Survival (18 page)

He scrambled to open the front door, but the catch
kept slipping through his fingers. On his fourth attempt,
he finally burst out into the open. He ran to the
pavement, relishing the cool air against the sweat on
his forehead. Then:

BOOM!

Felix was blasted off his feet. Heat roasted his back. All
he could see was an intense orange flash and he felt like
his eardrums would burst. He crashed to the pavement
on the other side of the street. It knocked all the air from
his lungs and for a second he couldn’t breathe. Then he
rolled over and looked back towards the flat.

The explosion was small, but devastating with its
precision. Through the smoke he could see the jagged
outline of where their flat had fitted into the building. It
was a ripped black hole. Felix staggered to his feet. He
couldn’t stand properly and nearly fell three times, finally
leaning back against the wall of the Gregor’s Elbow pub.
His eyes took in the scene piece by piece, as if together
it was too much for his mind to cope with. The heat…
the flames dancing inside… the glass that was still
falling around him, along with black confetti.

After a few seconds, Felix became aware of the
sirens, then the clusters of people gathering to watch.
A couple of kids started throwing stones into
the burning shell.

“Felix!”

He heard his own name, but didn’t respond.

“Felix!” It was a woman’s shout. The next thing he
knew somebody was clutching him to her chest. Still he
couldn’t take his eyes off the devastation. Then his
thoughts changed. Who was hugging him? It felt good
– almost like his mum.

Slowly he came to his senses.

“Felix, thank God you’re OK.” It was Helen Coates.
Felix’s brain wasn’t processing any of the words, but he
loved the soothing sound of her voice and the reassuring
smell of her clothes. “Come on, we’ve got to go.”

She took him by the hand and dragged him up the
street. By this time there was a different kind of chaos in
the street: fire engines, police cars, people evacuating
from the neighbouring flats. Felix stared as long as he
could, craning to peer over his shoulder. He hardly blinked.
Finally he managed to mouth a single word: “Boom.”

Zafi felt her shirt clinging to the sweat on her back. What
was happening to her? She sprinted through the back
streets with as much speed and grace as ever, but it felt
like she was carrying a weighted pack on her shoulders.

The explosion rumbled through the air only a few
hundred metres away, but she didn’t look back to see
the smoke rising above the buildings. Instead she
pressed on, harder and faster.

What have I done?
she heard herself thinking. Her
imagination played out two scenes simultaneously – in
one, Felix made it out of the flat alive. In the other, he
stumbled at the door and was lost in the flames.

There were sirens piercing the air now, but to Zafi
they may as well have been in her head. She reached
Camden and climbed over the railing of the canal bridge.
She stared into the water, crouching in the wrought-iron
curls of the bridge like a gargoyle at Notre Dame.

How long would it be before Stovorsky found out that
Jimmy’s mother, sister and friend had survived? That
Zafi had failed. Would he ever find out that she’d failed
deliberately?
No
, Zafi told herself.
It wasn’t deliberate. I
tried to blow them up. I failed. That’s all
.

But she could feel her left index finger trembling. She
tried to look away, but it seemed to catch the light,
almost flashing. There was still ketchup on the tip.
I
didn’t write the messages
, she pleaded with herself.
I
didn’t
. She shivered and closed her hand into a fist to
hide her fingertip.
If I did, I went against orders… If I did,
I disobeyed my nature
…

“If I did,” she whispered, “I’m not a killer.”

A spark ran through her blood. It flared into her
brain. In the murky water beneath her she saw Felix’s
smile. Then it melted into the shapes of her targets’
bodies. Were they alive or dead?

If I’m not a killer, what am I?

Finally she closed her eyes and sprang into a
powerful dive. A tramp was woken by the splash, but in
the darkness there was no way he could have seen the
shadow beneath the surface. It cut through the water
with the power of a shark.

She didn’t surface for miles.

Helen Coates and Felix stopped half a mile from the flat,
just outside a greasy spoon café. The light from inside
was enough for Helen to give Felix a quick examination.
She studied him up and down, staring into his eyes and
his ears, rolling each of his limbs, asking what hurt.

“I’m fine,” Felix insisted, pulling away. “I promise. I’m
just bruised.”

“You were nearly blown up,” Helen said sternly.
“And I’m not taking you to a doctor, so at least let me
check you over.”

Felix narrowed his eyes and let her carry on. “No
doctor?” he asked softly. They exchanged a glance.
Both of them knew the Royal Free Hospital was just
round the corner. “You think the explosion means
they’ve lost us on the surveillance?”

“It means either NJ7 is trying to kill us, or
somebody else is trying to kill us and managed to get
round NJ7 surveillance – possibly even shut it down
temporarily, like Zafi did. Either way, we need to get
into hiding as quickly as possible.”

“It was Zafi,” Felix blurted. Helen gave him a puzzled
look. “In the flat,” he went on, excited.

“Did you see her? Was she…?”

“No, no, but there was a message from her: that the
flat wasn’t safe and I had to get out.”

“What’s she doing?” Helen said, almost to herself.
“Why blow up the flat, but warn you about it so you
don’t get hurt?”

“Hey,” Felix protested. “I am hurt a little bit.” He put
on his saddest face and rubbed his shoulder.

“Get over it, sunshine.”

Felix shrugged. He didn’t mind the lack of sympathy.
Really he was just relieved to be in one piece – he knew
how lucky he was not to have been hurt more seriously.

“Where’s Georgie?” he asked.

Helen pointed through the window of the café and
tapped on the glass to her daughter. “We were lucky,”
she explained. “I bumped into her on the way home at
the top of the road, We both saw the explosion. I told
her to come straight here and wait for us.”

Georgie rushed from the café and wrapped her arms
round Felix. “You OK?” she asked, squeezing him hard.
“We saw what happened. How did you get out in time?”

“Zafi left me a warning. You didn’t know I could fly, did
you?” he joked, squirming out of Georgie’s bear hug.

“And such a graceful landing too,” Georgie quipped back.

“So are we grabbing a bite before we go into hiding?”

Helen rolled her eyes.

“Actually, Mum,” Georgie cut in, “I just ordered
some toast”

Before Helen could reply, Felix reached into his pocket.

“Great plan, Georgie. Get some for me too.” He pulled
out a few coins and was about to count them, but
something else came out of his pocket too – a small card.
Georgie picked it up off the pavement where it had fluttered
down and brought it close to her face to study it in the light.

“So you’re sitting at home,” she began, “you get a
warning from some weird French assassin girl that you’re
about to get blown up and the only thing you grab on your
way out is a property card from the Monopoly set?”

“What?” Felix screwed up his face. “Let me see
that.” He snatched the card from her. “I have no idea
how this got…” He stopped himself mid-sentence and
his mouth fell open because when he saw what was
written on the front of the card, he suddenly knew who
had put it in his pocket. “How did she…?” he gasped.

“What’s going on, Felix,” Helen asked seriously. “Is it
another message from Zafi?”

“What’s it mean?” said Georgie. “How do you know
it’s from her?”

At first Felix couldn’t take his eyes off the card. “The
warning in the flat was written on the kitchen floor in
ketchup,” he explained. “Smell this.” He shoved the card
up to Georgie’s nose, then to Helen’s. “So either there’s
suddenly a whole community of people who’ve given up
emailing and decided to send tomato-sauce messages
instead, or this is from Zafi.”

“Slow down, Felix,” Helen told him. She knelt down
and rested a hand on his shoulders. “Are you sure you
didn’t have it in your pocket already.”

“Maybe you took it with you to school this morning,”
suggested Georgie.

“Oh yeah, maybe trading Monopoly cards is suddenly a
massive new craze – especially the stations.” He pulled a
face of maximum disbelief. “And maybe when
I
hit the
pavement you lost some of your brain.” Before Georgie
could react, he rattled on. “Why would I write myself a
heart in ketchup? Did I die and come back as a freakoid?”

Now it was Georgie’s turn to pull a face. “Wait,” she
said, “that’s not a heart.”

“Of course it is,” said Felix, waving the card in front
of her nose. “I think me and Zafi, we’ve got, like, a little
thing going on.” He gave a cheesy wink. “Don’t be
jealous.”

“Felix,” Georgie cut in. “That’s a V.”

She took the card from Felix’s fingers and flicked it
round to show the face to the others.

“King’s Cross Station,” gasped Helen. “V for…”

“Victory?” Felix suggested, looking more puzzled by
the second. “Vertical? Vomit?”

“Felix,” Helen announced, “this message isn’t just for
you. It’s for all of us. Especially me.” She stood tall and
glanced around, checking whether anybody might have
been watching them. “Sorry about your toast, Georgie,”
she said. “We’d better get going.”

She took Georgie and Felix round the shoulders and
marched them off towards Camden.

“Er, vaccination?” Felix muttered. Helen and Georgie
ignored him.

“But how did she find Chris?” Georgie asked her mum.

“Chris?” said Felix. “But Chris doesn’t begin with…”
Suddenly the realisation struck him. “Oh,
Viggo
!”
he exclaimed.

“Smart work, freakoid,” laughed Georgie.

“This has to be Christopher Viggo,” Miss Bennett
muttered under her breath as they sped through
Camden. She glanced across the back seat to Eva, but
seemed to look right through her. Eva recognised the
expression on her boss’s face. It usually meant she was
plotting something.

Eva shifted uncomfortably, wishing she could move
out of Miss Bennett’s glare. But she had no room to
move and her knees were scrunched right up by her
chest because William Lee was in the passenger seat
directly in front of her.
People that tall shouldn’t be
allowed in cars
, Eva thought to herself. He’d pushed
himself right back for a superhuman amount of legroom.

When they reached the incident scene, a line of
police tape marked a blockade, but an officer saw the
long, black car with its distinctive but subtle markings
and lifted the tape in good time for them to sail straight
through. The driver slowed to a crawl.

Eva stared at the flashing blue lights that bounced
off the old walls and lit up the faces of the onlookers.
It made the whole place look like a scene from a bad
TV drama, but this was real. She peeked between two
of the huge fire engines to see the gaping black hole
where an hour before there had been a flat. Once
again she felt the wild lurch of emotion she’d
experienced when she’d first heard the news: One
burnt-out Government flat. No bodies.

The intensity of the relief and excitement made her want
to throw up. She couldn’t allow herself to reveal any hint of
how she felt – the terror that her friends might have been
hurt, the sheer joy that they’d survived and the exhilaration
at the thought of them being on the run again. Bottling it
all up made her guts boil, but she had no choice.

“Doesn’t look like an accident, does it?” announced
William Lee, dipping his head so that he could examine
the disorder in the street. “Look – none of the other flats
has been touched. It takes skilled manipulation of the
flow of gas and the temperature of the ignition to control
an explosion as accurately as that.” He didn’t wait for any
response. “How do you think he sabotaged our
surveillance operation this time? More cheese? Or
coffee and chocolate perhaps?”

Eva saw him snatch a glance in the rear-view mirror
to check Miss Bennett’s reaction. The woman didn’t
move a muscle. Then all she said was, “We’ll know.”

“When?” Lee barked. “When will you know?”

Miss Bennett gritted her teeth and narrowed her
eyes. The car pulled up in the middle of the junction
opposite the estate and the driver jumped out to open
Miss Bennett’s door.

“All the evidence is in there,” Miss Bennett insisted,
jerking her head towards the Gregor’s Elbow pub.

The three of them marched past a line of fire
fighters, policemen and Secret Service agents who
were scurrying in and out, fetching all of the surviving
contents of the flat. Eva was nearly knocked over by two
burly men with a charred sofa.

Inside the pub, everything had been neatly set out on
the bar and along the tables. New material was coming in
all the time and there was a team sorting through it all.
Everything was given a little white label, photographed,
prodded and discussed by a forensic team. At first Eva
didn’t see any faces. All she saw were the dozens of hands
going about their work, all of them a lifeless beige because
of the way the pub lighting struck the latex gloves.

Eva scampered after Miss Bennett and William
Lee, ignoring the questioning glances from the police
and Secret Service teams. When Miss Bennett and
Lee took latex gloves from a box, Eva took a pair for
herself as well, instinctively trying to fit in.

“And does it matter how he did it?” Miss Bennett
whispered to William Lee as they surveyed the rows of
evidence. “The fact is he’s done it – he made contact
with the family, he extracted them from the flat and
now he’s probably taken them into hiding with him. The
question is: why?”

“No,” Lee snapped back. “The question is, where
have they gone. It doesn’t matter why – if you find them
and kill them.”

“Don’t tell me how to do my job, Lee.” Miss Bennett
turned on him and her fist closed around the
blackened remains of a cuddly stuffed cow. A pool of
foam oozed out as she squeezed. “I’ve already called
Mitchell. He’s on his way.”

“You think he’ll find something in all of this that the
rest of us can’t see?” Lee snatched one of the charred
objects from the bar and gestured with it. Eva thought it
might be the remains of a games console. “There’s
nothing in here that tells us a thing about where they’ve
gone,” he said. “The fire service was here in under two
minutes. The forensic team wasn’t far behind. They’ve
saved or reconstructed every piece of data storage
equipment that was found in the flat.”

“Calm down,” said Miss Bennett. “They’ll find
something.”

“They’ve found nothing!” Lee declared bitterly. “No
message. No signal. Nothing. They’ve even rescued
every fragment of card or paper in case there were
hand-written notes. Look! They saved the stupid board
games, for crying out loud.” He pointed to the end of
the bar. “But still nothing!”

“Then they’ll keep looking,” Miss Bennett countered.
“There has to be something.”

“And nobody saw them leave!” Lee exclaimed.

Miss Bennett spun round and addressed everybody
in the pub.

“Is there no surveillance information?” she
demanded. She was met by blank stares and glances
of concern. “Nobody saw a thing?!” she yelled. When
nobody responded she turned back to Lee. “He
must still be nearby,” she hissed. “There’s a ring of
agents round the whole area. Viggo can’t possibly
get past them.”

She ran her hands through her hair in
exasperation. When she realised she was still wearing
latex gloves and she was spreading small bits of ash
all over her hair, she tore them off in frustration and
stormed towards the exit. “Eva!” she bellowed. “Stay
here and take notes.”

Before she could leave, the door burst open and
there was Mitchell, in a heavy duffel coat with the collar
turned up around his ears.

“Where’ve you been?” Miss Bennett barked.

Mitchell shrugged and nervously looked around.
“Looking for my target,” he said meekly.

“Well your target’s been busy blowing up Government
property,” Miss Bennett replied. “Find out where he is
and deal with him.” With that she stomped out, and Eva
heard her shrill voice splitting the quiet of the night.
“Who’s in charge here?”