“So how did my father die?” he asked. “And my mother? Is she still alive? What happened to her?” Mrs Jones glanced at Alan Blunt and it was he who answered.
“After the affair on Albert Bridge, it was decided that it would be best if your father took a long holiday,” he said. “Your mother went with him. We arranged for a private plane to take them to the South of France. You were meant to go with them, Alex, but at the last minute you developed an ear infection and they had to leave you behind with a nanny. The two of you were going to follow them out when you were better.” He paused. His eyes, as ever, showed nothing. But there was a little pain in his voice.
“Somehow Julia Rothman discovered that she had been tricked. We don’t know how; we’ll never know. But Scorpia’s a powerful organization: that much should be obvious to you by now. She found out that your father was still alive and that he was flying to France, and arranged for a bomb to be placed in the luggage hold. Your parents died together, Alex. I suppose that’s something of a mercy. And it was all so quick. They wouldn’t have had any idea…”
A plane accident.
That was what Alex had been told all his life.
Another lie.
Alex stood up. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling. On the one hand he was grateful. His father hadn’t been an evil man. He had been the exact opposite. Everything Julia Rothman had told him and everything he had thought about himself had been wrong. But at the same time, there was an overwhelming sadness, as if he was mourning his parents for the very first time.
“Alex, we’ll get a driver to take you home,” Mrs Jones said. “And we can talk more whenever you’re ready.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Alex cried, and his voice cracked. “That’s what I don’t understand. I nearly killed you, but you didn’t tell me the truth! You sent me back to Scorpia—just like my dad—but you never told me that it was Julia Rothman who killed him. Why not?”
Mrs Jones had also got to her feet. “We needed your help to find the dishes. There was no question about it.
Everything depended on you. But I didn’t want to manipulate you. I know you think that’s what we always do, but if I’d told you the truth about Julia Rothman and then given you a homing device and sent you in after her, I’d have been using you in the worst possible way. You went in there, Alex, for exactly the same reason that your father went to Albert Bridge, and I wanted you to have that choice. That’s what makes you such a great spy. It isn’t that you were made one or trained to be one. It’s just that in your heart you are one. I suppose it runs in the family.”
“But I had a gun! I was in your flat…”
“I was never in any danger. Quite apart from the glass, you couldn’t even bring yourself to aim at me, Alex. I knew you couldn’t. There was no need to tell you then. And I didn’t want to. The way Mrs Rothman had deceived you was so horrible.” She shrugged. “I wanted to give you the chance to work things out for yourself.”
For a long moment nobody said anything.
Alex turned away. “I need to be on my own,” he mumbled.
“Of course.” Mrs Jones went over to him and touched him lightly on the arm. It was the arm that was the least burnt. “Come back when you’re ready, Alex.”
“Yes—I will.”
Alex moved to the door. He opened it but then seemed to have second thoughts. “Can I ask one final question, Mrs Jones?”
“Yes. Go ahead.”
“It’s just something I’ve always wondered and I might as well ask you now.” He paused. “What’s your first name?”
Mrs Jones stiffened. Sitting behind his desk, Alan Blunt looked up. Then she relaxed. “It’s Tulip,” she told him.
“My parents were keen gardeners.”
Alex nodded. It made sense. He wouldn’t have used that name either.
He walked out, closing the door behind him.
A MOTHER’S TOUCH
« ^
Scorpia never forgot.
Scorpia never forgave.
The sniper had been paid to take revenge and that was what he would do. His own life would be forfeit if he failed.
He knew that in a few minutes, a fourteen-year-old boy would walk out of the building which pretended to be an international bank but was really nothing of the sort. Did it matter to him that his target was a child? He had persuaded himself that it didn’t. It was a terrible thing to kill a human being. But was it so much worse to kill a twenty-seven-year-old man who would never be twenty-eight than a fourteen-year-old boy who would never be fifteen? The sniper had decided that death was death. That didn’t change. Nor did the fifty thousand pounds he would be paid for this hit.
As usual he would aim for the heart. The target area would be a fraction smaller this time but he would not miss. He never missed. It was time to prepare himself, to bring his breathing under control, to enter that state of calm before the kill.
He focused his attention on the gun that he was holding, the self-loading Ruger .22 model K10/22-T. It was a low velocity weapon, less deadly than some he might have chosen. But the gun had two huge advantages. It was light. And it was very compact. By removing just two screws he had been able to separate the barrel and the trigger mechanism from the stock. The stock itself folded in two. He had been able to carry the whole thing across London in an ordinary sports bag without drawing attention to himself. In his line of work, that was the critical thing.
