Joe Craig - Jimmy Coates - Sabotage

Agency computers had flagged up a last-minute reservation on a transatlantic flight, under the name ‘Michelle Glenthorne’. Mitchell knew that Zafi was taunting him by booking herself a flight in that name. He clenched his fists. As soon as Zafi dared to turn up, no matter what disguise she tried, Mitchell was ready to rip her head off. That’s how annoyed he felt.

Zafi peeked through the curtain of the fitting room of the Ferragamo outlet. The clothes were too fancy for her tastes and they didn’t make anything in her size, but that wasn’t why she was here. As soon as she saw Mitchell she gave a light giggle. She laughed again when she noticed how annoyed he looked, and how hard he was studying the faces of everybody who went anywhere near the Air France check-in desks.

She slipped out of the fitting room and took a pink pashmina scarf to the till. Without looking up, the middle-aged woman behind the desk asked, “How will you pay?”

“Charge it to the Stovorsky account,” Zafi instructed confidently.

The woman shuddered slightly and her eyes jumped to her customer’s face. Zafi pouted. “Of course,” said the woman, nervously fingering the gold chains round her neck. She lifted the coin tray in the till and pulled out a selection of half a dozen airline tickets. Her hands were trembling as she fanned them on the desk.

“Get them out of sight,” Zafi snapped.

The woman gasped and shoved her hands back in the till.

“Is this Icelandic wool?” Zafi asked loudly, feeling the pashmina between her thumb and fingers. The woman took another corner of the scarf and felt it the same way.

“It’s the finest quality,” she announced.

“But too expensive for me,” Zafi replied and swept out of the shop. In her hand was the ticket that the woman had passed her under the scarf. It was a small charter flight, destination: Reykjavik, Iceland. The passenger name was ‘Glenthornia Mitchell’.

Colonel Keays was shaped like a box and his chest was a tapestry of medals, with ribbons in every different colour against the dark blue material of his uniform. He stood tall and proud, with his chin slightly raised and his cap under his arm. The stark light of the room reflected off the parts of his head where the hair was at its thinnest.

He looked over the three people standing in front of him and for a long time there was silence. Georgie and Felix stood on either side of Georgie’s mum, shifting from foot to foot. Helen Coates herself seemed completely relaxed, staring straight back at Keays.

A small team of CIA agents had brought them deep into the basement of Sak’s Fifth Avenue Department Store. But the ornate interior of the shop floor was a world away. They had found themselves surrounded by the stormy grey of completely bare concrete walls, facing the US Director of Intelligence, while three other agents waited outside.

For no apparent reason, Keays snorted a short laugh, though he wasn’t smiling. “I’m glad we found you first,” he announced. “The streets were still crawling with NJ7 agents when my men picked you up. But don’t worry; this is America. Miss Bennett knows she can’t do anything here unless I give her the OK.”

“You know Miss Bennett?” Felix blurted.

“Of course. Intelligence agencies all over the world have to talk to each other, don’t we? Especially countries like Britain and America. Countries that used to be close.” He paused and looked at them hard. “It’s a shame we’re not so close any more.”

“A shame for who?” Helen muttered.

“Ha!” Keays laughed properly this time. “You tell me—do British people like not being allowed to buyAmerican products?”

“Do American companies like not being allowed to sell them?” Helen’s voice was soft yet full of confidence.

“We used to protect you,” Keays insisted.

“We used to fight your wars,” said Helen. “Times change.”

“And so do people,” Keays replied quickly. “I understand you used to work for NJ7 yourself, Mrs Coates?”

Helen nodded slowly. “I…retired.”

“And yet your husband appears to have been promoted.”

Helen dropped her chin to her chest and Felix noticed her fingers automatically twisting her wedding ring. “Please,” she began, her voice cracking slightly for the first time, “just tell me what happened to Jimmy.”

“You should be very proud, Mrs Coates.” Keays spoke quietly and quickly. “Your son is a remarkably intelligent young man, quite apart from his unique skills. Yes, he’s alive. He wanted me to make sure you knew that, even though it could jeopardise the safety of all of you. As long as Miss Bennett is sure that Jimmy is dead, you’ll be safe.”

Huge smiles burst out on the faces of his visitors. Helen breathed a massive sigh of relief and gripped Georgie’s hand.

“Not so tight,” Georgie whispered, but she didn’t really mind. She looked across and beamed at Felix, who was almost bouncing on the spot with delight.

“Thank you, Colonel,” said Helen.

Suddenly, Felix’s mood changed. “What about the safehouse?” he asked. “Not very safe, was it? It was rubbish.” He narrowed his eyes and folded his arms. “You don’t even care, do you? They took my…” He didn’t finish his sentence. “You were meant to be protecting us.”

“He’s right,” Helen jumped in. “Felix could have expressed it a little more politely,” she gave him a quick glare, “but we do have to know what’s going on. If the CIA spends so much time talking to NJ7, is it possible one of your agents was talking about something they shouldn’t have been?”

Keays exploded with another short, sharp laugh. It echoed round the room. “Ha! A leak!” He shook his head quickly. “Impossible. I’ve got to tell you, Felix,” he stared into the boy’s eyes, “I don’t blame you for being mad. It makes me mad too, and I’m not the one whose parents are being held by NJ7 right now. To be honest, I don’t even know what they plan to do with them. They can’t use them against Jimmy, because as far as they know Jimmy is dead. Maybe it’s a kind of insurance. I don’t know. But it’s something I’d like to find out.”

Felix was about to jump in with another question, but Keays cut him off. “And no, I have no idea how the security of the safehouse was breached. I have people looking into it right now. But one thing is for sure—double agents don’t exist any more. There is nobody in the CIA leaking classified information to NJ7. It’s a tactic that’s just too messy. The Russians demonstrated that for everybody back in the Cold War. It’s more likely to be from electronic espionage, or from one of their operatives working on American soil. We’ll have to tighten up our systems, that’s all.”

The colonel winked and it sent a shudder down Felix’s spine. He had the urge to spit, but managed to stop himself. Instead, he gave a deliberately over-the-top smile and a huge wink of his own.

“There’s good news as well, though,” Keays went on.

“Are you sending us back to the UK?” Helen asked, her voice sombre.

Keays nodded.

“What?” said Georgie and Felix together.

“I thought you would,” said Helen. “It’s for the best. We can look for Felix’s parents.” She ruffled his hair into an even more chaotic state than it was normally. “And find Chris too.” Her smile dissolved.

“Jimmy did what he did so that the rest of you wouldn’t have to be on the run for the rest of your lives,” Keays explained. “Realistically, we’d never be able to hide you as a family. It’s much harder than hiding just one person and NJ7 have the best resources in the world. They’d find you.”

“But now they think Jimmy’s dead,” said Georgie, “we have to go back to Britain?”