“Because they made a spelling mistake?”
“Just do it, Jack!”
Alex didn’t have time to explain. He already knew what he had to do. The man with the cardboard box, the man who had tried to kill him, was waiting for the distributor to finish emptying it. Without saying another word, Alex ran across the road, weaving between the traffic. There was the scream of a horn, and a bike messenger on a black Kawasaki swerved around him, the driver swearing beneath his helmet. Alex reached the white van. He looked inside. It was empty. This must be the last delivery. There were some old blankets lying on the floor. They were perfect. He took one quick glance around, then climbed in and pulled them over himself.
For Jack, it had all happened too quickly. She had heard what Alex said and watched him race across the street, almost getting mowed down by a motorbike. She had seen him climb into the back of a white van, and now she watched the driver return. Was he going to look inside? No. He casually closed the doors and returned to the front. He climbed in and a moment later the van drove off.
Jack was left there, with the free sample in her pocket, and Alex’s words rang in her ears.
“Alan Blunt and Mrs. Jones. You need to call them.”
She didn’t doubt him. How could she? He had been right before. Once again, Alex had put himself in danger.
MI6. They worked in a building that called itself the Royal & General Bank on Liverpool Street. That was where she would start. She could still see the men and women handing out the chocolate bars, more and more of them. Quickly, she took out her phone and made the first call.
3
THE MEAT MARKET
A ROUGH WOODEN PANEL DIVIDED the back of the white van from the driver’s seat, but fortunately there was a knot in it that provided Alex with an eyehole directly over the driver’s shoulder and out the front window. It felt strange to be only inches away from a man who had once held him up at gunpoint, and Alex had to be careful not to shift his weight while the van was standing still. Any movement would have told the driver that he was carrying an uninvited passenger.
In fact, Alex was beginning to question the wisdom of what he was doing. Could it be that he had imagined a danger that didn’t exist? The driver had once worked for Herod Sayle. That didn’t mean he was involved in anything criminal now. And had there really been a spelling mistake on the chocolate bars? Now that Alex thought about it, he wasn’t quite so sure. Cadbury’s or Cadbury? There wasn’t such a huge difference between the two.
It was too late to back out now. He was in the back of a van being carried across London. Jack would be trying to contact MI6. Quite possibly he was making a complete fool of himself, but he might as well see it through to the end.
They were heading east. They stopped at a red traffic light, and Alex was able to make out another tube station: Holborn. There were more distributors in mauve jackets, more Crunch Bars being handed out. The men and women looked exactly the same as the ones that Alex had seen at Oxford Circus: military haircuts, fit, quite young. And they were just as popular here. Before the lights had gone green, they must have handed out another twenty or thirty bars. Was that so surprising? The truth is that chocolate is one of the few things that unites adults and children. There are very few people who don’t like it.
The van continued past the huge building site that Farringdon had become with the construction of all the new office blocks and luxury flats that were springing up around Crossrail. The driver slowed down and turned onto a narrow street that threaded its way between offices and fast-food restaurants. Ahead of him, Alex saw a strange building, almost like a railway station, made out of stone, brick, and iron, decorated with statues of dragons and knights. There was a great archway and the road—which was cobbled—continued straight through it and out the other side. The whole thing looked like something out of Sherlock Holmes, and it took Alex a minute or two to remember what it was.
Jack had brought him here once. The meat market at Smithfield. He remembered her telling him that there had been a market here for over eight hundred years. It was one of the oldest in London, and unlike the fish market at Billingsgate and the fruit and vegetable market in Covent Garden, it had refused to move out. Huge tractor trailers would arrive in the middle of the night, unloading hundreds of carcasses, whole pigs and sheep, dangling on hooks. They would trundle slowly forward on the next stage of a journey that would finally take them to the restaurants or supermarket freezers.
With his face still pressed against the eyehole, Alex watched as a couple of workers crossed the road, wearing bloodstained white overalls. A huge truck—PETERSFIELD ORGANIC MEAT—pulled away. Several sections of the market had been closed. They stopped in front of an ugly building with a green sliding door. This was one of the storage facilities that had been built just after the war. Jack had told him that they were empty and there were plans to knock them down. It seemed that they were going inside. The driver pressed the button on a remote control and the door slid open. They drove into a wide, empty space that led directly to a solid brick wall. There was absolutely nothing here, just dust and debris, a few planks of wood, rusting oil drums, and scraps of cloth. It was obvious that nobody had been here for years. Alex heard the sound of an electric motor and the door slid shut behind him. The driver didn’t move. What the hell was going on?
And then there was another click and, in front of him, the brick wall began to sink into the floor, carried by hidden hydraulics. The whole thing was fake. There was a huge space behind it, brightly lit, spread over several floors and illuminated by powerful spotlights. It was hard to make out very much through the small hole cut in the wood, but Alex was aware of some sort of control center with several television screens, a digital communications system, computers, ticking clocks. Unlike the rest of the meat market, everything was gleaming clean and modern. The white van swung around to the right and parked. As the driver turned off the engine, Alex heard a voice being relayed over a loudspeaker.
“Fourteen minutes until outbreak.”
Outbreak? What did that mean? Normally, if you used the word outbreak, you’d be talking about a disease. The more Alex saw of this fantastic operation, the less he liked it. He needed to tell Jack where he was and get someone over here . . . ideally in the next fourteen minutes. He began to reach for his phone, then silently cursed. Cell phones weren’t allowed at Brookland. He had left his at home.
The driver got out of the van. Alex heard him walk away, then hurried over to the back door. He was lucky—it could be opened from inside. Gently, he eased down the handle and slipped out. He saw at once that the van had been parked next to another vehicle: an ambulance. That was another question. What was it doing here? Being careful to make no sound, Alex moved forward. He was protected here. Nobody could see him. But crouching down between the two vehicles, he could see everything.
There were four men grouped together, surrounded by metal tables with computers, maps, radio transmitters, and various weapons. Their attention was fixed on a bank of television screens that were showing fuzzy black-and-white images of London streets, the traffic moving slowly in different directions. Alex guessed that they had somehow hacked into the closed-circuit cameras that were all over the city. A fifth man sat in a leather chair with his back to Alex. The driver walked up to them and stood to attention. The chair swiveled around and Alex saw that it was occupied by an enormous man, well over six feet tall, with square shoulders and muscular arms, dressed in loose-fitting combat fatigues. The man had a strangely babyish face with blond hair and blue eyes so intense that even at this distance Alex felt himself being hypnotized. The driver saluted and suddenly Alex understood what he should have known all along. They were all military. He remembered the man he had seen, missing a hand. He must have been wounded in action. Just a short while ago, Jack had been serving him Marmite soldiers for breakfast. Now, somehow, he had stumbled onto the real thing.
“Welcome back, Charlie.” The blond man smiled. Somehow Alex wasn’t surprised that he had perfectly white teeth too. “Report?”
“Distribution proceeding smoothly, Colonel.”
“No interference from the police?”
“No, sir. In fact, a couple of them even came over to ask for some of the samples.”
“That’s very good.”
“Will it kill them?” Another man, dark-skinned, had asked the question.
“Don’t worry, Khyber. I’ve already told you. It’s a hallucinogen, not a poison. Extracted from toads in Peru! They’re not going to feel well. They may think they’ve had a heart attack. But they’ll be fine.”
“That’s him!” One of the other soldiers had spoken. The blond man spun around again and looked at one of the other screens.
This television was tuned to Sky News, and there was a report about the banker that Alex had read about on the tube. Sir Frederick Meadows was being taken to the Old Bailey. Alex saw a security van driving into the famous court with a scrum of journalists and photographers firing off their cameras into the blacked-out windows. Was that what this was all about? None of it made any sense.
“Thirteen minutes until outbreak.” The amplified voice sounded again.
Alex couldn’t hang around any longer. He had to get out of here before he was discovered—or at least find a working telephone so he could contact Jack. The men were all gathered in a group. They had no idea he was here. Keeping close to the ambulance, Alex backed away, then slipped around the side of the chamber, staying in the shadows.
He came to a metal staircase and crept down. The complex—he thought of it as an operations center—was all metal and glass, with just a few of the older brick walls painted white. Once it must have been part of the meat market. Alex could imagine live animals being kept here before they were sold. Someone had come in, hollowed the place out, and then created this modern construction inside. It must have cost millions—but then maybe that’s what this was all about. Sir Frederick Meadows had stolen more than one hundred million pounds. The newspaper had said he might try to escape. Alex had just seen him being taken to court. He could have planned this before his arrest.
Alex went through an open doorway into a room that turned out to be a kitchen with a brand-new coffee machine, a gleaming aluminum fridge, a table with six chairs, and a cupboard. His eye was drawn to a photograph on the wall. It was a newspaper clipping that showed a man in a ceremonial uniform, holding up a medal for the cameras. Alex recognized the fair-haired man he had seen upstairs. The headline read MEDAL FOR WOUNDED IRAQ HERO. He read some of the text:
Colonel Aubrey Sykes, who was badly wounded in Operation Telic in Iraq, today visited Buckingham Palace, where he received the Distinguished Service Order from the Queen. Colonel Sykes saved eleven of his men when he came under fire in an ambush near Mosul—even though he himself had suffered major shrapnel injuries . . .
He was right. They were all soldiers, the whole lot of them. Or ex-soldiers. And whatever they were up to, they were treating it like a military operation. They saluted each other. They called their senior officer “sir.” The whole thing was hard to believe.
He crossed the kitchen to a second door, which led into a larger space. Alex found himself surrounded by machinery: some sort of industrial oven, a conveyor belt, a printing press, a great cylinder of silver paper. The smell of sugar and cocoa still hung heavy in the air. Of course! This was the factory where the chocolate bars had been produced. Alex went over to a metal counter and found one of the samples, discarded with the wrapper torn. Cadbury’s Crunch Bar. He couldn’t help smiling. All this planning and then someone had made a stupid mistake because they didn’t know how to spell.
He continued through a frosted glass door, which slid open to allow him into a third room, this one a laboratory with the usual apparatus spread out across a sanitized work surface. He walked past glass flasks and test tubes. Ahead of him there was a shelf lined with about twenty or thirty identical plastic bottles, most of them empty. He picked one up. This one still had an inch of some sort of colorless liquid. There was a label with the name—BUFOTENINE—and a picture of a crouching frog. Alex unscrewed the bottle and sniffed. The liquid had no smell.
“Eleven minutes until outbreak.”
The voice, booming out over the loudspeaker, reminded Alex that time was fast running out. He needed a telephone. He put the bottle down and headed back to the kitchen. Surely there would be one there, although he couldn’t remember seeing it. He went through the factory and had reached the door when he heard the clang of footsteps on the metal stairway and ducked back just in time to avoid being seen. It was one of the soldiers from upstairs. He was dressed in the dark green trousers and short-sleeved shirt of a London paramedic. He wore tinted glasses and he had a mustache and thick black hair, neither of which looked quite real.
Alex watched from the doorway as the man opened a cupboard, took out a selection of cups, and filled them with coffee from the machine. He wasn’t sure what to do. There was no telephone. He needed to get out of here—but that meant going back upstairs. He was also painfully aware of time running out.
A moment later, the decision was made for him. The soldier twisted around. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.
Alex froze. How could the man have known he was there? He hadn’t made a sound. He glanced left and right, then understood. It was the fridge. He had been given away by his own reflection in the aluminum door. Alex didn’t hesitate. Smiling, with his hands raised to show that he was unarmed, he moved into the kitchen. The man didn’t move. All he saw was some innocent-looking fourteen-year-old boy who had appeared out of nowhere. It was the same mistake that many of the guards had made at Sayle Enterprises. As soon as he was close enough, Alex twisted around and lashed out with his foot, driving the heel and sole into the man’s solar plexus. It was the fastest and easiest way to make sure that he went down and stayed there, but just to be sure, Alex followed through with an elbow strike to the side of the head.
The man collapsed. As he slid to the floor, the wig he had been wearing came loose from his head. The tinted glasses and the mustache were fake too. Alex understood. The man had been in disguise. When this operation was over, he wouldn’t want to be recognized. But what exactly was the operation?
Somehow, in the next few seconds, Alex managed to piece it all together. The chocolate bars, the ambulance, the laboratory, Sir Frederick Meadows. Yes. Of course. He remembered what Colonel Sykes had said. It’s a hallucinogen, not a poison. He must have been talking about the liquid that Alex had just seen. They were planning to poison London! The bufotenine—or whatever it was called—wasn’t lethal. They weren’t planning mass murder. But there was going to be mass panic as people all over the city thought they were having heart attacks. And they were going to drive an ambulance right through the middle of it all. They would get into the Old Bailey and grab the banker before anyone knew what had happened. One hundred million pounds! It was a huge risk, but the reward made it more than worthwhile.
“Eight minutes until outbreak.”
What was he going to do? The soldiers were waiting for their coffee. If it didn’t arrive soon, one of them would come down to investigate. Alex searched through the pockets of the unconscious man. There was no phone. Moving quickly and silently, he went over to the cupboard and opened it. It was empty and there was plenty of room inside. He remembered seeing parcel tape in the room where the samples had been manufactured. That provided part of the answer—but the rest of it? He picked up the wig and the glasses. The man was short, only a few inches taller than Alex himself. Yes! If he was lucky, it might work.
“Seven minutes until outbreak.”
Three minutes later, dressed as a paramedic, wearing the wig, mustache, and glasses, Alex climbed the metal staircase and went over to the television screens where the men were still waiting. He ju
st hoped they wouldn’t look at him too closely. The man he had attacked was still downstairs, stripped to his undershorts, tied up and locked in the cupboard. Keeping his head down, Alex placed the tray with the coffees on one of the tables and moved away.
“You took your time, Sarko,” the man, Khyber, muttered.
Sarko. Some sort of nickname. Alex realized this must be the man he had knocked out. Alex grunted and moved to the far corner of the room, trying to keep himself out of sight.
The men drank the coffee. At the same time, they studied the images on the television screens, the various roads of London, as if they were searching for a single vehicle in the endlessly moving traffic. And all the time, the prerecorded voice continued the countdown until a red light glowed on the control panel and the announcement came:
“Outbreak commencing . . .”
Colonel Aubrey Sykes, the man who had been given a medal by the Queen, got to his feet. He towered over the other men. “Gentlemen,” he said, “we are about to see something that has never happened before in London, something that has never happened in any European city. Let’s have no illusions. We didn’t set out deliberately to kill anybody, but nonetheless, people are going to die today. Maybe a lot of people. I understand that you may not be too happy about that. We’re not criminals. We’re not killers—even though all of us have killed for our country.
“What we are today is victims. I don’t want any of you to forget that. Khyber, you were driving a Snatch Land Rover in Afghanistan when you drove over a land mine. It wasn’t a suitable vehicle and that’s why you’re missing a leg. Charlie—you were put on trial, accused of killing people in Iraq. The judge seemed to forget that was why you were sent there. Sarko . . .” Alex straightened up. The Colonel was addressing him. “You watched your best mate get blown to pieces right next to you, and you have nightmares every night, but nobody cares about you anymore. Danny and Gareth”—these were the last men in the group, also dressed as paramedics—“after you were wounded in Helmand Province, you both spent six weeks in a mixed National Health Service ward. Nobody gave a damn about your dignity . . .”
Alex Rider--Secret Weapon Page 8
