THE ORANGE MOON AFFAIR (5 page)

"I've already checked. I can't find anything," he replied.

"Well the files are missing, aren't they?"

He cleared his throat and made himself comfortable before replying. "I think the idea of forming a new company in Northern Ireland was, and is, a sound one. The aid that is available from the Government is enormous and the benefits of cheap land and reasonably low wages make the potential profits very big." He paused, shifted position and continued. "The field of micro-electronics again was a good choice, the market at the moment being on an upward trend. The one oddity is the fact that Sir Ivan chose to go it alone. And yet this can also be considered a shrewd move." I looked up at him and he held up a hand to forestall my question. "Although the potential profits are high, so is the risk of any project in the Province. Your father was a farsighted man and I can only assume that by setting the Company up as a separate organisation he could minimise the risk. As to the unorthodoxy of the methods he used, one can only trust his judgement. If we can find out who the Managing Director is, a lot of the questions will be answered."

I digested what he said and mulled it over in my mind. Was Adrian just telling me what he thought I should know, or was he being straight with me? There was no real way of knowing.

"Wouldn't the Government have demanded a more orthodox approach? After all there is a considerable sum at stake.”

"With the contacts your father had in Government I should think that was the last thing on anybody's mind. Just the mention of his name was enough to seal a contract."

"Have there been any noises from Government departments now that he is dead?"

"No, Everyone seems to be satisfied that all was taken care of beforehand. Well, you just have to look at the detail in that report." He indicated the file. "No doubt the Managing Director of Rathborne Micro-Electronics Limited is dealing with the whole thing."

"His name must be on the Register of Companies?"

"No. It just says that the full name would be supplied at a later date." He rose from his seat. "Well, if you don’t need me any more then I will be getting back to work."

I nodded absently and sat trying to sort out the puzzle, my brain doing cartwheels. I am a trained Special Forces soldier and I'd better start thinking as if I was sifting through military intelligence reports. All the information was here, somewhere, I knew it, yet it just didn't make sense.

So what was there? A factory still under-construction, no personnel officially appointed except an unknown Managing Director, Mary and myself.

Did Mary know what was going on? The way her mind was right know that was an unknown as well. Right now I wanted to check the computer and the financial requirements of Rathborne Micro-Electronics Limited.

Getting more information was easier than I thought, now that I had the name of the company. I typed in the Rathborne company name and entered
'find'
. The screen did its usual blink and then reeled out some facts and figures relating to the new company. I sat looking at the screen in amazement. I could not really comprehend the amounts that stared me in the face. Rathborne Micro-Electronics Limited had been floated with an initial stake of £225 million from the Gunn Capital Trust Fund. A further £2.5 billion was then allocated to the company from Government sources, totalling £2.75 billion. The thought of that amount of money was staggering enough, but that one man had managed to raise it on his own was even more so. And somewhere there was a person controlling it all.

I quickly Skyped Jennifer. “On your terminal, type in Rathborne Micro-Electronics and then hit the 'find' button. Tell me what happens.”

I heard her typing rapidly as I was speaking.

“Nothing. Hasn't found anything.”

“Thanks Jennifer.”

“Can you tell me what this is about?”

“It's about missing information. I'll fill you in some other time.”

Julie was out with one of the horses and Mary was talking to Ron, the farm manager. This gave me time to go through the bag of possessions that I had brought back from Belfast. They had been sitting in a cupboard since my return and I had completely forgotten about them. My memory was only jogged when I tried to find the combination to the safe in the office. The old man had apparently kept it on him at all times and nobody else had any idea as to what it was. Going through his clothes and briefcase was a rather morbid business but I found a bunch of keys.

One of the keys fitted the desk in the study. A quick search revealed a diary and papers regarding the running of the Hall and farm, a few identification sheets of some of the more expensive horses in the stables that it was hoped would be used as breeding stock and other sundry bills and receipts. I flipped through the diary and found a Chubb Safe business card with an eight-digit number written on the back. There was also a box that contained a pile of personal letters. These I left until I'd talked to Mary. Then I booted up his computer and searched for Rathborne Micro-Electronics with no result. Which meant that the computer in the flat was the only one that could access any information. And of course nobody would have thought to look there if they were searching for information, assuming, just as I had done, that all the computers at the Hall were connected. For the first time since the funeral, I could feel a sense of excitement. My father must have thought that if anything happened to him, I’d use the flat and the computer, so that’s where he hid the information, at least some of it. And now I was certain he knew he was probably going to die. Rathborne Micro-Electronics was the key.

As my mind tried to ravel together everything I had just learned, I heard Mary's voice asking for tea to be sent into the drawing room. I left the study and joined her. We passed the few minutes until tea was served talking about the farm and the stables. I then broached the subject of Rathborne.

I told her that I had discovered that both of us were Directors of the company and asked her why she hadn’t told me.

"I just didn't think it was important. Your father said it was merely a formality and, as usual, I asked no more questions about it." She looked as if she were about to cry so I stopped questioning her.

I found myself walking towards the stables. It was at times like these, when I was confused and angry, that I always sought out Julie. Somehow she managed to calm me down and put me back on the road to rational thought. The stables were at the back of the Hall backing onto a paddock that had been set out as a small jumping course, mainly for schooling young horses and giving good, safe practice for riders. Julie was taking Prince, one of the biggest horses, through his paces. I stopped by the rail and watched.

It wasn’t until she had finished that she finally noticed me and waved. She dismounted and handed the horse over to the groom, climbed the fence and took my arm.

"Hey. Done with work for the day?" she said brightly.

"There were some questions that I had to ask Mary. I'm afraid I upset her again."

"You seem to be doing that a lot lately. You know what she's like with these depressions she keeps having."

"I know, I know. But there are some things that I haven't the answers to, and I think she may."

"Can't you drop it, at least until she’s over this?"

"No, I don't think there is time. Something is badly wrong and I've got to find out what it is."

"Do you want to tell me about it?" She stopped and stood in front of me, hands on my arms and looked into my eyes. "Perhaps I can help, I'm not so dumb, you know."

We continued on our way and as we walked, I told her everything that I had learned so far, including my suspicions and my fears.

"You think your father was engaged in something dishonest?" she exclaimed. "You can't be serious? He was one of the most respected men in the country."

"I’d like to think he wasn’t, but nothing seems to fit. Either he was into something pretty nasty or I didn't know him as well as I thought. I guess a lot of answers may well be locked in that safe at the Head Office."

"Did you say that only your father had the combination?" She said. I nodded. "And you found the combination this afternoon when you were going through his personal effects?" Again I nodded. "Right, then let's go to the office tonight and have a look in that safe. That might solve a lot of mysteries."

“Ready to take that flight then?”

“I guess.”

The Eurocopter EC120B is a great little helicopter, fairly quick and agile, with great equipment and, like all helicopters, a panoramic view, and this one was surprisingly quiet. First I had to check in with Norwich ATC for clearance, pressures and traffic information. That done, I lifted the collective, countered the yaw with the anti-torque pedals, pitch and roll with the cyclic, rising about five feet off the runway before applying more collective and pushing the cyclic forward to dip the nose and transition to forward flight and climb out from the Hall helipad. Norwich ATC cleared us to our en-route heading at an altitude of one thousand feet. As my old skills returned I relaxed and settled into the flight, following the flight plan on the moving map and keeping the speed at 120 knots.

I looked across at Julie, who still seemed tense. “Relax. Enjoy the flight.”

“You still have to land this thing. And if I'm not mistaken, very close to water on a little square barge.”

“Not quite, but close.”

“Did you fly helicopters in the Army?”

“No. I could already fly before I joined, but it came in handy a couple of times in Afghanistan.”

“And of course you can't tell me, Official Secrets Act and all that stuff.”

I nodded.

“What happens when this is all over?” She looked at me and I stared straight ahead, not wanting to catch her eye.

“We'll deal with that when the time comes.”

“And the company?”

“I don't know. Haven't thought about it.” Truth is I didn't want to think about it. Being bound to a desk for the rest of my life, living in a mansion in rural England with a wife and family just didn't appeal.

Not right now.

Maybe sometime in the future, but not now.

As we flew closer to London, ATC began to route me past the myriad airports in the London Terminal Control area, past London City airport in docklands and up the river toward Battersea. The light was beginning to fade, but not enough to make this a night landing and within a few minutes I was being talked down on the approach to the Heliport jutting out into the Thames on the south bank. The approach was from the West down to the pad, where I then had to hover, turn the aircraft ninety degrees and slowly move between the buildings to where a 'ramper' guided me to landing pad 3. It took all my concentration to keep the helicopter steady and I breathed a sigh of relief when the skids touched the ground and I shut down. Julie prised her hands off the edge of the seat.

“Safe and sound,” I said as cheerfully as I could. I hadn't told her this was the first time I had flown in here without an instructor. She gave me a very 'old-fashioned' look and waited until the rotors stopped before opening the door.

“Well there's never a dull moment that's for sure,” she said and gratefully stepped onto the ramp.

George, the night security guard
, let us into the lift and immobilised the alarms for the top floor and the safe in my office. There was no other way up to the Group offices except through this lift and at night they were locked and the power switched off. We had caught George just before he armed all the systems, which would then have been under a time lock until six o‘clock in the morning when the cleaners went to work.

The lift door opened and we made our way to the office. Julie gave a whistle when I switched the lights on.

"This is your office? Does your personal assistant match the surroundings?" she asked.

"Come on, let's get on with it." I led the way to the wall safe behind the Picasso, which slid aside to reveal the round
Chubb Bankers Treasury Safe
. I stared at the safe door. There were two combination locks and I only had one number written on the Chubb business card.

Two locks, eight digits 11101213, four for each lock but which number was for which lock? Something niggled me about the numbers and each combination I tried didn't work.

“I hope there's not a lock-out on this safe,” Julie said warily.

“Lock-out?”

“Yes. Like when you type in the wrong password three times into a computer, it locks you out and you can't enter anymore passwords.”

“Don't say that.” I sat back and tried to think why the numbers seemed so familiar. “God I'm such a dumb idiot sometimes,” I said in exasperation.

“Meaning what?”

“The numbers. 1110. November 11th, my birthday and 1213, December 13th my mother's death.”

“Mary?”

“No my real mother. She died when I was a baby so I never knew her.”

I took out the diary and flipped through to the eleventh day of November. My father had written
“Thomas' birth. A time to remember”.
And on the thirteenth day of December he had written,
“Ellie's death. Another time to remember”.

“Curious,” Julie said quietly.

“Not really. It’s quite clever actually. Now I just have to remember what time I was born and what time my mother died. Two four digit numbers in military time.”

“You don't need to remember anything,” Julie said excitedly. “Look.” She pointed to the page. It was divided into times of the day.

“Nobody is born exactly on the hour, or dies exactly on the half-hour.”

“But look at the bottom of the page. Were you born in New York? And did your mother die in Athens?”

“No. But my mother was born in New York. They could be time zones?”

“Why would you think that?”

“I'm a pilot, it makes sense.”

“To you maybe.”

“Exactly. New York is minus 5 hours and Athens plus two.”

Julie shook her head. “But that still whole hours and again who gets born exactly on the hour...” her voice trailed away.

“Unless they are minutes. So my birthday time would be 2205 and my mother's death would be 1602.”