Tiberius Crowned

Tiberius Crowned

- part three of The Emperor Initiative -

Smashwords Edition

Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom

Copyright © 2015 Andrew Goodman

The moral right of the author has been asserted

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by means, electronic or otherwise, without permission from the author.

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-1311623362

Smashwords Edition,

License Notes

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Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

DEDICATION

Life throws innumerable obstacles and challenges at us, both physical and emotional. This book is dedicated to all of us who have the strength to persevere…

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

About the Author

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many thanks go to:

CHAPTER 1

Daniel Henstock neared the end of his twenty-kilometre run and came to a halt close to one of the beach bars that bordered this stretch of the Mediterranean. The sweat under the bandage on his left forearm caused the wound there to itch but he resisted the temptation to scratch. It had taken long enough for the damage caused by Gregory Dryden in the warehouse in Staten Island to close up as it was, and disturbing the thick scab now would only delay the healing process even further.

He wiped the sweat from his face and looked out over the glistening water. Most of the holidaymakers were sunning themselves by the sea at this time of the morning, which meant that the beach footpath was all but empty. It was hot, again; the forecast estimated a high of thirty-four degrees and by eight o’clock, when he’d started his run, it had already reached twenty-nine. The sky was as blue as the sea, and he had to think hard when he’d last seen any real clouds; there had been four such days in the last sixty, and it had only rained once, briefly, overnight.

He’d been with Eleanor at the side-street house in Spain’s Pineda de Mar for a little over two months and during that happy time they had both developed deep, natural tans. Lying fifty-five kilometres northeast up the coast from Barcelona this Mediterranean town proved to be a Godsend. It boasted a high number of tourists from all over Europe but lacked the 24-hour nightclubs and noise of its close neighbour, Callela. He wasn’t able to lose himself in the crowds of Manhattan but found he could here in Spain.

The one thing that wrangled with him was the fact that it was Brennan’s idea for him to get away with Eleanor. He shouldn’t be enjoying himself so much based on the suggestion of a man he still didn’t fully trust.

Daniel leaned against one of the wooden benches and completed his warm-down exercises, after which he made his way off the beach path and crossed over the rail tracks by the station. The regular Friday street-market occupied the beachfront road for over a kilometre, and sold everything from tomatoes to electrical equipment, and Eleanor had asked him to buy some of the nectarines she liked so much. The route down the middle of the market stalls was, as usual, a crush of locals interspersed with curious tourists, and Daniel had to ease his way through to his favourite grocer.

It was only when he went to pay for the fruit did he notice the pale-skinned man in the blue swim-shorts, a short distance off to his right. He wore a sun hat and flowery shirt, and had a small bag slung over one shoulder but looked like someone who’d had to read a manual to tell him how to dress. It was the man’s shoes that set alarm bells ringing. They were too formal for one thing, and completely at odds with the rest of his attire. Daniel glanced around for anyone else that looked out of place but the man seemed to be alone.

Daniel tried to control the sudden quickening of his heart and thanked the grocer – his pronunciation and accent making him sound like a Catalonian native – and made his way back through the crowd towards his house off the Carrer de Mar. Daniel tried to not let the concern show on his face.

A casual glance over one shoulder confirmed the man was nonchalantly heading in the same direction. It had been close to ten weeks since he last needed to resort to fighting and Daniel gave an inward sigh wondering if he’d ever last more than a few months fight free.

The street narrowed once off the main road and there were noticeably fewer people moving around. Daniel knew that if an attack were to come then it would be somewhere near here. The street had a number of sandy, tree-lined areas set back from the road where people could sit on a bench and gain respite from the heat of the day, and Daniel slowed his pace judging that he would reach the nearest area about the same time as the man. If he was what Daniel thought then the shade provided by the broad-leafed Maple and Lime trees would be enough of an enticement for him to attack.

Daniel reached the first bench, saw that the area was empty, and pretended to remove a stone from his running shoe. He felt the man’s lunge through the air before he even heard or saw the blow coming, and dropped his bag of fruit to knock the man’s hand aside. It didn’t hold the knife as he’d expected but a gas-powered syringe.

The last time he had seen a similar one was the night his parents were murdered.

The man swung again, his movements much faster than Daniel had anticipated, and he had to leap backwards to avoid the syringe. In doing so, however, his heel caught the bench’s protruding leg and he tumbled to the floor. The man gave a confidant laugh and was on him in an instant, but Daniel was already rolling away. As he regained his feet he gripped the man’s lunging hand and turned it inwards. His attacker’s forward motion, along with his over-confidence, carried him onto the syringe and Daniel jabbed at the blunt end with his free hand. Its contents shot into the man’s stomach and he gave a brief grunt of pain and surprise before collapsing to the dusty sand.

Daniel gripped the man’s shoulders. ‘Who sent you? How did you know I was here?’

But the man was beyond questions. His eyes rolled up into his head and he became nothing more than dead weight as Daniel lowered him to the ground. He opened the man’s shoulder bag but a woman’s yell from a balcony across the street caused him to look up.

‘Policia! Policia!’

Pineda, with so many tourists, always had a handful of police patrolling and Daniel knew that the woman’s frantic yells would attract one of them within moments. He ignored her shouts and continued to search the bag’s contents but found it empty apart from a sleek mobile phone. He activated its recent activity and the only thing to display was a text message from someone identified as Control. The sound of police sirens rang in the air as he read the message: Incapacitate Tiberius. Take the girl.

Daniel dropped the phone and ran. He cleared the corner onto Carrer Comtal within seconds and was just in time to witness a black Range Rover speed away from outside the house he shared with Eleanor. He raced to the open door – the scent of tyre smoke still heavy in the air – only to find the hallway littered with broken glass and spots of blood. She obviously hadn’t let herself be taken without a fight and he hoped the blood was only from her abductors, yet it didn’t offer him any comfort knowing that his enemies now held the person he cared most about. Despite all the times he’d told the people behind the Emperor Initiative to leave him alone they had once again chosen not to listen. Daniel had told Brennan, the last time he’d seen him, to pass on the message that if they ignored him then he’d bring their whole organisation down. It was clear the message was something they didn’t want to, or couldn’t, understand. They thought they were better. They thought they could do what they wanted, without reproach.

So be it: they’d had their chance to call it a day.

Now he’d finish it.

He left the house thirty seconds later holding a bag of money and his most recent I.D. documents, and walked calmly in the opposite direction to the approaching sound of police sirens.

CHAPTER 2

Trevor Alexander finished compiling his presentation material then straightened his tie and checked his cuff links were level before activating the connection between his Tablet and the wall-mounted screen. A series of intricate graphs and data-layouts sprang into life.

‘As you’re aware, sir, we’ve known for some week’s now at which point the first intercept attempt was made,’ he tapped his Tablet and one of the graph points highlighted on the screen, ‘and then when all of the subsequent tries were made.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Sir Norman Denning muttered. ‘Go on.’

‘All of the intercept points originated via a terminal port at Langley.’

Denning’s shoulders straightened. ‘It was the CIA? Damn it. How on earth did they get wind of what we were doing?’

‘Ah, no, sir. Not the CIA.’

‘No?’

‘No. It was a deliberate, and I have to say an extremely convoluted, false trail.’ Trevor activated more points on the graphs that pinpointed multiple locations throughout Europe and Asia. ‘The port was accessed through a complex network of switch-backs and loop hacks utilising more than three dozen civilian and governmental networks –’

‘Yes, that’s all terribly fascinating, Trevor,’ Sir Norman said turning back to the stack of files on his desk, ‘however what I’d really hoped for, was for you to provide an answer to whom was responsible and not simply how they accomplished the task.’

‘And I have.’

Denning looked back up. ‘You have?’

‘I appreciate that it’s taken me far longer than was ideal, Sir Norman, and I apologise unreservedly for that, but I have been successful in tracking the hack through to its source.’

Denning’s mouth opened slightly as he waited for Trevor to continue. ‘Well spit it out, where man?’

Trevor tapped his Tablet and the source location displayed on the screen. He expanded the ratio so the position could be seen more clearly. It took Sir Norman a few moments to realise the importance of the address.

‘Ah, I see. Well, well. That is a surprise.’ He relaxed back into his chair. ‘Trevor, would you be so good as to contact Colonel Hill in Security? Tell him that I have a small task which needs completing.’

‘Certainly, sir, but …’

‘But what?’

‘Would …’ Trevor shuffled his feet, ‘would it be possible for me to accompany him? I mean, them?’

‘Really? Don’t take any offence, Trevor, but I hardly see you as the field-operative type.’

‘No, I’m not. Not at all. It’s just that I have a special interest—’ he nodded towards the screen ‘—with this particular individual.’

William Cross sat in front of his bank of monitors and analysed the multiple data streams being displayed. He took the final bite of a Braeburn apple then dropped the core into a bin below his desk. He looked up as the buzz of the door intercom sounded and he wiped the apple juice from his hands before pressing one of the buttons on his keypad. The image of a thin-faced man formed inside a small window in his central screen.

‘Yes?’

‘Sir Norman sent me,’ Trevor replied. ‘I have an update regarding the mission in Mali.’

‘Right.’ He watched as the man gave a forced smile. ‘Why didn’t he just send me the info?’

‘I suppose he could have, but he didn’t. Personally I wish that he had; I can’t begin to tell you how much I dislike coming this far west. My God, you’re practically in Ealing.’

Cross bit back the reply which sprang to mind.

‘So?’ Trevor continued. ‘Are you going to open the door or not?’

Another comment failed to make its way past Cross’ internal filter. ‘Sure.’

He activated the door release then picked at a sliver of apple caught between his teeth, and waited for the annoying man to make his way to the top floor offices.

Cross spun in his chair when he heard the door to his bolthole open. ‘So what is it that Sir Norman deems so important that he gets you—’ Cross stopped and regarded the four well-built men standing his side of the doorway. They might all have been wearing civilian clothes but there was no mistaking the stance of a professional soldier ‘—to come all the way out here.’

Trevor appeared from behind the square shoulders of one of the men. ‘I suppose you thought that you were being very clever,’ he said, ‘bouncing your hack via so many different international termini?’

‘Sorry, you’ve lost me,’ Cross replied. He casually stretched out his left leg and flexed the foot upwards to loosen out the tendons behind the knee. ‘No idea what you mean.’

‘But brains, ’ Trevor sneered, ‘will always overcome brawn.’

‘Let me guess: Stephen Hawking? No?’

Trevor lifted his chin. ‘We know it was you who detonated the missile over Staten Island. We know everything –’

‘I doubt that very much.’

‘– And if there’s one thing Sir Norman detests more than anything else then it’s a traitor. This is the end of the line for you, Cross; I’m bringing you in.’

‘You’re bringing me in?’

‘Yes.’ Trevor straightened his shoulders.

‘So what are they for?’ Cross nodded to the men. ‘Just here to make you look good?’

‘They’re here in case you choose not to come quietly. Personally I hope that you don’t.’ Trevor smiled and nonchalantly scratched his jaw. ‘I seem to remember that you threatened me a while back. You said that you’d …’ he snapped his fingers together a few times, ‘oh, what was it again?’

‘I said that if you sneered at me one more time then I’d kick your arse six ways from Sunday.’

‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘that was it. So?’

‘So, what?’

‘Are you going to come quietly?’

Cross stretched his knee tendons once more and gave the group of men another scan.

Sir Norman activated the intercom to his secretary. ‘Yes?’

‘Trevor Alexander is here to see you, sir.’

‘Excellent. Send him in would you, Sylvia? And perhaps a nice pot of tea?’ Sir Norman opened the lower draw to his desk and, as the door to his office opened, reached for a fresh packet of Garibaldi biscuits. ‘I was expecting you half-an-hour since. I trust it all went …’

He looked up into Trevor’s bruised and bloodied face. The younger man’s shirt was open at the neck and stained with spots of blood. His tie was askew and he held a handkerchief to a swollen eye.

‘… Well.’ Sir Norman sat back in his chair and his smile vanished. ‘What happened?’

Trevor took a hesitant step towards the desk. ‘Colonel Hill assigned me four of his men.’ He had trouble forming the words due to his split and swollen lower lip. ‘It was as many as could fit into the car. He assured me they were his best.’

‘So Cross was waiting for you,’ Denning nodded. ‘He was ready. Someone must have tipped him off, damn it. Someone –’

‘No,’ Trevor interrupted, taking another step closer. ‘No he really wasn’t. He didn’t suspect a thing. In fact to begin with he just sat in his chair and looked at me with that stupid grin of his.’ He rubbed his jaw. ‘I think some of my teeth are loose.’

‘What happened?’

‘I think I really ought to go to the hospital,’ Trevor added. ‘My ribs hurt, I think some might be broken –’

‘Trevor! For God’s sake, man, tell me what happened?’

Daniel moved through passport control at London City airport with more ease than he thought possible. He’d half-expected to be apprehended even before catching the short-haul flight from Girona, forty kilometres northwest from Pineda, to Carcassonne, a short distance over the mountains into France, but both airports had been free from any Initiative agents.

He completed the convoluted journey to London City from southern France via Bordeaux and then Schiphol Amsterdam in the Netherlands; the long-winded route designed to throw off any unwanted attention. The Initiative might have kept a look out for him at the major airports but it was unlikely they’d have sufficient surveillance at, or from, all European ones. He knew he his plan had worked as he slammed the taxi door and requested to be dropped off at an address in Shoreditch. If his I.D. documents had raised any alarms then he wouldn’t have made it past the immigration booths. The fleeting thought of disappointment flashed through his mind – perhaps a part of him hoped that they would try and snatch him, at least it would have sped up the process.

He’d never been to the Shoreditch address before; in fact the closest he had ever got to northwest London was when his year group at school went to watch a production of Romeo and Juliet at the Barbican centre. The address in Hoxton Street had been provided by Pickford, My cousin lives there, he had told Daniel. He ain’t as good lookin’ as me and neither is he as smart but he is dependable. If you need somewhere to stay while you’re over there then he’s your man.

‘Just got back from holiday, have you?’ the cab driver asked, breaking him out of his thoughts. The man stared at him in the rear view mirror.

‘Yeah, something like that.’

‘Been anywhere nice?’

Daniel looked out of the window across the marina to the ExCel centre. ‘Just … you know, around.’

‘I went to Portugal last year,’ the driver continued. ‘Wife’s choice. It was all right, I suppose; plenty of sun, nice beach. The beer wasn’t too bad. I even managed to find a decent greasy that did a pretty good Full English, which was surprising really considering all that fish and strange stuff they like to eat over there.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I mean sardines aren’t too bad when they’re in a can with tomato sauce but when they’re cooked fresh with their head still on? Nah, not for me. It was like the little buggers were lookin’ at me with their weird white eyes. Wouldn’t touch ‘em with a barge pole.’

‘No.’

‘The missus even tried to get me to eat some of that squid. Have you ever tried it? I wouldn’t touch that neither. Horrible stuff. I told her that if God had wanted us to eat rubber then he wouldn’t have given us taste buds. Know what I mean?’

‘Yeah.’

‘France; there’s another place where they eat some funny stuff. The wife made me go there a couple of years back. I mean, frog’s legs? What’s the deal with that? And snails? Seriously? Why would anyone in their right mind choose to eat snot?’

‘Look, I’m sorry but it’s been a long flight and I’m really tired. Could we just … not talk?’

‘All right, suit yourself.’ The driver squared his shoulders. ‘Just tryin’ to be friendly.’

‘I know, I know. It’s just that I’ve got a bit of a headache and it’d be nice to sit here quietly.’

‘Sure. Whatever.’

The remainder of the journey was spent in forced silence and the cab driver gave only the faintest of a gruff cheers when Daniel gave him fifty pounds as a tip.

Daniel gazed up at the row of terrace buildings as the taxi pulled away from the kerb, shielding his eyes from the sun shining off the high windows. The terrace had shops and restaurants on the ground floor but was otherwise plain, unremarkable; commonplace – just as he’d suspected it would be. If Pickford’s cousin were anything like his black-market relative then not standing out from the ordinary would be his number one means of camouflage. Despite the difference in accents this could very well have been Pickford’s little piece of Chinatown and Daniel knew that whatever lay behind the door of number 157a – squeezed in between a Dry Cleaners and a Gastro pub – would be a world away from what it appeared to be.

A market was in full swing along most of the length of Hoxton Street, with traders calling out to the passers-by, and it made Daniel think about his last morning spent in Spain; the last time he had seen Eleanor.