Spyforce Revealed (2 page)

‘Max, honey? It's time for dinner.'

 

Great! The food guru has just called. Maybe if I stay quiet, she'll forget I'm here. She's good at that. I've written another Alex adventure I'll attach. See what you think. She is on assignment in the Amazon. Why can't my life be like hers? Do you think Spyforce will ever contact us again? I still keep the telegram they sent us in my pocket. Mum put it through the wash once so it looks a little crumpled, but you can still read it.

 

‘Max? Did you hear me? Dinner is on the table.'

Max sighed and stopped typing.

‘Coming!'

 

Sorry Linden, gotta go. The wicked witch is calling. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Say hello to Ben and Eleanor for me.

 

Max paused as she tried to think of a way to sign off. She decided to keep it simple.

 

From Max

 

She logged off and shut down the computer. She missed Linden. He was the only one who could make her laugh. Even if his jokes were dumb. Before she met him she was happy not having any friends. She'd made heaps before but just when she was happy, her mum and dad would decide to move again and she had to say goodbye to them, so it was easier not to make any in the first place. But with Linden, it was different. She didn't have to see him all the time to know they were good friends.

She leant into the cactus on her desk.

‘Think yourself lucky you're not a human and you don't have a mother making your life a misery.'

Max stood up and opened the door onto the landing at the top of the stairs. She stopped when she heard voices coming from the kitchen. There was her mother's voice talking at a million miles an hour like she normally did, and someone else. A man. Her mum never mentioned anyone coming to dinner and she hadn't heard the doorbell ring either. He must have come home with her. Why didn't her mother get that she liked to be warned when someone else was going to be here? Was that too much to ask?

She tiptoed down the stairs, listening hard and trying to work out who the man was. She crouched
low and put her ear against the kitchen door. Her mum was going on about some new show that was starting on TV and how it was going to stop the world, blah blah blah, and whoever the mystery man was, was agreeing with her like she was telling him the secret of life no one had ever stumbled on before.

This was going to be too much. If Max had to sit in a room listening to this all night she was sure she was going to explode. She wouldn't be able to stop it. Her whole insides would splatter across the walls and floor and down the front of their designer clothes and overdone expressions.

Then, just as Max was turning around to creep back up the stairs, the kitchen door swung open and her mother only just stopped herself from tripping over Max's crouching body. What she didn't stop was her glass of red wine from spilling all over Max.

‘What on earth are you doing on the floor? Didn't you hear me call you for dinner? And look at your new shirt. How am I ever going to get that stain out?'

Now this scenario could have run a few ways. Some mothers, distraught that they had almost trampled their only beloved child, would have bent
down and kissed them repeatedly as they became overwhelmed by the near fatal tragedy. Others may have swept their precious daughter snugly into their arms while they apologised for ruining a brand new shirt that had been given to them as a present. And others may have just felt really bad as they offered a simple and quiet apology.

None of these ever happened in Max's house.

She looked down at her shirt and only just managed to hold back a blood-curdling scream when she saw it was totally ruined.

Then Max's mother remembered she had a guest and forgot all about the new shirt.

‘There's someone in the kitchen I'd like you to meet,' she said, suddenly sounding all bright.

‘Now?' Max was horrified. How could her mother even think of her meeting anyone when she was dripping with wine?

A head then appeared from behind the door.

‘Hi. I'm Aidan. I've heard heaps about you, Maxine.'

Anyone clever enough would see there were a few problems here. First, no one, but no one, ever called her Maxine. That is one of those really important laws of nature you must never forget, like, ‘remember to breathe or you will die'.

Also, as he made this monumental error against nature, he held out his hand. Max lowered her eyelids to give him a half-eye stare. She'd never heard about this Maxine-calling nobody before and she certainly wasn't about to make physical contact with him. He looked away awkwardly as his hand slowly made its way to a pocket for safety.

Aidan? I've never heard of any Aidan, she thought. And how come he knows about me? Because from his bad clothes and the fact that he's about thirty years younger than my mother, I know all I want to know about him.

There was an uncomfortable pause as nobody knew what to say. A trickle of red wine dribbled from Max's head down her face, adding another stain to her shirt.

‘I'm going to get changed,' she said.

‘Well don't be long, sweetheart,' Max's mum said with a nervous giggle. ‘Dinner's getting cold.'

If Max had been given a choice of being banished to the coldest regions of Siberia or facing a dinner with her mother and whoever this Aidan was, she'd have known what would have been worse. But since Siberia was out of the question, she changed her clothes and made her way back downstairs.

‘Aah, there you are,' said her mum in a sickly sweet voice that was like having your head dunked in a barrel of honey. ‘I've kept your dinner warm for you.'

Sweet voice, nice gestures. Max wanted to know where her real mother was.

There was another awkward pause as her dinner was placed in front of her.

‘So how was school today?'

Now she really knew this wasn't her mother. She never asked about school.

‘Fine,' she said, trying to eat as fast as possible so she could escape to somewhere saner.

Awkward pause number three. This meal was going to be worse than Max thought. The ticking of the clock above the fridge got louder and louder.

‘Well,' said her mother, which never meant good news for Max. ‘I thought it was about time you and Aidan got to meet.'

Her mother looked at her like it was Max's turn to speak but she didn't know what to say, so she kept eating instead.

‘Aidan is my boyfriend.'

Max dropped her fork sending bits of spaghetti worming all over her lap. Boyfriend? What boyfriend, she thought. I've never heard Mum
mention a boyfriend before. When did all this happen? People her age don't have boyfriends. They're too old for that kind of thing.

Max was picking spaghetti strands from her lap and wondering why the world just got so crazy. Her mum continued talking.

‘So I thought it would be good if you two got to know each other.'

You know those times when everything seems to stand still and every second passes like it's an hour? When you want to jump up and get out of where you are but you're stuck and it seems like you'll be there forever? This was one of those times.

‘I've got homework to do,' said Max as she wiped her mouth on her napkin and stood up.

As she closed the kitchen door behind her, she heard her mother say, ‘I think that went quite well, don't you?'

That's how it was with her mother. Everything was measured as having gone well or bad. She thought most of what Max did was bad and if things went her way, then everything was going well. It was at times like this when Max missed her dad more than anything.

Upstairs, Max closed her bedroom door, changed into her pyjamas and prepared to stay
there all night. Emailing Linden or writing another Alex Crane adventure would make her feel better. She turned on her computer and discovered she'd received an unusual email. It was marked Top Secret and came with a list of instructions and questions before she could open it.

 

Secure file

The following email is to be opened by M. Remy. Any person other than M. Remy found to have accessed this file will be subject to the full force of the Protection of Privacy Laws Act of 1926.

 

Please answer the following security questions before the attached email can be opened:

Name?

Date of Birth?

Address?

First names of only uncle and aunt?

 

If the questions are answered correctly, you will receive the accompanying mail. Failure to answer the questions correctly or within two minutes will lead to the neutralisation of this message.

 

Linden, thought Max. He was always joking and mostly this annoyed her but after what had
happened downstairs, she needed all the cheering up she could get. Max answered the questions and hit
send.
She waited eagerly for his reply, but instead, something strange happened to her computer. A series of numbers and letters hurtled up the screen like bugs caught in a wind tunnel. Finally the bugs stopped and the screen went blank.

Max stared at her computer not knowing what to do next when the following words appeared:

 

Security clearance granted. Email to follow.

 

Max knew Linden was clever with computers, but she'd never seen him do anything like this before. After two minutes exactly, the email alert appeared before her. Max moved the mouse across the pad and opened it.

Clever, thought Max. She was impressed but was going to let Linden know she was onto his games. She hit
reply
to his new phoney email address.

 

Very funny! You must be exhausted now from being so witty.

 

Fond regards

Not Easily Amused

 

She waited to hear back from Linden.

Max frowned as she read the email again. Maybe it wasn't from Linden. He knew not to stretch a joke too far with her. But could it really be from Spyforce?

She wrote an email to him using his usual address just to be sure.

You might be clever. Security clearance? Meetings at Spyforce? I thought the Administration Manager
of a major intelligence agency would be based somewhere a little classier than Mindawarra?

 

Max waited a few moments until a reply came back.