Terror Illusion

by James R Conway

Jonathan’s alarm clock went off at seven-thirty next morning. He threw on a t-shirt and tracksuit trousers and went from his bedroom to the kitchen. A he brewed a pot of coffee and poured himself a mug full.

  As he was drinking his coffee, Karen arrived.

  “Good morning, Jonathan,” she said. “How did it go last night?”

  “It went really well,” said Jonathan. “We got some good information out of Mendellson, but we’ll probably need more.”

  “That’s really good,” said Karen. “Was the Bletchley Park museum interesting?”

  “Yes, I enjoyed it, but I would love to go back there another time because there is just too much to see in one day.”

  “Well let’s get down to business,” said Karen. “Roger is expecting you at the office at ten o’clock. That gives you plenty of time to have breakfast and it gives me time to get to my eleven-thirty meeting after I drop you off.”

  “I’ll cook breakfast,” said Jonathan. “Do you want anything to eat?”

  “I’ll just have a piece of toast with marmalade.”

  “Mac said he would join us at lunchtime. Will you be there?”

  “No, I’m going to be stuck in that meeting until mid afternoon at the earliest. We have several new books that we are developing and they are all my authors.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what we found out from Mendellson last night. Mac said it would be OK to tell you. Mendellson went to see the Prime Minister. The PM is worried that, because we haven’t had a terrorist attack now for several years, people are getting resistant to anti-terrorist legislation. The PM asked Mendellson to fix the problem.”

  “Well, Mendellson is well known as the government fixer,” said Karen.

  “Mendellson is meeting with Grendan West on Monday.”

  “Grendan West. I have heard of him. Nasty piece of work, I understand.”

  “Mac has much the same opinion. We need to get inside Mendellson’s head again after that meeting with West to find out what they are planning. Mac said he would get Roger to organize that. I need to make eye contact with Mendellson to get into his memory stream.”

  “Have you got any plans for the weekend, Jonathan?”

  “Well, I thought on Saturday I might get a boat down the Thames to Greenwich and go to the Naval Museum and the Royal Observatory. I’ve never been to Greenwich before.”

  “Doing anything on Sunday?”

  “Nothing planned.”

  “Do you want to come round to my flat for Sunday lunch? That will give me Saturday to clean up the flat and do my shopping.”

  “That’s very kind of you. What’s your nearest tube station?”

  “That would be West Finchley, on the Northern Line. It’s about ten minutes walk from my from my flat. I’ll draw you a little map while you’re cooking your breakfast.”

  Jonathan jumped up. “I’d better get on with that or we’ll be late for Roger.” He walked over to the kitchen and started getting pots and pans from the cupboards and the eggs and bacon from the fridge. Meanwhile Karen drew a map for Jonathan showing how to get to her flat from the West Finchley tube station.

  After breakfast, Jonathan excused himself to Karen and he went back to his bedroom to get showered and dressed.

  Half an hour later, they were both ready for the day.

  “It looks like a nice day out there,” said Jonathan. “What’s the nearest tube station to Roger’s office?”

  “Westminster is about half a mile,” said Karen. “That’s the nearest. I’m ready to head out whenever you are.”

  “I’ll get my coat,” said Jonathan.

  They went down in the lift and left the building to walk along Thames Path and up the hill, past the Tower of London to get to the Tower Hill tube station, from where they could get a direct train to Westminster.

  They emerged into the wintry morning sunlight at Westminster tube station. The tower of Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey dominated the view as they came up the steps from the station. They walked down Abingdon Street, past the Houses of Parliament. As they turned right into Horseferry Road, Karen pointed out Thames House, the headquarters of MI5.

  Roger Gregson’s office was in part of the Home Office building. Government budget cuts had resulted in some of the functions of the Home Office being moved out of London to cheaper accommodation in provincial cities like Newcastle and Liverpool. The theory was that modern technology such as video conferencing made it increasingly difficult to justify employing thousands of civil servants right in the heart of the capital city. The exodus had left empty office space which had been leased out to private companies. Roger Gregson had jumped at the chance to take a suite of offices. His company, UK Connections really needed to be in the heart of government to maintain the personal contacts that were so essential to Roger’s business.

  Karen and Jonathan entered the building and took the lift up to the third floor where Roger’s office was situated. Karen used a key card to open the door and they were greeted by a receptionist in the outer office.

  “Hello Mary” said Karen. “We have a visitor today. This is Jonathan Long.”

  Mary extended her hand.

  “I’m Mary Robertson. I’m so pleased to meet you, Mr. Long.”

  As Jonathan shook Mary’s hand, Roger appeared from the inner office. “Mr. Long is going to be doing a lot of work for us, Mary. I think you’d better get him a badge and a key card. Authorisation level three on the key card.”

  “I’ve got to get to a meeting,” said Karen. “I’ll leave Jonathan in your very capable hands. See you later.”

  Karen left the office, closing the door behind herself. Mary stood up and retrieved a camera from a filing cabinet.

  “Just stand against that wall and smile, Jonathan.”

  She took the photograph and checked the image on the preview screen. “I think that will do. I’ll have the key card and the badge ready for you in about half an hour or so. Here is a visitor’s badge which you can use until your own badge is ready.” Mary picked up a badge from her desk and clipped it on to Jonathan’s shirt breast pocket.

  “Come on through to the inner sanctum,” said Roger as he waved Jonathan through to the inner office.

  Roger had a large desk with a studded leather executive chair and had his back to the window. Through the window and across the roofs of buildings, Jonathan could just see the top half of Big Ben. The rest of the office had dark wood panelling from floor to ceiling. The wall opposite the door was filled with a bookcase, which held hundreds of books. There were two rather less luxurious chairs for visitors in front of Roger’s desk.

  “This is where it happens,” said Roger as he sat down behind his desk. He then took a key from his pocket and turned it in a lock in one of the drawers of his desk.

  “Actually, this is where it all happens!”

  Jonathan heard a rumbling sound behind him. He turned and saw that the dark wood panelling was sliding back to reveal an array of television screens, computer monitors, keyboards and other control panels along a workbench that ran the width of the room. In front of the workbench were three executive chairs on wheels.

  “Behold! The Control Centre!” said Roger as he got up from his chair and walked across the room. He turned on a red switch on the wall and all of the screens slowly came to life. The television screens were showing a variety of street scenes while the computer screens showed a logo. When Jonathan looked closer, he could see that the logo consisted of a chess board in a circle with a chess Knight in the centre. He then noticed that Roger’s ID badge, clipped to his waistband, had the same logo.

  “What do you think?” said Roger, spreading his arms out as if to embrace the whole array of technology.

  “Amazing” was about the only word that Jonathan could come up with as he realized that his mouth had been hanging open as he tried to take in the scene before him.

  Roger pulled out two of the wheeled executive chairs from the counter.

&n
bsp; “Come on, sit down and I’ll give you a guided tour.”

  Jonathan sat down next to Roger who was sitting in front of one of the computer screens. Roger pointed to the television monitors. “These are all showing traffic around here in central London. We collect signals from CCTV cameras on buildings and other places. We control which cameras we use with these computers.”

  Roger unclipped his ID badge from his waistband and scanned the barcode on it across the lens of a webcam. He then placed his left thumb on another device on the worktop.

  “Fingerprint recognition,” said Roger.

  A map of the United Kingdom came up on Roger’s monitor. He clicked on an area of the map near Birmingham and the screen zoomed in. Several thumbnail images of roads appeared. Roger clicked on one of the thumbnail images and the image it contained appeared full size on his television monitor.

  “That’s the M6 just north of Birmingham,” said Roger.

  The image showed three lanes of very slow moving traffic.

  “Always a nightmare there,” said Roger. “I use the M6 toll road myself.”

  “I use the train myself,” said Jonathan.

  Roger laughed. “Wise man. Very wise.”

  “Talking about trains,” Roger spun his seat back round to his computer, he pressed a few keys, clicked on the screen a couple of times and on the screen appeared a railway train carriage with a dozen or so passengers sitting and a buffet trolley being pushed down the gangway between the seat. Roger looked closely at the bottom of the screen. “That’s coach B on the ten o’clock train from Kings Cross to Leeds, just south of Peterborough now.”

  Roger looked very proud of himself. “Neat bit of kit, eh?”

  “Neat indeed,” said Jonathan. “I’m not sure I want to know how you get all these pictures.”

  “Most of it is surprisingly easy and surprisingly legal. You can get almost all these pictures quite freely on the web. All we did is write software to make some of the cameras easier to find and display. For some reason, this country went crazy with CCTV cameras a few years ago and they didn’t put too much thought into the security of the images. For the rest of it, we have friends in certain places. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?”

  I could use a cup of coffee,” said Jonathan. “How about you?”

  “Yes, I’ll get Mary to put on a fresh pot,” said Roger.

  Jonathan put Roger into a seizure, got up from his chair and walked out to the front office.

  “Mr. Gregson would like some coffee please, Mary.”

  “I’ll brew a fresh pot and bring a couple of cups through.”

  “Oh no, he’s working on something in the control centre. I’ll wait and take it through.”

  “By the way, here’s your personal key card,” said Mary handing the laminated card to Jonathan,

  “Thank you.” Jonathan pulled the visitor’s badge from his shirt breast pocket and placed it on Mary’s desk.

  Mary opened a door in the corner of her office, which revealed a small cupboard containing a sink and a water tap. On shelves above the sink, there were coffee mugs and above them was coffee stuff like filters, coffee creamer and cans of Columbian coffee.

  “Columbian is Roger’s favourite,” said Mary as prepared the brew.

  “By the way, the men’s room is to the right down the corridor.”

  “Thanks,” said Jonathan. “I’ll just pop out for a moment.”

  Jonathan stepped out of the office. When he returned, the coffee had finished brewing.

  “How do you like yours, Jonathan?”

  “Cream, no sugar.”

  Mary poured two cups of coffee and placed them on a tray, which she handed to Jonathan.

  “There you go.”

  Jonathan carefully carried the tray back to the control centre and set it down on the workbench between himself and Roger. He looked at Roger, who was still in a seizure, his eyes closed as if he was asleep in his chair. He brought Roger out of the seizure.

  Roger shook his head. “Wait a minute! Where did that coffee come from? I just said I wanted some and it’s there. What’s going on?”

  Jonathan smiled broadly but suppressed the urge to laugh.

  Seeing Jonathan smile, Roger said, “Is this another one of your mind games like the one that you did on me last night?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “You just made the coffee appear by magic? How did you do that?”

  “I made it look to you as if the coffee appeared by magic. In fact, it took about ten minutes to brew the coffee and bring it in. I simply stopped most of your brain working for those ten minutes, so it appeared to you that the coffee appeared instantly as if by magic.”

  “You stopped my brain?”

  “Most of it. It was as if you were asleep. It was actually a seizure.”

  Jonathan explained to Roger how momentary brain seizures were very common and they gave people a sense of déjà vu. Roger continued to shake his head in amazement as Jonathan gave the explanation.

  “With that and the hallucination thing you did on me at the flat the other night we have the silver bullet. If we use your mental powers properly we can work miracles!”

  “Don’t let you coffee get cold,” said Jonathan. Roger laughed and picked up his cup of coffee.

  “Well, you’ve shown me a couple of miracles,” said Roger. “Let me show you a couple.”

  Roger took a sip of his coffee as he turned back to his computer.

  “Mac’s Land Rover,” said Roger as he typed in a registration number. A few seconds later, a picture appeared on a monitor above Roger’s head showing Mac’s Land Rover in the car park at Fort William railway station.

  “Automatic Number Plate Recognition?” said Jonathan.

  “Yes,” said Roger, “but we’ve added a few bells and whistles so we can track a vehicle around the country and we can see a picture of the vehicle.”

  “Who put all this stuff together?”

  “Well, I did most of the design work and I’ve got a tame programmer who did most of the technical stuff. There’s one more thing I’d like to show you.”

  Roger pulled up a picture of Jonathan on his screen.

  “That’s the picture that Mary took this morning. She’s already loaded you into the system. Now, let’s take a look.”

  Roger punched a couple of keys and about ten seconds later, the monitor showed a picture of Karen and Jonathan walking past the Houses of Parliament.

  “Automatic Face Recognition,” said Roger proudly.

  “No place to hide,” said Jonathan.

  “Pretty much, although this stuff is aimed at the bad boys, not innocent people like you and me. Don’t forget, our work is aimed at tripping up the folk who misuse stuff like this. This is just about levelling the playing field a little bit.”

  “I get your point,” said Jonathan.

  “Let’s get back to the project in hand,” said Roger. “How did things go at Bletchley Park last night?”

  Jonathan gave Roger the same short summary that he had given to Karen earlier that morning, including the planned meeting between Mendellson and Grendan West. Roger rubbed his chin, deep in thought.

  “So you need another face to face encounter with Mendellson after his meeting with West?”

  “I’m afraid so. Then we can hopefully get more information about what they are up to.”

  “I have an idea, though, since you came up with your seizure trick. What would you think about going into Mendellson’s office?”

  “Whoa! I’m not sure about that. I’m not a spy!”

  “I think I can get you in without too much risk. You see, for security, many government departments insist on cleaning staff who cannot speak English. I have a cleaning company as one of my clients and they do the cleaning in Mendellson’s building. All the cleaners are Spanish workers who do not speak any English at all. They are scheduled to clean Mendellson’s building every Tuesday evening, so I reckon I can switch you with the regular clean
er and you can get in and snoop around.”

  “What if I can’t get him into a seizure?”

  “Well, then you’ll just have to clean his office!” Roger laughed. “Let’s step back into my office and talk about it a bit more.”

  They moved back to Roger’s main office and Roger closed the sliding panels to hide the control centre. The desk intercom buzzed: “Sir Fergus McKinnon to see you sir,” said Mary.

  “Send him in,” said Roger.

  The office door opened and Mac stepped into the room.

  “Hello guys!” said Mac. “What do you think of the control centre, Jonathan?”

  “Quite interesting.” Jonathan had rather more on his mind than the control centre. He was not at all sure that he wanted to follow Roger’s plan. Mac sat down facing Roger.

  “Anything on what Mendellson’s up to, Roger?”

  “I’ve just been talking with Jonathan here about a possible plan, haven’t I Jonathan? I don’t think that you’re too comfortable about the plan yet, are you?”

  “Right now, I’m bloody terrified!” said Jonathan.

  “You’ll be fine,” said Mac. “What’s your plan, Roger?”

  “I was going to put him in as one of our Spanish cleaners then he could put Mendellson into a seizure and have a snoop around his office. He won’t have to say anything and I can get Marcia, the cleaning supervisor, to introduce him.”

  “You’re making the assumption that Mendellson will be in his office,” said Mac.

  “He always works late. There’s every reason to believe that he will be there.”

  “What about uniform?”

  “They all wear white overalls with the company logo. Marcia can arrange that. I’ll take Jonathan down to their offices on Tuesday afternoon.”

  Mac turned to Jonathan. “This is your first operation. You’re bound to have some first night nerves.”

  “You should only be in there for ten minutes or so,” said Roger, “and I’ll be right outside in the car. We’ll wire you up for sound. Your job is to do a memory trace on Mendellson just like you did last night.”

  “Jonathan,” said Mac, “why don’t we go to lunch and have a chat then I can take you back to the apartment and you can take the rest of the weekend off. What time do you need him, Roger?”

  “I need to be at the cleaning company office by five, so I’ll pick up Jonathan at the apartment at four thirty on Tuesday afternoon. I’ll call Marcia this afternoon and get it all set up.”

  “Good,” said Mac. “So Jonathan, you are a free bird until four-thirty Tuesday afternoon. Let’s go to lunch.”

  With that, Mac and Jonathan left Roger’s office and went to lunch.

  Chapter 23