Sentinel Five

Chapter Three-1

Chapter ThreeIt had been a little over two years since they'd last met, at the funeral for a former Redaction team member who had been killed during an operation in Rome. Masterman, once a large and powerful man, now resembled a broken scarecrow. His frame had lost all of its bulk and his body was contorted at unnatural angles, almost as if he was wracked with pain whenever he moved. His complexion was pale, and sickly. The Colonel looked like a man ten years older than his true age. Except for the voice and of course, those eyes, which still held the familiar bombastic fire.

Masterman, to his credit, took the shock and surprise on Grant's face well. “I had a run in with some flying lead and explosives. It ripped apart most of my back, damaged my spine and broke one of my legs. Not to mention what it did to my face.” Masterman raised one hand up to the scar tissue running across his face.

Grant eased himself into a chair; he could feel his legs trembling with shock. “Jesus, Colonel, you should have let me know, I would have come—”

Masterman interrupted, clearly not interested in any pity or remorse for his plight. “Pah, you had enough to deal with. I understand that now – you'd been through a rough operation. It hit you harder than you liked to admit and the best thing for your sanity was to give yourself some air to breathe, away from the death and the killing. Not that we didn't miss you, Jack. Many a time we could have done with your pistol skills, to assist us in halting a bit of trouble.”

“What happened? Was it a mission?”

Masterman nodded, wincing with the movement. “I was ambushed by a dead man, or at least, we all thought he was dead.” Masterman paused and Grant suspected he was using the extended silence, to decide how much to tell him. Finally he said, “It was your old team mate, Trench. We had word that he'd been taken out during an operation several months before in Macau, and I had no reason to doubt the information. Until I see him sitting in a sniper's perch, shooting down my security team and killing my informant in Australia.”

For a moment Grant couldn't take it all in. Trench gone rogue! What the hell had been happening in the year since he'd left the Service?

“I never trusted the bastard, but to his credit, he was a damned good Redactor. Trench is working for some very bad people, it seems, and they're the reason I need you back in the game and operational,” Masterman added.

“What? Me! I'm out of it, Colonel,” spluttered Grant.

“Our country is under attack,” said Masterman. “And the average man and woman on the street haven't even got a clue about it… yet. Besides you're never completely out of it… not in our game.”

Grant stared at Masterman, trying to assess if his old comrade was serious. Masterman, Grant knew, wasn't prone to bouts of melodrama. He saw the fear in the other man's eyes and spoke. “Alright. Tell me everything.”

“It started with an investigation,” Masterman began. “The Chief had personally involved himself in the smallest details of the case. He judged it to be of such significant threat to the nation, that he took charge of it himself. The details, even now, are still hazy and unclear. I received a package a week after C was killed, containing copies of the evidence he'd accumulated. Sir Richard was a careful man and it seems he feared he would be a target for assassination. He had evidently chosen me to pick up the mantel and carry on the fight… little did he know, I'd been taken out of the game as well.”

Masterman glanced down at his damaged body, pausing for a moment of reflection before he carried on. “It seems the Chief had been approached directly, by a former agent from his old wartime network, someone who had been part of an operation during the war in Asia. You know how it is; sometimes old agents pop up and try to make themselves useful again. Most of the time they're just after cash, needing a hand-out and missing the workings of the intelligence game, but according to the information I inherited; this agent was unique. This man had become aware of an organisation, one that if not controlled properly, could have been a threat greater than anything we've faced so far.”

“What kind of organisation? Terrorist?” asked Grant.

Masterman shook his head. “Not exactly. It borders on a private intelligence network, subsidised by the use of mercenaries for hire, private assassins and illegal arms deals in the region. All to the highest bidder, I might add. There were even rumours that they'd waged a war with several Yakuza clans in Japan, but the Yakuza fought back by forming an alliance. It was a close run thing though, and the gangsters were lucky to make it out alive.”

“So what was the information about?”

“Just rumours at first, talk of extortion, terrorist actions, the usual rubbish that we get all the time. But this one was a bit different… there was talk of a weapon, that if unleashed could have been devastating,” answered Masterman.

Grant c****d his head to one side. “A weapon. Explosives? Missiles?”

“No. A biological weapon, something we hadn't seen before and way beyond anything our experts have at the moment. Even now, the details on it are a tad vague. The Chief communicated secretly with his former agent and requested more details. What he discovered seemed to shock him into action. According to his private diary, he immediately ordered the agent to come into protective custody and make himself known to the SIS Head of Station in Hong Kong.”

“And did he?”

“No. The agent never made it. He was found with his throat slit, the day before he was due to meet with the Head of Station. Someone had gotten to him first, before we could question him in more detail. In the months following this event, the Chief's patience appears to have grown short and he targeted SIS resources at finding out more about the people behind this organisation, and the possible whereabouts of the bio-weapon.”

Grant frowned. Whatever this bio-weapon was, it had been enough to have the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service frightened. The whole situation seemed rather seedy and totally un-British. Since when did the SIS back down against terrorists? Something didn't add up. “What about Redaction? Couldn't you have sent the boys after them?” he asked.

Masterman paused, slowly moving his wheelchair until it was directly facing Grant. He pulled out a commando dagger from a sheath on the wheelchair, and pointed it at Grant like a schoolmaster instructing a pupil who is being particularly dense. “Redaction is gone, Jack. We were decimated. All your old team mates were wiped out by agents from this organisation. Following C's assassination and my shooting in Australia, the powers-that-be decided we'd outlived our usefulness and we should be scattered to the winds.”

Grant stared at his former leader in shock. Redaction – gone? The elite of SIS destroyed? These men had been the action arm of the British Secret Service! How could all of them have been… murdered? “What about the Service? What state is that in?”

“It's a cabal,” growled Masterman. “The lunatics have taken over the asylum, the Service is being stripped to its core and the politicians are in charge and they're making a right balls-up of it. At this rate, the Russians won't have to penetrate SIS – they'll be able to read all our secrets in the newspaper.”

“Who's in charge? Who is the new 'C'?” Grant asked. He was finding it hard to absorb all the radical changes which had apparently taken place in his old Service.

“Some career diplomat, a bit of a fop in my opinion. Sir John Hart.” Masterman shrugged, his expression softening slightly. “He's not a bad man, comes from a good family by all accounts. But he's out of his depth, and hasn't a clue how bone-to-bone intelligence operations really work. He's leaning a lot on Thorne's arm and in effect, he's taking his orders from him.”

Grant's brow furrowed. The name sounded familiar, but he couldn't quite place it. Masterman helped him out. “Sir Marcus Thorne, former member of the Service way back in the bad old days, now Deputy Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. He stepped in when the crisis began, helped negotiate with these… these terrorists. His advice has been invaluable. He's been put in charge of re-aligning the old SIS departments, and bringing new people up, to take over from the old guard.”

A kingmaker, thought Grant. Someone able to wield enough power to nudge the pieces on the chess board to wherever he wanted them. The hierarchy of the intelligence world always threw up such men; power hungry, ambitious, ruthless and willing to decimate a Secret Service to achieve their aims.

“So what is all this then?” said Grant, waving a hand at their secret meeting. “If Redaction is blown, what exactly is going on with all this?”

Masterman smiled, the scars on his face wrinkling maniacally like a cruel pirate. “This is private enterprise, Jack old boy. This is deniable all the way. SIS doesn't even know we exist. They think we're all retired, disabled, injured or drunk. This is about a debt of honour. This is about pure and b****y revenge.”

* * *

“Be a good chap Jordie and put the movie on,” said Masterman. Penn flicked the switch on a hidden movie projector, bringing it to life. A white light lit up the opposite wall and the inevitable number countdown began. The film started. It was dark and grainy, but clear in its detail. The footage had obviously been taken from behind a two-way mirror. What it showed was a small cell, no bigger than a standard prison cell. Except this cell had a small aperture built into one wall, which allowed something the size of a small suitcase to be pushed through in one direction. In the other corner of the cell was a young boy, no more than ten or twelve years of age. He looked like an Asian street kid, who had been imprisoned for some petty crime. His clothes were tattered and hung off his thin frame. He was huddled on the floor, his knees drawn up to his chest.

Grant looked more closely at the footage and noticed that in the bottom corner of the room, there were ventilation grills. Some kind of smoke or mist was being filtered through them and into the cell. Not in great plumes, but enough to make the small space cloudy for a few moments at a time. The boy barely seemed to notice, his head was down as if he was trying to block out his fate. While Grant watched, he began to twitch, almost imperceptibly at first, a flinch of a shoulder, a snap of his head, the shudder of a foot then an arm.

Grant turned to Masterman, a look of confusion on his face. Masterman, as if he guessed what the other man was thinking, merely pointed a finger at the footage and said, “Keep watching.”

Grant turned back to the film and saw that the boy was now bent forward on his hands and knees. His whole body was shaking and convulsing, and it seemed to be… stretching, almost as if his bone structure was extending swiftly, visibly increasing the young boy's size. Without warning, the boy launched himself head first at the two-way mirror, and a large c***k appeared where his skull impacted on the safety glass. Blood poured down his face from a gash on his forehead, but still the boy drove himself forward, banging against the glass with his fists, knees and feet. The glass was actually vibrating, from the level of punishment it was taking. Still trying to process what he was seeing, Grant was stunned when the small door in the corner of the room was lifted and, rather bizarrely, a goat was pushed into the cell before the door quickly snapped shut behind it. The boy didn't seem to notice the animal at first; still too busy using the mirror as target practice. It was only when the terrified animal bleated that the crazed boy stopped and turned. In a sharp movement he twisted his body around, leaping across the cell and onto the animal.