Nssm 200 - The Milieu Derivative

  Almost five thirty according to the illuminated time showing on his watch. Nearly dawn and so far the contents of the chip had been a disappointment. Not so much an exposé but a diary of a tortured soul. Who would have believed a man like John Tillman, hardened and granite-jawed leader of a crack team of special operatives, would resort to maintaining a record of his innermost thoughts in a personal log. Matt expected intricate accounts of the man’s secretive professional life, dangerous and covert missions undertaken in foreign climes on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government and its allies. The reality couldn’t have been further from the truth. Acres of text revealed the apparent disdain he felt towards people and his increasingly fractious state of mind at the state of the world in general and his life in particular. And it appeared to stem from events that occurred in Austria and the operation Will had mentioned before. Most striking of all, the log contained next to nothing about his domestic life, either of his children or Maria. Matt decided to return to the passages on Austria and review the entries Tillman had recorded. There had to be something in this part of the log that was relevant, something he had missed the first time.

  Her gaze mesmerises me, her smile intoxicates. Every conversation is an intellectual challenge, her razor sharp wit demanding total concentration of the mind. With each astutely delivered thrust, parry, and counter thrust she searches into the farthest reaches of my mind and I find it totally compelling trying to keep pace with her sheer speed of thought, her intellectual dexterity. And then there are the nights. The hue and softness of her youthful skin, the antithesis of my own white and worn flesh, offers a degree of physical pleasure which I find irresistible. Every time she is close I find her both beguiling and bewitching in equal measure. She is unique, different, perfection. I long for the nights to arrive.

  The words were almost poetic. Whoever this woman was had Tillman on the end of a rope which, whenever the whim took her fancy, could be shortened or lengthened to her heart’s desire. This was the tipping point in Tillman’s life. Events or a particular circumstance had brought this man into contact with a person who had changed his entire perception of life, brought questions of his own existence to the fore. This woman had succeeded in reducing a proud, courageous and fearless man to his knees. But who was she?

  Matt flicked back to the information on Tillman’s carefully constructed team. Vega One he’d named them, Vega after the name of the brightest star in the universe. Tillman expected they would outshine all others within the security community thereby reflecting his own perceived standing. The numeral he added because they were to be the first of a number of crack squads he expected to put together. The man certainly didn’t lack confidence, enjoyed the smell of his own dung, making his collapse into a weak-kneed and besotted lover all the more surprising.

  Six photographs flashed up on screen. Rosa’s stunningly beautiful face drew his immediate attention. Will was right. She could walk into a room and make every head turn. The adjoining photo was Will himself and the one next to him that of Helen Nash. Underneath were the final three. The pictures of the two virtually identical men, so remarkably similar they could be twins, were next. In the final frame was Lily, face adorned with her usual uncompromising and unsmiling expression. Tillman had waxed lyrical in the log about their individual characteristics. Rosa Cain; blessed with the ever present smile and sunny disposition behind which she hid her true sentiment on life and people. He never could determine the real thoughts beyond the piercing blue eyes and was a direct contradiction to Lily’s dour and forceful demeanour, surly to boot. Helen Nash, incessantly noisy and boisterous, couldn’t keep anything to herself. Everyone knew exactly what was on Helen’s mind at any given time. Of the men Johnno was the expansive one forever chasing the opposite sex. His doppelganger Toby Rowe, the hacker, could best be described as naturally reserved while Will, the last in line, was known to be studious and considered in everything he did and thought.

  An odd mixture, this disparate group, Tillman had written in the log. Individually he couldn’t see him spending much time with any of them yet, when together, they gelled into an outstanding collective with whom he would happily commit his time. Loyalty, to each other and him, was the consistently applied theme he used to explain their camaraderie; the glue which bound. Matt wondered, as he gazed upon Lily’s photo, what caused the breakdown in this sturdy relationship.

  “I believe it was her,” said a voice from behind.

  “Jesus,” he yelled, leaping from the chair. “What the hell are you doing here, Maria?”

  “I could not sleep and saw the light on when I got up to make coffee. You have been reading all night?”

  Heart rhythm settling back to normal he resumed position and cast a studious eye over the intruder. Maria was in her daywear, a bikini, loosely covered by a three quarter patterned wrap he assumed she was using as a gown.

  “How did you get in here?”

  Her hand rose to reveal a set of keys.

  “I have masters for all of the properties.”

  “You have more?”

  “Seven in all,” she answered. “They were bequeathed to me courtesy of my late husband’s estate.”

  “How the hell did he manage to buy up so much property in Portugal on his salary?”

  “I did not ask, just accepted the award as set out in his last will and testament.”

  “Then …”

  “I use a letting company. They take more of the rentals than I would prefer but there is the issue of convenience.”

  “You’re not short of money then?”

  “The current economic climate leaves a lot to be desired and the income stream is an inadequate substitute for some of the finer things in life.”

  “Of course,” he mumbled apologetically.

  Feeling uneasy he returned to the screen to examine Lily’s picture.

  “What makes you think it was her?”

  “She is the closest match to the description, the hue and youth of her skin.”

  “You’ve read the log?”

  “Up to the point he described her,” she said.

  He nodded in understanding, keeping his eyes focussed on the screen to avoid eye contact.

  “Is she Pakistani or Indian?”

  “Indian descent,” replied Matt, uneasily. “You should go back to bed and let me crack on.”

  The continuing silence added to his sense of unease. Bad enough for her to be standing there, worse that he could feel her eyes fixed on the back of his head.

  “Your cup is empty. I shall make some fresh coffee.”

  “Maria, I’m okay. The children will be up soon. Go back to bed and get some rest. I’ll tell you if I find anything. Not that it’s very likely given what I’ve read so far.”

  “The log contains nothing about the people he was trying to infiltrate?”

  “No, and there’s only a couple of sections left.”

  “There must be something in there. Are you sure you haven’t missed anything?”

  “Certain,” he said edgily.

  “Perhaps you have sat too long without a break. Tiredness can sometimes cause …”

  “I haven’t missed anything.”

  He waited, back turned on her, in the hope she would get the message. It took a few moments for her to make the decision to leave and he heaved a sigh of relief. Seconds later he heard her moving around the kitchen and looked over to see Maria at the coffee machine. Not what he wanted.

  “Two sets of eyes will be better than one that has grown tired through lack of rest,” she said, returning with two mugs.

  “Maria …”

  Ignoring the objection she placed both mugs on the table and sat beside him. Fatigue had taken its toll of his patience and he readied the rebuke which would send her packing.

  “I do not like this situation any more than you,” she said. “But John asked you be given this material and so I must put my personal feelings aside.”

  The comment silenced his prepared
censure. He wondered why she had adopted a conciliatory tone all of a sudden.

  “Look, there might be other things in here you don’t want to know about.”

  “Then I’ll force myself to pretend it refers to someone other than my husband in much the same way I force myself to pretend, no matter how hard, that you are a decent human being.”

  The words red rag and bull sprang to mind.

  “I do not want you constantly looking over my shoulder while I’m working through this,” he snapped. “It’s not going to work.”

  “I hardly think sitting and reviewing the log together could be construed as interference.”

  “Just because your husband left this for me it doesn’t mean I have to do anything with it.”

  Maria baulked at the sincerity, eyes quickly moistening. It had to be a ruse to soften his mood.

  “Do you not care for anyone else but yourself?” she said. “Perhaps this is why you are yet to marry. You can think of no-one else.”

  “This is not about me.”

  “John believed it was,” she said. “However, I can see his assessment of you was quite wrong. You are a man without conscience or principle.”

  Rising abruptly she started for the door and he regretted his tone, cursing inwardly at the particular human trait of moral reflection. Maria had done nothing wrong said the voice in his head, other than raise his guilt to the surface. Matt leapt from his seat and caught her by the arm.

  “Maria, stop.”

  “Take your hand off me!”

  He held his grip.

  “I told you to release me!”

  This time he let go.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I am tired, and two sets of eyes must be better than one. Let’s work through it together.”

  Angrily silent she held her ground and glared stonily into his eyes. Matt held out his hand and motioned her forward.

  “Please,” he said. “I’m likely to miss something important if I keep doing this on my own.”

  After a few reluctant seconds she edged back to the seat and he joined her. He hesitated for a fleeting moment then dragged the cursor down the screen, towards the end of the log.

  “These last two sections are marked appendices for some odd reason. This will be the first time I’ve looked at them.”

  The substance of the text resembled something more akin to an extract from a medical journal, full of scientific jargon and unpronounceable words. Even if his mind had been at its most receptive Matt wouldn’t have been able to understand the messages it was trying to convey.

  “This is interesting, truly fascinating,” she said.

  “I’m pleased you think so. It’s all gobbledygook to me. I’ll move on.”

  “Wait, scroll down a little further.”

  Maria’s face lit up, eyes brightening with every sequence of words they took in.

  “You understand this?”

  “Fascinating,” she said.

  “You keep saying that.”

  “Hush and let me concentrate.”

  Matt fell back into the cushioned seat rubbing his weary eyes in a desperate attempt to massage some semblance of life into them. He sipped at the hot freshly made coffee and saw Maria to be entirely engrossed in the substance of the text.

  “What do you make of it?”

  “Hush I said.”

  Another couple of sips and still her eyes remained fixed to the screen. Feeling redundant Matt placed the mug back on the table and started to rise, only to feel her strong hand grab at his forearm.

  “Wait there,” she said.

  “You don’t need me.”

  “Wait!”

  He slumped back, exhaling aloud to demonstrate growing impatience, a churlish mannerism Maria chose to ignore. The strength of her grip on his arm intensified.

  “Wow!” she eventually said.

  “Very scientific I’m sure. Are you going to let go now?”

  The hold relaxed and she turned sharply to stare into his eyes, a hand running through her tousled hair.

  “What have you seen?”

  “It’s an impact assessment.”

  “What are they measuring?”

  She appeared not to have heard him, her second hand joining the first to ruffle through her hair.

  “Maria, what does it say?”

  “So it is true,” she said. “These people have developed a virus as deadly as you had described. And it is a remarkable example of genetic engineering, a brutal beast of an infection yet simple in construction. It’s so hard to believe. And the way it mutates and …”

  “Maria, plain English please. It’s me you’re talking to not a science professor.”

  “This would decimate the planet,” she said, gaze distant and glazed in shock at what she had read.

  There was no telling how long the deep thoughts would engulf her thinking providing Matt with the opportunity to seize back his hardware. A flurry of hand movements and he had moved on to the next section. First to catch his attention was a series of numbers, 146.101.249.107, and it took him a few moments to understand the sequence. He typed in the numerals as laid out, waited for a few moments, and then the screen went blank.

  “What has happened?” asked Maria.

  “I’m not sure. I thought I’d entered an IP address and this is the result, a blank page.”

  He double checked the numbers and re-entered them into the laptop, with the same result.

  “Perhaps it isn’t an IP address,” she said.

  Matt drifted into deep concentration, unable to understand the anomaly. The numbers had to represent an IP address. So why hadn’t this worked as it should? Another attempt resulted in the same annoying outcome. But if it wasn’t an IP address then what did the numbers represent?

  “You must finish what John had started,” she said. “This is why he wanted you to have this information.”

  “I can’t,” he said. “I’ve already promised someone I would do only the job asked and then return home.”

  “I can help with the science.”

  “Maria, I can’t. I made a promise.”

  A flutter of eyelids and then her gaze hardened.

  “John wanted you to finish what he started. I now want you to complete his mission and will help in any way I am able. It is what you must do, the least you should do if your remorse is genuine.”

  The play on his conscience twisted at his gut like a knife.

  “The job needs specialist expertise,” he said.

  “I can work on the science with the help of published scientific journals and access to the internet. I would also need a lot of free time.”

  “There are other resources needed, such as the ability to crack this code and I don’t have the expertise.”

  “But you know someone who does?”

  She wasn’t going to let it go.

  “And I’ll also need to talk to someone.”

  “Use the phone.”

  “No. You’re not the only person in the world who has been subjected to surveillance, and I don’t want anyone listening in to my conversations.”

  “Then bring the people you need to talk to here.”

  “You wouldn’t like it.”

  “Enjoyment is something I have learned to live without.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Questions