"Problem Chief?" asked the man sat at a desk in the nearly empty office at Thames House. He wasn't working, but rather had his desert multicam clad legs propped up on said desk, his combat boots thrown to one side and a Classic and Sports Car magazine open, hiding his face.
"Damn it to hell!" cursed the tall, somewhat balding man pacing the office. "Potter, you seem to always have the solutions, if you can dig one out of this mess then I might admit that you're worth keeping around!"
"Maybe you could clarify Evans?" asked the first man, lowering his magazine. Around thirty-six years old, though he looked to be in his mid-twenties, but with the air of someone infinitely older. Black hair in a messy mop, green eyes with a steely, hard glint of someone who had seen combat... a lot of it.
Depending on what identity he was using, Hadrian 'Harry' Potter was a Lieutenant Colonel from the Parachute Regiment, on permanent attachment to the Special Air Service, though it wasn't something he ever talked about outside of people with sufficient clearance. Then with a few appearance changes, he was Viscount Harold Arcturus Black, philanthropist, occasional politician and son of the Earl of Blackmore, Lord Sirius Black, who found the whole cloak-and-dagger affair hilarious. On this occasion, the soldier was pretending to finish filing a report from his SAS deployment in Iraq, which would be followed by two weeks leave and then back to the grindstone with whichever squadron had replaced the last one.
"You've heard about these random, public murders in Britain and America?" asked the spymaster, pausing for a nod from the soldier; "Many of them have been motivated by an extremist preacher. We have simply assigned the codename 'Preacher' to him, as we know nothing else. He records his sermons, hides his face, all but his eyes. His voice is distorted, so we can't trace that, and the sermons are broadcast through a myriad of security and outright trickery we can't get through."
"Why didn't you just give me the file, a budget and let me run him into the ground?" Harry queried.
"If it were only that simple. The Americans and the Israelis both want a bite at the biscuit." replied Evans; "The Americans aren't cooperating too well with the Israelis since a Kidon operative went rogue with a VEVAK agent and blew up a defected Syrian Colonel in Washington, framing a Mossad liaison officer to one of the local agencies. So to solve their issues and cooperate, they've decided I'm hosting a meeting in about a month to decide what to do about him with a number of senior diplomats and intelligence personnel. I need both the high ground for bargaining, and I need to arrange the entire thing, security, transport, you name it."
"Give me an RAF VC10 flight crew, a Nimrod flight crew, one squadron of Special Forces for security, possibly a Rapier battery and crew if you think air defence is going to be an issue. I've got access to a high-security location with aeronautical facilities which can be made suitable for such a meeting in a short time." Harry rattled off.
"Whoa, wait, explain. Why do you need a VC10 and Nimrod flight crew? You haven't requested the aircraft, and even then using military transports for VIPs is a bad idea. I can understand the security bit, but what's this about a high-security location, I need some more information." Evans demanded.
"Okay, the high-security location is a fortress in the Cambrian Mountains, you probably won't know about it as there are very few people alive who know where it is and the upper parts are camouflaged into the countryside." explained Harry quickly; "It's not exactly the most modern, but between obscurity and the fact it is a medieval castle, it should be hard to get into. Plus there are the extra defences, such as Section M specialise in."
Evans nodded, he knew about Harry's wizarding background, and he'd set up Section M to provide magical protections to UK military installations.
"What you may not know is that my family were, and still are, incredibly rich. When I inherited it, my liquid funds were over a billion, and under the hands of a team of accountants, that has skyrocketed. However, my grandfather and his father had something of a passion for aeroplanes, and I maintain their collection, which includes a de Havilland Comet, which is close enough to the Nimrod, and a Vickers Super VC10. I had engineers check the airframes out, and they're pretty much zero-hour, as new." Harry continued; "I'd send out the VC10 to America, the Comet to Israel, fly the diplomats back to the castle under the protection of my squadron, hold the meeting, get them back out and get on with the hunt. Give me all the information you've got on the Preacher and I'll see what I can do about getting you the best bargaining position."
"You're certain these aircraft are serviceable?" asked Evans.
"Completely." Harry nodded.
The spymaster picked up the phone and dialled a number.
"John, can you come up to the office, I need you to brief an operative on our Number One.", he then paused before turning to Harry; "The bounty on this man is two million US dollars, but if you get him, I'll double that and make sure you're promoted immediately."
"Give the cash to Help for Heroes." Harry waved him off.
John Robertson was a completely normal man. Middle aged, with slightly thinning, greying hair, a slight shadow on his cheeks, he wore a slightly faded suit, swore at the London traffic when it slowed him down, had very few real patterns. He visited a local coffee shop randomly, sometimes in the morning, at lunch or in the evening. Everything in his life was normal, not clinical, but normal.
He'd been an operative in Northern Ireland, one of those who could be tarred with an ill brush, yet had served Queen and Country loyally. He walked alongside the tall, lithely built soldier as they moved through the corridors of Thames House, quietly discussing the target.
"Preacher. He's a cunning little shit." growled the retired field agent turned office operative to the soldier; "Ever heard of something called 'Hejira'?"
"Anglicised corruption of the Arabic 'Hijra', the migration of Muhammed and his companions from Mecca to Medina if I recall my Islamic studies correctly." replied Harry.
"Hmmph. Also the name of his website. He records them and transfers it to the website server. Which is housed inside a vehicle he bought in Delhi years ago. The company's gone, so are the people, that's a dead end." explained Robertson as the soldier flashed his ID card across a scanner.
"Clever, it's mobile, so we don't know how far it is from where he is, and it can follow him around as he moves. Rather Darwinian, the stupid end up dead quickly, if he's survived this long, he's an enemy not to be underestimated." Harry commented to his companion.
"Quite. Now, we have tried tracking the server's geographical location, but he uses malware placed on other people's computers, unknowingly, to broadcast the server. Those are all then covered with proxies to make it even more difficult to track the genuine one, or more like impossible." said Robertson.
"Since he's still alive and unidentified, I assume GCHQ have tried, and given that the Americans want some level of cooperation, they're probably having little to no luck." mused Harry; "I believe I'm going to try something slightly unusual. Inform the quartermaster to expect an order for some fairly sophisticated, but not above commercial level cyber equipment."
He already had a plan racing through his mind, it would take a bit of doing, but he felt it was possible. Improvisation and outside-the-box thinking was what kept him alive.
"If you put this bastard in the ground, I don't care if you ask me to have you supplied with London's finest escort girls." growled Robertson; "MI5 has rotated about a dozen operatives through this tasking and between them, they've produced jack shit."
Author's Note: I am contemplating putting together some of my 'Pilot's Tales' one-shots into a proper story, or at least giving them some continuity, thoughts?
ElMarquis