Agent 21: Codebreaker: Book 3 (15 page)

‘Hendricks,’ Ludgrove said without much enthusiasm.

Click click. Click click
.

‘In you go, Harry m’boy. After you, chop chop.’

There was something about Ludgrove. Zak sensed it the moment he stepped into the lift. It was like he had an invisible force field of contempt around him. ‘Yeah,’ the
Daily Post
’s defence correspondent said. ‘It would be a great shame for the nature notes desk to go unmanned. How would the newspaper possibly survive?’

‘Very popular, the nature notes, Harry m’boy,’ Hendricks said, ignoring the barely concealed criticism. ‘Very, very popular.’

‘Right up there with the horoscopes,’ Ludgrove said with a sneer. ‘Or the TV listings.’

Click click. Click click
.

‘Or the crossword?’ Zak asked.

He was watching Ludgrove carefully when he said it. He noticed the tightening of his eyes, and the irritable glance he flashed Zak. And he noticed the way the clicking stopped. But there was no time for Ludgrove to reply. A gentle chime announced their arrival on the seventh floor. The doors hissed open and Ludgrove barged his way out, clicking the ballpoint once again as he went. Hendricks scratched his beard. He had a slightly confused look on his face, like a school child who had just been bullied and didn’t know what to say about it. ‘Funny old cove, Ludgrove,’ he said. ‘Best to stay clear of him, eh?’

The lift doors started to shut. Zak stopped them with his foot and they slid open again. ‘Should we—’

‘Yes!’ Hendricks said, as though he had suddenly woken up. ‘Onwards!’ He shuffled out of the lift and onto the seventh floor.

The vast open-plan office of the
Daily Post
was very busy. As Hendricks led Zak through a maze of glass desks, computer terminals and whirring photocopiers, he estimated that there must be at least a hundred people working here, but they were doing just that: working, not talking. There was a constant
clackety-clack
of computer keyboards as journalists typed up stories. Anybody on the phone spoke in a loud voice just to be heard above the hubbub. As Hendricks and Zak passed through the office, the nature notes correspondent greeted his colleagues in a breezy voice. ‘Alan . . . Pippa . . . morning, George, morning, Emma.’ The Alans, Pippas, Georges and Emmas didn’t reply, but Zak felt their eyes on him as he passed. They clearly all thought Rodney Hendricks was a bit of a weirdo and, as he was with him, the opinion extended to Zak too.

Hendricks’s desk was in a far corner of the office, just next to the toilets. It was covered in books and papers, and had a very old computer. Hendricks stared at the chaos, then started rather ineffectively to move some of the papers around. ‘You’ll be needing somewhere to sit,’ he murmured, slightly flustered.

Zak couldn’t help smiling. ‘Why don’t I find us both a cup of tea?’ he suggested.

‘Of course, m’boy,’ Hendricks said without looking at him. ‘Kettle that way.’ He waved vaguely at the centre of the room. Zak went exploring.

Now that he was no longer with Hendricks, Zak could immediately see that Michael had been right. Nobody noticed him. He found he could wander among the desks with barely a glance from the journalists sitting at them. As he walked, he caught glimpses of half-formed headlines. SECOND BOMBING . . . POLICE BAFFLED . . . MINISTER CALLS FOR CALM . . . There was no doubt that this would be the big story for several days to come.

What Hendricks had referred to as a kettle was in fact an urn of boiling water surrounded by a collection of plastic cups, teabags and instant coffee granules. Three moveable screens surrounded the table on which they sat to form a makeshift room in the centre of the open-plan office, but at the corners where the screens met there was a gap of a couple of inches. Zak peered nonchalantly through these gaps as he made two cups of tea. About ten metres beyond one of them, he could see a large window with an impressive vista over London. Through it, he could just see the roof of Buckingham Palace, a Union Jack on the flagpole hanging limply. He remembered going to see the Changing of the Guard when he was much younger. His mum had told him that if the flag was up, it meant the Queen was at home. Zak was older now, and a bit wiser. He wondered if she was really there, given that the city was on high terror alert.

It took a few moments for Zak to realize what else he could see. Between the window and the gap where the screens met, about five metres away, was a glass desk, much neater than Hendricks’s. Its occupant sat with his back to Zak. His right elbow was resting on the arm of his chair and he was holding a ballpoint in his fist.

Click click. Click click
. Ludgrove.

Between Ludgrove’s body and his forearm, Zak could just make out a small section of the computer screen. He could see a line of text, cut off at the beginning and the end. It read: ‘… NY HER . . .’

Click click. Click click
.

Zak edged forward, leaning over the table holding the hot-water urn. He squinted, hoping that Ludgrove would move his arm enough for Zak to see more of what was written on his screen. Was the next letter an ‘O’? Or maybe a ‘D’ . . .?

Suddenly, Ludgrove spun round. It was almost as if he had sensed Zak’s eyes on him. His gaze pierced the gap between the screening panels and his dark eyes narrowed. As quickly as he had spun round to catch Zak staring at him, he twirled his seat again and clicked his mouse. His computer screen went blank.

‘Ah, Harry, m’boy.’ Now it was Zak’s turn to spin round. Hendricks was there, peering at him from behind his little round glasses, a leather-bound book in his hands. ‘Come along, come along, I’ve something most fascinating for you . . .’ He shuffled out of the tea-making area and back to his desk. Zak followed him, but as he glanced over his shoulder, he saw Ludgrove staring at him with thinly veiled suspicion. Zak cursed his lack of subtlety. Things hadn’t started well.

Hendricks’s desk was only slightly tidier. The bearded man had swiped a spot for Zak on the opposite side and found a chair from somewhere which he’d placed in front of this gap in the mess. Zak accepted a sheaf of papers from him. ‘The sparrow!’ Hendricks said, as though he were announcing an Oscar winner.

Zak looked down at the paper uncomprehendingly. ‘Er . . . what about it?’ he asked.

‘On the move, m’boy. Leaving this sceptred isle, escaping to pastures new. Or at least, we think it is. I’ve asked readers of my column to count the number of sparrows they’ve seen over the past week.’ A troubled look crossed his face. He rummaged around his desk a little more, lifted up a pile of paper and with a triumphant ‘Ha!’ pulled another sheaf of papers, at least as large as the first, from underneath and handed it to Zak. ‘Fabulous response,’ Hendricks said. ‘Bit of bore for an old brain like mine to deal with. Wonder if you might log ’em all.’ He patted his elderly computer screen, then turned it round so that it was facing Zak. ‘Not my thing, really, Harry m’boy, but it’s got to be easier for you than for me. And besides, I have an article to pen on the fascinating subject of the long-tailed shrike.’

‘The what?’

‘The long-tailed shrike, my dear boy. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of it.’

‘Er, ’fraid not.’

‘Ah, well it
is
rather rare. A vagrant in fact, only landing in the British Isles by accident. But quite lovely. Quite,
quite
lovely . . .’

Hendricks continued to state just
how
lovely while Zak looked rather gloomily down at the pieces of paper in his hand. There had to be at least 500. He glanced towards Ludgrove’s desk – he was no longer there. If Zak refused Hendricks’s request, or even moaned about it, he could be out of here a minute later. That would have been fine by him, but Michael might have a thing or two to say about it. He sighed, and took a seat at the desk. If he made a start on this boring job now, he could have a snoop around the offices while Hendricks wasn’t there.

‘Look lively, m’boy,’ Hendricks said in a low voice. ‘Editor’s on his way.’

The editor was a short man with a pot belly and hair that sprouted from the top of his open-necked shirt. He had a rather harassed look on his face, and clearly didn’t even notice Zak’s presence. ‘Hendricks!’ he barked. ‘I want a piece for tomorrow’s paper on the environmental effect of this blasted explosion on the wildlife of the city. Got it?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Hendricks said, his voice quietly shocked.

‘I said, I want a—’

‘That will be quite impossible.’

The editor blinked at him. ‘
What?
’

‘It will by
quite
impossible. I’m preparing an article on the long-tailed shrike.’

The editor looked at him as if he was mad. All of a sudden, Hendricks started to read from the pad on his desk, holding one arm in front of him like an actor. ‘
Quiet, graceful, powerful!
’ he announced. ‘
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, flock to the south coast
 . . .’

The editor’s face went a little red. ‘Hendricks, you can stuff your long-tailed whatever-it-is. I don’t want a single piece in tomorrow’s paper that isn’t about bombs. Do I make myself clear?’

Hendricks looked shocked. ‘But—’

The editor didn’t let him finish. He grabbed the piece of paper Hendricks had been writing on, crumpled it up and threw it to the floor like a child having a tantrum. ‘
Do I make myself clear?
’

Their gazes locked. ‘Quite clear,’ Hendricks murmured, suddenly contrite. ‘Of course.’

‘
Thank
you.’ The editor stomped away and started shouting at somebody else on the other side of the newsroom while Hendricks picked up the crumpled piece of paper from the floor.

For a few minutes, Hendricks mumbled into his beard, but he soon recovered his good temper. To Zak’s chagrin, he showed no signs of leaving his desk. He sat there for the next hour, wittering away almost nonstop as he browsed through the paper on his desk and buried his nose into the various wildlife books that were scattered around. ‘The grebe, Harry, marvellous bird, wonder if our readers might like a little piece on the grebe one of these days . . . Ah, the starling! Underrated. I could write a book on the starling, Harry m’boy, but twitchers are a funny lot. They have their favourites like everyone, I suppose . . .’

Soon Hendricks’s voice just became part of the background. An hour passed, as Zak entered the mind-numbingly boring data on the sheets in front of him: names, addresses, number of sparrows spotted.

Ten a.m. Check-in. Twelve a.m. Check-in again. By now, Zak had developed the skill of nodding at the right moment to make it appear that he was listening. In fact, as he typed, the cogs in his mind were turning . . .
NY HER
 . . . Ludgrove could have been reading anything, of course, but he’d seemed extremely keen to switch off his screen when he’d seen Zak watching. What had it said? NY – did that stand for New York? HER – if the next letter was an O, it spelled HERO. New York Hero. What could that mean?

He was never going to find anything out stuck here at a desk in a corner of the office. He needed an excuse to get away from Hendricks. Making a cup of tea or nipping to the loo wasn’t good enough. He wanted to find out what had been on Ludgrove’s screen.

The answer, he realized, was staring him in the face.

He was inputting his data into an Excel spreadsheet. Hendricks couldn’t see the screen. Even if he could, Zak reckoned he would be so absorbed talking about the native ladybird that he wouldn’t notice what Zak was about to do. He minimized the screen, navigated to the system files of the hard drive, copied one of them to another location and then deleted the original. When he tried to relaunch Excel, an error message appeared on the screen.

‘And you see, Harry, m’boy, the trouble with these invasive species is that they have a terrible effect on the—’

‘Um, Mr Hendricks?’

‘Call me Rodney, m’boy.’

‘There’s something wrong with my computer.’

A slightly panicked look crossed Hendricks’s face. He stood up, walked round to Zak’s side of the table and scratched his beard as he looked at the error message, clearly baffled. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to call the IT boys in.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Zak said quickly. ‘I’ll go and find them. I could do with stretching my legs.’

Hendricks looked momentarily uncertain, but then he smiled. ‘Of course, m’boy. But hurry back, eh? Important work. You’ll find them down in the basement. Gloomy old place. Don’t care for it myself . . .’ He shuffled back round to his side of the desk where he picked up his book again. Zak crossed the office floor. When he was halfway to the lift he looked back. Hendricks was totally immersed, but a quick look in the other direction told him that Ludgrove was watching him leave.

There was something about his gaze that made the skin on the back of Zak’s neck tingle. He suppressed the desire to return the defence correspondent’s stare. He’d already done enough to arouse suspicion and he knew he had to be more careful. He also knew he had to examine the contents of Ludgrove’s computer. It was like an itch that needed scratching. Trying to sit at the screen was too clumsy and obvious. There were a hundred others in this room who would notice him sitting where he shouldn’t be. Which meant finding a back way. Hacking into the newspaper’s intranet. Once he had done that, he could have all the access he wanted.

Zak Darke stood in front of the closed lift doors and pressed the button marked ‘B’.

13

LIQUID LUNCH

FOUR PEOPLE STOOD
silently in the lift as he descended – three men, one woman. None of them spoke, to Zak or to each other, and they all stepped out on the ground floor, leaving Zak to get to the basement alone.

The doors slid open onto a deserted corridor. To his right, a mop leaning against the bare wall and, ten metres beyond that, a green door marked FIRE EXIT. Someone had taped a piece of paper onto the wall opposite him. The letters ‘IT’ were scrawled on it, and an arrow to the left. Zak followed the corridor along and to the right. He reached an open door that led into a large, windowless room. There was one man in here in his early twenties. He appeared to be playing
Call of Duty
on one of the eight large terminals dotted around the room. A heavy, metallic drilling sound of gunfire came from his machine, and because it was gloomy down here in the basement, his face glowed with the light of the screen.