“Acknowledged,” said Agent J. He opened a channel to HQ. “Hive 1 to SWARM HQ, we’re in position.”
“Anything happening there?” Queen Bee’s voice sounded tense.
“Negative, Ms Maynard,” said Agent J. “Nobody’s come in or out of the shop. Sirena’s keeping her sensors focused on the back of the building. No movement there either. Only one person inside. Do we have an ID yet?”
“Simon Turing’s working on it now,” said Queen Bee. “Trendi Soundz has been registered as a private company. The shop itself is a perfectly ordinary, legitimate business. However, the name of whoever owns it has been deliberately covered up. Several databases that ought to list the owner have had all record of Trendi Soundz deleted. Others have been changed, to list fake companies or fake identities.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” muttered Agent J.
“That’s a quotation,” said Chopper. “Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865, Chapter Two.”
“This adds to our suspicion that Firestorm has been getting help from inside the secret service, doesn’t it?” said Agent J.
“Absolutely,” said Queen Bee. “Only someone with access to a large number of official records could have hidden information about Trendi Soundz in this way. Politicians or senior police officers could have done it, but not without signing various pieces of paper. Only someone in the secret service could have done it on the quiet.”
“So, do we have no idea who the shop owner is?” said Agent J.
“For the moment, no, but Simon and Alfred are confident they can track back through the affected databases and ID them soon.”
“Is that why you want us to tread carefully, and not simply raid Trendi Soundz?”
“That’s one reason, yes,” said Queen Bee. “The other is our knowledge of Firestorm’s tactics so far. They’re using technology that’s almost beyond what even we’ve got. They cover their tracks and they pack booby traps into everything. We have to handle things with the utmost care. That’s why I want the robots leading the way. They can watch and act with more stealth than anyone else. Now we know about Trendi Soundz, we can nip any further attacks in the bud.”
“Have you managed to keep Agent Drake and MI5 at arm’s length?”
“So far, yes,” said Queen Bee. “The prime minister and the home secretary are still giving SWARM full control of this crisis. But MI5 will be allowed to take over the investigation if we slip up. Agent Drake is grinding his teeth, waiting for a chance to take charge.”
“Alert,” cut in Sirena. “Adult male approaching the shop. It’s Tim Jones.”
“The teacher Firestorm hypnotized for the bank raid?” said Agent J. “The police only let him and Sally Burns go a little while ago. What’s he doing here?”
“He may be involved with Firestorm after all,” said Queen Bee.
“Chopper, listen in!” said Agent J.
“Logged,” said Chopper.
The micro-robot dragonfly’s wings buzzed into operation. He darted into the air, and out through the gap at the top of the passenger window.
At that moment, Agent K’s car appeared at the end of the street. Without slowing down, or even acknowledging the presence of Agent J, she clicked the switch on her dashboard. The hatch on the travel pod fixed beneath her car opened, and Widow, Nero, Sabre and Morph dropped neatly onto the street. The car headed back towards SWARM HQ. Nero and Morph scuttled along the gutters. Widow fired an ultra-thin line at the closest building and swung up into the air. Sabre zipped over to Agent J.
“Looks like we got here at exactly the right time,” he said, his voice routed through Agent J’s smartphone.
Tim Jones was carrying a plastic supermarket carrier bag. There was a chunky rectangular shape inside it.
“One of the speakers,” said Sirena. “Scanning… It’s the one Hercules is in!”
“Stand by, everyone,” said Agent J quietly.
Chopper landed on the shop’s cluttered front window. Tim Jones went in. The buzzer above the door sounded automatically as he entered.
A tiny video probe jutted out from the underside of Chopper’s head. It stuck itself onto the glass. Everything that went on in the shop could now be seen and heard on the SWARM network. Agent J watched on his phone.
Tim Jones approached the man at the counter. Eileen Parkins’s coat, hat and gloves had been stored away, as had the shopping bag full of money.
“Yeah?” said the shop owner. At first, he barely looked up. As soon as he did, he made an almost comical double-take. He recognized Jones instantly. His piercing eyes darted past Jones’s shoulder, checking that the man was alone.
“Hi,” said Tim Jones. The tone of his voice registered on the robots’ sensors as annoyed and irritable. “We bought a pair of these speakers from you a couple of weeks ago. This one’s stopped working.”
The shop owner didn’t reply for a moment.
“He’s wondering if this is a set-up,” muttered Agent J. “He’s wondering if Jones has remembered something, or worked out what happened to him.”
“Why would this man have let those speakers remain in the homes of Jones, Burns and Parkins?” said Sabre. “The modified circuits in them are evidence. After all, they led us here. Why wouldn’t he have set them to self-destruct, or something like that?”
“Why not leave them?” said Nero. “He couldn’t possibly have predicted that micro-robot insects would investigate them. He could safely have assumed that his modified circuits would never be discovered. Remember, we don’t yet know exactly what those circuits do.”
“Hello?” said Tim Jones.
“Huh?” said the shop owner. “Oh, yeah. Sorry, mate. What was it?”
“I said, this speaker’s stopped working.”
The shop owner was clearly nervous. As he stood behind the counter, Chopper’s eyes took a detailed close-up photo of him, and relayed it back to SWARM HQ to help Simon Turing ID the man.
“That’s a BebKo-X1,” he said.
“Yes, I know,” grumbled Tim Jones. “You said they were top quality. I wondered why you were selling them at such a knock-down price. Was it a faulty batch, or something?”
The shop owner eyed Jones carefully. “He’s still not sure what’s going on,” muttered Agent J, “but he’s realized that Jones really does have a faulty speaker.”
“When that circuit blew up and damaged Hercules,” said Morph, “it must have damaged some of the speaker’s other components too.”
“Mr … Jones, right?” asked the shop owner.
“Yes,” blinked Tim Jones. “That’s well remembered.”
“I like to look after my customers,” said the man.
“Yes, well, I’ve been having a terrible day, and I got home—”
“Terrible? Why terrible?” said the shop owner casually.
“Umm, it doesn’t matter, but I got home not long ago and I tried to put some music on, to calm my nerves, and this nearly new speaker had simply stopped working. I’ve had it up to here today, I really have.” He plonked the carrier bag containing the speaker onto the counter. “I wouldn’t have bothered bringing it straight round like this, but it was the last straw.”
The shop owner slowly opened the carrier bag and lifted out the speaker. He looked it over, but didn’t appear to spot the small access hole made by Hercules.
“You haven’t done anything to it, have you?” he said.
“Like what?” said Tim Jones.
“Dropped it?” shrugged the shop owner. “Put it close to a strong magnetic field? Taken the back off and poked around inside?”
“No, no, no, it’s been sitting on the same shelf, undisturbed, since we got it,” said Tim Jones.
“And your other one works?”
“Yes, it’s fine.”
Suddenly, Simon Turing’s voice cut into the SWARM communications network. “HQ to Hive 1, we’ve got a match on the photo Chopper just sent us. The man’s name is Henry Blackwater. We’re delving into records now, but it loo
ks like he’s on MI5’s current watch list, so he must be a known criminal of some kind. We’re sending Agent K to his home address.”
“Logged,” replied Chopper.
“Thanks HQ, Hive 1 out,” said Agent J.
Henry Blackwater sniffed and placed the speaker behind the counter. “Yes, well, I’ve still got some of these in stock, I’ll give you a free replacement.”
“Oh,” said Tim Jones, raising his eyebrows slightly at Blackwater’s sudden change of heart. “OK. Thank you.”
Blackwater sorted through a pile of boxes on a rack behind him. He pulled one out and handed it over. “There.”
“Thanks,” said Tim Jones. “Bye.” He put the box into his carrier bag as he left the shop.
Blackwater watched him go. He moved to the far edge of the counter and craned his neck, to check that Jones was walking away and not reporting back to someone outside. He stood there for a few moments, eyeing the street outside. Agent J’s car was well out of his line of sight.
He returned to the broken speaker. He put it back on the counter, and turned it round a couple of times.
“Well now,” he mumbled to himself. “What happened here? Lucky you didn’t go wrong yesterday, eh?”
He fetched a set of miniature screwdrivers and spread them across the counter. He flipped the speaker over, turning its rear side upwards.
“Alert!” signalled Chopper. “It looks like he’s going to open up the speaker. Hercules will be discovered.”
“Already on it,” said Agent J. He was out of his car and across the street in seconds. He dashed over to the shop, the rest of the SWARM robots scuttling and buzzing by his side. “Sirena, maintain a full sensor watch outside.”
“Logged,” said the butterfly. She fluttered down and landed on the wall above the shop’s window.
Agent J marched into the shop, whistling loudly. The buzzer sounded. The noise and movement were enough of a distraction to allow the remaining five robots to enter the shop unnoticed.
“Hi!” said Agent J, raising a hand in greeting.
“We’re just closing,” said Blackwater impatiently.
“It’ll only take a minute,” Agent J replied cheerfully. “Promise. Need some expert advice!” His secret-service training has given him plenty of practice at adopting undercover identities.
“We’re open tomorrow at nine,” grumbled Blackwater.
“I don’t mind paying full price,” said Agent J. “Budget, no problem. Just point me in the direction of the top stuff and I’m out of your hair.”
Blackwater sighed. “What is it you want?” He quietly slid the speaker and screwdrivers to one side.
“You’re a star!” Agent J grinned. “I’m looking for one of those, er, what-they-called, where you can stream stuff from your phone and hear it all over the house?”
Blackwater nodded. “A network media player.”
“Yeah, that’s the one. I need the lot: speakers, player, you know. Will I need a new Wi-Fi router?”
“Not necessarily,” said Blackwater. “What sort do you have now?”
While Agent J distracted Blackwater, the robots quietly headed for the speaker. Chopper and Sabre hovered along close to the ceiling, while Nero, Widow and Morph crawled up a rack and onto the counter.
“I’ve scanned a couple of items on these racks,” said Nero. “One of them contains exactly the same sort of modified circuit board that we found in those speakers. It’s inside a radio.”
“I’ve found one too,” said Morph. “There’s a dock here with an identical circuit.”
The robots’ sensors quickly established that there were thirty-seven items in the shop which had also been altered. Almost all of them were expensive items on sale at unusually low prices.
“Blackwater must sell them to unsuspecting customers, who then become puppets for Firestorm,” said Chopper.
Nero scurried up onto the broken speaker and through the hole Hercules had made. “I’ll need some help getting Hercules free,” he said. “He’s bulkier than the rest of us!”
“It may be better if we all help,” said Chopper. “We’ve got to get Hercules out of there as fast as possible. If Blackwater takes the back off the speaker and discovers that a micro-robot stag beetle is in there, our cover is blown. That must never happen.”
Agent J was doing an excellent job of keeping Blackwater busy. He was getting Blackwater to open up boxes and show him various types of equipment.
Sirena, outside the shop, kept her sensors trained on the street, but there was nothing suspicious to report. She also monitored everything Blackwater was doing.
“You may not have long to free Hercules,” she said. “Blackwater is getting noticeably impatient. He’s probably itching to return to the speaker and find out why it broke down.”
“Logged,” said Chopper. All five robots were now inside the speaker. “Widow, seal the hole for the time being, just in case it’s spotted.”
“Logged,” said Widow. She adjusted the settings of her thread-making mechanism and fired a coiling line of web at the hole that exactly matched the colour of the speaker casing. The thread formed a neat, flat plug.
Meanwhile, the robots made detailed scans of Hercules. “Four of his legs are fused into the circuit board,” said Nero. “I can cut around the board, but it will take 42.9 seconds.”
“It would be quicker to simply snip through the legs,” said Sabre. “He can be repaired back at HQ.”
“My pincers don’t have enough power to do that,” said Nero. “He’s the toughest of us all. Hercules is built to withstand direct sledge-hammer blows and other explosive impacts.”
“Also, we couldn’t risk leaving even minor mechanical parts behind,” said Chopper. “Anything like that might threaten the secrecy of SWARM.”
“Whatever you do, do it quickly!” said Morph.
“Morph’s right,” said Sirena, from outside the shop. “Analysis of Blackwater’s body language shows he’s trying to get Agent J out of his shop.”
Agent J was getting the same impression. Although, at that moment, he wasn’t tapped into the robots’ communications, he knew they’d need time to get Hercules out, but he could see that Blackwater was getting jittery.
“Have you decided? Only, like I said, I’m closing.”
“Sorry, yeah,” grinned Agent J. “What was the output of this system again? The silver one?”
“Look, I want to get home today, OK? If I leave too late, I hit the traffic.”
“Sorry, sorry, yeah, you’re right! I know I go on! My girlfriend’s always telling me to shut up.”
“I know how she feels,” said Blackwater with a fake smile.
Inside the speaker, Nero’s pincers were snipping into one end of the circuit board. At the other end, Morph was flattening himself to squeeze between the board and the speaker’s casing, in order to force the two apart.
“We can’t have more than a matter of seconds,” said Chopper calmly.
“I think,” said Agent J, “I’m going to go for … the silver one. No! The red one! No! The silver one, definitely.”
Blackwater had lost patience. “Oh, make up your mind. Do you want to buy this thing or not?”
“Oh, I do, I do. You’ve been really helpful, Mr Blackwater. I’m so grateful for your expertise.”
The robots spotted Agent J’s error in less than a micro-second. Blackwater himself noticed it almost immediately. Agent J was so intent on keeping Blackwater busy that he didn’t realize what he’d done.
“Can’t we communicate with him?” said Nero.
“No, he was using his smartphone in the car,” said Chopper. “There wasn’t time for him to place an earpiece before we had to rush over here to the shop.”
“He’s in danger!” said Nero.
Blackwater reached over the counter and produced a set of chunky headphones. He put them on his head, shuffling them slightly to ensure a snug fit over his ears. “You’re going for the silver one, then?” he said wi
th a smile.
“Oh, yes, definitely,” said Agent J. The headphones puzzled him, but before he could ask about them, Blackwater picked up the radio he’d been working on earlier. This was one of the items containing one of the mysterious extra circuits.
“We do some great radios,” said Blackwater. “This is the latest digital receiver.”
By now, Agent J was nervous. He’d spotted the change in Blackwater’s attitude. A moment later, he realized the mistake he’d made. Blackwater had never mentioned his name.
“Thanks, I’ll take the silver one, then,” bluffed Agent J. “And some extra speakers. How about that one on the counter there?”
“Let me give you a demo of the radio,” said Blackwater, ignoring Agent J’s words. “Remarkable sound quality.”
He twisted a dial.
Suddenly, the shop was filled with a weird, pulsating sound. It was high-pitched and wavering, like the scream of some sort of hideous monster. Agent J winced and screwed up his eyes, unable to stop the throbbing noise slicing through his thoughts.
Even the robots’ sensors were partially affected by the intense sound waves. They shuddered and flinched, feeling shaken and dizzy.
Henry Blackwater watched Agent J impassively. The noise-cancelling headphones kept him shielded from the sonic vibrations that reverberated all around the shop.
Slowly, Agent J stood up straight. His face had become expressionless. His eyes were glazed and unfocused.
Blackwater switched off the radio. The pulsing sound died away. He removed his headphones and placed the radio back on the counter.
“How did you know my real name?” he said, staring angrily at Agent J.
“You were photographed,” said Agent J flatly. “A few minutes ago. My HQ managed to ID you.”
“Your HQ?” said Blackwater. “Where is your HQ?”
“In London.”
“How did you find me?”
“Analysis of the circuits. Inside the speakers.”
“What?” spluttered Blackwater. “That’s not possible! How did you do it?”
“Not me. Other agents.”
Inside the speaker, the robots’ electronic brains had resisted the hypnotic effects of the sound. However, they were still readjusting their sensors and struggling to regain their normal functions.
Code Name Firestorm Page 5
