Jimmy Coates (24 page)

Once he had made it down into the tunnel, Jimmy could hear Felix's voice. It was the only thing that kept him moving forward. He carefully pulled Felix's father with him, while Helen carried the man's feet. Saffron had gone on ahead of them and had already reached the small bathroom, where Felix and Georgie were waiting.

“What happened?” Jimmy heard Felix saying. He could also hear the clatter of the medicine cabinet – Saffron was looking for first-aid supplies. Jimmy didn't listen for any more conversation. He just kept on heading through the tunnel, as if he could leave everything that had happened behind him in a nightmare, a different world, a different part of his brain. He focused on the image of Felix's face when he would see his father again.

“Hey, Jimmy!” Felix exclaimed, as soon as Jimmy emerged out of the tunnel. Saffron was sitting on the floor while Felix and Georgie crouched at her arm, surrounded by all kinds of bandages, plasters and lotions. Saffron was telling them how to strap up her injury; the tears on her face were obvious.

“Did you get…” Felix started. He stopped when he saw the unconscious body that Jimmy and Helen were carefully lifting out of the tunnel, into the bath. “What happened?”

Jimmy hid his reaction by marching straight across the bathroom and opening the door.

“We've got to go,” he announced. The sirens outside were clearer now, and Jimmy welcomed them. They lent authority to what he'd said and pressed everybody into action. He'd have an extra few seconds before he would have to relive the night's events. Perhaps if he never spoke about it, it wouldn't be true. Perhaps any second, Christopher Viggo would emerge from the tunnel behind them and…

“Jimmy!” whispered Georgie, breaking into his thoughts. “You coming?”

Everybody else was through the door already and halfway up the corridor. Jimmy's mother was carrying Neil Muzbeke over her shoulder, with a bit of help from Felix.

“What happened to Chris?” Felix asked, awkwardly lifting his father's feet.

“I'm coming,” Jimmy said, forcing his way past them and out into the street.

“Thanks for the food, Margaret!” Felix called out, closing the front door behind him. “Nice woman,” he added. “Good chilli.”

LOCO was surrounded by police. The lights from the squad cars flashed, illuminating the pale faces of the crowd, who were all penned in by police tape along the pavement. Helen left Neil Muzbeke with Jimmy and slipped past the chaos to bring the Bentley round, while the others waited in the shadows.

“What happened to Chris?” Felix asked again, sounding more and more desperate.

“Not now,” said Jimmy. “Let's get out of here first.”

Within seconds they were all in the car, speeding across London. Helen drove, with Saffron in the passenger seat. In the back, there was just enough room for Jimmy, Georgie, Felix, and the unconscious masked man propped up by the door.

“Seriously,” Felix said, squirming awkwardly in the squash. “Will you tell me where Chris is now? And who is
this
? I mean, it would make things a lot more comfortable if we could just, like, push him out.”

Felix tried to make more room for himself, squeezing against Georgie, who ended up so squashed against Jimmy that his face was mashed against the window.

“Sit still,” Helen insisted from behind the wheel. She twisted the Bentley through the streets. In the passenger seat, Saffron kept her face turned to the window.

“Take off his balaclava,” said Jimmy, struggling to say anything coherently with the car window in his mouth and the door handle in his ribs.

“Really?” asked Felix.

Jimmy pushed his sister back across the seat to give himself more space. “Really,” he said. He searched inside himself for the happiness that he knew was there somewhere. After a few seconds, he could feel it welling up in his throat, but it mixed with his despair and left a strange taste on his tongue. Jimmy took a deep breath, calming himself. This was one moment he'd longed for, but he'd never dared picture it clearly. And now it was happening there was no room for delight. Too much had gone wrong. Too much had been lost.

Felix gingerly hooked his fingers under the bottom edges of the man's balaclava and started to peel it off. In less than a second he let out a gasp. The atmosphere in the car seemed to change, lit up by some kind of electric spark. Felix had only revealed the man's chin, but that was enough.

“Dad!” he shouted, ripping off the rest of the balaclava. “Dad!” He wrapped his arms round his father, knocking him sideways. At the same time, Georgie let out a shocked laugh that pierced Jimmy's eardrums.

“What?!” Helen Coates looked round, astonished. Saffron did the same, wiping tears from her eyes. In a second, the Bentley screeched to a halt at the side of the road.

“It's Neil!” Helen shouted. “Did you knock him out?” she asked Jimmy. “Bring him round!”

Jimmy responded like he was on autopilot. He found himself reaching down, past his sister and Felix, to Neil Muzbeke's ankles. He was trying to feel some of the enjoyment of the moment, but all his sensations seemed dulled. He let his hands guide him, not knowing what he was feeling for, but confident that his body had the answer.

“What's happening?!” Felix's father gasped, pulling in a lungful of air. He sat bolt upright, his eyes wide, his face a picture of confusion. Then he saw his son. “Felix!” He squeezed the boy so hard Jimmy thought his friend might pop. “Where… what…?”

“It's OK,” Jimmy said. “Relax. Tell me everything you remember.”

 

It took most of the night to work out all of the details. Jimmy's mother found an all-night café and hid the Bentley nearby. Jimmy was grateful to feel the hot food sliding into his belly and the tea soothing his parched throat. He was also relieved that his mother and Neil Muzbeke were doing most of the talking. He explained what he knew about the H Code, which was very little, and blurted out a question now and then when he couldn't force his programming to stop, but for the rest of the time he just listened, letting the information take shape in his head.

“Do you think it was Dr Higgins?” Felix asked, when they heard Neil say he remembered the face of an old man.

“Definitely,” said Jimmy. “Last we heard he was in America, and from this it sounds like the US Government has got him working for them.”

“And the green light?” Neil asked, his deep voice as soothing to Jimmy's soul as it ever was. “What do you think that was?”

“A laser,” Jimmy replied, as if it was the simplest thing in the world. He didn't say anything more. The image of Lenny Glenthorne lying on a slab at NJ7 loomed at him in his head. Jimmy had seen the green laser. Then the image changed, and Jimmy saw Lenny's face staring up at him from the floor of LOCO, totally white in the flash of the strobe light, beside the body of Christopher Viggo. It was a sight he would never forget.

Felix and his dad talked rapidly for a long time. Felix asked again and again about his mum, but Neil couldn't remember much that had happened since he'd been taken by the CIA in New York. Soon Neil was desperate to hear about everything Felix had been doing, and Felix was excellent at telling him. The exploding plane played a particularly large role.

When the second round of tea arrived at the table, the moment came that Jimmy had started to hope would never come.

“What about Chris?” Neil asked.

“Yeah,” Felix chipped in. “Where is he?”

“After he lost the election…” Neil went on, “where did he go? You told me these people, the Capita, took him, but was he at the rendezvous like you thought he would be? Where is he now?”

Jimmy looked to his mother, who was staring at the plastic tabletop. She reached out and placed a hand on Saffron's good arm. She too was just staring downwards.

“There's something we have to tell you…” Helen Coates began. Jimmy let his mother's voice surround him. Hearing the news from her mouth made it that little bit more real for Jimmy. He saw Saffron crying, and his mother too, and that made it more painful, but at least pain was something he could deal with.

When it came to the part about how Viggo died, Helen simply said that he'd been pushed off the balcony by an NJ7 assassin. Jimmy didn't add anything. He told himself it was true – which it was, even if it was only half the truth. He didn't know whether he would ever be able to tell Felix about the bullet from Neil Muzbeke's rifle that had played its part in ending Viggo's life. Saffron instinctively checked the bandaging on her arm. She had also been shot by Neil and was lucky that the bullet had only grazed her shoulder. But it looked like she too was preparing to live with the secret.

Jimmy distantly heard his mother go on, explaining what they had done to try to save Viggo. He couldn't stop the torrent of his thoughts:
I hesitated. I chose to save Saffron. Maybe if I'd gone after the shooter…
He watched the faces of everybody else, especially Felix. How could Jimmy explain that his actions had cost Viggo's life and turned Felix's father into a killer?

Felix wiped his eyes and that moment, Jimmy found it easy to cry himself, as if his body had been waiting for a cue.

 

Eva was already sitting up in her hospital bed at sunrise. A laptop was open on her knees and that morning's copy of
The Times
was on her bedside table, folded over to the Sudoku puzzle. She was typing frantically, frustrated that she could only use one hand. Her left arm was strapped up in a sling.

“Are you ready for your visitor, Miss Doren?” asked a nurse, popping her head round the door.

“Of course she is,” said Miss Bennett, charging in before Eva had time to answer. “This girl means the world to me, and look at what she's sacrificed for her country.”

The nurse nodded sheepishly and left, while Miss Bennett strode over to the window and closed the blinds.

“Did they look after you OK, Eva?” she asked. “They told me you were lucky – the knife went through the muscle, but nowhere near the artery. Did they tell you that as well?” She didn't wait for an answer. “Apparently you'll be fit to come back to work this afternoon, but I'm happy for you to take some time off, if you'd like it. You'd have to stay here, of course, but…”

“No, no,” Eva insisted. “That's OK. I feel fine.”

Miss Bennett smiled, and for the first time Eva thought she saw some genuine warmth in it. It was Miss Bennett who had personally seen to it that Eva received the finest medical treatment, rushed to a private room at St Thomas' hospital.
Don't get comfortable
, Eva told herself.
She's a snake. She'd kill you just as quickly if she thought she had to…

“Did they find Olivia Muzbeke?” Eva asked.

“I'm afraid not,” said Miss Bennett, hesitantly. “Our security resources were… insufficient at the time.”

“Will we try to…?” Eva didn't know how to ask the question on her mind, but Miss Bennett seemed to know what to say.

“There's no point sending anybody after her, Eva. I'm sorry. You see, in herself she wasn't a threat. It was only the power of the brainwashing… We have higher security priorities. But I don't want you to worry about her. She only stabbed you in panic, in her desperation to escape. She has no reason to come after you again. You understand that, don't you? Promise me you won't worry about her.”

“I promise,” replied Eva quickly.

“That's good,” Miss Bennett said brightly. “You might find yourself with some kind of medal for this, Eva. I don't know which one… but don't worry. I'll invent one. I don't know… the Secretarial Services Medal for Bravery in an Office Environment… how's that? Or something like that…”

Eva forced herself to laugh.

“But don't get carried away,” Miss Bennett added. “Plenty more work to be done now. I'll need you to go through Dr Higgins' old papers.”

A chill struck Eva like a thunder bolt up her spine. Was this a trick? Did Miss Bennett know that Eva had already been searching through Dr Higgins' old papers, unauthorised, searching for something that would help Jimmy?

“I'll brief you fully when you're back in the office,” Miss Bennett went on, “but Mitchell might have discovered a clue to the whereabouts of the H Code.”

“The H Code?” Eva said in a flat tone, desperate to seem calm.

“Yes. A computer chip went missing many years ago. The French were meant to have stolen it, but Mitchell heard Viggo admit that he had it, and that he'd hidden it, so…” She waved a hand in the air. “You know – we'll have to find it.”

“What is it?” Eva asked.
And what happened to Viggo
, she wanted to add.
What did Mitchell do?
She forced herself to relax, but it took a huge effort. The answers to those questions would have to wait.