Free Divine Madness by Robert Muchamore Page A

around the outskirts of the city and ended up in a suburban area ten kilometres from the centre.
    They pulled into an upscale development of houses. The cropped lawns, recently planted trees and rain-washed tarmac had the orderliness of a town made from Lego. By the time the taxi pulled on to a sloping brick driveway at the front of an imposing house, the sun was back and the afternoon rain was evaporating into a shimmering heat haze.
    James lugged his backpack and a couple of cases inside with him. He dumped them in a large wooden-floored hallway and looked up at two curved staircases and a gigantic concrete dome with a chandelier hanging off it.
    ‘Holy crap,’ James grinned, ‘we’re loaded.’
    Abigail smiled as she waddled in behind him and dumped two cases. ‘Of course we’re loaded, James. If there’s one thing that’ll really get the Survivors salivating, it’ll be the prospect of recruiting Abigail Prince: wealthy divorcee, settling back in her native Queensland after a gory divorce from her millionaire husband.’
    ‘With her three delightful kids in tow,’ James added.
    Lauren and Dana followed in and they all stood looking up at the fancy hallway for a moment. Even Dana allowed herself to look impressed.
    ‘I haven’t seen this place before,’ Abigail said. ‘Everything was arranged while I was in Britain. The rooms are supposed to be set up for us, but I don’t know whose is whose.’
    James and Lauren bounded up the staircase to check the upstairs. There were six main rooms on the upper floor and James found his bedroom at the second attempt. Usually, all you have on a mission is a few bits you’ve packed up and carried with you, but because this mission was so long and because the plan called for the Prince family to eventually move in with the Survivors, James needed all the stuff a wealthy Australian boy was likely to own.
    ASIS had gone to great lengths creating the material history of James Prince. He had drawers and wardrobes full of clothes – most of them chemically treated to look lightly worn – and everything else you’d expect, from stationery to a surfboard, a computer and even a few tatty board games and soft toys that his alter-ego must have grown out of.
    James flipped on the air-conditioning and started going through his new clothes to work out what he was going to wear when he came out of the shower.

11. SETTLE
     
    Thirty-five hours trapped inside airports and aeroplanes combined with a ten-hour time shift had left James with his worst ever jet-lag. He spent the night tangling up his sheets and gave up trying to sleep altogether for a while, spending the first hours of Monday morning wide awake playing on his PSP.
    When the sun came up, he had a headache and felt groggy. He found some shorts and swam a few laps of the fifteen-metre pool to wake himself up.
    The morning got taken up with the routine details of settling into a new home. James cut an acre of shaggy lawn with a ride-on mower, while Dana called up local tradesmen to arrange for someone to come in regularly and clean out the pool and for a plumber to come and fix a broken tap in one of the en-suite bathrooms. Abigail and Lauren drove to Big Fresh and did the grocery shopping.
    After lunch they all went out together and visited their high school, which was about three kilometres from home. It was set in a large expanse of grassland. The four long lines of classrooms were at ground level, exiting on to a covered walkway that looped the entire school. They had a quick introductory meeting with their new deputy headmaster and Abigail shelled out A$500 in the uniform shop.
    On the way home they stopped at Target and bought a bike for Lauren – something ASIS seemed to have overlooked – before heading back out for dinner at a fancy restaurant on the Brisbane river.
    The food was Mexican and they ate in a private function room overlooking a harbour full of flash yachts, powerboats and motor launches. John and Chloe