Killing It

by Asia Mackay

  With a clean and once again sweet-smelling Gigi, I powered on towards the meet.

  When I had spoken to Jake again last night I had made one simple request: for him to get his Platform-issue login calculator to me. It allowed us to log on to our secure network from any computer outside of the office. I needed to get online to use Eight’s innumerable resources to try to work out what was happening. A face-to-face in daylight was out of the question. Eight would be watching Jake, maybe even investigating him as well. It was too big a risk to be seen together. I had named the 10 a.m. Monkey Music class at the town hall as the exchange point. Right now, safety was being out in public, not hiding away at home.

  ‘Leave it to me,’ was all he said before he clicked off.

  I hadn’t heard anything from him since. I had to trust that he had found a way.

  Once settled with Gigi in my lap and the room slowly filling up with mothers and babies I scanned the room, trying to determine where Jake could have dropped it. I checked my phone again. No text or voicemail to give me a clue. This wasn’t good. I had seen a decorator in the hallway when I arrived. Could he soon hover by the door and give me a nod?

  I was distracted by a beautiful young Brazilian walking in. The white-haired baby she carried on her hip was quite obviously not hers. Who on earth would be crazy enough to have a nanny that hot? She was dressed down in jeans and a cashmere jumper but she had the type of body where everything clung in the right place. A gay couple. She must work for a gay couple. I was so busy staring at her body that I didn’t notice she was waving at me.

  ‘Lex? Hi, I’m a friend of Jake’s.’ She had the good grace to look a little embarrassed. Obviously she’d realised ‘friend’ might be a push for someone she had clearly met the night before, but then also ‘friend’ was not quite descriptive enough for the more-than-friends activity that had been undertaken.

  ‘Oh, hi, nice to meet you.’

  She pulled what looked like a furry toy rat out her bag. ‘He said you would be here and to give this to you.’

  ‘Thank you so much. We were desperate to get good old Mr Rattykins back.’ I took the rat from her. It had goggly pink eyes, white whiskers and yellowing teeth. It looked more Halloween prop than cuddly soft toy. Giving it a squeeze I felt something reassuringly solid within its belly. ‘It’s my daughter’s favourite.’ I stuffed it into my nappy bag before Gigi could catch sight of it and give the game away by crying.

  She sat down next to me as the class began. I had to suffer through an hour of music making which mostly involved Gigi sucking every instrument she was handed and listening to Hot Nanny ask me questions about Jake and tell me how she’d never met anyone like him before. It turned out she worked for a recently divorced father. I was cross I hadn’t worked this out myself. When the class finished I bid my new friend goodbye and dissected the rat as soon as she was out of sight.

  ‘Don’t say I never do anything for you,’ said the note wrapped around Jake’s login calculator. I was impressed. He had had twelve hours to find a way to infiltrate a baby class and deliver me the calculator. Not only had he managed it but he had succeeded in ensuring it wasn’t exactly a chore.

  *

  Outside our house Will was slamming shut the boot of the car. He stretched out his arms at the sight of us.

  ‘It’s time to go, sweetheart.’ He plucked Gigi out of the pram.

  I hugged them both tight as we said goodbye.

  ‘I love you so much, little girl.’ I stroked Gigi’s cheek and adjusted her pink hat. ‘Je t’aime, mon cher.’ I kissed Will hard.

  ‘Je t’aime, beautiful. I’ll call when we get there. Don’t work too hard. Try to escape and come join us.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’ I always noticed how literal the phrases everyone used in everyday conversation were to us Rats. ‘Work is killing me.’ ‘I nearly died.’ ‘Try to escape.’

  Will carefully strapped Gigi into her car seat, dropped a small mountain of toys on her lap, and with another kiss for me got into the driver’s seat.

  I waved until they were out of sight, my other hand gripping the empty pram, the seat still warm. I wanted to collapse in a heap on the ground and cry and cry in fear that it could be the last time I ever saw them. But I didn’t. I bit my lip until it bled, took three long, deep breaths and went back inside. Crying wasn’t going to do us any good. Fighting back was.

  *

  ‘Good morning,’ I greeted the uniformed concierge at the reception desk. ‘I’m using Apartment 31.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I have a key waiting for you, Mrs Chang.’ He turned to the cupboard behind him.

  Logging on to Airbnb, I had booked a flat in a luxury apartment building on the Strand. I’d used a Chinese pseudonym as, having been on the searching end of a hunt before, I knew we were all too quick to write off ethnic names if looking for a white subject. But while a white man called Chang might lead to identity-theft questions from suspicious cashiers, people were so used to women taking their husband’s surname they wouldn’t think twice.

  ‘I see you’re here for three nights.’

  ‘It may be longer. Depends when I need to return to Hong Kong.’

  ‘No problem, Mrs Chang. You’re on the tenth floor and the lift is just through there.’

  The flat was costing me a small fortune but it was a necessary expense to get the level of security I wanted. With cameras in the reception, lifts and corridors on every floor I could hack into their feed and keep an eye on exactly who was headed my way. I also wanted to be close to the office. My hideout had been carefully chosen for practical reasons yet, as I let myself into the flat, I couldn’t deny the luxury part was an added bonus.

  I looked at the beautifully decorated bedroom with plump pillows and a cashmere blanket draped over the thick duvet. It was my first night away from Gigi. Yet I wouldn’t be enjoying the extra rest but sleeping with one eye open, bracing myself for any incoming threats.

  I turned on the large flatscreen television in the living area and connected it to the small black box I had brought with me. With a few tweaks, the DVD channel was now broadcasting the building’s security feed.

  I unpacked the rest of my small case, including a large bag of food I had thrown together from our kitchen. Needing enough energy to find out who was trying to kill me was definitely a valid reason to break my diet. I made myself a large chicken and avocado sandwich and opened a bag of crisps. I fired up my laptop and got to work.

  Using Jake’s login calculator I got on to Eight’s network and hacked the CCTV records of the day of the restaurant op. Whoever was setting me up would have needed to make a visit just before I arrived. If it was Bennie I just needed one shot of him on camera to take to Anne to prove his involvement.

  The only cameras for that street were right above the restaurant and the way it was angled meant I could only see people who were walking on the edge of the pavement. No one seemed to be going anywhere near the restaurant. I fast-forwarded until I saw someone approach. Someone who seemed to know exactly where the cameras were as they knew how to make sure they weren’t in shot; all I got was a glimpse of an arm. The restaurant door then opened as they walked in. Half an hour later the restaurant door opened again and the man headed back the way he came. Again a flash of dark jacket as he walked back down the road was all I could see. I watched it three times. I stared at the screen thinking about my next move now this was a dead end as I watched it for a fourth time. A small flash of movement along the car doors caught my eye. The cars lined down the road reflected the man’s progress down the street. All I could see were legs walking away. No visual on the face.

  But I didn’t need one.

  I could recognise that walk a mile away.

  Ten years together.

  Working side by side.

  And now he wanted me dead.

  I replayed it again, watching the lopsided gait of his left leg dragging behind his right.

  Sandy, you piece of shit.

&
nbsp; Chapter Thirty

  ‘TRY THE BLUE DOOR.’

  When the bullets were flying and all hell had broken lose Sandy had shouted this down my comms. Running back over the whole restaurant operation, this was the one phrase that kept sticking. It wasn’t right. But why? I kept replaying the scene over and over in my mind.

  And then it all clicked. He had visuals from my head camera but he was shouting before even I had seen it was blue. He claimed he’d never been there yet knew the colour of a door. A door he wanted me to go through that led into a cold room with no means of escape. If I’d listened to him I would’ve been shot to death in an icy walk-in coffin. Cut down amid the cuts of meat. How could I have missed that?

  I was fucked. Sandy being a Snake meant I didn’t have a chance. Right now Anne and her colleagues would be asking him for all the intel he had on the op. I could go to them myself but with what evidence? Some grainy CCTV footage and my word that he had said ‘blue door’ over a hail of gunfire. I thought for a moment. Sandy could barely work an iPhone, let alone edit together faked footage of a safe full of money. He had to be working with somebody. While Sandy was running point, supposedly helping save my life, they would have been the one to ring the Russians and tell them there was no bomb and to get back in there and finish me off.

  It had to be Bennie. Sandy could have been working with him from the beginning and brought him in as my maternity cover to set all this up.

  I closed my eyes. I needed to think this through.

  Bennie being involved didn’t rule out someone else in Unicorn. Geraint and Nicola would have been running comms together in our office. Robin was in the van outside. And Jake. Where was Jake in all this? Where was he when I was running for my life? Conveniently out of the country. He’d been partnered with Bennie throughout my maternity leave. Could Jake right now be sitting with him and Sandy laughing that I’d asked for his help when Anne cast me out? After everything we had been through together over the years I couldn’t believe that he would be in on this.

  But things weren’t adding up.

  And he had lied to me.

  When I had spoken to him in the shower after the restaurant op he had lied about where he had been. He had fiddled with his shirt cuff. He always did that when he was lying. I had noticed it years ago and had always meant to tell him. Although chances were no hostile would ever notice such a tiny detail, there was always a chance they might. And that was why I knew it was important for me to let him know.

  But I hadn’t. Maybe because I knew one day it might be useful. Maybe always in the back of my mind I thought this could happen. That I would need to know when he wasn’t telling me the truth.

  We had worked side by side together for ten years but what did I really know about him? He gave away nothing about himself. Judging from his accent he seemed, like me, to come from the Home Counties, and despite him giving off an air of ex-public-school entitlement I don’t think he had actually gone to one – this was only judging from a rant about the smug elitist schooling system when we had come out of a meeting with Six run by a couple of particularly obnoxious Hooray Henrys. I only knew he had been in the armed forces because of the small nod of recognition he would exchange with other ex-army agents, and the tattoo he had on the back of his shoulder. I had assumed it was military as it had that look – swords, fists, Latin – yet I hadn’t been able to find it on any of the databases I had scoured when I was bored in the office one afternoon.

  All I really knew about him was that he was a perfect Rat. A formidable enemy.

  He excelled not just in hand-to-hand combat but also in the more difficult missions that required expert planning. Forget thinking outside the box. He would think outside the warehouse the stupid box was sitting in. The crazy shit he had come up with over the years was in equal measures terrifying and awe-inspiring to behold.

  A few years ago we were tasked with taking out an African dictator who was even madder and more brutal than what usually came to mind when you heard the words ‘African dictator’. Paranoid about his safety, the dictator had retreated to a fortified bunker in the middle of the jungle guarded by what seemed like a third of his poverty-stricken country’s population. It was an impenetrable fortress he had no intention of ever leaving.

  Jake studied his file for days and got hold of his hotel bills from all the trips he had taken before he decided to run his empire from a bunker. He determined that this terrifying mass murderer had a major thing for a certain C-list actress. Without fail, in every hotel he had stayed in he had viewed one of her films. Jake contacted this actress, posing as a big hotshot agent and convinced her to do a stunning calendar shoot that would be both tasteful and tantalising and remind Hollywood producers she was a force to be reckoned with. Thanks to a top photographer and a team of the best hair, make-up and lighting people, in a few weeks he had a calendar which was definitely more tantalising than tasteful.

  Geraint then hacked the Wi-Fi of the bunker with pop-ups detailing the ‘exclusive’ calendar and where to buy it. Within thirteen minutes of the first pop-up we had our first order. The next day a very special edition of the calendar was delivered to the actress’s number-one fan, wrapped in a cellophane packet. Three days later the dictator was dead. Every page had been laced with arsenic and days of continuous leafing through the pages meant he’d absorbed enough to kill him. His inner circle were in uproar; it looked like an inside job. A mess of in-fighting and accusations meant his whole military junta fell apart in a mass of paranoia and executions and the key players barely noticed when a legitimate government was formed amid all the chaos. It was genius. Even more so as we easily made back the budget we had blown on the expensive calendar shoot by the thousands of (non-arsenic-laced) copies we sold online. Turned out the dictator wasn’t her only fan, although she never did hit the big time. Her body may have done the world a big service but she couldn’t act for shit.

  Jake was not someone I would ever want as an adversary. Although I still couldn’t imagine he would do me any harm. But then, was that not naïve? We’d been long-term partners, occasional lovers, frequent co-fighters but never friends. He was a borderline psychopath who I suspected enjoyed killing and torture. Did he even know what loyalty was? Upon being confronted he could just say, ‘Well, Tyler, you must understand it was too much money to say no to,’ and not even comprehend my sense of betrayal. My despair. A thought that turned my stomach.

  I had to talk to him. But before I did I needed to work out where he had been.

  *

  Ten minutes later I had my answer.

  After accessing CCTV of him departing his flat, the cameras at Heathrow airport parking picking up his licence plate and the flight manifests for the eight flights departing in that timeframe I knew where he had gone. On the morning of the much-lauded Bonfire Night party Jake had boarded a 10.10 a.m. BA flight to Marseille.

  My enforced pregnancy leave at Five had not been a total waste of time as I had used the months stuck in the office to brush up on my IT skills. Skills that helped me hack Avis’s rental database until I found the exact make, model and registration of the car Jake had hired and its mileage upon his departure and return. That, combined with the French toll booth records, meant I had an idea of his route from the airport. Seeing where he turned off the main A7 road helped me narrow it down to four different towns.

  Thankfully I knew him well. I felt not unlike a cuckolded wife; using my knowledge of him and his habits to help track him down. Countless times the Platform had informed us we were due to head out the next day and we needed to plan our trip accordingly. Upon being given the name of the town we were being dropped into Jake had always followed the same routine:

  1. Narrow hotels down to those with Trip Advisor 4.5 or 5 star rating. (‘Luxury hotels are the best, security wise we can hack their feeds, no one is likely to try to storm us, and fucking hell, don’t you think we deserve somewhere nice to rest our weary heads after having the shit kicked out of us for Queen
and country?’)

  2. Check they had a restaurant with outdoor dining. (‘All I want is to have a cigarette with my morning coffee. Why does that have to involve being made to feel like a second-class citizen drinking out of a Styrofoam cup hunched in a doorway?’)

  3. Confirm if there was an indoor pool. (‘I run everywhere, mostly across rooftops, in a hail of gunfire. Why the hell would I run for fun? Swimming is exercise. And I get to see women in a state of undress I normally don’t get to see unless I at least talk to them first.’)

  It could be a dead end considering that I had no idea what he was doing. He might not even be staying in a hotel. But I had no other leads. I felt vindicated when the first hotel in the second town I rang confirmed that Jake had stayed there last week, but no, they had not discovered the scarf he’d left behind.

  Jake had spent three days in a town called L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue. Why would he lie about being in France? If it was for work and confidential he could just say so. If it was for play, why hide what country he had been to? Knowing Jake, a blower was more likely to involve hard partying in Ibiza with a flurry of drugs and bronzed, long-limbed women, not antiquing in a quaint little town in Provence.

  I scanned Platform Eight’s database of ongoing missions. Nothing came up on L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue. Whatever he was doing there was something he felt he had to lie about to me. And right now, with my life on the line, I couldn’t take any chances.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I RANG JAKE AND SAID we needed a face-to-face that evening. I named a storage unit that Mrs Chang had been renting a container at since I started at the Platform. All us Rats had an escape box in place, a container somewhere, with a crate filled with guns, money and passports. We all knew a time could come when we needed to disappear.

  It was a risk to leave the apartment. I could have asked him to meet me there. But I didn’t know how things would pan out, and if I was going to be on the run for a while I didn’t want my Airbnb rating ruined through this landlord complaining about bloodstains not coming out of his expensive polished wooden floor.