Ark Angel

stepped forward, he heard a screeching and jabbering from the first cage, and to his surprise an orang-utan bounded towards him, crashing its fists against the bars. Then he remembered. Drevin had said he was planning to send an ape into space—some sort of endurance experiment.
    “Meet Arthur,” Kaspar said. There was an ugly smile on his face.
    “Is he any relation?” Alex asked.
    The remark earned him a sharp jab with the gun. But the pain was quickly forgotten. He had looked into the next cage and seen Tamara Knight, still very pale but alive. She smiled at Alex but said nothing while Kaspar opened the door of the cage opposite.
    “In here,” he ordered.

    Alex had no choice. He stepped inside and waited while Kaspar locked the door behind him. He looked around. The cage was about two metres square. The bars were solid steel. The lock was brand new. Alex had no gadgets on him and his hands were still tied. He was going nowhere.
    Kaspar removed the key and slipped it into his pocket. “I’ll leave the three of you together.” He glanced at his watch. It was almost one o’clock in the morning. “You’ll hear the rocket launch,” he said. “And as soon as it’s gone, someone’ll come for you. They’ll take you to the beach and that’ll be the end.” The corner of West Africa twisted in a grimace of pure hatred.
    Alex had seen it all before. The bigger the criminals, the more they resented being beaten by a teenager.
    And Alex had beaten Kaspar twice. “I’m just sorry I won’t be the one holding the gun,” Kaspar went on.
    “But I’ll be thinking of you. I hope it won’t be too quick.”
    He walked away. Alex heard his footsteps on the stairs. The main door opened and closed. Arthur the orang-utan stalked to the back of his cage and sat down.
    “Charming guy,” Tamara muttered.
    “Tamara, are you OK?” Alex had been worried about her, and he was relieved to see her now.
    “I’ve been better,” she admitted. “Was that Magnus Payne just now?”
    Alex nodded.
    “I thought I recognized his voice. What happened to his head?”
    Alex told her. He also told her about his meeting in the hangar and Drevin’s plan to destroy Washington.
    Tamara was kneeling against the door of her cage, listening closely. When he finished talking she let out a deep sigh. It seemed to Alex that even more colour had drained from her face.
    “We thought he was going to cut and run,” she said. “We thought he was finished. We never figured he was going to come up with something like this.”

    “Can he really do it?” Alex asked.
    Tamara thought for a moment, then nodded. “Maybe. I don’t know. He’d have to work everything out right down to the last second. The explosion. All the rest of it. But, yes… I’m afraid he probably can.”
    “We have to contact Joe Byrne.”
    “The guards took my radio transmitter. I imagine they’ll have taken your iPod too.”
    “What about the phones?”
    “There are radio phones on the island but Drevin will have disabled them, just in case. And ordinary mobiles are no good; you can’t get a signal. I don’t know, Alex. Either we’re going to have to stop him ourselves or one of us is going to have to go for help.”
    “Barbados…”
    “It’s only about ten miles from here. Ed Shulsky is waiting at Harrison Point; he’s got plenty of back-up.
    Maybe you could steal a boat.”
    “Why me? Why not both of us?”
    Tamara shook her head. “I’m sorry, Alex. But I’ve got a bullet in my shoulder. I’d only slow you down.”
    Alex lashed out at the cage door with his foot. The bars rattled. It was obvious to him that he wasn’t going anywhere, and he said so.
    “Maybe I can help you,” Tamara said. She was wearing trainers and as Alex watched, she reached down and pulled out the laces. “Catch!” She slipped her uninjured arm between the bars of her cage and threw the laces over to Alex.
    “What—”

    “You’re not the only one with gadgets. There’s tungsten wire inside the laces. Diamond-edged. You can cut through the bars.”
    “That’s neat,” he said, though secretly he wished that the CIA had come up with something less clumsy and perhaps a little more efficient.
    “They removed my exploding earrings,” Tamara added, as if reading his mind.
    Alex took one of the laces and examined the door. The steel bars were strong but they were thin and he would only have to cut through three of them to squeeze through. His job wouldn’t be made