Skeleton Key

PASSPORT CONTROL

Alex had a window seat near the front of the plane. Troy was next to him with Turner on her other side, next to the aisle. A family on holiday (on vacation, he reminded himself). Troy was reading a magazine. Turner had a film script. He was meant to be a producer and had spent the journey making notes in the margin, just in case anyone happened to be looking. Alex was playing with a Game Boy Advance. He wondered about that. Turner had given it to him just before they’d left Miami. It had been very casual, standing in the departure lounge.

“Here, Alex. Something to keep you busy on the plane.”

Alex was suspicious. He remembered that the last time he’d held a Game Boy, it had been filled with gadgets invented by Smithers at MI6. But as far as he could tell, this one was completely ordinary. At least, he’d got to level five of Rayman and so far it hadn’t exploded in his hands.

He looked out the window. They had been in the air for about an hour. This had been their second flight of the day. They had gone from Miami to Kingston, Jamaica, and had caught the second plane there. They had been given the sort of snack that people expect, but never enjoy, on a plane. A sandwich, a small square of cake and a plastic tub of water. Now the stewardesses returned, hastily collecting the trays.

“This is your captain speaking. Please fasten your seat-belts and return your seats to the upright position. We will shortly be coming in to land.”

Alex looked out of the window again. The sea was an extraordinary shade of turquoise. It didn’t look like water at all. Then the plane dipped and suddenly he saw the island. Both islands. Cuba itself was to the north. Cayo Esqueleto was below it. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and for a moment the land mass was perfectly clear, laid out as if on the surface of the world, two patches of emerald green with a coastline that seemed to shimmer an electric blue. The plane tilted.

The islands disappeared and the next time Alex saw them the plane was coming in low, rushing towards a runway that seemed almost unreachable, hemmed in by offices and hotels and roads and palm trees. There was a control tower, ugly and misshapen. A low-rise terminal, prefabricated concrete and glass. Two more planes, already on the ground, surrounded by service trucks. There was a jolt as the back wheels came into contact with the tarmac. They were down.

Alex unclipped his seat-belt.

“Wait a minute, Alex,” Troy said. “The seat-belt light is still on.”

She was behaving like a mother. But the sort of mother she had chosen to be was bossy and demanding. Alex had to admit that it suited her. Anybody watching them might believe they were a family, but would have to add that they were an unhappy one. Since the events in Miami, the two agents had practically ignored him. Alex found it hard to work them out. Turner would be dead if it hadn’t been for him, but neither of them would admit it-as if, in some way, he had dented their professional pride. And they still insisted that he had blown up Mayfair Lady, killing everyone onboard. Even Alex was finding it hard to avoid a sense of responsibility. It was true that he had set fire to the petrol. What other reason could there have been for the explosion that had followed?

He tried to put it out of his mind. The plane had come to a halt and everyone had stood up, fighting for the overhead lockers in the cramped compartment. As Alex reached up to take his own bag, the Game Boy almost fell out of his grip. Turner’s head snapped round. Alex saw a flash of alarm in his eyes. “Be careful with that!” he said.

So he was right. There was something hidden inside the Game Boy. It was typical of the CIA agents to keep him in the dark. But that hadn’t stopped them asking him to carry it in.

It was midday, the worst time to arrive. As they came out of the plane, Alex felt the heat reflecting off the tarmac. It was hard to breathe. The air was heavy and smelled of diesel. He was sweating before he had even reached the bottom of the steps and the arrivals lounge offered no relief. The air-conditioning had broken down and Alex soon found himself trapped in a confined space with two or three hundred people and no windows. The terminal was more like a large shed than a modern airport building. The walls were a drab olive green, decorated by posters of the island that looked twenty years out of date.

The passengers from Alex’s flight caught up with passengers still being processed from the flight before and the result was a large, shapeless crowd of people and hand luggage, shuffling slowly forward towards three uniformed immigration officials in glass cabins. There were no queues. As each passport was stamped and one more person was allowed in, the crowd simply pressed forward, oozing through the security controls.

An hour later, Alex was still there. He was dirty and crumpled and he had a raging thirst. He looked to one side where a couple of old, splintered doors led into men’s and women’s toilets. There might be a tap inside but would the water even be drinkable? A guard in a brown shirt and trousers stood watching, leaning against the wall beside a floor-to-ceiling mirror, a machine-gun cradled in his arms. Alex wanted to stretch his arms but he was too hemmed in. There was an old woman with grey hair and a sagging face standing right next to him. She smelled of cheap perfume. As he half-turned, he found himself almost embraced by her and recoiled, unable to hide his disgust. He glanced up and saw that there was a single security camera set in the ceiling. He remembered how worried Joe Byrne had been about security at Santiago Airport. But it seemed to him that just about anyone could have walked in and nobody would have noticed. The guard looked bored and half asleep. The camera was probably out of focus.

At last they reached passport control. The official behind the glass screen was young, with black greasy hair and glasses. Turner slid three passports and three completed immigration forms through. The official opened them.

“Don’t fidget, Alex,” Troy said. “We’ll be through in a minute.”

“Sure, Mom.”

The passport man looked up at them. His eyes showed no welcome at all. “Mr Gardiner? What is the purpose of your visit?” he demanded.

“Vacation,” Turner replied.

The man’s eyes flickered briefly over the passports and then at the people to whom they belonged. He slid them under a scanner, yawning at the same time. The guard that Alex had noticed was nowhere near. He was gazing out of the window, watching the planes.

“Where do you live?” the official asked.

“ Los Angeles.” Turner’s face was blank. “I’m in the movie business.”

“And your wife?”

“I don’t work,” Troy said.

The official had come to Alex’s passport. He opened it and checked the picture against the boy who stood in front of him. “Alex Gardiner,” he said.

“How you doing?” Alex smiled at him.

“This is your first trip to Cayo Esqueleto?”

“Yeah. But I hope it won’t be my last.”

The passport official stared at him, his eyes magnified by the glasses. He seemed completely uninterested. “What hotel are you staying at?” he asked.

“The Valencia,” Turner said quietly. He had already written the name on the three immigration forms.

Another pause. Then the official picked up a stamp and brought it crashing down three times-three gunshots in the confined space of the kiosk. He handed back the passports. “Enjoy your visit to Cayo Esqueleto.”

Alex and the two CIA agents passed through the immigration room and into the luggage hall where their cases were already waiting, circling endlessly on an old, creaking conveyor belt. And that was it, Alex thought. It couldn’t have been easier! All that fuss and he hadn’t even been needed in the first place.

He picked up his case.

At the same time, although he was unaware of it, his picture and passport details were already being transmitted to police headquarters in Havana, Cuba, along with those of Turner and Troy. The “family” had actually been photographed three times. Once by the overhead camera that Alex had seen in the arrivals lounge, but which was far more sophisticated than he would have believed. As old-fashioned as it looked, it could zoom in on the hole in a man’s button or a single word written in a diary and blow it up fifty times if needed. They had been photographed a second time by a camera behind the mirror next to the toilets. And finally, a profile close-up shot had been taken by a camera concealed in a brooch worn by an old lady who smelled of cheap perfume and who had not, in fact, arrived on a plane but who was always there, mingling with the new arrivals, moving in on anyone who had aroused the suspicions of the people she worked for. The immigration forms that Turner had filled in were also on their way, sealed in a plastic bag. His answers to the standard questions mattered less to the authorities than the forms themselves. The paper had been specially formulated to record fingerprints, and in less than an hour these would be digitally scanned and checked against a huge database in the same police building.

The invisible machine that operated in the airport at Santiago had been focused on Turner and Troy before they had even arrived. They were American. They had said they were on vacation and their luggage (which had, of course, been searched as it came off the plane) contained the sunscreen, beach towels and basic medicines that you would expect an ordinary American family to pack. The labels on their clothes showed that they had all been bought in Los Angeles. But a single receipt tucked into the top pocket of one of Turner’s shirts told another story. He had recently bought a book from a shop in Langley, Virginia. Langley is where the headquarters of the CIA are based. The little scrap of paper had been enough to set alarm bells ringing. This was the result.

The officer in charge of security at the airport was watching them carefully. He was sitting in a small, windowless office and their images were right in front of him, on a bank of television screens. He watched them as they continued out of baggage reclaim and into the arrivals hall. His finger hovered briefly beside a red button on his console. It still wasn’t too late. He could pull them back in before they had reached the taxi stand. There were plenty of cells buried deep in the basement. And when normal questioning failed, there were always drugs.

And yet…

The head of security was called Rodriguez and he was good at his job. He had interrogated so many American spies that he sometimes said he could recognize one at a hundred metres. He had spotted “Mr and Mrs Gardiner” before they had even crossed the runway and had sent out his deputy to take a closer look. This was the bored-looking guard that Alex had seen.

But this time Rodriguez wasn’t sure-and he couldn’t afford to make mistakes. After all, Cayo Esqueleto needed its tourists. It needed the money that tourism brought. He might have his suspicions about the two adults, but they were two adults travelling with a child. He had overheard the brief conversation between Alex and the passport official. There were microphones concealed throughout the immigration hall. How old was the boy? Fourteen? Fifteen? Just another American kid being given two weeks on the beach.

Rodriguez made up his mind. He lifted his hand away from the alarm button. It was better to avoid the bad publicity. He watched the family disappear into the crowd.

Even so, the authorities would keep an eye on them. Later that day, just to be on the safe side, he would compile a report which would be sent along with the photographs and fingerprints to the local police in Cayo Esqueleto. A copy would also be forwarded to the very important gentleman who lived in the Casa de Oro. And perhaps someone would be sent to the Hotel Valencia to keep a close eye on the new arrivals.

Rodriguez settled in his chair and lit a cigarette. Another plane had landed. He leaned forward and began to examine the arriving crowd.

The Valencia was one of those amazing hotels that Alex usually saw in dream holiday prizes on game shows. It was tucked away in a crescent-shaped cove with miniature villas spread out along the beach and a low-rise reception area almost lost in a miniature jungle of exotic shrubs and flowers. There was a doughnut-shaped swimming pool with a bar in the inner ring and stools poking up just above the level of the water. The whole place seemed to be asleep. This was certainly true of the few guests Alex could see, lying motionless on sun-loungers.

Alex and his “parents” were sharing a villa with two bedrooms and a veranda sheltered from the sun by a sloping straw roof. There was a clump of palm trees, white sand, then the impossible blue of the Caribbean. Alex sat down briefly on his bed. It was covered with a single white sheet and a fan turned slowly in the ceiling. A brilliant green and yellow bird perched briefly on his windowsill then flew off towards the sea as if inviting him.

“Can I go for a swim?” he asked. He wouldn’t normally have asked their permission but he figured it probably suited his role.

“Sure, honey!” Troy was unpacking. She had already warned Alex that he would have to stay in character whenever they were in the villa. The hotel might well be bugged. “But you be careful!”

Alex changed into his shorts and ran across the sand into the sea.

The water was perfect; warm and crystal clear. There was no shingle, only the softest carpet of sand. Tiny fish swam all around him, scattering instantly when he stretched out his hand. For the first time in his life, Alex was glad he had met Alan Blunt. This was certainly better than hanging out in west London. For once, things seemed to be going his way.

After he had swum, he climbed into a hammock stretched out between two trees and relaxed. It was about half past four and the afternoon felt as hot as it had been when they arrived. A waiter came up to him and he asked for a lemonade, charging it to his villa. His mum and dad could pay.

Mum and dad.

As he swung gently from side to side with the water trickling through his hair and drying on his chest, Alex wondered what his real parents would have been like if they hadn’t both died in a plane crash soon after he was born. And what would it have been like for him, growing up in an ordinary home, with a mother to run to when he was hurt and a father to play with, to borrow money from or sometimes to avoid? Would it have made him any different? He would have been an ordinary schoolboy, worrying about exams-not spies and salesmen and exploding boats. He might have been a softer person. He’d probably have had more friends. And he certainly wouldn’t have been lying in a hammock in the grounds of the Hotel Valencia.

He stayed there until his hair was dry and he knew it was time to get out of the sun. Turner and Troy hadn’t come out to find him and he suspected they were busy with their own affairs. He was still sure there were a lot of things they weren’t telling him. He remembered the Game Boy Advance. They had only mentioned it at the very last minute, just as they were about to get onto the plane. Could it be that they had wanted him to carry it onto the island, knowing that a fourteen year old would have less chance of being searched?

Alex rolled out of the hammock and dropped down onto the sand. A local man was walking past, selling strings of beads to the tourists out on the beach. He glanced at Alex and held up a necklace; a dozen different shells on a leather cord. Alex shook his head, then walked the short distance back to his villa. He still had the Game Boy in his hand luggage. Turner had forgotten to ask for it back. Alex slipped quietly into his room, took it out and examined it again. There seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary. It was bright blue with the single game, Rayman, lodged in the back. Alex weighed it in his hands. As far as he could tell it wasn’t any heavier or lighter than it should have been.

Then he remembered. The Game Boy he had once been given by MI6 had been activated by pressing the PLAY button three times. Perhaps this model would work the same way. Alex turned it over and pressed the button. Once, twice… a third time. Nothing happened. He gazed for a moment at the blank screen, annoyed with himself. He was wrong. It was just a game, given to him to keep him quiet on the plane. It was time to get dressed. He put the Game Boy on the bedside table and stood up.

The Game Boy squawked.

Alex snapped round, recognizing the sound without yet knowing what it was. The Game Boy was still squawking, a strange, metallic rattling sound. The screen had suddenly come to life. It was pulsating, green and white. What did it mean? He picked the machine up again. At once the noise died away and the lights on the screen faded out. He moved the Game Boy back towards the bedside table. It burst back into life.

Alex looked at the bedside table. There was nothing on it apart from an old-fashioned alarm clock, supplied by the hotel. He opened the drawer. There was a bible inside with the text printed in Spanish and English. Nothing else. So what was causing the Game Boy to act in this way? He swung it away. It became silent. He moved it back to the table. It started again.

The clock…

Alex looked more closely at the dial. The clock had a luminous face. He pressed the Game Boy right up against the glass and the squawking was suddenly louder than ever. Now Alex understood. The numbers on the clock face were faintly radioactive. That was what the Game Boy was picking up.

The Game Boy concealed a Geiger counter. Alex smiled grimly. Rayman was certainly the right game for this machine. Except that the rays it was looking for were radioactive ones.

What did it mean? Turner and Troy weren’t on the island for a simple surveillance operation. He had been right. Both Blunt in London and Byrne in Miami had been lying to him from the very start. Alex knew that he was sitting only a few kilometres south of Cuba. Something he had learned in history came to his mind. Cuba. The nineteen-sixties. The Cuban missile crisis. Nuclear weapons trained on America…

He still couldn’t be certain. He might be jumping to conclusions. But the fact was that the CIA had smuggled a Geiger counter into Skeleton Key and, as crazy as it sounded, there could only be one reason why they needed it.

They were looking for a nuclear bomb.