Page 1 of The Shadow Code (Heroes of War #3)
S ir Charles Templeton's polished Oxfords clicked against the wet pavement, each step echoing through Westminster's blacked-out streets. The Thames whispered against the embankment as he walked east from Whitehall, the air thick with smoke and the ghosts of another raid.
The wind carried the acrid stench of smoke from the eastern docks – timber and the sickly-sweet smell of sugar, wine and other perishables still burning two days after Jerry’s first great blow.
He shouldn’t have been walking alone, not with what he carried, but his driver’s sudden reassignment an hour earlier had left him no choice.
The meeting point had shifted, too. Last-minute change, most irregular.
His contact claimed it was operational necessity, but it nagged at him even now.
Still, there hadn’t been time to argue. Some truths were too dangerous for telephones and the nation’s security depended on him reaching his contact tonight.
He adjusted his gloves with an old habit of precision, thumbs smoothing the seams as if every crease mattered. Military training had never quite left him; neither did the need to appear composed, even when the world was falling apart.
His knuckles whitened around the handle of his briefcase.
The documents inside would make headlines if discovered, but they were mere decoys.
The real prize was stitched into his coat lining: a scrap of paper that could end the war or destroy Britain’s last advantage.
The needle pricks still smarted on his fingertips.
Margaret would have done it better, with thimble and care, but Margaret couldn’t know.
He passed shuttered shops, boarded windows and sandbagged doorways.
A puff of breeze lifted a Ministry poster: CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES .
Someone had scrawled a moustache on the listening man’s face.
Despite everything, Templeton smirked. The powers that be had come up with an array of bold, brash slogans and this one – underlined in red – was no different.
He approached Victoria Embankment Gardens and slipped through the entrance. The park loomed, dark and rustling.
Then the air raid siren‘s wail cut through the air, and he stiffened, that familiar tide of fear and urgency flooding his chest. Searchlights split the sky in graceful arcs as the ack-ack gun team snapped to readiness.
High above, the distant drone of fighters engaging – Spitfires and Messerschmitts locked in their deadly dance.
Civilians scattered like leaves in a storm: a woman clutching a child darted towards the Savoy, an old man hobbled into the Underground.
The sensible thing would be to follow them. Instead, Templeton quickened his pace.
The river shimmered black as spilled ink. Overhead, the growl of bombers swelled into a guttural roar, chasing the Thames like bloodhounds on a scent.
Cold air knifed through the park, shaking hedges and scattering leaves like whispered warnings.
Unease prickled his neck, the sense of eyes tracking his every step.
He slowed his pace, listened with held breath.
A soft scuff, or just the breeze, but the thought did little to calm his racing pulse.
Blast it all, man. You’re afraid of your own shadow now.
Clouds swallowed the bomber’s moon and he picked up his pace, his breath writhing like a serpent against the indigo night.
To his left, beyond the trees, he glimpsed the faint outline of rooftops where below, Londoners curled beneath blankets or dashed for shelter, praying to see another dawn.
Margaret would be asleep in their Mayfair flat, the coal fire still glowing.
She didn’t always wake when the sirens wailed.
God, he wished he was there. Just one more evening by her side.
James's last letter crinkled in his breast pocket. Nineteen and somewhere in North Africa, fighting a war that made Templeton's clandestine mission feel trivial. Stay safe, Father. He pushed the thought aside. Tonight's work might bring the boy home sooner.
The meeting place on Carting Lane lay up ahead, a minute away. He glanced across the park towards the Savoy, its dark bulk rising above the trees, half-swallowed by mist.
An ARP warden’s whistle shrieked nearby. ‘Take cover! Take cover!’ The voice echoed off the buildings, urgent and sharp, and he wished he could vanish into the shelter, but duty steered him on.
Templeton crossed the street and turned onto Carting Lane, the narrow passage rising like a shadowed ribbon between high brick walls.
He was nothing but a silhouette here, a soft target.
One well-placed stick of incendiaries and he’d become a footnote in tomorrow’s reports.
But stopping meant losing his nerve, a luxury he couldn’t afford.
The footsteps behind him quickened and he cursed himself for leaving his revolver in the desk drawer. A voice emerged from the shadows.
‘Evening, Charles.’
The accent was perfect, delivering the King’s English, and the face that stepped into view turned his blood to ice.
Recognition bloomed, followed by a crushing realisation.
A man he had vouched for. A man who had sat in on briefings with that same earnest expression, taking careful notes.
The same man who knew about tonight’s route, the timing, even the decoy briefcase.
‘You really shouldn’t walk alone,’ the man said. ‘Bad things happen in the blackout.’
So, it was you all along. Templeton opened his mouth to speak the name, but leather-gloved fingers clamped over his lips.
A flash of cold steel. Then the knife whispered across his throat, slicing through skin and sinew with surgical precision.
Pain bloomed, sharp and cold, flooding his senses as the blade found its mark.
No cry escaped, only the soft rush of breath and blood.
Warmth surged down his chest as his knees buckled. The briefcase clattered to the pavement and his killer lowered him as gently as a babe to the ground, where he slumped beside the Savoy’s service door. The cold stone leeched through his trousers. His vision blurred, darkness creeping inward.
Fingers clawed at his chest. Not the message. Please, God . That was his final thought as the darkness claimed him.
A whistle cut the air, a Bobby on patrol.
Footsteps quickened, a shout rang out and the killer fled.
Moonlight slid from behind the clouds, washing the alley silver.
It gleamed in Sir Charles Templeton’s vacant eyes, his final expression frozen in death’s grasp.
As searchlights combed the sky, the first bombs fell and London burned.
Inside his coat, threads held more than fabric together. Hidden between wool and lining, ordinary words waited in an extraordinary order, a code worth more than Britain’s gold reserves. The race had already begun.