John McNally - Giant Killer

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins website address is

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Text copyright © John McNally 2017

Cover illustration © Paul Young

Cover design © HarperCollins Children’s Books 2017

John McNally asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007521692

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780007521685

Version: 2017-06-24

For my wife, Louise.

Thanks for winning me in that raffle

Then the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Take handfuls of soot from a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh. It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt, and festering boils will break out on people and animals throughout the land.”

Exodus 9:8–9

It’s far more important to know what person the disease has, than what disease the person has.

Hippocrates

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Part Two

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Part Three

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Part Four

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Part Five

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Footnotes

Keep Reading …

Books by John McNally

About the Publisher

“Place your bets! Mesdames et messieurs – faites vos jeux! ” The croupier’s voice rang out.

The roulette wheel spun, numbers flashed past, and for a few moments all possibilities existed at once.

An agent of the Global Non-governmental Threat Response Committee (commonly known as the G&T) prepared to place a five-hundred-euro bet on number 35 black.

The agent, beneath a heavy disguise, was Dr Al Allenby, six foot two inches of angular, eccentric cool; a scientist trapped in the soul of an artist.

His nephew, Infinity Drake – aka Finn – thought him the best uncle in the world. Al thought himself the worst. It was all his fault Finn had been shrunk, all his fault he’d subsequently been captured, all his fault for creating the Boldklub reduction process in the first place, something the world’s greatest terrorist, David Anthony Pytor Kaparis, wanted so badly.

Twice Kaparis had tried to blackmail the world into handing over the Boldklub secret; once by releasing the apocalyptic Scarlatti Wasp, more recently by creating a swarm of deadly nano-bots in Shanghai. Twice he had been thwarted, by a 9mm high Infinity Drake.

Infinity Drake: missing, presumed dead.

Until now.

“Place your bets! Mesdames et messieurs …”

The silver ball began to lose momentum as it orbited the spinning wheel.

After months of silence – of endless searching, with no result – the G&T had at last received some grainy video footage of what appeared to be Finn, together with a message from Kaparis proposing a deal: a handover of the boy in exchange for the key Boldklub fractal equations 1. To consent to the deal, a five-hundred-euro bet would be placed on 35 black at the casino in Monte Carlo at a specified time. An exchange would then take place in the smoking area on the street outside. The equations would be on a memory stick. The 9mm hostage, Infinity Drake, would be inside the aluminium tube of a Cohiba Espléndido fine cigar.

It was a fool’s gambit, but Al was desperate.

“Last chance, faites vos jeux ! Place your bets, mesdames et messieurs …” called the croupier.

The rich, mainly elderly players placed safe bets.

Al placed a blue five-hundred-euro chip on number 35 black. The deal was on.

The ball cracked against the spinning wheel then bounced like Al’s heart around his chest.

“No more bets! Mesdames et messieurs – rien ne va plus! ”

This was it. The culmination of five months of heartache and uncertainty. Al could not wait to see Finn, to bring him back to size at Hook Hall. He could not wait to hold him, to hang out with him, to eat junk food and play Xbox for nine hours straight. He could not wait to see his late sister, Finn’s mother, in his eyes, or for Al’s own mother – Finn’s epic grandma – to find peace again.

Al could not wait.

He was already on his way out, heading for the smokers of fat cigars on the street outside. As he burst through the swing doors to join them, precisely as planned, a motorbike drew up. A rider with a passenger on the back – both Tyros 2.

The passenger, a girl of fifteen or so, withdrew a Cohiba Espléndido cigar cylinder from a bag round her waist.

Al took out a small blue memory stick. The equations it contained were fake. Booby traps. If you ran them through any Boldklub machine it would blow up.

The Tyro thrust out the cigar tube. Al handed over the stick.

Then everything happened in a blur.

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

The motorbike roared straight off across the Place du Casino.

Al tried to twist the top off the cigar tube, hands shaking. It was stuck. One of the other smokers, another agent, ran to help. As they struggled, Al’s microphone picked up his desperate incantation, “Finn … Finn … Finn …”

Then the top finally twisted off and – POP! – the tube emitted a spray of confetti.

“Haaarrrurglurgl!” Kaparis gurgled in delight.