Under Cover (Agent 21) (20 page)

And thirty seconds after that, the door opened.

Jacob Cole wore a frown on his thin face. As he stepped inside the café, clutching a leather briefcase in his right hand, he stopped for a moment and glanced around the room. Ricky could tell he hardly registered the boy sitting just two metres away. Cole’s eyes lingered for a moment on the workmen sitting by the hatch, and he clearly couldn’t help the whisper of a sneer crossing his lips at the sight of their dirty clothes. He crossed the floor of the café and sat at the far end, putting the briefcase in the chair next to him as he picked up the menu. Ricky could tell, though, that he wasn’t really reading it – he was just looking over the top of the grease-spattered card, checking out the room.

Ricky picked up his phone and pretended to browse the internet. In reality, he had opened the camera app and set it to video mode. If he held it at an angle just shy of forty-five degrees from the hatch, he had Cole in plain view.

A song Ricky recognized drifted out from behind the hatch as his breakfast arrived. The workmen, who had finished their breakfast, stood up and left. Now it was just Ricky, Cole and the guy behind the counter, who was bringing him his full English.

‘Sink your teeth into that, sunshine,’ he said. Once Ricky’s plate and cup of tea were in front of him, he propped the phone against his hot mug, making sure it was at the correct angle to record Cole and anyone who sat with him. He switched off the camera so that nobody entering the café could tell what he was doing. Then he started on his breakfast.

He was slowly chewing his way through a piece of fried bread – and Cole had ordered himself a coffee in an extremely curt voice – when the door opened again. Two men entered. They were both very broad-shouldered – Ricky’s immediate thought was that he wouldn’t want to get into a fight with either of them. One of them had jet-black hair, rather scruffy. The other was blond, but his hair was cropped very short. Like Cole, he carried a briefcase, but this one looked a good deal sturdier: it was metallic and seemed rather heavy.

Neither man smiled as they too cast around the room. And just like Cole, they barely seemed to notice Ricky sitting there, concentrating hard on his rasher of bacon.

The two Russians – Ricky knew this must be them – seemed to fill the whole café as they walked towards the table where Jacob Cole was sitting. Izzy’s dad, with his thin, mean face, looked tiny compared to them. He spread out his hands to indicate that they should take a seat opposite him. As they sat down, Ricky switched his camera on again and pressed record. He continued with his breakfast, watching the proceedings covertly on the small screen, his ears straining to pick up every word of their hushed conversation.

The blond man spoke first. He had a Russian accent. ‘Your suitcase contains the—’

‘Yes, Dmitri,’ Cole cut in. ‘It contains the timetable.’

The Russians chuckled at Cole’s coded language. They appeared a lot less tense than him. The black-haired man looked over his shoulder and shouted ‘Coffee!’ at nobody in particular, and Ricky saw the shadow of a scowl cross the face of the jolly man in the apron. Back at the other side of the café, Cole had placed the briefcase on the table between him and Dmitri.

‘Open it,’ Dmitri said.

‘When I have my money.’

Dmitri smiled. From the inside lapel of his jacket he pulled out a memory stick. ‘The funds have been transferred to an untraceable Swiss bank account. You will find the account details, including all the security information you will need, on here.’

Cole eyed the memory stick suspiciously, and took it with obvious reluctance. Ricky had the impression he was expecting cash.

‘Now open the briefcase,’ Dmitri told him.

Cole gave him a dead-eyed look, then set the numerical code on his briefcase and flicked it open. The file he handed over to the Russian was very slim, but Dmitri handled it as if it was the most precious thing in the world.

‘Paper?’ Dmitri said. ‘How quaint.’

‘Paper is safer than electronic files these days,’ Cole told him, looking meaningfully at the data stick he had just received. As he closed his briefcase and put it on the floor, Dmitri placed his metallic one on the table, opened it up and deposited the folder inside.

‘You’ll find that the folder contains a little something else that your people might find useful. Think of it as a free sample. There’s plenty more where it came from, but we will, of course, need to discuss a fair price.’

‘You’re a greedy man,’ Dmitri announced. He didn’t sound as though he meant it as an insult.

‘I just want an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work.’ Cole’s eyes narrowed. ‘Tell your people that this new information will be very expensive. But worth it.’

The man arrived with their coffee. He blocked the camera’s view of Cole and the Russians, but that didn’t matter. Ricky reckoned he had enough. He switched his phone off. The man returned to the serving hatch and Ricky placed some money on his table to pay for his half-eaten breakfast. He wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.

But something stopped him.

The briefcase was there, sitting on the table. Nobody was holding it. If he was quick, Ricky believed he could snatch it.

– You’re crazy.

– Maybe I’m not. That briefcase is the smoking gun. If I have the camera footage and the briefcase, Cole is going to prison for a long time . . .

He couldn’t think too long or too hard about it. If he was going to grab the briefcase, he needed to do it now.

It was almost on instinct that he adjusted his Nike baseball cap so that the peak faced forward and not back. It would shadow his face a little better, he figured. Disguise him.

Big mistake.

Ricky scraped his chair back and stood up, pocketing his phone as he did so. Distance to the briefcase: four metres.

He had covered three metres of it when Cole looked up at him.

Ricky knew, in an instant, that something was wrong. Cole wasn’t staring at his face, but at his baseball cap. Ricky saw him silently mouth the letters ‘N’ and ‘I’.

‘
Grab that boy!
’ he hissed.

For a big man, Dmitri moved very fast. Before Ricky could even take a step back, the Russian had reached out and seized his wrist. Ricky gasped with pain as Cole stood up and whipped the baseball cap from his head.

Cole stared at the lettering on Ricky’s baseball cap, then back at Ricky.

‘What’s the problem?’ Dmitri asked.

‘This boy broke into my house last night. It’s hardly a coincidence that he’s here now.’

Ricky knew that he would remember the seconds that followed for the rest of his life – however long that might be. The jolly guy from behind the counter strode towards them, his face outraged. ‘What’s going on?’ he said. ‘What are you doing with that young man? Leave him alone!’

‘Stay out of it,’ growled Dmitri.

‘No I won’t. This is my gaff and he’s just a kid. Get your bleedin’ hands off—’

He never finished his sentence. The dark-haired Russian had turned towards him and Ricky saw that he had a gun in his hand. Without a moment’s hesitation, the Russian raised it in the man’s direction.

‘
No!
’ Ricky shouted.

But too late.

The Russian fired.

The shot was very quiet, but its result was deadly. The bullet slammed into the man’s forehead and a chunk of his skull the size of Ricky’s fist blasted away. A grotesque spatter of blood sprayed over several of the tables as the man slumped to the floor.

There was a sudden, horrible silence. Ricky felt his muscles freeze.

‘Gregoriev, you
idiot
!’ Cole breathed. ‘You . . . you
IDIOT
.’

But Gregoriev wasn’t looking at Cole. He had turned his gun on Ricky. The barrel was just half a metre from his face and Ricky could see right down it. He could feel the slight warmth of the metal . . .

Suddenly Cole slammed the Russian’s gun arm away. ‘For God’s sake,’ he hissed. Then he turned his fearsome glare on Ricky. Dmitri gripped his wrist even harder and Ricky knew he had only seconds to act, otherwise there was a very good chance he’d be joining the dead man on the floor.

– Remember what Felix told you: ‘If you find yourself in a fight with someone, forget all the fancy stuff. Put your hands on something very heavy and hit them over the head with it.’

Ricky couldn’t work out if what he did next was stupid or brave. A bit of both, probably. He stretched his free arm out behind him and grabbed a greasy glass vase from the nearest table. With a great, forceful swing of his arm, he smashed it hard against Dmitri’s head.

The vase shattered. Dmitri roared in pain and anger as a huge welt of blood and lacerated skin appeared on his forehead. He let go of Ricky’s wrist and clutched his wound. Ricky still had the base of the vase in his hand and its edges were jagged and sharp. He knew he only had one chance to get out of here, so as the second Russian was swinging his gun arm in his direction he hurled the glass at the gunman, who raised both hands to protect himself from the missile.

– Get out of here! GET OUT OF HERE!

Cole was pale-faced and frightened. His eyes bulged and Ricky could see that he was about to grab the briefcase from the table. Half of him knew it was foolish to delay, but he grabbed the case before Cole could get it.

Then he turned and got ready to run.

He might have made it if the dirty white tiles on the floor of the café hadn’t been covered in blood. The dead waiter had bled atrociously. He was surrounded by a pool of red, sticky fluid. As Ricky’s right foot slapped against the wet floor, he slipped. He tried to balance himself, but it was no good. Still clutching the briefcase, he tumbled to the floor, his legs sprawled over the dead man’s hard body. He felt his phone crack in his pocket, but was too scared to consider whether he’d lost the video footage. Right now it only meant one thing: he couldn’t call anyone for help.

Sickened with fear, he scrambled to get to his feet again. But it was no good. Already the two burly Russians were standing over him. They didn’t care that their boots were spattered with the dead man’s blood. Dmitri’s face was covered with blood of his own, dripping down the side of his snarling face like a dreadful horror mask where the vase had hit him. And his colleague was there too, his eyes flashing. Both men had guns now, and they were both pointing them directly at Ricky.

There was no escaping. Ricky closed his eyes and waited for the gunshot he knew would end his life.

There was certainly a loud noise. But it wasn’t a gunshot, and Ricky wasn’t dead. Not yet, at least.

It seemed to happen in slow motion. Ricky heard an ear-splitting crack, then opened his eyes just in time to see the entire glass frontage of the café shatter. With a deafening crash, a million glass shards fell to the floor like icy rain.

In the split second after the explosion, Ricky saw a figure standing outside the café. It was a boy about Ricky’s age. He looked weirdly like Ricky himself, with a baseball cap, jeans, a black puffa jacket, a red scarf and black Converse trainers. And in that instant, Ricky knew he had seen him before. Twice. Once in the café in Frith Street. Then later the same evening, fixing his bike outside McDonald’s in Shaftesbury Avenue. The boy had a fierce, urgent look in his eyes, and he shouted a single word: ‘
RUN!
’

Ricky didn’t need telling twice. The explosion had forced the two Russians to take a couple of steps backwards. They had raised their arms to cover their faces, so their weapons were no longer pointing at Ricky. He scrambled to his feet, holding the briefcase tightly, and sprinted for the exit. His feet crunched over the broken glass as he ran towards the strange boy, who was pointing to the far end of the street. ‘That way!’ he urged. ‘
Go!
’

Ricky had sometimes had a dream where, no matter how fast he ran, he couldn’t get to the place he was heading for. He felt like that now. It was only fifty metres to the end of the street, but as the two boys sprinted side by side as hard as they could, it felt to Ricky like they’d never get there.

‘We’re too close together,’ the boy shouted. ‘We’re an easy target. Split up.’

The advice sounded so much like Felix that Ricky had to glance at the boy to check his eyes hadn’t been playing games. ‘
Who are you?
’ Ricky yelled.

But the boy didn’t have time to answer. There was the sound of a single gunshot and a bullet flew so close over Ricky’s head that he could feel the rush of air as it passed. They were ten metres from the end of the street. ‘Turn right!’ the boy shouted.

They veered right. Sweat was pouring from Ricky’s skin. Breathless, they turned the corner. The boy grabbed him by the arm. ‘Give me the briefcase,’ he said.

‘No way,’ Ricky snapped. He didn’t know who this kid was, and he certainly wasn’t going to surrender his hard-won evidence to him.

The boy didn’t argue. Instead, he slapped Ricky on the shoulder. It was a weirdly friendly gesture, given what was happening, but it was hardly the strangest thing that had happened to Ricky that day, so he ignored it. ‘Then keep running,’ the boy said. ‘I’ll delay them as long as I can.’

‘Who
are
you?’ Ricky demanded again, more harshly this time.

The boy had already turned away. ‘I’m Zak,’ he said. ‘Now
go
!’

There was no time to argue. Whoever this boy was, he clearly knew what he was doing. And Ricky had no desire at all to come face to face with those Russians again. His skin still felt clammy from the shock of seeing them kill the man in the café. He looked down and saw the man’s blood on his trousers. It made him shudder, but he knew he had no time for squeamishness.

He checked his grip on the suitcase and inhaled deeply.

Then he ran.

Jacob Cole was trembling with rage and fear.

He had never seen someone killed before. It wasn’t like in the movies. He would never forget the sight of that man with half his head blown away. It was this, even more than the fear of the police arriving, that made him sprint after the Russians as they chased the two kids.