‘Yes,’ said Friday.

  ‘But which one?’ said Bernie.

  Friday looked at the balloons. There were hundreds, some were pink, some were white, but they were all much the same. They bounced against each other as they floated and their strings got tangled. Then Friday spotted a difference.

  ‘That pink one!’ said Friday.

  ‘Well, that narrows it down by half,’ said Bernie.

  ‘It’s in the middle, towards the left,’ said Friday. ‘It’s not carrying a heart shape.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ said Bernie. He was shielding his eyes with his hands so he could see clearly. ‘It looks like a plastic tube.’

  ‘Oh yes!’ said Melanie. ‘Just like that tube the student was trying to sneak across the border.’

  ‘The Raphael must be rolled up inside,’ said Friday.

  ‘We’ll never be able to track that,’ said Bernie. ‘Not with five hundred other balloons looking exactly the same.’

  ‘Shoot it down,’ said Friday.

  ‘I can’t get out my gun at a party and shoot down a balloon,’ said Bernie.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Friday. ‘The balloon isn’t a sentient being.’

  ‘What if I shoot the drawing inside?’ said Bernie. ‘It’s a 20-million-euro, five-hundred-year-old artefact.’

  ‘Okay, that is a fair point,’ said Friday.

  ‘I can shoot it down,’ said Melanie.

  ‘What?’ said Friday.

  Melanie pointed to some games equipment nearby. There was an archery set. Melanie picked up a bow and arrow.

  ‘Hey, what do you think you’re doing?’ asked Bernie.

  ‘You’re a genius,’ said Friday with delight.

  ‘She is?’ said Bernie.

  Melanie pulled back the bow.

  ‘Don’t do it!’ cried Bernie, lunging forward. ‘You might hit the Raphael!’

  ‘Don’t stop her,’ said Friday, grabbing Bernie by the arm. ‘Melanie is freakishly talented at archery!’

  ‘Really?’ said Bernie.

  Melanie let the arrow answer for her. She fired. It shot through the sky and, in less than a second, it had pierced the outer edge of the exact right pink balloon. When the balloon popped, it sounded like a gun going off. Melinda screamed in shock.

  The ruptured balloon dropped out of the sky, its contents falling with it.

  ‘I’ll get it!’ said Friday. She stripped off her designer coat and dived into the lake. She immediately realised this was a terrible mistake. Swiss lake water in January is freezing cold. Friday had already had a traumatic experience with sub-zero temperatures that winter. Her lungs screamed for air. Her body went into panic mode. Her heart raced. Adrenalin surged and she started to hyperventilate. She gave up trying to swim, pulled her head out of the water and gasped for breath.

  There was a splash, then suddenly she was grasped from behind. Friday whipped her elbow back to strike whoever was attacking her, but as she twisted, she saw it was Ian.

  ‘You?’ she gasped.

  ‘You’re safe,’ he said. He leaned back and started swimming sidestroke back to the jetty, towing Friday along with him.

  ‘Forget me. We need to get the Raphael,’ said Friday.

  A shadow fell over Friday as something large flew over her head.

  ‘Bernie will take care of that,’ said Ian.

  There was a small splash. Friday turned and saw her oversized uncle surface several metres away before elegantly cutting through the water with perfectly executed freestyle.

  ‘Wow, he can really swim,’ said Friday.

  ‘Well, he was a professional athlete,’ said Ian, as he drew Friday closer to the jetty. ‘Three seasons with the Riga Raiders ice hockey team.’

  The partygoers had crowded along the edge. Dr Dalecki pushed his way to the front. ‘What on earth is going on?’ he demanded of Friday. ‘What are you doing here?’

  There was a ladder down into the water, so Ian helped Friday go up ahead of him, which wasn’t easy to do. She wasn’t coordinated at the best of times, but being plunged into freezing cold water had made her muscles and joints seize up.

  ‘I’ve only been in this job for a week,’ said Dr Dalecki. ‘And already I’m sick of your entire family. Genius status does not give you the right to act like a hoodlum.’

  ‘Yeah, well you’re not the boss of me,’ said Friday, through chattering teeth. She recognised her symptoms. It was either hypothermia, or shock, or most likely both. Water was still dripping off her. She felt so cold. Ian put his arms about her and drew her against his side. He was wet too, but he radiated some heat. For so many reasons, it felt good to be next to him again. Friday pulled herself together a bit. ‘I don’t care what you think. Frankly I don’t care if you get CERN to sack my mother or my entire family. I doubt they’d care much either. They’ll just continue working on their research regardless. And you’ll look like an idiot because they won’t be doing it for you. I work for Interpol. Speaking of such, where’s Hunziker gone? Someone should arrest him.’

  ‘His wife is working on it,’ said Ian. He pointed to the lawn where Mrs Hunziker was chasing Mr Hunziker around, threatening him with the cake knife. Several customs officers were chasing both of them. ‘I don’t think he told her about his scheme to use her balloons as his getaway vehicle.’

  ‘Look, Friday,’ said Melanie. ‘I found these lovely robes for you.’ Melanie had three big fluffy pink bathrobes that she had found in the lake house.

  Two hours later, Friday, Ian and Bernie were all still wearing the fluffy pink bathrobes as they drove back to CERN. But this time, Melanie sat in the front seat while Ian sat in the back with Friday, holding her hand. Supposedly to share body heat, but even Friday, with her limited emotional intelligence, realised there was more to it than that.

  ‘I guess we’re going to be moving on again,’ said Ian. ‘We seem to have outstayed our welcome with Dr Dalecki.’

  ‘I was just telling him the truth,’ said Friday.

  ‘People never like hearing that,’ said Melanie.

  ‘You got your memory back,’ said Friday.

  Ian nodded. ‘Mostly, I think. The feelings have been coming back for a while. Since I first saw you again. But I couldn’t remember why I had the feelings. Then when you hit the water – I was so scared. And I remember that fear. Seeing your head go under the waves. The icy cold, the polar bear and the submarine . . .’

  ‘Good times,’ said Melanie fondly.

  ‘You weren’t there,’ Friday reminded her.

  ‘Which is why I can enjoy it more than either of you,’ said Melanie.

  ‘It was like my brain was a photo album,’ said Ian. ‘And it suddenly filled with pictures. And it was all there. Everything.’

  Friday leant her head on Ian’s shoulder. It was good to feel warm again.

  ‘Where will we be sent next?’ Ian asked Bernie. ‘Back to Paris?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Bernie. ‘Things have happened so quickly here. Head office will smooth things over in Paris, but it might be a good idea if you three don’t show your faces there for a little while. I’ll have to talk to my boss.’

  ‘Will we have to go back to Highcrest Academy?’ asked Friday.

  ‘Urgh,’ said Ian with a shudder.

  ‘I doubt that,’ said Bernie. ‘I think the higher ups will have other ideas for your further education.’

  When they pulled up in front of the accommodation block at CERN, they were surprised to find half a dozen police cars parked outside and the building barricaded off with crime-scene tape.

  ‘What’s going on now?’ asked Bernie.

  Quantum was standing on the front lawn having an animated discussion with Ms Dekker. He turned on Friday as she got out of the car. ‘Where have you been?’ He was uncharacteristically emotional.

  ‘Fighting crime,’ said Friday.

  ‘You were meant to be here, preventing crime,’ said Quantum.

  ‘No, I was asked to babysit Mum,’ said Friday. ‘Something you and Halley should be able to cope with for one afternoon.’

  ‘Well, we can’t and now she’s gone!’ said Quantum.

  ‘What?’ said Friday.

  ‘It appears your mother has been kidnapped,’ said Ms Dekker.

  ‘Is this like the time Dad reported that she’d been kidnapped, but really she’d won the Nobel Prize and had caught a plane to Europe for the lecture tour?’

  ‘No, there’s CCTV footage,’ said Quantum. ‘An hour ago, two masked men ambushed her as she came out of the building. They put a hood over her head, bound her up with gaffer tape and threw her in the back of a van.’

  ‘They won’t be able to get her out of the country,’ said Ms Dekker. ‘The airspace has been closed down for some reason.’

  ‘Yeah, that would be me,’ said Bernie. ‘I ordered that. They can’t get out by road either. All the customs checkpoints are fully manned and they’re searching every vehicle. They can’t get her out of Switzerland.’

  ‘No!’ said Friday. ‘There is one way she could be across the border in minutes.’

  ‘What?’ asked Ian.

  ‘The Hadron Super Collider,’ said Friday. ‘It’s a tunnel that passes out of Switzerland and into France.’

  ‘But it’s a sealed tunnel,’ said Ms Dekker.

  ‘Is it?’ said Friday. ‘Pigeon feathers were found in the tunnel. You thought it was a prank. Pigeon racing. But what if it was simply that someone opened a maintenance hatch?’

  ‘That’s crazy,’ said Ms Dekker.

  ‘A grape was found in the tunnel too,’ said Friday. ‘Grape smuggling is the number-one thing customs officers look for when they search cars. Perhaps someone has been smuggling them out through the tunnel as well.’

  ‘That could be how they’ve been getting artworks out too,’ said Bernie.

  Ms Dekker’s phone rang. ‘What is it?’ She paused while someone spoke rapidly to her in German. ‘Wir sin gleich da,’ she replied, hanging up before speaking to Bernie in English. ‘There’s been a power outage at the super collider.’

  ‘It could be someone trying to access the tunnel unseen,’ said Friday.

  ‘Get in,’ said Bernie. ‘I’ll get you down there.’

  Friday, Ian, Melanie and Ms Dekker crammed into Bernie’s Interpol car.

  ‘Put your seatbelts on,’ he advised, before hitting a switch on the dashboard that started a siren and flashing lights. Uncle Bernie’s car turned out to be way more impressive than it looked. The BMW got up to 200 kilometres per hour in just six seconds. They rocketed down the two-kilometre stretch of road to the main entrance for the super collider and he didn’t slow down to park either. Bernie drove straight up over the curb, straight through an ornamental hedge and skidded to a halt at the front door.

  The security guards were waiting for Ms Dekker. She ran in flashing her badge and everyone else trailed behind. There was no time to wait for lifts. She headed straight for the fire stairs. They ran down three storeys to get to the operations room for the OMEGA experiment. Several scientists were checking computer monitors and electronic controls.

  ‘What’s going on?’ demanded Ms Dekker.

  ‘If we knew that, we would have fixed it by now,’ grumbled the lead scientist.

  ‘The backup generator has just come online!’ called another technician. ‘That’ll give us enough power to reboot the CCTV system.’

  ‘How do we get into the tunnel?’ asked Friday.

  ‘You can’t go in there,’ snapped the lead scientist. ‘It’s not safe. With the power off there is no temperature control. The magnets operate at minus two hundred and seventy-one degrees. Everything in the tunnel will be freezing cold by now.’

  ‘Someone is breaking in,’ argued Ms Dekker.

  ‘They already have,’ said the technician. He was watching a bank of screens. Images were flickering back up onto each one. ‘Look.’

  ‘What are we looking at?’ asked Ms Dekker. There were twenty-seven images on the screen and they all looked identical or at least very similar. They each had a view of the interior of the tunnel.

  ‘Each screen shows a different one-kilometre segment of the super-collider tunnel,’ explained the technician.

  Every screen looked much the same, except for one. There was a dot moving in it. The dot was growing bigger and bigger. They could see its shape.

  Friday leaned forward and peered at the image. ‘Is that a motorcycle?’ she asked.

  As it grew closer and closer, they could all see the powerful motorcycle shooting through the tunnel at high speed. The rider was wearing all black. They whizzed through the foreground of one screen, then appeared in the far distance of the next.

  ‘What are they wearing?’ asked Melanie.

  ‘They’re a criminal, who cares what they’re wearing?’ said Ms Dekker.

  ‘No, I mean you can’t see their arms,’ said Melanie.

  As the motorbike whizzed past the camera in the second screen, the rider was enlarged by proximity before disappearing into the back of a third screen. But in that moment, they could all see what Melanie meant. The rider looked like they didn’t have any arms.

  ‘She’s right,’ said Bernie. ‘There’s no hands on the handlebars.’

  ‘It looks like they’re a double amputee,’ said Ian.

  ‘No,’ said Friday. ‘It looks like their hands have been bound to their sides.’

  They watched the motorcycle fly past again in the next screen.

  ‘Yes, definitely bound down,’ said Friday. ‘You can see horizontal black lines.’

  ‘It’s gaffer tape!’ said Ian. ‘Their arms have been taped to their sides with gaffer tape.’

  ‘That’s just weird,’ said Bernie.

  ‘But what if that person is not riding it?’ said Friday. ‘What if it’s remote controlled?’

  ‘This place is full of experts in remote-control devices,’ said Ian.

  ‘Could that be your mum?’ asked Ms Dekker. ‘And they’re smuggling her across the border by remote control?’

  ‘Absolutely. I can one hundred per cent confirm that those are her ugly polyester slacks,’ said Melanie. ‘I’d recognise them anywhere. I tried to burn them when she took a shower, but I think they’re made of some sort of flame-retardant fabric.’

  ‘We’ve got to save her,’ said Friday. ‘She really is being kidnapped. Where is she in the tunnel?’

  ‘Um . . .’ said the technician. ‘That screen is segment seven. Now she’s in segment eight.’

  ‘She must have gone in from the PAN experiment’s access porthole,’ said Ms Dekker.

  ‘So she’s travelling towards us, here,’ said Friday.

  ‘Yes,’ said the technician. ‘She should pass through the tunnel here in about thirty-five seconds.’

  Friday took off running.

  ‘No!’ cried the supervisor. ‘You can’t go in there. It’s too cold.’

  ‘I’ll run to stay warm,’ said Friday, as she yanked open the door and stepped into an access passage. It was freezing cold. She could see the main tunnel of the super collider up ahead, and she could hear the sound of the motorbike approaching. She ran forward to intercept it. The motorbike’s engine was screaming. The sound echoing about in the enclosed space. It was obviously in top gear and flying at full speed. Friday suddenly realised how crazy what she was doing was. How could she stop a 200 kilogram motorbike travelling at 200 kilometres an hour in a dark tunnel, without hurting herself or her mother? She had no idea, but she had to try.

  She hurried forward, but just as she made it to the main tunnel, the motorbike whizzed past right in front of her.

  ‘Mum!’ cried Friday. But there was no way her mother could hear her over the roar of the motorbike.

  Friday jumped down into the main tunnel. The motorbike was disappearing into the distance. Friday sagged. It was moving too fast. She was too late.

  ‘Come on!’ said Ian. He had followed her. He jumped down into the tunnel behind her, grabbed her hand and tugged her to run with him after the motorbike.

  ‘But we’ll never catch them,’ said Friday, breaking into a run to keep up.

  ‘Sure we will,’ said Ian. ‘The border is only five hundred metres away. They’ve got to get her off the bike and up through a maintenance passage. We can catch up.’

  Friday ran. Friday was not a good runner. She hated running with every fibre of her body. But all she could think of was her mum, bound up in black gaffer tape like a horrible type of mummy, all frightened and confused. Whatever Friday felt about her mum for the childhood she had given her, she would not wish that on her.

  Friday told her legs to run. She ignored the burn of the icy cold air in her lungs and the ache in her chest. She ran and ran, letting Ian drag her faster than she had ever run before. Those two minutes felt like two years. Then they saw it. Up ahead. There was light.

  ‘You see, they’re there,’ said Ian. He was out of breath himself.

  Friday tried to run faster, but her legs were screaming they were so full of lactic acid.

  They could see a man in a ski mask pulling her mum off the motorbike. There was a remote-control unit on the floor by his feet. Dr Barnes wasn’t fighting, but she was stumbling. The kidnapper was not strong enough to just pick her up and carry her. They had to get her up through the access tunnel to the surface. Friday suddenly had hope that they would be able to catch up after all – thanks to her mother’s innate clumsiness.

  The kidnapper lifted her mother and set her down so her feet were on the first rung of the ladder.

  ‘Climb,’ he ordered.

  ‘Climb what?’ asked Mum. Her voice was muffled. ‘I can’t see what you expect me to ascend.’

  ‘Hurry up!’ a voice called down from the access passage.

  ‘I’ll get him,’ said Ian. ‘You get the person at the top.’

  Ian surged forward. His years of training with the rugby team at Highcrest Academy came to fruition. He crash-tackled the kidnapper in a way that would have made his old rugby coach proud. Mum stumbled a little and sat down. The other kidnapper’s feet appeared as they started to descend the ladder.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ called the second kidnapper from above.