Eagle Strike

and Alex had been represented by an avatar, a two-dimensional version of himself. But Cray had also built an actual physical version of the game. Alex reached out and touched one of the walls.

Sure enough, they weren"t really stone but some sort of toughened plastic. The whole thing was like one of those walk-throughs at Disneyland …an ancient world reproduced with high-tech modern construction. There had been a time when Alex wouldn"t have believed it possible, but he knew with a sick certainty that once the gates opened, he would find himself in a perfect reconstruction of the game—and that meant he would be facing the same challenges. Only this time it would be for real: real flames, real acid, real spears and—if he made a mistake—real death.

Cray had told him that he had used other “volunteers”. Presumably they had been filmed fighting their way through the various challenges; and all the time their emotions had been recorded and then somehow digitally transferred and programmed into the Gameslayer system. It was sick.

Alex realized that the darkness of the underground passages hadn"t even been part of the real challenge. That began now.

He didn"t move. He needed time to think, to remember as much as he could about the game he had played at the Pleasure Dome. There had been five zones. First some sort of temple, with a crossbow and a sword concealed in the walls. Would Cray provide him with weapons in this reconstruction? He would have to wait and see. What came after the temple? There had been a pit with a flying creature: half butterfly, half dragon. After that Alex had run down a corridor—

spears shooting out of the walls—and into a jungle, the home of the metallic snakes. Then there had been a mirror maze guarded by Aztec gods and finally a pool of fire, his exit to the next level.

A pool of fire. If that was reproduced here, it would kill him. Alex remembered what Cray had said. The comfort and the quiet of death. There was no way out of this madhouse. If he did manage to survive the five zones, he would be allowed to finish it by throwing himself into the flames.

Alex felt hatred well up inside him. He could actually taste it. Damian Cray was beyond evil.

What could he do? There would be no way back through the tunnels and Alex wasn"t sure he had the nerve even to try. He had only one choice, and that was to continue. He had almost beaten the game once. That at least gave him a little hope. On the other hand, there was a world of difference between manipulating a controller and actually attempting the action himself. He couldn"t move or react with the speed of an electronic figure. Nor would he be given extra lives.

If he was killed once, he would stay dead.

He stood up. At once the gates swung silently open, and there ahead of him was the temple that he had last seen in the game. He wondered if his progress was being monitored. Could he at least rely on an element of surprise?

He walked through the gates. The temple was exactly how he remembered it from the screen at the Pleasure Dome: a vast space with stone walls covered in strange carvings and pillars, statues crouching at their base, stretching far above him. Even the stained-glass windows had been reproduced with images of UFOs hovering over fields of golden corn. And there too were the cameras, swivelling to follow him and, presumably, to record whatever progress he made. Organ music, modern rather than religious, throbbed all around him. Alex shivered, barely able to accept that this was really happening.

He walked further into the temple, every sense alert, waiting for an attack that he knew could come from any direction. He wished now that he had played Feathered Serpent more carefully.

He had raced through the zones at such speed that he had probably missed half of the ambushes.

His feet rang out on the silver floor. Ahead of him, rusting staircases that reminded him of a submarine or a submerged ship twisted upwards. He thought of trying one of them. But he hadn"t gone that way when he was playing the game and preferred not to now. It was better to stick with what he knew.

The alcove that contained the crossbow was underneath a wooden pulpit, carved in the shape of a dragon. It was almost completely covered by what looked like green ivy—but Alex knew that the twisting vines carried an electrical charge. He could see the weapon resting against the stonework, and there was just enough of a gap. Was it worth the risk? Alex tensed himself, preparing to reach in, then threw himself full length on the floor. Half a second later and it would have been fatal. He had remembered the razor boomerang at the same instant that he had heard a whistling sound coming from nowhere. He had no time to prepare himself. He hit the ground so hard that the breath was driven out of him. There was a flash and a series of sparks. He felt a burning pain across his shoulders and knew that he hadn"t been quite fast enough. The boomerang had sliced open his T-shirt, also cutting his skin. It had been a close thing. Any closer and he wouldn"t even have made it into the second zone.

And silently the cameras watched. Everything was being recorded. One day it would be fed into Cray"s software—presumably Feathered Serpent 2.

Alex sat up and tried to pull his torn shirt together. At least the boomerang had helped in one way. It had hit the ivy, cutting and short-circuiting the electric wires. Alex stretched an arm into the alcove and took out the crossbow. It was antique—wood and iron—but it seemed to be working. Even so, Cray had cheated him. There was an arrow in it, but it had no point. It was too blunt to damage anything.

He decided to take both the crossbow and the arrow with him anyway. He moved away from the alcove and over to the wall where he knew he would find the sword. It was about twenty metres above him but there were loose stones and handholds indicating a way up. Alex was about to start climbing but then he had second thoughts. He had already had one close escape. The wall would almost certainly be booby-trapped. He would be halfway up and a stone would come loose. If he fell, he would break a leg. Cray would enjoy that, watching him lie helpless on the silver floor until some other missile was fired into him to finish him off. And anyway, the sword would probably have no blade.

But thinking about it, Alex suddenly realized that he had the answer. He knew how to beat the simulated world that Cray had built.

Every computer game is a series of programmed events, with nothing random, nothing left to chance. When Alex had played the game in the Pleasure Dome, he had collected the crossbow and then used it to shoot the creature that had attacked him. In the same way, locked doors would have keys; poisons would have antidotes. No matter how much choice you might seem to have, you were always obeying a hidden set of rules.

But Alex had not been programmed. He was a human being and he could do what he wanted. It had cost him a torn shirt and a very narrow escape—but he had learnt his lesson. If he hadn"t tried to get the crossbow, he wouldn"t have made himself a target for the boomerang. Climbing up the wall to get the sword would put him in danger because he would be doing exactly what was expected.

To get out of the world that Cray had built for him, he had to do everything that wasn"t expected.

In other words he had to cheat.

And he would start right now.

He went over to one of the blazing torches and tried to remove it from the wall. He wasn"t surprised to find that the whole thing was bolted into place. Cray had thought of everything. But even if he controlled the holders, he couldn"t control the flames themselves. Alex pulled off his shirt and wrapped it round the end of the wooden arrow. Then he set it on fire. He smiled to himself. Now he had a weapon that hadn"t been programmed.

The exit door was at the far end of the temple. Alex was supposed to take a direct path to it.

Instead, he went the long way round, staying close to the walls, avoiding any traps that might be lying in wait. Ahead of him he could see the second chamber—the rain-drenched pit with its pillars rising from the depths below and ending at floor level. He passed through the door and stopped on a narrow ledge; the tops of the pillars—barely bigger than soup plates—offered him a path of stepping stones across the void. Alex remembered the flying creature that had attacked him. He looked up. Yes, there it was, almost lost in the gloom: a nylon wire running from the opposite side to the door above his head. He thrust upwards with the burning arrow, holding the flame against the wire.

It worked. The wire caught fire and then snapped. Cray had built a robotic version of the creature that had attacked him in the game. Alex knew that it would have swooped down when he was halfway across, rushing into him and knocking him off his perch, causing him to plunge into whatever lay below. Now he watched with quiet satisfaction as the creature tumbled down from the ceiling and dangled in front of him, a jumble of metal and feathers that was more like a dead parrot than a mythical monster.

The way ahead was clear but the rain was still falling, splashing down from some hidden sprinkler system. The stepping stones would be slippery. Alex knew that his avatar would have been unable to remove its shoes for better grip. He quickly slipped off his trainers, tied them together and hung them round his neck. His socks went into his pocket. Then he jumped. The trick, he knew, was to do this quickly: not to stop, not to look down. He took a breath, then started. The rain blinded him. The tops of the pillars were only just big enough to contain his bare feet. On the very last one he lost his balance. But he didn"t have to use his feet—he could move in a way that his avatar couldn"t. He threw himself forward, stretching out his hands and allowing his own momentum to carry him towards safety. His chest hit the ground and he clung on, dragging his legs over the edge of the pit. He had made it to the other side.

A corridor ran off to the left, the walls close together and decorated with hideous Aztec faces.

Alex remembered how his avatar had run through here, dodging between a hail of wooden spears. He glanced down and saw that there was what looked like a smoking stream in the floor.

Acid! What now?

He needed another weapon and he had an idea how to get one. He took out his socks, rolled them into a ball and threw them down the corridor. As he had hoped, the movement was enough to activate the sensors that controlled the hidden guns. Short wooden spears spat out of the lips of the Aztec gods at fantastic speed, striking the opposite walls. One of the spears broke in half.

Alex picked it up and felt the needle-sharp point. It was exactly what he wanted. He tucked it into the belt of his trousers. He still had the crossbow; now he had a bolt that might fit it too.

The computer game had been programmed so that there was only one way forward. Alex had been able to dodge both the spears and the acid river easily enough when he was playing Feathered Serpent. But he knew he would be unable to do the same in this grotesque three-dimensional version. He would only have to take one false step and he would be finished. He could imagine splashing into the acid and then panicking. He would be driven straight into the path of the spears as he tried to reach the next zone. No. There had to be another way.

Alex forced himself to concentrate. Ignore the rules! He turned the three words over and over in his mind. Moving along the corridor wasn"t an option. But how about up? He put on his shoes, then took a tentative step. The spears nearest the entrance had already been fired. He was safe so long as he didn"t move too far down the corridor. He grabbed hold of the wall and, balancing the crossbow over his shoulder, began to climb. The Aztec heads made perfect footholds, and only when he was at the very top did he begin to make his way along, high above the floor and away from danger. One step at a time, he edged forward. He came to a camera mounted in the ceiling and, with a smile, wrenched out the wire. There was a lot of it and he decided to keep that too.

He reached the end of the corridor and climbed down into the fourth zone, the jungle. He was surprised to discover that the vegetation pressing in on him from all sides was real. He had expected plastic and paper. He could feel the heat in the air and the ground underfoot was soft and wet. What traps were waiting for him here? He remembered the robotic snakes that had barely managed to get close when he played the game, and searched warily for the tracks that would propel something similar his way.

There were no tracks. Alex took another step forward and stopped, paralysed by the horror of what he saw.

There was a snake, and, like the leaves and the creepers, it was real. It was as thick as a man"s waist and at least five metres long, lying motionless in a patch of long grass. Its eyes were two black diamonds. For a brief second, Alex hoped it might be dead. But then its tongue flickered out and the whole body heaved, and he knew that he was facing a living thing—one that was beyond nightmares.

The snake had been encased in a fantastic body suit. Alex had no idea how long it could have survived wrapped up like this. As terrifying as the creature was, he still felt a spark of pity for it, seeing what had been done. The suit was made out of wire that had been twisted round and round the full length of the animal, with vicious spikes and razors welded on from the neck all the way to the tail. Looking past the tail, Alex could see dozens of lines cut into the soft ground.

Whatever the snake touched, it sliced. It couldn"t help itself. And it was slithering towards him.

He couldn"t have moved if he had wanted to, but something told him that keeping still was the only chance he had. The snake had to be some sort of boa constrictor, part of the Boidae family.

A useless piece of information he had picked up in biology class suddenly came back to him.

The snake ate mainly birds and monkeys, finding its victims by smell, then coiling round and suffocating them. But Alex knew that if the snake attacked him, this wouldn"t be how he would die. The razors and spikes would cut him to pieces.

And it was getting closer. Wave after wave of glinting silver rippled behind it as it dragged the razors along. Now it was just a metre away. Moving very slowly, Alex lowered the crossbow from his shoulder. He pulled the wire back to load it, then reached into the waistband of his trousers. The broken spear was still there. Trying not to give the snake any reason to attack him, Alex fixed the length of wood into the stock. He was lucky. The spear was exactly the right length.

He wasn"t meant to have a weapon in this zone. That hadn"t been part of the program. But despite everything Cray had thrown at him he still had the crossbow and now it was loaded.

Alex cried out. He couldn"t help himself. The snake had suddenly jerked forward, dragging itself over his trainer. The razors cut into the soft material, only millimetres away from his foot. He instinctively kicked out. At once the snake reared back. Alex saw black flames ignite in its eyes.

Its tongue flickered. It was about to launch itself at him. He brought the crossbow round and fired. There was nothing else he could do. The bolt entered the snake"s mouth and continued out of the back of its head. Alex leapt back, avoiding the deadly convulsions of the creature"s body.

The snake thrashed and twisted, cutting the grass and the nearby bushes to shreds. Then it lay still.

Alex knew that he had killed it, and he wasn"t sorry. What had been done to the snake was revolting. He was glad he had put it out of its misery.

There was one more zone left—the mirror maze. Alex knew that there would be Aztec gods waiting for him. Probably guards in fancy dress. Even if he got past them, he would only find himself facing the pool of fire. But he"d had enough. To hell with Damian Cray. He looked up.

He had disabled one of the security cameras and there weren"t any others in view. He had found a blind spot in this insane playground. That suited him perfectly.

It was time to find his own way out.

THE TRUTH ABOUT ALEX

« ^ »

here are no gods crueller or more ferocious than those of the Aztecs. That was the reason why Damian Cray had chosen them to inhabit his computer game.

He had summoned three of them to patrol the mirror maze, the fifth and last zone in the huge arena he had built beneath the compound. Tlaloc, the god of rain, was half human, half alligator, with jagged teeth, claw-like hands and a thick scaly tail that dragged behind him. Xipe Totec, the lord of spring, had torn out his own eyes. They were still dangling in front of his gruesome, pain-distorted face. And Xolotl, bringer of fire, walked on feet that had been smashed and wrenched round to face backwards. Flames leapt out of his hands, reflected a hundred times in the mirrors and adding to the twisting clouds of smoke.

Of course, there was nothing supernatural about the three creatures waiting for Alex to appear.

Beneath the grotesque masks, the plastic skin and make-up, they were nothing more than criminals, recently released from Bijlmer, the largest prison in the Netherlands. They now worked as guards for Cray Software Technology, but they had special duties too. This was one of them. The three men were armed with curved swords, javelins, steel claws and flame-throwers.

They were looking forward to using them.

It was the one dressed as Xolotl who saw Alex first.

The camera in zone three had gone down, so there had been no way of knowing if Alex was on his way or if the snake had finished him. But suddenly there was a movement. The guard saw a figure lurch round a corner, naked to the waist. The boy was making no attempt to hide, and the guard saw why.

Alex Rider was soaked in blood. His entire chest was bright red. His mouth was opening and closing, but no sound came out. Then the guard saw the wooden spear sticking out of his chest.

The boy had obviously tried to run down the corridor but hadn"t quite made it. One of the spears had found its target.

Alex saw the guard and stopped. He dropped to his knees. One hand pointed limply at the spear, then fell. He looked upwards and tried to speak. More blood trickled out of his mouth. His eyes closed and he pitched to one side. He didn"t move again.

The guard relaxed. The boy"s death meant nothing to him. He reached into the pocket of his chain-mail shirt and took out a radio transmitter.

“It"s over,” he said, speaking in Dutch. “The boy"s been killed by a spear.” Neon strips flickered on throughout the game zone. In the harsh white light the different zones seemed cruder, more like fairground attractions. The guards, too, looked ridiculous in their fancy dress. The dangling eyes were painted ping-pong balls. The alligator body was nothing more than a rubber suit. The backward-facing feet could have come out of a joke shop. The three of them formed a circle around Alex.

“He"s still breathing,” one of them said.

“Not for much longer.” The second guard glanced at the point of the spear, covered in rapidly congealing blood.

“What shall we do with him?”

“Leave him here. It"s not our job. Disposal can pick him up later.” They walked away. One of them stopped beside a wall, painted to look like crumbling stone, and pulled open a concealed panel to reveal a button. He pressed it and the wall slid open. There was a brightly lit corridor on the other side. The three men went off to change.

Alex opened his eyes.

The trick he had played was so old that he was almost ashamed. If it had been done on the stage, it wouldn"t have fooled a six-year-old. But he supposed that circumstances were a little different here.

Left on his own in the miniature jungle, he had reclaimed the broken spear that he had used to kilt the snake. He had tied it to his chest using the wire he had torn out of the security camera.

Then he had covered himself with blood taken from the dead snake. That had been the worst part, but he"d had to make sure that the illusion would work. Steeling himself, he had scooped up some more of the blood and put it in his mouth. He could still taste it now and he was having to force himself not to swallow. But it had fooled the men completely. None of them had looked too closely. They had seen what they wanted to see.

Alex waited until he was certain he was alone, then sat up and untied the spear. He would just have to hope that the cameras had all been turned off when the game had ended. The exit was still open and Alex stole through, leaving the make-believe world behind him. He found himself in an ordinary corridor, stretching into the distance with tiled walls and plain wooden doors on either side. He knew that although the immediate danger was behind him, he could hardly afford to start relaxing yet. He was half naked and covered in blood. He was still trapped in the heart of the compound. And it could only be a matter of time before someone discovered that the body had disappeared and realized the trick that had been played.

He opened the first of the doors. It led into a storage cupboard. The second and third doors were locked, but halfway down the corridor he found a changing room with showers, lockers and a laundry basket. Alex knew that it would cost him precious minutes, but he had to get clean. He stripped and showered, then dried himself and got dressed again. Before he left the room he searched through the laundry basket and found a shirt to replace the one he had burnt. The shirt was dirty and two sizes too big, but he pulled it on gratefully.

Carefully he opened the door—and quickly closed it again as two men walked past, talking in Dutch. They seemed to be heading for the mirror maze, and Alex hoped they weren"t part of the disposal team. If so, the alarm would be raised at any moment. He counted the seconds until they had gone, then crept out and hurried the other way.

He came to a staircase. He had no idea where it went, but he was certain he had to go up.

The stairs led to a circular area with several corridors leading off it. There were no windows. The only illumination came from industrial lights set at intervals in the ceiling. He looked at his watch. It was eleven fifteen. Two and a quarter hours had passed since he had first broken into the compound; it felt much longer. He thought about Jack, waiting for him in the hotel in Amsterdam. She would be out of her mind with worry.

Everything was silent. Alex guessed that most of Cray"s people would be asleep. He chose a corridor and followed it to another staircase. Again he went up, and found himself in a room that he knew. Cray"s study. The room where he had seen the man called Charlie Roper die.

Alex was almost afraid to go in. But the room was deserted and, peering through the opening, he could see that the bottle-shaped chamber had been cleared, the money and the body taken away.

It seemed strange to him that there should be no guard assigned to this room, at the very heart of Cray"s network. But then again, why should there be? All the security was centred on the main gate. Alex was supposedly dead. Cray had nothing to fear.

Ahead of him was the staircase that he knew would lead up to the glass cube and out onto the square. But as tempted as he was to race over to it, Alex realized he would never have another opportunity like this. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that even if he made it to MI6, he still had no real proof that Cray wasn"t just the pop celebrity and businessman that everyone thought. Alan Blunt and Mrs Jones hadn"t believed him the last time he"d seen them.

They might not believe him again.

Ignoring his first instincts, Alex went over to the desk. There were about a dozen framed photographs on the surface, each and every one showing a picture of Damian Cray. Ignoring them, Alex turned his attention to the drawers. They were unlocked. The lower drawers contained dozens of different documents but most of them were nothing more than lists of figures and hardly looked promising. Then he came to the last drawer and let out a gasp of disbelief. The metallic capsule that Cray had been holding when he talked to the American was simply sitting there. Alex picked it up and weighed it in the palm of his hand. The flash drive. It contained computer codes. Its job was to break through some sort of security system. It had come with a price tag of two and a half million dollars. It had cost Roper his life.

And Alex had it! He wanted to examine it, but he could do that later. He slipped it into his trouser pocket and hurried over to the stairs.

Ten minutes later the alarms sounded throughout the compound. The two men that Alex had seen had indeed gone into the mirror maze to pick up the body and discovered that it wasn"t there.

They should have raised the alarm at once, but there had been a delay. The men had assumed that one of the other teams must have collected it and had gone to find them. It was only when they discovered the dead snake and the spear with the coil of wire that they put together what had taken place.

While this was happening, a van was driving out of the compound. Neither the tired guards at the gate nor the driver had noticed the figure lying flat, spreadeagled on the roof. But why should they? The van was leaving, not arriving. It didn"t even stop in front of the security cameras. The guard merely checked the driver"s ID and opened the gate. The alarm rang seconds after the van had passed through.

There was a system in place at Cray Software Technology. Nobody was allowed to enter or leave during a security alert. Every van was equipped with a two-way radio and the guard at the gate immediately signalled to the driver and told him to return. The driver stopped before he had even reached the traffic light and wearily obeyed. But it was already too late.

Alex slipped off the roof and dropped to the ground. Then he ran off into the night.

Damian Cray was back in his office, sitting on the sofa holding a glass of milk. He had been in bed when the alarm went off and now he was wearing a silver dressing gown, dark blue pyjamas and soft cotton slippers. Something bad had happened to his face. The life had drained out of it, leaving behind a cold, empty mask that could have been cut out of glass. A single vein throbbed above one of his glazed eyes.

Cray had just discovered that the flash drive had been taken from his desk. He had searched all the drawers, ripping them out, upturning them and scattering their contents across the floor.

Then, with an inarticulate howl of rage, he had thrown himself onto the desktop, flailing about with his arms and sending telephones, files and photograph frames flying. He had smashed a paperweight into his computer screen, shattering the glass. And then he had sat down on the sofa and called for a glass of milk.

Yassen Gregorovich had watched all this without speaking. He too had been called from his room by the alarm bells, but, unlike Cray, he hadn"t been asleep. Yassen never slept for more than four hours. The night was too valuable. He might go for a run or work out in the gym. He might listen to classical music. On this night he had been working with a tape recorder and a well-thumbed exercise book. He was teaching himself Japanese, one of the nine languages he had made it his business to learn.

Yassen had heard the alarms and known instinctively that Alex Rider had escaped. He had turned off the tape recorder. And he had smiled.

Now he waited for Cray to break the silence. It had been Yassen who had suggested quietly that Cray should look for the flash drive. He wondered if he would get the blame for the theft.

“He was meant to be dead!” Cray moaned. “They told me he was dead!” He glanced at Yassen, suddenly angry. “You knew he"d been in here.”

“I suspected it,” Yassen said.

“Why?”

Yassen considered. “Because he"s Alex,” he said simply.

“Then tell me about him!”

“There is only so much I can tell you.” Yassen stared into the distance. His face gave nothing away. “The truth about Alex is that there is not a boy in the world like him,” he began, speaking slowly and softly. “Consider for a moment. Tonight you tried to kill him—and not just simply with a bullet or a knife, but in a way that should have terrified him. He escaped and he found his way here. He must have seen the stairs. Any other boy—any man even—would have climbed them instantly. His only desire would have been to get out of here. But not Alex. He stopped; he searched. That is what makes him unique, and that is why he is so valuable to MI6.”

“How did he find his way here?”

“I don"t know. If you"d allowed me to question him before you sent him into that game of yours, I might have been able to find out.”

“This is not my fault, Mr Gregorovich! You should have killed him in the South of France when you had the chance.” Cray drank the milk and set the glass down. He had a white moustache on his upper Lip. “Why didn"t you?” he demanded.

“I tried…”

“That nonsense in the bullring! That was stupid. I think you knew he"d escape.”

“I hoped he might,” Yassen agreed. He was beginning to get bored with Cray. He didn"t like being asked to explain himself, and when he spoke again it was almost as much for his own benefit as Cray"s. “I knew him…” he said.

“You mean … before Saint-Pierre?”

“I met him once. But even then … I knew him already. The moment I saw him, I knew who he was and what he was. The image of his father…” Yassen stopped himself. He had already said more than he had meant to. “He knows nothing of this,” he muttered. “No one has ever told him the truth.”

But Cray was no longer interested. “I can"t do anything without the flash drive,” he moaned, and suddenly there were tears brimming in his eyes. “It"s all over! Eagle Strike! All the planning.

Years and years of it. Millions of pounds. And it"s all your fault!” So there it was at last, the finger of blame.

For a few seconds, Yassen Gregorovich was seriously tempted to kill Damian Cray. It would be very quick: a three-finger strike into the pale, flabby throat. Yassen had worked for many evil people—not that he ever thought of them in terms of good and evil. All that mattered to him was how much they were prepared to pay. Some of them—Herod Sayle, for example—had planned to kill millions of people. The numbers were irrelevant to Yassen. People died all the time. He knew that every time he drew a breath, at that exact moment, somewhere in the world a hundred or a thousand people would be taking their last. Death was everywhere; it could not be measured.

But recently something inside him had changed. Perhaps it was meeting Alex again that had done it; perhaps it was his age. Although Yassen looked as if he was in his late twenties, he was in fact thirty-five. He was getting old. Too old, anyway, for his line of work. He was beginning to think it might be time to stop.

And that was why he now decided not to murder Damian Cray. Eagle Strike was only two days away. It would make him richer than he could have dreamt and it would allow him to return, at last, to his homeland, Russia. He would buy a house in St Petersburg and live comfortably, perhaps doing occasional business with the Russian mafia. The city was teeming with criminal activity and for a man with his wealth and experience, anything would be possible.

Yassen stretched out a hand, the same hand he would have used to strike his employer down.

“You worry too much,” he said. “For all we know, Alex may still be in the compound. But even if he has made it through the gate, he can"t have gone far. He has to get out of Sloterdijk and back to Amsterdam. I have already instructed every man we have to get out there and find him. If he tries to get into the city, he will be intercepted.”

“How do you know he"s going into the city?” Cray demanded.

“It"s the middle of the night. Where else could he go?” Yassen stood up and yawned. “Alex Rider will be back here before sunrise and you will have your flash drive.”

“Good.” Cray looked at the wreckage scattered across the floor. “And next time I get my hands on him I"ll make sure he doesn"t walk away. Next time I"ll deal with him myself.” Yassen said nothing. Turning his back on Damian Cray, he walked slowly out of the room.

PEDAL POWER

« ^ »

he local train pulled into Amsterdam"s Central Station and began to slow down. Alex was sitting on his own, his face resting against the window, barely conscious of the long, empty platforms or the great canopy stretching over his head. It was around midnight and he was exhausted. He knew Jack would be frantic, waiting for him at the hotel. He was eager to see her. He suddenly felt a need to be looked after. He just wanted a hot bath, a hot chocolate … and bed.

The first time he had gone out to Sloterdijk, he had cycled both ways. But the second time, he had saved his energy and left the bike at the station. The journey back was short but he was enjoying it, knowing that every second put Cray and his compound a few more metres behind him.

He also needed the time to think about what he had just been through, to try to understand what it all meant. A plane that burst into flames. A VIP lounge. Something called Milstar. The man with the pock-marked face…

And he still had no answer to the biggest question of all. Why was Cray doing all this? He was massively rich. He had fans all over the world. Only a few days ago he had been shaking hands with the president of the United States. His music was still played on the radio and his every appearance drew massive crowds. The Gameslayer system would make him another fortune. If ever there was a man who had no need to conspire and to kill, it was him.

Eagle Strike.

What did the two words mean?

The train came to a halt; the doors hissed open. Alex checked that the flash drive was still in his pocket and got out.

There was barely anyone around on the platform but the main ticket hall was more crowded.

Students and other young travellers were arriving on the international lines. Some of them were slumped on the floor, leaning against oversized rucksacks. They all looked spaced out in the hard, artificial light. Alex guessed it would take him about ten minutes to cycle down to the hotel on the Herengracht. If he was awake enough to remember where it was.

He passed through the heavy glass doors and found his bike where he had left it, chained to some railings. He had just unlocked it when he stopped, sensing the danger before he even saw it. This was something he had never learnt. Even his uncle, who had spent years training him to be a spy, would have been unable to explain it; the instinct that now told him he had to move—and fast.

He looked around him. There was a wide cobbled area leading down to an expanse of water, with the city beyond. A kiosk selling hot dogs was still open. Sausages were turning over a burner but there was no sign of the vendor. A few couples were strolling across the bridges over the canals, enjoying a night that had become warm and dry. The sky wasn"t black so much as a deep midnight blue.

Somewhere a clock struck the hour, the chimes echoing across the city.

Alex noticed a car, parked so that it faced the station. Its headlamps blinked on, throwing a beam of light across the square towards him. A moment later a second car did the same. Then a third.

All three cars were the same: two-seater Smart cars. More lights came on. There were six vehicles parked in a semicircle around him, covering every angle of the station square. They were all black. With their short bodies and slightly bulbous driving compartments, they looked almost like toys. But Alex knew with a feeling of cold certainty that they weren"t here for fun.

Doors swung open. Men stepped out, turned into black silhouettes by their own headlamps. For a split second nobody moved. They had him. There was nowhere for him to go.

Alex stretched out his left thumb, moving it towards the bell that still looked ridiculous, attached to the handlebar of his bike. There was a small silver lever sticking out. Pushing it would ring the bell. Alex pulled. The top of the bell sprang open to reveal five buttons inside, each one a different colour. Smithers had described them in the manual. They were colour-coded for ease of use. Now it was time to find out if they worked.

As if sensing that something was about to happen, the black shadows had begun to move across the square. Alex pressed the orange button and felt the shudder beneath his hands as two tiny heat-seeking missiles exploded out of the ends of the handlebars. Trailing orange flames, they shot across the square. Alex saw the men stop, uncertain. The missiles soared into the air, then curved back, their movement perfectly synchronized. As Alex had suspected, the hottest thing in the square was the grill in the hot-dog kiosk. The missiles fell on it, both striking at exactly the same time. There was a huge explosion, a fireball of flame that spread across the cobbles and was reflected in the water of the canal. Burning fragments of wood and pieces of sausage rained down. The blast hadn"t been strong enough to kill anyone, but it had created the perfect diversion. Alex grabbed the bike and dragged it back into the station. The square was blocked.

This was the only way.

But even as he re-entered the ticket hall, he saw other men running across the concourse towards him. At this time of night the crowds were moving slowly. Anyone running had to have a special reason, and Alex knew for certain that the reason was him. Cray"s men must have been in radio contact with each other. Now that one group had spotted him, they would all know where he was.

He jumped on the bike and pedalled along the flat stone floor as fast as he could: past the ticket booths, the newspaper kiosks, the information boards and the ramps leading up to the platforms, trying to put as much space as he could between himself and his pursuers. A woman pushing a motorized cleaning machine stepped in front of him and he had to swerve, almost knocking over a bearded man with a vast rucksack. The man swore at him in German. Alex raced on.

There was a door at the very end of the main hall, but before he could reach it, it burst open and more men came running in, blocking his way. Pedalling furiously, Alex spun the bike round and headed for the one way out of this nightmare. An empty escalator, going down. Before he even knew what he was doing, he had launched himself onto the metal treads and was bouncing and shuddering head first into the ground. He was thrown from side to side, his body slamming against the steel panels. He wondered if the front wheel would crumple with the strain or if the tyres would puncture against the sharp edges. But then he had reached the bottom and he was riding—bizarrely—through a subway station, with ticket windows on one side and automatic gates on the other. He was glad it was so late. The station was almost empty. But still a few heads turned in astonishment as he entered a long passageway and disappeared from sight.

It was definitely the wrong time for this, but even so Alex found himself admiring the Bad Boy"s handling ability. The aluminium frame was light and manageable but the solid down tube kept the bike stable. He came to a corner and automatically went into attack position. He pressed down on the outside pedal and put his weight on it, at the same time keeping his body low. His entire centre of gravity was focused on the point where the tyres came into contact with the ground, and the bike took the corner with total control. This was something Alex had learnt years ago, mountain biking in the Pennines. He had never expected to use the same techniques in a subway station under Amsterdam!

A second escalator brought him back up to street level and Alex found himself on the other side of the square, away from the station. The remains of the hot-dog kiosk were still burning. A police car had arrived and he could see the hysterical hot-dog salesman trying to explain what had happened to an officer. For a moment he hoped he would be able to slip away unnoticed. But then he heard the screech of tyres as one of the Smart cars skidded backwards in an arc and then shot forward in his direction. They had seen him! And they were after him again.

He began to pedal down the Damrak, one of the main streets in Amsterdam, quickly picking up speed. He glanced back. A second Smart car had joined the first, and with a sinking heart he knew that his legs would be no match for their engines. He had perhaps twenty seconds before they caught up with him.

Then a bell clanged and there was a loud metallic clattering. A tram was coming towards him, thundering along the tracks on its way to the station. Alex knew what he had to do. He could hear the Smart cars coming up behind him. The tram was a great metal box, filling his vision ahead. At the very last moment, he twisted the handlebars, throwing himself directly in front of the tram. He saw the driver"s horrified face, felt the bicycle wheels shudder as they crossed the tracks. But then he was on the other side and the tram had become a wall that would—at least for a few seconds—separate him from the Smart cars.

Even so, one of them tried to follow. It was a terrible mistake. The car was halfway across the tracks when the tram hit it. There was a huge crash and the car spun away into the night. It was followed by a terrible grinding and metallic screaming as the tram derailed. The tram"s second carriage whipped round and hit the other Smart car, batting it away like a fly. As Alex pedalled away from the Damrak, across a pretty, white-painted bridge, he left behind him a scene of total devastation, the first police sirens cutting through the air.

He found himself cycling through a series of narrow streets that were more crowded, with people drifting in and out of pornographic cinemas and striptease clubs. He had accidentally drifted into the famous red-light district of Amsterdam. He wondered what Jack would make of that. A woman standing in a doorway winked at him. Alex ignored her and rode on.

There were three black motorbikes at the end of the street.

Alex groaned. They were 400cc Suzuki Bandits and there could only be one reason why they were there, silent and unmoving. They were waiting for him. The moment their riders saw him, they kick-started their engines. Alex knew he had to get away—and fast. He looked around.

On one side of him dozens of people were streaming in and out of a parade of neon-lit shops. On the other a narrow canal stretched into the distance, with darkness and possible safety on the other side. But how was he going to get across? There wasn"t a bridge in sight.

But perhaps there was a way. A boat was turning. It was one of the famous glass-topped cruisers, sitting low in the water and carrying tourists on a late-night dinner cruise. It had swung diagonally across the water so that it was almost touching both banks. The captain had misjudged the angle, and the boat seemed to be jammed.

Alex propelled himself forward. Simultaneously he pressed the green button under the bicycle bell. There was a water bottle suspended upside down under his saddle and out of the corner of his eye he saw a silver-grey liquid squirt out onto the road. He was hurtling towards the canal, leaving a snail-like trail behind him. He heard the roar of the Suzuki motorbikes and knew that they had caught up with him. Then everything happened at once.

Alex left the road, crossed the pavement and forced the bike up into the air. The first of the motorbikes reached the section of road that was covered with the ooze. At once the driver lost control, skidding so violently that he almost seemed to be throwing himself off on purpose. His bike smashed into a second bike, bringing that one down too. At the same time, Alex came down onto the reinforced glass roof of the tourist boat and began to pedal its full length. He could see diners gazing up at him in astonishment. A waiter with a tray of glasses spun round, dropping everything. There was the flash of a camera. Then he had reached the other side. Carried by his own momentum, he soared off the roof, over a line of bollards, and came to a skidding halt on the opposite bank of the canal. He looked back—just in time to see that the third Bandit had managed to follow him. It was already in the air and the diners on the boat were gazing up in alarm as it descended towards them. They were right to be scared. The motorbike was too heavy.

It crashed onto the glass roof, which shattered beneath it. Bike and rider disappeared into the cabin as the tourists, screaming, threw themselves out of the way. Plates and tables exploded; the lights in the cabin fused and went out. Alex didn"t have time to see more.

He wasn"t going to be able to hide in the darkness after all. Another pair of Bandits had found him, roaring up the side of the canal towards him. Pedalling frantically, he tried to get out of sight, turning into one road, cutting down another, around a corner, across a square. His legs and thighs were on fire. He knew he couldn"t go on much further.

And then he made his mistake.

It was an alleyway, dark and inviting. It would lead him somewhere he wouldn"t be found. That was what he thought. But he was only halfway down it when a man suddenly stepped out in front of him, holding a machine gun. Behind him the two Bandits edged closer, cutting off the way back.

The man with the machine gun took aim. Alex"s finger stabbed down, this time finding the yellow button. At once there was an explosion of brilliant white light as the magnesium flare concealed inside the Digital Evolution headlight ignited. Alex couldn"t believe how much light was pouring out of the bike. The whole area was illuminated. The man with the machine gun was completely blinded.

Alex hit the blue button. There was a loud hiss. Somewhere under his legs a cloud of blue smoke poured out of the air pump connected to the bicycle frame. The two Bandits had been chasing up behind him, and they now plunged into the smoke and disappeared.

Everything was chaotic. Brilliant light and thick smoke. The man with the machine gun opened fire, sensing that Alex must be somewhere near.

But Alex was already passing him and the bullets went wide, slicing into the first Bandit and killing the driver instantly. Somehow the second Bandit managed to get through, but then there was a thud, a scream and the sound of metal smashing into brick. The clatter of bullets stopped and Alex smiled grimly to himself, realizing what had happened. The man with the machine gun had just been run over by his friend on the bike.

His smite faded as yet another Smart car appeared from nowhere, still some distance away but already getting closer. How many of them were there? Surely Cray"s people would decide they"d had enough and give it a rest. But then Alex remembered the flash drive in his pocket and knew that Cray would rip all Amsterdam apart to get it back.

There was a bridge ahead of him, an old-fashioned construction of wood and metal with thick cables and counterweights. It crossed a much wider canal and there was a single barge approaching it. Alex was puzzled. The bridge was far too low to allow the barge to pass. Then a red traffic light blinked on; the bridge began to lift. Alex glanced back. The Smart car was about fifty metres behind him and this time there was nowhere to hide, nowhere else to go. He looked ahead of him. If he could just get to the other side of this canal, he really would be able to disappear. Nobody would be able to follow—at least not until the bridge had come down again.

But it looked as if he was already too late. The bridge had split in half, both sections rising at t he same speed, the gap over the water widening with every second.

The Smart car was accelerating.

Alex had no choice.

Feeling the pain, and knowing that he had reached the last reserves of his strength, Alex pushed down and the bike picked up speed. The car"s engine was louder now, howling in his ears, but he didn"t dare look back again. All his energy was focused on the rapidly rising bridge.

He hit the wooden surface when it was at a forty-five degree slant. Insanely he found himself thinking of some long-forgotten maths lesson at school. A right-angled triangle. He could see it clearly on the board. And he was cycling up its side!

He wasn"t going to make it. Every time he pushed down on the pedals it was a little harder, and he was barely halfway up the slope. He could see the gap—huge now—and the dark, cold water below. The car was right behind him. It was so close he could hear nothing apart from its engine, and the smell of petrol filled his nostrils. He pedalled one last time—and at the same moment pressed the red button in the bell: the ejector seat. There was a soft explosion right below him.

The saddle had rocketed off the bike, propelled by compressed air or some sort of ingenious hydraulic system. Alex shot into the air, over his side of the bridge, over the gap and then down onto the other side, rolling over and over as he tumbled all the way down. As he spun round, he saw the Smart car. Incredibly, it had tried to follow him. It was suspended in mid-air between the two halves of the bridge. He could see the driver"s face, the open eyes, the gritted teeth. Then the car plunged down. There was a great splash and it sank at once beneath the black surface of the canal.

Alex got painfully to his feet. The saddle was lying next to him and he picked it up. There was a message underneath. He wouldn"t have been able to read it while the saddle was attached to the frame. If you can read this, you owe me a new bike. Smithers had a warped sense of humour.

Carrying the saddle, Alex began to limp back to the hotel. He was too tired to smile.

EMERGENCY MEASURES

When Alex opened his eyes at eight the following morning, he found himself lying on a bed in a small, irregularly shaped room on the top floor, built into the roof. He hadn"t folded the shutters and sunlight was streaming in through the open window. Slowly he sat up, his body already complaining about the treatment it had received the night before. His clothes were neatly folded on a chair but he couldn"t remember putting them there. He looked over to the side and saw a note taped to the mirror.

breakfast served until ten. Hope you can make it downstairs! J xxx He smiled, recognizing Jack"s handwriting.

There was a tiny bathroom, hardly bigger than a cupboard, leading off the main room and Alex went in and washed. He cleaned his teeth, thankful for the taste of the peppermint. Even nearly ten hours later he hadn"t quite forgotten the taste of the snake"s blood. As he got dressed, he thought back to the night before when he had finally limped into the reception area to discover Jack waiting for him in one of the antique chairs. He hadn"t thought he had been too badly hurt but the look on her face had told him differently. She had ordered sandwiches and hot chocolate from the puzzled receptionist, then led him to the tiny lift that carried them up five floors. Jack hadn"t asked any questions and Alex had been grateful. He was too tired to explain, too tired to do anything.

Jack had made him take a shower, and by the time he had come out she had somehow managed to get her hands on a pile of plasters, bandages and antiseptic cream. Alex was sure he needed none of them and he was relieved when they were interrupted by the arrival of room service. He had thought he would be too tired to eat, but suddenly he found that he was ravenously hungry and wolfed down the lot while Jack watched. At last he had stretched out on the bed.

He was asleep the moment he closed his eyes.

Now he finished dressing, checked his bruises in the mirror, and went out. He took the creaking lift all the way down to a vaulted, low-ceilinged cellar underneath the reception area. This was where breakfast was served. It was a Dutch breakfast of cold meats, cheeses and bread rolls, served with coffee. Alex saw Jack sitting at a table on her own in a corner. He went over and joined her.

“Hi, Alex,” she said. She was obviously relieved to see him looking more like his old self. “How did you sleep?”

“Like a log.” He sat down. “Do you want me to tell you what happened last night?”

“Not yet. I have a feeling it"ll put me off my breakfast.” They ate, and then he told her everything that had happened from the moment he had entered Cray"s compound on the side of the truck. When he finished, there was a long silence. Jack"s last cup of coffee had gone cold.

“Damian Cray is a maniac!” she exclaimed. “I"ll tell you one thing, Alex, I"m never going to buy another of his CDs!” She sipped her coffee, grimaced and put the cup down. “But I still don"t get it,” she said. “What do you think he"s doing, for heaven"s sake? I mean … Cray is a national hero. He sang at Princess Diana"s wedding!”

“It was her birthday,” Alex corrected her.

“And he"s given zillions to charity. I went to one of his concerts once. Every penny he made went to Save the Children. Or maybe I got the name wrong; maybe it was Beat Up and Try to Kill the Children! Just what the hell is going on?”

“I don"t know. The more I think about it, the less sense it makes.”

“I don"t even want to think about it. I"m just relieved you managed to get out of there alive. And I hate myself for letting you go in alone.” She thought for a moment. “It seems to me you"ve done your bit,” she went on. “Now you have to go back to MI6 and tell them what you know.

You can take them the flash drive. This time they"ll have to believe you.”

“I couldn"t agree with you more,” Alex said. “But first of all we have to get out of Amsterdam.

And we"re going to have to be careful. Cray is bound to have people at the station. And at the airport for that matter.”

Jack nodded. “We"ll take a bus,” she said. “We can go to Rotterdam or Antwerp. Maybe we can get a plane from there.”

They had finished their breakfast. Now they packed, paid and left the hotel. Jack used cash. She was afraid that with all his resources, Cray might be able to track a credit card. They picked up a taxi at the flower market and took it out to the suburbs, where they caught a local bus. Alex realized it was going to be a long journey home, and that worried him. Twelve hours had passed since he had heard Cray announce that Eagle Strike would take place in two days" time. It was already the middle of the morning.

Less than thirty-six hours remained.

Damian Cray had woken early and was sitting up in a four-poster bed with mauve silk sheets and at least a dozen pillows. There was a tray in front of him, brought in by his personal maid along with the morning newspapers, specially flown over from England. He was eating his usual breakfast of organic porridge, Mexican honey (made by his own bees), soya milk and cranberries. It was well known that Cray was a vegetarian. At different times he had campaigned against battery farming, the transportation of live animals and the importation of goose liver pate.

This morning he had no appetite but he ate anyway. He had a personal dietitian who never let him forget it when he missed breakfast.

He was stilt eating when there was a knock at the door and Yassen Gregorovich came into the room.

“Well?” Cray demanded. It never bothered him having people in his bedroom. He had composed some of his best songs in bed.

“I"ve done what you said. I have men at Amsterdam Central, Amsterdam Zuid, Lelylaan, De Vlugtlaan … all the local stations. There are also men at Schiphol Airport and I"m covering the ports. But I don"t think Alex Rider will turn up at any of them.” “Then where is he?”

“If I were him, I"d head for Brussels or Paris. I have contacts in the police and I"ve got them looking out for him. If anybody sees him, we"ll hear about it. But my guess is that we won"t find him until he returns to England. He"ll go straight to MI6 and the flash drive will go with him.” Cray threw down his spoon. “You seem very unconcerned about it all,” he remarked.

Yassen said nothing.

“I have to say, I"m very disappointed in you, Mr Gregorovich. When I was setting up this operation, I was told you were the best. I was told you never made mistakes.” There was still no answer. Cray scowled. “I was paying you a great deal of money. Well, you can forget that now.

It"s finished. It"s all over. Eagle Strike isn"t going to happen. And what about me? MI6 are bound to find out about all this and if they come after me…” His voice cracked. “This was meant to be my moment of glory. This was my life"s work. Now it"s been destroyed, and it"s all thanks to you!”

“It"s not finished,” Yassen said. His voice hadn"t changed, but there was an icy quality to it which might have warned Cray that once again he had come perilously close to a sudden and unexpected death. The Russian looked down at the little man, propped up on his pillows in the bed. “But we have to take emergency measures. I have people in England. I have given them instructions. You will have the flash drive returned to you in time.”

“How are you going to manage that?” Cray asked. He didn"t sound convinced.

“I have been considering the situation. All along I have believed that Alex has been acting on his own. That it was chance that brought him to us.”

“He was staying at that house in the South of France.”

“Yes.”

“So how do you explain it?”

“Ask yourself this question. Why was Alex so upset by what happened to the journalist? It was none of his business. But he was angry. He risked his life coming onto the boat, the Fer de Lance. The answer is obvious. The friend he was staying with was a girl.”

“A girlfriend?” Cray smiled sarcastically.

“He must obviously have feelings for her. That is what set him on our trail.”

“And do you think this girl…?” Cray could see what the Russian was thinking, and suddenly the future didn"t seem so bleak after all. He sank back into the pillows. The breakfast tray rose and fell in front of him.

“What"s her name?” Cray asked.

“Sabina Pleasure,” Yassen said.

Sabina had always hated hospitals and everything about the Whitchurch reminded her why.

It was huge. You could imagine walking through the revolving doors and never coming out again. You might die; you might simply be swallowed up by the system. It would make no difference. Everything about the building was impersonal, as if it had been specially designed to make the patients feel like factory products. Doctors and nurses were coming in and out, looking exhausted and defeated. Even being close to the place filled Sabina with a sense of dread.

The Whitchurch was a brand-new hospital in south London. Sabina"s mother had brought her here. The two of them were in the car park, sitting together in Liz Pleasure"s VW Golf.

“Are you sure you don"t want me to come with you?” her mother was saying.

“No. I"ll be all right.”

“He is the same, Sabina. You have to know that. He"s been hurt. You may be shocked by how he looks. But underneath it all he"s still the same.”

“Does he want to see me?”

“Of course he does. He"s been looking forward to it. Just don"t stay too long. He gets tired…” It was the first time Sabina had visited her father since he had been airlifted back from France.

He hadn"t been strong enough to see her until today and, she realized, the same was true of her.

In a way, she had been dreading this. She had wondered what it would be like seeing him. He was badly burnt. He was still unable to walk. But in her dreams he was the same old dad. She had a photograph of him beside her bed and every night, before she went to sleep, she saw him as he had always been: shaggy and bookish but always healthy and smiling. She knew she would have to start facing reality the moment she walked into his room.

Sabina took a deep breath. She got out of the car and walked across the car park, past Accident and Emergency and into the hospital. The doors revolved and she found herself sucked into a reception area that was at once too busy and too brightly lit. Sabina couldn"t believe how crowded and noisy it was—more like the inside of a shopping mall than a hospital. There were indeed a couple of shops, one selling flowers, and next to it a café and delicatessen where people could buy sandwiches and snacks to carry up to the friends and relatives they were visiting.

Signs pointed in every direction. Cardiology. Paediatrics. Renal. Radiology. Even the names sounded somehow threatening.

Edward Pleasure was in Lister Ward, named after a nineteenth-century surgeon. Sabina knew that it was on the third floor but, looking around, she could see no sign of a lift. She was about to ask for directions when a man—a young doctor from the look of him—suddenly stepped into her path.

“Lost?” he asked. He was in his twenties, dark-haired, wearing a loose-fitting white coat and carrying a water cup. He looked as if he had stepped straight out of a television soap. He was smiling as if at some private joke and Sabina had to admit that maybe it was funny, her being lost when she was totally surrounded by signs.

“I"m looking for Lister Ward,” Sabina said.

“That"s on the third floor. I"m just going up there myself. But I"m afraid the lifts are out of order,” the doctor added.

That was strange. Her mother hadn"t mentioned it and she had been to the ward only the evening before. But Sabina imagined that in a hospital like this, things would break down all the time.

“There"s a staircase you can take. Why don"t you come along with me?” The doctor crumpled his cup and dropped it in a bin. He walked through the reception area and Sabina followed.

“So who are you visiting?” the doctor asked.

“My dad.”

“What"s wrong with him?”

“He had an accident.”

“That"s too bad. How is he getting on?”

“This is the first time I"ve visited him. He"s getting better… I think.” They went through a set of double doors and down a corridor. Sabina noticed that they had left all the visitors behind them. The corridor was long and empty. It brought them to a hallway where five different passages converged. To one side was a staircase leading up, but the doctor ignored it. “Isn"t that the way?” she asked.

“No.” The doctor turned and smiled again. He seemed to smile a lot. “That goes up to Urology.

You can get through to Lister Ward but this way"s shorter.” He gestured at a door and opened it.

Sabina followed him through.

To her surprise she found herself back out in the open air. The door led into a partly covered area round the side of the hospital, where supply vehicles parked. There was a raised loading bay and a number of crates already stacked up. One wall was lined by a row of dustbins, each one a different colour according to what sort of refuse it was meant to take.

“Excuse me, I think you"ve—” Sabina began.

But then her eyes widened in shock. The doctor was lunging towards her, and before she knew what was happening he had grabbed her round the neck. Her first, and her only, thought was that he was some sort of madman, and her response was automatic. Sabina had been to self-defence classes; her parents had insisted. Without so much as hesitating, she whirled round, driving her knee between the man"s legs. At the same time, she opened her mouth to scream. She had been taught that in a situation like this, noise was the one thing an attacker most feared.

But he was too fast for her. Even as the scream rose in her throat, his hand clamped tight over her mouth. He had seen what she was about to do and had twisted round behind her, one hand on her mouth, the other arm pinning her to him. Sabina knew now that she had assumed too much. The man had been wearing a white coat. He had been in the hospital. But of course he could have been anyone and she had been crazy to go with him. Never go anywhere with a stranger. How many times had her parents told her that?

An ambulance appeared, backing at speed into the service area. Sabina felt a surge of hope that gave her new strength. Whatever her attacker was planning to do, he had chosen the wrong place. The ambulance had arrived just in time. But then she realized that the man hadn"t reacted.

She had thought he would let her go and run away. On the contrary, he had been expecting the ambulance and began dragging her towards it. Sabina stared as the back of the ambulance burst open and two more men jumped out. This whole thing had been planned! The three of them were in it together. They had known she would be there, visiting her father, and had come to the hospital meaning to intercept her.

Somehow she managed to bite the hand that was clamped over her mouth. The fake doctor swore and let go. Sabina lashed out with her elbow and felt it crash into the man"s nose; he reeled backwards and suddenly she was free. She tried again to scream, to raise the alarm, but the two men from the ambulance were on her. One of them was holding something silver and pointed but Sabina only knew that it was a hypodermic syringe when she felt it jab into her arm. She squirmed and kicked, but she felt the strength rush out of her like water falling through a trapdoor. Her legs buckled and she would have fallen if the two men hadn"t caught hold of her.

She wasn"t unconscious. Her thoughts were clear. She knew that she was in terrible danger—

more danger than she had ever known—but she had no idea why this was happening.

Helplessly, Sabina was dragged towards the ambulance and thrown in. There was a mattress on the floor and at least that broke her fall. Then the doors slammed shut and she heard a lock being turned from the outside. She was trapped, on her own in an empty metal box, unable to move as the drug took effect. Sabina felt total despair.

The two men walked off into the hospital grounds as if nothing had taken place. The fake doctor removed his white coat and stuffed it into one of the bins. He was wearing an ordinary suit underneath and he saw that there was blood on the front of his shirt. His nose was bleeding, but that was good. When he went back into the hospital, he would simply look like one of the patients.

The ambulance drove slowly away. If anyone had bothered to look, they would have seen that the driver was dressed in exactly the same clothes as the other crews. Liz Pleasure actually noticed it leave, sitting in her VW in the car park. She was still there half an hour later, wondering what had happened to Sabina. But it would be a while yet before she realized that her daughter had disappeared.

UNFAIR EXCHANGE

Alex intended to take the flash drive straight to Alan Blunt. He would have telephoned ahead but he couldn"t be sure that Blunt would even take the call. One thing was certain. He wouldn"t feel safe until he had handed over the device. Once MI6 had it in their hands, he would be able to relax.

That was his plan—but everything changed as he stepped into the arrivals hall. There was a woman sitting at a coffee bar reading the evening newspaper. The front page was open. It was almost as if it had been put there for Alex to see. A photograph of Sabina. And a headline: Schoolgirl Disappears from Hospital

“This way,” Jack was saying. “We can get a cab.”

“Jack!”

Jack saw the look on his face and followed his eyes to the newspaper. Without saying another word, she hurried into the airport"s only shop and bought a copy for herself.

There wasn"t very much to the story—but at this stage there wasn"t a lot to tell. A fifteen-year-old schoolgirl from south London had been visiting her father at Whitchurch Hospital that morning. He had recently been injured in a terrorist incident in the South of France. Inexplicably she had never reached the ward, but instead had vanished into thin air. The police were urging any witnesses to come forward. Her mother had already made a television appeal for Sabina to come home.

“It"s Cray,” Alex said. His voice was empty. “He"s got her.”

“Oh God, Alex.” Jack sounded as wretched as he felt. “He"s done this to get the flash drive. We should have thought…”

“There was no way we could have expected this. How did he even know she was my friend?” Alex thought for a moment. “Yassen.” He answered his own question. “He must have told Cray.”

“You have to go to MI6 straight away. It"s the only thing you can do.”

“No. I want to go home first.”

“Alex—why?”

Alex looked down at the picture one last time, then crumpled the page in his hands. “Cray may have left a message for me,” he said.

There was a message. But it came in a form that Alex hadn"t quite expected.

Jack had gone into the house first, checking to make sure there was no one waiting for them.

Then she called Alex. She looked grim as she stood at the front door.

“It"s in the sitting room,” she said.

“It” was a brand-new widescreen television. Someone had been into the house. They had brought the television and left it in the middle of the room. There was a webcam perched on top; a brand-new red cable snaked into a junction box in the wall.

“A present from Cray,” Jack murmured.

“I don"t think it"s a present,” Alex said.

There was a remote control next to the webcam. Reluctantly Alex picked it up. He knew he wasn"t going to like what he was about to see, but there was no way he could ignore it. He turned the television on.

The screen flickered and cleared and suddenly he found himself face to face with Damian Cray.

Somehow he wasn"t surprised. He wondered if Cray had returned to England or if he was transmitting from Amsterdam. He knew that this was a live image and that his own picture would be sent back via the webcam. Slowly he sat down in front of the screen. He showed no emotion at all.

“Alex!” Cray looked relaxed and cheerful. His voice was so clear he could have been in the room with them. “I"m so glad you got back safely. I"ve been waiting to speak to you.”

“Where"s Sabina?” Alex asked.

“Where"s Sabina? Where"s Sabina? How very sweet! Young love!” The image changed. Alex heard Jack gasp. Sabina was lying on a bunk in a bare room. Her hair was dishevelled but otherwise she seemed unhurt. She looked up at the camera and Alex could see the fear and confusion in her eyes.

Then the picture switched back to Cray. “We haven"t damaged her… yet,” he said. “But that could change at any time.”

“I"m not giving you the flash drive,” Alex said.

“Hear me out, Alex.” Cray leant forward so that he seemed to come closer to the screen. “Young people these days are so hot-headed! I"ve gone to a great deal of trouble and expense on account of you. And the thing is, you are going to give me the flash drive because if you don"t your girlfriend is going to die, and you are going to see it on video.”

“Don"t listen to him, Alex!” Jack exclaimed.

“He is listening to me and I"d ask you not to interrupt!” Cray smiled. He seemed totally confident, as if this were nothing more than another celebrity interview. “I can imagine what"s going through your mind,” he went on, speaking again to Alex. “You"re thinking of going to your friends at MI6. I would seriously advise against it.”

“How do you know we haven"t been to them already?” Jack asked.

“I very much hope you haven"t,” Cray replied. “Because I am a very nervous man. If I think anyone is making enquiries about me, I will kill the girl. If I find myself being watched by people I don"t know, I will kill the girl. If a policeman so much as glances at me in the street, I may well kill the girl. And this I promise you. If you do not bring me the flash drive, personally, before ten o"clock tomorrow morning, I will certainly kill the girl.”

“No!” Alex was defiant.

“You can lie to me, Alex, but you can"t lie to yourself. You don"t work for MI6. They mean nothing to you. But the girl does. If you abandon her, you"ll regret it for the rest of your life. And it won"t end with her. I will hunt down the rest of your friends. Don"t underestimate my power! I will destroy everything and everyone you know. And then I will come after you. So don"t kid yourself. Get it over with now. Give me what I want.” There was a long silence.

“Where can I find you?” Alex asked. The words tasted sour in his mouth. They tasted of defeat.

“I am at my house in Wiltshire. You can get a taxi from Bath station. All the drivers know where I live.”

“If I bring it to you…” Alex found himself struggling to find the right words. “How do I know that you"ll let her go? How do I know you"ll let either of us go?”

“Exactly!” Jack had chipped in again. “How do we know we can trust you?”

“I"m a knight of the realm!” Cray exclaimed. “The Queen trusts me; you can too!” The screen went blank.

Alex turned to Jack. For once he was helpless. “What do I do?” he asked.

“Ignore him, Alex. Go to MI6.”

“I can"t, Jack. You heard what he said. Before ten o"clock tomorrow morning. MI6 won"t be able to do anything before then, and if they try something, Cray will kill Sab.” He rested his head in his hands. “I couldn"t allow that to happen. She"s only in this mess because of me. I couldn"t live with myself afterwards.”

“But, Alex… A lot more people could get hurt if Eagle Strike—whatever it is—goes ahead.”

“We don"t know that.”

“You think Cray would do all this if he was just going to rob a bank or something?” Alex said nothing.

“Cray is a killer, Alex. I"m sorry. I wish I could be more helpful. But I don"t think you can just walk into his house.”

Alex thought about it. He thought for a long time. As long as Cray had Sabina, he held all the cards. But perhaps there was a way he could get her out of there. It would mean giving himself up. Once again he would become Cray"s prisoner. But with Sabina free, Jack would be able to contact MI6. And perhaps—just perhaps—Alex might come out of this alive.

Quickly he outlined his idea to Jack. She listened—but the more she heard, the unhappier she looked.

“It"s terribly dangerous, Alex,” she said.

“But it might work.”

“You can"t give him the flash drive.”

“I won"t give him the flash drive, Jack.”

“And if it all goes wrong?”

Alex shrugged. “Then Cray wins. Eagle Strike happens.” He tried to smile, but there was no humour in his voice. “But at least we"ll finally find out what it is.” The house was on the edge of the Bath valley, a twenty-minute drive from the station. Cray had been right about one thing. The taxi driver knew where it was without needing a map or an address—and as the car rolled down the private lane towards the main entrance, Alex understood why.

Damian Cray lived in an Italian convent. According to the newspapers, he had seen it in Umbria, fallen in love with it and shipped it over, brick by brick. The building really was extraordinary. It seemed to have taken over much of the surrounding countryside, cut off from public view by a tall, honey-coloured brick wall with two carved wooden gates at least ten metres high. Beyond the wall Alex could see a slanting roof of terracotta tiles, and beyond it an elaborate tower with pillars, arched windows and miniature battlements. Much of the garden had been imported from Italy too, with dark green, twisting cypresses and olive trees. Even the weather didn"t seem quite English. The sun had come out and the sky was a radiant blue. It had to be the hottest day of the year.

Alex paid the driver and got out. He was wearing a pale grey, short-sleeved Trailrider cycling jersey without the elbow pads. As he walked down to the gates, he loosened the zip that ran up to the neck, allowing the breeze to play against his skin. There was a rope coming out of a hole in the wall and he pulled it. A bell rang out. Alex reflected that once this same bell might have called the nuns from their prayers. It seemed somehow wicked that a holy place should have been uprooted and brought here to be a madman"s lair.

The gates opened electronically. Alex walked through and found himself in a cloister: a rectangle of perfectly mown grass surrounded by statues of saints. Ahead there was a fourteenth-century chapel with a villa attached, the two somehow existing in perfect harmony. He smelt lemons in the air. Pop music drifted from somewhere in the house. Alex recognized the song. White Lines: Cray was playing his own CD.

The front door of the house stood open. There was still nobody in sight, so Alex walked inside.

The door led directly into a wide airy space with beautiful furniture arranged over a quarry-tiled floor. There was a grand piano made of rosewood, and a number of paintings, medieval altar pieces, were hanging on plain white walls. A row of six windows looked out onto a terrace with a garden beyond. White muslin curtains, hanging ceiling to floor, swayed gently in the breeze.

Damian Cray was sitting on an ornately carved wooden seat with a white poodle curled up in his lap. He glanced up as Alex came into the room. “Ah, there you are, Alex.” He stroked the dog.

“This is Bubbles. Isn"t he beautiful?”

“Where"s Sabina?” Alex asked.

Cray scowled. “I"m not going to be dictated to, if you don"t mind,” he said. “Especially not in my own home.”

“Where is she?”

“All right!” The moment of anger had passed. Cray stood up and the dog jumped off his lap and ran out of the room. He crossed over to the desk and pressed a button. A few seconds later a door opened and Yassen Gregorovich came in. Sabina was with him. Her eyes widened when she saw Alex but she was unable to speak. Her hands were tied and there was a piece of tape across her mouth. Yassen forced her into a chair and stood over her. His eyes avoided Alex.

“You see, Alex, here she is,” Cray said. “A little scared, perhaps, but otherwise unhurt.”

“Why have you tied her up?” Alex demanded. “Why won"t you let her talk?”

“Because she said some very hurtful things to me,” Cray replied. “She also tried to assault me. In fact, frankly she has behaved in a very unladylike way.” He scowled. “Now—you have something for me.”

This was the moment that Alex had dreaded. He had a plan. Sitting on the train from London to Bath, in the taxi, and even walking into the house, he had been certain it would work. Now, facing Damian Cray, he suddenly wasn"t so sure.

He reached into his pocket and took out the flash drive. The silver capsule had a lid, which Alex had opened, revealing a maze of circuitry inside. He had taped a brightly coloured tube in place, the nozzle pointing into the device. He held it up so that Cray could see.

“What is that?” Cray demanded.

“It"s superglue,” Alex replied. “I don"t know what"s inside your precious flash drive, but I doubt it"ll work if it"s gummed up with this stuff. I just have to squeeze my hand and you can forget Eagle Strike. You can forget the whole thing.”

“How very ingenious!” Cray giggled. “But I don"t actually see the point.”

“It"s simple,” Alex said. “You let Sabina go; she walks out of here. She goes to a pub or a house and she telephones me here. You can give her the number. Once I know she"s safe, I"ll give you the flash drive.”

Alex was lying.

As soon as Sabina had gone, he would squeeze the tube anyway. The flash drive would be filled with superglue, which would harden almost immediately. Alex was fairly sure it would make the device inoperable. He had no qualms about double-crossing Cray. It had been his plan all along.

He didn"t like to think what would happen to him, but that didn"t matter. Sabina would be free.

And as soon as Jack knew she was safe, she would be able to act. Jack would call MI6.

Somehow Alex would have to stay alive until they arrived.

“Was this your idea?” Cray asked. Alex said nothing so he went on. “It"s very clever. Very cute.

But the question is…” He raised a finger on each hand. “Will it work?”

“I mean what I say.” Alex held out the flash drive. “Let her go.”

“But what if she goes straight to the police?”

“She won"t.”

Sabina tried to shout her disagreement from behind the gag. Alex took a breath.

“You"ll still have me,” he explained. “If Sabina goes to the police, you can do whatever you want to me. So that"ll stop her. Anyway, she doesn"t know what you"re planning. There"s nothing she can do.”

Cray shook his head. “I"m sorry,” he said.

“What?”

“No deal!”

“Are you serious?” Alex closed his hand around the tube.

“Entirely.”

“What about Eagle Strike?”

“What about your girlfriend?” There was a heavy pair of kitchen scissors on the desk. Before Alex could say anything, Cray picked them up and threw them to Yassen. Sabina began to struggle furiously, but the Russian held her down. “You"ve made a simple miscalculation, Alex,” Cray continued. “You"re very brave. You would do almost anything to have the girl released.

But I will do anything to keep her. And I wonder how much you"ll be prepared to watch, how far I"ll have to go, before you decide that you might as well give me the flash drive anyway. A finger, maybe? Two fingers?”

Yassen opened the scissors. Sabina had suddenly gone very quiet and still. Her eyes pleaded with Alex.

“No!” Alex yelled. With a wave of despair he knew that Cray had won. He had gambled on at least getting Sabina out of here. But it wasn"t to be.

Cray saw the defeat in his eyes. “Give it to me!” he demanded.

“No.”

“Start with the little finger, Yassen. Then we"ll work one at a time towards her thumb.” Tears formed in Sabina"s eyes. She couldn"t hide her terror.

Alex felt sick. Sweat trickled down the sides of his body under his shirt. There was nothing more he could do. He wished now that he had listened to Jack. He wished he had never come.

He threw the flash drive onto the desk.

Cray picked it up.

“Welt that"s got that sorted,” he said with a smile. “Now, why don"t we forget all this unpleasantness and go and have a cup of tea?”

INSANITY AND BISCUITS

« ^ »

ea was served outside on the lawn—but it was a lawn the size of a field in a garden like nothing Alex had ever seen before. Cray had built himself a fantasy land in the English countryside, with dozens of pools, fountains, miniature temples and grottoes. There was a rose garden and a statue garden, a garden filled entirely with white flowers, and another given over to herbs, which had been laid out like sections in a clock. And all around him he had constructed replicas of buildings that Alex recognized. The Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum in Rome, the Taj Mahal, the Tower of London: each one was exactly one hundredth the scale of the original and all of them were jumbled together like picture postcards scattered on the floor. It was the garden of a man who wanted to rule the world but couldn"t, and so had cut the world down to his own size.

“What do you think of it?” Cray asked as he joined Alex at the table.

“Some gardens have crazy paving,” Alex replied quietly, “but I"ve never seen anything as crazy as this.”

Cray smiled.

There were five of them sitting on the raised terrace outside the house: Cray, Alex, Yassen, the man called Henryk and Sabina. She had been untied and the gag taken off her mouth—and as soon as she had been freed, she had rushed over to Alex and thrown her arms around his neck.

“I"m so sorry,” she had whispered. “I should have believed you.” That was all she had said. Apart from that she had been silent, her face pale. Alex knew that she was afraid. It was typical of Sabina not to want to show it.

“Well, here we all are. One happy family,” Cray said. He pointed at the man with the silver hair and the pock-marked face. Now that he was closer to him, Alex could see that he was very ugly indeed. His eyes, magnified by the glasses, were slightly inflamed. He wore a denim shirt that was too tight and showed off his paunch.

“I don"t think you"ve met Henryk,” Cray added.

“I don"t think I want to,” Alex said.

“You mustn"t be a bad loser, Alex. Henryk is very valuable to me. He flies jumbo jets.” Jumbo jets. Another piece of the puzzle.

“So where is he flying you?” Alex asked. “I hope it"s somewhere far away.” Cray smiled to himself. “We"ll come to that in a moment. In the meantime, shall I be mother?

It"s Earl Grey; I hope you don"t mind. And do help yourself to a biscuit.” Cray poured five cups and set the pot down. Yassen hadn"t spoken yet. Alex got the feeling that the Russian was uncomfortable being here. And that was another strange thing. He had always considered Yassen to be his worst enemy, but sitting here now he seemed almost irrelevant. This was all about Damian Cray.

“We have an hour before we have to leave,” Cray said. “So I thought I might tell you a little about myself. I thought it might pass the time.”

“I"m not really all that interested,” Alex said.

Cray"s smile grew a little thinner. “I can"t believe that"s true. You seem to have been interesting yourself in me for a considerable time.” “You tried to kill my father,” Sabina said. Cray turned round, surprised to hear her voice.

“Yes, that"s right,” he admitted. “And if you"ll just shut up, I"m about to tell you why.” He paused. A pair of butterflies shimmered around a bed of lavender.

“I have had an extremely interesting and privileged life,” Cray began. “My parents were rich.

Super rich, you might say. But not super. My father was a businessman and he was frankly rather boring. My mother didn"t do anything very much; I didn"t much like her either. I was an only child and naturally I was fabulously spoilt. I sometimes think that I was richer when I was eight years old than most people will be in their lifetime!”

“Do we have to listen to this?” Alex asked.

“If you interrupt me again, I"ll ask Yassen to get the scissors,” Cray replied. He went on. “I had my first serious row with my parents when I was thirteen. You see, they"d sent me to the Royal Academy in London. I was an extremely talented singer. But the trouble was, I hated it there.

Bach and Beethoven and Mozart and Verdi. I was a teenager, for heaven"s sake! I wanted to be Elvis Presley; I wanted to be in a pop group; I wanted to be famous!

“My father got very upset when I told him. He turned up his nose at anything popular. He really thought I"d failed him, and I"m afraid my mother agreed. They both had this idea that one day I"d be singing opera at Covent Garden or something ghastly like that. They didn"t want me to leave.

In fact, they wouldn"t let me—and I don"t know what would have happened if they hadn"t had that extraordinary accident with the car. It fell on them, you know. I can"t say I was terribly upset, although of course I had to pretend. But you know what I thought? I thought that God must be on my side. He wanted me to be a success and so He had decided to help me.” Alex glanced at Sabina to see how she was taking this. She was sitting rigidly in her chair, her cup of tea ignored. There was absolutely no colour in her face. But she was still in control. She wasn"t giving anything away.

“Anyway,” Cray continued, “the best thing was that my parents were out of the way and, even better, I had inherited all their money. When I was twenty-one, I bought myself a flat in London—actually it was more of a penthouse—and I set up my own band. We called ourselves Slam! As I"m sure you know, the rest is history. Five years later I went solo, and soon I was the greatest singer in the world. And that was when I started to think about the world I was in.

“I wanted to help people. All my life I"ve wanted to help people. The way you"re looking at me, Alex, you"d think I"m some kind of monster. But I"m not. I"ve raised millions of pounds for charity. Millions and millions. And I should remind you, in case you"ve forgotten, that I have been knighted by the Queen. I am actually Sir Damian Cray, although I don"t use the title because I"m no snob. A lovely lady, by the way, the Queen. Do you know how much money my Christmas single, „Something for the Children", raised all on its own? Enough to feed a whole country!

“But the trouble is, sometimes being famous and being rich isn"t enough. I so wanted to make a difference—but what was I to do when people wouldn"t listen? I mean, take the case of the Milburn Institute in Bristol. This was a laboratory working for a number of cosmetics companies, and I discovered that they were testing many of their products on animals. Now, I"m sure you and I would be on the same side about this, Alex. I tried to stop them. I campaigned for over a year. We had a petition with twenty thousand signatures and still they wouldn"t listen. So in the end—I"d met people and of course I had plenty of money—I suddenly realized that the best thing to do would be to have Professor Milburn killed. And that"s what I did. And six months later the institute closed down and that was that. No more animals harmed.” Cray rotated a hand over the biscuit plate and picked one out. He was obviously pleased with himself.

“I had quite a lot of people killed in the years that followed,” he said. “For example, there were some extremely unpleasant people cutting down the rainforest in Brazil. They"re still in the rainforest … six feet underneath it. Then there was a whole boatload of Japanese fishermen who wouldn"t listen to me. I had them deep-frozen in their own freezer. That will teach them not to hunt rare whales! And there was a company in Yorkshire that was selling landmines. I didn"t like them at all. So I arranged for the entire board of directors to disappear on an Outward Bound course in the Lake District and that put a stop to that!

“I"ve had to do some terrible things in my time. Really, I have.” He turned to Sabina. “I did hate having to blow up your father. If he hadn"t spied on me, it wouldn"t have been necessary. But you must see that I couldn"t let him spoil my plans.”

Every cell in Sabina"s body had gone rigid and Alex knew she was having to force herself not to attack Cray. But Yassen was sitting right next to her and she wouldn"t have got anywhere near.

Cray went on. “This is a terrible world, and if you want to make a difference, sometimes you have to be a bit extreme. And that"s the point. I am extremely proud of the fact that I have helped so many people and so many different causes. Because helping people—charity—has been the work of my life.”

He paused long enough to eat the biscuit he had chosen.

Alex forced himself to drink a little of the perfumed tea. He hated the taste but his mouth was completely dry. “I have a couple of questions,” he said.

“Do, please, go ahead.”

“My first one is for Yassen Gregorovich.” He turned to the Russian. “Why are you working for this lunatic?” Alex wondered if Cray would hit him. But it would be worth it. All the signs indicated that the Russian didn"t share Cray"s world view. He seemed uncomfortable, out of place. It might be worth trying to sow a few seeds of discord between them.

Cray scowled, but did nothing. He signalled to Yassen to answer.

“He pays me,” Yassen said simply.

“I hope your second question is more interesting,” Cray snarled.

“Yes. You"re trying to tell me that everything you"ve done is for a good cause. You think that all this killing is worth it because of the results. I"m not sure I agree. Lots of people work for charity; lots of people want to change the world. But they don"t have to behave like you.”

“I"m waiting…” Cray snapped.

“All right. This is my question. What is Eagle Strike? Are you really telling me it"s a plan to make the world a better place?”

Cray laughed softly. For a moment he looked like the diabolical schoolboy he had once been, welcoming his own parents" death. “Yes,” he said. “That"s exactly what it is. Sometimes great people are misunderstood. You don"t understand me and neither does your girlfriend. But I really do want to change the world. That"s all I"ve ever wanted. And I"ve been very fortunate because my music has made it possible. In the twenty-first century, entertainers are much more influential than politicians or statesmen. I"m the only one who"s actually noticed it.” Cray chose a second biscuit—a custard cream. “Let me ask you a question, Alex. What do you think is the greatest evil on this planet today?” “Is that including or not including you?” Alex asked.

Cray frowned. “Please don"t irritate me,” he warned.

“I don"t know,” Alex said. “You tell me.” “Drugs!” Cray spat out the single word as if it were obvious. “Drugs are causing more unhappiness and destruction than anything anywhere in the world. Drugs kill more people than war or terrorism. Did you know that drugs are the single biggest cause of crime in western society? We"ve got kids out on the street taking heroin and cocaine, and they"re stealing to support their habits. But they"re not criminals; they"re victims.

It"s the drugs that are to blame.”

“We"ve talked about this at school,” Alex said. The last thing he needed right now was a lecture.

“All my life I"ve been fighting drugs,” Cray went on. “I"ve done advertisements for the government. I"ve spent millions building treatment centres. And I"ve written songs. You must have listened to White Lines…”

He closed his eyes and hummed softly, then sang:

“The poison"s there. The poison flows It"s everywhere—in heaven"s name Why is it that no one knows

How to end this deadly game?”

He stopped.

“But I know how to end it,” he said simply. “I"ve worked it out. And that"s what Eagle Strike is all about. A world without drugs. Isn"t that something to dream about, Alex? Isn"t that worth a few sacrifices? Think about it! The end of the drug problem. And I can make it happen.”

“How?” Alex was almost afraid of the answer.

“It"s easy. Governments won"t do anything. The police won"t do anything. No one can stop the dealers. So you have to go back to the supplies. You have to think where these drugs come from.

And where is that? I"ll tell you…

“Every year, hundreds and hundreds of tons of heroin come from Afghanistan—in particular the provinces of Nangarhar and Helmand. Did you know production has increased by fourteen hundred per cent since the Taliban were defeated? So much for that particular war! Then, after Afghanistan, there"s Burma and the golden triangle, with about one hundred thousand hectares of land used to produce opium and heroin. The government of Burma doesn"t care. Nobody cares.

And let"s not forget Pakistan, manufacturing one hundred and fifty-five metric tons of opium a year, with refineries throughout the Khyber region and along the borders.

“On the other side of the world there"s Colombia. It"s the Leading supplier and distributor of cocaine, but it also supplies heroin and marijuana. It"s a business worth three billion dollars a year, Alex. Eighty tons of cocaine every twelve months. Seven tons of heroin. A lot of it ends up on the streets of American cities. In high schools. A tidal wave of misery and crime.

“But that"s only a small part of the picture.” Cray held up a hand and began to tick off other countries on his fingers. “There are refineries in Albania. Mule trains in Thailand. Coca crops in Peru. Opium plantations in Egypt. Ephedrine, the chemical used in heroin production, is manufactured in China. One of the biggest drugs markets in the world can be found in Tashkent, in Uzbekistan.

“These are the principal sources of the world"s drug problem. This is where the trouble all starts.

These are my targets.”

“Targets…” Alex whispered the single word.

Damian Cray reached into his pocket and took out the flash drive. Yassen was suddenly alert.

Alex knew he had a gun and would use it if he so much as moved.

“Although you weren"t to know it,” Cray explained, “this is actually a key to unlock one of the most complicated security systems ever devised. The original key was created by the National Security Agency and it is carried by the president of the United States. My friend, the late Charlie Roper, was a senior officer with the NSA, and it was his expertise, his knowledge of the codes, that allowed me to manufacture a duplicate. Even so, it has taken enormous effort. You have no idea how much computer processing power was required to create a second key.”

“The Gameslayer…” Alex said.

“Yes. It was the perfect cover. So many people; so much technology. A plant with all the processing power I could ask for. And in reality it was all for this!” He held up the little metal capsule.

“This key will give me access to two and a half thousand nuclear missiles. These are American missiles and they are on hair-trigger alert—meaning that they can be launched at a moment"s notice. It is my intention to override the NSA"s system and to fire twenty-five of those missiles at targets I have carefully chosen around the globe.”

Cray smiled sadly.

“It is almost impossible to imagine the devastation that will be caused by twenty-five one-hundred-ton missiles exploding at the same time. South America, Central America, Asia, Africa

… almost every continent will feel the pain. And there will be pain, Alex. I am well aware of that.

“But I will have wiped out the poppy fields. The farms and the factories. The refineries, the trade routes, the markets. There will be no more drug suppliers because there will be no more drug supplies. Of course, millions will die. But millions more will be saved.

“That is what Eagle Strike is all about, Alex. The start of a new golden age. A day when all humanity will come together and rejoice.

“That day is now. My time has finally arrived.”

EAGLE STRIKE

There was no view. The room might once have been used to store wine; the walls were bare and undecorated, the floor concrete, and apart from a few shelves there was no furniture. A naked bulb hung on a wire from the ceiling. Alex was looking for hidden bugs. It was unlikely that Cray would want to eavesdrop on the two of them, but even so he wanted to be sure that they couldn"t be overheard.

It was only when Alex had gone over every inch of the room that he turned to Sabina. She seemed amazingly calm. He thought about all the things that had happened to her. She had been kidnapped and kept prisoner—bound and gagged. She had been brought face to face with the man who had ordered the execution of her father, and had listened as he outlined his mad idea to destroy half the world. And here she was locked up again with the near certainty that she and Alex wouldn"t be allowed to leave here alive. Sabina should have been terrified. But she simply waited quietly while Alex completed his checks, watching him as if seeing him for the first time.

“Are you OK?” he asked at last.

“Alex…” It was only when she tried to speak that the emotion came. She took a breath and fought for control. “I don"t believe this is happening,” she said.

“I know. I wish it wasn"t.” Alex didn"t know what to say. “When did they get you?” he asked.

“At the hospital. There were three of them.”

“Did they hurt you?”

“They scared me. And they gave me some sort of injection.” She scowled. “God—Damian Cray is such a creep! And I never realized he was so—small.” That made Alex smile despite everything. Sabina hadn"t changed.

But she was serious. “As soon as I saw him, I thought of you. I knew you"d been telling the truth all along and I felt so rotten for not believing you.” She stopped. “You really are what you said.

A spy!” “Not exactly…” “Do MI6 know you"re here?” “No.”

“But you must have some sort of gadgets. You told me they gave you gadgets. Haven"t you got exploding shoelaces or something to get us out of here?”

“I haven"t got anything. MI6 don"t even know I"m here. After what happened at the bank—in Liverpool Street—I sort of went after Cray on my own. I was just so angry about the way they tricked you and lied about me. I was stupid. I mean, I had the flash drive in my hand … and I gave it back to Cray!”

Sabina understood. “You came here to rescue me,” she said. “Some rescue!”

“After the way I treated you, you should have just dumped me.”

“I don"t know, Sab. I thought I had it all worked out. I thought they"d let you go and everything would turn out all right. I had no idea…” Alex kicked out at the door. It was as solid as a rock.

“We have to stop him,” he said. “We have to do something.”

“Maybe he was making it up,” Sabina suggested. “Think about it. He said he was going to fire twenty-five missiles all around the world. American missiles. But they"re all controlled from the White House. Only the American president can set them off. Everyone knows that. So what"s he going to do? Fly to Washington and try to break in?”

“I wish you were right.” Alex shook his head. “But Cray"s got a huge organization. He"s put years of planning and millions of pounds into this. He"s got Yassen Gregorovich working for him. He must know something we don"t.”

He went over to her. He wanted to put an arm round her but he ended up standing awkwardly in front of her instead. “Listen,” he said. “This is going to sound really big-headed and you know I"d never normally tell you what to do. But the thing is, I have sort of been here before…”

“What? Locked up by a maniac who wants to destroy the world?”

“Well, yes. Actually I have.” He sighed. “My uncle was trying to turn me into a spy when I was still in short trousers. I never even realized it. And it"s true what I told you. They made me train with the SAS. Anyway, the truth is … I know things. And it may be that we do get a chance to get back at Cray. But if that happens, you have to leave everything to me. You have to do what I say. Without arguing…”

“Forget it!” Sabina shook her head. “I"ll do what you say. But it was my dad he tried to kill. And I can tell you, if Cray leaves a kitchen knife lying around, I"m going to shove it somewhere painful…”

“It may already be too late,” Alex said gloomily. “Cray may just leave us here. He could have already left.”

“I don"t think so. I think he needs you; I don"t know why. Maybe it"s because you came closest to beating him.”

“I"m glad you"re here,” Alex said.

Sabina looked at him. “I"m not.”

Ten minutes later the door opened and Yassen Gregorovich appeared carrying two sets of what looked like white overalls with red markings—serial numbers—on the sleeves. “You are to put these on,” he said.

“Why?” Alex asked.

“Cray wants you. You"re coming with us. Do as you"re told.” But Alex still hesitated. “What is this?” he demanded. There was something disturbingly familiar about what he was being asked to wear.

“It is a polyamide fabric,” Yassen explained. The words meant nothing to Alex. “It is used in biochemical warfare,” he added. “Now put it on.”

With a growing sense of dread, Alex put the suit on over his own clothes. Sabina did the same.

The overalls covered them completely, with hoods that would go over their heads. Alex realized that when they were fully suited up, they would be virtually shapeless. It would be impossible to tell that they were teenagers.

“Now come with me,” Yassen said.

They were led back through the house and out into the cloister. There were now three vehicles parked on the grass: a jeep and two covered trucks, both painted white with the same red markings as the suits. There were about twenty men, all in biochemical suits. Henryk, the Dutch pilot, was in the back of the jeep, nervously polishing his glasses. Damian Cray stood next to him talking, but seeing Alex he stopped and came over. He was bristling with excitement, walking jauntily, his eyes even brighter than normal.

“So you"re here!” he exclaimed, as if welcoming Alex to a party. “Excellent! I"ve decided I want you to come along. Mr Gregorovich tried to talk me out of it, but that"s the thing about Russians.

No sense of humour. But you see, Alex, none of this would have happened without you. You brought me the flash drive; it"s only fair you should see how I use it.”

“I"d rather see you arrested and sent to Broadmoor,” Alex said.

Cray simply laughed. “That"s what I like about you!” he exclaimed. “You"re so rude. But I do have to warn you, Yassen will be watching you like a hawk. Or maybe I should say like an eagle.

If you do anything at all, if you so much as blink without permission, he"ll shoot your girlfriend first. And then he"ll shoot you. Do you understand?”

“Where are we going?” Alex asked.

“We"re taking the motorway into London. It"ll take us just a couple of hours. You and Sabina will be in the first truck with Yassen. Eagle Strike has begun, by the way. Everything is in place.

I think you"ll enjoy it.”

He turned his back on them and went over to the jeep. A few minutes later the convoy left, rolling out of the gates and back up the lane to the main road. Alex and Sabina sat next to each other on a narrow wooden bench. There were six men with them, all armed with automatic rifles, slung over the white suits. Alex thought he recognized one of the faces from the compound outside Amsterdam. Certainly he knew the type. Pale skin, dead-looking hair, dark, empty eyes.

Yassen sat opposite them. He too had put on a biochemical suit. He seemed to be staring at Alex, but he said nothing and his face was unreadable.

They travelled for two hours, taking the M4 towards London. Alex glanced occasionally at Sabina and she caught his eye once and smiled nervously. This wasn"t her world. The men, the machine guns, the biochemical suits … they were all part of a nightmare that had come out of nowhere and which still made no sense—with no sign of a way out. Alex was baffled too. But the suits suggested a dreadful possibility. Did Cray have biochemical weapons? Was he planning to use them?

At last they turned off the motorway. Looking out of the back flap, Alex saw a signpost to Heathrow Airport and suddenly he knew, without being told, that this was their true destination.

He remembered the plane he had seen at the compound. And Cray, talking to him in the garden.

Henryk is very valuable to me. He flies jumbo jets. The airport had to be part of it, but it still didn"t explain so many things. The president of the United States. Nuclear missiles. The very name—Eagle Strike—itself. Alex was angry with himself. It was all there in front of him. Some sort of picture was taking shape. But it was still blurred, out of focus.

They stopped. Nobody moved. Then Yassen spoke for the first time. “Out!” A single word.

Alex went first, then helped Sabina down. He enjoyed feeling her hand in his. There was a sudden loud roar overhead and he looked up just in time to see an aircraft sweeping down out of the sky. He saw where they were. They had stopped on the top floor of an abandoned multistorey car park—a legacy of Sir Arthur Lunt, Cray"s father. It was on the very edge of Heathrow Airport, near the main runway. The only car, apart from their own, was a burnt-out shell. The ground was strewn with rubble and old rusting oil drums. Alex couldn"t imagine why they had come here. Cray was waiting for a signal. Something was going to happen. But what?

Alex looked at his watch. It was exactly half past two. Cray called them over. He had travelled in the jeep with Henryk and now Alex saw that there was a radio transmitter on the back seat.

Henryk turned a dial; there was a loud whine. Cray was certainly making a performance out of this. The radio had been connected to a loudspeaker so that they could all hear.

“It"s about to begin,” Cray said. He giggled. “Exactly on time!” Alex looked up. A second plane was coming in. It was still too far away and too high up to be seen clearly, but even so, he thought he recognized something about its shape. Suddenly a voice crackled out of the loudspeaker in the jeep.

“Attention, air traffic control. This is Millennium Air flight 118 from Amsterdam. We have a problem.”

The voice had been speaking in English but with a heavy Dutch accent. There was a pause, an empty hissing, and then a woman"s voice replied. “Roger, MA 118. What is your problem, over?”

“Mayday! Mayday!” The voice from the aircraft was suddenly louder. “This is flight MA 118.

We have a fire on board. Request immediate clearance to land.” Another pause. Alex could imagine the panic in the control tower at Heathrow. But when the woman spoke again, her voice was professional, calm. “Roger your mayday. We have you on radar. Steer on 0-90. Descend three thousand feet.”

“Air traffic control.” The radio crackled again. “This is Captain Schroeder from flight MA 118. I have to advise you that I am carrying extremely hazardous biochemical products on behalf of the Ministry of Defence. We have an emergency situation here. Please advise.” The Heathrow woman replied immediately. “We need to know what is on board. Where is it and what are the quantities?”

“Air traffic control, we are carrying a nerve gas. We cannot be more specific. It is highly experimental and extremely dangerous. There are three canisters in the hold. We now have a fire in the main cabin. Mayday! Mayday!”

Alex looked again. The plane was much lower now and he knew exactly where he had seen it before. It was the cargo plane that he had seen in the compound outside Amsterdam. Smoke was streaming out of the side and even as Alex watched, flames suddenly exploded, spreading over the wings. To anyone watching, it would seem that the plane was in terrible danger. But Alex knew that the whole thing had been faked.

The control tower was monitoring the plane. “Flight MA 118, the emergency services have been alerted. We are beginning an immediate evacuation of the airport. Please proceed to twenty-seven left. You are cleared to land.”

At once Alex heard the sound of alarms coming from all over the airport. The plane was still two or three thousand feet up, the flames trailing behind it. He had to admit that it looked totally convincing. Suddenly everything was starting to make sense. He was beginning to understand Cray"s plan.

“Time to roll!” Cray announced.

Alex and Sabina were led back to the truck. Cray climbed into the jeep next to Henryk, who was driving, and they set off. It was difficult for Alex to see what was happening now as he only had a view out of the back, but he guessed that they had left the car park and were following the perimeter fence around the airport. The alarms seemed to have got louder; presumably they were getting nearer to them. A number of police sirens erupted in the distance and Alex noticed that the road had got busier as cars tore past, the drivers desperate to get away from the immediate area.

“What"s he doing?” Sabina whispered.

“The plane isn"t on fire,” Alex said. “Cray"s tricked them. He"s evacuating the airport. That"s how we"re going to get in.”

“But why?”

“Enough,” Yassen said. “You don"t speak now.” He reached under his seat and produced two gas masks which he handed to Alex and Sabina. “Put these on.”

“Why do I need it?” Sabina asked.

“Just do as I say.”

“Well, it"ll ruin my make-up.” She put it on anyway.

Alex did the same. All the men in the truck, including Yassen, had gas masks. Suddenly they were completely anonymous. Alex had to admit that there was a certain genius to Cray"s scheme.

It was a perfect way to break into the airport. By now all the security personnel would know that a plane carrying a deadly nerve agent was about to crash-land. The airport was in the throes of a full-scale emergency evacuation. When Cray and his miniature army arrived at the main gate, it was unlikely that anyone would ask them for ID. In their biochemical suits they looked official.

They were driving official-looking vehicles. The fact that they had arrived at the airport in record time wouldn"t be seen as suspicious. It was more like a miracle.

It happened exactly as Alex suspected.

The jeep stopped at a gate on the south side of the airport. The guards there were both young.

One of them had only been in the job for a couple of weeks and was already panicking, faced with a red alert. The cargo plane hadn"t landed yet but it was getting closer and closer, stumbling out of the air. The fire was worse, clearly out of control. And here were two trucks and an army vehicle filled with men in white suits, hoods and gas masks. He wasn"t going to argue.

Cray leant out of the door. He was as anonymous as the rest of his men, his face concealed behind the gas mask. “Ministry of Defence,” he snapped. “Biochemical Weapons division.”

“Go ahead!” The guards couldn"t hurry them through fast enough.

The plane touched down. Two fire engines and an assortment of emergency vehicles began to race towards it. Their truck overtook the jeep and came to a halt. Looking out of the back, Alex saw everything.

It started with Damian Cray.

He was sitting in the passenger seat of the jeep and had produced a radio transmitter. “It"s time to raise the stakes,” he said. “Let"s make this a real emergency.” Somehow Alex knew what was about to happen. Cray pressed a button and at once the plane exploded, disappearing in a huge fireball that erupted out of it and at the same time consumed it.

Fragments of wood and metal spun in all directions. Burning aviation fuel spilt over the runway, seeming to set it alight too. The emergency vehicles had fanned out as if to surround the wreckage, but then Alex realized that they had received new orders from the control tower.

There was nothing more they could do. The pilot and his crew on the plane were certainly dead.

Some unknown nerve gas could even now be leaking into the atmosphere. Turn round. Get out of there. Go!

Alex knew that Cray had cheated whoever had flown the plane, killing them with exactly the same cold-blooded ruthlessness with which he killed anyone who got in his way. The pilot would have been paid to send out the false alarm and then to fake a crash landing. He wouldn"t have known that there was a load of plastic explosive concealed on board. He might have expected a long stay in an English prison. He hadn"t been told his job was to die.

Sabina wasn"t watching. Alex couldn"t see anything of her face—the gas mask had fogged up—

but her head was turned away. For a moment he felt desperately sorry for her. What had she got into? And to think that this had all begun with a holiday in the South of France!

The truck jerked forward. They were inside the airport. Cray had managed to short-circuit the entire security system. Nobody would notice them—at least not for a while. But the questions still remained. What had they come for? Why here?

And then they slowed down one last time. Alex looked out. And at last everything made sense.

They had stopped in front of a plane, a Boeing 747-200B. But it was much more than that. Its body had been painted blue and white, with the words UNITED STATES OF AMERICA written across the main fuselage and the Stars and Stripes emblazoned on its tail. And there was the eagle, clutching a shield, just below the door, mocking Alex for not having guessed before. The eagle that had given Eagle Strike its name. It was the presidential seal and this was the presidential plane, Air Force One. This was the reason why Damian Cray was here.

Alex had seen it on the television in Blunt"s office. The plane that had brought the American president to England. It flew him all over the world, travelling at just below the speed of sound.

Alex knew very little about it, but then virtually all information about Air Force One was restricted. But one thing he did know. Just about anything that could be done in the White House could be done on the plane, even while it was in the air.

Just about anything. Including starting a nuclear war.

There were two men standing guard on the steps that led up to the open door and the main cabin.

They were soldiers, dressed in khaki combat gear and black berets. As Cray got out of the car, they brought up their guns, moving into a position of alert. They had heard the alarms. They knew something was happening at the airport but they weren"t sure what it had to do with them.

“What"s going on?” one of them asked.

Damian Cray said nothing. His hand came up and suddenly he was holding a pistol. He fired twice, the bullets making hardly any sound—or perhaps the noise of the gun was somehow dwarfed by the immensity of the plane. The soldiers twisted round and fell onto the tarmac.

Nobody had seen what had happened. All eyes were on the runway and the still-burning debris of the cargo plane.

Alex felt a surge of hatred for Cray, for his cowardice. The American soldiers hadn"t been expecting trouble. The president was nowhere near the airport. Air Force One wasn"t due to take off for another day. Cray could have knocked them out; he could have taken them prisoner. But it had been easier to kill them; already he was putting the gun back into his pocket, two human lives simply brushed aside and forgotten. Sabina stood next to him, staring in disbelief.

“Wait here,” Cray said. He had removed his gas mask. His face was flushed with excitement.

Yassen Gregorovich and half the men ran up the steps onto the plane. The other half stripped off their white suits to reveal American army uniforms underneath. Cray hadn"t missed a trick. If anyone did chance to turn their attention away from the cargo plane, it would seem that Air Force One was under heavy guard and that everything was normal. In fact, nothing could have been further from the truth.

More gunfire came from inside the plane. Cray was taking no prisoners. Anyone in his way was being finished without hesitation, without mercy.

Cray stood next to Alex. “Welcome to the VIP lounge,” he said. “You might like to know, that"s what they call this whole section of the airport.”

He pointed at a glass and steel building on the other side of the plane. “That"s where they all go.

Presidents, prime ministers … I"ve been in there once or twice as a matter of fact. Very comfortable, and no queues for passport control!” “Let us go,” Alex said. “You don"t need us.”

“Would you rather I killed you now, instead of later?” Sabina glanced at Alex but said nothing.

Yassen appeared at the door of the plane and signalled. Air Force One had been taken. There was no one left to fight. Cray"s men filed past him and made their way back down the stairs. One of them had been wounded; there was blood on the sleeve of his suit. So at least someone had tried to fight back! “I think we can go on board,” Cray said. All his men were now dressed as American soldiers, forming a half circle round the steps leading up to the door of the plane, a defensive wall in the event of a counter-attack. Henryk had already climbed up; Alex and Sabina followed him. Cray was right behind them, holding his gun. So there were only going to be the five of them on the plane. Alex filed the information somewhere in his mind. At least the odds had been shortened.

Sabina was numb, walking as if hypnotized. Alex knew what she was feeling. His own legs almost refused to carry him, to take these steps, reserved for the most powerful man on the planet. As the door loomed up ahead, with another eagle mounted on its side, he saw Yassen appear from inside, dragging a body dressed in blue trousers and a blue waistcoat: one of the air stewards. Another innocent man sacrificed for Cray"s mad dream.

Alex entered the plane.

Air Force One was like no other plane in the world. There were no seats cramped together, no economy class, nothing that looked even remotely like the inside of an ordinary jumbo jet. It had been modified for the president and his staff over three floors: offices and bedrooms, a conference room and kitchen … four thousand square feet of cabin space in all. Somewhere inside, there was even an operating table, although it had never been used. Alex found himself in an open-plan living area. Everything had been designed for comfort, with a thick-pile carpet, low sofas and armchairs, and tables with old-fashioned electric lamps. The predominant colours were beige and brown, softly lit by dozens of lights recessed into the ceiling. A long corridor led down one side of the plane, with a series of smart offices and seating areas branching off. There were more sofas and occasional tables at intervals all the way down. The windows were covered with fawn-coloured blinds.

Yassen had cleared away the bodies but he had left a bloodstain on the carpet. It was horribly noticeable. The rest of the plane had been cleaned and vacuumed until it was spotless. There was a wheeled trolley against one of the walls and Alex noticed the gleaming crystal glasses, each one engraved with the words AIR FORCE ONE and a picture of the plane. A number of bottles stood on the lower shelf of the trolley: rare malt whiskies and vintage wines. It was service with a smile, all right. To fly on this plane was a privilege enjoyed by only a handful of people and they would be surrounded by total luxury.

Even Cray, who had his own private jet, looked impressed. He glanced at Yassen. “Is that it?” he asked. “Have we killed everyone who needs killing?”

Yassen nodded.

“Then let"s get started. I"ll take Alex. I want to show him… You wait here.” Cray nodded at Alex. Alex knew he had no choice. He took one last glance at Sabina and tried to tell her with his eyes: I"ll think of something. I"ll get us out of here. But somehow he doubted it.

The enormity of Eagle Strike had finally hit him. Air Force One! The presidential plane. It had never been invaded in this way -and no wonder. Nobody else would have been mad enough to consider it.

Cray jabbed Alex with the gun, forcing him up a stairway. Half of him hoped they would meet someone. Just one soldier or one member of the cabin crew who had managed to escape and who might be lying in wait. But he knew that Yassen would have been thorough in his work. He had told Cray that the entire crew had been dealt with. Alex didn"t like to think how many men and women there might have been on board.

They entered a room filled with electronic equipment from floor to ceiling. Hugely sophisticated computers stood next to elaborate telephone and radar systems with banks of buttons, switches and blinking lights. Even the ceiling was covered with machinery. Alex realized he was standing in the communications centre of Air Force One. Someone must have been working there when Cray took over the plane. The door wasn"t locked.

“Nobody at home,” Cray said. “I"m afraid they weren"t expecting visitors. We have the place to ourselves.” He took the flash drive out of his pocket. “This is the moment of truth, Alex,” he said. “This is all thanks to you. But do, please, stay very still. I don"t want to kill you until you"ve seen this, but if you so much as blink, I"m afraid I may have to shoot you.” Cray knew what he was doing. He laid the gun on the table next to him so that it would never be more than a few centimetres from his hand. Then he opened the flash drive and plugged it into a socket in the front of the computer. Finally he sat down and tapped out a series of commands on the keyboard.

“I can"t explain exactly how this works,” he said as he continued. “We don"t have time, and anyway I"ve always found computers and all that stuff really dreary. But these computers here are just like the ones in the White House, and they"re connected to Mount Cheyenne, which is where our American friends have their top-secret underground nuclear weapons control centre.

Now, the first things you need to set off the nuclear missiles are the launch codes. They change every day and they"re sent to the president, wherever he is, by the National Security Agency. I hope I am not boring you, Alex?”

Alex didn"t reply. He was looking at the gun, measuring distances…

“The president carries them with him all the time. Did you know that President Carter actually lost the codes once? He sent them to the dry-cleaner"s. But that"s another story. The codes are transmitted by Milstar—the Military Strategic and Tactical Relay system. It"s a satellite communications system. One set goes to the Pentagon and one set comes here. The codes are inside the computer and…”

There was a buzzing sound and a number of lights on the control panel suddenly went green.

Cray let out a cry of pleasure. His face glowed green in the reflection.

“…and here they are now. Wasn"t that quick! Strange though it may seem, I am now in control of just about all the nuclear missiles in the United States. Isn"t that fun?” He tapped more quickly on the keyboard and for a moment he was transformed. As his fingers danced over the keys, Alex was reminded of the Damian Cray he had seen playing the piano at Earls Court and Wembley Stadium. There was a dreamy smile on his face and his eyes were far away.

“There is, of course, a fail-safe device built into it all,” he continued. “The Americans wouldn"t want just anyone firing off their missiles, would they! No. Only the president can do it, because of this…”

Cray took a small silver key out of his pocket. Alex guessed that it must be a duplicate, also provided by Charlie Roper. Cray inserted it into a complicated-looking silver lock built into the workstation and opened it. There were two red buttons underneath. One to launch the missiles.

The other marked with two words which were of more interest to Alex. SELF-DESTRUCT.

Cray was only interested in the first of them.

“This is the button,” he said. “The big button. The one you"ve read all about. The button that means the end of the world. But it"s fingerprint sensitive. If it isn"t the president"s finger, then you might as well go home.” He reached out and pressed the launch button. Nothing happened.

“You see? It doesn"t work!”

“Then all this has been a waste of time!” Alex said.

“Oh no, my dear Alex. Because, you see, you may remember that I recently had the privilege—

the very great privilege—of shaking hands with the president. I insisted on it. It was that important to me. But I had a special latex coating on my own hand, and when we shook, I took a cast of his fingers. Isn"t that clever?”

Cray removed what looked like a thin plastic glove from his pocket and slipped it onto his hand.

Alex saw that the fingers of the glove were moulded. He understood. The president"s fingerprints had been duplicated onto the latex surface.

Cray now had the power to launch his nuclear attack. “Wait a minute,” Alex said. “Yes?”

“You"re wrong. You"re terribly wrong. You think you"re making things better, but you"re not!” He struggled to find the right words. “You"ll kill thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands of people, and most of them will be innocent. They won"t have anything to do with drugs…”

“There have to be sacrifices. But if a thousand people die to save a million, what"s so wrong with that?”

“Everything is wrong with it! What about the fallout? Have you thought what it"ll do to the rest of the planet? I thought you cared about the environment. But you"re going to destroy it.”

“It"s a price worth paying, and one day the under the ground. Some exploded out of specially adapted train carriages. Others came from submarines. And nobody knew who had given the order. It was a billion-dollar fireworks display that would change the world for ever. And in ninety minutes it would all be over.

In the communications room the computer screens were flashing red. The entire operating board was ablaze with flashing lights. Cray stood up. There was a serene smile on his face.

“Well, that"s it,” he said. “There"s nothing anyone can do now.”

“They"ll stop them!” Alex said. “As soon as they realize what"s happened, they"ll press a button and all your missiles will self-destruct.”

“I"m afraid it"s not quite as easy as that. You see, all the launch protocols have been obeyed. It was the Air Force One computer that set the missiles off; so only Air Force One can terminate them. I noticed you eyeing the little red button on the keyboard right here. SELF-DESTRUCT.

But I"m afraid you"re not going anywhere near it, Alex. We"re leaving.” Cray gestured with the gun and Alex was forced out of the communications room and back down to the main cabin. His head was still hurting where Cray had hit him. He needed to recover his strength. But how much time did he have left?

Yassen and Sabina were waiting for them. As soon as Alex appeared, Sabina tried to go over to him but Yassen held her back. Cray sank into a sofa next to her.

“Time to go!” he said. He smiled at Alex. “You realize, of course, that once this plane is in the air, it"s virtually indestructible. You could say it"s the perfect getaway vehicle. That"s the beauty of it. It has over two hundred and thirty miles of wiring inside the frame which is designed to withstand even the pulse of a thermonuclear blast. Not that it would make any difference anyway. If they did manage to shoot us down, the missiles would still find their target. The world would still be saved!”

Alex tried to clear his head. He had to think straight.

There were just the five of them on the plane. Sabina, Yassen, Damian Cray and himself—with Henryk in the cockpit. Alex looked out of the main door. The ring of fake American soldiers was still in place. Even if anyone at the airport glanced their way, they would see nothing wrong. Not that that was likely to happen. The authorities must still be concentrating on the cloud of deadly nerve gas that didn"t in fact exist.

Alex knew that if he was going to do anything—if there was anything he could do—it would have to happen before the plane left the ground. Cray was right. Once the plane was in the air, he would have no chance at all.

“Close the door, Mr Gregorovich,” Cray commanded. “I think we should be on our way.”

“Wait a minute!” Alex started to get to his feet but Cray signalled to him to sit down. The gun was in his hand. It was a Smith and Wesson .40, small and powerful with its three and a half inch barrel and square handgrip. Alex knew that it was extremely dangerous to fire a gun on a normal plane. Breaking a window or penetrating the outer skin would depressurize the cabin and make flight impossible. But this, of course, was Air Force One. This was not a normal plane.

“Stay exactly where you are,” Cray said.

“Where are you taking us?” Sabina demanded. Cray was still sitting on the sofa next to her. He obviously thought it would be better to keep her and Alex apart. He reached out and ran a finger across her cheek. Sabina shuddered. She found him revolting and didn"t care if he knew it.

“We"re going to Russia,” he said. “Russia?” Alex looked puzzled.

“A new life for me. And a return home for Mr Gregorovich.” Cray licked his lips. “As a matter of fact, Mr Gregorovich will be something of a hero.”

“I rather doubt that.” Alex couldn"t keep the scorn out of his voice.

“Oh yes. Heroin is smuggled into the country—I am told—in lead-lined coffins, and the border guards simply look the other way. Of course, they"re paid. Corruption is everywhere. Drugs are ten times less expensive in Russia than they are in Europe and there are at least three and a half million addicts in Moscow and St Petersburg. Mr Gregorovich will be ending a problem that has almost brought his country to its knees, and I know that the president will be grateful. So you see, it looks as if the two of us are going to live happily ever after—which, I"m afraid, is more than can be said for you.”

Yassen had closed the door. Alex watched as he pulled the lever down, locking it. “Doors to automatic,” said Yassen.

There was a speaker system active in the plane. Everything that was said in the main cabin could be heard in the cockpit. And, sitting at the flight deck, Henryk flicked a switch so that his voice too could be heard throughout the plane.

“This is your captain speaking,” he said. “Please fasten your seat belts and prepare for take-off.” He was joking: a grisly parody of a real departure. “Thank you for flying with Cray Airlines. I hope you have a pleasant flight.”

The engines started up. Out of the window Alex saw the soldiers scatter and run back to the trucks. Their work was done. They would leave the airport and make their way home to Amsterdam. He glanced at Sabina. She was sitting very still and he remembered that she was waiting for him to do something. I know things… You have to leave everything to me. That was what he had told her. How very hollow the words sounded now.

Air Force One was equipped with four huge engines. Alex heard them as they began to turn.

They were about to leave! Desperately he looked around him: at the closed door with its white lever slanting down, at the stairway Leading up towards the cockpit, at the low tables and neatly arranged line of magazines, at the trolley with its bottles and glasses. Cray was sitting with his legs slightly apart, the gun resting on his thigh. Yassen was still standing by the door. He had a second gun. It was in one of his pockets but Alex knew that the Russian could draw, aim and fire before he had time to blink. There were no other weapons in sight, nothing he could get his hands on. Hopeless.

The plane jerked and began to pull back from its stand. Alex looked out of the window again and saw something extraordinary. There was a vehicle parked next to the VIP building, not far from the plane. It was like a miniature tractor, with three carriages attached, loaded with plastic boxes.

As Alex watched, it was suddenly blown away as if it had been made of paper. The carriages spun round and broke free. The tractor itself crashed onto its side and skidded across the tarmac.

It was the engines! Normally a plane of this size would have been towed to an open area out of harm"s way before it began to taxi. Cray, of course, wasn"t going to wait. Air Force One had been put into reverse thrust and the engines—with a thrust rating of over two hundred thousand pounds—were so powerful that they would blow away anything or anyone who came near. Now it was the turn of the VIP building itself. Windows shattered, the glass exploding inwards. A security man had come out and Alex saw him thrown back like a plastic soldier fired from an elastic band. A voice came through on the speakers inside the cabin. Henryk must have connected up the radio so that they could hear.

“This is air traffic control to Air Force One.” This time it was a man"s voice. “You have no clearance to taxi. Please stop immediately.”

The stairs that they had climbed to board the plane toppled to one side, crashing onto the tarmac.

The plane was moving more quickly now, backing out onto the main apron.

“This is air traffic control to Air Force One. We repeat: you have no clearance to taxi. Can you please state your intentions…”

They were out in the open, away from the VIP lounge. The main runway was behind them. The rest of the airport must have been almost a mile away. Inside the cockpit Henryk put the plane into forward thrust, and Alex felt the jolt and heard the whine of the engines as once again they began to move. Cray was humming to himself, his eyes vacant, lost in his own world. But the Smith and Wesson was still in his hand and Alex knew that the slightest movement would bring an instant response. Yassen hadn"t stirred. He also seemed wrapped up in his own thoughts, as if he was trying to forget that this was happening.

The plane began to pick up speed, heading for the runway. There was a computer in the cockpit and Henryk had already fed in all the necessary information: the weight of the plane, the outside air temperature, the wind speed, the pressure. He would take off into the breeze, now coming from the east. The main runway is nearly four thousand metres long and the computer had already calculated that the aircraft would only need two and a half thousand of them. It was almost empty. This was going to be an easy take-off.

“Air Force One. You have no clearance. Please abort immediately. Repeat: abort at once.” The voice from air traffic control was still buzzing in his headphones. Henryk reached up and turned the radio off. He knew that an emergency overdrive would have gone into operation and any other planes would be diverted out of his way. After all, this aircraft did belong to the president of the United States of America. Already the Heathrow authorities would be screaming at each other over the phone lines, fearing not just a crash but a major diplomatic incident.

Downing Street would have been informed. All over London, officials and civil servants would be asking the same desperate question.

What the hell is going on?

A hundred kilometres above their heads, the eight Peacekeeper missiles were nearing the edge of space. Two of their rockets had already burnt out and separated, leaving only the last sections with their deployment modules and protective shrouds. The Minutemen and the other missiles that Cray had fired weren"t far behind. All of them carried top-secret and highly advanced navigation systems. On-board computers were already calculating trajectories and making adjustments. Soon the missiles would turn and lock into their targets.

And in eighty minutes they would fall back to earth.

Air Force One was moving rapidly now, following the taxi paths to the main runway. Ahead was the holding point where it would make a sharp turn and begin pre-flight checks.

In the cabin Sabina examined Cray as if seeing him for the first time. Her face showed only contempt. “I wonder what they"ll do with you when you get to Russia,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Cray asked.

“I wonder if they"ll get rid of you by sending you back to England or just shoot you and be done with it.”

Cray stared at her. He looked as if he had been slapped across the face. Alex flinched, fearing the worst. And it came.

“I"ve had enough of these guttersnipes,” Cray snapped. “They"re not amusing me any more.” He turned to Yassen. “Kill them.”

Yassen seemed not to have heard. “What?” he asked.

“You heard me. I"m bored of them. Kill them now!”

The plane stopped. They had reached the holding point. Henryk had heard the instructions being given in the main cabin but he ignored what was happening as he went through the final procedures: lifting the elevators up and down, turning the ailerons. He was seconds away from take-off. As soon as he was satisfied that the plane was ready, he would push down the four thrust levers and they would rocket forward. He tested the rudder pedals and the nose wheel.

Everything was ready.

“I do not kill children,” Yassen said. Alex had heard him say exactly the same thing on the boat in the South of France. He hadn"t believed him then, but he wondered now what was going on inside the Russian"s mind.

Sabina watched Alex intently, waiting for him to do something. But trapped inside the plane, with the whine of the engines already beginning to rise, there was nothing he could do. Not yet…

“What are you saying?” Cray demanded.

“There is no need for this,” Yassen said. “Take them with us. They can do no harm.”

“Why should I want to take them all the way to Russia?”

“We can lock them in one of the cabins. You don"t even need to see them.”

“Mr Gregorovich…” Cray was breathing heavily. There was a bead of sweat on his forehead and his grip on the gun was tighter than ever. “If you don"t kill them, I will.” Yassen didn"t move.

“All right! All right!” Cray sighed. “I thought I was meant to be in charge, but it seems that I have to do everything myself.”

Cray brought up his gun. Alex got to his feet.

“No!” Sabina cried.

Cray fired.

But he hadn"t been aiming at Sabina or even at Alex. The bullet hit Yassen in the chest, spinning him away from the door. “I"m sorry, Mr Gregorovich,” he said. “But you"re fired.” Then he turned the gun on Alex.

“You"re next,” he said.

He fired a second time.

Sabina cried out in horror. Cray had aimed at Alex"s heart, and in the confined space of the cabin there was little chance he could miss. The force of the bullet threw Alex off his feet and back across the cabin. He crashed to the ground and lay still.

Sabina threw herself at Cray. Alex was dead. The plane was taking off. Nothing mattered any more. Cray fired at her but the shot missed and suddenly she was right up against him, her hands clawing at his eyes, shouting all the time. But Cray was too strong for her. He brought an arm round, grabbed hold of her and threw her back against the door. She lay there, dazed and helpless. The gun came up.

“Goodbye, my dear,” Cray said.

He aimed. But before he could fire, his arm was seized from behind. Sabina stared. Alex was up again and he was unhurt. It was impossible. But, like Cray, she had no way of knowing that he was wearing the bulletproof jersey that Smithers had given him with the bike. The bullet had hurt him; he thought it might have cracked a rib. But although it had knocked him down, it hadn"t penetrated his skin.

Now Alex was on top of Cray. The man was small—only a little taller than Alex himself—but even so he was thickset and surprisingly strong.

Alex managed to get one hand around Cray"s wrist, keeping the gun away from him. But Cray"s other hand grabbed Alex"s neck, his fingers curling into the side of Alex"s throat.

“Sabina! Get out of here!” Alex managed to shout the words before his air supply was cut off.

The gun was out of control. He was using all his strength to stop Cray from aiming it at him and he wasn"t sure how much longer he would be able to hold him off. Sabina ran over to the main door and pulled up the white handle to open it.

At that exact moment, in the cockpit, Henryk pushed the four thrust levers all the way down.

From where he sat, the runway stretched out in front of him. The path was clear. Air Force One lurched forward and started to take off.

The main door flew open with a loud hiss. It had been set to automatic before the plane began to move, and as soon as Sabina had unlocked it, a pneumatic system had kicked in. An orange slide extended itself from the doorway like a giant tongue and began to inflate. The emergency slide.

Wind and dust rushed in, a miniature tornado that whirled madly through the cabin. Cray had brought the gun round, aiming at Alex"s head, but the force of the wind surprised him. The magazines on the table flew into the air, flapping into his face like giant moths. The trolley of drinks broke loose and rattled across the carpet, bottles and glasses crashing down.

Cray"s face was contorted, his perfect teeth in a twisted snarl, his eyes bulging. He swore, but no sound could be heard against the roar of the engines. Sabina was pressed against the wall, staring helplessly through the open doorway at the grass and concrete rushing past in a green and grey blur. Yassen wasn"t moving; blood was spreading slowly across his shirt. Alex could feel the strength draining out of him. He relaxed his grip and the gun went off. Sabina screamed. The bullet had smashed a light fitting inches from her face. Alex jabbed down, trying to knock the gun out of Cray"s hand. Cray slammed a knee into his stomach and Alex reeled back, gasping for breath. The plane continued, faster and faster, hurtling down the runway.

Behind the controls Henryk was suddenly sweating. The eyes behind the spectacles were confused. He had seen a light blink on, warning him that a door had opened and that the main cabin was depressurized. He was already travelling at a hundred and thirty miles an hour. Air traffic control must have realized what was happening and would have alerted the authorities.

If he stopped now, he would be arrested. But did he dare take off? And then the on-board computer spoke. “VI…”

It was a machine voice. Utterly emotionless. Two syllables brought together by electronic circuitry. And they were the last two syllables Henryk wanted to hear.

Normally it would have been the first officer who called out the speeds, keeping an eye on the progress of the plane. But Henryk was on his own. He had to rely on the automated system.

What the computer was telling him was that the plane was moving at one hundred and fifty miles per hour—VI—decision speed. He was now going too fast to stop. If he tried to abort the take-off, if he put the engines into reverse, he would crash.

It is the moment every pilot dreads—and the single most dangerous moment in any flight. More plane crashes have been caused by a wrong decision at this time than by anything else. Every instinct in Henryk"s body told him to stop. He was safe on the ground. A crash here would be better than a crash from fifteen hundred feet up in the air. But if he did try to stop, a crash would be the certain result. He didn"t know what to do.

The sun was setting in the town of Quetta in Pakistan, but life in the refugee camp was as busy as ever. Hundreds of people clutching blankets and stoves made their way through a miniature city of tents, while children, some of them in rags, queued for vaccinations. A row of women sat on benches, working on a quilt, beating and folding the cotton.

The air was cool and fresh in the Patkai Hills of Myanmar, the country that had once been Burma. Fourteen hundred metres above sea Level, the breeze carried the scent of pine trees and flowers. It was half past nine at night and most people were asleep. A few shepherds sat alone with their flocks. Thousands of stars littered the night sky.

In Colombia, in the Uraba region, another day had dawned and the smell of chocolate wafted down the village street. The campesinas—the farmers" wives—had begun working at dawn, toasting the cacao beans, then splitting the shells. Children were drawn to their doors, taking in the rich, irresistible scent.

And in the highlands of Peru, north of Arequipa, families in colourful clothes made their way to the markets, some carrying the little bundles of fruit and vegetables that were all they had to sell.

A woman in a bowler hat sat hunched up beside a row of sacks, each one filled with a different spice. Laughing teenagers kicked a football in the street.

These were the targets that the missiles had selected, far out in space. There were thousands—

millions—more like them. And they were all innocent. They knew about the fields where the poppies were grown. They knew the men who worked there. But that was no concern of theirs.

Life had to go on.

And none of them had any knowledge of the deadly missiles that were already closing in on them. None of them saw the horror that was coming their way.

The end came very quickly on Air Force One.

Cray was punching the side of Alex"s head again and again. Alex still clung to the gun, but his grip was weakening. He finally fell back, bloody and exhausted. His face was bruised, his eyes half closed.

The emergency slide was jutting out now, horizontal with the plane. The rush of air was pushing it back, slanting it towards the wings. The plane was travelling at a hundred and eighty miles per hour. It would leave the ground in less than ten seconds" time.

Cray raised the gun one last time.

Then he cried out as something slammed into him. It was Sabina. She had grabbed hold of the trolley and used it as a battering ram. The trolley hit him behind the knees. His legs buckled and he lost his balance, toppling over backwards. He landed on top of the trolley, dropping the gun.

Sabina dived for it, determined that he wouldn"t fire another shot.

And that was when Alex rose up.

He had quickly gauged distances and angles. He knew what he had to do. With a cry he threw himself forward, his arms outstretched. His palms slammed into the side of the trolley. Cray yelled out. The trolley shot across the main area of the cabin and, with Cray still on top of it, out the door.

And it didn"t stop there. The emergency slide slanted gently towards the ground that was shooting past far below. It was held in place by the rushing wind and by the compressed air inside it. The trolley bounced out onto the slide and began to roll down. Alex staggered over to the door just in time to see Cray begin his fairground ride to hell. The slide carried him halfway down, the force of the wind tilting him back towards the wings.

Damian Cray came into the general area of engine two.

The last thing he saw was the engine"s gaping mouth. Then the wind rush took him. With a dreadful, inaudible scream he was pulled into the engine. The trolley went with him.

Cray was mincemeat. More than that, he was vaporized. In one second he had been turned into a cloud of red gas that disappeared into the atmosphere. There was simply nothing left. But the metal trolley offered more resistance. There was a bang like a cannon shot. A huge tongue of flame exploded out of the back as the engine was torn apart.

That was when the plane went out of control.

Henryk had decided to abort take-off and was trying to slow down, but now it was too late. An engine on one side had suddenly stopped. Both engines on the other side were still on full power.

The imbalance sent the plane lurching violently to the left. Alex and Sabina were thrown to the floor. Lights fused and sparked all around them. Anything that wasn"t securely fastened whirled through the air. Henryk fought for control but it was hopeless. The plane veered away and left the runway. That was the end of it. The soft ground was unable to support such a huge load. With a terrible shearing of metal, the undercarriage broke off and the whole thing toppled over onto one side.

The entire cabin twisted round and Alex felt the floor tilt beneath his feet. It was as if the plane was turning upside down. But finally it stopped. The engines cut out. The plane rested on its side and the scream of sirens filled the air as emergency vehicles raced across the tarmac.

Alex tried to move but his legs wouldn"t obey him. He was lying on the floor and he could feel the darkness closing in. But he knew he had to stay conscious. His work wasn"t finished yet.

“Sab?” He called out to her and was relieved when she got to her feet and came over.

“Alex?”

“You have to get to the communications room. There"s a button. Self-destruct.” For a moment she looked blank and he took hold of her arm. “The missiles…”

“Yes. Yes … of course.” She was in shock. Too much had happened. But she understood. She staggered up the stairs, balancing herself against the sloping walls. Alex lay where he was.

And then Yassen spoke.

“Alex…”

Alex didn"t have enough strength left to be surprised. He turned his head slowly, expecting to see a gun in the Russian"s hand. It didn"t seem fair to him. After so much, was he really going to die now, just when help was on its way? But Yassen wasn"t holding a gun. He had propped himself up against a table. He was covered in blood now and there was a strange quality to his eyes as the blue slowly drained out. Yassen"s skin was even paler than usual and, as his head tilted back, Alex noticed for the first time that he had a long scar on his neck. It was dead straight, as if it had been drawn with a ruler.

“Please…” Yassen"s voice was soft.

It was the last thing he wanted to do, but Alex crawled through the wreckage of the cabin and over to him. He remembered that Cray"s death and the destruction of the plane had only happened because Yassen had refused to kill Sabina and him.

“What happened to Cray?” Yassen asked.

“He went off his trolley,” Alex said.

“He"s dead?”

“Very.”

Yassen nodded, as if pleased. “I knew it was a mistake working for him,” he said. “I knew.” He fought for breath, narrowing his eyes for a moment. “There is something I have to tell you, Alex,” he said. The strange thing was that he was speaking absolutely normally, as if this were a quiet conversation between friends. Despite himself, Alex found himself marvelling at the man"s self-control. He must have only minutes to live.

Then Yassen spoke again and everything in Alex"s life changed for ever.

“I couldn"t kill you,” he said. “I would never have killed you. Because, you see, Alex … I knew your father.”

“What?” Despite his exhaustion, despite all the pain from his injuries, Alex felt something shiver through him.

“Your father. He and I…” Yassen had to catch his breath. “We worked together.”

“He worked with you?”

“Yes.”

“You mean … he was a spy?”

“Not a spy, no, Alex. He was a killer. Like me. He was the very best. The best in the world. I knew him when I was nineteen. He taught me many things…”

“No!” Alex refused to accept what he was hearing. He had never met his father, knew nothing about him. But what Yassen was saying couldn"t be true. It was some sort of horrible trick.

The sirens were getting nearer. The first of the vehicles must have arrived. He could hear men shouting outside.

“I don"t believe you,” Alex cried. “My father wasn"t a killer. He couldn"t have been!”

“I"m telling you the truth. You have to know.”

“Did he work for MI6?”

“No.” The ghost of a smile flickered across Yassen"s face. But it was filled with sadness. “MI6

hunted him down. They killed him. They tried to kill both of us. At the last minute I escaped, but he…” Yassen swallowed. “They killed your father, Alex.”

“No!”

“Why would I lie to you?” Yassen reached out weakly and took hold of Alex"s arm. It was the first physical contact the two had ever had. “Your father… he did this.” Yassen drew a finger along the scar on his neck, but his voice was failing him and he couldn"t explain. “He saved my life. In a way, I loved him. I love you too, Alex. You are so very much like him. I"m glad that you"re here with me now.” There was a pause and a spasm of pain rippled across the dying man"s face. There was one last thing he had to say. “If you don"t believe me, go to Venice. Find Scorpia. And you will find your destiny…”

Yassen shut his eyes and Alex knew he would never open them again.

In the communications room Sabina found the button and pressed it. In space the first of the Minutemen blew itself into thousands of pieces, a brilliant, soundless explosion. Seconds later the other missiles did the same.

Air Force One was surrounded. A fleet of emergency vehicles had reached it and two trucks were spraying it down, covering it in torrents of white foam.

But Alex didn"t know any of this. He was lying next to Yassen, his eyes closed. He had quietly and thankfully passed out.

RICHMOND BRIDGE

« ^

he swans really weren"t going anywhere. They seemed happy just to circle slowly in the sunshine, occasionally dipping their beaks under the surface of the water, searching for insects, algae, whatever. Alex had been watching them for the last half-hour, almost hypnotized by them.

He wondered what it was like to be a swan. He wondered how they managed to keep their feathers so white.

He was sitting on a bench beside the Thames, just outside Richmond. This was where the river seemed to abandon London, finally leaving the city behind it on the other side of Richmond Bridge. Looking upstream, Alex could see fields and woodland, absurdly green, sprawled out in the heat of the English summer.

An au pair, pushing a pram, walked past on the towpath. She noticed Alex, and although her expression didn"t change, her hands tightened on the pram and she very slightly quickened her pace. Alex knew that he looked terrible, like something out of one of those posters put out by the local council. Alex Rider, fourteen, in need of fostering. His last fight with Damian Cray had left its marks. But this time it was more than cuts and bruises. They would fade like others had faded before. This time he had seen his whole life bend out of shape.

He couldn"t stop thinking about Yassen Gregorovich. Two weeks had gone by but he was still waking up in the middle of the night, reliving the final moments on Air Force One. His father had been a contract killer, murdered by the very people who had now taken over his own life. It couldn"t be true. Yassen must have been lying, trying to wound Alex in revenge for what had happened between them. Alex wanted to believe it. But he had looked into the dying man"s eyes and had seen no deceit, only a strange sort of tenderness—and a desire for the truth to be known.

Go to Venice. Find Scorpio. Find your destiny…

It seemed to Alex that his only destiny was to be lied to and manipulated by adults who cared nothing about him. Should he go to Venice? How would he find Scorpia? For that matter, was Scorpia a person or a place? Alex watched the swans, wishing they could give him an answer.

But they just drifted on the water, ignoring him.

A shadow fell across the bench. Alex looked up and felt a fist close tightly inside his stomach.

Mrs Jones was standing over him. The MI6 agent was dressed in grey silk trousers with a matching jacket that hung down to her knees, almost like a coat. There was a silver pin in her lapel but no other jewellery. It seemed strange for her to be out here, in the sun. He didn"t want to see her. Along with Alan Blunt, she was the last person Alex wanted to see.

“May I join you?” she asked.

“It seems you already have,” Alex said.

She sat down next to him.

“Have you been following me?” Alex asked. He wondered how she had known he would be here and it occurred to him that he might have been under round-the-clock surveillance for the past fortnight. It wouldn"t have surprised him.

“No. Your friend—Jack Starbright—told me you"d be here.”

“I"m meeting someone.”

“Not until twelve. Jack came in to see me, Alex. You should have reported to Liverpool Street by now. We need to debrief you.”

“There"s no point reporting to Liverpool Street,” Alex said bitterly. “There"s nothing there, is there? Just a bank.”

Mrs Jones understood. “That was wrong of us,” she said.

Alex turned away.

“I know you don"t want to talk to me, Alex,” Mrs Jones continued. “Well, you don"t have to. But will you please just listen?”

She looked anxiously at him. He said nothing. She went on.

“It"s true that we didn"t believe you when you came to us—and of course we were wrong. We were stupid. But it just seemed so incredible that a man like Damian Cray could be a threat to national security. He was rich and he was eccentric; nevertheless, he was only a pop star with attitude. That was what we thought.

“But if you think we ignored you completely, Alex, you"re wrong. Alan and I have different ideas about you. To be honest, if it had been my choice, we"d never have got you involved in the first place … not even in that business with the Stormbreakers. But that"s not the issue here.” She took a deep breath. “After you had gone, I decided to take another look at Damian Cray. There wasn"t a great deal I could do without the right authority, but I had him watched and all his movements were reported back to me.

“I heard you were at Hyde Park, in that dome when the Gameslayer was launched. I also got a police report on the woman—the journalist—who was killed. It just seemed like an unfortunate coincidence. Then I was told there had been an incident in Paris: a photographer and his assistant killed. Meanwhile Damian Cray was in Holland, and the next thing I knew, the Dutch police were screaming about some sort of high-speed chase in Amsterdam: cars and motorbikes chasing a boy on a bicycle. Of course, I knew it was you. But I still had no idea what was going on.

“And then your friend, Sabina, disappeared at Whitchurch Hospital. That really got the alarm bells ringing. I know. You"re probably thinking we were absurdly slow, and you"re right. But every intelligence service in the world is the same. When they act, they"re efficient. But often they get started too late.

“That was the case here. By the time we came to bring you in, you were already with Cray, in Wiltshire. We spoke to your housekeeper, Jack. Then we went straight to his house. But we missed you again and this time we had no idea where you"d gone. Now we know, of course. Air Force One! The CIA have been going crazy. Alan Blunt was called in to see the prime minister last week. It may well be that he is forced to resign.”

“Well, that breaks my heart,” Alex said.

Mrs Jones ignored this. “Alex … what you"ve been through … I know this has been very difficult for you. You were on your own, and that should never have happened. But the fact is, you have saved millions of lives. Whatever you"re feeling now, you have to remember that. It might even be true to say that you saved the world. God knows what the consequences would have been if Cray had succeeded. Anyway, the president of the United States would very much like to meet you. So, for that matter, would the prime minister. And for what it"s worth, you"ve even been invited to the Palace, if you want to go. Of course, nobody else knows about you.

You"re still classified. But you should be proud of yourself. What you did was … amazing.”

“What happened to Henryk?” Alex asked. The question took Mrs Jones by surprise, but it was the only thing he didn"t know. “I just wondered,” he said.

“He"s dead,” Mrs Jones said. “He was killed when the plane crashed. He broke his neck.”

“Well, that"s that then.” Alex turned to her. “Can you go now?”

“Jack is worried about you, Alex. So am I. It may be that you need help coming to terms with what happened. Maybe some sort of therapy.”

“I don"t want therapy. I just want to be left alone.”

“All right.”

Mrs Jones stood up. She made one last attempt to read him before she left. This was the fourth occasion she had met Alex at the end of an assignment. Each time she had known that he must have been, in some way, damaged. But this time something worse had happened. She knew there was something Alex wasn"t telling her.

And then, on an impulse, she said, “You were on the plane with Yassen when he was shot. Did he say anything before he died?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did he talk to you?”

Alex looked her straight in the eye. “No. He never spoke.” Alex watched her leave. So it was true what Yassen had said. Her last question had proved it. He knew who he was.

The son of a contract killer.

***

Sabina was waiting for him under the bridge. He knew that this was going to be a brief meeting.

There was nothing really left to say.

“How are you?” she asked.

“I"m OK. How"s your dad?”

“He"s a lot better.” She shrugged. “I think he"s going to be fine.”

“And he"s not going to change his mind?”

“No, Alex. We"re leaving.”

Sabina had told him on the phone the night before. She and her parents were leaving the country.

They wanted to be on their own, to give her father time to recover fully. They had decided it would be easier for him to begin a new life and had chosen San Francisco. Edward had been offered a job by a big newspaper there. And there was more good news. He was writing a book: the truth about Damian Cray. It was going to make him a fortune.

“When do you go?” Alex asked.

“Tuesday.” Sabina brushed something out of her eye and Alex wondered if it might have been a tear. But when she looked at him again, she was smiling. “Of course, we"ll keep in touch,” she said. “We can email. And you know you can always come out if you want a holiday.”

“As long as it"s not like the last one,” Alex said.

“It"ll be weird going to an American school…” Sabina broke off. “You were fantastic on the plane, Alex,” she said suddenly. “I couldn"t believe how brave you were. When Cray was telling you all those crazy things, you didn"t even seem scared of him.” She stopped. “Will you work for MI6 again?” she asked.

“No.”

“Do you think they"ll leave you alone?”

“I don"t know, Sabina. It was my uncle"s fault, really. He started all this years ago and now I"m stuck with it.”

“I still feel ashamed about not believing you.” Sabina sighed. “And I understand now what you must have been going through. They made me sign the Official Secrets Act. I"m not allowed to tell anyone about you.” A pause. “I"ll never forget you,” she said.

“I"ll miss you, Sabina.”

“But we"ll see each other again. You can come to California. And I"ll let you know if I"m ever in London…”

“That"s good.”

She was lying. Somehow Alex knew that this was more than goodbye, that the two of them would never see each other again. There was no reason for it. That was just the way it was going to be.

She put her arms around him and kissed him.

“Goodbye, Alex,” she said.

He watched her walk out of his life. Then he turned and followed the river, past the swans and off into the countryside. He didn"t stop. Nor did he look back.