And thirdly, she’d noticed that, in the same way Blon-Brown wasn’t her actual name, so Prince Stein Huckenbeck wasn’t the boy’s name either. He was called Petroc. Stein was his name in another language.
‘Translate Stein,’ she whispered to her glasses.
STEIN, she read. Germanic translation for stone or rock.
So that was it. No – he was it.
The rock they’d been sent to collect was Petroc Penhaligan - a scientist who had studied many books for three hundred years, and had somehow managed to work out how to turn lumps of iron ore - or whatever came out of the mines - into gold.
They’d come to steal the prince.
But before she could work out why, Jack ran across the courtyard, calling, ‘I couldn’t find them!’
She was about to reply when, to her astonishment, the necklace around the collar of her spysuit vibrated. It was a SPIV or SPI visualator, an invention which G-Mamma complained constantly had been stolen by various people – but mostly Steve Jobs - and turned into Skype and Facetime.
Janey held it up before her. ‘G-Mamma?’
A flustered face appeared, blowing hair out of the way – slightly blue, silvery hair. ‘No, it’s me, Matilda Peppercorn.’
‘Tilly! What are you doing?’
Tilly’s eyes appeared in the SPIV. ‘You’d better get to Kazakhstan quickly,’ she said. ‘I think we’ve stuffed up.’ Her face contorted into a guilty wince. ‘The Big G – your G-Mamma – well, she’s been arrested.’
‘Arrested?’
Tilly nodded. ‘Yep. And apparently it’s for murder.’
Chapter 19 - Kazakhstan Craziness
‘What’s the fastest way to Kazakhstan?’ Janey demanded, waving away the goblet of pom juice. ‘You said it’s the neighbouring country?’
‘You are leaving?’ Stein sounded horribly disappointed. ‘I’d hoped we were going to be friends! Of course, we won’t make you stay if you don’t want to …’
Janey paused, weighing it up – weighing him up – then decided in a rush. There was no time for delay with G-Mamma holed up in jail somewhere. No matter what Gideon had wanted Stein for (and she had a horrible feeling it was to turn metal into gold in yet another money-making scheme, probably the most successful so far), his other choices of team-mate had turned out to be quite useful. Even quite nice. Even … and she almost hated to admit it … kind of fun. Stein looked as if he needed that kind of fun, and he might also turn out to have some hidden skills that could winkle the Big G out of a cell.
‘Come with us,’ she said, ignoring Jack’s disapproving grunt. ‘You’re a scientist, aren’t you? You actually make that … pom juice?’
Stein glanced at his parents, and then nodded.
‘Well, a dear friend of mine – my teacher and mentor, actually, kind of like your Lord Viggo, I’m guessing – is in very big trouble in Kazakhstan. Our witch-type person is with her, but that isn’t enough. She needs us there, and Gideon had chosen you too, so I think you could come.’
‘How?’ bleated Jack. ‘How has he chosen the undead prince too? Flynn asked for a brick, didn’t he?’
‘A rock. I’ll explain on the way.’ She nudged Stein’s shoulder. ‘You’re obviously already dead, so you can’t come to any harm, and nobody will guess your state so they won’t come back looking for the rest of your people.’
‘Oh, Stein-Stein, no!’ Lavinia wrung her hands wretchedly. ‘You’re so young. Forsooth, how will you manage without us?’
‘Gadsbudlikins, Mother, I’m over three hundred years old. When do you think I’ll be ready to manage without you?’ Stein held a hand up imperiously. ‘And don’t say never! I’d … I’d like to go,’ he continued more kindly. ‘I’ve made new friends, they’re in trouble, and I’d like to go beyond the golden village of Rustnuts at least once in my life. Non-life.’
Darius slipped a hand across his wife’s shoulder. ‘We should probably let him spread his proverbial wings,’ he said. ‘And it could indeed be useful to discover what lies beyond our borders. Dost thou agree?’
‘Thou must take a goodly supply of pom juice,’ said Lavinia reluctantly, her bottom lip wobbling. ‘And cometh home directly!’
Stein looked from one to the other of them as if he could hardly believe what he was hearing, and then he burst into a tiny, Scottish-looking dance, with lots of pointed toes and arm flourishes. ‘I’m off! Moose and Frank, look out for each other. Mother and Father, take care of each other. Lord Viggo, keep control of everybody. And servant,’ he cried to a nearby wolfish creature, ‘bring me a week’s supply of the pom!’
The juice was hastily stowed in a flagon (although Janey was secretly sure that once he’d tried cola at the World Games, he’d never drink the gunky goo again by choice) as Stein explained that he wouldn’t need a change of clothes as he was undead and didn’t sweat.
‘Do you have alternative clothing, Mistress Blon-Brown?’ he asked politely.
‘Actually no, not here. And it’s just Janey.’
‘That would never do, unless we were betrothed,’ said Stein with a smile.
‘Then could you just call me Blonde? Like ‘Servant’? It will save time.’
Stein tried it for size. ‘Blonde. Blonde! Yes, I can use that, just while we’re away.’
‘Come on,’ said Jack, starting to yawn. ‘We’ve got to get across the border into Kazakhstan yet, and find these wretched games.’
That was true, and they hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. Luckily, someone was doing it for them. Janey’s SPIV rattled with an incoming message, and she picked it up to find an upside-down Tilly in the visuality screen. She shook it, and Tilly turned the right way up.
‘Are you on the way?’
‘Any second,’ said Janey as Stein stared in awe at the SPIV.
‘Good, because the Big G’s disappeared without trace so I’ve had to make my own arrangements. You and Jack—'
‘And Stein!’ added the prince.
‘What? Well, whoever you’re bringing, you have to pretend you’re my replacement coach and physio or something. As soon as you arrive, I’ll magic the guys on the gates into seeing you on the list and letting you in. And be quick, because it’s not just the Big G’s disappearance that’s weird.’
Jack leaned into the SPIV. ‘How long do we have?’
‘Well, Scary Hairy-face,’ cried Tilly, recoiling, ‘no time at all if you turn up like that. And less than an hour if you turn up looking half-normal.’ She rattled off some coordinates and then turned her head sideways so that they were staring into her ear. ‘Gotta go,’ she hissed. ‘I’m being called up for the band.’
She zoomed out of focus before they could ask whether she was singing or playing an instrument, although frankly, nothing much that Tilly did would surprise Janey any longer. Reading out the coordinates to the others, Janey felt her heart sank. She had seen Kazakhstan on the map in the library, and even with Jack’s help, there was no way they could get from Transnordia in only half an hour or so.
‘The Lazy SPIsan is too small for three, and too slow anyway. We’d need a jet to get there that quickly,’ she said mournfully.
Lord Viggo peered at her with his piercing red eyes. ‘Or perhaps … a bat?’
And that was how they came to be travelling across Transnordia by vampire. Viggo had roused three of his colleagues from their coffins and issued instructions. ‘Straight there and back, no harassing the locals and definitely no stopping for a drink.’
‘Aren’t they going to shrivel in daylight?’ said Jack, with just a shade of hope in his voice.
Stein shook his head. ‘They’ll have their pom juice. Nearly all our undead people eaters go out and about by day. Some of them are miners, for instance. Zombies are spectacularly strong.’
‘What about people spotting us?’ said Janey.
Lord Viggo turned to Stein. ‘That is indeed a fair point, my prince. You must be at the vanguard, and lead the group above the clouds as much as you can. If
you’re high enough up, you might look like birds. Again, no stopping.’
The three vampires selected to fly to the Games shuffled together. ‘What about landing?’ said the shortest one. ‘Or do we just drop them?’
‘If there are no observers, then you may land. Otherwise, yes, find a good spot and drop them. One is undead, one possibly immortal, and the other …’
‘I have a spysuit,’ said Janey, though she wasn’t sure it would save her if they let go of her at thirty thousand feet. Still, she’d fallen further and survived, and that was without Jack and Stein at her side. ‘Can we go? I’m getting worried.’
So after the vampire squadron each chucked a flagon of pom juice down their scrawny necks and donned a pair of aviator sunglasses, they all ran to the castle heights and lined up along the wall. Hardly daring to look down, Janey thought of Gideon with a painful pang. What had happened to him to make others track him down so violently? She might not approve of his money-grabbing ways, but she really hadn’t wanted any harm to come to him.
And talking of harm … ‘Ready,’ she said firmly, wondering if the vampire behind her had a strap like a tandem parachutist.
Jack nodded as the tallest vampire moved in close to his back. It would be strange to see someone else with a hand on his shoulder, guiding him this time. ‘Set,’ said Jack.
Stein could barely contain himself. ‘Go! Oh, adventure! Oh, wide blue sky! Oh, new friends! Go, go, go!’
And suddenly they were each gripped around the middle by a pair of vice-like arms. The vampires spread their capes and from beneath them emerged sinewy black wings, veined throughout with the faint pulsating glow of pom juice. It really was amazing stuff. With a simple nod to the vampire on either side, Stein’s vampire pilot launched himself from the parapet. For a moment they swooped towards the ground as he adjusted to Stein’s weight, and then they soared into the pale grey sky, wings beating slowly and steadily as they pierced the cloud cover and disappeared.
It was Janey’s turn. ‘Good luck!’ she cried to Jack, and then her vampire friend – a young undead man not much older than Gideon, with deep auburn hair and startling hazel eyes that glowed against his stark-white skin - jumped away from the building. Janey felt as though she were being carried by an enormous eagle. There was a jolt as he extended his wings and thrust upwards, completing a full barrel roll into a current of air before chasing Stein up through the clouds.
Across the mountaintop, she heard Jack shout out for joy. ‘I’ve never been able to do up! This is fantastic!’
‘Secret mission, Jack BC,’ she called back in warning, but she gave him a big thumbs-up and a grin before the clouds swallowed her up.
The span of the vampires’ wings was massive, each beat taking almost a minute as they stretched the tips forward and drew them back effortlessly and rather majestically. Their grace was incredible, and if she didn’t think too hard about the fangs that were positioned only a short space behind the back of her neck, she could enjoy the flight. They swooped and swept across the skies like dolphins arcing through the sea, Stein always slightly ahead, darting below the clouds for occasional reconnaissance before re-joining them to lead the flock. Were they a flock? It was hard to tell.
Just as Janey had actually started to relax so much that she felt like dropping off, Stein shouted from up ahead. ‘We’re going down!’
They were beneath the clouds; the skin on her face felt damp although her spysuit, ponytail and Gogs had protected her from the worst of it. She trained her glasses on the terrain below. It was almost like a desert – just a vast dustbowl that stretched on for ever, flat and unyielding.
The vampire carrying her suddenly spoke into her ear. ‘There is no cover, Mistress, so we cannot land.’
‘No, that’s fine,’ she shouted, her heart thumping with the shock. ‘You can drop me on one of those marquees.’
‘As my lady pleases,’ he said, his mouth just above her neck. ‘It has been my pleasure to serve you.’
Suddenly she felt ashamed for what she’d been fearing. Why couldn’t she trust anyone? Why was she always judging people – or non-people? She didn’t even know her saviour’s name. ‘Thank you so much, err …’
‘Ambro.’
‘Thank you, Ambro.’
For a moment she feared once again that he was baring his fangs to sink them into her, but he was merely smiling, gazing into her face with his intense green-brown eyes. He nodded to the others as they lined them up high above the immense tents on the outskirts of the Games venue, and they all let go at the same moment. As she dropped like a stone he swooped down beside her, as upright as if they were both standing on a platform. Then, with a gracious bow of his head, Ambro powered his way upwards, back among the clouds.
And now she had to concentrate. To her right, Jack was flailing like a windmill with his canine features horribly visible, while Stein was rushing towards a tent in a free-fall position, eyes closed as the wind buffeted him this way and that. At least she’d been dropped feet first; she was slicing through the atmosphere like a dart. The white slope of the marquee was sailing into view with alarming speed, and Janey realised that her Fleet-Feet would have nothing to grip onto if she landed this way up. Jack would be fine as he would simply sink into the ground to whatever depth the velocity took him before struggling upwards through the earth, but she had a strong suspicion that both she and Stein could shatter on impact.
There was only one thing for it. As Ambro had flown along she had watched with interest, and now she mimicked his movements. She found this put her in the same position as Stein, spread like the letter x across the sky. Once she’d stabilised, she pushed off with her legs and reached out with her arms, swimming towards Jack. From the corner of his eye he appeared to notice what she was doing, and for a moment he stopped wheeling his arms around. His speed increased immediately, so he followed Janey’s lead and tipped himself so that he was lying across a cushion of air. Janey swam towards him once more, and this time she glided through the air as Ambro had done. Jack copied her, and as the white mass below turned out to be not one big marquee but many smaller oblong tents, rather like greenhouses in a market garden, Janey reached his side. She pointed to the floor, unable to speak as the wind pushed against her face, and to her relief Jack nodded, grabbed her shoulder, then stretched an enormous arm out towards Stein who was rocketing past on his right. There was just time for the three of them to link up in a line as a snowy surface rushed up to meet them, followed by a row of tables and a layer of grass before a familiar loamy smell filled her nostril. They’d stopped, but they were submerged several metres into the earth.
Stein clambered to his feet, reeling and dazed, then slowly an enormous grin spread across his pale face. ‘Zooks and zounds,’ he hollered, ‘that was AWESOME!’
Janey put a finger to her lips. They hadn’t yet worked out where they were. They could be surrounded, for all they knew.
But the coast was relatively clear. They were evidently in one of the outer holding areas for the Games, as the HOST insignia was emblazoned on every possible surface, from the inside of the tent walls to the tabletops which stretched as far as the eye could see. A security guard was seated outside the door at the very far end, but judging by the way his chair was tipped back on two legs, he was indulging in a spot of sunbathing in the weak midday sun. Their arrival had gone unnoticed.
Silently, they climbed out of the pit they had just created and then crawled beneath a table on Janey’s mimed instructions. She turned to Jack. ‘That was brilliant, thank you so much.’
‘Gadsbudlikins, it most certainly was,’ agreed Stein.
Jack nodded modestly.
‘But the thing is, if we’re going to pass ourselves off as coaches and so on, you’re going to have to …’
‘Lose the head,’ said Jack. ‘I know. Bear with me.’
They turned away politely as Jack calmed his pulse down enough for his canine ears to shrink against his head into the pink questi
on marks of his human ears, and once that was achieved he transformed readily into Lord Jack Bootle-Cadogan. ‘Getting easier,’ he said with a smile.
‘Good. Then let’s find Tilly.’
They crawled beneath the tables for a while, then when they were well clear of the guard they got to their feet and trotted towards the door. It was only then that Janey noticed the tables were covered in something other than the HOST logo. Every one of the sixty or seventy tables sported a flag – she could see the Ecuadorian one across the room, and the Union Jack not too far away from the Chinese pendant – and beneath each flag lay a line of bracelets, individually named for the athlete who was going to wear it. Janey picked up the nearest one, for a member of the Georgian National Ballet.
‘These Games really are weird,’ she whispered. ‘They’re including ballet!’
She was just about to return the bracelet, which was little more than a black leather wristband, when she noticed how the bracelet fastened. The stud at one end obviously popped into the slot at the other, but as it was too small a slit for the stud, the bracelet would have to be clipped on with a machine of some kind. She ran her fingers down the leather towards the stud, holding it up to her glasses so that she could see.
The stud was a ruby. A miniscule, lozenge-shaped ruby, glued to the end of the strap in such a way that, once it was secured, it would surely press into the flesh of the athlete wearing it. And finally Janey worked out what it had reminded her of: it was the same shape as a SIM card for a mobile phone, only with all four corners cut off instead of just one.
‘These aren’t just identification bracelets,’ she said to Jack and Stein. ‘They’re communications devices.'
‘That’s a bit odd, but I suppose that HOST is a technology company.’ Jack looked at the nearest table. ‘These are all missing. Norway must have had theirs put on already.’
‘As with this one,’ reported Stein from further along the room. ‘I believe from my studies that this must be the Union.’
S*W*A*G*G 1, Spook Page 19