And they were holding a small baby.
Linden looked at Max and frowned. He gathered up the photos, put them back into the envelope and tucked it into her backpack.
He nestled into the lounge, gave her one last look and munched into the sandwich.
Max slept for over three hours when a faint knock at the door woke her. Linden opened it to a hotel employee who handed him a note.
‘A message for you, sir.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Who is it from?’ Max sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes.
‘Toby wants us to meet him in a café across the street.’
‘Excellent.’ Max threw off her covers. ‘I’m so hungry that even the idea of eating with Toby doesn’t spoil my appetite.’
Linden didn’t move. ‘Why didn’t he come up here and ask us himself?’
‘You know Toby.’ Max grabbed some clothes. ‘Leaving a message with the concierge would have made him feel important.’ She shot into the bathroom.
‘Maybe.’ Linden tried contacting him on his palm computer. When Max emerged from the bathroom he said, ‘He’s turned his computer off.’
‘No offence, Linden,’ Max lifted her coat from the back of a chair, ‘but neither of you likes to be interrupted when it comes to food.’
‘Are you sure you feel okay to go out? We could get room service.’
‘I feel great, except for the fact that I feel like I’ve been in bed for days.’ She slipped her arms through her backpack straps and opened the door. ‘Let’s go.’
The café was lit with low-hanging lights surrounded by rich red shades. There were rounded lounge booths with deep cushioned seats, and in the centre of the room was a glass counter filled with cream cakes and topped with bottles of sweet sauces, cordials and milkshake syrups.
‘I’ll have a vanilla milkshake, a vegetable pastie, a large serving of hot chips and a piece of apple pie with cream, ice cream and raspberries.’ Max smiled. ‘Oh, and a chocolate brownie for afters.’
‘I’ll have the same, thanks.’ Linden smiled at the waitress. ‘Are you sure we picked up the right Max Remy from the infirmary?’
‘Yes, you did, every hungry inch of her.’
Linden looked around the café. ‘I don’t see Toby anywhere.’
‘He’ll be here. He’s not going to miss the chance to eat and annoy me at the same time. In fact –’
Max’s face drained of all its colour.
‘I think I’ve just lost my appetite.’
‘But you’ve ordered all that –’
Linden followed Max’s gaze. A barrel-shaped man with log-thick legs and tennis racquet-sized shoes walked through the door.
‘Finch warned me I might have moments of confusion after the fall.’ Max’s voice was strained. ‘Can you see what I see?’
‘If you can see Kronch, then we’re seeing the same thing.’
‘Why would Kronch be here?’
‘Because he’s with her.’
Behind the lumbering bodyguard was a slim woman with her hair neatly pulled into a ponytail and wearing a long fitted coat.
‘Peckham.’ Max shook her head. ‘So that’s who she was.’
‘Who?’
‘I thought I recognised a woman outside our hotel when we left for the party. Only, I couldn’t remember who she was.’ Max pursed her lips. ‘I guess now I know.’
Kronch twisted his thick neck round as he heaved his way towards them.
‘What are they doing here?’ Max asked.
‘They’re with me.’
A thunderbolt of nausea stormed into Max.
‘We’ve come to have a little chat.’
The voice behind them was unmistakable. Cold, like deep winter snow.
Peckham and Kronch were now standing beside them.
‘Care to join us?’ Peckham held out her hand to the next booth. Kronch stood over them like a fortress.
‘Have you grown bigger since I saw you last?’ Max stared at Kronch’s stomach. ‘You might want to go easy on the cream cakes.’
She and Linden’s eyes met briefly as they both grabbed their packs and slipped out of their seats.
It was Blue’s face that shocked them most. He had a long scar that ran the length of his forehead down to his ear, and his left eye was hidden beneath a black eye patch. He wore a woollen scarf around his neck, a slightly too-large cardigan around his thin, measly body, and he hunched into his seat like a man twice his age.
Max and Linden met Blue and Peckham during their first mission to London to track down Ben’s brother, Francis, to reunite them so they could finish building their Time and Space Machine.10 Back then Blue was a man who wore only the best handmade suits, always had perfectly cut hair and stood tall and confident in expensive Italian shoes.
‘How very nice to see you again, Maxine and Linden.’
‘It’s Max. And you don’t really expect me to believe that, do you?’
‘It would be wrong of me to expect anything from you,’ Blue said. ‘Not after all that has happened between us.’
‘Where’s Toby?’ Linden asked.
‘He’s busily ensconced in watching some action movie in a cinema down the road. He had nothing to do with the note. It was from me.’
‘If you do anything to hurt him …’
‘Trust me, Max,’ Blue said, ‘I have no wish to harm the boy.’
Max eyed him off. ‘As pleasant as it is to see you again, what do you want?’
A cool smile slithered into Blue’s lips. ‘I’m here to tell you that my war with Spyforce is over.’
Max and Linden swapped looks.
‘I hope you don’t take this the wrong way,’ Max said, ‘but I have trouble believing that.’
Kronch inched forward.
Blue shook his head. ‘It’s okay.’
The bodyguard offered Max a hardened glare before slowly stepping back.
‘After the fight between Harrison and me at my castle on Cape Wrath, I was quite badly injured.’ He raised his hands towards Kronch and Peckham. ‘Fortunately, I was rescued by my trusty assistants and delivered to my doctors. They kept me in an induced coma to give my body time to heal without feeling any of the pain. When I was brought to, it took months of rehabilitation to get me where I am today. What was immediate, however, was my realisation that I can never win against Harrison and his agents.’
‘Took you a while to realise that, didn’t it?’ Max mumbled.
‘That’s not even the most important part. I saw clearly, for the first time since leaving Spyforce, that it isn’t about winning at all.’
He took a deep breath that ended with him bent over in a wheezing cough. Miss Peckham patted him gently on the back until he could breathe normally again.
‘I have been foolish.’
‘You made quite a habit of it for a long time.’
Linden squeezed Max’s arm beneath the table and offered her a careful look. She gave him a smile that told him she wouldn’t go too far.
‘No, Linden. Max has a right to say that.’ Blue’s smile faded. ‘Because, sadly, it’s true. Harrison was only doing what he does best, protecting the world. He is a man who believes in honesty and fair play, whereas I couldn’t understand what harm there was in bending a few rules, especially if science was to benefit.’
‘Like selling Spyforce inventions to known criminals, for example,’ Max reminded him.
‘Yes.’ Blue’s face chiselled into a pained frown. ‘I’d lost my way, but that has all changed.’
‘You know the police will take you back to Blacksea Prison when they find you.’
‘Actually, they won’t.’ Peckham’s smile was triumphant.
Max frowned.
‘I’ve recently offered myself to the police,’ Blue explained. ‘And we have come to an agreement.’
Max looked to Linden, who shrugged and shook his head. ‘Spyforce would have been told if that was true.’
‘It was a condition of handing myself in th
at no one else knew until the deal was done.’
Max eyed him carefully. ‘So the police are just letting a dangerous criminal roam free?’
‘Not exactly “free”. When I leave here, I am to stay confined in my castle in Scotland, and I have to wear this.’ Blue held up his arm and pushed back the sleeve of his cardigan.
‘A tracking device?’ Linden asked.
‘A Radio Frequency Identification Bracelet, actually. It enables the authorities to know where I am and what I am saying every second of the day.’
‘What’s the agreement?’ Max asked suspiciously.
‘As my health is so very poorly, I have been excused from carrying out my sentence at Blacksea. The authorities consider that I can hardly be seen as a threat to them in my current state, but I could be very useful to them in other ways. As well as paying a substantial fine, I have handed over my passport and will deliver regular classes to special police scientists.’
‘What are you going to teach them?’ Max asked. ‘How to make vast sums of money for yourself while lying and ripping off almost everyone around you?’
Peckham leant in close to Max. ‘Mr Blue has one of the most exciting scientific minds in the world. Only a mind like his could have created the Nightmare Vortex, the Spectral Hologram Mark III?11 and the Doppelgänger, which can replicate an entire human being’s physical form.12 They are truly works of a genius.’
‘And what about the Heart Stopper device that almost killed Chief Harrison? What’s so exciting about that little killing machine?’
Kronch slammed his fist into the table. Max jumped.
‘Now, now, Kronch,’ Blue said. ‘It just wouldn’t be Max if she wasn’t direct.’
‘Excuse me.’ The waitress shimmied past Kronch and delivered Max and Linden’s order. ‘Double milkshake, chips, pastie, apple pie and brownie. Enjoy.’ She turned away.
Blue raised his eyebrows. ‘You must be hungry.’
‘I was.’ Max folded her arms.
‘I know you care not to remember, but I did work for Spyforce for a long time. All I can hope is that my small contributions to their many gadgets goes some way to making the world a better place.’ He smiled. ‘Some of my favourites were the freeze rays, force-field hazes and, you must remember, I was there for the beginnings of the Time and Space Machine.’
‘That you wanted to sell to the highest bidder, no matter what they wanted to use it for.’
‘I only hope that with time, I can earn your trust,’ Blue said quietly.
‘You know as soon as I leave here I’m going to double-check everything you’ve said.’
‘You are nothing if not thorough, Max Remy, and I applaud you for that.’
Blue’s eyes didn’t so much as look at Max but, like the Face Reader, they analysed every centimetre of her thoughts. With a strained sigh, he leant into the table and moved closer. He didn’t touch her, but Max felt his presence all over her.
‘I owe you a great debt, Maxine.’ He blinked, just once. ‘I mean, Max.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you. I came up against one of Spyforce’s most clever agents when I met you.’
‘I’m sorry?’ She leant forward, making sure she could hear properly.
‘It’s true, and it’s because of meeting you that I can now see how wrong I was.’
‘Okay, now the flattery is getting creepy. Why don’t you just tell me what you want.’
Blue broke into more coughing that seemed to squeeze the breath from his chest. He fished a hanky from his pocket and held it against his mouth. Peckham patted him more forcefully on the back while Kronch handed him a clear mask attached by a tube to a small oxygen cylinder beneath the table.
Max slowly reeled back from this old and broken man.
‘Sorry,’ Blue said when he could breathe comfortably again. ‘I tend to run out of breath very easily. In the fall, one of my lungs was punctured, so I have only half the breathing capacity of a regular person.’ He took in another long, calming breath.
‘I want nothing more than to say sorry and finally admit that I became obsessed with beating Spyforce, with exacting revenge on Harrison for having me ejected from the Force. After all I could have done with my talents and knowledge, all I am left with is very little more than this crumpled excuse for a body and a genuine desire to make good.’
Peckham placed a kindly hand on his shoulder.
Max tried to read Blue’s eyes. To read behind the words that seemed so oddly placed coming from him.
Blue let his gaze fall on the city outside the café. ‘When you come so close to death as I have, you see differently. You take notice of things you never did before. Like London. What a lovely city this is! So many beautiful buildings and monuments. Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. And down small side streets there are all sorts of hidden treasures. It’s all so good for one’s health.’
Another cough rattled his body. Kronch again handed him the oxygen mask.
‘It really is magnificent, isn’t it? A city that makes people sit up and take notice. It takes a clever person to see behind the fuss to what is really there.’
Blue left them in a long wheezing pause.
‘Is that all?’ Max asked.
Blue attempted a smile. ‘Yes, that’s all.’
With a careful sidewards glance at Kronch, Max slid out of her seat. ‘We’ll be off then.’
‘Take care, Max and Linden. It all could have ended quite differently if I’d never met you.’
Max and Linden paid the bill and left the café.
From outside they could see Peckham collect a wheelchair and Kronch lift Blue into it.
‘He can’t walk?’ Max asked.
‘It seems not,’ Linden answered.
They turned away from the café and into the footpath that bustled with shoppers, tourists and schoolkids.
Max ducked under a balloon advertising Madame Tussaud’s Museum. ‘Do you really think he’s that sick?’
‘He does have this way of making it hard to believe him,’ Linden said.
‘And what was with the compliments and the “isn’t London great” speech?’ Max pulled out her palm computer. ‘Steinberger will know if he’s telling the truth, but my guess is –’
The streets ahead reverberated with a thundering tremor. Max’s computer was flung from her hands as Linden pulled her to the ground and shielded her with his body. Shouts of panic and scrambling feet raced past them, while a few streets away the sky filled with a thick choking plume of grey smoke.
‘That felt close.’ Max sneezed as a pall of dust snaked its way towards them. People ran with small children, dropping bags, tripping in their haste to get away.
Linden helped her up. ‘What do you think it was?’
‘I don’t know.’ Max picked up her computer before it was trampled. ‘Let’s go find out.’
Linden reached out to stop her, but she had already begun running against the stampeding crowd. He crisscrossed after her. ‘Max! Wait!’
At the edge of Trafalgar Square he caught up.
‘It’s gone.’ Max stared at the plinth that once held the tall stone monument of Lord Nelson standing atop a column – and that now lay as a crumbled pile of rubble.
More people gathered around the collapsed statue with cameras, videos and phones. Ambulance officers tended to injured passers-by, and police gathered to cordon off the statue’s remains and evacuate the area.
Linden managed to take a few photos with his watch before they were moved away.
Choppers swooped in overhead with loudspeakers: ‘Please leave the area in an orderly fashion, I repeat, please leave the area.’
The main roads became clogged with people trying to escape.
‘Let’s go the back way,’ Linden said. ‘Follow me.’
He led Max through a series of small cobbled back alleys that delivered them to their hotel. They pushed through the front doors and raced into th
e foyer.
‘Excuse me madam and sir, but we don’t allow running in –’
‘Sorry, we’re in a hurry.’ Max ran past the concierge to the elevators just as her palm computer vibrated in her pocket.
‘Ben. Hi.’ She opened the connection.
‘Max, where are you? Are you and Linden okay?’
‘We’re fine. We’re in the hotel elevator. We’ll be up in a few minutes.’
As the doors opened on their floor, Ben and Eleanor were waiting for them.
‘Thank goodness you’re okay.’ Ben looked them both over. ‘We got back a few minutes ago and you weren’t here and we worried that …’
‘Sorry. I woke up really hungry, so we went to have some lunch. You know about Nelson’s Column?’
‘We were on our way home when we heard.’ Eleanor opened the door of their hotel room. The TV was on and plastered with reporters, studio interviews and photos and video taken as the column was collapsing.
‘Is there any word on what caused it?’ Linden asked.
‘Not yet.’ Ben flicked through the channels. ‘It’s on all the stations.’
Max and Linden sat on the lounge with Ben. A news anchor from the BBC stopped an interview she was conducting with the mayor of London. ‘I’m sorry, Mayor, but there’s breaking news about the incident. Can you hear me, Olivia?’
The image crossed to a smartly dressed reporter holding a microphone. In the distance was Trafalgar Square.
‘Yes I can, Phoebe. As you can see behind me, the police have evacuated the area and moved us away from the square and the now-devastated monument. Differing reports are coming in about what happened at the time of the column’s collapse.’
The camera shot widened to reveal an athletic man with a bandaid on his brow standing beside her.
‘I have with me Tony, who was at the monument the very second it was destroyed. Tony, can you tell us what you saw?’
‘I was admiring Nelson’s Column, a lot of us were, and I was thinking how amazingly tall it is – I mean was. It always looks smaller in the photos, and that’s when it happened.’
He paused.
‘Can you tell us what you saw?’ Olivia asked.
‘There were clouds passing in the background, which made the column look like it was moving, until I realised it really was moving. Then, we all felt it. The ground started shaking and thousands of tiny cracks appeared all over the column, and it started to … fall apart. Small pieces flew into the air. That’s when people started running, and a piece of it clocked me on the head. It took only a few more seconds before it disintegrated into a heap.’
The Final Curtain Page 8