Spy Thriller - Prologue & Chapter 1 (DRAFT)

Prologue

Daniel lunged at the figure, desperate to avert the attack, and the bullet missed him, flying just shy of its intended victim. But the horror on the onlookers’ faces made him spin to his right, and the sight that awaited him told the full story. The man he had been trying to reach was dead. Nobody could survive a shot to the head at this range…

Daniel found himself re-living the events of that day, and only now could he realise how difficult it had been to tell the difference between the attacker, the defender, and the victim. Everything now, Daniel’s every thought and every action were focussed on righting this terrible wrong. He must clear his name, punish the criminals, and protect the State.

Chapter 1

It had seemed like hours when the aircraft reached the drop zone and the red light illuminated over Daniel Moss’s head. His training kicked in and he went through a mental checklist, each item like a familiar worn-smooth bead on a rosary, until he was ready. Then, there came that familiar feeling, the exhilarating white-knuckle, pit-of-your-stomach rush that had nothing to do with fear, and everything to do with honour and duty. Daniel was no stranger to this kind of action. He was no green first-timer. Parachute jumping, night exercises, assault course training, and the arcane rules of engagement were what kept him alert, kept him sharp, and kept him sane in a crazy world. He glanced up and the loadmaster looked him straight in the eye, appraising him, with the slight sneer that comes easy to a man who does not jump himself.

“Ready?” the loadmaster asked with considered irony.
Daniel, not a man to be crossed, gave the OK signal, and stood ready.
“Safety off. Five, four, three, two…”

Daniel was out of the plane a split second before the loadmaster could shove him out, mindful that the older man’s fifty year-old reflexes were not as honed as his, and carefully considering the effect of altitude, wind speed and weather conditions on today’s drop. He looked out at the green terrain below, found his bearings, and brought his considerable intellect to bear on the task, for this mission was vital and failure was not an option. Daniel knew that he was more than equal to the challenge and as his feet brushed the grassy surface and he came to a textbook roll-stop, his mind exulted in a job well done. Crouching, eyes scanning for movement like a trained hawk, he looked around and saw once more what his mind had been focusing on for thousands of metres: ‘East Hampton Flying and Parachuting Club – Non-Members Welcome – Jumping Every Sunday’.

What had seemed like hours had been twenty minutes on a Sunday morning. Daniel, a glorified librarian from Monday to Friday, had completed his mission and would be home in time for his roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

Parachuting. Check. Next Sunday would bring another adventure.


Monday morning is never kind, unless you are one of those crypto-American, psycho-babbling, garbage pedlars who find themselves, like, totally centred, and in a serene place right now. To be honest, however, Monday morning at 7.45, on a tube in the scrag-end dinge of old London-town, is probably not the centre that the pseudo-intelligentsia are mind warping into. No, London, and in particular its underground train network is dirty, squalid, and even on a cold February morning, it makes you sweat like a paedophile at a playground.

Daniel Moss had come, quite literally, falling back to earth with a bump. Monday morning, pre-coffee, post-sixty-minute journey on public transport and suffering from both a hangover and stimulation withdrawal, Daniel’s mood hung over him like the silken shroud of his weekend parachute. Every Monday morning was like this and Daniel fought with himself to keep an even keel through to Friday evening when the real living began again. Sitting on the tube, he thought in terms of rhyming pessimism: trudge; drudge; grudge. The lumbering trudge to work, followed by the monotonous drudge at work and the inevitable grudge that he bore towards both work and his fourth decade. What had happened? What had gone wrong? Trudge; drudge; grudge. It was like one of those tongue-twisting, onomatopoeic graphic poems that teachers like to pawn on thick children to make them think that poetry is not really for the elite. Trudge, drudge, grudge, trudge, drudge, grudge. Repeat it over and over, and you get the sound of the tube train, hammering in your Monday morning mind.

Daniel thought of the week stretching out in front of him. What should have been an exciting career move from an academic library to the Ministry of Defence had turned out to be a dud.
Daniel’s first day at the Ministry of Defence had lifted his spirits and raised his expectations. His mentor showed him around the facility and showed him to a shared office.

“You can expect to rotate from one assignment to another for the first year. However, in your case, we may accelerate this, given your experience and your specialisms. Security data transfer is a vital element of our work and we’ll need you to work with our intelligence specialists on a system we’ve been having problems with. Don’t worry, though, it’s just one of the many things we’ll have you working on.”

It had all sounded so plausible. Daniel could look forward to years of exciting and diverse work in the MoD, transferring from one special project to another as they required his expertise. Daniel knew he was a rare find for the MoD, an information specialist, with a background in secure data transfer, and with a security vetting of singular clarity. It was almost too good to be true.
And so Daniel’s first weeks had been a whirlwind of excitement and optimism, as he delved deeper and deeper into the heart of the British establishment.

However, just one month after starting work at the MoD, the government had fallen, unmanned in the face of a wave of unforeseen circumstances and breathtaking hubris, to be replaced by the former opposition in a handover of power that was little more than a regular and well-choreographed flip-flop of Labour to Tory, Tory to Labour. The Ministry of Defence job, that should have put Daniel’s hands on the pulse of defence information, serving national security, and doing his bit for the realm, was blown out of the water. Now, as a Senior Information Officer, Daniel found himself spending hours every day, sequestered in a tiny, locked office, underground, for God’s sake, working on PANDORA.

The former Labour government had been riding on a wave of political apathy, when three things happened in the space of a single month. The sudden death of the new King, and the unseemly battle for the regency, had brought about sympathy for his young daughter, but shed unwelcome light on the courtiers and minor royals, the blue-blooded hangers-on, who saw the girl-queen as little more than carrion. Then, the turn-down, that sounds like what a maid might do to a hotel room bed ***CLUMSY***, but in fact was the source of many a nightmare, turned into a deep recession, and then a profound depression, and the debate over who should wear the ancient and very heavy royal crown started to look superfluous. With Britain on its economic knees, and unable to look up to the balcony of Buckingham Palace for symbolic leadership, horror struck the capital city. Four teenage Saudi exchange students met at Leicester Square, split up, stood outside the House of Commons, Harrods, the Tate Gallery and the new Wembley*** Stadium, and blew themselves and 368 Saturday tourists, shoppers and soccer fans into what might have turned out to, indeed, be the kingdom of heaven. A reeling nation looked to its Prime Minister. But the red-brick, call-me-Jack, former shop steward misread the times. Instead of Churchillian steadfastness, Thatcherite balls, or even Blairite faux-Diana tugging at heartstrings, the PM looked increasingly like a scared estate agent and the writing was on the walls.

Enter Her (tiny) Majesty’s leader of the opposition. Marcus Duncan took the country by storm, speaking appealingly to the masses, the pundits, and the media, and calling for a vote of no confidence, an easy piece of political manoeuvring when there is a majority of three, and the government relies on Plaid Cymru. The vote was called and Duncan won. A relieved and grateful country cheered, not realising in its bovine obeisance that Duncan had not said a word of substance during the inevitable flurry of spin-doctor inspired bullshit. So the nation cheered Marcus Duncan. All, that is, except for Daniel Moss, whose life was to change forever. He remembered the new Prime Minister’s speech:

Fear will turn to the steady gaze of the righteous. Poverty will turn to prosperity. The seeds of doubt that this country can be great will be re-sown with the giant Oaks of freedom. Light will come and the dark hours of the past will fade, replaced by the blazing brightness of hope. We will do this. You and I. Together.

Early on in the new government’s administration, Daniel had been called for a meeting and told by none other than the Defence Secretary himself, that he was to be promoted to a senior post in the MoD’s information management department.

“We all expect great things from you, Moss,” the minister had whispered, as he shook Daniel by the hand, and led him out into a new, and unexpected, future.