Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Seventeen days till the Global Unveiling of Bluetannia: The local media spent most of the following week reporting every detail of what happened at Downing Street, coined as “a simple schoolyard prank” by an anonymous source. Some pundits opined that it was a coordinated retaliation engineered by hoodlums in response to St. Thomas Church. Others saw the incident as a prologue to a coming large scale cyber terrorist attack on Great Britain, though they were proven wrong days later when nothing else occurred. The only person in the entire island who knew the truth was Lugh.
Lugh sat at his desk, reading through stacks of documents and photographs collected from the DPG the day of the incident. There were also CCTV shots showing a strange green creature slipping inside one of the building’s heating vents minutes before the alarm sounded. There were filed reports from guards on scene detailing what happened that day, including one that detailed the half-hour gap in memory suffered by one of the officers during the incident.
He took a series of four security photographs from the stack showing Brigid fifteen minutes after the alarm ended. She was dressed in a formal dress suit with her hair somewhat messy, carrying a body. His finely tuned eyes noticed the dried blood on her skirt as well as Jar’Ed slung over her shoulder. No one was looking her way.
“Why would you go in yourself if you have the last Páistí of Aeonghus at your disposal?” he thought out loud, gazing at the last photo of her looking at her phone as she walked out of the building without anyone seeing her. “It seems a strange error on her part.”
A short time later, his intern stepped in to the office carrying a folder in her arm. She was a young girl no more than twenty years of age. “Mr. Pearson?” The young woman timidly uttered.
He looked up, placing the set of photographs back on his desk. “Yes? What is it?”
The young intern slowly moved toward Lugh’s desk. She tried her best to contain the nerves in her stomach as she pressed the folder from the Home Office tight to the lapel of her navy blue coat.
“There’s been an incident at Gerry Anthony,” she said nervously as she stopped a few feet from her boss’ desk.
Lugh stood up from his chair and flashed the intern a stern look. “What happened?”
“Two men stole a vial of Bluetannia from one of the refining pools last week.”
A feeling of rage bubbled up in his throat. “Why am I only hearing about this now?!”
“Ms. Koetter made that decision, sir,” she replied, timidly walking a half step toward him. “She didn’t want anything embarrassing or detrimental to the mine to leak out before the unveiling.”
“Verdammt menschliche ego…” Lugh groaned and shook his head. He slowly moved around the desk toward the bookcase across from the intern. “How did it happen?”
“There was an explosion that took out the security outpost at 23:30 that night.” She quickly replied, following him to the right side of the desk.
“Do we have an idea who initiated the explosion?” Lugh asked.
“Sort of yeah.” The intern replied. A split second later, she extended the folder to Lugh in front of her.
He snatched the folder out of her hands and opened it. The still photo on top showed Gerry Arthur’s main gates, its security checkpoint in full normal operation. The second one showed the same outpost engulfed in flames by a lightning bolt. Each still was separated by fifteen minutes according to their individual time stamps.
Lugh sneered. “Is that a lightning bolt? In pitch black of night, with no weather event in the area? How is that even possible?”
Lugh flipped to the next photograph from the sequence. Something about the shrubbery across from the front of the building looked out of place to him. He examined the image until he discerned the faint forms of two men hidden there. It did not take him long to recognize who they were.
“Leave!” Lugh barked, slamming the folder shut.
“Sir?”
He walked back to his desk and stood behind his chair. The man stared cold daggers back at the young intern. “Leave. Right. Now!” Lugh said, slamming the folder on the desk.
The young woman almost tripped in her hurry to exit the room. Lugh collapsed into his leather desk chair. He let out a sigh of relaxation as he leaned back in his chair. He returned to a centered mental state a short while later and returned to the folder. Unlike the DPG’s report, the rest of the evidence in the folder didn’t follow a visible storyline. It provided, though, a certain degree of insight into the night of the incident.
Other photos showed the two figures walking up the parking lot to the front of the complex. They were hardly noticeable thanks in part to a fog that seemed to follow them, covering their faces and physical features. There were also reports from the firemen who arrived an hour after the incident detailing the guard’s testimony along with a photo of the burnt remains of the outpost. Other images detailed the hole in the middle of the fence as well as the small hole made in the pipeline and the black mark on the ground of the Tuning Fork next to one of the Bluetannia pools. On top of that, there were eyewitness accounts from locals who saw a large black helicopter flying over the city towards London.
“You clever woman,” Lugh grinned going through each document. “Send the Páistí and the Bear God to retrieve the source while you saved your Plan A. Your father taught you well!”
He closed the folder and slid it next to the DPG report next to the phone. “Now for the bigger question at hand,” he leaned back in his chair and thought about the incident in the greater scale. “What possible reason would she hide this from me?” There was only one way he could find out. Lugh reached over to the phone and called the number for the Gerry Arthur mine.
***
George looked out from her office window toward the front gate as a half dozen workers at the scene busily picked up the charred remnants of the outpost and set about rebuilding it. She had heard about the incident a week ago from a security guard who was scheduled to work the following morning. She was skeptical of the story until she arrived and saw the rubble along with the hole in the middle of her pipeline. The phone rang a couple of times as she pondered past dealings. On the third ring, she walked over to her desk and picked it up.
“Good morning, Ms. Koetter,” he said coldly. “Can you please tell me what the hell you were thinking keeping this incident from me and the Prime Minister?”
“I was trying to defend the respectability of my mine,” George shot back. “Such an incident would have been a major PR embarrassment for us and hindered dozens of first-use agreements we’re negotiating with carmakers.”
“After everything you’ve done, how could you have not anticipated this could happen?” Lugh asked.
She wanted to scream, but tactically held her rage in check. “This was a brand new scenario. We had no way to anticipate this happening.”
“What about the hovercraft the suspects procured,” Lugh shouted, rising up from his chair. “Or the break-in at the Tuning Fork that occurred without entering the security code? Was that something that you simply did not plan on happening?”
The line went silent for a few seconds on both ends as Lugh tried to regain his prior state of calm. There was no point in expressing his rage to the woman, he thought, as long as the greater goals were still in sight.
“Are you still on schedule for the 8th of June?” he asked, sitting on the edge of the desktop.
“Yes, we are,” George replied pacing behind her desk holding the base of the phone. “The diagnostics on the Fork should be completed and installed within the next twenty four hours.”
“What about the delivery system,” he prodded. “Did the thieves harm it in any way?”
“No. It’s still very much functional and ready to go.”
Lugh’s focus was distracted by the sudden appearance of a smiling Charon standing in the middle of his office. He was dressed in a white toga and sandals with a symbol of the Underworld clipped on his chest. He nodded to Lugh and slowly walked over toward the bookcase.
“I’ll call you back.” Lugh uttered as he hung up.
“Beautiful office you have here,” Charon remarked, plucking a copy of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland from the shelf. “Not as beautiful as mine, mind you. But still has this nice charming evil to it that feels…cozy to me.”
“What brings you over here, Charon?” Lugh asked, standing and following Charon’s movements as he roamed. “I thought you were doing Question Time now. If one of my staffers’ discovered you in your true form, it’d be disastrous.”
“The building is frozen in a Chrónou spell, Lugh. I’m fine,” Charon replied, sliding the book in the shelf. “As for why I’m here, I imagine you already know that. The robbery last week at Gerry Anthony.”
“Ah yes,” Lugh crossed toward Charon. “I was just on the phone with Ms. Koetter, telling her how loathsome it was for her to withhold this information from—
“I don’t see it as that much of a problem, young Lugh.”
His words took Lugh by surprise. “But she deliberately withheld information from us in order to protect herself. She allowed the Halfling and that damn Bear God a full week to examine every aspect of the Bluetannia,” he argued, watching as Charon continued to pace. “At this point, it would not surprise me if they had enough gathered to expose our plan to the nation!”
Charon snickered as he walked towards Lugh. “Expose what? The greatest source of renewable energy this filthy speck of a planet’s ever seen? They have nothing that can hurt us!”
“Right now, you are right,” Lugh said as he reclaimed his place at his desk. “But I fear that can change all too quickly.”
Charon grinned. “Well, if you are this concerned about our friends at the Guardian, I would suggest that we try a new tactic to keep them in the proverbial mire.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“We already have played with their electrical system, correct?” Charon asked. Lugh nodded a few seconds later. Charon then placed his hand on Lugh’s shoulder. “Now, I think it is the time to cripple their entire infrastructure.”
“How do we do that?” Lugh asked with eyebrows raised.
“Just like we did with the peons at the Church: with private security,” Charon replied with an evil smile before walking away. “First the ogre, then…his employer.”
“I’ll get right on it, sir,” Lugh stood. “It should not be too difficult to procure rationale on him.”
“By the way,” Charon said, turning around at the door. “I’m thinking we should bump that up to the 2nd of June instead of the 8th.”
Lugh’s smile quickly faded as he walked back to his chair. “How are we going to explain this time shift to the public?”
“We’ll say it was due to a ‘security matter,’” said Charon, calmly straightening the bottom of his toga. “The break-in here and at Gerry Arthur would provide a feasible rationale behind it.”
“Are you sure the humans will willingly go along with it?”
“I’m the boss,” Charon replied with a playful smile. “It’s not like they’ll have the courage to ask.”
A split second later, Charon left in a flash that rattled the papers and books in the office. Lugh sat down, returning to prior business; namely his unfinished phone call with George.
***
George sat behind her desk looking over the front pages of different newspapers in Britain with photographs of former Chief of Staff Arnold being frog marched into court. Next to the papers was a large stack of official documents detailing the security changes engineers recommended for the mine. A few moments later, the phone rang again, pulling her focus from the paper. George knew intuitively who was calling. At the second ring, she put the front page down and reached over to answer it.
“I apologize for the delay, George. I was pulled away by an important phone call,” Lugh said, calmly leaning back in his leather chair. “Where did we leave off?”
“We were discussing the status of the Tuning Fork’s delivery system after the robbery,” George said, pulling the bulky receiver toward her.
“Oh yes,” he uttered with a jovial chuckle. “I was about to bring up something the Prime Minister and I have been discussing the past couple of days.”
“What?”
“We want to move up the global unveiling up from the 8th of June to the 2nd. If that’s alright with you.”
George stood up from her seat. “I have to say that would be a patently risky strategy, Sir,” she said walking along the edge of the desk. “We still have to make sure the technology on the Fork’s delivery system is able to contain the rush of energy without exploding. I don’t know if we can adequately complete all of those tests in the span of a week and a half.”
“Given what I witnessed, Ms. Koetter,” Lugh said, leaning forward. “There’s see no reason you and your people cannot properly achieve these tests in the next two and a half weeks, yes?”
After an extra half second of pained silence, she sighed and nodded. “Yes, sir, Mr. Pearson. We will be ready by then.”
“Excellent,” he smiled. “We shall let the Press Office know of the change in schedule. The Prime Minister and I look forward to seeing you at the ceremony.”
George slammed the receiver down in frustration. She then dropped the rest of the phone on top of the desk a split second later, briefly shaking the papers on it. She sighed and walked out of the office to deliver the news to her weary employees.
On the other end, Lugh hung up and immediately pressed the third number on his Speed dial. His secretary was busy at her desk typing up a memorandum on her computer when the phone rang. She stopped typing and picked it up on the second ring.
“Yes?”
“Betty, I have a few messages I want you to send out,” Lugh said.
“What are they, sir?” She asked in a soft and welcoming tone, opening up a new Word document on the computer.
“Tell the Press office to revoke the press credentials of the Guardian newspaper for the unveiling,” he replied. “There has also been a change to the date of the unveiling. It will now take place on the 2nd of June instead of the 8th of.”
“What reason should I give for the new date?” She asked as she typed.
“Tell them it was security related,” he replied with little effort. “Some classified information from MI6 about a potential terrorist attempt at Gerry Arthur.”
“Right,” said Betty uttered. “And the other one?”
“Notify G4S that the Prime Minister is needed to procure a corrupt London gangster called Kahrter. He has a decades-long relationship to the Guardian,” he said, gazing down at an unofficial memo from one of his doppelgangers lying on his desk. “He runs a pub near the Docks called Y Crug.”
Betty stopped just before she began writing the next message. “Won’t Scotland Yard get suspicious about this move?” She asked.
“With the right amount of coercion,” said Karhter, leaning forward on his desk. “I have faith they will come around to the idea of extra help in their matters.”
The young secretary paused for a few moments, taking in the statement. “I’ll get them out straight away,” she said, typing away the body of the second E-Mail message.