Song had just cast off and was speeding away towards the cliffs in the opposite direction.
‘Mr Spencer.’ Curtis spun around to speak to Ed, but the man had disappeared downstairs to get a closer look at Max’s fish.
‘I’ve got something!’ Kensy shouted. The line took off and she held the rod tightly. The family looked on eagerly.
Upstairs Curtis could see the black boat heading straight for them.
‘Ed!’ he yelled. But Kensy was making so much noise, whooping and cheering that nobody heard him.
‘Sorry, I need some help up here!’ Curtis shouted, watching the black boat getting closer and closer. It was on a collision course. The boy’s heart was pounding. He reached out and pressed the button to raise the anchor, hoping that it was the right one.
‘Fitz, Ed!’ he cried again, but no one came. So the boy did the only rational thing and fired the engines.
Now he had their attention.
‘Hey, Curtis,’ Ed called. ‘What are you doing?’
The man bounded up the stairs as the boy pushed the throttle to full speed. Max and Fitz fell forward, grabbing the back of the boat and just saving themselves, but Kensy flipped into the sea, still clutching her rod tightly.
It was fortunate that Hector, Marisol, Mim and Cordelia were all sitting down as they tumbled against one another like a pack of dominos. They quickly managed to right themselves. Anna grabbed a chair to stop herself from quite literally hitting the deck.
Frank was nowhere to be seen.
‘Girl overboard!’ Fitz roared.
Kensy wasn’t giving up her fish for love nor money. It was pulling her through the water at a rate of knots. She did her best to keep her mouth shut but still managed to take on several large gulps of sea water. If only she could stand up, she’d be able to ski behind the thing it was going so fast.
‘What are you doing?’ Ed screamed at Curtis. But then he saw the speedboat too.
‘Who’s driving that thing?’ Ed shouted, but he couldn’t see anyone on board. Curtis turned the wheel sharply to the left, almost flipping everyone over for the second time in as many minutes. The vessels missed each other with barely centimetres to spare. Moments later the speedboat exploded into a fireball, sending debris raining down over the sea.
‘A bomb!’ Ed shouted. ‘It must have been booby trapped or something as it didn’t look like there was anyone on board.’ He scanned the water for any signs of life and the cliffs too, but there was nothing.
Downstairs the rest of the family was rendered speechless until Cordelia shouted that Kensy was still in the water.
‘Good job, mate.’ Ed nodded at Curtis who was the colour of a sheet of paper. ‘I’ll take it from here.’
Ed wheeled the boat around, away from the burning wreckage and sped towards his daughter who, when she heard the explosion, had finally let go of the rod. She was bobbing up and down and waving her left arm.
Ed pulled up beside her and Fitz leaned over, dragging her onto the transom. Kensy coughed and sputtered.
‘What was that?’ she gasped for breath.
Max ran to the side of Anuket and looked back to where pieces of the shredded speedboat were floating in the water.
‘What about the driver?’ he yelled.
Ed called down from the bridge. ‘There was no one on board.’
‘One heck of a remote-controlled toy,’ the boy mumbled to himself.
‘We need to get that picked up now,’ Cordelia said. ‘All of it. Where’s Frank?’
The family looked around.
‘Frank!’ Cordelia shouted. Fitz flew downstairs, followed by Max and Anna. They checked every stateroom and the bathrooms too.
Max ran to the engine bay.
‘Frank!’ he called out then spotted the man lying on the floor. ‘He’s in here!’
Fitz and Anna charged into the room.
Max stared at the lifeless body. ‘Is he dead?’
Anna fell to her knees and checked the man’s pulse and breathing.
‘No, he’s alive, but only just,’ she said.
‘Help me carry him to a bed,’ Fitz said.
He and Max grabbed the man and with Anna’s help they lugged him to the largest of the staterooms.
‘What’s that, in his mouth?’ Max said, noticing a sliver of foam trailing from his lips.
‘I think he’s been poisoned,’ Fitz said then raced into the bathroom to get a first-aid kit that contained far more interesting things than betadine and bandaids.
The family minus Mim and Fitz had gathered in the sitting room as per Cordelia’s instructions. Fitz had remained behind at the lighthouse, overseeing the recovery of what was left of the speedboat along with Shugs and O’Leary and a crew they’d called in. Mim was upstairs, keeping watch on Frank. Much to Anna’s annoyance her mother-in-law had requested the man be given a thorough check up by Dr Edwards, the local Pharos GP, as well. Frank was now resting comfortably, his vital signs back to normal although he hadn’t yet regained consciousness. It was fortunate that Max had spotted his reaction to the toxin before it was too late and even luckier that the Pharos scientists had recently invented a broadbrush antidote to a wide range of poisons. Exactly what it was and how Frank had come to ingest it would remain a mystery until the lab results were returned and Frank woke up.
Anna was still feeling slightly miffed that she had been cut out of the medical team once Frank had been made stable. But if there was one thing she didn’t plan to do, it was work for Pharos ever again.
Curtis hadn’t said a word the entire way home. It was as if the lad was completely dumbstruck. Kensy had stayed by his side and Max had asked him several times if he was okay. The boy had simply nodded. Max wished he and Kensy had been more persistent in their efforts to tell someone about the speedboat last night. Perhaps they could have stopped the whole thing. They were both shaken by yet another close call.
Cordelia walked into the room, a sombre look on her face.
‘Well, that wasn’t quite what I had in mind when I suggested we take the boat out,’ the woman said as she stood by the grand piano, surveying her family who had taken up positions around the room. Hector and Marisol were on one of the double sofas, the pair gripping each other’s hands. Max perched on the arm while Anna was sitting beside Kensy and Curtis on the cream couch. Ed was pacing by the window and Song was standing sentry by the door.
Curtis picked at the skin around his fingernails. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered.
‘Whatever for?’ Cordelia asked, eyeballing the lad. ‘If it wasn’t for your quick thinking, Curtis, we’d all be fish food right now.’
Kensy leaned over and put her arm around his shoulder. ‘Granny’s right, Curtis.’
The boy managed a tight smile, but he still couldn’t quite believe what had happened out there.
Anna chewed absently on her bottom lip while Ed’s forehead seemed to bear a permanent row of frown lines.
An uncomfortable silence shrouded the room and for almost a minute no one said a word, lost as they were in their own thoughts.
Finally Max felt the need to fill the void. ‘Granny, we think that speedboat was the one that was used in the shooting on the Thames,’ he said.
‘What?’ Anna looked over at her son. ‘How do you know that?’
Cordelia arched her eyebrow.
The boy explained what they had seen the day before and how they had wanted to tell someone last night. Then Kensy confessed that she’d cornered Frank about it while they were on the cruiser, demanding to know where it had come from and why it was missing this morning.
Ed’s fingers drummed on the windowsill. ‘Surely you could have told one of us.’
‘We tried,’ Kensy said. ‘But everyone was so busy, we gave up and decided to work things out for ourselves and tell you after we’d gathered more evidence.’
Song was standing in the corner, shaking his head. Max thought he of all people had no right to be so condescending, when clearly he had his secret
s too. Maybe Max should tell his grandmother about the toilet and that you could hear everything she said in her study from there. It was only while he was thinking of that that another uncomfortable thought entered the boy’s mind. Song hadn’t been at home in Ponsonby Terrace when the bomb exploded and this afternoon he was making a run back to the lair when the speedboat came for them. Surely they were mere coincidences. Maybe Song was the luckiest man alive. Either that or – well the alternative was too awful for words.
Fitz had just walked into the room and caught the last part of the conversation.
‘Did you order that boat from the river shooting to be brought up here?’ Cordelia turned and asked the man.
‘No, as far as I understand Scotland Yard still has it down in London. It was impounded – that’s how I got the DNA via our man in the Yard,’ Fitz said. ‘At any rate Huang’s long gone – and regardless, it’s not the same boat. This one was called Osiris.’
‘But it wasn’t always named that,’ Max said, shaking his head. ‘That boat has been renamed. Curtis spotted it yesterday. There were the letters “tion” at the end, but we couldn’t make out the rest. It had to be the boat called Deception from the river. It would be too much of a coincidence otherwise.’
Fitz frowned. This was news.
‘We need to find out who asked Frank to pick it up and why.’ Cordelia let out an unsettling sigh.
‘Frank said he didn’t know,’ Kensy reported.
‘Honestly, I’m sick and tired of this. Houses don’t just blow up, people don’t just get shot at while they’re on an evening walk and boats don’t load themselves with explosives and mount a collision course with cruisers. Someone wants us dead – and I mean, all of us, not just you two as we had perhaps first thought,’ Cordelia looked at the twins. ‘There is someone out there who has designs on our lives and we need to find them before they tear everything apart.’
Curtis had been studying his shoes for the past ten minutes when finally he looked up. ‘You’re not a regular family, are you? I mean, apart from owning a newspaper and having a private jet and living in a mansion. You’re not exactly normal.’
Cordelia nodded. ‘In many ways, we are like every other family, Curtis. We have our quarrels and ups and downs, but I agree – we have some peculiarities.’
Curtis swallowed hard. ‘What do you mean?’
Cordelia walked over and stood in front of the fireplace. ‘I imagine there are some things that don’t make a lot of sense.’
‘Like why you said that someone wanted to kill you all?’ the boy said. ‘Did you do something bad?’
‘We haven’t done anything, and yes, there are people who would like to see our family harmed. I’m not entirely sure what their motives are, but I am sorry that you were part of it – and yet at the same time, I’m extraordinarily grateful that you were there and took the course of action that you did,’ Cordelia explained as she folded the cuffs on her white linen shirt.
‘Dash Chalmers did something horrible to your family too, didn’t he?’ Curtis said. While the boy had received a dose of memory erasing serum he clearly still had some recollections of the incident.
‘That man is pure evil,’ Marisol spat.
While she and Hector had adapted remarkably well to their new life, the woman was prone to the odd angry outburst, and rightly so. Hector squeezed his wife’s hand and whispered some calming words in her ear.
‘Curtis, what I am about to ask you is not something I want an answer to right away. I need you to consider my offer carefully because if you say yes, your life will change immeasurably,’ Cordelia explained.
Kensy and Max exchanged glances somewhat surprised by their grandmother’s timing – although Curtis had probably made the decision easy for her when he’d just saved them all.
‘Mother, are you sure about this?’ Ed asked, wondering if she was being a little hasty.
‘Of course. Curtis has proven himself today,’ the woman replied.
‘I don’t understand,’ Curtis said.
‘I’m asking if you would like to join the family business,’ Cordelia said.
A wry grin perched on the boy’s lips. ‘I’m a bit young for a journalism cadetship, though the offer is attractive.’
‘Is that really what you think I’m asking?’ Cordelia’s brow furrowed and she walked over to a small bureau and picked up the journal she’d presented him with when he arrived.
Curtis was surprised to see it here considering he’d tucked it carefully into his bedside cabinet last night. The boy gulped. ‘My thoughts in that journal are only guesses. I’m sure there’s more to it.’
Cordelia pursed her lips then flipped the pages open.
‘I think they belong to some sort of spy organisation,’ she read. ‘But not MI6 or the FBI or ASIO or Mossad or anything as ordinary as that. It’s more secret. The markings on this journal are something to do with ancient Egypt and a library at a place called Alexandria – which is the same name as this mansion. The lighthouse there was named Pharos. It stood thousands of years ago and was one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. But it was destroyed in an earthquake. I thought it was strange that the newspaper was called the Beacon – that’s a light in a lighthouse – maybe it’s all linked in some curious way.’
Kensy and Max looked at one another, both thinking that Curtis had certainly worked out a lot in the short time since he’d arrived.
‘I was only jotting down the crazy ideas that came into my head,’ Curtis said. ‘Because you know – there have been some odd things and Fitz dropped way too much weight for him not to have been wearing a disguise in Sydney, and Kensy and Max said he was their dad but then he wasn’t. And no offence, Anna, but I thought you were dead and clearly you’re not. That was a bit of a shock.’
‘You have impressive deductive skills, Curtis,’ Hector said with a nod.
‘So what are you really asking me to do?’ Curtis focused on Cordelia.
‘I am offering you to join our agents-in-training program and if you pass, you will become part of Pharos – the world’s most important clandestine spy organisation,’ the woman replied.
The boy grinned. ‘Are you serious? That’s the most awesome thing I’ve ever heard. Will I get a gun and a licence to kill?’
‘Steady on, Curtis,’ Max said. ‘I think that only happens in the movies, doesn’t it?’ But then again he wasn’t entirely sure himself.
‘But you have gadgets, don’t you? I know you must have gadgets. Kensy picked the lock at the lighthouse with her hairclip . . .’
‘What? How did you know that?’ The girl’s jaw almost hit the ground.
Curtis shrugged and his face turned red. ‘Your house in Sydney has so much awesome stuff – that room in the basement and the front door lock with the thumb print.’ Suddenly the boy’s look of elation dissolved. ‘What about my parents? I can’t leave them and live here in England. I’d miss them too much.’
‘You don’t have to. If you agree to being part of this, they’ll be relocated to London. I’ve already lined up a position for your mother at the Victoria and Albert Museum and I have something in-house for your father,’ the woman explained. ‘They’ve been prepped and are in agreeance depending on what you would like to do.’
‘Wow, the V&A – that’s Mum’s dream job,’ Curtis said. The boy glanced from Anna to Mim then at Hector and Marisol before his eyes landed on Max.
‘So are you in?’ Kensy asked. She couldn’t help herself.
‘Kensington,’ Cordelia said, glaring at her granddaughter. ‘This is not something Curtis should decide now and he still has to speak with his parents.’
‘Are you kidding me? I’ve wanted to be a spy since, well, ever since I can remember and I’ve been training all my life! Except that it’s a bit hard to train on your own, barring commando rolls and surveillance,’ Curtis said. ‘And now you’re asking me to be part of a real spy organisation where danger lurks at every turn? The answer is yes – I don’
t have to think about it at all.’
Kensy hugged the boy tightly and Max offered his hand for a high five.
‘That’s awesome news, but you do realise that no one can ever know outside of the organisation?’ Kensy said.
‘I kind of gathered that,’ Curtis replied before his face dropped.
‘What if I’d said no?’ The boy frowned. The whole objective of being a spy was to ensure that no one knew you were one – except for the other spies. That would surely have broken spy protocol. ‘Would you have had to kill me?’
Cordelia chuckled. ‘Of course not. We have ways to neutralise memories.’
Curtis’s mouth fell open. ‘Whoa! That sounds amazing. Is that what happened after our encounter with Dash Chalmers in that shed in Exeter? There are some things about that day I can’t remember properly and you know I have an awesome memory. You don’t have to do that to Mum and Dad, do you?’
The woman shook her head. ‘No, of course not – you said yes.’
‘That’s a relief. They might forget who I am.’ The boy grinned.
‘I doubt that very much, Curtis. You are quickly proving yourself to be unforgettable. Your formal training will commence tomorrow with Fitz and Song, but as you are also on holidays, things will progress more slowly until you go back to school for the start of the New Year.’
‘But it’s July. We don’t start a new school year until January,’ the boy said.
‘It’s different here in England – the new school year commences after the Northern Hemisphere summer,’ Kensy said. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. I expect you’ll be in the same classes as us.’
‘Us – but Max is older than you, Kensy. He was in Year Six and you were with me in Year Five,’ Curtis said.
Kensy shook her head. ‘Really? You still haven’t worked that out? We’re twins, Curtis – that whole school thing was because I had to cosy up to Ellery and Max was buddies with Van.’
Curtis’s eyes widened as the realisation sunk in. ‘So that’s why you can finish each other’s sentences and read each other’s minds.’
‘Not,’ Kensy said.
‘All of the time,’ Max added, grinning.
Kensy & Max: Freefall Page 7
