The cat snarled and leapt past him. His arms were wrenched behind him. A knee pressed into his back. A bag was pulled over his head and he felt cold steel against his wrists. There was a click. He could no longer move his hands.
Now he could make out several voices in the room.
“Are you all right, Mrs Jones?”
“We’re sorry, ma’am…”
“We’ve got the car waiting outside…”
“Don’t hurt him!”
Alex was jerked off the sofa with his hands cuffed behind him. He felt wretched and sick. He had failed Scorpia. He had failed his father. He had failed himself.
He didn’t cry out. He didn’t resist. Limp and unmoving, he allowed himself to be dragged out of the room, back down the corridor and into the night.
COBRA
« ^ »
The room was a bare white box, designed to intimidate. Alex had measured out the space: ten paces one way, four across. There was a narrow bunk with no sheets or blankets, and, behind a partition, a toilet. But that was all. The door had no handle and fitted so flush to the wall that it was almost invisible. There was no window.
Light came from behind a square panel in the ceiling and was controlled from outside.
Alex had no idea how long he had been here. His watch had been removed.
After he had been taken from Mrs Jones’s flat, he had been bundled into a car. The black cloth bag was still over his head. He had no idea where he was going. They drove at speed for what seemed like half an hour, then slowed down. Alex felt his stomach sink and knew they were heading down some sort of ramp. Had they taken him to the basement of the Liverpool Street HQ? He had been here once before but this time he was to be given no chance to take his bearings. The car stopped. The door opened and he was grabbed and dragged out. Nobody spoke to him. He was marched along pinned between two men—and down a flight of stairs. Then his hands were unlocked, and the bag was pulled off. He just had time to glimpse Lloyd and Ramirez—the two agents from the reception desk—as they walked out. Then the door closed and he was on his own.
He lay on his back, remembering the final moments in the flat. He was amazed that he hadn’t seen the glass barrier until it was too late. Had Mrs Jones’s voice been amplified in some way? It didn’t matter. He had tried to kill her. He had finally found the strength to pull the trigger, proving that Scorpia had been right about him all along.
He was a killer. Do you know how many people he murdered?
Alex remembered what Mrs Jones had said about his father. She was the one who had given the order for John Rider’s death; she had arranged it. She deserved to die.
Or so he tried to persuade himself. But the worst thing was, he half understood what she meant. Suppose his father hadn’t been killed on Albert Bridge. Suppose Alex had grown up with him and somehow found out what his father did. How would he have felt about it? Would he have been able to forgive him?
Sitting on his own in this cruel white room, Alex thought back to the moment when he had fired the gun. He felt again the shudder in his hand. Saw the invisible glass screen crack but not break. Good old Smithers! It was almost certainly the MI6 gadget master who had fixed it up. And, despite everything, Alex was glad. He was glad he hadn’t killed Mrs Jones.
He wondered what would happen to him now. Would MI6 prosecute? More likely, they would interrogate him.
They would want to know about Malagosto, about Mrs Rothman and Nile. But maybe after that, at last, they would leave him alone. After what had happened, they would never trust him again.
He fell asleep—not just exhausted but drained. It was a black and empty sleep, without dreams, without any feeling of comfort or warmth.
The sound of the door opening woke him up. He opened his eyes and blinked. It was disconcerting having no idea of the time. He could have slept for a few hours or all night. He wasn’t feeling rested; there was a crick in his neck. But without a window it was impossible to say. “You need the toilet?”
“No.”
“Then come with me.”
The man at the door wasn’t Lloyd or Ramirez or anyone Alex had ever met at MI6. He had a blank, uninteresting face and Alex knew that if they met the next day, he would already have forgotten him. He got off the bunk and walked towards the door, suddenly nervous. Nobody knew he was here. Not Tom, not Jack Starbright … nobody. MI6 could make him disappear. Permanently. Nobody would ever find out what had happened to him. Maybe that was what they had in mind.
But there was nothing he could do. He followed the agent along a curving corridor with a steel mesh floor and fat pipes following the line of the ceiling. He could have been in the engine room of a ship.
“I’m hungry,” he complained. He was. But he also wanted to show this agent that he wasn’t afraid. “I’m taking you to breakfast.” Breakfast! So he had slept through the night. “Don’t worry,” Alex said. “You can drop me off at a McDonald’s.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. In here…” They had arrived at a second door and Alex went through into a strange, curving room—obviously they were still underground. There were thick glass panels built into the ceiling and he could see the forms of people—commuters—walking overhead. The room was beneath a pavement. Feet of different sizes and shapes touched, briefly, against the glass. Above them the commuters were like ghosts, twisting, rippling, moving soundlessly by as they made their way to work. There was a table on which were arranged fruit salad, cereal, milk, croissants and coffee. Alex welcomed the sight of breakfast but lost some of his appetite when he saw whom he was supposed to share it with. Alan Blunt was waiting for him, sitting in a chair on the other side of the table, dressed in yet another of his neat, grey suits. He really did look like the bank manager that he had once pretended to be, a man in his fifties, more comfortable with figures and statistics than with human beings.
“Good morning, Alex,” he said.
