Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book One - Lawrence Miles [9]
And a good excuse. Right.
‘Out of breath,’ Llewis huffed. ‘Sorry. Been… been rushed off my feet… all morning. People to see. Deals to do. You know.’
‘Oh.’
Llewis tried to ignore the way the bodyguards were staring at him. ‘Not… not in the best of shape, right now. You know how it is. Stuck on the phone all day. In an office. Need to… to work out more. Pull a few weights. Build up the old muscle tone.’ He finished by giving the boy a Peter‐bloody‐Morgan kind of friendly wink. Then he realised how this might look, and prayed to God the boy wasn’t really a poof.
Fortunately, the contact took no notice. ‘We’re a bit early,’ he said. ‘Guest… Mr Guest’s still back at the hotel. He’ll be here soon.’
‘Mr Guest?’
‘Our… um, managing director.’
‘Oh, right. Right, got you.’ Yes. Yes, this is it. You’ve done it. You’ve bloody done it, Alan Llewis, you little wonder. You’re in.
‘Code?’ said the boy.
Llewis froze.
Code. Oh God. Nobody had said anything about a code. A last‐minute security measure? Why hadn’t he been told? Why was he never told? Why was he always the one who had to figure things out for himself? Code. Code. What could it be? What could it possibly…
He suddenly noticed that the boy was holding out his hand.
‘K‐o‐d‐e,’ the boy added.
Slowly, Llewis raised his hand. The boy shook it.
‘That’s your name?’ Llewis blurted.
The boy‐poof‐Goth‐whatever stared at him for a moment, as if it were a stupid question. Then he nodded.
Llewis breathed out, and the breath was much louder than he’d meant it to be. He found himself peering at the boy’s pass, the slab of yellow plastic pinned to his jacket. Searching for a name, just making sure he’d got it right. But of course there were no names on the passes. Not at a get‐together like this one. Only an ID number, and the words COPEX ’96 in big chunky letters. No names, no questions.
It was more or less at this point that Llewis realised he’d left his own pass back at the bar. It was pinned to his jacket, and his jacket was still slung over the bar stool. He imagined the greasy man going through his pockets, nicking his matches, his phone book, the cards he’d picked up from the local telephone kiosks, the decoder key for the satellite TV in his hotel room. He wondered if he should go back for it right away. He might have panicked, if he hadn’t already been panicking.
Mr Kode was speaking again. Llewis realised he’d completely missed the beginning of the sentence. ’…through this way,’ the boy went on. ‘We’ve hired a kind of side office off the exhibition hall. Mr Guest’ll join us when he’s ready.’
Mr Kode motioned towards the far side of the hall, and the bodyguards lurched aside, their sheer presence opening up a pathway between the other reps. Llewis started moving before he even knew what he was doing.
* * *
‘This is all new to me,’ said Mr Kode, as they made their way towards the side office.
Right, thought Llewis. You and me both. ‘Oh yes?’ he said, trying to sound nonchalant. ‘It’s an institution, COPEX. It’s like the first day of Ascot. Everyone likes to dress up for it.’
He was quoting Peter bloody Morgan there, of course. It was what Morgan always said, every year, the day before the fair. Llewis suddenly felt he should add something of his own to it.
‘Or Cruft’s,’ he said.
Instantly, Mr Kode stopped moving. The bodyguards stopped moving, too.
‘Cruft’s?’ asked Mr Kode.
Llewis nodded dumbly.
‘Oh,’ Kode said. And he started moving again.
‘It’s an event,’ Llewis babbled, this time trying to quote Morgan word for word. ‘That’s what I’m saying. It’s like… like the first day of Ascot.’ Damn. He’d already said that, hadn’t he? Damn damn damn. ‘That’s why they hold it here. At a racecourse. Not Ascot. Obviously. I mean, I don’t know if that’s really the reason. I mean, I couldn