Endgame (Agent 21) (12 page)

‘Have you hidden your IP address?’ Zak asked.

Malcolm looked at him in such a way that it was clear he thought that a very stupid question. He continued to type, then a sharp look crossed his face. ‘There’s another video,’ he said quietly.

Zak looked around to check they weren’t being observed. Then he took a seat next to Malcolm. ‘Play it,’ he said. ‘Keep the volume down so we’re not overheard.’

Malcolm clicked his trackpad as the three of them leaned in towards the laptop. The video started.

It was shaky to start with. The footage seemed to show a starkly lit open space – maybe a warehouse or a hangar – with metal walls and concrete floor. As the camera steadied, it fixed on two figures sitting on the ground, hands tied behind their backs. Zak instantly recognized Raf and Gabs. They looked worse than before. Their faces were more bruised. Their eyes rolled. They shivered.

Another figure entered the scene. He had his back to the camera, but Zak instantly recognized Cruz’s thin frame and dark, lank hair. And he caught a glimpse of the cruel-looking knife he was holding. He watched, in frozen horror, as Cruz bent over and sliced Gabs’s cheek, and then Raf’s. The worst thing wasn’t the blood. It was the tightness about their eyes. Zak, who knew them so well, could tell that they were in pain, but were doing what was necessary to stop themselves showing it.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. Ricky. ‘You all right, mate?’

Zak nodded. Cruz spoke. ‘
Go ahead. Give your boy wonder a message. Make it count. It might be the last time you ever speak to him.
’

The camera focused in on Raf. He lifted his head with difficulty. And when he spoke, his words were slurred, almost as though he was drunk. ‘
Remember the first thing I ever taught you – that your first duty is to stay alive.
’

He drew a deep breath. Even over the tinny laptop speakers, Zak thought he could hear his lungs rattling. He coughed weakly, then spoke again. ‘
That means you have to stay on the . . . on the right side of the track . . .
’ His voice petered away. Zak clenched his jaw. His Guardian Angel was barely making sense.

The shaky camera footage moved over to Gabs. She looked monstrous close up: puffy, bruised skin, blue lips and blood streaming from the fresh cut on her face. But she managed to stare straight into the camera, and even let the beginnings of an odd smile flicker at the corner of her mouth. Zak concentrated on her bloodshot eyes, trying to see if she was blinking him another message. Sure enough, her eyelids were flickering.

‘You getting it?’ he asked Ricky.

‘F – I – N – D – M – O—’

Zak held up one hand to stop him reciting the letters out loud. Still blinking, Gabs spoke. Her words were as incomprehensible as Raf’s had been. ‘
Be careful . . . of hangers-on, eh, sweetie?
’

Cruz’s voice. Harsh. Angry. ‘
Switch off the camera. Do it!
’

The screen went black.

The three teenagers sat in silence. Zak struggled to keep his breathing steady. Malcolm started typing again.

‘What was the Morse code message?’ Zak breathed. He’d been concentrating too hard on what Gabs had been saying out loud.

‘I think she said:
Find Moriarty
. But who’s that? Is it someone you know?’

Zak shook his head. The only Moriarty he’d ever heard of had been in a Sherlock Holmes book.

‘What was all that stuff about hangers-on?’ Ricky asked. ‘More secret messages?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Zak said.

‘So what did she mean by it? Is she talking about us? Me and Malcolm?’ Ricky sounded a bit offended.

Zak shook his head. ‘They sounded delirious, that’s all. They’re in a bad state.’ His voice cracked as he spoke.

‘She was able to blink a message and speak at the same time,’ Ricky pointed out. ‘I don’t think she was
that
delirious.’

‘You’re right,’ Zak said. ‘Gabs is tough. And clever. So we’ve just got to figure out what she was trying to tell us.’ He looked around. ‘But we have to get there first. And there are no flights to Nome. We need to find another way.’ He frowned. ‘Either that, or we need to find someone called Moriarty.’

Ricky stared at him. ‘Mate,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to put a damper on things, but it’s five hundred miles to Nome, it’s the middle of winter, and there are no roads to take us in that direction. We wouldn’t make it in five weeks, let alone five days. Flying’s our only option.’

‘Be quiet,’ Malcolm said suddenly.

Zak and Ricky turned to look at him. ‘What?’ Zak asked.

‘I’m on the UK passport system. They know they’ve been hacked.’ He was blinking very fast. ‘They’ve identified the three fake passports. The details were supplied to Interpol and immigration agencies twenty-eight minutes ago.’ He looked up from his screen. ‘The Agency knows we’re here,’ he said.

Zak felt his body tense up. He immediately started to scan the terminal concourse. It was not busy at this time of night – there were maybe a hundred passengers milling around, and only a handful of airport staff. But even as he looked, at a distance of fifty metres, just by the entrance to airport security, he saw three uniformed police officers, all armed, speaking urgently to each other and examining a smartphone screen.

‘We’ve got three . . .’

‘I see them,’ Ricky breathed. ‘We need to get out of here. Malcolm, pack up your laptop.’

But as Ricky spoke, another four officers seemed to appear from nowhere. They were by the ticketing office, and were speaking to the surly man with the paperback book. He was a lot livelier now – as they showed him another smartphone screen, he nodded vigorously and started looking around the concourse.

‘We’ve got about thirty seconds to get out of here,’ Zak said. ‘Move.’

The ticket guy was still scanning the area. One of the police officers was speaking into his radio.

‘
Move!
’ Zak hissed.

Malcolm was still closing up his laptop, but there was no time for that. ‘Leave it,’ Zak hissed. Malcolm started to object, but Zak grabbed him by the arm, pulled him to his feet and pushed him towards the exit, which was thirty metres away with a bright yellow sign over a revolving door. As Ricky, his rucksack over one shoulder, hurried their companion in that direction, Zak grabbed both his and Malcolm’s rucksacks and marched after them. They didn’t run – that would draw attention to themselves – but they walked very fast.

Malcolm was the problem. He practically stumbled all the way to the revolving doors, saved from falling only by Ricky, who kept stabilizing him with one arm. As they hit the exit, Zak looked over his shoulder. The armed officers had moved no closer, but the three by the security entrance were jogging towards their colleagues. The ticketing guy continued to survey the concourse.

They were no more than three metres from the exit when his eyes locked with Zak’s. He grabbed one of the officers by the arm and shook him vigorously while pointing in their direction. Zak cursed himself for letting the guy see his face, but there was no time to regret it. A second later he heard a loud American voice shouting from behind them.

‘
STOP! STOP OR WE SHOOT!
’

‘
They won’t fire in a crowded area
,’ Zak hissed as they slammed into the revolving door. It took an agonizing three seconds to spit them out of the terminal building. Once again, Zak found the air shockingly icy. He inhaled noisily as he surveyed the scene in front of him. A one-way vehicle lane ran the length of the terminal building. It was clearly a drop-off area – a line of fifteen vehicles were parked along the kerb. The area was covered, but Zak could tell it was snowing because the vehicles had a layer of snow over their bodywork. Their lights glowed in the night, and their exhaust fumes billowed in the freezing air. Passengers were hauling luggage out of open trunks, and in a few instances, money was changing hands with cab drivers.

Zak looked up. He immediately saw three security cameras covering the area. Then he turned his attention back to the vehicles. One of them, ten metres away, was a dark-green people carrier, with good, sturdy snow tyres. It was obviously a cab because the passengers were handing over some money to the driver.

‘This way,’ he hissed to the others and, grabbing Malcolm by the elbow, pulled him towards the people carrier. The driver was a shabby guy, with a pinched, lined face and hair greying at the temples. He raised an eyebrow at these three young people sprinting towards him. Zak didn’t like the look of him – not one bit – but their choices were limited. They
had
to get out of sight. ‘Can you take us downtown?’ he asked breathlessly.

‘Sure can, kid,’ said the driver, sliding open the side door of the vehicle. ‘Jump on in.’

Zak, Ricky and Malcolm tumbled into the back of the people carrier, slamming the side door shut. Zak caught a strong whiff of tobacco and, maybe, alcohol as the driver got behind the wheel and pulled away. Not a moment too soon. Through the tinted window of the vehicle, Zak saw three of the armed guards burst out of the terminal building.

‘I think that’s what they call a close thing,’ Ricky breathed.

Zak didn’t answer. He was too busy wiping the sweat from his brow. But he did notice the look the cab driver gave them in the rear-view mirror. It was sharp. Calculating. The friendliness had somehow fallen away. Zak scanned the front of the vehicle, looking for some sign that this was an official cab. There was none.

‘Looks like someone’s in trouble,’ the driver drawled. He sounded almost pleased about it.

A beat. Zak and Ricky exchanged a glance. A glance that said: ‘What the hell do we do?’

Ricky suddenly put his hand in his pocket and pulled out all the dollars he had. He held them up so the driver could see them. ‘These are yours,’ he said, ‘if you get us out of here without running into the police.’

The driver licked his lips and grabbed the notes. ‘You’re in luck, kid,’ he said. ‘Turns out that avoiding the police is something I’m pretty good at.’

Zak felt a small surge from the engine as the vehicle accelerated away from the airport.

Ricky was drenched in sweat, despite the cold. As the car swung away from the terminal building, his attention was divided between the armed guards and the driver. He didn’t know which one he feared the most. The guards had just threatened to shoot them. But the driver had a look on his face that Ricky recognized from his time scavenging on the streets of London: the look of a man who’d do anything for a pay day. It also meant that this was not a man they should trust.

‘Don’t drive too fast,’ Zak said, his voice very tense. ‘It’ll be too suspicious.’

‘What you do?’ the driver asked. ‘Steal a bag of candy from one of the shops?’

Ricky and Zak exchanged another glance. ‘Yeah,’ Ricky said. ‘Something like that.’ He turned to Malcolm, who was looking unusually anxious and digging his fingernails into his palm. ‘You all right?’ he asked.

‘My laptop,’ Malcolm muttered, his voice slightly wild. ‘What if they find it? What if they hack into it? What am I supposed to do
without
it?’

Ricky had no answer. They fell into an uncomfortable silence.

They trundled down a slip road. The vehicle stank of cigarettes – Ricky saw a packet of Lucky Strikes and a pale red disposable lighter on the dashboard. ‘You saw the security cameras?’ he murmured to Zak. Zak nodded. They both knew what those cameras meant: it was only a matter of time before the Agency saw footage of them getting into the green people carrier, whose registration number they’d also be able to view. They couldn’t stay in this car for long.

The snow was very heavy – a billowing, twisting blizzard. Ricky could barely see anything through the window.

– The snow might be a good thing
, said the voice in Ricky’s head.
If it’s harder to make out individual cars, we’ll have a better chance of slipping past any police patrols.

– Maybe. But something tells me police patrols aren’t our only problem.

He glanced towards the front of the vehicle again. The driver’s eyes were flicking regularly between the road ahead and the rear-view mirror.

– He’s planning something.

– Tell me about it.

The driver swung onto a turnpike. Squinting through the swirling snow, Ricky saw a brightly lit overhead sign. He could just make out the word ‘Downtown’. Ricky had examined a tourist map of Anchorage on the plane, so he knew that meant they were heading north. Even as he read it, the driver indicated left. He pulled off the turnpike and down another slip road.

‘Where are we going?’ Ricky asked.

‘Short cut,’ said the driver. ‘Less traffic. Won’t be no police, this way.’

– He kept looking straight ahead as he spoke to you. He was trying to avoid eye contact. He’s lying.

– Keep your bearings. We’re heading east now . . .

They continued driving for five minutes. There were few cars here. The road was lined with tall, snow-laden fir trees, and more snow had drifted in high piles along the sides. The road itself was clear – maybe it had been well salted – but off road, the conditions were extreme.

Suddenly, Ricky’s heart almost stopped. He saw flashing blue neon in the rear-view mirror. It was hard to make out the distance, but maybe 100 metres.

Almost immediately, the driver swung left again. They turned down a much smaller road, which immediately wound round to the left, taking them out of sight of the bigger road. ‘Ain’t no police going to follow us down here, kids,’ the driver said.

Somehow that wasn’t a comfort. Ricky could see Zak eyeing the doors and the locks, and sizing up Malcolm, as if trying to establish if he was capable of making a sudden run for it. Not for the first time, Ricky wondered if they’d made a massive mistake, bringing Zak’s strange friend with them.

‘Where are we going, pal?’ Zak said. His voice was tense and wary.

‘Like I told you, short cut.’

The snow was falling even more heavily now. For the next five minutes, the road twisted and turned. It was almost impossible to work out their direction, but when the road finally straightened out a little, Ricky decided they were still heading east. The going was icier here, but the people carrier’s snow tyres were up to the job.