by Chris Ryan
The men were silent. The wind howled around them. Ten seconds later, Cole said: ‘There!’
The two Russians squinted and peered out to sea. ‘What?’ Dmitri said. ‘Where?’
But Cole was the only one who could see, through the powerful magnification of the binoculars. About half a mile out to sea, something had just broken through the surface. It looked, at first, like the hump of a whale, but darker. Water sluiced from its rounded top as it emerged from the sea, getting bigger with every second.
But this was just the conning tower of the submarine. A few seconds later, the main body of the sub started to emerge. Black and threatening, it dwarfed the tower and churned up the already rough sea around it.
Cole handed the binoculars to Dmitri, who grabbed them greedily and looked out to sea. ‘I still cannot see anything!’ he announced immediately. ‘What is wrong with these stupid things? I can’t s—’ He cut himself off short. Clearly he had located the object. He stared at it for a full minute, before passing the binoculars to Gregoriev.
‘Vanguard class nuclear submarine,’ Cole said as the second Russian continued to look. ‘One of four. Fully equipped with Trident II D-5 ballistic missiles.’ He waited for Gregoriev to lower his binoculars, then gave the two Russians another of his thin smiles. ‘You see, gentlemen, I can show you how to locate any British nuclear submarine, anywhere in the world. Which is valuable information, of course. So shall we talk money?’
The two Russians grinned at each other. ‘Not here,’ said Dmitri. ‘Let us return to the car. There is a helicopter waiting to take us back to London. As we travel, we will be happy to discuss how rich we are going to make you, Mr Cole.’
Without another word, the three men turned their back on the ocean and walked up the hill to the waiting car.
Felix was right. Ricky did like his new home. How could you not?
There was a vast bedroom overlooking the Thames with a huge double bed and a big TV on the wall. The kitchen glistened with quartz and steel and there was a fridge packed full of food and soft drinks. The bathroom had a jacuzzi and a shower with four separate jets. There was a video entryphone, a state-of-the-art computer and a fully equipped gym in a room all by itself.
– This is awesome! And free!
– Nothing’s for free, buddy. Nothing’s for free.
‘Make yourself at home,’ Felix said as Ricky stood in the main room, clutching his rucksack, his eyes wide, not quite sure where to look.
‘This isn’t a wind-up?’ he asked.
‘Nope. I’ll leave you to get settled in. I’ll be back tomorrow morning, nine a.m.’
‘What for?’
‘I told you. Lessons.’
Felix turned his back on Ricky and limped towards the exit.
‘Hey, Felix.’
The strange man stopped and turned.
‘What happened to your leg?’
Felix’s face twitched. It was clearly a painful memory.
‘Somebody shot me. The bullet shattered the bones in my lower leg. They had to amputate.’
‘Sounds painful.’
‘I was lucky they could do it below the knee and not above it. It’s a good deal harder to walk without a knee joint. Or so I’m told.’
Ricky thought about that for a moment. ‘Does this sort of thing happen often, in your line of work?’
‘Amputations?’
‘Bullets.’
Felix scratched his nose. ‘We try to avoid it.’
‘Who’s “we”?’
Felix gave him a blank smile. ‘It’s complicated,’ he said calmly. ‘Now then, I almost forgot. You’ll be needing a key to get in and out.’
‘Who’s “we”?’ Ricky repeated. ‘The good guys or the bad guys? That’s not too complicated for you, is it?’
‘I’m surprised you care – it’s not like you really intend to stick around long enough to find out.’
Ricky said nothing, but he felt himself blushing.
‘Am I right?’
Silence.
‘Am I right?’
Silence.
‘Good,’ Felix said, almost as though he was talking to himself. ‘Maybe we’ve learned something already. Now, about that key.’
‘Yeah,’ Ricky said. ‘About that key.’
‘It’s in the flat somewhere. Your homework is to find it.’
‘What?’
‘Find it, Coco. Use your eyes. Show me how good you are at looking.’
– He’s crazy.
– You’ve only just worked that out?
Felix was limping towards the exit.
‘Hey, Felix?’
‘Yes, kid?’
‘Who are you, really?’
A pause. Felix put one hand in his pocket and pulled out a mint humbug, which he popped into his mouth.
‘Why don’t you just think of me as your guardian angel,’ he said.
5
HOMEWORK
Friday, 2:30 p.m.
The key was nowhere. Ricky was sure of it. He’d looked through the drawers in the kitchen, inside all the cupboards and even in the fridge. He’d checked under the mattress of his bed and inside all the wardrobes. He’d checked under the rugs in the living room and hallways. He had even found himself on his hands and knees checking behind the U-bend of the toilet, before returning to the kitchen and double-checking the drawers he’d already searched.
It was at that point that he’d decided this was insane. Felix was playing silly games with him. Well, maybe Ricky didn’t want to play.
He helped himself to a Coke from the fridge and sat on the balcony overlooking the Thames. It was late afternoon, and he couldn’t help thinking about how his life had changed in the past twenty-four hours. He had everything he didn’t have yesterday – a place to stay, and food to eat.
But he still felt very uneasy.
Who was this Felix character? Why was he going out of his way to help him? Ricky knew enough about the world to realize that nobody helped anyone unless there was something in it for them.
The sun started to set and the air grew chill. Ricky headed back inside and made himself an enormous chicken and mayonnaise sandwich from the plentiful stores in the kitchen. He walked around the flat as he ate it. He stared at the front door and it occurred to him that, without a key, he was as good as imprisoned in here.
But the key was nowhere.
Ricky felt a little surge of anger towards Felix for setting him an impossible task.
– I’m trapped. If I leave this flat I’ll never get back in again.
– But you can leave if you want to. Let’s face it though, being stuck here is better than being stuck in Bloomsbury Square.
He took his holdall into the bedroom. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he pulled out the framed picture of his mum, dad and Madeleine. He stared at it. As often happened, he found himself remembering the moment he heard the news that they had died: the two policemen at the door, Madeleine burying her face in her hands, the way he had sat on the sofa, staring into space, unable to take it all in . . .
Then he snapped out of it and placed the picture on the bedside table. He turned on the TV, lay on the bed and started channel hopping.
There was nothing much on. He spent a couple of minutes watching two kids his own age rapping on Britain’s Got Talent. He caught the last five minutes of The Simpsons. Then he found himself on a news channel. A journalist was standing outside the Russian Embassy in London. He had a serious face and a serious tone. ‘Tensions between Russia and the West are mounting over the situation in the Middle East. Talks between the British Foreign Secretary and his Russian counterpart have been described as . . .’
But Ricky never found out how these talks were described. The bed was soft. The room was warm. He had already drifted off into a deep sleep . . .
It was five miles, as the crow flies, from the elegant apartment in which Ricky now slept to an even more elegant mansion, grandly named the White House, in the heart of Mayfair. A
human, however, would have to struggle for a couple of hours through the rush-hour crowds to get there.
If they did this – and if they managed to get over the high railings that surrounded the White House and past the security cameras that covered the entrance, they might find themselves climbing an impressive, winding marble staircase and entering a bedroom at the top of the stairs. Here they would find a fifteen-year-old girl called Izzy Cole sitting on the edge of her bed, crying.
The palms of her hands, which covered her face, were soaked in tears. Her shoulders shook. She was trying not to cry, she really was. But even when she managed to stop for fifteen or twenty seconds, the tears always returned when she remembered what had just happened.
She had argued with her father about an earring. Such a small thing – a tiny gold stud that lay on Izzy’s bedside table. When he had returned home just half an hour ago – looking unusually windswept – he had seemed to be in a rare good mood. So good that Izzy had dared to appear in front of him wearing the earring.
Bad move.
When her father saw it, his mood had changed immediately. He knew that Izzy had defied his instruction that she would never – never – have her ears pierced while she lived under his roof. She was the only one of her friends who didn’t have pierced ears, of course, but even so. It had seemed like such a small thing to ask the lady in the tattoo parlour to do, especially as her two friends Becky and Caitlin had pretended to be eighteen and were getting actual tattoos – identical roses – on their shoulders.
Her father thought differently.
She hated him. Hated him. She knew it made her sound spoiled. She knew she lived in a posh house and went to a posh school and never really went without anything. But it was all a lie. She hated seeing her father on TV, smiling for the cameras – the Right Honourable Jacob Cole, MP, who always sounded so reasonable and who was so popular with everyone.
But they didn’t know what he was really like. They didn’t see the real him.
Izzy took a tissue from the box by her bed. She blew her nose, then winced. She lowered the tissue and looked at it. Blood. She walked across the room to her dressing table, where she looked at her face in the mirror.
Even Izzy was surprised by what she saw. There was a cut on her upper lip where her dad had hit her. The left eye was swollen with a fat purple bruise. She stared in the mirror for a full minute before the cut started to ooze again and she had to grab another tissue to mop it up.
When the bleeding finally stopped she moved over to the window and looked outside. Her room overlooked the front garden. There was a high wall between the garden and the street itself, but from the first floor she could see the opposite pavement. There was an elegant street lamp there, bathing the pavement in the yellow glow of its light. And leaning against the lamp post itself, a figure. He was broad-shouldered, with a heavy overcoat, a bald head with black skin. In one hand he carried a walking stick. Izzy stared at him.
Suddenly he looked up. Izzy felt a chill as their eyes met. The man quickly averted his gaze, then looked down at the pavement and started to walk away. Izzy noticed that he had a slight limp . . .
A moment later he was out of sight. Izzy forgot about him just as quickly. Rebellious thoughts went through her head. She would tell someone about her dad. Make everyone realize what he was really like. This wasn’t the first time he’d hit her, she would explain. He was brutal, and violent, and . . .
Her moment of courage quickly vanished. Tell everyone? She couldn’t even tell her mum, who always took her dad’s side because she was even more scared of him than Izzy was. Nobody would ever believe a silly fifteen-year-old girl against the important Jacob Cole, MP. She’d be laughed at, and accused of lying.
All she could do was clean herself up as best she could. Think up some story to explain away the marks on her face. And stay in her bedroom in case the sight of her made her dad even angrier.
It was a nice bedroom. Tastefully decorated with comfortable furniture. But to Izzy, it sometimes felt like a prison.
Ricky awoke suddenly. A harsh-sounding doorbell was buzzing repeatedly, and the morning sun was streaming through the windows. He looked at his watch: 9:06 a.m. Saturday morning. He’d slept right through.
The doorbell buzzed for perhaps the sixth or seventh time.
‘Bet it’s Felix,’ Ricky said under his breath. He jumped off the bed, hurried to the door and, with a quick yank, pulled it open. Felix was there, his usual white paper bag of sweets in his hand and a rucksack over his shoulder.
‘Jelly baby?’ Felix offered, holding out the bag.
‘Er, bit early, actually.’
‘Rubbish. It’s never too early for a jelly baby. Especially the blackcurrant ones.’ He selected a purple jelly baby and popped it in his mouth. ‘Have you found it?’ he asked.
Ricky blinked. His head was stuffy, his mouth dry. His clothes were rumpled and none too fresh. He shook his head to shake off the sleepiness. ‘Found what?’ he asked stubbornly.
Felix smiled, then stepped over the threshold as though he owned the place.
– Maybe he does own the place.
– He must be very rich if he does.
Felix was a metre past the door when he stopped as if he’d hit an invisible brick wall. He screwed his face up.
‘What’s the matter?’ Ricky asked.
‘You,’ he said.
Ricky looked himself up and down. ‘What about me?’
‘You stink, Coco,’ Felix said. ‘Like something that’s just died. Would you care to clean yourself up before we start?’
‘Please, don’t hold back,’ Ricky said. He felt himself blushing. He supposed Felix was right – he hadn’t washed for forty-eight hours, and twelve of those had been spent sleeping rough – but he didn’t like being spoken to like that. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I’m fine.’
Felix shrugged, wrinkled his nose and walked further into the apartment.
‘So, I couldn’t find the key,’ Ricky said. ‘You sure you left me one?’
‘Yep,’ said Felix, looking over his shoulder as they walked into the front room. ‘Where d’you look?’
‘Everywhere.’
‘Rubbish,’ said Felix, dropping his rucksack on the floor. ‘If you’d looked everywhere, you’d have found it.’
‘Well, OK, but nobody can look absolutely everywhere . . .’ Ricky walked towards the kitchen.
‘Course they can. They just need to know how. Want me to tell you?’
‘Er . . .’
‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ said Felix. ‘If you’re not going to have a shower, stick the kettle on and make me a brew. Have one yourself, if you like, but my need is greater – I’m going to be doing a lot of talking and you’ll be doing a lot of listening. Lessons start now, Coco. Put your brain into gear and get ready to learn.’
Five minutes later they were sitting in the front room, cups of steaming tea in their hands.
‘So when you were looking for the key, you just searched in random places, right?’ Felix said. ‘You thought about where it might be, looked in that place, then moved on to another place that popped into your head.’
Ricky peered at him. ‘Have you been spying on me again?’ he said.
‘Not at all. You just did what most people do. You searched without any kind of method. But that’s not really searching at all. That’s just looking around.’
Ricky opened his mouth, wanting to argue. But then he remembered himself opening random cupboards in the kitchen and realized that Felix was right.
‘Maybe you’ve got a point,’ he said.
‘How kind of you to say so.’ Felix looked around the room. ‘So why not try this. When you search a room, divide it up into smaller cubes – in your head, I mean. Search each cube thoroughly before moving on to the next.’
Ricky frowned. ‘But some of the cubes will just be empty space,’ he said.
‘Then they won’t take you long to search.’ Felix drained his tea and st
ood up, wincing as he put pressure on his bad leg. ‘Here endeth the first lesson,’ he said. ‘Now find that key.’
‘You could just tell me where it is,’ Ricky said. He was feeling rather grumpy about the whole key thing.
‘Of course I could. But where would be the fun in that? Now find it.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘If it’s all the same to you,’ Felix said, ‘I think I might have another cup of tea, and perhaps just one more jelly baby.’
As Felix limped off to the kitchen, Ricky stood up. He looked to one end of the room. ‘This is stupid,’ he muttered. But in his mind, he divided that end of the room into invisible cubes. One of the cubes contained a low wooden dresser, which he searched thoroughly – even going so far as to remove the drawers and check their undersides. Another cube contained a picture on the wall, which he removed to check the back. No key. He looked over his shoulder to see Felix standing in the doorway, watching him intently with a second mug of tea in his hand.
– This is a waste of your time.
– So what? If it keeps him happy, and means we get to stay here . . .
Ricky smiled at Felix, and went back to his searching.
He found the key ten minutes later. It was stuck with a piece of Blu-tac to the pelmet that covered the curtain rail. Ricky was surprised to feel a little surge of triumph as he held it up. ‘One key!’ he announced.
‘Well done,’ said Felix.
‘You don’t look all that impressed.’
For the first time since they’d met, Ricky saw a flash of irritation cross Felix’s face. ‘What did you want, Coco? A street parade?’
Ricky felt himself blushing.
‘I certainly hope you didn’t think that was tough, young man, because you’ve hardly even started. By the time I’ve finished with you, you’ll be—’
‘The best-trained little sneak thief on the streets of London?’ Ricky filled in. ‘Because that’s what you want me for, isn’t it? Nobody looks at a kid, nobody suspects a kid. So you need a kid to do your dirty work for you, stealing and stuff. Am I right?’
Felix’s face gave nothing away. ‘It’s complicated,’ he said.
Ricky felt a surge of irrational anger at having his phrase thrown back in his teeth again.
