CHAPTER NINE

Camera

JACK AND ROGER were uninterested by Ralph and Rachel's surreptitious behaviour that afternoon: they lay in apathy on different sides of the beach, and no dissuasions were necessary. After a light supper the new chiefs left Samneric in charge of the group and walked into the forest.

The daylight was faltering now, and the trees around them grew colourless as evening advanced. Eventually they reached the foot of the hill and Ralph stopped. 'The opening's up there,' he nodded, not a little nervous. 'It's a steep climb but we should manage it.'

The two set off up the winding track, and when it ended took to the shafts of rock that pointed to the summit, using tufts of vegetation as handholds. Finally they were at the top, where the dense forest resumed almost immediately. Recalling the location of his nightime encounter, Ralph entered the wood, and Rachel followed, impressed by the boy's bravado, for the trees were sombre and silent all around.

Presently Ralph descried the clearing, and stopped by the same tree behind which he had hidden from the mysterious man. He turned to the woman. 'It's over there somewhere. In the ground.'

The boy was about to set off when a familiar sound returned: the slow, brutal scrape of metal on metal. He clutched Rachel by the arm and they ducked behind the tree, their hearts frozen. After a few seconds the sound of footsteps trickled through the trees.

'See?' hissed Ralph to the wide-eyed woman. 'He's obviously up to no good.'

'Don't jump to conclusions,' Rachel whispered back. 'We're the uninvited ones, remember.'

They watched the figure walk about then stop a little way off from the clearing. An orange spark told the spies that he was lighting a cigarette. Ralph remembered the scene of the grave with an inner shudder, and held his breath as the man exhaled and moonlight illuminated the clouds of white smoke. After a few drags the man resumed his evening stroll – and in a flash Ralph decided to take his chance: wordlessly he darted away from the tree and made for the clearing.

Rachel called after him in a fright, but her protestation was lost to the rustling trees as well as Ralph's rash boldness. The boy ran silently to the bordering trunks then stopped abruptly.

The metal plate was open. A circle of warm yellow light shone up into the evening air, and insects flying about in its beam were as entranced as he was. After so many weeks of dichotomous days – scorching sun and barren nights – Ralph was delighted to see light emitting from a man-made construct. He crept to the opening and peered down.

This was the passage from his dream. A concrete wall with a ladder was directly below him, and eight feet down lay a slate-coloured floor. A lightbulb shone from the ceiling nearby, but otherwise the room looked empty.

Madly, as if his father would be waiting for him inside, the boy lowered his feet into the opening and felt about for the ladder, then climbed halfway down and looked about him. Two black wooden doors were closed on opposite sides of the room. Everything else was grey stone and metal. After an eternity of jagged rock this ordered geometry was thrillingly alien. How long had this room been here?

Ralph climbed down the ladder and stood on the cold stone floor. For the first time in weeks he felt as disheveled as he looked, like a beggar in a palace. He hoped the king would receive him kindly…

Above him, ten metres away in the black evening chill, Rachel admonished herself for not following the boy. His fearlessness always threw her: it was as if he owned the island. Her thoughts were broken by the sound of the man returning, and her heart sank, but still she remained stationary, frozen behind the tree, as she watched the figure walk heavily to the opening and lower himself down. She shut her eyes as the plate closed, darkness descending on darkness.

Ralph was just debating which door to open when he heard the footsteps above him. Adrenalin smacked him in the chest and he dashed to the one facing east; it opened smoothly into an unlit room, the dimensions of which were indiscernible, though the temperature and floor were identical to the first. He shut the door silently and held his breath.

The boy heard the man climb down the ladder and pause midway to close the opening before descending to the floor. In fear he backed away from the entrance with frigid, staccato steps – but the man went through the other door and shut it with a bang.

Ralph stopped dead in the centre of the black and shut his eyes. Darkness seemed less frightening when it was produced like this. You can't see me if I can't see you…

He opened them again and walked forward. On the wall he located a switch and with his heart swelling he turned on the light; half expecting a roomful of sleeping ogres, he spun around with a grunt, but the place was uninhabited. In fact it resembled a storeroom, or at least a space that was used as such; the walls around him bore three or four shelves on which were placed sundry domestic items: cans, boxes, a few hardback books.

Ralph breathed out and wondered if he could escape with some of the provisions. As the man had access to such a cornucopia, and knew of the children's existence yet did not share it, he was clearly someone whom the boy could not trust. Nevertheless, he anticipated awkwardly stuffing cans into his shorts and being unable to open the hatch, so he thought better of it and returned to the first room. Anxious, excited, he put an ear to the untried door. No sound. What was the man up to?

Fear trickled into Ralph's ambition, but he forced himself to be brave. He turned the metal handle.

The skeletal environment was maintained in this next room, which like the first had another black door directly opposite. A wooden table was pushed against the southerly wall, with a few browned pieces of lined paper scattered on it, and a bunk bed was bare and barren on the same side as the ladder in the first chamber.

Enveloped by mystery, Ralph dared the next door, which opened into a larger room than before. At its front, facing the beach, was a small round window, but the view was obscured by something black. This room was considerably more occupied by objects: a wide silver table beneath the window that held various electronic equipment, all dormant; a few chairs scattered nearby; and a faded blue rug on the floor, incongruous with the otherwise clinical surroundings.

The other door in this chamber was positioned on the northerly, ladder wall. Ralph crept up to it and listened again. He heard low snoring and deduced that the man was resting in a more homely room than the previous one.

He went back to the silver table and gently moved a chair out of the way. The panels of dead lights reminded him of the submarine in his dream, rendered dry and prosaic in the waking life. More browned sheets of paper littered the desk; Ralph fingered a few but nothing was written, nor, when he looked closer, imprinted from overlayed pieces.

With a jump he heard a creak from the unseen room – the man was getting out of bed. Hurriedly Ralph replaced the paper and ducked down beneath the table, quickly repositioning the chairs to conceal himself. He cowered against the cold wall and stared across the room as the man came out; large boots clumped into view and the stowaway watched as the faceless figure moved into the next room and scraped something, perhaps the bunk bed, a little way across the floor. The sound was loud and unnerving. Then the man returned, and paused inside the entrance.

At this point Ralph felt curiously untouchable, for he had been silent, quick-witted and daring. But then, to his incalculable and timeless horror, the man put his hands on his knees, stooped down, and looked directly into the boy's terrified face.

RACHEL OPENED HER eyes. The night was still there, the trees, the silence, but Ralph had been swallowed by the earth. After a deep breath she walked to the vacant clearing and crouched down by the metal circle, wondering what had become of her companion. Then she let her lids fall once more, and hoped that when she opened them again she would be back in God's own country.

RALPH WAS DRAGGED to his feet and given a brutal shake. By the pale bulb he could clearly see the man's features: a rectangular, unshaven face, grey eyes, and the ghost of a scar on the right side. The fellow's countenance was shrewd and angry.

'I thought I told you to stay with the other kids!' he hoarsed in his threatening tone.

Ralph was hardened by weeks of wild. He shot back: 'So that we can all starve to death together? I saw the storeroom here. Why don't you share it out, you brute? Maybe we'll leave you alone then.'

This speech made some sort of impression on the man. He loosened his grip on the boy's bare shoulders and put on a more pensive expression. Then he let go completely and gave him a push towards the room he had come from.

'Eat,' he prompted, and the verb was enough incentive for Ralph; he opened the door and found himself in a room far more comfortable than the others. A fridge sat in one corner – how on Earth it was powered Ralph could only guess – and a fat white mattress lay on the westerly side. A small writing desk bore documents, stationery, and, to Ralph's discomfort, an automatic pistol.

As if reading his thoughts the man pocketed it in his coat and said, 'Don't worry about that.' Then he added, 'Just be thankful I'm not a baddie.'

Ralph frowned at him, feeling patronised. 'Then what are you?'

The man leaned against the desk as his captive opened the fridge. 'I can't tell you exactly. That information is secret.'

The prisoner ran his eyes over cocoa powder, butter, chocolate. He took a bar and began devouring it. 'Like a secret agent?' he asked without sarcasm.

'Sort of.'

'What were you doing on the mountain?'

'Looking for someone,' replied the man with an arm cross. 'Another… agent landed here a few weeks ago and we haven't heard anything of him since.'

A memory knocked on the door of Ralph's brain.

'You haven't seen anything suspicious?' asked the man.

'Just you,' said Ralph, his mouth watering from the sweet.

The man shifted. 'This could be important. You're quite sure you haven't seen somebody land here?'

The memory nosed the door, and Ralph allowed himself to realise. 'The Beast…' he murmured.

The man cocked his head. 'Beast?'

The boy remembered the night flight, the sail over the sea, and put two and two together. 'Yes,' he sobered. 'Someone landed here. A few weeks ago. We… we thought it was a monster.'

'A monster, eh? What did he say to you?'

'Nothing,' said Ralph. 'He was dead.'

The man put a hand to his forehead. 'Then where is the body?'

Ralph had stopped chewing. Ironically, the past months were rendered more frightening now that he knew the origins of the Beast. 'It – he – was blown out to sea, during a storm.'

The man was silent, then to Ralph's surprise he shrugged with a benign expression. 'Well, never mind. He died doing his duty.'

His accent seemed to be English, but like Rachel's it was tinged by a dialect he could not quite place. The boy put the remaining chocolate on top of the fridge and asked, 'So what's your mission?'

'There are dangerous enemies about,' graved the nameless man. 'A handful of foreign spies have had their eye on this island for a while. I'm here to put a stop to it.'

'What's so special about the island?'

'This bunker,' answered the man with a wave. 'It's used for very important work. In fact you shouldn't even know about it.'

Ralph was unsettled but tried to maintain a casual face. 'How did you get here anyway?'

'From the northerly side. The coral is too consistent to pass through. I suspected something was afoot here so I came by night. I think I know how you got here.'

Ralph blinked dumbly, so the man continued: 'The same way my colleague did. Shot down.'

Ralph remembered the crashes and lurches of the plane as it shuddered downwards through the night. 'You mean an enemy fired on us?'

The man shrugged suggestively. 'Seems logical. It would explain why you haven't been rescued.'

Ralph swallowed and tried to put the events of the past weeks in a wider context. The only source of outside information was this man. And Rachel, Rachel… But why had he not asked her the most important question? Because, because, because…

He suddenly yearned to be back on the cool, dry earth with the woman again, and wriggled uncomfortably, feeling hot and naked before the strange man. Adrenalin had heated his limbs.

'Will you help us get off the island?' he asked.

'Of course I will,' said the man. 'But not before I've made sure the island is safe to land on. I'll arrange for a seaplane to fly you to the nearest populated island. In the meantime, help yourself to the storeroom.'

He escorted Ralph to the room in which, moments before, the boy had hidden in terror from him, and stacked about twenty tins of food into a carton. Then he balanced it on a shoulder and climbed up the ladder.

Suddenly the curtain in Ralph's head drew back, and he remembered the copper-haired man he had seen just a few feet away during his hillside vigil. 'There was one other suspicious thing…' he began. Was this his chance to be a hero?

OUTSIDE RACHEL HEARD heard the metallic scrape again, and opening her eyes she saw the handle turning quickly. Instantly she leapt up and ran behind a verduous tree, as the portal fell with a thud on the earth and a box was shoved onto the surrounding leaves. The unseen pusher retracted before Ralph's dirty blond head appeared, then the boy clambered onto the ground, the circle of light was obliterated once more, and Rachel leant her head against the bark with a deep sigh of relief.