The Yeoman: Crying Albion Series - Book 1 (4 page)

Chapter
3

The
Ministry

The Land Ministry ruled from an ugly gray building.
It had been constructed in the name of efficiency during the late
nineteen-sixties. It was largely made up of various civilian elements of the
Ministry of Defense who worked there. A multi-sectioned office within it housed
a department known as Special Occurrences Task Force. It was seldom known of by
most in the mainstream military, even the MOD folks would struggle to gauge
what it actually did. Such was the compartmentalization the shadowy group were
only fully known within the Ministry of Intelligence. The Ministry of
Intelligence did not dwell in the Land Ministry though and far from the master’s
eye the servants of the MOI roamed free.

In the years gone by SOTF had shrunk from a platoon-sized formation
with detachments overseas to just four operatives though. Originally it was
formed to assist NATO fighting military spies from the USSR. Then after the
USSR had collapsed they’d been reorganized to spy on other nations within NATO
and beyond. After the Colonel’s Coup they’d turned their gaze inward further and
worked with the aim of building a file on suspected terrorists from native-born
Britons. The Colonels War which followed left London unscathed and SOTF focused
its gaze upon the Yeomanry.

Unlike MI5 though SOTF were a military echelon which meant they were
much less accountable, could carry side arms concealed, even when off-duty.
Such a thing rankled the Land Ministry bosses but the section 5 authority to do
so came straight from the Home Office.

On the lowest rung of the SOTF ladder was Lance Corporal Brian
Athered
. He was new to the detachment with only a month’s
experience there, together with a year of military service. The wide-eyed, optimistic
prism he saw the world gave him a fluid appeal among friends and associates. The
man had light-brown hair, a boyish face and his athletic appearance radiated
charisma, catching more than one ladies eye.

Next was Corporal Scott Johnson, a career intelligence operative. He
was a decent-enough soldier but rough around the edges. His drinking escapades
were legendary, and usually involved being vulgar and crude. Heavy set and
leaning over two hundred pounds Johnson tended to be the bruiser-type of SOTF,
albeit an intelligent one.

The second-most senior rank of SOTF was a striking Sergeant called Rebecca
Templeton. Her faintly-olive face was attractively beguiling. It wasn’t a face
that radiated beauty in a conventional way; she had soft-features, a slightly
aquiline nose and a pair of dark hazel eyes that had a way of looking through
you. Some said it was her ruthless ambition that had got her promoted, others
that her womanly looks, assets and charms had played a part. She was
below-average in height for an army woman, yet muscular and somewhat
broad-shouldered. Her velvet-voice emphasized a touch of melancholy but it had
an authoritarian presence when necessary and if she was pressed too far. Unlike
the others who specialized in operational and personnel intelligence matters
she was more the experienced covert operative. Since the end of the Colonels
War, there wasn’t much call for that in SOTF though.

The Officer-In-Charge completed the small unit of five personnel.
Warrant Officer Danny Atkinson was an old soldier in the Intelligence Corps,
he’d seen conflicts come and go several times. With twenty-one years of service
he only had a year to go before a quiet retirement. He figured about four more
months of riding the desk then his resettlement training and leave would see him
away from SOTF and the military for good. Atkinson was gray-haired and worn-down
from a career of hard-work and harder drinking. His big plummy nose was
bloodshot and flushed, as was his face. Dark jaded eyes that had seen it all
looked at things with a cynical, fatalistic outlook. In some ways he was like
an older version of Johnson but was well over two-hundred and fifty pounds.
Being medically down-graded meant fitness was a distant thing for the officer,
which was just as well as would struggle to chase anything for long.

All of them were on first-name terms and military rank was seldom used
with a similar policy on wearing civilian attire instead of camouflage. In some
ways they were like a bubble, remote from their parent unit in Bedfordshire but
still retaining their military trappings in other ways. They seldom called in
sick, were professionally efficient when it came to casework and got the job
done by thinking outside the box.

The radio playing a lame pop tune suddenly interrupted to announce the
attack at
Heysham
. After a minute or so of the brief
message the pop tune resumed and there was some grim exchanges between
Athered
and Johnson.

The secure line in Atkinson’s office rang, followed by email reports
from JHQ a short time later.

The immense cogs and wheels of the military, political and
authoritarian machine were now turning.

“So much for a quiet few months,” he gloomed before calling for
Templeton. She finished what she was doing then sauntered up to his office
door. She moved confidently, as a single-woman, feminist-minded and with no
children and worries tended to do in Ministry circles.

“‘Becky,” Atkinson said to Templeton. “There’s a situation up at
Heysham
, the details have just filtered down to us.”

The warrant officer tapped a section of his LCD screen before slowly
swiveling it around to face her.

“Have the lads start with the Person Of Interest first. It’s a race to
get this guy, he’s the priority, we’ve got MI5 and Special Branch in the competition
as well.”

“Who is it? Some
Rabian
again?” she asked
leaning forward to take a look. The screen showed a screen-capture from
Heysham’s
security camera with a slender figure moving
towards a
landrover
. “Looks Caucasian to me.”

“Exactly, he’s one of those Yeomanry scumbags. Intel is showing he led
the attack with some
Rabians
. Then he killed his
terror team after they’d slaughtered dozens of civvies. No doubt to make it
look like they were the only ones responsible and deflect attention from the
Yeomanry onto the
Rabian
community.”

“This is
gonna
get big if a general mobilization
is made against them,” Templeton said analyzing the outcomes. “Will Control let
us harry the hare this time Danny?” she wished they’d let SOTF deploy on field
operations. It had been months since the last time.

“Hopefully! Let’s show the police how the military can be one step
ahead of them in the meantime eh? Here’s the intel on who this guy is.”

He passed her a sheaf of data-requests still warm from the printer.
Templeton carefully analyzed them with intrigue. The sergeant felt a shiver run
through her as she saw the small passport-sized photo on the top right corner
of the front page. It was a familiar face, all too familiar, one she’d known
all those years ago. The name on the form made it clear the man was no twin
either. A feeling like her world slowly being shook back and forth began to rattle
through her. On the outside her face and body showed little sign of the turmoil
starting to develop. Yet inwardly she was pole-axed.

“It’s a definite match on the camera suspect, it seems the Land
Ministry were waiting for him to enter the country. They didn’t reckon on his
Rabian
friends though. Good hunting!”

“I’m on it,” she said, barely keeping her voice from wavering. She left
his office and entered the main area where she and the other two men worked.
Things were about to get serious, up until now it had been small scraps of data
and leads to nowhere they were routinely collating.

“Right, top brass are wanting checks on a POI,” the raven-haired woman announced
taking a deep breath as she did so. “Brian, get your
Issy
turned on.”

“Can do,” he responded casually and swiveled his chair to the Internal
Security Control terminal. After a moment to log-in he turned to her for search
instructions.

“Search protocol under all spectrums, fields and notes as follows…”

Athered
nodded as he tapped in a bunch of pre-requisite data.

“Person of Interest — Eric
Weyland
,” her
voice almost wavered. Eric, the one who was so close, yet now so far and a
sworn opponent.

Athered
hesitated on hearing the ancient-sounding name before entering it and
hitting the ‘search’ key. His screen processed the data for nearly twenty
seconds then spat out long list of information that scrolled down ten pages.

“Alright, give me a print-out of that,” the woman ordered sharply. She
hoped that
Athered
would not be too interested but as
the printer began flaring into action her wishes were not answered.

“Hey he’s former Intelligence Corps!” he quipped with youthful
enthusiasm. The data had large notations and circles about various key points.
“He went through training nearly thirteen years ago, then left us to join the
Yeomanry!”

“Did he now?” Johnson interjected. “That’s bloody rare, most of those Yeoman
guys are front-line types, nationalists, pissed-off Territorials,” he said with
a veteran’s opinion. “A neighbor of mine down in Basingstoke joined ‘
em
, never would have thought it.”

“They get a number of civvies joining now too. After they get vetted
for Albion heritage,”
Athered
said remembering some
of the adverts. Since the British Coalition formed much of the pro-Albion stuff
was banned, yet online they proved popular.

“Abrasive bastards though for the most part,” Johnson surmised, “but
good soldiers I think. They fight for what they stand for, like we do.”

Templeton glared at him after the last sentence. “They’re army rejects
if you ask me,
nazi
-wannabes abandoning a country to
try and form one of their own.”

“Not this one,”
Athered
countered, drawing an
angry glare from the woman. “He volunteered for courier infiltration in
Northern Island, tried SAS Selection and Commando duty. Failed on the
continuation training phase, passed Commando training though. It also says—”

Templeton cut him off.

“Alright, alright I can read Brian. I don’t need a bloody commentary!”
she snapped, the feelings aroused by knowledge almost too much to deal with.

Her words surprised the rookie though. He’d never seen Templeton show
her driven-side.

“Sorry Becky, just surprised at his record.”

Rebecca Templeton leaned over and snatched the printouts, then stapled
them together using
Athered’s
stapler. She returned to her desk area across the office space. Unlike the two
Corporals she had a measure of privacy with a screened off cubical. She was
grateful for the seclusion as her face was wracked with worry and emotion. The
Sergeant read the sheet and saw much of the tracking data from ten years ago up
to present day was speculative. MI6 had caught his trail three times, first in
South-East Asia, then in northern India, finally there had been a sighting in Ireland.
The Top Secret dossier concluded he was a credible threat to National Security
and one of the Yeomanry’s best agents.

Sergeant Templeton was normally an unflappable woman, it was not the
conclusion of the dossier that had her rattled though. It was the fact that she
knew him, and not just as a former-friend either.

Her memories ran back to the halcyon days of when she’d just turned
twenty. She and her former best friend Lorraine Riley had the best posting at a
training base. It was a familiar place where they both fitted in like a glove.
Together the two of them were like a pair of femme-fatales, unstoppable and
already short-listed for promotion to full corporal. Then, that fateful August
night her world and Lorraine’s changed. After an encounter at a military
summer-show Rebecca entered a whirlwind romance with the elusive, but dashing Eric
Weyland
. The memory train of what happened next
almost felt like a knife passing through her heart. After a passionate
relationship lasting almost two months young Rebecca was sure Eric was the one
for her. Then the Colonels War erupted and
Weyland
quit the regular army to join the legions of former soldiers rallying to their
banner. ‘To save the country’ as he called it. Her arguments and pleading with
him was to no avail, she hated the Colonels and all they stood for and he did
not. She was a universalist, supporting the ways of multiculturalism upon the
west. He was a nationalist, or at least an idealized form of one, and a man that
had had his way with her.

That was in the past though, the present now threatened her profoundly.
If her military overlords or the police authorities knew she’d once been a
lover of
Weyland
her career and life would be ruined.
The Yeomanry and regular British Army were bitter rivals and it extended to
there being military regulations against current
and
prior fraternization. Templeton had lied on the declaration
form sent out after the Colonels War, she’d even altered records to change her
tour of duty dates. Yet now that lie was feeling like a landmine, one that
seemed to move from the pavement outside to inside the building.