Storm and Stone (10 page)

‘There’s definite change, like in the other cases I mentioned. With Gina, it’s from messy to neat with the added twist of turning against her old friend. I guess she’s also going to apply herself to her studies more than she has in the past. I’m wondering just how they’re getting the students to change and why.’ Kieran glanced at his own hair in a window, wondering if he should ask Joe if he needed a haircut too. He rarely thought about such things but he didn’t want Raven to think him scruffy. ‘Let’s find a quiet corner—I don’t want to be overheard.’

‘I know just the place.’

Joe took him through a little used back door. They sat side by side on a bench by the old servants’ entrance. Two ducks waddled over the gravel towards the wet patch under a black iron pump.

‘What did you get from Hedda?’ asked Kieran.

‘Other than a stomach ache?’

Kieran smiled. Yes, eating with that girl would do that to anyone with any sense.

‘Oh, she is on some personal vendetta to assassinate Raven’s character. It seems as though she’s a hot button for Hedda. Other students are joining in, including Adewale who I had down as a good guy. But I think Raven’s greatest sin is that she is perceived as being “not one of us”.’

‘Why? It can’t be a prejudice thing—they are from all sorts of nationalities—Hedda’s Swedish, Toni is Angolan, Adewale Nigerian and there’s at least one Chinese, two from the Indian subcontinent and an American in the group.’

‘I think it’s social status. Class and money—that’s what they have in common. I pass thanks to my mega-rich godfather showering me with Rolexes and funding my education. That speaks of serious connections.’ Joe’s watch had actually come as a reward from a jeweller in Switzerland when they had foiled a plot to rob the vault two months before. Kieran had one too. He had noticed other students checking out his wrist but hadn’t realized until now the watch was treated as proof of good credentials. ‘They like you, thanks to my little rumour about your classy family.’

‘I wish you hadn’t started that.’

‘You rarely tell any of us the truth about yourself so you shouldn’t have a problem concealing it from an outsider.’

True, he did not share his private life with many, only those in the YDA with a need to know. Joe had been told some of it but even he hadn’t heard the full ugly story. ‘The class thing though: it just makes matters complicated with Raven.’

‘But don’t get too hung up on the girl, Key. Odds are we’ll be shifted to another mission in a couple of months. This won’t go anywhere and you can’t have a serious relationship on a job, you know that. Flirting is OK; falling in love, majorly bad.’

‘I’ve said she can spend time with us.’

‘And that fits with our mission how exactly?’

Kieran knew he was acting out of character; he didn’t need Joe’s bemused look to tell him that. ‘Not when we’re talking to Isaac, obviously. Just she’s being victimized and I don’t like it.’ It offended his sense of justice; that was the only reason he would acknowledge.

‘Kieran Storm, the caped crusader, flying to the maiden’s rescue.’ Joe clapped his chest in a mock ‘you’re-my-hero’ gesture. ‘I am so going to have to put this on the Yoda message board.’

‘You will not. Anyone would have said the same to her.’

‘But you wouldn’t have—not before meeting Raven. You would have looked straight through her and told her to toughen up. Your ratings with the girls will rocket when they realize you have developed a soft spot for one of them.’

Kieran gave a dismissive snort.

‘Face it, Kieran. You are attracted to her and you’ll have to admit it sooner or later. But remember, my friend, as you just pointed out yourself, everything she knows about you is false. If she discovers that, she might not forgive you. That’s part of the reason we are told not to have serious relationships on a mission—too much damage all round.’

‘I’m not going to make a hash of it. I’ll keep my … my relationship with Raven in one compartment and the mission in another. I won’t get serious.’

Joe shrugged. ‘Your funeral, pal. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ He headed off to lessons leaving Kieran in sole occupation of the bench.

Kieran closed his eyes, enjoying a brief break in the sunshine. The last few years, since dating had begun in earnest, he had watched his friends turn into total idiots over the girls they fancied; he had been a little smug about it, always believing himself above such illogical behaviour. He never argued with the girls he’d dated, hadn’t felt that burning urge as he did with Raven: every other conversation with her ended up in a blazing row; the other half resulted in an overwhelming desire to kiss her.

She was distracting him. He should be thinking about the patterns, not about the fact that he was taking a step into the unknown with her.
Focus on your mission, Storm. Concentrate.

Making a big effort he forced himself to review the progress of the mission to date. So what did he know? Relatives of these students were making bent decisions of global importance. If it wasn’t stopped, one of these decisions would cause a catastrophe. Their job as agents of the YDA was to choke it off at the source; it was the only hope of diverting disaster down the road.

He had quickly latched on to the fact that the majority of these people had children whose behaviour had noticeably changed; the most likely cause was the courses they attended at the manor. Some kind of extreme pressure had to have been applied to make such rapid character alterations in the pupils. The word ‘brainwashing’ was dancing around in his mind. But why? With the correlation between parent and child behaviour, it couldn’t just be to benefit the school by giving them more obedient pupils. There had to be a link back to the parents’ actions, some payback.

Not all the missing students had returned yet but there had been no protest on the school’s database from the parents for their prolonged absence, no phone calls or angry emails. What conclusions could be drawn from that? Either the parents didn’t know the truth about what was happening to their offspring, happy with the explanations they had been given, or they were complicit. What had the pupils at the school been told? He would have to ask Raven. She had been in the dark about Gina but maybe there had been excuses given for the others who had gone missing for longer.

Sunshine pouring down on him, Kieran took a moment to enjoy the sense that he was assembling a case point by point. It was of sufficient complexity to be a challenge; he wouldn’t have liked it if the answer was too obvious, his talents wasted. He had, for example, searched through the decisions of the relatives, but he could find no clear link between the things they had done, no single person or entity benefitting. How, for example, did granting a diamond concession in Sierra Leone to a mining company ahead of their more respected competitors link to the promotion of a junior state department official to a more senior rank? And those blueprints for a new palm print-activated gun for the US military that had got into the hands of the Chinese: who had been at either end of that deal? It had the stench of major corruption, favouritism granted without a clear connection between the parties, like someone was bartering favours:
you do X in return for Y then Z will do A
.

Kieran let the idea run through his mind like an equation but the result was not understandable in arithmetic terms. There had to be an unknown in the mix, something integrating it all.

A clearing house. The solution came to him once he thought of the favours like currency. Was the school—not just this one but the whole network of the Union of International Schools—acting as the central bank with its various branches managing the flow of favours? If so, it was a clever system as the links were so tenuous no one could claim that diplomat A or businessman B had any reason to privilege the other, having no known relationship. There was next to no chance of a charge under international anti-bribery legislation that a backhander had been passed, as nothing was visible.

The clearing house was a good working hypothesis. What Kieran could not yet see was where the mind-altered students fitted in this scheme and what the people behind the school got out of it. They would be the next two elements to puzzle out.

After lunch, Joe and Kieran returned to their room to work on their assignments. Kieran was also running a scan of Westron’s communications with parents, looking for key terms, another on an analysis of links between diamond mining and trustees sitting on the school’s board, and two little personal ones, tracking NASA’s Mars programme and the CERN’s hunt for the Higgs. The space left over in his brain was devoted to writing an essay on
Pride and Prejudice
for English.

Joe pressed print on his French assignment. ‘You know, Key, you never did explain about those bluebottles. What case was it?’

‘A Victorian one in the old papers—murder in the greenhouse. The solution hinged on how long the body had been lying there next to the carnivorous plants.’

‘Gruesome. I like it.’

‘They found flies decomposing in the plants but the little greenhouse had been sealed from the outside and carbon monoxide pumped in. I was looking at how long it took the plants to attract the flies in a confined space, timing each species, and then noted how long the bodies take to be digested. I have established a range for the carnivorous plants available to a Victorian collector and my preliminary data suggests they hanged the wrong man. It couldn’t have been the gardener. Someone else had been in there later, which also fits the most likely time of death as well as they could fix that in those days. My money’s on the brother who inherited.’

‘Tell me again why you are doing this?’ Joe rolled his eyes.

‘Because no one else has. It is a puzzle to be solved. An injustice to be righted.’ An itch he had to scratch, but he didn’t add that last. Joe already knew that he was attracted to mysteries like a bear to a picnic basket.

The computer screen pinged as Isaac’s number came up. Joe clicked the answer button.

‘Hey, Isaac, we weren’t expecting you to check in. Everything OK?’

Clearly not, as Isaac’s expression was icy. ‘Is Kieran with you?’

‘Yes.’ Kieran moved so the webcam caught him.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Er, yes. I think so.’ He glanced at Joe.

‘Kieran, the school rang me.’

‘Uh-oh,’ murmured Joe.

‘They said you had left a lesson yesterday without seeing the teacher first and had refused offers to go to the nurse about your illness. They implied you were either skiving—which I know is impossible for you, Kieran, where learning is involved—or that you were hiding your symptoms. They were concerned, seeing you are new to the school.’

Kieran winced. He wished that particular incident could now be filed in the category of finished business. ‘I’m fine now, thanks. Back on track.’

‘What really interested me was that they said the lesson in question was Dance. I thought they were joking. They were surprised when I laughed. Did I not even know what subjects my godson was taking? I had to admit I did not—which was a major humiliation. Consider my shock when I discovered that you were doing Dance, Art, Drama, and English.’

‘It was a shock to me too.’

Isaac did not respond to Kieran’s drily amused tone. ‘I then followed back the paper trail and realized that certain of your friends had taken care of that part of your enrolment. Joe, have you anything to say?’

‘Damn,’ Joe said in a low voice. ‘I’m sorry, Isaac.’

‘Why?’ Isaac was curt, a sign he was really angry. Isaac’s fury was like a sandstorm—searing and gritty. Anyone with any sense took cover.

‘We thought it would be a laugh. You know how good Kieran is at everything else. This mission was judged low risk and isn’t due to take long; a few weeks of arts were supposed to be a new experience for him, I guess.’

‘I put aside what you’ve done to your partner for the moment, but I can’t understand why you’ve jeopardized the job to have … what? A joke at Kieran’s expense?’

‘Isaac, I’m really sorry. We were jerks.’

Isaac leant forward on his desk. ‘More than jerks. Unprofessional. I don’t think you yet grasp the gravity of your offence. You have put your mission and your personal safety at risk by throwing in an unstable element. That I cannot accept.’

Kieran wanted to protest that he wasn’t unstable, but Isaac was on a roll. ‘Disciplinary action will be taken, Masters. If you wish to graduate from the YDA and earn your scholarship to university, you cannot afford to have something like this on your record. This was explained to you when you signed on.’

Kieran fiddled with his phone, disliking intensely that he was present for Joe’s reprimand. He hadn’t appreciated the joke but he didn’t consider it a matter worth fouling up Joe’s future.

‘Kieran was supposed to fit in. You could have slipped him into some science classes with no one noticing anything but an extremely gifted pupil. Instead you chose to dump him somewhere he was most likely to do something, well, Kieranish. Do I make myself clear?’

Since when had ‘Kieranish’ become an English word?

‘Yes, Isaac.’ Joe sounded chastened.