by Joe Craig
“Anyway,” Georgie piped up again, furious, “NJ7 knows Jimmy didn’t do it – because they did it.”
“What?” Felix asked. “You think Miss Bennett sent someone from NJ7 to kill their own Prime Minister?”
“Maybe. Hollingdale was sadistic and cruel and probably crazy. Maybe they’d had enough and wanted Dad to take over.”
Hardly realising he was speaking, Jimmy cut in. “He had it coming,” he snarled.
All three of them looked at each other, shocked at what Jimmy had said, even if it was true. Was it him or his programming that was spitting out such venomous thoughts? Jimmy couldn’t get any more words out of his mouth. He could feel his lips trembling, but there was nothing more to say.
The only sound was the drone of the television and the incessant ticking of a clock.
CHAPTER FOUR – DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH
The British Prime Minister stepped out of the White House’s Oval Office to rejoin his assistants and his head of security, Paduk. The look on his face was far from optimistic.
“The President is considering our position,” he announced.
“What does that mean?” Paduk asked. “You were in there with him for over an hour. It’s not rocket science. Either he’s on our side or he isn’t.”
Ian Coates’ advisors huddled together in debate. He ignored them and threw himself into a chair of plush red velvet beneath a portrait of Hillary Clinton. He leaned his elbows on his knees and held his head. The quiet of the corridor was stifling and the cream walls seemed to be closing in on him. He felt like he was trapped inside a giant trifle. Somewhere, a clock ticked too loudly. Next to him, Paduk itched at his shirt collar.
“He can’t keep us waiting like this,” he grumbled. “Where’s the respect?”
Ian Coates shook his head. “It’s natural,” he explained, trying to stay calm. “We’re asking for their army to come and fight a war with us against France. That’s not a decision that can be hurried.”
Paduk grunted. “I remember when Americans were grateful to fight alongside us. Now they’ve forgotten everything. Most people in this country don’t even know where France is.”
“Most of them don’t know where Britain is either, Paduk.”
Suddenly, a door opposite them opened. They both shot to their feet and instinctively straightened their jackets. But it wasn’t the President who emerged, merely one of his aides. She was a woman in her early thirties, with brown hair tied back in a tight knot. The shoulders of her business suit were just a little too wide to be stylish and there was too much red lipstick lining her fake smile.
“Current US policy is not to intervene in foreign conflicts,” she announced. Her voice was clipped, with a clean mid-American accent. “But the President places great importance on the historical friendship between our two nations. Therefore, he would like to offer you a package of the finest military hardware the US industry has to offer.”
“Weapons?” Coates spluttered. “You’re offering me weapons?”
“Well, yes,” replied the aide. “As well as hardware of all other types – trucks, planes, missiles—”
“I know what military hardware is,” interrupted the Prime Minister. “So how much will this package cost?”
“Eighty billion dollars.”
Ian Coates let out an incredulous laugh. “I knew it,” he scoffed. “Grogan needed just enough time to phone the bosses at the arms companies, didn’t he?”
“I can’t answer that, sir,” replied the aide blankly.
“Tell Grogan I came to meet a President – not an arms dealer.” Coates spun on his heels and marched away, with Paduk and his own aides following close behind.
As they were escorted out of the White House, Ian Coates tried to contain his anger. He tried to imagine how he’d behave at the press conference that was coming up in a few days. How could he put a brave public face on this and pretend to be friends with the President of the USA? He also had to go through the motions of meeting with the UN in New York. But none of that ruled out the drastic action he could take in secret.
“Call Miss Bennett,” he hissed under his breath. “I’m approving the Reflex Plan.”
“The Reflex Plan?” Paduk gasped. “Are you sure?”
The Prime Minister nodded.
* * *
Mitchell checked the platform clock again. It was just habit now. He didn’t need to know the time – he wouldn’t even have remembered what it was if anybody had asked him. But every few minutes he looked up at the clock. His fingers tore and twisted at a paperclip he had found on the platform the night before.
It was days now since Mitchell had faced Jimmy, but not for a second had the confrontation left him. Every possible thought had blasted through his brain. And, like a high-powered water jet wearing down stone, his torment had reduced his mind to dust. At least, that was how it felt.
Your brother’s still alive.
Mitchell could still hear Jimmy’s words in his head. He had repeated them to himself so many times that they had almost lost all meaning. Another teenage boy walked past. He was probably a couple of years older than Mitchell – fifteen or sixteen. In Mitchell’s hunger and fatigue he saw his brother’s face on the boy, just the way it had looked when Mitchell had beaten it senseless. He shook his head hard and rubbed his eyes. The other boy was gone, but for Mitchell, the image of Lenny Glenthorne lying limp on the floor was as vivid as ever.
He could still feel the horror of being told that he had murdered his own brother. With that power over him, it had been easy for NJ7 to make Mitchell their assassin. They’d quickly sent him after his first target – Jimmy Coates. But when the moment came to complete the job, Mitchell was defeated – not by a stronger punch or some secret gadget, but because Jimmy had claimed that Mitchell’s brother wasn’t dead after all.
Since then, Mitchell’s survival instinct had forced him below ground. He had wandered through the Underground network, easily hiding from the overnight workers when the network closed in the early hours of each morning. He’d broken into the staff toilets to find water. He’d slept only a few hours at a time in any one place, continually moving on, sometimes walking through the tunnels and always avoiding the District Line – the line represented on the map by the biggest green stripe in London. His clothes and hands were black with dirt.
He could feel NJ7 all around him, watching. Not just in the thousands of security cameras, but in person. He’d seen those figures waiting for him – shadows that hovered on the platforms and by the exits. Agents of the Green Stripe were everywhere. He knew they could pick him up any time. They’d implanted a tracking chip in his heel. But that didn’t matter. Mitchell knew he was going to go back to them eventually. NJ7 was his life now. And it was a life that seemed to suit him well. The incident with his brother had led him to these things – training, purpose and something that could almost have felt like happiness.
Now he didn’t even know whether he wanted his brother to be alive or not. The possibility didn’t fill him with joy. His brother had beaten him up countless times. Maybe Lenny didn’t deserve to die, but he certainly didn’t deserve Mitchell fighting for him. Whether Mitchell had killed him, or NJ7 had just made it look that way, what difference did it make? Either way, Leonard Glenthorne was out of his life. Even if it turned out that NJ7 had killed him, there was nobody left in the world who was going to take revenge. Least of all me, Mitchell thought.
He looked up at the clock again. He didn’t even know how much time had passed. It was a good feeling to know that it had passed at all. He gave his paperclip a sharp kink with his thumb. A commuter strutted by, glancing at Mitchell’s face. All he saw was grime and suspicion. He looked away quickly, like everybody else did, and clutched his briefcase tighter.
Is this what I’ve become? thought Mitchell. No. I’m better than this. I’m different. I work for NJ7. He pushed himself off the bench and marched along the platform. He was still as strong as ever, despite so long with har
dly anything to eat. After these days of confusion, he was ready for the truth. He was ready for NJ7.
Halfway along the platform Mitchell dropped to his knees. There was a square in the platform floor that looked like some kind of trapdoor. He had seen dozens of these all over the tube network. Each one was about half a metre square, with a tiny keyhole.
Hardly aware of what he was doing, Mitchell opened his fist. There was his paperclip, bent into a strange and intricate shape. Of course, he thought to himself, there must be easier ways to reach NJ7 than walking through the streets.
He jabbed his paperclip into the keyhole. All this time, his programming had been fashioning the perfect key. In one fluid movement, he hauled open the hatch, threw himself in, feet first, and pulled the door shut over him. He didn’t even bother opening his eyes.
Instead, he surrendered himself completely to the intelligent force that drove him. He had landed on his back in a dank crawlspace. He immediately rolled a few metres to the side, feeling the platform floor just a whisker above him. Without knowing why, he counted the rolls – one, two, three, four – until eventually his body stopped itself dead. His hands shot up and, after only a second to feel around, he again pressed his paperclip key into a hole. He gave it a quick turn, then punched open another hatch door.
Mitchell emerged beneath bare strip lights that warmed his face. Around him were grey concrete walls covered in loose wiring that looked like a rainbow on a glorious day. This was no longer London Underground. Mitchell was back at NJ7 Headquarters and he wanted some answers.
He snapped his paperclip in two and flicked it to the floor, then broke into a sprint. It felt as if every muscle was thanking him for the chance to run again. He still felt as if he was watching somebody else’s actions, but it was a show he enjoyed watching. He swelled with pride to see himself move with such authority.
He tracked his progress through the labyrinth with ease. There were no features to mark his route, just miles and miles of grey concrete tunnel. They were like the veins of his own body. He just needed to look inside himself to see where they led.
In some places the corridors were broad thoroughfares; in others they were barely wide enough for Mitchell to squeeze down. There were no doors of course – NJ7 Headquarters were designed so that if it ever became necessary to evacuate, the whole complex could be flooded by the Thames in 120 seconds.
The constant pad of Mitchell’s feet was virtually the only sound, but he ran on his toes, keeping the noise to a minimum. Then he heard something from round the next corner – tapping on a keyboard. In an instant, he made the calculation: just one person. A man. Sitting down. Facing the entrance of a room with no other way out. As he approached, he made more deductions based solely on the sound of the person typing: left-handed. Not a trained fighter because the arms weren’t strong enough, so a technician, not a field-agent.
Whoever it was, he was about to meet Mitchell Glenthorne.
Mitchell whipped round the corner. In front of him was exactly the scene he had pictured – a lone man, typing at his desk. The light from his computer screen picked out the whites of his eyes, which were stretched out in astonishment, and a green stripe on his lapel. A diamond twinkled in the man’s left earlobe. There was no time for him to cry out. Mitchell moved too fast, diving over the desk. He rocketed into the man’s torso, forcing him backwards over his chair. As they landed, one on top of the other, Mitchell’s fingers homed in on the earring.
With a vicious twist, he ripped it straight out of the man’s ear, bringing half the lobe with it. Now the man found the breath to cry out in agony. His hand snapped to the side of his head. Blood splattered over his crisp white shirt.
Mitchell held him down with one arm across his neck. They were face to face. Mitchell hadn’t seen this man at NJ7 before, and though he looked young, he didn’t seem inexperienced. There was a sinister confidence in his expression that said he knew situations like this.
“Where’s Miss Bennett?” Mitchell hissed.
“Mitchell, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” the man replied calmly. His accent was faintly Irish. “But I don’t believe you have an appointment.”
Mitchell was outraged by the lack of fear. He brought the earring up to the man’s face and examined the sharp tip at the back. “I’ll appoint this in your eye unless you tell me where Miss Bennett is.”
The man didn’t flinch. For a second the only movement was the throbbing of a vein in his temple. “She’s in a meeting.” A smile crept up the man’s cheeks.
Mitchell pretended to stab the earring downwards, but stopped short. The man blinked and tried to pull away, but he was at the mercy of a thirteen-year-old boy. Mitchell felt the man’s breathing quicken.
“Try again,” Mitchell hissed. “I won’t be pretending next time.”
The answer came almost straight away, but in a smug whisper: “Dr Higgins’ old office.”
Mitchell rolled to one side and pushed himself up, launching into a run. He wove through the tunnels again, with a diamond earring in his fist and blood covering one arm.
“Did you lie to me?” he barked as soon as he turned the corner into Dr Higgins’ office. Miss Bennett was facing away from him, pencil and notepad in hand, studying one of the charts on the wall. The room was lined with computers and in the centre was a large empty desk. Miss Bennett’s curves were silhouetted against the wall. There was a green stripe down the back of her stilettos.
“Welcome back, Mitchell.” She sounded almost bored and didn’t turn round. “Been sightseeing?”
“Where’s my brother?” choked Mitchell. “Is he alive?” He edged round the room towards her and at last she turned to face him. The smile on her face offered no comfort.
“What do you think?” she asked.
Mitchell couldn’t hold back his temper any more. “Tell me the truth or I’ll rip you apart.”
“You’ve made a very basic mistake,” Miss Bennett stated clearly.
“My mistake was trusting you.”
“It’s worse than trusting me, I’m afraid.” For an instant, her cheeks seemed to flush with excitement. “You’ve underestimated me.”
Still staring at Mitchell, she reached behind her and tapped a key on the keyboard of a computer. Suddenly, a blinding strobe light flashed from the monitor. Mitchell’s hands rushed to his face, but it was too late. He was temporarily blinded. Then he felt a vicious stab on his forehead. It knocked all sense of balance out of him. He tumbled to his knees. After a few moments, he could see again, but he just dropped his head and looked to the floor.
Miss Bennett took a deep breath. “Mitchell Glenthorne, I don’t respond well to threats. In future you will raise all your enquiries with the appropriate courtesy.” Mitchell made no response. Miss Bennett bent down low. She placed a finger under Mitchell’s chin and raised his face to meet hers. Her perfume coated Mitchell’s nostrils. “I mean you’ll say please and thank you,” she whispered. To Mitchell it felt like the most terrifying telling off he could have imagined.
He couldn’t believe it. With such a powerful assassin inside him, surely he could have sprung up and taken control. He heard a distant calling in his head, urging him to resist. But the fight was gone from his heart. He had no real reason to challenge Miss Bennett. She was one of the few people in his life who had treated him well.
“If we hadn’t told you your brother was dead,” she explained gently, “you would never have agreed to work for us, would you?” Mitchell shook his head. “And that would have been the real tragedy, wouldn’t it? Because, you see, this is where you belong.”
“So you killed him, not me?” Mitchell asked meekly. A release of energy surged through him – was that relief?
Miss Bennett took him by the shoulder and helped him to his feet. “No,” she replied. “Nobody killed him.”
Mitchell’s relief froze. The news should have made him happy, but it didn’t. Instead, he could feel anxiety creeping through him, stiffening every muscl
e.
“You came close,” Miss Bennett went on, “but NJ7 doctors are keeping him alive for their own purposes.”
Mitchell felt a jolt of anger. His cheeks grew hot and his hands trembled slightly. But it was anger at himself. How could he have behaved like this? He was an assassin working for the finest espionage organisation in the world. It was time to annihilate his old feelings. He clenched his teeth and forced himself to stand tall, looking straight at Miss Bennett. This was his family now.
“You sent agents after me,” he said, holding his voice steady. “Just now, when I was hiding on the Underground, I mean. Why didn’t they bring me in?”
“I knew you’d come back,” Miss Bennett countered, obviously trying to sound casual about it. “You’re not like that other one, Jimmy Coates. I had agents keeping an eye on you just to make sure you didn’t cause any trouble, but I thought you deserved some time to yourself. You’ve worked very hard. Now, isn’t it good that I trusted you?” She smiled a feline smile, then pulled out a mobile phone from her suit jacket and punched a few keys.
“But while you’ve been away, some of us have been working,” she added. “There’s someone you need to meet.”
A few seconds later there were footsteps in the corridor. Then in walked a short man in his mid-twenties, who had a blood-soaked rag clutched to his ear and a look of deep resentment on his face.
“This,” Miss Bennett announced grandly, “is the man who is going to end the Jimmy Coates affair and bring order back to Britain’s Neo-democratic project.” She held out an arm in welcome. “Mitchell, meet the new head of NJ7’s technological team, Ark Stanton.”
“Yeah,” grunted the man. “We already met, thanks.”
CHAPTER FIVE – THE REFLEX PLAN
Mitchell couldn’t help laughing. This was clearly a man who liked to be smartly turned out. There’s only so much you can do to look good when there’s blood pouring out of one ripped earlobe. Apart from that, he looked like an artist had sculpted his head out of olive-brown clay and stuck on two flints of slate for his eyes. It was a perfectly proportioned face, even down to the impeccably neat layer of stubble.