Point Blanc (4 page)

Suddenly Beckett swore. "What the...?"

"What is it?" Skoda looked up.

"The cup..."

Skoda watched as a cup of coffee, which had been
sitting on a shelf, began to move. It slid sideways, then fell off with a
clatter, spilling cold coffee on the gray rag that they called a carpet. Skoda
was confused. The cup seemed to have moved on its own. Nothing had touched it.
He giggled. "How did you do that?" he asked.

"I didn't."

"Then..."

The fair-haired man was the first to realize what was
happening--but even he couldn't guess the truth. "We're
sinking!" he shouted.

He scrabbled for the door. Now Skoda felt it for
himself. The floor was tilting. Test tubes and beakers slid into each other,
then crashed to the floor, glass shattering. He swore and followed
Beckett--uphill now. With every second that passed, the gradient grew
steeper. But the strange thing was that the barge didn't seem to be
sinking at all. On the contrary, the front of it seemed to be rising out of the
water.

"What's going on?" Skoda yelled.

"The door's jammed!" Beckett had
managed to open it an inch, but the wire on the other side was holding it firm.
"Check the other door!"

But the second door was now high above them. More
bottles rolled off the table and smashed. In the kitchen, dirty plates and mugs
slid into each other, pieces flying. With something between a sob and a snarl,
Skoda tried to climb up the mountainside that the inside of the boat had become.
But it was already too steep. The door was almost over his head. He lost his
balance and fell backward, shouting as, one second later, the other man was
thrown on top of him. The two of them rolled into the corner, tangled up in
each other. Plates, cups, knives, forks, and dozens of pieces of scientific
equipment crashed into them. The walls of the barge were grinding with the
pressure. A window shattered. A table turned itself into a battering ram and
buried itself at them. Skoda felt a bone snap in his arm and screamed out loud.

The barge was completely vertical, standing in the
water at ninety degrees. For a moment it rested where it was. Then it began to
rise...

Alex stared at the barge in amazement. The crane was
lifting it at half speed--some sort of override had come into action,
slowing the operation down--but it wasn't even straining. Alex could
feel the power under his palms. Sitting in the cabin with both hands on the
joysticks, his feet apart and the jib of the crane jutting out ahead of him, he
felt as if he and the crane had become one. He had only to move an inch and the
five-ton boat would be brought to him. He could see it, dangling on the hook,
spinning slowly. Water was streaming off the bow. It was already clear of the
water, rising up about five yards per second. He wondered what it must be like
inside.

And then the radio beside his knee hissed into life.

"Crane operator! This is base. What the hell do
you think you're doing? Over!" A pause, a burst of static. Then the
metallic voice was back. "Who is in the crane? Who's up there? Will
you identify yourself..."

There was a microphone snaking toward Alex's
chin and he was tempted to say something. But he decided against it. Hearing a
teenager's voice would only panic them more.

He looked down between his knees. About a dozen
construction workers were closing in on the base of the crane. Others were
pointing at the boat, jabbering amongst themselves. No sounds reached the
cabin. It was as if Alex were cut off from the real world. He felt very secure.
He had no doubt that more workers had already started climbing the ladder and
that it would all be over soon, but for the moment he was untouchable. He
concentrated on what he was doing. Getting the barge out of the water had been
only half his plan. He still had to finish it.

"Crane operator! Lower the hook! We believe
there are people inside the boat and you are endangering their lives. Repeat.
Lower the hook!"

The barge was almost two hundred feet above the water,
swinging on the end of the hook. Alex moved his left hand, turning the crane
around so that the boat was dragged in an arc along the river and then over dry
land. There was a sudden buzz. The jib came to a halt. Alex pushed the
joystick. Nothing happened. He glanced at the computer. The screen had gone
blank.

Someone at ground level had come to his senses and
done the only sensible thing. He had switched off the power. The crane was
dead.

Alex sat where he was, watching the barge swaying in
the breeze. He hadn't quite succeeded in what he had set out to do. He
had planned to lower the boat--along with its contents--safely into
the parking lot by the police station. It would have made a nice surprise for
the authorities, he had thought. Instead the boat was now hanging over the
conference center that be had seen from Putney Bridge. But at the end of the
day, he supposed it didn't make much difference. The result would be the
same.

He stretched his arms and relaxed, waiting for the
trapdoor to burst open. This wasn't going to be easy to explain.

And then he heard the tearing sound.

The metal stanchion that protruded from the end of the
deck had never been designed to carry the entire weight of the barge. It was a
miracle that it had lasted as long as it had. As Alex watched, openmouthed, the
stanchion tore itself free. For a few seconds it clung by one edge to the deck.
Then the last metal rivet came loose.

The five-ton barge had been sixty yards above the
ground. Now it began to fall.

In the Putney Riverside Conference Center, the chief of
the Metropolitan Police was addressing a large crowd of journalists, TV
cameramen, civil servants, and government officials. He was a tall, thin man
who took himself very seriously. His dark blue uniform was immaculate, with
every piece of silver--from the studs on his epaulettes to his five
medals--polished until it gleamed. This was his big day. He was sharing
the platform with no less a personage than the home secretary himself. The
assistant chief of police was there as well as seven lower-ranking officers. A
slogan was being projected onto the wall behind him.

WINNING THE WAR AGAINST DRUGS

Silver letters on a blue background. The chief of
police had chosen the colors himself, knowing that they matched his uniform. He
liked the slogan. He knew it would be in all the major newspapers the next
day--along with, just as important, a photograph of himself.

"We have overlooked nothing!" he was
saying, his voice echoing around the modern room. He could see the journalists
scribbling down his every word. The television cameras were all focused on him.
"Thanks to my personal involvement and efforts, we have never been more
successful." He smiled at the home secretary, who smiled toothily back. "But
we are not resting on our laurels. Oh, no! Any day now we hope to announce
another breakthrough."

That was when the barge hit the glass roof of the
conference center. There was an explosion. The chief of police just had time to
dive for cover as a vast, dripping object plunged down toward him. The home
secretary was thrown backward, his glasses flying off his face. His security
men froze, helpless. The boat crashed into the space in front of them, between
the stage and the audience. The side of the cabin had been torn off, and there
was the laboratory, exposed, with the two dealers sprawled together in one
corner, staring dazedly at the hundreds of policemen and officials who now
surrounded them. A cloud of white powder mushroomed up and then fell onto the
dark blue uniform of the police chief, covering him from head to toe. The fire
alarms had all gone off. The lights blew out. Then the screaming began.

Meanwhile, the first of the construction workers had
made it to the crane cabin and was gazing, astonished, at the fourteen-year-old
boy he had found there.

"Do you...?" he stammered. "Do
you have any idea what you've just done?"

Alex glanced at the empty hook and at the gaping hole
in the roof of the conference center, at the rising smoke and dust. He shrugged
apologetically.

"I was just working on the crime figures,"
he said. "And I think there's been a drop."

AT LEAST THEY DIDN'T have far to take him.

Two men brought Alex down from the crane, one above
him on the ladder and one below. The police were waiting at the bottom. Watched
by the incredulous construction workers, he was marched away from the building
site and into the police station just a few doors away. As he passed the
conference center, he saw the crowds pouring out. Ambulances had already
arrived. The home secretary was being whisked away in a black limousine. For
the first time Alex was seriously worried, wondering if anyone had been killed.
He hadn't meant it to end like this.

Once they got to the police station, everything
happened in a whirl of slamming doors, blank official faces, whitewashed walls,
forms, and phone calls. Alex was asked his name, his age, his address. He saw a
police sergeant tapping the details into a computer, but what happened next
took him by surprise. The sergeant pressed ENTER and visibly froze. He turned
and looked at Alex, then hastily left his seat. When Alex had entered the
police station, he had been the center of attention, but suddenly everyone was
avoiding his eye. A more senior officer appeared. Words were exchanged. Alex
was led down a corridor and put into a cell.

Half an hour later, a female police officer appeared
with a tray of food. "Supper," she said.

"What's happening?" Alex asked. The
woman smiled nervously, but said nothing. "I left my bike by the
bridge," Alex said.

"It's all right. We've got
it." She couldn't leave the room fast enough.

Alex ate the food: sausages, toast, a slice of cake. There
was a bunk in the room and, behind a screen, a sink and a toilet. He wondered
whether anyone was going to come in and talk to him, but nobody did. Eventually
he fell asleep.

The next thing he knew, it was seven o'clock in
the morning. The door was open and a man he knew all too well was standing in
the cell, looking down at him.

"Good morning, Alex," he said.

"Mr. Crawley."

John Crawley looked like a junior bank manager, and
when Alex had first met him, he had indeed been pretending that he worked for a
bank. The cheap suit and striped tie could both have come from the Macy's
"Boring Businessman" section. In fact, Crawley worked for MI6. Alex
wondered if the clothes were a cover or a personal choice.

"You
can come with me now," Crawley said. "We're leaving."

"Are
you taking me home?" Alex asked. He wondered if anyone had been told
where he was.

"No.
Not yet."

Alex followed
Crawley out of the building. This time there were no police officers in sight.
A car with a driver stood waiting outside. Crawley got into the back with Alex.

"Where
are we going?" Alex asked.

"You'll
see." Crawley opened a copy of the
Daily
Tele
graph and began to read. He didn't speak again.

They drove
east through the City and toward Liverpool Street. Alex knew at once where he
was being taken, and sure enough, the car turned into the entrance of a
seventeen-story building near the station and disappeared down a ramp into an
underground parking lot. Alex had been here before. The building pretended to
be the headquarters of the Royal & General Bank. In fact, this was where
the Special Operations division of MI6 was based.

The car
stopped. Crawley folded away his paper and got out, ushering Alex ahead of him.
There was an elevator in the basement, and the two of them took it to the
sixteenth floor.

"This
way." Crawley gestured at a door marked 1605. The Gunpowder Plot, Alex
thought. It was an absurd thing to flash into his mind, a fragment of the
history homework he should have been doing the night before. Guy Fawkes had
tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament in the year 1605. Oh well, it looked
as if the homework was going to have to wait.

Alex opened
the door and went in. Crawley didn't follow. When Alex looked around, the
man was already walking away.

"Shut
the door, Alex, and come in."

Once again,
Alex found himself standing opposite the prim, unsmiling man who ran MI6. Gray
suit, gray face, gray life ... Alan Blunt seemed to belong to an entirely
colorless world. He was sitting behind a wooden desk in a large square office
that could have belonged to any business anywhere in the world. There was
nothing personal in the room, not even a picture on the wall or a photograph on
the desk. Even the pigeons pecking on the windowsill outside were gray.

He was not
alone. Mrs. Jones, the head of Special Operations, was with him, sitting
on a leather chair, wearing a mud-brown jacket and dress, and as always,
sucking a peppermint. She looked up at Alex with black, beadlike eyes. She
seemed to be more pleased to see him than her boss was. She was the one who had
spoken. Blunt had barely registered the fact that Alex had come into the room.