by Asia Mackay
‘The operation was successful. Geraint and Nicola are now going through the tape of Dimitri and Isaac’s meeting and we should have the names within the hour.’ So much for hoping he would focus on the positives.
‘Right now I feel like I’m walking into a bathroom and sniffing air-freshener. It may smell of roses but we all know an almighty fucking shit has just happened.’ He threw his pen down on to the table. ‘Is this what they call postnatal dementia? Total bloody baby brain? There are studies’ – he gestured towards the open browser on his laptop – ‘that claim mothers shouldn’t return to work for at least a year as the hormone imbalance can affect their decision-making.’
‘Where the hell did you find such total crackpot information?’
‘Consider this a formal warning. You know what’s at stake here. If Dimitri and his crew get one hint as to what we’re planning the whole mission is at stake and we’re one step closer to The President becoming the all-knowing master of the universe.’ He shook his head. ‘We’re meant to be the best of the best. The elite. We don’t potentially jeopardise operations by forgetting essential equipment. No matter how bloody weird it is.’ He gave a shudder.
‘Understood, Sandy.’ I stared down at the floor. I knew he was right. Such an oversight was unforgivable. Maybe the last year had taken its toll after all. Made me weaker. A defective weapon. Why hadn’t I ever stopped to think that there might be some truth to whispers that I was no longer up to the job?
Sandy sighed. ‘Just get out of here.’ He dismissed me with a hand wave.
*
Bennie McGinn was leaning outside the office door.
‘Seems someone is in trouble.’ I noticed he was wearing a blue shirt with his jeans. His hero worship of Jake had obviously extended to copying his wardrobe.
‘Jesus, Bennie, fuck off, please.’ I pushed past him, headed in search of a very strong coffee.
‘That’s no way for a lady to talk.’
‘Last I heard ladies shouldn’t kill people either.’ I stopped. ‘Oh, wait, or wasn’t that “people shouldn’t kill people”?’
‘Sounds like Sandy enjoyed his reading material.’ I didn’t look at Bennie, but I could hear the smile in his voice. He was obviously very pleased with himself.
‘That was you? You really don’t have anything better to do than look up studies on hormonally deranged mothers?’ I shook my head. ‘You’re a sad little boy. Maybe if you actually used your dick rather than just acting like one you would relax a little.’ I turned into the canteen.
‘I use my dick all the time!’ he exclaimed as he followed me in. His face dropping when he saw that a selection of Rats were sitting at the tables reading the morning newspapers and drinking coffee. There was deep laughter and a few slow hand claps.
‘Well done, Bennie, that’s great to hear. But I’m still not interested.’
‘Fuck you, Lex.’ His face twisted as he left to a chorus of heckles and catcalls.
Embarrassing Bennie was not enough retribution for trying to get me in the shit with Sandy but it was a nice start. I poured myself a large coffee, took a pastry and sat down at a table with two Rats who were busy debating an article featuring a German leather-clad dominatrix’s affair with a married Brexit-supporting Tory MP.
‘I’m telling you that’s a bloody Sheep!’
‘No chance. It’s a Wolf without a doubt.’
We weren’t the only under-the-radar branch of the Secret Services.
Another important division, that no one without high-level clearance even knew existed, managed deep undercover agents who were frequently dispatched to unduly influence public opinion. These ‘Wolves in Sheep’s clothing’ would move in for a public-relations kill and then abandon the scene of the crime to continue on with their next takedown.
Joe, the Rat next to me, motioned to another photo of the girl in her underwear, this time draped in the European Union flag.
‘What do you reckon, Lex? Wolf or Sheep?’
I leant over and read: As a prominent MP wanting hard Brexit it was no surprise that when I spanked him he would shout ‘harder, harder! ’
‘Wolf. Definitely. That line is too good for a Sheep. He can now never say the word “hard” in public without everyone laughing.’
Nothing helped camaraderie more than us Rats enjoying the superiority we felt over everyone else as we reviewed the papers in the canteen. The unsuspecting members of the public thought they were reading news, real-life events. We knew that at least half of what the newspapers were reporting were carefully engineered events and manufactured characters. We may all have been bit players, following the orders of the all-knowing Committee, but at least we knew about it. We had the inside scoop, even if we had as much influence over what was decided as the blissfully oblivious Sheep.
*
A litre of coffee and two pain au chocolat later I ventured into Unicorn’s office. It was a stark room with just five desks, empty except for small laptops. No landlines – we only ever used our mobiles. We didn’t need any filing cabinets as we had no paper to file. Although I was sure it was only a matter of time before Health and Safety reached the sanctity of the Platform. I imagined filling out a pre-mission risk assessment form. Hazards: Ten men with automatic machine guns and a few grenades. Potential consequences: Death/ Losing a limb or two. Action required: Shoot them before they shoot us. Secondary action: Keep our bloody fingers crossed.
Nicola was sitting at her desk, wearing a clinging black wool jumpsuit and orange high-top trainers. Thanks to the dodgy air ventilation down here it was always too warm. How could she not be boiling? I bet Nicola didn’t ever sweat.
Geraint stood up as I came in.
‘Good work on Onegin’s tape. We’ve just got a translated transcript of the recording. It’s Isaac and Dimitri talking about everyone who they consider a threat to Rok-Tech and whose business Dimitri wants to either crush or buy out.’
‘There are nine men on the list,’ added Nicola. ‘We’ve been undertaking some initial research but Russian businessmen who oppose The President and his regime tend to not advertise it. We’ll have to dig pretty deep to work out exactly where their loyalties lie.’
I took this in. We needed to narrow down who were going to be the best candidates willing to work with us and help the inexperienced Sergei take over Rok-Tech. We couldn’t risk approaching the wrong person and blowing the whole mission.
Doing our own research on each individual would take a lot of time, time we didn’t have. We needed a shortcut.
We needed to steal someone else’s homework.
‘The Russian Embassy. Find out when their next event is and get Jake and me on the list.’
The embassy would have detailed files on every single one of their high-profile high-net-worth citizens. I knew from a previous operation that all the embassy’s data was backed up on their main server; which we could gain control of if we were able to insert one of Geraint’s ‘hack sticks’ into it. Something Jake and I could easily do once we had got through the hard part of gaining access into the building under the guise of partygoers.
‘You’re in luck,’ said Nicola. ‘There’s a “Building Bridges in Business” drinks reception in two days time. You’re both now formally attendees.’
Forty-eight hours. Just enough time to familiarise ourselves with the embassy’s floorplans, prepare our equipment, and for me to try to find something to wear.
Chapter Eight
‘NOT BAD TYLER, NOT bad,’ was Jake’s assessment of my ‘Building Bridges in Business’ attire of tailored black dress and killer heels.
Unlike normal heels, mine really were ‘killer’. What looked like a standard pair of stilettos had been expertly adapted by our R & D team. With a deft click, each heel slid off and unsheathed blades that were hidden within the sole; a weapon for each hand and shoes I could now easily run in. Fight and flight.
I’d joined him in the street, the embassy entrance in our sights. We watched the n
umerous black taxis of party guests arriving.
‘You just need a little something to complete your outfit.’ Jake reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a large, sparkly necklace. He looked down at me as he fastened it round my neck. For someone with such big hands he was remarkably nimble at handling fiddly catches. He was so close I could feel his breath on my face. He adjusted it until the largest gem was in the centre. ‘Perfect.’
We arrived at the embassy arm in arm and were directed towards two suited embassy security staff. One of them subjected Jake to a pat down while the other opened up my sequinned clutch bag. He pulled out my house keys, which were attached to a large photo keyring of Gigi’s chubby, smiling face, before examining each of the make-up items inside. ‘That’s a tampon,’ I added helpfully as he stared at a small brightly coloured wrapped Tampax. He grimaced and quickly dropped it back into my bag before ushering us through to the party.
One token glass of champagne later, we were able to manoeuvre our way out of the bustling main reception room and towards a door opposite it marked ‘No Entry’. On the other side of this door, according to the floorplans we’d memorised, were a complicated network of corridors leading towards the server room. All the offices we had to pass to get there belonged to low-level staff who, with any luck, would have already headed home or joined the party next door.
I pressed the large stone on my gaudy necklace, sending a remote signal to Geraint who was outside in Unicorn’s van.
Ten seconds passed and my necklace vibrated. A confirmation he had hacked the embassy’s camera feed. I took my keys out of my handbag and held the keyring of Gigi up against the scanner next to the door. Her round face grinned out at us as the light above her head went green. We slipped through the door and made a fast series of turns down identical-looking corridors. Halfway to the server room we heard voices coming from the corridor up ahead. Jake checked through the window of the office door we had just passed and pulled me inside. We stood up against the door and listened as the voices and laughter got louder and then passed us by. I opened the door a crack and looked up and down the corridor – everything was quiet; like moths to a flame, any remaining embassy staff had flocked to the free champagne.
Motioning Jake to follow me we continued on to the imposing server room. The large door was made of steel. In place of a handle was a digital entry keypad.
I pulled my Touche Éclat pen out of my handbag. While it was still excellent at concealing dark circles and any unsightly blemishes, this pen was also magnetised. I stuck it on the bottom of the keypad. And excellent at jamming electric frequency. I pressed the stone on my necklace again. The error code flashing on the keypad was replaced with ‘Enter’.
The server loomed down from the back wall, dominating the room. It had a small inbuilt screen and a keyboard beneath.
I opened my handbag and pulled out the brightly coloured Tampax. After ripping off the paper I dissected the tampon and took out a small radio earpiece, which I placed in my ear.
‘Hello, Lex. This is your tampon talking.’ Robin chuckled.
‘Very funny, Robin. Get G-Force on, will you?’
‘I’m here, Lex,’ Geraint crackled in. ‘Plug in the stick and we can begin. You’ve got twelve minutes until the hacked camera loop ends, so this needs to happen fast.’ I took out my lipstick and, unscrewing the bottom of it, exposed a USB stick, which I inserted into the server’s USB hub. Jake watched from the door as I stared at the hypnotic flashing amber light. The only sound was Geraint’s tapping on his keyboard through my earpiece. The screen on the server lit up with a login page.
‘Okay Lex. Eleven minutes. You need to follow exactly what I say.’ There was a pause and then, ‘Shit. Looks like they’ve added a few security firewalls since our last visit.’
‘And that means what?’
‘That USB you just put in should link my computer to the server’s screen so I can take control of it. But it’s not working. It’s asking for a login and password before it will let me get access.’
‘How’s that a problem? We know the login and password, right?’ On our previous break-in, we had succeeded in cloning the embassy’s security software, which generated a unique username and password every two weeks. ‘Just dictate it to me and I can input it directly into the server.’
‘Look at the keyboard.’
I looked down.
It was in Russian.
‘You only have three attempts to get the login and password right before the whole server shuts down and security storms the room.’
I sighed. To think I had dared to hope this would be an easy in and out.
‘What’s the problem?’ said Jake.
I turned to him. ‘I need to log G-Force into the server and the keyboard’s in Russian.’ I checked my watch. ‘We have nine minutes and only three login attempts before we’re finished.’
We silently considered what lay ahead of us if we were caught by embassy security in this room. No one would come for us. We didn’t officially exist.
Jake spoke first. ‘Let’s get on with it then.’
I took a deep breath and wished I could forget the images of what the Russians did to a colleague we lost a couple of years ago. They had discovered him somewhere he shouldn’t have been. ‘G-Man, we’ll take it letter by letter. Describe each one to me.’
‘Copy that.’ I heard the sound of tapping keys. ‘Okay, the first letter is a W with a tick on the bottom right.’
Geraint proceeded to reel off a long list of letters that varied from the easy ‘It’s an R but in reverse. Like it would be in a mirror,’ to the more challenging, ‘It’s like a box on legs, but on a slight angle. Kind of like wiggly legs.’ We managed it in less than two minutes.
‘Okay let’s do this.’ I closed my eyes and winced as I hit the Enter button.
The login page remained, but red Russian writing, that I assumed screamed ERROR, appeared across it.
‘Shit.’
Jake was at my side in an instant. ‘What do you think you got wrong?’
‘Not a clue.’
‘You must have got the small N wrong,’ Geraint said. ‘The one you should have pressed has a slight tick at the end like someone lifting their foot up. You probably confused it with the other small N that’s all totally straight lines.’
I looked at the keyboard and tried to remember.
‘We don’t have time to redo all of them. It has to be that one. Try replacing it – it was the second last letter of the password.’ Geraint’s voice remained level. But then it wasn’t his life on the line.
I stared at the line of black dots and moved the cursor to the second last letter and deleted it, replacing it with the tick N. I took another deep breath and pressed Enter.
The screen went blank and then the red writing flashed up again.
‘Fuck this,’ was Jake’s reaction. He started pacing the room.
I checked my watch. Five minutes until the cameras came back online. We might as well go down with a fighting chance of getting the information we came for.
I took a deep breath. ‘Is there any other letter you think I could’ve screwed up?’
‘Can you remember if the small B you pressed had a cape or a kind of roof?’
‘The B was just before the backward slash, wasn’t it? Yes I definitely hit the B with the kind of cape as the backward slash was right below it.’
‘The cape was the right one so I’ve got no idea I . . . Wait, did you say backward slash? It’s forward slash. Sorry was that my mistake or yours? I was so focused on the letters maybe I messed up.’
I stared again at the keyboard. I was positive I had hit backward slash. Only one way to know for sure. ‘It was third character of the password, right?’
‘Yes.’
Four minutes.
I replaced it with a forward slash and pressed Enter. The screen went blank. Jake and I held our breath.
And then a flashing cursor popped up.
A yelp in my ear from Geraint. ‘I’m in! Give me two minutes and I’ll get everything we need.’ The server’s screen was now a flurry of numbers and characters as Geraint worked his magic. ‘You can go offline – once the screen goes black I’m done.’
I took my earpiece out and looked over at Jake. ‘G-Force needs two minutes. Which leaves us just two minutes to get back to the party.’
I opened my handbag and carefully placed my earpiece back inside the tampon.
Jake watched me, smiling. ‘Well the good news is you aren’t going to have any trouble getting that in now that you’ve been totally annihilated down there.’
‘Stop perving and do your bloody job.’ He returned to his post by the door. Once his back was turned I lifted up my dress and tucked the tampon into the inner thigh of my high-rise Spanx shorts. Jake didn’t need to know that my sculpted figure was a beautifully crafted illusion created through heavy-duty support underwear. And that trying to pull them down enough to put the tampon where our security protocols dictated it should go, would involve some rather ungraceful vigorous wiggling and ten minutes we didn’t have. Besides if we got searched I was sure the Russians would find the Spanx as impossible to get me out of as my husband did.
I watched the server screen – the burst of activity stopped and it went black. I pulled my dress back down and unplugged the USB before screwing it back into my lipstick and dropping it into my handbag. ‘Okay. Let’s go.’
Jake opened the door a crack and looked outside before motioning me forward. No one in sight.
We ran.
With only a hundred metres to go we heard the sound of heavy footsteps, and the crackle of a headpiece approaching round the corner.
Jake slammed me up against the wall and started kissing me. It wasn’t wrong that I kissed him back. It was wrong that I enjoyed it. It felt good to be kissed like that again, with an aggressive passion that was making me forget nearly everything else. Until we were pulled apart with a heavily accented, ‘Hey, you can’t be here.’ A tall, balding Ruski in a badly fitted suit, which was doing a poor job of concealing the two handguns he had holstered, was staring at us.