by Simon Mayo
It was still dark, but Itch became aware of more regular street lighting flashing past—he had managed to push the tarp away slightly and could see bits of light through a crack in the trunk. He thought Shivvi was driving more slowly. He nudged Jack awake.
“I think we might be near,” he whispered. “We’re stopping lots. Traffic lights, I think.”
“What’s that funny noise?” asked Jack; a rasping sound was coming from the front of the car.
“Dunno. It’s her breathing, I think, but it sounds weird to me.”
Jack winced. “I have pins and needles everywhere. Don’t know what she’s got lined up for us, but I can’t wait to get out of here.”
“Same,” said Itch as they bounced over a speed bump. “Ouch. Again.”
“Any idea what this stuff is that’s banging into us?” asked Jack.
“Seems to be ropes and equipment of some sort … She said she’d realized I must have dumped the rocks underground or underwater, so presumably it’s whatever diving and climbing gear she could bring with her.”
“Wasn’t she a diver for Greencorps?”
“That’s what it said online.”
“How deep is this well?”
“It’s 1,285 feet. The Empire—”
“—State Building underground,” finished Jack. “I remember Mr. Watkins telling us the story.” They were both thinking of their homeroom teacher as the car slowed and stopped.
“Here we go,” said Itch.
“I can’t wait,” said Jack.
It was just after 6:00 a.m. when Shivvi Tan Fook drove the Peugeot into the parking lot of the Fitzherbert School. In spite of the darkness and the early hour, it appeared busy. She had watched from the main road as the school lights were turned on and the large, imposing front doors were opened. A number of builders’ trucks and vans had driven into the parking lot, followed by a few cars.
“What the hell?” muttered Shivvi. “Might as well join in.”
She parked next to a pickup marked MCAFFREY’S BUILDING SERVICES, backing up against the school wall. Warning signs and traffic cones lay piled in the back of the pickup; in the front, the driver was holding a steaming cup of coffee, the thermos propped up against the windshield.
Looking down to hide her words, Shivvi addressed Jack and Itch in the back. “Any noise or movement from you two and Itch loses a kneecap.”
Itch felt Jack tense.
The driver of the truck, a large man in a tight sweatshirt, nodded in her direction and she wound down her window. A cold blast of sea air blew in, and she called over to him, “Early start!”
His window opened. “Eh?”
“An early start!”
“Aye,” he said, surprised to be engaged in conversation. “Big job, this one.”
She looked around. “How long do you think it’ll take?”
The man shrugged. “Dunno. They estimate nine months. Two for the demolition; the rest for building.”
“When do you start?”
“We won’t take the place down until after Christmas, but clearing work has to start now. It’s the end of term soon, so we can get on with it. Like I said, a big old job.” He drained his mug. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “You a student or what?”
“Oh, er, a former student. Wonderful school!” Shivvi beamed.
The driver shrugged again. “Looks like a dump to me,” he said. He tipped out the coffee dregs then, opening the door, jumped out, and walked into the school.
Shivvi shut her window, and Itch and Jack heard the strange breathing noise again. They wondered if there was something wrong with her.
“Listen up, you two,” she said. “Here’s how it’s going to be. You’re going to help me take some equipment into the school. If we are asked, it’s for the building work. Then I need you to show me where the rocks are, schoolboy. Once I’ve got them, I’ll let you go. Really.”
She waited until the parking lot was clear of people, then opened the door and walked around to the trunk. She pulled back the tarp, and Itch and Jack shrank away from her.
“Morning. But before I can let you go, and while you’re safely tied up, I’ll need to attach one of these.” Shivvi produced two of the cesium metal and glass tubes. “One each, this time!”
They both flinched as she unzipped Itch’s jacket and rested the old Soviet metal casing on his chest.
“No!” called Jack, and the baseball bat, from nowhere, crashed into her ribs, causing blinding pain to shoot through Jack’s body. Shivvi pushed her hand onto Jack’s mouth to silence her. Wide-eyed with agony, Jack gave a guttural moan and bent as close to double as the trunk would allow.
Shivvi leaned over so she was inches from Jack’s ear.
“Stupid girl. It should have been his kneecap, but your ribs were closer. Keep quiet.”
Itch was clasping the cesium to his chest with his free hand, terrified that the tube might roll off and smash against one of the metal cases. The slightest crack in the glass, any seepage of the protective oil, and the reaction would be instantly explosive.
Shivvi produced rope and masking tape. “I’d lie very still if I were you….” She leaned over Itch. “Undo your shirt,” she said and, holding the cesium in place, strapped the tube to his skin with some masking tape.
The cesium felt heavy and cold. Peering down, Itch could only see the glass and silver end of the tube, but he knew the element inside would soon be melting from dull silver to oily gold. He buttoned up his shirt as instructed, and Shivvi finished attaching a second tube to Jack.
“OK,” she said, “I’m uncuffing you. Neither of you wants to try anything. Clear?”
They both nodded quickly.
Itch climbed out first; his heart lurched as he felt the cesium tube drop and settle against the tape, but it held firm, and he helped Jack out. With their coats now on top of the tubes, the cousins looked bulky but, unless you noticed the look of terror in their eyes, not suspicious. Shivvi unloaded four crates and her duffle bag of cesium tubes. She rested the baseball bat on the bag and, from the back of the McAffrey truck, helped herself to a toolbox and a wheelbarrow, into which she loaded the crates and duffle, covering everything with the tarp.
“Bring that backpack of yours,” she told Itch. “I might need it.” He hitched it onto his back. “Now—stay close to me.” She looked at them both. “It is important that you understand: if either of you speaks or tries to attract attention, I’ll smash one of your cesium tubes. Whichever is closer. OK? Let’s go.”
With Shivvi pushing the wheelbarrow, the three of them walked up to the dilapidated entrance of the Fitzherbert School.
The lights were on everywhere, and their arrival caused no comment. In the big reception hall, two more builders were examining a chart; behind them, by a large, elaborate staircase, a battered statue of the Virgin Mary gazed forlornly into the distance. Itch shivered. He remembered how he had almost bumped into her on his way to the well to dispose of the 126; how, sick with radiation poisoning, he had asked her for luck.
“Thanks for nothing,” he muttered.
He jumped as Shivvi asked loudly in his ear, “Where now, schoolboy?”
“This way,” said Itch, turning left past the school office. “The woodshop rooms are this way.”
Chloe woke up with a jolt. She had slept in her clothes, and it was a few seconds before she remembered why. She had tried to stay awake, listening to every creak and movement of the house, hoping it was the sound of Itch and Jack’s return; she recalled seeing 3:30 a.m. on her clock. Now it was 6:05, and she sat bolt upright.
“Please, please let them be back,” she said, and ran toward Itch’s room. Finding it empty, her stomach knotting with fear, she sprinted to Jack’s. She already knew that her cousin wouldn’t be there, but she had to check. Seeing the bed untouched, Chloe stumbled back to her room. She sat on her bed and started to cry. Then, hands shaking, she grabbed her phone and called Itch.
“Pick up, pick up, pick up,”
she said as she listened to it ring. As it went to voicemail, she gave a cry of desperation and sat there, paralyzed with fear. When her phone suddenly beeped and vibrated, her heart lurched, and she stared at the text and photo and was nearly sick. Her hand to her mouth, she read it again:
I have Itch and Jack, who are wired to explode. If I see any police, or anyone tries to stop me, the cesium will detonate. Do not get in my way.
The photo showed Jack sitting on a chair with a large metal and glass tube strapped to her chest. Chloe’s eyes filled with tears, and she ran to her parents’ room.
Ten minutes later, the security team, realizing they had been duped both by Shivvi’s threat to blow up the school and by Jack’s and Itch’s escape, sat dejectedly around the table in the Coles’ kitchen. Danny Ford, having unwittingly let the cousins out, had tendered his resignation and was already on his way home. A white-faced Colonel Fairnie had just been dealing with a furious Jude Lofte.
“Anyone reached Nicholas Lofte yet?” he said, throwing his phone down on the table.
“Just got him now, sir,” called Moz from the front room. “His mobile was off, but we got the hotel to wake him.”
Fairnie took the phone and related the events of the night, briskly and without apology. He told Nicholas what Mr. Watkins had told them—the teacher had regained consciousness on his way to the hospital—and about the threat made to Itch and Jack. Fairnie was ready for another justified assault on his competence, but not for what Itch’s father said next.
“I know where they’re going, Colonel.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I can tell you where they are heading.”
“Hold on. I’m putting you on speakerphone.” He pressed a button on the handset and placed it on the table.
“Listen up, everyone. Nicholas, normally we’d wait for a secure line, but there isn’t time. Tell me what you know.”
The MI5 team stared at the phone. Nicholas Lofte’s voice rang out in the kitchen.
“The rocks are down a well in a school in Brighton. It’s the Fitzherbert School.” There was a long pause as the officers took in the information. As if reading their thoughts, Nicholas added wearily, “It’s a long story….”
Half a mile away from the Fitzherbert School, the local police commander was informed by the metropolitan police chief that there was a major kidnap and robbery in operation at the local school, but that under no circumstances should any patrol cars or officers go near; in fact, all police activity should be diverted away from the Fitzherbert School. There had been no demands made by the kidnapper other than to be left alone. For those reasons, no lines of communication were possible or even desirable. The commander was told to alert the fire brigade to the possibility of a perilous cesium-based fire. Obviously the school would need to be closed. Despite his questioning, he was told there were no further details available at the moment. This was, he was told, going to be a major operation and all resources at his disposal would be needed. There was to be no media involvement or comment in any way—there must be no leaks to the press. A media blackout had been requested. An MI5 team was on its way from London and would be with him shortly; armed police teams needed to be mobilized immediately. In case he hadn’t gotten it the first time, he was reminded that none of this operation was to be visible from the school.
The police commander called his wife to cancel their lunch.
As Itch led the way along the corridors toward the science labs—through, he noticed, new security doors—his head was spinning. I can’t believe I’m here again, he thought. After all I did, after all the secrets I’ve kept, this headcase is going to try and get the 126 back to the surface. This time I’m not bent double and vomiting blood, but I just can’t go back down there.
Every echoing step increased his dread. A man in stained work overalls walked past them with a toolbox in one hand and a drill in the other. Every part of Itch wanted to run up to him and tell him what was happening, but he knew Shivvi would carry out her threat. So he and Jack kept their heads down.
The corridor snaked left; science department posters appeared on the bulletin boards. Last time they had been a welcome sign to Itch that he was heading in the right direction; now they indicated that the moment of reckoning was closer. He came to the scrappy piece of carpet spread under one bulletin board, and stopped. Behind him, Jack and Shivvi stopped too.
“It’s down there,” Itch said quietly, pointing at the floor. “This is the top of the well. The rocks are down there.”
In a second, Shivvi was at his shoulder. “Under this carpet?”
Itch nodded.
She looked around. “This is the end of the extension?”
He nodded again.
She wheeled the wheelbarrow toward the safety doors, placing some bright orange traffic cones and a DANGER! HIGH EXPLOSIVES! sign in the corridor outside. Shutting and bolting the doors, she hurried back.
Itch and Jack leaned against the wall, supporting the cesium tubes with both hands. They watched as Shivvi threw back the carpet, revealing eighteen planks of wood glued together. Using a chisel to pry them apart, she exposed the steel cap locked into the top of the Woodingdean Well. It was twelve feet across, with a recessed circle in the middle—the same one Itch had struggled with.
Eighteen screws, he remembered, and you twist, you don’t pull.
With the drill in her hand, Shivvi walked to the middle and, crouching, started work on the screws. One by one they flew or rolled across the floor, each one seeming to come out faster than its predecessor.
Itch couldn’t help thinking of his own long battle and comparing it with the extraordinary speed of Shivvi Tan Fook. Not vomiting blood and fainting all the time must be a huge advantage, he thought.
With all the screws out, Shivvi squatted above the handle, grabbed it with both hands and began to unscrew the well cap. It had taken Itch ages to free the old rusted thread and move the cap. It took Shivvi less than a minute. The screeching of the metal threads rubbing against each other was followed by a huge clanging noise as the cap came free and Shivvi dropped it on the metal plate. The sulfurous stench from the well made her cough and retch, and she put her hand over her mouth.
“Let’s hope she’s violently sick and falls down the well,” Itch murmured to Jack.
She thought about that. “Why don’t we push her down?” she whispered. “Would that be wrong? We probably could … like Hansel and Gretel. And she’s the wicked witch,” she said.
“Who got pushed into the oven?”
“Yup.”
“It might be possible,” said Itch, “but if we messed up …”
Jack shivered.
“Come here, you two.” Shivvi was removing boxes from the wheelbarrow and arranging diving equipment around the open well. They shuffled forward.
“I’m going down for the rocks,” she said. “I don’t need you for that, but I can’t leave you here either. I need to make sure you don’t run off to the nearest teacher like you normally do. You’re coming down with me.”
Itch and Jack both gasped as if they’d been punched in the stomach.
“I can’t go down there again,” said Itch, swallowing hard.
“Not you, schoolboy. I’m taking Cousin Jack.”
Now it was Jack’s turn to recoil. “Me? But what can I do …?” She looked at Itch, horrified.
“You’re my insurance, Jack. And you won’t need to ‘do’ anything. Just hang there looking pretty. You have one good hand, don’t you?” Shivvi laughed, and Jack squeezed her eyes shut. “But first I do need to deal with you, schoolboy. Put your backpack down and walk!”
Itch let it drop, and Jack grabbed his hand as they were herded toward the science lab. They passed the woodshop, and then the metalshop. The last classroom in the extension was the science lab, and Shivvi urged them inside. The glass cabinet containing jars and bottles of chemicals was still there, Itch noticed. This was where he’d found the sodium—the container marked Na—t
hat had provided the blast he had needed to send the 126 to the bottom of the well, 1,285 feet down. Alongside the potassium and calcium, a new sample of sodium had been added.
He took all this in as Shivvi herded them both to the far corner of the lab, past the benches with gas taps and bottles of acid in neat, traditional rows. In the corner, a few feet from the end of the last workbench, stood a large enamel basin. Two copper pipes ran along the floor joining them.
“Kneel down.”
Slowly, carefully, holding the cesium tubes with both hands, they knelt down on the cold floor. Shivvi produced the two pairs of handcuffs, snapping one on each of Itch’s wrists.
“Itch, lock yourself to the pipe.”
He shuffled forward; as soon as one cuff had shut around the pipe, he felt the baseball bat in the back of his neck.
“And the other one! Quickly!”
He hooked the second cuff to the pipe and locked it. Twisting his head around, he found Shivvi’s face inches away from his.
“You do nothing. You say nothing. If I hear so much as a footstep from up here, you’ll never see your sweet cousin again. You’ll get out of here, but she might not. Am I clear?”
Itch was tempted, and was close enough to head-butt her or spit in her face, but instead he just glared. Then he nodded.
Shivvi peeled off a strip of masking tape and slapped it across his mouth. Hunched and chained, Itch listened as Shivvi and Jack walked off down the corridor.
“I’ll be all right,” Jack called.
Itch thought it was the least convincing thing he’d ever heard.
In the corner of the Fitzherbert School science lab, chained to the pipes between the sink and the bench and on his knees, Itch was starting to sweat. This was partly due to the overactive heating system, which had taken to blowing hot air into the lab, but mainly because he thought the cesium tube was beginning to slip.
