The Castle (25 page)

No, they wouldn't. I heard the Jongleur crack his fingers behind me. Beyond Dad, Max's hand was tightening on the gun.

I'd never felt this close to death before. It was like a void opening up in front of me. In front of both of us. Did Dad really want me to help these people?

‘Daddy?'

‘Just do what they say, love. Never forget, you have the power, and the Grandfather and his cronies are just worthless little piles of—'

THWACK.

It was Max who did it, cracking the pistol against Dad's head. He didn't seem to know his own strength. Dad crumpled like a rag doll.
Oh, my dad.

The Jongleur took two steps and pushed him over with the toe of his shoe. Dad toppled to the floor in the darkness beyond the lamplight. His eyes were closed. His mouth was slack. I wanted to scream but I couldn't, because I couldn't even breathe.

‘Is he faking?' Wahool asked, unmoved.

Another kick in the ribs. No reaction.

‘Is he dead? No matter. Max, be more careful next time. Girl, the password, please.'

I gulped some air. ‘But I don't
know
it!'

Mr Wahool picked up the black notebook and waved it in my face.

‘I SAY YOU DO! Tell me the password or I will have you
killed. Slowly.'

OK, OK, so I got the bit about ‘slowly'. I suppose my alternative was to be killed quickly and, yes, at this moment that seemed a better option. Even so, I wanted to resist. But when he asked me to obey them, Dad had said ‘love', not ‘honey'. He meant what he said.
He wants you to do this, Peta.

Slap. Slap
again. My cheek burnt.

‘You are thinking too much. The password. Please.'

Focus, and don't fall apart.

Then I realised what Dad was trying to do. It was brilliant. It was beautiful. But there was a problem: he said he'd given me the password, and he hadn't.

The Jongleur loomed ever closer. Mr Wahool waved the notebook madly.

A notebook of codes and passwords
, Dad had said. I took a breath and concentrated.

Never forget, you have the power.

Finally I understood. Those six words explained everything. ‘I think I've got it,' I whispered, trembling.

The Jongleur grabbed me by the throat and yanked me up so my face was level with his. Behind him, I could just see Dad crumpled on the floor, with Max standing triumphantly over him. The purple monster forced me to look into his cold, hollow eyes, then dropped me. I landed with a thud.

‘Let her try it,' he told Wahool.

My fingers shook so much I could hardly use them. Very carefully, one key at a time, I typed in ‘1015'.

Dad
had
given me the code. I'd used it myself. I
was
the code.

I held my breath, not sure what to expect. Wahool peered at the screen over my shoulder. The page didn't change. ‘It's not long enough. Try again.'

Oh hell. The Jongleur got me back by the throat.

‘You're not trying hard enough. Think! Think!'

Like being shouted at by a seven-foot psycho was going to help me think.

‘OK, I'm thinking.'

He dumped me down, walked a few steps across the carpet and picked up my phone from the floor.

‘Your mother's number will be in here. Maybe she would like to listen to your final moments. That would be good, yes? Your mother listening?'

I just stared at him. Did he honestly think that these mind games were making it any easier? Well, he'd have trouble with
that
little threat because, first, that wasn't my original phone with Mum's number in it, and second, the phone had a PIN and there was no way I would ever tell him what it was just so he could let my mum listen to . . . whatever.

The Jongleur was hissing at me now, talking in a low voice about Mum and stuff. I tuned him out and thought about home. Dad always made me have a PIN for my phone. He was fussy about that kind of thing. The password on my laptop was quite complicated. Dad had made me think of a phrase I knew well and take the first letters from each word. So that password was
atbab
– the first letters of Mum's favourite hymn, ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful'. Funny – I could remember it easily, but Dad said it was surprisingly hard for even computers to crack.

Oh, OK. So . . .

I closed my eyes. My power. If I was Dad and I wanted an unbreakable password using my daughter's power, what would I have done?

I let the Jongleur rumble on at me for a while. He seemed to be enjoying himself. I caught the occasional word –
‘muscle' . . . ‘ligament' . . . ‘agony' – but his voice was surprisingly easy to tune out now. I sang ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful' to myself in my head and thought about the knights in Winchelsea Church while I waited for him to finish.

‘I've got it now,' I said when he shut up at last. These might be the last words I ever said, I realised. Oh well. At least they connected me to Dad. And to Mum too, through the day I was born.

Carefully I typed
tttpof
.

Ten to the power of fifteen. Easy to remember, hard to guess.

Dad had done what he said, I thought with a smile. He'd put me at the heart of everything, even the most dangerous bit of his most deadly mission. OK, so it had got us both killed, but it was a nice gesture. He loved me dangerously well.

Nothing happened.

Really?
‘We have all night,' Mr Wahool said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, ‘but the next time you make a mistake, it will annoy me. This will not be good for you.'

Max smiled. The Jongleur cracked his fingers, while outside, muffled explosions announced the start of the fireworks. They were the signal for our rendezvous. At least that noise meant that Sammy and Parissa would soon be safe.

Computer passwords generally had a mix of numbers and letters, didn't they, to be really hard to crack? The code adjusted itself in my head slightly. This was my last shot.

Bye, Dad. Bye, Mum, and Luke. I'm sorry, Karim, but at least you know I tried. Dad, I hope I understood you right, because those six million people really need that money.

Forcing my fingers to press each key without a mistake, I slowly typed ‘10ttpo15'.

It looked like nothing on the screen. Just a jumble of numbers and letters. My code. My power.

The room went silent, apart from the whizzes and pops of the distant fireworks. A few seconds later, the password page disappeared and the columns of numbers were back. The red message was gone.

‘It's working!' Max said, looking excitedly over my left shoulder. ‘Is the money all there, Papa?'

Mr Wahool snorted with relief. ‘It is, my son.'

Max smirked. ‘He gave it to us so easily!' he crowed.

‘A father would do anything for his daughter,' Mr Wahool declared, with a pitiless glance at me. ‘He – wait. What's happening? What . . .? Where's it all going to? I didn't authorise this . . . Stop this! Stop this!'

He shoved me out of the way and furiously pressed the keys, but there was nothing they could do. A message had come up saying
Transferring
, and we watched as the amount in the account changed from $114,617,933 to $0. The screen returned to the main list of accounts, and while Wahool fussed and panicked, the money disappeared from each of them, until it was all gone.

Dad's mission had always been to divert the coup money to the Marvalian people. This wasn't the password that undid his virus: it was the one that finished the job.

Way to go, Dad!

I turned and grinned up at the Jongleur. He hit me so hard that I flew across the floor.

‘Kill her!' Wahool screamed. ‘Kill her now!'

With a hideous grunt of fury, the Jongleur lunged towards me, but he was distracted by a movement in the shadows. I
looked behind me. Max Wahool was falling to the floor. His startled face said he didn't understand how, or why. He hit the ground with a thud, smashing his head against the desk on the way.

There was a loud
PHUT PHUT
and I felt the air hiss and sizzle near my head. Something hot and wet hit my face. Now the Jongleur was crumpling to the ground in front of me. Blood oozed on to the expensive carpet.

Beyond him, on the other side of the room, the secret door was open and Karim was standing in front of it, dressed as a waiter, with a shiny silver revolver in his shaking hand. I stared at him. He seemed as astonished as I was.

‘Peta!' he said. ‘Mr Allud! You are safe?'

Mr Allud?

I looked back. Dad was sitting up, with his legs wrapped around Max's, breathing hard. At the desk, Mr Wahool looked around, utterly confused. His money was gone, his son was unconscious, his pet torturer was shot. And now Dad was pointing the Jongleur's gun at his head. Dad must have swiped Max's legs from under him when no one was looking, and grabbed the gun as Max fell. So
that's
why he'd played dead.
Seriously, way to go, Dad.

He smiled at me briefly, then turned to Karim.

‘Perfect timing,' he said. ‘You can keep an eye on the boy while Peta helps with these.' With his free hand, he took some plastic ties out of his trouser pocket and threw them to me. His voice was still muffled by his thick lip. ‘Move quickly.'

I did. The ties worked as handcuffs. Dad told me how to put them over Wahool's wrists, then pull them tight. I thought the old man might try and fight, but it's amazing how helpful people are when there's a gun pointing at them.

There was a knock on the door:
rat tat tat tat.

‘The boss is busy,' Dad called out in a muffled imitation of the Jongleur, while keeping his gun trained on Mr Wahool. Whoever it was seemed happy enough. They went away.

I moved across to Max, sprawled on the floor where he'd fallen. As I pulled his hands behind his back, he groaned and opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was Karim standing over him with the silver revolver.

‘But that's . . . 
mine
,' he said.

‘I found it in your room. You used to point it at my sister,' Karim told him coldly.

Max grunted and resisted, thrashing his body around, but it was too late. I had his hands tied by then.

We gagged them with pieces of torn-up toga and dragged them to the secret tunnel. Dad shoved them roughly inside, one by one, removed the door's rope handle and together we blocked the door with the desk.

‘That will keep them for a little while,' he said. ‘Long enough, I hope. Karim, will you check the corridor is free?'

In the centre of the room, the Jongleur moaned. He was badly injured, but not dead. Dad seemed disappointed by this.

‘I fired twice. Where'd the other bullet go?'

‘
You
fired?' I said. ‘But I thought Karim . . .'

‘I have not yet learnt to shoot,' Karim said, grinning. ‘Mr Allud shot the Jongleur. Ah, there it is, Mr Allud. Your other bullet.' He indicated the picture beside the secret door.

Dad had got the Picasso, right between the eyes.

We left the Jongleur where he was and locked the door behind us. Dad found a bathroom to wash the blood off his face. Then we walked out of the castle, through the main
hall, where none of the servants or guests who saw us bothered to ask why the girl, the waiter and the jewellery guard looked so rough. It really is amazing what people get up to at these parties and nobody turns a hair.

The last of the fireworks were exploding in the night sky.

A flower-festooned buggy drove us down the hill. Dad used my phone to tell Steve to come and get us, and heard the news that Sammy and Parissa were free. As we arrived at the jetty, a speedboat was already racing in to carry us away. ‘Robbins' explained to the island guards that Ella Van Cleepels was feeling sick and needed to go home. I'm sure I looked the part. I was tempted to do a few Amina-like groans, but decided that would be going too far.

François and Elena drew up with the boat. I took Karim's hand and led him aboard. As we headed out to sea, we heard the first faint
whoop whoop
of helicopter blades. Now we were safe, the American had called someone
very
high up in Italian security to say that this would be a good time to catch an international gang of criminals planning a coup.

The moon and stars were bright above us. The sound of helicopters grew louder. We watched the island disappear into the darkness until it was just a dot.

FIFTY-FIVE

W
e had two precious days together in Florence before I had to go home. Sammy and Parissa were recovering in hospital, but the rest of us spent most of our time round the kitchen table at the Foundation, regaling the rest of the team with our stories.

That first morning, Karim had walked into the villa like he owned it. This not-so-ragged, extraordinary boy. He wore super-skinny jeans, and a T-shirt with an image of six chess pieces that said ‘Weapons of Choice'. Maria, who'd met him off the jet with the outfit all ready, had been listening carefully when I'd told her all about him. He glanced around the rooms, approving the American's taste in art and furnishings,
nodding like a connoisseur. Which, in a way, he was.

When we joined the Foundation guys for our debrief that evening, Karim sat at the table with Dad and me, noticing everything, saying little. Amina quickly crawled into his lap and stayed there. His thin, strong arms wrapped themselves around her and held her fiercely close.

He had hugged me fiercely too, when we'd reached the safety of the mainland. It was the only time he showed just how much his freedom meant to him. Now he was learning to wear it nonchalantly, like the T-shirt and his cool new haircut. Sitting in the kitchen, he looked perfectly at home.

I felt it too. Here, round this table, with these people, talking about things that weren't
exactly
legal but . . . well, we were trying to change the world.

The Foundation guys kept asking us for more details about what we'd done in the study – how we'd survived. Sometimes it felt too good, and I didn't deserve it. I apologised for messing up with the pressure pads, and for getting caught.

‘Thank God you did,' Dad said, pouring himself a whisky from the bottle that was doing the rounds of the grown-ups. ‘It was only when they brought you in that we had a chance. Wahool would never have let me get past those last layers of security if it wasn't for you.'

‘You
used
me, Dad! You
used
me!'

He looked stricken. ‘I didn't plan to. But I thought you wanted me to . . .'

I nudged him in the shoulder. ‘Teasing?'

‘Blimey, Peta! Children!'

‘But weren't you worried that I wouldn't guess the password?' I asked. This had been bugging me a lot. ‘You didn't exactly make it easy.'

He shrugged. ‘It was fifty-fifty. If you got it, that was the icing on the cake. But by then, I just wanted them to be distracted while I got the gun off that idiot Max.'

‘But I thought . . . by then . . . we were just helping the Marvalians. I thought it was too late for us.'

Dad frowned at me. ‘Not if I could help it, love. I wasn't going to let that monster touch my little girl.'

I sighed. ‘I didn't get
that
at all.'

He smiled. The nicest smile he'd ever given me. ‘I know. You thought it was all over, but you did what I asked you anyway. That's what kept them so mesmerised, honey. I found it distracting myself, to be honest. I'd have got Max a few seconds earlier if I'd been concentrating.'

I noticed Dad had called me ‘honey'. He did that a lot now, and I called him ‘Daddy' for a joke.

‘We're going to need new code words for next time,' I pointed out. ‘Those old ones won't work now.'

‘Look into my eyes,' he said. ‘Your mother would kill me. There is never going to be a next time.'

Yeah, right.