Jimmy Coates (19 page)

“Wait,” Jimmy shouted over the noise of the drill. He dropped the chisel into the bath and rested a finger on his lips. When the drill stopped, the noise from the club was obvious. Now it wasn't just a bass line or a drumbeat they could hear, it was the full blast of the music. Jimmy closed his eyes for a moment. He could even pick out voices. He scraped at the end of their tunnel. A flurry of red dust came away – brick dust. They'd reached the wall of the club.

“Get the laptop,” Jimmy ordered.

Saffron crawled backwards and reached for the laptop they'd left in the bath. “What's the plan now?” she whispered, lying on her front and clutching the computer to her chest.

“You circle to the left, I'll go right. Cover the whole floor looking for exits, staircases, lifts, security personnel…”

“I know what to look for,” Saffron cut in. The light from the bathroom caught the outline of her face, glinting off her cheekbones. Jimmy felt the force of her determination. For a second it cracked the stone inside Jimmy's skin and he felt his human emotions seeping through the assassin.

“Are you still going to be his girlfriend?” Jimmy whispered, before he could stop himself. Saffron tensed up.

“What do you…?”

“You don't look scared,” said Jimmy, studying her face. “You used to be scared for Chris, but now you…”

“Get through that wall,” Saffron ordered. “Let's do one job at a time.”

Jimmy emerged from the hole in the wall at knee level. He immediately rolled to one side then bounced to his feet, his eyes darting in all directions. Had he been spotted? Was the Capita's security force coming for him? Jimmy saw the throng of people heaving in all directions, barely in time with the music. They pushed him back against the wall. Above the pounding, his ears picked out the swivel of the security camera on the ceiling. With the place so packed and the darkness only broken by coloured flashing lights, there was no way he could have been spotted by security. Not yet.

Saffron rolled out of their tunnel straight after him. Jimmy saw her disappear into the shadows of the club. Even the black hole in the wall was invisible from more than a step away. Jimmy moved around the edge of the room, knowing Saffron was doing the same in the opposite direction. The ceiling was low and the whole room was packed. The smell of sweat and stale nuts infused the air.

Jimmy quickly picked out the only exits: a spiral staircase leading up to the rest of the club, manned by a security guard, and the doors to the bathrooms. There was also a bar on Saffron's side of the room, and Jimmy guessed there'd be a ladder up to the street somewhere back there. But he didn't need Saffron to confirm it. His body had already chosen his strategy. It was simple, direct and lethal.

Jimmy circled back to the security guard at the bottom of the stairwell. He was a huge man, dressed all in black, but his size was already working against him. From the bulges in the man's clothing, Jimmy could see the location of the man's weapon as clearly as if it had been lit up by a spotlight. He knew that was what the man would go to first to defend himself, and a predictable opponent may as well already be on the ground.

Jimmy twisted and ducked, swivelling into the guard with his head bowed and his shoulders low to the floor. He swept his heel into the guard's knee and his hand beneath the man's jacket. The guard let out a gasp of pain as his knee crunched in the wrong direction. He reached for his gun, but Jimmy simply grabbed his wrist and used the man's own momentum to bring him to the floor.

“Take me to Viggo,” said Jimmy, bending to speak directly into the guard's ear as the man writhed face down in a puddle of something fizzy. “I have an invitation.” Jimmy flicked the guard's gun to the ground, where it spun directly in front of the man's face. Stuffed down the barrel was the LOCO flier, rolled into a thin tube.

Just then Saffron appeared at Jimmy's back. They smiled at each other and lifted the guard by the shoulders. Without another word, the man stumbled up the stairs, leading Jimmy and Saffron towards their appointment with the Capita. Saffron pocketed the gun to keep it out of sight and clutched the laptop under her arm.

When they reached the ground floor the true size of the club became clearer. The floors above had been replaced with balconies to create one huge, dark, circular hall with a massive dance floor in the middle and bars around the edges of the room. Large balconies ran round the whole hall at eight or nine levels overhead, all of them packed with people.

The guard led Jimmy and Saffron up to the very top floor, to the back corner of one of the balconies. He ushered them behind a bar, watched suspiciously by paying customers and servers alike. The barman aggressively sliced through a lemon when he saw the strangers slipping past him. They marched through a more brightly lit storeroom, stacked high with crates of bottled drinks, until the guard paused at the door of a back office.

“Don't stop,” Jimmy ordered, shouting over the music. He gestured for the guard to open the door and get out of the way.

The guard scowled at him. “I'm only doing this because they're expecting you,” he grumbled.

“Yes,” said Jimmy with a sarcastic grin. “It's so very kind of you.” He burst forward and slammed his foot into the door, just below the handle, missing the guard's hand by a millimetre. The door crashed open, but Jimmy held back. His instincts kept his feet locked to the floor, not letting him plunge straight into danger, and not wanting any startled Capita security agents to launch an unwise counterattack.

“You could have knocked,” shouted a woman in the middle of the room. Jimmy instantly recognised her: the short woman who had come to Viggo's headquarters. The dim light caught her cheeks, which almost glowed from behind the black curtain of her hair. She was still wearing that thick white coat that swamped her tiny frame. For a second she looked like a baby polar bear looming out of an Arctic night.

“We've come for Viggo,” Jimmy announced, stepping into the office. His senses were tingling. He could feel every movement reverberating in the stale air and every shift vibrating in the floor. There were Capita guards posted in every corner of the room and Jimmy saw them draw their weapons.

The light from the bar came through the door and cast Jimmy's own shadow across the floor. Caught at the edge of the brighter rectangle was a man's bare foot. There was dried blood on the nail of the big toe. Jimmy knew he had found Christopher Viggo. He was strapped to a chair in the middle of the room, his hands tied behind his back, a bag covering his head. Was he even still alive?
Yes
, Jimmy told himself.
He has to be.

“The H Code?” announced the woman in the white coat. Jimmy felt his muscles creeping with tension and knew Saffron must be feeling the same. But was she also rapidly constructing a plan to extract Viggo and escape?

The door had swung closed, cutting out most of the noise of the club, but there was still a pounding thud. It reinforced the power of Jimmy's thoughts. They wouldn't stop. They piled over each other, swamping his consciousness until he didn't know whether the music was hammering the inside of his skull or the walls of the room.

“It's here,” Saffron responded. She pointed to the laptop. “But we need guarantees first.”

“Guarantees?” snorted the Capita woman. “I'm not selling you a washing machine.”

“Show us his face,” Saffron ordered, ignoring the other woman's jibes. “You promised us he'd be alive.”

“He's alive.” The Capita woman whipped the bag off Viggo's head. Jimmy felt ice trickle down his throat. Viggo's eyes and mouth were open and from what Jimmy could see in this darkness, there weren't any serious cuts or bruises on his face. But though he was still breathing, he looked totally unaware of anything that was happening around him. His zombie-like expression seemed to loom at Jimmy, who couldn't bear to look away.

Jimmy's gut churned. How was he going to get this man out alive when he was bargaining with nothing?

“I know you rigged the election,” Jimmy announced to the Capita woman.
Put them off guard
, he told himself.
Let them know their secrets are coming out.
He felt Saffron shift uncomfortably at his side and he realised he'd caught her off guard as well – she didn't know what Dr Longville had really found on the Chisley Hall computer.

“Just protecting our investment,” the Capita woman barked after a long time. Then she added in a grumble, “Trying to, anyway.”

“It's a hard system to hack,” said Jimmy, all the time assessing the surroundings, looking for escape. His eyes flashed imperceptibly, taking in the positions of the guards, the dimensions of the room, the single bare bulb that illuminated it in the centre of the ceiling…

“Sometimes humans are more effective than systems,” the Capita woman replied. “We had a man working on the HERMES project from the beginning. Deep cover, I suppose you might call it.”

“You had a Capita man working on HERMES?” Jimmy said sharply.
Unsettle her,
he thought.
Provoke her. Anger creates mistakes.
“And you still lost the election? Your man didn't do a very good job, did he?”

“He's been processed,” replied the Capita woman automatically.

“Processed?!” Jimmy couldn't hide his disgust. His effort to unsettle the Capita had backfired. “Bring him into the bar,” he said firmly, waving a hand at Viggo with a lurch of revulsion.

The Capita woman snorted. “You know you're too young to buy him a drink?

“Just do it.” Jimmy's voice was flat and strong, while his eyes watched every movement of the guards that surrounded him. “We need to know you're going to let us out alive once you have the H Code. We need to be where people can see us.”

The woman let out another snort. “Give me the laptop first,” she insisted, then looked to Saffron. “And the gun.” Saffron glanced across at the guard, whose weapon she had taken. His embarrassment was as obvious as the bulge in Saffron's pocket. Saffron tried to protest, but Jimmy raised a hand to stop her. There was no point with so many armed guards surrounding them.

The Capita woman stuffed the gun into her coat and thrust the laptop to the guard next to her.

“Plug this in,” she ordered. “Or do whatever you need to do to tell me we have the H Code.”

“Do you know what you could do with that?” Jimmy asked, trying to sound like he knew what he was talking about. In truth, he just needed to slow down the Capita. It wouldn't take long once the laptop was powered up for them to realise that Jimmy and Saffron were bluffing.

“Sorry, Jimmy,” said the woman. “Enough conversation.”

“But you know what you've…”

“Be quiet.” The woman folded her arms and watched her assistant as he cradled the laptop in his arms and powered it up, still standing at the back of the room.
Stop him
, Jimmy heard himself thinking.
Destroy him.
He squeezed his fists, forcing the blackness of the club out of his head.

“Do we have it?” asked the woman. There was no response. “Do we have it?” she shouted. Jimmy knew his time was running out. He could hear the whirring of the laptop's fan as the hard drive started up. All the time, the pounding of the club's music was relentless. It seemed to surround him. But there was another noise too – a faint tapping. Viggo's big toe was bobbing up and down in a slow but regular rhythm and Jimmy was the only one in the room able to hear it.

Jimmy glanced up at Viggo's face. For a split second the zombie was gone and the man's spirit was back. Jimmy felt a flood of exhilaration. Had Viggo's body and mind been strong enough to withstand whatever the Capita had done to him? The next instant, Jimmy was sure. Viggo jerked a single eyebrow and flashed his eyes to one side. He was signalling. Immediately his expression switched back to the zombie, but Jimmy knew what to do.

“There's a password,” he announced. “On the laptop.”

“No, there isn't,” said the guard, looking at the screen.

“It's an encrypted operating system,” Jimmy lied, stepping forward slowly.

“Stay there,” said the woman, positioning herself between him and the laptop. “What's the password? Where does he enter it?” Jimmy was almost eye to eye with her. He could feel his limbs preparing for combat, throbbing with controlled power. But the assassin in him disguised his strength perfectly. He couldn't afford to give away that he was ready to strike at any moment.

“You have to search for a file,” Jimmy explained, speaking slowly and clearly. “Open a search box.”

“What next?” asked the guard, urgently. “What do I type in?”

“Type in ‘now',” Jimmy replied.

“Now?” the guard repeated, confused.

“N, O, W,” said Jimmy, then he shouted: “NOW!”

Suddenly Jimmy and Viggo burst into action. Jimmy leapt up and slapped at the light bulb in the centre of the ceiling like a basketball player delivering a slam dunk. In one movement he ripped the bulb free and threw it straight at the Capita woman. She just put her hand up in time to shield her face and the glass smashed against her elbow, but Jimmy followed it up with a kick while he was still in midair. The ball of his foot struck the woman's temple with pinpoint accuracy and she staggered backwards, her eyes rolling in her head until she was able to support herself against the wall.

At the same time, Viggo swung his arms round in front of him. Somehow, he'd cut through the bindings at his wrists. In the chaos, nobody noticed the lemonade bottle cap falling from his fist. He ducked and swivelled, still sitting on the chair, and landed the base of his palm in the gut of the guard next to him.

At the door, the other guards tried to raise their weapons, but Saffron was quicker to react. She chopped both guards' arms at the same time, slamming their wrists against the wall. As they struggled to hold on to their guns, Saffron delivered a knee to one man's groin, then twisted to land a fist in the other man's nose. Immediately she grabbed Viggo by the collar. He was still attached to his chair at the ankles, so she dragged him out into the storeroom.

Once Jimmy shattered the light bulb, the guard with the laptop spun it round to illuminate Jimmy and fight back. But he was too slow. Jimmy's heel shot into the centre of the computer's screen. Not only did the screen crack, but the force of the blow sent the laptop into the guard's chest like a battering ram. Jimmy didn't wait for his enemies to catch their breath. He dashed out, skidding into the storeroom after Saffron and Viggo. They were nowhere to be seen, but on the floor was the barman's knife, a lemon and Viggo's severed ankle ties.