Crocodile Tears

Alex hesitated. But there was no point denying it. He took out the knife and placed it in front of him.

“What were you going to do with it?” McCain asked.

“I just thought it might come in useful.”

“Were you planning to attack me?”

“No. But that’s a good idea.”

“I don’t think so.” He raised a hand and almost at once something whipped past Alex’s head and buried itself in a tree. It was a spear. Alex saw it quivering in the trunk. He hadn’t even seen who’d thrown it.

“You can see that it would be a great mistake to try anything unwise,” McCain continued, as if nothing had happened. “I hope I have made myself clear.”

“I think I get the point,” Alex said.

“Excellent.”

“Are you going to tell me why I’m here?”

“All in good time.” McCain turned his head and for a moment the flames were reflected in his silver crucifix. It was as if there were a fire burning on the side of his face. “I am sure you will have worked out that I risked everything bringing you here. Your disappearance has already been reported on the English news and the police forces of the world are united in the search for you. But I am also playing for an enormous prize, Alex. It is a little bit like that poker game that first brought us together. All gamblers know that the greater the reward, the greater the risks.”

“I suppose you want to take over the world,” Alex said.

“Nothing as tiresome as that. World domination has never seemed particularly attractive to me.” He glanced up. “But it seems that dinner is about to be served. We can talk further as we eat.” Two guards had appeared, carrying the dinner. They laid the food down on the table and disappeared.

Alex had been served a barbecued meat, sweet potatoes, and beans. McCain had a bowl of brown sludge.

“We have the same food,” McCain explained. “Unfortunately, I am no longer able to chew.” He took a small silver straw out of his top pocket. “My meal has been liquified.”

“Your boxing injury,” Alex said.

“It wasn’t so much the injury as the operation that I underwent afterward. My manager decided to send me to a plastic surgeon in Las Vegas. I should have known it would be a botch job. His clinic was above a casino. I take it you are familiar with my past?”

“You were knocked out by someone called Buddy Sangster when you were eighteen.”

“It happened at Madison Square Garden in New York, two minutes into the middleweight championship. Sangster destroyed not only my hopes of becoming world champion, but my career.

Then the surgeon made it difficult for me to speak and impossible to eat. Since then, I have only taken liquids, and every time I sit down for a meal, I remember him. But I had my revenge.” Alex remembered what Edward Pleasure had told him. A year later, Buddy Sangster had fallen under a train. “You killed him,” he said.

“Actually, I paid to have him killed. An international assassin known as the Gentleman did the job for me. He also took care of the plastic surgeon. It was very expensive and, in truth, I would have preferred to have done it myself. But it was too dangerous. As you will learn, Alex, I am a man who takes infinite care.”

Alex wasn’t hungry, but he forced himself to eat the food. He would need all his energy for what was to come. He tried a mouthful of the ostrich. It was surprisingly good, a bit like beef but with a gamier flavor. He would just have to do his best not to picture the animal while he ate. Meanwhile, McCain had leaned down and was busily sucking. His own brown porridge entered his mouth with a brief slurping sound.

“I am going to tell you a little about myself,” McCain went on. “This is the third time you and I have encountered each other, Alex. We are enemies now and tomorrow, I’m afraid, we are going to have no time for idle chat. But I am a civilized man. You are a child. Tonight, under the Wolf Moon, we can behave as if we are friends. And I welcome the opportunity to tell my story. I’ve often been quite tempted to write a book.”

“You could have the launch party back in jail.”

“I would certainly be arrested if I were to make public what I’m about to tell you—but there is no chance of that happening.”

McCain put down his straw and dabbed at his lips with his napkin. His mouth was slanting the wrong way, as if it had been further dislodged by the food.

“I began my life with nothing,” he said. “You have to remember that. I had no parents, no family, no history, no friends, no anything. The people who fostered me in east London were kind enough in their own way. But did they care who or what I was? I was just one of many orphans that they took in. They were do-gooders. This was my first lesson in life. Do-gooders need victims. They need suffering.

Otherwise they cannot do good.

“I grew up in poverty. I went to a tough school, and from the very first day, the other children were very cruel to me. I can assure you that it is not a good start in life to be named after a bag of frozen food. I was bullied unmercifully. My color, of course, was against me. If you had ever been a victim of racism, Alex, you would know that it goes to the very heart of who you are. It destroys you.

“I soon came to understand that only one thing would keep me safe and separate me from the herd.

Only one thing would make a difference. Money! If I was rich, people wouldn’t care where I came from. They wouldn’t tease or torment me. They would respect me. That is the way modern life works, Alex. Look at self-satisfied pop singers or greasy, semi-literate athletes. People worship them. Why?”

“Because they’re talented.”

“Because they have money!” McCain almost shouted the words. His voice echoed across the clearing and a couple of the guards turned toward him, checking that everything was all right. “Money is the god of the twenty-first century,” he continued, more quietly. “It divides us and defines us. But it is no longer enough to have enough. You have to have more than enough. Look at the bankers with their salaries and their pensions and their bonuses and their extras. Why have one house when you can have ten? Why wait in line when you can have your own private jet? From the age of about thirteen, I realized that was what I wanted. And very soon, that is what I shall have.” He had forgotten his food. He still hadn’t tasted the wine, but he held it in front of him, admiring the deep color, balancing the glass in the palm of his hand as if afraid of smashing it. Once again, Alex was aware of the power of the man. He could picture the huge muscles writhing underneath the silk suit.

“I had little education,” McCain went on. “The other children in my class saw to that. I had no prospects. I was, however, strong and fast on my feet. I became a boxer, which has seen more than one working-class boy rise to riches and success. And for a time, it looked as if the same might happen to me. I was known as a rising star. I trained in a gym in Limehouse and I threw myself into it. Sometimes I would go there for ten hours a day. This was in many respects the happiest time of my life. I loved the feel of my fist smashing into an opponent’s face. I loved the sight of blood. And the feeling of victory!

Once I knocked a man out. I thought for a moment I had killed him. It was a truly delicious sensation.

“But, as I have explained to you, my dream came to an end. My manager dropped me. The press, which had once fawned over me, forgot me. I returned to London with no money and no job. I had to move back in with my foster parents, but they didn’t really want me. I was no longer a cute little boy that they could feel good about helping. I was a man. There was no room for me in their life.

“My foster father managed to get me a job with a real estate developer, and that was how I found myself in the lucrative world of property. It was an area in which I had almost immediate success. At that time, it was easy to make a fast profit and I began to do well. People noticed me. You could not be a successful black person in Britain without standing out, and as I moved up the ladder, more and more businessmen wanted to be seen with me, to pretend that they were my friends. People liked inviting me to dinner parties. They thought of me as a bit of a character—particularly after my brief fame in the boxing ring.

“I made a large donation to the Conservative party, and as a result I was asked if I would like to become a prospective member of Parliament. I accepted and I was duly voted in, even though the seat had been Labour for as long as anyone could remember. Success followed success, Alex. I became a junior minister in the department of sport. I would often find myself on the terrace outside the House of Commons, sipping champagne with the prime minister. The entire cabinet came to my Christmas parties, which became famous for their fine vintage wine and chicken pies. I gave talks all over the country. And, thanks to my property empire, I was getting richer than ever. I still remember buying my first Rolls-Royce. At the time, I couldn’t even drive—but what did I care? The next day I went out and hired a chauffeur. By the time I was thirty, I had a dozen people working for me.” He spread his hands. “And then it all went wrong again.”

“You were sent to prison for fraud.” Alex remembered what Sabina’s father had said.

“Yes. Isn’t it amazing how quickly people desert you? Without a moment’s hesitation, my so-called friends turned their backs on me. I was thrown out of Parliament. All my wealth was taken from me.

Journalists in the main newspapers jeered and mocked me in a way that was every bit as bad as the boys I had once known at school. In prison, I was beaten up so often that the hospital reserved a bed for me. Other men would have chosen to end it all, Alex—and there were times when even I considered dashing my head against a concrete wall. But I didn’t—because already I was planning my comeback. I knew that I could use my disgrace as just one more step on the journey I had been born to make.”

“You didn’t convert to Christianity,” Alex said. “You just pretended.” McCain laughed. “Of course! I read the Bible. I spent hours talking to the prison chaplain, a pompous fool who couldn’t see farther than the end of his own dog collar. I took a course on the Internet and got myself ordained. The Reverend Desmond McCain! It was all lies . . . but it was necessary. Because I had worked out what I was going to do next. I was going to be rich again. Fifty times richer than I had ever been before.”

Alex had left most of his food. One of the guards came over and took the plates away, removing McCain’s unfinished food. Another brought over a basket of fruit. In the brief silence, Alex listened to the sounds of the night: the soft murmur of the river as it flowed past, the endless whisper of the undergrowth, the occasional cry of some animal far away. He was sitting in the open air, in Africa! And yet he couldn’t enjoy his surroundings. He was sitting at a table with a madman. He knew it all too well. McCain might have suffered hardships in his life, but what had happened to him had nothing to do with his background or his color; they were convenient excuses now. He had been a psychopath from the start.

“Charity,” McCain said. “A very wise man once defined charity in the following way. He said it was poor people in rich countries giving money to rich people in poor countries.” He smiled at the thought.

“Well, I have been thinking a lot about charity, Alex—and in particular how to use it for my own ends.” For a moment he looked up at the night sky, his eyes fixed on the full moon. “And in less than twenty-four hours, my moment will come. The seeds have already been sown . . . and I mean that quite literally.”

“I know what you’re doing,” Alex interrupted. “You’re faking some sort of disaster. You’re going to steal the money for yourself.”

“Oh—no, no, no,” McCain replied. He lowered his head and gazed at Alex. “The disaster is going to be quite real. It’s going to happen here in Kenya and very soon. Thousands of people are going to die, I’m afraid. Men, women, and children. And let me tell you something rather disturbing. I really want you to know this.

“I can see the way you’re looking at me, Alex. The contempt in your eyes. I’m used to it. I’ve had it all my life. But when the dying begins—and it will be very soon—just remember. It wasn’t me who started it.”

He paused. And somehow Alex knew what he was going to say next.

“It was you.”

19

ALL FOR CHARITY

THE GUARDS HAD SERVED COFFEE and McCain had lit a cigarette. Watching the gray smoke trickle out of the corner of his mouth, Alex was reminded of a gangster in an old black-and-white film.

As far as he was concerned, the habit couldn’t kill McCain quickly enough.

McCain stirred his coffee with a second silver straw. The night had become very still, as if even the animals out in the bush had decided to listen in. The breeze had dropped and the air was heavy and warm.

“There are two ways to become rich,” McCain began again. “You can persuade one person to give you a lot of money—but that means finding someone who is wealthy and stupid enough in the first place, and it may involve criminal violence. Or you can ask a great many people to give you a little money.

This was the thought that obsessed me while I was in prison, and it was there that I came up with my idea. It was easy enough to fake my conversion to Christianity. Everyone likes a sinner who repents.

And it certainly impressed the parole board. I was released a long time before I had completed my sentence and I immediately set up my charity, First Aid. The aim, as I described it, was to be the first organization to respond to disasters wherever they took place.

“I would imagine that you know very little about international charity, Alex. But when a catastrophe occurs—the Asian tsunami in 2004 is a good example—people all over the world rush to respond. Old-age pensioners dip into their savings. Ten dollars here, twenty dollars there. It soon adds up. At the same time, banks and businesses fight to outdo each other with very public displays of generosity.

None of them really care about people dying in undeveloped countries. Some donate because they feel guilty about their own wealth. Others, as I say, do it for the publicity—”

“I don’t agree with you,” Alex cut in. He was thinking of Brookland School and the money they had collected for Comic Relief. There had been a whole week of activities and everyone had been proud of what they had achieved. “You see the world this way because you’re greedy and mad. People give to charity because they want to help.”

“Your opinions mean nothing to me,” McCain snapped, and Alex was pleased to see that he was annoyed. The anger was pricking at his eyes. “And if you interrupt again, I’ll have you tied down and beaten.” He leaned forward and sucked at his coffee. “The motives are irrelevant anyway. What counts is the money. Six hundred million dollars was raised for the tsunami in the United Kingdom alone. It’s very difficult to say what a charity like Oxfam raises over a period of twelve months, but I can tell you that last year they raised the same figure—six hundred million in Great Britain. That was just one office. Oxfam also has branches in a dozen other countries and subbranches in places like India and Mexico. You do the math!”

McCain fell silent. For a moment, his eyes were far away.

“Millions and millions of dollars and pounds and Euros,” he murmured. “And because the cash comes so quickly and in such large amounts, it is almost impossible to follow. An ordinary business has accountants. But a charity operates in many countries, often in appalling conditions—which makes it much less easy to pin down.”

“So basically you’re just a common thief,” Alex said. He knew he was treading close to the line, but he couldn’t resist needling McCain. “You’re planning to steal a lot of money.” McCain nodded. Surprisingly, he didn’t seem to be offended. “I am a thief. But not a common one at all. I am the greatest thief who ever lived. And I do not need to take the money. People give it to me willingly.”

“You said you were going to create a disaster.”

“I’m glad you were listening. That is exactly what I am going to do . . . or perhaps I should say it is exactly what I have done. What we have done. The disaster is already happening, even as we sit here in this pleasant night air.”

He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another.

“People need a reason to give money, and my genius, if you will forgive the word, has simply been to work out that the reason can be created, artificially. I can give you an example. A serious accident took place last year at the Jowada nuclear power station in Chennai, southern India. You may remember reading about it in the newspapers. That was a fairly simple matter, a bomb carried into the plant by one of my operatives. I have to say that the results were disappointing. The full force of the blast and the resulting radioactivity were contained and did less damage than I had hoped. But even so, First Aid was the first on the scene and received more than two million dollars in donations. Some of it, of course, we had to give away. We had to buy large quantities of some sort of antiradiation drug, and we had to pay for advertising. Even so, we made a tax-free profit of about eight hundred thousand dollars.

It was a useful dress rehearsal for the event I was planning here, in Kenya. It also helped us with our operating costs.”

“And what are you planning here? What do you mean when you say I started it?”

“We’ll come back to you in a minute, Alex. But what I am planning here is a good old-fashioned plague. Not just in Kenya, but in Uganda and Tanzania too. I am talking about a disaster on a scale never seen before. And the beauty of it is that I am completely in control. But I don’t need to describe it to you. I can show you. I am, as you will see, one step ahead of the game.” McCain opened his laptop computer and spun it around so that Alex could see the screen. “When the disaster begins, a few weeks from now, other charities will rush to the scene. In a sense, all charities are waiting for bad things to happen. It is the reason for their existence. We need to be faster than them.

The first on the ground will scoop the lion’s share of the money. So we have already prepared our appeal . . .”

He pressed the Enter button.

A film began to play on the computer. Slowly, the camera zoomed in on an African village. At first, everything seemed normal. But then Alex heard the buzz of flies and saw the first dead bodies. A couple of cows lay on their sides with bloated stomachs and rigid, distended legs. The camera passed an eagle which seemed to have crash-landed, slamming into the dust. And at the same time, he heard a voice speaking in a soft, urgent tone.

“Something terrible is happening in Kenya,” the commentary began. “A dreadful plague has hit the land and nobody knows how it began. But people are dying. In the thousands. The oldest and the youngest have been the first to go . . .”

Now the camera had reached the first child, staring up with empty eyes.

“Animals are not immune. African wildlife is being decimated. This beautiful country is in the grip of a nightmare and we urgently need money, now, to save it before it’s too late. First Aid is running emergency food supplies. First Aid is already on the ground with vital medicine and fresh water. First Aid is funding urgent scientific research to find the cause of this disaster and to bring it to an end. But we cannot do it without you. Please send as much as you can today.

“Call us or visit our website. Our lines are open twenty-four hours a day. Save Kenya. Save the people.

How can we ignore their cry for help?”

The final image showed a giraffe stretched out in the grass with part of its rib cage jutting through its side. A telephone number and a web address were printed over them with the First Aid logo below.

“I am particularly pleased with the giraffe,” McCain said. He tapped the keyboard and froze the picture. “Many people in the first world just look away when a child or an old woman dies in the street.

But they’ll weep over a dead animal. A great many giraffes and elephants will die in Kenya in the next few months. It should double the amount we receive.”

Alex sat in silence. Everything that McCain was saying sickened him. But it was worse than that. He knew exactly what he was looking at. The African village on the screen. He had been there. He had stood in the same village when he had broken into the Elm’s Cross film studio. The only thing that was different was the backdrop. The green cyclorama was gone, replaced by swirling clouds and forest.

“You’ve made it all up,” he gasped. “It’s all fake. You built the village. It’s a set.”

“We were merely preparing ourselves for the reality,” McCain explained. “As soon as the first reports of the Kenyan plague hit the press, we will come forward with our television appeal. There will be advertisements in all the newspapers and on posters. This will happen not just in England but in America, Australia, another dozen countries. And then we will sit back and wait for the money to flood in.”

“And you’re going to keep it! You’re not going to help anyone!” McCain smiled and blew smoke. “There’s nothing anyone can do,” he said. “Once the plague begins, there will be no stopping it. I can tell you that with certainty because, of course, I created it.”

“Greenfields . . .”

“Exactly. I wish my good friend Leonard Straik was here to explain the science of it, but I’m afraid he met with an accident and won’t be joining us. You could say he choked on a snail. Except the snail in question was the marbled cone variety and deadly poisonous. I have a feeling that Leonard’s heart had exploded before I forced it down his throat.”

So McCain had murdered Straik. Presumably, he didn’t want to share his profits with anyone. Alex filed the information away. He had to find a way to contact MI6.

“It works like this,” McCain explained. He was enjoying himself and he didn’t try to hide it. “You don’t seem to have spent a lot of time at school, Alex, but can I assume you’ve heard of genes? Every single cell in your body has about thirty thousand of them—and they are basically tiny pieces of code that make you what you are. The color of your hair, your eyes, and so on. It’s all down to the genes.

“Plants are made up of genes too. The genes tell the plant what to do . . . whether to taste nice or not, for example. Now, what Mr. Straik and his friends at Greenfields were doing was changing the nature of plants by effectively adding a single gene. Plants are more complicated than you might think. For example, the information required to make a single stalk of wheat would take up one hundred books with one thousand pages each. And here’s the remarkable thing. If you added just one paragraph of new information—the equivalent of an extra gene—you would change the entire library. Your wheat might still look like wheat, but it would be very different. It might not be quite so tasty, for example, if eaten with milk and sugar for breakfast. It might, in fact, kill you.

“Do you see where I’m going with this? I’m talking about taking something very ordinary and agreeable and turning it into something lethal. And this actually happens in every kitchen in the world almost every day of the week! Only, in reverse. Let me try to explain it to you.

“I’m sure you enjoy potatoes. Young boys like you eat them all the time . . . as chips or as fries. It probably never occurs to you that you are actually eating a poisonous plant. Not many people realize that the potato is closely related to deadly nightshade. Its leaves and flowers are extremely toxic. They won’t kill you, but they would make you very sick indeed. What you actually eat is the tuber, the bit that grows underground.

“The tubers, of course, are delicious—but they can also be made to harm you. If you leave them out in the sun, even for one day, they turn green and taste bitter. If you eat them after that, you will be sick.

And why has this happened? There’s a gene—a genetic switch—hidden inside the potato tuber. It’s completely harmless and almost invisible—but the sunlight seeks it out and turns it on. And once that happens, the potato tuber behaves differently. It goes green. It becomes poisonous. You have to throw it away.

“For the last five years, Greenfields Bio Center has been supplying seed to grow wheat in several African countries. The wheat has been genetically modified to need less water and to produce extra vitamins. But what nobody knows is that Leonard Straik used his particle delivery system to add an extra gene to the package. Like the potato gene I just told you about, it’s harmless. A loaf of Kenyan bread made out of home-grown Kenyan wheat will be fine. But once the genetic switch has been activated, although the wheat will look exactly the same, it will begin to change. It will quietly produce a toxin known as ricin. Ricin normally grows in castor beans and is one of the most lethal substances known to man. A tiny capsule of the stuff would kill an adult. And very soon it will be growing all over Africa.”

“That stuff I found in your office,” Alex muttered. “In the test tube . . .”

“You’re very quick,” McCain said. “The more I get to know you, Alex, the more I like you. Yes. That is our activating agent. It is a sort of mushroom soup. And this is very important. It’s not a chemical, it’s a living organism—which is to say it can reproduce itself.

“Again, I can explain this to you by taking you back to the kitchen. If you place an ordinary mushroom on a piece of paper and leave it overnight, you’ll notice a blackish sort of dust covering the surface the next day. What you are looking at are spores. If they are released outside, the spores will spread—a little bit like the common cold, traveling from one field to another. It may interest you to know that the Irish Potato Blight of 1845, which caused the death by starvation of almost a million people, was caused by a spore attacking the potato crop.

“I can see from your face that you’re beginning to understand the exact purpose of the flight that you took this morning. You were kind enough to help Dr. Beckett by pulling a lever inside the Piper Cub, and when you did this, you sprayed a single field of genetically modified wheat with the activating agent. Leonard Straik told me that it would take exactly thirty-six hours for the reaction to occur. So, at sunset tomorrow, the genetic switch will be thrown and the wheat in the field will begin to produce ricin. But that will only be the start of it. Once the spores have done their work, they will move on. The wind will carry them to the next field and to the one after that. Nothing will be able to stop them.

Nothing will stand in their way.

“The birds will be the first to die. A little peck of poisoned wheat and they’ll look like the plastic eagle you saw in that film. Then it will be the turn of the people. It’s hard to believe that a loaf of bread in the local baker’s or wrapped in plastic on a supermarket shelf will contain enough poison to kill an entire family. But it will. It will have become a slice of death. Animals will die too. It will be as if God has passed judgment on the whole of Kenya.

“Except that it won’t stop at the borders. Greenfields has sold millions of seeds to the African people . .

. in Uganda, Tanzania, and all around. Soon the contamination will have spread across the whole continent.”

“They’ll realize,” Alex said. “People will know that the wheat is poisoned and they’ll stop eating it.

They’ll burn the fields.”

“That’s exactly right, Alex. It will all be over very quickly. It won’t even make a great economic difference to Kenya. They only grow 135,000 tons of wheat a year, and a lot of their food is imported.

But that’s why First Aid has to act fast. It’ll be in the initial panic, the first weeks, that we’ll make our billions. First Aid will publicize the catastrophe to the world, and people will rush to give money without thinking. And what do you think they’ll do when they discover that it’s only the wheat that has mysteriously developed this sickness, that the plague can be contained? Do you think they’ll ask for their donations back? I don’t think so.

“And anyway, it will be too late. By then, I will have moved to Switzerland. I already have a new identity waiting for me. I will have plastic surgery . . . this time, I think, more successfully. I will reemerge as a slightly mysterious billionaire businessman, but I don’t think people will ask too many questions about who I am or where I’ve come from. I already discovered this when I was partying in politics. When you are rich, people treat you with respect.” McCain fell silent. He had completed his explanation and sat back, almost exhausted, waiting for Alex to respond. There was a sudden hiss as one of the logs in the fire collapsed in on itself and a flurry of sparks leapt into the night air. The guards had disappeared from sight, but Alex knew they would be watching and would come in an instant if they were needed. He felt sick. It had been a final twist, a little act of extra cruelty to make him pull the lever that had released the spores. There had been no real reason for it. It was just how McCain and his fiancée got their kicks.

“So what happens next?” he asked. “What do you want with me?”

“Is that all you want to know? Haven’t you got anything to say about my plan?”

“I think your plan is as sick as you are, Mr. McCain. I’m not interested in it. I’m not interested in you. I just want to know why I’m here.”

Perhaps McCain had been expecting applause or at least some sort of reaction from Alex; he was clearly disappointed, and when he spoke, his voice was sullen. “Very well,” he said. “I might as well tell you.”

He had finished his second cigarette. He ground that out too.

“I have been thinking a great deal, Alex, about how you managed to cross my path on two occasions.

The first time was at Kilmore Castle in Scotland. You were with the journalist Edward Pleasure. Why were you there?”

“I’m a friend of his daughter.” Alex couldn’t see any harm in admitting the truth. “He invited me.” McCain considered for a moment. “Pure coincidence, then. Unfortunately for you, I was concerned about Pleasure,” he continued. “I had been warned that he might be dangerous and I wondered how much he knew about me. I only agreed to be interviewed by him because to have refused might have raised his suspicions. And then, when I heard the two of you talking about genetic engineering—”

“You thought he was talking about his article?” Alex almost wanted to laugh. “I was telling him about my homework! He’d asked me how I was doing at school!”

“I believe you, Alex. But at the time, I couldn’t take any chances. If Pleasure had found out about my involvement with Greenfields, he would have put this entire operation in jeopardy.”

“So you decided to kill him. You had one of your people shoot out his tire.”

“Actually, Myra did it for me. She was there too that night. Of course, there was a certain risk attached.

But as I have already told you, I am something of a gambler. Perhaps that’s why I allowed myself to lose my temper when you managed to beat me at cards.”

He lifted a hand and waved. It was a signal. Two guards, both carrying rifles, began to approach the table. Beckett was with them.

“The first time we met may have been a coincidence,” McCain said. “The second time most definitely was not. You were sent to Greenfields by MI6. There is no point in attempting to deny it. You were carrying equipment that allowed you to jam the surveillance camera, and you also exploded a chimney on the recycling unit roof. It is therefore absolutely critical for me to discover how much the intelligence services know about me and in particular about this operation. In short, I need to know why you were at Greenfields. How much of my conversation with Leonard Straik did you overhear?

What were you able to tell MI6?”

Alex was about to speak, but McCain held up a hand, stopping him. Beckett and the two guards had reached the table. They were standing behind Alex, waiting to escort him back to his tent.

“I do not want to hear any more from you tonight,” McCain said. “It is already clear to me that you are brave and intelligent. It is quite possible that you would be able to deceive me. So I want you to consider the questions I have asked you. I will ask them again in the morning.

“But the next time I put them to you, it will not be over a pleasant dinner.” McCain leaned forward, and Alex saw the ferocity in his eyes. “ ‘Behold, I have the keys of hell and death,’ as it says in the book of Revelation. Tomorrow, I intend to torture you, Alex. I want you to sleep tonight in the knowledge that when the sun rises, I am going to inflict terror on you such as you have never known in your life. I am going to strip you of your courage and your bravado so that when you open your mouth and speak to me, you will tell me everything I want to know and won’t even contemplate lying. Over this table, you have made some jokes at my expense, but you will not be making jokes when we meet again. You must be prepared to shed tears, Alex. Leave me now. And try to imagine, if you will, the horror that awaits you.”

Alex felt the two men grab hold of his arms. He shrugged them off and stood up.

“You can do what you like to me, Mr. McCain,” he said. “But your plan will never work. MI6 will find you and they’ll kill you. I expect they’re already on their way.”

“You’re right about one thing,” McCain replied. “I can do anything I like to you. And very soon I will.

Good night, Alex. I’ll leave you to your dreams.”

Alex was taken away. The last thing he saw was Myra Beckett standing behind McCain, massaging his shoulders. McCain himself was leaning forward with his elbows on the table, his hands in front of his face. He looked very much as if he was at prayer.

20

PURE TORTURE

THE SUN ROSE ALL TOO SOON.

Barely able to sleep, Alex watched the sides of his tent turn gray, silver, then finally a dirty yellow as the morning light intensified. He had lost his watch and he had no idea of the time, but being so close to the equator, he suspected the sun was up early here. When would they come for him? Exactly what sort of torture did McCain have in mind?

He lay back and closed his eyes, trying to fight off the demons of fear and despair. The fact was that he was completely in McCain’s power. And McCain wasn’t taking any chances; two Kikuyu guards had stood watch outside his tent all night. He had heard them murmuring in low voices and had seen the occasional flare of a match as they lit cigarettes. Once, he thought he had heard a plane flying low overhead, but apart from that there had been nothing except the usual eternal sounds of the bush. Alex had been left entirely on his own, unable to sleep. Right now, he was close to exhaustion. He could see no way out.

The sun was getting stronger by the minute. Alex thought of it beating down in the Simba Valley, just two miles to the north. The wheat would be growing taller, turning gold. And the deadly spores that he himself had released would be activating themselves. By the end of the day, they would have begun to spread, lifted by the breeze, carrying poison and death all over Africa. Alex’s eyes flicked open and suddenly he was angry. Why was he wasting time and energy worrying about himself when, in a few hours, an entire continent might begin to die?

Without any warning, the flap of the tent opened and Myra Beckett stepped inside, dressed in white with a round straw hat—the sort of thing a schoolgirl might have worn a hundred years ago. She had clipped two dark lenses over her spectacles to protect herself from the sun’s glare. They made her look less human and more robotic than ever.

She was obviously surprised to see Alex lying on the bed, seemingly relaxed. “How did you sleep?” she asked.

“I slept very well, thank you,” Alex lied. “Have you brought my breakfast?” The woman scowled. “I think you will find you are the breakfast.” She gestured at the exit. “Desmond is waiting. Let me show you the way . . .”

It was another beautiful day with just a few wisps of cloud in an otherwise perfect sky. There was a familiar chatter above Alex’s head and he looked up to see that at least one monkey had dared to come back, looking down on him with shock-filled eyes as if it knew what was about to happen. Birds with long tails and brilliant plumage hopped along the pathways. There would have been a time when tourists would have woken up to this scenery and thought themselves in heaven. But one sight of the glowering guards reminded Alex. McCain had turned it into his own peculiar version of hell.

“It’s not very far,” Beckett said. “Please, follow me.” She led him out of the camp, away from the landing strip, and also away from the open area where he had eaten the night before. Alex was still wearing part of his school uniform—the shirt, pants, and shoes. Even with his sleeves rolled up, he was still too warm and sweaty, but they hadn’t bothered to give him any fresh clothes. He had just one crumb of comfort. The gel-ink pen was in his pants pocket.

Even now he might get a chance to use it. He had no other surprises left.

With two guards behind him and the woman a few steps ahead, he was taken down a path that followed the edge of the river. The camp disappeared behind them, and looking ahead in the far distance, Alex saw a family of elephants washing themselves in the sparkling water. It was an extraordinary sight, but Alex couldn’t enjoy it. Not when it might be the last thing he ever saw.

Desmond McCain was waiting ahead of them, dressed comfortably in a well-tailored safari suit with a white silk neckerchief. It seemed they had arrived at their destination. Alex looked around him. He didn’t like what he saw.

A steep slope ran down to a stretch of sandy shingle, a narrow beach at the very edge of the water.

There was a stepladder, about twenty feet high, standing on the beach, and above it a metal pipe that had been fastened to the branch of a tree. The pipe ended with two handles and reminded Alex of a periscope in a submarine. A wooden observation platform had been constructed at the top of the slope.

This was where McCain was standing.

Alex had already worked out what might be going on here and was making calculations. If he walked down to the beach and climbed the ladder, he would be able to reach the handles. Then the ladder could be taken away and he would be left hanging from the pipe. He would be close enough to the platform to be able to talk to McCain and to hear what he had to say—but not close enough to reach him.

Because the pipe was rigid, he wouldn’t be able to swing back and forth. In other words, he would simply have to stay there until his arms grew tired and he dropped.

The question was—why? What was the point?

“This will not take very long, Alex,” McCain said. He had watched Alex taking everything in. “I will talk to you a little bit, and then, I’m afraid, we will begin. As I have already told you, I need most urgently the answer to three questions. What was it that brought you to Greenfields? Why did MI6 send you? And how much do the intelligence services know about Poison Dawn?” Alex had already decided what he was going to say. “You don’t need to play your sadistic games, Mr.

McCain,” he said. “I’ll tell you what you want to know anyway.” McCain held up a hand. “I don’t think you were listening to me last night. Of course you will tell me what I want to hear. That is the point I’m trying to make. You will tell me anything to protect yourself.

But I have to be one hundred percent certain that you are telling me the truth. There cannot be even the tiniest margin of doubt.”

“And you think torturing me will achieve that?”

“Normally, no. There are many horrible things I could do to you, Alex. We have electricity here and wires attached to various parts of your body could produce excruciating pain. My Kikuyu friends could take you far beyond the limits of endurance using only their spears, perhaps heated first in the flames of a fire. We could cut pieces off of you. We could boil you alive. And do not think for a single minute that I would hesitate to do any of this because you are fourteen. MI6 clearly does not think of you as a child, so why should I?”

“Is part of the torture boring me to death?” Alex asked.

McCain nodded. “Bravely spoken, Alex. Let us see how brave you are ten minutes from now.” He took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow. The sun was beating down on his bald head, and beads of sweat were standing out. “The pain that you are about to experience is going to be all the worse because you will inflict it on yourself. You will, as it were, cooperate with your torturers. And you will do so to escape the terror that lies below.” He took out a gun, an old-fashioned Mauser with a shortened barrel and a white ivory plate over the grip. It looked like something out of a museum. “I would like you now to go down to the river,” he explained. “If you refuse to do so, if you attempt to run away, I will shoot you through the knee.”

Alex stood where he was. Beckett was smiling properly for the first time, and he realized that she knew what to expect, that she had seen this all before. The two tribesmen were covering him with their rifles.

If McCain missed with his pistol, they would certainly gun him down before he’d taken a single step.

He glanced at the beach and at the river. There was nobody else down there. He had a nasty feeling he wasn’t going to be alone for long.

“I’m waiting, Alex,” McCain said.

Without speaking, Alex made his way down the slope. Now McCain and the others were directly above him, looking down from the protected height of the observation platform. Alex was reminded of a Roman emperor and his entourage. They were in the royal box. He was the gladiator, about to entertain them.

“This is part of the River Simba,” McCain explained. “It runs all the way up to the Simba Dam and Lake Simba beyond. It is the water from this river that will be feeding my wheat field, Alex. And as you are about to learn, it is infested with crocodiles.”

“Here comes one now!” Beckett crowed.

Crocodiles.

Alex turned to see a dark shape on the opposite bank slither forward and launch itself into the water, followed quickly by a second. There was something strikingly evil about the way they moved. They twisted and sliced their way through the water like two knife wounds, and somehow they managed to swim—or slither—very quickly without seeming to be in a hurry. They would be across the river in less than a minute. They somehow knew he was here. But then, of course, they had been fed this way before. And Alex had a feeling they were hungry.

Alex looked up. Beckett was gazing at him with her mouth open, and he could see the saliva glistening on her lips and tongue. McCain was next to her, his gun held loosely, watching with interest. He glanced back. The crocodiles were halfway across the river. His first instinct was to run, but he knew he would be shot if he tried. Nor would he be allowed back on the platform. Everything had been carefully arranged. There was only one way of escape.

Sick with himself, knowing that he was doing exactly what McCain wanted, Alex climbed the stepladder. He was trying not to panic, but now his every instinct was driving him up, out of harm’s way. As he drew nearer to the top, he felt the whole structure tremble underneath him and for one terrible moment he thought he was going to fall. Somehow, he managed to steady himself. He reached the top even as the first crocodile heaved itself out of the water and began to crawl toward him.

Alex turned back and looked at it. It was a mistake. In an instant he felt the terror that McCain had promised him, the deep-rooted fear of this ancient monster that had to be hot-wired into every human being. The crocodile that had just emerged was almost twice his own size, from the ugly snout to the writhing tip of its tail. Its great mouth was open, with two lines of ferocious white teeth waiting to snap shut on his arm or leg. That was how they operated, of course, clamping down on their victim and then dragging them back into the water. And only when the bones were loose and the flesh had begun to decompose would they begin their feast.

But worst of all were the eyes, midnight black, snake-like, and swollen on the side of its head, surely too small for its body and filled with hatred. They really were the eyes of death. Alex had heard it said that crocodiles wept as they attacked their prey, but there would be no pity in those eyes. They were part of a machine that existed only to kill.

The second crocodile was a little smaller and much quicker. Alex saw it overtake the other, scuttling over the shingle on its short, squat legs, all the way to the foot of the ladder.

He climbed the last few steps, using his hands to steady himself at the top. If he fell! . . . He could imagine it. Smashing into the shingle. Perhaps breaking an ankle or a leg. And then being torn apart between the two animals as they fought over him. There could be no more horrible death.

The crocodile threw itself at the ladder and the whole thing shuddered. How many people had McCain terrorized in this way? He looked up. He still wasn’t level with the observation platform. He knew what he had to do. With dreadful care, he balanced himself on the highest step. The handles at the end of the pipe were directly above him. Swaying, using his arms to steady himself, he reached up and grabbed hold of them. His fingers closed around them even as the larger crocodile reared up, throwing its entire weight against the ladder. The whole thing came crashing down. Alex was left dangling in space.

And now he saw how McCain had arranged things.

He was facing McCain, the two of them level with each other, no more than a yard apart. The two crocodiles were directly underneath Alex, climbing on top of each other, snapping at the air. For the moment he was safe. But he was stretched out, hanging in space, clinging to the pipe by his fingers. His wrists and arms were already feeling the strain as they supported his entire body weight, and the burn of lactic acid was building up in his shoulders. It was just as McCain had said. He was actually inflicting the pain on himself, and it would get worse the longer he hung there. In the end, of course, he would have to let go. And that was the horror of it. Once he dropped, there would only be more pain and then death. How long did he have?

“The longest anyone has ever remained where you are is eighteen minutes,” McCain said. He spoke slowly and evenly. He didn’t have to raise his voice to make himself heard. “The man in question had lost his sanity before the end. He was giggling as he fell. But you, Alex, you have one hope, one chance of survival. My men can shoot at the crocodiles and scare them away. But first you have to answer my questions, and you have to make me believe you. If you can make that happen, then you will be safe.” Alex swore. It was difficult to speak. All his concentration was fixed on his hands, the increasing pain in his arms, the need not to let go.

“I dislike that sort of language, Alex,” McCain said. “I am, after all, an ordained priest. Would you like me to go away for five minutes and come back when you’re in a better frame of mind?” One of the crocodiles leapt toward him. Instinctively, Alex pulled his legs up, curving them in toward his stomach. The movement put extra strain on his arms, but he actually heard the jaws of the animal snap together and he knew there were mere inches between it and his ankles.

“No,” he shouted. His voice was strangled. He didn’t sound like himself. But he had to get this over with. “Ask me what you want.”

He had been hanging for less than a minute. It already felt longer. He would never manage another five, let along another seventeen. In his desperation, he found himself twisting around. His wrists crossed and he had to jerk his body to bring himself face-to-face with McCain.

“The first question, then.” McCain paused. He was speaking deliberately slowly. He knew that every second only added to the torture. “Why were you at Greenfields?”

“It was a school trip.”

“You’re still lying to me, Alex. I’m going to leave you for a little while . . .” McCain turned his back on Alex and walked away. Below, on the beach, the crocodiles were writhing together in a frenzy of claws and scales and black eyes and teeth.

“It’s the truth!” Alex shouted after him. His hands were sweating, making it even more difficult to keep his grip. “It was a biology project for my teacher Mr. Gilbert. But then MI6 asked me to help them.

They weren’t interested in you. It was Leonard Straik.”

McCain turned back. “Go on.”

“There was someone in Greenfields. An informer . . .” What was his name? Alex thought back desperately. “Philip Masters. He’d gone to the police and then he was killed. That was why they wanted to find out about Straik.”

“You broke into his computer.”

“They gave me a memory stick. That was all they asked me to do.”

“What about Poison Dawn?”

“They never said anything about Poison Dawn. They never even mentioned it to me. I’m telling you, they only knew about you and Straik when I told them I’d seen you together.”

“That was very unfortunate. What else did you tell them?”

“I told them I heard the two of you talking . . . but you didn’t say anything that made any sense. I gave them the stuff I found in Straik’s office.” To Alex, it was as if his arms were being torn out of his shoulders. He could feel his body hanging in space. He didn’t dare look at the crocodiles below. “But I never even spoke to them again. I don’t know what they know. They don’t know anything else. . . .” McCain let him dangle in silence. Ten seconds dragged to twenty and then to half a minute. Alex felt every one of them. He could feel his bones wrenching in their sockets and knew that McCain was doing this on purpose. He was staring straight into Alex’s eyes as if trying to read what was going on inside his mind. Alex tried to ease his grip, but his palms were so slippery that the smallest movement could make him fall. Beckett had moved closer to him. She was breathing heavily, watching Alex struggle with evident delight. He could see himself reflected in the dark circles of her glasses.

The silence stretched out. Alex could actually smell the crocodiles; a deep, sickly odor of stale fish and decaying meat that rose up and crept into his nostrils. He was finding it difficult to breathe. The pain was getting worse and worse. All the muscles in his upper body were burning.

“I believe you,” McCain said at last. “You are telling the truth.”

“Then get rid of them!” Alex jerked his head down at the two crocodiles. They were silent now, as if they knew it was only a matter of time before they were given what they wanted.

Another long pause. Alex’s arms screamed.

“I’m afraid not,” McCain said.

“What?” Alex shouted the word.

“You have annoyed me very much, Alex. I tried to kill you when you were in Scotland, and it would have been a lot better if I had. Your activity at Greenfields very nearly brought an end to an operation that has taken me five years and a great deal of money to develop. Thanks to you, my name is now known to MI6, and that will make my future life more difficult. And, added to that, you are a very rude and unpleasant boy, and all in all, I think you deserve to die.” He turned to Myra Beckett. “I know you enjoy this, my love, so you can stay to the end. I’ll be interested to know how many minutes he manages to hang on before he falls. I somehow doubt that he’ll beat the record.” The woman took out her mobile phone. “I’ll take photographs for you, Dezzy.” McCain took one last look at Alex. “I hope you die painfully,” he said. “Because although you have not lived long, I really think you deserve a painful death.”

He signaled to the guards and the three of them walked away. But he had given his gun to Beckett. She was holding it in one hand, the mobile phone in the other. Behind him, Alex heard a splash. A third crocodile had launched itself into the river and was already wriggling its way across.

“Four minutes.” The woman glanced at her watch. “I do not think you will make it to five.” And she was right. Everything was pain and with every second the pain was getting worse. Alex couldn’t swing himself to safety. He couldn’t climb. He couldn’t move. He could only fall.

He closed his eyes and knew that very soon he would do just that.

21

RAW DEAL

SEVEN MINUTES. MAYBE EIGHT MINUTES. Alex wasn’t even sure why he was hanging on anymore. The sooner he dropped, the sooner it would all be over. His whole body was racked by pain and his blood was pounding in his ears and behind his eyes. With every second that passed, the strength was draining out of his arms. He tried to accept what was about to happen: his fingers slipping out of the metal handles, the short fall down to the riverbank, the jarring impact, and then the final horror as the crocodiles attacked.

Myra Beckett leaned forward. “Do you have any last words?” she asked. “Any good-byes you want to make? I can record them for you.” She held out her mobile phone.

“Go rot in hell.” Alex’s eyes felt as if they were swollen shut, but he forced them open, staring straight at her.

“You are the one on the way to hell, my dear,” she said.

Her eyes widened. She took a step forward as if something had surprised her. Once again she opened her mouth and Alex thought she was about to speak, but instead, a stream of blood poured over her lower lip. A moment later, she pitched forward and fell and Alex glimpsed the hilt of a knife jutting out of the back of her neck. Desperately clinging onto the handles, he cork-screwed around and looked down. The woman had landed in the middle of the crocodiles. She was still alive. He heard her scream as she was torn apart, her arms and legs being pulled in three directions. He turned away. He couldn’t watch any more.

He was going to join her. His own strength was gone. He felt his fingers opening. But then suddenly there was a man on the observation platform, leaning out, reaching toward him, and even as he wondered where the man had come from, he knew that he had seen him somewhere before.

“Alex!” the man called. “Take my hand.”

“I can’t reach . . .”

“One effort. You can make it.”

The distance was too great. Alex would have to let go with one hand and throw himself sideways, reaching out with the other. If he miscalculated or if the man was tricking him, that would be it. The crocodiles would get a second feed.

“Now!” The man couldn’t shout. They were too close to the lodge. His voice was an urgent whisper.

Alex did as he was told, stretching as far as he could, using every muscle to propel his body away from the handles. The man was leaning out. And somehow, just when Alex was certain he would fall, they managed to lock together, wrist in hand and hand over wrist.

“Okay. I’ve got you. I’ll take your weight.”

Alex let go of the handle. He felt the man pull him toward the platform. Even so, there was one dreadful moment when he was sure they had overbalanced and they would fall together. He came crashing down. But he was right on the edge of the platform. He clawed at the wooden planks and managed to find some purchase. His legs were dangling below him, but then he pulled himself forward and rolled over on his side. He was lying next to the man who had just rescued him. He was safe.

For a few seconds he lay in silence, recovering his breath and waiting for his jangling nerves to calm down. Then he looked up. “Who are you?” he asked.

“Not now.” The man was Asian, young, with very dark skin and close-cropped hair, dressed in camouflage khakis with a harness for three knives slanting across his chest. One knife was missing.

Alex knew him at once. With a sense of astonishment he remembered where they had met before. It was the man from Loch Arkaig, the driver of the white van who had appeared from nowhere when he had crawled out of the freezing water. He had driven Alex, Sabina, and Edward Pleasure to the hospital.

And now he was here! What sort of guardian angel was he, operating on two sides of the world?

“My name is Rahim,” the man said. “But now we must leave. When they find the woman is missing, they will come looking for her. Here . . . give me your shirt.” Alex didn’t know what the man was thinking, but this was no time for an argument. He stripped off his school shirt and handed it over. Rahim took out a second knife and cut the shirt to shreds, then tossed it down to the crocodiles. There were only two of them down there, fighting over what was left of the woman. The other had returned to the river, dragging part of her with it.

The pieces of Alex’s shirt fluttered down onto the riverbank. “It may fool them,” Rahim said. “It may not. Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“I have a camp.”

Alex followed Rahim off the observation platform and away from the river, heading into the bush. He was alarmed to see that Rahim was limping badly and that the back of his jacket was covered in sweat.

The man had a fever. Alex had also seen it in his eyes. He was a soldier of some sort, extremely fit. But he was also hurt. It was only willpower that was keeping him going.

Even so, they kept up a fast pace for the next fifteen minutes, finally arriving at a clearing dominated by a huge Kigelia africana, or sausage tree, with its strange black pods hanging underneath the branches. This was where Rahim had set up a makeshift camp. Alex saw a backpack, a few tins of food, and—at least this answered one of his questions—a parachute made of black silk, bunched up and tucked under a bush. A very sophisticated-looking gun was leaning against the trunk of the tree. It was a Dragunov SVD99 gas-operated sniper rifle, built in Russia but used extensively by the Indian army.

Rahim went over to the backpack and took out a spare T-shirt. He threw it over to Alex. “Here. You can wear this.” He opened a water bottle and drank, then offered it to Alex. Alex took a swig. The water was warm and tasted of chemicals.

“You were in Scotland,” Alex said.

“Yes.” Rahim had obviously been drained by what he had just been through. The sweat was pouring down his face and he was breathing heavily, fighting against the fever. Now Alex saw that one of his legs was bleeding. It was probably bandaged underneath his pants, but the blood was seeping through.

He sat down and began to untie his shoelaces. He was wearing heavy combat boots.

“How safe are we here?” Alex asked.

“Not safe. The Kikuyu will be able to track us. Maybe McCain will think you are dead. But he is already nervous. He will not take any chances.”

“You’re hurt.” Alex handed back the water bottle. “What can I do to help you?”

“I was unlucky.” Rahim drank a second time. “I parachuted in last night.” Alex remembered hearing a plane. It had passed over the safari lodge, flying close to the ground. “I landed badly in a thornbush and cut my leg open. The wound has become infected. But I have taken antibiotics and I will recover. There is nothing you can do.”

“You’ve told me your name, but you haven’t said why you’re here.” Rahim didn’t reply, but Alex had already worked it out for himself. “You were at Kilmore Castle, so you must be interested in McCain.” Rahim nodded.

“Who are you working for?”

Rahim took a deep breath and shifted his position. The movement caused him pain. “I know who you are,” he said. “You are Alex Rider. You are a part-time operative working with the Special Operations Division of MI6. They are looking for you. They have put out the call to every intelligence department, including mine.”

“But you didn’t come here looking for me.”

“I did not expect to find you here, Alex.” Rahim smiled, and at that moment Alex saw how very young he was, perhaps only twenty-three or -four. There might be less than ten years between them. “I was sent here for one reason only. It was the same reason that I was sent to Kilmore Castle, and this is now the second time you have got in my way. I am here to kill Desmond McCain.”

“Why?” There were so many questions Alex wanted to ask, and he was aware of time ticking away.

The tribesmen could come looking for them at any time. But at least the rifle might put the odds more on their side.

Rahim took a plastic bottle out of his pocket. “I will tell you,” he said. He tipped two pills into the palm of his hand and swallowed them dry. He grimaced. “I am a spy like you, Alex. I belong to a division of the Indian secret service called RAW. It stands for Research and Analysis Wing, and it deals in counterterrorism, foreign affairs, and covert action. My own department goes further than that. Our activities often come under a single word. Revenge.”

“This is about the nuclear power station,” Alex said. “The one that McCain tried to destroy.” Rahim nodded. “The Jowada facility in Chennai. We know that he bribed a man by the name of Ravi Chandra to carry a device into the building. It was a lamentable lapse in security, but the security at Jowada was in general a disgrace. Unfortunately, we were unable to question Chandra because he died in the initial explosion. McCain took a great deal of care. There were a number of connections between him and the man who paid Chandra, but we investigated, and in the end we found a link with First Aid.

Suddenly everything made sense. Even so, we cannot prove the case against McCain, nor do we need to. Sometimes RAW deals with its enemies in a simpler and more direct way. I was sent to Scotland to kill him there, and I was checking out the castle when your car went off the road and into the lake. That was fortunate for you. And it is even more fortunate that I should be here a second time. That business with the crocodiles . . .” Rahim gave Alex the ghost of a smile. “I have never seen anything like that.”

“How were you going to kill him?” Alex asked.

“I was planning to shoot him, but as I discovered last night, that will not be as easy as I thought. He is well protected by his Kikuyus. However, I have come well prepared. I can also blow up his plane.”

“You have plastic explosive?”

“Of course.” Rahim gestured at his backpack. “McCain flies a four-seater 172 Skyhawk.” Alex nodded grimly. “I know. That’s what brought me here.”

“I will blow it up in midair. In a way, that is the better option. It is part of my brief that RAW should not be seen to have been involved. A bomb, I think, will be more anonymous than a bullet casing.”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to think again, Rahim.” Alex went over to the Indian agent and sat down next to him. His thoughts had already raced ahead. “I have to contact MI6,” he said.

“You want to let them know you are safe.”

“More than that. Do you have a radio?”

“I have a laptop equipped with a demodulator. It will produce a baseband output that can be picked up by satellite. Do you have an address?”

“No.” It only occurred to Alex now. Even after all the missions he had undertaken for MI6, they had never given him an e-mail address or a telephone number. On the other hand, he’d been supplied with gadgets. What had happened to the pocket calculator with the built-in communications system? It was a shame it hadn’t been in his pocket when he was snatched.

“It’s not a problem,” Rahim said. “We can contact the Intelligence Bureau in New Delhi. They will pass on any message to Liverpool Street. What is it you want to say?” Quickly, Alex told Rahim everything that he had learned from Desmond McCain the night before . . .

the genetically modified wheat crop, the spores, the plan to poison half the continent. “We have less time than you thought,” he said. “And killing McCain right now isn’t going to do anyone any good. We have to go up to the Simba Valley. It’s only two miles from here.” Rahim shook his head. “I’m sorry, Alex. I don’t have enough explosive to blow up an entire wheat field.”

“That’s not my idea.” Alex was remembering what McCain had told him, and what he had seen for himself when he was flown in. “There’s a place called the Simba Dam,” he explained. “It’s on the edge of a big lake. If we could blow it up, we could flood the valley. We could put the whole crop underwater before it has a chance to do any harm. But we have to do it today. Right now. McCain said that the spores would start working at sunset. It must be about midday now.”

“Alex, I know this dam,” Rahim said. “I studied the whole area before I parachuted. It is what is known as a double curvature arch dam . . . which is to say that it curves against the side of the valley and also against the valley floor, making it doubly strong. I have just one kilogram of plastic explosive.

That would not be nearly enough even to make a crack in the wall.”

“There must be some sort of pipe or valve—”

“There will be a whole series of pipes carrying the water down the hill. Simba Dam is used for irrigation purposes, but there are also two hydroelectric turbines.” Alex was impressed. Rahim had clearly done his homework. “It might be possible to attack the bottom outlet valve or the scour valve that is next to it. Either of them would release enormous amounts of water.” He shook his head. “But it cannot be done.”

“Why not?”

“Because I cannot do it. My leg is infected. I was barely able to limp to the river. The Simba Dam is three miles from here.”

“I could go on my own.”

“That I will not allow.”

Alex thought for a minute. “You parachuted in,” he said. “How were you planning to leave?”

“McCain has a crop duster as well as the Skyhawk. I imagine he used it to spread this spore of his that you described? I can fly. I was intending to steal it.”

“Then you could fly me to the dam?”

“There is nowhere to land. I might be able to slow the plane to as little as thirty-five miles per hour and fly low over the water to allow you to jump, but even so, the chances are high that you would be killed.”

For a moment, Alex lost his temper. “We can’t just sit back and do nothing!”

“No, Alex. We can contact the Intelligence Bureau as I have already suggested. They will, in turn, speak to the British authorities. Together they will know what to do.” Rahim went on quickly, before Alex could interrupt him. “I have my instructions. I am here to kill McCain. I was acting improperly when I decided to rescue you, and I can assure you my superiors will not be amused when I make my report.” He broke off. He was sweating again and his eyes were unfocused. Alex could almost see the disease attacking his system. “My laptop . . .” Rahim pointed at the backpack. He was too weak to go over himself.

Alex stood up. He went over to the backpack and opened. Everything was packed very neatly inside.

There was a laptop computer, maps, a compass, ammunition for the Dragunov, medical supplies, spare clothes, and food. Much of the space was taken up by a silver box about the size of a car battery with two switches and a clock set behind glass. Alex knew at once what it was. Rahim must have been planning to conceal it in the Skyhawk’s hold.

“Bring it to me,” Rahim said.

Alex left the bomb and carried the computer over. Rahim opened it, booted it up, and then handed it across. “It will be easier if you do it,” he said. “But I suggest you don’t take too long. We will have to move from this place before the Kikuyu come looking for us, and I need to break into the Cessna and prepare it for its last flight.”

Alex crouched down. It felt weird to be tapping away at a keyboard, sitting in the dust in the middle of the African bush. He also wondered what the British or the Indian authorities would be able to do.

Another six hours and it might be too late. He briefly outlined the location of the valley, the crop that McCain was growing there, his plan to bring famine and disease to Kenya. Finally, he added a PS.

Please let Jack Starbright know where I am

and tell her I’m all right.

If there was one good thing to come out of all this, at least Jack would know that he hadn’t been hurt.

He quickly read the page over and pressed Send.

He looked up. Rahim had slumped forward. Alex went over and examined him. The RAW agent wasn’t exactly asleep. He was unconscious, breathing heavily. He had been knocked out—either by the fever or by the medicine he had been taking to fight it. Alex eased him gently to the ground, then looked back in the direction of the lodge. Everything was silent in the bush as even the animals slept in the midday sun. It was very hot, but at least Rahim was tucked away in the shade of the sausage tree.

What would MI6 do when they received the news?

Alex had visions of Alan Blunt and Mrs. Jones conferring with the appropriate ministers at Downing Street. A new government had recently been voted in. They probably wouldn’t even know he existed, so they would have to be persuaded he was reliable, that his information was accurate. And then they would have to make a decision . . . but what exactly were their options? They could send in troops with flamethrowers, but that might take days. In fact, Alex couldn’t even be certain that the Indian secret service would pass the message on in time. After all, they had their own agenda. They simply wanted McCain dead.

He didn’t like it, but he knew what he had to do. He took the map out of Rahim’s backpack and studied it. Simba River Camp was clearly marked—and there was the track that he had seen from the air. It led all the way to the dam, rising up the side of the valley. He could follow the river for the first mile and then cut across the countryside using the compass. It wouldn’t be too difficult to pick up the track.

There was electricity up there. He had seen one of the pylons. If he could find it again, it would lead him to the dam.

Finally, Alex examined the bomb. It wasn’t very complicated either. All he would have to do is set the timer, which operated like an ordinary alarm clock, then activate it by throwing a single switch. What was it that Rahim had told him? He had to locate one of the two main valves. That was where he would place the bomb.

Alex took out the medicine, then put on the backpack and tightened the straps. He felt bad just walking out on Rahim, particularly after the agent had just saved his life. But at least he could make sure that he wasn’t found by the Kikuyu tribemen. He would follow the path back to the river where he had first been taken. He would do his best to cover his tracks, and then he would set off in another direction, making sure that he disturbed the vegetation as much as possible. If McCain did realize that Beckett was missing and sent his men after him, they would follow the new path. Rahim would be left alone and Alex had no doubt that, once he woke up, he would be able to look after himself.

The decision was made. Alex looked up at the sky. The sun was directly overhead, beating down on him. It was midday. Before long it would begin its journey down.

Alex took a swig out of the water bottle and set off. Two miles in this unfamiliar countryside would take him as many hours. He just hoped he wasn’t already too late.

22

MARGIN OF ERROR

ONE O ’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON, London time.

The navy blue Jaguar XJ6 drove around Trafalgar Square and then headed down Whitehall, in the direction of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. The weather forecasters had been predicting snow, but so far it had held back. Even so, it was a hard, cold day, with the wind skittering along the sidewalks. Inside the car, the heat had been turned up and the windows were tinted. Both of these helped keep the winter at bay.

The Jaguar passed the famous Banqueting House, where the first King Charles had lost his head, and turned onto Downing Street. The black steel gates opened automatically to admit it. It stopped outside Number Ten and two people, a man and a woman, got out. As always, there was a handful of news reporters in the street, making their broadcasts against the backdrop of the most famous door in the world, but none of them noticed the two new arrivals, and if they had, it would have been extremely unlikely that they would have recognized them. Alan Blunt and Mrs. Jones had never been photographed. Their names didn’t appear on any government profiles.

Neither of them needed to knock. The door swung open as they approached and they passed into the brightly colored entrance hall with a surprisingly long corridor stretching out in front of them. They made no sound at all as they walked along the plush carpets, beneath the chandeliers, toward the far staircase. As usual, the walls were lined with paintings that had been borrowed from a central government reserve. They were by British artists, most of them modern and rather bland.

Blunt examined them as he continued forward, not because he was interested in art—he wasn’t—but because they might give him some insight into the mind of the man who had chosen them. There was a new prime minister in Downing Street. He had been voted in just a month before, And what did the paintings say about him? He liked the countryside, fox hunting, and windmills. His favorite color was blue.

Of course, Blunt already knew everything about the new man—from the state of his marriage (happy) to the last payment he had made on his credit card (£97.60 for a meal at The Ivy). There wasn’t a single prime minister in England who hadn’t been thoroughly checked by MI6: their families, their friends and associates, what websites they liked to visit, where they took their vacations, how much money they spent every week. There was always a chance that the information might reveal a security risk or something that the prime minister didn’t want anyone to know.

The two of them reached the staircase and began to climb up to the first floor, passing the painted portraits and photographs of past prime ministers, spaced out at regular intervals. There was a man in a suit waiting at the top, gesturing toward an office. The building was full of young men in suits, some of them working for Blunt, although they probably didn’t know it. Blunt and Mrs. Jones went into the office and there was the prime minister, waiting with two advisers, sitting behind a desk.

“Mr. Blunt . . . please, take a seat.”

The prime minister wasn’t happy, and it showed. Like all politicians, he didn’t entirely trust his spy masters and he certainly didn’t want one sitting opposite him now. It wasn’t fair. He hadn’t been in power very long. It was certainly too soon for his first international crisis. There were two men sitting with him, one on each side. They were trying to look relaxed, as if they just happened to be passing and had decided to pop in for the meeting.

“I don’t think you’ve met Simon Ellis,” the prime minister said, nodding at the fair-haired, rather plump man on his left. “And this is Charles Blackmore.” The other man was also young, though with prematurely gray hair. “I thought it might be helpful if they joined us.” Blunt hadn’t met either of them, but of course he knew everything about them. They had both been at Winchester College with the prime minister. Ellis was now a junior civil servant in the Treasury.

Blackmore had left a career in television to become director of strategy and communications. The two men loathed each other. The prime minister didn’t know this. They were also loathed by almost everyone else.

“Well . . . ,” the prime minister began. He licked his lips. “I’ve read your report on the situation in Kenya and it does seem to be very alarming. But the first question I really do have to ask you is—why did your agent feel it necessary to send his information via the Indian secret service?”

“I’m afraid I can’t answer that,” Blunt replied. “We only know what you know, Prime Minister. It’s all in the file. Our agent was kidnapped and smuggled out of the country against his will. Somehow he must have managed to break free and fell in with an agent from RAW.”

“Research and Analysis Wing,” Blackmore muttered helpfully.

“We have no idea what RAW was doing in Kenya, and so far they’ve refused to tell us. I’m afraid foreign intelligence agencies are always overcautious when it comes to protecting their own. But if I may say so, Prime Minister, it’s completely irrelevant. What matters is the report itself and the very serious threat it contains.”

The prime minister picked up a sheet of paper that had been lying in front of him. “This was sent by e-mail,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And it suggests that this man, Desmond McCain, is engaged in a plot to poison the wheat crop in Kenya for his own financial gain.”

Blunt blinked heavily. “I’m glad you had time to read it,” he muttered.

The prime minister ignored the rudeness. He put the paper down. “What makes you believe this information is reliable?” he asked.

“We have absolutely no reason to doubt it.”

“And yet I understand that this agent of yours, the one who sent the report—which, incidentally, has no fewer than three spelling mistakes—is only fourteen years old.” There was a long pause. The two advisers glanced at the prime minister, urging him on.

“Alex Rider. Is that his name?” the prime minister asked.

“He’s never let us down in the past,” Mrs. Jones cut in. She was carrying a slim leather case, which she opened. She took out a thin file marked TOP SECRET in red letters and handed it across. “These are the details of just four of the assignments he’s undertaken on our behalf,” she continued. “The most recent of them was in Australia.”

“Shouldn’t he be in school?”

“He called in sick.”

“Let me have a look . . .” The prime minister opened the file and read it in silence. “You certainly seem to have a very high opinion of him,” he remarked. “And let’s say for the sake of argument that it’s justified. Let’s assume that everything that he has told you is true—”

“Then by four o’clock this evening, the wheat field will have been activated,” Blunt said. In fact, Alex’s e-mail had crossed two time zones. He had sent it at midday. It had arrived in New Delhi at half past two, Indian time. They had kept it for three hours before they had sent it to MI6 where it arrived at noon, UK time. Four o’clock in England would be seven o’clock in Kenya, and sunset. They had less than three hours in which to act. “The wheat will have been turned into a million doses of ricin,” Blunt went on. “At the same time, the spores that McCain sprayed onto the field will take off and begin to spread across the rest of Kenya. It will settle on the next field and then the one after that. It’s impossible to say how many millions of seeds Greenfields has supplied over the past five years. All we know for sure is that within three months, the entire country will be poisoned.”

“We can let McCain know we’re onto him,” Ellis said. “There’s not going to be any charity appeal.

Once he knows that, there’ll be no point in going ahead.”

“I agree.” Blackmore nodded his head, secretly annoyed that he hadn’t spoken first.

“We don’t have any way to contact McCain, short of parachuting into Simba River Camp,” Blunt replied. “And anyway, we’re too late. There’s a biological clock that’s already ticking. The damage has been done.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“We need to speak to the Kenyan government and send in troops. The field has to be neutralized, probably with flamethrowers. And we also have to find Alex Rider. We’ve heard nothing more from him. I want to know he’s safe.”

Although she didn’t show it, Mrs. Jones was surprised. It was the first time she had ever heard Blunt show any concern for Alex. Even when he had been shot, Blunt’s main concern had been keeping the story out of the newspapers.

“I’m not sure that’s possible, Mr. Blunt.” The prime minister shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “It might be a bit awkward explaining to the Kenyan authorities that a British citizen has just launched a biochemical attack on their country . . . and let’s not forget that Greenfields actually receives government funding! Of course, it wasn’t my government that agreed to it, but even so, the political fallout could be appalling. Frankly, the less said the better. And I definitely think we ought to handle the situation ourselves.”

“I have an SAS task force on standby,” Blunt said.

“It would still take too long to fly them to Africa,” Blackmore said. He glanced at the prime minister, waiting for permission to continue. The prime minister nodded. “But in my view, we can do better than that,” he said. “We have an RAF Phantom squadron in Akrotiri, Cyprus. They’re already fueling. They can be in the air in half an hour.”

“And what do you intend to do with them?” Blunt asked.

“It’s very simple, Mr. Blunt. We’re going to bomb the entire wheat field. After all, thanks to your agent, we know exactly where it is.”

“But won’t the bombs do McCain’s work for him? You’ll actually blow the spores into the air. You’ll spread them all over Africa.”

“We don’t believe so. The Phantoms will be carrying AGM-65 Maverick air-to-surface tactical missiles with infrared tracking. They’ll be able to pinpoint the target exactly. Each plane has six missiles. Each missile contains eighty-six pounds of high explosive. The advice we’ve been given is that there’s a 99.5

percent probability that every single one of the spores will be destroyed in the firestorm.”

“That still leaves room for error,” Blunt said.

“And what about Alex?” Mrs. Jones added. “For all we know, he could still be in the area. Are we going to launch a missile strike against him too?”

“I don’t think we have any choice,” Ellis said. He reached down and picked a speck of dust off his tie.

“There’s no reason to believe he’s anywhere near the target area.”

“And if he is?”

“I’m sure you’d agree that we can’t allow one life to get in the way. Not when we’re trying to save thousands.”

There was a brief silence. The prime minister was looking more uncomfortable than ever. But then he spoke again. “I think we’ve come to a unanimous decision, Mr. Blunt.”

“You certainly have,” Blunt muttered.

“And before you leave, there is one thing I do have to ask you. Exactly how many agents do you have who are underage . . . which is to say, sixteen years old or younger?”

“We have only one,” Blunt replied. “There is only one Alex Rider.”

“I’m very glad to hear it.” The prime minister looked apologetic. “To be honest, I was rather horrified to discover that the British secret service would even consider employing a minor. I can see from his file that he’s been tremendously useful to you and he certainly deserves our gratitude. But putting children into danger, no matter how compelling the reason . . . well, I’m not sure the public would stand for it. In my view, recruiting him in the first place was a serious error of judgment.”

“Well, if your Phantom jets manage to kill him, that won’t be a problem anymore, will it,” Blunt said.

He was speaking evenly and without emotion, but it was the nearest Mrs. Jones had ever seen him come to losing his temper.

“I hope it won’t come to that, Mr. Blunt. But whatever happens, I want to make it clear that my government will not tolerate this sort of thing again. This is Alex’s last assignment, do you understand me? I want him back at school.”

The meeting was over. Blunt and Mrs. Jones stood up and walked out of the room, back down the stairs, and out into the street where their car was waiting for them.

“The man is an idiot,” Blunt snapped as they swept through the gates at the end of Downing Street.

“He talks about a 0.5 percent margin of error. But I spoke to Redwing, and she thinks it’s much higher.

These missiles of his won’t kill the disease. They’ll spread it . . . farther and faster than anyone could imagine.”

“What about Alex?” Mrs. Jones asked.

“I’ll talk to RAW the moment we get back. But their man has gone silent. Nobody knows what’s happening in Kenya.” He glanced briefly out of the window as they turned into Whitehall. “It looks as if, once again, Alex Rider is on his own.”

“Where did you find this?”

Desmond McCain was sitting behind the folding table that he used as a workplace in his own private cabin at Simba River Camp. The room was similar to the one in which Alex had been kept, except that there was no bed and the walls were decorated with photographs of the office buildings that McCain had once developed in the east end of London. Although the fan had been turned to full speed, the air was still hot and sluggish. There was sweat on his head and on his face. It was seeping through the shoulders of his jacket.

He was looking at a leather shoe, one he recognized. The last time he had seen it, it had been on Myra Beckett’s foot. In fact, it still was. The foot, bitten off just above the ankle, was still inside.

“It was beside the river, sir.”

Njenga was also in the room, standing with his legs apart and his hands behind his back. He had become the leader of the dozen men working for McCain. The rest of them spoke only Bantu, but he had been to school in Nairobi and spoke fluent English. McCain took one last look at all that remained of his fiancée. A single tear stole out of his eye and crept down his cheek. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.

Also on the table was a scrap of material, part of Alex’s shirt. McCain examined it. “What about this?” he asked.

“It was in the same place.”

“By the river.”

“Yes, sir.”

McCain held the shirt in his huge hands, tugging at it with his fingers. It had been more than two hours since he had noticed that Myra was missing and had sent out his men to find her. They had come back with this. What could possibly have happened? He had left her standing on the observation platform, waiting for the child to come to the end of his strength and to fall as, inevitably, he must. There was no way that Alex Rider would have been able to reach her. Nor could he have escaped. It had all been too carefully arranged. And yet there was something . . .

“There is no blood on this shirt,” he said. “We’ve been tricked. Somehow, the child got away.” Njenga said nothing. The rule here was to speak only when it was essential.

“He can’t have gone far, even with a two-hour start. He has nowhere to go. He won’t have crossed the river, not knowing what’s in it. So it should be a simple matter to track him down.” McCain had come to a decision. “I want you to take the men—all of them—and set off after him. I’m not asking anything clever. I want you to bring him back to me alive if you possibly can. I would like to have the pleasure of finishing this once and for all. But if you think he’s going to get away, then kill him and bring me back his head. Do you understand? This time, I want to be sure.”

“Yes, sir.” Njenga showed no concern about killing and decapitating a child. All that mattered to him was the money that would come to him at the end of the month.

“Go now. Don’t come back until the job is done.”

A few minutes later they all left, twelve men carrying a variety of weapons, including spears, knives, and machetes. Half of them had guns. Njenga himself carried a German-manufactured Sauer 202 bolt-action hunting rifle equipped with a Zeiss Conquest scope. He knew he could shoot the eye of an antelope out at two hundred yards. He had done so many times.

They found two tracks at the river. The first one went into the bush and came back again. The second, which was much clearer, headed off toward the north. This was the path they chose. Alex Rider had a two-hour start, but they were Kikuyu tribesmen. They were taller, faster, and stronger than him. They knew the land.

They set off at a fast run, dodging through the undergrowth, confident that they’d catch up with him in no time at all.

23

SIMBA DAM

THE BIRDS PERCHED HIGH UP in the camphor tree were definitely vultures. The shape was unmistakable—the long necks and the bald heads—and the way they sat, hunched up and still. There were about ten of them, ranged across the branches, black against the afternoon sky. But the question Alex had to ask himself was: Were they waiting for him?

He had no idea how long he had been running for, but he knew he couldn’t go on much longer. He was dehydrated and close to exhaustion, his arms covered in scratches, his face burned by the African sun.

The bits of his school uniform that he was still wearing couldn’t have been less well suited to this sort of terrain. The black polyester pants trapped the heat, and his lace-up dress shoes had caused him to slip twice. Each time he had come crashing down to the ground, he had wearily reminded himself that there was a bomb strapped to his back. Not that he could have forgotten it. The weight of Rahim’s backpack was dragging him down, the straps cutting into his shoulders. Well, if the bomb went off, the vultures would have their feast. It would just come in snack-sized pieces.

The journey should have been simple. After all, he had seen where he had to go from the air.

Unfortunately, the landscape looked very different at ground level when he was stuck in the middle of it. The sudden rising hills, the thick vegetation, the spiky shrubs that forced him to turn another way . . .

all these had been flattened out when he was in the Piper Cub. The bush had swallowed him up. The dam, the pylons, the track had all disappeared.

He had to rely on the map and his own sense of direction. To start with, he had kept the river on his right—near enough to glimpse the water through the trees but not so close as to attract the attention of whatever might be lurking within it. That was his greatest fear. He was in the middle of a killing field

—and he wasn’t being escorted around like a tourist in a four-by-four. It had been midday when he set out and most of the animals would have been asleep, but the sun was already beginning to cool and very soon they would awaken and begin their ceaseless search for food. Was he prey? He could imagine his scent creeping out. All around him, invisible eyes could be watching his progress, already measuring the distance. He had seen elephants, monkeys, and, of course, crocodiles. What other horrors might be waiting for him around the next corner if he was unlucky? There could be lions or cheetahs.

He had thought of taking the Dragunov sniper rifle or searching Rahim’s pockets for other weapons, but in the end he had decided against it. Rahim might need them when he recovered consciousness.

Now he wished he hadn’t been so generous.

After about half a mile, he had turned away from the river, heading in what he hoped would be the direction of the dam—and it was then that his progress became harder. This time it was the map that was deceiving him. It hadn’t showed that the ground sloped steeply uphill, although he should have worked it out for himself. Rahim had told him that the water held back by the Simba Dam flowed through two hydroelectric turbines. Since water only flows downhill, it was fairly obvious that he would have to climb.

It was hard work, weighed down in the hot sun. And the African landscape was huge. He knew he had only two miles to cover, but somehow the distances seemed to have been magnified so that even a shrub or a tree right in front of him always took too long to reach. Worse still, after leaving the river behind him, Alex had lost all sense of direction. The colors were too muted: the pale greens and browns, the faint streaks of yellow and orange. You could hide a herd of elephants here and not see them. There was nowhere for the eye to focus. There were no people, no houses, nothing that looked like a pathway or a road. This was the world as it must have been long ago, before man began to shape it to his needs. Alex felt like an intruder. And he was utterly lost.

But as long as he was climbing uphill, he had to be going the right way. He stopped and took out Rahim’s water bottle. He had already drunk from it three times, and he had tried to ration himself, but even so, he was surprised to find it almost empty. He finished the last drops and slung the empty container into the bush. Let the Kikuyu tribesmen pick it up. Alex had no doubt that they were already closing in behind him.

The bush ahead suddenly parted. Alex froze. It was an animal of some sort, small and dark, hidden by the long grass. And it was headed toward him. For a moment he felt the same uncontrollable terror that McCain had inflicted on him at the crocodile pit. If this was a lion, then it was all over. But then he relaxed. The animal was a warthog. For a moment it stared at him with its small, brutish eyes. Its upturned nose sniffed the air, and Alex could imagine it asking itself the same question it must ask every day. Food? Then it made its decision. This creature was too big and probably wouldn’t taste very nice. It turned around and fled the way it had come.

Alex looked back. What time was it? There was a mountain ridge over to the west, lost in the heat haze like a strip of gray silk. The sun was sinking slowly behind it and there was already a faint moon visible against the clear blue sky. A meeting place of night and day. Alex wiped a grimy hand over his face. A mosquito whined in his ear. He wondered if Rahim had woken up yet. What would the Indian agent do when he discovered he was alone?

A movement caught his eye. At first, Alex thought he had imagined it—but there it was again. An animal? No. About a dozen men were making their way toward him. They were still at least half a mile away, far down at the bottom of the slope that Alex had been climbing. They were spread out in a line and Alex could just make out their black faces, the combat clothes they were wearing, and the weapons they carried or had strapped to their backs. He knew exactly who they were. He also knew that if he had seen them, they had seen him. If he stayed where he was, they would be with him in less than fifteen minutes.

Forcing himself on, he broke into a run. There was a thicket of trees to one side and he made for it, wondering if he might be able to lose himself among the trunks and branches. But it was a foolish hope. Alex knew that McCain’s men must have been tracking him from the start and that a single broken blade of grass or a fallen leaf would have been like a flashing neon sign for them. Now it was just a question of speed. Could he reach the dam before they caught up with him? Could he detonate the bomb? Alex had no doubt that he was going to be captured and killed. But he would die more happily if he knew that he had beaten McCain.

The wood ended as suddenly as it had begun. On the other side was a field and the first man-made object that he had seen since he set out . . . the remains of a low wooden fence. He leapt over it and continued running, aware that he was surrounded by a very different sort of vegetation. It was wheat!

Incredibly, he had actually found his way to McCain’s wheat field. So the dam must be directly ahead of him. He still couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there. If he just continued forward he would have to come upon it.

Suddenly, he was racing through the stalks. He could feel it scratching at his ankles and his hands. It surrounded him. And with a jolt of horror he wondered if it had switched yet, if the spores had done their work. If so, he was running through a vast field of poison. Each one of these bright yellow blades could be the death of him. The very air he breathed could be full of ricin. Grimly, Alex kept his lips tightly shut and his arms held high. It seemed incredible to him that McCain could have done this: taken something as natural, as universal as a wheat field and turned it into something deadly.

He glanced back. There was no sign of his followers. Seeing them had given him new speed and determination. Over to one side he saw the electricity pylon that he had spotted before, or one identical to it—not steel, but wood, and only four or five yards high. It was still a quarter of a mile away, but he made for it. The wires would lead to the turbines and the turbines had to be somewhere beneath the dam. He tried to remember on which side he had seen the track. That would be the fastest way forward.

Was it possible that Njenga had come after him in the Land Rover? No. Alex would have heard the engine by now.

The wheat, waves and waves of it, crunched beneath his feet as he drove his way through it. He liked the sound that it made. He wanted to crush as much of it as he could, but the field seemed to go on forever, trapped between the two rock faces that rose up on each side.

Where was the dam? He should have been able to see it by now.

The wheat suddenly ended—so abruptly that it was as if Alex had fallen from one world to another. He was on the track! There it was, right underneath him. So how far did he have to go? How much farther could he go? He glanced back. There was still no sign of the Kikuyu tribesmen, but the wheat would cause them no problems. In fact, the trackers would have a field day. Alex would have left a highway for them to follow. He had to keep up his pace. They would surely have doubled theirs.

The track had once been covered with asphalt, but it was full of potholes now, with weeds and wild grass sprouting through. Alex guessed it would be used both by the farmers coming up to harvest the wheat and by technicians working on the hydroelectrics. He could make out tire tracks and hoofprints.

It was an easier surface for running, but he was still going uphill and his mouth was dry. He resisted the temptation to look back. He had no time to waste. His muscles were taut and his whole body was tingling with the anticipation of a knife or a bullet in his back.

And then the track turned a corner and there, ahead of him, was the Simba Dam.

It was completely bizarre and out of place. That was Alex’s first thought. This huge gray wall had been constructed in the middle of all this unspoiled nature, and it had no right to be there. It wasn’t exactly ugly. Indeed, the great curve, stretching from one side of the valley to the other, had a certain gracefulness. Beaten by the sun, the concrete had faded so that it blended in with the rocks that surrounded it. But it was still a scar. In a strange way, it reminded him of what had happened to McCain’s face. The dam cut the landscape in two, and the two halves didn’t quite meet.

Alex stumbled to a halt and stood there panting, his entire body covered in sweat. He desperately needed a drink. He wished now he had taken more care with his water supply.

There was no sign of the lake from where he was standing at the very foot of the dam, surrounded by discarded pieces of cement and broken rocks that must have been blasted during the construction. The surface of the water had to be about ninety feet above him and, of course, on the other side. He could see enormous slots in the wall, oversized letter boxes with what looked like metal gates cutting them in half. Presumably these could be raised or lowered to allow the water to spill through. Alex tried to imagine the amount of pressure that must be pushing against the wall itself, the tons and tons of water being held back. There was nobody here. Somewhere—perhaps in Nairobi—someone would press a button and a sluice would open. And then some of the water—just a few million gallons—would rush down a series of hidden pipes to the turbines, where its energy would be siphoned off to provide electricity before it was finally released to feed the crops.

Suddenly the bomb he was carrying felt very small. As he followed the track to its end, the Simba Dam loomed over him, much bigger and more complicated than anything he had imagined. It curved in two directions, forming a letter C around him but also slanting out over his head, away from the water.

What had Rahim called it? A double curvature arch dam. Now that he was here, it was easier to understand what that meant.

Two drainage slipways ran up on either side. These were basically curving roads running up the side of the hill, though so steeply that no car would be able to make the journey. Alex guessed that they had something to do with the water, which could be directed down them and into the valley if there happened to be heavy rainfall and the threat of a flood. Two concrete staircases had been built next to them, one for each slipway, with about a hundred steps leading up to the top. There was one other way up, a single ladder clinging to the face of the dam, leading to two inspection platforms, one above the other, and finally to the lip of the dam itself. The ladder was dangerous because it wasn’t quite vertical.

Following the curve of the wall, it slanted outward. It was also narrow, steep, and covered in rust.

Alex took this all in, then turned his attention to a construction directly in front of him. It looked like something out of the Second World War . . . a solid concrete bunker with an entrance and three barred windows. A pair of fat steel pipes jutted out, pointing at him like the cannons of two tanks that might have been parked next to each other inside. Both of them were capped, making them look like oversized industrial oil cans. They were connected to the dam by hydraulic steel claws with a network of smaller pipes, wires, and taps around them. The concrete underneath them was stained. It had recently been wet.

Alex knew that he was looking at the two valves that Rahim had described. His targets. He took one quick look back over his shoulder, then hurried forward. He had perhaps five minutes to position the explosive before the Kikuyus arrived. Even as he ran, he wriggled out of the backpack and opened it.

The concrete building had a sort of entrance, a narrow slit that led into an inner chamber with more pipes and machinery. While he was in here, Alex would be out of sight. Surely he couldn’t have left a trail on the broken rock and other debris in front of the dam. With a bit of luck, the trackers wouldn’t be able to find him . . . until it was too late.

He had the bomb in his hands. It couldn’t have been more old-fashioned or easier to understand. That was what made terrorism all the more frightening—the fact that it relied on such simple devices. The glass window in front of the clock face opened and Alex was able to take the single hand and move it as many minutes as he wanted, up to sixty. He made a quick calculation. It would take him about two minutes to climb up to the top of the dam, using one of the staircases beside the slipways. Once he was there, he would be safe from the torrent of water. But what about the Kikuyus? Suddenly, Alex had an idea.

He turned the hand of the clock to the figure 5, then pressed the two switches. A green light came on and the clock began to tick. So it was done. Alex looked around him. It didn’t matter which valve he chose. He just had to hope that the explosion—contained within the concrete walls—would be strong enough to rupture them both. He placed the bomb on top of one of the pipes, wedging it against the ceiling. Now to get away.

He slithered out of the opening and stopped in dismay. He saw three Kikuyu men just a short distance ahead of him. They had almost reached the end of the track and were gazing at the dam as if it had deliberately chosen to block their path. There was no more than fifty yards between them. They saw Alex at once. One of them called out. The other threw his spear. It fell short. None of them seemed to have guns.

Alex began to run. He headed for the nearest slipway, but he hadn’t even begun to climb when another of McCain’s men appeared at the top, pointed down, and shouted. Alex realized what had happened.

The dozen tribesmen had arrived at the dam and, as he had hoped, they had lost his track. So they had separated. They were all around him now, coming at him from all sides.

And he had made a terrible miscalculation.

There were just four and a half minutes until the bomb would go off. He didn’t have time to go back into the bunker and change the time of the detonation . . . he’d be trapping himself and it would only draw attention to what he had done. He had to move quickly—and preferably up. If he stayed here, he would be killed by the blast or drowned in the rush of water. The slipway on the right was covered.

Alex looked the other way. Yet another tribesman had appeared and was scampering down. The three men who had first seen him were getting closer.

That just left the rusty, winding ladder, running up the side of the bunker onto the roof and then up toward the two platforms.

Alex grabbed hold of the first rung and began to climb.

The F-4 Phantom 11 fighter jets had taken off at exactly 3:45 P.M. local time, their Rolls-Royce Spey engines powering them down the runway and into the air, climbing at 40,000 feet per minute. There were three of them. They had leveled off at 80,000 feet, moving into a classic arrow formation, before turning south toward Africa. Each one carried eight missiles. Between them, they were confident that they had enough firepower to turn McCain’s wheat field into a blazing hell in which nothing, not so much as a single microbe, would survive.

There was, of course, the faintest possibility that the initial force of the impact would propel some of the mushroom spores into the air, ahead of the flames. These spores would then travel very fast and very far and do their lethal work elsewhere. But as is so often the way with British politics, a decision had been made. If it was later shown to be wrong, all the evidence would be gently massaged to show that no other decision had been possible. Not that the public would ever hear about this. The orders that the three Phantom pilots had received were top secret. Their flight plan had not been recorded. As far as the world was concerned, they hadn’t even taken off.

And when the three planes crossed the Kenyan border, heading west from the Indian Ocean, the urgent inquiries from air traffic control in Nairobi were ignored. Later, it would be explained that they had accidentally strayed off course during a training mission. Profuse apologies would be offered to the Kenyan government. But for now, they were observing strict radio silence.

The Phantoms were equipped with the Northrop target identification system, essentially a telescopic camera fitted to the left wing and connected to a radarscope inside the cockpit. As Alex began to climb the ladder at the Simba Dam, the planes began to drop altitude, flying toward the Rift Valley at just under 1,200 miles per hour. Inside their cockpits, the pilots made their final preparations. There would be no need for a flyby. The target coordinates were locked in. Once they had visual contact, they would open fire.

Alex was halfway up the ladder, with the first maintenance platform stretching out above his head. It was hard work, climbing up. Because of the curve of the dam, he was leaning outward, and the force of gravity was against him; every time he pulled himself up another rung, he felt himself being dragged backward. The sun was now beating down on him, burning his shoulders and back. He forced himself to keep going. He was painfully aware of the bomb he had activated and that was ticking away even now. If only he had given himself more time! If it went off before he reached the top of the dam, there was a good chance the ladder would be blown off the wall—and him with it. He was already too high up. If he fell, he would die.

He grabbed hold of the next rung and looked back, only to see two of the tribesmen who had raised the alarm—at this height they were no more than toy figures—running down to the foot of the dam. The third was holding back. None of them seemed anxious to climb the ladder after him. Why?

He looked up and saw the reason. They had no need to follow him. Another Kikuyu man had reached the center of the dam and was already climbing down.

There was no way out. Alex consoled himself with the knowledge that nobody knew about the bomb apart from him and that in about two or three minutes it would explode, releasing millions of gallons of water that would flood the valley, drowning the wheat. It would be mission accomplished . . . except that he wouldn’t be around to see it. Somewhere in his mind, he wondered if anyone would ever discover what had happened. Perhaps Rahim would make a report if he managed to get away. He died fighting for what he believed in. Alex could already see the words inscribed on the medal. Jack could wear it at his funeral.

But he wasn’t ready to give up yet. He couldn’t go back down. He saw that the third Kikuyu was aiming another spear at him. That was why he had positioned himself farther back. Well, he would be in for a surprise when the valve smashed. A spider down the bath drain! He was about to find out what it felt like. Alex seized hold of the next rung and pulled. Once again, the curving wall pushed him backward, as if it were desperate to make him let go.

The man above him was getting closer. It was Njenga, McCain’s first in command. He had already reached the upper platform and was dragging the rifle off his shoulder, bringing it around to pick off Alex. But Njenga knew that he too had made mistakes. First, as he’d approached the dam, he had instructed his men to separate. He had been confused by all the different concrete ramps and stairways, the various outbuildings with their tanks and pipework. He had assumed Alex would try to hide and had given the order to spread out and search for him.

And he had spotted Alex too late. From where he was standing, the slant of the dam put him at a disadvantage. So long as Alex remained underneath him, he was slightly tucked away, out of sight, and Njenga couldn’t get off a clear shot. Why, then, was the boy still climbing? He had just reached the lower platform and was continuing up the next stretch of the ladder that would bring the two of them face-to-face. There was no need for shooting just yet. Njenga laid down the rifle, took out his machete, and smiled to himself. How far did the boy think he would be able to climb without hands?

He waited. Alex was getting closer.

Alex knew he couldn’t risk going any farther. He could see Njenga’s machete blade dangling in the air directly above him. If he climbed another few rungs, he would be in range. He would have to wait for the explosion. Perhaps the shock of it might change things, rearrange them in his favor. It was all he could hope for.

At the bottom of the dam, the Kikuyu tribesman threw his spear. The black needle with its vicious silver point flashed toward Alex. He saw it out of the corner of his eye. The man who had thrown it must have been fantastically strong, as there were at least twenty yards between them. But the spear was off target. It was going to hit the wall just to his left.

At the very last second, Alex let go of the ladder with one hand, his whole body swinging around as if on a hinge. He stretched out with his free hand and caught the spear in midair, then, using all the strength in his shoulder, swung himself back again. At the same time, he lunged upward. He had grabbed hold of the spear at the very bottom end. The beaten metal tip sliced into Njenga’s leg, just above the ankle. Njenga screamed and toppled sideways.

Then the bomb went off.

Alex felt the entire ladder jerk violently. He was almost thrown off—and would have been if he hadn’t been expecting the shock wave and prepared for it by wrapping himself around the metalwork, clinging on with his arms and his legs. He felt himself being slammed away from the wall of the dam and cried out as a ball of flame rushed past his back and shoulders, shooting into the air. But he was still there.

The ladder had held. He hadn’t been thrown off.

Njenga was less fortunate. Shocked and in pain, with blood pouring out of the wound in his leg, he was caught off balance and plummeted down. He managed one twist in midair before dashing onto the rocks below.

And instantly he was gone. Alex must have positioned the bomb perfectly. It had completely smashed the bottom outlet valve and ruptured the other valve too. It was as if the two biggest taps in the world had been turned on simultaneously. The water didn’t just rush out—it erupted with such force that it seemed to obliterate the entire landscape—the rocks, the vegetation, and, of course, the three Kikuyus who had been standing in its path. They were simply washed away, smashed out of existence by a thundering white locomotive that roared over them, taking them with it.

How many thousands of gallons of water were being released by the second? It was impossible to say.

The water didn’t even look like water. It was more like smoke or steam—only more solid. Alex saw a huge tree uprooted as if it were no more than a weed, a boulder pushed effortlessly aside. And then the flood reached up for him. He felt the spray whipping into the back of his legs, and looking down, he saw that almost all the ladder had been ripped away, that the twisted metal ended just a few rungs beneath his feet. If he stayed here for a minute more, he too would be sucked into the vortex and obliterated.

Once again he began to climb. The sound of the water was pounding in his ears, deafening him, and he remembered the huge lake that the Simba Dam had been containing and wondered how much longer the curving wall could hold it. The lake was a monster that had been given its first taste of freedom.

This one torrent might not be enough. It would demand more.

Alex was soaked from the spray. He was blistered by the sun. He was close to exhaustion. Yet somehow he dragged himself up to the platform where Njenga had been standing and then onto the last ladder that led to the top. He didn’t dare look back. He could still hear an incredible, explosive pounding, the sound of the third day when God created the oceans. Surely it must have been like this.

And he knew that very soon, the river that he had created would reach the wheat field. Every last stalk would be drowned. Maybe the water would even reach the Simba River Camp and destroy that too. He liked the idea of McCain disappearing in a swirl of mud and stones and broken trees. It was nothing less than he deserved.

He reached the top of the ladder and rolled over a low wall with a road on the other side. Dripping wet, gasping for breath, he knelt for a moment, taking stock of his surroundings.

The track that he had followed from the wheat field rose up past one of the slipways and continued over the lip of the dam, where it became a bridge, a dead straight line that crossed from one side to the other. That was where he was now. He had climbed over one hundred feet. The ground, with the churning water, was a long, long way down. On the other side of the dam, in front of him, the lake stretched toward the horizon, completely calm and undisturbed by what was taking place below. Alex could see distant mountains, the clouds, and the emerald sky, all reflected in the mirror of the surface.

He turned back. From here he could make out the sweep of the land, a great plain with the silhouettes of trees and, in the far distance, a herd of gazelles, lost in their surroundings.

And there was the wheat field with the first finger of water trickling through it, widening with every second that passed. In another minute it would begin to drown. In five, it would no longer exist. At least there was that.

But once again he was trapped. The remaining Kikuyu tribesmen were on top of the dam, in two groups, left and right. They had already seen him and were shouting among themselves, excitedly raising their rifles, taking aim. Alex was midway between them. Did they know what had happened while he was on the ladder? It made no difference. They would have fired at him already, except they had to be careful. If they missed, there was a chance they might hit each other.

They began to move forward. Alex could only stand and wait.

The road trembled. Alex felt it, like an earthquake beneath his feet. At first he thought it must be tiredness, that he had imagined it. But then it happened again and this time it was stronger. The entire wall of the dam was shifting. The Kikuyus had felt it too. They stopped dead in their tracks, looking at each other for explanation. The answer was obvious.

The dam was breaking apart. Perhaps the bomb had damaged some of the joints where the individual blocks of concrete had come together in the construction. Or there could always have been a hairline crack, a weakness just waiting for the moment to bring an end to the whole thing. Well, that moment had come. Alex was thrown sideways as the ground tilted. He saw more water gushing out of a newly formed crack. Part of the wall crumbled, huge pieces of masonry tumbling in slow motion, disappearing into the chaos below. He knew that there were just seconds left before the whole thing collapsed. Even if he tried to run, it would be too late.

The Kikuyus were retreating, panic etched into their faces. They had forgotten him. They had to get off the dam and back onto dry land. Two of them lurched into each other and then both of them were knocked sideways, thrown off their feet by the cement floor, which tilted up beneath them, their weapons clanging to the ground. They screamed as they fell over the edge.

Alex fought for balance. Something was coming toward him. What was it now? A plane—but a strange one, small, like a toy. Alex recognized the Piper Cub. It was flying over the lake, heading toward him, so low that the wheels were almost touching the water. Was it McCain? Had he come for revenge? But then he saw a rope trailing from the back and a dark figure hunched over the controls. Rahim! He must have recovered to find Alex missing and somehow guessed what he planned to do. Rahim had come for him. He had told Alex he could fly. He had also said that he could slow the plane down to thirty-five miles per hour. He was steering it straight into the headwind, using the air currents to slow himself down. If he went any slower, he would surely stall.

He knew what Rahim had in mind. But he couldn’t do it. Alex would be torn in two.

Another explosion of concrete and water. Part of the dam tumbled like a house of cards, sinking into itself. The ground tilted crazily. Once again, Alex had to struggle to stay on his feet.

The plane was so close that Alex could see the concentration on Rahim’s face as he fought to keep himself in the air. The end of the rope was skimming the surface of the lake, snaking a line through the water. The plane looked slow, but the rope was whipping toward him, almost a blur.

There was no other way.

Blindly, Alex reached up and felt something lash into his chest and the side of his neck. The plane howled over him, so close that it nearly took off his head. The wheels rushed past. Somehow, his scrabbling hands caught hold of the rope, tearing the skin off his palms. The end twisted around him.

And then he was jerked into the air, so hard that he felt like he was being split in half. Pain jolted through his arms and down his spine. His shoulders felt completely dislocated. He was blacking out.

But his feet were in the air. He was being dragged up and now there was nothing beneath him except white foam, the bellowing water, crashing cement. Higher and higher. He wasn’t even sure how he was holding on. Somehow the rope had tied itself around him. The ground was rushing past.

Behind him, the Simba Dam disintegrated and the lake surged forward, free at last, hundreds of thousands of gallons pouring down into the valley. All the remaining Kikuyus were swept with it, mercilessly battered to death before they could even drown.

Dangling from the plane, Alex was carried away.

The water, blood red in the setting sun, continued pouring into an ever-widening sea.

In London, the prime minister was on the telephone.

“Yes.” He listened for a moment, a tic of anger beating in his forehead. “Yes, I quite understand. Thank you for keeping me informed.”

He put the phone down.

“Who was that?” Charles Blackmore, the director of communications, was in the office with him. It was 5:15 in the evening, but the day’s work at Downing Street wouldn’t end for a while yet. There were papers to be signed off, a planned phone call with the president of the United States, and at six o’clock, a cocktail party being held for all the people who had been working on the London Olympics. The prime minister was looking forward to that. He still enjoyed seeing himself in the newspapers, particularly when he was supporting a popular cause.

“It was the RAF in Cyprus,” the prime minister said.

“Is there a problem?”

“Not exactly.” The prime minister frowned. “It seems that this whole business in Kenya was a complete waste of time.”

“Oh yes?”

“We actually deployed three Phantom jets down to this place . . . the Simba Valley. The pilots had the exact coordinates. Fortunately, they decided to take a visual sighting before they fired off their missiles.

And just as well . . .”

Blackmore waited, a look of polite inquiry on his face.

“There were no wheat fields . . . no sign of any crop at all. There’s just a giant lake there. They circled over the entire area, to be sure that there wasn’t any mistake. So either the information given us by MI6

was inaccurate, or this boy, Alex Rider, made the whole thing up.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Well, he’s only a child. I suppose he was seeking attention. But it just shows that I was absolutely right. Remind me to call the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I think I should have a word with them about Alan Blunt. I’m afraid this puts a serious question mark over his judgment.”

“I agree, Prime Minister.” Blackmore coughed. “So what did the Phantoms do?”

“What else could they do? They turned around and went home. The whole thing was a complete waste of time and money. Perhaps we should start looking for someone else to head up Special Operations.” The prime minister stood up. “How long until the party, Charles?”

“We have forty-five minutes.”

“I think I might change. Put on a new tie. What do you think?”

“Maybe the blue one?”

“Good idea.”

The file that Blunt had brought to the office was still on the desk. There was a photograph of Alex Rider clipped to the first page. The prime minister closed it and slid it into a drawer. Then he went out to get changed.

24

UNHAPPY LANDING

THE AIRPORT WAS ON THE OUTSKIRTS of a small town made up of brightly colored houses and shops and seemed to be a stopping point for tourists on their way to or from safari. There were half a dozen private planes lined up beside the single runway and a fancy clubhouse with wooden tables and sunshades where passengers could wait. Everything was very neat. The lawns and the hedges could have belonged to an English country house. There was a small playground with swings and a seesaw, and the children who were playing there were well-dressed and quiet. The evening was completely calm, with the sun setting behind the great mass of Mount Kenya, and the occasional clatter of a propeller starting up or the buzz of a plane landing seemed strangely inappropriate. Surely they could find somewhere else to go about the business of air travel!

Alex Rider took this all in as the Piper J-3 Cub came in to land. They flew low over a row of chalets with the word LAIKIPIA painted in large letters across the roofs, and he guessed that this must be the name of the town. They had been flying for about an hour, heading southeast. He knew they couldn’t have gone much farther. Looking over Rahim’s shoulder, he had watched the needle on the fuel indicator begin its downward journey. It had arrived at zero a while ago.

After everything he had been through, climbing into the rear seat of the Piper had almost been too much. Pulling himself up the rope, inch by inch, while being whipped through the air at eighty miles per hour and six thousand feet above the ground, he had forced his mind to go blank, to concentrate—

totally—on what he had to do. He didn’t look down. He wasn’t sure he had the stomach for it. But nor did he look up. That would only taunt him with how far he still had to go. All he could do was cling to the rope with his hands and his feet, trying to pretend that this was just a PE class at Brookland, that there was no wind rush on his face, no engines buzzing in his ears, and that when he got to the top he would be given a quick round of applause and then allowed to get changed for French.

The whole thing would have been impossible if the crop duster had been equipped with a closed cockpit. But there were no windows or doors, and when Alex reached the top of the rope, he was able to grab the edge of the plane and pull himself over and into the backseat. He landed awkwardly, his face and shoulder burrowing into the soft leather—but it felt wonderful. He was safe. And he was leaving the Reverend Desmond McCain, the Kikuyus, and the Simba Dam far behind him.

“Untie the rope!”

Rahim had turned around and shouted at him, the wind snatching the words away even as they were spoken. Alex did as he was told, untying the rope from the wing strut and letting it fall back to earth.

He watched it dwindle in the distance until it was no more than a wriggling worm and reflected that it could all too easily have been him, free-falling down to the earth far below. He couldn’t believe what he had just been through. He sank back into the seat, belted himself in, and let out a deep sigh of relief.

The RAW agent hadn’t spoken again, and Alex was grateful. He was utterly drained and although sleep was impossible with the wind battering against him, he tried as best he could to relax, somehow to recharge his batteries, to put this whole business behind him. He wanted to go home. With his eyes half open, he watched the landscape slide away beneath him, the different patches of green and brown crisscrossed by roads and dirt tracks with tiny buildings scattered here and there and hinting at some sort of life—normal life—carrying on in the vastness of the Kenyan bush. The Piper’s engine droned on. Rahim was wearing his camouflage jacket. Alex only had his shirt and pants, and as the evening drew in, he began to shiver. Very soon it would be night.

But even though the sun had gone, the sky was still glowing softly when Rahim suddenly shouted into his headset, getting permission from air traffic control at Laikipia to land. The little plane wavered in the air as if finding its balance. The ground, a long strip of tarmac, rushed toward them. Then they bumped down and taxied to a halt. A few airport workers, dressed in bright yellow overalls with TROPICAIR stenciled across their chest, glanced curiously in their direction. It wasn’t often they saw such an old-fashioned aircraft here. And a crop duster! There weren’t any crops for miles. A few tourists sitting outside the clubhouse stood up and watched them come in. A couple of them unfastened their cameras and took pictures.

Rahim turned off the engine and the propeller began to slow down. He took off his headset and twisted around. Alex wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but he was taken aback by the anger in the agent’s face.

“What did you think you were doing?” Rahim exploded. He still had to shout to make himself heard, but from the look of him, he would have shouted anyway. “You could have gotten yourself killed. You could have gotten me killed!”

“Rahim . . . ,” Alex began. He wanted to climb out of the plane. Couldn’t they have this argument over a cold drink and something to eat?

But Rahim was in no mood to go anywhere. “You stole my equipment. I cannot believe what you did.

You left me there—”

“I had to do it.”

“No! My job was to kill McCain. That was all. We could have dealt with his plan afterward. You disobeyed my instructions, Alex. Do you have any idea of the damage you’ve caused? And how do you think my people are going to explain all this to the Kenyan authorities? You took out an entire hydroelectric and irrigation system!”

“Well, maybe you can tell them we saved thousands of lives. They might like that.”

“McCain is still out there. He got away.”

“I left you your gun. Why didn’t you just go and shoot him?”

“Because I had to come after you.” Rahim shook his head in exasperation. “I should have left you to the crocodiles.”

There was a brief silence. The propeller was still turning, but more slowly.

“Where are we?” Alex asked. “What are we doing here?”

“This is Laikipia. We have to refuel. I’m leaving you here. I’ve contacted my people and they’ll arrange for you to be picked up.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going—”

That was as far as he got. To Alex, it appeared as if Rahim had snapped his head around the other way.

At the same time, he was aware of a sudden spray of red vapor filling the air in front of him. Alex looked back to see Desmond McCain, dressed in a brown linen suit, walking toward him, the Mauser pistol in his hand. He turned back to Rahim. The agent was dead. He had collapsed forward over the controls. There was a gaping wound in the side of his head.

Alex felt a wave of anger and disgust. He was also sorry. Despite everything, Rahim had come back for him and saved him . . . for the third time. Alex hadn’t even had a chance to thank him.

The propeller stopped.

McCain stood beside the plane, right next to the wing. The gun was now leveled at Alex. How had McCain gotten here? Alex was too shocked to think, but it occurred to him that if Rahim had chosen this airfield to refuel, then McCain might have landed here for exactly the same reason. All around him, he was aware of people—aircrew, tourists, children—running for cover, in panic. They had just seen a stumbling giant of a man, with a silver crucifix in his ear, appear from nowhere and commit murder for no obvious reason. They must think he was insane. If they only knew!

McCain didn’t seem to know where he was—or even to care. He had seen Alex and he had come to settle the score. Nothing else mattered.

“Get out of the plane,” McCain said. His voice was steady, but his eyes were bloodshot and unfocused, the skin around his face stretched tight. He was trembling slightly. He was doing his best to control it, but the muzzle of the gun gave him away.

Alex stayed where he was.

“What do you want, Mr. McCain?” he demanded. “I’m not going anywhere. Nor are you. Your wheat field is at the bottom of a lake. There isn’t going to be any plague. It’s all over.”

“Get. Out. Of. The. Plane,” McCain repeated. His finger tightened on the trigger. He was holding the gun as if he were trying to crush it.

“Why?”

“I want to see you kneeling in front of me. Just for once, I want you to behave like an ordinary child.

You’re going to cry and beg me not to hurt you. And then I’m going to put this gun between your eyes and shoot you dead.”

“Then you might as well shoot me here. I’m not playing your games.” McCain dropped the gun a few inches so that it was aiming at Alex’s legs. Alex knew that the skin of the Piper Cub would offer no protection at all. “I can make it slow . . . ,” McCain said.

Alex nodded. He took one more look around him. It didn’t seem as if anyone was going to come to his rescue. The whole airfield had emptied. The other planes—and now he spotted the Skyhawk that had first brought him to Simba River Lodge—were silent, unmoving. Surely someone would have called the police by now . . . assuming that there were any police operating in a remote town like Laikipia.

“All right,” he said.

He unbuckled his belt, gripped the sides of the plane, and began to pull himself out. At the same time, he glanced into the front of the plane, past the slumped figure of the pilot. He knew that Rahim had a gun. But there was no sign of it and no way he could search around without receiving a bullet himself.

What else? His eyes fell on the metal lever between the two seats. He thought of the two rubber pipes running underneath his feet, connected to the plastic tanks at the back of the plane. The pipes that had sprayed a wheat field with death.

The whole system must work on pressure, with the tank pumped up by the engine. They had been flying for an hour, so there had to be enough pressure in the tubes. But was there any of the mushroom spore left in the tanks? Alex didn’t dare turn around and look. McCain was still standing under the wing, waiting for him to climb down.

Alex stood up. As he swung his leg over the side, he pretended to stumble. His hand shot out, slamming the lever down. At once he heard a hiss—and a mere second later, a film of gray, slimy liquid squirted out of the pipes. McCain was taken by surprise. For a moment he was blinded, caught in the middle of the shower, the mushroom brew splashing over his head and into his eyes.

McCain fired his gun—but missed. After slamming the lever, Alex had thrown himself the other way, tumbling over the far side of the plane and down to the grass below. He heard the bullet thwack into the fuselage, inches from his head. At the same time, he hit the ground and cried out, a white flash blazing behind his eyes. He had landed badly, twisting his ankle beneath him. Worse still, the tanks had only contained a few dregs. Alex had barely got to his feet and begun to limp away before the shower stopped and McCain, cursing and wiping his eyes, was after him.

Alex could barely do more than hobble. His foot wouldn’t take his full weight. Every step was an agony that shot up his leg and all the way to his neck. He knew he wouldn’t be able to go much farther, and anyway, there was nowhere to go. Behind him, the grass and the landing strip stretched out, flat and empty. The perimeter was fenced off with an open gate leading to the edge of the town, but it was too far away. He would never reach it. McCain didn’t seem to be moving fast, but like a figure in a nightmare he was getting closer with every step.

Alex came to a line of drums stacked up on the grass right next to the tarmac, each one marked TOTAL

ESSENCE PLOMBÉE. Leaded fuel. Why was it written in French? McCain fired five times. The nearest drum shivered and fuel began to splash out, spouting in five directions. Alex dived for cover behind it. His ankle burned with pain. He wondered if he would be able to get up again.

McCain stopped about ten paces away, as if this was a game and he had all the time in the world.

Casually, he took out a fresh ammunition clip and reloaded the gun. Meanwhile, the fuel continued to gush out.

“You can’t hide from me, child,” McCain shouted. “ ‘Vengeance is mine. I will repay, sayeth the Lord.’

That’s Romans chapter twelve. A vengeful god . . . isn’t that a wonderful thing? And now, finally, the time for my vengeance has come. Let me see you.”

Alex tested one of the drums. It was full of fuel and too heavy to move. But the drum that McCain had punctured was emptying rapidly. Lying on his back, he pressed both feet against it and pushed with all his strength. It toppled over. Now Alex was exposed. There was nothing between him and McCain’s gun. He got to his knees, leaned on the drum, then rolled it over the tarmac toward McCain.

McCain smiled. He walked forward and place a single foot on the drum, stopping its progress. He had a clear view of Alex and at this range he couldn’t miss. Alex was still kneeling on the ground. It was just what he wanted.

“Is that the best you can do? Send a drum to run me over? You are a child, aren’t you? This isn’t a game, Alex. Do you know how many years I spent planning this operation?” McCain asked. His voice carried across the short distance. He was leaning forward, one foot still perched on the drum, his elbow resting on his thigh. “Do you have any idea what it meant to me? All I wanted was my rightful place in the world. Money is power and I was going to have more than you could possibly imagine.

“And now you are going to pay. I’m going to shoot you now. Not once but several times. And then I’m going to walk away.” He lifted the gun. “Good-bye, Alex. You’re going on a slow journey to hell.”

“Let me know what it’s like,” Alex said.

The fuel drum exploded. In the seconds before he had sent it rolling, Alex had attached the black gel-ink pen that Smithers had given him to the metal surface. He had activated it with a thirty-second fuse.

And it had worked. One moment, McCain was taking aim, the next he had disappeared in a pillar of flame that roared into the sky. It really was like a judgment from heaven. He didn’t even have time to scream.

Alex was already twisting away, trying to put as much space between himself and the inferno as he could. He was too close. Blazing droplets of aviation fuel rained down from the sky. He felt them hit his shoulders and back and with horror realized he was on fire. But the grass had recently been watered.

It was cool and damp under his hands. Alex rolled over again and again. His skin was burning. The pain was horrific. But after spinning half a dozen times, he had put out the flames.

He looked back at the tarmac. The charred, unrecognizable figure that had once been the Reverend Desmond McCain was on its knees. One final prayer. The silver earring had gone. There wasn’t very much of him left.

He heard shouting. Police and airport workers were running toward him. Alex couldn’t see them. He was stretched out on the grass, trying to bury himself in it. Was it really over at last, the journey that had begun in a Scottish castle and had led to an airport in Africa? How had he ever gotten himself into this?

He couldn’t move. And he was barely aware of the men who lifted him as gently as possible, laid him on a stretcher, and carried him away.

25

SOFT CENTERS

THE SNOW THAT HAD BEEN PROMISED in London had finally arrived.

Only a few inches had fallen during the night, but as usual, it had brought chaos to the streets. Buses had stayed in their depots, the subway system had shut down, schools were closed, and half the workforce had decided to take a day off and stay at home. Snowmen had appeared suddenly in all the London parks, standing under trees, leaning against walls, even sitting on benches . . . like some invading army that had come and seen and decided to take a well-earned rest before it set out to conquer.

It was the second week in February, and the winter had taken a grip on the city and seemed determined never to let go. The streets were empty, the parked cars huddled beneath their white blankets, but Jack Starbright had managed to persuade a taxi to bring her to St. Dominic’s Hospital in one of the northern suburbs of the city. She had been here before. It was a favorite place of the Special Operations Division of MI6 when its agents were injured in the field. This was where they sent them to recover. Alex had spent two weeks here after he had been shot by Scorpia.

Mrs. Jones was waiting for her in the reception area. She was wearing a black full-length coat with leather gloves and a scarf. It was hard to say if she had just arrived or if she was on her way out.

“How is he?” Jack asked.

“He’s much better,” Mrs. Jones said, and it occurred to Jack that she could have been talking about someone who had just recovered from a bad cold. “The burns have healed up and he won’t need any skin grafts. He won’t be playing any sports for a while. He fractured his ankle at Laikipia airport. But he has amazing powers of recovery. The doctors are very pleased with him.” She smiled. “He’s looking forward to seeing you.”

“Where is he?”

“Room nine on the second floor.”

“That’s the same room as last time.”

“Maybe we should name it after him.”

Jack shook her head. “I wouldn’t bother. He won’t be coming back.” The two women stood facing each other, each one waiting for the other to speak.

Mrs. Jones could see the accusation in Jack’s eyes. “This really wasn’t our fault,” she said. “Alex met McCain quite by accident. That business in Scotland had nothing to do with us.”

“But that didn’t stop you from sending him to Greenfields.”

“We had no idea that McCain was involved.”

“And if you had—would that have stopped you?”

Mrs. Jones shrugged. She had no need to answer.

There was a plastic bag resting on a chair. Mrs. Jones picked it up and handed it to Jack. “You might like to give this to Alex. It’s from Smithers. Some chocolates . . .”

“Oh yes? And what do they do? Explode when he puts them into his mouth?”

“They’re soft centers. Smithers thought he might enjoy them.” Jack took the bag. She glanced toward the elevator, then back at Mrs. Jones. “Promise me that this will be the end of it,” she said. “From what you’ve told me, this time it was worse than ever. It’s a miracle he’s still alive. Do you have any idea what this must be doing to him . . . inside his head, I mean?”

“Actually, I have a very good idea,” Mrs. Jones countered. “I asked our psychiatrists to run a few tests on him.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you. But I mean it, Mrs. Jones. Alex has done enough. I want you out of his life.”

Mrs. Jones sighed. “I can’t promise you that, I’m afraid. First of all, it’s not my decision. And anyway, as I said, this didn’t begin with us. Alex has a knack for finding trouble without any help.”

“I’m not going to let it happen again.”

“Believe me, Jack. I’ll be very happy if you can prevent it.” Mrs. Jones pulled up her collar and tightened her belt. “Anyway,” she said, “Alex is waiting for you. You’d better go up.”

“I’m going. Please thank Mr. Smithers for the chocolates.” Jack took the elevator to the second floor. She didn’t need to ask for directions. The layout of the hospital was all too familiar. As she approached the door of Alex’s room, a woman came out carrying a breakfast tray, and Jack recognized Diana Meacher, the attractive fair-haired nurse from New Zealand who had looked after Alex once before.

“Go right in,” the nurse said. “He’s been looking forward to seeing you. He’ll be so glad you’re here.” Jack hesitated, composing herself. Then she went into the room.

Alex was sitting up in bed, reading a magazine. His pajama top was open and she could see that, once again, he was heavily wrapped in bandages, this time around his neck and shoulders. His eyes were bright and he was smiling, but he looked bad. Pain had stamped its memory all over him. He was thin.

The haircut that Beckett had given him when he was smuggled out of the country didn’t help.

“Hello, Jack.”

“Hi, Alex.”

She went over to him and kissed him very gently, afraid that she would hurt him. Then she sat down beside the bed.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Terrible.”

“As terrible as you look?”

“Probably.” Alex put down the magazine, and Jack saw that even this movement made him wince.

“They’ve taken me off painkillers,” he explained. “They say they don’t want me to get addicted to them.”

“Oh, Alex . . .” Jack’s voice caught in her throat. She had been determined not to cry in front of him, but she couldn’t keep the tears from her eyes.

“I’m fine,” Alex said. “I’m already much better than I was a week ago.” In fact, Alex had spent ten days in the hospital in Nairobi before MI6 had flown him home.

“I wanted to come out and see you.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

Jack understood. If he looked this bad now, she could hardly imagine what he must have looked like then. He wouldn’t have wanted her to see him like that.

“Are you angry with me?” Alex asked.

“Of course not. I’m just relieved to see you. After you went missing, I was . . .” Jack stopped herself.

“When can you come home?” she asked.

“I was talking to the nurse just now. She says that if all goes well, it should only be a couple of days.

Tuesday. Wednesday at the latest.”

“Well, thank goodness for that,” Jack said. “You know what Thursday is.”

“No.” Alex had no idea.

“Alex!” Jack stared at him.

“Tell me . . .”

“Thursday, February thirteenth. It’s your birthday, Alex. You’re going to be fifteen.”

“Am I?” Alex laughed. “So, what are you going to buy me?”

“What do you want?”

“I want to go home. I want peace and quiet. And I want that new version of Assassin’s Creed . . . it’s just come out on PlayStation.”

“I’m not sure those violent computer games are good for you, Alex.” Jack didn’t tell him that she had already bought it and that a few of his closest friends were waiting for her call, hoping to come around.

Surely MI6 would leave him alone now. They had stolen almost a whole year of his life. But never again. Jack made herself that promise.

In front of her, Alex settled back into the pillows. His eyes were closed and even as she watched, he smiled and fell asleep.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

IT’S ALWAYS AMAZING how many people are willing to help me, giving up their time and opening doors that might otherwise stay closed—and it seems only right to name them here. I try to make the Alex Rider books as realistic as I can, and it simply wouldn’t be possible without them.

So to start at the beginning, Martin Pearce and Colin Tucker from British Energy showed me around the Size-well B nuclear power station in Suffolk. I’m assured that security there is rather tighter than it was at Jowada. I then visited the John Innes Center, which is part of the Norwich BioScience Institutes (and bears no resemblance at all to the Greenfields Center in this story). I was given an extensive tour by Dr. Wendy Harwood and Dr. Penny Sparrow, and they very kindly explained the principles of GM

technology and demonstrated the gene gun that I describe in Chapter 13. I owe a special debt of thanks to Dr. Hugh Martin, a principal lecturer at the Royal Agricultural College, who first suggested to me the method by which Desmond McCain poisons the crops in Kenya.

Jonathan Hinks, who is the chairman of the British Dam Society, introduced me to the concept of the double curvature arch dam and arranged for me to see one. I spent a very pleasant day in Scotland with Kenny Demp ster, from Scottish and Southern Energy, who gave me an extensive tour of the Monar Dam (the only double arch dam in the UK), located in the very beautiful Glen Strathfarrar.

Lea Sherwood, the brilliant stunt arranger who appeared in the film of Stormbreaker, assured me that Alex’s escape in Chapter 23 would have been possible, but perhaps you shouldn’t try it at home. The Gaelic translation in Chapter 2 was provided by Dr. Robert Dunbar at the University of Aberdeen. And I owe an apology to Professor Robin Smith from London Imperial College, who gave me a lengthy lesson in physics that sadly didn’t make it to the final draft.

As always, I have relied on the guidance and advice of my three editors: Jane Winterbotham and Chris Kloet at Walker Books and Michael Green in New York. Also in New York, Don Weisberg and the rest of the Philomel team moved mountains to make publication possible. My agent, Robert Kirby, gave me some great support when I needed it. My assistant, Olivia Zampi, organized everything with incredible patience and precision. And my son, Cass, was once again the first to read the manuscript, even though he’s now much too old for it.

Finally, thanks to my wife, Jill Green, who had to live through the writing of this. It wasn’t always fun.

Document Outline

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