The Phoenix Series Box Set 3 Read online

  “I hope so,” said Phoenix, “so, what else is on your mind?”

  “When we discussed the first intake of new trainees earlier, it was obvious several of you were unhappy at the apparent slow turnaround. The twelve-week course was designed by Rusty, and both Kelly and Hayden tell me they are supportive of its content, and duration. When I challenged the numbers, Rusty explained why he had set the limit at fifty. He has asked for your two friends in the ice-house armoury to supplement the training team. They’ve given excellent service since their arrival here, but Rusty believes they’re too valuable to leave below ground forever.”

  “I agree,” said Phoenix. “Bazza and Thommo are ex-SAS, the same as Rusty and hundreds of our agents. They would make excellent trainers. So, what’s the problem? I sense you don’t want them assigned to help with Kelly and Hayden? We could double our annual throughput.”

  “It’s something Erebus mentioned, not long before he retired to Ibiza. Don’t take this the wrong way, darling, but you aren’t getting any younger. That goes for a high proportion of our agents.”

  “I’m not ready for the pipe and slippers just yet, Athena,” complained Phoenix.

  “I accept that, but Erebus made a valid point,” his wife continued. “That first intake included servicemen who served in the Falklands, as Erebus did himself. Others fought in the first Gulf War. We have over two hundred agents at home, or abroad who are now in the mid to late fifties. A lot, including you and Rusty, are in the mid-forties. We need to prepare for the time when the older ones won’t be able to act on the front line. Erebus suggested I start a programme of assessment for the oldest agents. We must consider bringing them to Larcombe in batches of twelve, alongside the new recruits. Thomas and Longdon’s new role would be to check that their performance still reached our required standard.”

  “The first two that fail, take their place in the ice-house I presume?”

  “We can assign two temporary armourers from the staff here on the estate. There’s more to the suggestion Erebus made I’m afraid.”

  “He was full of ideas, wasn’t he?” said Phoenix.

  “Erebus had the best interests of Olympus at heart. In that same conversation, he said how ironic it would be if our own agents suffered from PTSD. The mind is such a delicate instrument. Our sleeper agents overseas have spent as much as seven years leading a double life undercover. Seven years in which their minds, and their bodies, have been ageing. The assessment will test how sharp their bodies are, but it’s important we assess them for other factors. We have to devise a programme that tells us whether we need to pull them out of the front line because of stress, or early signs of dementia.”

  “Are you serious?” asked Phoenix. “The whole reason we chose these guys was because they were the best of the best.”

  “No one is safe from the group of diseases that affect the brain. It’s not a consequence of growing old, but the risks increase with age. We received a call last month from Cairo. There’s a strict protocol for contacts from agents to HQ, as you know, but the wife of our agent there had discovered his passwords. She was concerned he hadn’t returned home after attending the courtroom where over five hundred members of the Muslim Brotherhood were sentenced to death, following an attack on a police station.”

  “How old is this agent?” asked Phoenix. “Has he been in Egypt long?”

  “He’s fifty-four years old and was posted to Cairo in 2008. His most active period occurred in 2011 when the revolution began. It has been a volatile country since that time. He worked for an engineering company as his cover, and until last month we had no cause for concern.”

  “What happened to him?” asked Phoenix.

  “He turned up, confused, after two days. His wife had no clue where he had been. When we asked how she got hold of his passwords, she said he had written them on a piece of paper by the phone around Christmas time. He had trouble remembering them.”

  “Your point is well made, Athena,” said Phoenix. “We need to initiate a programme to assess the fitness and well-being of our older agents as a matter of urgency. It’s another thing to add to the list of items to bring to the attention of Zeus and the others. The problems are mounting.”

  “Let’s get back to our apartment now, to check on Hope, and look after her,” said Athena. “Perhaps we can allow Maria Elena a brief respite. After we’ve grabbed a bite to eat, I plan to switch off for a while. There’s much to consider.”

  They went along the corridors to their rooms. When they walked into the sitting room Maria Elena sat in the window seat. Hope lay on the rug in the centre of the room.

  Athena stopped and watched. Hope rolled over towards her favourite teddy bear.

  “That’s the first time I’ve seen her do that,” cried Athena, “what a clever girl.”

  “How has she been?” asked Phoenix.

  “She’s okay now, Senor Phoenix,” said Maria Elena walking to the middle of the room to meet them. “You wouldn’t know she had been sick as a puppy only six hours ago.”

  Hope was now lying on her stomach, arching her back slightly, to see who was talking. When she saw her mother and father smiling at Maria Elena’s comment, she gave a broad smile, revealing a tiny white tooth poking through her bottom gum.

  “Another first,” said Phoenix. “At least she’s happier than she was in the middle of the night. I didn’t see that tooth when I cleaned the sick from her face.”

  “Nor me,” said Athena. “We’ll pop into the kitchen to get our lunch, Maria Elena. If you keep an eye on Hope, we’ll be back to relieve you. We’ll be here for the rest of the afternoon, so I’ll call you if we need you again today.”

  Maria Elena sat by Hope and played with her. Giles was working until six o’clock. She had better enjoy her time with the little one if she had to spend her afternoon alone.

  After the three family members were alone, they found the time passed far too quickly. It was soon time for Hope’s next feed, and then she went to the nursery for her afternoon nap. Phoenix and Athena turned their attention to thoughts of Manchester, and the next Olympus meeting.

  “If we stick to the schedule, it’s over eight weeks until the meeting in July,” Athena said, as they snuggled together on the settee. “You said only a full-blown crisis could bring it forward. If I contact Zeus to talk about Aurora and the other issues, do you think that will sway his decision?”

  “It might,” said Phoenix, “but I fancy something that posed an even greater threat to the status quo is required. There’s no sign of that at present, so let’s hope I’m not tempting fate.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Friday 25th April 2014

  Giles Burke and Artemis had stayed underground in the ice-house until after eight o’clock last night. The reaction of their partners was somewhat different when they surfaced and returned to their quarters.

  Maria Elena was not a happy bunny to be denied time with her partner. Meanwhile, Rusty spent time in the pool, swimming one hundred lengths, and didn’t notice the time.

  When the two couples got to talk to one another, it was the discovery of the private bank that dominated Rusty and Artemis’s conversation. Giles was not at liberty to discuss Olympus matters with his girlfriend, so he had to set his mind to getting back in her good books.

  This morning, at the morning meeting Giles could pass the good news on to Athena, Phoenix, and the rest.

  “What progress have you made, Giles?” Athena asked when the meeting started.

  “I concentrated on the newly formed private banks,” said Giles, “and it wasn’t difficult to find. The Glencairn Bank opened in December 2009. It's small but aggressive. The same as its owner. The link to Hannon is in the name. Glencairn Park is an open space, with a children’s playground, that marked the birth of many friendships among the Dublin boys who later gravitated to a life of crime. The name serves as a beacon to Irish families in the criminal underworld. It is telling them, here is a haven for your money-laundering, your
tax avoidance schemes, and investments.”

  “Discovering the name Hannon is now using is proving more difficult,” said Artemis. “The estate agent who handled the sale of his flat were uncommunicative. They put me through to the office manager, who told me she had been with the firm for fifteen years. As I probed her for details of the Hannon sale, it became obvious that she had been bought off. I did, however, talk to the buyer. The Saudi Arabian gentleman proved more helpful. He had no forwarding address, of course, but he recalled a scribbled note for the cleaner he had spotted on a calendar on the kitchen wall. This was on one occasion he and his wife visited the flat, checking their white goods fitted in, and measuring for curtains. He told me the note had asked his cleaner not to bother coming next week, as he was away in Ireland. The note was initialled ‘HH’.”

  “This was in 2010, I suppose?” asked Phoenix. “So, he wasted no time shedding his old skin. He dropped out of circulation before Christmas, then in the New Year, he’s adopted a new name. Does knowing the initials help, in regard to the bank, Giles?”

  “I don’t have many contacts in that world, Phoenix. I’m in the dark. These people don’t mix with those outside the small world in which they work. Which is why they are often portrayed in the media as being so out of touch. Remember Jeremy Faversham? Massive annual bonuses, a lavish lifestyle, and he robbed his investors blind.”

  “Faversham paid for his crimes,” said Rusty.

  “There are other ways to discover who ‘HH’ is,” said Artemis. “We’ve left messages on internet forums designed to draw out someone who might know who he is and have a grudge against him. We chose our wording with great care. If there’s a whistle-blower out there, he will seize this opportunity to get his own back. The Glencairn Bank has seen rapid growth in the time it’s been operating. Its owner had to have stepped on plenty of people to get to the elevated position he holds today. We could be swamped with replies.”

  “Have we identified the trigger yet, that turned our merchant banker into a power-crazed maniac?” asked Phoenix.

  “Not yet,” admitted Giles, “but my money is on the forums to give the answer to that. As Artemis suggests, anyone who suffered at the hands of this guy in the past four years will use the anonymity of a forum, or a chat room, to stick the knife in. The internet can be a force for good, as well as evil. People reveal more online than in face-to-face conversations. For whatever reason, they believe nobody’s listening. The amount of data we gather from sites similar to these in the ice-house is staggering.”

  “How long do you keep that data?” asked Henry Case.

  “We filter out the vast majority of it,” said Giles. “We could make a fortune blackmailing the husbands, and wives, who admit to affairs. However, that’s not our line of business. We retain any item that features one or more of our ‘keywords’. While we dealt with the Milton Keynes terrorist cell, for instance, we searched through reams of ‘chatter’ that had been passed to them from Pakistan. When we add in that data to the rest we had gathered through surveillance, it gave us a far clearer picture of how they were planning their attack.”

  “I only wondered, if you might have captured chatter relating to the meteoric rise of ‘HH’, without realising it,” said Henry.

  “Good to see you’re back on the ball, Henry,” smiled Phoenix. “What do you say, Giles, is that possible?”

  “It will be worth checking, that’s for certain,” agreed Giles.

  “No time like the present,” said Athena. “Artemis can return to the control centre, and get things moving. You should trawl through the old material you have on file and continue fishing in new waters.”

  Artemis got up to leave.

  “Good fishing,” said Rusty, “let’s hope you get an early bite.”

  “Promises, promises,” she replied, as she walked to the door.

  The other items on the agenda kept Giles and the rest occupied until lunchtime. When Athena called time on proceedings, the agents broke up for the weekend. Athena and Phoenix remained on call if something turned up in the search for the elusive banker.

  In the City, their target was finishing work for the week. His thoughts were not of a few days relaxing in the Spring sunshine, but of retribution. Ever since that phone call from Sean Walsh concerning the Old Bailey court case, he had been itching for the action to start. Walsh had so far found everyone with a direct connection to the case, except the exact whereabouts of Maurice Kelly, and his wife Deirdre. They were in the witness protection programme.

  Hugo Hanigan was not prepared to accept they couldn’t find them and kill them. He ordered Sean Walsh, and other gang leaders to continue hunting for them, weekend or no weekend. As he left his office, to return to his penthouse suite, Hugo looked forward to the morning newspapers. A few days he liked to think of as his ‘reign of terror’ was due to begin.

  Saturday, 26th April 2014

  Artemis had worked late into the night. Giles had helped her for a while after returning from the morning meeting. Since he and Maria Elena were away for the weekend. He felt he should make up for the lost afternoon on Thursday when he had worked a double shift underground. After Giles left her toiling away on her own, Artemis found a lead. Something that led her right the way to Glencairn Park, and the trigger they sought.

  Their ploy had worked. The anonymous messages hinting at an unscrupulous new banker, who might use dubious methods to make huge profits on futures and on the exchanges attracted interest. The name they wanted was plastered across message board, after message board.

  When she returned to her apartment, Artemis nudged Rusty awake. It was late evening, and he had nodded off in front of the television.

  “Oh, you’re back,” he said.

  “You’re sharp,” she countered. “I’ve got news.”

  “Let’s get something to eat first,” said Rusty. “I started making a meal earlier on, but when you didn’t come home, I took a break for ten minutes.”

  As they tucked into a ham salad, Artemis told him what she had learned.

  “The forums came up with the name in no time. Hugo Hanigan is our man. Although only one or two replies called him by first name and surname alone. To a man, they referred to either Hugo Bloody Hanigan or Hugo Effing Hanigan. He’s not well-liked, as you can tell.”

  “Just as Giles predicted,” said Rusty, pouring two glasses of white wine, “but why Hanigan?”

  “I checked through Hannon’s background, and made a few calls,” said Artemis. “His mother and father split up when he was thirteen. Ardal lived with his mother, in a less well-off neighbourhood than the one the family had occupied. There was animosity between his parents over custody. His mother switched back to her maiden name, which had been Sorcha Hanigan.”

  “The mist is clearing,” said Rusty. Artemis gave him a gentle dig in the ribs.

  “Mother and son moved home several times before he finished his schooling. Sorcha was desperate to hold on to her boy. Anthony Hannon thought his son was being influenced by the kids he mixed with on the streets in the rougher districts she now occupied. He wanted Ardal to move in with him, and his new wife, in their large house in the suburbs. If he had got his way, Ardal might have lived a far more worthwhile life.”

  “It’s still very misty around Glencairn Park,” said Rusty.

  “I’m getting to that,” said Artemis. “I worked hard on this, allow me the pleasure of showing off, for a change. As I said, Sorcha relied on Anthony for everything, during the marriage. As soon as the law said he could, he cut the purse strings providing for his son. Anthony didn’t want Ardal to suffer. He wanted to force Sorcha to give him up. When Ardal left Dublin to move to London, Sorcha slipped further into debt. She was too proud to ask him for financial help. He was unaware of how bad things had become. He was making his way in the City of London and doing well. Trips home became fewer and farther between. When old friends such as Gavin McTierney came calling, he fell in with their plans and laundered their drug mone
y. The ties that bound them from their days on the streets were all-powerful.”

  “So where’s his mother now?” asked Rusty, offering to refill their glasses. Artemis shook her head.

  “You can have another one if you wish. I’ll finish my news, then I’m having an early night. Athena needs to hear this first thing in the morning. Sorcha was the trigger. Ardal returned home for a weekend in September 2009. His mother wasn’t home when he arrived. She didn’t answer her mobile. Ardal called his father; something he hadn’t done in years. Anthony told him his mother had borrowed money from the wrong people. Their interest rates were extortionate. Their punishment for non-payment would be brutal. He had no idea where Sorcha had gone. He suggested Ardal try her parents, who lived in Bangor. Ardal drove to the large town on the coast and found his mother. Once the truth was out in the open, he gave her the money she needed to get these thugs off her backs. Sorcha promised never to let herself get into such trouble again. Soon, she found it impossible to manage on what little money she received in benefits. She had few qualifications, so any part-time work she got was menial and low-paid. The debts mounted yet again. The loan sharks soon circled the tiny flat where she lived. A dog-walker found her body in Glencairn Park, in early May in 2010. She had been bludgeoned to death.”

  “And there we have it,” said Rusty, “great work, Artemis. Hannon took his mother’s maiden name, Hanigan. That ties in with the note left for the cleaner in Cricklewood. Sorcha’s death was the trigger that unhinged him. Everything that’s followed is connected to that. It explains the name of the bank. It wasn’t only the connection to the children’s playground, and where the street kids played together. Everything is in homage to his mother. Why Hugo? Any ideas?”