Survival (5 page)

Opening his eyes felt like lifting up a building. Every part
of Jimmy’s body was either totally numb or in
excruciating pain.

Pain means I’m alive
, he told himself again, but it
wasn’t reassuring. Then he felt a sudden heat in his
chest. Within seconds it washed through his body,
melting to a soft warmth. It was like diving into a pool
of warm honey. It didn’t soothe his pain completely, but
it made it bearable.

Slowly Jimmy became aware of his surroundings.
The first thing he saw was soft beige light all around him
and a huge ceiling fan whipping round above his head.
His nostrils tingled with a bitter smell. It made him think
of school on the first day of term. Then he remembered
the same smell when he’d lightened his hair as a
disguise.
Bleach
. Jimmy thought.
I’m in a hospital
.

There was something soft behind his head which he
assumed was a pillow, but when he tried to feel around
to check whether he was in bed, he found that he had
no sensation in his hands.

Then he heard the squeak of soft shoes on lino and
a shadow fell across his face. Jimmy felt the kick of a
strong force inside his gut. His programming wasn’t
only working to dull the pain. It was on full alert.
Have
they examined me?
Jimmy wondered.
What have they
found?
Maybe whoever had examined him had simply
followed the usual procedure for victims of extreme cold
and not noticed any unusual results yet.

“Uno Stovorsky?” came a high-pitched male voice.

“Yes,” Jimmy tried to cry out, but his throat felt like
it had been slashed from the inside. He didn’t care.
Somehow whoever was looking after him had found out
that he needed to see Uno Stovorsky.

“Hello, Uno,” the man said in a thick French accent.
“You are English?”

Jimmy’s heart crumpled. Why would anyone think he
was Uno Stovorsky? He strained his neck to get a
better look at the doctor. He was a short, middle-aged
man with scars on his cheeks and a tidy goatee beard.
A line of biros stood to attention in the top pocket of his
immaculate white coat.

“I’m not Uno,” Jimmy said. His voice came out deeper
than he was expecting and with a rough tone. He repeated
himself, but this time relaxed his lips and tongue, letting
his programming take control. His words came out in
perfect French. “
Je ne suis pas Uno Stovorsky
.”

The doctor apologised, obviously shocked that his
patient spoke the language like a native. He continued
in French. “It’s the name you were muttering when they
brought you in. You said it over and over. You have no
identification on you, so we assumed it was your own
name. Tell me—”

“When who brought me?” Jimmy didn’t have time to
make a fuss about introductions and he certainly didn’t
want to explain what he was doing in the Pyrenees in
the first place.

“You set off the alarm when you touched the border
fence.” The doctor’s face turned sour at Jimmy’s
interruption. “That is only about five kilometres from
here. We don’t get many who have survived a journey
over the mountains. And children travelling alone…” He
tailed off as if he expected Jimmy to give an explanation.

It didn’t happen. The man shrugged. “The patrol
picked you up immediately. ”

In the past, the French-Spanish border had been left
virtually unmanned, with travellers free to cross one
way or the other as they pleased. But that wasn’t the
case any more. Despite the relatively civil relations
between the two countries, there were still security
concerns. Now the border was clearly marked out by
fences, patrols and checkpoints.

Jimmy remembered the silver glimmer he’d seen
before he collapsed. It gave him a thrill of achievement.
He’d made it to the border.

“Uno Stovorsky is an agent of the DGSE,” Jimmy
explained. “Your Secret Service. Can you contact him
for me? It’s urgent.”

Very slowly he flexed his elbows to force his upper
body off the bed.

“You can’t get up,” the doctor protested. He tried
to push Jimmy down, kindly but firmly. “It might not
seem like it because you’re on powerful painkillers, but
you’re very ill.”

“I’ll be fine,” Jimmy insisted. “I take vitamin tablets.”

He shook his chest to get the doctor off him, which
sent a harsh stabbing pain through his ribs. Jimmy
winced, but kept moving. In a second he was sitting
upright. The ward housed five other beds, but they
were all empty.

“You don’t understand,” said the doctor. “Even if you
can get up, you can’t leave.”

Jimmy stared the doctor down, trying to read what
he really meant. Then the details of his surroundings
flashed up in his brain – details he didn’t even realise
he’d noticed.

“Bars on the windows,” Jimmy muttered. “Doors of
double thickness with reinforced glass. What sort of
hospital is this?”

The doctor didn’t say anything, but glanced over his
shoulder towards the thick double doors. Meanwhile,
Jimmy rolled his shoulders, without knowing why. Then
he realised. His programming was testing his mobility.

He had to know which movements were impossible
and which were just painful.

He raised his hands to look at what damage the
cold had done and for the first time saw that they
were completely wrapped in bandages. He looked
down. So were his feet. The balls of bandaging looked
like four large portions of candyfloss, one stuck on the
end of each limb. Now Jimmy also noticed the tube
inserted into his arm, attached to a saline drip next to
his bed.

“I don’t need this,” Jimmy announced, surprised at
his own confidence. It increased as his programming
fuelled his strength. Jimmy was feeling the effects of
several weeks’ recovery condensed into a few minutes.
It was thrilling. He hooked one bandaged hand under
the tube and yanked it out of his skin. “Thanks for your
help, doctor. I’m leaving.”

“Stay where you are,” the doctor ordered. “This isn’t
a hospital. It’s the medical wing of a border control
detention centre.”

“Detention centre?” said Jimmy, testing how far he
could flex his knees.

“It’s where we keep people who try to cross the
border illegally until they can be identified and—”

“Are you going to help me or not?”

“We
are
helping you. That’s why I can’t let you—”

Before he could finish, Jimmy swivelled in the bed
and stuck a leg out. He hooked his bandaged foot round
the bottom of the metal stand his drip was hanging on
and flicked it upwards. The base of it smacked the
doctor in the knee. The man stumbled forwards.

Jimmy grabbed the pole between his forearms and
stamped down on the wheel lock on one leg of his bed.
Then he kicked against the wall to send himself rolling
across the lino on the bed.

The doctor scrabbled for a whistle that was round
his neck and gave it a huge blast. The echo had barely
died when the double doors burst open. Two armed
security guards charged towards Jimmy, one reaching
for the baton on his belt, the other going for his gun.
Jimmy kept rolling, using the metal pole as a paddle.

He crouched low on the bed and waited until the very
last second. His programming was thrusting power into
every corner of his being, as if it was grateful to be let
off the leash at last. At the same time it gripped
Jimmy’s mind, controlling his actions.

Just as the guards descended on him, Jimmy
steered himself round in a sharp twist. He twirled the
pole over his arm and smacked it into one guard’s
face. The momentum spun the bed all the way round
so Jimmy was facing the wrong way. Jimmy brought
the pole under control and jabbed it backwards, under
his arm. The foot of the stand connected with the
other guard’s chest, then Jimmy snapped it upwards
into his face.

When both guards hit the floor they stayed down.

But two more were hurtling towards the ward. Jimmy
stayed calm. He rubbed his feet together to loosen the
bandaging, then twisted his right hand into it and pulled.
Within seconds it had unravelled, exposing his
blackened and twisted left foot. Jimmy stared, relieved
that the power of his programming combined with the
painkillers meant he could hardly feel it.

The new guards were through the ward doors. Using
his wrists and forearms, Jimmy wrapped the length of
loose bandage round the metal pole. Then he kicked the
pole directly upwards. The foot of it caught on a strut of
the ceiling fan above Jimmy’s head.

Jimmy twisted his arms into the other end of the
bandage and swung into the air, leaning back to control
his direction. He slammed his knees into the guards’
faces and they toppled like skittles.

By now the first two guards were rolling over, trying
to get up, but they were too late. Jimmy was through
the doors. He hurtled down the corridor, half running
and half sliding, with one foot still cocooned in bandage.

A quick glance at the emergency evacuation notice
told him the layout of the building. As he ran, he tore at
his bandages with his teeth, desperate to free his hands.
He turned a corner, heading for the nearest fire exit.

Another guard sat in front of the exit reading a
newspaper. When Jimmy tore into view, the guard leapt
to his feet and held up a hand to signal “Halt!”.

Does that ever
work?
Jimmy wondered. He picked
up speed, while the guard scrabbled for his walkie-talkie,
then his gun. By then Jimmy was on him. He
crashed his shoulder into the man’s midriff and the pair
of them tumbled to the floor. Jimmy dived for the exit
in a flurry of newspaper pages. He clattered through
and an alarm erupted throughout the building.

Jimmy felt the ice-cold air hit his skin. It brought back
the terror of his mountain trek. He looked around to find
himself in a fenced courtyard, with a watch tower
looming overhead. The guard’s newspaper was
fluttering all over the courtyard.

“Stop immediately,” came a stilted voice, speaking
in English, but with a French accent. “Otherwise you
will be shot.”

Jimmy buzzed with the strangest feeling of delight.
His programming hummed through him, relishing the
battle. His brain whirred with a thousand calculations –
the angle of the shot, the velocity of the bullet, the
distance between Jimmy and the fence…

To his shock, a smile twitched in the corners of his
mouth. He felt his muscles bracing for the sprint and
was actually enjoying it. But then his eyes fixed on a
single sheet of newspaper and the delight froze in his
heart. Jimmy suddenly knew that there was no point
trying to outrun the French shooter. He stopped dead
still and raised his hands.

The newspaper’s front page swooped along the
concrete. It was dominated by one image: the skeleton of
a burnt-out building, with a huge grey battleship looming
on the horizon. The ship was flying the Union Jack.

Suddenly four guards pounced on Jimmy, pushed
him to the ground and cuffed him. He didn’t resist. He
knew it was too late for that now.

Mitchell jumped out of the shower and grabbed his
towel. The red light above the sink had just come on.
It reflected around the black tiles and gave the steam
an eerie, hellish glow.

He rushed through to his bedroom, randomly
drying bits of his body as he went. Drips ran down his
nose and bounced off his brawny chin before hitting
the carpet. He leaned over his laptop, careful not to
drip on it, and found what he knew would be waiting
for him. The red light only came on when there was an
email from Miss Bennett.

He clicked it open and pulled his desk chair closer with
his foot. Before his shower, he’d been absorbed in one of
the SAS combat simulators. It was intended as part of the
training for recruits, but to Mitchell it was just the best
console game he’d ever played. The handset was discarded
on the floor next to a packet of crisps and the image of a
mangled enemy corpse was still paused on his TV.

His room was quite small, but it had everything
he needed. In fact it had everything he had ever
wanted: TV, HD-DVD player, and imported luxuries like
a Bose sounddock. Even the shower responded to
voice commands.

But he knew there was a price for living in such
luxury. Looking around the room, with its smart black
and red design, there was one obvious reminder of his
situation: the lack of windows. The British Secret
Service had taken over his life so much that these days
he lived underground, in one of the few residential
apartments at the NJ7 network.

Miss Bennett’s email had no message in it, but a
video popped up instead. Mitchell settled back to watch.

The image was jerky, as if it had been filmed on a
hand-held device, like a mobile phone, and at first it was
too dark to see anything. Mitchell turned up the
contrast on his screen.

The video appeared to have been filmed in a
snooker hall. There was the noise of balls being hit
and in the corner Mitchell made out a sliver of green
baize. But everything was obscured by the shoulders
of people around the camera. The place was packed.
Then Mitchell finally realised what the focus of the
filming was.

At the front of the crowd was a tall figure addressing
the others. His manner was relaxed, but powerful.
Mitchell turned up the volume. He could just make
out snippets of the man’s speech above the cracking
of the snooker balls and the murmurs of the crowd.

“The British Government has become a dictatorship,”
the man declared. “They invented this system of
Neo-democracy to give them power to do whatever
they wanted.”

The murmurs from the crowd grew louder, but it was
clear they were all starting to listen to the man. The
rest of the background noise fell away.

“Some of you might like the fact that you don’t need
to vote any more,” the man went on. “But now the
Government commits horrendous acts without us
having any say in the matter.”

Mitchell peered closer. There was something about
this man that he recognised, but the image was too
dark and grainy to be sure.

“You won’t find it in any British media,” the speech
continued, “because it’s controlled by Ian Coates and his
Secret Service donkeys. But in France this is public
knowledge: a British destroyer has attacked a French
facility in Western Sahara.”

The packed hall was completely rapt. Everybody was
listening to him now, mesmerised by his charisma. After
a minute Mitchell was hardly taking in the speech; he
was examining the picture and analysing the voice.

“Are you going to let them start an unjustified, illegal
war?” the man asked, with passion shaking his words.
There was a roar from the crowd.

“Are you going to let them act in your name, without
serving your interests?”

Another roar, louder this time.

“Or are you going to join me in tearing down…”

The end of his sentence was lost in the cheering of the
crowd. The man raised his arms and strode to the front
of his platform, soaking up the applause and encouraging
more. Mitchell only realised now that the man had
actually been standing on one of the snooker tables to
make his speech. The overhead light reflected off the
green felt and caught the man’s face from below. Mitchell
broke into a smile. Of course he knew who this was.

Christopher Viggo: the man who represented the
only realistic opposition to the Government. The man
NJ7 had already tried to kill. But they’d sent Jimmy
Coates to do it. That’s what had started all of the
trouble – Jimmy had overcome his instinct to kill Viggo
and instead joined the man’s cause. Mitchell had heard
all about that. He remembered how careful Miss
Bennett had been to make sure he hadn’t challenged
his own programming in the same way.

And now Jimmy Coates was dead. Mitchell’s head
spun as he thought about it. It was nothing new, but it
still felt strange. If Jimmy hadn’t joined Viggo, would
he and Mitchell have fought side by side for NJ7,
instead of attacking each other? Could they even have
been friends? After all, they had more in common
than most other people.

We were
half-brothers
, Mitchell reminded himself.
He shook off the thought with a shudder. It was the last
thing he wanted to think about. For all he knew, it could
be a lie anyway.

The video came to an end and straight away the
phone on Mitchell’s desk rang. It made him jump. He
picked it up, but before he could say anything, Miss
Bennett’s voice came through the receiver.

“Seen enough?”

Mitchell hauled his concentration back to the video.
He ran his finger across the screen, tracing the framed
pictures on the wall behind Viggo’s head. They were too
blurred to make out, but he knew NJ7’s data team
would have been able to enhance the image.

“Where was this filmed?” he asked.

“A snooker hall in Camden.” Miss Bennett sounded
calm, but Mitchell had spent enough time with her to
know there was something extra in her voice today.
Fear, he wondered? No. More like excitement.

“He’s less than six kilometres from where you’re sitting,”
she said. “And he dares to make a speech like that.”

“Did we track him?” Mitchell asked. “Whoever took
this film—”

“Lost him. It wasn’t an agent, just a loyal member
of the public. Out of nowhere, Viggo pops up at a
snooker hall, makes that speech, then disappears.
Who knows where else he’s been doing it and how
many times? It can’t happen again.”

“Who’s he working with? He’d need help to disappear
like that.”

“No he wouldn’t,” Miss Bennett scoffed. “He’s ex-NJ7.
He could be alone or he could have built up his
own private army. But either way…”

Mitchell’s stomach turned over. It was a mixture of
the assassin power inside him stirring and his human
psyche making him sick with fear. Mitchell wallowed in
the sickness until it turned into strength. His voice
came out sounding more confident than ever.

“So you want me to—”

“I want you to send him an invitation to your
fourteenth birthday party.”

There was an awkward silence. Mitchell knew Miss
Bennett must be joking, but couldn’t work out why she
didn’t laugh.

“Do I have to spell this out?” she snapped. “Find him.
Kill him.”

The line went dead.

Jimmy’s hands and feet were back in bandages, but this
time his right wrist was cuffed to the bed. He hadn’t
been able to convince the doctors that the bandages
were unnecessary and cuffs were useless. If he wanted
to break free he knew he could. But now there didn’t
seem much point.

Some sheets from the newspaper lay open on his
lap. One of the guards was so scared he’d agreed to do
almost anything Jimmy asked. Salvaging the newspaper
from the courtyard was a simple place to start and
Jimmy was beginning to get the hang of moving the
pages around with the ball of bandage.

He stared at the picture on the front. Nothing in the
newspaper’s text added much; the picture said it all.
Jimmy’s mind went round and round in circles,
retracing the same thoughts, throwing up the same
furious frustrations. Britain had struck, and in a way
that was obviously meant to be direct retaliation for the
French blowing up the British oil rig. Except the French
hadn’t blow up the oil rig. Jimmy had.

As far as Jimmy could work out, a British destroyer
had blown up a French facility in West Africa known as
Mutam-ul-it. The paper was a bit sketchy on what
actually went on there, but there was plenty of indignant
discussion about how tragic it was for France to have
an evil dictatorship for a neighbour.
Try living there
,
Jimmy thought to himself.

“For a dead boy, you’re making a good recovery.”

Jimmy was startled out of his thoughts. The voice was
deep and flat and the English was perfect except for a
slight French accent. Jimmy looked up. In the door of the
ward was a short man with only a sprinkling of hair on his
head and a face like misery. His shoulders hunched up as
if he was trying to keep his earlobes warm, and the tails
of his long grey overcoat brushed on the floor.

“Uno Stovorsky,” Jimmy gasped. He switched
effortlessly into French without even realising. “You
came. How did you know…?”

“Anyone trying to escape an immigration processing
centre—”

“You mean a detention centre?”

“I know what I’m saying,” Stovorsky countered,
raising an eyebrow. “This is
my
first language, not
yours, remember?”

He walked slowly towards Jimmy and stood rigid at
the foot of the bed. He picked up the clipboard there and
while he spoke he pretended to examine the paperwork.

“Anybody trying to escape from… from this sort of
place gets flagged up and sent to the DGSE for analysis.
When the person escaping is eleven and manages to
knock out half a dozen guards on his way, the case gets
a little more attention that usual.”

“I’m twelve.”

Stovorsky looked up, perhaps surprised at Jimmy’s
sharp tone. “Well, look at you,” he cooed with mock
pride. “All grown up.” Jimmy forced himself to stay calm.

“Anyway,” Stovorsky went on, “I heard that
somebody was asking for me by name, so I had to look
into it. You see, most of the people who know my
name are dead.”

“Including me.”

“Exactly.”

The pair of them stared blankly at each other.

“Nice of you to come,” said Jimmy bitterly. “But
it’s a bit late.”

He scooped his hand under the newspaper and
thrust it towards Stovorsky, who grabbed it and
scrunched it into a tiny ball without looking at it.

“Jimmy, you’re a nice boy,” he said, his fist so tight it
was almost throbbing. “But I didn’t come to chat and
check on your health. Do you think I would have turned
up if it was too late?”

Jimmy didn’t respond, so Stovorsky carried on.

“Tell me if I’ve got this right,” he said softly. “You
blew up that oil rig. You found out that the British
thought Zafi had done it and you knew they would
strike back at France somehow. You wanted to stop
them. How am I doing so far?”

Jimmy nodded reluctantly. He hated hearing the doubts
and fears that had been tormenting him spoken out loud.

“But you had a little problem,” Stovorsky continued,
clearly beginning to enjoy Jimmy’s attention. “You
couldn’t tell the British you’d blown up the rig because
they think you’re dead. And if you reveal you’re alive,
you’ll be back to square one.”

“Worse than square one actually,” Jimmy cut in.

“Of course – your family.”

“NJ7’s watching them. Any sign that they lied about
me being dead and…”

Stovorsky held up a hand to stop him. “Enough,”
he whispered.

There was a long silence. Stovorsky circled Jimmy’s
bed.
What’s he thinking
?
Jimmy wondered.
Why’s
he come
?

“Will France strike back?” Jimmy asked at last.

“Probably,” Stovorsky replied with a shrug. “That’s
not my department.”

“And will Britain attack again?”

“This isn’t chess, Jimmy. You don’t take turns.
Anything could happen.”

“But I can stop it,” Jimmy insisted. He sat up straighter,
rattling his cuff against the bed frame. “I can show them
they’ve made a mistake and there’s no need to go to war.”

“They don’t
need
to,” Stovorsky growled. “They
want
to.” His glare was full of fire. “You think that just by
turning up and telling the British Government they’ve
made a mistake, you’ll convince them to call off their
war? They’re not fighting because of the oil rig, because
of politics, or even because of you, Jimmy. They’re
fighting because it suits them to fight. And soon they’ll
tell the public they’re at war, just to keep them afraid.
Showing Miss Bennett you’re still alive will only put you
in danger. If she wants a war, you can’t stop it.”

“But if I show people the reason for the war is a lie,
they’ll have to stop.”

A half-hearted laugh escaped Stovorsky’s throat.
“Lies work, Jimmy. They hurt and they can kill, but they
work – especially lies to nations. Millions of people might
discover the lie, but somehow they still ignore it.”

“They won’t ignore me,” Jimmy snarled. The words
rose on a sudden swelling of aggression inside him. He
hadn’t expected to say it, but he liked the sound of it.
“Everybody in Britain will—”

Stovorsky cut him off with a real laugh. “That’s the
spirit, Jimmy! Send everybody in Britain a postcard. I’ll
buy you the stamps.”

Jimmy tried to protest, but Stovorsky was enjoying
himself too much.

“Tell you what,” he announced, “I’ll get you a slot on
French TV. Or even better – you don’t need me. Go rob
a bank, wave to the security cameras and you’ll get
yourself on the news. Then everybody will know that
little Jimmy Coates is still alive.”