Thirteen (21 page)

Simon hurled himself against the door again. Desperation flooded through him.

Adam ran across the lawn toward the summer house. As he reached the stone path he slipped, both feet disappearing from under him. Ignoring his bleeding leg, he sprang up and hobbled on.

Further seconds slipped away as he peered through the dark windows. He tugged at the door: locked, but it looked flimsy.

Adam smashed once, twice at the door.

Simon smashed one more time. The door splintered. Screams tore through Dorm Thirteen. Were they Viper's?

Adam and Simon both shoulder-barged their doors. Adam's door cracked open; Simon's door shattered.

In the gloom, Adam could just about see a large envelope with his name on it. Stepping back into the light, he tore it open. Inside was a cell phone and a plan of the grounds and surrounding roads, including a snaking dotted line. There was a large letter C at the end of the line and a message: “Use the phone.” He swore, then stepped back and looked up at the main building.
Simon?

Simon stepped into the room. He saw thirteen packets of putty-like explosives and two words scrawled on the wall: The Traitor.

He saw the wires that led back to . . .

The door.

Simon heard a bleep.

He raised his hands in a futile attempt to shield himself. There was an enormous explosion.

The building was ripped apart. Adam saw flames leap from the upper windows and through the roof like angry dragons. Then there was a second blast, lower down, that smashed through the ground floor, cracking windows and blowing out doors. Adam was more than a hundred and fifty yards away, but the heat was searing and specks of masonry rained onto the ground around him, pinging off the path. The entire building was alive with flame that leaped with malevolent triumph.

Adam looked at the phone. He pressed the green button: one number was there. As the flames roared around him, he pressed it again.

He couldn't hear the voice at the far end properly, so shouted over it. “Listen to me! I'm going to kill you!”

Megan emerged from a confused blend of reality and dreams. She could vaguely recall people shouting at her as she struggled.

Shadowy traces of two nightmares hung in her mind. In one she was crowd-surfing above jabbing arms, roughly pushed from person to person as bands of light and dark passed overhead. In the other, sweet-smelling hands tried to suffocate her but then broke into a thousand droplets of water.

Her feeling of being bound up had not been a dream: she was wrapped in a sleeping bag on a bare mattress. Although she could not raise her head more than a few inches without pain tightening around her skull, she noticed that the room was windowless and lit by a single bulb. Voices passed outside like distant sirens.

Megan closed her eyes and disappeared into a shallow sleep filled with a kaleidoscope of leering, blurred faces. She didn't know if it was minutes or hours later when Viper gradually emerged from the misty colors. “Yes?” Megan muttered.

“I thought you were dead,” sneered Viper as she shook Megan. “Eat and drink. And there's no point looking for a way out: there isn't one.” Someone had placed water and a bowl of plain pasta on a bedside table. Megan noticed that she was now
free to move. Between forced mouthfuls, she pressed at a bruise on her forehead.

Coron rushed in, flanked by two men in black gowns.

“Megan, we are seeing history unfold before our eyes. In seconds Adam will call. In minutes he will hand himself over as a willing sacrifice.”

Megan uttered the desperate words of the fraught captive: “Please let me go.”

“Megan, if only you understood the glory of tonight. And in one month, just one month, the world will be turned on its axis. This city and then the whole world will be torn away from its rotten foundations.”

Megan realized that she would never in any way be able to reason with these people. Her hopelessness paralyzed her.

The phone rang. She could hear Adam shouting. Coron spoke: “
Adam
. Be careful who you threaten. You should consider the health of your parents first. And speak to Megan.”

The phone was passed over.

Megan spoke quickly, “Adam, it's terrible—they're going to kill our parents and me! I'm in London somewhere, and they want you, and I think they're going to blow something up—”

Coron prised the phone from her hands and Viper restrained her. Megan struggled desperately, like a drowning woman clawing at the surface.

Adam listened in silence as the building crackled and fizzed in front of him.

The words he heard were methodical, calm, unnervingly precise: “This is Coron. Now listen to me. Look at the map.”

Adam stared, his hands shaking with anger and frustration.

“There's a car at letter C. I will give you fifteen minutes to get there. When you're inside it, use this phone, and I will not kill Megan or your mother and father. Following the path marked by the dotted line will mean that you avoid the main
entrance and anyone coming to investigate the fire.” Flames were leaping thirty or forty feet in the air now.

“Let Megan go first.”

“No, I think not. You get in the car, call from there and then I'll let her go. She can walk away, and go can home.”

“I HATE YOU, YOU BASTARD.” Fury and terror strangled Adam's ability to think. He shouted, “Okay!” It was hopeless. This man was organized and had people and resources. Adam wanted to scream senselessly, wanted to get help, but the one person who could help him had just been murdered. Where the hell were the police? He pressed the red button and the phone went dead. Adam looked at the map. The dotted line directed him around the back of the building and through what must be another exit.

Viper turned to Megan. “Don't get your hopes up. You're not going anywhere.”

Megan was open-mouthed. “But you said . . . You—you lied!” She cried, hopelessly, pathetically, “ADAM!”

Coron smiled. “Yes. You helped deceive Adam, like Eve deceiving man in the Garden of Eden. And you may have to deceive him again. If you refuse, Viper will have the privilege of offering you as a sacrifice.”

Flames from the Old School House reflected in Adam's eyes as he looked at the map. The letter C marked the location of the car Coron had sent. The car: the capital, Coron, capture. But Adam could not believe that it would all end with his own death.

He ran along the gravel path indicated by the dots on the map, flecks of the burning building catching on his coat. Initially lit flame-orange, the path disappeared behind some trees into increasing gloom, and Adam was in near darkness when he reached a metal gate.

A short, muddy path led to a country lane. The letter C was very near if he turned left.

The car: the capital, Coron, capture.

I won't end up a hero
, he thought.
I'll be trapped and killed. I won't be able to beat up a lot of adults and rappel from a window. I'm going to have to do things differently
.

Adam turned right and sped up. He raced past a couple wearing the ill-matching attire of people who have dressed quickly in the night. They hurried down the road, presumably from the farmhouse he could see lit up in the distance. The man was on his cell phone, saying something about seeing flames behind the trees. When Adam neared, they shouted, “Hey! You! Stop!”

Adam sprinted on without looking back, soon into woodland, keeping the glow from the burning building behind him. The uneven path, strewn with puddles, was taking him in more or less the right direction. Branches clawed at him and he slipped more than once, but no one seemed to follow, though it was hard to tell.

Just as the glow from the building was fading, he saw a flash of fire engine lights in the distance to his right and soon came to the path where they'd left the motorcycle.

Adam heard an urgent buzzing and saw the screen of Coron's phone glowing through his jeans. He realized that there was no going back now.

Coron spoke as soon as Adam answered: “
Adam
, you don't seem to have arrived. Megan is getting worried. Your parents would be worried, if only they knew.”

“Listen to me,” said Adam. “We're going to do things my way.”

Coron shouted so loudly that Adam pulled the phone away from his ear. “No! You listen to me! People are going to get hurt if you don't get into that car right now.”

“Go to hell.
You
listen to
me
!”

Coron was furious, stumbling over his words. “Listen to Megan—go on, go on, listen!”

Adam could hear someone saying his name and a sharp
scream, but much of it was lost in the wind. With tears in his eyes, he bit his lower lip. “No,” he said, his face full of agony. “No. I will hand myself over, but not your way. You bring Megan somewhere public, like Trafalgar Square, and I will let you take me if you release her. Otherwise I'll hide until the New Year. I'll hide until I'm fourteen and then come and kill you.”

Coron, possessed by anger, grabbed Megan's throat.

Adam didn't pause: “Trafalgar Square, tomorrow—that is today, Saturday—five p.m., by the lions. Let Megan go and I'll leave with you.”

There was silence at the far end of the phone, apart from Megan's gurgled crying. Eventually Coron spoke, “All right. You have just over twelve hours. Every hour, I will keep Megan uncomfortable. Would you like to hear some more?”

If Adam spoke he couldn't hear Megan. “I'll be there if you leave my parents alone and don't hurt Megan.” His mind was whirring.

“You are playing a dangerous game, Adam,” said Coron.

The drizzle was turning to rain. Adam pushed the scooter to the main road and used the key that was hidden under the seat. He was used to bicycles, but it was an unsteady transition to something motor-driven, so he wobbled his way through a village speckled with street lamps, nearly falling off by a church and again by a white building that was probably a pub. After that, he found that more speed kept him upright.

Soon he found an arrow-straight, blue-black road and a sign that promised London.

Trafalgar Square is dominated by four lions and one tall pillar, Nelson's Column. As Adam's bus drove past, he could see Megan standing in the space behind this famous landmark, with Coron's arm around her shoulder, shadowy figures in the early-evening gloom. A woman was taking a photograph of them. Megan was grimacing; they looked like patient father and quarrelsome daughter.

Adam pulled his hoody around his cheeks. How many of the people he could see were Coron's People? Adam couldn't distinguish between the suspicious behavior of an extreme cult and the unpredictable movements of tourists.

Adam looked at his watch, partially hidden by the red wristband that Megan had given him. It was still only 4:45 p.m., so he went on a couple of stops and then passed again on a bus going the other way. This time he could see people talking into cell phones. Kids clambered on the stone lions and chased pigeons.
Does everyone belong to Coron?
Adam wondered.

The woman across the aisle was staring in his direction, probably; the man in front turned around twice.
What about them?

The bus crawled to the next stop. Adam stayed on, changed again and came back a third time, surrounded by Swedish teenagers.
Surely they were what they seemed?

Megan was still having her picture taken. This time Adam would have to get off. He let the bus pass the square, now certain that a girl in the distance was Viper, and that no one in the square could be trusted. He stepped off onto the Strand.

Adam didn't notice two white vans passing on a circuit. Nor did he consider the man on the corner selling the
Big Issue
, the man who pressed the send button on his cell when Adam stood in front of him. He also missed the young woman, no more than twenty, who appeared on Adam's right and nodded to a man across the road. The word went out that the boy had arrived.

Adam walked so that a statue hid him from Coron's view, then emerged into the center of the square, twenty yards away from Megan. About fifteen people adjusted their positions. Adam stopped ten paces away and glanced at his watch.

Megan saw him and gasped slightly. Adam looked exhausted and disheveled. “You don't have to do this,” she mouthed.

Adam smiled.

At that moment, she raced forward, as did he. Adam's mouth was near to her ear, clearly whispering.

Coron made a sign that no one should move. He and a woman closed in.

“That's enough,” he said. “The prophecy is fulfilled. The boy Adam has walked willingly up to me. The Master said that it would be in public.” Coron opened his arms, confident and triumphant. “And it cannot be more public than this.”

At that instant two things happened: Adam threw himself at Coron, and a hundred pigeons fountained into the air as Megan ran. As Adam was pulled away by two men, Coron calmly instructed those around him: “Let her go.”

Where to?

Megan ran to the edge of square by the road, but one of Coron's men was waiting on the other side.

What was her idea?

Then a car stopped, a door opened, Megan dived in and the car pulled away quickly.

Someone spoke into a walkie-talkie: a white van glided to a stop and the side door was flung open. Adam was thrown in, pinned down, and the door was closed. Another van pulled up and people jumped in. Others slipped away into the tube station or down side streets.

The car carrying Megan was lost in the distance.

Inside the van Coron turned to Adam. “Hello, Adam. We meet again.” He pressed his hands together and leaned forward.

Adam smiled. “She's safe now. And she will tell the police.”

Coron smiled and shook his head. “You're a mere boy. Out of your depth.”