Amanda Lester and the Pink Sugar Conspiracy

by Paula Berinstein

  Chapter 31

  The Sugar Factory

  Despite King’s Cross Station having been a complete zoo and despite the fact that she’d almost boarded the wrong train to get to Bank Station, Amanda made it to her destination in what seemed to be one piece at slightly after nine. The walk from West Silvertown Station had been harrowing though. The sugar mile was industrial, and sparsely populated at night. Amanda had seen a couple of drunks who had called out, “Hey, girlie. Wanna have some fun?” and “I want to show you something,” and stuff like that. She’d quickened her already frantic pace and given them a wide berth. They’d made her more than a little nervous and she’d imagined herself in a movie to distance herself from the fear and keep it from overwhelming her. After that she’d heard odd noises, like someone screaming, and metal grinding, and had broken into a run, visualizing herself on a huge screen with monsters pursuing her. When she arrived at the plant she was panting.

  The factory was near the London City Airport, and the noise of the jets was so loud that she could barely hear herself think. The warehouse, which was unmarked, was one of many along Factory Road, which paralleled the River Thames. It was dark now, but there was enough artificial light that she could see pretty well.

  She was astonished to discover how much larger the plant was than it appeared in the satellite photo. It wasn’t just a factory, but rather a constellation of separate industrial buildings of different sizes, materials, and heights, including some gigantic round things that were probably silos. She saw a conveyor belt that would have resembled a roller coaster if it hadn’t been so straight—it was extremely tall and obviously meant to move sugar from here to there—and an enormous silver something or other with a U-shaped tube coming out of it that looked like a demented space shuttle engine. Some of the buildings were as tall as Legatum or taller, and some were shorter and squatter. Embellishing the surface of the buildings were a number of grid-like scaffoldy constructions composed of diamond, rectangle, and square shapes. The plant looked as old as the city of London itself. It would process and store an enormous amount of sugar, and it might just be where they were holding her father!

  Suddenly she wished Nick were there. The whole time she’d been gone she’d been glad to be alone with no one watching her gaffes and offering advice. But now she felt like she needed a friend. Nick had been so supportive. Simon too, of course, and Ivy and the rest, but Nick was really dreamy on top of everything else, and she could have used a bit of sugar of her own at the moment. She’d been so lucky that they’d started school at the same time. Now they’d spend the next six years learning to be detectives together and she was actually looking forward to them.

  She thought going round to the back of the plant might be the best approach so that people on the street wouldn’t see her, not that there was a lot of traffic to see her. On the other hand, if anything happened to her it might be better if someone did see her go in so they could tell the police. Oh well. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. She made her way to the back.

  When she got there she was confronted with a large loading dock. It was late in the day, after business hours, so she wasn’t surprised to see that it was deserted. She climbed the stairs and looked through the windows of the double doors leading inside. It was too dark to see much and she didn’t want to call attention to herself by using her light. What she could see was a security lock and keypad attached to the door. You needed a code to get in!

  This was not good. How could she know what the code was? She might press randomly until the end of time and still not come up with the combination. But maybe she could guess it.

  She tried spelling out words with the numbers that corresponded to the letters in sugar, Moriarty, pink, beet, sweet, and so on. Nothing worked. She took out her phone and found a thesaurus, then tried synonyms. Still nothing. If she couldn’t get in all would be lost and she’d have to make her way back to the school and sneak in, mission unaccomplished. What would happen to her father then? She began to cry.

  Suddenly for no reason at all she got an idea. It was way over the top, but she was desperate. She pulled out her phone, called Ivy, and told her about the problem. As she’d hoped, Ivy said, “I know how to do it.

  “Each of the keys on the entry pad has its own tone. When you press them in sequence, they make sort of a melody, if beeping can be considered a note. Can you press them for me and tell me which one is which?”

  Amanda pressed number after number until Ivy was familiar with the sounds.

  “Okay, do this. Press 1, 3, and 4 all at the same time.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. You want a C augmented fourth chord. Try it.”

  “Why C augmented fourth?”

  “Just do it.”

  Amanda did as she was told, and lo and behold there was a click.

  “I heard that. Quick, push the door. Hang up and don’t talk anymore,” said Ivy.

  Amanda didn’t have time to wonder. She nosed her way inside and looked around where there was more light. She could see more vats and conveyor belts and fans and catwalks and ribbed drums lying on their sides between yellow supports, and ramps, and a huge round thing that looked like the water tanks you see on L.A. hillsides, and forklifts. The whole place looked like a cross between an M.C. Escher drawing and something out of the movie “Brazil” with a dash of “Metropolis” thrown in. It seemed to be deserted. She heard crunching under her feet and looked down. Sugar! Lots and lots of it all over the floor. Yup. This was the right place.

  All around her was so much white sugar she was afraid she might go snowblind—vat after vat of the sparkling stuff, glittering like the Pacific Ocean on a summer day. It was breathtaking, or it would have been at any other time. Now its aesthetic qualities didn’t register.

  It was confirmed. There was something going on with sugar, something big. Maybe the kids’ analysis had been correct. If you were a cartel wanting to get control of the sugar market, you’d be knee-deep, er, head-deep in sugar too. So what was their strategy?

  Let’s say you wanted to take over the sugar market in the UK. What would you do? For starters you’d put your competition out of business. One way of doing that would be to charge a lot less than they do and squeeze their profits until they folded. They’d discussed that. Another way would be to cut off their supply so they didn’t have anything to sell. They’d talked about that too. And another way—it was too terrible to think of. Another way was to do away with them, period. In other words, murder!

  There had been murders. The cook and the doctor were dead, but they were the wrong people to kill. They weren’t the competition. They were working with the cartel, if that was what it was. Of course Amanda didn’t know if the criminals—for that’s what they were—had killed anyone else. Professor Pickle and that other teacher had disappeared, but Amanda didn’t see how they could be the competition either, and they might not be dead. Probably what had happened was that the cook and the doctor had double-crossed their employers, or leaked something. Anyway, how many people would they have to kill in order to eliminate the competition? That approach didn’t seem feasible. There were too many. So murdering the competition probably wasn’t in the plan.

  Charging less than their competitors seemed the most likely possibility. If they were a cartel they had plenty of money, and lowering their own profits wouldn’t hurt that much, especially since the lower price would be temporary. Once they’d eliminated their rivals, they could make up the losses by charging more than ever. But if that was the plan, why involve the cook, the doctor, and the school? Why make virus-tainted sugar?

  It had to be the cutting off the supply thing. If the virus that contaminated the sugar spread through everyone’s supply, the cartel’s rivals would have nothing to sell and that would be the end of them. Of course. That was it. The only thing Amanda didn’t understand was how they would protect their own supply and keep it from being infected.

  And then she saw something curiou
s. In the Rube Goldberg jumble of machinery she noticed a glass globe containing light blue powder. It was being added to the white sugar bit by bit. Another virus perhaps?

  She got as close as she could but she couldn’t tell what the purpose was. The sugar remained white. Did that mean it wasn’t a virus? No, of course it wasn’t. The virus turned the sugar pink. This blue stuff wasn’t doing anything. That meant there was only one thing it could be: an antidote. It wasn’t changing the sugar. It was keeping it the way it was supposed to be. That was how they protected their supply. It didn’t matter if the virus ran rampant over the entire city of London because their sugar was immune!

  It was brilliant, as long as the sugar they were producing wasn’t toxic. Amanda supposed they’d tested it. Their plan certainly wouldn’t work if they killed off all their customers. At this very moment the competition’s sugar was undoubtedly being invaded by the virus and going all pink, much to their surprise. They’d figure out why eventually, just as she had, but without an antidote it wouldn’t matter. She wondered how far the virus would spread. Would it taint sugar all over the world? If that were the case the cartel would be the only sugar supplier on the planet! How much would a package of cookies, er, biscuits, cost then?

  Regardless of this discovery, she still had to find her father, and fast. She wandered around looking at everything and keeping her ears open, but with jets flying so close to the roof she couldn’t hear anything inside the building. As she reached the far side of the gigantic room, though, she saw that there was a large door in front of her with light peeking out from underneath. Maybe someone was there!

  She put her ear to the door and tried to listen. When she had no luck, either because there was nothing to hear or because the sound of whatever was inside was being drowned out by the planes, she thought there might be a way to magnify sound and looked around for something to use as a hearing aid. She caught sight of a drinking glass someone had left on a table in a far corner and grabbed it.

  When she placed the glass to the door and her ear next to it, nothing changed. She still couldn’t hear anything. Now she had to guess. Should she chance going in where some hostile person or persons might be waiting or should she look elsewhere? She’d come all this way and managed to evade a million obstacles. If she chickened out now there would be no ending to the story, and no one likes a story that just peters out. She thought of Darius Plover, turned the handle, and stepped into an airlock. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door beyond it and looked in.

  The room, which was a smaller version of the huge factory floor outside it, was a mass of pink. There was so much sugar dust that she could barely breathe and she had to cover her mouth with her sleeve. The sticky, gritty stuff stuck to her hair, covered her clothes, and insinuated its way into her purse. She couldn’t see or hear any people, though, so she took the opportunity to explore, despite her discomfort.

  As she made her way through the dust, she saw a series of metal contraptions in the middle of the room. There was something vaguely evil about them, like those giant towers in “The War of the Worlds,” but they were much, much smaller and looked like photographic tripods. They were lined up in a row, very even and precise, like soldiers. Behind each one was a bag of pink pellets.

  Amanda couldn’t make head or tail of this. She wasn’t good with machinery, unless it was cameras. She walked around the room and examined the devices from all angles. They were just a bunch of metal and a lot of dust. When she stood in front of the towery things, however, she started to get a really bad feeling. Each one of them had a nose that looked like the bell of a trumpet or a trombone or . . . a musket! These were weapons!

  It didn’t make any sense. Were these weapons used to guard the factory? Were the pink pellets the ammunition? Did the security guards use them?

  At the thought of security guards Amanda began to panic. She’d forgotten there might be some. What if they found her? She’d better get out of there and think. Better yet, hide. That was it. She needed to find someplace out of sight. There was certainly nowhere in this room.

  She made her way back through the airlock and looked around. She could see several doors, including one labeled “Office.” That would be a good place to stay out of view, plus there might be something inside that would help her. She opened the door and pushed, relieved to escape the cloud of sugar dust in what she was now thinking of as the pink room.

  The office was stark, containing only a desk with a computer, a filing cabinet, some chairs, and a closet. Amanda thought she’d better check out the closet first in case she had to run in and hide. She went to the door cautiously and opened it. It was empty except for a couple of jackets and an umbrella.

  She tried the computer next. She turned it on and was presented with a login screen. Great. How was she supposed to know the user ID and password? She couldn’t even begin to imagine what they might be and she didn’t see how Ivy could help, although she was pretty sure Simon would have some ideas. Unfortunately she didn’t want him to know what she was doing. The computer looked like a dead end. If she ever got out of this alive she’d be sure to pay close attention to her cyberforensics class next term. The list of skills she needed to acquire was getting longer and longer.

  Her last hope was the file cabinet. She pulled open the top drawer and stood on her tiptoes so she could reach in. She grabbed the biggest folder, pulled it up and out, and set it on the desk. It bulged like an overstuffed suitcase. Papers spilled out all over the desk and threatened to fall to the floor. She spent a few seconds trying to subdue them, then started to flick through. Sure enough she’d been right. It was all there: the complete plan for sugar dominance in the UK—the virus, the antidote, price points, you name it. Simon was a genius for having realized what the criminals were doing.

  In the second drawer she found a series of schematics. Perhaps these would show what those metal weapon-looking things were. She grabbed a folder and carried it to the desk, then sat down and opened it.

  When she looked inside, she was astounded. There were drawings of the towers she had seen, with all the parts labeled. She’d been right. They were weapons. They were weapons that used compressed sugar dust as ammunition. Inside their chambers the dust, loaded in the form of pellets, was ignited and produced an explosion as powerful as that of hand-held missiles, and the criminals were manufacturing thousands and thousands of them! It didn’t make sense but there it was. Exploding sugar dust? It was crazy.

  Then she remembered something she’d seen on the news back in L.A. A Mexican sugar refinery had exploded a couple of months before she’d left the U.S., killing a bunch of people. Somehow the dust had ignited and produced an explosion as powerful as if it were a gas leak.

  It seemed that the criminals had arrived at the idea of sugar as a fuel through a complex analysis of various alternatives, including a number of designer fuels. But sugar had won hands down. It was extremely powerful. Unlike conventional explosives it was virtually untraceable. It was readily available. And who would suspect? It was just a food. Amanda had to admit that their idea was brilliant. Weird and lethal, but brilliant.

  But it was diabolical too. The criminals were selling the weapons and the fuel to other syndicates around the world by the thousands and making gobs of money. The devices could be smuggled into buildings and trucks, onto ships and trains, and assembled on city streets. They came broken down in small, unobtrusive cases that looked like cardboard boxes or briefcase-like satchels. They could be assembled and detonated by an expert in sixty seconds, blowing their targets to bits before anyone realized they were there. And since they could be detonated remotely, the shooter would be completely safe.

  Amanda reached for her phone. She had to tell Thrillkill immediately. But when she pulled it out of her bag it was all sticky and wouldn’t work. And to make matters worse, someone was opening the office door!