Scorpia

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SCORPIA

Alex Rider Book 5

ANTHONY HOROWITZ

First published 2004 by Walker Books Ltd 87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ

2468 10 97531

Text © 2004 Anthony Horowitz

Cover illustration © 2004 Phil Schramm

Alex Rider Icon™ © 2004 Walker Books Ltd

ISBN 0-7445-8323-3

Table of Contents

EXTRA WORK

THE WIDOW’S PALACE

INVISIBLE SWORD

BY INVITATION ONLY

FLOOD TIDE

THOUGHTS ON A TRAIN

CONSANTO

DESIGNER LABELS

ALBERT BRIDGE

HOW TO KILL

THE BELL TOWER

DEAR PRIME MINISTER…

PIZZA DELIVERY

COBRA

REMOTE CONTROL

DECISION TIME

THE CHURCH OF FORGOTTEN SAINTS

HIGH RESOLUTION

DEEP COVER

A MOTHER’S TOUCH

EXTRA WORK

^ »

For the two thieves on the 200cc Vespa scooter, it was a case of the wrong victim, in the wrong place, on the wrong Sunday morning in September.

It seemed that all Life had gathered in the Piazza Esmeralda, a few miles outside Venice. Church had just finished and families were strolling together in the brilliant sunlight: grandmothers in black, boys and girls in their best suits and communion dresses. The coffee bars and ice-cream shops were open, their customers spilling onto the pavements and out into the street. A huge fountain—all naked gods and serpents—gushed jets of ice-cold water. And there was a market. Stalls had been set up selling kites, dried flowers, old postcards, clockwork birds and sacks of seed for the hundreds of pigeons that strutted around.

In the middle of all this were a dozen English schoolchildren. It was bad luck for the two thieves that one of them was Alex Rider.

It was the beginning of September. Less than a month had passed since Alex’s final confrontation with Damian Cray on Air Force One—the American presidential plane. It had been the end of an adventure that had taken him to Paris and Amsterdam, and finally to the main runway at Heathrow Airport even as twenty-five nuclear missiles had been fired at targets all around the world. Alex had managed to destroy these missiles. He had been there when Cray died. And at last he had gone home with the usual collection of bruises and scratches only to find a grim-faced and determined Jack Starbright waiting for him. Jack was his housekeeper but she was also his friend, and, as always, she was worried about him.

“You can’t keep this up, Alex,” she said. “You’re never at school. You missed half the summer term when you were at Skeleton Key and loads of the spring term when you were in Cornwall and then at that awful academy Point Blanc. If you keep this up, you’ll flunk all your exams and then what will you do?”

“It’s not my fault—” Alex began.

“I know it’s not your fault. But it’s my job to do something about it, and I’ve decided to hire a tutor for what’s left of the summer.”

“You’re not serious!”

“I am serious. You’ve still got quite a bit of holiday left. And you can start right now.”

“I don’t want a tutor—” Alex started to protest.

“I’m not giving you any choice, Alex. I don’t care what gadgets you’ve got or what smart moves you might try

—this time there’s no escape!”

Alex wanted to argue with her but in his heart he knew she was right. MI6 always provided him with a doctor’s note to explain his long absences from school, but the teachers were more or less giving up on him. His last report had said it all: Alex continues to spend more time out of school than in it, and if this carries on, he might as well forget his GCSEs. Although he cannot be blamed for what seems to be a catalogue of medical problems, if he falls any further behind, I fear he may disappear altogether.

So that was it. Alex had stopped an insane, multimillionaire pop singer from destroying half the world—and what had he got for it? Extra work!

He started with ill grace—particularly when he discovered that the tutor Jack had found actually taught at Brookland, his own school. Alex wasn’t in his class, but even so it was an embarrassment and he hoped nobody would find out. However, he had to admit that Mr Grey was good at his job. Charlie Grey was young and easy-going, arriving on a bicycle with a saddlebag crammed with books. He taught humanities but seemed to know his way round the entire syllabus.

“We’ve only got a few weeks,” he announced. “That may not seem very much, but you’d be surprised how much you can achieve one to one. I’m going to work you seven hours a day, and on top of that I’m going to leave you with homework. By the end of the holidays you’ll probably hate me. But at least you’ll start the new school year on a more or less even keel.”

Alex didn’t hate Charlie Grey. They worked quietly and quickly, moving through the day from maths to history to science and so on. Every weekend, the teacher left behind exam papers, and gradually Alex saw his percentages improve. And then Mr Grey sprang his surprise.

“You’ve done really well, Alex. I wasn’t going to mention this to you, but how would you like to come with me on the school trip?”

“Where are you going?”

“Well, last year it was Paris; the year before that it was Rome. We look at museums, churches, palaces … that sort of thing. This year we’re going to Venice. Do you want to come?” Venice.

It had been in Alex’s mind all along—the final minutes on the plane after Damian Cray had died. Yassen Gregorovich had been there, the Russian assassin who had cast a shadow over so much of Alex’s life. Yassen had been dying, a bullet lodged in his chest. But just before the end he’d managed to blurt out a secret that had been buried for fourteen years.

Alex’s parents had been killed shortly after he was born and he had been brought up by his father’s brother, Ian Rider. Earlier this year, Ian Rider had died too, supposedly in a car accident. It had been the shock of Alex’s life to discover that his uncle was actually a spy and had been killed on a mission in Cornwall. That was when MI6

had made their appearance. Somehow they had succeeded in sucking Alex into their world, and he had been working for them ever since.

Alex knew very little about his mother and father, John and Helen Rider. In his bedroom he had a photo of them: a watchful, handsome man with close-cut hair standing with his arm round a pretty, half-smiling woman.

He had been in the army and still looked like a soldier. She had been a nurse, working in radiology. But they were strangers to him; he couldn’t remember anything about them. They had died while he was still a baby. In a plane crash. That was what he had been told.

Now he knew otherwise.

The plane crash had been as much a lie as his uncle’s car accident. Yassen Gregorovich had told him the truth on Air Force One. Alex’s father had been an assassin—just like Yassen. The two of them had even worked together; John Rider had once saved Yassen’s life. But then his father had been killed by MI6—the very same people who had forced Alex to work for them three times, lying to him, manipulating him and finally dumping him when he was no longer needed. It was almost impossible to believe, but Yassen had offered him a way to find proof.

Go to Venice. Find Scorpia. And you will find your destiny…

Alex had to know what had happened fourteen years ago. Discovering the truth about John Rider would be the same as finding out about himself. Because, if his father really had killed people for money, what did that make him? Alex was angry, unhappy … and confused. He had to find Scorpia, whatever it was. Scorpia would tell him what he needed to know.

A school trip to Venice couldn’t have come at a better time. And Jack didn’t stop him from going. In fact, she encouraged him.

“It’s exactly what you need, Alex. A chance to hang out with your friends and just be an ordinary schoolboy.

I’m sure you’ll have a great time.”

Alex said nothing. He hated having to lie to her, but there was no way he could tell her the truth. Jack had never met his father; this wasn’t her affair.

So he let her help him pack, knowing that, for him, the trip would have little to do with churches and museums.

He would use it to explore the city and see what he unearthed. Five days wasn’t a long time. But it would be a start. Five days in Venice. Five days to find Scorpia.

And now here he was. In an Italian square. Three days of the trip had already gone by and he had found nothing.

“Alex—you fancy an ice cream?”

“No. I’m all right.”

“I’m hot. I’m going to get one of those things you told me about. What did you call it? A granada or something…”

Alex was standing beside another fourteen-year-old boy who happened to be his closest friend at Brookland. He had been surprised to hear that Tom Harris was going to be on the trip, as Tom wasn’t exactly interested in art or history. Tom wasn’t interested in any school subjects and was regularly bottom in everything. But the best thing about him was that he didn’t care. He was always cheerful, and even the teachers had to admit that he was fun to be with. And what Tom lacked in the classroom, he made up for on the sports field. He was captain of the school football team and Alex’s main rival on sports day, beating him at hurdles, four hundred metres and the pole vault. Tom was small for his age, with spiky black hair and bright blue eyes. He wouldn’t have been found dead in a museum, so why was he here? Alex soon found out. Tom’s parents were going through a messy divorce, and they had packed him off to get him out of the way.

“It’s a granita,” Alex said. It was what he always ordered when he was in Italy: crushed ice with fresh lemon juice squeezed over it. It was halfway between an ice cream and a drink and there was nothing in the world more refreshing.

“Come on. You can order it for me. When I ask anyone for anything in Italian they just stare at me like I’m mad.”

In fact, Alex only spoke a few phrases himself. Italian was one language Ian Rider hadn’t taught him. Even so, he went with Tom and ordered two ices from a shop near the market stalls, one for Tom and one—Tom insisted

—for himself. Tom had plenty of money. His parents had showered him with euros before he left.

“Are you going to be at school this term?” he asked.

Alex shrugged. “Of course.”

“You were hardly there last term—or the term before.”

“I was ill.”

Tom nodded. He was wearing Diesel light-sensitive sunglasses that he had bought at Heathrow duty-free. They were too big for his face and kept slipping down his nose. “You do realize that no one believes that,” he commented.

“Why not?”

“Because nobody’s that ill. It’s just not possible.” Tom lowered his voice. “There’s a rumour you’re a thief,” he confided.

“What?”

“That’s why you’re away so much. You’re in trouble with the police.”

“Is that what you think?”

“No. But Miss Bedfordshire asked me about you. She knows we’re mates. She said you got into trouble once for nicking a crane or something. She heard about that from someone and she thinks you’re in therapy.”

“Therapy?” Alex was staggered.

“Yeah. She’s quite sorry for you. She thinks that’s why you have to go away so much. You know, to see a shrink.”

Jane Bedfordshire was the school secretary, an attractive woman in her twenties. She had come on the trip too, as she did every year. Alex could see her now on the other side of the square, talking to Mr Grey. A lot of people said there was something going on between them, but Alex guessed the rumour was probably as accurate as the one about him.

A clock chimed twelve. In half an hour they would have lunch at the hotel where they were staying. Brookland School was an ordinary west London comprehensive and they’d decided to keep costs down by staying outside Venice. Mr Grey had chosen a hotel in the little town of San Lorenzo, just ten minutes away by train. Every morning they’d arrive at the station and take the water bus into the heart of the city. But not today. This was Sunday and they had the morning off.

“So are you—” Tom began. He broke off. It had happened very quickly but both boys had seen it.

On the opposite side of the square a motorbike had surged forward. It was a 200cc Vespa Gran-turismo, almost brand new, with two men riding it. They were both dressed in jeans and loose, long-sleeved shirts. The passenger had on a visored helmet, as much to hide his identity as to protect him if they crashed. The driver—

wearing sunglasses—steered towards Miss Bedfordshire, as if he intended to run her over. But, a split second before contact, he veered away. At the same time, the man riding pillion reached out and snatched her handbag.

It was done so neatly that Alex knew the two men were professionals—scippatori as they were known in Italy.

Bag snatchers.

Some of the other pupils had seen it too. One or two were shouting and pointing, but there was nothing they could do. The bike was already accelerating away. The driver was crouched low over the handlebars; his partner was cradling the leather bag in his lap. They were speeding diagonally across the square, heading towards Alex and Tom. A few moments before, there had been people everywhere, but suddenly the centre of the square was empty and there was nothing to prevent their escape.

“Alex!” Tom shouted.

“Stay back,” Alex warned. He briefly considered blocking the Vespa’s path. But it was hopeless.

The driver would easily be able to swerve round him—and if he chose not to, Alex really would spend the following term in hospital. The bike was already doing about twenty miles an hour, its single-cylinder four-stroke engine carrying the two thieves effortlessly towards him. Alex certainly wasn’t going to stand in its way.

He looked around him, wondering if there was something he could throw. A net? A bucket of water? But there was no net and the fountain was too far away, although there were buckets…

The bike was less than twenty metres away, accelerating all the time. Alex sprinted and snatched a bucket from the flower stall, emptied it, scattering dried flowers across the pavement, and filled it with bird seed from the stall next door. Both stall owners were shouting something at him but he ignored them. Without stopping, he swung round and hurled the seed at the Vespa just as it was about to flash past him. Tom watched—first in amazement, then with disappointment. If Alex had thought the great shower of seed would knock the two men off the bike, he’d been mistaken. They were continuing regardless.

But that hadn’t been his plan.

There must have been two or three hundred pigeons in the square and all of them had seen the seed spraying out of the bucket. The two riders were covered in it. Seed had lodged in the folds of their clothes, under their collars and in the sides of their shoes. There was a small pile of it caught in the driver’s crotch. Some had fallen into Miss Bedfordshire’s bag; some had become trapped in the driver’s hair.

For the pigeons, the bag thieves had suddenly become a meal on wheels. With a soft explosion of grey feathers, they came swooping down, diving on the two men from all directions. Suddenly the driver had a bird clinging to the side of his face, its beak hammering at his head, ripping the seed out of his hair. There was another pigeon at his throat, and a third between his legs, pecking at the most sensitive area of all. His passenger had two on his neck, another hanging off his shirt, and another half buried in the stolen bag. And more were joining in. There must have been at least twenty pigeons, flapping and batting around them, a swirling cloud of feathers, claws and—triggered by greed and excitement—flying splatters of white bird droppings.

The driver was blinded. One hand clutched the handlebars, the other tore at his face. As Alex watched, the bike performed a hundred and eighty degree turn so that now it was coming back, heading straight towards them, moving faster than ever. For a moment he stood poised, waiting to hurl himself aside. It looked as if he was going to be run over. But then the bike swerved a second time and now it was heading for the fountain, the two men barely visible in a cloud of beating wings. The front wheel hit the fountain’s edge and the bike crumpled.

Both men were thrown off. The birds scattered. In the brief pause before he hit the water, the man riding pillion yelled and let go of the handbag. Almost in slow motion, the bag arced through the air. Alex took two steps and caught it.

And then it was all over. The two thieves were a tangled heap, half submerged in cold water. The Vespa was lying, buckled and broken, on the ground. Two policemen, who had arrived when it was almost too late, were hurrying towards them. The stall owners were laughing and applauding. Tom was staring. Alex went over to Miss Bedfordshire and gave her the bag.

“I think this is yours,” he said.

“Alex…” Miss Bedfordshire was lost for words. “How…?”

“It was just something I picked up in therapy,” Alex said.

He turned and walked back to his friend.

THE WIDOW’S PALACE

« ^ »

Now, this building is called the Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo,” Mr Grey announced. “Bovolo is the Venetian word for snail shell and, as you can see, this wonderful staircase is shaped a bit like a shell.” Tom Harris stifled a yawn. “If I see one more palace, one more museum or one more canal,” he muttered, “I’m going to throw myself under a bus.”

“There aren’t any buses in Venice,” Alex reminded him.

“A water bus, then. If it doesn’t hit me, maybe I’ll get lucky and drown.” Tom sighed. “You know the trouble with this place? It’s like a museum. A bloody great museum. I feel like I’ve been here half my life.”

“We’re leaving tomorrow.”

“Not a day too soon, Alex.”

Alex couldn’t bring himself to agree. He had never been anywhere quite like Venice—but then there was nowhere in the world remotely like it, with its narrow streets and dark canals twisting around each other in an intricate, amazing knot. Every building seemed to compete with its neighbour to be more ornate and more spectacular. A short walk could take you across four centuries and every corner seemed to lead to another surprise. It might be a canalside market with great slabs of meat laid out on the tables and fish dripping blood onto the paving stones. Or a church, seemingly floating, surrounded by water on all four sides. A grand hotel or a tiny restaurant. Even the shops were works of art, their windows framing exotic masks, brilliantly coloured glass vases, dried pasta and antiques. It was a museum, maybe, yet one that was truly alive.

But Alex understood what Tom was feeling. After four days, even he was beginning to think he’d had enough.

Enough statues, enough churches, enough mosaics. And enough tourists all crammed together beneath a sweltering September sun. Like Tom, he was beginning to feel overcooked.

And what about Scorpia?

The trouble was, he had absolutely no idea what Yassen Gregorovich had meant by his last words. Scorpia could be a person. Alex had looked in the phone book and found no fewer than fourteen people with that name living in and around Venice. It could be a business. Or it could be a single building. Scuole were homes set up for poor people. La Scala was an opera house in Milan. But Scorpia didn’t seem to be anything. No signs pointed to it—no streets were named after it.

It was only now he was here, nearing the end of the trip, that Alex began to see it had been hopeless from the start. If Yassen had told him the truth, the two men—he and John Rider—had been hired killers. Had they worked for Scorpia? If so, Scorpia would be very carefully concealed … perhaps inside one of these old palaces. Alex looked again at the staircase that Mr Grey was describing. How was he to know that these steps didn’t lead to Scorpia? Scorpia could be anywhere. It could be everywhere. And after four days in Venice, Alex was nowhere.

“We’re going to walk back down the Frezzeria towards the main square,” Mr Grey announced. “We can eat our sandwiches there and after lunch we’ll visit St Mark’s Basilica.”

“Oh great!” Tom exclaimed. “Another church!”

They set off, a dozen English schoolchildren, with Mr Grey and Miss Bedfordshire in front, talking animatedly together. Alex and Tom trailed at the back, both of them gloomy. There was one day left, and, as Tom had made clear, that was one day too many. He was, as he put it, all cultured out. But he wasn’t returning to London with the rest of the group. He had an older brother living in Naples and he was going to spend the last few days of the summer holidays with him. For Alex the end of the visit would mean failure. He would go home, the autumn term would begin, and…

And that was when he saw it, a flash of silver as the sun reflected off something at the edge of his vision. He turned his head. There was nothing. A canal leading away. Another canal crossing it. A single motor cruiser sliding beneath a bridge. The usual façade of ancient brown walls dotted with wooden shutters. A church dome rising above the red roof tiles. He had imagined it.

But then the cruiser began to turn, and that was when he spotted it a second time and knew it was really there: a silver scorpion decorating the side of the boat, pinned to the wooden bow. Alex stared as it swung into the second canal. It wasn’t a gondola or a chugging public vaporetto, but a sleek, private launch—all polished teak, curtained windows and leather seats. There were two crew members in immaculate white jackets and shorts, one at the wheel, the other serving a drink to the only passenger. This was a woman, sitting bolt upright, looking straight ahead. Alex only had time to glimpse black hair, an upturned nose, a face with no expression.

Then the motor launch completed its turn and disappeared from sight.

A scorpion decorating a motor launch.

Scorpia.

It was the most slender of connections but suddenly Alex was determined to find out where the boat was going.

It was almost as if the silver scorpion had been sent to guide him to whatever it was he was meant to find.

And there was something else. The stillness of the woman. How was it possible to be carried through this amazing city without registering some emotion, without at least moving your head from left to right? Alex thought of Yassen Gregorovich. He would have been the same. He and this woman were two of a kind.

Alex turned to Tom. “Cover for me,” he said urgently.

“What now?” Tom asked.

“Tell them I wasn’t feeling well. Say I’ve gone back to the hotel.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

With that Alex was gone, ducking between an antiques shop and a café up the narrowest of alleyways, trying to follow the direction of the boat.

But almost at once, he saw that he had a problem. The city of Venice had been built on over a hundred islands.

Mr Grey had explained this on their first day. In the Middle Ages the area had been little more than a swamp.

That was why there were no roads—just waterways and oddly shaped bits of land connected by bridges. The woman was on the water; Alex was on the land. Following her would be like trying to find his way through an impossible maze in which their paths would never meet

Already he had lost her. The alleyway he had taken should have continued straight ahead. Instead it suddenly veered off at an angle, obstructed by a tall block of flats. He ran round the corner, watched by two Italian women in black dresses, sitting outside on wooden stools. There was a canal ahead of him, but it was empty. A flight of heavy stone steps led down to the murky water but there was no way forward … unless he wanted to swim.

He peered to the left and was rewarded with a glimpse of wood and water churned up by the propellers of the motor launch as it passed a fleet of gondolas roped together beside a rotting jetty. There was the woman, still sitting in the stern, now sipping a glass of wine. The boat continued under a bridge so tiny there was barely room to pass.

There was only one thing he could do. He swiveled round and retraced his steps, running as fast as he could.

The two women noticed him again and shook their heads disapprovingly. He hadn’t realized how hot it was.

The sun seemed to be trapped in the narrow streets, and even in the shadows the heat lingered. Already sweating, he burst back out onto the street where he had begun. Fortunately there was no sign of Mr Grey or the rest of the school party.

Which way?

Suddenly every street and every corner looked the same. Relying on his sense of direction, Alex chose left and sprinted past a fruit shop, a candle shop and an open-air restaurant where the waiters were already laying the tables for lunch. He came to a bend and there was the bridge—so short he could cross it in five steps. He stopped in the middle and leant over the edge, gazing down the canal. The smell of stagnant water pricked his nostrils. There was nothing. The launch had gone.

But he knew which way it had been heading. It still wasn’t too late—if he could keep moving. He darted on. A Japanese tourist was just about to take a photo of his wife and daughter. Alex heard the camera shutter click as he ran between them. When they got back to Tokyo, they would have a picture of a slim, athletic boy with fair hair hanging over his forehead, dressed in shorts and a Billabong T-shirt, with sweat pouring down his face and determination in his eyes. Something to remember him by.

A crowd of tourists. A busker playing the guitar. Another café. Waiters with silver trays. Alex ploughed through them all, ignoring the shouts of protest hurled after him. Now there was no sign of water anywhere; the street seemed to go on for ever. But he knew there must be a canal somewhere ahead.

He found it. The road fell away. Grey water flowed past. He had reached the Grand Canal, the largest waterway in Venice. And there was the motor launch with the silver scorpion now fully visible. It was at least thirty metres away, surrounded by other vessels, and moving further into the distance with every second that passed.

Alex knew that if he lost it now he wouldn’t find it again. There were too many channels opening up on both sides that it could take. It could slip into the private mooring of one of the palaces or stop at any of the smart hotels. He noticed a wooden platform floating on the water just ahead of him and realized it was one of the landing stages for the Venice water buses. There was a kiosk selling tickets, and a mass of people milling about.

A yellow sign gave the name of this point on the canal: SANTA MARIA DEL GIGLIO. A large, crowded boat was just pulling out. A number one bus. His school party had taken an identical boat from the main railway station the day they had arrived, and Alex knew that it travelled the full length of the canal, It was moving quickly. Already a couple of metres separated it from the landing stage.

Alex glanced back. There was no chance he would be able to find his way through the labyrinth of streets in pursuit of the motor launch. The vaporetto was his only hope. But it was too far away. He had missed it and there might not be another one for at least ten minutes. A gondola drew past, the gondolier singing in Italian to the grinning family of tourists he was carrying. For a second Alex thought about hijacking the gondola. Then he had a better idea.

He reached out and grabbed hold of the oar, snatching it out of the gondolier’s hands. Taken by surprise, the gondolier shouted out, twisted round and lost his balance. The family looked on in alarm as he plunged backwards into the water. Meanwhile Alex had tested the oar. It was about five metres long, and heavy. The gondolier had been holding it vertically, using the splayed paddle end to guide his craft through the water. Alex ran. He stabbed down with the blade, thrusting it into the Grand Canal, hoping the water wouldn’t be too deep.

He was lucky. The tide was low and the bottom of the canal was littered with everything from old washing machines to bicycles and wheelbarrows, cheerfully thrown in by the Venetian residents with no thought of pollution. The bottom of the oar hit something solid and Alex was able to use the length of wood to propel himself forward. It was exactly the same technique he had used pole-vaulting at Brookland sports day. For a moment he was in the air, leaning backwards, suspended over the Grand Canal. Then he swung down, sweeping through the open entrance of the water bus and landing on the deck. He dropped the oar behind him and looked around. The other passengers were staring at him in amazement. But he was on board. There were very few ticket collectors on the water buses in Venice, which was why there was nobody to challenge Alex about his unorthodox method of arrival or demand a fare. He leant over the edge, grateful for the breeze sweeping across the water. And he hadn’t lost the motor launch. It was still ahead of him, travelling away from the main lagoon and back into the heart of the city. A slender wooden bridge stretched out over the canal and Alex recognized it at once as the Bridge of the Academy, leading to the biggest art gallery in the city. He had spent a whole morning there, gazing at works by Tintoretto and Lorenzo Lotto and numerous other artists whose names all seemed to end in o. Briefly he wondered what he was doing. He had abandoned the school trip. Mr Grey and Miss Bedfordshire would probably already be on the phone to the hotel, if not the police. And why? What did he have to go on? A silver scorpion adorning a private boat. He must be out of his mind.

The vaporetto began to slow down. It was approaching the next landing stage. Alex tensed. He knew that if he waited for one load of passengers to get off and another to get on, he would never see the motor launch again.

He was on the other side of the canal now. The streets were a little less crowded here. Alex caught his breath.

He wondered how much longer he could run.

And then he saw, with a surge of relief, that the motor launch had also arrived at its destination. It was pulling into a palace a little further up, stopping behind a series of wooden poles that slanted out of the water as if, like javelins, they had been thrown there by chance. As Alex watched, two uniformed servants emerged from the palace. One moored the boat; the other held out a white-gloved hand. The woman grasped the hand and stepped ashore. She was wearing a tight-fitting cream dress with a jacket cut short above the waist. A handbag swung from her arm. She could have been a model striding off the cover of a glossy magazine. She didn’t hesitate.

While the servants busied themselves unloading her suitcases, she climbed the steps and disappeared behind a stone column.

The water bus was about to leave again. Quickly Alex climbed out onto the landing stage. Once again he had to work his way round the buildings that crowded onto the Grand Canal. But this time he knew what he was looking for. A few minutes later, he found it.

It was a typical Venetian palace, pink and white, its narrow windows built into a fantastic embroidery of pillars, arches and balustrades, like something out of Romeo and Juliet. But what made the place so unforgettable was its position. It didn’t just face the Grand Canal. It sank right into it, the water lapping against the brickwork.

The woman from the boat had gone through some sort of portcullis, as if entering a castle. But it was a castle that was floating. Or sinking. It was impossible to say where the water ended and the palace began.

The palace did at least have one side that could be reached by land. It backed onto a wide square with trees and bushes planted in ornamental tubs. There were men—servants—everywhere, setting up rope barriers, positioning oil-burning torches and unrolling a red carpet. Carpenters were at work, constructing what looked like a small bandstand. More men were carrying a variety of crates and boxes into the palace. Alex saw champagne bottles, fireworks, different sorts of food. They were obviously preparing for a serious party.

Alex stopped one of them. “Excuse me,” he said. “Can you tell me who lives here?” The man spoke no English. He didn’t even try to be friendly. Alex asked a second man, but with exactly the same result. He recognized the type: he had met men like them before. The guards at Point Blanc Academy. The technicians at Cray Software Technology. These were people who worked for someone who made them nervous. They were paid to do a job and they never stepped out of line. Were they people with something to hide? Perhaps.

Alex left the square and walked round the side of the palace. A second canal ran the full length of the building and this time he was luckier. There was an elderly woman in a black dress with a white apron sweeping the towpath. He went up to her.

“Do you speak English?” he asked. “Can you help me?”

“Si, con piocere, mio piccolo amico.” The woman nodded. She put the broom down. “I spend many year in London. I speak good English. Who can I do?”

Alex pointed at the building. “What is this place?”

“It is the Ca‘ Vedova.” She tried to explain. “Ca’ … you know … in Venice we say casa. It means palace. And vedova?” She searched for the word. “It is the Palace of the Widow. Ca‘ Vedova.”

“What’s going on?”

“There is a big party tonight. For a birthday. Masks and costumes. Many important people come.”

“Whose birthday?”

The woman hesitated. Alex was asking too many questions and he could see that she was becoming suspicious.

But once again age was on his side. He was only fourteen. What did it matter if he was curious? “Signora Rothman. She is very rich lady. The owner of the house.”

“Rothman? Like the cigarette?” But the woman’s mouth had suddenly closed and there was fear in her eyes.

Alex looked round and saw one of the men from the square standing at the corner, watching him. He realized he had outstayed his welcome—and no one had been that pleased to see him in the first place.

He decided to have one last try. “I’m looking for Scorpia,” he said.

The old woman stared at him as if she had been slapped in the face. She picked up the broom and her eyes darted over to the man watching them. It was lucky he hadn’t heard the exchange. He had sensed something was wrong, but he hadn’t moved. Even so, Alex knew it was time to go.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Thank you for your help.”

He made his way quickly up the canal. Yet another bridge loomed ahead of him and he crossed it. Although he didn’t know exactly why, he was grateful to leave the Widow’s Palace behind him.

As soon as he was out of sight, he stopped and considered what he had learnt. A boat with a silver scorpion had led him to a palace, which was owned by a beautiful and wealthy woman who didn’t smile. The palace was protected by a number of mean-looking men, and the moment he had mentioned the name Scorpia to a cleaning lady, he had suddenly become as welcome as the plague.

It wasn’t much to go on, but it was enough. There was going to be a masked ball tonight, a birthday party.

Important people had been invited. Alex wasn’t one of them, but already he had decided. He planned to be there all the same.

INVISIBLE SWORD

« ^ »

The full name of the woman who had entered the palazzo was Julia Charlotte Glenys Rothman. This was her home—or one of them, anyway. She also had a flat in New York, a mews house in London and a villa overlooking the Caribbean Sea and the white sands of Turtle Bay on the island of Tobago.

She walked along a softly lit corridor that ran the full length of the building from the jetty at one end to a private lift at the other, her high heels clicking on the terracotta tiles. There was not one servant in sight. She reached out and pressed the lift button, the white silk of her glove briefly touching silver, and the door opened.

It was a small lift, barely big enough for one person. But she lived alone. The servants used the stairs.

The lift took her to the third floor and opened directly onto a modern conference room with no carpet, no pictures on the walls, no ornamentation of any sort. Stranger still, although it should have offered some of the most beautiful views in the world, the room had been built without a single window. But if no one could look out, nor could anyone look in. It was safer that way. The lighting came from halogen lamps built into the walls, and the only furniture in the room was a long glass table surrounded by leather chairs. There was a door opposite the lift but it was locked. Two guards were standing on the other side, armed and ready to kill anyone who so much as approached in the next half-hour.

There were eight men waiting for her around the table. One was in his seventies, bald and wheezy with sore eyes, wearing a crumpled grey suit. The man sitting next to him was Chinese, while the man opposite, fair-haired, wearing an open-necked shirt, was from Australia. It was clear that the people congregated in this place came from many different parts of the world, but they had one thing in common: a stillness, a coldness even, that made the room as cheerful as a morgue. Not one of them greeted Mrs Rothman as she took her seat at the head of the table. Nor did they bother looking at the time. If she had arrived, it must be exactly one o’clock.

That was when the meeting was meant to begin.

“Good afternoon,” Mrs Rothman said.

A few heads nodded but nobody spoke. Greetings were a waste of words.

The nine people sitting around the table on the third floor of the Widow’s Palace made up the executive board of one of the most ruthless and successful criminal organizations in the world. The old man’s name was Max Grendel; the Chinese man was Dr Three. The Australian had no name at all. They had come to this room without windows to go over the final details of an operation that would, in just a few weeks, make them richer by the sum of one hundred million pounds.

The organization was called Scorpia.

It was a fanciful name, they all knew it, invented by someone who had probably read too much James Bond.

But they had to call themselves something, and in the end they had chosen a name drawn from their four main fields of activity.

Sabotage. Corruption. Intelligence. Assassination.

Scorpia. A name which worked in a surprising number of languages and which rolled off the tongue of anyone who might wish to employ them. Scorpia. Seven letters that were now on the database of every police force and security agency in the world.

The organization was formed in the early eighties, during the so-called Cold War, the secret war that had been fought for decades between the Soviet Union, China, America and Europe. Every government in the world had its own army of spies and assassins, all of them prepared to kill or to die for their country. What they weren’t prepared for, though, was to find themselves out of work; and twelve of them, seeing that the Cold War would soon be over, realized that was exactly what they would be. They wouldn’t be needed any more. It was time to go into business for themselves.

They came together one Sunday morning in Paris. Their first meeting took place at the Maison Berthillon, a famous ice-cream parlour on the Ile St-Louis, not far from Notre-Dame. They were all acquainted: they had tried to kill each other often enough. But now, in the pretty, wood-panelled room with its antique mirrors and lace curtains, and over twelve dishes of Berthillon’s famous wild strawberry ice cream, they discussed how they might work together and make themselves rich. At this meeting, Scorpia was born.

Since then it had flourished. Scorpia was all over the world. It had brought down two governments and arranged for a third to be unfairly elected. It had destroyed dozens of businesses, corrupted politicians and civil servants, engineered several major ecological disasters, and killed anyone who got in its way. It was now responsible for a tenth of the world’s terrorism, which it undertook on a contract basis. Scorpia liked to think of itself as the IBM of crime—but in fact, compared to Scorpia, IBM was strictly small-time.

Of the original twelve, only nine were left. One had died of cancer; two had been murdered. But that wasn’t a bad record after twenty years of violent crime. There had never been a single leader of Scorpia. All nine were equal partners but one executive was always assigned to each new project, working in alphabetical order.

The project they were discussing this afternoon had been given a code name: Invisible Sword. Julia Rothman was in command.

“I would like to report to the board that everything is progressing on schedule,” she announced.

There was a trace of a Welsh accent in her voice. She had been born in Aberystwyth. Her parents had been Welsh nationalists, burning down the cottages of English holidaymakers who had bought them as second homes. Unfortunately they had torched one of these cottages with the English family still inside it, and when Julia was six she found herself in an institution while her parents began a life sentence in jail. This was, in a way, the start of her own criminal career.

“It is now three months,” she went on, “since we were approached by our client, a gentleman in the Middle East. To call him rich would be an understatement. He is a multi-billionaire. This man has looked at the world, at the balance of power, and he has decided that something has gone seriously wrong. He has asked us to remedy it.

“In a nutshell, our client believes that the West has become too powerful. He looks at Great Britain and America. It was the friendship between them that won the Second World War. And it is this same friendship that now allows the West to invade any country that it pleases and to take anything it wants. Our client has asked us to end the British-American alliance once and for all.

“What can I tell you about our client?” Mrs Rothman smiled sweetly. “Perhaps he is a visionary, interested only in world peace; perhaps he is completely insane. Either way, it makes no difference to us. He has offered us an enormous sum of money—one hundred million pounds to be exact—to do what he wants. To humble Britain and America and to ensure they cease to work together as a world power. And I am happy to be able to tell you that twenty million pounds, the first installment of that money, arrived in our Swiss bank account yesterday. We are now ready to move into phase two.”

There was silence in the room. As the men waited for Mrs Rothman to speak again, the faint hum of an air conditioner could be heard. But no sound came from outside.

“Phase two—the final phase—will take place in under three weeks from now. I can promise you that very soon the British and the Americans will be at one another’s throats. More than that: by the end of the month both countries will be on their knees. America will be hated throughout the entire world; the British will have witnessed a horror beyond anything they could ever have imagined. We will all be a great deal richer. And our friend from the Middle East will consider his money well spent.”

“Excuse me, Mrs Rothman. I have a question…”

Dr Three bowed his head politely. His face seemed to be made of wax and his hair—jet black—looked twenty years younger than the rest of him. It had to be dyed. He was very small and might have been a retired teacher.

He might have been many things, but he was, in fact, the world expert on torture and pain. He had written several books on the subject.

“How many people do you intend to kill?” he asked.

Julia Rothman considered. “It’s still difficult to be precise, Dr Three,” she replied. “But it will certainly be thousands. Many thousands.”

“And they will all be children?”

“Yes. They will mainly be twelve and thirteen years old.” She sighed. “It is, it goes without saying, very unfortunate. I adore children, even though I’m glad I never had any of my own. But that’s the plan. And I have to say, the psychological effect of so many young people dying will, I think, be useful. Does it concern you?”

“Not at all, Mrs Rothman.” Dr Three shook his head.

“Does anyone have any objections?”

Nobody spoke, but out of the corner of her eye, Mrs Rothman noticed Max Grendel shift uncomfortably on his chair at the far end of the table. At seventy-three, he was the oldest man there, with sagging skin and liver spots on his forehead. He suffered from an eye disease that made him weep constantly. He was dabbing at his eyes now with a tissue. It was hard to believe that he had been a commander in the German secret police and had once personally strangled a foreign spy during a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth.

“Are preparations complete in London?” the Australian asked.

“Construction in the church finished a week ago. The platform, the gas cylinders and the rest of the machinery will be delivered later today.”

“Will Invisible Sword work?”

It was typical of Levi Kroll to be blunt and to the point. He had joined Scorpia from Mossad, the Israeli secret service, and still thought of himself as a soldier. For twenty years he had slept with an FN 9mm pistol under his pillow. Then, one night, it had gone off. He was a large man with a beard that covered most of his face, concealing the worst of his injuries. An eyepatch hid the empty socket where his left eye had once been.

“Of course it will work,” Mrs Rothman snapped.

“It’s been tested?”

“We’re testing it right now. But I have to tell you that Dr Liebermann is something of a genius. A boring man if you have to spend time with him—and heaven knows I’ve had to do plenty of that. But he’s created a brand-new weapon and the beauty of it is, all the experts in the world won’t know what it is or how it operates. Of course, they’ll work it out in the end, and I’ve made plans for that eventuality. But by then it will be too late.

The streets of London will be littered with corpses. It’ll be the worst thing to happen to children in a city since the Pied Piper.”

“And what about Liebermann?” Dr Three asked.

“I haven’t decided yet. We’ll probably have to kill him too. He invented Invisible Sword but he has no idea how we plan to use it. I expect he’ll object. So he’ll have to go.” Mrs Rothman looked around. “Is there anything else?” she asked.

“Yes.” Max Grendel spread his hands across the surface of the table. Mrs Rothman wasn’t surprised that he had something to say. He was a father and a grandfather. Worse than that, in his old age he had become sentimental.

“I have been with Scorpia from the very beginning,” he said. “I still remember our first meeting in Paris. I have earned many millions working with you and I’ve enjoyed everything we’ve done. But this project… Invisible Sword. Are we really going to kill so many children? How will we be able to live with ourselves?”

“Rather more comfortably than before,” Julia Rothman muttered.

“No, no, Julia.” Grendel shook his head. A single tear trickled from one of his diseased eyes. “This will come as no surprise to you. We spoke of this the last time we met. But I have decided that enough is enough. I’m an old man. I want to retire to my castle in Vienna. Invisible Sword will be your greatest achievement, I am sure. But I no longer have the heart for it. It is time for me to step down. You must go ahead without me.”

“You can’t retire!” Levi Kroll protested sharply.

“Why did you not tell us about this earlier?” another of the men asked angrily. He was black but with Japanese eyes. There was a diamond the size of a pea embedded in one of his front teeth.

“I told Mrs Rothman,” Max Grendel said reasonably. “She’s the project leader. I felt there was no need to inform the entire board.”

“We really don’t need to argue about this, Mr Mikato,” Julia Rothman said smoothly. “Max has been talking about retiring for a long time now and I think we should respect his wishes. It’s certainly a shame. But, as my late husband used to say, all good things come to an end.”

Mrs Rothman’s multimillionaire husband had fallen to his death from a seventeenth-storey window. It had happened just two days after their marriage.

“It’s very sad, Max,” she continued. “But I’m sure you’re doing the right thing. It’s time for you to go.” She went with him down to the jetty. The motor launch had left but there was a gondola waiting to take him back down the canal. They walked slowly arm in arm.

“I’ll miss you,” she said.

“Thank you, Julia.” Max Grendel patted her arm. “I’ll miss you too.”

“I don’t know how we’ll manage without you.”

“Invisible Sword cannot fail. Not with you at the helm.”

She stopped suddenly. “I almost forgot,” she exclaimed. “I have something for you.” She snapped her fingers and a servant ran forward carrying a large box wrapped in pink and blue paper, tied with a silver bow. “It’s a present for you,” she said.

“A retirement present?”

“Something to remember us by.”

Max Grendel had stopped beside the gondola. It was bobbing up and down on the choppy surface. A gondolier dressed in a traditional striped jersey stood in the back, leaning on his oar. “Thank you, my dear,” he said. “And good luck.”

“Enjoy yourself, Max. Keep in touch.”

She kissed him, her lips lightly touching his withered cheek. Then she helped him into the gondola. He sat down awkwardly, placing the brightly coloured box on his knees. At once the gondolier pulled away. Mrs Rothman raised a hand. The little boat cut swiftly through the grey water.

Mrs Rothman turned and went back into the Widow’s Palace.

Max Grendel watched her sadly. He knew that life wouldn’t be the same without Scorpia. For two decades he had devoted all his energies to the organization. It had kept him young, kept him alive. But now there were his grandchildren to consider. He thought of the twins, little Hans and Rudi. They were twelve years old. The same age as Scorpia’s targets in London. He couldn’t be part of it. He had made the right decision.

He had almost forgotten the package resting on his knees. That was typical of Julia. Perhaps it was because she was the only woman on the executive board, but she had always been the one who was most emotional. He wondered what she had bought him. The parcel was heavy. On an impulse, he untied the ribbon, then ripped off the paper.

It was an executive briefcase, obviously expensive. He could tell from the quality of the leather, the hand-stitching … and there was the label. It had been made by Gucci. His initials—MUG—had been engraved in gold just under the handle. With a smile he opened it.

And screamed as the contents spilled over him.

Scorpions. Dozens of them. They were at least ten centimetres long, dark brown with tiny pincers and fat, swollen bodies. As they poured into his lap and began to swarm up his shirt, he recognized what they were: hairy thick-tailed scorpions from the Parabuthus species, one of the most deadly in the world.

Max Grendel fell backwards, shrieking, his eyes bulging, arms and legs flailing as the hideous creatures found the gaps in his clothes and crawled inside his shirt and down under the waistband of his trousers. The first one stung him on the side of his neck. Then he was being stung over and over again, jerking helplessly, the screams dying in his throat.

His heart gave out long before the neurotoxins killed him. As the gondola floated gently on, being steered now towards the island cemetery of Venice, tourists might have noticed an old man lying still with his hands spread wide, gazing with sightless eyes at the bright Venetian sky.

BY INVITATION ONLY

« ^ »

That night, the Widow’s Palace slipped back three hundred years in time.

It was an extraordinary sight. The oil-burning torches had been lit and the flames cast flickering shadows across the square. The servants had changed into eighteenth-century costumes with wigs, tightly fitting stockings, pointed shoes and waistcoats. A string quartet played beneath the night sky, sitting on the bandstand that Alex had seen being constructed that afternoon. The stars were out in their thousands and there was even a full moon.

It was as if whoever had organized the party had managed to control the weather too.

Guests were arriving by water and on foot. They too were in costume, wearing elaborate hats and richly coloured velvet cloaks that swept the ground. Some carried ebony walking sticks; others had swords and daggers. But not a single face could be seen among the crowd making its way to the front door. Features were concealed behind white masks and gold masks, masks encrusted with jewels and masks surrounded by huge plumes of feathers. It was impossible to know who had been invited to Mrs Rothman’s party—but not just anyone could walk in. The Grand Canal entrance to the palace was closed and everyone was being directed to the main door that Alex had seen earlier that day. Four security guards wearing the bright red tunics of Venetian courtiers were positioned there, checking each invitation.

Alex watched all this from the other side of the square. He was crouched behind one of the miniature trees with Tom, the two of them outside the pool of light thrown by the torches. It hadn’t been easy to persuade Tom to come. Alex’s disappearance before lunch had been noticed almost immediately, and Tom had been left to make up an unconvincing story about a stomach ache in front of an angry Mr Grey. Alex should have been in serious trouble when he finally met up with the group back at the hotel, and if it hadn’t been for Miss Bedfordshire—

who was still grateful to him for recovering her handbag—he would have been grounded for the night. Anyway, this was Alex. Everyone knew they could rely on him to act oddly.

But to disappear again! It was the last evening of the trip and the group had been given two hours’ free time which they were meant to spend in San Lorenzo, in the cafes or the square. Alex had other plans. He had found everything he needed in Venice that afternoon before he went back to the hotel. But he knew he couldn’t do this alone. Tom had to come too.

“Alex, I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Tom whispered now. “Why is this party such a big deal anyway?”

“I can’t explain.”

“Why not? I don’t understand you sometimes. We’re meant to be friends but you never tell me anything.” Alex sighed. He was used to this. When he thought of all the things that had happened to him in the last six months, the way he had been dragged into the world of espionage, a web of secrecy and lies, this was the worst part. MI6 had turned him into a spy. And at the same time they had made it impossible for him to be what he wanted—an ordinary schoolboy. He had been juggling two lives, one day saving the world from a nuclear holocaust, the next struggling with his chemistry homework. Two lives, but he had ended up trapped between them. He didn’t know where he belonged any more. There was Tom, there was Jack Starbright and there was Sabina Pleasure—although she had now moved to America. Apart from them, he had no real friends. It wasn’t his choice, but somehow he had ended up alone.

Alex made up his mind. “All right,” he said. “If you’ll help me, I’ll tell you everything. But not yet.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I’m going to Naples tomorrow to stay with my brother.”

“Before you go.”

Tom considered. “I’ll help you anyway, Alex,” he said. “Because that’s what friends are for. And if you really do want to tell me, you can save it until we’re back at school. OK?” Alex nodded and smiled. “Thanks.”

He reached behind him for the sports bag he had brought with him from the hotel. Inside it were the various items he had bought that afternoon. Quickly he stripped off his shorts and T-shirt, then pulled on a pair of loose-fitting silk trousers and a velvet waistcoat that left his arms and chest bare. Next he took out a tub of what looked like jelly, except that it was coloured gold. Body paint. He scooped some out and rubbed it between his palms, then smeared it over his arms, neck and face. He signalled to Tom, who grimaced and then finished his shoulders. All his visible skin was now gold.

Finally he brought out gold sandals, a white turban with a single mauve feather, and a plain half-mask, just big enough to cover his eyes. He had asked the costume shop to supply him with everything he would need to become a Turkish slave. He hoped the overall effect didn’t make him look as ridiculous as he felt.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

Tom nodded, wiping his hands on his trousers. “You know, you do look a bit sad,” he muttered.

“I don’t care … so long as it works.”

“I think you’re completely mad.”

Alex watched as more people arrived at the palace. If his plan was going to work, he had to choose the right moment. He also had to wait for the right guests. They were still coming thick and fast, milling around the main entrance while the guards checked their invitations. He glanced over at the canal. A water taxi had just pulled in and a couple were climbing out, a man in a frock coat and a woman in a black cloak that trailed behind her.

Both were masked. They were perfect.

He nodded to Tom. “Now.”

“Good luck, Alex.” Tom took something out of the sports bag and darted forward, making no attempt to avoid being seen. Seconds later Alex stole round the edge of the square, keeping to the shadows.

There was a snarl-up at the entrance. A guard was holding an invitation and questioning one of the guests. That was helpful too. Alex needed as much confusion as possible. Tom must have seen that this was the right moment, because suddenly there was a loud bang and all heads turned to see a boy capering in the square, laughing and shouting. He had just let off a firework and, with everyone watching, he lit another.

“Come stai?” he shouted. How are you? “Quanto tempo a vuole per andare a Roma?” How long does it take to get to Rome? Alex had picked the phrases out of a guidebook. They were the only Italian Tom had been able to learn.

Tom threw the second firework and there was another bang. At the same time, Alex hurried down to the canal just as the two guests climbed the steps to the square. His sandals flapped on the paving stones as he ran, but nobody noticed him. They were all staring at Tom, who was singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” at the top of his voice. Alex bent down and picked up the train of the woman’s cloak. As she headed towards the main entrance he walked behind her, holding the material off the ground.

It worked exactly as he had hoped. The crowd quickly tired of the mad English boy who was making a fool of himself. One of the guards had already been sent to deal with him. Out of the corner of his eye, Alex saw Tom turn and run away. The couple reached the door and the man in the frock coat handed over their invitation. A guard glanced at the new arrivals and ushered them through. He had assumed that Alex was with the guests; they had brought a Turkish boy with them as part of their disguise. Meanwhile, the guests had assumed that Alex worked in the palace and had been sent to escort them in. Why else would he have appeared?

The three of them passed through the door and into a grand reception hall with a domed, mosaic-covered ceiling, white columns and a marble floor. A pair of double-height glass doors opened onto a courtyard with a fountain surrounded by ornamental shrubs and flowers. At least a hundred guests were gathered there, chatting, laughing and drinking champagne from crystal glasses. It was obvious they were all pleased to be there.

Servants, dressed identically to the ones outside, circulated with silver trays of food. A man sitting at a harpsichord played Mozart and Vivaldi. In keeping with the atmosphere, all the electric lights had been turned off, but there were beacons mounted on the walls as well as dozens of oil lamps, their flames bowing and dancing in the evening breeze.

Alex had followed his lord and lady into the courtyard but now he dropped the cloak and slipped away to one side. He looked up. The palace rose three floors above him, connected by a spiralling staircase like the one he had seen at the Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo. The first floor opened onto a gallery with yet more arches and columns, and some of the guests had made their way up there and were strolling slowly together, gazing down on the crowds below. Looking around him, Alex found it hard to believe that it really was the twenty-first century. A perfect illusion had been created within the palace walls.

Now that he was here, he was unsure what to do. Had he really found Scorpia? How could he be sure? It occurred to him that if Yassen Gregorovich had been telling the truth and his father had once worked for these people, they might be happy to meet him. He would ask them what had happened, how his father had died, and they would tell him. He had no need to creep around in disguise.

But suppose he was wrong? He remembered the look of fear on the old woman’s face when he had mentioned the name Scorpia. And then there were the hard-eyed men working outside the palace. They spoke no English and Alex doubted he would be able to explain what he was doing if they caught him. By the time someone had laid their hands on an English dictionary, he might find himself floating face down in the canal.

No. He had to find out more before he made his move. Who was this woman—Mrs Rothman? What was she doing here? It seemed incredible to Alex that a grand masked ball in a Venetian palace could in any way be connected to a murder that had taken place fourteen years ago.

The notes of the harpsichord rang out. The conversation was getting louder as more and more people arrived.

Most of them had removed their masks—it was impossible otherwise to eat or drink—and Alex saw that this was truly an international gathering. The guests were mainly speaking in Italian but there were many black and Asian faces among the crowd. He caught sight of a short Chinese man deep in discussion with another man who had a diamond set into one of his front teeth. A woman he thought he knew crossed the courtyard in front of him, and with a start he recognized her as one of the most famous film actresses in the world. Now that he looked around he saw that the place was packed with Hollywood stars. Why had they been invited? Then he remembered. This was the beginning of September, the time of the Venice International Film Festival. Well, that told him something about Mrs Rothman if she had the clout to invite celebrities like these.

Alex knew he mustn’t linger too long. He was the only teenager in the palace and it would only be a matter of time before someone noticed him. He was horribly exposed. His arms and shoulders were bare. The silk trousers were so thin he could hardly feel them on him. The Turkish disguise might have enabled him to get in, but it was awkward and unhelpful now that he was actually here. He decided to make a move. There was no sign of Mrs Rothman on the ground floor. She was the person he most wanted to see. Perhaps he would find her somewhere upstairs.

He made his way through the party-goers and climbed the spiral staircase. He reached the gallery and saw a series of doors leading off into the palace itself. It was less crowded here and a few people glanced curiously at him as he proceeded.

Alex knew that the important thing was not to hesitate. If he allowed himself to be challenged, he would soon be thrown out. He went through a door and found himself in an area that was a cross between a very wide corridor and a room in its own right. A gold-framed mirror hung on one wall above an ornate antique table, on which was a large vase of flowers. A huge wardrobe stood opposite. Apart from this, the area was empty.

There was a door at the far end and Alex was about to continue towards it, when he heard muffled voices approaching. He looked around for somewhere to hide. There was only the wardrobe. He didn’t have time to slip inside, but he slid against the wall next to it. Like the courtyard, this floor was lit by oil lamps. He hoped the bulk of the wardrobe would cast a large enough shadow to conceal him.

The door opened. Two people came out, talking in English: one a man, the other a woman.

“We have received the release certificates and the batch will be on its way the day after tomorrow.” The man was speaking. “As I explained to you, Mrs Rothman, timing is everything.”

“The cold chain.”

“Exactly. The cold chain cannot be broken. The boxes will be flown to England. After that…”

“Thank you, Dr Liebermann. You have done very well.”

The two of them had stopped, just out of sight from where Alex was hiding. However, leaning forward slightly, he could see their reflections in the mirror.

Mrs Rothman was stunning. There was no other way for Alex to describe her. She was more like a film star than any of the actresses he had seen downstairs, her long black hair falling in waves to her shoulders. She had a mask, but it was in her hand, on the end of a wooden rod, so he was able to see her face: the brilliant dark eyes, the blood-red lips, the perfect teeth. She was wearing a fantastic dress made of ivory-coloured lace, and somehow Alex knew that it wasn’t a costume but a real antique. A gold necklace set with dark blue sapphires circled her throat.

Her companion was also wearing fancy dress—a long, fur-lined cloak, a wide-brimmed hat and leather gloves.

He too was holding a mask but it was an ugly thing with small eyes and a long beak. He had come as a traditional plague doctor and, Alex thought, he hardly needed the disguise. His face was pale and lifeless, his lips flecked with saliva. He was very tall, towering over Mrs Rothman. Yet still, somehow, she dwarfed him.

Alex wondered why he had been invited.

“You do promise me, Mrs Rothman,” Dr Liebermann said, taking off a pair of heavy glasses and wiping them nervously. “Nobody is going to get hurt.”

“Does it really matter?” she replied. “You’re being paid five million euros. A small fortune. Think about it, Dr Liebermann. You’re set up for life.”

Alex risked another glance and saw the woman standing side-on, waiting for the man to speak. Dr Liebermann was frozen. Caught between greed and fear.

“I don’t know,” he rasped. “Perhaps if you were paying me more…”

“Then maybe we’ll have to think about doing just that!” Mrs Rothman sounded completely relaxed. “But let’s not spoil the party by talking about business. I’m coming down to Amalfi myself in two days’ time. I want to be there when the batch leaves, and we can talk about money then.” She smiled. “Right now, let’s go and have a glass of champagne and I can introduce you to some of my famous friends.” They had started walking again and as they talked they went past Alex. For a moment he was tempted to show himself. This was the woman he had come to find. He should approach her before she disappeared into the crowd. But at the same time he was intrigued. Release certificates and cold chains. He wondered what they had been talking about. Once again he decided it would be better to find out a little more before he revealed himself.

He stepped out into the corridor and went down to the door through which Mrs Rothman and her companion had come. He opened it and found himself in a huge room—and one that could truly be called palatial. It must have been at least thirty metres long, with a row of floor-to-ceiling windows that gave wonderful views over the Grand Canal. The floor was polished wood but almost everything else was white. There was a massive fireplace made of white marble with a pale tiger-skin rug (Alex winced; he could think of nothing more disgusting) spread out in front of it. White bookshelves lined the far wall, filled with leather-bound books, and, next to a second door, Alex saw a white antique table on which lay what looked like a remote control device for a TV. In the centre of the room stood a solid walnut desk. Mrs Rothman’s? Alex went over to it.

The surface was bare apart from a white leather blotting pad and a tray with two silver fountain pens. Alex imagined Mrs Rothman sitting here. It was the sort of desk a judge or a company chairman would have, a desk designed to impress. He looked around quickly, checking there were no security cameras, then tried one of the drawers. It was unlocked but it contained only writing paper and envelopes. He tried the next drawer down.

Surprisingly, that one opened too and this time he found himself looking at some sort of brochure with a yellow cover and a name printed in black: CONSANTO ENTERPRISES

He opened the brochure. On the first page was a picture of a building. It was obviously high-tech, long and angular with walls made entirely of reflective glass. There was an address at the bottom: Via Nuova, Amalfi.

Amalfi. That was the place Mrs Rothman had mentioned a few moments earlier.

He flicked over to another page. There were photos of various men and women in suits and white coats. The staff of Consanto, perhaps? One of them—in the middle of the top row—was Harold Liebermann. His name was printed underneath but the text was in Italian. Alex wouldn’t be able to learn anything from it. He closed the brochure and tried another drawer.

Something moved.

Alex had been sure he was alone. He had been surprised that there was no sign of any security in the room, particularly if this was Mrs Rothman’s study. But he was suddenly aware that something had changed. It took him a few seconds to realize what it was, and at once he felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristle.

What he had taken to be a tiger-skin rug had just stood up.

It was a tiger, alive and angry.

A Siberian tiger. How did he know it was Siberian? The colour, of course. The stripes were more white and gold than orange and black, and there weren’t so many as usual. As the creature turned its gaze on him, weighing him up, Alex tried to remember what he knew about this rarest of species. There were fewer than five hundred Siberian tigers left in the wild, with only slightly more in captivity. It was the largest living cat in the world. And … yes! It had retractable claws. That was a very useful piece of information to consider as the animal prepared to tear him apart.

Because Alex had no doubt that that was exactly what was about to happen. The tiger seemed to have awoken from a deep sleep but its yellow eyes were now fixed on him and he could almost hear the messages being sent to the brain. Food. That was another thing, he remembered now. A Siberian tiger could eat one hundred pounds of meat in a single sitting. By the time this one finished with him, there wouldn’t be a great deal left.

Alex’s mind was in a whirl. What exactly had he stumbled on in the Widow’s Palace? What sort of woman didn’t bother with locks and security cameras but kept a live tiger by her desk? The creature stretched. Alex saw the perfect muscles rippling beneath the thick fur. He tried to move but found that he couldn’t. He wondered what had happened to him, then realized. He was terrified. Rooted to the spot. He was just steps away from a predator that had, for centuries, inspired dread across the world. It was almost beyond belief that this animal should have found itself imprisoned in a Venetian palace. But it was here. That was all that mattered.

And whatever the surroundings, the carnage would be the same.

The tiger growled. It was a low, rumbling noise, more terrible than anything Alex had ever heard. He tried to find the strength to move, to put a barrier between them. But there was nothing.

The tiger took a stride forward. It was preparing to spring. Its eyes had darkened. Its jaw hung open, revealing two lines of white, dagger-sharp teeth. It growled a second time, louder and more continuous.

Then it leapt.

FLOOD TIDE

« ^ »

Alex did the only thing he could. Faced with five hundred pounds of snarling tiger hurtling towards him, he fell to his knees, slid along the wooden floor and disappeared under the desk. The tiger landed above him. He could sense its bulk, separated from him only by the surface of the desk—and he could hear its claws gouging into the wood. Two things went through his mind. The first was the sheer improbability of coming face to face with a live tiger. The second was the knowledge that, if he didn’t find a way out of the room fast, this might be the last thought he would ever have.

He had a choice of two doors. The one he had come in through was the closest. The tiger was half on the floor, half on the desk, momentarily confused. In the forest it would have found him at once, but this world was alien to it. Alex seized his chance and scrambled forward. It was only when he was out in the open, away from the scant protection of the desk, that he realized he wasn’t going to make it.

The tiger was watching him. Alex had twisted round, his hands behind him, his legs bent sideways, in the act of standing up. The tiger’s front paws were resting on the desk. Neither of them moved. Alex knew that the door was too far away. There was nowhere else to hide. A surge of anger flooded through him. He should never have come in here. He should have been more careful.

The tiger roared. A deep, rattling blast of air that made every nerve tingle. It was, quite simply, the sound of terror.

And then the second door opened and a man came in.

All Alex’s attention was fixed on the tiger, but he noticed that the man wasn’t wearing a costume. He was dressed in a polo-neck jersey, jeans and trainers; the clothes looked quietly, confidently expensive. And from the way they clung to the muscles in his arms and chest, Alex could see that he was extremely fit. He was young, in his mid-twenties. And he was black.

But there was something wrong.

The man turned his head and Alex saw that one side of his face was covered in strange white blotches, as if he had been involved in some sort of chemical accident or perhaps a fire. Then Alex noticed his hands. They too were different colours. The man should have been handsome. But in fact he was just a mess.

The man took in the scene instantly. He saw that the tiger was about to pounce. Without a second thought he reached out and picked up the remote control that Alex had noticed on the table. He pointed it vaguely in the direction of the tiger and pressed a button.

And then the impossible happened. The tiger climbed off the desk. Alex saw its eyes begin to dim, and it slumped down on the floor. Alex stared. The tiger had been transformed, in seconds, from a dreadful monster to nothing more than an oversized pussy cat. And then it was asleep, its chest rising and falling, its eyes closed.

How had it worked?

Alex looked back at the man who had just come in. He was still holding the device, whatever it was, in his hand. For a moment Alex wondered if the animal was even real. Could it possibly be some sort of robot that could be switched on and off by remote control? No. That was ridiculous. He had been close enough to the tiger to notice every detail. He had smelt its breath. He could see it now, twitching, as it returned to the forests it had come from … in its dreams. It was a living thing. But somehow it had been turned off as quickly and as easily as a light bulb. Alex had never felt more out of his depth. He had followed a boat with a silver scorpion, and it had led him into some sort of Italian wonderland.

“Chi sei? Cosa fai qui?”

The man was talking to him. Alex didn’t understand the words but he got the gist. Who are you? What are you doing here? He stood up, wishing that he had been able to change out of his costume. He felt half naked and horribly vulnerable. He wondered if Tom was still waiting for him outside. No. He had told him to go back to the hotel.

The man spoke to him a second time. Alex had no choice.

“I don’t speak Italian,” he said.

“You’re English?” The man switched effortlessly into Alex’s language.

“Yes.”

“What are you doing in Mrs Rothman’s study?”

“My name is Alex Rider—”

“And my name is Nile. But that’s not what I asked you.”

“I’m looking for Scorpia.”

The man—Nile—smiled, showing perfect teeth. With the tiger neutralized, Alex was able to examine him more closely. Without the skin problem, he would be classically handsome. He was clean-shaven, elegant, in perfect physical shape. His hair was cut close to his skull, with a pattern of curving lines shaved around his ears.

Although he looked relaxed, Alex knew that he was already in a combat stance, poised on the balls of his feet.

This was a dangerous man; he radiated self-confidence and control. He wasn’t alarmed to find a teenager here in the study. Instead he seemed to be amused.

“What do you know about Scorpia?” the man asked. His voice was soft and very precise.

Alex said nothing.

“It’s a name you overheard downstairs,” Nile said. “Or perhaps you found it in the desk. Were you searching the desk? Is that why you’re here? Are you a thief?”

“No.”

Alex had already decided he’d had enough. Any minute now, someone else would arrive. It was time to go. He turned away and began to move towards the door he had first come in.

“If you take one more step, I’m afraid I’ll have to kill you,” Nile warned.

Alex didn’t pause.

He heard the light footfall on the wooden floor behind him and timed it exactly right. At the last moment, he stopped and swivelled round, lashing out with his heel in a back kick that should have driven into the man’s abdomen, winding him at the very least, and possibly knocking him out. But with a sense of shock Alex felt his foot meet only empty air. Nile had either anticipated what he was about to do or twisted away with unbelievable speed.

Alex turned full circle, trying to follow through with a front jab—the kizami-zuki—he had learnt in karate. But it was too late. Nile had dodged again and there was a blur of movement as the edge of his hand scythed down.

It was like being hit by a block of wood. Alex was almost thrown off his feet. The whole room shuddered and went dark. Desperately he tried to adopt a defensive position, crossing his arms, keeping his head low. Nile had been expecting it. Alex felt an arm close around his throat. A hand pressed against his head. With a single twist, Nile could now break his neck.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Nile said, talking as if to a little child. “I did warn you and you didn’t listen. So now you’re dead.”

There was a moment of blinding pain, a flash of white light. Then nothing.

Alex came round with the feeling that his head had been wrenched off. Even after he had opened his eyes it took a few seconds for his vision to return. He tried to move a hand and was relieved to see his fingers curl inwards. So his neck wasn’t broken. He tried to play back what had happened. Nile must have let go of his head at the last moment and used an elbow strike. Alex had been knocked out before but he had never woken up in as much pain as this. Had Nile meant to kill him? Somehow he doubted it. Even from their short encounter, Alex knew that he had met a master of unarmed combat, someone who knew exactly what he was doing and didn’t make mistakes.

Nile had knocked Alex out and dragged him here. Where was he? With his head still pounding, Alex gazed around him. He didn’t like the look of what he saw. He was in a small chamber, somewhere underneath the palace, he guessed. The walls were made of mottled plaster and the way they sloped reminded him of a cellar.

The floor had recently been flooded. He was standing on a sort of trellis-work of damp and rotting wooden planks. The room was lit by a single bulb behind a dirty glass covering. There were no windows. Alex shivered.

It was cold in here, despite the earlier heat of the September evening. And there was something else. He ran a finger along one of the walls and felt a coating of slime. He had thought the cellar was painted a dirty shade of green, but now he realized that the flooding had risen further than the floor. It had continued all the way up to the ceiling. Even the light bulb had at some stage been underwater.

As his senses slowly returned, Alex became aware of the smell of water in the air and recognized the stench of the rotting vegetables, mud and salt of the Venice canal system. He could even hear water. It was lapping not on the other side of the wall but somewhere beneath him. He knelt down and examined the floor. One of the boards was loose and he was able to swivel it enough to make a narrow opening. He stretched a hand through and touched water. There was no way out. He turned round. A short flight of wooden steps led up to a solid-looking door. He went up to it and pressed his weight against it. The door was covered in slime too. There was no give in it at all.

What now?

Alex was still dressed in the silk trousers and waistcoat that had been his costume. There was nothing to protect him against the dank chill. He thought briefly about Tom, and that gave him a little comfort. If he hadn’t returned to the hotel by the morning, Tom would surely raise the alarm. Daybreak couldn’t be far away. Alex had no idea how long he’d been unconscious, and he had taken off his watch when he put on his disguise, something he was now regretting. There was no sound on the other side of the door. It seemed he had no choice but to wait.

He crouched in a comer, wrapping his arms around himself. Most of the gold paint had come off, and he felt ragged and dirty. He wondered what Scorpia would do with him. Surely someone—Nile or Mrs Rothman—

would come down, if only to find out why he had bothered to break in.

Incredibly, he managed to fall asleep. The next thing he knew, he had jerked awake with a crick in his neck. A cold numbness had spread through his body. Some sort of siren had woken him. He could hear it howling—not inside the building but far away. At the same time, he was aware that something in the room had changed. He glanced down and saw water spreading across the floor.

For a second he was puzzled. Had a pipe burst? Where was the water coming from? Then his thoughts came together and he understood his fate. Scorpia wasn’t interested in him. Nile had told him he was going to die and he had meant what he said.

The siren was warning that there was going to be a flood. Venice has an alarm system in place all year round.

The city stands at sea level and because of the wind and the atmospheric pressure, there are frequent storm surges. These cause water from the Adriatic to pour into the Venice lagoon, with the result that the canals break their banks and whole streets and squares simply disappear for several hours. Cold black water was bubbling up into the room even now. How high would it go? Alex didn’t need to ask. The stains on the walls went all the way up to the ceiling. The water would rise over him and he would struggle helplessly, unable to save himself, until he drowned. Eventually the level would fall again and they would clear out his body, perhaps dumping it in the lagoon.

He leapt to his feet and ran to the door, slamming his hands against it. He was shouting too, although he knew it was hopeless. Nobody came. Nobody cared. He surely wasn’t the first to end up locked in here. Ask too many questions, go into rooms where you had no right to be, and this was the result.

The water was rising steadily. It must have been five centimetres deep already. The floor had disappeared.

There were no windows, and the door was rock solid. There was only one possible way out of here and Alex was almost too afraid to try it. But one of the planks was loose. Maybe there was some sort of well or large pipe underneath. After all, he reasoned, there had to be some way for the water to come in.

And it was gushing in now, more quickly than ever. Alex hurried back down the stairs. The water level was well over his ankles, almost reaching his knees. He made a quick calculation. At this rate, the room would be completely submerged in about three minutes. He ripped off the waistcoat and threw it aside. He wouldn’t need that now. He waded forward, searching with his feet for the loose plank. He remembered that it was somewhere in the middle and soon found it, stubbing his toe against one side of the opening. He knelt down, the water now circling his waist. He wasn’t even sure he could squeeze through. And if he did, what would he find on the other side?

He tried to feel with his hands. There was an upsurge of water right beneath him. This was the source of the inflow. The water was coming directly up from some sort of opening. So this had to be the way out. The only question was—could he do it? He would have to force himself, head first, through the tiny gap, find the opening and swim into it. If he got stuck he would drown upside down. If the passage was blocked he would never make it back again. He was kneeling in front of the worst death imaginable. And the water was creeping up his spine, pitiless and cold.

Bitter anger shivered through him. Was this the destiny that Yassen Gregorovich had promised him? Had he come to Venice simply for this? The sirens were still howling. The water had covered the first two steps and was already lapping at the third. Alex cursed, then took several deep breaths, hyperventilating. When he had forced as much air into his lungs as he thought they could take, he toppled over and plunged head first through the hole.

The gap was barely big enough. He felt the edge of the wooden floorboards bite into his shoulders, but then he was able to use his hands to propel himself onward. He was utterly blind. Even if he had opened his eyes, the water would have been black. He could feel it pressing against his nostrils and lips. It was ice cold and stinking.

God! What a way to die. His stomach had passed through the opening but his hips were stuck. Alex twisted like a snake and the lower part of his body came free.

He was already running out of air. He wanted to turn and go back, but now fresh panic gripped him as he realized that he was trapped inside some sort of tube with no room to go any way except down. His shoulders banged against solid brick. He kicked out with one leg and was rewarded with a stab of pain as his foot hit the wall that enclosed him. He felt the current swirling round his face and neck—ropes of water that wanted to bind him for ever in this black death. He became aware of the full horror of his situation now that there was no escape from it. No adult would have been able to get this far. It was only because he was smaller that he had been able to make his way into this well shaft or whatever it was. But there was no room for manoeuvre. The walls were already touching him on every side. If the tube became any narrower, he would be stuck fast.

He forced himself on. Forward and down, his hands groping ahead of him, dreading the metal bars that would tell him Nile had been laughing at him from the start. His lungs were straining; the pressure was hammering at his chest. He tried not to panic, knowing it would only use up his air more quickly, but already his brain was screaming at him to stop, to breathe in, to give up and accept his fate. Forward and down. He could hold his breath for two minutes. And it couldn’t have been more than a minute since he had taken the plunge. Don’t give in! Just keep moving…

By now he must be ten or fifteen metres under the cellar floor. He reached out and whimpered as his knuckles struck brick. A few precious bubbles of air escaped between his lips and chased up his body, past his flailing legs. At first he thought he had come to a dead end. He opened his eyes for a split second. It made no difference at all. Open or closed, there was nothing to see: he was in pitch darkness. His heart seemed to stop beating. In that moment, Alex experienced what it would be like to die.

But then his other hand felt the curve of the wall and he realized that at last the well shaft was bending. He had reached the bottom of an elongated J and somehow he had to get round the turn. Perhaps this was where it finally joined the canal. As it twisted, it tightened. As if the swirling water wasn’t enough, Alex felt the brickwork close in on him, scratching his legs and chest. He knew he had very little air left. His lungs were straining and there was a giddy emptiness in his head. He was about to slide into unconsciousness. Well, that would come as a blessing. Maybe he would never feel the water rushing into his mouth and down his throat.

Maybe he would be asleep before the end.

He turned the corner. His hands hit something—bars of some sort—and he was able to pull his legs round. Only then did he discover that his worst fears had been realized. He had come to the end of the well shaft but there was a metal barrier, a circular gate. He was holding it. There was no way out.

Perhaps it was the sense of having come so far, of being cheated at the end, that gave him strength. Alex pushed and the metal hinges, weakened by the rust of three hundred years, shattered. The gate opened. Alex swam through. His shoulders came clear and he knew that there was nothing above him except water. He kicked out and felt the broken edge of the gate cut into his thigh. But there was no pain. Just a surge of desperation, a need for this to be over.

He was facing up. He could see nothing but he trusted to his natural buoyancy to take him the right way. He felt bubbles tickling his cheeks and eyelids and knew that, without wanting to, he was releasing the last of his breath. How far down had he gone? Did he have enough air left to reach the surface? He kicked as hard as he could, scrabbling with his hands—doing the crawl, only vertically. Once again he opened his eyes, hoping to see light … moonlight, lanterns … anything. And maybe there was a glimmer, a white ribbon flickering across his vision.

Alex screamed. Bubbles exploded from his lips. And then the scream itself erupted as he broke through the surface into the dawn light. For a moment his arms and shoulders were clear of the water and he took a huge gulp of air, then fell back. Water splashed all around him. Lying on his back, cushioned by the water, he breathed again. Rivulets of water streamed down his face. Alex knew they were mixed with tears.

He looked around him.

He guessed it was about six o’clock in the morning. The siren was still sounding but there was nobody about.

And that was just as well. Alex was floating in the middle of the Grand Canal. He could see the Bridge of the Academy, a vague shape in the half-light. The moon was still in the sky, but the sun was already stealing up behind the silent churches and palaces, casting a faint light across the lagoon.

Alex was so cold that he could no longer feel anything. He was aware only of the deathly grip of the canal, trying to drag him down. With the last of his strength he swam across to a flight of uneven stone steps on the far side of the Grand Canal, away from the Widow’s Palace. Whatever happened, he never wanted to go near that place again.

He was naked from the waist up. He had lost his sandals and his trousers were in tatters. Blood was running down one leg, mingling with the filthy canal water. He was soaked. He had no money and his hotel was a train ride away, outside Venice. But Alex didn’t care. He was alive.

He took one look back. There was the palace, dark and silent. The party had long ago come to an end.

Slowly he limped away.

THOUGHTS ON A TRAIN

« ^ »

Tom Harris sat back in the second-class carriage of the pendolino—the fast train from Venice to Naples—and looked out of the window as the buildings and fields slipped by. He was thinking about Alex Rider.

Alex’s absence had, of course, been noticed the night before. Mr Grey had assumed he was late getting back to the hotel, but when his bed was still empty at half past ten, the alarm buttons had been pressed. Mr Grey had alerted the police and then telephoned Alex’s guardian—an American woman called Jack Starbright—in London. Everyone at Brookland knew that Alex had no parents; it was one of the many things that made him different. It was Jack who had calmed the situation down.

“You know what Alex is like. Sometimes he lets his curiosity get the better of him. I’m glad you called, but I’m sure he’ll show up. You really don’t need to worry.”

But Tom was worried. He had seen Alex swallowed up by the crowd at the Widow’s Palace and knew it was something more than curiosity that had led his friend there. He didn’t know what to do. Part of him wanted to tell Mr Grey what the two of them had done. Alex might still be in the palace. He might need help. But another part of him was afraid of getting into trouble … and perhaps getting Alex into even more trouble than he was in already. In the end he decided to keep silent. They were leaving the hotel at half past ten the next morning. If by that time there was still no news from Alex, he would come forward and tell them where he was.

In fact, Alex rang the hotel at half past seven. He was, he said, on his way to England. He had got homesick and had decided to leave early. Mr Grey took the call.

“Alex,” he said. “I can’t believe you’ve done this. I’m meant to be responsible for you. When I brought you on this trip, I trusted you. You’ve completely let me down.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” Alex sounded wretched and that was how he felt.

“That’s not good enough. Because of you, I may not be allowed to take other kids on future trips. You’re spoiling it for everyone.”

“I didn’t mean this to happen,” Alex said. “There are things you don’t understand. When I see you next term, I’ll try to explain it to you … as much as I can. I really am sorry, sir. And I’m grateful to you for the way you’ve helped me this summer. But you don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be all right.” There were a lot of things Mr Grey wanted to say but he stopped himself. He had got to know Alex well in all their hours together and liked him. He also knew that Alex was like no other boy he’d ever met. He didn’t believe for a minute that Alex was homesick. Nor did he think he was on his way back to England. But sometimes, just occasionally, it was better not to ask.

“Good luck, Alex,” he said. “Look after yourself.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The rest of the school party had been told that Alex had already left. Miss Bedfordshire had packed his bags for him, and everyone else had been too busy sorting out their own things to think about him any more. Only Tom knew that Alex was lying. They had been sharing a room in the hotel, and Alex’s passport was still on the bedside table. Acting on impulse, Tom had taken it with him. He had given Alex his brother’s address in Naples. There was still a chance he might show up there.

The scenery flashed past, as uninteresting as scenery nearly always becomes when seen through the grimy window of a train. Tom had parted company with the school party outside the hotel They were flying back to England. He had a ticket to Naples, where his brother would be waiting to meet him. He had about six hours to kill. There was a Game Boy in his backpack and a book—Northern Lights. Tom didn’t much like reading but everyone in his class had been told they had to get through at least one novel during the summer holidays.

There were just a few days left until the start of term and he was only on page seven.

He wondered what had happened to Alex. And why had Alex been so determined to break into the Widow’s Palace in the first place? As the train rattled on, leaving the outskirts of Venice behind, Tom thought about his friend. They had met two years ago. Tom—who was about half the size of anyone else in his year—had just been beaten up. This was something that seemed to happen to him quite often. In this case it was a bunch of sixteen-year-olds led by a boy called Michael Cook who had suggested he should use his lunch money to buy them cigarettes. Tom had politely refused and a short while later Alex had come across him sitting on the pavement, picking up his tattered books and wiping blood from his nose.

“You OK?”

“Yeah. I’ve got a broken nose. I’ve lost my lunch money. And they’ve told me they’re going to do it all again tomorrow. But otherwise I’m fine.”

“Mike Cook?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe I should have a word with him.”

“What makes you think he’ll listen to you?”

“I’ve got a way with words.”

Alex had met the bully and two of his friends behind the bike shed the following day. It was a short meeting but Michael Cook never bothered anyone else again. It was also noticed that, for the following week, he limped and spoke in a strangely high-pitched voice.

That was the start of a close friendship. Tom and Alex lived near each other and often cycled home together.

They were in lots of teams together—despite his size, Tom was extremely quick on his feet. When Tom’s parents started talking about divorce, Alex was the only person he told.

In return, Tom probably knew more about Alex than anyone at Brookland. He had visited his house a few times and had met Jack, the cheerful, red-haired American girl who wasn’t exactly his nanny or housekeeper but seemed to be looking after him. Alex had no parents. Everyone knew that Alex had lived with his uncle—who must have been rich, judging from the house. But then he had died in a car accident. It had been announced in school assembly and Tom had gone round to the house a couple of times, hoping to find Alex, but he had never been in.

After that, Alex had changed. It had started with his first long absence from school in the spring term, and everyone assumed that he must have been knocked off balance by his uncle’s death. But then he had disappeared again in the summer term. There was no explanation. Nobody seemed to have any idea where he went. When the two of them had finally met again, Tom had been surprised how much his friend had changed.

He had been hurt. Tom had seen some of the scars. But Alex also seemed to have got a lot older. There was something in his eyes that hadn’t been there before, as if he had seen things he would never be able to forget.

And now this business in Venice! Maybe Miss Bedfordshire was right after all, and Alex really did need to see a shrink. Tom reached for his Game Boy, hoping to put the whole thing out of his mind. He knew he ought to continue with the book, and he promised himself he would go back to it in two or three hundred miles’ time …

after they had gone through Rome.

He became aware that someone was standing over him, and automatically fumbled for his ticket. He looked up and gaped. It was Alex.

He was dressed in old-fashioned jeans and a baggy jersey, both one size too big. He was dirty; his hair was matted and untidy. Tom glanced down and saw that he was barefoot. He looked worn out.

“Alex?” Tom was almost too shocked to speak.

“Hi.” Alex gestured to an empty seat. “Do you mind if I join you?”

“No. Sit down…” Tom had a whole table to himself—which was just as well. The other passengers were staring at Alex in horror. “How did you get here? What happened? Where did you get those clothes?” Suddenly the questions were tumbling out.

“I’m afraid I stole the clothes,” Alex confessed. “I nicked them off a washing line. I couldn’t get any shoes, though.”

“What happened to you last night? I saw you go into the palace. Did they find you?” Tom wrinkled his nose.

“Did you fall in a canal or something?”

Alex was too tired to answer any of his questions. “I’ve got a favour to ask you, Tom,” he said.

“Do you want me to hide you from the police?”

“I need to borrow some money. I couldn’t buy a ticket. And I’m going to have to get some new clothes.”

“That’s OK. I’ve got plenty of money.”

“And I need to stay with you—with your brother—for a while. Is that going to be all right?”

“Sure. Jerry won’t mind. Alex…”

But Alex had slumped forward, his head cradled in his hands. He was sound asleep.

The train picked up speed, curving round the Gulf of Venice and continuing its journey south.

When Alex woke up, the train was still travelling through the Italian countryside. He slowly uncurled himself.

Already he was feeling better. The train hadn’t just left Venice behind, it had carried him away from his experiences of the night before. He sat up and saw Tom staring at him. A sandwich, a bag of crisps and a Coke sat on the table between them.

“I thought you’d be hungry,” Tom said.

“I’m starving. Thanks.” Alex opened the can of Coke. It was lukewarm, but he didn’t mind. “Where are we?” he asked.

“We went through Rome about an hour ago. I think we’ll be there quite soon.” Tom waited while Alex drank.

He put his book down. “You look terrible,” he commented. “Are you going to tell me what happened last night?”

“Sure.” Alex had decided before he even got on the train that he was going to have to tell Tom everything. It wasn’t just that he needed Tom’s help. He was tired of lying. “But I’m not sure you’re going to believe it,” he added.

“Well, I’ve been reading my book for the last two and a half hours,” Tom said, “and I’m only on page nineteen.

So I think I’d prefer listening to you, whatever you’ve got to say.”

“All right…”

Alex had only ever told one other person the truth about himself, and that had been his friend Sabina Pleasure.

She hadn’t believed him—not until she’d found herself knocked out and tied up in the basement of the country mansion owned by the insane multimillionaire Damian Cray. Now Alex told Tom everything he had told her, starting with the truth behind the death of his uncle and continuing all the way up to his escape from the flooded chamber the night before. The strange thing was that he enjoyed telling his story. He wasn’t boasting about being a spy and working for secret intelligence. Quite the opposite. For too long he had been a servant of MI6, forced by them to keep quiet about everything he had done. They had even made him sign the Official Secrets Act. By telling the truth, he was doing exactly what they didn’t want him to do and it came as a relief, a great weight off his shoulders. It made him feel that he was the one in control.

“…I couldn’t go back to the hotel. Not without money. Not without shoes. But I knew you were taking the train to Naples, so I walked up to the station and waited for you. I followed you onto the train. And here I am.” Alex finished and waited nervously for Tom’s response. Tom had said nothing for the last twenty minutes.

Would he, like Sabina, walk out on him?

Tom nodded slowly. “Well, that makes sense,” he said at last.

Alex stared. “You believe me?”

“I can’t think of any other reason to explain everything that’s happened. Missing so much school. And all those injuries. I mean, I thought your housekeeper might be beating you up, but that didn’t seem likely. So, yes. You must be a spy. But that’s pretty heavy, Alex. I’m glad it’s you, not me.” Alex couldn’t help smiling. “Tom, you really are my best mate.”

“I’m happy to help. But there’s one thing you haven’t told me. Why were you interested in Scorpia in the first place? And what are you doing now, coming to Naples?”

Alex hadn’t mentioned his father. That was the one area that still troubled him. It was too private to share with anyone. “I’ve got to find Scorpia,” he began. He paused, then continued carefully. “I think my dad may have had some sort of involvement with them. I never knew him. He died shortly after I was born.”

“Did they kill him?”

“No. It’s difficult to explain. I just want to find out about him. I’ve never met anyone who knew him. Even my uncle never talked much about him. I just have to know who he was.”

“And Naples?”

“I heard Mrs Rothman talking about a company in Amalfi. That’s not too far from Naples. I think it’s called Consanto. I saw the name in a sort of brochure in her desk, and the person she was talking to had his photograph inside. She said she’d be there in two days. That’s tomorrow. I’d be interested to know why.”

“But, Alex…” Tom frowned. “You met this black guy, Nile…”

“Actually, he wasn’t exactly black. He was more sort of … black and white.”

“Well, the moment you mentioned Scorpia, he locked you in a cellar and tried to drown you. Why go back? I mean, it sounds to me like they’re not that keen to meet you.”

“I know.” Alex couldn’t deny that Tom was right. And he had learnt very little about Mrs Rothman. He couldn’t even be certain that she was connected to Scorpia. The one thing he did know was that she—or the people who worked for her—was utterly ruthless. But he couldn’t leave it. Not yet. Yassen Gregorovich had shown him a path. He had to follow it to the end. “I just want to take a look, that’s all.” Tom shrugged. “Well, I suppose you can’t be in any worse trouble than you are with Mr Grey. When you get back to school, I think he’s going to murder you.”

“Yeah. I know. He didn’t sound too happy on the phone.”

There was a brief silence. The train rushed through a station, a blur of neon and concrete, without stopping.

“It must mean a lot to you,” Tom said. “Finding out about your dad.”

“Yes. It does.”

“My mum and dad have been shouting at each other for ages. All they ever do is fight. Now they’re splitting up and they’re fighting about that. I don’t care about either of them any more. I don’t think I even like them.” For a brief moment Tom looked sadder than Alex had ever seen him. “So I think I understand what you’re saying, and I hope you find out something good about your dad, because right now I can’t think of anything good about mine.”

Jerry Harris, Tom’s elder brother, met them at the station and took them by taxi to his flat. He was twenty-two years old and had come to Italy on his gap year but had somehow forgotten to return. Alex liked him immediately. Jerry was totally laid-back, thin to the point of scrawny, with bleached hair and a lopsided smile.

It made no difference to him that Alex had turned up uninvited, and he didn’t comment on Alex’s appearance or the fact that he seemed to have made the journey from Venice without shoes.

He lived in the Spanish Quarter of the city. It was a typical Naples street: narrow, with buildings five or six storeys high on both sides and washing lines strung out between them. Looking up, Alex saw a fantastic patchwork of crumbling plaster, wooden shutters, ornate railings, window boxes and terraces with Italian women leaning out to chat with their neighbours. Jerry was renting a top-floor flat. There was no lift. The three of them climbed a twisting staircase with a different smell and sound on each floor: disinfectant and a baby crying on the first, pasta and a violin playing on the second…

“This is it,” Jerry announced, unlocking a door. “Make yourselves at home.” Home was an open-plan space with hardly any furniture, white painted walls, a wooden floor and views over the city. There was a kitchen in the corner, every surface piled high with dirty plates, and a door leading to a small bedroom and bathroom. Somehow, someone had dragged a battered leather three-seater sofa all the way up. It sat in the middle of the room surrounded by a tangle of sports equipment, only some of which Alex recognized. There were two skateboards, ropes and pitons, an oversized kite, a mono-ski and what looked like a parachute. Tom had already told Alex that his brother was into extreme sports. He was teaching English as a foreign language in Naples, but only to pay for his trips mountaineering, surfing or whatever.

“You two hungry?” Jerry asked.

“Yeah.” Tom slumped down on the sofa. “We’ve been on a train for, like, six hours. You got any food?”

“You’ve got to be kidding! No. We’ll go out and get a pizza or something. How’s things, Tom? How are Mum and Dad?”

“The same.”

“As bad as that?” Jerry turned to Alex. “Our parents are complete crap. I’m sure my brother’s told you. I mean, calling him Tom and me Jerry. How crap can you get?” He shrugged. “What are you doing down here, Alex?

You want to visit the coast?”

On the train Alex had impressed on Tom the importance of not repeating anything he’d said. Now he winced as Tom announced, “Alex is a spy.”

“Is he?”

“Yeah. He works for MI6.”

“Wow. That’s awesome.”

“Thanks.” Alex wasn’t sure what to say.

“So what are you doing in Naples, Alex?”

Tom answered for him. “He wants to find out about a company. Constanza.”

“Consanto,” Alex said.

“Consanto Enterprises?” Jerry opened the fridge and took out a beer. Alex noticed that, apart from beer, there was nothing else in the fridge. “I know about them. I used to have one of their people learning English. He was a research chemist or something. I hope he was a better chemist than he was a linguist, because his English was awful.”

“Who are Consanto?” Alex asked.

“They’re one of these big pharmaceutical companies. They make drugs and biological stuff. They’ve got a plant near Amalfi.”

“Can you get me in?” Alex was hopeful.

“You’ve got to be kidding. I doubt the pope could get in. I drove past once and it’s this really high-tech sort of place. It looks like something out of a sci-fi film. And it’s got all these fences and security cameras and stuff.”

“They must have something to hide,” Tom said.

“Of course they’ve got something to hide, you dimwit,” Jerry muttered. “All these drugs companies are coming up with new patents and they’re worth a fortune. I mean, like, if someone discovers a cure for AIDS or something, it would be worth billions. That’s why you can’t get in. The guy I was teaching never said anything about his work. He wasn’t allowed to.”

“Like Alex.”

“What?”

“Being a spy. He’s not allowed to say anything about that either.”

“Right.” Jerry nodded.

Alex looked from one to the other. Despite the fact that there were eight years between them, the two brothers were obviously close. He wished he could spend more time with them. He felt more relaxed now than he had in a long time. But that wasn’t why he was here. “Can you take me to Amalfi?” he asked.

“Sure.” Jerry shrugged and finished his beer. “I haven’t got any lessons tomorrow. Would that be OK?”

“It would be great.”

“It’s not that far from Naples. I can borrow my girlfriend’s car and drive you down there. You can see Consanto for yourself. But I’m telling you now, Alex, there’s definitely no way in.” CONSANTO

« ^ »

Standing beside the car, in the full heat of the mid-morning sun, Alex had to admit that Jerry Harris was right.

Consanto had certainly done everything it possibly could to protect whatever it was hiding.

There was a single main building, rectangular in shape and at least fifty metres long. Alex had seen the picture in the brochure and he was struck by how much the actual building resembled it—as if the photograph had been blown up a thousand times, cut out, and somehow made to stand up. It wasn’t quite real. Alex was looking at a wall of reflective glass. Even the sunlight couldn’t seem to find a way in. It was a huge silver block with a single sign—CONSANTO—cut out of solid steel.

Jerry was standing next to him, dressed in knee-length shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt. He had brought along a pair of binoculars and Alex examined the wide concrete steps that led up to the main entrance. There were a few outlying buildings, warehouses and ventilation plants, and a car park with about a hundred cars. He trained the binoculars on the roof of the main complex. He could see two water tanks, a row of solar panels and, next to them, a brick tower with a single, open door. A fire escape? If he could reach it, he might just find a way in.

But it was obvious that he could get nowhere near. The entire site was surrounded by a fence more than six metres high and topped with razor wire. A single track led to a checkpoint, with a second one right behind it.

Every car that went in and out was searched. And, just to be sure, cameras mounted on steel poles swivelled and rotated, the lenses sweeping over every centimetre of ground. Even a fly trying to get in would have been noticed. And swatted, Alex thought gloomily.

Consanto Enterprises had chosen this position carefully. Amalfi, the busy, densely populated Mediterranean port, was a few miles to the south, and there were a few isolated villages to the north. The complex was in a sort of hole, a flat and rocky stretch of landscape with few trees or buildings—nowhere to hide. Alex was standing with the sea about half a mile behind him. There were sailing boats dotted about and a single ferry ploughed through the water on its way to the island of Capri. His overwhelming impression was that it would be impossible to approach Consanto from any direction without being spotted. He was probably being filmed even now.

“You see what I mean?” Jerry said.

Tom had his back to the buildings; he was looking at the sea. “Anyone fancy a swim?” he asked.

“Yeah.” Jerry nodded slowly. “You bring any trunks?”

“No.”

“It doesn’t matter. We can swim in our underpants.”

“I’m not wearing underpants.”

Jerry glanced at his brother. “You are so gross!”

Alex watched as a supply van made its way past the first control post. It really did look impossible. Even if he managed to sneak into a car or a truck, he would be found when it was searched. There was no point waiting until nightfall. There were dozens of arc lamps arranged around the perimeter and they would flick on the minute it grew dark. He could see uniformed guards patrolling the grounds with German shepherd dogs on leashes. They would probably be there all night too.

He was about to give up. He couldn’t get in from the front or the sides; he couldn’t climb the fence. He looked past the complex. It had been set against a sheer cliff. The rock face rose at least three hundred metres and he noticed a cluster of buildings, far away, at the summit.

He pointed. “What’s that?” he asked.

Jerry followed the direction of Alex’s finger. “I don’t know.” He thought for a moment. “It’s probably Ravello.

It’s a hilltop village.”

“Can we go there?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Alex put it all together in an instant. The flat roof with the fire escape, seemingly open. The village perched high up on the cliff. The equipment he had seen in Jerry’s flat in Naples. Suddenly it was very simple.

Consanto Enterprises might look impregnable. But Alex had found a way in.

The faded eighteenth-century villa stood some distance away from Ravello, reached by a path that twisted along the side of the mountain, high above the pine trees. It was a wonderful place to escape to, lost in its own world, far away from the crowds on the beaches and in the streets below. A cool evening breeze drifted in from the sea and the light had turned from a blue to a mauve to a deep red as the sun slowly set. There was an ornamental garden with a long avenue running down the centre and, at the far end, a terrace that appeared unexpectedly with white marble heads mounted on the parapet. Beyond the terrace, there was nothing. The garden simply came to an abrupt end with a sheer drop straight down to the coastal road, the Consanto complex and the rocky flatlands three-hundred-odd metres below.

The tourists had long ago left for the evening. The villa was about to close. Alex stood on his own, thinking about what he had to do. His mouth was dry and there was an unpleasant churning in his stomach. This was madness. There had to be another solution. No. He had examined all the possibilities. This was the only way.

He knew that BASE jumping was one of the most dangerous of all extreme sports, and that every BASE jumper would know someone who had been injured or killed. BASE stands for Building, Antenna, Span and Earth. It means, essentially, parachuting without the use of an aircraft. BASE jumpers will throw themselves off skyscrapers, dams, rock faces and bridges. The jumps themselves aren’t against the law, but they’re usually done without permission, often in the middle of the night. Trespassing, being outside the system, is all part of the fun.

They had driven all the way back to Naples to get the equipment which Jerry Harris had agreed to lend to Alex.

Jerry had used the long journey to give Alex as much information about the techniques and the potential dangers as he could. A crash course, Tom had muttered gloomily. Just what Alex didn’t need.

“The first and most important rule is the one that beginners find hardest,” Jerry said. “When you jump, you’ve got to wait as long as possible before you release the canopy. The longer you wait, the further you travel away from the side of the cliff. And you must keep your shoulders level. The last thing you need is a one eighty onto a hard-core object.”

“What’s that in English?” Alex asked.

“It’s what occurs when you get an off-heading opening. Basically, it means you go the wrong way and hit the cliff.”

“And what happens then?”

“Yeah. Well… you die.”

Alex was wearing a helmet, knee pads and elbow pads. Jerry had also lent him a pair of sturdy hiking boots.

But that was all. He would need to react instantly as he fell through the sky, and too much protective gear would only slow him down. Besides, as Jerry had pointed out, nobody had ever made a BASE jump without basic training. If something went wrong, all the protective clothes in the world wouldn’t do him one bit of good.

And the difference between life and death?

For Alex it boiled down to two hundred and twenty square feet of Fill nylon. Skydivers need on average one square foot of parachute for every pound of their body weight and equipment. But BASE jumpers need almost half that again. Alex’s chute had been designed for Jerry, who was heavier than he was. He would have plenty of material.

He was carrying a seven-cell Blackjack canopy which Jerry had bought second hand for a little under one thousand American dollars. An ordinary parachute normally contains nine cells—nine separate pockets. The larger BASE canopy is thought to be more docile, easier to fly and land accurately. Alex’s own weight would drag it out of the deployment bag as he fell, and it would inflate over his head, taking the shape of an aerofoil, the ram-air design of all modern parachutes.

Jerry stood next to him, pointing a black gadget about the size and shape of a pair of binoculars at the ground.

He was taking a reading. “Three hundred and fifty-seven metres,” he said. He took out a laminated card—an altitude delay planner—and quickly consulted it. “You can do a four,” he said. “It’ll give you approximately fifteen seconds under canopy. A six max. But that’ll mean landing almost at once.” Alex understood what he was saying. He could free-fall for between four and six seconds. The less time he spent dangling underneath the parachute, the less chance he would have of being spotted from below. On the other hand, the faster he arrived, the more chance he would have of breaking most of his bones.

“And when you get down there, remember…”

“Flaring.”

“Yes. If you don’t want to break both your legs, you have to slow yourself down about three or four seconds before impact.”

“Not three or four seconds after impact,” Tom added helpfully. “That’ll be too late.”

“Thanks!”

Alex looked around. There was nobody in sight. He half wished a policeman or somebody from the villa would come along and put a stop to this before he could actually jump. But the gardens were empty. The white marble heads stared past him, not remotely interested.

“You’ll go from nought to sixty miles an hour in about three seconds,” Jerry went on. “I’ve put on a mesh slider, but you’re still going to feel the opening shock. But at least that’ll warn you you’re about to land. That’s when you get both feet and knees together. Put your chin on your chest. And try not to bite your tongue in half.

I almost did on my first time.”

“Yes.” Single words were about all Alex could manage.

Jerry looked over the precipice. “The roof of Consanto is right beneath us and there’s no wind. You won’t have much time to steer but you can try pulling on the toggles.” He rested a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “I could do this for you, if you like,” he said.

“No.” Alex shook his head. “Thanks, Jerry. But it’s down to me. It was my idea…”

“Good luck.”

“Break a leg!” Tom exclaimed. “Or rather—don’t.”

Alex moved to the edge between two of the statues and looked down. He was right over the complex, although from this height it looked tiny, like a silver Lego brick. Most of the workers would have left by now but there would still be guards. He would just have to hope that nobody looked up in the few seconds it would take him to arrive. But that was what he had observed earlier, outside the gate. Consanto faced the sea. The main road and the entrance were on the same side. That was where all their attention was focused, and if Alex was lucky, he would be able to drop in—quite literally—unnoticed.

His stomach heaved. There was no feeling in his legs. He felt as if he were floating. He tried to take a deep breath but the air didn’t seem to want to rise above his chest. Did it really matter to him so much, penetrating Consanto, finding out how it might be involved with Scorpia? What would Tom and his brother say if he changed his mind, even at this last minute?

To hell with it, he thought. Lots of teenagers did BASE jumps. Jerry himself had recently jumped off the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia. It had been Bridge Day, the one day in the year when the jump was legal in America, and he had said there’d been dozens of kids waiting in line. It was a sport. People did it for fun. If he hesitated for one more second, he would never do it. It was time to get it over with.

In a single movement he climbed onto the parapet, checked the line from the pilot chute, took one last look at the target and jumped.

It was like committing suicide.

It was like nothing he had ever experienced.

Everything was a blur. There was the sky, the edge of the cliff and (unless he imagined it) Tom’s staring face.

Then it all tilted. The blue rushed into the grey with the white of the roof punching up. The wind hammered into his face. His eyes were being sucked into the backs of their sockets with the sudden acceleration. He had to deploy. No. Jerry had warned him about this. How many seconds?

Now!

He threw out the pilot chute, hoping it would find the clean airflow that was meant to surround him. Had it worked? The chute had already disappeared, dragging with it the bridle line which would in turn suck the Blackjack canopy out of its pack. God! He’d left it too late. He was falling too fast. A long, silent scream with the wind in his ears, skin crawling. Where was the bloody chute? Where was up? Where was down? Falling…

And then there was a sudden wrenching, braking sensation. He thought he was being torn in half. He could see something, ropes and billowing material, just outside his vision. The canopy! But that didn’t matter. Where was he going? He looked down and saw his own feet, dangling in space. A white rectangle was racing up to meet them. The roof of the complex—but it was too far away. He was going to miss. Quick. Pull the toggles. That’s better. The roof tilted back towards him. What had he forgotten? Flaring! He pulled down on both brakes, dropping the tail of the canopy so that—like a plane landing—he came in at an upward angle. But had he left it too late?

All he could see was the surface of the roof. Then he hit it. He felt the shock travel through his ankles, his knees and up into his thighs. He ran forward. The canopy was dragging him. Jerry had warned him about this. There might be a stronger breeze lower down and if he wasn’t careful he would be pulled off the roof. He could see the edge racing towards him. He dug in his heels, reaching behind him for the risers. He caught hold of them and pulled them in. Stop running! With just centimetres to spare, he managed to get a grip with the balls of his feet. He leant back, tugging the canopy towards him. He sat down hard.

He had arrived.

For a few seconds he did nothing. He was experiencing the massive high that all BASE jumpers know and which makes the sport so addictive. His body was releasing a flood of adrenalin and it was coursing through his entire system. His heart was pumping at double speed. He could feel every hair on his skin standing up. He looked back up at the cliff. There was no sign of Tom or his brother. Even if they had been standing there, they would have been too small to see. Alex couldn’t believe how far he’d travelled, or how quickly he’d arrived.

And as far as he could tell, the guards had kept their heads down, their eyes on the ground, not the air. So much for Consanto’s security!

Alex waited until his heart and pulse rate had returned to normal, then pulled off the helmet and protective pads. He quickly folded the chute and packed it as best as he could inside the bag. He could taste blood in his mouth and realized that, despite Jerry’s warnings, he’d still managed to bite his tongue.

Keeping low, he carried the bag with the canopy over to the door that he had seen earlier from the ground. He was going to have to leave Jerry’s equipment up here on the roof until it was time to leave. He had more or less worked out how he was going to get out of Consanto. The easiest way would simply be to call the police and get himself arrested. At the very worst, he would be prosecuted for trespassing. But he was only fourteen. He doubted he would find himself in an Italian jail—more likely they would pack him off back to England.

The door was ajar. He had been right about that. A dozen cigarette butts on the roof told their own story. Despite all the security guards, the cameras and the high-tech alarms, a single smoker in need of a fag had found his way up here and blown the whole place wide open.

Well, that was fine. Alex slipped in through the door and found a flight of metal steps leading down. There was a set of more solid-looking doors—steel with small glass windows—and for a moment Alex thought his way was blocked. But there must have been some sort of sensor. They slid open as he approached, then closed again after him. Perhaps the anonymous smoker had set it up that way. Alex turned and waved a hand. The doors didn’t move. A numerical keypad on the wall told him the bad news. Getting in this way was one thing. But to get out again, he would need a code. He was trapped.

There was only one way to go and that was forward. He followed a blank white corridor down to another set of doors which hissed open and shut as he passed through. He had entered the core of the complex. There was an immediate difference to the air quality. It was extremely cold and smelt metallic. He glanced up and noticed a brightly polished silver duct running the full length of the passage. There were dials and monitors everywhere.

Already his head was beginning to ache. This place was just too clean.

He kept moving, wanting to see as much as possible before he was discovered. There didn’t seem to be anyone around—all the workers must have gone home for the night—but it could only be a matter of time before security looked in. He heard a door open somewhere. Alex’s heart flipped and he quickly searched for somewhere to hide. The corridor was bare, brightly lit by powerful neon lights behind glass panels. There wasn’t so much as a shadow to give him cover. He saw a doorway and hurried over to it, but the door was locked. Alex pressed himself against the door, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t be seen.

A man appeared round the corner. At first it was hard to be sure that it was a man. The figure was wrapped in a pale blue protective suit that covered every centimetre of his body. He had a hood over his head and a glass mask in front of his face, obscuring most of his features—but then he turned sideways and Alex caught a glimpse of glasses and a beard. The man was pushing what looked like a huge tea urn, shining chrome, mounted on wheels. The urn was as tall as he was, with a series of valves and pipes on the lid. To Alex’s relief the man turned off down a second corridor.

Alex looked at the door which had provided him with minimal cover. It had a thick glass window—like the front of a washing machine—and there was a large room on the other side, still lit but empty. Alex supposed it must be a laboratory but it looked more like a distillery, with more urns, some of them suspended on chains.

There was a metal staircase leading up to some sort of gantry and a whole wall lined with what looked like enormous fridge doors. All the metal looked brand new, brilliantly polished.

As Alex watched, a woman crossed the room.

The complex obviously wasn’t as deserted as he had thought. She was also dressed in protective clothes, with a mask over her face, and she was pushing a silver trolley. His breath frosted on the glass as he tried to peer in. It didn’t make any sense, but the woman seemed to be carrying eggs … hundreds of them, neatly lined up on trays. They were the size of ordinary chickens’ eggs, every one of them pure white. Could the woman be part of the catering team? Alex doubted it. There was something almost sinister about the eggs. Perhaps it was their uniformity, the fact that they were all so obviously identical. The woman went behind some machinery and disappeared. Increasingly puzzled, Alex decided it was time to move on.

He went down the second corridor, following the direction of the man with the urn. Now he could hear machinery, a soft, rhythmic clattering. He came to a glass panel set in the wall and looked through it into a darkened room, where a second woman sat in front of a bizarre, complicated machine that seemed to be sorting hundreds of test tubes, rotating them, counting them, labelling them and finally delivering them into her hands.

What was being made at Consanto Enterprises? Chemical weapons, perhaps? And how the hell was he going to get out again? Alex glanced down and noticed his hands, still grubby from his BASE jump. He was dirty and sweaty and he was surprised he hadn’t set off every single alarm in the building.

Surrounded by these white panelled walls with the air being sucked in and sterilized, he had become the equivalent of an enormous germ and the monitors should have screamed the moment he came near.

He arrived at another set of doors and was relieved when these slid open to allow him through. Perhaps he might be able to find his way out after all. But these doors led only to another corridor, a little wider than the one he had just left, but equally unpromising. It occurred to him that he was still on the top floor. He had entered from the roof. He needed to find a lift or staircase that would take him down.

Suddenly a door about ten metres away opened and a man appeared, staring at Alex in disbelief.

“Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?” he demanded.

Alex registered that the man was talking in English. At the same time, he recognized him: the bald head, the hooked nose and the thick black glasses. He was wearing a white laboratory coat hanging loose over a jacket and tie but the last time Alex had seen him he had been in fancy dress. This was Dr Liebermann, the guest he had seen talking to Mrs Rothman at the party in Venice.

“I…” Alex wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m lost,” he muttered helplessly.

“You can’t come in here! This is a secure area. Who are you?”

“My name’s Tom. My dad works here.”

“What is his name? What is his department?” Dr Liebermann wasn’t going to buy the little boy lost routine.

“How did you get here?” he asked.

“My dad brought me. But if you’d like to show me the way out, that’s fine by me.”

“No! I’m calling security. You can come with me!”

Dr Liebermann took a step back towards the room from which he’d come. Alex wasn’t sure what to do. Should he try to run? Once the alarm went off, it would only be a matter of minutes before he was caught. And what then? He had assumed that Consanto would simply hand him over to the police. But if they were hiding something here, if he had seen something secret, maybe he wouldn’t be that fortunate.

Dr Liebermann was reaching out for something and Alex saw an alarm button next to the door.

“It’s all right, Harold. I’ll deal with this.”

The voice came from behind Alex.

Alex spun round and felt his heart sink. It was like a bad dream. Nile, the man who had knocked him unconscious and left him to drown, was standing behind him, a smile on his face, totally relaxed. He too was wearing a white coat. In his case, it hung over jeans and a tight-fitting T-shirt. He had a grey attaché case in one hand but, as Alex watched, he set it down on the floor beside him.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you again.” Harold Liebermann was puzzled.

“Mrs Rothman sent me back.”

“Why?”

“Well, as you can see, Dr Liebermann, there’s been a very serious breakdown in security. Before she left she asked me to deal with it.”

“Do you know this boy? Who is he?”

“His name is Alex Rider.”

“He said his name was Tom.”

“He’s lying. He’s a spy.”

Alex was caught in the middle of this conversation, one man on either side of him. He was trapped. He felt dazed, and he knew there was nothing he could do. Nile was too fast and too strong for him. He had already proved that.

“What are you going to do?” Dr Liebermann demanded. He sounded peeved, as if neither Alex nor Nile had any right to be there.

“I just told you, Harold. We can’t have security problems. I’m going to deal with it.” Nile reached under his coat and produced one of the most lethal-looking weapons Alex had ever seen. It was a samurai sword, very slightly curving, with an ivory hilt and a flat, razor-sharp blade. But it was half sized—

somewhere between a sword and a dagger. Nile held it for a moment in his hand, obviously enjoying the fine balance, then raised it to the height of his shoulder. Now he could throw it or slash with it. Either way, Alex knew instantly, he was facing a master. He had perhaps seconds to live.

“You can’t kill him here!” Dr Liebermann exclaimed in exasperation. “You’ll get blood everywhere!”

“Don’t worry, Harold,” Nile replied. “This is going through the neck and into the brain. There’ll be very little blood.”

Alex crouched down, preparing to dodge, knowing that he wouldn’t have a chance. Nile was still smiling, obviously enjoying himself.

He threw the sword.

There was a single movement. Alex hadn’t even seen Nile take aim but the blade was already a blur, flashing down the length of the passageway. It passed over Alex’s shoulder. Had Nile missed? No. That was impossible.

He suddenly realized that Nile hadn’t been aiming at him.

Alex turned and saw Dr Liebermann already dead, still standing, a look of surprise on his face. He had managed to bring one hand up so that it was lightly holding the blade of the sword now sticking out of his neck. He pitched forward and lay motionless.

“Straight into the brain,” Nile muttered. “Just like I said.” As Alex watched, stunned, Nile walked past him and crouched down beside Dr Liebermann. He pulled the sword free, used the dead man’s tie to wipe it clean, and returned it to its sheath, which hung from his waist beneath his lab coat. He looked up.

“Hello, Alex,” he said cheerfully. “You’re the last person I expected to see here. Mrs Rothman will be pleased.”

“You don’t want to kill me?” Alex murmured. He still couldn’t believe what had just happened.

“Not at all.”

Nile stood up and went back to the attaché case and opened it. Alex was finding it very difficult to keep up with what was happening. Inside the case, he saw a keyboard, a small computer screen, two square packets and a series of wires. Nile knelt down and tapped rapidly on the keyboard. A series of codes appeared on the screen: black and white like the fingers that were typing them. He continued talking as he typed.

“I hope you’ll forgive me, Alex. I have to say, I’m terribly sorry for what happened at the Widow’s Palace. I didn’t realize who you were—John Rider’s son. I think it’s brilliant how you managed to escape, by the way.

I’d never have forgiven myself if I’d had to go in and fish you out with a boathook.” He finished typing, pressed ENTER, then closed the lid of the case. “But we can’t talk now. Mrs Rothman is just along the coast, in Positano. She’s dying to meet you. So let’s go.”

“Why did you kill Dr Liebermann?” Alex asked.

“Because Mrs Rothman ordered me to.” Nile straightened up. “Look, I’m sure you’ve got a lot of questions, but I can’t answer them right now. I’ve just set a bomb to blow this place to smithereens in”—he glanced at his watch—“ninety-two seconds. So I don’t think we have time for a chat.” He slid the case near Dr Liebermann’s head, checked the dead man one last time, then walked away. Alex followed him. What else could he do? Nile came to a set of doors and tapped in a code. The doors opened and they went through. They were moving quickly. Nile had the athlete’s ability to cover a lot of ground with no apparent effort at all. Here was the staircase that Alex had been looking for. They went down three floors and came to another door. Nile punched in a number and suddenly they were in the open air. There was a car—a two-seater Alfa Romeo Spider—waiting outside with the roof down.

“Hop in!” Nile said. From the way he was talking, he and Alex could have just come from the cinema and been on their way home.

Alex got in and they drove off. How much time had passed since Nile had set the bomb? It was now completely dark outside. The sun had finally disappeared. They followed a tarmac drive to the main checkpoint. Nile smiled at the guard.

“Grazie. E’stato bello verdervi…”

Thank you. It was good to see you. Alex already knew from their first meeting that Nile spoke Italian. The guard nodded and raised the barrier.

Nile gunned the accelerator and the car shot off smoothly. Alex twisted round in his seat. A few seconds later there was an enormous explosion.

It was as if a fist of orange flame had decided to punch its way out of the main complex. Windows shattered.

Smoke and fire rushed out. Thousands of pieces of glass and steel, a deadly rainfall, showered down. Alarms—

shrill and deafening—erupted. A huge bite had been taken out of the side and the roof of the building. Alex had seen the size of the bomb. It was hard to believe that it could have caused so much damage.

Nile glanced in the mirror, examining his handiwork. He tutted.

“These industrial accidents,” he murmured. “You can never tell when one is going to happen next.” He steered the Alfa Spider along the coastal road, already doing eighty miles an hour. Behind him Consanto Enterprises burned, the flames leaping up and reflecting in the dark and silent sea.

DESIGNER LABELS

« ^ »

Alex stood on the balcony and gazed at the sweeping view of the town of Positano and the black water of the Mediterranean beyond. Two hours had passed since sunset but the warmth lingered in the air. He was dressed in a towelling robe, his hair still wet from the power shower with its jets of steaming hot water blasting him from all directions. There was a glass of fresh lime juice and ice on the table next to him. From the moment he had met Nile for the second time, he had thought he was in a dream. Now that dream seemed to have taken him in a new and very strange direction.

The hotel, first. It was called The Sirenuse and, as Nile had been eager to tell him, it was one of the most luxurious in the whole of southern Italy. Alex’s room was huge and didn’t look like a hotel room at all—more like a guest suite in an Italian palace. The bed was king-sized with pure white Egyptian cotton sheets. He had his own desk, a thirty-six-inch TV with video and DVD players, a sprawling leather sofa and, on the other side of the huge windows, his own private terrace. And the bathroom! As well as the power shower, there was a bath big enough for a football team, together with a spa bath. Everything was marble, and decorated with hand-crafted tiles. The millionaire suite. Alex shuddered to think how much it must cost a night.

Nile had driven him down here from what was left of Consanto Enterprises. Neither of them had spoken on the short journey. There were a hundred things Alex wanted to ask Nile, but the rush of wind and the roar of the Alfa Spider’s 162kW quad camshaft V6 engine made conversation impossible. Anyway, Alex got the impression that Nile wasn’t the one with the answers. It had only taken them twenty minutes, following the coastline, and suddenly they were there, parked in front of a hotel that was deceptively small and ordinary—

from the outside.

While Alex signed in, Nile made a quick call on his mobile.

“Mrs Rothman is absolutely thrilled you’re here,” he said. “She’s going to have dinner with you at nine thirty.

She’s asked me to send up some clothes.” He weighed Alex up. “I’ve got a good eye for size. Do you have any particular likes or dislikes when it comes to style?”

Alex shrugged. “Whatever you want.”

“Good. The bellboy will take you up to your room. I’m so glad I ran into you, Alex. I know you and I are going to be friends. Enjoy your dinner. The food here is world class.” He went back to the car and drove away.

I know you and I are going to be friends. Alex shook his head in disbelief. Just two nights ago the same man had knocked him unconscious and left him in a subterranean cell to drown.

He was shaken out of these thoughts by the arrival of an elderly man in a uniform, who gestured and then led Alex up to his room on the second floor, taking him along corridors filled with antiques and fine art. At last he was left on his own. He checked at once. The door was unlocked. The two phones on the desk had dialling tones. He could presumably call anyone, anywhere in the world … and that included the police. He had, after all, just witnessed the destruction of a large part of Consanto Enterprises and the murder of Harold Liebermann.

But Nile obviously trusted him to stay silent, at least until he had met Mrs Rothman. He could also walk out if he wanted to. Simply disappear. But again, they assumed he would want to stay. It was all very puzzling.

Alex sipped his drink and considered the view.

It was a beautiful night, the sky stretching to eternity with thousands of brilliant stars. He could hear the waves rolling in, far below. The town of Positano was built on a steep hillside, shops, restaurants, houses and flats all piled up on top of one another, with a series of interlocking alleyways and a single, narrow street zigzagging all the way down to the horseshoe bay below. There were lights everywhere. The holiday season was drawing to a close but the place was still crowded with people determined to enjoy the summer right to the end.

There was a knock at the door. Alex went back into the room and walked across the shining marble floor. A waiter in a white jacket and a black bow tie had appeared. “Your clothes, sir,” he said. He handed Alex a case.

“Mr Nile suggested the suit for tonight,” he added as he turned to leave.

Alex opened the case. It was full of clothes, all of them expensive, all of them brand new. The suit was on the top. He took it out and laid it on the bed. It was charcoal grey, silk, with a Miu Miu label. There was a white shirt to go with it: Armani. Underneath, he found a slim leather box. He opened it and gasped. They had even provided him with a new watch, a Baume & Mercier with a polished steel bracelet. He lifted it out and weighed it in his hand. It must have cost hundreds of pounds. First the room, now all this! He was certainly having money thrown at him—and like the water in the power shower, it was coming from all directions.

He thought for a moment. He wasn’t sure what he was letting himself in for but he might as well play along with it for the time being. It was almost nine thirty and he was ravenous. He got dressed and examined himself in the mirror. The suit was in the classic mod style, with small lapels that barely came down to his chest, and tightly fitted trousers. The tie was dark blue, narrow and straight. Mrs Rothman had also provided him with black suede shoes from D&G. It was quite an outfit. Alex barely recognized himself.

At exactly nine thirty he entered the restaurant on the lower ground floor. The hotel, he now realized, was built on the side of the hill, so it was much bigger than it seemed, with much of it on levels below the entrance and reception. He found himself in a long arched room with tables spilling out onto another long terrace. It was lit by hundreds of tiny candles in glass chandeliers. The place was crowded. Waiters were hurrying from table to table and the room was filled with the clatter of knives against plates and the low murmur of conversation.

Mrs Rothman had the best table, in the middle of the terrace, with views over Positano and out to sea. She was sitting on her own with a glass of champagne, waiting for him. She wore a low-cut black dress set off by a simple diamond necklace. She saw him, smiled and waved. Alex walked over to her, feeling suddenly self-conscious in the suit. Most of the other diners seemed to be casually dressed. He wished now that he hadn’t put on the tie.

“Alex, you look wonderful.” She ran her dark eyes over him. “The suit fits you perfectly. It’s Miu Miu, isn’t it?

I love the style. Please, sit down.”

Alex took his place at the table. He wondered what anyone watching might think. A mother and her son out for the evening? He felt like an extra in a film—and he was beginning to wish someone would show him the script.

“It’s been a while since I ate dinner with my own toy boy. Will you have some champagne?”

“No, thank you.”

“What then?”

A waiter had appeared out of nowhere and was hovering by Alex, ready to take his order.

“I’ll have an orange juice, please. Freshly squeezed. With ice.” The waiter bowed and went to fetch it. Alex waited for Mrs Rothman to speak. He was playing the game her way, and she was the one with the rules.

“The food here is absolutely wonderful,” she informed him. “Some of the best cooking in Italy—and, of course, Italian is the best food in the world. I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve already ordered for you. If there’s anything you don’t like, you can send it back.”

“That’s fine.”

Mrs Rothman lifted her glass. Alex could see the tiny bubbles rising to the surface in the honey-coloured liquid.

“I shall drink to your health,” she announced. “But first you have to say you’ve forgiven me. What happened to you at the Widow’s Palace was monstrous. I feel totally embarrassed.”

“You mean, trying to kill me,” Alex said.

“My dear Alex! You came to my party without an invitation. You crept round the house and sneaked into my study. You mentioned a name which should have got you killed instantly, and you’re really very lucky that Nile decided to drown you rather than break your neck. So although what happened was very unfortunate, you can hardly say it was unprovoked. Of course, it would all have been different if we’d known who you were.”

“I told Nile my name.”

“It obviously didn’t register with him, and he didn’t mention it to me until the morning afterwards. I was so shocked when I heard. I couldn’t believe it. Alex Rider, the son of John Rider, in my house—and he’d been locked in that place and left to…” She shuddered and briefly closed her eyes. “We had to wait for the water to go down before we could open the door. I was sick with worry. I thought we were going to be too late. And then… We looked inside and there was nobody there. You’d done a Houdini and disappeared. I assume you swam down the old well?”

Alex nodded.

“I’m amazed it was big enough. Anyway, I was furious with Nile. He wasn’t thinking. The very fact that you were called Rider should have been enough. And for him to run into you a second time at Consanto! What were you doing there, by the way?”

“I was looking for you.”

She paused, thinking. “You must have seen the brochure in my desk. And did you overhear me talking to Harold Liebermann?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “There’s one thing I absolutely have to know. How did you get into the complex?”

“I jumped off the terrace at Ravello.”

“With a parachute?”

“Of course.”

Mrs Rothman threw back her head and laughed loudly. At that moment, she looked more like a film star than anyone Alex had ever met. Not just beautiful, but supremely confident. “That’s wonderful,” she declared.

“That’s really quite wonderful.”

“It was a borrowed parachute,” Alex added. “It belonged to the brother of a friend of mine. I’ve lost all his equipment. And they’ll be wondering where I am.”

Mrs Rothman was sympathetic. “You’d better call them and let them know you survived. And tomorrow I’ll write your friend’s brother a cheque. If’s the least I can do after everything that’s happened.” The waiter arrived with Alex’s orange juice and the first course: two plates of ravioli. The little white parcels were wonderfully fresh, filled with wild mushrooms and served with a salad of rocket and Parmesan. Alex tasted one. He had to admit that the food was as delicious as Mrs Rothman had promised.

“What’s wrong with Nile?” he asked.

“He can be exceptionally stupid. Act first, ask questions later. He never stops to think.”

“I meant his skin.”

“Oh that! He suffers from vitiligo. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It’s a skin disorder. His skin is lacking pigment cells or something like that. Poor Nile! He was born black but he’ll be white by the time he dies. But let’s not talk about him. There are so many other things we need to discuss.”

“You knew my father.”

“I knew him very well, Alex. He was an extremely good friend of mine. And I have to say, you’re his spitting image. I can’t tell you how strange it is to be sitting here with you. Here I am, fifteen years older. But you…” She looked deep into his eyes. Alex saw that she was examining him but at the same time he felt as if she were sucking something out of him. “It’s almost as if he’s come back,” she said.

“I want to know about him.”

“What can I tell you that you don’t know already?”

“I don’t know anything, except what Yassen Gregorovich told me.” Alex paused. This was the moment he had been dreading. This was the reason he was here. “Was he an assassin?” he asked.

But Mrs Rothman didn’t answer. Her gaze had drifted away. “You met Yassen Gregorovich,” she said. “Was it he who led you to me?”

“I was there when he died.”

“I was sorry about Yassen. I heard he’d been killed.”

“I want to know about my father,” Alex insisted. “He worked for an organization called Scorpia. He was a killer. Is that right?”

“Your father was my friend.”

“You’re not answering my question,” he said, trying not to get angry. Mrs Rothman seemed friendly enough but he already knew that she was very rich and very ruthless. He suspected that he would regret it if he got on the wrong side of her.

Mrs Rothman herself was perfectly calm. “I don’t want to talk about him,” she said. “Not yet. Not until I’ve had a chance to talk about you.”

“What do you want to know about me?”

“I know a great deal about you already, Alex. You have an amazing reputation. That’s the reason why we’re sitting here tonight. I have an offer to make, something that may startle you. But I want you to understand, right from the start, that you’re completely free. You can walk away any time. I don’t want to hurt you. Quite the opposite. All I’m asking is that you consider what I have to say and then tell me what you think.”

“And then you’ll tell me about my dad?”

“Everything you want to know.”

“All right.”

Mrs Rothman had finished her champagne. She gestured with one hand and immediately a waiter appeared to refill her glass. “I love champagne,” she said. “Are you sure you won’t change your mind?”

“I don’t drink alcohol.”

“That’s probably wise.” Suddenly she was serious. “From what I understand, you’ve worked for MI6 four times,” she began. “There was that business with the Stormbreaker computers. Then the school they sent you to in the French Alps. Then you were in Cuba. And finally you crossed paths with Damian Cray. What I want to know is, why did you do it? What did you get out of it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Were you paid?”

Alex shook his head. “No.”

Mrs Rothman considered for a moment. “Then … are you a patriot?” Alex shrugged. “I like Britain,” he said. “And I suppose I’d fight for it if there was a war. But I wouldn’t call myself a patriot. No.”

“Then you need to answer my question. What are you doing risking your life and getting injured for MI6?

You’re not going to tell me it’s because you’re fond of Alan Blunt and Mrs Jones. I’ve met both of them and I can’t say they did anything for me! You’ve put your life on the line for them, Alex. You’ve been hurt—nearly killed. Why?”

Alex was confused. “What are you getting at?” he demanded. “Why are you asking me all this?”

“Because, as I said, I want to make you an offer.”

“What offer?”

Mrs Rothman ate some of her ravioli. She used only a fork, cutting each pasta envelope in half, then spearing it with the prongs. She ate very delicately, and Alex could see the pleasure in her eyes. It wasn’t just food for her.

It was a work of art.

“How would you like to work for me?” she asked.

“For Scorpia?”

“Yes.”

“Like my father?”

She nodded.

“You’re asking me to become a killer?”

“Perhaps.” She smiled. “You have a great many skills, Alex. For a fourteen-year-old you’re quite remarkable—

and, of course, being so young, you could be very useful to us in all sorts of different ways. I imagine that’s why Mr Blunt has been so keen to hang on to you. You can do things and go places that an adult can’t.”

“What is Scorpia?” Alex demanded. “What were you doing at Consanto? What is Consanto? What were they making in that complex? And why did you have to kill Dr Liebermann?” Mrs Rothman finished eating her first course and laid down her fork. Alex found himself hypnotized by the diamonds around her neck. They were reflecting the light from the candles, each jewel multiplying and magnifying the yellow flames.

“What a lot of questions!” she remarked. She shrugged. “Consanto Enterprises is a perfectly ordinary biomedical company. If you want to know about them, you can look them up in the phone book. They have offices all over Italy. As to what we were doing there, I can’t tell you. At the moment we’re involved in an operation called Invisible Sword, but there’s no reason for you to know anything about it. Not yet. I will, however, tell you why we had to kill Dr Liebermann. It’s really very simple. It was because he was unreliable.

We paid him a great deal to help us in a certain matter. He was worried about what he was doing and at the same time he wanted more money. A man like that can be a danger to us all. It was safer to get rid of him.

“But let’s go back to your first question. You want to know about Scorpia. That’s why you were in Venice and that’s why you’ve followed me here. Very well. I’ll tell you.” She sipped her champagne, then set the glass down. Alex suddenly realized that their table had been positioned so that they could talk without being overheard. Even so, Mrs Rothman moved a little closer before she spoke.

“As you guessed, Alex, Scorpia is a criminal organization,” she began. “The S stands for sabotage. The CORP

comes from corruption. The I is intelligence—in other words, spying. And the A is for assassination. These are our main areas of expertise, though there are others. We are successful and that has made us powerful. We can be found all over the world. The secret services can’t do anything about us. We’re too big and they’ve left it too late. Anyway, occasionally some of them make use of us. They pay us to do their dirty work for them. We’ve learnt to live side by side!”

“And you want me to join you?” Alex put down his knife and fork, although he hadn’t finished eating. “I’m not like you. I’m not like that at all.”

“How strange. Your father was.”

That hurt. She was talking about a man he had never had a chance to know. But her words cut straight to the heart of who and what he was.

“Alex, you have to grow up a little bit and stop seeing things in black and white. You work for MI6. Do you think of them as the good guys, the ones in white hats? I suppose that makes me the bad guy. Maybe I should be sitting here in a wheelchair with a bald head and a scar down my face, stroking a cat.” She laughed at the thought. “Unfortunately it’s not as simple as that any more. Not in the twenty-first century. Think about Alan Blunt for a minute. Quite apart from the number of people he’s had killed around the world, look at the way he’s used you, for heaven’s sake! Did he ask nicely before he pulled you out of school and turned you into a spy? I don’t think so! You’ve been exploited, Alex, and you know it.”

“I’m not a killer,” Alex protested. “I never could be.”

“It’s very strange that you should say that. I mean, I don’t notice Damian Cray at the next table. I wonder what happened to him? Or how about that nice Dr Grief? I understand he didn’t survive his last meeting with you.”

“They were accidents.”

“You seem to have had an awful lot of accidents in the last few months.” She paused. When she spoke again her voice was softer, like a teacher talking to a favourite pupil.

“I can see you’re still upset about Dr Liebermann,” she said. “Well, let me reassure you. He wasn’t a nice man and I don’t think anybody’s going to miss him. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if his wife didn’t send us a thank-you card.” She smiled as if at some private joke. “You could say his death was a shot in the arm for us all. And you have to remember, Alex. It was his choice. If he hadn’t lied and cheated his company and come to work for us, he would still be alive. It wasn’t all our fault.”

“Of course it was your fault. You killed him!”

“Well, yes. I suppose that’s true. But we’re a very large international business. And sometimes it does happen that people get in our way and they end up dead. I’m sorry, but that’s just how it is.” A waiter came and took away the plates. Alex finished his orange juice, hoping the ice would help clear his head.

“I still can’t join Scorpia,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I have to go back to school.”

“I agree.” Mrs Rothman leant towards him. “We have a school; I want to send you there. It’s just that our school will teach you things that you might find a little more useful than logarithms and English grammar.”

“What sort of things?”

“How to kill. You say you could never do it, but how can you be sure? If you go to Malagosto, you’ll find out.

Nile was a star student there; he’s a perfect killer—or he would be. Unfortunately he has one rather irritating weakness.”

“You mean his disease?”

“No. It’s rather more annoying than that.” She hesitated. “You could be better than him, Alex, in time. And although I know you don’t Like me mentioning it, your father was actually an instructor there. A brilliant one.

We were all devastated when he died.”

And there it was again. Everything began and ended with John Rider. Alex couldn’t avoid it any longer. He had to know.

“Tell me about my father,” he said. “That’s the reason I’m here. That’s the only reason I came. How did he end up working for you? And how did he die?” Alex forced himself to go on. “I don’t even know what his voice sounded like. I don’t know anything about him at all.”

“Are you sure you want to? It may hurt you.”

Alex was silent.

Their waiter arrived with the main course. Mrs Rothman had chosen roast lamb; the meat was slightly pink and garlicky. A second waiter refilled her glass.

“All right,” she said when they had gone. “Let’s finish eating and talk about other things. You can tell me about Brookland. I want to know what music you listen to and what football team you support. Do you have a girlfriend? I’m sure a boy as handsome as you gets plenty of offers. Now I’ve made you blush. Have your dinner. I promise it’s the best lamb you’ll ever eat.

“And after we’ve finished, I’ll take you upstairs and then I’ll tell you everything you want to know.” ALBERT BRIDGE

« ^ »

She led him to a room at the top of the hotel. There was no bed, just two chairs and a trestle table with a video player and a few files.

“I had this flown down from Venice as soon as I knew you were here,” Mrs Rothman explained. “I thought it was something you’d want to see.”

Alex nodded. After the bustle of the restaurant, he felt strange being here—like an actor on stage when the scenery has been removed. The room was large with a high ceiling, and its emptiness made everything echo. He walked over to the table, suddenly nervous. At dinner he had asked certain questions. Now he was going to be given the answers. Would he like what he heard?

Mrs Rothman came and stood beside him, her high heels rapping on the marble floor. She seemed completely relaxed. “Sit down,” she invited.

Alex slipped off his jacket and hung it over the back of a chair. He loosened his tie, then sat. Mrs Rothman stood next to the table, studying him. It was a moment before she spoke.

“Alex,” she began. “It’s not too late to change your mind.”

“I don’t want to,” he said.

“It’s just that, if I’m going to talk to you about your father, I may say things that will upset you and I don’t want to do that. Does the past really matter? Does it make any difference?”

“I think it does.”

“Very well…”

She opened a file and took out a black and white photograph. It showed a handsome man in military uniform, wearing a beret. He was looking straight at the camera with his shoulders back and his hands clasped behind him. He was cleanshaven, with watchful, intelligent eyes.

“This is your father, aged twenty-five. The photograph was taken five years before you were born. Do you really know nothing about him?”

“My uncle spoke to me about him a bit. I know he was in the army.”

“Well, maybe I can fill in some gaps for you. I’m sure you know that he was born in London and went to a secondary school in Westminster. From there he went to Oxford and got a first in politics and economics. But his heart had always been set on joining the army. And that’s what he did. He joined the Parachute Regiment at Aldershot. That in itself was quite an achievement. The Paras are one of the toughest regiments in the British Army, second only to the SAS. And you don’t just join them; you have to be invited.

“Your father spent three years with the Paras. He saw action in Northern Ireland and Gambia, and he was part of the attack on Goose Green in the Falkland Islands in May 1982. He carried a wounded soldier to safety even though he was under fire and, as a result of this, he received a medal from the Queen. He was also promoted to the rank of captain.”

Alex had once seen the medal: the Military Cross. Ian Rider had always kept it in the top drawer of his desk.

“He returned to England and got married,” Mrs Rothman went on. “He had met your mother at Oxford. She was studying medicine and eventually became a nurse. But I can’t tell you very much about her. We never met and he never spoke about her, not to me.

“Anyway, I’m afraid it was shortly after he got married that things started to go wrong … not, of course, that I’m blaming your mother. But just a few weeks after the wedding, your father was in a pub in London when he got involved in a fight. There were some people making remarks about the Falklands War. They were probably drunk. I don’t know. There was a skirmish and he struck a man and killed him. It was a single blow to the throat

… just like he had been trained to inflict. And that, I’m afraid, was that.” Mrs Rothman took out a newspaper clipping from the file and handed it to Alex. It had to be at least fifteen years old. He could tell from the faded print and the way the paper had yellowed. He read the headline: Jail for

‘brilliant soldier’ who lost his way

There was another photo of John Rider but now he was in civilian dress, surrounded by photographers, getting out of a car. The picture was a little blurred and it had been taken long ago, but looking at it Alex could almost feel the pain of the man, the sense that the world had turned against him. He read the article.

John Rider, described as a brilliant soldier by his commanding officer, was sentenced to four years for manslaughter following the death of Ed Savitt nine months ago in a Soho bar.

The jury heard that Rider, twenty-seven, had been drinking heavily when he became involved in a fight with Savitt, a taxi driver. Rider, who was decorated for valour in the Falklands War, killed Savitt with a single blow to the head. The jury heard that Rider was a highly trained expert in several martial arts.

Summing up, Judge Gillian Padgham said: “Captain Rider has thrown away a promising army career in a single moment of madness. I have taken his distinguished record into consideration. But he has taken a life and society demands that he pays the price.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs Rothman said softly. She had been watching Alex closely. “You didn’t know.”

“My uncle showed me the medal once,” Alex said. He had to stop for a moment. His voice was hoarse. “But he never showed me this.”

“It wasn’t your father’s fault. He was provoked.”

“What happened next?”

“He was sent to jail. There was quite an outcry about it. He had a lot of public sympathy. But the fact was, he had killed a man and he was found guilty of manslaughter. The judge had no choice.”

“And then?”

“They let him out after just a year. It was done very quietly. Your mother had stood by him; she never lost faith in him and he went back to live with her. Unfortunately his army career was over; he had received a dishonourable discharge. He was very much on his own.”

“Go on.” Alex’s voice was cold.

“He found it difficult to get a job. It wasn’t his fault; that’s just the way it is. But by this time, he had come to the attention of our personnel department.” Mrs Rothman paused. “Scorpia are always on the lookout for fresh talent,” she explained. “It seemed quite obvious to us that your father had been unfairly treated. We thought he would be perfect for us.”

“You approached him?”

“Yes. Your parents had very little money by this time. They were desperate. One of our people met your father, and two weeks later he came to us for evaluation.” She smiled. “We test every new recruit, Alex. If you decide to join us, and I still hope you will, we’ll take you to the same place we took your father.”

“Where is that?”

“I mentioned the name to you. Malagosto. It’s near Venice.” Mrs Rothman wouldn’t be any more precise than that. “We could see at once that your father was extremely tough and exceptionally talented,” she went on. “He passed every test we threw at him with flying colours. We knew, by the way, that he had a brother—Ian Rider—

working for MI6. I was always a little surprised that Ian didn’t try to help him when he got into trouble, but I suppose there was nothing he could do. Anyway, it made no difference, the two of them being brothers. Your father was indeed perfect for us. And after what had happened to him, I have to say that we were certainly perfect for him.”

Alex was getting tired. It was almost eleven. But he knew there was no way he was leaving this room until the whole story had been told.

“So he joined Scorpia,” he said.

“Yes. Your father worked for us as an assassin. He spent four months in the field.”

“How many men did he kill?”

“Five or six. He was more interested in working as an instructor in the training school where he had been evaluated. You might like to know, Alex, that Yassen Gregorovich was one of the assassins he helped train.

Your father actually saved Yassen’s life when they were on an assignment in the Amazon jungle.” Alex knew that Mrs Rothman was telling the truth. Yassen had said as much himself in the final seconds before he died.

“I got to know your father very well,” Mrs Rothman went on. “We had dinner together many times, once even in this hotel.” She threw her head back, letting her black hair trail down her neck, and for a moment her eyes were far away. “I was very attracted to him. He was an extremely good-looking man. He was also intelligent and he made me laugh. It was just unfortunate that he was married to your mother.”

“Did she know what he was doing? Did she know about you?”

“I very much hope not.” Suddenly Mrs Rothman was businesslike. “I have to tell you now how your father died. I wish you hadn’t asked me to do this. Are you sure you want me to carry on?”

“Yes.”

“All right.” She took a deep breath. “MI6 wanted him. He was one of our best operatives and he was training others to become as effective as him. And so they set about hunting him down. I won’t go into the details, but they set a trap for him on the island of Malta. As it happened, Yassen Gregorovich was there too. He escaped—

but your father was captured. We assumed that would be the last of him and that we would never see him again.

You may think that the death penalty has been abolished in Britain, but—as they say—accidents happen. But then there was a development…

“Scorpia had kidnapped the eighteen-year-old son of a senior British civil servant, a man with considerable influence in the government—or so we thought. Again, it’s a complicated story and it’s late, so I won’t give you all the details. But the general idea was that if the father didn’t do what we wanted, we would kill the son.”

“That’s what you do, is it?” Alex asked.

“Corruption and assassination, Alex. It’s part of what we do. Anyway, as we quickly discovered, the civil servant was unable to do what we wanted. Unfortunately this meant we would have to kill the son. You can’t make a threat and then have second thoughts about it, because if you do, nobody will ever fear you again. And so we were about to kill the boy in as dramatic a way as possible. But then, out of the blue, MI6 got in touch with us and offered us a deal.

“It was a straight swap. They’d give us back John Rider in return for the son. The executive board of Scorpia met and, although it was only carried by a narrow vote, we decided to go ahead with the deal. Normally we would never have allowed an operation to become entangled in this way, but your father had been extremely valuable to us and, as I said, I was personally very close to him. So it was agreed. We would make the exchange at six o’clock in the morning—this was March. And it would take place on Albert Bridge.”

“March? What year was this?”

“It was fourteen years ago, Alex: 13th March. You were two months old.” Mrs Rothman leant over the table and rested a hand on the television.

“Scorpia have always made a practice of recording everything that we do,” she explained. “There’s a good reason for this. We’re a criminal organization. It automatically follows that nobody trusts us—not even our clients. They assume we lie, cheat … whatever. We film what we do to prove that we are, in our own way, honest. We filmed the handover on Albert Bridge. If the civil servant’s son had been hurt in some way, we would have been able to prove that it wasn’t because of us.”

She pressed a button and the screen flickered into life, showing images that had been taken in another time, when Alex was just eight weeks old. The first shot showed Albert Bridge, stretching over a chilly River Thames with Battersea Park on one side and the lower reaches of Chelsea on the other. It was drizzling. Tiny specks of water hovered in the air.

“We had three cameras,” she said. “We had to conceal them carefully or MI6 would have removed them. But as you’ll see, they tell the whole tale.”

The first image. Three men in suits and overcoats. With them, a young man with his hands bound in front of him. This must be the son. He looked younger than eighteen. He was shivering.

“You are looking at the southern end of the bridge,” Mrs Rothman explained. “This was what had been agreed.

Our agents would bring the son up from the park. MI6 and your father would be on the other bank. The two of them would walk across the bridge and the exchange would be made. As simple as that.”

“There’s no traffic,” Alex said.

“At six o’clock in the morning? There would have been little anyway, but I suspect MI6 had probably closed the roads.”

The image changed. Alex felt something twist in his stomach. The camera was concealed somewhere on the edge of the bridge, high up. It was showing him his father, the first moving image of John Rider he had ever seen. He was wearing a thick padded jacket. He was looking around him, taking everything in. Alex wished the camera would zoom in closer. He wanted to see more of his father’s face.

“This is the classic method of exchange,” Mrs Rothman told him. “A bridge is a neutral area. The two participants—in this case the boy and your father—are on their own. Nothing should go wrong.” She reached out a finger and pressed the pause button.

“Alex,” she warned. “Your father died on Albert Bridge. I know you never knew him; you were just a baby when this happened. But I’m still not sure it’s something you should see.”

“Show me,” Alex ordered. His voice sounded far away.

Mrs Rothman nodded. She pressed play.

The image unfroze. The pictures were now being taken by a hidden camera, hand-held, out of focus. Alex caught sight of the span of the bridge, hundreds of light bulbs curving through the air. There was the river again and, captured briefly in the distance, the great chimneys of Battersea Power Station. There was a cut. Now the picture was steady, a wide angle perhaps taken from a boat.

The three men with the civil servant’s son were at one end. His father was at the other. Alex could make out three figures behind him; presumably they worked for MI6. The image quality was poor.

Dawn was only just breaking and there was little light. The water had no colour. A signal must have been given because the young man began to walk forward. At the same time, John Rider left the other group, also with his hands bound in front of him.

Alex wanted to reach out and touch the screen. He was watching his father walk towards the three Scorpia men.

But the figure in the picture was only a centimetre high. Alex knew it was his father. The face matched the photographs he had seen. But he was too far away. He couldn’t see if John Rider was smiling or angry or nervous. Could he have had any idea of what was about to happen?

John Rider and the civil servant’s son met in the middle of the bridge. They paused and seemed to speak to each other—but the only sound on the film was the soft patter of the rain and the occasional rush of an unseen speeding car. Then they began to walk again. The son was on the north side of the bridge, the side controlled by MI6. John Rider was moving south, a little faster now, heading for the waiting men.

“This is when it happened,” Mrs Rothman said softly.

Alex’s father was almost running. He must have sensed that something was wrong. He moved awkwardly, his hands still clasped in front of him. On the north side of the bridge, one of the MI6 people took out a radio transmitter and spoke briefly. A second later, there was a single shot. John Rider seemed to stumble and Alex realized that he had been hit in the back. He took two more steps, twisted and collapsed.

“Do you want me to turn it off, Alex?”

“No.”

“There’s a closer shot…”

The camera angle was lower. Alex could see his father lying on his side. The three Scorpia men had produced guns. They were running, aiming at the civil servant’s son. Alex wondered why. The teenager hadn’t had anything to do with what had just taken place. But then he understood. MI6 had shot John Rider. They hadn’t kept their side of the bargain. So the son had to die too.

But he had reacted incredibly quickly. He was already running, his head down. He seemed to know exactly what was happening. One of the Scorpia men fired and missed. Then there was a sudden explosion, a machine gun opening fire. Alex saw bullets ricocheting off the iron girders of the bridge. Light bulbs smashed. The tarmac surface seemed to leap up. The men hesitated and fell back. Meanwhile the teenager had reached the far end of the bridge. A car surged forward out of nowhere. Alex saw the door open and the son was pulled inside.

Mrs Rothman froze the image.

“It seems that MI6 wanted the son back but they weren’t prepared to pay with your father’s freedom,” she said.

“They double-crossed us and shot him in front of our eyes. You saw for yourself.” Alex said nothing. The room seemed to have got darker, shadows chasing in from the corners. He felt cold from head to toe.

“There is one last part of the film,” Mrs Rothman went on. “I hate seeing you like this, Alex. I hate having to show you. But you’ve seen this much; you might as well see the rest.” The last section of the film replayed the final moments of John Rider’s life. Once again he was on his feet, beginning to run while the civil servant’s son hurried the other way.

“Look at the MI6 agent who gave the order to fire,” Mrs Rothman said.

Alex gazed at the tiny figures on the bridge.

Mrs Rothman pointed. “We had the image computer enhanced.”

Sure enough, the camera leapt in closer, and now Alex could see that the MI6 accent with the transmitter was in fact a woman, wearing a black raincoat.

“We can get in closer.”

The camera jumped forward again.

“And closer.”

The same action, repeated a third and fourth time. The woman taking out her radio transmitter. But now her face filled the screen. Alex could see her fingers holding the device in front of her mouth. There was no sound, but he saw her lips move, giving the order, and he understood perfectly what she said.

Shoot him.

“There was a sniper in an office block on the north bank of the Thames,” Mrs Rothman told him. “It was really just a matter of timing. The woman you’re looking at masterminded the operation. It was one of her early successes in the field, one of the reasons why she was promoted. You know who she is.” Alex had known at once. She was fourteen years younger on the screen but she hadn’t changed all that much.

And there could be no mistaking the black hair—cut short—the pale, businesslike face, the black eyes that could have belonged to a crow.

Mrs Jones, the deputy head of Special Operations at MI6.

Mrs Jones, who had been there when Alex was first recruited and who had pretended that she was his friend.

When he had returned to London, hurt and exhausted after his ordeal with Damian Cray, she had come looking for him and tried to help him. She had said she was worried about him. And all the time she had been lying. She had sat next to him and smiled at him, knowing that she had taken his father from him just weeks after he was born.

Mrs Rothman turned off the screen.

There was a long silence.

“They told me he died in a plane crash,” Alex said in a voice that wasn’t his own.

“Of course. They didn’t want you to know.”

“So what happened to my mother?” He felt a sudden rush of hope. If they had been lying about his father, then maybe she wasn’t dead. Could it be at all possible? Was his mother somewhere in England, still alive?

“I’m so sorry, Alex. There was a plane crash. It happened a few months later. It was a private plane, and she was on her own, travelling to France.” Mrs Rothman rested a hand on his arm. “Nothing can make up for what’s been done to you, for all the lies you’ve been told. If you want to go back to England, back to school, I’ll understand. I’m sure you just want to forget the whole lot of us. But if it’s any consolation, I adored your father.

I still miss him. This was the last thing he sent me, just before he was taken prisoner in Malta.” She had opened a second file and taken out a postcard. It showed a strip of coastline, a setting sun. There were just a few lines, handwritten.

My clearest Julia,

A dreary time without you. Can’t wait to be at the Widow’s Palace with you again.

John R.

Alex recognized the handwriting although he had never seen it before, and in that instant any last, lingering doubt was swept away.

The writing was his father’s.

But it was identical to his own.

“It’s very late,” Mrs Rothman said. “You really ought to get to bed. We can talk again tomorrow.” Alex looked at the screen as if expecting to see Mrs Jones mocking him across fourteen years, destroying his life before it had even really begun. For a long while he didn’t speak. Then he stood up.

“I want to join Scorpia,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Go to Venice. Find Scorpia. Find your destiny, Yassen had told him. And that was what had happened. He had made up his mind. There could be no going back.

HOW TO KILL

« ^ »

The island was only a few miles from Venice but it had been forgotten for a hundred years. Its name was Malagosto and it was shaped roughly like a crescent moon, just half a mile long. There were six buildings on the island, surrounded by wild grasses and poplars, and they all looked condemned. The largest of them was a monastery, built around a courtyard, with a red-brick bell tower, slanting very slightly, next to it. There was a crumbling hospital and then a row of what looked like apartment blocks with shattered windows and gaping holes in the roofs. A few boats went past Malagosto but never docked there. It was forbidden. And the place had a bad reputation.

There had once been a small, thriving community on the island. But that had been long ago, in the Middle Ages. It had been ransacked in 1380, during the war with Genoa, and after that it had been used for plague victims. Sneeze in Venice, it was said, and you would end up in Malagosto. When the plague died out it became a quarantine centre, and then, in the eighteenth century, a sanctuary for the insane. Finally it had been abandoned and left to rot. But there were fishermen who claimed that, on a cold winter’s night, you could still hear the screams and demented laughter of the lunatics who had been the island’s last residents.

Malagosto was the perfect base for Scorpia’s Training and Assessment Centre. They had bought the island on a lease from the Italian government in the mid-eighties and they had been there ever since. If anyone asked what was happening there, they were told that it was now a business centre where lawyers, bankers and office managers could come for motivation and bonding sessions. This was, of course, a lie. Scorpia sent new recruits to the school that they ran on Malagosto. It was here that they learnt how to kill.

Alex Rider sat at the front of the motor launch, watching as the island drew nearer. It was the same motor launch that had led him to the Widow’s Palace and the silver scorpion on the bow glistened in the sun. Nile was sitting opposite him, totally relaxed, dressed in white trousers and a blazer.

“I spent three months in training here,” he shouted over the noise of the engine. “But that was a long time after your dad.”

Alex nodded but said nothing. He could see the bell tower looming up, rising crookedly over the tops of the trees. The wind chased through his hair and the spray danced in his eyes.

Julia Rothman had left Positano before them that morning, returning to Venice, where she was involved in something that required her presence. They had met briefly after breakfast and this time she had been more serious and businesslike. Alex would spend the next few days on Malagosto, she said—not for full training, but for an initial assessment that would include a medical examination, psychological testing and a general overview of his fitness and aptitude. It would also give Alex time to reflect on his decision.

Alex’s mind was dead. He had made his decision and, as far as he was concerned, nothing else mattered. Only one good thing had come out of last night. He hadn’t forgotten Tom Harris and his brother. They had heard nothing from him since he had broken into Consanto yesterday evening—and there was still the question of all Jerry’s equipment, left behind on the roof. But Mrs Rothman had promised to deal with that, as Alex had reminded her.

“Go ahead and call them,” she had said. “Apart from anything else, we don’t want them worrying about you and raising the alarm. As for the parachute and all the rest of it, I already told you. I’ll send your friend’s brother a cheque to cover the cost. Five thousand euros? That should do it.” She had smiled. “You see, Alex?

That’s what I mean. We want to look after you.”

After she had gone, Alex called Tom from his room. Tom was delighted to hear from him.

“We saw you land so we knew you hadn’t got splatted,” he said. “Then nothing happened for a while. And then the whole place blew up. Was that you?”

“Not exactly,” Alex said.

“Where are you?”

“I’m in Positano. I’m OK. But, Tom, listen to me…

“I know.” Tom’s voice was flat. “You’re not coming back to school.”

“Not for a bit.”

“Is this MI6 again?”

“Sort of. I’ll tell you one day.” That was a lie. Alex knew he would never see his friend again. “Just tell Jerry that he’s going to get a cheque soon to pay for all his stuff. And tell him thanks from me.”

“What about Brookland?”

“It would be easier if you said you never saw me. As far as they’re concerned, I disappeared in Venice and that was that.”

“Alex … you sound strange. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine, Tom. Goodbye.”

He hung up and felt a wave of sadness. It was as if Tom was the last link to the world he had known—and he had just severed the connection.

The boat pulled in. There was a jetty, carefully concealed in a natural fault line in the rock so that nobody could be watched arriving at or leaving the island. Nile sprang ashore. He had the ease and grace of a ballet dancer.

Alex had noticed the same thing once about Yassen Gregorovich.

“This way, Alex.”

Alex followed. The two of them walked up a twisting path between the trees. For a moment the buildings were hidden.

“Can I tell you something?” Nile said. He flashed Alex his friendliest smile. “I was delighted you decided to join us. It’s great to have you on the winning side.”

“Thank you.”

“But I hope you never change your mind, Alex. I hope you never try to trick us or anything like that. I’m sure you won’t. But after what happened at the Widow’s Palace, I’d hate to have to murder you again.”

“Yes. It wasn’t much fun the last time,” Alex agreed.

“It would really upset me. Mrs Rothman is expecting great things from you. I hope you don’t let her down.” They had passed through the copse and there was the monastery, its great walls peeling from age and neglect.

There was a heavy wooden door with a smaller door set in it, and next to it the one sign that the building might, after all, have been adapted to modern times: a keypad with a built-in video camera. Nile tapped in a code.

There was an electronic buzz and the smaller door opened.

“Welcome back to school!” Nile announced.

Alex hesitated. The new term at Brookland would start in a few days’ time. And here he was about to enter a school of a very different kind. But it was too late for second thoughts. He was following the path his father had mapped out for him.

Nile was waiting. Alex went in.

He found himself in a open courtyard with cloisters on three sides and the bell tower rising up above the fourth.

The ground was a neat rectangle of grass with two cypress trees side by side at one end. A tile roof slanted in, covering the cloisters, like an old-fashioned tennis court. Five men dressed in white robes stood around an instructor, an older man dressed in black. As Alex and Nile entered, they stepped forward as one, lashed out with their fists and shouted—the kiai that Alex knew from karate.

“Sometimes, with the silent kill, it is not possible to shout out,” the instructor said. He spoke with a Russian or Eastern European accent. “But remember the power of the silent kiai. Use it to drive your chi into the strike zone. Do not underestimate its power at the moment of the kill.”

“That’s Professor Yermalov,” Nile told Alex. “He taught me when I was here. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of him, Alex. I’ve seen him finish a fight with a single finger. Fast as a snake and about as friendly…”