Her aunt’s eyes glinted. ‘I hadn’t felt truly alive until I joined Spyforce. I’d always dreamed of a life full of spies and adventures, but I never thought it could happen. Then, a few months later, things got even better.’ She grinned cheekily. ‘I met Ben. The smartest, sweetest, best-looking man I’d ever known.’
‘Were you scared when you went on missions?’
‘A little. At first, but Ben and I made a good team and it just … felt right.’ Eleanor looked at her niece. ‘Like you and Linden.’
Max could feel her cheeks redden.
‘When you find a great partner, always remember that you have something special. Something not everyone knows.’
Max thought about the missions she and Linden had been on. They did make a good team and even though he joked way too much, she’d trust him with her life.
‘How’s your mum?’ asked Eleanor.
As sisters, Eleanor and Max’s mum rarely spoke and had never been close. Max knew little about her family and was five years old before she even knew she had an aunt.
‘She’s good. She’s getting married.’ Max had done such a good job of blocking it out, she’d almost forgotten. Then she remembered the worst part.
‘And Dad invited me to visit him in America but Mum wants me to stay here and help with the wedding.’ Max slowly twisted the pen in her hand. Even though she’d travelled through time, she’d give it all back if she could visit her dad. She’d even give up being in Spyforce.
‘When were you supposed to go?’
‘He said I could come over straight away.’
Eleanor looked thoughtful. ‘You know what? I think it’s time I called your mother.’ She kissed Max on the head and went inside the house.
What did she mean? What was she going to say? What if they had a fight and never spoke again? What if Max was never allowed back to Mindawarra? She had to stop Eleanor. She ran inside just as her aunt spoke into the receiver, ‘Hello there.’
Max dropped into a chair in the kitchen. She tried to listen in but Eleanor faced away and her words were all muffled. Besides, from the little Eleanor did say, her mother was doing most of the talking.
‘Please, please, please,’ Max recited. ‘Don’t let it end badly.’
The phone call seemed to last forever, until suddenly, Eleanor hung up. Max froze, not wanting the next moments of her life to happen. She looked into the hall and the light in Eleanor’s study went on. It must have been bad, Max thought. She can’t even face me.
Max sat back on the chair as she heard Eleanor make another phone call. She didn’t bother trying to listen. There wasn’t going to be anything good about hearing Eleanor plead with her mum, but after a few moments she hung up and phoned someone else.
Who was she talking to?
Max didn’t have to wait long to find out.
‘That was the longest chat I’ve had with your mum in years,’ said Eleanor. ‘Funny old thing. You know …’
Max couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘Eleanor, what happened?’
‘Oh, sorry, dear. Your mother said yes. Now, do you think you might have room for some pumpkin pie?’
Pie? Eleanor had possibly told Max one of the most important sentences in the history of the world, and all she could talk about was pie?
‘Did someone say pie?’ Linden appeared out of nowhere, which he did on a regular basis, especially at the mention of food.
‘Max and I were going to have some. Are you in?’
Eleanor bustled into cupboards collecting plates and forks.
‘But how did you do it?’ persisted Max.
‘Ben and I have been invited to speak at a conference in LA in a few weeks and I convinced your mother to let you travel with us. I’ve checked the flight and there are plenty of seats left.’
‘But the wedding?’ Max had to make sure she’d heard right.
‘It’s not for months. I told her you’d be back in plenty of time for that. Oh, and you have to get ahead with your school work before you can go.’
Max hoped this was all true and not some cruel nightmare she was in the middle of. ‘That’s great!’
‘What’s great?’ Ben walked into the kitchen, followed by Francis.
‘Max is coming to America with us and we’re having pie. Want some?’
‘Only if you made it,’ Francis said as Ben grabbed some plates and Eleanor scooped out the pieces of pie. Max could hear them chatting about how Eleanor had made it but she understood none of it. She felt as if she was in one of those films where something good happens and corny music starts to play, flowers fall from the sky and the world becomes full of light. She didn’t care for girlie sparkles and she’d never be caught dead in a situation like that, but for now she didn’t care. She was going to be with her dad.
‘Oh,’ Eleanor added almost as an afterthought. ‘We thought Linden could keep you company, if that’s okay with you both. I’ve called your dad, Linden, and it’s okay with him if you’d like to go.’
‘Sure.’ Linden scooped out another spoonful of pie.
‘Max? Is that okay by you?’
It was more than okay. Max would love Linden to meet her dad and couldn’t think of one other person she’d rather be on holiday with. Of course she wasn’t going to let Linden know that. ‘Yeah. Okay.’
‘It’ll be nice to see your dad again. We always got along so well.’
Max smiled at her aunt. Even hard things got sorted out in this house as if they were no big deal.
‘Oh, Max.’ Ben wiped his napkin across his lips. ‘I forgot to give you this.’
He pulled a small, brown parcel out of his pocket.
Max tore off the paper. After undoing the strings that held closed a leather pouch, her face brightened. It was as if she was looking at a favourite toy from when she was a kid.
‘We wanted you to have it,’ Eleanor said in a voice like a warm blanket. ‘We put it back together and upgraded it from the original. It’s quieter now when you use it.’
‘After all,’ Ben added, ‘you helped make it possible and now that you’re a Spyforce agent it might come in handy.’
Max looked at the original Time and Space Machine cradled in her hands. All the memories of their first mission to London filled her head like an overflowing bath. There was an engraving on the back which read:
Happy travelling Max
Love, B & E
‘Thanks.’ Her voice cracked and her lips flew shut.
‘You’re welcome.’ Ben sighed happily and turned to the others. ‘Larry’s been making models again today.’
As talk turned to models he’d made in the past, Larry grunted from the end of the yard as if he knew he was being spoken about.
Max held the Matter Transporter carefully in her hands. After all that had happened in the last few days, today had been a good day. Max sat back in her chair, surrounded by her favourite people in the world, and as she thought about visiting her dad, Larry snorted in the dark and pushed clay into strange shapes.
Max sat on a bench in the school playground and counted the number of days in her notebook until she’d be on her way to America. She’d thought about visiting her dad so much over the years that she wondered whether she’d wake up like all the other times and realise they were still separated by endless oceans, slimy sea creatures and a neurotic mother.
‘Hey.’ Toby Jennings sat down next to her and opened his lunch box.
Max quickly closed her notebook. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Having my lunch,’ Toby answered innocently.
Max stared at him suspiciously. ‘You’re not going to ask me why I’m sitting with all my friends?’
‘Why would I want to do that when you’re sitting alone?’ He took a bite from a hefty-looking sandwich.
‘Because that’s the kind of thing you’ve said to me every day since I started at Hollingdale.’
Max felt as if she was talking to a Toby look-alike or a Toby who had had his memory erased a
nd forgotten that they weren’t friends.
‘Oh, Max.’ He sniffed. ‘Were you writing more of those stories?’
Max tried to stop her mouth answering Toby’s questions. There was something eerie about him knowing anything about her life.
‘No. I mean, yeah.’ She instantly tried to put her book in her bag. Its tattered cover, which was held together by sticky tape, was the result of Toby having fought her for it a few months ago. She tried to push it in further but it fell at Toby’s feet.
‘I’ll get it.’ He leant down to pick up the notebook and noticed one entry written in bright red. ‘You’re going to America?’
‘Yes.’ Max stared at her book trapped in Toby’s hands. She had to get it off him, but just as she was about to pounce, he did something weird. He handed it back.
‘Excellent. Where are you going to stay?’
‘With my dad in LA.’ Now Max was really confused. Toby never handed anything back to anyone without making them beg for it. Max slipped her notebook in her bag and it was then Toby noticed the leather pouch.
Max had to get out of there. Life was creepy enough living with her mother, but suddenly that felt normal compared with how Toby was behaving.
‘Gotta go. See ya.’ She pulled her bag to her chest and moved speedily away.
Toby watched her go. ‘America, eh? And I’ll bet there’s something special in that pouch. I think it’s time to do a little investigating.’
After lunch there was sport, so every student had to put their bag in their locker. This meant Max and her bag would be apart long enough for Toby to pay a visit.
‘Ms Flagbottom, I don’t feel very well.’
Toby grabbed his stomach as the sports teacher came over to see what was wrong. He’d also dabbed his face with a faint layer of powder he kept in his bag for emergencies. Toby loved sport, so he’d never be suspected of faking an illness to get out of it.
‘You certainly don’t look well.’ Ms Flagbottom held his chin, saw his pale complexion and fell for it.
‘No, Miss.’
‘Go to sick bay and lie down for a while.’
A kid called Grace with wild orange hair, fluoro braces and an annoying habit of skipping everywhere she went, skipped alongside Toby to sick bay. He lay on the bed and watched Grace skip her way back out the door. When she’d gone, he went to the lockers and easily picked Max’s lock. He opened her bag and saw the communication device Max had been speaking into. Up close, it looked like a mini computer.
‘Welcome to your new owner.’ Toby grinned, but when he pressed the same keys Max had, nothing happened. He checked for a power switch but gave up when he saw something else: Max’s notebook.
‘Now I’ll find out what you’ve been up to.’
Toby put the communication device back in Max’s bag and flicked through the pages of her book. They were crammed with stories of rescues from erupting volcanoes, escapes from menacing thugs, descriptions of flying backpacks called PFDs and flying through the sky at hyper-speeds in an invisible jet.
‘This stuff can’t be real,’ he muttered, but there was something about the way the stories were written that made him think they were true. He then read about her trip to Mindawarra to test the new Time and Space Machine. His face swelled into a bulging smile as if he’d been stung by an ingenious idea. ‘This machine sounds too good to waste on Max.’
He put the notebook back in her bag and reached for the leather pouch. ‘Now what do we have here?’ He undid the string that held it closed and pulled out a purple box-shaped device. It had a sensor at the top, an LCD screen above a computer-like keypad and three keys labelled scan, activate and transport. There was a rod at the side and a green light labelled power.
‘This must be the Time and Space Machine,’ he whispered excitedly. ‘It’s a little daggy looking but if it’s going to fly me round the world I guess I can live with that.’
With his brilliant idea whirring inside his head, Toby carefully placed the machine into his own bag and, finding Max’s address book, wrote down where her father lived. Then he heard footsteps at the other end of the corridor. He had to be quick. He searched through his bag until he found a small block of timber from his woodwork class. The footsteps came closer. He slipped the wood into the pouch, tied it up and replaced it in Max’s bag just in time to slip around a corner and watch Principal Peasers hum past in a haze of hippie love.
A smug smile appeared on Toby’s lips as he watched her walk away. He’d be good at this spy work, and deep in his heart knew that Max would be overjoyed that he’d decided to join her. He crept back to sick bay with a warm feeling circling in his stomach, knowing life was about to get very, very exciting.
They were the best father–daughter team in Spyforce since Alex Crane and her dad. They’d beaten baddies in Botswana, fought criminals in the Pacific and captured kidnappers in Kalimantan. They were tough, smart and always knew what the other was thinking without having to say it. Max sat in the passenger side of the desert buggy with a map fluttering on her lap.
‘The hotel should be …’
‘… coming up on our right,’ her dad answered above the noise of the engine.
Max smiled. ‘Yeah.’
They were in the Sahara Desert, in the sandswept and majestic country of Algeria. The temperature had reached 48 degrees Celsius and the hot dry wind was gluing itself to their skin in multiple layers.
A faint dot of green appeared in the distance and as they approached they knew they’d found it: the oasis they were searching for. Surrounded by imposing mountains of sand and sweeping stretches of dry golden plains was a lush eruption of rich green trees, shrubs and palms.
Cool air poured over them as they drove along the tree-lined road to the Hotel d’Algiers, tucked in the centre of the oasis. They stopped before a fountain at the entrance and were offered drinks while porters scurried to unload their bags.
‘We have to keep our eyes open,’ Max’s father whispered through half-closed lips. ‘Malovic is very cunning and if he catches wind of our plan …’
‘… it’ll put a nasty edge on our Saharan adventure.’
Max’s father smiled. Her courage astounded him and he couldn’t imagine a father more proud of his daughter than he was.
They’d been sent to capture the dreaded Alphonso Malovic, a wizened old man who leant over a cane and hummed as he walked, but beneath his flowing robes, wrinkled skin and off-key tunes was the most conniving racketeer the desert had ever seen. Malovic had contacts all over the world and whatever anyone needed, no matter how sinister, he could obtain it. It had taken months to organise, but they’d finally set up a meeting with Malovic to discuss a phoney business proposition they had for him.
Malovic’s assistants insisted they freshen up before the meeting and took them to a private bathing room decorated in intricate mosaics. They sat on a tiled bench in their swimming costumes as steam surged from tiny jets embedded in the wall and water trickled from fountains all around them. After a long journey through the Saharan heat, this was exactly what they needed.
Until what happened next. Several clicking sounds reverberated throughout the room as metal plates slipped across the drains. The trickling water became hissing streams, bursting into the room in angry torrents.
‘What’s happening?’ called Max.
‘It’s a double cross,’ her father yelled back as the water rose around their ankles. He raced to the door, but it had been bolted shut. The water quickly rose so high that it lifted them from their feet and floated them towards the ceiling.
Max desperately looked for a way out. The gap between the ceiling and the rising water became a sliver with barely enough room to breathe. What were they going to do? How where they going to escape? Would this be the end of Max and her dad? She’d be able to save them in an instant if only she had some
‘Drinks? Peanuts?’
Max jumped as a stewardess with bright red lips and over-straight teeth leant in and bellowed a
t her.
‘No thanks.’ Max reeled from being wrenched so abruptly out of the Sahara.
‘Peanuts?’ Ben snapped awake from a deep sleep. Max was sure her uncle could wake up from a coma if food was mentioned. ‘Love some.’
Max closed her book. She’d started writing to take her mind off her convulsing stomach, which was threatening to fly out of her mouth and leave her body forever at any second. She wasn’t sure if her queasiness was due to the flight, the foil-covered trays with what she suspected was food, or the fact that she was going to see her dad again. And his new wife. Max’s … stepmother. She’d never faced the word before, even in her head. Other kids had stepmothers and stepfathers — kids from books and TV — and they hardly ever got a good rap. What was she going to be like? What if Max didn’t like her? Or what if she didn’t like Max?
She held her stomach as a new wave of sickness rolled over her.
‘Nervous?’ Ben munched on his peanuts as he studied the scowl on Max’s face. ‘I am too. Never was a big fan of flying.’
‘The flying part’s okay,’ Max answered quietly.
‘Oh.’ Ben nodded, then held out his arm. ‘Pinch me.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Pinch me. Go on. I can take it.’
Max’s aunt and uncle could be odd and sometimes it was better not to question what they said. She reached out and pinched him.
‘Ouch!’ Ben rubbed his arm. ‘See?’
Max was confused. ‘See what?’
‘You really are on your way to see your dad.’
Max laughed. Ben was sweet in his loopy kind of way. He looked around conspiratorially. ‘I’m nervous about who we’re meeting too.’ He lowered his voice even further. ‘Can I tell you a secret?’
Max’s eyes widened. ‘Yeah.’
‘We’re having a meeting with Harrison to show him the new Time and Space Machine.’
‘Harrison?’
‘Shhhh. It’s a secret. At least I hope it still is.’ Then he added guiltily, ‘Hope the machine treats Harrison better than it treated you.’
The Hollywood Mission Page 4