‘I know Aubergine Wealth said they were going east to the coast,’ said Winchflat, ‘but they are going in the opposite direction.’

‘Maybe they’ve discovered the tracking bug,’ said Mordonna, ‘and they’re trying to throw us off the scent.’

‘It’s possible, but I think it’s unlikely,’ said Winchflat. ‘We all know Mr Wealth is one of the greatest geniuses ever when it comes to money and all that sort of stuff, but I happen to know he’s useless with electronics. I gave him a torch once and he needed a user guide before he could turn it on.’

‘Maybe his girlfriend found it,’ said Mordonna. ‘And be very careful before you make your next statement.’

She knew that Winchflat thought girls and computery stuff should not be, could not be and hardly ever were in the same place at the same time. Just to make sure he didn’t say so, she clicked her fingers and all the red knobs on his control panels turned blue and all the blue ones also turned blue. Winchflat got the point.

‘There’s something wrong,’ he said. ‘They were travelling west through the Russian forests making strange grunting noises and now they are lying in a gutter in Ulan Bator with a hangover and seeing double.’

Aubergine had switched the yak tracker off and both the Flood cousins on. He counted to fifty, then switched them back.

‘No, it’s all right,’ said Winchflat. ‘Must have been some electrical interference.’

Then Aubergine did the same with the eagle tracker for fifty seconds.

‘It’ll make Winchflat think there’s some technical problem with his equipment,’ he said as he switched between the cousins, the eagle and yak again.

‘What did you just do, Mother?’ said Winchflat staring at all the blue knobs. ‘My machine’s gone haywire.’

‘I just changed the colour of the knobs. That’s all.’

‘Well, something’s not right,’ said Winchflat, more than a little annoyed.61

‘Maybe it’s gone wrong,’ Betty suggested.

‘My machines never go wrong,’ said Winchflat. ‘I mean, they’ve all got secondary backup systems and special robot self-repairing thingies with spare screwdrivers and gaffer tape. They simply cannot go wrong.’

He buried his head in his hands. ‘But I think it has,’ he added.

‘Have you tried re-booting the whole system?’ Festival suggested.

‘Both boots and fresh socks too,’ said Winchflat. ‘But it’s still telling me that one minute Mr Wealth is heading west through the Russian forest, then a minute later he’s seeing double in a Mongolian gutter before tearing a rat to pieces in a small pet shop on the edge of Ulan Bator.’

Aubergine Wealth switched back the yak and left it at that.

‘It’s OK,’ said Winchflat with a sigh of relief. ‘It seems to have stabilised. Must have been electrical interference. I’ve built filters in to allow for that, but there must have been a really big solar flare or something. They are still travelling west through Russia and it looks as if they heading towards Kazakhstan.’

‘What are they talking about?’ said Mordonna. ‘Maybe that’ll give us a clue.’

‘I think the audio has gone faulty,’ said Winchflat. ‘Since the solar flare interfered with the signal the audio has sent nothing but strange grunting sounds. I fed the sound into my computer and it says it’s the noise of a yak eating grass. So I think we’ll just have to rely on the GPS bit.’

‘Unless it is a yak eating grass?’ Betty suggested.

‘Well, little sister, how on earth could it . . . Oh,’ said Winchflat.

‘Wait!’ said Chrysanthemum. ‘I know it was a brilliant plan and everything, but I think there’s something we overlooked.’

‘What?’ Aubergine asked.

‘Well, the Winchflat boy could hear you speak too, couldn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘So now he can hear you impersonating a yak having its breakfast, can’t he?’

‘Damn!’ cursed Aubergine and hit the mute button on his remote.

‘Let’s hope it’s not too late,’ said Chrysanthemum.

There was no way they could know. On the one hand, having switched between the four bugs should have made Winchflat think his machine wasn’t working properly, so he might think the audio was playing up too. On the other hand, Winchflat had programmed his brain to totally reject the possibility that anything he invented could ever go wrong and Aubergine suspected that Winchflat would have analysed the sounds and discovered they were genuine yak-having-lunch noises.

‘I think the only thing to do is switch on all four devices at the same time,’ said Winchflat, ‘and head for Transylvania Waters as quickly as we can. I know a secret way into Castle Twilight and once we get inside, there are hundreds of derelict and deserted rooms where we can hide for as long as we want. I mean, right under their noses is the last place they will ever think of looking.’62

‘I was kind of hoping we could live in a little cottage by a stream in the country with a lovely old half-timbered barn full of safes where we could keep all our money,’ said Chrysanthemum.

‘And we will, my darling, but right now we need a safe haven where we can rest and plan our future,’ said Aubergine.

So they got themselves some new disguises and joined a coach party of jolly Belgian tourists on holiday from the famous cabbage-pickling factories of Bruges. Two days later they arrived at the coach park by the entrance of the tunnel into Transylvania Waters. The tunnel had been deliberately made too narrow to allow anything larger than a mediumsized car to go down it, but as luck would have it, there was a huge fleet of Valla’s Executive Taxi Cabs waiting to take the tourists through the tunnel into paradise and on to their hotel.

---

61 Which for Winchflat means just a tiny little bit annoyed.

⁶² Except for Satanella, who spent a lot of time in front of mirrors looking under her nose. Being a dog she had a highly sensitive sense of smell, and being hairy she got a lot of her dinner stuck round her mouth, so under her own nose was a very interesting and exciting place.