Sam was asleep.
After the startling revelations of Project Hailstorm, Etheridge had decided to change the topic of conversation. They would get to it, he’d promised Sam, but when his mind was clear.
They had a couple more beers, enough to take the edge off the sickening truth and soon, tiredness laid claim to Sam’s body. He had been through the wars that day, with his fight through the station not only resulting in his face being busted open but also taking a swan dive off a balcony.
Sam was lucky he hadn’t been paralysed.
Or worse.
But as Sam slept through the pain, both physical and emotional, Etheridge looked out into the dark fields that backed onto his mansion.
Life was certainly different now.
Gone were the days of board meetings and small talk. The endless grind of traffic jams and demanding customers. A trophy wife, who wanted to know how much money he had every week.
Now, he was hiding in plain sight, helping the UK’s most wanted man go after its most protected.
He had never felt more alive.
The stiffness in his right knee reminded him the peril he’d faced to arrive at the moment. He was only a matter of metres away from where he was beaten, tortured, and then shot, the bullet shattering his kneecap beyond a full recovery.
But soldiers wore their scars proudly, and while he wasn’t on the frontline of the war like Sam, he knew he had a role to play.
He wasn’t pulling the trigger on the gun, but he was damn sure going to make sure Sam had everything he needed to be able to.
As he sipped at his coffee, Etheridge thought about the last time he got a full night’s sleep. Since Sam had returned two days ago, he’d been working round the clock. It would eventually catch-up on him, it always did, but for now, the regular caffeine and adrenaline was enough to get by.
They were so close.
They had the access to the files, proving beyond all doubt that Ervin Wallace was not only the world’s biggest terrorist, but had also used the UK government has a smoke screen to portray himself as a hero.
It was damning evidence, enough to put the man behind bars for the rest of his life.
But the cyber security attached to the files was unlike anything Etheridge had seen, which frustrated and impressed him in equal measure.
While they’d worked around the fingerprint access parameters, the files had what he’d described as an inbuilt ‘anchor directive’. The term was lost on Sam, but essentially, it pinned the file to its hard drive.
Meaning they couldn’t transfer the files from the USB stick.
Sam had suggested sending the USB stick to the BBC, allow them to break the news and sit back and watch Wallace get brought to his knees. It would be unsatisfying on a personal level, but justice would be done. Etheridge quickly dismissed the idea on the grounds of the security of the files.
As they couldn’t be manipulated, there was no way of proving the legitimacy of them. Wallace’s reckless pursuit of Sam was evident enough, but he could easily dismiss them as fakes.
They needed a confession.
Etheridge had clocked the sparkle in Sam’s eye as he suggested it, knowing that after discovering Wallace was the man who left him for dead all those years ago, Sam was aching for his chance to face the man.
But it wouldn’t be easy.
Etheridge had pulled up all the information he could on Wallace’s location, with little of it providing useful. He had moved from his usual abode to a remote location, a government safehouse which was not recorded on any database that Etheridge could gain access to. While he was running a few automatic programs to check other databases for anything resembling a bread crumb, the chances were slimmer than none.
What he did have, was access to government instructions to provide a motorcade for an emergency COBRA meeting first thing Monday morning. With Sam’s emergence, the presence of Blackridge, and the mass panic caused at Liverpool Street Station earlier that day, Wallace had been summoned for a discussion with the prime minister and his cabinet to discuss the potential threat.
Sam was being painted as a potential threat, but surely, Wallace’s conduct would be brought to light.
That wasn’t enough for Sam, and as he yawned, he told Etheridge to plot the exact route and fill him in when he woke up.
Now, as the spring evening developed a slight chill, Etheridge stepped away from the window, lifted his arms above his head and stretched his back out. He had spent a small fortune on making his desk and seat as comfortable as possible, but there was only so much money could buy.
After a few more moments of stretching, he sat back down at the desk, took a swig from his coffee and went back to it.
As the train filtered into another Tube station, Singh took a few more deep breaths, leant forward and closed her eyes. Her drunken stupor had slowly alleviated, leaving nothing but a thumping headache and the very real possibility of projectile vomit as one of the final trains on what had been a strange Sunday made its way to the station nearest to Helal’s location. As the crow flies, the distance from Euston to Perivale wasn’t huge, but navigating the underground tube system, while drunk had proven a harder task than Singh had anticipated.
She’d taken a train two stops in the wrong direction, before cursing herself loudly, drawing the attention of a number of commuters making their way home.
She looked like a drunk which had angered her but as she stumbled through the station to correct her mistake, she realised she was near to rock bottom.
Luckily for her, a small off-licence, no more than a shutter in the wall, was still open and she
