Authors: Peter Flannery
‘Will you tell anyone?’ she had
asked.
Psimon nodded.
‘Who?’
‘Everyone.’
She smiled but her smile was
tempered with a mother’s concern. ‘They will fear you.’
‘I will help them understand.’
‘They will try to control you.’
‘Yes...’ he replied. ‘They will
try.’
‘And is there someone you trust;
someone who can help you?’
‘Possibly… Yes.’
‘Good… That’s good.’
She had closed her eyes a final
time. ‘Take care of yourself, my love...’ she breathed. ‘Do what you have to
do…’
Psimon nodded at the memory of
his mother’s final words. Crouching down beside the grave he kissed his fingers
and pressed them into the soft mound of earth then he withdrew his hand and
rose to his feet.
‘Now,’ he thought. ‘Now I can
begin.’
He had five days to decide his
fate, five days before the end. But would it be slow or would it be quick...
‘Let it be quick,’ he thought.
‘Please God... Let it be quick.’
He lifted his face to the sky and
blinked away his tears then he made his way back to the path and turned in the
direction of his flat. He paused. Heading that way would take him past the
church; past the place where it had all begun. For a moment he wavered. He was
not sure he could face it. But the church was just a building… a place of
memories.
Lucifer was not there; Lucifer
was elsewhere.
Psimon took a breath and began to
walk. The light was fading when he reached St Joseph’s. He stopped and turned
to peer over the black iron railings, his mind leaping back to that terrible
night fourteen years ago... the lifeless body of Father Kavanagh, the
unsettling sound of whispers and the fury in Lucifer’s voice when he realised
that someone had overheard his confession. As the memories faded Psimon found
that he was gripping the railings. Slowly the tension went out of his body. He
let go of the railings and his eyes took on a more determined glint. He shook
his head to clear his thoughts then with a final look at the church he
continued on his way.
Navigating the leafy suburbs of
Manchester it took him another twenty minutes to reach his flat. He opened the
front door of the converted Victorian house and climbed the stairs to a second
door on the first floor. Opening it he placed his keys on a small unit in the
hall. He took off his jacket, loosened his black tie and proceeded down the
hall to his spare room. The room was almost empty but there was a chair and a white
table beside the door. On it was a pot full of pens, a sprawl of paper and
various rolls of adhesive tape. There was also a white padded envelope, a
mobile phone and a small black notebook with a thin pencil pushed down into the
spine. The notebook looked old and well used.
Psimon picked it up and turned to
the first entry...
October 1997
. The entry was made some fourteen
years ago in the scrawly hand of an eight-year-old boy. Under the date was a
name...Father Kavanagh. The old priest’s name was crossed
out and beneath it Psimon had written...
I’m sorry
.
He flicked through the pages,
through the long list of crossed out names, to a page that was divided into six
days. In the space for today’s date there were two names noted down. The first
was,
mum
. Gently Psimon crossed out the word and drew a single
X
beside it. The second name was,
Dr Marcus Bryant
. He put the tip
of the pencil to the name and shook his head in a gesture of regret then slowly
his eyes moved across the page to Thursday and another name...
Dr Patrick
Denning
. Finally he reached the space marked for Sunday, just five days
from now. Here was written a single word, the last word in his little book of
death.
Here, he had written,
me
.
For several seconds he stared at
the word as images of pain and death swam through his mind. He tried to make
sense of them, he tried to see beyond them but as he did so he began to sweat.
His hands shook, his jaw clenched and his breathing grew ragged until dark
spots appeared in his vision and the images were swallowed up in the black
shadows of his fear.
Slowly the crippling anxiety
faded as Psimon conceded to his fate. He could not stop it; he could not change
it. The end was close but before it came there were things he had to do. He
reached across the table for the mobile phone. The world needed to know that he
existed, or at least that someone like him could exist. He had five days in
which to tell them and it would start with a phone call.
Chapter 2
International
Liaison for National Security
The
Blenheim Suite
MI5
London
Richard Chatham spoke into the phone as he turned to the
computer on his broad walnut desk. ‘Thank you Ambassador. I’m just retrieving
the files now.’ He covered the mouthpiece with his hand and breathed a deep
sigh of relief. He had just succeeded in averting an international crisis but
it had taken the entire weekend
and
the first day of his long-awaited
vacation, and his wife was not amused. The high security network flashed up on
his monitor and he entered his password...
T
H E R M O P Y L A E 1 3 4 6
Locating the necessary files he
entered the ambassador’s details, verified the digital signature, and clicked
send. ‘That’s it,’ he said, speaking once more into the phone. ‘The files
should be with you now.’ There was a brief pause and Chatham smiled. ‘Not at
all, ambassador. Thank
you
for being so understanding.’ He put down the
handset and pressed the red button on the base of the phone to call his aide. A
few seconds passed and a tall young man leaned in through the door of Chatham’s
office.
‘You’ve done it then?’ asked the
young man.
‘Yes, Stokes,’ said Chatham. ‘You
can tell upstairs to stand down.’
Stokes lingered in the doorway.
‘Your wife phoned again...’ he said. ‘She wants to know if you plan on joining
her for the rest of your holiday.’
Chatham rolled his eyes but his
face took on a guilty flush as his eyes flicked down to his desk and the small
black and white photograph of his wife.
‘Well you did stand her up at
lunchtime,’ said Stokes.
‘There was an accident,’ said Chatham,
fixing his aide with a disapproving eye.
‘I know, said Stokes. ‘She was
just upset that you didn’t call...’
‘I...’
‘Lost your mobile phone... I
know,’ said Stokes. ‘I told her...’
‘And what did she say?’
‘She said that was
‘convenient’.’
Chatham sighed. He could not
blame his wife for being annoyed. It had been eighteen months since they he had
last taken a holiday and this one had been murder to arrange. With annoyance he
waved Stokes out. ‘Just tell them upstairs,’ he said.
‘Yes sir,’ said Stokes and with
that he left the room.
Chatham took an exhausted breath.
He was just reaching out to call his wife when a phone began to ring. And not
just any phone but
the
phone.
He paused. Maybe he had heard
wrong. Maybe it was just his desk phone that was ringing. The phone rang again
and now there was no mistaking its distinctive tone. Chatham turned to look at
the old-fashioned phone that sat on the bureau in the corner of his office. In
the seven years he had held this post that phone had rung only five times and
none of them was an occasion he was eager to recall. He stared at the large
black phone as if it were a Pandora’s Box he feared to open but the prospect of
ignoring it was not an option. Only a handful of people in the world were
cleared to use that line and ignoring any one of them was absolutely
unthinkable.
The phone rang a third time but
still he hesitated. His wife would never forgive him if he ruined the rest of
their holiday. Almost without thinking he got up from his desk, and went to
stand over the bureau.
The phone rang a fourth time.
Four times was tardy; five would
be downright rude, and if the phone was left to ring six times Chatham would be
getting a call from his superiors. There was no doubt about it… this call was
going to screw up his week but Richard Chatham could not abide rudeness. He
picked up the phone. ‘Blenheim Suite, Chatham speaking,’ he said, following the
accepted protocol.
‘My apologies for ruining your
holiday, Mr Chatham.’
In an instant Chatham went from
professional resignation to icy alertness. That was not a conventional reply
and the voice was not one that he recognised. The accent was English but not
the Prime Minister’s Eton English; this was more northerly, Manchester maybe…
‘Who is this?’ he demanded.
‘This is not the time for
introductions, Mr Chatham. I just need you to listen.’
The voice was self-assured but
despite that there was a distinct note of weariness to it.
‘How did you get this number?’
Chatham was playing for time, trying to collect his thoughts. He was still
reeling from the fact that an unauthorised individual had managed to get access
to this line. Stepping away from the bureau he reached across his desk and
began to stab at the red button on the base of his normal desk phone.
‘I’m sorry Mr Chatham. I’m not in
a position to answer your questions at the moment. But I do need your
attention.’
Chatham waited impatiently for
Stokes to answer the buzzer. At the same time he tried to glean as much detail
about the caller as possible.
He was male… young…
early-twenties…
The door to Chatham’s office
opened and Stokes poked his head into the room. ‘Sir?’ The frantic beeping of
the intercom had effectively communicated the urgency of the summons.
Chatham made a rapid circling
motion with his finger and pointed to the handset held to his ear. He also
mouthed the words, ‘
Trace this call
!’
Stokes looked down at the phone
on Chatham’s desk. He seemed puzzled by the fact that the handset was still in
place. Chatham covered the mouthpiece of the phone he was holding. ‘Not that
one you idiot... This one!’ He pointed to the phone sitting on the bureau.
Stokes looked at the
old-fashioned phone and comprehension finally dawned. He disappeared rapidly
from the doorway and Chatham returned his full attention to the caller on the
line.
‘Are you still there, Mr
Chatham?’ said the caller as if he had been waiting for Chatham to finish.
‘Yes, I’m still here. Now who the
hell is this? This is a restricted…’
‘Please, Mr Chatham. I do not
have time to explain. Now, do you have a pen and paper?’
Needled at being cut off like
that Chatham grabbed a pencil from a rosewood desk-tidy and flipped open his
leather-bound diary. He glanced anxiously at the door to his office, wondering
how Stokes was coming along with the trace. It would not be an easy task. This
was a clean line… no computer screening, no automatic recording, no network and
exchange software. The people who used this phone had to know that their words
were treated with the utmost confidentiality.
‘Go ahead,’ said Chatham trying
to sound calm when in truth he was deeply unsettled by this breach of security.
If someone had managed to get hold of this number then he wondered what other
sensitive information they might have access to. He was about to find out.
‘Please write down the following
letters and numbers as I call them out,’ the caller directed.
Chatham’s pencil hovered over the
page. ‘
What kind of perverse game is this?
’
‘T…’ the voice said.
Chatham wrote a capital T at the
top of the page.
‘H… E… R…M… O… P…Y… L… A… E…’
A chill ran down Chatham’s spine
as he recognised the first part of his password for accessing the classified
files of the Blenheim Suite. As a student of history Chatham had combined two
famous battles to make up his password. The first was the battle of Thermopylae
from the Greaco-Persian Wars, the second was the battle of Crècy which took
place on the 26th of August 1346.
‘1… 3… 4… 6…’ the voice on the
line continued.
Thermopylae1346… Chatham’s
password to information that could undermine the United Kingdom’s relations
with half the countries in the developed world.
Chatham felt sick.
‘Who is this?’ he asked in a
voice that was all but robbed of breath.
‘As I indicated, Mr Chatham. I am
not going to tell you my name at this time. I apologise for the secrecy but for
the moment it is necessary. I have contacted you because I believe I can trust
you. I hope in time you will learn to trust me but for now I just need you to
write down the names of the following people.’
Chatham’s brain was buzzing with
so many thoughts that he barely registered what the caller had just said.
‘Mr Chatham?’
‘Yes…’ said Chatham. ‘Yes, I’m
ready.’ Chatham’s mind raced as he began to write. ‘
Who
is
this? What
do they want?
’
‘First of all, there’s Greater
Manchester’s Chief Coroner, Sir Daniel Coombs.’
‘Has somebody died?’ asked
Chatham.
‘Not yet, Mr Chatham. Now please,
just note down the names.’
Chatham bridled at being spoken
to like this but he wrote the name down all the same.
‘Then there’s the German
psychiatrist… Heinrich Döllinger.’
‘
How did he get this number?
’
thought Chatham. ‘
And how the hell does he know my password?
’
‘Yale’s Professor of Neurology…
Harvey Osler,’ the caller added.
The list ran to seventeen names
and included scientists, doctors, military personnel and even religious leaders
from at least thirteen different countries. Scanning the list Chatham wondered
what they could possibly have in common and what the caller wanted him to do
with the list.