Another day another crisis

Another day, another crisis.

What is normal?

It all started so simply and slowly, a routine call from the mail room. A suspicious package wrapped in brown paper had arrived in the post, will I get it checked out? The fancy odour detectors had not shown anything, the x rays had not detected anything looking like explosives so the parcel had been put in the containment room but marked as low urgency. Nobody was rushing about in a panic, so I waited until I had dealt with the overnight paper work then went to the mail room carrying a cup of coffee. If this delivery had been in a modern bubble wrap container or a standard express delivery carton, it would probably never have been so carefully examined, it was the old fashion use of brown paper that had suggested a need for some caution. I initiated a full spectrum trace of poisons or bio-agents on the outer surface. It is surprisingly difficult to package up something like anthrax without leaving some minute trace on the outer wrapping but nothing was registered. I put on standard disposable gloves and picked up the package. Not heavy, in fact surprisingly light, about twelve inches cube, almost exactly regular in every dimension. A gentle shake did not seem to cause any loose movement inside it. The brown paper was creased as if it had been folded into other sized packs before being used on this one. The hand written address was in black ball point “ink” the postage stamp was correct for second class delivery and the post office had obviously fed it through automated sorting machines with no problems. The cancelling of the postage stamp showed it had been posted three days ago. As expected we found many differing sets of finger prints on the wrapping but we followed protocols and made a record of them all, for later feeding through the data base of prints. The brown paper was sealed with transparent sticky tape, the type available in every supermarket, corner shop and stationary outlet, all of the country, so not any use to me. I used a scalpel and sliced the sticky tape in a way that allowed me to unfold the brown paper. It had been used on another package before this one the inside clearly showed where a label had been previously stuck, then removed, I put this aside as forensics may come up with a clue to the sender, from this previous use. Thinking about the sender it had to be someone in the “business” to know this address. We are a secret organisation for good reason and our address is not public knowledge. The top layer of content were brand new clothes, sweat shirts from a very popular very cheap multi outlet chain. They appeared to be new and unused but were not individually wrapped. Under this top layer was the real content. Documents. Or rather parts of documents. They were roughly torn not cut, ragged edges showed they had been rather hastily torn up and shoved in the package. Under the paperwork were more clothes very similar to the top layer.

The first glance at the documents had me reaching for the internal phone. This was going to be a big problem for us. I took the paperwork to my office, forensics came and collected all the clothes and packaging. We had work to do, priority status work, no rest until conclusion work. The part documents were spread over an examination table which could be lit up from underneath. I carefully spread the parts out, aligning sheets to each other where they fitted. Photographs were taken for the record and my boss came in, took one look and rushed out to phone the cabinet office, this had repercussions to the very top of the establishment. She came back and sat with me as we poured over these dangerous sheets of paper.

Our mystery parcel contained parts of several pages of a very top secret, eyes only, document that should never have been seen by anyone outside the top level of our organisation and the Prime Minister. So secret that no other politicians or bureaucrats could be trusted with it. How the fuck had it ended up being posted to us and where the hell was the rest. Who had it and what did they want for both its return and for their silence. All such documents have codes on each copy to enable us to track who should have held it. The codes were in the missing parts so someone knew all about the tracing system. Adding this to the knowing of our address, indicated an insider, some one very knowledgable about how our security worked. My boss called the head of forensics and myself to her office, the Prime Minister herself was already there, Her first words set the tone. This has to be kept between just the four of us. Cover will be that the package contained a set of top secret drawing of an American nuclear submarine and we are desperate to keep a lid on this until it is resolved to our friends satisfaction.

Forensics and myself settled in for a non stop, round the clock many times over, operation. He took over a spare desk in my office so we did not have to even use phones to talk to each other. Nothing was on the record, nothing written down. We started with a list of all possible people who could have had access to the papers and also knew how our department worked. We shut down the official office computer system and used an off the books backup known only to myself and my most trusted tech officer. There were only six people who should have seen the paperwork, widen this to eighteen possibles by adding spouses and seniors assistants. Checking this against those who know about us and this list was down to ten. Five of these were our own departments seniors. Next was to consider why the documents were sent and why in such a bizarre way. The time line was also interesting, the document had been printed and distributed five days ago and the parcel posted three days ago. That only left a very short time for it to fall into the wrong hands and be ripped up to send to us. The Prime Minister was taking an active part in this, because she alone had a legitimate reason to contact the other five who held copies and ask about their current thoughts. Only three hours after we left the meeting with our boss, the first alarm bell went off. The PM reported she could not contact one of those who were on the official recipients list. We initiated a search and trace through our own department staff, since the missing person was a male member of our own directorate. He had always refused close protection and lived alone in a remote village in Scotland. When visiting the department he used one of our own very secure apartments. He was not at this and did not reply to calls to Scotland. He had been personally handed his copy of the document five days ago by our boss and had said he would study it before returning to Scotland. Standard protocols demanded that no one took any top secret papers to domestic addresses but there was no record of his consigning anything to the archive safe. The constant vetting procedures showed nothing had changed in his life, either inside or outside the service. CCTV showed him use a taxi to get from our building to the rail station, tracking his journey showed he left the train at the expected time and walked via a shopping mall to the car park he always used, before leaving this, presumably to drive home. We have no visuals of who he spoke to on the train or if anyone was waiting him at his home, this being unlikely since the only way to reach his place was by car and he should have called an alarm if anyone unexpected was in his home, before he entered. The train drivers records were checked, only one stop on the way to Edinburgh and CCTV again showed no sign of his leaving the train. The ticket booking system was trawled to see which seat he had reserved and who had any near him. One name came up, a senior advisor to an opposition MP but this guy was known to us and he lived in Edinburgh.

A helicopter and staff car got me to the remote house just before midnight. The place is called storm cottage but it is a 3 bedroom house. He lives alone. This place is so remote that our headlights would have been noticed from four miles away so we did not bother with a cautious approach. The driver went to the back. I knocked at the front door with my left hand while my right held a gun. The door was not locked or even fastened properly. Every room was a mess which is odd since overpowering a person is usually a small space activity. My driver came in the back door and we searched every room and the small outbuilding Nothing. We searched his car and there did find traces of blood. An urgent radio message set out all stations alert for our missing man. Then about two clock in the morning we got lucky. A report came in that three days ago an injured man was being brought to a hospital just outside Edinburgh, he was our man, still unconscious and with no brief case or any other belongings. We got to his bedside as they drugs wore off enough to let him speak. He told us that he had realised, while on the train that some one was following him so when he got to the end of the line he had gone shopping bought loads of new clothes and found some brown paper in the boot of his car. He knew he had broken protocols bringing the document home and he needed to get rid of it but could not trust the mail service completely so he ripped the document put some in the clothes and sent it off to us. The other parts he had burnt before getting home, stopping at the remote road side on his way. At his home he was attacked but they could not find the documents, since they no longer existed. He claimed had sent them to us in case he was killed and if so he thought that if he just burnt all the document it would mean we would not know if the killers had the papers. This did not make a great deal of sense to me but the boss wanted this whole thing buried so it was accepted; who tried to steal the papers and how did he get to the hospital? Were questions left for another day