The man took in the scene instantly. He saw that the tiger was about to pounce. Without a second thought he reached out and picked up the remote control that Alex had noticed on the table. He pointed it vaguely in the direction of the tiger and pressed a button.
And then the impossible happened. The tiger climbed off the desk. Alex saw its eyes begin to dim, and it slumped down on the floor. Alex stared. The tiger had been transformed, in seconds, from a dreadful monster to nothing more than an oversized pussy cat. And then it was asleep, its chest rising and falling, its eyes closed.
How had it worked?
Alex looked back at the man who had just come in. He was still holding the device, whatever it was, in his hand. For a moment Alex wondered if the animal was even real. Could it possibly be some sort of robot that could be switched on and off by remote control? No. That was ridiculous. He had been close enough to the tiger to notice every detail. He had smelt its breath. He could see it now, twitching, as it returned to the forests it had come from … in its dreams. It was a living thing. But somehow it had been turned off as quickly and as easily as a light bulb. Alex had never felt more out of his depth. He had followed a boat with a silver scorpion, and it had led him into some sort of Italian wonderland.
“Chi sei? Cosa fai qui?”
The man was talking to him. Alex didn’t understand the words but he got the gist. Who are you? What are you doing here? He stood up, wishing that he had been able to change out of his costume. He felt half naked and horribly vulnerable. He wondered if Tom was still waiting for him outside. No. He had told him to go back to the hotel.
The man spoke to him a second time. Alex had no choice.
“I don’t speak Italian,” he said.
“You’re English?” The man switched effortlessly into Alex’s language.
“Yes.”
“What are you doing in Mrs Rothman’s study?”
“My name is Alex Rider—”
“And my name is Nile. But that’s not what I asked you.”
“I’m looking for Scorpia.”
The man – Nile – smiled, showing perfect teeth. With the tiger neutralized, Alex was able to examine him more closely. Without the skin problem, he would be classically handsome. He was clean-shaven, elegant, in perfect physical shape. His hair was cut close to his skull, with a pattern of curving lines shaved around his ears. Although he looked relaxed, Alex knew that he was already in a combat stance, poised on the balls of his feet. This was a dangerous man; he radiated self-confidence and control. He wasn’t alarmed to find a teenager here in the study. Instead he seemed to be amused.
“What do you know about Scorpia?” the man asked. His voice was soft and very precise.
Alex said nothing.
“It’s a name you overheard downstairs,” Nile said. “Or perhaps you found it in the desk. Were you searching the desk? Is that why you’re here? Are you a thief?”
“No.”
Alex had already decided he’d had enough. Any minute now, someone else would arrive. It was time to go. He turned away and began to move towards the door he had first come in.
“If you take one more step, I’m afraid I’ll have to kill you,” Nile warned.
Alex didn’t pause.
He heard the light footfall on the wooden floor behind him and timed it exactly right. At the last moment, he stopped and swivelled round, lashing out with his heel in a back kick that should have driven into the man’s abdomen, winding him at the very least, and possibly knocking him out. But with a sense of shock Alex felt his foot meet only empty air. Nile had either anticipated what he was about to do or twisted away with unbelievable speed.
Alex turned full circle, trying to follow through with a front jab – the kizami-zuki – he had learnt in karate. But it was too late. Nile had dodged again and there was a blur of movement as the edge of his hand scythed down. It was like being hit by a block of wood. Alex was almost thrown off his feet. The whole room shuddered and went dark. Desperately he tried to adopt a defensive position, crossing his arms, keeping his head low. Nile had been expecting it. Alex felt an arm close around his throat. A hand pressed against his head. With a single twist, Nile could now break his neck.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Nile said, talking as if to a little child. “I did warn you and you didn’t listen. So now you’re dead.”
There was a moment of blinding pain, a flash of white light. Then nothing.
Alex came round with the feeling that his head had been wrenched off. Even after he had opened his eyes it took a few seconds for his vision to return. He tried to move a hand and was relieved to see his fingers curl inwards. So his neck wasn’t broken. He tried to play back what had happened. Nile must have let go of his head at the last moment and used an elbow strike. Alex had been knocked out before but he had never woken up in as much pain as this. Had Nile meant to kill him? Somehow he doubted it. Even from their short encounter, Alex knew that he had met a master of unarmed combat, someone who knew exactly what he was doing and didn’t make mistakes.
Nile had knocked Alex out and dragged him here. Where was he? With his head still pounding, Alex gazed around him. He didn’t like the look of what he saw. He was in a small chamber, somewhere underneath the palace, he guessed. The walls were made of mottled plaster and the way they sloped reminded him of a cellar. The floor had recently been flooded. He was standing on a sort of trellis-work of damp and rotting wooden planks. The room was lit by a single bulb behind a dirty glass covering. There were no windows. Alex shivered. It was cold in here, despite the earlier heat of the September evening. And there was something else. He ran a finger along one of the walls and felt a coating of slime. He had thought the cellar was painted a dirty shade of green, but now he realized that the flooding had risen further than the floor. It had continued all the way up to the ceiling. Even the light bulb had at some stage been underwater.
As his senses slowly returned, Alex became aware of the smell of water in the air and recognized the stench of the rotting vegetables, mud and salt of the Venice canal system. He could even hear water. It was lapping not on the other side of the wall but somewhere beneath him. He knelt down and examined the floor. One of the boards was loose and he was able to swivel it enough to make a narrow opening. He stretched a hand through and touched water. There was no way out. He turned round. A short flight of wooden steps led up to a solid-looking door. He went up to it and pressed his weight against it. The door was covered in slime too. There was no give in it at all.
What now?
Alex was still dressed in the silk trousers and waistcoat that had been his costume. There was nothing to protect him against the dank chill. He thought briefly about Tom, and that gave him a little comfort. If he hadn’t returned to the hotel by the morning, Tom would surely raise the alarm. Daybreak couldn’t be far away. Alex had no idea how long he’d been unconscious, and he had taken off his watch when he put on his disguise, something he was now regretting. There was no sound on the other side of the door. It seemed he had no choice but to wait.
He crouched in a corner, wrapping his arms around himself. Most of the gold paint had come off, and he felt ragged and dirty. He wondered what Scorpia would do with him. Surely someone – Nile or Mrs Rothman – would come down, if only to find out why he had bothered to break in.
Incredibly, he managed to fall asleep. The next thing he knew, he had jerked awake with a crick in his neck. A cold numbness had spread through his body. Some sort of siren had woken him. He could hear it howling – not inside the building but far away. At the same time, he was aware that something in the room had changed. He glanced down and saw water spreading across the floor.
For a second he was puzzled. Had a pipe burst? Where was the water coming from? Then his thoughts came together and he understood his fate. Scorpia wasn’t interested in him. Nile had told him he was going to die and he had meant what he said.
The siren was warning that there was going to be a flood.
Venice has an alarm system in place all year round. The city stands at sea level and because of the wind and the atmospheric pressure, there are frequent storm surges. These cause water from the Adriatic to pour into the Venice lagoon, with the result that the canals break their banks and whole streets and squares simply disappear for several hours. Cold black water was bubbling up into the room even now. How high would it go? Alex didn’t need to ask. The stains on the walls went all the way up to the ceiling. The water would rise over him and he would struggle helplessly, unable to save himself, until he drowned. Eventually the level would fall again and they would clear out his body, perhaps dumping it in the lagoon.
He leapt to his feet and ran to the door, slamming his hands against it. He was shouting too, although he knew it was hopeless. Nobody came. Nobody cared. He surely wasn’t the first to end up locked in here. Ask too many questions, go into rooms where you had no right to be, and this was the result.
The water was rising steadily. It must have been five centimetres deep already. The floor had disappeared. There were no windows, and the door was rock solid. There was only one possible way out of here and Alex was almost too afraid to try it. But one of the planks was loose. Maybe there was some sort of well or large pipe underneath. After all, he reasoned, there had to be some way for the water to come in.
And it was gushing in now, more quickly than ever. Alex hurried back down the stairs. The water level was well over his ankles, almost reaching his knees. He made a quick calculation. At this rate, the room would be completely submerged in about three minutes. He ripped off the waistcoat and threw it aside. He wouldn’t need that now. He waded forward, searching with his feet for the loose plank. He remembered that it was somewhere in the middle and soon found it, stubbing his toe against one side of the opening. He knelt down, the water now circling his waist. He wasn’t even sure he could squeeze through. And if he did, what would he find on the other side?
He tried to feel with his hands. There was an upsurge of water right beneath him. This was the source of the inflow. The water was coming directly up from some sort of opening. So this had to be the way out. The only question was – could he do it? He would have to force himself, head first, through the tiny gap, find the opening and swim into it. If he got stuck he would drown upside down. If the passage was blocked he would never make it back again. He was kneeling in front of the worst death imaginable. And the water was creeping up his spine, pitiless and cold.
Bitter anger shivered through him. Was this the destiny that Yassen Gregorovich had promised him? Had he come to Venice simply for this? The sirens were still howling. The water had covered the first two steps and was already lapping at the third. Alex cursed, then took several deep breaths, hyperventilating. When he had forced as much air into his lungs as he thought they could take, he toppled over and plunged head first through the hole.
The gap was barely big enough. He felt the edge of the wooden floorboards bite into his shoulders, but then he was able to use his hands to propel himself onward. He was utterly blind. Even if he had opened his eyes, the water would have been black. He could feel it pressing against his nostrils and lips. It was ice cold and stinking. God! What a way to die. His stomach had passed through the opening but his hips were stuck. Alex twisted like a snake and the lower part of his body came free.
He was already running out of air. He wanted to turn and go back, but now fresh panic gripped him as he realized that he was trapped inside some sort of tube with no room to go any way except down. His shoulders banged against solid brick. He kicked out with one leg and was rewarded with a stab of pain as his foot hit the wall that enclosed him. He felt the current swirling round his face and neck – ropes of water that wanted to bind him for ever in this black death. He became aware of the full horror of his situation now that there was no escape from it. No adult would have been able to get this far. It was only because he was smaller that he had been able to make his way into this well shaft or whatever it was. But there was no room for manoeuvre. The walls were already touching him on every side. If the tube became any narrower, he would be stuck fast.
He forced himself on. Forward and down, his hands groping ahead of him, dreading the metal bars that would tell him Nile had been laughing at him from the start. His lungs were straining; the pressure was hammering at his chest. He tried not to panic, knowing it would only use up his air more quickly, but already his brain was screaming at him to stop, to breathe in, to give up and accept his fate. Forward and down. He could hold his breath for two minutes. And it couldn’t have been more than a minute since he had taken the plunge. Don’t give in! Just keep moving…
By now he must be ten or fifteen metres under the cellar floor. He reached out and whimpered as his knuckles struck brick. A few precious bubbles of air escaped between his lips and chased up his body, past his flailing legs. At first he thought he had come to a dead end. He opened his eyes for a split second. It made no difference at all. Open or closed, there was nothing to see: he was in pitch darkness. His heart seemed to stop beating. In that moment, Alex experienced what it would be like to die.
But then his other hand felt the curve of the wall and he realized that at last the well shaft was bending. He had reached the bottom of an elongated J and somehow he had to get round the turn. Perhaps this was where it finally joined the canal. As it twisted, it tightened. As if the swirling water wasn’t enough, Alex felt the brickwork close in on him, scratching his legs and chest. He knew he had very little air left. His lungs were straining and there was a giddy emptiness in his head. He was about to slide into unconsciousness. Well, that would come as a blessing. Maybe he would never feel the water rushing into his mouth and down his throat. Maybe he would be asleep before the end.
He turned the corner. His hands hit something – bars of some sort – and he was able to pull his legs round. Only then did he discover that his worst fears had been realized. He had come to the end of the well shaft but there was a metal barrier, a circular gate. He was holding it. There was no way out.
Perhaps it was the sense of having come so far, of being cheated at the end, that gave him strength. Alex pushed and the metal hinges, weakened by the rust of three hundred years, shattered. The gate opened. Alex swam through. His shoulders came clear and he knew that there was nothing above him except water. He kicked out and felt the broken edge of the gate cut into his thigh. But there was no pain. Just a surge of desperation, a need for this to be over.
He was facing up. He could see nothing but he trusted to his natural buoyancy to take him the right way. He felt bubbles tickling his cheeks and eyelids and knew that, without wanting to, he was releasing the last of his breath. How far down had he gone? Did he have enough air left to reach the surface? He kicked as hard as he could, scrabbling with his hands – doing the crawl, only vertically. Once again he opened his eyes, hoping to see light … moonlight, lanterns … anything. And maybe there was a glimmer, a white ribbon flickering across his vision.
Alex screamed. Bubbles exploded from his lips. And then the scream itself erupted as he broke through the surface into the dawn light. For a moment his arms and shoulders were clear of the water and he took a huge gulp of air, then fell back. Water splashed all around him. Lying on his back, cushioned by the water, he breathed again. Rivulets of water streamed down his face. Alex knew they were mixed with tears.
He looked around him.
He guessed it was about six o’clock in the morning. The siren was still sounding but there was nobody about. And that was just as well. Alex was floating in the middle of the Grand Canal. He could see the Bridge of the Academy, a vague shape in the half-light. The moon was still in the sky, but the sun was already stealing up behind the silent churches and palaces, casting a faint light across the lagoon.
Alex was so cold that he could no longer feel anything. He was aware only of the deathly grip of the canal, trying to drag him down. With the last of his strength he swam across to a flight of uneven stone ste
ps on the far side of the Grand Canal, away from the Widow’s Palace. Whatever happened, he never wanted to go near that place again.
He was naked from the waist up. He had lost his sandals and his trousers were in tatters. Blood was running down one leg, mingling with the filthy canal water. He was soaked. He had no money and his hotel was a train ride away, outside Venice. But Alex didn’t care. He was alive.
He took one look back. There was the palace, dark and silent. The party had long ago come to an end.
Slowly he limped away.
THOUGHTS ON A TRAIN
Tom Harris sat back in the second-class carriage of the pendolino – the fast train from Venice to Naples – and looked out of the window as the buildings and fields slipped by. He was thinking about Alex Rider.
Alex’s absence had, of course, been noticed the night before. Mr Grey had assumed he was late getting back to the hotel, but when his bed was still empty at half past ten, the alarm buttons had been pressed. Mr Grey had alerted the police and then telephoned Alex’s guardian – an American woman called Jack Starbright – in London. Everyone at Brookland knew that Alex had no parents; it was one of the many things that made him different. It was Jack who had calmed the situation down.
“You know what Alex is like. Sometimes he lets his curiosity get the better of him. I’m glad you called, but I’m sure he’ll show up. You really don’t need to worry.”
But Tom was worried. He had seen Alex swallowed up by the crowd at the Widow’s Palace and knew it was something more than curiosity that had led his friend there. He didn’t know what to do. Part of him wanted to tell Mr Grey what the two of them had done. Alex might still be in the palace. He might need help. But another part of him was afraid of getting into trouble … and perhaps getting Alex into even more trouble than he was in already. In the end he decided to keep silent. They were leaving the hotel at half past ten the next morning. If by that time there was still no news from Alex, he would come forward and tell them where he was.
Scorpia Page 5