Scorpia (21 page)

“You need the toilet?”

“No.”

“Then come with me.”

The man at the door wasn’t Lloyd or Ramirez or anyone Alex had ever met at MI6. He had a blank,
uninteresting face and Alex knew that if they met the next day, he would already have forgotten him. He got off the bunk and walked towards the door, suddenly nervous. Nobody knew he was here. Not Tom, not Jack Starbright … nobody. MI6 could make him disappear. Permanently. Nobody would ever find out what had happened to him. Maybe that was what they had in mind.

But there was nothing he could do. He followed the agent along a curving corridor with a steel mesh floor and fat pipes following the line of the ceiling. He could have been in the engine room of a ship.

“I’m hungry,” he complained. He was. But he also wanted to show this agent that he wasn’t afraid.

“I’m taking you to breakfast.”

Breakfast! So he had slept through the night.

“Don’t worry,” Alex said. “You can drop me off at a McDonald’s.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. In here…”

They had arrived at a second door and Alex went through into a strange, curving room – obviously they were still underground. There were thick glass panels built into the ceiling and he could see the forms of people – commuters – walking overhead. The room was beneath a pavement. Feet of different sizes and shapes touched, briefly, against the glass. Above them the commuters were like ghosts, twisting, rippling, moving soundlessly by
as they made their way to work.

There was a table on which were arranged fruit salad, cereal, milk, croissants and coffee. Alex welcomed the sight of breakfast but lost some of his appetite when he saw whom he was supposed to share it with. Alan Blunt was waiting for him, sitting in a chair on the other side of the table, dressed in yet another of his neat, grey suits. He really did look like the bank manager that he had once pretended to be, a man in his fifties, more comfortable with figures and statistics than with human beings.

“Good morning, Alex,” he said.

Alex didn’t reply.

“You can leave us, Burns. Thank you.”

The agent nodded and backed out. The door swung shut. Alex approached the table and sat down.

“Are you hungry, Alex? Please. Help yourself.”

“No thanks.” Alex
was
hungry. But he wouldn’t feel comfortable eating in front of this man.

“Don’t be stupid. You need your breakfast. You have a very busy day ahead of you.” Blunt waited for Alex to respond. Alex said nothing. “Do you realize how much trouble you’re in?” Blunt demanded.

“Perhaps I will have some Weetabix after all,” Alex said.

He helped himself. Blunt watched him coldly.

“We have very little time,” Blunt said as Alex
ate. “I have some questions for you. You will answer them fully and honestly.”

“And if I don’t?”

“What do you think? Do you think I’ll give you a truth serum or something? You’ll answer my questions because it’s in your interest to do so. Right now, I don’t think you have any idea what’s at stake. But believe me when I tell you that this meeting is vital. We have to know what you know. More lives than you can imagine may depend on it.”

Alex lowered his spoon and nodded. “Go on.”

“You were recruited by Julia Rothman?”

“You know who she is?”

“Of course we do.”

“Yes. I was.”

“You were taken to Malagosto?”

“Yes.”

“And you were sent to kill Mrs Jones.”

Alex felt a need to defend himself. “She killed my dad.”

“That’s not the issue.”

“Not for you.”

“Just answer the question.”

“Yes. I was sent to kill Mrs Jones.”

“Good.” Blunt nodded. “I need to know who brought you to London. What you were told. And what you were to do when you completed your mission.”

Alex hesitated. If he told Blunt all this, he knew he would be betraying Scorpia. But suddenly he
didn’t care. He had been drawn into a world where everyone betrayed everyone. He just wanted to get out.

“They had a layout of her flat,” he said. “They knew everything, except for the glass screen. All I had to do was wait for her to appear. Two of their agents took me through Heathrow. We came in as an Italian family; they never told me their real names. I had a fake passport.”

“Where did they take you?”

“I don’t know. A house somewhere. I didn’t get a chance to see the address.” Alex paused. “Where is Mrs Jones?”

“She didn’t want to see you.”

Alex nodded. “I can understand that.”

“After you killed her, what were you supposed to do?”

“They gave me a phone number. I was meant to ring it the moment I’d done what they wanted. But they’ll know you’ve got me now. I expect they were watching the flat.”

There was a long silence. Blunt was examining Alex minutely, like a scientist with an interesting lab specimen. Alex squirmed uncomfortably in his chair.

“Do you want to work for Scorpia?” Blunt demanded.

“I don’t know.” Alex shrugged. “I’m not sure it’s any different to working for you.”

“You don’t believe that. You can’t believe that.”

“I don’t want to work for either of you!” Alex cut in. “I just want to go back to school. I don’t want to see any of you ever again.”

“I wish that were possible, Alex.” For once, Blunt actually sounded sincere. “Let me tell you something that may surprise you. It’s been six … seven months since we first met. In that time, you’ve proved yourself to be remarkably useful. You’ve been more successful than I could possibly have calculated. And yet, in truth, I wish we had never met.”

“Why?”

“Because there has to be something wrong – seriously wrong – when the security of the entire country rests on the shoulders of a fourteen-year-old boy. Believe me, I would be very glad to let you walk out of here. You don’t belong in my world any more than I belong in yours. But I can’t let you go back to Brookland, because in approximately thirty hours every child in that school could be dead. Thousands of children in London could have joined them. This is what your friends in Scorpia have promised, and I have no doubt at all that they mean what they say.”

“Thousands?” Alex had gone pale. He hadn’t expected anything like this. What had he walked into?

“Maybe more. Maybe many thousands.”

“How?”

“We don’t know. You may. All I can tell you now
is that Scorpia have made a series of demands. We cannot give them what they want. And they’re going to make us pay a heavy price.”

“What do you want from me?” Alex asked. All the strength seemed to have drained out of him.

“Scorpia have made one mistake. They’ve sent you to us. I want to know everything you’ve seen – everything Julia Rothman told you. We still have no idea what we’re up against, Alex. You may at least be able to give us a clue.”

Thousands of children in London.

Assassination, Alex. It’s part of what we do
.

That was what she had said.

This was what she meant.

“I don’t know anything,” Alex said, his head bowed.

“You may know more than you think. You’re all that stands between Scorpia and an unimaginable bloodbath. I know what you think of me; I know how you feel about MI6. But are you willing to help?”

Alex slowly raised his head. He examined the man sitting opposite him and saw something he would never have believed.

Alan Blunt was afraid.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll help you.”

“Good. Then finish your breakfast, have a shower and get changed. The prime minister has called a meeting of Cobra. I want you to attend.”

* * *

Cobra.

The acronym stands for Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, which is where, at 10 Downing Street, the meetings take place. Cobra is an emergency council, the government’s ultimate response to any major crisis.

The prime minister is, of course, present when Cobra sits. So are most of his senior ministers, his director of communications, his chief of staff and representatives from the police, the army and the intelligence and security services. Finally there are the civil servants, men in dark suits with long and meaningless job titles. Everything that happens, everything that’s said, is recorded, minuted and then filed away for thirty years under the Official Secrets Act. Politics may be called a game, but Cobra is deadly serious. Decisions made here can bring down a government. The wrong decision could destroy the entire country.

Alex Rider had been shown into another room and left to shower and change into fresh clothes. He recognized the Pepe jeans and World Cup rugby shirt: they were his own. Somebody must have been round to his home to fetch them, and seeing them laid out on a chair he felt a pang of guilt. He hadn’t spoken to Jack since he had left for Venice. He wondered if anyone from MI6 had told her what was happening. He doubted it. MI6 never told anyone anything unless they had to.

But as he pulled on the jeans, he felt something
rustle in one of the back pockets. He dipped his hand in and took out a folded sheet of paper. He opened it and recognized Jack’s handwriting.

That made him smile. It seemed it had been a long time since anything had happened to cheer him up.

As he had thought, the cell and interrogation room were beneath the MI6 headquarters. He was led out to a car park where a navy blue Jaguar XJ6 was waiting, and the two of them were driven up the ramp and out into Liverpool Street itself. Alex settled into the leather seat. He found it strange to be sitting so close to the head of MI6 Special Operations without a table or a desk between them.

Blunt was in no mood to talk.

“You’ll be brought up to date at the meeting,” he muttered briefly. “But while we’re driving there, I want you to think of everything that happened to you while you were with Scorpia. Everything you overheard. If I had more time, I’d debrief you myself. But Cobra won’t wait.”

After that he buried himself in a report which he took from his briefcase, and Alex might as well have been alone. He looked out of the window as the chauffeur drove them west, across London. It was quarter past nine. People were still hurrying to work. Shops were opening. On one side of the glass, life was going on as normal. But once again Alex was on the wrong side, sitting in this car with this man, heading into God knows what.

He watched as they arrived at Charing Cross and stopped at the lights at Trafalgar Square. Blunt was still reading. Suddenly there was something Alex wanted to know.

“Is Mrs Jones married?” he asked.

Blunt looked up. “She was.”

“In her flat I saw a photograph of her with two children.”

“They were hers. They’d be about your age now. But she lost them.”

“They died?”

“They were taken.”

Alex digested this. Blunt’s replies were leaving him hardly any the wiser. “Are
you
married?” he asked.

Blunt turned away. “I don’t discuss my personal life.”

Alex shrugged. Frankly he was surprised Blunt had one.

They drove down Whitehall and then turned right, through the gates that were already open to receive them. The car stopped and Alex got out, his head spinning. He was standing in front of probably the most famous front door in the world. And the door was open. A policeman stepped forward to usher him in. Blunt had already disappeared ahead. Alex followed.

The first surprise was how large 10 Downing Street was inside. It was two or three times bigger than he had expected, opening out in all directions, with high ceilings and a corridor stretching improbably into the distance. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling. Works of art, lent by major galleries, lined the walls.

Blunt had been greeted by a tall, grey-haired man in an old-fashioned suit and striped tie. The man had the sort of face that would not have looked out of place in a Victorian portrait. It belonged to another world, and like an old painting it seemed to have faded. Only the eyes, small and dark, showed any life. They flickered over Alex and seemed to know him at once.

“So this is Alex Rider,” the man said. He held out a hand. “My name is Graham Adair.”

He was looking at Alex as if he knew him – but
Alex was sure the two of them had never met before.

“Sir Graham is permanent secretary to the Cabinet Office,” Blunt explained.

“I’ve heard a great deal about you, Alex. I have to say, I’m pleased to meet you. I owe you a great deal. More, I think, than you can imagine.”

“Thanks.” Alex was puzzled. He didn’t know what Sir Graham meant, and wondered if the man had been involved in some way in one of his previous assignments.

“I understand you’re joining us at Cobra. I’m very glad – although I should warn you that there may be one or two people there who know less about you and may resent your presence.”

“I’m used to it,” Alex said.

“I’m sure. Well, come this way. I hope you can help us. We’re up against something very different and none of us is quite sure what to do.”

Alex followed the permanent secretary along the corridor, through an archway and into a large, wood-panelled room with at least forty people gathered around a huge conference table. Alex’s first impression was that they were all middle-aged and, with only a few exceptions, male and white. Then he realized how many faces he recognized. The prime minister was sitting at the head of the table. The deputy prime minister – fat and jowly – was next to him. The foreign secretary was fiddling nervously with his tie. Another man who might
have been the defence secretary was opposite him. Most of the men were in suits but there were also uniforms – army and police. Everyone in the room had a thick file in front of them. Two elderly women, dressed in black suits and white shirts, sat in the corners, their fingers poised over what looked like miniature typewriters.