He came to the first of the hangars, with the words STUDIO A stenciled in yellow letters on the corrugated iron wall. The huge sliding doors were open, but there was nothing inside apart from a puddle of oily water and a pile of broken wood. Cables hung down from the ceiling. A pigeon cooed somewhere in the rafters, the sound amplified by the empty space. The second hangar was the same. Alex was beginning to think he was wasting his time. There was nobody here. And what would someone like Desmond McCain want with an abandoned film studio, anyway? He must have been referring to a different Elm’s Cross after all. Alex looked at his watch. Quarter past eleven. Jack would be wondering where he was. He took out his mobile phone, thinking he would call her. There was no signal.
“It’s ready, ma’am . . .”
“Then I’ll leave you to it.”
Alex heard the voices and crouched behind a low brick wall—in fact made of painted cardboard and wood, another old piece of film scenery. He had already recognized the voice of Dr. Myra Beckett, and a moment later, there she was, walking out of the third studio dressed in a raincoat, which she had wrapped tightly around her waist. There were two men with her. Alex looked around for anyone else, but it seemed they were alone.
Beckett nodded at the men. “I’ll see you back at Greenfields,” she said.
For the first time, Alex noticed a couple of cars parked in the narrow driveway between Studios B and C. Beckett got into one of them and drove off. The two men went back into the studio. What could they possibly be doing there? Alex knew that he’d already been in enough trouble. Jack would kill him if she found out he’d come here. But he couldn’t just back out now. He had to know.
Beckett had left. Alex crept over to the studio entrance, fearful that the two men would reemerge at any moment. He peered inside. There was no sign of them, but it seemed that this studio was still in use. He could make out powerful lights on the other side of a huge screen stretched over a metal frame. The screen was a barrier between Alex and whatever was happening, but at least it was dark on this side. He could hear the two men muttering in the distance and knew that, for the moment, he was safe. He slipped inside.
“Some of this stuff must be worth a fortune.”
“You heard what she said. Leave it!”
The two voices carried easily in the enclosed space. Alex made his way along the back of the screen, keeping close to the outer wall. McCain was closing this place down. That is what he had said in Straik’s office. Perhaps Mr. Bray had done Alex a favor after all. If he hadn’t been suspended, he might never have had the opportunity to find out what was going on.
Then the two men appeared, coming around the side of the screen. But for the darkness, they would have seen Alex at once. Alex slipped behind a pile of boxes, crouching low. The men walked straight past him, so close that he could have reached out and touched them. He watched them disappear the way he had come. Good. Now he was on his own.
The sound of the door slamming shut echoed all around him like a gunshot. Alex twisted around, but he knew already there was nothing he could do. He heard the rattle of a chain being drawn through the handles, followed by the snap of a padlock. The men had finished here. They had left the lights on. But they had locked and bolted the main door. He heard their footsteps as they walked away and, a moment later, the sound of a car engine starting up. He would just have to hope there was another way out.
Alex straightened up, then continued around the side of the screen. And suddenly he was no longer in London, no longer in a grubby industrial area near Heathrow Airport.
He was in Africa.
Alex had never actually been to Africa, yet the scene that surrounded him was unmistakable. He was in the middle of a cluster of mud huts, half a dozen of them, with no windows and roofs made out of straw. They had been constructed close to each other in a dusty enclosure, surrounded by a wooden picket fence. An assortment of clothes, old but brightly colored, hung on a washing line between two stunted acacia trees. To one side, there was a well with a few objects—pots, pans, some tin plates—scattered around it. A shield shaped like a leaf and two wooden spears had been propped up against one of the doorways as if guarding the way in.
It was only when he looked up that the illusion was broken. Electric arc lamps blazed down from a network of catwalks high above. Together, they were creating the heat and light of an African summer’s day. The giant screen was actually a cyclorama made out of a bright green fabric. Alex understood enough about film technology to know that a computer could insert anything into the green background. A flick of a switch and the village could be in a jungle, a desert, or beneath a clear blue sky.
But what sort of film was being made? With a shudder, Alex realized that the village was populated—but not with anything that resembled life. There were three dead cows lying on their sides, their legs rigid, their stomachs bloated, their eyes glassy and empty. They had to be made out of plastic. There was no smell, no flies swarming over them as there would have been out in the wild. But that didn’t take away any of the horror. From the look of them, if these animals had been real, they would have died in pain.
They weren’t alone. As Alex moved farther into the set, almost drawn in against his will, he saw what had once been a large bird, perhaps an eagle, now a crumpled heap of bone and feathers lying in the dust. It was only when he reached the edge of the village that he came upon the first human being. A little black boy, maybe two or three years old, was lying curled up, one matchstick arm drawn across his eyes. Alex felt sick. He could tell that it was just a dummy, not a real child. But who would create something like this? And why?
He had seen enough. He could work out the reason for all of this later. Alex just wanted to be back out in the fresh air. He looked around him for a second door and saw one, set in one of the walls of the hangar. He tried it, but it was locked too. There were no windows. He looked up. He could see two barred skylights set in the roof, but there was no way he was going to be able to reach them, even if he climbed up to the lighting platforms. A rectangular air-conditioning shaft ran the full length of the hangar, suspended from the ceiling by a series of metal brackets. He might be able to reach the skylights if he climbed on top of it—but even then, how would he cut his way through the bars?
Perhaps he could blow them up. He still had the second gel-ink pen that Smithers had given him. He was already taking off his backpack when he remembered. He had left the pencil case with the pen and the pocket calculator beside his bed. He checked his mobile. There was no signal. So it looked as if he was just going to have to wait here until someone came back.
And then the whole world burst into flames.
Alex didn’t know what was more shocking—the fact that it was so silent, or so unexpected. All around him the ground simply erupted, tongues of fire shooting upward as if powered by hidden pipes below. Alex could have been in the middle of a minefield. About half a dozen bombs, incendiaries perhaps, were being set off, one by one. Alex was thrown off his feet. He knew that if one of the devices went off directly underneath him, he would be killed. He threw his arm across his eyes, protecting them from the heat.
Now he understood what Beckett and the two men had been doing. Closing this place down meant destroying it. The three of them must have just finished laying the explosive charges when he had come across them. They had been set off either by timer switches or remote control. It made no difference either way to Alex. The flames were roaring all around him. It was as if he had been locked inside some huge oven. He had only minutes to break out of here. Very soon he would begin to suffocate. And if he passed out, that would be the end of him. Everything in here would burn. There would be nothing left.
The green screen had caught alight. Alex saw it dissolve like a huge sheet of paper, turning black and then orange and red as the flames burst through. His eyes were streaming now. It was difficult to see, almost impossible to think. The doors were locked. The skylights were out of reach. The walls were metal. The mob
ile was dead. He had nothing with him. There was no way out.
The air-conditioning shaft . . .
It was a square tunnel hanging underneath the ceiling, plugged into the wall. It brought air into the building. So it had to lead outside. The silver shaft was big enough to crawl through, and Alex thought he could make out an access panel. He wiped a sleeve against his eyes. All the clothes on the washing line were ablaze. One of the huts had vanished, consumed by a whirlpool of fire. Suddenly, all the lights blinked out. The main electric cable must have melted. Now the hangar was an intense red, lit only by the inferno that was destroying it.
Coughing, forcing himself to suck in the hot air, Alex started forward. Without knowing quite why, he grabbed hold of the shield and carried it over to the ladder. It would make it more difficult to climb, yet somehow he had a feeling he would need it. He reached out and grabbed the first rung. It was already warm. In a minute’s time, it would be too hot to hold.
Dragging the shield with him, he climbed up to the walkway. The air-conditioning shaft was directly above him, running about thirty yards to the far wall. He was going to have to climb into it and then crawl the whole distance with the flames roaring underneath him. Alex stared at the distance across the studio with a sense of despair that made him weak. It was going to be like feeding himself into an oven. If he didn’t move fast, he would roast before he reached the other end.
But would there even be a way out? There had to be. There was no other choice.
The access panel to the ventilation shaft was fastened with four nuts and bolts. Alex was lucky. They turned in his hand. But even that wasn’t easy. The smoke was blinding him. There was a foul chemical smell—many of the props must have been made of synthetic materials—and even as he dragged at what little air remained, he felt sick. Finally the fourth bolt came free and the panel fell away, bouncing off the walkway and spinning down below. Alex watched it disappear into the fire. There was nothing but fire now. Beckett and her colleagues had done their work all too well.
He pulled himself into the open shaft, sliding the shield in front of him. Now he was glad that he had brought it. Even as he crouched in the square corridor, he could feel the metal underneath him heating up. The shield would at least protect his hands. Quickly, moving with difficulty in the confined space, he tore off his backpack and dropped it ahead of him. Then came his jacket. He folded it under his knees. It would have to provide a cushion against the heat. He was already sweating. He could see the air rippling in front of him. He fixed his eyes on the end of the tunnel. There was a square of daylight, another access panel. That was what he had to reach.
He set off.
He could no longer see the flames, but he could imagine them, stretching out, licking the metal surface directly beneath him. He was shuffling forward as quickly as he could, his hands resting on the shield, his knees on the jacket. But there wasn’t enough room to move properly. For just one moment he lost his balance and his palm and five fingers landed on the metal. He winced. The surface was already too hot to touch. He wasn’t going to make it. The end was too far away.
Push the shield. Draw in his knees. Push the shield. Draw in his knees.
His head was swimming. There was almost no air left in the tunnel. And the jacket was burning. Most of his weight was on his knees, and he could feel the heat coming through. There was a dull clang behind him and he glanced back to see that the access panel was filled with smoke and the metal was buckling. There was certainly no way back. It occurred to him that the entire shaft could come free, that the brackets holding it up could melt or break loose and that the whole thing could plunge down, smashing into the studio floor and the roaring fire below. But he couldn’t let that possibly stop him.
His knees were hurting now and he’d had to move his hands to the very edge of the shield, gripping the sides. It was fortunate that the African shield seemed to be the real thing. If it had been made of plastic, it would already have melted. Alex could hear someone grunting and realized it was him. Every movement was an effort: fighting the heat, fighting to breathe, forcing himself not to give up. He was more than halfway across. He could see the exit—a metal grille—ahead of him. He wouldn’t have time to turn any screws, even assuming there were any. What if the grille was welded into place? No. Don’t even think it. Alex shuffled faster and faster. Draw in the knees. Push the shield.
The last ten yards were the worst. Alex’s vision was blurred. He could feel tears streaming down his face. But then he was there. The grille was in front of him. He reached out and grabbed hold of it, curling his fingers over the metal slats. It wouldn’t move. He shook it. Something whispered behind him and he turned around to see a ball of fire rolling in slow motion from the far end toward him. There was only one thing to do. He slid the shield behind him then somehow maneuvered himself so that he was lying on his back. His shoulders screamed at him. The metal was too hot. He could smell his own clothes beginning to burn. He lashed out with both feet, smashing them into the grille.
Nothing.
The fireball was getting closer, floating in space, already halfway down the shaft. He kicked a second time and the grille swung open. Still on his back, Alex drew himself forward, using the balls of his feet. He hooked his heels over the edge of the wall and somehow spilled out into the open.
He was falling. How high up was he? Had he done all this just to break his neck when he hit the concrete below? But he was lucky. The ground rose up at the back of the studio and he hit soft grass, the slope of the hill. He rolled over several times, then came to a halt. There were flames above him, shooting out of the little square that had just provided him with an exit. Although the metal walls were keeping most of it contained, smoke was seeping through the cracks, rising into the air. Alex heard the glass shatter as the skylights broke and thicker smoke began to billow out. Coughing, wiping his eyes, he got to his feet.
The first fire engines arrived ten minutes later, followed by the police. A pilot coming in to land at Heathrow had seen what was happening and radioed the authorities. By the time the firemen bundled out and began uncoiling their hoses, the whole of Studio C was a raging inferno. Not a single piece of evidence of the filming would remain inside.
The firemen did what they could, but in the end it was easier just to let the building burn. Meanwhile, the police checked the rest of the complex, making sure there was no one else around. None of them had noticed a single schoolboy limping along the main road, looking for a taxi to take him home.
15
Q & A
“ALEX RIDER IS AN AGENT working for the Special Operations Division of MI6. I know that’s hard to believe, but I promise you it’s true. He lives in Chelsea, just off the King’s Road, with a housekeeper who acts as his guardian. Her name is Jack Starbright. He has no relatives that I know of. His uncle, a man named Ian Rider, was also a spy, but he was killed. That was when the kid got recruited.”
Harry Bulman unwrapped a stick of chewing gum, rolled it carefully between his finger and thumb, and slid it into his mouth. He was sitting in a makeshift office that stood on the edge of a building site in London, not far from King’s Cross. There was a cheap desk, three plastic chairs, and a fridge with a kettle and coffee mugs. The walls were covered with architect’s drawings. Outside, work had finished for the day and it looked as if everyone had gone home. There were two men with him. He recognized one of them. Desmond McCain had been in the papers often enough for his face to be familiar. He was dressed entirely in black, one leg crossed over the other, his hands resting in his lap. Bulman could see his own reflection in the brightly polished leather of McCain’s shoe. The other man had been introduced as Leonard Straik. He was older than McCain, with silver hair rising over his forehead. He looked nervous.
Bulman was also neatly dressed. He had put on a suit and tie for this meeting, and his briefcase, with all his notes, was at his feet. But something had gone out of him since he had turned up at Alex’s house. His confid
ence and swagger had been replaced by a dull sense of resentment. He was a man who had been injured, and it showed. He talked slowly, measuring his words, and the hatred in his voice was unmistakable. Even the way he chewed the gum had a mechanical quality. He could have been chewing raw flesh.
After he had been released by the police, Bulman had gone home. He had opened a bottle of whisky and drunk half of it, staring at the wall. He had been terrified. In a matter of hours, his entire life had been stripped away from him and—this was the worst part—it could happen again at any time. The man called Crawley had made it absolutely clear. They could just snap their fingers and he would vanish off the face of the earth, spirited away to some mental hospital where he would be left to rot. They were probably watching him even as he sat there. He wondered if his apartment was bugged. Almost certainly. For the first time in his life, he sensed how powerless he would be if the system—society, the government, whatever—turned against him. They had given him a warning and it had struck him in the heart.
Harry Bulman was many things, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew that there was going to be no newspaper story about Alex Rider, no front-page headlines, no publishing deal. Even if he dared try again, there wasn’t an editor in town who would go anywhere near him. The Internet? Despite what he had told Alex, he knew there was no point in posting the story in cyberspace. It would do nothing for him, other than getting him killed.