Scorpion_A Group Fifteen Novella by Mark Dawson

Author:Mark Dawson [Dawson, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unputdownable
Published: 2017-10-07T04:00:00+00:00

11

Milton had always hated large English country houses. They spoke of unearned privilege. The floor-to-ceiling oak panelling on the walls, the art, the chandeliers, the parquet tiled floor, all of it a testament to the wealth of the English upper classes, and, by definition, a stark reminder of how little most of the country had by comparison.

He’d asked for a computer with Internet access and Sanger led him and Hailey up the ornate staircase to the first floor. They stood outside a heavy set of double doors carved from solid oak.

“This is the heart of Lazarus House. I expect both of you to forget what you see here,” said Sanger.

He opened the doors to a large room with a cavernous ceiling. It would have been a vast reception room at one time, or perhaps a small ballroom, judging by the chandeliers. As it was, the room had several groups of sofas and chairs in the centre, some with video cameras pointed at chairs. Beyond this, at the back of the room, were row upon row of clothes racks filled with men’s and women’s clothing wrapped in cellophane as if they’d just been returned from the dry cleaner’s. Banks of filing cabinets lined the wall on the left, and computer stations and printers on the right. Sanger led them to a computer on an antique table and logged in.

He selected an Internet browser and opened it. Hailey sat down and logged on to her email account. She seemed to have moved past the shock of the evening’s events. Milton had often seen the same thing in combat. After the initial trauma of a grenade attack or a barrage of enemy fire, soldiers suddenly remembered that they had a job to do. The task of accessing her emails and finding the article she had been working on seemed to focus Hailey’s mind.

“What is this place?” said Milton.

Sanger nodded, beckoning to Milton to step away from Hailey. Milton followed him across the room to the metal filing cabinets. Each cabinet drawer bore a letter of the alphabet, and the cabinets stretched across half the length of the room.

“This is where we raise the dead,” said Sanger, making sure to keep his voice low so that Hailey wouldn’t hear. “In each drawer is a birth certificate, passport, bank account details, work record and list of addresses for an individual. An imagined life.”

He opened a drawer, selected a British passport and handed it to Milton. He opened it, found the ID page and noted there was no photograph to match the name and address.

“Every ID document is created here, apart from the birth certificate. That’s real. Each birth certificate is for an infant who passed away before their first birthday. We have birth certificates from every part of the country, stretching back seventy years. When we need a cover for an agent or source, they come here. This is where we give new life to the dead. It’s a shared facility with MI6. I imagine if you ever think of retiring, you might have to pay us a visit, old boy.

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