2
Despite its name, Dartmoor High wasn’t a normal secondary school. It sat above the snow line on the northern edge of Dartmoor National Park, built into the rock face like a small medieval fortress. Nestled into the ancient granite of Wolf’s Head Tor, it was believed to be the site of an outpost of Rome’s Twentieth Legion when they fought for and secured ancient Britain.
The Victorians originally built Dartmoor High as a prison for the criminally insane, believing that society would be better off if the prisoners were locked away in an isolated spot. After a few terrifying nights spent alone with the inmates in such a bleak place, where one’s imagination turned the wind’s howl into an evil, supernatural moan, even hardened warders refused to serve there. Eventually the inmates were institutionalized in slightly more humane conditions elsewhere.
After a checkered history, it finally became a private school that concentrated on vigorous physical pursuits and no-nonsense education.
A hundred years later it was still a boys-only school. Some of the former pupils had gone on to become explorers, soldiers, pilots, pioneering doctors, MI6 officers and successful businessmen; there was even a well- known rock star who had studied there. They all benefited from the self-reliance that Dartmoor High gave them. Pupils came there from all over the world, and it was now regarded as an exclusive school, catering for twelve-to sixteen-year-olds. Although it seemed to have a fearsome reputation that scared a lot of the new entrants, they soon found the staff to be firm and fair, and they discovered the excitement that this kind of adventure-training school offered. The emphasis was on the boys themselves proving that they were cut out for it. If they weren’t, they could always go to other schools. Once they’d adapted to their new surroundings, most would rather stay at Dartmoor High, despite the howling wind, the blistering cold winters and its close proximity to one of the military’s biggest training areas, than go anywhere else.
But being hunted down and killed was not on the curriculum.
Max’s cuts and bruises were treated by Matron. The headmaster recognized the need for some kind of female role model, so there were a couple of women on the staff. Right now, Max wished his mother were around to give him a hug. Tears stung his eyes but he tried to be brave and pretend it was caused by the antiseptic Matron was putting on his arm. She murmured a few comforting words about there being no shame in crying, and that no one would know. Max didn’t care about anyone knowing, he had cried for ages when his mum died, four years ago, and he couldn’t help some tears now, but once he put it in perspective and took some deep breaths to calm himself down, he felt better. He was alive.
Once Max had been checked by the school’s on-call doctor and had given his statement to the police, he learned that it was a paratrooper who’d saved his life by hurling him to the ground out of the way of the machine- gun fire that had killed the assassin. The army had been in the training area for two weeks on a live firing exercise, and by chance the eagle-eyed soldier saw Max being chased and, without time to stop the firing, threw himself at the dazed boy, saving his life.
Everything else was a mystery. “I’ve spoken to the police, Max; they don’t know who the dead man is. Not yet, anyway,” Mr. Jackson, the school principal, told him. Fergus Jackson didn’t have the look of a traditional school headmaster. He seemed to live permanently in corduroy trousers, hiking boots and a woolen round-neck sweater. Max sipped the hot chocolate someone had given him as they’d moved to Jackson’s study, a big room with a blazing fire in a massive granite fireplace. Multicolored rugs cushioned the slate floor and well-worn, creaky leather chairs and sofas were arranged around the fire.
Mr. Peterson, Max’s housemaster, was also in the room, looking more worried than usual. His appearance was that of a rather ineffectual bookkeeper. He had floppy hair and wore spectacles, and he always seemed to be deep in abstracted thought. This appearance was deceptive: he’d led a vigorous life, climbing the world’s highest mountain peaks in between teaching boys geography and white-water canoeing.
The attack remained a mystery. There was no obvious reason for anyone to try to kill Max. “Do you think it could have been a random attack?” Max asked. “Y’know, some kind of nutter who crawls out from under a stone whenever he feels the urge?”
“From what you’ve said, it seems he was determined from the start to kill you. Otherwise, once you’d run he could have simply got himself out of there and disappeared into the night,” Jackson answered.
“How did you realize it was an ambush?” Mr. Peterson said.
Max recalled when he’d first heard the sound of an automatic pistol being cocked, a moment indelibly impressed on his memory.
Every school holiday, the boys could stay on at school and take part in various activities, such as an expedition to climb Ben Nevis, a canoe trip, or even bear watching in Canada; but if they were really desperate they went home to their parents. It was a school rule that families had to be seen at least once a year, otherwise Mr. Jackson and the staff would never have a breather. Max chose to see his dad every time. He loved it. He always had. Tom Gordon was a … well, Max wasn’t a hundred percent certain what his dad was, to tell the truth, but it was something along the lines of a hydrologist-geologist-archaeologist, who traveled around the world. He found underground wells in the deserts and helped Third World villagers get a clean supply of water; he uncovered hidden cities and identified lost civilizations; he scuba-dived off exotic ocean reefs, searching for lost wrecks. No wonder his dad urged him to go to Dartmoor High-he wanted his son to be as resilient and capable as he was. Life should be an adventure, he always told Max, but you had to be equipped to go on the journey. It was brains as well as physical fitness that were needed.
It had been eighteen months ago when Max had heard the oily slide and click of metal against metal as his dad’s hands cocked a 9mm Browning pistol. Max had never been that scared before and had never seen that look in his father’s eye. It chilled him. It made him feel that the smiling, warm, loving father he’d always cherished had a cold place in his heart that was as deep as glacier ice.
For the summer holidays that year he’d joined his father on a dhow from Zanzibar, sailing down the east coast of Africa. His dad was taking a break from his work, showing Max a spectacular reef that teemed with sharks. Beneath the calm, gentle swell of the Indian Ocean the sea was thick with them. However, on the eighth day, pirates had roared up alongside them in a rigid raider boat, its high-powered outboard engines enabling it to catch up easily with the lumbering dhow. The modern-day cutthroats had a good intelligence network, gathering the gossip around the harbors as to who was sailing where. They were known to attack yachts and kill their crews. The dhow’s crew was terrified by the half dozen men, each brandishing an AK-47, that virtually indestructible workhorse of the gun world. Max’s dad had ducked down into the cabin and come back a few moments later, just as the first of the pirates clambered aboard, his gold-capped teeth glinting as he laughed at the terrified crew. Max’s dad had quickly stepped forward, grabbed the man’s neck with his left hand and squeezed a pressure point. The pirate was immobilized, his gun clattering to the deck; at the same time Tom Gordon fired twice into the pirates’ boat’s fuel tanks-the shock wave from the tremendous explosion made Max reel. The pirates bailed out and Max’s dad pushed the terrified captive pirate over the side. It had all happened in a matter of seconds. Tom Gordon shouted a command in Arabic and the dhow swung away, leaving the screaming pirates clambering onto what was left of their boat.
“Dad! What about the sharks?” Max finally managed to choke out.
“They should have thought of that before they set out to murder innocent people,” his dad replied, still grim- faced but, unlike everyone else, unshaken by the incident. Then he’d smiled, and he was the same old dad Max loved, though now he realized that there was a lot more to his father than he had ever known. “They’ll have a transponder linked to their mates back on shore, but by the time they get here we’ll be long gone and out of range. They can cling to the wreckage until then.”
The memory lingered a moment longer, before Max realized that Mr. Peterson and Mr. Jackson were still waiting for him to answer the question.
“Oh … sorry. I heard the man who tried to kill me cock the weapon; it was something I’d seen and heard before when I was with my dad.”
Jackson and Peterson looked uneasily at each other for a moment.
“Max,” said Jackson a little hesitantly, “we’ve tried to contact your father, but … well, we’re not sure where
