“I’ve waited for this moment for so long,” said Grandpa. For some reason, he didn’t sound happy. But it was him—his face, his voice, his expression. It was David McLean, my incredible grandfather!
I’ve never fainted before, but I almost did at that moment. I was immediately in tears, tears of joy, and I started feeling wobbly and weak. For a few seconds, I couldn’t move, not a single muscle. I stood there stunned, immobile as a statue.
He was alive! I stared at him. It was impossible, absolutely, positively impossible. Hadn’t my cousins and I seen him in his coffin? But there was no doubt that he was sitting right in front of me. I knew if I went to him, I could touch him. He even held his head slightly to the left, like he always did. Still, I couldn’t believe it. Then I thought of what we had found at the cottage, all the evidence of the secrets he had kept from us, all those passports, the money, and the Walther PPK. If David McLean really was a spy, then MI6 or the CIA could have made this happen—they could make anything happen. In fact, they might do this sort of thing often. Maybe spies faked their own deaths all the time.
I rushed toward him. Two steps forward, then John and Jim seized me.
“Grandpa!” I cried. “Grandpa, how…you’re…” I sputtered, and then I blurted out, “I…I love you! I’m sorry for the way I—”
“You love me?” he sneered.
“Yes! Of course I do! Let me GO!” I screamed at the two men. They were as strong as oxen.
“Well, I don’t love you, my boy.”
I froze.
“Love is unaffordable in this world, though I know I made it look as if I believed in it. I had a job to do, Adam. And I have one now. It is bigger than anything else in my world—in the world, period. Family must come second. Your mother and her sisters, you and your cousins, have their place. One must have priorities.”
It was a phrase Grandpa often used, but he’d never used it like this.
“What do you mean? Why are you talking like this? Make them let me go!” I was ashamed of my tears, yet I couldn’t stop them. But Grandpa almost seemed to enjoy my pain. He was smiling at me with exactly the same smile he’d used so many times when he talked to me in my childhood.
“There is more in this world than is dreamt of in your little mind.”
He was paraphrasing Shakespeare, another line from Hamlet. Grandpa had always loved to quote from literature.
“What do you—?”
“You cannot know that I am alive, Adam. Neither can your mother or father or your cousins. It is unacceptable. Impossible.”
“But you showed yourself to me.”
“Nevertheless”—he gave me a hard look—“now I must eliminate you.”
“Eliminate?” My stomach burned.
“Look at me.”
I looked right into his eyes, those amazing blue eyes I had never dreamed I would see again. “Take him away,” he said to his two thugs, still staring at me but with something hidden in his expression, something I couldn’t place. Was he trying to tell me something? Signal me somehow? “Take him to the Dahl building and finish him. You know how. Adam, I am sorry I have to do this, but nevertheless…I do.”
As Jim held me, John frisked me in a few quick motions, amazingly fast and professional. He felt my cell phone and ripped it out of my pocket. He flipped it to Grandpa, who opened a top drawer in his desk and set it inside, closing it immediately afterward.
“Bring me his other things. I’ll put them in here too.”
Then they pulled me screaming from the room. Grandpa watched as I was taken away. Once we’d reached the second soundproof room, they put thick tape over my mouth. I moaned and tried to wrestle free.
“Tell Angel to go to her room,” said John to Jim. I had enough Wing Chun training to take out almost anyone, I thought, even a big guy, and I had put on lots of muscle recently, but John had pipes like a blacksmith and had me in a tight grip, locking my arms and holding me down. It hurt. He seemed to really know what he was doing. Jim exited and came back a few minutes later.
They dragged me into the area by the front door. I looked down and saw my bag still sitting there, with the Walther PPK inside. All my cash and my passport were in there too. Though I kept trying to kick and wriggle my way out of their grips, they pulled me through the house to the glass doors and then across the big backyard. I could see a small building up ahead. It was made of unpainted steel. They unlocked it, threw me in and then slammed the door and secured it. I couldn’t hear anything once I was inside. It was soundproof too. I tore off the tape, ripping out the hairs growing on my upper lip. It hurt like crazy. But I didn’t give it a second thought. I shouted at the top of my lungs. It didn’t matter. No one could hear me. I slumped down on the floor and cried. Grandpa was alive! He was alive but he was…I don’t know… someone horrible and uncompromising, and unlike the man I had known…nothing like what he had always pretended to be! Then I thought of the stories Mom had told me about him constantly being away, flying around, running his “import/export” business. It had always seemed a bit mysterious, and he’d never said much about it. If he really was a spy or at least someone with big secrets, maybe he had no choice but to hide them. Maybe he had to eliminate me; maybe it was for the greater good. I didn’t know. But why couldn’t he find a way to protect me? Protect me no matter what? I collapsed and sobbed again.
But I didn’t cry for long. The building was one very small room. You could stand in the middle and almost touch the sides. There were no lights, just long horizontal slits up high in the walls, about an inch or two wide and a foot long, where light came in through what appeared to be incredibly thick glass—soundproof too, no doubt. There was nothing in the building but a desk and a chair, some yellow writing pads, some pencils with erasers, and a few books. I was surprised to see that many of them were by Roald Dahl, the guy who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach and The BFG, some of the most famous kids’ books ever written. I loved them when I was a kid, mostly because they all had an edge and also because Grandpa had read some of them to me. But why were they here in this prison he had put me in? That made no sense.
I sat there for hours, it seemed, many hours. No one brought food, nothing happened. It got darker, then completely black. I could barely see the nose on my face.
Then the walls began to move.