“Why did you do it?” he demanded. His voice had become a whisper. He was trying to channel the hatred through him, to give him the strength to do what he had been sent here for.
“Why did I do what, Alex?”
“You killed my father.”
Mrs Jones looked at him for a long moment and it was impossible to tell what was going on in those black eyes. But he could see that she was making some sort of calculation. Of course, her entire life was a series of calculations – and once she’d worked out the figures, someone would usually die. The only difference here was that the death would be her own.
She seemed to come to a decision.
“Do you want me to apologize to you, Alex?” she asked, suddenly hard. “We’re talking about John Rider, a man you never knew. You never spoke to him; you have no memory of him. You know nothing about him.”
“He was still my dad!”
“He was a killer. He worked for Scorpia. Do you know how many people he murdered?”
Five or six. That was what Mrs Rothman had told him.
“There was a businessman working in Peru; he was married with a son your age. There was a priest in Rio de Janeiro; he was trying to help the street children, but unfortunately he’d made too many enemies so had to be taken out. There was a British policeman. An American agent. Then there was a woman; she was about to blow the whistle on a big corporation in Sydney. She was only twenty-six, Alex, and he shot her as she was getting out of her car—”
“That’s enough!” Now Alex was holding the gun with both hands. “I don’t want to hear any of this.”
“Yes, you do, Alex. You asked me. You wanted to know why he had to be stopped. And that’s what you’re going to do, isn’t it? Follow in your father’s footsteps. I’m sure they’ll send you all over the world, making you kill people you know nothing about. And I’m sure you’ll be very good at it. Your father was one of the best.”
“You cheated him. He was your prisoner and you said you were letting him go. You were going to swap him for someone else. But you shot him in the back. I saw…”
“I always wondered if they filmed it,” Mrs Jones murmured. She gestured and Alex stiffened, wondering if she was trying to misdirect him. But they were still alone. The cat had gone to sleep. Nobody was approaching the room. “I’ll give you some advice,” she said. “You’ll need it if you’re going to work with Scorpia. Once you join the other side, there are no rules. They don’t believe in fair play. Nor do we.
“They had kidnapped an eighteen-year-old.” Alex remembered the figure on the bridge. “He was the son of a British civil servant. They were going to kill him; but they were going to torture him first. We had to get him back – so, yes, I arranged the exchange. But there was no way I was ever going to release your father. He was too dangerous. Too many more people would have died. And so I arranged a double-cross. Two men on a bridge. A sniper. It worked perfectly and I’m glad. You can shoot me if it really makes you feel any better, Alex. But I’m telling you: you didn’t know your father. And if I had to do it all again, I’d do it exactly the same.”
“If you’re saying my father was so evil, what do you think that makes me?” Alex was trying to will himself to shoot. He had thought anger would give him strength, but he was more tired than angry. So now he searched for another way to persuade himself to pull the trigger. He was his father’s son. It was in his blood.
Mrs Jones took a step towards him.
“Stay where you are!” The gun was less than a metre from her, aiming straight at her head.
“I don’t think you’re a killer, Alex. You never knew your father. Why do you have to be like him? Do you think every child is ‘made’ the moment they’re born? I think you have a choice …”
“I never chose to work for you.”
“Didn’t you? After Stormbreaker you could have walked away. We never needed to meet again. But if you remember, you chose to get tangled up with drug dealers and we had to bail you out. And then there was Wimbledon. We didn’t make you go undercover. You agreed to go – and if you hadn’t locked a Chinese gangster in a deep freeze, we wouldn’t have had to send you to America.”
“You’re twisting everything!”
“And finally Damian Cray. You went after him on your own and we’re very grateful to you, Alex. But you ask me – what do I think you are? I think you’re too smart to pull that trigger. You’re not going to shoot me. Now or ever.”
“You’re wrong,” Alex said. She was lying to him, he knew that. She had always lied to him. He could do this. He had to do it.
He held the gun steady.
He let the hatred take him.
And fired.
The air in front of him seemed to explode into fragments.
Mrs Jones had tricked him. She had been tricking him all along, and he hadn’t seen it. The room was divided into two parts. A huge pane of transparent, bulletproof glass ran from one corner to the other, stretching from the floor to the ceiling. She had been on one side; he had been on the other. In the half-light it had been invisible, but now the glass frosted, a thousand cracks spiralling outwards from the dent made by the bullet. Mrs Jones had almost disappeared from sight, her face broken up as if she had become a smashed picture of herself. At the same time, an alarm rang, the door flew open and Alex was grabbed and thrown sideways onto the sofa. The gun went flying. Somebody shouted something in his ear but he couldn’t understand the words. The cat snarled and leapt past him. His arms were wrenched behind him. A knee pressed into his back. A bag was pulled over his head and he felt cold steel against his wrists. There was a click. He could no longer move his hands.
Now he could make out several voices in the room.
“Are you all right, Mrs Jones?”
“We’re sorry, ma’am…”
“We’ve got the car waiting outside…”
“Don’t hurt him!”
Alex was jerked off the sofa with his hands cuffed behind him. He felt wretched and sick. He had failed Scorpia. He had failed his father. He had failed himself.
He didn’t cry out. He didn’t resist. Limp and unmoving, he allowed himself to be dragged out of the room, back down the corridor and into the night.
COBRA
The room was a bare white box, designed to intimidate. Alex had measured out the space: ten paces one way, four across. There was a narrow bunk with no sheets or blankets, and, behind a partition, a toilet. But that was all. The door had no handle and fitted so flush to the wall that it was almost invisible. There was no window. Light came from behind a square panel in the ceiling and was controlled from outside.
Alex had no idea how long he had been here. His watch had been removed.
After he had been taken from Mrs Jones’s flat, he had been bundled into a car. The black cloth bag was still over his head. He had no idea where he was going. They drove at speed for what seemed like half an hour, then slowed down. Alex felt his stomach sink and knew they were heading down some sort of ramp. Had they taken him to the basement of the Liverpool Street HQ? He had been here once before but this time he was to be given no chance to take his bearings. The car stopped. The door opened and he was grabbed and dragged out. Nobody spoke to him. He was marched along – pinned between two men – and down a flight of stairs. Then his hands were unlocked, and the bag was pulled off. He just had time to glimpse Lloyd and Ramirez – the two agents from the reception desk – as they walked out. Then the door closed and he was on his own.
He lay on his back, remembering the final moments in the flat. He was amazed that he hadn’t seen the glass barrier until it was too late. Had Mrs Jones’s voice been amplified in some way? It didn’t matter. He had tried to kill her. He had finally found the strength to pull the trigger, proving that Scorpia had been right about him all along.
He was a killer. Do you know how many people he murdered?
Alex remembered what Mrs Jones had said about his father. She was the one who had given the order for John
Rider’s death; she had arranged it. She deserved to die.
Or so he tried to persuade himself. But the worst thing was, he half understood what she meant. Suppose his father hadn’t been killed on Albert Bridge. Suppose Alex had grown up with him and somehow found out what his father did. How would he have felt about it? Would he have been able to forgive him?
Sitting on his own in this cruel white room, Alex thought back to the moment when he had fired the gun. He felt again the shudder in his hand. Saw the invisible glass screen crack but not break. Good old Smithers! It was almost certainly the MI6 gadget master who had fixed it up. And, despite everything, Alex was glad. He was glad he hadn’t killed Mrs Jones.
He wondered what would happen to him now. Would MI6 prosecute? More likely, they would interrogate him. They would want to know about Malagosto, about Mrs Rothman and Nile. But maybe after that, at last, they would leave him alone. After what had happened, they would never trust him again.
He fell asleep – not just exhausted but drained. It was a black and empty sleep, without dreams, without any feeling of comfort or warmth.
The sound of the door opening woke him up. He opened his eyes and blinked. It was disconcerting having no idea of the time. He could have slept for a few hours or all night. He wasn’t feeling rested; there was a crick in his neck. But without a window it was impossible to say.
“You need the toilet?”
“No.”
“Then come with me.”
The man at the door wasn’t Lloyd or Ramirez or anyone Alex had ever met at MI6. He had a blank, uninteresting face and Alex knew that if they met the next day, he would already have forgotten him. He got off the bunk and walked towards the door, suddenly nervous. Nobody knew he was here. Not Tom, not Jack Starbright … nobody. MI6 could make him disappear. Permanently. Nobody would ever find out what had happened to him. Maybe that was what they had in mind.
But there was nothing he could do. He followed the agent along a curving corridor with a steel mesh floor and fat pipes following the line of the ceiling. He could have been in the engine room of a ship.
“I’m hungry,” he complained. He was. But he also wanted to show this agent that he wasn’t afraid.
“I’m taking you to breakfast.”
Breakfast! So he had slept through the night.
“Don’t worry,” Alex said. “You can drop me off at a McDonald’s.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. In here…”
They had arrived at a second door and Alex went through into a strange, curving room – obviously they were still underground. There were thick glass panels built into the ceiling and he could see the forms of people – commuters – walking overhead. The room was beneath a pavement. Feet of different sizes and shapes touched, briefly, against the glass. Above them the commuters were like ghosts, twisting, rippling, moving soundlessly by as they made their way to work.
There was a table on which were arranged fruit salad, cereal, milk, croissants and coffee. Alex welcomed the sight of breakfast but lost some of his appetite when he saw whom he was supposed to share it with. Alan Blunt was waiting for him, sitting in a chair on the other side of the table, dressed in yet another of his neat, grey suits. He really did look like the bank manager that he had once pretended to be, a man in his fifties, more comfortable with figures and statistics than with human beings.
“Good morning, Alex,” he said.
Alex didn’t reply.
“You can leave us, Burns. Thank you.”
The agent nodded and backed out. The door swung shut. Alex approached the table and sat down.
“Are you hungry, Alex? Please. Help yourself.”
“No thanks.” Alex was hungry. But he wouldn’t feel comfortable eating in front of this man.
“Don’t be stupid. You need your breakfast. You have a very busy day ahead of you.” Blunt waited for Alex to respond. Alex said nothing. “Do you realize how much trouble you’re in?” Blunt demanded.
“Perhaps I will have some Weetabix after all,” Alex said.
He helped himself. Blunt watched him coldly.
“We have very little time,” Blunt said as Alex ate. “I have some questions for you. You will answer them fully and honestly.”
“And if I don’t?”
“What do you think? Do you think I’ll give you a truth serum or something? You’ll answer my questions because it’s in your interest to do so. Right now, I don’t think you have any idea what’s at stake. But believe me when I tell you that this meeting is vital. We have to know what you know. More lives than you can imagine may depend on it.”
Alex lowered his spoon and nodded. “Go on.”
“You were recruited by Julia Rothman?”
“You know who she is?”
“Of course we do.”
“Yes. I was.”
“You were taken to Malagosto?”
“Yes.”
“And you were sent to kill Mrs Jones.”
Alex felt a need to defend himself. “She killed my dad.”
“That’s not the issue.”
“Not for you.”
“Just answer the question.”
“Yes. I was sent to kill Mrs Jones.”
“Good.” Blunt nodded. “I need to know who brought you to London. What you were told. And what you were to do when you completed your mission.”
Alex hesitated. If he told Blunt all this, he knew he would be betraying Scorpia. But suddenly he didn’t care. He had been drawn into a world where everyone betrayed everyone. He just wanted to get out.
“They had a layout of her flat,” he said. “They knew everything, except for the glass screen. All I had to do was wait for her to appear. Two of their agents took me through Heathrow. We came in as an Italian family; they never told me their real names. I had a fake passport.”
“Where did they take you?”
“I don’t know. A house somewhere. I didn’t get a chance to see the address.” Alex paused. “Where is Mrs Jones?”
“She didn’t want to see you.”
Alex nodded. “I can understand that.”
“After you killed her, what were you supposed to do?”
“They gave me a phone number. I was meant to ring it the moment I’d done what they wanted. But they’ll know you’ve got me now. I expect they were watching the flat.”
There was a long silence. Blunt was examining Alex minutely, like a scientist with an interesting lab specimen. Alex squirmed uncomfortably in his chair.
“Do you want to work for Scorpia?” Blunt demanded.
“I don’t know.” Alex shrugged. “I’m not sure it’s any different to working for you.”
“You don’t believe that. You can’t believe that.”
“I don’t want to work for either of you!” Alex cut in. “I just want to go back to school. I don’t want to see any of you ever again.”
“I wish that were possible, Alex.” For once, Blunt actually sounded sincere. “Let me tell you something that may surprise you. It’s been six … seven months since we first met. In that time, you’ve proved yourself to be remarkably useful. You’ve been more successful than I could possibly have calculated. And yet, in truth, I wish we had never met.”
“Why?”
“Because there has to be something wrong – seriously wrong – when the security of the entire country rests on the shoulders of a fourteen-year-old boy. Believe me, I would be very glad to let you walk out of here. You don’t belong in my world any more than I belong in yours. But I can’t let you go back to Brookland, because in approximately thirty hours every child in that school could be dead. Thousands of children in London could have joined them. This is what your friends in Scorpia have promised, and I have no doubt at all that they mean what they say.”
“Thousands?” Alex had gone pale. He hadn’t expected anything like this. What had he walked into?
“Maybe more. Maybe many thousands.”
“How?”
“We don’t know. You may. All I can tell you now is that Scorpia have made a series of demands. We cannot give them what they want. And they’re going to make us pay a heavy price.”
“What do you want from me?” Alex asked. All the strength seemed to have drained out of him.
“Scorpia have made one mistake. They’ve sent you to us. I want to know everything you’ve seen – everything Julia Rothman told you. We still have no idea what we’re up against, Alex. You may at least be able to give us a clue.”
Thousands of children in London.
Assassination, Alex. It’s part of what we do.
That was what she had said.
This was what she meant.
“I don’t know anything,” Alex said, his head bowed.
“You may know more than you think. You’re all that stands between Scorpia and an unimaginable bloodbath. I know what you think of me; I know how you feel about MI6. But are you willing to help?”
Alex slowly raised his head. He examined the man sitting opposite him and saw something he would never have believed.
Alan Blunt was afraid.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll help you.”
“Good. Then finish your breakfast, have a shower and get changed. The prime minister has called a meeting of Cobra. I want you to attend.”
* * *
Cobra.
The acronym stands for Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, which is where, at 10 Downing Street, the meetings take place. Cobra is an emergency council, the government’s ultimate response to any major crisis.
The prime minister is, of course, present when Cobra sits. So are most of his senior ministers, his director of communications, his chief of staff and representatives from the police, the army and the intelligence and security services. Finally there are the civil servants, men in dark suits with long and meaningless job titles. Everything that happens, everything that’s said, is recorded, minuted and then filed away for thirty years under the Official Secrets Act. Politics may be called a game, but Cobra is deadly serious. Decisions made here can bring down a government. The wrong decision could destroy the entire country.