The Ultimate Truth (16 page)

The sat nav chimed quietly –
bing-bong
– and the opening screen lit up.

The battery icon showed two bars. Good enough.

I pressed the
N
AVIGATION
icon, then
M
ENU
, then
G
O
T
O
.

I paused for a second, mentally crossing my fingers, then selected
R
ECENT
D
ESTINATIONS
and held my breath. A second later, a list of
addresses appeared on the screen. As I read the one at the top, I recalled Mum and Dad arguing about the sat nav again.

I’m not having that thing in my car.

We’re driving into the middle of London. You know what the roads are like—

I don’t care. I’d rather get lost than use one of those.

But I’ve already keyed in the address. All we have to do when we get to London is turn it on . . .

He’d already keyed in the address. The address they were going to in London. He’d already keyed it into the sat nav.

I was looking at it right now.

Thames House, 11 Millbank, London SW1

It took me a moment to work out why the address seemed so familiar, and even then I wasn’t sure if it meant anything or not. The reason I recognised the address, I
realised, was that I’d seen it on TV. It was always being shown on
Spooks
, the BBC series about MI5 agents. In the TV programme, when the spies are in their HQ in London, the location
comes up on the screen to let us know where they are:
Thames House
, it says.
London MI5 Central HQ
. Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean the
real
MI5 was based at
Thames House, but it didn’t take me long to find out. I took out my mobile, opened up Google, and typed in
MI5 HQ
.

The entry at the top of the list was from Wikipedia. It read:

So now I knew that on the day they died, Mum and Dad were driving down to London to meet with someone at MI5. But what did that mean? Did Mum and Dad know about Bashir’s
undercover work? Had they found out where he was? Were they meeting with MI5 to let them know they’d found him? Or maybe they
didn’t
know anything about Bashir’s MI5
connection. Maybe someone at MI5 had requested a meeting with them, possibly to warn them off, and Mum and Dad had agreed to go, but they’d had no idea what the meeting was about.

It seemed as if I’d answered one question – why were Mum and Dad going to London? – but in doing so I’d uncovered a dozen more. None of which I could answer.

‘Great,’ I muttered to myself, turning back to the sat nav. ‘More unanswered questions . . .
just
what I need.’

I wasn’t too despondent though, because hopefully I was going to find the answer to everything in one of the other addresses in the
R
ECENT
D
ESTINATIONS
list. I didn’t know which one it was yet – I was guessing it’d be the second or third – and I wouldn’t really know until I’d done
some more checking. But for now I just wanted to make sure the addresses were there. I wanted to know where Dad had been the day before he died.

I studied the list.

They were all fairly local addresses, and most of them were in or around Barton. I looked at the most recent entry first, the second address on the list.

Sowton Lane, Barton BR10 6GG

It didn’t ring any bells. As far as I knew, I’d never heard of Sowton Lane.

But I recognised the next entry.

42 Roman Way, Beacon Fields, Barton BR11 8TW

The Kamals lived at 42 Roman Way.

I already knew that Dad had been to the Kamals’ house, but had he been there more than once?

I started fiddling around with the sat nav menu, looking for anything that would tell me the time and date of a saved destination. If I could find out exactly when Dad had entered the addresses
into the sat nav, I’d know which one to concentrate on.

I selected the Sowton Lane address and tried holding it down, hoping for some kind of menu to appear, but nothing happened. I studied the screen again, looking for other options, but I
couldn’t see anything useful.

It was at that point, just as I was about to go back to the main search menu, that I heard the front door opening.

In the second or two between the sound of the front door opening and the sound of it being closed, a whirlwind of thoughts raced through my head. Who could it be? Grandad?
Courtney? The police? A neighbour? Whoever it was, they’d opened the door with a key. I’d taken Nan and Grandad’s door key. Did they have another one? Why would Grandad be here?
Did Courtney have a key? What about the neighbours? Would the police have a key?

I heard voices then.

Muttered voices from the hallway.

I froze, barely breathing, and listened hard.

The voices were low and muffled, and I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but I was fairly sure there were two of them. And from the sound of it, they were both American.

American?
I thought.

CIA?

The surveillance team from the white van?

The footsteps were moving along the hallway now.

Did they know I was in the garage? I wondered. Did they know I was in the house at all? Had they followed me from Nan and Grandad’s? Even if they hadn’t, they must have seen my bike
outside. They must know I was here somewhere. I looked over at the door to see if I’d closed it or not. It was shut. But the garage light was on, and I knew the light was visible from the
other side of the door. You could see it shining through the gap at the bottom. So even if they didn’t know I was in here, they’d know
someone
was in here when they saw the
light.

Should I turn it off ?

I reached out for the light switch . . . then stopped.

I could hear them approaching the door now. They could probably see the light already, which meant they’d see it being turned off. Then they’d
definitely
know someone was in
here.

What should I do?

Think!

Turn off the light? Leave it on and hope they didn’t see it?

I was still trying to make up my mind, my finger poised over the light switch, when I saw the door starting to open. Without really thinking about it, I hit the light switch, quickly slipped the
sat nav in my pocket, and began edging round to the front of the car. As the light went off, plunging the garage into darkness, the door swung open and I saw two figures silhouetted in the doorway.
The one on the left immediately reached round for the switch by the door, and as the light came back on again, I could see them both quite clearly. The one who’d switched the light back on
was a well-built man in his mid-twenties wearing a dark-grey suit. The other one was a short-haired black woman in a leather jacket and jeans.

The woman was pointing a gun at me.

It was a pistol, a handgun. A matt-black automatic.

I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

The woman was standing perfectly still. She was holding the gun in her right hand, supporting her wrist with her other hand, her elbows tucked in close to her body.

I was too stunned to do anything. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. I didn’t even feel scared, just numbed to the bone. All I could do was stand there like
a zombie, staring dumbly at the barrel of the gun.

It was probably only a second or two before the woman lowered the pistol and secured it in a holster on her belt, but it didn’t
feel
like a second or two. It felt like for ever.

‘It’s all right, Travis,’ the woman said, holding up her hands to show me they were empty. She smiled, trying to reassure me. ‘We just want to talk to you, OK?’

I still couldn’t speak. I just stared at her.

She smiled again, trying to look friendly, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. Her eyes were cold and calculating.

‘Hey, come on, Travis,’ she said breezily, her American accent soft and unthreatening, ‘why don’t you just—’

‘Who are you?’ I said, surprised at the steadiness in my voice. ‘What are you doing in my house?’

The woman hesitated for just a second, then reached into her jacket pocket. ‘We’re with the CIA, Travis,’ she said, taking out a wallet. ‘I’m Special Agent Zanetti,
and this –’ she indicated her colleague ‘– this is Special Agent Gough.’

Gough took a wallet from his pocket, and they both opened them up and held them out, showing me their CIA identity cards. Which was kind of pointless. Because even if I could have seen them from
where I was standing – which I couldn’t – I had no idea what a genuine CIA identity card looks like anyway.

‘So can we talk now?’ Special Agent Zanetti said, putting her wallet away. ‘All we want—’

‘How did you get in here?’ I said.

She sighed. ‘Listen, Travis—’

‘You can’t just break into my house and point a gun at me,’ I said, taking out my mobile. ‘I don’t care
who
you are. I’m calling the police.’

Zanetti glanced quickly at Gough, and I saw him nod his head and put his hand in his pocket. I thought he might be reaching for a gun, but he didn’t take anything out. I held up my mobile,
my thumb poised over the screen, letting them know that I meant what I said. Zanetti just looked at me and shrugged, as if to say,
Go on then, call the police, see if I care
. I wondered if
she was calling my bluff, just pretending she didn’t care, but then Gough took something out of his pocket and held it up for me to see. It was a small handheld device with three stubby
little aerials sticking out at the top. I was pretty sure I knew what it was – Dad had shown me something similar once – and when I glanced at my mobile and saw that I didn’t have
a signal, I knew I was right.

‘Mobile phone jammer?’ I said to Gough.

He nodded, looking bored, and put the device back in his pocket.

They both started moving towards me then – Zanetti edging her way along the right-hand side of the car, Gough squeezing through the clutter on the left. I instinctively began backing away
from them, but there was so little room between the bonnet of Dad’s car and the garage door that I simply had nowhere to go.

‘There’s no need for this, Travis,’ Zanetti said, pushing past a pile of boxes. ‘We’re only trying to help you.’

Ignoring her, I turned round to the garage door and tried the handle. I didn’t remember Dad locking the door after he’d put the sat nav in here, but either I’d misremembered or
someone else had locked it since, because it was definitely locked now. I yanked the handle a couple of times, just to make sure, but I knew I was wasting my time.

I turned back and looked at Zanetti and Gough. They were getting closer, both of them passing the car doors and heading towards the front wheels. There was absolutely no way I could get past
them. And I couldn’t run
away
from them . . .

There was nowhere to go.

I was trapped.

They’d reached the front wheels of the car now. A few more steps, and they’d have me.

I saw Zanetti glance across at Gough –
You ready?

Gough nodded –
I’m ready.

They both turned back, looked at me, and started moving again – up to the front wings of the car, around the bonnet . . .

I waited until they’d almost reached me, and then I made my move.

Using the front bumper as a step, I leaped up onto the bonnet of the car, then straddled up over the windscreen, rolled onto the roof, and started sliding myself towards the
back of the car. Gough made a lunge for me, reaching out for my trailing foot, but I was too fast for him. I could hear Zanetti barking out orders as she shoved her way back along the garage wall,
and then I felt the car shift beneath me, and I guessed that Gough had climbed up onto the bonnet and was coming after me. I knew he wasn’t going to catch me though. I’d taken them by
surprise. I’d given myself the head start I needed. All I had to do now was keep going, keep sliding – down the rear windscreen and over the boot – and there was no way they were
going to stop me getting to the door.

They didn’t even get close.

As I slid off the car boot and sprinted for the door, I glanced over my shoulder and saw that Zanetti was stuck about halfway along the garage wall. She’d got herself tangled up in the
folds of a deckchair that had slipped off the wall in front of her. Gough, meanwhile, was crawling clumsily across the roof of the car. When he saw me looking back at him, and realised how close I
was to getting away, he heaved himself up onto his hands and knees – in an effort to crawl faster, I suppose – and promptly cracked his head against a metal strut in the garage roof. As
he swore loudly and clutched at his head, I gave him a quick smile, then stepped through the garage door into the hallway and shut the door behind me. I slid the bolts shut, top and bottom, then
locked the door and removed the key.

I instinctively started to run then, heading along the hallway towards the front door, but after a second or two I stopped. I thought for a moment, then turned round, went back to the garage
door, and just stood there, listening and thinking, taking my time . . .

There was no need to rush now, I realised. Zanetti and Gough were safely locked in the garage. The locked door wouldn’t hold them for ever, of course, but they weren’t going to get
through it in a hurry. I had time enough to think things through.

I put my ear to the door and listened. I could hear Zanetti talking, her voice calm and controlled, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. Whatever it was though, Gough wasn’t
saying anything in reply. All I could hear was a metallic
dong
followed by a dull thump – which I guessed was the sound of Gough jumping or sliding off the car boot – and then
another muttered curse of pain.