Free Zero Hour by Andy McNab Page A

old leant against walls and talked sociology shit, or maybe just shit.
    Anna stopped an older guy in a brown and grey patterned sweater. He looked Scandinavian rather than Russian. He pointed in the direction we were already heading. I smiled my thanks and got a very dark look in return. Maybe my jacket didn’t have enough herring-bones and snowflakes.
    ‘Where are we going?’
    ‘I thought we’d start at the administration offices. Maybe I’ll say I’m an aunt on a surprise visit from Moscow, hoping to pick up her phone number or address.’
    We came to a line of benches that would have been more at home in a park.
    ‘Wait here, Nicholas. It might be better, just a woman on her own. And we’ll have a problem explaining the fact you don’t speak your niece’s language.’
    It sounded fine to me. I took a seat as she disappeared into the office.

7
    I was surrounded by display cabinets bursting with trophies, framed certificates and photographs of bigwigs handing them over, shots of social and sports events, class and year portraits. It got me thinking. I decided to have a closer look.
    It took a few minutes, but it was worth it.
    A group of students dressed like Victorians stood, bathed in sunshine, outside the building; a party maybe, or some kind of commemoration. Lilian was in three of the pictures. She was alone in one, poking her tongue out at the camera. In another she looked almost shy, alongside three or four other girls. It was the third that interested me. The lad she was with had eaten a few too many pies. He had a mop of fuzzy brown hair and bum-fluff on his chin. He and Lilian had their arms around each other. Their eyes were swivelled towards the camera and they seemed to be enjoying a very un-Victorian kiss.
    I was about to move on to the next display when Anna rushed out of the office. ‘We need to go.’
    I kept scanning the photos. ‘Hang on, look at—’
    She grabbed me. ‘Now, Nick. Now.’
    Sweaterman was piling down the corridor towards us with a posse of six or seven very pissed-off mates.
    ‘What the fuck’s happening?’
    The office clerk came to her door. She shouted and waved her arm to move us on.
    ‘No questions.’
    I started walking fast beside her. We went back the same way we’d come in, with Sweaterman’s posse in hot pursuit.

8
    Anna didn’t turn a hair as we drove away. There was no need to flap. They hadn’t jumped into vehicles and followed us. All we had to do was make some distance.
    I watched in the wing mirror my side as we rumbled across a cobbled junction. Trams, buses, cars, carts - all tried to head in a dozen different directions at the same time. Once we were clear I glanced behind us.
    ‘What the fuck was all that about?’
    ‘They thought we were secret police.’
    I turned back but kept an eye on the wing mirror. A dark blue Beamer with the new shark-eye headlights and low-rider sills was shadowing us, but keeping its distance. The front fairing made it look like a hovercraft. It was having a hard time with the cobbles and potholes.
    ‘So teachers now stand up to the police round here, do they?’
    ‘The people united will never be defeated. Haven’t you heard?’ She allowed herself a smile. ‘Or, as they’ve been saying more recently, the people with Twitter will never be defeated.’
    ‘Like the green revolution in Iran?’
    ‘They had it here first. As soon as they heard the result, the students started tweeting, trying to mobilize opposition. There was also a rush on Facebook and videos on YouTube. Suddenly everybody knew what was going on. It gave them a sense of power. Something they’d never experienced before.
    ‘The police wanted to get in there and grip everybody, of course. The first people to arrive for a rally outside the government buildings found their cell phones were dead. The network had been switched off. But somebody had Twitter, and they used it to give live updates over the GPRS networks. The authorities won that round,