Operation Code-Cracker

by John Townsend

  ‘Maybe I didn’t put the cake tin back properly. It’s probably just slipped a bit on the shelf,’ Dad whispered unconvincingly.

  But then came a scraping from the kitchen.

  Clutching the tray in front of him like a shield and gripping the cake knife, Dad opened the door from the sitting room and approached the kitchen. Max followed close behind, armed only with his new phone with its hot-line to Tango at GCHQ. Not that it would do much good right now.

  Dad slowly placed his hand on the door handle, took a deep breath and barged into the kitchen. There was a scream and the smash of a plate.

  ‘Whatever do you think you’re doing?’ It was a woman’s voice. Gran.

  ‘Blimey, Mum! I thought we had burglars. What are you doing here?’

  Still startled and with her hand clutching her chest, Gran spluttered and waved her other hand across her face like a fan.

  ‘Goodness me, dear. You scared the living daylights out of me rushing in like that. And you, Max – it looks as if you’ve seen a ghost. I told you I’d pop back with a chocolate cake when I’d done some baking. Shame about that plate. Sorry, love.’

  ‘It’s okay, Gran, it’s just that we thought there was an intruder on the loose.’

  ‘Come through for a cuppa, Mum, and a piece of cake. Leave that broken plate, it doesn’t matter. We’ve got a visitor for you to meet.’

  Max shook his head frantically. ‘Dad, no. Hush hush.’

  ‘A visitor?’ Gran laughed. ‘Not a new lady friend, darling? This I must see...’

  She entered the room and looked round. ‘Oh. I knew it was too good to be true.’

  Max and his dad stared at the empty chair. Delta was nowhere to be seen. The chair and cushion where he’d been were not creased in the slightest, his cup and saucer had gone completely and there was nothing to suggest he had ever been in the room. He had disappeared without trace.

  ‘A professional to the last,’ Dad muttered, going to the front door to peer outside.

  ‘Stop all this nonsense.’ Gran sighed. ‘I don’t know what’s got into you both. Now you’ll be delighted to know I’ve brought you a new ball, Max. It’s in my bag in the kitchen, dear. Oh look, there’s a little package on the sofa. What’s in there, I wonder?’

  Max dived onto the sofa and grabbed it before Gran could pick it up. ‘Just a couple of things to help with a little job I have to do,’ he said. ‘Ah, he’s done my dingbat!’

  He picked up the paper with Delta’s answer scribbled on it. It said under XMASCARA: ‘Could be XLIPSTICK or XBLUSHER. Answer still the same: Kiss and make-up’.

  ‘He worked it out.’ Max grinned.

  Gran frowned. ‘You seem to be talking in riddles today, Max. Sometimes I think you’ve got an overactive imagination. But I wouldn’t have you any other way, love.’ She ruffled his hair. ‘Maybe you get it from me. Perhaps I’ve got a mad imagination, too. I think that’s what the police thought when I phoned them today.’

  ‘You did what? Why?’ Dad looked horrified.

  ‘Well, you hear so many stories these days that I felt I had to report it. I was convinced I was being followed in Archers, the garden centre on the ring road. It was a man with a face shaped like a potato who wore grubby tennis shoes – the same man who I’ve seen staring at me from a white Volvo outside my house for the last couple of weeks. A shifty-looking type. And I’ll tell you another thing. This morning I caught him snooping through my wheelie bin. I waved my rolling pin and he ran off but ever since, I’ve had that uneasy feeling that I’m being watched. And the awful part is, it’s just the same in this house. Between you and me, it feels as though something scary is going on. Something very scary indeed – just you mark my words.’

  Chapter 5

  Must get here

  Must get here & WONADLEIRCLEAND

  Must get here

  On the day after their sleepover, Jay asked Max back to his house to try out some new games on his PlayStation. ‘I don’t know if my uncle or cousin will be in,’ Jay said.

  ‘Cousin?’ Max asked.

  ‘Uncle Jay’s daughter, Miya. Don’t mention her mum. I never knew Auntie Yasmin but she died in some sort of accident a few weeks ago. I think that’s why they came to this country but we don’t really talk about it.’

  Jay lived in a cul-de-sac on an estate near school. The house was hidden behind a high conifer hedge, which made the rooms inside gloomy even on sunny days. The hedge was so thick that Jay could easily climb right inside and hide from his mum when she was in one of her moods. A letter from the council telling her the hedge needed cutting down had just put her in a worse mood than ever.

  ‘Look at that hedge. I ask you, what’s wrong with it? I refuse to cut it down,’ were the first and only words she said to Max as he came in. But it made him wonder. Maybe that hedge was the reason he’d been called in – he was the only way to see through it.

  He glanced around the dark sitting room, wondering if he’d catch sight of the evil terrorist skulking in the gloom. Instead, he saw a cheery-looking girl watching a cartoon on TV. The smell of toast wafted from the kitchen.

  ‘Hi!’ she called. ‘You must be Max. I’m Miya. Help yourself to toast.’

  Max couldn’t help staring at her. It wasn’t so much her smiling face that surprised him, though it was certainly not what he expected from a terrorist’s daughter. What really fascinated him was her voice.

  She read his mind. ‘American,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘Everywhere from the mid-west, New York to Dallas. Smart memory stick!’

  ‘Yeah.’ Max felt embarrassed. His first day as a spy, and within seconds the distress flare round his neck was clear for all to see. He poked it back inside his shirt. ‘It’s new,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m always forgetting my memory stick. Ironic, isn’t it?’

  She erupted into giggles. ‘You’re cute! See you later.’ She returned to the world of a cartoon shootout, with a blast of ricocheting bullets filling the entire house. Max just hoped the noise wouldn’t bring her terrorist father running in waving a submachine gun and hurling grenades in all directions.

  He turned and found himself face to face with the man himself – the very one he’d been sent to investigate. At first, in the dark hallway, all Max could see was the man’s shadowy outline.

  ‘Hi there, young man,’ he said brightly. He was holding a piece of buttered toast.

  ‘Hi,’ Max replied nervously. ‘I’m Max.’

  ‘Security, by any chance?’ The man bit into the toast, with a spray of crumbs and butter.

  ‘Pardon?’ Whatever did the man mean? Did he already know something?

  ‘Max security,’ he chuckled. ‘Just like this place, with my sister as chief jail warder! With a bit of luck you’ve come to help me dig an escape tunnel.’

  ‘Don’t worry about Uncle Kurt,’ Jay piped up. ‘He’s nutty as pecan pie, with a dollop of peanut butter on top.’

  Uncle Kurt ruffled Jay’s hair with his buttery hand before disappearing into the sitting room, with its hail of cartoon bullets and canned laughter.

  ‘Actually, Uncle Kurt’s cool,’ Jay whispered. ‘Mum’s been a lot better since he arrived. Come on, let’s go up to my room for a battle of wits.’

  Max would rather have joined the others in the sitting room. He liked cartoons and toast. And he liked Uncle Kurt and Miya, despite their secret world and the Silver Scorpion. He remembered Delta’s warning not to be fooled by the man’s charm. Even so, Max couldn’t help thinking he seemed like a very friendly sort of terrorist.

  Just as Jay switched on his PlayStation and began explaining the wonders of his latest game, a voice called up the stairs. It was Miya.

  ‘Hey, you guys, come on down. We’ve got plans.’

  Max was down in the sitting room like a shot, to join all the other shots still blasting from the TV.

  ‘Just turn that down a tad, Miya,’ her dad said, chewing the last of his toast. ‘Now, you guys, how do you fancy going to see a movie? I’ll
treat us all to whatever you want to see and as much popcorn as you can manage. What do you reckon? What kind of thing do you like, Max?’

  Jay laughed, ‘Anything to do with dingbats. Dingbats, the Movie!’

  ‘Not another word freak,’ Kurt teased. ‘Miya does ten crosswords before breakfast!’

  She was already on her feet and scrawling a coded message on a notepad.

  ‘There you go, wise guy. Try this.’

  Max read the words in front of him:

  Must get here

  Must get here

  Must get here

  WONADLEIRCLEAND

  ‘Blimey, I haven’t got a clue.’ He scratched his head.

  ‘Try Jay’s room,’ she called as she ran up the stairs.

  ‘Hey, what are you doing in my room?’ Jay chased her up the stairs, making the sound of a siren.

  Max followed on his heels and threw himself, panting, on the bed. ‘Can I look at your bookshelf?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Max scanned the titles and pulled out two books with a triumphant laugh. ‘Got ’em!’ He threw one onto the bed. ‘If I’m not mistaken, Miya, that book called The Three Musketeers is what you mean by MUST GET HERE, MUST GET HERE, MUST GET HERE. As in three “must get here’s”. And the other clue has the word ALICE hidden in the word WONDERLAND. So you must be referring to the classic ALICE IN WONDERLAND, which of course should really be Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.’ He grinned smugly.

  ‘Yeah, Mr Clever Guy – but who said I never cheat?’ Miya called from the door. ‘But well done, Max, you’re quick. I guess we’re on the same wavelength.’

  Jay looked on, totally baffled. ‘I’d never have worked that out in a month of Sundays. You two are wordy nerds! You think alike. Fair play, very clever – but completely useless!’

  ***

  Within an hour they were sitting in the cinema, with Max between Miya and her dad. Jay sat on the end, his mum having stayed at home to sleep off another of her headaches. As the screen crackled to life with speckled pin-pricks of light that suddenly burst to flash across their faces, Max sank back in his seat, feeling a real glow inside. This was great, and the people with him were great, too. He knew he had an important job to do for the good of the whole country, but Uncle Kurt couldn’t really be that dangerous, could he? He seemed so friendly and great fun to be with. Maybe Delta had got things wrong.

  A funny advert swirled in front of them. A cartoon frog hopped across the screen with sparks of coloured light peppering the darkness, and an exploding monster lit up the whole cinema with blinding white light and loud farting splats. Everyone laughed. Max chuckled as he looked along the row of seats at all the smiling faces gazing up at the screen. This all felt safe and cosy – a world away from the world of dangerous terrorists… until he caught a glimpse of someone at the far end of the row. It was a man sitting on his own and, for a brief moment, he had been staring intently at Max. And the strangest thing of all, the man was wearing dark glasses – in the middle of a darkened cinema.

  Max was sure he’d seen that face before, and that head shaped like a potato. He looked back up at the screen and remembered where he’d seen that outline of a double chin. It had been behind the window of a white Volvo estate.

  Max suddenly felt annoyed that Department 42 didn’t trust him after all. If the man with the double chin was watching Uncle Kurt, then why had Delta asked Max to do the job? It was ridiculous that the man on the end of the row was meant to be keeping an eye on things, but he couldn’t even keep out of sight himself. What sort of a spy was that? Max wanted to tell Tango this man’s presence could make his own job more difficult. The trouble was, he couldn’t refer to him as ‘the man with the double chin’ or ‘Potato-head’. No, he would have to be more professional and show the evidence. He would photograph him with his special phone that was able to take pictures in the dark.

  Max discreetly pulled out his phone, tapped in the code and pressed his finger onto the pad. He selected ‘camera’ and ‘infra-red’ before whispering that he was just popping to the loo. He shuffled along the row, pointing the lens at the potato-shaped head just in front of him. As the camera clicked, the man looked up, grunted and scuttled off up the aisle like a startled rat, disappearing into the darkness behind the ice-cream queue. His whole body was like a huge potato, Max thought. Baked, tough-skinned and greasy.

  When Max returned to his seat, Uncle Kurt was already handing round the Cornettos. They began peeling off the wrappers as the lights dimmed again and the title of the film appeared in front of them with a loud fanfare. Kurt cheered and acted as the biggest child of them all – until, as the screen brightened and lit up everyone’s faces, he glanced across to the end of the row and froze. Max looked to where he was staring and was horrified to see Potato-head was in his seat again, and coldly glancing back at them. Kurt clearly knew him.

  ‘Stop, all of you,’ Kurt hissed. ‘Don’t eat your ice creams.’ He held up his wrapper and examined it carefully. ‘Give them to me. I’ll get some more. These have been tampered with. Whatever you do, don’t eat any.’

  Miya was just about to take a large bite. ‘Hey, Dad – are you crazy?’

  ‘Just listen to me carefully, all of you,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll explain later. Right now I’m going to tell you something important. Keep looking at the movie and listen to me. I’m really sorry, but we’ve got to get out of here. Don’t ask questions now – just act normally. When I count to three we’re going to stand quickly and get out as fast as we can. We’ll run straight up the gangway, through the foyer, out into the street. Just keep following me. I’ll tell you why once we’re out of here. Right now, just treat the whole thing as a bit of a fun race. Trust me kids. One…two…three.’

  Without stopping to question why, caught up in Uncle Kurt’s crazy game, the three children sprang to their feet with a clatter of seats springing back. They shuffled into the middle aisle then darted towards the exit. Potato-head looked confused before he too stood and headed for the green exit sign nearest to him. Faces turned to stare briefly but quickly returned to the more colourful action on the screen.

  Max burst out into the foyer, squinting like a mole tunnelling up into daylight. They rushed past the queue waiting for another film and tumbled out onto the pavement where they threw their ice creams in a bin. Kurt sped down the street like the Pied Piper, followed by a line of bewildered children. Max glanced back to see Potato-head emerge from the cinema, looking breathless and exasperated that he couldn’t catch them. Kurt led them round a corner and headed down the next street before looking back over his shoulder.

  ‘OK, you guys, we can stop running now. Well done – you’ll make the Olympics yet. Sorry about missing the movie. I’ll take you back some time, don’t worry.’

  He paused to catch his breath. ‘Right now, I’ll treat you to some fries and a milk shake. I know a little place round here so follow me...’ He led them down steps into a narrow passageway, along a side alley and into a small courtyard. There was a gloomy little café with no customers inside, just a fog of fumes.

  ‘Don’t worry about my dad,’ Miya said calmly. ‘We’re always doing crazy things. Like at the airport we had to hide for an hour in a rest room. You get used to it after a while.’

  Jay was still panting furiously. ‘There’s never a dull moment with Uncle Kurt around!’

  Max was full of questions but he knew he’d have to wait for answers. Even so, he felt it was time to contact Tango and warn them Uncle Kurt had recognised Potato-head. As they entered the café, he muttered, ‘I just need to wash my hands,’ and escaped to the toilet. As soon as he was on his own, Max sent a message as well as the photo of Potato-head.

  Kurt has seen this agent and recognises him. Please advise.

  Within seconds, as he was returning the phone to his pocket, it bleeped and a message appeared:

  Tango to Max. Message received. WARNING. Image of suspect is not – REPEAT NOT – an agent of this depart
ment. URGENT – be on your guard. Details of image supplied:

  Name: Agent NERO of Silver Scorpion.

  Category: Highly dangerous.

  Max read the message several times. This didn’t make sense. What was going on? If Potato-head was Nero of the Silver Scorpion, why had he been following Max and Gran from that white Volvo for the last week? And why ever should he cause Uncle Kurt to react like that? Max put the phone back in his pocket and looked in the mirror. ‘Your mission is to find out,’ he said to himself, and returned to the café with its sizzling burgers and belching fumes.

  As they sat eating chips and drinking Coke, Uncle Kurt spoke directly to Max.

  ‘I guess you must think your friend has a real weird uncle, eh? Who in their right mind takes a bunch of kids to the movies only to make them throw their ice creams in the trash can and run from the theatre just as the movie’s about to start? The thing is, I’m kinda embarrassed and I’d prefer it if you said nothing about this. You see, I owe a guy some money and he sent one of his guys to get it just now. It could’ve gotten scary back there so I reckoned it was best to get right outta there. That ice cream thing was just to get you kids hyped-up so you’d run like crazy! Thanks, you guys, for being so cool about it.’

  ‘I told you Uncle Kurt’s a nutter, didn’t I?’ Jay smiled.

  ‘We’ve both been a bit on edge since Mom…’ Miya looked unusually serious but her father butted in and stopped her.

  ‘Yeah, well, I don’t suppose Max here wants to hear all our family stuff. It’s great having you with us, Max. It’ll be good to get to know you a bit more.’ He beamed a smile as he sat back and drummed his fingers on the table.

  ‘Yeah,’ Max said genuinely. ‘And I’d like to know more about you, too. But maybe not too much or I might get some shocks with all your secrets!’ He waited for a reaction.

  Kurt didn’t seem phased in the least. ‘You bet.’ He laughed and continued drumming his fingers. ‘My cupboards are full of scary skeletons.’