Point Blank

Mr. Baxter had presumably been the surgeon. But for what sort of work had he been paid a million dollars?

Trying not to look at the body, Alex glanced around. On one shelf was a collection of surgical knives, as horrible as anything he had ever seen, the blades so sharp that he could almost feel their touch just by looking at them. There were rolls of gauze, syringes, and bottles containing various liquids. But nothing to say how Baxter had been employed. Alex realized it was hopeless. He knew nothing about medicine. This room could have been used for anything from ingrown toenails to full-blown heart surgery.

And then he saw the photographs. He recognized himself, lying on a bed that he thought he knew too. It was Paris! Room 13 at the Hotel du Monde. He remembered the black-and-white comforter, as well as the clothes he had been wearing that night. The clothes had been removed in most of the photographs. Every inch of him had been photographed, sometimes close up, sometimes wider. In every picture, his eyes were closed. Looking at himself, Alex knew that he had been drugged and, for the first time, remembered how the dinner with Mrs. Stellenbosch had ended.

The photographs disgusted him. He had been manipulated by people who thought he was worth nothing at all. From the moment he had met them, he had disliked Dr. Grief and his assistant director. Now he felt pure loathing. He still didn’t know what they were doing. But they were evil. They had to be stopped.

He was shaken out of his thoughts by the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. The disposal team! He looked around him and cursed. He didn’t have time to get out, and there was nowhere in the room to hide. Then he remembered the elevator. He went over to it and urgently stabbed at the button. The footsteps were getting nearer. He heard voices. Then the panels slid open. Alex stepped into a small, silver box. There were five buttons: S, R, 1, 2, and 3. He pressed R. He knew enough French to know that the R must stand for Rez-de-chaussee … or first floor.

With luck, the elevator would take him back to where he had begun.

The doors slid shut a few seconds before the guards entered the operating room. Alex felt his stomach lurch as he was carried down. The elevator slowed. He realized that the doors could open anywhere. He might find himself surrounded by guards—or by the other boys in the school. Well it was too late now. He had made his choice without thinking. He would just have to cope with whatever he found.

But he was lucky. The doors slid open to reveal the library. Alex assumed this was the real library and not another copy. The room was empty. He stepped out of the elevator, then turned around. He was facing the alcove. The elevator doors formed the alcove wall. They were brilliantly camouflaged, with the suit of armor now sliced exactly in two, one half on each side.

As the doors closed automatically, the armor slid back together again, completing the disguise.

Despite himself, Alex had to admire the simplicity of it. The entire building was a fantastic box of tricks.

Alex looked at his hands. They were still filthy. He had almost forgotten that he was completely covered in soot. He crept out of the library, trying not to leave black footprints on the carpet. Then he hurried back to his room. When he got there, he had to remind himself that it was indeed his room and not the copy two floors above. But the CD player was there, and that was what he most needed.

He knew enough. It was time to call for the cavalry. He pressed the Fast Forward button three times, then went to take a shower.

DELAYING TACTICS

« ^ »

IT WAS RAINING IN LONDON, the sort of rain that seems never to stop. The early evening traffic was huddled together, going nowhere. Alan Blunt was standing at the window, looking out over the street, when there was a knock at the door. He turned away almost reluctantly, as if the city at its most damp and dismal held some attraction for him. Mrs. Jones came in. She was carrying a sheet of paper. As Blunt sat down behind his desk, he noticed the two words MOST

URGENT printed in red across the top.

‚We’ve heard from Alex,' Mrs. Jones said.

‚Oh, yes?'

‚Smithers gave him a Euro-satellite transmitter built into a portable CD player. Alex sent a signal to us this morning, at eleven twenty-seven hours, his time.'

‚Meaning …?'

‚Either he’s in trouble or he’s found out enough for us to go in. Either way, we have to pull him out.'

‚I wonder…' Blunt leaned back in his chair, deep in thought. As a young man, he had gained a degree with honors in mathematics at Cambridge University. Thirty years later, he still saw life as only a series of complicated calculations. ‚Alex has been at Point Blanc for how long?' he asked.

‚A week.'

‚As I recall, he didn’t want to go. According to Sir David Friend, his behavior at Haverstock Hall was, to say the least, antisocial. Did you know that he knocked out Friend’s daughter with a stun dart? Apparently, he also got her nearly killed in an incident in a railway tunnel.'

Mrs. Jones sat down. ‚What are you saying, Alan?' she demanded.

‚Only that Alex may not be one hundred percent reliable.'

‚He sent the message.' Mrs. Jones couldn’t keep the exasperation out of her voice. ‚For all we know, he could be in serious trouble. We gave him the device as an alarm signal, to let us know if he needed help. He’s used it. We can’t just sit back and do nothing.'

‚I wasn’t suggesting that.' Alan Blunt looked curiously at his head of operations. ‚You’re not forming some sort of attachment to Alex Rider, are you?' he asked.

Mrs. Jones looked away. ‚Don’t be ridiculous.'

‚You seem worried about him.'

‚He’s fourteen years old, Alan! He’s a child, for heaven’s sake!'

‚You used to have children.'

‚Yes.' Mrs. Jones turned to face him again. ‚Perhaps that does make a difference. But even you must admit that he’s special. We don’t have another agent like him. A fourteen-year-old boy! The perfect secret weapon. My feelings about him have nothing to do with it. We can’t afford to lose him.'

‚I just don’t want to go blundering into Point Blanc without any firm information,' Blunt said. ‚First of all, this is France we’re talking about—and you know what the French are like. If we’re seen to be invading their territory, they’ll kick up one hell of a fuss. Secondly, Grief has got hold of boys from some of the wealthiest families in the world. If we go storming in with the SAS or whatever, the whole thing could blow up into a major international incident.'

‚You wanted proof that the school was connected with the deaths of Roscoe and Ivanov,'

Mrs. Jones said. ‚Alex may have it.'

‚He may have it and he may not. A twenty-four-hour delay shouldn’t make a great deal of difference.'

‚Twenty-four hours?'

‚We’ll put a unit on standby. They can keep an eye on things. If Alex is in trouble, we’ll find out soon enough. It could play to our favor if he’s managed to stir things up. It’s exactly what we want. Force Grief to show his hand.'

‚And if Alex contacts us again?'

‚Then we’ll go in.'

‚We may be too late.'

‚For Alex?' Blunt showed no emotion. ‚I’m sure you don’t need to worry about him, Mrs. Jones. He can look after himself.'

The telephone rang, and Blunt answered it. The discussion was over. Mrs. Jones got up and left to make the arrangements for an SAS unit to fly into Geneva. Blunt was right, of course.

Delaying tactics might work in their favor.

Clear it with the French. Find out what was going on. And it was only twenty-four hours.

She would just have to hope Alex could survive that long.

Alex found himself eating his breakfast on his own. For the first time, James Sprintz had decided to join the other boys. There they were, the six of them, suddenly the best of friends.

Alex looked carefully at the boy who had once been his friend, trying to see what it was that had changed about him. He knew the answer. It was everything and nothing. James was exactly the same and completely different at the same time.

He finished his food and got up. James called out to him. ‚Why don’t you come to class this afternoon, Alex? It’s Latin.'

Alex shook his head. ‚Latin’s a waste of time.'

‚Is that what you think?' James couldn’t keep the sneer out of his voice, and for a moment Alex was startled. For just one second it hadn’t been James talking at all. It had been James who had moved his mouth, but it had been Dr. Grief speaking the words.

‚You enjoy it,' Alex said. He hurried out of the room.

More than twenty hours had passed since he had pressed the Fast Forward button on the Discman. Alex wasn’t sure what he had been expecting. A fleet of helicopters all flying the Union Jack would have been reassuring. But so far nothing had happened. He even wondered if the alarm signal had worked. At the same time, he was annoyed with himself.

He had seen Grief shoot the man called Baxter in the operating room, and he had panicked.

He knew that Grief was a killer. He knew that the academy was far more than the finishing school it pretended to be. But he still didn’t have all the answers. What exactly was Dr. Grief doing? Had he been responsible for the deaths of Michael J. Roscoe and Viktor Ivanov—and if so, why?

The fact was, he didn’t know enough. And by the time MI6 arrived, Dr. Baxter’s body would be buried somewhere in the mountains and there would be nothing to suggest there was anything wrong. Alex would look like a fool. He could almost imagine Dr. Grief telling his side of the story …

‚Yes. There is an operating room here. It was built years ago. We never use the top two floors. There is an elevator, yes. It was built before we came. We explained to Alex about the armed guards. They’re here for his protection. But as you can see, gentlemen, there is nothing unpleasant happening here. The other boys are fine. Baxter? No, I don’t know anyone by that name. Obviously Alex has been having bad dreams. I’m amazed that he was sent here to spy on us. I would ask you to take him with you when you leave…'

He had to find out more—and that meant going back up to the third floor. Or perhaps down. Alex remembered the letters in the elevator. R for Rez-de-chaussee. S had to stand for Sous-sol— French for basement.

He went over to the Latin classroom and looked in through the half-open door. Dr. Grief was out of sight, but Alex could hear his voice.

‚ Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causus—'

There was the sound of scratching, chalk on a blackboard. And there were the six boys, sitting at their desks, listening intently. James was sitting between Hugo and Tom, taking notes.

Alex looked at his watch. They would be there another hour. He was on his own.

He walked back down the corridor and slipped into the library. He had woken up still smelling faintly of soot and had no intention of making his way back up the chimney. Instead he crossed over to the suit of armor. He knew now that the alcove disguised a pair of elevator doors. They could be opened from inside. Presumably there was some sort of control on the outside too.

It took him just a few minutes to find it. There were three buttons built into the breastplate of the armor. Even up close, the buttons looked like part of the suit … something the medieval knight would have had to use to strap the thing on. But when Alex pressed the middle button, it moved. A moment later, the armor split in half again and he found himself looking into the waiting elevator.

This time he went down, not up. The elevator seemed to travel a long way, as if the basement of the building had been built far underground. Finally, the doors slid open again.

Alex looked out onto a curving passageway with tiled walls that reminded him a little of a London subway station. The air was cold down here. The passage was lit by naked bulbs, screwed into the ceiling at intervals.

He looked out, then ducked back. A guard sat at a table at the end of the corridor, reading a newspaper. Would he have heard the elevator doors open? Alex leaned forward again. The guard was absorbed in the sports pages. He hadn’t moved. Alex slipped out and crept down the passage, moving away from him. He reached the corner and turned into a second passageway lined with steel doors. There was nobody else in sight.

Where was he? There had to be something down here or there wouldn’t be any need for a guard. Alex went over to the nearest door. There was a peephole set in the front, and he looked through into a bare, white cell with two bunk beds, a toilet, and a sink. There were two boys in the cell. One he had never seen before, but he recognized the other. It was the red-haired boy, Tom McMorin. But he had seen Tom in Latin class just a few minutes ago! What was he doing here?

Alex moved on to the next cell. This one also held two boys. One was a fair-haired, fit-looking boy with blue eyes and freckles. Once again, he recognized the other. It was James Sprintz. Alex examined the door. There were two bolts, but as far as he could see, no key. He drew back the bolts and jerked the door handle down. The door opened. He went in.

James stood up, astonished to see him. ‚Alex! What are you doing here?'

Alex closed the door. ‚We haven’t got much time,' he said. He was speaking in a whisper even though there was little chance of being overheard. ‚What happened to you?'

‚They came for me the night before last,' James said. ‚They dragged me out of bed and into the library. There was some sort of elevator…'

‚Behind the armor.'

‚Yes. I didn’t know what they were doing. I thought they were going to kill me. But then they threw me in here.'

‚You’ve been here for two days?'

‚Yes.'

Alex shook his head. ‚I saw you having breakfast upstairs fifteen minutes ago.'

‚They’ve made duplicates of us.' The other boy had spoken for the first time. He had an American accent. ‚All of us! I don’t know how they’ve done it or why. But that’s what they’ve done.' He glanced at the door with anger in his eyes. ‚I’ve been here for months. My name’s Paul Roscoe.'

‚Roscoe! Your dad’s …?'

‚Michael Roscoe.'

Alex fell silent. He couldn’t tell this boy what had happened to his father and he looked away, afraid that Paul would read it in his eyes.

‚How did you get down here?' James asked.

‚Listen,' Alex said. He was speaking rapidly now. ‚I was sent here by MI6. My name isn’t Alex Friend. It’s Alex Rider. Everything’s going to be okay. They’ll send people in and get you all freed.'

‚You’re a spy?' James was obviously startled.

Alex nodded. ‚I’m sort of a spy, I suppose,' he said.

‚You’ve opened the door. We can get out of here!' Paul Roscoe stood up, ready to move.

‚No!' Alex held up his hands. ‚You’ve got to wait. There’s no way down the mountain.

Stay here for now and I’ll come back with help. I promise you. It’s the only way.'

‚I can’t—'

‚You have to. Trust me, Paul. I’m going to have to lock you back in so that nobody will know I’ve been here. But it won’t be for long. I’ll come back!'

Alex couldn’t wait for any more argument. He went back to the door and opened it.

Mrs. Stellenbosch was standing outside.

He barely had time to register the shock of seeing her. He tried to bring up a hand to protect himself, to twist his body into position for a karate kick. But it was already too late. Her arm shot out, the heel of her hand driving into his face. It was like being hit by a brick wall. Alex felt every bone in his body rattle. White light exploded behind his eyes. Then he was out.

HOW TO RULE THE WORLD

« ^ »

‚OPEN YOUR EYES ALEX. Dr. Grief wishes to speak to you.'

The words came from across an ocean. Alex groaned and tried to lift his head. He was sitting down, his arms pinned behind his back. The whole side of his face felt bruised and swollen, and the taste of blood was in his mouth. He opened his eyes and waited for the room to come into focus. Mrs. Stellenbosch was standing in front of him, her fist curled loosely in her other hand. Alex remembered the force of the blow that had knocked him out. His whole head was throbbing, and he ran his tongue over his teeth to see if any were missing. It was fortunate he had rolled with the punch. Otherwise she might have broken his neck.

Dr. Grief was sitting in his golden chair, watching Alex with what might have been curiosity or distaste or perhaps a little of both. There was nobody else in the room. It was still snowing outside, and a small fire burned in the hearth. The flames weren’t as red as Dr. Grief’s eyes.

‚You have put us to a great deal of inconvenience,' he said.

Alex straightened his head. He tried to move his hands, but they had been chained together behind the chair.

‚Your name is not Alex Friend. You are not the son of Sir David Friend. Your name is Alex Rider, and you are employed by the British secret service.' Dr. Grief was simply stating facts.

There was no emotion in his voice.

‚We have microphones concealed in the cells,' Mrs. Stellenbosch explained. ‚Sometimes it is useful for us to hear the conversations between our young guests. Everything you said was overheard by the guard who summoned me.'

‚You have wasted our time and our money,' Dr. Grief continued. ‚For that you will be punished. It is not a punishment you will survive.'

The words were cold and absolute, and Alex felt the fear that they triggered. It coursed through his bloodstream, closing in on his heart. He took a deep breath, forcing himself back under control. He had signaled MI6. They would be on their way to Point Blanc. They might appear any minute now. He just had to play for time.

‚You can’t do anything to me,' he said.

Mrs. Stellenbosch lashed out, and he was almost thrown backward as the back of her hand sliced into the side of his head. Only the chair kept him upright. ‚When you speak to the director, you will refer to him as ‘Dr. Grief,’ ' she said.

Alex looked around again, his eyes watering. ‚You can’t do anything to me, Dr. Grief,' he said. ‚I know everything. I know about Project Gemini. And I’ve already told London what I know. If you do anything to me, they’ll kill you. They’re on their way here now.'

Dr. Grief smiled, and in that single moment Alex knew that nothing he said would change what was about to happen to him. The man was too confident. He was like a poker player who had not only managed to see all the cards but had also stolen the four aces for himself.

‚It may well be that your friends are on their way,' he said. ‚But I do not think you have told them anything. We have been through your luggage and found the transmitting device concealed in the Discman. I note also that it is an ingenious electric saw. But as for the transmitter, it can send out a signal but not a message. How you learned about the Gemini Project is of no interest to me. I assume you overheard the name while eavesdropping at a door.

We should have been more careful—but for British intelligence to send in a child … that was something we could not expect.

‚Let us assume that your friends do come calling. They will find nothing wrong. You yourself will have disappeared. I shall tell them that you ran away. I will say that my men are looking for you even now, but that I very much fear you have died a cold and lingering death on the mountainside. Nobody will guess what I have done here. The Gemini Project will succeed. It has already succeeded. And even if your friends do take it upon themselves to kill me, it will make no difference. I cannot be killed, Alex. The world is already mine.'

‚You mean, it belongs to the kids you’ve hired to act as doubles,' Alex said.

‚Hired?' Dr. Grief muttered a few words to Mrs. Stellenbosch in a harsh, guttural language.

Alex assumed it must be Afrikaans. Her thick lips parted and she laughed, showing heavy, discolored teeth. ‚Is that what you think?' Dr. Grief asked. ‚Is that what you believe?'

‚I’ve seen them…'

‚You don’t know what you’ve seen. You have no understanding of my genius! Your little mind couldn’t begin to encompass what I have achieved.' Dr. Grief was breathing heavily. He seemed to come to a decision. ‚It is rare enough for me to come face-to-face with the enemy,' he said. ‚It has always been my frustration that I will never be able to communicate to the world the brilliance of what I have done. Well, since I have you here—a captive audience, so to speak—I shall allow myself the luxury of describing the Gemini Project. And when you go, screaming, to your death, you will understand that there was never any hope for you. That you could not hope to come up against a man like me and win. Perhaps that will make it easier for you.'

‚I will smoke, if you don’t mind, Doctor,' Mrs. Stellenbosch said. She took out her cigars and lit one. Smoke danced in front of her eyes.

‚I am, as I am sure you are aware, South African,' Dr. Grief began. ‚The animals in the hall and in this room are all souvenirs of my time there, shot on safari. I still miss the country. It is the most beautiful place on this planet.

‚What you may not know, however, is that for many years I was one of South Africa’s foremost biochemists. I was head of the biology department at the University of Johannesburg. I later ran the Cyclops Institute for Genetic Research in Pretoria. But the height of my career came in the 1960s when, although I was still in my twenties, John Vorster, the president of South Africa, appointed me minister of science.'

‚You’ve already said you’re going to kill me,' Alex said, ‚but I didn’t think that meant you were going to bore me to death.'

Mrs. Stellenbosch coughed on her cigar and advanced on Alex, her fist clenched. But Dr.

Grief stopped her. ‚Let the boy have his little joke,' he said. ‚There will be pain enough for him later.'

The assistant director glowered at Alex, but returned to her seat. Dr. Grief went on. ‚I am telling you this, Alex, only because it will help you understand. You perhaps know nothing about South Africa. English schoolchildren are, I have found, the laziest and most ignorant in the world. All that will soon change! But let me tell you a little bit about my country, as it was when I was young.

‚The white people of South Africa ruled everything. Under the laws that came to be known to the world as apartheid, black people were not allowed to live near white people. They could not marry white people. They could not share whites’ toilets, restaurants, sports arenas, or bars.

They had to carry passes. They were treated like animals.'

‚It was horrible,' Alex said.

‚It was wonderful!' Mrs. Stellenbosch murmured.

‚It was indeed perfect,' Dr. Grief agreed. ‚But as the years passed, I became aware that it would also be short-lived. The uprising at Soweto, the growing resistance, and the way the entire world—including your own stinking country—ganged up on us … I knew that white South Africa was doomed, and I even foresaw the day when power would be handed over to a man like Nelson Mandela.'

‚A criminal!' Mrs. Stellenbosch added. Smoke was dribbling out of her nostrils.

Alex said nothing. It was clear enough that both Dr. Grief and his assistant were mad. Just how mad they were was becoming clearer with every word they spoke.

‚I looked at the world,' Dr. Grief said, ‚and I began to see just how weak and pathetic it was becoming. How could it happen that a country like mine could be given away to people who had no idea how to run it? And why was the rest of the world so determined for it to be so? I looked around me and I saw that the people of America and Europe had become stupid and weak. The fall of the Berlin Wall only made things worse. I had always admired the Russians, but they quickly became infected with the same disease. And I thought to myself, If I ruled the world, how much stronger it would be. How much better…'

‚For you, perhaps, Dr. Grief,' Alex said. ‚But not for anyone else.'

Grief ignored him. His eyes, behind the red glasses, were brilliant. ‚It has been the dream of very few men to rule the entire world,' he said. ‚Hitler was one. Napoleon another. Stalin, perhaps, a third. Great men! Remarkable men! But to rule the world in the twenty-first century requires something more than military strength. The world is a more complicated place now.

Where does real power lie? Oh, yes—in politics. Prime ministers and presidents. But you will also find power in industry, in science, in the media, in oil, in the Internet… Modern life is a great tapestry, and if you wish to take control of it all, you must seize hold of every strand.

‚This is what I decided to do, Alex. And it was because of my unique position in the unique place that was South Africa that I was able to attempt it.' Grief took a deep breath. ‚What do you know about nuclear transplantation?' he asked.

‚I don’t know anything,' Alex said. ‚But as you said, I’m an English schoolboy. Lazy and ignorant.'

‚There is another word for it. Have you heard of cloning?'

Alex almost burst out laughing. ‚You mean, like Dolly the sheep?'

‚To you it may be a joke, Alex. Something out of science fiction. But scientists have been searching for a way to create replicas of themselves for more than a hundred years. The word itself is Greek.'

‚The Greek word for twig,' Mrs. Stellenbosch muttered.

‚Think how a twig starts as one branch but then splits into two,' Grief continued. ‚This is exactly what has been achieved with lizards, with sea urchins, with tadpoles and frogs, with mice and—yes—on the fifth of July, 1996, with a sheep. The theory is simple enough. Nuclear transplantation: to take the nucleus out of an egg and to replace it with a cell taken from an adult. I won’t tire you with the details, Alex. But it is not a joke. Dolly was the perfect copy of a sheep that had died six years earlier. She was the result of no less than one hundred years of experimentation. And in all that time, the scientists shared a single dream: to clone an adult human. Well … I have achieved that dream!'

He paused.

‚If you want a round of applause, you’ll have to take off the handcuffs,' Alex said.

‚I don’t want applause,' Grief snarled. ‚Not from you. What I want from you is your life, and that I will take.'

‚So who did you clone?' Alex asked. ‚Not Mrs. Stellenbosch, I hope. I’d have thought one of her was more than enough.'

‚Who do you think? I cloned myself!' Dr. Grief grabbed hold of the arms of his chair, a king on a throne of his own imagination. ‚Twenty years ago I began my work,' he explained. ‚I told you—I was minister of science. I had all the equipment and money I needed. Also, this was South Africa! The rules that hampered other scientists around the world did not apply to me. I was able to use human beings—political prisoners—for my experiments. Everything was done in secret. I worked without stopping for twenty years. And then, when I was ready, I stole a very large amount of money from the South African government and moved here.

‚This was in 1981. And six years later, almost a whole decade before an English scientist astonished the world by cloning a sheep, I did something far, far more extraordinary … here, at Point Blanc. I cloned myself. Not just once! Sixteen times. Sixteen exact copies of me. With my looks. My brains. My ambition. And my determination.'

‚Were they all as mad as you too?' Alex asked, and he flinched as Mrs. Stellenbosch hit him again, this time in the stomach. But he wanted to make them angry. If they were angry, they might make mistakes.

‚To begin with, they were babies,' Dr. Grief said. ‚Sixteen babies who would grow up to become replicas of myself. I have had to wait fourteen years for the babies to become boys and the boys to become teenagers. Eva here has been a mother to all of them. You have met them …

some of them.'

‚Tom, Cassian, Nicolas, Hugo, Joe. And James…' Now Alex understood why they had somehow all looked the same.

‚Do you see, Alex? Do you have any idea what I have done? I will never die because even when this body is finished with, I will live on in them. I am them and they are me. We are one and the same.'

He smiled again. ‚I was helped in all this by Eva, who had also worked with me in the South African government. She had worked in BOSS—our own secret service. She was one of their principal interrogators.'

‚Happy days!' Mrs. Stellenbosch muttered.

‚Together we set up the academy. Because, you see, that was the second part of my plan. I had created sixteen copies of myself. But that wasn’t enough. You remember what I said about the strands of the tapestry? I had to bring them here, to draw them together.'

‚To replace them with copies of yourself!' Suddenly Alex saw it all. It was totally insane.

But it was the only way to make sense of everything he had seen.

Dr. Grief nodded. ‚It was my observation that families with wealth and power frequently had children who were troubled. Parents with no time for their sons. Sons with no love for their parents. These children became my targets, Alex. Because, you see, I wanted what these children had.

‚Take a boy like Hugo Vries. One day his father will leave him with a fifty percent stake in the world’s diamond market. Or Tom McMorin. His mother has newspapers all over the world.

Or Joe Canterbury. His father at the Pentagon, his mother a senator. What better start for a life in politics? What better start for a future president of the United States, even? Fifteen of the most promising children who have been sent here to Point Blanc, I have replaced with copies of myself. Surgically altered, of course, to look exactly like the original thing.'

‚Baxter … the man you shot …'

‚You have been busy, Alex.' For the first time, Dr. Grief looked surprised. ‚The late Mr. Baxter was a plastic surgeon. I found him working in Harley Street, in London. He had gambling debts. It was easy to bring him under my control, and it was his job to operate on my family, to change their faces, their skin color, and where necessary their bodies so that they would exactly resemble the teenagers they replaced. From the moment the real teenagers arrived here at Point Blanc, they were kept under observation.'

‚With identical rooms on the third and fourth floors.'

‚Yes. My doubles were able to watch their targets on television monitors. To copy their every movement. To learn their mannerisms. To eat like them. To speak like them. In short, to become them.'

‚It would never have worked!' Alex twisted in his chair, trying to find some leverage in the handcuffs. But the metal was too tight. He couldn’t move. ‚Parents would know that the children you sent back were fakes!' he insisted. ‚Any mother would know it wasn’t her son, even if he looked the same.'

Mrs. Stellenbosch giggled. She had finished her cigar. Now she lit another.

‚You’re quite wrong, Alex,' Dr. Grief said. ‚In the first place, you are talking about busy, hardworking parents who had little or no time for their children in the first place. And you forget that the very reason these people sent their sons here was because they wanted them to change. It is the reason all parents send their sons to private schools. Oh, yes, they think the schools will make their children better, more clever, more confident. They would actually be disappointed if those children came back the same.

‚And nature, too, is on our side. A boy of fourteen leaves home for six or seven months. By the time he gets back, nature will have made its mark. The boy will be taller. He will be fatter or thinner. Even his voice will have changed. It’s all part of puberty, and the parents when they see him will say, ‘Oh, Tom, you’ve gotten so big, and you’re so grown-up!’ And they will suspect nothing. In fact, they would be worried if the boy hadn’t changed.'

‚But Roscoe guessed, didn’t he?' Alex knew that he had arrived at the truth, the reason he had been sent here in the first place. He knew why Roscoe and Ivanov had died.

‚There have been two occasions when the parents did not believe what they saw,' Dr. Grief admitted. ‚Michael J. Roscoe in New York. And General Major Viktor Ivanov in Moscow.

Neither man completely guessed what had happened. But they were unhappy. They argued with their sons. They asked too many questions.'

‚And the sons told you what had happened.'

‚You might say that I told myself. The sons, after all, are me. But yes. Michael Roscoe knew something was wrong and called MI6 in London. I presume that is how you were unlucky enough to be involved. I had to pay to have Roscoe killed just as I paid for the death of Ivanov.

But it was to be expected that there would be problems. Two out of sixteen is not so catastrophic, and of course it makes no difference to my plans. In many ways, it even helps me.

Michael J. Roscoe left his entire fortune to his son. And I understand that the Russian president is taking a personal interest in Dimitry Ivanov, following the loss of his father.

‚In short, the Gemini Project has been an outstanding success. In a few days’ time, the last of the children will leave Point Blanc to take their places in the heart of their family. Once I am satisfied that they have all been accepted, I will, I fear, have to dispose of the originals. They will die painlessly.

‚The same cannot be said for you, Alex Rider. You have caused me a great deal of annoyance. I propose, therefore, to make an example of you.' Dr Grief reached into his pocket and took out a device that looked like a pager. It contained a single button, which he pressed.

‚What is the first lesson tomorrow morning, Eva?' he asked.

‚Biology,' Mrs. Stellenbosch replied.

‚As I thought. You have perhaps been to biology classes where a frog or a rat has been dissected, Alex?' he asked. ‚For some time now, my children have been asking to see a human dissection. This is no surprise to me. I myself first attended a human dissection at the age of fourteen. Tomorrow morning, at half past nine, their wish will be granted. You will be brought into the laboratory and we shall open you up and have a look at you. We will not use anesthetic, and it will be interesting to see how long you survive before your heart gives out.

And then, of course, we shall dissect your heart.'

‚You’re sick!' Alex yelled. Now he was thrashing about in the chair, trying to break the wood, trying to get the handcuffs to come apart. But it was hopeless. The metal cut into him.

The chair rocked but stayed in one piece. ‚You’re a madman!'

‚I am a scientist!' Dr. Grief spat the words. ‚And that is why I am giving you a scientific death. At least in your last minutes you will have been of some use to me.' He looked past Alex. ‚Take him away and search him thoroughly. Then lock him up for the night. I’ll see him again first thing tomorrow morning.'

Alex had seen Dr. Grief summon the guards, but he hadn’t heard them come in. He was seized from behind, the handcuffs were unlocked, and he was jerked backward out of the room.

His last sight of Dr. Grief was of the man stretching out his hands to warm them in the fire, the twisting flames reflected in his glasses. Mrs. Stellenbosch smiled and blew out smoke.

Then the door slammed shut and Alex was dragged down the corridor knowing that Blunt and the secret service had to be on their way, but wondering whether they would arrive before it was too late.

BLACK RUN

« ^ »

THE CELL MEASURED six feet by twelve and contained a bunk bed with no mattress and a chair. Moonlight slanted in through a small, heavily barred window high up on the wall. The door was solid steel. Alex had heard a key turn in the lock after it was closed. He had not been given anything to eat or drink. The cell was cold, but there were no blankets on the bed.

At least the guards had left the handcuffs off. They had searched Alex expertly, removing everything they had found in his pockets. They had also removed his belt and the laces of his shoes. Perhaps Dr. Grief had thought he would hang himself. He needed Alex fresh and alive for the biology lesson.

It was about two o’clock in the morning, but Alex hadn’t slept. He had tried to put out of his mind everything Grief had told him. That wasn’t important now. He knew that he had to escape before 9:30 because—like it or not—it seemed he was on his own. More than thirty-six hours had passed since he had pressed the panic button that Smithers had given him, and nothing had happened. Either the machine hadn’t worked or for some reason MI6 had decided not to come. Of course, it was possible that something might happen before breakfast the next day. But Alex wasn’t prepared to risk it. He had to get out. Tonight.

For the twentieth time he went over to the door and knelt down, listening carefully. The guards had dragged him back down to the basement. He was in a corridor separate from the other prisoners. Although everything had happened very quickly, Alex had tried to remember where he had been taken. Out of the elevator and to the left. Around the corner and then down a second passageway to a door at the end. He was on his own. And listening through the door, he was fairly sure that they hadn’t posted a guard outside.

Alex had one bit of hope to cling to. When the guards had searched him, they hadn’t quite taken everything. Neither of them had even noticed the golden stud in his ear. What had Smithers said?

‚ It’s a small but very powerful explosive device, like a miniature grenade. Separating the two pieces activates it. Count to ten and it’ll blow a hole in just about anything.'

Now was the time to put it to the test.

Alex reached up and unscrewed the ear stud. He pulled it out of his ear, slipped the two pieces into the keyhole of the door, stepped back, and counted to ten.

Nothing happened. Was the stud broken, like the Discman transmitter? Alex was about to give up when there was a sudden flash, an intense sheet of orange flame. Fortunately there was no noise. The flare continued for about five seconds, then went out. Alex went back to the door.

The stud had burned a hole in it, the size of a silver dollar. The melted metal was still glowing.

Alex reached out and pushed. The door swung open.

Alex felt a momentary surge of excitement, but he forced himself to remain calm. He might be out of the cell, but he was still in the basement of the academy. There were guards everywhere. He was on top of a mountain with no skis and no obvious way down. He wasn’t safe yet. Not by a long way.

He slipped out of the room and followed the corridor back around to the elevator. He was tempted to find the other boys and release them, but he knew they couldn’t help. Taking them out of their cells would only put them in danger. Somehow, he found his way back to the elevator. He noticed that the guard post he had seen that morning was empty. Either the man had gone to make himself coffee or Grief had relaxed security in the academy. With Alex and all the other boys locked up, there was nobody left to guard. Or so they thought. Alex hurried forward.

He took the elevator back to the second floor. He knew that his only way off the mountain lay in his bedroom. Grief would certainly have examined everything he had brought with him.

But what would he have done with it? Alex crept down the dimly lit corridor and into the room.

And there it all was, lying in a heap on his bed. The ski suit. The goggles. Even the Discman with the Beethoven CD. Alex heaved a sigh of relief. He was going to need all of it.

He had already worked out what he was going to do. He couldn’t ski off the mountain because he still had no idea where the skis were kept. But there was more than one way to take to the snow. Alex froze as a guard walked along the corridor outside the room. So not everyone at the academy was asleep! He would have to move fast. As soon as the broken cell door was discovered, the alarm would be raised.

He waited until the guard had gone, then stole into the laundry room a few doors down.

When he came out, he was carrying a long, flat object made of lightweight aluminum. He carried it into his bedroom, closed the door, and turned on one small lamp. He was afraid the guard would see the light if he returned. But he couldn’t work in the dark. It was a risk he had to take.

He had stolen an ironing board.

Alex had been snowboarding only three times in his life. The first time, he had spent most of the day falling or sitting on his bottom. Snowboarding is a lot harder to learn than skiing, but as soon as you get the hang of it, you can advance fast. By the third day, Alex had learned how to ride, edging and cutting his way down the beginner slopes. He needed a snowboard now. The ironing board would have to do.

He picked up the Discman and turned it on. The Beethoven CD spun, then slid forward, its diamond edge jutting out. Alex made a mental calculation, then began to cut. The ironing board was wider than he would have liked. He knew that the longer the board, the faster he could go, but if he left it too long, he would have no control. The ironing board was flat. Without any curve at the front—or the nose, as it was called—he would be at the mercy of every bump or upturned root. He pressed down. The spinning disc sliced through the metal. Carefully, Alex drew it around, forming a curve. One end of the ironing board fell away. He picked up the other. It came up to his chest. Perfect.

Now he sliced off the supports, leaving about six inches sticking up. He knew that the rider and the board can work together only if the bindings are right, and he had nothing … no boots, no straps, and no highback to support his heel. He was just going to have to improvise. He tore two strips of sheet from the bed, then slipped into his ski suit. He would have to tie one of his sneakers to what was left of the ironing board supports. It was horribly dangerous. If he fell, he would dislocate his foot.

But he was almost ready. Quickly, Alex zipped up the ski suit. Smithers had said it was bulletproof, and it occurred to him that he was probably going to need it. He put the goggles around his neck. The window still hadn’t been repaired. He dropped the ironing board out, then climbed out after it.

There was no moon. Alex found the switch concealed in the goggles and turned it. He heard a soft hum as the concealed battery activated. Suddenly the side of the mountain glowed an eerie green and Alex was able to see the trees, the deserted ski run, and the side of the mountain, falling away.

Carefully, he took up his position on the ironing board, his right foot at forty degrees, his left foot at twenty. He was goofy-footed. That was what the instructor had told him. His feet should have been the other way around. But this was no time to worry about technique.

Instead, he used the strips of torn sheet to tie the ironing board to his feet, then he stood where he was, contemplating what he was about to do. He had only traveled down green and blue runs—the colors given to the beginners’ and intermediate slopes. He knew from James that this mountain was an expert black all the way down. His breath rose up in green clouds in front of his eyes. Could he do it? Could he trust himself?

An alarm bell exploded behind him. Lights came on throughout the academy. Alex pushed forward and set off, picking up speed with every second. The decision had been made for him.

Now, whatever happened, there could be no going back.

Dr. Grief, wearing a long silver dressing gown, stood beside the open window in Alex’s room. Mrs. Stellenbosch was also wearing a dressing gown. Hers was pink silk and looked strangely hideous, hanging off her lumpy body. Three guards stood watching them, waiting for instructions.

‚Who searched the boy?' Dr. Grief asked. He had already been shown the cell door with the circular hole burned into the lock.

None of the guards answered, but their faces had gone pale.

‚This is a question to be answered in the morning,' Dr. Grief continued. ‚For now, all that matters is that we find him and kill him.'

‚He must be walking down the mountainside,' Mrs. Stellenbosch said. ‚He has no skis. He won’t make it. We can wait until morning and pick him up in the helicopter.'

‚I think the boy may be more inventive than we believe.'

Dr. Grief picked up the remains of the ironing board. ‚You see? He has improvised some sort of sleigh or toboggan. All right…' He had come to a decision. Mrs. Stellenbosch was glad to see the certainty return to his eyes. ‚I want two men on snowmobiles, following him down.

Now!' One of the guards hurried out of the room.

‚What about the unit at the foot of the mountain?' Mrs. Stellenbosch said.

‚Indeed.' Dr. Grief smiled. He had always kept a man and a driver at the end of the last valley in case anybody ever tried to leave the academy on skis. It was a precaution that was about to pay off. ‚Alex Rider will have to arrive in La Vallee de Fer. Whatever he’s using to get down, he’ll be unable to cross the railway line. We can have a machine gun set up, waiting for him. Assuming he does manage to get that far, he’ll be a sitting duck.'

‚Excellent,' Mrs. Stellenbosch purred.

‚I would have liked to watch him die. But, yes. The Rider boy has no hope at all. And we can return to bed.'

Alex was on the edge of space, seemingly falling to his certain death. In snowboarding language, he was catching air, meaning that he had shot away from the ground. With every foot he went forward, the mountainside disappeared another five feet downward. He felt the world spin around him. Wind whipped into his face. Then somehow he had brought himself in line with the next section of the slope and shot down, steering the ironing board ever farther from Point Blanc. He was moving at a terrifying speed, trees and rock formations passing in a luminous green blur across his night-vision goggles. In some ways, the steeper slopes made it easier. Once, he had tried to make a landing on a flat part of the mountain—a tabletop—to slow himself down. He had hit the ground with such a bone-shattering crash that he had almost blacked out and had taken the next twenty yards almost totally blind.

The ironing board was shuddering and shaking crazily, and it took all his strength to make the turns. He was trying to follow the natural fall line of the mountain, but there were too many obstacles in the way. What he most dreaded was melted snow. If the board landed on a patch of mud at this speed, he would be thrown and killed. And he knew that the farther down he went, the greater the danger would become.

But he had been traveling for several minutes and so far he had fallen only twice—both times into thick banks of snow that had protected him. How far down could it be? He tried to remember what James Sprintz had told him, but thinking was impossible at this speed. He was having to use every ounce of his conscious thought simply to stay upright.

He reached a small lip where the surface was level and drove the edge of the board into the snow, bringing himself to a skidding halt. Ahead of him, the ground fell away again alarmingly.

He hardly dared look down. There were thick clumps of trees to the left and to the right. In the distance there was just a green blur. The goggles could see only so far.

And then he heard the sound coming up behind him.

The scream of at least two—maybe more—engines. Alex looked back over his shoulder. For a moment there was nothing. But then he saw them, black flies swimming into his field of vision. There were two of them, heading his way.

Grief’s men were riding specially adapted Yamaha Mountain Max snowmobiles equipped with 700 cc triplecylinder engines. The bikes were flying over the ice on their 141-inch tracks, effortlessly moving five times faster than Alex. The 300-watt headlights had already picked him up. Now the men sped toward him, halving the distance between them with almost every second that passed.

Alex leapt forward, diving into the next slope. At the same time, there was a sudden chatter, a series of distant cracks, and the snow flew up all around him. Grief’s men had machine guns built into their snowmobiles! Alex yelled as he swooped down the mountainside, barely able to control the sheet of metal under his feet. The makeshift binding was tearing at his ankles. The whole thing was vibrating crazily. He couldn’t see. He could only hang on, trying to keep his balance, hoping that the way ahead was clear.

The headlights of the nearest Yamaha shot out, and Alex saw his own shadow, stretching ahead of him on the snow. There was another chatter from the machine gun and Alex ducked, almost feeling the fan of bullets spray over his head. The second bike screamed up, coming parallel with him. He had to get off the mountainside. Otherwise he would be shot or run over.

Or both.

He forced the board onto its edge, making a turn. He had seen a gap in the trees and he made for it. Now he was racing through the forest, with branches and trunks whipping past like crazy animations in a computer game. Could the snowmobiles follow him through here? The question was answered by another burst from the machine gun, ripping through the leaves and branches. Alex searched for a narrower path. The board shuddered, and he was almost thrown headfirst. The snow was getting thinner! He edged and turned, heading for two of the thickest trees. He passed between them with inches to spare.

The Yamaha snowmobile had no choice. The rider had run out of paths, and was traveling too fast to stop. He tried to follow Alex between the trees, but the snowmobile was too wide.

Alex heard the collision. There was a terrible crunch, then a scream, then an explosion. A ball of orange flame leapt over the trees, sending the black shadows in a crazy dance. Ahead of him, Alex saw another hillock and beyond it, a gap in the trees. It was time to leave the forest.

He swooped up the hillock and out, once again catching air. As he left the trees behind him, six feet in the air, he saw the second snowmobile. It had caught up with him. For a moment, the two of them were side by side. Alex doubled forward and grabbed the nose of his board. Still in midair, he twisted the tip of the board, bringing the tail swinging around. He had timed it perfectly. The tail slammed into the second rider’s head, almost throwing him out of his seat.

Alex fought for balance. The rider yelled and lost control. His snowmobile jerked sideways as if trying to make an impossibly tight turn. Then it left the ground, cartwheeling over and over.

The rider was thrown off, then screamed as the snowmobile completed its final turn and landed on top of him. Man and machine bounced across the surface of the snow and lay still.

Meanwhile, Alex had slammed into the snow and skidded to a halt, his breath clouding, green, in front of his eyes.

A minute later, he pushed off again. Ahead of him, he could see that all the trails were leading into a single valley. This must be the bottleneck called La Vallee de Fer. He’d actually done it! He’d reached the bottom of the mountain. But now he was trapped. There was no other way around. He could see lights in the distance. A city. Safety. But he could also see the railway line stretching right across the valley, from the left to the right, protected on both sides by an embankment and a barbed-wire fence. The glow from the city illuminated everything. On one side the track came out of the mouth of a tunnel. It ran for about a hundred yards in a straight line before a sharp bend carried it around the other side of the valley and it disappeared from sight.

The two men in the gray van saw Alex snowboarding toward them. They were parked on a road on the other side of the railway line and had been waiting only a few minutes. They hadn’t seen the explosion and wondered what had happened to the two men on their snowmobiles.

But that wasn’t their concern. Their orders were to kill the boy. And there he was, right out in the open, expertly managing the last slope down through the valley. Every second brought him closer to them. There was nowhere for him to hide.

The machine gun was a Belgian FN MAG and would cut him in half.

Alex saw the van. He saw the machine gun aimed at him. He couldn’t stop. It was too late to change direction. He had come this far, but now he was finished. He felt the strength draining out of him. Where was MI6? Why did he have to die, out here, on his own?

And then there was a sudden blast as a train exploded out of the tunnel. It was a freight train, traveling about twenty miles an hour. It had at least thirty train cars being pulled by a diesel engine, and it formed a moving wall between Alex and the gun, protecting him. But it would be there only a few seconds. He had to move fast.

Barely knowing what he was doing, Alex found a last mound of snow and, using it as a launch pad, swept up into the air. Now he was level with the train … now above it. He shifted his weight and came down onto the roof of one of the cars. The surface was covered in ice, and for a moment he thought he would fall off the other side, but he managed to swing around so that he was snowboarding along the roofs of the cars, jumping from one to another while being swept along the track—away from the gun—in a blast of freezing air.

He had done it! He had gotten away! He was still sliding forward, the train adding its speed to his own. No snowboarder had ever moved so fast. But then the train reached the bend in the track. The board had nothing to keep it from sliding on the icy surface. As the train sped around to the left, centrifugal force threw Alex to the right. Once again he soared into the air. But he had finally run out of snow.

Alex hit the ground like a rag doll. The snowboard was torn off his feet. He bounced twice, then hit a wire fence and came to rest with blood spreading around a deep gash in his head. His eyes were closed.

The train plowed on through the night. Alex lay still.

AFTER THE FUNERAL

« ^ »

THE GREEN-AND-WHITE ambulance raced down the Avenue Maquis de Gresivaudan in the north of Grenoble, heading toward the river. It was five o’clock in the morning and there was no traffic yet, no need for the siren. just before the river it turned off into a compound of ugly, modern buildings. This was the second-biggest hospital in the city. The ambulance pulled up outside SERVICE DES URGENCES—the emergency room. Paramedics ran toward it as the back doors flew open.

Mrs. Jones got out of her taxi and watched as the limp, unmoving body of a boy was lowered on a stretcher, transferred to a gurney, and rushed in through the double doors. There was already a saline drip attached to his arm, and an oxygen mask covered his face. It had been snowing up in the mountains, but down here there was only a dull drizzle sweeping across the pavements. A doctor in a white coat was bending over the stretcher. He sighed and shook his head. Mrs. Jones had seen this. She crossed the road and followed the stretcher in.

A thin man with close-cropped hair wearing a black sweater and vest had also been watching the hospital. He saw Mrs. Jones without knowing who she was. He had also seen Alex. He took out a cell phone and made a call. Dr. Grief would want to know…

Three hours later, the sun had risen over the city. Grenoble is largely modern, and even with its perfect mountain setting, it still struggles to be attractive. On this damp, cloudy day it was clearly failing. Outside the hospital, another car drew up and Eva Stellenbosch got out. She was wearing a silver-and-white-checked suit with a hat perched on her ginger hair. She carried a leather handbag, and for once she had put on makeup. She wanted to look elegant. She looked like a man in drag.

She walked into the hospital and found the main reception desk. A young nurse sat behind a bank of telephones and computer screens. Mrs. Stellenbosch addressed her in fluent French.

‚Excuse me,' she said. ‚I understand that a young boy was brought here this morning. His name is Alex Friend.'

‚One moment, please.' The nurse entered the name in her computer. She read the information on the screen and her face became serious. ‚May I ask who you are?'

‚I am the assistant director of the Academy at Point Blanc. He is one of our students.'

‚Are you aware of the extent of his injuries, madame?'

‚I was told that he was involved in a snowboard accident.' Mrs. Stellenbosch took out a small handkerchief and dabbed at her eye.

‚He tried to snowboard down the mountain at night. He was involved in a collision with a train. His injuries are very serious, madame. The doctors are operating on him now.'

Mrs. Stellenbosch nodded, swallowing her tears. ‚My name is Eva Stellenbosch,' she said.

‚May I wait for any news?'

‚Of course, madame.'

Mrs. Stellenbosch took a seat in the reception area. For the next hour, she watched as people came and went, some walking, some in wheelchairs. There were other people waiting for news of other patients. One of them, she noticed, was a serious-looking woman with badly cut black hair and very black eyes. She was no doubt from England, as she was periodically glancing at a copy of the London Times.

Then a door opened and a doctor in a white coat came out. Doctors have a certain face when they come to give bad news. This doctor had it now. ‚Madame Stellenbosch?' he asked.

‚Yes?'

‚You are the director of the school?'

‚The assistant director. Yes.'

The doctor sat next to her. ‚I am very sorry, madame. Alex Friend died a few minutes ago.'

He waited while she absorbed the news. ‚He had multiple fractures: his arms, his collarbone, his leg. He had also fractured his skull. We operated, but unfortunately there had been massive internal bleeding. He went into shock and we were unable to bring him around.'

Mrs. Stellenbosch nodded, struggling for words. ‚I must notify his family,' she whispered.

‚Is he from this country?'

‚No. He is English. His father … Sir David Friend … I’ll have to tell him.' Mrs. Stellenbosch got to her feet.

‚Thank you, Doctor. I’m sure you did everything you could.'

Out of the corner of her eye, Mrs. Stellenbosch noticed that the woman with the black hair had also stood up, letting her newspaper fall to the floor. She had overheard the conversation.

She looked shocked.

Both women left the hospital at the same time. Neither of them spoke.

The aircraft waiting on the runway was a Lockheed Martin C- 130 Hercules. It had landed just after midday. Now it waited beneath the clouds while three vehicles drove toward it. One was a police car, one a jeep, and one an ambulance.

The Saint-Geoirs airport at Grenoble does not see many international flights, but the plane had flown out that morning from England. From the other side of the perimeter fence, Mrs. Stellenbosch watched through a pair of high-powered binoculars. A small military escort had been formed. Four men in French uniforms had lifted up a coffin that seemed pathetically small when balanced on their broad shoulders. The coffin was simple: pine wood with silver handles. A Union Jack was folded into a square in the middle.

Marching in time, they carried the coffin toward the waiting plane. Mrs. Stellenbosch focused the binoculars and saw the woman from the hospital. She had been traveling in the police car. She stood watching as the coffin was loaded into the plane, then got back into the car and was driven away. By now, Mrs. Stellenbosch knew who she was. Dr. Grief kept extensive files and had quickly identified her as Mrs. Jones, head of Special Operations for MI6 and number two to its chief, Alan Blunt.

Mrs. Stellenbosch stayed until the end. The doors of the plane were closed. The jeep and the ambulance left. The plane’s propellers began to turn, and it lumbered forward onto the runway.

A few minutes later it took off. As it thundered into the air, the clouds opened as if to receive it, and for a moment its silver wings were bathed in brilliant sunlight. Then the clouds rolled back and the plane disappeared.

Mrs. Stellenbosch dialed a number on her cell phone and waited until she was connected.

‚The little swine has gone,' she said.

She got back into her car and drove away.

After Mrs. Jones left the airport, she returned to the hospital and took the stairs to the second floor. She came to a pair of doors guarded by a policeman, who nodded and let her pass through. On the other side was a corridor leading to a private wing. She walked down to a door, this one also guarded by a policeman. She didn’t knock, but went straight in.

Alex Rider was standing by the window, looking out at the view of Grenoble on the other side of the River Isere. High above him, five steel and glass bubbles moved slowly along a cable, ferrying tourists up to the Fort de la Bastille. He turned around as Mrs. Jones came in. There was a bandage around his head, but otherwise he seemed unhurt.

‚You’re lucky to be alive,' she said.

‚I thought I was dead,' Alex replied.

‚Let’s hope that Dr. Grief believes as much.' Despite herself, Mrs. Jones couldn’t keep the worry out of her eyes. ‚It really was a miracle,' she said. ‚You should have at least broken something.'

‚The ski suit protected me,' Alex said. He tried to think back to the whirling, desperate moment when he had been thrown off the train. ‚There was undergrowth. And the fence sort of caught me.' He rubbed his leg and winced. ‚Even if it was barbed wire.'

He walked back to the bed and sat down. After they had finished examining him, the French doctors had brought him fresh clothes. Military clothes, he noticed. Combat jacket and trousers. He hoped they weren’t trying to tell him something.

‚I’ve got three questions,' he said. ‚But let’s start with the big one. I called for help two days ago. Where were you?'

‚I’m very sorry, Alex,' Mrs. Jones said. ‚There were … logistical problems.'

‚Yes? Well, while you were having your logistical problems, Dr. Grief was getting ready to cut me up!'

‚We couldn’t just storm the academy. That could have gotten you killed. It could have gotten you all killed. We had to move in slowly—try to work out what was going on. How do you think we found you so quickly?'

‚That was my second question.'

Mrs. Jones shrugged. ‚We’ve had people in the mountains ever since we got your signal.

They’ve been closing in on the academy. They heard the machine-gun fire when the snowmobiles were chasing you and followed you down on skis. They saw what happened with the train and radioed for help.'

‚All right. So why all the business with the funeral? Why do you want Dr. Grief to think I’m dead?'

‚That’s simple, Alex. From what you’ve told us, he’s keeping fifteen boys prisoner in the academy. These are the boys that he plans to replace.' She shook her head. ‚I have to say, it’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever heard. And I wouldn’t have believed it if I’d heard it from anyone else except you.'

‚You’re too kind,' Alex muttered.

‚If Dr. Grief thought you’d survived last night, the first thing he would do is kill every one of those boys. Or perhaps he’d use them as hostages. We had only one hope if we were going to take him by surprise. He had to believe you were dead.'

‚You’re going to take him by surprise?'

‚We’re going in tonight. I told you. We’ve assembled an attack squad here in Grenoble.

They were up in the mountains last night. They plan to set off as soon as it’s dark. They’re armed and they’re experienced.' Mrs. Jones hesitated. ‚There’s just one thing they don’t have.'

‚And what’s that?' Alex asked, feeling a sudden sense of unease.

‚They need someone who knows the building,' Mrs. Jones said. ‚The library, the secret elevator, the placement of the guards, the passage with the cells…'

‚Oh, no!' Alex exclaimed. Now he understood the military clothes. ‚Forget it! I’m not going back up there. I almost got killed trying to get away! Do you think I’m crazy?'

‚Alex, you’ll be looked after. You’ll be completely safe.'

‚No!'

Mrs. Jones nodded. ‚All right. I can understand your feelings. But there’s someone I want you to meet.'

As if on cue, there was a knock on the door. It opened to reveal a young man, also in combat dress. The man was well built with black hair, square shoulders, and a dark, watchful face. He was in his late twenties. He saw Alex and shook his head. ‚Well, well, well. There’s a surprise,'

he said. ‚How’s it going, Cub?'

Alex recognized him at once. It was the soldier he had known as Wolf. When MI6 had sent him for eleven days’ SAS training in Wales, Wolf had been in charge of his unit. If training had been hell, Wolf had only made it worse, picking on Alex from the start and almost getting him thrown out. In the end, though, it had been Wolf who had nearly lost his place with the SAS, and Alex who had saved him. But Alex still wasn’t sure where that left him, and the other man was giving nothing away.

‚Wolf!' Alex said.

‚I heard you got busted up.' Wolf shrugged. ‚I’m sorry. I forgot the flowers and the fruit basket.'

‚What are you doing here?' Alex asked.

‚They called me in to clear up the mess you left behind.'

‚So where were you when I was being chased down the mountain?'

‚It seems you were doing fine on your own.'

Mrs. Jones took over. ‚Alex has done a very good job up to now,' she said. ‚But the fact is that there are fifteen young prisoners up at Point Blanc and our first priority must be to save them. From what Alex has told us, we know there are about thirty guards in and around the school. The only chance those boys have is for an SAS unit to break in. It’s happening tonight.'

She turned to Alex. ‚The unit will be commanded by Wolf.'

The SAS never uses rank when it is on active service. Mrs. Jones was careful only to use Wolf’s code name.

‚Where does the boy come into this?' Wolf demanded.

‚He knows the school. He knows the position of the guards and the location of the prison cells. He can lead you to the elevator.'

‚He can tell us everything we need to know here and now,' Wolf interrupted. He turned to Mrs. Jones. ‚We don’t need a kid,' he said. ‚He’s just going to be baggage. We’re going in on skis. There’ll be blood. I can’t waste one of my men holding his hand.'

‚I don’t need to have my hand held,' Alex retorted angrily. ‚She’s right. I know more about Point Blanc than any of you. I’ve been there—and I got out of there, no thanks to you. Also, I’ve met some of those boys. One of them is a friend of mine. I promised I’d help him, and I will.'

‚Not if you get killed.'

‚I can look after myself!'

‚Then it’s agreed,' Mrs. Jones said. ‚Alex will lead you in there, but then will take no further part in the operation. And as for his safety, Wolf, I will hold you personally responsible.'

‚Personally responsible. Right,' Wolf growled.

Alex couldn’t resist a smile. He’d held his ground, and he’d be going back in with the SAS.

Then he realized what had happened. A few moments ago, he’d been arguing violently against doing just that. He glanced at the head of Special Operations. She’d manipulated him, of course, bringing Wolf into the room. And she knew it.

Wolf nodded. ‚All right, Cub,' he said. ‚Looks like you’re in. Let’s go and play.'

‚Sure, Wolf,' Alex sighed. ‚Let’s go and play.'

NIGHT RAID

« ^ »

THEY CAME SKIING DOWN from the mountain. There were seven of them, Wolf in front, Alex at his side. The other five men followed behind. They had changed into white trousers, jackets, and hoods—camouflage that would help them blend into the snow. A helicopter had dropped them two miles north and two hundred yards above Point Blanc, and equipped with night-vision goggles, they had quickly made their way down. The weather had settled again.

The moon was out. Despite himself, Alex enjoyed the journey, the whisper of the skis cutting through the ice, the empty mountainside bathed in white light. And he was part of a crack SAS

unit. He felt safe.

But then the academy loomed up below him, and once again he shivered. Before they had left, he had asked for a gun, but Wolf had shaken his head.

‚I’m sorry, Cub. It’s orders. You get us in, then you get out of sight.'

It was the same old story. When they needed him, he was a man. When he asked to protect himself, he was just a kid.

There were no lights showing in the building. The helicopter had arrived back from Paris, crouching on the helipad like a glittering insect. The ski jump stood to one side, dark and forgotten. There was nobody in sight. Wolf held up a hand and they sliced to a halt.

‚Guards?' he whispered.

‚Two patrolling. One on the roof.'

‚Let’s take him out first.'

Mrs. Jones had made her instructions absolutely clear. There was to be no bloodshed unless absolutely necessary. The mission was to get the boys out. The SAS could take care of Dr. Grief, Mrs. Stellenbosch, and the guards at a later date.

Now Wolf held out a hand and one of the other men passed him something. It was a crossbow—not the medieval sort but a sophisticated, high-tech weapon with a microflite aluminium barrel and laser scope. He loaded it with an anesthetic dart, lifted it up, and took aim. Alex saw him smile to himself. Then his finger curled and the dart flashed across the night, traveling at three hundred feet per second. There was a faint sound from the roof of the academy. It was as if someone had coughed. Wolf lowered the crossbow.

‚One down,' he said.

‚Sure,' Alex muttered. ‚And about twenty-nine to go.'

Wolf signaled and they continued down, more slowly now. They were about twenty yards from the school when they saw the main door open. Two men walked out, machine guns hanging from their shoulders. As one, the SAS men veered to the right, disappearing around the side of the school. They stopped within reach of the wall, dropping down to lie flat on their stomachs. Two of the men had moved slightly ahead. Alex noticed that they had kicked off their skis at the very same moment they had come to a halt.

The two guards approached. One of them was talking quietly in German. Alex’s face was half buried in the snow. He knew the combat clothes would make him invisible. He half lifted his head just in time to see two figures rise out of the ground like ghosts from the grave. Two blackjacks swung in the moonlight. The guards crumpled. In seconds they were tied up and gagged. They wouldn’t be going anywhere that night.

Wolf signaled again. The men got up and ran forward, making for the main door. Alex hastily pulled his own skis off and followed. They reached the door in a line, their backs against the wall. Wolf looked inside to make sure it was safe. He nodded. They went in.

They were back in the hall with the stone dragons and the animal heads. Alex found himself next to Wolf and quickly gave him his bearings, pointing out the different rooms.

‚The library?' Wolf whispered. He was totally serious now. Alex could see the tension in his eyes.

‚Through here.'

Wolf took a step forward, then crouched down, his hand whipping into one of the pouches of his jacket. Another guard had appeared, patrolling the lower corridor. Dr. Grief was taking no more chances. Wolf waited until the man had gone past and then nodded. One of the other SAS men went after him. Alex heard a thud and the soft clatter of a gun dropping.

‚So far so good,' Wolf whispered.

They went into the library. Alex showed Wolf how to summon the elevator, and Wolf whistled softly as the suit of armor smoothly divided into two parts. ‚This is quite a place,' he muttered.

‚Are you going up or down?'

‚Down. Let’s make sure the kids are all right.'

There was just room for all seven of them in the elevator. Alex had warned Wolf about the guard at the table, in sight of the elevator, and Wolf took no chances: he came out firing. In fact, two guards were there. One of them was holding a mug of coffee while the other lit a cigarette.

Wolf fired twice. Two more anesthetic darts traveled the short distance along the corridor and found their targets. Again, it had all happened in almost total silence. The two guards collapsed and lay still. The SAS men stepped out into the corridor.

Suddenly Alex remembered. He was angry with himself for not mentioning it before. ‚You can’t go into the cells,' he whispered. ‚They’re wired up for sound.'

Wolf nodded. ‚Show me!'

Alex showed Wolf the passage with the steel-lined doors. Wolf pointed to two of the men. ‚I want you to stay here. If we’re found, this is the first place Grief will come.'

The men nodded. They understood. The rest of them went back to the elevator, up to the library, and out into the hall.

Wolf turned to Alex. ‚We’re going to have to deactivate the system,' he explained. ‚Do you have any idea …?'

‚This way. Grief’s private rooms are on the other side.'

But before he could finish, three more guards appeared, walking down the passageway.

Wolf shot one of them another anesthetic dart—and one of his men took out the other two. But this time they were a fraction of a second too slow. Alex saw one of the guards bring his gun around. He was probably unconscious before he managed to fire. But at the last moment, his finger tightened on the trigger. Bullets sprayed upward, smashing into the ceiling, bringing plaster and wood splinters showering down. Nobody had been hit, but the damage had been done. The lights flashed on. Once again, the alarm began to ring.

Twenty yards away, a door opened and more guards poured through.

‚Down!' Wolf shouted.

He had produced a grenade. He tugged the pin out and threw it. Alex hit the ground, and a second later there was a soft explosion as a great cloud of tear gas filled the far end of the passage. The guards staggered, blind and helpless. The SAS men quickly took them out.

Wolf grabbed hold of him and dragged him close. ‚Find somewhere to hide!' he shouted.

‚You’ve got us in. We’ll do the rest now.'

‚Give me a gun!' Alex shouted back. Some of the gas had reached him, and he could feel his eyes burning.

‚No. I’ve got orders. At the first sign of trouble, you’re to get out of the way. Find somewhere safe. We’ll come for you later.'

‚Wolf!'

But Wolf was already up and running. Alex heard machinegun fire coming from somewhere below. So Wolf had been right. One of the guards had been sent to take care of the prisoners—but there had been two SAS men waiting for him. And now the rules had changed.

The SAS couldn’t afford to risk the lives of the prisoners. There was going to be bloodshed. Alex could only imagine the battle that must be taking place. But he was to be no part of it. His job was to hide.

More explosions. More gunfire. There was a bitter taste in Alex’s mouth as he made his way back to the stairs. It was typical of MI6. Half the time they would happily get him killed. The other half they treated him like a child. A guard appeared suddenly, running toward the sound of the fighting. Alex’s eyes were still smarting from the gas, and now he made use of it. He brought his hand up to his face, pretending to cry. The guard saw a fourteen-year-old boy in tears. He stopped. At that moment Alex twisted around on his left foot, driving the upper part of his right foot sideways into the man’s stomach—the roundhouse kick or mawashi-geri he had learned in karate. The guard didn’t even have time to cry out. His eyes rolled and he went limp. Alex felt a little better after that.

But there was still nothing more for him to do. There was another round of gunfire, then the quiet blast of a second gas grenade. Alex went into the dining room. From here he could look out through the windows at the side of the building and the helipad above. He noticed that the blades of the helicopter were turning. Somebody was inside it! He moved closer to the window.

It was Dr. Grief! He had to let Wolf know.

He turned around.

Mrs. Stellenbosch was standing in front of him.

He had never seen her look less human. Her entire face was contorted with anger, her lips rolled outward, her eyes ablaze.

‚You didn’t die!' she exclaimed. ‚You’re still alive!' Her voice was almost a whine, as if somehow none of it had been fair. ‚You brought them here. You’ve ruined everything!'

‚That’s what I’m paid for,' Alex said.

‚What was it that made me look in here?' Mrs. Stellenbosch giggled to herself. Alex could almost see the sanity slipping out of her. ‚Well, at least this is one bit of business I’m finally going to be able to finish.'

Alex tensed himself, feet apart, gravity center low, just like he had been taught. But it was useless. Mrs. Stellenbosch lurched into him, moving with frightening speed. It was like being run over by a bus. Alex felt the full impact of her body weight, then cried out as two massive hands seized hold of him and threw him headfirst across the room. He crashed into a table, knocking it over, then rolled out of the way as Mrs. Stellenbosch followed up her first attack, lashing out with a kick that would have taken his head off his shoulders if it hadn’t missed by less than an inch.

He scrambled to his feet and stood there, panting for breath. For a moment his vision was blurred. Blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth. Mrs. Stellenbosch charged again. Alex threw himself forward, using another of the tables for leverage. His feet swung around, scything through the air, both his heels catching her on the back of the head.

Anyone else would have been knocked out by the blow. But although Alex felt the jolt of it running all the way up his body, Mrs. Stellenbosch hardly faltered. As Alex left the table, her hands swung down, smashing through the thick wood. The table fell apart and she walked through it, grabbing him again, this time by the neck. Alex felt his feet leave the floor. With a grunt she hurled him against the wall. Alex yelled, wondering if his back had been broken. He slid to the floor. He couldn’t move.

Mrs. Stellenbosch stopped, breathing heavily. She glanced out the window. The helicopter’s blades were at full speed now. The helicopter rocked forward then slowly rose into the air. It was time to go.

She reached down and picked up her handbag. She took out a gun and aimed at Alex. Alex stared at her. There was nothing he could do.

Mrs. Stellenbosch smiled. ‚And this is what I am paid for,' she said.

The dining room door swung open.

‚Alex!' It was Wolf. He was holding a machine gun.

Mrs. Stellenbosch lifted the gun up and fired three shots. Each one of them hit its target.

Wolf was hit in the shoulder, the arm, and the chest. But even as he fell back, he opened fire himself. The heavy bullets slammed into Mrs. Stellenbosch. She was hurled backward into the window, which smashed behind her. With a scream she disappeared into the night and the snow, headfirst, her heavy, stockinged legs trailing behind.

The shock of what had happened gave Alex new strength. He got to his feet and ran over to Wolf. The SAS man wasn’t dead, but he was badly hurt, his breath rattling.

‚I’m okay,' he managed to say. ‚Came looking for you. Glad I found you.'

‚Wolf…'

‚Okay.' He tapped at his chest and Alex saw that he was wearing body armor under his jacket. There was blood coming from his arm, but the other two bullets hadn’t reached him.

‚Grief…' he said.

Wolf gestured, and Alex looked around. The helicopter had left its launchpad. It was flying low outside the academy. Alex saw Dr. Grief in the pilot’s seat. He had a gun. He fired. There was a yell, and a body fell from somewhere above. One of the SAS men.

Suddenly Alex was angry. Grief was a freak, a monster. He was responsible for all this—and he was going to get away. Not knowing what he was doing, he snatched up Wolf’s gun and ran through the broken window, past the dead body of Mrs. Stellenbosch and into the night. He tried to aim. The blades of the helicopter were whipping up the surface snow, blinding him, but he pointed the gun up and fired. Nothing happened. He pulled the trigger again. Still nothing.

Either Wolf had used all his ammunition or the gun had jammed.

Dr. Grief pulled at the controls and the helicopter banked away, following the slope of the mountain. It was too late. Nothing could stop him.

Unless …

Alex threw down the gun and ran forward. There was a snowmobile lying idle a few yards away, its engine still running. The man who had been riding it was lying facedown in the snow.

Alex leapt onto the seat and turned the throttle full on. The snowmobile roared away, skimming over the ice, following the path of the helicopter.

Dr. Grief saw him. The helicopter slowed and turned. Grief raised a hand, waving goodbye. Alex caught sight of the red glasses, the slender fingers raised in one last gesture of defiance. With his hands gripping the handlebars, Alex stood up on the foot grips, tensing himself for what he knew he had to do. The helicopter moved away again, gaining altitude. In front of Alex loomed the ski jump. He was traveling at seventy, eighty miles per hour, snow and wind rushing past him. Ahead of him there was a wooden barrier, shaped like a cross.

Alex smashed through it, then threw himself off.

The snowmobile plunged down, its engine screaming.

Alex rolled over and over in the snow, ice and wood splinters in his eyes and mouth. He managed to get to his knees.

The snowmobile reached the end of the ski jump.

Alex watched it rocket into the air, propelled by the huge metal slide.

In the helicopter, Dr. Grief just had time to see five hundred pounds of solid steel come hurtling toward him out of the night, its headlights blazing, its engine still screaming. His eyes, bright red, opened wide in shock. The makeshift torpedo hit its target full-on. Point-blank.

The explosion lit up the entire mountain. The helicopter disappeared in a huge fireball, then plunged down. it was still burning when it hit the ground.

Behind him, Alex became aware that the shooting had stopped. The battle was over. He walked slowly back to the academy, shivering suddenly in the cold night air. As he approached, a man appeared at the broken window and waved. It was Wolf, propping himself against the wall, but still very much alive. Alex went over to him.

‚What happened to Grief?' he asked.

‚It looks like I ‘sleighed’ him,' Alex replied.

On the slopes, the wreckage of the helicopter flickered and burned as the morning sun began to rise.

DEAD RINGER

« ^

A FEW DAYS LATER, ALEX found himself sitting opposite Alan Blunt in the faceless office on Liverpool Street, with Mrs. Jones twisting another peppermint between her fingers. It was May 1, a bank holiday in England, but somehow he knew that holidays never came to the building that called itself the Royal & General Bank. Even the spring seemed to have stopped at the window. Outside, the sun was shining. Inside, there were only shadows.

‚It seems that once again we owe you a debt of thanks,' Blunt was saying.

‚You don’t owe me anything,' Alex said.

Blunt looked genuinely puzzled. ‚You have quite possibly changed the future of this planet,' he said. ‚Of course, Grief’s plan was monstrous, crazy. But the fact remains that his…'

He searched for a word to describe the test-tube creations that had been sent out of Point Blanc.

‚…his offspring could have caused a great many problems. At the very least they would have had money. God knows what they would have done had they remained undiscovered.'

‚What’s happened to them?' Alex asked.

‚We’ve traced all fifteen of them, and we have them under lock and key,' Mrs. Jones answered. ‚They were quietly arrested by the intelligence services of each country where they lived. We’ll take care of them.'

Alex shivered. He had a feeling he knew what Mrs. Jones had meant by those last words.

And he was certain that nobody would ever see the fifteen Grief replicas again.

‚Once again, we’ve had to hush this up,' Blunt continued. ‚This whole business of …

cloning. It causes a great deal of public disquiet. Sheep are one thing—but human beings!' He coughed. ‚The families involved in this business have no desire for publicity, so they won’t be talking. They’re just glad to have had their real sons returned to them. The same, of course, goes for you, Alex. You’ve already signed the Official Secrets Act. I’m sure we can trust you to be discreet.'

There was a moment’s pause. Mrs. Jones looked carefully at Alex. She had to admit that she was worried about him. She knew everything that had happened at Point Blanc, how close he had come to a horrible death, only to be sent back into the academy for a second time. The boy who had come back from the French Alps was different from the one who had left. There was a coldness about him, as tangible as the mountain snow.

‚You did very well, Alex,' she said.

‚How is Wolf?' Alex asked.

‚He’s fine. He’s still in the hospital, but the doctors say he’ll make a complete recovery. We hope to have him back on operations in a few weeks.'

‚That’s good.'

‚We had only one fatality in the raid on Point Blanc. That was the man you saw falling from the roof. Wolf and another man were injured. Otherwise, it was a complete success.' She paused. ‚Is there anything else you want to know?'

‚No.' Alex shook his head. He stood up. ‚You left me in there,' he said. ‚I called for help and you didn’t come. Grief was going to kill me, but you didn’t care.'

‚That’s not true, Alex.' Mrs. Jones glanced at Blunt for support, but he didn’t meet her eyes.

‚There were difficulties…'

‚It doesn’t matter. I just want you to know that I’ve had enough. I don’t want to be a spy anymore, and if you ask me again, I’ll refuse. I know you think you can blackmail me. But I know too much about you now, so that won’t work anymore.' He walked over to the door. ‚I used to think that being a spy would be exciting and special, like in the films. But you just used me. In a way, the two of you are as bad as Grief. You’ll do anything to get what you want. Well, I want to go back to school. Next time, you can do it without me.'

There was a long silence after Alex had left. At last Blunt spoke. ‚He’ll be back,' he said.

Mrs. Jones raised an eyebrow. ‚You really think so?'

‚He’s too good at what he does—too good at the job. And it’s in his blood.' He stood up.

‚It’s rather odd,' he said. ‚Most schoolboys dream of being a spy. With Alex, we have a spy who dreams of being a schoolboy.'

‚Will you really use him again?' Mrs. Jones asked.

‚Of course. There was a file that came in only this morning. An interesting case. Right up his alley.' He smiled. ‚We’ll give him a few days to settle down and then we’ll call him.'

‚He won’t answer.'

‚We’ll see,' Blunt said.

Alex walked home from the bus stop and let himself into the elegant Chelsea house that he shared with his housekeeper and closest friend, Jack Starbright. Jack knew where Alex had been and what he had been doing. But the two of them had made an agreement never to discuss his involvement with MI6. She didn’t like it, and she worried about him. But ultimately, they both knew, there was nothing more to be said.

She seemed surprised to see him. ‚I thought you’d just gone out,' she said.

‚No.'

‚Did you get the message by the phone?'

‚What message?'

‚Mr. Bray wants to see you this afternoon. Three o’clock at the school.'

Henry Bray was the principal at Brookland. Alex wasn’t surprised by the summons. Bray was the sort of principal who managed to run a busy school and still find time to take a personal interest in every pupil there. He had been worried by Alex’s long absence at the start of spring term. The fact that Alex had also missed the last two weeks of the same term had worried him more. So he had called a meeting.

‚Do you want lunch?' Jack asked.

‚No, thanks.' Alex knew that he would have to pretend he had been ill again. Doubtless MI6 would produce another doctor’s note in due course. But the thought of lying to his principal had spoiled his appetite.

He set off an hour later, taking his bicycle, which had been returned to the house by the Putney police. He cycled slowly. It was good to be back in London, to be surrounded by normal life. He turned off the King’s Road and pedaled down the side road where—it felt like a month ago—he had followed the man in the white Skoda. The school loomed up ahead of him. It was empty now and would remain so until the summer term.

But as Alex arrived, he saw a figure walking across the yard to the school gates and recognized Mr. Lee, the elderly school caretaker.

‚You again!'

‚Hello, Bernie,' Alex said. That was what everyone called him.

‚On your way to see Mr. Bray?'

‚Yeah.'

The caretaker shook his head. ‚He never told me he was going to be here today. But he never tells me anything! I’m just going down to the shops. I’ll be back at five to lock up, so make sure you’re out by then.'

‚Right, Bernie.'

There was nobody in the school yard. It felt strange, walking across the tarmac on his own.

The school seemed bigger with nobody there, the yard stretching out too far between the redbrick buildings with the sun beating down, reflecting off the windows. Alex was dazzled.

He had never seen the place so empty and so quiet. The grass on the playing fields looked almost too green. Any school without schoolchildren has its own peculiar atmosphere, and Brookland was no exception.

Mr. Bray had an office in D block, which was next to the science building. Alex reached the swinging doors and opened them. The walls here would normally be covered in posters, but they had all been taken down at the end of the term. Everything was blank, off-white. There was another door open to one side. Bernie had been cleaning the main laboratory. He had rested his mop and bucket to one side when he had gone to the shops—to pick up cigarettes, Alex presumed. The man had been a chain smoker all his life, and Alex knew he’d die with a cigarette between his lips.

Alex climbed up the stairs, his heels rapping against the stone surface. He reached a corridor—left for biology, right for physics—and continued straight ahead. A second corridor, with full-length windows on both sides, led into D block. Bray’s study was directly ahead of him. He stopped at the door, vaguely wondering if he should have dressed up for the meeting.

Bray was always snapping at boys with their shirts hanging out or crooked ties. Alex was wearing a Gortex jacket, T-shirt, jeans, and Nike sneakers—the same clothes he had worn that morning at MI6. His hair was still too short for his liking, although it had begun to grow back.

All in all, he still looked like a juvenile delinquent—but it was too late now. And anyway, Bray didn’t want to see him to discuss his appearance. His nonappearance at school was more to the point.

He knocked on the door.

‚Come in!' a voice called.

Alex opened the door and walked into the principal’s study, a cluttered room with views over the school yard. There was a desk, piled high with papers, and a black leather chair with its back toward the door. A cabinet full of trophies stood against one wall. The others were mainly lined with books.

‚You wanted to see me,' Alex said.

The chair turned slowly around.

Alex froze.

It wasn’t Henry Bray sitting behind the desk.

It was himself.

He was looking at a fourteen-year-old boy with fair hair cut very short, brown eyes, and a slim, pale face. The boy was even dressed identically to him. It took Alex what felt like an eternity to accept what he was seeing. He was standing in a room looking at himself sitting in a chair. The boy was him.

With just one difference. The boy was holding a gun.

‚Come in,' he said.

Alex didn’t move. He knew what he was facing and he was angry with himself for not having expected it. When he had been handcuffed at the academy, Dr. Grief had boasted to him that he had cloned himself sixteen times. But that morning Mrs. Jones had traced ‚all fifteen of them.' That left one spare—one boy waiting to take his place in the family of Sir David Friend.

Alex had glimpsed him while he was at the academy. Now he remembered the figure with the white mask, watching him from a window as he walked over to the ski jump. The white mask had been bandages. The new Alex had been spying on him as he recovered from the plastic surgery that had made the two of them identical.

And even today there had been clues. Perhaps it had been the heat of the sun, or the fallout from his visit to MI6. But he had been too wrapped up in his own thoughts to see them.

Jack, when he got home. ‚ I thought you’d just gone out.

Bernie, at the gate. ‚ You again!'

They had both thought they’d seen him. And in a sense, they had. They had seen the boy sitting opposite him. The boy who was now aiming a gun at his heart.

‚I’ve been looking forward to this,' the other boy said, and despite the hatred in his voice, Alex couldn’t help marveling. The voice wasn’t the same as his. The boy hadn’t had enough time to get it right. But otherwise he was a dead ringer.

‚What are you doing here?' Alex said. ‚It’s all over. The Gemini Project is finished. You might as well turn yourself in. You need help.'

‚I need just one thing,' the second Alex sneered. ‚I need to see you dead. I’m going to shoot you. I’m going to do it now. You killed my father!'

‚Your father was a test tube,' Alex said. ‚You never had a mother or a father. You’re a freak. Handmade in the French Alps, like a cuckoo clock. What are you going to do when you’ve killed me? Take my place? You wouldn’t last a week. You may look like me, but too many people know what Grief was trying to do. And I’m sorry, but you’ve got ‘fake’ written all over you.'

‚We would have had everything! We would have had the whole world!' The replica Alex almost screamed the words, and for a moment Alex thought he heard Dr. Grief somewhere in there, blaming him from beyond the grave. But then the creature in front of him was Dr. Grief …

or part of him. ‚I don’t care what happens to me,' he went on, ‚just so long as you’re dead.'

The hand with the gun stretched out. The barrel was pointing at him. Alex looked the boy straight in the eyes.

And he saw the hesitation.

The fake Alex couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. They were too similar. The same clothes, the same bodies, the same faces. For the other boy, it would be like shooting himself. Alex still hadn’t closed the door. He threw himself backward, out into the corridor. At the same time, the gun went off, the bullet exploding inches above his head and crashing into the far wall. Alex hit the ground on his back and rolled out of the doorway as a second bullet slammed into the floor.

And then he was running, putting as much space between himself and his double as he could.

There was a third shot as he sprinted down the corridor, and the window next to him shattered, glass showering down. Alex reached the stairs and took them three at a time, afraid that he would trip and break an ankle. But then he was at the bottom, heading for the main door, swerving only when he realized that he would make too easy a target as he crossed the school yard. Instead he dived into the laboratory, almost falling headfirst over Bernie’s bucket and mop.

The laboratory was long and rectangular, divided into workstations with Bunsen burners, flasks, and dozens of bottles of chemicals spread out on shelves that stretched the full length of the room. There was another door at the far end. Alex dived behind the farthest desk. Would his double have seen him come in? Might he be looking for him, even now, out in the yard?

Cautiously, Alex poked his head over the surface, then ducked down as four bullets ricocheted around him, splintering the wood and smashing one of the gas pipes. Alex heard the hiss of escaping gas. Then there was another gunshot and an explosion that hurled him backward, sprawling onto the floor. The last bullet had ignited the gas. Flames leapt up, licking at the ceiling. At the same time, the sprinkler system went off, spraying the entire room. Alex tracked back on his hands and feet, searching for shelter behind fire and water, hoping the other Alex would be blinded. His shoulders hit the far door. He scrambled to his feet. There was another shot. But then he was through—with another corridor and a second flight of stairs straight ahead.

The stairs led nowhere. He was halfway up before he remembered. There was a single classroom at the top that was used for biology. It had a spiral staircase leading to the roof. The school had so little land that they’d planned to build a roof garden. Then they’d run out of money. There were a couple of greenhouses. Nothing more.

There was no way down! Alex looked over his shoulder and saw the other Alex reloading his gun, already on his way up. He had no choice. He had to continue even though he would soon be trapped.

He reached the biology classroom and slammed the door shut behind him. There was no lock, and the tables were all bolted into the floor. Otherwise he might be able to make a barricade. The spiral staircase was ahead of him. He ran up it without stopping, through another door and onto the roof. Alex stopped to catch his breath and see what he could do next.

He was standing on a wide, flat area with a fence running all the way around. There were half a dozen terra-cotta pots filled with earth. A few plants sprouted out, looking more dead than alive. Alex sniffed the air. Smoke was curling up from the windows two floors below, and he realized that the sprinkler system had been unable to put out the fire. He thought of the gas, pouring into the room, and the chemicals stacked up on the shelves. He could be standing on a time bomb! He had to find a way down.

But then he heard the sound of feet on metal and realized that his double had reached the top of the spiral staircase. Alex ducked behind one of the greenhouses. The door crashed open.

Smoke followed the fake Alex out onto the roof. He took a step forward. Now Alex was behind him.

‚Where are you?' the fake Alex shouted. His hair was soaked and his face contorted with anger.

Alex knew his moment had come. He would never have a better chance. He ran forward.

The other Alex twisted around and fired. The bullet creased his shoulder, a molten sword drawn across his flesh. But a second later he had reached him, grabbing him around the neck with one hand and seizing hold of his wrist with the other, forcing the gun away. There was a huge explosion in the laboratory below and the entire building shook, but neither of the boys seemed to notice. They were locked in an embrace, two reflections that had become tangled up in the mirror, the gun over their heads, fighting for control.

The flames were tearing through the building. Fed by a variety of chemicals, they burst through the floor, melting the asphalt. In the far distance, the scream of fire engines penetrated the sun-filled air. Alex pulled with all his strength, trying to bring the gun down. The other Alex clawed at him, swearing—not in English but in Afrikaans.

The end came very suddenly.

The gun twisted and fell to the ground.

One Alex lashed out, knocking the other one down, then dived for the gun.

There was another explosion, and a sheet of chemical flame leapt up. A crater had suddenly appeared in the roof, swallowing up the gun. The boy saw it too late and fell through. With a yell, he disappeared into the smoke and fire.

One Alex Rider walked over to the hole and looked down.

The other Alex Rider lay on his back, two floors below. He wasn’t moving. The flames were closing in.

The first fire engines had arrived at the school. A ladder slanted up toward the roof.

A boy with short fair hair and brown eyes, wearing a Gortex jacket, T-shirt, and jeans, walked to the edge of the roof and began to climb down.