Trapped (21 page)

He nodded. ‘Back up near my desk.'

‘Sorry, gotta go. Can you look for the bear? It's stripy.' Hand over her mouth, she ran back across the gangplank and out from the bay.

As she entered the corridor she noticed the guard head back down into the submarine to carry on the search for the bear. He was behaving himself beautifully, Cate thought. She ran to the computer. The screen was showing the same options as it had before, she clicked onto
Door Two
and then chose the
Close
option. Immediately the shutters began to move downwards. Now she had to pray that the guard would not hear them until it was too late.

She stood by the screen holding her breath. Fifteen seconds passed and the shutters were almost down when she heard a shout from the guard. ‘Hey!' he said. ‘What's going on?' She saw his hands scramble at the bottom of the shutters, trying desperately to pull them up. He crouched down, clearly considering whether he had enough time to slip under them. But it was too late. With a defiant clang, the shutters were down. Cate turned back to the screen, clicked on options again.
Seal Room
or
Open Door
came up. ‘The former I think,' Cate said to herself.

Within seconds she had the data stick back in the computer.
Here goes nothing
, she thought as she opened Arthur's file and his override program started running. The security guard banged on the shutter doors as the file downloaded into the computer. Cate flicked back to the original screen with its
Room One
and
Room Two
. Her hands shaking, Cate clicked the first option.
Please
, she thought,
please let it work
.

There was a soft click from the door opposite. She grabbed the data stick and, hardly daring to believe what she was hearing, Cate went over and pushed at the door gently, sending a silent thank you to Arthur as she did so. It swung into a dark space and Cate fiddled around for the light switch, blinking as light flooded the room.

The room was tiny, barely three metres by two metres with a low ceiling. It smelt stuffy and stale, the cork tiles underfoot
loose and ragged. It was furnished with a small, plain desk, a grey plastic chair and white-fronted cupboards which ran at waist height around the room.

To Cate's disappointment there was no sign of a phone, a computer screen and certainly not a laptop. Cate went quickly through the cupboards, checking with her hands back into the furthest corners, but they were empty.

She looked at her watch desperately. A minute gone already. What was this room for? Why all the fuss? There must be something here.

She got down on her hands and knees and worked her way methodically across the floor, rapping with her knuckles as she went. Nothing. The floor was solid, concrete, probably thick. But there was nowhere else to look so, with her knuckles already sore, she kept trying, rapping right down to the far end of the room where the light was dim. Then, when she had all but reached the far wall she heard the sound change from dull to echoey. The floor had suddenly become hollow.

Cate scrabbled at a loose tile and it came away easily. Under it was a small wood cover which lifted up as she pushed down at one end. There in front of her was the blue laptop!

Cate caught her breath in a sob of relief. She opened it up and pressed the on button, praying that the batteries still had life in them. The screen lit up in front of her, the wallpaper a beautiful photograph of a mountain gorilla. She inserted her datastick and then began a frantic search copying recently viewed and amended files.

Cate waited for the files to copy, trying hard to contain her terror as the time ticked slowly by. As she did so her hand
brushed against what seemed to be a light switch; suddenly there was a smooth
whoosh
and a door-sized piece of wall moved slowly to one side.

Cate stared at it, amazed. At first she thought it was just a hole and then realised she was looking at a glass door. She walked towards it, peered through it and nearly screamed. There, stretching out in front of her, was a row of cages of varying sizes and shapes. And each one contained an animal. Exactly the same animals she had seen in that awful film just a few days ago. She had found them at last.

Cate clapped her hand to her mouth. She felt sick with shock, could hear blood rushing through her ears and, as she looked down, she saw her hands were shaking. She hadn't expected this, not here, not now.

She desperately wanted to rush in and free the animals and whisk them up to the fresh air and sunlight just a few tantalising metres above them. But she knew that was impossible.

At least they weren't in squalor. Cate had expected that, when she found the animals, they would be in an awful condition. But although these animals looked miserable, physically they were in good shape; clean and well fed.

She hated to leave them in their misery for even a few hours longer, but she had to. She pressed the switch and watched sadly as the door whirred back into place. Cate felt as if she was torturing them too, as cruel and as wicked as the people who had wrenched them from their natural habitat and brought
them into this terrible place. She forced herself back to the laptop, to concentrate on the task in hand. ‘Nearly there,' she consoled herself. ‘Nearly there.'

Finally the download was complete. Cate slipped the laptop back into its hiding place, switched off the light and pulled the door closed behind her. It locked fast.

She let out a huge gasp of air and looked at her watch. The whole thing had taken less than three minutes. She ran back down to the shutters. The guard had stopped banging now.

‘Hello?' she called out, sounding panic-stricken. ‘Hello? Where are you? Are you OK?'

‘I'm stuck, you goddamn stupid girl.' Despite his obvious annoyance the guard sounded relieved. ‘The shutter system has stuck. Where the hell have you been all this time? Didn't you hear me shouting?'

‘Oh, I've been so sick,' Cate whined. ‘I've been in that loo for ages. It must have been something I ate. Shall I get help?'

‘The computer must have frozen. Do you know how to work computers?'

‘I can try,' said Cate meekly. ‘What shall I do?'

The guard sounded exasperated as he gave her the instructions. As Cate went to the computer and opened the submarine door, she took some deep breaths, trying to calm herself down.

‘About goddamn time too.' The guard snorted angrily as his lower body came gradually into view. ‘What a mess.' In his left hand he held a small green and white bear.

‘Stripy!' said Cate, rushing towards him. ‘You found Stripy! Thank you so, so much.'

The guard handed the bear over and gestured impatiently towards the door. ‘I'm not in the mood, kid,' he said. ‘Get going and take your stupid bear with you. And don't come back.'

It was dark by the time Mikey and Ahmed came to pick them up. As the powerboat pulled into the mini harbour, Cate and the children were already waiting for them on the boardwalk.

Now all she had to do was get back to the
Catwalk II
and brief Marcus and it would all be over. Surely the IMIA would make their move now.

Cate, who felt as if she had been waiting for days rather than just a few hours to get off the boat, hustled them quickly onboard.

‘You're keen,' said Mikey, gesturing to the pilot to start the engine.

‘The kids are tired and so am I,' said Cate as the boat reversed back into the sea.

When she got back, Marcus was nowhere to be seen. Cate was desperate to tell him what she had found and sent him a text. She needed him to call her urgently.

Returning to her cabin, Cate was so tired that it was all she could do to fire up her computer and send Arthur the information she had grabbed from the blue laptop. She had got as far as she could on her own, now she needed someone else to help her to put the final pieces of the puzzle together.

The next thing Cate knew it was morning, the sunlight was streaming through her porthole and her phone was vibrating on her bedside table. It was Arthur, his voice shaking with excitement.

‘Cate, Cate, are you awake?' Arthur was having trouble getting his words out. ‘I've been through the files you sent me. It's unbelievable, horrible, obscene. No wonder they were prepared to kill. Cate, whatever it takes, you have to stop it.'

‘Do you need some shopping done, Marcus?' Cate had just arrived up on deck and found Marcus in the galley working on breakfast. He was waiting for her, she knew, from the text he had sent to her sometime during the night when she was too deeply asleep to hear it. It was time to set up what she hoped would be the final meeting with the IMIA.

‘Wendy is looking after the kids this morning and I thought I would have a break, go for a run. I was thinking you might need something from the fish shop?' Cate asked.

Marcus looked sharply at her as she leant against the door frame of the galley. Behind her, Bill was pottering around in the navigation bay, well within earshot of their conversation.

‘Actually, I was going to nip up there myself this morning,' he said casually. ‘About nine-ish. See what's come in on the overnight boats. Thanks for the offer but I fancy a walk anyway.' He winked at her and mouthed, ‘See you later.'

Cate nodded and turned without answering as Wendy appeared from the salon carrying dirty breakfast bowls.

‘Well done, yesterday, I hear the kids had a great time,' she said kindly. ‘And you'll be very glad to know that the new nanny will arrive today. You're off the hook with the kids.'

Cate seized her chance. ‘In that case, Wendy, do you mind if I have a break now for a couple of hours, please? Just get
off the boat, have a run, maybe a coffee?'

‘No worries, Cate. You can have until lunchtime.'

Ten minutes later Cate, dressed in her running gear, headed into town. Antibes was slowly waking up from its Saturday night to another still morning.

It's all so beautiful
, Cate thought, as she ran to the fish shop.
Maybe soon, when all this is over, I can begin to properly enjoy it. Maybe even with Michel.

She stood for a short while outside the fish shop, watching as the streets gradually became busier, fantasising that Michel might walk past her and then panicking in case he did. She was almost relieved when she spotted Marcus making his way up towards her from the bottom of the hill. She took a deep breath. Time to get to work.

She headed into the alleyway and climbed up the rusty iron stairway once more. As she reached the top of the steps, Marcus was behind her, pushing at the door to let her in ahead of him.

‘Marcus, it would be best if I could speak to all of you,' Cate shouted above the rattle as the ancient lift swayed down into the depths of the caves. ‘You, Piot and Henri. Would that be OK? Are they there?'

Marcus nodded.

The lift doors wrenched themselves open and Cate and Marcus stepped out into the cool air. Up ahead of them were Henri and Piot.

Piot put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Good to see you again, Cate. I hear you've been amazing.'

Cate gave him a grateful smile and dumped her rucksack onto the desk. ‘We need to get Arthur on the line,' she said.

The room fell silent. Cate pulled out her laptop and set it on the table. She sat down next to it and gazed at the faces of the adults watching her. She knew they were waiting for her to talk but she couldn't tell the whole story alone.

‘I need internet access,' she said flatly.

Henri waved to a man poring over a computer screen on the other side of the room and, handing him the laptop, whispered some instructions to him.

‘The conference line will be set up in five,' he told the group. ‘In the meantime, Cate, can you bring us all up to date?'

‘Andrei was right,' Cate began. ‘Everything we needed to know was on
The Good Times
.'

None of the adults moved a muscle, watching her closely as she spoke. ‘Down at the bottom of the yacht, right at the front is a secret room. It is so secret hardly anyone on the boat even knows about it. The animals you have been looking for are in there, crammed into that room, in the darkness. According to Professor Mantanini's files, they are the end results of two years of experimentation and will shortly be paraded, by Tass Taplinski, in front of the world's media as the pioneers of a great age of rare animal survival.'

No one said a word.

‘Those animals were stolen to order, brought to Tendo and then taken on to St Tropez,' Cate continued, ‘to that lab, where Professor Mantanini was waiting for them. He'd spent months, years, working on God knows how many similar animals, trying to perfect his research and then discarding those
beautiful creatures when he had finished with them.' Her voice trailed off and for a moment she struggled to continue.

‘That was what he was doing in his lab. Those poor animals were brought there all that way from their homeland, to be experimented on.

‘Tass wasn't stealing them,' Cate continued. ‘Not in his mind, anyway. They were essential for vital experimentation. He wanted to clone them, you see. Clone them so that they would no longer be endangered. Well, that was the original plan. And that's what he told Nancy, who believed him. Why shouldn't she? She is madly in love with him and she thought he was doing her a massive favour by putting money into her animal charity. But really it was the other way around. Nancy was invaluable to Tass. Tass would never have been able to walk into reserves like that and gain access to so many animals. But, with her charity work, she could get easy access to the animal reserves and no one would ever suspect her of being involved with stealing the animals.'

‘But how did they get the animals out?' Henri asked.

‘Good old-fashioned bribery,' said Cate. ‘Arthur found the accounts. Tass channelled the money via Nancy's charities through various officials worldwide in charge of animal welfare. Half the money went to him to make sure the animals passed safely through their country and out to the nearest docks. The other half, well it went to an account in the name of Louisa Katerina Sobieski.'