The Fifth Freedom

[Confederal Republics]

13th of September, 1926

155 Alderton Street
Hawking House, Seat of the Canton of Eastern March
Whitehaven
Canton of Eastern March
Commonwealth of Cornavia

Slogans drawn on the walls of the assembly hall of the Eastern March Canton Assembly served as a visible remainder that mere days ago, the building had been the site of the last stand by a desperate band of men known as the Eastern March People's Volunteers. The bodies that undoubtedly had been scattered across the floor during the assault had, however, been removed ahead of the President's visit.

God must have been a friend of irony, for the man whom the Red insurgents had chosen as their leader - a former Army Sergeant and a well-known brawler in the harbour strikes that had plagued the city in the recent months - had made his last stand against the Commonwealth soldiers from the podium of the room, where usually the Premier of the Canton Assembly presided over the Assembly's sessions. However, he'd not ended his life there: He had been the last one alive, and after he had expended the bullets of his handgun the first Commonwealth soldiers to have reached the podium had "accidentally" bayoneted him to death. So had told Whitehaven's temporary military commandant, Lieutenant General Winston Chamberlain, who had accompanied him to the Canton Seat.

Sebastian Quintaine flinched as he heard a gunshot, echoing from somewhere outside of the broken windows of the assembly hall, and from behind of the nearby buildings. The Lieutenant General evidently saw his reaction.

"It's alright, sir, the Southport Rifles have this area of Whitehaven already under tight control", Chamberlain replied in a reassuring, firm tone, "But they're still rooting out some of the remaining Reds. Still, they're few and far between, they shan't pose a threat for us."

Quintaine nodded. Of course, if he'd truly feared violence, he'd had stayed behind in Southport. However, he'd had to see the aftermath of the Whitehaven Uprising for himself, to see what kind of a reaping of those seeds that the Commonwealth as a whole had sowed had taken place here. He'd seen plenty of the bodies outside, and even here stains of dried blood and bullet holes in the walls and furniture served as a testimonial of the moment when brothers had raised arms against each other. Through sheer luck had the Quintaine presidency prevented the growing of the Whitehaven Uprising into a civil war, even though later records and public statements would label the Uprising as an isolated incident that could not have repeated itself elsewhere in the country.

It was only now, in this spot, and with the contrast between democracy and terrorism in his mind, that Sebastian Quintaine truly understood. The founders of the Commonwealth had understood that in such a situation, freedom could only be gained in the barricades. What their followers should have understood is that to preserve freedom, the erection of further barricades by freedom's enemies should follow.

"Four Freedoms..."

"Excuse me, sir?", Chamberlain replied with a quizzical look.

"In 1833 they neglected to include the fifth", Quintaine said, gazing at the bullet-ridden coats of arms of the Commonwealth and the Eastern March which still hung side-by-side behind the podium, "To do everything in our power to preserve the other four."

 

[Confederal Republics]

MEMORANDUM

EYES ONLY
17th of June, 1982

Purpose

The following are noted as the purposes of this memorandum:

a) To provide an overview on the current threats to the survival of the Commonwealth as a political system, and the potential for the use of the Special Home Guard for their prevention.

b) To provide an overview on the possibilities of influencing the operation of the Special Home Guard through pre-existing Operation GARNET.

Background

We note the following:

a) Communist and fascistoid agitational groups, funded by sympathizing entities within the League of Free States and the global Communist block, continue to pose a serious hazard to the internal security of the Commonwealth.

b) The ideological base of these Communist and fascistoid groups is in a direct contradiction with the Four Freedoms principle.

c) The measures available to the Commonwealth to guarantee its internal security within the limits of the Four Freedoms principle and the Constitution are insufficient to guarantee an effective defense against the aforementioned groups, therefore warranting covert measures.

Special Home Guard

a) The Special Home Guard comprises 5000 men and women drawn from the Commonwealth Home Guard and SOF components of the Commonwealth Armed Forces.

b) The members of the Special Home Guard possess existing talents of covert warfare and intelligence-gathering and have undergone counter-espionage vetting to ensure operational and tactical reliability.

c) The Special Home Guard operates under the operational control of Military Intelligence, which itself includes an embedded, pre-existing GARNET cell.

Operation GARNET

a) The purpose of Operation GARNET is to guarantee the Four Freedoms and the survival of the Commonwealth as a political system against internal enemies.

b) Operation GARNET exists to undertake such measures which cannot for moral, political and practical reasons conducted by the Cantonal Anti-Terrorist Branches, the Greater Southport Public Security Wing or the Commonwealth Security Service.

c) Operation GARNET uses methods of political, media and cultural manipulation, social engineering, false flag terrorism and covert intelligence which cannot be applied by agencies within the Commonwealth's formal political structures.

d) Operation GARNET is insulated from the Commonwealth's formal security organizations.

Findings

a) We recommend the promotion of the Special Home Guard as an adjunct to Operation GARNET to accomplish GARNET's internal political goals.

b) Awareness of Operation GARNET must only come to certain Special Home Guard members identified as key assets, and whose tasks will be to direct, analyze and report.

c) Existing Operation GARNET infiltration of the Commonwealth Security Service and Military Intelligence is sufficient to guarantee operational insulation.

 

[Confederal Republics]

4th of October, 1926

6 Westings Square
Hall of the Grand Orient of Cornavia
Southport-on-Sea
Canton of Western Crownland
Commonwealth of Cornavia

Though the Grand Orient kept its lists of membership secret, President Sebastian Quintaine still entered its Hall through the back, away from any curious eyes. Knowledge or even a hint that the Commonwealth President could be an initiate of the Masonic rites would, after all, be of political interest to his opponents.

Especially ironic, Quintaine noted as his Metropolitan Police bodyguard opened one of the oaken twin doors of the back entrance of the Hall, was the fact that his presidency himself relied in part on the opponents of Masonic influence in the Cornavian society. When he'd been elected by Parliament three years ago, Quintaine had in particular emphasized the defense of the common man against elitism and secret plots, causes that were dear to the then-influential populist caucus of the Commonwealth Party. And here was he, now, entering that very Hall which the populists and their kind considered the embodiment of all that was wrong in the fabric of the Commonwealth. The President allowed himself a faint smile as he climbed up the narrow marble stairwell towards the inner sanctum of the Grand Orient of Cornavia.

When he'd returned from Whitehaven, President Quintaine had made a speech before Parliament assuring that a restoration of order against the bloody tide of Bolshevism was in the works, but that at the same time the Commonwealth would not give up its democratic values. Quintaine was particularly proud of "the Fifth Freedom", his assertion in that speech that to the Four Freedoms of the Cornavian Revolution needed to be added a fifth: The freedom to defend the other Four Freedoms through any and all means needed.

Lies were a politician's standard-issue weapon, and he'd thrown a hell of a one before the Parliament. In Whitehaven, understanding had come to Quintaine that the Commonwealth could not, by its very nature, afford all of the measures it needed for its own defense. His Freemasonry might have been ironic, but even more ironic was the fact that what Quintaine considered the best system of politics crafted by Man might not be able to sustain itself. At least not without lies even greater than the ones thrown day to day by the world's leaders.

The most influential of the Master Masons had gathered as he'd requested, in the luxuriously decorated room intent on serving as a space of informal assembly and socialization by members of the oldest Lodges of the Southport area. With whiskey already passed around by their ever-reliable butler, as Quintaine had instructed.

The deputy chair of the Labour Party was here, as were several professors, the Chief of the General Staff, a couple of the Commonwealth's richest men, the Canton First Minister of Southport, and many others of note who comprised the most influential Cornavians inducted into the ranks of the Grand Orient. The Grand Master of the Orient, Professor Jacob Gilchrist, was also here in attendance. In this room, or in this hall, differences of standing, birth or party membership held no meaning. They were all Masons here.

Their talk interrupted by the arrival of President Quintaine, each of the fellow Master Masons exchanged greetings with the man who had summoned this meeting. Questions that each of the men held would be answered by Quintaine soon.

"Sebastian?", Professor Gilchrist, head of the Faculty of Political Sciences at the Scanian University of Southport, gazed at the Commonwealth President and a former student of his, studying his reaction with fascination. "What's the purpose of our assembly here, and such secrecy with which we've gone to hide it even from our own brothers?"

"Grand Master, Master Masons", President Quintaine replied, acknowledging each of the fifteen or so men in assemblage in this otherwise thoroughly unremarkable Monday evening, "You will undoubtedly be familiar with what I said about the relevance of the Four Freedoms in our society before Parliament, if not from personal attendance then from our esteemed papers. Having said that, it is an unfortunate truth that the Commonwealth as an entity is not fit to exercise that Fifth Freedom, not with the vigor that the preservation of our society requires. It is thus that I state the necessity for different action, on our own initiative by those gathered here. If you will, a lie to preserve the truth. Lesser evil to preserve the greater good. An exercise of our Fifth Freedom, gentlemen."

 

[Confederal Republics]

Residence of Stephen Wright M.P
53 Farpoint Road
Southport-on-Sea
Canton of Western Crownland
Commonwealth of Cornavia

"Interesting literature you've been reading as of late, Stephen", Derrick Cole said, his eyes fixed on the book lying on the table of Stephen Wright's living room. Treatises of the Will of the People and its Application in High Politics by 1920s Cabinet Chancellor Peter Wolfstone was often considered the founding book of Cornavian political populism, and even today debate raged among Cornavian political scientists as to whether Wolfstone had been a political genius who'd revolutionarized Cornavian democracy or merely another demagogue.

Stephen Wright took a sip from the glass of Rodham and Sons whiskey in his left hand, feeling the tastes and sensations that went with the fine drink as it passed down his throat. He nodded in acknowledgement of Cole, whose gaze then turned away from the table towards the living room's bookshelf. Stephen chuckled, in the knowledge that his friend had seen his bookshelf many times enough, so he must have been looking for new additions. Maybe he wondered if Wright had taken a sudden interest in political populism.

Derrick Cole was an old friend of his from the Whitehaven Academy, where they'd both studied Political Science. Only whereas Wright had been caught up in student politics and eventually entered the Parliament as a Commonwealth MP, Cole had pursued his life's ambition of political journalism, now writing political columns that were syndicated into fourteen major newspapers and maintaining his own political blog site in the Internet. In Parliament, whenever he released a new column it was bound to appear in the summaries of the day's newspapers that the aides of each M.P usually prepared for their superiors.

"I do remember you as a...fan of Wolfstone, but I thought that to have reduced when you entered Commonwealth", Cole said, sitting down on the sofa opposite to Stephen and taking his own glass of whiskey from the table, "I must say, Whitehaven professors are still talking about the one time when you called out Arterton in his own lecture hall."

Stephen chuckled again, this time more loudly. Professor Marcus Arterton, now professor emeritus, had then been one of the teachers in Political Science, and during a certain highly critical lecture concerning Cornavian populism and Chancellor Wolfstone in particular Stephen had loudly challenged his opinions, resulting in a drawn-out debate between Stephen and Arterton that had taken up the remainder of the lecture. When Arterton had given him failing grades from the course, Stephen had extended their feud to the newspaper run by Whitehaven's student board and eventually forced Arterton to give him passing grades.

He'd had a knack for that as a young man, and he'd always enjoyed presenting a challenge to the establishment. It was too bad that he'd had to give up much of that to advance within the ranks of the Commonwealth Party, as his friend Cole had just remarked.

"True, true", Stephen replied, "And 'tis also true that I've had to give up a bit of myself for my career. But then again, don't we all?"

"At least you voted against in the Council vote", Cole remarked.

That was true. Stephen Wright and a number of other Commonwealth M.P.s had, during the vote to submit a Cornavian application of membership into the Council of Nations, but he had to admit to himself that had it been just him and none of the other dissidents, he'd likely have not gone forward with the notion of challenging Cabinet Chancellor Wainwright over the Council issue. Now he knew, however, that silence in the matter would have been wrong.

"It passed anyway", Stephen replied in a grim tone, "It wasn't enough to overcome this globalist idiocy that Wainwright and her cronies are pushing through with, and what they've decided in their cabinets before even brought the proposal into Parliamentary vote."

"Quite direct of you to say that", Cole said, raising an eyebrow in curiosity.

Stephen knew that he could be direct with his friend, even in sensitive matters such as these, despite of the fact that Cole was a member of the press.

"An astute observation of you to take note of my recent readings", Stephen said, reaching for Wolfstone's book from the table, "You see, I'm drawing inspiration. President Breckenridge is going to resign from Party leadership this year, and Wainwright's making a bid for chairmanship. If she succeeds, the hold that she and her clique have over the party will be complete. And I don't want that. We need to restore the governance of this country back to the people, and to do that I need your help."

 

[Confederal Republics]

Commonwealth Security Service General Headquarters
13 Seaboard Avenue
Southport-on-Sea
Canton of Western Crownland
Commonwealth of Cornavia

Michael Drake stared quizzically at the man seated on the opposite side of the table, trying to gauge the man's thoughts from his blank facial expression. Still, he knew that his superior always made that look when he was about to elaborate on something sensitive, unsure as he was in spite of the state-of-the-art counter-surveillance equipment and double-panel armored glass installed in the building that they were in. General Director Jonathan Wilcox had always been an elusive personality, even for a spook.

The room that they were in stood in the top floor of the C Building of the compound of buildings in Western Southport that made up the Commonwealth Security Service General Headquarters, and out of here worked Wilcox and his closest operational and administrative subordinates, Drake included. Thus the General Director's office was a place familiar to Drake.

Jonathan Wilcox finally let off a sigh, then turned on his office chair to again face the large screen on the room's wall, connected to his personal computer which was right now displaying a classified memorandum fresh off the Analysis Section. Though Drake had seen the memorandum earlier during the meeting when Wilcox had explained to him the nature of the situation, the fact that M.P Stephen Wright had been listed as its subject again caught Drake's eyes. Officially the Commonwealth Security Service was supposed to monitor only those political movements considered to be extremist in nature, so surveillance on a Commonwealth Party member not subject to a criminal investigation constituted at least a mandate violation, if not an outright criminal offense. That hag Wyman would have a fit if she'd know about this, Drake spoke to himself in reference of the Minister of Human Rights, among whose duties was independent monitoring of the police and security services of the Commonwealth.

"If Wright intends to replace President Breckenridge in the Commonwealth Party this year", Wilcox said to Drake with his characteristic gruff, yet eloquent tone, "It won't bode well for the others. Hell, the man's a complete and utter populist, a tried-and-true professional bullshitter. And we need Wainwright in chairmanship. Wright as a chairman and Wainwright as the Cabinet Chancellor would be a recipe for uncertainty for our country, particularly with that new foreign policy."

In other words, a politician. Drake's experience and knowledge had more to do with practical experience rather than academia. From what he knew of Parliament affairs Wright seemed to speak agreeable things. However, Drake was not swayed to his side by the virtue of the simple fact that a Parliamentary of a Cornavian major party wanting to bring politics "from backrooms to the people" would have to be a liar.

"And you want to do...what exactly, sir?", Drake gave his reply. General Director Wilcox again had that look on his face which he put on in moments such as these, and it was far more prominent than before.

The man's answer was just a single word, "Garnet".

Michael Drake almost twitched in response. He knew Operation Garnet, which had been established by the Security Service and Military Intelligence in the 1950s to combat political extremism through nonlegitimate means, well, for one of his present duties included supervising elements of what was left of the operation. It had been scaled down from its heyday in the 1980s after the Tyskreicher communist regime had collapsed, but never fully ended to preserve the option of using such illegitimate means against the ongoing threats of leftist radicalism and regional separatism.

"Wright puts us in a difficult position, being in the Commonwealth Party, so we can't just discredit him without hurting the Cabinet itself", Wilcox mused, and then hesitantly added, "I'm not going to blame you if you don't want to go through with this, however."

Drake didn't exactly know what the General Director was implying, but knew that no matter how sensitive it was, it would be well below his pain threshold. The two men had built a kind of trust which was based on mutually known and carried out favors and quasi-legal and illegal actions which, if revealed by either, would have constituted a mutually assured destruction of sorts. That Wilcox was so hesitant indicated to Drake that this was very serious indeed. Drake shrugged, urging Wilcox to continue.

"There's something else: You see, the essential problem with Wright is not only his political views, but the fact that he's not one of us", Wilcox said, the emphasis in the end clearly implying that Wright was not of the Grand Orient, specifically of its inner circle of Master Masons. Cabinet Chancellor Wainwright wasn't of them either, but she was a woman, and women were forbidden from joining the Grand Orient's lodges. Those such as her existed as a strange kind of outer element of Southport's Masonic inner circle. "And that's why Wright is unpredictable, a wild card."

"I see. And what would you have me do about it, especially as it relates to Garnet?"

"The solution needed involves permanence", Wilcox managed to say.

And Drake realized. Assassinating a Cornavian citizen had been done before, but on such occasions the persons removed had mostly been extremist trouble-makers and the like. Never a proper tax-payer, and certainly not from the ruling party. The thought managed to both intrigue and trouble him at the same time.

 

[Confederal Republics]

The Blue Fountain Restaurant
44 Commonwealth Colonnade
Southport-on-Sea
Canton of Western Crownland
Commonwealth of Cornavia

By the virtue of being located alongside an avenue which spanned most of central Southport and ended at the Westings Square - which housed the Parliament and other centers of Commonwealth power - the Blue Fountain Restaurant was a favorite of Southport's elites and assorted socialites. Unless you were part of an "invitation only" club that included parliamentaries, prominent businessmen and top academics in its ranks, you had to wait for weeks to gain a reservation to dine, even though the restaurant spanned two floors and a rooftop of a four-floor trade building from the 1910s. With the first floor of the restaurant housing the restaurant itself, the second floor housing a drinking lounge and a set of exclusive dining lounges and with the rooftop housing a terrace popular on summer days.

And as it turned out, one Member of Parliament Stephen Wright was a regular customer, enjoying a dining lounge reserved for the exclusive use of a club of his party's parliamentaries from the Coleridge-Anston Canton. For tonight Wright had arranged the lounge for his sole use, or rather, he had arranged it to be shared with his guest. Sean Devenham headed the Commonwealth Party's organization in the Farpoint Canton, and had a seat in the party's Standing Committee.

"Well?", Wright said after Devenham had begun to help himself to the entrecôte steak Wright had ordered from the Blue Fountain's kitchen. The party organizer had a contemplative look on his face.

"I like you, Stephen, I really do", Devenham said after finishing his bite and washing it down with a glass of Franconian red wine, "And I can't say that I disagree with you concerning what you've put out on Wainwright and her Southport lackeys, but are you sure that you're up to this?"

"Am I?", Wright asked, as much as a rhetorical question to Devenham as he asked it as a genuine one for himself. After all, making a genuine bid to do something was different from merely criticizing others when they tried to do things their way. That was the dilemma every populist faced.

He continued, "I think that I am, and since you ought to have had at least some grasp of my thoughts and why we're even here, I think that you're in agreement."

* * *

In a building on the other side of the Colonnade opposite to the building housing the Blue Fountain, Crow kneeled in front of the window, peering through the small opening between the curtains using a pair of military-issue binoculars. Second floor, sixth window to the right from the main entrance, he reminded himself, before sighting Stephen Wright. His conversation partner was out of sight, but they'd seen the man identified as one Sean Devenham go in.

"Bluebird", Crow said in a quiet tone, with his eyes and binoculars still focused on the window.

"Yeah?", the one called Bluebird replied from Crow's right.

"Got a fix on the principal, second floor, sixth window to the right from the main entrance."

"Turn up the mike?"

"Aye."

First there was background noise in Crow's headset, then to his surprise, the voice of an unfamiliar woman saying, "...what if he'll find out about us?"

"Don't worry, the manager's a friend of mine, we can meet here", replied another voice, that of an equally unfamiliar man. Crow had memorized to recognize Wright's voice and that of Devenham from phone calls they'd recorded earlier, and this man wasn't Devenham either.

"Bluebird...", Crow replied with a sigh. As interesting as this intrusion into the extramarital lovelife of some other customer was, their mission was something else.

"Ahem", Bluebird said back in a tone that managed to convey slight embarrassment, "I've mis-adjusted the laser, hold on."

"You don't say? And here I was thinking that Stephen Wright was really a Stephanie", Crow said dryly.

The men ceased their banter as Bluebird adjusted the laser microphone towards the right window, and a voice Crow recognized as that of Sean Devenham carried through his headset.

* * *

"But what about foreign policy?", Devenham asked, "I know you want the chairmanship but is doing that on the backs of the isolationists and the near-Republicans really worth it?"

Stephen Wright sighed. Devenham was being unsure of his proposition, even though both of the men had something to gain. Wright would attain a supporter for his bid to replace President Breckenridge as the chairman of the Commonwealth Party, and with it a supporter for his shot for the Chancellorship. And Devenham would gain a Commonwealth Party chairman receptive to the interests of rural Cornavia and his Canton. Wright decided to put in a new angle.

"Neither of us are in the inner circle these days", Wright said, his eyes fixated on Devenham, "And the solution to that is to create a new inner circle in the party. The reason that Wainwright and her lackeys are succeeding is precisely that we've stood alone separated from one another, and this needs to stop. As for your question over whether or not I feel that I can win, well, I've got friends in the press, Derrick Cole for instance..."

Dropping the name of the Commonwealth's most read political blogger seemed to cause a reaction. Wright continued, "We're going to work through independent outlets and the blogosphere, rather than big media houses like Beacon. As said, we need to create a new inner circle. I'm already getting in touch with Mark Dunham..."

Mark Dunham was the deputy chairman of the Commonwealth Party Caucus of Rural Parliamentaries.

"...and other people outside Wainwright's small clique of sycophants. How does this sound like to you?"

"Go on..."

* * *

"Crow", Bluebird said contemplatively, "Ought to we have Garnet on the horn on this?"

"Aye."

 

[Confederal Republics]

New Office Annex of the Commonwealth Parliament
3 Parliament Lane
Southport-on-Sea
Canton of Western Crownland
Commonwealth of Cornavia

Nicole Hayward cursed herself for letting things come to this point. She should have known better, listening to her conscience which had told her that she was in terrible peril thinking that she would be able to keep her habit to a few dozen Sovereigns a weekend at the Grand. But no, though the winnings had been scant in comparison to the money she'd spent, their rarity had made them attractive. She'd tried simply not going to the casino, but even that had been rendered futile when she'd discovered online gambling. And that had been when her real troubles started.

Attempting to keep her facade and the vision that everything was perfectly okay in her life was becoming more and more difficult by the day. Hayward didn't like the recent turn that her affairs had taken, but knew that she couldn't have gone on the way she'd gone for long. She'd barely managed to pay off her Cornavian debts, and she'd known that it would only have been a matter of time until the foreigners would start sending in letters to her Cornavian addresses, maybe even hire a debt collection agency or go straight to the police. And had they done that, she would have been ruined.

The mysterious strangers who had one evening arrived to her doorstep had offered Nicole a way to make up for all her gambling debts, if only she'd carry out certain services on their behalf. Services which, she'd discovered, included relaying information from her employee to her mysterious benefactors. Though she'd accepted and gone forward with it, she now worried greatly over what she'd gotten herself into, and if she was now treading into a greater peril in her bid to save her name and career.

A parliamentary aide couldn't afford being marked as a credit risk, not only because of the usual problems such a thing entailed in Cornavian society but also because such things appeared in the security evaluations run by the Commonwealth Security Service for anyone in such a position. If her employer would find out, Nicole's career would be over. But at the same time, if what she was doing for her benefactors would be found out, worse things could happen. And certainly, she'd already done too much to quit. If her benefactors were political rivals or reporters, she could by the very least face a serious civil lawsuit on behalf of her employer. And if they were foreign spies, a possibility Nicole didn't think likely but considered nevertheless, she could be charged with espionage.

However things went, no good options would be available to her. So he settled for the one that would at least keep her secret a secret a moment longer. She'd locked the door leading from the corridor to the waiting room of her employer's, MP Stephen Wright's, office so as to be sure that there'd be no intrusion. Wright, she knew, was in the countryside and the other members of his staff would not be around for the weekend. Using a set of spare keys her employer had given her, Nicole entered Wright's office. As she walked through the door towards Wright's table and his tabletop computer, she cursed herself for her past betrayal and those betrayals that were to follow.

 

[Confederal Republics]

The Commonwealth Parliament
Westings Square
Southport-on-Sea
Canton of Western Crownland
Commonwealth of Cornavia

A place next to which stood the Commonwealth Parliament and other institutions of power so recognizable for the Cornavian people, the Westings Square had witnessed Cornavian history from the dawn of the Commonwealth and the foundation of the Maxwell dictatorship all the way to the second Red Scare and the Cold War. Time upon time history had been made on that square, and on the stairs of the Parliament, and right now the members of the New Lightbearers seemed to be hoping that they'd be able to follow up on the tradition.

The first rally of the Association of New Lightbearers took place on the Westings Square, and a stage had been erected before the Parliament building for that exclipit purpose. As Stephen Wright watched, though from the armored glass-shielded terrace of the Parliament building's Staff Cafeteria for parliamentarians and their employees and guests, he smiled at the gathering group. The groups of demonstrators coming to attend the rally, he realized, were filling nearly the entirety of what area the Metropolitan Police had told them would be usable for the purposes of the demonstration. Loud talk echoed from the Square, from the mass of demonstrators that was assembling between the Neoclassical facades of the buildings around the Square.

It was a shame that Wright could not stand there in person, for the shape that the New Lightbearer movement was taking was much to his liking. Alas, the Commonwealth Party's leadership had issued strict guidelines regarding association with such groups tied to the Cornavian opposition. And Stephen Wright wanted to assail Cabinet Chancellor Wainwright from the within, challenging her attempt to replace President Breckenridge as the party chairman in the election a few weeks from now.

"A shame you can't join us, Stephen", Lawrence Anderton said, taking a sip from the pint of Old Coleridge Stout before him. A special blend, Wright noted, one that a number of fine beer houses had in their stocks. "I trust that if we go forward with this whole 'Stephen Wright is the voice of reason in the Commonwealth Party', thing, you'll hold your end of the bargain when you're in charge, right?"

He suppressed an urge to make a retort, knowing that Anderton was a man to say what he wanted to say bluntly. At least the man was being bluntly honest rather than being a friendly liar, Wright mused, then took a sip of his own red wine and replied, "Alas, I will only be able to prove myself once Wainwright's attempts to attain chairmanship are defended. And in this, partner, you're needed, at least insofar as further convincing my party's dissidents to stay in until the elections. This is the price that you'll need to pay for our cooperation."

"As long as Wainwright gets what's coming to her, and as long as my Republicans attain our rightful place in the Commonwealth politics."

Your republicans? Why, you're not even a chairman of the damn party yet. It seems that someone else is making a bid for power too.

"As if I wouldn't have you convinced by now", Wright retorted dryly, sure that he'd already dropped enough names of his associates in the Commonwealth Party to convince Anderton. A sad predicament it was that Stephen Wright had to make compromises with the likes of the Republicans in what was an internal affair of the Commonwealth Party. But he well knew that in his quest to oust Joanne Wainwright's clique from leadership he risked splitting the party, and though Commonwealth would still be likely to come over the elections as a major party, his move risked driving some of Wainwright's supporters away. If that would happen, he'd need the Republicans more than he needed them now, as them and the rest of the Lightbearers were rocking Wainwright's boat with the promise of future cooperation.

* * *

Elsewhere in the city, to be specific in one of the telephone kiosks placed in the Neoclassical waiting lounge of the Southport-on-Sea Inter-Cantonal Railway Station, Nicole Hayward took a deep breath before reaching into her handbag to take out an USB flash drive and a roll of tape, as instructed by her anonymous benefactor in the instructions she'd received earlier day. Or was he even a benefactor, Nicole asked herself, for she still wasn't entirely sure as to what she'd gotten herself into.

Still, behind the confines of the darkened glass of the telephone kiosk, she reached to a cavity in the back side of the telephone unit and the kiosk's wall, and attached the flash drive to that cavity using the tape that she'd taken with her. And then she left, eager to get over with this frivolity that seemed to be straight from a pulp spy novel. Only, Nicole noted to her self, this spy novel was real.

* * *

An anonymous occupant of one of the many benches installed to the waiting lounge for the purposes of men and women waiting for the call to board their train, or waiting for a loved one or some other acquintance to arrive from another one, Crow watched the woman exit a telephone booth and quickly head towards the doors leading into the outlying Markham Boulevard.

She, Crow noted to himself, was being awfully sloppy. The first lesson of fieldcraft that the man had learned was to avoid drawing suspicion to oneself, and had Miss Hayward not been unnoticeable amidst the masses of busy travellers going from one end of the lounge to the other, she would've definitely drawn such suspicion to herself. Alas, the woman was no spy, even though she'd fared somewhat well so far. Watching Hayward head towards the exit, Crow noted that her slim build and auburn hair, not to mention her face, which was not terribly bad to look at, reminded him of an old high school sweetheart. Too bad, he mused, that they could be no more than an exploiter and the exploited.

After the woman had left the station, Crow waited for a few minutes and then went in to retrieve the dead drop placed by Hayward.

Mere hours later, the flash drive had found itself in the hands of Director-General Jonathan Wilcox, who now held in his possession the entire contents of the hard drive of Stephen Wright's personal computer. And Nicole Hayward would find herself in possession of a new sum of money with which to pay off her substantial gambling debts.

 

[Confederal Republics]

The Republic Country Club
Dunbarton
Canton of Western Crownland
Commonwealth of Cornavia

"Yes, show him in."

The butler replied with a curt nod, then with haste made his way back from the sofa where Wilcox was seated to the doors of the private cabinet rented by the General Director of the Commonwealth Security Service. Hearing the butler summon Drake in, Jonathan Wilcox let off a wry smile and took another sip of the glass of the Old Seven Cities Whiskey on the table in front of him.

Located in the small town of Dunbarton several kilometers away from Southport-on-Sea, the Republic Country Club was a private golf and recreational club open to new members solely on the basis of invitation from an existing member. As it turned out, most of the members of the Club were also members of the Grand Orient of Cornavia, specifically its inner degrees of Master Masonry, Wilcox included. And the Master Masons were ones to value the peace a quaint retreat such as this one, still near the busy capital of Southport-on-Sea provided. The manor that housed the main building of the Club together with its adjunct guest huts and recreational distractions had on a number of occasions housed their meetings when the inner circle had not wanted to use the Greater Hall of Masons in Westings Square.

Wilcox, looking outside at the golf green from the cabinet's windows, heard the butler exit and another pair of footsteps walk from the now closed doors towards the sofas where he seated. Moments later, Wilcox turned around and saw Michael Drake seated in a sofa on the opposite side of the table. The man, he saw, had laid an unmarked dossier to the table. Wilcox had a hunch as to what the said dossier was about. As he opened it, the headline that Drake had laid out for him made him reach for another glass of Seven Cities.

As he browsed through the pages of the thirty-page dossier, containing surveillance transcripts and a condensed version of various e-mails that Drake's source had stolen from Stephen Wright's computer. Wilcox didn't like what he saw at all, though he'd heard of some of it from Drake in advance.

"It appears that we've a predicament, then, alas", Wilcox said, holding the glass of whiskey in his hand.

"You could say that", Drake snorted, "This plan of yours has gained a turn, sir, has it?"

"Indeed", Wilcox replied contemplatively. It had been known from the start that Wright was seeking connections in the Commonwealth Party's internal dissidents, but his foray with the Republicans and the gang of political agitators called the New Lightbearers made the Director of the Security Service more concerned. The conspiracy, it seemed, was spreading. A conspiracy indeed, Wilcox mused, allowing himself a faint smile in response to that one. Indeed, it carried a strain of irony.

Stephen Wright was preparing for the inevitable weaking of the Commonwealth Party by negotiating with the Republicans, no doubt intent on securing Republican support if push came to shove with the Commonwealth Party's inner affairs and the Wainwright clique would not bend to a possible victory by Wright and his partners.

"Given what I said earlier...", Wilcox continued, "I'm clearing Garnet to undertake active measures in this matter. Leave the rest to me."

 

[Confederal Republics]

Greater Southport-on-Sea Metropolitan Airport
Caldicott
Canton of Western Crownland
Commonwealth of Cornavia

The burly private constable, responsible for checking the identity cards of passengers traversing the aisle ahead of the security inspection, seemed to almost twitch as he saw what his computer had yielded on the Ministry of Justice identification card handed to him by his current "customer".

Watching the man look at the screen for a short while, then input something to the computer, then take out his identity card from a card reader attached to the computer and then hand the card back to him, Michael Drake guessed correctly that the constable had checked out his Ministry credentials. Among other things, they showed that he was on the list of those firearms-rated officers allowed to carry their weapons aboard domestic aircraft. That measure had originally been implemented in the case of selected law enforcement and government security officers regularly travelling by air as an option to maintaining a dedicated air marshal service, as the Cabinet had decided that they could not afford to hire dedicated marshals to deal with the rather small amount of criminal incidents aboard airliners.

Though both General Director Wilcox and Drake himself knew that this wasn't the true reason, officially Drake was travelling from Southport-on-Sea to Marsden in order to take part in the security arrangements of the Commonwealth Party National Conference as a representative of the Security Service. His secondment into that particular event would prove a valuable cover for his true purpose of being in the city, which was to coordinate a certain action by the duo of ex-Special Forces operators that Michael Drake relied on for his dirty work. They'd travel by train under false identities, because to book an inter-Cantonal train ride you didn't need to state an identity of any kind, whereas nowadays you had to book even domestic flights by name and go to identity checks before the flight. The practice had been put to use after a spate of aircraft hijackings by Järnmark separatists in the 1980s. To insulate those doing the dirty work from Drake and Wilcox, the former were travelling without any official cover under false identities.

Politely thinking the first constable, Drake moved on, heading to the main checkpoint where he'd pass through a metal detector and the briefcase he carried would be scanned separately. Both him and the briefcase came in clean, at least as far as everyone else were concerned. Stepping into the passenger zone of the Metropolitan Airport's Domestic Terminal 2, Michael Drake peered at a large screen on the wall of the corridor leading into the waiting room.

The flight to Marsden would depart in forty minutes.

 

[Confederal Republics]

New Office Annex of the Commonwealth Parliament
3 Parliament Lane
Southport-on-Sea
Canton of Western Crownland
Commonwealth of Cornavia

With the National Conference of the Commonwealth Party a mere week away, Stephen Wright was getting busy. Though his aides, the infinitely valuable Nicole Hayward among others, were doing a lot of his work alongside his other supporters and associates such as the journalist Derrick Cole, he had decided to handle the most important parts in this last streak of amassing support himself. Not only did he know that his staff needed to see their boss doing his part too, but he also knew that he couldn't just sit on his arse doing nothing as the race for chairmanship neared.

His working quarters in the New Office Annex was doubling as the headquarters of his chairmanship campaign, and Wright had spent most of his time there since the last week, making phone calls to those in the National Committee he needed and could sway to his side. The last leg of his campaigning would be done in Marsden, in the city that was the venue of this year's conference. He'd be heading there on Wednesday, in the knowledge that many of the delegates would arrive into the city in advance of the conference to socialize with their peers and to prepare for the conference weekend itself.

It was well known that Stephen Wright possessed a fear of flying, a trait of his that he'd managed to turn into one of the many things cultivating his homely and flawed, if just, image. However, the sentiment itself was genuine, so his leg from Southport-on-Sea to Marsden would take place by a car, for which he'd hired a chauffeur from the security company he used in public functions and such.

The details of that, however, he had decided to leave to his assistant Hayward, as he had politicians to call. Vigor had gripped Stephen Wright in the last days of the campaign trail, even though his competitor Joanne Wainwright was improving her position in the competition.

 

[Confederal Republics]

The City Bypass
Marsden
Canton of Coleridge-Anston
Commonwealth of Cornavia

In the back seat of a Tyskreicher-made Tjorven 905, Stephen Wright let off a deep, long yawn, then glanced outside from the window to see that his car was making its way towards the downtown of the city of Marsden. He'd been there before, and the city was definitely one of the duller towns in all Cornavia, having been bombed to pieces by the Franconians and their allies during the Great War and rebuilt during the 1950s into a shape that more or less made the city a sea of prefabricated concrete housing. Only the more recently build suburbs and Marsden's renovated business center made an exception to this.

He'd left the specifics of driving and route-planning to his driver, who had demanded extra payment from him owing to the extraordinary nature of the leg from Southport-on-Sea to Marsden across over a half of all Cornavia. In the next seat, Nicole Hayward had fallen asleep. Wright didn't bother waking her up as they were getting near their destination anyway, and he had little use of her aide right now. A part of Wright cursed himself over the fact that he just couldn't stand flying, because that way he could've been in Marsden in less than two hours, whereas travelling by car had taken them almost two days including a night stop in Northridge in a hotel. And he had absolutely no trust on the ability of the railways these days to even deliver him to the city on time. Wright knew that his driver was a professional and an experienced one at that, but he was beginning to be somewhat worried over his ability to carry forward the rest of the leg. And it was getting late, he saw as he gazed at his watch, nearly ten in the evening.

The conference would begin tomorrow, and he knew that he needed to use the morning and the afternoon and perhaps the early evening too to do his last campaign work. Tomorrow, he mused, Joanne Wainwright will get what she deserves.

They turned off City Bypass - a road that extended the Anston-Bolton Intercantonal Highway through Marsden, dividing the city in its Western and Eastern halves - and Wright's driver slowed down his speed as he drove on a ramp to Westwood Avenue which in turn went over the City Bypass. Having driven in the city himself on previous occasions, Wright remembered that Westwood had a speed limit of 70km/h in comparison to the 120km/h in the Bypass. Driving Westwood Avenue eastward towards the city's Downtown where awaited his destination the Grand Hotel, Wright's driver took the car to the Westwood Tunnel, a two-kilometer stretch under the area of Woodlaw Heights which ended in the Downtown's Western edges. As the Tjorjen 905 descended into the tunnel, a white van overtook them from the left lane. Wright paid no attention to it.

* * *

"We're on", Bluebird shouted to Crow from the van's back compartment as he saw the black executive sedan positioned directly behind them inside the tunnel. No other cars followed nearby, for on a Friday night most of the cars going around in Marsden were taxi cabs, and they were allowed to go through Woodlaw Heights without entering the tunnel. During work times the tunnel greatly shortened the period of time one used to go around, but in the evenings there wasn't much of a difference.

Bluebird switched on the strobe light apparatus directly behind the van's doors, and connected into a battery by electric cords running across the length of the compartment. Alas, they wouldn't be in a position to watch over what they'd do here.

* * *

Stephen Wright had been doing his fourth re-read of the day's North Star Daily when he'd suddenly been blinded by the pulsing strobe light coming from ahead of them. As he covered his eyes in an instinctive movement, he felt the car swerve to their left in a violent manner and briefly accelerate before smashing into something. He heard a woman's scream from his left side. The collision was strong enough to send his head in to the internal wall built between the front and back seats despite of his seat belt, and he briefly registered immense pain before blacking out.

 

[Confederal Republics]

The City Bypass
Marsden
Canton of Coleridge-Anston
Commonwealth of Cornavia

When he sighted the badly damaged Tjorven car that had apparently swerved off its lane and collided with one of the pillars built between the two directions of the Westwood Tunnel before being thrown into its other end, Constable Jeremy Hughes brought his police cruiser into a halt in the middle of the two lanes on the Tunnel's right side, leaving on his emergency lights before exiting the car alongside his partner.

Being that he'd been in the City Police's Road Transit Unit for six years, Hughes had seen his share of automobile accidents, but only a few that were as bad as this one. Whatever fancy safety aids they had in cars these days hadn't helped the guy driving this one as it had collided against the concrete pillar - as evidenced by markings in the pillar in a bumper's height, and pieces of a bumper and the car's hood and front parts that lay around the pillar's position. Reaching for his flashlight to gain a better view of the interior of the car, he now saw that everything up until and partly including the driver's seat had been totaled. Constable Hughes didn't need to watch for life signs in whatever was left of the driver to see that he was done for.

"Jonesy!", Hughes shouted at his partner Constable Derek Jones, who was busy setting up a warning sign well behind the crash scene to ward off any incoming vehicles, "The driver's a goner now..."

He adjusted the flashlight to look at the back seat of the car, where the bloody, slumbering shape of a man was visible pressed against an interior wall of sorts. The man was still moving. There was another one, likely a woman, equally worse for wear.

"...and there are two in the back in a hell of a bad shape!"

* * *

In his room in the Marsden Grand Hotel, Michael Drake had just received a phone call from Crow telling that they'd attained initial success and were now extracting as originally planned. Minutes later, Drake was feigning surprise when the Commissioner of the Marsden City Police phoned him to tell that a Member of the Commonwealth Parliament was being taken to hospital in a critical condition following a car crash.

 

[Confederal Republics]

Commonwealth Security Service General Headquarters
13 Seaboard Avenue
Bythesea, Southport-on-Sea
Canton of Western Crownland
Commonwealth of Cornavia

The car crash that had killed Member of Parliament Stephen Wright, her assistant Nicole Hayward and their driver was the top story in CNBC 24H and mainline CNBC alike, and in all its rival national television channels. Michael Drake had arranged one hell of a spectacle, Wilcox noted to himself as he watched the CNBC news broadcast with its images of their car's mangled wreckage being towed away from the Westwood Tunnel.

They hadn't been able to count on Hayward accompanying Wright to Marsden in his car, because the assistant could have well showed up later or earlier. Wilcox and Drake had even prepared a cover-story in which the woman would have committed suicide with medicines a couple of months after Wright's demise, evidently spawned by the remaining gambling debts she was no longer able to pay without employment from Wright. However, she had been with Wright when Drake's men had made their move, meaning that her involvement in parts of the operation preceding the Marsden crash was no longer a problem. The woman was single and had taken her secret to her grave with her, as far as Jonathan Wilcox and his cohorts could determine. He'd need to have a clean-up team over at her apartment, in any case, if she'd left any evidence of her espionage on her boss or of the money transfers she'd received in an offshore account lying about in her apartment.

The wetwork phase of the operation was thus over. Wilcox had his own plans for Michael Drake he needed to address with the man upon his return from Marsden, but the men Drake used for his wet-work needed to go away for a while. Somewhere abroad, maybe. The next phase of the operation Wilcox had devised against the Commonwealth Party opposition would also involve elements put in place in Operation Garnet, but it would take place in an entirely different form. With Wright gone, they'd need to exploit differences between other figures of the Commonwealth Party's internal opposition as they tried to regroup.

As the TV resumed its broadcast of images from Wright's crash site - including that of a blanket-covered body being lifted into a Marsden coroner's car - he was reminded of the significance of what they'd done. Their predecessors, he knew, had not always stayed within the letter of the law even in the loosest sense, but this was the first time Operation Garnet was used against a figure so prominent such as Wright. Inconvenient people had had a way of disappearing or being shot by armed policemen while resisting arrest even before, but the assassination of a political leader had opened a new world.

But in the end, for his ordinary collagues and for the Cornavian people, life carried on as before. Business as usual. Wilcox shut down the TV, then took a look at the clock on his wall. It was way past five, and he wasn't supposed to be working on Sundays in any case. Time to go home.

 

[Confederal Republics]

OOC NOTICE

Just so that you know, I'm retconning the RP here in its portions concerning the 1926 events. Originally, I intended to delve into assorted conspiracy fare by including the existence of "Fifth Freedom", a shadow government of sorts with the stated aim of protecting the Commonwealth Constitution.

However, a shadow government pulling the strings behind the scenes would make for a rather boring RP, so I'm restricting the IC implications to Operation Garnet in itself. Basically, everything aside from the Whitehaven posts happened, and Operation Garnet will remain as a Gladio/COINTELPRO-esque black operation.

In any case, Wright did die a bit suspiciously, and Wilcox's goons will be seen again, just not with the broader implications of the conspiracy RP I was planning to pursue. But, in effect, it will be more about what a certain group of people can do when they're given no restrictions whatsoever in advancing cause X, rather than a grand conspiracy plot.