‘Sorry, Max.’ Quimby gently lifted the slug, ‘Harry’s a bit hyperactive and has recently discovered the joy of escaping.’
‘You’re keeping slugs?’ Max moved away from the tank and finally managed to unstick her arms. ‘And since when did they start growing that big?’
‘This is a great grey slug. He’s only eight centimetres, but they can grow up to ten. Some of our scientists are working on a top-secret theory relating to their mucous thread and anti-gravity capabilities.’
‘How about this theory? They’re disgusting.’
Quimby laughed. ‘But that is part of a slug’s charm. In you go, Harry.’
Max backed away from the container as Quimby lowered the giant gastropod into the tank.
‘After our progress with the Flea-Powered Shoes, I’ve refocused some of our activities in the lab so that we are now taking more of our invention cues from the the animal kingdom. We plan to take our scientific studies far with the help of Alfonzo.’ Quimby’s smile dissolved slightly. ‘Come back safely. All three of you.’
‘We will,’ Linden promised.
Max noticed Steinberger looking at her with eyes widened in silent, fearful panic. ‘What is it?’ Max flicked at her clothes. ‘What else is on me?’
‘Steinberger?’ Quimby watched as the Administration Manager’s face turned the colour of soggy newspaper and his breathing became laboured.
‘Sorry about the wait,’ a voice sang from behind them. ‘I was feeding the Venus flytrap and she’s unusually hungry today.’
‘Oh,’ Max sighed. ‘That’s what it is.’
It was Frond, the Head of the Plantorium and Steinberger’s not-so-secret love, who unfortunately gave him the symptoms of an asthma attack every time she came near him.
‘Hello, Steinberger. Are you okay?’ Frond pushed her rose-coloured glasses along her nose. ‘You look like you’ve jumped out of a plane and forgotten your parachute.’
The others giggled quietly as Steinberger stumbled through his answer. ‘I’m … it’s just so nice to … oh, what a lovely …’
Steinberger wheezed in another breath at the sight of Dr Frond’s beehive hair and gentle smile.
‘Dr Frond, do you have the anti-paint thingy?’ Max interrupted the muttered and pained love dribble.
‘Certainly, Max.’ Frond took a bottle of dark liquid from her red lab coat. ‘Simply use this, and in a few minutes you’ll be back to your usual self and ready to start your mission in Malta. Ah, Malta. Such a country of romance.’
Steinberger let loose a crazed giggle before slapping both hands across his mouth.
Max opened the bottle only to quickly replace the cap. ‘What is that smell?’
‘Fish eggs mostly, a little seaweed, squid ink and some other natural products.’
‘What’s wrong with a little perfumed soap?’
‘Not strong enough, I’m afraid.’ Frond shrugged. ‘Must go. I’ve got a date with a prickly pear plant that needs milking. Good luck and may the Force be with you.’
‘She’s a genius,’ Steinberger said in a whispered swoon as Frond and her red lab coat swished away.
Max wasn’t sure what was going to stink more, her or Steinberger’s love attack, but she suspected for the next few hours it was probably going to be her.
Max Remy adjusted her diving mask and Mini Underwater Snorkel before tumbling backwards from the inflatable dingy into the glass-blue waters of the Red Sea. It was a rare break from her hectic life as one of Spyforce’s youngest and most daring spies. She’d fought forgers in France, embezzlers in Eritrea and smugglers in Spain, and now it was time for a holiday.
The young spy glided through the warm, kaleidoscopic waters off Egypt, which rippled beside vast and searing deserts. She let the sea wash over her, draw her in with its cool, undulating swell. The noise and chaos of her regular life melted away as the muffled wash of ocean and soft, ballooning bubbles made her feel as if she was floating.
Fiery-coloured coral formed a miniature kingdom beneath her. Aquamarine, yellow and gold schools of fish darted in and out of roughly carved castles and grottoes, while the more curious ones strayed close to Max for a look – and a nibble – at her bright rubber goggles, or even a finger.
It was serene and peaceful.
It wasn’t to last.
In quick, flicking movements, the fish began to dart in a confused panic. They scurried beneath rock platforms, hid in knife-width crevices or simply turned and swam, leaving streaks of silver bubbles in their wake.
Max felt a thundering rush of water course over her. Whatever had caused the disturbance was big, and it was coming straight for her.
With her laser watch ready, she turned round only to come face-to-face with the swooping fins of a manta ray.
‘Aaah!’ Bubbles of Max’s scream escaped to the surface.
Knowing she would be easily outswum, she pulled her arms in close to her sides and spun around quickly, only just avoiding the intended ramming of the powerful sea creature. Max turned to see it glide past. Its great pectoral fins spread six or even seven metres wide, flinging through the sea like a giant, underwater pterodactyl. Max tried to think of a means of escape as the ray slowly turned to begin another attack. It was as if it was being controlled by another force – an unseen enemy bent on using the ray to witness the final moments of Max Remy’s life.
The manta ray sped closer and closer. Max flung her arms around, hoping to drive the giant fish away, to repel his advances, to
‘Ow!’
Linden was rubbing his cheek when Max opened her eyes. Her head felt foggy and her hand stung.
‘You don’t have to wake up if you don’t want to. I just thought you’d like to see this.’
Linden pointed out the window of the plane to the creeping expanse of the islands of Malta floating beneath them. Max leant over to see the rocky, sandstone-coloured landscape surrounded by the silver-glittered waters of the Mediterranean Sea. Sprinkled across the almost treeless islands were stone buildings, churches with grand bell towers and ancient, domed cathedrals.
‘Steinberger was right,’ Max whispered and closed her spy notebook that was sitting open on her lap.
‘Must have been some story you were writing.’ Linden’s cheek still had a red mark smudged across it from where Max’s flailing hand had struck.
‘Sorry,’ she winced. ‘I’ve been getting a little carried away in my dreams lately.’
‘You want to be careful you don’t kill someone. Like me. You’d miss me if I was gone, you know.’
‘Would I?’ Max stifled a grin. It was true – she would miss him – but when Linden kept grinning at her, she felt her smile twist into a kind of pained snarl. She shifted in her seat, feeling as if she was in one of those dreams where she was standing on stage in front of the whole school, wearing nothing but her underwear.
‘Aah!’ Max cried as the plane jolted onto the tarmac.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to Malta,’ a voice floated gently through the cabin.
‘Our mission begins, boss.’ Linden beamed, oblivious to Max’s nearly-nude-on-stage dream feeling.
‘Don’t call me boss.’
In the airport terminal, they stood by the baggage carousel and scanned the bustling room for their contact, Stefan. Max’s eyes darted between reunited smooching couples, tearful hugging relatives and even grown men kissing hellos and goodbyes.
‘They’re an affectionate people, aren’t they?’ She frowned.
‘That’s what I’ve heard.’ Linden threw a cashew into the air and caught it in his mouth. ‘And I don’t think you’re going to escape it.’
‘Escape what?’
‘That.’
‘Bongu!’
A small man with tufts of wiry, grey, Albert Einstein hair swooped in on Max, grabbed her by the shoulders and planted two slobbery kisses on both cheeks.
‘Hey, what do you –’
‘Max Remy. I’d recognise you anywhere.’ The man stopped hi
s kissing and sniffed. ‘What’s that smell? It’s like the bottom of a fisherman’s boat after a long day.’
Linden knew he was referring to Max’s fishy paint-cleaning smell and had to stop Stefan before he went any further, so he instantly threw out his arms. ‘And what about me? Don’t I get a hello?’
Stefan forgot about the fish. ‘It is so good to finally meet you.’ Linden accepted the overly emotional hello from the man they had never met before. ‘Nice hair,’ he nodded at Linden’s similarly dishevelled hairdo.
‘My mum used to say my hair had personality.’
The old man threw his arms into the air. ‘That’s what my mama used to say too.’
Max rolled her eyes, hoping they were going to stop comparing hair sometime soon. ‘I’m assuming you’re Stefan?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Where are my manners? I am Stefan Mifsud. Welcome to Malta,’ he cried loud enough for the whole island to have heard. ‘It is an honour to meet you both. I have read all about you in my palm computer, and it gives me the shivering jeebies just thinking of the dangerous missions you have been on.’
He took Max by the shoulders again and, before she could object, pulled her in and kissed her for a second time on both cheeks.
‘What –’ Max began to argue, but Stefan moved on to Linden and planted the young spy’s cheeks with yet more kisses.
‘This is truly a great day. To think, I, Stefan Mifsud, would ever have the pleasure of meeting two of the world’s most courageous individuals. To think!’ Stefan threw his arms out so vigorously he knocked into a passing flight attendant. Max and Linden shot forward and caught him before he hit the ground.
‘Are you okay?’ Linden asked.
The attendant mumbled, rubbed his head and stumbled off in a daze.
Stefan didn’t even seem to notice.
‘Well, well, well. I have to say to you, I was a little shocked when they said I’d be working with a couple of children, but the stories that run around the office about you are pret-ty impressive. And once I looked you up, well …’ He looked over his shoulder and lowered his voice. ‘Missions in the Amazon and Hollywood, saving the world’s top spies from the fiery oblivion of an active volcano and the whole city of Venice from disappearing forever into the Adriatic Sea.’ Stefan stood up and nodded authoritatively. ‘You are quite a team.’
‘Before everyone at the airport hears about how wonderful we are, do you think we could …’ Max wasn’t sure if it was the glare of the airport lights making his eyes water or whether Stefan was actually starting to cry.
‘Can I ask a favour of you both?’ The old man sniffed.
Max’s eyes zeroed in on this small, slightly odd man.
Linden gave a small shrug. ‘Sure.’
‘Can I give you a hug?’
‘I’m not sure that’s necessa–’
Max’s words were muffled by the semitrailer-sized hug that careered into both of them and squeezed them into Stefan’s chest. ‘Do you think we’re getting out of here any time soon?’ Linden mumbled through squished lips.
But Max said nothing, concentrating instead on stopping her lips from getting any closer than the few centimetres they were away from Linden’s.
‘I just want to say what an honour and a privilege it is to be serving under your capable and outstanding talents,’ Stefan’s voice wavered above them.
The bear hugging continued so that Max felt like she was being squeezed to half her original size, while Linden’s lips stayed perilously close to hers.
‘Max?’ Linden tried again. ‘I wouldn’t mind being out of here by Christmas. Do you think we need to give Stefan a bit of a shove?’
Max did nothing except keep her lips firmly closed.
‘Are you okay?’ Linden wasn’t used to Max doing nothing in the face of extended hugging. He’d seen her think up enough ways to get out of Ben’s emotional squeeze fests.
‘Uh, huh. Fine. Great even. Couldn’t be finer.’ Max knew she was blathering but blamed it on the accidental near lip-touching.
‘Now.’ Stefan released his hugged captives. ‘We go.’ He turned and strode through the crowds of people, who hoisted luggage and yanked at small children to get out of his way. ‘You’re going to love Malta. It can be a little hot and dry, and right now we are having problems with water. Much of our drinking water comes from desalination plants. One has failed and the other has been shut down due to a mysterious contamination, but otherwise, there are the beaches, the people, the food,’ he turned briefly, ‘the romance.’
‘We’re twelve,’ Max snapped. ‘We don’t do romance.’
‘Maybe not yet,’ Stefan winked, ‘but later.’
Max was left in the wake of Stefan’s romance prediction, wondering who was this man Spyforce had teamed them up with.
Outside the airport, Stefan surveyed the car park and spun his keys around his finger like worry beads.
‘Anything wrong, Stefan?’ Linden asked.
‘Nothing that finding my car wouldn’t fix.’
Max gave Linden a ‘who is this guy’ look.
‘Ah, there she is.’ Stefan stepped off the kerb and straight into the path of an oncoming car, which screeched to an ear-piercing stop. Once he was safely across the street, the car drove off as if nothing had happened. Max and Linden hurried after him, wending their way in and out of crookedly parked cars, vans and motorbikes.
‘And we are here.’
The two agents stood before a scratched and dinted version of what they assumed was a car. One side was crushed, with the red paint scratched away in long, frayed streaks. One wheel had lost its hub cap, the aerial was replaced by a bent coathanger and one of the back windows was broken and covered over by a piece of old plastic.
‘I know what you are thinking.’ Stefan tapped his temple. ‘Where’s my good-looking fast car? But this is the perfect undercover vehicle. In this car, no-one would ever suspect me of being a world-class spy.’
‘No,’ Max sighed. ‘There’d be no danger of that.’
After struggling with his key in the lock, Stefan wrenched open the driver’s door with a wailing creak and slammed it into his knee. ‘Ow!’
‘Are you okay?’ Linden winced.
‘Yes, yes,’ he wheezed through clenched teeth. ‘My knees aren’t so great anymore, but I’ll be all right.’
He lowered himself into the car with a pained groan. He fastened his seatbelt and adjusted the rear-view mirror, which came unstuck in his hand. He pulled some thick black tape out of the glove box and retaped it to the front window. ‘Buckle up, everyone.’
Stefan revved his car and crunched through the gears before bumping over the kerb and into the airport fence, which easily buckled under the wheels of his car. He crossed three lanes of traffic and swerved around a goods truck, leaving a tangle of cars in his wake, skidding into roadside bushes and spinning into tyre-screeching donuts.
‘So.’ Max tugged at her seatbelt to make sure it could handle Stefan’s driving. After racing through London with Steinberger in the Force’s Aston Martin, no safety precaution was enough. ‘Have you been a spy for long?’
‘Most of my life. When I was young I wanted to be an actor, but do you know how hard it is to even get an audition?’
He spun the wheel hard into oncoming traffic to avoid a car that had double parked. ‘Oh yeah, everybody wants to be Johnny Depp or George Clooney or Orlando Bloom.’
He jerked the wheel back again and his car screeched into the left lane.
‘First, you have to be good-looking, and don’t get me wrong, I was a very good-looking man in my younger days. The women threw themselves all over me. Ah,’ he breathed dreamily, ‘I was quite the handsome devil, I can tell you.’ A wail of squealing tyres drilled into their ears as Stefan accelerated through a red light. ‘Then you spend years doing commercials for breakfast cereal or a new toothbrush, while knocking on doors of producers and directors who are too busy to see you, and when they do see you, all they really want i
s to use you up and make themselves lots of money.’
Stefan started driving even faster.
‘Spying must be a good alternative career?’ Linden asked calmly from the back seat, as if his life wasn’t in extreme danger of being flattened under a truck.
Stefan brightened momentarily. ‘It is, don’t get me wrong.’ He turned to look at Linden. ‘But acting was my first love, and you can never quite forget a first love.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Linden nodded.
‘Stefan!’
Stefan turned back just in time to slam on the brakes. ‘Grazzi, Max. That was close.’
Max’s heart jammed in her throat like a cricket ball as she watched a mother push a pram across the street, only centimetres from the car’s bonnet.
Stefan took off again with a spluttering jerk. ‘You’ll learn that people in Malta are not very good drivers or pedestrians – they never watch where they are going. But you are lucky.’ He stabbed his chest proudly. ‘I’m one of the safe few.’
It was a whole thirty seconds before Max could start breathing again.
Stefan drove into the narrow streets of Malta’s capital, Valletta. ‘This city has a fascinating history. It was built in the sixteenth century after The Great Siege, a battle that threatened to wipe Malta off the world’s face forever.’
He screeched into a roundabout, cutting off a busload of school kids and a group of elderly German tourists.
‘We Maltese people might be short, but we are strong. With only seven hundred knights and nine thousand civilians, we faced an invading force of thirty thousand armed men.’
Stefan’s car jumped a kerb to squeeze past a delivery van before crashing back onto the cobbled road.
‘After four months of fighting, the Maltese people drove away the invaders, and the magnificent city of Valletta was built in memorial of that great heroism.’
He turned sharply to avoid a street filled with market stalls, only to bump his way to the bottom of a road made of steps before finally stopping in front of a grand hotel.
‘Quite a feat.’ He yanked on the handbrake with a yawning creak. ‘Welcome to the Hotel Valletta – one of the best hotels in Malta.’ He turned to his passenger. ‘Max, are you okay?’
Mission In Malta Page 5
