Chris Ryan - The One That Got Away - Junior edition

Although Saddam Hussein was forced to withdraw from Kuwait, he remained in power as the President of Iraq. The regime was widely perceived to be oppressive, including atrocities against specific members of the Iraqi community, and ultimately UK forces were involved in a second war against Iraq which began in 2003.

The invasion of Iraq led to an occupation and the eventual capture of Saddam Hussein, who was later tried in an Iraqi court of law and executed by the new Iraqi government.

The situation in Iraq remains unstable.

‘I work for a government agency. You don’t need to know which one… The people we are looking for are of a very particular type… You fit a profile, Zak,’ the old man said. ‘A very precise one.’

Zak Darke becomes Agent 21.

What happened to the twenty agents before him he doesn’t know yet.

What he does know is that his life is about to change for ever…

It didn’t take them long to die. It never does. Not if you do it right.

Al and Janet Darke had been looking forward to their trip. Lagos in Nigeria might not have been their first choice, but as the university where they worked had paid for them to come here for an international climate-change conference, they didn’t want to miss the opportunity of travelling around a bit once it was over.

They were a quiet couple. They kept themselves to themselves. They had both felt a bit scared when their taxi drove them from the airport into the busy, noisy, dirty city of Lagos. Cars sat in traffic jams, bumper to bumper. Their fumes made it difficult to breathe. Some of the buildings they passed looked quite grand; others were just shacks made out of metal sheets. And there were thousands upon thousands of people, everywhere. It made Oxford Street at Christmas look like a desert island.

So when they arrived at their hotel — a posh one called the InterContinental, bang in the middle of the city — they holed up in their room for a bit. Getting used to the heat and to being in a strange place. A shower. Some food.

‘Zak would like it here,’ Janet said as they stood on their balcony and looked out over the chaos.

‘If Zak was here,’ Al replied, ‘he’d be out there nosing around already. You know what he’s like.’

Janet smiled. Yeah, she knew.

It felt weird coming away without their son, but it was 22 April and the summer term had just started so they didn’t have much choice. Not that a couple of weeks out of school would have harmed him. Zak was a smart kid. Good with his hands. Good with his brain. The kind of boy who knew how to take care of himself. He had seemed perfectly happy to be staying with Janet’s sister and her family. Vivian and Godfrey were a bit severe, but Zak got on well with his cousin Ellie. His parents were sure they’d be having a good time.

The sun set about 7 p.m. — a blood-red ball that drenched Lagos with its glow before it plunged into darkness. Al and Janet dressed for dinner and prepared to meet the other conference delegates who’d come from all over the world. They wouldn’t know anyone — not even any of the eleven other British guests — and they were glad to have each other.

The dining hall was splendidly set. To look at it, you wouldn’t know that barely a mile from this hotel there existed one of the seediest slums in the world, so poor that the people who lived there had to use the streets as a toilet. Here were crisp, white tablecloths, fizzy water in bottles and appetizing baskets of freshly baked bread rolls. There were five large round tables, each with ten place settings, and a table plan pinned to a board by the entrance. When Janet and Al checked it they saw, to their relief, that they were sitting next to each other. To Janet’s right there was a professor from Helsinki in Finland; to Al’s left an American journalist. The couple accepted a glass of wine from a smartly dressed waiter with a tray of drinks, then went to find their seats.

The Finnish professor was an eccentric-looking man with a bald head but a bushy white beard. He was already sitting down when they approached, but stood up when he saw Janet. ‘Allow me,’ he said, and he pulled out her seat for her. ‘My name is Jenssen. It is very nice to meet you…’ He glanced at the name tag on Janet’s place setting. ‘Dr Darke.’

Janet smiled. ‘And you, Professor Jenssen.’

The American journalist didn’t arrive until everyone else was sitting and the waiters were serving the starter. He was hugely fat, and had sweat pouring down his face. ‘Africa,’ he said with a huff as he plonked himself down on his seat. ‘Every time I come here, I promise myself I’ll never come back. Perhaps I should listen to myself a bit more.’

Perhaps you should , thought Al Darke, but he didn’t say it out loud. Instead, he thanked the waiter who had just placed a plate of food in front of him. Slices of colourful fruit were laid out on the plate like a fan, with some kind of dressing drizzled over the top.

‘This looks delicious,’ Al said.

‘Give it three days,’ the journalist replied. ‘You’ll be begging for a cheeseburger.’ Al saw, though, that he tucked in to his food with gusto.

Al was halfway through his starter when he noticed that his nose was running. Embarrassed, he grabbed his napkin and held it to his face. By the time he had covered his face, though, he felt moisture seeping from his eyes and his vision was blurred. He turned to look at Janet. Her eyes were wet too, the pupils as small as pinpricks.

‘What’s happening?’ Al started to say. But as he spoke, his chest collapsed into a fit of coughing and he found himself struggling for breath.

‘ Al …’ Janet was looking at him with fear on her face.

The pain came next — a horrible, sharp needling behind the eyes and in the throat. Al felt dizzy. He looked around the room. About half of the guests had stood up, and from the way they clutched their heads and throats, it was clear they were suffering the same symptoms. At the far end of the room, one man collapsed. Al was half aware of the waiters, buzzing around them like panicked bees. They didn’t know what was happening any more than the diners.

Al felt himself slump in his seat. He couldn’t help it — it was as though his muscles had turned to jelly and he had lost the power to control them, even in order to breathe. His eyes fell on the half-eaten fruit. The bright colours of the mango and papaya looked ten times brighter, and they burned into his retinas. He turned to his wife.

‘The food,’ he said.

Janet Darke didn’t hear him. For her the room was spinning more violently. People were shouting around her, but all she could really concentrate on was the nausea. She wanted to be sick, but was too weak to do even that.

Al and Janet weren’t the first to die. The professor from Helsinki was already slumped on the table, his face in his half-eaten plate of fruit; and the American journalist was twitching on the ground. They knew it was coming, though. With what little strength they had left, they reached out with their hands and clasped their fingers together.

When the Nigerian police arrived half an hour later, they needed to prize Al and Janet Darke’s hands away from each other before they could remove the bodies.

‘Darke!’

Giggling in the classroom.

‘ Darke! ’

Zak looked up. He’d been staring out of the window, where the late afternoon sun was glowing over the school football pitch. He had a pencil in his hand, which he twirled through his fingers. On his table there was a circuit board. It was covered with transistors and diodes and connected to a small loudspeaker.