Lion Resurgent
Page 48
“Dad, how longs did dreams last before they go away?” Conrad Cross was having problems with his tenses.
“What makes you think they ever will?”
Next morning, Allie Cross came down and found her husband and son sprawled over the kitchen table, sleeping off the schnapps. She shook her head fondly, muttered ‘old soldier’s business’ and made a note to charge them for two bottles of best Dutch schnapps. Business was business, after all.
House in Unknown Part of London
Officially, the room was empty. The people who had gathered in it did not exist. The organization they belonged to did not exist. Nothing any of them had done had ever happened. In a more real sense, the room was empty because nobody in it knew the identities of anybody else there. They had arrived separately; they would leave separately. The room was darkened so that no faces could be seen. It was possible to tell whether a speaker was a man or a woman but that was all. When they spoke, they did so with a generic Oxford Received-English accent that might or might not be genuine. Even their ages were uncertain. The meeting itself ran according to the format adopted by the Society of Friends. They sat in silence unless one person felt he had something to say. Whoever spoke received a quiet and polite hearing and everybody paused for a minute or more before a reply was made. That allowed for a calm and considered response.
“Too many fuelling accidents.” The voice came out of the semi-darkness. The tone was not critical but thoughtful.
After a delay, the reply was couched the same way. “We didn’t cause that many of them. We should remember that inexperienced armies normally have a high accident rate without our assistance. The elevated Argentine rate plus our own contributions was too high for comfort. I think the Argentines were getting suspicious towards the end.”
There was another silence. The others present guessed that the speaker had headed one of the Auxiliary Units that had deployed south. One team had gone to South Georgia, the other to the Falklands although there was no record of that fact nor would there ever be. Even the trawler that had inserted them and picked them up had vanished. Its assumed identity had evaporated as quickly and as finally as dew on a warm summer’s day.
“We must think of other accidents that might befall such forces in the future.” A woman’s voice this time but that meant nothing. It was quite possible that the teams that might have deployed south had had women as members; only their commanders would know that. Even the crew of the trawler that had briefly been the Nikogas Nevidel would be unable to identify the teams they had carried. Nor would those teams be able to recognize the crew of the trawler. In the Auxiliary Units, complete and total anonymity was the norm. When they had been founded in the early days of 1940, in anticipation of a German invasion, the anticipated ‘life’ of an Auxiliary Unit had been two weeks. Now, the force had lasted almost fifty years yet they were still an unknown, untouchable ghost. That had been achieved by the strictest attention to security. Back in 1942, innocent people had died to maintain that secrecy.
“We must.” Another voice from the darkness. “Also, we must move with the times. There are other targets now that can be equally destructive.”
“Telephone lines.” The truth was that most who attended these meetings rather enjoyed them. The leisured pace of discussions and the complete anonymity of the speakers meant that ideas could be proposed and approved or shot down on their merits.
“And satellite links.” The impression of the attendees thoughtfully nodding was strong. “Communications are a modern army weakness as much as fuel and supplies.”
“Batteries. Almost everybody depends on battery-powered equipment these days. If we can find a way of ensuring batteries went flat before they were used?”
Another long pause and when the next speaker brought up the idea, the reluctance in her voice was palpable. “Medical supplies. Perhaps we could poison blood banks or pharmaceuticals?”
“That would make wounded troops reluctant to seek medical attention. A major impact on morale. We should look into this.”
There was another pause for thought. “Infect, not poison. Poisoning could be detected as deliberate and would reveal our hand. But septicaemia or syphilis in blood supplies could just be an accident. And the rumor would be as damaging as the deed.”
“Good ideas. They will be studied.” Nobody quite knew how, but they would be. Somebody, somewhere would get a contract to study the degree of infection in blood banks. Somehow, that information would find its way back to be weaponized.
“Are there other matters?”
“The Government remained firm. Commendably firm. There was no sign of weakness and the ghost of That Man remains in his grave.”
The satisfied stir that went around the room was unmistakable. One of the key functions of the Auxiliary Units was to ensure that what had been done by Lord Halifax on June 18, 1940 could never be repeated. If a modern-day Lord Halifax tried, he or she would never survive the drive from Downing Street to the Palace and the Monarch would be spared the duty having their hands kissed by a traitor. Who shall guard the guards? A question that might be asked of the Auxiliary Units had they existed, which, of course, they did not. And the reply they might have given, had they existed, was we guard each other.
There was another long, relaxed silence. Eventually, another woman spoke. “The Americans have been sniffing around. They have picked up word that we might exist.”
The possible consequences of that and how word might have leaked out were contemplated. “Is there a breach in our security?”
Another contemplative pause. “I do not think so. I believe they heard the legends and decided that where there was smoke there might be fire. So they investigated. One of the agents from the Office of Strategic Services was looking around. And asking discrete questions.”
“Victim of an accident?”
“In this case no. The agent is a person of importance and an accident would have resulted in a full-scale investigation with all the resources the Americans could throw at it. Also, asking questions and the questioner then dying tends to confirm the importance of those questions. Instead, the investigation was monitored and quietly sealed off from access to any possible leads. As a result, it died from lack of interest.”
“Very well handled.” A male voice from the darkness was filled with approval.
Slowly the meeting petered out. Once the discussions were completed, the attendees left. One by one they quietly slipped away in the darkness. Each left with enough delay between them so they would be lost in the passers-by outside long before the next one emerged. The house they met in had several exits and they were used at random. The need for security and absolute secrecy was maintained at all times, even when whatever was happening had concluded.
The woman who had raised the issue of the American investigation into the possible existence of the Auxiliary Units was one of the last to leave. The approval of her actions had pleased her greatly since handling the situation had been one of her first unsupervised missions. It had not been an easy one for her. In common with all Auxiliary Unit personnel she had training in unarmed combat and other deadly skills that was the best that anybody could receive anywhere. Allowing herself to be thrown around a hotel room by Igrat Shafrid had been hard for her to swallow. Still, she had fulfilled her mission and been praised for her success. With that, a contented Heather Watson adjusted her hat, put up her umbrella against the fine spring rain and unobtrusively mixed in with the civilians on the street.
THE END
Table of Contents
LION RESURGENT Stuart Slade
PART ONE SOBERANIA
CHAPTER ONE TOOLS OF THE TRADE
CHAPTER TWO PROFESSION OF ARMS
CHAPTER THREE PLANS AND INTENTIONS
CHAPTER FOUR MOVEMENT ORDERS
CHAPTER FIVE ENHANCED DETERRENCE
PART TWO ROSARIO
CHAPTER ONE SECOND CHANCES
CHAPTER TWO FIRST SHOTS
CHAPTER TH
REE ZERO HOUR
PART THREE CORPORATE
CHAPTER ONE STRIKING BACK
CHAPTER TWO SHAPING A BATTLEFIELD
CHAPTER THREE SLUGGING MATCH
CHAPTER FOUR INVASION
CHAPTER FIVE CONSOLIDATION
EPILOGUE