by Paul Adam
The noise was deafening – ten teenage boys whooping and bawling – the disruption infuriating, and it wasn’t long before the police arrived. They rounded up the gang without difficulty. Max had told the boys to allow themselves to be caught, and paid each of them 50,000 rupiahs – about three pounds – for their trouble. They were tossed roughly into the back of a van and driven to the police station. As Max had expected from Ari’s information, there were no formalities. No one filled out any forms, took fingerprints or even asked for names or looked closely at the boys. They were simply given a cuff around the ear and thrown into a large holding pen – a steel cage the size of a sitting room with a bare concrete floor and wooden benches around the edges. An officer locked them in, then went back through the door into the front part of the police station.
Max thanked the boys for helping him. They grinned and shrugged, none of them remotely worried about being locked up. Many of them had been here before and they knew they’d be out in the morning.
Max went to the front of the holding pen and peered through the mesh at the row of five steel doors to his left, working out which cells contained Consuela and Chris. He reached into his sock and pulled out the piece of wire he’d used at the processing plant. Then he knelt down and picked the lock on the holding pen door, the other boys gathering round to watch him at work. It wasn’t a hard job. Half a minute of probing through the keyhole and the door was open. Max and Ari slipped out and Max locked the door behind them.
‘Sorry to leave you, guys,’ he said to the boys, Ari translating for him. ‘Thanks again for your help.’
He went to the door of Consuela’s cell, inserted the wire into the lock and clicked back the tumblers one by one. When he opened the door, Consuela threw her arms around him.
‘Oh, Max, I’m so glad you’re OK,’ she whispered.
‘What about you?’ Max said.
‘I’m fine.’
Max went to the adjoining door and picked the lock. Chris stepped out and gave him a big bear hug and a slap on the back.
‘What the hell took you so long?’ he asked with a grin.
There was another door beyond the row of cells that had a tiny barred glass window in the centre. Max squinted through the pane and saw the yard at the rear of the police station. The door was locked, but Max had no trouble getting it open. They dashed across the yard and scrambled over the fence, then carried on running, only slowing to a walk when they’d gone five hundred metres.
‘You know something, Max?’ Chris said. ‘You’re a useful guy to have around in a tricky situation.’
‘Do the police check the cells during the night?’ Max asked.
‘They haven’t so far,’ Consuela replied.
‘So they won’t know you’ve gone until morning?’
‘Probably not. Where’ve you been, Max? I was so worried about you.’
‘I’ll tell you later.’
‘Why not now?’
‘We have things to do,’ Max said. ‘And we haven’t got much time.’
The first thing they did was find a public telephone. Max took Sammy Lin’s business card out of his wallet and rang him in Kuching. It was very late, but Sammy had said to call any time, day or night, if he was needed. Max asked him to fly to Pangkalan Bun to collect them, promising him a big bonus if he could be there by dawn.
Then Ari guided them to the local hospital, a small building near the river with a single ambulance parked outside. Max showed the nurse at the reception desk his passport and said he’d come about his father.
The nurse, a young Indonesian woman in a white uniform, looked surprised, then uncomfortable. ‘Alexander Cassidy?’ she said awkwardly. ‘You are his son?’
‘Yes.’
‘We do not know he have family, or we try to contact you. I am very sorry.’
‘What happened to him?’ Max asked.
‘He come in with bad fever,’ the nurse replied. ‘High temperature, aching limbs. He is hallucinating, his speech is rambling. Dr Halstead do his best, but we are not big city hospital. Your father’s body, his heart, are not strong enough.’
‘Could I speak to Dr Halstead? Is he on duty tonight?’
‘Dr Halstead go back to America. He leave yesterday.’
‘He’s American? How long will he be away?’
‘He go for good. He is on a three-year contract here which come to end. He has new post at hospital in San Francisco, I think.’
‘And my father’s body?’ Max said.
The nurse looked uncomfortable again. ‘He is buried in local cemetery. Dr Halstead take care of all arrangements. It seem best thing to do. We don’t know how contagious his illness is and in our climate … well, we bury our dead quick. Of course, if we know he has son … How you find out?’
‘Jaya told me – the man who runs the orang-utan sanctuary.’
‘Ah, yes, Jaya. He was at funeral, I believe. With Dr Halstead.’
‘Just the two of them?’
‘I think so.’
‘Is the cemetery far away?’
‘On edge of town, maybe three kilometres.’
‘Is there anywhere round here we can get a taxi?’
‘I call one for you.’
The nurse picked up the telephone and rang for a cab. ‘It come in two minutes. I am very sorry about your father. We do everything we can for him.’
‘I’m sure you did,’ Max said.
No one spoke on the short journey to the cemetery. Max was deep in thought, thinking about what the nurse had told them. His dad’s fever – had that been caused by Episuderon, or by something else – a tropical virus, maybe? He felt numb. Not only was his father dead, but he was buried as well. This Dr Halstead sounded like a good man – treating Alex first and then kindly taking care of the funeral. Max made a mental note to try to trace the doctor when he got home to thank him for everything he’d done.
The cemetery was some way from the nearest houses, a patch of open ground with lush rainforest encroaching on its boundaries. Max gazed out across the rows of tombs and headstones and wondered how he was going to find his father’s grave in the dark.
Ari must have been thinking the same thing, for he suddenly said, ‘We need torch. I go to taxi.’
They’d asked the cab to wait for them outside the cemetery gates. The driver gave Ari the torch he kept in his glove compartment and they headed for the far side of the cemetery, where the graves were newest. Alexander Cassidy’s was the last in a row: just a mound of bare earth, with a simple rectangular headstone engraved with his name and the date of his death.
Max stood at the end of the grave with his head bowed, saying a silent prayer for his father. Consuela stood beside him, her arm around his shoulders, tears rolling down her cheeks. Chris and Ari waited behind them, watching respectfully from a distance.
Max stared down at the mound of earth, his vision blurring, his heart breaking. He remembered how he’d grieved for his father two years earlier; then his dad had come back from the dead. He wouldn’t come back again. This time it was all over. Why did this have to happen? he thought. Why didn’t you come home? Goodbye, Dad. I love you.
It wasn’t much of a final resting place. A tiny strip of a cemetery in an obscure corner of Borneo. No proper headstone, no memorial service, no family present, no obituaries in the papers. Just a cold burial with only a couple of strangers looking on. That wasn’t a fitting end for a man like Alexander Cassidy – a loving father and husband, but also a world-famous escapologist. He deserved better.
Then a tiny niggle of doubt began to creep into Max’s mind. Why had Jaya – one of Julius Clark’s fifth columnists – been there at the burial? He had barely known his father. How had he heard of his death? Presumably Dr Halstead or someone else at the hospital had told him. But why? Why tell Jaya?
I wonder … Max thought. Is there more to this than meets the eye?
He looked back across the cemetery. By the entrance was a tiny wooden hut. Max strode across to
it. The door was held closed with a padlock. Max used his piece of wire to pick the lock and went inside. There were a couple of bamboo chairs and a table at one end, and tools stacked against the walls: machetes and shears and hoes for keeping the cemetery neat and tidy, and – this being the gravediggers’ hut – three spades. Max grabbed the spades and went back to his father’s grave.
‘Max, what are you doing?’ Consuela said, staring in horror at the tools. ‘You’re not going to—’
‘I have to know,’ Max replied. ‘I have to know for certain.’
He started to dig away the mound of earth. Consuela reached out to restrain him, then changed her mind and stepped back. Chris took a spade and began digging at the other end of the grave. Ari watched uncertainly for a few minutes, then put aside his qualms, picked up the third spade and joined in.
They dug down steadily, throwing the soft earth to one side. The hole got deeper; then, two metres down, Max’s spade hit wood. They shovelled away the last soil to reveal a coffin. Max gazed at the wooden box, feeling suddenly nervous, terrified to go on.
‘Let me do this bit,’ Chris said gently.
He straddled the coffin, wedged the spade under the lid and levered it off. Max averted his eyes: he couldn’t look.
‘Max …’ Consuela was shining the torch into the hole. ‘Max …’
Max looked down.
The coffin was empty.
‘How did you know?’ Chris asked in amazement.
‘I didn’t know. I just guessed.’
Max stared at the box, feeling an uplifting surge of joy. His father wasn’t dead. His illness, his heart failure, his burial – it had all been a trick – just like the buried-alive trick he had performed so many times during his career. But why? Why had he done it?
To fool his enemies. To fool Julius Clark into believing he was gone so that the hunt would be called off. That was the only answer. Now it became clear why Jaya had been at the burial. Alex must somehow have suspected that he was one of Clark’s men and had made sure he was present in order to convince Clark that he was dead. That meant that Dr Halstead had to have been a party to the deception. Who was he, this mysterious American doctor? Max knew he had to track him down. If he found Halstead, maybe he would also find his dad.
‘You seen enough?’ Chris said.
Max nodded. Chris replaced the coffin lid and climbed out of the hole, then they shovelled the earth back in. Max took a last look at the fake headstone and glanced up at the sky. Dawn was breaking. It was time they were on their way.
The taxi took them to the hotel to pick up their luggage and Chris and Consuela’s passports. Max waited anxiously outside while the two of them went into the building. What if the police had discovered their escape from custody? What if they were inside, lying in wait for them?
But five minutes later, Max was relieved to see Chris and Consuela coming back out with their cases. The taxi turned round and headed out to the airport. It was getting lighter by the minute. What time did the police check the cells? Max wondered. They could be checking them right now, raising the alarm. And the first place they’d notify would be the airport. Max asked the taxi driver to put his foot down.
They sped through the gates of the airport, and as they turned into the car park outside the terminal building, a small Cessna was just coming in to land.
Max took out the last of his rupiahs and some dollars and handed them to Ari. ‘Thanks for your help,’ he said with a smile. ‘I couldn’t have done it without you.’
Ari glanced at the money. ‘Is too much,’ he said.
‘Take it,’ Max insisted. ‘You deserve it. Buy your mates some bottles of cola.’
Ari grinned. ‘Was fun,’ he said. ‘You find your father, you let me know, OK? Send message to Mrs Anwar.’
‘I will.’
They shook hands.
‘Goodbye,’ Max said.
‘Selamat jalan – goodbye,’ Ari replied.
They hurried through into the departure area, Max glancing around nervously, looking for any signs of the police. But no one tried to stop them. Sammy Lin was waiting for them on the apron beside his Cessna. They climbed on board and the plane took off immediately. Max looked down out of the window as they cleared the runway and began to turn north, and saw Ari waving from the car park. He waved back, though he knew Ari probably couldn’t see him.
The plane began to climb. Max sagged back in his seat, drained by everything that had happened over the past few days. He was physically tired, but his emotions were also in shreds. For the second time his father had come back from the dead. That made him happy, but underneath he was also angry with his dad for putting him through such a traumatic ordeal. You’re playing games with us all, he thought. Except this isn’t a game – it’s a matter of life and death.
Julius Clark had tried to kill him, just as the men in Stockholm had tried to kill him. Max knew he was a target. He knew he had to fight back. This wasn’t just a question of finding his father, it was a question of personal survival.
He felt the slight bulge of the memory stick in his pocket. I’m closing in on you, Julius Clark. And I’m going to nail you. Provided I live that long.
Max turned to look out of the window. He saw oil-palm plantations and isolated patches of rainforest below. Then the plane soared into low cloud and everything disappeared in a swirling white mist.
About the Author
Paul Adam studied law at Nottingham University and started his writing career as a journalist. He has written ten critically-acclaimed thrillers for a grown-up audience that have sold widely around the world and have been translated into several foreign languages. Reviews have called his adult books, ‘Brilliantly imagined, fiercely authentic and wholly gripping’. The Max Cassidy Adventures are Paul’s first books for children. He lives with his wife and sons in Sheffield.
MAX CASSIDY’s mission does not end here, read the whole trilogy
Escape from Shadow Island
Jaws of Death
And coming soon:
Attack at Dead Man’s Bay
JAWS OF DEATH
AN RHCB DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 409 02455 2
Published in Great Britain by RHCB Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Books
A Random House Group Company
This ebook edition published 2011
Copyright © Paul Adam, 2011
First Published in Great Britain
Corgi Childrens 9780552560337 2011
The right of Paul Adam to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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