Salby Damned (36 page)

The immaculately dressed, tall and imposing figure of her father stood halfway down the steps, waiting to greet her. She could tell him from a crowd of thousands, knew his stance, step and stride, and the way he carried himself. The precisely straight creases in his expensive silk suit trousers tipped the top of his shoes, which glinted in the floodlights of the driveway.

She waited after the car had come to a stop. She'd been frequently scolded by her father in her youth for opening her own door. She could remember the words he used as if it had been yesterday.

“I employ this man and pay him good money to open car door for you amongst other thing. If you do for yourself, for why do I need this man?”

“Yes, Papa,” she had replied then.

“Janishka, my favourite daughter, how good to see you. You look beautiful. Your hair reminds me of your mother so much. Come, we will go to the study and you can tell me all about your trip,” he said, speaking in Russian.

“Good evening, Papa,” she said, embracing him gently.

Even now, nearing sixty years of age, he towered above her. She looked at the icy blue eyes that had lost none of their sharpness as the years rolled on. His trim, athletic build had been maintained by constant work that dominated his life and had led to the vast empire of wealth, property, and titles in his portfolio. The only tell-tale sign of his effort was his silvery-white short-cropped hair. As a child, she had remembered it being the same jet-black shiny colour of her own. The years had taken their toll, as had the pressures of such responsibility, but he loved the power.

“I spend thousands of roubles on Russian language teacher and still you speak English.”

“Papa, you spent thousands of roubles to have me taught English, complete with the accent. Do you not think it wise for me to keep practicing still?” she countered.

“Ohhhhh, Jani, my little girl. I forget how astute you are. Very well, English it is,” he said, guiding her through the great hall to the study.

One of his staff had already placed refreshments on a highly polished silver tray, set atop the magnificent antique carved table at the front of the study. It had views down the manicured, rolling lawn all the way to the lake, far in the distance, just visible in the fading light.

She recalled playing on the slopes as a child, and she had learnt many of her skills in the grounds and annexes of this house. She sat in the enveloping leather-bound chair as her father took a similar seat opposite. He took two small shot glasses and filled them with the finest Russian vodka. He offered her the drink from a delicate tray set beside some food.

“Thank you, Papa. Salut!” she said, downing the fiery liquid in one.

“Salut! To you, my dear,” he said, matching her.

“So Jani, tell me of your tale this last few months; how did mission go?”

“It has been almost a year, Papa. Time evades you, I think. As far as the mission goes, I think it went better than we could possibly have hoped. At first, it was very hard to judge. I received the details on Garrett, the chief engineer, long before he made his move on the wellhead. I thought he had been instructed to cause an accident though, Papa?”

“His mandate was supposed to be to cause small industrial accident, just enough to spook British into thinking shale gas is no safe,” he said slowly.

“The man blew up half of the town, hitting a secret installation and releasing a deadly toxin into the air, which killed tens of thousands. We could never have predicted that the secret base was there, or could we have hoped that it would serve us so well. By the time the kill order came through for him, he was already long dead. Then, I had to do a lot of waiting and a lot of acting before the kill order arrived for Snape. He really deserved it.”

“Da good, go on.” Her father nodded.

“He was the kind of man most people would want dead. As it happened, he tried to make a break from the camp, and may have evaded me for a short time, had he been successful. He was killed by an infected man that had been captured for testing. The man who killed Snape was in the back of the Jeep that he chose to steal; he was just unlucky I guess. The next problem was the missing laptops. Two of them had been taken from the wellhead site at or just after the outbreak. They would have contained details traceable back to the ghost companies that made the payments; they had to be found and erased.

“So what you do?” Viktor asked.

“Again, it was a waiting game, frustrating when I was so close. It paid off. Your guidance helped me, Papa,” she said, and added, “I had unwitting accomplices in the form of Meriam Stuart and Brian Goulding, both employees of SGFC. The first laptop surfaced a few days into the recovery phase, but it held only employee details and was not my main concern, as it was unlikely to have any information about Garrett, Snape, or us. The second laptop was the crucial one. That was found by Snape around day three. He’d begun to act very strangely. Unknown to me, Brian and Meriam had hatched a plan of their own to remove the hard drive from the machine. By chance, they gave it to me; a lucky break, Papa.”

“Indeed, Jani, lucky for us.”

“It took six hours to copy the drive and a further two to duplicate the disk, less any incriminating evidence. I handed the doctored disk to the C.O. having to make an excuse about being unable to find him, to cover the time it took me to erase the data. When the kill order came through on my tablet device for Snape, he was already very dead. I am sorry to report that the money you sent to the two incompetent fools at SGFC was seized by the UK government before I had chance to recover it. I'm sorry, Papa.”

“Echhhh! It was only one million. By midnight tonight, I’ll have made ten time that. Is no worry, my sweet,” he said, chuckling and sipping another shot of neat vodka.

“My other news is that Lieutenant Colonel Connell and Major Sower recommended me for the Officer Training Corps. So it looks like I’ll be going ahead with that on my return.”

“Da, very good. Could come in useful to have someone high-ranking inside UK Army. The outcome of this will put petroleum price up for us. I think I will have Talya make contact with the foreign secretary in morning, to make offer of our services for supply of crude oil to UK market. You have done well and you will be on leave now. Stand down until further notice. I have sent your reward to Zurich account; it should be there by now. Also have little present for my daughter in main garage, I thought you might like.”

*******

In an office surrounded by banks of computer screens and buzzing printers in the bowels of GCHQ, a tired and ageing analyst watched as another “Communication of Interest” flagged up, to be stored for future investigation. This time he noted, as before, that it had been another communication originating from Odessa, Ukraine. The first one, logged many months ago, had been intercepted by the spy satellite over Russia and had set the destination as somewhere in the North Yorkshire area in the UK. This one, however, had originated in the same place but had been sent to Tel Aviv, Israel.

He wondered if there was a connection. Time would tell, he thought, and he would investigate it further once his backlog had cleared. What had been odd about both messages was that they didn’t appear to be in any recognisable international dialect, but instead some form of basic code; not the usual way to send messages.

***

The Baltic Wanderer had been reported lost at sea, presumed sunk, over five months ago. The vessel, registered in Murmansk Oblast, had left Hull docks one day after the outbreak at Salby wellhead, just evading the lockdown instigated by the government. A spotter plane picked up the 20,000-tonne cargo ship in the Barents Sea, powering towards the shipping lane and docking port, going far faster than the five-knot limit beyond the breakwater.The captain sat in his chair, staring from the bridge view windows, eyes fixed, his face expressionless. The rigor mortis that had set into his body over four months ago held his clawed hands at his lap, which in turn had once held the man’s intestines and stomach. He had been gutted in the bloodbath that had occurred a few weeks after the ship had set sail. Now as he sat, seeing nothing, the putrefying liquids of his body had drained slowly from him, pooling under his seat, spreading out in a yellowy-brown-coloured sticky liquid.

Of the eleven crewmembers on board, including the captain, five had jumped overboard to be lost to the sea forever, in an attempt to avoid the carnage. The ship was carrying a shade under 15,000 tonnes of grain bound for Russia, held deep in the cargo hold to keep it dry in the often stormy seas. At the access steps to the huge metal storage area, rats teemed over the rotting flesh of several dismembered crew. The acrid, foul-smelling stench of the now rancid feast of putrid cadavers wafted slowly through the air to the darkest corners. Two pairs of jet-black shiny eyes watched and contemplated killing the scavenging pests.

Kill, kill, kill them all
, the voices said inside his head.

Simon Lloyd had made it to the docks, killing or wounding many on the way. He had boarded the ship, undetected, and waited, just waited. It had started as a normal day. He’d been out and about and had planned to stop by and see his kids, like most absent fathers do from time to time. Only, this was different. It would have been the first time he’d seen them in over five years if he’d made it; and wasn’t it typical for him not to turn up? He couldn’t remember trying; couldn’t remember much of anything now as he stared at the rats, contemplating killing a few.

Kill, kill, kill them all; what are you waiting for?

His leg had healed a little; the black jelly coagulating the wounds from the frenzied attack of something that he couldn’t quite bring to focus. The crew had been no match for him. He’d torn each one apart and how good it had felt as the limbs separated. How good it had felt as he watched the life fade in their eyes. How good it had felt as the soft flesh met his mouth as he ripped and tore, satisfying the rage inside, if only for a few sweet moments. Time to go and kill some rats.

Kill, kill, kill them all

.

To The Reader,

I hope this story has given you hours of entertainment. Please write a review by searching Salby Damned. Fledgling authors like me depend upon people like you to read, review, and hopefully enjoy the works we produce. In an age where everything is digital, I still believe that having a physical book with real paper pages makes for a better story experience.

Finally, I have another book planned for the future,
Being Within
; please watch out for it. The sequel to
Salby Damned
, entitled
Salby Evolution
, is well underway and you can find my fundraising collaboration, You’re Not Alone: An Indie Author Anthology, on Amazon now.

My humble thanks for your purchase.

Ian D. Moore

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If you like short stories, please consider helping me to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support by purchasing You’re Not Alone. It is an international collection of short stories based around a single theme ‘Relationships’. The stories are limited to a 3500 word count and cover a smorgasbord of genres and styles—something for everyone.

More books by Ian D. Moore

You’re Not Alone: An Indie Author Anthology

Being Within

Salby Evolution

The Amazing Adventures Of Ken Brown – Australian Wombat.