Monday 21 November re: Thursday 17 November

The four of us didn't get much sleep that night. The cage was pretty cramped with four grown adults in it and on top of that I was cold because I was dressed for a mild day in Cambridge rather than a freezing cold day in St Andrews. In the morning, hawk-eye brought us breakfast.

Dad demanded to speak to Horace Tipperlong.

Hawk-eye Meier said he could pass on a message if he wanted to.

Dad said something that is best not repeated here.

Hawk-eye Meier wrote it down. Said, "I can send that to him if it makes you feel better." And headed off.

Ape-face Erlick and hawk-eye Meier came in a bit later on and took some footage of us with a digital camera. Then they made us turn round with our backs to them, tied our hands behind our backs, put duct tape over our mouths, and bundled us into a couple of big flight cases. For the next hour or so we seemed to trundle along, occasionally being lifted up or pushed down what seemed to be flights of stairs, loaded into what seemed to be a van, unloaded, pushed along again, before eventually they opened the flight cases and pulled us out.

We were on a boat somewhere, some distance offshore. There was an open hatch on the deck leading down into some sort of a hold underneath. One at a time, they freed our hands and made us climb into the hold down some sort of a ladder. Once the four of us were down, they pulled up the ladder.

Meier said, "It's ten o'clock on Thursday. Amendment 15 is scheduled to be voted in Committee on Monday. You'll get out and home the minute it is removed from the schedule. If it isn't, the outcome will be a little bit more … explosive."

The hatch banged shut and we could all hear a bolt being slid into place.

It was at this point that it started to dawn on Dad that he was probably up against something that didn't involve Horace for once.

"Can somebody please explain to me what is going on here?" he said.

Kirsty said, "I think you need to listen to your son for once, uncle Jack."

Dad said, "OK then Samuel, what is all this about?"

I said, "Do you remember telling us about that time in Wales when you came across a secret laboratory in a mountain?"

Auntie Lucy said, "You remember the Mountain of Adventure, don't you, Jack?"

Dad said softly, "Yes. Yes I do."

I said, "Well apparently it's the same people."

Dad said, "You mean Erlick and Meier and that king of the mountain clown? They must all be dead by now, surely?"

I said, "They're in Russia masterminding it. They cosied up to the regime there when they were released from prison nine years ago. Those two men who have put us down here are their sons. Lee Erlick and Julius Meier."

Dad said, "I see. What do they want?"

I said, "They want auntie Dinah to withdraw an amendment that she has tabled on a Bill that's currently before Parliament. Amendment 15 to the Anti Money Laundering Bill. The one that Mum helped her to draw up, remember?"

Dad said, "How did you know all this?"

I said, "Anatoly Petrov told me. Lee Erlick's son Barry is my supervision partner for Physics in Cambridge. All this came to light when I introduced him and my supervisor to auntie Dinah in The Baron of Beef a few weeks ago. She said he seemed familiar and then she told me all about your mountain of adventure, so I asked great uncle Bill about it and he asked Anatoly to get in touch. Barry kept pestering me to ask auntie Dinah to withdraw the amendment, but I started avoiding him. Then the amendment mysteriously disappeared from the system the day before it was to be voted on in second reading, so auntie Dinah tabled it again to be voted on at committee stage. Then on Tuesday evening, I was in a supervision with Barry. He goes to get himself a drink, comes back with one each for me and my supervisor as well, and the next thing I know I'm knocked out, only to wake up in a cage in a cellar that, as far as I can tell, is somewhere beneath the streets of St Andrews."

Dad said, "So it's nothing to do with Horace then?"

I said, "Of course not. Dad, how many of your childhood adventures had anything to do with Horace? The only one where he was involved, he turned out to be a genuine ornithologist and not one of the bad guys. You really need to let go."

Auntie Lucy said, "So what happens next?"

Dad said, "I think the only thing we can do is wait."

It was at this point that the hatch opened. Someone was pushed down into it, landing on the floor on top of us, and then the hatch was shut and locked again.

It was dark and difficult to see who the newcomer was, but I recognised the voice that was groaning and muttering in the darkness.

"Barry?" I said. "What are you doing here?"

Barry was bound hand and foot, so we set to untying him. He seemed a bit shell-shocked and unsure of where he was.

"I am so sorry about this, Sam," he said. "Just wait until I get my hands on that girlfriend of mine."

Asked him what he meant.

He said, "I never thought they would actually go through with something like this. She had asked me to try to get you to persuade your aunt to withdraw her amendment, and I was happy to go along with that. But then when she didn't, Sophie used her admin privileges to delete it from the system before the second reading. Then when your aunt re-submitted the amendment for the Committee stage, Sophie all of a sudden found herself moved onto a different team and her admin rights were revoked. So she spoke to her dad and my dad and they decided to use what they call the rubber hose cryptography approach. Basically, bring you guys in and hold you hostage to force your aunt's hand. She asked me to do the dirty work just before our supervision, but I refused. I was going to warn you and go to the police, but it seems she beat me to it. My drink was spiked too."

I wasn't sure whether to trust him or not on this. But he was in the same predicament as us, so there wasn't much any of us could do about it.

Auntie Lucy said, "Well we've been in worse scrapes than this before and we've lived to tell the tale. In fact, there was one situation very similar to this one before, wasn't there, Jack?"

Dad said, "Yes. Our adventure in the Hebrides. When I was sixteen." He started to tell Barry all about it, how he and uncle Philip had swum up to a boat in a harbour on one of the islands there and rescued great uncle Bill and Horace Tipperlong from a very similar hold underneath a very similar hatch just as the enemy gang was preparing to set sail at midnight.

Barry said, "If only it were that simple now. This boat is all computerised. Set to head off on a pre-programmed course via GPS, scrape the outcome of the division from the public Parliament website automatically, and if it goes through to blow up the boat. And even if someone did somehow manage to find us, that hatch up there is booby-trapped."

We sat in silence contemplating our fates. What had become of my robot spider, it seemed, was a moot point. Everything really was down to auntie Dinah now: either she withdrew her amendment, or else we would go boom.