Saving Tara Goodwin (Mystery Book 1) (33 page)

She chuckled darkly.

‘And even you joined in this time, and gave us all a nice little show.’

Martha squirmed.

‘Not that you did much talking, but I suppose you couldn’t with your mouth full.’

Martha stared down to the work surface, ‘No ma’am.’

Enjoying Martha’s discomfort, she happily sat down at the table and sipped her coffee.

‘And now my darling Chrissy has come to stay, we can have fun all the time.’

Martha pretended to smile, but she was trying hard not to think of it.

‘Yes ma …’

She froze, as quite suddenly that awful sound floated out across the kitchen, and turning to the Swiss clock, saw the tiny wooden figures of a boy and girl beginning to revolve in and out of their little house, and they foretold the coming of hell as that hideous tune announced a priority message for ma’am, waiting for her up in the priest hole.

As Frank made his way along the tunnel, he saw it wasn’t complete darkness after all, the peepholes peppering the tunnel giving just enough light to see forward, and once he’d settled himself, could understand what Tara had tried to explain, and the master passage was exactly that, with tunnels and passages branching off everywhere to form an enormous horizontal tree, and as the side passages always ended in a cul-de-sac, it was virtually impossible to get lost, and he soon found he was able to keep track of his progress by looking into the rooms as he passed by, and it was amazing, sometimes travelling between rooms, beside the normal passages and occasionally under short flights of high stairs or even crawling along narrow twisting tunnels.

Passing by Dudley’s office he saw it was lifeless and silent, and looking into Merlin’s sanctum, saw the many technicians working steadily and quietly at their various computer stations, and realising he was entering the so-called, naughty area, remembered Tara’s embarrassment when she’d tried to avoid describing the various bed chambers.

And now he could see why, because the pornography was quite incredible and he could only wonder at the obscene debauchery that must have taken place in these rooms.

Moving deeper into the sex area, he saw all the rooms had the same theme and had obviously been left untouched throughout the years, but it looked incongruous to see a bed chamber full with sex objects now being used just as any normal office, because filing cabinets stood beside beds fitted with straps, while huge oil paintings of degenerate orgies hung impassively over typists’ desks.

Travelling on, one room immediately stood out. It was enormous with paintings and drawings of the most extreme obscenity while on clothes rails hung every type of fetish clothing imaginable, and shaped pieces of furniture for kneeling and splaying, all fitted with collars and chains, but most amazing of all was further over, and it was nothing less than a smaller version of flight control at Cape Canaveral.

There was bank after bank of computers, printers, monitors, televisions, phones, copiers and fax machines all sectioned off under their individual nameplates.

UK, USA, MIDDLE EAST, SOUTH AMERICA, FAR EAST, EUROPE, RUSSIA, ASIA, BALKANS, and in endless categories, sub-names were listed underneath.

Political, Financial, Industrial, Economy, Religion, Military, Subversives, Terrorists, Propaganda, Law, History, Criminal, Mafia, SIS - MI6, The World Trade Organisation, Covert Action, Lethal Funding, Communism Delta, Liaison - CIA Near East Division, Pakistan Afghanistan Mudjahideen, Liaison - Solidarity, Polish Intelligence, Section 11, but on separate banks there were the two biggest teams of all with huge nameplates. GCHQ (Encryptabust ) > Liaison < STATION X1 - HOMOGENISE - FORTY, and, MOD - NSA - MENWITH - FYLINGDALES - ECHELON > Liaison < STATION X1.

Watching through the peephole, the many operators monitored, gathered and updated the endless files and disks, and Tara was right, he was looking at Cardinal’s gathering system and their technically advanced IT computer. The Minotaur.

He’d seen enough, the Minotaur did exist, and making his way back along the passage, he heard the hum of the lift shaft motor, and realising the security office couldn’t be far away, wondered just how murky those security monitors had been. Crawling along, he followed a tunnel leading off into the gloomy darkness, but he came to a dead end, and keeping still, heard voices close by.

Looking around, he saw a chink of light coming from the wood panelling at the end of the tunnel, and putting his eye to the peephole, looked down and saw a large desk with a pile of
Tits and Bums
magazines, the voices coming much louder, but squinting down through the peephole, all he could see were two security guards staring hard at a monitor.

‘Well, Cardinal man or not, we’ve got to do something.’

As the guards moved away, Frank could finally see the screen, and there was Monty, leaning against Cabinet 1 and reading that damned file, page after page.

Frank watched, his mind numb, then one of the guards picked up the red phone.

32

Lucinda’s mood had flipped the very moment the old Swiss clock had burst into life, and although she’d been smiling and jovial till then, in that mesmerising second she’d become statuesque like a dark angel, silent, venomous and frightening.

Martha watched the transition through eyes fixed in horror.

She’d hoped it wouldn’t happen again for a long time, but nonetheless, they were there, the wooden boy and girl going round and round in endless circles to that hated tune.

Lucinda fell into a still darkness as in her mind’s eye she saw the fireball of the explosion that had ripped the building into broken shards, and amongst the screaming bodies lay smouldering lumps of human flesh that had once been tiny children, just playing.

Standing up slowly as if in a dream, her dark eyes now stared directly at Martha.

Someone had made the fatal mistake of directing the bomb to the wrong target.

But only the two of them were here, so that person must have been Martha …

Lucinda moved closer, and Martha, quivering, edged away backwards.

‘Please ma’am. Please … For the love of God, please …’

She came on, her feet hardly seeming to move as Martha slowly backed away, but just as Lucinda’s bright red pointed fingernails clutched at Martha’s throat, the hall door suddenly crashed open as Arthur barged through in a temper.

‘Martha. What the hell have you done to the video recor…’

He stopped dead, for after all this time, ma’am was killing Martha again.

Lucinda faltered, and shuddering, began to melt out of her trance, and releasing Martha’s throat, watched her cough and gasp for air as small rivers of blood trickled down.

Lucinda stood perfectly still, her eyes blank as if unable to understand where she was, and when her vision at last began to clear, recoiled back from the sight of Martha laying sprawled against the wall, her piggy eyes bulging in terror while her throat ran with blood.

Yelling and screaming, Lucinda ran away into the dark morbid depths of the old house, and frantically climbing the gloomy stairs to the priest hole, stood on the landing and began to thump her head on the carving.

Frank made his way back as fast as he could through the half lit master passage, angry and confused as he scrabbled through the twists and turns of the tunnels.

So what had possessed him to do it?

Jesus, that damned file was for authorised eyes only, but he hadn’t been able to resist it, and now he’d blown everything to hell.

Monty had found the seal on the file to have been long since broken by Robin Sheverill, but the front cover was intact, and in large bold letters, he’d read:

Dr Edward Jenner, 1749 - 1823.

On the inside page was a brief description of the man and his work.

'His great discovery which has saved more lives than the work of any other man had begun on the 14th of May 1796 when a milkmaid, Sarah Nelmes came to him suffering from cowpox.'

Dr Jenner knew from country folklore that milkmaids who had contracted the mild form of cowpox could not then catch the dreaded
'smallpox'
and so he conducted an experiment.

On the 14th of May 1796 he took infected material from Sarah Nelmes and scratched the infected material into the skin of his gardener’s son, James Phipps, and that in effect was the first vaccination, and when James had sufficiently recovered, he tried to infect the boy with the killer disease, smallpox, but without success.

On the next page, Monty read a brief description of how the virus affected mankind, because smallpox is highly specialised, it only attacks humans and there’s no cure.

It’s estimated that since smallpox first appeared some 3,000 years ago it has killed approximately 20 - 30 % of the world’s population, around 100 million people and left another 200 million either blind or scarred for life, and recently, in just this century alone it has killed more people than all the wars put together.

Monty looked through the other details in the file.

As recently as 1967 The World Health Organisation attacked smallpox on a global scale and success was proclaimed in 1980 when they declared that 'Smallpox' was dead.

The WHO then decided that the remaining research stocks of over 600 vials of the smallpox virus should only be kept in two high security laboratories, one in Russia and one in America.

So it was arranged that the samples of the virus held in Britain would be shipped from Porton Down to the security laboratory in America, and it was agreed with the Health & Safety Executive that it would be shipped as freeze-dried powder in small labelled containers, and although the police would escort the samples to the departure airport, other people would not be allowed to know.

But in a closed session, a meeting of Am-Brit Intelligence was held in secret and Glenndenning persuaded the committee that in view of the political meltdown in Russia, and the fact that weapons were disappearing, left, right and centre, it would be prudent if a Mimesis think-tank of the joint advisors to the NSA, CIA and SIS could find a logistical solution to substitute a placebo in place of a particular sample of the virus, either before or in transit across the UK, and the virus would be held unclassified in a destination to be chosen by the CoS, and later, if all the stocks were destroyed in both America and Russia, Am-Brit would hold the ultimate bargaining chip.

Since then, the WHO have tried on two occasions to have the remaining stocks in Russia and America destroyed, but both extinction dates in 1993 and 1995 have been postponed due to research protests, but now there’s a new, final official date when all the vials in both Russia and America will be destroyed.

It’s the 30th of June 1999 and then 'Smallpox' will no longer exist on earth.

Monty grimaced, except for one vial that’s now declassified, and by orders of the CoS has come to rest unnoticed and within the safety of Area 57.

Staring out through the window, he knew now that the number, 57, was simply an amalgam of the grid reference numbers on the Ordnance Survey map, Sheet 184.

But why did Glenndenning want to know where the vial could be found?

Lucinda stood in the gloom outside the priest hole, and calming the pounding in her chest, shut her eyes tightly against the flashes of bright light shooting through her head.

Looking up, she slowly turned the wooden carving and felt the sweaty burst of heat as she eased the door open, and stepping into the dark deathly silence, ignored the spiders already around her ankles, but as she reached up to the light switch, she stopped abruptly, her eye suddenly caught by the faintest red glow up in the priest hole.

She stared in puzzlement, and in the sweet musky darkness, padded up the stairs and pushed the door open, but only to stand transfixed as she looked at the red neon shining brightly on the switch of the photocopier.

And then the pain vanished instantly as her eyes narrowed to slits of venom.

Snapping on the light, she flicked the grotesque spiders from her and crushed them, and looking around the room, checked every detail for the slightest discrepancy, and when her gaze fell on the red digital numbers of the copier, they told her exactly how many copies had been made.

Checking her desk, she saw the pad and alphabet were more or less as she remembered leaving them, but looking more closely to the pad, realised that although it was open at the correct page, she could see faint crease lines on the individual pages as if they’d all been folded over, one at a time along the spine.

Sitting down, she flipped through the used portion of the pad, and counting the pages, looked back to the reading on the copier and saw it had recorded just one more.

Frowning, she looked down to the desk and her gaze fell on the alphabet page.

And now, someone must die, die quite horribly, and very soon.

Evelyn waited nervously in the corridor, and when she heard Lewis pulling at the lever, watched impatiently as the huge mechanism began to open the door, but when he emerged, he looked angry, ‘Evelyn, where the hell is Monty?’

She glanced anxiously down to the cubicles, ‘He’s getting changed.’

‘Well thank god for that, we’ve got to get out of here, and pretty damned quick.’

Following her through the airport gate, they hurried down the corridor.

‘Evelyn. Monty’s in big trouble, he’s been reading that damned file.’

‘Yes, I know,’ she looked at him quizzically, ‘but how do you know?’

‘Never mind that, so why the hell didn’t you stop him?’

She looked frightened, ‘I did try, but he wouldn’t listen.’

‘Well that’s Monty all over. Do the job and bollocks to the Devil.’

Monty was almost changed when they rushed into the cubicles and stripped off, and having stood impatiently for the camera, got dressed in their own clothes.

‘Jesus, Monty, I don’t believe it, you actually read that bloody file.’

‘Yes, sorry about that, but it had to be done, it was the only way.’

‘But they’ve got you on camera, reading the damned stuff.’

‘I rather thought they would, after all the fuss.’

‘And you still read it? An authorised eyes only file. Dear god.’

‘Well as I said, it had to be done.’

‘Okay, if you say so, but we’ve got to get the hell out of here, or you’re dead.’

Monty straightened his tie, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much.’

‘Worry? Did you say, worry …

One, you’ve just committed a crime to die for.

Two, the only way out is through the main gate.

Three, Sergeant Jenkins just happens to be Angela’s poodle.

And four, his fucking guards are armed and we’re not, just in case you’ve forgotten.’

Monty checked his watch, ‘No, I didn’t forget, and it’s only myself who’s recorded going into that room and being monitored, and for the last half an hour, Sergeant Jenkins will have been trying to explain to the CIC why he allowed the release of the bodies without the correct medical certificates, so Sergeant Jenkins is feeling rather isolated just now.’

Looking up to the sprinklers, Evelyn wished they could leave before they went off.

‘Also, a private ambulance will arrive here in twenty minutes, and the doctor has orders to remove me on a priority emergency basis, then quite soon, Angela will receive a letter saying if anything should happen to my Sarah, a dossier of everything I know will be sent to the French and German national newspapers.’

As Frank looked up from tying his shoelaces, a quiet smile spread over his face.

‘Monty, why did I ever doubt you?’

‘I’ve absolutely no idea, old chap. No idea at all.’

Swiping the men out of the house, Evelyn left them to sit and talk on the steps, but she was scared and couldn’t help wondering what would happen to her, now she’d helped Monty commit the worst possible crime at Thornley Manor.

Frank sat huddled on the step, ‘Well, was reading that file worth the risk?’

‘Sadly, yes it was.’

‘Go on then, fill me in.’

‘I can’t. You see, although I’ve provided a safety net for yourself, Mrs Carthwaite, and my own dear Sarah, it would be foolish to provide you with information that would seal your death warrant.’

‘Okay, but ignorance is dangerous, and if I foul up, a lot of people could get hurt.’

‘True, so maybe something to help you, but just enough and no more.’

His eyes searched along the avenue for the ambulance, time was running away.

‘Well it’s more or less certain that Glenndenning is the key figure in all this.’

‘That’s right, and I reckon Angela will soon be asking the CoS if she can turn the dogs loose on him.’

Monty shook his head, ‘I think not, old chap, because the lady would be refused.’

Frank looked surprised, ‘And what makes you think that?’

‘Just knowledge, and if Angela was also aware of the contents of that file, I have no doubt she would agree with me.’

‘But maybe she does know, I wouldn’t put anything past her.’

‘Now that is most unlikely. To know the content of the file would be foolish, and Angela is not that, but Glenndenning was mentioned in the file, and I suspect the reason for the violation was to discover the resting place of an extremely lethal item.’

‘Okay, so if Angela can’t cleanse Glenndenning, where does that leave everyone else?’

‘In a very dangerous situation, for if Angela is denied access to Glenndenning, she might decide to isolate him by removing anyone who might be involved, that’s why I’ve decided to go to Moon Shadow and try to make a difference from there.’

‘Right, but you can’t leave me here naked, I must have something.’

‘But I can’t tell you more, it’s just too dangerous, surely you can see that?’

‘Well of course I can, but Angela is always one step ahead, I need a fighting chance.’