PRAISE FOR LAST MESSAGE
FROM SEVEN (THE SERIES)
“Part mystery and part adventure…a fantastic and thrilling page-turner…Highly Recommended.”
—CM Magazine
“Amusing and suspenseful.” —Kirkus Reviews
“[The] adventures are exciting and readers will be anxious to pick up the next book in the series.”
—NJ Youth Services
PRAISE FOR DOUBLE YOU
FROM THE SEVEN SEQUELS
“This thrill-a-minute series will hook…fans of James Bond and Jason Bourne.”
—School Library Journal
“A romantic spy thriller with a heart.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Teen readers who know and love the James Bond stories and movies will enjoy the novel and find many similarities and intricacies linking back to Fleming’s work within the storyline.”
—CM Magazine
SEPARATED
SHANE PEACOCK
ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS
Copyright © 2016 Shane Peacock
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Peacock, Shane, author
Separated / Shane Peacock.
(The seven prequels)
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4598-1164-5 (paperback).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1165-2 (pdf).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1166-9 (epub)
I. Title.
PS8581.E234S47 2016 jC813'.54 C2016-900492-9
C2016-900493-7
First published in the United States, 2016
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016933640
Summary: In this middle-grade novel, Adam finds himself alone and on the run in Sweden.
Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper.
Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Design by Teresa Bubela
Cover photography by Alamy.com
Author photo by kevinkellyphotography.com
ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS
www.orcabook.com
19 18 17 16 • 4 3 2 1
To Ernest and Vernon, best grandfathers.
“I never cry,” said Pippi.
—ASTRID LINDGREN, PIPPI LONGSTOCKING
CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ONE
I hate it when Mom calls me sensitive. I’m a guy. I’m almost a teenager. I can’t be a twelve-year-old boy and sensitive at the same time. That’s not possible. But as I stood in that crowd, not a single face familiar to me for as far as I could see, my lifeline cut, fear making my knees weak, and my heart pounding like a basketball rattling hard inside a hoop, I knew she was right on the mark.
I was alone. I had never been so alone. And I had never been so frightened in all my life.
Just two days earlier, I had been safe and sound—sort of. And Grandpa and I were on a plane a million miles above the Atlantic Ocean. That’s the “sort of ” part. How can you even be remotely safe when you are inside a steel object weighing about a trillion pounds that is hanging in the air, or at least hurtling through it, and might at any second fall out of the sky and send every last person inside it to a fiery death, arms and legs ripped off, heads severed and blood splattered all over the place and…perhaps I shouldn’t go on. I won’t even mention the remains-getting-eaten-by-sharks part. Not that I’m sensitive.
Grandpa sure isn’t. I can picture him now, sitting there next to me in our economy-class seats (not a big spender, is David McLean) and looking highly insensitive. That doesn’t sound right, and I don’t think I mean it the way it came out. He’s a good man and a caring grandfather and just about perfect in every way, even though he’s old. Sometimes I actually wish he wasn’t so perfect. I doubt he talks to himself inside his head like this. But at that moment on the plane he looked like he didn’t have a care in the world: a real guy, strong and manly and bold.
We were on our way to Sweden, which, at the time, was a good thing, and I was about to barf, which obviously wasn’t. I had my attention on the throw-up bag in the pocket of the seat in front of me, eyeing it sideways so he couldn’t tell I was looking at it so lovingly. I’m not a good flier. Never was and never will be. Grandpa, on the other hand, is among the best in the history of the world, the universe, the Milky Way and beyond—World War II hero and all that goes with it, pilot of every plane known to mankind and for many years the operator of what he called an import/export business. I could never figure out what that really was and what he really did. But he flew all over the world doing stuff. And now that he’s retired, he’s still flying all over the world…doing stuff. He has lots of friends in all parts of the globe, and he likes to visit them.
A while back he stopped in at our house in Buffalo and offered to take me on one of his trips to celebrate my becoming a man, as he put it, and clapped me so hard on the shoulder that I just about fell over. He’d made similar offers to all six of his grandsons and had already followed through on a few. What he meant by man was a teenager, a thirteen-year-old. I was still a few months from that then, though I’m almost there now. But age was beside the point—the chance he gave me to go far away, to the land of IKEA and the world’s best meatballs and other cool things, was something I was into immediately.
I should have been in school, it being the first week of September and all. That was an added bonus when he made the offer (and maybe helped blind me to the fact that I was going to have to fly in an airplane to go on this trip). From way up there in the plane, the weather outside (or at least down below) appeared amazing. We were high above wispy, white clouds that looked like massive stretched-out cotton balls, and the sky was clear blue all around us. I use the word sky loosely, because as far as I could figure out from the altitude the pilot said we were at, we were basically in space. That meant that when we started to fall, we’d reach terminal velocity really quickly. Maybe we’d die before we even hit the ocean, before the plane ripped into the water like an atomic bomb into concrete, disintegrated and evaporated all of us.
But there was Grandpa, disgustingly calm, sitting beside me with his black beret still on his head, smiling at me every now and then (and each time I gave him my best fake smile back), his earbuds in and music pumping out of them. Yep, I said pumping. This guy is God knows how old—I’ve lost track, but he’s over eighty for sure—and he was listening to the Black Eyed Peas or something like that. It sure sounded like “Boom Boom Pow.” I knew he was a Frank Sinatra fan—he always slapped me hard on the back when he had that sort of historical stuff ramped up on his stereo. My cousins tell me they’ve heard him listening to lots of Elvis too and even the Boss, Bruce Springsteen. This guy is so open-minded it is sickening. He’d obviously found some channel on the music fee
d on the plane that was giving him newer stuff, and he’d just started getting down. And, of course, he was multitasking. I guess when you’ve flown dangerous missions in a war and been all over the world doing amazing things like climbing mountains in your spare time, you’ve got to have that sort of talent.
He was reading, and he’d been at it just about all the way across the ocean…as he nonchalantly flew in that deadly machine, listening to music and smiling at me.
Reading? Not exactly my idea of a scintillating time. I wished I had my cell phone with me—or at least the cell that would finally be mine on my thirteenth birthday.
Grandpa was some sort of speed reader too, of course. He must have read about three or four books on that flight. He handed me The Little Prince when we boarded (along with another hard clap on the back). That novel was a big fave of his, one he had read to me and all the cousins over the years. I didn’t entirely get it, really—a story, almost like a fable, about this weird person, this small prince, from another planet who was involved in a plane crash. Perfect! A plane crash! I only pretended to read it as I sat there worrying. Grandpa had already read the Sherlock Holmes thriller The Hound of the Baskervilles—which actually sounded kind of cool, with a massive dog with glowing eyes and murder and all that stuff—and had almost finished a Swedish crime novel, which he’d started plowing into about halfway into the flight. He was kind of holding the cover away from me, and I had the feeling that maybe the story inside was a bit inappropriate for someone my age, maybe a tad violent and all. You wouldn’t think the famously happy-go-lucky Swedes would be up to that sort of thing—I certainly didn’t—but they actually were. Big-time. I’d done some research about them on Mom’s laptop the week before we left, and it actually kind of freaked me out.
That should have been my first clue that this trip to Sweden was going to be a whole lot scarier than I ever could have imagined.
TWO
I had expected to find all sorts of information online about how wonderful Sweden was, and I did for a while. The stuff I found talked about ABBA, cool furniture and architecture, hip clothes, nice safe cities and hockey (or ice hockey, as they called it, which would really make my Canadian cousins barf), and how there were so few poor people and how the government paid for all your medical bills, and the fact that they had a king. The whole place was very liberal too, which would upset lots of Americans, since if you call yourself a liberal in my country, many of us (not my parents though) seem to think you’re a two-headed monster or something. A few sites said Sweden was something like Canada in terms of its weather and landscape, which was fine with me since I’d often visited my cousins and Grandpa in the Great White North and almost felt at home there. I’d also been to his cottage, way, way north, and I just loved it, hanging with the guys, swimming and going on hikes. Though I’d never tell them this, I think Canada is a really neat place, really safe and friendly, though Canadians are a little laid-back and kind of secretive in some ways…which leads me back to Sweden.
The last thing I read online was an article called “The Land of Secrets—The Sweden You Never Thought Existed.” It was a long story from a newspaper or magazine, something from some famous publication in New York, and I was just going to give it a pass—I hate reading long things. But man, after I read the first paragraph, I couldn’t stop.
It was that article that got me started worrying about where we were going.
What this writer was trying to say was that Sweden was a much more ominous place than its reputation indicated, that its people were like icebergs—different on the outside than on the inside, with darker lives and ideas than the rest of us even imagined. They were also really open about sex (inappropriate!) and violence and not always very pleasant. During World War II they had sort of been on both sides, supplying arms to the Nazis and to the good guys, making money off them killing each other by the millions. And man, they could really make weapons. They had this wicked thing called the Bofors gun that did some serious damage throughout the war. Even the Swede who has the Nobel Prizes named after him, a dude named Alfred Nobel, was into weapons. He invented dynamite! The Peace Prize guy! And he was the head of a huge armaments company too. The only reason he came up with the prizes was that a journalist once called him “The Merchant of Death” (which was true), so out of pure guilt he created the award. Talk about deceptive, about not being what you say you are!
And the Swedes were well hooked up to the secret service and espionage world too. I suppose they were perfect for it—nice, calm people but full of hidden schemes. Even one of their greatest heroes, this guy called Raoul Wallenberg, who risked his life to help Jewish people escape the Nazis in Hungary during the war and is revered around the world, apparently was a spy. Rumor has it he was working for the CIA! The bad guys from the Soviet Union picked him up as the war wound down, and he ended up in a prison in Siberia, kept there forever, until he rotted or died or whatever. They weren’t about to let him out. Not a Swede with the abilities he had.
And I couldn’t believe this—one of their prime ministers, perhaps their most famous one, a really liberal guy named Olof Palme, who looked kind of boring, like a principal or something, was assassinated in the streets of their capital, Stockholm (where we were going!), right in broad daylight on one of their safe and perfect streets just after he’d gone to a movie with his wife! This wasn’t in the Dark Ages—it was in 1986! And on top of that, they never really caught the guy who did it, though there are all sorts of rumors about who it was and who he was working for and what Palme was up to behind the scenes. It was amazing! Like something you’d see in a documentary with scary music, lots of bass and drums. And to top it all off, I also read that the guy who may have shot him is, in some ways, considered kind of cool in Sweden. Wow!
Another one of their great people was this guy with a completely unpronounceable name—Dag Hammarskjöld! (Dag? Really?), who was the second secretary-general of the United Nations. He died in mysterious circumstances, going down in a plane crash in Africa—just falling out of the sky for no reason. He was one of the most powerful people in the world at the very moment of his death and had his hand on all sorts of secret information.
What sort of a place were we really going to? Was it simply full of lovely people with cheerful, hip ways who sat drinking lattes in cool cafés on cobblestone streets surrounded by amazing buildings? A place of good clean “ice hockey” and ABBA (“You are the dancing queen…oh yeah!”)? Or was it this “land of secrets” where you had to be very careful? As I said, I started worrying, and then I worried even more. Not that I’m sensitive.
Grandpa had never really made it clear what he was going to do in Stockholm. He would have been a good Swede. He kept giving me those smiles—sly ones, really. He was excellent at them. I noticed the title of that book he held in his hand, though he kept subtly trying to pull it out of my line of vision. I could see that it was about murder. And I noticed the word secret on the back of it in a long blurb about the plot. That was another thing I’d read about the Swedes. They didn’t just write the odd dark crime novel; they wrote piles of them, and they were really good at it. It made me think there must be way more crime in Sweden than anyone was letting on.
I kind of like gruesome murder stories too, though my parents don’t know it. I sneak a look every now and then at some of the crime shows they watch. Funny how they say they are “inappropriate” for me and yet they are so into them, even talking about them when they are making dinner. There’s one called Wallander, which they’ve just started watching and seem to absolutely adore. It is particularly gross, as far as I can tell, with lots of blood and horrible crimes and has really creepy music. I remember sneaking a look at the description on the DVD case. It is set in Sweden.
Somehow I didn’t unload my guts onto Grandpa’s lap all the way across the ocean. I’m not sure how I did it. We Americans aren’t like Swedes or Canadians—we show our feelings. But, being a guy, I thought it important to hold on—to the
death if necessary.
Then the plane started its descent into Stockholm.
It looked all right down there…at first.
THREE
I couldn’t complain about our first few days in Sweden. Man, it was fun. At least, once we’d gotten out of the sky. We flew in over Scotland and then Norway and landed at Stockholm Arlanda Airport, which is way north of Stockholm. Grandpa got us a cab, and we made the long trip down to the city. I couldn’t believe how much Sweden seemed like Canada at first as we sat in the back of the cab looking out at a four-lane highway with lots of Canadian-type trees on either side and a few stretches of farmland and then some modern-looking suburbs. Everything seemed awfully clean too, just like the Great White North.
Grandpa was pointing things out—he’d obviously been here many times before—smiling away at me again as I now genuinely smiled back (since we had returned to planet Earth).
When we finally got off the highway, we hit this street called Sveavägen (with two dots over the second “a”), and things began looking a little more like I figured Sweden should look. The buildings just somehow seemed kind of Swedish, not American or even Canadian. For a start, they looked older and more colorful than North American buildings, and they didn’t have as much glass or even brick. They were kind of IKEA-like inside as far as I could tell from peering through the front windows. There were lots of cafés and trees, everything was very green, and, of course, most of the signs were in Swedish (though I was surprised to see some in English too). As we got down into the main part of the city, the buildings got higher and more American-looking, more like we’d come to the business district of an important urban center. I recognized some American stores and brands too.
Then something kind of spooked me.
We slowed in traffic, and I noticed that a cross street was called Olof Palmes gata. I looked the other way and saw a little tunnel-like street across from it called Tunnelgatan. It didn’t have any traffic on it, since it was just for walking, and the ground was covered with some sort of square gray bricks. It was awfully narrow, and I could see, in the shadows at the far end of it, steps that led up toward another street. I had the weird feeling I’d seen this place before. And it felt like it was a bad place, for some reason. Then it hit me. This was where that Swedish prime minister Olof Palme was gunned down. It must have been really close to here, perhaps at this very spot. And Tunnelgatan was the street down which the mysterious murderer had fled! Everything in the Swedish streets had seemed so perfect until that moment, so sunny and wonderful and safe.
Separated Page 1
