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out a couple of years ago. He’s not a millionaire, he’s a billionaire .’
    â€˜Oh, nice. Marvalia . . . Marvalia . . . It rings a bell.’
    â€˜They had a revolution.’
    â€˜Of course they did!’ I said. ‘I remember now. The Orange Revolution.’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Green? Purple? It was some colour . . .’
    â€˜Blue.’
    â€˜Yes! Exactly!’
    Dad was home on leave when it started, before his last tour in Afghanistan and I remembered him watching on TV. Marvalia was a small country, but it had dominated the news. The people demonstrated for weeks. They poured into the streets every day, waving banners, blue paint on their faces. Students and workers, young men and women, facing down policemen with riot shields and tear gas, then soldiers with tanks. They were complaining about no food, no jobs, the universities being shut down, hundreds of people being thrown in prison and disappearing.
    â€˜You must remember it,’ I said to Luke. ‘They’d had this evil dictator for, like, thirty years, and in the end they kicked him out and took over. They’ve got a university professor in charge now. It was amazing.’
    â€˜Yeah, I vaguely remember,’ Luke said, with the confused, lying look of someone who didn’t remember at all.
    How could anyone not remember the Blue Revolution? I Googled it on my laptop and brought up the famous video of a girl climbing on a tank and sitting there in a blue dress, with bright blue eyes and blue streaks in her hair, daring the soldiers to shoot her down. She was in a million photographs too. I pulled up one of them and showed Luke.
    â€˜Oh, her . Yeah. She was pretty.’
    Yeah. Because that was so the point of the Blue Revolution.
    And now one of the sons of the exiled Finance Minister was talking to me on the internet. Bizarre.
    â€˜So what about you?’ Luke asked.
    â€˜Mmm?’
    â€˜What did you discover?’
    â€˜Oh. Well, Omar Wahool is not Omar Wahool.’
    â€˜Uh?’ Luke’s whole face was a question mark. It was very gratifying.
    â€˜There are three Wahool children: Omar, Maxim and a girl called Yasmin. It’s obvious, really. The guy I spoke to that one time I made the call is the real Omar, the older boy. The stuff he said to me fits him perfectly: he was all parties and girls. The one who called me was totally different: he was all about warning me, and helping the prisoner. He’s not Omar at all – I think he’s Maxim.’
    â€˜Sorry?’
    I grinned. ‘He’s the younger brother, pretending to be the older one. Maxim’s sixteen. He’s known as Max, by the way. He’s using Omar’s phone and his old Interface account to talk to me, instead of his own.’
    â€˜Why would he do that?’
    â€˜Because he’s helping me? Because he doesn’t want to get caught? Because he wants to get his big brother into trouble if anything goes wrong? Because he’s really clever?’ I suggested.
    â€˜Cool,’ Luke said, grinning slowly. ‘Not bad detective work, Miss Jones.’
    I gave him a modest smile. ‘It explains why I can’t call him back.’
    Luke hesitated for a moment. ‘Any connection to your dad?’
    I deflated a little. ‘Can’t think of one.’ I’d tried to find something that connected the Wahools to Afghanistan or Baghdad, or Dad to them in some way, but there was nothing.
    â€˜So what now?’ Luke asked.
    That was a good question. Max Wahool had told me to hide from the ‘bad people’ and I couldn’t keep doing it here:Granny had made it clear she wouldn’t let me. An idea had been forming. It seemed like the only sensible option.
    â€˜Find out where Mr Wahool’s living now,’ I instructed.
    â€˜But that could be anywhere!’
    â€˜You’re brilliant, Luke. It won’t take you