Cold Monsters_No Secrets To Conceal

by Simon J. Townley

  “Can’t say that I do,” said Sir Joshua. “What of it?”

  “I was wondering if you might find a means to bring her back into the fold, as it were. Welcome her once more into the warm embrace of the establishment.” He sat forward and half-whispered, conspiratorially, as if exchanging news that would shock and astound: “She is freelancing, to pay her way. At The Monitor, would you believe?”

  “Left wing rag. Good luck to her."

  “She doesn’t want to, I can assure you of that. She would much rather have her former job back. Or perhaps another position, in any of your stable of newspapers. I’m sure she would fit in most anywhere. She’s very versatile."

  “I let the editors deal with the staff. Can’t be bothered with them."

  “Just this once? For an old friend?”

  A log in the fire shifted, and the embers gushed, flames flickering with renewed enthusiasm. The two men sipped their brandy in unison.

  “Why? If you don’t mind me asking? What’s so important about this woman?”

  “I would like an opportunity to turn her. To ascertain what is going on at The Monitor,” said Sir Leo. “The particular thing that would bring her around would be the offer of a position on one of your titles. Give her a job, can’t you? All she cares about is her sad, little career."

  “Not sure I should allow the state to be choosing journalists for us."

  “I could see to it that she arrives with a most interesting story, front page stuff, an exclusive you won’t get anywhere else, by any other means.” Sir Leo’s mouth puckered towards a smile. He sensed how much Sir Joshua and his minions would love to lay hands on his hoard of information, his treasury of tapes and photographs and recorded phone calls, his storehouse of gossip and rumour.

  Sir Joshua grumbled into his brandy. “What kind of story?”

  “Something immensely damaging, and embarrassing, for a leading member of her Majesty’s loyal opposition.” Sir Leo sat forward in his chair. The two men exchanged whispers, so low, so subtle even the guttering embers could not hear.

  “How do these people ever get elected?” asked Sir Joshua. “What makes them think they’re fit to rule?”

  “Indeed. We would do the country a service, to make it more widely known."

  “Hmmmm. Exclusive. You guarantee that?”

  “Absolutely."

  “And evidence?”

  “Enough to print. Not enough to trace the source, naturally."

  Sir Joshua slugged the last of his brandy and struggled free of the armchair’s soft embrace. “I’ll arrange it. You owe me."

  “Any time. Glad to be of service."

  “Hmmmm. Yes, well. Good night to you."

  “Thank you, Sir Joshua. I’ll tell the young lady the news myself, if that’s acceptable?”

  “If you wish, but make sure it will stand up in court. Damned if I’m paying libel damages to a man like that."

  “Quite so. The evidence is incontrovertible, I assure you."

  Sir Joshua drifted away into the gloom of the club’s sitting room. Sir Leo sank back once more into the gentle caress of the enfolding armchair, its arms wrapped around him like a lascivious mistress, or the nanny who cuddled him as a child. Or, perhaps, as his mother should have done, but never did.

  Chapter 46

  Editorial Conference

  Tom sat at the back of the conference room letting Jon Fitzgerald do the talking. His turn would come and it all hinged on the pitch. The bigwigs were here, the ones that mattered for important decisions: the editor, deputy editor, managing editor, news editor, features editor, the works. No one from outside editorial, which was as it should be. If the money men got involved, this story would be gunned down in minutes.

  No freelancers had been invited either, apart from him. Staff only on this one though Angie Gossage had hovered as the powerful people trooped into the conference room. Through the slatted blinds he saw her patrolling the newsroom, watching them, talking to other reporters: trying to work out what was going on.

  Capgras had spent twenty minutes persuading Jon Fitzgerald to exclude her. Jon wanted Angie involved since she’d worked on the Albright story from the start. She was part of it, he insisted, there when the body was found. She’ll betray us, Tom told him. In the end, Capgras won, though he suspected Angie might have her own ways of finding out what was going on. She’d been freelancing here long enough: she probably had the rooms bugged. And how many men was she shagging? It wouldn’t be just him, he was certain of that.

  But for now, at least, she was locked out.

  Jon told the room about the Apostle project, its links to the Albright death, and its potential impact on the lives of every citizen of the United Kingdom. Even Fitzgerald hadn’t yet heard the whole story. The envelope from the Albright girl had been the icing on the cake: explosive enough to blow the tale wide open, and maybe even bring down a government or two, if the wind was in the right direction.

  “That’s what we had, until yesterday. I’ll let Tom tell you the rest. Take it away.”

  All eyes turned to Capgras, slouched in a chair at the back of the room. He got to his feet, paced to the window then leant forward on the desk. “An envelope was given to me, by Albright’s girlfriend. The one he was seeing before all this broke. She came here, to find me, which was brave of her, but she wouldn’t talk, or tell me how to get hold of her. She wouldn’t accept any help. She wanted rid of the evidence though I doubt she realised how dangerous it might be."

  Tom paused, enjoying the tension in the room.

  He had form on this score. Four years previously the police, together with MI5, had raided the newspaper looking for hard drives containing state secrets that were, admittedly, in Tom’s possession. He had been careless back then and kept them in his desk at work. Arrests had followed, and tough questions for the editor, and others. But only Tom was charged. Only Tom went to prison.

  “Don’t worry,” he told the room, “I didn’t bring it with me. Not even copies. The evidence she gave me has been secured. And the story, the background, the papers, all of it is online, waiting to be released. I created a dead man’s handle. If I fail to log in every day, it gets disseminated, everywhere."

  Shawn Milikan, editor-in-chief, asked: “What was in the envelope?”

  Tom stared out the window at the pavement below, where the people of London hurried about their business, concerned with rent payments and work deadlines, dinner dates and sports results, celebrity news and the latest doings of the royal family. He turned back to the room. “The envelope was from James Albright. It contained a print-out of a scenario of how the state should act in the case of a major international emergency. All theoretical: just for planning and practice and so people can fine tune things, make decisions in advance. All fictitious. It involved a series of nuclear explosions, terrorist bombs, going off in cities across Europe, including London, Birmingham and, for reasons that aren’t clear, Calne in Wiltshire. It’s a small town. No strategic importance.

  “The scenario envisages an uprising, a left-wing attempt to take power from the standing government. There’s a fear of more terrorist attacks, an influx of migrants, and possibly even a military invasion from Russia. It concentrates on how to lock the country down, clear the streets and restore order. In all of this, Apostle is the key."

  He took a deep breath and scanned the faces. Would they trust him? “The scenario outlines a series of measures. They include…” He paused, looked from face to face, then launched into the next stage.

  “The recommended course of action involves the execution of all male prisoners in the country’s jails. And most of the females. Some are held back though it’s unclear who and why. Though, to be honest, if I had to guess, from the comments, I’d say the female prisoners earmarked for transfer rather than the firing squad are probably breeding age. And attractive. It didn’t say where they would be taken."

  The room was silent. No one so much as coughed, all eyes fixed on him.
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  “Special squads are sent out to target subversives. Apostle is used to identify and find them. The addresses are known. In the first days, the most threatening are eliminated, with no trials or arrests. Straight killings. More follow. The longer the emergency goes on, the more die. They have a long list and work their way down it, day after day, until the trouble stops and order is restored."

  He paused and took a sip of water. The room remained silent.

  “Muslims are targeted, deported, interned in camps. Left-wingers, environmentalists, trade unionists. Anyone who stands up to authority. Readers of this newspaper. They can run the algorithms a certain way and generate a register, a roll-call. They could send police or troops out onto the streets, stop you, scan your face, and in seconds learn everything about you: where you live, how you vote, the websites you visit. But they wouldn’t need to check through all that detail. They receive a score, a summary, and a recommendation. To let you go. Or arrest you. Or shoot on sight.”

  “Then there’s the workforce, those they deem to be useful and essential, the ones needed to rebuild a world. Engineers and doctors, nurses and plumbers become indentured serfs. It’s feudalism, reintroduced, with all rights and democracy overturned. It can happen overnight, the orders are in place. If an emergency comes, the authoritarians seize power and don’t let go. It’s their chance. They have the technology. The army would obey. The police would do as they are told. And they can control people with precision. They can determine exactly which parts of society to target next, keeping the majority sweet, while they whittle down the numbers."

  “And there’s a lot of whittling. Population reduction is one of the key drivers in all this. It’ll be hard to feed sixty million or more. Halving that number is an early goal. If has to come down further, to twenty or ten million, or even four, the way it used to be back in the middle ages, then they will have the names. They have already decided who lives and who dies. It won’t be left to chance or opportunity, or survival of the fittest. It will be controlled. And all of this is set down in a PowerPoint presentation that was presented to an inner circle of government leaders, civil servants and security bigwigs. Not everyone was happy, for sure. James Albright believed things had gone too far. My guess is that he was angry, but so fearful that he resorted to approaching a man like me. We’d never met. But he thought I was the right channel for this, and that’s because I work here. He knew the only prospect of getting this made public was for this newspaper to take a stand and print it, regardless. Get it in black and white, now. Go to them asking for official quotes and a response and you’ll be raided, issued with injunctions, arrested. God knows what."

  Capgras paused, eyes scanning the room.

  “There are details around food rationing, restricted access to medical facilities. Basically, creating a caste system in the UK, with the algorithm deciding every aspect of your life: where you can go, if you can eat, whether you are killed outright or left to die, or allowed to fend for yourself as best you can. While those considered worthy get all the food, the medicines, the protection. It’s about as evil as you can imagine, and there are detailed plans to make it happen sitting on desks across Whitehall. There would be resistance, and fightback, but they have measures for dealing with that as well. And those proposals potentially include the use of nuclear weapons against the country’s own population. Whole cities have been deemed beyond redemption. They would be cut off by army barricades and starved, or nuked, if things get bad enough. All to save the few. To save the state."

  The silence hung in the room. Capgras waited. The managing editor got to his feet.

  “Tom, we’d need to see this evidence."

  “I have it with me, on my laptop. We can take it out of the building, go somewhere safe. I don’t want to bring more trouble than you can bear."

  “But if we go to print, then the trouble is coming anyway,” said Fitzgerald.

  “I’ll not pretend it’ll be easy. This risks more than injunctions and writs. Your lives too. James Albright paid the price. He was murdered, I’m sure of it. His girl thinks so too though she refused to go on the record. Can’t say I blame her. She’s fleeing the country. I hope she gets away."

  “It’s a bit melodramatic,” said the deputy editor. “Governments run exercises all the time: what they might do if the bombs started to fall. Everyone hopes it wouldn’t happen. But you’d expect the measures to be tough."

  “It’s the detail,” Tom said. “The rigorous planning, and the fact that they’ve spent so much money, effort and care on Apostle, to sift the population and rank every one of us, put black marks against our names. Decide our fates, long before any emergency happens. And there’s a very real reason to fight this: people in power will know they can take risks, because they’ll be safe. Their families, and their friends, their kind, their clan. Their tribes will be the ones led towards the promised land. They won’t pay the price for climate change. They’ll have a bubble where they can survive. So they’ll be more inclined to take chances, less likely to stop disaster happening. They can sail close to the rocks because they have a lifeboat.”

  He scanned the faces of the editorial team and saw fear, excitement, but mostly deep, nagging concerns. In principle, they could all go into battle on this. But the details, that was where the problems lay.

  “We need to get lawyers to look at it,” said one.

  “And review the evidence."

  “This is too dangerous.”

  “We’ll have to go to the Government, give them the chance to respond.”

  “That risks an injunction,” Tom said.

  “He’s right though, we must,” said Milikan. “That’s proper journalism. We can prepare the coverage. Be ready. We’ll take the story to the top. Prime Minister, head of MI5, GCHQ.”

  Tom hadn’t mentioned DarkReach yet. That was still to come, and might be best held back for another meeting, or let it trickle out. If he overloaded them with angles and complications, they would be even more likely to back out.

  “We take our time,” Milikan said. “This is too important to rush. We have to be precise and accurate. The reputation of the newspaper is at stake. We can defend it, provided we’re right about everything. Otherwise, we’ll get torn to shreds.”

  “The longer you wait, the more likely they’ll come knocking on your door,” Tom said.

  “We’ll keep quiet on this,” Milikan said. “All of us here.”

  Capgras glanced through the window to the newsroom. Angie Gossage stood over the desk of one of the reporters, from where she could see the meeting, learn when it was ending. Could she read lips through slatted blinds? He’d put nothing past her. He didn’t trust her. But Milikan had made his decision, the other chiefs agreed with it, and to all and sundry it seemed like the sensible course. “You need to take precautions,” Tom said. “Protect yourselves. Don’t have anything on you own network. Or in the offices."

  “You’re overdoing it Tom,” Milikan said. “We’ll discuss this with legal and take it from there. All agreed?”

  A mumble of consent rolled around the room accompanied by a thoughtful nodding of heads. They were sleepwalking into trouble but they didn’t want to hear it, not from Tom Capgras. They’d accept his story on Apostle, but not his lectures on how to run a newspaper. Or how to stay clear of legal issues. They had a point there, he had to admit.

  The meeting broke up amid a shuffling of chairs and an outbreak of conversations and small talk. Milikan thanked Tom, assured him they were proud of him and all he’d done on this one. It would make a great exclusive, breakthrough journalism. A story that would be remembered for a long time. It would be a significant chapter in the history of the newspaper. Blah, blah, blah. Tom didn’t like it. This would go wrong, he sensed it.

  Angie Gossage descended on the senior staff as they left the meeting, flirting and chatting.

  “I don’t trust her,” Tom told Milikan.

  “Neither do I."

  “Then why hav
e her around?”

  “She’s leaving soon, anyway, so I hear. Think she has her old job back."

  “Then kick her out before she finds out. Before she talks."

  “You’re sounding paranoid. I’ll talk to the lawyers today. Let’s review those files you promised."

  “Not in the office,” Tom said. “The pub?”

  “That’s a terrible idea."

  “British library? Museum?”

  “Too public."

  “A taxi then, company car. Name your place,” Tom said. “Anywhere but here."

  “In my office. Trust me,” he said, “nothing will go wrong.”

  Chapter 47

  Injunction

  Capgras sat in the editor’s office, waiting while Milikan and Fitzgerald pored over the evidence on his laptop. One of the deputy editors poked his head around the door. “Police. Looks serious."

  “Get rid of this,” Milikan said.

  Tom didn’t need a second invitation. He set a script running which would wipe the browsing history, delete the cache, quit the browsers, scramble and encrypt all data, then commit harakiri, overwriting blocks on the drive and going into a death spiral.

  A group of burly, thickset men in suits, men who worked out too much for their own good, headed across the newsroom. Tom was familiar with the type. They looked intimidating, that was their intention, something they had practiced and honed to perfection. It was part of their schtick, their bedside manner, the act they played. But these tough guys were merely puppets on a string dancing to someone else’s tune. Uniformed police followed, milling around the room looking embarrassed, not knowing what to do.

  “Make yourself scarce, Tom” Milikan said. “Your shift is over for the day. Get out, if you can. And take that damn laptop with you."

  Too late. The door was blocked. A man in his sixties led the delegation into Milikan’s room without waiting for an invitation. He introduced himself: William Russell-Davis, head of security for the cabinet office. The men with him, he said, comprised a mix of police special operations, MI5 and GCHQ. “We have an injunction, for you.” He handed it to Milikan. “And a search warrant which your lawyers will doubtless want to examine. It’s watertight, trust me."