At last, she smiled. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘Where should you be now?’
‘With the directors, I was just making my way over to their offices.’
‘Well, you carry on, um. Sorry, what did you say you name was?’
‘Oh, yeah, right, I’m Darrell. Daz. Daz Whitehall. Starting in IT.’
‘Alright, Daz. You wait here, I’ll just pop to ask Jackie, the Office Manager, if she knows where Clive is. Jackie pretty much runs the place in reality, so if anyone knows, it’ll be her.’
She waddled off past the printers and coffee machine and around the end of the partition wall to the reception area.
Raynor resumed his course toward the outer perimeter offices.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
By 1973 word was starting to get around of a secret troop of armed psychopaths running around the world in the name of the Queen, killing anyone who dared oppose them, and secretly reclaiming the Empire. Those in the Ministry of Defence who knew of the SCU programme were quick to respond with cover stories and counter claims that American Delta Force soldiers were in fact the ghosts of these legends.
The stories died, but the legend had been born along with its nickname — The Devil's Tormentors. A new breed of recruits were also being groomed. Sociopaths, people with little or no remorse or empathy. Those who could kill without it affecting them. Soldiers who had no concept of right or wrong and were happy to accept the orders without question, and action them unconditionally.
The remainder of the 1970’s were fairly quiet for the SCU members. In 1978 SCU3 disbanded and SCU4 was commissioned. The Middle East was awash with skirmishes and wars both short and long, some of which are still ongoing, but none of them posed a direct threat to the security or economy of the UK or her allies.
In 1979, however, the Soviet Union sent troops to Afghanistan to help the new pro-Soviet government of Nur Mohammed Taraki suppress the uprising of the devout Muslim groups who had been overthrown in a coup the previous year. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev ordered troops to the Afghan capital city of Kabul where they promptly staged a coup and installed a socialist president.
While the UK saw no real worth in directly assisting the Afghans by providing ground troops, Secretary of the Cabinet, Sir Robert Armstrong, was vocal about support the UK could provide in other ways. SCU4 commanders saw this as their opening to send the unit into Afghanistan, to help train Afghan troops as well as to perform sabotage and assassination missions. The conflict lasted ten years, Mikhail Gorbachev announcing in 1987 that a withdrawal of troops would commence imminently. Half of the occupying force had been withdrawn by August 1988. By mid-February 1989, the Soviets had withdrawn completely.
Sam looked away from the screen for a moment. He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands before turning to Mickey.
‘I’m starting to get the idea, Mick.’ He said. ‘Let’s have another brew before we start looking for names. Let’s see what our friend Raynor’s been up to, and who he knows.’
Mickey replied. ‘Good idea mate. Let’s have a little break. Get back to it in ten.’
‘Neil, what have you got?’ Virani asked as Neil Barford, almost sprinting, made his way through the operations room in Thames House. He was holding a wad of paper and some photographs.
‘Check this out Jay.’ He said as he thrust the papers and photos into Virani’s hand. She looked at the first photograph. It was a Devil’s Tormentors tattoo.
‘This was on the assassin?’ She asked.
‘Yep, the name’s Bush. Andrew Bush. Much like Raynor, he doesn’t have much of a record, but his goes back to 1993, so we’re assuming Andrew Bush served before Raynor and that both Bush and Raynor are fabricated identities.’
‘Good work Neil, anything else?’
‘Probably nothing Jay, but we found a dusty substance on Bush’s clothes.’
He pointed to another photograph which had been magnified, then he continued.
‘Not very much of it at all, brownish-red in colour, it’s being analysed at the moment. I’ll let you know when we get the results. Probably just dust.’
‘And how long will analysis take?’
‘Not too long, hopefully have at least an idea of what it is in the next half hour.
‘Fine, I’ll give Sam a call once we know what it is. Let him know the name of the man that was sent to kill him. It might help, but then again, it might send him over the edge.’
Raynor knocked on the door and entered the large office. The man behind the desk looked up from what he was doing, a confused look on his face.
‘Nice office.’ Said Raynor as he looked around the impressive workspace. The massive TV hung on the wall, the large desk. The view over London.
‘Selling the tools of death certainly does pay well.’
He approached the man behind the desk, whose expression was becoming stern, serious, and almost hostile. Raynor continued.
‘Unless you’re the one on the ground doing all the hard work. Then it pays peanuts.’
‘Sorry, but who the hell are you?’ Asked the man.
‘Oh, I’m just the messenger. Mind if I take a seat? Of course you don’t.’
Raynor slumped down into the office chair opposite, facing the man. He smiled, leaned forward and placed his arms in front of himself on the desk, left hand wrapping a clenched right fist.
‘Your business partner’s been a very naughty boy.’
‘Wha… what the hell are you talking about?’
The man pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his right middle finger. He too leaned forward, to face Raynor. Not intimidated in the slightest.
‘My business partner is a good man who’s recently suffered a bereavement. I’ve known him my whole life. Our fathers were friends, their fathers founded the company.’
He sat back, relaxing more, feeling like he was taking control of the situation.
‘There is nothing you could tell me about Lucas Fostervold that could surprise me in any way.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘Right, come on, let’s get back to it.’ Said Sam.
He and Mickey went back into the office and Mickey entered the password to unlock the computer. Sam perused the list of files and folders. A folder called Personnel caught his attention. A double click later he was presented with a list of subfolders numerically labelled one to ten.
‘Start at one.’ Suggested Mickey.
Sam double clicked the folder, then opened a text file called Read_1st.txt. It stated:
SCU1 active 1963 — 1968
Original members:
Ken Adamson — Retired
Andrew Knatt — Retired
Roland Pitts — Retired
Adam Trezise — Retired
Ian Woodbridge — KIA — 17/08/1965
Other members
James Bartholomew — Replaced Ian Woodbridge — Retired
‘Doesn’t really tell us much.’ Remarked Mickey.
‘Not really.’ Sam agreed. ‘But let’s keep looking.’
They went through the second and third folders, checking the Read_1st.txt file of both folders. Nothing of interest. They moved on to folder number four and again opened the text file. Then a name jumped out at Sam. ‘Why does William Thomas ring a bell?’
Raynor left Culpepper’s office, a smile as wide as the horizon on his face. As he strode across the open-plan space he dropped a small brown bag in a waste paper basket next to a desk. An ordinary looking woman of about thirty-five looked up at him from her screen. Raynor smiled and gave her a cheeky wink. She started to blush and turned back to her work.