Snakehead

He coughed, dabbed his lips and began again.

“I was born in Hong Kong. Although you wouldn’t believe it to look at me now, I began with nothing. Even my cot was a cardboard box filled with straw. My mother was Chinese. She lived in a single room in a slum and worked as a chambermaid at the Hilton Hotel. Sometimes she would smuggle home soaps and shampoos for me. It was the only luxury I ever knew.

“My father was a guest there, a businessman from Tunbridge Wells, in Kent. She never told me his name.

M a d e i n B r i t a i n

271

The two of them began an affair, and I have to say that she fell hopelessly in love with him. He used to talk to her about the place where he lived, this country called Great Britain. He promised her that as soon as he had enough money, he would take her with him and he would turn her into a British lady with a thatched cottage with a garden and a bulldog. For my mother, who had nothing, it was like an impossible dream.

“As a young person, I’m sure you have no attachment to your country, but the truth is that it’s a remarkable place. At one time, this tiny island had an empire that stretched all around the world. You have to remember that when I was born, you even owned Hong Kong.

Think how many inventors and explorers, artists and writers, soldiers and statesmen have come out of Britain.

William Shakespeare! Charles Dickens! The computer was a British invention—as was the Internet. It’s sad that much of your country’s greatness has been squandered by politicians in recent years. But I still have faith. One day, Britain will once again lead the world.

“Anyway, my mother’s affair came to an unhappy end.

I suppose it was inevitable. As soon as he found out that she was pregnant, the businessman abandoned her and she never saw him again. Nor did he ever pay a penny toward my upkeep. He simply disappeared.

“But my mother never lost sight of her dream. If anything, it became more intense. She determined that I should grow up with full recognition of my English blood.

272

S N A K E H E A D

She named me Winston, of course, after the great wartime leader Winston Churchill. The first clothes I wore were made in Britain. As the years went on, she became more and more fanatical. For example, one day she decided that I would be educated in a British public school—even though it was obviously quite impossible when she was earning only a few pounds an hour changing beds and cleaning toilets. But nonetheless, when I was six years old, she left her job and began to look for other ways to make money.

“It took her just two years—a tribute, I think, to her single-mindedness and courage. And that was how I found myself, first in a prep school in Tunbridge itself and later at Harrow School, dressed in their smart blue jacket with the marvelous straw hat. All the boys wore them. On Sundays we dressed in cutoff tailcoats . . . bum freezers we used to call them. It was actually Winston Churchill’s old school, and I found it hard to believe I was there. I mean, I could actually imagine I might be sitting at his desk or reading a book that had once belonged to him. It was thrilling . . . and my mother was so proud of me! I did sometimes wonder how she could possibly afford it all, but it wasn’t until my second year that I found out, and I must say, it came as a bit of a surprise.

“This is what happened . . .”

He poured himself some more wine, swirled it in the glass, and drank.

“You might imagine that I was bullied at Harrow,” he M a d e i n B r i t a i n

273

said. “After all, this was back in the fifties, and there weren’t many half-Chinese boys there, particularly with a single parent. But by and large everyone was very kind to me. However, there was one boy . . . a chap by the name of Crispin Odey. The strange thing is that I rather liked him. He was a pleasant enough chap, very good with money. Anyway, I don’t quite know what I did to upset him, but he made a whole lot of rather hurtful remarks, and for a couple of terms, thanks to him, life was very uncomfortable for me. But then my mother heard about it and I’m afraid she dealt with him very severely. A hit-and-run accident, and they never found the driver. But I knew who it was, and I was completely horrified. It was a side of my mother that I had never seen. And that was when I found out the truth.

“It turned out that when I was just six years old, she had managed to track down one of the main snakeheads operating in Hong Kong and had volunteered her services as a paid assassin. I know it sounds remarkable, but I suppose that being abandoned so cruelly had changed her. She no longer had any respect for life. And the fact was, she was extremely good at her new job. She was very small and Chinese, so nobody ever suspected her and she was utterly without mercy because mercy, of course, wouldn’t pay the school fees. And that was how she was supporting me at Harrow! Every time a bill arrived at the start of a new term, she would have to go out and kill someone. It’s strange to think that fifteen men died to 274

S N A K E H E A D

make my education possible—sixteen, in fact, when I decided to take up horse riding.

“After she’d finished with Crispin Odey, I never had any more trouble. Even the teachers went out of their way to be pleasant to me. I was actually made head boy in my last term, although between you and me, I was the second choice.”

“What happened to the first choice?”

“He fell off a roof. From Harrow, I went to London University, where I studied politics, and after that I joined the army. I was sent to Sandhurst, and I will never forget the day of my graduation parade, when I received a medal from the queen. I’m afraid it was all too much for my mother. A few weeks later she died quite suddenly. A massive heart attack, they said. I was shaken to the core because I loved her very much—and here’s something you might like to know. I bribed one of the gardeners and had her remains scattered in the grounds of Buckingham Palace . . . in the roses. I knew it was something she would have appreciated.”

Major Yu had finished eating and the maid suddenly appeared to clear the dishes. Alex wondered how she had known when to arrive. Dessert was a rhubarb pie served with cream. At the same time, the maid brought in a cheese plate: cheddar, Stilton, and Red Leicester. All English, of course.

“There is not much more to tell,” Yu continued. “I served with distinction in the Falklands and the first Gulf M a d e i n B r i t a i n

275

War and was given two letters of commendation. I was as happy in the army as I had been at Harrow . . . happier, in fact, as I had discovered that—taking after my mother, perhaps—I rather enjoyed killing people, particularly for-eigners. I rose to the rank of major, and it was then that the great tragedy of my life occurred. I was diagnosed with a quite serious illness. It was a rare form of osteo-porosis known as brittle bone disease. The name tells you everything you need to know. What it meant was that my bones had become very fragile. In recent years, the condition has gotten considerably worse. As you can see, I need a stick to walk. I am forced to wear gloves to protect my hands. It is as if my entire skeleton is made of glass, and the slightest blow could cause a terrible injury.”

“You must be all broken up about that,” Alex remarked.

“You remind me of that boy I mentioned—Crispin Odey,” Yu replied. “He learned how unwise it was to annoy me and so, Alex, will you.”

He poured himself another glass of wine.

“I was forced to leave active service, but that was not the end of my career. I still had an excellent mind, and I was recommended for a job in intelligence . . . in MI6.

That’s quite a coincidence, don’t you think? In other circumstances, you and I could have been working together.

Unfortunately, though, it didn’t quite work out that way.

“You see, at first I thought that it was all going to be very exciting. I imagined myself as quite the young James 276

S N A K E H E A D

Bond. But I was never invited to be part of Special Operations like you, Alex. I never met anyone senior like Alan Blunt or Mrs. Jones. I was sent to the communications center at Cheltenham. It was a desk job! Can you imagine someone like me slaving away from nine to five in a boring little office, surrounded by secretaries and coffee machines? It was miserable. And all the time I knew that my disease was getting worse and that it was only a matter of time before I would be thrown out and put on the scrap heap.

“And so I decided to look out for myself. Despite everything, a lot of the information that passed my way at Cheltenham was highly sensitive and confidential. And of course there was a market for this sort of material. So, very carefully, I began to steal secrets from British intelligence—

and guess where I took them! I went to the very snakehead that had employed my mother when she was in Hong Kong. They were delighted to have me, and quite soon I was being paid quite handsomely for my services.

“In the end I had to resign from MI6. The snakehead was paying me a fortune and they were offering me all sorts of career opportunities very quickly. I rose up the ladder until—by the early eighties—I had become number two in what was now the most powerful criminal organization in Southeast Asia.”

“And I suppose number one fell off a roof,” Alex said.

“As a matter of fact, he drowned . . . but you seem to have got the general idea.” Yu smiled. “Anyway, it was M a d e i n B r i t a i n

277

about this time that I heard rumors of a new organization that was being formed by people who were, in their own way, quite similar to me. I decided to diversify and, using my snakehead connections, I managed to contact them and eventually we met up in Paris to finalize details. That, of course, was the birth of Scorpia and I was one of the founding members.”

“So what are you doing now? Why do you need Royal Blue?”

Major Yu had been helping himself to cheese. He stopped with a piece of cheddar on the end of his knife.

“You saw the bomb?” he asked.

Alex said nothing. There was no point in denying it.

“You really are a very capable young man, Alex. I see now that we were quite unwise to underestimate you last time.” Major Yu dropped the cheese onto his plate and reached for a cookie. “I’m going to tell you what the bomb is for because it will amuse me,” he went on. “But then I’m afraid you must be on your way.” He looked at his watch. “The plane will be here any minute.”

“Where am I going, Major Yu?”

“We’ll get to that in a minute. Cheese?”

“Do you have any Brie?”

“Personally, I find French cheese disgusting.” He ate silently for a moment. “There is an island in the Timor Sea, not very far from here, in fact. Its name is Reef Island. You may have heard of it.”

Alex remembered the newscast he had heard on board 278

S N A K E H E A D

the Liberian Star. A conference was taking place there.

The alternative to the G8 summit. A meeting of famous people who were trying to make the world a better place.

“Scorpia has been given the job of destroying the island and the eight so-called celebrities who will be on it,” Yu went on. He was sounding pleased with himself. Alex imagined that must be one of the problems of being a criminal. You could never find anyone to tell about your crimes. “But what makes the task particularly interesting is that we have to make it look like an accident.”

“So you’re going to blow them up,” Alex said.

“No, no, no, Alex. That wouldn’t work at all. We have to be much more subtle. Let me explain.” He swallowed a piece of cheese and dabbed his lips with his napkin. “As it happens, Reef Island is located in what is known as a subduction zone. Perhaps you’ve studied that in geography. What it means is that underneath the sea, a few hundred miles north of the island, there are two tectonic plates pushing against each other with a fault line between them.

“Among its many business interests, the Chada Trading Agency is involved in deep-sea oil exploration and leases an oil platform in the Timor Sea. In the last couple of months, I have arranged for a shaft to be driven into the seabed, precisely over the fault line. This was quite a feat of engineering, Alex. We used the same reverse circulation system that was developed to build the ventilation shafts for the Hong Kong subway. I’m delighted to say M a d e i n B r i t a i n

279

that it was designed by Seacore, a British company . . .

once again, one step ahead of the world.

“Normally, the pipe running down from the rig would be no more than five inches in diameter by the time it hit the oil field. However, our shaft will have ample room for Royal Blue. We will place the bomb half a mile below the surface of the seabed. I will then travel to the oil platform and personally detonate it . . .”

But what was the point? Alex went through what he had just been told, and suddenly he understood. He knew exactly what the result would be. Not just an explosion.

Something much, much worse. He couldn’t keep the horror out of his voice. “You’re going to cause a wave,” he said. “A huge wave . . .”

“Go on, Alex.” Yu couldn’t keep the glee out of his voice.

“A tsunami . . .” Alex whispered the word.

He could see it clearly. That was what had happened on December 26, 2004. An earthquake underneath the sea. A tsunami that had hit first Sumatra, then the coast of Somalia. More than two hundred thousand people had died.

“Exactly. The bomb will have the effect of lubricating the fault line.” Yu rested one hand on top of the other.

“This will force one of the plates to rise.” He lifted the upper hand a few inches. “The result will be a deep water wave, just one yard high. You wouldn’t think it could do much harm. But as it approaches the coastline, where the 280

S N A K E H E A D

seabed begins to rise, the front will slow down and the rest of the water will pile up behind. By the time it hits Reef Island, a one-hundred-foot wall of water will have formed, traveling at about five hundred miles an hour . . . the speed of a jumbo jet. One cubic yard of water weighs about one ton, Alex. Imagine hundreds of cubic yards rushing in. There will be no warning. The island will be destroyed utterly. It is low-lying. There will be nowhere to hide. Every building will be smashed. Every single person on the island will be killed.”

“But the tsunami won’t stop there!” Alex exclaimed.

“What will happen to it after that?”

“That’s a very intelligent observation. No. The tsunami will unleash the same amount of energy as several thousand nuclear weapons. It will continue on its way until it hits the coast of Australia. We’ll be all right up here in Darwin, but I’m afraid a very large section of the western coast will disappear. Everything from Derby to Carnavon.

Fortunately, there’s nowhere very important or even attractive in that part of the country. Broome, Port Headland . . . few people have even heard of these places. And they’re not exactly overpopulated. I wouldn’t expect more than about ten or twenty thousand people to die. A small price to pay for a job well done.”

“But I don’t understand . . .” Alex could feel his chest tightening. “You’re going to do all this just to kill eight people?”

“Perhaps you didn’t hear what I said. Their deaths M a d e i n B r i t a i n

281

have to look accidental. Our job is to make the world forget that this stupid conference ever took place. And so we will provide a natural disaster on a massive scale. Who will care about the extinction of eight people when the number of deaths rises into the thousands? Who will remember a little island when an entire continent has been hit?”

“But they’ll know it was you! They’ll know it was all started with a bomb.”

“That would be true if we used a nuclear bomb. There is an international network of seismographs. The Posei-don satellite in outer space. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. And so on. But the blast made by Royal Blue won’t register. It will be lost as the tectonic plates shift and the devastation begins.”

Alex tried to make sense of what he was hearing. He had been sent to uncover a smuggling operation, and somehow instead he had stumbled into this terrible nightmare . . . another attempt by Scorpia to change the world.

He had to stop himself from glancing at his watch. Several hours had passed since he had set the hands to eleven o’clock. Surely MI6 were on their way. Why weren’t they already here?

“I expect you’re wondering whether such a relatively small bomb will really be able to cause such havoc,” Major Yu continued. “Well, there is one other thing you need to know. As luck would have it, in three days’ time, a rather special event is taking place. I’m afraid I don’t know the astronomical term for it, but what we’re talking about is 282

S N A K E H E A D

the alignment of three celestial bodies—the sun, the moon, and the earth. And the moon is going to be particularly close. At midnight, in fact, it will be as close as it ever is.

“As a result, there will be a particularly strong gravitational pull on the earth’s surface. I’m sorry, Alex. I’m beginning to sound like a schoolteacher. Let me put it more simply. The sun will be pulling one way. The moon will be pulling the other. And for just one hour, from midnight, the tectonic plate will be at its most volatile. A single explosion will be more than enough to begin the process I have described. Royal Blue is the perfect weapon for our needs. Undetectable. Invisible. And above all, British.”

Yu fell silent, and in that moment Alex heard the drone of a plane. He looked out the window and saw it circling.

It was a seaplane, a tiny two-seater with floats instead of wheels. It could land on the sea right outside the house and tie up on the jetty that Alex had seen from his room.

He knew it had come for him.

“Where are you taking me?” he demanded.

“Ah, yes. Now we come to the rub.” Major Yu had finished eating. He sat back and suddenly the gun was in his hand, pointing at Alex. He had certainly moved quickly.

Alex hadn’t even seen him draw it. “The easiest and perhaps the most sensible thing would be to shoot you now,” he said. “In half an hour you could be at the bottom of the M a d e i n B r i t a i n

283

ocean, and neither Mrs. Jones nor Mr. Ethan Brooke would ever know what had happened to you.

“But I’m not going to do that. Why? For two reasons.

The first is that I really don’t want to get blood on the carpet. You may have noticed that it’s an Axminster—from the town of Axminster in Devonshire. The second is more personal. You owe me a great deal of money, Alex. You have to pay for the damage you did on the Liberian Star.

There is still the rather more considerable debt that you owe to Scorpia following the collapse of Invisible Sword.

And the truth is that although you may not realize it, right now you are worth a great deal to me alive.

“How much were you told about my snakehead?

People smuggling, weapons, drugs . . . these are all part of my business. But I have another highly profitable activity based a couple of hundred miles from here in a facility hidden in the heart of the Australian jungle. This facility deals in the sale of human organs.” Alex said nothing. No words would come.

“Do you know how hard it is to find a kidney donor even if you are rich and live in the West?” Yu pointed the gun at Alex’s stomach. “You are young and fit. I will be able to sell your kidney for a quarter of a million dollars.

And the operation won’t even kill you. You will live through it, and after that we’ll be able to come back, perhaps, for your eyes.” The gun rose up to the level of Alex’s head. “Your eyes will sell for fifty thousand dollars each, 284

S N A K E H E A D

leaving you blind but otherwise in good health.” The gun dropped again. “You can live without your pancreas. It will make me a further one hundred thousand dollars.

While you are recovering from each operation, I will drain off your blood cells and your plasma. They will be kept frozen and sold at five hundred dollars a pint. And finally, of course, there is your heart. The heart of a young healthy boy could fetch up to a million dollars more. Do you see, Alex? Shooting you does me no good at all. But keeping you alive is good for business, and you might even get some satisfaction in knowing, when you do finally die, that you have restored the health of quite a few people around the world.”

Alex swore. He spat out every foul word he knew. But Major Yu was no longer listening. The door to the dining room had opened again, but this time it wasn’t the maid who had come in. Two men. Indonesian, like the maid.

Alex hadn’t seen them before. One of them placed a hand on his shoulder but Alex shrugged it off and stood up on his own. He wasn’t going to let them drag them out of here.

“Good-bye, Alex,” Major Yu said. “I enjoyed meeting you.”

“Go to Hell, Major Yu,” Alex replied.

He turned around and, followed by the two men, walked out of the room.

17

S P A R E P A R T S

T H E P L A N E WA S A two-seater Piper Super Cub PA-18-150 with a top speed of just 130 miles per hour—but Alex had already been told that they wouldn’t be traveling very far. He was sitting behind the pilot in the cramped cockpit with the buzz of the propellers wiping out any chance of conversation. Not that Alex had anything to talk about. His wrists and ankles were shackled. The seat belt had been fastened in such a way that he couldn’t reach the release buckle.

He wondered briefly about the balding, red-necked man in front of him—paid to carry a boy to an unspeak-able death. Was he married? Did he have children of his own? Alex had considered trying to bribe him. ASIS

would pay twenty thousand dollars or more for his safe return. But he never even got a chance. The pilot only glanced at him once, revealing black sunglasses and a blank face, then put on headphones. Alex guessed that he would have been chosen carefully. Major Yu wasn’t going to make any more mistakes.

But his worst mistake had already been made. He had left the watch on Alex’s wrist . . . the same watch that was even now—surely—sending out a distress signal to MI6.

It had to be. Inside Alex knew that without this one hope, 286

S N A K E H E A D

if he didn’t believe that despite everything he still had the advantage, he would have been paralyzed with fear. Major Yu’s plan for him was the most evil thing he had ever heard . . . turning him from a human being into a bag of spare parts. Ash had certainly been right about the snakehead, and maybe Alex should have listened to his warn-ings. These people were death itself.

And yet . . .

Alex had been locked up at Yu’s house throughout the night and for much of the morning. It was now almost midday. How long had it been since he had begun sending the signal? Fifteen hours at the very least. Maybe longer. MI6 would have received the signal in Bangkok.

It would take them time to reach Australia. He had nothing to worry about. MI6 would be tracking him even now, watching him every inch of the way as he moved to the east.

But still Alex had to force himself to ignore the little voice in his ear. They should have been here already. They had decided not to bother. After all, he had called them once before when he was a prisoner in the academy in Point Blanc. That time, the panic button had been concealed in a CD player. He had pressed it, and they had done nothing. Was it happening a second time?

No. Don’t go there. They would come.

He had no idea where they were heading, and the pilot’s body was effectively blocking out the compass and S p a r e P a r t s

287

any of the other controls that might have given him a clue.

He had assumed at first that they would stick to the coast.

After all, the plane had no wheels. It had to land on water.

But for the last hour, they had been flying inland, and only the position of the sun gave him any sense of his direction. He looked out the window, past the blur of the propeller. The landscape was flat and rocky, covered in scrub. A brilliant blue river snaked down like a great crack in the surface of the world. Wherever this was, it was huge and empty. There was no sign of any roads. No houses. Nothing.

He tried to make out more of the pilot’s features, but the man’s eyes were fixed on the controls as if he were making a deliberate effort to ignore his passenger. He pulled on the joystick, and Alex leaned to one side as the plane dipped. Now he saw a canopy of green . . . a band of rain forest. Yu had spoken of the Australian jungle.

Was this what he had meant?

The plane dipped down. Alex had been in rain forests before and recognized the extraordinary chaos of leaves and vines, a thousand different shades and sizes, each one of them endlessly fighting for a place in the sun.

Surely there would be nowhere for them to land here? But then they flew over the edge of the canopy, and Alex saw a clearing and a river that swelled suddenly into a lake with a cluster of buildings around the edge and a jetty reaching out to welcome them.

288

S N A K E H E A D

“We’re landing,” the pilot said—for no obvious reason. It was the first time he had spoken throughout the flight.

Alex felt his stomach shrink and his ears popped as they circled and began their descent. The sound of the engines rose as they neared the surface of the water. They touched down, sending spray in two directions. An os-prey, frightened by the sudden arrival, leapt out of the undergrowth in a panic of beating wings. The pilot brought the plane around and they headed smoothly toward the jetty.

Two men had come out. They were both muscular, black, unsmiling, dressed in dirty jeans and string vests.

They were Aboriginal. One of them was carrying a rifle, slung over his bare shoulder. The pilot cut the engines and opened the door. He had unhooked a paddle from the side of the cockpit and used it to steer the plane the last few yards. The two men helped tie it to the jetty. One of them opened the door and released Alex from his seat.

Nobody spoke. That was perhaps more unnerving than anything else.

Alex took a look around him. The compound was clean and well ordered, with lawns that had recently been mown and neat flower beds. All the buildings were made of wood, painted white, with low roofs stretching out over long verandas. There were four houses, square and com-pact with open shutters and fans turning behind. Each of S p a r e P a r t s

289

them had a balcony on the second floor with views down to the lake. One of the buildings was an office and administration center connected to a metal radio tower with two satellite dishes. There was a water tower and an electrical generator with a fence running around it, topped with razor wire.

The last building was the hospital itself, long and narrow with a row of windows covered in mosquito net and a red cross painted on the front door. This was where Alex would be sent when the time came . . . not once but again and again until there was nothing left of him. The thought made him shiver despite the damp heat of the afternoon, and he turned his head away.

At first sight, there didn’t seem to be too much security—but then Alex noticed a second fence, this one on the edge of the compound and about ten yards high.

It was painted green to blend in with the forest beyond.

There were no boats moored to the jetty and no sign of any boathouse, so an escape downriver would be impossible too—unless he swam. And at the end of the day, what would be the point of breaking out of here? He had seen from the plane. He was in the middle of the outback with nowhere to go.

The two Aboriginals had each clamped hold of one of his arms, and now they led him toward the administrative building. As they reached the door, a young woman appeared, dressed as a nurse. She was short, plump, and 290

S N A K E H E A D

blond. She had put on bright red lipstick, which seemed strangely at odds with her starched white uniform. One of her stockings had runs.

“You must be Alex,” she said. “I’m Nurse Hicks. But you can call me Charleen.”

Alex had never heard such a broad Australian accent.

And what the woman was saying was simply crazy. She was welcoming him as if he might actually be glad to be here.

“Come right in,” she continued. Then she noticed the handcuffs. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” she exclaimed in a voice full of indignation. “You know we don’t need those here, Jacko. Will you please remove them?” One of the men produced a key and freed Alex’s hands and feet. The nurse tut-tutted at them, then opened the door and led Alex down a corridor that was clean and simple, with rush matting and whitewashed walls. Fans were turning overhead, and there was music playing somewhere . . . a Mozart opera.

“The doc will see you now,” the nurse said brightly, as if he had booked an appointment weeks ago.

There was another door at the far end, and they went through. Alex found himself in a sparsely furnished room—little more than a desk and two chairs. There was a screen to one side, a small fridge, and a cart with some bottles, a stethoscope, and a pair of scalpels. The window was open, with a view of the jetty from where they had just come.

S p a r e P a r t s

291

A man was sitting behind the desk, dressed not in a white coat but a turquoise open-neck shirt with the sleeves rolled up and jeans. He was in his forties, with thick blond hair and a craggy, weather-beaten face. He didn’t look like a doctor. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days, and his hands were grubby. There was a glass of beer on his desk and an ashtray with a pile of stubs.

“Good day, Alex.” He also spoke with an Australian accent. “Take a seat!”

It wasn’t an invitation. It was a command.

“I’m Bill Tanner. We’re going to be seeing a lot of each other over the next few weeks, so I might as well get a few things clear from the start. Fancy a beer?”

“No,” Alex replied.

“You’d better drink something anyway,” the nurse said. “You don’t want to get dehydrated.” She went over to the fridge and produced a bottle of mineral water. Alex didn’t touch it. He had already decided. He wasn’t going to play these people’s game.

“How was the flight?” Tanner asked.

Alex didn’t answer.

The doctor shrugged. “You’re angry. That’s okay. I’d be pretty angry if I were in your shoes. But maybe you should have thought about the consequences before you took on the snakehead.”

He leaned forward, and Alex knew, with a sense of revulsion, that he had had this conversation many times before. Alex wasn’t the first person to be brought unwill-292

S N A K E H E A D

ingly to this secret hospital. Others would have sat right where he was sitting now.

“Let me tell you how this works,” Dr. Tanner began.

“You’re going to die. I’m sorry to have to tell you that, but you might as well get used to it. We all have to die sometime, although for you it’s probably a little sooner than expected. But you have to look on the bright side. You’re going to be well looked after. We have a really qualified team here, and it’s in our interests to keep you going as long as possible. You’re going to have a lot of surgery, Alex. There are some bad days ahead. But you’ll come through . . . I know you will. We’ll help you to the finish line.”

Alex glanced briefly at the cart, measuring the distance between himself and the scalpel. He thought about making a grab for it, using it as a weapon. But that wouldn’t help him. Better to take it with him, to find a use for it later. He realized that the doctor was waiting for him to reply. He answered with a single, ugly swearword. Tanner just smiled.

“Your language is a little ripe, son,” he said. “But that’s all right. I’ve heard it all before.” He gestured out the window. “Now, you’re probably wondering how you can escape from here,” he went on. “You’ve seen the fence, and you’re thinking you can climb over it. Or maybe you’ve looked at the river and decided you can try swimming. It all looks pretty easy, doesn’t it? No TV cameras.

S p a r e P a r t s

293

Just the seven of us in the compound. Me, four nurses, Jacko, and Quombi. Not much security . . . that’s what you’re thinking.

“Well, I’m sorry to tell you, mate. But you’re wrong.

You go out at night and you’re going to have to reckon with Jacko’s dog. It’s a pit bull. His name is Spike, and he’s a nasty piece of work. He’ll rip you apart as soon as look at you. As for the fence, it’s electrified. Touch it and it’ll take you a week to wake up. And you’re not getting anywhere near the generator—not unless you know how to bite your way through razor wire—so you can forget about tampering with the current.

“And even if you did manage to get out, it wouldn’t do you much good. We’re on the edge of the Kakadu National Park . . . two billion years old and as bad as the world was when it began. The start of Arnhem Land is about a mile from here, but that’s a mile of tropical rain forest, and you’d never find your way through. Assuming a death adder or a king brown didn’t get you, there are spiders, wasps, stinging nettles, biting ants, and—waiting for you on the other side—saltwater crocodiles.” He jerked a thumb. “There are a hundred ways to die out there, and all of them are more painful than anything we’ve got lined up for you here.

“That leaves the river. Looks pretty tempting, doesn’t it? Well, there are no boats here. No canoes or kayaks or rafts or anything else you can get your hands on. We even 294

S N A K E H E A D

keep the coffins locked up after one guy tried to bust out in one of those. You remember that, Charleen?” The nurse laughed. “He was using the lid as a paddle.”

“But he didn’t get very far, Alex, and neither would you. Because this is the start of the storm season . . . what the Aboriginals call Gunumeleng. The water’s swollen and fast-moving. About ten minutes downriver you’ll hit the first rapids, and after that it just gets worse and worse.

You try to swim, you’ll be cut to pieces on the rocks. You’ll almost certainly drown first. And waiting for you a mile downstream is the Bora Falls. A fifty-yard drop with a ton of water crashing down every minute. So do you get what I’m saying? You’re stuck here, mate, and that’s that.” Alex said nothing, but he was storing away everything Tanner was telling him. It was just possible that the doctor was giving away more than he realized. Outside the window, he heard a sudden whirring. The engine of the Piper had started again. He glanced out and saw the seaplane moving away from the jetty, preparing to take off.

“We’re not going to lock you up, Alex,” Tanner went on. “The grub’s good, and if you want a beer, just help yourself. There’s no TV, but you can listen to the radio, and I think we’ve got a few books. The point I’m trying to make is—right now, you’re here as our guest. Soon you’ll be here as our patient, And after we’ve begun work, you won’t be going anywhere. But until then, I want you to take it easy.”

S p a r e P a r t s

295

“We have to watch your blood pressure,” the nurse muttered.

“That’s right. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to roll up a sleeve so I can take a blood sample. It doesn’t matter which arm. I also want a urine sample. It looks to me like you’re pretty fit, but I need to get it all down on the computer.”

Alex didn’t move.

“It’s your choice, son,” Tanner said. “You cooperate or you don’t cooperate. But if you want to play hardball, I’ll have to call Jacko and Quombi in. They’ll rough you up a little and then they’ll tie you down and I’ll get what I want anyway. You don’t want that, do you? Make it easy on yourself . . .”

Alex knew there was no point refusing. Although it made him sick, he allowed Tanner and the nurse to give him a thorough examination. They checked his reflexes, probed his eyes, ears, and mouth, weighed and measured him, and took the various samples. At last they let him go.

“You’ve looked after yourself, Alex,” Tanner said. “For an English immigrant, you’re in great shape.” He was obviously pleased. “Your blood type is A positive,” he added.

“That’s going to be an easy match.”

It was as he was putting his clothes back on that he did it. Tanner was typing something into his computer. The nurse was looking over his shoulder. Alex was pulling on his shoes, leaning against the cart as if to support himself.

296

S N A K E H E A D

He allowed one hand to cover the scalpel, then slid it sideways and dropped it into his pants pocket. He would have to walk very carefully for the next few minutes or he’d give himself a nasty cut. He just hoped nobody would notice what he had done.

The nurse looked up and saw that he was dressed. “I’ll take you to your room,” she volunteered. “You should have a rest. We’ll bring you supper in about an hour.” The sun had already set. The sky was a deep gray with a streak of red like a fresh wound above the horizon. It had begun to rain, fat drops of water bursting one at a time along the ground.

“There’s going to be another storm,” the nurse said.

“I’d get tucked up and have an early night if I were you.

And remember . . . stay indoors. The dog’s trained not to come into the buildings. I mean, this is a medical facility.

But remember—take one step outside and he’ll go for you . . . and we don’t want you losing too much of that blood of yours, do we? Not at five hundred dollars a pint!”

She left Alex alone in a small room on the ground floor with a bed, a table, and a single fan rotating in the center of the ceiling. In one corner, there was a heavy silver filing cabinet. Alex opened it, but there was nothing inside.

A second door led into a small shower room, which also contained a toilet and a sink. Alex slid the scalpel out of his pocket and hid it inside the hanging roll of toilet paper.

S p a r e P a r t s

297

He didn’t know if he would have any use for it, but at least it made him feel better having taken it. Maybe these people weren’t quite as clever as they thought.

He went back into the bedroom. A single window looked down to the lake. The Piper Super Cub had gone.

Alex had watched it become nothing more than a speck in the sky at the same time as he was being examined.

He sat down on the bed and tried to collect his thoughts. Only the day before he had been in Darwin, congratulating himself on what he had achieved, thinking that his mission was over. And now this! How could he have been so stupid? He wondered what was happening to Ash. He still didn’t understand why the two of them had been separated. If Yu knew that Ash was working for ASIS, why hadn’t he sent him here too? Alex was filled with a longing to see his godfather again. It made everything even worse being here alone.

About an hour later, the door opened and a second nurse came in carrying a tray. She was dark-haired and slim and would have been pretty except that she had a broken nose that had set badly. She was younger than Charleen but equally welcoming.

“I’m Isabel,” she said. “I’m going to be looking after you. I’ve got a room just past the stairs, halfway down the corridor, so if you need anything, just yell.” She set the tray down. Alex’s dinner consisted of steak and chips, fruit salad, and a glass of milk, but the sight of 298

S N A K E H E A D

the food sickened him. He knew they were only building him up for what lay ahead.

He noticed two pills in a plastic cup. “What are these?” he asked.

“Just something to help you sleep,” Isabel replied.

“Some of our patients have difficulty nodding off, espe-cially the first couple of nights. And it’s important you get your rest.” She paused at the door. “You’re the youngest we’ve ever had,” she said, as if Alex wanted to know. “Leave the tray outside the door. I’ll pick it up later.”

Alex picked at the food. He wasn’t hungry, but he knew he had to keep up his strength. Outside, the rain fell more heavily. It was the same tropical rain that he had experienced in Jakarta. He could hear it hammering against the roof and splashing into ever-widening puddles. There was a flicker of lightning, and for a couple of seconds he saw the rain forest, black and impenetrable. It seemed to have moved closer, as if it was trying to swallow him up.

Later, somehow, he slept. He didn’t take off any of his clothes. He couldn’t bear to. He simply lay down on the bed and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, the first light of the morning was already slanting in. His clothes felt damp.

His muscles ached. He lifted his wrist and examined the watch. The two hands were still set at eleven o’clock.

Almost twenty-four hours had passed since he had called for help. He listened to the world outside. The S p a r e P a r t s

299

harsh cry of some sort of bird. The rustle of the grasshop-pers. The last drip of the water as it fell from the branches.

There was nobody out there. MI6 hadn’t arrived yet, and Alex couldn’t fool himself any longer. Something had gone wrong. The watch wasn’t working. They never were going to come.

18

D E A D O F N I G H T

T W O DAY S L AT E R , I N the afternoon, the Piper Super Cub returned.

By now, Alex had fallen into a strange mood and one that he could barely understand. It was almost as if he had accepted his fate and could no longer find the strength or even the desire to escape it. He had met the two other women working at the hospital: Nurse Swaine and Nurse Wilcox, who had proudly told him that she would be his anesthetist. Nobody had been unkind to him. In a way, that was what made it all so nightmarish. They were always checking that he had food and water. Would he like something to read? Would he like to listen to some music? Soon, the very sound of their voices made his skin crawl, but he couldn’t break free of the feeling that they owned him and always would.

But he hadn’t given up completely. He was still searching for a way out of this hideous trap. The river was impossible. There were no boats; nothing that would pass as a boat. He had followed the fence all the way around.

There were no gaps, no convenient overhanging branches. He had considered blowing a hole in it. He still had the one coin that Smithers had given him. But the fence was connected to an electrical circuit. The guards D e a d o f N i g h t

301

would know instantly what he had done, and without a map, a compass, or a machete, Alex doubted he would be able to find a way through the rain forest.

He thought about sending a radio message. He had seen the radio room in the administration building . . . it was neither locked nor guarded. He soon realized why.

The radio transmitter was connected to a numeric key-pad. You had to punch in a code to activate it. Major Yu really had thought of everything.

Alex watched as the plane hit the surface of the lake and began a slow, lazy turn toward the jetty. He had been expecting it. Dr. Tanner had told him it would be coming the night before.

“It’s your first customer, Alex,” he had said cheerfully.

“A man called R. V. Weinberg. You may have heard of him.”

As usual, Alex said nothing.

“He’s a reality TV producer from Miami. Very successful. But he’s contracted a serious eye disease, and he needs two transplants. So it looks as if we’ll be starting with your corneas. We’ll operate first thing tomorrow morning.”

Alex examined the American from a distance as he was helped out of the plane. Dr. Tanner had warned him not to approach or try to speak to the “customer.” It was one of the house rules. But looking at him, Alex found himself filled with more hatred than he had ever felt for any human being.

302

S N A K E H E A D

Weinberg was overweight in a soft, flabby way. He had curling gray hair and a face that could have been made of putty, with sagging cheeks and jowls. He was a millionaire, but he dressed shabbily, his gut pressing against his Lacoste shirt. But it wasn’t just his appearance that disgusted Alex. It was his selfishness, his complete lack of heart. Tomorrow Alex would be blind. This man would take his sight without thinking about it simply because it was what he wanted and he had the money to pay for it.

Major Yu, Dr. Tanner, and the nurses were evil in their own way. But Weinberg, the successful businessman from Miami, made him physically sick.

He waited until the man had disappeared into the house that had been prepared for him, then walked down to the edge of the lake. So this was it. He had just one night to make his escape. After that it really would be impossible.

But the anger that Alex had felt had broken through his sense of helplessness. It had come like a slap in the face, and suddenly he was ready to fight back. These people thought he was helpless. They thought they’d covered everything. But they hadn’t noticed the missing scalpel.

And there was something even more important that they’d overlooked—despite the fact that it was sitting there right in front of them.

The plane.

The pilot had climbed out, dragging a kit bag with him. It looked as if he was going to stay until Weinberg D e a d o f N i g h t

303

was ready to leave. Alex had no doubt that the Piper would be incapacitated, the engine closed down and the keys locked away. And Dr. Tanner would be fairly certain that no fourteen-year-old boy knew how to fly.

But that was his mistake—to leave the plane, and everything inside it, moored to the jetty.

Alex examined it, working out the angles, thinking about what lay ahead.

They sent Alex to bed at eight thirty, and Nurse Isabel came into the room once he was tucked in. She was carrying two sleeping pills and a little cardboard cup of water.

“I don’t want to sleep,” Alex said.

“I know, dear,” Isabel replied. “But Dr. Tanner says you’ve got to get your rest.” She held out the pills. “It’s going to be a big day for you tomorrow,” she went on.

“You’re going to need your rest.”

Alex hesitated, then took the pills. He threw them into his mouth and swallowed the water.

The nurse smiled at him. “It won’t be too bad,” she said. “You’ll see.” She put a hand to her mouth. “Or rather, you won’t . . .”

They checked Alex’s room an hour later and again at eleven. Both times they saw him lying, utterly still, in bed.

In a way, Dr. Tanner was surprised. He had been expecting Alex to try something. After all, Major Yu had warned him to take extreme care with this particular boy, and the 304

S N A K E H E A D

fact was that tonight was his last chance. But it sometimes happened that way. It seemed that—despite his reputation—Alex had accepted the hopelessness of his situation and had chosen to find a brief escape in sleep.

Even so, Dr. Tanner was a cautious man. Before he went to bed himself, he called the two guards, Quombi and Jacko, into his office.

“I want the two of you outside the room all night,” he ordered.

The two men looked at each other in dismay. “That’s crazy, boss,” Jacko said. “The kid’s asleep. He’s been asleep for hours.”

“He can still wake up.”

“So he wakes up! Where’s he going to go?” Tanner rubbed his eyes. He liked to get a good night’s sleep before he operated, and he was in no mood for a lengthy debate. “I’ve got my orders from Major Yu,” he snapped. “You want to argue with him?” He thought for a moment, then nodded. “All right. Let’s do it this way.

Jacko—you take the first shift until four o’clock.

Quombi—you take over then. And make sure that dog of yours stays outside the whole time. I just want to be sure that no one goes anywhere tonight. Okay?” The two men nodded.

“Good. I’ll see you tomorrow . . .”

At three thirty that night, Jacko was sitting on the porch of Alex’s building, reading a magazine he had read fifty D e a d o f N i g h t

305

times before. He was in a bad mood. He had passed Alex’s window at least a dozen times, listening for the faintest sound. There’d been nothing. It seemed to Jacko that everyone had got themselves into a complete panic about this kid. What was so special about him? He was just one of the many who had passed through the hospital. Some had screamed and cried. Some had tried to buy their way out. All of them had ended the same way.

The last thirty minutes of his watch ticked away. He stood up and stretched. A few yards away, lying on the grass, Spike cocked an ear and growled.

“It’s all right, dog,” Jacko said. “I’m going to bed.

Quombi will be here soon.”

He belched, stretched a second time, and walked off into the darkness.

Ten minutes later, Quombi took his place. The other man was the younger of the two and had spent almost a third of his life in jail until Dr. Tanner had found him and brought him here. He liked his work at the hospital, es-pecially taunting the patients as they got weaker and weaker. But he was in a bad mood right now. He needed his sleep. And he didn’t get paid overtime for working through the night.

As he reached the building, his eye was caught by something glinting in the grass just in front of the door.

It was some sort of foreign coin. Quombi didn’t even wonder how it had gotten there. Money was money. He walked right over and reached down to pick it up.

306

S N A K E H E A D

He was faintly aware of something falling out of the sky, but he didn’t look up quickly enough to see it. The silver filing cabinet could have crushed him, but he was lucky. One corner struck him, a glancing blow on the side of the head. Even so, it was enough to knock him out instantly. Fortunately, it made little sound as it thudded into the soft grass. Quombi fell like an axed tree. The dog got up and whined. It knew that something was wrong, but it had never been trained for this. It went over and sniffed at the motionless figure, then sat on its hind legs and scratched.

On the first-floor balcony, Alex Rider looked down at his handiwork with grim satisfaction.

He had never been asleep. He had palmed the pills and swallowed only water and had been waiting quietly ever since. He had gotten up several times in the night, waiting for Jacko to leave, and had heard the words he had spoken to the dog. That was when he had gotten dressed and set to work.

Carrying the heavy filing cabinet up one flight of stairs had almost been beyond him, and it was probably only desperation that had lent him strength as he clutched it in both arms and balanced it on his knee. The worst part had been making sure the metal frame never banged against the walls or the wooden steps. Nurse Swaine had a room on the ground floor, halfway down the corridor, and the slightest sound might awaken her.

He had dragged it into the bedroom over the front D e a d o f N i g h t

307

door and, with one last effort, had somehow managed to heave it up onto the balcony rail, balancing it there while he fumbled in his pocket. He had only just been in time.

Quombi had made his appearance a few seconds after he had dropped the ten-baht coin that Smithers had given him onto the lawn as bait. From that moment, the trap had been set.

And it had worked. Jacko was in bed. From the sound of it, Nurse Swaine hadn’t woken up. Quombi was unconscious. With a bit of luck, he might even have fractured his skull. And the dog hadn’t spoiled it all by barking.

The dog was next.

Alex crept back downstairs and went over to the main door. As he appeared, Spike began to growl, its hackles rising and its ugly brown eyes glaring out of the darkness.

But—like Dr. Tanner—Nurse Hicks had told him more than she should have. She had said that the dog was trained not to come into the building. The animal was clearly lethal. Even for a pit bull, it was ugly. But it wouldn’t harm him so long as he didn’t step outside.

“Nice dog,” Alex muttered.

He stretched out his hand. He was holding a piece of steak that he had been given on the first night. It had been kind of Dr. Tanner to warn him that there was a dog. Cut into the meat were the six sleeping pills that he had been given over the last three days. The question was—would the dog take the bait? It didn’t move, so Alex 308

S N A K E H E A D

threw the meat onto the grass, close to the sprawled-out body of the guard. Spike ran over to it, his stubby tail wagging. He looked down, sniffed, and scooped up the meat greedily, swallowing it without even chewing.

Just as Alex had hoped.

It took ten minutes for the pills to take effect. Alex watched as the dog grew more and more drowsy until finally he collapsed onto one side and lay still, apart from the rise and fall of his stomach. At last things seemed to be going Alex’s way. But even so, he stepped outside cautiously, expecting either the dog or his master to wake up at any time. He had no need to worry. He scooped up the coin—it was lying a few inches from the edge of the filing cabinet—and hurried into the night.

There was a soft echo of thunder that trembled through the air like a drum rolling down a hill. It wasn’t raining yet, but there was going to be another storm.

Good. That was exactly what Alex wanted. He checked left and right. The compound was kept permanently lit by a series of arc lamps. The rest of the hospital staff, the pilot, and the American television producer would all be fast asleep. Alex hesitated for just a few seconds, thinking how wonderful it would be if MI6—perhaps Ben Daniels and a platoon of SAS men—chose this moment to make their appearance. But he knew what wasn’t going to happen. It was all up to him.

He hurried toward the jetty. If only he had learned how to fly! He might have been able to get the Piper D e a d o f N i g h t

309

started up and in minutes he would have been out of here, on his way to freedom. But at fourteen, and despite all the other skills his uncle had taught him, he had been too young for flying lessons. Never mind. The plane was still going to be useful to him—for that was Dr. Tanner’s big mistake. The security at the hospital had been thoroughly checked— but only when the Piper was away. Right now it was back, and even though he couldn’t fly it, the seaplane was still going to help him escape.

He reached the jetty without being seen and crouched in the shadow of the plane, which was sitting on its two floats, rocking gently in the water. There was another rumble of thunder, louder this time, and a few drops of water splashed against Alex’s shoulders. The storm was going to break very soon. Alex examined the Piper Super Cub. There were two metal struts on each side, supporting the weight of the cockpit and fuselage. They tapered to a point, where they were bolted into the long, fiberglass floats. Just as he remembered.

Alex reached into his pocket and took out the ten-baht coin again. It was the last one that Smithers had given him, and it occurred to him that all three would have saved his life. He placed it against the larger of the metal struts. He looked up at the sky. There were few stars tonight, the clouds swirling overhead. Behind them, the lightning flickered, white and mauve. Alex had the chewing gum pack in his hand. He waited for the thunder and pressed the switch at exactly the right moment.

310

S N A K E H E A D

There was a flash and a small explosion. Even without the storm, it might not have been heard. But the coin had done its job. One of the struts had been ripped apart. The other had come free. The Piper sagged in the water. Alex lay down on the jetty and pressed his feet against the float, pushing with all his strength. Slowly the float moved away from the main body of the plane. Alex pushed harder. The float came free. The rest of the plane sagged uselessly in the water. Moving more quickly now, Alex grabbed hold of the float and dragged it to the shore.

What he had was something almost exactly the same shape and size as a kayak or a canoe. He had even managed to blow a hole in the top, which would allow his legs to fit inside. Admittedly, the float had no foot braces, no thigh hooks, and no support for his lower back. The hull was too flat. That would make it stable in the water, but with such a wide footprint it would be hard to control. It was also much too heavy. Most modern kayaks are made of Kevlar or graphite cloth, glued together and strength-ened with resin. The float from the Piper would be as nimble as a London bus. But at least it would carry him.

It would just have to do.

Alex had gone kayaking three times in his life. Twice with his uncle, Ian Rider, in Norway and Canada. Once in Wales with the Brookland School when he was doing his Duke of Edinburgh award. He’d had some experience with rapids—the pillows and eddies, the holes and the pour-overs that made the journey such a white-knuckle D e a d o f N i g h t

311

ride. But the truth was, he was no expert. Far from it. All he could remember of his last trip was speed, screams, and exploding water. He had been twelve at the time and had thought himself lucky to reach thirteen.

The scalpel was back in his pocket, wrapped in toilet paper to prevent the blade from jabbing into him. Now he took it out and unwrapped it, glad that he’d decided to take it from Dr. Tanner’s office in the first place. Being careful not to slip and slice open the palm of his own hand, he cut away the jagged edges where the strut had been torn away, trying to make a smooth line. He knew that the journey ahead of him was going to be tough. He didn’t want his stomach and hips to be cut to pieces on the way. The blade was small but very sharp. Soon the float was ready. He left it on the shoreline.

Now he needed a paddle.

That was the easy part. For all his smug jokes about coffin lids, Dr. Tanner had overlooked the obvious. The Piper Sea Cub itself carried a paddle as part of its safety equipment. Alex had noticed it when he had flown in, clipped to the side wall of the cockpit. The pilot had used it to steer the plane ashore.

Alex went back to the edge of the lake, where the plane seemed to have tilted even farther below the surface of the water. Eventually, it would sink. He found a piece of the broken strut and twisted it free. Now he had a makeshift crowbar. He waited for another roll of thunder, then used it to smash a window, then opened the passenger door 312

S N A K E H E A D

from the inside. The paddle was there. He reached in and took it.

Alex was tempted to get under way at once, but he made himself wait. If the rapids were as bad as Tanner had described, he couldn’t possibly risk hitting them in the dark. He needed the first light of dawn. It was raining harder now. Alex was soaked through. But in a way he was glad. The rain would provide him with cover if anyone chanced to look outside. While he was on the wide section of the lake, he would be exposed. It would take him about five minutes of hard paddling to reach the cover of the rain forest.

He needed a diversion, and it suddenly occurred to him that the Piper could provide it. Once again, he worked out the various possibilities. Could he do it?

Yes—he had at least another hour until he would have enough light to take on the river. He might as well put the time to good use. And he wanted to leave his mark on Dr.

Tanner, R. V. Weinberg, and this entire setup.

Alex smiled grimly. These people were poison, but they’d been in control for too long.

Now it was time to bite back.

19

W H I T E W A T E R

ALEX WENT BA CK TO the plane and soon found what he was looking for, rummaging around in the hold: two big empty cans that might have been used to carry water or fuel. He needed a length of rubber tubing and tore it out of the engine itself. It didn’t matter. This plane wasn’t going anywhere. He opened the nozzle under the wing and put one end into the fuel tank and the other into his mouth and sucked, reeling back, gagging as the acrid taste of aviation fuel cut into his throat. Nothing happened. He forced himself to try again, and this time it worked. He had created a vacuum, and the liquid was flowing out. He dragged over the cans and filled them both.

By the time he had finished, the cans were almost too heavy to lift. Gritting his teeth, he set off across the lawn, heading back to the hospital. He knew he was taking a risk, but he didn’t care. He wondered how many other people had been brought here, poor refugees who had set out in hope of a better life but who had never arrived. He wanted to wipe this place off the face of the earth. Someone should have done it years ago.

The biggest risk of all was creeping into Dr. Tanner’s office. The first thin cracks of light were appearing in the 314

S N A K E H E A D

sky, and one of the nurses could wake up at any time. But he found what he was looking for in a drawer of the doctor’s desk. A cigarette lighter. Tanner should have known that smoking could be harmful to his health. It was certainly going to prove expensive.

Moving faster but still being careful not to make any sound, Alex emptied both cans over the side of the building, the veranda, the roof. The fuel sat on top of the rainwater, not mixing with it as it was carried down the drainpipes and along the gutters. He saw it in the puddles, a strange mauve color that almost seemed to glow. When he had just half a can left, he went back to the lake, leaving a trail of fuel behind. The can was empty. He threw it into the water, then climbed into his makeshift kayak, resting the paddle across his legs.

He was almost ready.

The paddle was too short, and the kayak was hopelessly unbalanced. It should have been trimmed out—

with the bow and the stem holding the same position in the water. Unfortunately, the hole he had made wasn’t central. He tried to shift his weight. At once he found himself wavering helplessly and thought he was going to capsize, but at the last minute he managed to right himself. He tried again more cautiously, and this time he got it right. The float sat evenly on the surface. He dropped a shoulder. The fiberglass dug into his back, but the kayak tilted slightly. He had it under control.

He took a deep breath and pushed off.

W h i t e W a t e r

315

At the last minute, he flicked the lighter on. The tiny flame leapt up, battling against the falling rain. Alex touched it against the grass, and at once the fire took hold, rushing up toward the hospital, which was now clearly visible in the rapidly breaking day. Alex didn’t wait for it to arrive. He was already paddling, leaning forward and driving with his shoulders to give each stroke more power. He wobbled a couple of times as he got used to the weight, but the float was living up to its name. It was carrying him away.

Behind him, the line of flame reached the hospital.

The result was more spectacular than Alex could have hoped for. The rainwater had spread the aviation fuel everywhere, and although the wood was wet on the surface, years of Australian sunshine had baked it dry inside.

Alex heard the soft explosion as the fire caught hold and felt the heat on his shoulders. He glanced back to see that the entire building had become a fireball. The rain was actually steaming as it hit the roof, and there was an epic struggle going on between the falling water and the rising flame. Nobody had come outside yet, but suddenly the American, R. V. Weinberg, appeared, dressed ridiculously in striped pajamas, his pant legs on fire. Alex smiled grimly as he hopped about, screaming, in the rain. It wasn’t just his eyes that were going to need medical treatment.

Jacko was next, shocked out of his sleep and unable to take in what had happened. He was followed by Dr. Tan-316

S N A K E H E A D

ner. By now, it wasn’t just the hospital that was on fire.

On the other side of the rain, the administrative building and one of the houses was also alight. The whole compound was being torn apart.

Tanner looked around him and saw Quombi lying stretched out on the grass, the great bulk of the filing cabinet still resting on his head and neck. He understood at once. “The boy!” he shouted. “Find the boy!” Weinberg had thrown himself into a puddle and lay there whimpering. The rest of them ignored him, scattering around the complex looking for Alex. But even if they had thought of looking on the lake, they were already too late. Alex was already out of sight, behind the curtain of rain. There was a deafening crack and the generator shuddered to a halt with a series of sparks and a plume of black smoke. Unable to contend with the joint attack of water and fire, the electricity had failed. Tanner howled.

“Sir—the plane!” Jacko had noticed the Piper resting lopsidedly on its single float.

With the rain streaming down his face, Tanner gazed at it and pieced together what had happened. Now he knew where Alex had gone. He scanned the river, searching for him, but the smoke, the rain, and the half-light had blotted out the world. But he couldn’t have gone far. It wasn’t over yet.

Dr. Tanner dragged his cell phone out of his pocket and began to dial.

W h i t e W a t e r

317

• • •

Alex heard the first rapids before he saw them. The lake wasn’t a lake at all . . . it was simply a widening of the river. There was probably a word for it, but it had been far too long since he had sat in a geography lesson. At the far end, it became narrower again, the banks closing in like a letter

V

, and Alex could feel the current driving him on.

He hardly had any need to paddle. At the same time, the rain forest closed in on both sides, the trees towering above him, the foliage squeezing out the very air. And there was a sound that he remembered well. It was distant and elemental and immediately filled him with dread.

Rushing water, somewhere around the corner, daring him to come on.

He dipped the paddle into the water, testing his makeshift kayak, knowing that he would have to be able to twist and turn, reacting to whatever the river threw at him with split-second timing. He could see already that he wasn’t going to be able to stop. The current was too strong and the banks too steep. The nearest trees simply disappeared into the water, the roots trailing down with ugly-looking rocks behind. But at least he was putting distance between himself and the compound . . . or what was left of it. And Dr. Tanner had already told him that there were no boats. The Piper was a wreck. Smoke was still rising from the hospital—he could see it over the line of the trees. There was no way that anyone would be able to follow him.

318

S N A K E H E A D

He turned the corner and came to the first section of rapids. The sight reminded him that he wasn’t safe yet, that the worst still lay ahead of him and that he might only have exchanged one death for another.

Ahead of him, the river dipped steeply downward, hemmed in by massive boulders and tree trunks on both sides. A series of jagged ledges had created a sort of natural staircase. If he landed where the water was too shallow, the kayak would be snapped in half—and Alex with it. White water was frothing and foaming, thousands of gallons thundering down from one level to the next. To make matters worse, the whole stretch was dotted with boils, areas where the water were rushing to the surface as if it was being heated in a saucepan. Hit one of those and he would lose all control, and then he’d be completely at the mercy of the river.

“The thing is, Alex, you’re never really in control, whatever you may think. Just keep paddling and never fight the current because the current will always win.” The words of his uncle, spoken a lifetime ago, came to his mind. Alex wished he could grasp some comfort from them. He felt like a loose button in a washing machine.

His fate was out of his hands. Gritting his teeth, he tightened his hold on the paddle and charged forward.

Nothing quite made sense after that. He was struggling, thrown left and right, blind. Water shot past him, smashed into his face, pulverized him from above. He dug down, using a forward sweep to turn the boat, miss-W h i t e W a t e r

319

ing a black boulder with vicious, razor-sharp edges by a matter of inches. The green canopy spun around him.

The trees had all blurred into one another. He couldn’t hear. His ears were full of water, and when he opened his mouth, gasping for air, water rushed into the back of his throat. Two more sweep strokes, dodging the rocks, then a terrible crash as the kayak slammed into one of the shelves. Mercifully, it stayed in one piece. A huge blanket of water fell on him. He was drowning. He had gone under.

But then suddenly, somehow, he was through. He felt battered and exhausted as if he had just been in hand-to-hand combat with the river, which, in a sense, he had. His stomach and back were on fire where the broken edges had cut into him. Alex slid a hand under the sodden rag that was his shirt and felt the damage. When he took it out, his fingers were bloody. Behind him, the white water leapt and hurled itself against the rocks, displaying its fury that the kayak had gotten through.

Alex knew that he wouldn’t be able to take much more.

It was only desperation—and pure luck—that had brought him this far. From the moment he had entered the white water, he had lost all sense of his center of gravity, which really meant that he had lost everything. He might as well have been a piece of driftwood, being swept no matter where. It wasn’t just that the kayak was the wrong shape. It wasn’t a kayak at all. It was a float ripped off a seaplane, and if Alex had decided, after all, to steal 320

S N A K E H E A D

a coffin for the journey, he doubted he would have had any less control.

He tried to remember what Dr. Tanner had told him about the river. After the first rapids, it got worse. And then, a mile downstream, came something called the Bora Falls. Alex didn’t like the sound of that. He would have to find somewhere to come ashore and take his chances in the rain forest. He had already covered a certain amount of ground. With a bit of luck he might even have reached the edge of the floodplain on the other side. There had to be some civilization somewhere in the area; a ranger, a flying doctor, somebody! Somehow he would find them.

But there was still nowhere to land. The banks climbed steeply, with rocks forming an almost-permanent barrier.

When Alex looked up, the tops of the trees seemed a long way away. As wet as he was, Alex wasn’t cold. The rain forest throbbed with its own muddy heat. He was moving swiftly, still being swept along by the current. He was listening for the next stretch of rapids—but that wasn’t what he heard. Instead, it was the last thing he had expected.

A helicopter.

If he had still been in the rapids, he wouldn’t even have been able to hear the chatter of the blades, but right now he was in one of the straits, where the water was fast-moving but silent. Even so, he had to look up to make sure he wasn’t imagining it. Somehow it seemed unlikely, early in the morning, in the middle of an Australian rain W h i t e W a t e r

321

forest. But there it was. It was still a small speck, some distance behind, but drawing nearer with every second.

Alex’s first thought was that MI6 had finally arrived, almost when it was too late. He looked back a second time and felt his hopes shrivel and die. There was something mean and sinister about the helicopter, the way it was zeroing in on him like an insect about to sting. If MI6 were coming, they would have been here days ago.

No. This was something else. And it wasn’t on his side.

The helicopter was a Bell UH-1D, also known as a

“Huey,” one of the most famous flying machines in the world ever since the Americans had sent hundreds of them to Vietnam back in the sixties. Alex recognized the long, slim fuselage with the extended tail. The cargo door was open and there was a man sitting with his legs hanging out and some sort of weapon on his lap. It had to be nothing more than bad luck. Dr. Tanner couldn’t have called up support in the few minutes that Alex had been gone. The helicopter must have been on its way anyway, perhaps dropping off supplies, and Tanner had simply redirected it after him.

Alex had nowhere to hide. He was in the middle of the river, and he wasn’t moving fast enough to get away. At least the helicopter didn’t seem to be equipped with door guns, rocket launchers, or antitank missiles. And the man only had a rifle. That was good too. If it had been a machine gun, Alex would have had no chance at all. But even so, a half-decent marksman would be able to pick him off 322

S N A K E H E A D

with no trouble. Suddenly Alex’s back and shoulders felt horribly exposed. He could almost feel the first bullet slamming into them.

He lowered his head toward the water, changing his center of gravity and tilting the float onto its side. His left shoulder was touching the water now as he lanced forward, pounding down with the paddle, heading for the nearest bank. It was a technique known as the low brace, and Alex hoped that as well as giving him extra momen-tum through the water, it would also present less of a target to the sniper above.

Something snapped against the surface inches from his head, and a microsecond later, he heard the discharge of the rifle. The bullet had reached him faster than its sound. Alex jerked upright again. Water dripped off the side of his face. But he had reached his destination, a clump of trees hanging over the river, forming a green tunnel for him to go through. At least he would be out of sight for the next few seconds.

The next stretch of white water was about fifty yards in front of him, directly ahead. The rapids had been his enemy, but now, in a strange way, they had become his friend. The churning water, the current spinning him, and the waves tossing him from side to side would make him more difficult to hit. But could he reach them? The helicopter was directly above. The leaves and branches were thrashing around madly, tearing themselves apart.

W h i t e W a t e r

323

The downdraft was beating at the river, and the howl of the Huey’s engine was shattering the very air.

Alex emerged from the tunnel and dug down, using all the strength of his upper body and shoulders, propelling himself forward. There were two more shots. One of them hit the kayak, and Alex found himself staring at a hole, right in front of him. It had been fired at an angle, boring through the fiberglass and exiting just above the waterline. It must have missed his leg with barely an inch to spare.

Left and then right, two more power strokes and he was into the rapids. He hadn’t had time to pick a line—

or to form any strategy for surviving the next section. And this stretch was even worse than the first one had been, with faster water, a bigger slope, rocks that seemed purposely built to impale him or tear him in half.

Even the sniper seemed to hesitate, letting the river do its work for him. “When in doubt, keep paddling.” That was another of Ian Rider’s instructions, and Alex did just that, swinging the paddle automatically, first on one side, then the other, battling his way through. The helicopter had gone from sight. The spray had wiped it out. Surely that meant they couldn’t see him. There was an earsplit-ting bang, but it wasn’t the rifle. The nose of the kayak had slammed into a rock, jerking Alex around in a crazy circle, so that for the next few seconds he found himself traveling down the river backward. He jammed the paddle in, 324

S N A K E H E A D

using the current to turn him. His arms were almost torn off by the strain, but the boat came around, then shot forward. All the water in the world fell on him. But then, like before, it was over. He was through.

Ahead of him, the river was wider, and this time the vegetation was set farther back, providing no cover. The kayak was being carried rapidly. In fact, the river seemed to be moving faster and faster. Why? Alex had no time to find an answer. He heard the thudding of the rotors, glanced up, and saw the sniper taking aim. He was so close that Alex could make out the stubble on his chin, the finger closing on the trigger.

There was only one thing he could do, one last trick he could play. It might easily kill him, but Alex was fighting back. He wasn’t just going to sit there and let this man gun him down.

The sniper fired. Alex felt the bullet crease the side of his neck, just above his shoulder. He wanted to scream.

It was as if someone had purposefully drawn a kitchen knife across his flesh. But at the same exact moment, he took a deep breath, threw himself sideways, jerked up a knee, and turned the kayak upside down.

He wanted the sniper and the helicopter pilot to think that they had gotten him. From the air, all they would be able to see was the upturned hull of the kayak. Alex was dangling beneath, his face and shoulders buffeted by the current, the paddle gripped tightly in his hands. He was still traveling very fast. If he hit a rock, he would be killed.

W h i t e W a t e r

325

It was as simple as that. But it was either that or a bullet from above.

For Alex, the next minute was the longest of his life.

He could feel himself moving, but he could see nothing.

When he tried to look, everything was a swirl of dark gray, and the water beat against his eyes. He could hear strange echoes of the river and, far away, the helicopter hovering in the air. His legs were trapped, locked above his head inside the kayak. His heart was pounding. His lungs were beginning to demand fresh air.

But he had to stay underwater. How long would the helicopter follow him before the pilot decided that his work was done? His chest was getting tighter. There were bubbles escaping from his mouth and ears, precious oxygen leaking out of him. He had no idea how long he had been submerged. He felt the kayak hit something, sending a shudder down his spine. This was madness. He was drowning. If he waited much longer, he wouldn’t have the strength to flip himself back up.

At last, at the very end of his endurance, on the edge of a blackout, he acted. The move was called the hip snap.

Alex curled his face into his body and pushed with the paddle. At the same time, he rolled his hips, forcing the kayak to turn. Everything happened at once. His head and shoulders cleared the surface, water streaming down his face. Daylight burst all around him. The kayak swayed, then righted itself. Gasping, dazed, Alex found himself in the middle of the river, moving faster than ever.

326

S N A K E H E A D

And he was alone. The helicopter had gone. He could hear it fading into the distance behind him. So it had worked. They thought he was dead.

Alex looked ahead of him. And saw that he was.

Now he understood why they had left him. It wouldn’t have mattered if he was still alive underneath the kayak because what lay in front of him would kill him anyway.

He had reached the Bora Falls.

A straight line that marked the end of the world. The river was rushing over it . . . hundreds, thousands of gallons. There was a white cloud, a mist hanging over the abyss. And beyond that nothing. He could hear the water thundering down endlessly and knew that there could be no going back. There was no power on earth that could stop him now.

Alex Rider opened his mouth and yelled as the kayak was swept helplessly over the edge.

20

B A T T E R I E S N O T I N C L U D E D

F O R A L O N G , D R AW N - O U T second, he hung in space with the roar of the Bora Falls in his ears, the spray in his eyes, and the certain knowledge in his mind that he couldn’t possibly survive. The water was like some huge living thing—rushing and exploding over the side of the rock face. And there would be no safe landing. Looking down, Alex saw a boiling cauldron, fifty yards below, waiting to receive him.

There was no time to think, no time to do anything but react instinctively, half remembering lessons taught long ago. Somehow he had to lessen the impact when he hit the surface below. Be aggressive! Don’t let the waterfall just take you. At the very last moment, as he began to fall, Alex tensed himself, took a deep breath, and then paddled hard with a single, powerful stroke.

The world tilted.

The roar in his ears was deafening. He was blind. His head was being hammered. He was only aware of his hands, gripping the paddle, the wrists locked, his muscles seizing up.

Lean forward. You don’t want to fight the water—you have to go with it. The higher the drop, the more angle you’ll need when you hit the bottom. And—he remem-328

S N A K E H E A D

bered when it was almost to late—turn your head to one side or the impact will smash every bone in your face.

Falling. Half in the water, half in the air. Faster and faster.

Try to aim for the white. That’s where there’s the most air in the water, and the air will cushion your fall. Don’t shout. You have to hold that breath.

How much farther could it be? And how deep was the basin? God—he would be smashed to pieces if he hit a rock. Too late to worry about that now. He closed his eyes. Why watch his own death?

The kayak hit the cauldron nose first and was instantly sucked inside. Alex’s legs and stomach took the full force of the impact before the water overwhelmed him. It pounded down on his shoulders, crushing him. His head was thrown back, and he felt the whiplash twist his neck.

The paddle was torn free. And then he was floundering, scrabbling desperately with his hands, trying to free himself from the kayak, which was now dragging him into the depths below. His elbow struck a rock, almost breaking the bone. The shock made him release his breath, and he knew he had only seconds to reach the surface. But his legs were trapped. He couldn’t pull them free. The kayak was sinking, taking him with it. Using all his strength, he twisted his lower body, and somehow his hips cleared the edge of the kayak. He pulled. First one leg, then the other.

He was swallowing water. He no longer knew which way was up and which was down. His feet were free. He B a t t e r i e s N o t I n c l u d e d 329

lashed out once and then again. The water spun him, throwing him violently from side to side. He couldn’t take any more. One last try . . .

His head and shoulders burst up into the air. He was already far downstream. The Bora Falls were behind him, impossibly high. There was no sign of the kayak. It had surely been smashed to pieces. But as Alex sucked in fresh air, he knew that he had done everything right and that by a miracle he had survived. He had taken on the falls and he had beaten them.

The current had slowed down. Alex’s arms and legs were completely limp. All his strength had gone, and the best he could manage was to keep himself afloat, tilting his head back so that his mouth stayed in the air. He felt as if he had swallowed a gallon of water and vaguely wondered about cholera, yellow fever, or whatever else this tropical river might contain. ASIS hadn’t bothered giving him any injections before he flew to Bangkok.

How far had he traveled? Dr. Tanner had said that the falls were a mile from the camp but he felt he had gone twice that distance. No sign of the helicopter, though. That was a good thing. They thought he was dead. So they’d leave him alone. He had never felt so weary. The water was now a cushion, and he wanted to lie back and sleep.

Some time later, he found himself lying on a riverbank made up of gravel and sand. He had been washed up without even noticing it and must have nodded off 330

S N A K E H E A D

since the sun was now high in the sky. He allowed the warmth to creep into him. As far as he could tell, none of his limbs were broken. His neck and back were bruised and hurting—his spine had taken the full force of the impact—and there were cuts and scratches all over his waist, his hips, and his legs. But he knew he had gotten off lightly. The chances of his surviving the waterfall must have been about fifty to one . . . but to have done so without a major injury would have been considerably less. He remembered what Ash had told him about his father. The luck of the devil. Well, that was something Alex seemed to have inherited.

Ash.

Reef Island.

The tsunami heading for Western Australia.

For the last few days, Alex had been so worried about himself that he had lost sight of the bigger picture. How long did he have left before Major Yu set off the bomb that was going to have such a devastating effect on the earth’s tectonic plates? Was he already too late? Alex forced himself into a sitting position, warming himself in the sun and trying to get life back into his battered frame. At the same time, he worked it out. Yu had spoken of three days.

At midnight the earth was going to be in the grip of some sort of gravitational pull and the fault line deep down in the seabed would be at its most vulnerable.

Three days. Alex had spent two of them as a prisoner in the hospital compound. So it was going to happen B a t t e r i e s N o t I n c l u d e d 331

today! Right now it couldn’t be much later than ten or eleven o’clock in the morning. So Alex had only twelve hours to prevent a terrible catastrophe, the murder of eight people on Reef Island and the deaths of thousands more in Australia.

And that was when the complete hopelessness of his situation hit him. It was true that he had managed to escape from the horrific death Major Yu had planned for him. But where was he? Looking around him, Alex saw that he had left the rain forest behind him. He was on the edge of a floodplain with mountains in the far distance, perhaps thirty miles away. He was surrounded by stubby, dwarflike trees that he couldn’t name, a few boulders, and some termite mounds. There was a sweet smell—

something like moldering wood—in the air. And that was all. If nowhere had a middle, this was it.

There was nothing he could do. Nobody was going to operate on him, but he would die anyway—either from starvation or disease. Assuming, of course, that a saltwater crocodile or a snake didn’t get him first. Alex wiped a grimy hand across his face. It seemed to him that from the moment this mission had begun, nothing had gone right. He had never been in control. He cast his mind back to the office in Sydney and Ethan Brooke outlining what he would have to do. He was there to provide cover, that was all. It was going to be easy. Instead of which, he had been thrown into the worst two weeks of his life.

God! He should have listened to Jack Starbright!

332

S N A K E H E A D

He looked again at the mountains. It would take him forty-eight hours to reach them at the very least. Too long.

And why should he assume anyone lived there? He hadn’t seen any roads or houses from the plane. If only he could get in touch with MI6. He glanced at his wrist. Miracu-lously, despite the battering it had taken, the watch was still in place. The question was—why hadn’t it worked?

Smithers had built it for him personally. The watch must be sending out a signal. So what possible reason could MI6 have to ignore it? Alex remembered his meeting with Mrs. Jones and Ben Daniels—Fox, as he had once been known. Alex couldn’t believe that the SAS man would let him down. So what had gone wrong?

He took the watch off and examined it. Although it looked cheap and tacky, like something he might have gotten in a street market in Afghanistan, the watch would have been built to last. The strap must have been strong to survive the journey over the Bora Falls, and Alex guessed the case would be waterproof. The hands were still showing eleven o’clock. Alex turned it over. There was a groove going all the way around the underside. He realized that the back must screw off. He pressed his thumb against it and twisted. The case opened with surprising ease.

The watch contained some complicated microcircuitry that Smithers must have designed and installed. It was completely dry. There was no evidence of any water seeping in. The whole thing was powered by a battery, which B a t t e r i e s N o t I n c l u d e d 333

should have been sitting in a circular compartment, right in the middle.

But there was no battery. The compartment was empty.

So that was the answer, the reason why his signal hadn’t been heard. There had been no signal. But how could it have happened? Smithers had always been on his side. It was completely unlike him to forget something so basic. Alex had to fight back a wave of fury. His whole life snatched away from him simply because of a missing battery!

For a moment, Alex was tempted to fling the watch into the river. He never wanted to see the wretched thing again.

For a long time he didn’t move. He let the sun beat down on him, drying out his clothes. A few flies buzzed around his face, but he ignored them. He found himself playing back everything that had happened to him . . . the waterfall, the flight through the rapids, the moment he had set the hospital ablaze. Had it really all been for nothing? And before that, his dinner with Major Yu, the chase on the Liberian Star, the discovery of Royal Blue, the toy warehouse in Jakarta, and the arrival of Kopassus.

No battery!

He remembered his time in Bangkok with Ash and the story he had been told about his father in Malta. That was the only reason he had agreed to all this, to learn something about himself. Had it been worth it? Probably not. The truth was that Ash had disappointed him. His 334

S N A K E H E A D

godfather. Alex had hoped he would have been more of a friend, but despite all the time they had spent together, he had never really gotten to know him. Ash was too much of a mystery—and from the very start he had set out to trick Alex. That business on the beach in Perth.

He remembered his first sight of Ash, dressed as a soldier and carrying an assault rifle, looming out of the darkness as Alex stood on a fake mine in the middle of a fake barrage. How could they have done that to him? It had all been a test.

“You weren’t in any real danger. We knew exactly where you were all the time.”

That was what Ash had told him that first night at the Peninsula Hotel, sitting out at the swimming pool. Alex remembered it now.

And how had they known?

“There was a beacon inside the heel of one of your sneakers.”

His sneakers.

Alex looked down at them. All the color had faded, and they were ragged, full of holes. Was it possible, what he was thinking? Could it possibly be true? Alex had been given the sneakers when he was on the aircraft carrier that had picked him up when he first landed in Australia.

The beacon had been added by Colonel Abbott when he was staying with the SAS in Swanbourne.

He was wearing the same sneakers now.

B a t t e r i e s N o t I n c l u d e d 335

He had been given a complete change of clothes by Cloudy Webber when she had dressed him as an Afghan—but the shoes hadn’t fit him, so she had allowed him to keep his own. He hadn’t changed again until his dinner with Major Yu. He had worn the English designer shirt and jeans until he had arrived at the hospital. There had been fresh clothes in his room. But neither Major Yu nor Dr. Tanner had provided him with new footwear. So the beacon that he had been given in Swanbourne must still be on him. It wouldn’t be working. It had been designed for short-range use.

But it might be battery-operated.

Alex fought back the surge of excitement. He was too afraid of being disappointed. He leaned down and pulled the sneakers off so that he could examine them. If there was a tracking device, it would have to be buried in one of the heels. There was nowhere else to hide it. Alex turned the shoes over. The soles were made of rubber, and he couldn’t see any openings or anything that looked like a secret compartment. He pulled out the insoles. And that was when he found it. It was in the left shoe, directly over the heel: a flap that had been cut into the fabric and then sealed.

It took Alex ten minutes to get it open, using his fingers, his teeth, and a sharp stone from the riverbank. As he worked, he knew that this might all be for nothing.

The battery had been there for two weeks. It might be 336

S N A K E H E A D

dead. It surely wouldn’t fit the transmitter in the watch anyway. But the chances of finding a second battery in the Australian outback had been zero to begin with. Alex found it hard to believe that he had been carrying it all the time.

He pulled open the flap and there it was—the little pack of circuitry that had been designed to save his life during the bombardment in Swanbourne. And there was the power source too, a straightforward lithium battery, about twice the size of the one that should have been fitted into the watch. Alex eased it out and held it in the palm of his hand as if it were a nugget of pure gold. All he had to do was connect it. He had no screwdriver, no con-ductor, no metal contacts, nothing. Easy!

In the end, he broke two spikes off a nearby shrub and used them as miniature tweezers to pry out some of the wires from inside the heel of the shoe. It seemed to take forever, and as the sun climbed higher, he felt the sweat trickling down his forehead, but he didn’t stop to rest.

Painstakingly, he unstitched the inside of the radio beacon until he had two lengths of wire, each one barely more than an inch long. Did the battery still have any life? He rubbed the wires against it, and to his delight, he was rewarded by a tiny spark. So now all he had to do was connect the battery to the watch, using a couple of peb-bles to keep everything in place. There really was nothing more he could do. He set the battery next to the watch with the wires trailing inside, the two of them feeding B a t t e r i e s N o t I n c l u d e d 337

precious electricity into the transmitter, and balanced the entire thing on a rock. After that, he went and lay down in the shadow of a tree. Either the transmitter was working now or it wasn’t. He would find out soon enough.

A few minutes later he was sound asleep.

21

A T T A C K F O R C E

A L E X WA S W O K E N BY the sound of a helicopter. For a moment he was filled with dread, fearing that the Bell UH-1D had returned. If that were the case, he would let them take him. He simply didn’t have in him to fight anymore. There was nothing left with which to fight back.

But squinting into the sun, he saw at once that this was a bigger helicopter with two sets of rotors: a Chinook. And there was a figure already leaning out of the front door.

Blue eyes. Short black hair. A handsome, slightly boy-ish face. It was Ben Daniels.

Alex clambered to his feet as the Chinook landed on a patch of scrubland a short distance away. He went over to it, taking care where he put his bare feet. It would be just his luck to step on a death adder now! Ben stepped out and stared at him.

“So here you are!” he exclaimed, shouting over the noise of the helicopter rotors. “We were getting worried about you!” He shook his head in disbelief. “What on earth are you doing out here? Where have you been?”

“It’s a long story,” Alex said.

“Has it got anything to do with the smoke coming from upriver?” Ben jerked a thumb. “We saw it as we flew in.”

A t t a c k F o r c e

339

“That used to be a hospital.” Alex couldn’t hide his delight that things were finally going his way. “I’m really glad to see you . . .”

“Mrs. Jones has been frantic. We knew you’d flown to Jakarta, but we lost you after that. She’s got people all over Indonesia, but she sent me to Darwin in case you made it across. I’ve been waiting there for three days, hoping you’d get in touch. You look terrible! Like something the cat dragged in . . .”

“That’s how I feel.” Alex stopped. “What time is it, Ben?” he asked.

Ben was obviously surprised by the question. He looked at his watch. “It’s ten past one. Why do you ask?”

“We have to get moving. We’ve got less than twelve hours.”

“Until what?”

“I’ll tell you on the way . . .”

Alex was feeling a lot better than he had in a long time. He was warm and dry and well fed, and all the dangers of the last few days had slipped away behind him. He was lying on a comfortable bunk in a military compound just outside Darwin, which was where Ben Daniels had brought him earlier that day. He was wearing combat fatigues, the only clothes Ben had been able to find for him. For the last few hours he had been left on his own.

He could see a certain amount of activity outside the window. Soldiers crossing the parade ground, jeeps 340

S N A K E H E A D

speeding in and out of the main gate. The helicopter was still sitting where it landed. Half an hour ago, a gas truck had pulled up and Alex had watched as refueling began.

He wondered if it was significant. Maybe something was happening at last.

Despite everything, he couldn’t relax completely. It was six thirty, and very soon the sun would be setting, at the same time moving into the alignment with the earth and the moon that Major Yu had been waiting for. At midnight, Royal Blue would be lowered to the seabed and detonated. The devastation would begin.

And what were MI6 or ASIS doing to prevent it?

Alex had explained everything . . . not just to Ben but to a whole posse of Australian army officers. His story was incredible, almost beyond belief, but the strange thing was that not one person in the room had doubted him.

This was, after all, the boy who had dropped in from outer space. Alex supposed that where he was concerned, anything was now considered possible. One of the men was a technical adviser, and he had quickly confirmed what Major Yu had said. It would be possible to manufacture an artificial tsunami. From midnight onward, the fault line would be in the grip of enormous gravitational pressure. Even a relatively small explosion would be enough to trigger a global catastrophe, and Yu had all the power of Royal Blue at his command.

Of course, in one sense Scorpia’s mission had already failed. Thanks to Alex, the intelligence agencies knew A t t a c k F o r c e

341

what Scorpia were planning, and even if everyone on Reef Island were killed in a freak wave, nobody would now think it was an accident. Alex assumed that the island would be evacuated anyway, just to be on the safe side.

There was no longer any need for Major Yu to press the button. If he was sensible, he’d already be looking for somewhere to hide.

There was a knock on the door. Alex straightened up as Ben Daniels entered. He was looking grim.

“They want you,” he said.

“Who?”

“The cavalry’s just arrived. They’re in the mess hall . . .”

Alex walked across the compound with Daniels, wondering what had gone wrong. But at least he was grateful he was still being included. MI6 had always treated him as a spy one minute, a schoolboy the next, dumping him out of the way whenever it suited them.

The mess hall was a low wooden building running the full length of the square. With Daniels right behind him, Alex opened the door and went in.

Most of the officers he had spoken to earlier that day were still there, poring over maps and sea charts that had been spread out over the dining tables. They had been joined by two men that Alex recognized at once. This was the cavalry that Ben had referred to. Ethan Brooke was sitting at a table, with Marc Damon standing just behind him. Presumably they had been flown up from Sydney.

342

S N A K E H E A D

Garth—the guide dog—saw Alex come in and thumped his tail. At least someone was pleased to see him.

“Alex!” The blind man had become aware of his presence. “How are you doing?”

“I’m okay.” Alex wasn’t sure he was too happy to see the head of ASIS—Covert Action. Ethan Brooke had ma-nipulated him as cold-bloodedly as Alan Blunt would have in London. It seemed to him that all these people were of a type.

“I know what you’ve been through. I can’t believe the way things played out. But you did a fantastic job.”

“Major Yu knew about me all the time,” Alex said.

Even as he spoke the words, he knew they were true. The fight in Bangkok had been designed to cripple him. And on the Liberian Star, Alex had overheard Yu boasting to the captain. He had known Alex’s identity before he entered the container. He has simply been playing with him, for his own amusement.

“Yes. We have a security leak, and it’s worse than we thought.” Brooke glanced in the direction of his deputy, who looked away, as if he didn’t want to make any comment.

“What’s happened to Ash?” Alex asked.

“We don’t know. We only know what you told us.” Brooke fell silent, and Alex could see he was preparing himself for what he had to say.

“So what are you going to do?” Alex asked.

A t t a c k F o r c e

343

“We have a problem, Alex,” Brooke explained. “Here’s the situation . . . I’ll give it to you straight. The first thing is, the Reef Island conference is still going ahead.”

“Why?” Alex was shocked.

“We told them they were in danger. Obviously, we couldn’t give them all the details, but we suggested they pack their bags and get out of there in the strongest-possible terms. They refused. They said that if they left, they’d look like cowards. Tomorrow’s their main press conference, and how’s it going to look if they’ve all skulked away overnight? We’re still arguing with them, but in a way, I suppose they’ve got a point. Scorpia wanted them out of the picture. If they simply disappeared, they’d be doing the job for them.” Alex took this in. It was bad news—but Reef Encounter was only part of the picture. After the tsunami hit the island, it would continue on its way toward Western Australia.

“Have you found Major Yu?” he asked.

“Yes.” Brooke smiled briefly. “He told you he was on an oil platform in the Timor Sea, and we’ve gone through all the records, including the latest satellite images.

There’s an oil rig licensed to the Chada Trading Agency in Bangkok. It’s a semi-submersible platform moored in four thousand feet of water a hundred miles north of Reef Island.”

“Right in the subduction zone,” Damon muttered. It 344

S N A K E H E A D

was the first time he had spoken since Alex came into the room. “It’s called Dragon Nine.”

“So that’s it,” Alex said. It seemed obvious to him.

“You bomb it. Blow it out of the water. Kill Major Yu and everyone who works for him.”

“I’d love to do just that,” Brooke replied. “But first of all, Dragon Nine is just outside Australian waters. It’s in Indonesian territory. If I send a strike against it, I might accidentally start a war. It seems I can’t even send one man in a boat without written authority, and that could take days. Officially, we’re stuck . . .”

“Why can’t you ask the Indonesians for help?”

“They don’t trust us. By the time we’ve persuaded them we’re telling the truth, it’ll be too late.”

“So you’re just going to sit back and let him get on with it?” Alex couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Obviously not. Why do you think we’re here?” Ben Daniels took a step forward. “Why don’t you tell Scorpia that you know what they’re up to?” he asked.

“You said it just now. The plan only worked if we all thought the tsunami was caused naturally. If we tell them they’ve failed, maybe they’ll back off.”

“We’ve already tried,” Damon replied. “But Dragon Nine has shut down. It’s observing radio silence. And even if we did find a way to contact Major Yu, he might go ahead anyway. Why not? He’s obviously mad. And if the bomb’s already in place . . .”

A t t a c k F o r c e

345

“So what is the answer, Mr. Brooke?” one of the other officers asked.

“A small British-Australian task force. Unauthorized and illegal.” Brooke turned to Alex. “I’ve already spoken to your Mrs. Jones and she’s agreed. We have very little time, but I’ve assembled some of our best people. They’re getting equipped right now. You and Daniels go with them. We parachute you onto the oil rig. You find Royal Blue and deactivate it. Meanwhile, my people kill Major Yu. If you can locate the whereabouts of Ash, so much the better—but he’s not a priority. What do you say?” Alex was too shocked to say anything, but next to him, Ben Daniels shook his head. “I’m happy to go,” he said.

“But you can’t be serious, asking Alex. He’s only a kid, if you hadn’t noticed. And I’d have said he’s already done enough.”

Some of the Australian officers nodded in agreement, but Brooke wasn’t having any of it. “We can’t do it without Alex,” he said simply.

And Alex knew he was right. He had already told them what he had done on board the Liberian Star: the bomb and the scanning equipment. “I scanned my fingerprints into Royal Blue,” he said. “I’m the only one who can deactivate it.” He sighed. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

“I’ll expect you to look after him, Mr. Daniels,” Brooke continued. “But we don’t have a lot of time to 346

S N A K E H E A D

argue about this. It’s already seven o’clock, and it’s a two-hour trip.” He turned to Alex. “So, Alex. What do you say?”

Two men and a woman were watching the sun set on Reef Island.

The island was only a quarter of a mile long, but it was strikingly beautiful with white beaches, deep green palm trees, and a turquoise sea . . . all the colors somehow too vivid to be quite real. The north side of the island rose up, with limestone cliffs covered in vegetation and mangroves below. Here sea eagles circled and monkeys chattered in the trees. But on the southern side, everything was calm and flat. There was a wooden table and a bench on the sand. But no deck chairs, no sun umbrellas, no Coke bottles or anything that might suggest that, just over the horizon, the twenty-first century was ticking on.

There was only one building on Reef Island, a long wooden house with a thatched roof, partly on stilts. Normally, there were no generators. The only electricity was supplied by wind or water power. A large organic garden provided all the food. The owner of the house ate fish but not meat. A few cows, grazing in a field, were milked twice a day. There were chickens to lay eggs. An elderly goat, wandering free, was no use at all, but it had been there so long that nobody had the heart to ask it to leave.

In the last few days, the island had been invaded by a press corps, which had established itself in a series of A t t a c k F o r c e

347

tentlike structures behind the house. The journalists had brought their own generators. And meat. And alcohol.

And everything else they would need for the press conference the next day. They were enjoying themselves. It was nice to be able to report a story that people actually wanted to hear. And the weather during the last week had been perfect.

The woman on the beach was the actress—Eve Taylor—who owned the island. She had made quite a lot of bad films and one or two good ones, and she didn’t really care which was which. They all paid the same. One of the men was an American multimillionaire . . . a billionaire, in fact, although in recent years he had given much of his wealth away. The other man was the pop singer Rob Goldman, who had just returned from his tour of Australia.

“ASIS are still insisting we should leave,” Goldman was saying. “They say we could all be killed.”

“Have they explained the nature of the threat?” the millionaire asked.

“No. But they sounded serious.”

“Of course they did.” The actress let sand run through her fingers. “They want us to go. This is a trick. They’re just trying to scare us.”

“I don’t think so, Eve,” Goldman said.

Eve Taylor gazed at the horizon. “We’re safe,” she said. “Look how beautiful it is. Look at the sea! That’s part of the reason we’re here. To protect all this for the 348

S N A K E H E A D

next generation. I don’t care if there’s danger. I’m not going to run away.” She turned to the billionaire.

“Jason?”

The man shook his head. “I’m with you,” he said. “I never ran away from anything in my life and I’m not starting now.”

Three hundred miles farther south, in the cities of Derby, Broome, and Port Headland, thousands of people were watching the same sunset. Some of them were on their way home from work. Some were tucking children into bed. In pubs, in cars, on the beaches, wherever . . .

they were simply edging toward the end of another day.

And none of them knew that inch by inch, the bomb known as Royal Blue was already making its way down the pipe that would carry it to the seabed and below. That the sun and the moon were moving, inexorably, into an alignment that wouldn’t happen again for another century. And that a madman was waiting to press the button that would unleash chaos on the world.

Five hours until midnight.

And in an army camp south of Darwin, Alex Rider gave his answer and the final preparations began.

22

D R A G O N N I N E

E T H A N B R O O K E H A D H A N D P I C K E D ten soldiers from the Australian SAS for his assault team, and at least some of them needed no introduction. As Alex joined them in the hanger that was going to be used as a briefing room, he saw Scooter, Texas, X-Ray, and Sparks waiting for him, and suddenly he was back where this had all begun, on the beach near Swanbourne. He wasn’t sure if he should be glad or annoyed to meet up with them again.

Scooter was equally uncomfortable. “I’m really sorry about that trick we pulled on you, Alex,” he said. “We all felt bad about it. But we had our orders . . .”

“Colonel Abbott asked us to pass on a message,” Texas added. “No hard feelings. And if you ever come back to Swanbourne, we’ll throw a proper Aussie barbecue.”

“With no hand grenades,” Alex muttered.

“You got it.”

Alex looked at the other soldiers. None of them seemed to be older than twenty-four or twenty-five, meaning there was an age gap of just ten years between him and them. Maybe that was why all of them had accepted him. Like Alex, they had changed into night combat gear. A couple of them carried balaclavas. The rest had painted their hands and faces black.

350

S N A K E H E A D

The hanger was vast and empty. A blackboard had been placed in the middle with a row of metal benches.

Alex sat down next to Ben. The others took their places with Scooter facing them in front of the board. Once again, he seemed to be in charge. Scooter was looking tired. He seemed to have grown a lot older since Swanbourne—or maybe it was just that he knew how much was at stake. “We haven’t got a lot of time,” he began. “Nor do we have much of a plan . . . so this won’t take long.

“We’re parachuting in from about eight thousand feet.

I know a boat would have been easier and less conspicu-ous, but by the time we got there it would all be over. Anyway, it’s always possible our friend Major Yu has radar.” He turned to the blackboard. Someone had taped up what could have been an engineer’s drawing of two oil rigs—one square, the other triangular, joined by a narrow bridge. Each of the rigs had three cranes and one of them had a helicopter pad, represented by a square in a circle. Scooter picked up a stick, which he used as a pointer.

“All right—listen up!” He tapped the picture. “This is what we think Dragon Nine looks like. We don’t know because we don’t have any pictures and we haven’t had enough time to take any. All I can tell you for certain is that it’s a semi-submersible platform, which means that basically the whole thing floats on the surface of the water, connected to the seabed by a dozen steel tendrils.

D r a g o n N i n e

351

In case you’re wondering, each one of them is about a mile long.”

“What happens if they break?” someone asked.

“Nothing much. The whole thing will float away, like a ship without an anchor. At least that’s something we don’t have to worry about.” He pointed again. “The processing platform is on the left. Dragon Nine isn’t in production, so the whole area will be quiet—and that’s where we’re going to start. We’ll land on the helicopter pad. You’ll recognize it because it’s got this big letter H . . .” Scooter turned his attention to the square-shaped rig.

“This is the drilling platform,” he continued. “Once we’ve assembled and checked everyone’s there, we’ll make our way across the bridge, heading for the main derrick . . . that’s the metal tower over the well hole. And that’s where we’re going to find Royal Blue. Our friend Major Yu will be using some sort of system—maybe guide wires—to lower it down to the seabed.”

“So let’s blow it up,” X-Ray growled.

“It’s our first target,” Scooter agreed. “The power unit will be our second. But we can’t take anything for granted. Yu could just as easily be using a submarine to take the bomb down. That’s why Alex is here. Our job is to find the control room and get him there. He can deactivate Royal Blue—but no one else can, so if he gets shot we might as well pack up and go home. You hear what I’m saying? I want you to watch his back. And his front and his sides.”

352

S N A K E H E A D

Alex glanced down. He understood what Scooter was saying and why he had to say it, but he still didn’t like being picked out in this way.

“I’m afraid this mission isn’t as easy as it seems,” Scooter continued, although Alex wouldn’t have said it looked simple to begin with. “We’ve got no idea where the control room is. There are five different levels, two separate platforms. Yu could be on either. You’ve got to think of Dragon Nine as two metal cities. They’ve got their own storage depots, dormitories, mess halls, and recreation rooms as well as fuel tanks, desalination units, pump rooms, engineering blocks, and all the rest of it. Somehow we have to find our way through all that until we find what we’re looking for. Then we have to deal with Royal Blue. And when we start, it’s possible that we’re going to be spread out all over the place. We’re lucky that there’s not too much breeze, but there’s no moon. Just try not to fall into the sea.”

He paused. Eleven silent faces watched him from the two rows of benches. Alex could feel the clock already ticking. He wanted to be out and away.

“So what do we have on our side?” Scooter asked.

“Well, first there’s the element of surprise. Major Yu thinks he killed Alex, so he’ll have no idea we’re on our way. And also, there’s the question of timing.” He looked at his watch. “Yu can’t detonate the bomb whenever he likes. He’s tied into the one hour starting at midnight.

D r a g o n N i n e

353

That’s when the earth, sun, and moon are going to be in the right position. It’s nine o’clock now, and we’re only two hours from drop-off. That means we’ll have one hour plus to find Royal Blue before he can throw the switch.

And there’s something else we know, thanks to Alex. The bomb can only remain at depth for twenty minutes. So it’s not there yet. And if all goes well, it never will be.” He looked around.

“Any questions?”

There were none.

“We’ve got to move quickly and quietly,” he con -

cluded. “Take out as many of Yu’s people as we can before they know we’re there. Leave the guns and grenades for as long as possible. Use your knives. And find the control room! That’s what this is all about.” He set down the pointer.

“Let’s go.”

Everyone stood up. Ben had Alex’s parachute—black silk, for a night drop. He’d packed it himself before the briefing, and now he helped Alex put it on, pulling the straps tight across his chest and around his thighs.

“It’s probably a bit too late to ask you this,” he muttered. “But have you ever parachuted before?”

“Only once,” Alex admitted. That had been eight months ago. Alex had landed on the roof of the Science Museum in London. But he decided not to go into all that right now.

354

S N A K E H E A D

“Well, don’t worry if you miss the target,” Ben said.

“The sea’s warm. Conditions are perfect. And with a bit of luck, there won’t be too many sharks.” The Australian SAS men were already moving. Ben strapped on his own parachute, and the two of them followed the others out of the hangar. There was a helicopter waiting for them on the tarmac—the same one that had picked Alex up in the jungle. The Chinook CH-47 was the ideal machine for this night’s work. Often used to ferry troops or supplies, its wide rear exit was also perfect for parachute drops. It would fly them to the target at 190 miles per hour and at an altitude no higher than 8,500 feet. That wouldn’t leave long to deploy the chute.

Ben must have been reading his thoughts. “We’re using static line,” he said. The static-line deployment system meant that they wouldn’t have to pull a rip cord. The parachutes would open automatically.

Alex nodded. His mouth was suddenly too dry to speak.

They climbed in the back. In the jungle, Alex had used a door just behind the cockpit, but this time the whole rear section of the Chinook had been opened, forming a ramp big enough to take a jeep. Alex looked in. The pilot and the co-pilot were already in their seats. There was a third man, a flight engineer, cradling a 7.62-millimeter M60 general-purpose machine gun, which must have D r a g o n N i n e

355

been bolted on at some time during the day. Alex hoped it wouldn’t be needed.

The twelve of them took their places. There was a long row of seats facing each other on either side of the fuselage. Although they were made of canvas stretched over metal, they reminded Alex a little of dining room chairs.

Normally, the Chinook carries thirty-three men, so at least there was plenty of room. Alex sat next to Ben. It was clear that everyone expected them to stick together—

although how they would manage that, parachuting out into the night, was something they hadn’t discussed.

Scooter leaned over and clipped Alex’s rip cord to a silver rail running all the way to the cockpit. The pilot pressed a switch and slowly the rear door closed. A red light flashed on, the helicopter lurched off the ground, and moments later, they were on their way.

It was already dark, and there was nothing to see out of the windows, which were too small anyway to provide much of a view. Alex could only tell their height from the feeling in his stomach and the pressure in his ears. The SAS men were sitting silently, some of them checking their weapons—machine guns, pistols with silencers attached, and a wide variety of vicious-looking combat knives. Next to him, Ben Daniels had nodded off to sleep.

Alex guessed he’d be well practiced at taking a catnap whenever he needed it, conserving his strength.

But Alex couldn’t sleep. He was in a Chinook heli-356

S N A K E H E A D

copter with the Australian SAS, on his way to attack an oil rig and defuse a bomb before it caused a tsunami. And as usual, he was the only one who hadn’t been given a gun.

How had he managed to get himself into this? For a moment, he remembered walking with Jack Starbright on the Rocks in Sydney. It seemed a long, long time ago.

Below them the Timor Sea was black and still. They were rapidly approaching Indonesian airspace. The helicopter droned on through the night.

The light turned orange.

Smoothly, one inch at a time, the great door at the back of the helicopter dropped open, revealing the black rush of the night behind. Although it was true there was no moon, the sea seemed to be shining, as if with some natural phosphorescence—Alex could see it glinting far below.

He hadn’t even thought about the parachute jump until now, but as the reality hit him, his stomach lurched.

The simple truth was that he wasn’t some sort of daredevil who enjoyed the prospect of hurling himself from eight thousand feet in the dark. Right now he would give anything to be back in London with Jack.

Well, all he had to do was survive the next hour. One way or another, in just sixty minutes this would all be over.

The door had gone down as far as it could and clicked into position. It was jutting out of the back of the heli-D r a g o n N i n e

357

copter. A short walk into nothing. “I’ll be watching you,” Ben shouted. With the roar of the wind, only Alex heard.

“Don’t worry! I’ll stick close . . .”

“Thanks!” Alex shouted back the single word.

Then the light went green.

No time to think. Because of his position, Alex was going to be the first out. Maybe they had planned it that way. He didn’t even hesitate. If he stopped to think what he was doing, he might lose the resolve. Three steps, trailing the cord from his parachute behind him. Suddenly the blades were right over his head, thrashing the air. He felt a hand on his shoulder. Ben. He jumped.

There was a moment of complete disorientation—he remembered it from the last time—when he couldn’t quite believe what he’d done and had no idea what would happen next. He was falling so fast that he couldn’t breathe. He was completely out of control. Then the parachute opened automatically in the slipstream. He felt the jolt as his descent slowed. And then the peace. He was floating, dangling underneath an invisible silk canopy, black against the black night sky.

He looked down and saw the oil rig. He could only make out its vague shape—two geometric islands with a narrow corridor in between. There were about twenty lights, flickering and still tiny on the twin platforms. By joining them in his imagination, Alex was able to draw a mental image of Dragon Nine.

He twisted around and saw the helicopter, already far 358

S N A K E H E A D

away, and beneath it the eleven black flowers that were the other parachutes. It seemed to him that the Chinook was surprisingly quiet. If he could barely hear it at this altitude, perhaps Major Yu would have heard nothing below. Just as Scooter had promised, there was no wind.

The sea was utterly flat. Alex didn’t need to steer himself.

He seemed to be heading in exactly the right direction. He could make out the white H in the middle of the heliport.

H for happy landing . . . at least, that was what he hoped.

There are three stages to a parachute descent. The raw fear of the jump itself. The sense of calm once the chute has opened. And the first panic as the ground rushes up. Alex reached the third stage all too soon, and that was when he realized that he had drifted off course after all. Maybe he had been overconfident. Maybe some sea breeze had caught him unawares. But suddenly he found himself with nothing but water below him. He was drifting away from the triangular processing platform.

Urgently, Alex tugged the two cords at his shoulders, trying to change direction. He was plunging toward the sea.

He couldn’t let that happen. The splash might give the others away. Worse than that, he might drown.

Alex jerked and writhed helplessly but at the last minute another breeze caught him and carried him over the lip of the drilling platform and onto one of the decks.

He had been doubly lucky. The deck was wide enough to allow him to land safely, dropping to one knee and folding in his parachute in a single movement. And the area D r a g o n N i n e

359

he had chosen was like a metallic courtyard, enclosed on all sides. With a bit of luck, he would be completely out of sight. What about the noise of landing? No worries there. He had landed on a bumpy, uneven surface, close to some sort of electrical generator. The noise of the machinery would have covered the crash of his feet as they made contact with the metal surface.

Five seconds later, a figure dropped out of the sky and landed just a few yards away. It was Ben Daniels.

Unlike Alex, he must have chosen the deck with pin-point accuracy. He gathered in his chute and gave Alex the thumbs-up. Alex twisted around. As far as he could see, all the other SAS men had landed on the processing platform. He looked up. The helicopter had already gone, but presumably it would be nearby in case it was needed.

Alex realized that his own inexperience had spoiled Scooter’s plan. The whole idea had been to stick together.

It was vital that Alex should be protected at all times. In fact, he and Ben were cut off on the drilling platform.

The SAS men would have to make their way across the bridge to find him. And if Yu’s control room was on the other side, they would have to take Alex all the way back again.

Not good.

He looked around him. He realized now that he was standing on a row of pipes. The whole deck was covered with them, cut into lengths of about ten feet. A huge metal trough rose up out of the ground, slanting toward the 360

S N A K E H E A D

metal tower that housed the wellhead. Presumably, the pipes would be dragged up and somehow assembled in a straight line before they were lowered all the way to the seabed and beyond. On the other side, a metal wall rose up, like the side of a fortress. There were windows on the third or fourth floor, but they were so covered in dirt and grease that surely nobody would be able to see through them. One of the cranes stretched out over the water, its arm silhouetted against the stars and the night sky.

Ben Daniels had taken off his parachute. He scuttled over to Alex, keeping low. He must have already come to the same conclusion—but he had decided what to do.

“We won’t wait for them,” he whispered. “We’ll start looking over here. We don’t have a lot of time.” Alex didn’t have a watch. He looked at Ben’s. It was 11:10. He wondered how so much time could have passed so quickly.

The two of them set off together, making their way across the pipes, trying to find the way into the wellhead.

Dragon Nine was bigger than Alex had expected, but at the same time every inch was crammed with pipes and cables, cog wheels, chains, dials, and valves. The oil rig was also a living thing, throbbing and humming as different machines carried power or coolant to the various outlets.

It was a hard, unpleasant environment. Every surface had a permanent coating of mud, oil, grease, and puddles of salt water. Alex could feel his sneakers sticking to the floor as he walked.

D r a g o n N i n e

361

But Yu didn’t seem to have posted any guards. Scooter had been right about that. With Alex supposedly dead, why should he have been expecting any trouble, miles from anywhere, in the middle of the Timor Sea? Together, they eased their way around corners and between ventilation towers, immediately lost in the great tangle that had been designed to pump oil from the seabed, thousands of feet below. Ben was carrying a miniature flashlight, which he kept cupped in his left hand, allowing only a trickle of light to escape. His right hand held an automatic pistol, a Walther PPK with a Brausch silencer attached.

Scooter and the other SAS men had dropped out of sight. Alex could imagine them moving toward him on the other side of the water. In the far distance he thought he heard a sound: a soft thud, the clatter of metal against metal, a stifled cry cut off very quickly. Maybe there were guards after all. If so, one of them might be wishing that he had been a little more alert.

Ben was opening doors, peering in through windows.

There was still no sign of life on the drilling platform.

They climbed a flight of steps that brought them to a metal walkway on the very edge, high over the sea. Alex looked down, and that was when he saw it. The oil rig was actually balancing on four huge legs, like an oversized metal table. One of the legs had a ladder that ran all the way down to the surface, actually disappearing beneath it.

Next to the ladder and tucked away almost underneath 362

S N A K E H E A D

the platform was an executive yacht, the sort of thing that would have looked more at home in a private marina—

perhaps in the south of France. The boat was about sixty feet in length, sleek and white, with several sundecks and a bow that was clearly designed for speed. Alex tapped Ben on the shoulder and pointed. Ben nodded.

It had to belong to Major Yu. It was surely there to provide him with a fast escape, meaning that he must be on the processing platform, just as Scooter had suspected.

If Alex had known the make of the yacht, there would have been no doubt in his mind at all. It was a Sealine F42/5 flybridge motorboat with a unique extending cockpit system. It had been designed and manufactured in Britain.

Ben signaled the way forward. More than ever, Alex wished that Scooter and the others were with them. They were following a narrow gantry that led to a door set in a circular building, jutting out over the corner of the rig with curving windows that provided views in three directions.

The control room. It had to be.

They crept toward it. Alex didn’t know what Ben had in mind. Maybe he was going to wait for the rest of the squadron to catch up. That would have been the sensible thing to do.

But in the end, he was never given a choice. Without warning, a spotlight swept through the air, searing its way across the drilling platform. A second later, a machine D r a g o n N i n e

363

gun began firing, bullets ricocheting crazily off the rail-ings, slamming into the walls and sparking as they flew off the metal walkways. A siren began to wail, and at the same time Alex heard answering fire from the other side of the bridge. The silence of the night had been shattered.

There was an explosion, a ball of flame erupting into the night like a brilliant flower. More shooting. Ben twisted and fired twice. Alex didn’t even see his target, but there was a cry and a man fell out of the sky, slammed into a gantry, and bounced off it into the sea.

“This way!” Ben shouted. He had already started forward, and Alex went after him, knowing that Yu would be expecting them now but that there could be no going back. Yu’s men would be taking positions all over the oil rig. They had the advantage. There were a dozen ladders they could climb and platforms high above from where they could pick off the invaders one by one. He and Ben would be safer inside. The door was ahead of them, leading into the circular room. Ben reached it and crouched down. “Stay back!” he commanded.

Alex saw him count to three.

He slammed the door open and went in firing. Despite what he had been told and even though he wasn’t carrying a weapon himself, Alex followed. And that was how he saw what happened in the next few seconds, even though it would be a lot longer before he took it all in.

There had been two men in the control room, surrounded by computer screens, a radio transmitter, and 364

S N A K E H E A D

the equipment that Alex had seen on the Liberian Star.

One of them was Major Winston Yu. He was holding the pistol that he had just used to gun down Ben Daniels.

Ben was lying on the floor in a spreading pool of his own blood. The Walther PPK had dropped out of his hand and lay pointing toward Alex. There was another man lying facedown a short distance away, and Alex realized that Ben must have shot him as he came in. Major Yu himself was unhurt. He was staring at Alex in astonishment and disbelief.

Somehow he managed to recover. “Well, this is a surprise,” he said.

Alex didn’t move. He was less than three yards away from Yu. He had nowhere to go. Yu could shoot him down at any time.

“Come in and close the door,” Yu said.

Alex did as he was told. Outside, the battle was still going on—but it was happening on the other platform.

Too far away. The heavy door clicked shut.

“I knew you hadn’t drowned in the river,” Yu said.

“Something told me. And when we couldn’t find your body . . .” He shook his head. “I have to say, Alex, you’re very hard to kill.”

Alex didn’t reply. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Ben’s pistol lying on the floor, and part of him wondered if he could dive down and grab it. But he would never be able to bring it around and fire it in time. He was too easy a target.

D r a g o n N i n e

365

“You’re finished, Major Yu,” Alex said. “And you’ve failed. ASIS knows what you’re trying to do. Reef Island has been evacuated. There’s no point in setting off a tsunami. Everyone will know it was you.” Yu considered Alex’s words carefully. Part of what he had said had been a lie—the Reef Island conference was still taking place—but there was no way Yu could know that. Alex was here. He had brought the SAS with him.

The facts spoke for themselves.

Eventually, Yu sighed. “You’re probably right,” he said.

“But I think we’ll go ahead anyway. After all, it’s been months of planning, and I’d like to make my mark on the world.”

“But you’ll kill thousands of people—for no reason.”

“What reason can you give me to spare them?” Yu shook his head. “World chaos does have its uses, Alex.

This was never just about Reef Island. The reconstruction of the Australian coast will cost billions of dollars, and I have commercial interests all over Southeast Asia. The Chada Trading Agency has shares in many building companies that will be first in line for the new contracts.

Unwin Toys will offer gifts to the many hundreds of new orphans—paid for, of course, by the Australian government. There are all sorts of other interests too. A snakehead thrives on misfortune and unhappiness. For us it just means new business.”

He glanced at one of the television screens. Alex saw a white line running straight from the top to the bottom.

366

S N A K E H E A D

There was a blinking red square attached to it, moving slowly downward.

“Royal Blue,” Yu said. “In six or seven minutes it will reach the seabed and enter the shaft that I told you about.

The shaft continues a further half mile down. At midnight exactly the bomb will detonate, and my work will be done.

By then, I will be a long way away and you will be no more than a fading memory.”

He raised the gun. The single black eye searched for him.

“Good-bye, Alex.”

And that was when Alex heard a groan. It came from the floor. The man who had been shot by Ben Daniels was struggling to drag himself into a sitting position. Major Yu was delighted. “How very fortunate!” he exclaimed, lowering the weapon. “Before you die, I can introduce you to one of my most trusted and effective colleagues. Although on second thought, I believe you’ve already met.” The man looked up.

It was Ash.

He had been shot twice in the chest and the life was seeping out of him. Alex could see it in the dark eyes, which were filled with pain and remorse and something that was less definable but that might have been shame.

“I’m sorry, Alex,” Ash gasped. He had to stop himself to catch his breath. “I didn’t want you to know.”

“I’m not sure that Alex is surprised,” Yu remarked.

D r a g o n N i n e

367

Alex shook his head. “I guessed.”

“May I ask how?”

This time there was no point in ignoring the question.

Yu had been about to shoot him anyway. The longer Alex could keep him talking, the more chance there was that the SAS might finally arrive. Alex could hear the alarm, but there was less shooting and it seemed to be farther away. Had the SAS been overpowered, or were they already in command and on their way? He glanced at the television screen. The little red square was continuing its journey down.

“Everything went wrong from the start,” he said, talking directly to Major Yu. “Ethan Brooke had already lost two agents. Somehow the snakehead knew everything he planned. They knew about me too. Why else was I chosen for that fight in Bangkok? It didn’t make any sense.

But then, when I was in the arena, Mr. Sukit said something to me. He said he’d kill me if I didn’t take part, and he said it first in French, then in English. Why? If he really believed I was an Afghan boy, he’d have known I wouldn’t speak either.

“I wondered about that. But it got worse. Ash gave me an emergency telephone number. I called it and it led me straight to you.”

Ash opened his mouth to speak, but Alex cut in.

“I know,” he said. He looked briefly at the dying man.

“You made it look good with the fake blood, as if you’d 368

S N A K E H E A D

been taken prisoner like me. But then I lost two of the gadgets Smithers had given me, and that was when I knew it had to be you.

“I told you about the watch and the belt. Somehow the battery disappeared out of the watch. I suppose you must have done that when I was asleep that night in Jakarta. As for the belt, Major Yu took that when I was in his house.

But I’d never told you about the coins. Smithers had also given me coins with an explosive charge and those stayed in my pocket. If I’d told you, I guess those would have gone too.”

He stopped.

“When did you start working for Scorpia, Ash?” he asked.

Ash glanced at Major Yu.

“Tell him—but be quick,” Yu snapped. “I don’t think we have very much time.”

“It was after Mdina.” Ash’s voice was weak. His face was gray, and he could no longer move from the chest down. One hand was on his chest. The other lay palm upward on the floor. “You can’t understand, Alex. I was so badly hurt. Yassen . . .” He coughed, and blood speckled his lip. “I had given everything to the service. My life. My health. I wasn’t even thirty, and I was crippled. I was never going to sleep properly, never eat properly. From that day on it was just pills and pain.

“And what was my reward? Blunt humiliated me. I D r a g o n N i n e

369

was demoted, taken out of the field. He told me . . .” Ash swallowed hard. With every word he was finding it hard to go on. “He told me what I already knew,” he rasped.

“I was second rate. Never as good . . . as your dad.” He had almost come to the end of his strength. His shoulders slumped, and for a moment Alex thought he had gone. The blood was all around him now. There was a steady flow of it from his mouth.

Major Yu was enjoying himself. “Why don’t you tell him the rest of it, Ash?” he crowed.

“No!” Ash straightened his head. “Please . . .”

“I already know,” Alex said. He turned to Ash one last time. He could hardly bear to look at him. “You killed my parents, didn’t you? The bomb in the airplane. You put it there.”

Ash couldn’t answer. His hand tightened on his chest.

He had only seconds left.

“We had to test him,” Major Yu explained. “When he came over to us, we had to make sure he was telling us the truth. After all, we had just been tricked by one British intelligence agent—John Rider. So we set him a very simple task, one that would prove to us with no doubt that he was ready to switch sides.”

“I didn’t want to . . .” It wasn’t Ash’s voice. It was just a whisper.

“He didn’t want to, but he did. For the money. He put the bomb on the plane and he detonated it with his own 370

S N A K E H E A D

hand. Rather more successful than his mission in Mdina.

And the start of a long association with us.”

“Alex . . .”

Ash tried to look up. But his head fell forward. He was dead.

Major Yu prodded him with his foot. “Well, as they say, Ash to ashes and dust to dust,” he remarked. “I’m glad you heard that from him, Alex. You can take it with you to the grave.”

He raised the gun once again and pointed it at Alex.

There was an explosion, loud and near. But it wasn’t the gun. The entire room shook, and dust and metal fil-ings came showering down from the roof. Alex heard a shearing of metal as the crane overhead broke in half and came crashing down. The shock sent Major Yu reeling back. His arm banged against one of the work surfaces and the gun went off, the bullet smashing uselessly into a wall. Major Yu was shouting in agony, and Alex realized that the impact of the blow had shattered the brittle bone in Yu’s arm. The gun now lay useless on the ground.

Deafened, half dazed, Alex threw himself onto the gun, snatched it in both hands, desperate to protect himself from further attack. But he was already too late. Yu had already decided to leave. The room was full of smoke.

The SAS were here. Alex Rider would have to wait until another day.

There was a trapdoor set in the floor, with the ladder leading down underneath. Somehow, using his one good D r a g o n N i n e

371

arm, he pulled it open and climbed down, dropping into the boat below. But the fall had been too far for his bones.

The impact broke both his ankles. Howling with agony, barely able to stand, he groped his way over to the controls. He used a knife to cut through the mooring rope. A second later, he was speeding away.

Meanwhile, Alex had staggered over to the controls.

On the TV, the little square representing Royal Blue was about two inches above the seabed but edging closer all the time. There was the scanner, wired into the computer.

Alex slammed his palm onto the glass panel and let out a sigh of relief as a line of text appeared on the computer screen.

> AUTHORIZATION ACCEPTED

There was a pause, then a second line scrolled across.

> Override master commands? Y/N

Alex tapped on the Y key just as the door crashed open and about half a dozen SAS men somehow managed to burst in, covering every angle with their weapons. Scooter was at the front of them with Texas and X-Ray right behind him. It looked as if Sparks, the young soldier who had once played a guitar on an Australian beach, hadn’t made it.

Scooter saw Alex. “Where’s Yu?” he demanded.

372

S N A K E H E A D

“Gone.” Alex had his eyes fixed on the screen. A menu had come up. He ran his eye down the list of options, looking for the one that said DISARM or DEACTIVATE.

But it wasn’t there. Instead, his eyes settled on the last command.

> DETONATE

“Over here!” It was Texas. He had found Ben Daniels and was already kneeling beside him, tearing open his shirt to examine his wound. One of the other soldiers rushed over with a medical kit.

Alex slid the mouse, highlighting the last command.

He looked at the television screen. Royal Blue was still above the seabed but almost touching it. He remembered what he had heard. The bomb still had another half mile to travel, far down into the Earth’s crust. A timeline read 23:47:05:00, the microseconds flickering and changing too fast for his eye to follow. But the bomb still had thirteen more minutes until it would be in position. The moon and the sun were not quite ready yet.

Could Alex destroy the bomb without accidentally setting off the tsunami?

In desperation he turned to the SAS leader, who seemed to understand the stakes almost at once.

“Do it,” he said.

Alex double-clicked on the command.

Three thousand, five hundred feet below Dragon Nine D r a g o n N i n e

373

but five hundred feet above the seabed, the bomb exploded. Alex felt the entire oil rig shudder violently, and the floor veered crazily beneath his feet as five of the steel tethers along with the drill pipe itself were torn apart.

And half a mile away, speeding through the water in his Sealine yacht, Major Yu heard the explosion and knew, with an overwhelming sense of bitterness and defeat, that even his last hopes had been destroyed.

Somehow Royal Blue had been detonated too early. There would be no tsunami. He sat, hunched up in front of the steering wheel, moaning quietly to himself. He had com-prehensively failed.

He didn’t even feel the shock wave from the explosion until it hit him, but this of course was the main purpose of Royal Blue, to flatten anything for miles around. The pulse smashed into the yacht, destroying the electric system, snuffing out the lights, ripping every fitting apart.

Major Yu’s bone structure wasn’t strong enough to with-stand it. Every single bone in his body fractured at the same time. For about two seconds, he remained vaguely human. Then his body, with no frame to support it, crumpled in on itself, a bag of skin full of broken pieces. The boat veered around, a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of British engineering with no one to steer it. Zigzagging crazily, it disappeared into the night.

Back on Dragon Nine, Yu’s remaining men were being rounded up. The SAS had lost two men, with three more injured. Ben Daniels was still alive. He’d been given a 374

S N A K E H E A D

shot of morphine, and there was an oxygen mask strapped to his face.

Scooter had finally noticed the other body lying in the control room.

“Who was that?” he asked.

Alex took one last look at his godfather.

“It was nobody,” he said.

23

D I N N E R F O R T H R E E

“ I T ’ S V E RY G O O D T O see you, Alex. How are you getting on at school?”

It seemed a very long time since Alex had last found himself back in this room, the office on the fifteenth floor of the building on Liverpool Street that called itself the Royal and General Bank but that in fact housed the Special Operations division of MI6. Alan Blunt, its chief executive, was sitting opposite him, his desk as neat and as empty as ever: a couple of folders, some papers await-ing signature, a single pen, solid silver, resting at an angle.

Everything in its place. Alex knew that Blunt liked it that way.

Blunt didn’t seem to have changed at all. Even the suit was the same, and if there was a little more gray in his hair, who would notice when the man had been entirely gray to begin with? But Blunt was not the sort of person to grow old and wrinkled, to wear baggy sweaters, play golf, and spend more time with his grandchildren. His job, the world he inhabited, had somehow pinned him down. He was, Alex decided, a twenty-first-century fossil.

It was the first week of December, and suddenly the temperature had dropped, as if in response to the Christmas decorations, which were going up all around. There 376

S N A K E H E A D

had even been a few scatterings of snow. There wasn’t enough to stick, but it had added a certain chill to the air.

Walking to the office, Alex had passed a Salvation Army band playing “Good King Wenceslas.” The players had been huddling together as if for comfort, and even their music had been cold and mournful . . . as well as slightly out of tune.

He couldn’t hear the music in the office. The windows would doubtless have been double or triple glazed to stop any sound from coming in or—more importantly—

leaking out. He focused his attention on the man sitting opposite him and wondered how he should answer the question. Blunt would know already, of course. He would probably have access to Alex’s school reports before they were even printed.

Alex had just completed his first week back at Brookland School. Blunt would know that too. Alex had no doubt that he had been under twenty-four-hour surveillance from the moment his Qantas flight had touched down at Heathrow Airport and he had been hurried out through the VIP channel to the waiting car outside. The last time he had taken on Scorpia, he had been shot, and MI6 certainly weren’t going to let that happen again. He thought he had seen his tail once: a youngish man standing on a street corner, seemingly waiting for a taxi. When he had looked for him a second later, the man had disappeared. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Blunt’s field agents knew how to live in the shadows.

D i n n e r f o r T h r e e

377

And so, finally, he was back at school.

For most kids of his age, it meant coursework and homework, lessons that dragged on too long, and terrible food. For Alex it was all that and something more. He had been nervous, walking back into Brookland on a chilly Monday morning. It had seemed a long time since he had seen the familiar buildings: the bright red brickwork and the stretches of plate glass. Miss Bedfordshire, the school secretary, who had always had a soft spot for him, had been waiting in the reception area.

“Alex Rider!” she had exclaimed. “What has it been this time?”

“Glandular fever, Miss Bedfordshire.” Alex’s illnesses had become almost legendary in the past year. Part of him wondered if Miss Bedfordshire really believed in them or if she was just playing along.

“You’re going to have to drop a whole year if you’re not careful,” she remarked.

“I’m very careful, Miss Bedfordshire.”

“I’m sure you are.”

In Sydney, Alex had been worried that he wouldn’t fit in, but from the very first moment he arrived, it was almost as if he hadn’t been away. Everyone was pleased to see him, and he wasn’t as far behind as he had feared. He would have extra tutoring over the Christmas vacation, and with a bit of luck he would be at the same level as everyone else by the time he began the next semester.

Surrounded by his friends and swept along by the day’s 378

S N A K E H E A D

routine—the ringing bells, the slamming doors, and desks—Alex realized that he wasn’t just back at school.

He was back in normal life.

But he had been expecting Alan Blunt to make contact, and sure enough, he had got the call on his cell. Blunt had asked Alex to come to a meeting on Friday afternoon.

Alex had noticed the one small difference. Blunt had asked. He hadn’t demanded.

So here he was with his backpack still full of books for the weekend: a particularly vicious math paper and Animal Farm, by George Orwell. Another British writer, he reflected. Major Yu would surely have loved it. Alex was wearing his school uniform—a dark blue jacket, gray trousers, and a purposefully crooked tie. Jack had bought him a scarf when she was on vacation in Washington and it was hanging loosely around his neck. He felt relieved to look the same as everyone else. He just wanted to get back to normal.

“There are a few things you might like to know,” Blunt said. “Starting with a message from Ethan Brooke. He asked me to pass on his thanks and his good wishes. He said that if you ever decide to emigrate to Australia, he’ll be happy to arrange a permanent visa.”

“That’s very kind of him.”

“Well, you did a remarkable job, Alex. Quite apart from tracking down our missing weapon, you’ve more or less destroyed the snakehead. The Chada Trading Agency has gone out of business, as has Unwin Toys.” D i n n e r f o r T h r e e

379

“Did you realize it was an anagram?” Mrs. Jones asked. She was sitting in a chair next to the desk, one leg crossed over the other, looking very relaxed. Alex got the sense that she was glad to see him. “Unwin Toys. Winston Yu. That was the vanity of the man . . . he named it after himself.”

“Have you found him?” Alex asked. He had last seen Yu climbing into the motorboat and didn’t know if he’d gotten away.

“Oh yes. We found what was left of him. Not a pleasant sight.” Blunt folded his hands in front of him. “Yu dealt with quite a lot of his own people before ASIS could reach them,” he went on. “I think you know that he killed the captain of the Liberian Star . . . De Wynter. After your escape from the hospital, Dr. Tanner committed suicide, possibly following orders from Yu. ASIS did manage to pick up the rest of the staff, though. Two guards—one of them with a fractured skull—and a handful of nurses.

They also arrested a man called Varga . . .” The name meant nothing to Alex.

“He was a technician,” Mrs. Jones explained. “He helped adapt Royal Blue to work underwater. He also set up the detonation procedure.”

Now Alex recalled the man he had glimpsed on the Liberian Star, setting up the scanner for Major Yu.

“He was a fairly low-level Scorpia operative,” Blunt added. “Out of Haiti, I understand. He’s being questioned and may provide some useful information.” 380

S N A K E H E A D

“How is Ben?”

“He’s still in the hospital in Darwin,” Mrs. Jones said.

“He was lucky. The bullets didn’t do any serious damage, and the doctors say he’ll be out by Christmas.”

“We’ll look after him,” Blunt added.

“Better than you looked after Ash.” Alex looked Blunt straight in the eyes.

“Yes.” Blunt shifted uncomfortably. “I wanted you to know, Alex, that we had no idea about Ash’s involvement with Scorpia. Even now I find it hard to believe that he had any involvement with . . . what happened to your parents.”

“I’m so sorry, Alex,” Mrs. Jones cut in. “I understand how you must be feeling.”

“Do you think Ethan Brooke knew?” Alex asked. It was something he had been thinking about on the long flight home. “He knew someone was a traitor. Someone had been feeding the snakehead with information all along. He put me together with Ash. Was that what he really wanted? To flush him out?”

“It’s quite possible,” Blunt said, and Alex was surprised. The head of MI6 wasn’t normally so honest.

“Brooke is a very devious man.”

“It’s what makes him so good at his job,” Mrs.

Jones remarked.

It was five o’clock. Outside, it was getting dark. Alan Blunt went over to the window and shooed away a couple of pigeons. Then he lowered the blind.

D i n n e r f o r T h r e e

381

“There are only a couple of things to add,” he said as he took his place again. “Most important of all, we want you to know that you’re safe. Scorpia aren’t going to have another crack at you.” He blinked twice. “Not like last time.”

“We’ve been in contact with them,” Mrs. Jones explained. “We made it clear that if anything happened to you, we would let the whole world know that they had been beaten—for a second time—by a fourteen-year-old boy. It would make them a laughingstock and would destroy what little reputation they have left.”

“Scorpia may be finished anyway,” Blunt said. “But they got the message. We’ll keep an eye on you just to be on the safe side, but I don’t think you need to worry.”

“And what was the other thing?” Alex asked.

“Only that we hope you found what you were looking for, Alex.” It was Mrs. Jones who had answered.

“I found some of it,” Alex said.

“Your father was a very good man,” Blunt muttered.

“I’ve told you that before. You obviously take after him, Alex. And maybe, when you leave school, you’ll think again about intelligence work. We still need people like you, and it’s not a bad career.”

Alex stood up. “I’ll show myself out,” he said.

He took the subway back to Sloane Square and then a bus along King’s Road to his house. He had told Jack he would be late home from school. The two of them would 382

S N A K E H E A D

have supper together when he arrived, and then he would start his homework. He was seeing his friend Tom Har-ris on Saturday. The Chelsea soccer team were playing at home against Arsenal, and somehow Tom had managed to scrounge two tickets. Otherwise, Alex had no plans for the weekend.

Jack Starbright was waiting for him in the kitchen, putting the final touches to a salad. Alex helped himself to a glass of apple juice and hoisted himself onto one of the bar stools by the counter. He liked to talk to Jack while she cooked.

“How did you make out?” she asked.

“It was fine,” Alex said. He reached out and stole a piece of tomato. “Alan Blunt offered me a job.”

“I’ll kill you if you take it.”

“Don’t worry. I let him know I wasn’t interested.” Jack knew everything that had happened to Alex since she had left him in Sydney, including Ash’s final moments on Dragon Nine. He had told her his story the moment he got home, and when he had finished, she had turned away and sat for a long minute in silence. When she had finally turned back again, there had been tears in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Alex had said. “I know you liked him.”

“That’s not what’s upsetting me, Alex,” she had replied.

“Then what?”

“It’s this world. MI6. What it did to him, to your parents. I suppose I’m scared about what it’ll do to you.”

“I think I’ve finished with it, Jack.” D i n n e r f o r T h r e e

383

“That’s what you said last time, Alex. But the question is—has it finished with you?”

Now Alex glanced at the table. He noticed that it was set for three. “Who’s coming for supper?” he asked.

“I forgot to tell you.” Jack smiled. “We have a surprise guest.”

“Who?”

“You’ll find out when they get here.” She had barely spoken the words when the front doorbell rang. “That’s good timing,” she went on. “Why don’t you answer it?” Alex noticed something strange in her eyes. It wasn’t like Jack to have secrets from him. He was still holding the piece of tomato. He tossed it back into the salad, swung himself down, and went out to the hall.

He could just make out a figure shimmering behind the mottled glass of the front door. Whoever it was had activated the automatic light on the porch. Alex threw open the door and stopped in complete surprise.

A young, dark-haired, and very attractive girl was standing there. The car that had dropped her off was just moving away. Alex was so stunned that it took him a minute to recognize her. Even then, he didn’t believe who it was.

“Sabina!” he exclaimed. The last time he had seen Sabina Pleasure, the two of them had been on Richmond Bridge on the river Thames when she had told him she was leaving for America. He had been convinced that he would never see her again.

384

S N A K E H E A D

That had been only a few months ago, but she looked completely different. She must be almost sixteen now.

Her hair had grown longer, and her shape had changed.

She looked wonderful in tight-fitting DKNY jeans and a soft cashmere jersey.

“Hi, Alex.” She stood where she was as if she were a little wary of him.

“What are you doing here?”

“Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“Of course I am. But . . .” Alex’s voice trailed off.

Sabina smiled. “That was my dad in the car. We’re visiting for Christmas. He’s over here writing a story for the paper. Something about some sort of weird church or something. He got me out of school early, and we’re going to stay over here until the new year.”

“In London?”

“Where else?”

“Is your mom here?”

“Yeah. We’re renting an apartment in Notting Hill.” The two of them stared at each other. There were all sorts of things Alex wanted to say. He didn’t know where to begin.

“Are you two going to come in?” Jack called from the kitchen. “Or would you like me to serve dinner in the street?”

There was a moment of awkwardness. Alex realized that he hadn’t even invited Sabina into the house. Worse than that, he was actually blocking the way. He stepped to D i n n e r f o r T h r e e

385

one side to let her pass. She smiled a little nervously and stepped inside. But the doorway was narrow, and as she came in, he felt her briefly against him. Her hair brushed his cheek, and he smelled the perfume she was wearing.

At that moment, he realized how glad he was to see her.

It was as if everything was beginning all over again.

Now she was in the hall and he was the one outside.

“Sabina . . . ,” he began.

“Alex,” she said, “I’m freezing. Why don’t you shut the door?”

Alex smiled and closed the door, and the two of them went in.

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

AS WITH ALL THE Alex Rider books, I’ve tried to make Snakehead as accurate as possible—and I wouldn’t have been able to do this without the generous help of people all around the world. So it seems only polite to mention them here.

Dr. Michael Foale at NASA spoke to me at length for a second time, and the opening chapter is largely based on his own experiences returning from outer space. The mechanism by which Major Yu brings chaos to the world was suggested to me by Professor Bill McGuire at University College London . . . he also came up with the planetary alignment that makes it feasible.

Panos Avramopoulos at CMA-CGM Shipping (UK) Ltd. kindly arranged for me to visit a container ship, and Captain Jenkinson allowed me on board. A few weeks later, Andy Simpson of Global SantaFe and Rupert Hunt from Shell gave up a whole day of their time to show me around an oil rig near Aberdeen. Neither of these visits would have been possible without Jill Hughes, to whom I am eternally grateful.

I spent a week in Bangkok, where I was looked after by the author Stephen Leather, who took me to all sorts of locations, many of which I wasn’t allowed to mention 388

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

in the book! He also accompanied me to the Thai kick-boxing fight that is the basis of Chapter Eight. I also want to thank Justin Ractliffe, who showed me around Perth and Sydney during a lengthy book tour.

Joshua King, Alfie Faber, Max Packman-Walder and Emma Charatan all read the manuscript and gave me great notes and advice. Not for the first time, my son Cassian suggested some major changes.

Finally, my assistant Cat Taylor organized everything and then organized it again when I changed my mind.

Justin Somper continues to be the guiding light behind much of Alex’s success. And my very lovely editor, Jane Winterbotham, spent hours trawling through some of the most painful notes ever to come out of a publishing house to ensure that all the dates and times make sense.

AH