Deadlock by Mark Walden

agency’s facial-recognition processing had raised a flag. He pulled up the image that had caught the machine’s attention and studied it. At first glance it was nothing of interest, just a photo that an English schoolgirl had uploaded to a social-media site showing her and her friends standing in the middle of a busy square. The machines at CIA headquarters routinely scanned all images uploaded to these sites for persons of interest and though the software was good it was notorious for throwing up false positives. The rectangle highlighting the positive hit in this particular image was not framing anyone in the foreground though. Instead it drew his attention to a face in the background. Sitting at a café table behind the group of laughing girls was the woman who the security camera had caught entering the hotel in Phoenix and sitting next to her, with his back to the camera, was someone with a crop of spiky white hair. Flack felt his heart rate increase as he accessed the data embedded within the photograph, silently praying that it had been taken with a smartphone. A moment later his prayers were answered as he studied the properties of the file and saw the precise GPS coordinates that had been recorded at the moment when the photo was taken. He smiled to himself as he punched the coordinates into his laptop’s mapping software. His job was so much easier now that everyone carried a device around in their pocket that allowed people like him to track their movements twenty-four hours a day. A second later he had the precise location of where the photograph had been taken less than forty-five minutes ago. He picked up the phone and quickly dialled a number.
    ‘This is Flack,’ he said, ‘get me the Italian field office. I want a full snatch team mobilised and feet on the ground in Venice within half an hour. Malpense was in St Mark’s Square less than one hour ago.’

    ‘I knew he wasn’t just lying on a beach somewhere,’ Shelby said with a grin as she, Wing and Franz read the report on the screen in front of them. It detailed Otto and Raven’s efforts to track down and interrogate the senior members of the Disciples. ‘Although, with his complexion, lying on a beach for more than about thirty seconds would potentially be just as dangerous as what he’s been getting up to. He’s been working with Raven all this time.’
    ‘It would appear so,’ Wing said, ‘though they do not appear to have made an enormous amount of progress.’ A note of frustration was clearly evident in some of the latest reports. The last update detailed the accidental death of a senior Disciple commander in London while he was being pursued by Raven. Shelby pulled up the accompanying photographs.
    ‘Ewwww,’ she said, before hurriedly closing the pictures again. ‘Train one, bad guy nil.’
    ‘Yes,’ Wing said, ‘most unpleasant, but that was several weeks ago. This file is not up to date.’
    ‘Well, at least we are knowing that Otto is OK,’ Franz said. ‘That’s something, isn’t it?’
    ‘Hmmm,’ Wing said, walking across the room and sitting down on the edge of what had once been Laura’s bed, with an unhappy look on his face.
    ‘Hey, you want to give us a minute, Franz?’ Shelby said quietly, looking slightly worried.
    Franz saw her expression and gave a quick nod before heading out of the room.
    ‘You OK, big guy?’ Shelby asked as the door hissed shut behind Franz.
    ‘No, not really,’ Wing replied.
    ‘What’s up?’ she asked, putting her arm around his shoulders.
    ‘I hate this,’ Wing replied, shaking his head and staring at the floor. ‘Hard as it was when Otto told us that he had been expelled from H.I.V.E., at least we had the consolation of knowing that he would not be in any further danger. But this,’ he gestured towards the text on the screen across the room, ‘knowing what he’s doing out there makes being stuck here unable to help worse. Otto is more than just my friend, Shelby, he is