Rule 53

by Elaine Nolan

  “Well, we can’t let someone with your… particular set of skills go to waste. It arrived this morning in the diplomatic pouch. DFHQ and the Garda cyber-crime and economic crime units worked their way through the information we sent. Donal picked up on something you said, about being a commodity. Turns out the commodities you found was…”

  “What?” she pressed.

  “What you said you were, a commodity. It’s people. They were trafficking people. DFHQ sent Europol information found on the drive. Some of our European counterparts consider Ireland a soft entry point to the EU, so we are taking it seriously. The intel you pulled together is disturbing and affects the security of the entire EU. It also ties in with another Europol investigation that involved a GNIB Garda.” Leigh flipped to the relevant pages and raised her eyebrows in surprise as she read the name of the Garda involved. “They uncovered a human trafficking ring,” he continued on, “involving a Hungarian Immigration Officer who was part of the Europol team, so the EU policing department is taking this seriously. They’re extending their EC3 Cybercrime Division, and seeking recruits from Member States on the operations side. Something the matter?”

  “I went to school with two girls, sisters, whose surname was Ravenwood,” she mused. “They were a year either side of me, and total bitches.”

  “I don’t imagine it’s a common surname in Carlow. Anyway, with your skill set and Donal’s recommendations of your field experience, DFHQ are loaning you to the EU for two or three years.”

  “Just me?”

  “From DFHQ? No, some of the G2 team will join you, and the Gardaí are sending their own people from the Special Detective and Counter Terrorism Intelligence Units, and the Garda National Immigration Bureau.”

  “And Amsterdam,” she mused, a cheeky smile growing at the possibilities for her particular brand of fun.

  “Don’t get any ideas. This is not a secondment for personal pleasure, although I suspect you’ll find some.”

  “When?” she asked.

  “In a few weeks. The senior officials in G2 want to debrief us first on what’s just happened here, dig deeper into this Red Hand Conglomerate, then it looks like you’re scheduled for retraining,” he read from another file.

  “Retraining?”

  “Yes, physical and technical,” he showed her the Department of Defence Order.

  “At least it’s closer to home this time,” she commented, noting the Curragh base, and not the opposite side of the country.

  “I know nothing about this EC3 or Europol, but it sounds as though it will be physically demanding.”

  “Sounds like fun,” she answered. He smirked.

  “Yeah, but probably not your kind of fun.”

  “That depends on how much it hurts,” she answered.

  CHAPTER 73

  The two agents re-emerged from the gangway and joined the rest of the security team before advancing on Jake.

  “Agent Jake Mann?” the lead agent asked, his hand ready on his weapon.

  “You damn well know it is,” Jake answered.

  “Jake Mann, you’re under arrest,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Under the Patriot Act, you’re under arrest for fraternisation and collusion with a foreign Intelligence agent.”

  “It was international cooperation with an ally,” he argued back.

  “Call it whatever makes you feel better, but it doesn’t change the fact that you had close and personal contact with a foreign agent. You’re still under arrest.”

  They shoved him against the glass as they cuffed them, and he watched her plane taxiing to the runway, too far away for her to see him. They took his weapon, his ID. It felt like being stripped bare, made worse by having it done on his home turf. It felt worse knowing who’d authorised it.

  “Let Leigh know,” he said to Nathan as they took him away.

  EPILOGUE

  Vaughan-Williams’ Fantasise on a Theme of Thomas Tallis was seventeen minutes of heaven. The long opening strains echoed in the space above the garage at Pembroke, Carlow, Lee’s overflow garage. This was his office away from the house that kept his home, Garda and Intelligence lives separate. Leigh programmed the player to progress to Telemann and Vivaldi after the Vaughan-Williams. The classical period may have been her father’s musical preference, but the baroque was hers.

  Two lines of while powder sat prepared at the edge of the desk, but she ignored it for the moment, testing her resolve to hold out for as long as she could, or perhaps it was to build up the anticipation, she wasn’t sure anymore. For now, the large glass of merlot started the numbing process, the path to suppressing the pain, sadness and loneliness.

  Her retraining at the Curragh Camp proved more physically demanding, more intense than she’d expected, with extra counter terrorism training modules thrown in for good measure. Three gruelling months and she returned home to… Nothing. No emails, texts or missed calls from either Jake or Nathan. So much for his promises of being family, and staying connected. Only in its absence did she realise how much she wanted it, wanted that connection in her life.

  And Jake. His silence hurt the most, her texts going unanswered, the phone disconnected when she tried calling, and she wondered if he’d changed his number again, but she couldn’t find any trace of another one for him, not even with tapping into Swayne’s like she did that first time.

  While she drank, she read, thumbing through Lees’ old notebook, his so-called rules to live by, which turned out to be total bollocks. As she read every one of them, along with Lee’s own notes and interpretations, she realised how much he lied, not just to everyone but also to himself. Perhaps the rules were another psychologically perverse coping mechanism, that they were more aspirational than operational, the ideal rules rather than real-life ones. She now knew Lee had broken every single one of them.

  Were they the lessons he’d learned in hindsight, putting new rules in place so it never happened again? She rationalised his actions and stopped, knocking back most of the contents of the glass, feeling the burn at the back of her throat. She refilled the glass, annoyed she still felt the need to keep justifying her father and his actions, felt a need to hold on to an honourable image of him, when he was anything but.

  She removed the lid of her fountain pen, his pen, and pressed the nib to the next blank page, determined to make her own mark, if not in the world, then at the very least in this notebook.

  Rule 53, she wrote, every rule can be ignored, bent, or broken, but in the end, every rule will end up broken.

  She recapped her pen and placed it on top of the notebook as the orchestral swell of strings on the Vaughan-Williams grew, and decided it was time to give into the need to lose herself, be free of this ache for a while.

  She inhaled the drugs, experiencing that long forgotten sensation as it hit home and she sprawled across the small sofa, preparing for the drugs to kick in while the music provided the soundtrack to the rising euphoria and she waited for the pain to go away, for a while.

  LEE’S RULES TO LIVE (AND DIE) BY…

  Einstein’s 3 rules of work: Out of clutter, find simplicity.

  Out of discord, find harmony.

  In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.

  There are two rules in life: Never give out all the information.

  Trust your gut.

  Trust no one.

  The Golden Rule – he who has the gold makes the rules. – Brant Parker & Johnny Hart

  Admit when you’re wrong; shut up when you’re right – John Gottman

  The problems that exist in the world cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them – Einstein

  If you know yourself, you cannot be harmed by what is said about you – Lorde

  The most dangerous animal in the world, is a smiling woman – Unknown

  It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission – Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper

  Don’t hold grudges, but remember facts – unknown
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  If you’re going through hell, keep going – Churchill

  The three good essentials to happiness in this life are; something to do, someone to love and something to hope for – Addison

  Without that innate sense of human self, a man cannot long endure adversity, nor can he long enjoy prosperity – Confucius

  The aim of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other poor bastard die for his – George S Patton.

  Never return to the scene of your crime – Unknown

  Destiny is not a matter of chance, it’s a matter of choice – W.J. Bryon

  Nothing is good or bad. Only thinking makes it so – Shakespeare

  Never argue with a stupid person for they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience – Twain

  Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is perspective, not the truth – Marcus Aurelis

  The roots of education is bitter, but the fruit is sweet – Aristotle

  Silence is a source of great strength – Lao Tzu

  Honesty is almost always the best policy – Abraham Lincoln

  Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage - Confucius

  Silence is a true friend that never betrays – Confucius

  When anger rises, think of the consequences – Confucius

  Learning without thought is labour lost, thought without learning is perilous – Confucius

  Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere – Lao Tzu

  There is always some madness in love, but there is always some reason in madness – Nietzsche

  Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become the monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you – Nietzsche

  He who has a why to live, can bear almost any how – Nietzsche

  One must have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star – Nietzsche

  Fear is the mother of morality – Nietzsche

  Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies – Nietzsche

  From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate – Socrates

  Charm is a way of getting a ‘Yes’ without asking a clear question – Camus

  History repeats itself; first as a tragedy, then as a farce – K Marx

  Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumoured by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conductive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it – Buddha

  To be prepared for war is the most effective way of preserving peace – Washington

  Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you - Heller

  War does not determine who is right, only who is left – Russell

  Have the hindsight to know where you’ve been, the foresight to know where you’re going, and the insight to know when you’ve gone too far – Irish saying

  Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights – Hegel

  You shouldn’t give circumstances the power to rouse anger, for they don’t care at all – Marcus Aurelis

  To refrain from imitation is the best revenge – Marcus Aurelis

  The secret of victory lies in the organisation of the non-obvious – Marcus Aurelis

  There’s no luck, except where there’s discipline – Irish saying

  Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form – Marx

  Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy – Sun Tzu

  The two most powerful warriors are patience and time – Tolstoy

  The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting – Sun Tzu

  The man of knowledge must be able to not only love his enemy, but also hate his friends - Nietzsche

  Coming soon

  ReCrossed

  A Claire Ravenwood Novel

  And

  Chasing Shadows

  A Leigh Harte/Claire Ravenwood Novel

  ReCrossed

  Chapter one

  Jackson Logue reached for his eco-friendly bottle of water and took another sip. The air con in this lecture hall dried his throat out more than his nerves did, but only just. A man accustomed to being in the public eye as an actor and activist, this talk shouldn’t have affected his nerves but he looked across at his audience, at the many law enforcement officials watching him. Given his troubled teenage past, this situation, facing so many cops, was once his worst nightmare. He was reformed now, had mended his ways, and while he’d dedicated more of his adult life so far to other causes, he felt he had now found his true calling , and was proud to stand and be counted alongside those fighting the good fight for justice and in saving lives.

  Claire once told him to use his voice, use his super-star status in the world to highlight what was going on in the underbelly of society. So here he was, standing at a podium in a Europol conference room in The Hague, speaking to the very people he had volunteered to be the public face for. These were the people for whom he spoke, whose voices couldn’t be heard otherwise.

  And Claire was gone. She’d disappeared in the middle of the night, unlike her entrance into his life. He shook those thoughts from his head and concentrated on the teleprompter before him. While he excelled at remembering scripts, speeches were an entirely different matter. There were no second or third takes with this.

  “The sacrifices you have all given,” he went on, “to save the lives of so many others, will not go unaccounted for, will not go unannounced. I was once asked to be the voice where you can’t speak, allow me that honour. Let me speak of your efforts, of your work, of your successes, and yes, of your failures, for that too only goes to highlight your struggles, the effort required, and the losses that you too have faced in this war on human trafficking. Thank you.”

  While the applause couldn’t be called rousing, and nothing like the adulation he was used to in his public life, this had a heart to it. And why should they fawn on him? He was only an actor. He wasn’t a hero, something he considered everyone else in the room, and all unsung for the most part. They had to keep their anonymity, or their undercover and investigative work would come to nothing, and likely shorten their lives considerably. He stepped aside as Chief Inspector Emilie Dufont replaced him at the podium.

  “Mr Logue, thank you. We are most grateful for your help, your willingness to be the public face on what you have correctly identified as a most dangerous game. I very much look forward to working closely with you on developing our publicity strategy.” Jackson gave her another nod of acknowledgement and his trademark smile, which she found unsettlingly disarming.

  “Now, if I may, we will get to the main reason for this conference today. As you all know, Averyanov, one of our top targets, was successfully apprehended by one of our specialist undercover teams.” That news brought a more rousing applause that his speech, but he didn’t mind. These successes were theirs, and such successes were rare Dufont told him. They had good reason to celebrate.

  “Unfortunately,” Dufont continued, “the fight doesn’t end with him. All we have achieved is remove one more player from the field. We received credible intelligence on our next target and you are gathered here today to develop an intra-EU strategy, because unfortunately ladies and gentlemen it seems this new target has extensive reach and is operating in every State. However, I am not going to talk to you about it, but introduce and hand you over to the new project leader. She has successfully brought down such traffickers as Sava Radic and now Averyanov…”

  In the assembled
audience, assigned from the Irish Police force, sat Detective Garda Vinny Ryan and Garda Sargeant Rob Cashman, who exchanged concerned looks at where this was leading.

  “A detective within her own police force in Ireland, she was recruited as a member of Europol’s tactical team, and remained undercover within her own agency. In the course of that undercover operation, she was instrumental in finding one of the most heinous networks of traffickers, which disturbingly, involved a number of enforcement and Immigration officers throughout Europe. Some of these people were your colleagues. Some may even have been your friends and because of that, her mission was kept secret from most law enforcement and Immigration agencies. She has put her own life on the line so that these people could be brought to justice. So ladies and gentlemen, I give you your colleague in Law and Immigration, Detective Garda and Team Leader to Europol’s Human Trafficking Unit, Claire Ravenwood.”

  Jackson’s heart pound in his chest. Not the reaction he was expecting whenever he thought he’d meet her again, but then again, this scenario and reunion was as far from anything he had imagined. Dressed in black combat fatigues, Europol badge across the back of her operational vest, Claire strode down the central isle to a more rousing applause than his speech, but he barely noticed. Passing her colleagues, she smirked at their confused glares, and winked at them for added effect. For Jackson she reserved a shy but warm smile. She knew she would have to face him later, face up to what she did, of how she’d abandoned him, and before he’d even left the hospital from a gunshot wound. He tried to hide his emotions, but his tell-tale signs gave him away. What it told her made her smile even more. He’d missed her. She took the place at the podium as Dufont stepped aside and stood beside Jackson. She let the praise die down, nodding acknowledgements to those faces she easily recognised among the small crowd.