CHAPTER TEN

They parked up on the side of the interstate, in a lay-by that seemed to be set up for truckers who needed a break. Fortunately, they were the only ones there. Sitting in the hire car, listening to some bizarre American rock station whose name was composed of random-sounding initials – KVCG or KUJG or something – Bex was getting increasingly worried. She realised this because her fingers were drumming on the steering wheel, because she kept changing the radio station to see if there was anything better to listen to, and because Sam kept saying, ‘Are you all right? You seem nervous.’

‘Something’s wrong,’ she said eventually.

From where he sat in the back, Sam patted her shoulder reassuringly. ‘Nothing’s wrong. Kieron’s intelligent. He’s even fairly active. He’ll complete the mission. OK, we’ve driven past the car park three times now and he’s not been there, but all that means is that he hasn’t got into the computers yet. He’s fine. Trust me.’

‘You don’t know that,’ Bex said.

After a few moments silence Sam said, in a small voice, ‘You’re right – I don’t. I’m just trying to keep your spirits up. And mine.’

‘You guys watch a lot of movies, don’t you?’ Bex asked.

‘Yeah. Why?’

‘You know that whenever a character says, “I’m sure everything’s OK,” it’s about to go terribly wrong?’

‘Yeah. It’s a cliché. Or a trope, which is what we call it these days.’

‘Yeah, thanks for that glimpse into teenage slang.’ She took a breath. ‘And you know whenever a character says, “Something’s wrong,” then something is actually wrong, and the audience is just about to find out how wrong it is?’

Sam’s voice sounded like each word was being pulled from him with forceps. ‘Yeah. I know films like that.’

‘Well, something’s wrong.’

‘What do you want to do?’

‘I don’t know.’ And it was true – she didn’t. Her careful preparation of Kieron for this mission had covered everything that he might do, depending on a range of circumstances, but hadn’t, she realised belatedly, addressed what she would do if she started getting worried. ‘Let’s drive back to the security gate again, just to see if anything’s changed.’

Bex put the car in drive and pulled off. She’d chosen the waiting area carefully: just a little way ahead an intersection lay where she could turn around and go back to the Goldfinch Institute turn-off.

Thirteen minutes later they were heading back down the road to the Institute.

As they got closer, Bex noticed that the low clouds in the sky seemed to be reflecting light from the Institute. Irregular, flashing light. Blue light.

‘Someone’s activated the alarms,’ she said. ‘I think Kieron’s been discovered.’ She pressed down hard on the accelerator.

‘What will they do to him?’ Sam asked.

‘I don’t know. It depends how guilty they are. If there’s a simple explanation for the deaths of so many people in the same place for the same reason, then they’ll probably call the police. If that’s what’s happened we can probably negotiate him out of custody fairly easily. Or break him out.’ She took a deep breath. ‘If, on the other hand, the Goldfinch Institute are at fault then they might just take him off for questioning.’

‘And that means …?’

‘I’m not going to lie to you, Sam – it means they’re going to hurt him.’

Silence from the back seat, then: ‘We need to rescue him.’

‘We do, but he’s got both pairs of the glasses. We’re literally and metaphorically going in blind.’

The Goldfinch Institute appeared over the horizon: a mass of blue glass buildings reflecting the light of the desert moon. As they approached it was obvious that alarm lights were flashing all over the complex, giving it the look of a macabre dance club.

‘This is bad,’ Sam whispered. ‘This is really bad.’

‘I’ll do a slow drive-past of the parking area,’ Bex said, as she approached the security cabin. ‘If we’re lucky, Kieron will have got out and will be waiting there.’

He wasn’t. The tarmac square was empty. Bex didn’t stop, but she made sure she drove through the area slowly enough that Kieron could make his presence known, if he was there.

The back of her neck itched. Someone was watching her careful drive-past. Maybe a security guard in the cabin; maybe someone else, somewhere else. And she didn’t think it was Kieron.

‘Stop!’ Sam said urgently.

‘Why?’ Bex asked, but she was already slowing down.

‘I saw something.’

She brought the car to a stop. As she tried to look casual, like a wife who’d come by to pick up a husband who was working late, she heard Sam move across the leather upholstery towards the driver’s side back door. It opened and he slid out.

Bex noticed that across the tarmac, beyond the security fence, a guard had left the cabin and was staring at her.

‘Hurry,’ she said. ‘Whatever you’re doing, just hurry.’

The security guard started to walk towards her. Either he had a hidden remote control or there was someone else in the cabin, because the metal barriers started sliding down to allow him to exit.

‘Sam?’ she hissed.

‘Got it!’ he said, sliding back into the car and shutting the door.

Bex put the car back into drive and began to accelerate towards the one road that led to the Institute. In her rear-view mirror she kept watching the security guard. He stood there uncertainly, one hand on the butt of his gun.

‘What have you got?’ she asked as they sped away.

‘Kieron’s glasses,’ Sam said bleakly. ‘Either he dropped them, or he threw them over for us to find or because he didn’t want to be caught with them.’

‘Which pair are they?’

‘Does it matter? They’ve got Kieron.’

‘Yes, it matters. Which glasses?’

‘The ones that Bradley was wearing when we first saw him, and Kieron used when you were in Mumbai and Pakistan, and you had on when he went into the Institute this morning. Those ones.’

‘Thank heavens,’ she said. ‘Quick – put them on! See if you can see what Kieron’s looking at!’

‘Did you hear what I said?’ Sam said, slipping the glasses on: ‘They’ve got Kieron!’

‘Yes, but if we’ve got those glasses – if he managed to get those glasses to us – then we hopefully have a record of what’s happened to him and what he found out. And that’s the only thing that might help us to rescue him! Well done for spotting them. I could have driven right over them.’

‘Nothing,’ he said angrily. ‘Just darkness.’ He pulled the glasses off in disgust. ‘They’re switched off, or in a bag or something.’ He shook his head. ‘We have to get in there. We’ve got to get him out!’

Bex tried to keep her voice calm and level, even though she didn’t feel in the slightest bit calm. ‘The best thing we can do,’ she said, ‘is get out of here, so we don’t get taken as well. We’re no help to Kieron if we get captured. Once we’re back, we can look at the glasses, see if he managed to record anything we can use. We can also talk to Bradley and see if he’s got any ideas.’

‘But you’re employed by MI6!’ Sam protested. ‘Call them in to help!’

‘That’s not how it works, Sam. This is a deniable operation, which means MI6 won’t even admit we exist. And remember – I’m not even supposed to have involved you and Kieron. No, we need to sort this out ourselves.’ She sighed. ‘Somehow.’

The tense and silent drive back to the hotel took half an hour, taking them from the desert isolation of the Goldfinch Institute to the perpetual lights and traffic of the centre of Albuquerque. Late though it was, cars, trucks and vans were heading in all directions, but Bex had never felt so alone. This had been her nightmare – getting Kieron into a dangerous, potentially lethal, situation just because he’d wanted to help. This was what she’d fought so hard to avoid. She should never have agreed to keep in contact with him. When she’d returned from India she should have taken the ARCC glasses and the earpiece from him, grabbed Bradley and relocated somewhere Kieron couldn’t find her.

But beneath all that, beneath the professional guilt over getting an innocent member of the public involved in intelligence matters, there was something else. She liked Kieron. She’d come to really appreciate his attitude, his resilience, his intelligence and even his taste in music. Sometimes. If anything bad should happen to him, she didn’t know how she’d be able to cope.

‘Bex …’

‘Yes,’ she said softly.

‘I’m sorry I got angry. It’s not your fault.’

‘It is my fault.’

‘Kieron made his own choices, and I’ve never seen him happier than he’s been this past month. It’s like he’s found something to believe in.’ Sam hesitated for a moment. ‘We’re greebs. We don’t believe in anything apart from darkness and the ultimate futility of human existence.’

‘And ice cream,’ Bex pointed out.

‘And ice cream,’ Sam conceded. ‘But we’ve both discovered there’s something bigger than ourselves that we can help with. That we can make a difference to. Kieron isn’t here by accident – he made a choice. And so did I. You should respect that.’

Arriving in the hotel car park, Bex chose a spot away from other cars and in the shade of a desert tree with wide, spreading leaves. At least that meant the car would be slightly cooler when they came back to it. She checked the time. Sunrise would be occurring in maybe an hour or so. She needed sleep, but she had to keep going. She had to find Kieron.

As she opened the door to get out of the car, her mobile rang. Getting back in, she pulled it from her pocket. Probably Bradley, she thought – it was mid-afternoon in the UK. She quailed slightly at the prospect of telling him what had happened, but he might be able to help, and he had to know that things had gone wrong.

The ringing continued, but not from the mobile she held. It still came from her pocket.

She pulled out her other mobile – the one that she’d bought back in England to use as part of her undercover identity.

‘Hello?’ No mention of her name – that was standard practice for agents. Just an acknowledgement that she was there, listening.

‘Hello?’ A woman’s voice. She recognised it, but couldn’t place it. ‘Is that Chloe Gibbons?’

Chloe Gibbons – the supposed publicist for the Lethal Insomnia competition. Her current cover identity. And now she recognised the voice – it was Kieron’s mother.

‘Yes,’ she said, feeling her heart race. A tight band seemed to be gripping her chest, stopping her from breathing properly. ‘Who is this?’ She knew perfectly well, but she had to buy a few moments to get herself under control.

‘This is Veronica – Veronica Mellor. I’ve been trying to phone Kieron to see how he is. Everything’s OK, isn’t it? It’s just – I haven’t heard from him.’

‘Everything’s fine, Mrs Mellor,’ Bex said, trying to sound as reassuring as she could. ‘The boys crashed out after the flight. They were exhausted, poor things. That’s probably why Kieron hasn’t called you.’

‘Could you put him on – just for a second. I want to hear his voice, just to reassure myself.’

‘Oh, I’m really sorry but I’m afraid he’s in the studio with the band right now,’ Bex said. She mentally crossed her fingers. ‘I could drag him out, if you like.’

‘No – don’t do that,’ Kieron’s mother said hurriedly. ‘He’d never forgive me. Is he eating properly?’

‘Like a horse.’

‘Not crap food – good food. Not chips and burgers and stuff.’

Bex remembered back to the ice creams, but said, ‘I’m making sure they’re both getting fresh vegetables and proper steaks. They seem to like the food here.’

‘And Sam – is he having fun?’

She glanced over at Sam and put a finger to her lips, just in case he was going to say something. ‘Yes, he’s having a great time too.’

‘And they’re not too much for you to cope with?’

‘They’re both great boys.’ She hesitated. ‘Kieron’s a credit to you, Mrs Mellor. He’s been brought up really well.’

‘Thank you. It’s been … hard. Especially since his dad left. Look, I don’t want to waste your time. Just, you know, get him to ring his mum, will you? And tell him I love him.’

‘I will. And don’t worry – he’s having the time of his life.’

‘Thank you.’ She rang off, and Bex just sat there for a moment, holding the phone up to her ear. Those last seven words had been the hardest lie she’d ever had to tell.

‘You should phone your mum,’ she said eventually to Sam.

‘Oh, she’s probably forgotten I’m abroad,’ he said levelly, looking away out of the car window. ‘She probably thinks I’m down at the local youth club or something.’ He paused for a moment. ‘It’s a big family,’ he went on. ‘Easy to lose track of a child or two.’

Bex wanted to say something reassuring, but she couldn’t think of anything that might help. Instead she pushed her door open, intending to leave the car, but something made her stay where she was. It took her a moment to work out what had triggered her mental alarm bells.

‘Sam?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Your room overlooks this car park, doesn’t it?’

He thought for a second. ‘Yeah, it does. I’d hoped for, like, a desert view or something, or maybe a panoramic view of the city, but all I get is tarmac, trees, cars and white lines. Why?’

‘Which one is your room?’

He craned his neck, gazing up at the concrete edifice of the hotel. ‘Third floor, two windows along from the end … oh. That’s odd.’

‘What do you see?’

‘There’s someone at the window. They’re looking down here. Maybe I got it wrong.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Maybe there’s another car park.’

‘There isn’t another car park, and there is someone in your room. And probably in mine as well. They’ve realised that Kieron isn’t all he seems, and so they’ve come to take us prisoner.’

‘They’ve stepped back,’ Sam said. ‘They’ve let the curtains fall back.’

‘Then they’ve seen us, and probably alerted their people. They’ll be coming for us.’ Bex turned the key in the ignition. ‘We need to get out of here.’

As Sam scrabbled to get his seat belt back on she reversed rapidly out of the bay, nearly hitting a black SUV that had appeared out of nowhere and which seemed determined to block their path. She managed to weave around it like a drunk driver spotting an obstruction just in time, then slam the car into drive and accelerate away.

Across the car park, people wearing black had appeared from all the hotel entrances. Two other black SUVs had leaped out of their parking spots and were converging on them.

Rather than crash into the SUV directly ahead of her, Bex veered left, heading diagonally across the parking lot and through the gap between a lemon-yellow sports car and a battered pick-up truck that was only a few centimetres wider than their car. She made it with just a bump or two but without hearing any squealing metal.

‘We may have lost a door handle,’ Sam shouted over the roar of the engine. ‘Just saying.’

The SUV that had tried to block their exit had followed them, almost bumper to bumper. Too late, the driver realised they were driving a wider vehicle as the SUV slammed into the sports car and the truck. The sports car spun round, glass smashing and alarm blaring. The truck just rocked back on its suspension. In her rear-view mirror Bex could see a sudden bloom of white in the SUV’s windscreen as the airbags deployed.

One down; no idea how many to go.

‘Head over there!’ Sam shouted, pointing to a distant corner of the car park.

‘Why?’

‘Why do people always ask why when you tell them to do something? Just do it! Please!’

She plotted the quickest route in her head: straight along a row of cars, then left across a stretch of tarmac kept clear for access, then right again. As she manoeuvred to get into the right row she glanced around. The car park had two entrances – one on a main route and one on a side road. It looked to her as if both had been blocked off by black SUVs. Whatever Sam had in mind, she hoped it was good.

The rear windscreen suddenly crazed over. An instant later Bex thought she heard a bang! Effect before cause: that meant the bullet was travelling faster than the speed of sound. That meant the people trying to catch them were armed with high-power handguns – something like .44 Magnums. Either that or someone in the hotel had a rifle.

A person in a hotel with a rifle: that would be ironic, considering what had happened to her in Mumbai just a week ago.

Approaching the turn, Bex realised that an SUV was coming up behind her. It would probably use the standard car-takedown technique: come alongside and then nudge the rear bumper of her car with its front bumper, sending her into an uncontrolled spin. She had to stop them doing that, which meant she couldn’t slow down too much as she approached the junction. Instead she kept up her speed and actually passed the entrance to the access route.

‘You missed the turn!’ Sam said.

Bex crossed her hands on the steering wheel – left hand on the right side and vice versa. ‘No, I didn’t,’ she said.

‘I know what you’re going to do!’ Sam shouted. ‘I’ve seen it in movies.’

‘Hang on!’ she said. Reaching down quickly, she pulled the handbrake up. The rear wheels locked, dragging against the tarmac and sending up plumes of smoke. Both hands back on the wheel, she turned it quickly. The car slewed through 180 degrees, so that it was now facing back the way they’d come. She released the handbrake again and floored the accelerator. The car leaped forward, heading back for a junction that was now invisible behind a wall of smoke.

A wall of smoke broken by the SUV that had been behind them. Bex had a momentary flash of the surprised faces of the driver and his passengers – all dressed in black and all, strangely, with red hair – as she sped past. They were too busy staring at her to notice one of the concrete bars that separated the car spaces from the access roads. Their car hit it at speed. The front of the car stopped abruptly, while the back rose up into the air, wheels spinning. Bex didn’t like to think about the chaos inside. The car seemed to stand impossibly on its nose, like some bizarre sculpture, but it couldn’t stay there forever. Slowly it toppled back down, slamming against the tarmac and bouncing.

‘Cat in a washing machine,’ Sam said, grinning as Bex made it through the right-hand turn that moments before had been a left turn. She accelerated away.

‘What?’

‘That’s what they probably feel like.’

She turned right again, heading alongside another row of parked cars. Somewhere over to her right she became dimly aware of another SUV, with a third to her left.

Ahead of them she saw the end of the car park: a two-metre high wall of hedge stretching away in both directions, with concrete bars along its base.

‘What was your brilliant idea?’ she asked as they raced towards the hedge.

‘There’s a gap, straight ahead. See – there’s no concrete bar. The hedge has grown across the gap.’

Bex was amazed. ‘How did you find that?’

Sam sounded shifty. ‘Kieron and I came down for a quick vape earlier, before we left. We had to – the entire hotel’s covered with smoke detectors. We noticed it then.’

They were travelling so fast that, in a few more seconds, it would be too late to brake.

‘Just out of interest, what’s on the other side?’ Bex asked, trying to sound casual. In her imagination it was the side of a building.

‘A disused car park,’ Sam explained. ‘All cracked and covered with weeds.’

Now it was too late to brake. They were committed. All Bex could do was hope Sam was right. She kept her foot on the accelerator and forced her eyes to stay open as the hedge filled the windshield.

Crunch! and they were through, in a storm of leaves and twigs. Just as Sam had said, the car park on the other side was like the evil twin of the pristine one they’d been chased through: cracked, broken and abandoned. But there was an exit on the far side, and Bex steered directly for it.

Once on the main road, she sped away, then turned off as soon as possible. She kept an eye on the rear-view mirror through two more turns, but nobody appeared to be following them.

‘Where to now?’ Sam asked breathlessly.

‘Somewhere anonymous where we can rest up and look at what Kieron has left for us.’

She drove back towards the airport, on the basis that there would be hotels there she and Sam could hole up in. She ignored the first few they passed, eventually turning in to a motel-style place where rooms more like cabins were arranged around a parking area, meaning you could park your car right next to your room. She told Sam to stay in the car while she went and booked a single room from the cabin that operated as the motel’s reception desk, reasoning that anyone looking for them would be searching for a woman and a boy, probably in two rooms. As far as the unshaven man in reception knew, she was a lone woman. And besides, she had no intention of being there long.

It was almost dawn. The sky to the east had taken on a rose-coloured blush, and the air was already beginning to heat up. Their car was reasonably anonymous, but while Sam caught some sleep she returned it to the airport, then walked to a different rental firm and hired a different car. She stopped off at a diner on the way back and picked up food for them both.

Sam was asleep on the bed when she got there, fully clothed and snoring. Bex sat down in the room’s only chair, slipped the ARCC glasses on and began to scroll through the material Kieron had recorded.

An hour later she took the glasses off, massaged her temples and sighed deeply.

Sam turned over and looked at her muzzily. ‘What is it?’

‘Sorry – I didn’t mean to disturb you. You should try and sleep some more.’

‘I’d rather know.’

She sighed. ‘Kieron found out a lot of stuff before he got caught – and yes, he did get caught. Those thirty-five employees – they all died of heart attacks, like we thought, but they didn’t die here in Albuquerque – they died in Israel. Tel Aviv. The Goldfinch Institute has a branch out there apparently. They do a lot of work with the Israel Defense Forces. Oh, and all the people that died were of Eastern European heritage.’

‘What?’

‘You can tell from their names. They’re all Polish, Czech, Romanian, Bosnian, Croatian …’

‘What else?’ Sam asked, sitting up.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, I can see it in your eyes. There’s something else.’

Bex gestured to the bags of food she’d got from the diner, which she’d left on the dressing table. ‘There’s breakfast over there, if you want some.’

‘Tell me.’

She sighed, then flicked her way through the recorded material stored inside the glasses until she found the particular bit she’d tagged earlier. ‘Take a look at this,’ she said, throwing the glasses to him. ‘Tell me what you think.’

Sam slipped the glasses on. ‘OK, this is one of those fancy computers Kieron said they had in the Institute. He’s looking at the screen, and those are his hands on the keyboard. He’s accessed the personnel records. There’s a handwritten list by the side of the computer – I’m guessing he’s cross-referencing the names of the dead staff members you got from the medical examiner with the list of people employed by Todd Zanderbergen.’ He paused. ‘How am I doing? Do I get a prize?’

‘Look at the various divisions of the company where the staff were employed.’

‘Administration,’ Sam read, ‘Finance, Non-Lethal Weapons, Computing, Genetics … All obvious stuff.’

‘Yes,’ Bex said, ‘but the Genetics division didn’t appear on the company information we researched before we came here. And it’s not in the promotional material they showed Kieron either. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, the Goldfinch Institute doesn’t do genetic research.’

‘What’s the problem? Genetics is the next big thing – being able to decode our DNA, make changes to it, cure diseases caused by defects in the genes. Any research institute worth the name would be looking into that kind of thing.’

‘But why hide it?’ Bex closed her eyes, hoping that the suspicion forming in her mind was wrong. ‘Let me put it this way – a company involved in military research that has a secret genetics laboratory suffers a whole load of unexplained deaths, but only of employees with Eastern European heritage. Eastern European genes.’

The silence in the room went on for a long time after she said those words. Eventually she opened her eyes. Sam was staring at her. The expression on his face was one of shock.

‘They’re developing biological weapons designed to kill people with particular DNA?’ he whispered. ‘Why would they do that?’

‘Why wouldn’t they?’ Bex shook her head. ‘The history of the human race is a history of racial groups hating and fighting each other. Arabs against Jews in the Middle East. Hutu against Tutsi in Rwanda. Bosnians against Serbs in Eastern Europe. White against black everywhere you look. Go back a few hundred years and it was the British against the Dutch and the Spanish against the French. You’ve heard the word “genocide”? The United Nations defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”. And how can you distinguish one national, ethnic or racial group from another? Genetic testing. Now, imagine that one racial group gets hold of a weapon, like a gas or a virus or something, that can destroy only people with a different genetic make-up. What would happen?’

‘Carnage,’ Sam whispered. ‘Wholesale slaughter, until the only people left in the world are the people who have the same DNA as the people with the weapon.’

‘And that,’ Bex said, ‘is what I think we’re up against – a man who has developed a weapon exactly like that.’

‘Can we stop him?’

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Bex felt a wave of affection wash over her for the scruffy little urchin she’d somehow ended up with. No thought of getting away, no suggestion that they pretend they didn’t know anything. His first thought was how they could deal with the situation they’d discovered. ‘You’re a good kid, you know that?’ she said.

His expression was serious, and a shadow darkened his eyes. ‘I’m a greeb,’ he said. ‘Kieron’s a greeb. We get chased down the street by chavs wherever we go. If the chavs could get hold of a way to eradicate all greebs and all emos, they’d do it without a second thought. That’s why we can’t let this go. But first we have to get Kieron back.’

Bex nodded. ‘I’ll see what I can find out. Pass me the glasses, will you?’

Putting them back on, Bex pushed away the recording Kieron had uploaded and tried to get into the Goldfinch Institute’s admin-level computers using the hacking tools built into the ARCC kit. All she wanted to know was whether the police had been called to the site last night or whether Kieron’s illegal entry had been reported, but it was no good – the security clampdown meant that the Institute had ramped up their firewalls. No way in, even to the areas they’d been able to access the day before.

‘If Kieron’s still being held,’ she said, more to herself than to Sam, ‘then we’re going to have problems. They’ll be expecting us to try and rescue him. If we thought it was difficult to get in before, it’ll be nigh-on impossible now.’

‘If he’s still there,’ Sam mused.

‘Actually, that’s a point.’ She frowned, thinking. ‘Zanderbergen might decide to leave the area for a while, and he might take Kieron with him.’ Quickly she accessed the Albuquerque airport computer, hacking in to the data on flights in and out. ‘Damn – someone filed a flight plan for a jet belonging to the Goldfinch Institute. Destination is … yes, of course. Tel Aviv. Due to take off in … no! Half an hour!’ She moved her hands, manipulating information. ‘If I can get access to the airport’s security cameras in the VIP area … yes, I’ve got a live feed!’ Her triumph was short-lived, replaced with anger and despair as she found herself looking at a picture being taken probably by a camera on a pole. It showed an executive jet with its stairway extended. A limousine sat at the bottom of the stairs. Todd Zanderbergen stood halfway up the steps, looking back towards the terminal. And at the bottom of the stairs, Bex’s old friend and colleague Tara Gallagher had her arms around someone as she helped them out of the back of the car.

The person’s head hung low, but Bex knew who it was. She recognised the jacket, the shoes she’d bought, the hair. Everything about him.

It was Kieron.