Betrayed: (A Financial and Conspiracies Thriller – Book 1 in the Legacy Thriller Series) (9 page)

‘How’re you feeling?’ said Angus as he drew up a comfortable arm chair next to the other.

‘I’m fine, though I found the helicopter a bit difficult after such a long day’. He smiled a wisp of shadow leaving it as he looked back at his nephew. His illness meant that he had little to do with the project from day to day, but as it was to be his last project and his legacy, he liked to be kept informed of developments.

‘You’ll have heard that Athena gets launched tomorrow,’ said Angus.

‘Yes, you’ve done wonders getting it as far as you have,’ replied Sir Jeremy, ‘and I can’t thank you enough – yet again – for taking over the burden of developing it for me. You may not know this, but I was very aware of the sacrifice you made when you gave in to my pleading and joined the Towneley Bank when Jack died. Believe it or not, I was aware that you had inclinations to do other things with your life and I’m truly grateful you gave those up for a career in banking.’

Angus seemed about to say something to all of this but Sir Jeremy held up his hand to stop him, and continued. ‘When your still in your prime, things like ‘family history’ and ‘heritage’ don’t mean a great deal and it must have been difficult for you to understand why, when Tommy died, the dying out of the male line of the Towneleys mattered so much to me. As you’re half a Towneley, I hope one day that you’ll thank me for press-ganging you into all of this against your wishes and I thank you for doing so – especially as family, lineage, and all that are regarded as a bit of an anachronism, not just by you but by most people these days.’

‘It’s kind of you to say all that,’ replied Angus, ‘but I’ve come to see that you gave me something really worthwhile to do with my life and as we complete the first objective of your project with its launch tomorrow, the financial world will quickly begin to become a safer and more stable place.’

‘I gather there’s a threat of an attack on one of the banks expected tomorrow, can the project, I mean the team you’ve built up, can they cope with that?’

‘Yes, we will’ said Angus, ‘the only thing to stop that will be if the attackers go for one of the banks which has not yet installed our software.’

‘I’m still not clear why this matters quite so much now,’ said Sir Jeremy.

‘Mainly because without our own cyber-attack detection software on a system, when an attack comes in, Athena won’t be triggered to counter-attack. I’m afraid we know, that those just relying on proprietary defence systems are going to fail and suffer the consequences. Still, after the demonstration this afternoon and a repeat of the crucial bit of it at the conference tomorrow morning, we hope that the rest of them will allow us to install.’

‘That’ll be good,’ said Sir Jeremy, ‘everything else under control?’

‘I’m sure it will all go just fine,’ replied Angus smiling back down at his uncle.

‘You’re
sure
?’ repeated Sir Jeremy, ‘I’ve often found that when people use the phrase “
I’m sure”
they often actually mean “I hope”. But there’s no shame in hoping and I too naturally hope you’ll all succeed.’

‘You’re right, of course,’ replied Angus, ‘there was no way in which even Athena can
guarantee
to deal with the incoming cyber-attack; depends somewhat whether or not cyber-attack teams had learned any new tricks for which Athena has not been prepared.’

Sir Jeremy seemed to be about to doze off after his medication so Angus quietly left him and went up to see how Perry was getting on with his researches into the software brokerage company, Silayev & Komarov. All that was known so far was that Komarov was close to the President – did that mean that the attacking team were state-backed or was it perhaps a team belonging to the less-known character Silayev? Angus wondered when they would discover the full truth behind the Komarov-Silayev twosome. Was Komarov acting with the Silayev mafia or was the real power behind the two of them the Kremlin? It was going to be interesting to see how it was going to play out – well interesting, but also, even in Angus’s mind, a touch daunting.

Chapter 11

Thursday late afternoon,

Eaton Square, London W1

Jed and Maisie Butters had been looking forward to the long Easter weekend for some time. Not because they needed the rest – working for Sir Jeremy and the late Lady Towneley was hardly demanding - even less so since her death last year. They were excited, because their daughter and grandchildren were coming up to London to visit them for a week or so.

These days, Butters was more of a caretaker and general handyman than his earlier role as full-time butler. Maisie was hardly overworked as part-time cook either, for as often as not, if there was to be a dinner or luncheon party, Mortillas were called in to bring and serve the whole meal, right up to and including the coffee. The days of entertaining, however, had all but ended after Lady Towneley had died and Sir Jeremy became ill.

Butters used to worry that the Towneleys thought he and his wife too old for the job, but whether or not that was true, nowadays, the current arrangements seemed to work well and they were down in their sitting room watching a game show on the television, relaxing whilst they had the opportunity to do so before the grandchildren arrived and turned the whole place into a fairground. As Sir Jeremy had gone to Scotland, the other two members of staff had been given the long weekend off and so the two of them had the whole place to themselves.

It surprised the couple when the front doorbell rang. Not knowing if it might be a friend of the Towneley Family who were not aware that they were away, Butters quickly tidied himself as he went up to answer the front door. The bell rang a third time as he reached the door but, just before opening it, he peered through the peep hole in the door. There was a young police couple at the door, both probably constables. Considering the recent spate of burglaries, in this, probably the most expensive and tempting area of London, it was nice to see the two of them on the beat again.

He undid the chains, unbolted the door but, as he opened it, was shocked to be thrust aside as the two police barged past him into the house and, turning quickly, slammed the door shut behind them. This was immediately followed by the young male constable thrusting a gun up into Butter’s throat.

‘Not a squeak.’ he said, and then he added, ’how many in the house?’

‘Just myself and my wife,’ replied Butters, his voice quaking.

‘And where is she?’

‘Downstairs in our sitting room, watching television.’

The policeman nodded to the police girl who left the two of them in the hallway and went off downstairs to find her. In the small, snug sitting room she went over to Maisie Butters, put a gentle hand on her shoulder and smiled down at her.

‘No need to disturb your viewing,’ she said bending down close to the old lady. ‘Constable Smithers and I are just upstairs with your husband – we’re just checking out the alarm systems and windows, can’t be too careful these days.’ Maisie looked back up at her, smiled and nodded her head in agreement.

The young police woman then pretended to check the windows whilst looking round the room. Surreptitiously, she pocketed up a mobile telephone on the side table and, with Maisie once again intent on the television, she wound the telephone wire round her hand a couple of times and, with a sharp pull, yanked the connection out of the wall socket. She smiled broadly again at Maisie, gave a little wave and left the room to search the rest of the large downstairs area. She pulled out the telephone wires of one other extension and also pocketed a second mobile phone she found in the kitchen.

She then returned upstairs, to join the other two. Smithers had got Butters to give him the full layout of the upstairs rooms and the three of them then proceeded together on a thorough search of the house for telephones and a safe.

It was in Sir Jeremy’s study that they found what they had come for – a small laptop hidden away in a bottom drawer of the bookcase. They took it and its charging cable. Butters, trembling by now, swore on his children’s lives that they had disabled all the telephones in the house and that there were no more mobile telephones either. He was taken downstairs told to sit and watch the television and constable Smithers then used the key to their sitting room which Butters had taken off a large key-ring and locked the two of them in. The two police then left the house, and hurried round to a side street where they had parked their car.

The young police couple, had they not been on a tight schedule, might have done more to ensure that Butters and his wife could not give them away for many hours. After a few minutes had passed, however, Butters explained as gently as he could to Maisie what had happened upstairs and then quietly, as though the young police might still be in the house, rose from the sofa and went over a tall dresser against the wall near the door. Here he scrummaged around in the back of one of its drawers and soon found what he was looking for – a spare master key for the downstairs rooms. Unlocking their sitting room door, he crept back upstairs, and crossed the hall towards the dining room. Just to the left of the dining-room door, tucked away out of sight for discretion, behind a heavy curtain, there was another telephone. He rang both the real police and then Sir Jeremy Towneley at Craithe.

* * * * *

Wheeler arrived at the Antelope pub in Eaton Terrace, and no sooner had he settled into his usual seat in the small snug bar at the back of the pub, than his mobile telephone rang.

‘Hello, Max,’ said the voice the other end, ‘we’ve made a good start on your project and I’ve already got some interesting information for you – when can we meet?’

‘Ah, good, Jock,’ replied Wheeler, ‘I’ve a short meeting with someone in a few minutes, immediately after which my client gets back from Switzerland and I’m seeing him at his place. Why don’t we get together after those two meetings? I can then see what you’ve got for me. Shall we say nine at the Antelope Pub in Eaton Terrace?’

‘Okay, see you there at nine.’

Wheeler took a sip of the pint that had been put on his table while he was on the phone. His mind turned to Jock Hunter’s call. He was pleased with such a quick response for he had first contacted the Major only a few hours ago – soon after his call to Nat Matthews in St Moritz. His urgent need to get on with Matthews’s insistence on sorting matters out by Monday night had left him with little choice but seek out Jock – or, rather the Major as he liked to be known.

He thought about him for a moment. He knew that Jock was not really a major at all but, chameleon-like played the part well – it was better for his mercenary-broking business to have been a commissioned officer than a Sergeant-major. Still, right now, choosing the Major seemed to confirm that he had been right to pick him – already having some ‘interesting information’ for him.

Whilst waiting for Mina, he looked about him, the reassuring familiarity of the Antelope a peaceful counter to the new anxieties of the current situation. The pub had been allowed to remain unchanged in its decor for over sixty years, though the yellow-ocre patina of years of smoke haze had been painted out soon after the smoking ban was introduced in pubs. About the only thing that had changed was that a number of the older pub regulars had moved on to celestial bars, replaced by the likes of Wheeler. He had been coming here, his ‘local’ ever since an unexpected inheritance had helped him to buy a two floor flat in one Cliveden Place’s extremely expensive houses round the corner from here. He knew both the faces and names of some of the regulars. None were his friends however, as he used this as an extension of his house, as a kind of extra office rather than for leisure. Most of the regulars knew that Wheeler used the quiet comfort of the panelled room this way – no one listened in his conversations, no one asked questions, some of them used the place for the same reasons.

Mina was prompt as always, and as soon as Wheeler spotted her coming through from the front bar, he caught Harry the barman’s attention. With nothing said, Harry poured a large glass of Chardonnay and Mina collected it from the bar on her way over to join Wheeler – a procedure seemingly well-practiced between the three of them.

She was in a good mood. Not only did Wheeler owe her for the information she had emailed to him earlier, she still had the memory stick with her. Though she was now well practiced in pretending to Wheeler that she was only a part of his team of informants because of the money she could send to her supposedly impoverished family, she quickly reminded herself to maintain the charade as she reached his table.

There was no small talk, no time wasted on ‘catching up’. They got straight down to business. As soon as she was seated next to Wheeler, she delved into her large floppy leather bag and, after a moment of rummaging around, brought her hand out with the tiny memory stick in it. Wheeler held his hand out for it but instead of handing it over to him she said, ‘how much for the email and for this as I’ve more even than those two?’ Unlike her demeanour with Cape, there was no trace of an accent when dealing with Wheeler and a stranger overhearing her might have thought her a native Londoner.

‘Five hundred for the email,’ said Wheeler, ‘same again depending on what’s on the memory stick. After that, we’ll see what your other information is worth to me’,

At five hundred pounds, she handed over the memory stick.

Wheeler pulled out a small laptop from behind him, opened it and plugged Mina’s memory stick into it. He opened the files and began working through them. Twice he said ‘shit’ as he read through the files. Whilst he did this, Mina pretended to be looking round the photographs on the panelled walls and she amused herself by wondering just how much each use of the word ‘shit’ was going to be worth in money to her.

As she was getting near to the end of her glass of Chardonnay, he snapped the laptop shut and put it to one side taking the memory stick out of it and putting it in his pocket. He then picked up his half-finished pint and downed the rest of it.

‘Another?’ he asked. Mina just nodded.

On returning with the drinks, instead of his usual bargaining stance he simply said, ‘You’ve done well, Mina.’

She was quite shocked. All they usually discussed was money, but this comment of his sounded close to praise. She smiled – and, come to think of it, the smile was probably the first she had ever given him since her recruitment.

‘So that‘s five-hundred for the email,’ he said, returning her smile, ‘and five hundred for the memory stick. And I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you another five hundred, if you’ll keep an eye on Mr Cape over the weekend… Can you manage that or do you have other plans?’

She smiled back at him. ‘No other plans, but I’m already going to a conference with Mr Cape tomorrow morning – something to do with the launch of this Athena.’

‘That’s good. So fifteen hundred it is,’ said Wheeler, ‘and, for that, I need you to ring or contact me by email or text the moment anything significant happens, can you do that?’

‘I manage,’ she replied in a rare lapse of English grammar.

Wheeler checked the money put it into an envelope and handed it her between the two of them and out of sight of the others in the bar. Mina took the envelope, got up, smiled gratefully down at him and, after promising to keep in touch, left the Antelope.