Alex took stock of his surroundings. He might be inside the compound, but his luck wouldn’t last for ever. He didn’t doubt that there would be other guards on patrol, and other cameras too. What exactly was he looking for? The strange thing was, he had no real idea. But something told him that if Damian Cray went in for all this security, then it must be because he had something to hide. Of course, it was still possible that Alex was wrong, that Cray was innocent. It was a comforting thought.
He made his way through the compound, heading for the great cube that stood at its heart. He heard a whining sound and ducked into the shadows next to a wall as an electronic car sped past with three passengers and a woman in blue overalls at the wheel. He became aware of activity somewhere ahead of him. An open area, brilliantly lit, stretched out behind one of the warehouses. A voice suddenly echoed in the air, amplified by a speaker system. It was a man speaking – but in Dutch. Alex couldn’t understand a word. Moving more quickly, he hurried on, determined to see what was happening.
He found a narrow alleyway between two of the buildings and ran the full length, grateful for the shadows of the walls. At the end he came to a fire escape, a metal staircase spiralling upwards, and threw himself breathlessly behind it. He could hide here. But, looking between the steps, he had a clear view of what was happening ahead.
There was a square of black tarmac with glass and steel office blocks on all sides. The largest of these was the cube that Alex had seen from outside. Damian Cray was standing in front of it, talking animatedly to a man in a white coat, with three more men just behind him. Even from a distance Cray was unmistakable. He was the smallest person there, dressed in yet another designer suit. He had come out to watch some sort of demonstration. About half a dozen guards stood waiting, dotted around the square. Harsh white lights were being beamed down from two metal towers that Alex hadn’t noticed before.
Watching through the fire escape, Alex saw that there was a cargo plane in the middle of the square. It took him a moment or two to accept what he was seeing. There was no way the plane could have landed there. The square was only just wide enough to contain it, and there wasn’t a runway inside the compound, as far as he knew. It must have been carried here on a truck, possibly assembled on site. But what was it doing here? The plane was an old-fashioned one. It had propellers rather than jets, and wings high up, almost sitting on top of the main body. The words MILLENNIUM AIR were painted in red along the fuselage and on the tail.
Cray looked at his watch. A minute later the loudspeaker crackled again with another announcement in Dutch. Everyone stopped talking and gazed at the plane. Alex stared. A fire had started inside the main cabin. He could see the flames flickering behind the windows. Grey smoke began to seep out of the fuselage and suddenly one of the propellers caught alight. The fire seemed to spread out of control in seconds, consuming the engine and then spreading across the wing. Alex waited for someone to do something. If there was any fuel in the plane, it would surely explode at any moment. But nobody moved. Cray seemed to nod.
It was over as quickly as it had begun. The man in the white coat spoke into a radio transmitter and the fire went out. It was extinguished so quickly that if Alex hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed it had been there in the first place. They didn’t use water or foam. There were no scorch marks and no smoke.
One moment the plane had been burning; the next it wasn’t. It was as simple as that.
Cray and the three men with him spent a few seconds talking, before turning and strolling back into the cube. The guards in the square marched off. The plane was left where it was. Alex wondered what on earth he had got himself into. This had nothing to do with computer games. It made absolutely no sense at all.
But at least he had spotted Damian Cray.
Alex waited until the guards had gone, then twisted out from behind the fire escape. He made his way as quickly as he could around the square, keeping in the shadows. Cray had made a mistake. Breaking into the compound was virtually impossible, so he had worried less about security on the inside. Alex hadn’t spotted any cameras, and the guards in the towers were looking out rather than in. For the moment he was safe.
He followed Cray into the building and found himself crossing the white marble floor of what was nothing more than a huge glass box. Above him he could see the night sky with the three windmills looming in the distance. The building contained nothing. But there was a single round hole in one corner of the floor and a staircase leading down.
Alex heard voices.
He crept down the stairs, which led directly into a large underground room. Crouching on the bottom step, concealed behind wide steel banisters, he watched.
The room was open-plan, with a white marble floor and corridors leading off in several directions. The architecture made him think of a vault in an ultra-modern bank. But the gorgeous rugs, the fireplace, the Italian furniture and the dazzling white Bechstein grand piano could have come out of a palace. To one side was a curving desk with a bank of telephones and computer screens. All the lighting was at floor level, giving the room a bizarre, unsettling atmosphere, with all the shadows going the wrong way. A portrait of Damian Cray holding a white poodle covered an entire wall.
The man himself was sitting on a sofa, sipping a bright yellow drink. He had a cherry on a cocktail stick and Alex watched him pick it off with his perfect white teeth and slowly eat it. The three men from the square were with him, and Alex knew at once that he had been right all along – that Cray was indeed at the centre of the web.
One of the men was Yassen Gregorovich. Wearing jeans and a polo neck, he was sitting on the piano stool, his legs crossed. The second man stood near him, leaning against the piano. He was older, with silver hair and a sagging, pockmarked face. He was wearing a blue blazer with a striped tie that made him look like a minor official in a bank or a cricket club. He had large spectacles that had sunk into his face as if it were damp clay. He looked nervous, the eyes behind the glass circles blinking frequently. The third man was darkly handsome, in his late forties, with black hair, grey eyes and a jawline that was square and serious. He was casually dressed in a leather jacket and an open-necked shirt and seemed to be enjoying himself.
Cray was talking to him. “I’m very grateful to you, Mr Roper. Thanks to you, Eagle Strike can now proceed on schedule.”
Roper! This was the man Cray had met in Paris. Alex had a sense that everything had come full circle. He strained to hear what the two men were saying.
“Hey – please. Call me Charlie.” The man spoke with an American accent. “And there’s no need to thank me, Damian. I’ve enjoyed doing business with you.”
“I do have a few questions,” Cray murmured, and Alex saw him pick up an object from a coffee table next to the sofa. It was a metallic capsule, about the same shape and size as a mobile phone. “As I understand it, the gold codes change daily. Presumably the flash drive is currently programmed with today’s codes. But if Eagle Strike were to take place two days from now…”
“Just plug it in. The flash drive will update itself,” Roper explained. He had an easy, lazy smile. “That’s the beauty of it. First it will burrow through the security systems. Then it will pick up the new codes … like taking candy from a baby. The moment you have the codes, you transmit them back through Milstar and you’re set. The only problem you have, like I told you, is the little matter of the finger on the button.”
“Well, we’ve already solved that,” Cray said.
“Then I might as well move out of here.”
“Just give me a couple more minutes of your valuable time, Mr Roper … Charlie…” Cray said. He sipped his cocktail, licked his lips and set the glass down. “How can I be sure that the flash drive will actually work?”
“You have my word on it,” Roper said. “And you’re certainly paying me enough.”
“Indeed so. Half a million dollars in advance. And two million dollars now. However…” Cray
paused and pursed his lips. “I still have one small worry on my mind.”
Alex’s leg had gone to sleep as he crouched, watching the scene from the stairs. Slowly he straightened it out. He wished he understood more of what they were saying. He knew that a flash drive was a type of storage device used in computer technology. But who or what was Mil-star? And what was Eagle Strike?
“What’s the problem?” Roper asked casually.
“I’m afraid you are, Mr Roper.” The green eyes in Cray’s round, babyish face were suddenly hard. “You are not as reliable as I had hoped. When you came to Paris, you were followed.”
“That’s not true.”
“An English journalist found out about your gambling habit. He and a photographer followed you to la Tour d’Argent.” Cray held up a hand to stop Roper interrupting. “I have dealt with them both. But you have disappointed me, Mr Roper. I wonder if I can still trust you.”
“Now you listen to me, Damian.” Roper spoke angrily. “We had a deal. I worked here with your technical boys. I gave them the information they needed to load the flash drive, and that’s my part of it over. How you’re going to get to the VIP lounge and how you’ll actually activate the system … that’s your business. But you owe me two million dollars, and this journalist – whoever he was – doesn’t make any difference at all.”
“Blood money,” Cray said.
“What?”
“That’s what they call money paid to traitors.”
“I’m no traitor!” Roper growled. “I needed the money, that’s all. I haven’t betrayed my country. So quit talking like this, pay me what you owe me and let me walk out of here.”
“Of course I’m going to pay you what I owe you.” Cray smiled. “You’ll have to forgive me, Charlie. I was just thinking aloud.” He gestured, his hand falling limply back. The American glanced round and Alex saw that there was an alcove to one side of the room. It was shaped like a giant bottle, with a curved wall behind and a curving glass door in front. Inside was a table, and on the table a leather attaché case.
“Your money is in there,” Cray said.
“Thank you.”
Neither Yassen Gregorovich nor the man with the spectacles had spoken throughout all this, but they watched intently as the American approached the alcove. There must have been some sort of sensor built into the door because it slid open automatically. Roper went up to the table and opened the case. Alex heard the two locks click up.
Then Roper turned round. “I hope this isn’t your idea of a joke,” he said. “This is empty.”
Cray smiled at him from the sofa. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll fill it.” He reached out and pressed a button on the coffee table in front of him. There was a hiss and the door of the alcove slid shut.
“Hey!” Roper shouted.
Cray pressed the button a second time.
For an instant nothing happened. Alex realized he was no longer breathing. His heart was beating at twice its normal rate. Then something bright and silver dropped down from somewhere high up inside the closed-off room, landing inside the case. Roper reached in and held up a small coin. It was a quarter – a twenty-five cent piece.
“Cray! What are you playing at?” he demanded.
More coins began to fall into the case. Alex couldn’t see exactly what was happening but he guessed that the room really was like a bottle, totally sealed apart from a hole somewhere above. The coins were falling through the hole, the trickle rapidly turning into a cascade. In seconds the attaché case was full, and still the coins came, tumbling onto the pile, spreading out over the table and onto the floor.
Perhaps Charlie Roper had an inkling of what was about to happen. He forced his way through the shower of coins and pounded on the glass door. “Stop this!” he shouted. “Let me out of here!”
“But I haven’t paid you all your money, Mr Roper,” Cray replied. “I thought you said I owed you two million dollars.”
Suddenly the cascade became a torrent. Thousands and thousands of coins poured into the room. Roper cried out, bending an arm over his head, trying to protect himself. Alex quickly worked out the mathematics. Two million dollars, twenty-five cents at a time. The payment was being made in just about the smallest of small change. How many coins would there be? Already they filled all the available floor space, rising up to the American’s knees. The torrent intensified. Now the rush of coins was solid and Roper’s screams were almost drowned out by the clatter of metal against metal. Alex wanted to look away but he found himself fixated, his eyes wide with horror.
He could barely see the man any more. The coins thundered down. Roper was trying to swat them away, as if they were a swarm of bees. His arms and hands were vaguely visible but his face and body had disappeared. He lashed out with a fist and Alex saw a smear of blood appear on the door – but the toughened glass wouldn’t break. The coins oozed forward, filling every inch of space. They rose up higher and higher. Roper was invisible now, sealed into the glittering mass. If he was still screaming, nothing more could be heard.
And then, suddenly, it was over. The last coins fell. A grave of eight million quarters. Alex shuddered, trying to imagine what it must have been like to have been trapped inside. How had the American died? Had he been suffocated by the falling coins or crushed by their weight? Alex had no doubt that the man inside was dead. Blood money! Cray’s sick joke couldn’t have been more true.
Cray laughed.
“That was fun!” he said.
“Why did you kill him?” The man in the spectacles had spoken for the first time. He had a Dutch accent. His voice was trembling.
“Because he was careless, Henryk,” Cray replied. “We can’t make mistakes, not at this late stage. And it’s not as if I broke any promises. I said I’d pay him two million dollars, and if you want to open the door and count it, two million dollars is exactly what you’ll find.”
“Don’t open the door!” the man called Henryk gasped.
“No. I think it would be a bit messy.” Cray smiled. “Well, we’ve taken care of Roper. We’ve got the flash drive. We’re all set to go. So why don’t we have another drink?”
Still crouching at the bottom of the stairs, Alex gritted his teeth, forcing himself not to panic. Every instinct told him to get up and run, but he knew he had to take care. What he had seen was almost beyond belief – but at least his mission was now clear. He had to get out of the compound, out of Sloterdijk, and back to England. Like it or not, he had to go back to MI6.
He knew now that he had been right all along and that Damian Cray was both mad and evil. All his posturing – his many charities and his speeches against violence – was precisely that; a facade. He was planning something that he called Eagle Strike, and whatever it was would take place in two days’ time. It involved a security system and a VIP lounge. Was he going to break into an embassy? It didn’t matter. Somehow he would make Alan Blunt and Mrs Jones believe him. There was a dead man called Charlie Roper. A connection with the National Security Agency of America. Surely Alex had enough information to persuade them to make an arrest.
But first he had to get out.
He turned just in time to see the figure looming above him. It was a guard, coming down the stairs. Alex started to react, but he was too late. The guard had seen him. He was carrying a gun. Slowly Alex raised his hands. The guard gestured and Alex stood up, rising above the stair rail. On the other side of the room, Damian Cray saw him. His face lit up with delight.
“Alex Rider!” he exclaimed. “I was hoping to see you again. What a lovely surprise! Come on over and have a drink – and let me tell you how you’re going to die.”
PAIN SYNTHESIS
“Yassen has told me all about you,” Cray said. “Apparently you worked for MI6. I have to say, that’s a very novel idea. Are you still working for them now? Did they send you after me?”
Alex said nothing.
“If you don’t answer my questions, I may have to start thinking about
doing nasty things to you. Or getting Yassen to do them. That’s what I pay him for. Pins and needles … that sort of thing.”
“MI6 don’t know anything,” Yassen said.
He and Cray were alone in the room with Alex. The guard and the man called Henryk had gone. Alex was sitting on the sofa with a glass of chocolate milk that Cray had insisted on pouring for him. Cray was now perched on the piano stool. His legs were crossed and he seemed completely relaxed as he sipped another cocktail.
“There’s no way the intelligence services could know anything about us,” Yassen went on. “And if they did, they wouldn’t have sent Alex.”
“Then why was he at the Pleasure Dome? Why is he here?” Cray turned to Alex. “I don’t suppose you’ve come all this way to get my autograph. As a matter of fact, Alex, I’m rather pleased to see you. I was planning to come and find you one day anyway. You completely spoilt the launch of my Gameslayer. Much too clever by half! I was very cross with you, and although I’m rather busy at the moment, I was going to arrange a little accident…”
“Like you did for that woman in Hyde Park?” Alex asked.
“She was a nuisance. She asked impertinent questions. I hate journalists, and I hate smart-arse kids too. As I say, I’m very glad you managed to find your way here. It makes my life a lot easier.”
“You can’t do anything to me,” Alex said. “MI6 know I’m here. They know all about Eagle Strike. You may have the codes, but you’ll never be able to use them. And if I don’t report in this evening, this whole place will be surrounded before tomorrow and you’ll be in jail…”
Cray glanced at Yassen. The Russian shook his head. “He’s lying. He must have heard us talking from the stairs. He knows nothing.”
Cray licked his lips. Alex realized that he was enjoying himself. He could see now just how crazy Cray was. The man didn’t connect with the real world and Alex knew that whatever he was planning, it was going to be on a big scale – and probably lethal.
Eagle Strike Page 10