The Fund. Jeff Edwards

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ of a book on the life of Jade Green would make good reading then the true life adventures of these two men would be a blockbuster, especially that of the late Robert Symes, right up to and including his untimely death while blowing up a bridge in occupied France.

      As much as he would have liked to have gone back to do further research on these brave men, it was not his main objective. That could wait till the current project was complete. Instead, he concentrated on what little information was available on Robert Symes’s life at home.

      Ignoring the spectacular, he concentrated on the mundane.

      He noted that Symes changed his home address just after his marriage to Janice Green, as well as making her his next of kin. However, after his death she had never bothered to apply for any of the privileges accorded war widows. True, she was wealthy enough not to need them, but she had not even applied for his medals.

      One curious item that Sloane did uncover was that Symes had requisitioned the use of a tank and its crew for a period of one day whilst he was supposedly on leave. Sloane wondered what that was about.

      There was also correspondence between himself and his superiors concerning the establishment of a secure facility to be set up outside the normal military precincts. His reason for doing so, he wrote, was so that he could interview escapees from Hitler’s wrath without them being compromised. He also had applied to set up a radio communications network to send messages to agents in occupied Europe. The date of the establishment of the secret base meant nothing to Sloane, but its address in the centre of London did.

      Searching through old records, Sloane was amazed to discover that the address supplied was none other than the location of Jade Green’s Garden of Eros and the dates even coincided! The two of them had been working from the same establishment, at the very same time!

      Shocked, Sloane began to consider the meaning of this information.

      The military had known, and actually granted permission, for Symes to establish a secret base for intelligence gathering to be operated from a brothel.

      Was the brothel also part of Symes’s intelligence gathering network?

      Sloane’s mind was abuzz with the possibilities. He had to find out more about the early life of Jade Green.

      Sloane decided that Daniel Clarke was the most obvious person to answer his questions, but he was disappointed to discover that Clarke had died some ten years before. He did, however, manage to track down Clarke’s only child, a son, and paid him a visit.

      The man explained that his father had never spoken about his wartime activities even though he had asked him on many occasions.

      ‘He refused to talk about anything that took place during the war. I know he was an officer in the army, but that’s all. I think having to keep it all bottled up affected him deeply. He was always a very withdrawn person and shunned most personal contact.’

      Sloane nodded. ‘I think you should get a copy of his military record.

      It will explain a lot.’

      ‘Thank you. I will.’

      As Sloane was about to leave, Clarke’s son had a sudden recollection. ‘The only time I heard my father mention anything to do with the war period was when he saw a woman on the television. I remember he sort of smiled and pointed her out to me. He said he knew her and that they had met during the war. It was as though it was one of the few happy memories he had of the period.’

      ‘Who was the woman?’ asked Sloane excitedly. ‘Was it a person named Jade Green?’

      ‘No. That name doesn’t ring any bells with me. If I can recall, I think it was something to do with a charity event. I remember thinking it was unusual that Dad would know someone like that. What I mean was that the woman was wearing a sari and I didn’t think Dad would ever associate himself with an Indian person. If you know what I mean.’

      Sloane’s mind raced. A woman wearing a sari? ‘Could this woman have been a doctor? Possibly a doctor named Rani Smith?’

      ‘I’m sorry. It was so long ago I couldn’t possibly remember the name.’

      Sloane could though. Clarke and Dr Rani Smith were both on Jade Green’s marriage certificate. It had to be her.

      ‘How long ago did this take place?’

      ‘He was here, living here with us. So it couldn’t have been too long before his death. After Mum died he lived alone for years, but at the end he couldn’t look after himself properly so we took him in.’

      Sloane was ecstatic. He had a new lead and that meant he was still in the hunt for the elusive Jade Green.

      As soon as he arrived home Sloane logged onto the Internet and searched for Dr Rani Smith. He was surprised at the number of hits raised and realised that he would be spending a long time going over such fertile ground.

      However, his main priority was to ascertain if Dr Rani Smith was still alive.

      A call to the Medical Association elicited the information that, although now retired, Dr Smith was still a member of the Association. They would not supply Dr Smith’s home address, but this did not trouble Sloane as he soon had that information from other sources often used by reporters.

      Sloane debated calling Dr Smith immediately but decided that it would be better if he knew more about the woman, so he returned to the Internet, reading everything he could about the doctor and making many notes.

      Chapter 3

      Initially, Mick Sloane and his investigations had I gone unnoticed. He had been just one of many reporters looking for a news story.

      However, his persistence had resulted in his name cropping up repeatedly on lists of persons seeking information. Information was well and good, but the people he was seeking that information on were people that were also of interest to the intelligence community.

      Therefore, his name had been flagged and any inquiries made by him were now the subject of a separate list, and as his list of inquiries grew, Sloane’s name was mentioned as a person who might bear further investigation.

      With his name now linked to that of Jade Green, Sloane’s file was passed to none other than the head of Inland Security, John Thorpe.

      ‘Frustrated’ was a poor description of how John Thorpe actually felt when it came to the subject of Jade Green and now that she was dead this frustration had passed to her circle of friends who made up the board of the charity named ‘The Fund’.

      Time and again his efforts to locate Jade Green’s secret cache of videotapes had been thwarted. Whether by bad luck or bad management, the videos remained beyond his reach.

      The Minister for Inland Security and Prime Minister Foster continued to support him in his efforts, but his continued lack of success meant the time was rapidly approaching when another failure would mean the end of his career, notwithstanding his years of service to the Crown.

      Despite the sex scandal involving his brother, Prime Minister Foster’s party had narrowly survived the last election and he was still focused on obtaining the missing videos. No matter that they were now forced to hold out the proverbial ‘olive branch’ to The Fund, secretly they continued СКАЧАТЬ