The Great Escape (3 page)

‘Where you used to live?’

‘Where I still live,’ he corrected her. ‘I’m just not there at this exact moment. And it was around lunchtime, I guess, and I was thinking of finding something nice to
eat, perhaps from the kitchen of one of the cafés—’

‘You were going to steal lunch from a café?’

‘Not
steal
. Liberate.’

‘That’s what my dad calls it.’

‘He’s a smart man. Anyway, I was just heading down a small alleyway to the back of La Perruche – my favourite café, where they serve some very good chicken – and I
walked past a grey van. And as I was going past, a man threw something over me, a . . . I don’t know the word in English. Like you use to catch fish.’

‘A net?’

‘Yes, a net. The humiliation. Caught like a stupid fish.’

‘It’s not that stupid.’ Millie tried to console him. ‘Being caught on a line would have been worse.’

‘True.’ Max nodded. ‘Yes, that is a different level of stupid that only the fish can attain. “What is this that looks like a small meal, on a big sharp metal hook? I
will, perhaps, just put my mouth around it and find out. That is surely the safest way to discover more. Ah! I am caught, who could have foreseen?” Everyone but the idiot fish, of course. No
wonder they are becoming extinct. They deserve it.’

‘I’m not sure that’s
exactly
why they’re becoming extinct,’ Millie said, thinking that deep-sea fishermen probably almost never used fishing rods.

Max ignored her loftily. Some grievances couldn’t be put aside, especially where fish were concerned.

‘But this net is heavy, weighed down at the edges, so once it is over me, I can’t get it off. And in an instant, I am lifted inside the van and put into a tiny box.’

‘You must have been terrified,’ Millie sympathised.

‘Not terrified. Never terrified. Cats are very brave, you know. More angry, and unsure how to escape, and a little, you know, perhaps nervous.’ He eyed her, warily, as he continued:
‘That evening, I was shoved into a room full of cats in boxes. Next day, I was in a big car, with the windows blacked out, with another dozen or so cats. We were driven for a while, and then
we went onto a boat.’ Max shuddered, overcome by the distress of his kidnap, the memory of the long, cramped journey and the sheer fury of having been made to travel on water, when this was
as unnatural to cats as flying through the air on wings.

‘I saw that car!’ Millie tried to keep her voice down, in case her dad could hear. ‘Last week. There was an annoying man who had a couple of crates that—’

‘That what?’

‘That
meowed
,’ she whispered.

‘That would have been the most recent shipment. Another twelve stolen cats.’

‘Miiiiilliiiiie!’ her dad shouted up the stairs. ‘Dinner time.’

‘I’ll be right there,’ she called.

‘I’ll be right back,’ she said to Max. ‘Well, I’ll be half an hour. Are you hungry? I’ll bring you something up.’

‘A little chicken, or maybe some fish would be nice.’

‘Ah.’

‘Ah?’

‘I’m vegetarian. We probably don’t have any meat in the house.’

‘
No meat?
’ Max looked as if she had just told him that, usually, she and her father wore cats’ skins as coats, except for the nicest ones, which they used for matching
hats.

‘Well,
you
wouldn’t like to be eaten.’

‘That’s true, but chickens are so stupid, and fish are so ugly. It’s different, eating a carnivore – we are clever and—’

‘Edible. It’s an honour thing. Just because you
can
kill something, doesn’t mean you should. Unless you don’t have a choice. Like, if I was on a desert island or
something, and I had to eat a fish or starve to death.’ Millie frowned at this prospect, although the likelihood of it occurring anywhere in East Anglia seemed pretty slim.

‘If we all thought that way,’ Max sniffed, ‘the world would be overrun with mice.’

Millie thought for a minute. ‘OK. You catch mice, or birds, and eat them, fine. But humans don’t need to do that. We can eat anything.’

‘Interesting as these philosophical distinctions are, what
have
you got for me to eat?’

‘Cheese?’ Millie ventured.

‘Cheese will do for now, thank you. But we will have to arrange something else tomorrow. I cannot live off cheese, like a cartoon mouse. I need amino acids that are only in
meat.’

‘You’re pretty well informed, for a cat.’

‘I’ve just spent three months in a laboratory – you pick things up.’

‘Miiiiiilliiiiie!’

‘I’ve got to go. I’ll be back as soon as I can. If you hear anyone come up the stairs, hide under the desk in case it’s not me.’

The cat looked plaintive. ‘Make it a big piece of cheese. Maybe shape it like a sparrow. Or a goldfish. Even a squirrel.’

The door shut behind her, and the cat looked around his new home.

Millie had the second largest bedroom in the house – her dad had the biggest one, ‘because I’m the biggest’, as he had unarguably pointed out when they
moved in. And the smallest one was kept for ‘visitors’, who were usually Millie’s friends. Max looked around him – he hadn’t been in a girl’s bedroom before. In
Brussels, he lived with Sofie and her son, Stef, who must be about the same age as Millie, he guessed. But he had always thought that girls’ rooms would look more, well, girly. Pink and so
on. Millie’s room was not like that at all. There were aerial photographs on the walls, some of the sea. He shuddered again. The walls were covered with lots of shelves filled with books. On
her desk were a computer and printer, and some other devices he couldn’t quite name. Maybe a scanner, he wondered, although he wasn’t entirely sure what that was. Perhaps Sofie and Stef
weren’t very technologically minded, he thought, jumping up onto the desk and looking more closely at Millie’s computer, which appeared to be both smaller and newer than the ones in the
lab.

In many ways, the room matched its owner, Max decided. His rescuer had a very sensible face, but she definitely wasn’t pretty. Although he would probably have tried to come up with a more
flattering description, if pushed. Well, maybe not – cats have an obligation to tell the truth, even if they’ve just been assisted in a daring bid for freedom. Millie had dark brown
hair, cut into what might generously be described as a mess. She wasn’t very tall for her age, either, and she appeared to dress as though she were hoping to pass as a boy. He thought about
how different she looked from the girls Stef knew. But the more he thought, the more he realised that it didn’t matter – Millie could obviously think quickly in an emergency, and that
was what he had needed most today, and would continue to need, if he was going to keep his promise to Monty.

Max blinked quickly. Some of the cats in the lab had been pretty boring, he thought. And one or two had been quite unpleasant, especially a big ginger tom who’d tried to bully Max when he
first arrived. And then there was the cat who had stood up for Max, and refused to let anyone pick on him – Monty. He was the oldest cat in the lab, in his mid-teens. And his was the only
family to have been kidnapped – Monty’s daughter, Celeste, had been in the cage below Max, and they were the only cats that hadn’t laughed at Max when he explained his plan to
escape.

Max had promised them both that he would come back and rescue them, as soon as he got the chance. The ginger tom had snorted with derision at the very idea that Max would make it to the outside
world, let alone come back for his friends. Even Monty had only nodded sadly at Max, as though he couldn’t quite believe that he would be able to do it. But, as Max had made his escape,
Celeste had whispered, ‘Come back for us, Max. We’ll be waiting.’ Max blinked at the memory and took a deep breath. He looked around approvingly at Millie’s desk, with its
supply of electronics, and began to plan.

Max had no idea how long he had been sitting, thinking, when he heard the telltale creak of a foot on the stairs. In less than a second he was under the bed. The door opened,
and shut again quickly.

‘Max?’

He wriggled out from under the bed, and sneezed twice, looking at Millie with an unmistakable air of reproach.

‘Sorry,’ she said guiltily. ‘I always mean to hoover under there, but I usually forget. That’s why I thought you might prefer hiding under the desk.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed ruefully.

‘I brought you some cheese.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Now, tell me about the Haverham lab.’

‘Is that what it’s called?’

‘No. Well, I don’t know. It’s just where it is. I don’t know who owns it – I guess we could find out.’ Millie jerked her head at the computer.

‘Later, we will do that. First, I should tell you what they do there.’

‘They’re making cats that can talk.’ Millie knew she was stating the obvious, but she was still having problems making her brain accept what her eyes and ears were telling
her.

‘Do you know why?’ asked Max.

‘Is it a government lab?’ Millie’s eyebrows shot up in alarm. ‘Are you a secret weapon? Like a spy?’

‘Yes, of course. Your government has decided it will send adorable kittens to dubious world leaders, media moguls and international terrorists. They will keep us on their laps at all
times, because we are so furry and cute. We will overhear everything they plan, just like our role model, the fluffy white cat in your James Bond films. This has, in fact, been happening for many
years, but with one flaw: we could not communicate what we knew. Many intelligence missions, many top-secret investigations, even many wars could have been avoided, if only we could tell what we
had heard. And then, one day,
voilà
, someone has the bright idea. Kidnap cats from overseas, with a range of languages at their disposal. I, for example, speak French, Dutch and
English, as you can hear. Give them voice-boxes, like humans have. Then, each time we go for our injections, or worm tablets, or minor operations, we can tell the vet everything we know, very, very
quietly. The vet is not only a vet, but an operative from MI5. It is simple, but brilliant.’

Millie looked at Max for a long minute.

‘You’re pretty sarcastic for a cat.’

‘No more than average. It’s just you can hear me.’

‘OK, it was a stupid suggestion. But who
does
have an interest in making animals talk?’

‘I don’t know. That is something we have to find out.’

‘And do you know
why
they want to make cats talk? It might help us find out who’s behind it.’

‘No, they hardly let me see any memos while I was sitting in a cage.’

‘You could just say no, you know.’

‘Of course, but then how would you learn?’ Max gazed at her innocently.

‘Speaking of which, how have you learned so many languages so fast?’

‘I have not learned them fast. Sofie, with whom I live in Brussels, is an English teacher. She helps her son, Stef, with his homework – he is around your age, I should think. They
speak French and also Dutch at home – there are two national languages in Belgium, you know. Well, three, really, because everyone also learns to speak English. I have been able to understand
all three languages for many years. Once I could speak at all, I could speak all the languages I knew. Pretty good, huh? You must be very jealous. Everyone knows that English people are hopeless at
languages.’

Millie grinned, but they must have been talking too loudly to hear the stair creak, because an unexpected knock at the door made her leap suddenly to her feet.

Max had dived back under the bed before Millie’s dad’s knuckles hit the door a second time. Millie was beginning to understand how the cat had escaped – he
was astonishingly fast.

‘Millie,’ called her dad. ‘Are you all right in there? Can I come in?’ He had already begun to open the door. It banged immediately onto the open wardrobe door behind it.
‘Oops, sorry.’

‘I don’t know why you bother asking, if you’re just going to open the door anyway.’ Millie sighed, trying to sound vaguely annoyed, while her heart pumped crazily. She
jumped up to shut the wardrobe so that her dad could open the door properly.

‘Sorry – I wasn’t sure if you’d heard me over the TV.’ He looked at the television, which was steadfastly switched off. ‘That’s funny, I could have
sworn I heard—’

‘What’s up, Dad?’ she asked brightly.

‘Nothing, really, I just came to see if you were all right. You were so quiet at dinner, and you’ve been up here ever since we got home. You’re upset because we were out at the
lab today, aren’t you?’

‘Not exactly upset.’ Millie didn’t like fibbing to her father, and she was trying hard not to lie outright, but she could see it was going to be tricky.

‘I know it bothers you, sweetheart. And I’m sorry I have to keep going there, but
you
don’t, you know.’

‘I know. I might not come out tomorrow, Dad, if you don’t mind.’

‘Well, we’re not going back to Haverham lab till next week now anyway, so why don’t you have a think about it?’

‘I will. Do you, er . . .’ Millie tried hard to be as unconcerned as possible. ‘Do you happen to know who owns the laboratory?’

‘No, I don’t, love. A pharmaceutical company, I expect. That’s what the protesters’ signs all say.’

‘I thought you hadn’t seen any protesters? That man said they came quite late in the morning.’

‘Well’ – her dad looked a bit shame-faced – ‘I saw them earlier, actually. I was looking out for them after you mentioned them the other day, and from the third
floor you can just make out the main road, over the trees. I could see their banners, and a couple of them were big enough to read.’

‘What did they say?’ asked Millie curiously. Maybe this was a chance to find out more about who had been kidnapping Max and the other cats.

‘They were both the same – “The drugs don’t work, and it’s too high a price to pay”.’

‘It is, isn’t it?’ Millie was disappointed – she thought there would have been the name of a company at least.

‘I can’t answer that, sweetheart. We’ve been very lucky – it’s easy for us to moralise. If you were ill, and needed new drugs to keep you alive and healthy, God
forbid, all I know is that I prefer you to some rats in a cage.’