by Simon Mayo
“Well, they got that right,” said Nicholas.
“Remind me …?” said Jude to Itch.
“It’s a solid metal but turns liquid above 83 degrees Fahrenheit,” said Itch. “It’s the most reactive of the alkali metals. Burns immediately on contact with air. Explodes on contact with water.”
“My God,” said Jude. “Here we go again.” There was a silence in the room.
“OK, thanks for the heads up, Itch. We don’t know she has any cesium for certain—who knows where the photo came from—but we do need to treat her as extremely dangerous. If she does resurface, we’ll be ready for her.” Fairnie looked around. “OK, that’s it, folks.”
Itch, Jack, and Chloe returned to Gabriel’s/Jack’s room. “I don’t like the sound of Shivvi with that cesium, Itch,” said Chloe. “Do you think she has it?”
“Well, she seemed keen to bring it in, but who knows? Maybe she was bluffing.” He sounded unconvinced.
“Anyway,” said Chloe. “Good speech. Mum had lost it down there.” She high-fived her brother, and Jack joined in.
“But Mum has a point about no one spotting Shivvi. Mind you, we saw a picture of her and even we didn’t realize it was Shivvi when we met her in person.”
“A grainy image on a website hardly counts, Jack,” said Itch, “and she’d cut her hair since then.”
“Wonder where she went….” said Chloe.
Jack frowned. “Let’s hope we never have to find out.”
Nathaniel Flowerdew threw his phone against the wall, where it cracked a photo frame holding a picture of himself on an African oil rig. The battery flew out of the handset and both crashed to the floor. He cursed loudly and banged the table with his hand.
“Damn that woman! She’s messing everything up all over again!”
Alejandro Loya and Peter Voss realized they were not expected to reply. Both men were in Flowerdew’s London apartment by the Thames, a private investment made through an offshore company while he was working for Greencorps in Nigeria. He had barely been there, but it was the perfect place from which to plot the recovery of the rocks. From wherever they were.
“She might be a brilliant diver, but that’s all she is. My Interpol friend says she’s on the run after an incident at the Academy. At the Academy, for God’s sake! Whatever her plan was, it’s over now—the security around the children will be much tighter.”
Loya smiled. “It’s a treasure hunt, Dr. Flowerdew. La equis marca el lugar. X marks the spot, yes? And instead of doblóns—doubloons, as you say—our treasure is more valuable.”
Before Flowerdew could throw anything else, Voss passed him some tea. “So, we have to be smarter. From the beginning. Every fact, every detail matters. Staff, pupils, how you found the rock, where you took the boy and his cousin … everything. Conversations you had that Itchingham might have heard …”
“Don’t call him Itchingham—it sounds ridiculous. Like you’re his dad or something.”
“What do you want me to call him?”
“Don’t call him anything. Or ‘that boy,’ if you need to.”
“OK,” Loya said. “Things that boy might have said—either to you or to other members of staff—that might give us some clue where he could have gone to hide the 126. It’ll be in there somewhere. We have time. Begin …”
Flowerdew found a coin in his pocket and began to work it around his fingers, weaving it in and out, the coin spinning as it moved from one side of his hand to the other. His long frame stretched low in the chair as he thought through the thousands of conversations, meetings, and people. Apart from his fingers, nothing moved; the Argentinean sat waiting with his laptop open and a pen in his hand.
Then, with a sudden snap of his wrist, Flowerdew tossed the coin in the air and caught it. “OK, here’s what happened,” he said, and starting with the first time he’d passed the academy’s Geiger counter over the piece of 126, he told Loya and Voss everything he could remember. He held nothing back—why should he? If they wanted the 126 as much as he thought they did, they wouldn’t be too bothered about a few British laws that he had broken.
As Flowerdew gathered speed, Loya struggled to keep up. Scribbled page followed scribbled page, each full of names, opinions, and rants. Occasionally the Argentinean would ask Flowerdew to pause as he looked up some information online; then the tirade would start again. Flowerdew had gotten to the capture of “the detestable Lofte children” and their flight from the mining school. He described the theft of the Lexus, the drive to London; how he and his driver Kinch had been drugged, allowing the cousins to escape. “Xenon, apparently! Gassed by xenon! I never even knew it was an anesthetic. I’d told Kinch to check the backpack, but the idiot missed it.”
“Cars like that are sometimes fitted with tracking devices,” said Voss. “Weren’t you worried you’d be caught?”
Flowerdew shook his head. “Never really thought about it. We just—” He sat bolt upright, banging the table with his knees as he did so, his eyes wide.
“You have thought of something?” Loya looked intrigued.
“Tracking devices. You said tracking devices,” said Flowerdew quietly.
“On the car, on the Lexus …?”
“No. Not on the car, stupid. On my laptop … on my laptop!”
“I’m not with you.”
“Of course you’re not. When they escaped, the accursed Lofte children stole my briefcase and my laptop. While in Nigeria I was persuaded by a business colleague to have a tracker fitted to my laptop—it seemed a laughable idea at the time, but he insisted. He said I had too much dangerous information to take the risk. Had it done there and then.”
“When was this?” said Voss.
“Ages back. Forgotten about it ’til ten seconds ago.”
“And your laptop never turned up?”
“Obviously not.” The sneer was unmistakable.
Loya stood up and started pacing around Flowerdew. “A tracker on a laptop would have its own battery or maybe run from the laptop’s. Either way, it’s unlikely to be still charged. It’ll be dead by now.”
“Yes, yes, of course, but it worked with a website, I think. I’m sure he said that this tracker left coordinates every hour or something. You just log in and it’ll tell you where it is.”
“What’s the website?” asked Voss.
“No idea. Absolutely no idea.”
After ten minutes on the phone, Loya was back at his laptop. “There aren’t that many sites that do this tracker operation. Any of these look familiar?” he said.
Flowerdew joined him in front of the screen as he typed in a series of web addresses. When, one by one, the home pages flashed up, Flowerdew shook his head, exasperated. “I never logged on, I never checked it. I never needed to. This is useless.”
“No, let’s try something else,” said Voss. “Men of your age usually keep the same login and password. You’re told to change it regularly, but you don’t. Am I right?”
“Possibly. Let’s try. How many sites?”
“Eight, I think. Here—try to log in.” Loya moved aside so that Flowerdew could enter his details. As he typed, Loya and Voss could sense his excitement rising. The fifth site was boxsecure.com. Flowerdew typed in his password, and the now-familiar •••••••••••••••••••••••••• came up.
“That’s a long password.”
“It’s part of a DNA sequence of a protein,” said Flowerdew, and hit ENTER. “You beauty,” he said as the screen showed a new array of security questions. Typing furiously now, he tore into answer boxes and hit ENTER again. The screen momentarily went blank; then, suddenly, an array of tiny black figures filled the screen, and Loya and Voss leaned forward to take in the information.
“Dates on the left, coordinates on the right!” shouted Loya.
“And the last date is in June—that’ll be when the battery died.” Flowerdew was following the last entries on the screen with his finger. “And all the coordinates are in the same
place. It didn’t move for six days! We need a map! Where is 50.8288 degrees north and 0.1411 degrees west? Write it down!”
Alejandro Loya smiled again. “I think it’s easier than that. Look.” He clicked on the coordinates and the screen moved into Google Maps. The image zoomed in on blocks of color which, when focused, revealed a mass of railway tracks by a park.
“Dyke Road Park? Where’s that?” said Flowerdew, his voice loud and tense.
Loya pulled the focus out, and a mass of blue appeared at the bottom of the screen.
“Well, well,” said Flowerdew, smiling. “Hello, Brighton. Now what, I wonder, was Lofte doing there?”
“The school run just got canceled!” Itch had put his head around Jack’s door just as she was putting on her school sweatshirt. From underneath it, she called, “You what?” Pulling it over her head, she stared at Itch. “What’s happened?”
“Two sightings of Shivvi. One at a clothes shop in Launceston, the other in a supermarket.”
“You’re joking.” Jack ruffled her hair, making it stick up. “A supermarket? Like she’s going to be shopping?”
“Kirsten is checking the security camera footage, but until they know what’s happening, we’re staying here. Too much of a threat.”
“Wild Prisoner Attacks Van with Her Groceries! Crazy Woman Throws Beans at Students! That kind of danger, do you mean?”
They were still laughing when they entered the kitchen. Chloe was sitting at the table with Nicholas and Fairnie.
“I know what you’re thinking!” said the colonel. “But we can’t allow you to go to school if Tan Fook is still around. I guessed she’d be back, but not this soon.”
“And not grocery shopping,” said Jack.
Fairnie smiled. “Agreed. But we can check that one. The sighting at Launceston is trickier. Reports point to someone small and female buying gentlemen’s clothes. Could be her.” Everyone looked doubtful. “OK, OK, it sounds unlikely, but we’ve taken a lot of heat for not getting this right. From many quarters.” He glanced at Nicholas. “And Jude was right to be angry. So, we take no chances.”
“But I’d like to go home,” said Jack. “It’s nice here with everyone, of course, but…”
Fairnie was shaking his head. “Sorry, Jack. Not yet. You can go home when you can go to school. We’re sending Chris to the supermarket for a while to see if he can help from there. Meantime you’re still stuck here, I’m afraid.”
From then on, things got increasingly difficult for everyone.
Jack, realizing she was rooming at Itch and Chloe’s for an unknown amount of time, spent longer on her own in Gabriel’s room.
Itch realized he was annoyed with her for wanting to be at home, and Chloe was missing her friends.
“It’s fun for a few days,” she said, “but then it just gets boring.”
Itch had cataloged his element collection twice—once in alphabetical order and then in atomic number order. But then he too had gotten bored.
“Got a friend for you to meet,” Nicholas called up to Itch’s room, and was surprised to find his son jumping down the stairs.
“Really? We don’t really get visitors anymore. Who is it?”
Nicholas led the way to the kitchen, where Jacob Alexander, the director of West Ridge School of Mining, sat drinking tea. He smiled broadly and got to his feet when he saw Itch. Itch hadn’t seen him since running away from his labs with the pieces of 126. Just before being kidnapped by Flowerdew.
“Hi, Itch! Great to see you!” The scientist was dressed in a suit, his broad frame straining the fabric in a number of places. He offered his hand, and Itch shook it tentatively.
“Oh. Hi.”
It was Dr. Alexander who had analyzed and identified the 126 and then had been attacked by Greencorps agents when he had refused them entry. And, as Itch had learned in that startling beach-hut confession, he was now his dad’s boss. He didn’t know where to start.
“You OK now?” he asked at last. “That was quite a kicking you took in the parking lot.”
Alexander smiled and his tanned face crinkled. “I was going to ask how you are! That was some dose of radiation you must have taken.”
“Yes. Bone marrow transplant, blood transfusions—that kind of thing. But I’m OK now, I think.”
“Found any more of those rocks?”
“Haven’t been looking. I’m stuck in here or at school these days. Can’t say I’d be that keen to find any more, anyway.”
“No, no, of course,” said Alexander, rubbing his closely cropped gray hair. “I was going to suggest taking a walk, but your dad says that’s not possible.”
“Not at the moment, no. No school, no town, no nothing. There’s always the backyard, if you want some air.” Itch looked through the kitchen window into the misty gloom. “We’ve some neatly trimmed hedges to have a look at.”
His father smiled, but he seemed on edge and subdued. He’s obviously set this meeting up, thought Itch. This is all for me. And when he thought about it, he realized that this chat was always going to happen at some point. But if his dad needed him to listen to Dr. Alexander, then he wanted to hear what he had to say.
The three of them pulled on jackets and wandered into the darkening yard.
“What’s really weird,” said Itch, “is that, er, until recently I didn’t even know you knew each other.”
“Well, this is just a social chat, of course. I’ve really come to see your dad….”
“While my mum’s out.”
“Yes, while your mum’s out. So this is awkward in a number of ways. But let me get to the point—your dad says we can speak safely here.”
“Unless they’ve bugged the flowerbeds, yes. As far as I know.”
They set off around the yard.
“I know that you know I don’t just run the mining school. I also head up a group of scientists around the world who are trying to plan for when the world has run out of energy. Which will happen much, much sooner than anyone realizes. Until now we have been concentrating on hydraulic fracturing—fracking, as it’s known—but when you came along with the 126, everything changed. It is a source of great frustration to me that I had in my hands … for just a few moments—an energy source that could revolutionize everything. But then we … lost them. And it would break my heart to think that they might be lost forever.”
“Can I just say something?” said Itch as they started their second lap of the yard.
“Of course.”
“Well, it’s just that I know all this … I don’t mean to be rude or—or disrespectful, but I had scientists and politicians telling me this all summer. I know the good stuff it can do, but I know the bad stuff too. A friend told me, Don’t trust anyone, and I don’t. And I’m not going to. Sorry, but there it is.”
“Was that Cake?”
Itch paused, and his father almost bumped into him. “You know him?” Itch was incredulous.
“Oh, not very well, but we all had dealings with him over the years. I knew him when he was called Mike.”
Itch stopped again, and this time his father did bump into him. “Mike? He was called Mike? You’re kidding … Anyway, he died.”
“Yes, I heard. I’m sorry.”
“Radiation.”
“Yes. A nasty way to go, but then, you know all about that. My point, Itch, is that Cake was wrong. You can trust some people.”
“People like you?”
“Yes, actually, people like me. And your dad. If the future is left to the oil companies and politicians, we’re lost. But scientists can make a difference—we can make a difference. If we had the 126, we could ensure that it was only used for powering ships, cars, and airplanes. In a power station it could make its own energy by fission—where a particle would split, produce free neutrons and gamma rays and a whole lot of energy—”
“I know what fission is, Dr. Alexander.”
“Sorry. Of course you do. Anyway, we’d probably get element 127 out of that little lot.
”
Nicholas put his hand on Itch’s shoulder as they walked. “I’ve explained to Jacob that you won’t be telling anyone where the rocks are, but he just wanted to give it a go, that’s all.”
“We’ve started searching for the 126 elsewhere,” Alexander said. “We’re looking in northern France now. Geologically, the rocks in Brittany are the closest match to Cornwall’s—almost certainly the two land masses were joined at one time. Seems like the best place to start, but nothing yet. It’s still just your rocks, I’m afraid.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Alexander, but as I keep telling everyone, they aren’t my rocks. And I have no intention of ever seeing them again.”
With the arrival of December and no sightings of anything suspicious for many days, Fairnie gave permission for the cousins to return to school and for Jack to go home. Chloe and Jack celebrated by going Saturday shopping, while Itch realized he didn’t really have anywhere to go. Or anyone to go anywhere with. He had hoped to make some friends this term, but it hadn’t worked out like that. In fact, since returning from the military hospital he’d had even less contact with even fewer people.
The morning mail brought a parcel for Itch. All packages had to be inspected, and Kirsten had already opened it when she walked into the kitchen and passed it to Itch.
“Looks like your kind of thing, Itch—this your latest order?”
“Yup,” said Itch, and tipped out a small box containing some silvery crystals and a square of torn foil. Pointing at each in turn, he said, “That’s scandium and rhodium. And this …” He held up a clear packet containing a white powder. “It’s 52 on the Periodic Table. Come on then, Kirsten—you must have studied this at school. What’s this?”
“I could pretend to try and remember, but to be honest I don’t think I’ve ever known. Surprise me.”
“Tellurium,” said Itch, weighing the bag of powder in his hand. “Atomic weight 127.6, melting point 449.51 degrees Celsius. It’s not pure, unfortunately—sodium tellurite is the best I could do.” He put it down on the table, and saw her blank expression. “Well, you did ask.”
