by Joe Craig
The murmurs from the crowd grew louder, but it was clear they were all starting to listen to the man. The rest of the background noise fell away.
“Some of you might like the fact that you don’t need to vote any more,” the man went on. “But now the Government commits horrendous acts without us having any say in the matter.”
Mitchell peered closer. There was something about this man that he recognised, but the image was too dark and grainy to be sure.
“You won’t find it in any British media,” the speech continued, “because it’s controlled by Ian Coates and his Secret Service donkeys. But in France this is public knowledge: a British destroyer has attacked a French facility in Western Sahara.”
The packed hall was completely rapt. Everybody was listening to him now, mesmerised by his charisma. After a minute Mitchell was hardly taking in the speech; he was examining the picture and analysing the voice.
“Are you going to let them start an unjustified, illegal war?” the man asked, with passion shaking his words. There was a roar from the crowd.
“Are you going to let them act in your name, without serving your interests?”
Another roar, louder this time.
“Or are you going to join me in tearing down…”
The end of his sentence was lost in the cheering of the crowd. The man raised his arms and strode to the front of his platform, soaking up the applause and encouraging more. Mitchell only realised now that the man had actually been standing on one of the snooker tables to make his speech. The overhead light reflected off the green felt and caught the man’s face from below. Mitchell broke into a smile. Of course he knew who this was.
Christopher Viggo: the man who represented the only realistic opposition to the Government. The man NJ7 had already tried to kill. But they’d sent Jimmy Coates to do it. That’s what had started all of the trouble – Jimmy had overcome his instinct to kill Viggo and instead joined the man’s cause. Mitchell had heard all about that. He remembered how careful Miss Bennett had been to make sure he hadn’t challenged his own programming in the same way.
And now Jimmy Coates was dead. Mitchell’s head spun as he thought about it. It was nothing new, but it still felt strange. If Jimmy hadn’t joined Viggo, would he and Mitchell have fought side by side for NJ7, instead of attacking each other? Could they even have been friends? After all, they had more in common than most other people.
We were half-brothers, Mitchell reminded himself. He shook off the thought with a shudder. It was the last thing he wanted to think about. For all he knew, it could be a lie anyway.
The video came to an end and straight away the phone on Mitchell’s desk rang. It made him jump. He picked it up, but before he could say anything, Miss Bennett’s voice came through the receiver.
“Seen enough?”
Mitchell hauled his concentration back to the video. He ran his finger across the screen, tracing the framed pictures on the wall behind Viggo’s head. They were too blurred to make out, but he knew NJ7’s data team would have been able to enhance the image.
“Where was this filmed?” he asked.
“A snooker hall in Camden.” Miss Bennett sounded calm, but Mitchell had spent enough time with her to know there was something extra in her voice today. Fear, he wondered? No. More like excitement.
“He’s less than six kilometres from where you’re sitting,” she said. “And he dares to make a speech like that.”
“Did we track him?” Mitchell asked. “Whoever took this film—”
“Lost him. It wasn’t an agent, just a loyal member of the public. Out of nowhere, Viggo pops up at a snooker hall, makes that speech, then disappears. Who knows where else he’s been doing it and how many times? It can’t happen again.”
“Who’s he working with? He’d need help to disappear like that.”
“No he wouldn’t,” Miss Bennett scoffed. “He’s ex-NJ7. He could be alone or he could have built up his own private army. But either way…”
Mitchell’s stomach turned over. It was a mixture of the assassin power inside him stirring and his human psyche making him sick with fear. Mitchell wallowed in the sickness until it turned into strength. His voice came out sounding more confident than ever.
“So you want me to—”
“I want you to send him an invitation to your fourteenth birthday party.”
There was an awkward silence. Mitchell knew Miss Bennett must be joking, but couldn’t work out why she didn’t laugh.
“Do I have to spell this out?” she snapped. “Find him. Kill him.”
The line went dead.
Jimmy’s hands and feet were back in bandages, but this time his right wrist was cuffed to the bed. He hadn’t been able to convince the doctors that the bandages were unnecessary and cuffs were useless. If he wanted to break free he knew he could. But now there didn’t seem much point.
Some sheets from the newspaper lay open on his lap. One of the guards was so scared he’d agreed to do almost anything Jimmy asked. Salvaging the newspaper from the courtyard was a simple place to start and Jimmy was beginning to get the hang of moving the pages around with the ball of bandage.
He stared at the picture on the front. Nothing in the newspaper’s text added much; the picture said it all. Jimmy’s mind went round and round in circles, retracing the same thoughts, throwing up the same furious frustrations. Britain had struck, and in a way that was obviously meant to be direct retaliation for the French blowing up the British oil rig. Except the French hadn’t blow up the oil rig. Jimmy had.
As far as Jimmy could work out, a British destroyer had blown up a French facility in West Africa known as Mutam-ul-it. The paper was a bit sketchy on what actually went on there, but there was plenty of indignant discussion about how tragic it was for France to have an evil dictatorship for a neighbour. Try living there, Jimmy thought to himself.
“For a dead boy, you’re making a good recovery.”
Jimmy was startled out of his thoughts. The voice was deep and flat and the English was perfect except for a slight French accent. Jimmy looked up. In the door of the ward was a short man with only a sprinkling of hair on his head and a face like misery. His shoulders hunched up as if he was trying to keep his earlobes warm, and the tails of his long grey overcoat brushed on the floor.
“Uno Stovorsky,” Jimmy gasped. He switched effortlessly into French without even realising. “You came. How did you know…?”
“Anyone trying to escape an immigration processing centre—”
“You mean a detention centre?”
“I know what I’m saying,” Stovorsky countered, raising an eyebrow. “This is my first language, not yours, remember?”
He walked slowly towards Jimmy and stood rigid at the foot of the bed. He picked up the clipboard there and while he spoke he pretended to examine the paperwork.
“Anybody trying to escape from… from this sort of place gets flagged up and sent to the DGSE for analysis. When the person escaping is eleven and manages to knock out half a dozen guards on his way, the case gets a little more attention that usual.”
“I’m twelve.”
Stovorsky looked up, perhaps surprised at Jimmy’s sharp tone. “Well, look at you,” he cooed with mock pride. “All grown up.” Jimmy forced himself to stay calm.
“Anyway,” Stovorsky went on, “I heard that somebody was asking for me by name, so I had to look into it. You see, most of the people who know my name are dead.”
“Including me.”
“Exactly.”
The pair of them stared blankly at each other.
“Nice of you to come,” said Jimmy bitterly. “But it’s a bit late.”
He scooped his hand under the newspaper and thrust it towards Stovorsky, who grabbed it and scrunched it into a tiny ball without looking at it.
“Jimmy, you’re a nice boy,” he said, his fist so tight it was almost throbbing. “But I didn’t come to chat and check on your health. Do you think I would have tur
ned up if it was too late?”
Jimmy didn’t respond, so Stovorsky carried on.
“Tell me if I’ve got this right,” he said softly. “You blew up that oil rig. You found out that the British thought Zafi had done it and you knew they would strike back at France somehow. You wanted to stop them. How am I doing so far?”
Jimmy nodded reluctantly. He hated hearing the doubts and fears that had been tormenting him spoken out loud.
“But you had a little problem,” Stovorsky continued, clearly beginning to enjoy Jimmy’s attention. “You couldn’t tell the British you’d blown up the rig because they think you’re dead. And if you reveal you’re alive, you’ll be back to square one.”
“Worse than square one actually,” Jimmy cut in.
“Of course – your family.”
“NJ7’s watching them. Any sign that they lied about me being dead and…”
Stovorsky held up a hand to stop him. “Enough,” he whispered.
There was a long silence. Stovorsky circled Jimmy’s bed. What’s he thinking? Jimmy wondered. Why’s he come?
“Will France strike back?” Jimmy asked at last.
“Probably,” Stovorsky replied with a shrug. “That’s not my department.”
“And will Britain attack again?”
“This isn’t chess, Jimmy. You don’t take turns. Anything could happen.”
“But I can stop it,” Jimmy insisted. He sat up straighter, rattling his cuff against the bed frame. “I can show them they’ve made a mistake and there’s no need to go to war.”
“They don’t need to,” Stovorsky growled. “They want to.” His glare was full of fire. “You think that just by turning up and telling the British Government they’ve made a mistake, you’ll convince them to call off their war? They’re not fighting because of the oil rig, because of politics, or even because of you, Jimmy. They’re fighting because it suits them to fight. And soon they’ll tell the public they’re at war, just to keep them afraid. Showing Miss Bennett you’re still alive will only put you in danger. If she wants a war, you can’t stop it.”
“But if I show people the reason for the war is a lie, they’ll have to stop.”
A half-hearted laugh escaped Stovorsky’s throat. “Lies work, Jimmy. They hurt and they can kill, but they work – especially lies to nations. Millions of people might discover the lie, but somehow they still ignore it.”
“They won’t ignore me,” Jimmy snarled. The words rose on a sudden swelling of aggression inside him. He hadn’t expected to say it, but he liked the sound of it. “Everybody in Britain will—”
Stovorsky cut him off with a real laugh. “That’s the spirit, Jimmy! Send everybody in Britain a postcard. I’ll buy you the stamps.”
Jimmy tried to protest, but Stovorsky was enjoying himself too much.
“Tell you what,” he announced, “I’ll get you a slot on French TV. Or even better – you don’t need me. Go rob a bank, wave to the security cameras and you’ll get yourself on the news. Then everybody will know that little Jimmy Coates is still alive.”
“Nobody in Britain would see it!” Jimmy shouted, desperate to be heard. “You know that. They control what’s on TV and what British people can find on the Internet. All that would happen is…” Jimmy found it harder to form his words. “My family. They’re being watched by NJ7. I told you. My mum. My sister. Felix too. As soon as they know I’m alive, they’ll…”
“Ah,” Stovorsky sighed, deliberately over-the-top. “Now we hear the real problem. You want to save the world, but you don’t want anybody to hurt your precious family.” Stovorsky injected every word with scorn and each syllable wrenched Jimmy’s gut. He needed help, not ridicule. Stovorsky went on before Jimmy knew what to say. “Would you rather see two countries at war?”
“Than what? Than know I put my family in danger?”
“Pretty selfish, aren’t you?”
Jimmy felt sick. Uno was twisting his words, making them sound worthless. Then his sickness shifted to despair. He felt his face creasing into a deep frown.
“And you came to see me,” Stovorsky said quietly, “because you thought I could get your family to safety. Is that right?”
Jimmy shrugged. “Can you do it?” he asked meekly.
“What makes you think I even know where they are?”
Suddenly Jimmy’s meekness exploded into anger. “You can find them, can’t you?” he yelled.
“I can try to help you, Jimmy,” said Stovorsky softly, coming closer. He slowly opened his fist and unscrunched the front page of the newspaper. He flattened it firmly on the bed to push out some of the creases in the picture of Mutam-ul-it.
“But I came here,” he whispered, “because I need you to help me.”
11 CHEMISTRY KILLS
“Mutam-ul-it,” Stovorsky announced, swivelling his laptop round to face Jimmy and pushing it across the table. “On the coast of Western Sahara. It’s the largest uranium mine in the world.”
Jimmy ignored the laptop to concentrate on his burger. He demolished it in seconds and leaned back in his chair, satisfied for the first time in ages. They’d driven out to a nearby service station for something to eat.
It had been dark for ages, but Jimmy had lost track of the time. All he knew was that until a few seconds ago he’d been starving. The only people around now were the attendants at the food outlets and a cleaner, winding through the plastic landscape with his mop.
“It’s always been under French control,” Stovorsky explained, pushing the laptop closer to get Jimmy to look at it. “Until now. We think the British meant for it to remain operable so they could go in and take over. But they messed up.”
“They wanted the uranium?” Jimmy clicked through dozens of windows as they talked, soaking up images, charts, maps and diagrams. In seconds he was familiar with the layout of the mine, its position on the coast, the buildings in the dock it was attached to. Then there was the street map of the nearest town, Tlon, 12 kilometres up the coast to the north.
All the information distracted from the pain in his hands and feet. His fingers were a greyish yellow, but some of the feeling had returned. At least that meant he could control them well enough to eat a burger and use a laptop.
“No,” Stovorsky replied. “Actinium. Within the uranium ore, in minuscule amounts, is 90 per cent of the Earth’s actinium.”
Jimmy had never heard of it. He tried to think back – had he heard about actinium at school? He’d never paid much attention in science. “I’ve missed a few chemistry lessons,” he said. “This ‘actinium’ – it’s valuable? Dangerous? What?” “Both,” said Stovorsky. “It’s highly radioactive and incredibly rare. All of the naturally occurring actinium in the world would make a lump not much bigger than your burger was. Without this mine, the French Government would have to manufacture it using neutron irradiation.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s like making a cake, but with more lasers.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Well, how do I know what it is?” Stovorsky shrugged and looked away. “But apparently it would cost billions.”
“Billions?”
“Put it this way,” said Stovorsky. “I’d give you twenty oil rigs for a handful of actinium.”
Jimmy examined the man to make sure he was being serious. Stovorsky looked like he had never told a joke in his life.
“What’s this actinium stuff for then?” Jimmy asked.
“Does it matter?” Stovorsky snapped back. “Trust me,” he insisted, leaning forwards. “If it were just the uranium, Mutam-ul-it would hardly be worth fighting for.”
Jimmy hesitated. Never trust a man who says “trust me”. “So send in the army,” he declared. “You don’t need me.” He pushed himself up from the table and turned away, heading for the exit. He didn’t know where he was going, but he didn’t care.
“Wait,” Stovorsky called out.
Jimmy spun round. “If this actinium means so much
to the Government,” he whispered furiously, “send the army to storm the mine. Post one unit at Tlon, another to the south and—”
“The army can’t go near it.”
“You’re lying.”
“The blasts from the British missiles have ionised the uranium and the actinium – maybe. We don’t know. If it has it’s highly unstable and nobody can go near it until it’s properly insulated.”
“It’s not properly insulated anyway?”
“Not the uranium. It’s not that dangerous under normal conditions, so they store it in aluminium. They never thought anybody would be stupid enough to do anything to destabilise it. Now if it has been ionised, any human going into the mine will get a massive dose of radiation poisoning. So we need you—” Stovorsky stopped himself suddenly.
Jimmy’s face was white.
“Because I’m not… human?” His voice came out as a raw hiss. His words echoed round the food court and seemed to linger long after they should have died. Jimmy wiped his face and stared down at the plastic table-top. “How do you know it’s safe for me if it isn’t safe for a… for the army.”
“We know all about you, remember? We’ve studied…” Stovorsky dropped his voice and shifted in his seat. “We’ve studied Zafi and she’s also… like you.”
Jimmy didn’t know how to respond. Stovorsky’s words were hardly going in. He rocked forwards and had to support himself with a hand on the table. “Why not send Zafi?” he asked.
“Doesn’t it make sense for her to stay in Britain and extract your family while you carry out the mission?”
“Zafi’s in Britain?”
Stovorsky gave a small nod. “I meant what I promised, Jimmy,” he said softly. “If you do this for me, in return I’ll get your mother, your sister and Felix out to a safehouse. All you have to do,” he went on, “is this: go into the mine, take some readings from the computers to assess the state of the radioactive material in the mine. That’s the uranium and the actinium. Communicate that information to me. If the area is unstable I’ll have a clean-up team talk you through the containment process, then come in to take the actinium away and get the mine working again. I need you to do this, Jimmy.”