Right, time for a little Steve Johnson POV. Steve by the way is one of De Luca's guards, he was kind of necessary to smooth out a few details. Hope you enjoy, I might just start the next chapter now, so it could be up pretty soon. As ever, please R&R, your reviews mean a lot to me.
El x
"Lock up your sons boys, Mistress De Luca's back." The guys chuckle as I walk out of the guardroom. I'm not joking though; I wouldn't let my Luke anywhere near Calvino's daughter, that girl's trouble if ever I saw it. And De Luca's so blind, he let's her bring home visitors and then wonders what they're doing for hours at a time in her bedroom. She's a spoilt little Madame, but I can't help but feel sorry for her; like that Jeremy Kyle says, it's a classic case of a girl trying to fill the hole that a lack of love from her father creates with numerous fleeting relationships, or something like that.
"Morning Terry, how's the wife?" I take my position on the other side of the gate, relieving Reg of his duties, who dashes off for a quick ciggie and a cuppa.
"Same old, same old, wants to redo the kitchen again, silly old mare, don't know where she thinks the money for that will come from."
"They're all the same, never satisfied. Did you see the match?"
"Yeah, they want to give that Davis a right seeing to, but beautiful goal in the second half."
"Mmm. You hear about Derik?"
"Yeah, poor sod, wife and kids and now he's banged up in jail. I don't envy Paul, I don't care how much De Luca paid me, I wouldn't want to be his fall guy."
It's a well known fact that De Luca pays one of us extra to be his fall guy. All they have to do is have control of the remote that causes lock down, if De Luca radios them all they do is flip the switch that shuts the main gate, and the fourth door to the nerve centre, and then, whenever whatever danger has passed, re-open them. The unwritten part of this contract is that if the police ever get involved, sealing De Luca off is a criminal offence, withholding evidence or something, but De Luca doesn't go down for it, he just says it was the guard acting out of orders and the police can't pin anything on him. That's what Derik got done for, and a few before him, it's the risk, good money, but jail if you're caught. Paul's been approached and he's accepted the position, raving about him and the missus going on a Caribbean cruise.
"Have you seen the new camera's he's had put up?" Terry looks keen to spread the latest news.
"No, where are they?"
"On the walls, pointing out."
"What's the point of that, loads of people pass the walls, why does he need to see them?"
"Well the rumour is he's stolen a file from the secret services, listing all their agents. He's pretty paranoid about them coming to retrieve it, so he put up these cameras and he's checking every person within a couple of metres of the walls against these files, just to check they're not secret agents."
I've heard about the stolen files, but not about the new cameras. It doesn't surprise me though, everyone knows how paranoid De Luca is about security.
"I knew about the files, but I though the techies couldn't get into them."
"Apparently they made a break through a couple of days ago, they can't actually access the files, but they can run photos through them, to see if they get a match. They're not far from breaking the encryptions completely and when they do, well I wouldn't want to be an agent; they've got names, addresses, everything."
We're silent for a moment, there's a lot of violence in this business, but none of us like it, it's just life. But we all know that if De Luca has the means to track down every agent in MI9, there'll be a lot of blood shed.
Suddenly my radio crackles, "Johnson, there's a possible MI9 agent on the west wall, I want you to bring him in, I'll send you over the CCTV now. Don't mess up."
"Looks like those cameras were worth it." I remark. Glancing down at the still on my communicator screen I'm shocked by the picture I see.
"Jesus Christ."
I show the photo to Terry who lets out a low whistle before saying, "He's just a kid"
"I hope he's smart enough to talk," I sigh, "s'pose I better go get him."
I'm not happy about it, the lad looks a little like my Luke, and I thank God that it's not Luke, coz life's about to get pretty scary for this kid.