There were crumbling wooden steps that took them down to a passageway. Mehmet had a weak torch, which shone its feeble light ahead, and they followed. The passage was short – mercifully, as even Amazon had to duck her head to avoid scraping it on whatever horrible creatures were living in the roof. In less than five minutes they emerged into a small ornamental garden at the back of the hunting lodge.
It was around midnight and there were still sounds of revelry from within – German drinking songs, bellows of coarse laughter, the clinking of glasses.
Mehmet put his finger to his mute lips – although none of them needed to be told that silence was crucial at that moment. They followed him in a crouching run across an area of open ground, until they reached the cover of some scrubby bushes. They gathered together, and Mehmet thrust a few sheets of paper into Frazer’s hands. Amazon could see that, as well as some written notes, there was a map.
Mehmet lit an old metal lighter, and Amazon’s father read out the message.
‘My old friend Roger and Mrs Roger and Children, follow this map to get to Temple place. At the Temples you can find a place of some safety from the wild beasts of the night. It is possible that you can hide there for long time. Or follow on map direction to river. Might be able escape across, but crocodile many. Cannot go over wall – on top of old stone has been put deadly electric!!! And also many camera there. I will try to go through gate, as I am trusted and known to guard. Maharaja cut out tongue, so I can never speak his secrets, but I learned to read and write. Will find brother Hal, bring here.’
Then Mehmet pointed in the direction they must follow and made shooing motions.
‘Thank you, Mehmet, my friend,’ said Roger. ‘And if we get through this I’ll make sure you have a safe job at TRACKS.’
Mehmet touched his head, bowed and scurried away.
‘OK, guys,’ said Roger. ‘We’ve got to get to this temple as soon as we can. The map says north. Is that one of those fancy TRACKS compass watches I see on your wrist, Frazer?’
‘It sure as heck is.’
‘Then lead on!’
The trek through the forest night was difficult and dangerous. There was just enough starlight for them to see each other, and to pick a slow path between the trees. Occasionally the moon would come out from behind a cloud and they would get a sense of the vastness around them. But it was impossible not to blunder into hanging vines or trip over roots. Frazer and Roger led the way, followed by Amazon and Ling-Mei, hand in hand.
Chung trudged at the back, muttering and grumbling to himself.
Frazer knew all too well the dangers of walking like this, unseeing, through unknown territory. On every other mission he’d been on, the rule was to camp at night, to light a fire, to huddle close. Night was the time of predators. And they all knew that no other forest in the world contained as many potential killers as this. But, as ever, it was the bugs that Frazer complained about.
‘OK, that’s it, I’m devoting the rest of my life to developing an anti-bug spray that satellites could deliver from space and wipe out every single blasted mosquito on the planet.’
He slapped ineffectually at his neck.
‘And what about all the birds and animals that eat the mosquitoes?’ said Ling-Mei, smiling in the darkness.
‘Yeah, I know. Circle of life and all that stuff. But why do they always eat me alive? Zonnie hardly ever gets bit – OW!’
‘What is it now, Fraze?’ said Amazon.
‘Some plant just stung the heck out of my face. I’m really going off India in a big way. Jeepers, it burns.’
Roger and Ling-Mei gathered round.
‘Don’t move,’ said Ling-Mei. ‘You’ve walked into a creeper of some kind.’
She pulled her sleeve down over her hand and moved some vines away from Frazer’s face.
‘It really hurts,’ said Frazer.
‘Did it get in your eyes?’ asked Ling-Mei urgently.
‘No … I don’t think so, just my face.’
Ling-Mei peered at the leaves in the murk.
‘I think it’s a member of the genus Tragia – commonly called a noseburn.’
‘Well, that’s got it right, because my nose and the rest of my face feel like they’re burning off.’
‘Is it bad?’ asked Amazon, suddenly concerned. She’d got used to Frazer’s half-playful complaining, but this seemed serious.
‘We need to wash the skin. The noseburn has prickles that inject a rubbery sap. That’s what’s causing the burning sensation. It can be very nasty if we don’t get it clean … Anyone got any water?’ she asked, though it seemed a futile hope – none of them had any bottled water, and they hadn’t heard any streams in the dry woods.
‘Got this,’ said a sulky voice. ‘Idiots not even search Chung before they put him in cage like animal.’
He held out a bottle to Ling-Mei.
‘What is it?’
‘Medicine. Good stuff.’
Ling-Mei took the bottle, unscrewed the lid and had a sniff.
‘Gin!’
‘Take it or leave it, lady. Myself, I’d rather drink it than waste on boy’s face. But the longer we stand around hear gossiping, sooner we get caught and shot by Kaggs … or worse, eaten alive!’
Ling-Mei shrugged. ‘Better than nothing. OK, Frazer, close your eyes. This is going to sting.’ Then she poured the gin all over his face.
Frazer really wanted to scream. It was like she’d fired a flame-thrower at his face. He clenched his hands, and found that he was gripping other hands – the hands of Amazon and his Uncle Roger.
It was Roger who said, ‘You got it, Fraze. You’re as tough as your dad, and he’s made out of tungsten steel and depleted uranium.’
To Frazer’s surprise, the gin seemed to work.
‘Hey, it’s feeling better,’ he said after a few seconds.
‘I knew it would,’ said Chung. ‘Still, would rather have been drinking nice gin and tonic watching sun set into sea back home. So maybe now we move?’
Frazer checked the compass, the luminous dial green in the starlight, and moved on.
Her ambush site – a patch of dead reeds by a dry stream bed – had proved ill-judged. Nothing suitable had come within striking range. A small herd of elephants had passed by, shying away from her scent, but even a baby elephant was too big a mouthful for her.
Smaller prey – black rats and an angry porcupine – had ambled or scurried by. But the rats were too small to be of interest, and the porcupine, although succulent beneath the spines, was not a relaxing meal. She had a distant memory of a porcupine charging backwards at her, leaving an agonizing deposit of spines in her face. After the encounter with the gorilla, she wanted easy meat: deer, or antelope, or gazelle.
And so she moved on, slowly, silently, through the forest.
She picked up a scent. Again it was new, but, unlike with the gorilla, it was vaguely familiar. The scent reminded her a little of bear. Well, she had eaten bear before. Not a full-grown one perhaps, but a cub, or even a juvenile … yes, that would go down very well. There were dangers, of course, but she was hungry, very hungry.
She followed the trail of nearly-bear-smell until she came to a patch of tall grass, like none she had seen before. The creature was in there, she knew. Slowly, slowly, she crawled. The moon came out from behind a cloud and she saw through the thick stems of the bamboo the sleeping form of the bear. She knew it was a bear by the shape, but its colouring of white and black was most unbearlike. The weird pattern broke up the outline of the creature and also confused her. It made it hard for her to judge its size. She came closer, curious.
It was big. But was it too big?
Well, there was one way to find out. The panda – a fully-grown female – snuffled in its sleep, unaware of the grisly fate that awaited it.
The python pulled back, preparing to strike, the huge muscles that ran along its supple spine thrumming with energy and anticipation.
And then she sensed the vi
bration in the ground. Feet. Lots of feet. They were close. She flicked out her tongue and caught the hated scent of humans. She looked into the moonshadowed forest and saw them. They were trying to be stealthy, but her senses found them. There were big humans – she had learned to be wary of those. But there were also smaller ones, not quite cubs, not quite adults.
She thought again about the strange bear. Bears had claws and teeth. And so she left the panda to its dreams of bamboo and moved stealthily after Roger, Ling-Mei, Amazon and Frazer Hunt, and the skulking Chung.
Merlin Kaggs was not a man to waste the opportunity to torment his enemies. He had enjoyed a fine meal, but now he wanted a proper … dessert.
And so, as the hunters were drifting off into drunken sleep, he nodded curtly to the guard at the cellar door, who bowed and unlocked it. Kaggs padded down the stairs, rehearsing the things he would say, the quips and taunts. Yet, almost as soon as he entered the dark space, he knew that it was empty, and that he had been betrayed.
He walked over to the cages.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said to himself. ‘It seems our guests decided not to stay the night.’
At an earlier stage of his criminal career he might have raged and raved, spitting, punching the walls, cursing. But he had learned to control his emotions. And that control, allied to his native cunning and his utter ruthlessness, had made him a rich man. A man wealthy enough – with the aid of that old popinjay the Maharaja – to put into operation his long-planned revenge against the Hunts.
He wasn’t really going to have them shot in the morning. That would be a waste. He was going to wait until he had captured the other one – the one he hated more than all the others combined. And then, when he had them all … well, that’s when the fun would start.
But now it seemed that his prey had escaped. He paced across the floor, and soon found the outline of the trapdoor. He crouched down, took out his knife and prised it open, and looked into the deeper darkness of the tunnel.
‘Run all you like, Hunts,’ he said, in a low, even voice. ‘I’m going to catch you and kill you. Slowly. That’s if one of your precious animals doesn’t get to you first.’
Then he stood upright once more, leaving the trapdoor wide open, and walked briskly back up the stairs. A few snapped commands to the servants and the millionaires were soon assembled in the great hall, some bleary-eyed, some angry at being disturbed.
‘What the heck is this?’ said someone – the drug dealer and gangster, whose name was Big Zee. Kaggs gave him his best black-eyed stare and silence descended.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Kaggs, ‘I have a new entertainment planned for tomorrow. It seems that we have a traitor in our midst and that, as a consequence, our birds have flown the coop. I need not tell you how … awkward it would be for us if our enterprise here were to be discovered by the authorities. It’s important that we catch up with those people and deal with them … permanently. But there’s no reason why this shouldn’t be fun. You’re hunters, and tomorrow morning, as dawn breaks, we hunt the Hunts.’
The American banker said, ‘What if they get away? Why the heck don’t we start after them now?’
Some of those in the great hall shouted their assent. Others were quieter, as they thought of their comfortable beds. Some may have been uneasy about the idea of hunting humans, but, if they were, they concealed what they feared might be considered a sign of weakness.
‘There’s no need,’ said Kaggs. He turned to the Maharaja, who was wearing an ornate dressing gown made of red silk with golden embroidery. ‘I assume you have a skilled guide we can send out after them …? When he finds them, he can radio back their position. We can be out there in the jeeps in no time. Much better than blundering about in the dark. That’s for the quarry. We are the hounds.’
‘Well, my best tracker is certainly Mehmet,’ replied the Maharaja. ‘But I’m afraid he couldn’t radio back with any information, as I was forced to remove his … that is to say, a minor operation was performed on him to ensure his, ah, discretion. Actually, I haven’t seen the scallywag in quite some time …’
When a brief search failed to find Mehmet, and a report came back from the gatehouse that he’d been seen leaving the compound, on, it was said, ‘important business for the Maharaja’, Kaggs declared, ‘Well, it seems we have our traitor. Maharaja, dispatch some of your best men to find him. I want him brought back to me before he does any damage. I will personally remove his skin.’
The Maharaja looked most offended. ‘Dear chap,’ he said, ‘that will not do. He’s been my servant for forty years. If anyone is to skin him alive, it is I.’
‘As you wish. Anyway, send your best tracker – I mean, your best tracker with a tongue – after the Hunts. I need to know where they are.’
And so it was that another of the Maharaja’s men set out into the forest night to find the fugitives, and the millionaires returned to their beds, to dream of the excitement of the day ahead.
‘I think we’re here,’ said Roger Hunt. ‘The temple complex. This is where Mehmet thought it might be safe to rest for a while.’
And they certainly needed the rest. It wasn’t just that they hadn’t slept, or that the trek had been tiring – although exhaustion certainly played a role – it was more the fact that they were constantly on the alert for night stalkers. Every crackling twig or strange call in the night made their adrenalin surge, as their bodies prepared for fight or flight. Twice they heard roars – ‘Lion,’ said Ling-Mei the first time, ‘Tiger,’ the second. Then there were the eerie barks and yelps, and other sounds like the wails of torture victims.
Frazer looked around. And yes, there did seem to be strange structures surrounding them. In the starlight all he could do was sense their rough outlines, but he got a distinct impression of … majesty.
‘This must have been some place, back in the day,’ he said.
‘How’s your face, Fraze?’ asked Amazon.
‘Uh, ugly as ever. But it doesn’t sting too bad any more. I guess Chung’s magic medicine did the trick.’
‘OK, Chung,’ Roger said to the animal smuggler. ‘Now we’ve got away from the immediate danger, you’ve got a choice. You can clear off and take your chances out there on your own. Or you can stay and help us all get out of this.’
‘No, Dad!’ yelled Amazon. She couldn’t believe that her father had made this offer to Chung. It was bad enough that he was with them even for this first part of the journey. But for him to stay with them was unthinkable. ‘You don’t know what he’s like. He tried to kill Frazer and me … he’s not … stable.’
‘Amazon,’ her father said patiently, his hands on her shoulders, his eyes looking deeply into hers, ‘I know exactly what kind of man Mr Chung is. We’ve been tracking his activities for years. He’s greedy and sly and he’ll do whatever it takes to earn money. But, whatever you might think from his play-acting, he’s no fool and he knows how to handle himself in a fight. And we need every soldier we have if we’re going to get out of this alive. And remember, this isn’t just about us. Kaggs has stocked this place full of rare animals. If we don’t make it, they won’t either. So, Chung, what do you say – fight with us or die out there alone?’
Chung’s eyes moved rapidly round the group, and then out into the jungle beyond them. Amazon could almost hear his brain working. Would he be better off alone, skulking, letting the bigger party attract all the attention from the hunters, human and animal? Or should he throw his lot in with them?
And then Ling-Mei Hunt astonished everyone by taking two quick steps towards Chung and delivering a punch to his chin that left him sitting on the jungle floor, looking even more perplexed than before.
‘That’s for hurting my little girl,’ she said, her mouth tight with fury. ‘And, if you ever harm a member of my family again, I’ll make you wish you’d never left that rat-infested fishing village in the Philippines.’
And then she spat a few more choice words at Chung in Chinese.
‘OK, crazy lady, you make your point. I’ll stay and help. One for all, all for one.’
Frazer couldn’t help but smile. ‘Well, Aunt Ling-Mei, remind me never to get on the wrong side of you!’
More by touch than by sight, they found an ancient temple building that seemed to offer some protection. It was roofless, but still had the remains of four walls. The forest had grown in and around it, so the stone of the walls seemed to belong more to the world of nature than the world of humans.
‘We can build a fire here without being seen,’ said Roger. ‘And it’ll be easier to defend against men or animals. You know how to light a fire, Frazer?’
‘Yep, if I’ve got the tools. I usually use a firesteel and my knife … Wait, knife! Those dumb schmucks never even bothered to search me cos I’m a kid, I guess, but look, I’ve still got my pocketknife!’
‘Well,’ said Roger, ‘that’s going to come in mighty handy. But how will it help us light a fire, without the steel?’
‘Hmmm, well, if we had some flint …’
‘No flint here, Frazer. What other ways are there of starting a fire?’
Frazer concentrated. He knew all this stuff, but his mind had gone blank. He felt like he was representing his dad in some ancient contest between the two brothers. But all he could think of was rubbing two sticks together, like some kind of halfwit. But at least the sticks got him thinking along the right lines.
‘Well, there’s the flat board and stick method. Only … well, I’ve tried that many times and my arm always gets tired from rubbing the hardwood stick up and down the groove in the softwood long before there’s any hint of an ember.’
‘Not just you, young man. I haven’t ever managed to start a fire that way, either.’
That admission gave Frazer more confidence. In fact, later, Frazer wondered if Uncle Roger had said it for that very reason, and that he’d actually been starting fires all his life in exactly that way.