that if he turned, he would lose the euphoria of this moment, as to the west all was in darkness, with brooding clouds settling over London like a shroud. In place of the bright colours of daybreak were the dreary shadows of yesterday, where millions of people slept, oblivious to the spectacle Jacob witnessed. The early morning sunrise and the dawn chorus weren’t for them. They would wake to the muted half-light of morning, the drone of traffic and the contemplation of another day’s grind, grey suits and sombre skies.
So, Jacob didn’t turn. He instead looked down at the decaying photo in his hands, as vivid reds and violets dissolved into the pastel pinks and blues of the morning sky, criss-crossed by pale jet-trails slowly melting away. The fading colours of the two smiling faces in the picture mirrored the waning sunrise, and Jacob supposed that was why he was so drawn to it. Everything was so fragile. He couldn’t explain why he had risen so far, so fast, and then suddenly found himself at the bottom of the heap, and he often wondered whether he would make the same choices if he had his time again. Deep down, he suspected he would still end up as he was, standing alone over forty floors up on the roof of Shakespeare Tower.
Just a few minutes more. He tore his gaze away from the snapshot of his wife and daughter and looked back at the eastern sky. He would stay until either the last wisps of colour had disappeared or he was spotted by the tower warden and ordered to leave. It didn’t matter which, it was time to move on anyway. Within an hour, the City would be overflowing with people, hungry for power and success, or at least what they considered to be success: money. These weren’t Jacob’s people, and he wouldn’t be sharing in their fortune. Not today, not anymore.
‘Time to go,’ he murmured.
***
Brandon had always been a bit of a loner, so it was no surprise to find him at the end of a deserted platform at Stratford railway station, leaning against the railing with his laptop open, staring into the distance. Shabby, in old, faded jeans and a baggy hoodie, and facing down the tracks, to the casual observer he looked just like any other trainspotter, waiting to log serial numbers and arrival times into a spreadsheet. A pointless exercise and an anonymous existence, and no one would look twice at the figure at the end of platform eight.
Which was exactly how he wanted it.
But Brandon needn’t have worried. At this ungodly hour there were no casual observers, unless you counted the foxes and rodents that he’d watched wander across the tracks since he’d been standing there. He felt a strange kinship with the animals, lurking in the shadows, scavenging for scraps and avoiding the company of others as they carried out their mundane activity. He felt their desolation, their loneliness. Outcasts.
Yet Brandon wasn’t your average trainspotter, and his work was anything but mundane. Supremely confident in his abilities, Brandon saw himself on the verge of greatness, rising above the pathetic mediocrity he saw all around him. He had no interest in timetables, freight schedules or the digits printed on the side of the carriages, only the people that rode within them, the early morning commuters on their way into the City. Although they didn’t know it, these passengers were part of his dark plan.
For the third time that morning, he checked his laptop for power and saw that it was fully charged. Brandon knew that he was on edge, but he wasn’t taking any chances; where technology was concerned, he never did. For today’s trial it was particularly important, as his Proximity program consumed an inordinate amount of power, and he’d probably need several test-runs to get it right.
This was it. History beckoned, it was his time and he was ready. All it would take was a simple act, then everything would change. He lowered his gaze and looked at the Proximity icon, its glowing skull daring him to go on, taunting him, and despite the chill of the early morning air, he felt clammy, sweaty, as he contemplated his first time, the maiden outing of his program. Brandon touched the screen, no more than a gentle caress, and a wave of nausea washed over him. This was the moment of truth and he knew that, if it worked, there would be no turning back.
Immediately two windows appeared on his screen, the first a simple list of drop-down boxes and the second a series of graphs and charts, currently devoid of any data. Brandon moved his fingers over the touchscreen with practised ease, selecting various inputs from the first window for Proximity’s debut.
First, he chose a low power setting, corresponding to a transmission range of about twenty metres, sufficient to reach the passengers in the final carriage of each train from his position at the end of the platform. That would be fine for this first test, and only when he was ready for the real thing would he extend the range to its maximum setting.
In the next box Brandon selected ‘Android’ as the target operating system, and in the third he highlighted a pre-prepared short message:
IF YOU FEEL ALONE, CLICK HERE => ☐
In Brandon’s opinion, this was the cleverest part of his program, as it made no difference whether the message’s recipient selected the radio button or closed the pop-up box by hitting ‘X close’ in its top right-hand corner. Either action would result in a viral download, and the virus would be
saved in less than a second without interrupting any other applications. The only way to avoid it was to ignore the message completely, which Brandon knew would rarely happen if the device was being used. It would remain on screen for as long as the train stood at the station or in range of his laptop, typically about thirty seconds, but in today’s impatient, always-connected world, it was almost unheard of for someone to allow a message like this to sit on screen for half a minute, rather than close it and go back to playing a game or scrolling Facebook messages.
He clicked on the final drop-down box. The virus itself, or as Brandon preferred to call it, the ‘bug’. On this occasion he selected the smallest one, designed specifically for today’s test, whose sole purpose was to confirm that a gadget had been infected. Compared to most viruses, it was benign. All it did was emit a single message back to Proximity to confirm it had been installed, including details of the infected device. Thereafter it snoozed in the background, without interacting with any other applications or software, and Brandon had therefore named it Sleeper. Brandon always christened his programs and bugs, as a child would give names to toys or imaginary friends, giving them character, imagining them alive, talking to them and nurturing them as he honed their capabilities. At this stage of its development, Brandon merely wanted to be sure that Proximity worked, and he had no intention of risking his project by installing a malicious or larger file that might be detected or arouse suspicion. That would come later.
The East London breeze pulled at the frayed hem of his hood, and Brandon shivered. He was all set, and it was time to select his first prey.
He looked up from his screen and focused on the headlights of a train making its way through Maryland station, less than a mile away. Before he could hear the engine itself, the rails hummed and then whined under the weight of the approaching carriages, and seconds later the train rattled through the points. The front coach rumbled into the station, and the driver in his cab flickered with each passing platform light. The red stop signal reflected in his otherwise blank eyes and he didn’t even glance towards Brandon, apparently blind to anything beyond his vacant stare.
Even this early in the day, the first couple of carriages were at least half-full with commuters, many of whom were slumped in their seats catching a few minutes of fitful sleep before the final leg of their journey to Liverpool Street in the City. But as the train slowed, each coach became progressively emptier, and Brandon regretted placing himself at this end of the platform, rather than at the far end where he would have caught the busier front ones.
However, as the train came to a standstill, he was relieved to see that the last carriage was almost fully occupied, with a handful of people standing up at the doors ready to leave the train at Stratford. The perfect target. With a sense of excitement bordering on delirium, he pressed the command button on his laptop.
Unleashed, Proximity instantly sprang into life.
Brandon glanced back at the carriage. Many of the disembarking passengers carried smartphones in their hands, some of them hardly looking up from their screens as they stepped off the train and headed towards the Underground. Several of the remaining passengers dozed, but Brandon saw with delight that others held phones up to their faces or looked down at their laps intently, presumably reading, studying their tablets or playing games.
It didn’t matter that Brandon couldn’t see what they were doing below the window. Proximity wasn’t limited by line of sight and was capable of infecting any device within scanning range, inside or out. He smiled to himself at this thought and, with the rapt anticipation of a hunter, looked down at his screen to survey the results of his first attack.
The graphs and charts in the second window, his dashboard, recorded the progress of Proximity. On the first chart, the bar plotting the number of hits was rising, but its progress was excruciating to Brandon, who had always imagined Proximity infecting its targets as a plague of locusts might devour a field of ripe crops; easy pickings for such a virulent and voracious predator. Disappointed, desperate for success, he willed it to speed up.
He then screwed up his face at the sound of alarms that heralded the closing doors and, when the train pulled out of the station to continue its onward journey to Liverpool Street, Brandon was sure that he hadn’t given the program enough time.
With trepidation, he gazed back down at his screen, but his anxiety quickly turned to joy when he saw that Proximity had made nineteen hits and, of those, a dozen people had dismissed the pop-up message that had appeared on their gadget. He touched the glowing figure twelve on his screen. A new window opened, listing the devices, their serial numbers and confirmation that each was now infected with the Sleeper bug.
Brandon was elated; he could barely contain himself. Despite being a naturally shy and reserved person, he would have pumped his fist in the air if it wouldn’t have attracted unwanted attention. This outcome far exceeded his expectations, especially for a first attempt. Imagine how successful it would be after a little fine-tuning.
Brandon noted that none of the passengers had selected the button within the pop-up window, the one they were invited to click if they felt alone. He wasn’t surprised. It was hardly the sort of thing most people would admit, especially via an unknown and unsolicited link. Brandon thought it ironic that the sad-looking commuters staring longingly at their phones and craving social media contact had decided not to acknowledge their loneliness. Not that he cared. The message itself was irrelevant, other than it should be one that people wanted to remove from their screens as soon as they saw it. As far as he was concerned, the result was the same: his trial had been a success and that was all that mattered.
Flushed with the ecstasy of his first time, he craved more, urgently. Seeing that his battery still had plenty of charge, he decided to stay where he was, to test Proximity on a few more trains, challenging its limits and gathering data to feed his programming skills and ingenuity, determined to make his program the best it could be.
He squinted down the tracks in search of his next fix.
Trainspotting? Maybe it’s not such a pointless exercise after all.
2
With no fear of heights, Jacob grabbed the cold, hard steel, leaned over the barrier, and looked down over four hundred feet to the terraces and gardens of the Barbican complex below, savouring the simple pleasure of the wind on his face. Yes, it was cold, as it often was up here at this time of day. But feeling cold was a way of life to Jacob, and it didn’t dampen his enthusiasm for these trips.
As always when he ventured to the roof of Shakespeare Tower during one of his occasional early-morning excursions, Jacob had climbed the steel ladder to the upper tier. Unlike the lower level, which was enclosed by a concrete wall, the smaller upper deck was surrounded only by railings. With so little separating him from the precipitous edge, he felt free. Alive. Yet in the exhilaration of his precarious perch, he also imagined the thrill of the ground surging towards him, the finality of such a rush, and he sometimes wondered if true freedom lay that way. It seemed so easy, so tempting. But he knew he’d never do it. If he had faith that he’d be reunited with his wife, maybe then. Just maybe…
Jacob roused himself from his reverie and gazed straight ahead. After a final lingering look at the last vestiges of the majestic sunrise, he turned his back on the view and retraced his earlier steps across the roof and down the ladder to the lower tier. He paused at the emergency exit, which he had left an inch ajar on his way onto the roof, and peered through the opening. The corridor was clear, so he widened the gap just enough to sidle through, taking care to step over the wires he had attached to the alarm contacts about six inches above the floor, and ducked to avoid a similar set near the top of the door.
Jacob was well versed in the difficulties of reaching the roof undetected, having previously been discovered several times in nearby Cromwell Tower. He could still remember the warden’s nose wrinkling in distaste at his tattered clothes and pungent aroma as he escorted him of
f the roof. Jacob knew that he’d always be considered an imposter in this wealthy City residence, and it was clear that the building manager in the neighbouring tower was now watching out for him.
But for some reason, Shakespeare Tower was different. The staff were easier to evade and he hadn’t been stopped once, and it had crossed Jacob’s mind that they knew of his occasional visits but viewed them as harmless and not of any risk to the tower’s residents. More likely, though, Jacob had simply become better at avoiding them, learning from his previous escapades and calling on his experiences from past times, memories never far below the surface.
On his way to the rooftop, Jacob had noted the alarm points in the door frame, and had inserted wires, attached to small contacts made of foil, into the tiny gap so expertly that the electric current was maintained when the door opened. Stealth was vital to the success of this mission, and something as simple as a door alarm could easily catch him out, leading to a slow, painful death at the hands of the enemy.
After stepping across the threshold on his way off the roof, Jacob closed the door behind him, muffling the sound by holding his fingers in the gap until the last moment. With the same delicate touch, he removed his improvised electrical circuits and placed them into his trouser pocket. So far so good, although further dangers may still lie ahead. Leaving the building was arguably more difficult than entering, as the later hour meant that more inhabitants would be up and about when he exited. Fortunately for Jacob, people seldom used the stairs, even when going only one floor, which he put down to general laziness and an increasing reliance on technology to do everything. He found it amusing that soldiers and civilians alike would even go to the gym, with the explicit purpose of taking some exercise, yet still use the lifts in their accommodation blocks to travel one or two floors. But he wasn’t complaining; it reduced the chances of someone disturbing his escape.
