Under Cover (Agent 21) (18 page)

None.

Moving very slowly so he didn’t make any unnecessary noise, he slid the blade of the snap gun into the lock. The clicking sound as he pumped the trigger sounded unnaturally loud and it made his palms sweat even more.

– Open it quickly, otherwise you’ll disturb him.

– I’m going as quick as I can . . .

He had it open in thirty seconds. Not for the first time that evening, Ricky found himself thankful for the training Felix had given him. With a final glance towards the bedroom, he slipped inside the office and, after double-checking that he could easily open the door from inside, he closed it behind him.

Thanks to the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows and the bright white snow outside, Ricky could see quite well, even though the light was off. He gave himself a few seconds to take in the layout of the room. There was a large desk at one end with a leather chair on the far side, and two much less comfortable-looking chairs facing it. The walls were lined with wooden bookcases while an enormous antique globe stood on a pedestal in one corner. He crept over to the window – vertical blinds were pulled wide open – and looked out onto the garden. There was no sign of Izzy crouching by the wall, and he couldn’t make out the tracks in the snow, which was a relief.

He turned his attention to the desk. It was very neat. Ricky stepped round the two chairs facing it and examined a photograph in a silver frame which sat on one side of the desk. He half expected to see a picture of Izzy, but no: it showed Cole himself standing alongside the Prime Minister, and smiling. It was the kind of smile that made you feel a bit creepy. Next to the picture there was a notepad and a biro. Ricky flicked through the pad, but Cole hadn’t written anything on it.

In the middle of the desk, Cole had left his mobile phone plugged into a charger. With slightly trembling fingers, Ricky made to pick it up. But before his fingers made contact, he stopped. He examined the exact angle at which the phone was lying on the desk. It would be sloppy of him to pick it up and return it in a different position.

He picked it up. It was slightly warm, which suggested to Ricky that Cole had been using it very recently, either to talk to someone or to access the internet.

– There could be helpful information on that phone. Recently dialled numbers, websites he’s accessed.

He swiped the home screen. The phone asked him for a passcode, and he had no way of knowing what it might be. Ricky allowed himself a wry smile. He hadn’t really expected it to be as easy as that . . .

He returned the phone to its place on the desk, then sat down in the comfortable leather chair and turned his attention to the drawers.

There were four on either side of the desk. The top drawer on the right-hand side was locked. The others were all open, so Ricky quietly opened them one by one and searched their contents, but like the desk downstairs these drawers contained nothing of interest – items of stationery, old passport photos, and two of the drawers were entirely empty.

Ricky turned his attention to the locked drawer. His forefinger traced the outline of the little Chubb keyhole. The snap gun would be no good for that. The only way he was going to find out what was in it was by finding a key.

He smiled another wry smile as he remembered again his very first lesson with Felix.

Could the key to this locked drawer be hidden somewhere in the room? Almost instinctively, he looked around the room and started dividing the space into cubes. How long, he wondered, would it take him to search the entire place? An hour? Maybe a little more?

Ricky started. A door slammed in the corridor outside and he heard footsteps. A thin strip of light appeared at the bottom of the door.

– Cole is out of bed!

For a fraction of a second, Ricky felt paralysed. Only when he saw the shadow of footsteps passing – and clearing – the door did he regain control of his muscles.

– He’s probably just going to the loo. He won’t come back in here.

– You should hide anyway. Just in case.

Ricky looked desperately around the room, searching for hiding places. There were none – no curtains to stand behind, no bulky items of furniture except the desk at which he sat . . .

He felt a moment of panic. But that panic only doubled when, a second later, the mobile phone on the desk started to ring.

It was loud. Very loud. As well as the ring tone, the phone buzzed noisily against the hard wooden surface of the table. Its screen lit up, illuminating the whole room. It said: ‘Caller Unknown’. Each time it rang, it slid about half a centimetre along the desk.

– You need to hide! HIDE!

All of a sudden, the sound of the mobile was not the only thing causing panic in Ricky’s mind. As soon as it had started ringing there were heavy footsteps in the corridor. Running. A clattering on the other side of the door as someone placed a key into the lock.

Ricky had no option. As the phone continued to ring and someone – Cole, presumably – tried to gain access to the room, he sank to the floor and wormed his way underneath the desk. He huddled himself up into a ball so he took up as little space as possible. If anyone looked under the desk, they’d see him immediately. But if their attention was elsewhere, maybe he had a chance . . .

The door opened. Ricky’s eyes burned suddenly as the lights were switched on. The phone continued to ring. Through his suddenly dazzled vision, Ricky saw legs walking – running – towards the desk from the door. Their owner was wearing a dressing gown and slippers, but Ricky could make out his knobbly ankles and thin shins.

A metre out from the desk, the owner of those legs almost threw himself towards the phone. There was a great clatter as he knocked the two chairs onto their side. Ricky held his breath as the ringing stopped and a male voice said, ‘Hello?
Hello?
Yes, this is Cole. You’re late, you were supposed to phone two hours ago.’

Ricky didn’t dare move. Cole was standing right by the table, no more than thirty centimetres from where he was crouched underneath. Ricky silently begged him not to move, or start pacing. The further he walked from the desk and into the main part of the room, the more likely he was to see Ricky hiding. And if he bent down to pick up the fallen chairs, they’d come face to face . . .

Sweat poured from Ricky’s crunched-up body. He wished he hadn’t stolen the necklace, but he put that from his mind as he listened to the conversation going on above him.

‘Tomorrow, you say? Yes, I can do tomorrow.’

– Do
what
tomorrow?

‘You want to come
here
? Are you out of your mind, Dmitri? That would be entirely inappropriate. If anybody
saw
you . . .’

Dmitri
. That had been the name Izzy had mentioned.

‘Absolutely not,’ Cole continued. ‘We shall meet at a location of
my
choosing, not of yours.’ There was another pause as he thought for a moment. ‘There is a café off the Kilburn High Road. It’s called the Happy Valley Café. I will be there at precisely nine a.m. in the morning. We will make the exchange then. Make sure you have the money, Dmitri, because I will not suffer any foolishness.’

Ricky could faintly hear the voice at the other end of the line, but it was suddenly cut short as Cole hung up. Then there was a clattering sound as he dropped the phone back onto the table.

Ricky’s lungs ached from holding his breath. Very slowly, he breathed out. Then in again. To his own ears, his breath sounded like a gale. He kept his eyes fixed on Jacob Cole’s lower leg. The man didn’t move. Ricky pictured him staring at the phone and considering the conversation that he’d just had. Ricky was wondering about that too. Who was this Dmitri? Why didn’t Cole want him near his house? What would they be exchanging at the Happy Valley Café? What was the money for?

Yet again, Felix’s voice echoed in his head.
There are terrorists, or members of rogue states, who would pay a great deal of money for nuclear submarine location codes. And they would only pay such sums if they were prepared to use the information . . .

– Leave! Please leave!

Jacob Cole stood by his desk for a full minute. Without any warning, he walked round to the other side and sat down on the leather chair.

Ricky shrank away from Cole’s legs, which were now underneath the table, just centimetres from him. He heard the sound of a key in the lock. The sliding of a drawer. The fluttering of papers.

Thirty seconds passed. The drawer slid shut again. The lock clicked.

– Did he put the papers back in the drawer?

– What does it matter? We didn’t hear him searching for his key. That means he must have had it on him. We’re never going to break into that drawer.

As this conversation took place in Ricky’s head, Cole stood up, walked round to the other side of the desk and headed towards the door.

– He’s leaving.

Ricky allowed himself another lungful of air as relief flooded over him.

It didn’t last.

Halfway to the door, Cole suddenly stopped.

He turned.

Ricky could see Cole from the waist down now. But could Cole see
him
?

Ten seconds passed. They felt like ten hours.

‘It’s nothing,’ Cole muttered under his breath. He turned again and walked to the door. As he opened it, he switched off the light. Then he left the room and allowed the door to clunk heavily behind him.

Ricky’s blood ran hot and cold. He realized how close he’d just come to being caught. But he also realized, as he remained crouched in the darkness beneath Jacob Cole’s desk, that he had a lead.

– What do we do? Call Felix and tell him?

– No way. I’m done with Felix. He wanted to send Izzy back to her father, remember? If we’re going to get some dirt on Jacob Cole, we have to do it by ourselves. Otherwise Felix will just want to send her back home again.

First things first. He had to get out of here. He waited, huddled in the darkness, for another ten minutes. Only when everything in the house was silent again did he venture out from under the desk. The phone was still lying there. Perhaps he should steal it? No. If he did, Cole would realize there had been an intruder. Ricky wasn’t quite sure what his next move was going to be, but he knew this: if Cole suspected he had been overheard, it would make everything more difficult. He tried the top drawer for a second time, just on the off-chance. No luck. It was locked again.

So he tiptoed towards the door and listened carefully for a moment before opening it. The landing was dark and empty. He edged towards the staircase, resisting the urge to run and get out of the house as quickly as possible. He padded down the stairs, wincing every time the floorboards creaked. In the hallway, he briefly thought about taking one of the smaller presents from under the tree to give to Izzy. She wasn’t having much of a Christmas, after all. But no. He’d already taken too much of a risk in stealing the jewellery from Izzy’s mum. In fact, he was beginning to wish he hadn’t done that. It was too late to return it, though. His top priority had to be getting out of here.

The kitchen seemed colder than when he’d entered the house. Or perhaps that was just him. He headed to the back door and stepped outside, then closed and locked the door behind him before retracing his footsteps back across the garden. He took very good care not to deviate from Izzy’s footsteps, and two minutes later he had re-joined her.

She was freezing cold. Shivering. Blue lips. A thin layer of snow over her head and clothes. But she managed to ask him: ‘Did you find anything?’

‘Maybe. You going to be OK?’

She nodded weakly, but it was clear to Ricky that she needed to get warm, and fast. He helped her clamber back over the wall. Then he climbed over himself. Back in the snow-filled alleyway, Ricky grabbed Izzy’s hand. He forced her to run, more to warm her up than anything. They weaved their way onto Park Lane, then up towards Marble Arch. In the shadow of that stone arch, Izzy tugged on his arm to stop him. He looked at her to see that she was crying.

‘I can’t go back to Hunter’s, can I?’

Ricky shook his head grimly. ‘I get the impression he doesn’t take too kindly to people disobeying him. But it was only a matter of time before he sent you out onto the street with all the others. You don’t want to end up like that.’

‘Where am I going to go?’ she whispered. ‘I haven’t got any money – Hunter took it all . . .’

Ricky frowned. She was right. Hunter’s had been a bad place, but it had been a roof over Izzy’s head, and protection from the warmth. For a moment he considered taking her back to the apartment where he’d been living for the past few months. Making his peace with Felix. But no. Felix would have no qualms about sending Izzy back to her dad, and Ricky had promised her that wouldn’t happen.

But where could she go? Where could she stay? There were homeless shelters across London, of course, but if she turned up at one of those, they would ask questions, speak to the authorities. And there were other pockets of Thrownaways across the capital, but he couldn’t let her fall in with them. Sooner or later, she’d find her way back to Hunter, or someone like him.

‘I’m not going back home,’ she whispered, as if that was going to be Ricky’s next suggestion.

‘I know,’ Ricky said quietly. ‘I understand.’ But in the quiet of his mind, he wondered if Izzy would change her mind if her dad was out of the way . . .

The problem, as always, was money. Ricky would gladly give her what he could spare. But that wouldn’t be enough to get accommodation for long, even if Izzy could find somewhere a minor could live unreported. But they needed to get warm, and Ricky needed time to think. He took her hand again. ‘Come with me,’ he said.

At the bottom of the Edgware Road they hailed a night bus. It was busy – they only just managed to find themselves seats at the very back. But it was at least warm. After five minutes, Izzy stopped shivering. She wiped away the condensation on the inside of the window and looked out at the dark London street.