The Mystery of the Russian Ransom by Roy MacGregor

Author:Roy MacGregor [MacGregor, Roy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-77049-425-1
Publisher: Tundra
Published: 2014-02-11T05:00:00+00:00

14

I was back on the ice this morning. It was very different.

Pavel and Sacha were there again, and so was the tall man in the hat – always standing far back, as if he didn’t want to be seen up close.

What was different was me. Before I dressed to go out onto the ice, Olga took me into this room where there were people waiting around. They seemed to have more to do with science than hockey. They had me lie on a bed, and they taped tiny sensors all over my head. What were they looking for? Brainwaves? Escape plans?

They also taped sensors to my legs and arms. And finally they gave me a new hockey helmet. It was very different from the one I had been wearing. When I first tried it on, I thought it was too big – something a large man might wear – but then I saw it in the mirror and understood.

The helmet had a built-in camera.

Once all the sensors had been attached and double-checked to see if they were being picked up on the various computers around the room, they let me finish dressing to play hockey. Olga helped, because it wasn’t easy pulling on socks, for example, over the sensors and wires that had been taped all over me.

I didn’t feel right at first, but after a few laps around the rink, I sort of forgot that I was completely wired and began fooling around with the pucks. Pavel managed to do the scoop perfectly and we all laughed.

That felt very odd. Here we were, playing. I didn’t know who they were. I wasn’t there voluntarily. I was their prisoner – well, if not their prisoner, then surely the prisoner of the tall man who was watching. They should have been my sworn enemies, and yet here we were, playing on the ice and laughing at each other trying my little scoop trick with the puck.

On the ice, they felt more like friends – especially Pavel. I wondered how they felt about me. They had to know that I was there against my wishes.

After we had warmed up and tried a few simple drills – I even taught them one of Muck’s – the doors opened at the Zamboni end and a bunch of new players came out. As far as I could tell, all of them were girls. They said nothing to me.

Pavel said we were to play a scrimmage and that they wanted me to try my best, because it would be the three of us and a goaltender against a full team on the other side, two full lines of five apiece.

We wouldn’t stand a chance.

I guess they knew me better than I know myself, though. My mother always says I’m hopelessly stubborn. According to her, I can never resist a challenge.

This was going to be an incredible challenge.

But it didn’t take more than a couple of rushes by the three of us, or a few rushes by the other side, for me to see that it wasn’t as impossible as it might have looked.

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