Grk Undercover (28 page)

Charlie Cecconi whisked Tim and Mrs. Malt through passport control and three different security checks, then led them through endless long white corridors until they arrived at the back entrance of a boarding gate. He ushered them onto the plane, wished them luck and said goodbye.

An air steward welcomed Tim and his mother aboard and took them to their seats in the first-class cabin. The doors were closed and the aircraft was prepared for takeoff. Ten minutes later, the plane taxied along the runway and lifted into the air.

They were on their way to Singapore. There, the plane would refuel, before continuing on to Australia. This time tomorrow, they would be in Sydney.

It was early in the morning of a perfect day. Sydney looked beautiful. The sun was shining, the sky was clear and the Australian police were absolutely furious.

They were hungry too, and very tired. But mostly they were furious.

They had stayed in position overnight, hunched behind barricades, clutching their rifles and their bulletproof shields, watching the Opera House and waiting for the Red Jelly Gang to make their next move.

Not long after dawn, the city had come to life around them. They saw the first commuters crossing the harbour on ferries. The windows of nearby office blocks crowded with faces, peering down at the Opera House, watching the scene of the siege.

Now, finally, things were happening.

Helicopters were landing. Hostages were emerging. Criminals too.

But the police had been give strict orders to keep away. A message had come directly from Chief Inspector Somerville. Don’t shoot, he’d said. Don’t even move from your positions. Just stay still and watch and wait for further orders.

Red Jelly’s men emerged from the Opera House, bringing bag after bag of loot and loading them into the four helicopters.

Along with the bags, the Red Jelly Gang led four hostages out of the Opera House, three men and a woman. One of the hostages clambered into each of the helicopters and took a seat opposite an armed member of the gang.

The police watched. And waited. And did nothing.

Marksmen were poised, their eyes pressed to telescopic sights, their fingers curled around triggers. With a few well-placed bullets, they could have picked off every criminal leaving the Opera House.

A thousand police could have rushed forward and arrested every member of the Red Jelly Gang.

But they followed orders and did nothing.

The doors slid shut. The rotors whirred. The helicopters lifted into the air and flew across the harbor.

Grk was confused.

He had been promised breakfast. He thought he had, anyway. The fat man had said, “Come on, Bingo. Come here! Follow me, mate!”

Grk followed him. Of course he did. Where else was he going to find some more of those delicious chocolate-coated hazelnuts? It was the morning now and he hadn’t eaten anything since the night before. He would happily follow anyone who could fill his stomach.

Together, Grk and the fat man trotted down a narrow corridor and through a doorway and across a yard and into a small machine, which smelled of oil.

Grk looked around, but he couldn’t see any sign of breakfast.

Inside the small machine, the fat man sat down and strapped a seat belt around his enormous belly. Grk squatted at his feet, wondering when they were going to serve the hot buttered toast.

There was a terrible noise. Which got louder and louder. And then the whole world suddenly shot into the air. Grk scrambled for safety. He lurched under the seat and jammed himself there, his feet pinned to the floor, waiting for the world to stop moving.

Sitting in the seat directly above him, Red Jelly leaned back and folded his burly arms across his enormous chest.

Red Jelly had been awake all night, but he wasn’t tired. He didn’t even want to go to sleep yet. He was too excited.

Everything was working perfectly. Just as he had planned.

With a wide smile on his face, he looked out of the window, staring down at the city of Sydney, spread out underneath him.

He thought about the four helicopters filled with men and hostages, flying in formation toward the Blue Mountains. He thought about the black bags packed with money and jewels. He thought about the news broadcasts all around the world, showing an image of his face and describing the fabulous crime that he had just committed.

His smile grew even wider.

Down on the ground, Chief Inspector Somerville lifted his binoculars to his eyes and watched the four helicopters cruise through the sky.

He didn’t know where they were going. Even worse, he didn’t have any way to find out.

He had kept his promise. His men hadn’t placed any bugs or trackers on board any of the helicopters. He didn’t want to take any risks with the lives of four very important hostages.

He hoped he hadn’t made a terrible mistake.

The Blue Mountains is a vast area of steep-sided hills and deep, narrow valleys to the west of Sydney. That was where the helicopters disappeared.

They didn’t really disappear, of course. They just disappeared from the screens of anyone who was trying to track them.

One moment, radar operators could see four blips on their screens. The next moment, the four blips had vanished.

Dodging radar isn’t complicated. You just have to fly very close to the ground. As the four choppers wove through the valleys of the Blue Mountains, that was exactly what they did.

When they flew into the outback, the four pilots stayed at the same height. They skimmed along, only a meter or two above the ground, dodging trees, slaloming round bushes, hugging the earth.

Up ahead, there was a vast emptiness.

Australia is the sixth largest country on the planet.

(Just in case you’re wondering, the five bigger countries are Russia, Canada, China, the United States and Brazil, in that order.)

In this enormous country there aren’t actually very many people—only twenty million of them, in fact. That’s not much more than the population of Los Angeles or Tokyo.

Almost all these twenty million Australians live in a handful of big cities: Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide, Darwin and Perth.

If you look at a map, you’ll notice that all six of those cities are on the coast. Most Australians live within spitting distance of the sea.

If you go inland, you’ll find a few roads, a few lizards, a lot of sheep. And not much else.

It’s a very good place to hide.

That night, representatives of the Bank of Australia met representatives of the mayor’s office, the Corrigan Media Group and the Anglo-Australian Committee for International Business Cooperation. They discussed the best way to help Rebecca Ward, Jimmy Hu, Robert Corrigan and Sir Tristram Tinderbiscuit. After a long conversation, they decided to offer a reward to be given in exchange for any information leading to the capture of Red Jelly. Between them, they donated a million Australian dollars.

Posters were printed. Emails were sent out. News bulletins spread the word. All over Australia—and all around the world—people saw the same message:

The poster featured two photographs of Red Jelly.

In the first, he was staring directly into the camera, his red face splintered by a broad smile. He looked proud, confident and very happy. Come and get me, he seemed to be saying. Catch me if you can.

In the second, taken only a day earlier, he was standing on the stage of the Sydney Opera House. The picture showed his enormous body, his unmistakable bulk, his bulging belly and his thick thighs straining to break through his black clothes.

Standing at his feet, looking up at his face, there was a small white dog.

At first, the citizens of Sydney were the only people looking for Red Jelly and his little white dog. They wanted to find the fat man and the dog who had besieged their opera house.

But news spread fast. Messages flashed across the country and around the world. A million dollars is a lot of money. Minute by minute, hour by hour, more and more people joined the search.

Soon, the inhabitants of Adelaide and Canberra were hunting for Red Jelly and his little white dog. Then the citizens of Perth and Brisbane joined in. And so did everyone else in Australia. Wherever they lived, they searched their neighborhood for an enormous red-faced man and a little white dog, hoping to catch a crook and earn a reward of one million dollars.

But where was the Red Jelly Gang? Where had they flown in those four helicopters?

North, south, east, west?

Up to Darwin? Down to Melbourne?

Did they try to reach the coast and catch a boat and head for another country where they wouldn’t be so famous?

Did they have a plane stored somewhere, waiting to take them to the other side of the world?

Or did they go deeper and deeper into the heart of the vast scrubby outback, the empty heart of Australia, where you could hide for years, never meeting another human being?

At twenty-past three on Tuesday afternoon, a man named William Priest rang the police and said, “I’ve found him.”

“Found who?” asked the operator.

“That crook’s dog! I’ve found him! Do I get a million dollars now?”

“You will, sir. If he’s the right dog and leads us to Red Jelly. Where exactly did you see him?”

“He’s tied up outside the post office.”

“Which post office?”

“In Katoomba, of course.”

“You’re in Katoomba now, are you?”

“Where else would I be? I’m Katoomba through and through. Born here, bred here, probably die here too. Anyway, what are you going to do about this dog? You’re going to look him up, aren’t you?”

“We’ll send someone to check it.”

“You’d better be quick, sweetheart. What if Red Jelly comes back? I don’t want to tackle him myself. I’m not so fit as I used to be.”

“Have you actually seen Red Jelly in Katoomba?”

“No, no, but he must be here, right? If his dog is.”

A police unit was dispatched immediately. Sirens wailing, the car roared through the streets of Katoomba and screeched to
a halt outside the post office. Two policemen leaped out, guns drawn, and found an old lady, named Marjorie Clark, untying her dog, Bonzer. She had left him outside the post office while she went to post a parcel to her sister in Hobart. The police checked Bonzer against a photograph of Grk and could see immediately that the two dogs were quite different. Bonzer was twice the size of Grk and mostly brown.

The police released Marjorie Clark and Bonzer, then had some stern words with William Priest on the subject of wasting police time.

Over the following few hours, more Grk-alikes were reported all around Australia. Six were sighted in Sydney. Another four were found in Melbourne. Yet more were spotted in Cannonvale, Mooloolaba, Port Augusta, Porongurup, Moreton Bay and the Yarrangobilly Caves. Someone even called the police from Kuala Lumpur, four thousand miles away from Sydney, claiming to have seen Grk riding in a taxi.

The police couldn’t afford to ignore any of these reports; they didn’t want to risk missing Red Jelly. Officers were dispatched to every location, ready to do battle with twenty heavily armed criminals, their red-faced boss and his pet dog.

Some of the animals did actually look quite like Grk. Others bore no resemblance to him. But not one of them was Grk himself.

A little after ten o’clock on Wednesday morning, several hundred newly arrived passengers at Kingsford Smith Airport were waiting in a very long line, lining up to show their documents at passport control.

An official in a dark suit walked along the line, looking at the faces of every passenger. He stopped beside two people near the very back of the line, a woman and a boy.

“Mrs. Melanie Malt?” he said. “And Tim?”

“That’s us,” said Mrs. Malt.

“Welcome to Australia. Will you come with me, please?”

“Why?” said Mrs. Malt. “Who are you?”

“I work for the police. You’re our guest in Australia, so we’re going to take you straight to the front of the line.”

Tim had a question. “Have you got Grk?”

“Not yet, no. The Red Jelly Gang made a getaway in four helicopters, and they took Grk with them.”

“Where have they gone?”

“I can’t give you that information right now,” said the official. “When you see Chief Inspector Somerville this afternoon, he’ll be able to tell you everything about the investigation.”

“This afternoon?” said Tim. “Why do we have to wait till this afternoon?”

“The chief inspector has a very busy schedule. Now, will you follow me please? Let’s get you into the country.”

The official led Tim and Mrs. Malt to the front of the line, taking them past the curious stares and resentful glares of the other passengers, who wondered, once again, what was so special about those two. Back in London, they had arrived late for the flight, which was delayed especially for them. They sat in first class. And now they had been met by an official in a dark suit and taken to the front of the line at passport control. Who were they? A teenage pop star and his mum? Minor members of the royal family? Or just billionaires who could get whatever they wanted with a snap of their fingers?

I’m no one special, Tim wanted to say. And I’m sorry about the line jumping. I’d be happy to wait like everyone else.

But he kept quiet and, following his mum’s example, showed his passport to an officer in a blue uniform. The officer glanced at the passport and said, “Welcome to Australia, Mr. Malt.”

“Thanks very much,” said Tim, suddenly feeling rather grown-up. He didn’t often get called Mr. Malt.

“This way, please,” said the official in the dark suit. He led Tim and Mrs. Malt down a long white corridor to the luggage carousels. “Now, I know you’ve had a very long flight, but I hope you’re ready for a quick chat with the press. I don’t know how they’ve done it, but they’ve somehow found out about your arrival.”