I Spy (17 page)

The wrong way.

Arthur only realized his mistake when he heard his name being called and turned to see Neyla beckoning for him to follow her, and then high-tailing it after Evren in the opposite direction. As
he ran Arthur heard voices shouting and footsteps clattering – he’d been seen! They were going to try and catch him!

Imagining he was on the sports field at school and taking part in the most important 440 yard race of his entire life, Arthur powered forward. Sprinting as if his life depended on it (because,
if he was caught, and his father
ever
found out what he’d been up to, his life would
not
be worth living) he ran like he’d never run before, quickly catching up with Neyla
and then easily overtaking both her and Evren. Slowing a bit as he skidded round a corner, arms flailing wildly in an effort to keep his balance, Arthur picked up speed again and almost ran
straight past Ahmet’s taxi. Sliding to a halt he grabbed a handle, yanked a door open and tumbled onto the floor at the back of the car, nearly giving Ahmet, who was still fast asleep, a
heart attack.

“Step on the gas!” Arthur yelled breathlessly as he got up, only to be knocked down again by Neyla diving into the back with him.

“What?” spluttered Ahmet. “What happen?”

Evren rattled off something in Turkish, Ahmet slapped his forehead with his palm and immediately turned the engine over. The starter motor wheezed like a creature about to die.

“I say, chaps...” said Arthur, who had risked a quick look out of the back window and seen someone – someone who looked like they
could
be carrying a pistol –
running their way. “Could we get a move on?”

At that moment the engine caught and rumbled into life with a loud backfire. As Ahmet engaged first gear and accelerated away there was an answering couple of bangs as the man who had been
following them, thinking he was under attack, returned fire at the car.

I
t was a terrifically long way down, or at least it seemed that way to Trey, diving towards the coal black waters of the Bosphorus. As he flew like
an arrow, the cold night air singing in his ears, he tried to keep in mind what he’d been taught at his swimming lessons...
keep your head down; keep your arms completely straight in front,
hands together, like a knife to cut the water;
don’t
let your legs wave about and keep your feet as parallel to your legs as you can
. All of which wouldn’t matter one tiny
bit if the water was too shallow, of course.

Before he’d launched himself off the roof, Trey had taken one last deep breath, which he had held all the way down. The shock of hitting the water made him breathe out, which was exactly
the right thing to do as he plunged down, the drag from his clothes and the shoes tied to his belt slowing him up; and then he remembered, too late, that he should have pushed his hands up the
moment after he hit the water so that he wouldn’t go too deep. Trey bent backwards, pushing at the water with his arms and kicking as powerfully as he could; opening his eyes he could see
there was light above him, although he couldn’t tell how far away it was, and he swam towards it for all he was worth. Now that he hadn’t crowned himself by diving into water that
wasn’t deep enough, he didn’t want to end up drowning because he’d gone down too far.

Five seconds later – five of what had to be the
longest
seconds in the entire
history
of the whole world, in his opinion – Trey broke the surface, completely
disoriented and sucking in air like there was no tomorrow. He trod water for a moment or two, swinging round left and right until he’d finally got his bearings.

He floated low in the water, his clothes clinging to him like folds of sagging skin, shoes still attached to his belt and, amazingly, his jacket still tied round his waist, and he looked up at
the house. It wasn’t built at the water’s edge, as he’d assumed, but right
over
the water, with twin boat houses under the veranda. As far as he could tell his dive
hadn’t prompted anybody to turn a lamp on and look out of a window to see what had happened. Yet.

Still and all, hanging around in the water, right in front of the house where anyone who
did
take a look might spot him, was probably not a terrific idea. Best that he got himself to
shore as quick as he could so he could decide what to do next – attempt to get back
into
the house to see if his father was there, or start making his way back to Constantinople for
help.

It took seconds to figure that getting help was his only real option as he did
not
want to get caught. Remembering that south was to his left, Trey started swimming, breaststroking as
quietly as possible in that direction, figuring that he’d better get further away from the house before he made for the shore. Which was when he saw the seaplane.

Bobbing on its floats, with its double set of wings making it look kind of old-fashioned in comparison to Major Bernardi’s sleek, red, single-winged Macchi M.52, the plane was moored
downriver from the house; as Trey swam towards it he allowed himself to imagine that in fact he
was
an experienced pilot. That the Italians had taught him
everything
he needed to know
back in Venice and all he had to do was climb up into the cockpit, turn the engine over, and before the men who had kidnapped him knew anything about it he’d be airborne! The truth of the
matter was he had absolutely
no
idea how to fly the seaplane, but it did occur to him that something useful might’ve been left in it – like, maybe, a map?

You never knew.

Trey glided over to the nearest float and used one of the struts to help pull himself up onto it, his waterlogged clothing doing its level best to pull him into the water again. The plane rocked
back and forth as he stood up rather unsteadily. Holding onto the lower wing, with water cascading off him, the night air suddenly made him shiver quite violently, his chattering teeth sounding
like someone was playing a game of pick-up with knucklebones
inside
his head. Moving along the float he ducked under the wing, coming up below the pilot’s cockpit.

Carefully hauling himself up onto the lower wing he took a look and saw nothing there that seemed like it was going to be any use to him. He was about to look in the rear cockpit, where the
co-pilot would sit, when it occurred to him that this must’ve been where they’d dumped the case with him in it! Incensed at the treatment he’d had, Trey reached into the cockpit
and grabbed a lever at random...then he stopped for a moment, feeling just a
bit
guilty that he was about to vandalize a beautiful machine. Only for a moment, though, and only a
very
tiny bit guilty: these were bad people. Then he yanked sideways on the lever as hard as he could and it came off in his hand.

Try flying without
that
, he thought as he held on tight and leaned over at a fairly perilous angle to see whether there might be anything of interest in the back. Peering into the dark
space Trey saw, tantalizingly just out of reach, the shape of what looked like it could possibly be a leather briefcase on the seat. But if he was going to get his hands on it he was somehow going
to have to get an awful lot nearer. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”, that’s what good old Pistol Gripp would say, so he ventured, clinging to the side of the cockpit, legs
dangling down, and scrambling with his bare feet until he eventually fell head first onto the seat.

Squirming himself back upright, Trey got a hold of what he’d seen on the seat and discovered that it was, after all, a rather excellent brown leather case, like a very grown up satchel,
complete with brass clasps, a handle and a shoulder strap. It was pretty heavy, like all the best presents on your birthday or at Christmas were, and feeling quite excited he undid it and took a
peek inside. Papers. And a gun. An automatic pistol, by the look of it.

Trey could feel his pulse racing. A gun. He had a gun! Just like Trent and all the sleuths in the
Black Ace
stories. It was kind of careless of the people who’d grabbed him to leave
it out here on the plane, but, he supposed, this did seem like it was the boondocks. And who would expect a kid to jump off the top of the roof in the middle of the night?

He was just about to start the process of getting himself out of the cockpit and back down onto the float when he heard a noise. His nerves completely on edge, Trey immediately sank down in the
seat. Was someone out there? Did they have a guard, patrolling round the house? How the
heck
was he going to get ashore now? Panic spread like blood from a gunshot wound, the dread of being
found and taken back to that attic room making his scalp tighten. Hunkered down out of sight Trey then cottoned on that what he was hearing wasn’t footsteps at all, and that now he could also
hear some kind of snuffling.

Snuffling?

He inched his way upwards until, in the gloom, he saw it. A pig. And not the kind of jolly
Piggly Wiggly
-style porker like you might expect to see on a farm, but a big old wild boar. On
its way to who knew where, the stocky, bristle-covered animal took a last look around and then trotted off, disappearing into the night. Trey sat up. It dawned on him that, wherever he was, the
fact there were wild boar out there meant it was proper countryside. With who knew what other wild animals. He looked at the briefcase he was hugging, in which there was a gun. Trey glanced over at
the shoreline and let out a sigh...all he had to do now was somehow find a way of swimming over to it
without
getting the pistol wet and everything would be just fine and dandy.

A quick search of the cockpit of the seaplane showed that it was entirely devoid of anything waterproof to wrap the briefcase in (the search did, however, throw up a couple of maps – the
reason he’d taken a look in the plane in the first place – which he stuffed in the briefcase without looking at them), so he’d just have to find another way.

Trey carefully slid down onto the float nearest to the shore and lay the briefcase on the float; easing himself back into the cold, black water he looked behind to gauge how far he had to go and
took a deep breath – which was nowhere near as meaningful as the one he’d taken on the edge of the rooftop. Reaching up for the briefcase, he held it as high as possible over his head
and struck out, kicking as hard as he could.

It wasn’t
that
far to the shore, but it felt like he was
never
going to get there. His shoulders were aching, he was getting more and more tired (and the case getting nearer
and nearer to the water) with every kick,
and
he was making what sounded like an unholy racket as well. Then his foot hit gravel and mud. Trey splashed to a halt and stumbled to his feet
knowing exactly how a drowning rat must feel. And look.

Holding the briefcase out to the side so he didn’t dribble water onto it, Trey dragged himself up to the top of the slope and sank to the ground, shaking the Bosphorus out of his hair.
He’d made it. And
all
he had to do now was make it to Constantinople... He looked to his left at the silhouette of the house. Even if his father
was
being held a prisoner there,
no matter which way he looked at it, the only way forward was to find help. If his father was there, he had to leave him. And if he
wasn’t
there, Trey had to find him.

He unknotted his jacket from around his waist and wrung as much of the water out of it as he could, laying it on the ground beside him, then took his balled-up socks (which contained his
wristwatch) out of one of his shoes. The lame attempt to stop his watch from getting too wet had failed miserably and it was now stuck at just after half past twelve. For ever. Trey put it on
anyway and tried to undo the laces attaching his shoes to his belt. It was no easy job as his fingers were numb, waterlogged and wrinkly, while the laces had swollen and at first refused to
budge.

Finally, as damp, uncomfortable and tired as he felt, he was at last ready to go, and then he remembered the maps. He got them out and discovered, by the light of the silvery moon (the tune, one
of his mother’s favourites, started to run in his head) that they were German, which he might know the sound of but he couldn’t read. One of the maps had
Das Königreich von
Serben, von Kroaten und von Slovenes
on the cover, which even he could tell was going to be no help at all to him, but the other map was titled
Die Türkei: Konstantinopolis und das
Bosphorus
. Trey opened it up to find that it was going to be a lot more useful than he could ever have imagined.

Someone had helpfully marked on it what Trey took to be a rough flight path, with what looked like compass bearings and other notations every so often. The pencil line went from Constantinople
(or Konstantinopolis) to where he could make out that the word
haus
had been neatly written next to a dot on the western side of the Bosphorus.

There was nothing else marked on the map. No sign of a town or a village, or houses, for that matter. This really was Nowheresville, good and proper.

But, while Trey couldn’t fly himself back he could read a map, and he was sure, if he kept close to the line he figured must be a road, that he’d find his way okay. He’d bet
good money on it (if he was allowed to). Refolding the map he stashed it in the briefcase, which he slung over his shoulder, and wearily stood up. “Time to move on out,” he muttered to
himself, like ranch-hands in the Saturday morning Tom Mix movies always did. “Git along there...”

B
aba Duan had not let grass grow under his feet since Herr Reinhardt Gessler’s visit. In fact, much like his eldest son, he too had been
busy; going here, there and everywhere else, he’d worked until the early hours doing what he did best: gathering information. His methods, unlike Evren’s, were much more subtle and they
had, also unlike Evren’s, been really quite successful.