by Oisin McGann
He felt immediately defensive, given everything he’d been through that day, though he was somewhat unbalanced by the smile and the confidence of her approach. He went through a couple of gear changes before settling on a new mental position: Here was a, not unattractive, woman showing interest in him—but he had to remind himself to stay focused on what was important. She was a little taller than average—it was hard to guess her height now that she was sitting down—with her hair cut in that short, practical style often favored by nurses or teachers, with feathered bangs left as a bit of flair. She had dark, resolute eyes and the kind of olive- skin Chi wished he could have had. Her strong, lean, rectangular features looked as if they normally had a rather stern set to them, but were temporarily warmed by the smile she wore now. The smile, Chi noticed, did not reach her eyes. This wasn’t going to be a social chat. Of course.
“What’s your name?” she inquired.
“Why? Who are you?” he retorted.
“Me?” she said lightly, flipping open a black leather wallet. “Oh … well, I’m a police officer, mate.”
Chi felt his stomach tighten up as he looked at the silver badge, resembling the royal coat of arms, with the braille strip below it. A while back, he’d learned how to spot a fake police ID. Given his perpetual paranoia, it seemed a reasonable precaution to take. After all, how many people even knew what a real one looked like? This was the genuine article, identifying her as an officer in the Metropolitan Police. Harriet Caul, Detective Sergeant.
This was turning into the weirdest day. Chi let out a quiet, hissing breath, trying to figure out what he’d done to bring him to the attention of the police. Could they have found out about the fight in the flat? Or worse, the fact that he’d helped the anarchists break into Gordon Lidby’s apartment? Shit, shit, shit.
He stayed quiet and for a few moments; so did she. She was obviously waiting for him to blurt out some objection or protest and give himself away. Give a nervous suspect an empty silence and let them fill it. He wasn’t about to fall for that one.
“And what can I do for you?” he managed to say in an unconcerned voice.
“Well, a few minutes ago, I passed you as you were standing outside my building, staring up at my flat,” Caul said to him, pointing at the building through the window. “And now you’re looking at pictures of my girlfriend on your screen. She’s a journalist—as you clearly already know—and her stories have made her a few enemies along the way. So when strangers start hanging around outside our home, showing an interest in her, I take an interest in them. Now, want to tell me who you are and what you’re doing here?”
Ah, Chi thought. The copper girlfriend. The one Robert had told him to steer well clear of. So this wasn’t official business … yet. Chi was starting to wonder how utterly incompetent he might actually be at this surveillance lark. Certainly, the professionals seemed able to run circles around him. Perhaps he should tap Robert for some tips in return for helping the old man out. Caul was still waiting for an answer, an expression of mild, if slightly hostile, amusement on her face. She was suspicious, but from her posture, must already have decided he wasn’t a serious threat. Not for the first time, Chi was glad that his customary manner gave the impression of a slightly barbed and wary but essentially harmless oddball. He was taken less seriously, but at least people didn’t find him threatening—which meant they’d be more likely to talk to him.
“My name’s Sandwith. Chi Sandwith. I’m a journalist,” he said at last. “I’m writing a story and I think Sharon might be able to help me. One of my contacts heard she was working on something related to my project and suggested I touch base with her to, y’know … compare notes.”
“And who is this contact?” she pressed him.
“Come on,” he said, spreading his hands in a gesture of exasperation. “Really?”
“Okay, let’s leave that aside for a minute. What’s this story?”
“I’ll tell her when I meet her.”
“You can tell me now or you’ll never meet her.”
“What, you follow her around every minute of the day?” he asked her pointedly.
“No, but we do live together and actually talk from time to time. I’ve already taken a photo of you and now I have your name, Chi Sandwith,” Caul replied, holding up her phone. “Where her safety is concerned, she trusts my judgment. So unless you want to get blackballed before you get anywhere near her, you’re going to have to talk to me.”
Chi pondered this for a few seconds. He’d been caught out and would have to adapt to the circumstances. But talking to a copper from the Met about a story that could possibly implicate the government in illegal operations in foreign countries, not to mention trying to establish a surveillance state, would be an excellent way to kill the story before it even got started. Anyone involved would soon catch wind and either spin their lies first, undermining Chi, or just disappear. Though they’d tie up all the loose ends before they did so. And Chi didn’t want to end up on some assassin’s to-do list before his story ever saw the light of day.
But then Robert said Sharon was working on this too. Would Harriet Caul be more loyal to her lover than she was to the government? Probably, Chi thought. It was worth taking the chance.
“All right,” he said at last. “I’ve heard Sharon is researching a story about spooks who’ve been experimenting with brainwashing techniques. You can tell her that they’ve perfected their technique … and I know what they’re going to use it for. Has she told you anything about the Scalps?”
Caul sat back ever so slightly, a guarded expression on her face. He knew he’d scored a hit.
“Okay, so what kind of stuff do you work on?” she said. “You’re not a crime correspondent—I know everyone with the papers and the main news sites and you’re a bit young to be investigating intelligence or politics. It’s normally a veterans’ game. Who do you write for?” She gestured at his laptop. “Show me some of your work.”
Chi gave a tight smile, hesitating, before opening a file that contained links to a few of his best stories. He didn’t have much published in print—he doubted she’d be impressed with his piece in Paranormal Monthly on the likelihood of genetic manipulation on developing telekinesis (it was very unlikely, but he teased the reader along for a while before admitting it). Or the subversive and potentially illegal hacking tips offered in his articles for the underground magazine The Unspoken Truth. Most of the pieces he thought suitable were on his blog or other like-minded online publications. She perused the open windows, scanning through articles on how world domination had been achieved through the system of central banking. There were his thoughts on the September 11th attacks and his assertion that climate change was a centuries-old ploy of the Illuminati, who were suspected of working with an alien race to help them maintain their control of, and continue experimenting on, humanity.
Caul’s face gradually lost all emotion as she flicked from one written piece to the next.
“Oh,” she said at last, her voice tired and flat. “You’re a conspiracy theorist.”
“That’s a contemptuous term,” he objected. “I’m looking for the facts about who controls our lives. Using dismissive labels to sideline people like me is just one of the ways the mainstream media avoids having to deal with the lies they peddle every day. It’s easier to belittle us, turn us into figures of ridicule, than to deal with the Truth.”
“Right,” she sighed, rubbing her face with her left hand. “The Truth.”
She moved her right hand as if to touch the laptop. Suspicious, he went to stop her and, in a fluid motion, she cupped her right hand over his left and curled her fingers around his, folding the ends of his fingers in painfully, squeezing the joints so they felt as if they were being crushed. He nearly yelped, looking around reflexively to see if anyone else was watching. She had really strong hands. He tried to pull his fingers free, but she squeezed hard
er, causing him to flinch and whimper until he held up his other hand to show he would stop resisting. Caul was staring at him, all civility gone from her face, her mouth a tight thin line.
With her other hand, she pulled his laptop toward her and started looking through his browser history and searching through all of his recently opened files.
“You can’t bloody do that without a warrant,” he said, grimacing as he felt another squeeze on his aching fingers.
“Who sent you here?” she asked. “This has a spook’s stink all over it. Who’s pulling your strings? It wasn’t your idea to come here, was it? And don’t play the innocent; I grew up with this nonsense and I’ve no patience for it.”
“This is assault!” Chi squeaked. “You’re going to break my fingers!”
“I’m a female police officer who started to question a much larger male member of the public about something she happened to see on his laptop screen. He went to lay his hands on me and I defended myself. It’ll be your word against mine, of course, but giving testimony in court is something I do every day. My story will be better than yours, so behave yourself and answer my questions.”
“He’s an intelligence officer, okay? I don’t know his name—agh! He … agh! … he didn’t tell me. I swear! He’s burned out … he’s an operations guy who works a desk now. He found out what his bosses have planned for the future, some mad police state deal, and he doesn’t like it. He came across something I’d written, saw a … a chance to expose what was going on without risking his own skin, gave me information on the story and told me to … to … to talk to Sharon. Agh! Will you stop that, for God’s sake! It’s the truth!”
“And you don’t know his name?”
“No. He didn’t give me one, and it wouldn’t have been his real one even if he had.”
She eased off on his fingers, but kept her grip, ready to put the pressure back on.
“What does he look like?” she demanded.
“He’s an old guy, late fifties or early sixties, maybe. White, with gray hair. Wears, like, antique square glasses. Face made up of these deep, straight lines, like that actor, whatshisname … eh, Scott Glenn. Looks pretty fit still, and hard as nails.”
Caul released Chi’s hand and leaned back in her chair, her expression still chilly, but no longer aimed at him. He flexed his aching fingers, glaring at her, but decided he wasn’t going to make a big thing of it. He’d just had his balls handed to him by a woman half his size. It wasn’t a story he’d be spreading around. This was his second bout of violence in one day; he definitely needed to start doing some martial arts or something.
“So how about it?” he said to her. “Will you let me talk to Sharon?”
“What?” she grunted, looking at him with faint surprise, as if she’d forgotten he was there.
“Sharon,” he repeated. “Will you let me talk to her?”
“Forget it, Goldilocks. You won’t be getting anywhere near her. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell.”
Chi’s mouth dropped open slowly and he frowned uncertainly.
“What did you just say?” he asked.
Harriet Caul leaned in close, so that her face filled his vision, in case he might be in any doubt about her assertion.
“You will never get to talk to Sharon Monk. Don’t call her, don’t text or email, and definitely don’t come anywhere near her or you’re going to learn the true meaning of ‘police harassment.’ And tell your bloody handler the same thing.” She eyed him for a moment, her expression softening slightly. “Listen, I’d get clear of this if you still can, kid. People like you don’t last long around people like him. He’ll just use you until you’re ruined and then he’ll dispose of you.
“Oh and tell him this is our favorite café, too. And you can piss off out of it.”
Chapter 9: Going Public
The local library wasn’t far from Sharon Monk’s flat, so Chi decided to use the computers there. It was time to look at Robert’s thumb drive. If there was malware on it, he’d rather let it loose on a public computer than his own, even if it did make him feel a bit guilty.
On his way there, Chi made no attempt to sneak around or evade detection. He had no wish to look a fool again. If someone wanted to follow him, let him. He was done hiding—for the simple reason that he didn’t seem to be much good at it.
He booked time on a computer and sat down, leaving the laptop in its bag on the floor. Slotting the key into the front of the PC tower, he opened the folder. There were dozens of documents, all of which looked innocent enough until you saw that some were sales invoices for surplus military supplies bought in Eastern Europe as well as large quantities of ammonium nitrate and diesel. So this was the stuff, according to Robert, that Sharon Monk had gathered as part of her investigation. There were purchases of drugs too: a generic form of sodium thiopental, the stuff films always claimed was a truth serum, and a whole bunch of hallucinogens.
There were dockets for the loading of cargo onto freighters, reports on border controls across Europe and into Asia, the purchase of diamonds in South Africa, and bank transfer statements. Chi whistled softly. Individually, each piece looked legit, but if this added up to what he thought it did, it was dynamite. Here was what appeared to be documentary evidence of weapons and explosives being smuggled across continents, with enough of a paper trail to prove who funded it.
Chi rubbed his eyes, then pinched the bridge of his nose. Robert was right; Sharon was on to something, but she hadn’t put all the pieces together yet. She didn’t know what it was all intended for. She didn’t know about the brainwashing, or the plan to start a war. Chi would have loved to take this and run with it, but that would be stealing her work, something he could never do. And besides, to be taken as seriously as it deserved, it needed a major, mainstream news outlet—if it was possible to find one that wasn’t just a mouthpiece for the puppet masters who dominated the globe. This was as big a story as the lies that started the war in Iraq, or the Snowden revelations about the NSA. It was a beautiful, seemingly verifiable, monster of a conspiracy. Chi really needed to meet this woman and pass on what Robert had told him. Goddammit.
Chi found himself thinking again of the conversation with Harriet Caul. Something wasn’t right about this whole thing. There was an inkling bouncing around inside his head, some little snippet of information logged away in his mental filing system, crying out for attention. Instead of trying to snare it, which he always found was a sure way to lose a stray thought, he leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and tried not to think of anything at all.
Moments later, his eyes snapped open again.
“Holy shit!”
“Sir, language, please!” a soft voice uttered from nearby.
He hunched forward, eyes fixed on the screen, fingers rattling across the keyboard as he started searching. The first article was tricky to find, a news story in Northern Ireland that broke before the advent of the Web. Once he had the right search terms, however, he found much more.
Back in the early nineties, a member of MI6 working in Northern Ireland had been captured and tortured by the IRA. Chi hadn’t been born yet, but the man’s story became legendary among conspiracy theory types, so he had come across it eventually. Now he rooted it out again, searching for as many details as he could find.
The spook was rescued by the 14 Intelligence Company, the British Army’s undercover, counter-terrorist guys over there. They managed to save him before the Provos could kill him, but the rescue operation was … messy. What should have been a neat, quick strike turned into a drawn-out fire-fight near the Falls Road, right in the epicenter, in west Belfast. It all got very public. It was really bad timing for the political parties—they were seeing the first glimmers of hope for a peace process to end the Troubles.
This was a major blow for the British government and they needed someone to take the fall for it. So th
e agent was sacrificed, crucified in the press. Chi shook his head as he read the last of the articles he’d found, looking at the pictures of a haggard, bearded man holding his hands up to fend off questions from reporters.
Bloody hell. Bloody hell! Robert wasn’t just a real spy, he was a goddamn famous spy.
Chi’s phone beeped, announcing the arrival of a text. With his eyes still fixed on the computer screen, he picked up the phone and opened the message. Glancing down, he saw it was a photo, and at first, he didn’t understand what he was looking at. It was the back of his own head, as he sat … at this computer. A sensation like ice water ran down his spine and he twisted around.
There was no one there—just a tall partition that doubled as a noticeboard for clubs run in the library. It was less than ten feet behind him, so whoever had taken the photo must have been standing in front of it, only a few feet from him. The picture could only have been taken minutes earlier.
There were two words accompanying the photo:
“Be Careful.”
Was this Robert, somehow keeping an eye on him, messing with his head? It had to be. Chi’s hands shook as he closed down his files on the computer. Then he grabbed the thumb drive and his bag and walked up to the counter.
“Excuse me,” he said to the librarian. “There was an old man in a trench coat standing near me a few minutes ago, big square glasses on him? Did you see where he went?”
“Sorry, I didn’t see anyone like that,’ the woman replied, pushing her glasses up against the bridge of her nose with one hand as she swept a barcode reader across a book with the other. “There was just you and the other gentleman over at that desk. But he doesn’t sound like the man you’re describing.”
“The other gentleman?”
“Yes, a pale man, youngish, I think … quite bald, but then a lot of fellows are these days, aren’t they? Better to shave it off, I suppose, than have those comb-overs they used to cling to. Horrid things. He was a bit like you, eyes glued to his phone.”
