“Finance is next, George,” Charlotte replied, nodding at the researcher to dismiss her. George’s heart sank. He liked finance even less than he liked biology, but as a senior member of the board at the Ascalon Institute, there were some crosses he had to bear.
They were sitting in the main meeting room of the Ascalon Institute headquarters. It was a sterile room, with only a projector, an oval table, and some basic office chairs. Three of the walls were white with no decorations, and the carpet tiles were grey and functional. The room was also sterile in that it had been swept for electronic listening devices by the security team before the board meeting had begun an hour previously. Through the floor to ceiling windows that formed the fourth wall, George could see an open swathe of countryside. He would have preferred it to be rolling countryside, but Norfolk was as flat as a pancake.
While he waited for the representative from the finance department to load his slides, George looked across at Charlotte. She was, as always, immaculately dressed in a sharp business suit than he knew cost almost a thousand pounds from an exclusive boutique in London. As if she sensed him looking at her, Charlotte met his eyes and gave him a lingering smile. He returned the gesture, knowing that the best and most important part of the meeting was yet to come. After finance had finished their spiel. All George was really interested in was whether the institute was making money. If it was, happy days. If it wasn’t, well, you just had to roll with the punches.
After several incomprehensible slides and a presentation that would have cured the most ardent insomniac, finance was done. The financier thanked them for their attention, obviously not realising that George hadn’t really given him any, and left. It was time to get down to business.
Charlotte got to her feet and walked over to the door of the conference room. George, more from habit than anything else, followed the curve of her buttocks as she did so.
“George,” Charlotte called over her shoulder as she locked the door, “stop staring at my arse. It’s unbecoming of a man in your position.”
“Sorry, Charlotte,” George replied with a grin. “But you know I can’t help it. It’s a fine arse, if I may say so.” They had done this conversation, or a variant of it, many times before.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Charlotte said as she returned to join him at the table. “And you are most definitely not the beholder.”
“I live in hope, Charlotte,” George replied as he reached down for his briefcase. It had started life as a Pelican Protector laptop case, but he had stripped out the foam inserts and left the automatic purge valve, the watertight silicone O-ring lid, and over moulded rubber handles. According to the spiel on the manufacturer’s website, it was the most secure business briefcase available. George had owned two—the first had been destroyed by the institute’s security team as they tested the claims of the manufacturer. In the process, they had also managed to obliterate the contents. He clicked the combination lock of the remaining case and pulled out a thin sheaf of papers that Charlotte had given him earlier.
“Talk me through this chap, Charlotte,” George said, placing the papers on the table. On the front page of the stack was a photograph of a man in a thick blue woollen suit, a pale blue shirt, and a black tie which, to George’s annoyance, was tied in a half Windsor knot instead of a full Windsor.
“Sure,” Charlotte replied with a laugh. “Corporal Robert Hunter, known as Titch to his few friends.”
“What trade?”
“Weapons engineer.”
“Excellent. How does his profile look?” George leaned forward to study the face of the young man in the photograph.
“He joined the entry forum about a month ago, and rapidly passed through to the dark forum,” Charlotte replied.
“Does he have a nominator?”
“Yes, he does.” Charlotte gave George a name which he didn’t recognise. “The nominator’s doing a hard stretch in a Cat A prison. He set up and carried out the Golders Green attacks last year.”
“Ah, okay,” George replied. The Golders Green attacks were a series of fire bombings on synagogues in London during which three people had died. “Very good. You’ve analysed Hunter’s postings?”
“Indeed. Almost exclusively white supremacy, with a fair bit of misogyny in there,” Charlotte said with a grin. “I was surprised how quickly he wanted to prove himself by running that woman down.”
“Do you think he’s ready for the next step?”
“I think he’s more than ready.”
“Well, Charlotte. You are the doctor, after all.”
“I’m not that kind of doctor, and you know it.” Charlotte laughed in response. “But yes, I think we should give him a nudge in that direction. See what he’s capable of.”
“Excellent, let’s do that. Anything else?”
“Have you actually looked at those papers?” Charlotte replied, her face darkening. George said nothing. Of course he hadn’t actually looked at the papers. That was what he paid Charlotte so handsomely for. “Look at the print-outs at the back and the spreadsheet.”
George leafed through to find the papers that Charlotte was referring to. The print-outs were screen grabs from what George thought were CCTV cameras. They showed a young woman with a laboratory coat on holding up a phone with her thumb paused over the screen. In front of her, and the subject of the photograph the woman was just about to take, was the airlock to their main research laboratory.
“How the fuck did she get that in there?” George said, almost shouting. “What the fuck are we paying those security idiots for if they can’t even stop a phone being brought in?”
“It gets worse, George.” Charlotte gave him a dark look, which he knew was a reprimand for swearing. “Look at the last page.”
He did as he was instructed and read down a long list of filenames.
“What are these?”
“Well, she didn’t just manage to get a phone in. Those documents are all ones that the system shows she downloaded to a USB drive from the desktop computer on her desk. We’ve subsequently recovered the drive and the phone, but obviously we don’t know what she’s done with files in the meantime.”
George swore again, this time under his breath. He ran his eyes back down the list of files, relieved to see that they were all harmless research reports. That wasn’t the point, though. The point was this was a clear security breach. Who knew where the documents, and far more importantly, the photographs, had ended up.
“So where does this leave us, Charlotte?” he asked her.
“Where it leaves us,” she replied with a grim expression, “is needing a new administration assistant.”
22
“Bloody hell, Adams, take your time.” Adams laughed at Lizzie’s voice on the other end of the line. “I only get an hour for lunch, and I’ve wasted half of it waiting for you to answer the phone.”
“Sorry,” Adams said, smiling as he sat on the sofa in his lounge. “The phone slipped down the back of the sofa, and it took me ages to find it.” He nursed an angry scratch on the back of his hand from a broken spring in a piece of furniture that had seen better days, to put it mildly.
“You got time to chat?” Lizzie asked.
“I’ve always got time to talk to you, you know that.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” There was a silence on the end of the line, and Adams knew that what Lizzie was going to tell him wasn’t good news. Not for him, anyway.
“You’re going, aren’t you?” he asked as the silence bordered on becoming uncomfortable.
“Well, I wanted to talk to you first,” Lizzie replied, “but I think I’m going to, yes.”
“So go for it, then,” Adams said, trying to hide his disappointment. “It’s not like it’s for long. What is it, a six-week placement?”
“Twelve weeks.”
“That’s like half a tour, if that. Do you get R&R?”
“I think we can take a week in the middle, yes.”
“We
could meet up then, somewhere halfway between here and Sub-Saharan Africa. How about Cyprus?”
“You and bloody Cyprus,” Lizzie said, and Adams could hear the smile in her voice. “Let me guess, unfinished business?”
“We’re going to have to go back there at some point, aren’t we?” Adams replied. “Finish off what we started?”
“Anyway, Cyprus isn’t halfway between here and Sierra Leone.” He grinned at her response, knowing that she was about to tell him exactly where was halfway between the two locations.
“Go on then, where is?” Adams asked. “I know you’ve measured it.”
“Well, according to the map on my wall, Norwich is eighteen centimetres away from Freetown.”
“Very scientific, Lizzie.”
“Shut up. Now, nine centimetres is Casablanca, so we should meet there. What do you think?”
“Sounds really cool,” Adams said. “I’ve never been to Tunisia.”
“I know you haven’t.” Lizzie was giggling on the line.
“What’s so funny? And how do you know I’ve never been to Casablanca?”
“It’s in Morocco, for a start. I figured if you had been there, you’d probably know what country it’s in. I’m guessing you didn’t do geography at school?”
“I did, just not very well,” Adams said. “But I’m pleased you’ve decided to go for it.”
There was another silence on the line, which Lizzie broke a moment later.
“You’re such a shit liar, Adams,” she said. Her tone had changed, and she sounded tired. “You’re not pleased at all. If you don’t want me to go, I won’t.”
“It doesn’t matter what I want, Lizzie,” Adams replied, trying to keep his voice upbeat and not let on to Lizzie how gutted he actually was. “It’s a fantastic opportunity for you, and you need it. Besides, in a couple of years’ time, you could be pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen, listening to your three other children screaming while I’m in the pub.”
“Idiot,” Lizzie said quietly. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, one hundred per cent. When do you go?”
“I’m not sure, but it could be as soon as next weekend depending on what the station commander says.”
It was Adams’s turn to be quiet. He’d not thought it would be that soon.
“That quickly?” he said, forcing his mouth into a smile.
“They’ve got their own private plane and everything. Not the charity, but the company that sponsors it.”
“Would they give us a lift to Algeria for your R&R? We might be the only passengers. You know what that might mean, don’t you?”
“It’s Morocco, you fool. And no, I am not joining the mile high club.” Lizzie sounded brighter. “Not with you, anyway. In fact, after your comment about being pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen, I’m seriously considering never having sex with you again.”
“Are you duty medic all week?” Adams asked her.
“Er, yes, nice change of subject,” Lizzie replied. Adams knew from the way she said it, she was rolling her eyes. “I hand over Friday at seventeen hundred.”
“I’m on an early shift Friday, if you fancy coming over in the evening. I can probably get you a ticket for the game on Saturday afternoon as well?”
“What part of never having sex with you again didn’t you understand?” Lizzie’s voice was playful and light-hearted. “But yes please to the football. Some of those Norwich players are well fit.”
“Okay, well, I’ll make up the spare bed for you then for Friday. We can have a takeout pizza, then some Netflix.” Adams grinned. “And definitely not have sex. Then we’ll go to the football and you can get all hot and bothered watching some overpaid prima donnas rolling around on the grass.”
“Now that,” Lizzie replied, “sounds like a perfect couple of days. Especially the no sex bit.”
Adams said goodbye to Lizzie, telling her he had to leave for work. In reality, he had about half an hour before he needed to leave for the hospital, but he wanted some time to himself to process what Lizzie had just told him about going away.
“Adams?” Lizzie had said just before they ended the call. “You know I wasn’t joking about the no sex thing, don’t you?” He had called her a prick tease, she had told him to fuck off, and the conversation had ended with them both laughing.
“Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks,” Adams said as he put his phone on the coffee table. He sighed, taking a deep breath to try to calm down. The last thing he wanted Lizzie to do, just when they had finally got onto an even keel, was bugger off to the arse end of Africa for three months. Even the promise of a week in Casablanca, wherever the hell the place was, didn’t sweeten the deal. But at the same time, he knew she needed it to recover from some of the things that had happened to her over the last year or so.
Adams felt awful for thinking it, but he’d experienced a lot of what Lizzie had been through as well. In a sense, his experiences had been worse, but he would never admit that to anyone. The crucial difference was that he had never been injured. Lizzie had, and quite seriously. None of her physical injuries could be seen, but for a while she hadn’t been able to walk through an airport metal detector without the plates in her cheek setting off the alarms. But it wasn’t the physical injuries that were important. The plates were now gone, and the underlying injuries healed.
Adams was a professional medic, as was Lizzie. There wasn’t a situation with a casualty that they couldn’t handle, either on their own or together. Physical wounds and injuries were relatively straightforward. But the psychological ones? When they were the casualties?
They took longer.
23
The itching in his leg was driving Titch absolutely crazy. He sat on the edge of his bed, reluctant to put his trousers on because then he couldn’t itch the edges of the wound with his fingers, but he needed to be at work in less than thirty minutes. He didn’t think the pretty little medic who’d stitched his leg the previous evening had put anything on it to make it itch so much. But with women, you never knew.
He’d quite liked the sergeant, though. There was something quite filthy about her, which she knew but hid well. Women like that, they always held something back. They always made sure they held onto something to maintain their efforts at power over men like Titch. Except what the slutty woman who’d sutured his leg didn’t know was that there were men like Titch who knew exactly what they were up to. Maybe their paths would cross again? Titch certainly hoped so.
Unable to put off the inevitable any longer, Titch pulled up his trousers, tucked his combat jacket into them, and cinched the stable belt tight. He winced as he bent over to tie his shoelaces and make sure his trouser legs were properly secured with small green elasticated trouser twists. The sutures down the back of his leg were pulling as he bent over and he wondered if they might split. Turning up for his first day with blood pissing down his leg wasn’t how he wanted to start his new posting.
Titch left his room, satisfied at his appearance after checking it in the full-length mirror on the back of his door, and walked down the corridor toward the exit. Just as he got to the door, he saw another man outside. It was Big Guy, standing outside the door smoking a cigarette even though there was a smoking shelter less than a hundred yards away. When Big Guy saw Titch, he smirked at him before giving him a grudging nod. Titch suppressed a smile, knowing that he had passed the previous evening’s test and was, at least for the moment, an accepted member of the accommodation block.
The armoury was only a ten-minute walk from Titch’s block. He walked past the Costa Coffee outlet, considering grabbing a few takeout coffees, but he didn’t know how many people would be working in the armoury. He didn’t want to turn up with one for him and one for the boss, only to have a bunch of other blokes pissed off with him, so he decided not to get any.
Titch reached the heavily fortified building and made his way to the solitary entrance gate. The armoury was a fortress within a fortress, which considering its conte
nts probably wasn’t a bad idea. There was a doorbell to one side, so he pressed it. Almost a full minute passed before there was a reply.
“What?” It was a male voice crackling through the small speaker set into the fence.
“Er, Corporal Robert Hunter? Reporting for duty,” Titch said into the intercom.
“Who?”
“Corporal Robert Hunter. I’m starting this morning.”
“Are you? News to me.” There wasn’t much Titch could say to that, so he chose to say nothing. A moment later, there was a metallic clunk from inside the wire, and he saw the main door to the building open.
The man who walked through it wasn’t the best example of the British military. He was in his late forties to early fifties, had an impressive gut that hung over so much it obscured his belt completely, and was wearing a T-shirt that did nothing to hide it. As he approached the gate, Titch realised he needn’t have worried about turning up to work with a hangover. The man in front of him reeked of stale alcohol.
“You got an assignment order?”
“Yes,” Titch replied. “Effective today.”
“Fucking useless twats,” the man in front of Titch said as he opened the gate from the inside. “Been expecting someone for a while, but I would have thought that the scribblies could have let me know, at least. Come on in, I’ll show you where you can make me a brew.” He opened the door which screeched in complaint. “I’m Flight Sergeant White, by the way. Armourer here for the last three years.” The flight sergeant took a deep breath, the wheeze giving away a lifetime of smoking. “I go by Chalkie.”
“I’m Titch.”
“Right.” Chalkie regarded him through rheumy eyes. “Whatever. Follow me.”
The flight sergeant spent the next ten minutes or so walking Titch through the facility. Like every other armoury he’d ever been in, the building was pokey, poorly lit, and had doors that were a workout in themselves to open.
“That’s the weapons store.” Chalkie nodded at a room as they walked past it. “Ammo’s in the big cupboard at the back.” Titch followed him down a short corridor. “Explosives are in there.” Titch looked at a solid door with a Simplex lock on the front. Almost certainly, the code would be CX12345. It was at every other explosive store Titch had ever been to. “There’re the bogs,” Chalkie said as they walked past another door. “If you need a shit, use the far cubicle. And own your skids. Mags will have your balls in a vice if you leave one for her.”
Enemy Within: A heart-wrenching medical mystery (British Military Thriller Series Book 3) Page 9
