Christopher Brookmyre (7 page)

'
No hablo inglese
,' she ventured, by way of procrastination.

'Aye, right,' he retorted. 'That's why you were saying "come on" to the computer? What are you doing here?'

'Computer
no hablo espanol
. Me doing
nada
.'

His eyes flitted restlessly, their focus pinging around between the multiplicity of factors he needed to control: Lex's gun, his own weapon, Lex's hands, her face, her batbelt and the countless possibilities beyond the periphery of his vision.

'Answer me,' he said, his voice lowered to a whisper by dryness in his throat. He was very scared and for that, very dangerous. 'Why are you here?'

'I'd find it easier to answer questions if that thing wasn't pointed at my face,'

she said calmly.

'Yeah,' he replied, beads of sweat forming around his temples. 'But I've a sneaky feeling you'd be disinclined to answer altogether if it wasn't.'

'Could be right,' she conceded. 'But just stay cool right now, okay? You gotta think very carefully about your next move, dude, and I'd advise you against anything that might seriously preclude making friends with me.'

'Why the hell would I want to do that?'

'Because you may have the drop on me right now, but I got buddies coming and you don't. The alarms have been deactivated, the call-out to the cops has been cancelled and we already took out all the security guards.'

'In which case why would you spare me?'

'I could tell you, but you wouldn't believe me. In fact, you'd think I was just trying to sell you a line that might get you to put the gun down.'

'Well, there's a quality double bluff if ever I heard one. I've no idea whether I'd believe you, but believe this: nothing you say's going to make me put this gun down. Though seeing as we're standing here, why not try me anyway.'

'Okay. We're here to . . . '

Lex never got to finish her sentence as her eye was drawn to Armand, stealthily opening the door six or seven yards behind the lab-geek's right shoulder. Her pause betrayed him. It wasn't much, but with her captor's eyes locked on hers, it was enough. He turned in response to the noise, swivelling his shoulders and firing the weapon just as Armand was levelling his. Armand's right hand recoiled and slammed into the wall next to the doorway, driven there and stuck, together with his gun, by an issue of thick white goo. The lab-geek spun back to face Lex, but he'd blown it the second he took his eye - and his aim - off of her. Lex had changed her stance immediately, her weight shifted and her hands already in position to grip as he brought the gun around. Her right hand took his forearm, holding it straight, as her left pushed the gun firmly and smoothly, his own despairing grip causing his arm to twist and his balance to lurch in compensation. After that it was a matter of merely taking one step away to drop him on his back to the floor, that same step taking Lex closer to her own weapon. She gripped it in her right hand, still holding his with her left, and pointed it at his chest.

'Told you you should have made friends, dude,' she said. Her knuckles curled around the trigger as a voice sounded in her ear.

'Don't shoot, Alexis. Just bring him to me.'

It wasn't only Lex's fingers that froze. She glanced away from the sprawling lab-geek and scanned the room. A camera spied down at her from one corner of the ceiling. Bett was watching. But how much had he seen?

'Yes, sir,' she said, pressing her collar-mike.

'What is this stuff?' Armand asked, as he tugged his arm from the wall, his fingers and sleeve entangled in stringy, elasticated yuck. It resembled a gigantic gobbet of bubblegum, or 'the world's biggest come-shot', as Som vividly remarked when he arrived to assist.

The lab-geek said nothing, but the words 'non-lethal enforcement' came to Lex's mind. She unplugged her memory stick and slipped it into a velcrosealed pouch on her harness, then helped the lab-geek to his feet.

'A moment,' Armand requested, as she prepared to escort her prisoner away. He gestured that it was for her ears only, so she drew close. 'Keep his eyes front,' he stated, indicating with his own which direction she ought to be leading him.

Lex didn't ask why; it wasn't a priority. She marched the lab-geek into the corridor a couple of paces in front of her, her pistol pointed at his back. This allowed her to steal a glance in the proscribed direction. There was a pallettrolley parked further down the tunnel, in the direction of the cargo bay and the freight elevator. Grey fire blankets were draped over whatever Armand and Som had been transporting, so Lex didn't get to see what it was, but at least she now knew what that extra sled was for.

Lex was grateful to be walking behind her charge, because that way he couldn't see that she was almost as nervous as him. Once again, she had to rationalise. This was just her fear lending Bett absurd powers of interpretation. There was little he could have seen that would have caused him suspicion: Lex at a PC, tapping away. Even if it was after she'd supplied the codes, it wasn't unusual that she'd be curiously poking about inside the system; that was what she
did
. Besides, if he'd been looking at the right monitor at the time, he would have given her a heads-up that she was about to be ambushed.

Still, the rush of arguing voices and conflicting possibilities was growing cacophonic inside her head, which was why she ended up making small talk with the geek.

'We're not going to hurt you,' she assured him. 'Just taking you to see the boss.'

'Aye, right,' he doubted.

'Hey, it could have been worse, man. You could have been watching the game with the others. You not a fan?'

'I was taping it. Planned to watch it when I got home. That's if nobody told me the score.'

'No danger from me. I don't know it. But I do know whatever happened, it didn't end well for your security guys.'

'So I gathered,' he said bitterly. 'And how's it going to end for me?'

The Security and Surveillance HQ doorway stood only yards ahead.

'You're just about to find out.'

Lex overtook him and ushered him inside, where Bett was waiting next to the monitor console, a telephone ready in preparation. He offered the labgeek an outstretched hand, which he shook half-heartedly with near-dazed uncertainty, then Bett told him what he wanted him to do. Bett hit dial. They heard the tones sound out twice from the speaker before it was answered.

'Hello,' said a voice: male. English accent. 'Nicholas Willis here,' he identified himself. 'Who is this?'

'Sir,' the lab-geek started throatily. He swallowed and began again. 'Sir, this is Ross Fleming at Marledoq. I'm calling to inform you that it's twenty-two eighteen hours and I am currently being held at gunpoint by intruders who have complete control of the facility. Sir, I'm sorry, they just came from--'

'Yes, thank you, Mr Fleming, that will be all,' Bett said, taking the receiver from him and turning the speakerphone off. 'Hello, Mr Willis. Yes, reckoned I'd better do that in case you thought I was making this call from my living room. For the record, we had complete control at twenty-two eleven, that's twenty-four minutes after entering the subterranean complex, forty-one minutes after first point of contact at your exterior perimeter and sixty-seven minutes after landing our helicopter. Indeed. I'll be putting all of those details in my written report, along with my full list of recommendations and, of course, my invoice. No, I agree, it's not good at all, Mr Willis. Well, that's at your discretion, but, personally, my first step would be to fire anyone who is right now literally sleeping on the job. I'll be in touch.'

Bett put down the phone.

'Who are you people?' Fleming asked.

'What's called a Tiger Team,' Lex told him. 'We were brought in to carry out a Defence and Integrity test on the Marledoq complex. If you don't mind me telling you the scoreline in advance, it didn't pass.'

'No kidding.'

'I'd anticipate seeing a lot of changes around here, Mr Fleming,' Bett said.

'Your employers are about to seriously upgrade this facility's security. I'm sure you know more than I about precisely why, but from precedent my guess is you're working on something that certain people might be prepared to go to extreme lengths to procure.'

Lex felt her hand move unbidden towards the pouch on her harness where the memory stick sat safe, storing her stolen digital cargo. Extreme lengths indeed, she thought.

Sports cars and casinos

Jane stopped dead in her tracks when she saw him approaching hurriedly in the smir under the low, grey, mid-morning sky. It was eleven in the morning, but passing cars still had their headlamps on and there had been no improvement in natural visibility since the street lights went off two hours before. He was in uniform, grim-faced as he clutched his gun. She stared, the consequences hitting home, and in that moment her hesitation cost her the option to hit the deck. He looked up and saw her. Eye contact had been made, so he knew she was there.

If she'd been more alert, she could have spotted him earlier, she knew, and taken steps accordingly: changed her itinerary, used her time on areas his intrusion wouldn't affect, or possibly just hidden her presence altogether. Kill all the lights, stay low, wait it out, and he'd move on; then a simple phone-call to relay the appropriate information would prevent his coming back. But all of that was moot now. She no longer had any choice but to let him do his worst.

She walked reluctantly to the front door in her stocking soles, the delicacy of her imprint seemingly pointless in the face of what was about to be wreaked.

'Morning. Here to read your gas meter,' he announced.

'Oh, sure, come on in,' she said, faking a smile. It wasn't his fault; he was only doing his job. It was just bad timing, really had timing. If she'd held off on the hall for five minutes, it wouldn't have made a big difference, or if she hadn't just mopped the kitchen floor, she could have called him round the back door and let him in there.

She led him down the full length of the hall to the cupboard under the stairs, at the far end next to the living room, where he pointed the gun and took his reading.

'That's me, thank you,' he told her, then she escorted him back out again. A matter of moments, that was all it took.

Jane closed the door and turned around, surveying the damage. Two sets of bootprints, one in each direction, tracked the meter-reader's passage up and down her just-hoovered hall carpet. He'd not been particularly tall or heavyset, but that didn't matter: it was all in the soles. Flat spread the weight and 37

left minimum markage, but his chunky, patterned rubberware had bitten into the pile like a Dobermann, and that Dobermann had drooled, too. Almost every step was damp on the inwards journey, and nearer the door there were dark streaks, an abrasive seasonal compound of earth, decayed leaves, grittersalt and bark. She should have let him in the back door anyway, she thought ruefully. At this time of year, she should always and only let them in the back door. Mopping the kitchen again would take a fraction of the time, though at the cost of damp stockings (bare feet not being an option due to leaving prints that remained visible against the tiles after the floor was dry). The damp stockings were going to be unavoidable anyway as she had to get to the sink and the cupboard under it in order to begin working on the damage. Jane looked at the glistening kitchen tiles. Why was it they only looked that clean and shiny when they were wet, and why was it that you always had to go back into the kitchen for something as soon as the floor had been mopped? She could wait ten minutes for it to dry, she considered, already anticipating the feel of the cold wet on the soles of her tights, but that was ten more minutes for that sludgy compound to be drying into her carpet.

Damn it. She took a step forward, bracing herself for the ick factor of that cold, spreading sensation, then stopped and remained at the edge of the carpet. For the resourceful operative, there were always other options. Jane leaned inside, her left foot still outside the door, her right held in balance in the air as her hands met the island worktop. She tipped herself further until the edge of the Formica pressed just beneath her chest, then reached her hands towards the far edge and pulled, her centre of gravity shifting all weight forwards. Both feet left the ground as she pivoted on her front on the edge of the worktop, before hauling herself and turning in one movement to leave her sitting on the island. Good to know all those aerobics sessions at the gym had a practical pay-off. Drawing her legs up to her chest and spinning on her bottom, she manoeuvred to the other side of the island, from where she was able to reach out with her right leg and hook a dish-towel off the radiator with her big toe before transferring it to her right hand. Thus armed, she let the towel unfold and dropped it gently to the floor, then stepped down on to it with both feet. After that, it took only half a yard of the tied-foot shuffle to get her to the sink, the dish-towel providing a priceless protective membrane between soles and floor.

Jane ran a basinful of hot water and added some washing-up liquid, before unlatching the cupboard below, where her heavy-duty chemical arsenal was stored. So many abrasives, detergents, poison warnings, death-heads, biohazard decals. She often wondered whether, if you put all these cleaning agents together in the right quantities, you might create something that could blow half the neighbourhood to Kingdom Come, or even just to Busby. They should never have gone for self-coloured, she thought, working carpet-mousse into the fibres with a sponge. It showed up everything; not just dirt, but each wisp of fluff from Tom's socks, each discarded snippet of thread from clothing. Plus, they should have definitely, definitely chosen a twist rather than a pile that becomes churned-up and streaky if walked upon in anything more substantial than M&S nylons - and even that is enough to make it look bumpy and mottled after a while. What use was a carpet if it doesn't look good after any modicum of pedestrian traffic? On occasion, she found herself watching visitors arrive and wishing she hadn't invited them because they were about to violate this expanse of laboriously cultivated neatness. Then, once they were inside, her mind was drawn impatiently throughout their conversation to thoughts of combing it neat again as soon as they left.