Secret Breakers: The Power of Three (16 page)

‘I know, I know,’ said Brodie, ‘and if you think we should tell him what we know now then I’ll go along with whatever you decide. But if we keep going it’d mean we’d gone the whole way, and how pleased would the Group be with that? It’d justify all their hard work with us. Prove we’d learnt something. Before the candle burns out completely.’

Tusia took a moment to answer. ‘How about we try and work it out? But,’ Tusia sounded forceful, as if in a desperate attempt to at least think of herself in charge, ‘we give ourselves a time limit. Ten o’clock tonight. If we haven’t done it then we’ll tell what we know.’

‘Midnight?’ Brodie said coyly. ‘That leaves just a few hours left for the candle to burn. If we haven’t done it by
midnight
then we go straight to Smithies in the morning and we show him what we’ve worked out already.’

‘Having some sort of feast?’ laughed Miss Tandari who was taking her turn at staffing the sweet counter after locking up the museum for the night. ‘Don’t forget to brush your teeth after all that sherbet and chocolate.’

Hunter led the way back to the huts, his arms weighed down this time with a bag full of edible goodies. Tusia threw her blazer around his head as they reached Hut 8. ‘Oh yes, such a clever disguise,’ Hunter moaned from behind the sleeves which flapped against his nose.

‘Well, you know we’re not supposed to go into each other’s rooms. They stressed that in the welcome pack information,’ Tusia reprimanded. ‘Now watch the step.’

Watching the step was in fact impossible from beneath the folds of fabric and Hunter performed a magnificent flying leap as he tripped up the stairs. Once inside, Brodie stacked the Malory, their logbooks and lots and lots of pieces of paper on the chest of drawers which Tusia had positioned at a crazy angle just inside the door.

‘There to trap the good luck,’ explained Brodie as Hunter reeled from stubbing his foot on the base.

‘Fantastic plan,’ he groaned through gritted teeth.

Brodie tried her best to look apologetic while nervously opening a packet of Polos. ‘OK. Let’s think this through. We’re pretty sure we’ve found the fourteen special words in the poem by Malory.
For whiles you have the scabbard upon you ye shall never lose no blood
. Somehow, we have to use those words and the string of “handle with care” numbers that were with Van der Essen’s letter, to crack the code.’ She copied the numbers from her logbook on to a clean page next to the special words about the scabbard they’d found. 41, 33, 57, 2, 24, 40, 3, 52, 23, 24, 23, 39, 29. It sounded almost easy in her head. ‘Numbers are your thing, Hunter. Where d’we start?’

Initially Hunter seemed reluctant to take control of the session but after nearly three hours had passed and the clock on the windowsill was creeping nearer to eleven, and the best Brodie had come up with was a code that included the words ‘hamster’ and ‘beetroot’, he coughed to clear his throat and swept his rather too long fringe away from his eyes.

‘You’ve got to be more systematic,’ he said, in an obvious attempt not to sound too frustrated while glancing down at the discarded piles of screwed-up paper now littering the floor like overstuffed snowflakes. ‘Substitution codes are a thing of beauty and you really have to take more care.’

Brodie considered herself well and truly told off and scribbled out the words ‘hamster’ and ‘beetroot’ from her pad.

‘If we think logically,’ Hunter added, ‘which after all seems sensible to do if we’re solving a code, then what we hope to find, when we’ve cracked this code, is the name of a location.’

‘A place name then. Where we’ll find the “phoenix” … whatever Van der Essen has hidden for us and written the code to protect.’

‘Exactly,’ said Hunter, rewarding Tusia’s suggestion with a broad smile. ‘And so although in code-cracking you should obviously consider every possibility, you should at least have some sense of what you’re aiming for and then when the code throws up something that may make sense, you know you’re on the right lines.’

Brodie looked down at the floor.

‘Look, BB,’ said Hunter, standing up suddenly and swinging his arms by his side. ‘Think back to what we’ve learnt.’

It was trying to use all Ingham had taught them that’d led Brodie to the words ‘hamster’ and ‘beetroot’. She tore out the page from her notebook and tried hard to focus on Hunter’s instructions.

‘Let’s think this through step by step,’ he said. ‘We think we’ve found the key to the code. A phrase from a poem. The fourteen words Van der Essen wanted us to focus on.’ He turned to write it this time on a large piece of paper he’d tacked to the wardrobe. ‘
For whiles you have the scabbard upon you ye shall never lose no blood
.’

‘And finding that part was exciting,’ said Tusia.

Hunter tutted a little and continued. ‘We’ve fourteen words and they all contain letters.’

‘Can see why Station X chose you as a super-brain,’ Brodie mocked.

Hunter tutted once more. ‘Now the next thing we’ve got to deal with is a series of thirteen “handle with care” numbers which Van der Essen wrote on the back of his message.’

Brodie pulled her most impressed face as Hunter scribbled the line of numbers this time on to the big sheet of paper.
41, 33, 57, 2, 24, 40, 3, 52, 23, 24, 23, 39, 29
.

‘Now,’ Hunter went on. ‘Each of these numbers must represent a letter in our phrase about the scabbard. In a really simple code the letter A is given the number 1 and the letter B is given the number 2. So, if I wanted to write BALL, for example, my code would read: 2, 1, 12, 12.’

‘OK,’ said Brodie. ‘Nice and simple.’

‘Yes. But so simple we wouldn’t need a special sentence hidden in part of a poem to write the code, would we?’

Tusia shook her head. ‘No. A would always be 1, B always 2, I guess.’

‘Exactly. A poem code works because the letters in the chosen phrase give the numbers and if I don’t know the phrase then I’ve absolutely no chance of breaking the code.’

‘So how do you think the letters in the phrase about the scabbard are numbered?’

‘I’m getting to that, Toots,’ said Hunter, with the tiniest note of irritation in his voice. ‘This poem system was used all the time in the Second World War. You take the phrase and you give the letter A the number 1. But, and here it gets more tricky, if there’s more than one A then the next one gets a number 2, and the third a number 3. Eventually, when you’ve used up all the As you can start to number the Bs. The first of those would get a 4 in this example.’

‘And what happens if there are no Bs?’

‘Good question. The letter C would be 4, or the letter D.’

‘So the numbers are totally dependent on the letters in the phrase then?’ said Brodie, trying not to sound too panicked.

‘Totally. And the chances for making a mistake are huge. But Van der Essen had a long time to check his code so I don’t think there’ll be many mistakes.’

Brodie took a toffee from the shrinking pile of sweets and began to chew.

‘If we try this system,’ said Hunter, ‘first we have to number the letters. The letter A in “
have
” should be number 1 because that’s the first time A is used. Then the As in “
scabbard
” are 2 and 3. Do you see?’

Brodie tried to show she did. ‘We should all have a go at doing the numbering and compare answers just to make sure we don’t slip up.’

As it was, Hunter finished so much faster than the others, Brodie suggested they trust him and use his numbers. Tusia didn’t attempt to disagree.

‘We’re nearly there,’ Hunter said. ‘We’re really nearly there.’

Hunter’s excitement was contagious. ‘So what now?’ Brodie asked.

‘Now, we simply decipher the code.’

Tusia giggled but Brodie was sure this was due to a combination of exhaustion and her unusually massive intake of sugar by way of the Sherbet Dips.

Hunter took the series of ‘handle with care’ numbers and read them aloud again. ‘41, 33, 57, 2, 24, 40, 3, 52, 23, 24, 23, 39, 29. So, the first number in our code,’ he continued, ‘is 41.’ He traced his finger along the line of letters from the scabbard phrase they’d just been numbering. ‘And the number 41 matches the letter R in our phrase. The first letter of the location is R.’

Brodie jotted it down.

‘The next “handle with care” number is 33. That,’ he said, ‘gives us the letter O.’

Brodie added an O after the R.

Tusia blew a rather large violet bubble-gum bubble which hung for a moment in the air and then popped all over her nose. Brodie looked down and tried to make it seem she hadn’t noticed.

For a moment Brodie thought she might’ve stumbled on the word ‘Rottweiler’, but then she remembered they were looking for a place name and decided not to share that discovery with the others anyway.

Outside it’d begun to rain slightly and the sound of the drops against the windows kept a gentle rhythm as they worked.

It was after midnight. Her eyes were heavy and the combination of apple crumble, Curly Wurlies and a whole packet of Starbursts was making her feel more than a little unwell.

Hunter showed no sign of giving up. He was scribbling as if trying to scratch through the paper stuck to the wardrobe in front of him, muttering numbers as he wrote.

At last he lowered his pencil.

‘I’ve done it,’ he said and his voice shook a little, maybe from exhaustion but more likely from delight.

Brodie swallowed and the pen she was holding fell from her fingers. Every number of the code now had a letter written below it and the words that had been hidden by the code said:

‘So we should go and tell Smithies,’ Brodie said, stretching and standing up from the floor, her knees cracking a little as she stood. ‘Right away.’

Tusia looked down at her watch. ‘It’s half past one in the morning.’ They’d long since exceeded their self-imposed deadline, but not one of them had mentioned it.

‘And the man’s made his life about trying to crack this code and we’ve done it. I don’t think he’ll mind what time it is. Not with less than one day left on that candle clock of his.’

‘I’m with Brodie,’ said Hunter. ‘He’s got a right to know.’

Tusia blocked the doorway, her arms on her hips. ‘Hold on a minute. Let’s just think this through.’

Brodie was really of the opinion they’d done enough thinking and in fact it’d be better just to get a move on, but something about the way Tusia looked at them made her hesitate.

‘Smithies doesn’t stay at the mansion overnight, does he?’ Tusia said, as if she were explaining the fact to a group of small children. ‘They told us that in our tour. He has a house in the village, so even if we went up to the mansion we wouldn’t be able to find him.’

Brodie slumped despondently on to the foot of the bed. ‘Oh great. I’d forgotten. So what d’we do then? Morning’s years away. The candle will be nearly out by then.’

Tusia flickered her eyes in thought. ‘OK. What about this? We could use the internal mail system. Leave him a note to say we’ve cracked the code and we know where the “phoenix” is hidden and then he’ll be all set to meet us tomorrow. And that way it’ll have been worth staying up half the night working. What do you think?’

Brodie rubbed the back of her neck. She felt there was a very real possibility that with all that looking down at pieces of paper she’d never fully regain the movement of her head! ‘I say yes,’ she mumbled. ‘To at least make the pain and the headache worth it!’