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DEPARTMENT 14 Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)
DEPARTMENT 15 Royal Air Force
DEPARTMENT 16 Northern Ireland Office
DEPARTMENT 17 Scotland Office
DEPARTMENT 18 Wales Office
DEPARTMENT 19 CLASSIFIED
DEPARTMENT 20 Territorial Police Forces
DEPARTMENT 21 Department of Health
DEPARTMENT 22 Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ)
DEPARTMENT 23 Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC)
PROLOGUE
BRENCHLEY, KENT3
NOVEMBER 2007
Jamie Carpenter was watching TV in the living room when he heard the tyres of his dad’s car crunch across the gravel drive much, much earlier than usual. Jamie looked at the clock on the wall above the TV and frowned. It was quarter past five. Julian Carpenter had never, to the best of Jamie’s memory, arrived home from work before seven o’clock, and even that was only on special occasions like his mum’s birthday or when Arsenal were playing in the Champions League.
He hauled himself off the sofa, a tall, slightly awkward fourteen-year-old with a skinny frame and unruly brown hair, and went to the window. His dad’s silver Mercedes was parked where it always was, in front of the garage that stood apart from their house. Jamie could see his father in the glow of the car’s brake lights, pulling something out of the boot.
Maybe he’s sick, Jamie thought. But as he looked closely at his dad, he didn’t think he looked ill; his eyes were bright and wide in the red light and he was moving quickly, putting things from the boot into his pockets. And Jamie noticed something else; he kept looking over his shoulder towards the road, as if he thought—
Something moved in the corner of Jamie’s eye, near the oak tree at the bottom of the garden. He turned his head, gooseflesh breaking out suddenly along his arms and back, and he realised he was scared. Something is wrong here, he thought. Very wrong.
The tree looked the same as it always did, its gnarled trunk tilted to the left, its huge roots rippling the lawn and bending the garden wall out towards the road.
Whatever Jamie had seen, his father had seen it too. He was standing very still behind the car, staring up into the branches of the tree. Jamie looked closely at the tree and the long black shadows the moonlight cast across the grass. Whatever had moved wasn’t moving any more. But as he stared, he realised that there was something different.
There were more shadows than there should be.
The tree’s leaves were gone for the winter and the shadows should have been the straight lines of empty branches. But the dark patterns covering the lawn were thick and bulky, as though the branches were full of—
What? Full of what?
Jamie looked back to his dad. He suddenly wanted him in the house, right now. His father was still staring at the tree, holding something in his hand, something that Jamie couldn’t quite make out.
Movement, again, by the tree.
Fear rose into Jamie’s throat.
Come inside, Dad. Come inside now. There’s something bad out there. The shadows on the lawn began to move.
Jamie stared, too scared to scream, as the dark patterns began to unfold. He looked up into the tree and now he could see the branches shifting as whatever was in there began to move, could hear the rustling of the bark as something – lots of things, it sounds like there’s lots of them – started to move through the boughs of the oak.
He looked desperately at his father who was still staring into the tree, lit by the red lights from the car.
Why are you just standing there? Come inside, please, please.
Jamie turned his head to look at the tree. On the other side of the window a girl’s face, pale, with dark red eyes and lips drawn into a snarl, stared through the glass, and he screamed so loudly he thought he would tear his vocal chords.
The face disappeared into the darkness and now there was movement as Jamie’s father ran up the drive towards the house. The front door slammed open and Julian Carpenter burst into the living room at the same time his wife ran in from the kitchen.
“Get away from the windows, Jamie!” he shouted.
“Dad, what’s—”
“Just do what I tell you and don’t argue! There isn’t time.”
“Time for what, Julian?” asked Jamie’s mum, her voice tight and high-pitched. “What’s going on?”
Julian ignored her, taking out a mobile phone that Jamie didn’t recognise. He punched numbers into the handset, and held it to his ear. “Frank? Yeah, I know. I know. What’s the ETA? And that’s accurate? OK. Take care of yourself.”
He hung up the phone and grabbed Jamie’s mum’s hand. “Julian, you’re scaring me,” she said, softly. “Please tell me what’s happening.”
He looked into his wife’s pale, confused face. “I can’t,” he replied. “I’m sorry.”
Jamie watched in a daze. He didn’t understand what was happening here, didn’t understand it at all. What was moving through the darkness outside their house? Who was Frank? His dad didn’t have any friends called Frank, he was sure of it.
The window behind Jamie exploded as a branch from the oak tree came through it like a missile and smashed their coffee table into splinters. This time his mum screamed as well.
“Get away from the windows!” bellowed Julian again. “Come over here next to me!”
Jamie scrambled up from the floor, grabbed his mum’s hand and ran across the room towards his father. They backed up against the wall opposite the window, his dad placing an arm across him and his mother, before putting his right hand into his coat pocket and taking out a black pistol.
His mother squeezed his hand so tightly that he thought the bones would break. “Julian!” she screamed. “What are you doing with that gun?”
“Quiet, Marie,” his father said, in a low voice.
In the distance, Jamie heard sirens approaching.
Thankyouthankyouthankyou. We’re going to be all right.
Outside in the garden a grotesque high-pitched laugh floated through the night air.
“Hurry,” Julian whispered. “Please hurry.”
Jamie didn’t know who his father was talking to, but it wasn’t him or his mum. Then suddenly the garden was full of light and noise as two black vans, sirens blaring and lights spinning on their roofs, screeched into the drive. Jamie looked out at the oak tree, now lit bright red and blue. It was empty.
“They’ve gone!” he shouted. “Dad, they’ve gone!”
He looked up at his father, and the look on his face scared Jamie more than everything else that had happened so far.
Julian stepped away from his family and stood facing them. “I have to go,” he said, his voice cracking. “Remember that I love you both more than anything in the world. Jamie, look after your mother. OK?”
He turned and headed towards the door.
Jamie’s mum ran forward and grabbed his arm, spinning him round. “Where are you going?” she cried, tears running down her face. “What do you mean, look after me? What’s happening?”
“I can’t tell you,” he replied, softly. “I have to protect you.”
“From what?” his wife screamed.
“From me,” he answered, his head lowered. Then he looked up at her and, with a speed Jamie had never seen before, twisted his arm free from her grip and pushed her backwards across the living room. She tripped over one of the smashed legs of the coffee table and Jamie ran forward and caught her, lowering her to the ground. She let out a horrible wailing cry and pushed his hands away, and he looked up in time to see his father walk out of the front door.
He shoved himself up off the floor, cutting his hand on the broken table glass, and ran to the window. Eight men wearing black body armour and carrying submachine guns stood in the drive, the barrels of their weapons pointed at Julian.
“Put your hands above your head!” one of the men shouted. “Do it now!”
Jamie’s dad took a few steps and stopped. He looked up into the tree for a long moment before glancing quickly over his shoulder at the window and smiling at his son. Then he walked forward, pulled the pistol from his pocket and pointed it at the nearest man.
The world exploded into deafening noise and Jamie clamped his hands over his ears and screamed and screamed and screamed as the submachine guns spat fire and metal and shot his father dead.
TWO YEARS LATER
Chapter 1
TEENAGE WASTELAND
Jamie Carpenter tasted blood and dirt and swore into the wet mud of the playing field.
“Get off me!” he gurgled.
A shrieking laugh rang out behind his head and his left arm was pushed further up his back, sending a fresh thunderclap of pain through his shoulder.
“Break it, Danny,” someone shouted. “Snap it off!”
“I just might,” replied Danny Mitchell, between gales of laughter. Then his voice was low and right next to Jamie’s ear. “I could, you know,” he whispered. “Easy.”
“Get off me, you fat —”
A huge hand, its fingers like sausages, gripped his hair and pushed his face back into the dirt. Jamie squeezed his eyes shut and flailed around with his right hand, trying to push himself up from the sucking mud.
“Someone grab his arm,” Danny shouted. “Hold it down.” A second later Jamie’s right arm was gripped at the wrist and pressed to the ground.
Jamie’s head started to ache as his body begged for oxygen. He couldn’t breathe, his nostrils full of sticky, foul-smelling mud, and he couldn’t move, his arms pinned and fifteen stone of Danny Mitchell sitting astride his back.
“That’s enough!”
Jamie recognised the voice of Mr Jacobs, the English teacher.
My knight in shining armour. A fifty-year-old man with sweat patches and bad breath. Perfect.
“Mitchell, get off him. Don’t make me tell you again!” the teacher shouted, and suddenly the pressure on Jamie’s arm and the weight on his back were gone. He lifted his face from the mud and took a huge breath, his chest convulsing.
“We were just playing a game, sir,” he heard Danny Mitchell say.
Great game. Really fun.
Jamie rolled over on to his back and looked round at the faces of the crowd who had gathered to watch his humiliation. They looked down at him with a mixture of excitement and disgust.
They don’t even like Danny Mitchell. They just hate me more than they hate him.
Mr Jacobs hunkered down next to him.
“Are you all right, Carpenter?”
“I’m fine, sir.”
“Mitchell tells me this was some kind of game. Is that true?
” Over the teacher’s shoulder Jamie saw Danny looking at him, the warning clear in his face.
“Yes, sir. I think I lost, sir.”
Mr Jacobs looked down at Jamie’s mud-splattered clothes. “It certainly looks like it.” The teacher held his hand out and Jamie took it and pulled himself up out of the mud with a loud sucking noise. A couple of people in the crowd giggled, and Mr Jacobs whirled round, his face red with anger.
“Get out of here, you vultures!” he shouted. “Get to your next lesson right now or I’ll see you all for detention at the end of the day!”
The crowd dispersed, leaving Jamie and Mr Jacobs standing alone on the field.
“Jamie,” the teacher began, “if you ever want to talk about anything, you know where my office is.”
“Talk about what, sir?” Jamie asked.
“Well, you know, your father, and… well, what happened.”
“What did happen, sir?”
Mr Jacobs looked at him for a long moment, then dropped his eyes. “Let’s go,” he said. “You need to get cleaned up before next lesson. You can use the staff bathroom.”
When the bell rang for the end of the day, Jamie made his way slowly up the school drive towards the gate. His instincts were normally sharp, especially where danger was concerned, but somehow Danny Mitchell had crept up behind him during afternoon break. He wasn’t going to let that happen again.
He slowed his pace, drifting in and out of groups of children ambling towards buses and waiting cars, his pale blue eyes darting left and right, looking for an ambush.
His chest tightened when he saw Danny Mitchell off to his left, laughing his ridiculous laugh and waving his arms violently around as he made a point to his adoring gaggle of sycophants.
Jamie slipped between two buses and across the road, waiting for the shouts and running feet that would mean he had been seen, but they didn’t come. Then he was into the neat, identical rows of houses that made up the estate he and his mother lived in, and out of sight of the school.
The Carpenters had moved three times in the two years since Jamie’s dad had died. Immediately after it happened the police had come to see them and told them that his father had been involved in a plot to sell intelligence to a British terrorist cell, classified intelligence from his job at the Ministry of Defence. The policemen had been kind, and sympathetic, assuring them there was no evidence that either he or his mother had known anything, but it didn’t matter. The letters had started to arrive almost immediately, from patriotic neighbours who didn’t want the family of a traitor living in their quiet Daily Mail-reading neighbourhood.
