“Max! Max! My boy!” An urgent whisper. Max felt someone tapping his face gently. He came to. His blurred vision cleared. He was propped against the wall with Dr. Miller at his side. The jade skull still grinned in the exhibit case, and on the floor, the attacker’s body lay prone. Miller still held the hefty chain and padlock in one hand.
“Ah. My boy. Good. Good. Come along, we have to get out of here.”
Max clambered to his feet, looked at the fallen man and then at the academic.
“I may be getting old, but I’m not afraid to stand up to thugs like that. Though I hope I didn’t hit him too hard.”
Max nudged the man with his toe, and he groaned. “He’ll be all right. Where do we go?”
Dr. Miller was limping. It was obvious he had been hurt in the scuffle. “I fell badly on my knee,” he explained, catching Max’s glance. “I’ll manage. We must get to a phone.”
“I’ve got a mobile.”
“It’s no good down here.”
Max took Miller’s arm across his shoulders and helped him to walk. The pain in his own shoulder from the attacker’s punch still hurt, but he kept silent; this was no time to moan. Shadows flitted and fast-moving footfalls padded quietly but urgently in the background. Dr. Miller’s breathing was labored.
He stopped and leaned against an exhibition case. They had barely managed a dozen meters. Miller was trembling, his face drawn, his breathing becoming more strained. His face grimaced in pain.
“Oh dear … Oh God …”
Max tried to ease him gently to the floor, but his weight was too much to control. Dr. Miller slumped hard and tore unsuccessfully at the constriction of his shirt collar. His eyes seemed glassy and unfocused. Max touched the man’s face. It was clammy. Something more frightening than the assault gripped Max’s stomach. The edge of panic threatened to take control. Dr. Miller was having a heart attack.
Max’s mind raced. He had done first aid; he knew what to do. He eased Miller’s body over, tore off the man’s tie and ripped open his shirt. Anything that might help him breathe.
There was a look of fearful surprise on Miller’s face, and then the muscles relaxed and he sighed. His eyes half closed. He was dead.
Max desperately felt for a pulse in his neck, but there was nothing.
He laid the heel of his hand halfway down Dr. Miller’s chest, leaned on it, felt the ribs give a little.
How much time had passed? Max checked his watch. Three minutes. It felt like three hours as he made the frantic attempt to save the man. How quickly a life could slip away. Max shook from the exertion of his first aid and the nervous tension of the old man’s death. A death that would have been avoided if Max had not come here. And he had tried and failed to save him.
“No!” Max screamed, and heard the echo bounce down the halls of the uncaring statues.
Feet pounded toward him. Someone shouted something. Two torch beams slashed through the darkness in the distance.
Max touched the gentle man’s clammy hand. “I’m so sorry. Forgive me,” he whispered. He reluctantly pulled the small bunch of keys off Dr. Miller’s belt clip and jumped to his feet.
For a second he stood stock-still, closed his eyes, pictured the way he had come into the building, where he had rushed through to reach the Anthropology Library, and how he had dogged Miller’s footsteps to get here. He saw the pictures in his mind’s eye-and ran. He knew where he was in relation to those doors, but he needed a map to get out, and they were only to be found on the information desk near the main entrance across that huge open space. That was just too dangerous. He would have to adapt and tackle each problem as it came. All he knew was that the main offices were east, and there were loading bays to the west. And that was how he was going to get out of the building.
Max quickly flipped open his mobile, pressed a button and ran-away from the approaching sounds of running feet. The torch beams had ducked and weaved as the men checked each side room, cabinet and cranny.
“This is Max Gordon. I need help. I’m in the British Museum.” He paused. “I don’t know where exactly. Help me!” He paused again. “Listen, I can’t talk. They’re close. I reckon there are at least three men.” He closed the phone.
Max pounded up the stairs.
A shadow gave chase.
How close?
Max could hear the man’s breathing.
Arms pumping, legs fueled with escape juice, he gained a few meters. The man gasped a breathless shout. “Here!”
Voices echoed. A beacon to another deadly night shape that came from the adjoining room from which Max had escaped. The other man came at him now. He could see his eyes and the snarl on his face. Two of them. He could beat them. He knew he could.
Running scared but running alert, Max saw a third man. Waiting. Right where Max was heading. This man seemed totally unperturbed, as if he knew his victim was being driven to him for the kill. Where to run? Central stairs curved upward, turned at the top and came down the other side. They led nowhere except to a closed restaurant. If he bounded up there, they would simply follow and box him in.
Max was trapped like a monkey being chased by lions.
Monkey see, monkey do.
On pure instinct, he ran for the looming shadow that disappeared high into the dull gloom reflecting from the glass roof. It was like a massive, limbless tree about ten or twelve meters high.
Carved, grimacing faces snarled at him. A gruesome mask with a whale’s tale in its mouth sat squashed at the bottom. It was a totem pole. Coarse, hacked wood, its paint long gone from a hundred years of North American weather, allowed a firm grip as his feet dug into the swirls and shapes of the carvings. Creatures of a Native American spirit world. He heard men swear below him as he clambered higher. Monkeys climb and monkeys jump, but this was so high he didn’t even want to look down into the murkiness below.
A shout: “Get after him!”
Max dared to glance down. One of the two men went higher after him, the second scorched the darkness with his torch beam, but the third just stood and watched. Silent and unmoving. Figuring out what Max could do once he reached the top of this man-made tree. There was nowhere to go.
Trembling with exertion and the fear that came from being pursued, he felt the gentle vibration through his fingertips, the urgency of the man climbing up behind him. The totem wobbled. Max was at the top.
He had expected them to chase him up here. Added weight made the pole unstable, and Max was going to make sure it became even more unsteady-he had to if he was going to survive, but if he got it wrong, the fall could kill him.
Gripping a gnarled creature’s sculptured face, he leaned backward. It didn’t give. He threw his body weight forward, hauled back again and felt a tremor of movement. It began to rock. Max grunted with effort, felt his leg muscles straining against the force needed to shift the center of balance.
“Hey! Kid! Cut it out! You’ll kill us both!” the man yelled, five meters below him. He was gaining fast, but the rocking motion made him grip the pole tightly and cling desperately.
Max was in no mood to do as he was told. “Go to hell!” he shouted back, and threw himself into the
