S.T.I.N.K.B.O.M.B. (12 page)

‘Erm, that’s right.’

One side of Dr Doom’s mouth stretched into a broad smile. ‘Thought so,’ he said warmly. ‘Oh – one very final thing. Could you take a couple of steps to the left for
me? Thank you.’

Immediately Doom yanked a lever then pressed a button next to it. Antony instinctively glanced at his feet.

Three sounds followed in quick succession. First there was an emphatic ‘
shuck
’ like the sound of someone putting their palm over the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner. Then came the
pneumatic ‘
swish
’ of sliding doors before a deep liquid ‘
ploosh
’!

Dr Doom grinned at the dark cloud billowing on one of the screens mounted on his desk. Calmly he reached out and flicked a small switch then leaned towards a microphone.

‘Hello, is that the Clone Zone?’ he asked. ‘It’s Doctor Doom here. Listen, I need you to grow me another Antony and I need it in twenty minutes. Is that
understood?’ Pause. ‘Excellent. I’m afraid the last one rather dropped himself in it.’

Archie and Barney were sitting in Archie’s room, snacking on sandwiches and two tall glasses of cold milk Archie’s grandmother had prepared for them. They’d
cycled back from the safe house in stunned silence and hadn’t spoken since getting to Archie’s.

‘We’re MI6 agents, you know,’ said Archie at last.

‘I know!’ Barney beamed. ‘STINKBOMB agents, to be precise.’

‘How’s your sandwich, Agent Zulu?’

‘That’s classified, Agent Yankee. I could tell you but I’d have to kill you!’

‘Gemma’s pretty cool, don’t you think?’ Archie said, trying to sound vaguely bored by the topic. ‘I mean, she’s not like other girls we know or
anything.’

‘Of course she’s not,’ Barney laughed. ‘She’s an MI6 secret agent for starters.’

‘I suppose.’ Archie studied his glass before taking a slurp of milk. ‘But apart from that, she’s just quite, I dunno, cool.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, hacking into the police computer is pretty cool.’

‘True.’

‘And the way she dresses – the jacket and that – is cool.’

‘I guess.’

‘Have you noticed that funny dimple she gets . . .’ Archie stopped himself. Suddenly feeling the overwhelming urge to swallow he slowly raised his eyes to meet Barney’s.

‘Let me guess,’ Barney said, grinning. ‘The dimple is cool too?’

The boys were interrupted by the sound of Archie’s phone chirping the theme from
Star Wars.

Archie was slouched back on his bed so Barney pushed across the room on the chair’s castors and picked the phone up off the desk.

‘Hello?’ he said, rolling a bite of sandwich into his cheek like a hamster. ‘Archie Hunt’s phone. Oh, hi, Gemma.’

There was a lengthy pause before Barney spoke again. ‘Sorry Yes, Agent X-ray. It was a momentary lapse in agency protocol. It won’t happen again . . . That’s
affirmatory.’

Archie watched his friend’s eyes open steadily wider as he listened to the handset. Finally he said, ‘Copy that – message received and understood. Over,’ before ending
the call and tossing the phone on to the bed.

‘We’ve got to get online,’ he announced, spinning to face the desk. ‘We’ve got a code blue on the suspect. Looks like the cheetah is about to snare its next
mouse.’

Barney bit his bottom lip and hunched over the keyboard, typing feverishly. When Dr Doom’s page appeared on the screen both boys sat in silence and read the latest message.

Archie let out a long breath. ‘I haven’t got a Scooby Doo what he’s on about.’

‘Agent X-ray said Doom must have changed his cipher on this one. It’s classic evil mastermind behaviour. He’s sort of taunting the authorities while still keeping us
guessing,’ said Barney, with a knowing look.

‘Well, how are we supposed to crack it if we don’t know how the code works?’

‘Agent X-ray told us not to bother trying to solve it anyway,’ Barney said, before glugging the last of his milk.

‘How come?’

‘She said it was far too complicated for us to work out and we should let the professionals do the thinking.’

‘She said that?’ said Archie, his blood fizzing with anger. Suddenly the importance of what they were doing jolted him into action. His father’s life was at risk and it was in
his power to help. It was as if someone had lit a fuse inside him and he could practically feel the synapses in his brain firing as he channelled all his attention into solving the riddle.

‘OK, let’s think about this,’ Archie muttered. ‘A cave dweller could be an animal of some sort – a bear or a salamander or even some kind of sea creature which
might live in an underwater cave . . .’

The boys stared at the walls for a long while. Barney popped open a packet of crisps and started munching.

‘There must be millions of creatures that live in caves,’ he sighed, spraying cheesy crumbs into the air.

‘Maybe we’re thinking about it too literally,’ Archie offered, wiping some crisp spray off his cheek with the back of his hand. ‘What if it’s not an animal at all?
Who else lives in a cave?’

Barney shrugged. ‘A caveman? Ooh, I know, Captain Caveman!’

As he excitedly pronounced each C, more globules of soggy potato rained over Archie.

‘I’m not sure I’d describe Captain Caveman as secretive exactly.’ Archie paused, picking a morsel off his glasses. ‘What about Batman, though? He was pretty
secretive and he lived in a cave.’

‘I think you’ve cracked it, Agent Yankee.’

‘Well, it’s a possibility,’ Archie said. ‘Let’s see if it fits with the rest of the clue. Let’s see . . . Whose achievements are out of this world?’

‘Anyone who’s really successful,’ Barney suggested. ‘Actors, sportspeople, rock stars – tons of people. How are we supposed to pick a name out of thin air?
It’s impossible.’

For a few moments both boys slouched in front of the computer, staring at the screen in silence. Then Archie’s back straightened.

‘Unless . . .’ he said, leaning across Barney and tapping something into the computer, ‘. . . Doom is referring to someone whose achievements are
actually
on another
planet.’

‘Like E.T.?’ Barney suggested.

‘Could be,’ encouraged Archie, adrenalin pumping round his body. ‘Who else goes outside this world to achieve their goals?’

‘Astronauts,’ Barney beamed, starting to enjoy the challenge.

‘Exactly!’ said Archie. ‘And who’s the most famous astronaut in the world?’

Barney clicked his fingers triumphantly. ‘Armstrong. Neil Armstrong!’ he proclaimed, then a frown puckered his forehead. ‘But I’m not sure the Caped Crusader ever met
Neil Armstrong.’

Archie’s fingers were a blur on the keyboard. ‘The clue doesn’t say they meet each other,’ he pointed out. ‘It says they
hang around with
each
other.’

‘Same difference, isn’t it?’

Without taking his eyes off the computer screen Archie shook his head. ‘I think Doom chose his words very carefully. What jumps out at me is that we’re not talking about actual
people, obviously, but we might be talking about pictures, or portraits. And where might you find paintings of, say, Batman and Neil Armstrong?’

Realisation relaxed Barney’s frown. ‘
Hanging around
a gallery?’

‘Exactly.’ Archie grinned and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. ‘The Atomic Gallery in Hamburg, to be exact.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Easy.’ Archie shrugged modestly. ‘I just Googled the words
gallery exhibition Batman
and
Neil Armstrong
and this came up.’

Archie pointed about halfway down the screen of search results and Barney leaned forward to read the text.

‘That’s awesome.’ Barney grinned. ‘You’d better let Gemma know you’ve done her job for her.’

‘I know,’ said Archie, grabbing his mobile. ‘We haven’t got much time.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Barney, a baffled frown creasing his face again.

Archie pulled up Dr Doom’s blog and tapped the eight-digit sequence beneath his riddle.

‘Twelve, oh-seven, sixteen hundred,’ read Barney. ‘What is that, a telephone number or something?’

Archie shook his head. ‘It’s a date and time,’ he explained, waiting for his call to be answered. ‘Twelve, oh-seven means the kidnap will take place on the twelfth of
July and sixteen hundred is the designated time for the snatch.’

‘Four o’clock today?’ Barney glanced at his watch. ‘But that means we only have . . .’

He looked at Archie, his jaw slack with despair.

‘That’s right.’ Archie nodded grimly. ‘We’ve got less than two hours.’

‘So you’re saying it’s going to happen at sixteen hundred hours?’

‘Four o’clock, yes.’

‘And that’s this afternoon?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that doesn’t give us much time, does it?’ Highwater’s statement almost sounded like an accusation.

‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,’ Archie said, managing to stay calm. It had been a long phone call during which Highwater and Gemma had forced him to explain
each stage of his thought process. ‘I was thinking we should contact the German authorities and inform them that a crime is about to be committed. They could get a team of agents down to the
gallery and catch Doctor Doom in the act.’

The next voice Archie heard was Holden Grey’s. ‘Yo, Yankee. A.S.I. Grey witcha.’

‘Er . . . hello, Mr Grey.’

‘Hear me now,’ Grey continued. ‘FIY, our Spooks ain’t tight enough with the Polizei Posse for us to drop a beat and expect them to boogie. Do you feel me?’

‘Let me make a phone call,’ Highwater said, coming back on the line. ‘I’ll call you back in five.’

While Archie waited for Highwater to ring back he instructed Barney to find out the scheduled departure and arrival times of every commercial flight from the UK to Hamburg that afternoon. When
his ringtone sounded again he stepped out of his room on to the landing to answer it.

‘Yankee, this is I.C.’

‘What’s the score?’ asked Archie.

‘I’ve reported your theory to my immediate superior.’

‘And?’

‘He wants to give Cipher Branch some time to corroborate your findings before he calls in a foreign agency.’

‘Time?!’ Archie yelped. ‘We haven’t got any time. There’s an hour and fifty-one minutes before Doctor Doom kidnaps another innocent person and we need to do
something – now.’

The reality was that the Hamburg Polizei would not respond to STINKBOMB’s new intelligence. Hugh Figo had been so determined Highwater’s fledgling agency should fail that he’d
assigned it a pitifully low security clearance level, rendering it virtually powerless. Any information coming from the agency would be ignored unless its priority was boosted by verification from
Figo himself.

Archie waited to hear Highwater’s Plan B but all that came from her was a series of noises intended to convey annoyance.

‘Listen,’ he said, feeling his frustration boiling over. ‘At exactly five minutes to four call Hamburg Police and report a crime at the Atomic Salon Gallery.’

‘But the kidnap won’t have happened by then.’

‘The police won’t know that. It doesn’t have to be a kidnap, it could be an assault or a robbery or anything – we just want the cavalry to arrive as the abduction is
taking place.’

‘Good idea,’ said Highwater with a note of surprise.

‘I’m going to try and get to the gallery,’ Archie continued. ‘Barney’s checking timetables online now. If there’s a flight from Bournemouth in the next twenty
minutes we might make it.’

Muffled by some amplified rustling, Archie heard Highwater speaking to someone else with her hand over her mouthpiece.

‘X-ray can’t get there in time,’ she announced. ‘She’s checked the flights and nothing leaves any London airport until three thirty this afternoon.’