by Asia Mackay
Jake’s heartbeat remained steady. Mine was hammering.
‘You got anything up there, Steve?’ the man in front of us shouted up to his partner.
Loud clanks as Steve walked across the metal platform. ‘Not a thing, mate.’
‘We’ll call Keeno later and tell him he’s a fucking muppet. Let’s finish adding the armour plating to that Landy and we can get out of here.’
The sound of a drill starting up blocked out the rest of what the men were saying to each other.
‘Fuck,’ said Jake. ‘They’ll be here for hours. I only needed five more minutes with the Ferrari. I just need to reconnect the two outside wires. If we miss this window the security system won’t let me in for another twenty-four hours.’
‘I can distract them. You finish with the car.’
‘It’s too risky.’
‘It’s our only option.’
His grip on me didn’t loosen.
‘Come on, Jake. I know what I’m doing.’
He held on to me for another second and then let go.
I left him my gun and earpiece and crept round the side of the car to the back of the garage, where there was a second set of steps leading up to the mezzanine. I got to the top of them and picked up a spanner. I took a deep breath and hoped that this evening would end in me being back home in time to put my baby to bed, and not in a Campbell gang body dumpsite. I waited for a pause in their drilling and then dropped the spanner.
‘What the hell . . .?’
The two men came racing up the metal staircase next to the Landy, the whole floor shaking at their weight. They thudded round to the back wall and then stopped. I was clearly cornered with nowhere to go.
They both looked at me and started to grin.
‘Bit out of your depth here, darling,’ said the one nearest to me. He was bald with bad teeth.
The second, the larger of the two and wearing an ill-fitting leather jacket, wasn’t so polite. ‘You stupid bitch! Do you have any idea who you’re trying to rob?’
They may have been big men but were more flab than fit; both were breathing heavily from their short run up the stairs. I knew I could take them. But that would take time. And I really wanted to see my baby. I needed to neutralise them fast and without harming them enough to create headlines.
‘I’m sorry, okay,’ I held my hands up. ‘Please, let me go. I haven’t got anything.’ I did a little circle to show I was unarmed.
‘Not a hope, love, our boss is going to want to talk to you.’ The baldy moved towards me to grab me but the leather-jacketed one held his arm back.
‘Take off that top.’ He stared at me as he tucked his gun into his waistband.
‘What, this?’ I motioned towards my hoodie.
‘Yes. Do it.’ He licked his thin lips.
I unzipped it and threw it on the floor. I was wearing a fitted black vest underneath and three long chunky silver necklaces. Very street. I did another circle. ‘See? No weapons.’
He nudged his friend. ‘No harm in having a little fun with her first.’
The other man gave me a slow once over. ‘Guess not. All part of teaching her a lesson.’
The two of them laughed.
Now I really wanted to hurt them. Enough to blow the mission by causing headlines about a stolen car and castrated security guards. But all I said was, ‘Oh God, oh, please no.’
Leather Jacket roughly grabbed me under the arm. I pulled his hand off me and twisted one finger back until he screamed. I pulled on the bottom of one of my necklaces, and plunged the needle now protruding from it into his side. He collapsed to the ground, the fast-acting knock-out sedative doing its job. I saw the bald man fumbling with the safety on his weapon. I launched one well-placed kick at his hand and the gun went flying. He charged at me, I dodged out the way and, jumping up, put all my weight into my elbows and crashed on to his back. He fell to the floor. I flicked the cap off my second necklace and needled him in the neck.
Platform Eight certainly knew how to make statement jewellery.
The unmistakable roar of a Ferrari engine filled the garage, I ran down the steps and slid into the passenger seat. The garage door was already opening.
‘You took your time.’
‘They liked to talk. Could you give me a lift home?’
‘You want me to be a taxi service in a fucking stolen orange Ferrari?
‘Yes.’
He revved the accelerator. ‘Why the hell not? The tracker’s disabled. And I always wanted to see if these things were worth the hype. Seatbelt on.’
We sped through the streets of London, turning people’s heads as we roared past. In record time we screeched to a halt outside my house. I shouted a goodbye to Jake and skipped up the steps to my front door.
I got to the bathroom just in time to see Gigi splashing water everywhere as she smacked both hands against the water. After thanking a now sodden Beata and wishing her a good evening, Gigi, soft and pink, was out the bath and wrapped in a towel in my arms. I walked into her nursery making funny faces at her. A good day at work, men twice my size knocked to the ground, a car successfully stolen, a mission on track and back in time to feel the soft squidge of my daughter’s cheeks before bedtime. I sat back in the nursing chair smelling her hair, and holding her little hand in mine. Forget Johnnie Mac. I was the real rockstar.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: FreeJohnnieMacTickets
MISSION: #80436
UNIT: UNICORN
WEASEL: DIMITRI TUPOLEV
ALERT: 2 DAYS TO POP DAY
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘DUHDELDEL DELEDA DUH DUH duh.’ I couldn’t get the music from Gigi’s bloody Jumperoo out of my head. I was walking down the tunnel to see R & D humming it to myself. Of all the toys Dasha had handed over, what we called ‘the circle of neglect’ had been without a doubt her favourite.
Bryan and two other men in white lab coats stood around a sweet-looking old-fashioned bicycle which had a wicker basket at the front filled with roses. Jane Thornton, the only other active female agent currently serving in Eight, was in the seat, dressed in all black. She was in her late forties, half-Japanese and half-German and everything you would expect from such heritage.
There were a series of targets lined up on the far wall.
‘I’m ready,’ Jane said.
The men stepped back and Jane set off bicycling across the vast empty lot alongside the row of targets. Pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft. They went down one by one. Jane’s hands never left the handlebars and she never slowed her pace.
‘Amazing,’ I said to Bryan. ‘How did she do it?’
‘Each target has a tracker on it giving out a radio signal. The gun in the flower basket is programmed to find that signal. Trigger is on the handlebars.’
Jane got off the bicycle and put it on its stand. It didn’t look quite so picturesque anymore.
‘Nice work, boys. I’ll come back for it later.’
She nodded at me as she walked towards the tunnel. I could see the large burn on her forearm creeping out from under her cardigan. Everyone had a different dramatic story of how she got it. No one knew the truth as no one had ever dared ask; she had a demeanour that did not invite personal questions. Being scarred in the line of duty definitely gave her a certain gravitas, which was something I sometimes worried I was lacking as I bounced around in my jeans and dimples.
One of the men wheeled a fur-lined pram over to Bryan and me.
‘It looks good.’ I was impressed. I never would have guessed it was anything other than a luxury stroller.
‘We’re pretty much there, Lex. We embedded the needle into the Ferrari seat with no problems. The seat is now safely enclosed within this sheepskin cover and we have added these clasps here, which is what is holding it into place on the pram base. It’s actually a pretty nifty design. Thinking we could patent it and make a killing.’
; ‘Is it easy to take apart and put back together? Jake won’t have long to make the swap.’ The plan was to deliver this stroller to Dasha today with instructions that it needed to be stored in the garage. That would mean when Jake broke in tonight he could swap the Ferrari seats over so that the needled one was in Dimitri’s car and the normal one was back atop the stroller.
‘It shouldn’t take more than three minutes.’ I thought back to the painful two hours and forty minutes it had taken me to construct Gigi’s obscenely expensive pram and thought Bryan definitely had a point about setting up their own sideline.
‘Let’s get it delivered.’
*
I headed straight to the meeting room to update Jake.
‘R & D are getting the pram to Dasha in the next hour. We need to . . .’ I stopped.
He was not alone.
Bennie was sitting opposite him with his feet up on the table. They each had a mug of coffee in front of them.
I stared at Jake unsmiling. He knew how much trouble Bennie had been giving me. Where was the partner loyalty?
I felt like I’d walked in on a boyfriend with another woman.
‘Good to catch up, Jake.’ Bennie got up. He brushed past me on his way out the door. ‘Looking tired, Lex. Hope you’re not overdoing it.’
Jake was quick to defend himself.
‘It’s not what it looks like. I was busy working on this.’ He motioned towards the replica of Dimitri’s garage alarm panel next to him. ‘Bennie brought me a coffee and asked for my advice on a current op.’
Bennie clearly knew how to ingratiate himself with Jake – caffeine and hero worship.
‘Are you coming to Bonfire Night tomorrow? Going to be quite a show.’
‘Did Sandy not tell you? I’m out of here in the morning. He said if I don’t take a blower now Eight says I can’t take the lead on our next mission, which is starting right after this one. Bloody department guidelines.’
After months of working straight on an intense mission that could have been abroad, could have led to taking numerous lives, could have led to us nearly dying, could have been all of the above, the Platform decreed Rats needed time off to recuperate. There was genuine concern that too long spent doing what we do could lead to a psychotic breakdown. That was why these little sabbaticals were affectionately called ‘blowers’, because they were to blow off steam and to stop us blowing our own heads off.
‘You’re buggering off before the mission is even finished?’
Jake looked up at me from the many multicoloured wirings of the alarm keypad’s interior.
‘Don’t worry, Tyler, you’ll be fine. No one, not even the ever-cautious Sandy, thinks we’ll need to action the Back-up.’ He tweaked a few wires and the alarm keypad beeped twice and the light went green. ‘Nailed it. This is going to be easy.’
I wasn’t happy about Jake not being in the country when I undertook the Pop in two days’ time but I didn’t want to further strengthen any idea that I had changed since becoming a mother by weeping and begging him to stay.
‘Of course I’ll be fine. Be safe tonight.’
‘Will do. And you be careful. It’s good having you back.’ He left the office with the keypad tucked under his arm.
‘I bet you say that to all the girls,’ I shouted after him.
‘There’s only you, Tyler. There’s only you,’ came his voice echoing down the corridor.
*
I left the Platform telling Sandy I had important work to do preparing for Bonfire Night. Thankfully he didn’t ask for details so I didn’t have to volunteer the information that I needed to get home to make a hundred cupcakes. Dasha had commanded they be delivered by 6 p.m. today.
By the time Beata came back from the park with Gigi I had been baking for over an hour. She walked in and looked round the chaos in the kitchen. There was flour all over the worktops and up the side of one wall. I had not realised the white puff explosion that would happen from attempting to whisk flour. I had overestimated my level of skill. Just because I could disarm a bomb, assemble an assault rifle blindfolded and hack a fortified alarm system did not apparently mean I could just whip up some cupcakes.
‘Why you just not buy?’
‘They need to be red and white in the school colours and have a CH on each one.’
‘Do you know someone who can cook? Maybe ask help? You have buttered the wrong side.’ She held up the cupcake tray which I had slathered in butter thinking that at least I could get the easy part out of the way.
‘Right. Yes. There must be someone who can get this done in’ – I looked at my watch – ‘two hours.’ I needed to play to my strengths. I picked up my mobile and rang Demon. ‘It’s Lex. Who do I need to intimidate into doing a small baking favour for me?’
It was with great satisfaction I was able to text Dasha that the cupcakes were being couriered over to her in the next hour. I didn’t add that the school logo, in the correct Pantone colours as taken from their website, had been hand drawn in edible food dye on each one’s rich fondant icing. Or that the cupcakes themselves were made with the finest Belgian chocolate and mixed with a popping candy that meant every bite was an explosion of crunchy sweetness. She would know what she was dealing with when she saw the signature boxes of the Michelin-starred restaurant they were arriving from. I sat back in my armchair. I was so fucking Super Mama right now.
Well except for the part where I had to threaten a celebrity chef with the loss of his flambéing hand unless he helped me out.
*
The text came in as I was sitting drinking a glass of wine in front of the television.
Ocado: Dear Ms Tyler, Your 9–10 p.m. order was delivered by Jake in Rat van LEG3ND. You have no missing items.
It had all gone to plan and finally everything was in place. Jake had fixed the Ferrari and now he was off. His blowers usually involved him disappearing for a month and coming back thin and hollow-eyed, and everyone knew better than to ask what he’d been up to.
Before Will, my blowers would be trips to faraway places that I’d always wanted to visit. One of the many benefits of being a trained killer was that I never felt nervous about being a woman travelling solo. Yet, although I always booked the trips alone, more often than not a man would enter the frame.
Planned solitude at a remote cabin in the Rocky Mountains was interrupted by a French artist I met at the local grocery store. I would pose naked for him as he made strong purposeful brush strokes on his canvas while smoking a roll-up, only breaking for hot frantic sex in amid the paint and empty wine bottles.
Then there was the idea of a solo motorbike trip through the Himalayas. Yet while picking up an old Royal Enfield from a rundown shop in Delhi I also picked up a stupidly handsome Israeli biker. The first day I had my guard up, convinced he could be a member of the Aman, the supreme military intelligence branch of the Israeli Defence Forces. By the second day, I still had doubts. By the third, the sex was so good I didn’t really care. A month later we parted and I was still no closer to knowing if he really was just a chance encounter. But seeing as I only ever travelled with an old Nokia with no email and no contacts there was no data to steal. And unless during my slightly out-of-body orgasming he was able to do some kind of hypnotic mind-hacking (which if he did, all I could say was well played, sir, very well played) then he didn’t get any information out of me.
Blowers all over the world were the chance for me to see if there was another kind of life out there that would make me happy. Happy enough to give up the life I was currently living. Hippy Lex, Arty Lex, Daredevil Lex, Biker Lex, I kept on trying. But in all my searching, nothing seemed to be more satisfying than Killer Lex. After each trip I found by the time the tan had faded so, too, had the memories, and I was back into the hard grind of the Platform planning my next getaway, my next trial life.
Blowers now would be a little different. Big suitcases of essential kit, noisy family-friendly hotels, plastic water slides, bad food, and a probabl
e Insta:Shit ratio of 1:3. Mummy Lex with a baby and husband in tow. Would I come back happy with my new life or missing my old one?
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: $HotRussianBrides$
MISSION: #80436
UNIT: UNICORN
WEASEL: DIMITRI TUPOLEV
ALERT: 24 HOURS TO POP DAY
Chapter Twenty-Four
BONFIRE NIGHT.
One final day of prep before the big social event tonight, and the final Pop tomorrow morning. Two important missions each headed up by domineering, aggressive micro-managers – both of whom seemed likely to resort to violence if their every demand was not met. I had no idea who was more terrifying – Sandy or Dasha – and I had the joy of working for both of them.
It was 7.30 a.m. and Dasha had already sent eighteen WhatsApp messages to the ‘Bonfire Committee’ group she had created, all varying in hysteria on subjects from ticketing issues to rain concerns.
Apart from the frequent pings from my phone as Claudia and Cynthia kept replying to the group chat with reassuring words and contradictory weather reports it was oddly peaceful throughout Platform Eight. Just the low hum of the air vents and the electricity powering the lights.
I walked through to the meeting room and looked at the whiteboard where the whole plan was tacked all over it. I didn’t have that excitement that usually came on the cusp of mission completion. The anticipation that all the weeks of work were about to come to fruition in one bloody conclusion was not, for once, doing anything for me. I still had doubts and today was my last chance to quash them. I needed to believe that everything was as it should be and that tomorrow after a push of a button the mission would be finished.
*
Eight in the morning. Geraint, Nicola and Robin had joined me in the meeting room. All with large receptacles filled with varying types of caffeine. Geraint had also brought a large box of Krispy Kreme donuts. I tried resisting but then thought I was gearing up to a big day and a big kill so deserved some extra calories.