The Great Escape (10 page)

‘OK, coast’s clear,’ she said, and opened the bag.

Max jumped free and looked around.

‘Didn’t you think we should be somewhere a bit more hidden?’ He was rather grumpy after the long, dark, uncomfortable journey.

‘Nope. If they can’t see us, we might not be able to see them. Here, we can see a mile or more in every direction. No one’s going to sneak up on us.’

Max thought again what an excellent spy Millie would make.

‘Ready?’ she asked.

He cleared his throat dramatically.

‘Ready. What’s the name again?’

‘My dad’s? Alan,’ she said.

‘Not
his
name,
my
name,’ said the cat patiently.

‘Oh, yeah. Derek.’ Millie smacked her fist onto her forehead – this lack of sleep was making her a bit dense. She pulled her phone out of her pocket, dialled 141, and then her
home number. It rang out twice, three times, and then her dad picked up.

‘Hello?’ She held it quickly to Max’s ear.

‘Hello?’ said Max. ‘Is that Alan Raven?’

‘Speaking,’ said her dad.

‘This is Derek, Sarah’s dad,’ continued Max.

‘Oh, hello.’

‘I was calling to see if Millie can come over on Wednesday night.’

‘Sure, of course she can. I just wanted to talk to you to check it was OK,’ said Alan.

‘We’re looking forward to having her,’ said Max, pulling a face at Millie to say this acting natural thing was not coming easily. Millie smirked back.

‘Well, we’d love to have Sarah round some time, too.’ Millie’s dad was polite to a fault.

‘She’d love that. Ah, is that the doorbell?’

Millie began shaking with silent laughter, her nervousness about this stage of the plan making her giggly.

‘Excuse me,’ Max said, with as much dignity as he could muster, ‘I’m afraid there’s someone at my door.’

‘Oh, sure,’ said Millie’s dad. ‘Well, nice to talk to you. Bye.’

‘Bye,’ said Max, and Millie pressed the ‘End Call’ button before collapsing into laughter.

‘Was that the best you could come up with? “There’s someone at the door”?’ She was prostrate on the ground.

‘It was difficult,’ Max said, now sounding injured. ‘I don’t like lying to your dad – I like him.’

‘You haven’t even met him.’

‘I’ve
heard
him. That’s the same thing.’

‘OK, international super spy, it’s the same thing.’

‘There’s no need to be quite so rude.’

‘Sorry.’ Millie was chastened by his hurt face. ‘I’m not really laughing because it’s funny. I think I’m slightly hysterical because that’s the first
part of our plan in place.’

‘It is, isn’t it?’ said Max.

Millie nodded. Max rubbed his head hard against her leg. She scritched his ears. They had begun.

On the other side of the wood, Arthur Shepard sat at his desk, wondering. He had spoken to the window cleaner, his colleague, and his daughter, and all had professed to know
nothing. He didn’t know which man had been lying to him, but he was sure one of them had. It obviously wasn’t the girl – Mickey and Ray had checked her bedroom and her computer
out the day before, and she was just a child. But someone had been trying to get information from the protesters –
his
protesters. The messages had come through to him, of course, and
he had approved the reply, telling whichever thieving crook it was who had seen his cat, maybe even stolen his cat, to sit tight and wait for further information. Which would come in a few weeks,
when everything was finished. Still, whoever it was had been looking him up on the internet – he had set up an expensive alarm system some months ago, which alerted him when anyone tried to
find out anything about him through electoral registers and the like. And the alarm had been triggered the previous day. He tracked down the service provider and the telephone number and cursed
with rage when it led him only to the local library. It must have been one of the window cleaners – no one else could know anything, he had been too careful. But whoever it was was being
cautious, covering their tracks. And yet, there had been no demand for money, no tabloids ringing up with their exposé, nothing. He couldn’t work it out. If one of them knew what was
going on – worse, if one of them had the damned cat as evidence – why weren’t they selling what they knew, either to him or to the press?

He had spent twenty-four hours weighing up the pros and cons of his decision, and he had come to a conclusion. The cats would be transferred to another lab, as soon as possible. Next week at the
latest. He would need to make some calls.

Millie and Max were already fidgeting with nerves by Wednesday morning. Millie had woken up every hour of every night, and grey circles smudged under her eyes. Max liked to
think he was hiding it a little better, but he too looked nervous and edgy. They had arranged to meet the protesters at eleven o’clock that evening. At first, Millie had been worried that it
would be too early, and maybe the security guards would be less enthusiastic later in the night. But her dad thought she was going over to Sarah’s at eight, and now the day had finally
arrived, Millie realised that by the time they had biked over there, they would still have to wait for about two hours in the woods, which was more than long enough.

She packed her bag carefully, taking a navy jumper with a hood, the map they had drawn of the building, a torch and spare batteries, a fully charged phone she had already set to silent, so there
would be no nasty shocks if it suddenly started ringing, her bike lights, because it would be dark when they came home, and chocolate, in case either of them needed a sugar rush later on. She wore
dark jeans, black trainers, and a navy T-shirt, and hoped that in the dark she would be pretty hard to see.

Max wore his usual dark grey fur, and looked on smugly at Millie’s complex preparations. They left the house at eight o’clock, and by half past eight they were on the edge of the
woods. Millie picked an unusually large oak tree and hid her bike underneath it. There were plenty of dead leaves and bracken, and soon she had concealed the bike from view. She made a large
scratch in the tree at eye-level, feeling guilty as she scarred the huge trunk and subverted everything her dad had told her about environmental responsibility. But she couldn’t afford to
lose time later trying to remember which tree it had been, and it was mostly moss that she had removed. She and Max sat and talked, distracting each other in whispers, about Ixelles, Max’s
home, and his family – smart, practical Sofie, whom he had picked when she came to a cat breeder’s several years before, with her son, Stef. Stef was now thirteen, and Max had largely
forgiven, if not entirely forgotten, his early tail-pulling years. Sofie was a kind woman who had patiently helped Stef with his English and Dutch homework, little realising that Max was picking up
trilingual skills as well.

Stef would like Millie, Max thought, and she him – although he was quite a dreamy boy, which Millie might find a bit irritating at first. She would get over it, though. He hoped he would
have the chance to introduce them.

It was quarter to ten. They padded silently through the woods, following the compass set into the bottom of Millie’s torch, but keeping the light off – the plan was
to use it only after the escape, when speed was absolutely necessary. Max could see easily in the dark, and could guide Millie around trees that suddenly leapt out of total blackness, or troughs
that would suddenly fall away beneath her feet. They had arranged to meet the protesters on the far side of the wood, about fifty feet inside it, where the security men shouldn’t be able to
see them. They were a few minutes early, and they waited behind a tree for the sound of more people arriving. At five to eleven, Millie was getting worried.

‘What if they’re not coming?’ she hissed.

‘I don’t know. It’s still early. They will come.’ Max tried to sound more confident than he felt, which was not at all. They waited a few more minutes. At two minutes
past the hour, Millie began to despair.

‘We’ll have to go home. We can’t do it on our own. They aren’t coming.’

‘Shh,’ he said. ‘I hear something.’

They stood behind their tree, peering round into the darkness.

‘I can’t hear anything,’ she said.

‘Shhh. Wait.’ And Max was right, Millie heard it too. In just a few moments, their knights in shining armour would appear. The trained, experienced laboratory-breakers, who were
going to make everything all right. The noise drew closer. Millie and Max stared.

‘Who is that?’ whispered Max.

‘I don’t know,’ Millie mumbled back.

‘Hello?’ said a voice softly. ‘Are you there?’

Millie came out from behind the tree to meet the people who were going to divert the guards’ attention, control the building’s electricity, and generally enable the escape plan to be
a success. Or rather, the man. Or, technically, the boy. She was finally face to face with the brains behind the direct-action website, and he appeared to be no more than fifteen years old.

‘Who are you?’ she asked quietly.

‘I’m Jake. Who are you?’

‘I’m Millie.’

‘Well, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m supposed to be meeting some people here in secret, and it’s quite important, so would you mind leaving?’

‘You’re meant to be meeting me.’ Millie sounded grim.

‘What do you mean? I’m here to . . . Oh. That was
you
, emailing?’

‘Yep. That was me, emailing.’

‘But you’re just a little girl.’

‘That must get so boring,’ Max sympathised. Millie really was very clever and good at things, and yet people patronised her all the time, just because she was young, and looked even
younger. He had nearly jumped to the same conclusions himself when he had first met her, and would doubtless have tried to find someone else to rescue him, if there had been anyone else. Luckily
for him, there hadn’t been.

‘Who’s that?’ said Jake, peering into the darkness.

‘My friend, Max,’ Millie shot back. ‘Where’s everyone else?’

‘I’m it.’

‘What do you mean, you’re “it”?’ she asked.

‘I mean, I’m the one who’s coming to help. But this must be some sort of mistake. You can’t be planning to break into a secure building. What are you, ten?’

‘I’m twelve,’ she said through tightly clenched teeth.

‘And there are only three of us?’ Jake asked, disbelieving.

‘I thought you were bringing the other protesters. You said you would.’

‘Well, I couldn’t. They’re not real,’ said Jake, looking shifty.

‘Of course they’re real. I’ve seen them,’ Millie snapped before she realised that wasn’t actually true. She had never seen the protesters, nor had Max. They only
had her dad’s word that they existed at all.

‘No, I mean, they are real
people
,’ Jake corrected himself. ‘Just not real protesters.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Max, and Jake looked around, trying to find a face to attach to the voice.

‘They’re just stooges. Moles, if you like,’ Jake said.

Millie heard Max sigh.

‘He means that they’re just pretending to be protesters,’ she explained, realising that ‘mole’ wouldn’t mean very much to Max, apart from as a concise
description of a dinner with poor eyesight and low ground speed. ‘Why would anyone do that?’ she demanded.

‘They’re paid by Vakkson to protest outside. They can spy on other people who come and join the protest, and keep Vakkson informed about what’s going on. All the animal testers
do it now.’

‘Oh no,’ said Millie. ‘We mailed them, too.’

‘What did you say?’ asked Jake quickly. ‘Whatever you told them, they told the people inside the laboratory.’

Millie racked her brains, and recreated the emails she had sent.

‘We didn’t say anything about a break-out,’ she said, hugely relieved.

‘Then you’re probably all right,’ said Jake. ‘Anyway, you weren’t serious about breaking in, were you?’

‘I was and I am,’ Millie said simply.

‘You’re kidding?’ Jake was astonished. He assumed she would have reconsidered her plan, now she knew how many co-conspirators she really had.

‘Are you going to help or not?’ she said testily.

‘I thought you said you had insider knowledge. You seemed to know what you were talking about.’

‘I do. I’ve cleaned every window and every door on the ground floor of that building and I know it pretty well. Max has been inside the building, right up in the labs on the top
floor, where the cats are. Now – are you in or out?’

Jake stood for a moment, trying to work out how his first attempt at a daring and illegal activity was being dictated by a kid and some bloke he couldn’t even see. It was stupid. He should
just leave them to it. But he really wanted to go home having achieved something in the real world, not just having sent out salvoes from a computer. Most of all, he really wanted those smug,
vicious losers to pay for tormenting harmless creatures. Suddenly, he had an unpleasant thought.

‘Hold on. How did Max get into the laboratory, if he’s not one of them?’

‘He isn’t one of them.’

‘How can I trust you? You didn’t even tell me you were twelve.’

‘It didn’t come up. Besides, we’re trusting
you
,’ Millie said sharply.

Jake looked a little abashed. ‘You could have said you were just a kid,’ he said, trying to regain the moral high ground.

Millie would have none of it. ‘So could you. If I prove to you that Max isn’t one of them, are you in?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come on, then.’ Millie scooped Max up from the ground and said,’Jake, meet Max. Max, meet Jake.’

‘Hello,’ said Max coolly.

Jake jumped backwards.

‘How are you doing—?’ he asked Millie, eyes wide.

‘You think I am some kind of . . .’ Max looked at Millie for the word.

‘Ventriloquist,’ she guessed.

‘Thank you,’ he said with perfect politeness. Then he turned to Jake and, in a far less polite tone, said, ‘You think I am some kind of ventriloquist’s dummy?’

Jake looked so shocked that Millie took pity on him.