Survival

by Joe Craig

  “Not yet,” Stovorsky corrected him. “But he could be soon. He could be the future of Britain, and if he is, we want him to be grateful to France.”

  “So should I meet him?”

  “No.” Stovorsky held up a finger to emphasise his point. “He’s powerful and he’s dangerous.”

  “But you just said—”

  “Someone should meet him, but not you. We can’t trust him. I’ll send someone who can defend themselves if there’s trouble.”

  The man with the moustache was indignant. “I’m a trained agent!” he protested. “I’m highly dangerous!”

  “I can only see your head and shoulders,” replied Stovorsky, “but you still manage to look overweight.” He shook his head in exasperation while his colleague glanced down to examine his waistline and tried to suck in his belly.

  “I’m sending Zafi,” Stovorsky announced. “Jimmy’s family isn’t going anywhere – NJ7 will make sure of that. So she can leave them for now, meet Viggo, then go back later if she needs to.”

  “What do you mean?” The moustache man stared into the camera. “About the family?”

  “Nothing.” Stovorsky sighed. “It’s just we’re having a slight… problem. Jimmy’s… it doesn’t matter. You can leave this with me. I’ll take it from here.”

  They ended the conversation quickly and in under ninety seconds Stovorsky was decrypting an email attachment containing details of a proposed meeting with Christopher Viggo. With new energy, he straightened his tie and rolled his shoulders several times. Then he opened a fresh document. It was time to send Zafi her new instructions, then get out of Africa. Somebody else could run about in the heat for a change.

  Zafi snapped out of her sleep with a flood of images in her head – the flat where she was staying the night, a rough schematic outline of the whole estate, the light on her mobile phone softly glowing in the darkness… For a second they were outshone by the brightest of them all – a flash of something from her dream. But then it was gone, forgotten forever. Her dreams always vanished like that.

  She rolled off the sofa, slipping out from under the blanket. Still she didn’t let her guard down and kept her hoodie covering her face. It was cold and the only noise was the occasional thrum of a car or night bus going past the window. The lights flared through the gap where the curtains didn’t quite meet.

  Zafi grabbed her phone and felt a knot of anxiety forming in her chest. A new message. Her thumb hovered over the button. Was this the kill order? A part of her thrilled to the idea, while the rest wanted to shut it out completely. If it was, she would obey. She had always followed orders and always would. It’s how I’m made, she told herself. At the same time she knew that somewhere out there was a boy made just the same way as her, but who didn’t follow orders when he didn’t like them.

  She opened her message. The seemingly random sequence of letters and numbers jumped into her head, taking new form as it travelled, as if to her it was written in 3-D and could dance to form new shapes.

  Viggo? She was suddenly awash with a strange mixture of confusion and relief that she didn’t want to admit existed. And not to kill, but to talk? It seemed simple enough, but Zafi didn’t like it. Why was the DGSE using her as a messenger all of a sudden? She thought she was their most potent weapon. Recently they’d sent her to try to kill the British Prime Minister. Were her doubts stronger than she thought? Had they started to show?

  No, she reassured herself. Impossible. They’ll want me to kill somebody soon. Everything will go back to the way it was. Even as she gave herself this pep-talk, there was a growl of terror in her heart.

  A second later she was up and could feel new strength pumping through her. She was about to dash out of the front door, but stopped herself. She stood, frozen, staring at the half-finished Monopoly game still set out on the coffee table. What if the DGSE did send her a new kill order? And what if the targets were the other people asleep in this flat?

  * * *

  The iron lattice gate on Wharfdale Road rattled as Zafi climbed over it, but at 4.00 a.m. there was nobody around to notice. She hurried to the end of the narrow alley, where there was an opening in the brickwork and a dark stairway.

  Years ago there had been an Ice House Museum here, offering an experience of London’s Victorian age, when ships brought Norwegian ice up the canals to this spot. Some of the museum paraphernalia still survived. Zafi hurried down, past the welcome signs and broken fittings, all thick with dust and cobwebs.

  The further down she went, the more she shivered and the more the stench in the air grew. At some point since the museum had closed the drains must have leaked into the ice house. Smells like British cheese, she thought. She felt a faint buzz in her head as her night-vision came into operation.

  She jumped off the last step and landed with a slight splash at the bottom of the ice house. Now she could appreciate why visitors had once paid to see the place. It was much bigger than she’d expected, with Victorian graffiti carved into the brick walls.

  “Chris!” she called out playfully. “Viggy!” She loved the way her voice bounced around the pit.

  Suddenly a hand clamped over her mouth. “Are you alone?” came a hiss in her ear. The breath was hot.

  Zafi’s muscles jolted as if her veins were carrying lightning. She dropped into a perfect splits, her heels sliding through the slime. In the same moment, she grabbed the wrist of the hand at her mouth and rotated her shoulders with the torsion of an aeroplane propeller. A black heap rolled over her shoulder, but instead of landing with a splat, the man controlled his fall and skidded across the mud.

  “You move well for an old man, Viggo,” Zafi called out. “And yes – I’m alone.”

  “Keep your voice down,” came the whispered reply. Then there was the groan of a battered man getting up from the floor. “We’d better move.”

  A few seconds later they were walking through a tunnel complex that no visitor to the museum had ever seen – low underground passages that had been used to transport the ice across London to the major railway stations. Some of the tunnels were severely dilapidated and they were squirming with rats, but it was obvious Viggo had recently cleared certain areas to make them passable.

  “I know people who are looking for you,” Zafi told him, following a few steps behind Viggo. “Apart from the Government, I mean.” She wasn’t sure, but Zafi thought she saw Viggo shrug. “Helen Coates,” she said.

  “Is she…?” came a croaky whisper back up the tunnel. But then it died. “They mustn’t come,” he said in a stronger voice. “You mustn’t…”

  “It’s not why I’m here.”

  They walked on in silence. Zafi counted the paces as they walked, calculating the distance as well as noting every slight shift in direction. Without her even wanting it, a map of their route was taking shape in her head. On top of that, her imagination superimposed a map of the streets above them. We’re heading for King’s Cross Station, she realised.

  Only a few minutes later they came out into what looked like an empty storeroom. They’d entered through the back entrance and there was another door on the opposite side of the room. Zafi worked out where it must lead: an unoccupied retail concession at St Pancras International terminal.

  It was warmer in here and the lights were on. It was also a relief not to have to put up with the smell any more. Zafi wasn’t surprised to see that Viggo had furnished his new home with the essentials. The empty shelf racks were pushed against the walls to make space for a heater, a large mattress and several blankets laid across the floor.

  Zafi looked straight to the mattress. There, sitting up against a rack, with a blanket across her lap and her arm in a sling, was Viggo’s girlfriend.

  “Saffron Walden,” Zafi gasped. “I heard you were dead.”

  The woman smiled calmly and it was one of the warmest smiles Zafi had ever seen. Her dark skin seemed to glow. The harsh strip lights emphasised the fullness of her lips while her tousled black hair frame
d her face in an oval.

  “I nearly was,” she said softly, and Zafi couldn’t help smiling at the richness of Saffron’s voice. “I was shot by an NJ7 agent at the French Embassy.”

  “I know,” Zafi answered quietly. “I was there.”

  Viggo and Saffron stared at her. “You were there?” Viggo asked in amazement.

  Zafi just shrugged.

  “So much for history,” she said, then carried on quickly. “Shouldn’t you be in a hospital?”

  “I’ve healed well enough, thanks,” said Saffron firmly. “I’m not as frail as I look.” She raised an eyebrow and lifted her good arm from under the blanket. She was clutching a rifle.

  “Going on a hunting trip?”

  “Kids!” cried Viggo, with a grunt of exasperation. “Why did they send a child?”

  “They didn’t,” Zafi protested. “They sent an agent.”

  She studied Viggo’s face. He looked more rugged than in images on the news or surveillance photographs. His soft brown eyes seemed to glint a little more and his stubble was a little more unkempt. His hair was longer too. For a second Zafi was distracted by thinking about how she would disguise his strong features.

  Saffron’s voice pulled her out of her thoughts. “We need to know we have the support of the French,” she said.

  “I’ll pass on the message,” Zafi replied casually and turned to leave.

  “No,” Viggo blurted. He grabbed Zafi’s shoulder and spun her round. “You’ll pass on this message: Britain’s Neo-democratic Government is going to come to an end. Soon. I’m going to end it. Whether you French like it or not, this country will soon have free and democratic leadership. I plan for it to be me, and when it is I’ll support French interests – trade, diplomacy, migration… everything.” His eyes burned into Zafi’s. “That will happen much more quickly if I can count on French support now. Tell Uno Stovorsky to forget what happened between us in the past. Like you said – it’s history, right? We have a common enemy now. I need France as my friend.”

  Zafi waited for the silence to fill the whole sewer. She held Viggo’s intense gaze. “That’s a long message,” she whispered at last, raising one eyebrow.

  “Will you pass it on?”

  Zafi shrugged very slowly and shook off Viggo’s grip.

  “I might forget it,” she whimpered. “I’m only a child, remember?” She gave her sweetest smile, then brushed past Viggo to the other exit. “I’ll find my own way out, thanks.”

  25 THE CAPITA

  Jimmy felt consumed by heat. Sweat crawled all over him. His mind was a mess of colours and shadows. I’m not dreaming, he told himself. I don’t see my dreams. He didn’t feel asleep, yet he knew these visions weren’t reality.

  It’s a drug, Jimmy finally remembered. Where am I? The parade of images flashed faster and faster, and the colours became objects: a mug of tea, a black K, a green stripe, a paper clip, Marla’s face, the fuel gauge of an aeroplane, his old bedroom, the freezer from the kitchen at home… they all spun into each other. Then suddenly they vanished and Jimmy saw a clear, hot, blue sky.

  It’s not real, he told himself. It’s still not real. But he wasn’t sure any more. He saw that he was lying on his back in the desert. And bent over his middle, their heads dipped, was a flock of huge brown vultures. Jimmy wanted to shoo them away, but couldn’t move. Then that urge melted and he felt a strange new feeling rush over him. Was that gratitude? Were these vultures trying to help him?

  Wake up, Jimmy screamed inside his head. The cry was lost in the heat and the sounds of the birds pecking. That noise grew louder and louder until finally the largest of the birds lifted its head and stared straight at Jimmy.

  In his delirious apparition, Jimmy felt genuine horror. This bird wasn’t like the others. It was a deep black, not brown, and where the others had eyes like glowing blue pebbles, this one had no eyes at all. And yet Jimmy still felt it staring. Then he saw its beak – a thick, green hook. From it hung a smooth pink ball, dripping with blood.

  Jimmy realised that the birds had ripped open his belly and were consuming the contents. The black bird was eating Jimmy’s stomach. It opened its beak, while the entrails dangled out of the corner, and let out a squawk. Jimmy had never felt such terror. The noise exploded from the bird’s throat and seemed to form a word that blasted across the desert:

  “Lies!”

  Jimmy screamed. He felt it in his chest and almost ripping the lining of his throat. His eyes shot open. His heart was hammering. He couldn’t see anything – just the inside of a black linen bag and a bright white light behind it.

  “E svèglio,” said a man’s voice.

  Jimmy’s mind absorbed the words and understood them without him even realising they were Italian. He’s awake, they’d said.

  Yes, Jimmy thought. I think I am now.

  He tried to move, but discovered his hands, ankles and knees were fastened to the wooden chair he was sitting in. He strained them again. They were held tight. He poured everything into breaking free. He shook his whole body violently, letting out a great roar of effort. He could feel the cuffs stretching against the arms of the chair, which told him they must be plastic hand ties, but they refused to snap. The attempt had only made him hotter.

  It seemed that the heat in his hallucination had been real, even if it wasn’t from the desert sun. Jimmy guessed that if he’d been able to remove the bag from his head, he’d have seen a huge halogen lamp about 30 centimetres from his head. An old interrogation tactic. The question was, who was interrogating him and what did they want to know?

  “Where am I?” Jimmy cried. His voice caught in his throat, it was so dry. “Who are you?” Then, unexpectedly, that force swept up his neck and surged through the muscles in his face, like black honey pumped at a thousand miles an hour. He felt his lips moving and his voice emerging: “Dove sono?” he said, repeating his questions in Italian. “Chi sei?”

  There was no response, but Jimmy heard his voice echoing back to him. He repeated himself, but not for answers this time – to listen to the echo. As the words bounced back to him, he felt lines forming in his head. His mind’s eye was constructing the shell of a building, estimating the size and shape of his surroundings based on how his voice rebounded off the walls.

  A high ceiling, Jimmy thought, seeing it take shape in his head like an architect’s drawing. Probably about a hundred metres up, possibly domed. Stone walls, but enclosing a narrow space, like a long hall. And there was something else… Jimmy shouted again. His breath was hot against the inside of the bag – almost stifling – but he focused his concentration. His hearing broke down the echo into hundreds of separate components, including the tiniest sub-echoes that would be lost to normal ears. That’s it, Jimmy thought in triumph. A line of pillars on either side of the hall.

  Then Jimmy started to listen to the breathing of people around him. Their presence had affected the echo too and now he started to place them around him, like dolls in his mental dolls’ house. Five of them? Six?

  Jimmy was only wearing socks, so he could feel the texture of the floor. It was rough. Flagstone? The floor was cold too, despite the heat coming from the lamp. It was obvious to Jimmy he wasn’t in Africa any more.

  Memories rushed back to him – first the face of Josh Browder, then, more importantly, what the man had said about the organisation he worked for: that the Capita had grown out of old organised crime networks.

  Now Jimmy was ready to make his guess. “Rome has such beautiful churches, doesn’t it?” he announced.

  There it was – a barely audible response. Somebody behind him had changed their breathing pattern. They’d stifled a gasp. Jimmy smiled.

  Suddenly the bag was whipped off his head. Jimmy was almost blinded by the white light blasting into him from the spotlight.

  “Are they coming?” asked an English voice softly. Jimmy recognised it as Josh Browder’s.

  Jimmy squinted and ducked his head to lessen the intensity of the ligh
t on his face. “I came to you for help, Browder,” he said calmly. “What do you want from me?”

  “Are they coming?” Browder asked again.

  “I think I need another cup of tea,” Jimmy snapped back.

  Browder laughed. “Your nice cup of tea wore off a long time ago, Jimmy,” he chortled. “We’ve injected plenty of other things into you since then.”

  Jimmy squirmed again, pulling at the ties that bound his wrists to the chair.

  “It’s nothing serious,” Browder added. “Just something that will help you tell us the truth. Now…” He enunciated every word as slowly as possible. “Are… They… Coming…?”

  Jimmy couldn’t see him, but the man’s voice was circling him.

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Jimmy insisted. “If you think somebody’s coming to find me, search me for a tracking device.”

  “We did,” Browder replied immediately. “We found nothing.”

  “So this is all just for fun?” Jimmy asked quietly. He could feel his anger stirring in his head, mixing with the whispers of the invisible figures around him. How many were there? Then the image of the vultures chewing on his digestive system lurched back at him through the glare of the light.

  “We’re not playing games, Jimmy,” said Browder slowly. Then he exploded with rage. “ARE THEY COMING?”

  “WHO?!” Jimmy bellowed back, fighting off the torment in his mind.

  “The DGSE? NJ7? CIA… ANYBODY!?”

  Jimmy clenched his jaw and rocked ferociously, battling away the beaks of the vultures. The chair rattled on the stone floor. “Nobody’s coming!” he cried, squeezing out every scrap of strength his body could push through his muscles. “Nobody!”

  At last Jimmy felt a blast of power. He slammed his feet down on to the floor, thrusting his whole body backwards and the chair with it. The wooden back landed with a clatter, sending a judder through the structure. At the same time Jimmy wrenched his arms upwards, straining against the plastic ties. They didn’t break – but the chair did.