Grk Undercover (3 page)

To his disappointment, they hadn’t grabbed their coats or put on their shoes. Instead, they had gone into the sitting room and sat down at the computer.

Grk trotted after them, wondering what they were doing. What could possibly be more important than going for a walk?

Tim and Natascha pulled up two chairs and sat at the desk.

Tim switched on the computer, opened the browser and searched for “Colonel Zinfandel.” He clicked on a link for news stories. The page showed the headlines from several news sites. Tim clicked on the most recent. The story had been updated within the past two hours and said that Colonel Zinfandel was currently visiting Paris.

“That was easy,” said Tim, feeling very pleased with himself. “Colonel Zinfandel is in Paris. So Max must be there too.” He pushed back his chair and stood up. “Shall we go and find him?”

“Paris is a big place,” said Natascha, staring at the screen and reading the news story. “We can’t just go there and hope we bump into Colonel Zinfandel. We’d have to know where to look.”

“No problem,” said Tim. He sat down again. “Let’s find him.”

He went back to the previous page and followed the other links to different news stories, but none of them revealed the exact location of Colonel Zinfandel. They simply said he was visiting Paris.

“I’ve got an idea,” said Natascha. She took over the keyboard and plugged three terms into a search engine: “Stanislavia ambassador France.” She pressed Return and immediately found what she was
looking for: the site of the Stanislavian Embassy in Paris. She started reading through the pages, searching for information.

Tim had no idea what she was reading. The site was written in a mixture of French and Stanislavian, and he couldn’t understand either.

He had been to Stanislavia only once. During that brief trip, he met the president, flew a helicopter and escaped from a high-security prison, but didn’t learn more than a couple of words of the language.

He had spent hours learning French at school, so he knew a few more words of that language. He could remember the meaning of
pomme, pain
and
fromage
, for instance. But the Stanislavian Embassy didn’t have anything to say about apples, bread or cheese. So he simply stared at the pictures on the screen and waited for Natascha to translate whatever she had discovered.

She didn’t take long. “There,” she said triumphantly, pointing at the screen. “Found it!”

“Found what?” said Tim.

“Colonel Zinfandel’s schedule for the day.” Natascha leaned forward and peered at the small letters on the screen.

Tim stared at the screen too. He couldn’t read what was written there, but he looked at the photograph of Colonel Zinfandel and remembered the day that the two of them had met.

Colonel Zinfandel was a handsome man with black hair, a straight nose and lean cheekbones. Looking at him, you wouldn’t have thought that he was a cruel dictator who had been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of his citizens and the misery of millions more.

“He’s just going to Paris for the day,” said Natascha. “He’s arriving in the morning. In fact, he must be there already. He’ll go straight from the airport to the Quai d’Orsay—whatever that might be—where he is going to meet the French Minister of Foreign Affairs. Then he’s going to the Eiffel Tower, where he’s having lunch at the Jules Verne restaurant with a group of French business leaders. He’ll visit the Paris arms fair in the afternoon and have more meetings with more business leaders. Then he’s flying back to Stanislavia tonight.” She sighed. “That’s not much use, is it?”

“Wait a minute,” said Tim. “What did you say? Where’s he having lunch?”

“In the Eiffel Tower. I just told you that.”

“But where in the Eiffel Tower?”

Natascha looked at the screen and read what was written there. “The Jules Verne restaurant.” Her eyes widened. “Where’s that piece of paper?”

Tim dug into his pocket and pulled out the paper. He unfolded it and spread it out on the desk. He and Natascha stared at the number and the three words that Max had written there:

They looked at one another, suddenly excited by what they had discovered.

“That’s it,” said Natascha. “Jules Verne means the Jules Verne restaurant.”

“And ‘one’ must mean one o’clock,” added Tim. “Max must have found out that Colonel Zinfandel is arriving at the Jules Verne restaurant at one o’clock.”

They both grinned. Finally, they were on the right track. They knew where Max was going. And they knew when he wanted to get there. Now they just had to arrive first.

Natascha said, “Can we get to Paris before one o’clock?”

Tim glanced at the clock in the corner of the computer screen. “It depends on the trains. I don’t know how long they take or when they leave. Let me look.”

Natascha moved aside, letting Tim take control of the keyboard. He went to the Eurostar website and searched for the times of trains running between London and Paris.

“There’s a train leaving in half an hour,” said Tim. “But we’d never get that one.”

“Why not?” Natascha pushed back her chair and jumped to her feet. “We have to get there as quickly as possible. Come on, let’s go!”

“It’s just not physically possible,” said Tim. “We’re too far from St. Pancras. We’d have to travel across half of London. We couldn’t get there in half an hour.”

“When’s the next train?”

“It leaves in …” Tim stared at the timetable on the screen. “An hour and a half.”

“Could we catch that one?”

“We’d have to buy a ticket,” said Tim. “And get from here to St. Pancras. But if we’re quick, we might just make it.”

“What are we waiting for?”

Some people don’t eat breakfast.

They jump out of bed, grab their clothes and plunge into the day on an empty belly.

Tim wasn’t one of those people.

If he didn’t eat breakfast, his stomach would start moaning and groaning by the middle of the morning, complaining to everyone within earshot. His arms would lose their strength, his legs would refuse to move and his brain would turn to jelly.

If he was going to spend the morning traveling to Paris, then searching for Max and Colonel Zinfandel, he had to have breakfast.

He sprinted downstairs to the kitchen, grabbed a bowl and a spoon, and poured himself some cereal. He sloshed some milk into the bowl, sat down at the table and ate fast. He knew he would probably get indigestion, but he was sure that a sore stomach is better than an empty stomach.

He ate the last mouthful of cereal, dumped his bowl in the sink and sprinted upstairs to his parents’ bedroom.

He was hunting for his dad’s spare credit card. He knew where it was kept. (In the top drawer of his dad’s bedside table.) He also knew
how angry his dad was going to be. (Very.) But he didn’t have time to worry about anger, apologies or punishment now. Getting to Paris was the only thing that mattered.

He opened the top drawer of his dad’s bedside table. Just as he had hoped, the credit card was lying among a jumble of receipts and coins. Tim plucked it out and shut the drawer again.

He hurried downstairs, sat at the computer, went to the Eurostar site and booked two tickets from London to Paris, leaving later that morning. The website told him to collect the tickets from St. Pancras Station and reminded him to take the credit card that he had used to book the tickets.

He tucked the credit card into his pocket. Now he just needed three passports. And he was ready to go.

Mrs. Malt kept useful documents in the tall filing cabinet beside the computer. Tim opened the top drawer and rifled through the files until he found one marked TRAVEL. He pulled it out.

Inside the file, he found several white envelopes. Mrs. Malt had written on each of them in neat black capital letters. One said INSURANCE. Another said MONEY. And a third said PASSPORTS.

Tim looked inside the envelope that said MONEY. When Mr. and Mrs. Malt came home from their holidays or business trips, they dropped any spare change into this envelope. Tim sorted through the dollars, rupees and yen, searching for euros. He found a few and pocketed them, then closed the envelope and opened the one marked PASSPORTS.

There were five passports inside—and there should have been six. One was missing. Max must have come here earlier this morning and taken his.

Tim grabbed three passports—his, Natascha’s and Grk’s—then put the file back in the cabinet and went to find the others.

While Tim was eating breakfast and buying tickets, Natascha had packed a backpack with everything that they could possibly need for a trip to Paris.

This is what she put in her backpack:

She stuffed everything inside the backpack. It was extremely heavy. She thought about taking a few things out, lightening the load, then decided not to. You never know what you might need on a trip to Paris.

Now, Natascha was standing by the front door, holding her backpack in one hand and Grk’s leash in the other, wondering what had happened to Tim.

Grk was standing at her feet with his tail wagging quickly from side to side. He didn’t know where they were going and he didn’t care.
He was just looking forward to getting out of the house and smelling the new day.

Natascha glanced at her watch. She was getting impatient. She had been waiting for a long time. When she finally saw Tim, she said, “What’s taken you so long?”

“I’ve been doing stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Important stuff. I’ve been buying tickets and getting passports and finding money and having breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” Natascha could hardly believe what she was hearing. “We don’t have time for breakfast! Don’t you realize we’re in a hurry?”

“I’m almost ready now.”

“Almost?” Natascha glanced at her watch again. “We’re going to be late. Come on, let’s go. We have to leave this minute. Or we’re going to miss our train.”

“I’ve just got one more thing to do,” said Tim. He turned round and ran toward the kitchen.

Natascha shouted after him, “What are you doing? Hey! Tim! Come back! We have to go!”

Tim took no notice. There was one final thing that he had to do and he wasn’t going to leave the house before he’d done it.

There was a shopping list stuck to the fridge. Tim took it off and turned it over. The back was blank. He placed it on the kitchen table and scrawled a quick note. This is what he wrote:

He put the note in the middle of the kitchen table where it couldn’t be missed. When his parents came home from work that night, they would see it immediately.

Tim could imagine exactly what would happen next. His mum would cry. His dad would panic. They would be terrified that something terrible had happened to their son.

Tim didn’t like the thought of his parents panicking. He wondered how he could make things easier for them.

He had an idea. He could add a few more sentences to his note, explaining exactly why he was planning to go to Paris and what he was intending to do when he got there. He chewed the end of the pen and tried to think of the right words to say.

But before a single word could take shape in his mind, he heard Natascha’s voice, shouting at him down the stairs. “Tim! We’re late! We’re going to miss the train! What are you doing down there?”

Tim glanced at the clock on the wall and realized she was right. Unless they left now, they would never get to Paris. He dropped the pen on the table and ran up the stairs.

The front door was open. Natascha was pacing impatiently up and down the street, glancing at her watch and worrying about the time. As soon as she saw Tim, she said, “What have you been doing? Don’t you care about finding Max?”

“Of course I do,” said Tim. “Sorry I took so long. Sorry I wasn’t ready quicker. Sorry I didn’t answer you when you shouted at me. Sorry I had breakfast.”

“Stop apologizing so much,” said Natascha. “You’re wasting time and we don’t have time to waste. Let’s just go to Paris!”

She turned round and hurried along the street. Grk trotted by her side with his nose in the air, sniffing all the fascinating smells that the street had to offer.

Tim closed the front door. As the lock shut with a loud click, he remembered he hadn’t brought a key. If they missed their train, they wouldn’t be able to get back into the house. They would have to wander the streets till his parents got home from work.

There was no time to worry about that now. Natascha was already halfway down the street. If he didn’t start moving now, she’d go to Paris alone and he would be left in London. He ran after her.

They turned left, then right, and came to the main road.

A bus was approaching the bus stop.

“Run!” shouted Natascha. “If we miss this, we’ll have to wait hours for the next one!”

They sped down the street. Grk darted ahead of Tim and Natascha, his tail wagging and his nose in the air. For the first time that day, he was having fun.