“If I sent somebody else to kill Jimmy Coates? After you were in a position to kill him twice and failed? That’s so understanding of you.”
Mitchell hadn’t been to school in a while now, but that feeling of being the least significant person in the world flooded back. He bowed his head and stared at his desk.
“Oh, cheer up, Glenthorne,” Miss Bennett insisted. “You’re still the best thirteen-year-old, genetically programmed assassin we’ve got.” She laughed, and after a couple of seconds Mitchell did too. He buzzed with the excitement of being back in the briefing room. It could only mean a new mission. And if it wasn’t Jimmy Coates, Mitchell had no idea what it could be.
The overhead projector flashed to life. Emblazoned across it in massive letters was ZAF-1.
“ZAF-1,” announced Miss Bennett.
“Yeah,” Mitchell muttered, “I can read.”
Miss Bennett glared at him. He shrunk into his chair. Clearly, sarcasm was a one-way street.
“Dr Higgins’ papers seem to suggest that for over a decade, the DGSE, the French Secret Service, have had access to the assassin technology that built you.”
Mitchell tensed up. Suddenly, he was paying closer attention. Miss Bennett went on, her voice sounding just like a teacher explaining part of some textbook.
“At first we thought ZAF-1 referred to a second French intelligence agency. Now we’ve realised, of course, that there’s hardly enough intelligence in the whole of France for one agency – let alone two.”
Mitchell chuckled.
“Our current theory,” Miss Bennett went on, “is that ‘ZAF-1’ refers to a French assassin. The oldest he could be is about twelve, and if he were any younger than nine he would be almost completely ineffective.” She pressed a button on the laptop to flick to the next screen. Nothing happened.
“Oh, blast,” she exclaimed. “I hate PowerPoint.”
“I’ll show you,” sighed Mitchell, pushing himself up. His chair leg screeched on the floor, but not as loud as Miss Bennett yelled at him now.
“I don’t need showing, thank you!” She slammed the lid of the laptop shut. “The rest is simple. Find the French assassin. Kill him before he kills you.”
“What do you mean, ‘before he kills me’?”
“What do you think I mean? If the French could steal the assassin technology, they could also know about you. Pretty soon we’re going to be at war with France. We know that and they know that. So, just like us, the first person they will want to eliminate is their enemy’s most powerful assassin.”
Pride rushed through Mitchell. Miss Bennett wasn’t being sarcastic about his abilities any more. He sat at his desk with his chest upright and broad. “Where do I start looking?”
He had never expected to be sent on a mission where so little was known about his target – what he looked like, where he was or even whether he definitely existed. But somehow, all of that doubt added to the feeling of responsibility. It certainly added to the excitement. Mitchell could feel the tips of his fingers tingling.
“Paris,” Miss Bennett explained. “I have a support network spread out across France right now and several agents in the process of infiltrating the DGSE as moles. They should have information for you in a few days. Start your own investigations in Paris and I’ll arrange for you to meet with one of these agents as soon as they have something for you. Good luck. Britain is depending on you.”
Mitchell’s face stretched into the biggest smile of his life. The trials of the last week were behind him now. The boy in him had set aside his confusion. He was an assassin again – time to find his target.
Heathrow airport was full of armed police. It always was. Jimmy knew that. But he still couldn’t force down the feeling that every one of them was staring at him. CCTV cameras peered into every corner of the terminal building.
Suddenly, there was a bang. Jimmy jumped. He sniffed for the smell of cordite and swivelled round, expecting the black nose of a machine gun to be pointed straight at him.
“Calm down,” Felix hissed. “It was just that guy dropping his suitcase.”
Jimmy said nothing. He marched on through the terminal. There weren’t many people about – it was before the midmorning rush, and in any case, not that many people travelled in and out of Britain these days. The light glared off the lino floor. The sounds of people getting on with their business mixed with the squeaking of their shoes and the ticking of the terminal clock.
In Jimmy, every muscle was ripped tight. He and Felix had been paired off together, while the others spread out around the terminal. Each group was to check in at a different desk and at a different time, though every now and again Jimmy caught a glimpse of one of them through the crowd.
“I should be tense,” Felix carried on. “Not you. They could bring me down by sneezing too hard.”
But I’m the one they’re after, Jimmy thought. He checked the back pocket of his jeans again. The corners of the fake documents dug into him. Another false identity. Another new life he’d destroy as soon as it was finished with. He’d examined them in the van on the drive to the airport. He’d looked as hard as he could without getting car sick, and they seemed good – too good in fact. The more pieces of this operation Jimmy saw, the more he was worried about who these new contacts of Viggo’s might be. Still, he had no choice now but to go along with the plan and remember his false details: Sam O’Shaughnessy, from Acton.
Suddenly, he let out a yelp of pain and pressed his fingers to the point where his right ear joined his skull.
“What is it?” gasped Felix.
Jimmy’s head felt like someone was firing lightning bolts at him. And it wasn’t the first time it had happened that morning. Felix quickly realised what was wrong.
“Again?” he asked. They stopped and Jimmy bent double, holding his head. “It’s like Harry Potter and that stupid scar, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” moaned Jimmy sarcastically. “It’s exactly like that.” That was the fourth time in the day already. Each attack hit in the same spot on Jimmy’s head and with the same pain – a precise and piercing stab that lasted thirty seconds or so, then dissipated to nothing. He took a deep breath and pulled himself upright.
“You OK?” Felix asked. Jimmy nodded and squeezed out a smile.
“So what’s wrong with your head?” Felix said as they reached the queue for check-in. Jimmy didn’t know how to answer. It wasn’t like anything he’d experienced before. His only explanation was that it must have something to do with his programming developing.
He liked to think that he was more comfortable with his programming now – that he knew roughly what it was capable of and almost how to control it. But really he had to admit he had no idea. It was like an alien growing inside him. More than that – the alien was him,
