by Paul Adam
‘Over it?’ Chris said. ‘I’ve already told you, it’s got a touch-sensitive alarm wire. You lay a finger on it and bells will start ringing.’
‘Over it, but without touching it.’
Chris stared at him. ‘What’re you talking about? The fence is four metres high. Are you going to fly over it?’
‘Something like that.’
Chris kept staring at him. He knew Max well by now. He knew how ingenious, how determined he was. It never paid to dismiss his ideas out of hand. ‘Go on,’ he said quietly.
Max gestured at the open countryside behind the laboratory compound. ‘You see out there? The pylon?’
Chris turned to look. Silhouetted against the horizon, about sixty or seventy metres away, was the skeletal outline of a tall electricity pylon. From one of the arms of the metal tower a cable ran across to a transformer on the roof of the Phobos Pharmaceuticals building.
‘I see it,’ he said.
‘That cable. It’s three or four metres above the fence, and also out of sight of the CCTV cameras. They’re all angled down to cover the yard. They can’t see anything above the roof of the lab.’
‘Max, you’re not proposing to somehow use that cable, are you?’
‘It’s an idea.’
‘It’s a high-voltage power line. You’d kill yourself if you even touched it.’
‘Only if I was earthed,’ Max said.
‘What?’
‘We did it in science lessons at school. It’s the electricity running to earth that kills you. If I climb the pylon and put my hand on the cable, you’re right, I’d be killed instantly. But if I hang onto the cable with my body dangling in space, I’ll be OK. That’s why birds can sit on electricity wires. The current goes past them, but it doesn’t fry them because they’re not earthed.’
‘You’re crazy. Come on, let’s get back to the car.’
Max didn’t move.
‘Max …’
‘You go. I’m not coming with you,’ Max said.
‘Look, this is stupid,’ Chris said. ‘You’re not going near that cable.’
‘Yes, I am. They’re making Episuderon in that lab – the drug Julius Clark gave my dad. It brainwashes people, kills them sometimes. I need to know what Clark is doing with the Episuderon, where it’s going.’
‘It’s a suicidal idea. I can’t possibly allow you to do it. It’s way too risky.’
‘I take risks all the time in my show. The key is knowing which risks are controllable, and which aren’t. Knowing how to eliminate the real dangers so that what’s left is manageable.’
‘No, Max,’ Chris said firmly. ‘I’m not even going to discuss this further.’
‘OK, see you later.’
‘You’re coming with me.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘You want me to pick you up and throw you into the car?’
‘I’d like to see you try.’
Stalemate. There was a silence. Chris glared hard at Max. Max glared back, not flinching, stubborn as could be.
‘Let me get this straight,’ Chris said eventually, knowing that he’d lost the argument simply by continuing the discussion. ‘You’re going to hang off the cable and go hand over hand along it until you reach the roof of the lab? It’s – what – a hundred metres long? You’d fall off well before you got to the end.’
‘I’m not going hand over hand,’ Max replied. ‘Look at the angle of the cable. It slopes down to the roof. I’m just going to slide down it. I’ll need to borrow your leather jacket.’
‘For what?’
‘Insulation.’
Chris looked across at the pylon again, then back at Max. ‘You think it’ll work?’
‘Yes,’ Max said confidently.
‘Then I’ll do it.’
‘You’re too heavy. The cable would break under your weight. It has to be me.’
Chris shook his head. ‘I can’t let you do it. You’re just a kid.’
‘I’m not “just a kid,” Max snapped back angrily. ‘I’m a professional escapologist. I can do it, Chris, trust me.’
‘I’m here to look after you, Max. What if something happened to you? I’d never forgive myself.’
‘I know you’re only thinking about my safety and I appreciate that. But I’m going ahead anyway. You don’t have to stay. I’ll make my own way home.’
Chris sighed. He knew he’d been outmanoeuvred. He didn’t want a fight. Despite his earlier threat, he had no intention of trying to use force to drag Max back to the car. He couldn’t do that to him, and it probably wouldn’t work, in any case. Max was a strong, determined teenager. Overpowering him wouldn’t be easy, certainly not without hurting him – and the last thing Chris wanted was to hurt him. He had no choice really. He had to help him.
‘We’re wasting time,’ Max said. ‘What do you say?’
‘You’re the craziest, most pig-headed person I’ve ever come across. If you kill yourself, don’t blame me.’ Chris slipped off his leather jacket and tossed it to Max. ‘So let’s do it before I change my mind.’
They scrambled out of the ditch and ran across to the pylon. It towered over them like a six-armed, fleshless metal giant. Max tied the leather jacket around his waist, his pulse racing. Going in without Chris hadn’t been part of their plan, but there was no alternative now.
‘I’ll call you on my mobile when I get inside.’
‘You take care, Max,’ Chris said, his anxiety clear from both his face and voice.
‘I will.’
‘Here, you’ll need this.’ Chris held out the torch and Max stowed it safely away in his jacket pocket.
There was a large metal sign fastened to the base of the pylon. DANGER. HIGH VOLTAGE. KEEP OFF, it read. Max glanced at it and immediately put the warning out of his head. If he gave too much thought to what he was about to do, he knew he’d never go ahead. Chris was right: this was a crazy plan, though not suicidal. Max wasn’t stupid enough to do anything that would result in certain death, but he had a more reckless approach to danger than most people. He was used to assessing risk, weighing up hazards. The plan was a gamble. There was a chance that he would kill or seriously injure himself. But there was also a chance that he would get inside the lab and find out something that would help in his search for his missing father. On balance, Max decided that success was more likely than failure. It was a hazardous undertaking, but the potential benefits outweighed the risks.
There was no ladder up the pylon, but the framework of steel girders and cross-struts was as good as one to someone as agile as Max. He climbed from one strut to the next, reaching up with his hands, then swinging his legs up behind him until he reached the lowest pair of the pylon’s six arms. This was as high as he needed to go. The cable supplying electricity to the Phobos Pharmaceuticals laboratory branched off the main power line at this point. Max looked down. He could just see the shadowy figure of Chris twenty metres below him, his upturned face paler than the rest of his body, his expression impossible to make out in the darkness.
Max turned his gaze to the lab, a hundred metres or so away across the rough countryside. The power cable from the pylon sloped down at a fairly gentle angle, swooping over the perimeter fence and yard to the transformer on the flat roof of the building. It reminded him of the zip wire he’d gone down a few times during a school trip to an outdoor pursuits centre in Year Eight, the main difference being that this particular wire had thousands of volts of electricity pulsing through it.
He untied the leather jacket from his waist and, gripping it in his right hand, edged slowly out along a horizontal girder, his left hand hanging on tight to the cross strut by his shoulder. Nearing the end of the girder, he stopped. The power cable was a metre and a half above him. Max could hear a low hum, feel the electric field radiating out around him, making his skin tingle, his hair prickle.
He had to be very careful indeed here. He was still touching the pylon. If he got too close to the cable and accidentally complete
d the electric circuit to the earth, he was toast – literally. His whole body would be incinerated, burned to a blackened crisp. He hooked his left arm around the cross strut to secure his position and manipulated the leather jacket so that he was holding it by the end of one sleeve, the rest of it dangling down into space. Then he started to swing the jacket to and fro in an arc, gradually building up momentum before whipping it up in a circle over his head and letting go. The jacket flew through the air and hooked over the cable, the sleeves hanging down on either side. It slid a few centimetres down the wire, then stopped. Max heaved a sigh of relief. The jacket was just where he wanted it.
Now for the really dangerous bit. One slip and he would either plummet to his death, or electrocute himself. He didn’t dwell on the thought, but adjusted his feet on the girder, shuffling out to the very end. There was nothing between him and the ground now. He didn’t look down. The leather jacket was diagonally above him, the sleeves dangling half a metre away, almost level with the top of his head.
Max said a silent prayer, took a deep breath and threw himself outwards and upwards, bending his knees and lifting his feet to make absolutely sure he was clear of the pylon before his hands touched the jacket. His fingers found the sleeves and he snapped them shut around the leather, gripping tight as the jacket began to glide away down the cable. He swung his legs and felt the momentum increase, the jacket sliding easily over the smooth metal wire, getting faster and faster, hurtling down towards the ground at a terrifying speed.
It might have been fun, if the stakes hadn’t been so high, the penalty for failure so potentially fatal. The wind gusted into his face, clawing at his hair, stinging his cheeks like sharp needles. He screwed his eyes shut to protect them and counted the seconds, estimating how much further he had to go. He snatched a quick glance down. He was whizzing high over the ditch around the compound, then he was over the fence and speeding across the yard, the ground just a blur beneath him. The building rushed up to meet him and he let go of the jacket instinctively, dropping three metres and rolling over as he hit the flat concrete surface of the roof.
Winded, and bruised, he lay on his side for a few seconds until he could regain his breath, listening hard throughout for any sound of an alarm, any indication that his arrival had been spotted. But he heard nothing.
He pulled himself up into a crouch and looked around, panting a little, rubbing his hip where it had struck the roof. The transformer was right in front of his nose – a big metal box with coils and wires on the top, an on-off lever on the side and a protective cage all around it. Chris’s leather jacket was still dangling from the power line. Max left it where it was – it was too dangerous to risk touching it. He stood up and padded across to the raised stairwell behind the transformer. The access door was locked, but Max took out his L-shaped pick and had it open in a few seconds. He listened again for any sound of an alarm, but the building was silent. Pulling out his mobile, he punched in the preset number for Chris’s phone.
‘I’m going inside,’ he said softly when Chris answered.
Then he put the phone away in his pocket and went cautiously down the stairs.
SIX
THE INSIDE OF the building was in darkness, but there was enough light coming in from outside for Max to see what he was doing. At the foot of the stairs was a long corridor, with doors along one side and windows on the other looking out over the floodlit yard. He paused in the shadows, studying the corridor carefully. He could see no CCTV cameras, no light trickling out beneath the doors. It was the middle of the night, but it was always possible that someone might be working – someone apart from the security guards, that is.
How many guards were there? Max had seen only the one in the gatehouse, but he knew that there had to be more. This was a high-security site. It had the fence and the cameras to protect its exterior, but there’d surely be guards inside the premises too. Where were they? he wondered. Patrolling the building? Making regular rounds of all the corridors and rooms? He had to be vigilant, listen out for any signs of activity.
He had no idea of the layout of the place. There’d be laboratories and other facilities for the production of Episuderon and maybe other drugs too, but none of that interested Max. He wanted to know where the Episuderon was going after it left the site. And that meant he needed to find the management offices. To find the company records – invoices, billing addresses, shipping details, that kind of thing.
He moved off along the corridor, hugging the wall to keep away from the windows. If the yard outside was also patrolled by guards – and he was sure it would be – he didn’t want to be caught unawares. He stopped by the first door. It was solid wood – no sign on it to indicate what the room beyond contained. He tried the handle. The door was locked. Taking the pick from his pocket, he crouched down and went to work, slipping the implement into the keyhole and clicking back the tumblers one by one.
It wasn’t a difficult lock. Ten seconds later and he was easing open the door and slipping inside. He was in some kind of laboratory – a small, rectangular room with steel-topped benches in the middle and bits of scientific apparatus on worktops around the edges. The far wall was mostly glass, a series of windows over looking a courtyard in the centre of the building. It was dimmer here than in the corridor, but the compound flood-lamps were so powerful that some of their diffused light spread out across the roof and down into the courtyard. Max saw paving stones, a few shrubs and more windows on the other side, with what looked like offices behind them. He could just make out filing cabinets, desks with computer terminals on top of them. That was where he needed to be.
He went back out into the corridor and retraced his steps, going past the bottom of the staircase to the roof and continuing on to where the corridor made a ninety-degree turn to the left. He put an eye out warily round the corner. The corridor was deserted. He ran lightly along it, his trainers making hardly any noise on the lino floor, and rounded another corner at the far end. There were doors on both sides here, white plastic signs screwed to the wood: CLEANING STORE, MEDICAL ROOM, CHIEF SCIENTIFIC OFFICER, LABORATORY ADMINISTRATOR. Max went slowly along the corridor and stopped by a door marked ‘Sales Manager’. He unlocked it with his pick and pushed it open.
The office inside was small and cramped – just a few metres square and crowded with furniture: a desk, a chair, a cupboard and a row of five tall, grey filing cabinets. Max used his pick to unlock the first cabinet and pulled out a few files at random, to see how the filing system worked. He opened the cardboard folders on the desk and took the torch from his pocket, cupping his hand around the end to narrow the beam and stop the light spreading too far. The files were arranged in alphabetical order according to the names of the customers, each one containing details of the drugs ordered, how and when they were supplied and when payment was made. It was clear that Phobos Pharmaceuticals manufactured a range of different drugs. Max studied the names, but found no mention of Episuderon.
He put the files back in the first cabinet and turned his attention to the last one in the row. Julius Clark was rumoured to own dozens, perhaps hundreds, of companies around the world, but his main corporation was called Rescomin International. Max searched through the ‘R’ section of the cabinet. There was no file for Rescomin.
Puzzled and frustrated, he sat down in the swivel chair behind the desk to think for a moment. Clark must be buying the Episuderon through one of his other companies. That complicated matters. Max didn’t know the names of any of those companies and without a name he had only one course of action open to him. He would have to go through every file in the office and hope he found a customer who’d bought Episuderon. Would there be more than one? Max knew that Julius Clark was buying it, but it was possible there were other customers too.
He gazed at the filing cabinets. It would take him hours to go through every folder – and he didn’t have hours. If a security guard walked around the building and happened to glance up, he was bound to see Chris’s lea
ther jacket draped over the power line and raise the alarm. Max couldn’t afford to linger. He had to complete his task and get out fast.
His eyes strayed across to the cupboard in the corner of the office. It was made of metal, and something about its lock suddenly drew Max’s attention. He got up from the chair and went to take a closer look. He knew a lot about locks: he’d spent years studying them, practising how to pick them. The filing cabinet locks were cheap, basic models. A beginner could probably manage to open them with little more than a paper clip. But this cupboard was different. Its lock was big and heavy, the kind of lock Max would have expected to find on a safe or a strongbox. Interesting. Why put a lock like that on an office cupboard? Unless you had something important, or valuable to protect.
Kneeling down on the floor, he slipped his pick into the keyhole of the cupboard. It was a tricky job, and he had to borrow a thin, metal paper knife from the desk to help him manipulate the tumblers, but in a little under three minutes he had the lock open.
There were various files on the shelves inside the cupboard, one of them labelled RESCOMIN INTERNATIONAL. Max took the file to the desk and examined it in the light of his torch. The papers went back three years, documenting – Max counted them all – thirty-three separate purchases of Episuderon. He felt a surge of excitement. He’d found what he was looking for. On each occasion, the order was the same – three hundred five-millilitre ampoules of the drug – but the price had gone up over the course of the three years. Max stared at the figures on the invoices, wondering if the decimal points were in the wrong place. But there was no mistake. The last consignment, dated just a week earlier, had cost Rescomin a cool hundred thousand pounds. That was one very expensive drug.
The ampoules had all been despatched by air, using a freight service at Heathrow Airport, and sent to San Francisco. Max memorized the address: Rescomin Tower, Eldorado Plaza, California Street, San Francisco, USA, and photographed the invoices with his phone. Then he replaced the file, closed and locked the cupboard and went to the door. He peered out cautiously. The corridor was dark and deserted. Max stepped out and began to walk quickly back the way he’d come.
