To Kill a Grey Man (13 page)

Chapter 18

A Council of War

Once Surge and Jonathan had returned from the shops, Collins made
sandwiches and tea and they returned to the front room where The Grey Man had
hardly moved all day.

“A council of war,” Collins declared.
 
“Let’s see what we know.”

“Right,” said The Grey Man picking up his cue.
 
“Sir Thomas, head of UK security, meets with
John Sea without registering the meeting so it is unofficial and highly
irregular.
 
He passes him a briefcase and
a few days later we are all under some kind of surveillance from John Sea.
 
Weeks then go passed and on the day I lose my
eyesight we all get attacked by John Sea’s men.
 
Conclusion: Sir Thomas must have known I was about to go blind and set
this up.”

“Why?” said Jonathan.

“I can only think,” said The Grey Man.
 
“That it has to do with The Firm.
 
If I am quietly put out of the way Sir Thomas
can move in and run The Firm without any of the other nations knowing.
 
He could set up all kinds of background controls,
before word got out of my demise.”

“Knowledge is power and he will have all the knowledge.
 
He could become the most powerful security
director in history able to manipulate and spy on anyone he wants with complete
impunity and a reach that potentially would allow him to do almost anything.”

“This could go on for years with the balance of power shifting in
the UK’s
favour
but were the other nations to
subsequently find out, it could be highly dangerous for the stability of Europe.
 
They would, quite rightly, not accept Sir
Thomas having this power as it could be used against them and so The Firm would
undoubtedly be disbanded.
 
The UK would
be shunned and our enemies would have free reign.”

“I am afraid the rest of you being attacked
was
just collateral damage to prevent anyone finding out what was happening to me.”

“What do we do?” said Surge.
 
“We are not designed to be
hunted,
we are
trained to be hunters.
 
If we wait around
we will be found and then all hell will break loose.”

“As always,” said Collins looking at the Grey Man.
 
“We need
intel
to fight back and we need to find out if your
blindness is permanent or not.”

The Grey Man said “They will know that.
 
By now every hospital and eye specialist will
be watched”.

“What if we just hunt down and kill both John Sea and Sir Thomas?”
asked Surge.

“They are very difficult targets and they will have realized that is
a possibility.
 
John Sea is no fool and will
have highly sophisticated security.
 
Sir Thomas
is surrounded by the very best security specialists.
 
Without The Grey Man’s
intel
to bypass this, to investigate their security systems
and let us know exactly where they will be and when, we would not even get
close.” said Collins.

“How about just going to the police?” said
Jonathan.

The Grey Man smiled.
 
“I am
afraid you do not understand Sir Thomas’s power.
 
By now there will be a D Notice going to
every superintendent in the land.
 
If we
find ourselves in police custody, we will be locked in a secure cell, no
paperwork will be filled in and within three hours from when we entered the
police station we would be picked up taken away and Sir Thomas can then have us
disposed of, no questions asked.”

“All we can do is
follow
the most obvious
route.
 
We need to get The Grey Man’s
eyes sorted out.
 
Only then do we become
a team and only then can we fight back,” said Collins.
 
“But let’s be clear.
 
If he remains blind we cannot go up against
these men, it would be suicide.
 
To have
any kind of life then I would suggest we would have to split up.
 
I would take The Grey Man, Surge you would
take Jonathan and
disappear
overseas, joining back up
in some God forsaken part of the world.
 
We all have money and can make some kind of life for ourselves.
 
It may mean running for a long time but we
have no choice. We will decide after we have seen a specialist.”

Jonathan sat there shocked.
 
His
dad’s words echoing in his ears.
 
To go
on the run for the rest of his life opened up horrific possibilities.
 
He wanted to stop this, get up and go back to
university but he knew he couldn’t.
 
He
had to do the best he could to help and hope it all came out okay.

The Grey Man turned to Jonathan, “Are you ready for some work?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s fire up that laptop then.”

Surge and Collins left them to it.
 
Surge went upstairs and changed into his sports stuff and went to the
garage for a workout.
 
Collins picked up
one of the bags full of weapons, went up onto the top landing and opened the
lock to the hatch which went through to the loft.
 
He pulled down a ladder, climbed up and
switched on the light.
 
It was like all
lofts, dusty and hot.
 
He walked to the
far end and felt around the wall until he found a catch.
 
The wall opened to reveal a small workplace
with a bare bulb over a desk with a soft green baize surface.

More guns were hanging on the wall and ammunition was stored in a
corner.
 
He sat down, picked one of the
guns at random from the bag and started to strip and clean it.
 
He worked slowly and quietly, his mind
seemingly miles away.

He thought back over the long, interesting lives he, Surge and The Grey
Man had had and he knew they would not run, probably taking the “
Swans Path
” but he despaired for
Jonathan.
 
He was so young but what to
do?
 
Over the next few hours he sat and tried
to
quieten
his mind with his work.

“Right,” said The Grey Man.
 
“Now we will see how well you know computers.”

“I think I am okay,” said Jonathan.
 
“As I said I have built my own system at
uni
and have done some basic programming in the sixth form at school.”

“Good,” said The Grey Man smiling.
 
“What I am going to teach you will undermine all of that quite literally.
 
Listen carefully and imagine this.
 
When computers were first being designed, governments
realized the power they would have in the future, how they would control our
lives and could hold all our secrets.
 
This
was unacceptable to them.
 
As I said
earlier, knowledge is power and the government needs the power.
 
So they designed into the fabric of the
software a way to circumnavigate the system.
 
Imagine it this way.
 
You are
building a house and the foundation is already laid down so you build on top of
the foundation, makes sense, right,
no
point digging
up a perfectly good foundation?”

“But what if under the foundation there is a garage and unbeknown to
you there are ways from the garage through the foundation into the house.
 
It means the security of the house is
compromised.
 
Well, that is what happened.”

“The government built the first computers and designed the software which
everything has stemmed from.
 
In effect
they set up and controlled the
foundation,
everything
else has been built on top of this.
 
There
has never been a reason to relook at the building blocks of basic programming.”

“Now, I am going to show you where it all came from and the way into
the garage and from the garage we can break into almost any privately or
business owned computer in the world.”

“It gets a little more complicated for government computers because
they are aware of our metaphorical garage but they cannot close all the
entrances and I have found ways around them.”

Jonathan sat there in awe.
 
This was like a make-believe story “So if you wanted to you can get into
banks and credit card companies and do what you want?”

“Oh, I do that all the time,” said The Grey Man.
 
“Banks and credit card companies hold masses
of information about people.
 
If we
wanted to we could break into your university and give you a “first”.
 
How does that feel?”

“Bloody hell,” said Jonathan.

“Exactly, which is another reason I am hunted.
 
Now if I show you this garage you may be
hunted as well.
 
Do you want to go on?”

“I don’t have much choice,” said Jonathan.

“Okay.
 
Power
up.”
 

For the next eight hours, deep into the morning of the next day,
they worked.
 
The Grey Man lay back on
the sofa with his eyes closed, Jonathan on the keyboard.
 
First they went through the background and
theory, then the procedure with The Grey Man dictating every move.
 
Then Jonathan had a go.
 
First he broke into a bank, then a telephone
provider, a water board and then finally into a government database looking at
taxes, a constant dialogue flowing both ways between each man, Jonathan
describing the screen and The Grey Man telling him what to do next until
Jonathan started to understand what he should be doing and began to find his
own way.

Jonathan marveled at The Grey Man’s memory as he was able to
memorize screen after screen and then explain what was needed to be done or be
able to re-track to previous screens with perfect recall.

Finally at three thirty in the morning when both men were tired, The
Grey Man declared, “We are ready.
 
We are
going to break into a part of The Firm that I control.
 
I need to know if they are trying to break
the system yet.”

Jonathan went through the process and finally a screen appeared that
said ‘
Welcome
’.
 
They were in.
 
Then a message flashed up
that
two snoopers had
been fired.
 
The Grey Man look worried.

“What’s up?” said Jonathan.

“Snoopers are software I have put into the system,” explained The
Grey Man.
 
“Anyone trying to hack The
Firm would find this virus unleashed into their system.
 
Whatever computers were connected would be
fried.
 
Two going off either means they
were expecting this and had isolated their computers from a full system, had
one computer destroyed then immediately attacking with another, or I fried a
complete system and they have enough back up to go over to another system
straight away.
 
Not
good either way.”

“How long do you think it might take before they get through?”

“Well, I have a few other surprises so I would hope at least a week.”

“Is there anything we can do?”

“If I had my eyesight back I could screw them completely but
unfortunately you would need a lot of training before I could show you what to
do and any mistake would draw them directly to us.
 
Let’s get what we came for and close out.”

Jonathan carried on.
 
He went
through a number of protocols which The Grey Man spewed out from his
capacious memory bypassing all dangers.
 
Finally they came to the database he wanted on The Firm.
 
In plain view, on this database, everyone
associated with The Firm was listed, every member, every past member and their specialty,
from gun running to murder to false documentation and body recovery.

“Any doctor currently working for The Firm would be the obvious
place for me to look and will be monitored so we need retired members,” said
The Grey Man.
 
“These disappear
from the current Firms register and only I keep their details for my records.”

Jonathan clicked into a few more pages to search under ‘
doctors, expertise eyes
’.
 
The database came up with three possibilities
in the UK, all elderly men whose details Jonathan wrote down including their contact
codeword.