Mission In Malta

by Deborah Abela

  ‘A blowtorch?’ Max asked. ‘Isn’t that a little dangerous?’

  ‘Yes, but you know how the chief gets when he has an idea. If you need anything else, contact me immediately. May the Force be with you.’ Steinberger signed off and disappeared from Max’s screen.

  ‘What would a leech expert like Straussmann be doing with Syphon?’ Max asked.

  ‘He needs a little help with his pet leech?’ Linden suggested. ‘Or he’s wants to breed performing leeches for a leech circus and needs some advice on how best to train them. Or maybe –’

  ‘Okay, I think I’ve had enough of the suggestions.’ Max deactivated the Shush Zone and the invisible security cone disappeared.

  ‘But I’ve only just begun,’ Linden pleaded. ‘There’s also –’

  ‘Look at this.’ Max stared out of her hotel window. ‘There’s a flashing light coming from the top of Fort St Angelo. What is it?’

  ‘Someone got a new torch for their birthday?’

  ‘And why would they want to show it off to us?’

  Linden watched the flashing light that shone in short bursts and then long flares. ‘It’s no birthday present,’ he realised. ‘It’s Morse code.’

  ‘Morse code? How are we going to work out what it says?’

  Linden grabbed a piece of paper and pencil from the desk. ‘I can work it out if I write it down.’

  ‘You know Morse code?’

  ‘I was helping teach Larry.’

  ‘Of course you were.’

  The light continued to switch on and off in long and short bursts.

  ‘Dot, dot, dot, dot.’ Linden copied the letters down. ‘Pause, dot, pause, dot, dash, dash, dot. Pause again. Dot, dash, dash, dot.’

  ‘It says, help,’ Linden deciphered.

  ‘Help? Who is it from?’

  ‘It doesn’t say. But there’s more.’ Linden again took down the mysterious code. This time it was longer.

  ‘Help … me …’ Linden translated before looking up. ‘Max.’

  ‘Help me, Max? Me, Max?’

  ‘I’m not sure Max is such a common name in Malta,’ Linden suggested. ‘And it is pointing directly at your window, so I’d say so. Is it the same person who left the note in your pie?’

  ‘Maybe they’ve decided to meet earlier. Maybe they’re in trouble.’

  ‘Or maybe it’s a trap.’ Linden frowned.

  ‘A trap? Why would it be a trap?’

  ‘They don’t like that we’re getting close to finding out who is after Alfonzo.’

  ‘And maybe they have information that will take us even closer to solving our mission.’ Max watched as the light repeated the same plea. ‘We have to go.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Linden shook his head.

  ‘Come on,’ she added with a smile. ‘If anything happens, I’ll buy you breakfast for the rest of the mission.’

  ‘Okay, but the moment we sense trouble we’re out of there.’

  Max and Linden put on their packs and headed downstairs into the quiet, night streets of Valletta. They ran down steep alleyways, past creeping cats scrounging for food, a few strolling couples, and the blue light and muffled voices of TV sets. Soon they reached the edge of the harbour. A breeze stirred the light-sparkled surface, creating the whisper of a gently lapping sea. The foreshore in front of them was empty of boats and across the bay was the fort.

  In a brief exchange of looks, Max and Linden pulled out the levers on their backpacks. ‘Looks like we fly,’ Max grinned.

  The fortress city of Valletta rose behind them as the two spies activated their packs and were slowly lifted into the air under the protective cover of darkness. Max looked ahead as her Personal Flying Device glided effortlessly towards the fort. The light of the Morse code message was still flashing. Still pleading for help. Linden was slightly in front of her, and in only minutes they would both be there.

  Or that’s what they thought.

  Max’s pack began to falter. It spluttered through the air like a car running out of petrol. She moved jerkily forward, rising and falling. She grappled with the lever, trying to gain control, trying to stop her descent.

  Then the PFD stalled.

  ‘Linden!’ Max looked below into the inked blackness of the sea, dropping in a terminal freefall.

  Linden turned to see his spy partner plunging silently into the night. ‘Max! Your parachute!’

  Max worked her fingers to the strings at the side of her pack and tugged hard. Her parachute opened above her in a billowing slap, jerking her forward on the edge of the breeze. Linden landed with his pack on the shore, beneath the fort. ‘Just a little bit further,’ he whispered.

  Max’s parachute sailed towards him. Sinking and sailing closer to safety until a sudden burst of air pushed her sideways. Max tumbled like a broken string puppet at the whim of the wind, twirling beneath the chute.

  Linden reached out helplessly when she fell with a muffled splash into the harbour. ‘Max!’

  But there was nothing. Just the warm night wind and the rippling of Max’s parachute, floating on the harbour surface like the remains of a shipwreck.

  And something else. Something he couldn’t see.

  Linden took off his pack and dived into the harbour. All around him, like slow moving horses on a merry-go-round, were colourful Luzzi – red, yellow and blue-painted fishing boats, all with two eyes painted on the front to ward away evil spirits. Eyes of Osiris. They bobbed beneath the lights of the shore, buoyed up and down by the gentle swell of the sea. Most of them were equipped with the usual fishing supplies: nets, tackles, boxes of bait and lures, but in one of them, not far from where Linden was frantically searching for his friend, a man lay hidden from view. Watching from beneath a canvas cover. A sly grin on his face. A small, compact gun firmly grasped in his hand.

  ‘Please answer, Max.’ Linden’s voice echoed emptily around the harbour. It reverberated off the stone walls of the fort and foreshore. With his torch watch held before him and his flippers activated on his shoes, he quickly swam to the floating parachute.

  ‘Max?’

  He’d seen no sight of his friend since the fall. Maybe telling her to activate the parachute was a mistake. Maybe it had smothered her underwater, making it impossible to breathe, impossible to find the surface, and now she was … she was …

  ‘Max!’ Linden swam harder and faster until he reached the outskirts of the chute. He grabbed at the silky material, pulling it towards him, folding it up in his arms as his buoyancy vest kept him afloat. Finally he felt the strings of the chute. Driving one hand over the other, he pulled the strings towards him like a lifesaver pulling a swimmer from drowning waves. On the end, floating like a washed-up lifebuoy, was the limp body of Max.

  ‘Oh Max, please.’

  He held his friend against him and blinked away the stinging in his eyes. With his free hand, he took out his pocketknife and cut away the strings of the chute. ‘You’ll be fine, Max,’ he panted. ‘I promise.’

  He swam with one arm wrapped around her and the other breaking through the water, tugging them both to safety.

  Linden reached a metal ladder fixed to the stone wharf beneath the fort. He retracted the shoe’s flippers and dragged Max out of the water, laying her carefully down on the ground.

  ‘Max,’ he whispered and gently slapped her on the face. ‘Max?’

  She didn’t move.

  ‘I’m sorry, Max. I know you’re going to hate this, but I have no choice.’

  Linden positioned himself beside his spy partner. The wharf was eerily quiet apart from the gentle kissing sound of the harbour water and Linden’s racing heart. He tilted her head back, pinched her nose between his fingers, slowly leant over and opened his mouth. His head moved closer and closer, moving straight for Max’s opened lips. He felt a panicky, quivering jangle at his nerves. A large drop of water fell from his hair. With only millimetres between them, Max’s lips got larger and larger. He opened his mouth wider, when …

&nbs
p; ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Giving you the “kiss of life”.’ Linden pulled his head back.

  ‘If you come one millimetre closer, I’ll give you the slap of death.’

  Linden smiled. ‘You’re back.’

  ‘Where else would I be? And move away, you’re freaking me out.’

  Linden straightened up. ‘Looks like you are going to be okay.’

  ‘Of course I’ll be okay,’ Max said gruffly. ‘Especially if you don’t …’

  Linden laughed and pushed his sodden hair out of his eyes, only to have it fall back again.

  ‘What’s so funny. Why am I all wet?’ Max rubbed her cheek. ‘And why does my face sting?’

  Linden did nothing more but crouch beside her and smile. ‘Stop smiling at me, it’s getting … my backpack,’ she remembered. ‘My backpack failed, didn’t it? But Quimby had them serviced. Someone’s tampered with them. They’re trying to stop us from solving this mission, and they’re not going to win.’

  Max sat up quickly and cradled her head in both hands. ‘And as soon as my head stops spinning, we’ll get straight back to it.’

  Linden was still quiet.

  ‘Don’t you have anything to say?’

  ‘It’s good to have you back,’ he answered quietly.

  Max squirmed in Linden’s stare. ‘Right. I think my head’s better now.’

  The flashing light from the fort started again. Max and Linden watched as the same regular pulses of the plea for help were signalled.

  ‘It’s coming from up there.’ Max pointed to the top of the fort that sat high above the harbour.

  Max and Linden hurried over to the point beneath the light.

  ‘It’s a little higher than Straussmann’s window,’ Max breathed.

  ‘We can figure out another way in.’

  ‘No,’ Max blurted. ‘There’s no time.’

  She flexed her feet before positioning them firmly apart. She looked one more time at the top of the fort and felt her head spin again. She looked quickly down and clamped her eyes tight.

  ‘Bend your knees when you land and the shoes will absorb most of the shock,’ Linden reminded her.

  Max felt his calmness float over to her on the breeze and smiled. ‘Let’s go.’

  The two agents bent their knees in preparation and, with a single leap, began to ascend past the ancient layers of stone on Fort St Angelo. They flew over the towering walls before slowing and heading downwards to a courtyard in the fort’s interior.

  Linden landed with a cushioned bounce and a puff of dust rose around his feet. Max, however, landed with a plunging splash in an outdoor pool.

  Linden turned on the torch in his watch and raced over. He held out his hand. ‘Quimby was right about finding ourselves in water during this mission.’

  ‘I don’t see you in any water,’ Max grumbled. She stepped out of the waist-high pool, which smelt as if it hadn’t been cleaned since the time the fort had been built. ‘And of course it has to stink. What’s a pool doing in a fort anyway?’

  Linden looked at the stable-like building behind them. ‘Maybe it’s where they washed the horses.’

  ‘Great,’ Max sighed.

  The fort was crumbled and rundown. Buildings around them were boarded up with planks of wood and wire mesh. There were danger signs nailed over windows and doors warning against entry and clusters of blackened and burnt out fire pits surrounded them like flattened moon craters.

  ‘Something tells me this place needs a spruce up.’ Linden stepped over a half-burnt door lying in a cold fire pit.

  ‘Where do we look?’ Max squinted into the darkness. ‘This place is huge.’

  A pained groan sounded from the far edges of the fort.

  ‘Maybe over there.’ Linden and Max moved carefully towards the groaning to find Straussmann crumpled against an outer wall, struggling for breath.

  ‘Straussmann? What is it? What’s happened?’ Max knelt beside the weak and wheezing man. A torch lay about a metre away, beyond his grasp.

  ‘I … I …’ Straussmann stammered. ‘I know who it is,’ he gasped.

  ‘Who it is, what?’

  ‘Who it is that’s after Alfonzo,’ he breathed and rocked forward, clasping his hands to his side.

  ‘So do we.’ Max straightened. ‘You.’

  Straussmann doubled over, holding his stomach in a teeth-gritting cry of pain. ‘It was for a while. I was offered money to kidnap Alfonzo, but even though he thinks he’s so much better than everyone else with his fame and his fans and his exclusive groups of scientists …’ He took a few more gasping breaths. ‘I couldn’t do it.’

  ‘Really?’ Max’s head fell in a disbelieving tilt. ‘You changed your mind?’

  ‘Yes.’ Straussmann bent forward. ‘The people after him lied to me about what they wanted him for.’

  ‘It’s such a shame when you can’t trust criminals, isn’t it?’ Max sneered.

  ‘At first I enjoyed the idea of teaching Alfonzo a lesson and pocketing a huge sum of money I could use to continue my research, but when I discovered how far these people were prepared to go to get what they wanted, I couldn’t allow myself to do it.’

  ‘So, what were you doing at the luncheon today?’ Max accused. ‘When I thought you were aiming a cupcake gun at Alfonzo.’

  ‘It wasn’t a cupcake gun,’ Straussmann replied weakly. ‘It was a cupcake tranquilliser.’

  ‘So I was right. Sort of.’ She frowned. ‘But Linden checked it.’

  Straussmann smiled. ‘The one I gave Linden was a fake, the real tranquilliser cupcake was squashed in my jacket pocket.’

  ‘But why would you want to tranquillise Alfonzo in such a public place when you would have had a million chances to do it somewhere more discreet?’ Linden asked.

  ‘I wasn’t after Alfonzo. I was after someone who … aaah.’ Straussmann grabbed at his stomach.

  ‘Who?’ Linden asked.

  Straussmann grunted. His face creased in pain. ‘Someone who’s after Alfonzo.’

  ‘And you expect us to believe you?’ Max folded her arms across her chest as Straussmann opened his coat to reveal a small bloodstain across his shirt. Max’s face turned the colour of an old sport sock.

  ‘I guess we have to,’ Linden decided. ‘Who did this to you?’

  ‘The same person who is after Alfonzo.’

  ‘And who is that?’ Max asked.

  ‘You must act quickly.’ The last of his strength was fading fast. ‘They’re coming for Alfonzo tomorrow.’

  ‘Who? Who’s coming?’ Max cried.

  ‘It’s … it’s …’

  Straussmann’s head collapsed backwards and fell to the side. His whitened face became grey, his body limp and unmoving.

  ‘Straussmann?’ Max tried to shake him back to consciousness.

  Linden put his ear against the collapsed man’s chest. ‘His heart’s really weak.’

  ‘It still doesn’t mean he’s innocent.’

  ‘No,’ Linden opened Straussmann’s shirt, ‘but maybe this does.’

  Max leant in and saw a large, plump leech clinging to his stomach next to the wound. It wobbled sleepily for a few seconds before falling to the ground.

  ‘I think I may have to pass out too.’

  Linden lifted his watch. ‘I’ll call Stefan to come and get us.’

  ‘Tell him not to bring the horse.’ Max slumped. ‘I don’t think my stomach could handle it.’

  Linden contacted Stefan, who answered immediately that he was on his way.

  Max concentrated on taking deep breaths and not thinking about the leech. ‘So we’re looking for someone else. Possibly another leech expert who was at the luncheon today.’

  ‘Seems like it,’ Linden nodded.

  Max shivered from the cool of the night air against her waterlogged body and the thought of what had happened to Straussmann.

  And that there was someone else out there who was after Alfonzo.

  �
�Have we been wrong all this time?’ Max’s face moulded into a pool of disappointment.

  ‘We went after the man we thought was the culprit. Who was for a while,’ Linden reasoned gently. ‘That’s what we’re supposed to do.’

  ‘But we’re not supposed to get it wrong.’

  Max remained slumped at the top of the fort, surrounded by the ruins of her speculations. She lifted her head towards the collapsed body of Straussmann. Her skin tightened with goose bumps.

  ‘But Alfonzo said one leech bite couldn’t kill you.’

  ‘No,’ Linden frowned, ‘ordinarily it can’t.’

  He took a hanky from his pocket and used it to carefully wrap up the leech. ‘Maybe this isn’t your ordinary leech.’

  ‘He was poisoned.’

  The doctor gently closed the door of her examination room and sat beside Max, Linden and Stefan.

  ‘Someone poisoned a leech?’ Max’s brow creased.

  ‘Not the leech. Mr Straussmann.’

  When Stefan arrived after Linden’s call, he had taken Max, Linden and Straussmann to a friend of his who was a doctor and was waiting for them at her surgery, not far from Fort St Angelo.

  ‘All his symptoms indicate he has been poisoned by the weever fish.’

  ‘The what fish?’ Max sat forward.

  ‘The weever fish. I’ve yet to run tests but I am almost certain. It’s very common in Mediterranean waters.’

  ‘Ow!’ Stefan went to stand up but clasped a hand onto his back and groaned before sitting back down.

  ‘Are you okay, Stefan?’ Dr Victoria pushed her long, thick hair over her shoulders.

  ‘A bit of back strain,’ Stefan wheezed. ‘I think I got it when I picked up your patient, but don’t worry about me, I’ll be all right.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ The doctor placed a gentle hand on Stefan’s knee. ‘Because I could …’

  ‘But Straussmann wasn’t in the sea when we found him,’ Max interrupted. ‘He was in one of the courtyards of the fort.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but he didn’t receive the poison from being in water. Near where the leech had attached itself to Mr Straussmann’s body was a small dart, which seems to have been injected with concentrated poison from the weever fish. From the depth that the dart had penetrated the skin, my guess is that it was fired from quite a distance and would have put Mr Straussmann in immediate and severe pain.’