Authors: J.E. Moncrieff
“I can’t promise you’ll get rid of me yet, Guv” he said. “But I’ll meet with him. When does he need me?”
“Scotland Yard at one-pm today, apparently. You best get going.”
With his suit jacket tucked under his arm, John walked out of St
. James’ Park Station and looked up at the clear, blue sky between the buildings above him. The sun shone warmly and summer looked to be in full bloom as he crossed the road and through the outer doors of the yard, flashing his warrant card at the jumpy security officer standing before him.
To his surprise, he was met inside the inner doors by his old friend Derek standing in a Commander’s uniform and smiling broadly at him.
“Good afternoon, Sir. It’s been quite a while.”
“Don’t give me that ‘Sir’ Bullshit, Johnny!” Derek exclaimed under his breath looking around him and grabbing John’s hand excitedly. “I don’t think you’ll ever have to call me that!”
He led the way and John followed in the unusual silence for a fair distance through the building before they came to a door of dark wood in a part of the building he hadn’t seen before. Taking a deep breath, Derek opened the door wide and held it open for John.
“After you,” he said nervously.
Having worked on more undercover jobs than he could count, John had been briefed in some strange places. But he hadn’t expected to find himself in the long, dark boardroom he stood in now. The only lamp in the windowless room hung low over the table and despite its reflection in the black glass surface, the light was absorbed into the darkness only inches behind the faces of the well-dressed men he saw around it. He couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable as something struck him as being unusual the moment he entered, but he stepped in and felt the door close with Derek behind him.
“Detective Inspector Bridge?” asked a short, plump man in a dark suit as he jumped up from his seat. “I’m Richard Walker, well, Rich if you like. I’m a government engineer and senior technician from the Home Office Physics and Spatial Astronomy Department. You’re bigger than I thought you’d be,” he added making John frown at the unexpected appraisal. He was used to being called big, being 6 foot 2 inches tall and muscular from years of training, but not in these circumstances. He extended his hand and took hold of the plump fingers.
“John,” he said, “nice to meet you.”
Walker carried on, looking around the room.
“This is Peter Stypes from...”
“A different department,” added the shadow-faced Stypes smiling darkly.
“This is David Staple, a historian and field archaeologist from the British Museum; and you know Commander Pritchard.
John nodded to each man in turn and sat down at one of two vacant seats at the table. Derek spoke first as he looked around the room.
“John, this may seem strange to you, and believe me it is. But this is a rather unusual case. It’s also classified as, well, as secret as it gets; and as such I cannot brief you unless you agree to take part, swear to secrecy and sign to confirm you will not back out once you are briefed.”
“Right,” answered John rubbing his shaven head. “Do I get to find out anything before I commit?”
“Of course, I can tell you that you will be away for a fair amount of time, but that you will return to the same day that you leave. I can also tell you that this is potentially very dangerous. You’ll be trained appropriately of course, but even so, it’s never been done before. You will head up a whole new team, handpicked by us; and it will involve some very heavy undercover work amongst extremely dangerous, suspicious and unusual individuals. It will be heavy, John, in that it won’t end until it ends. There will be no break, no home, and no let up. Once you’re under, you’re under; until the end.”
“Is it a prison job or something? You know I’m not sure about being banged up again after last time?”
“No, Johnny, it’s not.”
“Right, ok, good. Then why me, Derek?”
“Because, John, I can trust you and this job must be done. You’re the best undercover I have ever worked with and, quite frankly, I don’t know anyone else with the bottle to do a job like this. Plus you’re not exactly married at the moment, mate, and I need that kind of freedom and individuality.”
“Thanks for sharing that!” John said, smiling and looking around the room. “Though that doesn’t mean I don’t get constant grief about work from her! Ok,” John paused for a moment. “I’ll do it. After such compliments how can I refuse?”
“Brilliant, sign here please,” Derek said, showing John a document that he signed without reading. Pushing the papers back, he loosened his tie and sighed, waiting to find out what was expected of him.
“John,” Stypes spoke up. “My department focuses its full attention on the prevention of terrorist attacks. But we are not police, and we’re not military. We use and gather intelligence, then either put the evidence forward to the Met to prosecute or we disrupt the cell ourselves so they can’t operate. Over the past eighteen months, we’ve had mounting intelligence relating to a home-grown terrorist cell called the Faculty. They are a highly funded and highly protected unit; hell-bent on destroying the major UK cities and every living thing within them. They use mixed biological warfare tactics, and as far as we know they have the tools, the funds and the capabilities to pull off devastating attacks.
“We’ve worked on them for a long time
,” he continued. “We’ve tracked their every move and listened to everything they’ve said for over a year. We’ve also managed to turn a fair few of them in an attempt to infiltrate. But we have nothing. They’re impossible. There’s a small inner-circle, and there’s the periphery. We’ve been inside the periphery, John, we’ve turned some of them too. But unless you’re in the ‘Faculty’ as they call themselves, you’re kept in the dark. All the rest of them know is that there is a huge attack coming. Death toll looks to be in the thousands and perhaps even in the tens of thousands. And that’s if damage control is spot on.”
“When will they attack?”
“Believe it or not, it will be September twelfth this year if they have their way.”
“S
eptember twelfth? So what can I do? If military agents haven’t sussed this in eighteen months, how are this handpicked team and I meant to crack it?”
“
The head of this cell is Lord Charles Courtridge.”
“You’re joking?
Lord Courtridge?”
“I’m not
. He funds the cell. And believe it or not, his family’s legacy goes further than what is known publically. It makes him a Lord, of course, but it also makes him one of only a handful of UK-born billionaires. Not that it is recorded as such, and hence no one knows those details of him. Either way this is his plot for sure and that’s all we know. There is nothing we can do apart from exposing his funds and his on-going tax evasion, and those tactics just simply will not be enough on this one unfortunately.”
“Why can’t we nick him? You have evidence, right? From informants? Agents?”
“It won’t prevent the attack.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?” John asked, feeling
the pressure of the job mount already. “I don’t understand what my role is?”
“All we can focus on
is disrupting the cell. If we disrupt them enough then we can remove all of the funding, break the ‘faculty’ apart and prevent the attack. They wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for their leadership and funding so we need to take out Courtridge. As a man, he’s untouchable. His money and titles are not.”
“David?”
asked Derek. “Why don’t you help us out with the next bit?”
“
Ok. John, as said earlier, I am an archaeologist,” added David, taking his tie off nervously as he spoke. “A number of months ago, a team on one of my digs recovered a fifteenth century chest hidden deep amongst a decayed Roman structure. In that chest was a diary written by an unknown hand that describes a successful plot of treason from planning to execution. It fully documents the murder of King Edward the Fifth and his brother.”
“The
two dead boys in the Tower?”
“
That’s right, good knowledge. It describes the orchestrator of the assassination as Lord Edmund Courtridge of Exeter.”
“Right, now there’s some sense.”
“The Courtridge family received their titles because of this murder and their subsequent
involvement in the clear up and allegations. Without their help to Henry Tudor a year or so later, they wouldn’t be who they are today.”
“So what does it
all mean?”
“It means the titles were gained through treason and fraud, John.”
said Derek, interrupting David. “If we can prove it, we can take back Courtridge’s titles, and more importantly, his money. The Courtridge estate is built from title and heritage only.”
“
Ok great, so there’s a way. But aren’t most historical facts tainted by discrepancy despite the evidence anyway? How is this different? How can we use a five hundred year old diary to take billions of pounds away from one of the country’s most respected noblemen?”
“Because this time it
’s a matter of national security and quite frankly, life and death,” interjected Stypes, growing impatient. “Now we have methods of proving historical findings in a way that they didn’t have in the past. With forensics, pathology, photography, technical support, surveillance, audio; we have lots of advantages.”
“So you’re going to p
ull up the bodies of the boys, ok, but surveillance? What are you talking about? I don’t get it.”
“No, you clearly don’t get it, John. We want you to go back and get this evidence. Get it the way you know how - as a skilled detective, a good boss, and
apparently
an excellent undercover officer.”
“Where exactly?!”
asked John, becoming irate and frustrated. “Where, Stypes? Where, on earth do you want me to go? Stop being so bloody cryptic and tell me the fucking plan.”
“Back in time, John,” Derek added, quiet
ly. “You’re going back to the fifteenth Century.”
“Is this some kind of joke?
What do you mean back to the fifteenth century? People don’t just fly back to the fifteenth century, Derek. What are we going to do, time travel?”
“I believe Mr
Walker can help you there,” Derek replied hopefully, making John turn to the portly, excited man on his other side.
“Please
, Commander, call me Rich,” he said, grinning shyly. “About 4 years ago, a member of my team stumbled on a theory of particles and time. He believed that all particles remain for eternity in one form or another. They follow a path in their own place and that their path can be read in their appearance and response to radioactive movement. Other particles move around them; air, people, plant life. They have a history too. But particles in each place are separate. I take it you’ve read the texts on quantum physics and the theories of being able to walk through walls etcetera? That as slow as it will be, eventually your particles would get through a wall? Or that you die and your particles will always be here no matter what form? No?” He paused as he waited for understanding to fall over John’s impassive face. “Ah well, it’s fascinating in any case. Mr Bridge, please understand this is very complicated. But when analysing a place on this earth, we can read and explore its history by examining the particles there. By exploring the particles, we can go where the particles have been. And, we can send objects to any time in its history.”
“So you can pick me up and put me somewhere else?”
“No, we can’t teleport and never will be able to, that’s a ridiculous idea in science fiction novels. We won’t move you, we can’t move you. We move space and time around you. You stay in the same place, they move. We fix the permanent particles of the place in our machine with you and then work our way back through their history. As you are in there with them, well, you go along too. Wherever you start, you finish. Only you finish at a designated time in the history of the place alone. That’s why we can never operate underground or at an artificial altitude,” he added, smiling as though he was discussing the weather. “Of course we also can’t ever go into the future either; only into history and directly back to where you started. Take a look at these pictures,” he said, leaning across the table to pass a small bundle to John who whistled softly as he looked through the shots of the machine and records. Like a room-sized cabin, it looked too real to have been built as a joke and his mind whirled in confusion between what he believed and the evidence he was shown.