Home - Target 31 by Jason Black

Date: 2014 September 4 Elope to Oblivion

Sarah awoke with sex and divorce on her mind, while her husband, James, awoke with 007 on his mind. Sarah got up first and showered while James picked up her phone to see if there was a PIN setup on it, there was and he put it down.

James got ready for work and went outside to the awaiting car while Sarah got herself ready for her new man - she had much to tell him but first a quick Skype session with her friend. She lifted the lid on her laptop and could see her friend was online.

"Hi Wendy" she typed.

"Hey babes hows things ?" replied Wendy.

"Oh wonderful my man will be round soon to fuck my brains out" replied Sarah.

"oh lucky you" replied Wendy.

"and im divorcing james !" replied Sarah.

"wow thats a bit sudden !" replied Wendy.

"iv been thinking about it for ages i wonder how much ill get" Sarah smiled as she typed, oblivious to the fact the laptop in the cellar was intercepting her conversation. The words 'divorcing' and 'james' triggered something and it started forward the entire conversation to a compromised server thousands of miles away in South Africa.

A while later the first man in the Rolls-Royce read "Target 31: Divorce probability 82%. Click link for more info" on his mobile. James read the same message on his 'burner' phone and clicked the link to see the whole conversation that his wife had had a couple of hours ago with Wendy.

"The scheming, greedy, ungrateful bitch" thought James, "She needs to be 'disappeared' before she starts divorce proceedings." he thought. He read more of her conversation about her dreams of a luxurious, James-free lifestyle with £60+ million of his hard earned wealth while getting fucked to oblivion by her new gigolo.

James texted "can u hit her asp" on the 'burner' phone to the only number in the contact list.

"We normally wait until 90%" came the reply.

"she also is screwing around and I want them both gone" replied James.

"OK cost is £5 million per person and we will setup a false trail suggesting they eloped." came the reply.

"Brilliant." thought James.

The plan was brilliant but would take a day or two to set up. Any police investigation would have to conclude that Sarah and her lover suddenly decided to elope and somehow vanished. There have to be an appropriate digital and paper trail to match. There would have to be a clear-out of clothes from draws, closets and cash from the safe and/or the ATM. Mobile phones would have to register with the correct cell towers. The only weak spot would be James, he would need to give a very convincing performance to the police officers who would be interviewing him. If James wasn't convincing there was a back-up plan for that.


DI Don Hanson needed to know if the husbands of the two dead women had spoken to anybody capable of murder. The only way to do that was to 'tap' their internet and phones. The only organization that could do that was GCHQ. He quickly realised he was technically out of his depth. A visit to his boss was in order.


A few days later, Sarah woke and stretched her arms "Where's James ?" she thought "Oh who cares, he's probably gone to work early, the boring sod." she lay back dreaming of her soon-to-be life of leisure, free of wifely duties.

James had something completely different on his mind. He had gone to work in the normal way and set about his daily routine. About 10:30 the 'burner' phone buzzed, James read the message "its a go" and put the phone back in his pocket out of sight.

Sarah and her lover walked out of her house to her car and got in. A few yards away three men and a woman sat in a van and watched. Sarah started the car and pulled away. A few seconds later the van started and followed her. Sometime later they were going down a quiet country lane.

"So, when are you going to divorce him ?" asked Sarah's lover as the van overtook them.

"Oh very soon, I've found a lawyer who seems ... shit !!" shrieked Sarah as the van stopped and three men and a woman jumped out.

One of the men was holding out an ID badge and walked up to Sarah's car. Sarah noticed that the woman was wearing similar clothes to her.

"Good morning ma'am, I'm Detective Sergeant John Hogan", he held out his ID so Sarah could read it. The other people took positions around the car, two of them carrying hidden syringes.

"OW ! hey !!" said Sarah as a needle went into her neck.

"Hey ! are you doing ? ... Hey !!" shouted Sarah's lover as a needle went into his neck.

They both closed their eyes for the last time. All their belongings were given to the woman and one of the men who both got into the car and drove away. The unconscious Sarah and her lover were dragged into the van by the two remaining men. They closed the van door and drove in the opposite direction.

The fake Sarah and lover drove north, stopping every hour or so to buy coffee and snacks on Sarah's credit card, the PIN had been supplied by James earlier. As they drove, Sarah's mobile phone would register with cell towers en-route creating a digital trail leading north reinforced by the credit card purchases. Meanwhile, the real Sarah was dissolving in a barrel of Hydrofluoric acid alongside her lover.

James got home after work and quickly removed any items that Sarah would take if she were planning to elope and disposed of them as instructed. He sent out a few texts to Sara's mobile asking when she would be home. He went down stairs to the laptop in the cellar and pressed Delete three times and watched the screen.

"Disconnecting from WiFi ... wiping hard drive .............. task complete ... Shutting down."

He unplugged the laptop, took it back upstairs and put it in his wardrobe with all the other old laptops and mobile phones.

Later on that night he tried to call Sarah's mobile. He knew she wouldn't answer, it was simply a way to create a plausible chain of events to satisfy the police that she had simply run away from her unsuspecting husband. He then called the police to report a missing person. A few hours later he went to bed. It felt strange without Sarah laying next to him but perhaps Suzi, his secretary, wouldn't mind taking her place. Tomorrow would be a very odd day, he had to find a way to move £10 million without raising red flags and get interviewed by the police without raising suspicion, but at least he didn't have that scheming bitch Sarah to worry about.

"Police are investigating the disappearance of Sarah Cromwell-Sykes wife of James Cromwell. It seems like she eloped with her lover Andrew Harris to Scotland where the trail seems to end." said the newscaster.

"That went well" said the second man in the Rolls-Royce.

"I agree. James played his part of the distraught husband who was totally surprised she had a lover. The hit team were on the ball, The substitute couple left a convincing trail all over Scotland. The police are running into dead ends. No lose ends - Perfect." said the first man.

"As for loose ends, what about James ?" enquired the second man.

"He's fine. he got what he wanted, he's now an accessory to murder, so he's hardly going to go to the police. And if he's stupid enough ... well we have plenty of plastic barrels." said the first man sounding like a villain from a James Bond movie.

The two men arrived at their destination and got out of the Rolls-Royce. "This where we are going to put Unit 5." explained the second man pointing at a tall apartment block in a nice part of town. "Deborah Foster is in the process of tracking down and recruiting some black-hats."

"Black-hats ?" interrupted the first man.

"Yes, black-hats are hackers who are on the dark side, you know, hacking banks, corporate servers and stuff like that."

"Oh I see." replied the first man.

"And then I'll track down a few ex-special forces types for the kinetic hits and to keep the others in check." continued the second man.

"Will they know about other aspects of our operation ?" asked the first man.

"No, everything is compartmentalised, nobody knows about the other units, let alone what those other units might be doing ... except Deborah, she will be the go-between." replied the second man.

"Good, keep it that way." replied the first man. "We need to offer other means of payment, moving large amounts of cash raises too many flags. Do we know anyone who can handle corporate bonds, treasury bonds or diamonds ?" continued the first man.

"Yes, I know a few people, I'll set it up." replied the second man.

"What about gold coins ? are the crypto-currencies like bitcoin stable enough ?" asked the first man.

"Gold is easy, crypto-currencies might be OK in a year or so when they settle down." replied the second man.

"OK, we need to randomise the price a bit, say 4.5 to 5.5 million, offer blended modes of payments over a period of time eg 1.5 million in gold plus 3.3 million in cash over a year or so" said the first man.

"Tricky but doable." replied the second man.

They got back into the Rolls-Royce and drove away.


DI Don Hanson read the report on Sarah Cromwell-Sykes. It read like a typical missing persons report but something just didn't seem right, especially when he included other mysterious deaths and disappearances of very rich men's wives. It all seemed a bit too convenient. It almost seemed like there was some kind of wife disposal service in operation, and if there was, he would look pretty good if he could take it down, possibly get promoted.

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