“Good afternoon,” Mrs Rothman said.
A few heads nodded but nobody spoke. Greetings were a waste of words.
The nine people sitting around the table on the third floor of the Widow’s Palace made up the executive board of one of the most ruthless and successful criminal organizations in the world. The old man’s name was Max Grendel; the Chinese man was Dr Three. The Australian had no name at all. They had come to this room without windows to go over the final details of an operation that would, in just a few weeks, make them richer by the sum of one hundred million pounds.
The organization was called Scorpia.
It was a fanciful name, they all knew it, invented by someone who had probably read too much James Bond. But they had to call themselves something, and in the end they had chosen a name drawn from their four main fields of activity.
Sabotage. Corruption. Intelligence. Assassination.
Scorpia. A name which worked in a surprising number of languages and which rolled off the tongue of anyone who might wish to employ them. Scorpia. Seven letters that were now on the database of every police force and security agency in the world.
The organization was formed in the early eighties, during the so-called Cold War, the secret war that had been fought for decades between the Soviet Union, China, America and Europe. Every government in the world had its own army of spies and assassins, all of them prepared to kill or to die for their country. What they weren’t prepared for, though, was to find themselves out of work; and twelve of them, seeing that the Cold War would soon be over, realized that was exactly what they would be. They wouldn’t be needed any more. It was time to go into business for themselves.
They came together one Sunday morning in Paris. Their first meeting took place at the Maison Berthillon, a famous ice-cream parlour on the Ile St-Louis, not far from Notre-Dame. They were all acquainted: they had tried to kill each other often enough. But now, in the pretty, wood-panelled room with its antique mirrors and lace curtains, and over twelve dishes of Berthillon’s famous wild strawberry ice cream, they discussed how they might work together and make themselves rich. At this meeting, Scorpia was born.
Since then it had flourished. Scorpia was all over the world. It had brought down two governments and arranged for a third to be unfairly elected. It had destroyed dozens of businesses, corrupted politicians and civil servants, engineered several major ecological disasters, and killed anyone who got in its way. It was now responsible for a tenth of the world’s terrorism, which it undertook on a contract basis. Scorpia liked to think of itself as the IBM of crime – but in fact, compared to Scorpia, IBM was strictly small-time.
Of the original twelve, only nine were left. One had died of cancer; two had been murdered. But that wasn’t a bad record after twenty years of violent crime. There had never been a single leader of Scorpia. All nine were equal partners but one executive was always assigned to each new project, working in alphabetical order.
The project they were discussing this afternoon had been given a code name: Invisible Sword. Julia Rothman was in command.
“I would like to report to the board that everything is progressing on schedule,” she announced.
There was a trace of a Welsh accent in her voice. She had been born in Aberystwyth. Her parents had been Welsh nationalists, burning down the cottages of English holidaymakers who had bought them as second homes. Unfortunately they had torched one of these cottages with the English family still inside it, and when Julia was six she found herself in an institution while her parents began a life sentence in jail. This was, in a way, the start of her own criminal career.
“It is now three months,” she went on, “since we were approached by our client, a gentleman in the Middle East. To call him rich would be an understatement. He is a multi-billionaire. This man has looked at the world, at the balance of power, and he has decided that something has gone seriously wrong. He has asked us to remedy it.
“In a nutshell, our client believes that the West has become too powerful. He looks at Great Britain and America. It was the friendship between them that won the Second World War. And it is this same friendship that now allows the West to invade any country that it pleases and to take anything it wants. Our client has asked us to end the British-American alliance once and for all.
“What can I tell you about our client?” Mrs Rothman smiled sweetly. “Perhaps he is a visionary, interested only in world peace; perhaps he is completely insane. Either way, it makes no difference to us. He has offered us an enormous sum of money – one hundred million pounds to be exact – to do what he wants. To humble Britain and America and to ensure they cease to work together as a world power. And I am happy to be able to tell you that twenty million pounds, the first instalment of that money, arrived in our Swiss bank account yesterday. We are now ready to move into phase two.”
There was silence in the room. As the men waited for Mrs Rothman to speak again, the faint hum of an air conditioner could be heard. But no sound came from outside.
“Phase two – the final phase – will take place in under three weeks from now. I can promise you that very soon the British and the Americans will be at one another’s throats. More than that: by the end of the month both countries will be on their knees. America will be hated throughout the entire world; the British will have witnessed a horror beyond anything they could ever have imagined. We will all be a great deal richer. And our friend from the Middle East will consider his money well spent.”
“Excuse me, Mrs Rothman. I have a question…”
Dr Three bowed his head politely. His face seemed to be made of wax and his hair – jet black – looked twenty years younger than the rest of him. It had to be dyed. He was very small and might have been a retired teacher. He might have been many things, but he was, in fact, the world expert on torture and pain. He had written several books on the subject.
“How many people do you intend to kill?” he asked.
Julia Rothman considered. “It’s still difficult to be precise, Dr Three,” she replied. “But it will certainly be thousands. Many thousands.”
“And they will all be children?”
“Yes. They will mainly be twelve and thirteen years old.” She sighed. “It is, it goes without saying, very unfortunate. I adore children, even though I’m glad I never had any of my own. But that’s the plan. And I have to say, the psychological effect of so many young people dying will, I think, be useful. Does it concern you?”
“Not at all, Mrs Rothman.” Dr Three shook his head.
“Does anyone have any objections?”
Nobody spoke, but out of the corner of her eye, Mrs Rothman noticed Max Grendel shift uncomfortably on his chair at the far end of the table. At seventy-three, he was the oldest man there, with sagging skin and liver spots on his forehead. He suffered from an eye disease that made him weep constantly. He was dabbing at his eyes now with a tissue. It was hard to believe that he had been a commander in the German secret police and had once personally strangled a foreign spy during a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth.
“Are preparations complete in London?” the Australian asked.
“Construction in the church finished a week ago. The platform, the gas cylinders and the rest of the machinery will be delivered later today.”
“Will Invisible Sword work?”
It was typical of Levi Kroll to be blunt and to the point. He had joined Scorpia from Mossad, the Israeli secret service, and still thought of himself as a soldier. For twenty years he had slept with an FN 9mm pistol under his pillow. Then, one night, it had gone off. He was a large man with a beard that covered most of his face, concealing the worst of his injuries. An eyepatch hid the empty socket where his left eye had once been.
“Of course it will work,” Mrs Rothman snapped.
“It’s been tested?”
“We’re testing it right now. But I have to tell you that Dr Liebermann is something of a genius. A boring man if you have to spend time w
ith him and heaven knows I’ve had to do plenty of that. But he’s created a brand-new weapon and the beauty of it is, all the experts in the world won’t know what it is or how it operates. Of course, they’ll work it out in the end, and I’ve made plans for that eventuality. But by then it will be too late. The streets of London will be littered with corpses. It’ll be the worst thing to happen to children in a city since the Pied Piper.”
“And what about Liebermann?” Dr Three asked.
“I haven’t decided yet. We’ll probably have to kill him too. He invented Invisible Sword but he has no idea how we plan to use it. I expect he’ll object. So he’ll have to go.”
Mrs Rothman looked around. “Is there anything else?” she asked.
“Yes.” Max Grendel spread his hands across the surface of the table. Mrs Rothman wasn’t surprised that he had something to say. He was a father and a grandfather. Worse than that, in his old age he had become sentimental.
“I have been with Scorpia from the very beginning,” he said. “I still remember our first meeting in Paris. I have earned many millions working with you and I’ve enjoyed everything we’ve done. But this project … Invisible Sword. Are we really going to kill so many children? How will we be able to live with ourselves?”
“Rather more comfortably than before,” Julia Rothman muttered.
“No, no, Julia.” Grendel shook his head. A single tear trickled from one of his diseased eyes. “This will come as no surprise to you. We spoke of this the last time we met. But I have decided that enough is enough. I’m an old man. I want to retire to my castle in Vienna. Invisible Sword will be your greatest achievement, I am sure. But I no longer have the heart for it. It is time for me to step down. You must go ahead without me.”
“You can’t retire!” Levi Kroll protested sharply.
“Why did you not tell us about this earlier?” another of the men asked angrily. He was black but with Japanese eyes. There was a diamond the size of a pea embedded in one of his front teeth.
“I told Mrs Rothman,” Max Grendel said reasonably. “She’s the project leader. I felt there was no need to inform the entire board.”
“We really don’t need to argue about this, Mr Mikato,” Julia Rothman said smoothly. “Max has been talking about retiring for a long time now and I think we should respect his wishes. It’s certainly a shame. But, as my late husband used to say, all good things come to an end.”
Mrs Rothman’s multimillionaire husband had fallen to his death from a seventeenth-storey window. It had happened just two days after their marriage.
“It’s very sad, Max,” she continued. “But I’m sure you’re doing the right thing. It’s time for you to go.”
* * *
She went with him down to the jetty. The motor launch had left but there was a gondola waiting to take him back down the canal. They walked slowly arm in arm.
“I’ll miss you,” she said.
“Thank you, Julia.” Max Grendel patted her arm. “I’ll miss you too.”
“I don’t know how we’ll manage without you.”
“Invisible Sword cannot fail. Not with you at the helm.”
She stopped suddenly. “I almost forgot,” she exclaimed. “I have something for you.” She snapped her fingers and a servant ran forward carrying a large box wrapped in pink and blue paper, tied with a silver bow. “It’s a present for you,” she said.
“A retirement present?”
“Something to remember us by.”
Max Grendel had stopped beside the gondola. It was bobbing up and down on the choppy surface. A gondolier dressed in a traditional striped jersey stood in the back, leaning on his oar. “Thank you, my dear,” he said. “And good luck.”
“Enjoy yourself, Max. Keep in touch.”
She kissed him, her lips lightly touching his withered cheek. Then she helped him into the gondola. He sat down awkwardly, placing the brightly coloured box on his knees. At once the gondolier pulled away. Mrs Rothman raised a hand. The little boat cut swiftly through the grey water.
Mrs Rothman turned and went back into the Widow’s Palace.
Max Grendel watched her sadly. He knew that life wouldn’t be the same without Scorpia. For two decades he had devoted all his energies to the organization. It had kept him young, kept him alive. But now there were his grandchildren to consider. He thought of the twins, little Hans and Rudi. They were twelve years old. The same age as Scorpia’s targets in London. He couldn’t be part of it. He had made the right decision.
He had almost forgotten the package resting on his knees. That was typical of Julia. Perhaps it was because she was the only woman on the executive board, but she had always been the one who was most emotional. He wondered what she had bought him. The parcel was heavy. On an impulse, he untied the ribbon, then ripped off the paper.
It was an executive briefcase, obviously expensive. He could tell from the quality of the leather, the hand-stitching … and there was the label. It had been made by Gucci. His initials – MUG – had been engraved in gold just under the handle. With a smile he opened it.
And screamed as the contents spilled over him.
Scorpions. Dozens of them. They were at least ten centimetres long, dark brown with tiny pincers and fat, swollen bodies. As they poured into his lap and began to swarm up his shirt, he recognized what they were: hairy thick-tailed scorpions from the Parabuthus species, one of the most deadly in the world.
Max Grendel fell backwards, shrieking, his eyes bulging, arms and legs flailing as the hideous creatures found the gaps in his clothes and crawled inside his shirt and down under the waistband of his trousers. The first one stung him on the side of his neck. Then he was being stung over and over again, jerking helplessly, the screams dying in his throat.
His heart gave out long before the neurotoxins killed him. As the gondola floated gently on, being steered now towards the island cemetery of Venice, tourists might have noticed an old man lying still with his hands spread wide, gazing with sightless eyes at the bright Venetian sky.
BY INVITATION ONLY
That night, the Widow’s Palace slipped back three hundred years in time.
It was an extraordinary sight. The oil-burning torches had been lit and the flames cast flickering shadows across the square. The servants had changed into eighteenth-century costumes with wigs, tightly fitting stockings, pointed shoes and waistcoats. A string quartet played beneath the night sky, sitting on the bandstand that Alex had seen being constructed that afternoon. The stars were out in their thousands and there was even a full moon. It was as if whoever had organized the party had managed to control the weather too.
Guests were arriving by water and on foot. They too were in costume, wearing elaborate hats and richly coloured velvet cloaks that swept the ground. Some carried ebony walking sticks; others had swords and daggers. But not a single face could be seen among the crowd making its way to the front door. Features were concealed behind white masks and gold masks, masks encrusted with jewels and masks surrounded by huge plumes of feathers. It was impossible to know who had been invited to Mrs Rothman’s party – but not just anyone could walk in. The Grand Canal entrance to the palace was closed and everyone was being directed to the main door that Alex had seen earlier that day. Four security guards wearing the bright red tunics of Venetian courtiers were positioned there, checking each invitation.
Alex watched all this from the other side of the square. He was crouched behind one of the miniature trees with Tom, the two of them outside the pool of light thrown by the torches. It hadn’t been easy to persuade Tom to come. Alex’s disappearance before lunch had been noticed almost immediately, and Tom had been left to make up an unconvincing story about a stomach ache in front of an angry Mr Grey. Alex should have been in serious trouble when he finally met up with the group back at the hotel, and if it hadn’t been for Miss Bedfordshire – who was still grateful to him for recovering her handbag – he would have been grounded for the night. Anyway, this was Ale
x. Everyone knew they could rely on him to act oddly.
But to disappear again! It was the last evening of the trip and the group had been given two hours’ free time which they were meant to spend in San Lorenzo, in the cafés or the square. Alex had other plans. He had found everything he needed in Venice that afternoon before he went back to the hotel. But he knew he couldn’t do this alone. Tom had to come too.
“Alex, I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Tom whispered now. “Why is this party such a big deal anyway?”
“I can’t explain.”
“Why not? I don’t understand you sometimes. We’re meant to be friends but you never tell me anything.”
Alex sighed. He was used to this. When he thought of all the things that had happened to him in the last six months, the way he had been dragged into the world of espionage, a web of secrecy and lies, this was the worst part. MI6 had turned him into a spy. And at the same time they had made it impossible for him to be what he wanted – an ordinary schoolboy. He had been juggling two lives, one day saving the world from a nuclear holocaust, the next struggling with his chemistry homework. Two lives, but he had ended up trapped between them. He didn’t know where he belonged any more. There was Tom, there was Jack Starbright and there was Sabina Pleasure – although she had now moved to America. Apart from them, he had no real friends. It wasn’t his choice, but somehow he had ended up alone.
Alex made up his mind. “All right,” he said. “If you’ll help me, I’ll tell you everything. But not yet.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I’m going to Naples tomorrow to stay with my brother.”