Stormbreaker (3 page)

With one shoe on and one shoe off, his clothes in rags, and his body streaked with oil, Alex knew he must look a strange sight. But then he thought back to his last seconds inside the crusher and sighed with relief. He could be looking a lot worse.

THE BANK CALLED the following day.

“This is John Crawley. Do you remember me? Personnel manager at the Royal and General. We were wondering if you could come in.”

“Come in?” Alex was half dressed, already late for school.

“This afternoon. We found some papers of your uncle's. We need to talk to you ... about your own position.”

Was there something faintly threatening in the man's voice? “What time this afternoon?” Alex asked.

“Could you manage half past four? We're on Liverpool Street. We can send a cab-”

“I'll be there,” Alex said. “And I'll take the tube.”

He hung up.

“Who was that?” lack called out of the kitchen. She was cooking breakfast for the two of them, although how long she could remain with Alex was a growing worry. Her wages hadn't been paid. She had only her own money to buy food and pay for the running of the house. Worse still, her visa was about to expire. Soon she wouldn't even be allowed to stay in the country.

“That was the bank.” Alex came into the room, wearing his spare uniform. He hadn't told her what had happened at the junk yard. Jack had enough on her mind. “I'm going there this afternoon,” he said.

“Do you want me to come?”

“No. I'll be fine.”

He came out of Liverpool Street tube station just after four-fifteen that afternoon, still wearing his school clothes: dark blue jacket, gray trousers, striped tie. He found the bank easily enough. The Royal & General occupied a tall, antique-looking building with a Union Jack fluttering from a pole about fifteen floors up. There was a brass plaque with the name next to the main door and a security camera swiveling slowly over the pavement.

Alex stopped in front of it. For a moment he wondered if he was making a mistake, going in. If the bank had been responsible in some way for Ian Rider's death, it was always possible they had asked him here to arrange his own. But why would anyone from the bank want to kill him? He didn't even have an account there. He went inside.

And in an office on the seventeenth floor, the image on the television monitor flickered and changed as Street Camera #1 smoothly cut across to Reception Cameras #2 and #3. Everything was dark and shadowy inside. A man sitting behind a desk saw Alex come in and pressed a button. Camera #2 zoomed in until Alex's face filled the screen.

“So he came,” the chairman of the bank muttered.

“That's the boy?” The speaker was a middle-aged woman. She had a strange, potato-shaped head and her black hair looked as if it had been cut using a pair of blunt scissors and an upturned bowl. Her eyes were almost as black as her hair. She was dressed in a severe gray suit and was sucking a peppermint. “Are you sure about this, Alan?” she asked.

Alan Blunt nodded. “Oh yes. Quite sure. You know what to do?” This last question was addressed to his driver, who was also in the room.

The driver was standing uncomfortably, slightly hunched over. His face was a chalky white. He had been like that ever since he had tried to stop Alex in the auto junkyard. '“Yes, sir,” he said.

“Then do it,” Blunt said. His eyes never left the screen.

In the lobby, Alex had asked for John Crawley and was sitting on a leather sofa, vaguely wondering why so few people were going in or out. The reception area was quiet and claustrophobic, with a brown marble floor, three elevators to one side, and above the desk, a row of clocks showing the time in every major world city. But it could have been the entrance to anywhere. A hospital. A concert hall. Even a cruise liner. The place had no identity of its own.

One of the elevators slid open and Crawley appeared in the same suit he had worn at the funeral but with a different tie. “I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, Alex,” he said. “Have you come straight from school?”

Alex stood up but said nothing, allowing his uniform to answer the man's question.

“Let's go up to my office,” Crawley said. He gestured. “We'll take the elevator.”

Alex didn't notice the fourth camera inside the elevator, but then, it was concealed on the other side of the oneway mirror that covered the back wall. Nor did he see the thermal intensifier next to the camera. But this second machine both looked at him and through him as he stood there, turning him into a pulsating mass of different colors, none of which translated into the cold steel of a hidden gun or knife. In less than the time it took Alex to blink, the machine had passed its information down to a computer that had instantly evaluated and then sent its own signal back to the circuits that controlled the elevator.It's OK He's unarmed. Continue to the fifteenth floor.

“Here we are!” Crawley smiled and ushered Alex out into a long corridor, with an uncarpeted wooden floor and modern lighting. A series of doors were punctuated by brightly colored abstract paintings. “My office is just along here.” Crawley pointed the way.

They had passed three doors when Alex stopped. Each door had a nameplate and this one he knew. 1504: Ian Rider. White letters on black plastic.

Crawley nodded sadly. “Yes. This was where your uncle worked. He'll be much missed.”

“Can I go inside?” Alex asked.

Crawley seemed surprised. “Why do you want to do that?”

“I'd be interested to see where he worked.”

“I'm sorry.” Crawley sighed. “The door will have been locked and I don't have the key. Another time per haps.” He gestured again. He used his hands like a magician, as if he were about to produce a fan of cards. “I have the office next door. Just here . . .”

They went into 1505. It was a large, square room with three windows looking out over the station. There was a flutter of red and blue outside and Alex remembered the flag he had seen. The flagpole was right next to the office. Inside there was a desk and chair, a couple of sofas, in the corner a fridge, on the wall a couple of prints. A boring executive's office. Perfect for a boring executive.

“Please, Alex. Sit down,” Crawley said. He went over to the fridge. “Can I get you a drink?”

“Do you have Coke?”

“Yes.” Crawley opened a can and filled a glass, then handed it to Alex. “Ice?”

“No, thanks.” Alex took a sip. It wasn't Coke. It wasn't even Pepsi. He recognized the oversweet, slightly cloying taste of supermarket cola and wished he'd asked for water. “So what do you want to talk to me about?”

"Your uncle's will. . .

The telephone rang and with another hand sign, this one for “excuse me,” Crawley answered it. He spoke for a few moments, then hung up again. “I'm very sorry, Alex. I have to go back down to the lobby. Do you mind?”

“Go ahead.” Alex settled himself on the sofa.

“I'll be about five minutes.” With a final nod of apology, Crawley left.

Alex waited a few seconds. Then he poured the cola into a potted plant and stood up. He went over to the door and back into the corridor. At the far end a woman carrying a bunch of papers appeared and disappeared through a door. There was no sign of Crawley. Quickly, Alex moved back to the door of 1504 and tried the handle. But Crawley had been telling the truth. It was locked.

Alex went back into Crawley's office. He would have given anything to spend a few minutes alone in Ian Rider's office. Somebody thought the dead man's work was important enough to keep hidden from him. They had broken into his house and cleaned out everything they'd found in the office there. Perhaps the office next door might tell him why. What exactly was Ian Rider involved in? And was it the reason why he had been killed?

The flag fluttered again and, seeing it, Alex went over to the window. The pole jutted out of the building exactly halfway between rooms 1504 and 1505. If he could somehow reach it, he should be able to jump onto the ledge that ran along the side of the building outside room 1504. Of course, he was fifteen floors up. If he jumped and missed, there would be a couple of hundred feet to fall. It was a stupid idea. It wasn't even worth thinking about.

Alex opened the window and climbed out. It was better not to think about it at all. He would just do it. After all, if this was the ground floor, or a jungle gym in the school yard, it would be child's play. It was only the sheer brick wall stretching down to the pavement, the cars and buses moving like toys so far below, and the blast of the wind against his face that made it terrifying. Don't think about it. Do it.

Alex lowered himself onto the ledge outside Crawley's office. His hands were behind him, clutching onto the windowsill. He took a deep breath. And jumped.

A camera in the office across the road caught Alex as he launched himself into space. Two floors above, Alan Blunt was still sitting in front of the screen. He chuckled. It was a humorless sound. “I told you,” he said. “The boy's extraordinary.”

“The boy's quite mad,” the woman retorted.

“Well, maybe that's what we need.”

“You're just going to sit here and watch him kill himself?”

“I'm going to sit here and hope that he survives.”

Alex had miscalculated the jump. He had missed the flagpole by an inch and would have plunged down to the pavement if his hands hadn't caught hold of the Union Jack itself. He was hanging now with his feet in midair. Slowly, with huge effort, he pulled himself up, his fingers hooking into the material. Somehow he managed to climb back up onto the pole. He still didn't look down. He just hoped that no passersby looked up.

It was easier after that. He squatted on the pole, then threw himself sideways and across to the ledge outside Ian Rider's office. He had to be careful. Too far to the left and he would crash into the side of the building, but too far the other way and he would fall. In fact, he landed perfectly, grabbing hold of the ledge with both hands and then pulling himself up until he was level with the window. It was only now that he wondered if the window would be locked. If so, he'd just have to go back.

It wasn't. Alex slid the window open and hoisted him self into the second office, which was in many ways a carbon copy of the first. It had the same furniture, the same carpet, even a similar painting on the wall. He went over to the desk and sat down. The first thing he saw was a photograph of himself, taken the summer before on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, where he had gone diving. There was a second picture tucked into the corner of the frame. Alex aged five or six. He was surprised and a little saddened by the photographs. Ian Rider had been more sentimental than he had pretended.

Alex glanced at his watch. About three minutes had passed since Crawley had left the office and he had said he would be back in five. If he was going to find anything here, he had to find it quickly. He pulled open a drawer in the desk. It contained four or five thick files. Alex took them and opened them. He saw at once that they had nothing to do with banking.

The first was marked: NERVE POISONS. NEW METHODS OF CONCEALMENT AND DISSEMINATION. Alex put it aside and looked at the second. ASSASSINATIONS: FOUR CASE STUDIES. Growing ever more puzzled, he quickly flicked through the rest of the files, which covered counterterrorism, the movement of uranium across Europe, and interrogation techniques. The last file was simply labeled: STORMBREAKER.

Alex was about to read it when the door suddenly opened and two men walked in. One of them was Crawley. The other was the driver from the junkyard. Alex knew that there was no point trying to explain what he was doing. He was sitting behind the desk with the Stormbreaker file open in his hands. But at the same time he realized that the two men weren't surprised to see him there. From the way they had come into the room, they had expected to find him.

“This isn't a bank,” Alex said. “Who are you? Was my uncle working for you? Did you kill him?”

“So many questions,” Crawley muttered. “But I'm afraid we're not authorized to give you the answers.”

The second man lifted his hand and Alex saw that he was holding a gun. He stood up behind the desk, holding the file as if to protect himself. “No . . .” he began.

The man fired. There was no explosion. The gun spat at Alex and he felt something slam into his heart. His hand opened and the file tumbled to the ground. Then his legs buckled, the room twisted, and he fell back into nothing.

“SO WHAT DO YOU SAY?”

ALEX OPENED HIS EYES. So he was still alive! That was a nice surprise.

He was lying on a bed in a large, comfortable room. The bed was modern, but the room was old with beams running across the ceiling, a stone fireplace, and narrow windows in an ornate wooden frame. He had seen rooms like this in books when he was studying Shakespeare. He would have said the building was Elizabethan. It had to be somewhere in the country. There was no sound of traffic. Outside he could see trees.

Someone had undressed him. His school uniform was gone. Instead he was wearing loose pajamas, silk from the feel of them. From the light outside he would have guessed it was midmorning. He found his watch lying on the table beside the bed and he reached out for it. The time was twelve o'clock. It had been around half past four when he had been shot with what must have been a drugged dart. He had lost a whole night and half a day.

There was a bathroom leading off from the bedroombright white tiles and a huge shower behind a cylinder of glass and chrome. Alex stripped off the pajamas and stood for five minutes under a jet of steaming water. He felt better after that.

He went back into the bedroom and opened the closet. Someone had been to his house in Chelsea. All his clothes were here, neatly hung up. He wondered what Crawley had told lack. Presumably he would have made up some story to explain Alex's sudden disappearance. He took out a pair of Gap combat trousers, Nike sweatshirt and sneakers, got dressed, then sat on the bed and waited.

About fifteen minutes later there was a knock and the door opened. A young Asian woman in a nurse's uniform came in, beaming.

“Oh, you're awake. And dressed. How are you feeling? Not too groggy, I hope. Please come this way. Mr. Blunt is expecting you for lunch.”