Fuelling the Fire

by Roland Ladley

  Music, and playing musical instruments, had been a family tradition for as long as anyone could remember. Many aristocratic families have life-size portraits of distant relatives adorning the walls of their stately homes. Most of the men are dressed in uniform, carrying swords aloft or shouldering rifles. Great men—and some women—fighting for the family cause and winning.

  His ancestors were different. Apart from his great-great-great-uncle Ferdinand, whom history would cruelly tell never commanded an army but couldn’t stop dressing as a soldier, nearly all of Wolfgang’s relatives were portrayed—or, more recently, photographed—holding a violin, embracing a cello or double bass, or sitting at a piano.

  That said, they weren’t all shrinking violets. It was fair to say that the Neuenburgs played their part in defining central European history. But they were mostly peacemakers, rather than battle-winners. That might well be the secret as to how the family had been able to keep most of its wealth and much of its property and land. Schloss Neuenburg was one of five major family homes. Whilst neither the prettiest nor the most valuable of the family piles, its location in the dense Bayerischer Wald forest on the Czech/German border gave it a hidden-away feel. It presented Wolfgang and, he guessed, many of his predecessors, with a warm, secure feeling.

  He dearly loved the schloss. After the trials of the last three days, its solitude was the perfect tonic to help him unwind without fear of intrusion.

  With his eyes closed, his neck twisted, and his chin pressing down on the shoulder rest of the violin, Wolfgang let the music flow. Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 was three movements and twenty-three minutes of sheer ecstasy. It was written to showcase the violin, floating above the orchestra, singing and rising with pure romance. The themes were heartbreaking, and even without the backing of the orchestra, it was a beautiful, genius piece of music. It was both melodic and extremely technical.

  None, and all, of these reasons explained why he loved to play it. It reminded him that he was as good a violinist as his instructors at College had told him. In this, the round room, the tone of his Höfner rang as true as in any major concert hall in the world. It was piercingly clear and, as such, a casual listener could pick out even the most well-disguised mistake. He had to play it brilliantly; there were no hiding places. That’s how he liked it.

  Unsurprisingly, his mother preferred their Munich home. It was more central, more playful. She was there now; he had left her there this morning. She was, he was pleased to see, in remarkably good health.

  He had texted her as he left Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof yesterday at lunchtime, letting her know he was on his way home. She had driven from their house to the station in Munich to pick him up. The Munich house was on one of the avenues that backed onto the Englischer Garten. It was large, very grand on the outside, and elegantly opulent on the inside. Wolfgang forgot how many bedrooms it had—maybe twelve?

  When she arrived at the station, he reminded his mother that Klaus, the butler, could have come to pick him up. “And, you know, they do have taxis and buses in Munich. Which I am capable of using.”

  She had ignored him and, as she always did, lavished him with words as they drove back to the house. It may have been three years since his father’s death, but she still didn’t seem to regard Wolfgang as a grown-up. She treated him just like she always had whenever he had come back from his English boarding school for the holidays. “How I have missed you, darling! Have you been eating properly? It doesn’t look like you have. Are you managing to feed yourself? You look fabulous. Your clothes”—she reached across and felt his fine wool jacket—“they are fabulous, such schöne kleider. Such taste! You are a very handsome boy, Wolfgang. Have you got a girlfriend yet? I must hear you play your violin. I must! Within minutes! I will make some tea, and you go to your room and fetch your Höfner. What shall we play? I could sing!”

  His mother did have a fine voice, although, as she had gotten older, it had slipped from soprano to mezzo-soprano. She only ever sang at family occasions, which frustrated Wolfgang. He was sure, if she had tried, she could have joined the Munich Symphony Orchestra’s choir. His father was always admonishing her for not auditioning for a role in a local opera. Since his father’s death, he had followed the same tack.

  “Someone has to manage the house, Wolfgang.”

  That always made him laugh. They had four or five staff who ran the house in Munich meticulously. His mother was always busy—a charity event here, prison visits there, menu selections—but she never ran the house. Why should she?

  Once ensconced in the house and satisfied that he had eaten at least half a cow, his mother had sung Handel’s “Lusinghe Più Care” while he accompanied her on the piano. Then she had gone to dress for a dinner appointment with Herr Michael Schmidt.

  “Not the lesser-known Schmidts of Lower Saxony!” He pulled her leg.

  “No, Wolfgang, you tease. Michael is a film director, and he wishes to use the house on Chiemsee for his latest serialisation. I think it’s a crime thriller, but it might be a musical. He’s very handsome and very rich.” She winked at him.

  His mother always looked fabulous. A few years before her husband’s death, she had been voted by some poll in the German upmarket magazine Stern as the best-looking countess in western Europe. And rightly so. But he knew that she had as much interest in Herr Schmidt’s looks and money as Wolfgang did in working as a farm labourer at the local bauernhof. But she did love to party. And why not?

  Once she’d disappeared upstairs to change, he went down to the cellar and checked his Synology servers. The twin four-terabyte hard drives matched each other. If one went down, the other was always ready to receive or supply information. The power supply was regulated and backed up with the latest Sonnenbatterie home battery should there be a power cut. But this was Munich. There would never be a power cut.

  He logged onto the machines and checked the outcome of his latest enquiries. Whilst he had been at the crash site, he had asked his tower in Dresden to interrogate—and hopefully gain access to—five sources. One was in Dortmund, Germany; one in London; one in Jerusalem; and two in the United States: the first in New York and a second in Los Angeles. He’d chosen these mainframes because the firms behind them, or in the case of New York, a single client, had shown a trend toward investigating and monitoring global power and/or transport businesses. These hacks were all part of trying to put some flesh on the bones of the Lattice.

  As he scrolled down through the results from his sophisticated, but reasonably shallow, hacking, he was pleased to see that he could probably delve deeper into the London and Jerusalem mainframes without too much trouble. He discounted the Dortmund source—getting in was too easy. The Los Angeles enquiry had come up with nothing, so he would need to look again at that. But it was the New York ping that interested him the most.

  His attempt to hack into the New York client had not only been rebutted, but the client, or a subset or subsidiary of the client, had subsequently attempted to gain access to his machine. He had been attacked. From what he could see, so far they hadn’t been able to gain access to his own servers.

  It was the first time that he’d been attacked. He’d have expected that from the FBI or BfV, where they had a wealth of staff permanently assigned to look for, and deal with, hackers. Or maybe even Mercedes or Siemens, where industrial secrets needed to be kept secret. But not from an almost unknown source that he’d come across by accident. What were they hiding? And why were they so incensed by his clever, but very casual, hack that they needed to retaliate? It was odd. And a little bit alarming. He’d need to tread carefully here. With that thought lodged firmly in his mind, he’d gone back upstairs to pack his things.

  Wolfgang had finally broken the apron strings in Munich late yesterday afternoon and had driven the two hours up to the schloss in a hire car. In the mild autumn sunshine it had been an easy drive, although with the later enveloping darkness, the temperatures had dropped. He’d slept and eaten well, and n
ow, after Tomas had cooked him a fine breakfast of eggs and fresh bread, he was enjoying the best acoustics in all of Germany.

  He played the last three bars of Bruch and let the final note ring out for much longer than Bruch, he was sure, had intended. He gently dropped his violin to his side and looked out through the doors on to the lawn. It was a mesmerising view. All manner of greens piercing a cloudless, light blue sky.

  In that moment of tranquillity, his new, odd, quick-witted, and unsmiling friend came to mind. Sam Green. There was something about her that meant she was never far from his consciousness. Special? Maybe. Different? Certainly. Perhaps he should get to know her better?

  It was true to say that a combination of Bruch, and now Green, had made him feel so much more relaxed than just an hour earlier.

  Tomas would call him for lunch soon. Doubtless it would be pork of some kind, albeit beautifully cooked. Tomas would eat with him. He was ten years older than Wolfgang and, whilst technically staff, was an old friend. So why not share great food and palatable wine with those who worked for you? Otherwise he’d be eating alone. And, at the moment, he didn’t want that.

  Then he would get out his laptop, connect to the servers in Munich, and try and establish what the people in New York were up to. If it turned out to be a governmental organisation, he would leave well alone. But that seemed unlikely. So he might just have to press harder.

  Westminster Bridge, London

  It was a great relief to learn that Jane’s team had established that the SRR soldiers had been in the compound. He felt that the new intelligence had vindicated the choice of target. On the negative side, and much more disturbing, was the news that one of soldiers—probably Tony James—had been waterboarded. David, who was away with the fairies as he meandered in and out of the rush-hour crowd heading over to Waterloo, wasn’t surprised. Not that either of the soldiers would have much to give up.

  He’d experienced waterboarding. Not firsthand, of course. But he had seen it in use. He’d spent fifteen years in the field, mostly in eastern Europe at the height of the Cold War. But he had also been posted to Jordan for a tour, where his remit had required him to travel into Iraq, Israel, and Syria—the latter before the current breakdown. Then, all three countries had a good smattering of SIS people. Now their presence in Syria was limited to just a handful of very dedicated and specialised agents, working among the rebels in the north of the country.

  In some ways he envied them. His missions from the distant past were never directly involved in war zones, although his time in Iraq, following the coalition invasion, had been hairy at times. For the most part, he had been running local agents and informers, intelligence gathering, and other “not quite above the line” activities: looking at emerging threats and, even then, investigating burgeoning terrorist cells. But never with an accompanying hail of bullets and bombs.

  Today, you couldn’t dispatch an SIS agent anywhere in the Middle East without throwing away the health and safety handbook. It was dangerous. But for the individual, it was very fulfilling.

  Many, many years back, all intelligence agencies used whatever methods and tactics they needed to gather information to protect their national interests. Waterboarding was ugly. But it was cheap, effective, and left no marks—externally. Thankfully, things had moved on considerably since then. Certainly within SIS. Truth drugs, such as sodium thiopental, were still frowned upon. But they were sometimes effective. Often, just offering amnesty and a wodge of cash did the trick. Not everyone was Daniel Craig.

  David was on Westminster Bridge now. He weaved past a small group of Pacific Rim tourists who were walking, pointing, and taking photos with their iPads all at the same time. He didn’t mind. He wasn’t in a great rush. The COBR meeting wasn’t for another thirty minutes.

  “Sorry!” he said, as he bumped into a commuter, a pinstripe-suited missile on a collision course with the 5.45 from Waterloo to Godalming. Thankfully he had a place in town that he used during the week—and on weekends, when it was busy. His thoughts drifted to his rose garden in Suffolk, his bench on the patio, and a glass of decent Cabernet Sauvignon.

  He weaved again, missing a jogger—that was close—but couldn’t stop himself from bumping into a second one, just behind the first. A collision was inevitable.

  “Ow! Oi!”

  The so-and-so had caught him on his calf muscle, as though the jogger’s trainer had a spike in it. That hurt. Ow!

  Momentum carried him forward, and, with his mind still in wandering mode, he thought of the last time he was spiked. It must have been—hang on, difficulty concentrating—forty years ago when he was running the eight hundred metres for his house at school. Oh dear, a bit woozy now. Charlie Broadbent had crossed in front of him with about two hundred to go and caught him with a spike . . . I need to stop and get a grip. What’s happening to me?

  David staggered to his right and grabbed at a rail on the wall of the bridge. He struggled to stay upright. People walked past him, ever so slightly out of focus. Everything and everyone was moving, left to right, right to left, up and down. A blur of movement. Colours were lost. It was all black, white, and greys.

  “Are you all right, mate?”

  An unfamiliar voice. David turned, his head moving but his brain remaining still. That sudden movement made him feel very unwell. He tried to focus on the man who was talking to him, but all he could see was a smudge of lips, accompanied by unrecognisable sounds.

  He knew when his legs gave way because the man’s face became his crotch. He found that amusing for some boyish reason. He really should grow up.

  Then he didn’t feel anything at all.

  Chapter 10

  SIS Headquarters, Vauxhall, London

  Jane had the whole Op Glasshouse team seated around the table. She’d chosen for them to meet in a small conference room, just down from her office. There was no way she would have used David’s room. That wouldn’t have been right.

  There was a gentle murmur among the small team. They all knew about David. And they would all have seen the missive from the chief about her taking responsibility for the Op until further notice. That might have caught one or two of them by surprise. It certainly had her.

  She’d been called personally by Clive, that is, Sir Clive Morton, the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, late last evening. She had almost dropped the phone.

  “Hello, Jane, it’s Clive here.”

  Jane’s brain spun as she tried to work out who it was. Whirr, click, whirr. For a while now it had all been “just call me Clive,” SIS keeping up to date with the latest management trends. Gone were the days of standing up when the chief came into the room and folks subserviently calling the man “Sir.” The new approach had made things easier, more manageable. But she wasn’t sure she could ever cope with “Clive.”

  Jane had only been to his office once before, three years ago, directly after the Ebola affair. That time it had been a “well done” for her, and he had handed Jane a written commendation for her work in West Africa. It was a nice touch; so nice she’d had it framed, and it now hung, pride of place, in her loo. So, it was an understatement to say that she was surprised to get a call directly from the chief asking her to come down to his office “immediately.” She couldn’t think of a single reason why he’d want to commend her for anything she’d done recently.

  What on earth is up?

  She was swiftly ushered into the chief’s office by his PA. On seeing her, he put his pen down, walked around his desk, and led her to some comfy seats in the corner of his office. He was wearing a serious face. After the very briefest of preliminaries he’d told her of David’s condition. He kept his explanations precise and factual. In short: David had collapsed walking to that afternoon’s COBR meeting about Op Glasshouse; he was in Saint Thomas’s hospital; the doctors had placed him in an induced coma; they knew little else.

  “Was it a heart attack?” Jane had asked, although her mind was chasing so many other conflicting t
houghts and questions: God! Poor David; does his wife know? I thought he’d kept himself reasonably fit? Who takes on his responsibilities now? What will be my role?

  It shamed her that the last thought entered her head when David was obviously so unwell. It shamed her further to hear herself think of the situation as an opportunity. But nobody was bigger than SIS, and, with David out of action, the business of spying still needed oversight and direction. It couldn’t happen in a vacuum.

  “Nobody’s sure. They don’t think so. But at the moment they really don’t know.” He had stopped in thought and then added, “So we’re clear, just in case you were considering it, there’s no point going to the hospital at the moment. They’re not allowing visitors. As far as I can tell, David’s in an isolation unit.”

  Jane wasn’t a medical student, but she knew that meant they were worried about contamination, or maybe even contagion.

  What has he got?

  “And his wife?”

  “I phoned her. She’s metaphorically at his bedside. I’m going to pop along in an hour to see her. It’s all very shocking.”

  “Yes, sir. It is. Poor David.”

  Poor David.

  “Look, Jane, I’m assuming that David will be out of action for a while. I’d like you to continue to hold your portfolio, but also take on the leadership of Op Glasshouse and any operation that might stem from it. I’ve informed the JIC and will be speaking to the CIA later. You have David’s authority on both counts, which will mean attending all meetings, including COBR if it needs Glasshouse input.” He was staring intently at Jane. “You can do this?”

  Jane wasn’t sure if the last comment by the chief was a question or a statement. She took it as a question.

  “Of course, sir.”