Sentinel Five (The Redaction Chronicles Book 2) (18 page)

Nora Birch hurried, pushing her head down against the driving rain, clutching the net shopping bag closer to her body in case the contents – her tea of sausages and eggs for this evening – should spill out onto the cold and wet street. The streets were poorly lit in this part of the city and she increased her pace, keen to be home safely. She'd already missed the bus to her lonely flat in Ealing, and decided to walk to the next bus stop along. Better that than standing in the freezing cold of a dark night; at least by moving, she was keeping warm and getting nearer to home.

Every day she got up and went to the new office block that was the Secret Intelligence Service's headquarters. She would lock herself away with her equally bland colleagues in the Research/Secret Intelligence Section. The section was lost in the maze-like corridors of Century House. It had no windows and the doors were deadlocked and bolted from the inside. Access was granted by means of a buzzer. It had been many years since she'd been a part of any operations of value for SIS. That was when her talents as a researcher and a finder of vague clues had been her forte. She had helped, in those heady days, to catch spies, hunt down terrorists and avert assassination. She'd been valued and respected. In the old days… before the murder of C and the decimation of the operational arms of the Service by the politicians and back-room deal makers.

These days, she was just another file clerk and paper pusher. There to dot the 'I's' and cross the 'T's'. In the space of a few short years' things had changed at SIS. It had once been a place of beauty and hope for her. Now, it was like living inside the rotting remains of a long dead corpse. Her life had become a routine of boredom and drudgery, each day as bland as the next.

So her recruitment by Colonel Masterman for a private operation had been an easy one. The Colonel was such a charmer when he wanted to be. He knew the right buttons to press to keep people loyal to him. She would be fed names, dates, places and for the Colonel, she would ferret about deep into the darkest secrets of SIS and their liaison departments within a host of friendly intelligence services worldwide. So far, she guessed she'd been foot perfect, no Special Branch officers had been beating her door down, dragging her off to be charged with leaking top secret information, and as far as she was aware, she wasn't under hostile surveillance from either SIS's Hawkeye teams or the Security Service's spy catchers. She was Nora Birch, the Dormouse, and Sentinel's spy inside SIS, the woman who no one looked at twice, who the male officers pitied because of her scarred face. A nobody, a nothing. A perfect spy.

But that had only been part of her mission. The other part, far more valuable and dangerous, was to seek out leads about the ultimate devil, the traitor, the Raven's man inside the Whitehall intelligence machine who had long been suspected but never found. It had been a long road, littered with many false starts and blind alleys. She'd had doubts about her role, effectively being an informant for someone now classed as outside the Service, but her moral fortitude had kept her committed. They all owed that to the memory of their murdered Chief. Once the information gained from Gorilla Grant had come through, about the real identity of the Raven, the rest had been easy. Tracking files, old field reports, case notes until she had whittled it down to five possible officers, then three… then another discounted… until finally, there had been only one man left… the Raven's spy. And his identity was located, in written code for Sentinel's Eyes Only, inside the small cigarette carton she had in her coat pocket.

She'd barely made it through the door of her basement flat when the leather-gloved punch hit her directly on the jaw. The force sent her falling into the darkness of the room, dizzy and uncoordinated; she landed on her side and immediately experienced another sharp pain as a heavy shoe was kicked, with force, into her side.

“Get up, you little bitch, get up,” said the voice in the most calm and reflective way. It was as if in her dizzy state, the voice, its gentle manner and the violence, were coming from two separate people. But Nora was canny enough to know that they weren't. Then the man grabbed her by her hair and lifted her up and she felt the scream rising from deep in her throat…

* * *

Frank Trench had everything he wanted. The woman had folded easily. Of course she had, she wasn't a field agent or particularly tough. She was just a sad, middle-aged spinster, scarred and deformed and lonely. It hadn't taken much to break her.

He'd started with the rough stuff, beatings and kickings. Then he'd calmed her down and talked to her. She'd been good, held out for a little while until he'd grown tired of her stalling. Then he'd produced the knife, a long, thin filleting knife he'd purchased from a department store. He'd threatened to chop off her fingers – she'd screamed – and it was only when he took her thumbs by crunching down through the bone with the blade, that she told him, through tears, the whole story. He'd held her hand in the sink of her small and neat bathroom and cut away at her. She'd fought at first but then submitted. Through sobs of shame and pain, he'd barked questions at her and occasionally smacked her face when she didn't answer fast enough.

She spilled her guts fast. Masterman recruiting her… working inside SIS as their informant… a private operation to get close to the Raven organisation… Redact the top man, the Raven…

“But who?” he'd cooed gently in her ear moments after torturing her with the knife. “Who is going to get close to us?”

“O-o-ne of M-m-masterman's men… retired, on the outside,” she stammered, her left eye almost closed over from the punches she'd suffered.

“Does he have a name?”

“O-o-only a… c-codename… Gorilla! His name was Gorilla…”

Trench believed her. “And then what? What happens after this man, Gorilla, gets inside?”

“I… I…think the plan was to destroy the organisation… they had some kind of terror weapon… some kind of hold over the government… they had to be Redacted… all of them… killed.”

“But not by SIS?”

She shook her head and the sweat from her face and in her hair flicked out across the bathroom. Trench thought that he could have fried an egg on her skin at that moment, such was the level of fear in her. “Redaction was dismantled. Masterman had taken it upon himself to fight back for C. The mainstream didn't want to know, made a half-hearted attempt to start some kind of… investigation… but it faltered and died.” The last part had seen her wincing as blood poured from her wounds.

“So how do you know Masterman?” asked Trench.

“We worked together, years back, an operation in Europe. I was part of the intelligence team. The Colonel had remembered me, he said, said I was good at tracking down leads… said he needed my help… that it was important.”

Trench laughed. “Ha! And that didn't bother you, selling out your employers on a bit of a private mission?”

She glared at him, the fire returning to her eyes. “Never seemed to bother you, Trench… I know who you are and what you did. You were on the rogue agents list I helped to compile.”

That snippet had earned her another lost finger and she'd passed out after that. Trench had gone to the kitchen to find a saucepan and then filled it to the brim with cold water. So, it was a private operation organised by that cripple, Masterman. No wonder Salamander hadn't been alerted to it – it had fallen through the cracks in the British intelligence community. The clever bastard. And of course, who else would Masterman pick but that little killer who had watched his back for years and done his Redacting for him – Gorilla Grant. He returned to the bathroom to find her slumped on the tile floor, blood everywhere. Disgusted, he pitched the cold water into her face to bring her round again.

“So this Gorilla chap gets inside, then what.
Then what!
” he barked.

“A t-team… an unofficial team… storm their way in and kill the top men,” she spluttered

“Who are they?”

“I don't—”

“
Who are they!
”

“I don't
bloody know
!”

Trench believed her. Operational security would dictate that the spy on the inside would be on the wrong end of the flow of information and anything she did know would only be on the periphery of the operation. He stared down at her; Christ, she was feeble and pathetic. His hand tightened around the handle of the knife, he felt it twist in his grip. He grabbed her head, forced it back onto the floor and moved the knife blade closer to his target.

She knew what was coming, had seen and felt the knife. More importantly, she'd seen Trench's face and she knew the way it worked. She'd seen him, knew he was alive and consequently, she would have to die. So when Trench grabbed her head and forced it sideways against the cold floor, she knew it was happening now. There would be no hero storming in to rescue Nora Birch. No fanfare, no medal, she would die a cruel and lonely death… and yet she still smiled. She smiled, because she knew that even though her end would be brutal and painful, she had still won. Oh, maybe not the battle between Trench and herself, but certainly the war. She'd given him the slimmest of details, nothing really, regarding what she knew of Masterman's operation. Really, she couldn't handle the torture and the violence against her… would do anything to make him stop… and she'd known that not talking was never going to be an option. Everyone talks.

But the little dormouse, the spy, kept the most precious thing hidden inside and deep away from sight… not the name of the agents on the ground, not the plan of attack, not the fact that Masterman was on a private operation. No, she kept hidden deep in her heart the information she'd left at the dead letter box at the bus shelter, for Jordie Penn, her case officer. The information in the little packet of cigarettes, left between two bricks in a crumbling wall next to the bus shelter, had been found earlier that day in some obscure SIS Registry file she'd unearthed, holding the details of the only man in the British Intelligence community to have intimate knowledge of Yoshida Nakata, the Raven. This man had been the Raven's wartime SIS case officer, who had eventually been rescued by the Raven from a Japanese interrogation camp in Singapore… but of course, Trench would never know that now because he'd taken the bait and thought he had the gold seam, when all he really had were a few titbits'.
Checkmate, Mr. Trench,
she thought.
I've outplayed you and your murderous mob.

Nora felt the cold tip of the blade brace itself against her neck, just behind her ear. Then she felt an explosion of light and pain as the blade was inserted quickly and violently, felt her body tense and then go limp and then she rolled onto her back and slipped away.

* * *

Trench stared down at the body.

The mad cow, why was she smiling like that,
he thought. Even in the throes of death, she still had that stupid grin on her face. Almost as if she knew something more – had he killed her too soon? He didn't know, didn't care really. He'd managed to get some useful information for his employers, well, with the help of Salamander, of course. Information that would see that little bastard Grant nailed to a tree and that fucker Masterman dead in a ditch somewhere. Masterman.
Maybe he should pay his old boss a visit here in London,
thought Trench. Visit him and finish what he'd started on the docks in Australia over a year ago.

Trench looked at the body of the dead woman one last time. Something was not quite right. He reached down and ripped open her blouse, exposing her bra and then he gently scooped one perfect breast out and let it hang. Next he lifted up her skirt and pulled down her knickers. When the body was eventually found, the Police would think they were looking for a sex attacker, rather than it having anything to do with her job. A small detail, maybe, but it might just buy him some time.

But still, that smile on her face… Yes, that smile worried him.

Five days after the killing of Nora Birch, Salamander and Trench met again, this time the venue was the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew. It was far enough out of mainstream London that they could consider themselves reasonably safe. It would also be the last time they would have contact. They walked side by side, Salamander tapping his tightly-bound umbrella on the stone pathway and Trench, with his hands pushed deep into his coat, walking in the Salamander's wake as they admired the fauna on the route

“Did you get everything you needed from the woman?” asked the Salamander.

Trench nodded. “It was perfect. She gave everything up without too much trouble. She was playing games she had no right to be meddling in.”

Salamander grimaced. He'd seen the newspaper clippings regarding the discovery of the woman and read the press reports, revealing what Trench had done to her. Most distasteful, but necessary. “So what was it?”

Trench shrugged. “It's a hit, what else could it be? They're nothing, if not predictable. They plan to take down the Raven. They evidently have a location and they think they're up to the challenge.”

“Ambitious fellows, then,” Salamander remarked.

“Indeed they are. Remember I used to work with these people, I know what they're capable of carrying out,” cautioned Trench.

“So what will the Raven do? Fight or flight?”

“Not my department, I'm afraid,” said Trench. “I just take care of the dirty work and pass the messages upstairs. But if I was in his shoes, knowing what we know now, I'd give them just enough rope to hang themselves. Draw them in and finish them off.”

Salamander knew the Raven was a brilliant tactician. He would expect nothing less of his long-time friend and partner. God help Masterman, Grant and whoever else was engaged in this stupid operation. Which reminded him. “Here, have this,” he said to Trench, handing him a sealed envelope.

Trench, confused, frowned. “I don't need your money. I'm well taken care of.”

“No, you bloody fool, it's not a payment,” growled Salamander. Was this man stupid? “Call it an extra insurance policy, in case the worst happens to the Raven or to me. In that eventuality, you can personally strike back.”

Trench ripped open the envelope and looked at the two addresses handwritten on a card inside it. He smiled, a sense of euphoria overcoming him. The first was the address in Chelsea of Mrs. Elsa Masterman, wife of the retired Colonel Stephen Masterman. The second was the address of a small house in Arisaig, Scotland which belonged to one Willie McHugh, local fisherman, and brother-in-law to Jack Grant.