The Whitehall Syndicate: A time travel conspiracy thriller (15 page)

The small, homely Mexican restaurant was silent, save for a few quiet conversations. It was only late morning going on noon and the proprietor was surprised. While there were several couples munching away on authentic spicy taco's, there were a few too many tables empty considering it was nearing lunchtime.

From across the street, a group of suit-clad politicians and their entourage slowly marched up to The Happy Mexican. The six friends had made it part of their routine to get an early lunch at this same restaurant every week, and this week was no exception.

Being the top six employees on Michael Green's staff, they were constantly swamped with work and this was their favourite time to unwind. As they entered the establishment the owner showed them to their usual table, right next to the counter and they began leafing through the menus. It was an arbitrary exercise, because although the selection of meals changed every week, the alterations were usually insubstantial. Even so, the clique always looked through the menu every time they arrived, almost seeing it as a challenge to spot the difference.

The head of Green's speech writing team was a middle-aged woman in a pale blue-grey suit, wearing her sandy hair just below shoulder length. She began making small talk with the chancellor's political advisor, a tall, lean and muscular African man with a shaven head and a dark black box surrounded by hazy stubble.

As they sat talking about the value of kidney beans in a tortilla wrap, both their eyes turned to a gorgeous brunette who stepped through the door. She had golden skin and her long dark brown hair matched her sparkling eyes. Every man at the table sat in awe, while the women burned with jealousy.

She went over to the usher to get her a seat but stopped halfway.
In a shocked, shrill voice she cried out “Oh my God!” Within a split second she was walking across the room, where she interrupted a trio of business types eating their meal.

“Hi there. I'm sorry to bother you but are you Jason-Patrick Lazardou?” The man smiled, clearly flattered at the recognition, and gave a restrained nod.

At the other table, Green's public relations strategist sat up at the scene, his ears burning. The table had long gone quiet, entranced by the exotic woman. He whispered to his colleague “Did you hear that? That's Jason Lazardou.”

Lazardou was almost legendary as an MP.  He was often credited as single-handedly breaking the thirty-year dominance of the liberals with his radical alteration of the conservative party. Since then he had kept out of view most of the time and it was rare to
see him at all in the capital nowadays. Chuck was also at the table and looked across in awe.

Back at Lazardou's table, the gorgeous woman continued the conversation, speaking just loud enough for Green's staff to eavesdrop. “Hi I’m Marta. I used to work with you for a little while. So what brings you out to London. I've read that you rarely ever come here anymore.” Lazardou was surprisingly chatty considering the interruption but one look at the person interrupting, and it wasn't hard for any of Green's staff to see why.

“I'm here for my wife's birthday,” he began, fiddling with his wedding ring. The woman broke into a soppy grin. “And me and my friend are throwing a party for her. Oh sorry, this is my good friend Jeffery Dunn.” The clean-shaven man next to him stood up to shake hands and the woman smiled again, coyly this time.

Across the room, gossip volcanically erupted. Moira was nearly yelping at yet another name she knew. She had only ever met Dunn once and he had changed a little since then but remained as handsome as ever. Most of the table looked confused and those who didn't left her to explain. “Tony Dunn is in the top twenty on the UK rich list. Oh my God he’s a major contributor to the campaign. He was the one who financed the complete cabinet re-shuffle and the party re-structuring.”
The others began to nod, most of them having got their jobs from that same re-shuffle.

The woman next to Lazardou, presumably his wife, now spoke to the woman at the table. “I have to ask you this, I've got a bit of a gift for this sort of thing. Now let me guess… Did you used to work at the university with Jason?” She squeaked in excitement.

“Yes, yes I did! I can't believe you worked that out! That’s spooky!” The woman exchanged some pleasantries with the couple and after getting a wrap to go, left the eatery. With the focus of attention gone, the group returned to more discussion about kidney beans.

A short while later the trio got up to pay for their meal and as they reached the counter, Green's cohorts could hear every word they said. Lazardou was mentioning a party, saying how excellent it would have to be to warrant the trip back into London before Dunn interrupted to say he expected nothing less of Michael Green.

Green's advisor smiled as he took in the situation. Here he was, a worker and close friend of Michael, and he didn't even know that Lazardou was invited. As they left, Juleen ventured a theory. “I bet them two are like special guests. They must have been like a surprise or something, for his party on Monday.” While her explanation left something to the imagination, most of the sextet nodded in agreement, before continuing their typically bland discussion.

Outside the restaurant, the three continued walking down the street, huge grins on every face. Crossing the road they met up with Green senior, who was waiting anxiously. “It worked!” exclaimed Jack passionately. “They were exactly where you said they would be. You did well.”

“I told you they would be.”

“Well I think everyone did well, even Kenya,” said Pete. “It's a shame she isn't here now, but I told her to go back to the studio when she was done, so that we could talk. I don't really want to get her mixed up in this
anymore.”

Everyone was wearing giant smiles, excitedly chatting away. The first phase was complete and hopefully, by the time they got into Green's house word would have spread, and they could wander freely
as guests. All they would have to do is avoid Green. Despite Jack's doubts, Pete had pulled through for them.

Kim was feeling slightly nauseous, and her huge cafeteria lunch was malevolently crashing around in her stomach. Snapping back her orange safety goggles, which were beginning to give her a headache, she scratched at her scalp and the coarse, dry hair made a crackling sound.

A little red light on the counter blinked and she tapped a few buttons on the huge dome shaped piece of equipment in front of her. It began chugging out a quiet sound as the contents inside span around, surrounded by a bubble of blue light. Kim began jotting shorthand scribbles on her sheet of paper, observations of the experiment besides just the data tables the computer collected.

She heard her phone vibrating and waited for the machine to stop before she picked it up. It was Jack, texting her a message. She was so glad to hear from him that for a second her stomach felt less painful. Reading down she saw that it was basically telling her to try and get into a private space within an hour or so, at which point he would call her.

She returned to the experiment and smiled randomly at her technicians, watching the clock nervously for the entire hour. Finally, with five minutes to go, she got off of her workstation and headed to the toilet. Reaching the lavatory she was so nervous she ended up going. She couldn't believe how worried she was about a simple phone call but in the back of her mind was the fear that her bosses were spying on, even in the toilet.

Right on cue, Jack rang her up and began telling her about his adventure today. Finally able to get a word in edgeways, she began explaining her situation with the access codes. Once she finished, she waited for Jack's reaction.

There was a long pause and for a second she thought she might have been disconnected but then she heard Jack slowly reply. “Hang on a second,” he said with a sense of urgency reminiscent of a zealous schoolboy. “I saw six of something in my brother's message.” He flicked open his laptop, where had had transferred the files, and stayed on the
line to Kim as he searched through. His fingers were trembling and when he couldn't find it he started to panic. Not letting it show in his voice, he continued searching and breathed a sigh of relief as he located the missing file.

“Okay, I've got it. According to this, Green bought six high specification safes, and hired someone to build them into a lab.”

“Well that has to be the place I work at. Does it say where they are?”

“Erm hang on,” said Jack as he checked the reams of information his brother had sent him. “Yes, I have a plan of the lab and the six locations. They're complicated though, and I don't understand the blueprints. They've been altered in some way.”

“Okay, well I can help you look through them once I get off work. Can you make it to mine?”

“Yeah I think so.”

“I assume you'll let yourself in,” she joked.

Kim suddenly stopped talking as she heard the door to the toilet creak open. Her cubicle was locked and there was no way to tell who was outside. Whispering goodbye she hung up the phone and turned it off.

Not wanting to risk anything, she flushed the toilet again for show and walked out, passing Tammy as she went. She cursed herself as she left, for being too overcautious. Now she would have to wait until she got home to find out what Jack knew.

Frank and Tony sat in Frank's car, computers on each lap. It was awkward for both of them and Frank wasn't convinced his coffee was stable on the dashboard. Mobile phone tracer software was making his life so much more complicated. There was no map data, only a series of numerical grid co-ordinates at given times. Even those weren't in order.

Tony was the technophile of the pair and he had a program that worked like a map to show the movement more clearly. The laborious part was filling in all the values and discarding the ones that were false signals or when the phone was switched off. Those were values the system predicted, and they were always wrong.

After spending most of their day on it, Frank finally declared his section was ready and Tony said his would be in less than a minute. Frank began to drift off into speculation again, wondering why somebody would want him murdered.

The tech guys had looked over the video and found that the bomb was in a package that was posted to the police station. The post service at the station had no record of the package and the video quality was too poor to zoom in on the address of origin printed on the box, so that was a dead end.

Tony nudged Frank back into the moment and crossed his fingers as he loaded the software. After a second a map came up and small red lines traced the phone's movements over the last twenty-four hours. There were records further back but it was a lot of effort to input them so they had decided to leave them out for now.

Tony was about to start going through Jack's movements more slowly, hour by hour, when Frank stopped him. Instead he leaned across and accessed the records for the hours around midnight and saw the location was constant at one place. A small apartment near Elephant and Castle. “That's where he slept, so that's probably where he's staying,” said Frank and started up the car.

Kim lay down on her bed and closed her eyes. She hadn't specified where she was meeting Jack or when, so she just assumed he would show up at her flat. The door was locked to try and keep her safe from anyone who might be coming after her, so despite what she's said, Jack would have to use the doorbell like anyone else.

Lying on the bed was making her drowsy so she sat up before her eyes became too heavy. She was still in her work clothes; a typical smart casual outfit made up of a pair of slightly snug grey trousers and a pink and purple top, which was a little bit thin for today's weather. She heard the doorbell and walked downstairs carefully before answering the door to find Jack.

Trading hellos, she let him in and he immediately asked for her laptop. He seemed all business but since his life was at stake, it seemed more than reasonable. She loaded up her machine and waited while Jack got out an Erbium Laser Disc with the data. Sticking the ELD
in, he pulled up the schematics he had mentioned earlier on the phone.

Kim looked at them for a second, frowned, and began bending her body and arching her neck, attempting to view them from several angles. Finally it clicked and she explained it to Jack. It wasn’t a blueprint but rather a sketch of the finished lab.

The artist had clearly never seen the building before doing this part two dimensional, part three dimensional rendition, and it was only due to Kim working there that any of it made sense.

Looking over the plans, Jack asked her how her day was and she replied that it had been as boring as usual. Right now Jack wished he was back at work and away from all of this.

Kim was the only one he felt he could fully trust and suddenly he found himself opening up to her about everything. Green senior's ulterior motives, his own confusion over why he was being made to do this, and his betrayers, in particular Anisha. Kim could tell he still wanted her to be innocent. She in turn shared her concerns about her bosses to Jack, before he once again started to wallow in pity. Kim tried to comfort him but Jack, sensing her pity, closed off, becoming business like and rigid again.

He turned back to the laptop then showed her the six points on the map and asked her if she knew where they were. Kim, feeling like she had touched a nerve, followed his lead. She looked over the map and in her mind tried to picture the location of each. She wrote the six down in simple sentences on a sheet of paper and thanked Jack for his information, half expecting him to leave there and then.