Crocodile Tears

Unless, of course, he used his car. Bulman had a secondhand Volkswagen parked around the corner from his apartment. He didn’t often use it during the day—there was far too much traffic in London for his taste—but he sometimes drove it at night, and he kept a spare twenty-dollar bill in the glove compartment for emergencies. That wouldn’t buy him much, but it was better than nothing and he could use it for breakfast while he waited for the bank to open. He’d feel better with a bit of food inside him. Then he’d go in to the bank and shout at the silly fat girl behind the teller’s desk. (In his experience, bank tellers were always silly and fat.) And once it was sorted, he would get on with his day.

He found the side street and strolled down to the spot where he’d parked.

The car wasn’t there.

Bulman stood on the sidewalk, blinking. He had the beginnings of a headache. He had definitely parked in this spot. He might have had a few too many drinks that evening—and, yes, he was probably well over the limit—but he was certain this was where he had left it. Now there was a blue Volvo in his space. He looked up and down the road. There was no sign of his Volkswagen. He forced himself to think. Dinner, pub, slot machine, one last drink, then home around midnight. The car had to be here.

And yet it wasn’t.

It had been stolen! Cars were always being taken in this part of town! A lot of the residents had those clumsy-looking locks that fit over the steering wheel . . . but he had never bought one.

He shook his head. What a day this was turning into! He’d be in a bad mood when he caught up with Alex Rider later this afternoon. It would be their first session together—but even so, he was going to give the boy a hard time.

First things first. Bulman took out his mobile phone to call the police. He wondered what number to use. This wasn’t really an emergency, but he decided to call 911 anyway. He thumbed the buttons and held the phone to his ear.

Nothing.

It wasn’t ringing. There wasn’t even a dial tone. Bulman brought the phone down—it was a brand-new BlackBerry—and examined it.

This was ridiculous. He was in the middle of the city. There was always a signal here. He walked a few paces up the sidewalk, held the phone up, tried it at a different angle. The message remained the same.

He squeezed the phone so tightly that he was almost crushing it.

He forced himself to calm down. There was an old-fashioned telephone booth at the end of the road. He wouldn’t need coins to make a 911 call. He would contact the police from there.

He retraced his steps and entered the phone booth. It was plastered with advertisements for models and smelled of cigarette smoke and urine. At least the phone itself seemed to be working. He balanced his briefcase against the glass and made the call.

“Which service do you require?” the operator asked him.

“My car has been stolen,” Bulman said. He was almost relieved to hear another human voice. “I need to speak to the police.”

There was a pause and he was put through.

“I’d like to report a stolen car,” he said. “I parked it on Chilton Street last night and now it’s gone.”

“Can I have the license plate number?” It was a woman’s voice. She didn’t sound very concerned. She also spoke with a foreign accent, making him wonder if he’d been rerouted to a call center abroad.

Forcing himself not to lose his temper, he gave the license number. “KL06NZG.”

“KL06NZG?”

“Yes.”

“Is that a green Mercedes SLR Coupe?”

“No!” Bulman shut his eyes. His headache was getting worse. “It’s a silver Volkswagen Golf.”

“Can you give me the license number again?”

Bulman repeated it, pausing between each digit. Whoever was at the other end of the line obviously didn’t have much skill with computers.

“I’m sorry, sir.” The woman was adamant. “That number is registered to a Mercedes. Can I take your name?”

“It’s Bulman. Harold Edward Bulman.”

“And your address?”

He told her.

“Could you hold a moment?” There was another silence, longer this time. Bulman was about to hang up when the woman came back on the line. “Mr. Bulman, how long have you had this car?”

“I bought it two years ago.”

“I’m afraid we have no record of that name or that address on our files.” This was the end. Bulman lost his temper. “Are you telling me that I don’t know where I live and that I’ve forgotten the make and the color of my own car? I’m telling you, my car has been stolen. I left it here last night, and now it’s gone.”

“I’m sorry, sir. The license number you’ve given us doesn’t match up with the information I have here.”

“Well, your information is wrong.” Bulman slammed the phone down. His head was throbbing.

He needed money. He felt naked without cash and he wanted to eat. He looked at his watch. At least that was still working. Half past nine. The banks would have opened by now. Bulman had plenty of ID

on him, and he’d feel better once he had a full wallet. He could deal with the car later.

He turned and walked back the way he had come. Ten minutes later, he found himself in the local branch of his bank, talking to one of the managers who had a desk in the main hall. The manager was a young man, Asian, dressed in a suit, with a neat beard. He was clearly alarmed as this new customer came striding up to him, and Bulman realized that, what with all the tramping back and forth, trying to deal with all the events that seemed to have ganged up on him in the past hour, he must look half crazed. He no longer cared.

“I need to withdraw some money,” he said. “And your machine doesn’t seem to be working.” The manager frowned. “We haven’t had any complaints.”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t need to use the machine. I want to withdraw some money from you.”

“Do you have a card, sir?” Bulman handed over his last remaining credit card and watched as the manager brought up his details on the computer. He gazed at the screen, perplexed. “I’m very sorry, sir . . .”

“Are you saying I don’t have an account with you?” Bulman’s voice was quavering.

“No, sir. You used to have an account. But you closed it down a year ago. You can see for yourself.” He swiveled the computer around and there it was, a row of zeroes at the bottom of his account. Every last penny had been removed exactly twelve months before.

“I never closed my account,” Bulman said.

“Would you like me to talk to the head office? . . .” Yet Bulman was already gone, spinning out of the chair and making his way through the main door, out into the fresh air. What the hell was going on? His travel pass, then the bank cards, his mobile phone, his car, now his accounts . . . it was as if his identity was being taken from him one piece at a time. He leaned against the corner of the building, steadying himself, and as he stood there, a commuter hurried past, throwing a copy of his newspaper into a bin right in front of him, almost as if he wanted Bulman to see what was on the front page.

It was a photograph of himself.

Bulman gazed at it in horror, remembering the headline that he had seen as he came out of his apartment. “Journalist Killed.” He was looking at the same headline now. He felt the sidewalk lurching underneath him as he stepped forward and plucked the newspaper out. The story was very short.

Harold Bulman, a freelance journalist who specialized in stories relating to the army and intelligence services, was yesterday morning found dead in his north London apartment. Mr.

Bulman, 37, had been stabbed. Police today appealed for any witnesses who might have seen or heard anything between ten o’clock and midnight to come forward. Detective Chief Superintendent Stephen Leather, who is heading the investigation, said: “Mr. Bulman may well have made himself enemies in his line of work, and at this stage we are not ruling anything out.” Harold Bulman was unmarried and had no close family or friends.

It was him. They were saying he was dead! How could they have made a mistake like that? Was this the reason why his phone wasn’t working, why there was no money in his account? Suddenly it all made sense. Somehow he’d been confused with somebody else. And as a result, a whole series of switches had been pulled as, automatically, his life was turned off.

He had to get to a telephone. He had to talk to his editors, to the people who employed him. He had no money. But there was a telephone in his apartment. That was the answer. Bulman didn’t want to be on the street anymore, anyway. He had become a non-person, an invisible man. For some reason, he felt exposed. How could he be sure that there wasn’t someone out there who really did want to stab him?

He had to get back inside.

He was sweating by the time he got back to his apartment, and his hand shook as he tried to force the key into the lock. It didn’t seem to want to go in. In the end, after three attempts, he realized that the key didn’t fit. And that was impossible too. Wasn’t it? He had used it only last night! But someone in the last twelve hours had gone out and changed the lock.

“Let me in!” he shouted. There was nobody to listen to him. He was shouting at the glass door and the brickwork. “Let me in!” He kicked the door, using the sole of his foot. But the glass was reinforced, shatterproof, and the door was held in place by powerful magnetic plates. He kicked out a third time.

He was screaming now. Anyone passing would think he was insane.

“Are you all right, sir? Can I help you?”

He hadn’t heard the police car draw in behind him, but when he turned around, there were two policemen standing on the sidewalk. Bulman was glad to see them. After all, he’d been trying to call them just a few minutes ago.

“I’m locked out,” he said.

“Do you live here, sir?”

“Well, obviously I live here. If I didn’t live here, I wouldn’t be trying to get in.” Bulman realized he was being rude. He tried to force a smile to his face. “I have a home on the top floor,” he explained.

“This has never happened before . . .”

“Can I try for you?”

Bulman noticed that the policeman had dropped the “sir.” He handed the keys over and watched as the policeman tried them in the lock—also without success. The policeman examined the keys, then the lock. He straightened up. “You’re not going to open this door with these keys,” he said. “The lock is Banham. These keys are Yale.”

“But that’s not possible . . .”

“What’s your name?” the second policeman asked.

“It’s Harry Bulman. I’m a journalist.”

“And you say you live here?”

“I don’t just say I live here. I do live here. But I’m locked out.”

“Just one moment, sir.”

The first policeman was talking on his radio. Bulman passed his briefcase from one hand to the other. It was suddenly feeling very heavy. Considering it was only January, the weather was far too hot. The second policeman was looking at him suspiciously. He was only about nineteen years old, with light brown hair and stick-out ears. He still had a schoolboy face.

“Are you sure this is where you live?” the first policeman asked. He had finished his radio conversation.

“Yes. Apartment thirty-seven. On the top floor.”

“There was a Harold Bulman, a journalist, registered to this address, but he was killed two nights ago.”

“No. That was in the newspapers. I just read it. But it’s a mistake. I’m Harry Bulman.”

“Would you have any identification on you?”

“Of course I have.” Bulman took out his wallet. But two of his credit cards had been taken by the cash machines, and he had left the third in the bank. His driver’s license was in the apartment. His fingers were shaking as he fumbled through his wallet. “I can give you ID once I get into my home,” he said.

The two policemen looked at each other. The younger one seemed to notice Bulman’s briefcase for the first time. “What are you carrying?” he asked.

The question took Bulman by surprise. “Why do you want to know?” he snapped.

Before he could stop him, the first policeman had picked up the briefcase. “Do you mind if we look i nside?”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, I do.”

It was already too late. The policeman opened the briefcase and was looking at the contents, his face full of horror. With a sense that his whole life was draining away from him, Bulman leaned forward. He knew what was inside: a notepad, a couple of magazines, pens and pencils.

He was wrong. The policeman was holding the case open, and Bulman could clearly see a kitchen knife, about fifteen inches long, the blade covered in dried blood.

“Wait . . . ,” he began.

The two policemen acted incredibly quickly. Without even knowing quite what had happened, Bulman found himself facedown on the sidewalk with his arms gripped behind his back. He felt the metal edges of the handcuffs bite into his flesh as they clicked shut. The first policeman was back on his radio, talking rapidly. Seconds later, there was a screech of tires and another police car drew up. More uniformed officers surrounded him.

“You have the right to remain silent . . .”

Bulman realized that he was being told his rights, but the words didn’t quite register. They were booming in his ears. He felt himself being picked up and propelled toward the car. A hand was placed on his head to stop him from banging against the door frame. And then he was inside, being driven away at speed. They had even turned the sirens on.

An hour later, Bulman found himself alone in a bare brick interrogation room with a window set so high up, it showed only a small square of sky. They had taken his fingerprints and a swab from the inside of his mouth, which he knew would be used to check his DNA. There were two new officers sitting opposite him. They were older and more experienced than the men who had made the arrest, heavyset and serious. They had introduced themselves as Bennett and Ainsworth. Ainsworth seemed to be the senior of the two, bald, with small, hard eyes and a mouth that could have been drawn with a single pencil line. Bennett was slightly younger and looked as if he had recently been in a fistfight. He was holding a file.

Bulman had been given a little time to collect his thoughts. He had worked out what he was going to say. “Listen to me,” he began. “This is all a stupid mistake. The way you’ve treated me is outrageous. I am a well-known journalist, and I’m warning you—”

“It’s good to see you, Jeremy,” Bennett interrupted.

“That’s not my name.”

“Jeremy Harwood. Did you really think we wouldn’t find you?” Ainsworth laid the file on the table and opened it. Bulman saw a black-and-white police photograph. Once again he recognized himself.

But it had this other name underneath it.

He drew a breath. “My name is not Jeremy Harwood. My name is Harold Bulman.”

“Harold Bulman is dead.”

“No.”

“We’ve already analyzed the blood we found on the knife in your briefcase. It’s Bulman’s. You killed him.”

“No. You’re making a mistake. This is all wrong.” Bulman fought for control. How could this nightmare be happening?

Ainsworth flicked a page in a file. There were fingerprints—ten of them in a row—and what looked like a chemical formula. “We’ve checked your DNA and your fingerprints, Jeremy. They all match up.

There’s no need to pretend anymore.”

“You escaped from Broadmoor two months ago,” Bennett said.

Broadmoor? Bulman blinked heavily. That was where they sent the most dangerous prisoners in the country, the ones who were considered criminally insane.

“Why did you kill Harold Bulman?” Bennett asked.

“I . . . I . . .” Bulman tried to find the answer, but the words wouldn’t come. Something had happened to his thinking process. He was aware that there were tears trickling down his cheeks.

“Don’t worry, Jeremy,” Ainsworth said. He sounded almost kind. “We’re going to take you back.

You’ll be safe, locked up in your cell. You won’t hurt anyone ever again.”

“You’ll be taken back to Broadmoor this afternoon,” Bennett added.

“No . . .” The room was spinning in ever-increasing circles. Bulman gripped the table, trying to slow it down. “You can’t—”

“We can. The arrangements have already been made.”

The door suddenly opened and a third man came in. From the very start he didn’t look anything like a policeman. He was more like a retired colonel, about fifty, with thinning hair and a face that was hurrying toward old age. He was wearing a suit that didn’t match his brown suede shoes. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll take over now.”

He didn’t exactly radiate authority, but there was something in his voice, an edge of steel, that cut straight to the point. The two detectives stood up immediately and left. The man took their place at the table, opposite Bulman. His eyes were empty and cold.

“My name is Crawley,” he said. Bulman was still crying. There were tears dripping out of his nose.

Crawley reached into his pocket and took out a tissue. “Use this,” he suggested.

Bulman wiped his nose and ran a sleeve across his eyes.

“I work for the intelligence services,” Crawley explained. “A branch of MI6.” And suddenly Bulman understood. It was like being slapped across the face. MI6! Who else could have twisted his life out of shape with such ease? If he hadn’t been so terrified, he would have been furious with himself. He should have expected something like this. “Alex Rider . . . ,” he rasped.

“I’m not saying I’ve ever heard of Alex Rider,” Crawley responded. His voice was utterly flat. “But I am going to tell you this. I could snap my fingers now and a van would take you to a mental hospital and lock you up, and that is where you would spend the rest of your life. Harry Bulman would be dead and you’d be the lunatic who killed him.”

“But . . . but . . .” Bulman couldn’t talk. He could barely breathe.

“For that matter, I could eliminate you now myself,” Crawley continued. “I actually know thirty-seven different ways to kill you in a manner that will look completely natural. Some of them are quick. Some of them hurt.” He paused. “But those are not my instructions. I’ve been told to give you another chance.”

“You bastard.” Bulman was crying again.

“You can go home now. You can forget all about this. But if you ever go anywhere near Alex Rider again, if you approach any newspaper editor, if you so much as mention his name, we will hear about it, and next time we won’t be so generous. We will wipe you off the face of the earth. Do you understand me?”

Bulman said nothing. Crawley stood up.

“From now on, we’ll be watching you, Mr. Bulman,” he said. “Every minute of every day. Please believe me. This was just a lesson. Next time it’ll be for real.” He left the room.

Bulman stayed where he was. Alex Rider. The two words thundered through his head. Alex Rider. He knew that he would never write his story. His hopes of a major scoop had been destroyed, along with all his riches. He dragged himself to his feet. He was still trembling. Alex Rider. How he wished he had never heard the name.

10

GREENFIELDS

THE BUS HEADED WEST DOWN THE HIGHWAY, turning off at Junction 15, near Swindon. It passed through the attractive town of Marlborough, then on toward the vast area of empty grassland that was Salisbury Plain.

There was nowhere quite like it in the whole of England. Three hundred square miles in area, it had been inhabited long before the Romans had arrived. Stone henge stood on its southern edge. Traces of hill forts dating back to the Iron Age were still dotted around. The plain was used by the army, frequently shut down for night exercises using tons of live ammunition. And one small part of it had been leased out to Greenfields for a research center that the authorities had decided was best kept hidden, in the middle of nowhere.

Alex Rider was sitting in the back of the bus next to Tom Harris and James Hale. There were forty students from Brookland on the trip, along with two teachers—Mr. Gilbert and a prim, slightly nervous woman named Miss Barry, who taught music but who had been included to help with discipline. They had been driving for over two hours now and the initial excitement had long since faded away, replaced by the dull sense of endlessness that comes with any highway journey.

Alex took out the postcard that had arrived the day before. It showed a picture of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. On the back, someone had written a date—2/25—and a message: Paris is beautiful and fortunately we didn’t manage to get lost. I hope you have a great time. The signature was unreadable, but Alex recognized Smithers’s writing. He had been expecting the card, and Smithers had told him how to use it. He slipped it away and turned to Tom.

“Can you do me a favor?” he said casually.

“Sure. What sort of favor?”

“While we’re on this trip, I might have to disappear for a bit. So if there’s any roll call, could you answer when you hear my name?”

Tom frowned. He spoke quietly so his voice wouldn’t carry above the sound of the engine. “The last time you asked me to cover for you, we were in Venice,” he said. “You’re not doing that stuff again, are you?”

Alex nodded gloomily. He wasn’t going to lie to his best friend.

“But I thought you’d finished with all that.”

“Yeah. Me too. But it didn’t quite work out that way.” Alex sighed. “It’s not anything dangerous, Tom.

And it shouldn’t take very long. I just don’t want anyone to notice I’m missing.”

“Okay. Don’t get yourself killed.”

They had been following a series of minor roads through swathes of green countryside that stretched to every horizon. This wasn’t the England of pretty fields and hedgerows. There was something ancient and untamed about Salisbury Plain. It seemed to be completely deserted, with nothing—no buildings, no fences, no power lines, no people—for as far as the eye could see. There were a few clumps of trees huddled together on the hillsides, boulders and bits of debris thrown carelessly around. The wind was rippling through the grass, making strange patterns, like silent music chasing ahead of them as they rumbled slowly toward the top of a hill.

“Here it is,” James said.

He was right. The Greenfields research facility had suddenly appeared in front of them, concealed in a miniature valley. It was somehow shocking after so much emptiness, like a glass-and-steel city, or perhaps a prison, or even a colony on another planet. It certainly looked completely alien here, in the middle of Wiltshire. The complex was shaped like a diamond, completely surrounded by a fence with links so tightly meshed that it was almost like a metal wall, glinting in the sun. A single sliding gate, heavily guarded, stood at the end of the tarmac road. At least the guards didn’t seem to be armed—but they looked threatening enough, even without weapons.

“What is this place?” James muttered, staring out the window. “It seems like a lot of fuss for a bunch of vegetables.”

There were about twenty buildings on the other side of the fence. Many of them were indeed greenhouses, but they were enormous, taller and more solid than anything that might be found in any garden. The rest were either offices, warehouses, or factories, most of them low-rise but some of them five or six stories high, with radio antennas, satellite dishes, and tall silver chimneys built onto the roofs. To one side, Alex saw what might have been a welcome center, sleek and white. A second building right next to the gate was square and solid with a sign marked SECURITY. But his eye was drawn to the construction at the very center of the complex. It was a huge dome, like something out of a science-fiction film, filled with vegetation. He could make out the leaves of palm trees licking at the glass, twenty or thirty yards high. Vines and knotted foliage hung down on all sides. It was connected to other buildings by four glass corridors, radiating out like points on a compass. The Biosphere, Alex thought. He didn’t know where he had gotten the name from, but it seemed right.

Greenfields looked brand-new. There was a network of black tarmac roads separated by perfect rectangles of freshly mown grass. Or perhaps the grass had been genetically programmed to grow to exactly the right height. Silent electric vehicles were ferrying men and women from place to place.

Some of them—presumably the scientists—were wearing white coats. Others were in suits. The guards wore green camouflage jackets, as if to remind themselves that the environment was what this was supposed to be all about. And everywhere, on dozens of poles and on the sides of every building, sophisticated cameras and light sensors gazed down from every angle so that if a single wasp or bee had flown in, someone somewhere would have known.

There was a loud whine inside the bus as Mr. Gilbert turned on the intercom system. “Please don’t be alarmed by all the security,” he said. His voice, amplified and relayed through the speakers, didn’t sound very confident. “A lot of the work that they do here at Greenfields is sensitive. They have to protect themselves from competitors and from journalists and that sort of thing—and some of the plants they grow here have to be contained. I’m afraid we are all going to have to be searched as we go in—

but it shouldn’t take long. Please remember to leave all cameras and mobile phones inside the bus.

They’ll be perfectly safe here, and they won’t be allowed inside.” There were general groans and protests, but as they drew closer to the gate, everyone began to open their backpacks, doing as they were told. They’d been on school trips before, but they weren’t used to blank-faced guards and body searches. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Tom muttered, glancing at Alex. Alex didn’t reply. “It’s a very simple matter. Hardly worthy of your talents.”He remembered Blunt describing the job. Why should he have been surprised by another lie?

The bus slowed down and stopped. They had reached the gate, which slid open slowly to allow them into a holding area. Someone rapped on the door and the driver opened it to allow a thin, unsmiling woman to step inside. Mr. Gilbert stood up and held out a hand, but she ignored him.

“Good afternoon,” she said. Her voice was clipped and somehow artificial. She sounded like a speak-your-weight machine. “May I welcome you to Greenfields Bio Center. I am the supervisor here at Greenfields.” She paused, running her eyes over the passengers as if committing the faces to memory.

“My name is Dr. Myra Beckett, and I will be looking after you during your visit.” It was hard to say how old Beckett might be. She was a severe, very masculine woman in a white coat that hung loose from her shoulders and somehow defined her. There was so little emotion in her face that it was hard to imagine her doing anything that didn’t involve books, Bunsen burners, and bottles of chemicals. Her dark hair was cut short, with bangs that cut diagonally across her forehead, the last strands touching her left eye. She wore circular, gold-framed spectacles that looked cheap and didn’t flatter her. It was obvious that she didn’t care about her appearance. She had no makeup and no jewelry.

She made no effort to be polite.

“We have not had a visit from a school before,” she continued. “We will be showing you our laboratories, some of our cultivation centers, and finally, there will be a lecture on GM technology by one of our experts. Any photography or recording is forbidden. When you leave this bus, every one of you will be searched. This was agreed with your school when you were invited. All mobile telephones are to be left behind. You will follow me now, please.”

“What a charming woman,” Tom muttered.

“Yeah. I’m really glad we came,” James agreed.

The supervisor had climbed off. The two teachers and the rest of the Brookland crowd followed her into the square building that had been designed exactly like a security area in an airport. There were uniformed men standing behind silver tables, X-rays for hand luggage, and metal detectors that everyone would have to pass through. Alex was one of the first to be searched. He watched as his backpack, with the pencil case inside, disappeared into one of the machines. At the same time, he was briskly patted down by a tight-lipped guard. The postcard that Smithers had sent him was in his inside pocket, and the guard pulled it out, glanced at the picture of the Eiffel Tower, then handed it back to him. His backpack appeared on the other side of the machine, but before he could reach it, another security man picked it up.

“Is this yours?”

“Yes.” Alex nodded. All around him, his friends were being processed.

It was as if the guard sensed that something was wrong. He examined Alex, then opened the backpack and looked inside.

“It’s just my schoolwork,” Alex said.

The guard ignored him. He rifled through the books, then took out the pencil case and opened that too.

For a moment Alex was certain that every alarm in the place was about to go off. The guard took out the rubber eraser and turned it over between his fingers. But then, as if he had suddenly lost interest, he shoved everything back into the bag and handed it over.

“Next!”

Alex joined the others at the far end of the security hall. He noticed that Mr. Gilbert was looking fairly disgruntled, and he understood why. They were only on a school outing. They were being treated as though they might all be terrorists.

Beckett didn’t seem to care. “We will now proceed into the complex,” she announced. “Please stay together. Before we log in, does anyone need to use the toilet?” There was silence. “Good. Then come this way. . . .” She led them to a final barrier, and Alex noticed they were counted electronically as they passed through.

But at last they were inside Greenfields. Beckett gathered them in a group, standing in the open air with the great dome behind them. Now that he was closer to the glass, Alex could see that there was an entire ecosystem contained on the other side. Exotic-looking trees sprouted in all directions like green fireworks photographed just as they went off. There were strange plants and bushes fighting for space, some of them carrying ugly, brilliant-colored berries or fruit. It had to be hot inside. A thick layer of steam hung in the air and Alex noticed beads of moisture trickling down the panes. To his surprise, there was a movement and a man appeared briefly, covered from head to toe in a white protective suit.

He was inside the dome, carrying a piece of measuring equipment. He stood briefly by the window.

Then he was gone.

“You are going to be with us for two hours,” Beckett began. She didn’t sound pleased. Indeed, she was making it clear that this entire visit was an irritation. “We will start by looking at some of the laboratories where you will see some of our techniques, including genetic transformation, cloning, and the particle delivery system—we call it the gene gun—that fires new DNA into plants. The gene gun was developed by our director, Leonard Straik. You will visit some of the greenhouses and storage facilities where we cultivate and store fruits and vegetables, some of which have never before existed on this planet. After that, you will be taken to our lecture theater.” She pointed at the white building that Alex had noticed from the brow of the hill. “There will be a discussion about the need for GM

technology and the ways that it can help the future of the planet. And finally”—she smiled so briefly that it seemed to be no more than a nervous twitch—“you are invited to our canteen for a cup of our own Greenfields Bio Center Blend coffee, which has been genetically modified to deliver a more satisfying flavor.

“Please do not at any time separate from the group. This is the very first occasion that we have opened our doors for a school visit, and some of the guards are a little nervous. I would be very sorry if any of you delightful young people were asked to leave. Also, do not touch anything. You will be standing close to many chemicals and plant specimens. Any of them could be dangerous. Are there any questions?”

“What’s in there?” someone asked.

Beckett turned around and looked at the central greenhouse. For a moment her eyes seemed to flash behind the circular lenses. “We call that the Poison Dome,” she explained. “For many years, Greenfields has been researching natural poisons . . . which is to say toxins such as ricin and botulin, which occur in nature and have the ability to kill human beings. Inside the Poison Dome, we grow some of the deadliest plants on the planet, including water hemlock, deadly nightshade, elephant’s ear, death cap mushrooms, and castor beans. The manzanilla tree has attractive fruit that you may choose to swallow. If you do so, it will kill you instantly. There is also a white resin dripping out of it that will blister your skin or blind you. The leaves of the ongaonga from New Zealand only need to touch you to produce hideous burns. It might interest you to know that a common nettle that you may find growing in your garden— Urtica dioica—injects you with five neurotransmitters when it stings you. The nettles inside the Poison Dome have been genetically modified so that they will sting you with five hundred neurotransmitters. I would like to imagine the pain of such a death, but in truth, I do not have enough imagination.”

She took out a tissue and touched it briefly against her lips.

“We are particularly interested in the way poisons interact,” she continued. “So you will also find animal life in there, including specimens of the blue dart frog, which releases lethal toxins from its skin, the banana spider, the taipan snake, and the marbled cone snail. A single drop of its slime can kill an elephant.” She paused and looked around the group. “If any of you would like to visit the Poison Dome, please let me know. Your visit will probably last about fifteen seconds before you die horribly.” Nobody spoke. Miss Barry, the music teacher, had gone very pale.

“Very well. Let us head over to the first laboratory. I will ask your teacher to take a roll call when we enter and again when we leave.”

Tom Harris glanced at Alex, looking more doubtful by the minute. Alex shrugged. He was remembering what Blunt had told him about Philip Masters, how the whistle-blower had died. His body had been unrecognizable when it was found, and now Alex had a good idea what might have happened to him. Well, here was certainly one area of the Bio Center he’d be careful to avoid.

They went into one of the taller buildings with a steel chimney rising above them and smoke trickling into the sky. Beckett let them in using an electronic swipe card that she carried around her neck, and they passed into a clean, uncluttered passageway, where Mr. Gilbert took their names. As they set off once again, Alex made sure he was lingering near the back. They passed a restroom. Quickly he nudged Tom, who nodded back, and without hesitating Alex suddenly ducked sideways, throwing his weight against the door and plunging inside.

Suddenly he was alone, standing in a white-tiled room with two sinks and two mirrors in front of him.

He waited until he could no longer hear the voices or the footsteps of his friends. Nobody had seen him leave. It was time to get started.

He took out the postcard with the view of Paris and went over to the sink. He ran a paper towel under the tap, then wiped it over the picture. The Eiffel Tower and its surroundings dissolved and disappeared. Underneath, there was an intricately drawn map of the Greenfields Bio Center, showing all the buildings and passageways, with two tiny lights already blinking. One was red. One was green.

They told him where he was and where he had to get to.

He listened for a moment, and when he was sure that there was no one nearby, he slipped out into the corridor again, holding the postcard in front of him. According to the flashing display, the chief science officer—Leonard Straik—could be found in the building next door to this one, but the two of them were connected by a walkway, so Alex wouldn’t have to go back outside. All in all, he didn’t think he was in too much danger . . . at least not yet. He was wearing a school uniform, part of an invited group.

If anyone did run into him, it would be easy enough to claim that he had simply lagged behind and become lost. And anyway, what was there to worry about? The research center might look sinister and it might have poison at its heart, but nobody had suggested it was breaking any laws. He was here simply because one man, Straik, might be a security risk. His job was an easy one. And half an hour from now, it would all be over.

Even so, his nerves were jangling as he made his way forward, the flashing light in the display signaling his progress. He had been heading in the same direction as the school party until he came to an open area where three corridors met with a concrete staircase heading up to the next floor. That was where the light seemed to be directing him. He went up the first few steps, then flattened himself against a wall as he heard footsteps approaching. A man and a woman appeared, both of them wearing white coats, walking down one of the passageways below him. They were deep in conversation and didn’t notice him. Alex waited until they were gone, then continued up.

The inside of the building was like a school or university. The walls were mainly whitewashed and bare, with signs pointing toward different blocks. There were no decorations, just fire extinguishers and display boards full of safety notices. The second floor was identical to the ground one, with doorways and interlinking corridors. Without Smithers’s postcard, Alex wouldn’t have had any idea where to go, but now he allowed it to lead him until he arrived at the glass bridge that led to the next building. It was more dangerous here. The bridge was about thirty feet long, exposed on both sides. From where he was standing, Alex could see electric vehicles passing each other on the road underneath. A couple of guards walked slowly past, and Alex saw that these two were armed. He recognized the familiar shape of 19mm Micro Uzi sub-machine guns, hanging lazily against their chests, and wondered if the weapons had been kept hidden deliberately when the school party arrived.

To make matters worse, there were also several cameras pointing his way. Alex could wait until there was no one around, but he would still be spotted if he tried to cross the bridge. He opened his bag, took out the pencil case, and found the pocket calculator. Jamming the cameras might well advertise that something was wrong, but he had no choice. He pressed the plus button three times, checked that the road was clear, then crossed the bridge.

He knew he was operating against the clock now. With the cameras down, security inside the complex would be heightened and it would be less easy to explain what he was doing if he was caught. He ran to the next corner, then jerked back as a door opened and a guard appeared, running down a corridor in front of him. It was obvious that Alex had passed from an academic or administrative block into an area reserved for senior management and executives. The floor was suddenly carpeted. There were paintings

—highly detailed watercolors of different plants—on the walls. The lighting was softer and the doors were made of expensive wood. According to the navigation system concealed inside the postcard, Straik’s office was nearby, and Alex also knew its number: 225. That was the date that Smithers had written above the message.

He found it at the end of the corridor around the next corner. As he approached, he heard a door open somewhere downstairs and someone calling out. There were more footsteps . . . someone hurrying. A telephone was ringing insistently. Nobody was answering it. They were only tiny details, yet Alex had the sense that something had changed inside Greenfields. The cameras were out of action, and that had made them nervous.

Was there anyone in Straik’s office? There was only one way to find out. Alex took a deep breath and knocked. This was the moment of truth. If someone called out for him to come in, the whole thing would have been a waste of time.

There was silence.

Alex sighed. So far, so good. He took out the pencil case and removed the library card. He had noticed a card reader built into the wall beside every door that he had passed, and Straik’s was no different.

Alex swiped his card through the reader, then fed it into the slot at the bottom of his pencil case. He felt the whole thing vibrate in his hand as the machinery that Smithers had built into the secret compartment did its work. A few seconds later, the library card slid out again. Alex swiped it a second time. The card had been reprogrammed. There was a click and Straik’s door swung open.

Alex hurried in, closing the door behind him. He found himself in a large, comfortable office with views over the perfect lawn outside the security block. That was where they had gathered when they had first arrived, and for a fleeting moment Alex wondered if he had been missed yet. Had Tom been able to cover for him during the second roll call? He began to realize just how risky his plan had been

—but it was too late now. He looked around him. Straik had four or five potted plants, which seemed to have been genetically modified to look artificial. There were half a dozen bookshelves, an antique mirror, and a glass-fronted cabinet with a scattering of scientific awards. A framed picture had recently been delivered but not yet hung. It was still in Bubble Wrap, leaning against the wall. Two designer armchairs sat side by side, opposite an antique desk. Straik’s computer was on the desk.

Alex made straight for it. He just wanted to get this over with and then join his friends. Once he was back with the school group, he would be safe. Even if the security people realized there was an intruder at large, they would never suspect him. He had to admit that Alan Blunt was right. Sometimes it did help to be fourteen.

Straik had a leather chair, a massive, swiveling thing that reminded Alex of the dentist. He sat down and took out the eraser that had come with the pencil case. Some of the gadgets that Smithers had supplied him with over the past year had been ingenious, but this one was very simple. He simply ripped the eraser in half, then pulled it apart to reveal the memory stick inside.

Straik’s computer was already turned on, but Alex had no doubt that any important files would be encrypted and protected by a whole series of passwords. Fortunately, that wasn’t his problem. Alex found the USB port. There was already a memory stick there and he took it out, laying it on the desk.

Then he plugged in his own.

Immediately, the screen blazed into life with four columns of figures flickering and spinning crazily as the worm—or whatever was built into the memory stick—burrowed into the heart of the computer, sucking out its information. How long had Smithers said this would take? Alex thought he heard voices outside in the corridor, and he felt the cold touch of the air-conditioning against the sweat on his neck and brow. Half a minute. That was all. But the seconds seemed to stretch themselves in front of him as more and more files—thousands of them—appeared and disappeared, each one duplicated and stolen away.

57.2 GB downloaded of 85.3.

Alex forced his eyes away from the screen and looked at the desk, wondering what other secrets the director of Greenfields might have left scattered around. But there was nothing out of the ordinary: a diary with a few scribbled entries, some letters waiting to be signed. He glanced at them, but they were brief and uninteresting.

66.5 GB downloaded of 85.3.

He slid open one of the drawers. It held stationery—envelopes and headed notepaper, business cards, and a telephone directory. Two notebooks, both of them empty. He turned back to the screen. Only twenty gigabytes to go, but infuriatingly, the compuer seemed to have slowed down as whatever worms were hidden on the memory stick burrowed their way through the various firewalls. Even so, he wouldn’t have time to go through the files. Most of them would make no sense to him anyway, and it would be impossible to tell which were important and which were simply routine.

71.1 GB downloaded of 85.3.

Alex knew that he was running out of time, that someone could arrive at any moment. Part of him was listening for footsteps in the corridor.

79.5 GB downloaded of 85.3.

The memory stick had almost done its work. But now someone really was approaching! Alex could hear two men talking, getting closer all the time.

On the screen, the horizontal bar came to the end of its journey.

Download complete.

The memory stick had finished its work. The computer screen went blank. There was a faint bleep as the lock was activated. Alex snatched the memory stick and dived forward, making for the one hiding place he had seen inside the office. Already he was wondering what he would do if Straik decided to spend the whole day in his office. How would he get back to the school group? He would be trapped.

Alex had just managed to conceal himself when the door opened.

Two men came in.

From where Alex was crouching, he could see Leonard Straik as he approached the desk. The Greenfields director was reflected in the mirror, and with a sense of total shock, Alex realized that he recognized him. Silver hair rising up as if it had just been blown dry. Heavy lips and jowels. Small, watery eyes. The two of them had met recently. But where . . . ?

Then he remembered. Scotland. New Year’s Eve. The man he had thought of as an accountant, playing cards with Desmond McCain. What had McCain called him? Leo. Of course! That was it. Leo was Leonard . . . Leonard Straik.

“Do you want something to drink? Tea? Coffee? We actually develop it ourselves, you know. But it still tastes disgusting.”

“No. Not for me, thank you.”

The other man came in, closing the door behind him. And that was an even bigger shock for Alex.

The second man was Desmond McCain.

11

CONDITION RED

“ S O, IS IT READY FOR SHIPMENT?”

Alex remembered McCain’s voice so well: not loud but deep and powerful, brimming with self-confidence. And yet he had difficulty pronouncing his words. His smashed jaw wasn’t quite able to form them perfectly. He had taken one of the designer chairs and was sitting with his back to Alex, the silver crucifix in his ear just visible above his right shoulder. Meanwhile, Straik had taken his place on the other side of the desk. The two men had no idea that anyone else was in the room.

It was fortunate that Straik liked big paintings. Whatever it was that he had bought for his office had provided Alex with his hiding place. He was squashed up behind it, in the awkward, triangular space between the picture and the wall. There certainly wouldn’t have been room for a full-grown adult here, and even he was cramped, the muscles in his thighs and shoulders already urging him to straighten up.

He could make out a little of Straik and McCain reflected in the antique mirror, but he didn’t dare lean too far forward. If he could see them, they would be able to see him.

“Of course it’s ready,” Straik replied. He sounded irritated. “I gave you my word, didn’t I?”

“So where is it now?”

“The bulk of it is at Gatwick Airport. It’s being carried out in a commercial Boeing 757. Completely routine. But I thought it might amuse you to have a look at it, so I’ve kept a sample for you here.” Straik slid open one of the drawers of his desk and took something out. Alex craned forward, but he couldn’t see what it was. “It took a little while longer than expected. We had problems with mass production.”

“How much were you able to produce?” McCain asked.

“A thousand gallons. It should be more than enough. The main thing is to make sure that the temperature is kept constant when it’s in the air. You have to remember, this stuff is alive. But that said, it’s also fairly durable.”

“How quickly will it work?”

“Almost immediately. You need to apply it in the morning. The process will begin at once, and within thirty-six hours it’ll be unstoppable. There won’t be anything to see, of course—not to begin with—but in about three weeks you’ll have the attention of the entire world.” Straik paused. “What about the shooting? All done?”

“I’m sending Myra to Elm’s Cross tomorrow. We’re closing it down.”

“Getting rid of the evidence.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, in that case . . .”

Straik stopped. And in the silence, somehow Alex knew that something had gone wrong. Crouching behind the picture, he froze, afraid that the sound of his breathing or his heart beating would give him away.

“Someone has been in my office,” Straik said.

“What?” The word came out like a whiplash.

“My desk . . .” Straik picked something up, and even without seeing it, Alex knew what it was. The memory stick that had been in the computer when he arrived. He had taken it out to insert his own—but he hadn’t had time to replace it. “This was in my USB port when I came down to meet you,” Straik said. “I loaded it myself. Someone’s taken it out.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Your secretary could have been in.”

“She’s not here.”

Alex realized he couldn’t hold his position much longer. He was desperate to straighten up, to allow his muscles to stretch. At least there was one good thing. The hiding place was so small that neither of the two men would suspect for a minute that anyone else was still in the room. But he had to know what was going on, even at the risk of giving himself away. Very slowly, he leaned forward a few inches to have a glimpse in the mirror. McCain was holding the memory stick. Straik was hunched over his computer, tapping furiously at the keyboard, his little eyes focused on the screen. Two pin-pricks of red had appeared in his cheeks.

“This computer has been compromised,” he announced.

“Compromised?”

“Someone has attempted to download documents and files from the main drive. For all I know, they may have succeeded.” Straik snatched up a telephone and dialed a number. There was a brief pause.

Then he was answered. “This is Leonard Straik,” he said. “I want an immediate status report.” Another pause. Alex wondered what was being said at the other end of the line. It wasn’t hard to guess. Then Straik spoke again. “I want you to put out a condition double red alert,” he snapped. “All personnel to assemble immediately. This is not an exercise. We have a major security breach.” He hung up. “We have an intruder,” he said to McCain. “Ten minutes ago, our entire surveillance system went down. Someone must be jamming the signal. This is what they were after.” He nodded at the computer. “They must have left seconds before we arrived.”

“What’s a double red alert?”

“Any unauthorized person found wandering inside the Bio Center will be killed . . . no questions asked.”

“Don’t you have a bunch of schoolchildren here?”

“I haven’t forgotten that, Desmond. I’m not an idiot—whatever you may think. My staff have special instructions.” He turned off the computer. “I’m going to the control center. Are you coming?”

“Absolutely.” It struck Alex that McCain sounded more amused than alarmed. But that seemed to be his character. Whatever he might be up to, he didn’t believe that anyone could get in his way.

The two of them stood up. Alex heard the swish of cloth as Straik came out from behind his desk. They went over to the door. It opened, then closed. Alex was on his own.

Gratefully, he uncurled himself from behind the picture. For a moment he stood where he was, trying to collect his thoughts. He was probably safe while he was in Straik’s office, at least for the time being.

Security would be searching for him—but this was the one place they wouldn’t look. Even so, he couldn’t stay here forever. With an intruder on the loose, the school visit might be cut short and the bus sent back to London. Alex had to be on it. He couldn’t be left behind.

It was worse than that. Alex realized that his only chance of survival was to get back to Mr. Gilbert and the others. There had been nothing accidental about the death of the whistle-blower, and no matter what Blunt might have said, there really was something seriously unpleasant going on at Greenfields. Why else would the director be so keen to see that any intruder was killed? Alex had to get back to his class.

No guard was going to fire at him when there were witnesses. Once he was back with the others, he would be safe . . . just one bored student among many.

He headed for the door, about to leave, when he noticed a glass vial resting on Straik’s desk. It was a test tube, sealed at the top, with a muddy gray liquid inside. This must be the “sample” that he had heard the two men talking about. Alex had no idea what it contained, but another thousand gallons of it were on their way somewhere abroad. He still had the memory stick in his pocket, but on an impulse he went over and took the test tube too. Smithers would analyze it. And that would be the end of it. The liquid would surely reveal whatever was being planned.

He opened the door carefully, checked there was no one in sight, then stepped outside. He had decided to head back the way he had come. He had no idea where his friends were and he was furious that he had no way of communicating with them. Normally, he would have called Tom or James . . . but all their mobile phones had been left on the bus. What had the woman, Dr. Beckett, told them? The laboratories first. Then the greenhouses and storage centers. Finally, the lecture theater. Surely they couldn’t be too hard to find.

Alex closed the door behind him and sprinted back around the corner, his feet making no sound on the carpet. The glass bridge was ahead of him, but even as he approached it, he heard men running toward him and spun back, ducking into a storage cupboard a second before they appeared. There were three guards and they were all armed. Alex watched them run across the bridge and disappear down another passage. Above his head, he noticed a light flashing red. He gritted his teeth. This had turned into a cat-and-mouse game with only one mouse and an awful lot of cats.

The bridge was clear and he crossed it into what he had thought of as the administrative block. He went back down the stairs but immediately realized that he had forgotten which way he had originally come from—left or right. The trouble was that every direction looked the same. He tossed a mental coin and set off, knowing almost at once that he was lost. He still had the postcard with its guidance system in his back pocket but it couldn’t really help him now. All that mattered was to keep moving and not to be seen.

“Stop!”

The guard had stepped out of nowhere, blocking his way. He had a machine gun dangling around his neck and he was already fumbling with it, bringing it up and around. Alex turned and ran. He had taken no more than ten steps when a neon light fitting exploded with a shower of sparks and broken glass. At the same time, the walls and ceiling showered plaster on him. Alex hadn’t heard much more than a whisper, but the guard was clearly firing in his direction, the bullets streaming over his head. The gun must have some sort of silencer attached to it . . . and of course, that made sense. These were the

“special instructions” that Straik had issued. They couldn’t risk the sound of gunfire, not when they had forty schoolkids on the site.

Alex hurtled down another corridor, past a series of open doors. He passed a laboratory, surprisingly cluttered and old-fashioned, with plant specimens on the work desks and bottles of different chemicals on the shelves. A woman in a white coat, holding a petri dish in the palm of her hand, looked up and momentarily caught his eye. Behind her, a man was taking a tray of flowers out of what looked like an industrial fridge. Alex wondered if his class had been here, perhaps a few minutes before. He was tempted to stop and ask. He could still pretend to be lost. He decided against it.

Double red alert. He had so far been spotted by one guard, and the fact that he was a boy in a school uniform hadn’t made any difference at all. These people wanted him dead.

He heard shouting behind him. There was another light flashing in the corner of his eye. Alex hadn’t even slowed down. He saw a glass door ahead of him and sprinted toward it, palms outstretched, praying that it wasn’t locked. He pushed. It opened. He almost fell through as another blast of bullets fanned silently through the air, punching dotted lines across the wall beside him. But now he was outside and running. He saw the sleek white exterior of the lecture theater on the other side of the lawn, but he couldn’t reach it. More guards in electric vehicles were racing toward him, moving fast. Alex felt a surge of despair. How could he have allowed Alan Blunt and MI6 to talk him into this? He’d promised Jack he wouldn’t get into trouble again. He’d promised Sabina. More than that, he’d promised himself.

Anger spurred him on. He reached one of the greenhouses and plunged in through two sets of doors. It had been cold outside, but here the climate was subtropical. Hundreds of plants were arranged on shelves, some just a few inches tall, some bending against the roof high above. The greenhouses were actually more like glass factories, divided into dozens of different rooms, each one joined to the other by a maze of interlinking corridors. Huge silver pipes and watering systems snaked across the ceiling.

There were banks of machinery controlling the lights, the temperature, and the humidity in all the different areas, ensuring perfect conditions for all this artificial life. Alex had to be safe here. The guards might have followed him in, but there were plenty of hiding places. Provided he kept moving, there was no way they would be able to find him.

The next attack took him completely by surprise. A cascade of bullets that seemed never-ending. They came from all sides, determined to kill the intruder even if it meant destroying the entire complex. Alex didn’t hear a single shot, but inside the greenhouse the noise of bullets smashing glass was deafening.

Windows shattered all around him. Alex threw himself to the ground as shards of glass, thousands and thousands of them, showered in all directions. Inches above his head, the plants were shredded, the very air turning green as it was filled with tiny cuttings of stalk and leaf. Terracotta pots exploded, earth showering out. Brightly colored flowers tore themselves apart. And still the bullets kept coming, hammering into the machinery, ricocheting off the metal pipes. Alex could just make out the dark shapes of the guards surrounding the building, destroying it. He wondered if they had all gone mad. Or was it that the work at Greenfields was finished and nothing mattered anymore, so long as nobody was able to escape with its secrets?

He scurried forward on his hands and knees, trying to lose himself farther inside the complex. He came to a brick wall with another bank of machinery and crawled behind it, putting a solid barrier between himself and the gunfire. Nobody could see him here. He patted his fingers against his forehead. When he examined them, they were stained with blood. None of the bullets had hit him. It must have been the falling glass. He brushed it out of his hair and off his shoulders. What must he look like? What would Mr. Gilbert say if he ever turned up?

He had to find the school tour! Surely they must have heard all the racket, even if the guards were using silencers. Another corridor led into the distance, this one with mirrored tiles instead of glass. He set off, still keeping low. Suddenly he was surrounded by brickwork. He had entered some sort of equipment room with spades and wheelbarrows. He could have been in an ordinary garden center rather than a top-secret research institute. There were even bags of fertilizer . . . as if he needed reminding of the sort of trouble he was in.

Somehow he had to find a way back outside. Then he would cut back to the lecture theater and hope to join the rest of Brookland there. At least he seemed to have lost the guards with their machine guns.

Perhaps they were scouring through the wreckage, looking for a body. Alex checked the test tube that he had stolen from Straik’s office. He had been carrying it in his top jacket pocket, and fortunately it was still in one piece. He slipped it back in and set off again, heading for a set of solid-looking doors and a sign: STRICTLY NO ADMITTANCE. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. The doors were locked and hermetically sealed, but there was another reader set in the frame. Alex still had the library card. He had reprogrammed it to open Straik’s door, and presumably Straik had access to every zone in the Bio Center. So . . .

He tried it. It worked. The doors opened. Alex went in, smiling as they clicked shut behind him. It might well be that the guards were unable to follow him in here. How many of them, after all, would have been authorized?

He only realized where he was when it was too late. The shape of the building, the intense heat, the moisture running down the glass panes . . . all these should have warned him. But the door had already locked itself, and looking back, he saw that there was no reader on this side, no way back out. He stood where he was, feeling the heavy air on his cheeks and forehead. His clothes were already sticking to him. Something was buzzing loudly over his head. Alex closed his eyes and swore.

He had walked into the Poison Dome.

12

HELL ON EARTH

ALEX LOOKED AROUND HIM. He had once visited the greenhouses at Kew Gardens in London—

and in some ways this was similar. The building itself was very elegant, the great dome supported by a delicate framework of metal supports. The whole area was about the size of a circular soccer field, if such a thing could exist. But unlike Kew Gardens, there was nothing beautiful or inviting about the plants that grew here. Alex examined the tangle of green in front of him, the trunks and branches crisscrossing each other, struggling for space. They all looked evil, the leaves either razor sharp or covered in millions of hairs. He remembered what Beckett had said. These were mutant organisms.

Touching just one of them would bring pain and death. Fruits in the shape of half-sized apples hung over his head, and rich, fat berries clung to the bushes. But they were all hideous colors, somehow unnatural, warning him to stay away. He could hear droning. There were insects in here and they were big ones, from the sound of them. Bees, perhaps something worse.

Alex’s skin was already crawling, but he forced himself not to move. The information that the Beckett woman had given him when he arrived might even now save his life. He mustn’t brush against any of the plants here. They had been altered so that they were a hundred times more deadly than nature intended. And there weren’t just plants. She had talked about the interaction of poisons. And so there were spiders and snails and . . . of course, the bees. Why had Straik created this place? Hell on earth.

What was he trying to prove?

Alex couldn’t go back. He remembered the shape of the dome, with the corridors branching out like points of the compass. He had come in as if from the south. Now he had to reach the other side and one of the other three exits. Two in and two out . . . that must be how it worked. From what he could remember, the lecture theater must be directly in front of him. So all he had to do was walk straight.

And at least there was a path, a boardwalk made of wooden planks, stretched out ahead. And nobody would be looking for him in here. Nobody would be stupid enough to follow him in. He might be stung, bitten, poisoned, or scared to death, but at least he wouldn’t be shot.

So . . .

There was no other way.

Alex moved forward, very slowly. Touching nothing. Not making a sound. If he was going to get out of here alive, he would have to take it literally one step at a time. Beckett had mentioned snakes . . . the taipan. Alex knew it to be the most venomous land snake in the world, fifty times more toxic than the cobra. But it was also nervous. Like most animals, it wouldn’t attack a human unless it was threatened.

So provided he didn’t brush against anything, touch anything, step on anything, or alarm anything, he might come out of this all right.

One step at a time.

He followed the wooden boardwalk. The plants were horribly close to him. The nearest of them was an oversized thistle that seemed to be straining to break free and attack him, like an angry dog. Then came a squat, ugly tree corkscrewing out of the earth with green scalpel blades instead of leaves. The smell of sulfur rose in his nostrils. The path was crossing a volcanic pool. A creeper hung in front of him. He resisted the urge to brush it aside and bent low, contorting himself to avoid coming into contact with it.

If he made one miscalculation, even so much as an inch, he might dislodge something, and he knew that a single touch could finish him. Everything here was his enemy. Something buzzed close to his head and he jerked around, unable to control himself. His sleeve brushed against a jagged-edged nettle, but fortunately, the material protected him from the bristling hairs—or neurotransmitters, as Beckett had called them. Alex shrunk into his jacket, pulling it around him. Every fiber of his being was concentrated on the way ahead.

Something slithered onto his foot.

Alex stopped. He even stopped breathing. It was as if someone had drawn a noose tight around his throat. Trying not to panic, he looked down. He could already tell from the weight that this wasn’t a snake. It was too small, too light. And it hadn’t slithered, it had crawled. For a moment he couldn’t see it and thought that perhaps, after all, he had imagined it.

He hadn’t. It was almost worse than a snake. A glistening centipede, at least eight inches long, had settled on the top of his sneaker. The creature could have been drawn by a demonic child: red head, black body, bright yellow legs that seemed to be writhing with anticipation. Alex knew what it was. He had seen something exactly the same once on television. The giant redheaded centipede. Also known as the giant desert centipede. How had the narrator described it? Unusually aggressive and extremely fast .

. .

And this one had decided to stretch itself out on his foot. What if it decided to explore a little farther, over his ankle and up his pant leg, for example? Alex stood as still as a statue. Without making any sound, he was screaming at the insect. Go away! Go and explore a sulfur pit. Make friends with a marbled cone snail. But leave me alone! Alex could see its antennae twitching as it made up its mind.

He looked fearfully at his bare flesh just inches above his sock. He couldn’t bear it any more. He suddenly lashed out, using every muscle in his leg as he kicked at the air. He thought the centipede would still cling on. It might get tangled in his laces. He was certain he was going to feel its bite. But when he looked down again, it was no longer there. He had managed to shake it free.

He needed a weapon . . . anything to protect himself from whatever might come next. Why couldn’t Smithers have built a flamethrower into his Simpsons pencil case? Alex reached into his backpack once again. He had the two gel pens, but the last thing he wanted to do in here was set off an explosion . . . it would just advertise his presence to every living thing. That just left the pencil sharpener with the diamond-edged blade. He took it out and unfolded it three times, the plastic swiveling on concealed hinges. He was left with something that looked like a tiny ax or meat cleaver, barely three centimeters long. It might be useful for cutting through wire or even glass, but it wasn’t much good for anything else. Even so, Alex felt a little more confident having it in his hand.

Where was the other door? The guards must still be looking for him, and he knew he had to get a move on, to find his way out of here as quickly as possible. But even so, he didn’t dare hurry. He took another step and his foot came down on a little cluster of mushrooms, crushing them. Pale yellow liquid, like pus, oozed out from beneath his sole. A moth fluttered briefly in front of him. It was hard to believe that he was in an artificially created environment, a greenhouse—and not lost in the jungle. The pathway took him past a pool of boiling mud, bubbles rising slowly and heavily to the surface. A tall, twisted tree with lianas trailing from its branches grew beside it. Alex looked up, then ducked back as a globule of milky white syrup splashed down, oozing out of the bark. It missed his face by millimeters and he knew that if it had hit his eyes, he might well have been blinded.

The path curved around and Alex found himself in a slight clearing with a tiny river in front of him and a Japanese-style bridge. The pretty humpbacked structure looked ridiculous in this artificial jungle.

Who could possibly want to come for a walk here among so much death? He could no longer see the glass windows that made up the outer walls of the Poison Dome and guessed that he must be at its very heart. Well, at least if he was halfway in, that meant he was also halfway out. Something buzzed past his head and he just caught sight of a giant wasp, legs trailing, barely able to stay in the air as it struggled against its own weight. What horrors were going to come next? He had to get out of here.

He crossed the bridge, still moving slowly. Silvery water flowed beneath, and as Alex passed across, it suddenly erupted in a frenzy. Some sort of fish life had detected his presence. Piranha . . . or something worse. Alex was beginning to wonder if the dome had really been built as a scientific experiment or if it wasn’t just some huge toy, the fantasy of a sick mind. Straik might pretend to be studying poisons. In fact, he seemed more interested in sudden death.

He stepped off the other side of the bridge. That was when the man appeared.

It was a guard—or a gardener—dressed in a white protective suit that began at his ankles and continued all the way to his neck. His feet were weighed down by heavy-duty boots and he was wearing gloves that doubled the size of his hands. His head was completely enclosed in the sort of helmet that a beekeeper might wear, except that instead of a net, his face was covered by a plastic sheet. Alex was aware of two hostile eyes glaring at him, a small nose, and a mouth curled in a sneering smile. The rest of the man’s features were hidden. He was holding a machete. He was pointing it directly at Alex.

Alex stopped with the bridge behind him. “Hi,” he said. “Are you the park attendant? Because if so, maybe you could show me the way out.”

The man tightened his grip on the weapon. Alex knew what was about to happen and he was ready for it. As the machete swung through the air, the blade aiming for his neck, he dropped down, then threw himself forward, ducking underneath the man’s arm. For just a second, Alex was behind him and he slashed upward with his own, miniature blade. The man didn’t even feel it. He spun around and brought both his hands plunging down, using the handle of the machete as a club. It smashed into Alex’s shoulder and the pain ricocheted along his bones and muscles, all the way to his wrist. His hand fell open and the little knife dropped away.

The man came at him again, this time swinging the blade to force Alex away from him. Alex took one step back, then another. At the last second, he remembered the water behind him. The man was about to feed him to the fish. Alex stopped with his heels on the very edge of the bank. The machete sliced the air in front of him and at once he lashed out, his fist plunging into the man’s abdomen. The protective suit absorbed much of the damage. Alex felt the hardened material take the skin off his knuckles. But the man had been winded and fell back. Alex lashed out with his foot, catching the man on his arm. The machete spun away and landed, point down, in a flower bed.

The man charged straight at him, almost knocking Alex off his feet. Alex was terrified he was going to step on a nettle or fall backward into one of the flower beds. The flowers growing near the river were like porcupines, with huge spikes and bulging, overripe berries that could have been disease-ridden eyes. For a moment Alex lost his balance and he lifted an arm to steady himself. He touched a spider’s web hanging from a branch. He hadn’t even seen it, but he felt it at once. A single strand of the web had wrapped itself across the flesh on the back of his hand. It burned into him like acid. Alex cried out.

The man reached for the machete, took hold of it, and suddenly he was coming again at Alex, chopping the air with a series of vicious blows. Alex looked left, right, then behind him. He had almost backed into another tree. The bark looked innocent enough, but he didn’t dare touch it. It might contain ricin or botulin or any other toxin that Beckett had forgotten to mention. How far away was it? Alex judged the distance carefully, then stood his ground. The man stumbled toward him. The heavy protective suit he was wearing was slowing him down. The blade slashed toward Alex’s neck. At the very last second, Alex ducked and, just as he had hoped, he heard the clunk as it bit into the tree. The man pulled at it, but it was stuck fast. And that was when Alex twisted around and slammed his foot into the man’s chest, putting all his strength behind it.

The man, thrown backward, slipped and fell on his back, landing in one of the beds of porcupine flowers. Even now, his suit should have protected him. But he had no way of realizing what Alex had done. Before he had lost it, he had used the little pencil-sharpener knife to make a slit that ran all the way from the man’s waist to the back of his neck. There was a gap now that had allowed the spikes to go all the way through. The man screamed. Behind the mask, his eyes bulged and his entire body began to jerk, his legs kicking helplessly. Alex watched in horror as gray foam began to pour out of his mouth.

Then suddenly his arms shot out and he lay still.

Alex didn’t stay a moment longer than he had to. The noise of the fight would have disturbed whatever else was living in this nightmare place. If there were any other men working inside the dome, they would be on their way to investigate. He’d had enough. Still forcing himself not to panic, he pressed forward. A few minutes later, he was finally rewarded—a door! This one opened from the inside. Alex felt a great wave of relief as he swiped the card and passed through. The door swung shut. He had left the Poison Dome behind.

He examined the back of his hand. The web had left a white line running from one side to the other and the whole thing was swollen and painful. Well, he just had to be grateful that he hadn’t actually met the spider. He rubbed the wound, but that only made it feel worse. He would just have to ignore it until he could get medical help. Where was he? The dome had brought him into another greenhouse, this one filled with troughs of what looked like wheat. He wasn’t safe yet, but at least he was away from the shooting. Maybe the guards thought he was already dead.

He found a door and made his way outside again. In the distance he could hear shouting and two electric vehicles shot past, carrying more guards toward the noise. The lecture theater—white and modern—was right in front of him. Alex didn’t know if the cameras were still jammed, nor did he care anymore. He was tired. His hand was hurting. His shoulder—where he had been hit with the handle of the machete—was on fire. There was still broken glass in his hair and he knew there must be quite a few cuts on his forehead and face. The next time Mr. Gilbert offered him a school trip, he would say he was sick.

He staggered forward, heading for the lecture theater. Maybe the rest of the school would already be there. He would slip in without being noticed and join the rest of the group. He could already see himself dozing off during the rest of whatever talk was going on.

Then the doors opened. Two guards stepped out. They saw Alex at the same moment that he saw them.

It wasn’t over yet.

Alex turned around and ran.

13

EXIT STRATEGY

TOM HARRIS WAS GETTING WORRIED.

Almost an hour had passed since Alex had slipped away, disappearing into a restroom like some superhero about to change into costume and save the world. Only it wasn’t like that. Tom knew that Alex didn’t really want to work for MI6. He had said as much when the two of them were out together in Italy. So why had Alex chosen to go back to it all—and what could be such a big deal about a research center that seemed to be spending most of its time designing the perfect tomato?

After Alex had gone, the rest of the school party had been taken to one of the laboratories, where an earnest young scientist with a neatly trimmed beard had shown them the chemical process that put new DNA into a single plant cell. Tom had barely listened. He didn’t find it easy to concentrate at the best of times. Now, his parents had recently separated. His father was living on his own in a motel in south London. His mother had taken up smoking again. They were both overachievers with a pile of diplomas between them, but what good had it done them? If Tom had his way, he would drop school entirely.

As they had moved from one laboratory to the next, Tom had passed a window and had found himself looking for Alex. There was nobody in sight. But during the next demonstration—something to do with plants freeze-dried in liquid nitrogen—he had noticed a red light begin to blink discreetly in the corner of the room. Beckett had clearly seen it too. Tom saw her face change, a look of concern creeping into her eyes. It was an alarm. He was sure of it.

And then, in the distance, he heard something. The sound of breaking glass—a lot of it. Everyone else was too busy listening, taking notes. But Tom knew what it meant. Alex was on the run. Part of him was tempted to sneak out and join him.

It was lucky he didn’t. As soon as the demonstration ended, Beckett insisted on a roll call to check that everyone was there, and—as promised—Tom stood in for Alex, doing a reasonable imitation of his voice.

“Rider?”

“Here, sir.”

Only James Hale, standing next to him, saw what was happening and glanced at him quizzically. Tom shrugged but gave nothing away.

And now they were in some workshop, two floors down, underground. Tom wondered if they had been brought here on purpose, to stop them from hearing or seeing anything that might be going on outside.

Another scientist—this one young, female, and Chinese—had arrived to show them the famous gene gun, developed, they were told, by the director of Greenfields. It was a rather ordinary-looking piece of equipment that resembled a small metal safe with a glass door. Nonetheless, this was at the heart of GM

technology, the woman said. She opened the door and placed a round petri dish inside.

“The gene gun is a very effective way to deliver new DNA into a plant,” she explained. “This is done by a system known as Biolistic Particle Delivery . . .”

As she continued, Tom noticed a guard, dressed in khaki, steal into the room. He approached Beckett and whispered urgently into her ear. Tom wasn’t surprised when, a moment later, she stepped forward, interrupting the talk.

“I am very sorry, boys and girls,” she exclaimed. “I am afraid we are going to have to end your visit to Greenfields. An emergency situation has arisen and you must return to your school bus at once.”

“Wait a minute . . . ,” Mr. Gilbert began. His face was indignant. They had driven a long way to visit the center and they had only been here for an hour.

“There will be no argument,” Beckett snapped. “We will take the back staircase. Your driver has been instructed to meet you around the side of the building.”

James moved closer to Tom. “This is about Alex, isn’t it,” he muttered.

“Alex is standing right next to me,” Tom replied.

“Yeah. Sure.” James nodded slowly.

The class was already filing out and the two of them followed behind.

The guards had seen him. If they had been carrying Uzis, he would have been dead already. One of them was coming after him, catching up fast. The other had stopped to talk into his radio, alerting the others.

Alex was getting tired. He was in pain. As he ran back toward the center of the complex, he was aware of just two things. He had to drop out of sight. And—if it wasn’t too late already—he had to find his way back to his friends. There was safety in numbers. So long as he was part of Brookland School, inside the group, there was nothing that Straik or anybody else could do.

But where were they? There was no bus, no sign of anyone, and definitely no way out of the Greenfields Bio Center. The fence was too high and he could see the gate, over on his right, firmly closed. The Poison Dome, which he’d managed to break out of just a few moments before, was now on his left. Well, one thing was certain. He wasn’t going back in there.

Alex heard a whine and saw an electric car with three more guards speeding across the lawn toward him. The door of one of the brick buildings opened and more guards poured out. These ones were armed. For just a second, Alex was tempted to hand himself over. He could still pretend he had lagged behind his class and gotten lost. Would they really be so quick to kill him?

Then he remembered the test tube in his top pocket. Straik knew someone had hacked into his computer. And there was a dead man in the Poison Dome. Alex put the thought out of his mind. It was obvious what they could—and would—do if they got hold of him, and right now they were just seconds away. He had to move . . . fast.

Ahead of him, a wide tarmac driveway ran straight between what looked like two rows of factories.

This was the only way with no guards . . . and it might lead him back to the block where the school visit had begun. A single white-coated technician stood in his way, but he was busy with other things, funneling a steaming liquid from a steel cylinder into a heavily insulated container. Liquid nitrogen. It had to be. Alex had seen the same stuff—though in smaller quantities—at Brookland. And what were its properties? In physics class . . . yes . . . there was something he had been told.

The electric car was getting nearer. The guards who were on foot had brought up their machine guns, preparing to fire. A single cascade of silent bullets and he would be torn to shreds. Alex was already sprinting down the driveway. As the stunned technician stood frozen in surprise, Alex leapt forward and seized the steel cylinder. Then, in a single movement—he spun around and hurled it behind him. The container hit the tarmac and the liquid nitrogen splashed out, immediately forming itself into marbles that bounced along the hard surface. At the same time, it began to evaporate, and suddenly there was a wall of white mist between Alex and his pursuers as the liquid reacted to the higher temperature and turned back into gas. The car swerved as for just a moment Alex disappeared from view. The technician was shouting, but Alex ignored him.

He raced over to the nearest door, using the library card to swipe his way in. He hoped the guards would be unaware that he could open any lock and would keep running. His eyes were watering and he could taste nitrogen gas at the back of his throat. If he had thrown the liquid in a closed room, he would have killed himself, suffocating as the oxygen was swallowed up. Now he found himself in a bare industrial building with cinder-block walls and cement floors. A series of furnaces stood in front of him, none of them operating. A metal staircase twisted upward. Alex was disappointed. He had hoped the building might offer more. Somewhere to hide. Some way of escape. Something.

He took the stairs. He would go up to the roof. There was a communication system built into the pocket calculator that Smithers had given him. He would use it to call MI6. With luck, they would respond before it was too late.

The staircase rose six floors. At the top he came to an old-fashioned door with a push bar. Even as he reached it, he heard the main door of the building crash open beneath him and knew that the guards had worked out where he had gone. He had to fight back a growing sense of hopelessness. There really didn’t seem to be any way out of this mess. So what now? A fire escape. He would make his way from the roof back down again and find somewhere else to hide.

Alex had crashed through the door, which then slammed shut behind him. He found himself on a wide, flat roof covered with asphalt. A long silver chimney rose about fifty feet into the air, presumably carrying smoke from the furnaces that Alex had seen below. There were two air-conditioning units and a water tank. But that was all. There was no fire escape in sight. The roof had a low brick wall running all the way around the edge. The nearest building looked to be at least ten yards away—too far to jump.

Alex was six stories up with no way to climb down. He was trapped.

He could imagine the guards already climbing the staircase, making their way toward him. Somehow he had to keep them at bay. There were a few pieces of scaffolding left over from building work lying on the ground beside the water tank. He snatched two of them, ran back to the door, and wedged them against the handle, slanting them into the ground. That would at least buy him a bit of time.

But he was still a sitting target. In a way, he had played right into their hands. They could leave him here all night and then pick him off at their leisure. Where were his friends? Alex ran back to the edge of the building, skidding to a halt beside the parapet. And finally he saw them.

The school bus was parked at the far end of the main driveway. The field trip must have ended early, as students were already loading up. Even as he watched, he saw Tom Harris and James Hale climbing on board, deep in conversation. He heard a couple of girls laughing. It seemed incredible that they could be unaware of what had been going on at Greenfields while they were being shown around. And there were the two teachers—Mr. Gilbert and Miss Barry! Alex tried to get their attention, tried to call out to them, but they were too far away and his voice was hoarse from the nitrogen. He could only watch in despair as the door hissed shut, sealing his friends inside. He twisted around and looked the other way.

The gate was already sliding open. Straik was determined to get rid of the school party as quickly as possible. The best Alex could hope for was one last roll call, perhaps delaying their departure by another few minutes. Then they would be gone. He would be stuck here, on his own.

He sized up the angles. The bus would pass directly underneath him. Could he jump down? No. He was far too high up. Even assuming he timed it properly and landed on the roof, he would break his arms, his legs, and quite possibly his neck. Could he wave at the driver, somehow attracting his attention?

Impossible. He wouldn’t be seen at this height and there was nothing he could throw down.

He heard the sound of fists pounding against metal. A single door was all that was between him and the armed guards, wedged shut by two pieces of scaffolding. Desperately, Alex made a circuit of the roof.

There were no fire escapes, no ladders, no ropes, nothing. The bus engine had started. It was about thirty yards away at the end of the driveway. At the other end, the gate was open, with Salisbury Plain in clear view.

A cascade of machine-gun fire sent Alex diving for cover. The noise was deafening and very near. But they weren’t shooting at him. Not yet. One of the guards at the top of the stairs had sprayed the door with bullets. Alex actually saw the metal bulging and blistering as it was hammered. It was on the verge of being blown off its hinges.

The chimney . . .

Alex was already up and running as the idea took shape in his mind. The chimney was modern and silver, and as far as he could see, its outer casing was fairly thin. He didn’t have time to work out the measurements, but surely if it was laid out horizontally, it might reach across to the next rooftop. He could use it as a bridge. And he had the means to bring it down.

Another burst of machine-gun fire. The door shivered in its frame. Feverishly, Alex reached into his backpack and took out the red gel-ink pen that Smithers had given him. Red was more powerful. It would do more damage. That was what Smithers had said. He glanced back at the door. White smoke was trickling through the cracks around the side. How much longer would it hold? Alex had the pen in his hand. He twisted the cap once then pulled the little plunger to activate it. He felt it click and slammed the pen against the chimney, diving for cover behind one of the air-conditioning units. The pen stayed in place, held magnetically.

The bus had yet to move. The guards were hammering at the door now, using the stocks of their machine guns to finish the job. There was a brief pause and then an explosion, louder than anything that had gone before. Hopefully the bus driver would hear it. He would have to stop and find out what was going on! Alex was crouching with his hands over his ears. He felt the blast sear across his forearms and the top of his head and looked up just in time to see the chimney topple like a felled tree, the metal close to the base grinding in protest as it was torn apart.

It crashed down, but even as it fell, Alex saw that his plan couldn’t work. The chimney was too short to reach the building opposite. It had fallen sideways, smashing into the low wall. The wall acted as a fulcrum, tearing the metal skin a second time. The chimney ended up tilting down toward the main driveway. What had been its top end was now about thirty feet above the road.

The door, meanwhile, had finally collapsed, blown off its frame from one last blast of machine-gun fire. Half a dozen men rushed out onto the roof.

The bus was now moving, slowly picking up speed, roaring toward the gate as if desperate to get out of here. In a few seconds, it would pass directly beneath Alex.

One of the guards saw him and shouted. Alex stood where he was. The guard took aim.

As the bus drew closer, Alex sprinted forward, as if determined to throw himself off the side of the building. The guard fired. Bullets skidded across the roof of the building, ripping up the asphalt.

The chimney had been sliced open by the edge of the wall. It had almost broken in half. If it had, it would have fallen down to the road, blocking the bus. But it was being held in place by a small section of the metal skin, resting on the wall and acting like a hinge. Alex dived headfirst into the opening. The chimney was just big enough for him with his backpack still strapped to his shoulders. It was like being inside a slide at a swimming pool. The round silver surface offered no resistance and Alex shot down.

In the end, it was all about timing. If he had hit the road, he would have died. If he had started too soon, he might have missed the bus and been run over by it. But Alex had timed it perfectly. He shot out of what had once been the top of the chimney at the exact moment that the bus passed beneath him. For a brief second, he saw the roof, a yellow blur rushing past. He had only about fifteen feet to fall, but he knew that the impact was going to be painful.

It was worse than he imagined. The breath was smashed out of him. His neck and his spine almost separated. He was sure he had broken several of his ribs. He rolled, spinning toward the edge. If he kept rolling and fell off, he would be left behind after all and it would all have been for nothing.

Alex stretched out his arms and legs, spread-eagling himself, doing everything he could to stay in contact with the roof. He wondered why the driver hadn’t stopped, but perhaps he hadn’t heard anything above the noise of the engine.

The bus reached the security gate and passed through without slowing down. Then it was outside the complex, accelerating across Salisbury Plain.

Alex stayed where he was, battered and exhausted. He allowed the cold air to wash over him. Every part of him was in pain. Something was trickling against his chest and for a horrible moment he thought he had been shot. But it wasn’t blood. The test tube had smashed. Smithers would just have to use whatever liquid he could separate from the fiber of Alex’s jacket. Surely there would be enough of it to analyze.

Meanwhile, he couldn’t travel all the way back to London on the roof.

Just before they reached the main road, Alex crawled over to the edge and lowered the top half of his body so that he was hanging, upside down, outside the window where he had been sitting. He was lucky. Tom Harris saw him, his eyes widening in disbelief. Alex made a sign with one hand. Tom nodded.

About one minute later, the bus stopped and Tom got out. Alex watched him rush behind a tree and pretend to be sick. He used the opportunity to slide to the edge and lower himself down. He limped over and joined his friend.

“Alex!” Tom looked horrified. “What happened to you?”

“Things didn’t quite go as planned.”

“You look awful!”

“Really? I feel great. . . .”

Tom helped Alex back to the bus. The two of them had to pass Mr. Gilbert, who was sitting in the front seat. Their teacher was even more shocked than Tom had been. He had only seen one boy leave the bus.

So how was it possible for two of them to be returning?

“Rider!” he gasped. “What are you doing out of the bus? What happened to you?” Alex didn’t know what to say. He could only imagine what he must look like.

Tom came to his rescue. “He fell out of the window, sir. It’s lucky we stopped.”

“I don’t believe a word of it! The windows don’t even open—”

“It was the back door.”

“Well . . .” The biology teacher was out of his depth. He just wanted to get back to London. “You’ll see the principal first thing tomorrow morning,” he snapped. “Now get back to your seat.” Alex leaned on Tom and hobbled to the back of the bus past forty staring faces. Everyone would be talking about this at school the next day—but this was Alex Rider. Somehow, any strange behavior was to be expected. As for Alex, he still had the flash drive with its precious download and the sample from the test tube as an added bonus. He had completed his part of the bargain and he had come out of it more or less in one piece. And as he hadn’t heard a word from Harry Bulman, he assumed that MI6 had kept their promise too.

He sank back into his seat, reflecting that his part in all this was over. He might never find out what McCain and Straik had been planning—but what did it really matter? It was none of his business and he was just glad that he would never see either of them again.

Desmond McCain was back in Straik’s office, and for once it was clear that he had lost his composure.

He was sitting cross-legged, one hand clenching and unclenching on his knee, and the crack that divided the two halves of his head seemed to have somehow widened as the damaged muscles in his jaw attempted to chew over what had happened. Even the silver crucifix earring had lost its shine.

“This intruder must have been in here, in the room, when we were talking,” he growled.

“I would think so.” Behind his desk, Leonard Straik licked his lips. He was blinking repeatedly.

“But where?” McCain’s great white eyes slid slowly around the office. “There! Behind the picture!”

“I hardly think that there’s room.”

“Where else?” McCain paused, deep in thought. “What did he hear?”

“I don’t think he could have heard anything very much, Desmond.” Straik faltered. “We were only in here a couple of minutes. It’s just lucky I noticed the flash drive.”

“So he now has the contents of your computer.”

“All the files are encrypted. And even if he manages to break into them, they won’t give much away.”

“What about the test tube?”

“I don’t think that matters either. Of course, it’s bad news. He’ll have the sample analyzed—but it won’t tell him very much. I don’t think anyone will be able to guess its significance.”

“You don’t think.” McCain’s fist came pounding down on the side of his chair. Straik heard a dull crack. The arm of the chair had been broken in two. “Five years’ work and hundreds of thousands of dollars! We’re just a few days away from Poison Dawn, and you don’t think we’ve been compromised!

Obviously, this intruder came in here on the back of your blasted school visit. Why did you allow it in the first place?”

“We had no choice. We only rent this facility . . . the land and the buildings. We have to do what the government tells us, and they insisted we have a couple of schools in. They insisted we educate schools about GM technology.”

“So then it was a government agent who broke in?”

“I don’t know, Desmond.” Straik took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow. “But I don’t think it was a coincidence that the cameras malfunctioned when they did.”

“Did any of the guards see the intruder?”

“Quite a few of them did. And they’re insisting it was a boy . . . a teenager.”

“That doesn’t make any sense at all. If it was a child, then the whole thing could have been . . . I don’t know . . . a prank!”

“He blew up a chimney on the recycling unit. And he killed a guard in the Poison Dome.”

“A teenager? Then who was he? What was he doing here?” There was a knock at the door and Dr. Beckett came in, her white coat flapping behind her, carrying a file. There was something military about the way she walked, like a soldier delivering news of a defeat.

“I have the photographs,” she announced.

“I thought you said the cameras weren’t working,” McCain said.

“They were jammed for about forty minutes.” Straik took the file. “But they were working when the bus first arrived, and I thought it might be worth our while to examine who exactly came here today.” McCain went over to the desk. The file that Beckett had brought contained a dozen photographs taken by the camera closest to the main gate. They were grainy, in black and white, but Mr. Gilbert and Miss Barry were clear enough, stepping down from the bus with the rest of the school group following behind. Straik and Beckett were both leaning forward, examining the pictures, when McCain suddenly stabbed down with his finger.

“Him!”

“Who is it, Desmond?”

“Don’t you recognize him, you idiot? I don’t believe it! It’s impossible. But there’s no doubt about it.

It’s the boy from Scotland.”

“What boy?” Then Straik realized. “The boy from the card game.”

“Alex Rider.” McCain uttered the name with undisguised hatred. “That was what he called himself.”

“I heard that name on the roll call,” Beckett muttered. “But he never left the group.”

“Somebody must have answered for him,” McCain said. His finger was still pressing down on Alex, as if he could squash him like a bug. “It’s definitely the same boy, and this is the second time he’s crossed my path.”

“I thought we’d dealt with him, Desmond.” Myra Beckett stared at the picture in dismay. “You said he was in the car with that journalist—”

“Evidently, we failed.” McCain twisted away. “Which means that that irritating journalist is still alive as well. This boy is no mere teenager, though. Who is this Alex Rider? Why is he interested in us?”

“We can find out,” Straik muttered.

McCain nodded. “We have contacts. We need to use them. It doesn’t matter how much it costs.

Someone must know something about this boy . . . he clearly wasn’t working alone.” McCain took one last look at the photograph. With an effort, he broke free. “We’ll locate him and we’ll bring him back here.”

“And then?”

“And then we’ll find out what he knows.”

14

FEELING THE HEAT

HENRY BRAY HAD BEEN THE PRINCIPAL at Brookland for seven years and assistant principal at another school for five years before that. He didn’t often find himself lost for words, but right now that was exactly how he felt. Once again, he examined the boy in front of him while he tried to work out how to proceed.

Alex Rider was different from all the other boys at Brookland. He knew that. The unfortunate death of his uncle in a car accident almost a year ago had clearly sent him off the rails. That was understandable.

But Alex had barely been in school since then, missing week after week because of so many different illnesses that in the end (Mr. Bray hadn’t told anyone he’d done this) he had actually written to the doctor, suspecting that something might be going on. He had received a short note back. Alex had viral problems. His health was very delicate. The doctor—his name was Blunt—wouldn’t be at all surprised if Alex had to miss a lot more school in the future.

Alex didn’t look ill now. He looked as if he had been in a fistfight. There were a number of small cuts on his forehead and the side of his cheek, and from the way he was standing, Bray guessed he had hurt his shoulder. He was here because of a report sent in by his biology teacher, Mr. Gilbert. But Alex didn’t give any sign of being ashamed or nervous about what might follow. He was just angry.

Mr. Bray sighed. “Alex. You made a very good start in year seven. All your reports said the same. And I am well aware of your personal circumstances. I imagine you were very close to your uncle.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It doesn’t help that you’ve had a lot of time off school . . . all these illnesses. Obviously, I’ve made allowances for you. But this business yesterday . . . frankly, I’m appalled. As I understand it, the bus had an emergency door that you opened, and you managed to fall out. Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m amazed you could be so irresponsible. You could have seriously hurt yourself. And there were other young people on the bus too. Didn’t you stop to think that you might cause an accident? I can’t imagine why you would do such a thoughtless thing.” Mr. Bray took off his glasses and laid them on his desk. It was something he always did when he was about to pronounce sentence. “I hate the idea of your missing any more lessons, but I’m afraid I am going to have to make an example of you. You are going to have one day’s suspension from school. You are to go home straightaway, and I’ve written a note for you to take with you.”

Half an hour later, Alex crossed the school yard with a sense of injustice burning in him. He had survived poisonous plants and insects, hand-to-hand combat, and machine-gun fire. He had downloaded the contents of Straik’s computer and stolen a sample of whatever he was brewing at Greenfields. Jack would have already delivered them to the MI6 offices on Liverpool Street. And what was his reward? To be treated like a naughty schoolboy, sent home with a note.

The first lesson had already begun, and nobody noticed Alex as he made his way out of the gates and down the road toward the bus stop. As he walked, he found himself going over the events of the day before. The appearance of Desmond McCain had completely thrown him. What was the head of an international charity doing in a bio research center in Wiltshire? He was planning something with Leonard Straik. That much was clear. The two of them had talked about shipping a thousand gallons of the liquid—and they had said that it was alive. But what was it and what was it for? The more Alex thought about it, the less sense it made.

McCain had been to prison once in his life, and he had to be heading that way again. Alex was certain now—not that he had ever really doubted it—that his near death in Scotland, along with Sabina and her father, had been no accident. McCain had tried to kill them. He was prepared to do anything to protect himself. MI6 had wanted to investigate Leonard Straik because he might be a security risk. In fact, he was using Greenfields for something much bigger than anyone suspected.

And then Alex remembered something he had overheard while he was in the office. McCain was going to send the Becket woman somewhere the following day—today. A place called Elm’s Cross. The name rang a faint bell. Alex continued walking until he arrived at an Internet cafe not far from Brompton Cemetery. The place served disgusting coffee, but it charged only two dollars for half an hour on one of its ancient computers. At least it had broadband.

Alex paid and chose a computer at the very back, away from the window. The owner glanced at him briefly, then returned to a crumpled copy of The Sun. Alex Googled Elm’s Cross and waited for the page to come up on the screen. The results were disappointing. There was a packaging company with that name in Warminster, a restaurant in Bradford, and a film studio in west London that had apparently closed down a year ago. None of them could possibly be connected. Except . . .

“ What about the shooting?”

Straik to McCain. When Alex had heard them, he’d automatically assumed that they were talking about guns. But suppose they had actually meant shooting film? Alex looked for more information about the studio. It was on the other side of Hayes, not far from Heathrow Airport. According to an old news report, a raft of British comedies had been shot there after the war, but the increasing noise of aircraft along with the decline in British film production had combined to put it out of business. There was talk of the land being developed . . . affordable housing and more office space. The last film that had been shot there was an advertisement for the shopping chain Woolworth’s. It seemed appropriate. A few weeks later, Woolworth’s had gone bust too.

Alex had made his decision. Jack wouldn’t be expecting him, and even if the school had managed to tell her what was happening, she wouldn’t be too worried if he took his time turning up. He would have to be careful. He was still in school uniform and that would certainly attract attention, being out on the street in the middle of the day—but he doubted there would be many policemen around, where he was going.

He took the subway from Fulham Broadway and a taxi the rest of the way. Elm’s Cross was in a strange derelict area that had somehow been forgotten by the housing estates, the industrial zones, and the soulless strip malls that surrounded it. As Alex paid the taxi driver, there was a sudden roar and he looked up to see the underbelly of a 747 as it lurched out of the sky toward the main runway of Heathrow. In the distance he could make out the M4 highway, raised up on concrete spurs, injecting London with a never-ending stream of cars and trucks.

The driver looked at him suspiciously. “Shouldn’t you be in school?” he asked.

Alex tipped him generously. “I’m on a school project,” he replied. “We’re writing about air pollution.” The lie had come easily. Alex could actually taste the exhaust fumes in the air, and he couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live with it, day in and day out. He wondered what he was doing. Less than twenty-four hours ago, he had been congratulating himself on a mission accomplished. MI6 had what they wanted. So why was he here, quite possibly putting his head back in the noose?

He was angry. That was part of the reason. But Alex knew it was more than that. Mr. Bray might have given him the excuse, but there was part of him that needed to investigate, to uncover the answers. That part had been deliberately cultivated by MI6 and his uncle—Ian Rider. Using him wasn’t enough. First, they had turned him into someone who wanted to be used.

Alex hoisted his backpack onto his shoulder and set off. He had given the taxi driver an address about a quarter of a mile from his true destination—just in case he had taken it upon himself to call the police and warn them about a boy cutting off from school. He passed through an empty area with what looked like a reservoir on one side and a wide expanse of dirty, litter-strewn grass on the other. A wire fence stretched out ahead of him. Now he had to be careful. Desmond McCain had said he was coming here today. If he happened to drive past, Alex would stick out like a sore thumb, and this time there were no witnesses.

ELM’S CROSS STUDIOS

PRIVATE

WARNING: 24-HOUR SURVEILLANCE

The sign hung on the fence outside the main gate, but Alex wasn’t sure he believed it. How could there be round-the-clock surveillance when there were no cameras? There were no guards in sight either. The paint on the sign had faded, with rust speckling through. And the gate itself was open, inviting him in.

Alex could see a paved driveway leading down to a cluster of buildings, most of them low-rise with long, narrow windows running horizontally, just beneath the roof. They might once have been surrounded by manicured lawns, but the site had become overgrown with long grass and shrubs running rampant. In the middle of it all, there was a row of three hangars, big enough to house planes . .

. although they long ago would have ceased to fly. The whole place looked sad and abandoned.

He walked in. If security men appeared, he would just have to bluff it out. With a bit of luck, nobody here would know what had happened the day before. And although the guards at Greenfields had been armed, it was very unlikely that they would be toting guns right next to a major international airport.

Nobody stopped him. There were definitely no cameras. Alex passed a couple of Dumpsters, filled to overflowing. A lot of the contents were household rubbish—old cartons and broken pieces of furniture.

But there were also oddities: a plastic cactus, a swordfish, a scaled-down replica of the Statue of Liberty missing the hand holding the torch. He thought he saw a car parked on the other side of some shrubs and was about to duck out of sight when he realized it was a black saloon BMW, left over from the Second World War, burned out and resting on bricks instead of tires. He was surrounded by the remnants of old films that had been made, seen, and forgotten. Elm’s Cross had once been a dream factory, but the machinery had long since shut down.

He came to the first of the hangars, with the words STUDIO A stenciled in yellow letters on the corrugated iron wall. The huge sliding doors were open, but there was nothing inside apart from a puddle of oily water and a pile of broken wood. Cables hung down from the ceiling. A pigeon cooed somewhere in the rafters, the sound amplified by the empty space. The second hangar was the same.

Alex was beginning to think he was wasting his time. There was nobody here. And what would someone like Desmond McCain want with an abandoned film studio, anyway? He must have been referring to a different Elm’s Cross after all. Alex looked at his watch. Quarter past eleven. Jack would be wondering where he was. He took out his mobile phone, thinking he would call her. There was no signal.

“It’s ready, ma’am . . .”

“Then I’ll leave you to it.”

Alex heard the voices and crouched behind a low brick wall—in fact made of painted cardboard and wood, another old piece of film scenery. He had already recognized the voice of Dr. Myra Beckett, and a moment later, there she was, walking out of the third studio dressed in a raincoat, which she had wrapped tightly around her waist. There were two men with her. Alex looked around for anyone else, but it seemed they were alone.

Beckett nodded at the men. “I’ll see you back at Greenfields,” she said.

For the first time, Alex noticed a couple of cars parked in the narrow driveway between Studios B and C. Beckett got into one of them and drove off. The two men went back into the studio. What could they possibly be doing there? Alex knew that he’d already been in enough trouble. Jack would kill him if she found out he’d come here. But he couldn’t just back out now. He had to know.

Beckett had left. Alex crept over to the studio entrance, fearful that the two men would reemerge at any moment. He peered inside. There was no sign of them, but it seemed that this studio was still in use. He could make out powerful lights on the other side of a huge screen stretched over a metal frame. The screen was a barrier between Alex and whatever was happening, but at least it was dark on this side. He could hear the two men muttering in the distance and knew that, for the moment, he was safe. He slipped inside.

“Some of this stuff must be worth a fortune.”

“You heard what she said. Leave it!”

The two voices carried easily in the enclosed space. Alex made his way along the back of the screen, keeping close to the outer wall. McCain was closing this place down. That is what he had said in Straik’s office. Perhaps Mr. Bray had done Alex a favor after all. If he hadn’t been suspended, he might never have had the opportunity to find out what was going on.

Then the two men appeared, coming around the side of the screen. But for the darkness, they would have seen Alex at once. Alex slipped behind a pile of boxes, crouching low. The men walked straight past him, so close that he could have reached out and touched them. He watched them disappear the way he had come. Good. Now he was on his own.

The sound of the door slamming shut echoed all around him like a gunshot. Alex twisted around, but he knew already there was nothing he could do. He heard the rattle of a chain being drawn through the handles, followed by the snap of a padlock. The men had finished here. They had left the lights on. But they had locked and bolted the main door. He heard their footsteps as they walked away and, a moment later, the sound of a car engine starting up. He would just have to hope there was another way out.

Alex straightened up, then continued around the side of the screen. And suddenly he was no longer in London, no longer in a grubby industrial area near Heathrow Airport.

He was in Africa.

Alex had never actually been to Africa, yet the scene that surrounded him was unmistakable. He was in the middle of a cluster of mud huts, half a dozen of them, with no windows and roofs made out of straw. They had been constructed close to each other in a dusty enclosure, surrounded by a wooden picket fence. An assortment of clothes, old but brightly colored, hung on a washing line between two stunted acacia trees. To one side, there was a well with a few objects—pots, pans, some tin plates—

scattered around it. A shield shaped like a leaf and two wooden spears had been propped up against one of the doorways as if guarding the way in.

It was only when he looked up that the illusion was broken. Electric arc lamps blazed down from a network of catwalks high above. Together, they were creating the heat and light of an African summer’s day. The giant screen was actually a cyclorama made out of a bright green fabric. Alex understood enough about film technology to know that a computer could insert anything into the green background. A flick of a switch and the village could be in a jungle, a desert, or beneath a clear blue sky.

But what sort of film was being made? With a shudder, Alex realized that the village was populated—

but not with anything that resembled life. There were three dead cows lying on their sides, their legs rigid, their stomachs bloated, their eyes glassy and empty. They had to be made out of plastic. There was no smell, no flies swarming over them as there would have been out in the wild. But that didn’t take away any of the horror. From the look of them, if these animals had been real, they would have died in pain.

They weren’t alone. As Alex moved farther into the set, almost drawn in against his will, he saw what had once been a large bird, perhaps an eagle, now a crumpled heap of bone and feathers lying in the dust. It was only when he reached the edge of the village that he came upon the first human being. A little black boy, maybe two or three years old, was lying curled up, one matchstick arm drawn across his eyes. Alex felt sick. He could tell that it was just a dummy, not a real child. But who would create something like this? And why?

He had seen enough. He could work out the reason for all of this later. Alex just wanted to be back out in the fresh air. He looked around him for a second door and saw one, set in one of the walls of the hangar. He tried it, but it was locked too. There were no windows. He looked up. He could see two barred skylights set in the roof, but there was no way he was going to be able to reach them, even if he climbed up to the lighting platforms. A rectangular air-conditioning shaft ran the full length of the hangar, suspended from the ceiling by a series of metal brackets. He might be able to reach the skylights if he climbed on top of it—but even then, how would he cut his way through the bars?

Perhaps he could blow them up. He still had the second gel-ink pen that Smithers had given him. He was already taking off his backpack when he remembered. He had left the pencil case with the pen and the pocket calculator beside his bed. He checked his mobile. There was no signal. So it looked as if he was just going to have to wait here until someone came back.

And then the whole world burst into flames.

Alex didn’t know what was more shocking—the fact that it was so silent, or so unexpected. All around him the ground simply erupted, tongues of fire shooting upward as if powered by hidden pipes below.

Alex could have been in the middle of a minefield. About half a dozen bombs, incendiaries perhaps, were being set off, one by one. Alex was thrown off his feet. He knew that if one of the devices went off directly underneath him, he would be killed. He threw his arm across his eyes, protecting them from the heat.

Now he understood what Beckett and the two men had been doing. Closing this place down meant destroying it. The three of them must have just finished laying the explosive charges when he had come across them. They had been set off either by timer switches or remote control. It made no difference either way to Alex. The flames were roaring all around him. It was as if he had been locked inside some huge oven. He had only minutes to break out of here. Very soon he would begin to suffocate. And if he passed out, that would be the end of him. Everything in here would burn. There would be nothing left.

The green screen had caught alight. Alex saw it dissolve like a huge sheet of paper, turning black and then orange and red as the flames burst through. His eyes were streaming now. It was difficult to see, almost impossible to think. The doors were locked. The skylights were out of reach. The walls were metal. The mobile was dead. He had nothing with him. There was no way out.

The air-conditioning shaft . . .

It was a square tunnel hanging underneath the ceiling, plugged into the wall. It brought air into the building. So it had to lead outside. The silver shaft was big enough to crawl through, and Alex thought he could make out an access panel. He wiped a sleeve against his eyes. All the clothes on the washing line were ablaze. One of the huts had vanished, consumed by a whirlpool of fire. Suddenly, all the lights blinked out. The main electric cable must have melted. Now the hangar was an intense red, lit only by the inferno that was destroying it.

Coughing, forcing himself to suck in the hot air, Alex started forward. Without knowing quite why, he grabbed hold of the shield and carried it over to the ladder. It would make it more difficult to climb, yet somehow he had a feeling he would need it. He reached out and grabbed the first rung. It was already warm. In a minute’s time, it would be too hot to hold.

Dragging the shield with him, he climbed up to the walkway. The air-conditioning shaft was directly above him, running about thirty yards to the far wall. He was going to have to climb into it and then crawl the whole distance with the flames roaring underneath him. Alex stared at the distance across the studio with a sense of despair that made him weak. It was going to be like feeding himself into an oven.

If he didn’t move fast, he would roast before he reached the other end.

But would there even be a way out? There had to be. There was no other choice.

The access panel to the ventilation shaft was fastened with four nuts and bolts. Alex was lucky. They turned in his hand. But even that wasn’t easy. The smoke was blinding him. There was a foul chemical smell—many of the props must have been made of synthetic materials—and even as he dragged at what little air remained, he felt sick. Finally the fourth bolt came free and the panel fell away, bouncing off the walkway and spinning down below. Alex watched it disappear into the fire. There was nothing but fire now. Beckett and her colleagues had done their work all too well.

He pulled himself into the open shaft, sliding the shield in front of him. Now he was glad that he had brought it. Even as he crouched in the square corridor, he could feel the metal underneath him heating up. The shield would at least protect his hands. Quickly, moving with difficulty in the confined space, he tore off his backpack and dropped it ahead of him. Then came his jacket. He folded it under his knees. It would have to provide a cushion against the heat. He was already sweating. He could see the air rippling in front of him. He fixed his eyes on the end of the tunnel. There was a square of daylight, another access panel. That was what he had to reach.

He set off.

He could no longer see the flames, but he could imagine them, stretching out, licking the metal surface directly beneath him. He was shuffling forward as quickly as he could, his hands resting on the shield, his knees on the jacket. But there wasn’t enough room to move properly. For just one moment he lost his balance and his palm and five fingers landed on the metal. He winced. The surface was already too hot to touch. He wasn’t going to make it. The end was too far away.

Push the shield. Draw in his knees. Push the shield. Draw in his knees.

His head was swimming. There was almost no air left in the tunnel. And the jacket was burning. Most of his weight was on his knees, and he could feel the heat coming through. There was a dull clang behind him and he glanced back to see that the access panel was filled with smoke and the metal was buckling. There was certainly no way back. It occurred to him that the entire shaft could come free, that the brackets holding it up could melt or break loose and that the whole thing could plunge down, smashing into the studio floor and the roaring fire below. But he couldn’t let that possibly stop him.

His knees were hurting now and he’d had to move his hands to the very edge of the shield, gripping the sides. It was fortunate that the African shield seemed to be the real thing. If it had been made of plastic, it would already have melted. Alex could hear someone grunting and realized it was him. Every movement was an effort: fighting the heat, fighting to breathe, forcing himself not to give up. He was more than halfway across. He could see the exit—a metal grille—ahead of him. He wouldn’t have time to turn any screws, even assuming there were any. What if the grille was welded into place? No. Don’t even think it. Alex shuffled faster and faster. Draw in the knees. Push the shield.

The last ten yards were the worst. Alex’s vision was blurred. He could feel tears streaming down his face. But then he was there. The grille was in front of him. He reached out and grabbed hold of it, curling his fingers over the metal slats. It wouldn’t move. He shook it. Something whispered behind him and he turned around to see a ball of fire rolling in slow motion from the far end toward him. There was only one thing to do. He slid the shield behind him then somehow maneuvered himself so that he was lying on his back. His shoulders screamed at him. The metal was too hot. He could smell his own clothes beginning to burn. He lashed out with both feet, smashing them into the grille.

Nothing.

The fireball was getting closer, floating in space, already halfway down the shaft. He kicked a second time and the grille swung open. Still on his back, Alex drew himself forward, using the balls of his feet.

He hooked his heels over the edge of the wall and somehow spilled out into the open.

He was falling. How high up was he? Had he done all this just to break his neck when he hit the concrete below? But he was lucky. The ground rose up at the back of the studio and he hit soft grass, the slope of the hill. He rolled over several times, then came to a halt. There were flames above him, shooting out of the little square that had just provided him with an exit. Although the metal walls were keeping most of it contained, smoke was seeping through the cracks, rising into the air. Alex heard the glass shatter as the skylights broke and thicker smoke began to billow out. Coughing, wiping his eyes, he got to his feet.

The first fire engines arrived ten minutes later, followed by the police. A pilot coming in to land at Heathrow had seen what was happening and radioed the authorities. By the time the firemen bundled out and began uncoiling their hoses, the whole of Studio C was a raging inferno. Not a single piece of evidence of the filming would remain inside.

The firemen did what they could, but in the end it was easier just to let the building burn. Meanwhile, the police checked the rest of the complex, making sure there was no one else around. None of them had noticed a single schoolboy limping along the main road, looking for a taxi to take him home.

15

Q & A

“ALEX RIDER IS AN AGENT working for the Special Operations Division of MI6. I know that’s hard to believe, but I promise you it’s true. He lives in Chelsea, just off the King’s Road, with a housekeeper who acts as his guardian. Her name is Jack Starbright. He has no relatives that I know of.

His uncle, a man named Ian Rider, was also a spy, but he was killed. That was when the kid got recruited.”

Harry Bulman unwrapped a stick of chewing gum, rolled it carefully between his finger and thumb, and slid it into his mouth. He was sitting in a makeshift office that stood on the edge of a building site in London, not far from King’s Cross. There was a cheap desk, three plastic chairs, and a fridge with a kettle and coffee mugs. The walls were covered with architect’s drawings. Outside, work had finished for the day and it looked as if everyone had gone home. There were two men with him. He recognized one of them. Desmond McCain had been in the papers often enough for his face to be familiar. He was dressed entirely in black, one leg crossed over the other, his hands resting in his lap. Bulman could see his own reflection in the brightly polished leather of McCain’s shoe. The other man had been introduced as Leonard Straik. He was older than McCain, with silver hair rising over his forehead. He looked nervous.

Bulman was also neatly dressed. He had put on a suit and tie for this meeting, and his briefcase, with all his notes, was at his feet. But something had gone out of him since he had turned up at Alex’s house.

His confidence and swagger had been replaced by a dull sense of resentment. He was a man who had been injured, and it showed. He talked slowly, measuring his words, and the hatred in his voice was unmistakable. Even the way he chewed the gum had a mechanical quality. He could have been chewing raw flesh.

After he had been released by the police, Bulman had gone home. He had opened a bottle of whisky and drunk half of it, staring at the wall. He had been terrified. In a matter of hours, his entire life had been stripped away from him and—this was the worst part—it could happen again at any time. The man called Crawley had made it absolutely clear. They could just snap their fingers and he would vanish off the face of the earth, spirited away to some mental hospital where he would be left to rot.

They were probably watching him even as he sat there. He wondered if his apartment was bugged.

Almost certainly. For the first time in his life, he sensed how powerless he would be if the system—

society, the government, whatever—turned against him. They had given him a warning and it had struck him in the heart.

Harry Bulman was many things, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew that there was going to be no newspaper story about Alex Rider, no front-page headlines, no publishing deal. Even if he dared try again, there wasn’t an editor in town who would go anywhere near him. The Internet? Despite what he had told Alex, he knew there was no point in posting the story in cyberspace. It would do nothing for him, other than getting him killed.

But what rankled him most wasn’t Crawley. It wasn’t MI6. It was that he had been defeated by a fourteen-year-old boy. Mr. Alex Bloody Rider. The kid was probably laughing at him.

When the phone had rung a few weeks later and Bulman had heard the voice of one of his contacts, the ex-soldier who had helped him put the story together in the first place, the reporter was tempted to hang up. Fortunately, the man didn’t mention Alex Rider. He simply said that something interesting had turned up and he wondered if Bulman would like to meet at the usual place.

The usual place was the Crown pub on Fleet Street. Bulman used his old army training to make sure he wasn’t being followed, but he still insisted on walking to a second pub on the other side of town before he said a word. And even then, he chose a back room with the music turned up loud and nobody else in sight.

And that was when he heard that someone else was now asking questions about Alex Rider, and that they were prepared to pay good money for information. It was all being done very discreetly. The friend didn’t even know who wanted to know—but the money involved had a lot of zeroes and there was a telephone number he could pass on if Bulman was interested.

Bulman took twenty-four hours to come to a decision. Every instinct told him that Alex Rider had an enemy and that they weren’t doing this to buy him a surprise present for his birthday. There was a risk putting himself forward. He could be walking into a trap. But even as he mulled it over, two thoughts stayed in his mind. The first was the money, which he needed. The second was the possibility that he could do Alex serious harm.

In the end he made the call.

He had been passed from one anonymous voice to another. There had been three different people asking him questions before he had finally been told to come here, and he was fairly sure that his own background, everything about him, would have been checked. But the way that it was all being handled reassured him. Whoever these people were, they were afraid of being found out, just like him. And the more careful they were, the safer he would be.

Finally, the date for this meeting had been set. According to the signs on the street, this was the site of a new hostel for the homeless being built by the international charity First Aid. Even so, Bulman was astonished to find himself face-to-face with the Reverend Desmond McCain. Of course he remembered the story of the Parliament member who had gone bad, the building that had burned down and the false insurance claim. He’d heard that McCain had reformed. For the past five years he had been devoting himself to charity projects. Well, obviously he wasn’t quite as saintly as people thought. It had already occurred to Bulman that there might be another story in all this, but of course, he kept the thought to himself.

There had been no pleasantries and no introductions. No offers of tea or coffee. After Bulman had sat down, McCain had opened the meeting as if he really were a vicar addressing his congregation.

“I appreciate your coming here today, Mr. Bulman. It is most generous of you. I understand you have information about a boy named Alex Rider. Please would you be good enough to tell me everything you know.”

And Bulman had done just that. Once he had started, he found it all pouring out of him, everything he had learned during his research. It had been difficult to stop.

“They recruited a child!” McCain had listened in silence, but now he turned to Straik. “ ‘For they are a wicked generation, children who have no faith.’ We should have been warned by the book of Deuteronomy, chapter thirty-two.”

“He’s been incredibly successful,” Bulman said, although it annoyed him to have to admit it. “I have notes on his last three assignments, and there may have been others.”

“You have his address?”

“I’ve actually been to his house. I know where he goes to school. I’ve written it all down for you. I can tell you everything you want to know.” Bulman didn’t want to push his luck, but he couldn’t resist asking a few questions of his own. It was too good an opportunity to miss. He began innocently. “What is this place? You’re building a hostel?”

“It’s a dreadful thing, the number of young homeless people there are in London,” he said—and to Bulman’s surprise, he actually had to brush away a tear. “Out on the streets with no food or shelter!

First Aid was given this land by one of the city’s most prominent developers, and I’m happy to say that we have raised enough cash to build somewhere they can be looked after with food and warm clothes.”

“You do a lot of charity.”

“I have made it my life’s work.”

It was the moment to ask what Bulman really wanted to know. “So why are you interested in Alex, Mr.

McCain?” he continued casually. “I have to tell you, whatever you do with that kid is fine with me. But I would be interested to know—”

“I’m sure you would, Mr. Bulman.” The round white eyes settled on him, and for a moment he shuddered. “You are a journalist, I understand.”

“That’s right.”

“I would hate to think that you might be tempted to write about this meeting today.”

“That depends how much you’re going to pay me.”

“We’ve already agreed on the price,” Straik muttered. “Twenty thousand dollars, in cash.” Bulman licked his lips. He could taste the mint from the chewing gum. “I agreed to that price before I realized that Mr. McCain was involved,” he said. “But I thought, under the circumstances, that we might renegotiate.”

“I agree with you,” McCain said. “That’s exactly what I’ve decided to do.” He took out a gun and shot the journalist three times; once in the head, once in the throat, and once in the chest. Bulman’s last gesture was one of surprise. His eyes widened even as his hands flew up and his body jerked in the chair. Then he slumped back. Blood trickled down from the three bullet holes, spreading across his shirt.

“Was that completely wise?” Straik asked.

“It was unavoidable,” McCain replied. He slipped the gun back into his pocket. “He wasn’t going to keep quiet. He was greedy. A week from now or a year from now, he would have made himself a nuisance.”

“I’m sure. But are we safe?”

“I would doubt very much that he told anyone he was coming here. There’s nothing to connect him with you or me. He was a journalist. Now he’s a dead journalist. Who really cares about the difference?”

“And what about Alex Rider?” Straik got up and went over to the window. He made a signal and a moment later there was the sound of an engine starting up. “We can’t go ahead, Desmond. Poison Dawn is finished.”

“No.” McCain hadn’t raised his voice, but the single word was dark and thunderous. The two of them had known each other for years, but at that moment Straik wondered if he fully understood what went on inside the other man’s head. There was a sort of madness there. He wouldn’t listen to any argument.

“We have been planning this too long,” McCain said. “We’ve spent too much time and too much money. Everything is in place.”

“But if MI6 knows what we’re doing . . .”

“They can’t know. It’s impossible.”

“They sent the boy. First to Scotland and then to Greenfields.”

“I’m not so sure.” McCain glanced at Bulman as if he’d forgotten that he’d just shot him and was expecting him to make some comment. “When Alex Rider came to Kilmore Castle, he was a guest of another journalist, Edward Pleasure. There was a teenage girl too. When he came to Greenfields, he was with a school party. It was quite different. I don’t quite know what’s going on here, but it may not be quite as cut and dried as it seems.”

“Even so . . .”

McCain held a hand up for silence. “We are not canceling Poison Dawn,” he said. “And certainly not yet. It seems to me that we have to meet with this Alex Rider and have a little talk.”

“You think he’ll just walk in here?”

“I have something else in mind.” McCain stood up. “We are about to make an unimaginable amount of money,” he said. “Two hundred million dollars. Maybe more. But that means we have to take risks.

More than that, we have to make sure that we move one step ahead of the opposition. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

He reached forward and grabbed Harry Bulman by the front of his shirt. The journalist had never been a small man, and now he had become, in every sense, a dead weight. Even so, McCain pulled him effortlessly to his feet and dragged him over to the door. Still holding him, he stepped outside. A mechanical digger had started up while he was talking with Straik and it was waiting for him on the other side of the door with its metal arm raised. There was a driver sitting behind the window, smoking.

McCain threw down the body and the driver revved up the engine and trundled forward. There was a crunch of machinery as the arm was lowered and the dead man was picked up. Then the digger reversed, carrying Bulman toward the muddy excavation that would soon be his grave.

McCain watched him go. “Well, it looks as if Mr. Bulman finally got what every journalist wants,” he said.

Straik glanced at him.

“A scoop.”

McCain had made his decision. He set off, avoiding the puddles so that he wouldn’t get his shoes dirty as he made his way toward his car.

“So what exactly do you think is going on?”

Even as Alan Blunt posed the question, a waiter approached his table with the main course: steak and kidney pie for him, a tuna salad for Mrs. Jones. The two of them preferred not to talk as the plates were positioned and the wine was poured. They were having lunch at Blunt’s club, the Mandarin, in Whitehall. And although all the waiters had received security clearance, the two of them preferred not to talk while there was any chance of being overheard. A great many members of the Mandarin were either politicians or intelligence chiefs, and it was said to be the most unfriendly place in London.

Nobody trusted anybody. Members very rarely spoke to each other at all.

That morning, Blunt and his deputy had been given a full briefing by the chief science officer at MI6, a fiercely intelligent woman called Redwing. She had analyzed the liquid that had seeped into Alex Rider’s jacket after the test tube he had stolen had smashed. Her report—she was always thorough—

had begun with wool, polyester, and apple juice. The first two, of course, were the materials of the jacket itself. The third had perhaps been a spill during school lunch.

But the rest of the ingredients had been more interesting. According to Redwing, the test tube had contained something that she called bitrites infestans. This was essentially a biological soup that seemed to have been developed from a variety of different mushrooms. It was too soon to say which mushrooms exactly had been used, but preliminary tests were surprising. The liquid was completely harmless. It even had a nutritional value. Although it would taste disgusting, it could be consumed by humans or animals with no side effects. Redwing had eaten once or twice at the Mandarin, so she had concluded by saying, “They could serve it at your club, Mr. Blunt, and you might not even send it back.

Why they’re making so much of it is a little puzzling. A thousand gallons? Is that what your agent said?

Well, I can’t tell you what they’re going to do with it, but I can assure you that the worst it would give you is indigestion. . . .”

Alex had told Jack what had happened at Greenfields, and she had in turn informed MI6. The appearance of Desmond McCain, the chase through the complex, the Poison Dome, the escape from the roof . . . they knew all of this. But, like Alex, they still had no clear idea what exactly was going on.

The waiter retreated and Mrs. Jones tried to answer Blunt’s question. “I’m not at all surprised that McCain is up to no good,” she said. “He has a criminal record, after all.”

“Didn’t he convert to Christianity?”

“So he claims—and to be fair, his charity, First Aid, has done some very good work. But after what Alex has told us . . .”

“Of course.” This time, Blunt was going to believe everything Alex had said. After all, as much as it embarrassed him to admit it, the boy had been right in the past and MI6 had been proved wrong. “Is there any link between McCain and this man Leonard Straik?” he asked.

“None that we’ve been able to find.”

“What do we know about McCain’s movements in the past five years?”

“I’m having a report prepared. It’ll be on your desk this afternoon.” Blunt broke the crust on his pie and examined the contents. The food at the Mandarin Club was not good, but the members liked it that way. It reminded them of school. “I have to say, I’m quite worried about all this,” he said. “I always had a feeling that the department would have to turn its attention to GM food one day. There are people out there doing things that half the world doesn’t even understand.”

“We are what we eat.” Mrs. Jones had lost her appetite. She put down her knife and fork.

“That was why I was interested in Mr. Straik. And if he’s working hand-in-hand with McCain, that’s certainly alarming. We need to know what the two of them are up to.”

“What about Alex?” Mrs. Jones asked.

“As usual, Alex has done an extremely good job. We really are going to have to make sure we recruit him full-time after he finishes college. He’s already shown himself to be more resourceful than a great many of our adult agents.” Blunt stuck his fork into the pie and pulled out a piece of rather fatty meat covered in thick brown gravy. “But as far as this business is concerned, he’s no longer involved. Maybe you should drop him a note, Mrs. Jones. We’ve treated him badly in the past, but perhaps we could send him a brief thank-you? And maybe we should enclose a bag of candy.” Alan Blunt began to eat his lunch. He was still puzzled about the mushroom soup, but his department would work on it. That was the important thing. In the meantime, Alex Rider was already out of his mind.

16

SPECIAL DELIVERY

ALEX COULD TELL JACK was in a bad mood. She had made the breakfast as she did every morning

—boiled eggs for him, fruit and muesli for her. There had been a freshly ironed jacket waiting for him in his room. But she had stamped around the kitchen in silence, and when she had loaded the dishwasher, she had slid the plates in as if she had a personal grudge against them.

He knew what had upset her. “Jack,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you?” She lifted up the toaster and wiped away imaginary crumbs.

“I am. Really.”

Jack turned around and let out a sigh. She could never stay angry for long and they both knew it. “I just don’t understand you sometimes,” she said. “We both agreed that Greenfields wasn’t your business.

You did what you were told and you were lucky to get out alive. So what on earth did you think you were up to?”

“I don’t know.” Alex thought for a moment. “I just felt angry after being told off by Mr. Bray. And I thought, if I could only find out what McCain was doing . . .”

“What exactly is he doing?” Jack sat down at the table. “You say there was a film set, an African village. But why? What’s the point?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. McCain runs a charity. First Aid. They have appeals all over the world.

Maybe that’s his plan. He wants to raise money for something that hasn’t happened.”

“A fake charity appeal.”

“Exactly. He shows a film of some village that doesn’t exist. People send in money. He gets to keep it.” Jack thought about it for a moment, and then shook her head. “It wouldn’t work, Alex. These days, everything is on TV or in the newspapers. People would find out soon enough if it wasn’t true.”

“Can you think of anything else?”

“No. But I think we should go back to MI6 and leave it to them this time.” She glanced meaningfully at him. “Okay?”

Alex smiled. “That’s what I’d already decided,” he said. “Do you mind going back?”

“Of course not,” Jack replied. “I’m beginning to wonder where this is all going to end. You go to a party in Scotland and you end up at the bottom of a lake. A school field trip almost lands you in the hospital. And now this!” She took one of Alex’s toast slices and bit it in half. “The trouble is, you’ve got too much of the spy in you. It’s all your uncle’s fault. And your father’s. And your grandfather’s.

For all we know, he was probably a spy too.”

Alex looked at his watch. It was a quarter past eight. “I ought to be on my way to school,” he said.

“Yes.” Jack nodded. “Let’s not get into any more trouble with Mr. Bray.” Alex ran up to his room, collected his books, and put on the spare jacket. He was about to leave when he noticed the black gel-ink pen that Smithers had given him resting on his desk. On impulse, he slipped it inside his pocket. He knew that Tom Harris would get a kick out of seeing it.

He hurried back downstairs and out through the hall, calling out a last “Good-bye!” as he went.

“Don’t forget your scarf!” Jack called back.

She was too late. It was cold outside but dry, and there was no wind. Alex hoisted his knapsack over his shoulder and made his way along the backstreets that would lead him to the King’s Road.

This part of Chelsea was full of elegant townhouses standing side by side with expensive cars parked outside. In a few months, the trees would blossom and the wisteria would tumble down the brickwork.

Ian Rider had liked being here because it was quiet and private and yet still in the middle of the city.

He’d always had a hatred of the suburbs. “A nice place for children and vets.” Alex could still hear his slightly cryptic remark.

There was a FedEx van at the end of the street, badly parked across the corner, and two men dressed in overalls examining a clipboard that they held between them. They were obviously lost, and as Alex approached, one of them came over to him.

“Excuse me, mate,” he said. “We’ve got a delivery for Packard Street. You wouldn’t know where it is, would you?”

Alex shook his head. “There’s no Packard Street around here.”

“Are you sure? That’s what it says here.” The man held out the clipboard, inviting Alex to take a look.

It was the empty van that alerted him.

The doors of the van were open, and if they were making a delivery to an address in Chelsea, why was there nothing inside?

Alex jerked back, but it was already too late. The two men had maneuvered Alex between them so that they were perfectly placed, one of them in front of him, one of them behind. He heard the clipboard hit the sidewalk. It was just a prop. They didn’t need it anymore.

One of the men grabbed him by the throat. Alex twisted around, trying to break free. At the same time, he saw something that sent a chill up his spine. The second deliveryman had produced a hypodermic syringe. They weren’t here to kill him. They were here to take him. The van was for him.

Alex put everything he had been taught into action. He knew that it would be almost impossible even for two grown men to drag him into the van . . . unless they made contact with the needle. That was what he had to avoid. So he didn’t waste any energy trying to break free of the neck lock. It was too strong anyway. Instead, he used the man’s own strength against him, levering himself back, raising both legs off the ground and lashing out. The man with the syringe had been looking for somewhere to plant it, and with a smile of satisfaction, Alex saw the soles of his shoes smash into it, breaking it against the man’s chest. If they’d been planning to knock him out, they could forget it. Now it would be twice as hard to make him disappear.

So far, no more than about ten seconds had passed since the attack had begun, and Alex knew that time was on his side. The streets of Chelsea might be quiet, but it was eight thirty in the morning and people would be on their way to work. He couldn’t call for help. He was still being strangled. But someone would see what was happening. They had to.

Sure enough, a figure turned the corner and Alex was overjoyed to see the blue-and-silver uniform of a policeman. Alex felt the man behind him loosen his grip as the policeman ran forward, and he gratefully sucked in air.

“What’s going on here?” the policeman demanded.

“They . . . ,” Alex began, and stopped as he felt something stab him in the back, just above his waist. A second needle! The man who had been holding him must have taken it out of his pocket. But surely . . .

The policeman wasn’t doing anything, and even as the strength drained out of him and his legs buckled, Alex understood. The policeman wasn’t any more real than the deliverymen had been. They were all in it together. Alex had been tricked and there was nothing he could do as whatever drug had been pumped into him coursed through his system. He saw the street tilt and then turn sideways and knew that the only reason he wasn’t lying flat on the sidewalk was because the deliverymen had caught him and were carrying him into the van.

He was angry with himself. Only a few minutes ago, Jack had been accusing him. He could have died at Elm’s Cross and she would have never known what had happened to him. He had promised her it would never happen again. And yet it already had. In a few hours, the school would report him missing.

She would think he had betrayed her again. If he died, he would never be able to tell her the truth.

This was all his fault. He shouldn’t have gone to the film studio. He should never have gotten involved with Desmond McCain in the first place. He wished he could call Jack and tell her. But it was too late.

Barely conscious, already unable to struggle, he was bundled into the back of the van. He didn’t even hear the doors slam shut.

Alex opened his eyes.

Someone was doing something to his head. A lock of light brown hair twisted, falling in front of his eyes. At the same time he heard the snip of scissors. He was sitting in a chair in what looked like a hotel room. They hadn’t tied him up, but they didn’t need to. He was still drugged and couldn’t move.

He’d been taken out of his school uniform and dressed in an ill-fitting tracksuit. They were cutting his hair. The two deliverymen were standing over him. There was a window covered by a blind and, at the very corner of his vision, an unmade bed. No carpet. His feet seemed to be resting on some sort of metal shelf, but he didn’t have the strength to look down.

The two men were talking, their voices like distant echoes that he couldn’t make out. One of them noticed he was awake and grabbed his head, squeezing his cheeks between thumb and fingers. More of his hair tumbled down into his lap. He could feel the cold air touching his scalp.

“He’s back,” the man said.

“Good.”

A woman appeared from nowhere—she must have been standing behind him—and Alex recognized Myra Beckett, the supervisor of Greenfields. Bizarrely, she was dressed as a nurse, complete with a starched white hat. The diagonal fringe of dark hair looked more severe than ever, as if it had been sliced with a single sword stroke. Her eyes, behind the round, gold glasses, were slightly crazy. Alex’s mouth was dry and he was feeling sick, but he managed to swear at her, a single venomous word.

“We’ll do it now,” she said.

They took hold of his arm and rolled up his sleeve. Alex winced as they gave him another injection, a long needle sliding into the flesh just above his wrist. But this time they didn’t remove it. Beckett taped it in place and Alex saw there was a tube connecting it to a plastic box about the size of a cigarette packet, which they taped to his arm.

“This IV will continue to give you a timed injection of the drugs we are using over the next few hours,” Beckett explained. “You will not be able to move or to speak. There will be other side effects.

Try to breathe normally.”

Alex felt a wave of a nausea. He was completely helpless. And whatever these people were planning, it wasn’t going to end in this room.

The men rolled back his sleeve, hiding the plastic box. Alex knew that it was pumping its venom, drip by drip, into his bloodstream. He tried to jerk his arm but he had no strength at all. He swore at Beckett a second time, but his voice was no longer working and all that came out was an inarticulate grunt.

Beckett leaned over him and pressed a pair of glasses onto his face. Alex tried to shake them off, but they were tight-fitting, hooked over his ears. “You can take him out now,” she said.

He was in a wheelchair! Alex didn’t realize it until one of the men spun him around and pushed him out the door. They turned into a long corridor. “Wait a minute,” Beckett said. She stepped forward and crouched beside Alex so that her face was close to his. “What do you think?” she asked, with a thin smile.

There was a full-length mirror at the end of the corridor. Alex stared at himself in shock and disbelief.

His hair had been cut so hideously that he looked two years older than his true age and completely pitiful. The tracksuit was the color of a nasty bruise. It was one size too big and it was covered in stains, as if he was unable to feed himself. His skin was pale and unhealthy. The glasses he had been given were deliberately ugly; black plastic with thick lenses. They hung slightly crooked on his face.

The drugs had attacked his muscles, paralyzing him and somehow changing the shape of his entire body. His jaw hung open and his eyes were glazed. Alex knew exactly what they had done. They had turned him into a foul parady of a disabled person. They had made him look brain-damaged . . . but worse than that, they had removed his dignity too. In a way, it was a brilliant disguise. People might glance at him in the street, but they would be too embarrassed to look twice. Beckett was taking their prejudices and using them to her own advantage.

Beckett must have given a signal. Alex was taken down the corridor and around to an elevator. After that, the extra drugs must have kicked in, because his world seemed to skip and jump.

He had the foggy sensation of being on the street and wheeled into the van.

He was in the van.

He was at Heathrow Airport! Hadn’t he been here just a few weeks ago with Sabina and her parents?

The terminal lights hurt his eyes and he saw people staring briefly at him, then turning away, ashamed of themselves. He tried to call out for help, but the low, pathetic mumbling that came out of his lips only added to the impression that he was handicapped. They had no idea what was going on. They wouldn’t even begin to guess that he was being kidnapped, spirited away in front of their eyes.

Passport control. They had provided Alex with fake documents, of course, but it seemed to him that the official didn’t look too closely. A boy in a wheelchair accompanied by a nurse. The two men had stayed behind.

“Jonathan loves flying on big airplanes. Don’t you, Jonathan!” Beckett was talking to him, addressing him as if he were six years old.

I’m not . . . Alex wanted to tell the passport officer his real name. But nothing resembling a word came out.

And now he was in some sort of lounge.

Now being wheeled down a corridor.

On the plane. A seat had been taken out to make room for the wheelchair. Other passengers were passing him, carrying their luggage. He saw them glance in his direction. Each time the reaction was the same. Puzzlement, the realization that something was wrong, then pity, and finally a sense of embarrassment. The drug was making his knee twitch. His hand, resting on the knee, was doing the same.

“Try to get some sleep, Jonathan,” Beckett said. “It’s a long flight.” Where were they taking him? And why? Did they really think they could get away with this, whisking him out of the country with a fake ID? Jack would already know he was missing. The school would have called her and she would have alerted MI6. They would be looking for him. Every airport would be watched.

Except . . .

What day was this? He could have been kept drugged for a few hours or a week. Or a month. Alex had no control over his body, but they had left his mind intact . . . hadn’t they?

He was alert enough to realize it wasn’t completely hopeless. Everything led back to Desmond McCain. MI6 knew what had happened at Greenfields. Jack would tell them about Elm’s Cross. They would track down McCain and that would lead them to him.

They were in the air. How was that possible? Alex couldn’t remember taking off. How long had they been flying? He tried to work out where they might be going. It had been light when they were on the runway, and it was still light now. If they had been in the air for a while, that would suggest, at the very least, that they weren’t heading east. The different time zones would have brought the night in faster.

South, then, or west? He couldn’t turn his head—the muscles in his neck refused to work—but as they had filed past, he had noticed that many of the other passengers were black, dressed in clothes that were too brightly colored for the UK. They could be going home.

Africa.

Food was served—but not to him. The stewardess smiled at him sadly, as if understanding that he couldn’t feed himself. Beckett brought out some baby food and tried to force it into his mouth with a spoon. Using all his remaining strength, Alex kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t going to be humiliated by her any more than he had been already.

Hours passed, yet Alex hardly was aware of it.

They were on the ground.

The doors were open.

And then Alex was being wheeled through an arrivals hall, and a poster on the wall answered the question he had been asking himself for the past how-many hours. A brightly dressed black woman with a huge smile, holding a basket of fruit. And a caption.

SMILE! YOU’RE IN KENYA.

Kenya! Vaguely, Alex remembered something that Edward Pleasure had told him. “He’s the part owner of a safari camp somewhere in Kenya.” The words might have been spoken a century ago and on a different planet. Had he really once been in Kilmore Castle, dancing with Sabina? What would she say if she could see him now?

The plastic box was still resting against his arm, and he actually felt the whole thing vibrate as the timing mechanism clicked in, sending another spurt of the liquid into his veins. He felt unconsciousness returning and didn’t even try to fight it. He was on his own, thousands of miles from home. He had fallen into the hands of a ruthless enemy and nobody knew where he was. Ahead of him, a set of automatic doors swung open. Alex was wheeled into the dark.

17

A SHORT FLIGHT TO NOWHERE

MOVEMENT RETURNED, one twitch at a time.

Alex had no idea how long he had been here, but he guessed that it couldn’t have been much more than twenty-four hours. He had watched the sun rise, not out of the window but through the cloth that made up the wall. He was lying on his back on a comfortable bed in what seemed to be a cross between a luxury hotel room and a large tent. The floor was made of polished wood. There was an expensive-looking wardrobe, a carved wooden table, and two chairs. A fan hung from the ceiling above his head, turning continuously. He was completely enclosed by a mosquito net that rippled in the breeze. But the walls were made of canvas. The windows consisted of two flaps, fastened from the outside.

Where exactly was he? From the sounds that surrounded him—the chatter of monkeys, the occasional bellow of an elephant, the constant whoops and screams of exotic birds—it seemed that he was in the bush, somewhere in the middle of Kenya.

That tied in with his memories of the journey here, even if they were still confused. There had been the poster he had seen. SMILE! YOU’RE IN KENYA. As if he had felt remotely like smiling! They had gone through passport control, and after that the drug must have kicked in again. They had driven across a city, but he had barely seen any of it. It had been late evening. Nairobi? And then there had been a second, smaller airport and another plane, this one a four-seater with propellers. They had bundled him in, leaving the wheelchair behind. And then . . .

He had woken up here, on his own. It was dark . . . evening or night. But they had left two little battery lights on—battery, not electric. At least he could see, even if he couldn’t yet move. The plastic box had been removed from his arm and a dirty bandage stuck over the puncture where the needle had gone in.

That had been the first thing he had noticed—and he’d been grateful for it. With the drug no longer pumping into his system, he had begun to recover. He could lift his hand. He could turn his head from side to side, taking in the sweep of the room. Eventually he had stood up and tottered on unsteady legs into the bathroom, behind the bed, separated by a screen. He had thrown up and that made him feel better. Then he had taken a cold shower, the water washing away some of the horror of the past day.

He had still been too weak to make his way outside. He had decided he would wait for the sun. Once again he had fallen asleep, but this time more normally.

And now it was morning. Alex rolled off the bed and stood up. He had slept in his shorts. The tracksuit that they had dressed him in was lying on the floor, a crumpled heap. He noticed that his school uniform had been brought over from England. It seemed somehow strange to see it, but of course he had been wearing it when he was kidnapped. He went over to it, feeling in the inside pocket of his jacket.

Yes. It was there. He had been carrying the black gel-ink pen that Smithers had given him and nobody had thought to remove it. It wasn’t as powerful as the device that had brought down the factory chimney, but it might still be useful. At the very least, it gave Alex hope. McCain had made his first mistake.

He was now moving completely normally. They had used a powerful drug on him, but it had left his system completely. Just to be sure, he forced himself to do twenty push-ups, then had another shower.

He got dressed in his own pants and shirt, leaving off the jacket. Although it was early morning, it was already warm. He could feel the sun beating through the walls of the tent and the fan was having to fight against the sluggish air. He slipped the gel-ink pen into his pants pocket. From now on, he would make sure it never left him.

The front of the tent was sealed up. There was a large flap with a zipper running around the side. Well, if this was his prison, it was a very flimsy one. Alex went over and unzipped it. At once he saw the green of the jungle, confirming what he had guessed. He was in the bush. But the way was blocked by a guard, a black man dressed in jeans and grimy shirt, a rifle strapped over his shoulder. Alex realized that he must have been there all night.

The guard turned around and scowled. “You stay inside.” That seemed to be the limit of his English.

“What time do you serve breakfast?” Alex asked. He had already decided. He wasn’t going to let these people think he was scared.

“Inside.” The guard brought the rifle around.

Alex raised his hands and retreated. There was no point starting a fight. Not yet.

Breakfast came half an hour later: tea, canned orange juice, and two slices of toast, carried in by a second guard. Alex wolfed it down. It had been a long time since he had last eaten and his stomach couldn’t have been more empty. There was a bottle of water in the tent, and he drank that too. He had no idea what was going to happen to him. He would take any food or water he could get.

Why had they brought him here? Alex almost admired McCain. The man must have nerves of steel, kidnapping him in broad daylight, smuggling him out of England through one of the world’s busiest airports. But what was the point? McCain must have identified him as the intruder at Greenfields. He would have remembered their meeting at the castle in Scotland. Maybe he had decided to take revenge.

After all, he had already tried to kill Alex once.

And yet, somehow, Alex didn’t believe it. Whatever McCain was planning, the stakes were too high.

This wasn’t personal. This was business. McCain needed Alex for a reason.

And now Alex was completely in his power. It was probably best not to think too much about what might lie ahead.

Instead, Alex thought about Jack. What would she be doing now? And what about MI6? Once they’d realized he was gone, they’d have spared no effort. Every intelligence agency in the world would be looking for him. Surely someone would remember a fourteen-year-old boy being taken through passport control, even if he was in a wheelchair. The trail would lead to Kenya and they must know that McCain had a base here.

Except that McCain would have covered his tracks. He knew exactly what he was doing. Alex was going to have to rely on his own resources to get himself out of this mess. He would just have to wait for an opportunity and take it when it came.

The tent flap suddenly opened and Myra Beckett stepped inside. She had changed once again, wearing a safari outfit—a loose shirt and long pants in different shades of brown. The clothes made her look more masculine than ever. She was carrying what looked like a leather cloth.

She wasn’t alone. A guard had come with her, but not the one he had seen earlier. This one had on dirty jeans and a black sleeveless T-shirt. Alex noticed the knotted muscles of his arms and the machete hanging from his belt. He had narrow, mean eyes. He was looking at Alex as if the two of them had been lifelong enemies.

“I heard you were up,” Beckett said. “How are you feeling?” Alex wasn’t sure what to say. Just seeing her made him feel sick again. “Never better,” he muttered.

“The serum that we injected you with was my own invention, and I’m very pleased with the way it worked. It was derived from the water hemlock that we cultivate at Greenfields. The effect is not dissimilar to a snake bite, only far less permanent. Can I trust you to behave yourself? If not, we can always inject you with some more.”

“What do you want with me?” Alex asked.

“You’ll find out in good time. For the moment, let me introduce you to Njenga.” She gestured at the guard. “He’s a Kikuyu tribesman, as are all the guards here, and they will do anything we tell them.

There are no other jobs, you see. You might like to know that the Kikuyus once fought against the British with a ferocity that made them a source of great terror. One of their tricks was to impale their victims with a spear up their backside, then leave them to die slowly on the side of a hill. I mention this only as a warning not to annoy them.”

“Nice to meet you, Njenga,” Alex said.

Njenga’s scowl deepened.

“Where’s McCain?” Alex demanded.

“The Reverend McCain won’t be here until later today. It is very likely that your friends in MI6 are watching him, so he had to take a more roundabout route. But he’s hoping to have dinner with you this evening. In the meantime, I thought you might like to come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“Oh—nowhere in particular.” Beckett smiled, her lips barely moving. “A short flight to nowhere.” She lifted the piece of leather and Alex saw that it was a flying cap. “You don’t mind another plane?”

“Do I have any choice?”

“Not really. This way . . .”

She led him out of the tent.

He was in a safari camp. The tent where he had spent the night was one of a dozen, each one surrounded by a wooden veranda and built into the embrace of a wide river that swept around them.

Alex looked at the silver water rippling past, with a tangled wall of green rising in a steep bank on the other side. This really was a beautiful spot. He heard chattering above him and looked up to see a family of gray monkeys leaping from the branches of a juniper tree, using their hands and tails. Some of the mothers had tiny babies clinging to their chests.

“The monkeys are a nuisance,” Beckett muttered. She snapped out an order in another language and one of the guards standing beside the path lifted his rifle and fired. A dead monkey plunged out of the tree and crashed to the ground. The others scattered. “The guards are equally accurate with guns and spears,” she went on. “They keep the population down.”

“What is this place?” Alex asked. He was careful not to react to what he had just seen. He knew it had been done for his benefit.

“This is the Simba River Camp, a business that belongs to Mr. McCain. I take it you know which country you’re in?”

“Kenya.”

“That’s right.” Another hint of a smile. It was as if she had forgotten how to do the real thing. “We’re on the edge of the Rift Valley. Simba River Camp was once a world-class safari lodge with visitors from America, Europe, and Japan. Brad Pitt once stayed here. Unfortunately, it became a victim of the global recession. The visitors stopped coming and the business went bust.” Looking around, Alex could see it for himself. His was the only tent that had been occupied. The others were empty and falling into disrepair. The path that they were following had been neglected, with weeds and wild grass breaking through. They passed a swimming pool, but it had no water and the cement was cracked. All around, the vegetation was tumbling over itself, out of control. If the camp was left to itself for much longer, it would be swallowed up, disappearing into the bush, and nobody would know that it had ever existed.

They came to a beaten-up Land Rover with dirty windows and wires tumbling out of the dashboard.

Njenga climbed into the driving seat with Beckett next to him. Alex went in the back. He was moving completely normally now and he was glad of it. Even on this short journey, he might get a chance to break away.

“It’s seventy miles to the next camp, and I doubt that you’d ever find it,” Beckett said. She must have seen what he was thinking. “So please don’t entertain any foolish ideas. The Kikuyus are also excellent trackers. They would be able to follow your trail in the darkness, even in the pouring rain. I’m afraid Njenga would enjoy hacking you to pieces. That’s the sort of person he is. If I were you, I wouldn’t give him the opportunity.”

They rumbled along a dirt track for a couple of minutes, passing through a wire fence with a rusting gateway and leaving the camp behind them. Almost at once they came to an airstrip—a dusty orange runway that had somehow been cut through the long grass. A dilapidated wooden hut stood to one side, with a wind sock hanging limply from a pole. This must have been where Alex landed when he was brought to Simba River Camp, although he had no memory of it.

There was a plane parked on the grass next to a line of about thirty oil drums. Alex had never seen anything quite like it. It was like an oversized toy with two seats, one behind the other, three wheels, and a single propeller at the front. It had no cabin or cockpit. A slanting window would protect the pilot, but any passenger would be sitting outside, feeling the full force of the air currents. A single wing, on struts, stretched out from left to right, and Alex saw a series of rubber tubes running all the way to the tips. These were connected to two plastic drums lashed to the side of the plane just behind the passenger seat.

It was a crop duster, but a very old one. It should have been in a museum. Alex wondered if it could really fly.

“This is the Piper J-3 Cub,” Beckett told him. She had taken off her glasses and was putting on the flying cap, fastening it under her chin. She was also wearing a leather jacket, which she had brought from the Land Rover. Alex noticed that she wasn’t offering him anything to keep him warm. “Twenty-two feet long. Sixty-five horsepower engine. They used them for training during the war. Please, get in.”

Njenga stood near the car. Alex was feeling increasingly uneasy, but he did as he was told. There was a metal lever between the seats connected to a control box, with two sets of wires running toward the wings. When he sat down, it was right in front of him. There was almost no room for his feet. Myra Beckett got into the front and made a few checks. She produced a pair of goggles and slipped them over her eyes. Then she flicked a switch and the propeller began to turn.

It took a full minute to blur and then come up to speed. Alex could feel the high-pitched buzz of the engine and knew that from this point on there would be no more conversation. That suited him. He had nothing to say to the woman.

Njenga moved forward and pulled the chocks from under the wheels. Alex clicked on his seat belt. The Piper rolled forward.

They taxied to the end of the runway, bumping up and down on the uneven surface. At least Beckett seemed to be an experienced pilot. She spun the plane around, then raced back again, the engine straining like an overworked lawnmower. Alex wondered if they had enough speed to get into the air, but after one last bump they were up, with the wind rushing past and the ground sweeping away below.

Alex looked back. He could see Njenga standing on his own beside the car and behind him, separated by a line of brush, Simba River Camp, with the water now a silver ribbon twisting around it. The far bank rose steeply, then sloped down again, opening onto a great savannah that fanned out to the horizon. He saw a herd of antelope, startled by the sound of the engine, racing across the plain as if it were a bed of hot coals, their feet barely touching the grass. In any other circumstances, it would have been a beautiful sight. The flat African landscape, with its burned-out yellows and browns, had a true majesty. The sun was shining. The sky was a brilliant blue. Just for a moment, he was able to forget the trouble he was in.

Beckett had taken the Piper to a height of perhaps one thousand feet, at the same time tilting away from the river, heading north. Alex could see the compass on the control panel in front of her. He studied the landscape, holding up a hand to protect his eyes from the slice of the wind. They were flying over a sprawl of green, but there were hills ahead of them, gray and rocky, rising up to the east and west, then closing together to form an upside-down V. In the far distance, he made out what looked like a man-made wall, but it would have to be a very big one if he could see it from here. Over to one side, he noticed a track winding up into the hills, and an electricity pylon. Had Beckett been lying when she said there was no one around for seventy miles? There seemed to be signs of civilization much closer than that.

They flew over a wheat field. The entire valley between the hills had been planted with the crop, which looked almost ready to harvest. Alex could see thousands of golden blades bending in the breeze. He wondered how it could possibly grow out here in this heat, and a moment later he got his answer. The wall he had seen was a dam built into the neck of the valley. The plane flew over it and suddenly they were above water, a huge lake stretching out to the mountain range on the far shore. The water must somehow feed into the river. It would also be used to feed the crops.

Beckett pulled on the joystick and the Piper Cub performed a tight circle, the whole continent tipping on its side. Alex felt his ears pop and he was glad he was belted in. For a few seconds he had almost been upside down, and in a plane like this it would be easy enough to tumble out. They were flying back exactly the same way they had come. For a second time, they passed over the lip of the dam. The wheat field lay ahead of them, less than half a mile away.

For the first time, Beckett turned around and called out to him. Her eyes, behind the goggles, looked enormous. “When I tell you, I want you to pull the lever.” Alex could barely hear what she was saying.

She repeated herself, stressing each word. He nodded.

Pull the lever? What was this all about? Alex wondered if he might be about to eject himself, if this hadn’t all been some cruel and horrible trick. But he had no choice but to play along, and anyway, if he refused, it would be easy enough for her to reach back and do it herself.

They swept in low over the wheat and Beckett signaled with one hand. Alex pulled the lever. At once, there was a gurgle. Alex felt the rubber pipes under his feet swell as liquid rushed through them, and seconds later a spray began to burst out from beneath the wings, spreading out in the air and falling evenly onto the crop. He wondered why he was even remotely surprised. The plane was a crop duster and that was what they were doing. Dusting the crops.

They flew over the field four times before the liquid ran out. Alex could only sit there, watching the artificial rain, completely mystified. At last, Beckett turned around again. “Now we can go back!” she shouted.

It took them just a few minutes to return to the runway. Njenga was still waiting for them, leaning against the Land Rover in the heat of the sun. Alex saw his head turn slowly as they approached. He had been smoking a cigarette. He dropped it and ground it out under his foot.

They landed. The plane rattled back to the grass and came to a standstill. Myra Beckett flicked off the engine, then took off her goggles and helmet and climbed down. Alex followed her. He was glad to have his feet back on the ground. He stood there, waiting for her to explain herself.

“Did you enjoy that?” she asked.

“What was it all about?” Alex demanded. Suddenly he was angry. “Why don’t you stop playing games with me? I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’ve got no reason to keep me here. I want to see McCain. And I want to go home.”

“Desmond will be here this evening and he will explain everything to you, including the purpose of our little flight today. But I’m afraid I have to tell you there’s no chance of your going home.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re going to kill you, you silly boy. Surely you must have realized that. But first we’re going to hurt you. You see, there are things we need to know. I’m afraid you do have a very unpleasant time ahead of you. If I were you, I’d get as much rest as you can.” She untangled her eyeglasses and put them back on. Then, with a brief laugh, she walked back to the waiting car.

18

WOLF MOON

ALEX HEARD DESMOND MCCAIN arrive later that afternoon. He came in a plane that was larger than the Piper, with a deeper, more solid-sounding engine. Alex didn’t actually see it—he hadn’t been allowed out of his tent since the flight with Myra Beckett—but he heard it land.

He had been on his own all afternoon. Only once, a Kikuyu guard had come in carrying a meager lunch on a tray: fruit, bread, and water. He refused to think about what the Beckett woman had told him. He had been threatened before and he knew that part of her plan was to weaken him psychologically, to sap his resolve.

Instead, he used the time to collect his thoughts. He presumed the crop duster had been carrying the liquid that had been developed at Greenfields. But what was the point of spraying a single field in Kenya, and why had Beckett made such a big deal of it? Alex tried to connect the dots. An international charity, a dead African village mocked up in a film studio, his own kidnapping, the wheat field. The more he thought about it, the more unsettled he became, and in the end he pushed it out of his mind and dozed off. He would let McCain explain himself when the time came.

But the sun had set and darkness fallen before Beckett returned to the tent.

“The Reverend McCain would like you to join him for dinner,” she announced.

“That’s very kind of him.” Alex swung himself off the bed. “I hope it’s better than the lunch.” Once again, they left the tent.

Simba River Camp looked better at night than it had in the day. There was a full moon and the pale light softened everything and made the river sparkle. There were a few lights burning in the camp, but they were hardly needed when the sky was so full of stars. The air smelled of perfume. Cicadas were already at work, grinding away in the shadows.

Alex followed the woman to what was clearly the center of the camp, a circular clearing with the river on one side and acacia trees on all the others, the wide branches stretching out as if to form a protective screen. Two wooden buildings stood opposite each other. One was a welcome center and administrative office. The other combined a bar, lounge, and restaurant. It had a thatched roof that was much too big for it, almost thrown over it like pastry on a pie. There were no windows or doors . . . in fact, no walls.

Alex could imagine the guests meeting here for iced gin and tonics after their long day spotting wild game . . . except the tables were piled up in the corner and the bar was closed.

He noticed a satellite dish mounted on the roof of the first building and realized there must be a radio somewhere inside. Might it be possible to send out a message? He doubted it. There were yet more guards patrolling the area—there must have been a dozen of them altogether—these ones armed with spears, which they carried as if they’d had them from the day they were born. Guns and spears. It seemed a strange combination in the twenty-first century, but Alex guessed that in the hands of the Kikuyu tribesmen, one would be just as dangerous as the other.

“Over here, Alex.”

There was a raised platform close to the river with a bonfire burning low to one side. The embers were glowing bright red and the smell of charcoal crept into the air. A table and chairs had been laid out on the platform with two white china plates, two crystal wine glasses, but only one set of silver knives and forks.

“You’re not joining us?” Alex asked.

Beckett added a couple of branches to the fire. “Mr. McCain has asked to eat with you alone.”

“Well, you can do the washing up.”

“Still making jokes? We’ll see if you find this all so amusing tomorrow.” She spun around and left him. It occurred to Alex that she might be annoyed that she hadn’t been invited. He still hadn’t worked out what her part in all this might be. She was a scientist, after all. What had persuaded her to throw in her lot with Desmond McCain?

Alex sat down. A bottle of French wine, already opened, stood next to a jug of water. He helped himself to the water. His eye fell on one of the knives. It looked sharp, with a serrated edge. Would anyone notice if it was missing? He glanced around, then slid it off the table and into the waistband of his pants. He felt the blade against his skin, strangely comforting. He would use his bread knife when it was time to eat.

He glanced over at the river, wondering what animals might gather there in the night. There was no fence, no barrier between them and the camp. He had seen monkeys and antelope. Might there be lions too? Despite everything, he had to admit that this was a memorable place, with the river sweeping around, the fire blazing, the African bush with all its secrets. He looked up at the night sky, packed with so many stars that even in the vastness of the universe they seemed to be fighting for space. And there, right in the middle of them, huge and pale . . .

“They call it the Wolf Moon.”

The voice came out of the shadows. Desmond McCain had appeared from nowhere, walking up to the table in no particular hurry. Alex wondered how long he had been standing there, watching him.

McCain was dressed in a gray silk suit, black polished shoes, and a black T-shirt. He was carrying a laptop computer that seemed to weigh nothing in his hand. His face gave nothing away. He sat at the table and laid the computer down. Then he unfolded his napkin and looked at Alex as if noticing him for the first time.

“American Indians call it that,” he went on. “But I have heard the name used here too. It is also known as the Hunger Moon, which is strangely appropriate. I have been waiting for it. The moon is important to my plans.”

“There’s a name for people with an interest in the moon,” Alex said. “They’re called lunatics.” McCain laughed briefly but without making any sound. “The late Harold Bulman told me a great deal about you,” he said. “I was impressed by what I heard, but I have to say I am even more impressed now. Any other boy who had been through what you have been through would be a sniveling wreck.

Far away from home. Transported in a manner that could not have been agreeable. And you’re still brave enough to trade insults with me. At first I was disinclined to believe that the British intelligence services would have recruited a fourteen-year-old child. But I’m already beginning to see why they chose you.”

“Bulman is dead?” Alex wasn’t sure what else to say.

“Yes. He told me what I wanted to know and then I killed him. I enjoyed doing so. If you have learned anything about me, Alex, it won’t surprise you that I have a strong dislike of journalists.” McCain picked up the bottle. “Will you have some wine?”

“I’ll stick to water.”

“I’m glad to hear it. You’re too young to drink.” McCain poured himself a glass of the wine. Alex saw the swirl of red against the side of the glass. “Did you have a good day?” he asked. “Did Myra look after you?”

“She took me for a ride in the crop duster.”

“Do you know that she taught herself to fly? She never had a single lesson. She merely had a complete understanding of the laws of physics and worked it all out. She is a remarkable woman. When this is over, she and I plan to get married.”

“You must let me know what to buy you.”

“I doubt that you’ll be invited, Alex.” McCain still hadn’t drunk any of the wine. He was gazing into the glass as if he could see his future in it. “The meal will be brought over very shortly. Have you ever eaten ostrich?”

“They don’t serve it in the school cafeteria . . . at least not that I’m aware of.”

“The meat can be quite tough, and you will need a sharp knife to cut it. I notice that your knife is missing. Can I suggest you return it to the table?”