S*W*A*G*G 1, Spook

by Jill Marshall

  If she hadn’t been in such a bad mood, that was a race that Janey might even have enjoyed.

  ‘How about you?’ she said stiffly to Gideon Flynn.

  He shrugged. ‘I’ve got some … research to do in about an hour’s time. I might just stay in here in the meantime, if that’s all right with you, GM?’

  ‘Fine by me.’ G-Mamma was obviously already thinking about crispy duck and green beans. ‘You paid for the Octobus anyway! Only right that you should get to use it.’

  Janey almost scowled. He’d paid for the spy upgrades, and Jack’s castle upkeep, and Tilly’s entry into the games. What else did he think he could buy his way into?

  Maybe that was the research he was doing – in their spy van.

  So perhaps she should do some research of her own – like, where was he getting all the money to shell out for gadgets and games admittance?

  ‘Bye then,’ she said to Flynn, not sure why she was so torn between feeling pity for him at the same time as being volcanically furious.

  He regarded her warily. ‘Good night, Janey.’

  Oh, it will be, she told herself. It really will.

  Chapter 15 - Following Guts and Gideons

  An hour later, with her parents placated by the sight of a hastily grabbed textbook that she insisted on reading in her room, Janey slipped back through the fireplace into the Spylab under the pretence of checking on G-Mamma. No – not a pretence, she reminded herself. Of course she was concerned about her. She genuinely wanted to check that the Big G had fully recovered.

  It certainly looked as though she had. The SPI:KE was surrounded by takeaway trays, littered among several hard, crusty ends of spring rolls which Trouble was eyeing up hopefully.

  ‘Are you feeling okay now?’

  ‘Yup. Much better now I’m breathing. I like breathing, I’ve decided.’ G-Mamma looked her up and down. ‘Have you come to de-Wow, Blondalicious?’

  Janey puffed out her cheeks. ‘Oh, actually, I thought I might just check … you know, on Gideon.’

  ‘Did you now?’ said her SPI:KE in that strange tone of voice again. ‘Well, I’m sure our patron can manage on his own.’

  She had to come clean. ‘Okay, G-Mamma, I mean that I want to follow him. He’s only telling us part of the truth, I know it, and besides, he was so … so rude! I don’t trust him, and I’m just tuning in to my spy instincts like you always said I should.’

  G-Mamma nodded. ‘Following your gut?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Janey.

  ‘Feeling a little peculiar, is it? Your gut, I mean.’

  ‘No, just …’ Actually it was, but she wasn’t about to tell her mentor that. It was as though her spy instincts were on fire, working overtime; if G-Mamma knew that, she’d suspect Janey was in danger and not let her go after Gideon. Or … maybe she was in danger! Perhaps her spy instincts – her gut – had been compromised. Maybe she’d been poisoned too – by the super-sized ruby. It had certainly made her feel strange.

  ‘I just think I ought to find out what he’s up to,’ she spluttered, aware that G-Mamma was patiently waiting for an answer, with her arms crossed and her eyebrows meeting her hairline. ‘And you … you should investigate where that poison came from! It must be the ring.’

  ‘Actually that’s exactly what I should do, Blondette,’ said G-Mamma. ‘Where did you put it?’

  She’d been distracted, to Janey’s relief. It wasn’t that she didn’t want G-Mamma with her on this particular part of the mission - it was just that she moved faster and operated better on her own. Sometimes. Whisking the Invisibubble covering from the cake tin with the ring in it, Janey grabbed a cold spring roll and headed down the SPIral staircase.

  As she stepped out into the moonlight, Janey remembered something about her newly refreshed spy-suit. Like the Girl Gauntlet, it contained Invisibubble technology – but she didn’t know where or how it worked.

  ‘Invisibubble switch,’ she hissed to her Ultra-Gogs, and instantly a diagram popped up on the mini screen before her eyes.

  In reality, it wasn’t a switch - it was the label in the back of the neat neckline of her suit. She reached over her head and pulled it up and over her shoulder like the ripcord on a parachute, then watched as her shoulders, arms, stomach, thighs, knees, ankles and finally her feet disappeared from sight. Her head could be seen, but she was still holding the Invisibubble napkin with which she’d hidden the ruby ring. She draped it over her head, tucking it into the collar of her suit along with her ponytail, and checked in G-Mamma’s front window. She had no reflection at all.

  ‘Like a blood-sucking vampire,’ she told herself.

  But the only blood she was worried about was the stuff sprayed around the HOST office. And the blood that had thumped in her ears and trickled down her thumb when she’d held the massive gemstone in her palm . There was a whole lot of mystery needing further investigation. Time to get going.

  As she turned around and strode across to the Octobus, wondering how to get into it without Gideon noticing, she suddenly spotted him. He was walking away from the van, sticking to the edges of the pavements where the streetlights wouldn’t give his presence away. Janey trailed him at a safe distance. Even though he wouldn’t be able to see her, she didn’t want him to hear her footfall.

  After a mile or so she realised where he was going. As she had done herself on many occasions, and once or twice in a very spectacular fashion on a SPIcycle, he was taking the Tube. It was late; the barriers were open and unattended, so he breezed through the gates and made his way down the stairs to the District Line. Feeling bad for not buying a ticket, Janey hesitated at the barriers – but then recalled that she’d spent the day stealing rubies and avoiding evils with guns. Was one train ticket going to make a difference? Besides, nobody could see her.

  It was as if she wasn’t really there.

  She crept down the stairs behind Gideon, then perched on a different bench to await the train’s arrival. He let the first one go by, perhaps because it was destined for Ealing Broadway, and then drifted onto the second train bound for Richmond. He moved with his head down, eyes cast towards the floor, as sad and quiet as Janey had ever seen him, making eye contact with nobody and avoiding the seats and rails because of the painful condition that made physical contact so sore. Instead, he remained in the doorway, swaying gently.

  Through the next set of doors, Janey slipped, undetected, onto the same train.

  They alighted, separately, at the Richmond terminus, whereupon Gideon started walking again, tucking his head into the unusually rounded collar of his shirt and giving any people he passed a very wide berth. It was as if he was ashamed, Janey thought – as if he felt they would stare at him with his illness on view for all to see, like some kind of deformity. For a moment she wanted to run up to him and tell him that nobody saw him like that. He was just pale and tired-looking, that was all, and there were plenty of people around them who were the same – Alfie, for instance, and Janey herself sometimes. Before she could decide to give up her disguise and offer her kind words, he turned a corner, stepped sideways through some tall iron gates, and disappeared into the blackness.

  She’d lost him! Janey took to her heels, kicking the Fleet-Feet into action and surging onwards towards the gates. She could see he wasn’t directly behind them, and with her Invisibubble outfit he wouldn’t be able to see her anyway, so she took a risk and slammed down onto her soles. The spring action of the Feet didn’t get her completely across the gates, but she landed near the top, hung on with both hands and swung herself over, landing neatly and silently on the tarmac with her toes together and her arms out to balance herself. See, she thought, I’m like a gymnast. It could have been Janey herself in the World Community Games – although she would have to compete in her spy-suit …

  Suddenly she spied him ahead of her, striding through the trees past startled deer and the occasional indignant-sounding owl. They appeared to be in some kind of gardens, although it was slightly wilde
r and certainly a lot larger.

  ‘Where am I?’ she asked her Gogs under her breath, and the answer came up immediately. ‘Ah. Richmond Park,’ she read. ‘The largest of London’s eight Royal Parks and the biggest enclosed space in London. Interesting. Thank you!’

  Gideon was speeding up now, hurrying through the trees as a nearby church clock chimed eleven thirty. Janey closed the gap between them, afraid he’d whisk out of sight as once more he stepped sideways through a set of gates that Janey vaulted, this time in one smooth leap.

  They were in a different part of town, with smaller terraced houses – cottages, almost – that edged the Thames. Finally, Gideon began to slow. The houses had almost petered out and they were reaching the end of the terrace. Light shone from a low window in the last house, shifting in the darkness – someone watching TV, Janey guessed. Beyond the house there appeared to be a small park, and other adjoining terraced houses set out around a small triangular green. It was almost like a tiny version of the grander gardens they’d seen at Simone Varley’s house.

  She drew to a halt suddenly. Gideon had stopped. Standing before the blinking window with the flickering shafts of light, he stuffed his hands further into his pockets and peered inside. Janey edged closer so that she could see past him.

  He was staring intently at an elderly couple who leaned against each other, side by side on a neat sofa. The old gentleman was probably in his nineties, and Janey could see that he was actually nodding off, although he would wake with a start occasionally and pretend he’d been concentrating on the screen. Beside him, the elderly lady completed her crossword, took off her glasses and laid her head on her husband’s shoulder. Together, they continued to watch the TV, although Janey was sure that neither of them was far from sleep.

  As she hung back near the hedge, a familiar face was projected onto the window pane as Simone Varley and her fellow HOST executive told the world about the upcoming World Community Games. Mrs Varley’s face was wreathed with smiles and solicitous concern, but Janey knew better than to trust them. So far the woman had owned a dangerous ring, told her henchmen to shoot at them all, and ordered her destruction in a mysterious basement – for Janey was convinced that the voice and the green shoes had belonged to Varley. As for the man, Janey recognised him from two photographs she’d now seen of him: it was Henry Wentworth, a handsome man in his fifties or sixties who grinned too often and too broadly for comfort.

  Janey zoomed in quickly.

  ‘… a global first,’ the woman was saying. ‘Through the power of technology we will be able to – ahem - host every event, from skiing to tennis or curling on ice to beach volleyball, with all events occurring concurrently over just three days. Athletes will be convening in a tiny handful of locations around the world tomorrow, and the viewer will never have had so much choice. They’ll be able to watch multiple sports at the same time. They’ll be able to attend “live” via fan-led forums on a scale such as you’ve never before seen, and the piece de resistance … every single athlete will have fan-cam capabilities so you can join in the match, run the race, play the game along with them, from the athlete’s perspective.'

  ‘This is state-of-the-art technology.’ The interviewer cocked his head. ‘Are these athletes the first to try it?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Simone Varley’s response seemed a little snappy. ‘As all great inventors do, we tried it on our own people first.’

  ‘Your own people? So are you saying—'

  ‘And let’s not forget, Simone,’ Henry Wentworth interjected smoothly, his toothy smile encompassing the woman, the journalist and the camera alike, ‘you can even sponsor your favourite athlete as you watch. Many of them are not professionals and need funding to continue towards their dream. So Andrew, it’s a truly mind-blowing, multi-sharing, viewer-centric experience.’

  ‘Which brings us,’ said Andrew casually, ‘to the athletes we won’t be seeing – Vance Kettering, and now Olympian diver, Karen Fallows, who dropped out with crippling migraines just this morning, citing HOST as the cause.’

  Wentworth wrinkled his brow thoughtfully. ‘It’s a very sad state of affairs, Andrew,’ he crooned, ‘when people who’ve served their country well don’t just retire gracefully, but rather insist on blaming others for the end of their career. Everyone knows how much your head hurts when you hit the water. That’s obviously the cause of her migraines. Nonetheless, we are having Fallows tested in our own top-class facility with the very latest in medical technology.’ He grinned again, directly at the camera. ‘We promise not to live-stream that though, Andrew, as we will with forty plus different events shown simultaneously and then sequentially from the Games.’

  ‘Extraordinary – and just thirty-six hours to go until this all begins in …’ Andrew the journalist laughed. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter where, viewers, because it’s all in your own hands!’

  The camera panned out to show a vast arena, decorated with HOST material with the now familiar logo of a bejewelled ‘O’ in the centre of the company’s name, and bristling with satellite equipment and antennae. Men and women of all shapes, sizes and nationalities were warming up, practicing with or against each other, or simply gazing into space as they reached for the Zen-like state they needed to hone their physical performance.

  In the darkness outside their window, Gideon watched the old people watching TV, apparently not interested in the information about the Games despite being so desperate to get Tilly involved in them. He didn’t move or attempt to knock on the door. In fact, the couple would have had no way to know that he was there at all. In the beams of light dancing through the low window, Janey could see that Gideon Flynn’s weary eyes were heavy with tears.

  He stayed in his covert position, his head scrunched down into his neck, his eyes more pained than ever before until they finally switched off the television set and the lights and went to bed. Then he turned away and walked to the triangular patch of grass, staring at the ground, once more alone in the shadows.

  Janey watched him until she felt like the worst kind of spy – more like a sneak. It was too late now to reveal herself to him. He’d know that she’d been there for ages, and she wouldn’t be able to explain why in any satisfactory way. She wondered now if she understood a little more – were these his great (or however many greats it had been) grandparents, from whom the rifle had been stolen? Or perhaps his condition meant he couldn’t go near his relatives as they were so elderly and frail and it might be fatal for them if they caught it. Maybe that was why he gazed at them with such intense sadness.

  Whatever the reason, she knew that this was a part of the mission from which they were excluded. This was private. She’d overstepped the mark, and she wanted no more of this overwhelming sense of despair.

  In fact, like Tilly and Jack, suddenly she wanted to run. Disguised by her spysuit, Janey set up the directions on her Ultra-Gogs, and raced, fleet of foot, across the city and back towards her home.

  All at once, she couldn’t imagine anywhere that she’d rather be.

  Knowing someone was there from the moment he arrived at the house, he’d adapted his actions accordingly.

  His sense was that whoever it was posed no kind of threat. They appeared to be just watching him. Which meant that he couldn’t suddenly leave when he’d obviously come all this way to achieve something – and anyway, it was his gift to himself, standing in the garden like this, feeling so close. He’d continued to wait there for so long that he’d almost forgotten the presence of the second person standing just metres away.

  But then the Games were projected onto the window, right before his eyes, and once again he curbed his reactions. He could have no reaction, in fact. Whoever it was could have no knowledge of the way the news item disturbed him. Actually, worried him to the core. They might be a HOST member, somehow able to keep tabs on him, like the one he thought he’d seen at the offices the other day. He’d given chase, but the figure disappeared before he could catch up.

 
; So despite the sense of panic filling his chest as the news report continued and the double act of Varley and Wentworth shamelessly plugged the games and their own technology (and what a joke that was), Gideon Flynn simply trained his eyes on the elderly pair through the window – the impossibly elderly couple - never letting his gaze even flicker to the TV screen.

  But just because he wasn’t staring at the screen didn’t mean he couldn’t hear it. He heard all of it. Heard what they were saying and understood it more than anyone else could possibly know.

  Which was only natural, when he was the one who had discovered what the ruby could do. He was the one who’d tested and experimented and played until he uncovered the stone’s amazing wave-transmitting properties, from short UV waves that could read invisible ink, to the long infra-red rays used for lasers and masers. Then, like the prized fool he was, so proud of his own cleverness, he’d invented a way to create more, finding the means to mix AI² O³ with Cr² O³, creating fake rubies like the Geneva stone in the birthday ring. Loving the science and the numbers. Always loving the numbers.

  And now they were mass-producing rubies in that crypt beneath the HOST offices and it was his fault. Someone had died while testing the new batch – because he was now pretty sure that this was the reason for the twitching eyes, the jerking body. That was his fault too. What was about to happen – it was his fault. He had to stop it. Poisonous anger surged through him, just as it had for all this time. All this time that he’d spent researching, learning, finding solutions. They must pay for what they’d done. He’d waited long enough.

  So that meant hiding his emotional response to the news piece from whoever was observing him. He held on fast to his neutral stance, although he was fairly sure his eyes filled up from time to time. Then, when they went to bed, he turned the other way and marched off across the green, making for the trees which always made him feel wholesome again, somehow, strenuously hoping that the other person in the garden wouldn’t follow this time.