The Need for Fear (5 page)

Chapter 9: Going Public

The local library wasn't far from Sharon Monk's flat, so Chi decided to use the computers there. It was time to look at Robert's thumb drive. If there was malware on it, he'd rather let it loose on a public computer than his own, even if it did make him feel a bit guilty.

On his way there, Chi made no attempt to sneak around or evade detection. He had no wish to look a fool again. If someone wanted to follow him, let him. He was done hiding—for the simple reason that he didn't seem to be much good at it.

He booked time on a computer and sat down, leaving the laptop in its bag on the floor. Slotting the key into the front of the PC tower, he opened the folder. There were dozens of documents, all of which looked innocent enough until you saw that some were sales invoices for surplus military supplies bought in Eastern Europe as well as large quantities of ammonium nitrate and diesel. So this was the stuff, according to Robert, that Sharon Monk had gathered as part of her investigation. There were purchases of drugs too: a generic form of sodium thiopental, the stuff films always claimed was a truth serum, and a whole bunch of hallucinogens.

There were dockets for the loading of cargo onto freighters, reports on border controls across Europe and into Asia, the purchase of diamonds in South Africa, and bank transfer statements. Chi whistled softly. Individually, each piece looked legit, but if this added up to what he thought it did, it was dynamite. Here was what appeared to be documentary evidence of weapons and explosives being smuggled across continents, with enough of a paper trail to prove who funded it.

Chi rubbed his eyes, then pinched the bridge of his nose. Robert was right; Sharon was on to something, but she hadn't put all the pieces together yet. She didn't know what it was all intended for. She didn't know about the brainwashing, or the plan to start a war. Chi would have loved to take this and run with it, but that would be stealing her work, something he could never do. And besides, to be taken as seriously as it deserved, it needed a major, mainstream news outlet—if it was possible to find one that wasn't just a mouthpiece for the puppet masters who dominated the globe. This was as big a story as the lies that started the war in Iraq, or the Snowden revelations about the NSA. It was a beautiful, seemingly
verifiable
, monster of a conspiracy. Chi really needed to meet this woman and pass on what Robert had told him. Goddammit.

Chi found himself thinking again of the conversation with Harriet Caul. Something wasn't right about this whole thing. There was an inkling bouncing around inside his head, some little snippet of information logged away in his mental filing system, crying out for attention. Instead of trying to snare it, which he always found was a sure way to lose a stray thought, he leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and tried not to think of anything at all.

Moments later, his eyes snapped open again.

“Holy shit!”

“Sir,
language
, please!” a soft voice uttered from nearby.

He hunched forward, eyes fixed on the screen, fingers rattling across the keyboard as he started searching. The first article was tricky to find, a news story in Northern Ireland that broke before the advent of the Web. Once he had the right search terms, however, he found much more.

Back in the early nineties, a member of MI6 working in Northern Ireland had been captured and tortured by the IRA. Chi hadn't been born yet, but the man's story became legendary among conspiracy theory types, so he had come across it eventually. Now he rooted it out again, searching for as many details as he could find.

The spook was rescued by the 14 Intelligence Company, the British Army's undercover, counter-terrorist guys over there. They managed to save him before the Provos could kill him, but the rescue operation was … messy. What should have been a neat, quick strike turned into a drawn-out fire-fight near the Falls Road, right in the epicenter, in west Belfast. It all got very public. It was really bad timing for the political parties—they were seeing the first glimmers of hope for a peace process to end the Troubles.

This was a major blow for the British government and they needed someone to take the fall for it. So the agent was sacrificed, crucified in the press. Chi shook his head as he read the last of the articles he'd found, looking at the pictures of a haggard, bearded man holding his hands up to fend off questions from reporters.

Bloody hell.
Bloody hell!
Robert wasn't just a real spy, he was a goddamn
famous
spy.

Chi's phone beeped, announcing the arrival of a text. With his eyes still fixed on the computer screen, he picked up the phone and opened the message. Glancing down, he saw it was a photo, and at first, he didn't understand what he was looking at. It was the back of his own head, as he sat … at this computer. A sensation like ice water ran down his spine and he twisted around.

There was no one there—just a tall partition that doubled as a noticeboard for clubs run in the library. It was less than ten feet behind him, so whoever had taken the photo must have been standing in front of it, only a few feet from him. The picture could only have been taken minutes earlier.

There were two words accompanying the photo:

“Be Careful.”

Was this Robert, somehow keeping an eye on him, messing with his head? It had to be. Chi's hands shook as he closed down his files on the computer. Then he grabbed the thumb drive and his bag and walked up to the counter.

“Excuse me,” he said to the librarian. “There was an old man in a trench coat standing near me a few minutes ago, big square glasses on him? Did you see where he went?”

“Sorry, I didn't see anyone like that,' the woman replied, pushing her glasses up against the bridge of her nose with one hand as she swept a barcode reader across a book with the other. “There was just you and the other gentleman over at that desk. But he doesn't sound like the man you're describing.”

“The other gentleman?”

“Yes, a pale man, youngish, I think … quite bald, but then a lot of fellows are these days, aren't they? Better to shave it off, I suppose, than have those comb-overs they used to cling to. Horrid things. He was a bit like you, eyes glued to his phone.”

Chi thanked her and swore softly as he strode toward the door. He needed to get hold of Robert, but had no way of reaching him. No phone number or email address, nothing. He was stumped for a moment; then his eyes opened wider and he chewed on his lip for a few seconds before shrugging and pulling a sheet of A4 paper from his case. With a thick marker, he wrote out some words on it then, paper in hand, he picked up his case, swung the strap over his shoulder and walked outside. Standing on the path, looking out at the road, he held up the sheet of paper and waited. On it, were the words: “ROBERT, WE NEED TO TALK.”

Less than a minute later, his phone rang.

“What the hell d'you think you're doing, you moron?” Robert's voice growled.

“Improvising,” Chi told him. “You didn't leave me a contact number, so I'm left to communicate with the great unknown. You haven't been straight with me, Robert, which shouldn't be a surprise, I know, but we need to meet up and a have a proper chat. Either you tell me what's really going on, or I go public with what I know so far.”

“Is that right?” Robert snorted. “And what do you
know
, exactly?”

“Well, for a start,” Chi told him, “your name actually
is
Robert. Freaky, huh? Maybe it was just a lucky guess on my part, or maybe I somehow knew from the get-go. Maybe my subconscious remembered something from all those stupid little snippets of information I've got filed away in the old memory banks.

“Oh, and also … I've just met your daughter.”

Chapter 10: The Troubles

Robert wanted to take another bus, but Chi felt the need to assert himself a bit, so he insisted they meet like a pair of civilized adults, taking a seat on a bench in Aske Gardens. It was a public park shaded by mature deciduous trees, with an area sectioned off for tennis courts and partially bordered by a former hospital with a grand entrance framed by tall pillars. They sat with their backs to the courts, facing into the green.

Robert was seething, his teeth clenched together, his hands tense. There was a slightly unhinged quality to his anger, as if he was scared, too. He was uneasy sitting with his back to the open space behind him and kept turning to look over his shoulder, one way, then the other. His agitation served to make him all the more intimidating, but Chi had some good cards to play for the first time today and he was determined to lay them down.

Perhaps he'd been reckless holding up that note to get Robert's attention; however, he figured that, if they were being watched, the watchers knew what was up anyway. And if they weren't, nobody was seeing anything important.

“Did you follow me into the library?” Chi asked.

“What? No, I was outside. Why?”

“You didn't take a
photo
of me in the library?”

“What are you talking about?”

Chi opened up the picture in the text and showed it to him.

“This, you git. I'm talking about
this
.”

Robert took one look at it and handed it back. He showed no sign of surprise, but he went a shade paler. That was enough for Chi. Whatever was going on here, they were no longer alone. Perhaps they'd been under surveillance all along, despite all of Robert's “precautions.”

“Harriet called me ‘Goldilocks,'” he told the old spy. “She even used the same damn tone as you. You had my whole focus on Sharon, so I hadn't even thought of connecting you with her girlfriend until she used that word. You must have used the term for other blond guys when Harriet was a kid; am I right? It's one of your charming habits that she picked up, whether she meant to or not.

“Anyway, once she said it, it got me looking at things in a different way. I started to see a family resemblance. She gets her skin color from her mum, but her face is quite like yours, around the mouth and the eyes. She has a similar manner, too. And you've both got the look of a ballbreaker about you. She also mentioned spooks and said she, ‘grew up with that nonsense.' That got me thinking, 'cause if she was a relative of yours she shouldn't know what you are. Spies aren't allowed to tell their families what they do for a living. If Harriet was your daughter, she wouldn't have known you were a
spy
unless it
came out
somehow.

“That reminded me of something I saw years ago. I've got a good memory—it was always good, but I've worked at it too, developing it—”

“Can you remember how to get to the bloody point?” Robert snapped.

“Sure I can,” Chi said, smiling at the old man's blunt manner. “

“There's this famous story about an MI6 agent who was captured by the IRA. He was rescued, but not before it all became very public. His name was Robert Caul. At the time, known Republican sympathizers were being kidnapped by intelligence operatives and were being interrogated. Those who made it back alive claimed they were subjected to the kind of torture that doesn't leave a mark—sleep deprivation, locked in cramped spaces, blasted with white noise, waterboarding—you know, that kind of thing. The IRA said Caul had been leading those interrogations. They alleged that he was working with Loyalist terrorists, who were helping MI6 pick targets and providing local knowledge and support. Any of this sounding familiar?”

Robert said nothing, his posture hunched, his head hanging slightly, his gaze fixed on the ground in front of the park bench. If there was any sense of emotion off him, it was more disgust than anger. The lines either side of his nose and mouth were deep; his upper lip pulled back from his teeth.

“The exposure was a major embarrassment for the government,” Chi went on, feeling vindicated by Robert's reaction. It was as if he had his fish and was reeling it in. He was going to gut this old deceiver and get the truth out of him. “They couldn't be seen to be working with terrorists. Caul became their scapegoat; they made him famous …
infamous
, really, leaking all kinds of ugly stuff about him. His face—
your
face—was plastered all over the news. You had a beard then, which is why I didn't recognize you when we first met. The press even found your family over here. There was one really touching photo of your poor nine-year-old daughter,
Harriet
, answering the door and finding herself facing this barrage of reporters. Which was how she found out her dad was a spy.

“You let it happen. You took the blame for everything; you confessed to running an unsanctioned intelligence operation. You were tried and sent to prison. You did easy time though, and a lot of people thought you were taking one for the team, so to speak. That you'd actually been under orders, that it was a typical black op from start to finish and, like a loyal soldier, you were sacrificing yourself to save the government embarrassment.

“That was a brave thing to do. It must have been hard on you … and your family. Funny thing is, that whole affair had a big influence on me when I was young,” Chi went on. “It was one of the first stories that convinced me our government couldn't be trusted. You opened my eyes, in a way—which is kind of ironic now. So how about it, Robert? Did you fall on your sword for Queen and country? Did you ‘confess' to hide the truth about the kinds of crimes your puppet masters are still committing all over the world to maintain global domination?”

Again, Robert said nothing, but his body had the trembling, aggressive poise of a cornered animal. Chi took this in, a little unnerved, and wondered if he should press this any further. Then he figured, what the hell?

“So now you're telling me you want to expose the government's plan to brainwash people”—Chi leaned in close to Robert, close enough for Robert to feel the breath on the side of his face—“except I can't believe a bloody word you say. Your daughter's girlfriend is already investigating it and instead of going to her directly, you want
me
to bypass Harriet and give Sharon some much-needed ‘direction.' So I think it's time you told me what's really going on here.”

There was a momentary pause; then, without warning, Robert's left hand clamped onto Chi's crotch and squeezed. Chi sucked his breath back into his lungs and he squeaked in pain as his testicles were crushed. Robert turned to glare at him, the old man's face a mask of vicious desperation. It was only then that Chi realized how the stakes had changed. This wasn't some washed-out killer looking for redemption. Robert was being driven to do what he was doing … because he was utterly terrified of something.