“He is my son. He is my only son. What else could I do?”
“You could have prevented the murder of my wife you fucking bitch. Oh, you helped me get her back. You organised it all for Stiles and me, the guns, the bullet proof vests, the diplomatic passports, the Special Forces and even the Navy. You did everything you could and broke every rule, just to make sure that we kept the file. If the trade had taken place the Russians would have had their incriminating evidence back and Nick would have lost his only chance to stay alive.”
“I didn’t mean for your wife and Stiles to die. I am sorry” Elaine’s face was contorted, with remorse. She was in a state of emotional turmoil. She had worked her all life to ensure the security of her Country. She had desperately tried to keep her son on the right path. Time and time again he had been in trouble, she had pulled strings. She had called in favours and even helped him with fake passports and documents to enable him to escape justice. Whatever he did, he expected his Mother to come and save him. From a small boy it seemed he had been missing some vital part of his personality. She had spoiled him and he had never had to face the consequences of his actions. His Mother was there to be used to get what he wanted. He had no sense of right or wrong. He just did and took what he wanted and was outraged, if his Mother did not do his bidding.
“You provided him with a passport, an MI5 passport in the name of Steven Melville, which is why I couldn’t trace it. You arranged our accommodation and told Nick where we were staying. You then made sure that the Special Forces who rescued us gave the file back to us rather than hand it to naval intelligence. It was imperative that we retained the evidence on the Russians, as that was Nick’s only chance of saving his worthless skin. That is what happened wasn’t it? You set us up from the very start?”
The sound of the shot shattered the silence. Tim felt no pain, dazed by the loudness of the retort.
Nick’s face briefly turned to surprise in the instant before life left him.
Tim looked at Elaine, the gun still in her hand. She mouthed her last silent words as tears ran down her face “I am sorry,” she put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger.
Tim stood for a moment. Then he returned his gun to his pocket. It was the third time in his life he had held a gun and people had died, but he had never fired a single shot. He turned and left. He felt no emotion, no satisfaction.
The souls weighed, Annubis and Sobek satisfied, justice had been served.
Chapter 40
Harriet Shaw sat opposite Tim in the office. Thames House was in a state of lock down. Elaine’s death had shocked and terrified in equal proportions. No one was sure what was happening. Tim had taken control, insisted on calm and maintaining order and discipline.
“I don’t understand it,” said Harriet.
Tim sat in silence observing her for a few moments. She became aware of his gaze and felt uncomfortable as he continued to stare at her. Finally he spoke. “I think you do,” he finally spoke.
“How could I?”
“I have been thinking and now matters are clearer, he let the sentence hang.
The silence, now awkward forced her to speak,” What matters?”
Tim swivelled his chair so he faced the window to his right, turning his gaze from Harriet. He could feel the tension in the room. He let her sweat a little longer.
“You betrayed me...”
She started to protest but he ignored her and raised his hand to bring silence into the room once again. He slowly started speaking. Choosing his words, he carefully laid before her the sequence of events as he now understood them.
“You were new, fresh faced and a techie. I had no experience of cyber space or its security implication. In fact, I was the least qualified person on the Planet to take on the role at MI5 to expand our counter intelligence in that area. But I was chosen to head up the recruitment drive. “Why do you think that was?”
“I don’t know?” she said reluctantly.
“I think you do. In any event, Elaine placed me in the driving seat. New to the job and with no specialist skills in computing it puzzled me at the time. Of course, I did not care, as the only reason I stayed at MI5 was to use the resources to track down Jackie’s killer. The day to day stuff was just an irrelevancy.”
He looked at her to see if she reacted to the revelation. She now had taken on the role of looking out of the windows, avoiding his gaze. She turned her head and bowed her head avoiding eye contact.
“I needed help, technical help. There you were. You really did help, but you did so much more. Didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what…”
He again held his hand. “Elaine had to give me the job. There was no viable alternative at that point. There was disarray and Government pressure. I was close to the situation and answers were needed. I would be dedicated to getting those answers. In fact, I would be more than dedicated, I would be fanatical, after all, it was personal. The last thing Elaine wanted was the truth. The fact that she had conspired and was involved in the deaths of her Deputy and an employee’s wife was not something to be broadcast. “
Tim watched Harriet’s reaction. There was none. She knew. She was smart and had worked it out.
“I was out of my depth and Elaine approached you, “What did she offer, rapid promotion, more pay?”
“Nothing really, I think she made me feel important I suppose. She painted you as a potential rogue agent. I was naïve and she used that.”
“So she put you in my eye line and I took the bait. I used your skills to track the money, the passports. You knew every step of my investigations and you told her?”
“I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“Who knows? I suspect that at some stage she would have asked you to hinder the investigation in some way if it got too close. Withhold something or change something.”
“The passport, but I didn’t. I was becoming aware something was badly wrong. In any event, once Benedict confirmed the details of the murder, I realised the truth would come out.”
“Did you know her son Nicholas was the assassin?”
“Of course not, I wouldn’t have become involved, if I had known…”
“But you worked it out, when?”
“I had shown Elaine, your search of the properties that were local to the phone mast that pinged, on Nicholas’s mobile number, given to you by Benedict. She didn’t look at the map or anything. It was clear that she already knew. I came back here, looked at the properties and like you I identified the safe house connection. It fell into place. She had from the start been only interested in protecting the murderer. It was only a small jump to work out the only person that could be.”
Tim looked across at her. “What do you think now?”
“I am not sure. I am sorry. It was a mistake. What are you going to do?”
“What I do best, nothing,” said Tim. “You go back to work and we shall let the gods decide what happens next.”
She left and Tim pulled the tattered book from his drawer. He opened it to the page showing the Weighing. “It is not finished yet. I will have my revenge,” he vowed.
Oligarch
Copyright © Nicholas E Watkins 2017
The right of Nicholas E Watkins to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and patent Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication my be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor may be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictional and any resemblance to real persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Oligarch
Chapter 1
Aleena heard the news, that her husband had been killed, in the fighting, in Mosul, Iraq,
not, with a sense of grief, but with fear. She was fourteen years of age and had travelled with her sister and her friend, to Iraq, just four months earlier. They had been seduced, by the ISIS propaganda on the internet and with heads filled with dreams, of playing their part, in the restoration of the Caliphate and a perfect World, in which they fitted. They had left Walsall, and headed for Iraq. They were to be brides, to the brave fighters, in a Holy War.
The dreams soon evaporated, like early morning mist, as the reality, of the situation, was revealed. Her sister and friend, Mariam and Haniya, had become the camp whores. They had no choice. The Jihadis used any unmarried women, that way. To justify their actions, they would brand, young girls as unclean. Unclean could mean anything, from using tampons, to shaving their pubic hair. Anything would do, in order to justify, the mass raping, of young women in the local population, or so called Jihadi brides from abroad, it made no difference. All in the name of, Allah and always justified, by some obscure and misinterpreted verse, in the Qur’an
She had been more fortunate, in that she had not been raped to death, in the preceding months. She had been taken by an ISIS lieutenant, as his bride. Her being more fortunate was relative. He was old with rotting teeth, rotting body and a rotting soul. He had used her, as he wished, enjoying the privilege he had, to take and keep a young girl for himself, to the full. She had never felt so much pain, as he had inflicted on her young body. She now constantly bled from her anus, which was completely prolapsed, from his brutal attention.
She was glad he was dead, but she knew, that she would be just another whore in the camp, to be gang raped, by all the heroes of the Jihad. She huddled in fear as night approached. She had crawled through an opening in the wall, to one of the partially collapsed buildings, in the compound. She could hear the sounds of shelling in the distance, as she burrowed into the loose rubble, in an attempt to conceal herself.
ISIS was losing ground on all fronts. In Syria, Assad’s forces supported by the Russian air force were driving them out. In Iraq they were being driven, from the territory they held, by the Iraqis and the Kurdish forces, and the battle for Mosul was almost lost. Morale was low and discipline was breaking down. The fanaticism remained, but was insufficient on its own; to win a war.
“Where are you British slut?” she could hear them getting closer looking, for their evenings entertainment. They called mocking as you would call your dog. “Here whore, come slut, come, fucky fucky time.”
She tried to hide in the dust and filth of the rubble. She closed her eyes as, if that would have the effect, of making her invisible, As if, not seeing the beam of their torches searching the bomb site of what had been a village, would make them not see her. “There you are bitch.” Roughly, she was dragged from the building into the compound, where the camp fire burned.
Three women were already being used, by the group of thirty something men. “Another whore to fuck boys,” shouted her captures, as she was dragged into the light. Her clothing was ripped from her, as she was thrust into the centre, to join the gang rape in progress.
She was pushed face down into the dirt, her bottom, exposed to the group of men, leering at her young, not fully formed body. “Look at her arse hole,” said one.
“Fuck me, what a fucking mess. That’s been well fisted and fucked.”
“Looks fucking nice to me” said another, as he shoved her face further into the dirt and shoved his hard penis, fully in. She screamed in pain, as he pushed her prolapsed anus back, into her body. The pain was terrible, as he thrust with no form of lubrication.
“Fuck that feels good,” he cried as he ejaculated. The queue formed, as they waited their turns.
Nizar had had a shit day. He was supposed to be in command. The idea of command was rapidly descending into the theoretical. The Iraqi troops were squeezing them in the South and the Peshmerga were linking up, in a pincer move, so the ISIS forces would soon, be split in two, The Peshmerga were the troops, of the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq. He knew they were lost. The allies, led by the US, the Russians and local Syrian and Iraqi forces, would regain the ground ISIS had held up until now. It was only a matter of time.
He sat in the Jeep, on his own, looking at the flashes of light over Mosul. The bombardment was incessant now. He had enough of this fucking shit. He had been fighting, for four years, non stop. He was loosing faith in the dream. It had seemed so different, in what was a life time ago, at University in Leeds. Then he had believed. The lure of a pure Islamic state had seemed so beguiling. In England, he had been disgusted by the society, with its secularism and its corrupting influence, on his brothers and sister. A land run in accordance with Sharia law, was what his fellow students and he, who attended the Mosque, wanted. Not the corrupt secularism, in which they lived.
Now he was older and battle weary. The atrocities he had witnessed, by ISIS, on fellow Muslims, in the name of Allah, had started the worm of doubt burrowing, in his mind. He had doubted his faith, which was once so all pervading. He had begun to doubt his own humanity. He was the leader in this sector and he had participated in the beheadings, the rape and the torture. It was all so black and white, when he had begun. If you didn’t agree with the ISIS doctrine, you were an enemy and that justified everything.
Nizar no longer believed and he wanted to go home. He started the engine and drove towards the compound.
Aleena was screaming and praying for death as yet another Jihadi began to bugger her. She did not hear Nizar’s jeep, drive into the compound. The raping soldiers, of ISIS, paid little heed either, as their leader drove up. He stepped from the jeep and looked at the scene with disgust. So this was what, he was fighting for. This was the dream, he had seen in his minds eye in the Mosque, listening to the Imam’s preaching, in England. The reality, he now knew, was a crock of shit.
He looked at the girl being gang rapped, no more that fifteen or sixteen. Something snapped. He had come to issue the orders and outline this unit’s plan of action, for the next day. Now he just wanted them to fuck off.
He snapped. He unleashed a burst of gunfire into the night sky. He had their attention. “Stop fucking and listen to me.” They formed a circle around him. He gave the usual bullshit, morale boosting talk and outlined their role, in the next days fight.
They listened, but were eager to return to their evening’s entertainment. Their time was running out. They would fight and continue to fight, but they would soon die. The force against them was now overwhelming and it was only a matter of time. There might be virgins in paradise awaiting them, but there was pussy closer to hand now.
He finished his speech then said, “I’ll take the girl.”
They were reluctant, but defying their commander, was not an option. She gathered her clothes and made her way to the jeep. “Get in.”
She sat like a bundle of rags, in the back, as he drove away from the compound. She looked at him fearful, expecting them to stop at ant moment. What was, his particular perversion, that made him reluctant, to use her, in front of the crowd?
“We’re going home,” he said, to her surprise, as they drove west.
Dealer (A Tim Burr Thriller Book 3) Page 15
