Paul Drevin was a target. That was what Drevin had said. He was always in danger.
So why had he been on his own? That night at the hospital, four men had broken in to kidnap him. They had known he was there.
But there hadn’t been a single guard in sight.
THE LAP OF LUXURY
« ^ »
elcome to Neverglade,“ Paul Drevin said.
Alex stepped out of the luxury car that had brought him here and looked around. He had seen wealth before. He had once gone undercover as the son of a supermarket magnate, which had meant spending a week in a mansion in Lancashire. But this place was something else again.
His first sight of Drevin’s country estate had been a pretty but very ordinary gatehouse on a country lane about twenty miles north of Oxford. But even here, Alex had noticed the high walls and woodland surrounding the estate, and the closed-circuit television cameras rotating discreetly between the trees. The driveway must have been a mile long, emerging from the woods into fields so perfectly mown it was hard to believe they were made of grass. On one side was a lake with two jet skis and a Lapwing wooden sailing boat moored beside a jetty. On the other, partly hidden in a slight dip, a miniature racing circuit twisted and turned, with its own grandstand for spectators. Four of the most beautiful horses Alex had ever seen were grazing in a paddock. The sun was shining. It was as if the summer had returned.
And there was Neverglade. It wasn’t a house but a fourteenth-century castle—with its own moat, battlements, towers and outlying church. It was built of grey stone, with dark green ivy spreading diagonally across the face. Alex caught his breath as they drove towards it and crossed the drawbridge.
The castle didn’t seem real. It was like something out of a picture book. And why had it been built here of all places? He wondered why he had never heard or seen pictures of it before.
Alex wished now that Jack Starbright had decided to come.
She had seemed uneasy and deep in thought in the taxi home from the Waterfront, but it was only later in the evening that she announced her decision.
“I’d love to come with you, Alex,” she said. “And I’d love to watch this rocket being launched. But I can’t. I haven’t seen my mum and dad for nearly a year, and I need to go back home to Washington DC. It’s their wedding anniversary next week, and this would be a good opportunity to take a vacation. You’re safe, and you’re going to be well looked after. Anyway, you’ve got Paul Drevin. He’s your age and you won’t want me hanging around. So go and enjoy yourself. And just you make sure you don’t get into any more trouble.
Rest and recuperation. That’s what the doctor said.”
Nikolei Drevin had sent a uniformed chauffeur to pick Alex up—and this time he had arrived in a Rolls-Royce, a pale blue Corniche with a retracting hood. They had cruised out of London and up the M40, the 6.75 litre V8 engine effortlessly gliding past all the other traffic as if the roads had been built exclusively for its use. Now the car disappeared round the side of the house as Paul Drevin came out to greet him.
The last time Alex had seen the other boy, he had been wearing a dressing gown and pyjamas. Now he was dressed in jeans and a loose-fitting jersey. He looked a lot healthier than he had in hospital—but there was more to it than that. He was more confident. This was his home, his territory, and one day he would inherit it. Alex had to remind himself that this boy was probably a multimillionaire himself. His weekly pocket money probably arrived in a security van. Suddenly Alex wondered if coming here had been a good idea.
“Quite a place,” he said as they walked towards the front door, their feet crunching on the gravel.
“My father had it built here. The castle used to be somewhere in Scotland. It was falling down so he bought it and shipped it here, piece by piece, and then put it back together again. Come on, I’ll show you your room.”
Alex followed Paul into an entrance hall with flagstones, tapestries and a fireplace big enough to burn a bus. As they climbed up a majestic staircase, they passed paintings by Picasso, Warhol, Hockney and Lucian Freud. Nikolei Drevin obviously liked modern art.
“What you did at the hospital was amazing,” Paul said. “Did you really mean to take my place?”
“Well, it just sort of happened…”
“If those men had kidnapped me, they were going to cut my finger off!” Paul shuddered and Alex wondered how he knew about that. The exact details of what had happened at Hornchurch Towers hadn’t been in the papers. But he assumed that for a man like Drevin, even the most classified information wouldn’t be hard to get. “They nearly killed you because of me,” Paul went on. “I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s no need to say anything.”
“I’m glad you agreed to come.”
Alex shrugged. “Your dad made it difficult for me to refuse.”
“Yes. He’s like that.” They had reached the top of the stairs. Paul took out an inhaler and puffed at it twice.
“I have asthma,” he explained.
“That’s bad luck.”
“This way…” They walked down a corridor with ornate wooden doors at intervals on either side.
“There are thirty bedrooms,” Paul told him. “I don’t know why we need so many. They’re never full. I’ve put you next to me. If you want anything, just pick up the phone. It’s like living in a hotel, except you don’t have to pay.”
They came to an open door and went into a bedroom with windows looking out over the lake. The chauffeur must have come in through another entrance; Alex’s luggage was on the bed. The room was modern. Alex took in the plasma screen television mounted on the wall, the console with DVD, video and PlayStation, the phone with about a dozen buttons for the different services it provided, a shelf of books—
