Secret Breakers: The Power of Three (2 page)

‘And anyway, MS 408’s a banned document. It’s got a “D notice” on it. No one can go anywhere near it legally.’

‘So who’ve you asked, then?’

The end of the milky moustache dripped a little. ‘Children,’ he said.

Friedman took a moment before he answered. ‘Are you totally insane, Smithies?’

‘Possibly. But that’s hardly the point. And with all due respect I don’t think you’re exactly in a position to be making comments like that.’

Friedman shuffled in his chair.

‘The fact is, Robbie, I had a spark of inspiration. Like a fire. We were just children ourselves when we were first involved and so to me it made perfect sense.’

Friedman now wore a face which made it look like he’d swallowed some particularly vile-tasting medicine.

‘Using children’s the answer. I know it. Children have nothing to lose. They don’t know what’s OK to see and what isn’t. They haven’t got the weight of expectation on their shoulders.’

Friedman still looked a little green.

‘Most importantly, children haven’t been put off code-cracking and replaced by computers in their work. There’s still a chance they’ll have a love of the code. Don’t you remember how it used to be? When we were young and unafraid? When there was the thrill of the chase?’

Friedman’s eyes lightened a little but when he spoke his voice shook. ‘Children, Smithies. Is that safe? You know … after everything?’

It was Smithies’ turn to look uncomfortable. ‘There’s no other way.’

‘But the risks involved. We’d be putting them in danger.’

Smithies ran his finger along the rim of the mug. ‘It’s children. Or it’s over.’

Friedman took a while before he looked up. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘I’ve chosen carefully. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren of code-breakers who worked in the war. And obviously descendants of the 1960s Study Group Veritas. They’ll be less likely to ask awkward questions. They’ve secrecy running through their veins! And the children are most likely to be naturally good at accepting a challenge.’ He paused. ‘We’ll just have to be careful.’

Friedman jabbed at the yolk of his egg with his fork. ‘How will it work?’

‘Ahh, now this is the part I’m particularly proud of.’ Smithies beamed. ‘We’re going to run the whole thing like a home-school learning project. There’s some loopholes in the law I’m making use of. We’ll set up a sort of Code and Cipher School using some of the old-style code-crackers as teachers.’

‘Teachers?’

‘Yep. I’ve put the word out, secretly of course. Tried to draw in some retired code-breakers who can pass on what they know. Old-style stuff. That doesn’t rely on computers. You know the sort of thing, Robbie. Teaching an eye for subtlety, a nose for connections, an ear for a link.’ He leant forward in his chair. ‘I’ve got interviews set up for this afternoon. We should end up with an excellent team of children and a top-class team of code teachers.’ He pushed his empty plate across the table. ‘This time we’re going to be lucky, Robbie. I know it. The time to make sense of MS 408 has finally come.’

Tandi Tandari, Mr Smithies’ secretary, winced a little and lowered her head. A flurry of tight black curls tumbled over her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, sir. He was the only one to turn up.’

Smithies peered through the frosted screen door at a man wearing a pair of pyjama trousers tied up with a garish yellow necktie.

‘And you didn’t feel the need to get rid of him?’ Smithies hissed.

Tandi clutched a pile of Manila folders tightly to her and shook her head defiantly. ‘No, sir. I didn’t feel it polite to “get rid of him”. He was, after all, the only one to come.’

‘But where are the others I invited?’

‘Dead, sir.’ She paused. ‘Or in prison. And these two here,’ she flicked to the uppermost files, ‘are in institutions apparently. This one hasn’t spoken a word for nearly ten years.’

Smithies grimaced. ‘Oh well, Oscar “Sicknote” Ingham will certainly make up for that then.’

‘Sir?’

‘Never mind.’ Smithies pushed open the door and made his way into the board room. ‘Oscar,’ he said with a fair degree of effort. ‘How’ve you been?’

‘Oh, you know, Jon. Never without pain.’

Smithies counted to ten silently in his head.

All things considered the interview went quite badly. Oscar Ingham was enjoying his retirement, hated the thought of working with children and was appalled at the idea of being on the staff of a Code and Cipher School.

‘So why
exactly
did you answer the call?’ said Smithies, biting back the urge to also ask why a fully grown man had decided to arrive at a meeting he so obviously didn’t want to be at, and hadn’t even bothered to change out of his pyjamas.

Ingham reached into his pocket and took out a small container of tablets, emptied two into his hand and swallowed them before speaking. ‘MS 408,’ he said with an urgency that made Smithies’ heart quicken. ‘You said there’s a new lead.’

Smithies reached into his briefcase and very carefully, as if afraid it may turn to dust in his hand, he drew out a small yellowed envelope. Across the back of the envelope was a seal pressed into thick red wax. It showed a bird in flight. A phoenix with wings spread wide. The mark of the Firebird. The seal was broken. The envelope open. And with hands that shook a little, Smithies drew out a folded sheet of paper and laid it on the table.

Brodie Bray stood on the footbridge that spanned the river and waited for her granddad. She knew he’d arrive on his scooter. Not the sort of scooter that looks like a golf buggy and that old ladies with blue curly hair ride at top speed down the middle of the pavement. A proper scooter. A silver one with two wheels and a footboard; that you scoot on.

She didn’t mind that her granddad rode a scooter. She was just glad he’d grown out of his rollerblade phase.

She rolled up the left sleeve of her jumper and looked at her watch. He was late. She rolled up her other sleeve. Her second watch was set to show the time in New York, America. It was behind English time. But whichever calculations she made to allow for the time difference, Granddad was still late. She kicked a loose pebble with her foot. It rolled across the pavement and then dropped into the river. It made barely a ripple. ‘Too small,’ thought Brodie to herself. ‘Just too small to make a difference.’

She peered down into the water. It looked thick and black like oil, her reflection rising and falling so her freckled nose seemed to grow and shrink. She kicked another pebble. This time a bigger one. The image in the water swirled beneath the weight of the pebble. She waited for the image to settle. But it still didn’t look like her. Not the person she saw in the mirror with wild straw-coloured hair that never hung smooth, and a crooked grin where her teeth stuck out a little because she’d sucked her thumb as a baby. This shimmery water version of her looked strangely scary. She kicked one more stone. The largest she could find. The reflection in the water shattered into a thousand pieces.

‘So you found it all right?’ Her granddad’s voice behind her made her jump. ‘Been waiting long?’ He was loosening the strap on his helmet and unfixing the cycle clips from around the hem of his trousers.

Brodie gave him a quick hug. ‘Just arrived,’ she lied.

At first her granddad had been dismissive. The map on the card was probably a joke. A clever trick played by someone in her class. It wasn’t. Brodie was sure. So he’d said he’d go with her; that she wasn’t to be there on the bridge alone. And she was suddenly very glad he was here.

Brodie looked down at her Greenwich Mean Time watch. It was nearly ten. The streetlamp flickered above them. In precisely three minutes she and her granddad would find the mystery solved.

Tandi Tandari was waiting. She had her arms folded, her eyes narrowed so thin lines wrinkled the skin of her black brow, and she was tapping her left foot impatiently. ‘You’re transferring to Bletchley Park Museum?’ she said, any attempt to disguise the annoyance in her voice failing miserably.

‘Ah, yes, about that. I was going to mention—’

Tandi didn’t let Smithies complete his sentence. ‘Five years I’ve worked as your secretary and you didn’t think to let me know you’d be moving on.’ She snorted, making a sound very much like a muffled sneeze. ‘As if taking a post at Bletchley is
moving on
.’ Her voice was getting higher and a little shriller.

Smithies steered her rather abruptly through a nearby doorway. It led to a cleaning cupboard and amid the mops and buckets he tried to calm her down.

‘Tandi, please.’ A tin of furniture wax to his left clattered to the floor.

‘Why on earth would one of the Chamber’s best code-crackers want to work at a museum? I thought that role was just for those who wanted to build up their pension before they retired. Why on earth would you want to transfer there?’

Smithies picked up the tin of furniture wax and cradled it in his hands. ‘It’s not what it seems,’ he said.

‘Well, that’s good because it seems to me you’re giving up code-cracking and had forgotten to mention it.’

Smithies put the tin of furniture wax down on the shelf. ‘Would you let me explain?’

There was something about the way his secretary swept her hair dramatically behind her shoulders that suggested he should!

‘It’s true I’m making a move to Bletchley Park but I won’t only be working at the museum there.’

He held his hand up to stop her interrupting.

‘Bletchley Park Mansion was a hugely important code-cracking centre in the Second World War and the museum does a great job of telling people what went on. But I plan to do something else with my time there.’

‘Like what?’

‘I intend to set up a secret Code and Cipher School for modern-day code-crackers. I want to choose a team of successful candidates to work with me, covertly, in a secret section of the Black Chamber, on a particularly tricky manuscript.’

Tandi drew her hands up to her face and pressed them tight against her mouth. ‘You’re going to work on MS 408 again?’ she spluttered.

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You are! It makes total sense. All the people you hoped to interview yesterday used to be connected to MS 408.’

Smithies could feel the panic rising in his chest. It was usually a source of pride to him that his secretary was thorough in her work and meticulous in her quest for details. Now, it was particularly awkward.

‘Tandi, please. Maybe we’re going to be looking at MS 408.’ She made a yelping noise then which he couldn’t be entirely sure signalled distress or pleasure. ‘But no one must know. It’s
entirely confidential
. It’ll be like a secret in a secret. I’ve waited years to look again at MS 408 but since the ban on the manuscript, what I’m doing is highly risky.’ He hesitated a little. ‘That’s why I didn’t tell you.’

‘But a Code and Cipher School. You want to use
children
?’ It was clear she was finding it hard to breathe. ‘What about the rules? What about the risks?’

‘No one’ll know. I’ll be careful.’ Smithies wished he was as confident as he sounded.

Her forehead wrinkled again. ‘Let me come with you.’

He stepped back against the shelf and the tin of furniture wax toppled to the floor again. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I want to come. If you’re looking at MS 408 then I want to be part of it. What greater challenge is there than trying to read an unread book?’

Smithies tried to argue but no sound came out.

‘I was a teacher. In Jamaica. Before all this.’ She waved her hands around and the tins on the shelving wobbled. ‘Teaching’s what I did. And I loved it.’ She drew herself up tall to her full height. ‘Let me come and teach.’

Finding any words at all was now impossible.

‘Smithies, if you’re packing up and going to work as part of a secret Code and Cipher School then I want you to count me in. I can’t believe for a minute you thought I’d stay behind and work here without you.’

He lifted the tin of wax once more and this time she took it from him and placed it on the shelf. ‘You sure?’ he said. The idea was brilliant. It might just work.

Her smile told him that when he left for Bletchley Park, Miss Tandari would not be far behind.

‘Well, whoever it is, isn’t coming,’ Brodie’s granddad said quietly, leaning his weight on the lamppost.

Brodie pretended not to hear. What was the point in arranging to meet someone and going to all the trouble of sending them a map if you weren’t going to turn up? It wasn’t worth looking at either of her watches. She knew how long they’d stood there. She’d counted the minutes in her head.

‘Shall we give them till eleven?’

That just made her feel worse. Granddad being all understanding and patient. It’d been much better when he’d suggested the note was from someone at school and perhaps she should ignore it.

‘No one,’ she said at last. ‘We’ve seen absolutely no one. A whole hour and not a single person’s walked by. No one ever uses this bridge – that’s the problem. Don’t know why they bother having a light here,’ she snapped, kicking out with her foot at the base of the lamppost. ‘No one needs it.’

Her granddad chuckled. ‘Well it’s good to kick out at when you’re angry. Good to lean on when you’re tired. I think it’s great it’s here,’ he said.