“Not singing,” Max said.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” The captain gestured to one of the security guards. “You will be under the guardianship of Mr. Robles until we dock. If you cannot be met by a family member in Newfoundland, we will need to leave you in the custody of the local police. They will help you further, and your parents will be billed for your time on the ship and our administrative costs. Mr. Robles?”
Before they could protest, the captain picked up his phone and turned away.
Mr. Robles had a thick mustache and a stony face locked into a permafrown. He held the door open, and Alex and Max slumped out of the captain’s office.
They emerged at the end of a corridor and onto a deck. To their left was a wide-open space with a huge pool, where kids were laughing and zooming down long slides. “Go toward the stern,” Mr. Robles said in a gravelly monotone.
“Is that the front of the boat?” Max asked hopefully, looking toward the pool. “A swim would be great.”
“Stern is back, bow is front.” Mr. Robles gestured to the right, away from the pool. “And by the way, this is a ship, not a boat. If you’re facing the stern, port is to the right, starboard to the left.”
“Thank you,” Max said.
“Facts always make him feel better,” Alex drawled.
“Loud bad music makes her feel better,” Max piped up. “Can you sing anything by the Ramones?”
Mr. Robles silently led them into an elevator, where they rode grimly up to the penthouse floor. As they emerged and began following Robles toward the penthouse, Alex pulled Max back. When the guard was a safe distance ahead, she whispered into Max’s ear, “We have to ditch this guy. After we get our stuff.”
“We have no place to go,” Max pointed out. “A ship like this is a closed system.”
“There are a gazillion people on board,” Alex said. “We get lost as best we can. We sneak back down into the cargo hold. Then we find the luggage that we came in, and we zip ourselves back inside.”
“Good,” Max said. “That’s good. But we need to have a secret signal. Something we can say aloud. A code word that means ‘Time to escape.’”
“How about Go?” Alex said.
“That’s not secret. I was thinking . . . Aronnax! You know, the hero of Twenty Thousand Leagues?”
“Fine,” Alex said. “Till then, just act normal.”
Mr. Robles had disappeared around a corner, but now he stuck his stonelike head back in the hallway. “Come!”
“Yes, sir,” Max said.
He and Alex scurried after him. When they reached the corner, he gestured toward the Dolphin Penthouse at the end of a short corridor. “You will retrieve your belongings, and then I will take you to our back offices. There will be water and food, but you will not be able to mix with the regular paying guests. If anything is missing, you will be billed.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bubbles,” Alex muttered.
As Robles waited in the hallway, Max followed Alex inside.
She quickly disappeared into the inner bedroom. Max took one last look at the view outside the window. He would miss that.
“Hey, Max?” Alex called out. “Is the note from you-know-who in your backpack?”
Ducking into the bedroom himself, Max lifted his pack off the floor and opened it to look inside. That’s when he noticed Vulturon sitting on the floor by the wall.
He moved closer. “I didn’t take that out,” he murmured.
“I don’t have the booklet, do you?” When Max didn’t answer, Alex spun toward him. “Don’t tell me. You smell fish.”
Max nodded. “My stuff. Someone touched it. It’s not the way I packed it.”
“But the note’s in there, right?” Alex asked.
“No,” Max replied.
“That’s impossible,” Alex said. “Look again.”
“Come, come!” Mr. Robles yelled from the living room.
Alex and Max quickly dumped out their packs, sorted the stuff, and repacked. They looked everywhere in the bedroom. In the living room. In the rooms they’d never entered. The note was nowhere.
“We’re missing something, Mr. Robles!” Alex protested. “Someone stole it from us!”
“Nobody was here,” Mr. Robles said.
“How can you be sure of that?” Alex asked.
“You may file a claim with the lost and found,” Mr. Robles replied. “Now come. I have a schedule.”
He stood and gestured out the door. Alex gave Max a look. They were stuck.
Max stuffed Vulturon back into his backpack, hooked it onto his shoulder, and trudged through the door. Alex followed behind him.
Mr. Robles locked the room behind him. “A lot of good that does now,” Alex said.
“She’s being sarcastic,” Max explained.
Without a reply, Mr. Robles began walking back down the hallway toward the elevator. Alex took Max’s hand and walked slowly. She eyed a door at the end of the hallway marked Emergency Exit.
The moment Robles turned the corner, Alex whispered, “Aronnax.”
She leaned into the door’s horizontal latch, pushed it open, and pulled Max along with her. An alarm echoed in the stairwell. “Hey!” Mr. Robles shouted. “Stop!”
But Alex and Max were already racing down the metal steps. At the first landing, Max burst through another door. He emerged into a corridor that was longer and wider than the first. He and Alex sprinted down a hall full of stateroom doors. They scurried around a group of three old men making their way slowly with walkers. “Excuse me . . . excuse . . .” Max said.
As they disappeared around a corner, Max could hear a crash behind them. And then Mr. Robles’s voice yelling at the three elderly passengers.
Alex and Max made it past the elevator bank when one of the doors dinged. Even before it opened, Max could hear the crackle of walkie-talkies from within.
Security.
Max’s eyes focused on a closet near the soda machines. He yanked on the door. It opened into a boxy closet full of shelves containing sheets, pillows, and cleaning supplies. “Come on,” he said, pulling Alex inside and shutting the door as quickly and quietly as he could.
Their breaths sounded like buzz saws in the small room. Max hoped they couldn’t be heard outside. Footsteps clattered by—then Mr. Robles’s voice barked out a report, telling the others something in a language Max didn’t know.
Then nothing.
One . . . two . . . three . . .
Max counted to thirteen, his age, in total silence. Then he slowly pushed the door open. The hinges creaked mournfully like lost sheep.
Halfway down the hall, the three old men were waiting for the elevator. At the sound of the closet door they turned toward Max and Alex and gave them a long look. “We told them you went to Section C,” one of them said. “You’re good for a few minutes at least.”
“You lied?” Max said.
The old guy smiled. “We’re on your side. That fella with the mustache was very rude to us.”
Alex ran to him and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Thanks!”
“I will not kiss you,” Max said. “But yes, thanks.”
The elevator door opened, and they both stepped inside. The three men waved to them as Max pressed B1. “Where are we going?” Alex asked.
“After we stowed away in the cargo hold, we climbed the stairs to level B1, remember?” Max said. “Then we took an elevator up.”
“Yeah, but it didn’t look like this elevator,” Alex said.
“Must have been a different part of the ship,” Max said. “But when we get down there, I think I’ll be able to retrace our steps.”
Max held his breath as the door opened. The hallway was empty. It did not look familiar to Max at all. As they stepped out, he tried to adjust his bearings. “I think we need the starboard bow.”
“What does that mean?” Alex said.
“Follow me.” He ran to the left. The engine noise was loud down here, and Max felt as if the floors we
re vibrating. They stopped at a T intersection. To the left was an empty hallway. To the right, Max saw a sign that said Lifeboats.
“I think we go right,” Alex said. “Right?”
Max was losing his sense of direction now. “This looks wrong to me,” he said. “I’m pretty sure we need to go the other way.”
Alex was already halfway down the right-hand corridor. As she turned toward Max, she stopped halfway. Her eyes were fixed on a porthole at about eye level. “Come here . . .” she said. “Now. Look at this.”
Max ran to her side. Outside was a narrow deck, and beyond it a lifeboat suspended on a winch. To the right of the hanging lifeboat, two men were looking over the railing down into the sea. They were wearing floppy hats, their backs to Max and Alex, and the bigger of the two men had a small string bag slung over his shoulders.
“So?” Max said.
“Look closely,” Alex whispered.
Max squinted. The thinner man was waving at someone down below with his left hand.
Which was very clearly missing a pinkie.
18
“ALEX, don’t!” Max shouted.
But his cousin had pounded through the door and was lunging for Rudolph. As the big guy turned, Alex caught him off-balance, and he fell.
With a quick, graceful move, Fix managed to slide the string bag off the bigger man’s beefy shoulders. He clutched the bag tight to his chest. “Don’t you think dear Rudolph has had enough physical trauma?”
“You haven’t,” Alex said, balling her fists. “But we can change that. Give us the bag. I know what’s in it.”
“I quiver with fear,” Fix replied.
“That’s a lie!” Max shouted. “Unless you’re being sarcastic.”
Fix gave him an odd look. “Yes, you’re right, dear boy. I’m not quivering, because I’m quite happy to see you. And very grateful to receive such a precious gift to humanity. You will benefit someday, I promise.”
Rudolph stood and grabbed Alex by the front of her shirt collar. “I would love to heave-ho both of these pains in the—”
“Manners, Rudolph, manners,” Fix said. “These are children, and children are the planet’s great hope.”
Alex swatted aside Rudolph’s arm. “Brush your teeth, Hagrid, your breath is like day-old roadkill,” Alex said. “As for you, Mr. Fix-It, I don’t know how you guys found us, or how you got on this ship—”
“Fix is the name,” the silver-haired man said. “A nickname, I should say. To the world I am known as Spencer Niemand. Yes, I am head of Niemand Enterprises, the number-one global company forging a dynamic synergy between telecommunications, exploration, shipping, and environmental innovation. In person.”
Alex and Max stared at him blankly. “Never heard of you,” Max said.
“Suffice it to say we have eyes and ears,” Niemand snapped. “Plus ample private aircraft and ground transport—and more than enough financial resources for a last-minute cruise ticket. Although I admit we almost lost you after the parking garage.” He chuckled. “Kudos on a very clever move with that luggage. Don’t you agree, Rudolph?”
Rudolph scowled at Alex. “I did brush my teeth.”
Max could see her coiling to lunge at him again. That, he knew, would not work. He held her back with one hand and reached out the other to Niemand. “You can keep the string bag, but give us what’s inside. It belongs to us, and you’re stealing.”
“And what will you do if we don’t return it—report us to security?” Niemand smiled. “How do you suppose that will work for you?”
Alex’s teeth were gritted, her eyes intense. “Give. Us. That. Booklet.”
“Maybe you can tell us what it says,” Niemand replied. “That would save us a lot of time and expense. Neither Rudolph nor I read French. We could all form a big, happy team.”
“As if,” Alex said, shaking her head.
“I take that as a no,” Niemand said.
He held the string bag over his head, swung it out over the side of the ship, and dropped it.
Max screamed and ran to the railing. But Alex stood there, staring at Niemand in disbelief. “Th-that made no sense! You just shot yourself in the foot, fool.”
“Alex—” Max said.
Alex laughed. “Let it sink, Max,” she said. “We already know what it says. But they—”
“Alex!”
Max pulled her to the railing and made her look over. Below them was a sleek silver-and-black cigarette boat. On it, a man dressed in a black uniform was placing the string bag into a chest. He revved the engine and glanced behind him.
Alex spun around. “Max, Niemand and Rudolph are gone!”
Over Max’s shoulder, he saw the door swinging slowly shut. He could hear the clatter of footfalls in a nearby stairwell.
“We can’t catch them,” Max said.
“We’ll have to jump,” Alex replied, putting one leg on the railing. Below them, Niemand and Rudolph burst through a door exactly one level down, ran to the railing and leaped over, one after the other.
Niemand landed smoothly with help from the uniformed man. Rudolph missed entirely and had to be quickly helped into the cigarette boat.
“It’s too dangerous,” Max said, pulling her back.
“They have the message!” Alex pleaded. “They’ll figure it out. You read what Jules Verne said. He hid the fortune to keep it away from bad guys.”
“Bad guys from the eighteen hundreds,” Max said.
“Niemand and his BFF have been looking for this forever,” Alex said. “They smoked out my craigslist post and came all the way to your house. They nearly killed us and chased us to New York City. And they bought at least fourteen thousand dollars of cruise tickets and hired a speedboat just to steal it. Do you think it’s just possible that they’re somehow connected to Verne’s bad guys?”
“When you put it that way . . .”
Max was eyeing the lifeboat that hung overhead. It was attached by two strong ropes to a winch. The winch had two pulleys that were operated by a crank at the level below, where Niemand had just been. But that crank was protected by a thick padlock.
The cigarette boat was turning away from the ship now, picking up speed. Max knew they had to get down there. Now.
He bolted for the door behind them.
“Where are you going?” Alex cried out.
“Follow me.”
Max darted down the hallway, pushed through the exit door, and rushed down to the level below. The cigarette boat was headed for the horizon as Max unhooked his backpack from his shoulders, opened it, and dug his hands in.
Alex stared mutely as he pulled out a pocketknife and began cutting through the rope that held the lifeboat above them.
As the rope severed, the port side of the boat abruptly fell. Minutes later Max worked through the starboard rope, and the boat crashed into the water, barely missing the keel of the cruise ship.
“Jump,” Max said, throwing his backpack over his shoulder again. “And don’t say no. I need you. I don’t know how to work one of these boats.”
“Wait—neither do I!”
Max climbed over the railing and fell onto the deck of the lifeboat. He stood and reached up for Alex.
As she jumped in beside him, Max cried out, “Hurry!”
“Me hurry?” She glanced with panic at the outboard engine and pointed to a wooden knob at the top. “OK. OK. We can do this. I—I think that’s a cord. And you pull it. Like a lawn mower.”
Max yanked on the cord once . . . twice . . . but the engine groaned and sputtered.
“Let me try.” Alex took the knob, gritted her teeth, and yanked it as hard as she could.
The motor sputtered to life. Alex jumped back. With a solid thunk, the boat crashed into the side of the SS Sibelius, leaving an ugly dent.
“Can you straighten it out?” Max said.
“I’m trying!” Alex yanked the tiller to the left and eased up on the throttle. The boat spun slowly and soon faced out to sea.
“Now what?” Max demanded.
Alex held tight and pointed them in the direction of the cigarette boat, which was now a dot on the horizon. “Sit down, cousin. And pray.”
19
“CAN’T you go any faster?” Max shouted.
The engine was roaring like a trombone with indigestion as the boat bounced on the choppy water. “We’re at full throttle!” Alex said.
Max stared straight ahead at the dot. Saltwater sprayed up from the sea on both sides, cold and nasty, but he didn’t care.
In a moment, he realized the little black dot of the cigarette boat was actually beginning to grow. They were gaining. “I don’t believe this . . . they stopped.”
Alex saw it too. “Why would they stop in the middle of the ocean?”
“Out of gas?”
“I don’t trust them. We may have to defend ourselves.” Alex gestured toward a wooden chest with a slanted top marked Equipment. “Check in that thing.”
“You think there might be weapons in there?”
“Spears, harpoons, flares, crowbars, nunchucks, whatever we can use!”
Tentatively Max pulled open the chest and rooted around inside. Life vests . . . extra rope . . . GPS device . . . hooks and tools . . .
At the bottom was a small, black leather box. Max lifted it out and unlatched the top.
It wasn’t a weapon, but it was a pair of binoculars. Lifting them to his eyes, Max found the cigarette boat. Three figures were standing on the deck, but even with the magnification he couldn’t recognize faces. “They’re just standing still—not even looking our way!” he called out.
But now Alex’s eyes were trained on another black dot behind them—another boat with a whining engine. “Max—the other direction—back toward the cruise ship!” she shouted. “What’s that?”
Max swung the binoculars around. A lifeboat sped toward them, with the words SS Sibelius emblazoned on the hull. On deck were two people in white uniforms. “It’s security! They’re after us.”
Max Tilt: Fire the Depths Page 8
