Blink and You Die

‘THE WANDERER RETURNS,’ said Mrs Digby as Ruby walked in through the kitchen door. ‘Where have you been?’

‘Trying to solve your hen of the woods problem.’

‘Well, knock me down with a feather,’ said Mrs Digby, who looked genuinely astonished. ‘Any luck with that?’

‘I got a lead on them,’ said Ruby.

‘From whom?’

‘You gotta understand, I gotta protect my source, but suffice it to say, the wheels are in motion and there’s a good chance I can get the mushrooms to you by the end of the week.’

‘Nice work,’ said Mrs Digby. ‘You earned yourself a cookie, cookie.’

‘Just one?’ complained Ruby.

‘Don’t want to spoil your supper,’ said Mrs Digby.

Ruby looked at the table, set for two.

‘Hitch is coming?’ Ruby asked.

‘He better be, I’ve made enough stew to feed an army.’ She reached for a ladle, but was interrupted by the ring of the telephone. ‘Well, howdie, stranger … What? … I can’t say I approve … it’s not good for you to skip meals, did your mother never tell you that? You’ll be jumping into an early grave … I’ll leave it in the warmer, if the dog doesn’t get to it first.’ She put down the receiver.

‘He’s not coming?’ asked Ruby.

‘He said he had to get off somewhere in a hurry; something about a friend of his with a broken-down car.’ The housekeeper sniffed disapprovingly. ‘He’ll not be long for this world if he doesn’t take the time to eat.’

‘I didn’t know he had any friends,’ said Ruby.

‘Too many friends, if you ask me,’ said Mrs Digby. ‘He certainly didn’t seem one jot put out by my going off on that cruise. He couldn’t pack me off quick enough.’

‘Yeah, well, at least you wound up in the Caribbean,’ said Ruby. ‘He packed me off to spend a month in the back end of nowhere.’

The housekeeper picked up the dog bowl and served a generous portion to Bug. ‘Anyone would think he wanted rid of us,’ she said.

Ruby decided to get an early night: she needed to catch up on her sleep and if she hit the hay early then she might clock up a round ten hours. That would have been nice, but in the end all she managed was an uneven five. First of all came the phone call from Paris.

‘Hey, Ruby, it’s us!’

‘Bonjour, Mom, bonjour, Dad. Quelle heure est-il, by the way?’

‘Pardon?’

‘What time is it?’

‘Almost lunch time, what time is it with you?’

Ruby reached for her watch.

‘Three in the am.’

‘Oh, Rube, you should really be asleep,’ said her mother.

‘Yeah, you might want to try calling a little later, six hours maybe, either that or a whole lot earlier, there’s a nine-hour time difference – that’s nine hours behind.’

‘Oh, I thought Twinford was nine hours ahead,’ said her father.

‘Other way around, Dad.’

‘In that case, sleep tight!’ said her mother.

‘Bon appétit,’ said Ruby.

An hour later and she was woken again, this time by the sound of a fly. Judging by the insistent racket it was making, it was in its death throes, and was making a noise like it might be buzzing about on its back, legs in the air.

Still caught in sleep, Ruby attempted to bat it away, but her hand hit the edge of something solid and her eyes blinked open to find, not a noisy upside-down insect, but her Spectrum Escape Watch vibrating on the nightstand. Words in green blinked at her from the face on the dial.

A message from Hitch.

City planetarium 04.35 Row F seat 6

It was four am, really not a good time to greet the day. But if Hitch was planning on taking her into HQ to meet with her (possibly) murderous boss, then four am was as good a time as any.

Ruby reached for her glasses, struggled to her feet, fell over, cursed, hobbled to the bathroom, washed her face, brushed her teeth, combed her hair, and peered at herself with bleary eyes.

Redfort, you have to pull it together, she told herself.

Ruby decided the only way she could wake up would be to stand under the shower. This she did, and it did the trick. She peered out of the window into the still-dark morning. Cold, she thought, colder than yesterday. The temperature was really dropping.

She dug out some thermal leggings and pulled her jeans on over them, found a thermal undershirt, a T-shirt with the words, don’t wake me printed across the front, a black zip top and a snow parka and earmuffs. Snow was not forecast, but the air had turned icy. When she was ready, she picked up her backpack, tiptoed down the stairs and out of the front door. The only people riding the subway from Green Street were nightshift workers and early birds.

She arrived at the planetarium and was surprised to find the doors open and a guy selling tickets. She had been prepared for a little breaking and entering.

She went up to the booth. ‘What’s the deal?’ asked Ruby.

‘What do you mean what’s the deal?’ said the young man in the ticket booth.

‘How come you’re open? It’s four-thirty in the am.’

‘It’s to celebrate the anniversary of last year’s moon landing, you know, Apollo 17?’ said the guy.

‘I hate to burst your balloon, but you know you’re early?’ said Ruby. ‘The anniversary is December seventh.’

‘Yeah, we do know that, but a lot of people want to come so we’re doing a whole month of events,’ said the guy, pointing at the huge poster framed there on the wall. ‘There’s a whole deal of stuff going on. You might have heard, the Observatory on Meteor Island is building a new telescope … it’s been in the news, you know: Planet Twinford – 1974’s City of Space?’

‘But it isn’t 1974,’ said Ruby.

‘Yeah, but it will be in like four weeks,’ said the guy. ‘You really haven’t heard anything about this?’

Ruby was looking blank. Then, ‘Oh yeah, I think maybe my parents were invited to something spacey, what was it?’

‘Could it be the Galaxy Concert? Or the Astro Lectures? Or the Deep Space Gala?’ suggested the guy, before adding a little sarcastically, ‘what planet have you been on, man?’

‘Planet Geek,’ said Ruby. ‘I guess you might have a ticket for me, in the name of Redfort.’

The guy shuffled through his stack of prepaid tickets and handed her an envelope.

‘Enjoy!’ he said.

Ruby opened the door to the auditorium and tiptoed quietly down the steps. All the seats in the middle section were taken but towards the edges there were plenty of empty seats. She found F and began sidling along the row.

She sat down. All the seats around her were unoccupied and there was no sign of Hitch.

Mr Punctuality appeared to be late.

She began to watch the show and quickly became absorbed by the commentary.

‘Hey,’ said a voice.

RUBY: ‘Jeepers! I didn’t hear you arrive.’

HITCH: ‘You seem tense, kid.’

RUBY: ‘Well, now you mention it …’

HITCH: ‘By the way, have you eaten breakfast?’

RUBY: ‘What, are you kidding? It’s not even five am.’

He handed her a paper bag.

‘Thanks,’ she said. She pulled out a donut.

HITCH: ‘From Blacker.’

RUBY: ‘What’s he doing up at this hour?’

HITCH: ‘It’s all hands on deck while there’s a madman at large.’

Like every other member of the audience his eyes were trained on the ceiling, where the night sky rotated slowly above them.

Hitch pointed up at a cluster of stars. ‘That’s Hercules, right?’

Ruby tutted. ‘Orion,’ she said.

‘You sure?’

‘Course I’m sure,’ said Ruby. ‘I read up on all that stuff about a billion light years ago when I was five years old. I can draw you every constellation going – blindfolded and with my hands tied behind my back.’

‘That sounds like quite a party trick,’ said Hitch. ‘Who could know when that talent might come in handy.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Ruby. ‘What are we doing here anyway?’

‘Oh, you know,’ said Hitch, ‘it’s very soothing contemplating the stars, don’t you think?’

‘I guess,’ she said, giving him a ‘what’s got into you?’ look.

‘So how was geek camp?’ he asked.

‘Geeky,’ replied Ruby. ‘So you been busy?’

‘Pretty busy, at least up until your parents flew to Paris. Boy, do they have a social life!’

‘So what made you think they needed a vacation?’

‘What makes you think it was my idea?’

‘Mrs Digby told me it was.’

‘Well, I have got to admit, they were driving me a little crazy. Do you have any idea how many parties they attend?’

‘I’ve been living with them the past thirteen years – what do you think?’

‘So you understand,’ said Hitch.

‘More than anyone,’ said Ruby. ‘I also understand Mrs Digby mysteriously won a free cruise round the Caribbean, what I don’t understand is how?’

‘I know, who would have guessed?’

‘Not her, that’s for sure,’ said Ruby.

‘Life is full of surprises,’ said Hitch.

‘So what, you felt like you wanted the place to yourself?’

‘We needed to make some adjustments to the house, add some security features,’ said Hitch.

‘For my sake?’

‘For all your sakes.’

‘You think my folks are in danger?’ asked Ruby. ‘Mrs Digby even?’

‘I wouldn’t fancy anyone’s chances if they were to go after Mrs Digby.’ He smiled. ‘But yes, I just don’t want any of them to become any kind of target.’

‘You think that could really happen? Really, I mean?’ asked Ruby. ‘The Count knows that my parents aren’t involved in Spectrum; they aren’t exactly agent material.’

‘You’re missing the point, kid. If the Count has a mind to rattle you, or worse, destroy your world, he knows how to do it. He knows where you live, he knows what makes you tick,’ said Hitch.

‘Meaning … he might make an attempt on their lives?’

‘Meaning, it’s possible.’

‘Hence the safety upgrade.’

‘Hence the safety upgrade.’

‘So what are you going to do when they get back?’ asked Ruby, ‘I mean you can’t stop them going out?’

‘I’ll do my best, kid, anything I can to ensure their safety and I’ll try my darndest to keep them from knowing anything about it.’

‘So what did you tell them? About the house, I mean?’

‘I didn’t want to get them all in a stew about it, so I got a friend of mine who happens to be in construction to persuade them that the windows needed replacing. He told them they had a bad case of window weevils.’

‘How did he convince them of that?’

‘Sprinkled a bit of glass dust around the place and loosened one of the window panes; they got the picture.’

‘Glass dust?’ said Ruby.

‘They were very concerned,’ said Hitch.

‘I’ll bet,’ said Ruby. ‘Since when was it possible for a weevil to eat through glass?’

‘I know,’ said Hitch, ‘alarming, isn’t it?’

‘And Mrs Digby?’ said Ruby.

‘It was a big job and I didn’t want her picking up on what was really going on. She has eyes like a hawk. I told her I had changed the locks and upgraded the alarm system because I had mislaid a set of keys but I kept the real reason from her.’

‘Well, so far you seem to have succeeded at keeping her in the dark. Mrs Digby thinks you packed her off because you wanted to have a high old time with your friends.’ She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. ‘I told her I didn’t think you had any friends.’

‘One day I’ll introduce you to one of them,’ said Hitch.

‘Mrs Digby probably thinks you sent my folks to Paris because you couldn’t handle their crazy social life.’

Hitch winked at her. ‘I’m a trained agent, I can handle any party they throw at me.’ He paused. ‘Speaking of training, right now we have to get our skates on.’

‘Why? Where are we going?’

‘A date with LB,’ he said.

He caught the expression on her face. ‘Jeepers, kid, relax a little. Anyone would think you were about to meet with the Grim Reaper.’

THEY PARKED THE SILVER CAR down a side street and walked perhaps another two hundred yards.

‘Here?’ asked Ruby.

‘Here,’ said Hitch.

‘So you meant literally,’ said Ruby, ‘actually get our skates on?’

They were standing in midtown outside the ice rink on Bowery.

‘No, not actually.’

‘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.

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.