Agent 21 Read online

  About the Book

  I work for a government agency. You don’t need to know which one . . . The people we are looking for are of a very particular type . . . You fit a profile, Zak. A very precise one.

  Tragically orphaned in an unexplained mass murder, Zak Darke becomes AGENT 21.

  What happened to the twenty young agents before him he doesn’t know. What he does know is that is life is about to change for ever.

  He’s going undercover . . .

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781409097105

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  AGENT 21

  A RED FOX BOOK 978 1 849 41007 6

  First published in Great Britain by Doubleday,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  A Random House Group Company

  This edition published 2011

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Chris Ryan, 2011

  The right of Chris Ryan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  Set in Adobe Garamond 13.5 / 17.5 pt

  Red Fox Books are published by Random House Children’s Books, 61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA

  www.kidsatrandomhouse.co.uk

  www.rbooks.co.uk

  Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

  THE RANDOM HOUSE GROUP Limited Reg. No. 954009

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Also available by Chris Ryan

  Prologue

  PART ONE

  1. The Shadow

  2. Two Lessons

  3. Family Business

  4. A Thief in the Night

  5. Guardian Angels

  6. Calaca

  7. Locked and Loaded

  8. Agent 17

  9. Break-in

  10. A Trojan Horse

  11. Decision Time

  PART TWO

  12. Uncle Frank

  13. Contact

  14. Jail

  15. La Catrina

  16. Chinese Whispers

  17. A Few Simple Questions

  18. Eavesdropping

  19. A Suggestion

  20. The Lab

  21. The Traitor

  22. The Devil’s Choice

  23. The Hangman’s Noose

  24. Out of the Woods

  25. ...---...

  26. Going Noisy

  Epilogue

  • Joined the SAS in 1984, serving in military hot zones across the world.

  • Expert in overt and covert operations in war zones, including Northern Ireland, Africa, the Middle East and other classified territories.

  • Commander of the Sniper squad within the anti-terrorist team.

  • Part of an 8 man patrol on the Bravo Two Zero Gulf War mission in Iraq.

  • The mission was compromised. 3 fellow soldiers died, and 4 more were captured as POWs. Ryan was the only person to defy the enemy, evading capture and escaping to Syria on foot over a distance of 300 kilometres.

  • His ordeal made history as the longest escape and evasion by an SAS trooper, for which he was awarded the Military Medal.

  • His books are dedicated to the men and women who risk their lives fighting for the armed forces.

  Also available by Chris Ryan, and published by

  Random House Children’s Books:

  The One That Got Away

  CODE RED

  Flash Flood

  Wildfire

  Outbreak

  Vortex

  Twister

  Battleground

  ALPHA FORCE

  Survival

  Rat-Catcher

  Desert Pursuit

  Hostage

  Red Centre

  Hunted

  Blood Money

  Fault Line

  Black Gold

  Untouchable

  Published by the Random House Group for adult readers:

  NON-FICTION

  The One That Got Away

  Chris Ryan’s SAS Fitness Book

  Chris Ryan’s Ultimate Survival Guide

  Fight to Win: Deadly Skills of the Elite Forces

  FICTION

  Stand By, Stand By

  Zero Option

  The Kremlin Device

  Tenth Man Down

  Hit List

  The Watchman

  Land of Fire

  Greed

  The Increment

  Blackout

  Ultimate Weapon

  Strike Back

  Firefight

  Who Dares Wins

  One Good Turn (Adult Quick Read for World Book Day 2008)

  Hi guys,

  This is the first book in my brand new series Agent 21. In it, the main character, Zak, loses his family in a tragic accident and is then recruited by a government agency to become Agent 21.

  On his first mission Zak is sent out to Mexico. I’ve worked in and travelled throughout Mexico many times, and believe me when I say it’s one of the most dangerous places on Earth. It’s run by notorious drug cartels, who not only fight between themselves but also fight the security services.

  This is fast-paced and action-packed as always.

  I hope you enjoy it.

  PROLOGUE

  It didn’t take them long to die. It never does. Not if you do it right.

  Al and Janet Darke had been looking forward to their trip. Lagos in Nigeria might not have been their first choice, but as the university where they worked had paid for them to come here for an international climate-change conference, they didn’t want to miss the opportunity of travelling around a bit once it was over.

  They were a quiet couple. They kept themselves to themselves. They had both felt a bit scared when their taxi drove them from the airport into the busy, noisy, dirty city of Lagos. Cars sat in traffic jams, bumper to bumper. Their fumes made it difficult to breathe. Some of the buildings they passed looked quite grand; others were just shacks made out of metal sheets. And there were thousands upon thousands of people, everywhere. It made Oxford Street at Christmas look like a desert island.

  So when they arrived at their hotel – a posh one called the Intercontinental, bang in the middle of the city – they holed up in their room for a bit. Getting used to the heat and to being in a strange place. A shower. Some food.

  ‘Zak would like it here,’ Janet said as they stood on their balcony and looked out over the chaos.

  ‘If Zak was here,’ Al replied, ‘he’d be out there nosing around already. You know what he’s like.’

  Janet smiled. Yeah, she knew.

  It felt weird coming away without their son, but it was 22 April and the summer term had just started so they didn’t have much choice. Not that a couple of weeks out of school would have harmed him. Zak
was a smart kid. Good with his hands. Good with his brain. The kind of boy who knew how to take care of himself. He had seemed perfectly happy to be staying with Janet’s sister and her family. Vivian and Godfrey were a bit severe, but Zak got on well with his cousin Ellie. His parents were sure they’d be having a good time.

  The sun set about 7 p.m. – a blood-red ball that drenched Lagos with its glow before it plunged into darkness. Al and Janet dressed for dinner and prepared to meet the other conference delegates who’d come from all over the world. They wouldn’t know anyone – not even any of the eleven other British guests – and they were glad to have each other.

  The dining hall was splendidly set. To look at it, you wouldn’t know that barely a mile from this hotel there existed one of the seediest slums in the world, so poor that the people who lived there had to use the streets as a toilet. Here were crisp, white tablecloths, fizzy water in bottles and appetizing baskets of freshly baked bread rolls. There were five large round tables, each with ten place settings, and a table plan pinned to a board by the entrance. When Janet and Al checked it they saw, to their relief, that they were sitting next to each other. To Janet’s right there was a professor from Helsinki in Finland; to Al’s left an American journalist. The couple accepted a glass of wine from a smartly dressed waiter with a tray of drinks, then went to find their seats.

  The Finnish professor was an eccentric-looking man with a bald head but a bushy white beard. He was already sitting down when they approached, but stood up when he saw Janet. ‘Allow me,’ he said, and he pulled out her seat for her. ‘My name is Jenssen. It is very nice to meet you . . .’ He glanced at the name tag on Janet’s place setting. ‘Dr Darke.’

  Janet smiled. ‘And you, Professor Jenssen.’

  The American journalist didn’t arrive until everyone else was sitting and the waiters were serving the starter. He was hugely fat, and had sweat pouring down his face. ‘Africa,’ he said with a huff as he plonked himself down on his seat. ‘Every time I come here, I promise myself I’ll never come back. Perhaps I should listen to myself a bit more.’

  Perhaps you should, thought Al Darke, but he didn’t say it out loud. Instead, he thanked the waiter who had just placed a plate of food in front of him. Slices of colourful fruit were laid out on the plate like a fan, with some kind of dressing drizzled over the top.

  ‘This looks delicious,’ Al said.

  ‘Give it three days,’ the journalist replied. ‘You’ll be begging for a cheeseburger.’ Al saw, though, that he tucked into his food with gusto.

  Al was halfway through his starter when he noticed that his nose was running. Embarrassed, he grabbed his napkin and held it to his face. By the time he had covered his face, though, he felt moisture seeping from his eyes and his vision was blurred. He turned to look at Janet. Her eyes were wet too, the pupils as small as pinpricks.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Al started to say. But as he spoke, his chest collapsed into a fit of coughing and he found himself struggling for breath.

  ‘Al . . .’ Janet was looking at him with fear on her face.

  The pain came next – a horrible, sharp needling behind the eyes and in the throat. Al felt dizzy. He looked around the room. About half of the guests had stood up, and from the way they clutched their heads and throats, it was clear they were suffering the same symptoms. At the far end of the room, one man collapsed. Al was half aware of the waiters, buzzing around them like panicked bees. They didn’t know what was happening any more than the diners.

  Al felt himself slump in his seat. He couldn’t help it – it was as though his muscles had turned to jelly and he had lost the power to control them, even in order to breathe. His eyes fell on the half-eaten fruit. The bright colours of the mango and papaya looked ten times brighter, and they burned into his retinas. He turned to his wife.

  ‘The food,’ he said.

  Janet Darke didn’t hear him. For her the room was spinning more violently. People were shouting around her, but all she could really concentrate on was the nausea. She wanted to be sick, but was too weak to do even that.

  Al and Janet weren’t the first to die. The professor from Helsinki was already slumped on the table, his face in his half-eaten plate of fruit; and the American journalist was twitching on the ground. They knew it was coming, though. With what little strength they had left, they reached out with their hands and clasped their fingers together.

  When the Nigerian police arrived half an hour later, they needed to prize Al and Janet Darke’s hands away from each other before they could remove the bodies.

  PART ONE

  1

  THE SHADOW

  Six months later

  ‘Darke!’

  Giggling in the classroom.

  ‘Darke!’

  Zak looked up. He’d been staring out of the window, where the late afternoon sun was glowing over the school football pitch. He had a pencil in his hand, which he twirled through his fingers. On his table there was a circuit board. It was covered with transistors and diodes and connected to a small loudspeaker.

  ‘Zachary Darke,’ his physics teacher, Mr Peters, said in a nasal voice. Peters had bad skin, square glasses and a tragic dress sense. He’d only been teaching at the Camden High School in North London for six weeks, but in that time he’d managed to make himself unpopular with pretty much everyone. ‘You’ve got ten minutes left to complete your assignment. I don’t think staring out of the window is a very good way to—’

  He was interrupted by a noise. Zak had flicked a switch and the sound of Lady Gaga singing ‘Just Dance’ filled the room. The physics teacher had told them to construct a transistor radio, after all.

  Peters was a total nightmare. He loved to set his classes almost impossible tasks and watch them squirm as they failed to complete them. All of them except Zak. He was good at stuff like this, but even that didn’t seem to impress Peters. The jokers at the back singing along to the music didn’t impress him either. His pockmarked neck turned red. ‘Turn it off, boy.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Zak replied. He stared back out of the window.

  Mr Peters walked up to Zak’s table. Zak had grown tall in the last year – taller than a few of the teachers, even. It meant that some of them, like Peters, puffed themselves up when talking to him. ‘Showing off isn’t a very attractive habit, Darke,’ he said.

  ‘I wasn’t, sir. I was just—’

  ‘Quiet. I don’t want to hear another word from you.’

  ‘No, sir,’ Zak said, and went back to his daydreaming.

  He had plenty to daydream about.

  When the police had showed up six months ago on the doorstep of his uncle and aunt’s house to tell him what had happened to his parents, they had said it was food poisoning. An acute case, a terrible accident. It had affected everyone in the hotel dining hall that night. Fifty of them. And for a while Zak had believed them. Why wouldn’t he? The story had made it onto the news, and he was too shocked and upset anyway to think about it much.

  But as time passed and the Nigerian police had refused to release his parents’ bodies for burial, Zak had grown suspicious. If it had been just food poisoning, then why the delay? Why couldn’t they just send his mum and dad back so they could have a proper funeral? And what was so virulent that it could kill fifty people at a single sitting? Zak had hit the Internet, done his research. There was botulism; e. coli, maybe. But Mum and Dad had been in good health. Those kind of bacteria might have made them feel very unwell, but kill them? And everyone else they were dining with? Not likely.

  When school finished, he walked home with his cousin Ellie. She was in the year above, but they were good friends. This walking home together thing was a new one, though. Zak used to skateboard everywhere on the board his mum and dad had got him for his thirteenth birthday. However, he didn’t have the heart to use it now, which was why he preferred to walk.

  Ellie chattered away like she always did. Zak’s cousin was a tall, pretty girl with long, honey-colo
ured hair and one of those friendly, open faces that people quickly take a shine to. Zak heard her, but didn’t listen. Something else had caught his attention.

  For two weeks now, maybe three, Zak had had the strangest feeling. More than once, he’d thought he was going mad. He knew that nobody could really be following him, but it happened almost every day – twice a day, sometimes – that he was walking down the street, or buying something in a shop, or doing whatever he was doing, and he’d get that familiar, unpleasant feeling. A hotness on the back of his neck. A tingling.

  At first, he would turn and look around. But he never saw anybody. Or he saw lots of people, just walking past or milling about. After a bit, he didn’t bother to turn. Instead, he would keep walking and try to look out of the corner of his eye. That was more successful. He’d sometimes be able to sense somebody walking along the opposite side of the road, or standing by the school gates. Whenever he turned to look, however, the person was gone. It was like they had a sixth sense – although Zak’s sensible side told him that was impossible . . .

  He had the feeling now. They were walking along Camden Road. It was busy with the early rush-hour traffic, and the pavements were full of school kids. But there was something else – like a dark shadow on the edge of his vision, walking in the same direction on the opposite pavement.

  Zak looked firmly ahead and tuned his ears in to Ellie’s conversation.

  ‘. . . so I told her that there was no way I was going if—’

  ‘Ellie, shh.’

  She looked at him. ‘Don’t be so rude,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry. But listen, you see that turning up ahead to the right?’

  Ellie looked ahead to see what he meant. It was a small turning about fifteen metres away that led into a little cobbled mews road. ‘Jasmine Mews?’