THE ORANGE MOON AFFAIR

by AFN CLARKE

  I didn't know whom I could trust, so decided that the best tactic would be to keep quiet and just do some gentle probing.

  By the time I thought all this through about a dozen times, it was time to call up Norwich airport for landing instructions. As this was the aircraft's home base the controller recognised the identifying letters and cleared me straight in on runway 09.

  There was very little traffic, just a few Piper Warriors on the circuit and a helicopter making practice approaches.

  Once on the ground, I handed the Mustang over to Simon and the ground crew, and with my arm around Julie, walked over to the car.

  “Would you call your father and ask him if he would drive up to the Hall this afternoon.”

  She looked at me a little taken aback. “Why on earth would he do that? He doesn't even like driving to the airport. You know that.”

  “He can take the train then. Henderson can meet him at the station. I need to talk to him face-to-face, not on the phone or Skype.”

  At first I thought she was going to refuse, but instead she said. “If you tell me what's on your mind?”

  “Remember those loose papers we found in the safe? The one with Des Ascot's name on it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Attached to it was a note with what I thought were clues to a crossword puzzle. I didn't think about it because my father was always doing crosswords and even created his own which he submitted to the local paper. I think he called himself The Question Meister or some ridiculous thing.”

  “What's that got to do with anything?”

  “When your dad was going through the mainframe, he said he found some stuff that he said were bored IT guys playing games on company time.”

  Julie sat up in her seat, iPhone already in her hand. “So you think that was your Dad's way of pointing to where the missing data is.”

  “Yeah. Not missing. Hidden.”

  “Dad, it's Julie. Thomas needs to talk to you.” She handed me the phone and after a brief conversation, he agreed to be at the Hall by two in the afternoon.

  I was glad and surprised that she had recovered from the horror of seeing somebody shot. She had managed to sleep on the flight and looked pale, but in control.

  Back at the Hall we checked on Mary who seemed to be in one of her positive and happy moods, then went to the flat. The papers where I'd left them and as Julie turned on the desktop computer, I found the sheet with the attached note.

  “See what I mean. Above Ascot's name he wrote 'Top American', and on the note these phrases; 'is yet kindlier to our taxi drivers', then 'obnoxiously evil road' and lastly 'the reverse is a true'.

  We both looked at the phrases and then Julie typed them in upper case into a Word document. On their own, they did not make sense and looked just like cryptic crossword puzzle clues. At the bottom of Des Ascot's main personnel sheet, a list of his previous work record, was a scrawled a reference code: OR 443 121/TQ followed by another cryptic crossword puzzle clue, 'Olympic swimmer's key stroke' scrawled in pencil as if my father was thinking about crossword puzzle clues.

  “Let's start with these companies Ascot worked for,” Julie offered, typing the names into Google. They were all public shell companies. “That's interesting. Ascot's like his résumé. Fake. What the hell is he up to.”

  “There are a lot of ways to use shell companies, some of them legal, some of them not. Some are also used by Governments to hide large transfers of money into covert operations and all sorts of other shady dealings. In the interests of national security, of course.”

  “Of course. You would know something about that.”

  “We used shell companies to pump money to informants in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, not to mention some of our allies we wanted to keep a close eye on.”

  “We're still no closer to finding out who he is. He's not listed on any of these shell companies; in fact they are as mysterious as he is. The only difference is that they exist, and he doesn't.”

  Professor Oldfield arrived at the Hall in the early afternoon, and was shown to the flat.

  "I'm glad to see you Dad," Julie said hugging him briefly

  "Me too,” he said crisply, giving her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. He shook my hand briefly. “Show me what you have.”

  I showed him the page where I had written out the phrases my father attached to the bogus personnel sheet. "We've been trying to work out the code, but nothing seems to fit." He sat looking at the page for a long time.

  "Did you say your father was a crossword puzzle creator?" he asked quickly. I nodded. "Then I think I may know where some of the answers lie." He sat down at the desk and began to type quickly. “I'm accessing the mainframe. Now, watch this," he said.

  He typed rapidly and the screen went blank.

  He typed more code and again nothing happened, then on the third try an unfilled crossword puzzle grid filled the screen.

  "When I first went through it, I thought that maybe one of the IT guys was in the process of creating a game hadn't finished what he set out to do. As you can see, there are only seven horizontal rows, but there are ten vertical columns."

  “Okay.” I said cautiously, glancing at Julie who looked just as baffled.

  "How many clues are there on that note? Four. Now, it may be a long shot but I think there is a relationship. Let's see. Julie open an excel document in that laptop and create a grid exactly like this one."

  She did as he asked, and when she finished sat back looked at her father, who gazed at her questioningly at her and then at the note. Her face cleared. “Oh. I see.” Quickly she typed the phrases starting at the top left until she reached the end of the third phrase. “That's it. The last clue doesn't fit.”

  I stared at the puzzle. "They're not clues they're answers. It's not an encryption, the answer is right in front of us. If the reverse is true, then if we read it backwards starting at the bottom right to top left, then we get......” I read the letters backwards. “Total gibberish.”

  “Assume the crossword is the method of blocking out letters." Oldfield said cautiously. “Your father would have left another clue as to which letters are blocked, which would then reveal the answer.”

  “There is one comment he scrawled on the bottom of Ascot's personnel sheet,” Julie said laying the note in front of her father. “'Olympic swimmer's key stroke' whatever that means.”

  Oldfield looked at it for a moment and then burst out laughing, thumping the table. “Clever bastard and really bloody obvious.”

  Both Julie and I stared at each other as Oldfield started typing code rapidly. “He remembered me because he checked up on you, Julie. Somebody in his position would want to know everything about the girl in his son's life. This last phrase is for me. Years ago I wrote a program that identified and remembered specific keystrokes, even if the original document had been erased.” He filled in the squares of the letters that are unusable. “Watch.” He pressed the return key and sat back. Almost immediately, the letters began to be blocked out until the last square on the bottom right was filled. “See.”

  Oldfield beamed at us. “Now read it backwards.”

  “Drive in box at ROL key in crema pot,” Julie read aloud. “Okay, but I've no idea what that means.”

  “I do,” I said, my mind finally clicking into gear. “Do you remember that small box of body butter that was in the safe?”

  “That Orange Moon stuff?”

  “Yes, but the full name on the box reads 'Orange Moon Body Butter by Crèma'. Do you still have it?”

  “I do. I've been meaning to give it to Mary, I know she uses it,” she said crossing to the bathroom and retrieving the box. I followed her. She opened it and handed me the small pot.

  I unscrewed the lid and dug my finger into the thick cream, located the key and pulled it out, then washed it and my hands. It was a standard looking key that any number of places use for safety deposit style boxes, or lockers.

  Julie echoed my thoughts. “Safety deposit box?”


  “Maybe.”

  “Which bank?”

  “Not a bank,” I said going back to where Oldfield sat basking in satisfaction at his work. I looked at the sentence again, at the letters R.O.L. “It's a key to a box at the Royal Overseas League. The message reads, 'Drive in box at Royal Overseas League, key in Crèma pot'. The hard drive, or flash drive or whatever, is in my Dad's mail box at the club.”

  “I guess that's another helicopter flight to London,” Julie said resignedly.

  “Indeed.”

  “No helicopters for me,” Oldfield said briskly. “You don't need me there anyway, just hook up the drive or flash stick to a laptop and call me when you're ready.”

  I had Milly show him to the guest room, then rang the Royal Overseas League, quoted my membership number and booked Julie and I into the suite my father kept reserved. Before we left I took the second Glock with two magazines from my hidden closet, and two burn phones with attachments, then I called Danny's burn number, told him where we were going, and asked for a two man cover group.

  On arriving at Battersea heliport, I went to the office, paid my landing and parking fee, and told them we'd be staying overnight at the Royal Overseas League if I needed to be contacted.

  “Your car is waiting for you outside sir,” the receptionist said efficiently and within a few minutes we were being driven through early evening London traffic across the river to Saint James's. Twenty minutes later the car stopped outside the club at the end of Park Place, and the chauffeur opened the doors as a porter took our bags inside.

  “Mr Gunn how delighted we are to see you sir. Your father's suite is ready,” the male receptionist said politely, handing me the key. “Edwards will show you the way.”

  The porter looked as if he had been at the Club since its inception in 1910. Thin, short and stooped with thick lens glasses and wisps of grey hair on his 'liver' spotted scalp. He moved slowly, wheeling our bags to the elevator, standing silently without looking at us as we rose to the sixth floor.

  Edwards opened the door and led us in.

  The suite was comfortably simple, clean, with King Size bed, a settee, two armchairs, desk, and looked out over Green Park. Edwards placed the bags in the corner of the room next to the walk-in closet, then turned and walked over to me. He waved his hand as if beckoning me to bend so he could whisper in my ear.

  “I believe you have a key, sir,” he said, so quietly that I could barely hear. I nodded. “Meet me in the bar of the Golden Lion on King Street. Ten o'clock tonight.” With that he slowly walked out of the room and closed the door softly.

  “What a funny little man,” Julie laughed, then caught my expression. “What?”

  “I'll tell you later, right now I could do with a shower, a drink, and food. And you can join me for all three.”

  We made love in the shower, after which I told her what Edwards had said, before we dressed and went to the Buttery for a large vodka tonic each and a simple meal of herb crumbed veal escalope, with asparagus and sautéed potatoes.

  Julie looked stunning in a black trouser suit, simple pearl necklace offset by her golden tan and blonde hair, the atmosphere of the club relaxing her; it was as if nothing bad had happened, or was going to happen. We were in a tiny bubble of contentment.

  At least for an hour.

  King Street was a block away from Park Place, a two-minute walk to the bustling, colourful Golden Lion Inn sandwiched between office buildings. I spotted Danny dressed incongruously in a very expensive suit staring into the window of an art gallery, and I knew one of his trusted men would be close by.

  Young tourists and middle age professionals stood side-by-side sipping martinis, white wine and draught bitter amid a hubbub of voices clamouring to be heard. Edwards was at the back of the bar, sitting on his own with an almost empty glass of stout in front of him. When he saw us, he quickly finished his drink, stood, made a slight motion of his hand showing five fingers, then walked to a stairway behind him and disappeared down out of view. I took this to mean we should follow in five minutes. Julie and I casually ordered two vodka tonics, sat in the booth just vacated by Edwards and tried to look like a couple of young love struck tourists. Nobody paid us any attention.

  “This is all a little elaborate isn't it?” Julie said under her breath.

  “It does seem so.”

  Five minutes later we slipped away down the stairs to where Edwards stood waiting. He turned and, surprisingly quickly, made his way through the basement to a seemingly empty room, took an iPad mini from his coat pocket and typed onto the screen. A section of wall clicked open revealing a concealed doorway and another set of stairs leading downwards. We stepped through and the door closed silently behind us.

  “That's a neat trick,” I muttered.

  “It's a security app,” Edwards said matter-of-factly. “You can download it from the Internet.”

  Julie stifled a laugh and followed Edwards down the steps. It smelled musty, and somewhere in the dimly lit passageway, water dripped. I guessed it was an access to the hundreds of miles of London's Victorian sewer tunnels. We followed Edwards to another tunnel that straight for about sixty feet to another set of stairs, this time leading upward.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “This leads to a room beneath Christie's basement.”

  The Christie's auction house was almost directly across the street from the Golden Lion. Anyone who might have seen us enter the Inn and was waiting outside would never have thought we had just walked beneath them to the building opposite.

  “I started work here about sixty-five years ago, just after World War Two. That's when I discovered the passageways. I was just a lad, did odd jobs, cleaning, stuff like that, moved up the ladder, so to speak, became Head of Porters before I retired. I got the job at the Overseas League when the missus died about ten years ago, just to keep myself busy,” Edwards said conversationally as we reached a dead end, with a blank brick wall. “Your father was very good to me over the years. A sad, sad loss.” He again typed into his iPad mini. Large blocks of stone slid out from the wall, forming steps leading diagonally up the wall to a small door that we had failed to notice.

  Edwards turned and grinned at us. “Whoever built this was either a thief, or a philanderer and wanted a way to leave the building without anyone noticing. We just modernised the mechanics with this.” He held up the iPad mini. “Your father liked electronics.” He led the way up the steps and opened the door to a brightly lit room. Wooden crates lined one wall and an office chair incongruously stood in the middle of the floor facing the crates.

  “The key if you will,” Edwards asked, holding out his hand. I gave it to him and watched as he bent down and inserted it into the gap between what had seemed to be two wooden crates. The false front of the crates slid apart to reveal a desk and computer monitor.

  “Not the box I was expecting,” I said as the computer automatically booted up.

  “I feel like I landed in a Doctor Who episode,” Julie exclaimed.

  “Just a little something I cooked up. Sir Ivan wanted a safe quiet place so I had a few friends knock this up.”

  “You are a surprising man, Edwards.”

  His eyes twinkled mischievously. “Nobody pays attention to little old men. We're invisible.”

  “Well I will from now on,” I told him sitting down and staring at the screen, which consisted of a little box asking for the password. “Give me a break.”

  “Wait a minute,” Julie stood with her hands on her hips thinking, then took out her iPhone. “I know where the password is.”

  “Women are so much smarter than men,” Edwards said with a smile. “Better to look at too.”

  “You’ve been taking your Viagra then, Edwards.”

  “No need young man, you should see me with the fillies down the old people's home,” he said laughing and shuffled his feet in a mock dance.

  Julie ignored us and called the Professor. “Dad? Have you got the notes we
were looking at?”

  “I do.”

  “The one that says 'Olympic swimmer's key stroke' it has a code on it starting O.R.”

  “Yup. Letters in uppercase reads OR 443 121/TQ,” he said as I typed. “Do you have the box?”

  “Just a minute.”

  The computer whirred for what seemed a lifetime but was probably less than a second and the face of my father appeared on the screen, sitting in this very room.

  “We have it Dad, switch to video, so you can see this.” Julie held her iPhone so the camera could see the screen.

  “I hope this is Thomas watching this recording. If it is then it means I am dead. If it isn't then whoever it is won’t be able access the rest of the clip.” The screen went blank and an in-screen box appeared with my father's voice-over.

  “When we sat on the dock, by the old mill clock, and sang to the moon a nonsense tune. How many fish did we catch?”

  “Dear God, I was five years old,” I exclaimed as if talking to him.

  “Take your time and remember.”

  “How paranoid can you get?”

  “Think Thomas,” Julie said urgently.

  I thought back to a time when life was easy, carefree, before my real mother died, when everything was fun, when my father laughed at every stupid, silly, child thing I said.

  The light bulb went off in my memory.

  “No fish. Just six eels,” I blurted out, typing as I said it and feeling more than a little silly.

  My father's face appeared again seemingly heaving a sigh of relief. “I hope that worked and you remembered. A childish but effective encryption I'm sure the Professor will agree.”

  When I looked at his face on the monitor, I noticed how old he seemed. Worn down, weathered and sick. The intensity that used to be in his eyes no longer there, as if he knew his life was about to end.

  “Much has happened, much that I have had to keep to myself while I am still alive, but with my death, Thomas, you will have to get to the bottom of this mess.” He paused and smiled grimly. “Your military training will come in handy now, and by now you will have realised that I know Julie's father. A long time ago, but I always remembered him. Make sure he knows that. You'll need him. The truth is that I have allowed myself to be blackmailed. It was only way to get to the bottom of this conspiracy. Yes I use the word deliberately because I believe that's what it is. A conspiracy.”