by Paul Adam
The beam of his pencil torch lanced around the interior, picking out the stacks of timber planks on the floor and a neatly-coiled rope in one corner. The man went to the rope and knelt down. From his pocket he took a tiny explosive device no bigger than a sunflower seed. Opening up the strands of the rope with the blade of a knife, he inserted the device deep into the fibres, then inspected his handiwork carefully. The device was completely hidden – it was impossible to tell that the rope had been tampered with in any way.
The man stood up and eased open the container door a couple of centimetres, putting his eye to the gap. The car park was still deserted so he stepped out and relocked the door behind him. Then he jogged back to his car, climbed in and drove away.
FOURTEEN
‘YOU SAID YOU’D phone us, Max. You promised.’
‘Yes, I know, but—’
‘You almost got killed. Several times. Why didn’t you contact us?’
Max had never seen Consuela so angry. She was pacing across the sitting room of their hotel suite, her mouth tight, her face flushed.
‘I couldn’t,’ Max protested. ‘I told you. I lost my phone.’
‘That was when you were being chased through Golden Gate Park. You could have found a payphone after that and rung us. Or you could have come back to the hotel. But no, you had to go to Rescomin Tower, didn’t you. On your own. You didn’t need to do that.’
‘I was looking for Dad. I couldn’t afford to wait, I had to go straight there.’
‘You didn’t have to go alone. Have you any idea how worried Chris and I have been? You’ve been out all night. We didn’t know where you were, we didn’t know what had happened to you.’
‘Look, I’m sorry,’ Max said meekly. ‘Really, I am.’
He meant it. He could see how upset Consuela was. He knew he’d behaved recklessly, thoughtlessly, and wanted to make amends. ‘I didn’t want to delay, that’s all,’ he said. ‘In case they moved Dad to another place.’
‘If you’d come back here, we could have contacted the police and let them deal with it. All you’ve done is give Clark and his men the time to spirit your dad away and hide him somewhere we don’t know about. Hasn’t he, Chris?’
Consuela glanced across at the armchair in which Chris was slouching. He’d said very little since Max had returned. He’d left all the talking – and all the anger – to Consuela. He nodded phlegmatically.
‘I’m afraid so. Consuela is right, Max. Your dad won’t be there any longer. They’ll have moved him to a safe house elsewhere in the city. They might have moved him out of San Francisco altogether.’
‘You put your life in danger,’ Consuela said. ‘And for what? Why don’t you let us help? Why did you have to rush in like that?’ She slumped down onto the edge of the settee and covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders began to shake with silent sobs.
Max looked anxiously at Chris, unsure what to do, his eyes asking for guidance. Chris glared at him, then jerked his head at Consuela. The message was unmistakable: You caused this mess, mate. Now you sort it out.
Max got up and sat down beside Consuela. He hesitated for a moment, then put a tentative arm around her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’
Consuela took her hands away from her face. Her cheeks were wet with tears, her make-up smudged. ‘I know you didn’t, Max.’
‘Sometimes I don’t think. Sometimes I do stupid things. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done what I did.’
Consuela twisted round on the settee and gave him a long hug. ‘You’ve got to understand,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘You’re only fourteen. I’m your guardian. I’m responsible for you. I care about you, Max.’ She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. ‘But you’re alive. That’s the important thing.’
She stood up and went across the sitting room into her bathroom, closing the door behind her. Max watched her, feeling bad about making her cry.
Chris gave him a reproachful look. ‘What were you thinking, Max? I’m here to look after you. Your safety is paramount to me. That’s why I roped Rusty and Zip in to help. We’ve heard from them, by the way. Rusty called an hour or so ago. The police held them for forty-eight hours, then released them without charge.’
‘Are they coming over to join us?’
‘There’s no point now. It’s too late. But I’m here, Max. You know you can always call on me. Don’t go running off on your own again like that, OK? Enough said.’
Chris went across to the television set and switched it on, flicking through the channels until he found the local station.
The shooting in Haight-Ashbury was the lead item on the breakfast news. There was a reporter at the scene, a tall, elegant woman in her thirties, with a lot of blonde hair and very white teeth. She was standing on Shrader Street, just outside an area that had been cordoned off. In the background, the camera picked up police vans and cars, officers moving around under bright portable arc lights. The reporter described what had happened, how a white male, identified from his driving licence and other papers as 38-year-old Anthony Halstead, a doctor about to take up an appointment at San Francisco General Hospital, had been gunned down on the sidewalk. Neighbours had heard two or three shots, seen cars and several unidentified men running away from the scene.
Max listened to the report, going suddenly cold as he relived the experience – seeing Halstead going down again, seeing the blood on his chest, then seeing the gunmen coming after him, chasing him through the park.
‘You OK with this?’ Chris asked. ‘I can turn it off, if you find it disturbing.’
‘I’m OK,’ Max replied.
‘I think we should know what the authorities are saying, what the official story is.’
Max nodded in agreement. He wanted to keep watching. It had taken place only a few hours ago, yet it seemed so much longer. He remembered every part of it in vivid detail, but he felt detached from it now, as if it had all happened to someone else.
Consuela came out of the bathroom, her face washed, her make-up repaired. She sat down next to Max and watched the news with them. From the shooting of Dr Halstead, the programme moved on to another incident in the west of the city that the police believed might be connected to it. Two men, so far unidentified, had been seriously injured in what appeared to have been a buffalo stampede in Golden Gate Park. The men were in a stable condition in hospital, with police guards outside their rooms. A police spokesman, interviewed on camera, said that the two men had both been carrying automatic pistols and tests were currently underway to establish whether the guns had been used in the Shrader Street shooting.
At the end of the report, Chris turned the television set off.
‘You’re a one-man news-creation machine, Max,’ he said dryly. ‘That entire bulletin was generated by your antics.’
Max didn’t dispute the facts. It was undoubtedly true, but he’d had enough of the previous night and all the explanations and apologies that had followed. He wanted to move on now.
‘So what do we do about my dad?’ he asked. ‘Why did those men take him away? Why not kill him there and then?’
Chris shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you think they’ve killed him now? Taken him somewhere and shot him?’
Consuela winced. ‘Max, don’t think about such things.’
‘But I have to think about them. It’s important.’
‘I know it’s important,’ Consuela said. ‘To all of us. But you have other things to deal with today.’
‘My bridge stunt, you mean?’ In all the excitement, Max had almost forgotten that he was performing on the Golden Gate Bridge that evening.
Consuela nodded. ‘And you’ve been up all night, had no sleep. You look absolutely terrible. I think you should go to bed for a few hours.’
‘I don’t want to go to bed.’
‘Max, this is the biggest show of your life. Do you want to cancel it?’
‘I don�
�t know. Maybe we should pull out. I don’t really feel like performing.’
‘You don’t feel like it?’ Consuela said incredulously. ‘Max, have you thought about how big this event is? Why you are getting such a huge fee, and all our expenses met like this? They’ve closed part of the Golden Gate Bridge to enable you to do this stunt, the mayor of San Francisco has given it his personal support, the police department is providing hundreds of officers to help and there are going to be thousands of spectators watching here in the city and millions around the world. There’s no way you can pull out now – unless, of course, you are too ill to do the stunt …?’
‘What about those men who just tried to kill me?’ Max said, ignoring her concern about his health. ‘They could try again.’
‘Not on the Golden Gate,’ Chris said confidently. ‘Not with all those police officers around, plus Feinstein’s own security men, not to mention the TV cameras. They’d have to be stupid, or crazy, and I don’t think they’re either. The bridge is going to be the safest place for you. Now go to bed. You need to be sharp and alert tonight.’
‘And my dad?’ Max said.
‘Consuela and I will discuss what we should do about your dad.’
Max considered for a moment, then gave a reluctant nod. The previous night was catching up with him. He needed some sleep, if he was going to be ready for his show.
He went into his bathroom and stripped off his clothes. They’d dried almost completely since his immersion in the lake, but they were still tainted with dirty water and made him feel unclean. He took a shower, then got into bed.
Sleep didn’t come easily. He’d got through the night on a mixture of adrenaline and determination. Now he was back in the security of his hotel suite, he was realizing how drained he was, how shaken by those terrifying events. Three times they’d tried to kill him and three times – through luck and skill – he’d escaped. Rupert Penhall’s parting comment came back to him. ‘You lead a charmed life at the moment, Max. I wonder how much longer you can keep it up.’
Max was wondering too, now. How many lives did he have left? Not many, if he kept taking such foolhardy risks. He was bitterly disappointed not to have made contact with his father. He’d been so close. Their eyes had met for a brief moment, and then his dad had gone. Max found that immensely distressing. Alexander Cassidy had looked so feeble and infirm. Max desperately wanted him back home with him and his mother where he could be properly looked after. But now he’d disappeared again.
Max’s thoughts strayed back to the questions he’d asked earlier. Why had the gunmen abducted his dad? If he was such a threat to Julius Clark, why hadn’t they just killed him in the house on Shrader Street? He could think of only one reason why Clark wanted his father alive: to interrogate him. But about what? Again, there seemed to be only one answer: about the Cedar Alliance, the secret organization that was fighting Clark’s global ambitions and whose clandestine leadership included Alexander Cassidy. Did Clark want to find out who the other leaders were so he could destroy the Alliance? Did he intend to drug Alexander with Episuderon again, to finish off the job he’d started on Shadow Island two years ago?
Max had a feeling he did. But where would he do it? Max’s reckless escapades at Rescomin Tower had failed to find, or rescue, his father, but it had succeeded in its other aim: he’d discovered where the Episuderon was being sent – to Zaliv Myertvetsa. Max was certain that Clark was continuing the brainwashing programme that he had originally conducted on Shadow Island before Max destroyed his laboratory. Kamchatka, like Shadow Island, was remote and unpopulated. Clark could do whatever he liked there.
If the brainwashing drug was being used at Zaliv Myertvetsa, then maybe Max’s father was also being taken there. The more Max thought about it, the more the idea became a conviction. And in San Francisco harbour was a ship named the Reunion Star that at nine a.m. the following morning was setting sail for Kamchatka.
FIFTEEN
MAX HAD NEVER experienced such a phenomenally high level of public and media interest in one of his shows. He was used to a certain amount of press coverage for his theatre performances as the Half-Pint Houdini, and his Tower Bridge stunt had been televised in the UK. But San Francisco was something different altogether. Here, he was being treated as a real global celebrity.
He’d already done a press conference and a few television interviews and he’d caught a glimpse of a trailer for his show that one of the networks was running regularly in between programmes, but nothing had prepared him for the sheer scale of the media circus that surrounded him that Sunday evening.
The lobby of the Fairmont was crowded with photographers and reporters and television crews. Stepping out of the lift with Consuela, Herb Feinstein and Chris – who, after the events of the night before, was sticking to him like a magnet – Max was so taken aback by the barrage of flashguns and cameras that he stopped dead, his face frozen into a mask of stunned surprise. It took a reassuring squeeze of his arm from Consuela and a murmured, ‘Smile,’ to prevent him diving back into the lift and retreating upstairs to their room.
‘How’re you feeling, Max?’ a reporter yelled.
‘You all set for the show?’ called another.
‘Hey, Consuela, look this way,’ shouted a third.
Max recovered himself. He forced his features to relax and beamed at the cameras. ‘I’m fine. I’m looking forward to it,’ he said brightly.
‘You scared?’ one of the reporters asked.
‘You bet,’ Max replied, with a grin, though it wasn’t his forthcoming stunt that frightened him, but this seething mass of journalists and cameramen, all jostling and fighting for position so aggressively that he feared he might be crushed in the scrum.
Two big security men in dark suits stepped forward, pushing the crowd back to allow Max and his companions a clear path to the exit. The media people followed, pouring out through the doors and clustering around Max and Consuela as they ducked inside the limousine that was waiting for them on the forecourt.
Max sagged back into the soft leather seat and let out a deep breath, relieved to have the metal doors and tinted windows between him and the mob. Consuela and Feinstein settled down next to him. Chris took one of the fold-down seats opposite, his back to the glass panel that separated them from the driver.
‘You OK?’ he asked Max.
Max nodded. ‘Just a bit shocked. I never expected that. So many people, all those cameras.’
‘You’re like a rock star,’ Feinstein said. ‘The media are wild for you. They’ve been hyping your show round the clock. Didn’t you notice?’
Max glanced out of the window. The photographers were pressing close to the glass, still snapping away. The attention made him feel exhilarated, but uncomfortable. He wasn’t a rock star, and didn’t want to be treated like one. A blue flashing light and a siren started up and he noticed a police patrol car in front of the limousine. There was another one behind, too. A police escort – that was a new experience for him as well.
The convoy pulled off, going west past Grace Cathedral, then turning north a few blocks later to head over to the Golden Gate Bridge. They drove fast, the police sirens giving them an uninterrupted run through the traffic.
On the flyover near the bridge, Max looked out of the window and saw dense crowds of people down on the shore of the bay. ‘They’ve not all come to watch me, have they?’ he asked, astonished by the numbers.
‘Why else do you think they’re there?’ Feinstein replied. He seemed amused by Max’s question. ‘You’d better get used to it. This is a first for San Francisco – a stunt like this off the Golden Gate Bridge, and done by a fourteen-year-old kid from England. Everyone wants to see it.’
Max felt the stirrings of a few butterflies in his stomach. He wanted people to take notice of what he did, but this was really rather overwhelming.
Consuela sensed his nerves and reached out to touch his hand. ‘You’ll be fine,’ she said with a smile. ‘You’ve done th
is before. You can do it tonight too.’
‘But in front of so many people!’ Max said.
‘One person, or a thousand, what difference does it make?’
In theory, none, Max thought. The stunt was still the same regardless of how many people were watching. But, of course, it did make a difference. It increased the pressure on him. He had to be good. He had to be better than good, he had to be superlative, if all these spectators were to go away satisfied. And he had to be good to survive too – he was putting his life on the line with a stunt this dangerous, no matter how well prepared he was.
The limo slowed as it passed through the toll plaza, then stopped at a metal barrier that had been erected at the southern end of the bridge. A police officer swung open the gate and waved them through. The limo accelerated behind the leading police car. The two nearside lanes of the northbound freeway had been closed to traffic. One was rapidly filling up with spectators, but one had been fenced off to allow police, fire and ambulance access in the event of an emergency, and to let Max through to the middle of the bridge. The central section of the two lanes was also cordoned off with barriers manned by police officers. No one was allowed past except Max and his team, Feinstein’s people and the television network staff who were covering the event.
Max had never seen so many uniformed police officers in one place. It made him feel secure. Chris was right; Clark’s men wouldn’t be able to touch him here. He got out of the limo and looked around. It was getting dusky. The bridge was bathed in bright light from portable spot lamps. The city, too, was lit up. Max could see the skyscrapers in the Financial District, the streetlights on the hills behind. Out in the bay, Alcatraz was also visible. The old cell block that dominated the summit of the rock was illuminated and next to it the light at the top of the lighthouse was rotating, flashing its warning beam every few seconds.
