by Paul Adam
He’d gone only ten metres when the overhead lights suddenly snapped on. He stopped dead in surprise. A security guard was standing at the end of the corridor, his arms stretched out in front of him, both hands together. Max realized with a jolt of alarm that the man was pointing a pistol straight at him. He looked around, wondering recklessly whether he could make a run for it, but a second guard was advancing towards him from the opposite end of the corridor. He, too, was aiming a pistol at him.
‘Lie down on the floor and put your hands behind you,’ the first guard ordered.
Max did as he was told. His mouth had gone dry, his heart palpitating. He heard the guards’ footsteps drawing nearer, the rattle of something metallic. Then he felt the steel cuffs being clipped round his wrists, hands grasping him by the arms and hauling him roughly to his feet.
He was escorted round to the front of the building, across the wide entrance foyer and into a small room behind the main reception desk that seemed to be part guard room, part office, part kitchen. In the centre there was a battered metal desk with a solid front, and a sink and cooker against one wall. Next to the sink were a frying pan and a couple of dirty plates smeared with tomato ketchup. On a shelf above was an open plastic bag from which sesame seed burger buns were spilling. The guards must have been cooking themselves a meal. The place reeked of fried onions and meat.
But what shocked Max was the bank of three television screens on the wall, showing CCTV pictures from around the site, the images changing every few seconds according to which camera was recording. Max saw a picture of the internal corridor he’d walked along and cursed himself for his stupidity. The cameras must have been cunningly hidden for him not to have noticed them. He realized that the guards had probably been watching him from the moment he’d entered the building, no doubt waiting to see what he was up to before they moved in to seize him. Did they know about Chris? Had they caught him too?
The two men led him to a metal chair behind the desk and forced him to sit down. His hands were released, but only to bring them round to the front where they were manacled to the arms of the chair with two pairs of cuffs. One of the guards searched his clothes, finding his mobile and torch, but not his lock-pick, which he’d managed to slip out of his pocket and up the sleeve of his shirt while he was lowering himself to the floor in the corridor.
The guards were both young men, in their early twenties, with the same military-style haircuts as the guard at the main entrance – the crude crop-cuts that seemed to take away the individual characteristics of their faces so that they looked almost identical. One of them gazed coolly at Max. He had pale blue eyes and the stubble on his scalp had a gingery tint to it.
‘What’s your name?’ he demanded curtly.
Max toyed with the idea of saying nothing, but decided to put on a show of cooperation instead. These men were armed. He didn’t want to antagonize them. ‘Jack Singleton,’ he replied, giving the name of one of his classmates at school.
Would they recognize him? he wondered. His Tower Bridge stunt had been shown on national television and his photo had been in all the papers, but he knew that to adults a lot of teenagers looked alike. Why would they link a kid caught breaking into a pharmaceuticals lab in Wiltshire with an escapologist in London?
‘How old are you?’ the second guard asked.
‘Fourteen.’
‘Where d’you live?’
‘Salisbury,’ Max said glibly.
‘Where in Salisbury?’
Max made up an address. ‘Twenty-four London Road.’
That sounded plausible. There was a London Road in half the towns of England and he could tell from their accents that neither of these two young men was local. They probably wouldn’t know much about street names in Salisbury.
‘This is private property. What’re you doing here?’ the first guard said.
‘Just taking a look around.’
‘A look around? For what? To steal something?’
‘I haven’t stolen anything. You can see that. You searched me.’
The two guards exchanged glances.
‘Maybe he’s a junkie looking for drugs,’ the first one said. ‘We’ve had them before.’
‘He doesn’t look like a junkie.’
They turned back to Max.
‘How did you get in?’
‘There was a hole in the fence,’ Max replied without hesitation.
‘Yeah? Where?’
‘At the back, over there.’ Max inclined his head. ‘I haven’t done anything. I haven’t damaged anything, or stolen anything. I was just curious to see what this place was, that’s all.’
They didn’t believe him, Max knew that. He didn’t expect them to. He was buying time, sowing a few seeds of confusion in their minds so they weren’t sure what to make of him. And he was succeeding. He could see the bemusement in their faces. They were very young soldiers, probably only privates, he guessed, and he wanted them to do what all junior soldiers did in circumstances like this – go away and contact their superior officer for instructions. If he could get them out of the room for a few minutes, he had a chance – a slim chance – of escaping.
The two men glanced at each other again. Then the one with gingery hair nodded at the door.
‘Let’s go outside.’
They went out of the room, locking the door behind them. Max didn’t wait for even a second. He bent forward and got his teeth on the cuff of his right sleeve, pulling back the jacket and shirt to expose the lock-pick he’d secreted there. He didn’t have much time, but he had to stay calm, try to control his nerves. He’d been lucky. Maybe the guards hadn’t seen him picking the locks on the two internal doors on the CCTV monitors. If they had, they would surely have wondered how he’d done it and searched him more thoroughly. Or maybe they just weren’t thinking too clearly, or weren’t too bright.
He gripped the pick between his teeth and inserted the end into the lock on the cuff around his right wrist. It wasn’t the first time he’d used his teeth to manipulate a pick. One of his regular stage tricks required the skill, so he had had plenty of practice. Nevertheless, it wasn’t easy, particularly when time was against him.
How long did he have? The guards would be discussing what to do next, ringing someone with greater authority for orders. But who would they ring? Who was ultimately in charge of this laboratory, and what would they decide to do with him? Hand him over to the local police to deal with? That was the best-case scenario from Max’s point of view. And the worst case? If word somehow got back to Max’s enemies in the British government and through them to Julius Clark, he was in big trouble. A teenage boy found inside the Episuderon laboratory. Clark would know immediately that it was Max. Then it wouldn’t be the police for him, but a bullet in the head and an unmarked grave in some faraway wood.
He felt the tip of the pick catch on the tumbler inside the lock and pulled back hard with his teeth. The cuff clicked open. Extricating his hand, he took the pick from his teeth and attacked the cuff around his left wrist. That was more straightforward now he could use his fingers. It took him less than five seconds to get the cuff off. Both pairs of manacles were now dangling loose from the arms of the chair.
Max grabbed his torch and phone from the desk and stuffed them back in his pockets. He went to the door and put his eye to the keyhole. He could just see the two men outside in the foyer, hear them talking quietly to each other. There was no way out here, but there were two more doors in the room. The first, on the left wall, he discovered, was unlocked but gave access only to a store cupboard. The second, on the opposite wall, was locked. Max opened it with his pick and stepped through.
The first thing he noticed was the smell. Not the acrid odour of fried food that permeated the guard room, but something riper and more pungent – more animal, Max thought. Then he heard a rustle of feet and froze. He snapped on his torch and directed it around the room. He was in a long, narrow laboratory crammed full of stainless steel benches. On top
of the benches were cages containing animals – mice, rats, rabbits, guinea pigs. They fidgeted nervously as the torch beam hit them, their eyes glowing brightly in the light.
Max moved deeper into the room. There must have been hundreds of animals there, all presumably used for testing drugs. It was disconcerting, hearing the frightened creatures shuffling around their cages, hiding in corners or in their bedding, all the while that sour, animal stench getting stronger.
Max shut out the sounds and smell and concentrated on exploring the lab. There were no windows, not even any skylights, and only two doors – the one he’d come through and a second a few metres away on the side wall that Max knew, from its position, would open onto the foyer. Could he get out that way? Not a chance. He’d never manage to creep unseen past the two security men. He could hear them faintly through the door. One of them was on the phone, talking to someone more senior now. Max could tell from the deferential tone of his voice, the ‘Yes, sir, no, sir’ he kept repeating.
He was running out of time. He was free of his handcuffs, but what use was that if he was trapped in these two rooms? Could he fight the guards, somehow overpower them and make his escape? That was just wishful thinking. Max was young and strong, but not strong enough to deal with two trained soldiers. What about releasing the animals, causing a diversion to distract the guards so he could slip away? He liked the idea, but couldn’t see it working, couldn’t see a way around his fundamental problem – how did he get into the foyer and then out of the building without being caught again?
His torch beam passed over a plump black and white guinea pig and alighted on a big metal cylinder which had N2O stencilled on the side. N2O? Some faint, deep-seated memory from his science lessons began to stir in his head. This was the second time that night he’d remembered something from science classes. Maybe school wasn’t such a waste of time, after all. He knew that chemical formula. It was nitrous oxide – laughing gas – an anaesthetic used in medicine and no doubt used here to knock out the animals for experiments. An anaesthetic? He couldn’t use force to beat the guards, but maybe he could use his brains.
Lifting the cylinder up – it was so heavy he had to wrap his arms around it and brace it against his chest – he went back into the guard room and lowered it to the floor under the desk where it couldn’t be seen from the front. Then he quickly closed the lab door and sat back down in the chair, slipping his wrists into the open handcuffs so that it appeared as if he was still firmly manacled to the arms.
He was only just in time. Just a few seconds later, the security men returned, closing the door behind them. Under the desk, Max used his feet to turn the valve on the cylinder, twisting it round until it was fully open. Then he inhaled deeply, filling his lungs, and held his breath.
‘You’re in big trouble,’ the first soldier said. ‘We’ve done some checking. There’s no Singleton family living at number twenty-four London Road, Salisbury. What do you have to say about that?’
Max said nothing. He could feel the nitrous oxide seeping out into the room, drifting up past his face, and was relieved that it made no sound. The valve on the cylinder was so wide open that the gas was escaping without any tell-tale hissing noise. Would the security men smell it? Nitrous oxide wasn’t odourless – Max, like most of his class, had tried a sniff of it during science lessons – but nor did it have a strong scent. Max was banking on the overpowering reek of fried onions and burgers to cover the presence of the gas.
‘You lost your tongue?’ the guard snapped. ‘You’re lying to us. You’re not called Jack Singleton. What’s your real name?’
Max didn’t reply. He was counting the seconds. How long did it take for nitrous oxide to work? Half a minute? A minute? The security men were so far showing no signs of succumbing to it.
‘Let me give you a bit of advice, kid,’ the guard said. ‘Our boss is on his way here to see you and, believe me, he’s not going to be anything like as nice as us.’
He paused, wrinkling his nose and blinking. It’s working, Max thought. He’s breathing the gas in, but doesn’t realize it.
‘He’s going to want some answers from you,’ the guard went on. ‘And he won’t care how he gets them. You understand me? You’re a burglar, a criminal. You’ve committed a serious offence. Now what’s your real name?’ The man glanced across at his colleague, who was looking pale and slightly unsteady on his feet. ‘You OK?’
‘I think so.’ The second soldier sat down heavily on the corner of the desk. He seemed to be having difficulty breathing.
‘You sure?’
‘I don’t know. I feel funny. A bit sick.’
He took a couple of deep breaths, but that seemed to make him worse. Max watched him intently. Two minutes had passed. He was starting to feel uncomfortable himself now. He couldn’t hold his breath for much longer.
‘Sick?’ the first guard said. ‘I know what—’ He broke off and started to sway from side to side, as if he were feeling dizzy.
Just hold on, Max said to himself. Just a few seconds longer.
‘The room …’ the second guard said. ‘You feel it going round and round? What the—’
His eyes rolled up into their sockets and he suddenly toppled over sideways and fell to the floor with a crash. A few moments later, his colleague also collapsed, tumbling over unconscious in a heap by the desk.
Max whipped his hands out of the cuffs and bent down to shut off the valve on the cylinder. His lungs were bursting, his chest in agony. He ran to the door and flung it open, throwing himself out into the foyer and sucking in great gasping mouthfuls of air.
He was still panting when he made himself get moving. He didn’t know how long the guards would remain unconscious, but it might only be a matter of minutes. He ran across the foyer and along the corridor, taking out his mobile and speed dialling Chris’s number.
‘Max?’ Chris said anxiously. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m coming out the back way,’ Max replied. ‘Can you cut a hole in the fence?’
‘What about the alarm?’
‘Wait for the power to go off.’
Max reached the stairs and ran up them two at a time, bursting out onto the roof. The cage surrounding the electricity transformer was fastened shut with a padlock, but he had no trouble undoing it with his pick. He depressed the shutdown lever that he’d noticed earlier and all the compound floodlights cut out abruptly.
Max went to the edge of the roof and lowered himself over the side, hanging by his arms and dropping nimbly to the ground. He didn’t care about the CCTV cameras or alarms now – they couldn’t function without electricity.
He sprinted across the yard and saw Chris waving to him from outside the perimeter fence. He’d already cut a metre-square hole in the wire mesh with his bolt-cutters. Max scrambled through.
‘You OK?’ Chris asked. Max nodded. ‘What happened? You find anything?’
‘Not now,’ Max said urgently. ‘I knocked the guards out. They might be waking up.’
Chris gaped at him. ‘Knocked them out?’
‘I’ll tell you later.’
Max slithered down into the ditch, clambered up the other side and raced away across the downland. Chris ran after him. It was a good mile to the car over difficult terrain, but they did it in under ten minutes. Three minutes after that they’d negotiated the farm track and were back out on the main road, speeding away from the laboratories.
They were entering the outskirts of Salisbury, almost no other vehicles on the road, when they heard the sound of sirens coming towards them. Chris reacted with lightning speed, braking hard and veering off into the driveway outside the nearest house.
‘Get down!’ he ordered.
Max doubled up and ducked down, snatching a quick look through the side window to see two police cars hurtling past, their roof-lights flashing, sirens blaring.
They waited a while, to make sure no other police cars appeared, then reversed back out of the drive and headed away along the
road.
Chris glanced at Max. ‘OK, let’s hear what you have to say. I get the feeling it’s going to be good.’
SEVEN
DAWN WAS BREAKING when they got back to London. They left the car in the underground car park and went up to the apartment. Rusty was waiting for them – Max had called him on his mobile as they drove up from Wiltshire to let him know they were on their way. Consuela was still in bed, Zip curled up in a sleeping bag on the living-room floor. Rusty made coffee for Chris and himself while Max had an early breakfast of toast and marmalade, then went into his bedroom.
He was worn out, but tense. The two-hour drive home had relaxed him a little, taken his mind off what had happened at Woodford Down, but now he was alone in his room, vivid memories of the previous few hours returned to disturb him. He saw himself climbing the pylon again, whizzing down the power line and wondered what madness had possessed him, driven him to take such a foolhardy risk. He knew the answer to that, of course – the search for his missing father. And the risk had been worth it in the end. He’d found out where the Episuderon was going. He wrote down the address on a piece of paper before he got into bed and gazed at it for a moment.
San Francisco. Dr Halstead, the man who’d helped his father in Borneo, was also in San Francisco. Was that a coincidence? Max didn’t think so. Nothing in all the traumatic events of the past few months was coincidental. Everything was linked, everything had a reason, a logical explanation. Max just had to join those links together and he’d find his father.
He struggled to get to sleep. Woodford Down kept preying on his mind. He still couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid as to miss the CCTV cameras. His image had now been captured on tape, so it wouldn’t take very much investigation for him to be identified. A couple of phone calls, his picture sent round the right government circles and Rupert Penhall would quickly get to hear about it. Even without Penhall’s intervention, Max knew he’d be identified sooner rather than later. He’d been on television only recently – his face was familiar to a lot of people. How long would it be, he wondered, before the police – or the security services – came knocking on his door?
