AWOL 1 Agent Without Licence Read online

  ‘No,’ Kieron agreed. ‘I followed a link and got access to his medical records. Does this thing access the Deep Web as well? I bet it does. And the computer systems of other nations? It’s wicked!’

  ‘Probably. It’s just a tool as far as we’re concerned.’ She thought for a second. ‘What’s this Kyle Renner doing now?’

  ‘He’s talking to the security guard who patrols the mall. It looks like he’s learned his lesson from what happened with the cleaner – he’s being a lot more reasonable now. Yeah, he’s offering the guard some money. They’re walking away together now.’

  ‘That’s bad,’ Bex said without thinking.

  ‘Why?’ Kieron sounded nervous. Bex couldn’t really blame him.

  ‘Because if I was Renner, if I knew something important had gone missing from a public place and I knew that it hadn’t been cleared away, then the next thing I would do is check the recordings from the security cameras.’

  ‘That’s not going to help,’ Kieron sniffed.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because they’d all been turned away so that the table where your friend was sitting couldn’t be seen.’

  Bex laughed in relief. She was impressed how the kid had been so observant. ‘You’re right. They are intellectually challenged.’

  ‘Does that mean we’re safe?’

  ‘Probably. For the moment.’ With the threat in the mall suspended, Bex’s thoughts turned back to her own situation. What could she do?

  ‘I don’t want to worry you,’ Kieron said suddenly, ‘but another box has come up at your end of the link.’ He sounded as if he was talking through a mouthful of ice cream.

  ‘What colour is the box?’

  ‘Green.’

  ‘That’s a mission-related one.’ She let her gaze roam around the plaza, just like a tourist. Nothing seemed to have changed: the crowds were still milling around the Gateway of India, taking selfies and looking impressed. ‘What’s it indicating?’

  ‘There’s a man over to your right. He’s wearing a suit. Dark-skinned, bald on top but long hair around the back of his head falling down over his collar. Middle-aged.’

  She could see him now. He stood still, looking around as if he was expecting someone. He held a briefcase defensively in front of him. Local vendors and impromptu tourist guides approached him expectantly, but he just waved them away. ‘What’s the system saying about him?’

  ‘It says: “Target One identified – Fahim Mahmoud, Sub-Director, Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission”. So what’s the deal with him?’

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ she said. ‘“Need to know”.’

  ‘Never mind.’ Kieron sounded smug. ‘I’ve accessed a sub-menu. He’s meeting someone in order to hand over atomic information, isn’t he? You know, from phone intercepts passed to the UK by the American National Security Agency that he’s selling secrets to but you don’t know who or what for. You’re there to find out who he’s meeting. Terrorists is the best guess.’

  ‘I can neither confirm nor deny that,’ Bex said stiffly, but inside she felt a little glow of admiration for this kid she’d never met.

  ‘Oh, that’s interesting,’ Kieron added. ‘The phone intercepts weren’t between this bloke and his potential customer; they were between two numbers that couldn’t be traced, but they mentioned him and this meeting. The closest you could get to finding out who had been talking about it was that one of the numbers was near Newcastle.’

  ‘Again,’ she said, ‘that’s just pure speculation on your part. I’m not going to comment on it.’

  ‘But it says so, right here!’

  As she watched, a man approached Mahmoud: Indian, young, with cheeks marked by smallpox scars. He had a rucksack in his hand.

  The two men were shaking hands now.

  ‘Can the system identify the second man?’ she asked. As she said the words, the man with the rucksack turned his head to scan the crowd. To avoid meeting his eye and rousing his suspicions, Bex turned around and looked at the ornate bulk of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel behind her. She let her gaze scan across it idly while she counted to twenty.

  ‘The system doesn’t know who he is,’ Kieron said hurriedly, ‘but you’ve got a bigger problem to worry about.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A red box has just appeared, with a line pointing to the hotel’s roof.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘Oh God! You need to get out of there! It says: “Danger! Retro-reflection from telescopic sight detected! Sniper on roof, preparing to fire!”’

  Bex’s immediate reaction was an urge to whirl around and scan the roof of the hotel behind her, but she stopped herself. That would give her away to the sniper immediately. Instead she casually raised her camera as if taking a photograph. Keeping the camera pointed low, she peered over the top of it and let her gaze travel across the top of the building.

  The roof of the hotel was a complicated mix of red tiles, little white spires and three large red domes – one on either end and a larger one in the middle. There was a lot to look at, and no immediate clue as to where the sniper might be located.

  ‘Give me a pointer,’ she said quietly to the kid on the other end of the ARCC kit, holding her camera in front of her mouth so nobody could see her lips move.

  ‘See that middle dome?’

  ‘How could I miss it?’

  ‘Look to the right of the dome – about twenty feet.’

  She let her gaze wander away from the dome while keeping the camera stationary. Yes, there! A black shape in the shadow of one of those white spires. It was the only flaw in the Christmas-cake perfection of the hotel’s facade; like a fly on white icing.

  ‘Got them. Too far away for me to do anything.’ She lowered the camera and glanced back at where Mahmoud and the Indian man were now shaking hands warily. They separated, and the man said something to Mahmoud. The Pakistani man nodded, and held the briefcase up. The Indian man nodded as well, and slid the rucksack from his shoulder.

  It looked like the exchange was about to take place: Pakistani nuclear secrets for cash. Bex’s instructions were to observe but not interfere, and to follow the person who took the nuclear secrets. Mahmoud was known to MI6; the person buying the secrets was not. Her job was to follow him to wherever he was using as a base and try to identify him. The problem was that the unexpected presence of the sniper confused the issue massively. Were they there to kill Mahmoud, or the Indian man? Or were they there just to watch, and kill anyone who tried to interfere with the exchange?

  Or, Bex considered with a chill, were they there to kill her?

  She felt a tingle right between her shoulder blades, as if a pair of crosshairs was already centred on her fifth thoracic vertebra.

  If she moved, if she tried to hide or duck or get out of the way, then the two men exchanging nuclear secrets for cash would immediately know that something was wrong, and they would run for it. She just had to stand there, feeling like a spider was crawling around on her back, and pretend that everything was all right.

  ‘Turn around!’ the boy on the other end of the ARCC kit said in a panicked tone of voice; ‘I can’t see the sniper.’

  ‘More important things to think about,’ she murmured. ‘I’ve got a job to do.’

  As Mahmoud took the rucksack in one hand and prepared to relinquish the briefcase with the other, the rucksack suddenly seemed to explode. In her earpiece, Kieron gasped in surprise. Scraps of cloth flew everywhere, along with a spray of brightly coloured banknotes that fluttered like butterflies in the hot breeze.

  Mahmoud staggered backwards in shock, releasing the rucksack. It fell towards the ground. The other man, the Indian, gazed around in horror, trying to work out what had happened; how the secret meeting had suddenly gone so public and so wrong. He held the briefcase in both hands in front of him, like a shield, obviously worried that the next shots would hit him.

  The crowd near them took a few steps back, the way any crowd did when something strange happened. Well, the entire crowd except for two people who actually stepped forward. For a second Bex thought they had spotted the falling cloud of banknotes before anyone else and wanted to get hold of some for themselves. Instead one of them grabbed the briefcase while the other took the Indian man by the back of the neck and squeezed.

  As the Indian man fell to the ground with an expression of agony on his face the briefcase was wrenched from his grasp. The two people turned to leave. It was only then that Bex saw them clearly: young, one male and one female. The man had short blond hair while the woman had her blonde hair pulled back in a plait. They were wearing anonymous clothes of the kind you could get from any camping store: lightweight jackets and loose canvas trousers.

  ‘They look like the men who took your friend,’ Kieron said suddenly. ‘They could all be part of the same family.’

  ‘Or the same organisation,’ Bex said quietly. Her mind raced, sorting facts, possibilities and speculations.

  The whole situation was in flux anyway, so she felt no compunction about turning around and staring at the hotel’s facade. Where previously she had seen something that might have been a person’s head, and possibly a gun, now there was nothing. The sniper had vanished.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The young blond-haired couple – the man and the woman – were almost at the edge of the crowd surrounding the great arch of the Gateway of India now. Kieron could only work out where they were because the glasses had thoughtfully put two arrows above their heads, like something in a computer game, so that he could keep track of them. Threat markers, he thought. If only real life came with something like that. It would be nice to go into a skate park, or a shopping arcade, and immediately have all the chavs and the bullies marked out so he could avoi
d them.

  ‘Where are they?’ Bex asked urgently.

  ‘Heading past the corner of the hotel, towards the road,’ he replied.

  Bex’s vision suddenly shifted, making Kieron feel sick. There must be a trick to this, he thought. Maybe travel-sickness tablets. She was looking along the line of the hotel roof now. The sniper had vanished. There wasn’t even a threat marker to show that they might have ducked below the roof line. Actually, Kieron realised, if the camera in Bex’s glasses hadn’t been pointed at the sniper for a while then the computer system would have no idea where they might have gone. It did have its limitations, then. It wasn’t magic – just technology.

  ‘I was right,’ she said, looking back towards the edge of the crowd. ‘It was a diversion. I need to get after them.’

  She started moving, but the picture in Kieron’s glasses suddenly shifted as if she’d tripped again, or been grabbed. She looked around. The man who, until a few seconds before, had been holding the rucksack stood behind her, his hand on her shoulder. He’d obviously only been unconscious for a few seconds. Now he looked angry and scared, as well as in pain. Kieron wasn’t surprised. The man had just lost what was almost certainly atomic secrets belonging to the Pakistani government, and he hadn’t even got any cash in return in order to start a new life for himself in hiding. His life was probably going to be very short and very painful if his bosses got hold of him. If Kieron had learned one thing from action movies, it was that.

  ‘Where did they take the briefcase?’ he said, his voice high-pitched. ‘I have to get it back!’

  ‘It’s gone,’ Bex’s voice said. She reached up and casually moved his hand off her shoulder. She must have been putting pressure on a nerve, because Mahmoud winced.

  ‘Please,’ he said, ‘you do not understand. If I do not get that briefcase back –’

  ‘Let’s be clear – you were giving the briefcase to your terrorist contact,’ Bex said. ‘The only thing you’ve lost is that envelope full of rupees. Or was it dollars? So much easier to spend, dollars. So much easier to take out of the country if you’re starting a life somewhere else, which I’m guessing was your next step.’

  On the screen Kieron was watching, a beige box appeared. The text in the box read: The Indian rupee is named after the silver coin, rupiya, first issued by Sultan Sher Shah Suri in the 16th century and later continued by the Mughal Empire. The current exchange rate is 81.06 Indian rupees to the pound, or 66.71 India rupees to the dollar.

  This thing would be so great for doing his homework. This thing would be brilliant. Then again, it obviously had a problem in deciding what information was relevant and what wasn’t.

  Bex’s words interrupted his thoughts. ‘Who was your contact?’ she said. Kieron swiped the currency information away, conscious that in the real world of the shopping mall he actually sat in it probably looked like he was trying to swat a fly.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean!’ Mahmoud said defensively, trying to pull away. She still held his hand tightly. Kieron could see his skin turning pale under the pressure. His thumb seemed to be twisted back at a strange angle as well.

  ‘Your name is Fahim Mahmoud and you work for the Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission,’ she continued. ‘You made a deal with a terrorist group to hand over your country’s nuclear secrets for cash, but they’ve just betrayed you. The secrets are gone and the money is gone. I want to know which terrorist group recruited you, and who your contact is.’

  ‘My people will kill me if I go back!’ he squealed.

  ‘Not actually my problem, but I can arrange for the British government to take you in. Just give me the group and the contact.’

  Mahmoud’s face was slick with sweat. ‘I honestly do not know. They sent me a text from an unidentified mobile phone. They offered me money – so much money! – for just a little information. Not even information on our atomic energy programme –’

  ‘Your atomic military programme,’ Bex corrected.

  ‘– but just some geographical locations. Places where these devices were stored.’

  ‘And you agreed to it?’ There was frank disbelief in Bex’s voice. ‘What are you – some kind of moron?’

  Mahmoud succeeded in looking sullen and embarrassed at the same time. ‘I have an American girlfriend,’ he said. ‘I wanted to have some work done on my teeth, and –’ he indicated his receding hair – ‘perhaps some of those implants I read about in magazines.’

  ‘You are a moron,’ Bex said, releasing his hand, ‘but we can use you.’ She indicated the hotel behind her with her thumb. ‘Get a room in there under the name …’

  She trailed off suddenly, as if waiting for something. Kerion suddenly realised she was waiting for him, or, rather, for Bradley to give her information.

  His fingers rippled in the air as he typed Find name of Pakistani footballer into the virtual keyboard. He didn’t know why he’d thought of footballers – he hated football – but it was better than just trying to make a name up, or getting the computer to make one up.

  Another beige screen appeared in Kieron’s field of vision. Mohsin Ali: Pakistani national squad. More information?

  ‘Mohsin Ali,’ he said.

  ‘Mohsin Ali,’ Bex repeated. ‘Wait there. Someone will contact you.’

  She gave Mahmoud a little push on the shoulder. He staggered away, staring back at her with fear.

  ‘Thanks for that,’ Bex muttered. She swung around again and glanced towards the edge of the crowd. ‘Can you still see the two with the briefcase?’

  There were still two arrows pointing at a couple of figures standing by the side of a fence that seemed to run around an area of grass. One of them had a hand raised. ‘Yes, just. I think they’re trying to hail a taxi.’

  ‘Then I’d better get after them. They’re the only real leads we’ve got. Can you stay with me?’

  A thrill ran through him. ‘Of course.’

  Something touched his arm in the real world.

  ‘Just let me sort something out,’ he added. ‘Go towards that park ahead of you. I’ll keep you updated.’

  It was a strange mental adjustment to look through the images that were projected onto the lenses of the glasses, but he managed it. Sam was staring at him.

  ‘Where are you?’ he asked. ‘When you’ve got those things on?’

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ Kieron said, ‘but there’s someone on the other end of these glasses who needs my help.’

  Sam raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Did you actually hear what you just said?’

  Kieron nodded, smiling weakly. ‘I did. But it’s true.’

  ‘And so’s that.’ Sam nodded his head towards the window of the ice-cream shake place they were in.

  Outside the window, a man with close-cut white-blond hair stood against the balcony. It was the man that the computer had identified as Kyle Renner. He was looking around the multi-storey open area inside the shopping mall, letting his gaze run over the balconies opposite and the escalators. He seemed to be staring at everybody, checking them out for something.

  Checking out whether they were wearing tinted glasses, making strange waving gestures in mid-air and talking to themselves, perhaps. Or, if he had managed to take a look at the mall security recordings, maybe he was looking specifically for the person who had taken the glasses and the earpiece from the floor just after he and his friend had kidnapped Bex’s friend, Bradley. Either way, Kieron was in trouble.

  ‘You should go,’ he said to Sam.

  ‘Are you talking to me or to her?’ Sam asked.

  ‘You, moron.’

  ‘No, seriously, which one?’

  He sighed. ‘I’m talking to Sam.’

  ‘OK then. No – I’m staying here.’

  Sam had that look on his face – that stubborn look that said, No, I’m not leaving the skate park to go home even though it’s dark and my mum and dad will be worried, and No, I’m not going to put this cat down even though it’s hissing and clawing at me, and No, I’m not going to pause the game to go to the toilet even though I’ve drunk an entire two-litre bottle of soda and my bladder is shortly going to explode. That look.

  Kieron had to try anyway. ‘This could be dangerous. I don’t want to see you hurt.’