Max knew no apology would make any difference, so she backed away from the chaos and ran to the back of the kitchen and through the first door she saw.
Max wiped a sundried tomato from her shoulder. She was standing in a giant storeroom loaded with shelves of jars and packets of foodstuffs, with smoked hams and salamis strung across the room like weird fairy lights. She was safe – for now.
Until the door opened and she ducked down behind a shelf. When she carefully raised her head, she saw one of the men searching the room.
Max frantically looked for a place to hide and at the end of the giant rows of food, she spotted the door to a coolroom.
‘Great,’ she winced, realising freezing was preferable to being caught. She silently made her way to the door and slipped inside where she found herself standing amongst hanging chickens and ducks, bunches of fresh herbs, boxes of vegetables and giant spare pots of sauces.
Apart from the light coming through a small glass window in the door, inside was cold and dark. She hugged herself and moved from foot to foot to keep warm. She waited a few moments before she crept towards the window and saw her pursuer coming towards her.
She ducked down. What could she do now? She looked around and saw only one place to hide: a giant cooking pot half-filled with sauce. ‘Great,’ she mumbled.
She opened the glass lid and climbed inside, trying not to think about the squelching bits of meat swimming around her as she climbed into the garlicky mixture. She felt the chilled sauce soak into her clothes and slime over her skin as it rose almost to the brim.
‘It looks like my days of swimming in vats aren’t over yet.’ Max wiped a blob of meat sauce from her chin.
She had just squelched into as comfortable a squat as she could and replaced the glass lid when the door opened. She heard the caped man mutter something to himself as he searched the coolroom until, finally, he left.
Max waited a few minutes after he’d gone before she lifted the lid and dragged herself out of the sauce.
Her watch vibrated on her wrist.
‘Max, we haven’t located the detonator yet but Toby has found a map that he thinks is important.’ Linden spoke quietly. ‘Where are you?’
‘The coolroom.’
‘What are you doing in a coolroom?’
‘Don’t ask,’ Max moaned as another splodge of sauce slid down her face. ‘What’s the quickest way out of here?’
Linden called up the floorplan of Signora Antonelli’s house on his palm computer. ‘Make your way out of the coolroom into the storeroom. There’s a door at the south end of the kitchen that leads to a delivery dock. We’ll wait for you there.’
Max took one more look through the small window of the coolroom door and crept out into the storeroom. The kitchen was still busy and if she was quick, she should be able to sneak out without being seen. She crept quietly out of the storeroom and rushed towards the door Linden had told her about, only to be stopped by the gleaming smile of the caped man.
‘Buona sera, signorina,’ he said gently as he aimed a revolver straight at her.
‘That means “good evening”, doesn’t it?’ Max answered. ‘But I don’t really have time to chat.’
She reached into her pocket, pulled out some sneeze powder and, tearing open the packet, threw it in his face. He fell into a wild fit of sneezing.
‘Bless you,’ she smiled and scurried under his arms before running down a long darkened corridor.
‘Ooph!’ Max rebounded from a muscle-toned chest and stomach. She looked up. ‘Alberto!’ He wore a black half-mask over his eyes and a pair of leather gloves. ‘Am I glad to see you. The other day we were followed by some men who are here tonight. One of them is after me. I don’t know who they are but …’
‘I do.’
‘You do?’ Max asked.
‘Si.’ He waved at Max to follow him.
Max and Alberto hurried down a set of wooden stairs into the lower levels of the house. ‘Is this where the boys are?’
Alberto didn’t answer.
‘And who were those men?’
Alberto looked over his shoulder contemptuously at Max as if he had no intention of answering.
‘Max!’ Linden and Luca stepped out of the shadows. ‘You’re here.’ He looked at her more closely and picked a piece of meat off her shoulder. ‘What’s with the pasta sauce?’
‘I got hungry. Where’s Toby?’
‘Don’t worry about your little friend. He won’t be joining us,’ Alberto replied evenly.
Max didn’t like the way he said it. ‘Why not?
‘He’s decided to have a little lie down.’
Luca stared at him in disbelief. ‘You can speak English?’
‘I always said you were clever,’ Alberto almost sneered.
The black-caped man who had been following Max appeared behind them, puffing and sneezing, his revolver drawn.
‘That’s him!’ Max shouted to Alberto. ‘That’s the man who was after me.’
But Alberto never moved as the room was punctuated by more sneezing.
‘Alberto?’ Luca wondered why he just stood there.
‘It seems Toby’s parents didn’t teach him it was wrong to take something that didn’t belong to him.’ Alberto held up a map of Venice that held similar markings to the one Steinberger had sent them – the locations of the bombs!
‘That must be the map Toby found in Signora Antonelli’s study.’ Linden felt a shiver of fear. ‘Where is he?’
‘I told you, you don’t need to worry about him.’
‘Tell us where Toby is,’ Max demanded.
The sneezing guy’s laugh ran down Max’s spine like ice.
Alberto ignored Max’s question and pulled open two scuffed and worn cellar doors set into the floor.
‘Please.’ Alberto’s smile lifted like a slowly rising cobra. It was then Max remembered where she’d seen that smile.
‘You’re the one who tried to push me into the canal.’
Alberto simply smiled again. ‘This way, if you will.’
‘No!’ Luca yelled, fury gripping his body. ‘We’re not going anywhere. You were involved with the threat to Venice from the very beginning! That’s how my father received the note and how our every move has been followed. How could you?’ He screamed. ‘How could you?’
Luca ran at Alberto, pounding his fists into his chest.
Alberto’s fingers dug into Luca’s wrists. The two wrestled until Alberto flung Luca away in one solid push.
Luca fell backwards down through the cellar doors and landed with a hard thump.
‘Luca!’ Max and Linden ran down the stairs after him.
‘I’m okay,’ Luca gasped as he lay on the bottom step above a cold, ink-black canal.
The cellar doors slammed above them and Alberto and the sneezing man followed them down. ‘Now, I must insist.’
He signalled to a speedboat that was moored to the dock beside them.
Linden gave Max a slight nod, admitting that, for now, they had no other choice.
‘I’m not going without Toby,’ Max shouted, but a bolt of panic shuddered through her as Alberto’s gun nudged into her back. She reluctantly followed the others into the speedboat, when she heard Alberto mutter, ‘Chi trova un amico, trova un tesoro.’
Max’s breath caught in her chest. They were Signora Antonelli’s exact words. Toby was right, she was involved after all, and something terrible may have happened to him trying to prove it.
The two men laughed a mean and twisted laugh that Max felt was aimed at her for being so easy to fool. Her memories of Signora Antonelli – the rescue, her kind smile and her dark honey voice – clouded over like the darkened waters of the canal.
The sneezing man untied the boat and kept his gun trained on their captives as Alberto slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine.
It was only hours until midnight and they hadn’t found the detonator. As the boat slowly crept into the canal, the cold February wind
forced its way against them, biting at their skin and carrying with it a moody warning of bad things to come.
The boat sped through the cold winds of the Venice evening, away from Signora Antonelli’s palazzo and into the open waters of the Venetian Lagoon. The lights of the Piazza San Marco, the safety of Luca’s home and, Max thought painfully, her trust in Signora Antonelli, were all quickly left behind.
Max looked at Luca’s drawn face. Even though she’d hidden in coolrooms and fallen into wintry canals and vats of frozen ice-cream, for the first time since she’d arrived in Venice, she felt a deep, chilling cold that soaked straight through to her bones.
The journey was over in what felt like minutes.
Luca, who had been staring at Alberto’s darkened silhouette for the entire journey, looked up and only then realised where they were. ‘San Michele. The Island of the Dead.’
‘I thought your plan wasn’t to take us here.’ Linden attempted a joke.
‘It wasn’t.’ Luca’s voice was empty and distant.
A large brick wall ran around the island dotted by the powerful silhouettes of tall cypress trees that stood like an army of impassable sentinels.
Alberto slowly brought the boat in beside a badly damaged and closed wharf and secured it with a rope. It looked like years since the wharf had been used and the entry gate had been boarded up. ‘Last stop,’ he said. ‘Everybody out.’
The three spies climbed out of the boat while Alberto aimed his gun directly at them. The wharf swayed under their weight with each tidal swell. Max almost fell, but Linden caught hold of her. Luca turned back briefly to look at the boat.
‘It’s the boat you and I escaped in,’ he said to Max. ‘I asked Alberto to return it with an apology and some money.’
‘Why would he keep it?’ Max looked down at the rising tide of the lagoon splashing through the gnarled and broken planks of the wharf beneath them.
The sneezing man scrambled onto the damaged wharf and tied them roughly to a support pole.
‘Easy,’ Max said, quickly switching on the video recorder in her watch before her hands were bound to her sides. ‘I want to be able to use these arms after I’ve escaped from here.’
‘Oh, there will be no escaping.’ Alberto almost giggled.
Another boat approached the island. Max squinted into the darkness but only made out the identity of the passengers when they reached the wharf.
‘Signora Antonelli?’ Luca gasped. She was with the second black-caped man who had been following them.
The boat pulled up beside them and threw a rope around a support pole.
‘Hello, my dears,’ said the Signora from the boat. ‘I’m so sorry to drag you away from the party.’
‘Signora Antonelli. We know it was you who planted the bombs to destroy Venice,’ Max replied.
‘Yes, it was. I was happy being the good girl for a while but I’m over it now.’ She looked at them with fake sadness. ‘Just like I’m over you.’
Luca felt swallowed by disbelief and sadness at what Signora Antonelli was saying.
Max stared directly at her and spoke into the wind. ‘My “swim” in the canal during the storm? My fall into the ice-cream vat? That was all your doing?’
‘Yes, all mine. I was hoping to scare you off, but you were a little more persistent than I’d expected. And now I’ve come to say goodbye.’ She paused. ‘And to make sure this time you don’t have any more lucky escapes. But first, tell me who you really are.’
‘Just some kids on a holiday,’ Max said defiantly as another wave surged through the wharf and almost tipped her into the lagoon.
‘If you waste my time with lies I will end this conversation and you without hesitation,’ she said pitilessly. The charming hostess was gone, replaced by a ruthless criminal who would stop at nothing to get the information she wanted. She signalled to Alberto, who grinned sadistically and aimed his gun directly at Max before slowly beginning to squeeze the trigger.
‘We’re from an international spy agency, and we won’t let you blow up this town,’ Linden spelt out hurriedly.
‘Ah, I see. I have to applaud your cleverness and determination, even though it won’t do you any good now.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ Luca managed.
‘I saw the chance to become very wealthy and I took it.’
‘It’s all about money?’ Linden asked. ‘How can you endanger your own city and the people who live here, just for money?’
Signora Antonelli scoffed. ‘It is your father who is endangering this city, Luca Cavello, since he is prepared to ignore my request and risk its very existence,’ she concluded with pointed malice.
‘My father loves this city and would do anything to save it!’
‘Well, he’d better be quick.’ Signora Antonelli tapped her ruby brooch. ‘Otherwise there will be precious little left to love.’
Something clicked in Max’s head when Signora Antonelli tapped her brooch. She had to keep her talking! ‘So what’s with the cemetery?’ Max strained against the rope. If she could just reach one finger into her pocket to activate the bomb detector … ‘Anyone who crosses you ends up here?’
‘Perhaps.’
Luca looked up suddenly. ‘Is that what happened to Signore Georgio?’
Signora Antonelli was momentarily shaken. ‘Georgio and I were great friends. I was devastated when he died.’
Luca’s voice hardened. ‘What happened?’
‘He didn’t follow orders and we parted. Sadly. You saw the funeral I gave him, Luca, it was one of the finest Venice has seen.’
‘You killed him.’
For the first time Signora Antonelli squirmed at the accusation.
‘That is such an ugly thing to say. It was an accident.’
‘Which seems to happen a lot to people around you.’ Luca’s normally smiling eyes hardened. ‘He was a good man. He was my father’s friend.’
‘Sometimes friends let you down. Let’s go.’
Alberto and the sneezing man climbed into Signora Antonelli’s boat. With very little effort, they leant over the side and, pressing on the back of the stolen boat, filled it with water. It sank in seconds.
‘That’s why you kept the boat,’ Luca said to Alberto. ‘When the police uncover it, they’ll find my fingerprints are all over the wheel, whereas you’re wearing gloves. It’ll look like we stole it for a little joyride until it sank.’
Alberto looked away and said nothing.
‘I am sorry, Max,’ Signora Antonelli said. ‘If we’d met in other circumstances, we would have been friends. I really did like you.’ She paused for a few brief moments. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a party to get back to. Oh, and just to let you know, I couldn’t just let you ruin my plans and have the city think I wasn’t serious. There is one bomb you didn’t find, one that will unfortunately be a little messy for the Doge’s Palace. It’s going to be spectacular. There will be fireworks at midnight followed by an explosion unlike anything our fellow Venetians have ever seen. Maybe next time that will teach the authorities to ignore me.’
The goon at the helm of Signora Antonelli’s boat started the engine and, thrusting the gears into reverse, tugged at the wharf, destabilising it even more and sending half of it below the waterline. The prickly rope dug into Luca, Max and Linden as they jolted forward.
‘Ciao, my dears.’ It was the last they heard from Signora Antonelli before her boat disappeared into the night towards the lights of Venice.
The wharf shifted and creaked with the tide that washed even higher over their legs.
Max’s fingers stretched towards her pocket where they managed to pull out her bomb detector. She looked down. ‘The brooch!’ Max cried. ‘The detonator is in the brooch. We’ve got to work out a way to get back to Venice and stop her using it.’
‘How long do we have before the tide is fully in?’ Linden asked as his head slammed against the pole with another swelling wave.
‘A few hours,’ answ
ered Luca.
‘You think it’ll rise much higher?’ Max watched another even bigger wave splash over the damaged wharf.
Luca paused. ‘High enough to drown us.’
‘That high, eh?’
‘I’m not sure I want to spend my final hours tied to a cemetery.’ Max felt her a vibration on her wrist. ‘My watch! Linden, can you reach it?’
Max twisted her watch face towards Linden. He pushed his arm against the rope and inched his fingers towards it. The rope ate at his skin like a chinese burn until finally he made contact and accessed the link.
‘Toby. You’re okay! What happened?’
‘One of the guys who’d been following us found me looking at the bombing plan and chased me to a balcony. We had a bit of a tussle and I knew I had to get rid of him, so I pretended to fall back, hitting my head on a stone statue and falling unconscious into the canal. It was an award-winning performance.’
‘I’ll bet.’ Max smiled. It was good to hear Toby’s voice.
‘Where are you?’ He asked.
‘The cemetery.’
‘The cemetery?’
‘Don’t ask. Signora Antonelli has another bomb planted somewhere in the Doge’s Palace. It’s due to go off at midnight and the detonator is in her ruby brooch. Call Steinberger to get the Italian Police to stop her.’
‘Will do, and what about you? Are you three okay?’
Another wave lashed over their legs. ‘Know how to drive a boat?’
‘How hard could it be?’
‘Use the locator on your palm computer to find us, and Toby …’ The wharf again shifted with the tide and sank even further into the water. ‘Make it quick.’
‘Watch it!’ Max yelled at the cameraman who’d stood on her toes. ‘I’m not invisible, you know.’
Max, Linden, Toby and Luca stood in front of Signora Antonelli’s palazzo, Toby in his harlequin suit, Max covered in pasta sauce and Linden and Luca in their soggy jackets and capes.
Toby had contacted Steinberger who immediately sent Plomb’s bomb squad to search the Doge’s Palace, and contacted the two other Spyforce agents on the ground in Venice who travelled to San Michele with Toby to rescue an almost-submerged Luca, Max and Linden.
The Venice Job Page 12
