that had been diverted to pick him up. His name was Josh Cook, and he was forty years old, black with wire- frame glasses and a pleasant, soft-spoken manner. He helped Alex out of the space suit and stayed in the room when Alex finally did throw up. It turned out that he’d dealt with astronauts before.
“They’re all sick when they come down,” he explained.
“It goes with the territory. Or maybe I should say terra firma. That’s Latin for ‘down to earth.’ You’ll be fine by the morning.”
“Where am I?” Alex asked.
“You’re about ninety miles off the coast of Australia.
We were on a training exercise when we got a red alert that you were on your way down.”
“So what happens now?”
“Now you have a shower and get some sleep. You’re in luck. We’ve got a mattress made out of memory foam.
It was actually developed by NASA. It’ll give your muscles a chance to get used to being back in full gravity.” Alex had been given a private cabin in the medical department of the
“hospital at sea” with sixty-five beds, an operating room, a pharmacy, and everything else that 5,500 sailors might need. It wasn’t huge, but he suspected that nobody else on the
5
“You may find it difficult to walk,” he explained.
“You’re going to be unsteady on your feet for at least twenty-four hours. If you like, I can wait in the room until you’ve showered.”
“I’ll be okay,” Alex said.
“All right.” Cook smiled and opened the main door.
But before he left, he looked back at Alex. “You know—
every man and woman on this ship is talking about you,” he said. “There are a whole pile of questions I’d like to ask you, but I’m under strict orders from the captain to keep my mouth shut. Even so, I want you to know that I’ve been at sea for a long, long time and I’ve never encountered anything like this. A kid in outer space!” He nodded one last time. “I hope you have a good rest. There’s a call button beside the bed if there’s anything you need.” Cook left.
It took Alex ten minutes to get into the shower. He had completely lost his sense of balance, and the roll of the ship didn’t help. He turned the temperature up as high as he could bear and stood under the steaming water, enjoying the rush of it over his shoulders and through his hair. Then he dried himself and got into bed. The memory foam was only a couple of inches thick, but it seemed to mold itself to the shape of his body exactly. He fell almost instantly into a deep but troubled sleep.
He didn’t dream about the Ark Angel space station or his knife fight with Kaspar, the bald ecoterrorist who had
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been determined to kill him even though it was clear that all was lost. Nor did he dream about Nikolei Drevin, the billionaire who had been behind it all.
But it did seem to him that, sometime in the middle of the night, he heard the whisper of voices that he didn’t recognize but that, somehow, he still knew. Old friends.
Or old enemies. It didn’t matter which because he couldn’t make out what they were saying, and anyway, a moment later they were swept away down the dark river of his sleep.
Perhaps it was a premonition.
Because three weeks before, seven men had met in a room in London to discuss an operation that would make them many millions of dollars and would change the shape of the world. And although Alex had never met any of them, he certainly knew them.
Scorpia was back again.
2
“ D E A T H I S N O T T H E E N D ” I T WA S T H E SO RT of building you could walk past without noticing: three stories high, painted white with ivy, perfectly trimmed, climbing up to the roof. It stood about halfway down Sloane Street in Belgravia, just around the corner from Harrods, surrounded by some of the most expensive real estate in London. On one side there was a jewelry shop and on the other an Italian fashion boutique—but the customers who came here would no longer be needing either. A single step led up to a door painted black, and there was a window that contained an urn, a vase of fresh flowers, and nothing else. The name of the place was written in discreet gold letters. It read: Reed and Kelly, Funeral Directors. And beneath that, a brief motto: Death is not the End.
At ten thirty on a bright October morning, exactly three weeks before Alex landed in the Pacific Ocean, a black Lexus LS 430 four-door sedan drew up outside the front door. The car had been chosen carefully. It was a luxury model, but there was nothing too special about it, nothing to attract the eye. The arrival had also been exactly timed. In the past fifteen minutes, three other vehicles and a taxi had briefly pulled up and their passengers, either singly or in pairs, had exited, crossed the
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pavement, and entered the parlor. If anyone had been watching, they would have assumed that a large family had gathered to make the final arrangements for someone who had recently departed.
The last person to arrive was a powerfully built man with massive shoulders and a shaved head. There was something quite brutal about his face: the small, squashed-up nose, thick lips, and muddy brown eyes. But his clothes were immaculate. He wore a tailored silk shirt, a dark suit, and a cashmere coat, hanging loose. There was
