Under Cover (Agent 21) (9 page)

Soon, Ricky found that he was starting to enjoy himself as Felix made things more difficult – changing direction halfway down a street, or jumping on a bus and forcing Ricky to follow as covertly as possible. It was a challenge that he was up to, he decided as he followed those scruffy Nike Airs along Piccadilly and into Green Park. He’d been good at following people even before he’d met Felix. Now he was—

‘
Ouch!
’

Both Ricky and Felix said it at the same time, and with good reason. Ricky had walked straight into his mentor’s back, and the collision had hurt.

Felix turned. ‘It was only a matter of time before you did that,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You were daydreaming, Coco. But even worse, you weren’t paying attention to how fast or slow I was walking. Sometimes you were ten metres behind me, sometimes more, sometimes less. That’s OK if it’s what you mean to do, but if you don’t . . .’ He slammed his two palms together, and Ricky blinked as he did it. ‘Bang! And if you’re following a professional . . .’

‘A professional what?’

‘. . . they’ll be adjusting their pace. Short strides, long strides – they’ll mix it up as a way of finding out if anyone’s tailing them. You need to follow their stride. That way,
you
control the distance between you both, not them.’ Felix pointed towards a nearby park bench. ‘Let’s sit down,’ he said. ‘My leg’s killing me.’

‘So what you’re saying,’ Ricky said as they sat down, ‘is that I didn’t do very well.’

‘Actually,’ Felix replied, ‘you did brilliantly. Pear drop?’

‘No thanks.’

‘You’re not one for sweets, are you?’

‘Not pear drops, anyway.’

‘What’s your favourite?’

‘I dunno. Smarties?’

Felix made a face, as though Smarties were the most disgusting thing that had ever been invented, then popped a pear drop into his mouth. ‘Anyway, like I was saying, you did very well. But we need to take you to the next level. Following someone from behind is all very well, but if you’re conducting surveillance on a target who thinks someone might be watching, they’ll notice you sooner or later.’

Ricky gave Felix a confused look. ‘Well, if I can’t follow someone from behind . . .’ His voice trailed off.

‘If you can’t follow someone from behind, Coco, then you have to follow them from in front.’

‘But that doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Sure it does. If you think you’re being followed, you’re going to look over your shoulder, not up ahead.’

‘But you’ve
got
to be behind someone to follow them. That’s what following
means
.’

Felix smiled. ‘Not in our world,’ he said. He winced as he got to his feet and put pressure on his bad leg. ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’

It was hard. Much harder than following from behind. Felix explained how to use the reflections in shop windows, or the wing mirrors of cars driving along the street, to keep an eye on his mark. But the shop windows were already filled with glittering Christmas displays, which made it difficult to focus on the reflections, and the vehicles moved in stops and starts, their mirrors obscured by the swarming crowds.

Ricky kept complaining that this was an impossible task. Felix listened with a mild smile. Then he made him continue practising. He taught him how to cross the road and walk just in front of the target, casting only the occasional sidelong glance to make sure they were still in his sights. By the end of that first day Ricky was nowhere near competent. But Felix made him practise, every day for the following week, and the week after that.

As the days passed, the weather grew colder. The rain turned to snow, and the snow to slush, which became covered in snow again. Ricky got used to his shoes and the bottoms of his trousers being perpetually wet as he tramped through the dirty, sludgy streets. But somehow he didn’t mind, because gradually he could feel his skills improving. He found that he could walk twenty metres ahead of Felix and be quite confident that he knew where his mentor was. It was like a sixth sense, and it grew stronger with each hour that passed.

‘When you’re following someone, you also need to make sure you pay attention to what
you’re
wearing,’ Felix explained on Christmas Eve morning as they were walking from the apartment to continue their practice. A thin drizzle of snow had just started to fall. ‘Make sure it’s appropriate to where you are. If you’re in a rough, poor area, wearing all the latest designer gear will make you stick out like a sore thumb. Likewise if you look like an urchin in Mayfair. And one of these is a good idea.’

From the pocket of his coat he pulled out a baseball cap.

‘If you think your target has spotted you, put on a baseball cap. It changes your features immediately. You can wear it forwards, backwards and even’ – he punched the cap so that the red inside became the outside – ‘inside out. This one’s invertible. Very useful.’ He propped the baseball cap on Ricky’s head as they turned a corner into Regent Street. ‘Keeps your head warm too,’ he murmured.

The smell of roasting chestnuts wafted under Ricky’s nose. He felt a pang. It was such a Christmassy smell. And with the snow, and the Regent Street lights, and the shoppers with their bags full of Christmas gifts, it was such a Christmassy sight.

– Everyone’s looking forward to being with their family. Except us.

– Get used to it. We don’t have any family any more.

It was true. The closest thing Ricky had to it right now was a strange one-legged ex-army intelligence officer whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to turn him into the best-trained pickpocket in London. In a strange way, though, he was grateful for that. It kept his mind off everything he was missing.

He turned to Felix and smiled. ‘What now?’ he asked.

Felix clapped his hands briskly together. ‘I’m going for a wander,’ he announced. ‘I’ll meet you back here in three hours. I want you tell me where I’ve been and what I’ve done. If I’ve eaten a sandwich for lunch, I want you to tell me what the filling was. And if I
see
you . . .’

‘I know, I know,’ said Ricky, and before Felix could do it himself, he made the slicing gesture across his throat.

‘Turkey and stuffing from Pret a Manger. Chocolate brownie. Black coffee, three sugars. You should cut down on the sugar, Felix. You’ll have no teeth left.’

‘Thanks for the advice, pipsqueak. And good work with the surveillance. I didn’t see you once. Come on, it’s five o’clock and I’m freezing. Let’s get you home.’

The underground was very crowded, so although it was suddenly bitterly cold outside, Ricky felt sweaty and dirty by the time they were standing outside his apartment block. ‘Have tomorrow off,’ Felix said.

Another time, Ricky might have replied with a sarcastic comment. Tonight he looked up to the top of the apartment block, which was almost hidden in the swirling snow. ‘I could make you a cup of tea or something,’ he said quietly.

Felix shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Coco,’ he said. ‘I’ve got family waiting for me.’

Ricky felt himself blush. He frowned and looked at his shoes. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Of course. Sorry.’ Somehow he’d never thought of Felix as having a family.

‘Here,’ Felix said. He pulled a small paper bag from his pocket and handed it to Ricky. It was still warm. Ricky looked inside. It was a bag of the roasted chestnuts that had smelled so good. ‘Happy Christmas.’

‘Yeah,’ Ricky said quietly. ‘You too.’

‘Rest up,’ Felix said. ‘You’ve still got a long way to go. We start again on Boxing Day.’

There was no ‘Well done’. No ‘Happy Christmas, Coco’. Without another word, Felix turned and walked away.

‘I might go out,’ Ricky shouted. ‘Celebrate by myself.’ He knew he was being petulant, but somehow he couldn’t help it.

Felix stopped and turned. ‘Stay home, Coco,’ he said. ‘That’s an order.’ Then he turned and limped off into the snow.

Ricky burned with anger. He dug his hands into his pockets and tramped into the foyer of the apartment block.

Was anybody about to have a worse Christmas than him? he wondered.

When she was younger, Izzy Cole had loved these days before Christmas.

She especially liked the evenings, when it was dark outside, maybe even snowing. There was always an enormous Christmas tree in the large entrance hall of the White House. She would sit for hours and stare at its twinkling lights. There would be Christmas carols playing in the background, and amazing smells wafting from the kitchen where their housekeeper was baking goodies for her.

This year, the Christmas tree was just as large and beautifully decorated as before. The Christmas songs drifted in the air. But there was nothing cosy or festive about the house that evening, because all Izzy could hear was the screaming.

It had started that afternoon. As Izzy walked past her father’s office, she’d heard him shouting down the phone. ‘
You won’t get a single thing, Dmitri, until I get my money!
’

The sickening thought immediately struck Izzy that he was talking about something crooked or dodgy. There had been something in his voice that had chilled her. A horrible mixture of greed and anger. And fear, maybe. Yes, there was definitely fear somewhere in the mix.

Now, as she listened to her parents arguing, the greed and fear had left his voice, but the anger hadn’t.

She didn’t know what they were arguing about. But it sounded bad, because even her mum, who was normally too scared of her dad to disagree with him, was shouting. Izzy sat beneath the Christmas tree, her knees up against her chest, her hands clasped over her ears, trying to block out the sound. But she couldn’t. Her parents’ screams rose above the strains of ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’.

Suddenly she stood up. She couldn’t take it any more. She stormed across the entrance hall and burst into the drawing room, where her mum and dad were yelling at each other. Her dad was standing just inside the door with that look on his face that normally warned Izzy to keep her distance from him. Her mum was on the other side of the room opposite the fire. Her face was wet with tears, and make-up streamed down her cheeks.

‘Shut up!’ Izzy shouted. ‘Just
shut up
!
Shut u—
’

She was silenced by her father’s fist. He swiped her across her face with the back of his big hand, harder than he’d ever hit her before. Izzy collapsed, too shocked and stunned to cry. She touched her nose and saw that her fingertips were smeared with blood.

Her father stood over her, a hot anger in his eyes, the hand with which he’d hit her still raised. For an awful moment she thought he was going to strike her again, but then he lowered his hand, turned his back on Izzy and her mother and stormed out of the room.

There was a horrible silence. The carriage clock on the mantelpiece chimed 10 p.m. as Izzy wiped the stream of blood from her nose, then looked over at her mum. Her mum’s eyes were raw from crying, and there seemed to be the beginnings of a bruise on her face. Izzy staggered to her feet and was just about to run across the room to hug her mother, when she saw something in her face that stopped her. It was a little curl of the lip. A sneer. Izzy’s mum was looking at her daughter with contempt.

‘You
stupid
girl,’ she hissed. ‘You
stupid
,
stupid
girl. Why did you make him do that?’

Izzy stood very still and stared at her mother.

‘It’s your fault,’ her mum continued. ‘All this is
your
fault. We were
fine
before you came along.’

‘He hit me, Mum,’ Izzy whispered.

‘Well, you probably deserved it,’ her mother snapped as she hurried away from the fireplace towards the door. As she passed Izzy, she gave her another horrible look. ‘You should just keep your mouth shut, you stupid little girl,’ she said, before disappearing from the room.

Izzy stood alone, blood still pouring from her nose. Her face hurt, but her body and her mind were numb. She stared into the middle distance, unable to believe what had just happened. The music changed. ‘Silent Night’.

She made her decision there and then.

Izzy turned and, with her sleeve up against her nose to stem the flow of blood, left the room. There was no sign of her parents in the hallway. Good. She walked past the twinkling Christmas tree and up the stairs. In a little corner of her mind she half expected her mum to be in her bedroom, waiting to apologize. But she wasn’t, and that just made Izzy even more determined to go ahead with her plan.

There was a black rucksack under her bed which she normally used for school trips. She pulled it out and filled it with handfuls of clean underwear, a deodorant and a toothbrush and toothpaste. She looked out of the window. The snow was falling heavier than before, settling thickly on the stone statues dotted around their large gardens. She would need warm clothes. She found her thickest jumper, a pair of gloves and a woollen hat, before putting on an extra pair of socks and her leather walking boots.

She had just under forty pounds, which she stuffed into her pocket, before looking around her room one last time. It was a warm, comfortable room. A haven from the horrible things that happened elsewhere in the house. But she really couldn’t stay here any more.

She looked in the mirror. The bleeding had stopped, but her lips and skin were stained with blood and her face was throbbing. She cleaned herself up with a moisturizing wipe, swallowed a couple of painkillers, then shouldered her rucksack and stepped up to the door.

She put her ear to the door and listened carefully. There was no noise, so she slowly opened the door and looked out. The landing was clear, and so were the stairs. She crept out and tiptoed down to the hallway.

She couldn’t leave by the main entrance. There was a video camera there that recorded everything. Instead, she crept past the Christmas tree, deeply breathing in its festive scent, and slowly opened the door which led to the kitchen. There was a tray of cakes on the side, and something simmering on the stove. But their cook wasn’t there, so Izzy swiftly slipped in.