He took the elevator back to the second floor. He knew that his only way off the mountain lay in his bedroom. Grief would certainly have examined everything he had brought with him.
But what would he have done with it? Alex crept down the dimly lit corridor and into the room.
And there it all was, lying in a heap on his bed. The ski suit. The goggles. Even the Discman with the Beethoven CD. Alex heaved a sigh of relief. He was going to need all of it.
He had already worked out what he was going to do. He couldn’t ski off the mountain because he still had no idea where the skis were kept. But there was more than one way to take to the snow. Alex froze as a guard walked along the corridor outside the room. So not everyone at the academy was asleep! He would have to move fast. As soon as the broken cell door was discovered, the alarm would be raised.
He waited until the guard had gone, then stole into the laundry room a few doors down.
When he came out, he was carrying a long, flat object made of lightweight aluminum. He carried it into his bedroom, closed the door, and turned on one small lamp. He was afraid the guard would see the light if he returned. But he couldn’t work in the dark. It was a risk he had to take.
He had stolen an ironing board.
Alex had been snowboarding only three times in his life. The first time, he had spent most of the day falling or sitting on his bottom. Snowboarding is a lot harder to learn than skiing, but as soon as you get the hang of it, you can advance fast. By the third day, Alex had learned how to ride, edging and cutting his way down the beginner slopes. He needed a snowboard now. The ironing board would have to do.
He picked up the Discman and turned it on. The Beethoven CD spun, then slid forward, its diamond edge jutting out. Alex made a mental calculation, then began to cut. The ironing board was wider than he would have liked. He knew that the longer the board, the faster he could go, but if he left it too long, he would have no control. The ironing board was flat. Without any curve at the front—or the nose, as it was called—he would be at the mercy of every bump or upturned root. He pressed down. The spinning disc sliced through the metal. Carefully, Alex drew it around, forming a curve. One end of the ironing board fell away. He picked up the other. It came up to his chest. Perfect.
Now he sliced off the supports, leaving about six inches sticking up. He knew that the rider and the board can work together only if the bindings are right, and he had nothing … no boots, no straps, and no highback to support his heel. He was just going to have to improvise. He tore two strips of sheet from the bed, then slipped into his ski suit. He would have to tie one of his sneakers to what was left of the ironing board supports. It was horribly dangerous. If he fell, he would dislocate his foot.
But he was almost ready. Quickly, Alex zipped up the ski suit. Smithers had said it was bulletproof, and it occurred to him that he was probably going to need it. He put the goggles around his neck. The window still hadn’t been repaired. He dropped the ironing board out, then climbed out after it.
There was no moon. Alex found the switch concealed in the goggles and turned it. He heard a soft hum as the concealed battery activated. Suddenly the side of the mountain glowed an eerie green and Alex was able to see the trees, the deserted ski run, and the side of the mountain, falling away.
Carefully, he took up his position on the ironing board, his right foot at forty degrees, his left foot at twenty. He was goofy-footed. That was what the instructor had told him. His feet should have been the other way around. But this was no time to worry about technique.
Instead, he used the strips of torn sheet to tie the ironing board to his feet, then he stood where he was, contemplating what he was about to do. He had only traveled down green and blue runs—the colors given to the beginners’ and intermediate slopes. He knew from James that this mountain was an expert black all the way down. His breath rose up in green clouds in front of his eyes. Could he do it? Could he trust himself?
An alarm bell exploded behind him. Lights came on throughout the academy. Alex pushed forward and set off, picking up speed with every second. The decision had been made for him.
Now, whatever happened, there could be no going back.
Dr. Grief, wearing a long silver dressing gown, stood beside the open window in Alex’s room. Mrs. Stellenbosch was also wearing a dressing gown. Hers was pink silk and looked strangely hideous, hanging off her lumpy body. Three guards stood watching them, waiting for instructions.
‚Who searched the boy?' Dr. Grief asked. He had already been shown the cell door with the circular hole burned into the lock.
None of the guards answered, but their faces had gone pale.
‚This is a question to be answered in the morning,' Dr. Grief continued. ‚For now, all that matters is that we find him and kill him.'
‚He must be walking down the mountainside,' Mrs. Stellenbosch said. ‚He has no skis. He won’t make it. We can wait until morning and pick him up in the helicopter.'
‚I think the boy may be more inventive than we believe.'
Dr. Grief picked up the remains of the ironing board. ‚You see? He has improvised some sort of sleigh or toboggan. All right…' He had come to a decision. Mrs. Stellenbosch was glad to see the certainty return to his eyes. ‚I want two men on snowmobiles, following him down.
Now!' One of the guards hurried out of the room.
‚What about the unit at the foot of the mountain?' Mrs. Stellenbosch said.
‚Indeed.' Dr. Grief smiled. He had always kept a man and a driver at the end of the last valley in case anybody ever tried to leave the academy on skis. It was a precaution that was about to pay off. ‚Alex Rider will have to arrive in La Vallee de Fer. Whatever he’s using to get down, he’ll be unable to cross the railway line. We can have a machine gun set up, waiting for him. Assuming he does manage to get that far, he’ll be a sitting duck.'
‚Excellent,' Mrs. Stellenbosch purred.
‚I would have liked to watch him die. But, yes. The Rider boy has no hope at all. And we can return to bed.'
Alex was on the edge of space, seemingly falling to his certain death. In snowboarding language, he was catching air, meaning that he had shot away from the ground. With every foot he went forward, the mountainside disappeared another five feet downward. He felt the world spin around him. Wind whipped into his face. Then somehow he had brought himself in line with the next section of the slope and shot down, steering the ironing board ever farther from Point Blanc. He was moving at a terrifying speed, trees and rock formations passing in a luminous green blur across his night-vision goggles. In some ways, the steeper slopes made it easier. Once, he had tried to make a landing on a flat part of the mountain—a tabletop—to slow himself down. He had hit the ground with such a bone-shattering crash that he had almost blacked out and had taken the next twenty yards almost totally blind.
The ironing board was shuddering and shaking crazily, and it took all his strength to make the turns. He was trying to follow the natural fall line of the mountain, but there were too many obstacles in the way. What he most dreaded was melted snow. If the board landed on a patch of mud at this speed, he would be thrown and killed. And he knew that the farther down he went, the greater the danger would become.
But he had been traveling for several minutes and so far he had fallen only twice—both times into thick banks of snow that had protected him. How far down could it be? He tried to remember what James Sprintz had told him, but thinking was impossible at this speed. He was having to use every ounce of his conscious thought simply to stay upright.
He reached a small lip where the surface was level and drove the edge of the board into the snow, bringing himself to a skidding halt. Ahead of him, the ground fell away again alarmingly.
He hardly dared look down. There were thick clumps of trees to the left and to the right. In the distance there was just a green blur. The goggles could see only so far.
And then he heard the sound coming up behind him.
&n
bsp; The scream of at least two—maybe more—engines. Alex looked back over his shoulder. For a moment there was nothing. But then he saw them, black flies swimming into his field of vision. There were two of them, heading his way.
Grief’s men were riding specially adapted Yamaha Mountain Max snowmobiles equipped with 700 cc triplecylinder engines. The bikes were flying over the ice on their 141-inch tracks, effortlessly moving five times faster than Alex. The 300-watt headlights had already picked him up. Now the men sped toward him, halving the distance between them with almost every second that passed.
Alex leapt forward, diving into the next slope. At the same time, there was a sudden chatter, a series of distant cracks, and the snow flew up all around him. Grief’s men had machine guns built into their snowmobiles! Alex yelled as he swooped down the mountainside, barely able to control the sheet of metal under his feet. The makeshift binding was tearing at his ankles. The whole thing was vibrating crazily. He couldn’t see. He could only hang on, trying to keep his balance, hoping that the way ahead was clear.
The headlights of the nearest Yamaha shot out, and Alex saw his own shadow, stretching ahead of him on the snow. There was another chatter from the machine gun and Alex ducked, almost feeling the fan of bullets spray over his head. The second bike screamed up, coming parallel with him. He had to get off the mountainside. Otherwise he would be shot or run over.
Or both.
He forced the board onto its edge, making a turn. He had seen a gap in the trees and he made for it. Now he was racing through the forest, with branches and trunks whipping past like crazy animations in a computer game. Could the snowmobiles follow him through here? The question was answered by another burst from the machine gun, ripping through the leaves and branches. Alex searched for a narrower path. The board shuddered, and he was almost thrown headfirst. The snow was getting thinner! He edged and turned, heading for two of the thickest trees. He passed between them with inches to spare.
The Yamaha snowmobile had no choice. The rider had run out of paths, and was traveling too fast to stop. He tried to follow Alex between the trees, but the snowmobile was too wide.
Alex heard the collision. There was a terrible crunch, then a scream, then an explosion. A ball of orange flame leapt over the trees, sending the black shadows in a crazy dance. Ahead of him, Alex saw another hillock and beyond it, a gap in the trees. It was time to leave the forest.
He swooped up the hillock and out, once again catching air. As he left the trees behind him, six feet in the air, he saw the second snowmobile. It had caught up with him. For a moment, the two of them were side by side. Alex doubled forward and grabbed the nose of his board. Still in midair, he twisted the tip of the board, bringing the tail swinging around. He had timed it perfectly. The tail slammed into the second rider’s head, almost throwing him out of his seat.
Alex fought for balance. The rider yelled and lost control. His snowmobile jerked sideways as if trying to make an impossibly tight turn. Then it left the ground, cartwheeling over and over.
The rider was thrown off, then screamed as the snowmobile completed its final turn and landed on top of him. Man and machine bounced across the surface of the snow and lay still.
Meanwhile, Alex had slammed into the snow and skidded to a halt, his breath clouding, green, in front of his eyes.
A minute later, he pushed off again. Ahead of him, he could see that all the trails were leading into a single valley. This must be the bottleneck called La Vallee de Fer. He’d actually done it! He’d reached the bottom of the mountain. But now he was trapped. There was no other way around. He could see lights in the distance. A city. Safety. But he could also see the railway line stretching right across the valley, from the left to the right, protected on both sides by an embankment and a barbed-wire fence. The glow from the city illuminated everything. On one side the track came out of the mouth of a tunnel. It ran for about a hundred yards in a straight line before a sharp bend carried it around the other side of the valley and it disappeared from sight.
The two men in the gray van saw Alex snowboarding toward them. They were parked on a road on the other side of the railway line and had been waiting only a few minutes. They hadn’t seen the explosion and wondered what had happened to the two men on their snowmobiles.
But that wasn’t their concern. Their orders were to kill the boy. And there he was, right out in the open, expertly managing the last slope down through the valley. Every second brought him closer to them. There was nowhere for him to hide.
The machine gun was a Belgian FN MAG and would cut him in half.
Alex saw the van. He saw the machine gun aimed at him. He couldn’t stop. It was too late to change direction. He had come this far, but now he was finished. He felt the strength draining out of him. Where was MI6? Why did he have to die, out here, on his own?
And then there was a sudden blast as a train exploded out of the tunnel. It was a freight train, traveling about twenty miles an hour. It had at least thirty train cars being pulled by a diesel engine, and it formed a moving wall between Alex and the gun, protecting him. But it would be there only a few seconds. He had to move fast.
Barely knowing what he was doing, Alex found a last mound of snow and, using it as a launch pad, swept up into the air. Now he was level with the train … now above it. He shifted his weight and came down onto the roof of one of the cars. The surface was covered in ice, and for a moment he thought he would fall off the other side, but he managed to swing around so that he was snowboarding along the roofs of the cars, jumping from one to another while being swept along the track—away from the gun—in a blast of freezing air.
He had done it! He had gotten away! He was still sliding forward, the train adding its speed to his own. No snowboarder had ever moved so fast. But then the train reached the bend in the track. The board had nothing to keep it from sliding on the icy surface. As the train sped around to the left, centrifugal force threw Alex to the right. Once again he soared into the air. But he had finally run out of snow.
Alex hit the ground like a rag doll. The snowboard was torn off his feet. He bounced twice, then hit a wire fence and came to rest with blood spreading around a deep gash in his head. His eyes were closed.
The train plowed on through the night. Alex lay still.
AFTER THE FUNERAL
THE GREEN-AND-WHITE ambulance raced down the Avenue Maquis de Gresivaudan in the north of Grenoble, heading toward the river. It was five o’clock in the morning and there was no traffic yet, no need for the siren. just before the river it turned off into a compound of ugly, modern buildings. This was the second-biggest hospital in the city. The ambulance pulled up outside SERVICE DES URGENCES—the emergency room. Paramedics ran toward it as the back doors flew open.
Mrs. Jones got out of her taxi and watched as the limp, unmoving body of a boy was lowered on a stretcher, transferred to a gurney, and rushed in through the double doors. There was already a saline drip attached to his arm, and an oxygen mask covered his face. It had been snowing up in the mountains, but down here there was only a dull drizzle sweeping across the pavements. A doctor in a white coat was bending over the stretcher. He sighed and shook his head. Mrs. Jones had seen this. She crossed the road and followed the stretcher in.
A thin man with close-cropped hair wearing a black sweater and vest had also been watching the hospital. He saw Mrs. Jones without knowing who she was. He had also seen Alex. He took out a cell phone and made a call. Dr. Grief would want to know…
Three hours later, the sun had risen over the city. Grenoble is largely modern, and even with its perfect mountain setting, it still struggles to be attractive. On this damp, cloudy day it was clearly failing. Outside the hospital, another car drew up and Eva Stellenbosch got out. She was wearing a silver-and-white-checked suit with a hat perched on her ginger hair. She carried a leather handbag, and for once she had put on makeup. She wanted to look elegant. She looked like a man in drag.
She walked into the
hospital and found the main reception desk. A young nurse sat behind a bank of telephones and computer screens. Mrs. Stellenbosch addressed her in fluent French.
‚Excuse me,' she said. ‚I understand that a young boy was brought here this morning. His name is Alex Friend.'
‚One moment, please.' The nurse entered the name in her computer. She read the information on the screen and her face became serious. ‚May I ask who you are?'
‚I am the assistant director of the Academy at Point Blanc. He is one of our students.'
‚Are you aware of the extent of his injuries, madame?'
‚I was told that he was involved in a snowboard accident.' Mrs. Stellenbosch took out a small handkerchief and dabbed at her eye.
‚He tried to snowboard down the mountain at night. He was involved in a collision with a train. His injuries are very serious, madame. The doctors are operating on him now.'
Mrs. Stellenbosch nodded, swallowing her tears. ‚My name is Eva Stellenbosch,' she said.
‚May I wait for any news?'
‚Of course, madame.'
Mrs. Stellenbosch took a seat in the reception area. For the next hour, she watched as people came and went, some walking, some in wheelchairs. There were other people waiting for news of other patients. One of them, she noticed, was a serious-looking woman with badly cut black hair and very black eyes. She was no doubt from England, as she was periodically glancing at a copy of the London Times.
Then a door opened and a doctor in a white coat came out. Doctors have a certain face when they come to give bad news. This doctor had it now. ‚Madame Stellenbosch?' he asked.
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