White Gold

by David Barker

  “We have a procedure to help with that. Besides, if his mole reports back that you’re dead, well he won’t exactly be keeping an eye out for a corpse, will he?”

  “What sort of procedure?”

  “Oh, it’s doesn’t hurt much. And it does wear off. Eventually.” Wardle turned to leave. “Rest up, Atkins. I’ll be back for your answer later.”

  Back at headquarters, Wardle popped another pill. When he got into the lift from the basement car park, he ignored the usual 6th floor button and pressed for the sub-basement level. He signed in to the detention centre. The guard stood up to sweep him with a hand-held metal detector.

  Wardle tilted his head forward slightly and stared at the man. “Jones? I’ve been on the go for nearly twenty hours now. One of my best agents has just died. I have to go and compose a letter to his pregnant wife.”

  “Sorry, sir. Rules—”

  “You want to sweep the director. Right here, right now?”

  Jones averted his gaze and sat back down, mumbling an apology.

  Wardle continued along the corridor, past the room where Feinberg was being held and went to the toilet. Then he returned, a few pounds lighter, and went to see the disgraced IT expert.

  David looked up from behind the bars keeping him in the far end of the room. His dark hair looked even blacker than usual against the pale skin of his face. “Sir, please.”

  “Save it,” said Wardle. “We need to use your precious roll tab. The one that talks the Terror Formers’ language.”

  “I can help, sir. But the encryption. It’s coded to my biometrics now. These systems only allow one re-reset. I don’t think it’ll work for anybody else.”

  “That’s convenient for you, isn’t it?” Wardle approached the bars, presenting his back to the camera filming them from above the doorway. He held up a finger for silence, that only David could see. “We really need to find out what’s happening with the North Korean situation. If only you would help.”

  “Why would I do that?” said the IT expert in a raised voice.

  “Because if you don’t, I’m going to dump so much shit on your lawn, you’ll never dig yourself free.”

  “I’ll think about it,” replied David.

  Wardle turned to leave. “I’ll be back for your answer very soon.”

  The director left the detention centre, returning to the sixth floor, while David Feinberg asked to be allowed to use the toilets. Taped to the underside of the cistern lid, in the second cubicle he tried, David found his roll tab. He used an alias to connect to the Overseas Division servers, then logged in as a TF member and started reading. The guard banged on the door. David groaned, farted and said he’d be a couple more minutes.

  CHAPTER 22

  Beijing

  Gopal was jogging across the wide, bright atrium. He saw no windows – this was all artificial light. Underground, presumably. No shadows, no hiding places. There was no time for subtlety anyway. Gopal knew that running across this busy hall would look odd. Drawing attention to himself and Rabten. But what choice did they have? If they lost sight of Freda’s crate they might never find it again. And she might never get out.

  The crates were on a trailer being towed by a low, wide vehicle that was too small for a human driver. A machine following a pre-set course. There was no human walking alongside either. That was good. The machine turned a corner and as the two disguised agents ran around the same bend a few seconds later, Rabten clattered into a Chinese official with an armful of papers. The documents flew into the air and fluttered to the ground in all directions. Rabten bowed and apologised in mandarin, then caught up with Gopal.

  They were approaching a gateway to another part of this subterranean base. An armed guard stood by a body scanner. Next to this was a low archway that the vehicle drove through and halted for a moment. Inside the archway a mobile scanner slid up and down the length of the tractor and trailer. It beeped and the light above the archway flashed green. The vehicle trundled away.

  Rabten turned to look at Gopal, who just nodded and charged. The guard looked confused and started to unsling his machine gun, but Gopal was too fast. He pushed him into the wall and ran through the gate. The guard steadied himself and turned, raising his gun towards Gopal, but Rabten followed up with a punch to the side of the head. The guard fell, unconscious.

  On the other side of the gate a second guard turned to see the commotion. He pressed a button on the desk next to him. Two things happened at once. Alarms filled the corridor with noise and flashing lights. And a screen dropped down, blocking the doorway with the scanner. Gopal had got through already, but Rabten was stuck on the other side.

  The guard turned to face the ex-Gurkha and raised his gun. Gopal looked around the gateway for anything he could use as distraction. The pistol tucked into the back of his trousers would take too long to draw. He slowly raised his hands.

  There was a noise to Gopal’s left, like an object being dragged along the floor. The guard looked down to see Rabten slide out the end of the low arch that the vehicle had used only moments before. That was the second Gopal needed. He drew his gun and shot the guard. The man toppled backwards, clutching his chest. He put a bloodied hand on the floor and tried to get up, but Gopal shot him again. This time, the guard stayed down.

  The tractor and trailer had already turned the next corner, oblivious to the chaos going on behind. The two agents gave chase. A guard burst out of a door in the right-hand wall of the corridor. Gopal shoulder-barged the door into the guard’s face and kneed the man in the stomach as the guard clutched his bleeding nose. Grabbing the soldier’s machine gun, Gopal sprinted to catch up with Rabten and the tractor.

  The monk banged on top of the automated truck, but nothing happened. He ran ahead and then stopped directly in the path of the vehicle. It came to a halt with a squeak of rubber. The machine said in mandarin: ‘Please keep clear. Delivery in progress.’ And then repeated it. Gopal pressed the barrel of his machine gun against the tractor and emptied the clip into the tractor’s brain. The message stopped and the lights on the front of the vehicle went out.

  The crates were secured to the trailer by four arms, two on each side. The agents found the mechanism for unlocking the arms and twisted the handle. The arms expanded outwards and the men began banging on the sides of the crates.

  “Are you there, Freda?”

  No response.

  “Shit,” said Gopal. “Just get them open.”

  “Which one?” asked Rabten.

  Gopal called out. “Freda?” There was no reply. Unconscious? Or worse? “Get them all open, quick.”

  Using the stock of the machine gun, they pried the lid off the first one. It was full of polystyrene boxes and the smell of new plastic. The second one contained some medical equipment. Footsteps. From the sound of it at least a dozen guards were closing on their position. Gopal toppled the third crate and its lid burst open. Grenades spilt out onto the floor amongst the packing straw. He bent down and pulled the pins out of two of them and rolled them down the corridor towards the approaching feet.

  Rabten prised open the lid of the last crate. A Chinese man, lay curled up at the bottom, his hands bound. He opened his eyes and tried to shout something past the gag in his mouth.

  The grenades exploded just as soldiers appeared from around the corner. Three bodies were flung up and back. A part of the ceiling caved in and the lights went out in that section of the corridor. The two agents looked at each other and at the crates.

  “Where the hell is she?”

  The doors to the hyper train closed automatically and it began to roll forwards, slowly, heading for a branch in the track. Freda’s arms and legs were screaming in agony, jamming her to the ceiling of the cargo compartment by pressing against the walls. As soon as the door closed, her limbs eased off and she fell to the floor with a bang. The British agent lay there for a moment in the dark, breathing deeply as her muscles unwound.

  She knew that Gopal and Rabten would
be worried, but she’d had little choice when that inspector had opened her crate. Fortunately, he was an administrator and not an armed guard. Without her to worry about, she hoped it would be easier for Gopal and Rabten to get out of this base. Freda did not want to cause them additional difficulties. She knew that she was endangering this mission. The wrong skin, the wrong hair to blend into the crowds here. Her colleagues were perfect for this mission. She was a liability. Why hadn’t Wardle realised this?

  Still, she could make herself useful in other ways. She needed to get to the British embassy. But first she needed to get out of this train compartment. Freda switched on her torch. The handle on the inside of the door would not budge. No windows to smash. There was a partition between the section where the passengers sat and the cargo hold. It was thin but metal. She lay on her back and tried kicking it with the soles of her shoes. After several attempts, her feet and calves were beginning to hurt but there was no discernible effect on the partition. The train came to a gentle stop. She crouched in the corner of the carriage and listened for signs of somebody coming to open the door. Nothing.

  Freda got to her knees and started to scan the floor, torch held in teeth, feeling the surface for any cracks. Yes, there. Her fingers found a line in the rubberised mat. She followed it around in a complete square. In the middle of one side, Freda could see that the thin gap widened just for a few centimetres. She pulled from her pocket a thin set of tools that she had picked up in Kathmandu. The implements were tiny, all set into a slim rectangle like an old-fashioned credit card. Freda used the flat-headed screwdriver to lever up the mat and uncovered a circular handle recessed into the floor. She twisted and pulled. Through the opening, she could make out the track beneath the hyper train.

  The screwdriver flew out of her hand, downwards, and slammed into a block underneath the train, sticking there. Freda could feel the set of other tools tugging, trying to free themselves of her fingers. Powerful magnets in the track below hummed, holding the train in a hover position. She put the tools back into her pocket and clambered through the hole in the floor, squeezing into the gap between the train and the ground. As she rolled sideways the humming stopped. The train wobbled slightly and descended, clunking onto the track. Freda was stuck in the gap between the sloped side of the train and the wall. She crawled along in the dirt. A pungent aroma – stale urine – arose from the grime. A brown and white rat in front of her squeaked and ran off.

  When she was clear of the train, Freda heaved herself onto the narrow platform. No passengers here. It looked like a simple walkway for engineers or maintenance crew. She crouched down and stared in each direction, checking for movement. Nothing. Freda set off in the opposite direction to the main platform. The walkway ended in a ladder stretching upwards into darkness. She climbed. At the top there was a white, bright corridor that led to a doorway with a control panel next to it. But there was another door, just next to the top of the ladder in the side wall. It had a green picture of a man running through a doorway and some Chinese characters that Freda did not need to translate. She pushed on the bar and the door swung outwards, letting in a welcome ray of sunshine. Freda blinked and stepped out into the city, smiling.

  The British agent hurried through the streets of the vast capital, trying to orientate herself. She was reluctant to use her wrist tab, presuming it would be picked up by Chinese monitoring stations. Freda vaguely recalled where the British embassy was. She knew the un-manned taxis were all bugged by the Chinese government so was hoping to avoid using one of those. She began to perspire as the sun beat down from a hazy sky. She didn’t mind that so much but the smell invading her nostrils was deeply unpleasant. A mix of body odour from the crowds jostling past her, the sweet sticky aroma of street food frying, and an acrid tang at the back of her mouth, like a bonfire of wet leaves.

  Freda traced the banks of a river eastwards for a while and then turned left following a sign that pointed, in English, to the World Financial Centre. That definitely rang a bell. She saw some Western people approaching her and heard them speaking in French. She asked them if they knew where the embassy was, but they just shook their heads.

  After a few more blocks, Freda’s steps were shortening. Every few hundred yards, she stumbled as if the pavement was buckling beneath her feet. Her stomach was making noises and her tongue was sticking to the roof of her mouth. Another pair of white people, speaking English, approached. When she asked them, struggling to get the words out, they smiled back at her.

  “You OK, honey?”

  Freda just nodded.

  “The embassy’s not far away. Quite close to ours, actually. Keep straight on for two more blocks, take a left and then second right. You’ll find yourself in a circular park. The British embassy overlooks the park.”

  She smiled and tried to straighten her hair. “Thank you.”

  Standing in the middle of the park, Freda could see the embassy just as the American couple had promised. But she had one final hurdle. The front entrance was ringed with cameras. Not British ones, but Chinese cameras, monitoring people who came in and out of the little patch of foreign soil. And if the rumours were true, secret service agents were permanently stationed outside, ready to grab somebody before they made it to sanctuary, thousands of miles from blighty. Freda Brightwell had form in China. A known Overseas Division agent walking in the front door? Not advisable.

  She sat and waited. Watching the people come and go in front of the embassy while hunger gnawed away at her insides. What did Rabten say about the patient heron? Catching fish? The memory just made her hungrier and guilty. She knew her companions would think she had abandoned them or worse, been captured. She prayed she had not led them into danger.

  Once she was sure she knew which individuals were the Chinese agents, Freda started to concentrate on the people entering and leaving the building. She picked a black man in his thirties, wearing a smart suit and small glasses. Neither Chinese spy paid him any attention as he left the embassy, so Freda approached as he walked off towards the end of the afternoon.

  Freda caught up and walked a couple of paces behind him. She said the phrase that signified an undercover agent in need of assistance, just loud enough for him to hear, without looking up.

  The man stopped.

  “Don’t turn around,” she said. “Just keep walking.”

  He did so, then looked sideways and down. “Can I know your name?”

  “B17. That’s all you need for now. I have to get inside the embassy. Without using the front door.”

  “OK. My flat’s five minutes away, with my car parked outside. We can drive back in, using the basement entrance. Follow me.”

  They left the park and soon the man was unlocking his car, climbing into the front seat. As Freda got in, the man turned quickly to point a gun in her face.

  “Don’t move.”

  Freda rolled her eyes.

  “I’m going to need more than a three-digit code before I sneak you into the embassy. Car, scan her.”

  There was a beep from the console next to the man’s head. ‘No gun. Some sharp metal objects in her left hip pocket.’

  “Pull them out slowly,” the man said.

  Freda extracted the tool kit. “Can we hurry up please, this is kind of urgent.”

  “Not until I’m sure. Car, run her code and face through the software.”

  Another beep and then. ‘Freda Brightwell, Overseas Division. Active service. Chinese Ministry of State Security has her on their most-wanted list.’

  The man put his gun away. “Aren’t you a naughty girl? Well, you better squish down in the footwell back there and put that blanket over you. Let’s hope we don’t get stopped.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Birmingham

  Sim was channel-hopping. Trying to take his mind off the impending decision. Click. The news headlines. Another famine in Africa. Click. A game show: win a dream ticket on Virgin Galactic. Click. A London soap opera: the bartender is really an android!
Click. A morning chat show: is it morally justified to send astronauts on a one-way ticket to Mars? The host of the chat show tells the audience that one of the crew has got his wife pregnant, but he still wants to go on the mission. An intake of breath, collective gasps and cut to an advert. Sim told the screen to shut down.

  He closed his eyes and pictured himself in the TV studio.

  The door to his room opened.

  Wardle entered and sat down opposite Sim. “So?”

  “You ask too much, sir. I can’t put Rosie through that pain.”

  “You think I enjoy doing this?” asked Wardle.

  “I need more time to think.”

  Wardle shook his head. “Can’t risk it. You not being dead won’t stay a secret forever. Besides, this new Ebola strain. We don’t when the bastards who made it intend to use it again. What if next time they unleash it in Washington? Beijing? Or London?”

  Sim stared at the ground.

  “If ESCO is behind this, we have to stop them,” said Wardle.

  “Can’t the egg heads in Colindale come up with a cure or a vaccine?”

  “Working on it, sure. Ready in time? Certainly not in enough quantities if this thing goes pandemic.”

  Sim walked over to the window and stared at the people strolling past the safe-house. A mother holding hands with a child in school uniform. A jogger listening to something in their Personal Acoustic Field. A long-limbed dog taking a man for a walk. Ordinary people doing ordinary things.

  “Can’t somebody else try? Another agent from the division?”

  “Hamilton already did. They saw straight through his false ID. Couldn’t get close even with his drone surveillance. You’re being removed from our database. If they think you’re dead, it’s our best chance.”

  “You mentioned a procedure,” said Sim.

  “Silicon implants for your eyebrows, cheeks, chin. Change the shape of your face. Crowns for your front teeth. Dyed hair. Contact lens to change your iris pattern. All reversible.”