Trapped (15 page)

She was frightened now, her breathing coming in short shallow gasps. For a second, she considered fleeing back to the restaurant, but she knew that she had to keep trying to track down those poor, trapped animals.

As she reached the door, she had a sudden vision of Bill coming out of the house carrying the laptop with the air of a man who had just finished a job. She remembered the dull thump, the lank-haired man's frantic nervousness and the way both men had clearly been desperate to get away from the house.

Cate gently opened the door. This room was brightly lit, a stainless steel and white model of pristine cleanliness. Suddenly Cate knew exactly what she was going to find and for a minute her courage nearly failed her.

Everything was immaculate, like the science lab at Cate's school only bigger and better. Microscopes were lined up neatly on the metal worktops next to petri dishes and piles of needles and spatulas still wrapped in their plastic packaging. Clearly no expense had been spared. There were centrifugal machines and ovens, blood-washing machines and numerous fridges with thermometers that measured in fractions of degrees.

A dark-haired man was sitting behind a desk at the far end of the room. His deep set eyes, one brown, one blue, seemed to watch Cate as she went towards him, but he didn't move. Down the left side of his distinctive beak-like nose a small trickle of blood was already coagulating, but enough had spilled
down to form a pool of darkness which was still spreading over his white-coated arm and onto the floor below.

As she walked determinedly towards him, Cate had the strangest feeing that he was desperately trying to say something to her, that he was not yet gone from this world. But even if he had wanted to talk, it was clear that, as Cate touched his still-warm hand, it was all too late for that. Professor Mantanini had been silenced forever.

Looking back on it later, Cate was amazed that she didn't scream. Instead, almost on autopilot, she began taking more pictures, walking steadily and carefully around the body, making sure that she covered every angle. ‘Sorry,' she found herself murmuring to the dead man, feeling guilty that she was invading his privacy. ‘Sorry,' she muttered again as she almost tripped over an outstretched foot.

She had no idea why she was so calm. Although she had seen plenty of dead bodies on TV and in films and a few on the roads driving through a war zone in a UN convoy, this was different. Perhaps it was because he was only just dead. Perhaps because she was the first person to find him after he had died. She had heard the sound of the shot as he was murdered and now she felt attached to him, responsible for him even. She knew she would be haunted by the sight of him forever.

Cate was just about to call Marcus and tell him what she had
found, when she smelt the first wafts of something sickly and sinister. She stopped what she was doing and sniffed the air, trying to work out what it was. The smell hit her like a wave, making her head spin. It was getting stronger, and now she could hear a low, hissing sound behind her.
Gas
, she thought with a gut-wrenching lurch of terror.
The room is filling with gas.

She looked around frantically, following the sound, and spotted a tiny pipe that had been wrenched away from the wall behind the professor's desk. Hidden by a small shelf, Cate guessed that it had been slowly spewing its invisible poison into the air since Bill had left the house. Next to the pipe stood a small metal box on which a digital countdown spiralled towards zero. Cate had heard of this set-up before. In approximately four minutes it would trigger a spark to ignite the gas creating an explosion so huge it would no doubt obliterate the entire building.

The ultimate clean-up job,
she thought grimly.
To blow the whole place to kingdom come and hope that no one would ever find the body. Or if they did, it would be pretty much impossible to identify.

Her first reaction was to preserve the evidence of the horror in the room, and to do that she had to at least try to disarm the bomb. She reached for the magnet, sliding the lid off the survival kit with a shaking finger. Then she paused, suddenly cold with fear. What if the magnet sent the countdown haywire instead of stopping it, and tripped the device while she was standing over it?

By now she was feeling nauseous, her legs wobbly and weak, her mind a hazy mush of thoughts and emotions but she
knew that now, more than ever, she needed to concentrate. There was certainly no point in freaking out or screaming for help. The only person who could keep her alive was herself. She had to get out of there!

She started to run, but her knees buckled beneath her after just a few metres. Gasping for breath, she crawled on her knees towards the door, her hands scrabbling desperately on the tiled floor for grip to pull her along. But any progress she made was agonisingly slow, it took at least a minute to make it to the first doorway and Cate knew that at this rate she had no chance of getting out of the building before the bomb went off.

With tears streaming down her face, she tried to pull her phone from her pocket. It was too late to call for help, she knew that, but she wanted to hear Arthur's voice to tell him that she loved him and to say goodbye. But, as she did so, her hand banged against the survival tin and she forced her mind back to the instructions Marcus had given her.

She could see him now, handing over the tin and shaking hands with her solemnly, finalising her agreement that she would do as he asked and spy on Nancy.

What on earth had she been thinking? That she, Cate Carlisle, a sixteen-year-old who had spent most of the last year revising for her GSCEs, could outwit experienced hardened criminals, men who thought nothing of assassinating witnesses and planting bombs? Was she now in danger of breaking the record for being the shortest-lived agent in the entire history of spying?

As she sprawled exhausted on the cold floor, Cate was laughing and crying at the same time, tears rolling down her
cheeks.
It must be the gas
, thought Cate, making another huge effort to force herself to focus through the mental fog that was now threatening to overwhelm her.

Try to remember. There had been something that Marcus had laughed about when he showed her how it worked. ‘This one's for fun,' he had said. ‘This one is real secret agent stuff. And I promise that at the end of the summer you get to keep it as a souvenir.'

Of course
, Cate thought, as she remembered the package she'd also been given.
The projectile pulley
. She nearly laughed out loud again as she pulled it out of her bag. At least before she died she would get to use a real-life spy gadget.

She fumbled clumsily in the semi-darkness and found the tiny fibreglass grip, aimed it at one of the chinks in the window boards and pressed the black firing button. The hook, with a thin wire attached to it, shot out with a power so strong that her arm was wrenched forward, causing a sharp pain to shoot through her shoulder focusing her mind and lifting the fug slightly. Cate held her breath and squinted at the window, but then her heart sank – she had missed her target, the hook had fallen short of the window and was lying uselessly on the floor.

Grunting with effort, she pressed the green button. The pulley self-wound, bringing the hook back with it and Cate, using her left hand to hold her trembling right one steady, fired again. This time she saw the hook disappear through the chink in the boards and smash the window. She tugged on it desperately and felt it come back on itself, holding fast against the boards.

She pulled harder in a final test, then, uttering a silent prayer that the hook would hold her weight, grabbed tightly with both hands, pressed the green button and in an instant was dragged at speed across the floor of the room towards the window. She removed the boards and pushed up the broken sash, gratefully gulping lungs full of fresh air.

Outside the sun was still blazing and the sky a bright blue, the tattered buildings opposite sharp in the sunlight. But she was still ten metres above the street with only seconds to go before the bomb exploded. Desperately she swung her legs out onto the sill and looked down to the concrete paving below. Her heart sank. There was nothing beneath her to cushion her fall and if she broke a leg or an ankle she would be left there like a wounded animal, unable to run for cover from the explosion. Then she remembered the pulley. She grabbed the hook and passed it back through the window, scrabbling around until it caught on the sill. ‘I'm out of time,' she told herself. ‘It's now or never.'

Holding the pulley tight, she said a quick prayer, pressed the black button and jumped. The pulley whizzed out above her and then, with a jerk, stopped dead, leaving Cate hanging just a metre above the ground. The relief that she wasn't plastered all over the concrete gave her a sudden burst of power. Kicking off from the wall, she jumped over the fence letting go of the wire and rolling as she hit the ground. She sprinted across the road, reaching the cover of the alleyway just as the building blew up into the clear blue sky.

Cate hadn't expected the noise. It was so loud that for a few seconds it deafened her, leaving her head ringing with pain.
Instinctively, she ducked as a fireball rolled along the street, followed by a cloud of debris which blotted out the sun and left her choking and gasping for breath. But she was alive.
Alive
. Even the ash that was falling in thick layers on her skin felt wonderful – proof that she had, against all the odds, survived.

Then there was silence. Cate wasn't quite sure what she had expected. Shouts maybe, frightened neighbours running out into the street, sirens wailing. But there was nothing, except a few dogs barking in the distance and the gentle breeze rustling in the trees.

She looked down and groaned. Her clothes were blackened and ripped, her legs and stomach covered in grazes from where she had clambered through the window and rolled across the concrete ground. People would take one look at her and call either an ambulance or the men in white coats or probably both. She could call Marcus but it would be too long before he got help to her.

Five minutes later, via back alleys and several brick walls, Cate had arrived at the first of the shopping streets. Most of the shops were shut for the siesta, but Cate spotted one still open, racks of clothes standing outside fluttering in the summer breeze.

She darted across the road and grabbed a lightweight cotton dress that looked approximately her size. Then she went into the shop and headed straight for the changing room at the back before the elderly shopkeeper had even registered her presence. As she pulled the curtain across she finally heard sirens – several of them by the sound of it.

She pulled her clothes off her bruised body, wincing as she
did so. The dress fitted pretty much perfectly, but as Cate looked at herself in the mirror, she grimaced at the grubby-faced girl staring back at her. Frantically she pulled her dirty hair back into a ponytail and wiped her face with what was left of her trousers before reaching into her rucksack and taking out some euros.

‘
Pardon, mademoiselle
.' The old lady was outside the changing room now, sounding puzzled.

Cate pulled back the curtain suddenly, shoved the euros at the surprised lady, muttered an apology and was gone. She knew she had given her enough money to cover the cost of the new outfit and she had to hope that, if anyone came asking questions about the explosions, the old lady wouldn't put two and two together.

Ten minutes later, her dirty clothes dumped in a roadside bin, Cate slipped back into the garden of Le Ricochet, where everything seemed almost exactly as she had left it an hour or so before. Nancy and Tass were on the beach, surrounded by a host of glamorous-looking new-found friends. Wendy and Lulu were walking barefoot along the water's edge, with Jules trailing behind them. There was no sign of Bill or the
Catwalk II
tender. Presumably he had gone back to the boat on his own.

Cate sat cross-legged on the hot wooden jetty, waiting for the restaurant boat to take her back to the yacht. She knew she should call Marcus, but the thought of talking about what she had just seen made her feel sick.

Through the slats in the wood she could see small shoals of fish darting amongst the shallows. Cate shaded her eyes and looked out across the blue sea, her mind churning as she tried
to make sense of what had just happened.
Catwalk II
was still there, a thing of glistening beauty as it pivoted on its moorings but it no longer felt like a safe berth against the world.

While she made the journey, Cate hoped to be able to slip back onboard unnoticed and go straight to find Marcus. It would be easier to tell him her story face to face. But, as the restaurant boat approached the side of the yacht, she could see activity on the top deck. A few metres out, the pilot cut the engine on the little boat and drifted gently and expertly up to the steps on the rear of
Catwalk II
where, to her horror, Bill was waiting to grab the rope.

‘Hi, Cate,' said Bill cheerfully. ‘Good afternoon?'

It took all Cate's inner strength to push down the knot of nausea in her stomach. It wouldn't do to throw up on Bill's shiny deck shoes, she thought wryly, although it was the least he deserved. But any flicker of emotion, any clue or hint that she had changed in her attitude towards Bill could, she knew, prove disastrous – if not fatal.

‘I got distracted shopping,' she said, trying to sound enthusiastic. ‘You know what us girls are like. Bought this dress. Do you like it?'

She looked at Bill's smiling face, and Cate had a vision of the Professor pleading for his life, trying to talk to Bill, to reason with him or offer him a bargain that would keep him alive. Or perhaps Bill had shot him without warning, coming up behind him and taking him by surprise.

‘Marcus was asking for you,' said Bill as Cate scrambled up onto the hot white deck. ‘He wants some help in the kitchen.'