Snakehead

by Anthony Horowitz

  A gaunt, gray-haired man, wearing a loose, dark yellow colored shirt and baggy pants, made his way forward. Alex guessed he must be in his sixties. He might once have been a farmer. His hands were coarse, and his face had been burned dry by the sun. He muttered a few words to Alex. He could have been speaking any language—Dari, Hazaragi, Kurdish, or Arabic—it would have made no difference. Alex knew that without Ash, he was exposed. He had no way of communicating and nobody to hide behind. What would these people do if they discovered that he was an imposter? He hoped he wouldn’t have to find out.

  The man realized that Alex hadn’t understood him. He tapped his chest and spoke a single word. “Salem.” That was presumably his name.

  He waited for Alex to reply, and when none came, he turned to a woman, who came forward and tried a second language. Alex turned away and sat in a corner. Let them think he was shy or unfriendly. He didn’t care. He wasn’t here to make friends.

  Alex drew his legs toward his chest and buried his face against his knees. He needed to think. Why had he been separated from Ash? Had the snakehead somehow found out that the two of them were working for ASIS? All in all, he doubted it. If the snakehead even suspected who they were, they would have dragged them out together and shot them. There had to be another reason for the last-minute decision at the harbor but try as he might, Alex couldn’t work out what it was.

  There was a sudden jolt. The whole container shook, and one of the children began to cry. The other refugees drew closer together and stared around them as if they could somehow see through the flat metal walls. Alex knew what had happened. One of the huge machines—the spreaders—had picked them up, lifting them off the truck and loading them onto the Liberian Star. Right now, they could be fifty yards above the dock, dangling on four thin wires. Nobody was moving, afraid of upsetting the balance. Alex thought he heard the hum of machinery somewhere above his head. There was a second jolt and the electric light flickered. And that was a horrible thought. Suppose it went out! Could they endure the entire journey in pitch darkness? The container was swaying very slightly. Somebody shouted, a long way away. They began the journey down.

  Alex hadn’t been able to see very much of the Liberian Star in the rain and the confusion of their arrival, but he had taken in the metal boxes piled up on great blocks, one on top of the other, separated by a space that couldn’t have measured more than a couple of feet. Where would they end up? On top, in the middle, or buried somewhere deep in the hold? He had to fight back a growing sense of claustrophobia. There were no holes drilled in the walls. The only air would come in through the cracks around the door and the secret trapdoor. The container had already reminded Alex of a coffin. Now he felt as if he and the twenty other occupants were about to be buried alive.

  They came to a halt. Something clanged against the outer wall. Two of the children whimpered, and Salem went over to them, putting his arms around their shoulders and holding them close. Alex took a deep breath. There could be no going back now—that much was certain. They were on board.

  And what next? Ash had said it would take them forty-eight hours to reach northern Australia, and by the time they had waited to be unloaded, it could be as much as three or four days. Alex wasn’t sure he could bear to sit in here all that time, locked up with these strangers. He had only the two bottles of water and the bread that he had been given at the last moment. He hoped the other refugees had brought their own supplies. There was a chemical toilet in the far corner, but Alex knew that conditions inside the container would soon become disgusting. For the first time, he understood how desperate these people must be even to dream of making such a journey.

  For his own part, he knew he couldn’t just sit here. He was worried about Ash—and he was going to learn nothing about the snakehead, locked up in the dark. Of course, there was always the watch that Smithers had given him. But despite everything, there was no real reason to send out a distress signal. There was still a chance that Ash was somewhere on board the Liberian Star. Alex was just going to have to find him.

  He had made up his mind. There was nothing he could do until the ship had left Jakarta, but once they were at sea, there was every chance that the container would be unguarded. Why bother when there was no chance of escape? Alex closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He needed to gather his strength. He wasn’t going to use the watch, but there was another gadget Smithers had given him. Alex had already slipped it into position. When the time was right, Alex would use it to break out.

  He waited until they were halfway across before he made his move.

  At least twenty-four hours had passed, night blending into day with no difference between the two inside this blank, airless box. The smell was getting worse and worse. At least no one had been seasick, but the chemical toilet was barely adequate for so many people. Nobody was talking. What was there to say? In a way, the crossing had become a sort of living death.

  Alex had caught up on the sleep he’d missed at Jakarta, although he’d had bad dreams…Ash, Thai boxing, sardines! Now he’d had enough.

  He dug into his pocket and took out the pack of chewing gum, then slid open the panel in the side. He had to hold it against the light to see properly, but there were the three numbers: 1, 5, and 10, each with its own switch.

  The five-baht coin was already in position. When Alex had climbed into the container, he had pretended to stumble, and as he reached out to steady himself, he had slipped it behind the sliding bolt. As long as none of the snakehead members had seen it, it was still there, magnetically held in place underneath him. Now was the time to find out. He would just have to hope that the noise of the engines and the sea swell would cover any sound made by the explosion.

  He went over to the trapdoor and knelt beside it. He couldn’t hear anything outside, but that was hardly surprising. The other refugees were looking at him, wondering what he was doing. There was no point in waiting any longer. Alex pressed the switch marked 5.

  There was a sharp crack underneath the trapdoor, and a wisp of acrid smoke rose up inside the container. One of the women began to gabble at Alex, but he ignored her. He pressed down with one hand, and to his relief, the trapdoor fell open, forming a small chute that angled into the darkness between the two blocks. The bolt had snapped in half. There was just enough room for Alex to slither out—but into what? It was always possible that he would find himself in the very depths of the hold, hemmed in on all sides, with nowhere else to go.

  He had caused a minor panic inside the container. Everyone was talking at once, at least half a dozen languages fighting with one another all around him. Salem came over to him and tugged at his shirt, pleading with him not to do whatever it was he had planned. He looked bewildered. Who was this boy, traveling on his own, who had dared to antagonize the snakehead by attempting to leave without their permission? And how had he done it? They had heard the bolt shatter, but that was all. It seemed to have happened by magic.

  Alex looked Salem in the eyes and pressed a finger against his lips. He was pleading with the old man to be silent and not to let the others give him away. It was the most he could hope for. These people were here to make a journey. He had nothing to do with them. With a bit of luck, none of them would try to follow him out or, worse still, tell the ship’s crew what had happened. But if he waited any longer, one of them might try to stop him. It was time to go.

  Still not sure what he was letting himself in for, Alex slid through the trapdoor headfirst, easing himself into the black square that had opened up below. It was much cooler outside. He had been sharing the same air with twenty people for an entire day and night, and he had been unaware how stifling it had become. It was noisier too. He could hear the hum of the ship’s engines, the grinding of machinery in constant motion.

  But at least there was a way out. Alex found himself in what was effectively a long, flat tunnel. The containers were piled up on top of him, and he could feel their huge weight pressing down. But there was a crawl spac
e about half a yard high between the floor above him and the ceiling of the container below. He could see the daylight bleeding in—a narrow strip like a crack in a brick wall. Using his knees and elbows, he pushed himself toward it. It was a painful process, constantly scraping his legs and banging his shoulders on the rusty metal above and below him.

  At last he reached the edge, only to find himself high above the deck, caught three stories up a tower of containers with no obvious way to climb down. Alex could see the ocean rushing past on the other side of the ship. There was no sign of land. For a moment he was tempted to crawl back inside. He had nowhere to run. Swimming was out of the question. He would be safer back with Salem and the others.

  And was there really any chance of finding Ash? The Liberian Star was huge. It probably held a thousand containers. Ash could be stuck in any one of them, locked up with his own crowd of refugees. Alex had never felt so helpless. But going back would be admitting defeat. Ever since he had first encountered the snakehead in Bangkok, he had allowed them to push him around. He’d had enough. It was time to fight back.

  He had come out at one of the long sides of the container, with a sheer drop to the deck below. There was no way down, so he crawled all the way along the edge and over to the front. He had more luck here. The container doors were fastened with long steel rods that formed a climbing frame, and there were the metal security pins and locks that would provide perfect footholds. Alex knew he had to move quickly. It was still light—he guessed it must be late afternoon—and he would be seen by anyone who happened to appear on deck. On the other hand, he would have to be careful. If he slipped, there was a long way to fall.

  Holding on to one of the bars, he squeezed himself out and then began the journey down, trying to ignore the sea spray that whipped into his back and made every surface slippery. His worst fear was that a crew member would come out, and despite the danger, he forced himself to move faster, finally dropping the last few yards and crashing down onto the deck, anxious to get himself out of sight. Nobody had seen him. He looked back up, checking the position of the container just in case he needed to return. There was the name, Unwin Toys, in great white letters. Alex thought about the secret it concealed. He had to admit that he had never come across a criminal organization—or a crime—quite like this.

  He looked around. It was only now, crouching in the open air, that he realized quite how enormous the Liberian Star actually was. It measured at least three hundred yards in length, and it must have been about fifty yards across. The containers were piled up like metal office blocks, surrounded by decks, gantries, and ladders that would allow the crew to scurry around in what little space was left. Alex was at the back of the ship, where the huge anchor chains disappeared into a cavity below. In front of him, the bridge rose up, the eyes and brain of the entire ship. Behind him, the water boiled, churned up by the propellers below. He guessed they must be traveling at about thirty-five knots, or thirty miles per hour.

  He had already accepted the fact that he had no hope at all of finding Ash. But now that he was out, he decided to explore. They could only be about twenty-four hours from Darwin. If he could survive that long without being seen, he might be able to get off the ship and find a telephone. The number that Ash had given him had completely vanished from the back of his hand. He just hoped that he had remembered it correctly and that Ash would still be able to take his call.

  In the next couple of hours, Alex explored a large part of the ship. He quickly realized that despite their great size, container ships are almost entirely made up of containers and that their layout is actually very simple, with two decks running all the way from fore to aft and only a limited area for the crew to live and work. And the crew is actually surprisingly small. Only once did he spot a couple of crewmen—Filipinos in blue overalls, leaning against a handrail, smoking cigarettes. Alex slipped behind a ventilation shaft and waited until they left. That was something else to his advantage in this strange, entirely metal world. There were a thousand places to hide.

  It was more dangerous inside, where the clean, brightly lit passageways were lined with dozens of doors, any one of which could open at any time. Alex was looking for the food store—he was hungry—but just as he came upon it, another crewman appeared, and he had to duck down the nearest stairway to get out of sight. The stairs led to a cargo hold. As he waited for the man to disappear, Alex heard voices…two men talking. They were speaking in English. Intrigued, he continued down.

  He came to a platform perched on the edge of an area that was like an oversized metal cube, with sheer walls rising to the deck above. A single container had been stored here. It was also marked Unwin Toys and was locked with the same security pin as the others. Four men were standing in a semicircle, deep in conversation. One of them was obviously in charge. He was standing with his back to Alex, and from his position high above, all Alex could make out was a thin, rather frail-looking body and strange white hair. The man was leaning on a walking stick. He was wearing gray gloves.

  Alex assumed they were going to unlock the container, but what happened next took him completely by surprise. One of the men lifted something that looked like a television remote control and pressed a button. Immediately one side of the container opened electronically, the sections separating like elevator doors. There was a click, and then the floor of the container slid forward, bringing the contents out where they could be examined. What a box of tricks! The security pin was still in place and wouldn’t need to be touched.

  Alex knew at once what he was looking at. There could be no mistaking it. Royal Blue. That was the name that Mrs. Jones had given it. She had told him it was the most powerful non-nuclear weapon on the planet. Alex’s first impression was that the bomb was strangely old-fashioned, like something out of World War II. In the great emptiness of the hold, it looked small, but he guessed that it was about the size of a family car. He wondered what it was doing out here—and where were they taking it? Australia? Was the white-haired man planning to set it off there?

  Right now, it was surrounded by a bank of machinery, and as soon as the container had clicked into position, two of the men set to work connecting it all up. There was some sort of scanner—it looked like an office photocopier—and a laptop computer. A third man was explaining something. He was black, with a pockmarked face, very white teeth, and cheap plastic glasses that were too heavy for his face. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt with half a dozen pens in the breast pocket. Alex edged forward to hear what he was saying.

  “…We had to modify the bomb to change the method of detonation.” The man had an accent that Alex couldn’t quite place—French, perhaps. “It would normally explode one yard above the ground. But this one will be required to explode one-half mile below it. So we have made the necessary adaptations…”

  “A radio signal?” the white-haired man asked.

  “Yes, sir.” The tall man indicated a piece of equipment. “This is how you communicate with the bomb. The timing is crucial. I estimate that Royal Blue will only be able to function at that depth for around twenty minutes. You must send the signal during that time.”

  “I want to be the one who sends the signal,” the white-haired man said. He spoke perfect English, like an old-fashioned news broadcaster.

  “Of course, sir. I received your e-mail from London. And as you can see, I’ve arranged a fairly simple device. It allows you to scan your fingerprints into the system. From that moment on, you will have complete control.”

  “That’s absolutely first rate. Thank you, Mr. Varga.”

  The white-haired man pulled off one of his gloves, revealing a hand that was small and withered. It could have belonged to someone who was dead. Alex watched as he placed it against the scanner. Mr. Varga pressed a few buttons on the laptop. A green bar of light appeared underneath the hand, traveling across the palm. It only took a couple of seconds, and then it was over.

  One of the other men was overweight, with thinning g
inger hair. He was about fifty years old, dressed in a white shirt and pants with blue and gold bands on his shoulders. The white-haired man now turned to him.

  “You can put Royal Blue back into the container, Captain De Wynter,” he said. “It’ll be unloaded the moment we arrive at East Arm.”

  “Yes, Major.”

  “And one other thing…”

  But the white-haired man—the major—never finished the sentence. There was a scream from a siren, so loud that Alex was almost knocked off the platform and had to cover his ears to protect himself from the noise. It was an alarm signal. The fourth man, who had so far said nothing, swung around, revealing a machine gun—a lightweight Belgian M249—hanging at his waist. Captain De Wynter pulled out a cell phone and speed dialed.

  The siren stopped. The captain listened for a few seconds, then reported what he had heard, speaking in a low voice. Half deafened, Alex couldn’t hear a word he said.

  The white-haired man shook his head angrily. “Who is he? Where did he come from?”

  “They are holding him on the deck,” De Wynter replied.

  “I want to see him for myself,” the white-haired man exclaimed. “Come with me!”

  The four of them left together, making for a door set in the side of the hold. A moment later they were gone, and to his astonishment, Alex found himself alone with the bomb. It seemed to be a heaven-sent opportunity, and without even hesitating, he climbed down the staircase and went over to the container. And there it was right in front of him. MI6 was searching for Royal Blue all over Thailand, but he had found it in the middle of the South China Sea. He had found Winston Yu at the same time—for that was surely who the white-haired man must be. After all, he had just heard the captain refer to him as “Major.” But why were they both here? What did the major want with the bomb? Alex wished he had heard more.