Secret Breakers: The Power of Three (9 page)

‘Yeah, well, tell him that, if he can hear you behind all that fluff.’

‘At least it’s obvious why I can’t hear you,’ snapped back Hunter. ‘What’s your excuse for mishearing everything that’s ever said to you?’

Brodie slopped milk on her cereal. ‘Can we
please
just try to get along?’ she begged.

‘Look, we’re here to work miracles with the greatest unread code in the world,’ Hunter continued in a voice that was far too loud. ‘There’s only so much miracle you can hope for.’ He took a section of rather overdone toast, which was dripping with peanut butter, and pushed it eagerly into his mouth.

The rest of the meal passed in silence, apart from Hunter’s chewing, and no one spoke either when they made their way over to the music room where the challenge was supposed to begin.

Tusia sat scowling on the floor, tracing patterns in the light cast by the beautiful glass ceiling above them. Hunter only removed his earmuffs when Smithies led Ingham and Miss Tandari into the room.

Smithies had obviously chosen a new tie for the occasion. He patted the mustard yellow fabric flat against his stomach before beginning to speak. ‘So, this is it then. The moment of truth or, we hope, one of many such moments.’ He laughed a little but there was an edge of nerves to his voice. ‘You’ve worked hard on your training. The tutors have made pleasing reports about your progress.’ Brodie looked along the line at Ingham whose face was flushing a little as if in an attempt to reject any association with notes of praise. ‘Perhaps, and it’s a big perhaps, we’ve begun to make code-crackers out of you.’

‘Some of us were crackers to start with,’ Hunter whispered behind the back of his hand to Tusia.

‘Speak for yourself.’

Smithies coughed a little and then continued. ‘But our purpose in bringing you here wasn’t simply to train you, but to use you. Our Study Group lacks recruits and our task today is to choose those who’ll swell our numbers and complete our team. We’ve set you a simple task. You’ll be given no help from the adults here. But if you complete the task successfully, then you’ll be part of Veritas.’

He reached then into his pocket and pulled out a long thin cord. Hanging from it were several tiny red ribbons. ‘Your lifeline.’ He smiled. ‘A coded lifeline, in fact. Let me explain.’

Stuck to the wall was a long strip of paper with the letters of the alphabet printed on it. Smithies held the end of the cord at the start of the row of letters. Miss Tandari took the other end and pulled it straight. The first red ribbon fluttered under the letter ‘I’.

‘What the hot relish sauce is he doing?’ whispered Hunter.

‘Spelling,’ Smithies laughed. ‘Spelling out your chances.’ He relaxed the cord and then held the first red-ribbon marker at the start of the alphabet line and stretched the cord again. The second ribbon fluttered beneath the letter ‘N’. ‘It’s a rope code,’ Smithies explained. ‘Each ribbon marks a letter and the letters together spell out “
IN VERITAS
”.’

‘Nice,’ said Tusia.

‘It will be,’ said Miss Tandari. ‘And you will be,’ she laughed. ‘In Veritas, I mean. If you pass the test. And if you don’t lose all the letters.’

Brodie felt a little sick.

‘As you work on the test,’ Ingham continued, ‘you’ll be asked to place the lifeline in the vacuum message system every time you hear a bell ring. The rope will travel down the system and to us.’ He was enjoying this, Brodie could tell. ‘We’ll return the rope to you perhaps unchanged. Or perhaps with ribbons missing.’

Brodie didn’t like the sound of this.

‘We’ll remove ribbons,’ said Miss Tandari, ‘if we feel you’re making errors in the test. You have nine lives. Like a cat. If you complete the test but all the ribbons are removed – you fail. Keep the lives and you will really be “in Veritas”.’

Smithies clapped his hands together purposefully as Brodie tried to process all she’d heard. ‘Now before we begin, let me make two tiny reminders. Firstly, we will be watching you, so don’t be put off.’

Brodie wasn’t reassured by this comment.

‘Secondly, remember nothing you’ve learnt before is without use.’

Brodie didn’t find this last comment encouraging either. There was a lot they’d learnt before and retaining all of it in her head turned out to be a bit of a problem.

As she was contemplating this fact, Smithies put a small piece of paper on the table in front of them. He coiled the coded lifeline on top. ‘Here it is, my eager ones. The final challenge. Pass this and you’re part of the team.’

Then without even a backwards glance he led the way out of the music room with Miss Tandari and Ingham following behind him.

Tusia darted forward and grabbed the piece of paper. ‘Shall I?’ she said.

‘Looks to me as if you already have,’ Hunter murmured.

Brodie lifted the coded lifeline. Nine lives. Surely they’d be OK? She could not begin to explain how much she wanted this. How much she
needed
this.

Tusia began to read. ‘
To take a place amongst us, line the lower stitches straight with the fire then prepare for feasting in the place where the corpse awakes at two
.

‘Oh, that’s gross,’ snapped Tusia, recoiling and holding her hand across her mouth. ‘What do they mean? Corpses awaking. That’s just weird.’

‘No more than anything else we’ve done here,’ said Hunter, ‘and before you panic it’s not going to mean what we think it means, is it? That’d be too obvious. It might be disinformation. Or mean something else. Like not really dead people.’

‘Good, because if it did then I wouldn’t want anything to do with it,’ said Tusia.

‘Shame it doesn’t then really,’ Hunter said loftily.

Tusia didn’t humour him with a reply.

‘So, if not dead people, then what?’ asked Brodie.

‘I vote for getting a dictionary,’ said Tusia. ‘If we look the word up then there’ll be alternative suggestions.’

‘Do you think if she goes to get a dictionary we can have an alternative team-mate?’ Hunter whispered.

This time Brodie didn’t offer an answer.

It didn’t take long for Tusia to nip across the hall to the library and retrieve two huge reference books. She left the door open as it was hot and the stained-glass window above them, covered with pictures of flowers, was making the room feel like a greenhouse. In the corridor, Brodie could see Smithies. He had a clipboard. Tusia seemed undeterred and raced back in, flicking through the pages of the dictionary, stopping at the Cs.

‘OK, we’ve got the obvious one. Dead bodies. But apparently we’re ignoring that, like I’m trying to ignore you.’ She smiled smugly at Hunter before looking back again at the open page. ‘Then there’s “to corpse”, which is to do with forgetting your lines if you’re in a show. But I can’t see how that one makes sense of the clue.’

Brodie frowned. ‘Any more?’ The rope of ribbons was heavy in her hand.

Tusia looked up. ‘One,’ she said. ‘A corpse flower.’ She ran her fingers across the page, skim-reading the information. Then she began to flick through the second book she’d brought, a heavy encyclopaedia, until she found the entry on corpse flowers. ‘Says it’s one of the ugliest flowers in the world. And worse than that, it’s got a really disgusting smell.’

‘Must remember to get you a bunch,’ sniffed Hunter.

Tusia carried on reading. ‘Apparently the flower only blooms when the plant’s mature. And then not every year.’ She snapped the encyclopaedia shut. ‘And apparently, even when it does flower it’s only for a few days. Five at most. It’s pretty rare.’

‘Bet I could track some down,’ said Hunter, ‘for the right person of course.’

Suddenly a bell rang.

Brodie’s hand tightened on the coded lifeline. ‘Already? We have to hand this thing in already?’

Two pink circles appeared on Tusia’s cheeks. ‘But we haven’t done anything yet!’

‘Except row,’ muttered Brodie a little too quietly to be heard.

Brodie carried the lifeline as they hurried to the nearest hut. She opened the door to the vacuum tubing, coiled the cord inside a message container and shut the door. There was a familiar whirring noise and the container sped out of sight.

Brodie waited. The vacuum system thrummed above their heads. There was a popping noise. And then the sound of falling. The container dropped back down the tube.

‘Well?’ urged Hunter, as Brodie unscrewed the lid.

She held the cord outstretched.

Tusia gasped. ‘Seven! Only seven ribbons. We’ve lost two lives already. Why?’

Brodie thought she knew but was too scared to say. ‘What matters is we don’t lose more.’ She tried to sound calm but she wasn’t sure she managed it. ‘We need to focus on the problem and not stress about the “lives”.’ She was sure she failed to deliver that sentence as if she meant it.

Tusia looked back at the clue. ‘OK. So we keep going. Do you think we’re looking for a place somewhere at Station X where there’s corpse flowers? The encyclopaedia says the smell’s so gross we wouldn’t be able to miss it. I reckon if there’s a corpse flower around then finding where it blooms or
awakes
will be no problem.’

‘OK.’ Brodie twisted the lifeline round her wrist but with fewer ribbons it felt less comforting.

‘Should be a piece of cake,’ said Hunter. ‘Come on.’

It seemed, however, he was wrong. A thorough search of the gardens left them despondent.

Eventually Hunter led the way back past Miss Tandari and towards the mansion. His stomach grumbled from hunger. He wasn’t happy and his mood didn’t improve when the bell rang again.

‘Oh no. This can’t be good,’ said Brodie.

They hardly spoke as she pressed the lifeline into the vacuum system. They said nothing as the rope whirred through the air to return to them. Brodie couldn’t speak at all when they saw the ribbons.

‘Five,’ groaned Hunter. ‘Only five. This can’t be happening.’

But it was.

‘We’ve searched everywhere,’ Hunter moaned, glancing up at the tapestry hanging in the passageway when they finally got back to the mansion. ‘Look.’

Brodie stared up at the hand-stitched map of the Bletchley Park estate and agreed they’d searched every outside location shown on the needlework picture. She jabbed her finger at the various huts depicted on the scene. ‘Do we try the inside places now?’ she said. ‘And look for an outside flower, inside?’

Tusia ran her fingers across the stitching. ‘But the place’s huge. And if we really have to search inside then what’s the point of the clue about the flower?’

‘What’s the point of any of it?’ moaned Hunter, scrabbling in his pocket for a rather crushed packet of Polos. ‘I’m starving. We should stop to eat.’

‘What and lose more lives?’ blurted Tusia. ‘I don’t think so.’

Brodie was beginning to panic. ‘The clue said we should prepare to feast,’ she said, trying to cling on to any hope she could find. ‘Maybe it’s that simple. We go back to Hut 12. That’s where there’d be a feast.’

‘Hut 12’s too obvious. And why the flower?’ Tusia said, leaning her head against the tapestry.

‘Look,’ Brodie said at last. ‘We’re tired and hungry. Let’s take the tapestry into the other room and lay it down on the floor so we can read it like a map.’

‘OK. Maybe there’s something we’re missing,’ added Tusia as she helped Brodie lower the hand-sewn map and carry it through to the music room.

‘I tell you what I’m missing,’ huffed Hunter. ‘My lunch.’

‘We don’t have time for this!’ shouted Tusia, waving the lifeline in his face. ‘Five lives left, Hunter. That’s all. And then it’s over.’

The girls put the fabric map down on the music-room floor and weighted down the corners with their shoes and the huge reference books.

‘OK, Station X,’ said Brodie, lifting her head in exasperation to allow the sun from the window above to warm her face. ‘Tell us where you want us to go before it’s too late.’

Brodie closed her eyes and thought for a while. The light from the window danced on her face. Flashes of colour streamed through the stained glass. Brodie could still see the flowers with her eyes shut.

She opened her eyes.

‘The glass.’ She blinked to see more clearly. ‘It’s patterned, right?’

‘Well done, Miss Observant. The glass skylight does have pattern on it. And the relevance of that is?’ asked Hunter.

‘And we’re supposed to remember all we’ve learnt?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the thing we forgot when we were coming into the mansion for the very first time was about …’

‘Light being knowledge,’ Tusia interrupted, scrambling to her feet.

‘Still not with you,’ Hunter said, peering to see whatever Tusia was staring at in the skylight above them.

Tusia was now reaching for the encyclopaedia. ‘Corpse flowers,’ she said. ‘Look. That stained glass in the skylight. It’s of flowers. All sorts. But look. In the corner, there’s a corpse flower.’

She thrust the book into Brodie’s hand so she could see and true enough, the ugly flower depicted on the glass looked remarkably like the one sketched beside the definition.

‘OK,’ said Hunter, dragging out the word as if not entirely convinced. ‘I can see the flower and that’s all great. But how’s that tell us where to meet?’

Brodie read the clue again. ‘
To take a place amongst us, line the lower stitches straight with the fire then prepare for feasting in the place where the corpse awakes at two
. So, if light is knowledge then maybe our answer is when the light shines through the corpse flower in the skylight at two.’

‘OK,’ Hunter said again, looking at the patterns made on the floor through the glass. ‘But how will light through the window give us a location? You want us to dig up the floor looking for corpse-flower bulbs? Cos the light’s going to fall on the floor, right?’

Brodie rubbed her eyes to concentrate. ‘We could hold a map,’ she said. ‘Under the light.’

Hunter seemed impressed but Tusia was shaking her head. ‘But where would we hold it? Would you just wander around under the light? That way you could make the light fall anywhere you want to. That can’t be what the clue means.’

Hunter looked down at his shoes. ‘So maybe there’s a fixed map. On the floor.’

‘Well, there is now. I mean, not a fixed one. But this tapestry. There’s your map.’