AWOL 2 Read online

  ‘I’ve got to get back on the bicycle sometime,’ Bradley said, taking them. ‘And that means you have to get off.’ He sat in a comfy armchair, hesitated, then slid the glasses on and slipped the earpiece into his ear. He glanced up at Bex, who was watching. ‘Here goes,’ he said, and touched a hidden button at the side of the frame.

  From where Bex was standing, she couldn’t see any response in the glasses, but they were designed that way. Nobody looking at them could tell that the wearer was looking at something projected by tiny lasers onto the inside of the lenses.

  Bradley frowned in concentration. His right hand reached up and started touching things that only he could see. His tongue poked out slightly from his mouth and he licked his lips nervously. ‘You’ve played around with the settings,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry.’ Kieron was sitting on the edge of his seat, hands clasped as if he wanted to launch himself forward and snatch the glasses away from Bradley. ‘I meant to change them back.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Bradley said, distracted. ‘I think I can – ouch!’

  ‘What is it?’ Bex said, stepping forward.

  Bradley’s face contorted into a pained grimace. ‘I think – ouch! Ow!’ He swept both of his hands up to his face, knocking the glasses. They flew off over his head. Eyes screwed shut, he put his hands over his temples and leaned forward, pressing hard. ‘Sorry – everything suddenly went blurry, and I felt a sudden sharp pain between my eyes. It was like someone had shoved a knitting needle right through my forehead.’ His voice sounded strained. More than that, he sounded frustrated.

  Bex sympathised. She knew how badly Bradley wanted to be able to get back to work. ‘Go and lie down,’ she said firmly. ‘Kieron – you help him. Sam – there are some painkillers in the front pocket of my rucksack. Can you get them and a glass of water and take them in to Bradley.’

  ‘I can do it myself –’ Bradley said, trying to stand up.

  ‘Just do it.’

  As the three of them headed away, Bex retrieved the ARCC glasses from the floor behind the chair before someone stepped on them. She stared at them bleakly. She could operate them of course – not as well as Bradley, but she knew how they worked and what they could do, but she couldn’t use them to do the job they were supposed to do. If she was using these ones, then who was going to use her glasses on a mission? There had to be two of them in the team!

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Kieron asked from one of the bedroom doorways. He sounded concerned.

  ‘Whatever’s wrong with him is affecting his ability to use the ARCC equipment,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if it’s neurological or psychosomatic. We need to get him looked over.’ She held the glasses up. ‘But I also need to see if MI6 have sent through any messages. It’s been a while since we checked in, and I should give them an update.’

  Kieron walked across the living area and took the glasses from her. She noticed that he was holding the earpiece. He must have taken it from Bradley’s ear. ‘Look – you sit down. I’m used to the kit. I’ve used it more recently than you. I’ll check for messages, and then you can talk me through any response.’ As she hesitated, he went on: ‘You’ve been travelling, you’re probably jet-lagged and you haven’t stopped since you landed. Just sit down and have your cup of tea. You don’t have to look after all of us. Let me look after you.’

  It was the mention of jet lag that did it. Bex had been keeping it at bay, trying to pretend that it didn’t exist, but she’d not slept a wink on the flight, and by now she’d been awake for longer than she wanted to think about.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I give in. Just this once.’

  As she sank into the chair that Bradley had recently vacated, Kieron sat on the sofa and slipped on the glasses. His hands immediately sprang to life: moving in the air as if he was assembling some complex invisible machine. Watching him, Bex found herself amazed at the ease with which he used it. Bradley was competent, but Kieron seemed almost … intuitive.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the classified email program up and running. It needs a separate password obviously.’

  ‘TAG-LOL-GID,’ Bex recited automatically. ‘It’s a randomly generated set of three single-syllable sounds. It avoids people using the names of their pets or the road where they used to live. All of those things can be researched.’

  His fingers twitched. ‘Got it. Right – OK! Wow – no spam!’

  ‘Of course not. You’ve accessed an MI6 server. It’s separated from the public Internet, and it’s got all kinds of firewalls.’

  ‘I know – I’ve been taking a look at them. Very impressive.’ He paused, reading. ‘There are a couple of queries about how your mission is progressing –’

  ‘Where do I start?’ she muttered.

  ‘And an email with a new mission! It says you should confirm receipt and give an estimate on when you can start.’

  ‘Who’s it from?’

  ‘There’s no name – just what looks like a job title: “Dep-Director, SIS-TERR”.’

  Bex took a deep breath. She’d have to debrief her bosses on what had happened in Mumbai of course – although as she was supposed to have been undercover, luckily they were used to waiting until she was clear so that she could update Bradley. But this new assignment – was it real, or was it a trick to lure her and Bradley out of hiding?

  ‘What’s the mission?’ she asked.

  Kieron nodded. ‘According to this,’ he said slowly, ‘there have been several deaths of members of staff in something called “The Goldfinch Institute”.’ His fingers danced in the air. ‘Yes – there’s a link to more information on it. The Goldfinch Institute is apparently a research facility based in Albuquerque but with facilities around the world. It manufactures highly classified weapon systems for the British Army, MI5, MI6 and SIS-TERR in the UK, as well as the CIA, the NSA and the FBI in America.’ He paused. ‘Hang on – I’ll move back to the email. OK, the briefing note says that the deaths appear, on the face of it, to be natural, but the fact that they all occurred at roughly the same time is raising suspicions on this side of the Atlantic. What this Dep-Director wants you to do is to go to Albuquerque and covertly investigate to see if there is any threat to British interests. Basically, find out if these deaths really are natural or whether they might be murders.’ He frowned. ‘Albuquerque. That’s in America, isn’t it? Somewhere down south? New Mexico …?’

  ‘New Mexico,’ Bex confirmed absently. ‘Your geography is surprisingly good.’ Most of her mind was consumed with poring over the contents of the email that Kieron had read out. Investigate deaths at a classified American research institute? She and Bradley had done similar things in the past, but never in America. In fact, there were rules in place in the intelligence community that specifically prohibited members of what was known as the ‘5-Eyes Community’ – the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – from spying on each other. It was fairly common knowledge that the Americans at least flagrantly ignored that prohibition, while everyone else pretended not to notice, but for her to be asked to operate in the USA … it must be important. And that meant it was the kind of thing that she really shouldn’t turn down. And the money would be good, which was what they were particularly short of at present.

  ‘I didn’t learn that at school,’ Kieron replied. ‘I know it’s in New Mexico because my favourite band record their albums in a studio there.’

  ‘Lethal Insomnia?’ she said hesitantly.

  He smiled. ‘You do listen. Sam said you don’t, but I knew he was wrong.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Bex asked.

  ‘A couple of attached files – looks like autopsy reports on the dead staff members – plus some maps of the area. Oh, and there’s a budget. If you need to go above a certain amount of money then you need to seek approval. And that amount of money is –’ he gasped – ‘a huge amount! I’m not surprised you can afford an apartment like this!’

  Bex shrugged, feeling strangely defensive. ‘It’s not
that much, in the scheme of things,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to pay for all our own travel, and sometimes we have to go undercover, so we have to stay in good hotels and buy stuff to back up our story, like … wristwatches and … er, cars.’ Even as she said the words, they sounded weak. ‘And there’s danger money as well. It’s a risky job. If something goes wrong, the British government will claim they know nothing about us and leave us to our fate. That’s one of the reasons MI6 uses freelance operative teams like us – we’re eminently deniable.’

  ‘Yes, but –’ Kieron’s eyes were wide behind the glasses – ‘this is an incredible amount.’

  ‘We have to sort out our own pension schemes and healthcare insurance,’ Bex said in a small voice.

  ‘My mum could buy her own flat for this amount of money.’ Kieron’s tone wasn’t accusatory – more like sad. Maybe even wistful. The kind of tone that someone might use if they were describing the perfect Christmas present – one they would never, ever get.

  ‘Look –’ Bex said, wanting to try to explain the realities of the world to Kieron, but he interrupted her before she could get the words out.

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Apparently there’s a time limit on this mission. It needs to be completed within a week, which means that you have to accept it or reject it pretty much within the next hour or they’ll pass it to another team.’

  ‘That,’ she said, ‘gives us a problem.’

  Kieron nodded. ‘Bradley can’t help you.’

  ‘But if I reject the mission then SIS-TERR will go to a different team, and we’re not going to be top of the list for the next mission that comes along. If we’re out of action as a team for too long then we’ll slip off the list altogether.’

  ‘There’s only one answer then,’ Kieron said. Maybe it was the lenses of the ARCC glasses, but his eyes seemed very wide.

  Bex nodded. ‘Fancy doing some temp work?’ she asked heavily.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Kieron felt a rush of excitement, but he kept his voice strictly neutral. ‘If you need my help,’ he said, ‘then I’m more than happy to provide it.’

  ‘Don’t give me that,’ Bex said, laughing at him. ‘You’d cut off your own little finger for the chance to use the ARCC kit again.’

  He tried to arrange his features into a wounded expression. ‘Not my little finger. Sam’s, maybe. And only his left little finger.’

  Bex got up from her chair. ‘I’ve got to check on Bradley, and then I’m going to arrange some kind of medical evaluation for him that doesn’t depend on some kid’s sister who he has a crush on.’ She smiled to take the sting out of the words. ‘Make yourself useful – put together a dossier on the Goldfinch Institute for me.’

  As she vanished out of the living room, Kieron’s fingers were already moving over the virtual keyboard that only he could see. He set searches going on the Goldfinch Institute on not just the normal Internet, but also on the dark web, where all kinds of illegal software could be found and illegal things bought using virtual currency, and on the various highly classified British government databases that the kit could access. Within a few minutes he had pulled together a virtual dossier of information, starting with the company records that were available online, going through blueprints of the facility’s buildings in Albuquerque and staff lists, and ending with a list of the various top-secret projects that the institute was working on for various clients. They seemed to spend a lot of time developing weapon systems, he discovered – not just guns, missiles and bombs but also non-lethal weapons: things designed to stop rioting crowds or bring down armed criminals without causing them any damage. Well, no lasting damage, anyway. Going sideways from some of the information he’d found, chasing links to mainstream sites like Wikipedia, Kieron discovered that there was a surprisingly big debate within the non-lethal weapon community. Some people were happy with the term ‘non-lethal’ while others wanted it replaced with ‘less-than-lethal’ on the grounds that non-lethal weapons sometimes killed people, despite the best efforts of the people firing them. Kieron couldn’t see the point. If you were going to do that, he thought, then why not rename ‘lethal weapons’ as ‘more-than-wounding weapons’, on the basis that sometimes when you fired a gun or dropped a bomb people didn’t die? It was a pointless discussion.

  He pulled the various bits of information he’d found into a dossier, then used the capabilities of the ARCC computer – actually a chip somewhere inside the glasses – to index it and provide a table of contents. It even produced a one-page summary, just to make it really easy.

  He’d just finished when Bex came back into the room. She was talking on her mobile.

  ‘Thank you for that – I really appreciate it. Yes, someone will be here to let you in. Don’t worry. Thanks – goodbye.’ Putting the phone back into her pocket, she said, ‘I’ve arranged for a doctor to come and take a look at Bradley. Because she’s private, and because she’s charging us an arm and a leg, there won’t be an information trail for SIS-TERR to follow if anyone there wants to find us.’ She laughed. ‘I think she thinks that we’re criminals and she’s coming to treat a gunshot wound.’

  ‘Even so,’ Kieron offered hesitantly, ‘I could always wipe her computer records from here, using the ARCC equipment.’

  ‘You can do that?’ Bex asked, apparently amazed.

  ‘This kit can do pretty much anything, as long as it’s got a satellite link and can access the web.’

  ‘Wow.’ She sounded impressed. ‘Let’s hold back on that for now, but keep it in mind. Any luck on producing a fact-file for me on the Goldfinch Institute?’

  ‘Yeah – do you want me to send it to the printer, or do you want to look at it on the glasses?’

  ‘The glasses, please. Never good to leave secret information lying around where anyone might see it – including random doctors who get invited in.’

  With what he recognised as a slight pang of reluctance, Kieron took the glasses off and handed them to Bex. She slipped them on.

  ‘You manipulate the information by –’ he started.

  ‘It’s OK – I’ve done this before,’ she said. She waved a hand, but he wasn’t sure whether she was shushing him or accessing the ARCC system. ‘Bradley and I worked on this together after we left university. We set up a start-up company to fund it, but we got bought out by MI6. They wanted to keep the technology to themselves. That’s how we got involved in the missions – they wanted to keep us close by to act as technical consultants, but we knew more about how to use it than anyone else, so they started giving us things to do.’

  She was quiet for a few minutes, and Kieron watched as she moved information around and navigated between virtual screens. Apart from Bradley, in the Newcastle shopping mall the first time Kieron had seen him, and Sam a couple of times, Kieron hadn’t had the chance to watch someone using the ARCC equipment – especially the way it was meant to be used. Bex’s gestures were fluid and precise, like a dancer’s. He wondered how he looked when he was using it. More like a performing bear, he suspected.

  ‘Oh. Oh no.’

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, leaning forward. ‘Is the equipment working OK? Your head isn’t hurting, is it?’

  ‘It is, but not for medical reasons.’ She abruptly removed the ARCC glasses and put them on the arm of the sofa. Her face was creased into a frown. ‘I found something in the information that I really don’t like.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Not your fault, Kieron.’

  ‘What is it?’

  She paused for a few moments, marshalling her thoughts. ‘The idea was that I would travel to Albuquerque under some kind of false identity with my end of the ARCC equipment – the covert end – and investigate the Goldfinch Institute secretly to find out how and why these deaths have occurred, right? Probably put a Trojan virus on their computer system from a USB thumb drive that would hoover up the information we want. Meanwhile, Bradley – or, more likely, you – would pr
ovide support and feed me information.’

  He nodded. ‘Right.’

  ‘The trouble is, there’s a name I recognise on the Goldfinch Institute staff list. Tara Gallagher. She’s apparently Head of Security at the Institute, working directly for the boss – Todd Zanderbergen. She used to be with MI6. We shared an office for two years. She’d recognise me straight away. And even if I was in disguise, it’s too much of a risk.’

  ‘Maybe it’s another Tara Gallagher,’ Kieron suggested.

  ‘No such luck. I checked her date of birth and her staff photo. It’s definitely her. She looks older, but then I guess I do as well.’ She paused, remembering. ‘We weren’t close and we never kept in touch. I’d heard she’d gone into the army, and then a while later I heard that she’d been recruited into the Royal Marines. I guess she retired and went into independent security. Good choice for a technology company – she’s fearsomely intelligent.’ She sighed. ‘I suppose that blows the whole plan out of the water. There’s no way I can go out there now. It’s just too risky.’

  ‘What about Bradley?’ Kieron asked. ‘Can he go? I mean, if he doesn’t actually use the glasses at this end – the ones that actually project the information – then he should be OK, shouldn’t he?’

  Bex shook her head decisively. ‘I’m not taking the risk of him having another fit or blacking out while he’s undercover. No, I’ll have to tell MI6 that I’m scrubbing the mission. They can give it to someone else.’

  ‘If they do that,’ Bradley said from the doorway of his bedroom, ‘then we can say goodbye to our jobs. They’ll ask why, you’ll have to admit that I’m ill, and that will spook them. There’s other teams jockeying for top slot. If this job goes to one of them, then we become redundant – figuratively and probably literally. You know what they say – you only turn a mission down once.’

  ‘Yes, but –’ Bex started to say.

  ‘We need to keep on top of the pile,’ Bradley carried on, not waiting to hear what she had to say, ‘especially if we want to identify this traitor in SIS-TERR. We can’t let them get suspicious, or think that anything is wrong.’