Blood Sun

5

The air was dry from the school’s geothermal heating unit as Max ran quickly down into the pit of darkness. The vault lay buried like an Egyptian tomb. Deeper and deeper the steps went.

He reached the bottom. His headlamp scanned the boxes. Opening his own flooded him with memories of the last time he had been down here. His father had gone missing in Africa, and someone had tried to kill Max. Taking his passport then had been the start of a frightening adventure that left his dad’s mind wrecked and Max a changed boy. He took what he wanted from the box and began the muscle-burning exercise of running back up the stairs.

He had tried to eliminate the self-defeating anger he had felt over the past few weeks by hard physical activity. The sickness of suspicion and doubt had threatened to depress him as it ate away at his love for his father. Nothing could really shake that love-nothing except the thought that his mother had died because his dad had abandoned her in the jungle.

Now, as he pounded up the steep incline toward the faint glow of the corridor far above, he felt as though he had a focus for his pent-up emotions and energy. Danny Maguire was dead but had somehow managed to post the khipu to him. It was a message that needed an expert to decode it.

Max had just taken the first 133 steps toward finding out the truth about his mother’s death.

He closed his laptop’s lid, shoved it into its case and handed it to a waiting Sayid. He had done as much as he could to prepare for his journey.

“Keep this out of the way for me. Once they know I’ve gone, they’ll search this to see what they can find. Don’t lose any sleep over it, Sayid, but keep them guessing for a few hours, yeah? Then give it to them.”

“OK.”

“You remember everything I’ve asked you to do?”

“My name’s not Baskins.”

“Sorry, mate. Right. Time to get out of here.”

“You’re going now?” Sayid shivered and yawned. It was still dark, and the early hour meant Sayid’s bed beckoned. Unlike Max, he did not have the capacity to ignore the need for sleep or the crushing tiredness fear can bring.

“I have to get across the moor, Sayid,” Max said, pulling on his gloves. “It’ll be light in a few hours. If I hang around, I bet Mr. Jackson will have one of the masters keeping an eye on me, and they’ll find plenty of things to keep me busy until whoever’s planning to come and see me turns up.”

He zipped his fleece, then tightened the Velcro tab on his waterproof leggings. He’d be running part of the way, and the ground would be muddy despite the frost. He pulled his wool cap down over his head, but only to the top of his ears-he needed to hear clearly.

“Thanks for the extra cash,” Max said.

Sayid had raided his sock drawer and pulled out every note he’d stashed there from doing odd jobs on people’s computers. Max had his own small savings pot and the credit card his dad had set up for emergencies. But Max had wanted to avoid using that until the last minute.

“I’ll come downstairs with you,” Sayid said.

“No. Kill the lights and I’ll get going.”

Sayid knew Max was right. His friend could move more easily without having him to worry about. The two boys embraced.

“Take care, Max.”

“I will. Don’t worry, I’ll be in touch. I just have to sort this out.”

Sayid switched off the room’s light as Max settled his backpack onto his shoulders, left the room and walked quickly and silently toward the back door that would lead him to the yard.

Within minutes he had skirted the dark edge of the building, finding clear ground that would leave no footprints. He lifted Sayid’s mountain bike onto his shoulder, edged around the outbuildings and found an animal track etched through the gorse and heather. He ran, balancing the bike as best he could. Clouds were pushing in, hurried along by the north wind, its chill biting through his cargo pants. Tears from the cold filled his eyes.

For the next twenty minutes or so, it would be almost as bright as daylight, a chance to make fast time. A bomber’s moon, his gran had called a full moon on a clear night. As a child, she had endured saturation bombing in the Second World War, and whenever there was a beautiful, cloudless night, she would hastily close the curtains in her modest home. Well, he was glad of the moon. The sky’s glow helped Max see exactly where he needed to go. Within minutes he would drop out of sight from the school; then there was no chance of anyone who might still be awake seeing his shadow flit across the white-topped land.

Except that the threat did not lie in the school behind him.

Drew ran steadily on a bearing that would cut Max off. There was no need for night-vision goggles or binoculars: he saw the boy’s dark shape cut in and out of the folding ground. Somewhere behind him, and over to one side, Stanton would have the Range Rover ready to plunge through the night if for any reason Drew could not catch the boy.

Max was already more than a kilometer from school. Sweat ran down his back, his T-shirt clinging to his skin. As the track became a path, he climbed onto the mountain bike and kept his legs pumping. At this rate he would make good time. If his plan was going to succeed, he had to be in the city before the commuter rush hour started. He was so busy projecting his thoughts, following the plan in his mind, that he failed to see the rock in the path. The front wheel hit it awkwardly, the handlebars twisted and, because he was riding out of the saddle, using his body weight to power the bike along, he fell sideways into the gorse, rolling a couple of meters into the undergrowth.

Frozen snow and gorse needles scratched his face. He swore, picked up the bike and was immediately grateful for the accident. As he got to his feet, he looked back the way he had come. Across the low hill to his left, a shadow came on relentlessly. It was a big man, less than three hundred meters away. A determined energy powered the spectral figure forward, jumping and dodging any small obstacles like the inconsequential nuisances they were.

The shock of seeing the man momentarily stunned Max, but he recovered, kicked down on the pedals and felt the tires bite into the frozen sludge. Sucking in air, he kept going as fast as he could. Gran was right! A bomber’s moon brought the enemy right down your throat! Where were those clouds?

He dared a look over his shoulder. The man was closer. A horrible sensation gripped Max. The man pursuing him with such relentlessness must be superfit. Not only had he kept a fast pace going across difficult ground, but also he had increased his speed. He obviously had untapped reserves of stamina.

Max knew he was not going to outrun this man.

Know your ground, use your mind. Survival needs more than guts and strength. Dad whispered in his mind like a guardian angel.

Max knew where he was. He had run these hills and paths ever since his dad had placed him in school here. Dartmoor had dozens of danger zones. Military no-go areas, old mine shafts, bogland-there were plenty of nature’s traps ready to snare the unwary.

Where to go? Max’s mind raced faster than his legs. Get off the path! Make it difficult. Make him look where he’s going! Make him take his eyes off you!

Cold, raw air scoured his lungs. Pedal harder! No need to turn and look now. He could hear the man’s boots brushing aside the frozen gorse. Carrying the bike again would slow him down, but he had to take the risk. He couldn’t ride here. The crossbar dug into his shoulder. He dipped left, downward past an outcrop of knuckle-like boulders, saw the edge of the moon smiling its farewell as clouds crawled all over it. Darkness! He needed darkness. Another twenty meters. In the distance, the woods, spiky grassland in front, a last glint of light to help confirm what he saw in his mind’s eye. He veered right, banged his shoulder on an unseen fist of rock. It threw him off balance. But he was almost there. Now he ran straight, right out into the open where the man could not fail to see him.

He turned and faced his pursuer. Like a cornered rat.

“Who are you? What do you want?” he yelled, shaking with exertion, offering himself to the predator, who was less than fifty meters away. The man was expressionless. His eyes locked on to the seemingly helpless boy.

Max saw the ground in his head, remembered it in daylight, watched his finger trace the map as he took part in orienteering. Saw the places to avoid.

The mantraps.

As the darkness blanketed the moor, Stanton watched through night-vision binoculars. One of the ghosts had stopped. The other, a silvery, fast-moving apparition, raced toward it. And then floundered, half of its ghostly image disappearing from view.

Drew was down.

Stanton turned the ignition key.

Max gasped in air, letting his lungs settle, watching as the man spluttered and gagged on the foul bog water. The craters were deep, some of them bottomless, according to local legend. This was Blacksnake Mire, one of the primeval pockets of sludge, camouflaged by a covering of vegetation.

The man was trying to clamber out, but there was no means of reaching the edge. He trod water, except there was no buoyancy. The glutinous liquid was like quicksand.

“You’re going to die. You can’t get out of these mires unless someone helps you,” Max said evenly, surprised at the objective tone of his voice. Death was part of nature, and this hunter was about to be taken into a foul grave.

Drew spat out vomit-inducing mud and swore at Max with an even more evil spewing of expletives.

“Why were you chasing me? Tell me!” Max demanded.

Drew stayed silent. He was convinced he had the strength to get out of this, but the mire was sucking him down. Maybe he wasn’t going to make it.

“Gordon! Get me out, kid.”

Max was surprised to hear the man call him by name. “Tell me!” Max yelled. He could hear the purr of a powerful engine some distance away. It wouldn’t be a farmer. Their old workhorses coughed and spluttered through thirty years of use. This was controlled power. Like a Range Rover. Exactly! The one that nearly hit Sayid. These were the same men and they were still out here.

Drew had sunk down to the top of his chest; there was no chance of using his arms except to spread them out-to delay the inevitable.

“I dunno, boy. Your pal Maguire. He found out stuff.…”

“What stuff?” Max asked desperately. The sound of the engine was closer; it must be just over the rise of the hill behind them.

“Dunno! Kid! C’mon! Throw me something! Hurry, dammit!”

“What did he find out?”

A beam of light cut through the night sky. Whatever it was coming across the hills wasn’t using its headlights yet, but it had a powerful searchlight. The kind lampers use to hunt foxes.

Drew never thought he would die like this. Not chasing a kid on Dartmoor. Not being swallowed alive. “They don’t tell me things like that! I don’t get the details! Y’understand? Please!” Drew had heard men beg before they died but had never expected to hear a plea for life escape from his own lips.

A part of the hillside moved, its lightsaber beam sweeping across them. Max clambered onto the bike.

“Your mate can save you!” he yelled, hoping the man’s rescue would buy him time. And then he was gone into the night as Drew spluttered a desperate cry.

“No, he won’t! Kid! He won’t! He won’t help me!” But Max had moved quickly and was already out of earshot.

Moments later the Range Rover stopped. Stanton swung the side-mounted searchlight across the landscape. There was no sign of Max Gordon. He brought the beam to bear on the deceptive land. He couldn’t drive any closer, but he could throw Drew a rope and haul him out.

The light settled on his partner. Drew was up to his neck. Gasping.

“Riga, c’mon! Get me outta here!”

Stanton ignored the use of his professional name. It made no difference what anyone called him. He was who he was.

Drew was choking now. The slime was over his chin; his arms reached for the night sky. The beam of light blinded him.

“Pl … ea … se … For God’s … sake …”

Stanton watched the last slurp of foul liquid take the man’s face. His fingers curled in a final desperate clutch at life. And then they, too, slid below the surface.

“Maybe now you’ll stop whining,” Stanton said quietly to himself.

Exeter St. Davids was the mainline station to London Padding-ton. Some of the trains labored for hours from Penzance at the tip of the country. If they were lucky and everything was working as it should, passengers might have had a hot bacon roll and coffee from the buffet car. By the time the train, its tinted windows veiling the dull glow of light from inside the carriages, rolled into Exeter, Max was waiting-and the smell of the cooked food made his mouth water as the carriage glided past.

Thirty minutes earlier he had stood at the ticket desk, aware that a CCTV camera was in the corner. With barely a glance over his shoulder, he kept his back to the cold-eyed lens. There were others at various points on the platform. Max had already stored Sayid’s bike, making sure the padlock and chain were in place. Now all he had to do was mingle with the crowd of commuters.

The train squealed to a halt. Doors opened; a few students, who used the intercity as a local train for a few stops, got out. Doors slammed. The train manager waved to the front of the train, and the driver eased the brakes. Two minutes after arriving, the train was gone.

And so was Max.

Fergus Jackson paced his study. Bob Ridgeway’s MI5 agent would be here any minute, and Mr. Jackson was even more worried than the previous night. Max Gordon was missing. Jackson had assembled the twenty or so boys in the staff room under the watchful eye of the four teachers who had stayed on at the school during half-term.

Sayid Khalif had denied all knowledge of anything Max might have done or where he might have gone. Even Sayid’s mother could not get any information from him. No one knew anything. Limbo. That was where Fergus Jackson felt himself to be. Schoolboy honor and friendship closed doors against the adults who were trying to help one of their own. Although Jackson grudgingly admitted to himself that of all the boys at Dartmoor High, Max Gordon was probably the one who least needed help.

He heard the slick-engined motorbike before he saw it. So did the boys in the staff room. They crowded the windows to see the rider crest the hill over the still-frozen approach road.

“Look at that!” one of the boys said as the rider wobbled at speed, corrected the spin and then opened the throttle again. It was a big, heavy machine, and the slightly built figure looked as though he would have trouble lifting it if it fell. Which probably meant he didn’t lose control too often-an expert rider.

The black-clad figure wore a full-face helmet, and the leathers had creases of red in the gussets. It looked as though flames sneaked from the side vents on his jacket, like a Spitfire’s engine used to spout flame.

Now the rider downshifted, and the sweetly tuned engine idled. He wore a body-hugging backpack that matched his leather gear. Racking the bike onto its stand, he turned and looked directly at the boys’ faces. The smoked Perspex helmet hid the rider’s features.

“That’s awesome,” one of the boys muttered.

“That’s a liquid-cooled, six-hundred-cc, four-cylinder, four-stroke, sixteen-valve engine, giving one hundred twenty-five bhp at thirteen thousand five hundred revs. Zero to sixty in three seconds, zero to a hundred in about six. Top speed one hundred sixty-five miles an hour,” said Baskins, almost drooling.

The rider pulled off the helmet. A purple and crimson head emerged. Jackson was momentarily lost for words. The highlighted tufts of hair were chopped short, there was a stud in the rider’s nose and once the gloves came off to shake his hand, Jackson could see she wore Goth jewelry.

She.

“Charlotte Morgan,” she said, and smiled, extending her hand. “Great place you’ve got here. Roads were rubbish. M5 was terrible. A lorry had slipped its load-took me longer than I thought. Wouldn’t half mind a cuppa.”

She was already pulling a slimline laptop from her backpack and peeling off her leather jacket to reveal a T-shirt hidden by a sweatshirt that sported a Sundance logo. At least, that was what it appeared to be to Mr. Jackson. For all he knew, it could have been an advert for a grunge band.

“Tea. Ah. I have coffee on the go.…”

She smiled. “A cup of tea would be ace.”

“Yes. Of course. Forgive me. I’ll … er …” He reached for the phone, pressed a button and asked if one of the teachers could rustle up a pot of tea from the kitchen. The young woman was keying information into her laptop. She pulled out a file from the backpack and laid a mobile phone on his desk.

He replaced the phone. “You’re not quite what I expected, Charlie.”

“That’s what most people say. I find that helps.”

“Understandably,” he said.

She turned her computer round so he could see the screen. Hash marks crisscrossed it; a small red dot blinked.

He watched as she bent down and ran her fingers under the edge of his desk. She pulled out what looked like a Shreddies square, dropped it on the floor and crushed it under her boot heel.

“Cheap as chips, no pun intended, but effective up to about a couple of Ks.”

“Pun?” Jackson said.

“Microchips,” she said. “The phony guys bugged you.”

Stanton and Drew’s intrusion felt all the more grubby. They’d been eavesdropping! Had he said anything that could have endangered Max?

“OK. Let’s speak to this Max Gordon and see what he can tell us about Danny Maguire,” Charlotte Morgan said.

“Well, Charlie, that’s where we have a problem.”

There was no sign in the frozen snow of anyone using the road that led in and out of Dartmoor High. So Max Gordon must have gone cross-country. To where? It would take at least six hours of hard slog to get to the nearest railway station, which could be either Exeter or Plymouth. Could any of these boys hack that in these conditions? Morgan wondered.

She scanned the files on Max Gordon. Definitely, was the answer she came up with. In two hours she had looked at everything to do with Max Gordon. There was no direct relationship or even friendship noted between him and Danny Maguire, and that was confirmed by Jackson. She sweet-talked half the boys who would have told her anything had they known, but the boy who had fought with Max, Baskins, was worth interviewing.

Charlotte watched as Baskins straddled her bike. Its body contour demanded a low-profile riding position. Baskins could see himself screaming along at 150. Wait till he told Hoggart about the babe on the bike.

He’d realized he’d dropped Max in it when he mentioned the khipu. She had smiled and turned away. She’d lured him in and trapped him. The bike didn’t feel that great anymore.

Charlotte Morgan declined to speak to Gordon’s best friend, Sayid, until she had more information about him. She needed a lever. Now the information had been downloaded. No more Miss Cool Nice Person.

Sayid and his mother sat in Mr. Jackson’s office.

“Why has he run, Sayid?” Charlie asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered.

“Mr. Jackson told me he might have been expecting a letter or a package. Did he get anything?”

“I checked the postal deliveries myself. Nothing came for Max,” Jackson told her.

“Sayid, I’m here to help Max. There are some dangerous people out there who might want to hurt him.”

Sayid shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know anything. Max keeps things to himself.”

“Then where did he get the khipu?”

Baskins! Sayid couldn’t believe the oaf had blabbed. Well, actually he could.

“I don’t know. He just had it.”

She looked at the laptop screen. “You and your mother were rescued by your late father’s friend, Max’s dad.”

Sayid’s mother looked worried, and Mr. Jackson placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” he said.

“Sayid’s father was a vital link for work that was being done in the Middle East. It was his good standing that allowed Tom Gordon to get Sayid and his mother into this country.” She paused and made a quiet but pointed comment. “I don’t know just how secure that status is or whether there is a case for deportation.”

Sayid’s mother pushed her hand against her lips. Sayid looked panicked. Exactly what Charlie wanted.

“That’s a terrible threat to make to this family. How dare you. I’ll speak to Ridgeway about your behavior. He offered help, not intimidation!” Jackson said.

The girl was unperturbed. “You can do whatever you want, Mr. Jackson, but since you contacted my boss, he’s had a lot of heat put on him from people in our own government. He’s been told not to get involved in this matter. A boy’s death on the London Underground has now triggered something entirely different, and we don’t know what it is. Mr. Ridgeway does not like being squeezed by faceless bureaucrats. We’re the ones who are supposed to know everything. We’re the spooks. So I want information and I want it quickly. This now has as much to do with Max Gordon as it does with Danny Maguire’s death. He knew something important, and we want to know what.”

She looked at Sayid.

“You can save your mother a lot of heartache if you tell me.”

Keep them guessing for a few hours, yeah? Then give it to them. Max’s voice in his head calmed Sayid’s anxiety.

“I’ve got his laptop,” Sayid said.

Robert Ridgeway listened to his field agent. Max Gordon had broken into Jackson’s safe-and how did the kid ever do that? — and taken his passport from a place called the vault. He had also made a dozen online inquiries about flights to Peru, which was where khipus came from. Trouble was he could get to Peru from a dozen local airports via Europe. Charlie had no idea where he might leave from. There was also a composite letter on Gordon’s laptop, forged by pasting elements of the school’s website information pack, which had Fergus Jackson’s signature on it. It was written as a letter of authority confirming that the underage Max Gordon had permission to travel. A second letter was addressed to the British consul in Lima, asking that all assistance be given to the boy while he undertook field studies at a volunteer program in the Andes. The boy had everything planned.

“Then he’s been too clever by half,” Ridgeway told her. He would scan all the airports’ ticketing systems. Sooner or later, Max Gordon’s name would appear; then they would have him.

Morgan finished her report: a certain university lecturer in Oxford should be checked. He was the one who had visited the school and given a lecture on the Peruvian khipus. If Max Gordon had one of those things, then odds were he’d head there first. And then he would have easy access to Luton or Stansted airports, which had flights to Europe. That all seemed to fit neatly.

“I’m going to check CCTV at the most likely train station. If he’s heading anywhere by train, we’ll find him,” she said. “The London train stops at Reading. He could connect to Oxford from there.”

“Or the main London airports,” Ridgeway suggested.

“Maybe.”

“All right. We’ll get an alert at all passport controls,” Ridgeway told her. “For some reason, this boy has, or is able to obtain, information that people want. And until I know more, I don’t want another boy to die under suspicious circumstances.”

“Why? What makes you think that, boss?”

“As soon as we knew about Riga, we tried to double-check Danny Maguire’s cause of death, but we can’t; his body has gone missing. If Danny’s death was something other than suicide, Max Gordon might well be their next target.”