Grk Undercover (23 page)

Ah! The smell! And, even better, the taste!

Grk gulped down a mouthful, and was just about to gulp down another, when his attention was distracted by another even more delicious scent wafting toward him from the other side of the van.

He turned round, sprang and sampled a tray of cheese, then grabbed several slices of salami and swallowed them down, freeing his mouth for more treats.

He had never been so happy.

Surrounded by such a feast, he hardly knew which way to turn, so he simply tried to stuff his mouth as full as possible with as many different snacks as he could fit between his jaws. He gulped and chomped and chewed and grabbed and gulped and—

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing? Get out of there!”

A furious red-faced waiter shook his fist at Grk. Then he hauled himself into the van and lurched forward with his arms raised.

Grk was a polite and sociable dog. He liked meeting new people. But sometimes he preferred his own company. He took a final sausage roll, sprang out of the van, dodged past the waiter and sprinted across the parking lot.

The waiter jumped out of the van and shouted at the top of his voice, summoning reinforcements.

People came from all directions.

Grk ran round the Opera House, pursued by shouts and footsteps. He charged up some stairs and across a plaza and down some more stairs.

Ahead, he could see a large crowd of people. Women in long dresses. Men in dinner jackets and bow ties. They saw him too. Some shouted. Others screamed. One held out his arms and yelled, “Here, doggie! Come here, doggie! Nice doggie!”

Grk wasn’t that stupid. He took no notice of the yelling man or anyone else. He just ran through the crowd at full speed, leaving a trail of smashed glasses and angry waiters and confused security guards and a tourist with a camera who recorded the whole thing and later sold the film for enough money to extend his holiday for an entire week.

Grk was quicker than any of them. He dodged out of their way, avoiding their hands and their legs, ran down a flight of stairs, sprang through an open doorway and disappeared into the depths of the Opera House. People pounded after him. Grk could
hear their footsteps. He sped along corridor after corridor till he came to a storage room stacked with forty or fifty large wooden crates used for carrying scenery from one theater to another, and that was where he decided to stop. Grk darted behind the nearest crate, threw himself to the floor and waited to see if he was being followed.

A minute passed. Then another. He couldn’t hear any footsteps. His pursuers must have lost him. They had given up or gone the wrong way.

He was safe.

He picked himself up and explored his new home. He soon found a moldy old blanket that stank of socks.

He licked the last crumbs of cheese from his lips, then lay down and rolled over, wrapping the blanket around himself.

Grk had a short memory.

A couple of minutes ago, he had been running up stairs and through corridors, terrified by the mad horde of angry people just an arm’s length behind him.

But now, a couple of minutes later, he had forgotten all about them. In fact, he couldn’t have been happier.

His stomach was full. The blanket was warm and cozy. The smell reminded him of the laundry basket at home, which was one of his favorite places for a midafternoon nap.

He soon drifted into a deep, comfortable sleep.

That day, Tim felt like a prisoner. The classroom was his cell and the teachers were his wardens. Even when he went to the bathroom, one of them stood outside the door, waiting for him to emerge.

They weren’t taking any chances.

He wished he could tell them that they were making a big mistake.

Don’t worry, he wanted to say. You don’t have to watch me all the time. I’m not going to run away. Grk’s a clever little dog and he can look after himself. Wherever he is and whatever he might be doing, he’s going to be fine. He doesn’t need my help—and I wouldn’t want to help him even if I could.

But if he
had
said all that to his teachers, he would have been lying. In actual fact, he was desperate to escape from his stupid school and join the search for Grk. It was all he wanted to do.

If his teachers hadn’t been watching him, he would have slipped out of the door, sprinted across the yard, dodged through the gates and found his own way back to Cuddles Kennel.

Trevor Cuddle and his family had promised to devote all their spare time to the search, but Tim didn’t trust them. Much more likely, he thought, they would be looking after the other dogs in their kennel and forgetting all about Grk. To them, Grk was just one more dog, no more or less interesting than any of the others in their care.

Tim felt very differently. To him, there was nothing in the world more important than Grk. That was why he wanted to be there himself, hunting through the countryside, shouting, “Grk! Grk! Where are you, Grk?”

Mrs. Malt had confiscated his posters, but she’d probably just put them in her desk. If not, he could print a hundred more.

As soon as he got home, he decided, he would assemble whatever he needed. He would take some tape and pins for the posters. Then he would select a few warm clothes, an anorak, a
torch, a penknife and his pocket money. He’d hide everything under his bed. That night, he’d act perfectly normally. He’d do his homework and eat his supper and go to bed, pretending to his mum and dad that he’d forgotten all about Grk. He would wait till midnight. When his parents were asleep, he would sneak out of the house and head for Cuddles Kennel.

Once he got there, he would spend the rest of the night pinning posters to trees and wrapping them around lampposts.

With any luck, he’d be home again before dawn and no one would even suspect that he’d left the house.

Grk was woken by a voice.

He sat up, immediately alert, his ears upright, and listened.

A second voice joined the first.

They were nearby.

Grk trotted down to the end of the crate, poked his nose round the corner and had a look at the men who were talking.

He had never smelled them before. They weren’t the men and women who had been chasing him earlier. No, these were entirely new strangers.

They were talking in low voices as if they didn’t want to be overheard.

They were dressed identically in black jeans and black shirts. They had heavy steel-tipped boots on their feet, black leather gloves covering their hands and black woollen caps perched on the back of their heads.

One of the men took a phone from his pocket and made a call.

A minute later, he was joined by two more men. Then three others. And yet more, until there were about twenty men standing around in a huddle, talking in low voices. All of them were dressed identically in black shirts, black jeans, black gloves, black caps and heavy steel-tipped boots.

Grk stayed behind the crate and watched them.

His nostrils twitched.

He could smell something good. He wasn’t sure what it might be, but he knew he wanted to eat it.

He turned his head from side to side, searching for the source of the smell.

Sniff, sniff.

Sniff, sniff.

Ah! Yes! There it was!

On the other side of the crate, Grk could see an enormously fat man with a bright red face. In one of his huge hands, the fat man was holding a packet of chocolate-coated hazelnuts. Every
few moments, he dipped the chubby fingers of his other hand into the packet, pulled out a nut and popped it into his mouth.

Have you ever tasted a chocolate-coated hazelnut?

If you have, then I’m sure you’ll agree that there are few things in the world more delicious.

Grk stared longingly at the packet, wondering how he was going to get the nuts out of the red-faced man’s hands and into his own mouth.

The men worked in silence. No one asked any questions. They knew exactly what they were doing. Two of them opened a crate and reached inside. They passed guns, ammunition and explosives into the waiting hands of their companions. When the crate was empty, they opened another and emptied that too.

They looked like a well-trained band of soldiers, preparing for a fierce mission.

They took their orders from the red-faced man.

Actually, he didn’t just have a red face. He had red hands too, and a red neck. If he had removed all his clothes, you would have seen that his enormously fat body was bright red from the very top of his round bald head to the very tip of his tiniest toe.

His name was Red Jelly, and he was one of the most famous criminals in Australia. He had spent half his life in prison and the other half on the run from the police, stealing and spending and stealing some more. And now he was going to commit the biggest crime of his life.

Let me tell you how Red Jelly got his name.

It’s very simple. And very horrible.

He was stung by a box jellyfish.

Have you heard of the box jellyfish?

No?

You’ve heard of jellyfish, haven’t you? Those funny, wobbly creatures that shimmer through the sea, letting their
tendrils drift in the water. If you bump into one of them while you’re swimming, it might sting you, and you’ll get a red rash.

If you bump into a box jellyfish, it will sting you so badly that you’ll almost certainly be dead within four minutes.

Box jellyfish are among the most deadly creatures in existence. Very few people have ever survived an encounter with one of them. Which is why many Australian beaches are protected by safety nets, providing a jellyfish-free area where people can swim.

A box jellyfish has twenty-four eyes. It also has sixty long tentacles that trail through the water. Each one of the tentacles is filled with thousands of tiny poisonous darts.

If you are swimming in the sea and you suddenly realize that you are unlucky enough to be sharing a patch of water with a box jellyfish, get out!

Otherwise its tentacles will envelop your body. Hundreds of tiny darts will puncture your skin. Each one will deliver a
brutal dose of poison. And, three or four minutes later, you will probably be dead.

Red Jelly was very lucky.

He went swimming in the ocean and was stung all over by a box jellyfish. His limbs swelled up. His skin turned bright red. He suffered appalling agony in every part of his body. He stayed in the hospital for several months, recovering from his wounds.

But he didn’t die.

When he came out of the hospital, he looked like an enormous red blob of jelly. Someone said so, anyway. And the name stuck.

When the crates had been emptied and everything had been prepared, Red Jelly looked at his gang and spoke in a low voice: “This is the big one, boys. This is the day we’ve been waiting for. Are you ready?”

“Yes, boss.” His men nodded. There were no jokes, no smiles. In the next few minutes, they would be risking their
lives. A few hours from now, they might be dead. They might be in prison. Or they might be rich.

“Then let’s go and make some money,” said Red Jelly.

He grabbed a handful of chocolate-coated hazelnuts and tossed them into his mouth. One of the hazelnuts fell to the floor, but he didn’t bother picking it up. He just gulped down the others, turned himself round and headed toward a flight of stairs that led up toward the main stage of the Opera House. His men hurried after him, carrying guns and grenades and boxes of explosives.

None of them even glanced behind them. Which was why none of them noticed that they were being followed.

Grk sprang forward, planted his paws on the floor, grabbed the hazelnut and gulped it down.

It was delicious.

But tiny.

Having eaten it, he seemed to feel even hungrier. The chicken pie was long forgotten. Now, his stomach felt as empty as a desert. He wanted more hazelnuts. He
needed
more hazelnuts. Delicious crunchy hazelnuts smothered in sweet milk chocolate. He could taste them in his mouth. He could feel them crackling between his teeth. If he didn’t get another one soon, he would probably go completely crazy.

Grk’s tummy gurgled. Saliva dribbled from his jaws. He wanted a hundred more chocolate-coated hazelnuts, and he would be prepared to do just about anything to get them.

He stayed in the shadows, hiding behind crates and big slabs of scenery, never allowing himself to be seen, but never letting Red Jelly or his gang out of his sight.

The applause seemed to go on forever. Cheers and whistles echoed around the auditorium. Shouts came from every corner:

“Bravo! Bravo!”

“Encore! Encore!”

The singers were standing in a line at the front of the stage, clutching bouquets and waving to their admirers. They stepped forward and gave a final bow. Then the conductor nodded to the stage manager and the curtain was lowered for the last time.

The singers hurried to their dressing rooms, the orchestra filed out and the lights came on. It had been a triumphant performance of
Fidelio
, witnessed by an exclusive audience of the smartest folk in Sydney, paying premium prices for their tickets. Now a hubbub of happy chatter filled the Opera House as people rose to their feet and headed for the exits.

A loud BANG stopped them in their tracks.

No one knew what had happened. They looked around, wondering whether the scenery had exploded or a member of the orchestra had stumbled and smacked his foot into a kettledrum.

As they looked around the auditorium, their eyes were drawn irresistibly to a huge figure who had stepped through the heavy curtains and was now standing at the front of the stage. Opera singers are often enormous, and many of tonight’s performers had been vast, but this man was bigger than any of them. He was wearing a black shirt that bulged around his vast belly, and his red skin glowed in the lights. From a distance, you might have mistaken him for the biggest tomato on the planet. His right hand was raised and he was pointing a pistol at the ceiling. He pulled the trigger. Another BANG filled the theater.