“I’m so angry with myself, Gus, you have no idea—and I’m so angry with all of them too! Especially my dad.”
During lunch, Gus realized how depressed Oksa really was. He’d never seen her like this, her eyes brimming with tears and her voice choked with emotion. She suddenly looked so… vulnerable. It was as if her protective shell had been stripped away by her sadness and the deep feelings of guilt she was describing in veiled terms. Gus longed to comfort her and help her get back to her bubbly, vivacious self, but he didn’t know how. How had she managed to help him when he was going through some difficult times a few years ago? That was a hard question to answer. All he knew was that she was better at comforting her friends than he was. “I’m so pathetic, such a dead loss, I can’t even help my best friend,” he thought, beating himself up inside. He watched her, opposite, helping herself to some of that strange dish of meat served with mint sauce. Their eyes met and Gus realized immediately that she was feeling better. That was Oksa all over! Any obstacles or ordeals she found in her way only served to make her stronger. And there he was, wallowing in his hang-ups, while Oksa was making signs at him which he couldn’t interpret. He looked at her and mouthed “what?”, to which she replied just as silently by rolling her eyes towards the far end of the cafeteria. Finally he realized what she was trying to show him: Mr Bontempi and Dr McGraw were sitting at the same table. A few minutes later, Gus and Oksa were outside, having ditched their trays. And their friends…
“Did you see that?” said Oksa. “McGraw is eating lunch with Bontempi!”
“Yes, it is rather unusual,” acknowledged Gus. “What are you thinking?”
“How about raiding Bontempi’s office?” suggested Oksa. “He must have files on all the teachers and we’re bound to find some info on McGraw.”
“Wait a minute—you want to get into the Headmaster’s office and go through his files?” exclaimed Gus in a low voice, looking round in the fear that someone might overhear this compromising conversation. “You’re not frightened of anything, are you?”
“Oh Gus, nothing ventured, nothing gained! Where do you think we’re going to find info? By going direct to McGraw? ‘Excuse me, my dear Dr McGraw, could you tell us where you come from, who you are and if you’re working for the secret services?’” said Oksa defiantly. “No, frankly Gus, we don’t have a choice. But you don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to…”
For a few seconds, Gus was tempted by this much more sensible alternative. But, blinded by his friendship for Oksa, he agreed to go with her, all the while telling himself that this was probably the one thing he’d regret most for the rest of his life.
“I’ve thought it over and I think you should keep watch in the corridor,” explained Oksa. “I’ll go into his office. At this hour, everyone’s eating. The teachers and monitors were all in the cafeteria, I counted them, so we should be left in peace.”
“We should,” muttered Gus who, despite cursing himself, was looking forward to such a dangerous yet exciting expedition. “What if someone comes?”
“You warn me!” said Oksa briskly. “That’s why you’re keeping watch, isn’t it? All you need to do is cough or whistle, whatever you want.”
“What if they ask me why I’m standing in the teachers’ corridor?”
Oksa scratched her head, narrowing her eyes. Suddenly she walked over to a corner of the courtyard, unhesitatingly stepped over the low fence around the rose bed and snapped off a magnificent white rose, which she brandished like a trophy in Gus’s face.
“Just say you were looking for the staffroom so you could leave this rose in Miss Heartbreak’s locker, because she’s your favourite teacher.”
“WHAT?!” cried Gus, beetroot-red. “I could never say that!”
“Have you got any better ideas?” asked Oksa.
“Not yet, but you can bet your life I’ll think of something!” retorted Gus.
“Fine! In any case, hold on to the rose, it may come in useful,” said Oksa grinning. “Come on, we’d better get a move on.”
The two friends went up to the first floor. The staffroom was just opposite Mr Bontempi’s office, which suited Gus, who was mentally preparing himself to justify his presence there.
“Damn! It’s locked,” cursed Oksa. “I’m going to try to open it.”
“How?” asked Gus, hoping this pitfall would put a halt to her plan. His hopes were dashed after a nanosecond.
“With this,” replied Oksa, waving her index finger mischievously under her friend’s nose.
She turned round to concentrate on the door. Then, barely an inch away from the lock which was barring their entry, she began moving her index finger very slowly in anti-clockwise circles. The mechanism seemed to respond, at first imperceptibly, but Oksa sensed she had it beaten. She hadn’t doubted it for a minute. After two minutes, she put her hand on the door handle, pressed down and… the door opened. She stifled a cry of satisfaction but punched the air in a sign of victory for Gus’s benefit. He managed only a weak smile, running his hand through his hair—a clear sign that he had mixed feelings. Oksa disappeared inside the office and closed the door behind her.
“Bento, Heartbreak, Martino… Ah here’s McGraw!” murmured Oksa.
Leaning over one of the drawers in Mr Bontempi’s filing cabinet, she took out a brown file and leafed through it. “What an idiot! I didn’t bring anything to take notes,” she said to herself.
She looked around—on the immaculately tidy dark wooden desk stood several piles of neatly stacked papers, a telephone, a lamp, a computer and a notepad, but not a single pencil. Against the left-hand wall was a shelf laden with books and against the right-hand one was a unit holding a fax, a printer and… a photocopier.”
“Yay!” exclaimed Oksa in a hushed voice. “Just what I need.”
She switched on the machine and began photocopying the ten or so sheets of paper in McGraw’s file without reading them—she’d have time to do that later. The photocopier must have been an old model, because the first copy wrested a loud grating noise from the machine. And a frantic groan from Oksa…
“Hang in there, Oksa,” she told herself quietly to keep her spirits up.
She placed the sheets on the glass, pressing on the lid with all her might and holding her breath, which unfortunately did nothing to muffle the photocopier’s complaints. Between two copies she managed to hear Gus, who seemed be in the grip of a violent coughing fit. The signal? The SIGNAL!
24
OPERATION MCGRAW
AS SOON AS OKSA BEGAN MAKING THE FIRST COPY, GUS had a feeling of foreboding. What Oksa thought of as a shushing sound sounded to Gus more like the roar of a jet at take-off. As the corridor was quite dark, the bluish flashes from the photocopier filtered under and around the door frame, projecting bright stripes onto the walls. Gus gritted his teeth and wrung his hands in misery, glancing up and down the corridor, terrified he might see someone coming. Suddenly he saw the light go on at one end: someone was climbing the stairs! With a little luck, the unwelcome intruder would stop at the first floor. But what if they didn’t? Gus felt icy perspiration trickling down his back and beading his forehead. His legs grew heavy, rooting him to the spot, and his mouth suddenly went dry. Without waiting to find out if the person who’d switched on the light in the staircase was coming up to the first floor, he started to cough. Because his throat was so tight and dry, this cough soon turned into a loud, irritating coughing fit. “Oh damn!” he panicked. “This stupid cough is going to bring the whole school running! Oksa, Oksa, what have you got us into now?”
Jake, one of the monitors, had just appeared at the end of the corridor. Gus felt all his blood drain away. Inside Mr Bontempi’s office, the bluish flashes and the roaring of the photocopier had stopped. Gus vaguely heard the click of the lock: Oksa had probably locked herself inside. He’d expected her to come out when he warned her, but apparently she had other plans. Unless she was trapped inside and counting on him to get her out
of this tight spot? “But what can I possibly do?” he wondered in a panic. “She was insane to take me with her!”
Fortunately Jake was nowhere near the most feared monitor in the school—which didn’t stop Gus being caught off guard when he called out.
“What are you doing there?”
“Er… I was waiting for Dr McGraw, um no, Miss Heartbreak… I wanted to ask her something about our history lesson,” he managed to splutter out in a monotone.
“I rather think you wanted to give her that, didn’t you?” teased the monitor, glancing at the rose Gus was holding.
“This? Er no,” replied Gus, feeling like a right idiot.
“Whatever, you can’t stay here anyway. You can ask her during your next lesson with her, okay? Go back to the courtyard now.”
“Okay!” said Gus, still unsure about going back downstairs on his own.
But he could hear the sound of voices, including those of Miss Heartbreak and McGraw, coming from the staircase. Nightmare! Struggling with his conscience, Gus had no choice but to walk back along the corridor and obediently, if reluctantly, go downstairs to the courtyard.
Inside Mr Bontempi’s office, Oksa had heard Gus’s entire conversation. Realizing that her friend was trapped, she turned off the photocopier and quickly put McGraw’s file back, pleased nonetheless that she’d been able to copy all of it. She rolled up the sheets of paper and stuffed them in the waistband of her skirt beneath her shirt. There were other voices in the corridor now, so she couldn’t get out that way. With her heart pounding, she quickly ran through her possibilities: hide under Mr Bontempi’s desk and risk being trapped there all afternoon a couple of inches from the Headmaster’s knees; shoot out of there and bolt away so quickly that no one would have time to recognize her; or take the only remaining way out: the window. Behind her, she heard the Headmaster’s voice coming nearer. The door of the office was about to be opened. Ignoring the voice of caution, she opened the window, pulled the curtain behind her and knelt on the windowsill, partially shutting both sides of the window again. One of the countless gargoyles was sticking out in front of her, providing an additional surface. But when she looked down, she suddenly remembered she was on the first floor. “Wow, this is high! A new challenge for Oksa-san!” She shut her eyes and concentrated on the empty space below her, driven by her need to escape this trap of her own making. After two seconds of total self-absorption, she confidently stretched out her left foot and moved it up and down slightly, as if she were testing the terrain. The empty space felt solid. PHEW! “It works!” she told herself without losing focus. She put her foot down as if she were treading on firm ground and decided to step forward with her other foot. This was more hazardous and the consequences much more serious if Oksa failed, because she was in danger of crashing to the ground thirty feet below. This thought insidiously crossed her mind, making her wobble.
“No! Don’t even think about it,” she told herself.
Bravely she looked down one last time to make sure there was no one there. No, the coast was clear, the students were still in the cafeteria but not for long, it was now or never. Focusing on her descent, Oksa put her right foot forward and, since she didn’t feel as though she was falling, imagined floating like a feather until she finally landed on the flagstones, a few minutes before the students streamed out into the courtyard.
“You gave me the fright of my life,” Gus whispered in Oksa’s ear. “I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Are you okay? How did you get down?”
With her arms pressed to her sides, Oksa flapped her hands as if she were fluttering.
“From up there?” continued Gus, stunned, gazing up at the first floor.
“You bet!” nodded Oksa with a radiant smile. “And look what I’ve got here,” she continued, briefly showing him the roll of paper stuck in her waistband.
Gus whistled through his teeth in admiration.
“What are you two up to?” asked Merlin, coming over. “An airborne escape, eh?” he added, gazing intently at Oksa. “St Proximus must look pretty cool from the sky, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Why did he say that to me?” Oksa whispered to Gus. “Do you think he saw me?”
“Sshhh,” breathed Gus, “I don’t even want to think about it. Come on, it’s time to go.”
“I’ll see you in a bit, I just need to put something in my locker,” said Oksa, made uncomfortable by the roll of papers sticking to her stomach and unsettled by Merlin’s ambiguous words.
During Dr Lemaire’s lesson she sank into a soothing reverie. She’d had to concentrate so hard during her free fall that it had left her feeling both hyper and drained of energy. But the teacher’s calm voice eased these two extremes and put the young student in a more reasonable state of mind. As for Gus, he had suffered a few minutes of black terror, convinced he’d find Oksa smashed to a pulp on the flagstones of the courtyard.
Like all lessons before those given by Dr McGraw, this one flew past much too quickly. An hour later, with a great deal of sighing, the students made their way to the science room. Despite her best efforts and her good resolutions, it only took Oksa a quarter of an hour to attract attention:
“Miss Pollock!” bellowed Dr McGraw. “If it’s not too much to ask, would you do us the great honour of coming back down to planet Earth? We know you’re an expert in astronomy, but even if it’s a real disappointment for you, let me remind you that we’re in a maths lesson! Come and sit at this empty desk in the front row, so it’ll be easier for you to stay with us.”
Oksa blushed to the roots of her hair and obeyed. She’d been totally absorbed in her own thoughts. Just before McGraw had interrupted her musings, she’d been wondering what she would find in his file. What a crazy day… She looked despondently at the desk which McGraw had pointed out, a couple of inches from his table and the rostrum; it was such a popular seat that no one ever wanted to sit there! She had only just sat down when the classroom door opened to reveal Mr Bontempi. They all stood up.
“Dr McGraw, can you spare a moment, please?”
“Of course, Headmaster,” said Dr McGraw. “Mr Poicassé, you will look after the class while I’m gone.”
“Yes, sir,” said Merlin, looking worried.
After McGraw’s departure, it didn’t take the Year 8 Hydrogen students more than ten seconds to start whispering. At first, Merlin tried to reason with his classmates, stressing the dire consequences which would befall him, but they were more interested in letting off steam than listening to his arguments. There was a cheerful hubbub as some of them threw balls of paper at each other and others decided to run races around the desks. When Axel Nolan knocked over McGraw’s satchel on the rostrum, she unwittingly placed an idea in Oksa’s mind, which was working overtime: that school bag was bound to contain personal papers or other interesting things about their teacher. Taking advantage of the confusion, she stood up and went over to pick it up. Trying not to draw attention to herself, she risked peeking inside. She noticed his wallet immediately. She dipped her hand in and took it, amazed at her own daring. This type of thing was just not done, but her investigation was too important to let principles stand in the way. She went back to her seat, huddled over so that her body acted as a screen and opened the wallet. She had to be quick! A few seconds later she stood up and again went over to pick up the satchel, which was still lying on the floor, and put the wallet back. The room was in such an uproar she was sure no one had noticed anything. But to justify being near her teacher’s desk, she set about coming to Merlin’s aid. Two precautions were better than one…
“Watch out, McGraw’s coming back!” she yelled loudly.
Everyone hurriedly returned to their seats. McGraw came in soon after and when he opened the door the Year 8 Hydrogen students were the image of a studious class, above all suspicion.
25
THE MYSTERIOUS LIST
“ORTHON-MCGRAW, BORN 1960 IN MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin, in the United States.”
G
us was sitting on Oksa’s bed. At last! The afternoon had dragged on interminably and, as soon as lessons were over, they’d raced back in record time to the novice spy’s home on their rollerblades. Breathlessly they had rushed into Oksa’s room and spread the photocopies of McGraw’s file all around them so they could study their booty carefully.
“That means he’s forty-nine,” mused Oksa. “Look, this lists his personal details: he lives at 12 Franklin Roosevelt Street, that’s appropriate for an American! He’s married and has a fifteen-year-old son. That must be who I saw in the photo.”
“There’s a photo?” asked Gus, interrupting her.
“Yes, in his wallet, there was the photo of a woman with a young boy. They were standing in front of what looked like the Capitol in Washington. So what else is on this sheet? Oh look! Here’s what he told Merlin—he was a researcher for a scientific laboratory attached to the CIA for ten years. He collaborated with NASA, working on the photoelectric effect and light waves. Wow! Take a look at this list of degrees—McGraw is a real brainbox!”
Oksa held out the long list to Gus and continued to leaf through the documents spread out on the bed. Suddenly she cried out in a shrill voice:
“Look at this! McGraw was an official representative for the American government for two years. Didn’t I tell you he’s a secret agent?”
Gus sighed noisily.
“But Oksa,” he remarked as tactfully as possible, “not everyone who works for a government is necessarily a secret agent.”
“Perhaps not necessarily, but it could be a good cover, don’t you think?”
“It is a bit strange that a man like him should be teaching maths and physical sciences in a school. I agree with you on that,” confirmed Gus, holding McGraw’s curriculum vitae.
Oksa Pollock: The Last Hope Page 14