Free Molehunt by Paul Collins Page B

know because forty years ago I sat at a table much like this and waited for my retired handler to show up. I was convinced that an army of villains would track him right to my table.’ Viktus leaned closer, grinning. ‘Perhaps we old dogs know a few tricks you young pups don’t.’
    That had not occurred to Anneke. She decided to pay more attention to Uncle Viktus’s stories in future, though they sounded so
boring
.
    â€˜Am I boring you?’
    That made her twitch like a puppet having its strings jerked. ‘I was thinking.’
    â€˜You were off with the pixies.’
    â€˜Off with the what?’
    â€˜Never mind, not many pixies about these days. So, you’re jumpy as hell but still breathing. And you don’t trust anyone at RIM.’
    â€˜That’s a good executive summary.’.
    â€˜Give me the details.’
    She told him everything that had happened, including the message she had sent the mole.
    Viktus frowned. ‘Not sure that was wise, Anneke.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜You made it personal.’
    â€˜Uncle, with this guy everything is personal.’
    â€˜We have to get you to a safe house then move you off Lykis.’
    Anneke shook her head. ‘He’ll be expecting that. And you can’t be sure he doesn’t know all your safe houses.’
    Viktus sighed, looking suddenly tired. ‘I hate these cases,’ he said. ‘Many a secret service has been destroyed by them, ripped apart by distrust and paranoia. The accusations have already started.’
    He told her about the Task Force, how his new protégé had already identified dozens of recruits who had lied on their applications or had not accounted for ‘missing time’.
    â€˜I wouldn’t mind seeing those files.’
    Viktus stared at his adoptive daughter for several moments then nodded. ‘Makes sense,’ he said at last. ‘Okay, time to act fast and be drastic. I’m going to empower you to act as an outside watchdog. I want you to recruit a handful of people from outside the agency, people you’ve worked with before. I’ll channel Averaged Galactic Currency and supplies to you.’ He got out his comm unit and drafted a tightly encrypted memorandum, including the codename Falstaff for Anneke. It authorised her to draw upon certain secret bank accounts reserved for such purposes. He stared into the retinal reader on the side of the device and passed the scan, then pressed his thumbprint to the scanning screen at the bottom. Pressing Send was almost an anti-climax after that.
    â€˜Done.’ He showed her the account numbers plus coding for secure access to the Task Force’s findings, and she locked them into her hardwired memory enhancements.
    â€˜Falstaff?’
    â€˜It’s Shakespeare.’
    â€˜I know who it is. Didn’t he write a lot of tragedies?’
    â€˜He wrote a bit of everything. Like a good agent, he had lots of fallbacks in case anything failed. So what’s your first step?’
    â€˜Getting a good night’s sleep.’
    â€˜Don’t stay the same place two nights running.’
    She gave him a look.
    â€˜Okay, okay, but remember that mine-under-the-rug that you fell for. You can’t afford any lapses now.’
    â€˜I’m going to analyse the Task Force data, look for patterns. Then I’m going to –’
    She paused. Her surveillance unit beeped. One of the eyes had picked up something that met her suspicion criteria. She didn’t stop to find out what. She jumped up, grabbed her uncle’s hand, and hurried him out to the rear exit. They raced through a steamy kitchen and burst into a covered alleyway. Anneke didn’t stop. She went straight across the alleyway and into the back of a hairdresser’s, rushing past the open-mouthed owner, droids with cutters and spray-on hairstyling gene therapies, and customers who didn’t have time to protest.
    Then they were