the casual swatting of a fly now squashed onto her picture-perfect smile. Hitch pressed his thumb into a barely visible identity scanner and the door clicked open. The door led to some stairs, the stairs led to Spectrum.
Once in the atrium they made their way across the vast space to the place where the Spectrum coordinator sat.
Nothing had changed, at least nothing had changed as far as the eye could see, but the atmosphere was very different. Breathe deeply and one could practically choke on the tension.
Buzz was where she always was, seated in the middle of the great round desk just off the main hall. Coloured telephones encircled her, and Ruby guessed that a web of wires and cables must trail around her feet. And though the administrator’s expression was as blank and unsmiling as always, in some strange way it was a relief to see her. That said, Ruby had no desire to hang out with the woman – she could bore you to death, if nothing else.
There was no ‘how are you’, no ‘we’ve missed you’, not the briefest snip of small talk, all Buzz said was – ‘LB will see you now.’
And Ruby felt her limbs become heavy as she walked the short walk to her boss’s door.
This time it wasn’t the fear of failure or of getting fired that made Ruby Redfort dread coming face to face with LB – this time it was a fear of getting found out. What if LB knew what she knew?
Ruby was grateful to have Hitch with her, though felt no certainty that he would take her side if he had to choose between her truth and his boss’s.
LB was looking steelier than she had done five weeks ago. The signs of fatigue and stress were gone and had been replaced by a cold, unwavering determination. Perhaps she was eating an iron-rich diet, as Consuela would no doubt recommend, or perhaps she had been working on her martial arts. Ruby had heard it rumoured that the Spectrum 8 boss was no slouch in this department, having studied karate in Japan under the great master, Funakoshi. It all seemed very unlikely to Ruby, who had never seen LB outside the walls of HQ, let alone out in the field. It might simply be gossip or it might be a very tall tale, but Agent Holbrook had told her that LB was the only Spectrum 8 agent to have mastered the deadly wrist grasp otherwise known as the ‘assassin’s handshake’.
None of these assertions were exactly comforting at this moment.
LB waved at her to sit down.
‘Do you want me to stay?’ asked Hitch.
Stay, thought Ruby, for Pete’s sake, stay.
‘No, that won’t be necessary,’ said LB. ‘Would you give me and Redfort five minutes?’
‘Of course,’ said Hitch, stepping out.
Ruby had a strong desire to jump up and follow him. But she kept her face composed and herself in her seat.
LB waited for the door to close behind Hitch before addressing Ruby.
‘So you’re back, Redfort,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said Ruby.
‘How was it?’
‘It was OK,’ said Ruby.
‘I hear you kept your head down and your nose clean.’
‘Yes,’ said Ruby.
LB peered at her from over her glasses.
‘What, no smart remark?’
Silence.
‘I’m beginning to wonder if they sent you to Swiss finishing school by mistake. I know I should be relieved, but it’s making me feel uneasy.’
Redfort, you’re acting weird, pull it together!
LB leaned forward. ‘Is there something wrong? Something you want to share?’
‘I’m not giving you half my donut if that’s what you’re getting at.’
‘That’s more like it. I thought for one horrible minute I was speaking with some Ruby Redfort doppelganger – I don’t know, Lorelei von Leyden in disguise, maybe.’
‘It would be a tough act to pull off,’ said Ruby. ‘I like to think that when they made me they broke the mould.’
‘So do I,’ said LB sourly. She cleared her throat. ‘As you might have heard, Spectrum 8 has handed much of its operations activity to Spectrum 1, just while we try to figure how far this contamination has reached, and which agent if any is responsible for leaking information to the Count.’
‘Right,’ said Ruby.
If LB was bluffing then she was a seriously cool customer. ‘A large number of our department have been suspended until we have clarity on this issue. Spectrum 7 agents will replace them until we have located our mole.’
‘So am I being suspended?’ asked Ruby. She paused, thought about where she had been. ‘Was I suspended? What I mean to say is, was geek camp really a way of getting me out of the picture? So you could check me out?’
‘Yes, but if it makes you feel better, we were as much concerned for your wellbeing as we were that you might in some way be leaking information.’
‘You thought I might be leaking information?’
‘You can see our point of view here, I’m sure. On the one hand, we were suspicious that the Count would keep you alive – we had to ask ourselves why –but on the other, we were concerned that he might change his mind. He doesn’t always abide by logic. And besides, his employer presumably still wants you dead, assuming that story is true, though when it comes to the Count one should never assume anything. Whatever else he is, he is predictably unpredictable.’
‘So now what?’ asked Ruby carefully. ‘Am I trusted employee or traitor?’
‘Quit being so dramatic, Redfort, you’re neither; no one ever thought you were a traitor – a blabbermouth perhaps, there was always a chance of that.’
Ruby opened her mouth to object, but LB raised her hand.
‘I never said you were, Redfort, I said there was a chance that you had brought this whole craziness to our door, but I concede that’s unlikely. There’s no evidence for it.’
Well, that was a relief.
Though what followed was not.
‘You, like every other agent in Spectrum 8, will be taken off duty. Eight is effectively closed to all lower-level agents. For all but vital access to our departments, permission must be given by a senior agent. My feeling was that your training should also be suspended until we have this security mess under control.
‘However,’ she paused and sighed, like what she was about to say was a great effort to her, ‘Hitch has persuaded HQ that it might be wise to keep up the survival skills. He seems to think you need all the protection you can get, and though you are no longer a functioning field agent or coding agent, after much consideration, I am persuaded he is right. We have a
