Chapter 103

 

 

Borough of Cheltenham, United Kingdom

 

Day 14

Sunday, July 20, 2:00 a.m.

 

The Maserati sped up the M5 motorway to Cheltenham and headed for the Government Communications Headquarters, the GCHQ, on the edge of the Cotswolds.

Meeting Rowe in Monaco, whom Calla now guessed was the very person who’d bugged Salib, was a memory she wanted to forget. Row, though, had some explaining to do.

“Jack, when were those bugs at Salib’s created?” Calla said.

Jack had been lost in thought for most of the drive. Something was up, but she would ask later. Nash fed gas into the engine.

“About three years ago. We called them digital eyes.”

Her eyes narrowed “The cameras we saw at Salib’s had a microphone to capture audio and a voice transmitter to relay anything they picked up to the listener. Those bugs automatically and quietly transported anything they picked up to GCHQ.”

The shadows beneath his eyes gave testimony to Jack’s exhaustion. He heaved his shoulders. “They can be carried into any setting and are quite effective as they attach themselves discreetly to anything using nanotechnology.”

Nash cornered the car round a bend, an icy expression entering his gray eyes. “My guess is that Rowe has been onto Salib and any other Blackhorse member he could get a hold of. He wanted to make sure he entered the highest bid.”

“What does this Rowe know?” Jack said.

Calla breathed hard. “Nash, you wanted to know what Rowe is fascinated with. Rowe believed my tattoo had more to say about the auction. Unfortunately, he thinks this tattoo is somewhat of a national security item.”

She reflected and knew what everyone in the car was thinking. The unfavorable resemblance of the Maltese Cross to her tattoo. What if Rowe had found something he wasn’t sharing? He didn’t all those months ago when he’d examined it.

“Rowe knows something,” Calla said.

She had no logical explanation for her anger. Calla rubbed the back of her head. This was way harder than they’d anticipated. Salib also had an Islamic art relic in the same symbol, but despite the connections, it wasn’t that simple.

 

The GCHQ building, the Doughnut, as it was fondly known in Britain, was the country’s cryptology intelligence agency in the suburbs of South-West England.

Home of Britain’s spy network, it was built primarily from steel, the building arched round in a perfect donut shape and employed several analysts, code breakers and contained one of the most complex networks of computers in the country. Nash slotted the car into the parking lot that looked onto three separate four-story structures that housed three thousand kilometers of fiber optics.

The guard at the employee entrance called them forward and they gave their names and credentials at the gate.

Jack set a timer on his e-watch. “We’ll have to sneak in the employee entrance. The phony credentials we gave will only last thirty minutes at best before we are discovered. I assume you don’t want to be announced or leave any digital footprints.”

The guard scanned his computer, “Follow me. You’ve been cleared for Section 72.”

“What is Section 72?” Calla said.

“The new wing,” The guard said and let them continue alone through the last part of the building.

Section 72 was a cordoned off location five hundred meters away. Once they were on the main floor Calla’s thoughts wandered to her last meeting with the prime minister. Intelligence analysts in this very building had been unable to help Byrne. Someone here knew more about her tattoo and the Maltese Cross than they were admitting.

The halls were quiet as they progressed past a corridor of closed offices.

“You okay?” Nash said.

Calla nodded and whispered, her voice almost inaudible in the quiet halls. “I feel like I could lose everything, Nash.”

He shortened his strides. “Let’s not think that way. Can’t wait to make his acquaintance though.”

“I want to know what this thing means,” she said, looking at her ankle. She eyed the cipher that used the concepts of the Knights’ Order, a five-magic square. There seemed to be no connection. Within the NSA and the GCHQ there were eleven uncracked codes and her tattoo would easily make its way on to the list if she didn’t succeed.

Nagging suspicion washed over Calla. “What if the cipher wasn’t to be cracked?”

“What do you mean?” Jack said.

“What if Alex, this Archimedes, wants us to focus on deciphering the code, but really that’s to throw us off track. We need to identify the buyer,” she said.

 

Quiet voices drifted from an adjacent room and Nash held up a hand to keep them back. They waited until the lone figure in the hallway crossed in to an open office.

“The web address was sent to several people. We only know of Salib and the prime minister. What connects these people and the tattoo, which I might add is as old as I am?” Exhaustion caused Calla’s eyes to droop. “I know it’s the Blackhorse Group’s motto, yet nothing in my life connects me to the Group. Why would I have it on my ankle?”

“I hate to say this but maybe someone isn’t telling you everything. I mean your parents,” Jack said.

Jack was right. Her parents kept her hidden all her life and hadn’t been upfront about a lot of things.

A shuffling noise up the hall drew their attention and Jack’s e-watch picked up movement. A masked man appeared.

Startled by their approach, the man charged at them. Nash reached for his neck and flung him to the floor pinning him to the concrete. Nash raised a hand to strike then stopped. He pulled off the man’s mask. “Stan?”

 

 

 

 

Stan’s sucked in a sharp breath and spat blood to the floor. His audience begged for an explanation.

“I too came here searching for answers. The Blackhorse Group are a secret society of tech and science hunters.” He rose, stretching away a crank in his neck.

“Sorry, Stan, but you were the last person I was expecting here,” Nash said.

“Fair enough. I should’ve said something earlier.”

Calla’s irritation faded with his soft-spoken words. Stan muttered as he spoke. “I’m sorry but I too needed to know what GCHQ has on the symbol. The Blackhorse Group is made up of the most influential mix of individuals, everything from business to government. They seek to build a scientific empire on the globe and started congregating shortly after the Second World War. They are above law, made possible by the fact that many of their members are in government and private individuals. I hate to say it but, they answer to no one, and are very dangerous members of a new order, if you like, of the Maltese Knights. They look for the most advanced technologies and believe every mystery, and unexplained phenomena in the world can be explained; and therefore collect unexplained historic artifacts, and chase mysteries of the world.”

Distorted images scattered through Calla’s thoughts. She now understood why this group would put in a bid for the genes of her child. Yet her father’s story had some loopholes. “How do they really operate?”

Jack glanced at his e-watch. “Not here, we’re exposed and in twenty seconds, the night watch will sweep through here if they haven’t already. All you need to know now is that Blackhorse members also do not know each other. In the early days, they used codes and ciphers to speak to each other but now they own a very sophisticated net online.”

“Is the auctioneer, Archimedes, part of them?”

“That I don’t know,” Stan replied.

“We know that Salib and the prime minister are linked to them,” Jack said.

“I wouldn’t count on that. Many so-called wannabes want to join them and believe money is the way in. It’s not.”

The sick knot of tension in Calla’s gut dissolved. “How do you know?”

Stan held Calla by the shoulders and Calla guessed his next words would disappoint her. “I’m a member of the Blackhorse Group.”

For a moment her heart began to race at his admission. “Then you must have the answers.”

“Not really. I’m what they call a watching member. In the seventies, the Cold War was getting out of hand, the Blackhorse Group invited MI6 and other intelligence officers, believing they could bribe us.”

“So why did you really join?” Nash said.

Stan observed Calla earnestly, and then his gaze dropped to her ankle.

She understood and fixed him with a stubborn stare. “It was because of my tattoo, right? How did I get it?”

Whether Stan knew the answer or not it was clear he didn’t want to discuss it.

“What I need to see is what GCHQ or any other government has on your tattoo. When I broke onto their networks and word was circulating, I needed to act,” Stan said.

“To protect me?”

Calla had had enough of everyone wanting to protect her. Anticipation for his answer was killing her.

“Notes are being sent to members of the group. These could be individuals from our own government, corporations and the like. Anyone really who wants to gain access to the auction,” Stan said.

“What does this symbol on my ankle mean, father?”

“I don’t know, but it’s important to the group. When I was at MI6, the Blackhorse Group liked to meet in abandoned places of the world. In high style though.”

“Ancient or modern?” Calla asked.

Jack pulled up a website on his tablet listing several abandoned places in Europe, Africa and Asia.

“These places were abandoned and there’s a link as to why,” Stan said.

“It was a technology gone wrong that killed off these places,” Calla said looking at an abandoned railroad station in Eastern Europe.

Stan scanned over his shoulder before responding. “The operatives in each case have been trying for years to unravel what scientific disaster killed off each civilization or left each place abandoned. They knew about the Group and saw it as their greatest threat. The group are the most influential people in the world. They have adopted the Maltese Cross as their group identity.”

Nash cast his eyes down the corridor ahead. “The Maltese Cross as we saw earlier has eight points we certainly know the coordinates of some of those places.”

“But what we don’t know is where they will meet next?” Jack said.

Stan took the tablet from Jack and examined the Internet map. “They meet twelve times a year.”

“That could be anywhere,” Nash said. “Do you know any of them? We know Salib may be given a ticket to bid at the next one. Should we ask him?”

Stan kept his voice low. “Meetings are all within forty-eight hours of each other. Some meetings are held to admit new members, auction technologies or even create new ones. We know what’s at stake. If they’re auctioning off anything the operatives have created or surrendered, it will unbalance the differences of superpowers living side by side or working together. That’s much more dangerous,” Stan said with deep furrows lining his brow. “And will make ISTF work hell.”

Nash raised an eyebrow. “We got lucky with the Scorpion Tide alias. They won’t let us in now that we left the last auction in a mess and pissed off the auctioneer,” Nash said.

“No, they won’t. But we’ll be flies on the wall,” Calla said. “We’ll have to send a feed into their virtual reality.”

“There’s one more thing that worries me,” Stan said. “All technologies are kept in a room coded ‘Digital Eyes Only’, a technology room.

“A room?” Calla said.

Nash raised an eyebrow. “What kind of room?”

“A room I wish didn’t exist and no one knows where it is. But if we find the room, we find all the auctions because the room houses the Vault’s technologies and loot. Room 717.”

“We have two choices: either go after each auction one by one…” Jack said.

Calla finished his thought. “Or go for Room 717—the mother ship.”

Stan’s mouth tightened. “No one has ever found the Digital Eyes Only room. That was what your mother and I went searching for when we left you at the orphanage. The plan was to find it, destroy it and come back and get you. That way you’d be safe from its harm.”

“How old is this room?” Calla asked.

Calla could see the tension in Stan’s face. “Not sure,” Stan answered. “But I can only imagine it has morphed as technology has advanced. It is the most-sought after location by governments who know about it and the auctions sell what comes out of it. Calla, your tattoo, the room and auctions are all connected.”

They hunched as footsteps in the adjacent corridor alerted them.

They shifted back into the shadows as a team of analysts deep in conversation crossed the halls. Her stare drifted to the team of conversing analysts who passed them oblivious to their presence.

Calla’s eyes shifted to a gadget in one of the men’s hands. A flat panel that resembled a mini-tablet.

“I’m going after them,” she said.

Nash smirked. “After you.”

“You sure about this, Calla?” Stan said.

Once the analysts were out of earshot, Calla turned to the men. “GCHQ can tap into the cables that carry the world’s communications. Chances are the Blackhorse individuals are on those cables in the form of phone calls, social media posts and the like.”

Nash interjected. “We need a GCHQ eye, that gadget the analysts have. If it’s anything like the NSA, they’re sifting through a flood of data. The eye is a top-tier spying tablet issued to GCHQ analyst or “eyes” as they are known. They use them to cross reference data movement across the globe.”

Calla raised an eyebrow. “If Rowe is onto the auctions, I can’t imagine a better case they’ve been tasked to tap into.”

“I’ve always wanted one of those eyes,” Jack said.

“I was hoping you’d say that. Sometimes a heightened eavesdropping ability comes in handy,” she said as she marched swiftly behind an unsuspecting analyst.

 

 

Twenty minutes later they left the GCHQ building with an eye in their hands. A mischievous smile grew on Calla’s lips as they scrolled through the eye she’d swiped off one of the analysts in a very unceremonious way. Too bad. He’d left it unattended during a mini-coffee break.

“Sun City, South Africa.” She angled the eye toward the men. “GCHQ has a sudden interest in the sub-Saharan destination.”

“My kind of vacation,” Jack said smiling.

“What I have in mind has no vacation written on it,” Calla said.

“It never does,” Jack said.

Nash slid an arm round her waist. “Knowing you, vacation is definitely not the word I would use.”