Scorpia (30 page)

“I’ll try to move a little faster next time,” Alex said.

“Yes. Well. One other thing. You might be amused to hear that Mark Kellner resigned this morning. The prime minister’s director of communications – remember him? He’s telling the press that he wants to spend more time with his family. The funny thing is, his family can’t stand him. Nobody can. Mr Kellner made one mistake too many. Nobody could have foreseen that stunt with the
hot-air balloon. But someone has to carry the can, and I’m glad to say it’s going to be him.”

“Well, if that’s all you called me in for, I’d better get home,” Alex said. “I’ve missed more school and I’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

“No, Alex. I’m afraid you can’t leave quite yet.” Mrs Jones sounded more serious than Alex had ever heard her and he wondered if she was going to make him pay for his attempt on her life.

“I’m sorry about what I nearly did, Mrs Jones,” he said. “But I think I’ve more or less made up for it…”

“That’s not what I want to speak to you about. As far as I’m concerned, your visit to my flat never happened. But there’s something more important. You and I have never spoken about Albert Bridge.”

Alex felt cold inside. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I know what you did was right. I’ve seen Scorpia for myself now; I know what they are capable of. If my father was one of them, then you were right. He deserved to die.”

The words hurt Alex even as he spoke them. They caught in his throat.

“There’s somebody I want you to meet, Alex. He’s come into the office today and he’s standing outside. I know you don’t want to spend any more time here than you have to, but will you let him talk to you? It will only take a few minutes.”

“All right.” Alex shrugged. He didn’t know what Mrs Jones wanted to prove. He had no wish to return to the circumstances of his father’s death.

The door opened and a tall man walked in, bearded, with brown curly hair that was beginning to grey. He was casually dressed in a beaten-up leather jacket and jeans. He looked in his early thirties and although Alex was sure he had never met him, his face seemed vaguely familiar.

“Alex Rider?” he asked. He had a soft, pleasant voice.

“Yes.”

“How do you do?” He held out a hand. Alex stood up and felt his hand taken in a grasp that was warm and friendly. “My name is James Adair,” he said. “I think you’ve met my father, Sir Graham Adair.”

Alex was hardly likely to forget. Sir Graham Adair was the permanent secretary to the Cabinet Office. He could see the similarity in the faces of the two men. But he knew James Adair from somewhere else too. Of course. He was a lot older now. The hair colour was different and he was more thickset. But the face was the same. He had seen it on a television screen. On Albert Bridge.

“James Adair is a senior lecturer at Imperial College here in London,” Mrs Jones explained. “But fourteen years ago he was a student. His father was already an extremely senior civil servant—”

“You were kidnapped,” Alex interrupted. “You
were the one Scorpia kidnapped.”

“That’s right. Look, do you mind if we sit down? I feel very formal standing up like this.”

James Adair took a seat. Alex waited for him to speak. He was puzzled and a little apprehensive. This man had been there when his father was killed. In a way, it was because of this man that John Rider had died. Why had Mrs Jones brought him here now?

“I’ll tell you my story and then get out of here,” James Adair said. “When I was eighteen years old, I was the victim of an attempt to blackmail my father. I was snatched by an organization called Scorpia, and they were going to torture me and kill me unless my dad did exactly what they said. But Scorpia made a mistake. My father could influence government policy but he couldn’t actually change it. There was nothing he could do. I was told I was going to die.

“But then, at the last minute, there was a change of plan. I met a woman called Julia Rothman. She was very beautiful but a complete bitch. I think she couldn’t wait to get out the redhot pokers or whatever. Anyway, she told me that I was going to be exchanged for one of her people. He’d been captured by MI6. And they were going to swap us. On Albert Bridge.

“They drove me there very early one morning. I have to admit that I was terrified. I was certain there was going to be a double-cross. I thought
they might shoot me and dump me in the Thames. But everything seemed to be very straightforward. It was just like in a spy film. There were three men and me on one side of the bridge. They all had guns. And on the other side of the bridge I could see a figure. That was your dad. He was with some people from MI6.” The lecturer glanced at Mrs Jones. “She was one of them.”

“It was my first major field operation,” Mrs Jones murmured.

“Go on,” Alex said. He had been drawn in. He couldn’t help himself.

“Well, somebody gave a signal and we both began to walk – almost as if we were going to fight a duel, except that our hands were tied. I have to tell you, Alex, the bridge felt a mile long. It seemed to take for ever to get across. But at last we met in the middle, your father and I; and I was sort of grateful to him, because it was thanks to him that I wasn’t going to be killed, and yet at the same time I knew he worked for Scorpia, so I thought he must be one of the bad guys.

“And then he spoke to me.”

Alex held his breath. He remembered the video Mrs Rothman had shown him. It was true. His father and the teenager had spoken. He had been unable to hear the words and had wondered what they had said.

“He was very calm,” James Adair went on. “I hope you won’t mind me saying this, Alex, but,
looking at you now, I can see him as he was then. He was totally in command. And this is what he said to me.

“There’s going to be shooting. You have to move fast
.

“What? What do you mean?

“When the shooting starts, don’t look round. Just run as fast as you can. You’ll be safe.”

There was a long silence.

“My dad knew he was going to be shot?” Alex asked.

“Yes.”

“But how?”

“Let me finish.” James Adair ran a hand across his beard. “I took about another ten steps and suddenly there was a shot. I know I wasn’t meant to look round, but I did. Just for a second. Your father had been shot in the back. There was blood on his padded jacket; I could see a gash in the material. And then I remembered what he’d told me and I began to run … hell for leather. I just had to get out of there.”

That was another thing Alex had noticed when he’d watched the video. James Adair had reacted with amazing speed. Anyone else would surely have frozen. But he’d clearly known what he was doing.

Because he had been warned.

By John Rider.

“I tore up the bridge,” he went on. “Then all hell
broke loose. The Scorpia people opened fire. They wanted to kill me, of course. But the MI6 lot had machine guns and they fired back. All in all, it was a miracle I wasn’t hit. I managed to get to the north side of the bridge and a big car appeared out of nowhere. A door opened and I dived in. And that was just about the end of it, as far as I was concerned. I was whisked away and my father met me a couple of minutes later, hugely relieved. He’d thought he’d never see me again.”

And that made sense. When Alex had met Sir Graham Adair, the civil servant had been surprisingly friendly. He had made it clear that he was in some way in Alex’s debt.

“So my father … sacrificed himself for you,” Alex said. He didn’t understand. His father had worked for Scorpia. Why should he have been prepared to die for someone he had never met?

“There is one other thing I have to tell you,” the lecturer said. “It’ll probably come as a shock to you. It certainly came as a shock to me. About a month later I went down to my father’s home in Wiltshire. By then I’d been debriefed and there were a whole lot of security things I had to know about just in case Scorpia tried to have another crack at me. And” – he swallowed – “your father was there.”

“What?” Alex stared.

“I arrived early. And as I came in, your father was leaving. He’d been in a meeting with my dad.”

“But that’s…”

“I know. It’s impossible. But it was definitely him. He recognized me at once.

“How are you?

“I’m fine, thanks very much
.

“I’m glad I was able to help. Look after yourself
.

“That was what he said to me. I remember the words exactly. Then he got in his car and drove off.”

“So my father…”

James Adair stood up. “I’m sure Mrs Jones can explain it all to you,” he said. “But my dad wanted me to tell you how very grateful we are to you. He asked me to pass that on to you. Your father saved my life. There’s no doubt about it. I’m married now; I have two children. Funnily enough, I named the eldest John after him. There would be no children if it hadn’t been for him. My father would have no son and no grandsons. Whatever you may think of him, whatever you’ve been told about him, John Rider was a very brave man.”

James Adair nodded at Mrs Jones and left the room. The door closed. There was a second, long silence.

“I don’t understand,” Alex said.

“Your father wasn’t an assassin,” Mrs Jones said. “He wasn’t working for Scorpia. He was working for us.”

“He was a spy?”

“A very brilliant spy,” Alan Blunt muttered. “We
recruited the two brothers – Ian and John – in the same year. Ian was a good agent. But John was the better man by far.”

“He worked for you?”

“Yes.”

“But he killed people. Mrs Rothman showed me. He was in prison…”

“Everything Julia Rothman thought she knew about your father was a lie.” Mrs Jones sighed. “It’s true that he had been in the army, that he had a distinguished career with the Parachute Regiment and that he was decorated for his part in the Falklands War. But the rest of it – the fight with the taxi driver, the prison sentence and all that – we made up. It’s called deep cover, Alex. We wanted John Rider to be recruited by Scorpia. He was the bait and they took him.”

“Why?”

“Because Scorpia was expanding all over the world. We needed to know what it was doing, the names of the people it was employing, the size and structure of its organization. John Rider was a weapons expert; he was a brilliant fighter. And Scorpia thought he was washed up. He was welcomed with open arms.”

“And all the time he was reporting to you?”

“His information saved more lives than you can imagine.”

“But that’s not true!” Alex’s head swam. “Mrs Rothman told me that he killed five or six people.
And Yassen Gregorovich worshipped him! He showed me the scar. He said my dad saved his life.”

“Your father was pretending to be a dangerous killer,” Mrs Jones said. “And so – yes, Alex – he had to kill. One of his victims was a drug dealer in the Amazon jungle. That was when he saved Yassen’s life. Another was an American double agent; a third was a corrupt policeman. I’m not saying that these people deserved to die. But certainly the world was able to get along very well without them and I’m afraid your father had no choice.”

“What about the others you told me about?” Alex had to know.

“There were two more,” Blunt cut in. “One was a priest, working on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. The other was a woman in Sydney. They were more difficult. We couldn’t let them die. And so we faked their deaths … in much the same way that we faked your father’s.”

“Albert Bridge…”

“It was faked.” Mrs Jones took up the narrative again. “Your father had told us as much as we needed to know about Scorpia and we had to get him out. There were two reasons for this. The first was that your mother had just given birth to a baby boy. That was you, Alex. Your father wanted to come home; he wanted to be with you and your mother. But also it was becoming too dangerous. You see, Mrs Rothman had fallen in love with him.”

It was almost too much to take on board at
once. But Alex remembered Julia Rothman talking to him in the hotel in Positano.

I was very attracted to him. He was an extremely good-looking man
.

Alex tried to grasp at the truth through the swirling quicksand of lies and counter-lies. “She told me he was captured. In Malta…”

“That was faked too,” Mrs Jones revealed. “John Rider couldn’t just walk out of Scorpia; they’d never have let him. So we had to arrange things for him. And that’s what we did. He had been sent to Malta, supposedly to kill his sixth victim. He tipped us off and we were waiting for him. We staged a ferocious gun battle. You know what we’re capable of, Alex. We did more or less the same thing for you with that multiple pile-up on the Westway. Yassen was there, in Malta, but we let him escape. We needed him to tell Julia Rothman what had happened. Then we ‘captured’ John Rider. As far as Scorpia were concerned, he would be interrogated and then either thrown back into prison or executed. They would never see him again.”

“So why…?” Alex still couldn’t make complete sense of it. “Why Albert Bridge?”

“Albert Bridge was a bloody mess,” Alan Blunt said. It was the first time Alex had ever heard him swear. “You’ve met Sir Graham Adair. He’s a very powerful man. He also happens to be an old friend of mine. And when Scorpia took his son, I didn’t think there would be anything I could do.”

“It was your father’s idea,” Mrs Jones went on. “He also knew Sir Graham. He wanted to help. You have to understand, Alex, that’s the sort of man he was. One day I want to tell you all about him – not just this. He believed passionately in what he was doing. Serving his country. I know that sounds naive and old-fashioned. But he was a soldier through and through. And he believed in good and evil. I don’t know how else to put it. He wanted to make the world a better place.”

She took a deep breath.

“Your father suggested that we send him back to Scorpia as an exchange. He knew how Mrs Rothman felt about him; he knew she would agree to anything to get him back. But at the same time, he planned to double-cross her. There was a gunman in place, but the gun was loaded with blanks. John had a squib in the back of his jacket – a little firework – and a phial of blood. When the shot was fired, he activated it himself. It blew a little hole in the back of his jacket. He went sprawling and pretended to be dead. It looked as if MI6 had killed him in cold blood. But we never hurt him, Alex. That’s why I wanted you to meet James Adair. The idea was that now he would be safe again and he could simply disappear.”