"Cadel..."
"What?" Cadel was becoming impatient. "What is it?"
"I could hang around, if you want me to." Gazo's tone was hesitant. "Maybe, if rings do get sticky, you shouldn't be on your own."
"I'll be fine." Cadel realized that Gazo was still at a complete loss. He didn't know what to do with himself. "I told you. Thanks for the lift, Gazo."
"I'll give you a call, okay?"
"Better not." What did the silly fool think he was doing? "Bye, now."
"Wait!" Gazo put out one gloved hand. "Wait. Cadel, I can't just go off like this..."
"Why not?"
"Well ... I mean..." Behind his mask, Gazo was turning red. He seemed flustered. "No offense, but you're just a little kid. You shouldn't be on your own. Not wiv all this stuff going down."
"What are you talking about?" Cadel was genuinely astonished. "I told you, I'm fine."
"Yeah, but—"
"Please, Gazo. The best thing you can do is disappear. I mean it." Slamming the door, Cadel lifted his hand. "Bye!" he said.
For a few seconds, Gazo didn't move. Then slowly, reluctantly, he pulled away from the curb. With a rattle and cough, the old Ford veered onto the road again. Cadel watched it disappear around a corner. When he was sure that it had gone, he trudged up the driveway between walls of camellia bushes, toward the house. He noticed that Mrs. Ang's car was parked near the front door.
Good,
he thought.
Maybe she '11 get me a hot lunch.
"Mrs. Ang!" he called, wiping his feet on the mat. There was no reply. He unlocked the front door and pushed it open, his eyes adjusting to the dimness beyond. He could smell something funny.
"Mrs. Ang?"
The hand came out of nowhere. Cadel didn't have time to scream.
He felt as if he was about to suffocate.
And then he fell.
Cadel woke up vomiting.
He hadn't fully regained consciousness, and already he was retching and heaving, hanging over the edge of whatever he was lying on. A bed, perhaps? No—a mattress on the floor. He felt horribly sick. And his head ached.
"Ah, Jesus," said a disgusted voice.
"Clean him up," said another.
"He's puked all over the sheets—"
"Then get some more! Chris'sake, whassa matter wit you?"
Cadel drifted off again. He was vaguely aware of being moved and wiped. He groaned because his head was hurting. But it seemed like a long while later that he finally became conscious of a smell like disinfectant, and then a scratchy feeling beneath his cheek, and a weight on his legs....
He opened his sticky eyes. The pain in his head, which had been lying dormant, abruptly sprang to life; it was like having an ice pick thrust through his skull. He rolled over, moaning, and realized that he still felt nauseous. Yes, he was going to throw up. When he raised himself on one elbow, the feeling grew worse. But there was a bucket. Someone had put a bucket beside the mattress.
He almost burst a blood vessel, bringing up what was left in his stomach. There wasn't much. As he hawked and strained, a large person appeared beside him. Cadel saw two shiny black shoes. A pair of trouser cuffs. A hairy hand, reaching down.
"You finished?" the man asked.
Cadel nodded, and was pulled back onto the bed. Through a haze of pain, he saw a broad, dark back and a bald head retreating.
"My head hurts," he croaked. "Please..."
"I'll get you some aspirin."
The aspirin arrived some time later. Cadel had dropped off to sleep again and was roused by someone flicking his cheek.
"Here." The same hairy hand offered him a glass of cloudy water. "I dissolved 'em."
Cadel sat up. He drank the contents of the glass, which the man beside him held to his lips. The man was vaguely familiar. Cadel tried to remember where he had seen that broken nose before.
"What happened?" he said faintly. "I feel so sick..."
"Drugs," came the blunt reply. Before Cadel could properly absorb this information, his companion had disappeared. A door slammed. Cadel fell back onto his pillow, holding his head.
Every heartbeat was hammering a bolt of pain into his temples. But beneath that steady rhythm, his brain was beginning to work. He knew that face. Of course he did.
It belonged to one of Max's bodyguards.
A pang of fear shot through him. He uncovered his eyes and surveyed his surroundings anxiously. He was lying in a concrete room. There was a toilet in the room, and a basin. Also a mattress and a heater. Exposed pipes. The glass of water had been taken away.
There was no window. The walls were streaked with rusty stains, and the door was made of metal.
Cadel closed his eyes again, massaging his forehead. He tried to think. He had walked into his house, and—what? Someone had jumped him. Stuck something over his face. A rag soaked in chloroform? But that wouldn't have knocked him out for very long. And where had Adolf's Grunts been? Why hadn't they saved him?
Cautiously, Cadel opened his eyes again. The light was on. He slowly sat up, wincing with every movement. His mouth was dry, and he smelled of vomit. Some of his hair was plastered to his cheek. He was examining his arms for needle marks when the door creaked open.
Maestro Max stood on the threshold, wearing a silk suit under his beautifully tailored overcoat. He closed the door softly behind him and walked with a heavy tread to the toilet. The lid was down. Removing a laundered handkerchief from his breast pocket, he gave the lid a bit of a wipe before lowering his bulk onto it.
He sat with a hand on each knee, his smooth jaw shining in the electric light.
For a long while, he and Cadel simply stared at each other.
At last the Maestro sighed. "So," he said. "You ain't gonna ask me nuttin?"
Cadel remained silent. He couldn't have spoken; his voice wouldn't have worked.
"No questions?" the Maestro continued. "No? Okay. What about I ask
you
some questions?" His morose brown gaze held Cadel's. "Like, for instance—you tink I'm stoopid? You and your papa?"
Swallowing, Cadel shook his head.
"You didn't tink I'd work it out, huh?" said Max, and leaned forward. "Listen to me—I
always
knew. Right from the start, I was wondering: What's dis all about? Uh? You get all your competitors, dey come together in the same place. What for? To raise an army? I don't tink so. To wipe 'em out? Maybe. To get 'em to wipe each
udder
out? Even better." The Maestro settled back again. Every movement was slow and deliberate, almost as if he was tired. "At foist I figured: Okay, Carla's dead, big deal. Coulda happened to anyone. Then I get ripped off. No problem. One little ass-wipe, what's it matter? So I go after 'im. What happens? My guy ends up dead. A little boid in the police department tells me de gun was bought yesterday, by someone called Paul Souvry. I'm tinking: What de hell? I'm looking for Art, and Alias bought de gun? Den I hear Tracey's been wiped. Barry Deakin's turned himself in. My guys are checking Art's office, middla last night, and dey see Terry loading up a van. Dey see one of Adolf's teams jump 'im. Haul 'im off to Yarramundi. Next ting I hear, dat whole place has gone up. Luther's been fighting wit Adolf, and dey've brought the whole goddamn building down. Now Adolf's gone. Luther, too. Might be dead, might be on the run. Who knows? Carla's dead. Tracey's dead. And Terry—he was in dere with the rest of 'em. So where is he now? Deal's as good as dead. Art's disappeared. What am I supposed to believe? It was all self-inflicted? I don't tink so."
Cadel simply stared, his arms wrapped around his chest. He was hardly breathing.
"I'm starting to tink: Someting's going on," the Maestro observed, wearily. "I'm starting to tink: Who's left? I am, but, hey, it's nuttin to do with me, right?"
Cadel wondered what the time was. He glanced at his wrist but his watch wasn't there anymore.
"I figured it was probably all wired up," said Max, following the direction of Cadel's gaze. "So I trew it under a train. If you wanna know, it's 6:15. Sunday night."
While Cadel kept his expression blank, his heart missed a beat. Sunday night! But he had promised Sonja. He had summoned her to the pool.
She would think that he had stood her up!
"Den I talked to Vee," Max went on. "Tracked him down dis evening. Turns out, he's as confused as I am. Says you've been hacking into all de computers for months, but when he told Thaddeus, Thaddeus didn't do a goddamn ting about it." Watching Cadel, Max must have seen his color change, or his breathing alter. A mournful smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Didn't know dat, uh? Guess not. Anyway, I let Vee go. It was a trade-off. He gave me his information; I gave him back his pinky finger. Man like dat—he's too useful to waste. Bit like you, Cadel."
All at once, Max rose. He began to walk toward the mattress. Cadel shied away, his heart pounding furiously.
"See, I figured it all out," the Maestro declared in a conversational tone. "Like I said, I'm not stoopid. You're Darkkon's son. You're Roth's blue-eyed boy. You're part of de whole setup. Somehow, you and your papa—and dat asshole Roth—you've been setting us all up. Getting us to do each udder in, while you sit back and let it happen."
"No," Cadel squeaked, shaking his head. "No, you're wrong."
"I don't tink so." Max loomed over the bed, blinking lazily down at Cadel in a way that terrified him. "I tink dey sent you in because you're such a goddamn little choirboy. Who's gonna suspect you? Nobody. Nobody except me."
"No!" Cadel cried. "You're making a mistake! It's all been a mistake! This has nothing to do with you—"
"Oh, sure." Max bent down until his grave and tranquil eyes were level with Cadel's. He smelled of cigars. "Kid, you might be able to fool everyone else, batting dose baby blues, but you're not fooling me. I know what dis is all about. And I know how to cover my back." He straightened. "As long as I got
you,
I'm safe. Because if Darkkon lifts one finger against me, he's gonna start getting little bits of you in de mail."
Cadel pressed his lips together, trying to stop them from shaking. Max must have seen this, because he smiled suddenly. It was the most bloodcurdling smile that Cadel had ever seen.
"Enjoy batting dose eyes while you can," he said, and turned toward the door. "Eh! Tommy!"
Immediately, the door opened. Baldie looked in.
"Yeah?"
"Kid's probably hungry," said Max. "Get 'im a drink—someting to eat."
"Okay."
The bald head withdrew.
Max regarded Cadel in a melancholy fashion. "Kid like you—you gotta lotta potential," he sighed. "Why'd you trow it all away?"
He shook his head sadly. Then he left the room.
Clank! Clunk!
The door swung shut and the locks clamped down.
Cadel couldn't believe it.
He couldn't believe that this was happening. He couldn't believe that he had never even remotely anticipated anything so awful. Where had he gone wrong? Why hadn't he calculated the probabilities?
Because he hadn't collected enough data—that was why. The institute was a big and complicated place. He had tried to cobble together estimates without mastering the raw facts. He had rushed into things because he was desperate to leave. And now? Now he was paying for sloppy preparation.
He hadn't meant to bring down the whole institute. His intentions had been far more modest. If his plan had been successful—if only a handful of staff had been affected—then Max would never have panicked. And Cadel would never have ended up locked in this ... this
dungeon.
He looked around, wondering where he was. Underground, almost certainly. The whole place had a musty underground smell to it. And he had caught a brief glimpse of the area outside the door, had seen a flight of stairs going up. Some of the plumbing that ran around the walls was old and disconnected; it looked as if there had been a shower, or something similar, to match the toilet and basin still huddled against one wall. Could he be lying in an old bathroom? Or in an old locker room, perhaps?
Click! Clunk!
As Cadel looked around, the door swung open. In came the bald man with the broken nose (Tommy, Max had called him) carrying a packet of chips and a small carton of fruit juice. He threw them on the floor and left, before Cadel could say anything.
Cadel didn't feel like eating. But he drank the juice, wondering if he could use the small, plastic straw that came with it. One end of the straw had been sharpened, so that he could poke it through the foil seal in the top of the box. Poking it through a seal, however, was different from poking it into somebody's eye—the only place where it would do any damage.
Cadel doubted that he would ever get anywhere near Tommy's eye. For one thing, he was about half the man's height. He doubted that he would be able to reach that far before being batted away like a pesky mosquito. And if he did poke Tommy in the eye, what then? It was hardly the kind of injury that would prevent Tommy from using his large, hairy fists or his enormous feet.
No, he would have to think of something else.
His headache had dulled a little, thanks to the aspirin, so he was able to study his surroundings without hurting his eyes, noting every little feature. The ceiling was high; he would never be able to reach that lightbulb, even if he stood on the mattress. The taps on the sink had been removed. The heater was an electric oil-heater, plugged into the wall. Hmm. If he was to dismantle that heater...
But he didn't have anything to dismantle it
with.
That was the problem. They had taken everything: his bag, his keys, his watch—even his shoes. The mattress was made of foam rubber, so it didn't have any inner springs. The old-fashioned toilet cistern was placed high on the wall, out of Cadel's reach, and it didn't have a chain hanging from it—just a frayed piece of string.
Max had obviously been very careful.
Cadel fell back onto his pillow. He felt ill and tired. His brain wasn't working as well as usual. Think, he chided himself. Think, think, think! You're supposed to be a genius, so prove it!