Chapter 10
What's The Time Mr. Wolf?
Sofia ascended the cold white steps into the Russian embassy, marvelling at the cleanup they had done in a relatively short time. The building was as pristine and perfect as it always was, the only thing that betrayed it was the paranoia now concealed behind the eyes of all those trapped within its walls.
"You know you're on your own in there Sofia, no heroics." Harry reminded her.
"We're really just listening in for fun, the closest officers are about five minutes from you, so if you do have to get shot make sure it misses all of the important things." Ros told her, earning her a wince from Harry. Sofia didn't mind, both women had found a mutual respect and even liking for each other, so much so that Lucas maintained he regretted ever introducing them.
"So in, convince him not to take over the world and back out in time for Coronation Street?" She smirked.
"If you would be so kind." Ros replied.
Sofia picked her way through the maze of windowless corridors, feeling as though she was trapped in underground tunnels before stepping into the relief of the lobby. They high ceilinged, open space would have felt warm and inviting in stark contrast to the grim, foreboding tunnels that led to it had she not known what their golden exterior concealed within its heart.
She confidently approached the reception desk, "Hello, is Mr. Amelin available?" she asked in a musical voice coated with a soft accent.
The secretary paused and stared at her, sizing her up with something close to disdain on her face before saying dismissively, "Mr. Amelin is away on business at the moment."
Sofia sighed and her features tightened in irritation as her long, thin fingers began to dance irritably on the top of the reception desk. "Can you get a message to him? Immediately?" she asked in evident exasperation.
The secretary raised her eyebrows but consented saying, clearly annoyed, "What would you like me to tell him?"
"Tell him," Sofia began in superior tones, "That his daughter is currently outside his office and needs to speak with him urgently." She finished smoothly.
""His daughter?" she squawked, as the colour drained from her cheeks at the thought.
"You're new aren't you?" Sofia said, patronizingly.
"I-I-"she spluttered, hands shaking.
"We'll forgive it this time. If you could tell him at once I would be grateful." She told her kindly.
"Of course." She gasped, upsetting several folders on the desk and leaving a cloud of paper settling to the floor in her wake as she hurried to the back of the offices.
"Does Amelin even have a daughter?" Ros asked, amused after her previous dealings with the insufferable receptionist.
"Yes, two. Lovely girls..." Sofia mumbled conversationally, carefully looking around the lobby, eyes flicking back to the doors at the end of the corridor into which the flustered receptionist had dashed.
"If this works..." Ros muttered, smirking.
"Hold that thought." Sofia whispered as Amelin burst from the door and hurried to the reception, closely followed by the petrified secretary.
"Helena? Nic-"he began, before swearing suddenly and violently in Russia, causing the young woman behind him to jump.
"Hello Dad." Sofia said sarcastically, grinning.
"How did you get in here?" he demanded ridiculously, furious as the receptionist scuttled back to her seat, attempting to make herself as small as possible while shooting daggers at Sofia who said, airily,
"There's a door over there." As she gestured in the general direction of the entrance.
"Why are you here?" Amelin snarled amidst a string of curses.
"That's a better question." She smirked before saying, "We need to talk." In a tone that implied that talking they would be.
He stalked back down the corridor; silently allowing she to follow as he marched into the room at the bottom of the corridor but opposite the one Ros and Lucas had entered.
"How much does Ros owe Lucas?" Sofia grinned in an undertone as she passed into the room and settled herself in front of the desk as he stumped towards her, thick crystal glass in one hand and a large bottle of whiskey in the other.
"I take it your people are listening?" he spat in Russian filling and draining the glass in one fluid, well practiced motion.
"Does it matter?" she said silkily, watching as he poured another generous measure of the thick dark liquid she added, "Conversation generally tends to work best when both parties are conscious."
"Of course. You wanted to talk." He snarled deliberately draining the glass again, "And if you want something then the world must grind to a halt and hang on your every word."
"I think that's more your area of expertise than mine." She muttered darkly.
"You came here to talk, so talk." He told her.
Confused as to what they had been doing up to this point she said bluntly, "What do you know about Lighthouse?"
Amelin choked on his third glass of whiskey and Harry winced, "Easy Sofia..."
"Nothing." Amelin spluttered, eyes streaming.
Sofia forced him to meet her icy gaze before telling him in a deadly whisper, "I know when you're lying to me..."
He choked again and began to mumble incoherently to himself as she straightened up, considering him.
"Alright...alright." Sofia said pensively, leaning back in her chair and continuing to study the pitiful creature opposite her, she was sure he was playing her, his job may have changed since last they met but he had not, the games had begun. Still she continued, "I don't suppose it's fair of me to waltz into your office and demand answers without so much as a 'hello' so I'll start. I'll tell you what I know and you feel free to jump in wherever..."
They watched each other carefully, the silent exchange between them lasted only a few seconds before she began speaking but it was more than enough time for both of them. During her time in Russia, they had become intimately familiar with the way the other worked. Both of them had mastered psychological mind games and were deciding who was manipulating who here.
"I know that, despite the fact every man and his bulldog looked to China, that the Russian operation Lighthouse was behind the attack on MI-5's network, compromising it beyond a criminal extent..." She told him, watching with satisfaction as his eyes widened for a fraction of a second. It was a simple enough statement but his reaction would be the most telling thing.
He gazed wildly around the room before stammering, "I-I have no idea what you're talking about."
He clutched at the crystal glass in his hand as his knuckles turned white.
"Drop the bullshit." She told him abruptly, in mood for his attempts to undermine her intelligence in such a way.
"Alright." He said, sinisterly, the pathetic, helpless demeanour falling away alarmingly as he leaned back in his chair and hissed, "Prove it."
She watched him carefully, considering her options, she did not want to reveal everything immediately, she had to push him further first, still he had unsettled her by rapidly changing the playing field, despite the fact she had been expecting it, the instantaneous character change was making her inadvertently reconsider her options.
"Strike at the heart of all the gentlemen know. Man hangs on the eve my heart lies, four o'clock-"she began in a voice barely above a whisper.
This caught him off guard, "How did you?" he snapped, forgetting himself momentarily.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" she smiled, watching as he leaned back in his chair again, attempting to regain control over himself, "Suffice it to say that everyone has their price if you can get to them. Revenge is also a good motivator."
Everything she had told him was true, but phrased in such a way that could make him second-guess things she had no influence or understanding of. She watched as he digested her words before he said, "Tell me, if MI-5 was aware of this, why do nothing to prevent it? It is catastrophic for them; they would have done well to avoid it."
"Why indeed?"
She watched him closely, while pretending to observe the bookshelf behind him. She knew that she was playing a dangerous game and that the ambiguity card would only work for so long, however she knew that equally, if she underplayed it he would sense that she was bluffing, both had disastrous outcomes if she read him wrongly.
"I expected better of you." He murmured finally, "You think that you can play me? Give me nothing in such a way that you believe you can convince me that you know more?"
"Shit." Ros muttered in Sofia's ear.
Sofia smiled quietly at the desk before saying, "And if you knew me well enough to expect better then you should have known that I would not have come here and bet with something I didn't have, that I wouldn't be at the table if I wasn't sure I had a winning hand." She laughed softly, waiting a beat and judging his reaction before continuing, "You are a fool Amelin, and it is disappointing. You're arrogance, and your faith in creating the perfect operation are making you ignore the thing that I so valued in you, you're ability to see everything at once. You're ignoring the human element. The perfect operation carried out by imperfect beings must have the potential to be flawed. You didn't really think that I would come here and lay all of my cards on the table in one, leaving myself exposed? You can't believe that I would come here with nothing more than a brief knowledge of something that has already happened? And if you believed that I would begin with information on one attack and claim to have knowledge of an entire network then this is barely worth my time...Frankly I expected better..."
She studied him, mask-like face impassive. Amelin could not know that at this moment, every muscle in her body had contracted making it impossible for her to breathe. If he did not accept what she had told him, if she had underestimated her ability to manipulate him then he would never believe what she had to make him. She had to make him believe now that she knew everything using only implied knowledge, she could not start throwing out random attacks to convince him. He would have to trust her on her word alone in order for things to proceed.
"This network is perfect...It has been built up over thirty years, it is impenetrable, you have no more 'cards' to play, you have nothing." He hissed, causing her heart to descend to the base of her spine.
She paused and tried a different tact, "I now have you on tape, confirming the existence of Lighthouse. What you believe is no longer important, who do you think I can now convince-"
He snarled and launched himself across the desk at her. She could feel the sharp touch of a knife pressed against her stomach. She refused to look at it, instead her dead, empty eyes stared straight into the fury filled sockets, inches from her before whispering,
"Much better..."
He struck her across the face with the handle of the knife, splitting open her lip and filling her mouth with the sickening, hot metallic liquid. He shrank back into his seat, his burning eyes leaving her in no doubt that had their circumstances been slightly altered he would not have shown as much restraint with the knife.
"You know nothing." He spat, eyes reduced to slits. But despite the surety of his claims, she sensed that he was trying to convince himself as much as her. She knew this was it, now or never. She was fairly certain that if she didn't play this right she would not live long enough to discover the global consequences.
"I know more than you will ever understand...You never could master the way to get me to talk, turns out it's easier than you expected, I won't just talk, I'll sing. Like a canary..." she paused a moment to watch the expression on his face change as she began in a measured voice, "Lighthouse is a trigger network formed behind closed doors during the Cold War. Within this operation you have individual, isolated cells based all over the world, each member of which is given a single piece of information concerning a specific attack. When the time is right one member of the group, the trigger, is given a means of contacting the others and pooling the data. When the fragments are then put together by the trigger they then have all the information they need. As do I."
She paused to savour his expression, she took great pleasure in knowing things that she shouldn't and this was a particularly enjoyable experience for her as she watched Amelin trying to understand how she knew details of something that only the most senior members of his security services had access to. She did not give him the chance to think about it long before continuing,
"Lighthouse exists to burn bridges, form alliances and put pressure on cracks that have been developing in nations' trusts for years. It's genius, Lighthouse initiates a string of attacks, all carried out by Russia but with another countries fingerprints that will cause a chain reaction culminating in war on a global scale, from which you remove yourselves and watch as the rest of the world destroys itself while you pull the strings."
He stared at her intently again before smiling nastily and hissing once again, "Prove it." He leant forwards with a smug smile and told her, "No-one will believe your claims, accurate or not, because that is all they are. If you had any hard evidence it would be being paraded around in front of me and on national television, not behind the closed doors of my office. It doesn't matter what you know, the only thing that matters is what you can prove. Information only has power if people accept it as truth."
"Devil's in the details isn't it Amelin..." she breathed, "The only thing you need is the one thing you are missing. Perspective. I know everything about this network, and I don't need a piece of paper to wave in front of you to prove it. I just need you to think about it to realise, I know this network just as well as you."
"Lies." He spat.
"Truth. Logic dictates that I know what I'm talking about. I have knowledge of Lighthouse Amelin, by its very definition that means I have proof of it. Just like I have proof of the fact that, while MI-5 are left helpless in the wake of the attack on their servers, several bombs will be detonated on the London underground today at six o'clock. It will appear on the surface to be a terrorist attack but Chinese involvement will soon be implied courtesy of the large 'Made in China' labels on the bomb components, hinting that China and the Middle-East are on very good terms. I also know that you intend to compromise several British banks causing the collapse, resulting in the loss of millions . It will become apparent that their collapse was caused by the sudden, deliberate demand for instantaneous repayment of several shady loans, also from the Middle-East. And that's only in Britain... We know that an attempt will be made on the American president's life when he visits Pakistan in three days time. I know that internet trading between the US and China will dry up at the same time classified British documents reveal our intention to pull out of Afghanistan, strongly implying an alliance between Britain and America. Then there's the plan for Germany to disgrace the French chancellor by showing his connections to several lucrative deals illegally smuggling drugs into the country. The French will then retaliate by seemingly providing proof that Germany's economic strength relies on big businesses' tax evasion and the government turning a blind eye to their use of cheap, overseas labour. It's all lies of course but mud sticks...And of course in a week's time you plan to-"
"Stop." He cut in, in a strangled whisper.
"Come now Ivan, I told you I know everything and you were sure that was impossible so surely you need more. You need me to tell you that America is currently planning to-"
"I said stop!" he snarled, flicking the knife up to her throat and breathing hard. His eyes were popping madly as he stared at her, the tip of the knife drawing ruby tears of protest from her skin.
Feeling that he was currently weighing up the pros and cons of slitting her throat, she said, "But I will prove it, further...You were right to suspect Jess Healy, while she pulled you to safety in the lobby, out of the way of the warzone that some maniac had created in your office one of her colleagues gained access to your computer and hacked into the Lighthouse file using your cleverly concealed code...It's over Amelin..."
"No..."
She got to her feet, as his hand going slack on the knife, shock taking control of his extremities as they began to shake violently, she leant down and whispered sweetly, "Call off your dogs...Or we'll slaughter them."
A/N: I realised that as I began to attempt a resolve for this that I didn't want it to be very dramatic and over the top, I wanted it to be realistic and believable and I didn't think the threat of a zombie apocalypse would qualify. As it turned out, it ended up being something as simple as having two people in a room together talking but because of that everything between them needs to be perfect. My biggest fear was that this would end up being a huge anti-climax and a disappointment, and I'm not sure about this chapter and not sure if it is, so please let me know your thoughts on this and how you feel about the way this is trying up.
I hope this worked, at least to an extent, and I hope you've enjoyed it so far, thank you all for your support!