Poster Boy, page 11
It was the latest in a long line of programmes that demonised people under the guise of ‘informative entertainment’. The concept was nothing new, there were plenty of similar tricks used when I was a kid. Back then the enemies they wanted everyone to blame for all the country’s ills were benefit claimants. My foster mum used to tune in every week, to indulge in a spot of self-righteous condemnation. These days it was the illegals under the spotlight.
The Raids was the most popular of all the ERP-funded shows. More than seven million patriots tuned in three times a week to watch immigrants being dragged from their hovels, hopefully kicking and spitting.
The show had become one of the best propaganda tools the government had, so it was closely monitored. They were under strict instructions to portray the illegals in a certain way. Under no circumstances were they allowed to broadcast any of them speaking English, unless they were swearing. No subtitles. If you can communicate with someone it makes them seem less different, less threatening. We wanted filth. Degenerates fighting, resisting, cursing. Not too much human interest, we couldn’t have them showing any sob stories. These people had to be a drain on our society, a threat to our safety. Or, at the very least, a burden on our moral fibre.
We’d been called in because one of the runners had reported concerns over the new producer. Apparently he was one of those ‘artistic integrity’ types, trying to make a name for himself rather than doing what he was told. He was good, though, the ratings were up since he took over. They didn’t want to lose him if they could help it. So they decided he needed ‘guidance’ (which was the official way of saying he needed to be reminded who paid his wages and taken down a peg or two).
When we arrived at the studio the problem was obvious. The guy in question, a flamboyant little ginger tosser, was clearly spoiling for a ruck. They were editing footage of a young Ukrainian family being rounded up. The father only had one arm; he’d been subject to torture in his own country. The shots had to be cut so you couldn’t see the stump. There were no two ways about it. Public sympathy for the illegals was not to be encouraged, that was fundamental. Let that in and it wouldn’t get through the censors. Everyone knew it.
But this twat’s ego was bigger than his common sense. He pranced around, waving scripts in Greyson’s face.
“It’s a perfect shot, it’s the money shot. Look!” He tapped at the screen and showed us the footage. The mother was ranting in her own language. Perfect. The broken windows and car tyres in the background. Sublime. Eldest kid kicking the cameraman, youngest covered in dirt. Bingo. But through it all there he was, right beside them. A drained, haggard-looking man, eyes glistening with tears, and that fucking ill-stitched stump. No. If the cameraman had had enough sense to film him from the other angle then maybe. But as it stood there was no way on Cole’s scorched earth that was staying in.
Greyson let the guy rant and rave about how the scene was ‘quintessentially Raids’ until he ran out of steam. Then he spoke slowly. “Sir, all we’re asking is can you edit him out?”
“What?” The producer looked as though he might have an embolism. “No, I can’t edit him out. The kid’s leaning on him for Christ’s sake.”
Greyson shrugged. “Then I’m afraid you’ll have to cut it.”
“It’s the best scene of the week. I don’t take orders from jumped-up bobbies who know nothing about cinematography.”
Greyson grinned. He turned to me and raised his eyebrow.
My turn, and I was fired up for it. I’d spent the morning having to get heavy with a poor Imam who’d done nothing more than accidentally misspell a name on his accounts. But we’d shut down his mosque, the last remaining one in Islington. Ever since Cole declared it illegal for any institution to promote ‘non-British values’ we’d spent most of our time scrutinising temples, mosques and synagogues, looking for any slight misstep that could be interpreted as unpatriotic. I charged him with fraud, and forced him to shut the doors for good. The look in his eyes when he pleaded with me to think of his congregation, and all the work they were doing for the homeless, was playing on my mind. Persecuting the innocent was a necessary evil; I had to play the perfect PID to stay hidden. But every now and then, it pricked at my conscience.
This little shit stain in front of me was exactly what I needed to take my mind off it. People like him made my blood boil. Their protests were always egotistical, self-serving. Just like all those god-awful student activists, pretending they’re trying to change society by locking themselves in a building, or holding a public rally. Ignorant glory hunters. You don’t make real change by jumping on anti-establishment bandwagons and flaunting your discontent for the cameras. Real change has to come from within, hard-won by true soldiers. People who put in decades, people who play the long game with their cards to their chest. People who don’t seek recognition. People like me.
I removed my Shades and put them in my back pocket. I held his gaze as I stepped forward, edging closer until I could smell the chorizo he’d had for lunch. He only came up to my chest but he didn’t look away, even though he must have been straining his neck. I smiled.
“My colleague has asked you nicely to—”
“I don’t give a shit! I’m trying to make television here, and—”
“My colleague has asked you, now I am telling you. You either edit him out, or you cut the whole scene. If you continue to make my life difficult I will not hesitate to charge you with obstructing public information, which carries a maximum sentence of ten years in prison under section twelve of the Public Information Act.’
He scowled and opened his mouth to protest. I didn’t give him the chance.
“Moreover, I will personally see to it that your entire family is slandered in the press. We’ll throw in some allegations of paedophilia perhaps, and you’ll get passed around the shower blocks to be devoured like the milky ginger pudding you are. Because, regardless of whatever self-important delusions of grandeur you are suffering from, the fact remains that this ‘jumped-up bobby’ has been given direct orders from the government, which grant me the jurisdiction to deprive you of your job, your home and your liberty… and even destroy your name.”
He tried to come up with a retort, but settled for storming out. The last ditch protest of someone who knows they’re going to have to toe the line, but still feels the need to make a pointless show of not being happy about it.
Greyson stared at me, wondering how I’d react. He knew I didn’t tolerate disrespect, or indulge pansy-ass displays of defiance. If I was pissed off (which I was most of the time, working for the enemy will do that to you), I’d usually have them back in front of me issuing a contrite apology, sometimes with their pinky bent backwards in my fist. But I was feeling generous. It was less than a week until Cole would be nothing more than a splattered mess to be scraped up outside Victoria station. I let the little twat have his last stand. It wouldn’t matter in the long run. I wouldn’t be a PID much longer.
The producer will never know how lucky he was that my Shades didn’t ring until we were back in the car. If the news had come ten minutes earlier he’d probably still be sucking dick in prison right now. As it was we were driving through Kensington when I got the call, Greyson sporting a face-splitting grin.
“Hoo man, did you see his face?” he started enthusing, and I sighed inwardly. The trouble with Greyson was that he wanted to shag me, which made him act like a cross between a peacock and a puppy. When he wasn’t strutting around showing off, he was bouncing around gushing about how brilliant I was. Neither stance impressed me, and both were becoming tiresome. “Oh, that was classic, Jinks. Total classic. Little prick didn’t know what hit him.”
“Yeah. Well, it wasn’t difficult. Guys like him are all front, no nuts,” I replied.
“You were amazing. It was all I could do to keep a straight face. We make a great team, eh?”
He was fishing. He wanted me to gush back about how his amicable, professional demeanour was the perfect set-up for my ‘take-no-prisoners’ approach. I couldn’t bring myself to stroke his ego. I was actually relieved when the office called. For a few seconds anyway.
“Get back here now, guys.” Leila cut to the chase, as usual. “We’ve got a major incident. Mills is calling a meeting in thirty minutes. All PIDS on deck.”
“What’s happened?” Greyson yelled out, before I could answer. Another thing that wound me up. He seemed to be incapable of letting me take calls on my own Shades without butting in.
“Terrorist plot. You won’t believe it but the Met have caught him.”
“Him who?”
“Public enemy number one. Knight himself.”
I felt sick. The whole world started to spin. Daniel? They’d caught Daniel? It wasn’t possible. He was the PIDs’ number one target. We were a pain in Cole’s arse. Daniel’s irreverent broadcasts had managed to garner far more public support than could be tolerated. All PID officers had access to everything we had on him, and it was sweet FA. There were no leads, no informants, absolutely no trace of him at all. He was safe. We were safe. And we were so fucking close. I checked the PID records ten times a day. There was nothing, nothing to suggest we were anywhere close to finding him. This could not be happening. And if they had Daniel, what about the others? Had they raided HQ? Were any of us safe?
I cleared my throat. “How?” I hoped I didn’t sound as shaky as I felt. “The trail was cold.”
I’d made damn sure it was.
“You’ll never guess, some drugged-up kid fell off a bridge, caused a pile up. His was one of the cars that crashed.”
He’d crashed? My stomach churned. “Is he alright?”
“Who, the kid? No, he died at the scene.”
“Not the kid, Knight. Is he okay? I mean, will we be able to question him?”
“Broken a few bones, I think. But don’t worry, he can still talk.”
“Good.” I thanked God he was alive. I couldn’t have held it together if not. Though maybe he’d have been better off dead. He’d never talk, and they’d never give up. I try not to think about what they must have done to him over the years. I don’t even look at the records; I can’t bear to imagine. If I were a better person I’d have wished him dead in the crash. My relief that he wasn’t was selfish. I don’t think I could keep going in this world if he wasn’t in it somewhere.
3
At the office everyone was buzzing, flapping around like startled seagulls. Walking into the chaos I felt numb. All I could think about was the night before. The smell of Scotch on Daniel’s breath as he hugged me, the sparkle in his eyes. He’d stroked my cheek, staring straight at me as though he were looking past all the superficial crap and into my soul.
“You did good, kid,” he told me, his voice like thick silk. “Stay strong, Teresa. I’ll see you on the other side.”
Just five days. Five little days and it would all have been over. All the years of training, of preparing, of walking through the lion’s den. I’d worked so hard for it. We all had. It was so close we could almost taste it. Teresa Clarke’s passport and plane tickets were tucked behind the clock on Zara Jinks’ mantelpiece. Ready to leave the lies behind. Ready to watch from across the globe as England awoke to a better future. And all because of us.
Now it was over. Pulled out from under me, leaving me giddy. Mills bustled in, and the room fell to a restless hush.
Stay strong, Teresa.
“Right,” Mills put his coffee down on the desk and adjusted his trousers over his beer gut, “I know it’s knocking-off time for most of you but you’re gonna have to forget whatever plans you had for tonight. This is big. We’re gonna have to go public much sooner than I’d like, so we need an angle. The situation is this.” He pulled down the screen behind him, and brought up Daniel’s mugshot. The bile churned in my guts. “We got the bastard.”
Everyone cheered.
“But,” Mills continued, “it’s not all good news. It turns out he was even more of a menace than we thought. Which means we have some explaining to do. Somehow, as well as not finding the son of a bitch, we – and I’m including all of you in this – managed to miss the fact he’s not just a hacktivist pain in the arse, he’s a fucking bomb-toting terrorist too. So, right now anti-terror are jumping up and down, demanding our heads on plates. The shit is hitting the proverbial fan and it’s about to cover us all. Now you know, and I know, anti-terror couldn’t find their own dicks in the dark—” The department roared and clapped. “But they’re gonna cover their own arses by flaying ours. They’re claiming they would have found him themselves if we had done our jobs properly. Seeing as we can’t prove otherwise, we need to do some major damage control. Cos I’m telling you now, Browne is not prepared to take the rap for this one, ladies and gents. If anyone starts throwing blame at anti-terror, she is gonna point her French manicures firmly in our direction. And frankly, I can’t find a good reason why she shouldn’t. We need to take the heat off them pronto or they’ll drop us in the fire too.
“Fortunately, our chums in anti-terror are a bit busy right now rounding up the rest of Knight’s team. So that buys us a few hours to work out what the fuck we’re going to do about this mess.”
The rest of his team?
I tried not to hyperventilate. How? What information did they have? I was supposed to warn the others if the PIDs were onto us. Was it already too late? I needed to find out exactly how much they knew.
“Sir,” I squeaked. “Perhaps if you can tell us exactly what information they have, we can formulate our response?”
“Always running off the block before the pistol, aren’t you, Jinks? I was just getting to that.” He perched himself of the edge of the desk, a stance he always employed when he wanted to come across as ‘one of us’ rather than the big boss. A stance that always made me wary.
“In a nutshell guys, the situation is this: Knight was unconscious in his car, carrying no identification. The only thing the cops on the scene found was a locked briefcase in the boot. Luckily for us, they needed to ID the guy to call his next of kin, so they had just cause to break into it. And that was when they hit pay day. Damn thing was stuffed full of blueprints, diagrams, notes… a fucking treasure trove. Plus, every page had Gridless’ logo at the top. The blueprints were for ten stations on the Circle line. From the notes and diagrams it was as easy as doing a toddler’s dot-to-dot to work out what they were going to do. If fate hadn’t thrown us a bone, ladies and gents, then next Tuesday at 8:45 ten suicide bombers carrying nitroglycerin disguised in thermos flasks would have blown up the London Underground. The death toll would have made it the biggest terrorist attack our country has ever seen. And we had no fucking clue.”
Whistles and gasps filled the room. My own shock wasn’t feigned.
It was bullshit. Total fucking bullshit.
I shoved my hands between my legs to stop them shaking. It was a lie. A huge fucking lie. The only target was Cole. Gridless had never intended to kill innocent people.
I knew the PIDs lied to the public; it was our job. Public MISinformation Department, that’s what we called ourselves behind closed doors. I’m not naïve, never have been. I knew there were things even a PID officer wasn’t privy to. But I thought we got the truth, mostly. It was our job to take the truth and spin it into lies. For the ‘greater good’, of course. But I was wrong. We weren’t as high up as I thought we were. We ourselves were being fed lies, to twist into insurmountable untruths. A tangle of bullshit so tight the end could never be found.
One bomber had become ten, one deserving target (Cole) had become hundreds of innocent victims, and all before the story even went public. We never wanted to kill people, we wanted to save them, from Cole. Nitro-fucking-glycerin? What were they on? The real plan was far more simple: One guy. One vest. One assassination. Okay, there probably would have been a bystander or two, but Tom wouldn’t have pressed the button near innocents if he could help it. But they were trying to paint us as mass-murderers, even within the supposed inner circle. I felt sick.
He was talking again, and I hadn’t been listening. Too caught up in righteous fury. I needed to pull myself together. Falling apart wouldn’t help anyone, least of all Daniel.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I interrupted. “I was taking it all in, about the plot. I missed what you just said.”
He glared at me. “Please try to focus, Jinks, we’re against the clock here.”
I muttered a second apology and he continued.
“Right, for the benefit of Jinks, and anyone else who drifted off, I’ll reiterate. Transport police tracked the journey he’d made via CCTV and number plate recognition, and managed to trace it all the way back to an industrial estate in Dagenham. No cameras in operation on the site, so they had to raid every building. But they found it. Gridless HQ. All their tech, all their weapons, even that fucking suit of armour they use in their broadcasts. Not to mention at least half a dozen terrorists happily pissing about hacking and plotting, praising Allah or whatever the fuck they do.”
I gritted my teeth. Gridless had nothing to do with religion. But I’d be a fool to think they wouldn’t claim every single member was a radical convert. Fuck, any decent PID would suggest it. Exaggerate the threat, blame it on Islam.
I wondered who’d been there when they raided. Who was lost? Schyler for sure, she was practically living there she was so focused. Probably Josh and Stoke too. There was nothing I could do for them now. Mills told us anti-terror were studying the footage from the A-road round the corner from HQ, looking for frequent comings and goings. Painstaking process, they had to eliminate all the legitimate workers from the industrial estate. It would take them a few hours. If the others realised what had happened they might have time to get away before anti-terror tracked them down. But how could they? We weren’t going to go public until the morning, and no one was contacting each other. It was Daniel’s orders. We were too close to the goal to take any risks.
They all relied on me to tell them if the police were onto anything. My stomach flipped over. I guess they all thought I was more in the know than I really was too. I was the lookout, the most protected. It was vital to everyone’s safety that I, as the one working undercover with the enemy, was untouchable. None of us were buried deeper than me. I had no links with HQ, never even visited. Different name, different history. Kyle sorted it all out for me, created an identity and a watertight backstory so the real Teresa Clarke would be untraceable. It was essential. If I was going to be our secret weapon in the PIDs, the real me had to be invisible.
The Raids was the most popular of all the ERP-funded shows. More than seven million patriots tuned in three times a week to watch immigrants being dragged from their hovels, hopefully kicking and spitting.
The show had become one of the best propaganda tools the government had, so it was closely monitored. They were under strict instructions to portray the illegals in a certain way. Under no circumstances were they allowed to broadcast any of them speaking English, unless they were swearing. No subtitles. If you can communicate with someone it makes them seem less different, less threatening. We wanted filth. Degenerates fighting, resisting, cursing. Not too much human interest, we couldn’t have them showing any sob stories. These people had to be a drain on our society, a threat to our safety. Or, at the very least, a burden on our moral fibre.
We’d been called in because one of the runners had reported concerns over the new producer. Apparently he was one of those ‘artistic integrity’ types, trying to make a name for himself rather than doing what he was told. He was good, though, the ratings were up since he took over. They didn’t want to lose him if they could help it. So they decided he needed ‘guidance’ (which was the official way of saying he needed to be reminded who paid his wages and taken down a peg or two).
When we arrived at the studio the problem was obvious. The guy in question, a flamboyant little ginger tosser, was clearly spoiling for a ruck. They were editing footage of a young Ukrainian family being rounded up. The father only had one arm; he’d been subject to torture in his own country. The shots had to be cut so you couldn’t see the stump. There were no two ways about it. Public sympathy for the illegals was not to be encouraged, that was fundamental. Let that in and it wouldn’t get through the censors. Everyone knew it.
But this twat’s ego was bigger than his common sense. He pranced around, waving scripts in Greyson’s face.
“It’s a perfect shot, it’s the money shot. Look!” He tapped at the screen and showed us the footage. The mother was ranting in her own language. Perfect. The broken windows and car tyres in the background. Sublime. Eldest kid kicking the cameraman, youngest covered in dirt. Bingo. But through it all there he was, right beside them. A drained, haggard-looking man, eyes glistening with tears, and that fucking ill-stitched stump. No. If the cameraman had had enough sense to film him from the other angle then maybe. But as it stood there was no way on Cole’s scorched earth that was staying in.
Greyson let the guy rant and rave about how the scene was ‘quintessentially Raids’ until he ran out of steam. Then he spoke slowly. “Sir, all we’re asking is can you edit him out?”
“What?” The producer looked as though he might have an embolism. “No, I can’t edit him out. The kid’s leaning on him for Christ’s sake.”
Greyson shrugged. “Then I’m afraid you’ll have to cut it.”
“It’s the best scene of the week. I don’t take orders from jumped-up bobbies who know nothing about cinematography.”
Greyson grinned. He turned to me and raised his eyebrow.
My turn, and I was fired up for it. I’d spent the morning having to get heavy with a poor Imam who’d done nothing more than accidentally misspell a name on his accounts. But we’d shut down his mosque, the last remaining one in Islington. Ever since Cole declared it illegal for any institution to promote ‘non-British values’ we’d spent most of our time scrutinising temples, mosques and synagogues, looking for any slight misstep that could be interpreted as unpatriotic. I charged him with fraud, and forced him to shut the doors for good. The look in his eyes when he pleaded with me to think of his congregation, and all the work they were doing for the homeless, was playing on my mind. Persecuting the innocent was a necessary evil; I had to play the perfect PID to stay hidden. But every now and then, it pricked at my conscience.
This little shit stain in front of me was exactly what I needed to take my mind off it. People like him made my blood boil. Their protests were always egotistical, self-serving. Just like all those god-awful student activists, pretending they’re trying to change society by locking themselves in a building, or holding a public rally. Ignorant glory hunters. You don’t make real change by jumping on anti-establishment bandwagons and flaunting your discontent for the cameras. Real change has to come from within, hard-won by true soldiers. People who put in decades, people who play the long game with their cards to their chest. People who don’t seek recognition. People like me.
I removed my Shades and put them in my back pocket. I held his gaze as I stepped forward, edging closer until I could smell the chorizo he’d had for lunch. He only came up to my chest but he didn’t look away, even though he must have been straining his neck. I smiled.
“My colleague has asked you nicely to—”
“I don’t give a shit! I’m trying to make television here, and—”
“My colleague has asked you, now I am telling you. You either edit him out, or you cut the whole scene. If you continue to make my life difficult I will not hesitate to charge you with obstructing public information, which carries a maximum sentence of ten years in prison under section twelve of the Public Information Act.’
He scowled and opened his mouth to protest. I didn’t give him the chance.
“Moreover, I will personally see to it that your entire family is slandered in the press. We’ll throw in some allegations of paedophilia perhaps, and you’ll get passed around the shower blocks to be devoured like the milky ginger pudding you are. Because, regardless of whatever self-important delusions of grandeur you are suffering from, the fact remains that this ‘jumped-up bobby’ has been given direct orders from the government, which grant me the jurisdiction to deprive you of your job, your home and your liberty… and even destroy your name.”
He tried to come up with a retort, but settled for storming out. The last ditch protest of someone who knows they’re going to have to toe the line, but still feels the need to make a pointless show of not being happy about it.
Greyson stared at me, wondering how I’d react. He knew I didn’t tolerate disrespect, or indulge pansy-ass displays of defiance. If I was pissed off (which I was most of the time, working for the enemy will do that to you), I’d usually have them back in front of me issuing a contrite apology, sometimes with their pinky bent backwards in my fist. But I was feeling generous. It was less than a week until Cole would be nothing more than a splattered mess to be scraped up outside Victoria station. I let the little twat have his last stand. It wouldn’t matter in the long run. I wouldn’t be a PID much longer.
The producer will never know how lucky he was that my Shades didn’t ring until we were back in the car. If the news had come ten minutes earlier he’d probably still be sucking dick in prison right now. As it was we were driving through Kensington when I got the call, Greyson sporting a face-splitting grin.
“Hoo man, did you see his face?” he started enthusing, and I sighed inwardly. The trouble with Greyson was that he wanted to shag me, which made him act like a cross between a peacock and a puppy. When he wasn’t strutting around showing off, he was bouncing around gushing about how brilliant I was. Neither stance impressed me, and both were becoming tiresome. “Oh, that was classic, Jinks. Total classic. Little prick didn’t know what hit him.”
“Yeah. Well, it wasn’t difficult. Guys like him are all front, no nuts,” I replied.
“You were amazing. It was all I could do to keep a straight face. We make a great team, eh?”
He was fishing. He wanted me to gush back about how his amicable, professional demeanour was the perfect set-up for my ‘take-no-prisoners’ approach. I couldn’t bring myself to stroke his ego. I was actually relieved when the office called. For a few seconds anyway.
“Get back here now, guys.” Leila cut to the chase, as usual. “We’ve got a major incident. Mills is calling a meeting in thirty minutes. All PIDS on deck.”
“What’s happened?” Greyson yelled out, before I could answer. Another thing that wound me up. He seemed to be incapable of letting me take calls on my own Shades without butting in.
“Terrorist plot. You won’t believe it but the Met have caught him.”
“Him who?”
“Public enemy number one. Knight himself.”
I felt sick. The whole world started to spin. Daniel? They’d caught Daniel? It wasn’t possible. He was the PIDs’ number one target. We were a pain in Cole’s arse. Daniel’s irreverent broadcasts had managed to garner far more public support than could be tolerated. All PID officers had access to everything we had on him, and it was sweet FA. There were no leads, no informants, absolutely no trace of him at all. He was safe. We were safe. And we were so fucking close. I checked the PID records ten times a day. There was nothing, nothing to suggest we were anywhere close to finding him. This could not be happening. And if they had Daniel, what about the others? Had they raided HQ? Were any of us safe?
I cleared my throat. “How?” I hoped I didn’t sound as shaky as I felt. “The trail was cold.”
I’d made damn sure it was.
“You’ll never guess, some drugged-up kid fell off a bridge, caused a pile up. His was one of the cars that crashed.”
He’d crashed? My stomach churned. “Is he alright?”
“Who, the kid? No, he died at the scene.”
“Not the kid, Knight. Is he okay? I mean, will we be able to question him?”
“Broken a few bones, I think. But don’t worry, he can still talk.”
“Good.” I thanked God he was alive. I couldn’t have held it together if not. Though maybe he’d have been better off dead. He’d never talk, and they’d never give up. I try not to think about what they must have done to him over the years. I don’t even look at the records; I can’t bear to imagine. If I were a better person I’d have wished him dead in the crash. My relief that he wasn’t was selfish. I don’t think I could keep going in this world if he wasn’t in it somewhere.
3
At the office everyone was buzzing, flapping around like startled seagulls. Walking into the chaos I felt numb. All I could think about was the night before. The smell of Scotch on Daniel’s breath as he hugged me, the sparkle in his eyes. He’d stroked my cheek, staring straight at me as though he were looking past all the superficial crap and into my soul.
“You did good, kid,” he told me, his voice like thick silk. “Stay strong, Teresa. I’ll see you on the other side.”
Just five days. Five little days and it would all have been over. All the years of training, of preparing, of walking through the lion’s den. I’d worked so hard for it. We all had. It was so close we could almost taste it. Teresa Clarke’s passport and plane tickets were tucked behind the clock on Zara Jinks’ mantelpiece. Ready to leave the lies behind. Ready to watch from across the globe as England awoke to a better future. And all because of us.
Now it was over. Pulled out from under me, leaving me giddy. Mills bustled in, and the room fell to a restless hush.
Stay strong, Teresa.
“Right,” Mills put his coffee down on the desk and adjusted his trousers over his beer gut, “I know it’s knocking-off time for most of you but you’re gonna have to forget whatever plans you had for tonight. This is big. We’re gonna have to go public much sooner than I’d like, so we need an angle. The situation is this.” He pulled down the screen behind him, and brought up Daniel’s mugshot. The bile churned in my guts. “We got the bastard.”
Everyone cheered.
“But,” Mills continued, “it’s not all good news. It turns out he was even more of a menace than we thought. Which means we have some explaining to do. Somehow, as well as not finding the son of a bitch, we – and I’m including all of you in this – managed to miss the fact he’s not just a hacktivist pain in the arse, he’s a fucking bomb-toting terrorist too. So, right now anti-terror are jumping up and down, demanding our heads on plates. The shit is hitting the proverbial fan and it’s about to cover us all. Now you know, and I know, anti-terror couldn’t find their own dicks in the dark—” The department roared and clapped. “But they’re gonna cover their own arses by flaying ours. They’re claiming they would have found him themselves if we had done our jobs properly. Seeing as we can’t prove otherwise, we need to do some major damage control. Cos I’m telling you now, Browne is not prepared to take the rap for this one, ladies and gents. If anyone starts throwing blame at anti-terror, she is gonna point her French manicures firmly in our direction. And frankly, I can’t find a good reason why she shouldn’t. We need to take the heat off them pronto or they’ll drop us in the fire too.
“Fortunately, our chums in anti-terror are a bit busy right now rounding up the rest of Knight’s team. So that buys us a few hours to work out what the fuck we’re going to do about this mess.”
The rest of his team?
I tried not to hyperventilate. How? What information did they have? I was supposed to warn the others if the PIDs were onto us. Was it already too late? I needed to find out exactly how much they knew.
“Sir,” I squeaked. “Perhaps if you can tell us exactly what information they have, we can formulate our response?”
“Always running off the block before the pistol, aren’t you, Jinks? I was just getting to that.” He perched himself of the edge of the desk, a stance he always employed when he wanted to come across as ‘one of us’ rather than the big boss. A stance that always made me wary.
“In a nutshell guys, the situation is this: Knight was unconscious in his car, carrying no identification. The only thing the cops on the scene found was a locked briefcase in the boot. Luckily for us, they needed to ID the guy to call his next of kin, so they had just cause to break into it. And that was when they hit pay day. Damn thing was stuffed full of blueprints, diagrams, notes… a fucking treasure trove. Plus, every page had Gridless’ logo at the top. The blueprints were for ten stations on the Circle line. From the notes and diagrams it was as easy as doing a toddler’s dot-to-dot to work out what they were going to do. If fate hadn’t thrown us a bone, ladies and gents, then next Tuesday at 8:45 ten suicide bombers carrying nitroglycerin disguised in thermos flasks would have blown up the London Underground. The death toll would have made it the biggest terrorist attack our country has ever seen. And we had no fucking clue.”
Whistles and gasps filled the room. My own shock wasn’t feigned.
It was bullshit. Total fucking bullshit.
I shoved my hands between my legs to stop them shaking. It was a lie. A huge fucking lie. The only target was Cole. Gridless had never intended to kill innocent people.
I knew the PIDs lied to the public; it was our job. Public MISinformation Department, that’s what we called ourselves behind closed doors. I’m not naïve, never have been. I knew there were things even a PID officer wasn’t privy to. But I thought we got the truth, mostly. It was our job to take the truth and spin it into lies. For the ‘greater good’, of course. But I was wrong. We weren’t as high up as I thought we were. We ourselves were being fed lies, to twist into insurmountable untruths. A tangle of bullshit so tight the end could never be found.
One bomber had become ten, one deserving target (Cole) had become hundreds of innocent victims, and all before the story even went public. We never wanted to kill people, we wanted to save them, from Cole. Nitro-fucking-glycerin? What were they on? The real plan was far more simple: One guy. One vest. One assassination. Okay, there probably would have been a bystander or two, but Tom wouldn’t have pressed the button near innocents if he could help it. But they were trying to paint us as mass-murderers, even within the supposed inner circle. I felt sick.
He was talking again, and I hadn’t been listening. Too caught up in righteous fury. I needed to pull myself together. Falling apart wouldn’t help anyone, least of all Daniel.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I interrupted. “I was taking it all in, about the plot. I missed what you just said.”
He glared at me. “Please try to focus, Jinks, we’re against the clock here.”
I muttered a second apology and he continued.
“Right, for the benefit of Jinks, and anyone else who drifted off, I’ll reiterate. Transport police tracked the journey he’d made via CCTV and number plate recognition, and managed to trace it all the way back to an industrial estate in Dagenham. No cameras in operation on the site, so they had to raid every building. But they found it. Gridless HQ. All their tech, all their weapons, even that fucking suit of armour they use in their broadcasts. Not to mention at least half a dozen terrorists happily pissing about hacking and plotting, praising Allah or whatever the fuck they do.”
I gritted my teeth. Gridless had nothing to do with religion. But I’d be a fool to think they wouldn’t claim every single member was a radical convert. Fuck, any decent PID would suggest it. Exaggerate the threat, blame it on Islam.
I wondered who’d been there when they raided. Who was lost? Schyler for sure, she was practically living there she was so focused. Probably Josh and Stoke too. There was nothing I could do for them now. Mills told us anti-terror were studying the footage from the A-road round the corner from HQ, looking for frequent comings and goings. Painstaking process, they had to eliminate all the legitimate workers from the industrial estate. It would take them a few hours. If the others realised what had happened they might have time to get away before anti-terror tracked them down. But how could they? We weren’t going to go public until the morning, and no one was contacting each other. It was Daniel’s orders. We were too close to the goal to take any risks.
They all relied on me to tell them if the police were onto anything. My stomach flipped over. I guess they all thought I was more in the know than I really was too. I was the lookout, the most protected. It was vital to everyone’s safety that I, as the one working undercover with the enemy, was untouchable. None of us were buried deeper than me. I had no links with HQ, never even visited. Different name, different history. Kyle sorted it all out for me, created an identity and a watertight backstory so the real Teresa Clarke would be untraceable. It was essential. If I was going to be our secret weapon in the PIDs, the real me had to be invisible.
