‘Depends how you use it.’ Kieron reached a hand backwards and felt the handle of the knife being pressed into his palm. He waited while the two men disengaged themselves from the chairs with a lot of swearing and climbed unsteadily to their feet. The first man had a long line of blood beneath his left eye. The second man held his right arm as if the shoulder was damaged. They both looked very, very angry. Actually, they both looked like they were going seriously insane with rage.

  ‘Get them!’ the first man snarled. ‘I really want to hurt them, and then I really want to kill them.’

  Kieron reached his arm backwards and threw the knife across to the other side of the warehouse. It spun through the darkness, arcing above the concrete floor and hitting a pile of crates with a clatter.

  ‘Over there!’ the second man said, pointing.

  Both men hobbled, rather than ran, away from Kieron, Sam and Bradley, towards the place where the knife had hit the crates. They vanished into the shadows of an aisle between the rows.

  ‘Right,’ Kieron whispered. ‘Let’s go.’

  With him under one of Bradley’s shoulders and Sam under the other they scooted across the ground, with Bradley sometimes helping and sometimes allowing himself to be dragged. They got to the door into the garage area without being spotted. The door was wrecked, so unfortunately Kieron couldn’t close it behind them. He hoped it would take the thugs a while to realise they’d gone, but he wasn’t holding out much hope.

  ‘What now?’ Sam hissed as they got to the blue van.

  ‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead,’ Kieron admitted. ‘Maybe we could steal the BMW outside.’

  ‘Have you got the keys?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted sheepishly. ‘You can hot-wire a car, can’t you? You used to hot-wire teachers’ cars and move them to different parts of the school car park. You almost got expelled for that.’

  ‘Not the ones with a security chip in the key and an engine-management system,’ Sam replied urgently. ‘Didn’t you learn anything in motor mechanics?’

  ‘No.’

  Between them, Bradley tried to struggle upright. For the first time since the shopping centre Kieron saw his face clearly, and he was shocked by the bloody cuts and dark bruises.

  ‘The van,’ Bradley said through bruised lips.

  ‘What?’ Kieron asked stupidly.

  ‘The van,’ he mumbled. ‘No security chip. Just keys.’

  Kieron reached out and tugged at the sliding side door of the van. It moved smoothly backwards, along the van’s length, on oiled runners. Quickly he and Sam helped Bradley get in, joined him and slid the door shut.

  They both hung back, each waiting for the other to get into the driver’s seat.

  ‘Look,’ Kieron admitted, ‘I can’t drive. You’ll have to do it.’

  Sam shook his head. ‘How do you ever intend getting a girlfriend?’ he asked.

  Kieron shrugged. ‘My whimsical sense of humour?’

  While Sam squirmed his way into the driver’s seat, Kieron leaned over Bradley.

  ‘We’re friends,’ he said. ‘We’re helping Bex.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be risking your lives,’ Bradley murmured.

  ‘Try not to talk. We’re going to get you to somewhere safe.’

  Shouts from outside were followed by the two thugs running into the garage area, having figured out what had happened. Fortunately they ran past the van and outside, through the open door and into the gathering darkness.

  Sam turned and flashed an anxious glance at Kieron. Kieron tried to look as confident as possible, and nodded firmly.

  Sam reached beneath the dashboard, grabbed a set of hidden wires and pulled them into view. Selecting two, he pulled hard until they broke, then touched the bare metal of the wires together.

  The van’s engine started with a roar.

  Outside, the two thugs turned around. Sam flicked the headlights on – main beam. The thugs staggered backwards, shielding their eyes.

  Sam slammed the gearstick into ‘drive’, yanked the handbrake off and pressed his foot on the accelerator. The van leaped forward, heading for a doorway about a third its size. The bull bar on the front hit the much larger, and closed, main door to the garage – the one that folded up into the ceiling to let cars in and out. For a stomach-churning second Kieron thought the van was just going to bounce back and its engine stutter to a halt, but instead it ripped the main door out of its frame and carried it forward.

  Right into the two thugs.

  Kieron didn’t see where they fell, but the van kept going. One side of the door hit the rear corner of the BMW. The door spun around and fell onto the car, leaving Sam to jerkily drive the van past it and out onto the tarmac.

  Kieron expected his friend to turn and head out onto the spine road, and away to safety, but he didn’t.

  Sam braked.

  Before Kieron could ask him what the hell he thought he was doing, Sam slammed the van into reverse, turned the wheel hard and accelerated backwards at an angle, right into the bonnet of the BMW.

  Kieron couldn’t see what had happened, but he heard an almighty smashing of glass and crumpling of metal. As Sam put the van into ‘drive’ again and pulled away with squealing tyres, he scuttled to the rear door and glanced out of the window. Behind them, getting smaller as the van raced away in a cloud of blue exhaust fumes, the BWM was canted to one side, its bonnet rucked up and the nearest wheel leaning at an odd angle. Kieron hadn’t learned much in motor mechanics, but he didn’t think it was drivable.

  The two thugs suddenly appeared from behind the car, where they must have taken refuge. The first one – the one who had threatened Sam – raised his hand and pointed his gun at the van. The van’s engine was racing too loudly for Kieron to hear anything, but a hole suddenly appeared in the glass, surrounded by a halo of white cracks. Then the figures disappeared as the van careered round the corner.

  ‘Good work!’ Bradley said weakly from where he lay on the floor.

  ‘Any idea where we’re going?’ Sam yelled over his shoulder.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The sniper – Emma Sprue, if that was her real name – stared darkly up at Bex from the hotel bed. Bex could see that she was surreptitiously testing the Ethernet cables that Bex had used to tie her up – flexing her muscles to see if there might be any give in the wires. There wasn’t. Bex had been very careful: the last thing you wanted to do when tying up a certified killer was give them a chance to get away. She excelled at tying knots: it was funny how outward bound from school kept coming in useful in her work. They ought to rename them Secret Agent Preparation lessons, she thought. That would get attendance numbers up.

  Enough, Bex thought. She was just delaying the inevitable.

  ‘So,’ she said brightly. ‘Where do we start?’

  Sprue just stared back at her.

  Bex felt nervous. She’d never had to do this before, and she wasn’t sure how it would go. This woman was a seasoned professional assassin who had managed to evade capture by, presumably, most of the intelligence agencies of the world. Bex was a young undercover operative working under contract to MI6, whose expertise was based on her ability to listen to a voice in her ear and act on the information it gave her while pretending that she couldn’t hear anything. One of her bosses in MI6 had once said, and while she was in earshot as well, that any newsreader who could look at an autocue and read out the news headlines with a smile could do the job Bex did. It had been a cruel, and not entirely fair, comparison. Newsreaders didn’t normally have to read out the headlines as if they’d only just thought them while knowing at the same time that the person they were talking to probably had a gun in their pocket. However, Bex usually had the comfort of knowing she was acting, playing a part, and the lines were being fed into her ear by Bradley. Now it was her, alone and unscripted, facing a true professional.

  Except … except that she was still playing a part, wasn’t she? It was a bit like being in a school play where someone else had forgotten their lines and she had to improvise in character. And Kieron was there, listening and feeding her information. He wasn’t Bradley, but he wasn’t doing too badly.

  ‘Let’s summarise, shall we?’ she went on. ‘Your name is Emma Sprue, and you’re a professional assassin. My name is – well, let’s not worry about that – and I’m an agent for – well, let’s not worry about that either. The important point is that you have information I want, and I intend to get it out of you.’

  Sprue was still staring blankly, emotionlessly, but Bex thought she could detect a hint of amusement in her eyes. At least she was listening, even if she wasn’t actually believing. Not yet, anyway.

  ‘You probably think that I’m going to hurt you until you tell me what I want to know,’ Bex said after a few moments. ‘After all, that’s what you would do, and that’s what the people who usually hire you would do. And you’ve killed many people that we know of, and almost certainly many more that we don’t, so I have no illusions about your ability to inflict suffering. I’m sure you don’t have a conscience. Maybe I do, or maybe I just can’t be bothered with the mess it would cause to this hotel room, but I’m not going to hurt you.’

  The amused expression in Sprue’s eyes had shifted to one of wariness now.

  ‘Also, there’s no point hurting you. I have a feeling your threshold of pain is quite high. You’d pass out, or have a heart attack and die, before I could cause you enough pain to make you talk. That would be a waste of time. I almost wish, at times like these, that I was a practised and trained torturer, because that way I could probably keep you conscious and alive for much longer, but I’m glad I’m not. If I was, I’d probably have had to trade my conscience for that ability, and that’s a trade I wouldn’t want to make. Not ever. I’d rather continue to be one of the good guys.’

  Sprue’s upper lip had begun to curl slightly in what looked like might be contempt. She was accidentally letting her guard down, letting some emotions come through. She was underestimating Bex, and that was exactly what Bex wanted. It would make the coming shock all the more, well, shocking.

  ‘So I’m going to try a different approach.’ Bex smiled cheerily. ‘And no, it won’t be truth drugs. Even if I could get hold of some – and I don’t carry them around in my wash-bag just in case I might need them – they are unreliable and, in inexperienced hands like mine, potentially dangerous. So, the drugs are out.’ She tilted her head sideways a little bit and stared at Sprue like a teacher looking at a child who’d done something bad but won’t admit it. ‘I’m not going to appeal to your better nature either, by the way. I’m pretty sure you don’t have one of those.’

  Curiosity now? A faint but noticeable lift of the right eyebrow. Keep going, she thought. You’re doing well.

  ‘I’m not going to offer you money to get you to talk either. You are, by definition, someone who will do the worst things for money, but I don’t think paying you is the way to go. For a start, it would be bad for your reputation if you accepted money from one group of people to undertake an illegal mission and then you accepted money from another group of people to blab about it. Business would suffer. It would also set a bad precedent. Just as my – well, let’s say my “employers” – don’t pay ransoms to hostage-takers to release their hostages, they don’t pay mercenaries for information. After all, if they did that then they’d have rats like you lining up to sell them all kinds of tittle-tattle.’

  Yes: definitely curiosity, and perhaps a tinge of concern as to where this was all heading.

  Bex looked around the hotel room. ‘You can also see from the quality of the accommodation I’m staying in that the budget of my employers is not very impressive. Every government is suffering budget cutbacks. It’s the world economy, apparently. I’m sure you’re doing very well for yourself, however, and I’m also sure that you’re staying in a much better standard of hotel than I am. Perhaps even the Taj Mahal Palace. I guess it would be nice to be staying just a few yards away from where you’re working, although probably not very professional. It looked very impressive from outside. I can see you there, in a suite of rooms perhaps. Not under your own name, of course. Or maybe you’re staying somewhere else. Wherever it is, I’m sure it’s five-star. I mean, what’s the point of going away on business as often as you do and earning as much as you do each time if you can’t indulge in a little luxury? And travel – first-class flights, I presume. I mean, you need to arrive rested and ready for action, and who wants to mix with the commoners like me back in economy?’ Bex leaned forward and put her hands together. ‘The question is: do you want that situation to continue?’

  She left a long pause, long enough that eventually the tip of Sprue’s tongue appeared at the corner of her mouth and she licked her lips: an involuntary gesture that told Bex she might be getting nervous. That was good. That was better than good.

  ‘You see, you probably thought that I’ve been talking so much because I’m nervous, but I think you’ve realised that’s not the case. So you’ll be wondering: why am I talking so much? And you’ll also have realised – just a few seconds ago, I think – that I’m buying time while a colleague of mine is finding stuff out for me.’

  A flicker. A definite flicker.

  Bex touched her glasses. ‘You might have heard of ARCC – Augmented Reality Computer Capability. It’s the next big thing in assisting agents under cover. Through these glasses and –’ she touched her hair – ‘the earpiece here I can communicate with a colleague back in, well, my country of origin. He doesn’t work undercover like I do. He works in coffee shops, restaurants, cafes and all kinds of places. He works on trains and aircraft, and in the passenger seats of cars. And what he does is: mainly he accesses databases. You know what a database is: it’s a big collection of information in electronic form, held on a computer server somewhere. Often this information is meant to be secure, but it’s not. It’s really not. Take bank records, for example. They should be protected by all kinds of uncrackable security, but banks are just businesses like anyone else, and if they think they can get away with installing some cut-price stuff and relying on you choosing a decent password, well, that’s more money for them, isn’t it? Now you’d think that your bank, which I believe is –’

  ‘The Bank of Commerce and Credit International,’ Kieron murmured in her ear.

  ‘The Bank of Commerce and Credit International,’ she repeated as if she already knew the words.

  ‘Based in Zurich,’ Kieron went on.

  ‘Based in Zurich, of course, would install the most up-to-date firewalls and suchlike, and you know what? They do. At least, they do if you’re a hacker trying to get in and steal some money. The trouble is that the resources that, oh, let’s say my country can bring to bear on a cryptography problem far outstrip what even the best hacker can do. Not only can we afford better hackers, we can afford quantum supercomputers that can break any security, anywhere, instantly. Which brings us neatly back to you, and your bank account, which is currently sitting at –’

  ‘Eighty-nine point five eight seven million dollars,’ Kieron said, sounding seriously impressed.

  ‘Eighty-nine million, five hundred and eighty-seven thousand and a few odd hundred dollars, plus some loose cents. Let’s not worry about the exact amount. Let’s worry instead about what happens if we remove, say, a hundred thousand dollars from your account and move it to a charity looking after premature babies in neonatal intensive-care units. Let’s face it, they could probably do with the money. Have you ever had a relative or a friend who has given birth to a premature baby? The worry and the stress are horrible. Anything that can be done to alleviate that is a good thing, I think.’

  ‘And … done,’ Kieron said. ‘Great Ormond Street Hospital in London is now one hundred thousand dollars better off than it was ten seconds ago.’

  Sprue had developed a very subtle twitch in her left eyelid.

  ‘Now I know what you’re thinking,’ Bex went on calmly. ‘You’re thinking that I’m just making this up. Bluffing. “Having you on”, as they say where I was bought up. You probably want me to provide some proof that my colleague currently has his electronic fingers inside your most private account, waving them around and causing all kinds of damage. That’s a reasonable request, and I’m happy to comply. I presume you know your own account number, which is –’

  Bex thought she could hear Kieron making clicking noises with his tongue as he worked. ‘Eight one zero, seven five nine, two three nine four eight.’

  ‘Eight one zero, seven five nine, two three nine four eight. Now we might have been able to access that number without accessing the account, of course, so I’ll throw in the fact that your personal password is –’

  ‘Alysheba1987.’

  ‘Alysheba1987.’ Bex couldn’t help smiling at the way Sprue’s eyes had suddenly widened in shock.

  ‘Oh, apparently it’s the name of the horse she used to own, and the year she got it. It was a birthday present from her father.’

  ‘Which is the name of the horse you loved so much and the year your father bought it for you. How lovely that you still remember. I think that’s very sweet.’ She paused for effect. ‘Another hundred thousand dollars, I think. What would you say to donating it to a charity that funds research on innovative diabetes treatments? Diabetes is a huge problem in the developed world these days.’

  ‘Done,’ Kieron said. ‘I like this game.’

  ‘It’s not a game,’ Bex said, and suddenly realised she’d replied to Kieron without thinking. Quickly she added: ‘It’s serious, and it’s your money. How much can you afford to lose? One hundred thousand dollars a minute is a million dollars every ten minutes, or your entire retirement fund in, oh, an hour and a half. And it’s not like I have anything else to do this evening. If I get hungry I’ll just order room service.’ She gestured towards the window. ‘Or there’s any number of restaurants just a phone call away who will deliver.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’ Sprue’s voice sounded harsh, with a trace of an American accent.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22