Power

by Joe Craig

  Suddenly Eva understood. Miss Bennett and Ian Coates both knew the truth. But what good did it do to spill it all out? There was nothing Ian Coates could do to protect himself from Miss Bennett—he couldn’t arrest her; he couldn’t condemn her. And she had nothing to gain now from harming him.

  “The public will like that,” Coates agreed. “So what about William Lee?” he added cautiously. “Should I deal with him?”

  “No,” Miss Bennett replied immediately. “He’s been disgraced in public. There’s nothing he can do to hurt us now. Nowhere he can go. He certainly can’t help Viggo. And he has certain…skills. We’d be fools to waste a good man. He’ll serve me.”

  “He’ll serve us,” said Coates tentatively.

  Miss Bennett shook her head slowly and very slowly whispered, “Me.”

  Ian Coates dropped his gaze to his lap. Eva could almost feel his spirit collapsing. “What about…” the man mumbled, waving a limp hand towards Eva. “Mitchell too. Do we…?”

  Eva’s blood froze in an instant. Miss Bennett beamed at her. It was the most frightening smile Eva had ever seen.

  “Eva!” Miss Bennett exclaimed, letting out a laugh like dark honey. “Eva and Mitchell have proved their loyalty to the Government this evening, haven’t they?”

  Eva nodded, unable to look anywhere but straight into Miss Bennett’s huge brown eyes.

  “So now,” Miss Bennett went on, her smile melting into a complete blank, “they must prove their loyalty to me.”

  Eva froze. It took a huge effort to draw breath into her lungs. Her terror was crippling. “Yes…” she said, her voice sticking in her throat, “…Prime Minister.”

  “Oh!” Miss Bennett brought her hand to her mouth in shock and laughed again. “Don’t go calling me that, Eva,” she said. “No —this gentleman here made it quite clear on television this evening who was Prime Minister. Weren’t you watching?”

  Eva looked from Miss Bennett to Ian Coates to clear up her confusion, but Coates was just sitting on the edge of his bed, his head in his hands.

  “I’ll never be Prime Minister now,” Miss Bennett explained. “But in the last half an hour I realised that I don’t need to be. Because the Prime Minister…” She held out a hand in the direction of Jimmy’s father. “…He’s done enough to show me that it’s far better to run the country without anybody knowing who you are. It’s much easier to keep secrets that way.” She lowered her voice to a whisper and paused between every word. “Secrets. Are. Power.”

  Suddenly, Ian Coates let out a desperate groan. Eva watched him rock backwards and forwards, holding his head. “Do you need a doctor?” she asked.

  Coates replied by throwing his head back and wailing. Eva could see that his face was wet with tears. “What have I done?” he cried.

  “Oh, be quiet,” Miss Bennett snapped. “You’ve done nothing. I organised a fire drill in good time to make sure that tower block was evacuated. I wasn’t going to let you—”

  “But I—”

  “You did what you had to do.” Miss Bennett’s tone was disapproving, almost disgusted. “Powerful men must make difficult decisions.”

  “Am I a powerful man?” Coates whimpered. “Or am I…?”

  “You’re not powerful any more,” Miss Bennett answered. “So it doesn’t matter whether you’re evil or not.”

  “It matters to me!” Coates yelled at the top of his voice. He heaved himself to his feet and staggered across the room towards Miss Bennett and Eva. “The tower block!” he howled. “What could have…?”

  “That was William Lee’s plan!” Miss Bennett shouted. “You only put it into action because the poison was already in your brain.”

  “You think I was mad?” Coates cried, saliva hanging from the corner of his mouth. “You’re blaming the poison?”

  Miss Bennett didn’t reply. It was as if she could hardly bear to look at him.

  “What about my son!” said Coates, still staggering across the room, tiny step by tiny step. “Was I mad just now when I sent Mitchell to kill him?”

  Miss Bennett looked disgusted. “Get back into bed,” she ordered. “You did what you had to…”

  BOOM!

  The end of Miss Bennett’s sentence was cut off by a fireball in the corridor. The internal wall was blasted to shreds like tissue paper in a volcano. The rest of the windows shattered. Eva and Miss Bennett were both thrown to the floor. Ian Coates was hurled back on to his bed. Eva couldn’t see anything but black smoke. It stung her eyes and seemed to wrap itself around her. She coughed and spluttered—and heard Miss Bennett and Ian Coates doing the same. At least that told her they were all still alive and conscious.

  In fact, the explosion had seemed more powerful than it actually was. It had been designed to maximise surprise, to create a huge amount of smoke and to leave the Prime Minister completely exposed to anybody attacking from inside the building.

  At last a clearing opened up in the billows of blackness. Eva waved the smoke away with one hand, covering her mouth and nose with the other. Before she could see what was happening, there was a flash and the crack of a gun. Then came another shot. That’s when Eva caught a glimpse of Ian Coates, curled up under his bed. Miss Bennett was standing next to the bed, shouting into a mobile phone held in the crook of her neck. Eva couldn’t hear what she was saying because her ears were ringing from the explosion and the gunshots.

  Miss Bennett was holding her gun out in front of her, cradled in both hands. She trained it from side to side and fired into the darkness again, towards the lift shaft. Eva couldn’t help flinching at the sounds of the shots. Who was out there?

  When the attacker finally appeared, it took Eva several seconds to believe what she was seeing. It looked as if the smoke itself was attacking. A streak of black flew towards Miss Bennett at chest level. It knocked the gun from her hands and sent her mobile phone clattering across the floor. The strike looked effortless—like a tornado snatching a balloon from a baby.

  Miss Bennett just managed to stay on her feet, but now she was confronted by a short, slim figure dressed head to toe in black. Only the gleam of the eyes revealed that this was a human being. Although, if Eva had been able to see through the mask, she would have known that this being was only 38 per cent human. From NJ7 files, she would have recognised the face of the French Secret Service’s most powerful and sophisticated weapon—Zafi Sauvage.

  24 THE LAIR OF THE RIVER SPIDER

  Miss Bennett dropped her bodyweight to the left and raised her hands to shield her head. Somehow, she managed to retain the elegance Eva was used to seeing in her, but combined it with a new speed—and self-defence techniques from four continents. Nevertheless, she was no match for Zafi.

  Zafi spun on the ball of her left foot, slamming her right knee into Miss Bennett’s side. There was nothing elegant about Miss Bennett’s fall. She sprawled across the lino and ended up barely a metre from Eva, wheezing for air and scrabbling for her phone.

  “No!” Ian Coates cried out from his shelter under the bed. Eva read it on the man’s lips—she was still slightly deafened. Then she just made out the crackle of Miss Bennett’s mobile phone. It was lying on the floor between them. At first, Eva couldn’t hear what was being said, but gradually her ears cleared. A single question was being repeated over and over: “One rope or two?”

  What did it mean? Eva watched in horror as Zafi flicked the bed away with one hand. It flipped over and almost flew through the empty window frame. Ian Coates was left cowering on the floor.

  “Save me!” he yelled, his eyes imploring Miss Bennett to act.

  “One rope or two?” came the question again, crackling out of the mobile phone on the floor. Miss Bennett grabbed Eva’s ankle. What was happening? Then everything became clear when a helicopter arrived, hovering a short distance from the building, outside the window. The smoke was blown away in huge plumes.

  Over the drone of the rotors, Eva heard the high pitched squeal of something streaking through t
he air. Then a rope flew in through the window, shot from the chopper. It landed right next to Miss Bennett, who snatched it up and wrapped it round her forearm. Almost instantly, the rope retracted. Together, Miss Bennett and Eva were dragged across the floor.

  Eva saw Zafi raise her arm above her head, ready to strike. Eva slid across the lino, pulled by Miss Bennett’s lock-like grip. She glanced up into Miss Bennett’s face. Her lips were parted to speak, but there was a moment of hesitation. The woman’s eyes were fixed on Ian Coates.

  Finally, Miss Bennett and Eva scrambled to their feet. They had to dive out of the window to avoid slamming into the wall. As Eva was hauled out into the night sky, she heard Miss Bennett let out a mighty cry: “TWO!”

  Almost instantaneously, a second rope shot out of the helicopter. Eva felt herself twisting upside-down in midair. Miss Bennett had her by the ankle, and it gave her the perfect view of the room she’d just left. She squinted in the wind to see the weight on the end of the rope slam into Ian Coates’ back. The assassin’s hand swept downwards. Eva couldn’t stop herself screaming—partly from the rush of being extracted from the top floor of a building by a rapid flight, partly from the pain of Miss Bennett’s nails in her ankle, but mostly from the utter conviction that the Prime Minister’s head was about to be cracked open like a coconut.

  But Zafi’s hand swished through empty air. At the last split-second, Ian Coates’ rope retracted—with him desperately clinging to the end. Eva crash landed in the cabin of the helicopter. At once, she twisted on to her front and peered back into the hospital. Ian Coates was flying to join them. How had Zafi missed her chance? She’d had long enough to complete the job, thought Eva.

  As Ian Coates scrambled on board and lay panting alongside her, Eva’s fear was ebbing away, replaced by a thousand questions. Only one stood out—was it possible that the French assassin suffered from glimmers of the same moral doubts that lived in Jimmy?

  There was no time to think about it now. The helicopter banked sharply to the side and soared high into the clouds, heading for the safety of Daws Hill Royal Air Force Station. Eva propped herself up against the wall of the helicopter, while Miss Bennett heaved Ian Coates towards her.

  “Congratulations!” she shouted, her hair flying wildly about her face in the wind. “You’re still alive and you’re still Prime Minister.” Her smile vanished and she yanked Coates closer until their noses were almost touching. “Your life is mine,” she sneered.

  Westminster Bridge was still crowded. As Jimmy hurtled under it, people leaned over the rail to see what was happening. Jimmy was vaguely aware of the line of faces, lit by the ghostly yellow lamplight reflected off the water. There was an “ooh” from the crowd. In less than a second, he left them behind. He tore under the bridge and out the other side in a rainbow cascade of water. He swerved to avoid a huge recycling trawler and twisted in and out between three smaller vessels.

  To his right, the pods of the London Eye twinkled. But Jimmy was moving too fast to enjoy the sights. His body was acting in perfect synchrony with the boat, the slightest twitch in his forearms adjusting the weight distribution. Then, over the roar of the boat’s motor, Jimmy’s ears picked up a second ‘ooh’. He didn’t need to look round. He knew straight away that another boat was close behind him, and he knew exactly who must be driving it.

  In fact, it wasn’t just one boat. Behind him, Mitchell stood astride two speedboats, powering them forwards side by side, one foot inside each. Just as he came out from under Westminster Bridge, he twisted the wheel of the right hand boat and ripped it off with one massive tug. It locked the steering. Then he stamped his foot down to unbalance the whole boat and kicked it away. He jumped with both feet into the left-hand boat and rapidly steered that way.

  The two boats curved round on either side of the recycling trawler then headed back towards the centre of the river. The two symmetrical arcs were leading them into a collision—but Mitchell had calculated the two courses perfectly. At the point of impact, they would crush Jimmy’s boat between them.

  Weaving round the obstacles in the centre of the river had slowed Jimmy down just enough for Mitchell’s two boats to catch him. They were bending towards him in a vicious pincer. He couldn’t accelerate any harder, but if he slowed down or stopped Mitchell would merely adjust his course to cut him off sooner. There was only one option.

  Jimmy’s eyes scanned the bridge ahead of him—Hungerford Bridge. Really it was three bridges in one—two footbridges on either side of a central railway line. Even sooner than Jimmy expected, Mitchell’s boats loomed towards him. Their tips attacked like black sabres, ready to skewer whatever came between them. As soon as Jimmy hit the shadow of Hungerford Bridge, he took a two step run-up, mounting the bow of the speedboat, and leapt into the air.

  In his peripheral vision, he just caught sight of Mitchell making the same jump. That instant, all three boats smashed together. One was thrown directly upwards. The other two exploded on impact. The ball of flame ignited the boat that was already in mid-air, causing a double-blast more spectacular than any firework display. There was another “ooh” from Westminster Bridge.

  The crowd may have had the perfect view of the destruction of the boats, but Jimmy was out of sight now, hanging from the structural beams under Hungerford Bridge. Only a faint light reflected off the water. Jimmy’s night vision purred in his head and he knew Mitchell’s would be doing the same. The shadows were still deep and the corners between the struts created cavernous hiding places. It was like a metal spider web in three dimensions. But was Jimmy the spider, or the trapped fly?

  At first Jimmy thought about dropping into the water and trying to swim away, but he knew that would immediately betray his position, and Mitchell was just as strong a swimmer. Better to finish it now. And Jimmy knew from experience that his best chance was to give Mitchell something to think about.

  “You heard what the Prime Minister said,” Jimmy called out, constantly shifting to obscure his position, clambering around the bridge like a giant insect. His words echoed round the metal and bounced off the water. “There’s going to be an election.” There was no reply. A pigeon hooted and flapped away.

  Jimmy swung quickly between the struts, each of them turned a hazy blue by his night vision. His grip was slippery and he kept moving through huge cobwebs. He had to wipe his face and spit the dust from his lips. He pulled his feet up to take some of the weight and to make himself as invisible as possible. There was no sign of Mitchell.

  Perhaps he’d already gone, Jimmy thought. Maybe he was trying to call in support from other NJ7 agents. Jimmy dismissed that idea immediately. It was strange that NJ7 hadn’t sent anybody else by now, but whatever the reason for that, Jimmy knew Mitchell wasn’t going anywhere.

  Of course, if Jimmy had known that every other NJ7 agent in the area was trying to deal with Zafi, it might have given him some confidence. As it was, all he could feel was the throb of his inner assassin, and a grave sense of dread. He had to lure Mitchell into the open.

  “An election changes everything!” Jimmy shouted. “You know that, don’t you? “Neo-democracy is over.” Still, Mitchell didn’t respond. He’s learned, Jimmy realised. He’s adapted. Then a question flashed through his mind: Why haven’t I?

  “In a few weeks,” Jimmy called out, his voice wavering, “people will vote and the Government that sent you to kill me will be nothing.”

  At last Mitchell broke his silence. “I don’t think I want to hang around here that long,” came the shout.

  Jimmy’s brain fizzed as if an electric current had been switched on. His programming created a picture of the sound of Mitchell’s voice, trying to pinpoint his position.

  “I’m voting now,” Mitchell went on. “I vote that I kill you.” And that’s when he struck.

  25 MESSAGES SENT

  A whoosh behind Jimmy alerted him just in time. His reaction was so fast he didn’t even know what he was doing until he’d done it. Mitchell was hanging
from a metal girder directly behind Jimmy and his foot was flying towards Jimmy’s neck.

  Jimmy squeezed a strut between his feet and let go with his hands. His upper body dropped. Mitchell’s trainer swished past Jimmy’s face so close he felt the rubber on the end of his nose. Jimmy swung upsidedown, but crunched his stomach muscles to bring his shoulders up again immediately. He relaxed his legs to let his lower half drop, leaving him in mid-air for a split second. Straightaway he caught that same strut with the tips of his fingers and kicked out behind him. He connected perfectly with one foot on each half of Mitchell’s ribcage.

  The two boys swung round each other like Olympic gymnasts on monkey bars. They traded blows with such pace that the noise of each strike echoed into the next. It sounded like rapid drumming. Jimmy let his mind drown completely in his programming. He wheeled his legs round, throwing himself in complete rotations to spin and kick again. At the same time he blocked Mitchell’s attacks with alternate hands—while his right defended against a savage kick, his left held on to the strut above his head, then vice versa.

  Eventually, actions merged together. The fight became a blur in Jimmy’s head. He felt like he was in a trance, with a red haze seeping from his centre out towards the tips of his limbs. It was the feeling of murder. He knew Mitchell felt it too, and the longer the fight went on the hotter it burned.

  One of us is going to die, Jimmy heard himself thinking. I can’t stop it. Even as he twisted and landed a kick in Mitchell’s stomach, he wanted to cry out, as if he could wake himself from his daze. Except that it wasn’t a daze—it was his programming and it was stronger than ever.

  With the flickering light from the water and his night vision, what Jimmy saw started to distort. First he couldn’t tell the difference between Mitchell’s fists and his own. Mitchell’s legs blended into his legs. For a horrifying flash, he thought he saw his own features on Mitchell’s face.