by Paul Adam
He felt like a prisoner in his own home. He hadn’t been to school for the past three weeks – it was too difficult to protect him there. Consuela had told the head teacher that he was ill and now, of course, they were into the summer holiday period. He hadn’t seen any of his friends, hadn’t been out anywhere except on essential business, and then only with Rusty and Zip watching carefully over him. When was it all going to end? When was he going to be able to get back to his normal life, his old life, before all this began.
He sat back on his bed, his pillow behind him, and thought again about everything that had happened to him since that fateful day a few months ago, when Luis Lopez-Vega had come to his dressing room after a show and told him his father was still alive. Everything had stemmed from that one meeting: Max later finding Lopez-Vega murdered, going to Santo Domingo to try to track down his dad, being imprisoned on Shadow Island where Julius Clark was conducting horrific scientific experiments on prisoners.
Max knew now what those experiments had been. Clark had been kidnapping his opponents from around the world – environmentalists, scientists, lawyers, anyone who stood in the way of his ruthless business activities. He’d brought them to Shadow Island and used a drug called Episuderon to brainwash them, to make them his faithful servants, before sending them back to their jobs and their countries as ‘fifth columnists’ – sympathizers in the enemy camp, who would supposedly still be fighting to protect the world, but in reality would be fighting to protect Julius Clark and his money-making interests.
Max’s father, Alexander, had been one of those prisoners, but had somehow escaped and then vanished into thin air. Max had the names of five other prisoners too: James Abbott, Sergei Alekseev, Narang Anwar, Redmond Ashworth-Ames and Erik Blomkvist. He’d tracked down the last three, going to Sweden to find out more about Blomkvist and discovering the existence of a secret organization called the Cedar Alliance, a worldwide group of activists dedicated to protecting the Earth from overdevelopment by greedy businessmen like Clark. He’d found out also that his father was one of the leaders of the Alliance, but where was Alexander now? Where had he been and what had he been doing for the past two years?
Max had gone to Borneo to try to find some answers and had been captured by Clark, tied up and thrown into a river as crocodile food. But Max had used his escapology skills to get away and then found evidence that his dad had been to Borneo before him and had faked his own death with the help of an American doctor named Halstead.
Who was this Dr Halstead? Max knew that he’d left Borneo to take up a post in San Francisco, but so far he’d been unable to make contact with him. Halstead, it transpired, had not yet started work at San Francisco General Hospital and the hospital had refused to give Max his home address or phone number. It was deeply frustrating. Halstead was important, Max knew that. If he found him, he was convinced he’d find his father too.
He got up from the bed, went across to his desk and switched on the computer. Then he logged on to his Facebook page. Dozens of his friends had posted glowing comments about his stunt off Tower Bridge. ‘Wow! Blew me away’, ‘Brilliant! Check it out on YouTube, everyone else is’, ‘You’re out of your mind’, were just a few of them. But it was the message from his best mate, Andy, that affected him most. ‘When are you coming back to school? Everyone’s missing you.’
Max read it and suppressed a sigh. He was missing his friends too – the daily routine of lessons, of kicking a football around in the playground at break. Even double maths was starting to seem an attractive option. He posted a reply, thanking all his friends for their support, then sent a separate private message to Andy, saying he hoped it wouldn’t be long before he was back in touch properly, but he couldn’t say exactly when. Andy would understand. He knew what Max was going through.
As he finished typing, his mobile rang. Max looked at the caller’s name – Sheldon Mackenzie – and groaned. He didn’t feel like talking to the promoter, but he knew he ought to. Mackenzie had put his all into organizing and publicizing the Tower Bridge event, had fought hard for months to get the authorities to agree to it in the first place. Max didn’t want to be rude to him.
‘Hi,’ he said into the phone.
‘Max, Sheldon here,’ the promoter said in his loud, pushy voice. Max pictured him in his opulent office, a cigar in his mouth, his chins wobbling as he spoke.
‘I had to tell you, kid,’ Mackenzie went on. ‘The phone’s been red hot since the show. Everybody – and I mean everybody – wants to know you.’
‘Really?’ Max said, trying to sound more enthusiastic than he felt.
‘We’ve had a terrific response from all round the world. The stunt’s been shown in more than fifty countries and I’ve already had several promoters clamouring for a repeat performance on their local bridges. Sydney Harbour, the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, the Golden Gate in San Francisco, the Bosphorus Bridge in Turkey, the Rialto in Venice. They’re offering you a lot of money to go there. We’ll say no to the Rialto. The water in the Grand Canal is too shallow, and the pollution would probably kill you. You don’t want to get typhoid and die – that wouldn’t look good for an escapologist.’
‘No,’ Max agreed.
‘If you’re going to go, you want to go out in style. I think Sydney Harbour Bridge would be perfect. Australia’s a nice place, great beaches. You could make a holiday out of it, kid, take that gorgeous assistant of yours. I’ll come with you, keep her company, ha, ha, ha.’
Max’s grip on the phone tightened. Did he really have to be having this conversation?
‘You thought any more about what I said earlier?’ Mackenzie continued. ‘You’ve got real star quality. You’re young, you’re talented, you’re good-looking. And you’ve got a fabulous newsworthy background.’
‘Background?’ Max said.
‘You know, your family problems. Your mum in prison for killing your dad. People are fascinated by that.’
Max gritted his teeth and thought about hanging up. He was angry with the promoter. His mum and dad weren’t some kind of publicity gimmick to be used to promote his career.
‘You’re fourteen now,’ Mackenzie said. ‘You could leave school in a few years, become a full-time performer, and be a millionaire in months. I guarantee you that.’
‘Maybe I don’t want to be a millionaire,’ Max said quietly.
There was a silence on the line – and it took a lot to silence Sheldon Mackenzie. Then the promoter’s voice came back, puzzled and incredulous. ‘Why on earth would you not want to be a millionaire? Why else are you an escapologist, risking your life doing these stunts?’
‘Look, can I get back to you on this,’ Max said. ‘Give me a bit more time to think about it.’
‘Sure, but don’t wait too long. You’re only hot for a short time, then you go off the boil. People lose interest in you. Remember that.’
Max put down the phone and went back to his room, wondering why he wasn’t more excited by Mackenzie’s call. Promoters across the globe were interested in hiring him, in putting on one of his shows. That should have given him a buzz, but it didn’t. It left him cold.
Was he just suffering from the aftereffects of his stunt on Tower Bridge? He was often like this following a show, when the adrenaline rush he got from performing subsided and left him with a feeling of anticlimax. Was it simply that, or was there some deeper explanation for his mood?
He thought about what Mackenzie had said – asking him why he was an escapologist. Why was he? What motivated him to do things that most people would have considered insane? It certainly wasn’t money; wealth didn’t interest him. In the early days, watching and learning from his father, he’d found it fun. It gave him the opportunity to be with his dad, to be like his dad. He still found it fun, still got a lot of enjoyment out of performing, but was it really what he wanted to do for the rest of his life?
He’d been on a high immediately after his escape from the crate in the river. He’d soaked up the cheer
s and the applause and let it fill some hollow space inside him. But he was down from that high now. He was back to reality – and the reality was that he didn’t really know where he was going, or what he wanted to achieve. Except for two things, two things that drove him, that kept the fires burning in his core: to find his missing dad and to get his mum out of prison. Fulfil both those aims and maybe then he could think about the future.
They all ate together in the kitchen – a big pot of chilli and rice that Consuela had made. Rusty and Zip and Chris did most of the talking. They had that easy camaraderie of long-time friends, friends who’d been through a lot together. Telling stories about their army days, about places they’d visited, people they’d met. Max usually found it interesting, but tonight he was preoccupied. They’d been living like this for three weeks. Sharing a house, sharing their meals, living on top of one another. How much longer could they keep it up? How much longer could they cope with the stress, the ever-present danger of an attack? Max was feeling the strain more and more. He knew Consuela was too, he could see it in her face. They were waiting for something to happen, waiting for a lead, and Max didn’t like that. It was too passive. He wanted to do something. Make things happen.
They cleared away the dishes. Chris carried a pile of dirty plates to the sink and deposited them in the washing-up bowl. Consuela was standing next to him and Max saw her touch Chris’s hand discreetly with her own, their fingers linking for a second before breaking apart. Maybe that was bothering him too. Chris and Consuela.
For the past two years, Consuela had dedicated herself to looking after Max. She’d put her personal life on hold for him. Max was grateful to her. He knew how much she’d sacrificed to put his needs first. But since Chris had appeared on the scene, things had started to change. Max had noticed how he and Consuela were spending more time together, how they looked at each other, those intimate smiles full of hidden meaning, and he was realizing that Consuela had found someone else, someone who might, in time, become more important to her than he was. He didn’t resent that. He was delighted for Consuela. She deserved a good guy and Chris, beyond all doubt, was a good guy. But it was unsettling. It added an extra element of uncertainty to Max’s already complicated life.
Rusty made a pot of coffee and got out a pack of cards for what was becoming a regular evening session of poker. Max was allowed to join in, although Consuela wouldn’t allow betting with real money, only the paper money they’d extracted from the Monopoly set upstairs in Max’s bedroom. He was getting quite good at it, though nothing like as good as Consuela who, much to the men’s annoyance, nearly always won. If they’d been playing for real money, she’d have had the shirts off their backs by now.
They were on their third hand, Zip living up to his nickname by dealing out the cards with lightning speed, when Chris’s mobile rang. He picked it up and listened. Everyone fell silent, sensing somehow that this was an important call.
‘OK, thanks,’ Chris said. ‘We’re on our way.’
He hung up and looked at the others.
‘That was Lucas Fisher,’ he said. ‘He has something for us.’
Max looked around the table, feeling the undercurrent of anticipation. The waiting was over. They were on the move at last.
THREE
THIS WAS WHEN they had to be careful. The house was safe. The doors were reinforced with bolts and extra locks and protected by the alarm system that Rusty and Zip had installed. They could move freely around inside, secure in the knowledge that no one could see them. They could talk freely too – the electronic surveillance bugs that their enemies had once covertly hidden in the house had all been removed and Zip or Rusty did a daily sweep of the building to make sure that no one was listening in to their conversations. It was when they left the house that they really had to be on guard.
Chris was the first to go, heading out across the garden and over the wall to pick up the Nissan in the next street. Then the others went through the internal door into the garage. Zip, Max and Consuela got into the Audi while Rusty opened the garage doors and checked the road outside. Satisfied that there was nothing to worry about, Rusty waved to Zip. The Audi crept out onto the drive. Rusty closed, locked and set the alarm on the garage doors, then jumped into the front passenger seat, clipping on his seat belt as Zip gunned the engine and sped away along the street.
They didn’t know for certain whether anyone was going to be following them, but they were taking no chances. Zip took a left, then a right, then another left, guiding the Audi expertly through the narrow corridor between parked cars. Rusty was twisted round in his seat, looking back through the rear window.
‘We have a tail,’ he said softly.
Zip glanced in his mirror. ‘Which one?’
‘Three cars back. The BMW. I recognize it.’
‘OK, guys,’ Zip said calmly. ‘Hang onto your hats.’
He turned right at a sedate thirty miles an hour then, seeing the road ahead clear, floored the accelerator. The Audi hit sixty for a few seconds before Zip braked heavily, slewed round to the left and accelerated again. Max clung on tight to the door handle, bracing himself as the car twisted and turned through the labyrinth of streets. He could feel a tightness in his stomach, part nerves, part exhilaration at the cat-and-mouse manoeuvres they were going through to shake off the tail.
Zip was good, the best driver Max had ever seen. Not just the fastest, but the sharpest, the smoothest. He handled the car like a Formula One racer, caressing the wheel, hugging the curves, extracting every last bit of power from the engine. They’d been followed a few times before, but never had it been so important that they evade their pursuers. Tonight it was vital that no one discovered where they were going.
‘You see him?’ Zip asked, concentrating on overtaking a bus and rocketing across a junction just as the lights turned to red.
Rusty stared back up the road. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘One more turn, just to be sure.’
Zip twisted the wheel to the left and the Audi shot up a tree-lined avenue, houses along one side, a row of shops on the other. The car slowed, then Zip did a U-turn and headed back the way they’d come for a couple of hundred metres, Rusty studying every vehicle going past on the opposite side.
‘I think we’re in the clear,’ he said.
Zip took a left at the next crossroads and cut through a maze of residential streets before coming to a halt at the end of a deserted cul-de-sac. They waited for a few minutes, no one saying anything. No other vehicles turned into the cul-de-sac, or passed by the end. It seemed to Max that they’d done all they could to get rid of their tail and were now out of danger. But what made Rusty and Zip so good at their jobs was their caution, their thoroughness. They were always willing to go that extra distance to make absolutely sure they were safe. So they all got out of the Audi and walked down an alley past a line of lock-up garages, emerging onto another quiet back street where – just as arranged – Chris was waiting in the Nissan.
Rusty joined Chris in the front of the car, Zip, Max and Consuela squeezed into the back, and they drove off, passing through streets and areas that were unfamiliar to Max until finally they turned into a yard at the rear of a workshop and got out.
The workshop was two storeys high, made of red brick with a tiled roof. It had the shabby, neglected look of an old industrial building – soot on the walls, rust on the metal window frames, weeds and grass spreading across the yard. But there was nothing old or neglected about the CCTV camera positioned above the door. That was a state-of-the-art piece of equipment. Chris pressed a buzzer on the wall and a man’s voice crackled out through an intercom grille.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s us,’ Chris said, lifting his head to give the CCTV camera a clear view of his face.
‘Come on up.’
The lock on the door clicked open and they went inside. Max noticed that the door was ten centimetres thick, reinforced with steel panels and with a complex lock that even
he would have had trouble trying to pick.
They went up a flight of stairs to a second door, another CCTV camera watching their every move. The door swung open to reveal a skinny young man in a dirty white T-shirt, jeans and tatty trainers. He was only a few years older than Max and still had the gangly, boyish build and downy moustache of a teenager.
‘Hi, you must be Max,’ he said. ‘Good to meet you at last. I’m Lucas Fisher. I saw your show today on the TV. Man, you were good. How the hell did you do that?’
Lucas backed away to let them enter. Chris closed the door and shot home the bolts at the top and bottom.
‘How’re you doing, Lucas?’ he said. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got.’
They were in a long room running the full length of the building. At one end was a living area containing a bed, a table and a plastic chair. The bed was unmade, the floor beside it littered with discarded clothes, and on the table were several dirty plates, empty cans of lager and a stack of used take-away containers: Chinese, Indian, pizza – a lot of pizza boxes. The other end of the room was occupied by a desk and a computer terminal and printer. The place was stuffy and smelled of stale food and sweat.
Lucas walked over to the desk and sat down in front of the computer screen. His eyes were hollow and bloodshot. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. ‘Man, those were tricky files you gave me. Sorry it’s taken me so long to crack them. They were just about the toughest codes I’ve ever had to deal with.’
Lucas Fisher was a computer specialist – a ‘whizz-kid genius’ was how Chris had described him to Max. He’d done work before for Zip and Rusty’s security business, some of it legal, some of it decidedly illegal. For the past three weeks he’d been trying to break into the encrypted files that Max had brought back from Borneo on a memory stick – files that he’d copied from Julius Clark’s computer.