Agent 21: Codebreaker: Book 3 (14 page)

He turned and looked back at them. ‘From now on, all three of you check in with me every two hours by holding down number one on the keypads of your phones for five seconds. Check-in times are between five to and five past the hour. If you miss one for any reason, wait until the next check-in time. Do not check in outside these times. If I receive an unexpected check-in, I’ll know something untoward has happened and that somebody is impersonating or coercing you. Understood?’

‘Understood,’ the three of them replied.

‘We regroup here every evening at 1900 hours. And I want information, Zak. Evidence. I want to be absolutely certain Ludgrove’s our man before we bring him in. OK?’

Zak nodded. ‘OK,’ he said.

‘Good.’ Michael pressed the tips of his fingers together and surveyed Zak from over them. ‘Tell me, Zak,’ he said, and suddenly, after the solemn seriousness of the conversation, the old twinkle had returned to his green eyes. ‘Have you ever taken a keen interest in ornithology?’

‘In what?’

‘Ornithology. Bird-watching. Have you ever experienced the pleasures of lying for hours in long, wet grass waiting for the lesser-spotted something-or-other to rise?’

‘Er, can’t say I have.’

‘Shame.’ Michael continued to stare at him from above his fingertips.

‘Have
you
?’ Zak ventured.

‘Not since my days in the Scouts,’ the man answered. ‘Never had the time, somehow.’

‘Right. So, er, why do you ask?’

‘Did I mention the work experience?’ Michael asked, sounding innocent.

‘Yeah . . .’ Zak replied slowly. ‘With Ludgrove, right?’

‘Wrong. It would look a little obvious if we shoehorned you into working alongside him, wouldn’t you say. Happily, however, the
Daily Post
is one of the few newspapers left who print a daily nature notes column. You’ll be working on that. And you’ll need to come across as a keen bird-watcher – a twitcher – so here’s a bit of reading for you.’ He tossed Zak a small battered guide to British birds.

Was Zak imagining it, or was Michael – serious, stern Michael – biting the inside of his cheeks in an attempt not to laugh? Gabs showed no such restraint. She was openly grinning. ‘You know, Raf?’ she said, ‘I’ve always thought there was something of the Bill Oddie about our Zak.’

‘It’s the hair,’ Raf said gravely. ‘Scruffy.’

‘Er, excuse me,’ Zak said, unable to keep the note of outrage from his voice. ‘I don’t know if any of you remember, but I’ve had quite a busy couple of days. Why am I the one that has to go and sit around some boring newspaper office talking about the lesser-spotted . . . whatever it is?’

Michael suddenly grew serious again. ‘I’ve already told you, Zak. Nobody notices the work-experience boy. And don’t for a minute think that this isn’t important work. Lives could depend on how well you do it.’

Chastened, Zak fell silent. He watched as Michael pulled a cigarette case from his inside pocket and lit the pungent cherry tobacco he favoured. The smell instantly filled the whole room.

‘The Puzzle Master’s anonymous tormentor wanted him to plant three crosswords in the paper,’ Michael continued. ‘I think we can reasonably assume that this points to three separate bombings. You have very cleverly identified two of them and our analysts have now examined the crossword the
Daily Post
are planning to run tomorrow. It gives no indication of a third device. Of course, it may be that the third message is encrypted differently to the first two, but I’d say that was rather unlikely. I suspect either that the perpetrator saw the evacuation of the hospital and is holding off for a few days, or that he’s giving London a breather before his final spectacular. I don’t know about you, though, but I’d rather not sit around waiting for it. Agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ said Zak.

‘Excellent. I suggest you catch up on some reading – not only the bird book, but also Ludgrove’s file.’ He nodded at Gabs, who passed Zak a brown file with the name LUDGROVE pencilled on the front, then Michael continued. ‘Get some sleep too. Master Harry Gold is expected at the offices of the
Daily Post
at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.’ He stood up. ‘Gabriella, Raphael, you’ll need to come with me.’ He headed towards the door, but had only gone a couple of metres before he stopped and turned, slapping the palm of his hand dramatically against his forehead. ‘I almost forgot,’ he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a photograph, which he handed to Zak. It showed a middle-aged man, rather paunchy, with unfashionable circular glasses that were wonky on his face, and an unkempt, greying beard.

‘Who’s this?’ Zak asked.

The mischievous sparkle had returned to Michael’s eyes. ‘Your new boss,’ he said. ‘The
Daily Post
’s nature correspondent. You’ll need to ask for him when you get there in the morning.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Rodney,’ said Michael.

‘Rodney?’

‘That’s right, Zak. Rodney. Rodney Hendricks. I’m sure you’ll get on like a house on fire. Word is he’s fond of a pint or two at lunch time. That should give you ample time for snooping.’

Gabs sighed. ‘I do wish he’d stop using that word,’ she said to nobody in particular.

‘Why? It’s what we do, isn’t it?’

‘Of course. But it sounds so uncouth.’

Michael shrugged. ‘Not as uncouth as killing hundreds of innocent people,’ he said. And without another word, he led Gabs and Raf out of the flat, leaving Zak alone with the picture of his new boss, the file on Joshua Ludgrove, and his thoughts.

Gabs had been right. Everything in Ludgrove’s file suggested he was a nasty piece of work. Zak was surprised at how detailed it was. He’d been expelled from two schools for bullying and had joined the army at the age of sixteen because his father, himself a military man, had insisted on it. The bullying hadn’t stopped when he joined the armed forces. The file contained seven notes from his commanding officer stating that he had received complaints of both physical and verbal violence from the young Ludgrove. There were two complaints that he had stolen personal property from his fellow recruits. On being discharged from the army, he had found himself a job on a local newspaper, lying about his CV in the process. From there, he had worked his way up the ladder. He had been married once. It had lasted six months before she left, complaining that he beat her up, although she never pressed charges. Reading between the lines, Zak deduced that it was his ability to bully a story out of people that made him such a good journalist.

He put the file to one side, stretched out on the sofa and switched on the TV – he needed a pause before trying to become a sudden fount of knowledge on the habits of sparrows. The same reporter he had watched at St Peter’s Crag was talking breathlessly, but it was the constantly updated ribbon of text along the bottom of the screen that grabbed Zak’s attention.
1 ADULT CONFIRMED MISSING PRESUMED DEAD IN HOSPITAL BOMBING . . . PRIME MINISTER: ‘IT IS A MIRACLE NO MORE PEOPLE WERE HURT IN THIS COWARDLY ACT. MY THANKS GO TO THE EMERGENCY AND SECURITY SERVICES FOR THEIR OUTSTANDING WORK.’ . . . 37 CONFIRMED DEAD IN TUBE BOMBING. 60 STILL MISSING. RESCUE WORKERS SAY CHANCES OF FINDING ANY FURTHER SURVIVORS ARE ‘SMALL’ . . . MIDNIGHT GUNSHOTS REPORTED IN VICINITY OF HARRINGTON SECURE HOSPITAL, SOUTH LONDON. METROPOLITAN POLICE HAVE ISSUED REQUEST FOR MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC WHO SAW ANYTHING SUSPICIOUS TO COME FORWARD . . . CHIEF COMMISSIONER AND HOME SECRETARY CONFIRM TERRORISM THREAT LEVEL HAS INCREASED TO ‘CRITICAL’ FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 7/7. LONDONERS URGED TO BE ‘EXTREMELY VIGILANT’, AND REASSURED THAT THE SECURITY SERVICES ARE TAKING ‘ALL POSSIBLE PRECAUTIONS AT THIS TIME OF HIGH ALERT’
.

Zak stared at those words. All possible precautions at this time of high alert? If only that were true. Michael was right. Three crosswords surely meant three bombings, and at the moment they were barely any closer to working out where or when the third bombing was going to take place.

And time, as it had a habit of doing, was running out.

17 JUNE

12

NY HERO

LONDON HAD CHANGED
.

The Victoria Line was still down, of course, on account of the Pimlico bombing just two days ago. Every other line was delayed. The passengers on buses and even pedestrians on the street eyed each other with suspicion and Zak noticed glimpses of fear on the faces of many going down the steps to the tube.

He was standing on the edge of Victoria railway station, near those stairs, holding a free newspaper someone had just shoved into his fist. On the front cover was the hospital at the moment of collapse, and the picture quite clearly showed the chopper with two people dangling from it on a rope. The journalists had enlarged the image of Zak and Gabs, but their faces were blurred and unrecognizable, thank God. It would be difficult for him to keep a low profile if everyone at the newspaper – many of them digging into the news story around the bombs – had seen his features. He heard two sirens in the distance, both travelling in different directions. When one of them faded away, a third came into earshot. The area itself was swarming with flak-jacketed armed police.

Yes. London had changed. It was a city on the edge of panic, and it had good reason to be.

Zak had changed too, in the months that had passed since he last considered himself a Londoner. Changed since he had lived with Ellie and her parents in Camden, gone to school like any normal teenager, hung round the park at the weekends. Now he immediately picked out the MP5s clipped to the jackets of the armed police teams and his mind automatically processed everything he knew about that weapon. Nine mill rounds, rate of fire 800 rounds per minute. But it wasn’t that he could identify a firearm with the same ease as other kids his own age could identify a new model of mobile phone that made him realize how different he was. It was that he was looking at the world in a different way. By the entrance to M&S, ten metres to his eleven o’clock, he saw a man in a leather jacket surreptitiously raise his sleeve to his mouth, and his lips move. The armed police, he realized, were just a visible sign of security. There were covert personnel in situ too, whom ordinary members of the public would never notice.

‘No loitering, son.’ One of the armed officers had approached him. Zak nodded and hitched his rucksack over his shoulder. He made to leave, but the officer held up one palm. ‘Hold your horses,’ he said.

‘Something wrong?’ Zak asked, innocently.

‘Open your rucksack, please.’ His words were polite, but his tone of voice wasn’t.

Zak did as he was asked. The officer poked around inside, but found nothing more exciting than a couple of rounds of cheese sandwiches, the battered guide to birds and a Harry Potter book that was well thumbed even though Zak hadn’t read a word of it. The officer nodded. ‘On your way,’ he said, before turning his attention to a confused-looking Japanese tourist. Zak left the area.

The offices of the
Daily Post
were situated on the top two floors of an office building 100 metres to the north of Victoria Station. Zak walked through the revolving glass door into the building’s comfortable reception area at eight a.m. precisely. He removed his phone from his pocket and held down number one on the keypad, checking in with Michael almost absent-mindedly as the rest of his attention focused on the layout of his surroundings. Second exit, fifteen metres to his left. A barrier to the right of the reception desk, blocking the reception from the area around the lifts. As he approached the desk, a receptionist looked over her half-moon glasses at a sheet of paper.

‘Yes?’ she asked impatiently.

‘My name’s Harry Gold. I’m here to see Rodney Hendricks.’

Thirty seconds passed as she tapped at a keyboard and peered at her computer screen.

‘Harry Gold, did you say?’

‘That’s right,’ Zak replied, quietly and politely. ‘G – O – L—’

‘No Harry Gold here, young man,’ she said. ‘Are you sure you have the right place? This is a newspaper office, you know. Who are you supposed to be visiting again?’

‘Rodney Hendricks.’

‘I say, did I hear my name?’

Zak looked around. Standing behind him was the man whose photo he had seen. He was about his own height but a good deal older – comfortably in his fifties. His little round glasses made him look rather like a mole and his blue eyes sparkled, making his ruddy face look very jolly. Zak was bizarrely put in mind of Father Christmas. If Rodney Hendricks had been wearing a red outfit instead of his crumpled grey suit, the similarity would have been astonishing.

‘Hi, Mr Hendricks,’ Zak said offering his hand. ‘I’m Harry. Harry . . .’

‘Harry Gold? Yes, of course, of course. I must say, it’s jolly nice of head office to send me a bit of help. Usually it’s the news desk who get all the work experience. Or features, of course. Mustn’t forget features. Don’t worry, Elspeth, I’ll take him up. Follow me, Harry, follow me.’

The words tumbled out of Hendricks’s mouth as though he couldn’t stop them. They continued to tumble as Hendricks led him across the marble reception towards the lift.

‘So, young Harry, what brings you to the hallowed halls of the fourth estate? Hundred years old, the
Daily Post
, m’boy. Rich in tradition. British institution. Floors seven and eight, m’boy, we’ll be needing seven.’ He pressed the button to call the lift, then stuck his hands in his pocket and stood there, whistling rather aimlessly as the lift rose from the basement level.

‘I’m hoping to be a journalist,’ Zak said, repeating the story he had worked out yesterday. ‘I have an uncle who—’

‘Eh?’

‘I was just saying that—’

‘Ah, here we are!’ The lift doors slid open. ‘After you, m’boy. After . . . Ah, Ludgrove . . . what an unexpected pleasure.’ Hendricks didn’t sound like it was a pleasure at all. He looked at the solitary figure in the lift. He was tall – much taller than Zak or Hendricks – and thick-set. He was very cleanly shaven, with the exception of a mole on his left cheek from which three hairs sprung. His hair was very precisely combed into a centre parting, and his forehead was creased into what looked like a permanent frown. In his right hand he held a ballpoint pen. Every couple of seconds, his thumb pressed the button at the end of the pen a couple of times, clicking the nib in and out.