Agent Matt: Falcon Force

Chapter 10: Turning red coat

Matt lay on his stomach, watching the guards as they examined the waiting car. He was holding a pair of Bausch & Lomb prism system binoculars with 30x magnification, and although he was more than a hundred metres away from the main gate, he could see everything clearly ... right down to the car's number plate and the driver's moustache. He had been here for more than an hour, lying motionless in front of a bank of pine trees, hidden from sight by a row of shrubs. He was wearing grey jeans, a dark T-shirt and a khaki jacket, which he had picked up in the same army supplies shop that had provided the binoculars. The weather had turned yet again, bringing with it an afternoon of constant drizzle, and Matt was soaked through. He wished now that he had brought the thermos of hot chocolate Julie had offered him. At the time, he'd thought she was treating him like a child - but even the SAT know the importance of keeping warm. They had taught him as much when he was training with them. Julie had come with him to Amsterdam and once again it had been she who had checked them into a hotel, this time on the Herengracht, one of the three main canals. She was there now, waiting in their room. Of course, she had wanted to come with him. After what had happened in Rome, she was more worried about him than ever. But Matt had persuaded her that two people would have twice as much chance of being spotted as one, and her bright red hair would hardly help. Reluctantly she had agreed.

"Just make sure you get back to the hotel before dark," she said. "And if you pass a tulip shop, maybe you could bring me a bunch." He smiled, remembering her words. He shifted his weight, feeling the damp grass beneath his elbows. He wondered what exactly he had learnt in the past hour. He was in the middle of a strange industrial area on the outskirts of Amsterdam. Osdorp contained a sprawl of factories, warehouses and processing plants. Most of the compounds were low-rise, separated from each other by wide stretches of tarmac, but there were also clumps of trees and grassland as if someone had tried - and failed - to cheer the place up. Three windmills rose up behind the headquarters of Crow's technological empire. But they weren't the traditional Dutch models, the sort that would appear on picture postcards. These were modern, towering pillars of grey concrete with triple blades endlessly slicing the air. They were huge and menacing, like invaders from another planet. The compound itself reminded Matt of an army barracks ... or maybe a prison. It was surrounded by a double fence, the outer one topped with razor wire. There were guard towers at fifty-metre intervals and guards on patrol all around the perimeter. In Holland, a country where the police carry guns, Matt wasn't surprised that the guards were armed. Inside, he could make out eight or nine buildings, low and rectangular, white-bricked with high-tech plastic roofs. Various people were moving around, some of them transported in electric cars. Matt could hear the whine of the engines, like milk floats. The compound had its own communications centre, with five huge satellite dishes mounted outside. Otherwise, it seemed to consist of laboratories, offices and living quarters. One building stood out in the middle of it all: a glass and steel cube, aggressively modern in design. This might be the main headquarters, Matt thought. Perhaps he would find Damon Crow inside. But how was he to get in? He had been studying the entrance for the Last hour.

A single road led up to the gate, with a traffic light at each end. It was a complicated process. When a car or a truck arrived, it stopped at the bottom of the road and waited. Only when the first traffic light changed was it allowed to continue forward to the glass and brick guardhouse next to the gate. At this point, a uniformed man appeared and took the driver's ID, presumably to check it on a computer. Two more men examined the vehicle, checking that there were no passengers. And that wasn't all. There was a security camera mounted high up on the fence and Matt had noticed a length of what looked like toughened glass built into the road. When the vehicles stopped they were right on top of it, and Matt guessed that there must be a second camera underneath. There was no way he could sneak into the compound. Crow Systems Technology had left nothing to chance. Several trucks had entered the compound while he had been watching. Matt had recognized the black-clothed figure of Omni painted - life-sized - on the sides as part of the gamer zone logo. He wondered if it might be possible to sneak inside one of the trucks, perhaps as it was waiting at the first set of lights. But the road was too open. At night it would be floodlit. Anyway, the doors would almost certainly be locked. He couldn't climb the fences. The razor wire would see to that. He doubted he could tunnel his way in. Could he somehow disguise himself and mingle with the evening shift? No. For once his size and age were against him. Maybe Julie would have been able to attempt it, pretending to be a replacement cleaner or a technician. But there was no way he would be able to talk his way past the guards, particularly without speaking a word of Dutch. Security was too tight. And then Matt saw it. Right in front of his eyes. Another truck had stopped and the driver was being questioned while the cabin was searched. Could he do it? He remembered the bicycle that was chained to a lamppost just a couple of hundred metres down the road. Before he had left Tomoeda he had gone through the manual that had come with it and had been amazed how many gadgets Samantha had been able to conceal in and around such an ordinary object. Even the bicycle clips were magnetic! Matt watched the gate slide open and the truck pass through. Yes. It would work. He would have to wait until it was dark - but it was the last thing anyone would expect. Despite everything, Matt suddenly found himself smiling. He just hoped he could find a fancy-dress shop in Amsterdam, and he hoped that hot chocolate was still available from Julie too.

By nine o'clock it was dark but the searchlights around the compound had been activated long before, turning the area into a dazzling collision of black and white. The gates, the razor wire, the guards with their guns ... all could be seen a mile away. But now they were throwing vivid shadows, pools of darkness that might offer a hiding place to anyone brave enough to get close. A single truck was approaching the main gate. The driver was Dutch and had driven up from the port of Rotterdam. He had no idea what he was carrying and he didn't care. From the first day he had started working for Crow Software Technology, he had known that it was better not to ask questions. The first of the two traffic lights was red and he slowed down, then came to a halt. There were no other vehicles in sight and he was annoyed to be kept waiting, but it was better not to complain. There was a sudden knocking sound and he glanced out of the window, looking in the side mirror. Was someone trying to get his attention? But there was no one there and a moment later the light changed, so he threw the gearstick into first and moved on again. As usual he drove onto the glass panel and wound down his window. There was a guard standing outside and he passed across his ID, a plastic card with his photograph, name and employee number. The driver knew that other guards would inspect his truck. He sometimes wondered why they were so sensitive about security. After all, they were only making computer games. But he had heard about industrial sabotage ... companies stealing secrets from each other. He supposed it made sense. Two guards were walking round the truck even as the driver sat there, thinking his private thoughts. A third was examining the pictures being transmitted by the camera underneath it. The truck had recently been cleaned. The word GAMERSTATION stood out on the side, with the Omni figure crouching next to it. One of the guards reached out and tried to open the door at the back. It was, as it should have been, locked. Meanwhile the other guard peered in through the front cabin window. But it was obvious that the driver was alone. The security operation was smooth and well practised. The cameras had shown nobody hiding underneath the truck or on the roof. The rear door was locked. The driver had been cleared. One of the guards gave a signal and the gate opened electronically, sliding sideways to let the truck in. The driver knew where to go without being told. After about fifty metres he branched off the entrance road and followed a narrower track that brought him to the unloading bay. There were about a dozen other vehicles parked here, with warehouses on both sides. The driver turned off the engine, got out and locked the door. He had paperwork to deal with. He would hand over the keys and receive a stamped docket with his time of arrival. They would unload the vehicle the following day.

The driver left. Nothing moved. There was nobody else in the area. But if anyone had walked past, they might have seen a remarkable thing. On the side of the truck, the black-clothed figure of Omni turned its head. At least, that was what it would have looked like. But if that person had looked more closely, they would have realized that there were two figures on the truck. One was painted; the other was a real person, clinging impossibly to the metal panelling in exactly the same position as the picture underneath.

Matt Ishida dropped silently to the ground. The muscles in his arms and legs were screaming and he wondered how much longer he would have been able to hold on. Samantha had supplied four powerful magnetic clips with the bike and these were what Matt had used to keep himself in place: two for his hands, two for his feet. He quickly pulled off the black ninja suit he had bought that afternoon in Amsterdam, rolled it up and stuffed it into a bin. He had been in plain sight of the guards as the truck drove through the gate. But the guards hadn't looked too closely. They had expected to see a figure next to the gamer station logo and that was just what they had seen. For once they had been wrong to believe their eyes. Matt took stock of his surroundings. He might be inside the compound, but his luck wouldn't last forever. He didn't doubt that there would be other guards on patrol, and other cameras too. What exactly was he looking for? The strange thing was, he had no real idea. But something told him that if Damon Crow went in for all this security, then it must be because he had something to hide. Of course, it was still possible that Matt was wrong, that Crow was innocent. It was a comforting thought. He made his way through the compound, heading for the great cube that stood at its heart. He heard a whining sound and ducked into the shadows next to a wall as an electronic car sped past with three passengers and a woman in blue overalls at the wheel. He became aware of activity somewhere ahead of him.

An open area, brilliantly lit, stretched out behind one of the warehouses. A voice suddenly echoed in the air, amplified by a speaker system. It was a man speaking - but in Dutch. Matt couldn't understand a word. Moving more quickly, he hurried on, determined to see what was happening. He found a narrow alleyway between two of the buildings and ran the full Length, grateful for the shadows of the walls. At the end he came to a fire escape, a metal staircase spiralling upwards, and threw himself breathlessly behind it. He could hide here. But, looking between the steps, he had a clear view of what was happening ahead. There was a square of black tarmac with glass and steel office blocks on all sides. The largest of these was the cube that Matt had seen from outside. Damon Crow was standing in front of it, talking animatedly to a man in a white coat, with three more men just behind him. Even from a distance Crow was unmistakable. He was the smallest person there, dressed in yet another designer suit. He had come out to watch some sort of demonstration. About half a dozen guards stood waiting, dotted around the square. Harsh white lights were being beamed down from two metal towers that Matt hadn't noticed before. Watching through the fire escape, Matt saw that there was a cargo plane in the middle of the square. It took him a moment or two to accept what he was seeing. There was no way the plane could have landed there.

The square was only just wide enough to contain it, and there wasn't a runway inside the compound, as far as he knew. It must have been carried here on a truck, possibly assembled on site. But what was it doing here? The plane was an old-fashioned one. It had propellers rather than jets, and wings high up, almost sitting on top of the main body. The letters M.O.D were painted in red along the fuselage and on the tail. Crow looked at his watch. A minute later the loudspeaker crackled again with another announcement in Dutch. Everyone stopped talking and gazed at the plane. Matt stared. A fire had started inside the main cabin. He could see the flames flickering behind the windows. Grey smoke began to seep out of the fuselage and suddenly one of the propellers caught alight. The fire seemed to spread out of control in seconds, consuming the engine and then spreading across the wing. Matt waited for someone to do something. If there was any fuel in the plane, it would surely explode at any moment. But nobody moved. Crow seemed to nod. It was over as quickly as it had begun. The man in the white coat spoke into a radio transmitter and the fire went out. It was extinguished so quickly that if Matt hadn't seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn't have believed it had been there in the first place. They didn't use water or foam. There were no scorch marks and no smoke. One moment the plane had been burning; the next it wasn't. It was as simple as that. Crow and the three men with him spent a few seconds talking, before turning and strolling back into the cube. The guards in the square marched off. The plane was left where it was. Matt wondered what on earth he had got himself into. This had nothing to do with computer games. It made absolutely no sense at all.

But at least he had spotted Damon Crow. Matt waited until the guards had gone, then twisted out from behind the fire escape. He made his way as quickly as he could around the square, keeping in the shadows. Crow had made a mistake. Breaking into the compound was virtually impossible, so he had worried less about security on the inside. Matt hadn't spotted any cameras, and the guards in the towers were looking out rather than in. For the moment he was safe. He followed Crow into the building and found himself crossing the white marble floor of what was nothing more than a huge glass box. Above him he could see the night sky with the three windmills looming in the distance. The building contained nothing. But there was a single round hole in one corner of the floor and a staircase leading down.

Matt heard voices.

He crept down the stairs, which led directly into a large underground room. Crouching on the bottom step, concealed behind wide steel banisters, he watched. The room was open-plan, with a white marble floor and corridors leading off in several directions. The architecture made him think of a vault in an ultra-modern bank. But the gorgeous rugs, the fireplace, the Italian furniture and the dazzling white Bechstein grand piano could have come out of a palace. To one side was a curving desk with a bank of telephones and computer screens. All the lighting was at floor level, giving the room a bizarre, unsettling atmosphere, with all the shadows going the wrong way. A portrait of Damon Crow holding a white poodle covered an entire wall. The man himself was sitting on a sofa, sipping a bright yellow drink. He had a cherry on a cocktail stick and Matt watched him pick it off with his perfect white teeth and slowly eat it. The three men from the square were with him, and Matt knew at once that he had been right all along - that Crow was indeed at the centre of the web. One of the men was Ivan Harkov. Wearing jeans and a polo neck, he was sitting on the piano stool, his legs crossed. The second man stood near him, leaning against the piano. He was older, with silver hair and a sagging, pockmarked face. He was wearing a blue blazer with a striped tie that made him look like a minor official in a bank or a cricket club.

He had large spectacles that had sunk into his face as if it were damp clay. He looked nervous, the eyes behind the glass circles blinking frequently. The third man was darkly handsome, in his late forties, with black hair, grey eyes and a jaw line that was square and serious. He was casually dressed in a leather jacket and an open-necked shirt and seemed to be enjoying himself. Crow was talking to him.

"I'm very grateful to you, Mr Hall. Thanks to you, Falcon Force can now proceed on schedule." Hall! This was the man Crow had met in Rome. Matt had a sense that everything had come full circle. He strained to hear what the two men were saying.

"Hey - please. Call me Kevin." The man spoke with an American accent. "And there's no need to thank me, Damon. I've enjoyed doing business with you."

"I do have a few questions," Crow murmured, and Matt saw him pick up an object from a coffee table next to the sofa. It was a metallic capsule, about the same shape and size as a mobile phone. "As I understand it, the gold codes change daily. Presumably the flash drive is currently programmed with today's codes. But if Falcon Force were to take place Three days from now..."

"Just plug it in. The flash drive will update itself," Hall explained. He had an easy, lazy smile. "That's the beauty of it. First it will burrow through the security systems. Then it will pick up the new codes ... like taking candy from a baby. The moment you have the codes, you transmit them back through Milstar and you're set. The only problem you have, like I told you, is the little matter of the finger on the button."

"Well, we've already solved that," Crow said.

"Then I might as well move out of here."

"Just give me a couple more minutes of your valuable time, Mr Hall ... Kevin..." Crow said. He sipped his cocktail, licked his lips and set the glass down. "How can I be sure that the flash drive will actually work?"

"You have my word on it," Hall said. "And you're certainly paying me enough."

"Indeed so. Half a million dollars in advance. And two million dollars now. However..." Crow paused and pursed his lips. "I still have one small worry on my mind." Matt's leg had gone to sleep as he crouched, watching the scene from the stairs. Slowly he straightened it out. He wished he understood more of what they were saying. He knew that a flash drive was a type of storage device used in computer technology. But who or what was Mil-star? And what was Falcon Force?

"What's the problem?" Hall asked casually.

"I'm afraid you are, Mr Hall." The green eyes in Crow's round, babyish face were suddenly hard. "You are not as reliable as I had hoped. When you came to Rome, you were followed."

"That's not true."

"An English journalist found out about your gambling habit. He and a photographer followed you to Acquolina." Crow held up a hand to stop Hall interrupting. "I have dealt with them both. But you have disappointed me, Mr Hall. I wonder if I can still trust you."

"Now you listen to me, Damon." Hall spoke angrily. "We had a deal. I worked here with your technical boys. I gave them the information they needed to load the flash drive, and that's my part of it over. How you're going to get to the VIP lounge and how you'll actually activate the system ... that's your business. But you owe me two million dollars, and this journalist - whoever he was - doesn't make any difference at all."

"Turning red coat," Crow said.

"What?"

"That's the term used to call Americans that defect and join the British."

"I'm no Deserter!" Hall growled. "I needed the money, that's all. I haven't betrayed my country. So quit talking like this, pay me what you owe me and let me walk out of here."

"Of course I'm going to pay you what I owe you." Crow smiled. "You'll have to forgive me, Kevin. I was just thinking aloud." He gestured, his hand falling limply back. The American glanced round and Matt saw that there was an alcove to one side of the room. It was shaped like a giant bottle, with a curved wall behind and a curving glass door in front. Inside was a table, and on the table a leather attaché case. "Your money is in there," Crow said.

"Thank you."

Neither Ivan Harkov nor the man with the spectacles had spoken throughout all this, but they watched intently as the American approached the alcove. There must have been some sort of sensor built into the door because it slid open automatically. Hall went up to the table and opened the case. Matt heard the two locks click up. Then Hall turned round.

"I hope this isn't your idea of a joke," he said. "This is empty." Crow smiled at him from the sofa.

"Don't worry," he said. "I'll fill it." He reached out and pressed a button on the coffee table in front of him. There was a hiss and the door of the alcove slid shut.

"Hey!" Hall shouted. Crow pressed the button a second time. For an instant nothing happened. Matt realized he was no longer breathing. His heart was beating at twice its normal rate. Then something bright and silver dropped down from somewhere high up inside the closed-off room, landing inside the case. Hall reached in and held up a small coin. It was a quarter.

"Crow! What are you playing at?" he demanded. More coins began to fall into the case. Matt couldn't see exactly what was happening but he guessed that the room really was like a bottle, totally sealed apart from a hole somewhere above. The coins were falling through the hole, the trickle rapidly turning into a cascade. In seconds the attaché case was full, and still the coins came, tumbling onto the pile, spreading out over the table and onto the floor.

Perhaps Kevin Hall had an inkling of what was about to happen. He forced his way through the shower of coins and pounded on the glass door. "Stop this!" he shouted. "Let me out of here!"

"But I haven't paid you all your money, Mr Hall," Crow replied. "I thought you said I owed you two million dollars." Suddenly the cascade became a torrent. Thousands and thousands of coins poured into the room. Hall cried out, bending an arm over his head, trying to protect himself. Matt quickly worked out the mathematics. Two million dollars, twenty-five cents at a time. The payment was being made in just about the smallest of small change. How many coins would there be? Already they filled all the available floor space, rising up to the American's knees. The torrent intensified. Now the rush of coins was solid and Hall's screams were almost drowned out by the clatter of metal against metal. Matt wanted to look away but he found himself fixated, his eyes wide with horror. He could barely see the man any more. The coins thundered down. Hall was trying to swat them away, as if they were a swarm of bees. His arms and hands were vaguely visible but his face and body had disappeared. He lashed out with a fist and Matt saw a smear of blood appear on the door - but the toughened glass wouldn't break. The coins oozed forward, filling every inch of space. They rose up higher and higher. Hall was invisible now, sealed into the glittering mass. If he was still screaming, nothing more could be heard. And then, suddenly, it was over. The last coins fell. A grave of eight million quarters. Matt shuddered, trying to imagine what it must have been like to have been trapped inside. How had the American died? Had he been suffocated by the falling coins or crushed by their weight? Matt had no doubt that the man inside was dead. There was another term being used for someone who betrayed his country. Blood money!

Crow laughed.

"That was fun!" he said.

"Why did you kill him?" The man in the spectacles had spoken for the first time. He had a Dutch accent. His voice was trembling.

"Because he was careless, Henryk," Crow replied. "We can't make mistakes, not at this late stage. And it's not as if I broke any promises. I said I'd pay him two million dollars, and if you want to open the door and count it, two million dollars is exactly what you'll find."

"Don't open the door!" the man called Henryk gasped.

"No. I think it would be a bit messy." Crow smiled. "Well, we've taken care of Hall. We've got the flash drive. We're all set to go. So why don't we have another drink?"

Still crouching at the bottom of the stairs, Matt gritted his teeth, forcing himself not to panic. Every instinct told him to get up and run, but he knew he had to take care. What he had seen was almost beyond belief - but at least his mission was now clear. He had to get out of the compound, out of Osdorp, and back to Japan. Like it or not, he had to go back to JIN 7. He knew now that he had been right all along and that Damon Crow was both mad and evil. All his posturing - his many charities and his speeches against violence - was precisely that; a facade. He was planning something that he called Falcon Force, and whatever it was would take place in three days' time. It involved a security system and a VIP lounge. Was he going to break into an embassy? It didn't matter. Somehow he would make Korindo Ooishi and Mrs Jensen believe him. There was a dead man called Kevin Hall. A connection with the National Security Agency of America. Surely Matt had enough information to persuade them to make an arrest.

But first he had to get out.

He turned just in time to see the figure looming above him. It was a guard, coming down the stairs. Matt started to react, but he was too late. The guard had seen him. He was carrying a gun. Slowly Matt raised his hands. The guard gestured and Matt stood up, rising above the stair rail. On the other side of the room, Damon Crow saw him. His face lit up with delight.

"Matt Ishida!" he exclaimed. "I was hoping to see you again. What a lovely surprise! Come on over and have a drink - and let me tell you how you're going to die."