The Desirables
Chapter ThreeThe command centre was buzzing. In the centre there was a large desk, complete with vertical panels, containing monitors and screens, each displaying vital information about the running of La Triste’s empire. The desk was on a raised platform and was formed in three-way shape, one central desk and another two coming off symmetrically at roughly one hundred and fifty degree angles. Entrapped in the desks were illuminated buttons, each performing a vital function that only La Triste himself knew how to operate. The entire area was surrounded by bulletproof glass.
Down below the central platform, there were more desks, complete with vertical information panels, however these weren’t joined together. At each, sat an operator, wearing a helmet with a dark visor, open from the visor down, and a microphone. There were roughly thirty of these desks, lain out in a symmetrical shape around the central platform. The non-grid-like pattern made it difficult for the armed patrol guards to keep a regular patrol route. Each guard wore green and brown camouflage jackets and trousers and they were heavily armed, carrying grenades along a belt, and AK-47 machine guns planted firmly in their hands. The group of ten guards were not there solely for the purpose of protecting the staff and the facility, but they were also being paid by La Triste to make sure the staff work.
The whole room was coloured in blues – the desks and panels were dark blues, illuminated in light blue. The sides of the desks were lined in red and with strobe lighting rigs, all designed by La Triste, showing he was proud of his home nation and still a patriot despite how the French government had treated him.
La Triste entered at the left corner of the room. The doors slid open with a hiss and all eyes turned to him. The dark light hid his disfigurements, but he was still instantly recognisable as he walked in and out of his maze of desks. La Triste was a very commanding figure. At just over six feet tall, he towered over most, but he was athletically built, rather than being made of muscle and strength.
The Frenchman made his way up the stairs to his platform. Once he reached the top, he pressed his finger onto a touch pad. After a moment, the red light above the touch pad turned green and the magnetically sealed door opened. La Triste stepped inside, closing the door behind him and sealing himself in. Once he had made his way to his control desk, he put on his headset – a simple set of earphones and a microphone – and spoke. “Right, what is the problem?”
“I’m sending the images up to you, Mr. La Triste,” one of his henchmen said. “I’ll load them into video four.”
La Triste turned to his right to look at the video screen. On it was a news bulletin, produced by Satellite TV. They were live outside his hospital in Iquitos – a female reporter was giving details about, what the local authorities believed to be a brutal murder. The whole area had been cordoned off around the hospital and the hospital had been put on high security risk, allowing no new patients to be admitted.
“Who was killed?” La Triste growled into his microphone angrily. He knew the pressures of journalism well, and he also knew that if any of the media had the initiative, they might well work out what he was up to.
“We don’t know, yet, sir,” the same henchman replied. “The full details haven’t been released. It appeared that the victim didn’t have any identification on his body – all we know is that it was a doctor and male. We don’t even know if he was one of ours.”
La Triste sighed. “As soon as you find out, report it back. If it is one of mine, we’ll need to sort something out.” La Triste was worried. If it were one of his doctors, by the time they came to attempt to identify the body it would be difficult, especially as, according to the Peruvian government’s records, his doctors didn’t exist.
Outside the hospital, one of the nurses stepped down out of the back of a police van. She had just given an interview on the events that had occurred earlier that day. It seemed, however, that her interview had been much shorter than anyone else’s that day.
As she got onto the road, she spoke to the officer in charge of keeping the crowds back and was allowed back into the hospital. After two or three minutes she returned with her handbag and headed home. However, once she had gotten past the cameras and around the corner, away from prying eyes, she stopped and removed her dress. Underneath, she wore a tight black, long sleeved tee shirt and dark trousers, tight to her legs. She put the nurses uniform into a bin in the street and began to ruffle around in her bag. After a moment, she pulled out a silenced pistol and placed it inside a holster on her ankle, under her trousers. It was still warm.
After some more routing around, she pulled out a swipe card and a set of keys. After dropping the two items into her pocket, she placed her bag into the bin with the uniform and walked off. Once she was out of sight, the bin exploded, destroying the bag and uniform.
About an hour earlier, she was wearing her same clothes, walking towards La Triste’s hospital along the quiet road. The hospital’s policy dictated that employees weren’t allowed to smoke inside the building, so, after months of surveillance, she discovered that a group of nurses take regular breaks to have a cigarette outside one of the staff rooms.
Just after midday, one nurse regularly took her break on her own. She would leave her keys in the staff room, and wedge the door open with a fire extinguisher. After months of watching, she decided that this nurse would be the best one to target.
As she noticed the nurse come out to take her break, she locked up her hotel room and began to run down the stairs to the lobby. She knew that she only had about three minutes before the window for her entrance had closed and she would have to find an alternative way in. As she ran through reception, she hit the bellboy, knocking the suitcases from his hand, one of them opening on impact with the floor, scattering clothes across the lobby. She continued running, however, not wanting to miss her opportunity.
She rounded the corner and into the street. She slowed to cross the road towards the hospital, but once over and to the pavement, she picked up her speed and headed around the back of the hospital building. As she reached the back, the nurse had just dropped her cigarette butt onto the floor and stood on it, putting it out. The nurse turned to head back into the building, but was met from behind by a swift blow to the side of the head, knocking her, silently, unconscious.
She dragged the nurse into the hospital staff room and removed her uniform in the toilet. After putting it on herself, she locked the nurse into a store cupboard she had found on the hospital blueprints, making sure that it was only possible to open the door from the outside, should the nurse come round before she was supposed to.
It was later that day that La Triste had been alerted to the killing. He was standing, looking at his monitors, when he suddenly growled down the microphone. “Do we have any security camera footage from the hospital, then?” There was a touch of desperation in his voice.
“I’m afraid not, sir,” a voice replied. “The cameras were disabled moments before the killing. I’ve looked at nearly all of the security camera footage and there isn’t a single shot of anyone disabling the cameras.”
“What about the camera in the security control centre?”
“That died seconds before the rest of them, sir.”
It was clear that the infiltrator had known what she was doing. After settling into her new uniform, she picked up the nurse’s keys from the staff room table and walked over to the locker that matched the number on the nurse’s badge. After opening the steel door, she took just the handbag out of the locker and shut it again, hanging the keys from her waist belt.
Before continuing, she bent over and took her pistol out from its holster on her ankle and placed it into the bag. She then put the bag over her shoulder and left the staff room. Having memorised the hospital’s blueprints, she headed straight for the reception area to try and find out which clinic her target was working in today. As she reached the desk, she asked the receptionist, but wasn’t given the reply she expected.
“Who are you?” The receptionist enquired. “I’ve never seen you around before.”
“I’m nurse Flinchwood,” she said, “I’ve just arrived.” She spoke with a husky, rather more masculine voice than her petite appearance would have suggested. She stood about five feet five inches tall, with short, blonde hair and blue eyes. Her complexion was perfect, along with her body – perfectly shaped with all the curves most men dreamt of. “I’m supposed to be working with the doctor in his clinic today. Could you direct me, please?”
After a very long, and somewhat uncomfortable pause, the receptionist told her the whereabouts of the doctor, and how to get there. However, she was informed that she had to go the long way around, due to a rather contagious infection that was being passed through one of the wards.
“What infection?”
“An entire ward of cancer patients have been pronounced dead this week alone. It was Ward 2B, so you’ll have to avoid the area,” the receptionist said. “The staff seem to be fine, but have been kept in quarantine for precautions.”
The intruder began to walk away, but was suddenly called back by the receptionist. The receptionist beckoned her closer and, once she was just inches from her face, the receptionist spoke.
“What I’ve just told you,” she said, “is in the strictest confidence. For obvious reasons, the hospital doesn’t want this information getting out, so I’ll be grateful if you kept this information under your hat. OK?”
“Understood.” The woman said, before leaving down the corridor to the doctor’s clinic. Halfway down the corridor, she turned off, swaying from the directions given by the receptionist. Reaching the end of her new corridor, she came to a staircase and began to make her way up to the second floor.
Once there, she took and left and then a right and came to a single door. She looked in through the window and spotted that there were two men working in the room. Suddenly, one of them turned to face her, and she dodged to the side, standing with her back to the wall next to the door. As the door opened, the man turned away from her and began down the corridor. With another swift blow, she knocked him out cold and moved his lifeless body into a laundry bag, out of sight of the other hospital staff.
She turned back to the room the man had come from and opened the door. The other worker still had his back to the door as she entered. She reached down and removed her pistol from its holster and attached the silencer. Seconds before she pulled the trigger, she stopped and looked upwards to see a security camera. She reached up and pulled the power lead out of the back of it, shutting it down.
She took a step forward and shot the other worker in the back of the head, killing him instantly. She stepped up to the control panel where he was working, and scanned over the buttons. She found the necessary button – the camera power button – and pressed it, silently disabling each and every security camera in the hospital building. As she was leaving the security centre, she bent over and slid the body to the back wall, by the door, taking the keys off it as she did so. With the door being the only window, the body was now well hidden. She left the room and locked it.
She turned and followed the same route as that she had taken a few minutes earlier. Once down the stairs, she continued on to the doctor’s clinic, just over fifty yards down the corridor.
She turned into the clinic. There were no patients in the waiting room – three rows of red, cushioned chairs, complete with tables in front, covered in piles of old magazines and newspapers and, at the back of the room, was a desk with a computer and a trolley where patients’ files would normally be kept. A nurse walked out of the small office at the side and into the consultation room where the doctor was. After a moment, she came out and spotted the woman.
“Oh,” the nurse said, “is it changeover time, already?”
“Yes,” the woman said, “go and take a break. Then you need to go up to reception, the rota has been changed.”
“Oh,” the nurse said again, “I should be on my lunch in five minutes, so I’ll take it early and check the rota after.”
“Just before you go,” the woman started, “is there anything I need to know to complete the rounds here?”
“Nothing I can think of, off the top my head. The doctor’s in the consultation room over there,” she indicated the consultation room that she had just left, “he can fill you in with any important details.”
“OK,” the woman said. “Thanks.”
After the nurse had left, the woman took out the silenced pistol from her bag and entered the consultation room. It was small and was furnished with a hospital bed to the right of the door, a screen covering a changing area on the back wall, a wash basin next to the door and a seat with a strange contraption to its left. The doctor was sat on the bed, with his back to the door, finishing his paperwork.
“I told you I didn’t want to be disturbed!” He shouted in a cockney accent. He seemed overly angry for someone with nothing to hide, so she safely assumed he was one of the targets.
The woman didn’t reply at all. Instead, she aimed her pistol and shot him in the back of the head. The doctor’s body dropped to the floor. After a moment, she moved up to the body and unclipped his keys from his belt. She then took his wallet out of his pocket, removed his swipe card and replaced it, slightly turning the body as she did. As the body turned over, we are able to see the name badge – ‘Dr. Masias, Consultant Tumour Specialist’.
The woman turned and left the room, calmly. She then carried on to the reception area and called the police, explaining she had just found the body and hung up, before waiting for the authorities to arrive.
Back in his command centre, La Triste worried. He had taken his headset off and was staring intently at the monitors in front of him, trying to work out what had happened from the limited information he was receiving from the news stations and also trying to work out what he should do. It was certainly possible that the authorities were on to him.
He placed both hands on the desk in front of him and let his head drop forward. His hair was no longer nearly done, but shabby due to the number of times had ran either his fingers or his hands through it.
Suddenly, he noticed that a red light had begun to flash on his control desk. After a moment, a siren began to sound throughout the room, signalling an intruder. At first thought, he had thought Rex had escaped, but he immediately discovered this wasn’t the case when he turned to the door the intruder had come through. Stood in the doorway, armed to the teeth, was a small, blonde haired woman. She shot one of the guards that had begun to run at her and dived forward for cover behind one of the desks.
With her back against the rear of a desk, she took one of the three grenades off her belt, removed the pin and threw it over the top of the vertical panel attached to her cover. The grenade smashed into the bulletproof glass of La Triste’s platform. As it exploded, there was no damage done to the screen.
With a flick of her hair, she turned to the left and spotted two guards running at her. So she used one of the two remaining hand grenades to kill the pair of them, before using the last to destroy two of La Triste’s desks, killing the workers at them.
She stood and ran down the back wall of the command centre, shooting at the oncoming guards as she did. She killed one, but her weapon jammed, rending it almost completely useless, before she was able to kill the second. She ducked and dived to avoid being hit by the oncoming bullet fire, and used the butt of her gun to smash into the second guard’s face as he was reloading his weapon to try a second assault. She knocked him to the floor, unconscious, and threw away her broken weapon.
She bent down to pick up his machine gun weaponry, but stopped when she heard a gun reload. “Freeze!” One of the guards was pointing his gun right at her head. She stood up straight and raised her hand. Another two had arrived as reinforcements and she gave up willingly. One of the guards raised his weapon to shoot her, but stopped on hearing La Triste’s voice.
“Is she secure?” The Frenchman asked. Once he had heard a positive reply, he said “bring her to me. I wish to speak with her.”
The guards marched her to La Triste’s central, raised platform. From inside the chamber he began to interrogate her, keeping his smug and arrogant persona. “So, Miss Goldheart,” La Triste began, “what made you think you could come here and beat me on my own grounds? Did you honestly believe that your little act of heroism there would fulfil your job remit?”
“Simon La Triste. Still as arrogant as ever.” The woman spoke with an American accent, “your file made interesting reading. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“As I have you,” he replied, “I hope you’ve only been made aware of the positive things about me?”
“I wouldn’t call hiring ex-British criminals into your hospitals ‘positive’.”
“Oh, I would,” he replied. “It is ingenious in its subtleties. I am going to be extremely powerful when all this is over, and there is absolutely nothing you, or your friend from Britain, can do.”
“You should know, by now, La Triste,” she began, “I always work alone. I have no companion from Britain.”
“Well that is funny,” he replied. “I always thought MI6 and the CIA were in close contact. It seems I may have been wrong. I think I shall let you stew for a while before I decide how you will meet your end.” La Triste turned to his guards. “Put her with Murdoch. We’ll see to them in the morning.”
The two guards that had hold of her suddenly turned, pulling her with them. They began to fight with her, dragging her away to the door on the right hand side of the room. She offered up as much resistance as she could, managing to hold them off for a moment. A third guard arrived to help his counterparts out, overpowering her.
They dragged Agent Goldheart away into the holding cell area, as she struggled in vain to get free.
She had heard a lot about Rex Murdoch, even if she had had to accelerate her plans at the hospital because of his rather inconvenient arrival the day before. It was at times like this that she wished the American CIA and the British Secret Service would actually tell each other what the other was doing. They may have been at loggerheads for a while, but it would have made her, and Rex’s, job easier in the long run.
Angela Goldheart was an expert at close range fighting. In this instance, however, she decided that the best course of action would be to wait and allow La Triste this victory, just so that she would have the night to formulate a plan with the infamous Rex Murdoch. She succumbed to the guards’ pressure and allowed herself to be pushed into the holding cell area.
The lights were out and the darkness had filled the cell. As the door opened, Rex squinted. He had been sat on the table, thinking desperately for a way to escape. At first, he thought it was too late, and that he would have to improvise an escape on his way to his ‘amusing’ death.
He stood, expecting armed guards to give him a hit or two as they dragged him out. Instead, a female was thrown into him from the doorway, which was promptly locked behind her. There was a splash as she landed face first on the wet floor. She moaned as she hit it, staying there for a second. She lifted herself up onto her knees.
“Hi,” she said as she stood up. She offered her hand to her cellmate. “Angela Goldheart, American CIA.”
“Rex Murdoch,” he replied, shaking her hand. “British Secret Service. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
© David Mooney 2006