Page 36 of The Shadow Code (Heroes of War #3)

U nable to sleep, Ellie returned to the office just after ten o’clock.

The building was virtually empty by the time she reached her desk, most staff long gone, having left forgotten cups of tea beside idle typewriters.

Jack had said he was working late. His jacket hung over his chair, but he was nowhere to be seen.

The blackout curtains were drawn, lamplight pooling on his desk where a file sat waiting.

She glanced at the door, then opened it, knowing she shouldn’t.

A report on intercepted communications. As she scanned the typed words, her gut twisted.

A line in the log caught her eye: Clearance Level A, approved by O. Granville.

Her blood ran cold. The same clearance as the leaked radar report, the one they’d recovered from the warehouse by the docks.

The same signature as on Templeton's memo, dated the day before his murder. What the blazes was Granville’s signature doing on a War Office form?

She rifled through the clearance logs Jack had given her yesterday.

There. Three operations. All authorised by Granville.

He'd approved every leak. The breadcrumb trail leading to Chalmers, then Talbot.

Granville had laid it all out, and they'd followed like sheep.

He hadn’t just covered the mole’s tracks. He was the mole.

Ellie‘s heart slammed against her ribs. She grabbed the documents and bolted for the door.

Jack was exactly where she’d hoped: in the incident room, studying the wall map, cigarette smoke curling around him, his collar loosened. He looked up as she burst through the door, his expression sharpening instantly. ‘Ellie.’

She slammed the documents onto the table, scattering papers everywhere. ‘It’s not Chalmers.’ The words hurtled out in a rush. ‘It’s Granville.’

He gave a sharp, disbelieving laugh. ‘Granville? He’s too polished to be the mole. Never gets his hands dirty.’

‘That’s exactly the point.’ She thrust the first document at him. ‘Templeton’s final meeting directive, dated the day he died.’

Jack leaned in, his cigarette burning low, forgotten between his fingers. ‘Meeting reassignment from the safehouse to Carting Lane. Authorised by …’ He squinted. ‘Is that D. Granville or O?’

Ellie studied the scrawled handwriting. Must have been in a frantic hurry. Probably a bally air raid. ‘It’s O,’ she said.

‘Why would he authorise this?’

‘Because he needed Templeton isolated.’ She placed the second document down. ‘Templeton’s driver was cancelled the same night. Same signature.’

Jack’s face went rigid. ‘So Templeton thinks he’s meeting Lambert at their usual spot, gets redirected, and he’s forced to walk alone.’

‘Meanwhile, Lambert’s waiting at the original location, wondering where the hell Templeton is.’ Ellie’s voice gained momentum. ‘Then Templeton walks into a trap at Carting Lane.’

‘Christ.’ Jack crushed his cigarette with a grim twist. ‘And Lambert?’

‘Realises he’s been compromised when Templeton doesn’t show. Goes into hiding.’ She spread out the clearance logs. ‘Look – Lambert’s current safe house location. Only select personnel know where it is.’

Jack’s jaw clenched. ‘Including Granville.’

‘Every movement, every leak, every dead end.’ She jabbed at the signatures. ‘His authorisation on all of it.’

Jack looked like he’d been punched. The betrayal was written across his face. This was someone he’d trusted, worked alongside and defended.

‘Bastard’s played us from the start,’ he said, his voice ominously quiet.

Ellie nodded, her throat tight. ‘And he knows we’re closing in.’

Her thoughts drifted to the cipher Lambert had left – twenty-one letters she’d almost forgotten in the chaos. PIYIT VLBVE OLRI MWKLZ VX.

Jack was already moving. ‘Then we move fast, before he realises we know.’ He paused, staring at her as she stifled a yawn. ‘But not tonight. Come on. I’ll drive you home. We’ll tackle this fresh in the morning.’

She opened her mouth to protest, but the weight of the evening caught up with her all at once, so she nodded and followed him out to the car.

***

The drive home was tense, made worse by the drone of bombers overhead.

Jack navigated the darkened streets carefully, headlights dimmed to slits.

In the distance, the dull crump of explosions echoed from the direction of Lambeth.

He gripped the wheel tighter as searchlights swept overhead, and the ack-ack guns pierced the night with a volley of gunfire.

To the south-east, the sky burned red over the Thames.

‘Looks like Jerry’s sticking to the other side of the river tonight,’ Jack muttered, navigating around a fire engine racing towards the flames.

When he finally pulled up outside her building, he turned towards her. ‘I’ll see you first thing,’ he said. ‘Try to get some rest.’

Back in her flat, Ellie couldn’t settle.

Despite her exhaustion, the cipher gnawed at her thoughts.

She made herself a cup of tea and sat at the kitchen table, notebook open.

She wrote out the letters again. What was the keyword?

One word had haunted them for weeks. Kingfisher.

She wrote it down and began decoding the first line, reversing the shifts letter by letter. Her pulse picked up … then she froze.

FALCON TURNED.

She stared at the words, her heart hammering. Falcon . Another bird, like Kingfisher. With trembling fingers, she decoded the rest: ECHO 7 EXPOSED .

Bird codenames. Kingfisher, the puppet master. And Falcon – his agent, turned traitor.

But who was Falcon? She thought of Granville. The mole they'd been hunting. His access to classified information, his knowledge of operations, his ability to stay hidden. What if he wasn't just a traitor selling secrets? What if he was Falcon – Kingfisher's man inside MI5?

The pieces clicked into place with terrifying clarity, and her father’s warning echoed in her mind.

Kingfisher is watching . Now she understood. A network of bird-coded operatives, with Kingfisher at the top. The conspiracy was bigger than they'd realised. But who was Kingfisher? Two codenames, two players in the same treacherous game. And if Pa had been asking questions … Her stomach lurched.

The pencil rolled from her fingers, clattering to the floor. Granville had choreographed every step, moving them all like pieces in a ruthless game of chess.

Outside, the city lay silent. Inside, everything had changed.