Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

‘Give me your cell phone,’ Bethany said.

He stared at the gun. Then at Bethany. He shook his head, emboldened perhaps by the booze in his system, which she could smell.

She didn’t have time for this. She pulled the trigger. There was a sharp recoil as she discharged a round, but the bullet drilled directly into the young man’s chest and he crashed heavily to the ground. Bethany felt nothing. No compassion for the victim, no fear that the gunshot would attract attention. She found his phone in ten seconds and took his wallet while she was at it. The phone required facial recognition to unlock it. She held the screen over the young man’s dead face then swiped it up and she was in. She disabled the locking function, then heard sirens in the distance.

She pocketed the phone and the wallet, and then she started running again.

Danny had made a plan. He would head to the British Embassy. It was the only place he would be safe. There he’d demand to see the defence attaché and the suits could do the rest of the work. He checked the location of the embassy on his phone. Memorised the route. Then he stood up. His joints were tight, his limbs numb. Pain radiated from the bullet graze. He hadn’t heard a siren or a voice for twenty minutes, however, so he was ready to risk moving.

He slowly emerged from behind the bin and wiped rain from his eyes. There was nobody about, so he moved to the end of the side street where it met the busier road. The traffic had died down a little but there were still no other pedestrians in this torrential rain. He had to force his aching legs into action. He had the uncomfortable sensation of his body letting him down.

His route took him north. He estimated that he’d need an hour, plus any time required to put in surveillance on the entrance to the embassy to check the US authorities weren’t lying in wait for him. He’d only been moving for ten minutes, however, when two police cars appeared up ahead, screaming down in his direction, forcing him to change his strategy. He was just passing a sports bar: green neon signage and a cartoonish decal of an American football player on the window. He quickly entered.

It was a relief to be out of the rain. It was warm inside. It made his soaked clothes feel even more clammy. There was a staircase leading down into the basement where the bar was. He could hear the regular thrum of music from below. Here on the ground floor were toilets. He entered the gents. Two of the cubicles were occupied, but he was able to check himself in the mirror without anybody watching. He was a mess. His hair and clothes and stubble were soaked. There were dark bags under his eyes. His main concern, though, was his sleeve. There was a tear in his jacket where the bullet had grazed it, but any blood had been soaked up by his hoodie. He looked scruffy, but he didn’t look as though he’d been shot. If the police cars had passed, he’d leave. If necessary, though, and in the dim light of a bar, he could pass as a loser who’d got caught in the rain. He put one hand through his hair, then exited the gents before the cubicle occupants emerged.

But the police cars had stopped outside the bar. Their lights were still flashing. Had he been seen? He didn’t know. But his decision was made for him. He couldn’t leave, at least not this way. His only option was to head down into the bar itself. Perhaps there would be another exit.

The volume of the music increased as he descended. Some heavy guitar band. He pushed his way through a set of double doors and entered the basement. There was a square bar with three bartenders serving in the middle. Dim lighting. Thirty or forty punters, all men, most of them at the bar, but a few standing at high tables. The walls were covered with framed pictures of sports stars, some of them signed. On one wall, there was a large, smirking picture of the President in front of the stars and stripes. There were numerous screens hanging from the ceiling. Some were showing the golf, others baseball. The music was not quite loud enough to drown out people’s voices, but nobody seemed to be talking to each other. They were just staring up at the screens, or down at their beers. Nobody even noticed Danny as he entered. He looked for alternative exits. There was another set of double doors at the far side of the bar. They swung open and a fourth bartender entered. He caught a glimpse of a washing-up area, but couldn’t be certain that it would lead to an exit.

He approached the bar and pointed at a Coors beer tap. An unsmiling bartender poured him a beer. Danny didn’t want it. He wanted hot, sweet coffee to raise his body temperature, but it was more important to blend in. He took a sip and looked up at the golf. He only saw five seconds of it, because it suddenly changed. A news anchor appeared, and a banner across the bottom of the screen read: Suicide bomber latest .

Danny pushed his beer away and stared. The image changed. There was shaky camera-phone footage of terrified crowds jostling each other. There were fireworks overhead. The wording changed. Walt Disney World terrorist attack. Two dead. Many injured .

A guy sitting at a stool to Danny’s right said: ‘Fuckin’ A-rabs.’ His speech was slurred.

The image changed again. A face appeared. Danny recognised it. The beard. The vertical scar across the face. It was the man in the deepfake footage, and he braced himself for what might come next.

‘Fuckin’ look at him,’ slurred the guy on the next bar stool. ‘They got the chair in Florida and that’s too good for him . . .’

Danny zoned him out. He read the rolling news banner across the screen. Former Guantanamo Bay suspect throws himself on suicide bomber. Foils terror plot in heroic act of self-sacrifice.

Danny blinked. He didn’t understand. He glanced across the room at the picture of the President smirking down on them. He pictured him sitting in the Oval Office, watching the same news flash, also wondering what the hell had happened. He imagined a room deep in the heart of the Kremlin, where men in suits would be having the same bewildered reaction. He looked to his right and saw the guy by his side properly for the first time. He was white, of course, and he wore a baseball cap with the words: Make America Great Again! He was frowning, as though what he was watching made no sense. Then he looked at his beer, downed it, left a twenty-dollar bill on the bar and walked out.

Danny pulled out his phone. The implications of what he was watching were not fully clear to him, but his duty was. Hereford needed to know that the guy with the scarred eye was the same guy in the General’s deepfake footage. He was about to dial into base when the phone vibrated and the screen lit up with an unfamiliar number.

Danny hesitated. Should he answer? It was a US number and that made him edgy. The golf had returned to the screen. The punters were still staring at it like zombies. Danny accepted the call and put the phone to his ear but didn’t speak.

He had to listen hard. The music in the bar was a distraction. He blocked his left ear with one finger and could make out the sound of traffic and rain on the other end of the phone. Whoever this was, they were outside. He still didn’t speak. If this unknown caller wanted a conversation, they would have to identify themselves first.

‘Hello, Danny,’ said Bethany White.

Danny felt a chill, and it was nothing to do with his wet clothes. The hysterical distress in her voice had gone. Menace and ice had replaced anger and fire. She sounded cold and determined.

‘I don’t know where you are,’ Bethany said, ‘and right now I don’t care. Don’t bother trying to track me. I’ll be miles away by the time your people find this phone. But I want you to know something.’