+ Ronald "Al" Frost - previously AFO with the Met's Diplomatic Protection Service
+ Chloe Thornes - ex-MI6 case officer with overseas experience in Russia
+ George Crackanthorpe - old-hand MI6 secondee
+ Holly Walker - a PISCES shrink and professional skeptic
+ Simon Spencer - millennial bad-boy computer hacker given another chance at life
WONDER WALL: SESSION ONE
A drab gray day in London. From the 23rd floor of the Severn Aerospace Building it was hard to tell if the Thames reflected the gunbolt hue of the sky or vice-versa. Sipping coffee, doodling on notepads, chit-chatting about the Gunners, the officers waited for today's Control - a middle-aged, tweed-jacketed type with a personality far too hip for his years - to brief them. "The Gods have spoken," he said. "The Sorting Hat chosen its candidates." He pinned photographs and papers to the whiteboard on the wall. Two issues had come up requiring the Section's involvement...
Team Shadwell: Heathrow Airport flagged Chuck Hauser (or rather his passport, AKA Milton Waters), an American citizen, entering the country via Schiphol, Amsterdam. He's booked into the Strand Hotel near Covent Garden. The Gods want him surveilled. No reasons given.
Team Wenceslas: One of PISCES' prognosticators dreamed a dream of doom. Onto the board goes his child-like etching of a ziggurat and stick-figures, drowning in a river of blood, overlooked by the lidless eye of the moon. The actuaries often send in their nightmares, scrawled in crayon; like Nostradamus they think they have meaning.
Sometimes - as in this case - they do.
No one would have cared if auditing hadn't flagged a music video - a rap piece - posted online by a Lambeth drill gang. SE1Nation's "yuves" are masked up on the video, spitting rhymes, dropping a lyrical flow about life on the roads:
“Qeffin wit' da prang
Xing xiong
Xing xiong
Slash and jank
Seein stars while trappin'
Space-n-time move
Gonna be a king
YGS YGS
SE1Nation
Time out fo ya
Time out London...”
YGS - Yig-Shoggoth? Yog-Sabbath? Yog-Shubbath? Crackanthorpe racked his brains for occult symbolism - dredged up Biblical
references to the Nile turning to blood, worshipful pyramids, the
all-seeing eye - but he couldn't find the end of the thread to pull. At least not yet.
SE1Nation controlled a council estate practically a stone's throw from PISCES' HQ. Wyndham Court, bordering Lambeth and Vauxhall, loomed enormous, an edifice remarkably similar to the ugly monstrosity taking pride of place in the Crayola sketch pinned to the whiteboard.
Gathering equipment from stores - B&E kit, shotgun-mikes, bugs and surveillance cameras - the teams split up, heading to their respective sites: Crackanthorpe and Walker would poke around the council estate; the rest would recce the red-flagged American tourist.
Let's All Go Down the Strand...
Team Shadwell crossed Waterloo Bridge, past the great neo-classical edifice of Somerset House, and onto the Strand, with its gray stone buildings and fancy restaurants and chock-a-block traffic. Dropping the car off in a car-park just past Drury Lane, the three officers grabbed their gear and sauntered back to the Strand Hotel, where they set up a surveillance post: the local Pret a Mange sandwich bar.
Unsure whether the target wasin the hotel or not, Frost came up with a cunning plan - phoning the front desk and claiming to be a business associate. Though it worked and ascertained Hauser was in his room, it also raised the rather belated question of whether the officers had unintentionally spooked him. Too late to worry about that, though; Spencer took a shufti at Chuck Hauser's social media presence. The American's websites (under both names) were set to private, with only a bare glimmer of information - specifically his work in "international trade", "government consultations" and other vaguely worded high-class corporate double-speak. Spencer decided not to pry deeper just yet.
Time passes; many cups of coffee and sandwiches were imbibed. Then Team Shadwell got their first break: out the window they saw Hauser, rotund bulk hidden under his jacket, a briefcase in one fleshy hand. He wobbled down the hotel's steps and to the side of the road. Behind him a slimmer, younger man in a leather jacket followed - his Minder. A black SUV pulled up and the two men jumped in.
Chuck Hauser
Behind them, unseen, Frost flagged down a black cab and - with a crisp £50 note - told the cabbie to follow that car.
"I've been waiting my whole life to hear someone say that," replied the driver, flicking the "for hire" lamp off. "So, you watch the match last night, pal?"
Meanwhile, in Lambeth...
South of the river, Crackanthorpe and Walker entered London's concrete jungle - the great overspill of the dispossessed and the forgotten, crammed into concrete shoeboxes. Parking their car, they went on foot into Wyndham Court, which rose like some ancient temple ahead of them - stepped and enormous. A pedestrian underpass that smelled of weed led them to a dingy public park behind the estate. Both officers had dirtied themselves up to try and stay inconspicuous, with Crackanthorpe throwing a hoodie over his head and affecting a half-stagger.
While Walker sat on a park bench and kept watch, Crackanthorpe tried to gather some info on the local gangland scene - by scoring drugs from a triumvirate of young dealers lingering in the children's play area. Though one of the hoodie-clad youth snaps the officer's picture, another led the older man to a secluded, wooded part of the park - where £20 purchased a baggie of brick-dust cut opioids and the cognizance it'll take more than that to solve the SE1Nation mystery.
Despite their apprehensions - particularly Walker's, for evidently the closest she'd come to a council estate was on BBC documentaries - the pair wandered the crumbling monolith. It seemed relatively safe, at least by daylight, but there were the obvious signs of urban decay: walls caked with graffiti, cracked lift-lobbies, and a abandoned and emptied flats, their doors open to the elements. On one of the upper floors they found a torched apartment, graffiti daubed around it: "Druggies Get Out!"
Some of the graffiti reminded the officers of the earlier drawing, their gang-tags topped with a crown and all-seeing eye, YGS scrawled below. Symbol of the gang's territory - or something more? They phoned ahead to nearby Brixton Police Station and set up a meeting with DS Chaz Styles, one of the division's anti-gang officers, hoping to uncover more.
Over tea in the police canteen, Styles explained he grew up at Wyndham Court - and it had effectively been left in the hands of Lynton Prince, the current boss of SE1Nation and regent of the estate, since he'd pushed the other gangs out. Nowadays the cops no longer went into Wyndham except in teams, and he was grateful the higher-ups were looking into the problem - particularly the missing kids.
What missing kids? asked the officers. Styles explained that a number of young kids had been reported missing from the estate over the last year, vanishing into the aether. Normally they'd be recruited as runners or shipped down the county-lines to deal outside the city, but it wasn't that: these kids had literally disappeared. He pointed the officers in the direction of Lambeth Social Services for more information and wished them god-speed...
Detective Sergeant Charlie "Chaz" Styles
Back on the Strand
With Hauser and his Minder gone, officers Thornes and Spencer grabbed their gear and headed over to the hotel. An unsecured router ascertained Hauser was in room 413 and it was no difficulty persuading the front-desk they were there to go up and fix an Internet issue. Breaking into the suite, Spencer set to work setting up his bugs and video-equipment while Thornes checked out the rooms.
The smaller bedroom - the Minder's - was neat, bland and empty beside a day or two of clean clothes. The bed was turned-down military style. By comparison Hauser's bedroom was a mess, American snacks and bottled water on the cabinet, two-days' clothes in drawers. The bedside cabinet held a loaded 9mm SIG automatic, and a metal briefcase sits nearby, its interior fitted with soft foam packing for carrying a spherical object apprently not present. From the other room Spencer cursed aloud; he'd forgotten to bring the correct wires to network his bugs. A bit of jerry-rigging set it right, but any competent counter-surveillance would readily find them. Hopefully Hauser wasn't that paranoid.
Hopefully.
Frost, meanwhile, was hanging around Hatton Garden - London's preeminent jewelry and diamond quarter. Hauser and his Minder had gone into a store, Cohen's Jewelers - bringing a suitcase with them into its back rooms. A quick phonecall to an old friend in the Flying Squad confirmed Cohen was a "bad lad" with a history of dodgy dealings but he was apparently untouchable - "literally?" asked Frost. No, not "literally" literally. But untouchable nonetheless.
Twenty minutes later, Hauser and co. were back in their car, heading to the hotel. Frost called his colleagues to inform them, then - using London's notoriously bad traffic - tailed his targets on foot.
At the hotel Spencer and Thornes got not one but two calls - one from Frost and another to room 413, which they intercepted. Reception was leaving a message for Hauser: apparently a "Kacey" was waiting for him in the foyer. Intrigued, the officers went downstairs and spotted a likely candidate: a young, attractive woman in a short red skirt, plinking away on her phone. Thornes' attempt to open communication by complimenting on her clothes did nothing but receive a withering glare. Duly chastised the team retreated to the café. A few minutes later, Hauser and Frost arrived outside the hotel.
Anytime You're Lambeth Way...
Meeting with the social worker handling Wyndham Estate, Walker and Crackanthorpe discerned that three youths had vanished from the estate in the last four months: Tessa Cook, Alex Mbunto, Oliver Hawtree. The overstretched authorities had neither the time nor manpower to do more than log it for future reference. Armed with photocopies about the missing kids, the pair headed back to the estate to talk with the families.
First on their list was Burt Cook, grandfather of missing Tessa (8YOA). Inviting them into his flat, Burt explained he'd told the authorities exactly what happened - the girl was stolen away by Old Scratch while in the nearby lift. The old Wyndham estate had a history of child disappearances, he said - "Kids used to disappear then, kids disappear now, he just comes in an gets you… through the angles. You should look into the history of this place. If it were up to me I'd tear it all down."
"Old Scratch?" the two officers asked, somewhat bemused.
To prove his point, the old man led them out to the walkway - with its rat-droppings and graffiti - and pointed out an enormous greasy handprint on one of the apartment windows. A handprint that was not a handprint - but a paw-print, as if belonging to some enormous rat.
Walker, ever the skeptic, checked out the rusty, foul-smelling elevator from which Tessa had vanished. No hidden hatches, no secret compartments, though it was covered in more graffiti - the same sort they'd seen before. Now, however, the officers noticed something: the crown atop the tag was weirdly drawn, atypical, stylized. For a moment they wondered if it was a protective ward, but then it hit them. It was an alchemical crown, signifying the successful completion of a magical operation or the achievement of authentic interpretation of the Word of God.
Burt had said everyone on the estate knew about Old Scratch and everyone had seen it. Taking this to heart, the two officers grabbed some equipment and set themselves up in one of the abandoned flats, readying themselves for a long night of rat-hunting on the Wyndham estate.
A Troubling Situation Brews by the Embankment...
Bemusing the café staff by commandeering yet more tables near the window, the Shadwell Team got to work on watching their surveillance stream. Hauser and his Minder had gone back to their room, bringing Kasey with them - and the overweight tourist was getting decidedly frisky. While the woman undressed in Hauser's bedroom, the American and his minder spoke of some unspecified deal - and Hauser's thankfulness red-tape in London was less troublesome than back in D.C. The team breathed a sigh of relief when Hauser waved off the Minder's recommendation to sweep the room for bugs.
Unseen by the two men, but
witnessed by the team, while Hauser was out of the bedroom
Kasey had found the gun in the drawer and toyed with it. They decided to log it for future reference - and for the next hour watched Hauser and Kasey engage in coitus as the Minder waited outside, watching television. Kasey's work done, she was paid with a wad of banknotes and left the hotel. Soon thereafter Hauser, getting dressed, transferred a blue stone from his bedroom safe to the metal briefcase and left with his minder.
It was at this point the surveillance team realized something was going to happen. In the hotel foyer, a man was leaning against the entrance door, holding it open, while two other men were pretending to read magazines in the plush reception area. As the elevator's bell tinkled, Hauser and his Minder stepping out, the three men made their move.
The first bullet fired by the foyer-men hit Hauser in the bulk of his chest and he stumbled and sat down, a look of surprise on his face. He fumbled for his gun, as the Minder drew his own sidearm and dropped behind cover, taking a potshot as the two men approached. A firefight broke out - screaming staff and tourists diving for cover. Hauser, pistol clenched in one flabby pale hand, metal briefcase in the other, tried to open fire - but the trigger just clicked on dead air.
Kasey had done something to his gun, the officers realized; switched his ammunition, maybe. Officers Frost and Thorns were already up, rushing across the street toward the incident, as passersby stopped in confusion at the pop, pop, pop from the nearby hotel. A beat constable darted between the traffic, drawn by the noise - Frost and the terrorist leaning against the door saw him at the same time. Only Frost's shout of warning saved the policeman, as the doorman opened his longcoat and swung an AK-47 up, barrel sweeping the cars, finger itching to fire.
Still seated in the café, whose patrons were now pressed up against the window to watch the chaos outside, only Spencer saw the aftermath of the gun-fight. The Minder was pinned down; Hauser injured and disarmed. One of the terrorists grabbed the briefcase from his plump, unyielding fingers and pressed the gun into his mouth. The back of Hauser's head exploded, blood and brain exploding across the polished tiles and imported rug. He lay still.
Job done, suitcase in hand, the three terrorists raced into the street, guns covering targets but not firing. Frost, ducked behind an idling car, had radioed local police - Armed Response Units were only a minute away. Their sirens could be heard, lights flashing, but the thick, stalled traffic blocked their entrance. The three men dived into a waiting car, which - bumping traffic in the way - pulled right and raced toward Waterloo Bridge...
Don't Bring a Transit Van to a Bloody Car Chase!
Frost and Thornes, badges in hand, rushed to a nearby taxi - "National security! We're requisitioning your vehicle!" - and took off in not-so-hot pursuit.
Swerving in and out of stalled traffic, sirens behind and in front of them, Frost called Spencer and asked if he could tap into London's traffic surveillance and "Ring of Steel" network to keep an eye on where the suspects were going. Using his PISCES laptop the hacker could; and he directed his colleagues as more police cars arrived on the road outside the café, armed officers pouring out to set up a cordon around the hotel and shuffle away civilians.
"I don't want to take them out," explained Frost, as his targets put their foot down - narrowly avoiding a big red bendy-bus trying to pull out of their lane. "I just want to keep an eye on where they're going."
Evidently the transit van on the Odeon cinema roundabout didn't get the message, for as the suspect vehicle slipped between two waiting cars, hopping over a bollard, it got T-boned by a Delivery-Master truck. In spite of its crumpled side, it kept going. ARVs and a helicopter were now on the suspect's tail, and Spencer watched the slightly blurry images on his laptop, as a trail of vehicles raced past King's College and Waterloo station. Leading the charge, Frost and Thornes' bright pink cab.
"I'll let the cops do the job," said Frost - and he slid back in formation, allowing a Battenberg patrol car to sweep forward and take his place. Ahead, a roadblock with stingers had been thrown across the road. The game, it seemed, was up. Yet at that moment a chatter of machine-gun fire cut through the trill of sirens. The patrol car skidded and limped to the side of the road - Frost and Thorns seeing, as they passed, it's shattered windscreen and bullet-riddled bonnet.
Now they were in the line of fire.
Another rattle of gunfire from the AK-47 carried by the man from the hotel. He was firing through the rear-window of the getaway vehicle. Bullets thudded into the cab's bonnet; the windscreen shattered, covering Frost and Thorns in fragments of safety glass. The getaway car was trying to turn off before it hit the roadblock, before reaching St. George's Circus - to careen down, into the entrance of an underground car-park.
Frost slammed on the gas-pedal - but it wasn't his skill, only the other driver's mistake, that saw the speeding leader lose control. Halfway down the garage's slope, taking the turn too fast, the car's wheels clipped the kerb. Rising like a whale breaking water, it flipped onto its roof and floundering down the slope to lie like a beached animal. At the same time, Frost's taxi slammed into the concrete pinion with teeth-rattling force. The two PISCES agents staggered from the vehicle, to find themselves in a headwind of screaming, armed police officers racing toward them.
Despite their cries of "Security services! Don't shoot!" Frost and Thornes were pinned down, cuffed and taken to Charing Cross Police Station. Spencer, having witnessed everything through CCTV, finished his coffee and the last of the sandwiches before disappearing into the crowds evacuating the Strand.
It wasn't long before Section was on the phone with the local police superintendent, getting its officers released - but by then the damage was done. Hauser lay dead on a slab at Westminster Public Mortuary, his suitcase vanished. MI6 wanted to know what PISCES were bloody well playing at, for the Minder guarding Hauser was one of their lads - and then there remained the question of those three armed terrorists, cheeky enough to instigate a gun-battle in the middle of one of London's most popular tourist districts...
The officers on Operation Wonder Wall was going to have its work cut out for them, it seemed...
What did that police chief say? Something 'bout the Kaisers?
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