Deep Sleepers
Copyright © Adrian Wills 2013
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Edited by Dave Arden
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Cover design by Lesley Worrell
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For my wife, Amanda, and my boys, Oliver and Thomas, for all your unending support.
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Chapter 1
A gang prowled the dimly lit room like hunting dogs stalking an injured calf; their attention focussed on a figure collapsed in a chair with his hands bound behind his back. A potato sack had been pulled over his head and his T-shirt ripped open from his throat to his stomach.
Tom Blake, sprawled on his front with his eye to a hole in the floorboards, counted four men. Three were lithe and wiry with hard faces, dark clothes, and tattooed arms. The fourth was short and fat, with a belly that hung over his belt, and rolls of flab that rippled down his neck where his head morphed into his shoulders.
'Names!' the fat man screamed.
The figure in the chair muttered something inaudible and his interrogator swung a clenched fist so hard into the knot of his stomach that Blake winced.
'Who are you working for?’
'No one.'
'I don't believe you.'
'It's the truth.'
The interrogator sighed and hung his head. 'Okay,' he said, quietly.
He nodded at one of his henchmen who stepped out of Blake's narrow field of vision. Blake concentrated on controlling his breathing, trying not to move, fearful that a creak from the rotten floor would give him away. He detected the faint smell of smoke. Not the bitter, chemical-infused odour of a cigarette, but the pungent aroma of burning wood. Blake sniffed the air, and frowned as he heard the sound of coals being raked.
The man who'd disappeared returned with a metal rod glowing red hot at one end, pulsing in waves of radiant orange and white in the darkened room. The fat interrogator examined the flattened tip at arm's length before thrusting it at the exposed chest of the man in the chair, who bucked violently as if he'd been plugged into the electrical mains, his screams echoing through the empty building, shattering the silence and startling a kit of pigeons roosting in the roof. Skin sizzled, and the nauseating stench of burning flesh hit Blake at the back of his throat.
He rolled onto his back, and stared at the exposed rafters trying to block out the howls, wracked by the guilt that he'd failed the man whose life he'd vowed to protect. What was worse, he had no idea who the abductors were nor how they could have possibly discovered that Ben Proctor was an impostor.
Proctor's abduction had been as efficient as it had been unexpected. The gang had screeched to a halt in a battered old Vauxhall, grabbing him from the street as he neared his flat. They'd bundled him into the boot, and driven to an abandoned Victorian railway station on the edge of the city where, presumably, they thought no one would hear his screams. Blake, who'd been discreetly following Proctor, had witnessed it all. He'd clambered onto a precarious canopy over the old platform, and slipped into an upstairs room from where he could observe through a tennis ball sized gap in the floorboards.
'Take him outside!' the fat man shouted.
Two men lifted Proctor, and dragged him out of the room with his feet trailing. Blake scuffed across the filthy floor and was about to climb out of the first floor window when the men appeared from around the side of the building. They carried Proctor to the edge of the platform, and stood him with his toes hanging over the drop as Blake retreated into the shadows.
The fat interrogator approached Proctor from behind, and said something in his ear that caused Proctor's head to jolt back and his body to tense. He tried to move away from the edge, but he was held tightly, lacking the strength to overcome the powerful grip of the three men.
'Please, no!' His muffled cry of anguish a desperate plea.
Blake's puzzlement lasted only a moment before he realised their intentions. It was a cheap psychological trick he'd seen once in a film. Blindfold a man, put his feet on the edge of a low drop, and tell him he's standing at the top of a tall building. His imagination would cripple him with fear and guarantee he'd spill every dark secret he'd ever taken to his heart.
But it didn’t quite play out like that. The interrogator placed his hand between Proctor's shoulders and shoved hard. Proctor fell forward, his scream knocked from his lungs when he hit the ground a second later, disappearing into the undergrowth that had swallowed what was left of the old railway track. The gang burst into cruel laughter and sloped away, leaving Proctor whimpering and gasping.
Cars doors slammed, an engine rattled to life, and tyres crunched over the hard ground. When he was sure they'd gone, Blake eased himself through the glassless window, dropped onto the canopy and down onto the platform.
He quickly located Proctor, who was lying awkwardly across the rusty tracks with his legs tucked up to his chest and his hands twisted behind his back. Blake lifted him to his feet, like an older brother dusting off a sibling after a playground scrap, and removed the sack from his head. Proctor's eyes were red and swollen, his lips puffed and a trickle of blood ran from his nose.
'I'm sorry,' Blake muttered under his breath.
Proctor tried to open his eyes, but the effort was too much. He allowed Blake to cut the cable tie from his wrist without question.
'Let's have a look at that burn,' said Blake, teasing back the ragged shreds of Proctor's T-shirt.
Even in the gloom, Blake could make out an angry, crimson welt. At its centre, a white blister was already starting to form.
Proctor stumbled, his legs weak. Blake caught him under his arms and walked him slowly back to his car, hidden in a scrub behind a disused signal box. As Proctor settled into the passenger seat, his eyes peeled open and he stared at Blake with faintly disguised contempt.
'Who are you?' he asked, coming to his senses.
'Never mind,' said Blake. He closed the door, walked around the bonnet and slid in behind the wheel.
'What do you want?'
Blake slotted the key in the ignition and fired up the engine. He was about to pull away when Proctor's hand fell on his wrist, gripping it tightly.
'I asked you a question. Who are you?'
Blake sighed. 'Listen, I can explain everything. Right now we need to get you sorted out.'
Chapter 2
Colonel Harry Patterson replaced the phone in its cradle and swivelled in his chair. Through the bare branches of the trees opposite, he watched a pleasure boat drifting along the river with a dozen hardy tourists scattered along its top deck. But his mind was elsewhere.
Blake's call had been a major concern. Ben Proctor was an experiment on which they'd staked their reputations. He was supposed to be the perfect spy, a new breed of undetectable sleeper agent. There were few logical explanations for his abduction beyond the unthinkable fact that his cover had been blown.
Patterson's desk phone gave a short trill, and he snatched up the handset.
'Yes?'
'The deputy director general is asking if you have a moment.'
Patterson checked his watch. 'Tell him I'll be there in five minutes. Thanks, Heather.'
He flipped the lid of his laptop closed and grabbed his jacket from the back of the do
or. The DDG wasn't a man to be kept waiting. He bounded up four flights of a grand stone staircase that wound through the centre of Thames House, the headquarters of the British security service, MI5, racing to the top floor under the watch of former prime ministers and agency director generals in their gilt-edged frames.
He announced himself to a secretary and took a seat outside floor-to-ceiling wooden doors. Exactly four minutes later he was ushered into a spacious, cold office where Sir Richard Howard, a small man with rimless glasses over crystal blue eyes and thinning, silvery hair parted neatly to one side, was sitting behind a desk in front of a large window hung with greying net curtains.
He waved Patterson towards a strategically low chair in the middle of the room, placed deliberately at a distance from the desk. All part of the power games to remind visitors of their lowly status in the presence of one of the most powerful civil servants in the country, the man who ran international and domestic counter-terrorism operations for MI5.
'Feeling at home with us yet?' Sir Richard asked, replacing the top on his fountain pen and looking up from his paperwork, his thin smile unnerving.
'I'm still getting used to your civilian ways of doing things, but I think I'm finding my feet.' Patterson said, smoothing out a crease in the leg of his the Savile Row suit that had cost him a small fortune. He'd chosen a sombre navy pin-stripe he thought befitted an intelligence officer in the secret service, but preferred his comfortable army fatigues and well-worn desert boots.
It had been less than a year since Patterson had left the Army after his black-ops intelligence unit, Echo 17, had been terminated. The unit had specialised in covert overseas missions using experimental hypnotic techniques to extract information from high-value targets. But with a growing budget deficit, the Ministry of Defence had announced Echo 17 would be deactivated.
With his career on the line, Patterson had pulled some strings to secure an unlikely meeting with MI5's counter-terrorism chief and made a compelling case for the unit to come under the security service's wing as a non-military operation. He had proposed the creation of a Deep Sleepers programme, using Blake's skills honed as a warfare psychologist, to infiltrate suspected terror organisations with undercover agents. With their subconscious controlled by Blake, they could be embedded in key positions and become virtually undetectable.
Sir Richard had agreed to a pilot scheme with the one condition that Blake, who would continue to work in the field, would become a deniable asset. He had to exist as a ghost and have no direct contact with anyone in MI5 apart from Patterson who would run the unit from an office in its headquarters. And so Patterson had engineered Blake's death. His Army records documented that a Taliban sniper in Afghanistan had fatally wounded him. Patterson even went as far as having Blake's empty coffin returned to Britain for a full, military funeral, and personally oversaw the obituary that was released to the press.
'How's Blake getting on?' asked Sir Richard, almost casually.
They both knew that the Deep Sleepers programme was a test of Patterson's competency and effectiveness.
'Fine. He's reporting very positive things with our deep sleeper.’
'Proctor? Is he making any progress?'
Patterson paused just a little too long, and the pitch in his voice was a little too high when he answered. 'Absolutely. The leadership appear to be totally convinced that he's genuine. He's ideological, dispossessed, and reliable. And he's in deep, exactly where we wanted him.'
'They believe his cover story?'
'Without doubt. He's fitting in well with the grassroots membership, and I'm sure it won't be long before he's able to provide some decent intelligence on what's really happening on the inside.'
'Good, good,' said Sir Richard, sitting back in his chair and steepling his fingers. 'But I'm afraid we're going to need to accelerate the programme. We don't have the time we thought we had. Proctor needs to start delivering results.'
'But you said this was a low-level operation to test the programme,' said Patterson, feeling the sweat build on his brow.
'Well, things have changed.' The DDG took a file from a drawer and pushed it across the desk. 'Take a look.'
A set of grainy black and white photographs sat on top of a pile of papers.
'The latest intelligence we've pulled on the BFA.'
Patterson flicked through the pictures. They'd all been taken with a long lens, and although the faces were blurred and indistinct, it was clear they were all of the same man. 'Ken Longhurst?'
Sir Richard nodded.
'Where were they taken?'
'Blackburn. Luton. Bristol. Dover. That last one was in Coventry just two weeks ago.'
'All at British Freedom Alliance marches?' Patterson studied the pictures closely. In each one, Ken Longhurst, the charismatic, recently appointed leader of the BFA, was wearing a hooded top or baseball cap pulled low over his face. He was surrounded by the same muscled, sour-faced hard-men with their shaven heads and Nazi tattoos.
'Every one of those protests ended in violent attacks on the black and Asian communities.'
Patterson raised an eyebrow. 'And you think Longhurst was orchestrating it?'
'If he wasn't orchestrating it, he was at least complicit.'
'Well, that goes against the grain.'
'Less than five months ago, he was vowing to clean up the party and root out the racists, bigots, and troublemakers, to paraphrase his own words. He promised to turn the organisation around and make it electable. The prime minister's fear is that the people are beginning to believe him, and all the indications show they could make ground in the next round of local elections. They already have representation in Europe. Before you know it, they'll have a seat in the Commons and then where will we be? Far be it for us to involve ourselves in the muddy world of politics, but I don't like the smell of this. Longhurst's not what he purports to be. And I want to know what's going on.'
'Why not release the pictures to the press? They'd have a field day.'
Sir Richard sucked a sharp breath through his teeth. 'That's not the way we do things here.'
'We'll see what Proctor can find out.'
'There's more I'm afraid. Take a look at the print-outs.'
Under the stack of photos were several loose sheets of printed A4 paper with columns of figures, certain numbers circled in pen. Most were five or six figure sums.
'The numbers highlighted show single deposits made into the BFA's bank account,' said Sir Richard.
'These are big sums. Where are they coming from?'
'We don't know, but we suspect an anonymous benefactor. The payments started shortly after Longhurst was appointed leader. They've grown steadily, and have swelled the BFA's modest balance considerably. We need to know who’s making those donations and why.'
'Can't you trace the payments back to source?’
'We've tried. Each donation has come through a series of complex transactions via offshore accounts and Swiss banks. In short, they're untraceable.'
'And you want Proctor to find out?'
'He's our best hope.'
'Perhaps they're just stockpiling cash for a big election push?'
'Maybe they are. But maybe they're planning something else. Whatever it is, I want to know. Money is power, you know.'
'Of course.'
Sir Richard held out his hand across the desk and Patterson passed him back the file. 'How long before Proctor can achieve some results?'
'Maybe six months, possibly a year. It depends how long it takes him to infiltrate the management structure.'
'He has six weeks.'
'It's impossible -'
'Six weeks. You promised when you first came in here begging me to save your career that Blake could deliver something special. Now's the time to prove it.'
'I understand.'
'And keep me up to date with developments.' The DDG picked up his pen, removed the cap, and turned his attention to a heap of paperwork on his desk, indicating to P
atterson his audience was over.
Patterson shuffled out of the office and pulled the enormous doors closed behind him, scuttled down the stairs, and slipped into his office, dialling a number on his mobile phone.
'Blake, it's me,' he said, quietly. 'We have a problem.'
Chapter 3
Proctor woke with a start. His eyes sprung open and his breath caught in his throat. He was still fully clothed, lying on the couch and wrung out with sweat. A siren wailed past the window, an eerie caterwauling carrying across the still, night air. Empty beer cans littered the floor, and cigarette butts were piled high in an ashtray. The smell of stale tobacco smoke hung heavy in the dreary room.
He had no idea how long he'd been asleep, only that he'd fallen into paracetamol-infused alcoholic slumber when fatigue had finally caught up with him. He glanced at his watch. Not yet eleven. Early by his standards. He swung his feet to the floor, and sat up too quickly. A pain shot through his head and a metallic sourness flooded his mouth as if he'd been sucking on coins. His tongue darted over cracked lips, and he fished at his feet for a beer, hoping to find a half-finished can, but discovered he'd drained them all.
It had become a regular pattern since his abduction. Sleep came to him only through alcohol or drugs. Even then, it wasn't a fruitful, energy-reviving sleep that refreshes the soul, but a fitful dormancy punctuated with dark nightmares. Neither was his mental state greatly improved when he was awake. He'd been gripped by a fear of leaving his flat, and the limit of his capabilities was a hurried visit to the store at the end of the road to stock up on dwindling beer supplies.
Proctor was worried he'd lost his nerve. He'd never been afraid of anybody before the attack. He'd always been defined by an unwavering self-confidence that some interpreted as arrogance. It was an attitude that said to hell with anyone else; from the way he walked, to the look in his eyes. Those dark, menacing orbs that burned with venom and loathing. He looked like trouble. The sort you crossed the street to avoid.
His slight build accentuated his height. He was whippet-thin but sinewy and loose-limbed, nimble on his feet and born with a swagger that suggested an underlying violence. He kept his hair closely cropped and wore only black. Two Nazi SS bolt tattoos were prominent on his forearm, and a white-power clenched fist visible on his upper arm when he rolled up his sleeve.