The Dead Speak Ill Of The Living (The Dead Speak Paranormal Mysteries Book 1) (34 page)

  
“It doesn’t get less creepy,” Nazir observed.

  
“I am prepared to use the Array to find Joe.”

  
“Ah.”

  
Peters walked up to the screens, flicked a switch, and began to talk.

  
“I need you to find someone,” he said, “the details are on this stick,” and a
small oblong was plugged into a socket.

  
“Joe le Tissier, Doctor, Scientist, Missing.” This voice was digital, like the
machine, and coming from the array.

  
“Yes,” Peters confirmed, “I want to know where he is and who took him. You’re
searching inside MI5.”

  
“Searching.”

  
“How long will this take?” Nazir asked.

  
“The Array is, well, we’re learning how to use it. But I suggest you take a
chair.”

 
“How about some coffee and sugar filled snacks,” Pohl suggested.

  
“You’ll need to hover in the corridor, but of course.”

  
The trio wolfed down chocolate and coffee, until Peters pulled the door open
and waved them in. They surged back up to the screens and control panel.

  
“I have some information,” the Array said again.

  
“What is it?” Peters asked.

  
“I have identified the location of Joe le Tissier. I will overlay the data on a
map for your convenience.” An Ordnance Survey now appeared, with a circle on
it. “I will now draw data from Google Maps.” Now a satellite image appeared,
and Peters breathed out in apparent surprise.

  
“What is it, what do you see?” Dee asked urgently.

  
“He’s not being kept on a base. This is just a safehouse, of sorts.”

  
“Why the shock?”

  
“It means we can go get him.”

  
“Ace,” Nazir said turning.

  
“Not you, but I can send a team and extract him.”

  
“You mean men with guns?”

  
“Sort of Dee, we have a lot of women with guns now too. Maybe you should
consider a career change.”

  
“I have servants to do the killing.”

  
“Is that what you’re telling people?” Pohl said sniffily.

  
“So who did this?” Peters asked.

  
The Array almost seemed saddened. “I have been able to establish that MI5 is
riddled with factions. Operating in secret from each other. It will take time
to discover who has le Tissier.”

  
“Okay, keep searching, I’ve got a raid to plan.”

  
“Do you get to say that enough?” Nazir asked.

  
“To be honest, I’m not sure whether it’s enough or too much.”

  
There were few good things about the decline in traditional British
manufacturing and the shift to a service economy, but if you ever wanted to
hide something there were many good things. A surfeit of brown field sites
where no one goes and with lots of cheap space, it was a blessing, and Kosar
had outlined one site on the edge of London to use for his purposes. In truth
he had several such sites, but Joe had been put in this one pending a decision
on his future.

  
There was another advantage of brownfield sites, and that was no one ever went
there. Which sounds the same as the previous paragraph, but that was for hiding
things, and this advantage was no one seeing you raid it. So when two minibuses
full of men pulled up nearby, a range of plain clothes individuals jumped out
and fanned into a pattern around the location, no one saw it happen. Each
individual now closing had pistols, which they were trained to use, but also
carried a taser, as the aim was to arrest not kill anyone they found. Peters
had assumed the security wouldn’t start firing guns or else Joe would have been
put on a very real, very armed base, and that Joe was floating in a netherworld
of not officially being in custody. Stick him out here and he could more easily
vanish, as opposed to having him signed into a base where he became part of the
system.

  
The operation was brief and efficient. There were just four people inside the
location, and as one of those was lying in a makeshift cell it was a simple
matter to overpower, rescue, and withdraw. But there was a downside. A major
problem.

  
Kosar picked up his phone and listened to the message.

  
“…the safehouse had been raided and le Tissier taken.”

  
“Any casualties?”

  
“Our men are also missing, presumed captured. But they don’t know enough to
compromise us.”

  
“Of course not. Still, we must do our best to recover them. I presume this is
the CIA?”

  
“Must be sir, must be, denying us the device.”

  
“Typical. Okay, thank you for letting me know.”

  
“What shall we do sir?”

  
“Let them have him. He can’t tell them anything useful, and we have the
machine, in fact it’s on my desk in front of me. They’ll never get it here, I’m
surrounded by a wall of bastards.”

  
“Excellent sir, excellent. And me?”

  
“I’ll send people with links to the CIA to get our own returned. You get back
here, we’re convening a full meeting to show this device.”

  
Kosar put the phone down and pondered. Was there going to be a war between the
agencies? Were spies going to fight and die over a new technology? Were the CIA
going to prevent us, and more specifically me, thought Kosar, from developing
machines like this? Wouldn’t be the first time, won’t be the last.

  
He’d have liked time to think, but there was never much of that. So time to
act.

  
Peters was pacing the hall of the Array, while the trio sat on the floor of the
corridor comfort eating their way through a free vending machine. That was,
until they heard Peters phone ring when they jumped and went in.

  
“Good, good, oh, that’s not good,”

  
“What is it?” said an impatient Dee worried about the last part. Peters talked
for a few seconds more, then put the phone down.

  
“Joe has been recovered. He’s safe, he’s in one piece, but he’s shaken up.
Tortured to be honest.”

  
“Cunts.”

  
“Quite. But the machine wasn’t there.”

 
“Secondary to Joe.”

  
“Indeed, but…”

  
“The machine,” came a digital voice from behind them. “This machine can be used
to speak to the dead?”

  
“Yes?”

  
“I have found your faction.”

  
All turned to face the array. “Go on,” Peters commanded.

  
“I have discovered the existence of a secret research project, created in 1946.
The aim was to look into the existence of souls and the potential for
intelligence. A soul is a perfect spy, if you could talk to it.”

  
“Does this group have a name?”

  
“It did, until 2007.”

  
“What happened then?”

  
“An MI5 man called Kosar was given command. The project had floundered for
decades. No funding, no results. Almost entirely dead. Kosar revived it,
removed it from view.”

  
“With renewed money.”

  
“Most certainly. Furthermore, the situation has become urgent.”

 
“Oh?”

  
“The CIA has the ability to talk to the dead. Our agents are convinced they
have an agent with this ability. We think he’s called Keyes.”

  
“Couldn’t be,” exclaimed Pohl.

  
“So Kosar discovered the machine,” and Dee ticked off on her fingers, proved it
existed, and then removed it and Joe, so he could use it.”

  
“Perhaps as I should have done,” Peters mused.

  
“So where does this leave us?” Nazir asked.

  
“Where is Kosar and the project based?” Peters asked.

  
“You won’t want to hear this.”

  
“Odd thing for a computer to say,” Nazir said out loud. The Array stayed
silent.

  
“Why not?” Peters asked.

  
“I am one hundred percent certain I know where Kosar, his project, and even the
machine are currently located.”

  
Getting frustrated with the technology, Peters asked “well where!”

  
A map appeared, and Peters did a double take. It couldn’t be. But… “They’re on
this base!”

  
“That is correct. They have the largest complex of buildings, over on the west
side.”

  
“Did you just say here?” Nazir asked.

  
“Yes.”

  
“Jesus, you fucker’s really don’t talk to each other very often do you.”

  
“This must make raiding it easier,” Dee said, very keen to be issued with a
pistol to chase people down.

  
“Err, err…yes. In theory we can just speak to the base’s security and get them
to shut it down.”

  
“In theory?”

  
“Well, the other project can do the same thing.”

  
“So a lot of people are going to get shot.”

 
“No Professor. A lot of people are going to have a very heated argument with
lots of dick swinging.”

  
“Sounds like my sort of thing,” Nazir said, believing that humour was the best
thing in any situation. Dee didn’t really agree.

  
When you’re the head of security at a very real military base you are normally
busy trying to keep people, from Communists to terrorists, out. Even when that
base is filled with projects from the intelligence services, the general idea
is still to protect them. What you’re not expecting is one project approaching
you, explaining that another project has overstepped its mark, is now rogue and
dangerous, and would you mind going in and arresting everyone.

  
The head of security pondered this for the full sixty seconds he had after
Peters had asked him, and decided on three thrusts of action. The first would
be to err on the side of caution and immediately shut down the buildings
belonging to Kosar, make sure nothing could be destroyed or removed, and no one
fled. The second point would be to do much the same thing for Peters’ project,
and the third would be to ring someone higher up to come round and sort this
clusterfuck out. There was, however, the question of who to ring, because both
projects had different chains of command, and there didn’t seem anywhere that
linked them.

  
Kosar was expecting visits from his interested parties to see the machine first
hand, not the army to march in, arrest him, take him to a makeshift cell, and
refuse to let him go near his phone or the machine, which he was forced to see
a sergeant pick up and carry off. Peters was expecting this to happen to Kosar,
and was bemused when it happened to him. And even more bemused when the car
containing Joe arrived, was promptly arrested too, and the army had to concede
that the damaged figure in the back would be better off with some food and
drink inside him whilst on a comfy chair.

  
The trio, now a foursome, were just glad to have Joe back. It was just him that
asked where his machine was.

  
Meanwhile security rang around, trying to sort something out.

  
A party of smart suited individuals soon arrived from inner London, at which
point Peters and Kosar were summoned to a discussion.

  
“Mr. Peters, what is your complaint in this matter?”

  
“Kosar has been making witnesses to my project disappear.”

  
“And your project is the…Array.”

  
“Yes.”

  
“Which I’ve just been informed is a vastly powerful computer powered by human
brains.”

  
“That’s correct.”

  
“And this is a real thing you’ve not made up.”

  
“We can go and see it if you wish.”

  
“Mr Kosar, did you abduct Joe le Tissier?”

  
“Yes, on a matter of national importance.”

  
“And this matter is?”

  
“He has in his possession a machine which can talk to ghosts.”

  
The lady asking the questions paused, looked at Kosar, and said simply “you
expect me to believe that?”

  
“Bring the machine here and I’ll prove it.”

  
“Mr Kosar, if this machine is anything less than you claim I’ll have you
arrested. Do you understand?”

  
He smiled like a wolf. “Oh yes.”

  
Soon the machine was placed down on the desk. “It doesn’t look like much,”
their superior commented.

  
“Just wait,” and Kosar switched it on. He thought he might have to wait a
while, but a voice came through immediately.

  
“You bastard!” it cried.

  
“A fan?” Asked Peters.

  
“You bastard, how dare you!”

  
“Are you a ghost?” the superior asked.

  
“Yes, I’m a ghost, we’re all ghosts, and it’s his fault.”