Sleeping Soldiers: (Tom Marlowe Book 1), page 19
‘Primakov got it from a friend, and tried to keep it from us,’ Shaw explained. ‘It opens a very important door in Westminster.’
‘President …’
‘Presidents come and go,’ Shaw rose now. ‘I’m sorry, Marlowe, I’d hoped we could convince you to join us.’
She walked over, pulling the blade from his sleeve.
‘But as I can see, you were never much of a joiner—’
She stopped as she stared at the coffee stain on the sofa.
‘There’s too much liquid there,’ she frowned. ‘You’d finished drinking the cup—’
Marlowe moved fast, grabbing the glass of water and slamming it against Shaw’s head, the glass exploding with the impact, sending her stumbling to the floor.
‘I poured it away when you went to get this for my burnt tongue,’ he said, dropping the broken glass from his bloodied hand, reaching into Shaw’s jacket and pulling out her gun. ‘Coffee is strong, but it doesn’t hide the smell of rotting onions or garlic. Both of which are smells given by sodium thiopental.’
Shaw didn’t reply, and Marlowe pulled the dazed agent up, going through her pockets, pulling out her phone, her ID card and a pair of large cable ties, obviously meant for Marlowe. Quickly, he took the ties and secured Shaw’s hands behind her back, placing his knee on her spine to stop her moving as he did so. With the agent now secured, he aimed the screen at Shaw’s dazed face, using the phone’s facial recognition to open it, scrolling through her call history.
‘There,’ he said, tapping the screen with the muzzle of the pistol. ‘Three calls, all in quick succession, yesterday afternoon, the third answered. Curtis answered your phone, didn’t he?’
‘Go to hell,’ Shaw spat, as Marlowe rolled her over, still using his weight to keep her down while watching the door.
‘Stepan phoned you as well, didn’t he?’ Marlowe insisted. ‘Was he telling you he failed to catch me? Or to let you know Raymond had aimed me at Brad Haynes?’
Shaw glared silently at Marlowe.
‘How long before they come in?’ he asked. ‘I’m guessing there’s a camera in here?’
‘You’re dead,’ Shaw hissed.
‘Yeah, but so was Marshall Kirk, but I’m reckoning he’s around here and alive, too,’ Marlowe smiled. ‘So again, how about explaining to me what’s going on?’
‘Retribution!’ Shaw’s voice rose as she looked at the door. ‘Guar—’
She didn’t finish as Marlowe finally returned the favour from their first meeting, slamming the butt of the gun against her head. And, with Shaw now unconscious, Marlowe rose, gun in hand.
He’d been lucky; if he’d taken in more than a sip of the coffee, he’d be unconscious now. That was probably how they got Kirk when he was here.
Thank God for rotting garlic.
Walking to the door, Marlowe took one last look around, and, with a knife in one hand and gun in the other, he opened it, walking outside.
Tessa Kirk had watched Marlowe walk into the building with the MI5 agent who had chased them, and Bridget Summers, who she’d last heard was dead. It was something she hadn’t expected, to be honest, and her plan of somehow breaking into the building and stealing the Rubicon file was placed mentally on hold as she reassessed the situation.
It hadn’t been hard to find the location from the Post-It note, and she’d stolen a car half a mile down the road from Trix’s cottage. She felt bad for doing that, but she didn’t know the woman, and with her parents now both gone, she had to control her own narrative.
And besides, the bitch had scared the crap out of her when she pulled the trigger, so Tessa was happy to be as far from that psycho as possible.
But Marlowe, entering with both friend and foe had thrown her. This meant there was an unreliable narrator somewhere, and a story that was being deliberately changed, or – and Tessa didn’t want to consider this – Marlowe had thrown his lot in with the enemy.
But that still didn’t explain Bridget.
She was about to make her way back out of the car park, using the low wall she was currently behind as a barrier, when she heard the familiar sound of someone moving up behind her. She spun, gun raised, only to find Brad Haynes, smiling, shotgun in hand, watching the same warehouse.
‘Uncle Brad?’
‘Hey, kiddo,’ he said. ‘You here to rescue the Brit too?’
‘You mean Marlowe?’ Tessa was surprised by this. ‘I thought he was on their side.’
‘That remains to be seen.’ Brad looked at Tessa’s gun and frowned. ‘Come back to my car. The Brit left a ton of toys for us to play with, and I think you need an upgrade.’
19
RESCUE STRANGERS
The elevator was in a hallway that seemed to be ignored, and Marlowe wondered if this was because nobody believed anyone would be stupid enough to enter it.
He knew he had a couple of minutes before anyone reached Shaw; she wouldn’t be waking soon, and it was likely whomever was watching the footage would be the first to attend her. So, he needed to move fast. Pressing the down button, he waited, impatient for a couple of seconds, before peering closer.
The button wasn’t lighting up.
Of course, he thought to himself, pulling the plastic card he’d taken from Shaw out of his pocket. The damn thing needed a security level pass. Pressing it against the metal plate with one hand as he pressed the button again, he sighed with relief as it lit up, and the faint rumblings of the elevator could be heard from beneath him.
Of course, if the elevator had a guard, this could be over real fast, and as the gun he’d taken didn’t have a silencer he placed it in the back of his waistband, pulling out the knife and hiding it up his forearm. The guard would be suspicious, but it’d give him a second or two for an attack.
What if they were MI5 agents? the voice of his conscience muttered. Would you kill someone who you’d worked with?
Marlowe pushed the thought back. The fact they were here meant there was a strong chance they weren’t on “his side”, which meant they weren’t working in the best interests of MI5. He had to consider them as enemies, no matter what he saw.
Luckily for him, though, when the elevator door opened, there was nobody inside. Quickly and quietly, making sure nobody was watching, but aware the security cameras were marking his every move, Marlowe slipped into the elevator, hitting the down button inside, only relaxing when the doors finally closed.
There was a camera in the back left of the elevator, nestled into the top corner, observing everything which happened within. Marlowe knew he couldn’t avoid it, but he’d kept his face down as he entered, and now stood directly underneath it, so at best it gained a great shot of the top of his head. He knew it wouldn’t work for long, but anything that extended his time down here was a Godsend.
He didn’t know if Marshall Kirk or Raymond Sykes were down here, but either agent was a bonus, for different reasons. Marshall would need rescuing, while Raymond would need questioning. But the basement was more likely to be the location of the server farm they had originally created this building for, and somewhere within the servers was the real Rubicon list.
At least, he hoped so.
There was every chance the list Shaw showed him earlier had overwritten the original list, and that could be a major issue down the line, but the server’s version of the list was still a digital version of the original one, transcribed in the last twenty years. The original Rubicon list, created by the eighties and nineties Project Rubicon, was probably still on a tape drive somewhere, a lost relic of an analogue era. Maybe even down here.
The elevator opened out into a corridor, with doors on either side. The ceiling was low, lit by fluorescent lamps, and it surprised Marlowe to see no visible security. Moving slowly, keeping to the wall, he watched the exit at the end as he stopped at the first door, a black-painted one to his right, trying the lock.
It didn’t open.
Marlowe considered trying to pick the lock, to see what was inside, but at the same time there were two more doors, and a chance to check through both. If he had the time, and by that he meant if he wasn’t being shot at, he could always come back and check it.
The next door was the one on the left; twisting the handle, Marlowe found it opened, the room within bathed in semi-darkness. Quickly, and as quietly as he could, Marlowe moved in, closing his eyes for a moment so he could adjust to the darkened space. Closing the door behind him, he looked around.
The room was unlit by lighting, but filled with a faint shade of electric blue, as LEDs on banks of computer servers flashed on and off rhythmically. Marlowe walked over to the first rack, examining either side, finding nothing but glass-fronted encasements. He walked to the next one and paused, smiling.
In the middle of the third rack was a slim shelf, and as it pulled out on the sliders on the sides, it revealed a folded laptop, connected to the network. Opening it up, he saw the screen flare up, a login command the only text on it.
Tapping quickly, Marlowe entered a name and code. It was one he’d known for a while, but it should still have the priority clearance he needed.
WINTERGREEN, EMILIA
028486 - 3HYb^ - DELTA
Nothing happened, and for a second, Marlowe wondered if Wintergreen had changed her login details while he was ill, but then a red command flashed up on the screen
ACCESS DENIED
Oh, crap.
Marlowe looked around the room, expecting to be caught at any moment. He was sure he’d just heard gunshots, and a faint klaxon could be heard from the floor above him.
He had another log in, one he’d picked up more recently, more because he was bored than anything else, and so he typed that instead.
FENCHURCH, CARRIE
947823 - 8vhW@ - GAMMA
He’d learnt the passcode while investigating Doctor Fenchurch when he discovered her connection to Rattlestone and Francine Pearce. He’d never intended to use it, but right now, it sounded like he had a matter of minutes before they found him.
ACCESS GRANTED
The green command screen lit up his face, and Marlowe gratefully searched through the file system of the servers. Anything Thames House had was automatically backed up here, so within reason, Rubicon should be easy to extract.
It was around this point Marlowe realised he didn’t have a USB drive on him. But that was fine because he’d found another problem.
There was a copy of Rubicon on the server. He could see the details.
Details that were modified two days earlier.
‘Shit,’ he hissed, stepping away. If this was showing as changed here, then it’d be the same in Thames House. Maybe there was a small, remote and air-gapped server out there which hadn’t been caught yet, but Marlowe doubted it.
Opening it up, he read through the list. It was the same one Shaw had shown him, one that didn’t name Harris as a traitor, while allowing Trix, Marlowe and Tessa to be damned by parental conspiracies within the list, with Wintergreen named personally. Which was bollocks, because back in the nineties, when this list was created, she was a beat copper in East London and nothing to do with this. She hadn’t even met Marlowe’s mum at that point, and the connection, and death, that brought her into the fold wouldn’t occur for years.
And Olivia Marlowe was no traitor.
Marlowe wanted to scream, punch something, break something; he couldn’t believe the lies being told here. However, on a second scan, he noticed something else. Only the file codes for Michael Preston, Olivia Marlowe, and Emilia Wintergreen had been altered recently. And, checking the data cells, he saw someone had changed only the names; the sexes of the traitors hadn’t been altered.
More importantly, Angela Weber, the wife of Marshall and mother of Tessa, hadn’t been touched. She really was a sleeping soldier.
Did Tessa know?
There was shouting now, faint and through the ceiling, and Marlowe could hear gunfire. Something was definitely happening and possibly not to his advantage, so he needed to move fast. There was no point taking a copy now, as this was the same list Trix now had, if it was from the USB Chechik had owned. Closing the laptop and moving to the door, Marlowe was still running through the scenarios in his head.
The sexes couldn’t be changed, which meant three sleepers, two women and a man had been removed. The obvious answers were Bridget and Raymond, as they seemed to work together, but the third name, the second woman, was a curious one. Was it Shaw? It couldn’t be, as she was too young to be on the list. A parent, perhaps? Shaw becoming damned like Tessa was. Or was there someone else out there still?
Marlowe couldn’t consider this, he needed to move, and fast. Opening the door, he was about to cross to the end of the corridor—
A door opened, and a very surprised guard stood facing him.
‘What’s all the noise—’ the guard started, but stopped as Marlowe moved in, chopping at his throat hard with the edge of his hand, the guard staggered back, grabbing at his neck, unable to shout and his eyes bulging as he struggled to breathe. Marlowe took the moment to step closer again, this time spinning the guard around and placing him in a sleeper hold, dropping him to the floor.
He hated to do this, but if the guard was a friendly, if misguided one, convinced the enemy were on his side, then Marlowe didn’t want to have his death on his conscience. Straightening up, Marlowe looked around the room. It was lit, and someone had placed a camp bed in the corner. The room seemed more like a cell, with a padded chair for the guard to sit, a table beside him, an iPad playing something off one of the streaming services beside it.
To have a guard in your cell was quite rare and made Marlowe wonder who’d need such treatment.
‘About bloody time,’ Marshall Kirk wheezed, sitting up on the camp bed. ‘Took you long enough.’
‘You’re lucky I found you at all.’ Marlowe walked over to his mentor, crouching in front of him, and checking him for injuries, smiling widely at the fact his friend was still alive. ‘I went to your bloody funeral two days ago.’
Marshall Kirk was exhausted, bruised, and battered. He had a dried cut running down from his forehead, and his nose looked to have been broken at some point and placed back into position, likely by Kirk himself. His clothes looked like he’d been sleeping in them for days, which was likely, and his stubble’s length gave a rough timeline of two weeks held.
‘They said I died?’ Kirk tried to rise, but he was weak, shivering.
‘Let me find you something to drink,’ Marlowe went to rise, but Kirk grabbed his arm.
‘No,’ he insisted. ‘It’s all drugged. I’d rather be dehydrated and awake. Now tell me what the hell happened. Is Tessa all right?’
‘Tessa’s with a friend, as far as I know,’ Marlowe helped Kirk up to a sitting position. ‘They tried to bring her in because she’s connected to the list.’
He watched Kirk’s face.
‘Although you knew that already, didn’t you?’ he asked. ‘This was why you got involved, wasn’t it?’
‘I never wanted to admit it, but I knew her mother was still loyal,’ he whispered. ‘I hoped she’d grow out of it, like a phase. And when Rubicon was active, I saw her name on it. I couldn’t change the details, I didn’t have the security level to do that, but I realised if I could control the op, I could make sure her name didn’t come out. And, when the Op ended, I made sure Rubicon was buried on a tape drive, deep inside Whitehall.’
‘Not deep enough, it seems,’ Marlowe nodded. ‘But Tessa’s safe, as far as I know. Some MI5 guy named Harris brought me in, said they found your body in a car park, burned to a crisp and with two bullets in the skull. I don’t know whether or not this was true—’
‘Obviously not true!’ Kirk exclaimed as Marlowe waved him back down.
‘I mean, whether Harris made this up, or believes it because there was a body,’ he corrected. ‘I had Bridget tell me she worked with you, but she seems to work with Raymond Sykes and a bunch of mercenaries. Oh, and some rogue MI5 agent named Shaw.’
‘Martina Shaw?’ Kirk’s eyes widened. Marlowe shrugged.
‘Never got the name. Why?’
‘Martina Shaw was brought in under Raymond Sykes’ internship scheme, about ten years back,’ Kirk replied. ‘I met her a couple of times before I retired. Analyst at GCHQ who moved into Special Branch.’
‘That sounds like her,’ Marlowe rose now, looking around the makeshift cell. ‘She’s working with Bridget and Raymond.’
‘Bridget was someone I knew, but not that close. And bloody Raymond is a snake,’ Kirk groaned as he stood now. ‘He has a plan—’
‘I know, to kill the US President tomorrow,’ Marlowe helped Kirk to the chair where the guard, still unconscious, had once sat. He paused, as the sounds of gunfire could be heard again in the distance.
‘Friends of yours?’ Kirk smiled.
‘Not that I know of,’ Marlowe shook his head. ‘I came alone.’
‘Some things never change,’ Kirk smiled weakly. ‘Working alone, jumping to conclusions—’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, Raymond isn’t using the list against the President,’ Kirk replied. ‘He’s using it to take down Parliament. Real Guy Fawkes shit. And he’s using me as the Oswald.’
Marlowe paused in surprise.
‘They made me write a confession,’ Kirk looked ashamed as he continued. ‘Pages of conspiracy shit. They drugged me up to the nines, writing whatever they told me to, because they told me they had Tessa. Had images of her with guards in MI5’s building.’
Marlowe knew how this had been shown; they must have taken them before she was rescued and escaped through the tunnel system.
If only they’d taken the photos an hour later, he thought morosely to himself as Kirk continued.
‘They’re using the confession to explain why I detonate a dirty bomb under Westminster tomorrow, and in the process reveal the list, starting a war,’ he finished. ‘I’m sorry, Tom, they made me add your name to it, making out you were helping me. I don’t think they intended us to live.’
