Blue's Revenge (2 page)

‘I'm Agent Madison. Well done. You followed the coordinates to the capture site precisely. Did you get the proof?'

‘We caught him on the X-ray Spectrogram buying detonators. Now we just need to persuade him to tell us why.'

Agent Madison smiled. ‘Certainly.'

She nodded to the three other agents, who swung the pulley, loosened the ropes and sent Haddock plunging into a deep red vat. The pool bubbled into life until, after a few seconds, they lifted the sack out with spluttering sound effects.
‘Now will you tell us?' Max asked politely.

‘No! You rotten, despicable, camel-smelling –'

Max gave the nod for another dunking.

This time, Haddock's swim was a little longer, and when his sack was pulled upwards, his gasping cough was accompanied by a promise to cooperate.

‘Okay! Okay! The detonators were going to be used to remove a few obstacles in the way of some of my business dealings.'

‘I think that'll be enough for now. We can get the rest later,' Agent Madison said. ‘Do you have the location of where the deal took place?'

Linden handed over his guidebook with the concealed EPF. ‘It's in here.'

Madison was impressed. ‘Excellent work. As usual.'

The agents lowered the bag to the ground. Haddock emerged looking like an overcooked tomato and smelling like a garbage truck at the end of a long night of pick-ups. The agents cuffed his hands and led him away to his new home, provided courtesy of the Moroccan police.

Linden turned to Max as they walked away from the tanneries. ‘I guess we can chalk up another victory.'

‘I guess we can,' Max smiled before she was struck by a different thought. It's not the same now that Blue is in prison.
¹
Don't get me wrong, I like it this way, but even though he's behind bars, I keep worrying that he's thinking up a new plan to out-evil his last scheme.'

‘I don't think we have to worry about Blue. By the time he gets out of prison we'll be sitting in a retirement home for old has-been scientists.' Linden gave a wicked grin. ‘Time for a sizzling skewer of goat, eh?'

Max screwed up her nose as Linden nudged her in the shoulder and laughed.

It did feel good that Blue was locked away, but Max had fought him enough times to know he never gave up a fight easily, and when it came to Spyforce, the fight was a long way from over.

Far from the dust and alleyways of Morocco, a small, hunched woman shrouded in a long, black shawl was led down murkily lit corridors into a series of grey, echoing rooms. Security was tight. Cameras fixed to the roof and walls whirred in the direction of any moving person or object. The guard beside the old woman held one hand over his gun and rested the other on the baton that swung in a holster at his side. He was also equipped with a Stinger, a small, electrically charged device that delivered a jolting current into the nervous system, rendering a person immobile for hours.

The woman's frail, careful steps seemed childlike next to the long stride of the guard in his metal-capped boots. But even though she appeared harmless, the woman was processed like any other visitor to Blacksea Penitentiary, an international prison perched on the rocky, barren landscape of Coffin Island. Lapped by seas that even in the midday sun looked like they had been stained by an oil spill, the Penitentiary held the record for being the only modern prison in the world that hadn't had one escape in its wretched twenty-year history. If a prisoner was to break through its security, they would be left with the choice of jumping into the high swell of the ocean and swimming fifty
kilometres through shark-speckled seas to the shore, or turning back and begging the guards to let them in to escape the treeless island's cruel sun and forlorn nights.

The old woman had been fingerprinted, had handed over her dental records, and her face had been scanned and checked against an international database of criminals. She was then brought to a table with a harsh fluorescent light overhead. Beside the table was a white-coated technician and a tall, cylindrical 360-degree X-ray machine.

‘Empty your pockets,' the guard snarled.

The old woman delved into her many layers of clothing and pulled out a crumpled handkerchief, keys, a few coins, a packet of mints and a thick metal disc. The last item she held before her. ‘It is a fob watch,' she explained.

The guard sniffed and took the watch. He flicked open the catch and stared at its careful craftsmanship, finely carved hands and gold-inlaid date of 1842. On the back was an inscription:

The woman stared pleadingly at the guard, her ice-blue eyes shining with tears. ‘It belonged to his grandfather and his grandfather before him. It has seen them through many hard times and I hope it will help my grandson through his.'

The guard remained unmoved.

‘Please. I am an old woman.' She wrung her hands at the possibility that her gift would not be allowed through.

The guard grunted and handed the watch to the technician, who opened a hatch in the X-ray machine and slid it inside. He closed the small door and pressed a series of buttons on a remote control. A low-level humming could be heard, and a picture of the inside of the watch appeared on a screen embedded into the machine. After a few seconds, a soft ‘ping' sounded. The technician removed the watch and handed it back to the guard. ‘It's clean.'

‘Step up here,' the guard ordered.

It was now the old woman's turn for an X-ray. She exhaled a gasping wheeze as she lifted her multi-layered skirts, stepped into the machine and was told to stand as still as she could. She looked uneasy as a low-level hum reverberated around her. After a few minutes, the technician gave a nod and she was allowed to step out.

‘The visitors' room is through that door.' The guard handed over the woman's possessions and the two men watched as she ambled away.

‘I wasn't really expecting grandma to be carrying any submachine guns.' The technician sniffed back a laugh.

‘Gotta be done.' The guard's expression was cold and hard.

Their voices echoed behind the woman as she stopped before a reinforced metal door. It opened with a click and whining hum, and the woman trudged into a long, glass tube suspended over the frenzied waves of Coffin Island's western edge. She flinched as a spear of lightning cracked overhead and sizzled into the ocean. She pulled her shawl around her shoulders and shuffled quickly along the tube.

At the end was a small glass-domed room which allowed a full view of the restless expanse of stormy ocean. In the centre of the room was a table and two chairs. Another lightning strike split the sky as the old woman slumped into a chair with a weary sigh. Her eyes flicked around the room and she saw tiny cameras fixed into the dome's walls, watching her every move.

It was then she heard the footsteps, as the guard led in the prisoner.

It was Mr Blue.

‘Grandma!'

The woman held out her arms for a hug but the guard quickly stepped between them and led Blue to the chair on the opposite side of the table. He then took up a position in the middle, watching over both of them.

‘You look thin.' The woman's voice croaked with sadness.

‘The budget for the kitchen doesn't extend to buying real food.' Blue shot the guard a sharp glare. ‘How is everyone?'

‘Fine. Looking forward to the day you come home.'

Blue's head sank forward. ‘That won't be for a long time yet.'

Another splinter of lightning broke through the blackness, followed by a rumble of thunder.

The woman sniffed into a handkerchief. ‘It's not right that you are here.'

‘We all have to face justice, Grandma.' He reached out to touch her hand but the guard took a menacing step forward so he stopped. ‘Are they keeping busy?'

The old woman sighed. ‘You know how they are, always working.'

Blue smiled.

‘Apart from you being here, everything is in its place.' Her face, concealed by the hanky, was lit up by more lightning as she gave Blue a brief, pointed look.

The guard looked at his watch. ‘Time's up.'

‘So soon?'

The woman stood up and reached into her shawl. ‘Your grandfather wants you to have this. To get you through this difficult time.'

Blue took the watch and his eyes were lit by a brief glint of excitement. He then watched as his grandmother was led down the sea-sprayed glass tube. The horizon was electrified by blue-white javelins of lightning. She would be taken through a series of exit screening rooms, before being delivered to a waiting chopper that would take her to the mainland.

After Blue had been escorted back to his cell, he listened as the reinforced double doors were locked behind him and the clack of the guards' metal-capped boots ricocheted off the stone walls as they moved away.

He sat on his grey prison blanket and held the watch before him, turning it in the dim glow of the overhead light. It looked worn from years of use,
scratched and dented by who-knows-what unforeseen event or, and here he had to smile, ‘difficult time'.

He turned the watch and read aloud the inscribed message. ‘Even at sea you will never be far from home … How right you will be,' he predicted.

Leaning forward, he reached under his bed and removed a small jeweller's screwdriver from inside the mattress. Holding it steady, he undid a tiny bolt on the back of the watch and opened the metal covering.

A small gasp escaped from Blue as he marvelled at what he was seeing. He was holding a genuine watch, but what it concealed within its mechanisms was the real gift.

Replacing the miniature screwdriver inside the mattress, he got up from his bed and held the metal device in front of him. Arms outstretched, Blue stood perfectly still, the opened inside of the watch pointed directly at his eyes. He flinched as a loud bellow of thunder rattled the glass of his window and sent a bolt of lightning so bright he had to blink the sting of it away.

He straightened up and threw his head back in a confident flick.

‘Now let's see what all our years of hard work have earned us.'

Blue's thumb rested on the winding mechanism at the top of the watch. With a deep breath and a sharp grin, he pressed down hard.

A green-tinged beam of light poured out of the watch and struck Blue with a steamrolling force. It entered his eyes and created a sizzling outline that crept around and down his body. He held his arms out before him, trying not to break the connection between his eyes and the powerful beam.

Blue held firm as the frenzy of the storm outside filled the room with jolts of lightning and unearthly, quaking thunder.

The pressure of the watch's crackling process was beginning to send spasms of pain through Blue's body, but as the light passed below his knees he clenched his teeth, refusing to give up.

When the light reached his feet, it went out, as if it was a torch that had been suddenly switched off. With a deep, stabilising breath and a smile dripping with anticipation, Blue prepared to see the results of his night's work.

A dark figure stepped out from the shadows of his cell. Blue's breath caught in his chest as he witnessed a spectacle modern science had until now only dreamt of.

‘Even after a bout in prison you still look good.'
Blue leant in close to the figure, his nose a hairbreadth away from the chiselled features of this fine, new face. He stood back, smirking beneath a raised eyebrow.

He was standing before an identical replica of himself.

‘Much quicker than cloning, don't you think? And definitely better-looking.'

Blue looked up as a pair of gloved hands suddenly appeared at the window and gripped onto the bars.

‘Ah, Sorenson, right on time.' Blue opened the window and took what looked like a leather wristwatch from the gloved fingers. He folded it around his wrist, pressed the clasp and adjusted the settings.

‘The energy from this little device should send out interference waves that will block any security system in the world,' he explained to his double. ‘I'll be as good as invisible.'

The two Blues watched as Sorenson's gloved hands suctioned thin, metal rods onto the window bars.

‘And those,' Blue continued, ‘are Particle Distortion Devices that are able to change the basic make-up of any metal.'

They watched as a red light glowed from the
end of each device. After a few seconds, a short beep was heard. Sorenson then held onto the bars and bent them as easily as sticks of liquorice.

‘It's time for me to leave. Do you mind?'

Blue's double interlaced his hands together, forming a stirrup. Blue stepped into them, lifted himself up and climbed out of the window so he stood beside Sorenson on the mossy stone wall of the prison exterior.

‘You are worth every one of the many pennies I am paying you.'

Sorenson nodded before replacing the metal bars and bending them back to their original shape. He then removed the Particle Distortion Devices, reinforcing the bars to their original strength.

Blue turned towards the face peering out of what had been his cell. ‘You be good now.'

He followed Sorenson over the scrubby grass of the prison yard to the edge of the cliff. Sweeping searchlights lit the ground in wide arcs. At times the two men were caught in the full glare of the lights. ‘Undetectable!' Blue exclaimed. ‘The fools thought they could keep me here!'

At the cliff's edge the wind erupted around them, piercing them with cold sprays of seawater churned up by the storm.

Just out of sight, beneath the overhang of the cliff edge, a mini helicopter was firmly anchored to the cliff. The two men climbed down the rocky slope with the aid of a rope and, moving carefully, scrambled inside the craft. Sorenson then released the anchors, started the engine and they were away.

‘So long, Blacksea. Sorry I can't stay longer, but I have some important business to attend to.' Blue sniggered in delight. ‘And a spy agency to bring down.'

The hovering aircraft swayed over the rising waves and within seconds had disappeared into the inky clutches of the night.

Not far away, another chopper struggled to navigate the slamming winds as one of its passengers watched Blacksea disappear into the mist. She sank into her shawl as a flash of lightning spilled onto her face. Ms Peckham let loose a quiet, victorious laugh. ‘We shall see you soon, sir.'