Trapped

by Isla Whitcroft

  ‘All ports,’ said Cate slowly. ‘But why?’

  ‘A-ha, well done,’ said Piot cheerfully. ‘International crime usually involves things like drugs and people and goods, and all these need to be moved around. Planes, even the small ones, have to file a flight plan and the large ones, well, let’s just say they have caught more drug dealers since the security operations were brought in after 9/11 than in the whole of the twentieth century. Cars and lorries, forget it. A random road check or a sniffer dog at a border crossing can destroy the best laid plans. No, even in this day and age you can’t beat a nice fast boat when it comes to shifting illegal items efficiently. And all boats have to come into port at one time or another.’

  ‘Which is where the IMIA comes in,’ Marcus joined in. ‘This section keeps an eye on every major port from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea. No one knows us, but we’re there. We watch and track and chase and finally we step in and sabotage anything nasty, before it happens.

  ‘In short, we do the dirty work that the local police can’t, or don’t even know about, and that the military haven’t got the expertise for. We go undercover, sometimes for months at a time. We break rules, use guns and surveillance and now . . .’ He grinned at Cate. ‘. . . even teenagers.’

  ‘You won’t have heard of us, of course. Nor will any politicians – or they won’t admit to it, which comes to the same thing. We’re on our own, really, and that’s the way we like it.’

  As Marcus finished talking, Cate suddenly realised that they had been joined by a fourth person. He was not much taller than Cate, his dark hair receding, but he nevertheless carried with him an unmistakable aura of authority and power.

  Not be messed with, thought Cate as the two of them sized each other up in silence.

  Marcus broke the impasse. ‘Cate, this is Henri Sorenzki, ex-SAS, seconded to the American CIA, had a jaunt with Mossad, back as number two at Interpol, and now Head of the Southern Central Sector of the IMIA. Got all that?’ He grinned as Cate gaped in amazement.

  ‘And Henri,’ continued Marcus, ‘meet your latest recruit. Fluent in several languages, can get by in a few more. Trained in martial arts, has natural survival skills and is one of the bravest teenagers I have ever met. She may be young but she already thinks and acts like an agent. She’s a natural.’

  There was silence. Then Henri spoke. ‘Prove it,’ he said, his black eyes staring into Cate’s face. To her surprise, his accent was cut-glass British public school.

  Cate felt a flicker of self-doubt before her competitive streak kicked in. ‘Well,’ she said in Russian, ‘if I wanted to get back in here I know that the code is 106829443110.’

  Marcus looked rueful. ‘I did it very quickly,’ he said to no one in particular.

  ‘And?’ said Henri.

  Cate looked at her watch. This time she spoke in Italian. ‘If I don’t make a phonecall within the next hour, then you are going to have the local gendarmes racing to break down the door of the poor accountant upstairs – which is probably where the last reading was given off by my tracking device. They might not find me but they’ll make life difficult for you.’

  A look of annoyance flitted across Henri’s face. ‘Marcus, this is a security breach.’

  ‘Sorry, Henri,’ said Marcus, sounding not very sorry at all. ‘I told you she was good.’

  Henri sighed. ‘OK, Marcus, I believe you. But she’s just a kid, no matter how bright or tough she is. What happens if she gets hurt or, worse still, jeopardises our work?’

  ‘We don’t have a choice,’ said Marcus, no longer smiling. ‘We’re going nowhere fast on this case using orthodox methods and we have already lost one good man and Andrei is fighting for his life in hospital. Thanks to Cate, we found him just in time, but he’s in a coma and hasn’t spoken since.’

  Cate looked up at the mention of Andrei but Marcus was in full flow.

  ‘Now our intelligence shows that the latest shipment has arrived and we probably have less than a week before it disappears out again. If that happens, who knows when we’ll get a good chance to crack the case again?

  ‘Cate is in the right place, at the right time, to help us and no one will ever suspect a kid like her of being an agent. She is our best hope of working out what the hell is going on here.’

  There was a silence. Three pairs of eyes turned to Henri, but still he hesitated. Then Marcus played his trump card.

  ‘I heard the American President has taken a special interest in the case,’ he said slyly. ‘Apparently he’s very keen on preserving endangered animals. He is talking about bringing in the CIA.’

  Henri went visibly pale under his dark skin. ‘OK, Marcus, you win. But just for this case, you understand? After that we debrief her and she goes back to her old life, gossiping about boys on Facebook or whatever it is girls do nowadays. And keep this quiet, on a need-to-know only. Even within our own department. You understand? I don’t want anyone else to know that we’re working with kids. We’ll be a bloody laughing stock.’ He shook his head, as if in disbelief at his rashness, but still held out his hand to Cate. ‘Welcome aboard, Cate Carlisle. And good luck.’

  ‘Just hang on a minute,’ said Cate, ignoring the outstretched hand and glaring first at Marcus and then at Henri. ‘Is anyone going to actually ask my opinion about this? More to the point, could one of you please tell me exactly what is going on?’

  She spoke with such vehemence that two men at a desk ten metres or so away looked up in amazement before turning back to a map on their computer.

  ‘You bring me here, put me on some sort of trial, discuss just how good I am, right under my nose, and not one of you has the decency to even ask me what I want to do. You’re acting worse than parents!

  ‘Why would I agree to just jump in with you without knowing what for? I’d be mad to do that – and come to that, you’d be mad to let me.’

  There was a sharp intake of breath from Marcus and Piot. Henri glowered at Cate, who glowered back.

  ‘Tell her,’ said Henri abruptly. ‘Then get her to work.’

  Silently, Marcus and Piot walked towards a desk which was standing underneath a screen showing footage of what looked like little more than a shanty town. Children were standing knee-deep in rubbish and mean-looking young men were hanging out at street corners. Most of the buildings were little more than shacks, some with tin roofs, a few like concrete bunkers. A couple of chickens wandered down what passed for a street and some mangy dogs were scavenging through the rubbish.

  ‘Right, Cate, we don’t have much time,’ Marcus said abruptly. ‘Concentrate while I talk you through the case. You can give us your answer afterwards.

  ‘This is Tendo, which believe it or not is the capital of the West African state of Ramibia. Heard of it?’

  Cate shook her head. ‘Never,’ she said.

  ‘No real reason why you should have. Ramibia is an ex-French colony spread across a few thousand kilometres of sand which runs along the West Coast of Africa. One of the poorest countries in the world, most kids your age there will have kids of their own and will be dead by the time they are forty-five.

  ‘The worst place to live in Ramibia is Tendo. It’s a port, but not in any sense that you would recognise. Fifty years ago, Tendo was a vital part of the major trade routes in and out of West Africa, a huge well-oiled cog in a very busy wheel.

  ‘Today it’s a hell-hole, rife with pirates and thugs of every nationality and description,’ Marcus said grimly. ‘There are mercenaries from Angola, terrorist groups from Pakistan, money men from Uzbekistan and the place is run like a private fiefdom.

  ‘The harbour master has his own helicopter and bodyguards and the mayor controls a small army, complete with, rumour has it, a couple of tanks, just in case anyone is brave enough to try and come and arrest him.

  ‘You can imagine what goes through the port today. Illegal drugs, trafficked people, fake pharmaceuticals, missile parts, stolen credit cards – even parts of nuclear bombs have bee
n known to turn up. It’s like the Wild West, only with Sat-nav and missile launchers. Even the CIA pulled out last year. But we’ve still got some men in there, brave sods that they are. And one of them sent us footage of something that was pretty awful. Which is where we – and you – come in.’

  Marcus picked up a pair of headsets, nodded for Cate to do the same, then pressed a button on the remote and the screen went blank. A split second later, it lit up again and the shanty town had gone. This time the camera was in a dark, confined space, moving shakily and hesitantly from side to side. There was no sound except a few small, sharp intakes of breath from the person holding the camera. A sound, Cate thought, of fear.

  The camera focused on a tiny cage, which at first appeared to be empty. But then, as the camera zoomed in, Cate spotted a creature lying at the back of the cage. Startled by the camera, it turned its head and Cate saw, with horror, that it was a baby orang-utan. She had never seen such a pitiful creature. Vomit streaked the front of its chest, most of its fur was matted or missing and its eyes were inflamed and full of pus. A large gash could clearly be seen along its back and its limbs were trembling either through pain, fear, or both.

  As it saw the cameraman, the wretched creature pushed itself further back into its cell, scrabbling crablike in a desperate circle, before giving up and crouching back down in silent misery.

  The camera left the cage and moved on to the next one. Another distressed animal, this time an infant snow leopard, lay in the stifling darkness, without bedding or, as far as Cate could see, water or food. Next to it, panting and wheezing, was a Siberian tiger cub, its distinctive stripes almost unrecognisable under a layer of what looked like excrement. Cate felt sick. She wanted to look away but she couldn’t.

  Cate had always loved animals, even though her nomadic lifestyle had meant she was never able to have a pet of her own, and it was clear that these poor creatures were going through a trauma too awful to contemplate.

  Despite herself, Cate felt tears stinging behind her eyes. ‘Get a grip,’ she told herself crossly.

  ‘Do you want to see any more?’ Marcus asked her quietly.

  Cate turned to him. ‘No, I get the gist,’ she said roughly, trying to hide her emotions. ‘What’s going on? Why are these animals being kept like this? What are they doing in Tendo?’

  ‘We don’t really have the answer to those questions,’ said Marcus. ‘Animal poaching has always been a problem, you probably know that. Over the twentieth century we lost hundreds of thousands of elephants, gorillas, tigers, and that is still going on. But now the really rare species – the Siberian tiger and the orang-utan, the ones on the verge of extinction – well, they are much more protected.

  ‘Most of them live in reserves which are guarded and protected 24/7 with CCTV and often watchtowers. They are looked after by teams of conservationists, people who are very dedicated and very, very protective. At any one time they more or less know the whereabouts of every single one of their charges, and big money is spent making sure they don’t lose them to the bad guys. It’s worked well. The populations of these species are slowly but surely increasing, although we all know it’s going to take a long time.’

  ‘But now?’ asked Cate.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Marcus. ‘But now, these animals, the ones that you saw and dozens of others, are being taken from right under the noses of their protectors and disappearing. They’re young, as you saw, all tagged and microchipped. We’re losing a dozen or so a month from across Asia, Africa, even the Chinese are reporting that their giant pandas have been stolen. That’s no mean feat. The Chinese government would cheerfully execute anyone who harmed a hair of their precious pandas’ heads.

  ‘Whoever is doing this is playing a very high risk game in some of the most dangerous countries in the world. We can pretty much guess that the smuggling is being carried out for financial gain – it always is. But is someone out there trying to build up a private zoo, or using them for some nonsensical medicinal purpose that we haven’t yet come across? We just don’t know who is behind it or why.

  ‘But we do know that whoever it is, they are clearly extremely well organised, well funded and know exactly what they want.’

  Cate was puzzled. ‘You said the animals are disappearing, but you know where the film was taken. And that it’s somewhere in Tendo, which is why you’re monitoring it so closely.’ She pointed at the screen. ‘So, why can’t you just charge in and rescue them?’

  ‘If only it were that simple.’ Marcus sounded frustrated and weary. ‘For months we knew that they were going missing but had no idea where they had gone. There was no chatter on the internet, they didn’t turn up in any of the usual dodgy dealers’ hotspots, or on websites that trade in these things. They just vanished into thin air.

  ‘That was until last month, when we received this film from one of our undercover guys. He’d discovered these animals waiting in Tendo to go on a ship bound for – yes, Cate – Antibes.’

  ‘Why didn’t he call the police and get them to raid the place?’ Cate was bewildered.

  Marcus sighed. ‘Because he knew just how corrupt the local cops are. But he was rumbled anyhow and he hasn’t been seen since. This is Tendo, remember. The poor sod is probably lying at the bottom of Tendo harbour, hugging a concrete block. That is, if he’s lucky.’

  Suddenly the room, and the world, seemed to be a colder, scarier place. Cate shuddered.

  ‘Somehow, he managed to get a message to his IMIA handler and tell him where he had hidden the data card that held the film file,’ continued Piot.

  ‘Who was his handler?’ asked Cate, although she already had a pretty good idea.

  ‘Yes, it was Andrei,’ said Piot soberly. ‘He was trailed back to Antibes where he was attacked and, if it wasn’t for you, would probably be dead.’

  ‘Clearly whoever is running this operation knows someone is on to them,’ broke in Marcus.

  ‘We have to stop these thefts. Not only are we losing too many precious creatures but we have no idea what is being done to them. At this rate, some of these species could be facing extinction. Gone, forever.’

  There was silence. Then Cate took a deep breath. ‘OK, I understand all that,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s terrible, it’s . . . disgusting, it’s revolting.’ She struggled to find the words. ‘But where do I come in? If they are in Antibes, those animals could be anywhere.’

  Marcus and Piot exchanged glances.

  ‘We don’t have much to go on but we do have one lead,’ said Piot. ‘Animals often disappear when Nancy Kyle comes visiting. It happened in China, Thailand, in Nepal, in South Africa, Rwanda and Kenya. She turns up, big fanfare, talk on animal rights, donates money for conservation, an orphanage whatever, sometimes adopts a small child for the heck of it and then, nine times out of ten, an animal goes missing. And now that the trail is leading to Antibes, she turns up right here, out of the blue, when she was actually scheduled to be in London for the entire Wimbledon fortnight.’

  ‘But this is Nancy Kyle we’re talking about,’ said Cate, horrified. ‘She loves animals, campaigns for them, raises money for them. God, she has saved thousands of them. Why on earth would she be involved in something as awful as this?’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense, I agree,’ said Marcus calmly. ‘But either it’s one huge coincidence – and personally I don’t much believe in coincidences – or Nancy Kyle is involved in the sort of devious double bluff not seen since the end of the Cold War.’

  ‘Those were the days,’ said Piot dreamily.

  Marcus glared at him. He turned back to Cate and looked at her, almost pleadingly. ‘Cate, you’re right at the epicentre of this whole thing. And the beauty is, no one will ever suspect you of being anything other than, well, a kid. You can find out so much more than we ever could. Just hang out near Nancy, find out things about her, snoop around, keep close to her. She could be completely innocent, but I’m sure she’s the key to cracking this case. And you’re the best perso
n to help us do that.’

  And if I decide that this is all too big for me, too scary, then what? thought Cate, staring at Marcus’s intense expression.

  The agent seemed to read her mind and shrugged. ‘Cate, if you don’t want to do this, just tell us. We’re not monsters or modern day Fagins, forcing you to do something against your will. Say the word and we’ll get you away from here and we’ll never mention it again.’ His voice took on a wheedling tone. ‘Why don’t you look on it as a charitable endeavour, or a sort of really unusual work experience? Help us out if you can and, at the end of it, you just walk away. Well, Cate, what will it be?’

  CHAPTER 6

  Cate stumbled back out of the alleyway into the bright, late afternoon sunshine and stood for a few minutes, gulping in the fresh air, frantically trying to reset her brain and make sense of what she had just agreed to do.

  Gradually, the heat warmed her cold limbs, the fresh, salty sea breeze blowing away the cloying dampness of the caves from her nostrils, and she began to feel part of the human race again.

  She looked down at the bulging straw shopping baskets she was clutching in either hand. Marcus had shoved them at her just before he sent her back to rejoin the outside world. ‘Your cover,’ he had said. ‘Take them back to the boat and carry on as normal.’

  But nestled in her pocket was another far more interesting gift from her new colleague.

  ‘Gadgets, devices, tricks of the trade,’ Marcus had told her with a big grin as he handed her the innocuous-looking square tin. ‘Every good spy should have them. There’s another gadget in the bottom of one the baskets too. I’ll run through all of them with you later.’

  Then he was gone, back into the murky depths of the cave. As the lift screeched and juddered its way upwards, Cate wondered how someone who did a job like Marcus’s could manage to behave in an even remotely normal way, let alone be that laid-back on the boat. She knew it must be tough to compartmentalise like this.