"I'm sorry I can't offer you a laptop," he added. "I'm afraid I wouldn't trust you with a computer just now. But rest assured that when you finally come to your senses, Cadel, you shall have all the technology you need. In fact, I'll build you your very own War Room, if that will make you happy."
Then he disappeared, taking Alias with him. And Cadel found himself in a wholly unsupervised state, free to walk out of the house if he so desired.
Except, of course, that he wasn't free. Not as long as Sonja needed his help. Not as long as he continued to play what was undoubtedly an important role in Prosper's plans for the future (whatever they might be). All his life, Cadel had been shackled by one restraint after another: high expectations; constant surveillance; his own reputation for mischief; even the carefully constructed destiny imposed on him by manipulative men with warped morals. Never once had he felt unsupervised, even when he was completely alone. Never once had he viewed his existence as anything but a locked room with bolted windows.
I'll never escape, he thought. How can I, when Prosper's in my blood? This awful insight made him want to scream aloud with fury and frustration. To pound his fists on the floor.
Before he could vent his feelings, however, his gaze fell on Sonja's wasted physique. And for perhaps the fiftieth time, he reminded himself that compared to his best friend, he was as free as a mountain eagle.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Cadel was familiar with the tactic of switching cars. It was a ruse much favored by Prosper, who had often used it to good effect. Cadel himself had once taken part in an elaborate escape from a police headquarters, involving several changes of vehicle. On that occasion, however, there had been no garment-switching. No one had changed so much as a pair of socks in order to avoid detection.
This time, it seemed that Prosper was leaving nothing to chance. The four people who emerged from his secret safe house at around three o'clock on Tuesday morning bore very little resemblance to the four people who had arrived some two hours earlier. Cadel had been transformed into an auburn-haired young girl. Alias had assumed the appearance of a blowsy, overweight housewife. As for Prosper English, he was no longer an imperfect replica of Zac Stillman. Instead he was pretending to be a harmless old grandpa, with white hair and a white goatee, broken veins across his cheeks and nose, lousy teeth, bifocals, a bad stoop, and a shabby tweed jacket.
Only Sonja remained unchanged. According to Alias, there was very little point in trying to disguise her. "You can't pass her off as anything but a spastic," was how he bluntly put it (much to Cadel's disgust), before adding, "On the plus side, though, people often can't tell the difference between one spastic and another. So we might just pull this off. Because the police will be looking for a cripple with three men, and she'll be a cripple with one man and two women."
Prosper sniffed. "I very much hope that by the time the police start looking for anyone, she'll be a cripple safely tucked away out of the public eye," he said. But in case he was being unduly optimistic, he decided to put her on the floor of their getaway car and cover her with a sleeping bag.
"You can't do that!" Cadel protested. Even Alias pointed out that if the police should stop them, a concealed body was bound to look suspicious. "The trick is to make everything seem totally aboveboard," he said. "That's why I didn't choose a van. Coppers don't like vans because they can't see what's going on inside."
His plan, he explained, was that everyone in the getaway car should give the impression of being part of a family. And no normal family would hide one of its members under a sleeping bag. Regardless of how deformed she might be.
But Prosper wouldn't be persuaded.
"She's drugged," he said. "It's obvious. Besides, I'm not sitting around while the police search this car. If they get close enough to see Sonja, they'll also be close enough to talk to Cadel. And I don't suppose he'llkeep his mouth shut." Placing a long, bony hand on the back of Cadel's neck, Prosper outlined his strategy. "The purpose of using these disguises is to discourage the police from pulling us over in the first place. We have to make sure that we don't attract attention. Which means staying under the speed limit. And wearing our seat belts. And behaving"—he smirked—"like a family on a road trip."
Cadel wondered sourly what someone like Prosper could possibly know about families on road trips, but said nothing. After everyone except Sonja had paid a final visit to the bathroom, the whole team bundled into a blue four-wheel drive that was parked at the rear of the house, concealed from public view by a tall fence. Cadel was instructed to sit beside Sonja's swaddled form, in the back of the car, and pretend to be asleep. He was also told to keep his mouth shut.
Then Prosper (who was in the driver's seat) engaged the safety locks.
"We don't want you jumping out and hurting yourself," he remarked. "Nor do we want you signaling for help. That's why you should put this up." And he passed Cadel a shirt on a hanger, to suspend from the handle above the window next to him. "It'll give you a little privacy."
"I think I should be on the nod, too," Alias suggested, from the seat beside Prosper's. "It would look more realistic at this hour of the morning." In a slightly anxious tone, he observed that a car full of party animals would have been even more realistic, and possibly a better disguise. Only he'd been worried about the effect it might have on any passing police officers.
Prosper assured him that the right choice had been made. "Your execution has been flawless," said Prosper, as he turned the key in the ignition. "So—are we ready now? Have we put out the garbage? Locked all the doors? Fed the fish?" He grinned mischievously. "Yes? Good. Off we go, then."
And off they went. Before long they had traversed the surrounding labyrinth of suburban streets and were cruising down a freeway, heading west, toward the mountains. Cadel was mystified by this tactic. He had expected that Prosper would attempt to flee the country in some kind of seagoing vessel. By traveling inland, they were not only abandoning the coast and all its possibilities, but were leaving behind them almost every international airport in Australia.
Unless they were making for Perth? Or Adelaide?
"Where are we going?" Cadel queried.
"You'll see," Prosper replied.
"To the mountains?" said Cadel.
"You'll see."
"Is Dot going to be there?"
Prosper sighed impatiently, as if he were being importuned by a fretful toddler wanting ice cream.
"You asked me that question before," he said. "I was astonished to hear it then, and I'm doubly astonished now. I can only assume that you're tired." He glanced into the rearview mirror. "What do you think, Cadel? Do you think Dot is going to be there?"
Cadel pondered this inquiry, which had been delivered in a very patronizing tone. "I think she'd be stupid if she was," he said at last. "If she disappears now, the police are bound to suspect her. But if she stays put and pretends to know nothing about you ... well, she might just get away with it."
"She might," Prosper agreed, without taking his eyes off the road.
"I guess that's what Trader will do, too." Cadel was thinking aloud. "I guess he'll pretend you took him by surprise. It might even work, if nobody finds out about the War Room."
"My dear boy, why should anyone find out about that?" Prosper seemed to be enjoying Cadel's step-by-step display of logical analysis. "After all, nobody's actually looking for it."
"The trouble is, Saul will wonder how you tracked me down," Cadel continued. "He'll be suspicious of everyone who knew where I was. He'll be asking a lot of questions." A vivid mental image of Saul's face suddenly assailed him like a blow, so that he flinched, and shut his eyes briefly. The pictured face wore a grimly determined expression "You shouldn't underestimate Saul," he added. "I know him. You don't. You're basing your conclusions on incomplete data."
"No, dear boy, that's what you're doing," Prosper declared. He then proceeded to explain that, when they came to investigate how he had walked unopposed out of a holding cell, the poli
ce would discover certain carefully placed clues. "They'll realize that the same hacker who broke into the computer system of the Department of Corrective Services also broke into another database containing your DoCS case file," he related. "Which, of course, happens to include all your contact details. And since the hacker in question doesn't have anything to do with Genius Squad..." He shrugged. "Well, let's just say I've illumined one particular line of inquiry. While the road to Clearview House remains shrouded in darkness."
"Vee was the hacker, wasn't he?" Cadel demanded. "Vee's still around."
"As far as I know, Dr. Vee is somewhere in the northern hemisphere," was Prosper's oblique response.
"Yes, but that doesn't mean anything. Not if he's got a modem." Cadel leaned forward, grabbing at Prosper's headrest. "Who else is still around? What happened to Dr. Deal? I know he escaped from prison the day you were arrested—did you organize that? Do you have him stashed somewhere?" Another, even more staggering thought occurred to Cadel. "Did Luther Lasco really die in that explosion? Or did you manage to save him?"
Over in the front passenger seat, Alias snorted. "Jesus," he said, without opening his eyes. Prosper sucked in his breath, before letting it out again very slowly. When at last he spoke, his voice trembled with suppressed amusement.
"I'm pleased to know that you've retained enough respect for your poor old dad to credit him with an almost superhuman level of ingenuity," he drawled. "Makes me feel a lot better about the way I brought you up."
"But—"
"Go to sleep, Cadel. You're overtired. You're losing it." Prosper reached back and squeezed Cadel's hand, which was still gripping the driver's headrest. "I'll wake you when we get there."
"Get where?" asked Cadel.
"You'll see when we arrive," said Prosper.
But Cadel soon realized that they wouldn't be arriving anywhere in a hurry. They drove and drove, along a freeway dotted with gigantic road trains. They drove past Blacktown, through the outskirts of Sydney, and over the Nepean River. They were in the lower reaches of the Blue Mountains when Cadel finally fell asleep, lulled into a restless doze by a very dull, late-night radio discussion about fishing quotas.
He woke more than an hour later, bleary and confused, as they hit a pothole. Around him, dawn had begun to creep across towering crags and rolling, bushy slopes. He couldn't believe his eyes.
"What—how—where are we?" he mumbled.
"Ah." Prosper was still driving. "You're awake, at last."
"We're in the country!"
"A brilliant deduction."
"I need a drink." Squinting down at Sonja's pale face, just visible above the folds of the sleeping bag, he saw that her mouth and jaw muscles were starting to quiver. "Sonja needs to get out of here."
"Not long now," Prosper said, and turned to Alias. "Are you sure this is the road?"
"Positive," Alias replied.
"Bit rough, isn't it?"
"That's the whole point," said Alias. "It's a weekender. A track like this keeps people away. So no one'll rob the place."
Prosper sighed. "I just hope there's an inside toilet," he remarked, sounding unimpressed, and Alias stared at him in amazement.
"Are you kidding?" said Alias. "There's a bloody spa bath!"
By this time Cadel's head had cleared, somewhat—and he realized, with a sinking heart, that he had no idea where they were. Peering out from behind the shirt that flapped and swayed on its hanger as they bumped along, he could see only thick, scrubby forest beside the road. Sometimes there would be a flash of smoke-blue ridge beyond a smudge of distant grassland. But, for the most part, his view was of tumbling rocks and twisted white tree trunks.
"Left up ahead," said Alias, whereupon the car slowed. Craning his neck, Cadel spied a mailbox. It marked the beginning of a precipitous track that plunged headfirst into the nearest gully.
"Jesus Christ," said Prosper.
"It's better than it looks," Alias assured him.
"Why would anyone in their right mind want to spend a weekend out here?" Prosper demanded, and Alias shrugged.
"I don't know. Trout-fishing, perhaps."
"Do they have winged trout in this neck of the woods?" Prosper grimaced, nosing his way down the track toward a half-concealed roof that appeared to be positioned directly underneath them. "We'll have to rappel in a minute!"
"Bird-watching, then." Alias pointed. "See that? It's the garage. You can hide the car in there."
Cadel had already noticed a power line, which had been strung perilously between clawing branches and across rocky clefts. It was attached to the eaves of what looked like a superior kind of a cedar cabin. As Prosper rolled to a standstill, Cadel ran a calculating eye over the building's woodpile, chimney, and outside fuse-box, all dimly visible in the murky light. A security sticker had been placed in one of the windows, warning that the house was equipped with a monitored alarm system.
"Hang on," said Alias, and jumped out of the car to push open the garage doors. Prosper then eased their vehicle into the space beyond, which was dim and generously proportioned.
Cadel unbuckled his seat belt.
"No silly tricks, now," Prosper warned, watching him in the rearview mirror. "Sonja's not really portable for someone your size. You wouldn't want to be dragging her through the bush in some fruitless attempt to escape."
"I know," said Cadel.
"Don't try to lift her. You'll only hurt yourself." Having satisfied himself that Cadel was making no move to disobey, Prosper slipped from behind the steering wheel, raising his voice to address Alias. "Where's Vadi's car?"
"I'm not sure," Alias replied, pitching his own voice very low. "It should be here."
"What if the alarm's on? Can you actually get inside this place?"
"Oh, yeah." Alias nodded. "Trader gave me his code."
"Trader?" gasped Cadel. "This is Trader's house?" He would have said more if Sonja hadn't groaned suddenly. Concern for her well-being drove every other thought straight out of his head; he had to be dragged from his seat.
"Wait! Stop! She's waking up!" he protested, but to no avail. Prosper kept a firm grip on his arm, and Cadel soon found himself being nudged toward Alias—who was still stationed at the garage door, all drooping hems and sagging bulges.
"I'll bring Sonja," Prosper said firmly. "Cadel, you get into the house."
"But—"
"Don't annoy me, please. It's been a long night." Prosper then gave Alias his instructions, clearly and crisply. "Don't let this child out of your sight for one instant," he advised. "And don't let him near any phones. Is there a computer in the house?"
"Uh—yes—"
"Don't let him anywhere near that, either." Prosper pinched Cadel's earlobe. "I've already paid a very high price for underestimating my son. Rest assured, I won't be doing it again."
Cadel wanted to hang back and satisfy himself that Sonja was being properly treated. But he wasn't given the chance. Alias immediately hustled him across a brick walkway toward the cabin's main entrance, where Cadel committed to memory the key code that Alias punched into the alarm panel. Being a six-digit code, it occupied Alias for just long enough to give Cadel time for a quick look at the system's fire-alarm component—which remained operative after the burglar alarm had been turned off.
He filed this fact away in his head, for future reference.
"Hello? Vadi? Are you here?" Alias called, upon entering the house. There was no reply. Cadel glimpsed a pair of grubby women's sandals lying in the entrance hall, but was quickly guided past them into a lofty and spacious living room, containing—among other things—a cathedral ceiling, a slow-combustion stove, and a whole wall of windows.
The rose-tinted view from these windows was spectacular.
"Nice, isn't it?" Alias flicked on some halogen lights. "I like the built-in couch, especially."
"This isn't Trader's." Cadel had observed a pile of well-thumbed financial reports on the coffee table. Together with the dirty old sandals?
??and a framed newspaper article about corporate fraud—they told him all that he needed to know. "This house belongs to Judith Bashford, doesn't it?" he said. "Trader managed to get the alarm code off her, somehow."
Alias smiled and shook his head in amazement.
"You're really something else," he remarked.
"She doesn't know that you're here, though. Does she?"
"Look!" said Alias, attempting to change the subject. "There's a wide-screen TV! Do you want to watch it?"
"I think he'd be better off taking a nap," Prosper submitted, from behind them. But Cadel didn't turn around. He had just seen something that interested him far more than Prosper's whereabouts.
On a shelf beneath the TV, directly beside the DVD player, sat a video-game console.
THIRTY-NINE
Cadel had never been much interested in computer games. They had always seemed to him rather restrictive and futile; he preferred to manipulate reality, not a computergenerated facsimile of the world.
Nevertheless, he was by now fully acquainted with every characteristic of every console in the known universe, thanks to Hamish. In Hamish's opinion, there were few topics as interesting as the relative merits of Sony, Microsoft, and Apple gaming products; he had lectured Cadel on the subject more than once, over breakfast. So Cadel was able to tell, literally at a glance, that the console beneath the television had online gaming capability. In other words, it could be connected to the Internet.
The question was: Had Judith availed herself of this feature?
"What about diapers?" he demanded, wrenching his gaze from the console and fixing it on Prosper's flushed face. "Sonja needs diapers."