“Well, in that case . . .”
Straik stopped. And in the silence, somehow Alex knew that something had gone wrong. Crouching behind the picture, he froze, afraid that the sound of his breathing or his heart beating would give him away.
“Someone has been in my office,” Straik said.
“What?” The word came out like a whiplash.
“My desk . . .” Straik picked something up, and even without seeing it, Alex knew what it was. The memory stick that had been in the computer when he arrived. He had taken it out to insert his own—but he hadn’t had time to replace it. “This was in my USB port when I came down to meet you,” Straik said. “I loaded it myself. Someone’s taken it out.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Your secretary could have been in.”
“She’s not here.”
Alex realized he couldn’t hold his position much longer. He was desperate to straighten up, to allow his muscles to stretch. At least there was one good thing. The hiding place was so small that neither of the two men would suspect for a minute that anyone else was still in the room. But he had to know what was going on, even at the risk of giving himself away. Very slowly, he leaned forward a few inches to have a glimpse in the mirror. McCain was holding the memory stick. Straik was hunched over his computer, tapping furiously at the keyboard, his little eyes focused on the screen. Two pin-pricks of red had appeared in his cheeks.
“This computer has been compromised,” he announced.
“Compromised?”
“Someone has attempted to download documents and files from the main drive. For all I know, they may have succeeded.” Straik snatched up a telephone and dialed a number. There was a brief pause.
Then he was answered. “This is Leonard Straik,” he said. “I want an immediate status report.” Another pause. Alex wondered what was being said at the other end of the line. It wasn’t hard to guess. Then Straik spoke again. “I want you to put out a condition double red alert,” he snapped. “All personnel to assemble immediately. This is not an exercise. We have a major security breach.” He hung up. “We have an intruder,” he said to McCain. “Ten minutes ago, our entire surveillance system went down. Someone must be jamming the signal. This is what they were after.” He nodded at the computer. “They must have left seconds before we arrived.”
“What’s a double red alert?”
“Any unauthorized person found wandering inside the Bio Center will be killed . . . no questions asked.”
“Don’t you have a bunch of schoolchildren here?”
“I haven’t forgotten that, Desmond. I’m not an idiot—whatever you may think. My staff have special instructions.” He turned off the computer. “I’m going to the control center. Are you coming?”
“Absolutely.” It struck Alex that McCain sounded more amused than alarmed. But that seemed to be his character. Whatever he might be up to, he didn’t believe that anyone could get in his way.
The two of them stood up. Alex heard the swish of cloth as Straik came out from behind his desk. They went over to the door. It opened, then closed. Alex was on his own.
Gratefully, he uncurled himself from behind the picture. For a moment he stood where he was, trying to collect his thoughts. He was probably safe while he was in Straik’s office, at least for the time being.
Security would be searching for him—but this was the one place they wouldn’t look. Even so, he couldn’t stay here forever. With an intruder on the loose, the school visit might be cut short and the bus sent back to London. Alex had to be on it. He couldn’t be left behind.
It was worse than that. Alex realized that his only chance of survival was to get back to Mr. Gilbert and the others. There had been nothing accidental about the death of the whistle-blower, and no matter what Blunt might have said, there really was something seriously unpleasant going on at Greenfields. Why else would the director be so keen to see that any intruder was killed? Alex had to get back to his class.
No guard was going to fire at him when there were witnesses. Once he was back with the others, he would be safe . . . just one bored student among many.
He headed for the door, about to leave, when he noticed a glass vial resting on Straik’s desk. It was a test tube, sealed at the top, with a muddy gray liquid inside. This must be the “sample” that he had heard the two men talking about. Alex had no idea what it contained, but another thousand gallons of it were on their way somewhere abroad. He still had the memory stick in his pocket, but on an impulse he went over and took the test tube too. Smithers would analyze it. And that would be the end of it. The liquid would surely reveal whatever was being planned.
He opened the door carefully, checked there was no one in sight, then stepped outside. He had decided to head back the way he had come. He had no idea where his friends were and he was furious that he had no way of communicating with them. Normally, he would have called Tom or James . . . but all their mobile phones had been left on the bus. What had the woman, Dr. Beckett, told them? The laboratories first. Then the greenhouses and storage centers. Finally, the lecture theater. Surely they couldn’t be too hard to find.
Alex closed the door behind him and sprinted back around the corner, his feet making no sound on the carpet. The glass bridge was ahead of him, but even as he approached it, he heard men running toward him and spun back, ducking into a storage cupboard a second before they appeared. There were three guards and they were all armed. Alex watched them run across the bridge and disappear down another passage. Above his head, he noticed a light flashing red. He gritted his teeth. This had turned into a cat-and-mouse game with only one mouse and an awful lot of cats.
The bridge was clear and he crossed it into what he had thought of as the administrative block. He went back down the stairs but immediately realized that he had forgotten which way he had originally come from—left or right. The trouble was that every direction looked the same. He tossed a mental coin and set off, knowing almost at once that he was lost. He still had the postcard with its guidance system in his back pocket but it couldn’t really help him now. All that mattered was to keep moving and not to be seen.
“Stop!”
The guard had stepped out of nowhere, blocking his way. He had a machine gun dangling around his neck and he was already fumbling with it, bringing it up and around. Alex
