by Guy Roberts
‘I’ve got it,’ he grinned at her. ‘Upon no land your battles fought – we’re not talking about a fighter ace, we’re talking about a naval commander, who fought the French at sea. Victorious death became your share – someone who died at the moment of victory. Bold Cyclops, master now the air…’
Cleo cut him off with growing excitement, ‘A man who only had one eye, who lost the other in battle and is now at the top of…’
‘Nelson’s Column.’ Jack grinned in confirmation. ‘Horatio Nelson, who lost one eye in combat, making him a Cyclops. Nelson died at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, when his British fleet beat the shit out of the French and Spanish navies - Victorious death became your share!’
Cleo smiled. ‘So we got the first part, what about the rest?
Jack nodded, looking down at the rest of the text.
Their order is the key so sought.
If taken seventh, eighth, fifth and nought.
Four times less one your visage found
And this will let her be renowned.
The words stared up at him, their secrets obstinately hidden. Jack scratched his chin thoughtfully.
‘Well, the Wellington statue and the Napoleon statue both had clues hidden on them – so I guess the third clue is hidden somewhere on Nelson’s Column. These words must be a way to decode them, or to identify them when we see them.’
‘Searching for clues in the middle of Trafalgar Square?’ Cleo frowned. ‘Risky. There’d be CCTV cameras everywhere, ready to find us in an instant – we wouldn’t take two steps before we were seen.’
‘We’ve evaded them so far.’
‘In the middle of the night, yes,’ Cleo conceded. ‘But after your run-in with that civil servant, they’ll be looking for us with everything they’ve got.’
Jack shook his head. ‘No. They’re still keeping this quiet.’ He pointed over to the TV set in the corner. ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on the breakfast show. I haven’t seen anything about us on it and there’s nothing in the paper.’ He gestured to the front cover of the nearby Guardian.
Cleo frowned. ‘So what does that mean?’
‘It means they’re still playing their cards close to their chest.’ Jack frowned. ‘Perhaps Sir Johnathon actually listened to what I said and they don’t want the public to think we had anything to do with it.’
‘But they’ll still be looking for us on cameras?’
‘No doubt,’ Jack nodded sternly. ‘They’ll have footage of us both from the party at Apsley House. They’ll be using biometric data from that footage to search for us right now. It’s Sir Johnathan’s style – keep quiet then strike once. But it relies on the CCTV cameras finding us first. And that’s where we have an advantage.’
Cleo raised an eyebrow. ‘Do tell.’
‘Well, there are so many cameras in London that facial recognition software is the only way to filter data into a manageable size – computers can do in an instant what would take a team of humans hours or days. Otherwise, to be 100 per cent effective, they’d have to have a single person watching every CCTV camera relay 24 hours a day. So instead you put a suspect’s photo into the computer and it’ll compare that picture with every image taken from every CCTV stream. So the obvious thing to do is to change our faces.’
Cleo smiled. ‘Girls change their faces with every spot of makeup they put on. Are you sure we’ll be totally safe?’
‘Not totally safe, no.’ Jack shook his head. ‘Certain places will have much closer surveillance – airports, the underground, trains and roads in and out of the city. The search programs there will be much broader and there will probably be a few dozen staff making manual checks on everyone the computer suggests. But that’s fine, because right now we don’t need to leave the city, we just need to move around. With a bit of care, I think we can do that, at least.’
‘How so?’
‘Ok,’ Jack smiled, enjoying the chance to explain things to Cleo for a change. ‘The Facial Recognition Software identifies the distance between the eyes, the width of the nose, the shape of the jaw and cheekbones, and, most importantly,’ he reached up and touched a finger to the bridge of her nose, ‘their relation to one another and to this spot.’
‘And that’s all?’
‘Not quite.’ Jack said. ‘There’s also behavioural patterns.’
‘Behavioural patterns?’
‘The way we speak, or type, or walk,’ Jack explained. ‘If they have footage of us walking around Apsley House, they’ll be able to feed that into the search parameters – our gait, the length of our pace, even the tiniest limp. The way we walk is as personal and unique as our finger prints – and some of the newest software can pick that up, no matter how much we disguise ourselves. But so long as we obscure the distances between our eyes, nose, jaw and cheekbones and alter the way we walk, then we’ve got a very good chance of parading through the middle of London without anyone noticing us at all.’
Cleo smiled. ‘Well. Nothing in life is assured. A good chance is a good chance. Let’s just see what we can do.’
Jack smiled and stretched out his jaw in a yawn. ‘You were in heels last night, so regular shoes will be fine, but for me… something a little more low-tech will be needed.’
0700 hrs (0600 hrs GMT) 15 June 2015, Rue de Passy, 16th Arrondissement, Paris.
GR 48.857847, 2.280398
Deschamps ran a frustrated hand through his carefully combed hair, his face tight with exasperation. He was baffled. It had taken two days of analysis and care to sort through the box of half-burnt papers that Reynard had fetched for him and the search phrases that Jack Starling had used which the Termite had uncovered, but now the words and phrases were assembled into five distinct stanzas, each one, he hoped, a clue that would take him one step closer to the gold. The poems had led him to the statues in Aldershot and the Duke of Wellington’s London home. It mattered little that the man sent to Apsley House had failed miserably, since Deschamps’ contact in COBRA had quickly revealed Jack Starling’s involvement. Capturing Jack Starling was now integral to Deschamps’ plans and the best way to do that was to lay an ambush at the location of the other clues – and the location of those clues was hidden on the pages scattered before him. Careful thinking had already revealed the first, second and fourth of the clues. Reynard had found the first clue, lost the second, but had already inspected the fourth. Even now, the tireless hunter was organising the force necessary to extract it from its location. A moderate success rate, Deschamps decided, but hours of thought the third and fifth clues remained obstinately opaque.
Deschamps took a deep sigh and sipped from a tiny mug of steaming espresso coffee and stared at the third stanza once again.
Bold Cyclops, master now the air
Victorious death became your share
Upon no land your battles fought
Their order is the key so sought.
Their order is the key so sought,
If taken seventh, eight, fifth and nought.
Four times less one your visage found
And this will let her be renowned
‘Master now the air…’ Deschamps mused. A British aviator? British Airways perhaps? He lit a cigarette in frustration and puffed its smoke across the table. He needed a breakthrough and he needed it soon.
1100 hrs 16 June 2015, Trafalgar Square, London.
GR 51.508181, -0.128543
Face hidden once again behind a hoodie and sunglasses, Jack looked across Trafalgar Square with mixed feelings. Tourists and shoppers rushed to and fro, matched by the pigeons that flocked hopefully overhead. The crowds and confusion would all make surveillance more difficult but Jack felt highly exposed nonetheless. He peered through his sunglasses carefully, his jaw thrust forward in a painful under bite, the lower teeth extended awkwardly past the upper teeth. The pose helped disguise the line of his jaw, but it made his face ache horrendously. Hidden beneath his hoodie Jack felt like a cross between a bulldog and Winston Churchill at his most belligerent. They were at
the North West corner of the square, close to the National Gallery, where a friend of Bethany’s had dropped them off in a battered old minicab.
‘Untraceable,’ Cleo had confidently declared as they climbed into the ancient green Audi. ‘If anyone asks, he’s to say we booked his cab in Brixton. No one will be able to discover anything more than that.’ Jack had looked at the wizened old man driving the car and hoped that she was right.
‘So, here we are,’ he muttered. Cleo looked across at him and smiled, a part of her enjoying his discomfort. She had a beanie pulled down low across her forehead, with a shock of carefully curled hair flowing down around her face in a golden waterfall. Bethany had opened her wardrobe to Cleo and the results had been stunning. Combined with a careful application of makeup, it made her face strangely different. Kohl eyeliner distorted the general impression of her eyes, while a silk scarf was wrapped around the length of her neck, helping to obscure the line of her jaw. Her footwear was unusual – white socks and a pair of Birkenstock sandals. The shoes were the final touch, clearly stamping her as a German tourist or backpacker. In contrast, Jack had been decked out in a variety of clothes belonging to Bethany’s unseen eldest son, who was a fan of Manchester United hoodies and baggy stone-washed jeans. The overall effect was far less impressive and Jack worried that he looked dodgy enough to be stopped by a policeman just because. If that happened, Jack knew, the game would get interesting. The Beretta pistol taken from the Apsley House basement was resting comfortably against the base of his spine. No policeman would overlook that if it came to a search. Jaw aching, he stood close by Cleo’s side, feeling distinctly seedy in comparison to her foreign glamour.
The grey space stretched away in front of them, dominated by the mighty Corinthian column on the far side of the square which was topped by the one-eyed, one-armed statue of Horatio Nelson. Other statues were scattered across the space. One statue in particular caught Jack’s eye. It was a great, skeletal horse, facing southward and pawing one hoof in the air. It made a strange sight amid the pomp of the great buildings and statues surrounding it. Jack felt a strange melancholy and nervousness emanating from the bronze sculpture.
‘The Fourth Plinth.’ Cleo explained as they passed the base of the equine statue. ‘It was going to be a statue of William IV, but they ran out of money. The City started putting modern art on it about ten years ago and never looked back. What do you think?’
Jack glanced back at the statue and shrugged. ‘It’s a skeleton horse – what’s not to like?’
He winced as the piece of Lego dug into his right heel. It was the simplest trick to counter modern surveillance programs. A pebble in a shoe – or piece of Lego – was enough to disrupt the natural walking gait of any man, while still remaining imperceptible to the casual observer. Jack knew it was a low tech way of outsmarting the machines, even if it did cause a great deal of annoyance. Instead, he stubbornly set his mind on their goal on the southern side of Trafalgar Square. Nelson’s Column reared above them, taller and taller in the morning sun. Four bronze lions guarded the monument, each one looking out with a regal expression. Closer to, Jack could see that a bronze relief was mounted on each side of the square base of the pillar, each one depicting one of Nelson’s famous victories. He couldn’t help but feel a deep swell of patriotic pride. They were at the centre of British civilisation – the National Gallery at the north of the square, the distant spire of the Big Ben clock tower to the south, the nearby facade of Admiralty Arch that led to Buckingham Palace. It was somehow fitting that the next step in the chase was to be found here, at the centre of all things Britain.
‘Well,’ Cleo whispered, ‘so far, so good.’
Jack nodded, jaw aching. ‘So far, so good,’ he agreed. He had been surprised to see how many men and women walking past had flickered their eyes across Cleo’s athletic frame – some with jealously, some with lust, many with outright admiration. The pair stood for a moment looking up at the Column, unsure how to proceed.
‘So are there any numbers we can see,’ Cleo asked, ‘or are we going to have to crawl over it as well?’
‘I don’t know.’ Jack admitted. ‘Upon no land your battles fought, their order is the key so sought,’ he recited the words from David’s poem, then looked the column up and down. The answer leapt out at him. ‘There!’ he pointed. ‘The bronze panels – one for each of his great battles. Their order is the key so sought – that’s the code we’re looking for. Something in the images must provide the clue.’ They scrambled up to the first image.
Cleo pointed out a line of text. ‘There, on the bottom of the picture.’
‘England expects every man will do his duty.’ Jack read the words out loud then looked up at the picture more closely. It showed a wounded man, Nelson, carried by his crew amid the scene of a naval battle, a shattered mast behind him and musket-wielding sailors on either side. It was a picture of Nelson’s death, Jack realised, at the moment when the British fleet were victorious over the French at the Battle of Trafalgar.
‘J.E. Carew.’ Cleo read a name in the extreme right hand side of the panel. ‘Part of the clue?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Jack walked around to the eastern side of the Column. It showed a one-armed man, Nelson again, stamping a seal onto a letter being held against a cannon. The backdrop of the relief again showed the destruction of battle, with ragged sails and wounded men lying bare-chested on a ship’s deck.
‘Copenhagen, 1801.’ Jack read. He kept circling the pillar, to find the next plaque had the words ‘Nile, 1798’ at its base. The final image had the words ‘St Vincent, 1797’ and showed Nelson in a glorious uniform receiving the sword of a defeated opponent. Jack kept limping around the column to re-join Cleo on its southern side.
‘It’s the dates of the battles.’ Jack decided. ‘The four years – 1797, 1798, 1801 and the Battle of Trafalgar in…’
‘1805,’ Cleo finished the sentence. ‘I asked someone.’ She explained in response to his look.
‘So those are the numbers… 1797, 1798, 1801 and 1805,’ Jack continued. ‘And the next part of the riddle is: Their order is the key so sought, If taken seventh, eighth, fifth and nought.’ He looked at her intently. ‘We’ve got the numbers from the years, so these lines must be instructions on how to break the code...’ A police car whooped in the background for a moment and Jack felt his pulse race. He kept his back turned for several seconds, then angled his head to watch from the corner of his eye as the car drove away through Admiralty Arch.
‘Maybe we should figure that out later on,’ Cleo suggested dryly.
‘Ok,’ Jack agreed, ‘the next line then, let’s be quick, Four times less one your visage found, and this will let her be renowned.’ He looked back at the bronze panels. ‘Well, four times your visage found – he’s on all four panels. Four times four is sixteen… less one means 15. So how does that let her be renowned?’ He frowned, feeling stumped. ‘It’s got to be something here, some part of the statue, something we can see, or that we already know.’
They looked at the picture in silence for a moment longer.
‘All right, come on,’ Jack said, then turned and began limping away from Nelson’s Column. ‘We can figure out the rest of this out of sight. I’m not happy with us being out in front of everyone like this.’ The hairs on the back of his neck were tingling and Jack was sure he was being observed. ‘At least now we know what the first part of the clue is. If needs be we can come back later on when it’s dark. That’ll keep us even safer from any surveillance.’
‘So what do we do instead?’ Cleo asked.
‘Sort out the next line of the poetry. We need to find it as quickly as possible so we can get back under cover.’
Cleo nodded. ‘I could do with some lunch as well. How about St James’s Park?’
Jack shook his head, remembering his meeting there with Andrew the previous morning. ‘Too open,’ he decided, ‘and I was there yesterday. I don’t want to risk being picked up on the odd chanc
e they’ve staked out the place in case I come back. It’ll have to be somewhere else.’
‘Down on the Thames?’ Cleo suggested. ‘The Embankment is five minutes’ walk away and we can look out across the river without a camera staring us in the face.’
‘Ok,’ Jack agreed. ‘Lead the way, I’ll be ten steps behind you trying not to feel as dodgy as I look.’
Cleo nodded, ‘You try that.’ She looked at him expressionlessly, but Jack could tell she was fighting back a smile at his choice of clothes. ‘Head straight to the Embankment and turn left,’ she continued. ‘I’ll stop for supplies and meet you at the first free bench.’
They set off down Northumberland Avenue toward the river, Jack limping slightly as the Lego piece bit into his heel, while Cleo peeled off at the first coffee shop they passed. The tree-lined boulevard was filled with workers and tourists, but Jack was able to make good headway through the crowds. He could feel the itch of surveillance on him with every passer-by and it was a relief to sit down at an empty bench and look out across the broad stretch of the Thames. The river curved away to his left, cut by the low arches of Waterloo Bridge. Beyond that, the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral was visible in the distance, a relic of another age that swam hazily in the distance under the hot sun of a London summer. Hoodie pulled forward over his head, Jack was able to relax his aching jaw and massage the overstretched muscles tenderly.
‘It’s a nice view from that bridge,’ Cleo declared, collapsing onto the bench beside him. Jack shook himself out of the reverie and gladly accepted the wrapped sandwich she thrust into his hands. His jaw ached as he chewed through the sandwich.
‘Waterloo Bridge?’ he asked. ‘We might get to see it first-hand. Knowing our luck, that’s where the next clue is and we’ll have to spend the afternoon climbing all over it.’
‘Oh gosh, really?’ Cleo looked at him in surprise.
‘Probably not,’ Jack smiled. ‘That bridge was built during the Second World War. A bit too late for our purposes. A Bulgarian was assassinated by the KGB there in the 1970s – jabbed in the leg with a poisoned umbrella. My dad was one of the investigators.’ He smiled for a moment, remembering.
