LITMIR.BIZ

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it was for so many people at a memorial service to be wearing bright colours. That was because a lot of them were military personnel in finest dress uniform. The civil servants and journalists were all in black though, making the overall effect like a mingling of peacocks and ravens.

      “Don’t you mind that they think you’re dead?” Mitchell pressed. “They might, like, miss you or something.”

      Eva sighed. “We didn’t get on that well, OK?” she explained. “My brothers know I’m fine. That’s all I care about.”

      “You’re lucky you even know your parents,” Mitchell mumbled.

      For a second, Eva felt a pang of sympathy. Mitchell never spoke about his own family. She felt the urge to explain that she knew all about what had happened to him: that his parents were killed in a car crash when he was a baby… that he’d escaped from his foster home… that his brother had beaten him… But she also knew what lay at the root of it all: Mitchell was the first child to have been genetically programmed to grow into the perfect Government assassin.

      Eva shuddered and deliberately pushed away her sympathy. The boy next to her was the enemy. She had to remember that. Already he’d been sent several times to kill Jimmy Coates. The thought of it made her catch her breath. Jimmy’s sister was her best friend. It was for Jimmy and Georgie Coates that she risked her life every day, undercover at NJ7.

      She reached forwards to the driver’s seat and turned the ignition one click so she could open her window.

      “Hey,” Mitchell objected. “The windows are tinted for a reason, you know.”

      Instinctively he tried to lean across her for the button. When he realised how close that brought them to each other, he froze. Eva glared.

      “It’s just a couple of centimetres, OK?” she protested softly.

      Mitchell pulled back.

      “If anyone finds out the British Secret Service is employing two thirteen-year-olds Miss Bennett will go mental.”

      “Who’s going to find out?” Eva asked. “Even if the press see us they can’t print anything about it, can they? Everything has to be approved by the Government press office.”

      “I dunno. Miss Bennett said to stay out of sight. That’s all. Otherwise we’d be standing over there, wouldn’t we?” He nodded his head towards the throng of people. “And I should be out there. You know, paying respects, or whatever. I went on a mission with Paduk. I was partly trained by him.”

      “You train yourself,” Eva snapped. “You went for runs with him, that’s all.”

      Mitchell didn’t answer. He knew she was right. She was always meticulous about detail and Mitchell wasn’t in the mood to challenge her. He also wasn’t keen to dwell on the sort of training that went on in his body: his muscles developing as he slept, his programming sending thousands of signals through his synapses every second to give him new skills that he’d never guessed could be his. The skills of an assassin.

      They were both glad to be distracted by the Prime Minister’s voice floating through the window on a waft of cooler air.

      “Paduk died in the service of his country, trying to defend one of our most precious assets from foreign sabotage…”

      They had to listen hard. Every time a car drove past it drowned out the words.

      “…response will be diplomacy… for a peaceful resolution… but if pressed we are ready…”

      Eva didn’t want to hear it. Whatever the man said, she knew he would probably be lying. But it wasn’t the words that upset her. It was the voice – that calm, reassuring, authoritative voice. To her it wasn’t just the voice of the Prime Minister, it was the voice of her best friend’s dad, Ian Coates.

      A few minutes later he was marching back in the direction of Mitchell and Eva, flanked on either side by Secret Service agents in plain black suits. The sun glinted off their dark glasses and picked out the green stripes on their lapels. They were big men, but Ian Coates wasn’t much smaller. Eva remembered that all the time she’d thought he was an ordinary businessman, he’d in fact been an NJ7 agent, along with Georgie’s mother, Helen. Since becoming Prime Minister, he’d clearly gone back to a strict regime of physical training. The shoulders of his suit were bulging.

      Eva watched him striding towards them, his jaw jutting out in grim determination. But the closer he came, the more she noticed something was wrong. His swagger was slightly off-centre and his face was pale, with patches under his eyes that were almost yellow.

      He forcefully raised a hand to wave to the press, before they were escorted away as a pack by more Secret Service staff. No time to pay private tributes to the fallen hero they’d all come to commemorate. Not that they seemed bothered, Eva noticed.

      Eva and Mitchell’s car was one of a row of five. Their driver appeared out of nowhere and opened the rear door, motioning Mitchell to shift over to make room, ready for Miss Bennett. As he shuffled towards Eva, the backs of his arms stuck to the leather, making a soft squeak. The Prime Minister’s car was the one directly in front of theirs. He paused with one foot in and one foot out, and raised his head back in the direction of the memorial.

      Eva followed the direction of his stare and saw Miss Bennett approaching across the grass. She moved gracefully and with a slight sway in her hips. Eva was amazed she could walk so effortlessly fast in high heels. One side of her mouth was curled upwards in a half-smile and as she came closer a flash of sunshine caught the subtle green stripe in the weave of her pencil skirt.

      As she reached the Prime Minister’s car, they started talking – quickly and without waiting for each other to finish their sentences. Eva couldn’t quite make out their words, but it was obvious they didn’t agree about something. She opened her window a little further to catch their conversation.

      Mitchell tried to object. “What are you…?”

      “Shh!” Eva hissed. “Can’t you use some special skill to tell me what they’re saying?”

      Mitchell snorted a sarcastic laugh, but before he could reply, a loud click cut him off. The back door on the other side of the Prime Minister’s car opened. Eva and Mitchell both sat to attention and leaned forward. Out of the car stepped William Lee.

      His presence stopped Miss Bennett’s conversation dead. Ian Coates looked from Lee to Miss Bennett and back again. For a second, nobody said anything. Then the Prime Minister seemed to glance up at the sky before issuing an order that Eva could hear perfectly, though it meant nothing to her.

      “Mutam-ul-it. Make it ours.”

      Lee’s response cut through all the background noise.

      “I’ll send the Enforcer.”

      Eva turned to Mitchell and read in his expression that he was as mystified as she was. Within seconds, Miss Bennett was sliding in next to them.

      “What’s Mutam-ul-it?” Eva asked, not caring now that Miss Bennett would know she’d been eavesdropping. “And who’s the enforcer – what did he mean?”

      “He means we’ve got work to do,” Miss Bennett replied calmly. Then a darker expression came over her face. “He means we’re attacking the French.”

      05 NASU MISO

      Felix Muzbeke’s fingers trembled on the glass of the door. Usually he had no doubts about walking into a restaurant, but tonight he hesitated. His arm seemed frozen. He stared at his reflection: large brown eyes a little too far apart and a chaos of black frizz on his head. But in his mind he was seeing something else.

      He was remembering another glass door just like this one, nearly five thousand kilometres away in Chinatown, New York. And he could see the scene that he’d replayed in his imagination so many times. Hiding in the darkness when that long black car pulled up. The two huge men in black suits who’d calmly stepped out, grabbed his parents and forced them to the ground.

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