old and incredibly thin, with eyes that looked too big for his head. Sabrina’s bag lay behind him on the bed.
‘Hi, there,’ Sabrina said, making her voice soft. ‘How you doing?’
The boy looked wary but he stayed where he was. Sabrina ruffled his hair. She reached past him and picked up the bag. She pulled open the drawstring at the top and checked the wallet first. The cards were there, her WHO ID and papers of accreditation were there, but the money, five hundred dollars, was gone.
She looked at the thin little kid again and decided she wouldn’t make a noise about the cash. She pulled back the tab on the false bottom and there was the pistol. All in all, she could say she was in luck.
‘I hope your mom uses the cash to do you both some good.’
Sabrina turned away, running her fingers through the stuff in the bag, aware that something else was missing.
Then a terrible pain hit her. She dropped to her knees and rolled on her side, gasping. The boy was standing, one empty hand outstretched, staring down at her. As he turned and ran, Sabrina reached behind her, clenched her teeth and pulled the Swiss Army knife from the back of her thigh.
‘Aah! God! Aaow!’
She pushed herself up and turned at a commotion in the other room. She saw the feet scamper out the front door, the boy and his mother. They were off like the wind, with enough money to stay away for a while, or to just go and live somewhere else for good.
Sabrina stood up, grunting, feeling the stiffness in her leg. She got a field dressing and an ampoule of wound wash from the zippered pocket in the bag.
‘I used to call it my lucky Swiss Army knife,’ she grunted.
The kid had used the longest, sharpest blade. Judging by the margin of blood on the polished steel, it had gone in three full centimetres. It felt like he had used a bayonet, but on the plus side there wasn’t much bleeding. Sabrina pulled up her skirt and squirted the antibacterial on to the wound.
‘Oh hell, hell, hell!’ A fresh agony hit her. ‘Son of a bitch!’
It burned like a blowtorch. She distracted herself by tearing open the dressing wrapper with her teeth, and as the pain diffused away and left behind only the nagging throb of punctured muscle, she tried once again to tell herself that, on balance, she had been pretty lucky.
Philpott picked up the red phone on the second ring and waited for the scrambler noise to subside.
‘Sabrina? Where in God’s name have you been?’
‘There was a hitch, sir. I’m truly sorry, I would have been in touch sooner if it had been possible.’
‘Something wrong with the phone, is there? We can always get a replacement to you if you think you need one.’
‘The phone’s fine, sir. I just encountered a little setback, and what with one thing and another, my call-in got delayed. I’ve already smacked my wrist on your behalf.’
‘Quite right. Are your problems sorted out now? Can I rely on you sticking to our agreed schedule from here on?’
‘Yes, sir, you can.’
‘Fine. Be careful.’
He put down the phone and immediately the black one beside it warbled. He picked it up, glancing at the clock. He had planned to leave half an hour ago.
‘Philpott.’
‘Thomas Lubbock.’
Philpott’s eyes narrowed. A call direct from the Director of Policy Control could only mean the pressure was being turned up.
‘What can I do for you?’
‘Pencil a date in your diary.’ Lubbock’s voice was cold and offhand, a model of rehearsed detachment. ‘Wednesday, March twelfth. Techniques-and-procedures review.’
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