Under Cover (Agent 21) by Chris Ryan Page A

and I’d have been killed.’
    Ricky absorbed that information for a moment. ‘Is that what you are, then?’ he said. ‘An intelligence officer?’
    ‘What I am,’ said Felix, ‘is very tired. It’s nearly ten o’clock. I need to get some sleep, and so do you. I’ll see you first thing in the morning.’
    And without another word he left the flat.
    As Felix walked out of that luxury apartment in the Docklands, a much younger man sprinted down a flight of stone steps into the basement of a derelict building in a dark, forgotten side street of Soho. He was sweating, out of breath and frightened.
    The building was called Keeper’s House. It had been condemned for years. Its windows were boarded up, its walls covered in graffiti, and lengths of guttering hung limply from the roof. Inside, it smelled of wet rot and neglect. The rooms on the ground floor were littered with old furniture – mouldy, ripped sofas, tables riddled with woodworm. Anything remotely usable had been moved down to the basement.
    The young man’s name was Tommy. He was sixteen years old, with scruffy black hair and a pronounced Adam’s apple. He wore a permanent scowl and always seemed to have cuts on his knuckles or face – the result of some fight or other. He had a lot of fights on the street.
    He burst into the main basement room.
    ‘Thought you’d forgotten about us,’ rasped a voice. Tommy looked over to see a figure, slightly smaller than him, hunched over in the corner of the room. It was too gloomy to make out his features very clearly, but Tommy recognized Hunter’s voice well enough.
    ‘Would I do that?’ Tommy replied sarcastically.
    He peered around the large basement room. It was lit by an old standard lamp in the corner – somehow, Hunter had managed to rig up some electricity – and contained a mismatched collection of furniture and people.
    The furniture was old. The people were all young. Tommy was easily the eldest, and one of the kids, who was sitting in the corner hugging his knees, couldn’t be more than twelve, though he swore blind he was fifteen. There were eight of them in the room, including Tommy and Hunter. The others were either still out on the street or in one of the other basement rooms that adjoined this one.
    Tommy looked anxiously over his shoulder, then back towards Hunter.
    There was a moment of silence. Then Hunter moved from the shadows into the centre of the room. His features became visible. Hunter was in his sixties, with a square jaw and a nose that had been broken several times. He had a sharp, violent face and watery, greedy eyes.
    ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he demanded.
    Tommy closed his eyes. ‘Police,’ he breathed.
    A nasty pause as Hunter stared at him. ‘Did they follow you?’
    ‘I think I lost them.’
    Another silence. Tommy felt the eyes of all the other kids in the room burning into him.
    ‘You
think
you lost them?’
    ‘Y . . . yeah . . .’
    ‘Well,’ Hunter said in a dangerous half-whisper, ‘that’s all right then, isn’t it? He
thinks
he lost them. You got anything for me?’
    Tommy swallowed hard, then nodded. He stepped further into the room and held out a fat black wallet. Hunter snatched it and started rifling through its contents. He clearly wasn’t interested in the credit cards – they were too easy to trace. But he fished out several notes and a handful of change which he shoved in his pocket before discarding the wallet. ‘That the best you can do?’ he said. ‘On a Saturday night?’
    Tommy nodded.
    ‘And I suppose you want something to eat? Go on then, son. It’s over there.’
    Tommy had already noticed the pizza boxes on a table against the right-hand wall. There were five, all open. He walked up to the table to see that only one of the boxes had any food left in it – two slices of cold, congealed pizza. He knew not to complain. Instead, he grabbed a slice and started cramming it hungrily into his mouth.
    The blow, when it came,