The Princess Trap (24 page)

A
ll morning,
messages had been passing to and fro, as far afield as North Island. Everyone who received the news immediately passed it on, and so by midday Nahira knew that there would be enough men.

“Tonight,” she said to Lorok. “Ten men will do it. They feel safe, so I don’t think we’ll need more than ten.”

“It’s been hard enough to get ten!” said Meonok. “You’ve let things slide during the last year, Nahira. You were relying on the new government to settle everything, and now you can see that you need to stay on the alert. We kept telling you, Lorok and me, but you —”

“Enough!” Nahira cut him off. “We can talk about that another time. There are more important things to be done now.” She knew very well that increasingly she was losing her authority. You couldn’t be a rebel leader if you didn’t give your people something to do — an attack, a kidnapping, or last year even a bomb. You couldn’t hope to keep them together if they didn’t understand why they had to wait. Tonight at last there would be a chance to act. “Midnight,” said Nahira. “Give them the coordinates.”

The two men keyed into their cell phones.

Nahira thought of Kalijoki. Only the old ones continued to follow her without question and with total trust. The old ones and the even older ones! They’d long since stopped fighting, but they were still of vital importance to her.

“And tell them the signals,” said Nahira.

Lorok and Meonok nodded as their fingers flew over the buttons.

At that moment, Nahira’s own phone rang.
The first protester
, she thought.
Wants to tell me what’s wrong with the plan. Wouldn’t have happened in the old days. Back then, my word was law.

For a second she thought of cutting off the call, but then she pressed the receiver button. She didn’t want it to come to protests, or a possible move against her. As long as they were still talking to her, she could keep hold of the reins.

“Yes?” she said.

The voice at the other end was trembling.

Outside the grimy window, the sky had turned gray. There would still be some time before nightfall, but already Jenna felt more desperate. Again and again they had tried to convince the guards that Perry had told his father, but the only response had been laughter, a kick at the door, and the order to shut up.

Bolström had not come back.

“But he’ll come tomorrow,” said Perry. “With the morning paper.” He looked down vaguely at the torn fishing nets on the floor.

“What if he doesn’t?” said Jenna. “What if he never comes back? He might just get one of the guards to take our photo tomorrow. So who can we talk to then? Perry, are you listening to me?”

Perry didn’t respond. For some time he’d been drawing in the dust with his index finger, without looking up. Even now he didn’t seem to hear her. He was drawing circles and wavy lines, then angrily rubbing them out with the flat of his hand before beginning again. Jenna gave him a nudge. “Perry, what is it?” she asked.

He raised his head and looked at her, but to her horror she realized that he didn’t see her. His lips moved silently, as if he were speaking to himself.

“Perry!” she cried, and felt goose bumps spreading over her arms.

He stared into space.

“Perry, what is it?”

When at last he managed to speak, his voice was flat and expressionless, and his eyes were fixed on some point in the distance that didn’t exist for Jenna.

“What did the phone call mean?” he asked. “The phone call in the car. It was only after that call that they changed their tactics and started to treat us as prisoners.”

He turned to Jenna, and she could see such despair in his eyes that she wanted to put her arms around him.

“But we talked about that yesterday, Perry,” she said. “I think it’s all clear now. We know that Bolström …”

Once more he seemed not to be listening.

“It was the
caller
who told them we’d seen the depot,” whispered Perry. “They didn’t find it out from your phone, Jenna. They didn’t take the phones away from us till later! After the call. It was the
caller
who told them!”

Jenna looked at him. She still couldn’t comprehend why he was in such a state.

“Then maybe it was someone from the depot who called them,” she said. “That’s logical, isn’t it? After all, they saw us!” She tugged at his sleeve. “But that doesn’t change anything, Perry! Once we tell Bolström that your father knows …”

Again his gaze wandered off into the distance. Then he turned to her almost in slow motion. From outside, Jenna recognized the high trill of a blackbird’s song. “So why haven’t the police stormed the place? Twenty-four hours have gone by, Jenna. It’s almost twenty-four hours since I told my father.”

She couldn’t bear the pain in his eyes. “What do you mean?” she asked. She still didn’t get it. “Maybe your father didn’t tell the police right away. Or maybe the police haven’t done anything right away, haven’t found the place … Or maybe …” But even she could see how unlikely all that was.

No.

No, not that, too.

Horrified, she finally understood.

“Jenna,” he said, “I think … I think …” Then his voice broke. He lay down on a coil of rope and began to cry.

All afternoon Bea had been unable to concentrate on her homework. She’d left the radio on in the kitchen, and whenever the music stopped and someone spoke, she rushed in. But the short news bulletins made no mention of Jenna. She would have to wait till the full evening news on TV.

“Bea!” her mother called from the living room. Bea looked at her grammar book. Tomorrow was the French final exam, and she still didn’t understand where these wretched pronouns were supposed to go. Which one came before which? Why couldn’t the French stick their pronouns in normal places, like everyone else?

“Y!”
she moaned. “So stupid! What are you supposed to do with
y
?”

“Bea!” called her mother. “You wanted me to tell you — the special feature’s on in a moment!”

Bea took her French book with her into the living room. A dumb thing to do. Like she’d be able to learn anything while she was watching the news.

Her mother was sitting at the end of the sofa watching a fat little man in an ill-fitting suit pointing to the weather map.

“Special programs two days in a row,” she said. “Things must be heating up in Scandia.”

“You don’t remember the rules about French pronouns, do you?” Bea asked without too much hope. “
Y
and
en
, and all that stuff?”

“Sorry, honey,” said her mother. “I only took French for three years.”

Bea sighed. Cell phone stolen, best friend kidnapped, and now French final exam. “It’s just not my week,” she muttered, and let the book slide to the floor.

The screen showed the host in the studio, repeating what he’d already reported the previous evening, with the same familiar pictures in the background.

“Will you say something about Jenna,
s’il-vous plaît
!” cried Bea, leaning forward.

She heard the front door open. “Any news?” her father called. He looked at the TV, and sat down in his muddy shoes. “Anything about —”

“You could have wiped your feet,” complained Bea’s mother. “Just look —”

“Silence, je vous en prie!”
cried Bea, not even realizing she’d just used one of the weird pronouns. “I want to see this!”

“… since yesterday morning, the streets of Scandia have been filled with soldiers,” a reporter was saying into his microphone. Bea recognized the foreign correspondent from last night. “Forty-eight hours ago, King Magnus declared a national state of emergency and brought in the military to keep the peace in Scandia. Discussion continues to rage as to whether this is the right move to pacify a country in which unrest is escalating by the day. On the streets of the capital city of Holmburg we asked …”

There were now armed soldiers in the background. People with frightened faces spoke into microphones.

“What about Jenna?” said Bea. “Do they think a princess is so unimportant that —”

Her father motioned her to keep quiet. “Shh, Bea, for heaven’s sake. This is important, too!”

“… evidently the first successes,” said the correspondent. He didn’t look too happy about what he had to say. “Today, soldiers searched a number of factories after receiving reports from the locals that North Scandian rebels were hiding there. A few arrests were made, but the most important discovery, allegedly, was of large stores of weapons. Unfortunately, reporters have not been allowed access to view the weapons for themselves.”

“Make sense of that if you can!” said Bea’s father, taking off his right shoe. “That’s completely illogical! Just now, when the country’s bringing in a whole raft of reforms—”

“Dad, shut up!” cried Bea.

“… most extraordinary,” said the correspondent. In the background was a cemetery. Soldiers armed with shovels were digging up graves. “In the cemetery of the little town of Ylarook, on North Island, further caches of weapons were found in a number of coffins. The police and army would certainly never have found them had they not been tipped off by local citizenry.”

“They can say what they like!” growled Bea’s father. He looked as if he wanted to crawl into the set to take them all on. “But there’s no way they can —”

“… latest news on Princess Jenna,” said the host in the studio.

“Shh, Dad!” yelled Bea.

“… perhaps the biggest surprise of all,” said the correspondent. The scenes behind him began to repeat themselves. “Last night it was still not certain whether the princess had run away or had been abducted, but over the course of this afternoon the situation was made clear. The press, Princess Jenna’s mother, and her frequent companion in recent times, Peter Petterson, who is the father of the other missing child, have all received the same demands from the kidnappers.” A photo appeared on the screen showing a tearstained and exhausted Jenna together with a boy that Bea didn’t know. They were both holding a newspaper.

“Oh God, Jenna!” exclaimed Bea.

“They have provided photos showing the two young people with today’s newspaper as evidence that they are still alive, and they are demanding in exchange the release of Minister of the Interior Liron, who was arrested for high treason yesterday. The North Scandian Rebel Movement has claimed responsibility for the abduction. However, a far more serious threat to the country is the fact that rebels have been working in league with at least some members of the present government. Yesterday’s arrest was seen by many as proof that the Minister of the Interior has been planning a coup with the rebels …”

“That’s incredible!” said Bea’s father.

“Incroyable,”
Bea echoed.

“And now back to the studio,” said the correspondent.

“Will they do it?” asked Bea. “Dad? Will they make the exchange? What will the rebels do to Jenna if they won’t cooperate?”

Her father shrugged his shoulders. “If you ask me,” he said, “there’s something very peculiar going on. We can only hope for the best.”

Bea stood up. “I’m going to my room,” she said.

Her mother bent down. “What about your French book?” she said. “You left it behind!”

“Oh, forget French!” said Bea. There would be no more pronouns this evening.