Under Cover (Agent 21)

by Chris Ryan

  She looked very unsure, but she nodded, and went back to looking out of the window. Ricky closed his eyes and allowed himself a few moments’ sleep. In just a few hours, he had an appointment at the Happy Valley Café, and he would need his wits about him.

  – You could speed dial one. Call Felix in. He could take it from here.

  – No way. What if the meeting’s totally innocent? I’d look stupid.

  – Pride, Ricky?

  – Maybe.

  But Ricky was honest enough with himself to admit that it was more than that. This was for Izzy, not Felix. But maybe it was for Ricky himself as well. Because if he could save Izzy on his own then maybe – just maybe – he could stop feeling guilty about Madeleine . . .

  Jacob Cole had woken at dawn, as usual. Ordinarily, he would put on a crisp, clean shirt, a sober tie and a well-cut suit. In Westminster, these were the kind of clothes that made him blend in. Not today. His nine o’clock meeting would take him to a place where a well-cut suit would attract unwanted stares. He even felt a bit uncomfortable that the jeans he hardly ever wore had a designer label. He decided that he would leave his shirt untucked – something he usually didn’t approve of – to cover it up.

  At eight a.m. he stepped out of his dressing room and glanced up the stairs to where his wife was still sleeping. Those tablets of hers would keep her unconscious until at least ten, by which time the deal would be done. Cole felt a little surge of excitement at that thought. Just two hours until he had more money than he could ever hope to spend.

  He stepped into his office, but before retrieving his papers from the desk, he stood at the window for a moment, watching the snow fall thickly over his large garden. He remembered Izzy, when she was a toddler, running up and down the garden, squealing as the water from a sprinkler hit her. His lip curled. How had such a pretty little child turned into such an ungrateful wretch?

  He frowned. Looking out over the garden, he thought he saw tracks in the snow. They seemed to lead up to the kitchen door, past the vegetable patch and down towards the garden wall. The falling snow had covered them up somewhat, but they were still there. He supposed an urban fox must have found its way into the garden, and he would have to speak to the gardeners about that. There must be some way of trapping and killing the blasted things.

  He turned away from the window and walked to the desk. His mobile phone was still there, now showing a full charge. He put it in his pocket and opened up the top drawer of the desk. The valuable papers were still safely hidden inside. He took them out, briefly looked through them for a final time, and then sealed them inside a briefcase which was propped against the far wall of the room. He set the numerical lock on the briefcase – 839 462 – then locked it securely.

  Before leaving the room, he glanced out of the window again. Something about the fox made him uncomfortable. The trail from the bottom of the garden to the kitchen door was very roundabout. If it had been a fox, surely it would have taken a more direct route.

  Cole felt an anxious chill. Something wasn’t right.

  He strode from the room, tightly gripping the suitcase, and headed down the stairs two at a time. He hurried past the Christmas tree and into the kitchen, before stepping into the surveillance room on the right.

  In here, there were three screens. Each one showed a clear image of the exterior of the house. At the moment, the cameras showed their scenes in real time, but Cole knew how to operate the system. In the past, when he had suspected his fool of a daughter of sneaking out of the house, he had scanned back through an entire night’s worth of footage. At high speed, you could do each of the cameras in about five minutes. True, he’d never actually seen Izzy trying to escape, but you couldn’t be too careful . . .

  With the press of a couple of buttons on the small keyboard, he scanned back now. The first screen displayed footage from the camera that covered the front of the house. Staring intently at it, he saw a cat slide backwards across the screen at about 1:30. An hour before that, the enormous front yard seemed to grow a bit lighter for perhaps five minutes – although it was only a few seconds at high speed. He assumed a car had stopped outside and remained stationary with its headlamps on. Aside from that, the front camera had nothing to show him.

  He turned his attention to the second screen. This covered one half of the rear garden. For another five minutes, he watched time roll back. But he saw nothing through the constant film of snow, except the snowy ground lighting up at about the time he remembered standing at his office window and looking out over the garden. He could even just make out his own silhouette stretching down from the house. But nothing else.

  Camera number three covered the other half of the rear garden. Cole found himself looking at it less closely. Perhaps he’d been mistaken. Perhaps there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the tracks in the snow. He was probably just on edge, he decided, because of everything that was going to happen today . . .

  He gave a low hiss. He had just seen something on the screen.

  If Cole had blinked at a different time, he’d have missed it. It was little more than a flicker on the edge of the screen. He stopped the footage then moved it forward frame by frame.

  It was a person. He knew that, even though he could not make out a face. All he could see was the person’s head drift for less than a second into the camera’s field of view. As he paused the footage to examine it, he realized that there must be a blind spot in the garden, a place that the cameras didn’t cover. He sneered – there would be hell to pay with the security firm who installed them. But he put that thought to the back of his mind as he studied the image. All he could tell was that the intruder was wearing a baseball cap. The peak was hiding his – or her – face. Above the peak, he could just make out an ‘N’ and an ‘I’.

  He stared at the image for a full minute without moving. What to think? Who was this intruder? His eyes narrowed. ‘Izzy,’ he said under his breath. Because if there was a blind spot in the garden, who would know about it apart from her? She was a dishonest, calculating girl, after all. No doubt she had broken back into the house to find some money. Or persuaded one of her criminal friends to do it for her. It was pathetic, the way she thought she could manage without his generosity. But she couldn’t.

  Later today, he decided, he would show this footage to the police. They had done precious little to find his daughter so far. He was rather looking forward to gloating that he had furthered their investigation more in a few minutes than they had in a few days. And he felt a sense of relief that this intruder had nothing to do with his business with Dmitri. How could they? It was just a kid.

  With a tap of the keyboard, the monitors returned to real time. Cole stood up, brushed himself down and headed to the front door. He would deal with all this when he returned. By that time, he would have handed the suitcase over to the Russians, and he would be a very, very rich man.

  18

  HAPPY VALLEY

  Ricky watched Izzy buy herself a one-day travel card from the busy ticket office at Piccadilly Circus station. She looked anxiously over her shoulder as she passed through the barrier into the underground. Then she disappeared into the crowd of commuters.

  Ricky checked his watch. A quarter past eight. He stifled his tiredness. It had been a long night, travelling around London on the night buses, keeping Izzy company as they tried to stay warm. But now he needed his wits about him. He had forty-five minutes to get to the Happy Valley Café in time for Jacob Cole’s nine a.m. meeting.

  He managed to find a seat on the rush-hour tube. As it trundled towards Kilburn, he pulled his baseball cap down over his head, closed his eyes and worked out his plan. He knew that Jacob Cole was meeting the Russian, Dmitri. He guessed there might be other Russians there too, and Cole would be handing over the nuclear codes. At the very least, Ricky needed to get a picture of him doing that: proof that Cole was a traitor to his country. And if possible, he needed to snatch the documents before the Russians got their hands o
n them.

  – So. No pressure. I thought you told Felix that this was a grown-ups’ problem.

  – It is. I’m doing this for Izzy.

  – For Izzy? Or for Madeleine?

  Ricky frowned under his cap. He didn’t like the way the conversation in his head was going. But he did know that he needed to do this; needed to show Felix what he was capable of. And now that he knew what was at stake, he couldn’t just walk away.

  His feet slapped across the wet, slushy floor of the concourse of Kilburn High Road station. Two ticket collectors were standing by the barriers. He approached them and asked if they knew the way to the Happy Valley Café. One of them shook his head, but the other nodded. ‘Right out of the station, turn right at Boots, second on your right.’ Ricky thanked them, but they’d already gone back to their conversation.

  The street was not nearly as busy as central London. Ricky turned his baseball cap so that it was pointing backwards, then started tramping along the snowy, slushy pavement towards Boots.

  Twenty metres out of the station, he stopped.

  Slowly, he turned round.

  Was someone following him? It sure felt like it. He scanned the street, but saw nothing except pedestrians walking briskly, their heads down as they went about their business. Then, because he knew better than most that someone who was following you didn’t have to be behind you, he turned again and looked ahead. He saw nobody suspicious.

  – You’re just on edge. Nobody’s tailing you. Nobody even knows where you are . . .

  At Boots, he turned right. There were even fewer people down this side street. And when he came to the second turning on the left, he saw nobody. The Happy Valley Café was about thirty metres along this deserted road.

  He drew a deep breath. Then he walked towards the Café.

  The Café had a glass frontage. The words ‘Happy Valley’ were printed in yellow lettering around a picture of an orange sun. Through the glass, Ricky could see that business wasn’t brisk. There were only two other people in there – workmen, by the look of their paint-spattered clothes. He reminded himself that it was 27 December. For most people, it was still the Christmas holidays.

  The heavy glass door squeaked a bit as Ricky pushed it open. The inside of the Happy Valley Café looked like any other greasy spoon. He counted eight tables, each with four red plastic chairs. On every table there was a red plastic bottle of tomato sauce, a salt cellar and a bottle of vinegar. In an attempt to brighten the place up, each table had a heavy glass vase filled with artificial flowers. But the glass was greasy and the flowers dusty, so they only made the Café look more down-at-heel.

  The white tiles on the floor were scuffed and chipped. There was a smell of fat and instant coffee. In front of Ricky, opposite the door, was a serving hatch. A man behind the counter in a blue and white striped apron gave him a welcoming smile as he walked in. He was a jolly-looking guy, rather fat and with a friendly face. His smile looked out of place here, but Ricky couldn’t help smiling back at him. From behind the hatch, a radio was blaring loudly – Ricky heard the Capital Radio jingle, then a pop song he didn’t recognize.

  The workmen were sitting just next to the hatch. Apart from them, Ricky had his choice of tables, so he picked one by the door – if he sat there, he could leave quickly if he needed to. But with his back up against the glass frontage, he also had a view of the whole Café. Wherever Cole and the Russians decided to sit, he would be able to see them.

  He tried to look casual as he took a seat. In fact, his eyes were darting around, searching for security cameras. He saw none, and began to understand why Jacob Cole had chosen this place. It was almost empty. Nobody would expect to see him here. And if anyone came asking, he could easily deny it. What would he, an important politician, possibly be doing in a place like this?

  But he wouldn’t be reckoning on a young kid secretly recording him on his phone. Ricky placed his mobile on the table, then glanced through the smeared, grease-spotted menu. Two minutes later the man from the counter came to take his order.

  ‘Bacon sandwich and a cup of tea, please.’ Then he corrected himself. ‘Actually, make that a full English.’

  The man chuckled. ‘You look like you need feeding up, sunshine,’ he said.

  Ricky nodded, but the truth was that a bigger plate of food would take longer to make and longer to eat. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself by sitting in a Café with no food in front of him . . .

  He checked the time. 8:55 a.m. He could expect Cole and the Russians to walk in at any moment.

  Thirty seconds later, his cup of tea arrived.

  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 . . .