would send them hurtling into the data bank. The screen bleeped a few times. He pressed another button. “Nothing,” he muttered.
Tim got to his feet. “Well, there’s nothing more we can do for you…” he began.
“Please sit down, Mr Diamond!”
There was a silence of about thirty seconds as he sat there, calculating. He had plans for us. I could see them forming — faster than the computer signals — in those soft, grey eyes. At last he stretched out a hand and pressed a button on his intercom.
“Miss Jones,” he said. “Could you get a drink for our guests?” Then he turned back to us. “I have a proposition for you,” he said. “I want you to work for me. We have to find Charon and you can help.”
“Now wait a minute…” Tim began.
Waverly ignored him. “We’re running out of time, Mr Diamond. Boris Kusenov arrives in England in just a few days’ time. But we no longer have any leads. We have no connection with Charon.” He took a deep breath. “Except you.”
“Me?” Tim squeaked.
“Charon knows that McGuffin spoke to you before he died. When he discovers that you’re working for MI6, maybe he’ll get worried.”
“How will he discover that?” I asked.
“We’ll make sure he finds out.”
I couldn’t believe it. I played back the sentence in my head and realized that was just what it was. A death sentence. We were going to be the bait in a trap for Charon. And if we got wiped out along the way, I don’t think Waverly would even send flowers to the funeral.
Even Tim seemed to have come to the same conclusion. “You can’t do it!” he exclaimed. “I’m not a secret agent…”
“You are now,” Waverly replied.
The door opened and Miss Jones came in, carrying a tray. She was a short, dumpy woman with hair tied up in a bun — but I hardly noticed her. She had two glasses on the tray. They were filled with a green liquid that was almost luminous. Somehow I didn’t think it was apple juice.
“I thought you might be thirsty,” Waverly said.
“I was until she came in,” I replied.
“Please drink…”
It was a command, not an invitation, and I got the feeling that something nasty would happen to us if we refused. Mind you, I knew something nasty was going to happen to us anyway. We didn’t have much choice. I held up the glass.
“Down the hatch,” Tim said.
“Yeah. And into the coal cellar,” I added.
We drank.
The juice tasted sweet and minty — like mouthwash. I think I began to feel its effects even before it had reached my throat.
“I can give you one piece of guidance in your task,” Waverly went on, but already his voice was in the next room. He seemed to be shrinking behind the desk, like we were looking at him through the wrong end of a telescope. “McGuffin wasn’t working alone. He’d been in touch with the Dutch Secret Service…”
“I didn’t know the Dutch had a secret service,” I said. The words came out thick and heavy.
“That’s how secret they are,” Mr Waverly explained. “We don’t even know the name of the agent he was working with. But he had a number.
86. Can you remember that?”
“68,” Tim said.
“89,” I corrected him.
“86,” Mr Waverly corrected me.
The room was spinning round and round. Now I knew what a CD felt like. Only instead of music, all I could hear was Waverly’s voice, the words slurring together, echoing around me. “You’re on your own, Diamond,” he was saying. “On your own… on your own.”
“Where’s Nick?” Tim asked.
“On the floor,” I replied.
A moment later the carpet rushed up at me, and I was.
BIRDS
“Waverly was hiding something,” I said.
Tim and I were sitting back in the Camden Town office, which was where we’d woken up. Whatever it was in the drink we had been given, it was powerful stuff. My head was still hurting. My tongue felt like someone had used it to dry the dishes.
“What was he hiding?” Tim asked. He wasn’t looking much better than me. It was four o’clock in the afternoon. We’d been unconscious for about six hours.
“I don’t know. It was something to do with Boris Kusenov. How did Mr Waverly find out that Charon was planning to kill him? And why is it so important that it doesn’t happen in Britain?”
“Maybe it would be bad for the tourist trade.”
Tim poured himself a cup of tea. “He offered me a job!” he exclaimed. “A spy! Working for MI6!”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to disillusion him but he had to know. “You’re not a spy, Tim,” I told him. “You’re a sitting target.”
Tim stood up. “What do you mean?”
“I mean — when Charon hears you’re working for MI6, he’ll come gunning for you. Or knifing. Or harpooning. That’s what Mr Waverly wants.”
“Why? Didn’t he like me?”
“If Charon comes after you, he’ll be too busy to go after Kusenov. And of course, it gives Waverly another chance to catch him.”
“You mean — he’s using me?”
“Yes.”
“Over my dead body!”
“Exactly…”
Tim sat down again behind his desk. Then he stood up. Then he sat down again. I was beginning to get a crick in my neck watching him, but at last he swung round and I realized that he was actually furious. “How dare he!” he squeaked. “Well, I’m going to show him!”
“What are you going to do?”
“He kidnapped me. He drugged me. And now he’s trying to get me killed. What do you think I’m going to do? I’m going to the police!”
“Snape?” I grimaced. “Are you sure that’s such a good idea?”
But Tim wouldn’t let me talk him out of it. And that was how — the very same day that we’d been released from jail for wasting police time — we found ourselves knocking on the door, asking to be let back in again. The desk sergeant wasn’t pleased to see us. We left him chewing the desk while a constable went to fetch Chief Inspector Snape.
Then Snape himself arrived, with Boyle, as ever, just a few steps behind. “I do not believe it!” he exclaimed in a cracked voice.
“But Chief… I haven’t told you yet,” Tim replied.
So Tim told him: the hotel room, the two MI6 agents, the taxi ride, Kelly Street, Mr Waverly… everything. Snape listened without interrupting, but I got the idea that he wasn’t taking Tim seriously. Maybe it was the way he rapped his fingernails on the table and stared out of the window. Maybe it was his occasional sniff of silent laughter. Meanwhile Boyle stood with his back against the wall, smirking quietly to himself.
