“What will you do then?” I shouted back. I took another step, moving away from the edge of the lake. The ice creaked. I could feel it straining underneath my feet. “You can’t reach me. You’re too heavy.”
“Maybe. But the ice will harden in the night. I’ll return for the laptop tomorrow.”
“You think it’ll still be working? A whole day and a night out here?”
“I’ll take that risk!” Da Silva didn’t want to argue any more. I could almost see his finger tightening on the trigger. I had absolutely no doubt that he was about to kill me. “I’m telling you, you little swine, this is your last chance.”
“Alex—get down. Now!”
My uncle’s voice came out of the woods. As da Silva spun around, I dropped low, hoping the sudden movement wouldn’t crack the ice. At the same time there were two shots. Da Silva fired first and missed. My uncle didn’t. Da Silva seemed to throw his own gun away. He had been hit in the shoulder. He sank to his knees, gripping the wound. Blood, bright red in the afternoon sun, seeped through his fingers.
Ian Rider appeared. I had no idea how he’d managed to follow us down from the Needle. I’d never so much as glimpsed him. But that must have been what he’d done. He skied to the very edge of the lake and spoke to me, his eyes never leaving da Silva or the other man.
“Are you all right, Alex?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Come back onto dry land. Don’t say anything else. Just give me the laptop, then get your skis back on.”
I did as he told me. I’d begun to tremble. I’d like to say it was just the cold, but I’m not sure that would be true.
“Who are you?” da Silva demanded. I’d never heard a voice so full of hate.
“You two can take off your skis. Both of you.” My uncle raised the gun. The two men took off their skis while I was putting on mine. Ian gestured. They knew what to do. Da Silva and the fat man threw their skis into the lake. Meanwhile, the Korean man had managed to pull himself out. He was lying there shivering, blue with cold.
Both my skis snapped into place. I was ready to leave.
“Enjoy the rest of the day, gentlemen,” my uncle said. He gestured at me and we set off together. Da Silva and the others would have to walk down. It would take them hours—and I had no doubt that the police would be waiting for them when they arrived.
* * *
• • •
And that was it, really. What you might call my first mission.
Sahara and her dad left that day. I thought I’d never see them again, but I met Sahara a couple of years later, and that was when she told me that her father worked in the office of the Secretary of Defense. His hard drive had contained classified information about an American agent working in the Middle East. If it had leaked, it would have put countless lives in danger—as well as being a huge embarrassment for the US government. Someone must have paid da Silva to steal it, but when that failed, he had engineered the kidnapping and the attempted ransom. Something like that, anyway.
I never did find out how my uncle had arrived just in time to rescue me. He said it was just luck, that he’d seen da Silva on the gondola and followed him up the mountain while I was racing back to the hotel. Maybe that was true. He also said the gun he’d used was the same gun he’d snatched in the fight the night before. That certainly wasn’t. The funny thing was, we hardly talked about it again while we were in Colorado. It was as if there was an unspoken agreement between us. Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.
When I look back on it, I wonder how stupid I could have been not to see what Ian Rider really was. A spy. But then again, I didn’t know what I was either—what he’d made me. I remember he pretended to be very angry that I’d put myself in danger. But at the same time I could see that secretly he was pleased. He’d been training me all my life to follow in his footsteps, and what happened at Gunpoint had shown him I was ready.
And that was just as well. In a very short while, I’d need to be.
SPY TRAP
1
THE NURSE
ALEX RIDER OPENED HIS eyes.
He was lying in bed in a room that he didn’t recognize. White ceiling. White walls. A single door opposite him. Two windows. A polished wooden floor. No carpet.
How had he gotten here? And where, exactly, was he? He lay completely still for a moment, fighting back the first stirrings of fear, trying to work out what had happened to him. He thought back to the evening before. It must surely have been evening or night when he went to bed but he couldn’t remember anything about it. Had Jack been there? Had he been in his room, doing his homework? Looking back into his memory, he saw nothing. It was as if he were standing against a blank screen that was concealing his entire world behind it. His heart was beating faster now. Something was very, very wrong. He didn’t even know what day of the week it was. He could have been here for an hour. He could have been here for a year.
He tried to push back the covers and stand up, but that was when he made his next unpleasant discovery. He was too weak to move. He looked down and saw that a needle had been inserted into his arm, kept in place with a neat strip of surgical tape. It was connected to a transparent tube. There was a plastic bag dangling over his head, feeding him with some sort of colorless liquid, drip by drip.
He was in a hospital or a clinic of some sort—but with no knowledge of what had brought him here.
A car accident?
A bullet wound?
This was bad. Very bad.
Forcing himself to keep calm, Alex flexed his fingers and then his toes. He could feel them moving. That was something. Carefully, he shifted himself in the bed, trying to sense if he had any injuries. As far as he could tell, he was in one piece, with no bones broken.
He turned his head and examined his surroundings more carefully—but there was little to add to what he had already seen. The room was perfectly square and very ordinary with no pictures on the wall, nothing to make it more welcoming. There were two wooden chairs and a cupboard but no other furniture. He could make out treetops on the other side of the windows and, to one side, a stretch of water that was a greenish blue. It didn’t look like the sea. It must be a lake or reservoir. The sun was shining. There was no sound of any traffic, which suggested that he wasn’t in London. But he was in England. He was sure of it. There was something about the quality of the light and the shapes of the leaves that suggested he hadn’t left the country. This was August, the end of the summer. At least it had been the last time he looked.
He became aware of something pressing against his head. He managed to lift a hand—the one that wasn’t connected to the tube—and felt with his fingertips. There was a bandage running all the way around, under his hairline and over his ears. So he was injured, after all. He wished now that there was a mirror in the room. He badly wanted to look at himself. If he had been in an accident, how seriously had he been hurt?
He lay back, his head sinking into the pillows. Part of him wanted to call out for help, and he might have, except that his mouth was so dry and his heart beating so fast that he doubted he would be able to find his voice. Instead, he looked around for a bell or anything he might use to summon help. There was nothing. A glass and a jug of water stood on a white bedside table. What had happened to his clothes? He was wearing striped pajamas that he had never seen before. Alex never wore pajamas in bed. He preferred shorts and a T-shirt. The material felt heavy against his skin. He was half tied down by the sheets and the blankets. There was an emptiness in his stomach and he wondered how long it had been since he’d had something to eat.
About five minutes passed, although it could have been a lot longer. That was another thing. His watch was no longer on his wrist and there was no clock in the room. Then, quite suddenly, the door opened and a woman came in, dressed in the white uniform and cap of a hospital nurse. She was small and
quite elderly, with gray hair tightly packed around her head and a thin nose curving some distance beyond her mouth. The way she walked and the glint in her eyes reminded Alex somehow of a bird. Glancing at her fingers, he saw that they were long and thin too. Like talons or claws.
She beamed, seeing that Alex was awake. “Oh! So you’re back with us again!” she exclaimed. She spoke with a heavy Scottish accent and a high-pitched singsong voice. She had a habit of emphasizing some of her words as if they were the ones she most wanted Alex to hear. “The doctor will be pleased. How are you feeling, my dear?”
“Where am I?” Alex demanded.
“Don’t you worry now. You’re among friends. I know this must all feel a bit strange to you, but the main thing is you’ve woken up.”
“You haven’t answered my question.” Alex knew he was being rude, but for some reason, the more pleasant the nurse sounded, the angrier he became.
She didn’t seem at all put out. She was carrying a tray with a thermometer, a washcloth, and a little plastic cup of water with two pills. She set them all down on a table and reached for Alex’s wrist. “You’re in Wiltshire,” she explained. “On the edge of Salisbury Plain. The building we’re in is called Bellhanger Abbey. It really was an abbey once until we took it over. By ‘we,’ I mean MI6. We took it over and turned it into a hospital and clinic. My name is Wendy McDarling, but you can call me Nurse Wendy.” She had been checking his pulse rate. Now she released him. “You’re very fit,” she said. “I can see you look after yourself, my dear. You’re in excellent shape.” She paused. “But you don’t remember what happened?”
“No.” Alex’s voice fell. He hated having to admit it. He felt completely helpless.
“You were in an accident,” the nurse explained. She reached for the thermometer, gave it a quick shake, then slipped it into Alex’s mouth before he could protest. “You were on your way to London, on the motorway. We’re not quite sure what happened. There’s an investigation going on even as we speak. But we think a truck went out of control and crashed into you. Anyway, your car was forced off the road and you got a nasty bang on your head. That’s probably what’s affected your memory. You were brought here to Bellhanger Abbey to be looked after. This is a private hospital . . . very private. When MI6 operatives come back from their missions, they often have to spend time here. We look after them and we don’t let them leave until they’re as good as new!” She drew the thermometer out and checked it. “That’s excellent!” she announced. “Your temperature is normal.”
“I want my iPhone,” Alex said. “I want to call Jack.”
“Is Jack a school friend of yours?”
“No. She looks after me.”
The nurse sighed. “I’m afraid your phone was destroyed in the car.”
“Then can you get me a phone?”
“You’ll need to see the doctor first. Meanwhile, I’m going to ask you to take these.” She held out the pills.
Alex looked at them suspiciously. They were lying like white maggots in the palm of her hand. “What are they?”
“They’ll help you sleep.”
“I don’t want to sleep. I’ve only just woken up.”
“I’m sure that’s what you think, but your body needs all the rest it can get. You’ve had a terrible shock.” Alex still didn’t take them, so she added, “If you don’t want to take them, I can give you an injection instead.”
She was smiling sympathetically, but Alex was sure there was something threatening in her voice, and if she still resembled a bird, it was suddenly a vulture. Her hand was stretched out. He looked at her wrist with the veins showing dark blue beneath her skin as they wormed their way up her arm. Her dark eyes were fixed on him, daring him to challenge her.
Alex was too weak to argue with her, too confused.
He took the pills.
2
THE DOCTOR WILL SEE YOU NOW
THE NEXT TIME ALEX woke up, it was late afternoon. He could tell from the light. How long had it been since Wendy McDarling had first introduced herself? It could have been that same morning, but Alex no longer trusted himself. He had been drifting in and out of consciousness with the result that he had no idea how much time had passed.
Once again he examined himself. He was still wearing the striped pajamas. That was his first, sour observation. But there was some good news. Turning his arm, he saw that the plastic tube had been removed. A small bandage covered the area where the needle had entered his arm. And somebody had left a plate of sandwiches and a glass of apple juice on the table beside his bed. The sight of them reminded him how hungry he was. Before he knew what he had done, he had wolfed down two of the sandwiches and drunk the juice—which was cold but too sweet. He felt better after that. More in control.
He wanted to get out of bed and stand up, but he was still too weak. He pushed back the covers and examined his legs. The striped pajamas really were horrible . . . the last thing he would have chosen to wear. As far as he could see, apart from the bandage around his head, he was unhurt. The nurse said he had been in a car accident on the way to London. Where had he been coming from? Why had he been out of London in the first place? Alex shivered. However much he tried, he couldn’t remember anything. It was strange and scary . . . living inside this empty bubble.
He was actually quite glad when the door opened and the woman came back in, this time accompanied by a young man pushing a wheelchair. He was dressed in shabby jeans with a tight-fitting T-shirt, and Alex could see that his arms were covered in tattoos: butterflies, hearts, flowers . . . but also guns and hand grenades. His hair was cut so short that his scalp showed through. He had piercings in one of his ears and the side of his nose. He hadn’t shaved, allowing the stubble to spread over his cheeks and upper lip. All in all, he was the last person Alex would have expected to see working in a hospital.
“How are you feeling, my dear?” the nurse asked, using exactly the same words as last time.
“I want to call Jack,” Alex said.
“I know! I know! You told me that this morning.” So it was the same day. “Jack knows where you are. We’ve given her a very full account of what’s happened to you. She’s very relieved that you’re all right.” The nurse moved to the side of the bed. “The doctor will see you now.”
“So where is he?”
“He’s in his office. This is Ivan. He’s here to help you, but don’t try talking to him, as he doesn’t speak a word of English. We’re to bring you to the doctor.”
That was good. Alex wanted to get out of the room, if only to see what was on the other side of the door. Even so, he didn’t like the idea of being taken in a wheelchair. “I can walk,” he said.
“Oh no!” Nurse Wendy frowned and shook her head. “I don’t think so, Alex. If you tried to stand up, you’d just fall over!” She gave a signal and Ivan, the man with the tattoos, wheeled the chair forward, then leaned over Alex and scooped him out of the bed. He was surprisingly strong, and Alex could do nothing to prevent what was happening. Inside, he was seething that he was so weak, unable to fight back. “You’ll be able to walk in a day or so,” the nurse assured him.
“As soon as I can walk, I’m out of here,” Alex growled.
That made her frown a second time. “I’m sure the doctor will tell you when you’re fit enough to leave,” she said.
“What’s the doctor’s name?” Alex asked.
Nurse Wendy smiled. “Dr. Feng.”
3
DARK GLASSES
THEY WHEELED HIM ALONG a corridor that managed to be both ancient and modern at the same time. The walls were made of stone and looked like the inside of a church—which, Alex reminded himself, they were. But the polished wooden floor and the lighting were brand-new. They passed a lift with gleaming stainless steel doors followed by a stone staircase with wrought iron banisters, sweeping down to what looked like a drawing
room. The downstairs windows were barred. Perhaps it was the effects of the drugs he had been given, but Alex couldn’t piece it all together. Abbey, hospital, hotel, prison . . . The building had something of all of them. He took a deep breath and tried to focus on his surroundings. Any detail, no matter how small, might help him later on.
Alex’s room was number 1. He had seen it written on the door. He was taken past five more rooms, all of them identical to his and empty, but the door of the last one—number 6—was closed.
“Who’s in there?” he asked.
“Nobody,” Nurse Wendy replied, a little too quickly. Alex made a mental note. There was something in her voice that suggested she might not be telling the truth.
“Am I alone here?”
“I’m not permitted to talk about the other patient.” Nurse Wendy scowled, realizing what she had just said. “I mean, if there was another patient, I wouldn’t be allowed to talk about him.” She was looking angry now, as if Alex had deliberately tricked her. “The doctor will tell you everything you need to know.”
They came to the end of the corridor and a plain-looking door with no number or name. The nurse knocked, and in response to a single word—“Come!”—she opened it and they went in.
Dr. Feng was sitting behind his desk. As his name might have suggested, he was Anglo-Chinese. He was also very round and fat, with black hair going gray at the sides and a small beard that began under his lower lip and hung about a centimeter below his chin. He was dressed in an old-fashioned three-piece suit complete with a striped tie and a watch chain that stretched across his stomach. There was a stethoscope hanging around his neck. Although it wasn’t particularly bright in the room, he was wearing sunglasses. Alex thought he might remove them as Ivan wheeled him in, but they stayed where they were, completely masking his eyes.
Alex quickly examined the office. It looked somehow fake, like a stage set, with its shelves full of books, the rugs on the floor, the oversized fireplace. A human skeleton stood in a corner, hanging in a frame, with another door just behind it. A large window looked out onto a series of well-kept lawns with hedges that had been cut into precise mathematical shapes: spheres, cubes, and pyramids. Three Roman gods were fighting among themselves as the centerpiece of a huge marble fountain, the water spraying around them. The garden was enclosed by a tall wire fence, and there was a locked gate with two men standing guard. A gravel driveway led out, disappearing into thick woodland that obscured any further view. They could have been anywhere.
Alex Rider--Secret Weapon Page 18
