Scorpia

by Anthony Horowitz

  Blunt took his place behind his desk. Briefly he outlined what had happened at Cobra. “They’ve made all the wrong decisions,” he concluded. “They’re going to look for the dishes – as if they have any hope of finding them. They think an evacuation would be too difficult.”

  “Kellner.” Mrs Jones spoke the name with a heavy voice.

  “Of course. The prime minister always does what he says. And the trouble is, Kellner’s completely out of his depth. It seems to me we have only one hope.”

  “You want me to go back,” Alex said.

  It was obvious. Blunt had been told to find Julia Rothman. But he had already admitted that he didn’t know where she was. Nobody did. Only Alex might be able to find her. He had a phone number; they were expecting his call.

  “They’ll know I failed,” he said. “At least, they’ll know I was taken prisoner by you.”

  “You could escape,” Mrs Jones suggested. “Scorpia won’t know if I’m alive or dead. You could tell them you killed me and that you managed to escape from us later.”

  “They might not believe it.”

  “You’ll have to make them.” Mrs Jones hesitated. “I know it’s a lot to ask, Alex,” she went on. “After everything that’s happened, I’m sure you never want to see any of us again. But you know the stakes now. If there was any other way…”

  “There isn’t,” Alex said. He had made up his mind before he had even left Downing Street. “I can call them. I don’t know if it’ll work; I don’t know if they’ll even answer. But I can try.”

  “We’ll just have to hope that they take you to Julia Rothman. It’s our only chance of finding her, and maybe she’ll lead us to the dishes.” Blunt reached out and pressed a button on his phone. “Please could you send Smithers up,” he murmured into the machine.

  Smithers. Alex almost smiled. It struck him that Alan Blunt and Mrs Jones had already planned this. They had known they would be sending him back and they had already told Smithers to come up with whatever gadgets he would need. That was typical of MI6. They were always one step ahead. Not just planning the future but controlling it.

  “This is what I want you to do,” Blunt explained. “We’ll arrange an escape for you. If we make it spectacular enough, we can even get it on the evening news. You’ll make the call to Scorpia. You can tell them that you shot Mrs Jones. You’ll sound nervous, on the edge of panic; you’ll ask them to bring you in.”

  “You think they’ll come?”

  “Let’s hope so. If you can somehow make contact with Julia Rothman, you may be able to find out where the dishes are located. And the moment you know, you get in contact with us. We’ll do the rest.”

  “You’ll have to be very careful,” Mrs Jones warned. “Scorpia aren’t stupid. They sent you to us and when you go back, they’ll be very suspicious indeed. You’ll be searched, Alex. Everything you do and say will be examined. You’ll have to lie to them. Do you think you can get away with it?”

  “How will I get in touch with you?” Alex asked. “I doubt if they’ll let me use a telephone.”

  As if in answer to his question, the door opened and Smithers came in. In a strange way Alex was pleased to see him. Smithers was so fat and jolly that it was hard to believe he was part of MI6 at all. He was wearing a tweed suit that was at least fifty years out of date. With his bald head, black moustache, several chins and his open, smiling face, he could have been anybody’s uncle, the sort who liked to do magic tricks at parties.

  And yet, for once, even he was serious. “Alex, my dear boy,” he exclaimed. “This is all a bit of a mess, isn’t it! How are you keeping? Are you in good shape?”

  “Hello, Mr Smithers,” Alex said.

  “I’m sorry to hear you’ve been tangling with Scorpia. They’re a very, very nasty piece of work. Worse than the Russians ever were. Some of the things they get up to – well, quite frankly it’s criminal.” He was out of breath and sat down heavily in an empty seat. “Sabotage and corruption. Intelligence and assassination. Whatever next?”

  “What have you got for us, Smithers?” Blunt asked.

  “Well, you always ask the impossible, Mr Blunt, and this time it’s even worse. There are all sorts of gadgets I’d like to give young Alex. I’m always working on new ideas. I’ve just finished work on a pair of Rollerblades. The blades are actually hidden in the wheels and they’ll cut through anything. I’ve got a very nice Rubik’s Cube hand grenade. But as I understand it, these people aren’t going to let him keep anything when he turns up again. If there’s anything remotely suspicious, they’re going to examine it, and then they’ll know he’s working with us.”

  “He needs to have a homing device,” Mrs Jones said. “We have to be able to track him wherever he goes. And he has to be able to signal to us when it’s time for us to move in.”

  “I know,” Smithers said. He reached into his pocket. “And I think I may have come up with the answer. It’s the last thing they’d expect … but at the same time, it’s exactly what you’d expect a teenage boy to have.”

  He took out a clear plastic bag and inside it Alex saw a small metal and plastic object. He couldn’t help smiling. The last time he had seen one of these had been at the dentist’s.

  It was a brace. For his teeth.

  “We may have to make a few adjustments, but it should fit snugly into your mouth.” Smithers tapped the bag. “The wire going over your teeth is transparent, so it won’t be noticed. It’s actually a looped radio aerial. The brace will begin transmitting the moment you put it in.” He turned the bag over in his pudgy fingers and pointed to the bottom. “There’s a little switch here,” he continued. “You activate it with your tongue. As soon as you do that, you send out a distress signal and we can come rushing in.”

  Mrs Jones nodded. “Well done, Smithers. That’s first-rate.”

  Smithers sighed. “I feel really terrible sending Alex in without any weapons. And I’ve got a marvellous new device for him too! I’ve been working on a Palm Organizer that’s actually a flamethrower. I call it the Napalm Organizer—”

  “No weapons,” Blunt said.

  “We can’t take the risk,” Mrs Jones agreed.

  “You’re right.” Smithers dragged himself slowly to his feet. “Just take care, Alex, old bean. You know how I worry about you. Don’t you dare get yourself killed. I want to see you again.”

  He left, closing the door behind him.

  “I’m sorry, Alex,” Mrs Jones said.

  “No.” Alex knew she was right. Even if he could persuade Scorpia that he had carried out his assignment, they still wouldn’t trust him. They would search him from head to toe.

  “Activate the tracking device as soon as you’ve found the dishes,” Blunt ordered.

  “It’s always possible they won’t take you to them,” Mrs Jones added. “In that event, if you can’t slip away, if you feel yourself to be in any danger, activate it anyway. We’ll send special forces in to pull you out.”

  That surprised Alex. She had never shown very much concern for him in the past. It was as if his breaking into her flat had somehow changed things between them. He glanced at her sitting bolt upright, neat and contained, chewing slowly on the peppermint, and guessed that there was something she wasn’t telling him. Well, that made two of them.

  “Are you quite sure about this, Alex?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Alex paused. “Can you really make them believe I escaped?”

  Blunt gave a thin, humourless smile. “Oh yes,” he said. “We’ll make them believe it.”

  It happened in London and made the six o’clock news.

  A car had been driving at speed on the Westway, one of the main roads leading out of the city. The car was high up – this part of the road was suspended on huge concrete pillars. All of a sudden it lost control. Witnesses saw it swerve left and right, careering into the other traffic. At least a dozen other cars were involved in the resulting pile-up. There was a Fiat Uno, crumpled up like paper. A BMW
had one side torn off. A van full of flowers, unable to stop in time, crashed into them. Its doors swung open and suddenly – bizarrely – the road was covered with roses and chrysanthemums. A taxi, trying to avoid the chaos, hit the crash barrier and catapulted over the edge, smashing into an upstairs window of someone’s house.

  It was a miracle nobody was killed, although a dozen people were rushed to nearby hospitals. The aftermath of the accident had been recorded by traffic policemen in a helicopter, and there it was on television. The road was closed. Smoke was still rising from a burnt-out car. There was shattered metal and glass everywhere.

  A number of witnesses were interviewed and they described what they had seen. There had been a boy in the front car, they said, the one that had started it all. They had seen him get out the moment it was all over. He had run back down the road and disappeared through the traffic. There had been a man – in a dark suit and sunglasses – who had tried to follow him. But the man had obviously been hurt. He had been limping. The boy had escaped.

  Two hours later the road was still closed. The police said they were looking for the boy urgently, to interview him. But apart from the fact that he was about fourteen years old and dressed in black, there was no description. They didn’t have a name. The traffic in west London had come to a standstill. It would take days to clear up the damage.

  Sitting in a hotel room in Mayfair, Julia Rothman saw the report and her eyes narrowed. She knew who the boy was, of course. It couldn’t be anyone else. She wondered what had happened. More to the point, she wondered when Alex Rider would get in touch.

  In fact, it wasn’t until seven o’clock that evening that Alex made the call. He was in a phone box near Marble Arch. He was already wearing the brace, giving his mouth time to get used to it. But still he found it hard to stop slurring his words.

  A man answered. “Yes?”

  “This is Alex Rider.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in a call box on the Edgware Road.”

  This was true. Alex was dressed once again in the black ninja outfit which Scorpia had supplied him with. The phone box was outside a Lebanese restaurant. He had no doubt that Scorpia would be using sophisticated equipment to trace the call. He wondered how long it would take them to reach him.

  He thought back to the car crash. He had to admit that MI6 had stage-managed it brilliantly. No fewer than twenty cars had been involved and they had only had a couple of hours, working with a team of stuntmen, to get it right. Not a single member of the public had been injured. But looking at the television footage and hearing the reports, Scorpia would have to admit that it looked real. That was what Blunt had said from the start. The bigger the pile-up, the less reason there would be for doubt. The front page of the Evening Standard’s final edition carried a photograph of the taxi embedded in the window of the house.

  None of this mattered to the voice at the other end of the line.

  “Is the woman dead?” it asked. The woman. Scorpia didn’t call her Mrs Jones any more. But then, corpses don’t need names.

  “Yes,” Alex answered.

  When they came to him, they would find the Kahr P9 back in his pocket with the one bullet fired. If they examined his hands (Blunt was sure they would) there would be traces of gunpowder on his fingers. And there was a bloodstain on the sleeve of his shirt. The same blood type as Mrs Jones. She had supplied the sample.

  “What happened?”

  “They caught me on the way out. They took me to Liverpool Street and asked me questions. This afternoon they were taking me somewhere else but I managed to get away.” Alex allowed a little panic to enter his voice. He was a teenager; he had just made his first kill; and he was on the run. “Look. You said you’d bring me in once I’d done it. I’m in a phone box. Everyone’s looking for me. I want to see Nile…”

  A brief pause.

  “All right. Make your way to Bank tube station. There’s an intersection. Seven roads. Be outside the main entrance at nine o’clock exactly and we’ll come and collect you.”

  “Who will—” Alex began. But the phone had gone dead.

  He hung up and stepped out of the telephone box. Two police cars sped past, their lights flashing. But they weren’t interested in him. Alex took his bearings and started off, heading east. Bank tube station was on the other side of London and it would take him at least an hour to walk there. He had no money on him and couldn’t risk being arrested for fare-dodging on a bus. And when he got there – seven roads! Scorpia were being careful. They could come for him from any direction. If this was a set-up and MI6 were following him, they would have to divide themselves seven ways.

  He set off along the crowded pavements, keeping to the shadows, trying not to think what he was letting himself in for. The night was already drawing in. He could see a hard, white moon, dead in the sky. Everything would end, one way or another, the next day. Just over twenty hours remained until Scorpia’s deadline.

  It was his deadline too.

  That was the one thing he hadn’t told Mrs Jones.

  He remembered what had happened on Malagosto. On his last day there he had been sent to see a psychiatrist – an inquisitive, middle-aged man – who had put him through certain tests and then produced his medical report. What was it that Dr Steiner had said? He was a little run-down. He needed more vitamins.

  And he had given Alex an injection.

  Alex had absolutely no doubt that he had been injected with the same nanoshells that were about to kill thousands of other children in London. He could almost feel them in his bloodstream, millions of golden bullets swirling around in his heart, waiting to release their deadly contents. There was a sour taste in his mouth. Scorpia had tricked him. They had been laughing at him from the very start. Even as Mrs Rothman sipped her champagne in Positano, she must have been thinking of how to get rid of him.

  He hadn’t told Mrs Jones because he didn’t want her to know. He didn’t want anyone to know what a fool he had been. And, at the same time, he was utterly determined. Once the switch was thrown, he would die. But there would be time before that.

  Scorpia had told him that it was good to get revenge.

  That was exactly what Alex Rider intended to do.

  THE CHURCH OF FORGOTTEN SAINTS

  The search had already begun.

  Hundreds of men and women were working their way across London, with hundreds more acting as back-up: on the telephone, on computers, searching and cross-referencing, trawling through the records. Government scientists had confirmed Dr Stephenson’s prediction that the terahertz dishes would have to be at least one hundred metres above the ground to be effective – and that did indeed make it easier. A search of the city’s basements, cellars and twisting alleyways would have been impossible, even for the country’s entire police force and army. But they were looking for something that had to be high up and in plain view. The clock was ticking but it could be done.

  Every satellite dish in London was noted, photographed, authenticated and then eliminated from the search. Whenever possible, the original planning application was found and checked against the actual dish itself. Telecommunications experts had been called in and wherever there was any doubt they were taken up to the relevant floor to see for themselves.

  If people were puzzled by the sudden buzz of activity in apartment blocks and offices, nobody said anything. The few journalists who started to ask questions were quietly pulled aside and threatened with such ferocity that they soon decided there were other, less dangerous stories to pursue. Word went round that there was a crackdown on television licences. And every hour, across the city, more technicians poked and probed, examining the dishes, making sure they had a right to be there.

  And then, just after ten o’clock on Thursday morning, six hours before Scorpia’s deadline, they found them.

  There was a block of flats on the edge of Notting Hill Gate with amazing views over the whole of west London. It was one of the tallest blocks
in the city – famous for both its height and its ugliness. It had been designed in the sixties by an architect who must have been relieved he would never have to live in it.

  The roof contained a number of brick structures: the cables for the lifts, air-conditioning units, emergency generators. It was on the side of one of these that the inspectors found three brand-new satellite dishes facing north, south and east.

  Nobody knew what they were for. Nobody had any record of their being placed there. Within minutes there were a dozen technicians on the roof and more circling in helicopters. The cables were found to lead to a radio transmitting device, programmed to begin emitting high frequency terahertz beams at exactly four o’clock that afternoon.

  Mark Kellner took the phone call at 10 Downing Street.

  “We’ve done it!” he exclaimed. “A block of flats in west London. Three dishes. They’re disconnecting them now.”

  Cobra was still in session. Around the table there was a murmur of disbelief that swelled in volume and became a roar of triumph.

  “We’re going to keep looking,” Kellner said. “There’s always a faint chance that Scorpia put other dishes in place as back-up. But if there are any others, we’ll find them too. I think we can say that the immediate crisis is over.”

  At Liverpool Street Alan Blunt and Mrs Jones were also told the news.

  “What do you think?” Mrs Jones asked.

  Blunt shook his head. “Scorpia are more clever than that. If these dishes have been found, it’s only because they were meant to be found.”

  “So Kellner is wrong again.”

  “The man’s a fool.” Blunt glanced at his watch. “We don’t have much time.”

  Mrs Jones looked at him. “All we have is Alex Rider.”

  Alex was on the other side of London, a long way from the satellite dishes.

  He had been picked up outside Bank Station at the agreed time the night before – but not by car. A scruffy young woman he had never seen before walked past him, whispering two words as she went by, and thrusting a tube ticket into his hand.