Saving Tara Goodwin (Mystery Book 1) (20 page)

Christiana looked into her coffee, ‘Well that’s a real shame, but I will help if I can.’

Martha picked up the rolling pin, and deep in thought, lightly dusted it with flour.

‘So did the diary help, miss, you know, as you said, to understand Mr Robin’s mind?’

‘No, not yet, but I’m quite sure it will. I just need a little more time.’

‘That would be nice, miss, and if you could help my lady, I’d be very grateful.’

‘That’s okay, Martha, I’ll do anything I can, but not today because I have to go visit an old friend. So tell Lucy for me, would you, and give her my love.’

The air was warming as Christiana stepped out happily through the kitchen door, and thought it would be real good if she were leaving here forever, but not yet.

Ted stood in the corner of the workshop, a smile on his face as he gazed at Frank’s car, and pushing the woollen cap to the back of his head, leant on the wing and grinned down into the engine bay of the old Range Rover.

The seven litre Chevy engine fitted like a glove and the car was now finished with electronic ignition, Holley carb, lowered anti-roll suspension, up-rated brakes, a limited slip diff, and twin, free-flow exhausts.

So Frank’s old toy was now complete and Rolling Thunder was ready for the road.

As Len brought out mugs of steaming tea, Ted gave him a big, silly, schoolboy grin.

‘Hey Len. Have a listen to this.’

Walking round, he slipped into the driver’s seat, and turning the key, the workshop reverberated to the heavy warble of the seven litre V8 engine.

Len smiled as the deafening noise hit him and pulled a face while Ted grinned back like a big kid, and revving the motor, switched off and walked back round, ‘Some beast, aye?’

Smiling, Len looked down to the huge fat tyres and the heavy gauge steel bumpers.

‘It sure is, and if you wanted to, I reckon you could use it as a bulldozer.’

Ted laughed, ‘Well the way Frank Lewis drives, you’re not far wrong.’

Len sipped his tea and thought back to all the hours Ted had spent on the car.

‘So is that who I make the bill out to, your pall, Frank Lewis.’

Ted became still, his mug of tea half raised to his mouth, ‘The bill?’

‘Well yeah, there’s a fortune in parts and labour sitting there.’

Turning slowly to the old man, Ted looked at him from blank, far away eyes.

‘Len, you’ve got it back to front, old son, if there’s a debt to be settled, it goes the other way, from me to him.’

He kicked out to the front tyre, ‘And anyway, this little job wouldn’t even come close to settling the bill, and I doubt if anything ever could.’

Frank was still raging with anger when he carried Monty away from the fallen tree, but as the official car took them on to the manor house he tried to clear his mind, and settling Monty on the steps, became aware of high heels as Tara clicked down to greet them, and although she was pleased to see that Mr Montague had returned, her smile slipped when she saw the strangeness in Frank’s eyes, ‘Are you alright?’

He shrugged, ‘Yeah, I’m okay. I’m just having one of those days.’

Knowing that the time to rescue her was slipping away, he left Monty to rest for a while in the sun, and walking her away across the gravel, sat down beside her on the smooth stone of the lily pond.

‘Tara. Look, I’m sorry about this but we have to talk about that Leonardo business, and we did agree to help each other, didn’t we.’

She saw in his eyes that he was troubled, ‘Alright, so what do you want to know?’

‘Well the truth is, there’s a lot more going on here than just the storage of secret files, isn’t there.’

She stared at him in surprise, ‘But why do you want to know that?’

‘I have to, it’s important.’

‘But why, you’ll be putting yourself in danger, why can’t you just investigate the file? It isn’t safe for anyone to know about those other things.’

Watching her gently rock to and fro, he knew that not only had she confirmed Thornley kept a dark secret, but it was obvious she knew about it, so this latest admission drove yet another nail into her coffin.

‘Look Tara, we’re guessing this place is some kind of intelligence gathering station that might be linked to Cardinal, and somehow it’s all mixed up with the file corruption, but the trouble is, we don’t know how, or why, so can’t you see how dangerous it is for us to try and make sense of it all, but with only knowing half the story.’

‘Yes, I can see that, but I wish you didn’t have to know.’

‘So do I, but we won’t be able to finish this job unless you help us.’

‘Oh, alright then, but you must be very careful, promise?’

Waiting for her to collect her thoughts, he gazed up over the huge old house and saw a distinguished looking man on a high balcony, and as he stared down to them, his grey hair and smart suit seemed forlorn and lonely on this bright summers day.

Tara finally turned to him, the look on her face unsure, ‘So who will you tell this to?’

‘Only Monty.’

‘Alright. Well I can’t imagine how you guessed, but you’re almost right, and just as Merlin has a dual-line security system, Thornley Manor is also a dual-line establishment having an authentic MoD department on the outside, a genuine facade, but on the inside, Cardinal dominates everything.’

‘That’s what Monty thought, a house within a house.’

‘But Thornley Manor is far more complicated than that, because hidden within the manor there’s yet another organisation, and they have a far more sinister function.’

‘We know. Intelligence gathering.’

‘True, but even that is not as it seems. You see, the gathering station is thought to be the government’s link to the US, NMD shield, the US, National Missile Defence system which uses US radar facilities at both RAF Menwith Hill and RAF Fylingdales.’

‘Yeah, I heard something about this at GCHQ when I was with the NSA, and we always guessed the government had a link station somewhere, so this is it then.’

Tara shook her head, ‘No, this is not it.’

‘But you just said …’

‘I said, this station is
thought
to be the government link station, and it’s thought to be, because that serves Cardinal’s purpose.’

‘So what is this place then?’

‘Echelon. The worldwide economic espionage intelligence system, or more precisely, it’s Cardinal’s very own private link to Fort Meade and GCHQ.’

‘Jesus, no wonder everyone’s walking around on egg shells, and the government sure wouldn’t want this can of worms to become public knowledge.’

She frowned, ‘But this has got absolutely nothing to do with the government.’

‘Sorry, I don’t understand. So if it isn’t the government, then what is it?’

‘I just told you. It’s Cardinal’s X station.’

‘Right. But what I can’t get my head around, is you said, although this is a Cardinal station, it’s got nothing to do with the Government.’

‘That’s right.’

‘But that’s crazy. Cardinal belongs to the government.’

‘No, it doesn’t.’

1
9

Seeing his doubt and confusion, Tara wondered how she could make it simple.

‘Let me explain. You see, Cardinal started during the First World War and has grown ever since, and anyone who’s allowed to have the slightest knowledge of its existence assumes it’s the premier secret intelligence service, and they’re quite happy to leave it alone because Cardinal has built its reputation on fear.’

‘Yeah, okay, but I don’t see how an organisation could just spring up from nowhere and create all this power just for its own personal use.’

‘But, Mr Lewis, you accept the authority of a policeman’s uniform, don’t you?’

‘Well of course.’

‘But that’s what I mean, everyone does, and yet, apart from Scotland there was no organised police force anywhere in the world until 1829 when Sir Robert Peel created the Metropolitan Police, and now these civilians in uniform control everything and nobody even questions it.’

Frank stared at her, ‘You are, you know, you’re just the same as Monty.’

Sitting quietly, she thought he looked quite sombre with his thoughts far away.

‘Tara, you said Cardinal really got started during the First World War, but Echelon was only created during the cold war, so it doesn’t add up.’

‘Well it does actually, because when the Americans created Echelon, it was to spy electronically on the Soviets during the cold war, but Cardinal was already far ahead, so when the cold war ended and the US diversified the Echelon apparatus from military into international economic espionage, all Cardinal had to do was simply amalgamate all the data from Fort Meade into their already existing scheme.’

‘Okay, so what was Cardinal doing before Echelon came along?’

‘They were gathering information about absolutely anything and everything, which is why anyone who’s of the slightest importance, whether in politics, commerce, religion or anything else, nationally or internationally is recorded on file, right here.’

Taking a cigarette, he tried to concentrate as she carried on.

‘So you see, everything, every single scrap of incoming data is constantly updated, and they say there’s enough information stored here at Thornley, to create governments, control them or bring them down, and whichever is economically beneficial to the 40.’

‘So who, or what, are the 40?’

‘The 40? Well that’s Cardinal, the Matrix 40, or the Continuum as they are known, and they are the cause of all the problems because they control the world of commerce through the politics of The United Nations and trade agreements.’

‘It sounds like you’re describing the World Bank.’

Tara smiled sadly, ‘I suppose it does, because Cardinal is the unofficial world bank.’

‘So is that what it’s all about, money and power?’

‘Yes, and for some people it means more than life itself.’

‘Yeah, sad but true. But would you mind running through the basics, just once more.’

‘Well as I said. While Leonardo and Merlin are quite genuine, they’re just a façade, and at the same time, the various government departments think Cardinal are monitoring the many NMD systems on trial, but in actual fact, Cardinal is busy with its own agenda and is continuously intelligence gathering to feed the Minotaur.’

Frank came wide awake, ‘The Minotaur? So what the hell is that?’

‘Well to be perfectly honest, it’s the devil in the house. You see, the Minotaur is the immensely powerful gathering computer of Cardinal.’

To Frank, it seemed like a smoke filled room crammed full with two-way mirrors, and he remembered Angela saying it was a looking-glass problem. Glancing over to the steps, saw that Monty was getting restless.

‘Tara, I’ve got just two more questions, and then you’ll have to tell all this to Monty or I’ll have him confused in two minutes, is that okay?’

‘Alright. So what do you want to know?’

‘Just this. You see, Monty thinks the Chiefs of Staff had to bring us in to investigate as the file was in Thornley’s official area, so is that how you see it?’

‘But of course. The file was in Leonardo, the official part, so the authorities had no choice but to bring disposable thugs into Cardinal to carry out the repulsive work.’

He looked at her, straight faced, ‘Oh great. Well thanks a lot.’

‘Oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean …’

Frank threw the cigarette away, ‘That’s alright, it’s what most people think anyway.’

Embarrassed, she stared down to her knees, ‘You said, two questions.’

‘Yeah. Well if the devil in the house, is this Mini, wotsit thing, then where the hell did it come from?’

‘Bletchley Park. You see, during the last world war, it was necessary to invent machines to de-code the messages the Nazis were sending on their Enigma machines, and the original was called a Bombe and used by the brilliant mathematicians, Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman, then later, Colossus, the world’s first programmable computer was built by Tommy Flowers to combat Hitler’s Lorenz Cipher.’

‘I know, and they sure were clever people.’

‘Indeed, and it was so successful they could read the Nazi communications even before they did themselves, and the project was so secret it was called Ultra.’

‘So are you saying that after the war, this Colossus machine ended up here?’

‘Well it’s thought that some went to GCHQ Cheltenham to keep an eye on the Soviets, then the Americans were given the blueprints to build their own, and the Prime Minister, Mr Churchill, ordered the rest to be destroyed, but Cardinal arranged for one of them to come here, and I suppose you can guess the rest.’

‘Well, more or less, but why did Cardinal want one?’

‘Oh, that’s easy, because while GCHQ were spying on the Soviets, and the Americans only wanted military supremacy, Cardinal had seen the future in international espionage, and over the following years Colossus was improved and updated beyond all recognition, and to hide its origin, the Matrix 40 renamed it, the Minotaur.’

Frank scratched his head in amazement as Tara casually explained the whole thing.

‘And the Cardinal intelligence banks simply kept on endlessly expanding, gathering and manipulating, and all under the perfection of Cardinal’s double indemnity of simply using the government’s very own secrets, Leonardo da Vinci and NMD.’

Frank nodded as it all began to make sense, ‘It’s just perfect, isn’t it.’

‘Yes, the Minotaur is the cuckoo in the nest, and from the fear of Cardinal’s power, no-one would even dream of prying into their inner sanctum. So, just as Colossus never officially existed during the war, neither does the Minotaur now.’

‘But someone must control it all.’

‘True, but who? As I said, I’ve only ever heard of a reference name, the Matrix 40, but what does it mean, an organisation, a cartel, and why that nickname, the Continuum?’

‘Well it sure beats me.’

‘And Cardinal isn’t classified or documented, and I’ve only ever heard of a budget called the Chrysalis Account, which is never questioned by anyone for the simple reason, no-one knows who the Matrix 40 really are, so to pry into the affairs of the unknown, could be like shaking hands with the Devil.

As Frank slipped into deep concentration, the ultimate question finally presented itself.

‘I think I’ve got the idea now, but what do they do with all this information?’

Tara smiled, ‘It’s silly, isn’t it. I’ve spent all this time explaining how it works, but I can’t answer the obvious question, because I don’t know.’

‘You don’t?’

‘No. But I do know, if someone gets in their way, they vanish into something called the disappearing ground and the difficult questions are never asked.’

As Frank listened, he couldn’t help thinking of Daniels and Coogan.

‘So do you see why I didn’t want you to know?’

Monty had been watching them as they sat together at the lily pond, and although he’d tried to concentrate on the corrupted file, his thoughts kept drifting back to Stacey’s diary and the hideous life Bromsgrove had inflicted on this poor girl.

It was a young life lost and nothing could change that, but for his part, or indeed for the sake of his own conscience, maybe some kind of apology.

Watching them walk back over, he noticed Frank’s expression was unusually serious.

‘Monty. Tara’s got something to tell you that will knock your socks off.’

She sat down cautiously on the step, but before she could speak, Monty stopped her.

‘Miss Goodwin. With regret, I sometimes have to behave in a manner that can often be totally unforgivable, and my questioning of you yesterday was just such an instance, and so I hope at some time in your life, you might find a way to forgive me.’

Tara felt confused. No-one had ever apologised to her before, so why this old man?

‘Mr Montague, I wonder, would you like to be my friend?’

Just for a moment, Monty saw his daughter, ‘Miss Goodwin, you’re too kind my dear.’

Frank walked quietly away, knowing some things in life are just too personal to share, and later when he walked back over, heard Tara explaining everything to Monty, and as she came to the end, he saw the strangest expression on Monty’s tired old face.

‘Miss Goodwin, I believe everything you’ve said because it confirms my worst fears, but why did they allow you to know so much detail, and who informed you of all this?’

Tara frowned, ‘No-one told me anything, I found out for myself.’

The two men looked at each other, and walking over, Frank sat down beside her.

‘But how? How did you find out?’

‘Well do you remember Mr Montague asking me if I didn’t get bored living here, and I said I had lots to occupy my time?’

‘Yes, I remember.’

‘Well I love books, I always have, and old Thornley’s library is absolutely wonderful, but no-one ever goes there except me, and I’ve spent hours and hours in there.’

Frank felt something coming, ‘Go on.’

‘Alright. Well one day I found old Thornley’s secret. His secret in the folly.’

Monty edged forward on the step, ‘And what secret is that, dear lady.’

‘Well do you remember Thornley liked to have his jokes, you know, by building his wonderful Folly, his labyrinth, inside the house.’

‘Yes, I remember.’

‘Well he did something else, and it’s something no-one knows anything about.’

Monty glanced to Frank, ‘Please go on, dear lady.’

‘Alright, but who will you tell the secret to, he wouldn’t want everyone to know.’

Frank moved closer, ‘Are you quite sure, no-one else knows about this secret?’

‘Oh yes, I’m positive of that because he took such care to hide his book. You see he put it in the wrong dust jacket and in the wrong section, high up behind the beam, and it was all covered in dusty cobwebs.’

Monty tried to visualise it, ‘So this book must be quite important.’

She nodded, her curls dancing, ‘Yes, it is. It’s of the house and estate. It’s wonderful ... a complete record and history of the building of Thornley Manor, and everything’s there, the original plans, drawings, architectural designs, bills, dates, names of the craftsmen, everything. But the prize is the map, the real map of the labyrinth.’

Monty looked quizzical, ‘But wasn’t there always a map, upstairs at security?’

‘Yes, but actually there are two up on the top floor. The one that Thornley showed to visitors and casual friends, that’s the one we now show to our official visitors, and the another one that shows the hidden naughty area.’

Embarrassed, she flashed a glance to the men and gazed down quickly to her knees.

‘It’s kept under lock and key somewhere, and never ever mentioned.’

Frank tread carefully, ‘Did you say, the naughty area?’

She nodded, ‘It’s huge, with passages and rooms and all have paintings and drawings.’

Frank glanced to Monty, ‘We saw some of those in the labyrinth.’

Tara squirmed, ‘Yes, but these are really naughty, and there are bedrooms as well.’

Monty slipped into thought, his eyes staring while his fingertips tapped on his knees.

‘So are you saying there’s a secret chamber within the labyrinth?’

‘Yes, but it’s far more than a chamber.’

She looked up to the vast expanse of the house, ‘But I don’t know how to explain it.’

‘Just take your time, my dear, take your time.’

‘Well do you remember when I signed you in at security on the fifth floor, and we went through the labyrinth to Mr Dudley’s office and finally into Leonardo, and it seemed as if we’d walked for miles, going here, there, and everywhere?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well it wasn’t miles, and we hadn’t travelled very far at all, it just seemed like it, in fact, compared to Thornley’s naughty area, which now belongs to the Minotaur, Merlin’s area is really quite small.’

Monty concentrated, ‘I think I’m finally beginning to understand. So the entrance to the naughty part of the labyrinth, which is now used by the Minotaur, can only be found if one has access to the second map. Would that be right?’