Blink and You Die. Lauren Child

master, Funakoshi. It all seemed very unlikely to Ruby, who had never seen LB outside the walls of HQ, let alone out in the field. It might simply be gossip or it might be a very tall tale, but Agent Holbrook had told her that LB was the only Spectrum 8 agent to have mastered the deadly wrist grasp otherwise known as the ‘assassin’s handshake’.

      None of these assertions were exactly comforting at this moment.

      LB waved at her to sit down.

      ‘Do you want me to stay?’ asked Hitch.

      Stay, thought Ruby, for Pete’s sake, stay.

      ‘No, that won’t be necessary,’ said LB. ‘Would you give me and Redfort five minutes?’

      ‘Of course,’ said Hitch, stepping out.

      Ruby had a strong desire to jump up and follow him. But she kept her face composed and herself in her seat.

      LB waited for the door to close behind Hitch before addressing Ruby.

      ‘So you’re back, Redfort,’ she said.

      ‘Yes,’ said Ruby.

      ‘How was it?’

      ‘It was OK,’ said Ruby.

      ‘I hear you kept your head down and your nose clean.’

      ‘Yes,’ said Ruby.

      LB peered at her from over her glasses.

      ‘What, no smart remark?’

      Silence.

      ‘I’m beginning to wonder if they sent you to Swiss finishing school by mistake. I know I should be relieved, but it’s making me feel uneasy.’

       Redfort, you’re acting weird, pull it together!

      LB leaned forward. ‘Is there something wrong? Something you want to share?’

      ‘I’m not giving you half my donut if that’s what you’re getting at.’

      ‘That’s more like it. I thought for one horrible minute I was speaking with some Ruby Redfort doppelganger – I don’t know, Lorelei von Leyden in disguise, maybe.’

      ‘It would be a tough act to pull off,’ said Ruby. ‘I like to think that when they made me they broke the mould.’

      ‘So do I,’ said LB sourly. She cleared her throat. ‘As you might have heard, Spectrum 8 has handed much of its operations activity to Spectrum 1, just while we try to figure how far this contamination has reached, and which agent if any is responsible for leaking information to the Count.’

      ‘Right,’ said Ruby.

      If LB was bluffing then she was a seriously cool customer. ‘A large number of our department have been suspended until we have clarity on this issue. Spectrum 7 agents will replace them until we have located our mole.’

      ‘So am I being suspended?’ asked Ruby. She paused, thought about where she had been. ‘Was I suspended? What I mean to say is, was geek camp really a way of getting me out of the picture? So you could check me out?’

      ‘Yes, but if it makes you feel better, we were as much concerned for your wellbeing as we were that you might in some way be leaking information.’

      ‘You thought I might be leaking information?’

      ‘You can see our point of view here, I’m sure. On the one hand, we were suspicious that the Count would keep you alive – we had to ask ourselves why –but on the other, we were concerned that he might change his mind. He doesn’t always abide by logic. And besides, his employer presumably still wants you dead, assuming that story is true, though when it comes to the Count one should never assume anything. Whatever else he is, he is predictably unpredictable.’

      ‘So now what?’ asked Ruby carefully. ‘Am I trusted employee or traitor?’

      ‘Quit being so dramatic, Redfort, you’re neither; no one ever thought you were a traitor – a blabbermouth perhaps, there was always a chance of that.’

      Ruby opened her mouth to object, but LB raised her hand.

      ‘I never said you were, Redfort, I said there was a chance that you had brought this whole craziness to our door, but I concede that’s unlikely. There’s no evidence for it.’

      Well, that was a relief.

      Though what followed was not.

      ‘You, like every other agent in Spectrum 8, will be taken off duty. Eight is effectively closed to all lower-level agents. For all but vital access to our departments, permission must be given by a senior agent. My feeling was that your training should also be suspended until we have this security mess under control.

      ‘However,’ she paused and sighed, like what she was about to say was a great effort to her, ‘Hitch has persuaded HQ that it might be wise to keep up the survival skills. He seems to think you need all the protection you can get, and though you are no longer a functioning field agent or coding agent, after much consideration, I am persuaded he is right. We have a duty of care and I have to concede that it is our responsibility to protect you. As such, you will remain in Spectrum as a trainee agent. Under our careful supervision.’

      Ruby tried to smile. ‘That’s good to know,’ she said.

      A month ago, she’d have felt that LB’s office was the safest place on this earth. Now she couldn’t help feeling she was a fly, about to be swatted.

      Problem was, she had no idea who was holding the swatter.

      

      RUBY WAS JUST TRYING to figure out where Hitch might have got to when she spotted a note on the table in the waiting area.

       Meet me in Froghorn’s coding room – he will be expecting you.

      She was surprised that he had arranged for them to meet there, and it was odd that Froghorn had agreed to it – with the exception of Blacker, Froghorn generally made it clear that no one was welcome in his coding room. Seeing him so soon after she had stepped back into Spectrum was an unpalatable idea, but then she remembered Clancy’s words – ‘talk to Froghorn, I bet you anything he’ll tell you whatever you wanna know, just to make you feel small.’ It was true, Froghorn couldn’t resist bragging about all the secrets he knew, and let’s face it, she thought, he loves nothing better than to drone on about the late great Bradley Baker.

      All I gotta do is get him talking, that’s not so difficult.

      Knowledge was her only weapon, the only superpower she really had. And if she was going to find out the truth about how Spectrum’s most revered agent met his end then Froghorn was her only option.

      The door to his coding room was unlocked, so she was puzzled when she discovered it empty of people. Miles Froghorn was usually very careful about security. Ruby took the opportunity to have a snoop around and she found a lot of interesting things.

      There were numerous files stacked neatly on tables, and code books marked with post-its and bookmarks, and notes carefully written in ink. There were several books on data transmission, particularly error-correcting codes that allowed computers to know whether there were mistakes in information they received. It was a subject that fascinated Ruby.

      She flipped open a book.

       Parity bits are one of the simplest systems for ensuring error-free transmission of binary data. Note though that as they indicate only whether the information contains an even or odd