Four children crouched motionless on the top of the tallest building in the most northern city in the world, waiting for the order to jump.
Around them were some of the most spectacular views they had ever seen: vast snow-topped crags, deep gorges with fjords running through them, a row of black mountains in the distance. But they weren’t there to look at the scenery. The trip was strictly business, not pleasure.
A fifth child – Lesh – sat in a wheelchair, waiting to relay that order and send the other four over the top. For Lesh, this was the first outing since his accident on their last mission. An accident that had left him paralysed from the waist downwards. So today he was determined to get everything right. To the second.
‘Remind me why we’re doing this?’ Adnan, a stocky Asian boy, murmured to the two girls crouching next to him.
One was white with blonde hair. Lily.
The other black with tight dark plaits. Hatty.
‘There’s someone we need to talk to,’ Kester, the fourth member of the group, said. ‘And this is the only way of reaching him.’
‘Who?’ Hatty asked.
‘I’m not allowed to say.’
‘Thirty seconds,’ Lesh said.
‘Why not?’ Hatty pressed.
‘Orders.’
‘And why do you know and we don’t?’
‘I’m the leader,’ Kester said firmly.
‘Twenty seconds,’ Lesh said, concentrating on his watch.
Lily listened to the others bickering, but decided not to join in. She too was trying to work out what was going on.
The point was that they were not supposed to meet or to be introduced to anybody new. The five of them were a secret. So secret, in fact, that only their commander and their commander’s commander knew about them.
Their role?
To travel around the world and carry out black-op missions to save British lives.
Their name?
The Squad.
Five children who work for the British government, spying in the places that ordinary spies cannot reach.
‘Ten seconds.’
‘Bear in mind it’s windy,’ Kester warned. ‘As you fall, it will affect your descent.’
Lily shifted her feet and prepared to move, her mind still whirring. Who, she asked herself, was this person they were going to meet? Why was he about to find out who they were? And why could they only meet him like this?
‘Five.’
The four children stood as one.
‘Four.
‘Three.
‘Two.
‘One.’
‘Go,’ Kester said in a low voice.
And, with that, four children threw themselves over the side of the building.
Lily felt her rope tighten almost as soon as she began to fall. She released it, hand over hand, her three friends moving down at the same pace. Lily felt her feet bounce twice on the side of the building as she descended, then land on something solid.
A balcony.
Without wasting a second – a second in which they might be seen from below – the four children pushed open a pair of large glass doors and entered the warmth of a huge room, lavishly decorated with a large chandelier, oil paintings and a plush red carpet.
‘Shut the door,’ the woman facing them ordered.
Adnan, the last one in, eased the door to and the four Squad members found themselves facing a man and the woman who had spoken. The woman, with bright copper hair, was no stranger to them. She was Julia, their commander. The man, however, was a surprise.
Even though the four Squad members, as trained spies, were supposed to be able to mask their reactions and appear as if nothing could shock them, Lily heard at least two of her friends quietly gasp. Because they all knew exactly who the man was. His face was in the newspapers and on the TV every day. He was about as famous as you could be.
They were looking at the British Prime Minister.
And now they knew that this mission, high in the Arctic Circle, was going to be their most dangerous and most exciting to date.