Chapter Nine
At five a.m. the next morning, Jamie was awoken from his sleep by an unexpected phone call. Byron stirred next to him.
“Mr. Love, it’s Emerson,” Emerson stated perfunctorily on the other end. “We’re taking you off the undercover detail. We need you back at headquarters.”
Jamie was stupefied.
“But… why?”
“Concerns have been expressed about your working relationship with Mr. Ashworth. We just think it’s for the best.”
Jamie’s mind cycled to put the pieces together. Concerns? Expressed by whom? It didn’t take long for the pieces to click into place. His conversation with Byron in the corridor of Khemidi’s apartment. Warwick would have heard all of it through Byron’s concealed microphone. Jamie felt himself getting angry.
“Concerns?! The only reason we know Khemidi’s movements is because of me!” Jamie protested, unable to hide his annoyance.
“The decision has been made.”
A subsequent effort by Byron to change Emerson’s decision over the phone was equally unsuccessful. The obvious emotion with which Byron fought for Jamie’s re-instatement only fed into Emerson’s belief that it was right to keep them working apart.
“You do know we’re not going to be given any more assignments together now?” Jamie concluded, shaking his head.
“I’ll talk to Camilla when I get back,” Byron said. “You haven’t seen me put my foot down!”
Jamie smiled. Why did everything Byron say sound like he was flirting?
“Make sure you come back in one piece!” Jamie warned.
“I’ll be fine. They have a separate team tagging Khemidi. I’ll be safe. Why are you so concerned anyway?” Byron smiled. “Something you want to do to me when I get back?”
***
As Jamie walked by the water’s edge of the marina in Royal Victoria Square, he couldn’t help the emotions building up inside of him. So much had changed for the better in the last few days. He’d found success in a new job, and in Byron, found a love he didn’t think was possible. He was sad there had to be a sour note in being relegated back to headquarters at the most crucial point in the operation. Still, if they prevented Keith Campbell from being harmed, that was ultimately the most important thing, Jamie decided.
At this early hour of the morning, Royal Victoria Square was almost deserted. A small group of cosplayers socialized in the distance, getting ready for a comic book convention taking place later at the nearby exhibition center.
It was coming up to seven a.m. and Byron would have left the hotel by now. At that moment, he’d be on his way into the center of Canary Wharf to keep close watch over Keith Campbell. As a member of the British Intelligence Service, Byron would be acting purely in the capacity of a civilian; he had no powers of arrest. Mr. Campbell wouldn’t even know Byron was there, either. Byron would be like a guardian angel, hovering in the background.
Long Watch didn’t have enough “dirt” to instigate the arrest of Khemidi yet. The plan was to wait until Khemidi was en route to Mr. Campbell, and then notify the authorities. By that point, whatever killing method Khemidi planned to deploy could be seized as evidence. With a separate team tailing Khemidi, he’d never get close enough to put anyone at risk.
That was the plan at least. But something was bothering Jamie. The clues had been there for some time… but it was only now, as the emotions over being demoted swirled in his mind, that they started to come together. His brain was wired to spot patterns, to detect anomalies… and a pattern was forming in his brain that could not be good at all. Up in the distance, the cosplayers played the Monster Cloner game using their phones. Their actions were almost hypnotic…
Jamie was thinking about the deaths of Khemidi’s previous targets. Each method completely different. Each method designed to look like an accident. But why would Khemidi adopt different methods? And why would he hide his handiwork? Long Watch had linked Khemidi to each of the killings because he’d met with the victims immediately prior. But where was the evidence he actually had killed them? Could they have been killed because they met with Khemidi?
His mind flashed back to the numbers in the steam room. Jamie knew he’d come across those number combinations before – and he remembered where. Computer programming. That type of binary sequence was consistent with computer programming.
He thought of his research on Khemidi: Khemidi’s association with the Filipino crime gang, Blue Pangong back in 2003. Blue Pangong were linked with numerous criminal activities, including drug smuggling and terrorism. But rumors also had circulated of a fleeting connection to another activity: cyber warfare. Rumors of this kind had been especially rife around 2000 with the dawn of the millennium and the Year 2K bug.
No one had worked out how Khemidi made his money. He’d made his wealth almost overnight. To transfer funds in and out of a bank account seemed very much the ability of someone skilled in computer programming. Not to mention all the app inventors in attendance at his party… Jamie noted.
Then there was the biggest pattern of all. The final sequence of clues. Monster Cloner. Coverage of the game in the news had been extensive. The game that had taken the world by storm; just shy of one billion people had downloaded it. But the news coverage wasn’t just regarding its success but about attempts to ban it, too. First in China, then the U.S., then Russia… and soon, the U.K. In fact, a parliamentary debate was scheduled to be taking place in Westminster next week. Could the corresponding countries be a co-incidence?
If Jamie had drawn the right connections, the conclusion was startling. Suppose Khemidi had developed some form of “cyber back-door” or “cyber tool” that worked in conjunction with the Monster Cloner game? He would need a government insider to get the technology implemented on a national scale. All three of Khemidi’s so-called “victims” had the political clout to do that. Keith Campbell has the political clout to do just that, too.
The only question that remained was if all the political insiders had been acting independently of their governments… seduced by bribes perhaps… who had killed them? And who would have wanted to make it look like an accident? The natural and chilling conclusion: each country’s own government.
Long Watch was placing its own spies at risk to tail Khemidi and Campbell—so Jamie doubted Long Watch’s involvement. But he thought back to his briefing with Camilla. She’d explained how MI5 had assigned Long Watch to identify who Khemidi’s next victim was. Was it conceivable that MI5 actually had been using Long Watch to uncover a political traitor?
And if that was the case, what fate did they have planned for that traitor? Keith Campbell, and anyone near him—including Byron—was in immediate danger.