Traitor in Our Midst

By Richard J. Sloane

When the serving Prime Minister is assassinated, Jack Sanderson is sent by his boss, Sir Maurice, head of MI5, on a desperate mission to find out who did it and why. With the help of an old police friend and his counterpart in MI6, he quickly discovers the assassins name: Yuri. Hes a foreigner and when hes shot dead in his home city, it strongly suggests that Russia might be behind the assassination. But then Jack finds out that the Deputy PM, Nick Henshaw, who is slated to become the next properly elected Prime Minister, is himself involved somehow with the Russians. Now the hunt is really on but its not until after Jack is threatened and his wife abducted that he and Sir Maurice finally gather enough evidence to confront Henshaw.......

This is the second Jack Sanderson political thriller after The Double Conspiracy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: May 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546292777

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© 2018 Richard J. Sloane. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 05/16/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9276-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9277-7 (e)

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Contents

Chapter 1 - Tuesday evening

Chapter 2 - Later that evening

Chapter 3 - Wednesday morning

Chapter 4 - Wednesday afternoon

Chapter 5 - Wednesday evening

Chapter 6 - Thursday morning

Chapter 7 - Thursday afternoon

Chapter 8 - Later Thursday

Chapter 9 - Friday

Chapter 10 - Friday (cont.)

Chapter 11 - Saturday

Chapter 12 - Later Saturday

Chapter 13 - Sunday To Monday Morning

Chapter 14 - Monday Afternoon

Chapter 15 - Monday evening

Chapter 16 - Monday night

Chapter 17 - Tuesday morning early

Chapter 18 - Tuesday morning later

Chapter 19 - Tuesday afternoon

Chapter 20 - Tuesday evening

Chapter 21 - Wednesday morning

Chapter 22 - Wednesday afternoon

Chapter 23 - Thursday

Chapter 24 - Tidying up

About the Author

Chapter

1

Tuesday evening

It was 6.20 in the evening and I was lying on the comfortable sofa in the living room of my flat in Highgate watching the early evening news with my feet in the lap of my newish wife, Pamela, when I noticed somebody pass a note to the newsreader. I saw her blanche visibly and then hesitate and knew at once something terrible had happened. After a long pause while she looked back questioningly at the person who’d passed her the note, she said, ‘A newsflash has just come in. Apparently the Prime Minister has just been shot while at a constituency meeting in her home town of Basildon. That is all we know at the moment but we shall of course keep you updated with events.’ Then she continued somewhat unsteadily with the rest of the news. But I didn’t stay to watch it. I was already putting on my jacket, hunting for the car keys, checking my official pass was in my pocket and heading out of the door after giving Pamela a quick kiss on the cheek and saying, ‘Don’t wait up for me, darling. I’ll probably be very late.’ She knew where I was going and that I was right. Jumping into the car and putting the blue flasher on the roof, I headed off for Whitehall at high speed.

Perhaps I should give a bit of background now. My name is Jack Sanderson and it was about three years since the successful completion of my last major operation for Sandy, the now ex-PM and my oldest friend, which I chronicled in my last manuscript, The Double Conspiracy. I had been re-employed by MI5 and given a desk job by Sir Maurice, the Director General, one of the wiliest old birds I have ever met who seemed capable of going on forever. Of course I knew I was too old by now to go chasing after baddies like I had in that last operation and the best place for me was at headquarters but, if I am going to be entirely honest, I still hankered after some excitement in my life. I kept myself in trim and still felt as fit as a flea. My wife, however, who I loved to death, really didn’t want me getting into any more trouble so I kept my nose clean and just handled the daily administrative tasks which came my way. I had recently been promoted to the dizzy heights of Director of Operations and this at least kept me busy and out of mischief. So I was now privy to many secrets and was ultimately responsible to the new PM, a lady by the name of Gabriela Wilson from a different party from Sandy’s who I got on with all right although I obviously wasn’t as close to her as I had been to Sandy. I was still on the COBRA Committee as the official MI5 representative and that was where I was now heading as I knew it would be convened.

Almost as soon as I’d jumped into the car, my mobile phone went off. It was Mary, the PM’s private secretary, who said that the Deputy PM wanted a meeting of the Committee ASAP. She sounded distraught but I just told her I was already on my way and hung up. As I sped through the damp streets of London on my way to Whitehall, I thought about the fragility of the protection surrounding our Great and Good. I knew it was possible for a determined lunatic, who didn’t mind sacrificing his own life, to kill anybody he wished, especially our politicians who had to go out and about among the people, and hoped to God that Gabriela had survived the attack. This made me remember from my O level history the only previous PM to have been assassinated: it was Spencer Perceval who had been shot in 1812 and, completely irrationally given the seriousness of the situation, I was quite proud of remembering this useless fact. I wondered if it was a Jihadist attack from a group we hadn’t been monitoring, always the greatest fear of any MI5 agent.

I kept the radio on the entire way but the only new thing they said was that she had been rushed to hospital, which I could have guessed anyway. I made it to the Treasury building in record time and, after parking the car in its allocated spot, dashed down to the basement where I presented my pass to the bored-looking soldier on duty at the entrance to the tunnel. After my pass and I had been carefully scrutinised, I was allowed through and ran into the tunnel. It was brightly illuminated as usual and I made my way quickly to the secret room where the Committee met under Whitehall and, once there, I was greeted by a grave-faced aide to the PM. He showed me immediately into the room and I went in to find a number of my colleagues on the Committee already there and talking in shocked tones of the incident. ‘Does anybody know any more?’ I enquired. But it appeared nobody did. So we just sat around and waited for whatever would happen next.

It was the appearance of the Deputy PM who came rushing into the big room in a very dishevelled state, apparently shocked and distressed. I hardly knew him at all, except for what I’d heard from others which, on the whole, was not very complimentary. One thing I’d been told, I remembered now, was that he was very ambitious and a very smooth operator, a politician’s politician in fact, something which did not endear him to me at all. However, in spite of being rather a short man, he somehow managed to exude an air of authority. He immediately sat down at the head of the table and said, ‘I’ve just received some very bad news. I’m afraid the Prime Minister died on the way to the hospital. I suppose that means I have to take over the government of the country.’ He looked very downcast when he said this but was that a gleam I saw in his eye? Then he continued, ‘The press already have the story and I suppose the first order of business is to compose a release for them. So, if you’ll excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, I’d better get on with it. Your priority is to catch whoever did this and bring them to justice.’ And he got up to leave.

But here I knew I had to intervene. ‘Are you telling us that the perpetrator got away?’ I asked in a loud voice which he couldn’t ignore.

Reluctantly, he sat down again and replied, ‘It rather looks that way, I’m afraid. Sorry. I forgot to tell you that you will be fully briefed on what happened in a few minutes by the chief of the PM’s security detail who is coming here directly from the scene.’ And now he obviously felt he’d done what he came to do and this time marched out of the room with a determined look on his face.

I decided on the spur of the moment that I would go through his file with a fine tooth comb when I got back to the office, wondering what I would dig up. Surely his ambition couldn’t have contributed to Gabriela’s death, could it? No, that was ridiculous. I was being fanciful and vindictive, I knew. Politicians didn’t go around murdering each other these days. We weren’t still stuck in the Middle Ages after all. But my instincts were in overdrive and, anyway, I knew I had to bring this dog to heel. He wouldn’t be allowed to treat us with such contempt next time we met just to satisfy his own political ambitions. We were the final bastion for the security of the country after all and, if Gabriela’s death wasn’t important enough for him to stay for, then what was?

So, with this gloomy jumble of speculations going through my mind, we just sat there in stunned silence. Soon, however, I moved on and started pondering the situation as it stood. If the perpetrator had got away, it would mean it was a professional job, not the work of some lunatic Jihadist. So it would be that much harder to solve. But my thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door and the entrance of the chief of the PM’s security detail who I’d had dealings with in the past. In spite of a reputation for calmness under pressure, he looked extremely flustered and I wasn’t surprised. Things like this simply weren’t supposed to happen. He smiled wanly at me and I said, ‘Hello, John. A bad day at work, I understand.’

‘The very worst,’ he admitted gloomily.

‘Sit down and tell us exactly what happened.’

He sat and hesitated for a moment. Then he reported succinctly, ‘I thought it was just going to be a routine trip to Basildon. She was meeting her constituents about a proposed bypass and it all started normally. There was pandemonium in the hall as they seemed to be about equally divided in their support for the project. I heard nothing like a gunshot. I didn’t even see a muzzle flash. But the next thing I knew was when the PM fell in front of me and I immediately rushed to her. That was when I saw a massive bloodstain on the front of her blouse and at once thought there might be a shooter in the hall. I covered her with my body and took out my mobile phone and at once dialled 999 and asked for an ambulance to be sent. I had to shout to make myself heard as the noise in the hall suddenly increased when people realised something had happened to her. I couldn’t feel her moving under me and thought the worst. I raised my head and shouted, ‘Everybody get down!’ But it didn’t have the intended effect as my colleague had taken out his weapon and was brandishing it in front of him, trying to spot a shooter, but this only increased the panic and everybody started trying to rush out of the hall. There was an empty public gallery at the end of the meeting room looking over it, and, before you ask, yes, we’d checked it before the start of the meeting and it was securely locked, and he at once realised that, if she had been shot, that was probably the only place a bullet could have come from. So he dashed up there and found the padlock which had been securing the door dangling from it but there was no one there. There was, however, a rifle with a silencer attached lying on the floor, which, by the way, is now with forensics. The shooter had obviously escaped in the melee. Then the ambulance came and I took her to hospital but she was dead before she got there. I had already asked the local plod to seal off the area but I didn’t hold out much hope there. It was clearly a professional job. And I’m afraid that’s pretty much everything I can tell you.’ And there he stopped.

Our committee chairperson, a lady, who was a Minister at the Home Office on this occasion, now spoke up. ‘Thank you. It seems no responsibility can be attached to either you or your colleague for this disaster. So I suggest you go about your duties.’ And John got up, looking clearly relieved