Nina read through it. Roy had listed the files by date, newest first, but the topmost were from the day before Brice’s confession. ‘Damn. It’s not there!’
‘Wouldn’t worry. The bigger the file, the more pieces there are to assemble, so videos will probably be the last to be recovered.’ He reached to turn the laptop back—
Nina grabbed his hand. ‘Oh, shit,’ she gasped.
Eddie quickly stood, hand moving towards his hidden gun. ‘What is it?’
She jabbed a finger at the menu bar — and one particular icon. ‘You’re on frickin’ wi-fi!’
‘Well, yah,’ said Roy. ‘I told you, I’m a regular — it finds it automatically.’
‘Yeah — which means MI6 can find you! You work for an intelligence agency, so they’ll have a list of all your computers to make sure you’re not emailing the Kremlin!’
He blinked. ‘Oh. Oh! I didn’t even — sorry, it didn’t even occur to me about the wi-fi. It’s just, you know… there.’
‘Some bloody spy you’d make,’ Eddie growled. ‘Come on, we’ve got to move.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘We can’t risk staying here,’ Nina told him, rising.
‘And turn off your sodding wi-fi!’ Eddie chided. Roy hastily did so. ‘It’s like a bloody tracking device. Where else can we go?’
‘If we only have to wait a half-hour for the files to be recovered,’ said Nina, ‘then we should head for the American embassy. And don’t start,’ she told Eddie. ‘What other choice do we have now?’
Roy picked up his laptop, holding it carefully so as not to dislodge the cable. ‘Okay, I’m ready.’
Eddie opened the emergency exit. The three piled through, ignoring the shout from a barista. They emerged in a dingy alley. ‘I still think giving the video to the Yanks is a bad idea,’ he said, ‘but you’re right, we’re out of options. The embassy’s in Mayfair — we can get there on the Tube—’
‘No, no!’ Roy cut in as they hurried along the alley. ‘That’s the old embassy. The new one opened a couple of years ago. It doesn’t have a Tube station yet, though — and you won’t want to use the one nearest to it.’
‘Why not?’ asked Nina.
‘It’s at Vauxhall — right by SIS headquarters.’
‘Yeah, okay, somewhere to avoid,’ she quickly agreed. ‘So what’s the best way there?’
They emerged on a main road and looked around. ‘Taxi,’ said Eddie, before seeing an alternative. ‘Or… bus?’
‘You want to get away from government goons chasing us by bus?’
‘Well, first thing is that they won’t be expecting us to do it. And second, there’s one right there.’ He pointed at an approaching red double-decker. ‘Won’t get us all the way, but at least we’ll be across the river.’
Nina was dubious, but the trudging pace of the traffic suggested that a cab would be little faster. They jogged across the road to meet it. ‘Okay, so we just jump on like in the movies, right?’
‘Not any more,’ Roy said. ‘They banned that when they fired all the conductors to save money. But there’s a stop down here.’
They hustled to it, joining the short queue. Eddie looked back. No sign of any speeding cars packed with large men, but after the wi-fi debacle he was sure they would be on the way.
The bus, a new-model Routemaster modelled on the iconic London vehicle, arrived. They boarded, Eddie and Nina paying with the cards lent to them by Alderley. Roy started for the rear, but Eddie called him back, finding seats as close to the driver as possible. ‘Just in case he gets any radio messages about us,’ he explained quietly.
‘You think he might?’ Nina asked as the bus set off, heading south.
‘There’s CCTV everywhere. They might have seen us get on.’ He turned to watch as a black Range Rover, flashing blue strobe lights concealed behind its radiator grille, muscled along the other side of the road to head for the coffee shop. ‘We got out just in time.’
‘Were they after us?’ Roy asked.
Eddie nodded. ‘You heard of the Increment?’
‘Yah, of course, although they’re called “E” Squadron now — wait,’ he added in alarm, ‘they’ve sent them after us?’
‘Who did you expect? Austin Powers?’
‘Oh, God.’ The young man’s demeanour had until now been that of someone embarking upon a slightly transgressive adventure, but now the gravity of the situation struck home. ‘That’s, ah… rather serious.’
‘No shit,’ muttered Nina. She indicated his laptop. ‘How much longer?’
Roy opened the machine. ‘The directory’s almost ninety per cent done. So fifteen, twenty minutes?’
‘Keep it going, then,’ she told him, looking back after the Range Rover.
Staite and Waterford had been joined in the control centre by two more young and keen operators. ‘According to building records, the coffee house has a fire exit into a back street,’ one reported.
‘Did you hear that?’ Staite asked the ground team through her headset.
‘Affirmative,’ came the reply.
‘Got them on cam,’ reported Waterford. A screen showed a live CCTV image from the main street, the Range Rover nearing a junction. It made a hard stop at the corner, two men jumping from its rear and running out of frame as the SUV set off again.
‘Can we see the shop?’ asked Staite.
He checked a grid of smaller images on another display. ‘Not directly. There’s a camera outside a bank that might have an angle, though. Hold on…’ His fingers rattled across a keyboard.
‘We’re here,’ the team leader warned. ‘Team Two, ETA?’
‘Ten seconds. Just reached the alley,’ a man replied.
‘Got it,’ announced Waterford. The view on the main screen changed. The camera was mounted high above the bank’s frontage, covering its entrance and ATM, but the coffee shop was visible in the corner of the frame. The Range Rover stopped on the pavement. Its two occupants leapt out and ran to the shop, drawing their weapons.
‘Team Two in position,’ said the second man.
Staite did not hesitate. ‘Move in.’
The pair on screen burst through the shop’s door. ‘Special Branch!’ the leader bellowed, the police undercover unit acting as the cover for MI6’s even more secretive operatives. ‘Nobody move!’ Cries of panic came from the shop’s customers, a baby screaming. ‘Two men and a woman! They were here — where are they?’
‘They — they went out through the fire exit,’ someone fearfully replied.
‘Team Two, did you get that?’ said Staite.
‘Yeah,’ came the response. ‘Door’s barred from inside, nobody’s here.’
‘Team One, search the interior in case they’re lying,’ she ordered. ‘We’ll try to pick them up on CCTV.’
A phone rang, Waterford answering. ‘Oh, you’re kidding,’ he said, aggrieved, after listening to the caller. ‘It’s GCHQ. Boxley logged off the coffee shop’s wi-fi over three minutes ago.’
‘Good of them to let us know!’ Staite said in exasperation. ‘Okay, that gives us a new time window. Poll the CCTV on the surrounding streets and wind back four minutes to see if we can spot them. And tell those nerds at the Doughnut’ — the nickname for GCHQ’s circular headquarters — ‘that this is a real-time operation, not something to catch up with on iPlayer!’
A report soon came in from the Removal Men that the targets were indeed no longer in the building. ‘We’ll update you as soon as we locate them,’ Staite told him, joining her companions to scrutinise recent footage from the dozen or so cameras covering the area. Minutes passed, Londoners stuttering along the streets in digitised fast-forward. Then—