Lauren Child - Catch Your Death

However, as good as Ruby was at these practical tasks, and although she had read and stored about as much knowledge as any survivalist, she couldn’t seem to convince Sam Colt that she was able to tune herself into the wild itself.

‘There are some things that ain’t in any book Redfort.’ He paused. ‘It’s like my pal, Bradley Baker, used to say: “Sometimes the best way to think about a problem is not to think about it.”’

Talking to any outsider about Spectrum was strictly forbidden, but despite this hard and fast rule there was one person who did know about Ruby’s double life and his name was Clancy Crew. Clancy was Ruby’s closest friend and most loyal ally; he could sniff out a secret at a hundred paces and it had taken him no time at all to discover something was up and even less time to get Ruby to spill the beans.

Ruby had broken a pretty big Spectrum rule here, Spectrum rule number one being keep it zipped, but on the other hand, telling Clancy Crew she was an undercover agent was like confessing to a priest or a doctor: the information would go no further. Clancy Crew never, ever told: he was like a human vault. Dangle Clancy over a river full of piranha and he would never say a single word; every last finger would have disappeared before he even began to open his mouth.

Ruby wished she could talk to Clancy at length about what her trainer considered a gap in her ability, but Clancy was away with his father on some lengthy ambassadorial tour and so they had only managed a few snatched phone conversations. It wasn’t enough time to go into any detail, to really explain to Clancy how she felt, how puzzled she was that her trainer thought she was in some way lacking in understanding. In any case, it wasn’t easy to explain anything on the phone and they mainly ended up discussing how mad Clancy was at his ambassador dad for getting him all dressed up in stupid blazers and ridiculous polished loafers.

‘What next?’ Clancy would whine. ‘Little tartan bow ties?’

On this, the final week of training, Ruby dialled Clancy’s number and hoped he would be there to pick up. She had just got home from school and was expected to dine with her parents and their friends the Humberts, before being helicoptered back out to the training camp: it made for a long day.

‘So how’s it going Rube?’ Clancy asked from his hotel room in Washington.

‘OK. I think I’m doing pretty well. I mean I know stuff, it’s just I don’t seem to know stuff,’ she replied.

‘I think I know what you mean,’ said Clancy, who did know what she meant: he was sharp at picking up on things that weren’t clear.

‘I just don’t know how to fix it,’ she said. ‘I mean my instructor says things to me like, “You need to throw away the handbook Redfort.” But why? Why do I wanna throw away the handbook?’

‘I think he’s talking about instinct Rube. You got a know the rules and then you got a forget the rules, you know?’

‘No,’ said Ruby.

It didn’t make any sense: she had spent thirteen years assembling a little book of life rules, a sort of guide to navigate her way through each and every day, so why would she ignore them now, just when her very survival was being put to the test?

Ruby thought about this as she travelled back to camp that evening.

It was true. She really didn’t understand what Clancy was trying to explain or what Samuel Colt was trying to tell her. The previous day Colt had sat her down and tried again to make her understand.

‘You got a learn to use your instincts,’ he said.

‘I use my instincts,’ countered Ruby.

‘No you don’t. You approach things like you’re reading a book of rules, like there’s one way, but out in the wild stuff changes a lot and everything can’t always be fixed the way you wanna fix it.’ Sam Colt looked at her, his eyes barely visible under the wide brim of his hat. ‘I’ve been around a long time and, if there’s one thing that nature’s taught me, it’s to never kid yourself that you’re in charge.’

Again she stared at him like this made no sense at all.

‘Don’t meet nature head on, walk alongside. Don’t try and control stuff, just go with what you got. It’s all about adapting to circumstances. Circumstances change, you change with ’em.’ He looked at her hard, trying to discern whether she had the faintest idea what he was talking about. ‘You can have your plans B, C and D, but they ain’t no good to you if nature decides otherwise.’

Colt wasn’t wrong about this; in fact, just six months ago, two Spectrum agents had perished after their tent had blown away in a blizzard and Colt couldn’t help wondering why two highly trained professionals had relied on something so flimsy out in such dangerous terrain where the elements ruled.

He lived day by day, hour to hour. ‘You can try and predict what might happen next, but don’t imagine it’s gonna come out that way just because you thought you’d like it to.’ The only certainty is there is no certainty was a sort of Samuel Colt mantra and his rule one, two and three: the rule he lived by.

The rule Ruby lived by was not unrelated. RULE 1: YOU CAN NEVER BE COMPLETELY SURE WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN NEXT.So why did she find this all so difficult? For the first time in her life, Ruby was failing. And she didn’t like it one bit.

AFTER SEVERAL WEEKS OF INTENSIVE TRAINING, camp was finally at an end; next would come the test. Sam Colt spent the last day preparing the recruits.

‘You’ll all be on your own here and you’ll have to navigate the terrain and take on the environmental challenges alone – that’s alongside any challenges set by Spectrum. Base camp is in woodland, but where exactly is your problem. You reach there, you clock in, mission over. Your task is to make it by sun-up three days from now.’

He took a deep breath. ‘I’m not looking to scare anyone here, quite the contrary, but the law of survival is pretty basic: you got a believe in your ability to stay alive.’ Samuel Colt had a pared-down approach to life and he was tough as winter earth. He firmly believed that all you need to survive is a positive mental attitude.

He looked at all their faces, some a little wary, even anxious, some confident, others like poker players, betraying nothing.

‘Unpredictable encounters with wild animals aside, your chances are good so long as you hold onto this.’ He tapped his head. ‘And I don’t mean physically, though course that helps. You got a believe death ain’t an option. Survival means getting out alive. And getting out alive means that on the most basic level you succeeded.’

Everyone went home that night and tried to get as much sleep as they could, aware that for the next few days sleep might not be found so easily.

The next day the trainees were each issued their mission briefing, handed their survival packs and offered a last chance to back out.

No one backed out.

A Spectrum agent, one Ruby didn’t recognise, had appeared from nowhere and was now handing out brown envelopes containing their instructions. Ruby pulled the tag which ran down the side of the envelope and pulled out the brown paper contained inside.

On it was written a code.

Ruby looked at it, frowning, for a few seconds. Then she smiled. Whoever had created the code had divided the message into six-letter chunks to make it seem more complicated than it was, but she soon saw what she was dealing with.

The clue was the frequency of certain letters.