Anthony Horowitz - Nightrise

“No, sir.” Jamie was ready.

“Very well.” Trelawny gestured at a low table in front of the sofa. There was a plain wooden box, about the size of a cigarette packet, placed in the middle. “My wife gave me that,” he said. “I carry it with me wherever I go. Alicia doesn’t know what’s in it. I haven’t told her. But she says you can tell me.”

Jamie concentrated for a moment. Then he looked Trelawny straight in the eyes. “There’s nothing inside the box,” he said. “It’s empty.”

Trelawny didn’t give anything away. But Alicia could feel a sudden tension in the room.

“Your wife made it,” Jamie went on. “She likes working with wood. Her name is Grace. You keep things in it when you go to bed. Cuff links and stuff like that. Right now it’s difficult to tell you more because all you’re thinking about is the election. It’s weird…”

“Go on.”

“Well, I was going to say, you’re really scared of losing. But what’s strange is, you’re even more scared of winning.”

There was a silence. Trelawny stood where he was, so still that he was barely breathing. At last he let out a long breath. “You have an extraordinary talent,” he said. “I won’t call it a gift – because perhaps it isn’t. I can’t imagine what it must be like for you – to have this ability.”

“I don’t use it,” Jamie said. “I don’t want it.”

“Nobody but me has ever looked inside this box,” Trelawny said. “It travels with me when I’m on the road. I’ve never told anyone who made it.” He went over to the table and picked it up, opened it and showed it to Alicia. There was nothing inside.

“Alicia has suggested that I should launch a full-scale investigation into the Nightrise Corporation,” he said. “But as it happens, I’ve already started.” He went over to the folder and opened it. “This is just the tip of the iceberg. Let me tell you a little bit about them. And then I’ll tell you why, right now, there’s nothing I can do.”

He sat down.

“I don’t believe all big business is bad,” he began. “But Nightrise are very big and they seem to take pride in being as bad as they can get away with. The trouble with this country is that we’re all too ready to turn a blind eye to crimes committed in the name of business. A factory burns down and twenty workers are killed. A tank leaks and a whole river system gets polluted. A weapons system is sold abroad and ends up being used against American soldiers. Nobody notices – and you know why? Because profit is all that matters. Profit is king. These companies are making huge profits and employing tens of thousands of people. So we let them get away with murder.

“I first heard about Nightrise about six months ago.” He produced a clipping, cut out of a newspaper. “This was sent to me by a friend. He thought I might be interested in the story of a twelve-year-old child working in a toy factory in Indonesia who got burned by one of the machines and died. The kid had been working ten hours a day for twenty cents an hour and he was exhausted. I call that murder. He was making parts for a shooting game and the company that employed him just happened to be fully owned by Nightrise. But did they pay any compensation? Did they care? Of course not. And you could buy that toy in any mall in America…”

“You said there’s nothing you can do,” Jamie cut in.

“Here’s why.” Trelawny frowned. “The current vice president and the chief of staff both used to work for Nightrise before they went into politics. When they leave the White House, whoever wins the next election, they’ll go back on the board. Nightrise has about three hundred companies all around the world and many of them do work for the US government. There’s one that manufactures bombs. The bombs are dropped. Then another one that’s hired to rebuild the cities that the bombs destroyed. You see what I mean? Business and politics go hand in hand.

“And just to make matters worse, Nightrise is supporting Charles Baker in the presidential election. In fact, they’re one of his main sponsors. They’ve channelled millions of dollars in his direction. They have to be clever how they do it: there are laws about donating money to political causes. But there are dozens of independent organizations and little groups fighting against me and, although they don’t seem to be connected, we’re pretty sure that Nightrise is bankrolling the whole lot of them. But I’ve got no proof, Jamie. They’ve been too careful. And if I start making accusations, it’ll just make me look like a sore loser – at least, I’ll look as if I’m afraid of losing, and that won’t help anyone.”

“So what can you do?”

“I have to wait and hope I win. If I become president of this country – and I believe that there’s a very good chance of that happening – I want to make it my first priority to fight corruption in business and I mean to make a start with Nightrise.”

“We can’t wait,” Jamie said. “They’re hurting Scott.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“Hold on,” Alicia said. She reached into her handbag and took out a sheet of paper. “Thanks to Jamie, we managed to find out that Scott may be being held in a place called Silent Creek. I checked it out on the Internet. Silent Creek is a prison, a Youth Correctional Facility, out in the Mojave Desert. It’s the only privately run prison in Nevada. And it’s owned by Nightrise.”

“Scott’s there,” Jamie said.

“We think Scott is there. And, we think, Daniel could be there too.” Alicia sighed. “It makes sense. If you wanted to hold a bunch of kids somewhere nobody could find them, somewhere out of the way, a prison in the desert would be perfect. Can you go in there, Senator? Could you get the police to raid it?”

“I could try.” Trelawny thought for a moment, then shook his head. “But it wouldn’t be easy. First of all, I’ve got no real proof that there’s anything wrong going on there. I haven’t even heard of Silent Creek – and if it’s in Nevada it isn’t even in my jurisdiction. And finally, if I did make enough noise to get an investigation started, the prison supervisor would hear about it before we got anywhere near. If those two boys were there, there’d be all the time in the world to move them some place else. Or worse…”

Alicia nodded. She had been expecting this. “You may be right,” she said. “But we have another thought.”

“I could go in there,” Jamie said.

“Go in there… how?”

“You must know people,” Alicia said. “Suppose Jamie were to become one of the inmates. With a false name. A judge could send him there with another bunch of juveniles. Once he was inside Silent Creek, he could find out if Scott and Daniel were there and get a message to me. Maybe he could even help get them out.”

“How would he do that?”

“There are things I can do,” Jamie explained. “Things you don’t know about.”

“I know you want to take these people on in your own time, Senator,” Alicia said. “But we don’t have any time. We have to do something now.”

There was a knock at the door and, without waiting for an answer, Warren Cornfield burst in. Trelawny’s security man was looking furious. He stood framed in the doorway, which was almost his own size.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said. “I’m sorry to butt in…”

“What is it, Warren?” Trelawny asked. He didn’t seem concerned.

“Sir, that woman has lied to me.” His finger jabbed in Alicia’s direction. “That boy she’s brought to see you, I think you should know that his name is not David. I thought I recognized him and now I know who he is. His name is Jamie Tyler and he is a wanted felon.”