THE ORANGE MOON AFFAIR (29 page)

Mary returned to the Hall under cover of darkness, her place in the hospital filled by a brain dead car accident victim with no family. She was still seriously ill from the affects of the heroin and the prognosis wasn't looking too promising. Radley provided around the clock medical care.

'It's the least he can do,'
I thought angrily, trying to purge all emotion from my mind and concentrate on the task at hand. Tomorrow night I was heading into the enemy's lair.

SEVENTEEN

The Gunn Group Gulfstream 550
drew up near the Perth airport hangers and lurched to a stop, the whine of the engines slowly disappearing as the pilot flipped off the switches. I went forward and opened the doors. There, pulling up beside the aircraft, was a black Mercedes saloon. The uniformed chauffeur got out and opened the rear passenger door. He took my bags and waited until I had made myself comfortable in the back seat, then shut the door without a word.

The drive out to the mansion was uneventful and I tried to relax and enjoy the rugged scenery. It was difficult, because there was a knot in my throat trying to throttle me. Disconcertingly, the chauffeur drove in silence without once glancing in the rear view mirror.

After what seemed an age of twisting roads and hills, we turned off the main road onto a private road that wound its way over a hill between open areas of heath land where sheep grazed lazily.

On the tops of the mountains in the distance there was snow, and the sheep's breath hung like a fine fog in the cold still air.

Beyond a formidable gatehouse and narrow bridge that crossed a fast flowing river, the driveway to the mansion must have been a good half mile long. Eventually the brooding grey stone building appeared around a corner, tucked back into the side of yet another hill.

The chauffeur stopped the car, got out and opened the door for me. At the top of the stone steps, as if by magic, two people appeared. One I took to be a servant as he came down the steps and took my bags from the boot of the car. The other was obviously the welcoming committee. He came towards me with his hand outstretched. His grip was firm and dry.

"Welcome, Mr Camden. I'm glad you could make it. My name is Charles Lambert." The voice was cultured and sounded friendly enough. Only the eyes held a hint of danger. They were slate grey like the building and just as cold. The smile that played around the lips never touched his eyes. “I trust you had a pleasant journey. Come and meet some of the guests. They haven't all arrived yet, but we expect them soon.” He led the way. "I was very sad to hear about the sudden death of Mr Newell." There was no sadness in his expression.

"Very sad indeed, and so unexpected. Please call me James.” I was surprised at the ease with which I matched Lambert's detached tone.

"I'll show you to your room and then let you loose with the others. We don't expect to begin for a few hours yet, so feel free to explore the grounds if wish." The inside of the mansion was as forbidding as the outside. Dim corners and suits of armour, large oil paintings Highland Chieftains and heavy wood panelled walls. The bedroom that I was allocated wasn't any more cheerful, with a huge carved wooden four-poster bed and ancient drapes. Only the view of the window across the land and the mountains was worth looking at. Once I had dropped off my bags, which I was sure would be inspected as soon as I left the room, Charles Lambert led me downstairs, showed me the bar, games room, lounge and dining-room. There were a few other men in the lounge gathered in a small group. He introduced me and then left.

All the men were of my age and held senior executive positions in high technology computer and research companies, as well as the banking and investment companies that were already on the list of ISEC members. And all were ambitious, aggressive young financial executives. I doubted there would be anyone amongst them I could trust. The conversation was all shop, so I decided to do a little research into how I was going to get out of this place when the need arose.

I excused myself and went out into the cold late morning air, and walked down the main driveway that led down to the river and the guarded bridge we had crossed earlier. At the bridge I turned right and followed the curve of the river to the back of the mansion where desolate sparsely treed moorland stretched to dark forbidding mountains beyond. Any escape in that direction would be folly unless fully equipped to deal with the harsh reality of the rugged Scottish countryside in winter. The river was a different proposition. It was about twenty metres across, fairly shallow but fast flowing. The only way to the far bank was either by the bridge or an ice-cold swim. There were guards and barriers at either end of the bridge, so that wasn't a reasonable choice.

That left the river.

To swim across in this weather would mean that you would probably freeze before you got half way across. I felt sure that although the natural barriers were formidable enough, that they would have other methods of preventing people from getting in or out. I moved slowly along the bank trying to look deep in thought. Perhaps pondering on the enormity of my role in ISEC. But I was really putting myself in their place. I would have some form of booby trap, both in and out of the water, as a back-up to the CCTV cameras that covered almost every inch of the grounds and the inside of the mansion.

I picked up a piece of reed and walked along casually swinging it across my body through the gaps in the grass and reed beds that grew to waist height along the edge of the bank. After a few swings, I felt the slight resistance that told me there was a wire running at about calf height along the edge of the bank. The wire was almost invisible, very thin and a dark matt green colour. Unless you knew what to look for you wouldn't see it. I carried on walking and wondered what was at the end of it. I doubted that it would be an explosive device because of the noise, so it was probably linked to a
'silent'
trigger that sounded an alarm in the security room. So now I had a fair idea what was on the bank, but the question was, what was in the river? Perhaps I was over-thinking. The river itself was a barrier. Ice cold and fast flowing. Whilst I was mulling everything over in my mind, I figured I might as well tell the back-up team, wherever they were what I had found.

Walking along ostensibly blowing on my hands as if they were freezing cold, which they were without gloves, I described everything that I could see, and the things that I thought lay in store. When I'd finished, I went back to the mansion.

The black Mercedes passed me returning from having presumably collected the remaining guests.

"W
e have brought you here
under a slight misconception, for which I apologise.” There was no sense of apology in Lambert thin smile. “We are very sensitive of security. ISEC is a multi-national organisation but we are not non-political. We are a global political party that brings together like-minded people from business, the military and foreign governments. This particular cell is known as
'ISEC Europe'
and operates solely within the European Community. The object is to safeguard the role of the business in the free world. At the moment, we have two controlling companies of which you will all have heard. The Griffin Trust and the Von Kurt Foundation. You may well be asking yourselves why the entire charade? Well, over the next few days you will be shown exactly why this is necessary. I must assure you that in no way is the ISEC an illegal organisation. But we feel that the business communities of all nations have the right to be able to invest their hard won profits in areas of their choice that offer the most protection and the most rewards without government intervention. I ask you not to formulate a fixed opinion at this moment in time, but to let us show you over the next few days just how membership of our organisation, can help both you personally and your companies."

His introductory speech sounded so bland; so reasonable; so logical. But it wasn't the full story. No doubt Lambert and his cohorts would cull the doubters fairly quickly and they would more likely find themselves washed up on a lonely beach somewhere, just like Adrian Newell.

Once the introductory speech was over, we were split into two separate discussion groups and spent the rest of the day going over the details of ISEC's mission and goals. Needless to say it all differed very much from the information that I had. However, I managed to sound as interested as I knew how, and asked what I hoped were pertinent questions.

At last the day was over and I could escape to my room for a little think. There were parts of the mansion that had been made off limits to us, with the excuse that they were reconstructing those wings. I wanted to have a look there and see just what it did contain. Whilst I had been out walking earlier, I thought I saw what could only be described as the tip of a microwave antenna. Unfortunately, the light was bad now so any poking around outside wouldn't do any good. That left an internal search.

At night, the grounds and walls of the mansion were lit by powerful spotlights, ostensibly to highlight its rugged beauty, but serving as an effective deterrent against breaking in or out. The lights were positioned in such a way that they shone only on certain parts of the upper part of the building. It would be the unlit parts that housed the closed circuit TV cameras.

The wing that housed the Administrative Offices was to the right of my room. It was impossible to get there from the ground floor, so I had scouted a route across the ledges and small roof area, to a point where I could enter through one of the top floor windows. I reckoned that the rooms on the top floor were the quarters of the 'staff’, but there seemed to be a couple of rooms from which there was never a light showing at night and no movement during the day.

Patience has never been one of my strong points and it was with growing restlessness that I waited until everything was quiet.

Finally at two o'clock in the morning, I considered it safe enough to venture out, but not before sending a message to my back-up team.

“I need the CCTV cameras to go on the blink for about half an hour. Like a persistent short or something.” And hoped they heard me. If they hadn't I'd be dead in five minutes.

It had become a lot colder, with a hint of snow in the air, as I slid the window open and gingerly climbed out onto the ledge that led to the sloping roof off to my right. There had been rain during the day that had turned to ice making the ledge very slippery. Once or twice I slipped and nearly fell, but somehow managed to make it to the roof.

By the time I reached the apex of the roof, my hands were raw from the rough stone and sharp spikes of ice. I lay for a minute just to catch my breath. It was only when I started to feel the cold biting into me that I moved on. Now it was a question of sliding down the roof and crawling along another ledge until I came to the window I had earmarked.

Perhaps the cold and the snow that had started to fall had numbed my brain because I let go of the apex of the roof and started to slide on the ice-covered tiles. Not just slide. I shot down the sharp slope and in panic dug my finger nails frantically into the ice and stone. I was about to shoot out into the void and thirty-foot drop when my hand caught one of the protrusions on the gable end and my legs swung out over the edge of the roof.

Desperately I launched for another handhold as I felt my grip loosening on the brick. Made it. Used all my strength to haul myself back onto the roof. Lay shaking on the cold surface trying to control the rising panic and terror, the cold creeping into my bones forcing me to move along the edge of the roof.

Fifteen minutes after starting this insane venture I was perched on the ledge outside the window. Naturally it was locked, but I had come prepared for that. At dinner I had slipped one of the steak knives into my pocket. The catches on the mansion windows were of the old-fashioned type, with enough room to slide the flexible blade between the two halves of the sash window and slide the catch. My fingers were numb with cold, and the falling snow that was settling all round me made the tricky process even more difficult. At last the catch slid across and very gently I eased up the bottom window.

Once inside with the window closed, I set about trying to warm myself up. The room was empty and had the musty smell of all places that have been unoccupied for some time. There were no curtains at the window, so I daren't use my small pocket torch.

Instead, I felt my way to the door in the darkness. No light showed under the door, so it seemed this part of the wing was unused, as I had hoped. The door opened without a sound and I slowly stepped out into the corridor. If it hadn‘t been for the light at the end of the landing where the other corridors joined this one, then I wouldn't have been able to see a thing. As it was I tripped over a chair and just caught it before it toppled over.

There was no sign that anyone had heard. Breathing a sigh of relief I carried on. This time more carefully. It was only on reaching the ground floor that there was there was the sound of muffled voices from behind one of the doors leading off the small passageway, a chair being pushed back and footsteps. The door behind me opened when I turned the handle and I slipped into the dark interior just as the opposite door opened. Footsteps retreated down the passageway and I risked a look. There was nobody in sight.

I shut the door again and turned to explore the room. The small torch made a thin beam that sliced through the black interior illuminating an office with large mahogany desk with a wireless keyboard and mouse and several filing cabinets. On the wall opposite the desk was a large computer monitor. I settled myself behind the desk and moved the mouse. The screen lit up.

“Okay guys. I'm in an office and just turned on the computer. There is a Google earth map of a place called the Dominion of Pakhia, a volcanic island in the South Pacific.” It felt absurd talking to myself and I hoped they could hear me and locate the room and the computer through the nanotechnology transmitter. “The office is on the ground floor of the west wing.” In a scene straight from an old spy film, I had been given a one hundred gigabyte flash drive, concealed in the heel of my shoe. The logic was that it was so ridiculous, nobody would even think of looking there. Once it was plugged in and the file downloaded, I keyed in a code Radley's tech guru had given me and uploaded the contents of the computer's storage into the cloud address. Then I sat back and looked at the map on the screen. There were several markings including the position of a factory complex labelled The Pakhia Research Foundation. Other marks on the map identified the main telecommunications centre, the Central Government buildings and the airport. The capital of the island, Pikua, and the port were ringed in red.