“You should be careful whom you choose to trust,” Drake said. “That’s the trouble with the Kochis, Alex. They’ve been fighting so many different people, they don’t really care which side they’re on. Whoever’s got the money, that’s all that interests them.”
“Alex Rider. England spy,” Faisal muttered, as if there could still be any doubt of it.
“I’ll see you very shortly for breakfast,” Drake continued, still addressing Alex. “And don’t worry. I won’t be inviting your friend. In fact, now that I think about it, he probably isn’t your friend anymore. Take it easy. If you try to fight with my men, they’ll break your arms, and we wouldn’t want that.”
He turned and left. The soldiers closed in.
An hour later, escorted by two guards and wearing a dark green uniform that was one size too large for him, Alex was taken back through the great cavern beneath the citadel. His backpack, his belt, his camera, his shoes . . . everything that he had brought with him had been removed. He had no socks, and there were rough leather sandals on his feet. He missed his combat boots more than anything else. He might get a chance to make a break for it—but there was no way he could make any fast moves the way he was dressed now.
Everything was very different. Sunlight was streaming in through the opening and the whole place had woken up, with soldiers everywhere, many of them training on the outer platform, others carrying crates, cleaning weapons. Alex saw that the three supply vans had arrived. One of them was white with a green cross, and he saw the driver, a dark, hooded man, staring in his direction. This must be Farshad, the man who was supposed to smuggle him out of here. Well, it wasn’t going to happen. There was no way the two of them were going to make contact. More soldiers were helping to empty the vehicles, carrying fresh provisions—meat, vegetables, sacks of grain—into the compound. The horses were kicking impatiently, anxious to be on the move.
The guards led him toward a stone staircase on the other side of the burned-out helicopter. Alex hadn’t noticed the staircase when he was there before. A hand shoved him hard in the back and he staggered up, climbing about fifty steps and emerging in a vaulted hallway with brick walls and chandeliers filled with candles. The citadel was a strange mix of ancient and modern. As Alex continued down a long, windowless corridor, electric light bulbs lit the way, but the flagstones under his feet could have been medieval. They came to a curved wooden door and one of the guards knocked, then entered without waiting for an answer.
Darcus Drake had living quarters directly above the open terrace looking out over the plain. The room was huge and austere with a very old, solid table and twelve chairs, a stone fireplace, and rough afghan rugs laid out on the floor. A fire had been lit but the room was cold. Alex noticed that there was no glass in the windows, and although the sun was now well up in the sky, he could still feel the chill of the night. There were maps on the wall: the local area, the country, the whole Middle East. This was the sort of room where wars were planned. He wondered who had sat around this table and what horrors they had discussed.
The two guards waited by the door. Alex stepped forward.
Drake was alone, waiting for him. Breakfast had already been brought up, and despite everything, Alex had to admit it looked good. There were eggs cooked with vegetables, sweet bread, pastries, cheese, dried fruit, and black tea—or chai, as it was called. Less welcome was the sight of his backpack with the contents scattered over the rugs. The computer, the vapor torch, the belt, the boots were all there. Drake was turning over the Leica camera in his hands. The smile was still on his face, exactly as before.
“This is a really fantastic camera,” he said, and Alex remembered what Mrs. Jones had told him. Before he had become a terrorist, Drake had been a professional photographer. “I’m quite surprised, MI6 giving it to a kid like you. No offense.”
“They wanted good photographs,” Alex said.
“Of the calutron?” Drake sneered at him. “Well, that’s a waste of time, Alex. I can’t get the bloody thing to work. Not that I need it. I’ve got much bigger plans.” He set the camera down in front of him. “I’ll keep this, if you don’t mind. It’ll be something to remember you by.”
Alex didn’t like the sound of that. “If you want to steal the camera, I can’t stop you,” he said. “And if it makes you smile . . .”
The gibe struck home. Drake’s eyes darkened. “You’ve noticed that, have you?” He pointed to his mouth. “It’s called Möbius syndrome. It’s a very rare nervous disease, a sort of facial paralysis. I was born with it. It’s funny, really. I’ve been smiling all my life, even though I’ve never found very much to smile about.”
“A bit like the Joker in Batman,” Alex said. He was being deliberately offensive. He didn’t want Drake to think he was scared.
“And who does that make you? Robin?” Drake shook his head. “I don’t think so . . .” He gestured at the table. “Why don’t you sit down? I promised you breakfast and you might as well enjoy it. It’s going to be your last meal.”
Alex felt a hollowing in his stomach as he took his place at the table. He had been threatened with death before. The last time, it had been Dr. Grief who had wanted to cut him up in a biology class at the Point Blanc Academy. But now he was thousands of miles away from home. He had been betrayed. MI6 had no way of knowing what was happening. This wasn’t looking good.
“I have to ask you some questions,” Drake said. “I already know most of the answers. Faisal has told me everything. So if you lie to me, I’ll know at once, and then, I’m afraid, I’ll give you to my men, who will do horrible things to you. This is Afghanistan, Alex. These people can be terribly cruel.”
“What do you want to know?” Alex asked. He helped himself to some bread and cheese. He didn’t feel like eating but was determined to try.
“You know, I’d heard a whisper that MI6 had employed a teenager. Was it you who took out Herod Sayle?”
“Yes.” Alex muttered the single word. The first time he had worked for MI6, he had been sent to Cornwall, where the Stormbreaker computers were being manufactured, and in the end Herod Sayle had died. But he wasn’t going to add any details if he could help it.
“That’s very impressive. How many times have you worked for them since then?”
“This is the third time.”
“Third time unlucky. You should have said no.”
“They didn’t give me much choice.”
“That’s a shame. Why did they pick on you?”
“They wanted photographs of the calutron. The only way in was through the pipes.”
“And the pipes are too narrow for a fully grown man?”
“Yes.”
“What were they going to do with the photographs?”
“They wanted to show them to the United Nations. They needed authorization. To bomb you.”
Drake laughed delightedly. “It’s very difficult to bomb me, Alex. First they have to find me, and I move around a lot. You’ve done well, so far. I’ve got just one more question. Did they tell you I would be here?”
Alex hesitated. He didn’t want to help Drake, but neither did he want to be tortured. In the end, he decided that he had no choice. It probably wouldn’t be that important anyway. “Yes,” he said. “They thought you might be here.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t send you in to kill me.”
“I wish they had,” Alex said.
Drake laughed a second time. “You’re a boy with spirit. I’ll give you that! I’m very sorry it’s had to end this way, Alex. For you, I mean. But I’ve got no more questions. You can eat your breakfast now, and while we’re together, I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen, although I doubt that you’ll like it. What do you say?”
“I’ll have some tea, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course.” Drake poured. Then he began to talk. “You were wasting yo
ur time, Alex. They can’t bomb me, whatever they may have told you. The walls of Falcon’s Edge are too thick and the caverns are too deep. They’d need to send a smart bomb in through the window, but I’m not sure they’ve got a bomb that’s smart enough for that. What other options are there? A drone? I have two hundred men surrounding me, my own personal bodyguard. They’d shoot it down before it got anywhere near me. There’s only one track that climbs up from the valley and I make sure it’s well protected. And anyway, like I told you, I’m not here very often. I move around. That’s what keeps me safe.
“I want you to understand who I am. I used to be a newspaper photographer. I’m sure they told you that. I was born in Dublin and I spent five years working for the Irish Times before I moved to London. After that, I was sent to villages all over the Middle East, taking pictures after they’d been targeted by the British and the French and the Americans. Do you know what it does to you, after a while, recording all that misery? Dead people. Destruction. It gets to your head, Alex, and in the end, I realized that I couldn’t do it anymore, supplying nice people like you or your mom and dad with pictures to look at while you’re having breakfast.”
“I don’t have a mom or a dad,” Alex said. “You don’t know anything about me.”
Drake ignored him. “I’m doing something amazing. I’m organizing an army. You see, the whole of the Middle East is crawling with freedom fighters—but there are too many of them, too many different groups. Every country has got half a dozen different factions and they’re all too busy fighting each other to see that the real enemy is laughing at them. The West! The billionaires who sell the weapons and buy the oil. That’s who they should be fighting. And here’s the funny thing. They’re listening to me. I speak their language and I understand their needs. They’ve accepted me as their leader, and quite soon, they’ll come together in a new organization that will stretch from here to Iran, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, and Syria. I’ve called it the Awakening. It has weapons. It has money. And quite soon it will launch a campaign of terror that will be unlike anything that has gone before.”
“Why do you think killing people will make any difference?” Alex asked. “Don’t you think enough people have been hurt already?”
“You’re just a kid. You don’t understand.” Drake scowled but only with his eyes. His smile remained frozen in place. “I can see I’m wasting my time talking to you, which is a shame because, you know, I’d heard so much about you. But you can still be useful to me.”
He picked up a pastry and tore it in half.
“Here’s what I’m going to do,” he went on. “We’ll wait until sunset. It’ll be more dramatic then, with a red sky. And then we’ll take you outside and put you in front of a firing squad. We’re going to execute you as a spy, Alex. And we’ll film the whole thing. You’ll be on the news. Your friends at school will watch you die. And the film will remind the whole world of the sort of dirty tricks that the intelligence services play, sending schoolboys to do their work for them. It’ll also show them that the Awakening is here and that we’re in business. It’s a win-win situation for us, Alex, although I suppose it’s a lose-lose situation for you. Do you want some more breakfast?”
Alex said nothing. Drake gestured and the two guards came forward and grabbed hold of him. As Alex was led out, Drake picked up the camera and took a couple of shots of him. As always, Drake was smiling.
5
BREAKOUT
ALEX KNEW THERE WAS no way out of the cell. It was buried as deep in the mountain as it was possible to be. There was no window. But for the single bulb burning over his head, he would have been in the pitch-dark. The door was a piece of solid wood, ten inches thick. Alex had measured it when he was led in. He had also noticed the two iron bars that would slide across on the outside. If he’d somehow gotten his hands on a pile driver or a battering ram, it wouldn’t have done any good. And Alex had nothing. All his equipment had been taken away from him. He was dressed in loose army combats and sandals. The cell had a bunk, a table bolted to the floor, and a plastic jug of water. Darcus Drake was taking no chances.
At sunset, he was going to be tied to a stake and shot. Alex tried to force the image out of his mind. He was scared but he wasn’t going to let fear weaken him. They still had to lead him from this cell, up two flights of stairs, and through the main chamber to the stone platform outside, and somewhere along the way, an opportunity would arise. All it needed was one guard to make one mistake. Perhaps the man in the white van—Farshad—was looking for him. After all, he had seen Alex taken prisoner. And what of Rafiq and the other tribesmen waiting for him in the cemetery? They would soon realize that something had gone wrong and they might try to help. Something would turn up. And Alex would be ready.
That was what he thought, but as the day wore on and he was left alone for hour after hour, he had to fight for control. He had no watch. He had no idea how much time was passing, how close he was to sunset. He kept himself active with push-ups, counting to fifty before he allowed himself a rest. He paced from one wall to the other—six paces there and back—until he could do it blindfolded. He sipped a little of the water. Nobody came with any lunch. He guessed that Drake was doing this on purpose. He wanted Alex to look worn-out and defeated when he was taken to his execution. It would look better on film.
Three hours, four hours, five hours . . . Alex guessed it was close to midday when he heard a sound outside the door, metal scraping against wood. He had been resting, lying on the bunk, when it happened, and his eyes flicked open, instantly alert. Someone was drawing back the bars. Had they come for him already? He expected the door to open. It stayed shut, but Alex was already on his feet, crouching down beside the wood, listening for any sound in the corridor outside. He heard soldiers march past, their boots stamping on the ground. Then silence. He reached up and grabbed hold of the iron ring that served as a door handle. He pulled. The door opened.
Looking out, he saw that the corridor was empty. Alex was puzzled. What was going on? Was this some sort of test? Was Drake playing a trick on him? He wasn’t going to waste time wondering about it. This was the opportunity he had been waiting for. He slipped outside and found himself in a dungeon area with stone walls and doors. He watched the soldiers—there had been four of them—disappearing into the distance and tried to work out his next move. He already knew that even if he was out of the cell, he wasn’t out of trouble. Drake had told him there were two hundred men at the citadel. He was high up in the Herat Mountains with a dizzying fall from the edge of the stone platform. The only way out was through the portcullis with the track beyond, but that would be heavily guarded. And if he did make it out of Falcon’s Edge, where would he go next? The Shuja cemetery was about twenty miles away, the Iranian border a lot farther. He was on his own. As relieved as he was to be out of the cell, Alex knew that his position was almost hopeless.
He watched the guards go, then went in the opposite direction. There were just a few steps until the passageway came to a corner, and as Alex reached it, a man suddenly appeared, walking toward him. With a shock, Alex recognized Faisal, the Kochi tribesman who had betrayed him in the first place. Faisal opened his mouth, about to call out, but Alex was already moving, running forward and lashing out with the front kick—mae geri—that was one of the first moves he had learned at karate. Alex was half the size of the man he was attacking, but that didn’t matter . . . He had chosen his target carefully. The ball of his foot slammed into Faisal’s solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him in one sharp breath. He followed through with a vicious back fist strike, targeting the man’s throat. Faisal crumpled. Both his eyes had gone white, although, of course, one of them had been that way already.
Which way? Before Alex took off, he reached down and removed the shemagh—the Afghan scarf—that Faisal had been wearing, winding it over his head and around the lower part of his face. In a way, Drake had done him a favor. By making him change
his clothes, he had made him invisible . . . Now he looked like everyone else. He continued forward, leaving the unconscious man behind. He knew which way he had been brought here. He just had to retrace his steps and find a way out before Faisal—and the empty cell—was discovered.
He came to an old-fashioned lift. As he arrived, the gate opened and a chef came out, a man in a grubby white jacket, carrying some sort of skinned animal, perhaps a goat. There was no time to hide, and Alex knew that any hesitation would finish him. He kept his head down. Half his face was concealed. Without breaking his pace, he brushed past the man and went into the lift. As he had hoped, the man had his mind on other things and didn’t even notice him. Alex pressed the top button and heaved a sigh of relief as the door slid shut.
He was carried upward. The lift seemed painfully slow, and Alex was already worrying about what he would see when the door opened again. In fact, he came out in an area behind the calutron, and now he was doubly glad that the complicated machine wasn’t working. There was nobody in this part of the complex. Alex hurried around the edge. Part of him was already planning what to do next, but at the same time he was also thinking back to the cell. Who had opened the door? Was there something he was missing? It occurred to him that he might have a friend somewhere in Falcon’s Edge. After all, someone had opened the cell door. But if so, where were they and what had happened to them?
He was almost back where he had started. The main storage area was still a mass of activity with at least fifty soldiers moving around, going about their duties, all of them armed. The three supply vans had left. Alex sneaked farther into the chamber and hid behind one of the crates. It was attached to a parachute, and he drew the silk fabric toward him, using it to conceal himself. The outdoor platform where he was to be executed was right in front of him. He could actually see two men setting up a camera and a tripod. It made him feel sick that anyone could think of making a film like that, and he certainly had no intention of being its star. But how was he going to get out of here? The portcullis was the only way. If it was open and if he moved fast enough . . . But he still had to cross the plain, twenty miles or more. The moment they knew he was free, they would come after him. Stealing a jeep was out of the question. Even if Alex had known how to drive, he doubted they’d have left the keys in the ignition. Was there another way?
Alex Rider--Secret Weapon Page 4