Agent 21: Codebreaker: Book 3

by Chris Ryan

‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. If there was a message, I would see it.’ There was no hint of doubt in his voice. ‘Maybe the bomber knows you have discovered his code. He would stop using it then, wouldn’t he?’

  Zak gave a short nod. He felt like hope was draining from him. He recovered the newspaper from Malcolm’s bed and started folding it up. ‘I have to go,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’

  Good question. Where could he go? What could he do? Hide out in the Knightsbridge flat? Get out of London?

  Or maybe, go back to work. The Daily Post was still his best lead. In the absence of any better idea, he should get back there. Do some more snooping. He heard Gabs’s voice in his head. I do wish he’d stop using that word . . . it sounds so uncouth. A sudden anger filled him. His only friends were missing and he had done nothing to find them. And now he was out of ideas. But if he couldn’t find a solution, and soon, people would be likely to die . . . He stood up. ‘I’m going to spend a day talking birds with a boring man called Rodney Hendricks,’ he said bitterly. ‘Nice knowing you, Malcolm.’ He strode towards the door.

  ‘Wait.’

  ‘I can’t. If they find me here . . .’

  ‘Wait!’ Zak heard the boy shuffle up in his stretcher bed. ‘What did you just say?’

  ‘I’m going back to the paper, see what I can dig up.’

  ‘You didn’t say that. You said . . . Rodney Hendricks . . .’

  ‘Yeah. So?’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ Malcolm sounded almost contemptuous. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

  ‘What’s obvious.’ Zak was losing patience.

  ‘Did you say you had a pencil?’

  Zak blinked in the darkness. ‘Yeah,’ he said, finally. He pulled a pencil from his jacket pocket and, still lighting his way with his phone, returned to Malcolm’s bed.

  ‘Give me the paper,’ Malcolm said. Zak handed over the paper and pencil and watched as, in the glow of the phone, Malcolm scribbled the name of Rodney Hendricks in the blank margin of the front page.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ he repeated.

  Zak shook his head. ‘See what?’

  One by one, Malcolm started crossing out the letters in Hendricks’s name, then writing each letter in a new space next to it as he did so. The D first. Then the I. Then the C.

  And gradually, a new name appeared.

  DICK SONNY HERDER.

  ‘It’s an anagram,’ Malcolm said. ‘I can always spot them. Rodney Hendricks is a fake name. It’s obvious.’ He peered sharply through his glasses. ‘Didn’t you say Richard Herder was dead?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Zak breathed. He could hardly believe what Malcolm had just revealed. That it had been there, under his nose, all the time. ‘Yeah, he’s dead.’

  ‘So, why would this Hendricks guy take his name . . .?’

  All of a sudden, the pieces were falling into place. He recalled two lines from Ludgrove’s article. Why did the Ministry of Defence go out of its way to cover up Herder’s death and the circumstances surrounding the car bomb that caused it? What is the truth behind the subsequent disappearance of his brother Lee?

  The brothers were bomb-disposal experts. But surely, anybody who is expert at defusing a bomb, would be an expert at constructing one too. ‘Rodney Hendricks isn’t Richard Herder,’ he breathed, improvising slightly but knowing with a strange clarity that he was on the right track. ‘He’s his brother, Lee. And he’s about to take his revenge – today, on the anniversary of his brother’s death. I’ve got to find him . . . stop him . . . now . . .’

  He was already standing up and heading for the door.

  But suddenly it opened.

  A figure stood there, dressed in doctor’s scrubs but Zak recognized him instantly. Black hair, slicked back. Flat nose. Weapon in his right hand. It was one of the two men he had fired at outside Harrington Secure Hospital. One of the two men who had come to kill Malcolm. And who had just killed the security guard sitting outside, whose body was slumped in his chair, his blood spattered all around.

  ‘GET OUT OF BED,’ Zak roared, even as he hurled himself at the impostor. They both fell into a scrambled heap in the corridor outside Malcolm’s room.

  Zak heard the pop of a silenced pistol.

  18

  THE LONG-TAILED SHRIKE

  THE MAN WAS short, squat and burly. He was obviously immensely strong. Zak had only managed to floor him because he’d had the element of surprise. With both of them in a heap on the ground, he felt the round from his adversary’s gun whip past his right ear. With all the force he could muster, he swiped one arm against the man’s gun hand. The weapon clattered a couple of metres along the corridor.

  Zak didn’t go after it. He scrambled to his feet and lunged back into Malcolm’s room, shutting the door behind him. There was a twist lock underneath the handle. Zak turned it and heard a thin clunk. It wasn’t much of a lock. It wouldn’t hold anybody for long. He switched the light on.

  Malcolm was sitting up in bed. He didn’t look scared. Bemused, if anything. ‘Is he going to kill us?’ he asked, with the innocence of a small child.

  ‘No,’ Zak said, his teeth gritted. ‘He isn’t.’

  As he spoke, there was the pop of another gunshot from outside. The door splintered, just a couple of centimetres from the lock. They had seconds before the gunman was inside. Another gunshot. Another splinter. They had seconds.

  ‘Can you walk?’ Zak demanded.

  ‘I think so,’ said Malcolm. He winced as he carefully swung his legs over the side of the hospital bed. Zak looked around the room. He needed a weapon. There was nothing. In the end, his eyes fell on a glass jug of water by Malcolm’s bed.

  A third gunshot. The hole by the lock was the size of Zak’s fist now. He grabbed the water jug and emptied it over Malcolm’s bed. ‘Stand by the door,’ he told the boy. ‘By the handle, not the hinges.’

  Malcolm nodded and, one hand clutching the bandage over his shoulder, took up position by the door.

  A thud. The door rattled in its frame. The gunman was kicking it in. Zak could tell it wasn’t going to hold. Clutching the water jug with his left hand, he stepped over to the door, unlocked it with his right and then yanked it open.

  The gunman was taking another kick. As the door opened, however, he tumbled into the room. Zak smashed the glass jug down on his head. It shattered. The man fell, bleeding from his scalp. Unconscious. Zak seized the gun from his hand and turned to Malcolm, who looked like he was watching an interesting TV programme.

  ‘We need to get out of here,’ Zak said. ‘There could be others like him, but the hospital staff will probably try to stop us. Don’t be surprised by anything I do or say – I promise I won’t hurt any of them, or you.’

  Malcolm nodded, then winced again. Together, they stepped out into the corridor. Zak tried not to look at the gruesome sight of the dead security man’s body.

  At first, he thought they might get away unnoticed, that the sound of the gun had sent all the hospital staff into hiding. He soon realized that wasn’t the case. Three security guards appeared at the end of the corridor and they started running towards Zak and Malcolm. Zak didn’t hesitate – he raised the gun into the air and fired at the ceiling. The security guards stopped as a shower of plaster fell to the ground and Zak placed the weapon against the back of Malcolm’s skull.

  ‘Get on the ground with your hands on your head, or I’ll shoot!’ he roared, his voice only slightly muffled by the mask.

  The guards looked nervously at each other. Then they hit the ground.

  ‘Walk,’ Zak hissed at Malcolm.

  There was a strange silence as they edged down the corridor. As they passed the men on the ground Zak lowered his gun in their direction to stop them from getting brave. Once they had cleared them, he told Malcolm to up his pace. Thirty seconds later they were at the top of a stairwell.

  Voices echoing down below. Zak fired another shot. It hit the ceiling, debris rained down loudly
and even Malcolm, who seemed immune to fright, jumped at the noise. Zak repeated his instruction to get on the ground by bellowing down the stairwell. They descended to find four doctors lying down, and the exit door that led out into the car park wide open.

  ‘Outside. Now.’

  Zak slammed the double doors as they exited. As an extra precaution, he fired a single shot at the keypad that opened them. He didn’t know if that would disable the doors, but it was worth a try. He turned to Malcolm. ‘How are you doing?’

  The boy’s face was white. He looked very weak. But he nodded.

  ‘We need to get to Knightsbridge. We’ll be safe there. Do you think you can walk that far?’

  For the first time, Malcolm looked uncertain. ‘It really hurts,’ he said.

  ‘I know. I’ll be able to give you something for the pain when we get there. But it’s not safe for you here any more.’

  Sirens. Approaching.

  ‘We have to move.’ Zak took off his jacket and helped Malcolm put his good arm through one of the sleeves while draping the other over his wounded shoulder. It wasn’t much, but it helped disguise his plain white hospital pyjamas a little. Malcolm’s slippers would get soaked in the rain, but there was nothing Zak could do about that. They just had to get to the flat as quickly as possible.

  And then what? He didn’t know.

  They emerged onto Victoria Embankment to find the rain falling more heavily than ever. It was a blessing in disguise. At this time of night, there were few people about anyway, but with this rotten weather, the streets were almost clear. Visibility was poor. And even though they could hear the sound of police cars growing nearer, nobody stopped them as they shuffled off through the elements.

  By the time they reached the safety and shelter of the Knightsbridge flat, they were soaked through and Malcolm was shaking alarmingly. Zak stripped the boy of his clothes and gave him towels to dry himself before he even thought about sorting himself out. In the bathroom he found a medicine cabinet. It was somewhat better stocked than the average first-aid kit. There were morphine injections and saline bags here, as well as sterile dressings and prescription painkillers. For a moment, Zak’s hand hovered over the morphine, but then he rejected the idea. It was true that it would make Malcolm more comfortable, but it would also make him less sharp and Zak had a feeling he was going to need the boy’s skills before the night was over. He took the painkillers and the dressing to where Malcolm was sitting quietly in the front room, looking out over the London skyline.

  ‘Take these.’ He handed Malcolm two tablets, and the boy swallowed them without complaint. ‘I should change your dressing. It got very wet out there.’

  Malcolm nodded his agreement and lowered the top of the white gown Zak had given him to wear. Carefully, Zak pulled away the adhesive strips that held the dressing to Malcolm’s skin. The boy winced, but did not complain, as Zak revealed the full extent of his gunshot wound.

  ‘You’re lucky it didn’t shatter a bone,’ Zak said as he examined the surgeon’s handiwork. The entry wound had been neatly sewn up, but the whole area was bruised and bloodshot, and the wound had started to weep a colourless plasma. Malcolm made occasional hisses of pain as Zak carefully applied a fresh dressing. Once the job was completed, he looked paler than ever. It was clear he needed more medical care than Zak had expertise to give him. It was equally clear that his life was in danger if anybody located him. That meant staying here, for now.

  Zak checked the time. It was a little before 3 a.m. His thoughts turned towards Rodney Hendricks. Could it be true that this strange, dumpy little man with thick round glasses and a passion for sparrows could be behind the terror that had raged through London over the past few days? It seemed wildly improbable. Perhaps the anagram was just a fluke. A coincidence.

  Zak hit the Internet. He Googled Richard Herder. He quickly identified plenty of people of that name, but they were all very much alive: one was an American real-estate agent, one was a schoolboy, one was a priest in Cornwall. Zak trawled through several pages, trying to find any reference to a former soldier with that name, but he found nothing. Until, that is, he clicked the Images tab.

  He found it tucked away on the bottom of the fourth page of results. It was an old photograph, a clipping from a parish magazine of 1971. It showed two young men smiling for the camera, both smartly dressed in military uniform. The caption below read: ‘Brothers Richard (left) and Lee (right) Herder, photographed on the day of their deployment to Northern Ireland.’

  Zak stared at the picture. They both looked so fresh-faced. Young. Eager to serve. For a moment, Zak couldn’t take his eyes off the picture. The brother on the right had not yet grown a beard, or taken to wearing glasses. He did not yet have a paunch. But there was no doubt about it. Lee Herder was a young Rodney Hendricks.

  Zak spun round to where Malcolm was sitting quietly. He had started to shiver again. ‘Mate,’ he said, ‘are you absolutely sure there’s nothing in that crossword? Nothing we’ve missed?’

  ‘Show it to me again.’

  Zak fetched the soggy newspaper and showed Malcolm the crossword. The boy’s eyes flickered rapidly up and down as he examined the grid. ‘Nothing,’ he said after a minute. ‘Trust me.’

  Zak did trust him. But where did that leave them? Perhaps he’d got it wrong. Perhaps today was not the day that London should expect the third bomb. Somehow he didn’t think so. Hendricks was un-hinged, and today – the anniversary of his brother’s death – would be significant to him. Zak didn’t know why he was planting these coded messages, but Hendricks surely knew by now that someone was on to him, because they had been able to evacuate the hospital before the second bomb detonated. Under those circumstances, it made sense that he had replaced the final crossword with an innocent one. But if so, perhaps he had planted his message elsewhere. And how did that dead-end mews fit into all of this? What was that all about? Was that why Ludgrove was dead?

  ‘Give me the paper,’ he breathed. Malcolm handed it over and Zak flicked through the pages until he reached the nature-notes column. It was tucked away in the bottom right-hand corner of a page towards the end of the newspaper, next to an unfunny cartoon and below an advert for mortgages. A passport photo-sized picture of Hendricks peered out from the page. Zak read the copy alongside it.

  The Long-tailed Shrike. Quiet, graceful, powerful. Every person near Yarmouth will witness jaw-dropping, Xanadu-like tails, unbelievably splendid swooping and diving as flocks of this rare bird, seldom seen in the British Isles, swarm to the south coast of the United Kingdom . . .

  ‘The long-tailed shrike,’ he murmured. He remembered his morning in the newsroom less than twenty-four hours ago. The editor had insisted that Hendricks write a piece for today’s paper on the effect the second bomb had had on the wildlife of the city. Hendricks had insisted that he wanted to write about this obscure bird, but then had appeared to back down. And yet, here it was, the article he had been so eager to print?

  Why?

  There could only be one reason.

  Zak cursed under his breath. He should have known all along. Xanadu-like tails? A phrase like that didn’t even make sense. Hendricks had to have put it in there for some other reason. He handed the newspaper to Malcolm. ‘It’s here,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The message. It’s somewhere in this article. Hendricks insisted on printing something about the long-tailed shrike – it’s a bird. Why would he care so much, if he’s in the middle of a bombing campaign?’

  Malcolm took the newspaper and looked at the article. His eyes started flickering again until, after about twenty seconds, they widened.

  ‘I need a pen,’ he said.

  Zak grabbed a pencil and a pad from a nearby desk and handed them to the pale-faced boy. Instantly he started writing.

  ‘What’s the cipher?’ Zak breathed.

  Malcolm didn’t answer. Instead, like the system of using the initial letters of down clues in the crossword
s, he circled the first letters of the next sixteen words of the article, counting hyphenated words as just one word each. Zak tried to decode it in his head. L=11, Q=16, add them together you get 27, which is a B . . . But he was a thousand times slower than Malcolm, who was already writing down the decoded message on the pad in his thin, spidery writing.

  He underlined the message once. Zak stared at it. Then he stared at Malcolm. Then he stared out over the London skyline.

  ‘Are you sure it’s right?’ he asked Malcolm.

  ‘I’m sure,’ said the boy.

  Zak closed his eyes and did everything he could to stem the panic rising in his gut. He opened them again and double-checked what Malcolm had written.

  He blinked. His mouth went dry. They had discovered the location of the third bomb. If Zak was reading the signs right, the blast would happen today. And it could happen at any minute . . .

  19

  CHALKER MEWS

  RAF AND GABS’S abductor had returned.

  ‘I trust the passing of a few hours has made the decision-making process a little easier for you,’ he said. He shone the torch in the direction of the digital clock face, though he needn’t have. They had been watching it glow in the dark for hours, silently willing time to slow down.

  ‘You know what?’ Gabs said. She was doing what she could to sound upbeat, but her voice rasped and she wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

  ‘Enlighten me,’ said the man.

  ‘We have come to a decision.’

  ‘I’m delighted to hear it.’

  ‘And our decision is,’ Gabs continued, ‘that we’d rather eat worms than tell a sicko like you anything.’

  The man smiled. ‘How ironic,’ he said, a slight edge to his voice. ‘Because in reality it is the worms that will be eating you in, oh, approximately fifty-nine minutes and thirty seconds. You won’t be their only meal, of course, but you’ll be their closest.’

  ‘Not if—’

  ‘QUIET!’ he roared suddenly. And then, in a much milder voice, he continued, ‘I understand your game. You wish to goad me into moving close to you. Then you hope to wrestle me onto the pressure pad and yourself off it. But rest assured, my dear lady, I won’t allow that to happen.’