by Asia Mackay
As we passed a group of men in white lab coats surrounding a Toyota Prius, its passenger doors open, Sandy called, ‘Don’t forget we need it for next week, boys.’ The windows had been darkened and the interior-door handles had been removed. ‘One of our little Uber adaptations,’ he explained to me. ‘Our drivers will definitely be getting one-star ratings.’ He chuckled to himself as he typed a code into the keypad next to the tunnel opening. The door slid back and we walked through, blinking slightly as we adjusted to the darkness. Naked bulbs hung sporadically from the ceiling in a line running through the tunnel. Enough light to see your way but not enough to see anyone coming. Our very own little hallway to hell.
‘Meeting room in ten minutes,’ announced Sandy over his shoulder as he reached the end of the tunnel and opened the door into the main corridor of Platform Eight. He limped off in the direction of his office.
‘I’ll tell the others.’ Jake followed him. ‘You might want to sort your tits out.’ He nodded down at my chest where once again my bra was on show. ‘Unless this is a new look you’re going for. In which case I’m all for it.’ He disappeared off round the corner before I could come back with a line that was just the right combination of witty and disparaging.
I stood alone in the empty corridor. I had not set foot down here for nearly a year. The fluorescent strip lighting gave a whitish glow to the grey chipped concrete walls and floors. The low drone of the air vents and the soft buzz of electricity powering the high-wattage lights were punctuated with the noise of the tube trains rattling past. I took a deep breath. Everything was the same. Yet everything was different.
I ran my hand along the rough wall as I headed towards the locker room. People had been plotting and planning down here for decades. It was one of these custom-built underground offices the War Cabinet used to meet in before the War Rooms were created. We were carrying on the tradition, except we fought wars most people didn’t even know about.
When the Services approached me in my final year at Oxford, I knew it was because I had been getting various bearded professors very excited by the first-class Economics papers I had been writing. They no doubt envisaged using me as an analyst or in some other important desk job where I would pour over reams of data to help keep the country safe. Yet my rather interesting psych test results evidently made them think perhaps there was another calling for a highly intelligent (scored 9.6), moderately attractive (scored 7.2) female with seriously questionable morals (scored 2.1).
I entered the locker room and looked at myself in the mirror hanging on the wall. I wondered how much of a battering my attractiveness rating would have taken since Gigi was born. I tilted my head from left to right. A few extra kilos and permanent bags under the eyes could definitely knock a couple of points off. The official name for this superficial round of testing was ‘Individual Appearance Assessment’. Although much maligned and referred to by the catchier ‘Hot or Not’, it was considered essential in fully assessing an individual’s viability as an active agent. Reportedly, a score of 2.2 and under or 8.7 and over meant you were too memorably attractive or unattractive, ruling you out of certain missions.
We all often wondered exactly how those on the judging panel assessed our looks. Scientifically? By measuring the symmetry of our features? Instinctively? By how much they wanted to see us naked? Or had some award-winning mathematician come up with a special algorithm taking both into account? I was just grateful I had a score that ensured eligibility for all missions and the somewhat smug satisfaction of being officially, as judged by my country, more Hot than Not. I flashed my reflection a grin.
I walked towards my unit’s corner of the locker room. Since I became a fully-fledged Rat I had only ever worked within the same team. There were around sixty of us within Eight, all rattling around in our underground lair, with the added bonus of a canteen and gym. Half of us were Rats. The rest were Tech Support or working in departments like Surveillance, R & D or Special Projects. Despite the sinister nature of our business, we weren’t that dissimilar from the companies in Holborn working directly above us.
Rats and Tech Support were divided into units, each headed up by a unit leader, and assigned specific missions which could be on home soil or anywhere in the world. Each unit was named by its leader; a power that was routinely abused as a chance to try to show off their wit or lack thereof.
I looked up at the ‘Unicorn’ scrawled in paint across our line of six metal lockers and shook my head. Sandy had named our unit this, saying, ‘What else would you call a group of dickheads who don’t officially exist?’
Other unit name highlights included ‘Megatron’ (big Transformers fan), ‘Watermelon’ (a reference to the ball size required to do this job) and ‘Jagger’ as that leader genuinely believed he had ‘moves like Jagger’. I would often think how our American counterparts probably had unit names like ‘Freedom’, ‘Independence’, ‘Patriot’ or other such worthy, inspiring monikers whereas we were proudly British in our schoolboy humour.
I entered the code for my locker’s padlock. In a defiant nod to the extreme security measures and the complicated passcodes that filled my working life, for this padlock I used 0000. I was not sure exactly who this was a middle finger to, but it was a small act of rebellion in my otherwise cautiously secure existence. I also figured if anyone really wanted to steal a bag of gym kit, spare underwear and a little black dress, they were welcome to it. I took off my suit jacket and stuffed it into the locker and pulled my hoodie out my gym bag. I put it on, zipping it up to my neck.
I passed Sandy’s office on my way to the meeting room. I saw a flash of him sitting at his desk.
‘Lex, come in here, will you?’ He had obviously spotted me, too.
I walked into his small office. The concrete walls were empty except for a poster that had been blu-tacked up behind his desk. It was a photo of a rat with its back to the camera. Underneath was the slogan ‘I’m all out of fucks to give . . . but here’s a rat’s ass’.
‘Yes, boss?’
‘Take a seat.’
He waited until I was sitting bolt upright in the plastic chair on the other side of his scuffed desk before he spoke. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Tyler, I’m delighted you’re back.’ His face remained deadpan. ‘But I need to know you’re going to be all right. That your head is back in the game?’
‘Sandy, I took a few months off and had a baby, not a psychotic break. Of course I’m fine.’
‘Good. I just had to check. As you know. Hormones.’ He twirled a finger round next to his head. ‘You’re taking the lead on this mission. Not Jake. Everything’s riding on you being on top form.’ He leaned forward in his chair. ‘If the Russians get even the slightest hint of what we’re up to, retaliation will be brutal.’
‘Sandy, all of us in Eight know exactly how unforgiving the Russians can be.’ A couple of years ago a Rat had been caught inside the home of a general from The President’s personal guard. He had been tortured for a week before he was executed and his body left in pieces on the steps of the British Embassy in Moscow. ‘It sounds like you don’t fully believe I’m up to the job.’
‘You’re the first female agent in our history to have had a kid and come back, which is making a lot of people very nervous. This is one hell of an important mission. It doesn’t get much bigger than this. Knowledge is power and with VirtuWorld behind him The President becomes god. We mess this up and Russia will be in charge of us all.’ He pointed his right index finger at me. ‘Everyone is going to be watching you very closely.’
‘I have never failed you. Do you really think having a baby has suddenly made me a liability?’ I may have had my own doubts, but he didn’t get to judge me from his supposed high horse of male superiority.
‘I’m just warning you, Lex. You’ve always gone on about being treated the same as everyone else and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.’ He lifted his bad leg up on the table. ‘So no trying to pull a sickie if the kid has a sniffle. No
coming in late because your babysitter was stuck in traffic. If you want to work somewhere that has to be legally understanding about you being a mother you can head back over to Five and fucking stay there.’ He stared at me unsmiling. ‘What we do is too important to have someone trying to slack off because they feel their vagina gives them special rights.’
‘Understood.’ I clenched my jaw so tight my teeth started to ache. I left his office, letting the door slam behind me. First day back on the job and already they were watching me from the sidelines, doubting I could do it. And after everything we had been through together.
It had been a busy and bloody ten years since my first day as a Rat when I had entered the joint-briefing room to report to Sandy that I was his latest recruit.
‘You’re Alexis Tyler? I thought you’d be a bloody man.’
‘Well it looks like you have enough of those.’ I had gestured at the all-male faces around me. ‘And you can call me Lex. But not Lexi. Unless you want me to shoot you and blame it on PMT.’
‘I think we’re going to get on just fine, Lex.’
He was right, we had. He had been a good unit leader; he was blunt and to the point but his mission planning and tactical support had been faultless. I had always done everything he had asked of me, and more. I liked to think I had shown you didn’t need actual balls to do this job; just hard-assed grit, determination, and the ability to always succeed in getting the shot, pushing the button, plunging the needle.
But, then, that was old Lex. New Lex and her baby were a whole different commodity. It looked as though I was going to have to prove myself all over again. Some welcome back.
Chapter Three
I GOT TO THE MEETING room to find Jake was already there. Although most of the Platform’s furniture was Formica, this room, for reasons no one seemed to know, was furnished with an enormous antique oak dining table. It looked somewhat ridiculous surrounded by tacky orange chairs, with the opulent wood reflecting the yellow glow from the unflattering fluorescent lighting, but I liked it. It made me feel like we were in Downton Abbey, about to be served a seven-course meal, rather than meeting to discuss how best to kill someone over cups of tea and digestive biscuits.
Jake stared at me. ‘I’m devastated. You’ve changed.’
For a moment I thought he too was having a dig at my new mother status. That I was a different person.
And then I realised he was referring to the hoodie.
‘Come on, unzip it just a little. This briefing will need some livening up.’ He leaned forward on to the table, cupping his face with his hands.
Jake Drummond may have been a prick but I had missed him. As my partner in Unicorn he had been a constant presence in my life for ten years. Always there, always impossible to ignore. Blessed with conventional good looks that hid the unconventional nature of his work, he was smug, irritating, bordering on psychotic, and someone I had started sleeping with within a few months of our unit first being formed. In my defence, studies have shown that nearly forty per cent of the working population will at some point indulge in a workplace romance, thanks to factors like the daily close proximity to each other and the thrill of the illicit. And that was before you added in the adrenaline surge of escaping a life-threatening situation or the high after taking out men twice your size.
Post-mission, with blood-splattered clothes in an alleyway, in the store cupboard of a five-star hotel while waiting for security to stop sweeping the building, in the back of a Land Rover Pickup while on a two-day stakeout in the middle of some godforsaken desert . . . We had done it all. Killing and fucking went terrifyingly well hand in hand. I once read somewhere that funerals could get people going as they were reminders of the fragility of life. Well, our work was a daily reminder of how quickly life could be over. What an aphrodisiac.
I should’ve known better.
I should’ve been better.
Jake was hard to resist, but it didn’t take long to see past the good looks and the easy charm. His smile never quite reached his eyes; his laughter was a little hollow. He knew what was expected of him and he played the part. For Jake, being a Rat was a way to give meaning to what he really enjoyed. He was a tamed lion. There were flickers, in the heat of a mission, interrogating a particularly reticent suspect, and his mask would drop, I would see it. I would see him. It should’ve scared me but it didn’t.
I would focus on how, by working at the Platform, he had at least chosen to use his dark talents for good. I knew I was making excuses for a bad man, just like I’d heard friends make excuses for bad boyfriends. ‘My lover is a cheating bastard who doesn’t want to settle down – but he really does love me,’ was every bit as deluded as, ‘My lover is a sadistic killer who enjoys inflicting pain – but he’s a nice guy really.’
But it was never my place to try and fix Jake. He was just a sideshow for me, simple workplace entertainment, and like all spectators of caged animals I wasn’t going to be so stupid as to put my hand through the bars.
Over the years we had stopped and started, stopped and started.
And then one day we finally stopped for good. All it took was nearly dying together. It changed us. Since the day we were choppered out of China, ashen-faced at the close call and the bodies left behind, he’d never tried and I’d never been tempted. We’d been strictly business for over three years now. I couldn’t remember if back when I was at least benefitting from Jake’s body I’d found him less annoying than I did now.
I looked at him leaning back in his chair with hands behind his head, smirking at me.
‘You’re a dick.’ The sleep deprivation was clearly affecting my usual razor-sharp wit.
We were interrupted by the arrival of the rest of Unicorn.
‘Good to see you, Lex!’ Geraint Callewaert, a sweet IT whiz with a name no one really knew how to pronounce, was in charge of Unicorn’s technical support. He was short and slight with trendy, thick-framed glasses that were an attempt to make him look more hipster than hacker.
‘You too, G-Man. And hello, Nicola.’ I nodded at the petite woman with long black hair next to him. Nicola Adams worked alongside Geraint. She was ridiculously trendy. The fact I called her trendy was a giveaway as to how uncool I was. There was probably a better word for it. Fly? No, that was definitely only used back in the 1990s. Nicola looked as though she might be half or a quarter Indian, although political correctness and her unfriendly nature had prevented me ever asking. She wore a diamond stud in an upper ear piercing and would slouch around the office in harem pants, tight bandeau tops and leopard-print metallic edged trainers. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her smile. She seemed to work hard and without complaining yet had a permanent air of being bored. Quite an achievement in our line of work.
‘Hiya.’ She flicked her hair and gave me a nod.
I looked over at the grinning Chinese man standing by the door. ‘And good to see you’re still with us, Robin.’
‘Come here.’ He walked towards me, opening his arms. ‘Everyone knows Mummy cuddles are the best.’ Robin Goh was an agent-in-training, a baby Rat. Having grown up in Glasgow he spoke with a strong Scottish accent. The majority of us in the industry presumed, when we met him, that his Asian heritage meant he would be some kind of martial arts expert. Sadly no. He couldn’t karate chop his way out of a paper bag. That disappointment aside, he was a fast learner and a good addition to the team, despite his insistence on being the class joker.
Sandy entered the room and I was thankful that Robin lowered his arms.
‘Good, you’re all here. Let’s begin.’
The five of us took seats round the grand dining table while Sandy stood at the front of the room next to a large whiteboard.
‘An hour ago you received the briefing email.’
Our mobiles and laptops were set up so that all Platform Eight’s encrypted emails looked like junk mail. What would appear to be something like another offer of ‘PeNi$ extension!!!’ was actually a secure email we could decr
ypt by typing in our unique authorisation code. We had five minutes to read it before it reverted back to being just another email telling us how to improve our sex lives with the help of little blue pills.
‘The target is Dimitri Tupolev. The action is covert elimination. I repeat: covert. This has to look like an accident. If The President gets one hint of UK involvement in Dimitri’s premature death it’s all-out war. Timeframe is as soon as bloody possible. We have three months and the clock is ticking. The incompetency hearing is set for December but Dimitri’s lawyers are battling for it to be sooner. There is also the risk his old man could be finished off by another stroke at any given time. Our objective is to make sure Dimitri beats his father to the fiery gates of hell. I say “hell” as if you’re familiar with the Tupolevs, you know it’s where they belong.’
The Tupolevs’ reputation was one of brutality; business associates who crossed them disappeared and were rarely found, and certainly never in one piece. None of us would be having any sleepless nights over Dimitri’s untimely demise. Sandy looked round the table at us. ‘This is not going to be an easy job. The Russians we are making a strike against are an unforgiving enemy. If we get caught it’s not a question of whether we live but how painfully we die. We can’t afford any mistakes.’
Jake shook his head. ‘I don’t like the timeframe pressure. Have the Committee requested any additional action or can we go straight to devising a kill plan?’
Eight offered a full elimination service, from conception through to finish with all the time-consuming admin in between. This was so no one at Five or Six could ever be traced back to a mission that ended in an ordered assassination. We did everything in-house, from initial surveillance, required reconnaissance, through to the final kill and clean up. A nice package deal.
‘The Committee have decreed that we can make the hit as soon as we’ve confirmed that Dimitri’s death will lead to his younger brother, Sergei, taking over the company. To succeed in this, we’re going to need some Russian help.’