Dead Hearts.
"(…) We carry in our hearts the true country,
And that cannot be stolen,
We follow in the steps of our ancestry,
And that cannot be broken (…)"– Midnight Oil "Dead Heart".
Warnings: Crime, racism/speciesism, xenophobia and everything that comes with it.
Timing: 2017, a year after "London Calling"
Rating: T to M.
Disclaimer: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen original comic books © Allan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. Thin Blue Line (in character of Maggie Habib) and 'Allo 'Allo (in person of Otto Flick) © BBC. Atomic Robo © Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegner. Stargate Atlantis © MGM Studios. Hellboy (in character of Karl Ruprecht Kroenen and Hellboy) © Michael Mignola. Slenderman © Eric Knudsen (as Victor Surge). Dracula (in character of Wilhelmina Murray) by Bram Stoker. Allan Quatermain by sir Henry Rider Haggard. Orlando (or his/hers alike) by Virgina Woolf.
This story © Archer Black. 2017
Going postal1).
?
Tuesday. September 26th. MI6 HQ
By the time Maggie and Robo returned to the interrogation room, Thomas Hill already capitulated. He was wrapped in Slenderman's tentacles and crying almost like a baby. If asked, Maggie wouldn't speculate what was the deciding factor in the man's downfall but she suspected that it was a joint effort of all three interrogators.
Regardless of who did what to ensure the man's 'cooperation' the result seemed to be far from what could be considered a success: the man was babbling about anything that he could think of.
"If they broke his brain, this will be the most spectacular failure in my career." Maggie noted.
"He's spilling his beans, don't worry." Robo reassured the woman next to him. "I think Slenderman can hack his brain even if he'll go coo-coo. He has to have experience with that."
Before Maggie could reply, Spike turned around and looked at them through the mirror as if he could actually see them. Robo assumed that the Wraith sensed Inspector Habib's presence since he himself couldn't be detected by Spike kind's abilities.
The Wraith gently nodded at them, giving them a signal that it was going well, or at least well enough considering the circumstances of this interrogation. It was then that Slenderman's relaxed and withdrew his tentacles from Thomas Hill's person. The arrested man bent forward and rested his forehead against the table he was sat at. He was trembling and sobbing. His ears were red and so was his neck, with visible veins throbbing on its sides. The interrogation was clearly straining for the man, emotionally, intellectually and possibly physically as well.
Robo tapped the glass. The neo-Nazi was done; the fact that Slenderman withdrew his tentacles meant that the faceless entity finished with the man, at least for the time being. There was little point in grilling him any further for now, else the man would roll over and die out of sheer desperation… and stroke if the pulsing veins and redness of his skin was anything to go by.
The trio left the interrogation room without a word and Kroenen, who was the last, closed the door gently. It would seem that the German was doing his best not to stress Thomas Hill any more than he already was. It might've been wise, all things considered.
"And?" Robo asked the instant Kroenen let go the door handle.
Slenderman gave the robot a long look before he turned to Spike.
"He says to look in the man's living space. The one where he was arrested in." Spike passed the message. "Look for any kind of correspondence, letters, telegrams, post cards. And to check his computer, email account, saved messages from forums and private conversations from social media."
"I'll get the Constables to do it, but first I need a warrant. We don't want anyone to claim that the search was illegal." Maggie decided. "Given the weight of this case I shouldn't have any problems with that."
Slenderman shifted his weight slightly, catching everyone's attention once more.
"He says that in the end this man has a very simple mind." Spike notified others of Slenderman's words. "And I agree. The moment we nailed him, his mind went straight to everything that could incriminate him. It was chaotic but Slender managed to sort it out."
"Great, now let's see what exactly is in said incriminating materials." Maggie clapped her hands together. "We should let Mr Hill to rest for now. He seems to need it."
?
Wednesday. September 27th.
The search was performed without delay and all required items were recovered. The regular mail was available instantly; the computer was another story however. Computer technicians had to search through the computer itself in search for any saved messages or important files, then they had to search through the man's e-mail accounts and he had few of these. Following that they visited all his internet forums and social media sites that he frequented – fortunately he saved all his logins and passwords so accessing these accounts wasn't problematic. That done, all the messages, saved files and forum threads had to be printed. All this consumed time, especially that there was a lot to print, and when they did finish with their task it was already late.
The Wednesday morning greeted the Group with their room filled with boxes of paper. It was two boxes of envelopes and additional five boxes of yellow folders filled with printed pages. And then there was a very thin yellow folder laying on top of the boxes. It was labelled "Tech Support Initial Report" in bold, black, capital letters written with permanent marker.
"Oh great, more paperwork." Robo growled with enough venom to poison Olympic stadium filled with villains.
"It's Hill's mail." Maggie reached for the technicians' report. "At least you don't have to interrogate it." She opened the folder and read its content, which consisted of one half of a page. "Or maybe you do."
"What does that mean Herrin Habib?" Kroenen glanced at the paper she was reading and then at the boxes.
"It would seem that it's all written in some kind of a code." She put the report down.
"Code? You mean a cipher?" Spike asked.
"No. I mean giving words and sentences new meanings." Maggie rubbed her forehead. "All right, everyone grab a box and read through every single page inside. See if words or sentences repeat in certain contexts; let's see if we can crack it." She got the first box of envelopes.
?
Sometime in the middle of their digging through Thomas Hill's mail they concluded that the correspondence with whomever Hill was in contact with was regular and reasonably frequent. The dates confirmed that both regular mail as well as electronic mail exchange ran concurrently. Apparently they each served their own purpose in the communication between the mystery man and Thomas Hill and his gang.
The first valuable information they managed to gather from the mail was not the contents of the mail itself but the regular dates of the correspondence: the regular letters came in twice a month while the emails came in weekly and a close look revealed that it happened usually before noon. The second thing came from the letters themselves: each form of communication served different purpose. Maggie noticed that the paper letters, while written in code, contained numbers that seemed very close to the financial support that the gang received. The numbers seemed to be in context to the rest of the letters. The emails on the other hand looked more like reports, or rather like short messages reports attached in form of password protected zip files. They didn't have access to these reports however due to the fact that the password or passwords were composed of 64 most likely random characters each making the passwords virtually unbreakable.
"And so we're stuck again." Maggie let her arms fell by her sides. "If only we could break that damn password!"
"Whoever thought of that form of sending reports knew what they were doing." Robo threw a printed email on the table. "A single zip file attached to an email, and each described differently, we have 'weight loss chart', 'calorie chart for home baked cookies', 'scones recipe' and even a 'blood test results interpretation chart'. And good luck guessing what each of it is without actually opening it."
"Whatever is in these zip files, it cannot be healthy for Vril, no matter what the emails clam them to be." Kroenen shrugged. "It is a terrible shame that we cannot read these reports. Aside of the fact that these could serve as evidence of the crimes, there could be a name or names mentioned there."
"No such luck, it's not that I would even expect there to be a return address, but all we have is the post stamps from Chile but that doesn't help us much." Maggie inspected an envelope that was in reasonably good condition. "The post office's own stamps are illegible; they're either smudged or barely visible as if the ink was dried. And without it we can't be sure where in Chile these were sent. If it was near a border then we have nothing because whoever sent them could just cross the border legally."
"That often?" Robo was surprised.
"Why not? If the sender claim to have actual business to attend to then he would be able to do that. Or he may actually have a legitimate business going. We don't know that." Kroenen explained. "Or he may cross the border illegally."
"Perhaps we should try and see if our technicians can track the IPs of the computers these were sent from. That should at least narrow our search." Maggie proposed.
No one protested.
TBC.
1) It has nothing to do with any Discworld novel.