The Sons of Scarlatti. John McNally

be neat. Or maybe he could add the Scarlatti itself to his collection? Imagine showing that off…

      Then he thought of the next best thing.

      DAY TWO 05:58 (BST). Siberia

       After seventeen hours of effort and agony, the Arctic fox had finally managed to drag his broken body over the frozen tundra and back into his lair. He was exhausted, but he was home.

       At last he could rest for however long the wound might take to heal. Or he could die.

       Deep beneath, Kaparis watched Finn hurry back to the laboratories.

       Deep beneath, Kaparis watched Allenby grinning in his pod.

       Since 19:43 the previous evening, he’d had access to the entire CCTV and surveillance system of Hook Hall, the heart of which now lay, not in Surrey or anywhere in England, but with a fourteen-year-old girl, another one of his Tyros, Li Jun – half blind and hunched over her keyboards and screens in the communications wing of Kaparis’s bunker, less than fifty metres away.

       She had emerged from his seminary aged just nine. She still barely spoke, but her work – Kaparis had to admit as he watched King making tense small talk with a member of the royal family in the control gallery – was perfection.

      DAY TWO 05:59 (BST). Hook Hall, Surrey

      Outside dawn had broken.

      The labs that looked directly on to the CFAC were crowded with the exhausted scientists, engineers and technicians who had built the accelerator, who had designed and put together the whole extraordinary mission.

      Politicians and scientists were gathered in the control gallery. The atmosphere was tense and expectant.

      One by one the crew were given a short-duration anaesthetic. (Delta’s last thought as she passed out, looking up at Al in the cockpit, was a cross between I hope he knows what he’s doing and problematic boyfriend material.) Then, one by one, they were wheeled on to the conveyor. Already in place at the centre of the accelerator was the helicopter; on the conveyor waited Stubbs’s workshop truck, a fuel tanker and now the crew. The rest of the supplies to be shrunk waited in the loading bay, and just the other side of the loading-bay doors waited the trolley containing the imprisoned Beta Scarlatti.

      Finn knew this was his last opportunity.

      Leaving the crowd of technicians and scientists at the big Lab One windows, he slipped away and headed back through the now deserted corridors and laboratories to Lab Four where the entomology team had been based.

      His plan was simple. To pocket the empty Beta Scarlatti husk.

      He walked into the deserted lab and there was the husk in the corner of the chamber, just as he expected. Like an exploded purse, the shed skin sat there, just waiting to be taken home and mounted on a piece of A3 card, its Latin name printed on a slip beneath. It was the size of a small pine cone and was bound to provoke wonder. In his friend Hudson at least.

      Finn was just looking around for something to put it in when he noticed a brand-new box containing sterile gloves that would be the perfect size, and remembered they’d thrown the old box away earlier. It was when he opened the bin to find the old box that he saw it.

      The small grey atomiser unit.

      The small grey atomiser unit that was supposed to be on the back of the trolley providing anaesthetising steam to the Scarlatti.

      What was it still doing here? He’d better check the trolley and warn someone.

      Finn didn’t quite know what conclusion to jump to. Had there been a change of plan? What was the atomiser unit doing in here? He had to tell someone. Half dreading he might get in trouble, he hit an alarm button beside the door.

      But no alarms sounded. No lights flashed. He hit it again. Nothing.

      Finn jogged back down the empty corridors towards the doors which faced the CFAC loading bay. There was the trolley. There was the Beta Scarlatti safely onboard.

      There was young Dr Spiro.

      Al’s speech from the cockpit was short.

      “This is history, or we are. Let’s go.”

      With that, he threw a switch and power dipped all over Europe.

      With a surge in noise, the accelerator started up and began to find its va-va-voom.

      Al started to manipulate the input interface and up the power. He wore earplugs and shades.

      Upstairs, even through the control gallery’s thick safety glass, the noise was extraordinary.

      In the accelerator great arcs of lightning spun themselves into a blur, like electric candyfloss.

      “The atomiser! I found it back in the lab!” yelled Finn at Dr Spiro over the sound of the accelerator just the other side of the loading-bay doors.

      “It’s been replaced!” Spiro shouted back. He seemed to be excited, glowing almost.

      Finn looked down. The slot on the back of the trolley where the atomiser should have been now contained something else. Like a lump of clay or playdough. Some wires were coming out of it. Finn didn’t get it at first, couldn’t process what it might be, just that it definitely wasn’t an atomiser unit. All was noise and confusion.

      And then, in Spiro’s hand, he saw a grey cover, just like the outside of the atomiser box. Just the right size to fit over the lump of clay. Still without joining the dots, but feeling something was very wrong, Finn hit the alarm at the loading-bay doors.

      It was difficult to hear, but again nothing sounded, no lights flashed.

      Then Finn saw something that really threw him.

      Dr Spiro wasn’t wearing any shoes.

      They were just behind the trolley. Both heels were askew. In fact, the heels seemed to be chambers, open and empty. The playdough has come out of his shoes, thought Finn absurdly. In a microsecond, a series of fearful connections flashed through his brain and he arrived at an even more absurd conclusion.

      While everyone else was watching the display, Spiro was putting a bomb on the trolley. There was plastic explosive in the shoes.

      “The boy has seen the shoes. Deal with him,” said a voice only Spiro could hear.

      Spiro became very calm and still. As if in a trance.

      Just turn, thought Finn.

       Just walk away.