by Kate Johnson
And they were coming inside.
“Hey,” the woman greeted Luke and Alexa, then switched her attention to me. “Oh, Luke,” she said.
That’s all she said.
I looked her over nervously. She was beautiful in a way I’d never be—perfectly straight, glossy dark hair, no little frizzy bits like I get because I brush it too meanly and blow-dry it when I shouldn’t. She had huge, mesmerising dark eyes, perfectly but sparsely made up, and gorgeous clear skin. Her figure was svelte, tightly wrapped in neat jeans and a little black T-shirt.
Ugh.
“I’m Maria,” she said.
Of course she was.
“And what the hell have you brought us, Maria?” Alexa laughed, coming out from behind the desk. To my surprise, she was wheeling herself. Luke’s highly secret government agency had a disabled agent?
Very equal-opportunity of them, but also kinda limiting. I was beginning to see how desperate they were.
Everyone was looking over the huge black man. He didn’t look amused.
“What am I, cattle?” he said, and his voice rumbled.
“Sorry, sweetie.” Maria placed a casual hand on his arm, and I saw Luke’s eyebrows rise. “Everyone, this is Macbeth.”
I stared. Alexa, safe in her wheelchair, started to laugh. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Great name.”
“He can quote it, too,” Maria said, unfazed. “I found him nicking car stereos in Brixton.”
“I figure, anyone who leaves a car unattended in Brixton deserves to have their car stereo nicked,” Macbeth said.
Good point.
“He also single-handedly broke up a six-man brawl outside a nightclub before I’d even got my gun out,” Maria said. She gave Luke a so-there look, then glanced back at me. “So, what did you bring?”
Luke nodded at me. “This is Sophie.”
I gave a little smile.
Macbeth was looking at me like I was meat. Maria was looking at me like I was a Barbie doll. “What can she do?”
I blinked at her. “Well, if you wind my arm back my hair grows,” I said, and she burst out laughing.
“Okay, I see. She’s the airport girl?”
Luke nodded.
“Very nice. So, Lex, where’s One?”
“Gone up the road for breakfast. He said to go through, he won’t be long.”
Luke opened the door behind Alexa’s desk and Maria, Macbeth and I followed him through. This was another ordinary-looking room, with a desk and a table and several chairs. There were filing cabinets and potted plants and a decrepit projector in the corner.
“Don’t look very secret to me,” Macbeth said.
“It’s not supposed to,” Maria said. “If anyone asks, we’re the administrative force for an in-flight service company. Take a seat.”
“So, this One,” I tried to make conversation, “he’s in charge here?”
Luke nodded. “Time was, we all had numbers according to our seniority. Now, I guess Maria’s Two, I’m Three and Lexy’s Four. We just call him One out of habit. His real name is Albert.”
I considered it. One sounded much more Bond than Albert.
“So we’d be Five and Six?” Macbeth gestured to me.
“No, you’d be Sophie and Macbeth.” Luke drummed his fingers on the table. “I need to sort out those contracts with Lexy.” He stood up, and then so did Maria.
“I’ll come with you. Let the newbies get to know each other.”
I managed a very faint smile. Being shut in a room with a human riot shield was not my idea of fun.
“So,” Macbeth said. “What’d you do?”
“Do? Well, I sort of work at the airport, I do check-in…” I trailed off, because he was shaking his head.
“No, I mean, what did you do to get snagged for this?”
“I followed a guy down the baggage belt and damaged company property.”
He grinned, a flash of white. “Nice one.” He paused. “So, you reckon this thing’s for real?”
I shrugged. I’d been wondering the same thing. “God knows. Luke has a warrant card, but then it could be a fake. I don’t know.”
“She—” he jerked his head at the closed door, “—has the sort of hardware you can’t buy in shops, you know what I mean? That’s black market stuff.”
“You mean guns and stuff?” I thought about bluffing it out but ended up confessing, “I don’t really know anything about guns.”
Macbeth shook his head. “So why’d they hire you?”
I shrugged again. “I have no idea.”
“You sleeping with him?”
“No!”
“Just checking.”
We waited in silence for a few more minutes. I tried to think of something to say to Macbeth but my mind drew a whole load of blanks. Truth was, I was terrified of him.
Eventually, voices sounded in the outer office, and then the door opened and a middle-aged man in a suit came in. He had that sort of distinguished look about him, handkerchief in his breast pocket, old school tie, air of supreme self-confidence. The kind of guy you’d hate to have as a neighbour—until someone tried to build over your street and he called in his old chums at the Home Office. Luke and Maria followed him, looking like rebel children.
“This is the biggest team briefing I’ve had in a while,” the distinguished chap said, taking a seat behind the desk and switching his computer on. “I’m One. You are…Sophie and…Macbeth?”
Macbeth nodded.
“Interesting. What’s your real name?”
Macbeth looked impassive, but he took something out of his pocket and handed it over to One. A passport. An old black one. They were pretty damn rare now. It was hard to get them extended.
One read it, raised his eyebrows, then handed it back. “Miss Green?”
I stared at him for a bit.
“ID?” Luke prompted and I, blushing, fumbled for my wallet. I’d brought my passport too, but I hated the picture. I handed over my driving license, figuring that if I could fly to Ireland with it, I could use it for government ID.
One looked me over, smiling. “Luke,” he said.
“Sir?”
“The British spy is elegant, suave and sophisticated. The British spy is not blonde, built and…and confused.”
I didn’t know where to look. I know I went red. Maria and Macbeth looked like they were having a hard time not smiling.
Luke had no such reservations. Grinning broadly, he said, “She’s smarter than she looks, sir.”
“Well, she’d have to be. All right,” One gave my driving license back. “They’ll need new pictures for their cards,” he said to Luke and Maria, who nodded. To me and Macbeth he said, “They’ve told you the rules? Don’t discuss any business with anyone outside this room—apart from Lex. Not even a policeman. Hardly anyone knows we exist.”
I wanted to ask about the police cooperation yesterday, but kept silent.
“Don’t tell anyone you work for us. Don’t tell anyone we exist. If we find out you’ve been telling secrets, we will have you killed. Is that clear?”
I nodded. Macbeth nodded too.
“Lex has the contracts for you to sign.” He looked up at Maria and Luke again. “They’re in your hands now. Good luck.”
With that he turned back to his computer, and Luke came forward to me. We went back to Alexa’s desk, I signed a million confidentiality things and then we were outside and it was hardly breakfast time.
“We’re going to take a look round the terminal,” Maria said. “You want to come with?”
I shrugged, looking at Luke. He grinned. “I think we’ve seen enough of it for now,” he said. “I rigged it with Paola that you’re off when we need you,” he went on, as Maria and Macbeth got into the 205 and disappeared. “Now it’s time for some training.”
I swallowed nervously. Precisely what kind of training did he have in mind?
He told me to drive back to the village, but to take a different route. I’d lived
there most of my life, and I thought I knew every part of every road, but when we turned off on what I’d thought was a dirt track and pulled up at a big converted barn with a sign outside reading “Smith’s Guns”, I was surprised.
“How long has there been a gun shop in my village?”
Luke shrugged. “Years. Why?”
“I—I just never knew about it.”
“Mostly they sell shotguns to game shooters,” Luke said, unfastening his seat belt, “but they do a few decent extras.”
“Such as…?”
“You’ll see.”
“Do I get a gun?” I asked hopefully. Okay, so they scare me, but I’d look pretty cool with one.
“Do you have a gun license?”
“No—”
“Then you don’t get a gun.” He flashed me a smile.
“Well, how do I get a gun?”
“Be very nice to your local constabulary. Join a gun club. Of course, to join most gun clubs you have to have a license…”
“That’s just stupid.”
“No, that’s very clever. That’s why we don’t have a gun control problem.” He held the door open, and I went in.
The walls were covered with every kind of shotgun, and there were rifles too. All of them were locked down with alarms and things. But there were no small guns. I looked at Luke, puzzled, and he smiled and went straight over to the counter.
“Mr. Sharpe,” the man there greeted him. “Haven’t seen you in a while. How’re you getting on with your SIG?”
Luke grinned. “Perfect partners,” he said. “Got any more bullets for me?”
The man reached under the counter for a key and unlocked a door behind him. “It was the .40 Smith & Wesson rounds, right?”
“Right,” Luke nodded. “And, Joe? Need to have a look in your special cabinet.”
Joe flicked his eyes at me as he dumped a box on the counter. “This is all on the level?”
“Totally above board. She’s with me.”
Joe gave a doubtful nod. “Right, then,” he said, and disappeared into the back room. Luke beckoned for me to follow, and I walked through cautiously, right into Wonderland.
Well, maybe Macbeth’s idea of Wonderland. The room was filled with guns of every size and calibre, ammunition, knives, defence sprays, bullet-proof vests.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered. “Is all of this legal?”
“Depends on who you are,” Luke said thoughtfully. “Everything’s legal for me.”
“What do I get?”
He took something that looked like an electric hair tong off the rack and handed it to me. “Stun gun.”
“You are kidding me.”
“Defence spray.”
“Seriously?”
“Kevlar.”
I stared at the vest. “A bullet-proof vest? What for?”
Luke and Joe both looked at me as if I’d just landed. “Erm, to stop the bullets?” Luke said.
“What bullets?” My voice was rising, I was panicking a little. “You never said there’d be bullets.”
Luke stared. “Joe,” he said, “can you give us a minute?”
Joe left, closing the door behind him, and Luke gave me a serious look.
“I told you there’d be bullets,” he said.
“No, you did not.” Did he?
“I said it’d be dangerous! Did you think people would be coming after you with sucker-dart guns?”
Chalker has one of those. He used to fire it at Tammy. And then I used to hit him.
“Well, no,” I said, feeling foolish, “but…”
“But?”
“But if they get guns, why don’t I?”
“You need to prove to me you’re not going to shoot yourself in the foot,” Luke said dryly. “Start off with the basics. You probably won’t need them.”
I trudged out of the room with him. Only probably?
Luke paid Joe by credit card, and I took my stash out to the car. He’d added handcuffs and a couple of Velcro braces for all my stuff, but there still wasn’t any gun.
I made a face.
“What?” Luke said patiently.
“Stephanie Plum gets a gun.”
“Who?”
I shook my head. Philistine. “What now?”
Luke glanced at my feet. I was wearing my cool trainers—the pretty ones, not my muddy, dog-walking trainers that my mother keeps trying to wash.
“How fit are you?” he said, leaning over and pinching my waist.
“Hey!” I recoiled in shock. Next he’d be asking how much I weighed.
“I’ll race you home,” Luke said, getting out of the car.
“No way.” It was at least a mile, and pretty much all uphill. Whoever said Essex is flat must have been in a goddamn tank.
“Yeah, come on. It’s good for you.”
I frowned reluctantly as I got out of the car and locked it.
“I’ll even give you a head start,” Luke offered.
Git.
“I’m fine,” I smiled sweetly. “I’ll see you there. Don’t get lost.”
He started running. I got back in the car and tried to run him over, but the bastard was too fast for me.
“Cheat!” he yelled, banging on the window, but I drove past, smiling serenely. Okay, I was cracking up, but let’s pretend I was serene, okay?
I arrived home, let myself in, put the kettle on and greeted Tammy, who was making a nest out of my laundry. “Hey baby,” I said, and she opened one eye at me. For a cat, that was a lot of effort. “Shall we lock nasty Luke out?”
But nasty Luke found my bedroom window open and climbed in.
“Cheat,” I said, and he shook his head.
“Seriously,” he said, “an open ground-floor window on an unsecured courtyard?”
“Oh, and I suppose you have CCTV on all your windows, and infrared alarms too?”
Luke shrugged. He probably did. He probably lived in a bunker or something, with lots of monitor screens and tripwires.
Freak.
The toaster popped and I took my bread out, spreading honey on it and then slicing a banana on top.
“What the hell are you eating?”
I looked down at my food, then up at Luke. “Lasagne,” I said. “Want some?”
He glared at me. “Don’t get smart. Is that supposed to be your breakfast?”
I looked at the clock. It was nine-thirty.
“Lunch,” I said. “I’ve been up for hours.”
Luke shook his head. “Shouldn’t lunch be…savoury? Like, a burger or something?”
“I’m a vegetarian.”
“Vege-burger.”
“Do you know how many additives there are in those things?”
Luke stared at me like I’d just grown another head. I was getting used to it.
“I suppose you don’t eat ready meals either?”
Of course I do. Everyone does. But he’d just run a mile uphill, I needed to beat him on something.
“Ice cream?”
I gave him a look. “I am still human.”
Luke made himself a sandwich and found some crisps and ate it all without asking. I got some gratification from Tammy, who tried to nick everything out of his hand.
“Your cat is just like you,” Luke commented after a while.
What, gorgeous, sinuous, almond-eyed, stealthy and deadly? I batted my eyelashes at him.
“Like a dog with a bloody bone. It’s my food, you little bugger.”
Offended, I picked Tammy up and nicked a handful of crisps for her. “I am not like a dog with a bone.”
“You were yesterday.”
“Are you even going to tell me their real names?”
“What, the Brownie twins? We’re still not sure. They have a lot of aliases.”
I mumbled something under my breath about the state of his military intelligence, but when Luke asked me to repeat it, asked brightly, “So what do we do now?”
“Go into town. Get you a phone.”
<
br /> “I have a phone.” I gestured to the handset by the sofa.
“A mobile.”
“Got one of those, too,” I pulled out my little Siemens from my handbag.
“A company phone. A good one.”
“This is a good phone!”
“Can it take hi-res pictures? Video clips? Is it Bluetooth enabled? Triband? Does it have my number, Maria’s, One’s, Lexy’s and the office programmed into it?”
“It could have,” I said sulkily.
“You’re getting a new phone. Give the number out to no one.”
“Or what, you’ll have to kill me?”
Luke didn’t answer, but got up and put his plate in the sink. “Come on.”
Whatever he drove, it was still up at the “office”, so we got back into Ted and rumbled off into town.
“This is incredible,” Luke said, looking around the car’s sparse interior.
“Yeah,” I said fondly.
“There isn’t even a tape deck.”
I frowned. “There’s a ghetto blaster under your seat,” I said. “But the batteries are flat.”
Luke shook his head. “You’re a weird girl.”
“…thank you.”
He didn’t say anything about my parking, but I could feel him wincing as I pulled into a rather small space. And if government agents have any kind of dispensation for free parking, then Luke didn’t share it with me.
I was half expecting another hidden Smith’s Guns type place, and was mildly surprised when we walked into The Link and Luke picked out an expensive Nokia package. I wanted to wail that I didn’t know how to use a Nokia. They confused me, all the punctuation was in the wrong place when you wanted to send a text—but he didn’t listen, carded it and handed me the bag.
“Do you belong to a gym?”
I shook my head in faint horror.
“Join one.”
“Sir, yes, sir!”
Luke gave me a sideways glance. “Are you on the Pill?”
I stared. “Excuse me?”
He handed me a slip of green prescription paper. “Present for you from Lexy. She’s a qualified doctor. This is a no-period Pill. Maria takes it. Carry them in your bag, take them religiously, and even if you’re captured and tortured, explain that they keep your heart beating or something.”
He looked slightly flushed. Men never grow up, do they?