But there was still nothing more for him to do. There was another round of gunfire, then the quiet blast of a second gas grenade. Alex went into the dining room. From here he could look out through the windows at the side of the building and the helipad above. He noticed that the blades of the helicopter were turning. Somebody was inside it! He moved closer to the window.
It was Dr. Grief! He had to let Wolf know.
He turned around.
Mrs. Stellenbosch was standing in front of him.
He had never seen her look less human. Her entire face was contorted with anger, her lips rolled outward, her eyes ablaze.
‚You didn’t die!' she exclaimed. ‚You’re still alive!' Her voice was almost a whine, as if somehow none of it had been fair. ‚You brought them here. You’ve ruined everything!'
‚That’s what I’m paid for,' Alex said.
‚What was it that made me look in here?' Mrs. Stellenbosch giggled to herself. Alex could almost see the sanity slipping out of her. ‚Well, at least this is one bit of business I’m finally going to be able to finish.'
Alex tensed himself, feet apart, gravity center low, just like he had been taught. But it was useless. Mrs. Stellenbosch lurched into him, moving with frightening speed. It was like being run over by a bus. Alex felt the full impact of her body weight, then cried out as two massive hands seized hold of him and threw him headfirst across the room. He crashed into a table, knocking it over, then rolled out of the way as Mrs. Stellenbosch followed up her first attack, lashing out with a kick that would have taken his head off his shoulders if it hadn’t missed by less than an inch.
He scrambled to his feet and stood there, panting for breath. For a moment his vision was blurred. Blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth. Mrs. Stellenbosch charged again. Alex threw himself forward, using another of the tables for leverage. His feet swung around, scything through the air, both his heels catching her on the back of the head.
Anyone else would have been knocked out by the blow. But although Alex felt the jolt of it running all the way up his body, Mrs. Stellenbosch hardly faltered. As Alex left the table, her hands swung down, smashing through the thick wood. The table fell apart and she walked through it, grabbing him again, this time by the neck. Alex felt his feet leave the floor. With a grunt she hurled him against the wall. Alex yelled, wondering if his back had been broken. He slid to the floor. He couldn’t move.
Mrs. Stellenbosch stopped, breathing heavily. She glanced out the window. The helicopter’s blades were at full speed now. The helicopter rocked forward then slowly rose into the air. It was time to go.
She reached down and picked up her handbag. She took out a gun and aimed at Alex. Alex stared at her. There was nothing he could do.
Mrs. Stellenbosch smiled. ‚And this is what I am paid for,' she said.
The dining room door swung open.
‚Alex!' It was Wolf. He was holding a machine gun.
Mrs. Stellenbosch lifted the gun up and fired three shots. Each one of them hit its target.
Wolf was hit in the shoulder, the arm, and the chest. But even as he fell back, he opened fire himself. The heavy bullets slammed into Mrs. Stellenbosch. She was hurled backward into the window, which smashed behind her. With a scream she disappeared into the night and the snow, headfirst, her heavy, stockinged legs trailing behind.
The shock of what had happened gave Alex new strength. He got to his feet and ran over to Wolf. The SAS man wasn’t dead, but he was badly hurt, his breath rattling.
‚I’m okay,' he managed to say. ‚Came looking for you. Glad I found you.'
‚Wolf…'
‚Okay.' He tapped at his chest and Alex saw that he was wearing body armor under his jacket. There was blood coming from his arm, but the other two bullets hadn’t reached him.
‚Grief…' he said.
Wolf gestured, and Alex looked around. The helicopter had left its launchpad. It was flying low outside the academy. Alex saw Dr. Grief in the pilot’s seat. He had a gun. He fired. There was a yell, and a body fell from somewhere above. One of the SAS men.
Suddenly Alex was angry. Grief was a freak, a monster. He was responsible for all this—and he was going to get away. Not knowing what he was doing, he snatched up Wolf’s gun and ran through the broken window, past the dead body of Mrs. Stellenbosch and into the night. He tried to aim. The blades of the helicopter were whipping up the surface snow, blinding him, but he pointed the gun up and fired. Nothing happened. He pulled the trigger again. Still nothing.
Either Wolf had used all his ammunition or the gun had jammed.
Dr. Grief pulled at the controls and the helicopter banked away, following the slope of the mountain. It was too late. Nothing could stop him.
Unless …
Alex threw down the gun and ran forward. There was a snowmobile lying idle a few yards away, its engine still running. The man who had been riding it was lying facedown in the snow.
Alex leapt onto the seat and turned the throttle full on. The snowmobile roared away, skimming over the ice, following the path of the helicopter.
Dr. Grief saw him. The helicopter slowed and turned. Grief raised a hand, waving goodbye. Alex caught sight of the red glasses, the slender fingers raised in one last gesture of defiance. With his hands gripping the handlebars, Alex stood up on the foot grips, tensing himself for what he knew he had to do. The helicopter moved away again, gaining altitude. In front of Alex loomed the ski jump. He was traveling at seventy, eighty miles per hour, snow and wind rushing past him. Ahead of him there was a wooden barrier, shaped like a cross.
Alex smashed through it, then threw himself off.
The snowmobile plunged down, its engine screaming.
Alex rolled over and over in the snow, ice and wood splinters in his eyes and mouth. He managed to get to his knees.
The snowmobile reached the end of the ski jump.
Alex watched it rocket into the air, propelled by the huge metal slide.
In the helicopter, Dr. Grief just had time to see five hundred pounds of solid steel come hurtling toward him out of the night, its headlights blazing, its engine still screaming. His eyes, bright red, opened wide in shock. The makeshift torpedo hit its target full-on. Point-blank.
The explosion lit up the entire mountain. The helicopter disappeared in a huge fireball, then plunged down. it was still burning when it hit the ground.
Behind him, Alex became aware that the shooting had stopped. The battle was over. He walked slowly back to the academy, shivering suddenly in the cold night air. As he approached, a man appeared at the broken window and waved. It was Wolf, propping himself against the wall, but still very much alive. Alex went over to him.
‚What happened to Grief?' he asked.
‚It looks like I ‘sleighed’ him,' Alex replied.
On the slopes, the wreckage of the helicopter flickered and burned as the morning sun began to rise.
DEAD RINGER
« ^
A FEW DAYS LATER, ALEX found himself sitting opposite Alan Blunt in the faceless office on Liverpool Street, with Mrs. Jones twisting another peppermint between her fingers. It was May 1, a bank holiday in England, but somehow he knew that holidays never came to the building that called itself the Royal & General Bank. Even the spring seemed to have stopped at the window. Outside, the sun was shining. Inside, there were only shadows.
‚It seems that once again we owe you a debt of thanks,' Blunt was saying.
‚You don’t owe me anything,' Alex said.
Blunt looked genuinely puzzled. ‚You have quite possibly changed the future of this planet,' he said. ‚Of course, Grief’s plan was monstrous, crazy. But the fact remains that his…'
He searched for a word to describe the test-tube creations that had been sent out of Point Blanc.
‚…his offspring could have caused a great many problems. At the very least they would have had money. God knows what they would have done had they remained undiscovered.'
; ‚What’s happened to them?' Alex asked.
‚We’ve traced all fifteen of them, and we have them under lock and key,' Mrs. Jones answered. ‚They were quietly arrested by the intelligence services of each country where they lived. We’ll take care of them.'
Alex shivered. He had a feeling he knew what Mrs. Jones had meant by those last words.
And he was certain that nobody would ever see the fifteen Grief replicas again.
‚Once again, we’ve had to hush this up,' Blunt continued. ‚This whole business of …
cloning. It causes a great deal of public disquiet. Sheep are one thing—but human beings!' He coughed. ‚The families involved in this business have no desire for publicity, so they won’t be talking. They’re just glad to have had their real sons returned to them. The same, of course, goes for you, Alex. You’ve already signed the Official Secrets Act. I’m sure we can trust you to be discreet.'
There was a moment’s pause. Mrs. Jones looked carefully at Alex. She had to admit that she was worried about him. She knew everything that had happened at Point Blanc, how close he had come to a horrible death, only to be sent back into the academy for a second time. The boy who had come back from the French Alps was different from the one who had left. There was a coldness about him, as tangible as the mountain snow.
‚You did very well, Alex,' she said.
‚How is Wolf?' Alex asked.
‚He’s fine. He’s still in the hospital, but the doctors say he’ll make a complete recovery. We hope to have him back on operations in a few weeks.'
‚That’s good.'
‚We had only one fatality in the raid on Point Blanc. That was the man you saw falling from the roof. Wolf and another man were injured. Otherwise, it was a complete success.' She paused. ‚Is there anything else you want to know?'
‚No.' Alex shook his head. He stood up. ‚You left me in there,' he said. ‚I called for help and you didn’t come. Grief was going to kill me, but you didn’t care.'
‚That’s not true, Alex.' Mrs. Jones glanced at Blunt for support, but he didn’t meet her eyes.
‚There were difficulties…'
‚It doesn’t matter. I just want you to know that I’ve had enough. I don’t want to be a spy anymore, and if you ask me again, I’ll refuse. I know you think you can blackmail me. But I know too much about you now, so that won’t work anymore.' He walked over to the door. ‚I used to think that being a spy would be exciting and special, like in the films. But you just used me. In a way, the two of you are as bad as Grief. You’ll do anything to get what you want. Well, I want to go back to school. Next time, you can do it without me.'
There was a long silence after Alex had left. At last Blunt spoke. ‚He’ll be back,' he said.
Mrs. Jones raised an eyebrow. ‚You really think so?'
‚He’s too good at what he does—too good at the job. And it’s in his blood.' He stood up.
‚It’s rather odd,' he said. ‚Most schoolboys dream of being a spy. With Alex, we have a spy who dreams of being a schoolboy.'
‚Will you really use him again?' Mrs. Jones asked.
‚Of course. There was a file that came in only this morning. An interesting case. Right up his alley.' He smiled. ‚We’ll give him a few days to settle down and then we’ll call him.'
‚He won’t answer.'
‚We’ll see,' Blunt said.
Alex walked home from the bus stop and let himself into the elegant Chelsea house that he shared with his housekeeper and closest friend, Jack Starbright. Jack knew where Alex had been and what he had been doing. But the two of them had made an agreement never to discuss his involvement with MI6. She didn’t like it, and she worried about him. But ultimately, they both knew, there was nothing more to be said.
She seemed surprised to see him. ‚I thought you’d just gone out,' she said.
‚No.'
‚Did you get the message by the phone?'
‚What message?'
‚Mr. Bray wants to see you this afternoon. Three o’clock at the school.'
Henry Bray was the principal at Brookland. Alex wasn’t surprised by the summons. Bray was the sort of principal who managed to run a busy school and still find time to take a personal interest in every pupil there. He had been worried by Alex’s long absence at the start of spring term. The fact that Alex had also missed the last two weeks of the same term had worried him more. So he had called a meeting.
‚Do you want lunch?' Jack asked.
‚No, thanks.' Alex knew that he would have to pretend he had been ill again. Doubtless MI6 would produce another doctor’s note in due course. But the thought of lying to his principal had spoiled his appetite.
He set off an hour later, taking his bicycle, which had been returned to the house by the Putney police. He cycled slowly. It was good to be back in London, to be surrounded by normal life. He turned off the King’s Road and pedaled down the side road where—it felt like a month ago—he had followed the man in the white Skoda. The school loomed up ahead of him. It was empty now and would remain so until the summer term.
But as Alex arrived, he saw a figure walking across the yard to the school gates and recognized Mr. Lee, the elderly school caretaker.
‚You again!'
‚Hello, Bernie,' Alex said. That was what everyone called him.
‚On your way to see Mr. Bray?'
‚Yeah.'
The caretaker shook his head. ‚He never told me he was going to be here today. But he never tells me anything! I’m just going down to the shops. I’ll be back at five to lock up, so make sure you’re out by then.'
‚Right, Bernie.'
There was nobody in the school yard. It felt strange, walking across the tarmac on his own.
The school seemed bigger with nobody there, the yard stretching out too far between the redbrick buildings with the sun beating down, reflecting off the windows. Alex was dazzled.
He had never seen the place so empty and so quiet. The grass on the playing fields looked almost too green. Any school without schoolchildren has its own peculiar atmosphere, and Brookland was no exception.
Mr. Bray had an office in D block, which was next to the science building. Alex reached the swinging doors and opened them. The walls here would normally be covered in posters, but they had all been taken down at the end of the term. Everything was blank, off-white. There was another door open to one side. Bernie had been cleaning the main laboratory. He had rested his mop and bucket to one side when he had gone to the shops—to pick up cigarettes, Alex presumed. The man had been a chain smoker all his life, and Alex knew he’d die with a cigarette between his lips.
Alex climbed up the stairs, his heels rapping against the stone surface. He reached a corridor—left for biology, right for physics—and continued straight ahead. A second corridor, with full-length windows on both sides, led into D block. Bray’s study was directly ahead of him. He stopped at the door, vaguely wondering if he should have dressed up for the meeting.
Bray was always snapping at boys with their shirts hanging out or crooked ties. Alex was wearing a Gortex jacket, T-shirt, jeans, and Nike sneakers—the same clothes he had worn that morning at MI6. His hair was still too short for his liking, although it had begun to grow back.
All in all, he still looked like a juvenile delinquent—but it was too late now. And anyway, Bray didn’t want to see him to discuss his appearance. His nonappearance at school was more to the point.
He knocked on the door.
‚Come in!' a voice called.
Alex opened the door and walked into the principal’s study, a cluttered room with views over the school yard. There was a desk, piled high with papers, and a black leather chair with its back toward the door. A cabinet full of trophies stood against one wall. The others were mainly lined with books.
‚You wanted to see me,' Alex said.
The chair turned slowly around.
Alex froze.
It wasn’t Henry Bray sitting behind th
e desk.
It was himself.
He was looking at a fourteen-year-old boy with fair hair cut very short, brown eyes, and a slim, pale face. The boy was even dressed identically to him. It took Alex what felt like an eternity to accept what he was seeing. He was standing in a room looking at himself sitting in a chair. The boy was him.
With just one difference. The boy was holding a gun.
‚Come in,' he said.
Alex didn’t move. He knew what he was facing and he was angry with himself for not having expected it. When he had been handcuffed at the academy, Dr. Grief had boasted to him that he had cloned himself sixteen times. But that morning Mrs. Jones had traced ‚all fifteen of them.' That left one spare—one boy waiting to take his place in the family of Sir David Friend.
Alex had glimpsed him while he was at the academy. Now he remembered the figure with the white mask, watching him from a window as he walked over to the ski jump. The white mask had been bandages. The new Alex had been spying on him as he recovered from the plastic surgery that had made the two of them identical.
And even today there had been clues. Perhaps it had been the heat of the sun, or the fallout from his visit to MI6. But he had been too wrapped up in his own thoughts to see them.
Jack, when he got home. ‚ I thought you’d just gone out.
Bernie, at the gate. ‚ You again!'
They had both thought they’d seen him. And in a sense, they had. They had seen the boy sitting opposite him. The boy who was now aiming a gun at his heart.
‚I’ve been looking forward to this,' the other boy said, and despite the hatred in his voice, Alex couldn’t help marveling. The voice wasn’t the same as his. The boy hadn’t had enough time to get it right. But otherwise he was a dead ringer.
‚What are you doing here?' Alex said. ‚It’s all over. The Gemini Project is finished. You might as well turn yourself in. You need help.'
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