“He died defending me,” Lily said, her eyes downcast.
“Oh,” Sky Monster said softly. “And Alby?”
“Don’t even ask,” Zoe said, rubbing her temples, clearly still dealing with that issue. “Hopefully, he’s not dead, too.”
She glanced at Lily as she said this, and their eyes met. Lily said nothing.
While they talked, Wizard tapped away on a computer, posting an encoded message on the Lord of the Rings noticeboard he, Lily, and Jack used for such communications. If Jack was somehow alive, he would check in on the noticeboard eventually.
“You think Daddy’s still alive?” Lily said, moving behind Wizard as he typed. “Even after that man showed us his helmet?”
Wizard turned to face her.
“Your father’s a very resilient fellow, Lily. The most resilient, stubborn, brilliant, loyal, caring, and difficult-to- kill man I know. As far as I’m concerned, Jack West isn’t dead until I see his unmoving body with my own eyes.”
This didn’t seem to encourage Lily.
Wizard just smiled. “We must always retain hope, little one. Hope that our loved ones are alive, hope that good will prevail over evil in this epic conflict. In the face of powerful opponents and overwhelming odds, hope is all we have.
“Never lose it, Lily. Deep in their hearts, bad people like Wolf have no hope and so they replace it with lust: lust for dominance, for power—and if they ever gain that power they’re only happy because now everyone else is as miserable as they are. Always have hope, Lily, because hope is what makes us the good guys.”
Lily looked at him. “That Wolf man said on the phone before that he’s my grandfather, Daddy’s father. How can Daddy be so good and Wolf be so bad?”
Wizard shook his head. “That I cannot explain. The path a person takes in life is often determined by the strangest, most incidental things. Jack and his father are alike in many ways: both are fiercely determined and incredibly intelligent. Only Jack acts for others, while his father acts for himself. Somewhere in their lives, they each learned to act in these ways.”
“What will I be like then?” Lily asked nervously. “I want to be like Daddy, but it seems that’s not guaranteed. I don’t want to make the wrong choice when it matters.”
Wizard smiled at her, tousled her hair. “Lily, I cannot ever imagine you making the wrong choice.”
“And now that Wolf man has got Alby,” Lily said.
“Yes,” Wizard said. “Yes—”
At that moment, something pinged in the cockpit and Sky Monster went to check on it. Two seconds later, he shouted: “What in the name of…?”
Zoe and the others raced into the cockpit to see what had upset him.
They found Sky Monster pointing at a satellite aerial map of southern Africa.
Dozens of little red dots filled the air above the northern border of South Africa. Many more blue dots flanked the western coast just off Cape Town.
“What is it?” Zoe asked.
“See all those dots,” he said. “The red ones represent military aircraft, the blue ones warships. And there’s a repeating message coming in over all frequencies: the South African Air Force has blockaded South African airspace to all foreign air traffic—military and commercial. At the same time, their Navy’s formed a perimeter around Cape Town, Table Mountain, and half the Cape of Good Hope.”
He pointed to a few white-colored dots on the ocean south of the Cape. “Those white dots, they’re the last civilian craft that were allowed in about an hour ago. Judging from their transponders, they’re South African– registered fishing trawlers returning from the Indian Ocean. They’re the last ones they’ve let back in. Now all the sea-lanes are closed.”
“But we have to get to Cape Town by tomorrow night,” Zoe said.
Sky Monster swiveled in his seat. “I’m sorry, Zoe, but we can’t do that, not without getting shot down. Our enemies have completely shut us out. They musta bought off the South African government with a boatload of cash. I hate to be the one to say this, but we can’t get to Cape Town.”
ENMORE MANOR,
LAND’S END, ENGLAND
DECEMBER 11, 2007
LACHLAN AND JULIUS Adamson sat gloomily in the locked library of Enmore Manor, a secluded estate in the far southwest of England near Land’s End.
The blinking red light of a supersensitive motion-tracking unit gazed down at them, tracking their every movement, telling their Japanese captors that they were still where they were supposed to be.
They sat with Lily’s backpack and nothing else. Only her toys remained in the pack—everything else they had of worth had been taken by the Japanese.
Every now and then, their captors came for them and got them to explain some diagram on their computer or some e-mail that Wizard had written about the Machine.
Tank Tanaka was always polite but curt, his eyes hard and cold, fixed on a purpose that the twins simply couldn’t comprehend.
Only once did Lachlan shake him from his trance. “Yo, Tank! Why are you doing this, man! What about your friends, like Wizard and Lily?”
