by David Gilman
But then the weight disappeared. Max opened his eyes. Sayid was on the ground, looking up, waving. Max hauled the rope back up, looped it through the balcony’s uprights and lowered himself down. Once on the ground, he yanked the rope free and tossed it into the shadows. Even if their pursuers saw the balcony, they wouldn’t see Max and Sayid’s means of escape. That should convince them to waste time exploring the servants’ corridor.
Max immediately urged Sayid into the shadows of the tree line. “Look out for anyone coming, especially the German’s wife. I bet she’s out here with their car.”
All they had to do now was escape. How long did they have before their attackers heaved the door upstairs open and realized the boys had escaped? Max took Sayid’s weight, helping the boy to move quickly towards the trees. They reached the front of the chateau. Half a dozen motorbikes stood tilted on their stands. Was Sharkface here? He couldn’t be. If he were he’d have led the battle on the staircase.
Max looked out into the moving shadows. Spiderwebs of light teased the bare branches. One patch of darkness was blacker than the rest. On the left of the drive the Germans’ car sat unmoving-and facing the gates. Tucked well in, so the driver could see if the old Frenchman returned.
Max put his mouth next to Sayid’s ear. “There’s no sign of Bobby. We’re on our own. Get into those trees over there on the right. See the car? Stay on its blind side and keep out of sight. Meet me at the entrance gates.”
Sayid hesitated.
“I’ll be right behind you,” Max assured him, then turned and ran for the chateau’s front doors. He had to buy them time.
Max barely made it to the Frenchman’s office before he heard the German’s shouting: “Find them! Find them! Search every room!”
He scanned the small, tidy office. Turn things around; make a disadvantage work for you. You’re in trouble-think. C’mon! He grabbed a pair of desk scissors, he’d need those. Then, opening the alarm box’s front panel, he saw the row of unlit lights and the master switch. How long did he have once he activated the alarm? He tried to remember what the Frenchman had done. He’d walked out of his office, closed the door behind him and then gone out of the front door. How long? The Frenchman was slow. Max saw him in his mind’s eye. And counted. Close the office door, one … two seconds. Turn, three … four. Three, maybe four steps to the front door, five … six. Open the door, seven … Pull on his hat and coat, eight … nine … ten … eleven …
The Frenchman had patted his pockets, twelve … thirteen. Stepped back to his office, fourteen … fifteen. Open the door, sixteen. Done what? Reached for something on his desk. What? Cigarettes. He had picked up the forgotten cigarettes, seventeen … eighteen. Repeated his movements again, out of the office, into the hall, nineteen … twenty … twenty-one. The old man had quickened his pace, twenty-two … twenty-three … twenty-four. By now, Max remembered, he would have been back at the door, which was already open. Stepped out-and closed it.
Twenty-five seconds tops. The old Frenchman might have been slow but it was a practiced pace, he did it every night of his life. To the second.
Max’s finger hovered over the master control. Was he about to throw the wrong switch? Holding his breath, he flipped the switch and began a mental count-following the same procedure as the Frenchman. Door … one second. Turn, three … four …
Footfalls pounded on the stairs. Max sneaked a peek around the office door and saw the German, grunting with exertion, reach the hallway. He ducked behind the open front door and watched through the narrow gap between wall and door as the German stopped in the archway.
Five … six … seven …
Max could have reached out from the darkness and touched him.
Eight … nine … ten …
The man gestured and yelled, “Bring the car! Bring the car! We need a flashlight! They’ve escaped! Rhona, schnell! Come on!”
Eleven … twelve … thirteen … fourteen … Max hardly dared breathe. The clock was ticking; the alarm would go off unless he could get out the door and close it. That was his only chance. Come on! Shut up and leave!
Fifteen … sixteen. The German turned back to the stairs. Max heard a car engine start, crunching tires, a car door open and slam. No headlights.
Seventeen … eighteen … nineteen. And then the German’s wife ran into the entrance hall. She hesitated. “Ernst!”
Twenty …
The voice carried. “Up here!”
Twenty-one … twenty-two …
She ran towards her husband’s voice.
Twenty-three …
Max stepped out, grabbed the door …
Twenty-four … twenty-five!
The door clicked shut behind him.
Silence.
Max blew the air out of his lungs with a massive sigh of relief. He leapt down the steps, past the guardian crocodiles to the motorbikes, then slowly and methodically pushed the scissors’ blades into the rear tire of each motorbike. There was an even more satisfying hiss of released air.
Max’s plan had worked better than he had hoped. The Germans’ car had stopped right outside the entrance and the keys were in the ignition. Max didn’t care about noise now.
He kicked the row of bikes. Nice to see the domino effect in action. The bikes clattered down. Handlebars snared wheels, brake and clutch levers dug into engine blocks, and headlights cracked and smashed.
Max adjusted the driver’s seat in the small Mercedes, turned the key, pulled the gear shift from park to drive and let the smooth engine glide him towards the entrance gates. He stopped the car, slid down the window and called, “Sayid, your taxi’s here.”
The boy stepped out of the shadows. “Max!” He climbed inside. “What was all that racket?”
“Fun,” Max said, smiling. “Not half the racket there’s going to be in a-”
The piercing screech of the chateau’s alarm siren sliced through his words. Max and Sayid turned. Figures ran down the steps. Some tried to lift their motorbikes; two bigger silhouettes pointed and shouted something.
Max laughed, pushed his arm out the window and waved.
“Auf wiedersehen, losers.”
Sayid beat his hands on the dashboard and shouted, “We did it! We did it!”
Max turned the car towards Biarritz.
“Put your seat belt on, Sayid. What’s wrong with you? You like living dangerously?”
14
Fedir Tishenko was superstitious. Portents and signs had guided many great men in history, and Fedir modestly counted himself among them. Had he not been marked by the lightning god’s hand? He doubted if any other human could have survived such a ferocious baptism.
The unseen powers of the universe guided his destiny un-equivocally towards that chosen moment when he would shock the world by harnessing and unleashing the greatest force nature possessed.
But he was also practical. Superstition was the foundation of his belief, but cold logic had given him immense financial power. Desire for anonymity from the world’s media was driven not only by his disfigurement but also by stealth and cunning. Behind the scenes he could influence governments, buy politicians and inflict whatever judgment he deemed appropriate on those who failed to live up to his expectations.
One billion dollars buys a lot of influence and privacy. But he knew that no matter how exact he had been over the years, a tiny speck of the unforeseen could create havoc. Like a Formula One racing driver getting a wasp under his helmet at three hundred kilometers per hour, or a precision piece of high technology getting a microscopic mote of dust in a vacuum-sealed area.
Deep underground he was driven past massive pieces of equipment resembling something a hundred times bigger than a jetliner’s engine, and an enormous disk, higher than a six-story building, gripped and secured by steel frames attached to the rock face. Except this disk did not house fan turbines but energy conductors, overlapping, highly polished titanium tiles, solenoids that would snare and capture, then transmit the raw energy
he would soon harness.
Energy crisis? A gash appeared in his crinkled face-a smile.
The world did not understand the meaning of the word energy, or crisis. What he planned would make any such concerns seem as insignificant as blowing out a candle.
Now, as he sat on the electric golf cart being driven through the cathedral-like halls beneath the mountains, a chill prickled his skin. It was not the cold, because massive heat conductors maintained a regular temperature down here at a hundred meters below the surface. No, it was this unexpected complication.
The monk, Zabala, had spent over twenty years searching for proof of some future profound, earth-shattering event. More importantly, it seemed, this evidence was the precise time, the exact hour when the cataclysm would occur. This was the information for which Tishenko had paid Zabala’s closest friend a small fortune. The man had failed to obtain the secret from Zabala, and Tishenko had taken his revenge-the body would never be found. But the man had learned enough to give Tishenko the exact day on which to inflict the terror of his awesome, earth-shattering revelation. He liked that word. Revelation. Yes, it would be that wondrous a moment.
Tishenko’s scientists, tracking powerful weather fronts across the Atlantic, confirmed that the day the storm was expected to strike matched Zabala’s prediction. But for Tishenko there was still a niggling concern. He wanted to unleash his cataclysm at the optimum moment in time for it to succeed. Absolute power demanded absolute knowledge.
Superstition teased at his logic like a child picking a scab. Perhaps the monk had had something Tishenko did not possess, something almost akin to a sixth sense. Zabala had turned to prayer and meditation as well as science and mathematics. He had become like one of those ancient masters who felt an affinity with the universe, who understood things at a superconscious level. Zabala knew things.
And had proved his mystical prediction with facts. Perhaps the scientific community would have still scoffed at Zabala had he lived-but what if they had not? Today’s climate change had scientists so worried that they swapped information like kids exchanging baseball cards. They might just identify where and what Tishenko planned.
Fedir, remember who you are, remember why you are so named-a gift from God. His mother’s words caressed his moment of doubt.
Why was this Max Gordon boy involved? Tishenko’s people had scoured the airwaves for months, ensuring that anyone who might even remotely offer any threat could be monitored. This illegal spying on known environmental groups, investigators, scientists and government departments had revealed no cause for alarm. Nothing would threaten Tishenko’s plans, because no one knew of them-except Zabala.
But a meddlesome environmental troubleshooter, Tom Gordon, had been contacted. He was confined to a nursing home in England, but his son was in precisely the same area as Zabala.
Tishenko hated coincidence. There was no such thing. It was destiny throwing forces together like a particle accelerator slamming together beams of protons at the speed of light-well, 99.999999 percent of the speed of light, to be precise, his mind chastised him-and not even the scientists knew what the resulting explosion would create.
Superstition gripped him.
They had checked back. Every Friday afternoon over the preceding weeks someone from the Pyrenees had used a landline phone and contacted Tom Gordon’s nursing home. The location told them it had to be his son, Max.
The boy had phoned again when he was in hospital in Pau, after the assassination of Zabala, and then he had gone to the monk’s mountain home.
Coincidence?
Fate?
Since discovering this information, Tishenko had tried to stop him. Just in case he knew something. But the boy had defied the threat of violence and death from Tishenko’s people at every step. Now he represented that speck of the unforeseen that could destroy everything.
The American boy who helped Max Gordon had been dealt with. The Germans who were in charge of capturing the troublesome English boy at the chateau near Biarritz had failed and had already paid the price-their bodies would never be found. Now the biker gang of hunters would scour the area around Biarritz until Max Gordon surfaced. He had been to the chateau in Hendaye, so the possibility of his finding Zabala’s secret was all the greater.
Max Gordon had succeeded, without even knowing it, in rattling him. Tishenko had to snare this boy and find out once and for all if he had discovered that vital piece of information of Zabala’s that he so craved. Now there was an urgent need to double-check that the father had not instructed the son. How? There was one person who might be able to reach him. A man who was once Tom Gordon’s friend but who had betrayed him.
Would sending this man be a bridge too far?
Superstition demanded Tishenko send him to Max Gordon’s father.
He gave the order-contact Angelo Farentino.
Max didn’t know how to read Sophie Fauvre. She had smiled with relief when he and Sayid had walked through the door, but she kept her distance, almost as if she might be intruding on their friendship. Max nodded a kind of gruff hi, then, thinking he’d been a bit rude, smiled back, told her that Bobby and Peaches were still surfing down the coast.
The small sequence of events was just like being in a home of his own. She offered them coffee that was already made. Max thanked her and took the biscuit plate she put in front of him. Then, in a spurt of words, she told him about the man in the black Audi. Max looked worried, nodded, but didn’t say anything. She reached out a hand and touched his face and smiled in a funny, kind of sad way.
It was a toe-curling, stomach-churning moment as far as Sayid was concerned. He watched them both, ignored and probably not even noticed by either of them, for a few minutes.
“I’m going to change my clothes,” Sophie said, leaving the two boys.
Max’s ginger biscuit, dunked in coffee, wobbled and splashed back into the mug. “Oh, right. Sure. OK,” he managed to say.
As Sophie turned out of sight, Sayid pulled a face. “What was all that about?”
“What?”
“All that. She was all over you. I thought she was going to wipe the biscuit crumbs from your mouth for a minute.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“If I’d had anything to eat in the last few hours I’d have puked. That’s how bad it was. She’s trouble, I’m telling you.”
Max pushed the chair away from the table.
“Sayid, one of those blokes from the hospital was waiting for her, didn’t you hear what she said?”
“And those others were at the chateau! Whoever ‘they’ are, they know everything. Max, you’re being set up. And guess who’s the only person who’s been around long enough to know where we are.”
“She didn’t know about the chateau,” Max whispered furiously.
“You can’t be sure! Just like you can’t be sure that bloke was watching her! She said he was but that doesn’t mean anything. He and his mate could be knocking on the comtesse’s door any minute now.”
Max felt the turmoil of uncertainty. This wasn’t one of those moments when you had to decide on a course of action, like when the German and those bikers attacked them. His body and mind had responded immediately then. This was worse, because it made heart and mind fight each other. They were surrounded by people who liked and cared about them. Who knew where they’d been? Who had betrayed them? It couldn’t have been Bobby. He would not have brought violence to his grandmother’s house. But where was he? Max couldn’t get hold of him on the phone he had given them. Was that because mobile reception was poor down there, or was Bobby deliberately not answering? And Sophie? Max shook his head. He didn’t want to be thinking such distrustful thoughts about anyone here.
“I’m sorry, mate. But this is really serious stuff now, and I don’t mind telling you, I’m scared,” Sayid said by way of apology.
Max had to acknowledge that. “Have another piece of cake. It’ll take your mind off things.”
“I’m not kiddi
ng, Max!”
“I know,” he said gently.
Max understood that Sayid had been incredibly brave so far. His friend had put aside his own fear to help. He guessed there was an element of adventure that excited Sayid, but the reality of the danger was getting to him. Max had faced violence before-but it didn’t stop him from being scared. The difference between them was that Max had to see this thing through. It’s what his dad would have done.
Max walked through to the kitchen and the sound of the small portable television set that the comtesse seemed to have on permanently, a slush of words and laughter. The old lady sat at a large wooden farmhouse-style table. A cigarette smoldered between her lips, one of her eyes half closed against the smoke, and a large glass of cheap red wine nestled in partnership with the half-empty bottle.
Piles of diced vegetables sat before her like a gambler’s winnings. Max told her briefly about the unknown enemy waiting at the chateau for him. She wielded the long-bladed knife with a rhythmic certainty as she listened. Max wondered how she didn’t lose the ends of her fingers. She looked up.
“I’m making soup and, before you ask, I didn’t tell Sophie where you were,” she said without looking up.
“How did you know that’s what I was going to ask?”
“It’s obvious, mon cher. Who knew? There was me, and Robert, and Sayid, of course. Who among us would betray you?”
“Where do you think Bobby is, Comtesse?”
She nodded. “Your question makes sense. He’s your first suspect.”
“No, I’m worried about him. He didn’t answer his phone and the mobile he gave us is flat. So if he is trying to contact us, why hasn’t he phoned here? He was supposed to come back to d’Abbadie’s chateau for us.”
Ash dropped from the cigarette. She blew it away from the vegetables, then ground out the smelly stub in a curve of potato skin. “Robert is a child of the sea and the mountain. He goes with the wind.”
“He wouldn’t abandon or betray us, Comtesse, I’m certain of it.”