Money Shot Chapter 1

money shot

Monday 1st August 2012

Where is Mecca when an early morning mist shrouds the Dorset coastline? If you use a compass it's 132 degrees 15 minutes south, almost South East. Sometimes Allah can't be acknowledged publicly, a silent prayer, just a movement of the lips as if you were mumbling to yourself, he will forgive. The mullah at the madrases in Karachi had told him so... If it helps the jihad.

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As the morning sun began to warm the air Portland began to appear like a floating island in the sky. The fortress sitting atop the great weight of limestone rock, then the Verne prison, down to the towers of the old navy accommodation blocks, recently refurbished for waterfront style apartments; which served the navy base that had been abandoned in the 90's. In the old base the cruise ship SS Sarnia was snugged up against the quay with 360 sailors on board.

Lazily the buildings on the harbour wall, constructed in the 1850's, appeared in the slight swirl of mist. On the opposite side of the harbour was one of the newest buildings the National sailing academy, venue for the 2012 Olympic sailing events, a hangar like construction painted blue to blend with its surroundings in an Eco friendly way. The national flags hung limply from the array of flagstaffs, but a good breeze was forecast for the days sailing.

The skull of one body was still smashing against the corner of a rock with monotonous regularity, the other body was twisting like a mad samba dancer in a mesh of rope pulled tight, but still connected to the first that was headbutting the island. Detective Sergeant Simon Duke had been watching the coastguards trying to get the bodies of the two climbers ashore for the last 40 minutes. They appeared to have been trying to get into the sea caves on the East of the island, when their support rope had given way.

Simon had been up since 4.00am. He waved to the coastguard "I'll catch up with you later I've got a meeting to go to". Might be able to get a bacon roll first he mused, as he climbed the cliff path, although the state of the bodies had rather killed his appetite.

The policeman at the gate was "very polite", the chief constables choice of words, but thorough. Even though the constable had known Simon for years he went over the old saab as per instructions, checked his pass, and finally grinned in recognition. " Only ten more days."
"Thank god for that. I can't wait to get back to normal," he said, letting in the clutch and driving into the car park of the Old Castle.

He glanced across at the SS Sarnia in the harbour, he had spent months checking the crew on her. The security people had fought against her tooth and nail, why screen an extra 1500 people, just to feed and house the athletes for the few weeks of the Olympics. Finally it had agreed the easiest way to look after all the athletes, officials, press etc, was to corral them on to a single boat which could cope with a wide variety of difficult people, efficiently and to a high standard. All 984 crew had eventually been monitored by the security services, the cost of that had been another very painful item on the £38 million budget agenda. Cruise ships made a show of having a multinational team aboard, it looked good in the promotional literature, but it was a pain for security.

The Old Castle on Portland is a scrubby building in the lee of the Chesil beach, nerve centre for Olympics security, it had been done up at a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds mainly on high tech equipment, with security links to all the Olympic nations. Much wrangling about costs, Portland didn't really need an international standard, anti terrorist surveillance and operational headquarters for 15,000 peasants and fisher folk; post Olympics a decent supermarket was what the locals wanted.

Running late Simon's bacon roll was definitely off the menu. Climbing the stone stairs two at a time, he headed for the first floor conference room, the building was an odd combination of ultra modern and eighteenth century but not in a designer conscious way. A motley collection of geeks, uniforms and overly casually dressed people, who obviosly were happier in suits than sailing kit, were streaming into the conference room for the daily briefing. A queue was forming for the trolley with the coffee on it.

Having got to the front of the queue for the old tea urn, he started pouring hot water to make a cup of coffee, on a good day it takes five seconds to put the water in a regulation green cup, it obviously wasn't a good day, after twenty seconds of pouring hot water into a single cup there was a puddle of hot coffee and water spreading across the floor, " Bloody thing won't turn off". he cursed to the amusement of all watching, he finally finished struggling with the faulty tap on the urn, and stepped back to get out of the mess, which had splashed all over the bottom of his trousers.

Stepping back he trod on something- a well polished Oxford brogue shoe. The word "Shit" flashed briefly through his brain, closely followed by the words "Sorry Sir, the Urn was playing up". Chief Superintendant Metcalf of the terrorist branch of the Met just stared at him. A difficult man to read normally, now it was easy to see Metcalf, was not impressed.

If anybody wanted luxuries like cappuccinos you wouldn't get them at the old Castle, Dorset constabularys £1 million budget was going on manpower not resources. Simon had just fallen foul of that penny pinching.

His secondment could be better. It had sounded good when his DI suggested a break for six months from the druggies of Bournemouth.
"Duke you know about sailing, how about joining the squad down for the Olympics in Weymouth". That was four years ago, the Met who were really running things had been forced to accept some local talent for the sake of appearances, it was soon clear for operational purposes the message was; "Get out of our way,we know what we are doing, we don't need a load of turnip heads fouling things up".

He had been detailed off with his squad to keep an eye out for the local malcontents, nutters and those with any kind of agenda, who might decide to create a nuisance that would get worldwide notice rather than half a page in the local paper. He had been up and down the quay in Weymouth and in and out of the local pubs, he now felt he knew all the staff of the local takeaways better than their mothers, he had been responsible for most of the raids in the last 3 years along with the border control agency. Checking their papers had been the reason given, but it was mainly to make a flutter in the hen coop and see if anything turned up.

Now he just seemed to be the gofer who ran around checking up on local odds and ends that were too petty for the rest of the team, hence being sent out that morning to a climbing accident. He didn't feel his career prospects were being enhanced and the hours were playing havoc with his social life.

"Ok after Duke here has cleared up, we'll get going" A small cheer from the assembled group of 28 assorted people, everyone was happy looking down on the Dorset police. The Met, MI5, MI6, Interpol, the navy and one guy from the FBI, individually weren't sure Dorset in 2012 was good for their own careers. It had to better than being the local plod. The job was nearly done now, the sailing competition had started 2 days ago, the months and years of preparation were behind them, now they simply had to man the controls for the next ten days and then they could all relax and go home.

"Morning ladies and gentlemen" Metcalf boomed out to get their attention, heads raised from laptops, blackberries and reams of A4 sheets. "We have had an update from London. They are getting reports of increased chatter about a terrorist attack, we know al Qaeda want to stage a spectacular and MI6 have information about a cell wanting to run a dirty bomb into London on a cargo ship, this has been getting a lot of attention, they think they may be going to try and run it up the Thames and blow it up where the river Lea enters the Thames, in one go they get the Olympics, the city airport, Greenwich and the cherry on top, the bankers in Canary wharf."

" Any ships running up and down the channel here are going to be scrutinised even more closely, our naval liaison officer Lt Col Harrison will keep us abreast of the action. HMS Charger and Ranger are patrolling the area between Old Harry rocks and Torquay. One may be called away, but we will keep one on standby. We are now on a higher level of alert across all the Olympic venues"

"Comms, will increase monitoring of any information coming across about shipping. MI5 and MI6 will give you as much information as they see fit". Janie Lewis looked up and nodded her head. She was already wondering whether the spooks would tell her anything, she was surprised Metcalf had shared this much information in such an open forum, someone must be worried. Her six month secondment from GCHQ, in a seaside resort away from the leafy campus in Cheltenham was almost up.
She caught Duke giving her a sideways look, "Dream on sailor boy, she thought I've got way too much to do and you aren't it." She smiled to herself but still stretched her legs out, just a little more than was necessary.

People were detailed off to their new tasks to check again on any potential trigger points, the security cordon around the island was to be tightened down, in a discreet way. Finally Simon got his duty. "Way I want you to check out all the takeaways again, any new staff, usual checks" He groaned inwardly. He'd already felt bad about organising one raid on his favourite kebab house and had made sure he wasn't around when it happened, kebabs were one of his vices. Last nights was still lingering in his gut. The coffee should have helped ease it down.

Four hundred yards from the Old castle, on the cruise ship Sarnia the competitors were working out in the gym or poring over the weather forecast charts and tide tables for that day, a vital wind-shift pattern or small tidal eddy could mean all the difference after 4 years of effort, the whim of the breeze could make heroes or villains out of them. Sport, the supreme pointless activity of the human race.

Sweating gently in the morning sunlight the six men were finishing off their yoga exercises on the back deck of the Sarnia, Ish and his group of lads kept together, they didn't speak English well. The Filipino engineers had been specially recommended some months back and had settled in well to live aboard the Sarnia. A shipping agent had suggested the team and they had worked closely with the refit crew as the engines had a major overhaul the previous autumn in Bremerhaven. Well disciplined, night and morning they kept their bodies as pure as their minds. As they stretched, they gazed intently across to the sailing academy, one of them always seemed to be looking out across the harbour. Much like a sniper would study a target.