Unknown Evil - A Noah Wolf Thriller Read online

  UNKNOWN EVIL

  Copyright © 2018 by David Archer.

  All right reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

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  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  EPILOGUE

  WHAT'D YOU THINK?

  READY FOR THE NEXT MISSION?

  ALSO BY DAVID ARCHER

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  PROLOGUE

  Early-morning patrols usually left Police Constable Cedric Gilby feeling as if he had outlived his usefulness, and this one was no different. As he walked along the Tower Hamlets streets when the sun was barely even close to peeking over the horizon, the chance of coming across any real crime was pretty slim.

  Occasionally he saw the residual effects of something criminal that happened in the night, but usually, all of the miscreants had finished their mischief long before Cedric was on duty. On this particular morning, he didn’t expect to see anything more criminal than some graffiti, or perhaps a little bit of leftover vandalism from the over exuberant gangs that roamed the streets at night.

  And then, of course, there were the occasional drunken sleepers. They would turn up on the side of the street or down an alleyway, sometimes sleeping in somebody’s flower bed. There were a couple of those up ahead, now, and he quickened his pace a bit. It wouldn’t do for Mrs. McGillicuddy to wake up and find delinquents among her roses.

  “Oi!” Cedric said, kicking the first of them in the foot. “Get up, time to go home.”

  There was no response, so he kicked the foot again. When that still didn’t elicit at least a grumble, he leaned down and grabbed the punk by the arm. A quick tug put him onto his back, and that’s when Cedric saw his face.

  If you could call it a face. There was something terribly wrong with it, a dark cast of some sort over the skin around the cheeks and mouth.

  “Here, what’s this?” He turned and looked at the second person lying there, and realized that that one had the same dark discoloration. He stared for a moment, stepped back and gathered his thoughts, then took up his personal radio. “Northumberland, twenty-seven. I need some help out here, I’ve got two dead bodies, some sort of discoloration on the faces.”

  There was static for moment, and then the dispatcher came back. “Twenty-seven, did you say discoloration on the face?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Some sort of dark discoloration on the lower part of the face, on both of them.”

  “Twenty-seven, stand by. Twenty-seven, avoid all contact with other persons. Keep everyone away from the bodies and from yourself. What is your location?”

  “Um—I’m on Chalgrove Road, where it meets Foyle Road. This is something I ought to be worried about?”

  “Twenty-seven, stand by. Someone is on the way to you. Keep everyone away, and don’t get close to anybody.”

  Cedric signaled that he would comply with the orders, then stepped away from the bodies a few feet. He looked down at his hands, especially his right hand, which actually touched one of the bodies, and wondered if he had somehow become contaminated.

  A siren cut the air, its warbling sending a chill down his spine. Two patrol cars pulled out, followed by an ambulance and another vehicle, the hazardous material vehicle. Two men climbed out of that one wearing what looked like spacesuits, and they approached Cedric carefully.

  “Those are the bodies, then?” asked one of the men. “Did you touch them?”

  Cedric pointed at the first body. “Yeah, I grabbed his arm to roll him over. Is there something contagious about them?”

  “Let’s see your hand,” the man in the spacesuit said. Cedric held it out, and the man sprayed something onto it, then held onto his wrist as he looked carefully at Cedric’s palm. “All right, good, looks like you didn’t come into contact with anything. Do you know if anyone else disturbed them?”

  “Not far as I know,” Cedric replied. “Only they were like this when I got here, that’s all I know. Didn’t see anybody about, I just thought they were sleeping it off.”

  “Yes, well, they’ll be sleeping this one off for a long time. You see that black stuff? We don’t know what it is yet, but it’s some sort of poison. If you’d gotten any on you, you probably would’ve been dead by the time we got here.”

  Cedric looked at his hand, which was glowing pink from the spray the man had put on it. “But this stuff says I’m good, right?”

  “Yeah, but I knew that already. Like I said, if you had touched any of it, you would have been dead before we showed up.”

  Cedric looked at him, then watched as he and his partner laid out big plastic bags. The two of them picked up the bodies and laid them inside the bags, then sealed them tight with zippers and gaskets. Once they were sealed inside, they loaded them onto gurneys and rolled them into the ambulance. That was when Cedric noticed that even the ambulance attendants were wearing the spacesuits.

  The vehicles rolled away and Cedric was left standing there. A constable stepped out of one of the patrol cars and walked up to him. He held out what looked like a surgical mask and motioned for Cedric to put it on.

  “We’re supposed to bring you to hospital,” the man said. “You’re to wear that until we get there, and an inspector will be coming to speak to you while you are there.”

  Cedric nodded, his eyes wide as he put on the mask. Without another word, he climbed into the back of the patrol car and let them drive him away while he stared out the window at the city rolling by. He wondered what it would be like if he had been exposed to whatever poison had killed those two young men. Would he feel a lot of pain? He tried to remember what the scene had actually looked like, but all he could actually remember was the dark, shadowy discoloration around their faces.

  What kind of poison can do that? he wondered. Granted, he was not a real investigator, but there was something about this whole situation that was bothering him. Those lads were
probably alive and healthy only a few hours earlier, most likely out gallivanting about and having fun. Could it be something they got into with drugs? Maybe it wasn’t poison after all, maybe it was just some sort of overdose. Surely there could be side effects like that to some of the drugs that were running wild on the street, couldn’t there?

  The car pulled up in front of the hospital, and one of the policemen stepped out to open his door for him. He got out of the car and looked at the policeman, who simply pointed toward the door into the Accident and Emergency Department. Cedric nodded and walked through the door, where a nurse seemed to be waiting specifically for him.

  “Constable Gilby?”

  “Yes, that’s me,” Cedric replied.

  “Come this way, please,” the nurse said, “and do not remove your mask until a doctor tells you to.”

  “Have I been exposed to something?” Cedric asked as he followed her down a hallway. “Only I’d like to call my wife, if I’m in some sort of danger.”

  “We don’t know as yet,” the nurse said. “At the moment, we’re waiting for word from the Medical Examiner as to just what exposure you might’ve had.” She stopped and turned to look at him, her eyes gentle. “Please don’t be alarmed,” she said. “It’s actually most likely that you’ve not been exposed to anything, but we have to take certain precautions. We actually don’t know yet whether we are dealing with a poison or some sort of biological agent.”

  “But it was just two lads,” Cedric said. “Couple of Broadwater boys, likely. Who would use a biological agent?”

  The nurse stood and looked at him for a moment, then sadly shook her head. “I’m afraid that’s something we haven’t figured out quite yet. The trouble is, there have been a few others who have turned up the same way. The first one was a young lady at Croydon Station, and we didn’t know to take these precautions, then. She had the same discolorations, but everyone who touched her came down with the same symptoms and died within a matter of minutes.” She cocked her head to one side. “How long has it been since you found the bodies?”

  “Why, nigh onto an hour and a half, thereabouts,” Cedric said.

  The nurse smiled. “Then I can safely say you were not exposed. Believe me, Constable, you would already be showing symptoms if you had. Come along, the doctors are waiting. They’ll just confirm what I’m saying, and you can be on your way.”

  The flood of relief that went through Cedric almost knocked him down, but he managed to remain on his feet and follow the nurse. “Oi, I was told to expect a police inspector to meet me here. Is he here yet?”

  The nurse glanced over her shoulder and smiled again. “She is,” she said. “She’s waiting with the doctors for you.”

  Cedric felt his face turn a little red, because he had naturally assumed the inspector would be male. When they entered the examination room, he glanced around and spotted her, and then he felt faint once again.

  “Good morning, Cedric,” Inspector Charlotte Winningham said. “You’re just always sticking your foot into something, aren’t you?”

  Nervously, Cedric smiled into the face of the woman who had tried repeatedly to get him fired, then remembered that she couldn’t see past the mask. “Well, and it’s not my fault, is it? I was just doing my rounds, just like I was supposed to. Not my fault these blokes decided to drop dead on my beat.”

  “Of course not,” she said. “I’m only here to get your statement, in case it’s too late to get it later.”

  “Yes, well,” Cedric said, “no worries there. The nurse says I’m likely no danger, or I’d be showing symptoms already.”

  Winningham smiled, but Cedric caught the hint of a scowl in it. “How wonderful,” she said dryly. “Then perhaps you could tell me what you saw this morning.”

  “What I saw? I saw two dead blokes, and both of them with the skin around the mouth turning gray. At first I thought they were only sleeping, maybe passed out from the night’s revelry, but then I saw they were dead. Soon as I saw that, I called in and that’s when I found out they’d been poisoned or something.”

  The inspector looked closely into his eyes. “And you saw nothing to indicate what might’ve happened to them?”

  Cedric spread his arms in a gesture of bewilderment. “’S like I told you,” he said. “They were dead when I found them. I don’t know anything else.”

  Winningham’s smile had faded away. “No,” she said. “Of course you don’t.” She started to turn away, then stopped and looked back at him. “Don’t discuss this with anyone else without my permission,” she said. “We are keeping this all rather quiet for the moment. It might be less than helpful for your career if the broadsheets were to get any information about it. Do I make myself clear?”

  Cedric bit back the scathing reply he wanted to throw at her. “Perfectly clear,” he said. “I’ll say nothing.”

  The smile returned, still holding the sense of repugnance. “See to that, will you?” She turned and walked out as a pair of doctors moved in. One of them obviously wanted to draw blood, and Cedric let out a sigh.

  He hated needles. Hated them.

  * * * * *

  Catherine Potts was known to be a very special person at MI6, and there were those in the organization who were careful to stay on her good side. Over the past couple of years, it had become known—although, never quite confirmed—that she was the British liaison to the American assassination organization known as E & E, the only person in the entire British intelligence community who could request an assassination on behalf of the British government. In addition, she had also been appointed as the Queen’s Royal Ambassador-at-Large, often sent around the world on a moment’s notice to express the wishes of the queen in matters both diplomatic and civil.

  Either way, she was a force to be reckoned with. Nobody at MI6 wanted to be the person to piss her off.

  Catherine was fully aware of the awe with which she was viewed, and had learned many different ways to use it to her advantage. Most days, she simply pretended the situation did not exist, which was guaranteed to make everyone around her slightly nervous. After all, being able to request the help of the American government in eliminating someone that she alone had decided was a threat to British national security made her an extremely powerful person. According to all the rumors, nobody in the government or the Secret Service was authorized to overrule her on that decision; that seemed to indicate that simply being a nuisance to her could be enough to get you killed.

  In reality, Catherine was not authorized to make any such decision on her own. If any agency of the British government decided that someone needed to be eliminated, and that the help of E & E was needed, it was simply a matter of policy to have Catherine present the request. Mr. Lambril, or any other department head, could initiate such a request on their own, without involving her.

  On a particular Monday morning in mid-August, Catherine walked into her office to find the entire staff keeping their eyes averted as she went by. This was usually a sign that there was something going on, something that was going to involve one of her extra personae, and she was therefore not terribly surprised to find a recently decoded communiqué from Allison Peterson, Director of E & E. The seal on the envelope indicated that it had been decoded by Edwin Longmont, who was the ciphers officer for all things related to international liaison activities.

  “BritLi,” it began, the interdepartmental shorthand for British Liaison, indicating that the message that followed was for her eyes only. “Team Camelot in residence Avalon. Recent situations justify a vacation, so the visit is non-official. Please advise Her Majesty that there are no actions currently in operation or planned within the U.K.”

  Catherine grinned. Avalon was the department’s codename for Feeney Manor, the estate that had been purchased during a strange time a year earlier when Team Camelot was actually being hunted by agents of the U.S. government. Those agents were under the control of a terrorist organization, but it was necessary for the team to go into hi
ding. The E & E station chief, Leon Kendall, had received top-secret orders from Neverland instructing him to provide them with cover identities under names that had already been given to them by the station chief in Barcelona, Spain. He had also been informed that they should be independently wealthy, so he had created an online book selling website and set them up as its owners. While the website did earn money, the nearly unlimited funds he placed at their disposal was considerably more than it was ever likely to make in reality.

  When that situation had come to an end, it was because of the efforts of Team Camelot. As a reward, they were allowed to keep the estate as their personal getaway, and this was the first actual recreational visit they had made since that time.

  On the other hand, Allison’s statement that they were there only for vacation was bound to be considered camouflage by her associates. After all, would an organization like E & E ever admit to being on a mission inside a friendly country? Catherine suspected that a few of her coworkers might be worried that the message was intended to confirm that E & E was in the country in order to take one of them out.

  She grinned again. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about any of them trying to give her problems for the next few days.

  The next envelope hadn’t come through the code room. It was addressed directly to her, and the source indicator in the upper left-hand corner bore only a green letter “C,” which meant that it had come straight from the Office of the Chief of SIS. Ever since the days of its first director, Captain Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming, RN, it had been a standard practice for the chief to use that single initial in green ink as a signature for all interdepartmental communiqués.

  Glancing up quickly to be sure no one was likely to walk in on her while she had the message in front of her, she sliced open the envelope and took out the single sheet of paper.

  “Kitty-Cat,” it began. “Kitty-Cat” was the inappropriately affectionate nickname Catherine had been given by Mr. Lambril not long after he was sworn in as the new chief a few years earlier. It was he, in fact, who had recommended her for the liaison post she now occupied, probably because he was her uncle. “There have been three incidents in the last forty-eight hours that involved suspicious deaths from some sort of poison that has yet to be identified. MI5 is convinced we are looking at a potential act of terrorism, but there is literally nothing on any international chatter to support that theory. I want you to take charge of the situation, using whatever assets might be available, and yes, I’m fully aware that some of your Yank friends are hanging about.” It was signed at the bottom with the same green “C.”