Python Adventure Read online

  Amazon tried to read the title on the cover. Considerations on the Changing pH Balance of the Indian Ocean, 1956–2007.

  Fascinating.

  Amazon would have given anything to have joined Hal, Frazer, Bluey and Miranda as they had flown off in an executive jet belonging to one of the Mumbai millionaires. But Hal’s logic had been, as ever, impeccable.

  ‘I hate to do this to you, Amazon,’ he’d said, ‘but the truth is that Frazer, Bluey and I are the only ones who have gone after big snakes before. And we need Miranda to sedate it when we’ve caught it. If we had longer then I’d happily train you up too. But we don’t have any time. For all we know there are already snake hunters out there now. Plus, the donors up in Jaipur will be disappointed about not meeting me, so it’s vital to give them at least one member of the Hunt family. That’s just the way things work out here.’

  What went unspoken was the point that one of the reasons they needed the money was to continue the search for Amazon’s mum and dad.

  ‘We’ll be back in three days max, anyway,’ Hal had continued. ‘Then I promise you’ll get some time out from the fund-raising craziness. You can go and see the Asiatic lions out in the Gir Forest. TRACKS is helping with an operation to reintroduce them to a couple of other reserves in India. And,’ he’d added, putting his hand on her shoulder, his tone softening, ‘you never know – Doc Drexler may have managed by then to get some sense out of that burnt diary of Roger’s. We know that someone found Roger and Ling-Mei, and took them away from the crash site by helicopter. Roger knew who was gunning for him. All we need is one clue from the diary, and we’ll find them. That right, Doc?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Drexler had said. ‘I have made some progress, using imaging technology I borrowed from a CIA, ah, acquaintance. It is able to pick up a trace of the chemical fingerprint left by the ink, even where the paper is almost completely carbonized, which is to say burnt. But it is a painstaking business, and rushing it could utterly destroy the paper … In any case, I, for one, am too old to be wrestling giant pythons, so I’ll happily leave that to you, ah, adventurers. And it will be a pleasure to really get to know young Amazon.’

  While Drexler looked through his report on ocean pH, Amazon read yet again the scans of the diary left by her father.

  She had been so excited when Hal Hunt had found it, buried in the ashes of the campfire by the crashed aircraft in Canada. She had been sure that it would contain the answers to, well, everything. There was the terrible secret, some burning truth or scandal about TRACKS, that Roger had been coming to tell Hal. There was the wider plot of which it formed a part, something to do with animal welfare on a global scale. Most importantly, Amazon had been convinced that it would reveal who had captured her parents, and with that knowledge would come the even more important truth of where they were. Once they established that, then they could go about the last job: saving them.

  And at first it seemed that the diary would give them the answers they needed. It began in a place she’d never even heard of – Kalmykia – a remote autonomous republic of the Russian Federation. It appeared as though her parents were there to help conserve an animal called the saiga – an antelope that had once ranged in herds counted in millions across the grasslands, but was now reduced by hunting and habitat loss to just a few thousand.

  But, interspersed among the notes on saiga behaviour, there were references to a ‘meeting with Sergei X’ to ‘discuss the issue at T’. ‘T’ must surely be TRACKS. ‘Sergei is convinced that K’s henchmen are on to him.’

  The ‘K’ Amazon had learned about from Uncle Hal. He was Merlin Kaggs, an old enemy of Roger and Hal, going back to when they were just boys. He had been a low-grade conman, a murderer, a thief. More than once, he had tried to kill Roger and Hal, but every time he had come off second best. He had disappeared many years ago, but now seemed to have made a fortune during the chaotic time after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He had reinvented himself as an oligarch – one of the billionaires who held so much power and influence in Russia.

  There were more pages about the saiga, and then this:

  There is now no doubt. The saiga are not being killed by local hunters. The herds are being depleted, yet there is no evidence of shooting, no carcasses, no blood. Ling-Mei’s theory had been that what lay behind all this was the use of saiga horns in Chinese traditional medicine, where they are occasionally used as a substitute for rhino horn. But in that case we would find the bodies with the horns removed – the killers would have no use for the rest of the animal. The only conclusion we can draw is that the animals are being captured alive, and taken to …

  Frustratingly, here the page had been too badly burnt to read. There was just the singed paper, gradually turning blacker towards the bottom.

  The parts that most moved Amazon were the sections – short but so, so sweet – where her parents mentioned her.

  ‘We miss our little Amazon so much. Ling-Mei was very upset last night. She said that in future we could not leave our daughter behind. Either we travel only in the school holidays or we take her out of school and bring her with us, taking a tutor along or teaching her ourselves. Neither of us can bear these absences any longer. A little girl needs her mom and dad. And a mom and dad need their little girl.

  Strangely, the pages with these kinds of personal comments about her, or those in which Roger spoke of his sadness about the breach with his brother Hal, were, although singed, still readable. It was as though a guardian angel had watched over the pages written with love … It was the ones that dealt with the meaty issues – who was betraying TRACKS, why they were doing it and where the animals were being sent – that had been destroyed.

  Still the limousine drove on through countryside as dry and brown as the diary of Roger Hunt. Having warned her several times that the battery was low, Amazon’s iPad finally ran out of juice and turned itself off.

  ‘I need a comfort break,’ said Dr Drexler, interrupting the long silence of the trip.

  He tapped on the window separating the passenger seats from the driver, and pointed towards an approaching roadside café. The car pulled in. Amazon opened the door and was hit by a wave of heat that had an almost physical force. Suddenly the air-conditioned car seemed like a very nice place to be.

  ‘I’m staying in the car,’ she said to Drexler.

  ‘As you choose,’ he replied, his mouth a narrow line of disapproval, and disappeared into the scruffy and cheerless interior of the café.

  Somehow it was always easier to breathe when Dr Drexler wasn’t around, but now Amazon was seriously bored. The countryside had been monotonous, but at least it had changed, slowly. Now there was nothing to look at. Her laptop was locked in the boot, as were the books she had brought with her. Anyway, all she really wanted to read was her father’s diary.

  Then she saw Dr Drexler’s laptop on the floor of the car, poking out from under his seat. She knew that he had the PDF of the diary on there. She felt a little guilty about opening someone else’s laptop, but not so guilty that it stopped her from doing it.

  It asked for a password. She knew that all of the TRACKS computers had the same password: SEMITA (which was Latin for TRACKS), followed by the initials of the user. What on earth was Dr Drexler’s first name, she wondered?

  David? Something boring like that. No, John, that was it. Amazon typed SEMITAJD and was in. She did a quick search for ‘Roger Hunt’s Diary’ and found the file. She double-clicked on it and it opened up in Adobe Reader.

  The bigger screen of the laptop made it much easier to read Roger’s spidery handwriting, and the file seemed to be of higher resolution than the one she had on her iPad – she was even able to make out an extra word or two under the scorched parts. Nothing that made much sense, out of context, but at least it gave her some hope.

  But then she had another pang of conscience about Drexler’s laptop. No, conscience wasn’t quite the right word. Amazon didn’t actually think there was anything morally wro
ng about what she was doing, but she still didn’t want him to know that she had done it. TRACKS’ head of science was a private man, and she didn’t think he’d appreciate anyone prying into his affairs, even innocently. However, she had a solution.

  She fished in the backpack at her feet and pulled out a USB stick. It had a couple of downloaded movies on it, but there was enough room for one small file. She dragged the PDF file to the USB drive icon. To her surprise a message came up saying that there wasn’t enough room. She tutted, trashed one of the movies and this time the copying worked. She slipped the USB stick back into her pocket, closed up the laptop and replaced it under the seat.

  A minute or two later, Dr Drexler came back.

  ‘Quite shocking,’ he said as he made himself comfortable again in the cool of the car, ‘the state of public conveniences in this country. I had to give a hundred rupees each to two fellows in there, and you’d think the least they could do would be to … well, anyway, things will be rather different when we arrive at the Maharaja of Jaipod’s residence.’

  ‘What’s it like?’ asked Amazon, relieved that Drexler hadn’t noticed anything amiss with his laptop.

  ‘Oh, a palace, quite definitely a palace. The largest in Rajasthan, in fact. And, as you know, the Maharaja also owns a huge estate further south, which he has turned into the biggest privately owned game reserve in India. TRACKS have been sending rescued animals to him for several years now, for, ah, rehabilitation, if that’s the word.’

  ‘Is that the guy with the Asiatic lions? Uncle Hal mentioned him to me.’

  ‘Yes, yes. In fact, his reserve is the only place in the world where you can see lions and tigers together in the wild, although of course they stick to their own preferred habitats. And of course there are leopards, the dhole – that’s the Indian wild dog – a fierce predator in its own right. And in the rivers there are mugger crocodiles – the biggest in India …’

  ‘Sounds quite a place. I’d love to see it.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you will, one day.’

  Frazer’s journey could not have been more different. He was loving every second of it: the screeching drive to the private runway at the edge of Mumbai international airport; the sleek little executive jet with leather seats and, if he’d wanted it, champagne on ice (he settled for iced tea); the chance to talk with his dad about the adventures they’d shared, as well as the ones Hal and Roger had been on at Frazer’s age.

  Hal himself was clearly relieved to be away from the fund-raising side of things and back to the thrill of actually saving animals. But there was one thing killing the joy for both of them.

  ‘Hope Amazon isn’t too bored,’ said Frazer.

  His father sighed. ‘Me too. Drex is a good man and a fine scientist, but he can be a dry old stick. Not really the sort of company you’d choose for a young girl. It’s a shame we couldn’t have left Miranda behind as well …’

  Frazer pulled a face. In his mind Miranda was almost as dry a stick as Dr Drexler. Then he realized that his father’s comments could have been taken in two ways, and that made him grin.

  ‘I’m not deaf, you know,’ came Miranda’s voice from behind them. ‘Or blind. I can see your face reflected in the window.’

  Hal and Frazer looked at each other and pulled the same naughty schoolboy face. Frazer hadn’t seen his dad looking so relaxed in a long time.

  ‘You love this, don’t you, Dad?’ he said.

  ‘You mean flying around in private jets?’

  ‘I mean saving animals. Rescuing giant snakes. Jungles. Deserts. The works.’

  ‘Guess you got me, son.’

  ‘And you know what, Dad?’ Frazer replied.

  ‘I think I do, Fraze. Yep, I think I do.’

  And the look they exchanged meant that Frazer didn’t have to say that he loved it too.

  Dr Drexler hadn’t been joking about the palace. Amazon knew that they were going to be attending a banquet there, but she had assumed that they’d be stopping at a hotel first, to freshen up. But it became clear as the palace came into view, and gradually filled her vision, that they were going directly there.

  ‘Yes, my dear,’ said Dr Drexler, as if reading her mind, ‘we will be staying in the palace while we are in Jaipur. Unlike the other business people and financiers and politicians you have met so far in Mumbai and Delhi, you are not primarily here to charm your way into bank accounts and wallets. The Maharaja is an old, old friend of TRACKS and, indeed, of mine.’

  Amazon was a little surprised. ‘OK, what am I here for?’

  ‘You are here, my dear, as a reward for the Maharaja.’

  Amazon didn’t much like the sound of that.

  ‘You make me sound like an ice cream given to some kid for being good.’

  Drexler looked blank for a moment, and then emitted his dry, mirthless laugh.

  ‘Not at all, dear child. It is just that the Maharaja was educated at a public school in England and consequently loves all things English. He simply wants to talk with you about English country meadows and bluebell woods and the like.’

  When Amazon next looked up, except for the tip of the gleaming dome, the palace was no longer visible. It was obscured by a high wall.

  The car drove through a mighty gateway, lacking only a portcullis to complete the picture. On either side of the gateway there stood a pure white horse with flowing mane and tail. Each horse had a tall, handsome rider, sporting a plumed turban and a moustache that looked like some extraordinary creature TRACKS would take an interest in. These two magnificent warriors saluted them with drawn sabres.

  ‘Are they for real?’ asked an astonished Amazon.

  ‘Oh yes, very much so. The guard is both ceremonial and practical. The Maharaja is a great man and, like all great men, he has many enemies.’

  Once through the gateway, the palace came back into view. From a distance it had a delicate and dreamlike beauty. At close range the sense of light and grace was replaced by something graver, weightier, more magisterial. It was a truly awe-inspiring structure with a great dome like that of St Paul’s Cathedral in the middle, and a tall, thin tower, topped with a slender, onion-shaped dome, at each corner. The walls were of a marble of such dazzling whiteness that it genuinely hurt Amazon’s eyes to gaze upon it.

  But even the white marble seemed dull in comparison to the dome.

  ‘That’s not really made of –’

  ‘Gold? No, my dear. Merely burnished copper. But yes, it is magnificent, isn’t it? It is said to be visible from space as a pool of molten gold, as if a new sun were being born, right here in Rajasthan.’

  Amazon had never heard Drexler speak like this, and she found it a little disconcerting.

  ‘So you’ve been here before?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh yes, many times. You see, the Maharaja is my godfather. He was at school with my father and has helped me all my life. He paid my school fees. It is not an exaggeration to say that I owe everything I have achieved to him.’

  By now the car, crunching along the gravel drive, had almost reached the palace itself. A reception committee was awaiting them. There were servants in elaborate uniforms, looking like something from a theatrical performance. Next to them stood the most bizarre band of musicians Amazon had ever seen: some held traditional Indian instruments, such as sitars, pungis and pulluvan pattus, while others were equipped with bagpipes, trombones, bugles and drums.

  As soon as the car drew up before them, the band struck up. It sounded, to Amazon, as though every member were playing a different tune, such was the cacophony. She thought that it was probably just Indian music, and she was being ignorant. But then an argument broke out between several of the band members, followed by apparent agreement. The band started up again and what they played was clearly supposed to be ‘God Save the Queen’.

  ‘Smile, my dear,’ said Drexler. ‘This is all in your honour.’

  Never mind smiling: Amazon was finding it difficult not to laugh.

  An anci
ent lady, who looked almost like a few handfuls of the dry earth formed into the shape of a person, dipped her thumb into a pot of powdery red dye and then anointed both of them on the forehead. An equally old man next to her then pushed a few broken grains of rice into the red spot.

  ‘This is called the bindi,’ said Drexler. ‘It is a blessing, for luck. And it will protect you from demons and suchlike.’

  And then a very grand figure approached them.

  ‘Is this the Maharaja?’ Amazon asked Dr Drexler out of the side of her mouth.

  ‘Oh dear, no, not at all,’ he chortled.

  ‘Please to follow,’ said the man, giving a little bow.

  He led them through the main doors of the palace. They were made from thick wood, covered by bronze panels showing intricate scenes of battles from bygone times. At a height that Amazon would have had to jump to reach there was a line of vicious spikes sticking out. Dr Drexler saw her gazing at them.

  ‘To deter elephants,’ he said, his normally tight mouth giving way to a grim little smile. ‘Any elephant rash enough to try to barge the door down would find its brain impaled upon a spike.’

  Amazon couldn’t help but cry out in distress. ‘Oh, but that’s not fair! The poor elephants! It wasn’t their fault …’

  ‘Those were cruel times,’ said Drexler. ‘Very cruel. Anyway, let’s put those thoughts out of our heads. We are here to charm and delight the Maharaja, remember. He has given millions to our projects, as well as supporting his own sanctuary.’

  The grave and grand servant passed them on to another, a little less grand, who showed them silently to their rooms. At his door Drexler said, ‘We’ll be dining with the Maharaja at seven. Do try to look …’