Sure Fire (9 page)

The café was busier by mid-morning. Rich and Jade spoke quietly so as not to be overheard by the people at nearby tables. They had decided not to call the number in Krejikistan, but now they were not sure what they could do.

“Maybe we should try the number he kept calling,” Rich said.

“He didn't
keep
calling it,” Jade told him.

“He called it more than he called anyone else,” Rich pointed out. “In fact, he didn't call anyone else. Ever. Not on this phone.” He sighed. “You got any better ideas?”

Jade had to admit she didn't. “Just see who answers. If anyone. Probably more voicemail.”

Rich held the phone so they could both hear. The numbers beeped through as the phone dialled. Then they heard the ringing at the other end. It seemed to ring for ages, and Rich was about to give up when the phone was finally answered.

“Hello?” a voice said. It sounded slightly tentative as if whoever was speaking had been surprised to get the call. “This is Andrew Phillips's phone.”

Their faces were close together, hunched over the phone, and Rich saw Jade's eyes widen. Rich hung up, almost dropping the phone like it was hot.

“Phillips,” he said. “The man who…” He swallowed, his throat dry.

“The man who was shot,” Jade completed for him, whispering, looking round to make sure no one was listening. But nobody seemed at all interested in the two children sitting in the back corner of the café close to the door to the toilets.

“So who's answering his phone?” Rich said.

“Friend, colleague, whatever. Question is – do we trust them?”

Rich thought about this. “Do no harm to talk to them. Phillips was shot; he tried to protect us. He was
a friend of Dad's. Probably.”

“Probably,” Jade agreed. “Try it?”

But before he got the chance, the phone rang, vibrating on the table between them.

“Can mobile calls be traced?” Jade whispered as though the phone might hear them.

“Doubt it,” Rich said. “There's no line, is there? You'd need, like, a satellite or something. They just did 1471 and called back.” He took a deep breath and answered the phone.

It was a different voice this time. A familiar voice – the man from the flat.

“I'm guessing that is either Jade or Rich,” the voice said. “You remember we met this morning?”

“It's both of us,” Rich said.

“Please don't hang up. I think we need to talk, though I do appreciate you must be feeling a little vulnerable right now.”

“Vulnerable?” Jade was making an effort to keep her voice down. “Men being shot dead. Dad kidnapped. Killers after us. Yeah, just a bit, I'd say.”

“Understandable,” the voice agreed. “And I really do want to help you. In fact, I may be the only person who can.”

“We've heard that before,” Rich said. “But how do we know you're telling the truth? How do we know we can trust you?”

“You can trust me,” Ardman said. “Really you can.” His voice was controlled, reassuring, confident. Jade and Rich looked into one another's eyes as they tried to decide if he was telling the truth.

Ardman was sitting at Phillips's bare desk as he spoke into the phone. On the other side of the office, a man was gesturing to Ardman to keep talking. Rich and Jade could be heard through speakers attached to the phone.

But they were not the only things attached to the phone. There was another wire that led to a powerful computer where a third man – a technician – was working rapidly.

“It's Chance's mobile all right,” he said, just loud enough for Ardman to hear. “Issued by us, so I'm activating the global positioning tracker now. It'll be online so long as they keep the connection open. Lose the call and you lose them.”

“Do we have a satellite in position?” the man who had gestured to Ardman asked, equally quietly.

“Patching through to a US Department of Defense bird,” the technician said. “It'll take them hours to realise they've lost control. Then they'll blame the techies. Or the hardware.”

“How long?” Ardman mouthed at the man. Into the phone he said: “Just listen to what I have to say, that's all I ask. Where's the possible harm in that, hmmm?”

“Almost in,” the technician said. “Accessing now. Should have a fix for you in about a minute.” He turned the screen so that Ardman could see the image on it.

It was a map of Britain. A rectangle appeared over the lower half, and the image changed to show just the area in that rectangle. Then another as the image zoomed in again – on London. With every second, the satellite closed in on the location of Chance's mobile phone…

“Got the general location,” the technician observed. “I'll get a team into the area ready. I think it's Goddard on standby today. Soon as we have a street address – bingo!” He grinned. “Shouldn't be long now.”

* * *

In Krejikistan, the Commander was sitting in the passenger seat of a heavy lorry as it made its way along the narrow track from the KOS main facility. He had waited perhaps longer than he should have done for the jeep, and it wasn't just the lurching and bumping of the vehicle that was making him feel queasy. He knew what would happen if he had lost Vishinsky's ‘guest'.

The sight of a soldier staggering along the narrow service road towards them, waving his arms to flag them down, did nothing to ease the Commander's fears.

“Private Levin, sir. I was escorting the English prisoner,” the soldier explained as soon as the lorry stopped.

The Commander listened to Levin's story with increasing apprehension. As soon as he had the gist of it, he ordered the soldier to squeeze into the front of the lorry with him and the driver. The heavy army lorry then continued slowly along the access road until it came to the point where the jeep had careered off into the wilderness.

The tyre tracks were easily visible in the mud even before Levin's enthusiastic shouts of: “Here – this is
the place, sir. We'll find him now.”

“I don't like the look of the mud,” the driver said as he stopped the lorry. “We could sink right in and be stuck here. A jeep's one thing, but in this…” He shrugged and waited for the Commander to make the decision.

The Commander shoved Levin out of the lorry. Then he ordered the troops in the back to get out and follow the tyre tracks. Private Levin was still insisting the prisoner could not have gone far and that they would soon find him – right up until they found another unconscious soldier.

“I want that jeep found,” the Commander ordered as soon as the unconscious soldier had been carried back to the lorry. “Private Levin says it was damaged, stopped. So it's close by somewhere.”

It did not take long to find it – with another unconscious soldier in the back. There was no sign of their former prisoner apart from the ropes his hands had been tied with – sliced through on the ragged metal of the jeep's bonnet and dropped nearby.

The soldier in the jeep was coming round. He seemed groggy. He insisted he was fine to help with the search, but the Commander sent him back to the lorry.

“Take him and the other one back to the KOS facility in the lorry,” he ordered. “Get them checked out by the medics there.”

One of the soldiers helped the groggy man out of the jeep and back towards the lorry. The man still seemed to be suffering, head down and face in shadow.

The Commander walked back to where Levin was standing, staring out into the empty wilderness. “You will stay and help us find the prisoner you lost,” the Commander said. “He can't have gone far. Search parties – groups of two or three,” he ordered. “Spread out from this point, on the double. What are you waiting for?”

Within a few minutes, there was a shout from one of the search parties. They had found the man dressed in civilian clothes lying dead in a gully.

“Looks like he fell and knocked himself out,” one of the soldiers who had found him said. It was several minutes before the Commander thought to have Levin look at the unconscious man to be sure.

The private stared in amazement.

“The prisoner?” the Commander prompted. “Yes?”

Levin shook his head. “No.”

“So who is he?” the Commander demanded.

“It's Dimitri. He was with me in the back of the jeep.”

“Why isn't he in uniform?”

“He was,” Levin protested. “Those are the prisoner's clothes.”

The Commander frowned. “And Dimitri was in the back of the jeep? But we have just taken that man to the lorry. So where is…” His mouth dropped open and he grabbed his radio.

The lorry pulled into the main compound, surrounded by industrial units – metal-clad buildings, pipelines, pumping stations. Smoke billowed out from vents and valves so that it was like emerging from the back of the lorry into some region of hell itself.

Chance made a play of rubbing his head. “Sickbay,” he grunted, hoping the guards now carrying the unconscious soldier from the lorry wouldn't notice his accent needed some work.

They didn't seem bothered and Chance suppressed a smile. He had hoped to be able to walk away,
on the pretext of helping with the search for himself. With luck, he had reckoned he could get to the main road and flag down a lift – maybe even commandeer a car and head for the border with the Ukraine.

But instead he had been escorted right into the heart of enemy territory – right to the place they'd been taking him anyway. But to Chance's mind it was a setback, not a defeat. There would be a vehicle somewhere he could ‘borrow'.

He turned from the tailgate of the lorry. And found himself staring into the barrel of a rifle. Three soldiers stood in front of him, all aiming their weapons. A fourth was listening to his radio.

“It is all right,” the fourth soldier said into the handset. “We have him now.”

Chance sighed. “It was worth a try,” he said. “You've got to grant me that.” He put his hands in the air. “Coming quietly,” he said in Russian, adding in quiet English: “For now.”

“We need to meet,” Ardman's voice said from the other end of the phone. “We can't do this over the phone.”

“You mean, so you can have us arrested, or shot, or whatever?” Jade said. She looked at Rich, and could tell from his expression that he agreed with her – it was too risky.

“I understand you must be wary.”

“Terrified, more like,” Rich muttered. Jade smiled.

“So,” Ardman went on, not having heard, “Why don't you choose the place and the time. I promise to come alone. Just me. Choose somewhere public, somewhere you can tell if you're being watched, where you can escape easily if you think you're in trouble. But I promise you, that won't be necessary. Really it won't.”

“Hang on,” Jade said, covering the phone with her hand. “What do you think?” she asked Rich quietly.

Rich shrugged. “What else can we do? And like he says, we can choose somewhere they wouldn't dare try anything.”

“We hope,” Jade said. “All right, where?”

“Here?”

“Too crowded. We need somewhere we can talk. Safely. Anyway, we might want to come back here, use
the computers or whatever. So it's best they don't know about this place. But a café or restaurant or bar or somewhere might be good.”

Rich grinned suddenly. “What about the bar in a big hotel? He pays.”

“We're not drinking,” Jade said. “Clear heads – right?”

“I meant a coke,” Rich said. “Or maybe lunch.”

Ardman's voice came from the phone as Jade removed her hand. “Are you still there?”

“We're here,” she assured him. “Name me three big hotels in Central London. Just any three. First you think of.”

Ardman did so, though he sounded puzzled: “The Savoy, the Ritz, the Clarendorf?”

“The last one. The Clarendorf.” Jade raised her eyebrows at Rich – a question. He nodded. It would do. “We'll meet you in the main bar. In half an hour. If we're not there, wait for us. See you.” She made to end the call.

“Hang on,” Ardman said quickly.

Jade hesitated. “What?”

“If you don't recognise me—”

“We will,” Rich said.

“Just in case. I'll leave my name with the barman, so he knows where I am. Just ask for Hilary Ardman.”

Rich laughed out loud.

“What's funny?” Ardman asked, sounding a bit hurt.

“Hilary's a girl's name,” Jade said.

“And Jade is a slippery semi-precious stone,” the man snapped back. “I'll see you in half an hour.”

The technician was giving a thumbs-up. Ardman nodded and put down the phone.

“Got 'em,” the technician said.

Ardman swung his feet off the desk and stood up. He took his jacket off the back of the chair and slipped it on.

“Coming to see the fun?” the third man in the room asked. He had just finished speaking urgently into his own mobile phone.

“No,” Ardman told him. “I'm off to the Clarendorf for a drink.”

The man laughed. “Right.” Then he realised that Ardman was not laughing. “You're serious? They won't be there, will they?”

“We'll see,” Ardman said. “If Goddard's people
underestimate these kids, then I'd rather we had a back-up. We can't let Vishinsky get to them.”

“If Goddard's team lose them, they're not likely to come and find you, are they?” the man said.

But Ardman had gone.

“Do we meet him?” Jade wondered.

“I still don't trust him, whatever he says,” Rich told her.

“Me neither,” she agreed. “So, what do we do? Go and see if he turns up, then decide if we see him?”

“I've got an idea,” Rich said. “How much power's that phone got left in it?”

Jade pulled the mobile back out of her rucksack. “Looks like—”