Bill looked at his three thousand pound watch, and seeing the allotted time stood, folding the newspaper he had never actually read. Discarding it in the almost empty park bin that lived beside the bench he had briefly dwelled on, he picked up his black leather briefcase and walked away towards the nearest park exit. He didn’t look back, didn’t rush, and did nothing to draw attention to himself. But nor did he linger. That was how he lived his life. He did his official job to the best of his abilities, and then shared the secrets he learned from his job with God’s right-hand man. It was not treachery he had been told, for how can the war against Satan be anything but just?
Bill Dodson, Private Secretary to the prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, did not see the park employee with the cart come along a minute later to empty the bin. He did not see the park employee pick out the newspaper, which contained taped to its inner pages a micro simcard. A micro simcard with photographs of everything that had crossed his desk in the previous month, courtesy of the smartphone Bill carried around with him. He didn’t see the park employee place the newspaper in a separate part of his cart, before emptying the bin. And neither did anyone else of consequence. Another act of rebellion perpetrated right under the very nose of the state. But what was just another day’s disloyalty when viewed against the months of sedition already committed?
Present Day
8.54AM, 14
th
September 2015, Hounslow Primary School, Hounslow, London
The roar of another plane taking off from Heathrow Airport was always present during the day, and often late into the night. But when you lived with the noise most of your life, you tended to block it out. It just became part of the environment you lived in, part of the pollution of everyday existence. Jack Nathan did that now, hardly registering the roar of the huge airbus as it streaked across the sky. He had other things on his mind, and he stepped off the dirty, litter-strewn bus outside his sister’s dilapidated primary school. A moment later, she joined him on the pavement, carrying her frozen bag like her life depended on it. They were the last people to get off, and the doors closed behind them with a mechanical hiss. The bus juddered and moved forward, merging back into traffic.
“Is Mum going to be okay?” Amy Nathan asked her older brother, looking up at him with worried eyes. At six foot one inch, he towered above her, and he put a reassuring hand on her head.
“Of course she is, sis. She’s just a bit sad at the moment.”
“She’s always sad. I don’t want her to be sad anymore.” She suddenly clung onto her brother, giving him a tear-filled hug.
“Hey. Where’s this all coming from?” He disengaged and crouched down so he was on her eye level. “I told you, she’ll be fine.” He looked over to the school gate and saw a smiling teacher waiting for her pupil. “Now come on, you’ll be late for class.” Amy sniffed and wiped tears from her eyes. Jack stood and gently pushed her towards the school gates, hand behind her head. Reluctantly, Amy went where her brother guided.
Of course their mother wasn’t okay, hadn’t been for several months. Depression was a horrible disease for those who suffered it, and for those who witnessed it. And the doctors were about as much use as a condom machine in the Vatican. Why didn’t they help her? They just gave her pills – pills that didn’t work, pills that just turned their once loving and bubbly mother into a bloody zombie. She wandered around the house almost in a daze, ate very little and spent most of her time watching daytime TV. And, of course, then there was the alcohol. The gift that kept on giving, the slow little death that promised so much but delivered nothing but disease and death. Jack knew she would already be drinking now, and by the time he returned to the school to bring his eight-year-old sister home, their mother would often be completely inebriated. There was always a smile there for her children though, and Jack was starting to learn that everyone handled loss differently. He just wished his mum could pull herself out of the black hole she had fallen into. They needed her. He needed her. And a part of him was even starting to resent her for her illness.
Six months ago, things had been different. Six months ago, his father had been alive, Jack had been ready to go to medical school and life had been good. He’d even had a girlfriend. And then one night on his walk home from his job at the airport, Benjamin Nathan had been mugged in the middle of the street, beaten senseless despite fighting back valiantly, and had died three days later from the head injuries sustained as he’d collapsed to the ground. Despite there being dozens of people around, nobody had stepped in to help. And nobody had stepped forward as a witness to the events that seemed more and more common on London’s streets. Nobody had been arrested for the crime. As far as Jack was aware, nobody had even been questioned. Robbed of his father and mentor, Jack had been forced to take on the role of surrogate parent, putting his life on hold for the people he loved, forced into it by a sense of duty. His job at the fast food joint was his way of topping up the benefits his family now needed to survive.
He watched his sister walk slowly onto the school ground, and he gave the teacher a friendly wave. He was well known to the teaching staff now, having had to explain to the Head Master the problems his family now faced. He really wasn’t sure he was ready to be a parent. But as his father had always said, you played the cards you were dealt in life. That was what a man did. And like it or not, he was now a man. Life would give him further opportunities to prove that over the coming days.
9.34AM, 14
th
September 2015, Brookwood Cemetery, Woking
How vulnerable this all was. Life was so brutally fleeting, so exquisitely brittle. For some, it was a precious gift; for others, an endless torture, punctuated by moments of clarity. And for many (perhaps most), it wasn’t even life, their existence almost eternally machine-like as they went about their daily business, never contemplating the mystery and the wonder of the universe around them. Their lives lived vacuously through the experiences of others. Did the bulk of humanity deserve what he did for them?
Standing over the grave of Sergeant John O’Brian, the morning sun failing to warm his chilled heart, Carter thought back to that devastating moment several years ago that ended his last tour in Afghanistan. It was a moment rarely from his thoughts. He came to this cemetery once a month to pay his respects, never wanting to forget the man who shouldn’t have even been his friend. After all, it was not deemed proper for the ranks to mingle like that, not proper for an enlisted man to be on first name terms with an officer. But that was the regular army, the so-called “Lions led by Donkeys”. Those conventions ended when you stepped through the gates of Hamworthy barracks. When a man wants to put on the insignia of the Special Boat Service, rank becomes almost obsolete. Proving yourself and beating the gruelling selection process meant more than a few bars on your shoulder. The significance of rank came in second place to the significance of working with the best in the business, to prove you were worthy of their respect. Rank meant nothing in selection. Just because the sergeant major who was taunting you on your 40-mile forced hike across the Brecon Beacons called you sir, well that did nothing to dispel the reality that you had a long way to go to cancel out the man’s obvious disdain for your abilities. Until you earnt that respect, you were just another bloody nugget Rupert.
Croft knelt down and touched his calloused palm to the chilled gravestone, running his fingertips over the engraving. “We saw some shit mate,” he said to the cold marble. “We saw some shit, and we nearly made it out. And now here we are. They put you in the ground, and they made me a fucking major.” Croft stood, his knee groaning. “With the shit I’ve seen recently, I think you might have got the better end of the deal, my friend.” As if on cue, the sun disappeared behind a blanket of cloud and he shivered, more from memory than the drop in temperature.
Shaking his head, he turned and walked away across the grass towards Long Avenue, one of the many footpaths in the cemetery. He always got to walk away whilst those around him seemed to die or get maimed. He always got to watch whilst those he cared for suffered and died. Was that a blessing or a curse? Perhaps it was both. As he walked, he couldn’t help but notice the solitude and the calmness around him, representing a complete contradiction to his present life and to the deaths that many buried beneath this ground had experienced. From above, a crow landed on the ground to the side of him and observed Croft almost dismissively. Nature was foolish to lose its fear of man, Croft thought, and his sombre form made its way along the avenue of the dead. But then, likewise, man was foolish to lose his fear of nature.
Perhaps vulnerable wasn’t the correct word. Perhaps fragile was better. Society was just a thin veneer, a patchwork plaster cast that stopped everything from falling into chaos. The chaos was there, waiting to be unleashed, waiting to force itself onto the world, to let loose its fury, its vengeance, its power, its anger for being locked up and contained. It wanted to be free, and Croft knew, with what he had seen in the last few years, that chaos would get its wish. It was only a matter of time. It was coming, and it would rip this placid city, this island, this world asunder. A student of history, Croft was well aware that all civilisations had a tendency to collapse from within. The barbarians at the gates of Rome were not the cause but a symptom of the collapse. And humanity was nothing if not consistent in the mistakes it liked to make.
Croft’s phone vibrated in his pocket. Withdrawing I, he stopped walking and read the message that had come over the encrypted network.
Civil Contingencies Committee meeting today at 2PM, Conference Room A, 70 Whitehall. Top Priority
That was unusual. His paymasters rarely met with him in person, but if he was honest, he wasn’t surprised. His last briefing paper had really put the cat amongst the pigeons. Telling the government there was an impending risk of a full scale biological attack had not put him on anyone’s Christmas card list. And telling them someone high up in the security structure of government was directly involved made him even less friends. They had listened though. They always listened, because his track record spoke volumes. They paid him to do the job he did because he was good at it.
Putting his phone away, he continued walking. The path took him beneath a small roof of trees, past an empty bench where a lone grey squirrel sat nervously, looking at him with quizzical, worried eyes. As Croft walked closer, the squirrel panicked and darted off, disappearing into the uncut undergrowth with nimble agility. Croft smiled at the sight of it, his smile however faltering as he turned his head back in the direction he was heading. Sixty metres ahead, a couple came into view, walking towards him in a lovers’ embrace. The blonde-haired woman was carrying a large bouquet of flowers, a common occurrence in any graveyard across the country. She laughed in response to something the man said and clung to his left arm, the flowers obscuring her right arm and most of her torso. So why did Croft suddenly feel alarmed? Why was there a claxon going off in his head, warning him of impending danger? Why were his adrenal glands firing up?
Slowing his pace, he did a casual 360 look around him and noticed a third individual closing in behind at a similar distance. Croft did not make eye contact with him but noticed his lean, muscular physique hidden from the world by jeans and a heavy sweater. Something wasn’t right here. He didn’t know what it was that first alarmed him, but he saw the tell-tale signs of the man walking behind him. The guy probably had a concealed weapon on his right hip; he could tell by the way the man moved, by the way he swung his arms differently. Croft’s training was kicking in, and when that happened, he listened.
Croft stopped and pulled out his Bluetooth from the inside pocket of his black suit, placing it behind his ear. He pretended to activate it with an exaggerated motion.
“John, good to hear from you.” There was, of course, nobody on the phone; he just needed a plausible excuse to stop, and he spoke loudly, the words puncturing the quiet bubble he had been dwelling in. Wandering off the path, Croft went over to a large oak tree and placed his back to it, his right hand slipping onto the gun holstered to the left of his spine. To the unsuspecting it looked like he was perhaps merely scratching himself, but the HK P8 felt reassuring in his hand. There was a calmness in him, and he felt time almost slowing down. Three targets, 15 rounds, plus a further 15 in the other magazine on his belt. Thirty metres out.
“No, I hadn’t heard that, could you forward that to me, please? Great.” The three people grew closer, and neither of them looked at him, despite him directing his gaze at them in turn. They were avoiding eye contact. An innocent passer-by would have been drawn to the volume of his voice, would have noticed him staring at them, maybe even given him a disapproving look. He sidestepped the tree, moving backwards a few steps ready to use it as a shield, the gun now free, held behind him, safety off, finger on the guard. Never point a gun at anything unless you are prepared to shoot it. Never put your finger on the trigger unless you intend to fire. “How’s the wife?” he asked the ether. The question came up now, should he flee or stand his ground and prepare to fight? Obviously, he couldn’t just start shooting. These might still be just regular passers-by; there was still a strong chance of that. Despite his training, he might just be riddled with paranoia. So what was it that had triggered his alarm? Whatever it was, and perhaps he would never know, he didn’t run. If they were here for him, he wanted to know why. Ten metres out now and the woman stumbled and dropped the flowers. Croft tensed, his gun moving.
And then it happened. The flowers were an illusion to hide the fact she was holding a gun. The stumble to distract him from the man coming in the other direction who reached to his hip. The woman’s partner threw himself sideways off the path. Her gun came up, and Croft dropped sideways, throwing himself behind the tree. In the emptiness of the cemetery, the noise of her gun was deafening, and he heard several rounds impact the oak. Then he was on his knee, gun up, aiming at the man who he was not shielded from, saw the gun pulled free, coming up, aiming.
Croft put three in the guy’s chest right over the heart, saw the guy’s arm jerk up and fire off wildly. As he fell, Croft put another towards the legs and saw it enter just above the right knee. Even with chest armour, the pain from that leg wound would give Croft time, especially as the man lost the grip on his gun as he fell to the floor. He heard the other two moving. They would try and flank him, coming at him from both sides of the tree, so he moved. He fired another shot at the fallen man, heard the impact and the cry and stepped out from behind the tree towards the other threat, gun up, firing as he went … 11 shots left, 10. He felt a round hit his right ear, ignored it, found his targets, centred on the first. One was running, panicking; the other, the woman, was the one firing at him, a look of surprise and shock in her eyes. They hadn’t expected things to go down like this; they hadn’t expected him to come out shooting. They had underestimated him. Her stance was off, she didn’t have control, her shots not accurate. Croft was the trained one, the professional, the man who had killed before and who would kill again. He was the man who could outshoot any of the men who had served under him, who had faced enemy fire and who knew what to expect when the bullets started flying. So barring the miraculous, there was really only one outcome from all this. And so, without a moment’s hesitation, he put one round straight into the woman’s forehead. The impact sent her backwards, the front of the skull cratering from the impact, the back of the head exploding as the round exited, taking much of her brain with it. She was dead almost instantly, and he moved forward as he aimed at the last attacker.