Gallery here ... Dark Logic 2 here
Part one
I
‘Gretna’s not this way!’
‘Fen’ looked sharply at his poker face, he ignored her and kept pressing on in a direction which could only have put them onto the A75 west, the last direction he should have been going.
‘Tom, we keep to the low roads here, you know that, you take the A75 east, drop me at Gretna and carry on south.’
He wasn’t listening in the least, eyes staring straight ahead, he was definitely heading for the Stranraer ferry as far as she could make out.
‘Hey you! Tom, stop this car now!!’
Grim determination … if anything he accelerated, there was the noise as of a blown tyre, then nothing.
II
‘Let’s listen to it again, Cam,’ they went by monosyllabic names in this "cell" as it was called … so Fen had been Fenella Mackie from Kirkcowan, it was her land here … this ‘Tom’ had arrived at the ferry, his papers passing muster, the car had collected him as arranged and dropped him near the cell's barn this side of Mill Glen Road, Stranraer, where ‘Lee’ and she had done the usual processing and early training of ‘Tom’, then it had been time for his next station near Gretna.
‘It’s too cramped in here,’ complained Jeanne, the other van, the Ford had been bigger in the van part at the back but Cam had insisted this was the better vehicle overall, in better condition he meant, less well known too on any watcher’s records.
‘Uh huh.’
‘We need to get this Lee down here, give him the once over … well the girls can anyway.’
III
The concert 'Lee' was to attend was at 7.30 p.m. at Wigmore Hall, formerly the alabaster and marble Bechstein Hall, in London’s West End … L’Arpeggiata was the early chamber music ensemble.
He'd signed in under his real surname Hayward, had dropped his things upstairs and was headed downstairs to the Londoner lounge, the meeting set down for 4:30, presumably before things got frenetic early evening before concert hour.
It was already filling up, he bought a glass of house red and mixed nibbles … then settled down to wait.
Strange call it had been from … well he didn’t really know who she’d been but she’d used the codes all right and the place to be, it seemed, was this bar. Sounded reasonable to him ... a short drive, a succession of trains, tube and now walking, it had got him from Stranraer to here, 7 hours 10 mins to the city all up, another hour to his accommodation, not bad going for one day.
A female voice behind him now spoke quietly: ‘Excuse me sir, would you mind changing tables for a few minutes? You’re in the line of fire.' Then: '... of a shooting that's about to take place.’
He got up, grinning, not a bad line at all, turned and was hit by the efficient prettiness of this smallish lady with the light patterned top and dusky navy jacket who now smiled and said, ‘Come with me … the stairs.’
He dutifully followed ... they’d just started up the stairs when a commotion could be heard behind them.
‘Quickly please.’
They went through to the corridor, a door opened … another dark haired fatale appeared, off white jumper set off by a purplish scarf … she said, ‘Come.’ He looked at N1, who nodded and through he went, N1 did not follow.
‘Ok,’ he said, ‘no doubt you’ll explain over coffee, yes?’
‘Relax, Lee, you got here in good time. They’re currently looking for our other guy downstairs … he’s on his way to Ireland.’
‘Pardon?’
‘You were set up, weren’t you, downstairs? The hit was to be on you, you must have uncovered something in Stranraer, we need to debrief, every little detail, I’ve a clipboard of questions our masters want answering.’
She switched the kettle on and opened two 3-in-1 sachets taken from her tweed jacket pocket.
‘You know you’ll not be at the concert, a proxy will. And Lee, nothing must cost us anything in here please, no electronic trail, we’ve pre-paid the room.’
‘ID please.’
.o0o.
The four stage process completed, besides, he’d seen this one before, not the other though … she was ready to get down to details. He asked, ‘My holdall?’
‘In the cupboard, you need something from it?’
‘Just to see it.’ He got up and wandered over. It was as she’d said. Presumably it was hers beside it, keeping it company. ‘And I’m addressing … who?’
‘Call me Cait, short for Caitlin, means ‘true, faithful’.
‘And the lady I just left?’
‘Jeanne, French spelling … and yes, she is named after Joan of Arc … vision, resistance and all that. More to the point, she was given that moniker owing to the crusading mission she was on when the ‘authorities’ disappeared her cousin one September night two years ago. We became suspicious of Stranraer as you must have realised, you’d both cleared this Tom through, you know the rest. Gruesome.
We’ve viewed the footage, we’ve heard the wire on Fen, we’ve been over and over it. Thing was, it’s not happened to us before, not as a unit I mean, not quite like this, so the question is which lot were onto us, and also what about this Tom?
We know the Tom you were meant to get, was this Tom the same person in the car with her? I have to ask a clipboard of questions from our cellmaster,’ she showed him. ‘You tell me when you’re ready.’
‘May I lie on my bed? I take it this one’s mine.’
‘I’ll sit on mine.’
.o0o.
It had been gruelling, moreso for her as it all had to be handwritten on dead tree, she was as exhausted as he was by the end.
‘Phew,’ she said, packing the notes away in her pack. ‘And now we entertain ourselves, eat, keep eyes and ears open.’
.o0o.
There was a knock some eight minutes later. A series of Qs&As through the door, backchecking.
She waited, then opened the door and stepped out, acknowledging someone to the left, then at the other end of the corridor. She picked up the tray and came back in. ‘You like Chinese of course.’
‘Well of course you’d know that. Crispy duck?’
‘Yes. I’m famished.’
.o0o.
They hadn’t died from it, the note under the tray cover had explained the next steps, she’d nodded. ‘Not rushing you, Lee, but we need to put the tray out. Then we go live again. There is extant danger, we need to flee sooner or later this evening.’
‘Staff lift?’
‘Yep.’ She showed the plastic key. ‘That’s why London. That and ease of egress, losing ourselves.’
‘Do you think you’re any furtherer with Stranraer?’
‘Yes. The suspicion was obviously about the switcheroo of the 'Toms'. You know there’s an MRI coming up this evening, it's universal across all cells, it's your turn. Just a question of when to make our move from here. I like your professionalism, Lee, you didn’t even ask if we had anything else planned after the scan. What are you suspicious of?’
‘You tell me.’
‘You suspect the support boys.’
‘And girls.’
She sighed. ‘It’s all horrible, truly. I mean society now ... really sick things from eating bugs to drag shows … the whole nightmare. And it’s always this neverending trust or don’t trust. I lost my brother through trusting. Jeanne lost her sister, you lost those two.’
‘The constant treachery … that’s how they wear us down.’
“If you left this room, Lee, went to the loo … the thought would be in your mind that the pleasant person you thought was your friend would pick up that phone and that would be that …’
‘The logic of distrust.’
‘There’s all sorts of dark logic in this end game. Do you think there’s a God?’
‘Interventions in human affairs suggest there just might be.’
‘I hope so.’
‘You’re my new partner … aren’t you?’
‘I’d like to be, I’ll be honest, if you can trust that word. But there’s another you must meet first. You see, we really did a number on you … and not just for official reasons. We’re looking at partnerships as well … not just working partnerships … I’ll tell you that one for free.’
‘Ah. She was pregnant you know, Fen was.’
‘Yes, we know. Tragic.’
‘Wasn’t me.’
‘Oh?’
‘Never happened with us.’
‘She had someone.’
‘Yes.’
There was quite a pause. ‘Her Tom then. We need to go, Lee. You almost ready?’
IV
Cait had been through her own MRI, only head and shoulders, he’d been in the booth, now their positions were reversed and his was going to be gruelling … full body, 90 minutes. Damned noisy things they were too.
.o0o.
He should have known she’d not be there after he’d come out, a new girl he’d not seen before was there, indeterminate age, might have been 30 even, maybe more, some features vaguely familiar, he was going to think that one through later. And what was it with this dusky navy top and pretty scarf motif?
He was famished again.
She spoke and immediately, from him: ‘Oh my goodness … you’re the Faye on the phone.’
‘In one. I’ll tell you all, Lee, but we have to get to our haven for the night, we can’t stay here.’ He was dubious, so she explained in detail, even down to the registration and driver. ‘I’m new to the role but I’ve been trained all the same.’
This one had a very soft voice, not put on, it was natural, he could imagine her being shrill if angered though. Cait was a harder lady, might be useful in a fight or flight situation, this one was all brain. Big, watchful eyes, small frame again.
.o0o.
They were in digs, a B&B out of London, semi-clad in their respective beds and talking, she’d risked the semi-risque nightdress before him. He felt the long boxers were the way to go.
‘You’re used to this, aren’t you?’ said Faye. ‘No awkwardness and yet you don’t bother coming on. You give the impression of actually liking the three of us. What do you think all this is about?’
‘Cait told me. It’s not just testing for the cell.’
‘That’s absolutely right. Jeanne will speak with us tomorrow, explain it all.’
‘You’re on the tech side.’
The breath was slowly released. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’ll ask it …’
‘From our conversation enroute, from your concerns with the two chaps, from various nuances.’
‘I was hoping for this level of thinking you know. It's reassuring. You seemed not bad in what you were doing in Stranraer, Lee, there was the question of whether you’d bedded Fen, I wasn’t sure you had. Would you bed me?’
He smiled. ‘If we were already an item, if we’d gone through the long, drawn out process two people used to in the old days, if most things rang true with you, if it did not break up your little triad of ladies, if I loved you and you loved me, if we’d married. Tell me what happened in the Londoner Bar.’
‘I know of it, I wasn’t inside. Essentially, there were two of the enemy roaming, with the one on the desk also part of it. Straight kidnap job of you it was to be, right where you were. No one had told you to sit there, Jeanne had kittens seeing you do that. We think we know that section, nasty people, you’d not want to go with them.’
‘But they never tried to go upstairs?’
‘Oh they did – they were put to sleep and removed but we still felt there was another girl involved, somewhere, we couldn't pin that down, we do know of her though.
Our purpose as a cell? Help the arrested escape, warn people ahead of time, we’re not above a kill but it’s always counterproductive, comes down upon any locals in the vicinity, comes down on us, support dries up as a result. We don’t do the revenge bit, that’s another lot, we assist escapees, coordinate, do the logistics, jam up their IT. Funding's interesting ... anonymous benefactors.’
‘It just goes on like this … forever ... for us I mean?’
‘Who knows? On the political front, there are enough cellss in the country, across Europe, we know of this one and that but we don’t know them as people, we know no details, not even our boys know everything about our own, all except for Jeanne whose guy is one of the high ups though you'd not know it, so in fact Cait and I are interviewing you at the moment and you, in turn, are interviewing us, partly with an eye to the future.
You see, Lee, to answer your earlier question, ground reports say that the enemy was unable to get close enough to us, or at least they’d not busted us as yet, but that’s exactly when it gets dangerous for people like us. France 1944/45 all over again.
We knew they’d try it on but at source? As in Stranraer? That puts it up to another level. We need another type of eyes and ears now, we also need to live as close to sane as we can, especially the nastier it gets … and it’s about to get quite nasty.
Lee, we do need to have some fun, conviviality, not burn out, I don’t mean sex, I mean just a few laughs … we need a homelife of some kind, some sort of normality. We have someone else in mind too, not from the outer reaches like you, it’s one of the current crew here, we need you as well as us to vet him for the new role … once you know the new role yourself of course. We’re a cell within a cell … six people, three male, three female. You do see the implications.’
‘You asked if I liked you. Read my body language and my voice, Faye. I’ve read yours. You know most things about me already, but I know nothing about you two, you have the advantage of me … there are big questions, minor questions as well to be asked.’
‘Of course there are, we’re well aware. We did our homework on you, you need to grill us within an inch of our lives. If you can’t do that effectively, then what’s the point you being here?’
‘The expression ‘all my birthdays’ does spring to mind.’
‘Look, Lee, in a more normal society before these bastards started on the ordinary people, we might not have crossed each other’s paths, we might have continued on our paths in different parts of the country. We were no way slutty party girls, either of us, like the Finland Prime Minister … we were though serial monogamists, let’s say, as you were, looking for that one and only, wondering how to keep him.
Then we saw that the issue was within us, ourselves, we saw by your profile, plus the things you’d said to Fen, by many things … that you were thinking along our lines. Cait looked at me, I looked at her and we thought … there might be a God after all. At least it was worth a try.
Nothing might have happened under different circumstances, as I say but times changed, these animals and their stasi started coming at us, breaking through … and then that tragedy near Stranraer.
The 'accident' in the ditch I’m thinking was Fen trying to grab the wheel. The horror was what someone did to her afterwards. At that point, we needed you down here … fast. You’ll see the photos tomorrow.’
‘I’m without words, Faye. This other guy you have in mind and you two … we have to make some sort of life decisions I take it?’
'As long as it takes … yes. We all need a life again, as close to normal as we can get. We were able to fast track this because we'd spent weeks, before Fen I mean, already checking you out and I mean checking everything ... we're deadly serious about this and dilettantes aren't welcome. Look, we’re in weird times, we’ve cut to the chase, both you boys are similarly inclined, we’re not ugly ducklings.’
‘Neither outside nor inside from what I’ve gathered so far.’
‘Thank you. I mean that.’
There was a beep, she pulled out the micropad, read it, put it away. ‘Come, we must go.’
She jumped out and dressed rapidly, he too, she grabbed her holdall from the cupboard, he too, she dowsed the light, opened the window, stepped out gingerly, careful with her footing, it was less well lit on this side, she pulled out her line, said, ‘Yours is in your pack,’ there was a heavy device on the end, he watched, he’d examine it later, just under a foot long, the solid bit, thinner line connected to it, the end was like jaws with levers, she pushed hers onto where the guttering met the down pipe, it snapped on and grabbed the guttering, she looked to see that he understood, let herself down over the edge, two floors down, looped around her waist.
She released the jaws via the second line, holding her main line taut while doing it, the whole kaboodle crashed below where she’d leapt out of the way.
Uh huh, he followed her lead.
Down he went, at the bottom she said to keep the main line taut, she then juggled his other line, it released and the whole thing clattered down, both units were now stowed in packs, they ducked under some shrubs, through the fence at its rotted point, they were off.
The van was two streets away.
V
‘Well?’ asked Faye in the well-appointed back of the Ford where they’d pass the rest of the night, it had been about two and a half hours and they'd pulled into a layby.
They heard the driver get out and seemingly head away from them, there was someone else getting out too, passenger side, a light step, a knock, Faye released the bar, in scrambled Cait.
‘Well?’ asked Cait.
Said Faye, ‘I just asked that … you do realise, Lee, that technically, we’ve kidnapped you?’ She now revealed her holster under her long blouson jacket.
‘Any chance you can keep me captive for awhile?’
‘That deserves one of these,’ responded Cait. She kissed one cheek, Faye the other. ‘Now, in all seriousness ... at the changeover, Faye must go, she’ll need to slip away and I’ll be with you for some time. The other guy, who’s Jeanne’s husband, is not far away. Any plod, any issue, he comes back and drives off with us. Either way he must drive off within this hour, we’ll go to another road, another layby, we’ll need to change vehicles, Faye will go, you’ll get three hours sleep, another burst later in the morning. Can you stand all this?’
‘Only about another decade of it, maybe two.’
‘Down, boy,’ she grinned. ‘Trouble is, Lee, this life may be semi-permanent. Things have heated up … that lot have begun their mission on society. Plus we as people do stress out and we need you to be a rock. I’m sure you’ve understood our agenda by now. We want you in this team, providing you are what we think you are, if you remain what you are.’
‘I get your drift. Look, the Stranraer area was nice, I was never that close to Fen, she was betrothed as I told Faye the first evening, someone in Kirkcowan, she kept it quiet but she told me.’
‘Lee, has Faye told you what we’re really really looking for, the two of us? I mean really really? Our end game?’ She glanced at Faye, who nodded. ‘It’s going to be awkward if you don’t like either of us and frankly, upping the ante, you do know there’s a price on your head as well, with the enemy, just by coming to us.’
‘Ladies, you really don’t need to explain that sort of thing to me, have no fear. Could you stand a male’s protective instinct?’
‘We’re depending on it … but not the proprietorial kind. We're give and take, all right, within old-fashioned values. Faye insists on those and I do agree.’
‘So do I.’
She pulled out the lunchbox, then the juices. ‘Sorry, should have given them to you earlier.’
He started tucking in, Faye was nibbling, Cait took one of the sandwiches. They could hear the guy … or someone … making for the van, he got in the front and started up.
