Blood Sun

9

The paramedics covered Dr. Miller’s body with a blanket and eased the stretcher out through the doors. Charlotte Morgan stood in the room. There was no doubt that there had been intruders in the British Museum or that the man had had a heart attack. And there was evidence that someone had tried to save him. Who? She did not believe for one moment that the vandalism was caused by these ACT people. Not after being told of Riga’s involvement at Dartmoor High.

She studied the room carefully, walking around the exhibits behind the glass. There was no evidence of any connection with Peru or South America. Light caught the glass and she saw the smudges. They were fingerprints, plenty of them. Most were low down. She imagined small children pressing their hands against the invisible wall.

Higher up were other prints. She stepped back, checked the maps behind the glass that showed the history of the Toltecs, Aztecs and Mayas. Why had Dr. Miller been in here? It seemed obvious that it must have been with Max. In Oxford, Professor Blacker had told her that there were two other experts who could understand khipus. One was in Edinburgh, the other at the British Museum. Max Gordon could go to either. Charlie Morgan had mentally tossed a coin. Heads or tails? Heads. London.

Her eyes scanned the glass. Among all the smudges was a full handprint at shoulder height, as if someone had wanted to touch the very place shown on the map. She opened a small pack of what looked like cellophane peel-offs, pressed one against the glass and lifted the fingerprints. If these prints were by any chance Max Gordon’s, then she knew he was not going to Peru, where Danny Maguire had been working, but to Central America. Why? What was there?

“Officer Morgan!” The irate voice echoed down the corridor into the room.

Charlie looked up, annoyed to have her chain of thought broken, but by the look of the wildly beckoning figure marching back outside, it looked like she was going to have to do even more thinking. And fast.

Four police cars, lights flashing, stood guard over the museum’s main entrance gates. Uniformed officers were coming and going, still searching the grounds and buildings for Max. Paramedics attended to the security staff. Charlie Morgan walked out into the courtyard. Crowds of faces pressed against the gold-tipped iron gates. There were always so many people on the streets even at this time of night.

“Who’s paying for all of this?” the red-faced inspector demanded.

“What?”

“Police time! You’ve pulled four area patrol cars and a dozen of my officers off the streets. This is not a major incident. A half-baked bunch of activists making fools of the security here is not worth my people’s time! I’m leaving one officer to take statements.” He turned on his heel.

Damn. Charlie needed these people for another few hours, but he was right-she had no authority to use his officers, and there was always the question of who paid for what in this bureaucratic world. How far could she go before this was blown out of all proportion? There was only one way to find out. “Inspector! This comes from the top. The Home Office. We think it might have been a practice run by terrorists. We have good information. They’re using a boy to get past security,” she lied. “We think he’s still inside.”

Mention the word terrorist and the world freezes. At least the inspector’s did. Was he going to take responsibility for letting an extremist escape?

“Is he dangerous? Do we need an armed team here?”

This was where it got tricky. Just how far could she go? Fear is a wonderful instrument to control people. She didn’t hesitate. “That would be a very good idea. Thank you.”

Now the inspector felt important. He was part of a bigger, more dangerous picture. He nodded. “I’ll bring sniffer dogs in as well. You can have them till the morning.”

He turned away. Charlie sighed. Whoever had caused havoc in the museum was already gone. Eyewitnesses had seen a car with four men inside pull away from the side entrance just before the police arrived. Two of the men were injured. There was little point in tracing the number plate; it would be false. Perhaps CCTV could track where it went.

But those were men. Where was the boy? Where was Max Gordon? All her instincts told her he was still inside.

Max waited until the initial shouts, lights and the sound of running feet had faded into a more industrious and less frenetic pace. The voices were more measured now, and it was obvious they were searching for someone. It did not take a great leap of imagination to guess who.

The false wall behind the exhibit case of the Tomb of Jericho was a space for pipework, most of which was as thick as his forearm. Old, solid, Victorian-era conduits. The gap was narrow, but if he held his backpack in one hand and a pipe with another, he could ease himself down. By the time he reached the bottom, he was in a network of underground pipes and cables. A service tunnel. Max knew he had been close to the west stairs when he hid but had no idea where he was now. It was almost pitch-black down here. Max did not like dark, enclosed spaces. He could feel it close around him, like an invisible night monster suffocating him.

It’s your mind. Ignore it. It’s only fear, and fear can’t hurt you. He tugged out his compass, found his beta lamp and watched the needle swing. He followed the direction west, stumbling, barking his shins on unseen pipes. Cobwebs caught his face and hair, and as he moved deeper along the tunnel, he heard scratching sounds scurrying before him. Rats.

The service tunnel led to a set of iron steps that went up into the back of the museum’s loading bays.

Max breathed in the cold night air and exhaled the fear he had bottled inside him. Now there were lights. Police cars blocked all the gates, officers came and went, and to the front and to the left of the loading bays, a woman wearing biker leathers was talking to a police officer. She had tufts of colored hair. She was pretty in a funky way. But tough-looking. She never smiled. That was the MI5 woman Sayid had told him about. And she had the place sewn up. There was no way Max could make a run for it.

At the end of the loading dock, an ambulance waited. It was almost as if it was not part of the activity in the nearby courtyard. Doors opened behind him and two paramedics wheeled out a blanket-covered body. They went down the side ramp, opened the vehicle’s doors and began to load Dr. Miller’s body-Who else could it be? Max reasoned-into the ambulance.

Max followed in their footsteps, and as they clambered out, he waited until they noticed him. His sadness was not really an act, but he had to make sure they believed him.

“Excuse me,” Max said.

“You all right, mate?”

“That’s my granddad in there. We were in the museum together when he … fell down.”

“Oh, I’m really sorry, son.”

“I tried to save him,” Max said.

“Yeah, we saw someone had had a go. Look, there’s nothing you can really do in a situation like that. Even if we’d been there, we probably couldn’t have saved him either.”

Max nodded and took genuine comfort from the paramedic’s consolation. “I’ve just spoken to the police. They said if it was all right with you, I could go with him. My mum and dad are on their way to the hospital.”

The female paramedic looked at her partner, who seemed uncertain. “You sure you want to?”

Max just nodded.

They closed the doors. Max sat on the opposite stretcher to Dr. Miller’s body. The ambulance smelled of disinfectant-a cold, functional place created to save lives. Or to ferry the dead on to the next stage of their journey.

The ambulance stopped at the gates. A police officer waved it through, giving it safe passage through the gawping crowd. It slipped away quietly. No flashing lights or siren needed. There was no need to trumpet a man’s death.

Max watched the police activity recede beyond the city streets. He reached out his hand and laid it on the still form in front of him.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

The trail had gone cold.

There was no trace in the database of the fingerprints Charlie Morgan had found in room 27 at the British Museum, and the search was called off by the time it opened the next morning.

Ridgeway had spoken to Fergus Jackson, but, despite his most persuasive efforts, had failed to convince him that taking fingerprints from Max’s room could aid in tracking him. Jackson was adamant. Such an act would be an infringement; he had no desire to have an innocent pupil’s fingerprints on a police or Security Service database.

No one is innocent, Ridgeway wanted to say, but did not.

Now Ridgeway faced a defeated, gum-chewing Morgan in his office.

“We might have to do this off the record,” he said, finally airing his thoughts.

“All right, boss,” she said. She didn’t care. Rules were for the guidance of the unthinking and the masses. The two were not mutually exclusive.

“I had a brief and robust conversation with a senior member of the civil service who had Jonathan Llewellyn as his shepherd dog.”

Llewellyn was a higher-up in MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service. “Does Six have an interest in Max Gordon?”

“Not him. Riga. He’s international and seems too big a hitter to bring in to get involved with the Gordon boy. I’ve now been told officially to keep my nose out of it unless, or until, the security of the nation is at risk from an internal threat. Which, from this particular incident, it is not.”

“I’ve got some leave due,” she said, knowing full well the suggestion for any unofficial activity had to come from her. A tacit understanding between professionals. What someone does in their own time is their business, not the department’s.

“Good. I’ll let you know when to take it. There’s absolutely no sign of Max Gordon leaving the country. Passport control at all regional and international airports and ferry terminals has been flagged. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know what his involvement is with Riga, nor why Danny Maguire’s body was mistakenly cremated in a supposed mix-up with another boy at a funeral parlor. I don’t know why I’ve been warned off by our government and Six. But I do know that I want to find out.”

“Can you speak to his headmaster? See if there’s a connection with Central America?”

“Not Peru?”

“Don’t know for sure; it’s only a hunch. And I’ve just remembered. I’ve got his laptop. His fingerprints will be all over it.”

She blew a bubble with a satisfying burst. She didn’t need anyone’s permission to lift those.

In the early hours of that morning, Max Gordon had walked away from the busy clamor of a city hospital. Easily lost in the crowds, he was minutes from an Underground station.

By the time the automated voice advised passengers that the train’s doors were closing, he was on a seat, his head nodding in exhaustion onto his chest. A woman with a big suitcase squeezed next to him. She nervously held on to her case’s strap, though Max reasoned it would take some effort to steal it in a hurry. It was obvious by the travel labels that she was going to Heathrow. He asked if she’d wake him when they got there. Then, with an arm hooked through his backpack, he fell into a deep and desperately needed sleep.

Max stood beneath the glistening ceiling of London’s Heathrow terminal five. Vast wings of glass, held fast seemingly to keep them from flight, spanned the concourse. There were a couple of hours to go before he boarded. Sayid had already checked him in online when he made the flight bookings. He could not risk using public email or phone to contact Sayid. It was down to the wire now. He had either got away with it this far or he hadn’t.

If anyone had rumbled what he had done, or if they had interrogated Sayid too strongly and forced his best friend to tell them everything, then Max would be picked up the moment he got to the boarding gate. He would soon find out. In the meantime, he needed a wash, food and a pharmacy. Not necessarily in that order.

Sometimes the small things in life help give you a boost-the airport cost five billion pounds to build, and the showers were pretty good. Max let the steaming water sluice away the grime and sweat. He stood for a long time, letting it pound his skin, allowing his mind to settle. He still had so much to do. And he wished there were a compass that pointed him in the exact direction he needed to go. He would use Miami as a gateway to fly down into the Caribbean and then strike inland through Belize, where he would try to find one of the remote border villages. Someone there had to know what had happened to his mother; a foreigner’s presence would not have gone unnoticed. Danny Maguire must have come close to finding out-and had paid the ultimate price. Max took heart from the fact that he had got himself this far.

By the time he presented himself at the boarding gate, he felt a different person. He had inverted his reversible jacket and settled the cheap reading glasses that he’d bought in the pharmacy onto his nose. He hoped that the brown color tint he had washed into his hair would not stay forever-the bottle’s label had promised him it would not.

He caught a glimpse of himself in a reflection and returned the counter clerk’s smile as she checked him through.

“Enjoy your flight to Miami, Mr. Lewis.”

Joshua John Lewis: eighteen years old, a final-year pupil at Dartmoor High. Max had also taken Lewis’s passport the night he broke into the vault.

Max Gordon had ceased to exist.