Endgame (Agent 21) (21 page)

Every hour, they stopped for a cupful of water and a mouthful of the strong-tasting dried jerky the brothers had brought with them. Zak was glad of the sustenance as they trekked relentlessly in what the brothers insisted was a north-easterly direction. He had no choice but to assume they were right.

And they were.

It was just past midday when a bulky grey shape suddenly appeared in the distance. The little group of travellers stopped. It looked bleak and unwelcoming. Tyler and Travis turned to Zak.

‘Moriarty,’ Travis said.

‘You need to leave us here,’ Zak said.

‘What if he turns you away?’ Travis asked. ‘Word is, he’s a pretty weird old guy. And this weather . . .’ He looked around meaningfully into the heavy snow.

‘We’ll just have to deal with it,’ Zak said. ‘Trust me, the less you can be linked with us, the safer you’ll be. Get back home. Help your folks move back to the city. I’ve got a feeling this winter’s only going to get harder.’

The two brothers nodded. Tyler shuffled slightly in the snow. ‘I, er . . . I’m sorry I accused you of taking my gun. Must’ve just mislaid it, like you said.’ He put his hand into his jacket and pulled out another firearm – a bulky old handgun that Zak could tell had seen better days. ‘Use it for shootin’ birds mostly,’ Tyler said. ‘But I reckon you could make use of it, wherever you’re going.’

Zak carefully took the old handgun and stowed it away in his pack. He could feel Ricky’s eyes burning into him, and he remembered the conversation they’d had on the plane.
The Agency recruited us because we were kids, but we can’t stay kids for ever.

He turned back to Tyler. ‘Thank you,’ he said shortly. ‘I hope I won’t need it.’

They all shook hands, then Zak, Ricky and Malcolm watched Tyler and Travis trudge back off into the distance.

Zak turned his attention to the grey building. There was no indication of any aircraft here, or even of any inhabitants. They pressed on apprehensively. The building grew clearer. It looked like an enormous barn, with a thick layer of snow over the roof. When they were twenty metres from it, Zak stopped.

‘Can you hear that?’ he said.

Ricky and Malcolm paused too.

‘It’s music,’ Malcolm said. His eyes shone as he said it, and for the first time since they had arrived in Alaska he looked happy, despite the cold. And he was right. Coming from the building was the muffled, scratchy sound of old-fashioned dance music. A big band. Someone singing.

They edged forward. There was no visible entrance in the side of the barn they were approaching, so they skirted clockwise around it. At the left-hand end of the building were two enormous barn doors. Yellow light was escaping from around them, and the music was louder. It was definitely coming from inside.

Zak strode up to the doors. He clenched his fist and banged three times against them. They gave a huge, hollow echo.

Almost immediately, the music stopped.

There was a ghostly shriek of wind high above them. Zak and the others instinctively backed away from the doors as they heard footsteps. An ominous creaking sound as the door opened. The yellow light spilled out onto the snow . . .

Zak had never seen a more grizzled-looking person than the man who appeared in the doorway. Despite probably only being in his late-thirties, the lines on his face were deeply etched, and his skin was so tanned and tough it looked like leather. He had a straggly beard. His hair receded far enough to show an ugly scar that stretched from his forehead almost to the top of his scalp. He had a thin cigar smoking in the corner of his mouth. His eyes were a piercing blue – very bright, but deeply mistrustful. But at the same time, there was something incredibly familiar about him. Zak had the uncanny feeling that they’d met somewhere before.

He looked his visitors up and down. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked. His voice was gruff, cracked and unfriendly. Zak was surprised to hear that he had a very distinct British accent.

‘We’re looking for Moriarty,’ Zak said.

The man’s eyes narrowed. The end of his thin cigar glowed as he inhaled, before expelling a powerful jet of smoke from his nose. ‘You’d better get inside,’ he said. Zak blinked. This guy was definitely British, not Canadian or American. How come?

The man – presumably Moriarty – turned and walked back into the building. Zak, Ricky and Malcolm followed.

As soon as Zak entered, he realized that this was not so much a barn as an aircraft hangar. Parked up at the far end was a small light aircraft with a single propeller. The air was thick with the smell of fuel, and several panels on the underside of the plane were open. Moriarty had clearly been doing some running repairs. It looked to Zak as if he intended to ride out the winter here. There were many boxes of tinned food piled up in one corner of the hangar, and a small gas stove next to them. In another corner was a sleeping area – a single mattress with several thick blankets. A CD player sitting on an old table explained the music they had heard. A handful of discs were scattered around it and there were two large, very old, floor-standing speakers. One of the speakers had a half-drunk bottle of whiskey on it. The other had a VHF radio set sitting on top. But the thing that attracted most of Zak’s attention was a photograph in a frame, next to the half-empty bottle. It showed a teenage girl. And Zak recognized her face.

‘Gabs . . .’ he breathed. His Guardian Angel looked much younger in the picture, but it was definitely her.

‘What?’ Moriarty barked. ‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing,’ Zak replied. He was still trying to make sense of what he’d just seen.

There were a few fan heaters dotted around – Zak assumed there had to be a generator somewhere behind the hangar, powering them as well as the CD player and any other electricals. But the heaters had little effect on the temperature. It was extremely cold in here. The cold didn’t seem to worry Moriarty. He wore jeans, regular trainers and a thick, checked lumberjack shirt. He watched the three of them carefully as they traipsed over the threshold in their snow gear, bringing loose snow with them. His face grew even more suspicious as they pulled back their hoods. ‘So what is this?’ he said. ‘School trip?’

Zak ignored the sarcastic remark and got straight to the point. ‘We need to get to Little Diomede Island,’ he said. ‘There are no commercial flights out of Anchorage. Someone told us you’ll put a plane in the air when others won’t.’

‘Whoa, sunshine. Back up. You missed the bit that explains what three kids young enough to be my children are doing in the middle of the Alaskan snows, a day’s march from anything resembling civilization.’ Moriarty blew out a lungful of cigar smoke, then coughed noisily.

‘Looking for you,’ Zak replied.

‘I haven’t finished. You also missed the bit that explains why three kids are so keen to fly to the ends of the earth when no sane person is willing to put a plane in the sky.’

Zak gave him a level look. ‘Can’t help you with that one,’ he said. ‘You’re just going to have to believe that we’re not quite what we seem.’ He glanced involuntarily at the picture of Gabs, then locked gaze back with the pilot. He didn’t want to play that card until the right moment.

Moriarty gave a short, barking laugh. ‘Right,’ he said.

He wandered over to the CD player and was about to press ‘play’ when Zak spoke up again. ‘Cessna 172 Turbo Skyhawk,’ he said, pointing at the aircraft. ‘Range, approximately a thousand nautical miles. That’s, what, about eighteen hundred kilometres.’

The pilot stopped and looked at him curiously.

‘Last time I was in a Cessna, we flew from Johannesburg to Dakar.’

‘Impossible,’ Moriarty cut in. ‘Unless you had a . . .’

‘. . . long-range tank, and a couple of refuelling stops.’

The pilot was looking at him curiously now. ‘Doesn’t sound like your average package holiday.’

‘It wasn’t,’ Zak said. He looked around the hangar. ‘What I’m wondering is, what’s a skilled pilot like you doing miles from anywhere. It’s almost as if you don’t want anybody to find you.’

Moriarty took the cigar from his mouth, dropped it on the floor and stubbed it out with his foot. ‘You think a lot, son,’ he growled.

‘Yep,’ Zak said. ‘And right now I’m thinking you’re a former special forces pilot with a very good reason to stay under the radar.’ He pointed to the corner of the hangar where the mattress and blankets were piled. Lying on the ground was a beige-coloured beret. Zak could just make out a badge on the front: the winged dagger insignia of the SAS. It was obviously precious to him. It really
meant
something. Why else would he have it lying by his bed?

‘You’re more observant than you look,’ the pilot said with a dangerous edge to his voice.

Zak removed his pack from his back and started removing wads of money which he threw onto the floor at the pilot’s feet. ‘We’ll pay you everything we have to make the journey,’ he said. ‘But that’s not the real reason you’ll do it.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Moriarty replied. He was trying to look dismissive, but Zak knew he had his attention.

‘We’re heading to the Bering Straits to rescue two people who the British government
really
want back. We can’t do it with the government’s knowledge, because they think I’m a traitor. But believe me: if we pull this off, anybody who helped us will be welcomed back with open arms. Any past crimes forgotten about. A clean slate.’

Zak could see the effect his words were having on Moriarty. At first all his attention was on the money at his feet. But gradually he had stopped looking at that and fixed his gaze on Zak. At the words ‘clean slate’ he had spun on his heel and started walking towards the Cessna.

‘You’re a fast talker, son,’ he called. ‘I’ll give you that.’ Standing by the plane, he put one hand on the wing. It was a strangely affectionate gesture. ‘Only a fool would put this old bird up in the sky in flying conditions like this,’ he said with his back to them.

‘A fool,’ Zak countered, ‘or an expert.’

Silence.

‘You know who we are,’ Zak said quietly. ‘When you were in the SAS, you must have heard rumours. A government agency, working at the highest level of secrecy. As well trained as the SAS, but much more covert.’

Moriarty hunched his shoulders and turned. His gaze was sharp and piercing. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I heard rumours. None of them mentioned using kids.’

He seemed to be wavering. It was time for Zak to play his trump card. ‘You want to know who taught me so much about planes?’ he asked. He turned, and pointed to the photograph sitting on Moriarty’s speaker. ‘She did.’

Moriarty gave him a sharp look. ‘Impossible, son,’ he said, with a strange edge to his voice. ‘That’s my baby sister Annabel. She died a long time ago.’

Zak felt a strange twist in his stomach. He’d never known Gabs’s real name. To find it out now, here, in this way, was kind of disorientating. He shook his head. ‘No she didn’t,’ he said, as kindly as he could. ‘She works for the Agency, like me. I don’t know much about her past. I’ve never even known her real name until now – I’ve always just called her Gabs. But I faked my own death when I joined. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she did the same thing too.’

There were tears on the man’s grizzled face. He turned his back on Zak. ‘Shut up, son. It’s not funny. You’d better leave. Go on!
Leave!
’

Zak gave him a level look and prepared to deliver his killer blow. ‘She used to call you “sweetie”, right?’

Silence.

Moriarty turned. His face was a mixture of horror and hope.

‘Your little sister’s in danger, Moriarty. She told us to find you. She’s obviously been keeping an eye on you for all these years. She knows where you are. And now she needs your help. If we don’t get to Little Diomede Island before midnight, Gabs – I mean, Annabel – dies.’

Zak sensed that everyone in the room was holding their breath. Moriarty turned his back on them again. He walked towards the plane and stood by it for a moment, his shoulders hunched.

Silence.

‘If we’re going to go,’ Moriarty called in a shaky, cracked voice, ‘we need to go now. The wind’s in the right direction for a takeoff. If it changes, we’re stuck. Plus, the colder it gets, the greater the chance of ice on the wings. And if I’m reading the weather right, conditions are only going to get worse . . .’

Moriarty made Ricky very nervous. The moment he had finished sparring with Zak, he had turned his music back on. Scratchy old dance tunes filled the hangar as he went about finishing whatever maintenance he’d been doing to his plane. When Ricky asked if he could help, Moriarty had replied by saying, ‘Yeah – sit down, shut up and keep out of my way.’

So Ricky, Zak and Malcolm hung back near the entrance to the hangar while Moriarty worked. ‘You sure you trust him to get us there safely?’ Ricky asked.

‘Special forces pilots are the best in the world,’ Zak said. ‘If anyone can get us there in these conditions, he can.’

Ricky didn’t like to point out that this wasn’t
quite
what he’d asked. ‘Is he really Gabs’s brother?’ he said.

‘I should have known the moment I saw him,’ Zak replied. ‘They look kind of similar.’ He grinned. ‘Apart from the beard, of course.’

Half an hour passed. Moriarty closed up all the open panels on the plane’s body, then headed back to the other end of the hangar and sat down at his VHF radio set.

‘What are you doing?’ Zak said, his voice slightly aggressive.

‘This isn’t Africa, son. I can’t just stick a plane in the air and hope the Americans won’t notice. We need permission to follow your flight path to Little Diomede, or they’ll shoot us out of the air quicker than you can say 9/11.’ He almost smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t mention any of your names.’

‘From what I’ve learned about this Cruz guy,’ Ricky said as Moriarty made his call over the crackly radio connection, ‘he’ll know we’re coming as soon as he learns there’s a plane
en route
to Little Diomede.’

Zak sniffed. ‘He knows we’re coming anyway,’ he said grimly.

Moriarty finished his call. ‘Done,’ he announced. ‘Now help me get these doors open.’