than that. Fortunately for the agent, the dart that he fired out of the straw contained only a sleeping draught. It hit the side of his cheek. The agent opened his mouth to cry out, stared stupidly at Alex, then collapsed.
Alex knew he had to move quickly. The two agents downstairs would allow him a couple of minutes but then they would expect him to return. He grabbed the Coke bottle and opened it—not turning the lid but the bottle itself. The bottle came apart in half. Dark brown liquid poured out, soaking into the carpet. Inside the bottle was a package, wrapped in brown plastic, the same colour as the Coke. With the label covering most of it, the package had been completely invisible. Alex tore it open. There was a gun inside.
It was a Kahr P9, double-action semi-automatic, manufactured in America. It was six inches long and, with its stainless steel and polymer construction, it weighed just eighteen ounces, making it one of the smallest, lightest pistols in the world. The in-line magazine could have held seven bullets; to keep the weight down, Scorpia had provided just one. It was all Alex would need.
Carrying the canvas bag with the pizza, he went past the sleeping agent and over to Mrs Jones’s door. It had three locks, as he had been told. He lifted the pizza box lid and removed three of the black olives from the top, squeezing each one against a lock. The canvas bag had a false bottom. He opened it and trailed out three wires which he connected to the olives. A plastic box and a button were built into the bottom of the bag. Crouching down, Alex pressed it. The olives—which weren’t olives at all—exploded silently, each one a brilliant flare, burning into the locks. The sharp smell of molten metal rose in the air. The door swung open.
Holding the gun tightly, Alex walked into a large room with grey curtains draped along the far wall, a dining table with four chairs, and a suite of leather sofas. It was lit by a soft yellow glow radiating from a single lamp.
The room was modern and sparsely furnished; there was little in it that told him any more about Mrs Jones than he already knew. Even the pictures on the walls were abstracts, blobs of colour that gave nothing away. But there were clues. He saw a photograph on a shelf, a younger Mrs Jones—actually smiling—with two children, a boy and a girl aged about six and four. A nephew and a niece? They looked a lot like her.
Mrs Jones read books; she had an expensive television and a DVD player; and there was a chessboard. She was halfway through a game. But who with? Alex wondered. Nile had told him she lived alone. He heard a soft purring and noticed a Siamese cat stretched out on one of the sofas. That was a surprise. He hadn’t expected the deputy head of MI6 Special Operations to need companionship of any sort.
The purring grew louder. It was as if the cat were trying to warn its owner that he was there; and, sure enough, a door opened on the other side of the room.
“What is it, Q?”
Mrs Jones walked in. Approaching the cat, she suddenly saw Alex and stopped. “Alex!”
“Mrs Jones.”
She was wearing a grey silk dressing gown. Alex suddenly saw a snapshot of her life and the emptiness at the heart of it. She came home from work, had a shower, ate dinner on her own. Then there was the chess game …
maybe she was playing over the Internet. News at Ten on the television. And the cat.
She paused in the middle of the room. She didn’t seem alarmed. There was nothing she could do—certainly no panic button or alarm she could reach. Her hair was still wet from the shower; Alex noticed her bare feet. He raised his hand and she saw the gun.
“Did Scorpia send you?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“To kill me.”
“Yes.”
She nodded as if she understood why this should be so. “They told you about your father,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, Alex.”
“Sorry you killed him?”
“Sorry I didn’t tell you myself.”
She didn’t try to move; she simply stood there, facing him. Alex knew he didn’t have much time. Any moment now the lift might return to the ground floor. As soon as the agents saw he wasn’t in it, they would raise the alarm. They might already be on their way up.
“What happened to Winters?” she asked. Alex didn’t know whom she meant. “He was outside the door,” she explained.
Winters was the third agent.
“I knocked him out.”
“So you got past the two downstairs. You came up here. And you broke in.” Mrs Jones shrugged. “Scorpia have trained you well.”
“It wasn’t Scorpia who trained me, Mrs Jones: it was you.”
“But now you’ve joined Scorpia.”
Alex nodded.
“I can’t quite picture you as an assassin, Alex. I realize you don’t like me—or Alan Blunt. I can understand that.
But I know you. I don’t think you have any idea what you’ve got yourself into. I bet Scorpia were all smiles; I’m sure they were delighted to see you. But they’ve been lying to you—”
“Stop it!” Alex’s finger tightened on the trigger. He knew that she was trying to make it difficult for him. He had been warned that this was what she would do. By talking to him, by using his first name, she was reminding him
