Riga went to an office in Canary Wharf. It was high up in one of the new towers that proclaimed themselves to the world as being very modern, very important and very expensive. None of which impressed Riga.
He waited while the ordinary-looking man spoke on a cordless phone. He stood with his back to the mercenary, making no concession to his presence. The balding head had close-cropped gray hair, barely covering the man’s scalp, but there was still a light dusting of dandruff on the crinkled suit. The man reminded Riga of a teacher who had taught English at his school in Finland. If you passed him in the street, you would not give him a second glance. Little did Riga know at the time that the mumbling teacher was a government agent, someone who kept an eye out for promising young men who would work for the state with blind obedience. Young men who could be trained to superfitness and given unpalatable tasks. And, like that teacher, this man speaking softly into the telephone wielded enormous power. Never judge a book by its cover. Never pick a fight with a stranger. Never believe the obvious. Riga had learned his lessons the hard way, and he knew that the man who now turned to face him was answerable to even more powerful people.
He replaced the phone and faced Riga with an ambivalent expression, giving nothing away. A professional. There was a hint of a German accent when he spoke, but Riga knew he was Swiss and that after this conversation, the helicopter on the roof of the building would whisk him away to another building in another city in another country. The extent of these people’s influence was global. His name was Cazamind.
“The Gordon boy is still in the country. Our people have double-checked the computer logs on all airline bookings,” Cazamind said.
“So why pursue him? It’s a waste of time,” Riga said, checking out the view, knowing he could speak freely because his services were so valued.
“I do not know the full details, but our friends”-he laid emphasis on the word friends-“feel it essential that their activities in Central America be kept private.” Cazamind brushed the dandruff from his shoulders and blew it from his desktop to the floor.
Riga wondered if anyone ever took him out to a restaurant and if the sight of that small snowstorm put diners off their food. He kept those thoughts to himself. He could stand his ground on any issue relating to his employment, but to discuss personal hygiene with the man who represented such powerful people would be a breach of etiquette. Even professional killers need good social skills.
“Gordon doesn’t know anything. It doesn’t look as though Maguire got any info to him,” Riga said.
“We cannot be certain. Not yet. He approached the man at the British Museum who was Maguire’s mentor; perhaps something passed between them before the old man died. What do you think of him? The boy.” Cazamind paused and, like a Swiss banker studying a balance sheet, gazed at Riga-reading between the lines, looking for anything not quite right. “Your professional opinion,” he said finally.
Riga gazed down at the bankers and traders scurrying out of their offices and into the man-made oases of food and drink. This was a small city-state created especially for the people who made the country’s wealth. In moments they would be jam-packed into expensive restaurants where they would have to shout to be heard in a conversation. Then an hour later they would surge back to their computer screens and play the equivalent of high-stakes poker with other people’s money. Meanwhile, Riga was a free man. Like the kid. Max Gordon was out there on his own, running scared maybe, being hunted, gone to ground, surviving. Riga respected that. He did not respect the moneymakers. Their risk was not the same as his and Max Gordon’s.
Riga turned back to Cazamind. “He’s resourceful. He’s got guts. He’s tough. He doesn’t give up. He knows how to survive, and he’s got a brain between his ears. If he has anything, anything at all that compromises the people you represent, the kid will exploit it. In a couple more years, I could train him up. He’d be an asset.”
“And you think that is even a remote possibility?”
Riga shook his head. Of course not. The boy did not have the instinct. He would not be able to stand the smell of a man’s fear as he moved in to kill him. He shook his head again.
Cazamind sighed, his palms opening in a small gesture of inevitability. “Then, if he is that tenacious, we should assume the worst-case scenario. We must find him, wherever he is.” He fixed his eyes on the mercenary. “And have you kill him.”
Twelve hours later, in Florida, a bus lurched, a car swerved and there was a scrape of metal. The drivers swore at each other. A man who had obviously been living rough threw up in the back of the bus, and the stench was foul. Passengers shouted abuse at him. The driver turned and called to everyone.
“OK, folks, take it easy. End of the line. I have to call this in. There’ll be another bus along in a few minutes.”
The driver eased himself down the aisle, muttering apologies to his passengers, most of whom he knew by name. His belly pushed against his trouser belt. Maybe that was why he wore suspenders as well, Max thought, just in case the belt snapped one day and, like a dam bursting, his belly disgorged and smothered everything in its vicinity. Max was surprised the man was as good-natured as he was, considering his bus had just had an accident, a bloke had puked all over the backseats and it was hot.
Miami.
Hot, bustling, big sky and brightly dressed people in floral shirts. It looked just like a travel poster. Except down this part of town. This was where the opulent lies of television and movies stopped. There was no glamour around here. There were poor people living on welfare who caught buses. Some of the shops were boarded up.
They stood in the heat while the drivers exchanged details. A Miami-Dade County police car arrived, but there was no sign of a replacement bus. Max turned to a woman who waited in the queue with him. “Excuse me, can you tell me where Backpackers’ Big House is?”
She looked at him for a moment as if an extraterrestrial had suddenly appeared next to her. “You English?”
“Yes,” Max said. “And you’re an American.”
She laughed. “You got a smart brain, son. What you doin’ all the way down here? This is no place for sightseein’, hon. This is the baadlands.”
“My friend in England booked me into a place called Backpackers’ Big House.”
“He wou’n’t be no fren’ o’ mine, he did that to me. I can tell you. No, sir.”
Sayid, what have you done?
“Still, I guess mebbe you kids’ve gotta have somewhere to stay, and it’s better’n bein’ on the streets.”
“I guess,” Max said.
“Well, you go three blocks south, two blocks east and it’s down there near the docks.”
“Thanks.”
“You sure you heard what I just said?”
“I’ve got a compass. I’ll find it, thanks.”
“What are you, some kinda Boy Scout? Son, this ain’t cowboy country-this is hostile territory. You get to this place you lookin’ for, you lock your door and don’t go out at night, you hear?”
“Yes. OK. Thanks for your help.”
“You’re welcome.” She watched Max walk away. “Damn fool kid’s walking into a mess of trouble. But do they listen? They do not,” she said to herself, and then yelled at the driver being questioned by the police. “Clarence! Where’s this damn bus you said was comin’?”
At least the room at the Backpackers’ Big House was halfway clean. There were only a few cockroaches scurrying around the bare floor. A solid, old-fashioned bed, with a well-worn but laundered sheet and a cotton bedcover on the mattress, was the only furniture. There wasn’t even a wire coat hanger to hook over the back of the door for his clothes. There was a bathroom down the hall. Smelly, industrial-sized rubbish skips, or Dumpsters, as the desk clerk had called them, were below his first-story window. It was the only room the guy at the desk had available. He wore a bandanna over his head, a Grateful Dead T-shirt and a gold earring. White whiskers clung like cactus spines to his face. It was no good Max’s arguing that his friend in England had made a booking-there was no trace of it, and a whole tour of German backpacking kids had reservations, taking all the rooms. But they hadn’t arrived yet, so why couldn’t he have a room that wasn’t over the Dumpsters? Max wanted to know. Because, the man said slowly, the bookings had all been paid for with a deposit. It was the room above the Dumpsters or nothing.
There was no key in the door lock. That was because, Cactus-Face told him, some dumb kid had lost it. If Max wanted to pay for a new lock, he could have a new key.
Max had slept in worse places. He took his backpack into the bathroom down the hall, where there was a lockable door, and showered. The hair color didn’t wash out. Back in his room, he pulled the bed across the door. He could hear the belly-growling blast of a ship’s horn not too far away. He had enough food and drink he’d picked up at the airport to keep him going until tomorrow. Just as well, looking out at those bleak streets. It was obviously not the kind of area renowned for family diners.
Max lay on the bed fully dressed, dismissing the idea of leaving his clothes on the floor. He hated doing nothing. It was like being in a hide, waiting for an animal to appear and having to find that stillness inside himself. Just as he’d done with his dad when he had taken him to Scotland and they sat next to a sea loch in a camouflaged hide waiting to see the wild otters. He and his dad had barely spoken, because they had had to stay silent, but they shared the same passion. Father and son on a small adventure together. Well, not anymore. His father had abandoned his mother, and now Max was on an adventure on his own.
He calmed himself as the adrenaline pumped at the thought of his dad. He needed to take every day as it came. He fingered the khipu, wishing his thoughts could show him the pictures the knots represented. He was warm, and safe from anyone pursuing him. All he had to do was get up early and reach the airport for the connecting flight to Central America.
He pulled out the wallet that held the half-dozen dog-eared pictures of his mother. Her hair was tied back, her tanned face smiling. Max pored over every inch of her. She wore a jungle fatigue shirt, its sleeves rolled halfway up her arms, and an army-style floppy hat. She looked so beautiful. Each picture was in a different location in the rain forest. A waterfall, a ruin-which Max now felt certain was a Mayan site-some huts and a cloud-shrouded mountain. The plume of cloud looked like a smoldering volcano.
A volcano was exactly what it was. That was what Dr. Miller had translated from the khipu. He kissed his mother. Now he felt stronger. The message was accurate. Jungle and volcano. It was as if his mother’s memory were calling him. Come to me. Find out the truth. I’m waiting, Max.
“I will, Mum, promise,” he whispered.
He tucked the photos back into the wallet and buttoned it into his shirt pocket. He wanted her close to his heart.
Knowing he had evaded those who pursued him enabled him to control his fears and uncertainties and allowed his thoughts to settle. He closed his eyes, set his mental alarm clock, which always worked, and drifted into sleep. His final thought was that he was safe.
For now.
Fergus Jackson ran down the corridor. The few boys on their way to various activities scattered. When Mr. Jackson ran, his arms flailed like a drowning man, but he could put a fair pace on that uncoordinated body.
“Yes?” he gasped down the phone that he’d been summoned to.
“Fergus. It’s Bob Ridgeway.”
“You’ve found Max?” Jackson said hopefully, praying the boy was safe.
“Can you check something first before I go into details?”
Mr. Jackson listened, did as he was asked and within ten minutes, having run down and then back up the 133 steps, confirmed Ridgeway’s question.
“Yes. Josh Lewis’s passport is missing from the vault. The boy’s at home in Herefordshire with his family. How did you know Max had stolen it?”
“Our friends in the FBI and Homeland Security run biometric fingerprint checks on all visitors to the States.”
“Max is in America?”
“Miami.”
“What on earth is he doing there? Have they caught him? Is he all right? How did you know he was there?” The questions tumbled out of Jackson’s concerned thoughts.
“They responded to our request to keep an eye open for Max’s prints.”
“But how did you get his fingerprints?” Jackson demanded, since he had denied them access to Max’s room for the very reason he did not wish Max’s personal data to be entered into a police computer system.
Ridgeway hesitated, then said, “We got a print off his laptop and circulated it. Thankfully, the FBI dislike the CIA as much as we tolerate MI-Six, so they kept it to themselves. The bureau likes to help their English counterparts whenever the occasion arises.”
Fergus Jackson berated Ridgeway even though the means might, in this case, have justified the end. “Max will be a criminal by entering America under a false name using stolen documents. This could irreparably harm the boy’s future, Bob.”
“He knew what he was doing.”
This was no time to argue with the security official. “What happens now? Can you find him? Can you bring him home?”
“We’re the Security Service, not MI-Six. We have no authority beyond these shores. Anyway, I thought you would like to know we’ve tracked him. I’ll pull whatever strings I can, I promise you. We’ll have people pick him up at Miami airport when he checks in again. Your boy has booked a flight onward to Belize.”
“Belize.”
“What’s the connection with Central America?”
Jackson quickly explained what he knew about the Gordon family background. “This is all about his mother,” he said. Another, more worrying thought occurred to him. “What about the mercenary?”
Ridgeway did not have an answer. Riga had dipped below their radar. “I don’t know where he is,” he admitted.
“Then Max is on his own without any protection from us.”
“Yes. I suppose he is,” Ridgeway said, ending the call.
From his office window, the MI5 officer gazed across Lambeth Bridge and the River Thames. The rise and fall of the tide was a certainty, unlike intelligence gathering. But there were times, as in the river at low tide, when muddy secrets might be revealed.
He turned to face Charlie Morgan. “If we know Max Gordon is over there, then so might the people chasing him. How do you feel about a spot of leave in a warmer climate?” he asked.
Despite the clatter and hydraulic hissing of the garbage collection in the early hours, Max slept soundly. Nor did he wake when a ship’s horn bellowed repeatedly into the night; distant police sirens barely penetrated his dead-to-the-world slumber. What snatched him from his sleep at four in the morning were the screams and gunshots.
They boomed. Terrifying blasts that reverberated throughout the building. Screams and shouts of alarm shattered the air like an exploding bomb. Feet pounded up the stairs. Someone was yelling, banging on doors along the corridor. A young voice. “?Por favor! ?Socorro! ?Alguien! ?Por favor!”
A cry for help. Max nudged the bed away a little, peered through the crack of the doorframe and saw a boy about his own age, maybe older. Hard to tell. He had an underfed, skinny look. His long, black hair caught across his face with sweat. He wore shorts, trainers and a T-shirt, and his hand clutched his side, stemming a flow of blood. He staggered, fell, got to his feet, leaving a blood smear along the wall. He was terrified. Max could hear someone pounding up the stairs after the wounded boy.
Max’s actions leapt ahead of any rational thought process. He heaved the bed aside and stepped into the corridor. The boy’s slight frame was easy to support. The look on his face said it all. A mixture of surprise and gratitude that someone had come to help him.
As Max dragged him to the door of his room, the gunman reached the top of the stairs. Latino twentysomething, bandanna on his head, bling jewelry round his neck and a big handgun in his fist. He snarled, screaming something in Spanish Max couldn’t understand. The shooter was in a blood rage and obviously after the wounded boy Max was now pulling into his room. Max was in the wrong place-again-at the wrong time-again.
A chunk of plaster exploded, followed by another terrifying boom from the handgun. Max threw the boy roughly to the floor of his room and wedged the bed back, ducking as part of the door splintered from another shot. Max’s hands shook with fear, but he hauled the wounded boy up, pushed open the window and lifted him out. He held him by his arm and dropped him onto the top of the Dumpster. No sooner had he let the boy fall than he jumped himself. His feet hit the curved lid. Legs together, he fell forward into space and tucked into a roll as he hit the tarmac.
The Latino kid was bleeding, but because he was so weak, his limp body had slithered from the top of the Dumpster and flopped onto the ground. Shock was getting to him now. Max quickly eased the boy’s hand away from the wound. It was a messy scrape of a flesh wound just above the hip bone, so there was nothing broken, and it looked worse than it was. Max clamped the boy’s hand back over the wound and took his weight. The boy pointed toward the darkened streets and alleyways, nodded enthusiastically, speaking rapidly, words Max didn’t understand. But there was no misunderstanding the danger. The gunman was at Max’s window, firing wildly at the garbage area.
Three shots quivered through the air in quick succession-zip, zip, zip-and the heavy bullets thudded into the Dumpsters. Something in Max’s mind clicked. The shooter was using a revolver. It must have six rounds. The gunman had already fired three inside the building. He was reloading.
Max pulled the boy to his feet, grabbed his arm over his shoulder and ran into the night. Fear powered his legs. His mind screamed at him. Idiot! You’ve left everything in the room! But survival was more important now. Max might have only minutes to live if that gunman had friends down here on the street. But now at least he had covered ground and moved out of sight.
He heard the sound of a big-engined car approaching.
Then two more gunshots. Different from the gunman’s. Car tires squealed round the corner, full-beam headlights holding Max and the wounded boy like a searchlight. The driver was going to run them down.
Max had nowhere to hide.
He braced himself for the inevitable impact if he couldn’t jump aside with the injured boy at the last second.
Chances? Rubbish.
The big American SUV shuddered to a halt. Scorched rubber smoked the air. Two men piled out of the car. They were in their twenties. They wore jackets and jeans, and had automatics in their hands. The driver stayed put, engine revving. They looked Mexican or South American. It didn’t matter. Max was going to die. The nationality of the man who pulled the trigger was irrelevant.
A third man climbed out of the passenger side. His leather jacket, black T-shirt, gold necklace and cowboy boots seemed to proclaim him the leader. He eased a wicked-looking revolver from his waistband and pointed it at Max.
Max desperately looked around for any escape route. There wasn’t one. The wounded boy was on the street behind him. Max stood his ground, fists clenched, ready to fight for his life if given the chance. Shuddering fear and expended energy made him gasp for air. He did not want to die. Let me fight. Give me a chance! Don’t just kill me!
“We haven’t done anything!” Max yelled, exploding his own tension and wanting the man to think for a split second before pulling the trigger. “This boy. He’s hurt. Look! He needs help.” He scrambled for Spanish words. “Hospital. Ayuda. Help him. Call an ambulance. Un medico-una ambulancia.”
All of this happened in seconds. Then the boy on the ground opened his eyes and spoke rapidly. Max caught the word amigo. The man lowered his weapon, then barked orders. His two companions grabbed the wounded boy and put him onto the backseat. Police sirens wailed somewhere in the distance. Were they coming here or not? They faded. Max and the gunman faced each other. He raised his gun again. Max was a witness.
Then he hesitated and spoke in English with a heavy Latino accent.
“You saved my stupid brother. I owe you. Get in!”
The SUV swung away into the night. Within minutes they had crossed a causeway, leaving the city’s glistening tower blocks behind. The driver killed the headlights and drove fast through the semidarkness. Canyons of shipping containers loomed next to iron skeletons of cranes guarding the docksides.
Max hung on as the SUV swerved, evading anyone who might be giving chase. The two men in the back had a first-aid pack open. One spilled a clear liquid that stank of antiseptic onto the boy’s wound. The boy winced, gritted his teeth and seemed a lot tougher now he was in the men’s company. The other quickly mopped the wound dry with a wad of gauze, then sprinkled a white powder over the gunshot. Using butterfly clips, they pulled the gash together. Finally they taped a clean dressing across it.
Max could see they had done this before; gunshot wounds were evidently not uncommon in their business.
The boy grinned. He was OK now. He reached out his hand toward Max. The boy’s grip was strong enough. His blood was already smeared across Max’s clothes. They both looked as though they had been in a war zone. The boy spoke in broken English.
“You save me. We friends now, yes? I am Xavier Morera Escobodo Garcia. What is your name?”
“Max, just Max will do fine.”