The Castle (3 page)

FIVE

M
y chest felt tight and my heart was pounding. I got out of bed, pulled back the curtains and put my forehead to the cool glass of the attic window. Those phone calls were so weird they hardly seemed real. Now I needed to reassure myself that the Range Rover wasn't parked outside.

The front of the inn overlooked an ancient cobbled street, where no cars were allowed, but my room overlooked the back. The road opposite my window was full of parked cars, but they were all normal, small cars. The kind of thing that the people of Rye and our friendly tourists would drive. People who don't think too much about missing fathers and
gangs of kidnappers on the loose. I watched them for a little while, taking in the ordinariness of each vehicle and telling my racing heart to slow down, and my imagination to stop over-reacting.

I turned back to the bed. Outside, the clouds shifted and a shaft of moonlight spilled across the room, illuminating the bedspread Granny made for Mum long ago, and Lacy, my cat, curled up at the end of it. The flat was quiet. My school uniform lay on the chair next to the door, with my blazer on a hanger hooked on the wardrobe, where Mum or Granny always put it for me when I left it lying around. The photos of Mum and her sister were all in their places, stuck to the sloping walls. Everything was normal and ordinary. Perhaps I
had
been dreaming.

Then Lacy gave a snort and stirred in her sleep, shifting into a new position. Her furry body took up the space where my feet should be. I stared at her in the moonlight.

Lacy had arrived on my birthday last year. After the bomb, my last birthday wasn't exactly the best. Normally, if Dad was home, he'd take me to the scariest theme park we could find, with the biggest rides, and we'd go on every one while Mum watched us through her fingers from the ground. If Dad was away, he would send me a hand-made card and a small present based on wherever he was working. He loved local research. So my shelves and drawers were full of Welsh dolls (training in the Brecon Beacons), a silver filigree prayer wheel (trekking in the Himalayas), and boxes made out of blue stone (serving in Helmand Province).

But after the ‘bomb' there was nothing. No card. No parcel with my address hurriedly written in Dad's spidery writing. Nothing at all.

Mum had decided that an extra-good way to celebrate turning fourteen would be to go to the graveyard at Winchelsea Church and spend some time with his ‘ashes'.
Way to go, Mum.
So we did, and it was horrible, but when we got back there was a cardboard box waiting for us on the steps leading up to the Smugglers' Inn. Inside it, shivering, was a tortoiseshell kitten with a luggage tag attached to her collar saying, ‘PLEASE LOOK AFTER ME'.

Somebody had sent me a kitten. A stripy, grey
tortoiseshell
kitten, and I'd always specifically wanted a tortoiseshell. On my
birthday.

Hello?

After a certain amount of arguing and crying (Mum did most of the crying) I was allowed to keep her. I called her Lacy after Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron, who invented the first computer program in 1843. Dad would approve, I thought, being a maths geek who loved computers, and Lacy was obviously a present from him. I mean, your father goes missing in suspicious circumstances and a few months later a mystery kitten shows up
on your birthday
? And it's just a coincidence? Please.

So there was Lacy. And now there was this.

Never forget, you have the power.
Those were the words Dad said to me every night he was home. Nobody else knew them, not even Mum.

Dad was away in Africa on a secret operation the day I was born. I came ten weeks early, tiny and purple. At the hospital, they said it was touch and go whether I'd make it. When Dad rang to see if we were OK, Mum asked him to choose my name.

Dad was always super-geeky about maths. It's his other
passion, apart from the army. I was born on the fifteenth of October, the tenth month of the year. He called me Peta, partly because it means ‘rock' and rocks can be tough little survivors, but mainly because it signifies ten to the power of fifteen in maths. Just like ‘kilo' means ten to the power of three – a thousand, and ‘mega' means ten to the power of six – a million.

Mum was never sure about it, because of the whole sounding-like-a-boy thing. It has its advantages, though: there are three Savannahs in my class right now, but only one Peta. She should be grateful I wasn't born nine days earlier. I like my name, but Mega Jones? Painful.

So anyway, that is my power. ‘Of fifteen.' It isn't the speed of light, or invisibility, or mind-reading: it's my name, and my birthday, and a little maths joke of my dad's.
Never forget, you have the power
was our secret code.

They were also the words Dad said to me on the phone from his last tour of Afghanistan, the two times he thought he was in real danger and might not be coming back. As well as being his goodnight, they were sort of like his goodbye.

He'd never said them from Baghdad, which was yet another reason I didn't believe the news about the bomb. However, if the boy on the phone was telling the truth just now, then somebody out there knew things that only my father knew, and was using his code for danger. Danger that didn't just affect Dad this time, but affected me too.

I went back to the window. Far below, a van drove slowly up the road, rumbling through the quiet of the night. The sound of the engine made my chest clench again, but it was a red post van, ordinary and normal. As it drove along, its headlights illuminated the parked cars ahead of it.

In one of them, a nondescript dark-coloured estate car parked right opposite the back of the hotel, a woman turned to look up at my window. I caught a glimpse of her pale oval face and her softly waving hair.

Ingrid, he'd called her. The Wicked Queen. Not so stupid a second time.

SIX

I
n the morning, Granny came to check I was ready for school. She found me sitting up in bed, clutching my knees, staring straight ahead of me. She folded her arms and pursed her lips.

‘You're going to be late, young lady.'

I swallowed. ‘Granny, can you look out of the window?' She did. ‘Is there a dark car parked opposite? With someone inside?'

‘No.'

‘I think . . . someone might be watching me.'

She came and sat next to me. Her face looked tired and wrinkled.

‘Oh, Peta.'

‘This car stopped me yesterday on the way home from school. Then someone called me . . .'

‘Really, dear. What would your mother say?'

‘I'm not paranoid, Granny. It's—'

‘Is it someone at school? Are you being bullied? Is that why you don't want to go? Or are you missing Isabelle? Let her enjoy the honeymoon. She deserves her special time, you know.'

‘No! It's not that!'

Granny closed her eyes and did her
patiently listening to rubbish
face, which Mum had inherited so exactly.

‘Tell me again.'

‘That phone call in church was a warning. I got another one last night. I think it was from Dad. I—'

‘Peta! Stop! Listen to yourself! The man is scattered in St Thomas's graveyard. I watched your mother do it and . . . I know he was a difficult man, but it broke my heart.'

Dad, difficult? But I didn't have time to argue. Someone was
trying to kidnap me.
How to convince her? I thought madly. I couldn't go outside with the Wicked Queen waiting for me.

‘I don't feel well,' I moaned, with a bit of a pathetic cough.

‘Oh, for goodness' sake! Stop play-acting and give your poor mother some peace!'

‘I mean it! I hardly slept last night.' I hardly needed to act – I felt terrible.

Granny peered at my face and her expression softened a little.

‘Well, you do look a bit . . . Those purple circles under your eyes . . . Promise me you'll stop playing those silly games till all hours.'

She meant Jelly Flop. It was the new craze at school and I was on Level 73. Yeah, I looked like this because I'd been squashing virtual jelly beans on my phone all night. Obviously.

‘I'll give you one day,' she decided. ‘One day only. No games, and lots of sleep. Promise me?'

‘I promise. Thanks, Granny.'

One day. It was a start. As soon as she left me to get on with her chores, I sneaked downstairs and found Luke alone in his room, playing on his computer. I told him everything, including Granny's reaction.

‘So? Why don't you just call that boy again?' he suggested. ‘Get him to talk to her.'

‘Because he sounded really frightened when he told me not to. I just . . . he's the only one who seems to know what's going on. I think I should do what he says.'

Plus Granny probably wouldn't believe him anyway. I mean, who would?

‘OK,' Luke agreed reluctantly. ‘And he's going to contact you later? By Interface?'

‘That's what he said.'

‘What are you going to do now?'

‘Sleep.' Granny was right that I needed some. Luke had planned to get on with homework anyway, so I left him to it.

Back in my room, I checked out of my window again. No estate car now. But that didn't mean they weren't watching me somehow.

It was strange to be ‘hiding' in one of the most famous landmarks in town. However, I felt safe enough here, with staff in all the corridors and Grandad working on admin tasks
just outside my door. He looked like a friendly old hotel manager, which is what he was now, but he'd also spent thirty years in the army before he bought the Smugglers' Inn. He could do things with his Parker pen that would make your eyes pop. Literally. And I didn't fancy anybody's chances against him if he got hold of the heavy brass model of a smugglers' lamp that he used as a paperweight on his desk.

With the normal hotel sounds going on reassuringly around me, I finally managed to doze off. At lunchtime, with Grandad busy downstairs in the restaurant, I put my laptop on the bed and waited. After half an hour, I got a new Interface friend request from a boy called Omar Wahool. I accepted, and messaged Luke to tell him to come up. Soon after, Luke arrived and ‘Omar' started a chat conversation with me.

Are you hiding?

Sort of.

Where are you?

Can't say.

There was a pause. Then:

That is good!

I could almost hear the delight in his voice again. He seemed to enjoy the game of lying low from these people, whoever they were. However, something bothered me.

Who's the other person I spoke to?
I typed.

The other person?

I called you, and someone else answered. Also named Omar? He didn't know who I was.

Did you tell him?

No.

Good. He is
–
there was a long pause –
my brother. He plays tricks. He is mean and stupid. You must not talk to him.

OK. Who told you about my power?
This was what I really needed to know.

There was a long pause.

Mr Allud. He is a prisoner
, the boy wrote.

A prisoner? What does he look like?

Very dirty. And very hairy. This place is not good

And then nothing. For a long time, Luke and I watched the screen and no further message came.

‘Oh, great,' Luke sighed. ‘Well, that was rubbish. All we know is there's a prisoner somewhere, we don't know where, called Mr Allud. Does that mean anything to you?'

‘No.'

‘Oh yeah,' Luke added snarkily, ‘and there are two boys who call themselves Omar. That's helpful.'

‘Actually, it is,' I said, thinking hard. ‘Omar Wahool. We've got his Interface profile. That should tell us something.'

‘Ah yes.' Luke's face lit up. ‘You're right.'

Luke went off to get his laptop so we could work together. Meanwhile, I rescued the canister of Toxic Waste from my bag. I took a thoughtful mouthful and started exploring Interface.

Omar hadn't used his profile for a while – two years in fact, judging from his timeline. He listed his interests as ‘Girls, parties, champagne, skiing, beach, adventure'. He went to school somewhere in Switzerland and many of his friends seemed to be princes, princesses and aristocrats from around the world. The photos were all of people making funny faces at parties, generally dressed in ball-type clothes or swimming costumes, and usually clutching champagne bottles. For his birthday, he'd been given a customised silver Ferrari.

He couldn't wait, he said, to learn to drive.

‘How're you doing?' Luke asked a few minutes later, panting slightly from the stairs and hugging his laptop tightly under his arm. I should have offered to get it for him, but I was glad I hadn't – he'd have hated that.

‘It's all a bit weird,' I said. I showed Luke the profile. ‘The dad must be a millionaire. I mean, who gives their kid a Ferrari for their birthday?'

Luke looked wistful. ‘Not mine.'

‘I got a kitten. And it gets weirder. This profile hasn't been used for ages. He's got another one now, see?'

I clicked to a new page. New Omar was nineteen, and going to college in America. He was driving a blue Lamborghini now. Presumably he'd got his licence.

‘How about you do a bit more research on Interface, and I look him up on Google?' Luke suggested.

‘Fine.'

We worked away in silence, punctuated by tapping keyboards and the happy crunching of Toxic Waste. After about fifteen minutes, I shouted ‘Aha!' and Luke stopped typing.

‘OK, come on, Miss Clever-Clogs. What have you found?'

‘You go first.'

‘Fine. So Omar's dad is Emil Wahool. He was the Minister of Finance for a country called Marvalia, but he got booted out a couple of years ago. He's not a millionaire, he's a
billionaire
.'

‘Oh, nice. Marvalia . . . Marvalia . . . It rings a bell.'

‘They had a revolution.'

‘Of
course
they did!' I said. ‘I remember now. The Orange Revolution.'

‘No.'

‘Green? Purple? It was some colour . . .'

‘Blue.'

‘Yes! Exactly!'

Dad was home on leave when it started, before his last tour in Afghanistan and I remembered him watching on TV. Marvalia was a small country, but it had dominated the news. The people demonstrated for weeks. They poured into the streets every day, waving banners, blue paint on their faces. Students and workers, young men and women, facing down policemen with riot shields and tear gas, then soldiers with tanks. They were complaining about no food, no jobs, the universities being shut down, hundreds of people being thrown in prison and disappearing.

‘You must remember it,' I said to Luke. ‘They'd had this evil dictator for, like, thirty years, and in the end they kicked him out and took over. They've got a university professor in charge now. It was amazing.'

‘Yeah, I vaguely remember,' Luke said, with the confused, lying look of someone who didn't remember at all.

How could anyone not remember the Blue Revolution? I Googled it on my laptop and brought up the famous video of a girl climbing on a tank and sitting there in a blue dress, with bright blue eyes and blue streaks in her hair, daring the soldiers to shoot her down. She was in a million photographs too. I pulled up one of them and showed Luke.

‘Oh,
her
. Yeah. She was pretty.'

Yeah. Because that was
so
the point of the Blue Revolution.

And now one of the sons of the exiled Finance Minister was talking to me on the internet. Bizarre.

‘So what about you?' Luke asked.

‘Mmm?'

‘What did you discover?'

‘Oh. Well, Omar Wahool is not Omar Wahool.'

‘Uh?' Luke's whole face was a question mark. It was very gratifying.

‘There are three Wahool children: Omar, Maxim and a girl called Yasmin. It's obvious, really. The guy I spoke to that one time
I
made the call is the real Omar, the older boy. The stuff he said to me fits him perfectly: he was all parties and girls. The one who called
me
was totally different: he was all about warning me, and helping the prisoner. He's not Omar at all – I think he's Maxim.'

‘Sorry?'

I grinned. ‘He's the younger brother, pretending to be the older one. Maxim's sixteen. He's known as Max, by the way. He's using Omar's phone and his old Interface account to talk to me, instead of his own.'

‘Why would he do that?'

‘Because he's helping me? Because he doesn't want to get caught? Because he wants to get his big brother into trouble if anything goes wrong? Because he's really clever?' I suggested.

‘Cool,' Luke said, grinning slowly. ‘Not bad detective work, Miss Jones.'

I gave him a modest smile. ‘It explains why I can't call him back.'

Luke hesitated for a moment. ‘Any connection to your dad?'

I deflated a little. ‘Can't think of one.' I'd tried to find something that connected the Wahools to Afghanistan or Baghdad, or Dad to them in some way, but there was nothing.

‘So what now?' Luke asked.

That was a good question. Max Wahool had told me to hide from the ‘bad people' and I couldn't keep doing it here:
Granny had made it clear she wouldn't let me. An idea had been forming. It seemed like the only sensible option.

‘Find out where Mr Wahool's living now,' I instructed.

‘But that could be anywhere!'

‘You're brilliant, Luke. It won't take you long.'

‘And then . . .?'

‘I'll go and find him.'

‘You'll
go and find him?
An ex-dictator?'

‘He was only a friend of the ex-dictator. I won't go and find
him
, obviously – I'll find his son. The one who's helping me.'

And where I find Max, I find Dad,
I thought to myself. But I didn't say that out loud. Even Luke's belief in me had its limits.

‘He could be in South America, Peta, or China or Russia.'

‘He could be in London. You never know.'

‘
Honestly!
What are the chances? You can be so . . .'

It took him eleven minutes. Luke was brilliant on computers. I knew he'd be quick.

‘I don't believe it!' he said, looking up from the screen. ‘Wahool
does
have a house in London.'

‘Told you so.'

‘You're weird.'

‘It's just logic. London's home to lots of dodgy rich people. It's on the news all the time.'

‘If you say so. But listen, he probably won't be there. He's bought himself a place in Miami too. And another one in the Cayman Islands, and an island off the coast of Italy.'

‘An
island
?'

‘Literally. A whole island. It's not big, but I bet it's mega.' Luke started trying to show me pictures, but I didn't care.

‘Tell me about the house in London.'

He sighed. ‘He won't be there, I promise you.'

‘Tell me.'

‘It cost fifty million pounds last year.'

‘Fifty
million?'

‘That's why it made the news.' He scrolled back through his search results as I leant over to look. ‘It's on some square. Eden, I think. Don't go there, Peta, it's pointless.'

‘I'll be back before you know it,' I said, straightening up. ‘I'll slip out from school tomorrow. You'll hardly know I've gone.'

‘Peta! No!'

‘Tell Granny I've run off to see a boy band. If the worst comes to the worst, tell her I'm staying with my Auntie Eliza. But leave it a couple of days, OK? Give me a chance to find something out first.'