Agent 21: Codebreaker: Book 3

by Chris Ryan

  Dr Cooper was no exception. He had come to work today against his better judgement, and hadn’t been surprised to learn that thirty per cent of the staff had called in ‘sick’. In a way he didn’t mind: it meant the day had been so busy that he barely had time to worry about terrorist attacks. Now, though, as he stood in the bright lights of the operating theatre, his face covered by a mask, his hands by skintight latex gloves, he found his mind wandering. He had been appalled by the news of that poor man hanging from Westminster Bridge, and he was appalled now by the sight of the patient in the operating theatre. The man on the table was an elderly man, in his late sixties, perhaps, although his physique was of a man half that age. Perhaps it was this that had enabled him to survive his gun wound, so far. He had shoulder-length grey hair and Dr Cooper had disapprovingly noticed a smell of tobacco about him. He had no name, at least none that anyone had been able to find. No relative had come forward to claim him. There was just an ID card that had made the hospital security staff jumpy. Dr Cooper had had to explain in no uncertain terms to a faceless bureaucrat who seemed to have appeared from nowhere that his patient absolutely couldn’t be moved to another hospital if he had any chance of living. What had happened to the patient, Cooper had no idea. He had just been found, bleeding half to death, by the police after an anonymous tip-off, and rushed into A&E immediately. That meant someone knew what had happened, but they were keeping quiet.

  Bad things were happening in London. This was one of them. And it felt like the whole capital was holding its breath, waiting to see what was next.

  ‘Scalpel,’ he said.

  The wound was bad. The bullet had punctured the man’s stomach lining and caused a massive amount of internal bleeding. This man was on the brink of death and it looked like being the graveyard shift in more ways than one. Dr Cooper’s eyes flickered towards one of the screens surrounding the operating table. His patient’s vital signs were weak. Low blood pressure. Low pulse. He exchanged a nervous glance with the anaesthetist. ‘It’s not looking good,’ he said. The anaesthetist shook his head.

  The scalpel was sharp. It cut with ease through the skin of the old man, and the thin layer of fat beneath. As the blade sliced through his flesh, the man’s blood pressure dropped a couple of points. Dr Cooper carried on with the procedure nonetheless.

  It was pitch dark, but it was not entirely silent. The pitter-patter and squeaking of rodents was all around them, and more than once both Raf and Gabs had felt something brush against them. The thought of being surrounded by rats was repulsive, but they barely noticed them. All their attention was focused on the glowing countdown of the digital clock.

  ‘Where do you think we are?’ Gabs breathed. It was the first time either of them had spoken for an hour.

  ‘Underground,’ Raf sniffed. ‘That seems to be his modus operandi. The first device was in a tube tunnel, the second one in the basement of the hospital.’ A pause. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Not really.’

  They sat in silence for a few more minutes, neither of them daring to move in case they disturbed the pressure plates beneath them.

  ‘We’re not going to tell him, right? About Zak, I mean.’ Gabs sounded a little fearful that Raf would disagree.

  ‘Of course not,’ he said firmly.

  ‘He will leave us here to die,’ she said, her voice no louder than the rodent squeaks around her.

  ‘I know.’ Raf sniffed. ‘You remember the lesson we were giving him? About Enigma and the Coventry bomb?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Works both ways. Maybe we could save ourselves by giving up Zak’s identity. But he and Michael are the only ones with a chance of stopping this maniac. If we have to die to help them . . .’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘I never thought this was how it would end.’

  ‘It hasn’t ended yet,’ said Raf, but he didn’t sound all that convinced.

  ‘What can we do?’

  Another pause.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Raf said. ‘I guess we just wait here and hope that Zak and Michael come up with something.’

  ‘They haven’t got long,’ Gabs whispered.

  The clock continued to count.

  Zak sat, anonymous, at the back of the bus. The other passengers were eyeing him suspiciously, but then they seemed to be eyeing everyone suspiciously. There was that kind of mood in the capital tonight. Zak ignored them. He had other things on his mind. Like the fact that with the death of Joshua Ludgrove, all his leads had dried up. Breaking into the journalist’s computer had gleaned nothing. All he knew was that Ludgrove had been investigating the death of some soldier forty years ago to the day. It was old news, and try though he might, he could see no connection, other than today’s date, with the events of the past few days.

  And yet, Ludgrove was dead. Murdered. Why?

  It crossed Zak’s mind that he should talk it over with his Guardian Angels, but that one thought made him feel coldly nauseous as he remembered that two of them were missing and one of them was gravely wounded, possibly dead . . . Panic welled up in him again. His eyes darted around as he desperately tried to think what to do.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, lad? You don’t look well.’ An old man in a peaked cap was sitting opposite him, looking genuinely concerned.

  ‘I . . . just . . . it’s nothing,’ Zak mumbled.

  ‘Worried about all these goings on, are you? You aren’t the only one, lad. But they’ll find him, whoever’s doing it all. They always do, in the end. You see on telly, that fella hanging off the helicopter when the hospital went down? Nobody got a look at his face, did they, but at least we know we’ve got blokes like that looking after us.’ He sniffed. ‘Cowardly way to do war if you ask me. Planting bombs, killing innocent people. When I was in the Forces . . .’

  Zak blinked. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, cowardly way to do war . . .’

  But Zak was remembering someone else who’d said a similar thing. They’re cowards, aren’t they, people who plant bombs. I don’t like cowards.

  Malcolm. With everything else that had happened, he’d almost forgotten about the strange boy he’d broken out of the secure hospital just a couple of days ago. It had all started with Malcolm, but Zak had barely spoken to him. Perhaps he was conscious now. If so, perhaps he knew more than he had told.

  Before he knew it, Zak was muttering an apology at the old man who had started reminiscing about the war, and was walking up the aisle towards the exit doors. He peered through the bus window to see that it had started to rain again. Through the rain he saw the familiar sight of, among others, a neon Coca-Cola sign. Piccadilly Circus. He rang the bell to halt the bus at the next stop, and moments later was jumping out onto the pavement of Lower Regent Street.

  He needed to head south, but something stopped him. Time check: 0022hrs. He had an idea.

  Zak ran north instead, sprinting across the road to the north side of Piccadilly where he found what he wanted: a newspaper stall selling the first editions of tomorrow’s papers. He grabbed a copy of the Daily Post and glanced briefly at the headline – ‘London Under Attack’ – before rustling through it until he found the crossword. Standing there in the soaking wet, the rain smearing the ink on the pages of the newspaper, he stared at the empty grid. The clues were challenging; on the previous two crosswords he’d had the advantage of a completed grid. Now he had nothing.

  It meant he needed Malcolm’s help more than ever. He rolled up the newspaper, tucked it under his jacket, and ran south towards Pall Mall, his trainers slapping in the wet as he went. He turned east and ran towards the river, suddenly glad to be operating on familiar territory. Knowing his way around the London streets saved a lot of time. And time was crucial.

  He remembered that the entrance to the hospital where Malcolm was being treated was just off Victoria Embankment. By the time he was standing outside that inconspicuous ‘car park’, he was wet through. He stood for a moment, listening to the distan
t sirens that told a story of high security in the capital. Then he ran down the ramp, past an unmanned barrier to find himself in that empty basement. Last time he’d been here, the double doors at the far end had been open, paramedics waiting to receive the wounded Malcolm. Now they were closed, and all was silent. The only sign that this was a hospital was a single stretcher bed parked outside the double doors with a sheet draped over its sides, and a metal bin, taller than Zak, which said ‘Medical Waste Only’.

  Zak stepped over to the double doors and pressed gingerly at the security bar. It was locked, and he cursed. To the right of the door was a numeric keypad – he hadn’t noticed it last time he was here – but without the access code it might as well have been a big iron chain. Zak had no idea how he was going to get inside. He looked around the car park. There was no other exit.

  He felt stupid standing there, not knowing what to do or how to get inside. His wet clothes had turned cold, and he was shivering as he listened to the noise of the traffic outside. Was it him, or did it sound as though a siren was getting closer?

  And closer . . .

  He looked up the ramp of the car park and saw a sudden flash of an ambulance’s light.

  He had to lose the gun. He had a plan, but the weapon would hold him back. He quickly removed the magazine then threw the weapon into the metal bin, before chucking the magazine in separately. He’d hardly made it safe, but at least it wasn’t going to go off by accident, and nobody would think to look for a weapon in a bin full of old bandages. Now that he’d rid himself of the firearm, he quickly ran to the stretcher bed and climbed underneath it. He grabbed the underside of the frame at one end and pulled himself upwards. His biceps and stomach muscles hardened as he felt for a place on the frame to support his feet. After a few seconds, he just managed to clip his toes into a gap in the frame. It was a strain to hang on, but he was committed now: the siren had stopped, the lights were still flashing and he could hear the ambulance screech to a halt next to him.

  Zak kept his breathing slow and shallow and concentrated on stopping his strained limbs shaking the stretcher bed. The sheet hid him from sight but also blocked his view. He could hear a commotion next to him, though, and within seconds he felt a weight – presumably a person – being placed on the bed. ‘Move,’ barked a voice. Zak heard someone tapping the keypad, then a scraping sound as the double doors opened up. ‘Get him into the lift,’ said the voice. Suddenly Zak was on the move.

  ‘We’re losing him,’ a tense voice said. They were in the lift now, and the doors were hissing shut. Zak wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold on as the lift moved upwards, coming to a halt about ten seconds later. As the doors opened again, the same voice shouted: ‘Get him into theatre, now!’

  They were moving again, quickly along a corridor. Zak’s hands were slipping. They crashed through a set of double doors. ‘Get him onto the operating table!’ yet another voice ordered. Zak sensed the weight being lifted from the stretcher. ‘Get that bed out of here. We need the space.’

  He was wheeled out again. Zak heard footsteps disappearing, then silence.

  He wanted to hold on a bit longer, but it wasn’t an option. It felt like every muscle in his torso and legs were shrieking at him. Easing himself down onto the floor he looked both ways along the corridor – it was about twenty metres in length – to check nobody was coming. The coast was clear, so he crept out from underneath the bed.

  The sheet that had been hiding him was stained red. Zak ignored that. He needed to find Malcolm’s room, and fast. He was right outside the operating theatre and could see, through the Perspex panels in the doors, a great deal of activity in there. He headed down the corridor, where he could see the doors to four more rooms, two on either side.

  He struck gold with the first one. It looked like a surgeons’ scrubbing-up area – lockers, sinks, alcohol gels for cleaning hands. Next to the lockers was a shelf full of neatly folded doctors’ gowns. Zak pulled one of the light green gowns over his wet clothes, then covered his hair with a fabric hat and his face with a surgeon’s mask. The disguise wouldn’t stand up to a robust inspection, but it was better than nothing. He left the room and was immediately glad he’d dressed up – two doctors were jogging in his direction, clearly rushing to get to the operating theatre. They barely looked at Zak as they passed.

  He continued along the corridor. The next door on his right looked onto an empty ward. On his left, some kind of common room, also empty, with a TV in the corner showing footage of Westminster Bridge. The second door on the right had no glass panels, but it had something none of the others did: a security guard, sitting outside. He had a news paper folded in front of him, and seemed to be filling in the crossword. Zak ignored the irony and, without even thinking about what would happen if he messed this up, drew himself up to his full height, put on an air of confidence he didn’t really feel, and approached.

  ‘Any sound from him?’ he asked the security guard, grateful that the mask muffled his voice.

  ‘Sleeping like a baby,’ the guard said without even looking up. ‘Wish I was too.’

  ‘I’ll check on him.’

  The security guard nodded and continued to fill in his crossword.

  It was dark in this room, but from the light of the corridor, Zak could see that it contained just a single bed. He closed the door and, using his phone as a torch, crept into the room.

  Bingo.

  Malcolm was asleep this time, propped up by a number of large pillows but, astonishingly given how bad his wound had been, free of any kind of medical apparatus. A drip stand stood in one corner of the room, along with a blood-pressure machine, but neither were connected to his body. Even so, he looked frail, his face gaunt and white. The bed sheet covered only the lower part of his body while a large, sterile dressing was spread over most of his right shoulder. His breathing was shallow.

  Zak held out his left palm, ready to cover Malcolm’s mouth and muffle any sound of surprise when he woke him. He was just about to switch off the phone, however, when Malcolm’s eyes suddenly pinged open.

  Zak jumped, but Malcolm himself looked neither scared nor surprised to see him standing over him. He clearly recognized him, despite the darkness and Zak’s surgeon’s mask. With his good hand he reached out for his glasses and put them on.

  ‘I want to leave,’ he said.

  Heavy footsteps outside the door. Zak froze. They faded away.

  ‘You can’t leave, Malcolm. You need to get better. You were badly injured.’

  ‘It hurts,’ Malcolm agreed. ‘But you said you would help me get away.’

  There was an awkward pause. Gambling that Malcolm wasn’t about to raise the alarm, Zak pulled the mask off his face then sat down at a chair next to the bed. ‘I worked it out,’ he said. ‘The crossword, I mean. The cipher. I couldn’t have done that if you hadn’t put me on the right track. Thank you. It saved a lot of lives’

  ‘It was obvious,’ Malcolm said. ‘If I wanted to hide something, I would be more careful.’

  Zak couldn’t help a smile. ‘I don’t think most people would find it obvious, Malcolm.’ And he thought: But you’re not like most people, are you? ‘How often do the doctors come in and see you?’

  ‘In the daytime, every hour. At night, not so often.’

  ‘Right. I haven’t got long, Malcolm. I need your help. I think there’s going to be another bomb, and I don’t know where.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ Malcolm breathed.

  ‘Does the name Richard “Sonny” Herder mean anything to you?’

  The boy shook his head.

  ‘Joshua Ludgrove?’

  A blank look. ‘Who are these people?’

  ‘Dick Herder is some dead soldier from the seventies. Ludgrove worked at the Daily Post, the newspaper that published the crosswords.’

  ‘Why do you say worked? Has he been sacked?’

  Yeah, Zak thought. Permanently.

  ‘He’s dead. Murdered, sometime this evening. He wa
s investigating the death of this Herder guy forty years ago.’ Zak shook his head. ‘Maybe it’s got nothing to do with anything. The guy who normally sets the crosswords is dead too. Someone tried to force him into printing three replacement crosswords. We’ve decoded two of them.’ He pulled out today’s Daily Post from under his jacket. ‘I think this could be the third. Can you solve it?’

  ‘Of course,’ Malcolm said, like it was a stupid question. ‘But why should I?’

  Zak blinked in the darkness. ‘This bomber,’ he replied carefully, ‘is trying to massacre innocent people.’

  ‘People die,’ Malcolm interrupted. ‘All the time.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Malcolm,’ Zak breathed. ‘He blew up a children’s hospital. Don’t you want to help catch him?’

  Malcolm sneered. ‘Nobody wants to help me. They want to throw me into a secure hospital and throw away the key.’

  The words for your own good danced on Zak’s lips as he remembered the gunmen at Harrington Secure Hospital, and how lucky Malcolm was to be alive. But something told him that kind of argument wasn’t going to wash with Malcolm. He didn’t think the way other people thought.

  ‘I can get you out of here,’ he said. Malcolm looked at him sharply. ‘Not now,’ Zak said hastily. ‘You’re too weak and you need to recover. But I’ve done it once and I can do it again. You know I can, right?’

  For a moment Malcolm didn’t reply. Then he nodded.

  ‘But I’ll only do it,’ Zak said, ‘if we stop the third bomb. If not . . .’ Zak gave him a severe look. ‘Well, I hope you like hospital food.’

  Their eyes locked in the darkness. Then, with a painful wince, Malcolm took the newspaper from Zak and, in the light of the mobile phone, Zak saw his eyes scanning the clues beneath the crossword grid.

  ‘Do you need a pencil?’ Zak asked.

  ‘Shhh . . .’ was the only reply.

  There was a minute’s silence. Malcolm’s eyes flickered back and forth. Finally he laid the newspaper down in front of him. ‘There are no messages here,’ he said.