Agent 21 (6 page)

On the ground below he could just make out mountains and lakes. He consulted his mental map of the country. Were they passing over the Lake District? Or had they gone further north, into the highlands of Scotland? He realized it was Scotland when he saw a crinkly coastline up ahead. The chopper flew over the sea – it was grey and threatening in the almost-light of dawn, and it made Zak shiver, especially when he felt the chopper losing height and he could make out the foam of the choppy waters.

Then there was land: a sheer, craggy cliff with moorland on top of it. The chopper flew low – low enough for its downdraught to cause hedges to buffet
in the wind – before it reduced speed and gradually rested on the ground once more. The hum of the engines grew fainter, and although the rotary blades continued to spin, Zak could tell they were slowing down.

The blond-haired man opened the side door and jumped down. He turned and held up one hand to help Zak out. Zak ignored it and dismounted from the chopper by himself. They ran away from the downdraught and he stopped to look around.

It was just about the bleakest place Zak had ever seen. The dawn light was still a faint, steely grey. It didn’t do much for the featureless expanse around him. There were no trees; just moor as far as he could see, with only the occasional mound of crags erupting from the ground to break up the monotony. And in the distance, perhaps a mile away, a single house, lonely and imposing against the grey skyline.

The blond man pointed towards it just as it started to drizzle. ‘That’s where we’re going.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘We’ll run,’ he said.

Without waiting for a word from Zak, he started jogging in the direction of the house.

The drizzle was becoming gradually more intense. The helicopter, which couldn’t have been on the ground for more than thirty seconds, lifted up into the air again, leaving Zak on that featureless moor,
getting wet. The blond man was already a hundred metres away and didn’t look like he was prepared to wait. Zak pulled his hood up over his head, and ran after him.

It took a minute or so to catch him up. ‘All right,’ the blond man said when Zak was alongside him. ‘Slow down, it’s not a race. You need to learn how to conserve your energy when you’re running. Anyone can sprint a couple of hundred metres, but for successful escape and evasion you need to know how to cover long distances.’

Zak looked over his shoulder. ‘Who am I escaping from?’ he asked.

‘No one,’ said the man. ‘Not yet.’

They ran on in silence.

It took about ten minutes to reach the house, by which time Zak was totally soaked. He bent over to get his breath back. The blond man, although he was also wet, didn’t seem remotely puffed. He strode up a flight of stone steps that led to an arched wooden door. On one side of the door, looking quite out of place on this big, old house, was an electronic keypad. The man typed in a number and Zak stood up just in time to see a red light shoot from the device and scan the man’s retina.

A pause. And then a slow hissing sound as the big door swung open. A figure appeared in the doorway.
He was tall, with a deeply lined, tanned face and long grey hair spilling out onto his shoulders.

‘Michael . . .’ Zak muttered.

‘Hello, Zak. Hello, Raf,’ the man said. ‘It’s good to see you both here safely. All went well, I trust? I imagine you’d like some dry clothes, and something hot to drink.’ He turned and disappeared into the house.

Raf looked at Zak. ‘After you,’ he said politely.

Zak trotted up the stone steps. ‘You’re too kind,’ he replied. He walked up the steps, in out of the rain.

And then he spun round. The heavy door had hissed shut behind him. He couldn’t help feeling as if someone had just locked him in.

Zak found himself in a large, high-ceilinged hallway with a chequerboard floor and an immense stone fireplace in which there was a roaring wood fire. He and Raf headed straight for it, and it was only a few seconds before their wet clothes started to steam in the warmth.

‘Where are we?’ Zak asked.

Michael looked around fondly. ‘St Peter’s House,’ he said. ‘The island itself—’

‘We’re on an island?’

‘Certainly,’ Michael replied. He walked up to a table on the other side of the room and picked up two large, white mugs – one for Zak, the other for Raf. Zak took a sip. Boiled water, nothing more. He made a sour face, which Michael noticed. ‘Drink it,’ the old man said. ‘Hydration is important. The island itself doesn’t have an official name – not one you’ll find on a map, anyway. Nobody lives here, but the locals on the
mainland call it St Peter’s Crag. One name is as good as another. Or did I mention that to you before?’ He brushed a strand of hair away from his forehead.

‘You said something about dry clothes,’ Zak reminded him. Even though the fire was warm, he was shivering.

Michael looked at Raf. ‘Take him to his room,’ he said.

Raf nodded. At the far end of the hallway there was an ornate wooden staircase ascending against the wall. Zak followed Raf up it, then down a long corridor with oak-panelled walls and thick, old-fashioned carpet. There were heavy wooden doors along the corridor at intervals of about ten metres, each with modern opaque white door knobs; and one at the very end. It was this door which Raf opened. He stepped aside to let Zak in.

It was a small room, though a lot bigger than the one he had at his uncle and aunt’s house. In a far corner was a single bed with crisp, white sheets. Next to it was a clothes rail on which hung ten or twelve sets of Zak’s trademark jeans and dark hooded tops, with several pairs of new trainers on the floor underneath. Hanging on one of the stark white walls was a huge flat-screen TV – fifty inches, Zak reckoned, maybe more – and beneath that a glass table with a PlayStation.

‘It’s been modified,’ Raf said, when he saw Zak’s
eyes linger on the console. ‘Special strategy and reflex exercises.’

‘No
Modern Warfare
?’ Zak asked.

‘You don’t need a games console for that.’ Raf walked up to the screen and put one finger to it. It immediately flickered into life, showing a plain web browser. ‘You’ve got Internet access, but there’s a firewall stopping you from sending emails or communicating with the outside world. Save yourself some time and don’t try to hack it. You won’t be able to.’

‘What am I?’ Zak asked. ‘A prisoner?’

‘Some walls,’ Raf said, ‘aren’t there to stop people getting out. They’re to stop people getting in.’ Zak didn’t think it was a very reassuring comment.

Opposite the flat screen there was another door, leading to a bright, modern bathroom. The lights flickered on automatically as soon as Zak walked in. ‘Take a shower,’ Raf told him. ‘Put on some dry clothes. We’ll come and get you in half an hour.’ Without another word, he turned and left.

It felt good to get out of his damp clothes and feel the steaming hot water on his back, but it did nothing to stop Zak’s uneasiness. Where was this place?
What
was it? He felt a million miles from anywhere, under the control of these strange people. He couldn’t help thinking he’d made a very serious mistake . . .

Zak tried not to think about how they knew exactly
what size clothes he wore, but the clean jeans, top and trainers fitted perfectly. When he was dressed, he touched the flat screen just as Raf had done. It switched on and this time Zak checked the time on the top of the screen. 07.58. It had taken just under five hours for his world to change.

He thought of Ellie. She’d be awake now – they all would, and they’d have seen what had happened. They’d know he was missing. Zak felt a pang of guilt. But then he thought about why he was here. About his parents. A scowl crossed his face.

Zak reckoned he still had ten minutes before Raf came back to get him, and he wanted to know what was in the rooms along the corridor. He wasn’t at all sure that if he left his own room the door wouldn’t shut behind him, so he took one of the spare trainers and propped it against the door frame before stepping out into the corridor.

The closest two doors were directly opposite each other, about ten metres from Zak’s room. He tried the right-hand one first, gripping the white door knob and trying to turn it. Nothing moved – the door was locked, but it puzzled Zak that there was no keyhole or keypad. As far as he could tell, the only way to unlock this door was from the inside. The same went for the door opposite. Zak pressed his ear up against the wood to listen to anything going on inside.

Nothing.

Then . . . footsteps.

They were coming up the stairs at the end of the corridor. Zak glanced guiltily towards them and hurried back to his room. He wasn’t sure if he’d closed the door in time and he could feel his skin flushing. When Raf knocked and reappeared, though, he showed no sign of knowing that Zak had been snooping around.

Like Zak, Raf had changed, but was still dressed entirely in black – black jeans, black polo neck, black boots. ‘Ready?’ he asked.

‘Yeah,’ Zak said. ‘I guess.’ But ready for what, he didn’t really know.

The room to which Raf led him was back on the ground floor. It was large, with a big oak desk in the middle and floor-to-ceiling windows, through which Zak could just make out the sea, grey and threatening in the distance – an impossible perimeter that he knew he could never cross. The air was thick with the aroma of cherry tobacco. Michael was here, smoking one of his thin cigarillos, but he wasn’t alone. A woman stood in front of one of the windows. She was in her twenties with shoulder-length white-blonde hair and large, icy-blue eyes. Like Raf, she was dressed all in black, and she gave Zak a friendly, open smile as he walked in.

‘Good to see Raphael picked you up OK, Zak,’ she said. ‘Wanted to do it myself – us girls are better at creeping around in the dead of night, you know.’ She winked at him. ‘Raf says it’s because we’re more sneaky, but that’s such a horrid word. “Subtle” sounds much better, don’t you think?’

Michael interrupted her. ‘Zak, I’d like you to meet Gabriella. Gabriella, Zak.’

The woman walked forward. Her movements were like a cat’s – elegant but silent. As she walked past Michael she brushed an affectionate hand against his arm and Zak noticed that her nails were painted in baby pink. ‘Michael is
so
polite. He’s like someone’s grandfather, isn’t he? Maybe he
is
someone’s grandfather. I suppose we’ll never know.’ By now she was standing just in front of Zak, holding out her right hand. ‘Call me Gabs, sweetie,’ she said. ‘Everybody does.’

Zak shook her hand a bit warily. ‘Pleased to meet you, Gabs,’ he said.

Gabs rolled her eyes. ‘He’s adorable,’ she said to nobody in particular. ‘You know, Zak, if Raf had a face like yours, he could fool anyone.’ She winked at Raf. ‘Of course, we wouldn’t change him for the world, though.’

Raf’s frown grew more pronounced, but he didn’t say anything.

‘That’s enough, Gabriella,’ Michael said. ‘We don’t have time to play. There are things Zak needs to
know.’ The old man walked to one side of the table and opened a drawer. He removed a piece of paper, then placed it on the table top. ‘Have a look, Zak,’ he said. ‘Tell me what you think.’

Zak took the piece of paper. It was a printout of a newspaper article. The headline, in thick black lettering, was chilling enough, the rest even more so:

BOY KIDNAPPED IN BUNGLED ROBBERY, FEARED DEAD

A teenager, still missing following a robbery on Monday night at the Camden home of his uncle and aunt, is feared dead, according to police sources. It is thought that Zachary Darke, 13 – who was staying with relatives after the tragic death of his parents six months ago – disturbed burglars when they entered the house. Police believe he may have recognized one of the intruders and was abducted to stop him revealing their identity.

Zak felt himself shiver. It was like staring at his own tombstone.

He looked around at the others in the room. Michael’s tanned face was expressionless. So was Raf’s; he stood hulking nearby with his arms crossed. Only Gabs showed any concern, her big blue eyes full of sympathy and her lips parted.

‘We’ll plant it in the local newspaper in about a week,’ Michael said. ‘Are you comfortable with that?’

‘Comfortable with being dead?’ Zak asked. ‘Not really. Do I get a funeral?’

‘Alas, your body won’t be found for some time. Which reminds me - I’ll be needing a single hair from your head. You needn’t look so perturbed, Zak, it’s perfectly simple. We’ll be on the lookout for a corpse of a similar size and shape as you. Suitably mutilated as to be unrecognizable, of course. We have ways of ensuring that your DNA is substituted for that of the deceased and for that I’ll need a single hair from your head. In answer to your question, yes, I’m sure there will be a funeral of sorts. I wouldn’t recommend investigating it, however. You never know what you might hear at such events. And in any case, your family and friends aren’t the only people who need to say goodbye to Zak Darke. You do too.’

He took something else out of the drawer: a plain brown padded envelope, which he handed to Zak.

Zak emptied it out onto the desk. There were five documents: a red passport, slightly dog-eared; an old birth certificate; an out-of-date library card; a printout of some emails going back a couple of years; and a mobile phone contract. The passport and the library card both had photographs. Zak didn’t know when the pictures had been taken, but he recognized the person well enough. It was him. A younger version, but definitely him.