Bionic Agent (17 page)

He left The Quay and headed towards the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club that jutted out over the water. Four yachts were perched on the decking. And Norman Lightfoot was sitting out on the
veranda.

Jordan came to a sudden halt and gasped. His main suspect was just sitting there, not paying much attention to anything except the glass and bottle on the table in front of him. No wonder he
hadn’t spotted Jordan rowing out to
Windsong
in the distance. He was probably drunk.

Straight away, Jordan decided to confront Lightfoot. He didn’t know the building, but it looked like he’d have to go round to the main door and through the club to reach the balcony.
But as he set off, he thought the old sea captain might have glanced in his direction. If he was right, he had to hope that Lightfoot hadn’t recognized him among the swarm of yachting
enthusiasts.

Jordan burst into the club through the roadside entrance and dashed to the waterside balcony, leaving startled sailors in his wake. He skidded to a halt on the veranda. But Norman Lightfoot was
no longer there. Only an empty bottle, a pair of binoculars and an ashtray containing the butt of a cigar remained on his table. Jordan sighed heavily and walked to the railing at the edge of the
balcony. He hung over it but could not see anyone retreating from the club.

Frustrated, he drummed his fingers on the top rail. He hadn’t dried off completely but he’d stopped dripping so at least he was attracting less attention. The few people relaxing on
the veranda ignored him.

Jordan could make out the distant
Windsong
. Then he became aware of something else. His heightened sense of smell picked up a familiar scent. It was a mixture of alcohol and cigars. It
wasn’t coming from the table. It was very close. Jordan spun round.

Lightfoot had sneaked up behind him and in his hand was his broken tumbler. He thrust the jagged glass at Jordan, aiming at his neck.

Instinctively, Jordan dodged out of the way and let fly with his right arm. It slammed into Lightfoot’s chest, glanced off and cracked against his chin. The broken glass
flew across the floor and the blow lifted Norman off his feet, even though he was big and solid. He jolted backwards and crumpled onto the floor.

A group of bar staff, bouncers and club members burst out onto the balcony and came at Jordan. Before he could react, they had him by the arms. He didn’t strike out again. Shocked by his
own power, he didn’t want to hurt anyone else. A yachtsman helped Norman Lightfoot up and supported him as he walked away.

“No!” Jordan cried. “You’ve got it wrong. I’m the good guy. He attacked me.”

“Sure,” one of the men replied. “Fifty-year-old attacks teenager. That’s a turn-up for the books.”

“How come he’s hurt if he’s the thug?” someone said.

“We’ve called the police.”

Jordan shouted, “You didn’t see. You don’t understand!”

“Save it for the police.”

“Till they come, you’re under citizens’ arrest.”

“Why don’t we get some rope and tie him up?”

A girl – about seven or eight years old – walked towards them timidly and said in a quiet voice, “He’s telling the truth. The bad man tried to hurt him.”

A woman – the girl’s mother, Jordan assumed – kneeled down beside her. “Are you sure, Sophie? What did you see?”

Sophie pointed to the steps that led down to the pontoon and the area underneath the balcony. “The man was hiding down there. He came up all quiet. On tiptoe, you know.” She
demonstrated a few silent steps. “He was holding a broken glass. He tried to stab...” She looked at Jordan and then fell silent.

Suddenly embarrassed, the men let go of Jordan.

Jordan nodded at Sophie and then said to the men, “I’m on the same side as the police. And I’m pretty sure the man you’ve just let off blew up the Thames Estuary. I think
he’s put a bomb in the river here as well.”

“What? Here? A bomb?”

The chief barman rushed to the door and shouted inside, “Don’t let him go!”

But it was too late. Norman Lightfoot had got his breath back and staggered out of the club.

The background noise was almost deafening as club members asked questions, wondering what was going on. Jordan was at the centre of the fuss, yet a distant cry made him suddenly alert.
“Hey! That’s mine. Come back!” At once, he shouldered his way through the crowd and looked over the rail.

Lightfoot was sailing away in a tiny yacht, while its owner stood at the end of the jetty waving his arms furiously and shouting.

Jordan squatted down briefly by the girl and said, “Thanks, Sophie. I’ve got to go and catch him.”

“Okay,” she replied.

He stood up and dashed to the steps that were out of sight around the corner of the balcony. He went down them two at a time, almost out of control. He sprinted towards the yachtsman at the end
of the pontoon. Both of them watched Norman Lightfoot meandering clumsily under a brilliant orange sail. “I don’t know anything about yachts,” Jordan said to him, “but you
do. So, let’s grab someone else’s and go after him.”

The man stared at Jordan for a few seconds and then seemed to click into action. “Yes. Of course. Harry will understand. We’ll take his.” He hurried along the jetty to another
yacht and Jordan followed him.

Unfurling the mainsail and jib, the yachtsman muttered angrily, “That idiot doesn’t know about sailing either. He’s all over the place. Not in control at all. If he damages my
boat, I’ll murder him.”

Jordan smiled. “I’ll help.”

The wind caught the sail and the yacht lurched away from the jetty. “Do you know him?” the sailor asked. “Keep down, by the way.”

Jordan ducked as the boom flew across and threatened to remove his head. “Yes. He’s used to something a bit bigger than yachts. When you catch him up, let me handle him. He’s
dangerous.”

“Fine. You take care of him. I’ll take care of the boats.” Keeping his eye on the river, the man paused and then said, “I’m Charles. Who are you?”

“Jordan.”

“Good to meet you,” he said, his tone heavily ironic.

The red and white sail swelled and strained above them. The hull sliced through the water and the whole yacht tilted. Jordan felt as if he was taking a corner on a speeding motorbike. They
accelerated westwards.

“The key is to angle the sail,” Charles said as he adjusted the jibsheet. Then he gazed ahead. “That chap hasn’t got a clue. I just hope we get to him before he collides
with something.”

Still keeping his head down, Jordan pointed to a large motorboat coming across the river. “Talking of collisions...”

“It’s the Wallasea ferry. I’ve got it covered.”

“I didn’t mean you,” Jordan replied.

Norman Lightfoot’s yacht appeared to Jordan to be swerving into the path of the ferry.

Charles muttered, “The fool!”

Making for its landing stage in Burnham, the ferry sounded its foghorn as a warning.

Jordan could just see Lightfoot. He seemed confused by ropes, tiller and sails. It was likely that panic and alcohol were adding to his confusion. His yacht veered crazily, the boom swung across
and struck the incompetent sailor across the head. He collapsed at once. The boat turned away from the approaching ferry and instead headed for the northern shore. Without anyone to steer, though,
it was bound to ram one of the moored boats before it reached land.

In the distance, a police siren wailed.

Concentrating on the stolen yacht with the bright orange sail, Jordan realized where it was going. Straight towards
Windsong
. He turned towards Charles and said, “Don’t go any
closer!”

“What? Why not? I’ve got to intercept it.”

“No!” Jordan yelled at him. “There’s a bomb.”

“A what?”

“Over there. Where it’s going. If it hits...”

“What do you mean? What about my boat?”

“Look,” Jordan said. “Phew! It’s okay. It’s going to miss.”

But Charles’s hijacked yacht glanced off one moored vessel, changed direction and headed directly towards
Windsong
.

Jordan closed his eyes, winced, and braced himself. He saw a huge column of water and bright flashes. He heard a massive explosion followed by a series of thunderous bangs. He saw a window
shatter in front of him. He saw glass piercing his body as he was blown backwards. And he saw his right arm wrenched from his shoulder. But he felt...nothing.

He opened his eyes. The yacht had slammed into
Windsong
but there had been no explosion. No injuries. No damage. Nothing. His imagination – and his fear – had transported him
back in time to a year earlier.

Charles was still manoeuvring the borrowed boat closer to his own.

A groggy Norman Lightfoot had scrambled onto
Windsong
and he was tottering around. Blood was leaking from his head wound and alcohol probably clouded his mind. He hadn’t even
noticed Jordan. He yanked on the door to the living quarters, but he couldn’t open it. Stumbling around the deck, he could barely keep upright. He searched one pocket after another until he
came across the key. In trying to push it into the lock, he dropped it and cursed.

Jordan’s companion was interested only in the yacht that had begun to drift at the whim of wind and tide. He fought heroically with rudder, ropes and sail, trying to get alongside.

Giving up with the key and opting for brute force, Lightfoot battered the door until it gave way. And that was the trigger.

The bomb attached to the keel detonated.

The blast was nowhere near as dramatic as the one in the Thames Estuary, but the powerboat’s fuel exploded. Parts of
Windsong
flew apart and the rest caught fire. Water erupted and
Norman Lightfoot was tossed into the air along with the fibreglass shrapnel from the devastated boat. The force of the blast snapped the mast of Charles’s unmanned yacht and shredded its
orange sail. Fragments of nylon fell from the sky like burst balloons. The boat itself flipped over. Its centreboard and rudder poked up out of the water like sharks’ fins.

Jordan felt the heat on his face and he gripped the side of the boat as it rocked uncontrollably from side to side.

“What the...!” Charles hung on to the mainsheet with his mouth open.

“Over there!” Jordan called out, pointing at Norman Lightfoot’s body. He was floating face down on the water.

Charles guided the yacht through the flotsam. Jordan leaned over the side and grabbed Lightfoot’s arm. The old sea captain’s body was incredibly heavy but Jordan steeled himself and
began to heave him onboard with his powerful right arm. Behind Jordan, Charles leaned over the opposite side to counterbalance Norman’s weight and to stop the yacht capsizing.

Jordan landed his catch. Norman Lightfoot flopped into the yacht like a wounded whale and Jordan said, “Let’s get him to land.”

“Is he dead?”

Jordan shrugged.

Lightfoot was a dreadful sight. Much of his skin was burned, his left leg was missing below the knee and watery blood was streaming from the wound. But both of his eyes remained stubbornly
open.

Was this shattered man responsible for killing Ben Smith, his family and so many others? Jordan was already sure. He leaned over Norman Lightfoot. “You’re not dead, are you?”
he said. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but you’ll survive. If I could, you will as well. And you know what? I’m glad. I want you to pull through. I want you to live with
it.”

The Crouch Harbour Authority and the police were waiting at the jetty. Jordan did not need to explain who he was because a mystery man, sent by Angel, had already spoken to
them. He didn’t know how the agent had worked out exactly where he was, but he was very grateful for the backup. While an ambulance raced to the scene and a first-aider tightened a tourniquet
round the remains of Lightfoot’s left leg, Jordan simply told the police what had happened and Charles nodded his agreement absent-mindedly.

A few minutes later, the ambulance took the disgraced captain to the nearest hospital with a police escort. Angel’s assistant whisked Jordan away in a Jaguar. Along with the harbour
master, Charles was left standing on the jetty, staring glumly at the river and the remains of his precious yacht.

On the way back to London, Jordan sat in silence. He had imagined how this moment would feel. He’d expected to run around and punch the air as if he’d just scored the winning goal.
But he didn’t feel like it. He wasn’t ready to celebrate. He wasn’t content. He wanted to believe he’d discovered Red Devil and handed him over to the police. He wanted to
believe he’d succeeded where everyone else had failed. But where was the proof that he’d completed his mission?

Norman Lightfoot would not be convicted because he looked guilty; because he ticked all the boxes, as Angel put it. Unit Red’s job was to prove a case against the bad guys. To make this
one watertight, Jordan felt he needed more evidence. He wished there was a way to detect Lightfoot’s fingerprints all over the crime. But Jordan wasn’t a forensic scientist and the
original crime scene had been obliterated twelve months earlier.

Desperate for proof, Jordan wondered why the man who’d once captained
Ocean Courage
had walked into his own booby trap on board
Windsong
. Lightfoot could have been dazed,
drunk or depressed. So depressed by what he had done that he wanted to blow himself up. If that was true, perhaps his attempt at suicide was an admission of guilt.

Something else stopped Jordan celebrating. The arrest hadn’t changed anything. The disaster had still happened and it could never be undone. His family was still dead and, as Jordan
Stryker, he still had to remain a stranger to Amy Goss.

The next day, as Jordan sat in the bunker, he wondered if the dead of Highgate Cemetery were also curious and eager to hear Angel’s words. He could picture them pressing
their decomposing ears against the other side of the wall.

Angel stopped typing and turned towards his young recruit. “You look like you’re in a world of your own.”