I, Spy? Read online

  “You’re a menace,” Luke said, pouring out water for my chocolate and his coffee. I didn’t remember him asking if he could drink my coffee.

  It was good coffee, too.

  Even Tammy, the little traitor, was happily weaving around his ankles as if he was a great friend. So much for cats being good judges of character.

  “Just doing my job,” I said tiredly, dabbing Dettol on the cuts and trying not to let him see my eyes watering.

  “No, you were doing my job. Why didn’t you wait?”

  I stared at him. “You said to follow him! He had a gun. I wasn’t about to let him try to board with it.”

  “They’d have picked that up at Security.”

  “Not if he didn’t go through Security.”

  Luke shook his head. “Even the staff Validation Points have scanners. Nothing gets through. It’s tight. I’ve checked them all.”

  I sighed. Probably this wasn’t the best time to bring this up but…

  “There is a way,” I said.

  He stared at me. Great, now he thought I was a terrorist. It was just an idle thought I’d had once, in between ranting about bloody cyclists taking their bikes with them on holidays. So they don’t have bikes in France? Yeah, right.

  “When someone wants to travel with a bike, what do we do?”

  “Tag it and send it to Outsize,” Luke said promptly, like a proper newbie.

  “What if it’s unpackaged?”

  “We escort it to the undercroft. It gets scanned there.”

  “Yes, but only after it’s been down in the lift. With an agent. All alone.”

  He gave me a hard look. “What are you getting at?”

  I peeled the backing off a huge plaster. “Okay. You’re a terrorist or a counterfeiter or whatever, and you want to take a gun through undetected. All you need is an airline uniform, a pass and a bike. Everyone knows the picture on your pass looks nothing like you. It’s like a passport photo. Did you search Brown?”

  Luke looked mulish. “He had a pass. Forged. Ryanair.”

  “Right,” I said. “And he was wearing a white shirt, yes? Lots of people don’t have full uniform. Security isn’t going to pull you up on that. All he had to do was get a bike, put his gun in a saddlebag or something and go through VP9 with it. He gets scanned, he’s clean. The bike goes through the gate to be scanned later. While he’s in the lift, he takes out the gun, puts it in his pocket, leaves the bike in the undercroft and wanders off airside.”

  I stirred my hot chocolate and looked up at Luke. He looked dumbstruck.

  Ha.

  “Jesus,” he said eventually.

  “I know.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  I shrugged. “Figured it out one day. I was bored, okay? It was even easier when we did the foot-and-mouth spraying. Even packaged bikes had to be taken down there. You could hide shedloads in one of those bike bags, then stash it under your coat, in the lift. Those Ace coats are bloody huge.” They were fat parkas, and I looked like the Michelin man in mine.

  Luke was still staring at me. “Shit,” he said. “So anyone could have taken anything through?”

  “If they were smart enough. If they knew how to work the system.”

  Luke shook his head. “Does anyone else know about this? Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

  I raised my palms. “Didn’t think anyone’d ever try it. You’ve got to be clever to work it out and pretty dumb to try it.”

  “A common criminal combination,” Luke said. He pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed his fingers into the corners of his eyes. “Can I use your bathroom?”

  “Sure.”

  Off he went, and I flumped down on the sofa. Tammy leapt up and settled on my lap. Apart from the grazes on my arm, I had bruises all over from being bashed about on the baggage belt. BAA had been really mad at me for that, but I pointed out that I’d been doing what no one else had done. I caught the criminal.

  I figured there’d be hearings and fines. I figured I might lose my job. I didn’t really care. I think I was in shock.

  Luke came back out, jiggling a small case in his hand. A contact lens case.

  I looked up at him. “You wear contacts?”

  He grinned. “Only for show.” He fluttered his eyelashes, and I realized in shock that his liquid brown eyes were now pale blue. And rather lovely.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “I figured Luca would have dark eyes. You don’t see many blond, blue-eyed Italians.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him he wasn’t a blond, but then I realized it was probably dyed. He seemed to take this undercover thing very seriously.

  “Why Italian?”

  “I can speak it. I’ve lived there. Girls like Italians.”

  I’m afraid my lip curled. “Look,” I said, “not to be rude or anything, but why are you here? Am I under arrest or something?”

  Luke sighed heavily and took a seat beside me on the sofa. I shuffled away from him. There was a very slight possibility he was mad. Hot as hell, but mad.

  “I’m going to tell you something,” he said, “and you have to keep it a secret. I mean this, if you tell anyone—your mum, your best friend, your brother, even your bloody cat—” Tammy looked offended at that, and rightly so, “then I’m not joking, I will have to kill you.” He lifted his pullover fleece and showed me the pistol holstered at his side.

  “What happened to Brown’s gun?”

  Luke gave me a look. “You know that wasn’t his real name, right?”

  “Duh.” It hadn’t occurred to me, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

  “It wasn’t even the same guy.”

  I stared, horrified.

  Luke laughed. “It’s okay. The guy we caught yesterday has a twin brother. What we didn’t know, when he used up his one phone call, was that he was giving out some kind of code. The brother was following instructions. If you hadn’t spotted him, he might have got through.”

  “To Alicante?”

  “No. Actually he was booked on the Geneva flight, but that’s by the by. What gets me is that he was stupid enough to use the same airport and the same fucking airline.”

  “Very bright and yet so very thick.”

  “They all are.” Luke held out his hand to Tammy, who sniffed at it, then licked his fingers.

  Bloody cat. Took me weeks to earn enough trust to pick her up.

  “Was that the classified information?”

  “What?” He looked up. “No. Not really. We’ve been after the brothers for a while. What I have to tell you is who ‘we’ are.”

  I braced myself.

  “Twenty years ago the government set up a special branch of military intelligence, based at Stansted, to deal with illegal airport traffic. Everything from drugs to terrorism. They called it SO17—Special Operations Seventeen. To begin with everything was excellent, the agents did everything they should and caught dozens of bad guys. At the time it was thought Stansted was going to grow into a huge airport, bigger than Heathrow.”

  “Not if I can help it,” I said with feeling. Airport expansion was something I was pretty much against, mostly because it would involve building over my house.

  “But of course the airport didn’t get that huge, and we shot ourselves in the foot.”

  “Feet.”

  “Whatever. The problem was that we worked too well. There were no more bad guys to catch. Word had got around. So they downsized us, didn’t want to spend all this money on an operation that wasn’t doing anything. Agents retired and they weren’t replaced. SO17 got pretty much forgotten by the government.”

  I can’t say I had any sympathy. As far as I was concerned he was talking bollocks. I didn’t believe for a second that there was a special governmental intelligence agency at the airport. We had Special Branch and that was it, right?

  Right?

  “Right now SO17 consists of four people. I’m one of them. We have license to do pretty much whatever we wa
nt, hire new people, et cetera, but we don’t have the funding. When I was hired they were skimming the cream of the military. I was in the RAF, then the SAS, before they picked me for this.”

  So now he was boasting to me? Ooh, look at my military record. Does that make you horny, baby?

  Well, quite frankly, no.

  “But now we can’t afford to do that. Our director has given us orders to each find and train new agents. My old partner is currently searching for a suitable recruit. I’ve been looking around for a while.”

  He looked right at me. Tammy clambered from me to him, and I focused my attention on the cat, because I wasn’t sure what Luke was saying.

  “That’s nice,” I said uncertainly, quite aware that I sounded like a complete idiot.

  “I was impressed with you today,” he went on. “Yesterday, too. You’re not very good at following orders, but I get that, because a good agent understands artistic license.”

  “Bond never followed his orders strictly,” I said helpfully.

  “Of course not. In License to Kill, he was a rogue agent. He still saved the day and got the girl.”

  I ignored that. I wasn’t really interested in getting any girls. “So you want someone who’s disobedient?”

  “No, I want someone with a brain. A lot of squaddies, they’re in it because they’re good at following orders. And they’re good at following orders because they’re crap at thinking for themselves. And that’s great, because the army always needs squaddies. But we need intelligence. We need stubbornness. We need someone who’ll see the mission right through.”

  I took Tammy off him. I needed a diversion. My head was whirling.

  “I was impressed with you today,” Luke said again, reaching out and touching my hair. “I’ve been watching you since I started at Ace. You’re bright and confident and you can think on your feet.”

  This was true. When you had a hundred and fifty passengers demanding to know what compensation they were going to get for a two hour delay (none) and threatening you with legal action, you learned to spout comforting drivel.

  “Plus,” Luke added with a smile, “you’re like a bulldog with a rag. Tell me, if the twin had driven away in that car, what would you have done?”

  I shrugged. “Got in one of the tugs and gone after him.”

  “You think a tug can keep up with a Corolla?”

  “I think Tammy could keep up with a Corolla.”

  He smiled properly. “And what would you have done when you caught him?”

  I blinked. “What I did today.”

  “Did you plan that?”

  “No. How could I?”

  “You thought on your feet. You didn’t consider the consequences for yourself, you just went after him. Sophie, do you want to come and work for SO17?”

  Chapter Four

  It was weird, but after he’d gone I didn’t feel as surreal as I’d thought. I fed Tammy and ran a bath and read my book and went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I ended up switching on the video and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer throw herself into that abyss for the millionth time.

  You see, it was like when she found out about the Initiative and became one of their sort of agents. Only Buffy could do all this cool Slayer stuff, all her athletics and stamina and accelerated healing and super senses and stuff, whereas I…I could touch my toes. If I warmed up, I could kick Chalker in the head. But only if I wasn’t wearing jeans. Which I usually am.

  Oh, bollocks. It was nothing like Buffy at all.

  Hey, I wonder if Luke has all those cool gadgets like Riley had? Or like Bond? If I was a secret agent would I get to run around in sexy leather outfits and outrageous wigs like Sydney Bristow?

  Note to self, try and watch an entire episode of Alias without going off into fantasies about Michael Vartan.

  Luke gave me a mobile number to call him on with my decision. But how the hell did I make a decision like that?

  When it came down to it, was there really a single reason why I should become a spy?

  It was sexy, yeah, but it was dangerous, really dangerous. There was a scar on Luke’s upper arm that I saw once when I thought he was Luca. He said he got it in a motorbike accident in Rome, but even at the time I thought that was made up. The scar was nasty, too. Looked like it was made with a blade.

  I didn’t like blades.

  He carried a gun. The guy I caught today—I still didn’t know his name, call him Brown 2—he had a gun too. Would I have to carry one? I didn’t know anything about guns. I could tell I don’t like them, and that was about it.

  God, this was hard. He even told me the pay wouldn’t be that great. But still a boost to my Ace pay, which in turn would go down because I’d be working there part time for appearance’s sake…

  He told me that if I take this up then it would have to be a total secret. I couldn’t even tell anyone about the existence of SO17, let alone that I was working for them.

  Because I was going to end up working for them. If I didn’t, I’d spend the rest of my life checking baggage for a low-cost airline. And that was a thought so wretched it made me feel physically ill.

  The name’s Green. Sophie Green.

  You know what? I need a new name.

  I made the call not long after the sun came up. On a normal day, I might be on my way to work right now. But I had a feeling there weren’t going to be many more normal days for me.

  “Okay,” I said when Luke answered. “I’m in.”

  I could hear the pause as he grinned. “Knew you would be,” he said. “Okay. I need you to come into the office and sign a few things.”

  “I signed millions of things yesterday!”

  “Yes, but these are important things. Do you remember where you did your Ace training?”

  I was confused. My training was so long ago that it was a distant memory (and a laughable one—did I really think people would pay their excess baggage charges without a fight?), but I remembered where it was, because that was where a lot of the airlines had their back-up and support. Ace had an office in supersmart Enterprise House, by the car park, but they still had a few rooms they used for training round where the old terminal was.

  I pulled up outside the building. Luke was waiting, a look of disbelief on his face.

  “What?” I said, opening the door for him.

  “This is your car?”

  “What are you implying?”

  “Why the hell are you driving a Land Rover Defender?”

  I made a face as he got in. “I like it. It’s reliable. Lara Croft has one.”

  Luke stared. I think I was doing okay until I mentioned Lara. “You know she’s fictional, right?”

  “I’m not stupid.” Probably this wouldn’t be the best time to tell him the car had a name. It was called Ted, after the character in The Fast Show… Okay, never mind.

  He shook his head. “Go up here and turn right.”

  I did as I was told. I’m not sure what I was expecting: a bunker, maybe, something highly secret. But he told me to stop outside a totally ordinary, rather shabby looking prefab hut. The peeling sign outside said it belonged to Flight Services Inc.

  “Has anyone ever come in asking about flight services?” I asked as I locked Ted up. He didn’t have central locking, and Luke shook his head in amazement when I asked him to lock his door, as if he was wondering why anyone would ever try to steal the car.

  I liked my car, all right? It was solid and dependable and a design classic, and the army had them. And if someone was parked in a stupid place then I could just trample all over them and not worry about the damage to my car. Ted looked happier with a dent or two in him.

  Luke, after a moment’s pause, glanced at the sign by the door and said no, no one had ever asked about flight services. Most airport people were very focused. It was sometimes hard to remember there was anything outside your own flight report.

  Christ, I was glad I was getting out of that.

  Inside was an ordinary, dat
ed office where a pretty blonde woman sat behind a desk, glancing at something on a computer.

  She looked up and smiled. “You must be Sophie! Luke’s told me all about you.”

  I glanced at Luke. He flicked his eyebrows at me but said nothing, and wandered over to check a chart on the wall.

  “I’m Alexa.” The blonde offered her hand over the desk, and I took it. “Call me Lex. Everyone does.”

  Lex. As in Luthor?

  I gave her a smile. She seemed very normal. She wasn’t Moneypenny glamorous or GI Jane hard. She looked like a normal receptionist. She even had an aspidistra next to her desk.

  It was all sort of disappointing.

  “So—” she leaned over the desk earnestly, “—are you excited?”

  I shrugged nonchalantly. I was so nervous I could barely stand up. It had actually taken me most of the night to decide on what to wear. Now the sun was up and Alexa was smiling at me in her New Look shirt, I felt a bit stupid for having agonised about whether to wear a skirt or trousers (in the end having plumped for trousers and top with high Lycra contents, just in case they wanted me to start doing any training, and a smart leather jacket).

  Alexa turned to Luke. “I know we said you’d go straight in, but Maria just called. She’s bringing up her catch from London. Should be here any minute.”

  I glanced at Luke for an explanation, but he didn’t look at me.

  “Did she say anything about him? Or is it a her?”

  Alexa shrugged. “No idea. Just that she’s very pleased with herself.”

  “Christ.”

  It was warm in the little office, thanks to the noisy air heater by Alexa’s desk, and I took off my jacket.

  “God,” Alexa cried, “what happened to you?”

  She was staring at my arm. So there were a few scratches on it, and the bruises were just beginning to come up. I shrugged. “I had a run-in with a baggage belt.”

  “I didn’t know they fought back.”

  “Viciously,” I said, and we shared a smile.

  A car pulled up outside, and I glanced through the blinds to see a woman in a shiny PVC coat getting out of an aged Peugeot 205. From the passenger seat emerged a giant of a man, the sort of super-scary black man they post outside clubs to frighten off teenagers.