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

by Jill Marshall

  ‘The Union of who?’ said Janey.

  ‘Of England and Scotland, of course.’

  ‘He means the Union Jack. The United Kingdom.’ Jack trotted over to the UK table. ‘Yes, all gone.’ And he held up a tiny name card. ‘Including this one.’

  ‘Matilda Peppercorn,’ they said together.

  ‘So that was the band she was being called for – a wrist-band.’

  Janey sighed. It could well be that Tilly was in some kind of trouble, but more than anything she needed to get to G-Mamma and find out about the murder charge.

  ‘You two find Tilly,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ll look for G-Mamma.’

  ‘Who is this Jeem-Amah?’ asked Stein. ‘Is she a housemaid from the colonies?’

  Jack grabbed his arm. ‘I’ll tell you on the way, but don’t you dare say that to her if you value your life. Death, I mean. Oh, just come on.’

  They hurried out through the back door, bursting into a very passable training routine as they neared some visiting athletes. Janey stared at the competitors. They were all wearing bracelets, along with the vacant zoned out expression she’d seen on the TV the other night. This was obviously where they’d been located as she watched – right here in Kazakhstan. So hopefully G-Mamma was here too – but she had no idea where.

  And then she recalled the first rule the SPI:KE had ever taught her: surprise, surprise, surprise. Sometimes, to surprise someone, it paid to do the obvious.

  Grabbing a coat from a nearby rail, Janey covered her spysuit and twisted her hair into a top knot, hoping she looked like a Kazakhstan policewoman, albeit a young one. Without pausing to check, she marched across to an official-looking booth and stomped up to the guard.

  ‘I am interpreter for prisoner,’ she barked, hoping whole-heartedly that they didn’t reply in whatever the local language was. ‘Take me.’

  Luckily, they spoke English. The guard looked her up and down then gazed at his phone. ‘What is the prisoner’s name?’

  ‘G … Rosie Biggenham,’ snapped Janey, sighing as if she had much better things to do than chat with mere guards.

  ‘And she is charged with?’

  Janey tutted. ‘With murder. As I may be also …’ she intoned darkly, raising her brow to indicate that the guard would probably be her next victim.

  The guard nodded quickly. ‘Fine. This way.’

  She trailed him through a maze of tents, marquees and prefabricated buildings from which the shouts and thumps of practicing athletes rang out, until she was almost sure he was leading her on a wild goose chase to confuse her. At long last, he stopped at the back of a row of what seemed to be earthen mounds. Was this a grave? Fear mounting, Janey followed his finger to the far side of the mound.

  A temporary prison had been dug into a bank of earth. At the side near to her it was much deeper – deep enough for a woman to stand in, just about, railed in by a massive iron gate. In the first cell was a woman half the size of G-Mamma, wearing two eye patches. She had scratched out a word in the dust at her feet. HELP. Janey turned to her instinctively.

  ‘Don’t touch,’ warned the guard, miming instant electrocution.

  ‘Of course not!’

  With a heart beating so fast it was a wonder the guard hadn’t seen her coat moving, Janey stepped in front of the next gate and addressed herself to the woman within. ‘Biggenham. I am interpreter.’

  G-Mamma stared at her with tears in her enormous blue eyes. ‘Blonde!’ she hissed. ‘Get me out of here! They’re feeding me nothing.’ She actually did look thinner, Janey was alarmed to see. Maybe the other lady had been bigger, too, before they locked her in here.

  Janey felt the guard’s eyes on her, so she blinked rapidly at her mentor and snapped at her again. ‘What is crime?’

  ‘They’re framing me for murder,’ said G-Mamma with a sob. ‘Me? Murder? Haven’t killed a soul since S … Sol’s Lols folded. But they found all this evidence at our … my lab. They ransacked it!’

  She had a horrible feeling she knew what the answer was going to be, but Janey was forced to ask. ‘And what was found?’

  ‘The poisoned ring and that stupid old rifle.’

  The very items that Janey had put there. G-Mamma had been framed, and Janey had unwittingly done it herself.

  ‘But who were you …’ She stopped herself quickly. ‘Who is victim?’

  G-Mamma shook her head, and for the first time ever Janey could see that she had absolutely no idea what to do. ‘I don’t even know the guy. Never met him.’

  ‘Which guy?’

  ‘Trent Varley.’

  ‘Trent Varley? Simone Varley’s husband?’ Janey could feel her accent slipping again, but she wanted to know more. G-Mamma nodded. Hoping it would sound like a Kazakhstan curse, she said insolently, ‘Ach, Gogs! Who is zis Trent Varley?’

  The information spooled out on the mini screens before her eyes. He was one of the HOST leaders, married to Simone Varley, the other man in the picture behind Oscar Sullivan’s desk.

  ‘And how did he die, Rosie Biggenham?’

  G-Mamma was nearly shaking. ‘This is the weirdest bit. Apparently, Blon … Interpreter, he was shot. Shot in an MRI machine.’

  And then Janey stepped right out of character. ‘But he can’t have been, G-Mamma,’ she cried. ‘Trent Varley isn’t even dead, or at least he wasn’t at that stage! He might be dead now, but you’re right – it’s a set-up.’

  Jane Blonde knew it for sure, because the image of Trent Varley being displayed on her glasses was completely familiar to her.

  Only a few hours before, that man had knocked Gideon Flynn off the castle ramparts in Transnordia, before falling to his own death over the edge.

  ‘I haven’t time to explain, but I’m going to get you out,’ she hissed urgently.

  But then the guard stepped up to her, pressing a remote control on his belt.

  ‘You’ve got all the time in the world,’ he said, not very kindly, ‘because you’re joining her in there. I heard accent. You are no interpreter.’

  With a foot in her back, he propelled her into the cell where she sprawled alongside her teacher. The gate slid shut behind her, humming with electrically evil power.

  ‘Good work, Blonde,’ said G-Mamma sardonically.

  ‘It’s all right. We’ll just have to wait for the others.’

  ‘Others?’

  The guard was right. She did need a lot of time to explain it all. All the time in the world.

  She heaved in a deep breath as Tilly would. ‘So there’s this place called Rustnuts,’ she began.

  Chapter 20 - The Great Escape

  G-Mamma listened with a slack jaw as Janey described everything that had gone on Transnordia, interjecting with occasional shouts of ‘Spies alive!’ and ‘You flew with Fang Airways?’

  When Janey told the tale of Gideon and – apparently – Trent Varley grappling on the battlements of the castle, she reached across and grabbed Janey, folding her into her capacious lime-green bosom. ‘What a thing to see, Blondey Baby! How are you coping?’

  ‘Okay. I’m mostly confused, though,’ said Janey, but then she paused.

  She really was confused, about matters like Gideon and Varley falling off the castle walls but their bodies not appearing on the ground below. Had the villagers taken them? Had they somehow fallen out of sight where not even Jack could find them? Although surely he’d have spotted their bas ambling about with his x-ray death vision or whatever it was he had. Added to that was the complication that Trent Varley was missing-presumed-dead at that point, judging by G-Mamma’s arrest. Well, he could certainly pack a punch for a dead guy.

  It was all completely bewildering, but nothing was more peculiar than the terrible sadness and feeling of loss that had swept over her when Gideon Flynn tumbled to his death. Actually, she’d wanted to cry when relating that part of the tale. And yet she didn’t like him or trust him and she suspected him of some truly hideous things – theft and avarice and possibly murder … Sh
e blinked up at G-Mamma from where she was squashed into her chest, and said again, ‘Yeah. Confused.’

  ‘I know, Zaney Janey,’ said G-Mamma with a sigh.

  ‘So what happened to you?’ Janey righted herself and leaned her back against the cell wall. It was pitted, hard and uncomfortable, but the only other options were the electrocuted gate or G-Mamma’s well-padded tracksuit, so she shuffled in closer to the wall and settled in for a long tale.

  G-Mamma was surprisingly brief, however. ‘We arrived in good time and checked in with the other athletes. Tilly said hello to Mrs Varley to see if she’d accuse her of stealing that ring, but she barely remembered the girl at all. I introduced myself as Tilly’s coach, and she just hurried off to deal with some technological issue. Ha! Technological issue my behind. Framing-me-and-locking-me-up issue, more like.’ She glared venomously at her orange trainers, as if she was visualising planting one in Mrs Varley’s mid-riff. ‘Then these goons in khaki – and I mean, what kind of colour is khaki? – grabbed me and hauled me off to speak to these policemen, English policeman, and it turned out they’d been tipped off that Trent Varley’s death was suspicious because he was,’ – she mimed air quotes – ‘“poisoned” with curare and then shot with an old-fashioned rifle in the HOST basement.’

  Janey nodded. ‘The MRI room. I saw it when I was collecting the rifle. The walls were covered in blood.’

  ‘AND,’ cried G-Mamma, ‘my lovely locks! One of my hairs was found near a plug socket, and both the ring and the rifle were found stashed away suspiciously in my home, as if I’d been trying to hide them.’

  Janey gulped, forcing back tears again. ‘That was all me! I’m so sorry. I must have had one of your hairs on my sleeve from dragging you to the operating theatre, and I suppose it fell off when I unplugged the MRI machine. The rifle was in that long doughnut box, and the ring was hidden in a cake tin.’

  ‘So not only do they believe I’m a murderer, but they think I’m a pig too! As if I could have eaten all those doughnuts,’ huffed G-Mamma crossly.

  ‘Well, you could …’

  The SPI:KE glared at Janey. ‘Not all at once! Seriously, Blondette – I’ve been poisoned myself and left for dead with some sheep creature trying to climb out of my body, according to Jack Booty-Delicious, and now framed for murder. Give me a break!’

  Janey apologised quickly, diverting G-Mamma as fast as she could. Provoking an angry, hungry G-Mamma in a small space was not a great idea. ‘So what did Tilly do?’

  ‘She tried her best,’ said G-Mamma with a shrug. ‘Did that slidy voice thing on the policeman, which is why they left me here instead of taking me back to the UK. She wanted to try out her kick-boxing on a few of the guards but we couldn’t compromise her position in the Games, so she grabbed my SPIV and headed back to the arena.’

  ‘She called me with it,’ said Janey, thinking hard.

  ‘Well! Maybe she’s not just loud and annoying.’

  ‘I don’t really trust her either, but I think she’s just … well, fun. She seems to enjoy everything.’ Janey stopped herself before pointing out that G-Mamma was a lot like that, too – even, occasionally, loud and annoying. ‘And she did manage to let us know what had happened. But where is she now? And Jack and Stein, of course. I’m guessing she’s had that bracelet stuck on her wrist, but what does that mean?’

  ‘More poison?’

  Janey’s innards squeezed tight. First G-Mamma, then Gideon’s plummet from the ramparts, and now Matilda Peppercorn. They were falling like flies. ‘I don’t know, but I’d hoped they’d be here by now. We need to get out of here and find them.’

  ‘Sure, if you want to be fried alive on a big griddle,’ scoffed G-Mamma, jabbing a finger towards the gate.

  ‘Well, there’s a keypad. Maybe I can find something to put in the code.’

  ‘You know the code?’

  ‘I know one code, but I’m not sure it’s the right one.’

  Scrabbling around on the floor of the earthen cave in which they were imprisoned, she tried to find something that would extend between the bars of the gate to touch the keypad. The cave was completely empty, presumably as it was newly created and hadn’t had anyone living in it. How she longed for some cavemen’s tools - a mammoth bone, or something. She took off her glasses, wondering if they would stretch out into a long prong, but as she approached the gate with them, they started to vibrate in her hand.

  ‘They’re made of metal, I suppose,’ she said, shoving them back on quickly. ‘They’d just send the current right through me. G-Mamma, what about your trainers? Do they have a rubber sole?’

  With her usual surprising dexterity, G-Mamma pulled her shoe in front of her nose and sniffed. ‘I think so! That will protect you from the electrical charge. Did I teach you that?’ she finished, preening slightly as she handed Janey an enormous orange sneaker.

  ‘No, I learned it in physics.’

  She placed her hand inside the trainer, realising instantly that G-Mamma was not undead like Stein, and evidently did sweat rather a lot. Why had she not persuaded her SPI:KE to do this? As carefully as she could, ensuring that not even a dangling lace could wobble against the fizzing metal gates, Janey eased her hand through the gap. ‘Good! I can reach it,’ she told G-Mamma, before turning the tip of the trainer towards the keypad.

  ‘O-7-1, oh! It’s not working. The toe isn’t pointy enough.’

  ‘Squash it!’ suggested G-Mamma, so Janey pulled it back through the gate and flattened the front of the trainer into an angle. Then she tried again.

  ‘O – yep, got that one, 7 … no, missed. I think I hit the 8 by mistake, and …’ She hunted around the keyboard helplessly. ‘Now I can’t find a correction key. I daren’t carry on, or we’ll trigger some alarm somewhere. That’s if it’s even the right code.’

  ‘Well, we can’t just sit here!’ G-Mamma scrambled to her feet. ‘Give me my shoe back and I’ll try it.’

  ‘It won’t work,’ said Janey despondently as she held out the trainer. ‘Unless …’

  She felt that tingle of anticipation as an idea occurred to her, accompanied by a tiny flash in her brain, like a camera going off. ‘Are your shoes equipped with Fleet-Feet?’

  ‘Of course,’ said G-Mamma, still holding her hand out for her missing trainer.

  ‘And so are mine. Which means that we have two pairs of matching spy devices. And they built this cell in a hurry which means some of the walls might be weak.’ Her eyes brightened as she X-rayed the cave wall through her spy glasses. ‘Here!’ she cried, running to the corner nearest the track she’d come down earlier. ‘It’s thinner here.’

  ‘Sometimes, if I say so myself, you’re quite brilliant, Blonde.’ G-Mamma cottoned quickly to what Janey was planning; she seized the shoe from her other foot and handed it to Janey.

  She was now holding – well, effectively a couple of small bombs. Scooping earth out of the cave wall with the trainers, she then planted the shoes in the hollow with the soles towards her. Without force, though, they couldn’t be detonated, which was where her own Fleet-Feet came in.

  ‘You’ll have to hold me up, GM,’ she said quickly, ‘and be careful not to fall back against the gates.’

  ‘I’ve got ya,’ the woman replied, positioning herself in the middle of the cell and linking her hands under Janey’s arms so that she was facing the wall.

  ‘On three,’ said Janey. ‘Three, two, one …’

  They moved seamlessly like a piston, Janey lifting her legs to waist height as G-Mamma leaned back to take the strain, just avoiding connecting with the gates. In one mighty shove, Janey rammed both legs out in front of her and slammed her feet against the soles of G-Mamma’s trainers, implanted in the earthen wall.

  The explosive impact was immediate. Janey and G-Mamma were thrown backwards but the SPI:KE held her ground. Before their eyes, the trainers emitted a dull ‘whu-whump’ then ploughed through the packed earth to the outside of the dirt cell and burst out into daylight in a tr
ail of smoke. Janey looked down – her own feet were shrouded in vapour too, and she realised how lucky it was she was wearing her spysuit, or else her ankles would have been broken, or possibly worse.

  Now a tunnel lay between them and the outside world, rather like the one at the cliff-top castle in Transnordia.

  ‘Come on!’ she shouted, throwing herself into it, head and elbows first.

  She was out in seconds, then she turned to help G-Mamma who squeezed herself through the tube, shovelling earth to either side to clear the way. ‘Now I know what a mole feels like. Ha! A mole, like a spy mole … oh never mind.’

  They stood for a moment, working out which way to go. Around them, televisions the size of cinema screens were directing the athletes to the bracelet tents, or to the arena, or for their screen-test for their sponsorship telethon. Half of every screen was dominated by a huge clock which counted down to the opening of the games. There were less than four hours to go.

  ‘Where do you think they’ll be?’ said G-Mamma, hastily shoving on her trainers.

  Following her lead, Janey threw off the coat she’d borrowed and untied her topknot. Hopefully they’d just be mistaken for an athlete and coach if anyone spotted them. She gazed at the screen again, working it out, working it out, with something niggling away at the back of her head.

  ‘Tilly’s team have been in the arena,’ she read from the directions, ‘and now they’re on the way for their screen test for their sponsorship telethon, so we need to find out where those two things are and check in between … oh no.’

  ‘Have we been spotted?’ G-Mamma jumped from side to side, trying to make herself invisible.

  Janey shook her head, her heart sinking. ‘No, it’s not that. It’s that I’ve just realised what this might all be about. The rubies in the wristbands are like SIM cards, and each individual athlete is asking for sponsorship through their own telethon, so there must be some connection. That code!’ she remembered with a start. ‘It’s like a telephone number – 0708 151 920. Maybe it’s a trick that will destroy all the athletes, or steal all their money, or …’