They worked for their father for nine years but perhaps inevitably they decided, on the same day, that the old man was standing in their way and they could do better without him. A week later, Carlo was gunned down in his Jacuzzi by his own bodyguard, an Italian American called Frankie Stallone, known as “The Flame” because of the tattoo on his right hand. With Carlo gone, the brothers took control of the family and the next few years were bloodier and more violent than any that had gone before.
Unfortunately, they were also less profitable. The Italian Mafia, also known as the Cosa Nostra, has become a worldwide criminal organization raking in as much as $4.9 billion a year, but it has done so by obeying certain rules. There’s the law of omerta, for example – the famous code of silence. Families stick together. Women are respected. Giovanni and Eduardo had never even visited their ancestral home in Sicily and understood none of this, and without their father to control them, they soon found themselves hated, isolated and finally almost assassinated. They survived a machine-gun attack on their yacht in Miami simply because they arrived ten minutes late. They also – miraculously – walked out of a hotel in Las Vegas after a bomb had brought all seven storeys crashing to the ground.
They had, however, seen the writing on the wall … or what was left of it. They knew they had to get out of their family and out of America. That was when they joined Scorpia. The new organization of out-of-work spies and killers which had been formed just after the Cold War was already thriving, specializing in sabotage, corruption, intelligence and assassination – areas that the two brothers knew well. They made contact, managed to get themselves recruited and rose rapidly to the executive committee. They had been there at the meeting when Abdul-Aziz al-Razim had been given the task of blackmailing the British government. They had listened to him as he explained his plans – which involved the assassination of the American Secretary of State and a boy called Alex Rider.
And now, thanks to that boy, Scorpia was finished. Razim was dead. Half of their colleagues had been arrested. Giovanni and Eduardo had managed to get away, one step ahead of the world’s security services, but their troubles were far from over. Their main problem was a very simple one: they were running out of money. It was true that they had properties all over the world. Their luxury yacht, Quicksilver, was worth millions. They had a dozen superb cars, including two bright-red Alfa Romeos and two silver Rolls Royces. If one brother bought something, the other had to have it too. What they didn’t have, though, was cash in the bank. That was why they were planning a new operation and the crucial phase was supposed to be happening in just two days’ time.
Operation Steel Claw.
The news they had just received was therefore all the more crushing. Everything had been carefully planned and it had all gone perfectly. Until last night.
“You shot her,” Giovanni said.
“The stupid woman got in the way.”
Frankie Stallone, the bald man with the flame tattoo, stood in front of the two brothers, wearing a grey suit and a T-shirt. He was still in pain and should have been in hospital. His face was a red and white latticework of burns. His lips were blistered. There was a plaster over the bridge of his nose. And he had lost both his eyebrows. He looked hideous.
“How bad is it?” Eduardo asked, bringing his spoon down hard on his boiled egg.
“Will she be able to fly?” Giovanni asked, doing the same.
“I spoke to the doctors this morning,” Frankie replied. He had a New York Bronx accent. “The bone in her shoulder is completely shattered.”
There was a lengthy silence. Neither of the brothers ate their eggs. Frankie Stallone stood there, waiting for their response. He was not afraid of them. He had made a mistake, certainly, but he had worked for the Grimaldis for many years – first for their father, now for them. They had sent him to the boat to keep an eye on the Serbian woman who was drunk and unreliable. None of them had been expecting an intruder – and certainly not one who was a teenage boy.
Giovanni put down his spoon. “It’s very…”
“…annoying.” Eduardo finished the sentence. This was one of their habits. The two of them often shared what had to be said.
“And who was this boy?” Giovanni asked.
“What was he doing?”
Frankie shrugged. The movement hurt him. His shoulder was burned too. “I have no idea. He may have been a thief. He set off a device that distracted our attention and that was how he slipped on board.”
The brothers considered. Both of them came to the same decision.
“Well, we’re very disappointed,” Giovanni began.
“You should have been more careful.”
“We’ll deal with the situation now. You’d better go and get someone to look at your face.”
“Your nose is peeling.”
“And your chin!”
Frankie nodded and walked off into the garden, his skin rubbing painfully against his suit, leaving the two brothers alone.
It was perhaps unfortunate that the two of them were identical twins, for it had to be said that both Giovanni and Eduardo were strangely unattractive. They were neat and delicate, almost like schoolboys, with very round heads and black hair that could have been painted on, coming down in cowlicks over their foreheads. Their eyes were also dark and somehow always suspicious, even when they were looking at each other. They were clean-shaven but their cheeks and chin were covered in permanent dark stubble, like sandpaper. They had very small mouths. If the devil had a church, they would sing in his choir. That was the impression they gave.
“So what are we going to do, Gio?”
“I don’t know, Eddie.”
These were their pet names for each other. Nobody else ever used them. Not if they wanted to live.
“It shouldn’t be too difficult to find someone else but it means we may have to delay Steel Claw,” Giovanni said.
“We can’t. Everything is set up. That ghastly man, Vosper, is already on his way. He’ll be here…”
“…later this morning. Yes. I know. But we have to find someone who can handle the Super Stallion. And it’s not an easy manoeuvre, the actual pick-up.” He put down his spoon. “We’re going to have to use all our contacts…”
“We’ll find someone,” Eduardo muttered. He had also put down his spoon.
There was another silence. The two brothers sat in the sunshine, looking at their breakfast, neither of them eating.
At last Giovanni muttered the words that both of them were thinking. “This boy…”
“It can’t have been…”
“Alex Rider!” Giovanni swore in old Sicilian. It was something that he and Eduardo had learned from their grandmother, an old woman who had been famous for her filthy language. “Who else could it have been?” he went on. “That little snake has caused us enough trouble already. He must have followed us here. And I thought he was finished after Egypt.”
“Evidently he’s back in business.”
“Razim failed completely. I’m telling you, Eddie, we’re better off without Scorpia. After Steel Claw, we’ll set up a new organization. We’ll have money in the bank. We’ll have everything we need.”
It was a pleasant thought. The two brothers returned to their breakfast. Behind them, one of the gardeners was mowing the lawn while another set to work cleaning the pool. A guard with a sub-machine gun walked past. The villa was patrolled twenty-four hours a day … more wages to be paid, more money that had to be found.
“What are we going to do about the Serbian woman?” Giovanni asked, touching a napkin against his lips.
“She’s in hospital in Saint-Tropez,” Eduardo replied, setting his napkin down.
“We should have had her treated on the boat.”
“That was the French. They insisted.”
“Have they spoken to her?”
“She hasn’t told them anything. At least, not yet.” Giovanni thought for a moment. “I think we should go and visit her,” he said. “One
way or another, we really need to take care of her.”
“Let’s take roses,” Eduardo suggested.
Giovanni smiled. “Yes. That’s a lovely idea.”
Saint-Tropez hospital is a couple of miles outside the city next to a village called Gassin. It’s a modern, low, white building, set back from the main road and surrounded by flowers and shrubs. Just before midday, Eduardo and Giovanni Grimaldi pulled up in their open-top Jeep Wrangler and stood for a moment, gazing at the narrow windows and main entrance. The car was a recent purchase and, of course, they both had one. Two Jeep Wranglers had cost them sixty thousand euros, smashing their credit-card limit. But they couldn’t resist the chunky off-road vehicles with their four-wheel drive and five-speed automatic transmission. They loved folding the roof down and speeding through the countryside with a blanket over their knees if the weather was cold. This Jeep was Giovanni’s. He beamed at it like a proud parent as he left it in the car park, sitting in the sun.
The two brothers walked through the car park and went into the hospital. They were each carrying a single red rose. They asked at the reception for Madame Dragana Novak and were shown to a room on the second floor, where the Serbian pilot was lying in bed, her face grey, her arm in a sling.
Dragana was in a bad mood. First of all, she was in pain. The doctors had operated and removed the bullet and the police had been persuaded that she had been attacked by a thief, trying to break into the boat. But she was angry with herself. She had allowed a boy – a mere child – to get the better of her. She still wasn’t sure why the poisoned needle hadn’t worked but she knew that somehow she had been tricked and the thought infuriated her. And then there was Operation Steel Claw. She was very well aware that she would be unable to manipulate the Super Stallion with her arm in a sling. It might well be that her employers would have to cancel the operation altogether. That didn’t bother her but the trouble was, she’d only received a small percentage of her fee. For a while now, she’d had her doubts about Eduardo and Giovanni. They might behave like millionaires but they’d been very slow coming forward with the cash.
And here they were, coming into the room, each one carrying a flower as if it were a flag. Why only one flower? That was exactly her point. They could at least have brought a bunch. Dragana straightened herself against the pillows as the brothers sat down, one on each side of the bed.
“How are you feeling, Miss Novak?” Giovanni asked – at least she assumed it was Giovanni. They were dressed identically and she had no way of telling them apart.
“We were so sorry to hear about what happened,” Eduardo added.
“It was completely the fault of your guards.” Dragana had already rehearsed what she was going to say. “You didn’t want me to stay in your house and you said I would be safe on the boat. Instead, I was woken up in the middle of the night and attacked. I could have been killed.”
“Can you tell us anything more?” Giovanni asked.
“We understand it was a young boy.”
“What exactly did he want?”
“I’m not telling you anything until I’ve got the rest of my money!” Dragana spat out the words. She looked from one twin to the other. It really felt strange having them on either side of her, still holding their stupid flowers. “You said you were going to pay me two hundred thousand pounds and so far I’ve had almost nothing out of you.”
“You’re no longer capable of doing the job,” Giovanni muttered.
“Exactly,” Eduardo agreed.
“That’s not my fault,” Dragana snarled. “You’ll have to find someone else.” She paused for a moment. Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to be so aggressive. “I’ve already spoken to my cousin, Slavko,” she went on. “He’s a qualified helicopter pilot. He works at the Moma Stanojlovic´ air plant and he’s highly regarded.” She fumbled in her bedclothes and produced a crumpled sheet of paper. “Don’t worry. I telephoned him this morning but I didn’t tell him anything about you. He’s waiting to hear from you. This is his number.”
“Thank you.” Giovanni took the paper and handed it to his brother.
“But you still have to pay me something,” Dragana went on. “I did what you wanted at the Suffolk Air Show. That was half of the work. I killed two American pilots! Without me, you’d have nothing!” She glared at them.
Eduardo smiled. “We came here because we wanted to take care of you,” he said.
“We feel responsible for you,” Giovanni agreed. “We bought you flowers.”
“Roses. We picked them from our own garden. They have a lovely smell.” Eduardo reached out, holding the single flower under Dragana’s nose. Almost despite herself, she leaned forward and that was when Eduardo thrust upwards. What Dragana couldn’t have known was that there was a very thin, razor-sharp wire concealed inside the flower. The twins had done this before. It was one of their favourite tricks and they would take turns – one watching, one doing the actual work. The wire went straight up her nose and into the medulla oblongata, the nerve mass located at the lower base of her brain. Dragana was dead before she knew what had happened. There was a tiny trickle of blood from the corner of her nostril. Otherwise, it would be very difficult to say what had killed her.
The two brothers stood up.
“My turn next time!” Giovanni said as he looked at the piece of paper that Dragana had given them. There was a long number beginning with 381, the international dialling code for Serbia.
“Are we going to call her cousin?”
“I don’t see why not, Eddie. She said he was…”
“…highly regarded.” Eduardo glanced at his watch. “We’d better get back to the house. Mr Vosper will be here soon.”
Taking the roses with them, the brothers left.
It took them half an hour to reach the Villa Siciliana in their Jeep Wrangler. They skirted round the edge of Saint-Tropez and turned off onto the road that wound its way up and up into the hills. Eduardo had driven them to the hospital so Giovanni drove them back. As they approached the gate, an image of the car appeared on a screen inside the guardhouse. The guards immediately recognized the driver and the man sitting next to him and hit the button to open the gate. Without stopping, the jeep rolled past.
Nobody was aware that it was carrying an extra passenger.
The night before, Alex Rider had pulled himself, dripping wet, out of the harbour and crouched in the shadows as the police piled on board Quicksilver. He assumed that they would search the boat. He still thought there was a chance they might find Jack. Surely, at the very least, they would arrest Dragana and the two men who had just tried to kill him?
But it seemed that, in France, things didn’t work that way. He saw the bald man, standing on the deck, explaining something to a young gendarme. The two of them seemed to be on the very best of terms. A few minutes later, Dragana was carried off on a stretcher and loaded into an ambulance which had also turned up. People were already going back into the restaurants. The fun was over. There was nothing more to see.
Alex felt angry and disappointed as he returned to his hotel. He grabbed his key from the receptionist and ignored her puzzled look as he took the stairs up to his room, his feet squelching on the carpet. He put his trousers, shirt and jacket out on the balcony to dry, showered and went to bed. He already knew what he was going to do the next day. He had planned it even as he had dived into the sea.
Dragana was his only lead. She had more or less admitted that the Grimaldi brothers owned Quicksilver but she had said nothing more. He didn’t know if they were in Saint-Tropez. He didn’t know where they lived. But if he stayed close to her, there was still a chance that she might lead him to them. Alex no longer had his computer but he still had his phone – miraculously it was still working – and he had used it to Google the name and address of the main hospital in Saint-Tropez.
He was up bright and early the next morning. He bought new clothes in the first shop that opened and then took a taxi to the hospital, arriving just
before ten o’clock. Since then, he had been in the reception area, hiding behind a French newspaper he had picked up at a kiosk. He wanted to see if anyone asked for Dragana Novak. If she had a visitor, he would follow them. They might lead him to the Grimaldis. And they in turn would lead him to Jack.
He had actually been looking out through the plate-glass windows when the Jeep Wrangler pulled up and he had watched as the two men had got out with their single roses. He had known at once who they were. Colonel Manzour had told him about the Grimaldi brothers and how many other identical twins could there be in Saint-Tropez? Alex couldn’t believe his luck. For some reason they had come here themselves. They were exactly the people he wanted to see. He had waited until they had come in, carrying their ridiculous flowers. They had passed within a few metres of him, but neither of them had looked his way. He had heard them ask for Dragana.
While they were upstairs, he had hurried outside. Again, he was lucky. They had driven an open-top car and had come alone. Making sure that nobody was looking, he had opened the door and slipped inside. There was a blanket lying in the back. He had squeezed himself into the well behind the two front seats and then drawn it over him. It had been about thirty minutes before the brothers had come back.
And now he felt the jeep slow down and stop.
“Vosper is here,” he heard one of the brothers say.
“Yes. Let’s get this over with,” the other replied.
Alex heard the jeep doors close and the crunch of footsteps as the two men walked away. Meanwhile, there was a buzz from somewhere behind him as the guards activated the controls and the gates swung firmly shut.
CEMENT SHOES
Alex remained where he was, under the blanket, listening out for any sound. This was the most dangerous part. He had no way of knowing if anyone was looking at the car – or even where the car was parked. If he moved and somebody saw him, it would all be over. He had heard the two brothers walk off – on their way to a meeting with someone called Vosper. He had heard the gate close and knew that he was effectively trapped inside some sort of compound. He would worry about that later. What else? In the distance, somebody had started a lawnmower. A plane flew overhead. He was well outside Saint-Tropez. He knew that from the length of the journey. This must be somewhere very secluded … quite possibly one of the villas that were dotted throughout the hills.
Never Say Die Page 12