that she wasn’t just a paper cut-out, a target. She was sowing doubts in his mind. And, of course, she was playing for time.
Nile had told him to do it quickly, the instant they met. Alex realized that this was already going wrong; she had already gained the upper hand—even though he was the one with the gun. He reminded himself of what Mrs Rothman had shown him in Positano. Albert Bridge. The death of his father. He was facing the woman who had given the order to shoot.
“Why did you do it?” he demanded. His voice had become a whisper. He was trying to channel the hatred through him, to give him the strength to do what he had been sent here for.
“Why did I do what, Alex?”
“You killed my father.”
Mrs Jones looked at him for a long moment and it was impossible to tell what was going on in those black eyes.
But he could see that she was making some sort of calculation. Of course, her entire life was a series of calculations—and once she’d worked out the figures, someone would usually die. The only difference here was that the death would be her own.
She seemed to come to a decision.
“Do you want me to apologize to you, Alex?” she asked, suddenly hard. “We’re talking about John Rider, a man you never knew. You never spoke to him; you have no memory of him. You know nothing about him.”
“He was still my dad!”
“He was a killer. He worked for Scorpia. Do you know how many people he murdered?” Five or six. That was what Mrs Rothman had told him.
“There was a businessman working in Peru; he was married with a son your age. There was a priest in Rio de Janeiro; he was trying to help the street children, but unfortunately he’d made too many enemies so had to be taken out. There was a British policeman. An American agent. Then there was a woman; she was about to blow the whistle on a big corporation in Sydney. She was only twenty-six, Alex, and he shot her as she was getting out of her car—”
“That’s enough!” Now Alex was holding the gun with both hands. “I don’t want to hear any of this.”
“Yes, you do, Alex. You asked me. You wanted to know why he had to be stopped. And that’s what you’re going to do, isn’t it? Follow in your father’s footsteps. I’m sure they’ll send you all over the world, making you kill people you know nothing about. And I’m sure you’ll be very good at it. Your father was one of the best.”
“You cheated him. He was your prisoner and you said you were letting him go. You were going to swap him for someone else. But you shot him in the back. I saw…”
“I always wondered if they filmed it,” Mrs Jones murmured. She gestured and Alex stiffened, wondering if she was trying to misdirect him. But they were still alone. The cat had gone to sleep. Nobody was approaching the room. “I’ll give you some advice,” she said. “You’ll need it if you’re going to work with Scorpia. Once you join the other side, there are no rules. They don’t believe in fair play. Nor do we.
“They had kidnapped an eighteen-year-old.” Alex remembered the figure on the bridge. “He was the son of a British civil servant. They were going to kill him; but they were going to torture him first. We had to get him back— so, yes, I arranged the exchange. But there was no way I was ever going to release your father. He was too dangerous. Too many more people would have died. And so I arranged a double-cross. Two men on a bridge. A sniper. It worked perfectly and I’m glad. You can shoot me if it really makes you feel any better, Alex.
But I’m telling you: you didn’t know your father. And if I had to do it all again, I’d do it exactly the same.”
“If you’re saying my father was so evil, what do you think that makes me?” Alex was trying to will himself to shoot. He had thought anger would give him strength, but he was more tired than angry. So now he searched for another way to persuade himself to pull the trigger. He was his father’s son. It was in his blood.
Mrs Jones took a step towards him.
“Stay where you are!” The gun was less than a metre from her, aiming straight at her head.
“I don’t think you’re a killer, Alex. You never knew your father. Why do you have to be like him? Do you think every child is ‘made’ the moment they’re born? I think you have a choice…”
“I never chose to work for you.”
“Didn’t you? After Stormbreaker you could have walked away. We never needed to meet again. But if you remember, you chose to get tangled up with drug dealers and we had to bail you out. And then there was Wimbledon. We didn’t make you go undercover. You agreed to go—and if you hadn’t locked a Chinese gangster in a deep freeze, we wouldn’t have had to send you to America.”
“You’re twisting everything!”
“And finally Damian Cray. You went after him on your own and we’re very grateful to you, Alex. But you ask me—what do I think you are? I think you’re too smart to pull that trigger. You’re not going to shoot me. Now or ever.”
“You’re wrong,” Alex said. She was lying to him, he knew that. She had always lied to him. He could do this.
He had to do it. He held the gun steady. He let the hatred take him. And fired.
The air in front of him seemed to explode into fragments.
Mrs Jones had tricked him. She had been tricking him all along, and he hadn’t seen it. The room was divided into two parts. A huge pane of transparent, bulletproof glass ran from one corner to the other, stretching from the floor to the ceiling. She had been on one side; he had been on the other. In the half-light it had been invisible, but now the glass frosted, a thousand cracks spiralling outwards from the dent made by the bullet.
Mrs Jones had almost disappeared from sight, her face broken up as if she had become a smashed picture of herself. At the same time, an alarm rang, the door flew open and Alex was grabbed and thrown sideways onto the sofa. The gun went flying. Somebody shouted something in his ear but he couldn’t understand the words.
