by Paul Adam
In time, he drifted off and slept heavily until noon. When he got up and went out into the living room he found Consuela and the three men having lunch. Chris had obviously told them all about Woodford Down for the first thing Consuela said to him was, ‘Max, are you all right? What were you thinking of, risking your life like that?’
Max shrugged. ‘I’m fine,’ he said indifferently.
He went into the small kitchenette and cut himself a couple of slices of bread, then took some Cheddar from the fridge and began to make himself a sandwich, hoping to deflect Consuela. But she wasn’t going to be put off.
‘Max, I’m talking to you. You could have killed yourself.’
‘I knew what I was doing. It’s all over and done with now.’
He didn’t want to think about last night. He was worried that if he dwelt on it too much, he would lose his nerve, not have the courage to do something similar again in the future. He couldn’t afford to let that happen. He had an inkling – no, it was more than an inkling. He knew that before all this was over he would have to face many more dangers and he had to have the guts to overcome them.
‘See, I told you he was OK,’ Chris said. ‘He’s a very tough kid.’
Consuela’s mouth tightened angrily. ‘You still shouldn’t have let him do it. You should have taken better care of him.’
Max brought his sandwich to the table and looked around at the others. There was an atmosphere in the flat, a tension in the air, particularly between Chris and Consuela. Max could tell they’d been arguing, that Chris had been on the receiving end of some heavy criticism.
‘It wasn’t Chris’s fault,’ he said to Consuela, trying to patch up their quarrel. He couldn’t bear to see them fall out over him. ‘It was all my fault. Blame me, not Chris. He tried to stop me, but I wouldn’t listen. OK?’
He touched Consuela gently on the arm. ‘OK?’ he repeated.
‘Yes, all right,’ she replied eventually. She flashed a glance at Chris. ‘But next time, I’m coming too. Is that understood? Someone has to look after you.’
She got up from the table, went over to the sink and began to wash up her coffee cup and plate, scrubbing the china so forcefully that it was a wonder it didn’t break.
Max and Chris exchanged looks, then Chris pointed an accusing finger at him. ‘You owe me a new leather jacket,’ he said lightly, defusing some of the friction in the room.
Max smiled. ‘I know. I’ll get you a decent one this time. Something more fashionable.’
‘Hey, careful. I liked that jacket. I got it in a market in Marrakesh.’
‘Yeah? How much did you pay for it?’
‘I don’t remember. The equivalent of about a tenner, I think.’
‘You could tell,’ Max said. He grinned at him and chewed some of his sandwich.
Consuela came back to the table and sat down beside him. She seemed to have calmed down a little. ‘Chris has told us what you found out,’ she said. ‘About the laboratory being protected by soldiers disguised as civilian security guards. He reckons it’s a government establishment.’
‘I think he’s right,’ Max said. ‘Maybe an offshoot of the germ warfare place at Porton Down, which is only a few miles away from it.’
‘So the British government is making Episuderon and selling it to Julius Clark. They know about his brainwashing programme?’
‘They either know, or suspect and are turning a blind eye,’ Max replied. ‘That’s what Episuderon is for, after all. And Clark is buying such large quantities of the drug that it must be obvious he’s up to something dodgy.’
‘And the drug is going to San Francisco?’
‘That’s right.’
She turned to look at him. ‘Where the mysterious Dr Halstead is.’
‘Exactly. And where my dad probably is too.’
Consuela frowned. ‘You don’t know that, Max.’
‘No, but it makes sense. Halstead was with my dad in Borneo. I think he’s still with him, hiding him in San Francisco.’
‘You think Clark is brainwashing people in San Francisco?’
‘I don’t know. But that’s where the Episuderon is going. And it’s where we should be going too.’
There was a silence while Consuela absorbed this. Max was expecting her to argue with him, to be cautious, protective of him, but she merely gave a pensive nod, as if she’d already accepted the need to go to America. Maybe they’d been discussing that very subject while he’d been asleep.
‘When?’ she asked.
‘As soon as we can,’ Max replied. ‘But we’ll need a cover, a different reason for going. If Clark suspects we know about the Episuderon, he’ll take steps to hide his tracks.’
‘Cover?’ Chris said. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve been thinking about this since Sheldon Mackenzie phoned me the other day. That stunt I did off Tower Bridge, Mackenzie has had approaches from all around the world, people wanting me to do it off their local bridges – including the Golden Gate, in San Francisco.’
Chris glanced around at the others. ‘That’s not a bad idea. What do you think, Consuela? You’ll have to be there, helping Max.’ He paused. ‘And taking care of him,’ he added with a smile.
Consuela eyed him narrowly, suspecting he was being sarcastic, but it was obvious he was only trying to make it up with her, to put their argument behind them. She gazed at him for a time, then gave a nod of approval to Max. ‘Why don’t you give Mackenzie a call?’
The promoter was delighted to hear from him, even more so when Max explained that he wanted to repeat his trick off the Golden Gate Bridge.
‘Good choice, kid,’ Mackenzie said. ‘There’ll be a massive audience in America. Network coverage, huge syndication opportunities. Leave it with me and I’ll get back to you later.’
Max rang off. ‘He’s taking care of it,’ he said.
He wolfed down the remainder of his cheese sandwich and turned to Chris. ‘You got any plans for this afternoon?’
Chris shook his head. ‘No, why?’
‘I want to go and see Dan Kingston.’
* * *
Max had first met Dan Kingston only a few weeks earlier, after he’d read an article Kingston had written about Julius Clark. He liked and trusted the journalist, who was conducting an ongoing investigation into Clark’s shadowy business empire.
‘It’s good to see you again, Max,’ Kingston said, shaking hands in the foyer of the London News Chronicle’s offices. He was a small, slightly built man with shrewd, intelligent eyes behind his wire-rimmed spectacles.
‘You too,’ Max replied.
‘Come upstairs.’
Kingston took them up to the second floor in the lift and then across the open-plan newsroom to a small office where they could talk in private. He got Chris and himself coffees and Max a Coke from the vending machine in the newsroom, then came back and settled himself down behind the desk. He’d taken off his suit jacket and hung it carefully on the back of his chair.
Max handed him a slim 8GB memory stick containing the computer files that Lucas Fisher had decrypted, and explained what it was.
Kingston stared at him incredulously.
‘You’ve got hold of Clark’s files? How?’
Max told him about what had happened to him at Clark’s palm-oil processing plant in Borneo, how the billionaire tycoon had tried to kill him, how he’d escaped and managed to copy the files.
Kingston listened attentively, then shook his head in disbelief. ‘That’s one hell of a story,’ he said. ‘You’re not an ordinary teenager, are you, Max? How did you survive all that?’
Max shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about the past, he wanted to move on to the future. ‘The files were encrypted,’ he said. ‘But we got an expert to break the codes. There’s all sorts of financial stuff in there, stuff we don’t understand, but I’m sure you will.’
‘What kind of financial stuff?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t looked too closely
at it – it’s all mumbo jumbo to me. But company records, accounts, that kind of detailed information.’
The journalist pursed his lips and let out a soft, low whistle. ‘That could be gold dust. You know how secretive Clark is, how he hides his business activities behind a complex wall of offshore trusts and shell corporations. If we can break through that wall, we might be able to get an accurate picture of exactly what he’s up to.’
‘There’s more where that came from too,’ Chris said. ‘Our computer expert is still trying to decrypt some of the files. We’ll let you have the rest when he finally cracks them.’
‘When? Or if?’ Kingston asked sceptically.
‘There’s no “if” about it,’ Chris replied. ‘This guy is good, really good. He’ll break the codes all right.’
The journalist gave a nod and put the memory stick in his pocket. His eyes were gleaming with excitement.
‘This is terrific stuff, Max. Just what I’ve been trying to find for months. I’ll take a close look at it, add the information to all the rest I’ve been compiling.’
Max drank some of his Coke. ‘What do you know about Clark’s activities in San Francisco?’ he asked.
‘San Francisco?’
‘Rescomin Tower, Eldorado Plaza.’
‘That’s the headquarters of Rescomin, his main company.’
‘The brainwashing drug, Episuderon – I told you about it when we met before,’ Max went on. ‘Clark is flying it out from the UK to that address in San Francisco. Could he be brainwashing people there?’
Kingston gave the question some thought, then shook his head. ‘I doubt it. Not in a big, densely populated city like San Francisco. And particularly not in his corporate headquarters. There must be several hundred employees working in that building. He’d never risk running his brainwashing programme from there – he’d go for somewhere more remote, where he could do it undetected.’
‘Like he did on Shadow Island,’ Chris said.
‘Precisely. An isolated site, preferably in a country where the government won’t interfere with him. Do you think he’s still using Shadow Island?’
‘I can’t see it,’ Chris said. ‘We burned the place to the ground. It would take him months to rebuild it.’
‘And he’s using the Episuderon now,’ Max added. ‘A new batch was sent to San Francisco only last week.’
‘So, if not Shadow Island, where then?’ Kingston said pensively. ‘Let me show you something I’ve been putting together.’
He opened a folder on the desk and pulled out a large map of the world, turning it round so that Max and Chris were looking at it the right way up. Max noticed that the map was covered with shiny red and green stars.
‘I’ve been marking all of Julius Clark’s business interests around the globe,’ Kingston explained. ‘Or, at least, the business interests I know about. I’m sure there are many more I’m not aware of. The green stars mark the location of his offices, the red stars his industrial operations.’ He pointed to Brazil. ‘This green star shows his South American headquarters in Rio de Janeiro. These red stars across the country indicate where his companies are engaged in logging and rainforest destruction. Rescomin has been clearing vast areas of tropical rainforest, then planting the cleared land with soy to make cattle-feed for the American and European beef markets – a very controversial practice, as are nearly all his business activities.’
The journalist moved his finger across the Pacific Ocean to Borneo. ‘You know all about his palm oil business in Borneo, of course. The stripping of the rainforest there to make biofuels, a substitute for petroleum. But he hasn’t given up on the traditional oil business, far from it. His companies are drilling here in the Middle East; in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. They are here in central Russia, drilling for both oil and gas. They are up here in Alaska and they are here in Nigeria.’
‘What’s this one here?’ Max asked, indicating a red star on a peninsula on the northeast coast of Russia.
‘That’s Kamchatka,’ Kingston answered. ‘Rescomin has a platinum mine there, at a place called Zaliv Myertvetsa. Clark’s mineral interests are huge. He controls copper mines in Australia and Chile; gold mines in South Africa; zinc and tin mines in Peru, Bolivia, China, Canada, Mexico, the USA – the list goes on and on. And that’s just his mining and extraction companies. He has others which are involved in processing the minerals and metals and still others in the manufacturing business. If you want a man who epitomizes the term “global economy”, it’s Julius Clark.’
Max stared at the map. There were dozens of red and green stars scattered across every continent, bar Antarctica – and that was only left out because no one was allowed to mine or drill commercially there.
‘There are so many places to choose from,’ he said with a sigh of frustration. ‘And a lot of them are isolated. Forests, jungle, deserts, arctic tundra – all of them suitable for holding people captive and brainwashing them.’
‘But which place is Clark using?’ Chris said.
Max turned to look at him. ‘That’s what we’ve got to find out.’
EIGHT
MAX FOUND IT strange, and uncomfortably claustrophobic, sharing this small, unfamiliar Docklands apartment with four other people, three of them big men who took up a great deal of room. He was used to his own space, his own bed, all his possessions around him – his CD player, his computer, his games console. He didn’t know how much of that was gone for good now. Consuela had been in touch with the fire brigade who’d told her that the damage to their house wasn’t as bad as they’d first feared. The ground floor had been gutted, but the basement and the first floor had escaped the worst ravages of the fire. It was likely that a lot of the contents would have survived, though Max and Consuela wouldn’t be allowed in to check until the building had been declared safe.
The thought that some of his belongings, including maybe his escapology equipment, were still intact cheered Max up a lot, but it didn’t get round the fact that he had no clothes other than the ones he’d been wearing for the past couple of days. Consuela was in the same position, so next morning they went to a shopping centre in the East End and bought themselves a few new outfits. Then they drove to a café near Victoria Station where Max had arranged to meet a police officer from Scotland Yard.
They got to the café early. Max and Consuela sat at one table, while Chris, Rusty and Zip took another near the door, where they had a good view of the street outside. Detective Sergeant Kevin Richardson came in ten minutes later. The detective looked uncannily like his late father, DCS John Richardson, Max thought: the same height and heavy build, even the same toothbrush moustache – though Kevin’s was jet black while his father’s had been tinged with grey.
Richardson sat down at the table opposite Max and studied him intently. Max gazed back, making his own assessment of the detective. He liked what he saw. Richardson had an open, honest face – again like his father – and trustworthy eyes.
‘Would you like something to drink?’ Consuela asked.
Richardson shook his head. ‘No, thanks, let’s get straight down to business, shall we? What’s this all about? Your phone call was very mysterious. Something important about my father, you said.’
Max took a moment to get his thoughts together. Kevin Richardson’s father, John, had also been a police officer – a detective chief superintendent and head of the Metropolitan Police’s Criminal Investigation Department. He’d helped Max try to find out more about Rupert Penhall, then been killed by a lorry while crossing a busy main road near his home in west London. Max didn’t believe his death had been an accident.
‘You know I knew your father?’ Max said.
‘Yes. He assisted you with one of your shows, didn’t he?’ Richardson replied. ‘That one in Hyde Park. I wanted to come and see it, but I was on duty that night.’
‘He helped me shortly after that too,’ Max went on. ‘When I was having trouble with a man called Rupert Penhall. He’s some kind of high-up
government official, something to do with MI5, I think. Your dad tried to find out who Penhall was, what he was up to, but he was warned off by his boss.’
‘The commissioner, you mean?’
‘That’s right. He threatened to sack your dad if he kept asking questions.’
Richardson’s eyes opened wide. ‘Did he indeed! You’re sure about this?’
‘Your dad told me himself. He wasn’t put off, though. He said he was going to carry on regardless.’
The detective smiled. ‘That sounds like my father.’
‘I think it cost him his life.’
Richardson frowned at Max, his face puzzled, uncertain. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I think he was murdered,’ Max said.
‘Murdered? You have some evidence to back that up?’
‘No real evidence. But it was too much of a coincidence. He starts asking questions about Penhall, then gets knocked down by a lorry. I think he was pushed in front of it.’
The detective sat back heavily and stared at Max. The colour had drained from his face. He was clearly shocked. ‘That’s a very serious allegation to make,’ he said.
‘I think it’s true,’ Max replied. ‘They’ve tried to kill me too.’
‘What?’ Richardson was gaping at him now. ‘Look, you’re losing me here. I think you’d better tell me the whole story.’
Max did. He told him everything that had happened over the past few months – from his trip to Shadow Island, through his adventures in Sweden and Borneo, to the bomb explosion in his house. Richardson said nothing as Max came to the end of his tale. He seemed to be dazed by the revelations. Finally, he said, ‘I think maybe I do need a drink.’ He got up from the table and walked over to the counter.
Consuela followed him with her eyes. ‘Do you think he’s going to help us?’
