South by South East (12 page)

“I expect you have a lot of questions,” Mr Waverly said.

“I’ve got one,” Tim cut in. “What happened to the birds?”

“The birds?” It took the head of MI6 a moment to work out what he was talking about. “Oh – you mean Bodega Birds. That was just a front. We had to do that. You see, we couldn’t allow you to get the police involved.”

“Sure,” I agreed. “They might have found out that it was you who paid Charon to kill Boris Kusenov.”

That got him. For one second his eyes were unguarded and I saw the panic that was hiding behind those small, faded pupils. Behind him, Ted and Ed shifted uneasily. All three of them were like guilty schoolboys who had just been caught smoking behind the gym. “How did you find out?” Waverly asked.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the cheque that I had found in Charon’s drawer. “I found this,” I said.

Mr Waverly hardly needed to look at it. He knew what it was. He coughed and ran a hand through his hair. “I have to congratulate you,” he said. “You’ve been very resourceful.”

“So why did you do it?” I demanded. “If you wanted to stop Charon, why did you pay him in the first place?”

Waverly sighed. I think he was actually relieved to get the confession off his chest. “It was an operation that went horribly wrong,” he began.

“I’m sorry,” Tim chimed in. “I didn’t know you’d been ill.”

“I haven’t been ill, Mr Diamond!” Waverly paused. This was going to be more difficult than he’d thought. “We had to find Charon,” he went on at last. “Too many people had died. Not just in England. America. France. Even Russia. It was always Charon. So we decided to mount an operation to bring him in. To unmask him. And we came up with an idea. The simplest way to find him was to become his client.”

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“It was easy. He had a number of agents working for him. The man who knocked out the magician, for example. We got a message to them. They passed it to Charon.”

“So you hired him to kill Kusenov.”

“Yes. We chose Kusenov because we knew he had no intention of coming to England. He doesn’t like England. In fact he never leaves Moscow. In other words, in order to kill him, Charon would have to go to Russia. And so of course, there was something he would need…”

“An aeroplane?” Tim suggested.

“A visa. You can’t enter Russia without a visa. Don’t you see? It was brilliant. All we had to do was monitor all the people applying for a visa to Russia and one of them would
have
to be Charon. And of course if anyone who applied for a visa had only nine fingers…”

“So you never really wanted Kusenov dead.”

“Oh no. That was just the point. We were certain that Charon would be unable to kill him. He was meant to be an impossible target.”

Suddenly I understood. Waverly was right. It had been a brilliant plan until it had gone terribly wrong. “But Kusenov decided to come to England after all!” I said.

“Exactly. That wretched painting, ‘The Tsar’s Feast’, came up for auction at Sotheby’s. Kusenov was a collector, and he had this fixation about the artist, Salvador Dali. He believed the painting had to hang in Russia – so he came over to bid for it. It was the last thing we’d expected.”

“I get it…” I said.

“I don’t,” Tim muttered.

I turned to him. “If Charon had killed Kusenov on British soil and the Russians had then found out he’d been paid by MI6—”

“It’s too horrible to contemplate.” Waverly finished the sentence. He had sunk into his chair as if he were deflating.

“You still haven’t found Charon,” I said. “Kusenov still isn’t safe.”

“My dear boy.” Mr Waverly recovered quickly. “The man with the scar! He
was
Charon.”

“Scarface…?”

“Yes. He’s in a prison cell now. It has to be him. He has only four fingers on his right hand.”

I thought back to the theatre in Amsterdam. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Of course he’s only got four fingers on his right hand!” I exclaimed. “Ted shot the other one off!”

That sent a ripple of alarm through the three agents. Quickly they conferred. Then Ted spoke. “It’s true I shot him in the hand,” he admitted. “But I didn’t see him lose a finger.”

“He must have lost it!” I insisted. “He certainly had all his fingers when we first met.”

Ted shook his head smugly. “Relax, kid. Your Mr Scarface is Charon, all right.”

“Has he admitted it?” I asked.

“No. But we’ll crack him.”

Personally, I doubted Ted could even crack a walnut without help from a friend but I didn’t say that. I turned back to Mr Waverly. He was my only hope. “Mr Waverly,” I said. “I know that Scarface is not Charon. Please believe me. You’ve got the wrong man.”

But Mr Waverly wasn’t having any of it. Suddenly he was all suit and old school tie. “I think I can be the best judge of this,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I’m the head of MI6 and you’re just a fourteen-year-old boy!”

Tim shrugged. “He has a point.”

I started to speak, then bit my tongue. There was no point arguing with them. I’d be better off working it out on my own. “What about us?” I asked.

Mr Waverly smiled. “You can go,” he said. “I’ve had a word with the police. That business with the bank. Everything’s been explained. You’re no longer wanted.”

We weren’t wanted. Not in any sense of the word.

Tim stood up. “So that’s it,” he said.

“That’s it.”

“Right.” Tim thought for a moment. “I don’t suppose you could lend us the bus fare home?”

We walked home. Every step of the way the same thought went through my mind. They’ve got the wrong man. They’ve got the wrong man. I knew Charon wasn’t Scarface. He had been in the room at the Winter House with Ugly and a third man. It was the third man who was Charon.

I thought back to the desk, the drawer with the cigarettes, the mirror and … something else. I couldn’t remember any more. I was tired. I needed to rest. But I couldn’t – not yet. They’d got the wrong man.

Tim picked up a newspaper on the way back. Someone had left it on a bench and now that the adventure was over he was keen to cut out any photographs of himself. But there wasn’t even a mention of him. He was yesterday’s news, already forgotten.

We climbed the stairs into the office and while Tim went through the paper again I put on the kettle and made us some tea. By the time I’d carried it into the office and sat down opposite Tim, my mind had begun to click into action. Carefully, I set out the pieces of the puzzle and tried to make sense of them.

Charon.

A white hammer.

A mirror in a drawer.

South by south east.

We still didn’t know what McGuffin had been trying to tell us. Had he really wanted us to travel south on the South East rail network? Was that all it boiled down to? I still couldn’t believe it could have been as unimportant as that. I thought back to the moment he had died, struggling to speak in Tim’s arms, with the train thundering past overhead.

“They’re auctioning that painting today,” Tim said. He folded the paper in half and tapped one of the articles.

South by south east.

“There’s a story about it here.”

“A story about what?”

“The painting.” He read out the headline.

“Sotheby’s. ‘Tsar’s Feast’.”

South by…

I sat up. “What?”

Tim sighed. “I was just telling you—”

“I know. What did you say? The headline…”

Tim waved the paper in my direction. “‘The Tsar’s Feast’! It’s the first lot to come under the hammer this afternoon.”

I snatched the paper. “Of course!” I shouted. “You’ve done it, Tim! You’re brilliant!”

Tim smiled. “Yeah. Sure I am.” The smile faded. “Why? What have I done?”

“You’ve just said it. The hammer…!”

“Where?”

“At Sotheby’s!” I turned the paper round and showed him the headline. “That’s what McGuffin was trying to tell you. But what with the train and everything you didn’t hear him properly.”

“What?”

“He didn’t say south by south east. He said Sotheby’s … ‘Tsar’s Feast’.”

I grabbed Tim’s wrist and twisted it round so that I could look at his watch. It was half past one. “When does the auction start?” I yelled.

“Two o’clock.”

“Half an hour. Maybe we can still get there in time…”

I was already moving for the stairs but Tim stayed where he was, his eyes darting from the newspaper to me then back to the paper. “The auction?” he muttered. “Why do you want to go there?”

I stopped with my hand on the door. “Don’t you see?” I said. “We’ve got to stop it.”

“Stop the auction?”

“Stop Charon. He’s planning to blow up Kusenov.”

We managed to catch a bus outside the office – but were we going to make it? The traffic was heavy and the bus was slow. I looked at Tim’s watch. It was already twenty to two. We weren’t going to make it.

Tim must have read my thoughts. “Why don’t we telephone them?” he said.

“They’d never believe me.”

Tim shifted uncomfortably in his seat. I stared at him. “You don’t believe me either!” I exclaimed.

“Well, it does seem a bit—”

“Listen.” I knew I was right. I’d worked it out. I
had
to be right. “You remember the hammer we saw at the Winter House? An antique white hammer…?”

“Yes.”

“It was an
auctioneer’s
hammer. The painting is going under the hammer. That means, when it’s sold, the auctioneer will hit down with the hammer.”

“Yes!”

“Well, Charon’s going to swap the real hammer with the one we saw. That must have been what they were talking about. The fake hammer will make some sort of electrical contact…”

Tim’s eyes lit up. “You mean … Charon’s going to electrocute the auctioneer?”

“No. It must be a bomb. The hammer will detonate it. That’s how he plans to kill Kusenov. The moment the painting is sold, the whole place will be blown sky high!”

The bus slowed down again. This time it was another bus-stop and the oldest woman in the world was waiting to get on. Worse still, she had about fourteen shopping bags with her. It would take all day. Quarter to two. If the bus moved off at once and didn’t stop again we might just make it. But the traffic was as thick as ever. I made a decision.

“We’ll run,” I said.

“What – all the way?” Tim cried.

But I was already moving. We had fifteen minutes, and a bus that was going nowhere. This was clearly not the time for a chat.

Sotheby’s main auction house is in New Bond Street, right in the middle of Mayfair. If you ever find yourself in the area, don’t try to go window-shopping. You won’t even be able to afford the window. It’s at number thirty-five, just one more smart door among all the others.

As we spun round the corner from Oxford Street and staggered down the last hundred metres, I could hear the chimes of clocks striking two. There was no security in sight on the door. Kusenov had to be there. The auction had begun. But Mr Waverly must have thought he was safe.

I reached the door, but even as my hand stretched out to push it open I was struck by a nasty thought. If there was a bomb – and I was pretty sure there was – it could go off at any time. The moment the auctioneer struck his hammer, that would be it. Did I really want to go inside? I glanced at Tim who must have had much the same thought. He was standing on the pavement, kicking with his heels as if they’d somehow got glued to the surface.

“We have to go in,” I said.

“Nick…”

I left him out there. I’d made up my mind. I had to stop the auction. He could do as he pleased.

The auction house was busy that day. There were people moving up and down the stairs and along the corridor which must have led to a secondary auction room. Somebody pushed past carrying an antique doll, a label still attached to its leg.

Someone else went the other way with a bronze-framed mirror. For a moment I caught sight of my own reflection. I looked tired and bedraggled.

And young. Would they even allow a fourteen-year-old into the auction?

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen…”

The voice crackled over an intercom system that had been installed above the reception desk. It was a plummy voice – the sort that belongs to someone who’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Maybe Sotheby’s were auctioning that, too. “Lot number one is by a painter who made an explosive impact on surrealism in Europe,” it went on. “Salvador Dali. It is entitled ‘The Tsar’s Feast’ and is painted in oils on canvas. I shall open the bidding at £100,000.”

I turned to Tim who had decided to come in after all. He was standing next to me. “It’s begun…” I said.

“Where?” he asked.

I looked around. “Upstairs.”

But Mr Waverly hadn’t completely relaxed his guard on Boris Kusenov. MI6 might not be involved any more, but he had handed the case over to the police and before we’d even reached the first step two uniformed officers had moved out of an alcove to block our way.

“Now where do you think you’re going?” one of them asked.

“£200,000…” The first bid had been made. I heard it over the intercom.

I tried to push forward. “I want to go to the auction…” I explained.

“Bit young for that, aren’t you?” The second policeman laughed. “Run along, sonny. It’s adults only.”

“You don’t understand.” I was speaking through gritted teeth. “You’ve got to let me pass…”

“£300,000 to the gentleman from Moscow.”

“You heard what I said.” The second policeman wasn’t laughing any more. He was blinking at me with small, unintelligent eyes. I knew the sort. If he was reincarnated as an ape, it would be a step up.

“Please…” Tim muttered. “We want to see Mr Grooshamov.”

“Boris Kusenov,” I corrected him. “He’s in danger.”

“What danger?” the first policeman asked.

The intercom crackled into life. “£400,000 to the lady in the front row.” Then immediately, “Back to the gentleman from Moscow. £500,000. Thank you, sir.”

“You’ve got to get up there,” I insisted. “Kusenov is in danger. We’re all in danger. The whole place is going to go up.”

“I think you’d better come with us,” the first policeman said.