CHAPTER TEN
With massive relief throughout the whole agency the five arrived back without incident.
While 22, 37, 45 and 61 grabbed a quick couple of hours sleep, Agent 4 was put through a battery of tests by the team who had performed his implant operation.
They managed to wipe everything harmful that had infiltrated the implant and clean up the sticks. After a few hours, he was back to his normal self, barring a memory of the last few days, and allowed to sleep.
Meanwhile, 45 had gone into the director's office.
"What happened with Imran and co?" she asked.
"No problem there," said White, "they were pleasingly predictable. When you didn't show up at the rendezvous, they tooled themselves up and broke into your house. We're holding them now on burglary and firearms offences, that was easily enough to keep them for seventy two hours. We've since been over their house with a microscopically fine tooth-comb; we found more than I'd hoped for. I'll be going to the CPS later today and I'm confident we have enough evidence to at least secure a trial for conspiracy to commit terrorist offences. The rest is up to the jury."
He leaned back in his chair and frowned.
"It would have been a nice bonus if you could have carried on until they revealed who was funding them, but I'll take this result any day. We've foiled their plans and that's the main thing. We would have been winding down the operation soon so no harm done really. Congratulations, Jennifer. I'm sorting out some new accommodation for you, just in case they revealed your address to anyone else."
"Thank you. I hate to sour the atmosphere, but what's happened with Peterson?"
His face darkened.
"That little runt is the thorn in the side of this whole organisation. I'm currently holding him in a cell downstairs."
Jennifer couldn't help laughing.
"I bet he doesn't like that."
"Actually, he seems almost pleased, which is worrying me. At the moment all I have on him is that he has surreptitiously contacted a known criminal and withdrawn ten thousand pounds in cash. I don't know what kind of contract he intended to pay for."
Jennifer blinked.
"Contract? You think he had a contract out on me and the guy he hired killed Libby by mistake?"
"I don't know that, and I certainly can't prove it."
"What's the murderer saying?"
"That is deeply frustrating. When the police raided his house he wasn't there. Obviously somebody tipped him off because he's vanished. Short of beating more information out of Peterson, I don't know how to proceed."
"I hereby volunteer to beat anything you like out of Peterson."
White smiled broadly. "I never said this, but as a last resort, I'm not ruling it out."
"I'll polish my knuckle dusters."
"I thought you could do that, metaphorically, and go and interview him now. If he has tried to have you killed, that might freak him out and make him talk."
She stood up. "I am in no way exaggerating when I say that it will be a genuine pleasure."
"I'm sure it will. Don't draw blood yet. Just see what you can find out."
"Cameras all set up?"
"Yes, whenever you're ready."
"Give me ten minutes."
Peterson looked up and couldn't disguise his confusion and unease at the sight of Jennifer entering his cell. He shifted in his seat and wondered what new form of cruel game was about to be played against him.
"What's the matter, surprised to see me alive?"
Peterson's face was a smorgasbord of reactions, each vying for attention. He evidently decided that saying nothing was better than attempting any kind of answer.
"This isn't proper interview protocol," he muttered half-heartedly.
"No," confirmed 45, "I should take you to a designated interrogation room and conduct a formal interview."
She paused just long enough for him to think that she may be about to acquiesce, then lunged towards him and grabbed his throat, pushing him back against the wall.
"Why did you pay someone to kill Libby Stevens?"
"I can explain..." he began, then didn't.
She let go of his throat in order to allow him to calm down, get over the disappointment that he'd caved so easily, and organise his thoughts. She waited a full minute but he said nothing.
"Were you, and take your time over this as it's fairly important, trying to have me killed?"
Jennifer cocked her head coquettishly to one side and waited.
He seemed understandably reluctant to answer.
"I've got all day," she said, "but you haven't."
"It was nothing to do with you. That is... I mean that you... you were never the intended target of the operation."
"Operation!" she spluttered, "That's rather overstating the capabilities of your hired thug. Would you care to tell me the origins of this operation?"
"No," spluttered Peterson, "it's... a personal matter."
"Personal. Interesting." She surveyed Peterson. "However, you are the deputy director of one our most secret secret services, so when you pay somebody to commit murder on your behalf that becomes really quite important, professionally speaking."
He looked at the ground, trying to summon up the courage to speak his mind.
"It's nothing to do with the service. I was having an affair with the woman. She threatened to tell my wife, I panicked." He actually looked sorry for himself.
"Panic!" she said in disgust. "You had your bit on the side murdered because you panicked?" Jennifer thought for a moment. "So it was just a coincidence that she looked like me?"
Peterson shuffled nervously and looked at the floor, trying to avoid her gaze. That was the one question he really didn't want to answer.
She stared open mouthed at the old man. "You were shagging her because she looked like me? You dirty fucking bastard!"
She took a firm stride towards him.
"Jen!" shouted Bill White.
It took her a moment to realise that the two way intercom had been activated. Of course it would be unprofessional to kill a man on the verge of retirement.
"To say you'll regret this is an understatement."
She walked briskly out of the room, slamming the door as hard as possible to get some of the anger out of her.
After a brief stomp about she went back to White's office.
"Unorthodox as usual, 45," he said as she sat down, "but we have all we need to charge him with conspiracy to murder. I'll talk to him myself in a while. If I'm then satisfied that this has nothing to do with the agency and doesn't compromise us in any way, then I'll hand him over to the police. They can also find the murderer."
"I'd like to do that, sir, I feel sort of responsible for this woman's death."
"You had no idea he had any kind of obsession with you or anything?"
"No, none."
"Then it's nothing to do with you, put it behind you," he said simply. "I'm sure Peterson will cooperate with the police in due time."
"I suppose so."
"Apart from having to appoint a new deputy, which is a deeply tedious process, this is no longer our concern. Besides, there's still important work for you to do with Agent 4."
"Of course, I'd forgotten all about that. How is he?"
"So far as we can tell he's back to normal, but we still don't know who gave him that virus, where it came from, what is was intended to do, how they managed to administer it to him and, more importantly, exactly what he did during the period his memory is wiped. He was on leave for a few days and we think it happened during that time, so he could have been anywhere and doing anything. He has only a very patchy memory of the last couple of weeks for some reason."
"So we don't know exactly when the virus was introduced - it could have been a sleeper, so to speak."
White nodded his reluctant agreement.
"The main question remains how did anybody find out about him and his implant. I'd rather not have to tear the organisation apart and suspect everybo
dy but I may have to if we can't find an answer soon. The implant team are doing all they can but the virus is like nothing they've ever seen, and of course this is totally new territory for all of us."
He ran a hand through his hair and stood up.
"If nothing is resolved in the next day or so you may have to take him back to the States."
"Yes," agreed Jennifer, "see if it jogs his memory or if anybody remembers meeting him. He could have said anything to anyone."
"Exactly. You and the others are off all cases until this is sorted - one way or another. Arthur has been a good agent, but I can't allow the organisation to be compromised."
"We're all expendable?"
"I didn't say that. Just see what you can do."
She nodded and left the office.
That afternoon 37, 45, 22 and 61 sat around an extravagant conference table on the top floor of the building. Being an old fashioned building, this unmodified room had windows that opened to some degree. John sat next to one of these, flicking ash out of the small gap.
On a white board were a tangled series of questions and assumptions but no concrete answers. They had been there for three hours and not really got anywhere.
"I think," said John, "that we're just tying ourselves up in ever increasing knots here."
"I agree," said Adam, "but how else can we proceed?"
"We could stop asking questions we can't answer."
"Isn't that our job?" asked Hannah.
"We're not going to uncover any new information by sitting here talking, are we?" said John. "I propose that for now we exclude all the unknowns and establish the facts more clearly."
"Okay," said Jennifer, "you're the statistician among us, go ahead."
John flicked his cigarette out of the window and went over to the white board, turning it over and wiping it clean.
"All we know is that at some point during the last few weeks some sort of code was somehow introduced into the circuitry of Agent 4. Subsequently, while on leave, he got on a plane to America for reasons unknown and then seemingly travelled in a straight line from the airport until he stopped at the hotel where we found him. For some reason either he or someone else removed his stick, resulting in memory malfunction and disorientation. That is all we know that definitely occurred. Therefore, rather than playing guessing games, I suggest we focus on the code itself, the so-called virus."
"Why so-called?" asked Jennifer. "Do you think it isn't a virus?"
"I've not studied it extensively but even the simplest of digital viruses has some kind of purpose. I haven't found anything yet and neither have the tech team, which indicates what the purpose of the code is. There are no clear instructions encoded anywhere, it doesn't seem to have any logic to it."
"Can I just clarify," asked Adam, "that it isn't possible to feed instructions to Arthur which he will obey unquestioningly?"
"I'm afraid we can't say that for certain. The implant has replaced his hippocampus and the sticks give us access to that. The sticks backup his memories in digital form and allow him to read certain kinds of information from them. Who knows what would happen if somebody tried to feed him instructions? It's not what the implant was designed for but it's not beyond the realms of technical feasibility that it could be used for that purpose."
"Hang on a minute," said Adam, "you said the code was badly written, or maybe not even written at all. Surely that rules out anyone in T14 with any real access to him or his records? So we're looking for somebody who knows that he has the implant and the sticks, but doesn't know all the tech stuff or how it works?"
"Oh good, that rules me out then," said John dryly.
"And the implant team, presumably," added Jennifer. "If it were someone in our organisation then they would have known how to get their hands on the tech info at the very least. But I don't see why anyone internal would want to do this - what's the point in wiping his memory and sending him to a random place in America? What benefit could any of us gain from that?"
"I agree," said Adam, "anybody who works here knows Arthur doesn't have superpowers. But let's hypothesis for a moment, sorry, John. Suppose somebody external somehow discovered that we had an agent with a brain implant who could process digital information. They may well assume, especially if they were from an especially paranoid or superstitious organisation or country, that Arthur was some sort of bionic man, or super weapon, or that they could programme him to be a Trojan horse. Surely they would, given the opportunity, take a punt, no matter how unlikely a result was?"
John lit another cigarette and looked out of the window for a few moments, mulling over Adam's idea.
"That is a very sound hypothesis," he agreed, "and I'm willing to go with it for the time being. But it doesn't get us any closer to ascertaining any of the who, when, where, why or how."
"No," said Jennifer. "I don't think we're going to make any more progress here. If somebody tried to make him a Trojan horse they've clearly failed. What we have to establish is what he did during his memory lapse. Maybe the purpose of the code was merely to confuse him so that whoever it was could get him to talk."
"We have no suspects at all, do we?" said Hannah. "If the code can't tell us anything then there's only one thing we can possibly do - retrace his steps."
"Well," said Jennifer, "there is one other thing, but it's a last resort."
The others looked at her expectantly.
"We could hypnotise him."
"Would that work?" asked John.
"I could do it, it's piss easy," said Jennifer, "it's no more than inducing a meditative, relaxed state. But with Arthur it has added complications. I wouldn't want him to start reliving the trauma of that bullet going in his head; he hasn't had to deal with that because it's always been a blank, no pun intended. Plus I've no idea if hypnosis would affect the implant. I agree with Hannah, we have little choice, if there's no tech answer by tomorrow, to take him back to the airport and do the journey again. John, is it likely that he removed his stick when he was in that field?"
"It's the most probable time, yes."
"So surely he must have had a reason for doing that, assuming nobody else was with him at the time? Taking him back to that field should trigger some sort of memory if he's totally back to normal now."
"I agree," said Adam. "We all need a proper nights sleep. I vote we fill White in with our findings and then go home."