Grk Undercover (20 page)

Tim and Mrs. Malt checked the edge of the field and walked through the trees, calling Grk’s name, listening for an answering bark.

Meanwhile, Mr. Malt walked along the road, checking the verges, searching for any evidence of an accident and hoping he wouldn’t find it.

On the other side of the road, Mr. Malt could see the tall fence that marked the boundary of the airport, but he didn’t bother searching there. Grk might be mischievous and energetic, but he wasn’t a superdog. He couldn’t possibly climb over such a tall fence.

It was possible, however, that Grk had turned round and sneaked back into the kennel, so the Cuddles checked the entire premises once again, turfing animals out of cages, peering under
beds, peeling back carpets, hunting through cupboards, opening fridges, emptying bins and looking anywhere that could possibly conceal a small dog.

By dusk, no one had located any trace of Grk. He seemed to have completely disappeared. Tim wanted to stay the night in Cuddles Kennel so he could start searching again at dawn, but Mr. and Mrs. Malt insisted on taking him home.

“We’ve been traveling all day,” said Mr. Malt. “I’m shattered. I’m sure you must be too.”

“I feel fine,” said Tim.

“I’ve got a good idea,” said Mrs. Malt. “When we get home, we could have a takeaway for supper. That would be a nice treat, wouldn’t it? What would you like? Pizza, Chinese or Indian?”

Tim shrugged. “I don’t care.”

“How about a nice chicken korma from the Taj Mahal?”

“Fine,” said Tim. “Whatever.”

They drove home.

When they got back to the house, Mr. Malt carried their suitcases upstairs. Mrs. Malt rang the Taj Mahal and ordered a delivery. Tim waited till she’d finished, then called Max and Natascha.

Had he ever made a more difficult phone call?

If he had, he couldn’t remember it.

He dialed the number of their cousins in Vilnetto. A voice answered in a language that he couldn’t understand.

“Hello,” said Tim. “Do you speak English?”

“Only when I have to.”

Tim laughed. “Hi, Max. How are you?”

“Not too bad. We’re just having supper. You should be here, Tim. You could try some good Stanislavian cooking. None of that tasteless British rubbish.”

“I like British food,” said Tim.

“That’s because your taste buds have been ruined by years of eating it. Hey, let’s talk about something else. I don’t want to
make you feel bad about your national cuisine. How’s life? How’s Grk?”

Tim paused for a moment, searching for the right words. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Something’s happened.”

“What do you mean? Something serious? Is he OK?”

“I hope so,” said Tim. He described how Grk had escaped from Cuddles Kennel and explained the efforts that he, his parents and the Cuddles had been making to find him. “Will you tell Natascha?”

“Of course I will,” said Max. “But I’m sure she’ll want to talk to you herself. Can you wait a second? She’s in the next room. I’ll go and get her.”

Tim waited for a minute or two. Down the phone line, he could hear the distant sound of two people talking in Stanislavian. He recognized their voices: Max was speaking slowly and calmly, relaying the news about Grk, and Natascha was interrupting him with lots of questions, her voice high-pitched
and anxious. The voices stopped. Tim heard footsteps and then Natascha picked up the phone.

“Is it true?” she said. “Has he really disappeared?”

“I’m afraid he has,” said Tim. For the second time, he explained exactly what had happened. To his surprise, Natascha didn’t interrupt him once, but simply listened in silence, absorbing every scrap of information about her beloved dog.

“G’day, and welcome to Australia! As you can probably see through the windows, the sun is shining and it’s a beautiful afternoon here in Sydney. The temperature outside is a very pleasant 28 degrees Celsius. That’s 82 degrees Fahrenheit. If you want to adjust your watches, it’s currently 17.10 here in Sydney. For those of you who prefer old-fashioned ways of telling the time, it’s ten past four in the afternoon. You can switch on your phones, but please don’t call your friends and family back in London. Back there, it’s very early in the morning and they’ll probably be fast asleep. We will be disembarking very soon, but the captain has requested that you remain in your seats until the seat belt signs are switched off. We’d like to remind you that smoking is not permitted on the aircraft or in the airport. Thank you for your cooperation. We hope you’ve enjoyed your flight and we look forward to seeing you again very soon.”

The 747 taxied along the runway and rolled to a stop alongside the terminal.

Inside the plane, the seat belt sign was switched off and passengers stood up to retrieve their hand baggage.

Outside the plane, a long flat-bedded truck parked beside the luggage compartment. A man in fluorescent overalls muttered into a walkie-talkie. His colleague pressed a button and turned a lever, opening the door in the side of the plane. The two men moved quickly and efficiently, pulling bags and suitcases out of the luggage compartment and onto the truck. They had been working for three minutes when one of the men muttered, “I don’t believe it.”

“What’s happened?” asked the other.”

“Some idiot didn’t close his bag properly.”

A pair of socks, a shirt, a book and a few other items had come loose and rolled across the luggage compartment. The baggage handler grabbed them, stuffed them into the suitcase and slammed the lid. He tried to close the catches, but the zipper
seemed to have snapped. When that happens, there’s only one thing to do. The baggage handler reached into his pocket, pulled out an orange strap, looped it around the suitcase and tied it with a knot. He passed the suitcase to his colleague, who added it to the pile on the truck.

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The sun beat down on Kingsford Smith Airport, coating the plane, the passengers and their luggage with a blistering heat.

The warmth brought Grk back to life.

He hadn’t actually been dead, of course. He’d just been so dazed by the cold that his body had shut down, conserving its energy, keeping him alive by sending him into a deep sleep. Now his eyes snapped open and his limbs wriggled and he tried to work out where he was.

Grk didn’t know that he’d traveled halfway around the world. He simply thought that he’d been locked inside a cold, dark space for a long, long time. As far as he knew, he was right
where he started, a short sprint from Cuddles Kennel. The temperature had changed. Some smells were different. But Trevor Cuddle was probably just around the corner, carrying a bucket in each hand. His family would be with him, laden with leashes and muzzles and walkie-talkies, determined to hunt down the dog who had eaten their lunch, escaped from their kennel and made them look like idiots.

Grk didn’t want to see the Cuddles ever again, but he needed to get out of this case. Determined to escape as fast as possible, he arched his back against one side of the suitcase, pressed his four paws against the other and pushed with all his strength.

When the luggage compartment was empty, the two baggage handlers boarded their truck and drove quickly to the terminal.

They were listening to the radio at full volume, nodding their heads and tapping their feet in time to a tune. Neither of them gave the bags another glance. Which was why neither of them had noticed that one of the suitcases was wobbling back and forth as though it had suddenly come alive.

They parked their truck beside the terminal and unloaded the luggage onto a revolving carousel. Piece by piece, the baggage was whisked through a curtain …

 … and into the terminal …

 … where four hundred and sixteen passengers awaited the arrival of their possessions. A few minutes from now, they would be riding buses and taxis to their homes and hotels. They just had to wait for their luggage. But where was it?

There! The first bag appeared on the carousel.

A lucky passenger darted forward, grabbed his suitcase and headed toward the exit, delighted to be the first to escape.

Other passengers pressed forward, watching the stream of suitcases on the carousel, waiting for theirs.

“Cripes,” said a short man in a blue suit. “What’s that?”

He pointed at a suitcase that was bouncing from side to side, threatening to leap off the carousel.

“It’s a bomb!” yelled his wife. “Call the cops!”

The man in the blue suit reached for his phone. But before he or anyone else could do anything, there was a loud SNAP as the orange cord broke in half. The suitcase fell open like a book, spilling shirts, skirts, socks, blouses, books and a small white dog whose half-frozen limbs stuck out at strange angles.

Some of the passengers jumped backward, trying to escape, and the others hustled forward, hoping for a better view.

“It’s alive!” shouted the man in a blue suit.

“It’s got teeth!” yelled his wife.

“That’s my bag!” shrieked a woman who had suddenly recognized not just her own suitcase, but a cotton skirt decorated with tiny pink flowers, which she had bought last week in Selfridges. She’d been looking forward to wearing it in Sydney. She hadn’t expected to see it draped around the shoulders of a small white dog. She ran forward with both arms extended and yelled, “Give back my skirt!”

Grk was dazed, confused and not entirely thawed, but he could still summon the energy to roll over, wriggle out of her grasp and hobble along the luggage belt, trailing the skirt behind him.

People screamed and yelled and reached for their cameras, wanting to snap a picture of this strange creature, a frozen monster in a flowery dress.

The luggage belt was like an assault course. Grk scrambled over suitcases, bounced over a buggy, slid down a surfboard, skidded on a backpack and slammed onto the floor.

“Stop him!” shouted the skirt’s owner. “Someone, please, stop that dog!”

Several people sprang forward.

Grk could see a forest of hands reaching for him. He could hear voices shouting at him, ordering him to SIT! or STAY!

Some dogs would have cowered in terror. Others would have squatted obediently on the floor and waited for their masters to come and fetch them.

Grk just ran.

He didn’t know where he was going. All he knew was this: a hundred crazy people were chasing him, shouting and screaming and waving their arms, and he didn’t want to be caught by any of them.

Someone lunged for the skirt and grabbed a handful of flowery cotton. For a moment, Grk froze. Then he tugged himself free. There was a loud
riiiiiiiiiiiiiiip …

 … and the skirt tore in half.

A sobbing wail echoed through the airport. “My skirt! My beautiful skirt! What have you done to it, you horrible dog?”

Even if he’d wanted to, Grk couldn’t have answered that question. And he definitely didn’t want to. He ducked under a table, scampered between a woman’s legs and sprinted down a long white corridor marked NOTHING TO DECLARE.

Airports are always prepared for emergencies. Employees know how to behave if there is a fire, a bomb, an accident—or an escaped animal.

Customs officials and passport inspectors chattered on their walkie-talkies. Shutters slid down to cover the windows of expensive boutiques. Alarms buzzed. Armed guards blocked every door of the VIP lounge. Cameras swiveled. In the control room, lights flashed and a man in a dark gray uniform spoke a stream of code words into a telephone: “Alpha, Zero, Charlie, Foxtrot, Dingo, Six. I repeat: Alpha, Zero, Charlie, Foxtrot, Dingo, Six.”

“Understood,” said a voice on the end of the line.

Alpha, Zero, Charlie, Foxtrot, Dingo, Six was a secret code devised by the security staff. Anyone who understood the code would now know that there was a dog running wild.

Three minutes later, a blue van marked with the words DOG UNIT screeched to a halt outside the airport.

The doors swung open. Four bulky men sprang out of the van, wearing white overalls and carrying rifles loaded with tranquilizer darts. They charged through the door marked ARRIVALS.

Shane glanced at his watch.

If his next client arrived on time, the flight would leave in precisely thirty minutes. Before then, he had to check the engine and prepare his route. He’d better get going. Shane quickened his pace and hurried across the tarmac, heading for his helicopter.

The helicopter wasn’t actually
his
, of course. It belonged to Botany Bay Air Taxis, the company that paid his wages.

BBAT rented helicopters to rich businesspeople who had an allergy to traffic jams. For a few hundred dollars, you could have your own helicopter for the day—and your own pilot too.

Thirty minutes from now, a wealthy businesswoman named Mrs. Patricia White would climb aboard the helicopter. Shane would fly her and her personal assistant to a helipad on the roof of a skyscraper in the business district. He would wait there until Mrs. White had finished her meeting or her dinner or her
shopping or whatever she was doing, then bring her back to the airport for her flight to Adelaide.

It was easy work, the money was good and he got to fly a nice, shiny helicopter. What could be better than that?

Some pilots stepped aboard their helicopters only a minute or two in advance of their passengers, but Shane preferred to arrive at least half an hour early, giving himself enough time to make a few final checks of the engine and the rotors. If you’re going to trust a machine with your life, you want to know that all its parts are working perfectly.

He walked briskly around the side of a long, low hangar. Several helicopters were parked in a row. All of them belonged to Botany Bay Air Taxis. At the end of the line, Shane could see his own machine, an orange Bell Jetranger with BBAT printed in large green letters on its side.

Then he saw the dog.

It was running toward him at great speed.

Shane wondered what it was doing here.

You didn’t often see dogs running round airports. A guard dog, yes. Police dogs too. And some sniffer dogs hunting for drugs or explosives. But this dog didn’t look like one of them. It looked like an ordinary pet that had lost its owner.