The Yeoman: Crying Albion Series - Book 1 (5 page)

There was another way
though, if
Weyland
was killed she’d surely stand no
risk of any chance of her secret being discovered. She could at last take her
revenge as an additional bonus. The Yeoman had broken her heart and soul so
long ago, he’d rejected her. Rebecca now silently vowed to be an instrument in
taking down
Weyland
.

“Rebecca are you ok?”

She looked to the side
and saw it was Atkinson, he was near the brew area refilling the kettle.

“Fine, just working on
how to get this
nazi
fuck.”

“That’s the spirit, he
killed a lot of people, police and
civvy
alike. Some
might support the Yeomanry, even in our military secretly, but they’re a menace,
as this latest outrage proves.”

“I see it as more than
that, this country can’t have two forces dividing us either. The sooner he and
the Yeomanry are in the trashcan of history the better.”

“Well there’s a shoot
to kill order just gone out. They’ll probably drop it back to Person of
Interest after a few days though. It’s probably the High Commissioner getting
angry about his man being slotted.”

“His man?”

“Junior Commissioner
Brown died at
Heysham
interrogating
Weyland
, he and High Commissioner Roberts were close,
lovers I think.”

Templeton shrugged
indifferently. She was always one for sexual equality, no matter what concept
it took.

“Any leads?” she asked
softly. “All this data is past records, would be good to have leads to get
harrying the hare,” she had a keen look now about her. Atkinson frowned. “We
can deploy Brian and Scott! They’ll be good field agents for this.”

“Rebecca, that’s more
for the police to play with.”

“Come on Danny, we’re
the only Intelligence Corps unit fit to track down rogue military and you know
it. We’ve got the equipment, the tools that police could only dream of, our
vehicles are as fast as theirs are, yet all the time we are stuck in this
office. Even MI5 probably hasn’t got a Ferret unit.”

“Since the cut-backs
we don’t number even half a dozen.
Weyland’s
unlikely
to head to London, probably on his way to Yeomanry territory in Yorkshire.”

“Exactly! This is our chance
to get on the radar!”

“What do you mean?”

“London is notorious
for Yeomanry operatives, it’s how they are staying one step ahead of government
operations. MI5 has been trying for months and nothing! We get ourselves a part
of the chase and it’ll increase our standing. Who knows? We could end up with a
permanent field unit if it pays off. If it doesn’t? Well it’s tax-payers money
being well spent.”

‘So much for any
peace,’ the old Warrant Officer mused, he sheepishly nodded.

“Well I wanted a quiet
time this year but I’ll put out a field-deployment request to Control and see
where it goes.”

“Oh thanks Danny!” Templeton
said with a satisfied smile.

“You keep the lads searching
for clues on the
Issy
in the meantime, it might throw
something up from the archives.”

Atkinson left and
Templeton smiled. “I’ll make it my mission to personally take you down Eric,
you and your fascist friends.”

The radio squawked
again, it was a counter-broadcast by one of the Yeomanry Colonels. The two
Corporals leaned-in to listen to what their response was to the attack. Before
Colonel
Sandford’s
voice could speak another sentence
Templeton pulled the radio from the top of the filing cabinet, yanking the plug
from the socket.

“No one in here
listens to their nationalist crap! From now on we focus, I’m going for a fresh-air
break and when I get back I want every report relevant from
Issy
worked out and on my desk!”

The Sergeant stormed
out and when the door had slammed shut the Corporals relaxed.

“What’s gotten into Rebecca?
Aren’t we supposed to be impartial and not take sides? Isn’t that what caused
the Colonels War?”

“What goes on paper
and in reality are two different things lad. Politics from the top-down.
Atty
gets told what’s what, he tells Becky and down to us it
comes.”

“Well sure, but I’ve
never seen Rebecca turn this hardcore?”

“Oh, she is when she goes
hard for something, she’s like a woman possessed. Short of killing her there’s
no way to stop her when she gets her claws in.”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw that look about
her once at a Sergeants Mess function in Germany,” Johnson nodded. “This was
years ago and she’d only been promoted Sergeant, so was pretty green to being a
senior NCO.”

“What happened?”

“I was only a
Lance-Jack then and was in charge of overseeing the waiters. Anyway, a Sergeant
Major, a real rough-
arse
, had his own view how to treat
women in the military. He fondled her while she was looking at some pictures in
a corridor. It happened really quickly, one minute he was walking past, then
next he’d gripped and groped, then threw her down and was off walking again. Only
I saw it, but she brushed it off, yet that look in her eye told me another
story. I thought the matter was over though. Then in the early hours of the
morning the guy was found half-dead in the gutter. Someone had used a heavy
baton and cracked his skull open.”

“Stars above! What did
the military police do?”

“Nothing, no-one knew
or saw a thing, it was a crazy night. For whatever reason the investigation
never questioned me, so I didn’t have to make lies or truths. I wasn’t going to
put myself forward either. Rebecca said she didn’t remember much and had a
fairly good alibi,” Johnson smiled warmly with the memory.

“Did he die? The
sergeant-major?”

“No, he was given a
medical discharge due to his injuries though. He had a habit of having roving
hands and bullying ways so there was probably no shortage of suspects.”

“How do you know it
was her though?”

“I saw the way she
looked at the guy as he was leaving the Mess. She knows I saw it happen too,
that’s why when we heard about the guy being discharged she looked at me and
smiled.”

“But that—”

“Enough chatter, we
have to get reports done, we don’t want you getting a medical discharge now do
we?”

Both laughed but
inside
Athered
was concerned SOTF was entering
dangerous new waters.

They
worked until early evening on the reports and collations. Brian
Athered
was hatching a plan, one that was as dangerous as
being an enemy spy. He worked on old files, catching up on previous work put
aside as they waited for other units to confirm data. First Johnson left, then
Atkinson. Only the experienced woman and boyish lad remained.

Rebecca had a casual
desire for the young Lance Corporal, but the new workload and
Weyland’s
reappearance muted her feelings. She would have
worked until ten at night but for the fact she had a sergeants mess function.

“I know I was pushing
about that POI, but don’t work too hard Brian. You don’t get paid any extra and
no-one gives you any thanks for it,” she said with a faint smile as she made to
leave.

“I won’t be long Becks,
just finishing up some of the backlog,” he lied.

As soon as she was
gone the young man worked for three more minutes. He went over to Johnson’s
area where the plate-glass windows were. They gave good views of London but all
Athered
was interested in was if Templeton had left
the building.

Indeed she had, the
tiny figure in a pale skirt and dark jacket walked confidently past a crowd at
a bus-stop towards the tube station a half-mile away.

She was a desirable
woman, but Brian
Athered
had already been warned the
senior ranker was off-limits, besides which, he was already seeing a university
student from Estonia. His young blood did occasionally wonder about Templeton’s
bedroom sexuality though. He could tell there was an experienced prowess about
her, a winsome aggression compared to his more gentle blonde girlfriend.

Athered
put the thoughts aside and sprang into action. The offices of SOTF were unique
in that there was no security camera’s watching over them. The outside
corridors had them but even Atkinson’s office was internalized to SOTF. Working
fast he unlocked the filing cabinet and found the bulky file he was looking
for. With a click he removed it from the drawer and took it over to the photocopier,
once there he began to copy the entire thing. After nearly a hundred pages were
done he manually ratcheted back the mechanical page counter on the photocopier.
Then he enclosed the photocopied documents into a new file cover, secured them inside
it and stuffed the lot into his backpack. Finally he returned the original file
to Atkinson’s office, locked the cabinet and put the keys into his hiding
place.

Now in his possession
was the raw and unfiltered data about the Yeomanry, all from the Ministry’s number
one agent. Instead of having to sift through biased news programs and media
articles
Athered
would have that dangerous entity
feared by those in power. The truth!

Athered
left the Ministry building without hindrance by the Asian security guard. His flickering
fear give way to relief as he rode the tube home. With the data he’d stealthily
obtained he was surely breaking the Official Secrets Act, various Army Acts and
numerous regulations concerning classified material. The file he’d purloined was
classified as Secret, which made him wonder what on earth Top Secret rated
stuff would reveal.
Athered
had that rare combination
of a daring nature and an ability to get to the bottom of something, no matter
how difficult or formidable.

It
wasn’t just the new assignment that had him thinking, but the whole screwed-up
situation Britain was in. People seemed careless or too numbed-out on a zillion
and one distractions. Everywhere people had their digital distractions glaring
about. Even though he was in his twenties and no stranger to the technology, it
seemed very odd. The smart-phone was handy in some ways, but a time-sucking
distraction in others.

After
two stops he got out and made his way on foot to his small apartment. It wasn’t
far and was in a middle-class area, thus shielded from the nastiness and
undesirables elsewhere.

His
girlfriend was already home in the living room studying her books. They spoke
to one another about this and that before he got onto what he had to do.

Athered
wanted to read the file right away but instead hunger
gnawed at him, causing him to resisted the urge to read about the Yeomanry
first hand. Natalya had already eaten so he cooked up a microwave meal. As he
watched the LEDs count down he thought about when he was a young teenager. Both
his parents had put him up for adoption as a baby so foster parents raised him
instead. Both he and they were anti-Yeomanry. The Yeomanry defiance that had
carved out a vast chunk of England used to bother him, especially when he was
younger. Yet now he was more ambivalent about them. Despite a media campaign
that seemed to host smear-stories every other day,
Athered
was starting to critically work things out. The Yeoman Colonels, their habits
and crimes seemed either exaggerated or justified when weighed against their
goals and what they were up against.

On many levels the
nationalist ways of Albion’s Yeomanry made sense. They did not want a
debt-based, service-driven economy, but instead one that actually minted its
own money interest-free to a nationalized bank. The work industry should be
home-grown of medium to high-quality and providing jobs to its people.
Out-sourcing jobs, importing a majority of food and goods seemed inherently a
bad idea. Especially given how unreliable it could be in uncertain times and the
uncertain times were never far away nowadays.

Athered
again delayed reading the file as his routine demanded he turned on his laptop to
check on the foreign news. He saw that the Chinese were beginning to draw down
their export market. The operative sucked in air through a tooth and nodded. Their
middle-class was now coming of age and the factories could barely keep up with
demand. Reading between the lines and from analyzing the intel reports at work
Athered
knew it differently. The USA and Europe’s easy
goods days were at an end. The cheap, affordable goods that China was world
famous for would slow to a trickle and price increases would follow. The
workshop of the world was about to become the workshop of Asia only. With
China’s inroads into the dirty, but resource rich African mines the shortfall
in profit could be more than easily ridden out by rare earth minerals. In the
meantime Europe would get poorer and poorer economically as it tried to borrow
its way out of debt.

Clicking the news window
closed on his machine he finally opened the red folder containing the
intelligence dossier he’d smuggled out. It was from an agent code-named Remora
whose real name was George Wiseman. His picture was that of a plain dark-haired
fellow. One who could pass for Scottish or Irish with an understated
appearance.

The report began with
the work-based economy in Albion. It seemed to prove that they were serious
about eliminating low-paid jobs for the masses. Labor exchanges allocated jobs
that were needed to an area based on the individuals skill and desire for work.
The work-shy either starved or needed a very good reason to claim a food and
shelter allowance. They objected to the British society that reveled in having
low or even zero-standards according to one Yeomanry publication.