Agent 21 (8 page)

‘Three.’

Calaca cocked his handgun.

‘
Señor!
’ the man squealed. ‘I am sorry! Please, I beg your forgiveness. Spare me.
Please spare me
. . .’

The one-eyed man nodded and a calm smile
appeared on his thin lips. When he spoke again, he sounded almost pleased.

‘This,’ he announced, ‘is from Cesar Martinez Toledo. It is what happens when you betray him. You can expect your family to receive the same treatment.’

And without another word, Calaca opened fire.

It was night, and Zak had awoken suddenly. For a few seconds he was confused and, not knowing where he was, started looking for the alarm clock he kept by his bed in Acacia Drive. Then he saw Raf standing in the doorway of his room, his flat-nosed, frowning face illuminated by the moon that shone through the window, and he felt a sinking feeling inside.

‘Wake up,’ Raf said.

Zak sat up in his bed. It was his first night on the island and it felt like he’d only fallen asleep two minutes ago.

‘What time is it?’ he asked. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Midnight. Get dressed. We’re going out.’

‘Am I leaving?’ Zak felt suddenly hopeful.

‘Of course not.’

Gabs was waiting for them in the main hallway to the house. She smiled at him as he walked in behind Raf. ‘You look tired, sweetie,’ she said, running one
hand unconsciously through her white-blonde hair.

‘Funny that,’ Zak replied. ‘It being midnight and everything.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Michael?’

‘Michael’s left,’ Gabs said. ‘You won’t be seeing him for a while.’

‘So it’s just me and my guardian angels, is it?’

Gabs and Raf exchanged a look. ‘Didn’t take you long to work that out,’ Gabs said. She held something up. ‘Put this on,’ she said.

‘What is it?’

‘A blindfold, sweetie.’

Zak took a step backwards. ‘No way,’ he said. He looked at the two adults nervously.

Gabs just smiled at him again. ‘What do you think we’re going to do, Zak? Kidnap you?’

‘You already did that.’

Raf walked up to Gabs, took the blindfold and approached Zak. ‘Actually, Zak, we didn’t. It was your decision to come here, and the sooner you start accepting that, the better. And if you think we’re blindfolding you because we want to hurt you in some way, think again. This isn’t the movies, you know. If somebody wants to kill you – and chances are that at some stage they will – they’ll just do it. There won’t be any of that James Bond stuff.’ He handed over the blindfold. ‘Put it on.’

Gabs was standing next to him now. ‘You need to
start trusting us,’ she said. ‘Now’s as good a time as any.’

Zak looked from one to the other. Both dressed in black, they had equally serious expressions as they stood there. Zak stared at the ground for a moment then, slowly, put on the blindfold.

Immediately he heard the main door open. Raf took his hand. ‘Come with me,’ he said, his voice as firm as his grip.

They exited the house, Zak treading carefully as he went. And then they started to walk. At first it was difficult – the ground felt treacherous underneath him and he tripped several times, although Raf was always there to pull him up. Soon, though, he got the hang of it and they started covering ground more quickly, even when the cold wind started to bite. After about an hour they stopped. ‘You can take the blindfold off now,’ Raf said.

Zak did so. He blinked and looked around. They were in the middle of a featureless stretch of moorland, and although the almost-full moon was bright enough to cast a shadow, he couldn’t make out anything beyond about thirty metres. He shivered.

‘Do you know where you are?’ Raf asked him.

‘The middle of nowhere,’ Zak said.

‘So how will you find your way home?’

‘Follow my nose, I guess.’

Raf looked unimpressed. ‘You can do better than that. Imagine you need to get to a rendezvous point, and you know that the RV is two miles to your northwest. How are you going to do it?’

Zak thought for a moment. ‘Maybe I’ve got GPS on my phone.’

‘OK,’ Raf replied. ‘GPS is good, but you can’t rely on it. What if your battery’s down? What if you’ve stumbled in a ditch and water’s got into the mechanism? Let’s say you’ve got no GPS.’

Zak chewed lightly on his lower lip. He was getting into this now. ‘Map and compass?’

‘You’re in an area that has a lot of underground metallic ores. They’re messing with the accuracy of your compass.’

‘Does that happen?’

‘Sure.’

‘Then I don’t know. Wait – hang on . . .’

He looked up.

The stars were astonishingly bright. There was no light pollution in this deserted place, so they glowed like the fires they were.

‘Well done, Zak,’ Raf said quietly. ‘People have been using the stars to navigate since before there were even maps, let alone GPS. We might have all sorts of modern technology to help us, but that doesn’t mean
you should forget the old ways. The time will probably come when you need them.’

He put one hand around Zak’s shoulder and pointed up. ‘You see that constellation?’ he asked. ‘It looks like a saucepan with the handle bending upwards.’

‘I see it,’ Zak said.

‘That’s Ursa Minor. Some people call it the Little Dipper. The third star of the handle – the bright one – is Polaris. The North Star. Walk towards it and you’ll always be heading north. You can work out your other bearings from that. Sometimes, though, you can’t see Ursa Minor.’

‘So how do you find the North Star?’ Zak asked.

Raf’s finger traced out another saucepan-shaped constellation. On this one, the third star of the handle bent crookedly down. ‘That’s Ursa Major,’ he said. Then he moved his arm across the sky and traced out a W-shaped constellation. ‘That’s Cassiopeia. Polaris is about halfway between the two constellations. Have you got that?’

Zak nodded.

‘Good. These stars need to become like friends. You never know when you might have to ask for their help. This technique works in the northern hemisphere. Do you know what that means?’

‘North of the equator,’ Zak said.

‘Right. In the southern hemisphere you need to look for a constellation called the Southern Cross to show you which way is south. I’ll show you that on a star chart another time.’ He paused. ‘Gabs was right, you know,’ he said after a moment. ‘You need to start trusting us.’

‘Michael told me I shouldn’t trust anyone.’

‘Well, we’re the exception that proves the rule. I know you’re angry with Michael, but you can’t let that get in the way. We’re here to teach you and help you. We can’t do that if you’re fighting with us.’

And Zak knew Raf was right. He looked at his guardian angel. ‘Just one thing,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’ Raf asked.

‘Can we cut out these midnight alarm calls?’

Raf’s permanent frown softened slightly. ‘It’s a deal,’ he agreed. He held out his hand and Zak shook it.

‘Now,’ Raf continued, sounding suddenly brusque again, ‘close your eyes and turn round three times. Keep your eyes closed.’ Raf’s voice grew more distant. ‘The house is about three kilometres away to the south-east. I’ll see you back there.’

When Zak opened his eyes, his teacher had disappeared.

‘Raf!’ he called. ‘
Raf!
’

There was no reply. Zak felt a little surge of panic. He was on his own.

It was incredibly bleak out here by himself. The wind ruffled his hair and in the distance he could just make out the sound of the waves crashing onto the beach. He shuddered. For the first time since being on the island he felt a desperate desire to be back within the walls of St Peter’s House.

Stay calm
, he told himself.
Remember what Raf just taught you
. . .

He looked up. It took a moment to orientate himself and locate Polaris again. South-east, Raf had said. He faced the North Star, then turned 180 degrees. That was south. He held out his arms at right angles, so his right was pointing forward to the south and the left was pointing east. South-east bisected the two. Zak started jogging in that direction. Every few minutes he stopped and checked his bearing against Polaris, and occasionally he found he had veered off course, so he readjusted his direction before continuing.

Zak had been running for about five minutes when he heard it – or thought he heard it. It wasn’t much: just a vague rustling nearby. He found he was holding his breath as he stopped and looked around, his eyes straining to penetrate the dark.

‘Raf?
Raf?
Is that you?’

No reply. Just silence. ‘You’re probably hearing things,’ he muttered to himself, even as he felt a chill
that was nothing to do with the cold night run down his spine. He quickly checked his bearings again and continued heading south-east. Only a little faster this time . . .

After about twenty minutes the house came into view. The yellow glow of the lights from inside almost looked welcoming.

Raf was waiting for him in a doorway; Gabs was nowhere to be seen. Raf looked at his watch. ‘Twenty-two minutes,’ he said. All traces of his former comradeship had disappeared and he seemed suddenly rather frosty. ‘We really need to work on your fitness.’

‘Did you come straight here?’ Zak asked.

‘Of course,’ Raf said. ‘Why?’

‘Nothing.’

Raf shrugged. ‘Go to bed,’ he said. ‘We’ve got an early start in the morning.’

When Raf said they would work on his fitness, he hadn’t been joking. Both he and Gabs woke Zak at six the next morning. They gave him high-energy foods to eat – bananas and oatmeal – which they consumed in a gleaming kitchen at the back of the house, then handed him some running gear and told him to get changed.

It was a bright, crisp morning and the first couple of kilometres were almost fun as he tried to keep up with
Raf and Gabs. They maintained a punishing pace, however, and his muscles soon started to burn. ‘Keep up!’ Raf shouted as Zak lagged behind. He gritted his teeth, tried to forget about the pain and upped his speed.

‘Ten miles,’ Raf told him when they got back to the house. He and Gabs had barely broken into a sweat. ‘We do that every day and increase it by three miles a week. Go and get changed. You’ve got tuition for the rest of the day.’

It started with Spanish lessons. Then Mandarin. Then Arabic. Both Raf and Gabs were fluent in them all. As Zak was struggling with the Arabic alphabet, Gabs smiled at him. ‘We’ll have you talking like a native in a few weeks, sweetie,’ she said.

Zak wasn’t so sure.

The days passed. They turned into weeks. The routine didn’t change. Before long, Zak had almost forgotten why he was here, or the life he’d left behind. The training was everything, and it took up every second of his time. When he wasn’t running, he was pushing weights; when he wasn’t pushing weights, he was studying languages; when he wasn’t studying languages, he was being tutored in the arts of navigation.

Every night before bedtime, Raf handed him a piece
of paper bearing facts about Harry Gold, Zak’s alter ego. And every night he would learn them. Harry Gold’s life was not so different to Zak’s. He too had lost his parents to illness – his mother to a rare form of cancer, his father to the lung condition that had plagued him all his life; he too was an only child who had gone to live with relatives. When Zak mentioned this to Gabs, she just smiled. ‘Of course, sweetie,’ she said. ‘The best disguises are the ones where you don’t have to try too hard.’

He considered asking about his own parents again, but something told him Gabs wouldn’t be any more forthcoming than Michael.

There was a lot to learn. After a week, Zak could recite Harry’s personal details off by heart; after two he knew where Harry had gone on holiday for the past ten years; and after three he could name his imaginary extended family down to the obscurest cousins living in Eastbourne or the great-uncle who emigrated to Mexico fifteen years ago and hadn’t returned to the UK since. Once a week, Gabs and Raf would test him with quickfire questions and Harry’s past started to become second nature to him.

When Zak wasn’t exercising his mind or his brain, he slept as soundly as the dead. He was four weeks in when he woke to the sound of the regular 6 a.m. knock on his door. ‘Forget the running gear,’ Raf’s
voice came from outside. ‘We’re doing something else today.’ Zak changed into his jeans and hoodie then stepped outside.

‘Come with me,’ Raf told him.

‘Where?’

‘You’ll see.’

He led Zak down into the basement. Zak had never been there before. At the bottom of the stairs there was a metal door with one of the opaque white door knobs. ‘We’ve given you access to this room,’ Raf told him. ‘You can come down here to train any time you want.’

‘Train in what?’

‘Firearms,’ Raf said, and the door clicked open. Behind the door there was a firing range. It looked a bit like a bowling alley, but at the end of each lane there were no skittles: there were targets, shaped like human bodies with concentric circles printed on the chests. To the left-hand side was a glass table, and on the table lay a selection of weapons, with Gabs standing next to them in her trademark black clothes.