by Tony Moyle
Byron may have felt that the press were against him, but for them this felt like a new prime minister compared to the one that had fronted so many recent press conferences. This prime minister was on the attack. A far cry from the one that they had been writing about, ineffective, powerless and isolated. This time he had the answers, not just the usual rhetoric. The secret to Byron’s performance wasn’t delight at what had unfolded but pure relief. He knew that his one chance to deliver on his manifesto, to deliver the people from themselves, had come close to being destroyed. Emorfed was safe, and so was Byron’s future.
“I will take a few questions,” he announced, confirming the end of his announcement. The watching journalists jostled for position, arms in the air like primary school children eager to answer the teacher’s question.
“Julian Mundy, BBC News. How can you be sure that this war is at an end?” asked the first to receive Byron’s outstretched finger.
“Our intelligence tells us that these attacks were being conducted by a small band of extremists. Some of them may be left, but this will have dented their confidence and capabilities. We also hope to use the evidence collected at the scene to track down the rest of the group,” he replied.
As the Prime Minister batted the questions comfortably away with both wit and skill, his thoughts lingered on what to do about Emorfed. Tavistock had until recently been a secret, even within the government. Now its home was being broadcast across every television network from Scotland to the Scilly Isles. Tavistock was no longer a safe place for it to be kept. Maybe it could be used before the tests had been successfully completed? Was that too great a risk? There would be one chance, and the timing had to be right.
“Gillian Trees, ITV. No doubt this is a huge achievement for the government, but yet again your Minister for Homeland Security is missing from another press conference. Where is Sandy Logan?”
“Mr. Logan is fully aware of our recent success but is unavailable for comment. He is currently following up on an extremely important piece of information linked to these attacks, but I can assure you, Gillian, I will be very keen to see Mr. Logan at our scheduled meeting this afternoon.” The Prime Minister’s response had been delivered with the well-rehearsed certainty that someone would ask it.
In reality, Sandy had not been seen since their showdown in his office three days ago. What had his decision been? Was he due to hand in the cherry on top of the terrorist cake, or open the trapdoor to his own political oblivion? Byron didn’t know what his choice would be, and nor did he care. He could no longer trust someone whose erratic behaviour was liable to make him self-destruct at any moment, possibly taking Byron down with him. It was time to flush him out. Whatever the outcome, Byron would win. Either Sandy brought Violet in and showed his own past links to her world, or he got relegated to the backbenches. It might make Byron’s life uncomfortable at moments like this, but his plan was faultless.
“Fiona Foster from The World Today. How would you respond to accusations that the government has been producing illegal biological therapies, designed as weapons of war, at Tavistock for the last four years?”
The auditorium fell silent as they focused on the source of the question.
“I’m sorry, who did you say you were?” asked the Prime Minister, squinting towards the middle-aged blonde sitting at the very back of the room.
“Fiona Foster, The World Today,” repeated the journalist.
“I don’t remember your name being on the list invited to this function, but in response I would say that you have been reading too many science fiction novels. Clearly your publication, which I am unaware of, is designed for readers only interested in conspiracy theories.”
The room erupted in laughter at the particularly cutting response, Byron revelling in the audience’s sudden shift to his side.
“I’ll repeat my question, sir. How do you respond to my sources who have been inside the Tavistock Institute and have witnessed secret testing on animals, said to be with therapies designed for use on humans as a type of biological conditioning?” demanded Fiona, now standing and pointing fiercely up at the rostrum.
“I’d say that your source was on the same medication as you. I would be happy to accept your claim, if you can accept that this room is made of fudge, The Queen is actually from a small planet on the outskirts of Saturn called Jinbut 3, and that German cooking is undoubtedly the best in the world.” More laughter burst out from the journalists and camera crews, charmed by the Prime Minister’s newly discovered humour. “I am unsure how you have come by these absurd suggestions, but I will not tolerate them anymore.”
Byron nodded towards two burly men stood at the back entrance of the auditorium and within seconds they had moved over to where Fiona had been sitting. After a brief and pointless attempt at resistance she was physically removed from her chair.
“Now, unless anyone has any questions that are substantiated or relevant to my announcement today, I have important issues to attend to,” bellowed Byron, ignoring the fact that almost everyone had their hands in the air.
“Please remove your hands from me. I am perfectly capable of leaving this room in the same manner that I entered!” shouted Fiona, aiming one final comment at the delegation as she was dragged away. “Just remember the word Emorfed. Ask him about that, see if he will deny any knowledge of that.”
“Paul Eaves, Sky News. What is Emorfed?”
“There will be no further questions; I refuse to answer questions that have no basis in reality.”
Byron picked up his papers and left to a barrage of further questions and a shower of crackling flashbulbs. Any empathy that he had created in the last five minutes had just evaporated. Byron disappeared behind the curtains.
“Get Agent 15 in here at once!” shouted Byron at the closest aide that he could see. “And I want to see Sandy Logan when you have dug him out of whichever vast hole he is hiding in.”
Byron’s rage was palpable. What had started out as a great victory had somehow developed into an open season. How was it possible that an obscure reporter from a two-bit rag had been so well informed? Only a handful of people even knew the name Emorfed, let alone knew what it was capable of.
“Agent 15 is waiting in your office, sir,” said the aide, having just come off his mobile phone. “He’s managed to identify the bombers. He says he’s got all the data with him.”
“Good, let’s see who these bastards are,” replied Byron as he headed for his nearest exit.
*****
Agent 15 was sprawled on the red leather sofa in Byron T. Casey’s private office, arms outstretched along its back, dressed as he always was in his dark suit, dark tie and shoes polished to within an inch of their lives: the classic spy clichéd dress sense. He always argued that this was the best appearance for meeting dignitaries as he’d fit in with all the other civil servants, security guards and hangers-on. In his left hand was a large brown envelope, sealed and marked ‘top secret’. Byron came through the doors of his office so forcibly that they almost came off their hinges.
“So what have you got?”
His anger had not yet abated and it was clear he was in no mood to be messed around. Byron removed the tie he always hated wearing, sat down behind his desk and waited for Agent 15’s report. Agent 15 stood up and approached the Prime Minister’s desk.
“We now have a positive ID. There were elements of two human bodies in what was left in the debris. The explosion was so powerful they are still finding fragments in nearby fields.” Agent 15’s style lacked emotion. Sights and scenes that would have turned most people into blubbering wrecks were delivered in a factual, almost heartless manner. “There were, in fact, no bodies to speak of, sir, just a lot of splatter. The job was made more difficult for the scientists, given the presence of non-human DNA in the remains.”
“I’m sorry, Agent 15, what do you mean, ‘non-human’ DNA? What are you saying?”
“There was a large quantity of bird DNA present,
almost certainly pigeon. These birds were seemingly removed to the vehicle from the laboratory, which gave us the impression at first that the perpetrators were animal rights protestors. They would no doubt have released them at a later date, but accidentally killed them instead. Ironic, isn’t it?”
“I feel quite sorry for the poor things: at least they would have survived if they were kept where they were. So who were they?”
“Our first clue comes from analysing the wreckage of the vehicle. Interestingly, the van that they used is untraceable.”
“Explain?”
“Firstly, the bomb exploded inside it, so there is very little of it intact, and secondly the serial numbers that we’ve recovered are not recorded at DVLA or any other official body.”
“What does that mean?” barked Byron, getting impatient with this clinical and seemingly round the houses description of the incident.
“Quite simply it means that it was either a government vehicle, or a vehicle from abroad. If you will let me continue I can demonstrate it is not the latter.” Agent 15 continued his summary on Byron’s nod of the head. “We know that it was a government vehicle because we know that one of the deceased was on the payroll of MI5.”
Agent 15 opened the envelope and passed him a dossier of information. It included a black and white photograph of a pale and gaunt individual.
“His name is Ian Noble,” added Agent 15, “and there’s very little detail on him. At least not that we can find. He’s been on MI5’s payroll for three and a half years but his personnel file has been encrypted and only one person can get access to it. Now there are very few people within the intelligence community that have the ability to do that. Would you like to hazard a guess as to whom?”
“Sandy Logan?” Byron answered with an air of self-expectancy and a tone reserved for those difficult moments in life when mistakes are about to come home to roost.
“I’m afraid so, Prime Minister.”
Byron’s reflexes launched towards his mobile phone.
“If you are about to call him, let me save you the job,” added Agent 15, guessing whose number was about to be dialled.
“I’ll kill him. Not a quick end, no. I will reserve the most unpleasant demise you can imagine. I’m going to string him up by his soft nether regions from the very hands of Big Ben. I’m going to suck his heart out with a straw.”
If Byron’s blood pressure had been high after the press conference, it had now surpassed all medical records.
“Again, let me save you a job.”
Agent 15 passed across a second dossier from within the brown envelope. The Prime Minister’s jaw dropped and for several minutes he stared unbelieving into the face of the second photograph. There the unmistakable features of the ex-Minister for Homeland Security, the late Sandy Logan, smiled back at him.
“Oh shit,” gasped Byron, dropping the dossier onto his desk and placing his hands through his greying hair. “Who else knows about this?”
“You and I. Even the scientist that ran the test doesn’t know who he is,” replied Agent 15.
“If this gets out into the open we are finished. Can you imagine the Minister appointed to destroy the terrorist network was actually running the bloody thing? Oh this is bad.”
“His treachery runs deeper than that.” Agent 15 removed his smartphone from his inside jacket pocket. “This call was made at ten to six this morning from Sandy’s mobile phone.”
Agent 15 held up the device and pressed play. The recording was muffled but most of the conversation was comprehensible. The first voice was unmistakably Sandy Logan’s, panic-stricken and angry.
“Violet, if you pick this up you need to act quickly. I’ve got into Tavistock. We thought you might beat us to it. I’ve just broken into a safe in one of the offices…I can’t believe what they’re doing here…it’s some kind of biological weapon called Emorfed. They’re testing it on animals, but that’s just the beginning.”
“The recording gets a bit muffled at this point. It seems he may have been distracted by something,” added Agent 15, as the recording became distorted and fractured.
“Go to the press, get this out in the open. If it is what I think, then we’ll all be in big trouble. It threatens our very way of life,” came Sandy’s voice, tailing off.
“So that’s how that bitch found out,” added Byron through gritted teeth. “Have you traced where the message was sent?”
“Yes, but the property was unoccupied. They must have picked the message up earlier today and scarpered, knowing what had befallen Sandy and knowing that we would come after them. Clearly they didn’t waste any time spilling the beans to the reporter from The World Today. What do you want me to do, sir?”
Byron composed himself. If nothing else, Byron T. Casey was a fighter. He’d won the ugliest general election campaign the country had ever seen. He’d fought dirty to get into this position and if necessary he could do the same to stay there. He had previous.
“Our only good lead is the reporter. We know that she must have got her information from Violet Stokes, or one of her people, and one thing’s for sure: if she’s still around we still have a problem. I want you to find this Fiona Foster. I want you to stick to her like glue. I want to know where she goes, who she meets, where she lives, who her friends are, and even what brand of shampoo she uses. Is that understood, Agent 15?”
“It will be done.”
“Oh, and if you have to silence her, then use all your powers, legal or otherwise, but keep it out of sight. This stays between the two of us.” Byron stood up and walked to the window. Rain lashed down on the rooftops of a blustery London.
Agent 15 departed through the nearest door, or at least that’s what Byron had thought he’d done. The moment after the door had closed, it opened again, then shut, opened, shut again, and for a third time opened and closed. A confused Byron walked to the door where Agent 15 was already halfway down the corridor.
“What was that?”
“What was what, sir?” replied Agent 15.
“All that mad door-shutting,” he asked, flapping his arms forward and back in mock reconstruction.
“Oh that. Obsessive-compulsive disorder,” replied Agent 15 as he returned. “I have to shut every door I open at least three times or unspeakable things will happen to me.”
“O.C.D., really? But you’re an agent. How did you manage to get the job in the first place?”
“Only started after I joined the service. Something to do with deflecting anxiety.”
Byron returned to his office. “That’s all I need. The only person that I can trust is a bloody freak.”
- CHAPTER EIGHT -
LEVEL ZERO
The very first resident of level zero was a rat called Li Xeng. The day she arrived in Hell had been a most memorable one. Li Xeng was the very first person to demonstrate the effects of the Limpet Syndrome and no one had seen anything like it. Her soul had finally been returned to the Soul Catcher by the efforts of a fellow Chinese man by the name of Zhang Heng, averting the certain doom that awaited the Universe. On his return from the afterlife, Zhang went on to be the Chief Astronomer for the Chinese Emperor, having inexplicably catalogued some two thousand unnamed stars. On top of this he had an uncanny ability to create inventions using mechanics and gears never previously seen on Earth.
When Li Xeng’s soul had finally been released from its rat-like form it was a complete bugger to catch. Like all souls, she had made her long and meandering journey through space and time to the very edge of the Universe. The soul had been altered in such a way that when it entered the Soul Catcher it would not accept the prosthetic human version of Li Xeng that had been laid on for it. For days the soul lay siege inside the machine refusing to budge, the effects almost destroying it. Every time a normal soul was incarcerated with it, the unusual union produced the weirdest and most wonderful pulses of energy emitted in every colour and direction out into space.
There was great concern amongst t
he demons that the Soul Catcher would be permanently damaged, and after much deliberation an alternative vessol was created to keep Li Xeng safe. A vessol shaped in the form of a rat which Li’s soul finally accepted as its last resting place. The idea had come from the quick thinking of a demon called Mr. Primordial, who, in turn, was given the responsibility for storing and dealing with Li Xeng and all other such cases in the future. A post he still held several millennia later when, unbeknown to him, a recently deceased man from Surrey was about to see how he was getting on.
John and Brimstone stood at the lowest visible level of Hell on the bank of the stagnant lake that John had seen from the bridge on his earlier walk around.
“I’ve never been where we are about to go, John, but I’m hoping that we will find out something that will help you in your task,” Brimstone announced, searching around the edge of the lake. “Now somewhere around here should be a switch…ah here it is.”
Brimstone placed his hot, stony fingers around a piece of rock protruding from the wall. As he pressed on it the once still and stagnant water of the lake started to froth and ripple, swirling violently around the edges, as if someone had removed the plug from the bottom. Within a minute the water was suspended against the side of the lake, held invisibly by centrifugal forces. The bed of the lake was laid bare. But from the flicker of the lanterns adorning the walls, John could make out some stepping stones winding down to a trapdoor. Brimstone was already stomping down the stairs like only a creature made of granite can, his pounding footsteps echoing through the cavernous city of cells.
