Survival (17 page)

Stovorsky and Jimmy stared at each other. Stovorsky’s
face was white again. He squinted against the wind and
the corner of his eye twitched rapidly.

“Where is it?” he bellowed. He held up the phone,
thrusting it towards Jimmy’s face. “Where’s the
actinium?”

Jimmy couldn’t help smiling. “Where’s my
helicopter?” he countered firmly.

“OK,” Stovorsky announced. “New game. It’s called:
tell me where the actinium is or I send the order to kill
your family.”

He mashed the buttons on his phone and put it to his
ear. Jimmy’s heart stabbed into his chest. Was the man
bluffing? Could Jimmy risk not taking him seriously?

“Get a message to Zafi,” Stovorsky shouted.

Jimmy glared at him, wishing poison would somehow
pour from his eyes into Stovorsky’s blood.

“Don’t make me a killer, Jimmy,” said the DGSE man.

“You already are one!” Jimmy screamed at the top of
his lungs. He held up his hand and wiggled the tips of
his fingers. “You sent me into that mine unprotected.
You knew what you were doing. You even
hoped
it would
kill me to protect Zafi’s cover!”

Stovorsky ignored him and yelled, “Where’s the
actinium?”

“I tell you and you’ll shoot me,” Jimmy replied,
suddenly wishing he could trust the man enough to
reveal to him the location of the mineral without being
shot immediately.

“You listening?” Stovorsky said into the phone, his
determination showing in his jaw. “The message is this…”
He hesitated, staring at Jimmy, his eyes wide. Was that
fear that Jimmy saw? Or was it pride? “Make them dark,”
Stovorsky ordered and snapped the phone shut.

Jimmy felt a cold sweat break out all over him, but he
couldn’t understand what was happening. His head
couldn’t catch up with his body. It was as if his brain had
deliberately obscured all the information it received. Yet
his hands still trembled and his eyes were hot with dread.

“You’ve no idea what you’re putting me through,”
Stovorsky whispered, his words barely carrying to
Jimmy in the wind. “You think if you tell me where the
actinium is I’ll shoot you? Well, try this…” With his
good hand, he flicked the tail of his jacket away and
pulled a gun from his hip. “Your family’s as good as
gone.” He levelled the gun at the base of Jimmy’s
neck. “Tell me where it is or you’re gone too.”

Jimmy felt tears creeping to his eyes. He tensed
every muscle as hard as concrete.
I’m gone anyway
, he
told himself. The silence was too long for Stovorsky.

“WHERE IS IT!?” he screamed. His voice tore through
the wind, blustering round the whole airfield. If Jimmy
told Stovorsky now, he might still have a chance – to stop
his family being killed and even to find a doctor who
would save him. But at the same time he braced himself
for the bullet. Finally he opened his mouth to give the
answer –
the honest answer
, he insisted to himself.

Before he could form the words, another voice
carried across the tarmac.

“It is here!” came a shout.

Jimmy looked past Stovorsky. It was Marla. He
thrilled at the sight of her, but could see the effects of
her illness had got worse. Her colouring was less
intense and her hair, which flew around her face like a
lion’s mane, looked much thinner. She moved slowly
towards them. Her arm was stretched out in front of
her and in her hand she grasped the top of a black linen
bag. A soft blue light glowed through the linen.

Stovorsky spun round as if the wind had knocked him
off-balance.

“Do you want me to bring it closer?” Marla shouted,
taking another step forward.

“NO!” Stovorsky jumped backwards and aimed his
gun at Marla.

“You know you cannot shoot at me,” she explained
calmly. “Do you realise how unstable this is?” She gently
waved the bag backwards and forwards. “And how
poisonous?” She jumped forwards another sudden step.
Stovorsky lurched back again and dropped his gun to
the ground. “OK, OK,” he panted. “Just stay back.”

“And make sure your gunmen know they cannot
shoot also. A bullet at the wrong angle, in the wrong
place…” again she waved the bag, almost taunting
“…and the whole of this airfield becomes a cloud.
Probably all of Paris too.”

Stovorsky raised his hands high in the air and turned
full circle, waving to every corner of the airfield and
giving the signal to lower every weapon. “How did you
get here?” he asked, astounded. “There’s a cordon of
my men. This whole place is locked down!”

“Perhaps I have the key,” Marla replied, a huge grin
on her face. “And it glows, no?”

Jimmy loved the image of Marla skipping past a ring
of DGSE agents, threatening them with her deadly,
radioactive bag. She and Jimmy were the only people
who had nothing more to fear from it.

“Come, Jimmy,” Marla ordered. “There is a
helicopter waiting over there.” She pointed towards the
other side of the airstrip. “Perhaps one that works.”

Jimmy didn’t need asking twice. He jumped out of the
chopper and raced over to Marla. Together they backed
away from Stovorsky, towards a waiting helicopter.

“Don’t go to London, Jimmy,” Stovorsky pleaded. “It’s
no good. You can’t save your family. You can’t stop the
war. All you’ll do is make it easier for Britain to win.”

Jimmy could feel a seething passion inside him.
Keep
going
, he told himself.
Keep control
.

“You’re only exposing Zafi,” Stovorsky went on, his
arms still raised. “Do you really want to give NJ7 that
advantage?” He shouted at the top of his voice now,
shrinking smaller and smaller as Jimmy and Marla
edged further and further away, leaving the man alone in
the middle of the concrete desert. “It’s Britain or France,
Jimmy!” he yelled. “Don’t you want to help France?”

“I’m going off France,” Jimmy muttered.

At last they turned and ran, moving together silently.
In seconds they were in the cockpit of a new chopper –
a Tiger Hellfire IV. It was a much smaller vehicle, with
only two cramped seats in the cockpit and no other
cabin space, but the rotors were spinning and the
drone of the engine sounded like music to Jimmy.

“Do you know how to…?” Marla started to ask, but
she didn’t finish. Her answer was in the speed and
confidence of Jimmy’s movements.

A cushion of air drew them upwards, perfectly stable.
Jimmy held the chopper level about twenty metres up,
ran his eyes over every centimetre of the two control
and display units to double-check the readings, then
leaned on the flight stick to send them soaring forwards.

They flew directly over Stovorsky. They were easily
close enough to make out the purple rage bursting from
every pore in his face, but they couldn’t make out his
words over the whine of the chopper.

The second they passed directly over Stovorsky’s head,
Marla threw the bag out of the open door of the cockpit.

“Wait!” Jimmy shouted. But he was too late. “What
did you…?” He stared across at Marla, but her
enigmatic smile revealed nothing.

The black linen bag dropped like a tiny bomb from the
helicopter – and with lethal accuracy.

“NO!” Stovorsky screamed. He flapped at the bag
with his one good arm, swatting it away as if it were a
wasp. It bounced off his elbow and crashed to the
concrete half a metre away.

Stovorsky instinctively raised an arm to shield himself
from the radiation, even though he knew that was
useless. But now he lowered his arm and stood
straighter. He stared at the bag. It wasn’t glowing.

Tentatively he shuffled towards it. Then he grew
bolder. If he was poisoned already, looking inside the
bag could hardly make things much worse. He picked up
the bag, slowly opened the top and peered in.

It took him a second to work out what he was looking
at, but then he realised: the broken pieces of an old
mobile phone. The glow of its screen had died as soon
as it had hit the ground.

Stovorsky erupted into a fit of frantic laughter. For a
full five seconds he hopped around in a jig of relief. A
moment before he’d been facing an agonising death
sentence. Now he knew that was a lie. An act. A clever
charade by a devious girl from Western Sahara.

As suddenly as it had appeared, the smile on
Stovorsky’s face vanished.
I don’t have the actinium
, he
thought.
But neither do they
. In a frenzy, he pulled out
his own phone again and dialled two keys.

“Shoot him down!” Stovorsky bellowed in French.
“He’s on his way to London. Get two jets in the air and
BRING HIM DOWN NOW!”

Felix had been disappointed to wake up and find that
Zafi had disappeared. He puzzled over it all day at
school – she’d said she’d come to protect them, then
just left. Didn’t they need protecting any more?

He tried to snatch a minute with Georgie to talk
about it, but it was impossible. They were being
watched every minute, either on the school security
cameras or by certain ‘teachers’ who weren’t trying
very hard to disguise the fact that they were NJ7
agents. Felix knew anything he said within the school
walls was being monitored.

Now he was at home and his mood was swinging
violently. There was joy that maybe Zafi had left
because she’d found out something about his parents,
there was misery about pretty much everything else
and there were a thousand emotions in between.

He stalked from room to room, desperate for a
distraction from the mess of his thoughts. He had
already consumed four slices of cheese on toast, so
now he whipped up a plate of salami and anchovy mush
– one of his specialities. He took his time over it and
squeezed the last dribble from the ketchup bottle with a
little too much enthusiasm. It spattered across the
kitchen counter and on to the floor.
Eat first, clear up
later
, he told himself.
Maybe
.

Georgie had stayed at school for football practice.
She and Helen wouldn’t be home for hours, so there
was no reason to keep the place tidy. Felix threw himself
on to the sofa and flicked on the TV. What he saw
ruined the first bite of his snack. Instead of a
distraction, he got what felt like a slap in the face.

On the screen was a grainy close-up of an old school
photo of Jimmy. It was the same image that the news
programmes had been recycling for weeks now, but it
still froze Felix’s muscles and stole the flavour from his
salami mush. He found he couldn’t change the channel.

The camera zoomed in on Jimmy’s eyes, bright,
almost laughing. Felix remembered the day when that
photo was taken. He’d spent all morning trying to draw a
face on Jimmy’s tie without him noticing. Now he wanted
to be sick. He was mesmerised by the screen, which
seemed to linger on the image of Jimmy’s face forever.

At last the programme switched to showing two
grey-faced old blokes in suits, stuck in a studio
somewhere discussing Britain’s “security challenges”.
They were supposedly experts and they were rattling on
– something about how NJ7 had successfully tracked
down the psychotic boy who had assassinated the old
Prime Minister.

Felix was finally able to flick over. He found a cookery
show. A man with a shiny head was slicing through a
mushroom with rapid, heavy chops. Felix let the images
wash over him, trying to steady his breathing. Suddenly
more tired than he could imagine, he lifted his feet and
plonked them on to the coffee table, right in the middle
of the Monopoly set.

He was still there a couple of hours later, breadcrumbs
and bits of salami all down his front. He couldn’t even
remember what he’d watched on TV. He didn’t care about
the programmes – just the feeling of numbness that
watching gave him. The way it dulled all of his thoughts.

Then he heard a crash. Something smashing on the
floor of the kitchen. His body shook with an eruption of
adrenaline. He slowly got to his feet and edged towards
the kitchen. Who was in there? His imagination burned
with the possibilities – an NJ7 assassin come to kill him,
or just a regular robbery? Viggo coming to make
contact at last, or Jimmy? His mum or his dad? He
couldn’t hold himself back. Despite the danger, he
shoved the kitchen door open.

The room was empty. Felix blinked hard and looked
again. Still empty.

The floor was covered in the shards of a broken plate
and underneath the pieces was a dull, red smear.
Ketchup. The smell was unmistakable. But Felix wasn’t
worrying about clearing it up. He was staring at what
was smudged into it. He crouched to move the pieces
of plate out of the way to reveal a message. It was
written in large finger-writing through the ketchup,
across the kitchen floor.

Felix’s throat seized up in shock. At first he just
stared at the letters:

FLAT NOT SAFE. GET OUT. 40 SECONDS.

It was signed with a loopy Z, followed by a curly heart.

Felix felt an intense chill stab right through him. It
was chased by a thrilling tingle. Zafi had been back. Felix
jumped over the message to the kitchen window and
pressed his face to the glass. Was she out there? He
couldn’t see anything in the darkness. Then he realised
the window was still locked. How had she got in? And
how long had she been in the flat?

Felix’s mind was racing.
She could have broken into
a different room
, he thought,
and crept past me to get
to the kitchen
. He couldn’t believe it was possible and
yet here was the evidence. And how had she got out?
She is so cool
.

His heart was thumping so hard he thought he was
going to collapse. Finally the words of the message sank
in:
40 seconds
. Felix felt a jolt of horror.
How long have
I been standing here?

He bolted out of the kitchen. He tumbled over the
coffee table in the living room, but kept going through a
shower of tiny green houses and fake money. He raced
for the front door, counting off the seconds in his head,
but still with no idea how long he had, or even what was
going to happen when his time ran out.