by Chris Ryan
‘If the Agency’s watching you, they’ll be monitoring your internet traffic,’ Zak said. He pulled another mobile phone from his pocket and tethered it wirelessly to the laptop.
‘How do you know they’re not monitoring your mobiles?’ Ricky asked.
‘They’re not mine,’ Zak said. ‘I stole them from some passers-by.’ He gave Ricky a sidelong glance. ‘You’re not the only one who can pick pockets, you know.’
Once the new internet connection was up and running, Zak plugged in the USB stick. Watching the screen, Ricky saw that it contained a single document. Zak opened it up. They were presented with a web link. Zak clicked it.
A web page came onto the screen. At its centre was a Quicktime window.
Zak clicked ‘play’.
8
THE CRADLE WILL ROCK
At first there was nothing. Just a black screen. Zak felt sick to the pit of his stomach. He’d been relying on this data stick. Calaca had surely pressed it into his hand for a reason. But as the seconds passed, and nothing appeared on the screen, he felt his hope draining away.
Suddenly, however, there was a flicker. A face appeared. Zak’s sickness turned into something else – halfway between fear and anger. It was Cruz Martinez.
Cruz had changed since their last meeting. His face was leaner and his hair longer – almost shoulder length. His eyes were cold and hard.
‘Who’s that?’ Ricky breathed.
‘Cruz,’ Zak said quietly. ‘Shhh . . .’
‘If you’re watching this, Harry Gold, and everything has gone according to plan, you will have suffered this morning.’
‘Who’s Harry Gold?’ Ricky asked.
‘Me,’ Zak told him. ‘It’s one of my cover names.’
‘If everything has happened the way I hope, my most loyal employee is on his way back to me, your handler is dead and your friends Raphael and Gabriella will be under my control.’ Cruz smiled. ‘I’d like to say that they are being well looked after, but we both know it would be a lie and I won’t insult your intelligence. By now, I kind of imagine they’re wishing they’d never been born.’
‘He’s a real charmer, isn’t he?’ Ricky said.
Zak stared hard at the screen. Awful images of what Raf and Gabs were undergoing spun through his mind.
‘I imagine your employers think you were involved in the jail break. So, you will be watching this by yourself. Be assured that as soon as you have finished watching this video, the link will no longer work. There will be no benefit in delivering it to your employers to prove your innocence.’
Another smile. Cruz seemed very pleased with himself.
‘I thought we might play a little game, Harry.’
‘Why do I get the feeling,’ Ricky cut in, ‘that he isn’t thinking Buckaroo?’
‘I’m taking your friends to a secret location. If you fail to locate them by midnight on el Día de Reyes, I’ll kill them, just like that witch Gabriella killed my father.’ His eyes narrowed unpleasantly. ‘The feast for the King of Kings. A day to bring me a special gift – yourself. If you do find them, but it appears that you have had – how can I put this – adult supervision, I’ll also kill them. But if you turn up alone, I’ll spare their lives.’ Cruz leaned further in towards the camera. ‘I’m not making any promises about your life, though, Harry.’ He leaned back again. ‘I am taking them to a place between yesterday and tomorrow. From time to time I might upload some footage of your friends, just to keep you focused.’ A third unpleasant smile. ‘I hope you’ve got a strong stomach. My next message might be a bit of a video nasty.’
Cruz lowered his head, and the video ended.
Zak’s mouth was dry, his skin tingling with hate and panic. He tried to play the video again. But when he clicked, it didn’t work.
‘El Día de Reyes? The king of kings?’ he said, puzzled.
‘Epiphany,’ said Ricky. ‘Sixth of January.’ He bit his lip. ‘Foster parents, once,’ he added. ‘Knew all that kind of stuff, crammed it into me and I guess some of it stuck.’
Zak looked at his watch and made a quick calculation. It was 8:45 a.m. That gave him just shy of eighty-seven hours to find his Guardian Angels. And they could be anywhere in the world.
Silence in the room. He could feel Ricky looking at him, sense the waves of sympathy coming from him. For some reason that made him even angrier. He didn’t want sympathy.
He wanted to get his Guardian Angels back.
‘I don’t understand what he was on about,’ Ricky said. ‘How can a place be between yesterday and tomorrow? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘It’ll make sense,’ Zak said grimly. ‘We just haven’t worked it out yet.’ He looked around the flat. ‘I shouldn’t have come here,’ he said. ‘I’ve put you in danger. I’ll go now. I know what I have to do.’ He removed the USB stick and stood up.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Ricky said.
‘To find Raf and Gabs.’
‘Not on your own.’
Zak narrowed his eyes. ‘It’s a trap, Ricky. Can’t you see that? Cruz thinks I’ll do anything to save them, and he’s right. He’s forcing me to go to him so that he can kill me. And if you’re by my side, he’ll kill you too.’
Ricky shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. From what you’ve said, he’s had two opportunities to kill you this morning. Why didn’t he?’
Zak didn’t have an answer for that. But his mind was made up. He was doing this alone. ‘I’m sorry, Ricky. I know this has been as bad a morning for you as it has for me. But this is my mission, not yours.’
Ricky’s eyes flashed. ‘He killed Felix. That makes me involved. End of.’
‘Forget it,’ Zak said bluntly. ‘I’m leaving. Alone.’ He stood up and headed to the exit. But when he was three metres from the door, he stopped.
He’d heard something. A scratching noise on the other side of the door. Instinct took over. He strode towards it and peered through the spy hole. His pulse rose at what he saw: four men in full combat gear – helmets, flak jackets and assault rifles. They were clearly preparing to enter.
Zak turned sharply to Ricky, who was just behind him. ‘Hold them as long as you can,’ he mouthed. ‘And remember, you never saw me . . .’ He pushed quickly past his fellow agent and back into the main room of the flat. His eyes picked out the line of baseball caps on the wall. He grabbed a lime-green one and ran to the open window. He could already hear shouts coming from behind the door as he looked out.
His stomach turned.
The window-cleaning cradle that he had used to scale the building was still empty, but now it was moving downwards. Vertical distance between Zak and it: fifteen metres. And the distance was increasing with every second. It was blowing and rattling precariously in the wind . . .
There was the sound of a heavy fist banging on the door. Zak looked over his shoulder, then back out of the window. He knew he had no option.
He took a deep breath, then climbed through the open window, trying to stop his brain focusing on the terrifying drop from here to the ground – the very thought of which made the strength drain from his muscles. Concentrate on the cradle, he told himself. Concentrate on the cable.
He heard the door burst open. He looked down. The cradle had descended another five metres. He couldn’t wait.
He pushed himself out and, still clutching the baseball cap, let his body fall.
Zak kept his arms by his side and his legs straight as he tried to ignore the horrible rushing sound in his ears. The drop seemed to take an age. He tried to look straight down – to keep his eyes on the landing zone of the cradle – but he couldn’t stop himself from looking further afield and seeing the awful vertical distance he’d fall if he missed his target . . .
Suddenly, with a great clatter, he hit the cradle. He bent his knees as his feet made contact, as though he were landing after a parachute drop, and let his body fall to the floor. The whole cradle juddered and rocked with the impact. Zak, sweating pr
ofusely, found he was still holding his breath, waiting to feel if the cradle was still safely descending.
It was.
Zak rolled over onto his back and looked up. There was a chance that the armed men in Ricky’s flat would check the window. If that happened, he needed to know, because it would mean a welcoming party when he reached the ground. But as the cradle descended, nobody appeared at the window.
It took five minutes to descend. Bizarrely, the nursery rhyme ‘Rock-a-bye Baby’ started whizzing around his head. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. The wind was blowing, and the cradle was rocking. Zak lay very still, moving only to pull the lime-green baseball cap back onto his head. As the cradle touched the ground, Zak prepared himself for an argument. Whoever was operating the cradle would be less than pleased to see a teenager walking out of it. He pulled the peak of the baseball cap over his eyes, and stood up.
He was right to expect a commotion. Standing next to the cradle were two middle-aged men, one of them slightly balding. To the side, where the override controls for the cradle were situated, was a third man. They were all looking at Zak with expressions of outrage.
‘What’s your game, son?’ said the bald man. ‘This thing ain’t a toy, you know?’
Zak quickly looked from each man to the other. Which of them had the kindest face? He selected the guy next to the bald man. He looked like the oldest of the three. There was something about his eyes that told Zak he’d be sympathetic. Zak put on what he hoped was a scared face, and addressed this older man directly. ‘They were chasing me,’ he said. ‘These big guys – five of them. They beat my friend up and they were going to do the same to me, and steal my wallet, and . . .’
‘All right, lad, all right,’ said the man. ‘Now you just climb out of the cradle and tell us what these fellas looked like.’
Zak nimbly did as he was told. ‘Don’t make me grass them up,’ he said. ‘If they find out, they’ll come after me. I’m really sorry about the cradle, I know I shouldn’t have done it, I just couldn’t think of anything else . . .’
The three window cleaners exchanged a look.
‘Go on,’ said the balding guy. ‘Get out of here.’
Zak gave him a grateful look and immediately edged away from them. ‘And don’t do it again!’ the bald guy shouted after him.
He wanted to run. To sprint away from Ricky’s apartment block as quickly as possible. But he knew that would just attract attention to himself. So he set a steady pace, skirting round the edge of the plaza, his shoulders hunched and his head down.
Zak had practically forgotten the drama of jumping into the cradle. That was in the past, and his mind was firmly set on the future. He had less than four days to find Raf and Gabs. Four days, and almost nothing to go on. As he headed towards the nearest underground station, he repeated Cruz’s sinister words in his head. I am taking them to a place between yesterday and tomorrow. It didn’t make any sense. Today was between yesterday and tomorrow, but ‘today’ was a time, not a place.
He continued to struggle with the riddle as he bought himself a ticket and, checking around to see that nobody was watching him, headed through the barrier, down the escalator and then – almost as a reflex – back up it to check nobody was following. He hoped Ricky was dealing with the armed response unit OK. He seemed like a good guy. A bit undercooked, maybe – but he had just lost Felix in the middle of his training. Zak made his way onto the westbound platform. He took a seat at the far end and continued to think. He knew that if Raf and Gabs were here, they’d tell him not to take Cruz’s bait. But he also knew that if the shoe was on the other foot, nothing would stop them from hunting him down and getting him home.
A cool breeze from the other end of the platform told Zak that a train was approaching. A wave of fatigue crashed over him as he stood up and moved to the edge of the platform. It had been a physically and emotionally exhausting morning. He wished he was back in bed on St Peter’s Crag and then, with a jolt, realized there was a good chance he’d never see that place again.
The train arrived and the door hissed open. Zak stepped into the carriage. It was only half full and he easily found a seat. As he sat down, another passenger took the seat next to him. A young guy wearing a blue baseball cap.
Zak swore under his breath. Either he was too tired, or too preoccupied, or he was losing his edge.
He turned to look at his neighbour, who smiled. ‘You’re not the only one who can creep up on people,’ said Ricky.
9
ALAS
Ricky couldn’t work Zak out. Half an hour ago he had needed his help. Now, as they sat side by side on the underground, he seemed furious to be in Ricky’s company. He put it down to the stress of the morning. Ricky felt it too.
They didn’t speak. Both of them knew to keep quiet in public. At Piccadilly Circus, Zak got off the train and Ricky followed. Only when they were out in the street, walking north through Golden Square, did Ricky strike up a conversation.
‘So where are we going?’
‘I’m going this way,’ Zak said. ‘I don’t know about you – you just seem to be tagging along.’
Something snapped inside Ricky. He grabbed Zak’s left forearm. Zak suddenly spun through a quarter-circle, with the speed and deftness of a cat, his right arm raised and ready to strike. It was the reflex action of someone prepared to fight. Zak’s movement, however, was precisely matched by Ricky, who had raised his left arm, ready to block the blow.
They stared at each other, then carefully lowered their arms.
‘Listen, mate,’ said Ricky. ‘I know you’ve been in this job for longer than me, but I just slipped away from four heavily armed men who were looking for you, and now they’ll be looking for me too. So spare me the sulks and tell me: where are you going?’
They stood almost like statues for a moment.
Then Zak sighed.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘A lot has happened in the past few hours. I’m not thinking straight.’
Ricky grinned at him. ‘Two heads are better than one.’
‘Yeah. And three heads are better than two. Cruz has set us a puzzle, and there’s a guy I know who’s very good at puzzles. Just a kid. He lives on Lexington Street, just up here.’
They started walking again.
‘So who is this guy?’ Ricky asked.
‘His name’s Malcolm.’
‘Is he an agent?’
‘Nope.’
‘Is he trained?’
‘God, no.’
‘Do you trust him?’
Zak stopped, seemed to think about it for a minute, then put his hand up and wobbled it slightly, as if to say, ‘Sort of.’
‘You’re not filling me with confidence, mate.’
‘Malcolm’s all right. We’ve been on a couple of missions together. I’ve seen him do seriously amazing things with computers. One time, he took over the whole of Twitter. Then another time, in Africa, he reverse-engineered the whole mobile phone network.’ The corner of Zak’s mouth turned upward. ‘He’s pretty good at crosswords too.’
‘So how come you know about him and the Agency doesn’t?’
‘It’s complicated. Michael put him up in a flat in Soho, but he kept it quiet from the Agency. There are a lot of people in our line of work who’d like to get their hands on him – not all of them friendly. We kind of had a feeling he might come in useful one day. I guess today’s that day.’
‘I bet it’s a pretty dodgy place,’ Ricky said.
‘How do you know?’
‘I used to have this landlord who let me live underage in one of his rooms. The fact that I didn’t want anyone asking questions meant he didn’t need to worry too much about making sure it was fit for human habitation.’
They took a right-hand turn, past warm, inviting cafés that were full of punters, then left into Lexington, where they stopped outside a tall, rather shabby terraced building, with a black front door. Zak sniffed. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’
he said, ‘but Malcolm’s a bit of a weirdo. He gets nervous around strange faces. Best to let me do the talking.’
Ricky shrugged.
There was an intercom by the door. Zak pressed the button.
No answer.
‘Maybe he’s gone out,’ Ricky said.
‘To be honest, Malcolm’s not the “going out” kind.’
‘You’re really bigging him up, you know that?’
As Ricky spoke, there was a noise above them. They both looked up. A window had opened three floors up. A boy about their age had poked his head out. He had a thin face, greasy brown hair and brown glasses. He stared at them for about five seconds, then disappeared back into the building.
‘Is that him?’ Ricky asked.
‘Yeah, that’s him.’ Zak raised his hand to ring the buzzer again, but there was a small tinkling sound as a key fell onto the pavement. Ricky picked it up and handed it to Zak, who opened the front door and let them in.
It was dark inside, and it didn’t smell too fresh. They closed the door behind them and felt their way up a steep, creaking, rickety staircase. There were apartments off the first- and second-floor landings, both of which had music blaring from them – Taylor Swift from the first floor, old-school drum and bass from the second. The third-floor landing, however, was silent. The number 3 had been roughly painted on the door, which was firmly shut.
Zak knocked.
No answer.
‘Malcolm, mate. It’s me. You need to open up.’
‘How do I know you’re not going to kill me?’ came a muffled voice from behind the door.
‘Why does everyone think I’m going to kill them?’ Zak muttered in a slightly exasperated voice. ‘I’ve never killed anyone.’
‘It’s probably just the way you look,’ Ricky whispered. ‘Look, mate, are you sure about this guy? He sounds more than weird.’
Zak ignored that. ‘Malcolm, how many times have I saved your life? Come on, buddy, open up.’
‘Michael told me not to open the door to anyone.’
Zak and Ricky exchanged a look. ‘I’m sorry, Malcolm,’ Zak said in a quiet voice. ‘Michael’s dead.’
