Mort Read online

  And then she’d put that stick thing in his mouth. Although sweet-tasting, it clearly contained an evil potion which would activate if he harmed her.

  Oh yes, the witch was clever, there was no doubt about that.

  Khan remained quiet and drank his tea.

  When he’d finished, Trish pointed in the direction of Festering Hall.

  ‘Let’s see if we can find these DeVere children, shall we?’ she said briskly.

  At the mention of Mort, Khan’s ears pricked up and he got to his feet.

  In all the excitement he’d almost forgotten about what he was going to do to Mort once he got his hands on him.

  The Helix touched down on the North Tower landing pad situated directly above Mort’s bedroom. Before the gyro-spiral had stopped moving, Mort leapt out and raced for the stairs. With a collarless Khan heading towards Festering, and the clock ticking on the eclipse, time – something Mort usually had far too much of – had become suddenly very precious.

  Twenty seconds later he was at his desk.

  He pressed a switch on the arm of his chair. A section of the wall in front of him slid back to reveal a bank of high-definition computer monitors. A sleek keyboard and tracking lever emerged from a recess in the desk and Mort booted up the nerve centre of Festering Hall.

  He placed a finger on the tracking lever and several surveillance cameras swung round to pick out Khan and the visitors when they came within range. Mort estimated they’d be arriving onscreen within a few minutes.

  While he waited, he sent a text to Leonardo to say he might be a little late back at the lab but under no circumstances should he alter the countdown. It was today or bust.

  He clicked the send key and switched his attention back to the screens as his eye caught a movement.

  There.

  They were coming in from the west under the thick cover of the forest. Khan had taken them to the closest point of the main building where they could enter without crossing open ground. Festering Hall had nothing taller than grass within fifty metres – an ancient, but still very effective security measure.

  ‘Sneaky,’ said Mort. He zoomed through the leaves and branches on the small group. ‘But not sneaky enough.’

  Mort leaned back and rested his fingertips on his chin, keen to see what Khan’s next move would be.

  Khan emerged alone from the trees. Mort’s fingers strayed to the keys controlling the roof-mounted laser cannons. One quick blast and Khan would be vaporised.

  Mort held his finger above the key and Khan disappeared.

  One second he’d been there, the next he wasn’t. Mort leaned forward, blinking at the screen. It was impossible, and yet there it was: the man had gone.

  Mort’s fingers danced across his computer command keys and a detailed digital schematic plan of Festering popped onto the largest screen. He flicked through layer after layer until he spotted something.

  There! It had to be.

  Khan was in one of the vents leading from the cavernous basement area below the building. A complex air filtration system like Festering Hall needed somewhere for the recycled air to go. The tubes were quite large enough for the three of them to fit into and led directly into the warren of ventilation pipes and ducting that snaked through Festering like veins through a body.

  Mort frowned. Once they got into the ventilation system they could go anywhere. Tracking them would become almost impossible.

  Khan came back out of the ventilation shaft and signalled the others to follow.

  Enough was enough, decided Mort. Khan was, after all, simply a copy. Almost a toy, really. Completely replaceable. And it would send a clear message to the visitors: stay out.

  Mort flipped the safety on the laser cannon and zoned in on the back of Khan’s head.

  ‘Sorry, hairball,’ he said and pressed the trigger.

  From its position eighty-five metres away, high on one of Festering Hall’s towers, the laser cannon pulsed with a single beam of pure deadly white energy. It arrived at the target a nanosecond after Mort pressed the trigger. There was a blinding flash and then the laser cannon itself exploded. On Mort’s screen flashed a message: WEAPON OUT.

  Mort stared at the screen in disbelief.

  The lasers were so accurate they could slice an apple at eight hundred metres (Mort had tested them only a year ago while Khan had held the fruit in his quivering fingers). And now, somehow, this mob were not only still alive, they had taken out one of his most deadly weapons.

  Mort glanced back at the screen.

  Trish Molyneux was looking at an object in her hand and then back up at the smoke rising from the cannon.

  Mort almost choked. The woman had anti-laser technology! As she, Khan and Nigel sprinted into the ventilation shaft, Mort snapped out his mobile and dialled Leonardo once more.

  This was getting seriously out of hand.

  ‘There’s a hold up,’ said Leonardo da Vinci. He snapped the mobile shut and looked at the other two men. ‘Mortimer has a problem. Can’t be here until he gets it fixed.’

  ‘Well I guess that’s that,’ said Oppenheimer. He turned towards the lab window, but not before H.G. noticed his lips twitch with the faint hint of a smile.

  ‘You know, if I was a suspicious person,’ said H.G., ‘I’d say that you want Retro to fail.’

  Oppenheimer turned back to face the other two men and shook his head. ‘Of course not.’ He paused. ‘But if Mortimer isn’t here, and with the eclipse starting soon …’ Oppenheimer let the sentence hang in the air.

  Da Vinci kicked a wastepaper basket, sending it spinning across the laboratory floor and causing Nemesis the cat to leap to the safety of a nearby metal shelf. ‘No!’ he yelled. ‘We carry on as planned!’

  ‘What about the eclipse?’ said Oppenheimer. ‘That’s not going to wait. Not to mention we don’t have a pilot! We could be meddling in things we don’t understand! Oh we are become death, destroyer of w–’

  ‘Here we go again,’ said H.G. He jabbed Oppenheimer in the chest with a finger. ‘Now listen, old chap, we’ve just about had enough of your “destroyer of worlds” nonsense. Pull yourself together, man!’ H.G. pointed at Retro. ‘That is not going to destroy anything, got it?’

  ‘What about the flux capacitor?’ said Oppenheimer. ‘We have no way of knowing what that will do! We’re not even sure what it’s capable of!’

  Da Vinci put up a hand. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘that’s not quite true. I know exactly what will happen with the flux capacitor.’

  H.G. and Oppenheimer waited.

  Da Vinci cut the air with the palms of his hand. ‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing.’

  ‘How can you know that?’ said Oppenheimer. ‘We haven’t even tested it!’

  H.G. peered over his glasses at da Vinci. ‘Yes, Leo, how can you know that? I mean, I’m sure you’re absolutely right and all that, but how do you know for sure?’

  Da Vinci blushed behind his white beard.

  ‘Because I bought it on eBay.’ H.G. blinked. ‘eBay?’

  Da Vinci shrugged. ‘It’s a prop. Made of plastic. From the Back to the Future movie.’

  H.G. walked towards Retro and placed a hand against its smooth steel sides.

  ‘You mean to tell me that the main part of this machine is nothing more than a … a toy?’

  ‘Si,’ said da Vinci. ‘Except it’s not an important part.’ He picked up a complicated-looking piece of machinery from a workbench and held it up. ‘I told Mort we needed a flux capacitor for Retro to keep him busy while I fixed the main thrusters.’

  ‘Why?’ said H.G.

  ‘To speed the boy up!’ Da Vinci waggled a finger at the window. ‘The eclipse is almost here and Mortimer goes too slow!’

  ‘So the machine’s ready?’ Oppenheimer looked like he was going to be sick.

  Da Vinci nodded. ‘She is tip-top ready.’ He held out a hand and began counting on his fingers. ‘We have thrusters. We have eclipse. We have fuel.’

  He broke
off and folded his arms, his eyes dark. ‘We just need a pilot.’

  ‘Come,’ said Khan as he came back out of the ventilation shaft. ‘Follow!’

  Nigel looked at Trish. She had a determined look on her face.

  ‘Well?’ said Nigel. ‘What do you think? It might be a trap.’

  ‘Don’t be so silly,’ said Trish. ‘We have business at Festering Hall.’

  Nigel shrugged and scampered across to the shaft, Trish walking briskly behind him. At the entrance she stopped and took out a small mirror and lipstick.

  ‘Vot are you doings, voman?’ snapped Khan. ‘Hurry!’ Then he remembered Trish had supernatural powers. ‘Please.’ The word felt funny in his mouth.

  Trish lifted the mirror to her face and applied lipstick carefully. ‘One must always look professional,’ she said.

  ‘Vot are you doings?’ repeated Khan, pointing to the mirror. He had never seen a woman applying make-up. Trish turned the mirror and held it out for him to look at. Khan bent forward.

  As he did so, a blinding flash of light zipped past his head, hit the mirror and bounced straight back from where it came. Behind them on the walls the cannon exploded.

  ‘Goodness me!’ said Trish. ‘What on earth was that?!’

  ‘They’re shooting at us!’ yelled Nigel as Khan hauled them into the protection of the ventilation shaft. ‘Your mirror must have reflected whatever it was back at them!’

  ‘Iss lasers,’ said Kahn, his voice quiet. He looked respectfully at the singed mirror in Trish’s hand. There really was no limit to this witch’s power.

  ‘Lasers? You mean they’re shooting at us?’ asked Trish.

  Khan nodded his great hairy head. Look at the witch pretending she doesn’t know!

  ‘Well!’ exclaimed Trish Molyneux. ‘That is just not on. I will certainly be including this in my report! Laser cannons! Sabre-toothed tigers! Mr Skelly would not approve!’

  A crow circled Smiler’s body and with a cackle, settled on the animal’s flank. To the bird’s delight, the creature was still warm but clearly dead. Perfect. The crow flapped towards Smiler’s head, settled on the ground next to Smiler’s left eye and drew back for the first peck.

  A split second before the crow’s sharp beak made contact, Smiler snapped open his jaws and swallowed the bird whole. It was still squawking as it disappeared down Smiler’s gullet.

  Black feathers fluttering from his mouth, the great beast staggered to his feet, Khan’s spear jutting out at an unnatural angle. Smiler padded to a nearby tree and, using all his weight, broke the spear against the trunk. A jolt of almost unbearable pain shot through the big cat’s body but it had done the trick. Only a few centimetres of spear now remained. Smiler narrowed his eyes into slits of hatred, let out a long rumbling growl, and limped in the direction taken by Khan, Trish and Nigel.

  Mort looked out of a window. Was it his imagination or could he already detect a darkening of the sky?

  The eclipse was happening earlier than he’d expected. If Retro was going to launch it was now or never. The planetary alignment was crucial to the machine being able to launch, and eighty-two years was an unacceptable wait for another try.

  Mort came to a decision.

  He would head back to the lab right away. He could bunker down in there, test Retro as planned and sort out this mess afterwards – if there was an afterwards. If Oppy’s opinion was right, Retro may be a death trap. Still, reflected Mort, Agnetha could look after herself if it all ended badly, he was sure of that.

  With his plan in place, Mort took the pole to the ground floor and hopped into his buggy.

  He flipped out his mobile and called Sir David.

  Sir David was bent over his own tracking screen, trying to trace Smiler, when Mort’s call came in. ‘I’m glad you called, Master DeVere,’ said Sir David. ‘I was beginning to worry about Smiler. It is autumn and the great beasts of the plains must find food if they are to survive the winter. A solo sabre-tooth such as smilodon fatalis requires many kilos of meat on a daily basis and will now be hungry. Stalking the heathlands like …’

  ‘Yes, yes, Sir David,’ said Mort, cutting across the great naturalist. ‘There’s no need to worry about Smiler. He’s dead. I saw it myself. Can you locate his body and get rid of it? I don’t want it hanging around in case Ma and Pa turn up.’

  ‘Dead?’ questioned Sir David, but Mort had hung up.

  Puzzled, Sir David turned back to his monitor on which he’d been tracking Smiler for the past ten minutes. Either Mortimer DeVere had been mistaken, or someone else was now wearing Smiler’s tracking collar.

  And that collar was heading straight for Festering via the ballroom ventilation shaft.

  Sir David stood up and straightened his safari suit. He reached for his tranquiliser gun, the big one. Sir David had, during his long and glittering TV career, swum with sharks on Ningaloo, faced down charging gorillas in Rwanda and wrestled anacondas in the Amazon, all armed with nothing more than a microphone. But with Smiler he wasn’t taking any chances. He checked the big gun was fully loaded and slid a pair of night-vision goggles onto his head. The approaching eclipse was slowly turning the already gloomy island dark.

  The last thing Sir David wanted was to be facing an injured sabre-toothed tiger in complete blackness.

  Khan took out a powerful maglite torch from somewhere inside his tunic and pointed it down the shaft. ‘Come,’ he growled, moving into the tunnel. Behind him, Trish and Nigel exchanged glances before following.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Trish. ‘We are on a timetable, Mr …?’

  ‘Khan,’ said Khan.

  ‘Oh, like the Mongolian,’ said Trish.

  Khan didn’t reply. A remark the cowardly assistant had said was turning over and over in his thoughts. Nigel had said something about a mirror reflecting the laser back. It was possible, Khan thought, that her ‘magic’ was simply good fortune. Unlikely but possible.

  And now he came to think about it, the same could be applied to the death of the sabre-tooth. What if Khan’s spear had accidentally hit the animal? The witch had said Khan was ‘her hero’. Would she have said that if she had planned on Khan’s spear killing the tiger? And, if she was a witch, why did she need Khan’s spear to kill the tiger? Couldn’t she just have cast a spell on the beast?

  It made sense.

  Khan was on his way to Mort’s not-so-secret laboratory. That was the most likely place the boy would be. And if the woman wasn’t a witch, then these two were a dead weight.

  It would have been simple to kill them both but Khan was feeling generous. The woman had freed him from his collar, after all. For that, and that alone, he was going to spare their lives.

  Two minutes later he came to an abrupt halt outside an open hatchway and motioned Trish and Nigel through into the ballroom. Khan walked across the vast floor and opened a small door set into the opposite wall, revealing a store cupboard crammed with brushes and various cleaning items.

  ‘Are the children in here?’ asked Trish. ‘We do have a ferry to catch.’

  ‘In. Now,’ said Khan, producing a length of rope from somewhere inside his tunic. He pushed Trish and Nigel inside. ‘Sit on floor and I tie you up.’

  ‘Tie us up? Why are you going to tie us up?’ asked Trish. ‘I thought you were taking us to the children.’

  Khan shook his head. ‘Neg!’ He pointed to the floor. ‘I leave you here. My gift. You should be grateful.’

  ‘Grateful?’ said Trish, hotly.

  ‘Grateful I not kill you. Or is it you prefer to be killed?’

  ‘We should do what he says,’ said Nigel, sitting down and holding out his hands. Khan pushed Trish to the floor and trussed the two of them up, back to back.

  Trish opened her mouth to say something else and Khan pushed a foul-smelling rag into it. Next he turned to Nigel and did the same to him.

  Then, without another word, Khan closed the door of the store cupboard and left.

  Five minutes a
fter leaving his headquarters, and with the light outside fading fast, a worried Sir David was about twenty metres from the ballroom when the door began to open. A grimy figure emerged.

  Sir David just had time to dart behind a thick curtain hanging by the side of a long window before Khan stepped from the ballroom and began walking in his direction. With a jolt, Sir David noticed that Khan was no longer wearing his shock collar.

  Sir David put his back to the wall and waited. He was armed, but a collarless Khan was something to be avoided.

  Khan passed by and disappeared round a corner.

  Sir David waited another twenty seconds before checking the hallway and moving quickly to the ballroom. Once there, he put his ear against the door.

  Not a sound.

  The naturalist waited patiently. From Alaska to Zimbabwe, he had found that waiting often brought results. Several minutes ticked by.

  And then, from inside the ballroom, a noise. Just a faint rustling sound, no more.

  Sir David brought the heavy-duty tranquiliser gun up to shoulder height and silently placed the muzzle against the door. He pushed it slowly open and put his head around the frame, the lapels on his safari suit quivering with nervous tension.

  At one end of the long room a curtain moved lazily in the breeze.

  Sir David moved into the ballroom and advanced towards the curtain. As he drew closer he could see that what was causing it to move was a gentle breeze blowing from an open ventilation hatch, the door of which swung gently on its hinges.

  It didn’t take a genius to realise that this was where Khan had come in.

  The big question was how far behind Khan was Smiler?

  Sir David thumbed the safety off the gun and approached the ventilation shaft. At the entrance he clicked the switch on his LED head torch and inched inside.

  On the floor were fresh prints, clear in the dusty surface. Sir David, an expert tracker, could read them as easily as a book.