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‘But this is the way into Spectrum?’
‘It is today,’ said Hitch.
‘So why did you get me crossing town to meet you at the planetarium when you coulda just told me to make my way to the ice rink?’
‘I like that place,’ said Hitch.
‘The planetarium?’
‘Yeah, like I said, I find it soothing.’
Ruby rolled her eyes. ‘Whatever floats your boat.’
They pushed through the turnstile and headed to the skate room, a labyrinth of shelves and cubbyholes each holding a pair of skates, too many to count. At the far end of this room was a door without a handle, and pinned to it was a poster of a skater mid-twirl. The skater looked happy, unaware that her tooth had been blackened by 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 The signs of fatigue and stress were gone and had been replaced by a cold, unwavering determination.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 duty of care and I have to concede that it is our responsibility to protect you. As such, you will remain in Spectrum as a trainee agent. Under our careful supervision.’
Ruby tried to smile. ‘That’s good to know,’ she said.
A month ago, she’d have felt that LB’s office was the safest place on this earth. Now she couldn’t help feeling she was a fly, about to be swatted.
Problem was, she had no idea who was holding the swatter.
(#ulink_b47c7720-d18b-54b3-ba57-2b7f805865ac)
RUBY WAS JUST TRYING to figure out where Hitch might have got to when she spotted a note on the table in the waiting area.
Meet me in Froghorn’s coding room –he will be expecting you.
She was surprised that he had arranged for them to meet there, and it was odd that Froghorn had agreed to it – with the exception of Blacker, Froghorn generally made it clear that no one was welcome in his coding room. Seeing him so soon after she had stepped back into Spectrum was an unpalatable idea, but then she remembered Clancy’s words – ‘talk to Froghorn, I bet you anything he’ll tell you whatever you wanna know, just to make you feel small.’ It was true, Froghorn couldn’t resist bragging about all the secrets he knew, and let’s face it, she thought, he loves nothing better than to drone on about the late great Bradley Baker.
All I gotta do is get him talking, that’s not so difficult.
Knowledge was her only weapon, the only superpower she really had. And if she was going to find out the truth about how Spectrum’s most revered agent met his end then Froghorn was her only option.
The door to his coding room was unlocked, so she was puzzled when she discovered it empty of people. Miles Froghorn was usually very careful about security. Ruby took the opportunity to have a snoop around and she found a lot of interesting things.
There were numerous files stacked neatly on tables, and code books marked with post-its and bookmarks, and notes carefully written in ink. There were several books on data transmission, particularly error-correcting codes that allowed computers to know whether there were mistakes in information they received. It was a subject that fascinated Ruby.
She flipped open a book.
Parity bits are one of the simplest systems for ensuring error-free transmission of binary data. Note though that as they indicate only whether the information contains an even or odd number of 1s or 0s, they are vulnerable to bits in the chain being swapped rather than lost, which is something they cannot …
She stopped reading when she heard footsteps coming down the corridor. She moved away from the table and listened, but whoever it was walked right on by. She continued to peruse Froghorn’s papers. There was a whole hand-written list of what must be ideas for locking devices: swipe card, iris lock, thumbprint, keypad, image lock, bolt key, 5 key, pressure key, voice key.
It rather looked like he had been working on some sort of multi-coded security system, because there was a diagram which was basically three squares arranged like an upside-down L, with letters and numbers marked at particular intervals, and to the side of each of the blocks: E1 E2 E3. In the middle of the third square he had written FC1 FC2 FC3. Next to these were six small pieces of coloured paper; each one was labelled with one of the sets of letters on the diagram, E1, E2, E3 etc., and on each paper was written a word or words, some crossed out, some replaced. E1, for example, said: MUSCA. E2: SWAT; E3: TRANSMISSION, F1: THE SPECTRUM. FC2 said: ROTOR MACHINE and then this was crossed out and had been replaced with CHROMATIC. FC3 was just a?
It looked as if he had been trying to figure out the best method of securing each part of a building, or series of rooms.
There was a beep on Ruby’s watch and she very nearly jumped out of her skin. A YELLOW FLY, meaning ATTENTION! A message flashed across the screen.
HUGE MISTAKE, I MEANT TO SAY MEET ME IN FROGHORN’S OFFICE! IF YOU HAPPEN TO HAVE MADE IT INTO HIS CODING ROOM THEN GET OUT!
PS MEETING CANCELLED.
Ruby did as instructed and got out of there quick, just in time as it turned out, because as she speed-walked along the corridor she ran into Froghorn coming the other way.
‘Oh, you’re back,’ he said slowly, drawing the words out as if he’d just found something unpleasant on the underside of his shoe.
‘Hey, Froghorn,’ she said, deliberately ignoring the silent G so the word ‘Frog’ sounded out very clearly. His irritation could not be missed.
‘What a shame, did kiddie camp not work out for you?’
‘Genius Camp, you mean?’ said Ruby. ‘Yes, that was fun, but you know what they say, too much fun can get you bored, so I guess it’s good to run into you.’
‘I thought it was going to be a bad day,’ said Froghorn. ‘Viridian days are always a total drag.’
‘What are you bleating on about – viridian days? Jeepers, Froghorn, maybe you need to leave the building for an hour or two.’
‘I would if there was anyone who could possibly handle my job, but since we lost Lopez we’ve had a tough job recruiting anyone with half a brain.’
‘I’m surprised you didn’t bring up Bradley Baker again, you guys seem to think the sun shone out of him.’
‘The sun did shine out of him,’ said Froghorn. ‘That’s exactly it, he was a sun ray. And even though he’s dead and gone to grey he never was and never will be some pale imitation of an agent, some little girl living a little pastel-pink life.’
‘Boy, Froghorn, that’s a very colourful picture you paint. So if you’re saying Baker was sunshine yellow and I’m insipid pink – which, by the way, I take great exception to – then what are you? Potato-head beige?’
‘I’m someone authorised to be here, what are you? Some little girl who needs to go back to school?’ He checked his watch theatrically.
‘No one said that about Bradley Baker and wasn’t he just some little kid when he started out?’ said Ruby. Her comment had the desired effect.
‘Bradley Baker was never just some little kid. He was extraordinary, a talent the like of which we will never see again.’
‘What is it with you guys and Bradley Baker? I’ve yet to hear one actual thing which makes this bozo so different from anyone else.’
Froghorn stepped back like he’d been slapped. ‘What?’ he said.
RUBY:‘You people talk about him like he’s some kinda super-agent, but he took orders same as you, same as me, same as every agent in this building.’
FROGHORN:‘Baker took orders because it was his job to take orders. It didn’t mean that he wasn’t capable of making his own decisions.’
RUBY: ‘So you’re saying he did make his own decisions?’
FROGHORN: ‘Of course he did, he was highly qualified, lived by his own rules.’
RUBY: ‘So he was a maverick, a renegade … took authority into his own hands, that sorta thing?’
FROGHORN: ‘No! That’s not what I’m saying, not at all! He never did anything to undermine the agency.’
RUBY:‘I don’t get it, now you’re telling me he was a zip-it and toe-the-line type of a guy? Make your mind up, Froghorn, either he had guts and initiative or he was just another listen-up-and-do-as-you’re-told team player.’
FROGHORN:‘The sheer magnitude of what you don’t know about Agent Baker’s guts and heroism would fill this atrium. Baker was an agent in a million.’
RUBY (YAWNING): ‘Yeah, right, so everyone keeps telling me, but it all sounds like a lot of hot air if you want my opinion.’
FROGHORN: ‘No one wants your opinion.’
RUBY: ‘Yeah, and why is that? I’m guessing because no one is tough enough to hear the truth.’
