Skeleton Key

TWO WEEKS IN THE SUN

Alex wasn’t sure what was more surprising. To be still alive, or to find himself back in the London headquarters of the Special Operations division of MI6.

The fact that he was still breathing was, he knew, entirely down to Sabina. She had been sitting on the beach, watching in awe as he rode the Cribber towards her. She had seen the jet ski coming up behind him even before he did and had known instinctively that something was wrong. She had started running the moment Alex had leapt into the air and was already in the water by the time he crashed down next to the jet ski and then disappeared below the surface. Later on, she would say that there had been a collision… a terrible accident. From that distance it was impossible to see what had really taken place.

Sabina was a strong swimmer and luck was on her side. Although the water was murky and the waves still huge, she knew where Alex had gone down and she was there in less than a minute. She found him on her third dive, dragged his unconscious body to the surface and then pulled him ashore. She had learned mouth-to-mouth resuscitation at school and she used that knowledge now, pressing her lips against his, forcing the air into his lungs. Even then, she was sure that Alex was dead. He wasn’t breathing. His eyes were closed. Sabina pounded on his chest-once, twice-and was finally rewarded with a sudden spasm and a fit of coughing as Alex came to. By then, some of the other surfers had arrived. One of them had a mobile phone and called for an ambulance. There was no sign of the man on the jet ski.

Alex had been lucky too. As it turned out, he had ridden the Cribber just far enough to be near the end of its journey, when the wave had been at its weakest. A ton of water had fallen onto him, but five seconds earlier and it might have been ten tons. Also, he hadn’t been too far from the shore when Sabina found him. Any further out and she might never have found him at all.

Five days had passed since then.

It was Monday morning, the start of a new week. Alex was sitting in room 1605, on the sixteenth floor of the anonymous building in Liverpool Street. He had sworn that he would never return here. The man and the woman with him in the room were the last two people he wanted to see. And yet here he was. He had been drawn in as easily as a fish in a net.

As usual, Alan Blunt didn’t seem particularly pleased to see him, preferring to study the file on the desk in front of him rather than the boy himself. It was the fifth or sixth time Alex had met the man in overall command of this section of MI6 and he still knew almost nothing about him. Blunt was about fifty, a man in a suit in an office. He didn’t seem to smoke and Alex couldn’t imagine him drinking either. Was he married? Did he have children? Did he spend his weekends walking in the park or fishing or watching football matches? Somehow Alex doubted it. He wondered if Blunt had any existence at all outside these four walls. He was a man defined by his work. His whole life was devoted to secrets, and in the end his own life had become a secret itself. He looked up from the neatly printed report.

“ Crawley had no right to involve you in this business,” he said. Alex said nothing. For once, he wasn’t sure that he disagreed.

“The Wimbledon tennis championships. You nearly got yourself killed.” He glanced quizzically at Alex. “And this business in Cornwall. I don’t like my agents getting involved in dangerous sports.”

“I’m not one of your agents,” Alex said.

“There’s enough danger in the job without adding to it,” Blunt went on, ignoring him. “What happened to the man on the jet ski?” he asked.

“We’re interrogating him now,” Mrs Jones replied.

The deputy head of Special Operations was wearing a grey trouser suit, with a black leather handbag that matched her eyes. There was a silver brooch on her lapel, shaped like a miniature dagger. It seemed appropriate.

She had been the first to visit Alex as he’d recovered in hospital in Newquay and she at least had been concerned about what had happened. Of course, she had shown little or no emotion. If anyone had asked, she would have said that she didn’t want to lose someone who had been useful to her and who might be useful again. But Alex suspected this was only half the story. She was a woman and he was fourteen years old. If Mrs Jones had a son, he could well be the same age as Alex. That made a difference-one that she wasn’t quite able to ignore.

“We found a tattoo on the man’s arm,” she continued. “It seems that he was also a member of the Big Circle gang.” She turned to Alex. “The Big Circle is a relatively new triad,” she explained. “It’s also, unfortunately, one of the most violent.”

“I think I’d noticed,” Alex said.

“The man you knocked out and refrigerated at Wimbledon was a Sai-b. That means ‘little brother’. You have to understand how these people work. You smashed their operation and made them lose face. That’s the last thing they can afford. So they sent someone after you. He hasn’t said anything yet but we believe he’s a Dai-io, or a ‘big brother’. He’ll have a rank of 438… that’s one under the Dragon Head, the leader of the triad. And now he’s failed too. It’s a little unfortunate, Alex, that as well as half-drowning him, you also broke his nose. The triad will take that as another humiliation.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Alex said. It was true. He remembered how the thruster had finally been torn away from his ankle. It wasn’t his fault that it had hit the man in the face.

“That’s not how they’ll see it,” Mrs Jones went on. She sounded like a schoolteacher. “What we’re dealing with here is Guan-shi.”

Alex waited for her to explain.

“Guan-shi is what gives Big Circle its power,” she said. “It’s a system of mutual respect. It ties all the members together. It essentially means that if you hurt one of them, you hurt them all. And if one of them becomes your enemy, they all do.”

“You attack one of their people at Wimbledon,” Blunt rasped, “they send another down to Cornwall.”

“You take out their man in Cornwall, the order goes out to the other members of the triad to kill you,” Mrs Jones said.

“How many other members are there?” Alex asked. “About nineteen thousand at the last count,” Blunt replied.

There was a long silence, punctured only by the distant traffic sixteen floors below.

“Every minute you stay in this country, you’re in danger,” Mrs Jones said. “And there’s not a great deal we can do. Of course, we have some influence with the triads. If we let the right people know that you’re protected by us, it may be possible to call them off. But that’s going to take time and the fact of the matter is, they’re probably working on the next plan of attack right now.”

“You can’t go home,” Blunt said. “You can’t go back to school. You can’t go anywhere on your own. That woman who looks after you, the housekeeper, we’ve already arranged for her to be sent out of London. We can’t take any chances.”

“So what am I meant to do?” Alex asked. Mrs Jones glanced at Blunt, who nodded. Neither of them looked particularly concerned and he suddenly realized that things had worked out exactly as they wanted. Somehow, without knowing it, he had played right into their hands.

“By coincidence, Alex,” Mrs Jones began, “a few days ago we had a request for your services. It came from an American intelligence service. The Central Intelligence Agency-or CIA as you probably know them. They need a young person for an operation they happen to be mounting and they wondered if you might be available.”

Alex was surprised. MI6 had used him twice and both times they had stressed that nobody was to know. Now, it seemed, they had been boasting about their teenage spy. Worse than that, they had even been preparing to lend him out, like a library book.

As if reading his mind, Mrs Jones raised a hand. “We had told them, of course, that you had no wish to continue in this line of work,” she said. “That was, after all, what you had told us. A schoolboy, not a spy. That’s what you said. But it does seem now that everything has changed. I’m sorry, Alex, but for whatever reason, you’ve chosen to go back into the field and unfortunately you’re in danger. You have to disappear. This might be the best way.”

“You want me to go to America?” Alex asked. “Not exactly America,” Blunt cut in. “We want you to go to Cuba… or, at least, to an island just a few miles south of Cuba. It’s called Cayo Esqueleto. That’s Spanish. It means-”

“Skeleton Key,” Alex said. “That’s right. Of course, there are plenty of keys off the coast of America. You’ll have heard of Key Largo and Key West. This one was discovered by Sir Francis Drake. The story goes that when he landed there, the place was uninhabited. But he found a single skeleton, a conquistador in full armour, sitting on the beach. That was how the island got its name. Anyway, no matter what it’s called, it’s actually a very beautiful place. A tourist resort. Luxury hotels, diving, sailing… We’re not asking you to do anything dangerous, Alex. Quite the contrary. You can think of this as a paid holiday. Two weeks in the sun.”

“Go on,” Alex said. He couldn’t help sounding doubtful.

“The CIA is interested in Cayo Esqueleto because of a man who lives there. He’s a Russian. He has a huge house-some might even call it a palace-on a sort of isthmus, that is to say, a narrow strip of land at the very northern tip of the island. His name is General Alexei Sarov.”

Blunt pulled a photograph out of the file and turned it round so that Alex could see. It showed a fit-looking man in military uniform. The picture had been taken in Red Square, Moscow. Alex could see the onion-shaped towers of the Kremlin behind him.

“Sarov belongs to a different age,” Mrs Jones said, taking over. “He was a commander in the Russian army at a time when the Russians were our enemies and still part of the Soviet Union. This wasn’t very long ago, Alex. The collapse of communism. It was only in 1989 that the Berlin Wall came down.” She stopped. “I suppose none of this means very much to you.”

“Well, it wouldn’t,” Alex said. “I was only two years old.”

“Yes, of course. But you have to understand, Sarov was a hero of the old Russia. He was made a general when he was only thirty-eight-the same year that his country invaded Afghanistan. He fought there for ten years, rising to be second in command of the Red Army. He had a son who was killed there. Sarov didn’t even go the funeral. It would have meant abandoning his men and he wouldn’t do that-not even for one day.”

Alex looked at the photograph again. He could see the hardness in the man’s eyes. It was a face without a shred of warmth.

“The war in Afghanistan ended when the Soviets withdrew in 1989,” Mrs Jones continued. “At the same time, the whole country was falling apart. Communism came to an end and Sarov left. He made no secret of the fact that he didn’t like the new Russia with its jeans and Nike trainers and McDonald’s on every street corner. He left the army, although he still calls himself General, and went to live-”

“In Skeleton Key.” Alex finished the sentence.

“Yes. He’s been there for ten years now-and this is the point, Alex. In two weeks’ time, the Russian president is planning to meet him there. There’s nothing surprising in that. The two men are old friends. They even grew up in the same part of Moscow. But the CIA are worried. They want to know what Sarov is up to. Why are the two men meeting? Old Russia and new Russia. What’s going on?”

“The CIA want to spy on Sarov.”

“Yes. It’s a simple surveillance operation. They want to send in an undercover team to take a look around before the president arrives.”

“Fine.” Alex shrugged. “But why do they need me?”

“Because Skeleton Key is a communist island,” Blunt explained. “It belongs to Cuba, one of the last places in the western world where communism still exists. Getting in and out of the place is extremely difficult. There’s an airport at Santiago. But every plane is watched. Every passenger is checked. They’re always on the lookout for American spies and anyone who is even slightly suspect is stopped and turned away.”

“And that’s why the CIA have come to us,” Mrs Jones continued. “A single man might be suspicious. A man and a woman might be a team. But a man and a woman travelling with a child…? That has to be a family!”

“That’s all they want from you, Alex,” Blunt said. “You go in with them. You stay at their hotel. You swim, snorkel and enjoy the sun. They do all the work. You’re only there as part of their cover.”

“Couldn’t they use an American boy?” Alex asked.

Blunt coughed, obviously embarrassed. “The Americans would never use one of their own young people in an exercise like this,” he said. They have a different set of rules to us.”

“You mean they’d be worried about getting him killed.”

“We wouldn’t have asked you, Alex,” Mrs Jones broke the awkward silence. “But you have to leave London. In fact, you have to leave England. We’re not trying to get you killed. We’re trying to protect you and this is the best way. Mr Blunt is right. Cayo Esqueleto is a beautiful island and you’re really very lucky to be going there. You can look on the whole thing as a free holiday.”

Alex thought it over. He looked from Alan Blunt to Mrs Jones, but of course they were giving nothing away. How many agents had sat in this room with the two of them, listening to their honeyed words? It’s a simple job. Nothing to it. You’ll be back in two weeks…

His own uncle had been one of them, sent to check on security in a computer factory on the south coast. But Ian Rider had never made it back.

Alex wanted none of it. There were still a few weeks of the summer holidays left and he wanted to see Sabina again. The two of them had talked about northern France and the Loire Valley, youth hostels and hiking. He had friends in London. Jack Starbright, his housekeeper and closest friend, had offered to take him with her when she visited her parents in Chicago. Seven weeks of normality. Was it too much to ask?

And yet, he remembered what had happened on the Cribber when the man on the jet ski had caught up with him. Alex had seen his eyes for just a few seconds but there had been no mistaking their cruelty and fanaticism. This was a man who had been prepared to chase him across the top of a twenty-foot wave in order to mow him down from behind-and he had come perilously close to succeeding. Alex knew, with a sick certainty, that the triad would try again. He had offended them… not once now, but twice. Blunt was right about that. Any hope of an ordinary summer had gone out the window.

“If I help your friends in the CIA, you can get the triad to leave me alone?” he asked.

Mrs Jones nodded. “We have contacts in the Chinese underworld. But it will take time, Alex. Whatever happens, you’re going to have to go into hiding-at least for the next couple of weeks.”

So why not do it in the sun?

Alex nodded wearily. “All right,” he said. “It seems I don’t really have a lot of choice. When do you want me to leave?”

Blunt took an envelope out of the file. “I have your air ticket here,” he said. “There’s a flight this afternoon.”

Of course, they had known he would accept.

“We will want to keep in touch with you while you’re away,” Mrs Jones muttered.

“I’ll send you a postcard,” Alex said.

“No, Alex, that’s not quite what I had in mind. Why don’t you go and have a word with Smithers?”

Smithers had an office on the eleventh floor of the building and at first Alex had to admit he was disappointed.

It was Smithers who had designed the various gadgets Alex had used on his previous missions and Alex had expected to find him somewhere in the basement, surrounded by cars and motorbikes, hi-tech weapons and men and women in white coats. But this room was boring: large, square and anonymous. It could have belonged to the chief executive of almost anything; an insurance company, perhaps, or a bank. There was a steel and glass desk with a telephone, a computer, “in” and “out” trays and an anglepoise lamp. A leather sofa stood against one wall, and on the other side of the room was a silver filing cabinet with six drawers. A picture hung on the wall behind the desk; a view of the sea. But disappointingly, there were no gadgets anywhere. Not so much as an electric pencil sharpener.

Smithers himself was behind the desk, tapping at the computer with fingers almost too big for the keys. He was one of the fattest people Alex had ever met. Today he was wearing a black three-piece suit with what looked like an old school tie perched limply on the great bulge of his stomach. Seeing Alex, he stopped typing and swivelled round in a leather chair that must have been reinforced to take his weight.

“My dear boy!” he exclaimed. “How delightful to see you. Come in, come in! How have you been keeping? I hear you had a bit of trouble, that business in France. You really must look after yourself, Alex. I’d be mortified if anything happened to you. Door!”

Alex was surprised when the door swung shut behind him.

“Voice activated,” Smithers explained. “Do, please, sit down.”

Alex sat on a second leather chair on the other side of the desk. As he did so, there was a low hum and the anglepoise lamp swivelled round and bent towards him like some sort of metallic bird taking a closer look. At the same time, the computer screen flickered and a human skeleton appeared. Alex moved a hand. The skeleton’s hand moved. With a shudder, he realized he was looking at-or rather, through-himself.

“You’re looking well,” Smithers said. “Good bone structure!”

“What…?” Alex began.

“It’s just something I’ve been working on. A simple X-ray device. Useful if anyone is wearing a gun.” Smithers pressed a button and the screen went blank. “Now, Mr Blunt tells me that you’re off to join our friends in the CIA. They’re fine operators. Very, very good-except, of course, you can never trust them and they have no sense of humour. Cayo Esqueleto, I understand…?”

He leant forward and pressed another button on the desk. Alex glanced at the painting on the wall. The waves had begun to move! At the same time, the image shifted, pulling back, and he realized that he was looking at a plasma television screen with a picture beamed by satellite from somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean. Alex found himself looking down on an irregularly shaped island surrounded by turquoise water. The image was time coded and he realized that it was being broadcast into the room live.

“Tropical climate,” Smithers muttered. “There’ll be quite a lot of rainfall at this time of year. I’ve been developing a poncho that doubles as a parachute, but I don’t think you’ll need that. And I’ve got a marvellous mosquito coil. As a matter of fact, mosquitoes are about the only thing it won’t knock out. But you won’t need that either! In fact, I’m told the only thing you actually do need is something to help you keep in touch.”

“A secret transmitter,” Alex said.

“Why does it have to be secret?” Smithers pulled open a drawer and took out an object which he placed in front of Alex.

It was a mobile phone.

“I’ve already got one, thanks,” Alex muttered.

“Not one like this,” Smithers retorted. “It gives you a direct link with this office, even when you’re in America. It works underwater-and in space. The pads are fingerprint sensitive so only you can use it. This is the model five. We also have a model seven. You hold it upside down when you dial or it blows up in your hand-”

“Why can’t I have that model?” Alex asked.

“Mr. Blunt has forbidden it.” Smithers leant forward conspiratorially. “But I have put in a little extra for you. You see the aerial just here? Dial 999 and it’ll shoot out like a needle. Drugged, of course. It’ll knock out anyone in a twenty metre range.”

“Right.” Alex picked up the phone. “Have you got anything else?”

“I was told you weren’t to have any weapons…” Smithers sighed, then leant forward and spoke into a potted plant. “Could you bring them up, please, Miss Pickering?”

Alex was beginning to have serious doubts about this office-and these were confirmed a moment later when the leather sofa suddenly split in half, the two ends moving away from each other. At the same time, part of the floor slid aside to allow another piece of sofa to shoot silently into place, turning the two-seater into a three-seater. A young woman had been carried up with the new piece. She was sitting with her legs crossed and her hands on her knee. She stood up and walked over to Smithers.

“These are the items you requested,” she said, handing over a package. She produced a sheet of paper and placed it in front of him. “And this report just came in from Cairo.”

“Thank you, Miss Pickering.” Smithers waited until the woman had left-using the door this time-then glanced quickly at the report. “Not good news,” he muttered. “Not good news at all. Oh well…” He slid the report into the “out” tray. There was a flash of electricity as the paper self-destructed. A second later, there were only ashes left. “I’m bending the rules doing this,” he went on. “But there were a couple of things I’d been developing for you and I don’t see why you shouldn’t take them with you. Better safe than sorry.”

He turned the package upside down and a bright pink packet of bubblegum slid out. “The fun of working with you, Alex,” Smithers said, “is adapting the things you’d expect to find in the pockets of a boy your age. And I’m extremely pleased with this one.”

“Bubblegum?”

“It blows rather special bubbles. Chew it for thirty seconds and the chemicals in your saliva react with the compound, making it expand. And as it expands, it’ll shatter just about anything. Put it in a gun, for example, and it’ll crack it open. Or the lock on a door.”

Alex turned the packet over. Written in yellow letters on the side was the word BUBBLE 0-7. “What flavour did you make it?” he asked.

“Strawberry. Now, this other device is even more dangerous and I’m sure you won’t need it. I call it the Striker and I’d be very happy to have it back.”

Smithers shook the package and a keyring slid out to join the bubblegum on the desk. It had a plastic figurine attached, a footballer wearing white shorts and a red shirt. Alex leant forward and turned it over. He found himself looking at a three centimetre high model of Michael Owen.

“Thanks, Mr Smithers,” he said. “But personally I’ve never supported Liverpool.”

“This is the prototype. We can always do another footballer next time. The important thing is the head. Remember this, Alex. Twist it round twice clockwise and once anti-clockwise and you’ll arm the device.”

“It’ll explode?”

“It’s a stun grenade. Flash and a bang. A ten second fuse. Not powerful enough to kill-but in a confined space it will incapacitate the opposition for a couple of minutes, which might give you a chance to get away.”

Alex pocketed the Michael Owen figure and the bubblegum along with the mobile telephone. He stood up, feeling more confident. This might be a simple surveillance operation, a paid holiday as Blunt had put it, but he still didn’t want to go empty-handed.

“Good luck, Alex,” Smithers said. “I hope you get on all right with the CIA. They’re not really like us, you know. And heaven knows what they’ll make of you.”

“I’ll see you, Mr Smithers.”

“I’ve got a private lift if you’re going downstairs.” As Smithers spoke, the six drawers of the filing cabinet slid open, three going one way, three going the other, to reveal a brightly lit cubicle behind.

Alex shook his head. “Thanks, Mr Smithers,” he said. “I’ll take the stairs.”

“Whatever you say, old boy. Just look after yourself. And whatever you do, don’t swallow the gum!”