Another day, another cafe and another sun burnt day in Byblos.

The children played in the fountain nearby, only to be moved on by an irate police officer. On benches, the city's elders sat around and discussed the days events, staying in the shade and resting as much as possible. The small square was filled with small boutiques, antique shops and the occasional tourist shop, catering for the mainly regional tourists who flock to the Lebanon for it's diverse climate and fabulous ancient ruins.

In the corner however, tucked between a shop selling ancient roman artifacts and a rug boutique was a small book shop. Its wares were set out, dry and dusty in the afternoon sun as the occasional tourist flicked and browsed, before sadly wandering off to catch some more sun or maybe an ice cream.

"Isn't it sad" the man said in an impeccable Cambridge accent as he sipped his coffee ever so slightly before taking a gulp of water from the supplied glass "all those books, I wonder what someone like Joker's staff would have made of it." He looked over at his companion and smiled softly "all of that knowledge, wasting away in the Mediterranean sun."

The man in question was dressed in a smart casual manner, a smart, short sleeve shirt with a paid of lightweight sandy coloured trousers with a pair of impeccable sandals on his feet. His worn features and big bags under his eyes suggested either constant drug abuse or a severe lack of sleep. He stroked through his short and aging brown hair, patches of white starting to show through.

"I would imagine, now with all of this investigation into Joker by various agencies and Parliamentary committees he wouldn't be worrying about such things." The Englishman's companion was an American sounding journalist, dressed casually and wearing a fine pair of sunglasses to match the boldness of his Hawaiian t-shirt.

"Hum! Parliament investigating the British Library?" the Brit snickered quietly "wouldn't have happened in my day."

"How was it like in your day then Mr Taylor?" the American asked, watching Taylor out of the corner of his eye while surveying the scene of tranquility. Looking up a bit, he saw the tall, forbidding silhouette of one of the towers built by the British Library during the crisis of the year before, the afternoon sun blotting out any features he might have seen. It was redundant now, they were dismantling it and selling off the bits for scrap to raise capital for a new revamped city commercial center.

"I wouldn't have one of those blasted things for a start" Taylor said, pointing to the tower "we had no idea, no idea at all. We tried to monitor what was happening, but in the end we found that there were more moles in our organisation than in the Library or Doukensha combined."

"Your organisation?"

Taylor looked at the American, smiled and chuckled quietly "I'm sorry, I haven't really elaborated on who I am" he smiled darkly "or, rather, who I used to be."

"Humour me."

"Brigadier Jeffery Taylor, retired Officer Commanding, Force Research Unit task force 765" Taylor smiled "and very close friend with the infamous Joker."

"Force Research Unit: the organisation within the British Army designed to deliver highly specialised, accurate and targeted intelligence to Army professionals by Army professionals" the American quoted from memory.

"Correct my boy, I see you've done your homework!"

"And what of your relationship with Joker?"

Taylor, stretched a little, took another sip of coffee along with another gulp of water before relaxing once more, taking a long pause before speaking again. The American looked intently at Taylor, waiting for his answer.

"I remember we had first met at Gordonstoun. I was just fresh out of prep school in East Anglia, Joker himself from a more prestigious one in the South West of England. We were both pretty slick individuals and I can tell you, we drove our tutors around the bend!" Taylor chuckled lightly "more because we'd do our work so effortlessly but also in the very arrogant and confident way that we conducted ourselves."

"Doesn't sound like Joker to me."

"Youth, is a wonderful thing, don't get me wrong is isn't the be all and end all, but for that period of your first two decades, you feel unbeatable and impatient to climb the rungs of that ladder to the very top" Taylor learnt back "besides, Joker had an excellent knack of never quite letting on what he was thinking to you. Never, not even to me did he fully reveal his true feelings, thoughts and fears."

"A deliberate barrier?"

"You could say that" Taylor sighed "I remember one time when he had sprained an ankle during rugby practice, he spent most of the week in the residential house with his feet up and we had managed to persuade the master of the house to let me accompany him, care for him, etc," he looked down for a moment to rub his chin, "we talked about everything and anything, but, he always kept me at arms length, he never did quite let on about his hopes and fears for the future."

"What happened then?"

"Eventually we left the school for good and left for University, Cambridge for us, he studied psychology and myself the classics. I had also signed up to the Army while he was head hunted on a tip off by the Security Services MI5. He left for London while I left for Sandhurst yet however we found time to catch up for a relaxing chat in London over a working dinner."

"Sounds like his path was already set."

"In a way, he never seemed to go home, he never talked about his childhood or how he was brought up, he was just steadfastly focused on the future," Taylor smiled darkly, "and how he could influence the future."

"So you said he worked for MI5 then?"

"Oh yes, I was an Officer for Military Intelligence and he was a case officer for MI5 for a year," Taylor finished his coffee and called the waiter over asking quietly in Arabic for an English tea with milk and no sugar before looking back up to the American "noted for his very thorough and elaborate investigation and planning, some of his operations he planned months, if not years in advance" he smiled as he saw the cup of tea arrived, thanking the waiter like an old friend before smiling warmly to the warm beverage in front of him.

"He was that into his job?"

"His intelligence network within the UK was far in advance of ours, years maybe," he chuckled, looking a little embarrassed "he was far more committed in his job than I ever was, I was swept away by the social side of being a British army officer to be concerned with striving to develop the very best Intelligence unit in the western world."

"That was until, Joker left for the British Library?"

Taylor looked up darkly at the American, his face a fierce scowl.

"Yow," the reporter chuckled "did I hit a nerve?" He smiled "not every day that you're asked to monitor a person who you hold very dear to your heart."

Taylor picked up his cup and stirred it with the supplied tea spoon, still glaring somewhat at the American, "let me tell you something" he sneered, "he may have kept me at arms length and hidden things from me, but he was my friend!"

The American watched, keeping quiet, for now.

"He stuck up for me when I was in trouble, he helped me with my studies, he got me drunk when I failed in my conquests for love" Taylor said, eyes narrowed in contempt "myself and Joker we very, very close" he breathed deeply and looked away "which made it tougher for me when I was asked quietly to set up a task force to monitor the British Library."

"And here, we find Task Force 765, headed by an Officer who had drank and schmoozed his way to the top."

"You don't hold your bloody punches do you?" Taylor remarked dryly before smiling painfully "yes, I was put in charge of the whole show, given resources I needed to monitor and build up a picture of what exactly was happening there because, frankly, nobody knew."

"Nobody you say?"

"Nobody." Taylor opened up his palm, "nobody in government, in the security services, the Force Research Unit, not even the Treasury knew what went on underneath the British Museum. Nobody knew how big the compound was, where the billions of pounds of funding was spent on, who was in charge of what, we didn't even have a decent organisational chart!"

"You are saying that British government funded an organisation that was shrouded in complete and utter secrecy even to someone like, say, the Prime Minister?"

"Exactly. The whole organisation worked independently as a whole. We had arrangements to second British Army, Navy and Air Force assets to the Library and they do buy in their own assets sometimes like specially fitted C-130 Hercules, etc but the servicemen are sworn to secrecy and such words were carefully enforced." Taylor learnt back "it was truly my first serious challenge as an Intelligence officer, this was like mapping out the KGB from scratch with only a soviet tourist guide for help."

"So you had to start from scratch and work from the bottom up?"

Taylor nodded "definitely, we seconded rank and file to join the Library, infiltrate various areas and departments and try and gain access to information which could help us build a better picture of the British Library beyond its public face." He paused to take another sip of tea before elaborating "eventually we gradually built up a picture of the British Library and how it was organised. One division that garnered particular interest was the Special operations Division."

"And I take it this was the department Joker headed?"

"It was quite a shock I must admit but yes, he was head of this department, albeit acting head." Taylor looked sad as he gazed into his tea "when he was offered a place in the British Library, he phoned me and arranged to meet me," a pause followed, Taylor apparently choosing his words carefully, "when we met, he said, "do not ask where I am going, for I am merely starting to follow my path in order to save this land from calamity", I enquired what that meant and he talked higher goals and the bigger picture."

"What happened again?"

"And I never saw him in person ever again. All of his words about his passion for shaping the future, his future, the future of his country, they all suddenly took on a starling new meaning." Taylor rubbed his tired eyes "I ordered the task force to focus on investigating anything to do with the Special operations Division."

"He never got in contact ever again after that? Phone? Letter?"

"Once. He was asking for a recommendation for a mercenary. I remembered a very good American who I had seen in the Gulf, Drake Anderson was his name and he wasn't like your average "shoot first, ask questions later" colonial. Quiet, focused, no nonsense and very very clinical in his work I recommended him to Joker. I received a nice 'with complements' note from Joker a week later."

Taylor pulled out a tatty small note and turned it over, pointing to some dark grey penned writing "text however appeared on the back a week later which I read. It was from Joker, he wrote that he had kept allot from me during our close friendship and due to circumstances he was sorry to say that we must part ways. He noted that his 'plan, years in the making, was in motion' although to what plan he was referring to I am not certain."

"Do you think his plan involved one of these" the American asked, pointing to the tower in the background.

"I think so, it could have involved many things" Taylor rubbed his chin again "for example, for a time, we broke the Library's codes and were eavesdropping on this communiques for a period of a month. We had already built up a pretty concrete picture of the staff roles within the SoD, we knew that there was a role of special agent known as "the paper", possibly a superhuman operative with some kind of mental power."

"Possibly, you sound puzzled though, something strange must have popped up."

"Exactly, we knew that the name "paper" is assigned to a person. We initially identified a one Donnie Nakajima to be assigned paper, however, when the British Library suffered from a mysterious fire, there was a flurry of communications between the SoD, Joker and the upper echelons of the British Library, such high parts of the command chain we still do not know about."

"And what was the picture you managed to build up?"

"Most of the messages, while decoded and readable, were full of unrecognisable code and trigger words. Many of the messages were recipes of deserts or sports listings, thus we had to enter yet another stage of decoding to get a decent picture." Taylor ran a hand through his hair "when the picture became clearer, Agent Nakajima had vanished completely from the organisational structure of the SoD."

"Completely?"

"Yes, gone, completely, no details about a transfer, resignation, sacking, criminal conviction, funeral, nothing. He had just vanished," Taylor finished his tea "in his place however was a new name. One Yomiko Readman."

"Did you know more about her than you did about Donnie?"

"Definitely," Taylor nodded rapidly "Donnie was an enigma, we knew he was an orphan, possibly born in Japan but his name could have been a fake one and there was no paper trail back to any orphanage in Japan. Yomiko was far easier to trace, we knew that she had been hired as an apprentice agent and had been trained by Donnie too."

"Something must have happened between the two," the American mused softly.

"Indeed," Taylor nodded in agreement "that was our conclusion too, but we had no proof that Donnie was even dead let alone prove that anything had actually taken place." Taylor looked around darkly before leaning in "in the last week when we still had relative free reign to monitor their communications, we noticed a slow trickle of messages between Joker and the research division of the British Library and they mentioned Donnie just by his first name more than once."

"Any idea what about?"

"None at all, that was part of some of the most secret programs and files in all of the British Library. To investigate would risk discovery and possibly a serious international incident so we never tried."

The American smiled and nodded "this is all very, very interesting, did you discover anything else before the crisis started?"

"Indeed, we monitored when the British Library once again caught fire, this time we were very sure of the cause although several of our embedded moles were killed in the fire we managed to get footage of the unfolding drama as part of our investigations." Taylor waved over the waiter and discreetly asked for the bill before sending him away, leaning in "it was none other than Yomiko Readman, the best Agent in the British Library who was the cause of the destruction. Furthermore, all military and law enforcement were ordered to keep away from the site. A five mile exclusion zone was evacuated too. Whatever it was, Joker and his superior did not want anyone finding out."

The American raised his eyebrow "you mentioned a 'superior' there."

"Yes, again, very little information. But we do know is that he isn't around any longer. He was very old, possibly kept alive via artificial means. He controlled the British Library and held enormous influence across the UK and the Globe." Taylor looked slightly puzzled "all trace of him too though vanished without a trace a short while after the disaster. Joker seems to worship him with almost godlike reverence. With almost as much love and reverence as he dedicates to his country."

"And that worried your superiors?"

"Definitely," Taylor nodded "from what we found in our research, you can trace the UK's exit from the European Union and other vital organisations through a major miscalculation on Joker's part. Whatever happened that caused the British library to burn to the ground, killing tens of people must have been caused as a direct result of a chain of events put into motion by Joker."

Taylor paused for a moment, then chuckled "you want to know where I think he got the nickname 'Joker' from?" he chuckled "the guy was a reformed gambler I think, he loved to play cards, he was a stickler for calculated gambles, he could read any face and see any tell. He was phenomenal in manipulating people which is why he was so excellent at pulling off such seemingly wild gambles."

The American laughed "well, in the case of the British Library fire, whatever gamble he was trying to pull off, it backfired."

"Indeed," Taylor smiled and stood up, taking out some money and putting it on the table "I hope I've been of some assistance to your article, my card if you wish to get in touch," he looked across the square "I'm setting up an international security business down the road in Beirut so I'll be here for the next week or so."

The American smiled and nodded "it was a pleasure sir, take care and thanks for the talk."

And so, the two parted company, Taylor caught a taxi and left the square, leaving the American sat at the table, thinking for a moment before looking up, up towards one of the taller buildings. It was the main hotel in the city, situated just off of the square.

"Did you get all of that, Ma'am?" He said quietly as he got up from his table, paying the bill and wandering into the square.

"Yes, thank you."

Looking through a pair of binoculars was Wendy Earhart. She was standing on the balcony of the suite with the best views of the square, she had seen and heard every word of the conversation. Putting the binoculars down, she looked over at Joker. The old man, haggard and grey, his skin dry and wrinkled, his eyes tired and drained, slowly removed the earpiece from his left ear, ran a hand through his ghostly white hair and nodded.

"Deal with the man, leave no trace," Wendy said sternly.

"Ma'am," the American said as he headed off to his own hotel room. In an hour he will be in a taxi en route to Beirut, in two he will have made final checks before visiting Mr Taylor one last time.

In six months time, they will have fished the corpse of Mr Taylor out of the Mediterranean. The cause? An accident following a yachting trip.

Another day, another wayward soul dealt with and another step towards the revival of what was the most powerful institutions on Earth.