May 12, 2001
His sandwich was soggy. The mayo had escaped containment and slid down the lettuce. Worse things had happened to him. This was only slightly better than the week he spent in a Czech whorehouse waiting for a contact to supply him and his team with mission critical intelligence. Now if the can of Coke had crushed his crisps, this ruined day would rank along the thirty six hour resistance and interrogation course from 1981 as all time bad days. Thankfully, his crisps were still intact.
He missed the active duty regiment. Now he had transitioned to the Artist Rifles, a Territorial regiment. He was in the field two weekends a month if he was lucky. But his age and his wife had won the battle against time. He was no longer twenty four and sure of the world. Now, he had a good sports coat hanging on a hook, a fine tie from Harrods around his neck, an assistant he shared with another man a lot like him, and a job working as a senior technical advisor to MI-5. He did not mind the spooks and the counter-spooks; he had worked with them enough times as a snake eater as they found ways to aim the Regiment in usually productive directions. He mainly worked with the counter-terror and hostage teams which kept his nose in quite a few books he had been reading for years.
Mr. Houlihan finished his lunch. As soon as the last bite hit his stomach, he began his third set of one hundred clapping push-ups for the day. Jane, his assistant, knew that she was to keep the world outside of his purview for his lunch break whenever he ate at his desk. She compiled a list of messages and requests at the edge of her desk.
As he finished his last push-up, he wiped the sweat from his brow, re-arranged his tie and looked at his afternoon schedule. Two meetings with his section, a counseling session for a young analyst who was showing promise but needed a good talking to by an NCO as his ideas were still ahead of his capabilities, and then a short walk and talk with his section chief. If all went well, he would be leaving before five. He walked out the door and looked at his messages. The walk and talk had been moved two floors up and half an hour later. He would text his wife on his new mobile once he was out of the secured section. There was a reminder that custodial engineering would be replacing the kitchen over the next bank weekend and all goods needed to be removed or discarded. And then there was a short note in his secretary's very precise handwriting.
"Phone Message 1242 - approx 90 seconds. A Harry Potter called, identified himself as the young man from the Copper Cauldron. Indicated he would like to talk with you. +44 7700 900616. "
Three other messages were left over lunch. Two could be ignored. He returned the last call and resolved a training schedule conflict for a team lead and her trainees. But that very precise note stuck with him.
He dialed the number. A click and then a strange buzzing sound. If he did not know better, he would have thought that he was calling a secured and encrypted telephone. That was nonsense. Those were rare and unusual within Her Majesty's government and even rarer in the private sector. And if he did not know the boy by sight, he was not working for Her Majesty's government.
"Good afternoon, this is Penelope Oakley, may I ask who is calling and who you are attempting to reach."
The voice was clear, professional and slightly aloof. Mr. Houlihan could picture a fifty eight year old matron controlling the front desk and the communication of A Squadron in his head. She was a battle-ax who took care of the blades and acted as a filter to the rest of the world. Why would he be calling her long lost sister or worse, her mother?
"This is Mr. Houlihan, I am returning a call from a Harry Potter, he had called my office approximately half an hour ago. I can leave a message."
"No dear, I'll get Harry." He heard a chair wheel squeak and then bizarre mandolin hold music. It had an unusual rhythm that if he did not know better was closer to a fourteenth century French lay than any Muzak available in Britain today. Two minutes later, the music stopped.
"Mr. Houlihan, Harry is coming in a moment. I apologize for the wait."
No transfer, no secondary line? That was odd. Even MI-5 would allow outside calls to be transferred from the central switchboard. Most of those calls would be sent to the Gray Phones, which were unsecured. Red phones were far less likely to be used as they guaranteed end to end encryption.
As his mind started to wander, a tentative voice came through the other end.
"Hello Mr. Houlihan, this is Harry Potter, I really wanted to thank you for your help last week."
"Not a problem, I always try to help young soldiers when they have a spot of trouble that they did not cause with the law."
"Why do you think I'm a soldier?" The voice on the other end of the phone was quiet and questioning. He was surprised at the surprise. The technique young Mr. Potter had used at the pub was not particularly skilled. The US Marines had an extremely simple basic hand to hand combat philosophy based on getting an opponent onto the ground before stomping on his head. There were several methods of putting someone on the ground and a few preferred stomping techniques, but the bloody American leathernecks focused on aggression over refined technique. Harry did not even use the limited techniques the American Marines taught, but his decisiveness would be at home at Camp Lejeune and Parris Island.
"I just thought you were, I saw a younger version of myself in you last week at the pub. I had gotten into more than a few scraps when I was young and protecting the fairer sex."
He did not anticipate the laugh. It was a laugh that started in the throat and quickly moved to the lungs and then the belly. "Hermione, needing protection…. That is absurd, Merlin's beard, she's protected me enough times… he needed the protection from her…."
Harry paused and then guffawed one last time. The idea that Hermione needed protection from a Muggle arsehole was ridiculous, it was almost enough to destroy a boggart. He caught his breath.
"Thanks Mr. Houlihan, I appreciate the help. I had a brief discussion with the magistrate and the responding officer. We've cleared things up. Could I buy you a pint tonight?"
This was not the discussion that Houlihan thought he would have had when he picked up the phone. The young man acted like a soldier, walked like a soldier and struck like a warrior, but he disclaimed that and then his friend, Hermione… an interesting name... was evidently even tougher than he was, or at least he thought so.
"I could do with a pint tonight…"
"When and where could you meet, I'm flexible." Harry had a study session and a practical curse breaking demonstration that afternoon. Ginny was on a quick PR tour following the announcement of her selection to the England U-23 National team so his bed would be empty tonight. Ron was stuck on a stake-out while Hermione was revising. No one who liked their eyes intact would interrupt her while revising for anything less than an Inferi insurrection. A pint and a laugh could be interesting.
"How about 7:00 at the Royal Oak"
"Sure, that's the one right on King's Terrace?"
"Yes, I'll find you. "
The phone suddenly went dead. Houlihan looked at the ceiling for a minute. He saw that his assistant had returned.
"Jane come in"
His assistant entered the office. She smiled at Mr. Houlihan, he kept her work interesting and he had been more than willing to trust her to do her job well while building her up to be a future analyst. She ran his life from the moment he entered the building until he left. His wife ran his life in the off-hours. They frequently coordinated to make sure that he believed he still had his independence and autonomy. The older woman was grateful that she had a co-conspirator in the young, recent university graduate. At some points, Jane believed that Mr. Houlihan knew he was being run by the two women in his life, but at others, she had to believe in his happy ignorance.
"Yes sir, need anything?"
"Clear your schedule this afternoon. I need three things; call my wife and tell her I won't be home until late. Second, please arrange for a dozen pink roses to arrive at 5:00pm - I have not sent her flowers for little reason in a while, and this is enough of a reason to remind her that I love her. Use my credit card that you have taped the information on the side of the bottom drawer on the right. Finally, once that is done, conduct a public records search for the following individuals…"
"Public records or a tier 1 search, sir?" A tier 1 search would provide some more information but it required a justification and approval to look at some details of an individual's interaction with the government and NHS.
"Just public records, right now I have an itch and I can't justify anything beyond a public records search from an itch… but I want you to scratch it."
"Yes sir."
The former sergeant major and now technical consultant for MI-5 grimaced internally. He worked for a living. He hated to be called sir and that was one of the ways that Jane gently tweaked him. He was respectable now and an eminence gris instead of a doer. He could revert back to being a gruff doer one or two weekends a month and a week during the summer but that part of his life was behind him. She had, by now, of course, quickly grabbed a pen and a notebook.
Can you look into the following individuals: Harry Potter, age 18 to 22 and Hermione Granger same age. Mr. Potter is from Surrey while Ms. Granger sounds like she is from the Home Counties. A few of their other friends are interesting as well, but I don't have names for them yet.
"E-R… I'll get this to you before I leave. "
"Thanks Jane, you're a gem. We need to set up time for your review soon, so coordinate that with yourself and before we do that, block out two or three hours of my time to write my thoughts up."
The Tube ride was short. It was crowded and loud. He had more questions now than he had at lunchtime. Jane was thorough and creative. She needed to be promoted and challenged.
Harry James Potter was born in 1980, orphaned in 1981 as his parents were killed in a car crash. His mother's sister and her family took him in. His foster family was blandly normal. He went to the local primary school, had been in a trio of picture captions celebrating artistic success as a seven and eight year old as well as a good Cow #2 when he nine during the Christmas Pageant. In 1991, he disappeared. There were no public records. He just disappeared.
Hermione Jean Granger was even odder. She was born in 1979 to a pair of dentists. She had won several prizes as a young student. There were no educational records from 1991 to 1999. She had enrolled at LSE and was receiving no visible support. Her parents owned a small dentistry clinic just north of London. Her mother specialized in endodontics while her father maintained a general practice with a focus on children. There was a small advertisement Jane had found and she had called to inquire about an appointment for her mythical seven year old daughter. She said the receptionist was pleasant and sounded fond of Richard Granger and as Jane probed, the receptionist told her that the clinic had been at that address for the past eight years. Hermione had a driver's license and was insured through her parents' policy.
What had happened to these two people? They fell off the face of the earth for eight or more years. And then they started showing up at one of his favorite pubs a little more than a year ago. Hermione was almost always eye fucking the tall gangly redhead, while Harry had to constantly struggle to keep his hands off the buxom redhead while they thought anyone was looking. Those redheads needed to be looked into, as they behaved the same way as Harry and Hermione, but he did not have enough to start a trace on them.
He wondered if they were foreign agents taking the life skins of children who had died a decade ago. It was an old play and a successful one as the documentation could be made to work, and both Harry and Hermione looked like people who were completely memorable only to those who cared about them, but otherwise would be easy enough to think that one knew them a decade ago if a low level background check was going on. If they were seeded with cash and an education at LSE, they could find ways to crawl the underbelly of the British and global elite. But that did not add up as today's phone call made no sense under that scenario.
The tube station was crowded as he exited the train. The walk to the surface was rapid and he soon was scanning the few blocks to the pub looking for any tails or observation teams. A professional team could easily remain hidden, but there were marks and tells of anything less than a full professional operation. A man at kibob stand fumbled for some change and glanced a moment too long in his direction, but other than that, he saw nothing. That could have been a coincidence, but survival hated assuming a coincidence.
As he entered the pub, his eyes adjusted to the low light. This was a third choice pub for him; the prices were always a little more than he appreciated and the service was a tad slower and more surly than it was at the Copper Cauldron. He nodded to the bar keep as he kept on turning his head. The first spot he looked was empty. It was a small table with a bench leaning against the wall and a chair on the open side of the bar floor. Someone sitting in the bench could see the front door, the pathway to the emergency exit and the kitchen. It was an obvious spot for someone who was professionally paranoid.
He smiled as he saw Harry. He had chosen a small nook that still provided full visibility to the entry and exit ways. More importantly, it was close to the waitresses' normal path which meant better service and more people nearby. For people who could speak quietly, they could converse without fear of being overheard amongst the general din of a pub without making it obvious that they were plotting. The old commando raised his right hand in greeting and Harry tipped a half empty glass of ale back at him.
As he made his way over to the seat, Harry held up two fingers to the waitress and she nodded. By the time he was within a step of the table, Harry had risen and reached out for a friendly forcep grasping handshake. Strength measured strength and found peers.
"Good evening Sergeant Houlihan, I'm happy that you helped me last week"
