about his uncle, that he had never actually worked in a bank. He had instead lived and died as a spy. Alex often walked past the gravestone, but today, acting on impulse, he left the main path and went over to it. He looked at the name, carved in a square slab of gray marble, with the dates below it and a single line: A GOOD MAN TAKEN BEFORE HIS TIME. Well, that was one way to put it. Somebody had left flowers, quite recently. Roses. The petals were dead and withered, but there was still a little color in the leaves. Who had been here? Jack? And if it was her, why hadn’t she mentioned it to him?
Alex bent down and swept the plants to one side. He thought about the man who had looked after him all his life but who had been gone now for almost a year. He could still picture Ian Rider—halfway up a mountain, on a diving boat in full scuba gear, or racing on Jet Skis over the South China Sea. He had taken Alex all over the world, always challenging him, pushing him to the limit. Adventure vacations, he had called them. And how could Alex have known that all that time he was being trained, prepared to follow in his uncle’s footsteps?
Footsteps that had brought him here.
“Alex Rider?”
They must have crept up behind him while he was crouching beside the grave, and even without looking up, Alex knew that somehow he was in trouble. There was something about the voice—soft and threatening, with a slight foreign inflection.
Slowly, Alex turned and looked up. Sure enough, there were three men standing at the foot of the grave, all of them Chinese, dressed in jeans and loose-fitting jackets. They were completely relaxed, as if they had strolled into the cemetery and come upon him by chance. But Alex knew that wasn’t the case. They might have followed him from school. They might have known that he sometimes took this shortcut and waited for him. But there was nothing chance about this meeting. They were here for one single purpose.
“I’m sorry,” Alex said. “My name is James Hale. You’ve got the wrong person.” Even as he spoke, he was glancing left and right. There was nobody else around. No passing vicar, no other kids from Brookland on their way home. Apart from his backpack, Alex had nothing with him.
He knew he wasn’t going to find any weapons in a cemetery, but there was always a chance that a gravedigger had been careless enough to leave behind a spade.
He was out of luck. There was an open grave, waiting for its occupant, about a dozen headstones away.
But there was no sign of any tools. What else? A small stone angel stood above him, a monument to “a great dad, a much-missed granddad and a wonderful husband.” Why did no one ever have anything bad to say about people who had died?
The nearest man smiled unpleasantly, revealing nicotine-stained teeth. “You are Alex Rider,” he insisted. “This is the grave of your uncle.”
“You’re wrong. He used to live next door . . .”
Just for a moment, the three men hesitated, wondering if, after all, they had made a mistake. But then the leader made up his mind. “You will come with us,” he said.
“Why? Where do you want to take me?”
“No more questions. Just come!”
Alex remained where he was, crouching beside the gravestone. He wondered what would happen next.
He quickly found out. The man who had spoken made a signal, and suddenly all three of them were armed. The knives had appeared in their hands like some unpleasant magic trick. Alex examined the silver blades, one in front of him, one on either side. They were notched, designed to leave the most vicious wounds. Somehow the men had gotten into position, surrounding Alex, without seeming to move. They were standing in combat stance, the weight spread evenly over their feet, each knife exactly the same distance from the ground. These were professional killers. They had done this many times before.
“What do you want?” Alex demanded, trying to keep his voice neutral. “I don’t have any money.”
“We don’t want money.” One of the other men spat into the grass. He had furious eyes, lips twisted into a permanent sneer.
“Major Winston Yu sent us to see you,” the leader said.
Winston Yu! So that was what this was about. Somehow the head of the snakehead that Alex had helped break up in Thailand had reached out from whatever hell he had been sent to. He had left instructions for revenge.
“Major Yu is dead,” Alex said.
“You killed him.”
“No. The last time I saw him, he was running away. If he’s dead, that’s the best thing that ever happened to him. But it had nothing to do with me.”
“You’re lying.”
“What difference does it make? He’s finished. The whole thing’s over. Coming after me isn’t going to bring him back.”
“You must pay for what you did.”
They were about to make their move. Alex could almost see the knives jabbing forward, striking at his stomach and chest. They would leave him in the cemetery, bleeding to death, and the next funeral that took place here would be his. But he wasn’t going to let that happen. He acted first. He was still holding the dead roses that he had been clearing from his uncle’s grave. He could feel the sharp thorns digging into the palm of his hand.
Swinging his arm up, Alex threw them, scattering them across the first man’s face. For just a second, the man was blinded, in pain, the thorns cutting into him. A single dead rose clutched at the skin under one of his eyes. Alex sprang up, then followed through with a powerful back kick, the ball of his foot ramming into the man’s stomach. The man’s eyes widened in shock and he crumpled, gasping for breath. That left just two.
They were already lunging toward him. Alex had to get out of their range, and there was only one way.
He threw himself sideways, one hand down, cartwheeling over Ian Rider’s gravestone. He needed a weapon and he snatched up the only one he could see—the stone angel from the grave next to his uncle’s. He hoped the much-missed granddad wouldn’t mind. The angel was heavy. Alex swung it around and hurled it at one of the men. It hit him in the face, breaking his nose. Blood poured over the man’s lips and he reeled away,
