THE ORANGE MOON AFFAIR

by AFN CLARKE

  “Coffee. Yirgacheffe. Black, no sugar.” I decided that my alter ego, Bonhoeffer, was a man of few words, and apart from the trappings of wealth, he like most mercenaries had little grace or manners. Killing for a living is not conducive to the finer points of social etiquette. I had asked for a particular Ethiopian coffee because I was pretty sure they did not have any in the office. And I was pretty sure the receptionist would have to leave to get it, as Stacy wouldn't want to piss off a client with millions to spend.

  He pressed a button on his desk. “Camilla, do we have Yirgacheffe coffee for our guest?”

  “Certainly sir.”

  Part of being a good assassin is not letting on that you just want to kill the person sitting opposite, or even looking as if you have any visible means by which to carry out the deed. Stacy would not have let me get this close if he thought I was going to kill him, but he would if he thought I was going to pay many millions for his services.

  I pulled out my Jean Michel sterling silver pocket watch, a 21st birthday present from Mary, from my inside suit pocket and glanced at it quickly, making sure Stacy could see it. “I have little time and one of your competitors to see. I need the best, you understand.”

  “Certainly,” he said quickly; a little too quickly as if eager to get my money as quickly as possible. Most high-level mercenary recruiters have some background in Special Forces, but not Stacy. My guess is he was a 'wannabe' from one of the county Infantry Regiments that had been amalgamated into The Rifles, and had had a less than stellar career. There were a lot of those kinds floating around the peripheries of private security firms. “I'm told that you are looking for a specialised unit for an operation in.... I'm sorry I have forgotten where exactly.”

  “That's because I do not divulge the details of my operations to anyone, only the team when I have approved the personnel.”

  “Oh. Of course. As I understand you are looking for former Spetsnaz soldiers.”

  “No. Spetsgruppa Alfa only.” These were the cream of Russian anti-terrorist Special Forces who operated under direct control of the GRU.

  Stacy's face betrayed fear for the first time, which he tried to cover with a smile, but his eyes told the tale. “I'm sorry but I don't know of any of those guys.”

  “Really,” I said also smiling, “I was informed that you recently supplied a two man team for a job in Northern Ireland.”

  His face drained of blood and he seemed frozen to the chair. I stood, and looked down at him. “I'm sorry I wasted your time. Perhaps when I have a less important mission we'll be in touch again. I'm late for my other appointment,” I said smoothly and turned to the door.

  Stacy was on his feet and came around the desk quickly. “Perhaps I can sort something out for you,” he said clutching at my sleeve. I knew I had about five minutes before Camilla came back with the coffee.

  One thing you should never do is reach out and touch someone who has been trained in unarmed combat. There is a simple method of snapping the wrist that is excruciatingly painful and allows a quick chop to the throat with the other hand, which inevitably renders the person completely incapacitated. Stacy was on his knees before he knew what hit him, coughing and gasping for air, his wrist a limp rag with torn ligaments and broken scaphoid bone.

  “Who hired you for the Northern Ireland job?” I said quietly, listening for any movement in the outer office indicating Camilla had returned.

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” Stacy wheezed. I hit him in the kidneys, a short sharp blow that was painful and marginally short of causing permanent damage.

  “Not the right answer. Two innocent women I knew were killed. One of the Russians who murdered them gave up your name before I killed him. So once again, who hired you?”

  “I don't know. I never met the woman. She was East European, I think. I got five hundred thousand cash delivered by courier.”

  “Are you the one supplying Mary Gunn with heroin? And what's Orange Moon got to do with it?”

  Stacy looked shocked and stared at me, total consternation in his eyes. “It wasn't my idea. I just did as I was told. Who the hell are you?” he said with fear.

  “Thomas Gunn.”

  “But that's impossible, De Costas said....” his voice trailed away as he realised he was talking too much.

  “So there's you, De Costas and the woman De Costas takes his orders from. Who else is involved?”

  I was almost too late, hearing the soft sound of the office door open, and seeing the fright in Stacy's eyes as I dove to one side. The bullets missed me and caught him in the right temple. He was dead before he hit the ground and I was rolling behind the desk as Camilla unloaded six more rounds into the desk. None penetrated and I knew she was out of ammunition as I'd caught a glimpse of the 9mm Beretta automatic with an eight round magazine. 'Lady's gun' Julie called it, but it certainly wasn't a lady using it.

  By the time I rolled out from behind the desk and sprang to my feet, Camilla was running from the building. When I reached the front door, she had vanished into the traffic.

  I returned to the office, quickly went through the filing cabinet and found nothing. There would be no point in checking the computer because it would be protected by a secure password, so I ripped the tower from under reception desk, broke open the casing and unceremoniously removed the hard drive. In Stacy's office I found a new leather briefcase and slipped the hard drive into it. The CCTV camera would have recorded me entering the building and I didn't want the inconvenience of having the Metropolitan police trying to track me down. I'd pass the drive on to Oldfield.

  Stacy had chosen the location of the office well, as there were no city surveillance cameras covering the building, so I took the first vacant taxi to Liverpool Street Station and bought a first class ticket to Diss, a small town about twenty miles south of Norwich. Once on the train I called Danny.

  “I wondered when you'd show,” he said conversationally.

  “Can you get to Diss station in about an hour?”

  “Just so happens my schedule is free this afternoon,” he said sarcastically.

  “There's a footpath that leads East from the Station to a small car park just off Nelson Road. I'll see you there,” I said and hung up.

  At this time in the afternoon, before the evening rush hour, the train was pretty much empty, so I had the carriage to myself as we sped through the dank British countryside, and assessed the situation.

  There was a huge missing piece to this puzzle I had yet to uncover. I called Oldfield.

  “Thomas, do you have any idea what I think you found?” he said excitedly.

  “No I don't Professor.”

  “Rhetorical question. Firstly, as far as I can make out, the woman whose photograph you sent me, is Marika Keskküla. Quite an interesting background. Her father was a Russian submarine Captain name of Georgy Bondarev who ran the Suldiski Island Submarine Training Facility off the coast of Estonia. Marika was born there and sent to Russia for her education. She returned to Estonia after earning a degree in Physics at Moscow University and married Hannes Keskküla who made his billions mining oil shale, then bought the Suldiski Island complex for Marika. By all accounts he was an ugly bastard both physically and personally. He died suddenly several years ago, and his entire fortune along with control of his companies passed to Marika, who is also employed by the Estonian Government as an International Consul for Industry. She has an apartment in New York, a house in Beverly Hills, a one hundred and thirty metre mega yacht in Monaco, called 'Marika', and of course Suldiski Island.”

  “Curiouser and curiouser. What on earth is she doing with low-life's like De Costas?”

  “This is where it gets more interesting. As far as I can make out, the 'machine' you photographed at Venus Automotive is some kind of a gas diffuser linked to a series laser array and a miniature industrial metal foundry. Just what it is for I have no idea. Yet.”

  “I have a funny feeling I think I do, but I'll tell you about that l
ater when I've had the chance to think this through,” I said the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. “Exactly what kind of physics degree did this Keskküla woman receive?”

  “Non-specific, just general physics.”

  “And curiouser,” I muttered, my mind racing.

  “And just what does that mean, Thomas,” Oldfield said irritably. He didn't like being in the dark about anything.

  “Can you get to Diss station in about an hour?”

  “Yes. I'm in Cambridge. Just finished a lecture on organic nano computer technology.”

  I gave him the same directions as I'd given Danny, told him to bring his laptop, and quickly disconnected before he could ask any questions.

  Diss is a small market town in south Norfolk close to the Suffolk border, with a rich social and geological history, a 'Cittaslow' project town with a small resident population of about seven thousand. I chose it because it was quiet, 'slow' and peaceful. It was close to London, Cambridge and Norwich, so easy to get to for Danny and Oldfield. And because it was pretty and unassuming, a place I hoped nobody would even think of looking for me.

  Oldfield would be here in about fifteen minutes.

  I left the station and set off down the footpath, briefcase in hand, as if I had lived here all my life. It was only about 200 metres to the small car park and it felt good to stretch my legs in the late afternoon. The rain had stopped sometime ago, and with no wind the evening was cool but bright in the weak sunshine, and the country air invigorating.

  “You make me feel like a chauffeur dressed like that,” Danny said as I slid into the passenger seat of his new BMW 6 series Gran Coupé.

  “Looks like stunt work is paying well,” I replied appreciating the car.

  “It's a living, and I want one of those Venus GT's,” he grinned. “What's the emergency?”

  “Nuclear waste re-enrichment. I think.”

  “Okay,” Danny said slowly. “Where?”

  “Venus Automotive.”

  Danny turned to me with look of total incredulity. “We'd have spotted that a long time ago. The plant would be massive and use more energy than it takes to power Belfast.”

  “Whose we, Danny? The Government? You working for MI5?”

  He shrugged and stared out of the window. “Something like that.”

  “I wondered why it was so easy for me to get in and out of Northern Ireland and all those aliases.”

  “We can talk about that later,” he said gruffly and I could see his deception troubled him. “What makes you think it's a re-enrichment plant?”

  “Not a plant, a laboratory. I think someone has discovered a way to combine old-fashioned diffuser technology with laser energy thus reducing the massive energy requirement for standard re-enrichment. It's almost like a portable lab with the ability to set up anywhere. Venus Automotive is a test and development centre.”

  “The proof?”

  I watched as Professor Oldfield's car drove into the car park. “Just arrived,” I said getting out of the BMW and catching the Professor's attention. He hurried over carrying his laptop and climbed into the back seat.

  “Danny, meet Professor Oldfield.”

  They nodded to each other.

  “What's this about?” Oldfield said bluntly.

  “Fire up that thing and bring up the photographs I sent you, and tell Danny what you told me earlier. As the laptop booted up, Oldfield quickly ran through everything he had discovered about Marika Keskküla. The photographs I took of 'The Lab' and the loading bay popped up on the laptop screen and Oldfield turned it around for Danny to see.

  I pointed to the cylinders. “These are in the loading bay. Remember the training we did for Iraq and that waste-of-time search for nuclear materials?”

  Danny nodded ruefully.

  “We were told to look for cylinders like this. Uranium Hexaflouride storage tanks, the by-product of uranium enrichment. Useless unless the price of natural uranium ore goes up, then re-enrichment becomes very viable, but still unbelievably expensive.”

  “Unless you can figure a way to re-enrich the Uranium Hexaflouride more cheaply, which means dramatically reducing energy costs,” Oldfield said excitedly. “Anyone with a Physics degree would have studied Nuclear Physics as part of the syllabus in their last year.”

  I turned to Danny. “I need the travel log of Marika Keskküla's yacht for the past year.”

  “I'll see what I can do.”

  I reached down for the briefcase I had taken from Stacy's office and pulled out the hard drive. “You think you can get anything off this Professor?”

  He took the hard drive, pulled some cables from his bag and plugged them into the drive and his laptop. “Quite cleverly encrypted. It'll take a minute.”

  While he worked I sat back and stared out at the darkening countryside. “When were you going to tell me?” I said quietly.

  “When I'm allowed to.” Danny looked everywhere but at me.

  “I need to meet whoever is controlling you.”

  “Not when you're in this mood. Somebody's liable to get hurt,” Danny said with a slight smile. “Beside we need more proof from the Venus Automotive plant.” Only then did he look at me.

  “Your handlers want me to go back in?”

  “You're expendable.”

  “They set it up that way.”

  “You know how they work. You fell into their lap, especially when you decided to 'do-your-own-thing'.” He turned to me, his expression deadly serious. “I asked for this mission. You're my brother, different parents but you're my brother and we been through a lot together. I told you I'd have your back.”

  “Okay. I'll go back.”

  “You'll need some equipment, I'll get it for you. Where will you be later tonight?”

  “At the Hall. I have to check on Mary.”

  From the back seat, Oldfield swore softly. “I need more computing power to crack this,” he said quietly, almost to himself.

  “Will the computer at the Hall do?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you drive, I don't have a car,” I said opening the door and hesitating a moment as pain shot down my leg. It had taken a crack as I dived for cover in Stacy's office.

  “The leg?” Danny asked.

  “Yep.”

  “You'll be okay?”

  “No choice.”

  “See you later. I'll call.” He tossed me a small highly sophisticated mobile sat-phone. “Compliments of your Government.”

  “I've got enough damn phones, I'll stick with what I've got.”

  “Not for this mission. If you need help fast, you'll need this.”

  Danny drove off and Oldfield and I headed for his car.

  We parked the car in the barn with the Mini-Cooper that Oldfield took a few minutes admiring, which surprised me. I thought he only had eyes for computers and expensive single malt.

  “Had one when I was an undergrad,” he said nostalgically.

  “We need to go,” I said roughly and led the way across the fields to the Hall. After the debacle in Stacy's office, it was quite possible that somebody had put the pieces together and realised I was still alive. The Government knew, but who else?

  For an hour I scouted the perimeter after telling Oldfield to stay out of sight. I knew every part of the grounds and the approaches, and every conceivable hiding place, and having cleared them all, returned to Oldfield and together we crossed to the Folly. I could see he was quite excited about the secret passage to the Hall and giggled softly every now and then. At the door to the wine cellar, I waited, listening for even the slightest sound, but there was nothing. The door opened with a soft creak, just wide enough for Oldfield and I to slip through. I closed it and made sure it couldn't be seen behind the wine rack, then led the way into the kitchen and up the back stairs to the flat, avoiding the main living area.

  It was just as Julie and I had left it. Her clothes in the closet, beauty items on the dressing table and the lingering smell of her in th
e air. Mary hadn't changed anything. It seemed a lifetime ago, a gentle warm memory mixed with inconsolable pain, and scrapbook images of us together, laughing, making love, her face as she slept, darted into my consciousness like pieces of old news film.

  I shut the door to the wardrobe and the door to my memory with one movement. I was here for a purpose; there would be time enough when all this was over, to ponder on what might have been. Much to my surprise, Oldfield was already at the computer attaching the hard drive, seemingly oblivious to Julie's ghostly presence in the room.

  “There's still some user encryption I can't fathom,” Oldfield said quietly.

  Staring down at the screen I had a thought. It was Stacy expression when I had mentioned Orange Moon that gave me an idea. “Type in 'Orange Moon'.”

  He did, the screen flashed then revealed Stacy's desktop. Oldfield quickly went through the folders and stopped at one entitled 'The Orange Moon Affair'. It seemed to me that perhaps Stacy's flair for the dramatic made him name the folder like a book title. Oldfield clicked on and was informed that access required a password. He ran his encryption code and came up with nothing.

  “It's like a pretty standard zero knowledge cryptographic protocol, but with some very sophisticated extra layers. Normally I'd crack one of these in no time,” Oldfield said obliquely after trying several algorithms. “I can verify who I am to the computer, but not get the information that's hidden on the drive. There's a key somewhere that's impossible to find.”

  “Orange Moon,” I thought aloud, my mind racing. “Everything comes back to Orange Moon. In Northern Ireland the guys in the office At Venus Automotive talked about it.”

  “Well there's nothing I can do with this here. Maybe if I take it back to my office I can crack it.”

  “Did you get anything from the tracker Julie installed in the Coltrane Engineering server?”