The Storm Protocol (39 page)

‘As you were reading that; as you were telling me that, I was getting goose bumps. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up,’ said David.

‘Yeah, some pretty scary parallels,’ said Ben.

‘Not only that,’ said David. ‘But you said it yourself. They were there at the start in the sixties and early seventies. They were able to translate that head
start into a huge business success. I would see the current opportunity that we have in the same light. We are on the cusp of a new era, and I am in at the ground floor. I would even go so far as to say that we are in the driving seat.’

‘So you think the mark
et is big enough for a new drug?’ asked Ben.

‘Just look what happened with ecstasy in the nineties,’ said David. ‘The key to this is going to be the marketing; to take a leaf out of Apples book.’

‘I don't follow,’ said Ben.

‘Tell people what they want
, before they actually want it. Who ever heard of an iPod in the sixties?’

Good point,’ responded
Ben.

‘If this drug is as good as they say
, then demand is going to be astronomical. If you control the supply....’

Ben looked at David levelly.

‘You’ve invested a lot of money in this. Pulled a lot of strings and called in a lot of favours. If this doesn't work....’

He left the rest of the sentence unsaid.

‘You have to speculate to accumulate,’ replied David, ‘and I have a good feeling about this as an investment.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Ben.

‘Don’t be so pessimistic,’ said David, clapping him on the back. ‘You money men are all the same. The glass is always half empty with you. Now fuck off out of my office, I’ve got a few calls to make.’

Ben was deep in thought as he
strolled back to his own office. He’d been struck by the similarities between the two sets of brothers, as he was relating the history to David.

He had an uneasy feeling that David had known much of the information before. It wasn't like him to risk so much on an uncertainty. Maybe he’d got caught up in the romance of the story. Maybe the parallels with his own background were too stark for him to see the wood for the trees. He felt David was adding two and two and making seventeen.

Only time would tell.

21
st
May 2011 – Eleven days after the Storm.

War consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known. – Thomas Hobbes.

Street climbed wordlessly back into the car. He started it up, and screeched out of the parking space with barely a backward glance. Neither Roussel nor Foster was stupid enough to ask him how it had gone. They both recognised a situation when somebody just didn't want to talk; they were both investigators after all.

As the car travelled on towards their destination, the atmosphere within the car was tense
and strained. It was unusual and a little bit unsettling for Roussel and Foster to see their newfound colleague so upset. In a short period of time, he had become more than a colleague and it was difficult for them to see him in such obvious and emotional distress. They also knew how pragmatic he was; it was only a matter of time before that emotion was channelled into action.

#

I was trying to seize on something, anything really. There had to be some definable characteristic, an identifiable personal trait. I didn’t start off without a dad. Early on, there was definitely a man physically in the house, at least some of the time, calling himself my father.

I didn’t know if it was wor
se to have never experienced it, but to be told in your mid forties that the man you’d worshipped, the stylised ideal you’d held aloft for so long, was possibly an imposter, a pretender to the crown; that was hard. That was tough to take.

The words of the solicitor, John Maguire, had cut deep.

‘But your mother was never married.’

L
ike all words of truth, the minute I’d heard them, I’d felt released. I was now free from all the doubt, the half remembered rows, the childhood insecurities.

As the tyres ate up the miles
, and my two new companions sat silently and respectfully in the back, I tried to conjure him up from the depths of my memory; the mystery man, my father.

Everywhere were snippets; brief memories here, shallow memories there. And then
, as I remembered the key points in my early life; birthdays, Christmas, first time to ride a bike, I could see my mother in perfect clarity, smiling, clapping, laughing, but with a shadow behind her eyes. I could also see an occasional ghost standing beside her, blurry and indistinct.

‘I don't remember much about my dad,’ I said at last, out loud. ‘And it looks like there was a good reason for that.’

I glanced in the rear view mirror. They were listening intently.

‘The thing that upset me the most when I heard it first,’ I said. ‘Not the fact that he wasn't married to my mother. I could have easily dealt with that. Living out of wedlock, so what? It was the fact that it might have been a relative playing a role. An
d the thing that hurts the most?’

I could feel my voice choking.

‘My mother was probably complicit in the whole thing.’

‘Do
n't judge her too harshly,’ replied Foster.

‘And what exactly would you know about it?’ I spat disdainfully.

‘More than you know,’ said Foster, a little sadly.

‘Try me,’ I said
.

‘I was born at the height of the Disco boom,’
he replied.

Roussel
and I smiled, despite ourselves.

‘I was the product of a liaison between two lawyers; I think a small quantity of cocaine may have been involved too. I was lucky; she carried me to full-term, others of my generation were not so lucky. By all accounts
, it was something to do with a devout Catholic mother and an inheritance in jeopardy. Whatever the reason, the ending was never in doubt. I was left in a small Catholic orphanage in Queen's.’

‘So
, what about your parents?’ asked Roussel. ‘Where do they come in?’

‘My p
arents....’

Dale accentuated the word
parents.

‘....were from the Mid West. They married young and went to New York to make their fortune. Initially
, they were all about the work. They couldn’t have kids; my mother was born with key parts of her plumbing missing. Neither of them thought it would be a problem in their youth. When they got to thirty, they realised how wrong they were. They moved back to the family farmstead near Dayton, Ohio. When they left New York, they didn’t leave empty handed. They had managed to acquire a piece of it; me.’

‘When did you find out?’ asked Roussel interestedly.

Dale turned to him.

‘I've always known,’ he said. ‘My parents never kept anything from me, and it's funny; maybe it's the way I’m made. Maybe I see things differently from other people, maybe it’s purely because I am adopted, but I never once thought about tracing my birth parents.’

He said the word
parents
disdainfully this time.

‘As far as I am concerned
, my real parents live on a small farm in rural Ohio. They are the ones who comforted me when I fell down or failed. They are the ones who taught me right from wrong. They are the people who gave me the strength of character to be who I am. And it was them who raised me right, and released me into the world, which in turn gave me the inner strength to make my own mistakes.’

He glanced up at the mirror
, so that he could catch my gaze, and when he caught it, he held it.

‘So
, actually, I do know a lot about it,’ he said. ‘And the one thing I’ll share with you is this. For every selfish career woman; for every couple not ready for that kind of commitment or responsibility, there is a corresponding young woman or couple, desperate to have a child at any price. So don’t judge your mother too harshly. Who knows the pressure she was under?’

I finally broke his gaze and looked away, slightly ashamed of my outburst. I hadn't had a bad life, certainly not a bad childhood. Maybe what Dale said was true; maybe I had finally laid that first ghost to rest.

‘Sorry about that,’ I mumbled.

Dale shook his head.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘You weren’t to know. But don’t be so quick to judge in future.’

I nodded to acknowledge what he
’d said.

‘So
, does this tell us anything new about the situation with Black Swan?’ asked Roussel.

I was about to answer when Dale piped up.

‘I think it's even more likely now,’ he said. ‘It definitely has something to do with you and your father. One or the other, or both of you, but like I said before, this is personal. You are personal to him, and if you can’t think of a reason why, then it has to be down to your father. Maybe it’s as simple as that old saying
the sins of the father
.’

We chewed on that for the rest of the journey
, in a slightly stilted, but still companionable silence.

As we got nearer to the coast, the scenery started changing
, and I could feel our collective spirits lifting.

The sea in Ireland was not the glorious azure blue of the Pacific Islands, or the deep emerald green of the Adriatic or Mediterranean. It was a typical dull and soft Irish day; a fine, almost invisible spr
ay that doesn't seem to be wet.

As we d
escended the hill into Kinsale, the grey clouds seemed to swoop down to meet the grey sea on the far horizon, and it was difficult to decide where one finished and the other began.

I had been to Kinsale once as a boy. I hadn't remembered it being so picturesque. Things like the view don’t affect you when you are that young. Looking at the picture postcard houses and beautifully manicured streets and shop fronts, it seemed an unlikely birthplace for a new illegal addiction.

‘Strangely enough, this feels a bit like the East Coast of the US,’ said Dale. ‘There’s a real Boston feel about it, especially around the harbour.’

‘Yeah it was originally a fishing port,’ I said. ‘But certainly
, in the last thirty to forty years, it's become much more synonymous with food and sailing and expensive holiday homes; very much the lifestyles of the rich and famous.’

We circled the harbour slowly
, until I found what I was looking for; a basic pay-and-display car park. I manoeuvred into a space, careful to centre it between the white lines; something my mother had drilled into me when she’d taught me how to drive. I ignored the looks from the other two, as I continued to move in and out, straightening the car until I was happy.

‘Don’t say a word,’ I said, prompting them to smile with amusement and raise their hands in a gesture of supplication.

‘Stay here,’ I continued, as I hopped out. ‘Don’t touch anything. I’ll be back in a minute.’

The last thing I needed was to get clamped
, and in these little picturesque villages, they took their car parking very seriously. It was a huge revenue stream for them.

As I pumped my small change into the ticket machine, I failed to register the two cars; large black
saloons, each one containing four large and forbidding looking gentlemen, dressed mainly in black.

I hit the green button to print my ticket. The sun was starting to break through the clouds, penetrating the gloom like golden rods of light. As I passed slowly back behind the two parallel parked BMW’s, all eight doors opened simultaneously. There was something about the symmetry of the action
. The choreography of the movement rang faint alarm bells at the back of my head.

I was almost level with my own car
, when I saw Roussel turn around in the back and his eyes widened in horror. The unease I’d felt seconds earlier hardened into grim resolve. At last I had something to channel my anger and frustration into. I took a deep breath, in through the nose and out through the mouth. I felt my muscles bunch and harden.

I whirled just in time; as the baseball bat was at the top of its down stroke. I caught it just before it started on its
return trajectory, and viciously twisted it out of my attackers grasp. I reversed my grip and then jammed the metal end of it straight back into my assailants face as hard as I could. I felt bones crack and he went down with a scream of agony. I reversed the bat again, using it as a staff this time to deflect an attack from the right. The iron bar splintered the bat in two under the force of the impact, but before he could react, I grabbed his wrist, spun inside and threw him straight over my shoulder. He landed with an almighty crack on his back and I followed up, dropping a knee straight into his exposed groin. He curled into an agonised ball, like a spider does when you touch it. He wasn’t getting up again anytime soon.

I relieved him of the bar, using it to quickl
y parry another blow from a bat. Grabbing the arm holding the weapon, I jabbed the bar into my assailant’s stomach, causing him to double up. As he bent over involuntarily, I caught him on the way down, my knee rising savagely into the middle of his face. He was out cold before he hit the deck.

At this stage Roussel and Dale were out of the car, standing slightly back from the action
, but watchful and ready. I grabbed the weapon from the attacker’s nerveless fingers and threw it across to Roussel. That was more like it; we were beginning to even up the odds.

The five remaining assailants stood back. I could sense a pervading air of uncertainty begin to infiltrate their ranks
, until one of their number stepped forward. He held a pickaxe handle, and as I watched, he theatrically twirled it around his head and from side to side. His action seemed to rejuvenate his gang, who closed in menacingly.

My eyes never left his. I clung grimly to the small iron bar; I was beginning to really like it as a weapon.

When he attacked, I had thought I was ready for it. Every nerve and sinew was tensed for the thrust, certain that I could read his intentions. However, my reflexes fired just a fraction too slow; he was a much younger man and had trained himself well.

The handle came down in a blur of speed. If it had connected, it would have caved my head like a melon. As it was, I felt the sting on my upper arm
, as it glanced off. Roussel had been watching proceedings warily, holding the bat like a baseball player. He was a younger man than I, and had reacted instinctively to the down thrust from my opponent. The attacker wasn’t expecting a counter attack, and had left himself wide open. The Bat whirled savagely in a wicked arc, to catch him cleanly on the side of the temple. The force of the blow literally lifted him off his feet. He clattered unconscious to the floor in front of Foster, who relieved him of the stout pickaxe handle. The odds were seriously beginning to even up now.

I guessed that the remainder of the group were now leaderless and rudderless. They were exchanging uncertain glances between them; a sort of collective paralysis. I knew one of them would make a move
, but I had a feeling that it wouldn't be coordinated. I was wrong.