Lying low meant parking near the university, where the natural camouflage was greatest. Still bewildered at the sudden alteration in the evening – still angry he felt two steps behind the others – Danny found himself thinking about the girl, Kim, a low-rent con-artist who’d been working the target. She had family back in North Korea; distant, but not so distant she was happy to let them become the object of official attention. Or perhaps she was just savvy enough to realise that some offers, you didn’t say no to. However distant those family members might be, her own face, her eyes, her teeth, were within reach, and easy collateral.
Her name had been given to them by the SSD, which had recruited Danny and his companions when they were children, and had provided for all their needs since. Their task was to bend her to the SSD’s will, which was, in turn, the will of the Supreme Leader, whose destiny was to bring low His enemies, and see them scuttle in terror. Like his four – now three – companions, Danny was an instrument of that destiny. Like them, he had come to this country as a student, under the flag of a different nation, his studies a mask for a mission years in the planning. The van they now lived in, the jeep they had long since torched, the weapons they had collected from a lock-up garage on the outskirts of Preston – all had been provided by the SSD. On the other side of the world, the Supreme Leader feasted in His palaces, and Shin made nightly reports, and nightly received instructions. Through His vessels, the Supreme Leader spoke to them, directing them in their mission. And all around the world, other groups like theirs would be activated too, and tearing down the houses of His enemies. The mad American had woken the tiger, and now he and all his allies would pay the price. The world would learn that there were many different ways of being locked and loaded.
The Supreme Leader’s glory was a global fact. Kim understood the serious folly of refusing Him. So she had accepted the orders they gave her, along with the pills she had slipped in the target’s alcohol, ensuring a night of oblivion. In the morning, she had convinced him this had been spent sharing secrets. If the target thought he had already let slip the true nature of his employment, he would find it easier to release subsequent, apparently trivial proofs.
A week later, the document was in their hands. And so it began.
Later still, once the wheels were in motion, they had been instructed to cover their tracks; to get rid of the girl and Ho too, before the significance of the stolen document became apparent. As with any conjuring trick, it would not do for the magic to be revealed before the final flourish. So Shin had finished the girl in her own home; but as for Ho, twice they had attempted to deal with him, and twice he had eluded their efforts. Despite himself, Danny felt respect. Ho was evidently a highly skilled agent, adept at evading danger. A worthy enemy in this milksop nation.
But he worried. They had been told that the plan was unalterable, and yet here they were, altering it. For the moment, he would go along. But if there were further derailments, further rearrangements, he would have to take action.
The Supreme Leader would expect no less.
‘I don’t get it,’ Shirley said. ‘How come Gimball’s dead?’
Louisa was tailgating some idiot crawling at eighty. ‘Because the bad guys got him.’
‘Yeah, but they were in Brum. In that van. Coming for Jaffrey.’
‘Until you scared them off,’ said Louisa.
‘Yeah.’
‘With a monkey wrench.’
Shirley nodded seriously.
‘You actually saw them?’
‘They were in the back of the van.’
‘So you actually saw them.’
‘It was a van, not a shop window.’
‘So you didn’t actually see them.’
Shirley shrugged. ‘They were opening up. That’s when I went for them.’
Running down the road, brandishing a chunk of metal: you could see why the folk in the van had decided to be elsewhere.
Especially if they were, say, a bunch of locals, rather than a tooled-up gang of murdering psychopaths.
Shirley said, ‘Did you see my throw? It actually stuck in the door. Hung there for a second.’
‘So I noticed.’
‘No wonder they scarpered.’
‘Shirley, do you really think that van was full of terrorists?’
‘Yep.’
‘Really? Armed terrorists?’
‘No match for Superwoman.’ Shirley mimed throwing the wrench, though there wasn’t room in the car to do it full justice. It looked more like she was chucking an imaginary ball for a non-existent dog.
‘You don’t think they might have been, say, ordinary citizens? Who you terrified?’
‘Nope,’ said Shirley.
‘So what happened in Slough? If the terrorists were in that van, coming for Jaffrey—’
‘Before I frightened them off.’
‘—before you chased them with a metal stick, what happened in Slough? Are there two gangs out there, or what?’
‘Maybe they split in two.’
