Ends of the Earth (6 page)

With a smirk, Max wondered whether that pet would be a pit viper or a piranha. His money was on the piranha.

“Do I have to go?” Vespa asked.

Mrs. Frost's lips thinned into a white slash. “You know better than to waste my time with such questions.”

The blond girl sighed. “Yes, Auntie. I'll be ready.”

Max kept his gaze down, focused on cutting his asparagus. How perfect. And he didn't even need to set anything ablaze.

An hour later, Max sat in his third-floor bedroom, pretending to read a book, with his back to the surveillance camera hidden in his alarm clock. When he'd first
discovered the camera, he considered destroying it, but then he realized it was better to have surveillance you knew about than surveillance you didn't.

Either way, Max knew he was living under a microscope, and he was good and sick of it.

The purr of a car engine caught his attention. He rose and peeked out the window. Illuminated by a floodlight, Mrs. Frost and Vespa were crossing the gravel below toward an idling Mercedes SUV
with a trailer hooked to the back. Max revised his guess about the pet from piranha to alligator. Did LOTUS buy nothing but high-end luxury cars, he wondered, or had Mrs. Frost worked out some sort
of endorsement deal? He could almost see the ad:
The automotive choice of evil spies for over thirty years.

He waited until the vehicle had motored off, then pocketed a couple of useful items and headed out the bedroom door. The hallway was quiet, the ivory carpeting as deep and plush as God's
own bathrobe.

Making his way to the edge of the staircase, Max stopped and listened to determine if the coast was clear. He'd brought along a handheld video game as a cover, and as he waited, he started
to play.

A good thing he did too. Because no sooner had he booted up a game than Humphrey Wall's close-cropped brown dome appeared below him, rising as the man climbed the steps. When he saw Max,
he stopped abruptly.

“Oi, what you doing?” said the agent, his hand resting on the butt of a pistol at his waist.

“Dancing the hoochie-koo with the Queen Mum,” said Max. “What's it look like?”

Humphrey's legs spread wide, and his lip curled. “Don't push me, boy.”

“Or what? You'll shoot me for playing a video game?” said Max.

“You don't wanna know what I'd do.” His voice was as hard and flat as stale peanut brittle.

Max feigned a yawn. “You're right,” he said. “I don't.”

“Hmph.” The agent glared at him a moment longer, seething. Then, since playing
Grand Theft Auto
wasn't on his list of approved reasons for killing someone, Humphrey
brushed past and swaggered off down the hallway, growling, “Keep your nose clean.”

“Sure. Got a hankie?”

Max silently released his held breath. Keeping up the bored-teenager act, he ambled casually down the stairs. He knew that the mansion bristled with more cameras than the red carpet on Oscars
Night, and that his movements were likely being recorded. Heart hammering, he proceeded to the first floor. What he needed was a mild distraction—nothing too extreme—for Humphrey and
the other roaming security guards.

His feet found their way down to the kitchen. Pausing in the doorway, Max scanned the gleaming, oak-floored room, packed with enough Sub-Zero freezers, groaning pantries, and high-tech culinary
equipment to supply a dozen reality-show cooking competitions. His gaze traveled down the counter and landed on a toaster that looked like it could control a space shuttle mission.

Hmm…

Max smiled. A burned English muffin, a blaring smoke alarm, and voilà—instant distraction.

He dug the bread out of the pantry, cranked the toaster setting to nuclear fusion level, and popped in the muffin. Shielding his next move with his body, Max then nudged the food
processor's handle over to hold the toaster's lever down.

A woman's voice spoke. “Still hungry?”

Max nearly jumped out of his skin. With a superhuman effort at casualness, he turned, still blocking the rigged toaster with his body. “Er, yes. I've never been keen on eating lamb.
Bad for the environment, you know.”

“What, do lambs pollute?”

It was the part-Asian server from dinner, bearing an empty glass and a plate with the remains of her own meal.

“Pollute? Er, no,” said Max. “It's, um, the global footprint?” He had no clue what he was talking about.

“Cattle are bigger than lambs,” said the woman. “Wouldn't they leave bigger footprints, then?” A wry smile played at her lips as she scraped her leftovers into the
garbage disposal.

“Er…”

The silence stretched like the waistband of some ancient gym shorts. Max fidgeted while she flipped the disposal's switch and wiped the glossy countertop with a dish towel, his mind
focused on the rigged toaster behind him. Did he smell burned toast already?

“I've got a high metabolism as well,” said Max. “I scoff food like I've got a hollow stomach.” Then, realizing how foolish that sounded, he forced a laugh and
added, “Um, I guess we all do. Otherwise the food would have no place to go.”

The server glanced up at him with a look that said,
Who is this git?
No wry smile this time.

More long seconds ticked by. Finally, she finished up and turned to go. Max offered a breezy “Great talk—see you around, then” as the woman headed out the door shaking her
head.

He waited as long as he dared, making sure she was truly gone. The burned-toast smell intensified.

Then he sauntered out of the kitchen, tapping away at his video game and whistling under his breath. By the time the distant blare of the smoke alarm began, he was just reaching the second
floor. Max dodged into the nearest open room and waited until he heard footsteps clomping down the stairs.

From here, Max knew, he would need to be particularly sneaky. He fished a laser pointer from his pocket and switched it on, holding the object atop the game player. Then he strolled into the
corridor, angling the device so that it pointed up at the juncture where the ceiling met the wall—where the surveillance cameras clung.

Max kept his face angled downward over the game, but his eyes up. When he rounded the corner into the stretch of hallway where Mrs. Frost's study lay, he made sure to give both cameras a
full blast of infrared laser pointer.

They didn't beep or emit smoke or do anything to indicate that they were disabled. Still, Max trusted crafty Mr. Stones, who had taught him this trick. He pocketed the pointer and worked
the doorknob, slipping into Vespa's darkened bedroom.

The scent of tropical flowers, strong and sweet, enveloped him—Vespa's scent. It reminded him of her smooth skin, her toffee-brown eyes, her tumble of blond hair…Max shook his
head. Why was he thinking of this now? With an effort, he concentrated on the task at hand.

Like a beacon, the golden glow of a night-light guided him into the bathroom. No cameras here, as far as he could tell. Max had to trust that Mrs. Frost wouldn't let the guards spy on her
own niece in the loo. He tried the door that connected to Mrs. Frost's office.

Locked, of course. He pulled out his picks and went to work.

After five minutes of dedicated effort, the knob turned and the door swung open. His stomach flipped like a trained seal. Moving lightly on the balls of his feet, Max made his way into the heart
of LOTUS's operations, Mrs. Frost's inner sanctum.

AS EVIL HEADQUARTERS WENT,
Mrs. Frost's was right up there with the best of them—if your idea of evil headquarters was a posh
accountant's office. The broad maple desk held a high-end computer, a green-shaded lamp, a sleek telephone, a nearly empty in-box, and a pair of crouching lion statuettes carved in onyx. The
bookshelves bulged with scads of leather-bound volumes that simply screamed “technical and boring.” Cherry-colored embers glowed in the fireplace.

All in all, it looked less like the sort of place where you'd hire an assassin, and more like the sort of place where your rich uncle Cedric would get his taxes done.

But Max knew that the office, like Mrs. Frost herself, hid its true nature beneath a sophisticated veneer. He sifted through the reports in the in-box. Nothing relevant. His gaze snagged on a
flyer for some kind of circus, and he thought, Does Mrs. Frost have a thing for clowns? He tried to log on to the computer. Password protected. Not for the first time, Max wished that he possessed
Wyatt's techno skills—or that he could just pick up the computer and shake it until all the secrets spilled out.

He prowled the room, snooping behind books and paintings. Nothing—not even a cobweb. Max gritted his teeth. No filing cabinets graced the tidy chamber, no handy maps highlighted his
friends' whereabouts. The desk itself had only two drawers—one containing stationery, and the other office supplies. Not so much as a camera pen or an eraser bomb to be seen.

Max clasped his hands on top of his head and pivoted slowly, surveying the room. What was he missing? This was it, the nerve center of LOTUS's operations, the heart of its evil domain. So
why wasn't there more…evil spy stuff?

On an impulse, he reached out and lifted one of the lion statues, hoping to uncover a secret stash, microfilm taped to its bottom—anything, really. What happened next made up for all his
frustration.

For the statue didn't lift; it folded back on a hinge. And when it did, something creaked behind him. Max spun to see a whole section of the floor slide away into the baseboard, revealing
a spiral staircase that trailed down into dimness.

Hairs stood up on the back of his neck and his breath came faster.

“Now that's more like it,” he muttered. Pulling a tiny LED flashlight from his jeans, he flicked it on and descended the steps. When his head was level with the floor, Max
hesitated. Should he leave the passageway open like this? What if someone should visit the office above while he was exploring down below?

Then his light picked out a switch on the center post of the stairs, several steps lower. When Max flipped it, the floor slid back into place above him. LOTUS, it seemed, had very courteously
thought of everything.

He continued along the metal steps, following the cone of illumination thrown by his flashlight. As he proceeded down and down, below what must've been the ground floor, the thought struck
him: What, they couldn't afford elevators? But before long, the tight cylinder of the staircase opened into a wider space, and he had reached the bottom.

Splashing his light about the place, Max gave a low whistle. Now,
this
was an evil lair to end all evil lairs.

Brushed-steel floors stretched farther than his beam could reach. Rows of open-fronted lockers to his left contained an array of weapons and espionage equipment impressive enough to make the
Pentagon revise its Christmas list. Max saw all manner of rifles and pistols, as well as nets, Kevlar vests, ninja throwing stars, laser weapons, grenade launchers, flashbangs, and devices he
couldn't begin to puzzle out. One locker even held what appeared to be a personal jet pack.

On an elevated sort of command center to his right, Max noticed several swivel chairs fronting a bank of controls, lit by the cool azure glow of the massive computer screens above them. On one
screen, he recognized an electronic map of the capital decorated with blinking dots of various colors.

Could these be his missing friends and father? Max hustled over to the screen and peered up at it, heart splashing in his chest. Although most of the dots were motionless, a few crawled along
what Max guessed were motorways. He scanned the display. Where was a handy-dandy caption, something to give meaning to these random spots of color?

Nowhere, that's where.

He leaned over the controls, pondering how to coax more information from this mysterious machine. Spotting an enter button, he pressed it.

Instantly, the map vanished.

“No!” burst from Max's lips.
Whoops
. His hand flew to his mouth, and he shone the flashlight around, making sure he was still alone, that no one had overheard.

The chamber was as deserted as an ice cream shop in the dead of winter.

He turned his attention back to the screen, which now displayed a list of names, most of which had the word
minister
before them. Where had the map gone? Max tapped the
ENTER
key again, and now the layout of an extensive building appeared. One more tap, and it zoomed in.

A section bearing labels like
CENTRAL LOBBY
and
HOUSE OF COMMONS
filled the screen. The Houses of Parliament? He frowned. Was LOTUS planning on
infiltrating the government?

Before he could investigate further, a familiar sound sent a jolt of adrenaline coursing through his body.

A sustained creak up above. Voices.

Someone was coming down the stairs!

Max whipped his flashlight about in a wide arc, searching for a hiding place. The rows of lockers offered scant protection. Ditto for the command center. But in the wall beyond it, two corridors
opened into deeper darkness.