Imperfect

Day in Court

The following morning Rosie told us that she had confirmation that Charlie was out. Geoff had also been released, having been cautioned for unauthorised filming in a section 22 area. He’d pleaded ignorance to the section 22 order designating that area. The police had cautioned him, telling him to check in future before filming police operations. They let him go a several hours after he’d been picked up.

Mark was still in custody and being held under a prevention of terrorism order, so was unlikely to be released. He was still in the cells in the main Cambridge police station, but would likely go to see a Magistrate on Monday morning. He’d had a public defender assigned to him, and it was one we’d had contact with. So we were able to keep up to date with his status, albeit indirectly through Han, the guy in orbit that Rosie was speaking to.

The message from Charlie wasn’t detailed, it simply said “The Children of Israel are fruitful”. Apparently this was a bit of a bible passage from the book of Exodus. Charlie had already agreed the signal with the others and it meant that it was time for the cell to leave Cambridge. The chosen verse told us that he wanted us all to leave but that we needed to wait at least 7 days if we could manage it.

In the meantime we split into two. Cat was going to meet up with Rog and sort out the extraction plan for the six of us, while Rosie and I worked out how to spring Mark so that he could come with us. We decided to go with the plan we’d come up with earlier to try and spring Charlie.

The plan had two parts, the first was to use the public defender to try and get Mark bail by providing evidence that he wasn’t involved in terrorism. Mark would plead guilty to anything that the police came up with that wasn’t going to stop him getting bail. In addition he’d make it clear that he’d been in it solely for the money. If that didn’t get him bail, then we would look to present ourselves as a couple of officers from the national police wanting him in connection with the serious charges and take him into our own custody.

We needed to be ready on this very soon, and it required us to be connected to the outside world to make it happen. Rosie had a plan for this eventuality, in her backpack was a small satellite broadcaster along with a dedicated terminal. This terminal worked on different frequencies from the usual ones and would only be detectable by someone looking for military equipment. This was her covert uplink to Han when we were otherwise off the grid.

She needed to take it for a walk before she could talk, and to keep moving regularly in case there were any drones overhead that might intercept the signal beamed at the satellite. As a precaution she was only going to use it in daylight when there was minimal cloud cover. That way she could check for drones in advance.

 

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