Jimmy Coates (9 page)

“Whatever,” Felix went on. “It might not be these ‘head people'. I mean, the woman might have been lying. She could even have been from NJ7!”

“She wasn't NJ7,” Jimmy said urgently. The voice was thrust from his gut before he even realised he was talking.

“I agree with Jimmy,” Saffron added over her shoulder, still tapping at one of the computers. “NJ7 would have killed Chris straight away. Now the election is over, Chris will be a marked man again. But the Capita have good reason to keep him alive.”

“They might even have taken him partly to protect him from NJ7,” Helen added, thinking aloud. “The Government has been trying to show everybody how fair and honest they are, but now they've won it'll be time to punish their enemies. That includes Chris and anybody who supported Chris during his campaign.”

Jimmy looked round at the rows and rows of empty desks. The place had obviously been abandoned in a hurry. Several chairs had been knocked over. Jimmy knew that not one person would dare turn up for work in the morning – even if it was just to collect some of the personal belongings that were strewn across the desks and the carpet.

“The Capita wants this ‘H Code' from him,” Jimmy muttered, “and we have twenty-four hours to deliver it to them if we want Chris back alive.”

There was a deadly silence and Saffron stopped typing. Jimmy immediately regretted what he'd said. The feeling side of him seemed cut off from the world while his calculating assassin side tried to work out what their next step should be.

“Why don't we just pay them back the money?” Felix suggested. Jimmy was grateful to his friend for breaking the silence, but not impressed by the idea.

“Yeah, nice one, Felix,” he said. “Let's all chip in and see how much we've got.”

“Don't you know what you could do?” Felix asked, scrunching his wild hair in his fingers. “You're sitting there with these amazing… skills, and you don't even know what to do with them. You have superpowers! Rob a bank!”

Jimmy's mum stood up straight away.

“Felix!” she cried with a laugh. “Are you serious?

“Why not?” said Felix.

“Are you a criminal all of a sudden?”

“If I need to be,” Felix insisted. “If we can save Chris by paying the Capita lots of money, then we should just, you know, rob a bank or something. It's not as if we'd get caught, is it? You and Saffron could probably do it with your training, even if you didn't have Jimmy to help.”

Helen waited until Felix had finished, then lowered her face and spoke softly.

“I didn't think I would have to say this, but…” She let out a deep sigh. “…while your parents aren't here, I'm the one who's meant to be looking after you, right?”

Felix's expression changed immediately. Jimmy knew his friend thought about his parents every day. They all did. Jimmy was angry with his mum for mentioning them like this. It seemed like a cruel way to win an argument with Felix. But then he knew she was right.

“What would your mum and dad say?” Helen asked. Felix didn't need to answer. He simply shrugged, slouched in his chair and reached for a packet of crisps.

“Anyway, robbing a bank wouldn't be enough,” Saffron cut in, swivelling from the computer to look at the others. “Do you know of any bank with twenty million pounds in the vault?”

“Twenty million pounds?” Jimmy gasped.

“From the look of Chris's campaign accounts,” Saffron explained, “that's a rough estimate of what he's spent.”

“And it's all the Capita's money?” Helen was aghast.

“For all we know it could be,” said Saffron. “Everything's been pretty well disguised in these accounts. It looks like it comes from lots of unrelated donors, but…”

“…but that's just the way the Capita would operate.” Jimmy finished Saffron's sentence for her. “I can't believe Chris was so stupid.”

“He's not stupid,” Georgie protested. “He's brave. He needed money to try to get rid of this Government and this was probably the only way he was going to get enough.”

All the information buzzed round Jimmy's head. He couldn't make sense of it.

“Twenty million pounds?” he said under his breath, half to himself. “What could be worth that much to the Capita?” Nobody had an answer. “Is there any more information on the computer network?”

“There's plenty,” Saffron replied. “And we can see it all if we like. Chris may have been secretive, but he's never had a password I couldn't guess.”

Jimmy jumped up with excitement. “So what does it say about—?”

“Nothing.” Saffron interrupted. “I've already run every kind of search I can think of. There's no mention anywhere on the network of any code or anything to do with the letter H. No H Code. Nothing on the internet either. Well, nothing that looks relevant. But you know how useless the internet is while it's so heavily censored.”

“So what can we do?” asked Georgie. Jimmy was impressed that she and Felix were regaining their composure so quickly. The image of the two dead attackers being dragged across the floor was only now starting to play on his mind. His programming was relaxing, allowing his human fears to seep through.

“What if we could get enough money?” Felix asked suddenly.

“We're not robbing a bank!” Helen laughed.

“No, you don't understand. We wouldn't need to rob a bank if we had all the Government's money. They've got billions.”

“So now you want to rob the Treasury? Felix, the Government doesn't just keep all its money piled up in a vault waiting for you to go and steal it…”

“But if we
were
the Government…”

“Chris isn't Prime Minister,” Georgie cut in. “Didn't you notice? He lost the election.”

“But did he?” Felix scooped up the last crumbs from the bottom of his crisp packet and licked them off his fingers. “Do you really think he lost? I thought we all agreed that the Government must have rigged the election.”

“That's still no good to the Capita,” said Jimmy. “So it's no good for us.”

“No, I think Felix has a point,” said Saffron, rising slowly to pace round the table. “What if we could actually overturn the result of the election? Or at least show that the result is void and force another one? That would at least give Chris another chance to give the Capita what they want, or do… well, whatever he needs to do.”

“Exactly!” Felix's face suddenly lit up with delight. Jimmy had almost forgotten how easily his friend came up with crazy schemes. But it looked like this one was being taken seriously. “The Capita only took him because he lost and can't give them this code thing,” Felix went on. “Or pay them their money back. But if there's still a chance he could win an election, they might keep helping him until he won. Then he can give them whatever they want.”

They all looked at each other. Jimmy could sense everybody trying to work out the flaw in Felix's logic, but there wasn't one.

“I think he's right,” said Jimmy at last. “Question is: how do we overturn an election?”

“Hold on,” said his mum. “Let's think about this…”

“That UN Inspector man,” Georgie exclaimed. “We have to tell him.”

“Tell him?” Helen frowned. “He's had an inspection team in the country for months watching everything that's been going on and they've found nothing wrong. You think if we just turn up and tell him the result was rigged he'll listen to us?”

“We don't tell him.” It was Jimmy this time, his mind racing on. “He needs evidence. So let's find some.” Jimmy could feel an exhilarating rush in his veins. A plan was growing in his imagination faster than he could get the words out.

“What do you mean?” Georgie asked him. Everybody leaned in closer, and he could see from their faces they were already thinking along the same lines.

“The UN team can't have watched everything,” he explained.

“That's right,” Saffron chipped in. “They will only have seen what Miss Bennett wanted them to see. It was a show. To demonstrate to the world how ‘fair' the election was.”

“So all we have to do,” said Jimmy with a deep breath, “is find out how NJ7 rigged the election, get hold of the evidence and find the UN Inspector so we can show it to him.”

“And we'll have to make sure the Capita know what we're doing,” added Georgie.

They all looked to Jimmy's mum, as if asking her permission. She puffed out her cheeks, widened her eyes, then finally announced, “Looks like it's going to be a very busy day.”

The journey from the Scottish Highlands to London had been long and uncomfortable. For two passengers on the 4.30 arriving into Kings Cross it had also been silent. Neither the man nor the woman had spoken a word. Now, they stepped off the train, blending into the small crowd with ease, having discarded their jumpsuits in the rubbish bins. Underneath they looked like any other weary businesspeople, with long, grey woollen coats. The only difference was that neither of them carried a briefcase or baggage of any kind. And they were the only two passengers shelling boiled eggs as they walked up the platform.

The smell of the eggs wafted away in the cold wind, but that was the only trace they left. They were careful to hold on to every fragment of shell, gathering it all together in their pockets while they bit into the white flesh of the eggs.

The man's straggly black hair was pulled back into a rough ponytail now, revealing a single silver stud in his left ear. His hands moved in smooth but direct bursts. There was no unnecessary action. Everything was done to maximise efficiency, but in his eyes was a vague hint of puzzlement, as if he didn't know he was watching his own limbs.

The woman next to him wore the same expression, as if neither of them could keep any thoughts in their head beyond the fact that they were shelling and eating eggs. By the time they reached the end of the platform, they had finished their first and simultaneously they each pulled out another one from a hidden pocket inside their coats.

The other passengers filtered away along the concourse, but these two stood still and faced each other. As one, they cracked into their eggs with a firm squeeze of their fists and started pulling away shards of the shell.

This time, the flesh inside wasn't white. The man's hard-boiled egg had been stained black, the woman's was a deep red. They glanced at each other, but neither of them seemed surprised. If anything, they both stood a little straighter, as if they had suddenly remembered something they had to do.

Within a few seconds they had both devoured their eggs. Then the man reached up to his left ear, to the silver stud. The woman pushed her hair back, revealing that she was wearing an identical earring. At the same moment, they squeezed their earrings between thumb and forefinger. Then, still without a word, they turned away from each other and marched in opposite directions. If all went well, they would see each other again very soon. Once two men were dead.

 

The drone of the vacuum cleaner drilled into Ian Coates' head.

“Why do they have to clean now?” he groaned. “It's the middle of the night!” He increased the setting on the running machine and pumped his legs harder.

“It's actually morning, sir,” said William Lee softly. “People will be arriving to start work any minute.”

The Prime Minister wiped the sweat from his face and glanced around him, as if searching for the daylight that he knew wouldn't be there. They were down in one of the offices of NJ7, underneath Number 10 Downing Street. It was nothing but a concrete bunker dressed up with a bit of office furniture. An empty bottle of champagne was perched at the edge of the desk. Ian Coates had been the one to ask for a running machine to be installed.

“And they have to clean up NJ7 some time,” Lee added.

Coates merely grunted in response and kept running, but then a piercing voice startled them both.

“People will not be
arriving
for work.” It was Miss Bennett, leaning against the wall in the open doorway. “Because nobody went home.”

“What do you mean?” At the sight of Miss Bennett, Ian Coates smacked a button on the machine and slowed to a halt. He wiped his face again, as if he could wipe away his tiredness, suddenly conscious of the contrast between his own appearance and Miss Bennett's. Her hair was glossy and neat, her skin glowing. Coates was bedraggled and pale, having managed to disguise the effects of the champagne by working up a sweat on the running machine. Meanwhile, Miss Bennett, even after such a long night, looked as if she had arrived fresh from a spa break.
She doesn't need sleep
, Coates thought to himself.
Just power.

“I mean exactly what I said, Ian,” Miss Bennett explained. “I always do. Nobody went home from the party. You remember the party, don't you? The one celebrating your election victory? The one you didn't show your face at?”

Coates hated the sarcastic tone in Miss Bennett's voice.

“It was
your
victory, not mine,” he muttered.

“But there were still hundreds of civil servants and politicians too afraid to go home until they congratulated you in person.”

Coates shrugged and climbed down from the treadmill to towel himself off.

“We should all have gone home,” said William Lee, picking up his suit jacket from the back of his chair.

“I am home!” roared the Prime Minister, taking the other two by surprise. “This is it!” He suddenly swung his arms through the air, knocking the champagne bottle to the floor, where it bounced and clanged, but didn't break. “I'm the Prime Minister! Everybody knows I live at Number 10 Downing Street. What they don't see is that the Director of NJ7…” He paused to give Miss Bennett a theatrical bow. “…runs my life from the cellar.”

“Sit down before you embarrass yourself,” said Miss Bennett. “I'm no good at sympathy.” As she glided into the room, William Lee tried to scurry past her to leave, but she placed a firm hand on his shoulder. With that single touch, and a stare, she forced him back to his seat. “Your story breaks my heart, Prime Minister,” she went on, “but you know it's a lie. If you weren't happy with the fact that NJ7 runs the country in your name, keeping you in power, you could have the whole place underwater in two minutes.”

Coates waved her comment away with disgust.

“Why don't you?” she went on, mocking. “Turn the right lever and in 120 seconds all of these corridors would be flooded with Thames water. But you won't. Instead you sulk down here, worried about what the world thinks of you. Well, I can tell you what the world thinks of you. The world thinks you run Britain. Is that such a bad thing? Do you have such a terrible life?”

Coates couldn't look at her. He knew she was right. Yet he also knew she couldn't possibly understand the fears and horror in his head. As far as he knew, she'd never had a family of her own.

“Why can't I go?” asked Lee suddenly, breaking through the fog of Coates' thoughts.

“Our satellite surveillance system still isn't working properly.” Miss Bennett spun on her high heels to face Lee. He was by far the physically larger of the two, but he shrunk into his chair as Miss Bennett loomed over him.

“I know,” he said, a slight tremor in his voice. “I've been trying to fix it. The tech team identified a time lag on the feed, and occasional blackouts.”

“The occasional blackouts are becoming more regular. If you're trying to fix it, you're making it worse.” Miss Bennett leaned down until she could whisper into Lee's ear, a strand of her hair falling to irritate the man's cheek. “Maybe you should try to make the problem worse and then you'd fix it?”

A glint of hatred flared up in Lee's eye, but he gritted his teeth and forced out, “Yes, Miss Bennett.”

“Our surveillance isn't working properly?” Coates gasped, just catching up with the conversation. “That's a disaster. Are we under attack?”

“No, no,” said Lee quickly. “It's just a glitch. I'll fix it.”

“You'd better.” Coates was regaining his confidence, or perhaps the effects of a night's alcohol really were wearing off. “Without surveillance, how are we going to run the country?”

“It's all so inefficient!” added Miss Bennett. “I have assassins posted all over the place, waiting to know the whereabouts of their targets.”

“Their targets?” asked Lee.

“Just get those satellites back online,” Miss Bennett hissed. “We've been through one ridiculous election and, thank god, we won it. But none of us wants another one. As soon as we're back to full surveillance capacity, my agents will track down every living soul that supported our enemies. We'll eliminate every opposition candidate in a single hour.”

“What about Viggo?” asked Coates, with a grimace.

“He's finished,” replied Miss Bennett. “He lost. He'll never be a threat to Neo-democracy again.” She ran a finger over the desktop and checked it for dust. “So we'll kill him anyway.”

 

*

 

It took Jimmy only a few minutes to post a message for Eva online. He double-checked the puzzles in the back of the newspaper, placing the Sudoku squares over the crossword puzzle clues and holding them up to the light. Only two words were clearly outlined by empty boxes: ‘Maltese' and ‘illusion'. Jimmy searched for them online, just as he had done every hour since that day's papers had come out, and found the same message board. He just hoped Eva wouldn't have already moved on somewhere else – the next day's papers must have been rolling off the presses and on to the street already.

“We should leave it in code,” Felix suggested, and the others had murmured their agreement.

“No time,” Jimmy insisted, already typing a message. The blue tips of his fingers flashed across the keyboard. “Eva's system is safe enough. It has to be. We can't make it harder for her with a code when we need her answer right now. Anyway, I'm not going to sign the message or anything like that, and we can delete it as soon as she's read it.”

They decided together to ask Eva three things. First, they needed to know the location of the central computer that had supposedly counted the votes and given out the result. Second, they needed to know where the Head UN Inspector was going to be for the rest of the day. Finally, but most important, they asked whether Eva could find evidence somewhere in NJ7 HQ or government files that the election had been rigged and get it to them.

“She must be able to uncover something,” Georgie thought aloud as Jimmy typed. “I mean, she's working directly for Miss Bennett.”

“That doesn't mean she can find solid evidence,” Saffron pointed out. “We know how crafty Miss Bennett can be.”

Crafty?
Jimmy thought.
What about cruel, violent, power-hungry and evil?
He kept his head down and refocused on the computer screen.

“And even if she can find it,” Helen pointed out, “it might take her longer than it would take us. She has to be discreet. Once we know where the central vote-counting system is housed, we can go straight in there and get what we want.”

Jimmy was excited to hear his mum talking with such determination, even though they all knew it wouldn't be that easy.

“OK,” he announced, and clicked ‘post message'. “Now we wait.”

“No,” Saffron declared. “We get moving.”

“What?”

“She's right,” Helen agreed. “We know the votes were sent to a facility somewhere near Milton Keynes. The UN Inspector announced that on TV. So let's set off in that direction and check for messages on the way.” She went to a laptop on one of the desks, ripped out the leads and tucked it under her arm. “Let's go. But you two stay here.” She pointed firmly at Georgie and Felix.

“What?” Felix moaned.

“Mum,” Georgie protested. “That's not fair. How many times do we have to show you how useful we can be?”

Helen was about to explain, but Saffron took her arm.

“I think you should stay here with them,” she said, gently. The two women looked at each other for a few seconds, but Jimmy couldn't work out what they were thinking. “Three of us are trained,” Saffron explained, glancing at Jimmy. He realised how strange it must be for her to describe him as ‘trained' when all the skills he'd developed had come to him naturally. His ‘training' took place while he slept, with electrical impulses hurtling through his muscles.

“So we're the three who should go,” said Helen. “I trust Georgie and Felix to look after themselves.”

“But we need someone who's trained to be in London to track the movements of the UN Inspector. Otherwise once we've got the evidence, what good will it be?”

“She's right,” Jimmy cut in. “Two teams. It's more efficient.” He could feel the urge to command the others bubbling up inside him.
Take control
, it seemed to whisper.
Use them.
Jimmy forced the voice away
.

“Should I go with Jimmy?” said Helen, “You track the UN Inspector with Georgie and Felix.”

“I can't let you do that,” said Saffron.

“Why not?”

“You're his mother.”

There was a long silence, but Jimmy knew exactly what Saffron was going to say.

“Your first instinct will always be to keep Jimmy safe,” she explained at last. Helen didn't protest. “On a mission like this,” Saffron went on, “I'll obviously try to protect my partner, but I won't be afraid to let him take care of himself, either.”