Parallel Lives chapter 43

Martin was having a singularly bad day. He had spent the weekend trying to acquire resources to assist him with his task, with little luck. Being an Intelligence Liaison Officer attached to the DTRU usually had its benefits, such as the high degree of autonomy he generally enjoyed. Mainstream intelligence work with the SIS generally meant seeking approval in triplicate for the most basic of tasks, such as for a surveillance operation. As the local liaison there was virtually no need to gain any such approval for such activities, and the DTRU staff were pretty much oblivious to the requirements that should be imposed. Most assumed that intelligence officers were above most legal obligations and avoided asking too many questions in case they too came under scrutiny.

The downside, as Martin was now finding, was that organisations such as the DTRU were largely absent of basic security resources such as trained personnel, vehicles and close protection weapons. Their purpose in life was secret research and as such they were extremely well provided for with facilities and key personnel, but outside of the main laboratories they had little in the way of a security infrastructure. Martin had begged and scraped to obtain the vehicle used to bring Sam to Fylingdales and the muscle provided were only available for a very short window in time. It probably impressed the hell out of Sam, who couldn’t have known that if he had argued harder and arranged for the pick up time to be slipped by more that three hours it would have been a self drive again.

Martin had, however, managed to massage the vanity of the RAF Officer the day before. That much had been fairly easy, far easier than Martin had prepared for. The hardest part was dissuading the Officer from taking part, he clearly saw himself in the role of James Bond. Martin didn’t. He also didn’t want to use the RAF Sergeant either, although if he had to use someone off the base he could do worse, much worse. He had bet on his departmental heads throwing their collective teddies out of their cots at the thought of the SIS using an airforce technician in a close protection role he hadn’t been trained to do. The idea was that they would capitulate and detail a professional to assist him, rather than risk the embarrassment likely to occur with his proposal, however Martin had underestimated the degree of over-stretch back at HQ and his boss had jumped at the opportunity to save manpower. It looked like Martin had some rapid training to undertake.

The news about the inquest had been a blow, of course, and the rapidity of its calling was a bit of a surprise. Martin’s own enquiries had revealed that the cause of the accident hadn’t been in dispute after the HSE had concluded its initial investigation, and there had been some conflict with the Coroner’s diary that meant that the inquest either happened now or not for six weeks. The later date wouldn’t have been an issue with the Coroner, it wasn’t unusual where there was any suspicion of foul play, but some influence had been exerted from the family of the dead man. Although he was a maintenance man he had married into a family with some clout, and they wanted the whole affair put to bed, especially as there wasn’t any hint of a problem. He couldn’t understand why Staples had been called but the initial resistance felt when he had inquired about non attendance persuaded him to back off.

Unfortunately, as far as Martin’s superiors were concerned, the DTRU project was a back-burner item that probably never would produce any tangible results. From Martin’s perspective, he was loathe to reveal any details about the apparent success at this time, even to his own people, such was the degree of paranoia embedded in him. Consequently he had to take Staples, his own car and some untrained assistant. And two increasingly unpredictable scientists. A singularly bad day indeed.

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Copyright Ray Sullivan 2011

The characters, places and events described in this novel are fictitious and any resemblance to persons, places or events, past or present, is coincidence.  All rights reserved

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