The Venice Job

by Deborah Abela

  ‘We will, Maxine,’ Luca said reassuringly. ‘As long as you promise you will concentrate on getting better.’

  From where he stood in the boat, Toby threw Luca a gnarled frown. Mr Smooth was getting too much! ‘I think that’s my cue to exit.’ He fixed his goggles, stepped onto the ladder and quietly lowered himself into the water. His suit heated up around him to offset the freezing water temperature. He adjusted his goggles and smiled when he realised that he could see perfectly, as if someone was flashing a huge underwater light over the whole area.

  Linden entered the water and gave Toby a thumbs up and, taking out their bomb detectors from their belts, they began their search. They each took separate sides of the canal, swimming through the silent water with their detectors in front of them. They waved them along the clay beds, carefully watching for any reading. The detectors stayed static.

  ‘Luca, are we in the right spot?’ Linden radioed up.

  Luca looked at his screen and saw them as two bright green dots. ‘Keep moving forward, you are in the area but there is more to cover.’

  ‘Maybe there isn’t anything down here after all?’ Toby suggested.

  Toby and Linden kept searching and, in only a few more moments, Linden let out a small grunt of satisfaction. ‘So that’s where you are.’

  ‘What? What have you found?’ Max’s voice came through over the radio.

  Linden’s bomb detector was going crazy, with numbers and letters flying across the screen until it finally rested on the words:

  BOMB LOCATED

  Below that a diagram formed of the round cylindrical bomb that lay buried in the clay bed below.

  ‘We’ve got one, everyone.’

  ‘So somebody really is prepared to blow the city up,’ Luca’s sad voice relayed from the boat.

  ‘Yeah, but they won’t be able to now we’ve uncovered their plan,’ Max said decisively. ‘And as soon as Plomb’s team dismantles this one and the others on the satellite map, Venice will be safe.’

  ‘What if they explode in the meantime?’ Luca asked nervously.

  ‘The person behind the note wants money,’ Max said confidently. ‘They’re not going to detonate these bombs without that.’

  Linden and Toby swam back to the boat. As soon as Linden had climbed on board, he downloaded the reading from the bomb detector to his palm computer and sent it to Spyforce. Within minutes, Plomb’s face appeared on the screen. ‘Good work,’ Plomb said quietly. ‘We know the bomb is very small but powerful and is on a timer device that requires a separate detonator to trigger the explosion at the set time. But I’m afraid the bomb detector can’t give us an exact reading of the time it’s set to explode, as the clay bed has obscured the signal. I’ll need you to get closer.’

  ‘How close?’ Max asked uneasily as she listened via her watch radio.

  ‘The bomb detector needs to be laid flush against the bomb’s casing. When the reading’s done, you’ll hear a small beep.’

  ‘So we’ll need to dig into the clay surrounding the bomb,’ said Linden thoughtfully.

  ‘I don’t mean to sound difficult,’ Toby frowned, ‘but won’t that be dangerous?’

  ‘A little,’ Plomb admitted. ‘But as long as you don’t disturb the bomb, nothing will happen.’

  ‘And if the bomb shifts?’ Max asked.

  Plomb was momentarily silent. ‘You can’t let it.’

  ‘Come on then,’ Linden decided. ‘Let’s get back down there.’ He pulled on his goggles and stepped down the ladder into the canal, followed closely by Toby.

  ‘Be careful,’ Max relayed, her skin prickling with fear.

  ‘We will,’ Linden assured her before slipping below the water.

  Luca directed them straight to the bomb site. Toby held his detector ready as Linden carefully dug out the loosely packed soil with his hands.

  ‘Don’t sneeze,’ Toby joked.

  ‘I’ll try not to.’

  Finally he felt it. ‘There she is.’

  Toby gave Linden a nervous smile before slowly approaching. He slipped the bomb detector into the elongated hole. He could feel his nerves shake through his body as he urged himself on, ‘Easy, Jennings.’ His arm disappeared down the length of the hole.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Max’s voice crackled through the radio.

  Toby jumped. ‘Apart from you nearly blowing us up, we’re fine.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Max apologised.

  ‘We’ll let you know when it’s done,’ Linden breathed.

  Toby felt the detector land against the bomb.

  ‘Got it,’ he said with a relieved sigh.

  It felt like whole minutes ticked by before they heard the beep Plomb had promised.

  ‘I think that’s enough time spent with an unexploded bomb.’

  Toby gently withdrew his hand and the two swam back up to the boat.

  ‘Well done,’ Luca said.

  Alberto nodded and gave them the thumbs up.

  ‘Thank you.’ Toby shook his dripping hair in an exaggerated James Bond flick. ‘We were pretty good.’

  ‘Did you do it? Is everything okay? Why won’t you guys answer me?’ Max’s frantic voice came through.

  ‘We’re on our way home,’ Linden radioed.

  Alberto put the boat into gear and steered quietly into the night as Luca breathed a little more easily. He only hoped Plomb could work quickly enough to deactivate the bombs and save his beautiful city from being destroyed.

  ‘We are here.’ Luca sprang out of the limousine and held open the door for Max. ‘It is time to take your tastebuds on a tour.’

  The four spies stood in front of Signora Antonelli’s ice-cream factory on the outskirts of Venice. It was a large imposing building with shuttered windows. The statues of two lions in a frozen snarling leap stared down at them from above the main entrance.

  ‘Are they supposed to make us feel welcome?’ Linden winced into a grey sky.

  ‘I’ve seen friendlier,’ Toby replied.

  Luca spoke through the car window and Alberto nodded solemnly before driving off.

  Urged on by Toby’s suspicions of the ice-cream queen, Max had called Signora Antonelli that morning and asked if they could have a tour after all. Without hesitating, she cancelled all her other appointments and arranged everything.

  ‘You still don’t think she’s good?’ Max asked Toby.

  ‘I’m going to wait and see.’

  ‘Smell that?’ Luca sniffed into the air.

  Toby and Max smelt nothing.

  ‘That is the smell of beauty.’

  ‘That’s the smell of baloney,’ Toby muttered as Linden tried to hide a smile.

  Luca tucked in his shirt and smoothed down his hair. ‘Shall we?’

  As they walked towards the entrance, a woman in an elegant suit of white, her hair piled up in dark shiny coils, came out to greet them.

  ‘Welcome to Antonelli’s Ice-cream,’ Signora Antonelli announced as if she was opening the Olympic games. ‘I’m so glad you could come.’

  She walked over and stroked Max’s chin. ‘How are you, Max? I’ve been so worried about you.’

  Max blushed. ‘I’m fine. Thank you.’

  Luca gave Toby a small, pointed glance.

  ‘These are my friends, Linden, Luca and Toby.’

  ‘How charming to meet you,’ Signora Antonelli sang. ‘Very few people are given the privilege of such a special visit. We take our ice-cream very seriously and trust that what you taste here today will delight your tastebuds as they have never been delighted before.’

  Luca hung on Signora Antonelli’s every word and looked as though any second he would burst into applause.

  ‘As I hope you will understand, there are certain areas of the factory that are heavily guarded, such as the laboratory, where all our unique recipes are created. If these recipes were to end up in the wrong hands, it would be the end of Antonelli’s century-old tradition of making the world’s most delicious ice-cream.’

>   ‘Excuse me, signora.’

  A wizened man in a white plastic jumpsuit with matching shower cap and shoe covers appeared beside them. ‘If we must do this we’d better start.’ His voice was crotchety and old, and he made it obvious he wasn’t happy to have guests.

  Signora Antonelli’s smile was deep and affectionate.

  ‘Let me introduce Signore Marco, the wonderful general manager of Antonelli’s Ice-cream. He is in charge of making sure the factory runs smoothly and in strict secrecy. If you have any questions, this is the man to ask.’

  Signore Marco looked like he would have been happier to have dropped them into a pool of hungry sharks than answer any of their questions.

  ‘This way.’ He shuffled them inside to a small room off the entrance foyer and flicked on a single bright light hanging from the ceiling. ‘Put these on.’

  He held out a coat-hanger to Linden with an oversized plastic suit with elastic wrists, a shower cap and two bulging plastic shoe covers.

  ‘Does this come in blue? It’s a better match for my eyes’ Linden tried to humour the seemingly humourless man.

  He didn’t. Marco’s mouth twisted into a crooked scowl and he released a low groan.

  ‘White’s good too.’ Linden took the hanger.

  ‘You are about to see some of the finest ice-cream in the world being made. Are you ready?’ Signora Antonelli tucked her full curly hair under a shower cap and seemed unaffected by her manager’s mood.

  Marco walked over to a set of double doors that led to the factory interior and opened the cover on a keypad positioned on the wall beside them. Throwing a piercing warning look over his shoulder, his fingers crawled over the keypad and a series of beeps rang out. His wrinkled hands clutched the thick metal handle and, wrenching it down, he pushed the door open with muffled effort.

  ‘Come in.’ Signora Antonelli’s voice barely hid her excitement.

  The aromas inside the factory floated over them on sugar-flavoured air.

  ‘Now I smell it,’ Linden said to Luca, swooning just a little.

  Marco hurrumphed and shuffled on, first into the ingredients room with its many shelves, fridges and cupboards filled with sauces, nuts, fruits and spices. Next he led them into the sampling room, a spacious area filled with rows of long white benches. Above each bench were small glass freezer compartments containing white round tubs with hand-written labels of the flavours marked clearly across them.

  ‘I love this room.’ Signora Antonelli’s eyes blazed in delight. ‘Some of these ice-creams are old favourites but others are brand new and aren’t even in the shops yet. Please try as many as you like.’

  Luca pulled down a freezer door before him as if he was uncovering some ancient artefact. Taking a small wooden spoon from a cup on the bench, he swiped it through a tub of golden ice-cream.

  Linden watched his every move. ‘And?’

  Luca closed his eyes and let the ice-cream slide across his tongue before slowly swallowing it. ‘It almost makes you faint.’

  Linden moved forward to try some, and the ice-cream had the same effect on him. Toby rolled his eyes as they fell into mini ice-cream spins trying out a few more.

  ‘The chocolate?’ Luca asked Linden.

  ‘More chocolatey,’ he admitted.

  ‘The vanilla?’

  ‘More vanillary.’

  Toby stared at both of them. ‘Fellas. It’s ice-cream.’

  But neither of them heard him as Signora Antonelli suggested some flavours in another row.

  Toby had had enough of the ice-cream swooning and hung back to have a snoop around. He pretended to be looking at specially labelled freezers, seemingly intrigued by the exotic flavours.

  At the end of a row, he saw a door marked ‘No Unauthorised Entry’.

  ‘This place just gets friendlier and friendlier.’ He tried the handle but it was locked. He then heard footsteps behind the door coming towards him. He sprang to one side and opened up a freezer, taking a scoop of Triple Chocolate and Cherry ice-cream. A man in a white plastic suit and cap ambled out, and before the door could close, Toby snuck inside.

  ‘This must be the lab Mr Happy spoke about.’

  He knew he had to be quick and, turning on the video in his watch, he began recording everything he saw. There were chrome benches, tubes, silver blenders and beaters, jars of all flavours and colours. It wasn’t long before he came across a box of metal cylinders.

  Perfect for making bombs, Toby thought, but as he was about to reach down for a closer look, a hand clamped onto his shoulder.

  ‘Who said you could come in here?’

  It was Marco.

  Toby tried to think quick. ‘The door was open and I thought …’

  ‘I don’t care what you thought. Right now you are trespassing, and if you don’t want anything terrible to happen, you need to get out.’

  His icy cold words pelted Toby like a mini blizzard and he didn’t need to be asked again.

  Marco interrupted the others in the middle of their tastings, keeping a close eye on them as he led them down a long brightly lit corridor to the ice-cream-making vats.

  Linden and Luca walked ahead, talking about favourite flavours with Signora Antonelli, when Toby whispered to Max, ‘For an intelligent kid, Luca’s getting pretty carried away about ice-cream, isn’t he?’

  ‘I think it’s cute.’

  Max stopped. What have I done? she thought. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud!

  ‘Cute, eh?’

  For a moment, Max had forgotten Toby was the annoying kid who used to tease her at school, had stolen the Time and Space Machine from her bag, and barged in on missions where he wasn’t welcome.

  ‘Don’t say anything,’ she warned as she moved up to the others.

  ‘I’d say your brain is slightly mooshed because of Luca.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Max whispered. ‘Luca is helping us out on this mission, that’s all.’

  ‘The same Luca who makes you blush and causes you to trip over welcome mats and bump into whole groups of tourists?’

  ‘I trip over things all the time, and anyway,’ Max turned and faced him, ‘why do you care what I think about Luca?’

  ‘What who thinks about Luca?’

  Max’s face, as Toby had rightly observed, blushed a deep puce colour at the sight of Luca standing in front of her.

  ‘Yeah, Max, what was that you were saying about Luca?’ Toby asked with a smile.

  ‘I wasn’t saying anything about Luca.’ Max bug-eyed Toby and could have kicked him from one end of the Venetian Lagoon to the other.

  ‘I thought you were just about to tell me what you thought about Luca.’

  Toby had been perfecting his look of innocence for years, and the one he had on at that moment was his most successful yet.

  ‘I would like to know what you think about me,’ Luca said, also with an innocent look, but unlike Toby’s, his wasn’t fake.

  ‘What’s Max going to say?’ Linden turned and asked.

  ‘She’s going to tell us what she thinks about Luca,’ Toby said seriously.

  ‘Oh.’

  Max stared at the three boys in front of her. ‘Well, I … I think you’re … it’s just that …’

  ‘Are we ready for the next part of our tour?’ Signora Antonelli sang out from the end of the corridor where she stood in front of a large blue door.

  ‘Yes, signora,’ Max answered in her sweetest voice. ‘Definitely. Can’t wait.’

  Max awkwardly squeezed past Luca and hurried away.

  Toby smiled. ‘Why are girls so hard to understand sometimes?’

  ‘Sometimes?’ Luca shook his head. ‘I find them hard to understand most of the time.’

  ‘I’m with him,’ Linden sighed. ‘Coming?’

  Through the blue door, the temperature dropped as they stepped into a large and cavernous room and onto a narrow metal walkway that clung to the upper edges of the walls. The walkway was dotted with a series of locked
gates with ladders that ran down to the floor beside rows of giant open vats of ice-cream. Thick blades turned the creamy mixtures, like the colourful inner workings of a giant watch.

  ‘This is where all the ingredients and hard work come together. In fact …’ Signora Antonelli’s enthusiasm was interrupted by a faint ringing sound.

  ‘Excuse me, I must take this.’ She answered her phone and stepped back through the blue door, leaving them with Marco, his scowl and a very awkward silence.

  ‘This is some place.’ Max tried to start a conversation. ‘It must be hard to …’

  Marco grunted and walked ahead. Max sighed. ‘I thought I was the grumpy one.’

  ‘I guess this time you’ve met your match,’ Linden joked.

  ‘Is it just me or does Marco give anyone else the creeps?’ Toby asked with a shiver. ‘I’m not sure if it’s the ice-cream or him that’s making this room so cold.’

  ‘It’s just his way,’ Luca smiled. ‘He may appear stern, but he’s famous for being one of the best managers Signora Antonelli has ever had.’

  In the next second, a sharp cranking sound rang out around them and the lights went out, leaving them in pitch darkness.

  The mechanical sound of ice-cream vats churned beneath them, filling the echoing darkness.

  ‘Marco?’ Max asked, but there was no answer. The light from Max’s watch lit her face. ‘I think the way out is over … aaaahhh!’

  The light disappeared and the sound of a sickening squelch gurgled from below.

  ‘Max!’ Linden looked into the darkness towards Max’s cry. ‘Max!’

  ‘Help!’ Max’s cry was followed by a muffled groan.

  ‘She’s fallen into an ice-cream vat.’ Luca stared into the darkness.

  ‘Max, keep talking so we know where you are and we’ll come and get you.’ Linden called.

  There was silence.

  Toby gulped down a surge of panic. ‘Max?’

  But there was nothing all around them except a wall of black and the churning of giant blades in huge, ice-cold vats.