The Exphoria Code

by Antony Johnston

  “And I don’t much like a mole going undetected, so today, nobody’s happy.” Giles shut down the slideshow for emphasis; there would be no argument.

  “That just leaves one rather important question,” said Chisholme. “Who are they working for? Any theories?”

  “Plenty,” said Giles, “but no hard evidence to point fingers with yet. And we can’t rule out that this could be ISIS or someone similar.”

  “Isn’t it a bit sophisticated for them?” asked Dunston.

  “It would be an escalation, but not beyond their reach,” said Bridge. She couldn’t decide if the thought of Ten being killed by terrorists was better or worse than falling victim to common spies. “ISIS are surprisingly tech-savvy. The CTA comes across them fairly regularly in the course of our monitoring.”

  Chisholme closed his files, tucked them away in his briefcase, and stood. “This is the point where I bid you good day,” he said. “Emily, Giles, keep me up to date but leave out the gory details. Don’t need to know, don’t want to know.”

  “Naturally,” said Giles, holding the door open for the civil servant. “Preliminary report as soon as.” Giles closed the door behind Chisholme, then turned back and clapped his hands. “Let’s get down to the business end. Henri, you’re in Paris, correct? How long would it take you to drive to Agenbeux?”

  “Not too long,” said Henri, looking at a map off-screen. “I’d say two or three hours, depending on traffic.” He looked back at the main screen. “I’m still on the matériel chaud op, boss, but I can hand it off if you want me to switch to this. What’s my cover? You don’t want me to go in and declare as SIS, right? Will anyone at the location be read in to the hunt?”

  “No, stay where you are,” replied Dunston. “I assume Giles was asking in case of emergency.”

  “Exactly so,” said Giles, smiling. “I just want to know how quickly you can get there if Bridge needs you.”

  25

  If anyone had asked the clerk to describe the man who came to pick up package delivery #48 that day, he would have shrugged and pointed to the CCTV camera in the corner of the front office.

  But if anyone had analysed the footage from that camera, they would be disappointed.

  The man was white, of average height and slim build. He wore a large white baseball cap and aviator-style sunglasses that obscured much of his face, while a sandy blond beard obscured the rest. Apart from the cap, his clothes were wholly unremarkable — black t-shirt, slim blue jeans, black Chelsea boots. He wore a black messenger bag over his shoulder. The only thing that separated him from London’s army of young male baristas, barmen, and buzzfeeders was the lack of visible tattoos on his skin.

  It didn’t matter. Nobody would request the footage from that day.

  The man had exited King’s Cross, noting once again how much it had changed since his last time in England. He crossed the square and entered the parcel-holding office. The office was a destination for deliveries from Amazon, eBay, and the like, for people who were not at home during the day. Instead of doing the missed-parcel dance, the recipients could set this holding office, which was always open during work hours, as the delivery destination. For a small fee the office would hold on to the package for a couple of days, until the customer had time to collect it before catching their train home.

  The man with the sandy beard wasn’t catching a train home.

  The clerk checked his ID, typed his name into the system, and located the package. The man paid the fee with cash, then the clerk fetched the package and handed it over the counter. The man took it, thanked the clerk, and left. It was a decent-sized package, maybe half a metre on all sides, but light.

  If anyone checked the name to which the delivery had been addressed, they would find it was as false as the name registered to the pay-as-you-go Oyster card he’d used for today’s travel. And if they checked the name used for the Amazon account that placed the order, they would find it belonged to a sixty-two-year-old man from Surrey who barely used his computer. Everything about the transaction was false, just like the other names, identities, and travel cards the man had used more than a dozen times over the past two months, at other addresses and pickup locations around London and the Southeast.

  With the package under his arm, he caught a cab at the nearby rank and gave the driver an address in Shoreditch.

  If anyone had stolen the package — well, if anyone had tried to steal the package, the man would have shot them with the unregistered and untraceable automatic pistol concealed in his messenger bag. But if by some miracle they escaped, and looked inside the package, all they would find was a toy; a modern gadget that anyone, anywhere, could simply buy. It was a small, black, polycarbonate quadcopter.

  Otherwise known as a ‘drone’.

  26

  “Mange ton cul, connard! Dégage avec tes putains de moutons!”

  Bridge checked her rear-view mirror. The car was still there, two behind. She couldn’t make out the driver’s features, couldn’t tell whether the figure behind the wheel was a man or woman. But they’d been following her for the past fifteen minutes, and now both she and her shadow were stuck in a stationary queue of vehicles while a languid French farmer led his sheep across the road. Not for the first time that day, Bridge wondered what the hell she was doing here.

  But Giles hadn’t given her much choice. When he’d dropped the bombshell that he intended to send her to Agenbeux to conduct the mole hunt, Bridge had frozen. For the next ten minutes she listened in silence, only occasionally nodding her head, as Giles and Dunston discussed her cover as a ‘workplace satisfaction inspector’ from London, the parameters of the hunt, and Henri Mourad’s support role. She was to relay all findings to Henri in the first instance, and let him dig into anything that looked unusual, to keep her one step removed from any suspicious activity.

  It occurred to her that Giles had put the groundwork of this together in the ten minutes she’d spent sitting alone in Broom Eleven, after looking over the laptop clone with her. While she’d been wondering if she was about to be fired, Giles had been preparing Chisholme, Dunston, and Mourad for the Exphoria read-in. Now he was planning the op more or less on the fly, making fast decisions about mission procedure and protocol. As frustrating as she sometimes found him, Bridge admired his ability to do that. She liked structure, plans, and logical systems. She’d never seen improvisation as one of her core skills.

  As they wound down the initial brief, Giles turned to her and said, “Everything OK? All on board?” But something in Bridge’s facial expression must have made him finally realise she hadn’t spoken for some time. He turned to Dunston and Henri and said, “Thanks for your attention, chaps. Let’s leave it there for now, and I’ll be in touch later today.” He cut the video link with Paris, and Dunston left the room with barely a nod.

  Bridge and Giles were alone, in silence. She got up and paced around the room, struggling to put her anger into words. “Are you serious?” she said at last, hands shaking.

  “You’re the best woman for the job, no doubt.”

  “I told you I don’t want to go OIT again. I turned down the Zurich post.”

  Giles counted off on his fingers as he spoke. “One, you’ve already been back in the field. Last night you bluffed your way past two policemen, stole an item from under their nose, followed the lead, and located an asset. All of your own volition, I might add.”

  Bridge threw up her hands. “That wasn’t ‘the field’, it was Catford.”

  “Don’t interrupt. Two, as I said, you are unquestionably the best woman for this job. You have the required technical knowledge, the people skills to ferret the mole out — as you so ably demonstrated with Robert Carter — and the advantage of native-language proficiency both to conduct these interviews and investigate locally. Perhaps most important of all, you’ve effectively been watching this mole longer than anyone else here. You j
ust didn’t know it before today.”

  “But it was Ten who figured out the code, not me. And look what happened to him. We were just contemplating that ISIS might be behind this, for heaven’s sake. These people are serious.”

  “So am I when I tell you not to interrupt, but that doesn’t seem to stop you,” said Giles. She opened her mouth to reply, then thought better of it. “Even if ISIS is pulling the strings, there’s no indication they’re on the ground. They’ll be directing remotely from very far away.” He paused, and frowned. “But most importantly of all, and now I really am serious — you’ve thrown a big old nasty cat among the pigeons, and it’s your job to wrestle it back into the bag so we can chuck it in the river. Either do as you’re told and conduct this hunt, or pack up your desk and leave.”

  Bridge stopped pacing and stared at Giles, speechless.

  “I’d be sorry to lose you. You’re a superb analyst and, I maintain, potentially a great hard asset as well. But this is crunch time, Bridge. You consistently ignore my advice, and your doctor’s, you’re reluctant to put your full capabilities at the Service’s disposal, and now you’re threatening to disobey orders.” He gave her a lopsided, sympathetic smile. “For God’s sake, you’re half-French, not half-American.”

  She dropped into a chair at the far end of the briefing table, and stared down at the polished wood grain. SIS was the only job she’d had since university. They’d made their approach during her second year at Cambridge, she’d been vetted and examined before her degree was confirmed, and within weeks she was cleared to begin work at Vauxhall. But that wasn’t what really bothered her. Bridge was naturally self-effacing, but even she knew her skills would allow her to find a new job with ease. She and Ciaran often joked that if they had any sense, they’d be writing algorithms for City trading firms and earning five times what SIS paid them. And did she really imagine herself still here in thirty years, managing her own team of analysts? Probably not.

  No, the real problem was the debt and guilt she felt over Ten’s death. Dr Nayar would tell her she wasn’t responsible, that it wasn’t her fault, that guilt was an irrational response to an emotional situation. But that didn’t make it any less real, and this could be Bridge’s only chance to find out who was responsible.

  As if reading her mind, Giles said, “I’ll make sure Five liaise with the Met on Mr O’Riordan’s murder here at home, and give it priority. If it’s truly connected, that elevates his case to national-security status in any case. And it’s entirely possible the killer is still here in London. After all, nobody’s been killed in Agenbeux.”

  “Yet.”

  “It’s France, not Fallujah. You’re in more danger crossing Oxford Street than you will be over there.”

  But if that was true, why had someone in a midnight-blue Audi begun following her after she collected her car at the airport?

  She’d flown in to Paris Charles de Gaulle and, instead of connecting to a local flight to Champagne, had used her cover ID to hire a car and drive out to the region instead. For the purposes of her time here in France she was an HR inspector for the civil service, supposedly assessing workplace morale on behalf of Whitehall to compile a report. Her passport was issued to ‘Bridget Short’, ostensibly to minimise the time needed to acclimatise herself to the false name, though when she’d collected it from OpPrep she suspected someone was also enjoying their little joke.

  Bridge could have arranged the car before leaving London, but that risked the possibility that the mole might somehow get wind of it, discover which car was destined to be hers for the next couple of weeks, and bug it. She could have had Henri Mourad arrange a clean car for her, and meet her with it at the airport. But if anyone knew Henri was SIS, and saw him not only meeting with her but handing over a car, that would only raise more suspicion.

  All this was completely paranoid, she knew. But that was the job.

  So she’d picked out a small blue Fiat and driven straight down to Agenbeux. She’d been to this region of France only once before, as a child, on holiday with her parents. She and Izzy had been bored senseless, especially by the landscape, so flat and empty compared to the Alpine-heavy lands around Lyon. That was a long time ago, but not much had changed; although, as she drove into the region, Bridge was happy to realise she’d forgotten how forested it was in places around the river.

  It was while taking in the scenery that she noticed the Audi following her. She couldn’t recall exactly where it had joined the road — if it had fallen in behind her somewhere between here and the airport, or joined the N4 when she did. Regardless, the driver was staying firmly two cars behind her. Even when she put on a spurt of acceleration and overtook some slower cars, the Audi kept pace. Finally, she turned off the highway onto smaller country roads, but not at the turn she should have taken for Agenbeux. Instead, she deliberately exited several kilometres in advance.

  The Audi followed.

  Bridge gripped the wheel to stop her hands trembling, and swore under her breath. She’d been OIT again for a little under forty-eight hours and already she was potentially blown, gaining a tail before she’d begun the assignment proper. She tried to lose it; a turn here, a turn there, another, and another. Her driving wasn’t completely random, because she didn’t want to risk being pulled over by any police. But after a short while she’d lost her bearings, and wasn’t entirely sure where she was going. The built-in GPS kept squawking at her to turn around, take this turn or that road, but she muted the volume and ignored it.

  And then she nearly rear-ended the car in front, as it suddenly halted for a flock of sheep.

  “Mange ton cul, connard! Dégage avec tes putains de moutons!” she shouted out of the window, but the farmer studiously ignored her and continued to move his livestock slowly across the road. Bridge felt pinpricks of sweat building on her skin, despite the air conditioning. She glanced in the rear-view mirror. The Audi was still there. Where else? Like her, it was stuck in this traffic queue. For a crazy moment she considered abandoning the car, just getting out and walking to the next village, to call Henri and ask him to put her on the next flight home. Or she could take the car south, to Côte-d’Or, to throw herself on her sister’s mercy and go AWOL for the summer. She wasn’t cut out for this. No matter what Dr Nayar said, or Giles thought, she wasn’t ready.

  And yet. Ten’s death, and her dinner with Izzy last week, had made Bridge realise how few friends she really had. If she gave up now, Ten’s killer might never be punished, perhaps never found. And that would hurt her more than Doorkicker ever could.

  The sheep were thinning out at last. She sounded her horn, but the car in front didn’t budge. She checked her rear-view mirror and saw the other drivers inching forward, preparing to move. The Audi was pulling out a little, as if to overtake the other cars, and — draw level with her, maybe? There were two sheep still yet to cross, but they were lagging behind the main flock by quite a way. Enough to fit a small car, like a Fiat.

  Bridge floored the accelerator and pulled away, out from behind the first car in the queue, one wheel churning up the grass verge, and sped through the gap between the sheep. The farmer shouted and swore at her, his arms flailing with angry disbelief. One straggler sheep panicked, and ran into the road. She spun the wheel to avoid it, bringing the Fiat back onto the tarmac, narrowly missing the rear end of another sheep halfway across. She yanked the steering wheel back into the turn to maintain control. The wheels skidded under her for a second, leaving their mark on the road. Then they made purchase and she was away as fast as she dared, speeding through a junction, back toward the highway.

  In her mirror she saw the other cars following, now the sheep were out of the way. The car that had been in front of her was stalled, and the others driving round it. The blue Audi turned off at the next junction, heading deeper into the countryside.

  It hadn’t been following her.

  She pulled over to the
side of the road and, when she was finally able to prise her fingers from the steering wheel, turned off the engine. Her rapid, ragged breath was like a roar in the quiet of the countryside.

  27

  The windscreen exploded, showering her with fragments of glass.

  The jeep had no rear-view mirror. Bridge wiped sweat from her eyes with her sleeve, glanced over her shoulder, and saw another vehicle following her across the desert. One man driving, two shooting.

  The jeep had been under a camouflaged gazebo, guarded by a single armed sentry. His companions were presumably away finding out what the hell was making the ground shake, but the sentry himself wasn’t on high alert. Bridge almost felt bad for shooting him in the back of the head while he blew smoke rings from an acrid Russian cigarette.

  Almost.

  It started first time and she stood on the accelerator, kicking up a dust cloud twice the vehicle’s size as it sped away. At the last minute, figuring it couldn’t make things any worse, she yanked the wheel hard right and smashed head first into the comsat dish — the site’s only uplink, according to the mission data. The mission plan said to leave it operational, to spread the infection if the server was ever put online, but with the server room now a pile of rubble it seemed almost churlish not to destroy it, too.

  She tried not to think about Adrian, lying underneath all that rubble, and to focus instead on the route ahead of her. That was proving difficult. Sure, he’d screwed up, but so had Bridge. If she’d been more assertive, had been able to persuade him that she knew what she was doing…but then she didn’t, did she? Her first OIT, and when the bullets began to fly she’d frozen up. Now the Russians knew this location, a repurposed bolthole from the Iraq war, was compromised. Screw their legends, it didn’t matter now if Moscow thought she and Adrian were Serbian, British, or even Chinese. The whole op was a bust, and instead of infecting the target server, she’d had no choice but to blow it up.