The Castle (16 page)

THIRTY-FIVE

N
o. No. NO. This couldn't be happening to me.

The man stared down at me, and his sunken eyes were sad but smiling.

I stared back. I had to be hallucinating.

The wild man reached out his hand again.

‘Peta. My love.'

Just
no
.

‘Come on. I have to get you out of here,' he insisted.

I couldn't have made such a mistake about him. My dad wouldn't
let
me.

The voice was Dad's, but rougher. The broad forehead could be his, and maybe the eyebrows. The nose was broken
and it was hard to see the rest of the face through the bushy beard, but now that he was standing upright, he was the right kind of height. He was several stones lighter than I'd ever seen Dad before, and I felt sick imagining that this bag of bones could be the person who used to carry me on his shoulders.

But this bag of bones had just killed an attack dog. It had bashed the guard to spare Karim and make it look like an outside job, not a drugging – I realised that now. It had folded its large frame into an impossibly small space and kept us moving. It was highly trained, and supremely tough, and it called me ‘my love'. Also, I noticed, it had a scar on its right cheek, from a training accident long ago.

Damn.

It was Dad.

‘We have to move,' he said. ‘Come on.'

Amina and I just sat there, exhausted from our flight. My brain was still struggling to un-know what it had finally accepted, and to believe that the pale figure in front of me wasn't a ghost, or a mirage, or a dream. I'd got so much wrong up to now; my heart couldn't afford to get this wrong again.

First my head got there, then, sluggishly, my heart followed.
Allud, Alard.
The knight in the church. The voice. Dad. My dad.

I rose to my feet and lunged for him, pounding my fists into his chest, howling. ‘Why didn't you tell me it was you? Why didn't you
tell
me?'

He held me against him, pressing his face against my hair.

‘Oh, love. My lovely girl.'

Oh, Dad.
And me howling with grief and my heart still aching. This was how they'd wanted me to feel in front of the urn of ashes, and now I did, and he was standing right in
front of me.

‘We have to go.'

I clung to him. He spoke gently, but there was an edge to his voice that translated as
move now or those men will find us and we die
. I wanted to run, but I couldn't bear to let go of him.

In the end he leant down and put an arm under each of our shoulders. He was surprisingly strong for someone who'd been locked up in a dark room for the last few months. Of course, my hero dad would have kept himself fit when they weren't looking. He'd have done secret exercises. He'd have never given up, keeping ready for this moment, just in case it ever came.

He half dragged, half carried us round the bay, through the shallow water, out of sight of the castle. Out to sea, the bright lights of the
Princess Nazia
danced on the water. Behind us, beams of torchlight criss-crossed over the hillside, moving fast.

The cold water shocked my body to life again. We took shelter among the puddles and rock pools, using a couple of big boulders for cover and listening to the sound of shouting as guards moved steadily down towards the shore.

Amina was moaning, ‘Karim! Karim!'

‘It'll be all right,' I whispered through chattering teeth. ‘He'll be OK.'

She shook uncontrollably. The horror in her eyes was scary.

‘Your brother is clever and strong,' the wild man said to her, gently, echoing my thoughts.
Dad's voice. Dad.
I still had to remind myself.

He turned to me. ‘We must keep moving.'

The torch beams were getting closer, and now there was
the sound of a second dog barking. He was right, and he wasn't the wild man any more: he was a trained soldier, trying to stay ahead of the enemy. However, he was a mess. His left arm was bleeding heavily where he'd cut himself on a stone or been bitten by the dog in the tunnel. His feet were grazed from the rocks. And bare. He'd done the whole thing without shoes. Two of his toes were in weird positions and looked broken. My stomach lurched.

‘Help me?' he said.

Together we put our arms round Amina and moved her quickly past the rocks and closer to the jetty. Beside the water there was a shelter for the vehicles and a low wooden boathouse with a slipway. People clustered near them, shouting instructions. Men ran. Engines started. Several people seemed to be heading up the hill.

‘Good,' Dad whispered. ‘I need to find us a way out of here. Stay nearby. Keep talking to Amina, love. Try and keep her warm. Don't let her shut down. I'll be back soon.'

He left us, wading towards the jetty, a dark figure moving through the shadows. I crouched behind the nearest boulder, holding Amina up as much as I could. We were knee-deep in cold water by now, and though I was alert again, she was shivering like she'd been electrocuted.

‘Don't worry,' I murmured to her. ‘You're safe now.'

‘He did not come,' she muttered through chattering teeth, staring dully ahead. Her mind was still trapped at the top of the tunnel, watching her brother fade into the distance.

‘He'll find a way out,' I said unconvincingly. ‘You heard . . . the man: Karim's clever and strong.'

He wouldn't be able to use the tunnel now it had been discovered. Amina's frightened eyes told me she was worried about this too. I had to think of something else to tell her.

‘He'll be so glad to know you're getting away.' This was true. ‘He only cares about you. You've got to get free, Amina, for him.'

For the first time she looked at me properly. The horror turned to something else: the need to please her brother, however she could.

‘Let me help you,' I said. ‘He wanted me to.'

The jetty was empty. Dad had disappeared, and all the men and vehicles had gone up to the castle. Up the hill, the distant shouting was interrupted by the sudden rapid sound of gunfire. It made us both jump. They obviously thought they'd found something, but it wasn't us. Was it Karim? I couldn't bear to think about that now.

To our left, the water just beyond the bay was criss-crossed with torchlight as the searching guards made their way through the dense bushes to the shore. The second dog barked loudly.

By now, Amina was so cold she'd stopped shaking. This couldn't be a good thing. Dad had told us to stay where we were, but he'd also told me to keep her warm. I could only do one of those things. ‘Come with me,' I said.

I helped her wade the short distance to the sloping slipway that led up to the boathouse. We hauled ourselves up the slippery concrete and I shifted the door open with my shoulder and felt around the walls for something, anything, to wrap Amina in. A folded sail seemed like the best thing I was going to find, but as I leant against the wall, my body fell into something smooth and padded. A miracle: four thick, warm sailing jackets, hanging near the door.

I grabbed the nearest one, which was enormous. Amina was too cold and weak to get her arms through the sleeves, so
I wrapped it round her like a cloak.

‘Better?' I asked.

Even in the jacket, her teeth were chattering. She was swaying with cold and fear. Before she could answer, a new sound pierced the night air: the roar of a motor boat. I peered through the window and saw the large white speedboat belonging to the
Princess Nazia
powering through the water towards us. Great. So now the waters were patrolled too. It wasn't the only boat out there, in fact. Another, smaller motor boat was rumbling around the jetty, taking it more slowly, checking out the rocks for signs of life.

The smaller boat drove out to near where Amina and I had been hiding behind the boulder, almost as if it knew exactly where to go. My heart pounded. Had they caught Dad? How else could they know where to look for us? I peered closer. It was hard to tell in the darkness, but the figure in the boat was about Dad's height. And then a gust of wind from the water caught his hair. Wild and unkempt, it blew around his face. He was scanning the shoreline for us.

I grabbed another jacket from the wall.

‘He's back,' I told Amina. ‘Come on. Let's go.'

She didn't move. ‘Come
on
!' I whispered urgently, forcing my face into a smile. ‘For Karim. You can do this, Amina.'

She'd reached her limit. It wasn't that she was weak or fainthearted, but she'd had to face the terror of the dark, and now the horror of leaving Karim behind. The thing was, though, we
had
to get off this island. Now.

I'm not sure how we got to the motor boat. Dad said later that I carried Amina through the water, but I couldn't have done because it was impossible. She must have found the strength from somewhere to wade back through the shallows with me. All I really remember is the sound of the barking
dog, and a jeep racing down the hill, and the loud, whiny engine of the superyacht tender getting closer and closer, and Dad yelling, ‘
Now
, Peta! Yes!'

THIRTY-SIX

D
ad hauled me aboard after Amina and set off in a slow, lazy circle away from the shore. My chest ached from the pounding of my heart. A muscle pumped in Dad's cheek too, as the speedboat changed its course and came charging towards us. Dad held his own course, keeping a tight grip on the steering wheel.

Why weren't we racing away? Of course, we couldn't escape the faster boat, but at least we could try . . .

Chess. This must be like chess. Karim always had a plan, and I was sure Dad did too. Maybe we looked less suspicious if we didn't speed off. But as I looked at Dad in his ragged, bloodstained shirt, he stood out a mile.

‘Here. Take this.' I shrugged off my jacket and handed it to him. In the past, if I'd offered him something I needed too, he'd refuse it without even thinking, but this time he simply grabbed the jacket and put it on. His brief nod of thanks, like from one team-member to another, made me feel warmer than the jacket had.

The speedboat drew nearer.

‘Hide,' Dad shouted over the noise of the engine. ‘Her too.'

OK – so hide. In an open boat. Sure. Now is not the time to panic, Peta Jones.

I did the only thing I could think of, which was to curl myself over Amina and huddle in the bottom of the boat with her jacket draped over both of us. I had no idea if it was good enough, or if any bits of us or my satchel were showing. I could feel Amina's pulse beating rapidly, almost in time with mine.

On the water, the engine's note changed down as the bigger boat slowed beside us.

‘Salve
,' the driver shouted down to Dad. Then some sort of question in Italian. He sounded tense, but not suspicious. Dad called something back, also in Italian. I didn't know he spoke it.

Anyway, it seemed to satisfy the other driver, who pulled slowly away. Meanwhile, Dad revved his engine slightly, gradually gathering speed until we were skimming across the water. I risked looking up, to find that we were level with the superyacht itself now, heading round the back of the island, past the cliffs and out of sight of the search party.

There was nothing ahead of us, nothing behind us. For a moment, it felt like freedom.

‘Stay down,' Dad said. ‘I told them I'd search the cliffs. Any moment now they'll realise what we're really doing.'

He headed straight for the mainland at full speed, his eyes fixed on the shore.

‘Check the box,' he ordered, without looking at me. ‘Stay low. See what's inside.'

Box? What box?
Crouching in my place, I scanned the little boat. There was a built-in store-chest behind the driver's seat. I went over and opened it up to find a couple of oars, some life jackets, some short rubber boots and various ropes. I put on one of the life jackets and did the same for Amina. Our dark, wet clothes looked somehow less unusual with a fat yellow jacket over the top. I passed the wellies to Dad, but they were much too small and he threw them aside. Two minutes later, the speedboat appeared again around the side of the island behind us, travelling fast.

‘Just a bit longer . . .' Dad muttered. He seemed to will the little boat to speed faster over the waves.

With every minute that passed, the mainland grew more distinct ahead of us, and the boat behind us grew closer. I tried to calculate the distances in my head. It was a classic maths problem:
Peta, her not-so-dead father and an ex-slave girl called Amina are heading towards safety at
x
knots, being chased by a much faster boat travelling at
y
knots, which is
z
distance away. How long will it take before they are overrun? And will they have reached the shore by then?

I looked, and the answer was
no. No, they won't. Not even close.
It didn't take a maths genius to see we had too far to go.

There was a dull popping sound from behind us. Looking round, like Dad, I saw a flash and a puff of smoke from the speedboat. Then another.

‘They're not
shooting
at us?' I asked.

Dad's lips set in a grim line. ‘They're idiots. And desperate. But don't worry – you can't hit a moving target at this range,
with this wind.'

They were. They were shooting at us. Out at sea. Dad seemed remarkably calm about this. I, however, was not. True, the bullets weren't reaching us yet, but the speedboat was getting closer all the time

‘Stay down. Don't look at them,' Dad said.

I couldn't help it. But a few seconds later, the popping stopped and Dad started slowing down.

‘What's happening?' I asked.

Dad nodded ahead of us. ‘Company,' he said.

A large fast boat was heading straight for us, with a bright searchlight that suddenly caught us in its beam.

‘Polizia!'
a voice boomed through the night air.

Rescue, finally!

Dad put a hand on my shoulder.

‘Get ready to lie.'