Catwalk Criminal

by Sarah Sky

  She rested her head in her hands. Sunday night had been an A to Z about how not to do a mission. Why did it have to go so horribly wrong on her first official assignment? She’d needed to prove to Nathan and his boss, Mrs T, that she was up to the job if she had any hope of staying on in Westwood beyond her six-month probation period.

  Jessica flicked her hair behind her shoulders. She couldn’t bear to think of the alternative. “Can’t you see there’s a possibility, even a slim one, that a Westwood model attacked me and programmed the drone to carry the USB device off the building?”

  “Yes, but it’s highly unlikely. Why would they deliberately sabotage the mission?”

  “For money? Or maybe they were blackmailed?” She shoved away the plate of toast Mattie placed in front of her. “Nathan needs to check all the girls’ bank accounts and maybe search their homes for potential evidence, particularly Bree’s.”

  Her dad reached over and squeezed her arm. “I get that you feel responsible for this mission failing, but it’s not your fault. You have to stop blaming yourself.”

  “How can I?” Her eyes filled with tears. “If this technology gets passed on to a terrorist, people could die because of me. How will I live with myself then? If I’d reacted quicker, I could have fought the attacker. I could have disabled the drone. I should have destroyed it while I had the chance.”

  Why hadn’t she dismantled the mini helicopter? She’d been beating herself up about that ever since Sunday night. If she’d sabotaged the escape device, the USB couldn’t have been flown off the building.

  “Hindsight’s a wonderful thing,” her dad said, “and we all wish we had it. The truth is, some missions will succeed and some will fail.”

  “Jack’s right,” Mattie said, sitting down next to him. “You can’t beat yourself up about what’s happened. You need to learn from it and move on. It’s what I had to do many, many times.”

  Jessica was about to argue back. She stopped herself. She hated to admit it, but spying was one thing that Mattie actually got.

  “What if I can’t let go?”

  “Then you should quit Westwood,” Mattie said bluntly, “because you’ll have to make judgement calls all the time. Some will be right, others won’t. You have to deal with the fallout. I did. So did your mother and father.”

  Leaving Westwood wasn’t an option. She couldn’t give up, however hard the coming months would be. It was the only way she’d find out what had happened to her mum all those years ago.

  “Please seek assistance.”

  Jessica barged into the ticket barrier, which failed to open as she swiped her Oyster card. Great. It was malfunctioning. She’d topped up her card with thirty pounds shortly before the job at the Shard and had been placed under house arrest by Mattie for the last five days, so she obviously had more than enough cash in her account for a return fare to Pimlico. Pressing her card against the sensor, she rolled her eyes with frustration as the message flashed up again. The barrier remained firmly shut. Typical. This wasn’t a good day to be running late.

  She was supposed to be at MI6 HQ in forty-five minutes for a debriefing. An MI6 agent had already visited her at home and taken a detailed statement about the Shard job. No doubt he was cross-checking to see if it tallied with the other models’ versions of events. Nathan had relayed the message that she had nothing to worry about; that the case had been passed to another department and there were a few minor details to run over. Still, she’d wanted to get to the meeting early enough to catch Nathan and raise her theory about Bree’s possible involvement with the mystery buyer. Face to face was far better; she hadn’t wanted to do it over the phone.

  Unfortunately, her dad had already delayed her; he was having trouble logging on to his online banking from his desktop. The whole system must have been down because she couldn’t access his current account via his app either. After ten minutes of trying, she’d had to give up. She couldn’t afford to miss today, even though it meant cancelling her usual Saturday brunch with Jamie at a local café. She’d claimed she was going round to Becky’s to help run through lines for her role in a new National Youth Theatre production. He hadn’t been too happy that she’d bailed on him yet again, but what could she do? She’d have to think of a way to make it up to him once all this Shard stress was over.

  Checking her watch, she calculated her route as she strode over to the ticket machine. It was eleven stops from South Ealing, changing at Green Park, so she could allow three minutes per station. She’d just about do it if the trains weren’t delayed. Fingers crossed. But she’d have to run like a mad thing at the other end. Hopefully she’d be up to it. She felt almost a hundred per cent – or ninety-eight per cent anyway. OK, ninety-five per cent.

  She pressed “Top Up” on the screen. Her Oyster card had zero funds. What? That couldn’t be right. Why didn’t the thirty pounds show up? Whatever. She’d pay again and chase up her missing cash later. She sighed as she pulled out her dad’s emergency credit card. She tapped in the PIN and waited.

  Number invalid.

  No! She tried again, but the card was rejected, as it had been at the cashpoint down the road when she’d tried to get money out a few minutes ago. This was the last thing she needed. She scraped together enough coins from the bottom of her blue Victoria Beckham handbag for a single fare to Pimlico. She’d worry about the return journey later.

  She pelted down the stairs and managed to get on a train as the doors closed. Phew. That was lucky. Today had to get better.

  Jessica burst into the briefing room, red-faced and out of breath. She’d spent the last twenty minutes attempting to get past reception downstairs, as her security pass wasn’t working and the system had no record of her name or any of the aliases she sometimes used. What was going on today? Was this karma for lying to Jamie?

  “You’re late,” Nathan said accusingly. “We had to start without you.”

  He sat at the head of the table with Natalia, Bree and Sasha on his right. Opposite were unfamiliar faces: a man with a grey goatee and a red-headed thirty-something woman with glossy scarlet lips. They didn’t look too pleased to see her; the woman gave her a particularly scathing look. This wasn’t a great first impression, admittedly, but surely they could cut her some slack? It wasn’t exactly her fault she was horribly late. Who were they anyway?

  She threw her black Ossa Cosway pea coat on to a chair and quickly slipped into a spare seat further down the table. “I’m really sorry, Nathan. You wouldn’t believe the day I’m having.”

  He gave her a curt nod and returned his gaze to his laptop.

  Jessica helped herself to a glass of water. She was dying of thirst. Thank God she’d finally made it.

  Natalia shot her a sympathetic look. Her cheeks were bright red and her eyes glittered with tears. Bree and Sasha didn’t look in much better shape either. Yikes. Nathan must have hauled them over the coals, or maybe it was the other MI6 agents sitting across the table who’d laid into them. He hadn’t bothered to introduce them to her. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise that she’d missed the worst of the Shard post-mortem.

  Nathan tapped at his laptop keyboard without looking up. “Feeling better now, I hope? Jack’s been giving me regular updates about your recovery.”

  “Yes, thanks.” Nausea was still a problem now and then, but she’d regained all feeling in her limbs. She’d even managed to run here without getting cramps. The bruise on her face had faded and she’d have the stitches removed from her hand soon.

  “Great. To fill you in, we still have this man in custody.” Nathan clicked on the mouse.

  A photo flashed up on the large screen on the wall. It was the Frenchman. Jessica had last seen him dangling helplessly from the window-cleaning rope at the Shard.

  “Is he cooperating?” she asked. “He didn’t seem the type.”

  “To a certain extent,” he replied. “He’s
cut himself a deal in return for info on the underworld Chinese contacts he was acting as a go-between for. He was the middleman.”

  “So that’s progress, I guess?” Jessica pulled out her notepad and pen from her handbag.

  “Except we have an unknown player,” the goatee man chipped in. “The third party who somehow knew about the deal with the Chinese and swiped the USB drive from under our noses.”

  She flinched. He meant her nose.

  The woman leant forward, fixing Jessica with a hard stare. “The powder you inhaled has a temporary amnesic effect. Is there anything you’ve remembered since that night about your attacker? A glimpse of an identifying feature? A scent of a particular aftershave or perfume? A sound? Anything at all that can help us track him down?”

  Jessica glanced at the other models. Bree glared back. Should she say something now? This could be her chance to alert MI6 to her theory, but something in the woman’s eyes made her pause. Her dad was right. She couldn’t throw accusations around about a colleague she had issues with in front of total strangers without proof; she’d look unprofessional or, worse still, vindictive. She’d have to grab Nathan afterwards and try to broach the subject off the record.

  “I don’t remember. I’m sorry.”

  The woman clasped her red talons together and leant forward. “Pity. We have no leads, no information and nowhere to go with this, apart from your account of what happened.”

  Her tone made Jessica catch her breath. “And you doubt that?”

  The woman’s lips curled into a smile, but her blue eyes were hard. “Should we?”

  What was she insinuating? That she’d made the whole thing up and stolen the USB drive herself? Maybe she should have voiced her suspicions while she had the chance and landed the other models in it. Had Bree already cast doubt on her story in order to cover her back?

  “I’ve told the truth and I’m not concealing anything.”

  “That’s good to hear. I’m sure you’ll give us your full cooperation.”

  The man and woman stared at her. What was going on?

  “Of course,” Jessica replied. “By the way, who are you both?”

  “I’m sorry. I should have introduced you.” Nathan gestured at the redhead. “This is Agent Clare Hatfield.”

  She stared back, unsmiling.

  “And this is her colleague, Agent George Booth.”

  “I guess you’re both from the unit charged with recovering the USB device?” Jessica said.

  The woman laughed and exchanged looks with Agent Booth. “No, that’s not our remit at all.”

  “Er, OK. What is it you both do?”

  “We investigate colossal cock-ups like this one and determine whether a department, in this case Westwood, has been compromised by a leak,” Agent Hatfield said sharply.

  Jessica sat back in her seat. “So you do think this was an inside job?”

  “If you’d managed to turn up on time, you’d have heard me say exactly that.” The woman’s icy blue eyes challenged her. “Someone knew we were intercepting the Frenchman at the Shard and planned ahead. They used the distraction to steal the USB flash drive.”

  Hello? Judging by the way she was glaring at Jessica, she must consider her the prime suspect. “I can assure you—”

  The door banged open and a bespectacled man burst in, panting.

  “I thought I said not to disturb me?” Nathan snapped. “We’re in the middle of something important right now.”

  “Sorry, sir. But we have a breach.”

  Nathan was already on his feet. “Tell me.”

  “MI6 is under attack along with the rest of the country.”

  “What?”

  “Sam Hewitt says to come right away.”

  Without uttering a word, Nathan followed him out the room. Agents Hatfield’s and Booth’s mobiles were vibrating.

  “I’ve already heard,” Agent Hatfield barked into her phone. “Put emergency protocols in place. Launch Operation Chaffinch.”

  Jessica exchanged glances with Sasha and Natalia, but Bree avoided eye contact. Did she think she’d had a lucky escape? Jessica grabbed her bag and coat and chased after the agents. Alarms sounded in the corridors and lights flickered on and off. She had to catch up; the building was going into lockdown. She sprinted after Nathan and the others, diving through a set of doors that shut and locked. Sasha and Natalia weren’t as quick; they were trapped in the corridor. Nathan peeled off into a room on the right, followed by agents Hatfield and Booth. The redhead had kicked off her high heels in the sprint.

  Jessica caught the door as it clicked, sealing her inside a large open-plan comms centre. Ranks of computers lined the room. Men and women were hammering at keyboards and talking urgently into earpieces. The man who’d gatecrashed their briefing slipped into a seat and put headphones on. Another man stalked towards them. He was tall and lean, wearing green-rimmed glasses and black gloves, with a shock of curly red hair. Jessica glanced from Nathan to the other agents. None of them seemed to think his appearance was odd.

  “Agents Hatfield, Booth, this is our systems analyst, Sam Hewitt,” Nathan said. “Bring us up to speed, Sam.”

  “Our firewalls came under attack from a computer virus approximately thirteen minutes ago. It didn’t appear to be anything out of the ordinary at first. We deal with cyberattacks like this hundreds if not thousands of times a day.”

  “Tell us something we don’t know,” Agent Hatfield spat out.

  The analyst wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. “This virus was different. Within seconds it had mutated and bombarded us with reams of data, which crashed our server for a few seconds. Then multiple, simultaneous attacks targeted various sites across the UK.”

  “Where?” Nathan asked.

  Sam waved his gloved right hand. A gigantic screen suddenly appeared, cutting the room in two. “This is the current scene at Hyde Park Corner.”

  CCTV footage of a large roundabout appeared. Jessica gasped as cars and buses crashed into one another. The footage flashed to different cameras, showing traffic lights all flashing green.

  Sam swiped the air and the image was replaced by another. “It’s the same at Oxford Circus and Trafalgar Square. All the traffic lights are either out or totally malfunctioning and turning green simultaneously.”

  Jessica stepped forward, but Sam had already batted the image away. Now he was flicking through a video file mid-air. How was he doing that? It looked like he was operating some kind of hands-free touchscreen using those weird gloves. It reminded her of Minority Report, the old Tom Cruise movie she’d watched with her dad years ago.

  “Whilst police were trying to deal with traffic chaos, this happened at Buckingham Palace,” Sam continued.

  He flicked his fingers and expanded the screen, zooming in. Police cars and ambulances surrounded the landmark building.

  “A computer virus has breached the emergency services’ firewall and taken control of the comms, sending police and ambulances to the palace. It’s also diverted officers to Downing Street, the Home Office and every single foreign embassy in London. All have been put on a high terror alert.”

  Waving both hands, he brought up images of each scene and arranged them in order in front of them. All were playing real-time footage, judging by the digital time-stamp at the base of each screen.

  “This must be stretching the police to breaking point,” Nathan said.

  “Precisely. Now this is happening.”

  The pictures disappeared and an image of a prison flashed up. Helicopters hovered overhead.

  Sam created a split screen. “That’s Belmarsh and this is Wakefield Prison.”

  Nathan’s face went white. “Please tell me we’re not looking at mass breakouts?”

  “Not yet. Viruses are attacking security firewalls at maximum security prisons. So far, eve
ry single door at Belmarsh and Wakefield has been automatically locked. Prisoners and families are trapped in waiting rooms and guards remain locked up with inmates in workshops. There’s no word yet on potential casualties.”

  “How long before we regain control?” Agent Hatfield asked.

  “A minimum of thirty minutes. The army’s moving in, but we’re also getting reports of hacks into the security systems of dozens of prisons across the country, including Low Newton in Durham and Long Lartin in Worcestershire.”

  Nathan looked startled. “We cannot afford breaches at any closed prisons. I want a maximum response, prioritizing those with Category A prisoners who are a danger to the public.”

  “We’re on it,” Sam said.

  “Do you have any idea who’s doing this?” Jessica asked.

  Agent Hatfield swung round. “Does that girl have clearance to be in here?”

  “Jessica’s the least of our problems,” Nathan snapped.

  Agent Hatfield gave her a withering look and turned back to the screen.

  “No one’s claimed responsibility yet and we’re still trying to trace the source of the various viruses,” Sam continued. “The one attacking MI6 is most worrying. Every couple of seconds, the code mutates as it attempts to crack our firewall. We’re doing everything we can to keep it out of our system. So far, it’s holding up, but we can’t trace the origin of the hacker. The IP address is being rerouted around hundreds of internet cafés all over the world, from India to Australia. While we try to nail it down, more virus attacks spring up elsewhere.” He touched his earpiece. “Such as right now. Multiple cashpoints are ejecting money across the country. The banks’ computers can’t shut them down and the police won’t be able to get to every site.”

  With a flick of his wrist, images of fighting erupted in front of them. Footage showed a man waving a wad of cash in the air. Seconds later he was wrestled to the ground by a gang of men in Manchester city centre.