he is.”
“He could be anywhere,” Max said. “Maybe you should try the organization he works for.”
Jackson paused. It was Peterson who broke the silence. “We have. It seems … he’s gone missing.” Max barely noticed Jackson’s look of disapproval at his geography teacher’s lack of tact. “Best you should know,” Peterson said.
Gone missing. That had an ominous ring to it. Under any other circumstances Max wouldn’t have been too alarmed-his father was often out of radio or cell phone range. But now? “It’s been more than a week since he made contact with anyone,” Jackson said.
Max nodded, thoughts flooding his mind as he tried to think clearly and picture what might have happened to his dad. “Where was he?”
“Namibia.”
Diamond country. Namibia’s coast ran for thousands of kilometers along the south Atlantic. Vast tracts of land were off-limits because there were diamonds waiting to be picked up. Max’s dad had told him about Namibia before. A huge triangle of a country, bigger than France and the UK put together. Away from its mist-shrouded coast was an arid, brain-sizzling desert and scrubland. The Okavango swamps with their crocodiles lay to the east in Botswana; Angola was north, beyond the Kunene River; and South Africa lay to the south. There was a lot of game: lions, elephant … but what else? Max’s brain couldn’t put it all together. His dad must have been injured, or worse. If an assassin had come in the night for Max, whoever wanted him dead must have captured or killed his father first. Why?
Jackson’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Naturally, if this wasn’t a random attack on you, then we have to assume there’s a connection.” Max nodded. What would Dad want him to do? “In the circumstances, Max,” Jackson went on, “we think we should go to the vault.”
The vault. That was where you heard voices of the dead. Max had known a couple of boys whose parents had died-they’d been taken down to the vault. Every pupil had his own key, kept in Jackson’s safe, which unlocked a deposit box in the underground chambers of Dartmoor High. The vault was fireproof, bombproof, everything-proof, because it was cut into the granite hills on which the school was built. When a parent died, it was a legal requirement that a guardian be nominated to look after the boy, and that information was in each boy’s deposit box. Sometimes there were personal letters, mementos, and usually a legal document that gave a lawyer’s name for his inheritance-if there was one. It was also a condition of attendance at Dartmoor High that each parent left a digital recording for their child. Jackson believed that if tragedy struck, the comforting voice of a parent was just about all a boy had left to help him cope with the trauma.
Voices from the dead. Going to the vault was so final.
Matron tapped on the door; Jackson nodded for her to come in. “We thought we’d do that tomorrow, Max,” Jackson said.
Matron was carrying a glass of water and a pill holder. “The doctor reckoned you should get a proper night’s sleep. Help you deal with things.” Matron offered the sleeping pill to Max. “It’s only a mild sedative. OK?” Jackson assured him. Max nodded, took the pill and a gulp of water and gave a reassuring smile to Jackson, Peterson and Matron.
“Good boy,” Matron said.
“We don’t want to cause any alarm, Max, so as far as anyone else is concerned, you strayed into the Danger Zone and took a tumble. Are you all right with that?”
Max nodded.
The moment he was outside the study, Max spat the tablet out. He’d tucked it under his tongue and pretended to swallow it. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust anyone; he just wanted to keep a clear head and think this through. That was what his dad would want him to do. That was why he’d sent him to this school in the first place.
Max’s room was big enough for a single bed, a small table used as a desk, a chair, a bookcase, a trunk for personal bits and pieces, and a single wardrobe. It might originally have been built as a prison cell, but now it offered enough space to have the essentials-but no luxuries, not even a television, though there was one in each House’s common room. There were four Houses at Dartmoor High: Eagle, which Max belonged to; Wolf, Otter and Badger.
Max lay on his bed. He realized he might be facing the starkest moment of his life. If his dad had been killed, he was an orphan. No, he just didn’t believe that. His father was too resourceful, but no sooner had this positive thought arrived than another one chipped in. Nobody is immortal and if they, whoever they were, had killed his dad then they must have taken him by surprise. Ambushed him. As they had tried to do with Max.
Max let out a deep, troubled sigh. He had escaped; maybe his dad had too.
He turned his head on the pillow, his eyes gazing idly at his desk and bookcase. Something wasn’t right. He looked again. Things weren’t exactly where they should have been. A small pile of textbooks was nudged across the desk at a different angle. He always had them in a certain place because he liked to rest his left elbow on them when he wrote his essays. And that Cook Island figurine of a war god was facing slightly away from the window when it should have been gazing directly across the moors. What else had been moved? Bits of stone from the ruins of Aglason in Turkey where Alexander the Great had attacked across the mountains; a rock crystal found in the Himalayas which had a glint of some magical light in it, said to be from the cave of an ancient mystic; the amber teardrop from Russia which a hundred million years ago had encased a wayward insect in its resin. All bits and pieces his dad had given him. Now Max’s senses sharpened. Letting his gaze sweep across the room, he realized that someone had pulled books away from the wall, checked them and put them back a bit too neatly. He knew the artifacts were not in exactly the place where they should have been because, despite the obligation to keep his room tidy, there was always a faint layer of dust noticeable on any flat surface. Max wondered what on earth the intruder had been looking for.
There was a knock on the door. “Max?” It was Sayid, whose mum taught Arabic at the school. Max let him in and closed the door quickly behind him. Sayid was his best friend.
When Max’s father had worked in the Middle East, Sayid’s dad had been killed by terrorists and Max’s dad had pulled strings to get Sayid and his mother, Leila, into Britain. Max was never sure what the connection was between the two men, except that they had worked together, and it seemed that Tom Gordon owed some sort of debt to the Khalif family. Max’s father explained that Sayid and his mother needed a safe place, well out of harm’s way, and he told Max to keep an eye on the new boy. Max did exactly that, but now Sayid had been there long enough and didn’t need looking after anymore.
“The whole place is buzzing, Max. The army, the police coming and going. What’s going on?” Sayid whispered quickly.
“I went for a run and decided to get a closer look at the guns.” Max shrugged.
“You can be gated for that! No more Saturdays in town for months.”
“Yeah, I know, it was stupid. The firepower was awesome, though. The whole place was shaking.”
Sayid looked over his shoulder at the closed door nervously and Max could see something was up. “Max, you’d better tell me if there’s anything else. I’m your mate, yeah?”
“Yeah, course. It was nothing. I broke a school rule. Big deal.”
Sayid gave him a disbelieving look and then pulled a crumpled envelope out of his back pocket. “Sorry this got a bit mangled, but I didn’t want anyone else to see it.”
“What?” Max asked, because Sayid still looked as though he knew there was something going on.
“This is addressed to me,” Sayid said as he handed over the letter. The envelope was open but there was another one inside with one word written clearly-MAX. Sayid shrugged. “Your dad obviously wanted this to get to you without going through the usual channels. It came in this afternoon’s post-I couldn’t find you.”
Max nodded. His father had used the one person in school whom Max could always rely on in a tight corner. He ripped the envelope open-and on the piece of folded paper inside there was, again, only one word.
Max knew what his dad wanted him to do.
Sayid waited patiently.
Max took a deep breath. “Sayid, listen. My dad’s in trouble, he’s gone missing….”
“Bloody hell! Where?”
