Mrs. Jones thought for a moment, then nodded. “I think it’s a good idea,” she said. “Alex?”
Alex was still gazing at Jack. “Are you really sure?” he asked.
“I’ve never been more certain about anything.”
“That’s great.” Alex smiled. “We can see the pyramids together. And the Nile. And it’ll be fun to have you with me.”
“You can leave all the arrangements to us,” Blunt said. “I’ll alert our Cairo office that you’re on your way. They’ll give you everything you need.”
“Then it seems we’re all agreed,” Jack said.
She got up and led Alan Blunt and Mrs. Jones to the door. Their car was waiting for them, parked outside. Meanwhile, Alex sat on his own, his head in a whirl. Cairo! Part of him was excited. He couldn’t help himself. It was an amazing city, somewhere he had never been before. And yet at the same time, he felt a great weight on his shoulders. It was all happening again.
Jack came back in. “They’ve gone,” she said.
“Thanks, Jack.” Alex got up. “Thanks for saying you’d come with me.”
“I wasn’t going to let it happen any other way.” Just for a moment, Jack remembered that she had been planning to tell Alex her plans this very evening. Had she really been thinking of abandoning him, of moving on? Well, her parents and Washington would have to wait. “I guess they’ll have to give me a new ID too,” she said. “I wonder what I’ll look like with a fake mustache.” She sighed. “Are you going to do your homework?”
“I don’t think there’s any point.”
“Then why don’t I make us some supper? And you see what’s on TV . . .”
Alan Blunt was in a better mood as they headed back toward Liverpool Street. Mrs. Jones had noticed the difference. “So you got what you wanted,” she said.
“Yes.” Blunt avoided her eye. “It’s funny how things work out sometimes.”
“I think you forgot to mention that Scorpia might be involved.”
“I didn’t forget. I preferred not to alarm him.”
“He might have decided not to go.”
“I would have said, all in all, that it’s better for him to keep an open mind.”
They drove on in silence.
“I want him to have backup in Cairo,” Mrs. Jones announced suddenly.
“Who do you have in mind?” Blunt knew that there was a time when his deputy would never have spoken to him so directly. But he would soon be gone. Power was already transferring itself to her. “We could send Crawley, perhaps. Or Gerrard . . .”
“I was thinking of Smithers.”
“An interesting choice.”
“Alex trusts him. And he may come in useful, particularly if Scorpia does show up. Do you have any objection?”
“Of course not, Mrs. Jones. Whatever you think best.”
The strange thing was that Blunt had been right all along. He never should have left Liverpool Street and he certainly shouldn’t have visited Alex at home.
He and Mrs. Jones had been filmed getting out of the car from the window of the house opposite. The owners of the house were on vacation in Thailand, and although they should have returned by now, they had both fallen ill with food poisoning and were being treated in a hospital in Bangkok. Scorpia had arranged this, just as they had arranged for one of their teams to break into the house and set up their cameras on the second floor.
Alex’s home had also been bugged. Two men dressed as telephone engineers had slipped in while Jack was out at the shops and placed recording devices in the kitchen, the living room, both bedrooms, and even dotted around the garden. The entire conversation with Blunt and Mrs. Jones had been recorded.
“I want him to go to Egypt . . . I have a job that is ideally suited to you . . .”
“We’ll give him a false name . . .”
“I’ll alert our Cairo office that you’re on your way. They’ll give you everything you need.”
It had all been recorded, on film and on tape, proof that MI6 had once again employed Alex Rider and sent him to the Middle East. It would be put into the Horseman file, and over the next few days, that file would start to grow. Ariston might be dead, but his work would continue. Scorpia’s operation had begun.
10
WELCOME TO CAIRO
THE MAN FROM THE EMBASSY had introduced himself as Blakeway, but Alex wondered if that was his real name. It somehow suited him too well. He was thin, elderly, hollowed out by the sun, and very English—wearing a crumpled linen jacket, a striped tie, and a Panama hat. He had been waiting for Alex and Jack at Cairo Airport, standing next to the metal tunnel that led from the plane.
“Miss Starbright? Alex? Very good to meet you. I’ve got a car waiting for you. Do come this way.”
They set off at a leisurely pace. Blakeway didn’t look like the sort of man who ever hurried. But it was good having him with them. They were waved through passport control. They didn’t have to join the long lines or buy twenty-dollar entry visas from the banking kiosks. Blakeway stood with them until their luggage arrived on the carousel, then carried Jack’s cases for her, leading them through the crowds of taxi drivers and tour operators clamoring on the other side of the arrivals gate.
The heat hit Alex full in the face. As they passed through the sliding doors, leaving the terminal behind them, it was almost like stepping into a furnace. Within seconds his clothes were sticking to him and he felt his case dragging him down. Meanwhile, Blakeway was looking around the concourse.
“Where’s Ahmed? I told him I’d be only a few minutes. Ah! There he is!”
He waved at an official-looking black sedan that drew up in front of him, and a small, round-faced man in a white shirt and dark pants leapt out and began to busy himself with the luggage.
“That’s better. You two can hop in the back. The car’s got air-conditioning, thank goodness. It shouldn’t take us too long to get across Cairo—apart from the blasted traffic.”
A minute later they were on their way. The car was cool inside and the seats were soft and comfortable, but Alex couldn’t relax. He was worn out from the long journey and although he desperately wanted to fall asleep, he knew it wasn’t going to happen. London didn’t just seem a six-hour flight away. It was another world, and part of him wondered when he would see it again. What a fool he had been to think that MI6 would ever leave him alone. Perhaps it had been the same for his uncle, Ian Rider—and for his parents. They had all discovered the same thing. In the end, there was no way out.
Sitting next to him, with her head resting against the window, Jack Starbright seemed to know exactly what he was thinking. She was wearing large sunglasses that covered most of her face, along with a floppy white hat, but he could tell that she was concerned about him. She suddenly reached across and put a hand on his arm.
“We don’t have to stay,” she said quietly, so that Blakeway wouldn’t hear.
“I know.”
“I noticed a flight to New York leaving in three hours. We could be on it.”
“We’re here now, Jack. We might as well see what it’s like.”
Was it even true? Alex wondered what would happen if he asked the car to turn around, if he tried to get back on a plane. Would MI6 let him leave Cairo? Alan Blunt wanted him here and that was where he was. There would be no departure until the job had been done.
“All right in the back?” Blakeway asked. He might have overheard them talking after all. “We’ve got some water here if you need it. Just shout . . .”
He had said the traffic would be bad and he hadn’t been exaggerating. It was horrendous. They had joined a six-lane motorway, but there still wasn’t enough room for the thousands of cars jammed together, the drivers beeping at each other furiously as if it would make any difference at all. Alex stared out the window. It seemed to him that they had driven into a nightmare of steel and concrete, of sand and dust. Old-fashioned office blocks stood next to crumbling houses. Here and there, slender towers rose over t
he domes of mosques, but they were hemmed in by radio masts, electricity pylons, and cranes, tons and tons of ironwork fighting for control of the sky. Alex’s first impression was that Cairo was a very ugly city. It certainly wasn’t somewhere he would have chosen to live.
Somehow they fought their way through to the other side. The traffic thinned out a little and they found themselves in a suburb, quieter and less densely populated than the city center but still less than welcoming. Everything seemed half finished. They were driving down a street with palm trees and expensive Arabic-style villas on one side, but piles of rubble and broken-down fences on the other. For the first time, Alex saw the desert. It was there, in the mid-distance, an endless wave of drab yellow sand. It was as if Cairo didn’t dare go any farther. It just stopped. And next to it there was nothing.
“Not much farther,” Blakeway said. He sounded remarkably cheerful. Alex wondered how long he had been here. He turned to the driver and said something in Arabic. The two of them laughed.
And then they drove into a bright, modern complex, the automatic gates opening and closing behind them. It was called Golden Palm Heights, a private community of about fifty bleached-out houses and apartments surrounding well-kept lawns with sprinklers twisting in the sunshine and a good-sized swimming pool. It reminded Alex of a vacation village the sort of place you might rent for a week in the sun. The sedan drew in beside a neat block of apartments with terraces overlooking the pool.
“This is it! Let’s go in. Ahmed can bring up the luggage.”
They followed Blakeway up a staircase to a two-bedroom apartment on the first floor. The door was open and he showed them in to a light, modern space with marble floors, air-conditioning, and an open-plan living room with sliding windows leading onto the balcony. There was a large fridge-freezer, an electric oven and microwave, and a fifty-five-inch plasma-screen TV on one wall. Everything was very clean. After the long journey, Alex had to admit that he was pleasantly surprised.
“I’m going to leave you now,” Blakeway announced. “I’m sure you want to get unpacked and go for a swim. If you need anything, this is my number here.” He took out a business card and snapped it down. “You’re only five minutes from Cairo College and I’m sure someone will turn up to show you around. Quite a lot of the students and some of the teachers live here at Golden Palm Heights. They’ll be here around four o’clock, after school, and there’s usually a rush for the pool. I expect it’ll be quite strange for you, Alex, being the new boy and all that.”
He went over to the window and glanced out, as if to make sure they were alone. When he turned around, his voice was lower and he sounded almost nervous. “I’m told that one of your people will be coming here on Sunday evening,” he went on. “He’ll give you further instructions and see that you’re properly equipped. But that gives you the weekend to acclimate yourselves, see a bit of Cairo. It’s not such a bad place once you get to know it. Well, I’ll wish you good luck, Alex. For what it’s worth, I’ve heard about you, you know. A few whispers, anyway. It’s very good to have met you.”
He called for Ahmed and the two of them left. Jack watched the car disappear through the gate. They were finally alone.
“A swim, something to eat, or a nap?” she asked.
“All three,” Alex replied. “But let’s start with the swim.”
Jack was keen to unpack, so Alex dragged a pair of trunks out of a case, got changed, and went down alone. He dived straight in and did six lengths, pounding through the cold water, leaving the heat and the grime behind him. He was still there, splashing around and enjoying himself, when the first students from Cairo College arrived back at Golden Palm Heights, threw off their backpacks and clothes, and dived in with him. Almost at once he found himself surrounded by two boys and a girl who were all about the same age as him and who seemed delighted to have a new face in the complex.
The two boys were Australian; Craig Daniels and Simon Shaw. Craig was tall for his age—in fact, he was huge. He needed to shave but didn’t. Simon looked like a surfer, from his tanned skin and long, fair hair right down to the bead necklace and brightly colored trunks he wore in the pool. The girl was named Jodie, and although she had been born in England, she had lived most of her life abroad. Her parents were both teachers, fortunately not at the CICAE. She had freckles and straw-colored hair cut short, and Alex liked her at once.
“Cairo College isn’t too bad,” she told him, in answer to his questions. “It’s pretty relaxed and the teachers are okay. I spent two years in Singapore and that was miserable.”
“How come you’re out here?” Craig asked. Like Simon, his father worked in the oil industry. Quite a few of the families at the school were supported by Shell or BP.
It was the moment Alex had been dreading. It was hard enough making new friends, and doing so on the basis of a lie made it ten times worse. But he had no choice. MI6 had given him a false name—Alex Tanner—and had already rehearsed the story of his background with Jack. She would support him if anyone asked her. “I don’t have parents,” he explained. “My uncle works for an international bank and they’ve recently started working in the Middle East. He’s not here right now. I have a sort of guardian who looks after me. Everyone just decided it would be easier for us to be here.”
Like all good lies, the story contained a lot of truth. Ian Rider had pretended to be a banker before he’d died. MI6 were certainly active in the Middle East. And Jack was his legal guardian. At any event, it seemed to make sense to Alex’s three new friends.
“It’s okay,” Craig said. “Once you get used to the heat and the noise . . .”
“And the hawkers . . .,” Simon added.
“And Miss Watson.” The three of them groaned.
“Welcome to Cairo, Alex. You’re going to love it here.”
And over the next few days, almost despite himself, Alex began to relax. He would start at the college on Monday. Until then, he and Jack were tourists, on vacation together, and they could put the rest of it out of their mind. The first thing they did was to visit the famous pyramids at Giza, slipping in as the sun was rising and wandering almost alone around the extraordinary monuments built to house the bodies of dead kings almost five thousand years before. They took a felucca, a traditional wooden sailing boat, along the Nile. They explored Cairo together, strolling through the crowded streets of the souk—the local market—and haggling for things they didn’t even want. They popped into mosques and museums, staying just long enough to say they had been. They visited the place where Moses had supposedly been found in the bulrushes and Jack got a picture taken of the two of them, arm in arm, grinning like idiots.
Craig and Simon had both been right. The heat in the city was almost unbearable, at least one hundred degrees without any desert breeze, and the hawkers never left them alone, trying to sell them everything from spices to pornographic postcards. Cairo had no center and seemed to have no way out. It was as if half of humanity had just piled in there and had decided to stay.
But they didn’t care. They were enjoying themselves, closer than they’d been for a long time. Alex felt as if he had gone back five years, as if Ian Rider were still alive and Jack were looking after him and every day in its own way was fun. He was almost glad that he’d been shot at. This wouldn’t have happened any other way.
They didn’t hear from Blakeway again, but returning home on Sunday evening, they noticed a new car parked outside the apartment and realized that the MI6 agent he had mentioned must have turned up. Sure enough, someone called from the front door, and to his surprise, Alex saw a plump, familiar man waddling slowly toward them.
He had last seen Smithers in his office on the eleventh floor of the Royal and General Bank in London, just before he had broken into the Greenfields research center at Salisbury. Alex had always had a soft spot for the man who had provided him with so many bizarre and useful weapons during his time with MI6. Seeing him now, he wondered how Smithers could possibly manage in this
heat. It wasn’t just the huge stomach, it was the three chins, the round cheeks, the neck that seemed to be melting slowly into the shoulders. Smithers was bald with a small mustache that reminded Alex of a comedian in one of those old, silent, black-and-white films. He was wearing a linen suit that billowed around him like a parachute. He was mopping his head with an oversized silk handkerchief, but as he drew up in front of them, he stuffed it back into his pocket.
“As-salaam alaikum, Alex,” Smithers chortled. “That’s Arabic for ‘good evening.’ And you must be Jack Starbright. How very nice to meet you.”
“What are you doing out here, Mr. Smithers?” Alex asked.
“Believe it or not, Mrs. Jones sent me to look after you.” Smithers beamed. “Let’s go and talk inside, shall we? I’m told you have a first-floor apartment. I hope it’s not too many steps!”
They made their way up and soon the three of them were sitting around the living room table. Alex had a glass of iced grenadine—still his favorite drink. Smithers had a beer.
“So you begin at the Cairo College tomorrow, Alex,” he said. “My job is to help you and also, as it were, to be the interface between you and London.”
“What’s going on in London?” Jack asked.
“They still haven’t found the helicopter pilot or his passenger,” Smithers said. “And no bodies have turned up, so we’re assuming they got away.”
“They tried to kill Alex. You must know who they were.”
“I’m afraid not, Miss Starbright.” Smithers lifted his beer. “Can I call you Jack? I feel I know you rather well, even though we’ve only just met. And I have to agree with you. It’s all rather mysterious. I’m not sure how the helicopter managed to land in the middle of London in the first place. It would have needed a flight plan, and for that it would have had to have a proper license. But so far all the trails have led nowhere.”
“Was it Scorpia?” Alex asked. He didn’t know why he had said that. The name had just dropped into his head.