CHAPTER TWO

‘OK,’ Bex Wilson said, ‘I’ve sent it.’ She gazed out of the window of the flat she and Bradley Marshall had rented a month ago, and which had quickly become their home and their base. She felt sick. This was the right thing to do, but she knew the effect it would have on Kieron. He would be devastated, and she didn’t want to hurt him. The trouble was, she had to hurt him so that he didn’t get hurt worse, later.

Bradley watched her from the sofa. ‘It had to be done,’ he said gently. ‘We can’t ask the boys to risk their lives any more than they already have. It’s time for me to get back to supporting you on our missions. It’s time for me to start using the ARCC glasses again.’

‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’ She turned away from the window and stared at him, trying to evaluate from the way he was sitting how he might be feeling. It wasn’t that long ago that he’d been knocked out, kidnapped, beaten up and tortured right here in Newcastle while working on a mission with her. Any normal person would have been traumatised by all that, but she knew how strong Bradley was. He didn’t look it, with his hipster beard and his friendly smile, but she knew he had an inner core of pure steel.

He nodded. He was sitting up straighter than he had been a few days before, she noticed, and he didn’t have that look of a person perpetually wincing slightly at the world. ‘Yeah – the headaches have pretty much gone away now, and so have the visual disturbances. I can even stand up and go for a long walk without keeling over. The private doctor you called in has given me a clean bill of health. She’s pretty sure it was concussion, but it’s gone now.’ He smiled gently. ‘She kept saying that I should get checked out in hospital, have an MRI scan and an X-ray, but I told her I had a phobia about technology.’

‘And what did she say?’ Bex asked.

‘She looked at the LCD screen and the Blu-ray player, shrugged and went back to checking my blood pressure and pulse. Whatever you were paying her, it kept her from asking too many difficult questions.’

‘What I was paying her was partly to stop her asking questions.’ As Bradley nodded, Bex went on: ‘Now for the one-trillion-dollar question: what about the ARCC glasses? Can you really use them properly, for sixteen hours a day if necessary?’

‘Yes,’ he said firmly. ‘I can.’

Bex wasn’t convinced. The glasses were her link to him when they were both on a mission for their employers in the UK’s spy agency: MI6. Undercover anywhere in the world, Bex wore a pair with hidden cameras, hidden speakers and a hidden microphone, all transmitting real-time information via encrypted satellite link back to Bradley, who sat somewhere that was supposed to be safe – probably with a coffee and a pastry in front of him. The set he wore showed him what Bex was seeing and allowed him to hear what she was hearing and saying. But that wasn’t nearly the end of their technological wizardry – they also acted as virtual-reality goggles, enabling him to call up any information or image he wanted from the Internet, the dark web or classified government databases so only he could see them. That way he could provide instant facts and guidance to Bex without anyone knowing. He had to be aware of what was going on around him, but also be sensitive to Bex’s requirements – which could be life-threatening and depend on him to respond with the right information. The problem was, looking through Bradley’s ARCC glasses meant he was seeing the real world and Bex’s world at the same time, one overlaid on the other. He had perpetual double-vision while wearing them. Long-term, that could lead to distraction, confusion and possibly even hallucinations if Bradley wasn’t careful – and that was when he was in perfect health. Now … now she wasn’t sure.

‘Have you tried them out?’ she asked.

‘You told me not to,’ he said virtuously, ‘in case they caused a relapse.’

She stared at him for a few seconds without saying anything, then repeated: ‘Have you tried them out?’

He did his best to meet her questioning stare with an innocent one of his own, but she knew him too well. Eventually he crumbled. ‘Yes,’ he said, blinking. ‘Kieron brought them over a couple of times, and I’ve had a go on them. The first time was just for a few seconds, then for a few minutes, then for a few hours. No bad effects – no headaches, and no passing out. Look, I’m fit for duty. Honest.’

Bex sighed, feeling relieved. It had been stressful while Bradley had been incapacitated – more so than she had admitted to herself. At the back of her mind there had always been the question: would he ever recover? Would he ever be able to work again?

‘Has any work come in from MI6 since the Goldfinch mission in Albuquerque and Tel Aviv?’ he asked.

‘I would have told you if it had. We’ve only just finished that job – they’re probably letting us have a few days to recover before they send us something else.’

He sighed. ‘Sorry. Sometimes I worry that you might have been keeping stuff from me while I was sick.’

‘I wouldn’t do that. We’re a team. Total honesty – right?’

He nodded. ‘Right.’ After a slight pause, he added, ‘In that spirit, I suppose we need to talk about MI6.’

She winced. ‘You mean about how one of our MI6 bosses is a traitor, working for an extremist right-wing organisation of fascists and racists? That talk?’

‘No – I was going to ask where this year’s Christmas party is taking place.’

Bex laughed, and the sudden relief of being able to laugh took her by surprise.

‘It’s good to hear you laugh again,’ Bradley said. ‘But yes, we need to talk about that whole “traitor” business.’

Bex sat down before replying. She’d been thinking this over obsessively, and she hadn’t come up with any answers. For a start, they didn’t know very much. In the first few days after Bradley had been kidnapped by the Blood and Soil organisation, and Bex had met Kieron and Sam, it had become obvious that someone in MI6 was passing information to a neo-fascist organisation – and had passed them Bradley’s information when he’d been sent to Newcastle to help Bex track them down. A sympathiser, if not an active collaborator. The problem was, apart from being able to identify the traitor as a woman, they didn’t know very much more. Yes, they could report their suspicions to MI6, but half of their bosses in the SIS-TERR department were female. What if they reported their suspicions to the actual traitor? They’d be exposing themselves to risk. As it was, they were living off the grid, under assumed identities and in untraceable accommodation, accepting missions from anonymised and encrypted email accounts. Being untraceable was hard work.

Bradley knew all that of course, so she didn’t bother rehearsing it again. Instead she sighed and said, ‘We can’t let it ride. We have to do something.’

‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘We could go up the chain, I suppose. Go right to the Director; tell her.’

‘Her,’ Bex pointed out. ‘That’s the problem. It might be her, for all we know.’

‘So is there anyone we could report it to?’ Bradley asked. ‘I mean, MI6 operate overseas – it’s MI5 who operate within the UK. We could tell them. Or the police.’

Bex shook her head firmly. ‘The problem is, we don’t know how far up the tree the rot goes. What if MI5 are compromised as well? What if the police have been infiltrated by Blood and Soil? No – reporting it isn’t enough.’

‘So we need to do something more active. We need to use our own particular skill sets to investigate, and identify the traitor.’

It felt like she should reject this as being too risky, but Bex found herself reluctantly nodding. ‘It feels wrong, investigating our own bosses – even if we are freelancers rather than registered agents – but I can’t see any alternative. We’re going to have to use the ARCC kit against MI6, if only to flush out the traitor.’ She sighed. ‘And that means it’s even more imperative that we get Kieron and Sam off the books. God knows we’ve exposed them to enough risks already. We can’t let them get involved in something this dangerous, and this close to home.’

Bradley nodded. ‘It’s the right thing to do. Kieron in particular has been brilliant – not just at providing support, but also at going undercover. He’s got natural ability, but we mustn’t encourage him – or Sam. We’d better relocate to a different town as well. If we don’t, we’ll keep finding the two of them on our doorstep. They’ve become addicted to this lifestyle, I think.’ He seemed to be about to say something else, but closed his mouth and deliberately looked away.

‘What?’

‘What what?’

‘You were going to say something.’

‘I was not.’

‘You were.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘You know what – we’re sounding like them.’

Bradley nodded slowly. ‘That’s part of the problem. We’re all growing together into some strange, dysfunctional family, the four of us. I know Kieron’s started thinking about you as the big sister he never had – I can see it in his eyes. I don’t know what he and Sam think about me – a big brother maybe –’

‘Or that uncle who thinks he’s really down with the kids but he’s really not,’ Bex murmured.

‘– but they’re definitely fixating on us, the way little baby ducks fixate on the first thing they see and assume it’s their mother.’

‘Those two kids,’ Bex said carefully, ‘are not ducklings. Not in any sense at all. They’ve already proved themselves in action better than some agents I could name.’

‘Agreed, but we’ve warped their lives enough. We need to back away gracefully, disengage and let them live the way they were supposed to.’

Bex stared at him for a long moment. ‘Do you know what their lives are like? Were like, before they got involved with us?’

‘Do you know what my life was like before I met you?’ he countered.

Bex shook her head. Bradley had always been close-mouthed about his family, his childhood, his history.

‘I didn’t have the greatest start in life,’ he said, avoiding her eyes and staring towards the window. ‘Bad things happened. I got over them.’ He looked back at her, and his face was serious. ‘We’ve given those boys the tools they need to make something of themselves. We’ve given them confidence in themselves. It’s up to them now.’

In the silence that followed, Bex found herself quietly saying, ‘And what about you? You and Courtney?’

He sighed. ‘If Sam is off-limits to us, then his sister is off-limits to me. The relationship has to finish. I’ll tell her tonight.’

‘Seems hard on you,’ she said gently.

He shrugged, trying to appear casual, but she could see the sudden tension in his shoulders, and the way he was sitting. ‘It won’t be the first relationship that I’ve had to end because of the job, and I doubt it’ll be the last.’

‘And I’ll tell Kieron that it’s all come to an end,’ Bex said, rising from her chair. ‘I’ll be firm, but fair. I’ll let him down gently.’

‘Make sure you emphasise how important secrecy is. I know he and Sam don’t have that many friends –’

‘They don’t have any other friends, as far as I can make out.’

‘– but I’d hate to find out they were boasting about how they’d been helping out secret agents on undercover missions, in an attempt to impress some girls at a party. That would be a bad thing.’

‘Yes – I know.’

‘Tell him what “Top Secret” actually means – that people might die if that information gets out. And by “people”, I mean you and me.’

‘I’m sure he understands all that, but yes – I’ll remind him.’

‘And I’ll get to work finding a new town for us to live in, and a flat there. I’ve always fancied Leamington Spa, just from the sound of it. What do you think? Ever been there? Any family there?’

‘No – you?’

‘No – so it’s perfect. We have no previous connection. Whoever is the traitor in MI6, they’ll have trouble tracking us down.’

Bex glanced at her watch. ‘I’d better go. I’ve probably put Kieron on edge already. If he has to wait for me to turn up then he’ll just get twitchy.’

‘Treat him gently,’ Bradley said. ‘Remember – it’s probably his first break-up.’

‘I’m not his girlfriend, remember,’ Bex protested. ‘I’m his big sister. You said so yourself. And all little brothers secretly want their big sister out of their life so they can grow up.’

‘And so they don’t get covered in make-up and have their hair done by their sister and her friends.’ Bradley grinned. ‘Yes, I had a big sister. Two of them in fact.’ He waved towards the door. ‘Go on then. Start cutting our ties. Just bring a takeaway back. Indonesian, please.’

Bex left Bradley in the apartment and headed down towards the outside world. She’d left her car parked in a different street, just a short walk away. It was a security measure, one of many small habits she unconsciously went through every day to protect herself and Bradley. It was theoretically possible that someone connected with a job they were on, or maybe even someone connected to Blood and Soil, might see her in the street or the supermarket and recognise her. It was also possible, she supposed, that they might tail her to her car and discover what make and model it was, and its registration. She always took care when she was out in public to check every couple of minutes for faces that seemed to be hanging around and staying behind her, but crowds made it difficult, and there were ways that followers could change their appearance – put a hood up or take it down; turn a reversible jacket inside out; take a scarf out of a pocket and wind it around their neck. She couldn’t rule out the fact that she and her car might have been connected, and that her car might be traced. If she parked outside the apartment then the followers – if there were any – would quickly find out where she and Bradley were living. Parking a street or two away was just another level of security. One of many.

It was cold outside, and she zipped her coat up as she walked. She felt her fingers tingling and stuck them into her pockets to keep warm. The sun was low in the sky, casting a reddish light on the roofs of the buildings she passed.

When she got to her car she reached into her pocket for the keys. As she bought them out she made a show of fumbling them, and dropping them to the ground with a jingle of metal on concrete. Cursing, she bent to pick them up. As her hand closed around them she glanced under the car. If anyone was going to place a bomb on the vehicle, the easiest thing was to attach it to the underside with magnets. She quickly scanned it from front to back. Nothing. No suspicious lumps or bumps.

Before she opened the door, she glanced at the bonnet. She always left a leaf underneath, trapped between the bonnet and the body of the car with its stem just poking out. The second-most-likely place to put a bomb would be in the engine compartment. If anyone tried they would disturb the leaf, which would fall away. Again, it was a simple countermeasure, but could potentially be a useful one.

The leaf was still there. As it always was. But she still kept on checking, every time.

She opened the car door and slipped inside. Despite all the precautions, all the countermeasures, as she turned the key in the ignition she felt herself tense slightly. Just in case.

Three years ago, a friend of hers, someone she had gone through training with, had got into his car and turned the key in the ignition, just like he’d done every day. A device nestling right beside the engine had exploded, killing him instantly and sending shards of metal and glass flying for hundreds of metres, propelled on a wave of burning gases. And every time Bex started up a car, she remembered that. If they wanted to get you, if they really wanted to get you, then they would find a way.

Not a comfortable thought.

Before she could pull away from the kerb, her phone pinged. She checked the number. If it was one she recognised then she would answer it. More often than not, it was just cold calls wanting to know if she’d had any accidents recently that weren’t her fault, and claiming she could be entitled to millions in compensation. Sometimes – just sometimes – she was tempted to actually tell them about the ‘accidents’ she’d had during the course of her covert missions abroad, just to see what their reaction would be. Crashing a light aircraft on top of a lorry carrying guns in Mozambique, for instance, or having a scorpion deliberately thrown in through her car window while she was going at over a hundred miles per hour on a German autobahn. But … best to keep those things to herself.

The ping was from Kieron. Pls phone, he’d texted.

Bex would be seeing him in less than half an hour, but she’d better call him back. Maybe he was delayed.

‘Kieron?’

‘Hi. Thanks for getting back to me.’

‘I’ll be with you soon. Everything all right?’

He didn’t sound panicked, or stressed. ‘Kind of, except that I’ve got some stuff to tell you. Like, personal stuff. But the reason I’m calling is, I put the ARCC glasses on, just before leaving, and saw there was a message for you on there.’

‘Why are you using the glasses?’ she asked calmly but firmly. ‘You know you’re not supposed to wear them unless you’re helping me out on a mission – and you’re not.’

‘If I don’t put them on every now and then,’ he said reasonably, ‘how would you know if you’d got any messages?’

Bex sighed. The best solution would have been for him to leave the glasses at the apartment with her and Bradley, but on the couple of occasions she’d politely asked for them back he’d ‘forgotten’ to put them in his bag. She knew perfectly well what was happening. He’d become addicted to them. So had Sam. The two of them loved the way the glasses gave them access to information they shouldn’t have, and they didn’t want to give that up.

Too bad. That was part of the conversation she and Kieron were about to have.

‘OK,’ she said, not willing to have an argument about it, ‘what’s the message?’

‘There’s an attachment that needs a code word to decrypt it, but the subject line is: Immediate Threat Assessment – Falcon Team, and it’s from someone or something called the Threat Cell.’

A shiver ran through her. Immediate Threat Assessment was a trigger phrase. It meant what it said – there was an immediate threat to the recipient that needed to be acted on. The Threat Cell was the team of people within MI6 whose job it was to track threats – of whatever form, in whatever context – and alert the target.

Someone was after her. Or Bradley. Or both of them.

‘Right,’ she said in a tone of voice that suggested, Nothing to worry about here, which was not what she was feeling. Not at all. ‘Good work. Not to panic. I’ll respond to the message as soon as I get to you.’

‘OK.’ He didn’t sound convinced. Smart boy. ‘Am I safe here?’

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She’d have to give him something. ‘You remember you told me about that time when you’d set up a folding ladder so you could cut your mum’s hedge, back at the house where you used to live, and you were balancing on the rungs of the ladder, and your foot went between two rungs and you fell backwards, and you thought your leg was going to break but you managed to pull it out from between the rungs just in time? Do you remember that?’

‘Ye-es,’ he said uncertainly.

‘You’re as safe there as you were back then. Do you understand?’

‘Ye-es.’ A long pause. ‘Should I stay here?’

‘Are you at the cafe?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then stay there.’

She cut the connection, feeling guilty. This was exactly the kind of thing she wanted to avoid involving him in. Invisible, intangible threats.

The drive from the apartment to Newcastle city centre took twenty minutes, but to her finely honed nervous system it seemed like an hour. Bex left the car across and down the street from the cafe, but chose a spot where she would still be able to see it. As she crossed, she felt as though she was moving through treacle. Her gaze moved across all of the faces she saw – old and young, male and female. Any of them might be a threat. All of them might be a threat. Her gaze moved upwards, to the rooftops above the shops: an irregular line of chimneys, gables and slanted tiles. Plenty of places to hide up there. Plenty of places someone with a rifle could take cover while they lined up a shot.

No. She had to pull herself together. She’d been in situations like this before. Threats had been made on her life before. And besides, it was probably something simple, like her photo had been found on a jihadist website, or her name mentioned in an email from someone in the Russian secret service. She wasn’t naive enough to believe that she’d conducted her undercover operations without ever being noticed. Just because someone had flagged her up somewhere in the world didn’t mean there was an immediate threat now.

She felt her heart rate slow down. Her breaths came more easily now.

As she pushed open the door of the cafe she scanned the crowd inside for Kieron. He was sitting over by the far wall, by the entrance to the toilets. He smiled when he saw her, but it was a tentative smile, a nervous smile.

‘I got you a black Americano,’ he said. ‘And a doughnut. I couldn’t afford it, so they’ve put it on a tab at the counter. I hope that’s all right.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, sitting down. She stared at his drink, with its conical topping of whipped cream and marshmallows. ‘Is there a hot chocolate under there somewhere, or is it all just empty calories?’

‘I’m a growing lad,’ he protested. ‘My mum says I need to keep my energy up.’

‘You and Sam are like hummingbirds,’ she observed, noticing the way his face had clouded over when he’d mentioned his mum. ‘You subsist on a constant diet of sugar.’

‘What do you think of my choice of seat?’ he asked.

‘Away from the windows, and next to a corridor that leads to a fire door,’ she said. ‘And in a corner, which means we can both sit with a view of the room. Very good. Very tactical.’

‘I thought you’d like it.’

He was trying to impress her. He knew why they were there.

‘Kieron –’

‘My mum’s lost her job,’ he said, taking a spoonful of the whipped cream and staring at it for a moment before slipping it into his mouth.

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘She says we’ve got savings and we can last for a while, but I don’t believe her. She also says it’ll be easy to find a new job with her qualifications, but I don’t believe that either.’

‘Things will work out,’ Bex said, knowing as she uttered the words how lame they sounded. And also knowing that there was no way to get from that conversation to the one she wanted to have without there being a jarring disconnect, which was probably why Kieron had jumped in with it. ‘Look, Kieron, we need to talk.’

‘I know what you’re going to say,’ he said morosely. ‘Bradley’s much better now, so he can use the ARCC glasses again. You don’t need me any more, and you’re worried about my safety, so you and he are moving to a different town.’

‘Then you’ve worked it out, and there’s nothing else I can add.’

‘Can you send me an anonymous message on social media every now and then, just so I know you’re OK? Cos I’ll worry about you.’

‘Better than that,’ she said brightly, but feeling her insides knotting up, ‘I’ll make surprise visits. You’ll look around somewhere, maybe in a cafe like this, or at a gig or something, and you’ll see me. You’ll smile, and I’ll smile, and then we’ll both know the other is all right. Or I’ll turn up in the crowd at a school sports day. You’ll be crossing the finish line, and you’ll look up and see me waving and cheering.’

‘Please don’t come to a school sports day,’ he said, wincing. ‘I don’t want you to see me crawling on all fours for the last few yards.’

‘OK. Sports days are out. Everything else is fair game though.’

‘Date nights are out too – if I ever get any. I don’t want to be with a girl watching a film and turn around and see you behind me.’

‘All right, date nights are out too.’

Kieron’s head turned, and his gaze flickered towards the counter, where a red-haired girl was serving coffee. Just as he turned away, the red-haired barista glanced across at him, smiling slightly. Something going on there, maybe? Bex hoped so. Kieron deserved to meet someone nice.

She caught herself. She wasn’t his mum, and she wasn’t his big sister. She couldn’t get involved.

She sighed. ‘You’re going to have to give me access to some kind of online calendar, so I know when it’s safe to see you.’ She took a breath, trying to push down the hard knot of emotion that seemed to want to block her throat. ‘Did you bring the glasses with you, like I asked?’

‘Yeah, I did.’ He shrugged. ‘Forgot them the first time, and had to go back for them.’

‘Pass them over, and then we can talk about other stuff.’

‘Until we say goodbye,’ he said bleakly.

‘Until we say goodbye.’

Bex wasn’t sure what it was that attracted her attention. Maybe nothing. Maybe it was that strange sixth sense that experienced agents have that alerts them when something is about to happen, a big, terrible event echoing back in time a few seconds, in contravention of every known law of physics. Whatever – the hairs on the back of her neck suddenly rose, and she felt herself tense.

Kieron felt it too – she saw his knuckles suddenly go white as he clenched his fingers.

‘Wha – ?’ he started to say.

Bex had turned her head to scan the cafe for threats, the queue at the counter, the seated customers with their lattes and macchiatos and flat whites. She looked out of the window to the street, to where her car was parked. Until it wasn’t. A sudden flash of light obscured it, and then it was just an expanding cloud of dust and debris and flame that filled the road. The window bowed in, bending under the force of the explosion before it fractured into a crazy cobweb of millions of small fragments of glass all held together by some plastic film that incredibly didn’t tear or rip but just sagged.

And then the noise. A sound like a skip full of rubble falling off a lorry onto concrete, a rushing noise, screams, the whoomph of the expanding window compressing the air in the cafe.

All that in one second. Less than a second.

Bex grabbed Kieron’s shoulder and pulled him off his seat with one hand while her other hand pushed their table over, sending their drinks flying. In her mind the only thought, apart from that of protecting Kieron and herself, was, I should have paid more attention to that threat assessment …