by Paul Adam
‘It takes a hell of a lot of guts to do what Jimmy’s doing,’ Halstead said admiringly. ‘If Clark finds out he’s working for us, he’ll kill him.’
Max was suddenly concerned for his father’s safety. ‘What about my dad?’ he said. ‘Is it wise for him to be here, in the same city as Clark’s headquarters? What if Clark’s men find him?’
‘They won’t find him,’ Halstead said reassuringly. ‘He’s in a safe house, just a couple of blocks from here. Only I know the location.’
‘Can I see him now?’
The doctor nodded. ‘Jimmy, you want to bring the car round to the front?’
‘Sure.’ Jimmy stood up and tossed his can into a recycling bin by the window. ‘Which direction are we going?’
‘Shrader Street. Number five two four.’
Jimmy went out of the office. Max and Halstead followed, Max barely able to control his mounting excitement. At last he was going to see his dad again. The doctor paused to set the alarm and lock the door behind them.
‘You’d better prepare yourself, Max,’ he said as they walked down the stairs. ‘Your father’s aged a lot over the past two years. He’s lost a lot of weight, his hair has turned grey – you might not recognize him.’
‘But he’ll recover, won’t he? Get back the way he was?’
‘I don’t know,’ Halstead said, shaking his head grimly. ‘Episuderon is a very nasty drug. Who knows what its long-term effects might be.’
They emerged onto the street. It was dark now, but there were still a lot of people around. Loud music was blaring from a bar across the street; adjacent to the bar, a tattooist’s parlour was still open for business, its front window lit up, showing examples of the elaborate designs customers could have inked into their skins. A scruffy man shuffled past, pushing a supermarket trolley piled high not with groceries but with what looked like his entire worldly goods.
‘How did you meet my dad?’ Max asked Halstead.
‘Through the Cedar Alliance. I first met him, oh, ten or twelve years ago, not long after I’d finished medical school. I was working as a doctor in Seattle, but in my spare time I was very active in the environmental movement, campaigning to stop all sorts of things – the over-fishing of the seas, the killing of whales, the destruction of the wilderness by multinational oil and mineral corporations. Your dad recruited me for the Alliance, as an area coordinator for the northwest USA.’ He glanced up the street. ‘Jimmy’s taking a long time … Anyway, then I got a job in Borneo, working at a hospital in Pangkalan Bun, and really got interested in how the rainforest was being destroyed, how it was affecting not just the local people, but the whole world. I became the Cedar Alliance’s coordinator for Indonesia, organizing protests, publicizing what was happening, helping local groups to be more effective in opposing the big logging and palm-oil companies like Rescomin – all behind the scenes, of course. The Alliance, as you know, always stays in the background, guiding things from a distance … Let’s go find him. He should be here by now.’
They walked round into the side street and paused at the mouth of the access lane to the yard. There was no sign of the car coming out.
‘He must be having trouble,’ Halstead said, turning into the lane. ‘Your dad trusted me – that’s why he came to Borneo. He knew about Clark’s fifth columnists. He was trying to find out how many there were around the world, trying to identify who they were and—’ The doctor came to a stop. They’d reached the yard and he was peering around in the darkness, a puzzled frown on his forehead. ‘What the …’
The dark green Ford was nowhere to be seen. Max looked around, too, wondering whether they’d somehow missed the car going past, or whether Jimmy had already been parked out at the front and they hadn’t noticed him.
‘Where the hell has he gone?’ Halstead snapped. He sounded confused and irritated.
Max was also confused. But his confusion was rapidly giving way to more sinister thoughts. What if something had happened to Jimmy? Like what? Had he been kidnapped? Had someone taken both him and the car? Max felt suddenly alarmed. He sensed danger. ‘I think we should get out of here,’ he said urgently.
‘What?’ Halstead didn’t seem to have heard him.
‘Something’s wrong. We shouldn’t hang around.’ Max turned and walked quickly back along the access lane and round to the front of the building, feeling safer under the street lights. He looked around for the Ford, but it wasn’t on the street, either. Halstead came up next to him. He seemed more alert now, as if he were sensing danger too.
‘Jimmy’s a reliable guy,’ he said tensely. ‘He wouldn’t just disappear.’
Max glanced up and down the street, watching out for people or vehicles approaching. He felt very exposed. ‘What if Clark’s men snatched him?’ he said.
‘That doesn’t make sense. Jimmy would’ve put up a fight. We’d have heard or seen something.’
‘Then where is he?’
Max’s brain was in overdrive, working feverishly through all the possibilities, searching for an explanation. Why would Jimmy have vanished like that? If he hadn’t been abducted – and Halstead was right, there were no signs of a struggle – then he must simply have driven off of his own free will. But why? Why drive off when Max and Halstead needed the car to go and see Max’s father?
My father, Max thought abruptly. He’s in a safe house, a place known only to Dr Halstead. No, not just Halstead. Jimmy knew where it was now. The doctor had given him the address. Five-twenty-four Shrader Street.
Jimmy Abbott?
Oh my God, no! Max’s stomach turned to ice. Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier? He spun round to face Halstead, feeling sick.
‘Jimmy is short for James, isn’t it?’
‘What? Why are you—?’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Halstead said.
‘James Abbott. He was on Shadow Island.’
‘Shadow Island? Jimmy? Max, you must be—’
‘I saw his name in the files,’ Max broke in. ‘His and four others. James Abbott was taken to the island and brainwashed. He’s not your fifth columnist, he’s Julius Clark’s.’
‘Clark’s? Max—’
‘Don’t you see? He’s not working for you, he’s working for Clark. And you’ve just given him my dad’s location. That’s where he’s gone.’
Halstead stared at him, horror-struck. ‘You think—’
‘Where’s Shrader Street?’ Max demanded.
‘That way.’ Halstead pointed west. ‘Two blocks.’
Max took off along the street, running flat out. He heard the thud of Halstead’s feet behind him, but didn’t look round. He had to get to Shrader Street, get to his father. How could he have been so stupid? He should have worked it out the moment he heard Jimmy’s name. It was one of the five. Three he’d already traced: only James Abbott and Sergei Alekseev had remained unidentified. Until now, that is.
Never before had he run so fast, with such ferocious determination. Jimmy had a head start on him – and he had a car – but Max had his strength and fitness, his speed honed over hundreds of training runs around the local park in London. Halstead couldn’t keep up with him; Max glanced over his shoulder as he reached a junction and saw the doctor thirty metres back.
‘Straight on!’ Halstead yelled.
Max sprinted across the side street, narrowly avoiding a turning car. There were people on the pavement, coming out of restaurants and bars or just loitering around in groups. He dodged around them without slowing, accidentally bumping into a man’s shoulder and earning a mouthful of abuse for the collision. He could feel the pain in his chest. He was gasping for air, his pulse off the scale. He was desperate. He had to get to his father. He was so near him. So near. To have him snatched away now would be a devastating blow.
He passed more shops, had to leap over the feet of a tramp who was stretched out in a doorway, wrapped in a blanket. Then he looked up and saw a sign on a lamppost – SHRADER.
; ‘Go right,’ Halstead called.
Max turned into the street and paused, looking at the buildings, trying to see their numbers. Which side was 524 on? He saw 542 to his right, so even numbers were on this side. 524 couldn’t be far away. Then he saw them. Five men coming out of the front door of a four-storey Victorian house fifty metres ahead of him. He recognized Jimmy Abbott, but not the other four. Then he realized that the man in the centre of the group was being held by his arms, forced down the steps against his will. He was struggling to escape, but the others were too strong for him. Max stopped dead, realizing who it was.
‘Dad!’
The cry escaped from his lips without him being aware he’d spoken. The men turned their heads and Max caught a glimpse of his father’s face. He was almost unrecognizable as the dad he remembered – his face was haggard, with hollow eyes and prominent cheekbones, his hair thin and grey as smoke.
‘Max?’ he called out weakly. ‘Max, is that you? Get away from here.’
Max heard Halstead running up behind him, heard the rasp of his laboured breathing. He didn’t look round. His eyes were fixed on his father, on the men who were taking him away. One of them broke apart from the group, his right hand reaching under his jacket and bringing something out. Max saw the glint of metal in the lamplight and instinctively threw himself sideways behind a parked car. The pistol fired once, then again.
Max rolled over on the tarmac and glanced round in time to see Halstead tumbling to the ground, a dark patch of blood on the front of his shirt. There was another gunshot. A bullet pinged off the bodywork of the car only inches from Max’s head. He pulled himself up into a crouch and scuttled away across the road, keeping low and zigzagging to offer less of a target to the gunman. He heard another report, felt a bullet whine past his ear. He dived into the cover of a van parked on the far side of the street and twisted round. He could hear his father protesting, his voice faint and croaky. Then car doors slammed, an engine started up and the dark green Ford came speeding past. Max saw Jimmy at the wheel, a man in the back he didn’t recognize, with Alexander Cassidy next to him. Alexander turned his head and for a split second his eyes met Max’s, father and son communicating with each other, almost identical emotions fleeting across their faces – fear, anxiety, love.
Then the car was gone and Max was staring across the street at Halstead’s lifeless body, aware that there were still two men unaccounted for – men who were intent on killing him too. He knelt up and cocked an eye round the side of the van. The men were coming warily out across the street. They were tall and powerfully built, but light on their feet. Both had automatic pistols outstretched in front of them, holding them in two hands like soldiers or policemen – professionals who were used to handling firearms.
Max knew he had to move fast. Scrambling to his feet, he raced out from behind the van and sprinted away along the pavement, veering into a parking lot on the corner of the street and running diagonally across it, using the parked cars to shield himself. When he came out of the lot, he turned right along the main road and kept running for a block until the buildings petered out. A street cut horizontally across his path, and on the other side of it was what looked like a park, a large open space with dense shrubberies and pockets of trees that would provide good places to hide.
He looked back. The two men were running towards him, moving easily like athletes. One of them had a phone pressed to his ear. Max felt a sharp stab of fear in his guts. He turned and dashed across the road into the park.
TWELVE
THERE WAS GRASS underfoot, a copse of tall redwood trees towering over him. Max ran in a straight line, not caring where the path was, just trying to put as much distance as he could between himself and the men behind.
He trod on something soft, heard a yelp and stumbled to the ground, realizing he’d tripped over a tramp sleeping rough. The tramp sat up, flailing his arms and yelling incoherently, so close that Max could smell the strong odour of alcohol on his breath. He rolled away and pulled himself to his feet.
‘Sorry,’ he murmured, and sprinted off, pushing past a large bush and breaking out onto a patch of open grass. There was a road on the far side of the grass, intermittent headlights moving along it. Max recognized where he was: Golden Gate Park. Herb Feinstein had driven him through it that morning.
Max raced across the open space. If he could get to the road, maybe he could stop a car, get help. He looked back. He couldn’t see the men, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. It was so black that they could have been just a few metres away and he wouldn’t have noticed them. The thought made him accelerate. He knew he was running for his life. These men had gunned down Dr Halstead in a well-lit suburban street. They wouldn’t hesitate to kill Max in this dark, secluded park.
He reached the road and paused, looking both ways for headlights. But the cars he’d seen earlier had all passed by and the road was deserted. Glancing over his shoulder, he could now make out two shadowy figures jogging across the grass towards him. They didn’t seem to be in any hurry. Max found that lack of haste almost more terrifying than the guns he knew they were carrying. It showed how confident they were, how completely sure of their superior force. They didn’t need to rush. They had Max where they wanted him – alone and defenceless in a park at night. It was only a matter of time before they caught up with him and finished the job.
Max felt his anger start to simmer. These men thought they could do anything. They’d kidnapped his father, they’d shot Tony Halstead and now they were going to kill him. Well, they weren’t going to find it easy. He was young and fit and determined, and was fighting for his very survival. There was no way he was going to let them catch him.
He sped across the road and crossed another open patch of grass, the ground underneath it uneven and pitted with hollows. It was too dark to really see where he was going. He had to run blind, feel his way across the field using his other senses.
He came out onto a second road and paused to draw breath. There was a high chain-link fence on the far side of the road, blocking his path, so he turned right and ran along the carriageway. There were no cars around, no pedestrians. He looked over his shoulder. The two men had reached the road and one of them was now talking into his mobile.
The sight reminded Max that he had a phone too. In the panic and agitation of getting away from the gunmen, he’d forgotten all about it. He felt in his jacket pocket, increasing his speed around a bend in the road. He could hear the sound of his own breathing, the pad of his trainers on the tarmac. He was getting tired. Then he heard the faint noise of an engine, saw the flicker of headlights on the trees and a car came cruising into view a hundred metres in front of him. Max let out a sigh of relief. Help was at hand.
He ran out into the middle of the road, waving his arms frantically. The car headlights hit him in the face and something about the vehicle suddenly struck him as wrong. It was going very slowly, prowling like a police patrol car. But it wasn’t a police car, and this wasn’t a built-up area. Why was it going so slowly? Then he remembered the man talking into his phone and realized with a sickening jolt what he’d been doing. This car wasn’t help – it was back-up for the killers on his tail.
For an instant, Max froze. The road was blocked in both directions. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and switched it on. The car accelerated, heading straight for him. Max dived out of the way, the phone slipping from his fingers and skittering away into some bushes. The car had stopped just up the road. Max heard doors slamming, the pounding of feet. There was no time to look for his phone. He leaped up at the chain-link fence, scrambled over the top and dropped to the ground on the other side. As he landed, he saw two men in dark suits running towards the fence, guns in their hands. He scuttled away into the undergrowth and burst out onto a path. The fence would slow the men up, give him a chance of getting away.
The path went up a slight incline past flowerbeds and formal gardens. Max wondered about hiding somewhere, but rejected
the idea – it was far too passive for his liking. Better to keep on the move and try to outrun his pursuers. He entered a wood, huge sequoia trees blocking out what little light was filtering in from the streetlamps on the nearby road. He was starting to feel the pain now; the hill was sapping his energy. His legs and chest aching, he paused briefly, looking back the way he’d come, listening hard. He could detect no signs of the men. Had they come over the fence after him? Or were they circling around the perimeter – maybe using their car – waiting for him to come out? The thought made his heart beat faster. He had to keep running, get out the far side of the gardens before the men got there.
The terrain levelled out as he left the wood, easing the pressure on his body. He could see an orange glow in the sky – the lights of the city that was all around the park. There were thousands of sleeping citizens only a short distance away, but they were out of reach for Max, out of earshot. If he shouted for help, no one was going to hear him except the gunmen who wanted him dead.
As the ground began to slope gently downhill, Max got a second wind and increased his speed. The path was soft and yielding, bark chippings rather than the concrete of the earlier paths. It cushioned his legs, made running easier. His eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness now. He could see the edges of the path, the shapes of the plants in the borders and, up ahead, a harder, more defined line that he realized was the perimeter fence.
He sprinted up to it and stopped, panting for breath. There were bushes on the other side of the wire mesh, blocking his view. Were the gunmen out there somewhere, waiting for him to emerge? It was impossible to tell. Grasping the mesh with his fingers, he climbed up the fence and down the other side. Then he pushed his way cautiously through the bushes, pausing where they came to an end to survey the ground beyond. There was a strip of grass next to another road and across it a steep, wooded hill. Max looked around intently, his gaze probing the shadows, the trees on the far side of the road. He saw nothing suspicious, nothing to alarm him.
