The Orphan Factory (The Orphan Trilogy, #2) (12 page)

“Sorry, sir.” Jason immediately eased his foot off the accelerator.

Kentbridge looked out the window and saw snowdrifts were piled high on the pavements and front yards of Riverdale properties on route.

#

The Range Rover pulled up outside the abandoned church on 137
^th
Street just as an ambulance pulled away from the curb, its siren howling. Kentbridge noticed CPD vehicles were parked out front and uniformed officers were interviewing a Latino gang member. He wasn’t to know it was the same muscular gang member who had chased after Nine with a knife.

Kentbridge jumped out of the Range Rover as soon as it stopped. He glanced around, observing the church and its surrounds were completely snowed over. Only the tops of headstones could be seen protruding through the snow in the cemetery at the rear of the church.

The Omegan walked straight over to the officer who was interviewing the gang member. One look at the badge Kentbridge flashed was enough to inform the officer he was outranked.

“What’s happening here?” Kentbridge asked.

“This guy reported an assault?”

“An assault on who?”

“On my friend, that’s who,” the surly Latino interjected.

“Shuddup!” the officer snapped. He turned back to Kentbridge. “This guy says his friend, a junkie, was ambushed by a young kid when he came to pray at the church earlier.”

Kentbridge raised one skeptical eyebrow.

“I know,” the officer responded, “doesn’t seem very likely, does it?”

Kentbridge looked at the Latino who a
t least had the good grace to look slightly embarrassed.

The officer continued, “Anyway, we arrived to find his junkie friend unconscious. Possibly a fractured skull. They’ve taken him to hospital. The medics said he’ll survive.”

“Thanks officer, that’ll be all,” Kentbridge said abruptly.

Realizing he was being dismissed, the officer walked off.

Kentbridge gave the Latino his full attention. “Now why don’t you tell me what really happened?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m someone who can have you put away for the rest of your days if you don’t tell me what I need to know.”

Something in Kentbridge’s expression made the Latino quit lying. “The kid almost killed my bro.” He pointed northwards up the street. “Then he ran off that way. Quick as a hare he was.”

Kentbridge became distracted when he noticed one of his fellow operatives hurrying toward him.

“We’ve just received a police report of a motorcycle stolen from outside a shopping center in Pullman,” the operative said. “The report mentioned a witness who saw a dark-haired boy get on the motorbike and head off north.”

“Okay, let’s go.” Kentbridge strode back to the Range Rover.

“What about me?” the Latino called after him.

Kentbridge ignored him. The other operative grinned at the Latino and hurried after the special agent. Behind their backs, the Latino gave them the finger.

Standing by the Range Rover, Kentbridge looked up the street in the direction his orphan was headed.
Why are you heading north, Nine?

Jason, who was still behind the wheel, leaned across and opened the front passenger door for Kentbridge who jumped into the passenger seat. The other operatives climbed in the back.

“Where we headed, sir?” Jason asked.

“North.” Kentbridge pointed up the road.

Jason accelerated away, a little more sedately than before.

As they traveled, Kentbridge tried to second guess Nine.
What are you up to?
Then it came to him.
Of course, you’re heading downtown.
He’d always instilled in them, if you’re on the run,
head to the most populated area or else into the wilderness.
In these conditions the wilderness is out of the question. So that only leaves one option.
He turned to the driver. “Faster, Jason.”

Jason planted his foot on the accelerator. The Range Rover shot forward.

21

It was dusk and Nine was no closer to resolving his immediate dilemma: how to escape a snowbound Chicago.

All public transport remained grounded. Visits to Union Station and the nearby Greyhound bus terminal had confirmed that, as had phone calls to O’Hare and Midway airports. Likewise, all boats remained in dock as Lake Michigan had totally frozen over, and all roads leading out of Chicago had been closed.

Now, as Nine walked along East Adams Street in the Loop, the city’s hub, he looked in the direction of Grant Park and couldn’t see a single moving vehicle. The only vehicles in sight had either been parked or abandoned for the time being, their windscreens and roofs covered in thick layers of snow.

Nine felt very small as he looked up at the surrounding skyscrapers. He couldn’t even see the top of the quarter-mile high Sears Tower, hidden as it was behind the sleet and snow that continued to fall. Nine recalled an earlier visit to the tower when Kentbridge had taken him and several other orphans to the very top. It seemed more ominous than he remembered – something to do perhaps with now being alone.

Cold, tired and hungry, a somewhat dispirited Nine realized his plan of coming to the city and finding suitable transport out of Illinois had backfired.
I should have continued south from Riverdale
. He knew if he’d acted earlier, he could have hitched a ride south as the blizzard had not yet reached its full fury and the roads were still in use at that point.

Nine forced himself to focus on the present. Resigned to overnighting in the city, he knew he must remain undetected until the blizzard passed. The orphan also knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that Kentbridge would now know he’d absconded and would have raised the alarm. He guessed the special agent would be personally leading the search for him and wondered how many Omega operatives he’d seconded to help him.
Plenty, I bet. Damn spooks
!

Assessing his chances of remaining undetected, Nine didn’t feel all that confident. He was very aware he and his fellow orphans had only completed about half their education at the orphanage and still had much to learn before they could be released into the murky world of intelligence gathering and assassinations. While they already had the skills to pick locks, monitor people, organize wire taps or even kill someone, they lacked the temperament and guile of Omega’s veteran operatives.

Nine tensed as he noticed a pedestrian approaching from the opposite direction. The man seemed familiar.
Is that Tommy?
He thought the man bore a physical resemblance to Kentbridge. It was too late to run. The Kentbridge lookalike was almost upon him. To Nine’s relief the man didn’t give him a second glance and walked on by, more content to watch where he was going than study the faces of the few other pedestrians silly enough to be walking the streets on a day like this.

The experience reminded Nine that Kentbridge was a master of disguise and had the ability to adopt radical disguises at a moment’s notice. In fact, he’d told the orphans only recently that using disguises – or shapeshifting as he’d called it – was on their curriculum and was something they’d be studying in the next few months.

This recollection prompted Nine to start taking more notice of others around him. As he progressed deeper into the CBD, the pavements became more congested as hardy Chicagoans spilled out of the surrounding buildings intent on somehow making their way home.

The orphan found himself looking suspiciously at a burly cop.
Is that you, Tommy?
He relaxed when he realized the cop was a good five inches shorter than Kentbridge. Not even a master of disguise could lose five inches in height. Nine found himself studying a Middle Eastern immigrant and then an elderly priest and finally a homeless man. He knew any one of them could be Kentbridge, such were his shapeshifting skills.
I know you’re close, Tommy.
He was sure he could feel his master’s presence.

Nine stopped abruptly when he saw someone he did recognize. It was Senior Agent Marcia Wilson. Just back from Omega HQ, the lean African-American agent was standing beneath the elevated train tracks of the downtown Loop transport system. She was in the company of two operatives, a man and a woman, who had traveled with her from the underground base in south-west Illinois.

The orphan recognized both operatives next to Marcia. They had once visited the orphanage to demonstrate fighting techniques.

Marcia looked directly at Nine. It took her a few moments to comprehend he was the rogue orphan. As soon as she did, Nine took off like lightning. Marcia signaled to her fellow operatives and all three gave chase. As she ran, she pulled out a state-of-the-art, military-issue satellite phone from her jacket pocket and speed-dialed a number.

Half a mile away, on Congress Parkway, Kentbridge answered the call on his near-identical phone. The three operatives who had journeyed with him from the orphanage hovered close by as he talked to Marcia. “Where is Nine?” He was already walking as he digested the information being relayed to him. Ending the call, Kentbridge looked back at his companions. “Follow me.” He began sprinting along the pavement. The others followed suit. Despite the snow underfoot, all four covered the ground quickly, so fit were they.

Contrary to Nine’s expectations, Kentbridge looked the same as always. The orphans’ master was so confident he and his team would soon capture the runaway boy, he’d seen no need to resort to a disguise. Besides, adopting a disguise could be misconstrued as going into full operational mode. That would send the wrong signal to Nine and, indeed, to all the orphans. Nine still had half a dozen years or more training ahead of him, and the last thing Kentbridge was prepared to tolerate was a cocky kid who thought he was so good that Omega considered him a threat.

As Kentbridge sprinted under one of the Loop’s many elevated tracks encircling the city center, he could feel his blood boiling. And it wasn’t the exertion that made him feel like that. It was the thought of Nine’s audacity in trying to escape from the very people who had nurtured him from birth.
Ungrateful little prick
. And it was the thought of how badly this incident reflected on him, the boy’s mentor.

Kentbridge glanced at his fellow operatives. The blank expression on their faces told him they shared none of his emotions. He realized it was just another assignment for them, and a minor one at that. Not for him, though. For him this was personal.

22

Night had fallen in Chicago. Power cuts caused by the blizzard meant only half the city’s automatic lights had kicked into action. That suited Nine.

The partial blackout didn’t suit his pursuers, however. Marcia and her two allocated Omega operatives were now proceeding on foot along East Jackson Boulevard, the same street they’d seen Nine running toward before they had lost sight of him minutes earlier. One side of the street was in darkness, which meant the operatives had to physically check every pitch-black alleyway to confirm their quarry wasn’t hiding there.

Marcia trailed her two associates while talking on her satphone. Naylor’s trusted senior agent had been receiving a steady stream of information from technicians back at Omega’s HQ ever since Nine had been sighted – as had Kentbridge who at that moment was approaching from the other end of the boulevard with his two operatives in tow. The agency’s IT team had been monitoring downtown Chicago’s vast array of surveillance camera footage, but so far the runaway had remained undetected.

The blizzard and partial blackout weren’t the only obstacles the operatives had to contend with. They now had an even bigger problem: East Jackson Boulevard and the surrounding streets were filling up with children and their guardians. The children had just finished competing in the first of a three day international spelling bee hosted by the city.

Within minutes, several hundred children of various nationalities had spilled out of the competition venue and were making their way to whichever one of the Loop’s numerous hotels they were staying at. Those in the company of parents were being shepherded along while many of the older children – including some who had never seen snow before – frolicked in the streets, throwing snowballs at each other.

The emergence of so many children made searching for one twelve-year-old boy akin to looking for a needle in a haystack.

Like Kentbridge and the other operatives, Marcia was rapidly tiring of trudging the city’s pavements in near Arctic conditions. When she thought her frustration levels couldn’t go any higher, she was struck on the head by a stray snowball. “Goddamn it!” She spun around and unbuttoned the top of her coat to reveal the handle of her holstered pistol.

A group of half a dozen children took off in all directions. Marcia was almost tempted to give chase when she noticed Kentbridge and his three operatives approaching.

The two groups converged on the pavement outside the large art deco building known as the Chicago Board of Trade. Like most of the buildings around it, it was in darkness, which suited the Omegans. All were flushed from their recent exertions.

Kentbridge addressed Marcia as well as the five operatives now gathered around him. “Nine could have gone in any direction since you last saw him,” he said. “He can’t have traveled far yet, so let’s split up and surround him east, west, north and south.”

Kentbridge didn’t wait for any agreement from Marcia or the others. Technically speaking Marcia was superior to him in the Omega hierarchy, but she wasn’t anywhere as experienced as him in conducting field operations. Besides, this mission involved one of the Pedemont orphans and Kentbridge was king in that department.

“We’ll create a circle around Nine,” the orphan’s master added. “And then, at my command, make the circle smaller and smaller until one of us smokes him out.”

Aware time was ticking, and in no mood for a debate, he motioned to the others to make tracks. They immediately took off in different directions. “And no-one harms the boy!” he shouted after them. “Naylor’s orders.” He turned and starting running east toward the Lake Michigan corner of the Loop.