Day Zero

by James Swallow

  “I– I want to arrange a drop. Somewhere indoors. Whitechapel Terminus.”

  “By drop, I assume you mean that I’m to leave you a certain amount of money in return for… what? Your silence?”

  “Something like that.”

  Coyle laughed. “No, I don’t think so. In fact, I think you leave me with little choice but to ensure your silence by any means necessary. Do have a nice day, Mr Holden.”

  He ended the call before Holden could reply and shook his head. Holden was a loose end he’d intended to leave until after everything was settled. He’d clearly underestimated the man, however. Holden had put two and two together with remarkable alacrity.

  Still, if he was as smart as all that, he would leave the city as soon as possible. Whatever had prompted this unwise attempt at blackmail would no doubt keep him occupied until Coyle could catch up with him at a time and place of his choosing. Satisfied, he sat back down and returned his attentions to the spiderbot.

  Over London, the drone continued the hunt.

  16: Hunted

  George Holden sat on a camp bed in his lock-up garage in Hackney, and stared at the burner in his hand. He’d made a mistake, contacting Coyle. He’d known that as soon as Coyle had picked up the phone. Not his first mistake, but possibly his last.

  His heart was beating too fast, making him feel sick. He’d known there was something wrong with Coyle the first time they’d met. A sort of cold calculation. You saw it sometimes in the men and women Albion employed – like they’d been too long in the sandbox, and seen too much to ever slip back into civilised society. Coyle reminded him of Faulkner, Albion’s man in East London, a little bit. There was that same animal viciousness there, hidden beneath a veneer of faux-affability.

  And now that viciousness was aimed at him.

  He’d been desperate, hoping for a quick pay-out to get him free and clear. Not for the first time, he’d let his greed outweigh his common sense. But now there was probably a killer drone prowling the skies, looking for him. He peered about him, at the racks of Albion surplus and equipment. He’d been selling corporate kit for months, trying to cover his debts.

  Nobody had noticed, until, suddenly, somebody had. They called themselves Zero Day, though whether that was the name of a person or a group, Holden couldn’t say. They’d contacted him out of the blue, using an encrypted program that he had yet to crack. They’d wanted supplies – made to order. They’d promised a good deal of money in exchange, and Holden had jumped at the deal. He’d forgotten that a sure thing rarely was, no matter what some insisted. He lay back on the bed, massaging his temples.

  Things had quickly become far too complicated. Zero Day, whoever they were, had provided Holden with a number to call. He’d done so, and received a list of materials to be provided for pick up by a courier. Some weeks later, a second number had been provided – a man looking to buy a drone.

  That was where things had started to go wrong. The UCAV drone was a prototype from Project LIBRA, one of Albion’s black book initiatives. He never should have taken the chance, but the money had been too good and he had bad people knocking at his door all hours, wanting what he owed. And Albion had all but mothballed the damn thing anyway. It was too expensive to maintain.

  Only now, it had been used in two murders. One of them, the poor bastard who’d acted as a go-between. That had scared him. He’d already been worried. Not long after he’d sold the drone, he’d started to wonder. Too little, too late, as it turned out.

  Going to Lincoln’s office had been a mistake as well. Initially, he’d hoped she’d be able to tell him something about the investigation, to give him some idea how close the police were to figuring out that the shooter wasn’t flesh-and-blood at all. Because once they figured that out, Albion would know what had happened. Then they’d come for him.

  That was why he’d left his flat and moved to the lockup. It wasn’t set up for comfort, but he told himself it was like camping out. And more importantly, Albion didn’t know about it. Nobody did. Except the courier, who was now dead.

  Holden swallowed a sudden rush of bile. He hadn’t meant for that to happen. He hadn’t meant for any of it to happen, but it had and he was as responsible as the man pulling the trigger. He needed protection. Failing that, he had to get out of the city. Out of the country. Somewhere neither Coyle nor Albion could find him.

  He laughed. There weren’t many places that fit that definition.

  “Protection,” he muttered. He sat up. Albion was still feeling out the territory. The government hadn’t yet delivered that blank cheque that Cass wanted. There was still resistance to their presence in London. He could use that. He knew plenty about all the dirty tricks the company had got up to over the years – and what he didn’t know, he could fabricate. What he knew about the drone program alone might be enough to sink Albion’s prospects in London. The question was, who to sell it to?

  A news alert popped up on his display. He expanded it, and saw that it was a GBB report from the Bethnal Green Police Station. He watched as Sarah Lincoln went nose-to-nose with Faulkner.

  A slow smile spread across his face.

  The man who called himself Marcus Tell sat in his tiny council flat, watching the sun set over the city through the kitchenette window. He’d done so almost every evening for ten years, from the same spot.

  A cup of red bush tea sat cooling on the table before him, with only a few sips taken from it. He’d grown to tolerate the flavour. His GP had cautioned him against overindulgence in caffeine – bad for his blood pressure. Or was it his kidneys? It was hard to remember. These days, his body was nothing but a tangle of problems, held together by sinew and stubbornness.

  He wasn’t long for the world. Death had always stood at his side, but now he could feel a bony hand on his shoulder. Time was running out. If his own body didn’t kill him, someone else would. He took a sip of the tea, grimaced, took another sip.

  According to the news, there’d been another shooting. He’d known the victim’s identity before it had been announced. Colin Wilson had been a petty criminal, and lacking in respect for his betters, but he had not deserved such a death.

  Tell – he thought of himself as Tell, now, though the real Marcus Tell was buried somewhere in Epping Forest – knew he would have to leave soon. The flat wasn’t safe. He would need a new Optik external as well, but that was easy enough to acquire. He tapped the implant, wondering if he ought to replace it. Better safe than sorry. But that would take time to arrange – and time was something he didn’t have a lot of.

  He looked up at a picture on the wall – himself, in better days, and Peter. Dear, sweet Peter. Middle-aged, comfortable, content. Life had not been perfect, but good enough.

  For a time, at least.

  Peter was dead now. Cancer. A bad way to go. Painful and debilitating. He abandoned that train of thought as quickly as he’d boarded it. Peter was gone. The dead could feel no pain, and their ghosts did not haunt the living. That was what Tell told himself. He took another sip of tea, savouring the bitterness. If he was wrong, if the dead did not pass on, but instead stayed… there would be a crowd waiting for him when he passed.

  He did not know how many people died due to his actions over the years. More than a few, less than a crowd. More had been hurt, crippled, traumatised. The man he had been had left behind a trail of human wreckage, stretching across continents. The reasons why no longer mattered, if they ever had to begin with. Looking back, he could not recall what had prompted him onto his path. It had seemed important at the time, he was sure.

  Tell shivered and looked around. The flat was small, but full of memories, most of them Peter’s. Tell was not sentimental. He could not afford to be. But even so, the thought of leaving it was painful. He finished the tea and put the mug in the sink. Out the window, the sky was full of hornet-shapes – drones, whisking to and fro. The future was automated. Maybe the machines would make a better go of it than mankind.

  He leaned
over the sink, looking at nothing. He closed his eyes. Thinking now. The old instincts were starting to kick in finally, after the paralysis of the last twenty-four hours. He had three safe houses in the city, all registered under different names. He didn’t need to activate his Optik to see them in his head. He was old enough that he could find his way around London without a GPS.

  Each contained the bare necessities – fake passports, falsified identification papers, the passwords for half a dozen different cryptocurrency accounts as well as packs of hard cash, some of it counterfeit, but not all. Weapons as well, though not many. Handguns, mostly. And the tools of his trade.

  His hands knotted into fists on the edge of the sink. He still wasn’t sure how they’d found him. His blackmailer – or blackmailers. He wasn’t sure whether they were one person, or many. A ghost in the frequency, reminding him of who he’d been – threatening him. Threatening to reveal who he was, beneath the mask of Marcus Tell.

  He’d thought fear had been burned out of him long ago. But he’d been wrong. He feared losing his little flat, his memories. That was why he’d done it, in the end. To hold onto what he had, just for a little longer, just until… well.

  So he’d picked up his old tools, and added some new tricks to his repertoire. He’d kept abreast of modern advances and techniques. The old stuff wouldn’t have done the job. Not the way his blackmailers wanted it done, whoever they were.

  “Impatient bastards,” he murmured. He turned away from the sink, eyes straying again to the window. They’d wanted bombs and they’d wanted them fast. He’d done his best. Most of his old contacts were out of business or had been replaced by younger models with no respect for an old man. Not to mention trying to get the necessary materials without alerting the wrong people was harder than it had been. That his blackmailers had left it to him implied that it was his expertise they needed as much as his skills at constructing improvised explosive devices.

  In his younger days, he might’ve tried to do something with that information. Maybe even find them, and teach them a lesson in respect. They were arrogant – overconfident. They had made no great secret as to their intentions towards him, once he’d completed his part in the affair. Perhaps they thought him too stupid to see what was coming, as Colin had been. Or maybe they simply didn’t care. What could one old man do, after all?

  That he’d survived this long was more due to chance than any skill on his part. It had been sheerest luck that he’d spotted the pickpocket working the crowd on Sunday. He’d known he was being tracked, though he hadn’t yet realised why. It had been a simple matter to flash his Optik and then put it in his pocket in a position so as to invite theft.

  The thief had been skilled. Tell had barely felt it when his Optik had been purloined. He’d thought to buy himself some time. When he heard the shot, he’d known there was no time left. They wanted him dead, and it was only a matter of time until they came looking. He’d expected someone to bust down his door before now, but so far – nothing.

  But he couldn’t remain in hiding here. Eventually, he would have to leave, if only for his own sanity. They would find him sooner or later.

  For him to survive, Marcus Tell would have to die. He would need a new name, a new life. He would have to start over again. He sighed. It seemed pointless, and a part of him wondered if it might be better to simply… wait. Make them work for it, but not too hard. Just enough to teach them some respect.

  The thought of dying made his heart speed up. He looked at his hands – lined and spotted, but steady. You had to have steady hands, when you handled explosives. One wrong twitch and that was it.

  Tell let out a slow breath, calming himself. He didn’t want to die. If he did, he wouldn’t have bothered becoming Marcus Tell. He would never have met Peter. He wouldn’t have had ten good years to overlay all the bad ones before.

  He didn’t want to die. That meant he had to hide. He had to move and keep moving, until what was going to happen, happened, and his status became irrelevant. They would forget about him then, maybe. A small chance, but a chance nonetheless. A chance for another ten years. That was worth the effort.

  Tell pushed away from the sink. Moving quickly now, decisively. He checked his wristwatch – an old fashioned habit. No one had watches, these days. He paused. Peter had given it to him. An anniversary gift, he thought.

  He noted the time, took the watch off, and tossed it into the cutlery drawer. He couldn’t afford to take anything with him, just in case. That was for the best. He would make do with what he had on him until he reached the first of his lockups.

  He looked around one last time, fixing the place in his mind and headed for the door.

  Day Two

  Wednesday

  17: Arrangements

  “You look like death warmed up,” Winston Natha said cheerily, as he lowered himself down opposite Sarah’s desk. He set a recyclable coffee cup down on the desk, and nudged it towards her. She took off the plastic top and gave it a sniff.

  “Hazelnut?”

  “Something godawful like that, yes.” Winston leaned back in the chair, legs crossed. “How long did Faulkner hold everyone, then? We got turned back at the cordon.”

  She rubbed her eyes. They felt gritty, despite the drops. She hadn’t gotten much sleep. She’d fielded dozens of calls after the news had gone out. She’d finally collapsed on the couch in her office for a nap at three AM. “About two hours longer than strictly necessary.”

  “I hope you spent the time productively.”

  “I had a lot to do. They started bloody shooting the place up.” She felt a spurt of anger. “Which they do not have authorisation for. Or so I thought.” And hadn’t that been a fun phone call, with Faulkner grinning at her the entire time? It turned out that authorization had come down from on high in the aftermath, after Faulkner reported that his men had been attacked. Cass’s influence, she thought.

  “I told you, things are changing.”

  “Yes. For the worse. Still, I made some new friends among the press and the police. Shared hardships and such.” She took a sip of the coffee. “Faulkner thinks it was DedSec.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I think it doesn’t matter what I think. Whoever they were, they got away.”

  “And made Faulkner look quite a prat in the process.” Winston scratched his nose. “That’s twice in two days you’ve tweaked his nose. I’m surprised he hasn’t bundled you off to one of those illicit black sites the media like to bloviate about.”

  “I suspect he needs to warm up to it.” She didn’t smile. There was enough evidence as to the very real existence of those sites that she didn’t find it as funny as Winston did. Most of what Albion did wasn’t funny. “Has Cass been in touch yet?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. It seems the Limehouse facility is undergoing necessary renovations and will unavailable for public tours for the foreseeable future.” Winston shook his head. “Albion is closing ranks.”

  “Something is up with them. And it has to do with the shootings.”

  “A word of advice, Sarah – leave it to CID. Let the Met handle this mess. That’s what they’re paid to do. We’re paid to make speeches and shake hands.” He leaned forward. “Speaking of which – the TOAN protests…”

  Sarah grunted. “Yes, I saw that.” The media were having a field day. They’d taken to referring to the conference as “TOAN Deaf”, mostly because of it its wildly inappropriate marketing efforts. Efforts which were having quite an effect, though possibly not the one the conference’s backers – not to mention the government – had hoped for.

  The rapid automation of the British industrial sector was a sore point with most, if not all, of the country’s trade unions. Joblessness was on the rise thanks to new technological innovations, and here was a celebration of the same. TOAN Deaf, indeed.

  Protests were inevitable. The Met was underfunded and lacked the manpower to tackle what was coming. “I’m sure our
friend Nigel Cass has already offered the services of Albion to alleviate some of the pressure on the Met.”

  “He claims some experience with crowd control,” Winston said. His smile was grim. “All it will take is some fool throwing a Molotov or a brick, and there’ll be blood on the streets. Worse than the Redundancy Riots.” There was an understandable edge to his voice when he mentioned the riots.

  The Riots had consumed the city for several, and nowhere had been hit harder than East London. Too many people already on the edge, and the first wave of automation had pushed them over, and onto the dole. Sarah herself had ridden into office on a wave of dissent. She’d promised to get people back to work. As yet, she had not been able to keep those promises. Initially, she’d hoped Albion would provide the answer.

  “I’m sure that’s exactly what Albion is hoping for.” Sarah sighed. “There might be an opportunity there, though. Not just a photo op this time, either. Something substantial. Have you talked to anyone else?”

  Winston shrugged. “Most of them are keeping their heads down. The Labour Party is officially noncommittal, and unofficially has its head thrust squarely up its–”

  “I get the picture, thank you.” Sarah massaged her temples. She’d had a persistent headache since last night. Faulkner had questioned everyone present in the station at least twice, while his men had scoured the surrounding streets, looking for any signs of whoever had stolen the evidence. If they’d stolen anything at all.

  A part of her suspected that it was all a ruse on Faulkner’s part. An attempt to make himself look the hero for his bosses and the media. The man taking charge of an impossible situation. Only the situation was largely of his making. At least that was how it seemed to her. She recalled how he’d reacted when she’d mentioned the mysterious Mr Holden.

  Winston cleared his throat, startling her from her momentary reverie. “Do you have a strategy in mind? Besides decamping for Bruges, I mean.”