David Golemon - Ripper

The man behind the operator straightened when he saw another icon start flashing beside the first two.

“This is far above our pay grade, mate. Look at this; it’s also to be forward to the Ministry of Defense, some office called Bluebell.”

“Why do I have the feeling we just uncorked a stinker here?” the operator said as the supervisor for the area just hung up his desk phone ten feet away from the two operators.

“Send it along to the three recipients,” he said as he turned in his chair with a white face and worried look. “Just get the damn thing out of this office.” The supervisor turned and ran a hand through his thinning hair and then removed his glasses. “Sometimes I hate this job.”

The first to receive the communiqué deciphered from the Americans was the head of SIS, Sir John Kinlow. When he opened the computer package from downstairs he didn’t exactly know what it was he was looking at. He knew because of the red flag, the special security numbers, and the key words that were passed along that this was information only available to certain members of British Intelligence. But he had never been briefed on anything such as this before in his five years on post. He knew only his computer terminal would have access to the material concerning the two key words and one name mentioned by the CIA and the FBI.

“Well, ’tis a boring night at any rate,” he said as he entered his security code and pulled up the file. Little did the president of the United States know, he had inadvertently passed the info to the British when he forwarded the information Niles Compton had passed to him. The code breakers received the information from the communiqués of the FBI and CIA when they informed the hostage rescue team of the history of the hacienda.

The head of the SIS read, and as he did his eyes widened. He whistled when he saw the original file date … September 3, 1900, the very turn of the century. He looked down at the key words that had set the security alarms off deep inside the code-breaking room downstairs. Perdition, Mexico , and finally the name mentioned, Lawrence Jackson Ambrose.

Sir John clicked on the heading for the file and started reading. By the time he was done it was near eight o’clock at night. While he had read the top-secret file, his secretary had buzzed several times without him answering the calls. Finally when she poked her head into his office he hastily waved her off without looking up from his computer screen. It wasn’t until he read the file another two times that he finally looked away and shook his head.

“What in the hell were they thinking back then,” he said to no one but himself. “What kind of bloody mess did we inherit?”

Another knock sounded at the door and this time the secretary came in without waiting. She saw Sir John looking as pale as she had ever seen him. The man had been practically euphoric for the past year since his office was instrumental in the American operation that killed the world’s leading terrorist, Osama bin Laden, and he hadn’t come down from that high for ten months — until tonight.

“Sir John, the minister of defense is on the line, and he is very adamant about speaking to you. He said it is of the highest priority.”

Sir John acted as though he didn’t hear his secretary. She came a few steps closer into the darkened office and then jumped when he suddenly straightened in his large chair and snatched up his phone, practically slamming his finger down on the flashing button.

“Kinlow,” he said not too delicately into the phone. “Yes, I just read it, several times as a matter of fact. Just how in the hell are we to hush this up without exposing this massive shit cake?”

The secretary watched Sir John start to rub his left temple and then he looked up and waved her out of the office as if a sudden plague had erupted at Vauxhall.

“Look, Wes, we cannot allow ourselves to be brought down by something like this. If even a smattering of this dirty business leaks out, the media would eat us alive … not counting our friends across the ocean. Could this possibly be real? I mean, my faith in everything has just gone tits up old boy.”

Sir John listened to the minister of defense and was soon joined in conference by the head of external intelligence, who had just been on the phone to the prime minister’s office.

“Do we have a consensus as to how we handle this mess?” the minister of MI5 asked his counterparts.

“Maybe it’s just a coincidence?” Sir John said into the phone, not believing the tale he had just read.

“Maybe the key words in the communiqué were a coincidence, Mexico and Perdition, but the name? You read the file gentlemen the same as I. Can we afford to ignore the name of Lawrence Jackson Ambrose? I think not — at least not after the horrid facts of this sordid affair. Great Britain would never live this down.”

“We cannot handle this mess ourselves as we cannot be connected to this if things blow up, and they always do. We need an outside source to deal with this,” said Sir John as he stood from his chair and paced a few steps away from his desk. “May I suggest we bring in our source at Langley? Maybe he can utilize the new teams they are putting together,” he said, not even wanting to mention the contact’s name. “The operators, after being suspended from activities the last five years, are back in business again. They are now being run by our friend at Langley. Let him get a handle on this thing and close it out for good. We’ll owe them something awful, but I see it as the only way.”

“Excellent,” answered the minister of defense. “Sir John, you are closest to our asset there. Can you get the ball rolling, as the Americans would say?”

“I think we best not use any American euphemisms for the time being; after all, if they find out what our good old government did back in the day, they may not be that pleased with us.” Sir John finally sat back down in his chair and regained some of the composure he was known for. “I just can’t believe they were capable of this kind of massive cover-up back then.”

“Think what you want. We need to settle this thing,” the head of foreign intelligence said.

Sir John nodded his head and absentmindedly hung up his phone without saying anything else and not even realizing the men on the other end of the phone couldn’t see his nod. He reached over and unlocked his right-hand drawer and pulled out a small book. He quickly ran his finger down a list of code names and numbers and then took a deep breath and made the call.

The special operations director for field incursions, or what amounted to the dirty-tricks department, a man that racked up favors from others in the intelligence community for cashing in at a later date, hung up his phone. He shook his head knowing that the Brits had screwed up royally on this one. He laughed. The whole thing was of minor concern to him.

The operations director flipped a switch on his computer and there appeared a coded e-mail from MI6 that he immediately opened and read. The details were all there; it was just missing the whys and what for’s, and those he really didn’t care about. He almost wanted to laugh. What kind of story were they trying to get him to believe? Oh, he would send the Black Team in alright. They’ll even destroy the serum and lab equipment if it’s all still there, but he will also learn the truth about what it is they were so afraid of across the water.

He finally reached for his phone and made the call to the Black Team that he and his superior had just reinstated as part of his small department. The team used to be a part of a corporate security department that worked for a defunct defense contractor, and they were known to be rather ruthless. He and his superior had seen a need in the future to bring this nightmare back into being, and now they would be sent on their first field assignment since they were brought back into the fold. What better way of testing these men than this little farce in Mexico? After all, his job was to be a sneaky, mean bastard and that meant everyone was fair game. He knew himself to be a true patriot.