Here, finally, is the sequel to my story "An Object Lesson"; I hope everyone enjoys it!
A couple of words on this; yes, it will eventually be slash, quite probably Wolf/Alex, since in the reviews for AOL, the slash votes won by something like 54 for to 21 against. Me, I'd say that's a pretty convincing victory.
DON'T LEAVE JUST YET, if you didn't vote for it, though. Although it will eventually be slash, Alex is still fourteen, and I'm not going to be mystically skipping eight years just for the sake of writing a homosexual relationship into my story. I'm not THAT desperate for vicarious thrills. :D Legal age, as far as I'm concerned, is at least 18 - you might be legally able to have sex at 16, but I haven't yet met ONE 16-year-old who was genuinely emotionally mature enough - and I doubt Wolf would even consider thinking about entertaining thoughts like that about Cub until the 'kid' was at least 21. At least. In fact, if it were down to dear ol' Wolf, he probably would never make a move, so we're just going to have to hope that Alex learns to be proactive in the next seven or so years.
What I'm saying is, if you didn't vote for slash, don't worry. You've still got a good several chapters before it appears, and when it DOES appear, it will be clearly labelled. This story is working up to a slash relationship, but it's not going to have any mention of any non-platonic relationships at all for a good long while yet.
On a different note, I'm going to make one quick plea here; please, if someone wants to use an idea of mine, could they PLEASE at least credit me? I genuinely didn't think that this was necessary, since it's not exactly a common occurence that someone uses my ideas; but there've been a couple of incidents recently which make me think I should just clear this up a little. Obviously, I'm not going to agree to someone just stealing my stories, but if you DO want to use ideas of mine, please at least credit me. Unless it's patently unreasonable, I'm not too bothered, but I WOULD like to be given some credit for it; and if you could drop me a line, that'd be nice too. I'd like to know what to look for; I'd be interested in reading it!
On to the chapter then, and the end of one of the longest Author Notes ever.
DISCLAIMER: Yep, I'm Anthony Horowitz. I'm writing here to slot in, via fanfiction, all the really over-the-top angst I couldn't put into the real thing; after all, why get paid to do something when you could do it for free?
Give over, of COURSE I don't own it.
"You," Alex said, panting, and throwing a glare over one shoulder, "Are a fucking idiot."
Even in the middle of what should have been a thoroughly off-putting situation, Wolf managed to give him a distracted grin by way of an answer.
If Wolf hadn't given the drug ring they'd infiltrated quite such a high-handed moral speech a couple of hours ago, they could have sheltered with them – albeit at risk of both blowing their cover and possibly starting a minor gang war, but either way it would have been better than the situation they found themselves in now, out in the open, suddenly-deserted streets of downtown Quito being shot at by several heavily armed men.
What was worse was they didn't even know why they were being shot at.
Wolf grabbed his arm at that moment, pulling him out of his thoughts, and down a side alley – which just happened to be a dead end.
"Great! Now what do we d-"
Wolf ignored him, kicking open the door of one of the many deserted warehouses which were scattered around this area of the city, and shutting it firmly behind them. It wouldn't hold out long against the submachine gun, and both of them knew this – but any barrier was a good barrier at the moment.
"What the fuck do we do now!?" Alex repeated at him, in a low, furious hiss.
Wolf glanced around the room, eyes searching in the half gloom. "These warehouses all have more than one exit. You should know that by now."
"Yeah, because I've studied abandoned Ecuadorian warehouses in such depth." Alex returned, sarcastically, but began to search anyway.
Just as the machine gun fire started up again outside, Alex found it. "Here!" he hissed at Wolf. The exit he'd was a heavy metal door set into the back of the warehouse, the kind used specifically to keep people out or in – Alex had experience with them. Hopefully, it would open onto the other side of the brick wall which had blocked the alleyway outside.
Wolf didn't waste time congratulating him, trying the handle, and giving a sigh of relief when the door opened, with the slight screech of rusted metal.
"Come on, Cub." He whispered, careful to keep his voice low. The men chasing them knew they'd come down this alleyway, and it was only a matter of time before they got to this particular warehouse, but there was no point giving them any more information than they already had.
"Yeah." Alex pushed the door shut behind him, and grabbed the lockpicks he tried to keep with him. Smithers' brother, Nick, had given them to him before they left on this assignment, with a vague comment about how they 'might come in handy'; Alex intended to make good use of them now. Even a submachine gun would take a while to get through a metal door this thick, if it was locked.
"What the hell are you doing?!"
"Trying to lock it, so just let me get on with it!"
"Cub, we don't have time-"
"I'm trying to make us some time, now shut up!" Alex hissed at him, and, miraculously, Wolf did actually listen to him.
Once he'd found the right lockpick, which was, in many ways, the longest part of the job – since it was a deadbolt, designed to be as strong as possible, he'd needed two, the standard L-shaped hook pick, and his favourite long pick, to deal with the hammers – it was relatively simply to slide the lock shut. Hearing the satisfying 'click' of the mechanism sliding into place – it was amazing that he'd managed to hear it at all, given the way Wolf had been fidgeting nervously right behind him – Alex stood, carefully slipped the picks back into his pocket, and turned.
"Shall we?"
"Lets."
They were off and running again. Although they both knew that the metal door would, theoretically, give them enough time to lose their pursuers – the pair of them could be long gone by the time the men got through the door – it wasn't wise to delay. The fable of 'the tortoise and the hare' was one every MI6 operative learnt and took to heart; never do anything slower than necessary. More than that, these people, whoever they were, obviously had some idea of who they were, or they wouldn't be shooting at them. Alex knew that, if this group couldn't kill him and Wolf themselves, there was a large chance that they would simply tell the drug ring the pair of them had been investigating who they really were. If they were revealed as spies, there was a good chance they'd be killed if they tried to go back; and neither of them were willing to take the risk that their cover hadn't already been blown.
Which left them with just one place to go, and they had to get there quickly.
It took them another forty five minutes to reach the dilapidated 'IT store' which hid the Quito branch of the British Secret Service, though the adrenaline running through them made it seem much longer; Alex expected to hear gunshots again at any second, to see the concrete kick up around him, and was more than relieved when they finally stumbled inside the little shop.
He had been surprised when Mrs. Jones had told them about it – he hadn't known that Britain had any ties with other countries except the standard Embassies, but she had intimated that these branches existed in a lot of countries. She had dismissed them as 'standard practice', but they were still new and strange to Alex.
Inside, the apparently dilapidated little shop was impressively high-tech, selling up-to-date equipment Alex would never have expected – though he had never doubted that the front was a properly working shop. Wolf, ignoring the surroundings after the first careful scan, headed over to the counter, saying, slowly, "My brother and I need a new hard-drive." He paused for a long moment, waiting for a reaction of some kind; none came. "We need a new, bigger hard-drive?" he tried.
Alex sighed; the most they had got from that was a mere twitch of a reaction from the weedy young man, hardly more than a flicker of incomprehension, which might or might not have been feigned. "My brother's mistaken – our hard drive is fine." He said, in rapid Spanish, and watched, out of the corner of his eye, as Wolf winced at forgetting something as basic as the language barrier. "Our internet connection has broken down; what we're looking for is someway to reconnect. Do you have anything which could help us?"
The man smiled properly at that. "I might have something for you." he agreed, eagerly, his eyes curious. "It's probably out the back, though – why don't you come through with me?"
Behind him, Wolf muttered, "See, this is doing it properly. Old-fashioned spying, Cub, none of this new-fangled gadgetry."
"From the man who forgot the password!" Alex returned, following the young man into the back. "And how old are you? 'New fangled gadgetry'?!"
"Shut up, Cub. Look, at least we're here, right? And, god, just look at this place…"
Alex shook his head. "Boys with toys…"
In the back – which was even more high-tech than the equipment being sold out in the front, unsurprisingly, and, cleverly, included nothing which couldn't be either easily hidden, or explained away as the stock for the store – the young man left them with a middle aged woman, who thanked and dismissed him in perfect, accentless Spanish, before turning to them, and reverting to English.
"You would be 'Wolf' and 'Cub', I assume?" she said, rather perfunctorily. "We were informed you were in the city. I wasn't expecting to see you quite this soon…"
Wolf, completely serious and professional now, said, coolly, "In all honesty, we were hoping not to see you at all, ma'am; but, as I'm sure you know, circumstances change."
"Obviously." She agreed, dryly. "What happened?"
"We don't know." Wolf shrugged, calmly. "Cub and I were about to be given an assignment by the one of the ring-leaders, when someone started shooting at us."
"How much information on the ring did you get?" She asked, crisply.
"Enough." Alex hedged. "But, if you'll forgive me saying so, we don't know you enough to start telling you these things. We don't even know your name."
"Of course." She nodded. "And as for my name, I'm sorry, but you're never likely to find it out. In this business, I've found that my name is a valuable commodity, and I don't hand it out to just anyone who asks; I do a dangerous enough job as it is, without making it more dangerous still." She paused, and offered Alex a smile without warmth and without humour. "If it comes to that, I don't know your name either – do I, Cub?" He inclined his head, as near as he was going to get to acknowledging the point. "Names are dangerous things, and I don't want to risk telling anyone yours if a situation comes up."
There was a long pause, until Wolf finally broke it. "So, what do we do now?"
"You're to check in with HQ in London – I'll set up a live feed for you – and you'll tell them your information. Once that's done with, we'll see about getting you out of here. Your cover is almost certainly blown by now, so you're as good as useless here anyway."
They both winced at the reminder of their failure.
"You're sure no one followed you here?" she asked, sharply.
"Certain." Alex said, firmly, and Wolf nodded.
"Good."
"When you say you'll get us out of 'here', do you mean this shop, this city, or this country?" Wolf asked, shrewdly, and the woman smiled tersely at him.
"I can get you out of the city." She told him, firmly, "But it's too dangerous to try to get you out of the country in one sweep, you'd be too easily tracked. Not to mention the fact that the easiest way to do it would be by air, and that's just not possible. This is Quito, after all; it's the most difficult airport to fly in and out of in the world. Also, we don't know the size of the organisation – if they even are an organisation, we don't even know that yet – so we don't know if they're watching the airport, or how much power they have over the borders."
Alex frowned at that. "You mean it's not Scorpia?"
The woman looked at him, and though Alex knew she had been surprised to find herself faced with a teenager – there had been just the slightest glimmer of surprise in that first moment – there was no sign of it on her face now. "No. We've already checked with the major terrorist organisations – Al Qaeda, Farq, ETA, Scorpia, all the majors that we have any sort of communication with. None of them have sent anyone after either of you…"
"Would they even tell you?"
"You'd be surprised." She said, rather ironically. "It's a dirty, underhanded world we're living in, but even our world has some rules, and everyone plays by them, even that lot. And this group, whoever they are, are breaking the most fundamental of them."
"What's that?"
"You don't move against someone unless they've done something to you."
"What do you mean?" Alex asked, frowning more deeply now.
She looked at him for a moment, before replying. "Organisations like ETA and Farq, and Scorpia, they do things on a massive scale, and it's our job to prevent that wherever possible. But we work against organisations, not individuals. These people are going for you and Wolf specifically, and as far as we know, you've never done anything to them. That's the rule they're breaking."
"Seems kind of petty." Alex commented.
"Quite possibly." The woman agreed, "But terrorism is already a terrible enough thing; petty rules like that keep it in check, at least to a certain degree, and that's something to keep hold of. We don't want to open that particular floodgate just yet." (1)
"Right." Wolf said, briskly. "So, how are we getting out of the city?"
"You're going to help me load the van for a large delivery to one of the factories on the outskirts." She said, suddenly just as brisk. "Then you'll get into the van and help to unload when it arrives at the factory; you'll stay behind to help set up the equipment. From there, they'll get you over the mountains in one of their big commercial loads towards the ports; they'll drop you off in one of the larger towns. You'll be met and debriefed, and taken to one of the large industrial centres within the town. Then you'll be helicoptered out to a small airport in Colombia, where you'll take one of the chartered planes to London."
Wolf nodded. "Long journey."
"It's tortuous, yes, but it's safest." She agreed. "In that many parts, is less likely that whoever this is will be able to follow you."
Alex simply sighed. "You know you're in trouble when Colombia is safer for you."
The woman actually cracked a smile at that. "Yes. No one said this would be an easy job."
An hour and a half later, after a swift interview with the Head of MI6 and the Head of Special Operations, Alan Blunt and Mrs. Jones, Alex and Wolf were in a van headed out of the city, wincing every time the van hit a rut, throwing them either into each other, or into the walls of the van. The journey was hellish – two and a half hours in hot, humid semi-darkness, jolted around by the movement of the van, and crammed in with boxes and wires. When it finally stopped at the factory, it was a genuine relief.
The person driving was the boy who had been at the front of the store – "That explains the driving." Wolf muttered – and he was obviously expecting them, as he was totally unsurprised when they appeared out of the back of the van to help him unload.
It took about half an hour to unload, and the boy left them at the factory, shouting across to the man who had received the 'shipment' that 'they were the technicians they had promised them who'd help them set up'.
"Come with me." The man told them, in perfect English. "Our next convoy leaves for the ports in two hours. You had better get cleaned up and change your clothes." He glanced, rather disparagingly, at their dusty, torn, sweat-stained clothes, and dirt-smeared faces. "OK. We'll – kit you up, then ship you out."
They were taken to a suite of private rooms – "The shower's just through there; I'll have food and clothes sent up to you…" – which apparently belonged to a recently-retired director, and left there.
They sat in silence for a few moments, before Alex said, very softly, "D'you think it's bugged?"
"South America, Cub. Almost definitely."
"Oh."
There was a long pause, before Wolf stood and stretched. "Do you want to shower first, or shall I?"
"You go for it." Alex said, tiredly.
Wolf paused. "You OK, Cub?"
"Just dandy." At Wolf's suspicious look, he shrugged. "The end of an adrenaline high, you know? I'm knackered. I can sleep on the way to this village. You OK?"
"Fine." Wolf nodded. "Why wouldn't I be?"
"Oh, I don't know… we just got shot at, we nearly got killed by Ecuadorian drug dealers… you just fucked up our first mission…"
Wolf shot him a dark look. "Oh, come on, Cub, I had help."
Alex shrugged, but he was grinning. "Don't worry, you did fine. Just – maybe less of the moralising, next time?"
"Whatever." Wolf grumbled at him, heading for the small bathroom.
When they were both showered, and wearing the clothes they had been given – casual-but-sturdy T-shirt and shorts, and the standard sleeveless jacket bearing the company logo – Wolf glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece of the suite's little sitting room, and sighed.
"We've still got nearly two hours to kill… you should catch some sleep, Cub."
"The journey to this village is going to take, what – three days? Maybe four? I've got loads of time to sleep."
"Yeah – good luck sleeping in those lorries." Wolf muttered. "You know what the roads are like here, there's no way you're going to be able to…"
"Look." Alex interrupted. "How about I sleep for an hour, then you sleep for an hour, OK? That way, we both win, and we can be pretty certain we're not gonna get murdered in our sleep."
Wolf paused, then nodded, rather reluctantly. "Sure." He gestured at the doorway to the little bedroom, "You go first."
While Alex was sleeping, Wolf pulled his gun out of the shoulder holster he'd been wearing it in since they got to Ecuador – MI6 had somehow managed to get it through the strict customs officials, and Wolf didn't even want to know how they'd managed that – and began dissembling it, to give it the thorough clean he knew it needed by now. His movements were slow, unhurried and accurate, but his mind was far from being fully on the job, as he headed to the bathroom and grabbed a roll of toilet paper to start cleaning the grease and grit out of the mechanisms of his gun.
Having been used to extensive debriefing, going over what went wrong, and how things could be improved upon, it wasn't surprising that he should do the same for himself when he was pretty certain that no such thing would be on offer when they got back to England. It really didn't help that his partner could tell him so little about what was normal for MI6, since Cub had never experienced any of this stuff.
Ignoring that little gripe – since Wolf knew very well where the blame for that lay – he concentrated on re-structuring in his mind the way the mission had gone, picking apart both his and Cub's performances, and coming to the rather unwilling conclusion that yes, he had fucked up with his casual comments about drugs. He hadn't meant them to sound quite as bad as they did, but with hindsight, it was easy to see that that had been a massive wrong-footing.
Since working undercover was something totally alien to him up till now, it wasn't too surprising that he should have screwed up – but it would have been nice if his mistake hadn't been quite so major.
Before he knew it, the hour was up, and Cub – who had obviously set an alarm somehow – stumbled into the room, yawning, but awake, and sent Wolf to sleep with a raised eyebrow and a total refusal to listen to any of the man's protests about it. He might have felt stupid about accepting the protection of a fourteen year old while he was asleep, but he needed it just as much as Alex; and by now, he could fully accept that Alex was far from being an average teenager.
When he was woken an hour later to find that the face looking down at him wasn't Alex's, his first reaction was to lash out with a rather too-well-aimed punch, which hit the man right in the jaw.
Reeling backwards with one hand clutched to his face, hissing a rather loud Spanish swear word, the man – a standard employee of the company, Wolf now saw, rather ruefully – gave him a furious look, but his only reaction was to say, with forced politeness, "If sir would follow me, the convoy is just getting ready to leave."
"Oh, yeah." Wolf stood, waiting until he was sure that the man was no threat, and that he was out of range, before he stretched. "Where's Alex? My little brother?" That was the cover story they'd been given, and there was no reason to break it now, in front of a man he didn't know at all.
"He's still in the sitting room, sir, waiting. If sir would…"
"…follow you, yeah, gotcha." Wolf nodded, gesturing towards the door. "After you."
Alex, who was indeed waiting for him in the little sitting room, gave him a grin and a raised eyebrow, before ushering Wolf out ahead of him into the corridor behind the employee.
The lorries were massive, full of the fertilizer this factory apparently made, the company logo emblazoned on one side. Each had two drivers – one slept during the day, in the little bed in the back of the lorry, and took over to drive at night, which left the extra two seats in the front of one of these lorries clear for Alex and Wolf.
They had initially tried to split the pair of them up, but both had refused; if there was going to be trouble on this journey – and they had no reason to believe there wouldn't be – they needed to be in the same place to deal with it. The reason for suggesting it was good, but that didn't mean it was the best plan.
Wolf had been worried that they would be too easy to spot through the large windows of the lorry's driving cab, but after a few minutes on the dirt-track roads they were travelling on, the windows were so caked with dirt, he was a little amazed that the driver could see out, let alone worrying about anyone seeing in. Alex's reaction to being on the road was simpler. After about fifteen minutes talking across Wolf – who was in the middle seat – to the driver, gently grilling him about his life, he nodded, satisfied that they were safe, leant against the window, and went to sleep.
They had a half-hour stop at a run down rest-stop – a shack selling warm bottled water, and a single-cubicle loo – where the drivers swapped over, and they stretched their legs out for a bit, then they set off again. The mountain roads were beautiful, and the views were amazing, but by the time they had reached the highest point of the journey – the first driver had told them that from there, they would be able to see for 'nearly a hundred miles' – it was already dark. Finally, after grilling this new driver in much the same way Cub had grilled the first one, Wolf simply copied Alex, and fell asleep.
They kept this pattern up for the next two days, alternating between chatting in Spanish, and sleeping away the long, boring journey. The town they were headed for – San Lorenzo, an important sea-port in the northern region of Ecuador, near a major city called Esmeraldas – was fairly easy to get to, as it lay on one of the better, stronger roads in Ecuador, but it was still a long way to get there. Getting onto that road from the factory was far from easy as well.
Both Alex and Wolf almost welcomed the boredom, however – if they were bored, then things were going to plan; no one was trying to kill them. It was all very well to say that if they're shooting at you, you're doing something right; that didn't make the experience any pleasanter.
When they finally arrived at San Lorenzo, three days after they'd set out from Quito, they had started to help unload the vehicles, only to be firmly ushered away by the drivers.
"We don't help with the unloading," the 'day'-driver, Bayardo, told them, with a grin, "Our job is just to get them here."
"So – what do you do now?" Alex asked, stretching out arms which felt leaden after three days of inaction.
"In three days, we make the return journey." Bayardo shrugged. "So now, I make the most of not being in that damn lorry any more."
He left them there, with another friendly grin.
For a couple of minutes, they hovered, rather awkwardly, at the edge of the enormous parking lot where the convoy was parked, before they spotted a man in a crisp grey suit coming towards them. Stopping in front of them, he gave them a tight, unfriendly smile.
"You must be Wolf and Cub." he said, quietly, his voice as unfriendly as his smile. It wasn't a question. "I'm here to debrief you, so if you'd just-"
"Have you got any ID?" Wolf interrupted, casually, and the man frowned at the interruption, but unwillingly produced an ID card, handing it over and allowing them to check it. They had no way of telling whether this man was MI6, or even that he was who he said he was – they had come across enough fake IDs, after all – but he was their best bet. And, as far as they knew, no one was expecting to find them in the town of San Lorenzo.
"Are you satisfied now?" the man – whose name was apparently 'Jonathan Collins' – asked, rather snippily. "As I said, I'm here to debrief you – then we'll take you to the industrial centre on the Calle Leon, and helicopter you over to Bogotá. If everything goes to schedule, you should be out of Bogotá about an hour and a half after that."
Alex nodded, slowly, following as the man turned, heading towards one of the buildings which made up the business complex on the outskirts of San Lorenzo, where they had ended up. "So, if we're being debriefed here… what happens when we get back to England?"
Collins looked at him; he wasn't half as good at hiding his surprise on being faced with a teenager as the woman back in Quito. "I expect the Head of Operations will want to speak to you – you did fail in your mission, after all. But it wasn't through any fault of yours, so I doubt there will be any serious repercussions, if that's what you're worrying about."
Alex glanced at Wolf, who bit his lip. Wolf's misstep with the drug ring had been covered over by this – whatever 'this' was. As far as Alex was concerned, there was no reason to bring it up; he just had to make sure that Wolf didn't either, in some twisted form of penance.
Collins took them into an office on the third floor of the office block, and sat them down. "So; according to our Quito branch, you've already reported back to our superiors in London, so all I'm doing here is the formal side of things…"
Their 'debrief' was swift. Normally, debriefing would involve handing over what information they had managed to find, but they had essentially already been debriefed, so Collins' job was more explaining what came next than a formal debrief.
"… once you're in Colombia, you're out of our hands – but you won't leave the airport until you actually leave the country. If anything happens to you, head for this address," he handed them a slip of paper, waited until they had memorised the address on it, then took it back, and calmly lit one corner of it with a lighter, before dropping into the empty metal bin at one side of his desk. "But we're not expecting anything to go wrong. Is all of that clear?"
Wolf nodded; Alex simply shrugged; it wasn't like there was anything to say. They'd been over this several times already.
The airport in Bogotá, 'Aeropuerto Internacional El Dorado', was comfortable enough, if a little dull. Their flight, a British Airways chartered plane due to land at Heathrow, was leaving in an hour; they had checked in, had looked half-heartedly through the duty free shops, and were now attempting to lounge in the impressively uncomfortable airport chairs, waiting for their flight to be called for boarding.
Wolf was reading one of Colombia's national newspapers, El Colombiano, and drinking a coffee; Alex was sipping his own coffee, and idly people watching, wondering who was heading where, and trying to amuse himself by guessing the content of people's conversations. It wasn't working.
He had been watching one man for nearly five minutes before he managed to place him.
Trying not to be too obvious about it, he nudged Wolf, who gave him a grumpy look from behind his newspaper. "What?"
"That guy, over there." He said, without taking his eyes off him. "By that rack of postcards, see?" Wolf carefully folded his paper, and looked over.
"Yeah, what about him?"
"Is it me, or does he look – familiar to you?"
Wolf frowned, looking at the guy a little harder. Alex was careful to look away from him – the last thing they wanted was for this guy to look over and see him, if he was the person Alex thought he was. "Holy shi-i-it…" his partner hissed, slowly. "Vicario, isn't it? Ernesto Vicario."
"I thought so too." Alex said, grimly.
"But why the hell would he be in Colombia?!" Wolf returned, looking away from Vicario as though completely uninterested in him, though his eyes were intense when he looked at Alex. "Colombia's a trouble spot; it's known for exporting drugs. Why would he try and get drugs out of Colombia, not Ecuador?"
"Who said he was exporting drugs?" Alex whispered back. "Think about it. He's not one of the mules – he doesn't carry the drugs himself, he's too high up for that. I bet I know what's happened; when whoever it was didn't kill us, they went to the drug ring they'd seen us working with, and blew our cover, hoping we'd head back there and get killed."
Wolf nodded, slowly. "But they're not going to risk flying out of Ecuador when they know that we know that's where they operate."
Alex nodded. "Exactly. They need to warn their contact in the British government; they don't know whether we're listening in on their telephone calls, or intercepting their communication somehow, so they've got to send someone, but they're not going to dare send anyone out of Ecuador, so they come to Colombia. This guy isn't trafficking drugs, he's taking information out of the country. The ring is going to break up for the next couple of years, so if we don't find out who their contact is now, we won't be able to for the next several years."
Wolf thought this through for a moment, watching as Vicario – a middle-ranking member of the drug ring they had been trying to infiltrate, the man who had taken Wolf under his wing – headed from the rack of postcards to the men's toilets.
"If you're right, we'd better hope he's on the same flight as us." He said, finally. "Then we can follow him, get a watch on him."
"Exactly." Alex nodded, standing up. "So we've got to find out whether he's on our flight."
Wolf frowned up at him. "How the hell do you expect to find that out? What are you going to do, go up and ask him?"
"Nope." Alex grinned at him. "I'm going to steal his ticket."
Wolf's frown became a glare. "Alex, that's fucking suicidal."
"No, it's not – he's never seen me, as he?" Alex and Wolf had infiltrated the ring separately, at different levels; Alex had been carefully courting those in the lower levels, the dealers and the mules, pretending to be a typical teenager, curious about drugs and eager to earn some money as quickly and as easily as possible – he had been sieving through whatever information he could get about the drug ring's practical effects in Quito, finding out how much was known about their involvement in England. It wasn't much, but they had both known that this assignment was going to take a while to give anything back; they had to make sure they were trusted before anyone would tell them anything. As it was though, that meant that Vicario had never seen Alex before, and that was going to prove useful now.
"We can't be sure that the people who were shooting at us didn't have photos." Wolf pointed out, harshly.
"Yeah, but we can be pretty sure they didn't show them to Vicario, can't we?"
"Why on earth not? He's the one going to England, he'd need to be able to recognise us!"
"What for? It's not like they're looking for us, is it? They just want to warn their contact." Alex frowned. "We don't even know for certain that our cover's been fully blown yet." He paused for a brief second to let that sink in. "We're wasting time. Look, we just have to hope that he doesn't recognise me, OK?"
"Pretty big risk to – Cub! Alex, get back here!"
Alex didn't pay any attention to him, heading for the loos they'd seen Vicario enter; it was just lucky coincidence that they'd seen him at all, it was incredibly lucky that this ring had sent someone they recognised, and Alex wasn't going to risk losing sight of the guy for the sake of winning an argument with Wolf.
Vicario was stood at the sinks, washing his hands when Alex got to the loos – thinking quickly, Alex staggered over to the sinks, splashing water on his face and leaning against it, trying to look as sick as possible. Vicario barely spared him a glance, turning off the tap, and heading over to the hand-dryer. As he lifted his hands, his jacket hitched up, and Alex could see his ticket and passport in the back pocket of his jeans – perfect.
He pushed himself off the sinks, and stumbled back over to the door, being careful to brush heavily against Vicario.
"Lo siento," he apologised, his voice low and rough, and Vicario frowned at him, but nothing more.
He grinned at Wolf as he headed back over to their seats, in response to his partner's stinging glare."You're the most fool-hardy, stupid brat I've ever met." Wolf informed him, firmly, as he sat down.
"You forgot 'incredibly lucky', as well." Alex returned, with another lazy grin, handing over the ticket and passport he'd lifted from the drug-runner as he'd stumbled into him.
Wolf took them, and looked at them. "Shit – he's not on our flight."
"Which one is he on?"
"Delta Airlines, flying into London Gatwick. Leaves two hours after ours." Wolf grimaced. "Bastard's travelling under a fake name, and all."
"We really need to be on his flight…"Alex frowned, and Wolf nodded, slowly. "How much money have you got on you?"
Wolf shrugged. "I've got a credit card, I guess…"
Alex nodded. "That'll do – you know you'll get reimbursed. Travel expenses, and all that. You go and get us two tickets for that flight, OK? Maybe they'll take our old tickets in part exchange, or something."
"Cub, couldn't we just take our flight, then head down to Gatwick and follow him when he gets in?" Wolf sighed, but he was already standing up, folding his newspaper under his arm.
"What, and risk missing him because of a traffic jam, or because there's a train strike on, or something stupid like that?" Alex asked, raising an eyebrow at him. "We've already buggered this up once, let's not risk doing it again."
"Fair point." He heaved another sigh. "So what are you going to do while I'm getting these tickets?"
Alex took back Vicario's ticket and passport. "Well, if we're going to all this trouble to make sure we're on his flight, we need to be certain that he'll be on the flight, too." He grinned. "I'm going to go and hand these in, make sure he gets them back."
They met up fifteen minutes later, back at the seats, just as the tannoy asked 'Alejandro Torres' – Vicario's alias – to come to the information desk.
"I really bloody hope I get reimbursed for this." Wolf grumbled, handing Alex his new ticket. "That cost me nearly two thousand quid."
"I'm sure you will be." Alex nodded, absently. "We need to, um – book out of the British Airways flight, don't we? Otherwise they'll expect us to turn up and fly with them."
Wolf shook his head. "Just let them call us. You know, 'this is the last call for passenger whoever flying on flight BA749 to Heathrow'. Just let 'em get on with it."
Alex shrugged. "Whatever you say."
The wait was the worst part of it. As far as it was possible, they tried to keep Vicario in sight, without looking too suspicious, but the extra two hours of sitting around did nothing for their nerves. Weirdly enough, Wolf was the worst of the two of them, and shifting nearly continuously. When Alex finally called him on it, he just shrugged.
"I'm not used to waiting like this."
"You were in the," he lowered his voice. "Sorry. You were in the SAS, for god's sake – are you trying to tell me that you've never had to wait around before?"
"There was plenty of waiting, but I knew what I was waiting for!" Wolf hissed, by way of reply. "And it wasn't waiting like this. It was just – waiting."
"Oh, and that makes so much sense." Alex returned, sarcastically, but let it drop. Sometimes, he wasn't sure he wanted to understand the way Wolf's mind worked.
When they finally boarded the plane, they were relieved to find that, although they were a decent way away from Vicario, he was still in their line of vision – just. Although they had bought the tickets extremely late, they had been among the first to check in, and had had the opportunity to pick where they wanted to sit.
Alex maintained that the girl at the check-in desk had only offered them the chance to choose their seats because Wolf had been flirting with her so hard. Wolf had shrugged, and pointed out that it didn't matter why – and had added, with an obnoxious smirk, that Alex was just jealous of his amazing skill with 'the ladies'.
Alex had seriously considered never speaking to him again.
As the plane prepped itself for take-off, Wolf grabbed the laminated security leaflet, detailing everything from the brace position to how to put on a lifejacket, gripping it so hard that the plastic covered sheet was bent and the plastic was starting to go as white as the man's knuckles under the strain.
"Still not good with flying?" he asked, his voice half-teasing, half-sympathetic. Wolf shot him a dark look.
"You could say." He conceded, tightly.
"I thought you got over it?"
"Well, put it this way. I can jump out of a plane just fine – thanks to you," Alex acknowledged that with a quick grin, "But I'm not so good with them while they're taking off."
"Oh." Alex considered that for a couple of moments. "Anything I can do?"
"Just – don't make me talk until we're horizontal, OK?"
Wolf didn't calm down until the plane had reached cruising height, when he finally stopped examining the Emergency Procedure leaflet; but Alex noticed that his partner bought himself one of the small bottles of gin when the air hostess came round offering 'drinks or snacks'. He didn't drink it – he was too aware of what lay ahead of them – but he slipped it into one pocket, and it apparently made him feel better to have it with him.
Finally, he recovered enough to go over their strategy for when they got in to Gatwick with Alex, arguing over the best way to keep him in sight when they got over, and pretending that he had never been bothered by a plane taking off in his life. The entire conversation was conducted in whispers which the insistent purr of the plane engine easily covered – they couldn't risk being overheard.
"We can't risk losing him." Wolf said, quietly. "So it's just as well that we don't have any bags to collect…"
Alex nodded. "Yeah…" he paused, "I wonder what will happen to all our stuff…" Except for the clothes they were wearing – and whatever they had had with them when whoever-it-was had started shooting at them – they had left everything behind. Wolf had his wallet, some spare change, and his house-keys with him; Alex had been even less lucky, escaping with just an old mobile phone Smithers had given them when they had been kitted up for this mission; he couldn't even ring anyone on it. It did a whole variety of unexpected things, but Smithers had somehow forgot to make sure that it could still make telephone calls.
Wolf gave him a half-hearted smile. "Why, you left anything precious behind, Cub?"
"Apart from my dignity? Nah." He quirked a smile at his still-new partner. "Y'know, this is the first time I've ever failed an assignment." He paused. "Then again, it's really saying something that this is first assignment that's gone kind of 'to plan'. All of the others have fucked up way more than this." Wolf digested that answer in silence, until Alex finally broke the quiet, pulling their conversation back onto the topic at hand. "The real problem will be working out where he goes next, you know?"
"We just stick close to him." Wolf shrugged.
"But we've got to make sure he doesn't notice us 'sticking' to him." Alex pointed out. "It's a little difficult to stick close to someone and be subtle about it."
Wolf pulled a face. "We're travelling in a pair, Cub. If he looks our way, we just look like we're deep in conversation. I mean – he's not going to be expecting a two-person shadow, is he?"
Alex frowned. "I really don't think that'll be enough."
"It's the best we've got, OK? If we lose him, we lose any chance of finding out who their contact is."
The boy sighed. "Fine. But I really wish we had something a little more solid than that."
Wolf just shrugged. "Well, tell me if you think of anything." He said, pointedly, and Alex sighed again.
"Yeah. I know. Just – I hate going in so unprepared. We've got no idea what to expect."
"If we're lucky, we'll just follow this guy to a house, hear a name, then go and report it like good little lapdogs."
Alex raised an eyebrow. "Quick, touch wood."
They managed to bash out a basic outline for what they were going to do when they arrived in Gatwick in about half an hour, and settled down to enjoy the rest of the flight.
Alex slept for most of it, while Wolf read a book he'd picked up in the airport, 'Crónica de una Muerte Anunciada"; both of them choked down the truly horrible plane food they were given for 'dinner' – something which was masquerading itself as 'mozzarella chicken', but tasted like cardboard – on the basis that they didn't know what they were facing, and neither of them wanted to risk fainting because they hadn't eaten anything for too long. If nothing else, Wolf was brilliant for impressing little points like that on Alex.
When they arrived at Gatwick, it was dark outside, and the early September evening felt ridiculously cold to the pair of them, after nearly three weeks spent in South America. Alex shivered a little as he left the plane, eyes firmly fixed on Vicario's dark head a couple of people in front of him, and drew his flimsy jacket more tightly around himself.
He had a feeling it was going to be a long, cold night.
Vicario headed down to the station, with Alex and Wolf following behind him, carefully deep in conversation; anyone looking at them would have assumed they were the brothers they had been pretending to be, or even simply friends, and there was absolutely no reason for Vicario to assume that there was anything odd in their following him. After all, they were hardly the only people from their flight who were taking the Gatwick Express into London.
Carefully keeping Vicario in sight, they managed to score two seats relatively near the man on the train, with one of them keeping a careful – but hopefully subtle – eye on him throughout the journey.
It was Alex who first voiced their main worry. "What if he gets a taxi?" he said, very quietly, to Wolf, who frowned.
"Then I guess one of us will finally get to say 'follow that car'."
Alex shook his head, but smiled a little. "Sometimes I don't think you take this seriously enough."
Thankfully, when they got in to Victoria Station, just over half an hour later, Vicario headed for the Tube, buying himself a single ticket, and heading for the District and Circle line. By now, the five o'clock rush hour – when the trains would be so crowded, it was difficult to see your own feet, let alone keep a discrete eye on anyone else – had died down to a small but constant trickle of people, and keeping the man in sight was relatively easy.
After a brief change at Embankment, Vicario finally got off the Tube for good at Waterloo station, pausing, seemingly confused, staring round the enormous, nearly-empty station; Wolf and Alex actually passed him, figuring that if they stopped just because he did, they might as well tap him on the shoulder and announce that they were following him. It was Wolf who managed to get Alex to keep walking, taking a firm hold of his arm, and almost frog-marching him forward, towards a newsstand, selling copies of the London Evening Standard. Vicario finally decided where he was headed, standing stock-still for a couple of minutes, then down the escalator, past the entrance for the EuroStar, and out of the station.
When Wolf went to follow, Alex grabbed his arm. "There's a different way out of the station we can go. It comes out on the same street, we won't lose him, but we don't look so obvious following him." He muttered.
Wolf just nodded, and they continued their stalking.
Vicario headed across York Road – the main road outside Waterloo Station – before entering a kind of outside foyer. Alex and Wolf loitered outside while he pressed a button, on a kind of outside intercom system.
"Which flat are you wanting?" crackled through the poor speakers.
Vicario's voice was low when he replied, his accent noticeable if not thick. "Flat 118. Floor Two."
Alex glanced at Wolf, who nodded at him.
"Patching you through now, sir."
There was a long pause, which seemed to go on forever for the two listeners. "Who is it?" finally came through.
"Senor Westbourne, I'm Ernesto Vicario. I'm from…"
"Yes, I know. Wait there, I'll be down to let you in."
"Thank you, senor."
They waited for another couple of minutes, until they heard the click of a door opening. Alex was the one who risked it, walking 'past' the doorway, and glancing in, making sure he got a good view of the man's face. He had the light coming from behind him, but Alex did manage to get a relatively clear view of his face in spite of that.
"Were you followed here?" he was asking Vicario, as he let him in, but the door shut before either of them could here the reply.
"Did you get a good look at him?" Wolf asked, joining him as Vicario and this man, Westbourne, headed over to the lifts.
Alex nodded, slowly, frowning. "Alright… not great. I'd probably recognise him, if I saw him again, though."
Wolf shrugged. "Good enough. I think we're done here, don't you?"
Alex shook his head. "Not really; I don't think we've got enough."
His partner frowned. "Cub, we know his address, we know his name… you can give a description of him, our job's done. We can let the higher-ups deal with the rest of this."
"We have no evidence that he's done anything." Alex argued back.
"He's let a known member of a drug ring into his house, there's enough evidence there!"
"You can't judge him on that alone. We don't know for certain that he's go anything to do with them."
"'A man is known by the company he keeps'." Wolf quoted, half-heartedly.
"Yeah, but he's rarely convicted on the strength of it." Alex returned, pointedly. "Come on, we need to have something a bit better than this."
"We've go this address, can't we just hand it over to MI6 and let them get on with it? They're the ones who'll be able to search his property, and get real results."
"Let's have something a bit more convincing than 'we saw him let this guy into the building where we think he lives' to give them, OK?" Alex said,
Wolf shrugged. "OK. What are you thinking?"
Alex paused. "We need to get into the building somehow – maybe listen in on their conversation?"
Wolf was shaking his head before Alex even got to the end of his sentence. "I don't think we need to be as 'hard-core' as that, Cub." He said, quietly. "Ideally, we need to find out whether there's somewhere we can watch the security cameras – find out whether they keep old security tapes. If they do, maybe we can borrow some for the second floor of this building – South Block." He read from the brass plaque on the cramped granite porch.
Alex nodded, slowly. "So, where would this place be?"
Fifteen minutes later, they were stood on the corner between Belvedere Road and Chicheley Street, just opposite the London Eye; they'd found a building with "Porter's Lodge, County Hall" written on the glass doors, and figured that if there were going to find the security cameras anywhere, it would be here. If nothing else, they would be able to find records here – the only problem was getting in.
"I can't believe I'm doing this." Alex sighed.
Wolf offered him a totally unsympathetic grin. "Go on, Cub, you'll be fine. Just – keep it up for a good long time, yeah?"
Alex nodded, headed out into the street, and started to scream obscenities loudly at passers-by. Wolf allowed himself a few moments to be impressed at the sheer range of vocabulary the kid was using – Alex wasn't limiting himself to simply English swear words, he was swearing creatively and fluently in French, German and Spanish – before slipping into the Porter's Lodge as the man on duty rushed out, presumably to try 'subduing' Alex.
Wolf grinned to himself. The man was in for a nasty surprise.
On the second floor of South Block, County Hall Apartments, both Ernesto Vicario and Ralph Westbourne heard the screaming, and looked out of the window.
Vicario frowned darkly, staring hard at the screaming figure to floors below them, before paling a little. "I know that kid…"
Westbourne raised an insouciant eyebrow. "Oh?"
"He was at the airport in Bogotá…" Vicario muttered, peering out the window into the orange-lit street. "I swear he was…"
Westbourne's expressions slid from half-interested to alert and even faintly worried. "You're sure it was him?" he rapped out.
Vicario took a step back from the window and shrugged. "As sure as I can be from this distance."
"I've heard a couple of things about some kid MI6 have got working for them… there was an incident not long ago, but…" Westbourne deliberately cut himself off there. Moving away from the window, he picked a small, silver mobile phone off his glass-and-cast-iron kitchen table, flipping it open and hitting speed dial. "You can hear that noise?" he said, immediately as whoever it was on the other end picked up, not bothering with introductions. "You should be able to see the boy who's making it from where you're stationed. I want you to bring him up to me." He paused, listening to the response. "I don't care how," he snapped, his face contorting in a way which made him look, to Vicario, truly frightening. "Just. Do. It."
The phone snapped shut.
Alex kept up the noise for a full ten minutes, and it was only when he was beginning to repeat himself that he began, slowly, to calm down.
He tensed immediately, though, when a strong hand clapped down on his shoulder. The man from the Porter's Lodge was easily in his line of vision, and when he twisted round to see who it was, the first thing he noticed was that whoever it was who had grabbed him wasn't someone he knew, and he wasn't wearing a uniform.
Beginning to struggle in earnest, he couldn't deny the first stirrings of real fear when none of his efforts could dislodge that frighteningly strong hand from his shoulder.
The voice which spoke was warm enough. "Come on, son. Let's get you back home – I think you've had enough… excitement for now."
The crowd which had gathered round him during his 'display' began to dissipate now that Alex's 'father' was here, but Alex's struggles only got stronger.
"Get off me!" he said, loudly, "Don't touch me, I don't know you!"
"Now, I know you're angry…"
"I said, get your hands off me!"
The porter was no use at all. "Try to keep him from making a public display of himself like that, sir." Was is only response, as he headed back to the Lodge.
"I don't know this man!" Alex yelled after him, but the man didn't even look back. In real desperation, now, Alex tried to fight back properly, but the man had him such a firm grip on him, and was holding him in a position which made it awkward for him to fight back easily. He was trapped.
This person – whoever they were – managed to manhandle him all the way down to the entrance Alex and Wolf had seen Vicario go in through, in spite of all Alex's efforts to free himself. The guy was frighteningly strong, brushing off Alex's attempts to get away as though they were nothing. Everyone on the street had seen Alex's outburst – none of them stopped to think that this might be anything other than a father dragging his spoilt, angry son home. No one was lifting a finger to help him.
In the small, private porch area, the man finally lost patience with Alex's struggles completely, backhanding him viciously across the face, effectively ending them. Alex's head snapped round, the sheer speed of it forcing him off balance. The pain that followed kept him firmly off-kilter, and he stayed that way as the man manoeuvred him through the door of the building.
He didn't need to see where he was being taken to know the destination.
That whole thing about terrorism having rules is, of course, total bollocks, I'm afraid. Terrorists rely on not having rules - that's one of the major ways they create terror. But I'm just building on things which I felt Anthony Horowitz implied in "Scorpia". Maybe I'm just reading into it too much, but there seemed to be, for me, the implication that Scorpia was abiding by some set of unspoken rules, which I think was interesting, so I've mentioned it here. Please don't be offended by it..
That aside, I hope you enjoyed it! Do tell.
-ami xxx