Jigsaw

by Garry Kilworth

Genres: YA Fantasy

Synopsis

April 29th: Krantu is a good way off the coast of Sarawak, a Malaysian island. No one lives on Krantu anymore and it’ll soon sink into the sea. May 2nd: This is just like when I went on digs. Dad is up to his eyeballs in work. June 4th: He put the edges of the scrolls near to each other. What happened next made me jump backwards, my heart pounding. July 5th: I’m not sure what happened. The bright beam of the torch was shining directly into a huge pair of eyes . . . Whatever had been caught in my torch beam had crashed through the flimsy wall of the shed and stampeded into the rainforest beyond it. As strange events unfold, Max and those around him are drawn deeper and deeper into danger. Surrounded by spies and pirates, Max makes a terrible discovery—a secret that could change the world for ever.

Release date: May 3, 2007

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 288

Sample

Call me Max – everybody does.

Welcome to my blog. I travel a lot with my dad and I set this up so you can see what I’m up to. There’s also another reason …

I have this big secret. Huge. I have lots of secrets of course, who doesn’t? But this secret’s special. It’s time I told you, because stuff like this starts to fight inside you. It’s like having a small animal trying to get out. I can’t keep it in much longer. It’s best I do it now in this way. It’s going to get out anyway, somehow.

Here it is then, the whole story. I took it from the diary I kept in Jordan and on Krantu Island. You can believe me or not. I don’t care. I know it’s true.

29 April, Krantu Island

We were told by Ram that Krantu Island was formed by an underwater volcano. You can see it in the rocks: they’re sort of jagged and sharp as chisels: they rip your knee open if you fall on them. Bits of volcano stick up in places, as weird pointed stacks which will probably look like the spires of drowned churches when the island gets covered by seawater. Dad says they remind him of Gothic towers.

Krantu is a good way off the coast of Sarawak, a Malaysian island. No one lives on Krantu anymore and it’ll soon sink into the sea. Or the sea’ll come up and cover it. I’m not quite sure which. Something to do with global warming maybe, but dad also said the reef is crumbling. A tsunami recently passed over the coral shelf and covered it with sand. Coral polyps are live creatures and I suppose they suffocated. Anyway, most of the reef itself is now dead. Dead stuff just rots away. Inside the reef, in the lagoon itself, some of the coral is still alive though.

When we first arrived we helped dad repair this massive fish-drying shed that the island people had left. There used to be fishermen on Krantu but they moved to somewhere else when this island was threatened. They left a village of sorts, though their huts aren’t any good to live in. Mostly made of palm leaves, the walls and roofs have rotted and some have been blasted to bits by storms. There’s also a sort of stockade made of thick bamboo poles, probably to keep out the wild hogs, but there are big gaps in it where clumps of the poles have fallen down.

We just moved into the village and made it our own. The fish-drying shed was to be dad’s workshop. Dad and Rambuta, the Malaysian zoologist he’d picked up in Kuching on our way through Sarawak. Once they started work I knew we wouldn’t see a lot of dad. He gets engrossed.

Repairing the fish-drying shed was fun though. I got to use some great tools. We sawed planks, nailed things together. It was fun somehow, to make a rotten old shed into something weatherproof. And when we had a break, we used to kick a ball around.

Rambutu is a terrific guy. He’s a small man, very light on his feet. We have this open square of hard-packed dirt where we play football. Talk about twinkle-toes. Rambuta could give lessons to any top-class striker. His footwork’s incredible. He’s taught me and Hass some tricks I’d never have learned anywhere else. Dad got annoyed. He said he’d hired Rambuta because he had a p-h-d, not because he had magic feet.

You could see dad was impressed though. He even started playing himself. It was me and Rambuta against dad and Hass. I don’t know why, but dad always seems to choose Hass over me. Sometimes it seems he doesn’t like me much at all. My nan reckons it’s because of mum, but that’s not fair. I wasn’t even there when mum died. Anyway, I try not to get jealous of Hass. Nan says it’s not his fault either.

Whatever, dad was no footballer. Rambuta could take the ball away from him in an instant. It made dad mad as fire. He’d blunder across the pitch, trying to take it back again and end up tripping over his own feet.

We had a lot of fun. That was before the serious work started. Afterwards we hardly saw dad, and Rambuta only for lessons. They were busy making bamboo frameworks for something inside the fish-drying shed. They wouldn’t say what. Not that I was that interested.

Hass and I went off and did our own thing in the rainforest, and in the lagoon.

1 May, Krantu Island

Trod on a spiny anemone and my foot puffed up like a balloon. Ram put some ointment on it which made it burn, but it went down again. Had to stay sat in one place till I could walk. Boring. Boring.

2 May, Krantu Island

This is just like when I went on digs. Dad is up to his eyeballs in work and hasn’t any time to eat even. In fact it’s worse. He never seems to come out of that fish-drying shed. As usual something strange is going on, but I don’t dare ask what. Dad would just tell me to mind my own business and when I ask Ram he says, ~ It’s not up to me to say anything to you, Max. That’s something for your father.

So here we are, up to our ears in work and secrets, just like in Jordan, where I first met Hass. Even there, in the desert of Qumran, we were able to make our own fun, Hass and I. Maybe this is a good place to say what went on there, when dad went crazy over a new find.

My dad has spent most of his life in the deserts of Jordan and Syria, looking for old things: weapons and pots and stuff. Mum too, when she was alive. They both discovered some pretty mean artefacts. Most of them are in museums now, or in universities, or somewhere like that. I was quite proud of my parents, though I never said so. I just sort of bragged about them to kids at school, even when I was younger. I have this joke which came from me boasting about him. Some kid said his dad was a famous caver and had discovered a new cave in Brazil. I told him my dad was famous for finding ancient weapons.

~ What then? asked this kid. ~ What’s he found?

I searched my brain for a name, but nothing would come – my head had gone empty, the way it does in moments like this.

~ Wouldn’t you like to know, I said weakly.

~ Yes, I would, said the kid, folding his arms as other kids gathered round us. ~ You tell us just one rare weapon your famous dad found.

~ He found … I had just come from an RI lesson, and I grinned as I thought of it ~ … he found the axe of the apostles.

The other kids burst out laughing.

The axe of the apostles.

I still smile to myself about that now. I told dad at the time but he didn’t see the joke then and now I think he’s forgotten all about it.

I love the desert. Everything seems so clean and clear out there: the space between earth and the stars, the moonbeams amongst the rocks, even the very dust itself seems cleaner. And the sounds! Kids at my school back home who haven’t been to the desert think it’s a silent place. It isn’t. Not at all. It’s quiet, but in that quietness you can hear lizards rattling the gravel and birds turning over stones. There are creatures calling each other: scruffy pi-dogs, brown kites with ragged wings. Even the beetles make noises, clambering over the gravel. Some beetles are as big as your fist, with a back as hard as a bullet. These sounds aren’t threatening, not to me anyway. They’re kind of comforting, like hearing your parents moving downstairs when you wake from a bad dream, or the milkman coming in the early dawn. Good sounds.

~ When are you going to bed? asked my dad one night, looking up from his work as if only just noticing I was there. ~ It’s past midnight.

~ I know. Just a few more pages.

~ All right. He went to his laptop computer, connected online through a satellite. ~ I’ll send a few emails, but when I’m finished we really must pack.

My dad’s an archaeologist. He says he’s one of the lucky ones, who gets to do what he does best. This was his patch, the Middle East. Three years ago he was in Syria and found a load of old weapons that the British Museum went mad over. Then it was Jordan, a place called Qumran. There’s lots of wadis – dry river beds – where there used to be towns back in ancient times. This dig was pretty boring so far as I was concerned. Only jars and agricultural tools. An adze. A thing for prising out roots of stubborn shrubs. Not much more. No swords or spearheads, like at the dig in Syria.

I kept reading, hoping dad would forget about me once he started studying the pottery again. But the yellow light of the bulb run by the generator was dimming and straining my eyes. The current needed turning up and if I asked him to do it, he would definitely give me marching orders. At that moment though, the flap opened and one of dad’s Jordanian colleagues came in.

~ James, said Professor Ahmed, ~ we have a visitor.

Dad’s eyebrows went up. ~ At this time of night? Then when he saw how serious Professor Ahmed’s expression was, he said sharply, ~ What is it?

I knew straight away that he was thinking that it might be terrorists, or bandits, come to cause trouble.

Professor Ahmed must have caught the anxiety in dad’s voice because he replied, ~ It’s nothing bad, James – it’s a goatboy. He says he wants to see you.

~ Good lord! Doesn’t he sleep?

Professor Ahmed shrugged and smiled. ~ He’s a goatherd. He watches his goats.

~ Oh, yes. Yes of course. Bring him in then, though I can’t think what … never mind, bring him in.

The professor lifted the flap higher and motioned with his arm, out into the night desert.

~ Taal hinna, he called to someone, meaning ‘come here’.

A young Arab boy entered. He was about my age, maybe a bit older. He had a thin face with brown eyes set wide. Those eyes glanced at me and were a bit scathing, I thought, bloody cheek. His body wasn’t broad, like mine, at the shoulders. It was sort of lean and whippy, especially about the wrists and ankles. There was white trail dust on his face and arms, and all the way up his legs from his bare feet. He needed a shower, but he didn’t smell. It was clean desert dust. Not dirt.

When he’d run his eyes over this kid in the knee-length surfers and Arctic Monkeys T-shirt, he turned back to dad again.

You could see this was a kid who wouldn’t take to being messed about. He had that sort of grown-up look of a boy twice his real age. I learned later that, not like me at all, he’d had some tough times and had had to grow up fast.

The boy was carrying a big urn which looked quite heavy. He put the pot on the ground and faced dad, at the same time as unwinding the ragged scarf he had on his head. At that moment someone called to Professor Ahmed that one of the camels was sick. I was pleased my Arabic was good enough to pick up the words. The professor grunted.

~ Excuse me, James.

~ Of course, said dad. ~ I’ll deal with the lad.

~ Sir, said the goatherd in a hoarse whisper, once Ahmed had left the tent, ~ I bring you something very valuable. Very old.

~ You have remarkably good English for a watcher of goats, dad said to him. ~ Where did you learn?

The boy stiffened slightly. ~ My father was a teacher, he said, ~ in a school in Amman. He taught me well.

~ Indeed he did.

The kid seemed to think he needed to explain further.

~ My father was killed in an accident. I have no mother – she too died, when I was born. I was sent to my uncle, out here.

~ Your uncle owns herds of goats?

~ My uncle is a rich man with a big house, but he does not like me, so he sends me to a farm. I must work for the farmer.

~ I think I understand. Now, what have you brought me? This magnificent urn? It does indeed look quite valuable …

It seemed to me from his tone of voice that he was feeling sorry for this Jordanian boy. Me, I wondered whether this kid was just putting it on. Making up this sob story to get more money. Maybe the pot was worth something, maybe not, but dad was going to buy it from him anyway. Dad bent down and studied the pot, running his hand over it, tracing a pattern with a fingernail.

~ This design … he began, but the boy interrupted him.

~ Not the pot, sir – there is something inside.

Dad looked up at him quickly, studying his face in the sallow light of the lamp.

I stepped forward quickly, crickets buzzing in my ears.

~ A snake?’ I cried. ~ Have you got a snake?

Why I yelled that, I don’t know, but snakes had always been a thing with me. Local people, when they caught snakes, often put them in pots like this to carry them somewhere. It’s not that I’m scared of snakes. I am a bit, the poisonous ones, but they excite me. It’s the way they move in the sand, sliding along without any effort at all. It’s the patterns on their backs and the way they shine in the sunlight.

The boy turned and looked at me again. There was utter contempt in his gaze.

~ A snake? he said. ~ Why would I bring a snake?

~ I dunno, I replied weakly, shrugging. Then rallying my own form of schoolboy contempt, ~ I give in. Why would you?

~ Don’t be stupid, Max, dad said. ~ Have some common sense.

The two of them then ignored me, the boy saying to dad, ~ Please, sir, look in the urn. You will find skins. Goatskins, with writings on them. I found them in a cave in the mountains. There are twelve, sir. The writings look very, very old. Even I, a teacher’s son, cannot read them.

Dad’s eyes widened. I wasn’t my father’s son for nothing. I knew immediately what he was thinking. He’d told me time and time again that this was the area in which the Dead Sea Scrolls had been found. And other such writings. The story dad told me was this:

A bedu shepherd boy named Muhammad-the-Wolf (what a cool name! – what I’d give to have a name like that! – imagine your teacher calling that out in class) found the Dead Sea Scrolls in a cave after one of his flock went missing. The treasures were in sealed earthenware jars, a total of seven, wrapped in linen. There were other scrolls (more interesting I would think); one was called the War Scroll, on which there were lists of armies and weapons and battle plans. It said things like ‘the sons of light fought a ferocious war with the sons of darkness’. Really cool stuff like that. Like something out of a fantasy film.

Anyway, if you wanted to find ancient documents, this was the place to do it, and it seemed like history had repeated itself, as they say.

Dad reached inside the jar.

5 May, Krantu Island

Krantu Island is our tropical paradise, with lots of play and only a few hours each day of school work from Rambuta, thank you very much St Thomas Aquinas (Patron Saint of Education). Hass and I, we still wonder what’s going on in that shed, but we’ve given up asking. Dad won’t tell us and neither will Ram. We boys are forbidden to go anywhere near it and have been told that if we do we’ll be sent back home to England straight away and our feet won’t touch the ground.

That shed is a sort of dark temple into which my dad disappears each day. It’s like, say, a demon’s castle on top of a hill that you can’t climb, or something at the bottom of a hell-deep chasm in a place no ropes are long enough to reach.

Not being allowed to look inside makes us desperate to look, but we know if we do the worst thing in the world will happen. We’ll be banished from our island, never to return. I always thought banishment was a soft punishment, when I read about it in stories – much less terrible than death by execution – but now that I’ve found somewhere I really like, I’ve changed my mind.

I spat out my snorkel.

~ Did you see that stingray? I cried to Hass, coming up for air in the lagoon. ~ It was massive. Big as a coffee table.

We were snorkelling above the coral. There were hundreds of different types of fish in the crystal-clear water below us. Fish of all shapes and so many colours they dazzled you. The deadly ones were the most interesting. Lion fish with their poisonous spines; ugly warty stonefish with their kill-you-in-two-minutes dorsal spikes; sea snakes fifty times more venomous than a king cobra. They all swam through coral gardens that took your breath away. Brain coral, stagshead coral, fan coral – you name it, we had it here, all to ourselves.

~ What’s that?

Hass was treading water, his face mask pushed up on to his forehead, his snorkel dangling.

He was pointing out over the reef.

I pushed up my mask and followed the finger. At first I could see nothing. The waves crashing on the reef were often a metre or more high and you had to wait for a lull. Then I saw it. A white sail on the horizon, dipping and rising through the troughs.

~ It’s only a boat, I said. ~ Some kind of yacht.

~ It’s coming this way.

~ Nah. Nobody’s allowed to come here now. You heard what dad said. We’re the only ones who’ve been given permission to stay here.

~ Maybe it’s in trouble, Max? Or they’re running short of water?

~ Who cares? Come on, have a look at this stingray. He’s settled between two rocks. You can see his eyes sticking up out of the sand …

Later though, when we walked back towards the camp inside the rainforest edge, we saw the boat again. It was moored inside the reef. The sail was down and I could see a tall man moving about the deck.

~ Dad won’t be happy about this, I murmured to Hassan. ~ You wait.

Sure enough, he wasn’t.

~ A what? he cried.

~ A yacht. A biggish one. ’Sout there now, in the lagoon.

Dad’s hands went on his hips and he stared in the direction of the boat as if he could see through the rainforest trees.

~ Hass reckons they might be just taking on water, I suggested. ~ Didn’t you, Hass?

Dad’s face cleared a bit. ~ Ah, yes, that’ll be it. Of course. Well done, Hassan. I was just about to march over there and make a fool of myself. Water. Yes, that’ll be it.

But it wasn’t it. Two hours later the tall man I had seen on the deck of the yacht appeared in the clearing. Dad was just coming out of the big shed and on seeing the man he slammed the double-doors shut with a bang. The man strode towards him with an outstretched hand, with what dad always called ‘a company smile’ on his face. The sort of smile bank managers and insurance men have when you first meet them.

~ Grant Porter, said the man in an American accent. ~ It seems we’re to be neighbours for a while.

Dad ignored the hand.

~ This is private property, said dad. ~ You need permission to make a landfall here.

The smile instantly vanished.

~ Is that so? Well, it just so happens I do have permission.

Dad’s hands went on his hips.

~ From whom, may I ask?

~ From the Malaysian government.

Dad said, ~ I was assured by the Office of Island Administration in Sarawak that we would not be disturbed here.

~ And my authority comes from Kuala Lumpur, the central government offices. It seems you only have local authority, whilst I have it from the top. What do you think about that, then?

Mr Porter’s tone was very belligerent now. I knew something about Americans from the US expat kids who’d boarded at my school. When you first met them they almost always proffered the hand of friendship. But if it was rejected they turned really nasty. Dad had to watch himself; this Yank was twice as big as him. And dad was no good at fist fighting. He had a brain as big as a cathedral but even I could get the better of him in a rough-and-tumble these days.

However, Mr Porter turned out to be a gentleman. Like dad, he seemed to prefer words to fists.

~ Now see here, dad said, ~ I’m in the middle of a very – an important experiment here. I can’t have strangers running about willy-nilly disturbing my concentration. You’ll have to find another island. This one’s about to disappear into the sea, in any case, so whatever it is that you’ve come here for you won’t find it. It’ll be gone soon.

Porter said, ~ It’s precisely for that reason I have come here, and I have no intention of leaving for somewhere else. My papers state I have permission to remain here until I see fit to leave or six months have expired. How about that then?

With that the American stormed off, down the rainforest path, back towards the lagoon.

~ Bloody cheek! cried dad, kicking a lump of wood in anger. ~ Who the hell does he think he is?

Rambuta tried to calm things down.

~ James, he said, ~ if he has permission there’s nothing we can do about it.

~ If he comes near this camp again, dad fumed, picking up the lump of wood, ~ I’ll brain him.

Hassan then spoke up. ~ We must kill them, he said quietly. ~ It is the right thing to do. When your family is threatened …

My eyes opened wide. Hass was serious.

This reaction from his adopted son stopped dad in his tracks. It seemed he had gone too far. He was always talking about the differences in culture that mattered.

~ Hassan, he said, now in a calm tone, ~ I didn’t mean what I said – about braining him. It’s just an expression.

Hassan suddenly grinned and his eyes glistened with delight. ~ I had you both there.

I heaved a sigh of relief and punched my brother on the arm. Hass had been kidding. But dad didn’t see the humour. He simply carried on with what he’d been saying.

~ If the man has permission from the authorities then there’s nothing we can do about it. We must suffer in silence. But we needn’t have anything to do with this intruder. I want you two boys to avoid him and anyone else from his yacht. Is he alone?

~ We didn’t see anyone else, I answered.

~ So, he’s most likely a lone yachtsman. Good. Avoid him. But Hassan – no violence. Do you understand? As your father, I forbid it.

Hassan nodded, widening his eyes at me and shrugging his shoulders. He wondered why dad took him seriously and where his joke had gone wrong. I explained later that it was very dif. . .