Code Name Firestorm (4 page)

“I’m afraid that’s not all,” said Alfred. “They took details of some of MI5’s activities too. MI6 missions sometimes overlap MI5’s. Firestorm are in possession of a full MI5 staff list.”

“Do they know about us as well?” said Professor Miller.

“No,” said Alfred. “Because we’re part of the SIA, our secrecy level is above almost everything else. However, we’re now the only branch of the secret service Firestorm’s got nothing on.”

“Then that remains our main advantage,” said Queen Bee. “They’ll have no idea that it’s us they’re up against. Our mission objectives are clear: we must track down Firestorm before they can use that stolen data. If the data gets out into the open, I dread to think what will happen.”

“Even a small leak of secrets can cause a major international row,” said Alfred.

“Quite,” said Queen Bee. “If this data is released, we could see wars break out all over the world. At the very least, our own government could end up at war with any number of enemies. Every country knows there are spies, but no country wants to admit that foreign agents are spying on
them
. This is a race against time. Right now, we need our robots like never before.”

At that moment, Simon Turing looked up from the 3D display. “Ms Maynard,” he said to Queen Bee. “I think the SWARM has discovered something very interesting…”

CHAPTER FOUR

“Cashier number four, please.”

The recorded voice was loud and cheery. The long, snaking queue shuffled forward a little. Everything was as normal in this small north London branch of the Lowfax Building Society.

Cashier number four smiled at her next customer from behind a bulletproof screen. “Hello, my name’s Sue. How can I help you today?”

The customer was an old lady, quite short and
thin, wearing a thick coat, gloves and a woolly hat. Her eyes seemed slightly unfocused.

“Can I help you, madam?” said Sue. “Are you all right?”

The old lady paused for a moment, as if she was listening to something nobody else could hear. She leaned close to the screen. “Give me all your money,” she said quietly.

“I beg your pardon?” The cashier blinked.

“Give me all your money,” repeated the old lady. She slid a fold-out shopping bag into the metal tray beneath the cashier’s screen. “Fill this. Notes only, no coins. Do it quickly. Do it quietly. If you try to press your alarm button, I’ll know.”

Sue half-laughed. “Sorry, is this a wind-up? Are we on telly?”

A small hatch opened at the front of the old lady’s hat. The barrel of a gun suddenly whirred out and the tiny spot of a laser sight appeared over the cashier’s heart.

“Fill the bag,” said the old lady. “Now.”

The cashier gulped. She had no idea whether the woman was bluffing or not. Then she remembered the reports about weird robberies
in the City that were all over the news.

She took the bag and slowly opened it out. The customers behind the old lady in the queue hadn’t noticed anything strange yet. Neither had the other cashiers.

The dot of the laser sight followed the cashier as she moved. She opened up the bag, then opened a set of three drawers beside her. Each drawer contained large amounts of cash, neatly sorted into plastic compartments. Sue began to place the cash into the bag.

“Faster,” said the old lady quietly. “Get more from the safe behind you.”

Trying to stay calm, Sue swung round on her chair. There was a hefty safe, about the size of a wardrobe, standing against the wall a few metres away. She pressed a six-digit combination into the safe’s key coder and it opened. Inside were shelves packed with papers, files and plastic wrappers filled with money. Nervously, Sue began to take out the wrappers and place them in the shopping bag.

She glanced across to the other cashiers. One of them had heard the safe opening, and was
looking at Sue with a puzzled expression on her face. Sue shot a wide-eyed look back at her, to indicate that there was something wrong.

The other cashier took the hint. Calmly, she reached out under her desk with her foot. The toe of her shoe tapped along, feeling for the alarm button that was located close to the floor.

Suddenly, motion-detection systems inside the old lady’s coat began to beep. Instantly, she pulled from her pocket what looked like a black tennis ball. She flung it at the floor in front of her.

As the ball hit the floor, an electro-magnetic pulse rippled out. The alarm buttons underneath the cashiers’ desks all fused and sparked. So did every electronic device within fifty metres, except the specially shielded ones carried by the old lady. The customers who were using their smartphones all yelped and dropped them in surprise.

The old lady reached out and touched the cashier’s bulletproof screen. Tiny lights blinked on the fingers of her gloves. Suddenly the screen burst into a shower of tiny pieces.

“Give!” demanded the old lady.

The laser sight was still levelled at Sue’s heart. Terrified, she pushed the nearly full shopping bag over the destroyed screen.

The old lady grabbed it and hurried out into the street. The customers behind her in the queue were too shocked to do anything. The cashiers were trapped, because the electric locks on all the doors had fused. After a minute or two, Sue crawled over her broken screen.

“Call the police, someone!” she cried, rushing into the street. She looked left and right, but there was no sign of the thief.

The old lady was gone. She’d ducked into a narrow alley close to the building society, and used a gripping device from her coat to raise a heavy manhole cover. Within seconds, she had climbed down into the drainage system below, and the manhole cover had been pulled back into place above her. Written on the pavement outside the building society, were the words:

“SWARM HQ to Hive 1, report,” said Queen Bee.

“Hive 1 to HQ,” signalled Chopper. “We think we’ve found something that links Tim Jones and Sally Burns. We’ve cross-checked every item in their homes, and have discovered that they both own exactly the same make and model of wireless speakers.”

“Speakers for a sound system?” said Queen Bee.

“Affirmative,”

“Is that really significant?” said Queen Bee. “Pick any two adults at random, and you may find a match on the brand of phone they own, or where they buy most of their clothes, all sorts of things.”

“Hive 2 to HQ,” cut in Nero. “That’s true, Queen Bee, but these particular speakers are a model not generally sold in this country, and which are normally expensive to buy.”

“Surely all this tells us is that they’re both music fans? They’ve bought top-quality equipment because they value what they listen to?”

“That might be the case,” said Nero, “if it were not for something else shown by our inventory of their possessions. Neither of them owns a large amount of music, or any other audio material.”

“A human who’d consider themselves a music fan would own a lot,” said Chopper. “Scans of hard drives, iPods and physical CDs shows that Jones owns only two thousand, one hundred and eleven music tracks, while Burns owns only two thousand, four hundred and eighty-five.”

“That sounds quite a lot,” said Queen Bee.

“These are less than average amounts for adult humans of their ages and income levels,” said Nero. “I have checked with a number of online databases.”

“The presence of these specific speakers in the homes of humans who don’t collect audio tracks is a statistical oddity,” said Chopper.

“It’s not much to go on,” said Queen Bee, “but you should investigate further. Wait! We’re picking up reports here of a third raid by Firestorm. Keep sending data back to the lab, I’ll be in touch shortly.”

“Logged, Queen Bee,” replied the robots.

The SWARM team at Tim Jones’s house – Chopper the dragonfly, Hercules the stag beetle and Sirena the butterfly – made their way over to the shelf in the sitting room where the two speakers sat.

Over at Sally Burns’s flat, the second team – Nero the scorpion, Sabre the mosquito, Morph the centipede and Widow the spider – had located the speakers on the floor of the flat’s main living area, at either end of a sofa that was littered with cushions and magazines.

The speakers themselves didn’t look unusual or remarkable. They were plain, black and box-like. There was a manufacturer’s badge showing the make and model number “BebKo-X1” in the lower-left corner of each.

“Comparing X-ray scans shows that all these speakers contain exactly the same components and circuits,” said Sirena at Tim Jones’s house.

“Confirmed,” said Nero at Sally Burns’s flat. “They connect to a Wi-Fi system using a standard set of protocols.”

“Same over here,” said Hercules. “Status check: no human activity detected nearby.”

“Police databases show both Jones and Burns are still being held in custody,” added Nero.

“Beginning high-res scans of individual circuits inside the speakers…” said Sirena. “There’s something strange here. Nero, do you read a data-static feedback loop too?”

“Affirmative,” said Nero. “In fact, there’s an entire circuit board that’s not part of the speaker system itself.”

“Confirmed,” said Sirena.

“We were right,” said Morph. “These speakers are definitely a clue of some kind.”

“Should we neutralize them?” said Sabre.

“Not until we know what we’ve found here,” said Chopper. “Let’s take a close look at these circuit boards.”

The robots calculated and analyzed, as sensor data flowed through their electronic brains.

“Each speaker has had one small extra circuit board added to it,” said Sirena. “Connectors and soldering marks show that this addition was made recently.”

“Someone has taken these speakers, opened them up, and modified them,” said Chopper.
“Whoever is behind the attacks, most likely.”

“I’d say these extra circuits were home-made,” said Nero. “Extraordinary. Firestorm may be one individual acting alone after all.”

“That would indeed be extraordinary,” said Sirena.

“I meant it’s extraordinary that I could have been wrong about Firestorm,” said Nero. “I calculate that the circuits were home-made because these components are the same, but there are very small differences in exactly where and how they’ve been fitted into the speakers. For example, the extra circuit in this speaker at Burns’s flat has been mounted eight millimetres lower than the one you’re looking at there in Jones’s house. That probably wouldn’t happen if the circuits had been added in a factory. Everything there would be done in a standard way. Someone has assembled these circuits individually, and wired them inside the speakers too. This is something human agents might have taken weeks to spot.”

“If I didn’t know better,” said Hercules, “I’d say you were boasting.”

“This evidence is important,” said Chopper. “It’s too much of a coincidence that we’ve found these speakers, modified in this way, in the homes of both Jones and Burns.”

“The question is why?” said Hercules. “What do these extra circuits actually do? Why have they been wired into ordinary audio speakers? A data-static feedback loop would seem to serve no function at all here.”

“The added circuits aren’t even powered up,” said Sirena. “The speakers are on standby, but these strange extras appear completely inactive.”

“I’ll cut my way inside this speaker,” said Hercules. “We need to get one of these circuits free and take it back to the lab at SWARM HQ.”

“Logged,” replied the others.

“Be careful,” said Morph.

Hercules’s razor-sharp claw was designed to cut through almost anything. It clicked and whirred as the targeting systems in his brain homed in on a small area at the back of the speaker.

“I’ll make a hole where it’s least likely to be noticed,” he said.

His claw sliced quickly into the speaker’s
tough plastic case. Within a few seconds, he’d cut a neat, circular hole, exactly large enough for his wing case to fit through. He crawled inside the speaker, pulling his legs in tightly. He was the bulkiest of the SWARM robots, even though he was only five centimetres long.

“I see it,” he reported from inside. “It’s a very advanced piece of work. Whoever made it was also extremely careful – there are no fingerprints on any of the components. I’ll remove it now.”

He scuttled alongside the circuit board. His sharp claw moved to snip the board free.

Suddenly, there was a sharp crackling sound. A flash of white light shone through the hole Hercules had made. Inside the speaker, sparks flew from the robot’s joints. Wisps of smoke rose around his claw, and his legs curled sharply inward.