by Chris Ryan
Five minutes passed. Or maybe ten. Zak wasn’t keeping track of time, just of Hendricks and Ludgrove. When Hendricks crossed to the other side of the road using a zebra crossing, both Ludgrove and Zak risked the busy road – a taxi beeped at him, but Ludgrove seemed too intent on following Hendricks to look back and notice him. A right turn, and then another left. Zak didn’t know where they were or where they were going. Not to the pub, clearly. The road ahead forked; they bore to the right and, twenty metres along this road, Hendricks took a sharp turn.
Ludgrove stopped. Zak did the same. He was breathing heavily, not through lack of fitness, but through anxiety. He didn’t know what was happening, but it didn’t feel good. But he saw why Ludgrove had stopped. The road into which Hendricks had turned was a dead end.
Zak stood with his back pressed against the red brick of a three-storey-high terraced building. Ludgrove was loitering by a pillar box, clearly deciding whether to follow his quarry or not. It took at least thirty seconds for him to decide to continue. Zak followed gingerly. When he saw Ludgrove stop and stare at the beginning of the road, he crossed the street again so he could share his view, albeit from a slightly greater distance.
Zak shared Ludgrove’s obvious confusion. The mews was indeed a dead end. There were no roads leading off it, nor were there any doors on either side. A few cars were parked at a handful of parking meters, but apart from that there was no sign of anything. Including Hendricks. Where on earth could he have got to?
Suddenly, Ludgrove stormed down the street. He started looking underneath and behind cars and, when he found nothing, his frustration clearly got the better of him. He kicked the chassis of a grey Mercedes, and the blow echoed against the high walls of the mews. Zak allowed himself a smile. Bumbling old Hendricks probably had no idea he was being followed, but he’d managed to give Ludgrove the slip anyway.
And then, without warning, Ludgrove turned.
It was almost as if he knew Zak was there. Their gazes locked and an angry sneer curled onto Ludgrove’s lips. He frowned, hunched his shoulders and started striding towards him.
For a moment, Zak considered standing his ground, but then he heard Gabs’s voice in his head. ‘Remember, sweetie, sometimes your legs are better friends than your fists.’
From the look on Ludgrove’s face – a deep frown, an angry sneer, a wildness in the eyes – Zak reckoned this was one of those times.
He ran.
1500hrs
A young woman with shoulder-length white-blonde hair and a grim-faced man were keeping very still. When you’re conducting surveillance, movement is your worst enemy.
The location Gabs and Raf were watching was extremely ordinary: a terraced house, number 6 Galsheils Avenue, Tottenham, London. Their CR-V was parked directly outside. It had been simplicity itself to find out that this was where Ludgrove lived. ‘His mother died eight years ago,’ Michael had briefed them. ‘Left him the house. Wife walked out on him last July. Domestic violence. He lives alone now. While young Zak has his eye on him, his house would be a good place to start snooping, don’t you think?’
‘I do hate that word,’ Gabs had sighed.
Discovering a safe place from which to conduct the surveillance had been more complex. But not impossible, since Gabs and Raf had access to the kind of information most people would find it very difficult to come by. So it was that they had discovered that the occupant of number three, almost exactly opposite, was a Mrs Enid Sears, who lived alone but was currently in hospital having a hip replacement. The front bedroom of her deserted house was the perfect place from which to keep tabs on Ludgrove’s place, and breaking in through the back way had been simple.
‘Anything?’ Raf asked.
Gabs gave a barely perceptible shake of her head.
‘We’ve been watching for an hour. I say we go in,’ Raf commented.
Under normal circumstances, an hour was nothing. They had both been on stakeouts that lasted days, and in far less comfortable surroundings than Mrs Sears’s bedroom. But these were not normal circumstances. Michael’s instructions had been very clear. Check that there’s no suspicious activity first. If anybody goes in or out of the house, I want to know who they are. If there’s nothing, force an entry and see if you find anything incriminating . . .
Gabs stepped away from the scope mounted on a tripod that she had trained at number six. Without speaking, she and Raf left the bedroom, and then the house.
Gaining access was easy. Raf was skilled with his tension tools and picked the lock in a matter of seconds. As they entered the house, both Raf and Gabs pulled their handguns before closing the door behind them.
The house was of a similar age to the Puzzle Master’s, and a similar layout. Raf held back as Gabs stepped forward into the kitchen, ready to offer covering fire if needed. Nothing to report. She entered the front room. Ditto.
Raf gave an enquiring glance up the stairs. Gabs nodded. She moved up first, keeping her gun held high towards the landing. It was dark here. Dark and very quiet, the only sound the creaking of the floorboards underneath their feet.
And the sudden opening of the door downstairs . . .
Raf and Gabs froze. They heard something clattering.
Silence again.
Very slowly, they turned, gripping their handguns firmly. Raf led the way as they retraced their steps along the hallway, taking extra care to tread lightly and avoid the creaking. At the end of the hallway, they stopped. Raf held up three fingers of his free hand.
Two fingers.
One finger.
In a single movement they swung round to the top of the stairs, aiming their guns back down towards the hallway and the front door.
They froze again, shocked motionless.
The door was open. Standing quite still in the frame was the figure of a man. It was impossible to tell what he looked like, because his face was covered with an old-fashioned gas mask. He resembled a figure from the distant past. A ghost.
But he wasn’t a ghost. He was very real.
Two seconds passed before Raf shouted, ‘GET ON THE FLOOR WITH YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD. NOW!’
The figure didn’t move.
‘GET ON THE FLOOR WITH YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD, OTHERWISE I FIRE!’
‘Raf,’ Gabs said sharply. ‘Look.’
She pointed to a step halfway up the staircase. There was something there. It resembled a small canister, with a valve at one end. Now that they had noticed it, they could both hear a faint hissing from the valve.
And there was an acrid smell in the air.
‘Get . . . back . . .’ Raf breathed. But suddenly his voice sounded woozy. He staggered slightly at the top of the stairs. Gabs did the same. Her gun arm dropped. Her knees felt weak.
They fell at the same time, tumbling heavily down the stairs into an unconscious heap on the hallway floor.
14
TILT SWITCH
1905hrs
‘LUDGROVE’S UP TO something,’ Zak said. ‘I’m certain of it. I know the NY Hero thing doesn’t add up to much, but why would he delete those files from his computer? Maybe he’d been looking at dodgy websites – you know, there are plenty of people out there who think the 9/11 bombers in New York were heroes . . . where are we going, anyway?’
They were in a car, heading north. Michael had kept their 1900hrs RV at the Knightsbridge flat, but had done little more than walk in, greet Zak with a nod, then usher him wordlessly down to a red VW Polo parked in a nearby street. The car itself was shabby, and Zak understood why that was. To remain unnoticed, the last thing you wanted was a flash, ostentatious vehicle. When Raf had first abducted him from Acacia Avenue the day he became Agent 21, he’d used an old Post Office van. The red Polo was the same kind of vehicle. Unremarkable in every respect.
Well, almost every respect. Clipped into a mobile phone cradle was a small tablet computer. It showed a map of London, on which two red dots glowed around the Cricklewood area. This was more than an ordinary satnav.
Michael cut into a line of traffic as he headed up Park Lane. A black cab beeped angrily. Michael didn’t even blink. An uncomfortable feeling grew in Zak’s stomach. He had spent an awkward afternoon at the newspaper offices, doggedly logging sparrows, but Ludgrove had not reappeared. Nor Hendricks, until just before five p.m. when he had jovially breathed whisky fumes over him whilst patting him on the back for his endeavours with the sparrow log. Now, though, his intuition told him that something was very, very wrong.
‘Michael, where are we going? What’s happened?’ he ventured.
His handler didn’t take his eyes off the road. ‘Gabriella and Raphael have missed three check-in calls, as well as the RV,’ he said quietly.
The feeling in Zak’s stomach turned to cold dread.
‘What do you mean?’
Michael ignored that question, but pointed at the tablet computer. ‘The map shows the location of their phones. We’re going to find them.’
Zak swallowed hard. ‘We should get some backup,’ he said.
‘No!’
‘Why not?’
Michael breathed deeply. ‘Our involvement here is a secret to everyone except those at the highest level of the security services,’ he said. ‘If something has happened to Gabriella and Raphael, it could mean that this secrecy has been compromised. I can’t risk letting anybody know what we’re doing.’ Finally he glanced in Zak’s direction. ‘Do you still have your weapon?’
Zak shook his head. The little snubnose was back in the flat, safely locked away in a metal cabinet.
‘Glove compartment,’ Michael said. ‘Locked and loaded.’
Zak opened the glove department. His eyes widened. He recognized the contours of a Browning Hi-Power. It had a suppressor fitted to the barrel in order to deaden the sound, and a telescopic sight attached to the top. A serious piece of kit, and the sight of it made his mouth dry. He knew perfectly well that under ordinary circumstances Michael would never expect him to wield a weapon like that in public. But these weren’t ordinary circumstances. Two of their number were missing. That was unacceptable.
He closed the glove compartment and stared straight ahead. The traffic on the Edgware Road up ahead was clear. A little panel on the bottom left corner of the tablet gave their ETA.
Fifteen minutes.
Michael stopped the car fifty metres short of their destination, outside a boarded-up house in a shabby residential street. He tapped the tablet and a satellite map of the area appeared. He zoomed in. The dots appeared to originate from a large, square building on a street parallel to this one. It looked like a warehouse.
‘There’s a bag for your weapon in the back seat,’ Michael told Zak. ‘When you get to the warehouse, you’ll see the main entrance on the western side. I’ll take care of that. I want you to skirt round to the eastern side.’ Another tap, and the schematics of the building came up. It was just one big room, with two windows on this eastern side. ‘Cover me as I enter. If you see anybody with a weapon, shoot to wound. We need information, not corpses.’
‘What if I miss them?’ Zak asked. He instantly regretted the question. Michael gave him a piercing look.
‘Don’t do that,’ he said. ‘Might I suggest that you go first? Individuals attract less attention than groups, wouldn’t you say?’
Zak nodded. He reopened the glove compartment, removed the weapon and hid it in a battered canvas bag he found scrunched up on the back seat. Then he exited the car and started walking briskly down the road.
A crescent moon had appeared in the misty evening sky. Zak’s senses were on high alert. He passed several houses where loud music was thumping from the window, and felt as though he could make out every beat. Two young men approached, wearing hoodies and bling. They gave him an aggressive look – did one of them glance at the canvas bag carrying the weapon? – but Zak walked past them with confidence. He was aware of their every movement, even of the sweat dripping down the side of one of their faces. If anyone tried anything, he would be on top of his game. Nothing was going to stop him from locating Raf and Gabs.
At the end of the street he looked over his shoulder. Michael was following. He had adopted the hunch of an old man, and looked strangely anonymous as he closed the gap between them.
He turned left, past a graffitied wall, and left again. The warehouse was thirty metres ahead of him.
Zak could instantly see that it had been deserted for a while. It was about twenty metres square and surrounded by a wire fence that had deteriorated through neglect and malicious damage. Zak stepped towards it without hesitation, his eyes scanning the surrounding area for signs of anything unusual. The warehouse was only a single storey, and he saw no sign of movement on the roof. The road that led to it had cars parked on either side. The doors of some of them were open, and more loud music was thumping from them as gangs of youths congregated in groups of four or five. Zak felt their eyes on him as he passed, and it crossed his mind that he and Michael were approaching this warehouse without a great deal of care.
It didn’t matter. If someone had Gabs and Raf, there was no time to lose.
Up ahead there was a section where the fencing had been knocked down. Zak stepped across it, and over the bundle of barbed wire still attached to the top edge. The main entrance to the warehouse was ten metres away, but Zak didn’t head towards it. As Michael had instructed, he skirted round the edge of the building to the eastern side. Before he turned the corner, he looked back again. Michael had straightened out and he was walking with grim purpose towards the warehouse.
Now that he was on the eastern side, Zak had nobody to overlook him – just a high brick wall that formed a narrow alley between itself and the warehouse. As Michael had predicted, there were indeed two large windows that looked into the warehouse. They clearly hadn’t been cleaned for years. As Zak looked through them, he could barely see anything inside through the protective mesh, itself looking like it hadn’t been maintained for years. A single big room, maybe? A table in the middle? It was instantly obvious that he would have to smash this window and bust the mesh if he had any chance of covering Michael as he entered.
He pulled his weapon from its bag, then looked left and right. Nothing. He raised the weapon and, with a short, forceful jab, smashed the butt against the window. It cracked and splintered. A second jab and the glass shattered. As the shards tinkled to the floor, Zak forced the rusting old mesh and immediately spun the weapon the right way round, raising the sight to his right eye. He panned left and right, scanning the room under the sight’s magnification, his finger resting lightly on the trigger. Ready to fire.
Everything he saw sickened him.
There was indeed a table in the middle of the otherwise empty warehouse. Two mobile phones were sitting on it, side by side. Zak recognized them, of course. It was like they were mocking him, sitting there alone, without their owners.
He panned towards the door and upwards. There was something taped to the ceiling.
Lots of things.
Small packets connected with wires.
Just like he’d seen in the ceiling cavity of the hospital.
His skin prickled with fear. He did everything he could to keep his hand steady as his sights followed a wire that led from the ceiling, down the far wall, over one of the hinges of the door and towards the handle.
A lever handle. The type you press down to open the door.
But it had been tampered with. Big time.
It took a couple of seconds for Zak to realize what he was looking at through the magnification of his gun scope. Taped to the underside of the door handle was a glass test tube, the kind of thing you could find in any kid’s chemistry set. The tube had a cork bung at one end, from which two wires protruded. The ends of each wire were visible inside the tube. But the test tube contained something else. Sitting at the rounded end was a metal ball bearing.
A sick wave of panic crashed over Zak as he realized what it was. A tilt switch. As soon as somebody op
ened the door handle from the other side, the ball bearing would roll toward the wires, completing the circuit, and then . . .
Bang.
It all happened so quickly.
Zak heard himself screaming as loud as he could: ‘MICHAEL, DON’T OPEN THE DOOR!’
But it was too late. The handle was moving.
There was nothing else Zak could have done. Even as the ball bearing started to roll, he fixed the test tube in the cross hairs of his sight.
He only had a single shot.
A single chance to blow the switch.
He fired.
There was a dull, knocking sound as the round flew from the suppressed barrel. The jolt of the weapon meant that Zak lost sight of the test tube for a fraction of a second, but he pulled it back in time to see three things.
The glass had shattered.
The ball bearing was falling to the floor.
And splinters were flying as the round ripped a hole in the wooden door.
Zak held his breath as five seconds passed in dreadful silence.
The door started to creak open. Slowly at first, but with increasing speed. Horrified, Zak saw a figure tumble into the room. Shoulder-length grey hair. A shocked expression. Both hands covering his stomach.
Michael hadn’t even hit the floor by the time Zak had jumped through the shattered window. He sprinted across the room towards his handler just as his body thumped onto the hard concrete. He rolled Michael onto his back – the old man was shaking violently, and sweating – only to see an alarming quantity of blood oozing from behind his hands covering his stomach.