“This is Alex,” Ian Rider had said. “Alex, this is Jack.”
Alex had stared at her. “Jack’s a man’s name.” Those were the first words he had ever spoken to her.
“Well, it’s my name and you’d better get used to it,” Jack had replied.
They had become friends almost immediately.
Jack had been in London to study law. She had a place at the School of Oriental and African Studies, one of the best colleges in London—but what she didn’t have was money. She had answered an advertisement in the Times.
Room in Chelsea available plus living expenses in return for some housekeeping duties and childcare. Would suit a student or part-time professional. Telephone:
The advertisement had been placed by Ian Rider, Alex’s uncle, who had introduced himself as a banker working in the city. She could still see him now, a darkly handsome man dressed in an expensive suit, sitting with his legs crossed and a glass of red wine in his hand.
“Let me explain, Miss Starbright. Alex’s parents died when he was young, and I’ve looked after him pretty much since he was born. Alex’s father was in banking . . . the same as me. The trouble is, I’m having to do more and more travel these days—Zurich, Luxembourg, Singapore. That’s the joy of international finance! I don’t want Alex to have a nanny or anything like that. I try to spend as much time as I can with him when I’m home. What I really want is for someone to live here part-time and to become a sort of friend to him so he won’t notice it so much when I’m away. You’ll find that Alex is very good at looking after himself. He goes to school just down the road, and I’m sure the two of you will get along well. You’re much closer to his age than I am, and he’s a very easygoing kid. What do you say?”
How could she possibly have known that almost everything Ian Rider had told her was untrue? He wasn’t in banking. He was a spy. Alex’s father had been a spy too. Both of Alex’s parents had been killed by a bomb planted on a plane, and Alex would have died with them but for the chance of an ear infection that had forced him to stay at home. Sometimes Jack hated Ian Rider for the way he had deceived her. But that hadn’t been the worst of it. He had also lied to Alex just about every day of his life, cold-bloodedly preparing him for a destiny that had been chosen for him the day he was born. How could anyone do that to a child? The climbing trips, the martial arts classes, the trips abroad, the different languages that Alex spoke . . . They had all been nothing more than basic training. Ian Rider had molded Alex into an image of himself.
And then Ian Rider had been killed. The police had said it was a car accident, but Alex had found the car and discovered that it was riddled with bullet holes. Another lie. After that, everything had happened very quickly as the entire construction that had been built around Alex’s life had collapsed in on itself. Alex had met Alan Blunt and Mrs. Jones on the day of the funeral, and almost immediately afterward he had been recruited by them and sent for two weeks’ intensive training in the Brecon Beacons. It had included assault courses, unarmed combat, forced marches, and survival in the so-called Killing House, a mock-up of an embassy used to practice techniques in hostage release. Alex had half drowned in freezing mud and water, stumbled up and down hills, been shouted at by sergeants in khaki whose entire vocabulary seemed to consist of four-letter words, swallowed down meals out of mess tins, and desperately snatched a few minutes of sleep when the exercises ended in the middle of the night. He was a child! Nobody seemed to have noticed.
Jack had learned all this afterward. Over the years, with Ian Rider away more and more, she had become Alex’s closest friend, and there could be no secrets between the two of them. She knew everything about his first mission, when he had been sent to Cornwall, to the headquarters of Sayle Enterprises. This was where the Stormbreaker computer was being mass-produced. Sayle planned to distribute them free to every school in the country, and if he had succeeded, the result would have been mass murder. Alex had discovered that Sayle was a psychopath planning some sort of mad revenge on the UK, and Alex had managed to stop him only at the last minute. Jack had been horrified by the whole story. What made it worse was her knowledge that although Alex had almost gotten killed, it wouldn’t end there. She was certain that—soon—MI6 would be back.
What should she do? Jack sighed as she unscrewed the Marmite and searched for a knife. She had questioned Alex about the Stormbreaker business. Of course she had. When Alex had finally gotten home in one piece, the two of them had talked until late in the night. Alex didn’t want to be a spy, but the truth was, he had no choice. Ian Rider had already made the decision for him. Jack had considered going to the newspapers. Part of her wanted to stop this madness before it went any further. But she knew that she couldn’t protect Alex by exposing him. All she could do was support him and try to stop him from getting into trouble a second time. It had been years now since she had attended college, and she had to accept that her career as a high-flying lawyer was definitely on hold. Ian Rider was to blame for that too.
She smeared each strip of toast with Marmite, then arranged them on the plate. Looking down, she was annoyed with herself. What did she think she was doing? Alex was fourteen, not four—and she was behaving exactly like the nanny she had never wanted to be. She was tempted to throw the whole lot into the trash and start again. At the same time, Alex liked being looked after. And she knew that he wasn’t looking forward to this morning, to what lay ahead.
“Hi, Jack.” Alex appeared at the door and slouched, bleary-eyed, over to the table. Like every other teenager, he wasn’t at his best first thing in the morning. He was wearing his school uniform (the tie was spectacularly crooked) but he wouldn’t be in school until after eleven. He had an appointment. It had been in the planner for weeks.
“Good morning, Alex.” She examined him. “You look a bit of a mess today.”
Alex yawned. “That’s what you said yesterday.”
“No. Yesterday I said you were a total mess. Today is definitely an improvement.” She slid the plate in front of him. “Breakfast!”
“Thanks, Jack.”
She went over to the fridge, took out a carton of orange juice, and poured a glass. When she brought it over to the table, she was absurdly pleased to see that he had lopped the top off the egg and dipped the toast in. What had happened in Cornwall hadn’t changed him. At heart, he was still just a kid. “We need to leave in fifteen minutes,” she said.
“I can go on my own.”
“No. I’m coming with you.”
Alex hesitated. “Jack,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about this. Do I really need to go today? I mean, couldn’t we wait until the holidays? I’ve missed enough school as it is.”
“One more morning won’t make any difference, Alex.”
“But it’s not hurting anymore. Honestly, I think I’m going to be fine. Let’s just cancel.”
Jack couldn’t hide her smile. “You’re not afraid, are you?”
“No!”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“There is no problem . . .”
“Then forget it, Alex. We were lucky to get an appointment. Have your breakfast and then go and brush your teeth. If you can remember what a comb looks like, you might also think about doing your hair.”
“Jack . . .”
“I mean it!”
Jack went over to make a cup of coffee. She wondered what MI6 would have made of it all. Alex hadn’t been afraid of the SAS. He’d been dumped in a tank with a giant jellyfish and survived. He’d parachuted out of a helicopter over London and smashed through the roof of the Science Museum.
But he was still scared of the dentist.
A tiny little filling.
Jack flicked on the kettle while, behind her, Alex finished his egg.
2
CRUNCH TIME
IT HAD BEGUN, LIKE all toothaches do, with a twinge. Alex had tried
to ignore it, but very quickly it had gotten worse. Hot drinks were bad. Ice cream was worse. In the end he had been forced to mention it to Jack, and she had called the dentist right away. Alex needed an emergency appointment and that meant missing a few hours of school. He wasn’t happy about that either. Thanks to Alan Blunt and Mrs. Jones, he had missed more than enough school already.
The two of them set off together, walking down the King’s Road to Sloane Square tube station. The dentist—his name was Wiseman—had offices just off Oxford Circus. Alex had been there only half a dozen times, but he remembered every detail, from the nasty striped wallpaper to the fish tank with its depressed-looking fish and the old magazines on the round table in the waiting room.
“Cheer up,” Jack said as they passed through the turnstile and made their way down.
“What’s there to be cheerful about?” Alex growled. “You’re not the one having a drill in the top of your mouth.”
“You should have thought of that before you ate all those sweets.”
“I don’t eat sweets.” Alex glared at her. “And you didn’t need to come with me. I could find my way there on my own.”
“Of course I had to come with you, Alex. And if you don’t stop complaining, I’m going to insist on holding your hand when we go in.”
They waited in silence until the train arrived, then climbed on together. Alex didn’t feel like talking and snatched one of the free newspapers that someone had left on the seat. He glanced at the headline: FREDDY FINGERS GOES ON TRIAL. It had been on the breakfast news on television too. Freddy Fingers. Everyone knew who he was. There had been enormous publicity about the trial, which was to take place at the Old Bailey. It began today.
His real name was Sir Frederick Meadows. Until recently, he had been the chairman of the Royal National Bank, one of the biggest banks in the country. The Queen was actually one of its customers, and he had often been photographed coming in and out of Buckingham Palace, a small, bald man with a round face and a nervous smile. Everyone trusted him. He had been knighted for services to banking and had frequently appeared on television, talking about the economy. He was always cheerful. He was easy to understand. And so it had come as a real shock when, after a two-year investigation, the police had arrested him for the theft of one hundred million pounds.
It was well known that Meadows had been born with a very unusual condition. He had an extra finger on his left hand—and of course that had been a gift for the journalists. There were plenty of headlines that described him as being “light-fingered” or “having his fingers in the till.” He had become known to the whole country as Freddy Fingers.
Alex read the story in the paper he’d picked up.
Meadows used his position in the Royal National to hack into the bank’s computers. Every time a payment was made, one pound was transferred to a secret account he’d set up for himself. This went on for ten years, by which time it is estimated that he had stolen at least a hundred million pounds, and maybe more. Last summer, Meadows announced his retirement and was on his way to Heathrow Airport when a sharp-eyed accountant realized what had happened and called the police. He was arrested as he tried to board a flight to Mexico.
Experts have been unable to locate the missing funds, and Sir Frederick has refused to cooperate. It is believed that he concealed the money in secret bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. The trial, which takes place at the Old Bailey, will have maximum security. More than a hundred policemen will surround the court, as there is a real fear that he may try to escape. Somewhere, there’s a huge fortune waiting for him. And you can bet that Sir Freddy will want to give justice the finger!
Alex finished the article, then turned to the sports section. He supported Chelsea and had watched them tie with Barcelona in the International Champions Cup over the weekend. He read the match report, putting everything else out of his head.
They reached Oxford Circus in good time and climbed the escalator back into the daylight. The strange thing was that Alex’s tooth wasn’t hurting anymore—but he was still feeling a little queasy. It wasn’t just the drill. He could see Dr. Wiseman with his huge eyes magnified behind his protective goggles, bending over him. He hated the thought of the man’s hand, with its latex-covered fingers, poking around in his mouth. Still, there was no point arguing. It was ten to nine and the intersection where Regent Street met Oxford Street was packed with commuters. The dentist was about a five-minute walk away.
“Free snacks! Try a Cadbury’s Crunch Bar. They’re free today. Try one now!”
There were half a dozen men and women on the sidewalk, dressed in mauve jackets and jeans, covering all the station entrances. They were handing out little bars of chocolate, and Alex guessed there would be more of them in other parts of London. It was quite common when new products were being launched. The big companies gave away free samples at all the main stations. Almost without thinking, he reached out and took one.
“Forget it, Alex,” Jack said. “You can’t eat chocolate five minutes before you go to the dentist.”
Alex was annoyed. When he had been training with the SAS, he had been treated almost as an equal. Certainly nobody had made allowances for his age. But here he was in the middle of London with Jack, and she was treating him like a child. “I’m not going to eat it now,” he protested. “I’m only taking it for later.”
“You may not be able to eat it. Your mouth will be numb.”
“Then you can keep it for me.” He was about to hand it over when he stopped and looked at it more closely. The chocolate bar was in silver foil with the name in bright red. All around him, people were grabbing their free samples. Even as they stood there, a hundred or more bars were given away. “That’s really weird,” he said.
“What?”
“The wrapper.” He held it out so Jack could see. “Read what it says.”
“Cadbury’s Crunch Bar.” She read the words out loud. She didn’t understand what he was getting at.
“It’s wrong,” Alex explained. “That’s not how you spell it. It ought to read ‘Cadbury’ without the apostrophe and the s.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so. It doesn’t look right.”
Jack shrugged. “They must have made a mistake. New product, new typing error.” She took the bar and slipped it into her pocket. “We’d better get a move on, Alex. I don’t want to be late.”
But Alex was puzzled. He examined the man who had given him the sample and who was still working his way through the crowd. He was very muscular, his hair cut short, clean shaven. With a slight jolt, Alex noticed that the man was disabled: he had only one hand. Alex turned his attention to the others. There was something quite similar about all of them—and it wasn’t just the mauve jackets and jeans. They were all fit. They all had short hair. All of them—the men and the women—carried themselves in a certain way. It was in their body language, the way they stood. And they were nervous, as if they knew something bad was about to happen.
A van pulled in across the road and parked on a yellow line. The driver got out and went around to open the back door. If Alex hadn’t been alerted, he would have barely noticed him, but as it was, he felt a sudden shock. He recognized him!
In his twenties with close-cropped hair. Well-built. The cold eyes of a mercenary. Alex couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was impossible that the man should be here, in the middle of London, but he knew he wasn’t making a mistake. You never forget the face of someone who has threatened to kill you—and that was just what this man had done in the secret research center under Sayle Enterprises. He had been a guard employed by Herod Sayle, and he had grabbed Alex as he came out of the disused mine.
“If you make any moves, I’ll shoot you in the head.”
Alex remembered the voice. The guard had been overconfident. After all, he had a gun in his hand, and this was just a fourteen-ye
ar-old boy. He had also been stupid. He had looked away long enough to allow Alex to take him out with a single karate move, an enpi, or elbow strike behind the ear.
Why was he here?
Alex watched as the driver took out a cardboard box and walked to the area where the sidewalk widened in front of the Niketown store. There were two distributors here, hard at work. One of them had a black eye patch slanting across his face. They nodded at him, took the box, and began to unload more of the bars. Alex tried to make sense of it all. A hired killer from Sayle Enterprises had now become a delivery boy in central London. Well, that wasn’t as unlikely as it sounded. Herod Sayle was dead. Sayle Enterprises had been closed down. He would need another job. But there was something else. The chocolate bars were supposed to be made by Cadbury, but somebody had made an elementary mistake with the spelling.
Perhaps it was something he had inherited from Ian Rider. Or maybe it had been knocked into him when he was with the SAS, moving through the dark and silent passageways of the Killing House. But Alex had learned to trust his instincts, and right now there was a warning bell jangling madly in his head. It might be that he was about to make a complete fool of himself. But that didn’t matter. He knew he had to act.
“Jack,” he said. “I need you to contact Alan Blunt.”
“What?” Jack stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
“Alan Blunt and Mrs. Jones. You need to call them.”
“I can’t call them. I don’t have their telephone number.”
“It doesn’t matter. Find them somehow. Or call the police. But I think there’s something going on.”
“Alex. If you’re trying to get out of going to the dentist—”
“I’m not. These chocolate bars they’re giving out. There’s something wrong with them. I’m sure of it.”
Alex Rider--Secret Weapon Page 7