The Joshua Files - a complete box set: Books 1-5 of the young adult sci-fi adventure series plus techno-thriller prequel

by M. G. Harris

  We almost drop our forks.

  “June sixteenth. . .?”

  Rodrigo nods. “Something wrong. . .?”

  “My dad died on June sixteenth,” I say. “Sometime that night, Mexico time.”

  And flew away from the secret city of Ek Naab on 15 June, the night of the UFO sighting – the six Muwans, one flown by Dad, five from the NRO. . .

  Rodrigo stares at me, dumbstruck.

  I get my question in before Mum can say anything: “Was he with anyone?”

  “Yes,” Rodrigo says, looking at us in turn, now utterly bemused by our reaction. “A couple of guys.”

  “What did they look like?”

  “Smartly dressed,” says Rodrigo. “Shirts and ties. Andres introduced them as fellow archaeologists. From the United States.”

  “Archaeologists don’t wear ties. . .” Mum says. Her voice sounds hollow.

  She’s right. I knew it – Dad was captured by those evil NRO agents. I can hardly sit still.

  Ollie hasn’t said a single word so far, but now she speaks up: “Where was this?”

  “Saffron Walden,” Rodrigo replies, “a little town near Cambridge. We were doing a concert in a church there . . . music from the latest recording. . .”

  I want to leave the restaurant immediately, go somewhere quiet and think about this. But Mum’s reaction is so extreme that it takes my mind off everything – for the moment.

  Mum faints. She literally fades out, right there at the table. It doesn’t last long, but when the paramedics arrive, they diagnose low blood pressure and shock. Poor Rodrigo can’t believe the effect of his innocent comment.

  Mum is driven home in the ambulance. Rodrigo, Ollie and I take a taxi, stopping to drop off Ollie, who kisses me on the cheek when she says goodbye. Back at our house, Rodrigo sits with my mum, making her tea with a dash of brandy. Mum makes a good recovery. Maybe I should be more astonished at the whole event, but somehow I’m not. I’ve seen this coming, the wearing away of Mum’s strength. There’s a cloud of worry floating around her these days. I just know it centres on me.

  Rodrigo takes me aside. “What’s going on. . .?”

  If Mum falls apart again, I have to get help – I can’t do this on my own. I have to tell someone something. It’s like a dam struggling to hold in a flood – something’s got to give.

  Well, it’s no use. I won’t be sleeping much tonight, either. The dream is back. Not just that but I can hear my mum snoring next door. The doctor gave her something to help her sleep and it’s put her into mega-deep napping mode.

  I do what I always do when I can’t sleep – Latin homework. Usually works like a charm. But the latest batch isn’t that dull – it’s a history of Julius Caesar’s military campaigns. Apparently he invented a whole new code – a cipher – for communicating with his front line of troops. Since I’m quite getting into codes, it actually keeps me awake.

  I came close to spilling the beans with Rodrigo del Pozo yesterday. He caught on to how freaked we were with what he said about seeing Dad in Saffron Walden.

  “You know something about this, I can tell,” he said just before he left, and gave me a hard stare. “Your mum, she was shocked. Absolutely stunned. But you! You hardly flinched.”

  “It’s probably something to do with that Mayan archaeologist who used to live in Saffron Walden,” I said. At least that could be true, so I actually met his eye. “Dad sometimes mentioned him. Maybe he was checking something out?”

  Rodrigo’s eyes narrowed. “Like what?”

  I wanted to tell him, but I didn’t. The words just wouldn’t come. Where would I begin? Show off my phone from Ek Naab? It looks strange enough, not much like a normal mobile phone. But I didn’t. I can’t even imagine where that would lead.

  Sitting at my desk at three in the morning, I wonder if I should call Montoyo.

  “Anytime you feel you need to talk about what happened,” he told me when I called to say I’d arrived back in Oxford, “or that you’re worried about something . . . or if you change your mind about coming back to us.”

  Truth is, though, I want to get a little further into this. Montoyo and the others in Ek Naab would be really impressed if I brought back something more concrete than a rumour.

  How hard could it be to do this myself . . . I found the Ix Codex, after all. And that was ages away from Ek Naab. Saffron Walden is only a couple of bus rides away.

  And I wasn’t fibbing about where Dad and those agents from the National Reconnaissance Office went in Saffron Walden. It’s obvious; they went to that archaeologist’s house – J Eric Thompson. The same place where my grandfather, Aureliano, went forty years ago.

  I think back to the day Montoyo told me the history of my grandfather, Aureliano, the last Bakab Ix in Ek Naab. He was the one who finally tracked down the missing Ix Codex – one of the four ancient Books of Itzamna. It turned up in an archaeologist’s cottage in an English village. If it hadn’t been for Aureliano’s attack of asthma on his way back to Ek Naab, they’d have had their precious Ix Codex back years ago. Me, my dad, we’d never have found out that we were both “Bakabs” – protectors of the Books of Itzamna.

  My dad would still be alive.

  I pick up my dad’s copy of Thompson’s The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilisation, open it to the acknowledgements page. Thompson ends with his address: “Yale”, Ashdon, Saffron Walden.

  A house named “Yale” in a tiny little village like Ashdon – shouldn’t be hard to find. I return to bed, already putting together a plan.

  The next morning is Saturday. Despite the insomnia, I still wake at seven-thirty, same as any other day. I can hear that Mum is already downstairs, washing dishes as though nothing has happened.

  I make myself a stack of toast and jam, a mug of tea, and sit down opposite Mum, watching her bustle.

  It’s not a good sign when she bustles this early. Something’s brewing, that’s for sure.

  And here it comes. . .

  She turns around, breathes a deep sigh, leans against the sink and stares at me.

  “I can’t take this any more.”

  I try to look clueless.

  “You. Me. What’s happened to us. I know you’re hitting your teens now, but honestly. . .”

  “What. . .?”

  “Is it really necessary to be so uncommunicative? It’s been clear to me since you came back from Mexico that you know something about your father’s death. Something you aren’t sharing with me. Maybe something you’re not even sharing with the police. I’ve gone beyond caring what it does to me. I have to know what you know.”

  Whoa. Sounds as if that’s been brewing for a while. . .

  I hang my head for a second, wondering what I can say to get out of it. Nothing. I don’t want to, either. I want to tell her everything.

  But slowly. Carefully.

  “Sit down.”

  She gives me this slightly surprised look, and sits.

  “When I was questioned by those NRO guys – the agents from the National Reconnaissance Office – I got the impression that they’d seen Dad before he died.”

  “Got the impression. . .? Josh: just give me facts.”

  “They asked me a lot of questions. About Dad, what he was doing, what he was searching for, who he knew. Why ask all that? They didn’t seem interested in the plane crash at all. Why not? Only about things he did in Oxford before leaving and things he’s done in Mexico.”

  Mum looks puzzled. “I thought they interrogated you about your abduction?”

  “Well, that too.”

  “Josh . . . were you abducted?”

  A long pause. “Not exactly. I was in a sort of spaceship thing, but it wasn’t against my will. . .”

  I don’t get any further. Mum just rolls her eyes. “Oh, Josh, you’re not still going on about the spaceships? I don’t believe this.”

  So there it is. I could cry with frustration, but instead I feel myself freezing up again. “All right, all right! Maybe it’s
best if we don’t talk about that. Just about Dad.”

  Mum stops talking, looks at me carefully.

  “It wasn’t just me they asked about Dad. They interrogated Tyler and Ollie too.”

  “Yes, I know all about that, I had Tyler’s parents complaining to me about it. To me! As if it was anything to do with me. If anything, that Ollie’s father should take the blame – he’s the one who bought your tickets to Mexico. I was in no state to make a decision to let you do something like that!”

  Of course, Mum was in a psychiatric hospital at the time, and Ollie did persuade her dad that we’d only be gone a week. I take her point, though. Tyler’s folks had been a tad unhappy too. I guess Ollie’s parents didn’t feel like they had a right to complain, since they authorized the trip. I bet they felt angry just the same.

  “The NRO weren’t interested in the plane crash, or anything about Dad’s death, because they did it. Don’t you see, Mum? They’re the ones. They wanted something that he was looking for, or maybe something that he had. And when they couldn’t get it from him, they killed him, to keep him quiet. They put his body in a plane on the night of June sixteenth, to make it look like an accident. So when I turn up in Mexico, they assume I know something too. That’s what the interrogation was about.”

  “But you didn’t know anything?”

  Well, I persuaded them I didn’t, but I can’t tell Mum that.

  “I couldn’t tell them what they wanted to know, whatever that was.”

  Mum slumps into a kitchen chair, pondering. Eventually she says, “I need to get away from this house for a bit. I just don’t know how you’re supposed to cope with bereavement when things like this happen. All the uncertainty.”

  “Imagine what it’s like for soldiers’ families when they go missing in action in a war. . .”

  Mum looks irritated. “I’m sure it’s awful, Josh. It’s good to see you have some compassion for total strangers. I only wish you could show the same to me; I am your mother, after all.”

  I can never say the right thing.

  Mum takes one of my pieces of toast. She looks thoughtful, tired, sad: a lethal combination. A change is coming, I know it.

  I never get letters. I don’t get that many emails either. Apart from the occasional mooch with Emmy down at the skatepark, I seem to have dropped off the social scene. There was a time when I had a few mates, but when my dad disappeared, that seemed to pretty much do it for me. I lost all interest in hanging around doing whatever it was we used to do . . . Xbox, guitars and stuff.

  Well, this morning, I got a postcard. I didn’t look properly at first, assumed it was to Mum and me. It’s a photo of Labna, the site of a Mayan ruin, one I remember visiting when I was about eight years old. It looks exactly the way I remember it. A typical rip-off postcard – an old photo.

  The card is addressed to me, only me. The writing is typed, old-fashioned typewriter-style. There’s no “Dear Josh” or anything. Just two words in capital letters:

  HOLDS.BLOOD.

  That’s it.

  It was posted about ten days ago, in the Mexican state of Veracruz.

  Totally random. I have no idea what it means, if anything. Maybe it’s meant to be a threat?

  I put the postcard on my desk and turn on my computer. Maybe I’ll find someone I know logged into my instant messenger program.

  Maybe even Ollie. I keep thinking about Ollie, about that moment in the concert, when she held my hand. How much did I let on that I’ve got a thing for her? When Rodrigo appeared on the scene, we didn’t manage to pick up whatever it was we had going on in the chapel. Like me, Ollie became totally focused on what Rodrigo said about meeting my father in Saffron Walden.

  Ollie’s not online, but Tyler is. And that gives me an idea.

  Want to go on an “adventure”? I type.

  He replies: LOL. Oh yeh. I’m dying to be interrogated again.

  Just to Saffron Walden. It’s near Cambridge. We could be back by tonight.

  What’s in Saffron Walden?

  I type: Meet me at McDonald’s in town half an hour from now and I’ll tell you. Bring cash for the bus!

  I check my watch. If I hurry I can make it in time for an Egg McMuffin.

  Tyler arrives later, orders a cheeseburger and orange juice, sits down. This time of the morning, the restaurant is fairly empty. We sit upstairs, looking out over Cornmarket across at the people in Starbucks, who stare right back. Early winter can be soggy and grey in Oxford, but today is one of the better crisp blue days. Not too cold either. Street entertainers are setting up for a lunch-time busk. Briefly, we watch a juggler hurl a bunch of tennis rackets around his head.

  “I’m not saying I’m comin’ with you,” begins Tyler.

  “Whatever. Just listen.”

  I tell him about Rodrigo, Dad and Saffron Walden. His eyes grow big; he’s definitely interested.

  “Man, that is mad. He was in England on June sixteenth? That means your dad was never in that plane.”

  I wish. But by now I’ve thought it through. Rodrigo spotted Dad with those other guys on the morning of 16 June in Saffron Walden. With the time difference, he could still – just – have made it to Mexico that night in time to be murdered and put in the Cessna, which was rigged to crash. I checked on the Web; there’s a RAF air base, Lakenheath, about twenty-five miles north of Cambridge. I reckon the NRO guys flew Dad in and out of that air base, had him back in Mexico that night. They wouldn’t even have had to use their stolen Muwan technology – with the time difference between England and Mexico, an ordinary military plane could do it.

  Which still leaves the question – what was so important in Saffron Walden?

  My guess? They were looking for the Ix Codex.

  Tyler kisses his teeth in scorn. “What?! I thought you’d given up on that. Seemed like you went off the whole idea after your ‘abduction’.”

  When he says “abduction” it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t believe me.

  “Listen, Ty, it’s not about the codex any more. Those people killed my dad. Think about that for a minute.”

  Tyler looks uncomfortable. “I know, mate,” he mumbles. “But what can you do?”

  I give a deep sigh. “Maybe I’m kidding myself, you know? Maybe there’s no way I can ever find out who really killed my dad. Or why. But if there’s any chance, any clue. . . Ty – how could I ever forgive myself? Five years from now, ten years from now. . . Knowing that I just gave up?”

  “Yeah, man.” Tyler nods slowly. “Yeah. You got a point.”

  “I need to know what he was doing the last day he was alive. Now that I know he was here, I can’t just forget it. Could you? I have to know why, what he was doing, to know if there’s any connection. . .”

  He seems to consider it. “Would you feel this way if he’d died in a proper accident? A real plane crash? Or if he’d fallen off a mountain? He used to climb, didn’t he, your dad?”

  “I think I would,” I reply. “If there was anything strange or mysterious about it, yeah. Like mountaineering. Sometimes they don’t find bodies for years. Relatives, friends, they never forget, never stop wondering. That’s how it is with me. It’s like there’s a hole somewhere inside your chest. No matter what you do, you can’t fill it. People grow old, wondering. Then they find the bodies, the people they lost. Frozen, still young. Yeah, if he’d died like that I’d want to know what happened. I’d want to see the place where he fell.”

  They gave me an urn with my dad’s ashes, but it’s not the same. I need to know the exact sequence of events that led to the end. Mum calls it “closure”. We both need it. And now there’s a chance to know what he was doing on his last day alive.

  Tyler nods a few times. He’s still weighing things up. “Why not Ollie too?”

  I don’t want Ollie involved – I want to protect her. “Not Ollie,” I say. “She’s always busy these days . . . with coursework.”

  He shrugs. “What’s the plan?”

  “We
go to a house near Saffron Walden, used to belong to a famous Mayan archaeologist. We ask questions.”

  “What questions?”

  I shrug. “We ask them what my dad was doing there, what he wanted, who the blokes in ties claimed to be . . . that sort of thing.”

  “That’s it?”

  I nod.

  “And if they tell us to get lost?”

  “Well, then . . . I guess we might have to get into some light . . . housebreaking.”