Fox In The Henhouse

by James Lawson

  Finally, the train pulled into the platform. Max stepped forward to board, and a short young man bumped into him.

  “Perdón,” the young man mumbled. He held out a stack of today’s newspaper emblazoned with the headline: CROWN OFFICIALS NERVOUS OF HYBRID INTERFERENCE IN ELECTION. Max bought a copy and thanked the man. He skimmed through the front page article – nothing of substance to the headline, just the newspaper drumming up business by stoking people’s paranoia.

  Max boarded the train and it chugged forward. It cleared the outskirts of Madrid, and the scenery devolved from houses to the burnt orange countryside. He opened the newspaper again and returned to the front page article. Maybe the Crown was nervous about interference. Max looked up and scanned the train. It was full of ordinary people going about their business. But with the hybrid’s ability to hide in plain sight, even the most innocent of scenes was fraught with danger.

  Max flicked through a few pages of the newspaper to an article about a minor controversy to do with some uppity Scottish Lord. A rough scratching sounded, and he looked up to see a primly-dressed woman sitting across from him, fumbling with a cigarette.

  “Sorry,” she said with a knowing smile. “It’s these damn gloves. They make me so damn clumsy. Oh, drat!” The cigarette slipped out of her hands and fell to the floor. “They make it impossible to do anything. My father insists the damn things make me look more dignified, but if you ask me, they’re a bloody nuisance. Father doesn’t know the first thing about what it’s like to live in the real world. Do you know what I mean? I suppose you don’t, being a man. Not that I have anything against men, it’s just I find it hard to really believe they properly know what it’s like being a woman. Especially one from a family like mine. Not that you’re necessarily from a family like mine. I’m speaking about my father now. But I’d expect you’d be able to offer some degree of sympathy. Yes?”

  Max was stunned silent for a moment, unsure of whether he was witnessing some kind of performance. “Yes, I suppose so,” he said, attempting to inject some sort of measure of cool into his voice.

  “The name’s Fisher.” She removed a glove and extended her hand. Her eyes caught the sun, and briefly sparkled. “Elizabeth Fisher. Pleased to meet you.”

  He shook her hand, and offered her a pleasant smile. “Nigel Gunston. I don’t suppose you’re keen to smoke that cigarette now. Allow me?”

  He removed a cigarette case from his jacket, opened it, and passed one to Elizabeth. He motioned to light her cigarette, but she waved his hand away. “Entirely unnecessary, Mr Gunston. I’m obviously better off doing away with these damned gloves entirely.”

  She removed the other, lit the cigarette, and took a drag.

  “Going far, Miss Fisher?” He folded up his newspaper.

  “Cáceres,” she said, with a sigh. “Father maintains a rather impressive collection of antiquities, you see. I suspect it’s compensating for the fact that he is so utterly dull. There is a museum that’s apparently quite keen on acquiring a piece he has lost interest in. I’m acting as his agent, as he’s apparently got better things to do, like skiing in Switzerland. It’s rather absurd for someone to collect antiquities only to eventually tire of them, don’t you think?”

  Max smirked. “It shows a certain honesty, I suppose. We all run out of space to store our stuff eventually.”

  Elizabeth was silent for a moment, then let out a punch of a laugh. “You’re quite right, Mr Gunston. Perhaps I’d be better off minding my own business and enjoying the train ride. You tend to meet the strangest characters.”

  Max raised an eyebrow. “Myself included?”

  “Of course, Mr Gunston. That was entirely the joke.” She leaned in and inspected Max’s cigarette case. “If you don’t mind me saying so, Mr Gunston, that’s a rather remarkable case. Would you mind me taking a closer look? The design is quite exquisite.”

  “Of course, Miss Fisher.” He handed over the case with a smile, thinking of how Duncan had warned him that he would most likely be trailed on his way out of Madrid. Was this Miss Fisher just an eccentric passenger? Max guessed the cigarette case would return to him with a bug of some kind.

  He looked out the window as she inspected his cigarette case. Where exactly had she come from? There was a slight twinge to her accent – certainly a rather polished and refined London way of talking, but with something else mixed in.

  “I rather hope you don’t mind me asking,” Max began as she handed the cigarette case back to him, “but I detect an interesting note to your accent.”

  “Interested in the exotic, are you, Mr Gunston?”

  “Yes, actually. That’s why I work on the continent, in spite of the dangers.”

  “Well, if you must know, my father employed an au pair when I was younger. A refugee from Portugal, as a matter of fact. He always insisted it was his way of giving back. Of course, once he didn’t need her around, she was out the door. Still, it gave him another excuse to feel superior for a little while.”

  “How interesting.” He accepted the cigarette case back and slid it into his jacket pocket.

  “Quite a specimen,” she said. “It’s the sort of thing that might find itself in a museum one day – if you were to leave it buried in the sand for a few hundred years.”

  “I must remember that.” He turned to look out the window at the passing countryside – an endless sea of paddocks. He could feel the occasional weight of Elizabeth’s gaze as she looked from the fields outside to him. The accent story had to be bogus. No one would acquire a Portuguese accent from an au pair. She must have been using the story as a cover for the Portuguese twang. Likely enough she had never been to Britain.

  She was likely some hybrid sympathiser’s girlfriend. An academic, maybe. The sort of person who thought it wise to announce themselves to the person they were shadowing. They were always getting in the way of the Hive’s work. A lot of guff about hybrid rights, and so on. The sort of thing yelled down from upon an ivory tower in Cambridge. Well, no. Max checked himself for buying into the tabloid nonsense. The worst offenders were a minority of radical students who barely understood what they were saying. Occasionally some well-meaning old professor would utter a comment that could have been construed as being pro-hybrid if you squinted, and the papers ran with that.

  There was no question Max would have to change his method of travel. The Gunston identity, too. He’d be able to head off any threats from this Miss Fisher, or whomever she represented (given the amateur theatrics, Max didn’t expect the operation to be particularly slick). But the last thing he needed was to be waylaid by some group of amateurs. Odds were they knew Max was Ministry of Detection, but if Miss Fisher was their way of tracking him, he’d be able to send them off in the wrong direction easily enough.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Max said, and stood. “My stop’s coming up, and there’s a rather speedy connection. Knowing my luck, the trains will be running on time and I won’t have a chance to splash some water on my face.”

  “It’s always that way, isn’t it?” she said. “The Spanish can be relied upon to be efficient when you least need or want it.”

  Max grinned tightly and nodded. “Good day, Miss Fisher. And the best of luck in Cáceres with the museum.”

  “A pleasure, Mr Gunston.”

  Max turned and left, taking his bag. He strolled down the aisle to the bathroom. He opened the door and stepped inside, taking care to not look back at Miss Fisher.

  He splashed a bit of water on his face, dried his hands, and opened the cigarette case. There were no obvious bugs, but not even Miss Fisher would be so careless as to place it in clear view. He removed each cigarette, slightly pressing, feeling for any irregularities in the tobacco. On the last one, he felt a long, thin cylinder embedded inside. Max smiled. It was the last cigarette he would have smoked, so it would have travelled the furthest with him. And he had to admit, the switch-out was well conducted.

  He’d ditch the case at the station. Hi
s connecting train, as well. He’d take a car to Lisbon the rest of the way, if he could find one. It would take a little longer to reach the border, but not that much. Best thing to do in the meantime would be to quickly patch through to Duncan in Madrid. Duncan obviously knew more about what was going on in the Barcelona office, and the details about whoever Elizabeth Fisher was might point to the identity of the mole.

  A whistle sounded, and the train pulled into the station at Illescas. Max straightened his tie and left the train. He stepped onto the platform, feeling the heat radiate upwards from the baking ground. A porter offered to take his bag, but he said no, thanked him, and kept walking.

  Max moved into a more densely packed crowd of people, removed the cigarette case, and slipped it into the pocket of a passing commuter. Without pausing, he strode forwards, and passed down a flight of stairs into a short tunnel connecting him to the main station building.

  He felt a twinge of guilt for the man whom he had bugged. No doubt he’d get a surprise when he was bagged up by hybrid sympathisers. They’d let the man go, though. With any luck.

  3

  He made his way out of the train station, making a beeline for a nearby café. The town was slow-moving and sun-baked; the kind of place that felt like it was in a perpetual lazy afternoon. A block from the station he came to Café Salamanca, a small establishment with a handful of Spaniards playing cards around a table in the corner and smoking cigarettes. All he would need to do was place a call through to Duncan, update him, and he’d be out of there. He’d cross the border by night.

  He introduced himself to the owner, a thin man with a wide smile who was standing behind the bar, and found a public telephone on the far side of the room.

  He inserted a few coins, and dialled a number that he, as well as a dozen other Hive agents, had been given for times when they needed to touch base with HQ while in the field.

  There was a muted, muffled ring on the other end of the line. A woman answered in Spanish.

  “Madrid City Council. How may I direct your call?”

  “I’d like to speak to Senor Basquiat,” Max replied. “It’s an urgent matter concerning a shipment of wool.”

  The woman’s voice dropped out and was replaced by a series of clicks and buzzes.

  Max waited, tapping his foot on the wooden floor. The door to the café opened, and a little bell on the door dinged. A dishevelled, suntanned man with patchy facial hair walked in.

  “Agent Green,” said a voice on the phone, and for a split second Max’s attention was diverted from the bar’s newest patron.

  “Yes, it’s–” His words stalled as the dishevelled man produced a long-barrelled handgun. It looked big enough to punch a hole through a mountain.

  “Agent Green?”

  Max leapt through the air as the man pulled back the hammer and fired. The bullet smashed through the telephone receiver in mid-air as it fell, sending chips of plastic across the room.

  Max landed with a thud behind a table, and there seemed to be total silence in the world. Max reached for the pistol in his ankle-holster and drew it. He grabbed the table to steady himself and it splintered under shot after shot.

  Every other one of the barflies was on the ground, and Max scurried away from the table as it disintegrated. He leapt forward to a nook behind a brick wall as the table collapsed under its own weight, its legs now in pieces.

  The last few bullets in the assassin’s chamber punched into the brick wall in front of him, covering him in a fine red dust.

  The shots stopped. Max breathed hard, sweat coating his hands. Was the gunman reloading? Or just waiting for Max to expose himself before putting one in his head.

  Either way, he’d have to make a move soon. Max leant around the corner with his gun raised. The man was fumbling for more bullets, trying to slide them into his revolver, panicked.

  “Stop!” Max yelled in Spanish. “Put the gun down!”

  The assassin worked furiously to load the gun. He snapped the chamber closed and tried to raise the gun. Max fired twice. The bullets slammed into the gunman’s chest with sprays of blood, toppling him backwards across the bar. With a bloody cough, he slid off the bar and onto the ground and didn’t move.

  The patrons of the bar looked up nervously. “Ministry of Detection,” Max said firmly, without taking his eyes off the body. His stomach seized as he realised he had just blown his cover to the barflies. But, he figured, the assassin already knew that. Outside, he heard a scramble of feet and some people calling out to each other in Spanish.

  Then the unmistakable racking of a machine gun.

  “Get down!” Max screamed. A barrage of bullets smashed through the bar’s windows and he dropped to the floor. The bottles of port and whiskey disintegrated behind the bar, the noise blotting out everything else. He covered his ears and his eyes on the beer-soaked floor, unable to do anything but wait until the gunfire ceased.

  After what seemed like an age, it did, and Max looked up. Each stick of furniture and brick in the bar had been chewed up and spat out. The barflies cowered on the floor, and the bartender was moaning behind the bar, nursing a bloody shoulder.

  With a quick shrug to the barman that said, “Sorry about this,” Max grabbed his bag and kicked the second door open. Half expecting to be torn to shreds by a swarm of bullets, he dashed out into the street with his pistol raised.

  There they were: three men, each as grubby as the first gunman, with smoking submachine guns, struggling to reload them. They were amateurs; as if shooting up a bar in broad daylight wasn’t crazy enough, they hadn’t stopped to make sure they wouldn’t run out of bullets all at once.

  “Ministry of Detection!” Max bellowed, his gun raised. One of the assassins almost dropped his machine gun in surprise, while another reached into his waistband.

  For a vital second, Max hesitated – what they hell did they say in training?

  Then one of the assassins had a pistol out and fired. Max turned to run, squeezing off a shot. Not knowing whether he had hit anything, he ran across the street and down an adjoining alley, just ducking under a bullet that smashed into the wall of the building.

  He jettisoned the magazine from his pistol and nimbly replaced it with another from his bag. Whoever these clowns were, they were serious. But they were also stupid. Too stupid to be involved with Elizabeth Fisher, as amateur as she had initially appeared. But what were the odds of being tracked by two enemies on the same day?

  Max ducked around a corner and raised his pistol, ready to fire back down the alley he had just used to escape. It was empty; no one had followed him. In the distance, a siren sounded and people cried. But no one came down the alleyway.

  Could that have been enough? Would be he able to just stroll away like nothing had happened?

  A strange clicking sound came from above, and Max immediately knew a quiet exit was out of the question. Above him, peering down at him from the rooftop, was a big smile and the burning yellow eyes of a hybrid.

  “Hola,” the hybrid said in its guttural, inhuman voice.

  “Good morning,” Max replied, before unloading a couple rounds up into the sky. The hybrid jumped back from the edge of the roof, and Max ran.

  Great, he thought. The first reported hybrid sighting for two years, and it’s on my field mission.

  Max, like everyone, was happier with the idea of hybrids staying shifted in their human form. Much easier to deal with rather than when they were seven feet tall, ripped with muscle and enough anger to tear the head off a cow.

  He could hear the beast leaping from rooftop to rooftop above him, just waiting for a chance to drop down on Max and beat him to death. The alley ended twenty metres ahead, coming out into a square with a produce market flanked by a huge cathedral. Max knew the instant he was in the open the hybrid would be able to catch him, using its agility to evade his gunfire.

  “Shit,” Max said, slowing as he neared the end of the alley. Hadn’t Duncan been more careful than this? Word
of Max’s mission must have leaked to the mole, and now Max had a price on his head. Anything to stop him locating the Sailor, anything to sabotage the election next week.

  The sirens screamed, coming closer. The local authorities must have been notified, maybe even the local Hive office.

  He came to the end of the alley, breathing hard. He looked up at the rooftop, but the hybrid wasn’t there. For all Max knew, the city was swarming with Hive agents, and the hybrid had been spooked.

  He stashed his pistol in his jacket and briskly stepped out from the alleyway. Act normal. Get some transport, and get the hell out of here.

  He weaved through the market stalls, trying to get a read on anyone who looked strange or suspicious – without trying to draw attention to himself. But no one looked out of the ordinary. There were dozens of fruit sellers, people looking through trinkets, cloths, and rugs. Half of them looked normal, but mixed through were people checking over their shoulders, standing alone, glancing over at Max; suddenly everyone seemed as though they were trying to blend in, hiding from him.

  The sound of the sirens was dim in the distance; this area was untouched by the violence.

  Max walked faster. He just had to get some transport.

  A man crossed Max’s path and he bumped into him. “De nada,” Max muttered.

  “No hay problema,” the man said, and his eyes flashed yellow.

  Max didn’t have time to grab his gun; in an instant, the man shifted into his hybrid state, and backhanded Max in the face, throwing him backwards through a stall of watermelons.

  The screams of the crowd erupted, and Max struggled to stand. The hybrid stood above him, reached down, and gripped his throat. It heaved him off the ground and threw him through the air. He was weightless for a moment, then slammed into the hard ground, and tumbled. A motorcycle squealed its horn and skidded to a stop, centimetres from Max’s face.

  A motorcycle!

  Max jumped up and drew his pistol. He fired a round into the air, and a second wave of screams went up from the crowd. The hybrid had vanished; shifted back and disappeared into the crowd.