Alex watched.
Something horrible was happening to Razim. The salt had penetrated his skin, working its way through the pores. It was as if he was being cooked alive inside the huge pile. White foam began to bubble out of his mouth. It trailed out his eyes. Alex was reminded of a garden slug. He had heard it said that slugs died horribly if they were rolled in salt.
“Alex . . .”
It was Razim’s last word. His eyes were completely white. He managed to swallow one last breath, as if it would do him any good, and then he was pulled beneath the surface, disappearing altogether. For a brief moment there was a dent in the surface where he had been, then the salt poured in, filling it.
“We’ve got you!”
Alex felt hands grab hold of him.
The fighting was over. Alex didn’t care. He was completely exhausted.
As Alex was helped back down the stone staircase, he saw Arab guards lined up against the wall with their hands over their heads. There were bodies everywhere. Two Americans and a Triple Seven man had been killed, along with Blake Lewinsky. But most of the casualties were Razim’s people, lying stretched out in the bloodstained sand.
Someone gave Alex a bottle of water. “Are you okay?”
Alex nodded.
“Stay here. We’ve radioed Cairo. It’s over now. There are more people on the way.”
But ten minutes later, Alex had disappeared and at first there was panic among the special forces fighters as they searched for him, wondering what had happened. It was only much later that they found him, outside the fort, on his own, kneeling beside a burned-out car.
24
DEPARTURES
IT WAS TIME TO GO.
Alan Blunt had reached his last day as head of MI6 Special Operations. He had spent the morning packing his personal possessions. It hadn’t taken him very long. In fact, they all fit inside a small shoe box that now sat in the middle of his otherwise empty desk. Of course, what he would really be taking from here would be his memories, and he certainly had enough of those. It had briefly occurred to him that he might write a memoir—it was very much the trend with politicians and departing civil servants. But of course it was out of the question. It was part of the job description that he should take his secrets to the grave. And if he tried to sell them, he might arrive there sooner than he had expected.
He took one last look outside. It was going to be a hot summer. Liverpool Street was unusually bright with the sun flaring off the plate glass windows. There was a pigeon half asleep on the ledge outside. Do birds sleep? Blunt tapped on the glass and it flew away. He had once discussed with Smithers the possibility of using homing pigeons to listen in on foreign ambassadors. Homing pigeons with homing devices around one leg. The Covert Weapons Section had put in a feasibility study, but nothing had come of it. Blunt had seen Smithers a few weeks ago, after his return from Cairo. There had been a formal debriefing. The two of them had not said good-bye.
Blunt went back to his desk and rested a hand on the shoe box. He was tempted to throw it in the garbage. There was nothing inside that he really wanted. Suddenly he just wanted to be out of here. In two days he was leaving for Venice, the first stopping point on a six-week tour of Europe. His wife was coming with him. It would be the longest time the two of them had spent together since the day they were married.
The door opened and Mrs. Jones came in. The new head of Special Operations, just as he had expected. She seemed surprised to see him, but that couldn’t be the case, because she had actually asked for a final meeting before he left. For a moment the two of them looked at each other uneasily over the desk. It occurred to Blunt that they should swing around. Her place was behind it now.
He moved back to the window and sat down in an armchair that looked antique but which was actually modern. Like so many things in this building, it wasn’t what it seemed. Mrs. Jones perched on the edge of the desk. She was wearing black, a smart suit with a silver chain around her neck. She was sucking one of her peppermints. That was bad news. Blunt knew her habits. She sucked peppermints when she had something unpleasant to say, as if to wipe away the taste of the words.
“Congratulations,” Blunt said. He had only been officially told about her new appointment that day. “I wish you every success.”
“Thank you.” Mrs. Jones nodded briefly. “Have you made plans?”
“Travel. A little golf perhaps. The BBC have asked me to join the board.”
“I know. I recommended you.” She paused, her hands resting on the surface of the desk behind her. “Before you leave, we have to talk about Alex.”
“Yes. I thought that might be on your mind. How is he?”
“I’m afraid he’s not at all well. What do you expect?”
“It was very unfortunate. The loss of that housekeeper of his.”
“Jack Starbright was more than a housekeeper. She was his closest friend. She was the only adult friend he had. Certainly the only adult he could ever trust.”
“Nobody could have foreseen what would happen.”
“Is that really true?” Mrs. Jones walked behind the desk and sat down. She had taken Blunt’s chair, and the message was clear. She was taking his authority too. “Scorpia set a trap for us and we walked straight into it. Levi Kroll turning up in the River Thames with an iPhone conveniently lodged in his top pocket. A handful of clues leading us to the Cairo International College. They took us for fools and that’s how we behaved. If it hadn’t been for Alex, the secretary of state would be dead and we’d be at war with the Americans. And all this for the Elgin marbles! It almost beggars belief.”
Blunt spread his hands. “I take full responsibility. You don’t need to worry. You can start your new job with a clear conscience.”
“I wish that were the case. But I agreed to use Alex Rider from the very start . . . and I’m talking now about the Stormbreaker affair more than a year ago. I may have had my doubts about bringing a fourteen-year-old boy into our world, but I ignored them. He was too useful to us. And in that respect, I’m as guilty as you.”
Blunt was impressed. There was a quality to his former deputy, a steel in her voice, that he had never noticed before. “How bad is he?” he asked.
“As I’m sure you know, he killed Julius Grief,” Mrs. Jones said. “That was something else, by the way. We should never have accepted his supposed death in Gibraltar and I’ve already given instructions for the whole facility to be shut down. Anyway, Alex had never had a gun before, but this time he used it. He was forced to shoot Julius in cold blood. I don’t think he can be blamed. Unfortunately, the effect on him has been traumatic.”
She fell silent for a moment. Blunt waited.
“I’ve talked to the psychologists and they say that for Alex it was almost as if he were killing himself. After all, the two of them were identical. What it boils down to is that part of Alex Rider died with Julius Grief. He shot himself . . . or perhaps a part of himself that should never have been born.”
“Maybe that was the part that we created,” Blunt suggested.
“Maybe it was. But as far as I’m concerned, the file on Alex Rider is now closed. It was an experiment that we should never have attempted. There’s no point raking over it all now, but we were wrong—both of us. It will never happen again.”
“Is that why you wanted to see me?”
“No. There’s one other thing you have to answer for before you leave. The attack on Alex Rider at Brookland School.” Mrs. Jones waited for Blunt to respond. He said nothing. He showed nothing more than polite interest. She wasn’t surprised. “A gunman was sent to shoot Alex,” she went on. “But curiously, Erik Gunter never mentioned it. Nor did Razim. One might almost think they knew nothing about it. And there are two other questions that have puzzled me. The first one is very simple. Why did the sniper miss? It’s true that Alex noticed him and reacted quickly, but even so, the bullet hit his desk, not his chair. It’s as if the sniper wasn’t aiming at him at all.
&n
bsp; “And then there’s the business at the Wandsworth Park industrial estate. Alex overheard the gunman talking to the pilot of the helicopter. “It was fine. Mission accomplished.” That was what he said. Was he lying? Or was he actually telling the truth? Had he achieved what he set out to do?”
“Where are you going with this?” Blunt asked.
“I think you know exactly where I’m going. You recruited the sniper and the helicopter pilot. You arranged the whole thing. Scorpia wanted to lure Alex Rider to Cairo and they set up the trap. But you had to make sure that he fell into it. If Alex believed he was in danger—worse than that, that his friends might also be in danger too—he would have no choice but to leave. I’ve traced the ownership of the Robinson R22, by the way, so there’s no point denying it.”
“I wouldn’t insult your intelligence by denying it, Mrs. Jones,” Blunt replied.
“What happened to the pilot and the sniper?”
“They survived. They broke a few bones. Nothing serious. They’re both recuperating on the Isle of Man.”
“Do you have any idea how serious this is? You arranged a shooting in a British school! You brought half of London to a standstill and you’ve wasted thousands of hours of police time—and all so you could get your way. And you were wrong all along. Scorpia tricked you.”
Alan Blunt took off his glasses, wiped them with a handkerchief, then put them on again. His eyes were suddenly tired. “Who knows about this?” he asked.
“Only me.”
“And what do you intend to do?”
There was a brief silence.
“Nothing.” Mrs. Jones might have made the decision before she came into the room. Or she might have made it just then. It made no difference. “I can’t separate myself from the responsibility in all this,” she went on. “I can understand why you did what you did. And I won’t stand in the way of your knighthood. So go to Venice. Enjoy your vacation. We’ve been together for a very long time. We won’t see each other again.”
Blunt stood up. He went over to the desk and laid his hands on the shoe box. But he didn’t pick it up. He looked straight at Mrs. Jones. “I’ll say two things if I may,” he said.
“Go ahead.”
“Try not to forget that some good came out of all this. I understand that Scorpia has disbanded.”
“Scorpia is a laughingstock,” Mrs. Jones agreed. “They’ll never work again. Several of their personnel—including Zeljan Kurst—have been arrested, and the international police forces are cooperating to track down the rest of them. They took on Alex three times and three times they failed. That was the end of them.”
“Well, one might argue that made it all worthwhile.”
“One might. What else?”
“Only this. Let me give you some parting advice, Mrs. Jones.” Blunt lifted the shoe box. Now the desk was entirely hers. “The Brookland business was a mistake, as it turned out. But I had no hesitation in arranging it. And if you are going to succeed in this job, Mrs. Jones—my job—then there will come a time when you will have to do the same. Of course, you know that. You know the sort of decisions we’ve had to make. But I wonder if you know what it’s like to live with them? A German philosopher once wrote that he who fights monsters must take care that he doesn’t become one himself. Our work is often monstrous. I’m afraid there’s no escaping it.”
Mrs. Jones considered this and nodded. There was nothing more to say.
“Good-bye, Alan.”
“Good-bye, Mrs. Jones.”
Blunt took the shoe box and left the room, closing the door behind him.
“Virgin Airways Flight 20 to San Francisco has begun boarding. Will all passengers please proceed directly to Gate 3.”
Sitting in the Virgin business-class lounge at Heathrow, Edward Pleasure closed the book he had been reading and put it away.
“Time to go,” he said.
“Okay.”
Alex Rider was sitting next to him, dressed in jeans and a dark jersey. He had a carry-on bag for the flight, packed with books and computer games for his Nintendo DSi. He had checked in two other suitcases, and they contained just about everything he now owned. The house in Chelsea had been cleared and was on the market to be sold. Alex had taken his clothes, a few photographs, his tennis racquet, and a soccer ball signed by members of the Chelsea squad that he had once won in a raffle. He could have taken more. Edward had offered to arrange a whole crate to be shipped out. But Alex had preferred to leave it all behind.
He was going to live in San Francisco with Edward and Elizabeth Pleasure—and of course with Sabina. The two of them had spoken on the phone and she was thrilled he was coming. “It’ll be great,” she had said. “We’ll be together all the time. And you’ll love it here, Alex. I know you will. I’ve already got your room ready for you. And Mum can’t wait to see you.”
Edward and Elizabeth were now legally responsible for Alex. It was almost as if he had been adopted.
Curiously, it had been Mrs. Jones who had suggested it. Perhaps it had been her way of making up for everything that had happened, but she had called Edward Pleasure even before Alex had arrived back in England. She had sorted out the legal work and had managed to get Alex a full-time visa to stay in America. MI6 had a manor house—part hospital, part rest home—in fifty acres of parkland down in the New Forest, and Alex had stayed there while the arrangements were being made. Edward had finally arrived two days ago. And now they were on their way.
Edward Pleasure worked as a journalist, and following the success of his book about Damian Cray, he was also a wealthy man. He was in big demand in America, writing for several of the major newspapers and magazines. He owed a lot of his success to Alex. After all, it had been Alex who had discovered the truth about Cray in the first place. And Alex had ties with the family that went far beyond his friendship with Sabina. He had stayed with them in Cornwall, in Scotland, and in the south of France—where Edward had nearly died when a bomb exploded in his house. He walked with a limp and still needed painkillers, but he hadn’t let what had happened to him destroy his life. He had a beautiful home in Pacific Heights, a quiet, tree-lined area of the city. Sabina was at the local high school. Her mother cooked and looked after the garden and walked the dog (they had recently taken on a chocolate Labrador) and was writing a book. It had taken them time to get used to life on the other side of the world, but they were comfortable and happy.
And Alex was going to join them, to be part of their family. Edward examined him as the two of them left the lounge and began to walk to the departure gate. He knew very little about what had happened out in Egypt. It wasn’t just that Mrs. Jones had been unwilling to tell him. He just didn’t want to ask. Jack Starbright was dead. He knew that much and understood what it meant to Alex. He also knew that Alex’s spying days really were behind him, that MI6 would never contact them again.
Alex had barely spoken during the time they had been together. There was something terrible about the silence that had taken hold of him like some sort of illness. He showed no interest in food and barely ate. If he was asked something, he would respond politely. But he never volunteered anything and there were long minutes when he didn’t seem to be in the room, when his eyes were somewhere else. At their first meeting, it seemed to Edward that something inside Alex had broken and would never be repaired. He even wondered if he was doing the right thing, taking responsibility for him, bringing him into his home.
But even in the past forty-eight hours he had noticed small differences. Alex was more alert. His pace was quickening as he made his way down the long tunnel that connected with the plane, as if he was in a hurry to be on his way. He had overheard Alex talking to Sabina on the phone and knew that he was looking forward to seeing her.
Was it too much to hope that Alex was already healing? Suddenly Edward was determined. It would all work out. Alex would be part of a family, something that he had never experienced in his entire life. He would be thousands of miles away from t
he forces that had done so much to damage him and he would leave them far behind. It was a fresh start. He would finally be what he had always wanted to be. An ordinary boy.
Twenty minutes later, they were sitting next to each other with their seat belts fastened. Alex was next to the window, looking out. The plane had reached the start of the runway and was waiting there while the pilots made the final checks.
“Are you feeling all right, Alex?” Edward asked.
Alex nodded. “Yes. I’m fine.”
The engines roared. The plane rolled forward, picking up speed, then rose into the sky.
ALSO BY ANTHONY HOROWITZ
THE ALEX RIDER NOVELS:
Stormbreaker
Point Blank
Skeleton Key
Eagle Strike
Scorpia
Ark Angel
Snakehead
Crocodile Tears
THE DIAMOND BROTHERS MYSTERIES:
The Falcon’s Malteser
Public Enemy Number Two
Three of Diamonds
South by Southeast
Horowitz Horror
More Horowitz Horror
Bloody Horowitz
The Devil and His Boy
Scorpia Rising Page 30