The men climbed down again and Alex saw them busy themselves with a long roll of tarpaulin which must have been lying beside the track, waiting for this very moment. When he had met the Grimaldis, he had been unimpressed. He had thought there was something almost childish about them, their schoolboy spite, the way they hung on each other’s every word. But he had to admit that their operation – Steel Claw – had been worked out to the last detail. They had stolen an immensely powerful helicopter and used it to snatch a bus full of children in a way that had made a complete mockery of all the security around it. Now, he guessed, the coach was being disguised in some way so that when it finally emerged from the tunnel, it would be hidden from passing aircraft, from satellites, from anyone who happened to be watching.
And what then? Where exactly were they? Alex was surprised he had managed to survive so far but he suspected the worst was still to come. He had arrived in the lions’ den – and he had no doubt that the lions were about to show their teeth.
He lay there for what seemed like an eternity. The men finished their work and walked away and suddenly the tunnel was full of fresh smoke as the train shunted forward, pulling the coach – now concealed underneath a giant sheet of tarpaulin – behind it. It took them a long time to reach the end of the tunnel and by then Alex was almost at the end of his endurance, sweating and choking. His nose and throat felt completely clogged up and the fresh air, when it came, washed over him deliciously, wiping away all the fears and doubts of the last hour. Perhaps things weren’t as bad as he thought. The Grimaldis had no idea he was here. In fact, they believed he was dead. All he had to do was find out where he was and contact MI6 and this would all be over.
Looking out of the narrow slit that was all he had beneath the coach and its tarpaulin cover, Alex watched the countryside sliding past. The locomotive was moving quite slowly. The railway was level and straight. There were no buildings that Alex could see – just wild grass dotted with flowers. The puffing of the engine, the constantly shifting pistons and the grinding of the wheels would have blocked out any other sound, but Alex sensed that they had arrived at a part of the country that was as silent as it was remote. Finally, they began to slow down. The edge of a station platform blotted out Alex’s view. The train drew to a halt, steam exploding out of it like exclamation marks. The tarpaulin cover was removed. They had arrived.
He had a choice. He could stay where he was underneath the coach. At least nobody could see him there and he knew he was safe. Or he could move out at once, find somewhere else to hide and see what happened next. He decided on the second option. Apart from anything else, he needed to escape from the narrow space in which he’d been trapped for so long and he knew it was important to keep track of the children from Linton Hall, to watch where they were taken. The locomotive was already settling down, the steam hissing and the various metal parts clicking as they began to cool. Alex slithered sideways, edging across the wooden floor of the low-loader, away from the station platform. He stopped behind one of the coach’s tyres and checked around him. There didn’t seem to be anyone near by. He wriggled out, then dropped to the ground, squatting beside the railway track with the low-loader above him. Nobody had seen him. His lungs gratefully sucked in the clean afternoon air.
But where the hell was he? What sort of place was this? Alex stared around him, trying to take it all in.
It was an industrial complex – although one that had long ago been abandoned. He could tell that instantly from the silence, from the rusting pipes, from the tufts of wild grass sprouting out of the broken concrete and the puddles of stagnant water. There was a massive square tower in the middle of it all, grey and windowless, made out of concrete. It rose about fifty metres into the air. A conveyor belt surrounded by corrugated-iron walls sloped down from the top, reaching all the way to the end of the platform. It must have been used to carry some sort of product – either into the tower or away from it. But what? The answer was right in front of him. The lower end of the conveyor belt stopped a few metres short of what looked like a black pyramid. It was coal. Alex’s first thought had been that this was an old Welsh mine. But it might well be that coal hadn’t actually been dug up here. It could have been brought from somewhere else, offloaded and then used in some sort of industrial process.
He examined the rest of the complex, trying to get his bearings. A brick chimney, the same height as the tower, stood to one side with half a dozen smaller, steel chimneys glinting in the sun. All around there were giant fuel tanks, oil drums, rusting tractors and wagons. Everything was connected by a network of twisting pipes and girders, cables, bridges and walkways, as if the whole place were some extraordinary machine and it might all be turned back on with a single switch.
Curiously, one or two of the buildings looked new, as if they had recently been restored. At the far end, Alex saw two blocks, one-storey high, with a corridor joining them together so they formed a letter H. They immediately reminded him of the prison quarters where he had been held at Siwa. Even at this distance he could see the windows were barred. The fence that surrounded the complex and the searchlights on aluminium poles were all brand new. The Grimaldi brothers must have taken over the place and added their own security. Guards with machine guns were patrolling the perimeter. As far as he could see, there was no road leading out. Certainly, there were no cars in sight. He looked behind him and saw that the locomotive had crossed a turntable before it had arrived at the platform. Presumably it would back onto it and then – assuming that it actually worked – the whole thing would rotate so that it could leave the same way it had come.
“OK, kids. Let’s have you out of the coach! Quickly now!”
Alex twisted round. He recognized the voice. It wasn’t one he would ever forget easily. Frankie Stallone, the gangster who had tried to kill him, had followed him here from the South of France. It seemed that he was in charge of this part of the operation.
Alex hadn’t heard the doors open but now he watched the children climbing down – or at least their feet and the bottoms of their legs, which was all he could see beneath the coach. They were being assembled on the platform on the other side of the train. One or two of the younger ones were crying. Finally they were all out. Alex guessed that it must have been Stallone who had addressed them in the tunnel. Now he spoke to them again.
“I want you to line up in pairs,” Stallone ordered. “You’re going to be taken to the accommodation block, which is just over there. We have bedrooms for you to stay in, just like at school. There’s a TV room and a dining room – you’ll all get something to eat very soon. Like I told you, you’re going to be with us for forty-eight hours and if you all behave yourselves, nobody needs to get hurt. We have someone to look after you and if you need anything – medicine or stuff like that – you can ask. Are there any questions?”
“I have several questions.” It was another man speaking. Alex wished he could move round to the other side of the train so that he could actually see what was happening, but it was too dangerous. “What have you done to Mr Philby?”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Our security man. He’s unconscious.”
“Don’t worry about him. He’s been knocked out. He’ll be fine in an hour or two.”
The man hadn’t finished yet. “Who are you, and what do you want?” he demanded. His voice was high-pitched, trembling. “This is an outrage!”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Jason Green. I’m their drama teacher.”
“And you’re going to be their dead drama teacher if you don’t shut your mouth. It doesn’t matter who I am. All that matters is that you do as you’re told.”
“You’ve kidnapped us!”
“That’s right, Jason!” Alex could hear the mockery in Stallone’s voice. “How very smart of you to notice. Now shut up and get in line. Let’s move out of here.”
There was the shuffling of feet as the children formed a line and Alex watched them set
off. They walked past the steam locomotive, which was sitting there, puffing quietly after its labours, like a great, metallic beast. He saw them disappear into the distance, heading for the prison block he had already identified. It was time to move himself. There were two wagons parked near by, no longer on the track … fuel tanks on wheels. They were rusty and the paint was faded but Alex could make out a word, painted in red letters on the side: BENZENE. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he was sure he knew what it meant. He had heard it mentioned in chemistry class. Some sort of fuel? Not for the first time, he wished he had spent more time in school.
Keeping low, he ran a short distance across the ground, away from the locomotive and over to the wagons. He skidded underneath one of them and lay there panting, once again out of sight.
Already he was running through his options. All he had to do was contact MI6, but how was he going to do that when he no longer had a mobile phone? He had lost his in the South of France, along with everything else, and he hadn’t had a chance to replace it. He might be able to break into an office but he couldn’t see any telephone lines running in or out of the compound, which suggested there might not be any phones and anyway, they probably wouldn’t be connected. That left the guards. He could knock one of them out and steal a mobile but he wondered if he’d even get a signal. Worse than that, once they knew he was here, he would lose the one advantage he had. They would quickly hunt him down.
He was on his own. He was unarmed. There were at least a dozen guards with machine guns. He had no idea where he was … he only knew that it was the middle of nowhere. He was fenced in, surrounded by steep hills and, unless there was a road somewhere that he couldn’t see, it looked as if a long tunnel was the only way back into the real world.
Not good.
So what next? Even as he asked himself the question, Alex knew that the answer lay in the accommodation block. Maybe the drama teacher or one of the children had managed to hang on to a mobile. There were fifty-three of them. Was it too much to hope that between them they might have some weapon he could use, even if it was only a penknife? And then there was the security man, Philby, that the teacher had mentioned. Surely he’d be able to help, once he’d come round. The more Alex thought about it, the more he saw what he had to do. There was safety in numbers. Out here, he was on his own.
He couldn’t make his move yet. There were too many guards around and too much chance of being seen. Alex reached up and touched the surface of the metal fuel tank. Benzene. He suddenly remembered. It was a by-product that came from coal. It was used in motor cars, blended with petrol. It was highly flammable. If the tank was full, that might be useful.
He looked at his watch, then wiped the surface with his thumb to remove the coating of soot. It was four o’clock. The sun wouldn’t set for another few hours.
Alex settled down to wait.
The compound was called Dinas Mwg – a Welsh name which translates roughly as Smoke City.
A thousand men and women had once worked here, turning coal into an industrial fuel known as coke; it was a strange thing that it should share its name with a soft drink. The process was long and dirty and began in the cement tower that Alex had noticed. It was known as the retort house. The coal would have travelled up the conveyor belt before being heated in enormous steel tubes. The resulting product, coke, was very pure and smokeless, used in the steel manufacturing industry. It also had remarkable heat-shielding properties. NASA had used it on many of their space vehicles. In addition, there would have been a number of by-products including gas, tar, ammonia, sulphuric acid and benzene. All of these had been separated, stored and finally sold.
Unfortunately, the collapse of the steel industry had spelled the end for Dinas Mwg. The place had closed down eleven years before and effectively it had been left to rot. The countryside was dotted with old mines and factories that had been abandoned as the twenty-first century had taken its toll. One more wouldn’t make any difference. And so it might have remained – but then the Grimaldis had come along. They had bought the compound from the Welsh authorities for next to nothing, claiming that they were going to turn it into a museum and a heritage centre. Of course, that had been a lie. From the very start, they had seen it as a perfect location to hide fifty-two extremely wealthy children while the police and the security services scoured the country for them.
Dirty, lost and forgotten, Smoke City lay concealed in a valley, surrounded by mountains. A narrow road had once led there but a landslide five years before had closed it and now the only way in and out was a single, old-fashioned railway line. The Blaina Tunnel, where Alex had waited in the dark, was half a mile long and connected directly with the main line. The Grimaldis had been forced to purchase the train that had brought them here. It was called The Midnight Flyer and it was a Standard Class 5 steam locomotive, built in Doncaster in 1950. It was a beautiful piece of machinery, bringing back memories of the age when it had been constructed. As well as being restored to working condition, it had been repainted and polished so that it looked as good as new, gleaming black with its name picked out in gold letters and a single bright red pilot bar just above the ground at the front. Rebuilding the engine had been the most expensive part of the operation. In fact, the Grimaldis had spent just over five million pounds setting up Operation Steel Claw. That left them with an expected profit of around two hundred and fifty-five million pounds, which they both considered perfectly acceptable.
It had been necessary to make certain modifications to the compound itself. What had once been an administration centre with a number of offices had been turned into the prison building that Alex had seen. They had put bars on the windows and brought in fifty-two beds. The Grimaldis had also built an accommodation block for themselves. It was basic but comfortable, with two bedrooms, both of them identical with a connecting door. They had one large living room and a small kitchen – but no bathrooms. The water supply had been cut off when the compound was closed down. It didn’t matter. They could easily go without a bath for a couple of days and there were chemical toilets and bottles of drinking water.
Two hours after the children had left the train and as Alex waited for darkness to fall, the two brothers were sitting in the living room on the first floor, having tea. They were not alone. Jane Vosper was sitting opposite them, her legs crossed, balancing a cup and saucer on her knees. Giovanni and Eduardo were dressed very much like the gangsters that they were: in dark suits with white shirts and narrow ties. Their shoes were highly polished, their black hair slicked back with gel. Giovanni had a gold ring on the fourth finger of his right hand, Eduardo on the same finger of his left.
The tea was very good. There were sandwiches cut into triangles, a sponge cake, a variety of chocolate biscuits. They had poured Earl Grey tea for their guest. They were drinking coffee themselves.
Even so, Jane Vosper was in a bad mood. “How long am I going to have to stay here?” she demanded.
“I think we agreed that you would stay here until the operation was concluded,” Giovanni replied.
“Two days,” Eduardo added.
The woman sniffed. “So what am I supposed to do for two days?”
The brothers exchanged a sly glance, as if there was something they weren’t telling her. “I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Giovanni said.
Mrs Vosper turned and stared out of the window at the silver chimneys, rising up in the afternoon sun, the long stretches of pipes criss-crossing each other, weaving in and out of the walkways. In the distance, the locomotive with its tender had backed onto the turntable. It was about to be rotated one hundred and eighty degrees, ready for the return journey. Smoke was still belching out of the chimney. Meanwhile, the coach had been driven off the low-loader and concealed underneath a wooden canopy. It was standing on a patch of concrete, surrounded by wild grass and rubble. “When do I get my money?” she asked.
“As soon as we have the ransom, you’ll be paid.”
Mrs Vosper fin
ished her tea, noticing for the first time how bitter it tasted. She turned away from the window. “Why have you taken my mobile?” she asked. “I want to telephone my husband.”
“I’m afraid you can’t,” Giovanni told her. “We have to think about security. It’s always possible that your calls are being monitored.”
“You have to be very careful,” Eduardo agreed. “I’m afraid it’s quite likely that the police are going to suspect you were involved.”
“I’ll tell them I was taken prisoner with the rest of the children,” Mrs Vosper retorted. “There’s nothing to make them think otherwise.”
“Of course, dear lady. That’s how we planned it. So obviously you can’t make phone calls. That would give the game away!”
“I suppose that’s true.” Mrs Vosper put down her cup and saucer. She was certain that the air at Smoke City was making her ill. She was a little breathless and there was a burning sensation in her throat. She sat down in her chair.
“Are you all right?” Giovanni asked. “You’re looking a little pale.”
“Perhaps you’d like to lie down?” Eduardo suggested.
The two brothers stared at her with concern. Mrs Vosper said nothing. She had suddenly become very still. In fact, she was staring at the ceiling with empty eyes. Her tongue was sticking out of the corner of her mouth. Her face had gone mauve.
The brothers gazed at her curiously.
“How much cyanide did you put in her tea?” Eduardo asked.
“Half the bottle.”
“It took its time.”
“Yes. But it’s over now.” Giovanni helped himself to another sandwich. “That will save us a bit of cash!”
Eduardo picked out a chocolate finger. “We’ll have to kill her husband too, of course.”