Snakehead

Bond. But I was never invited to be part of Special Operations like you, Alex. I never met anyone senior like Alan Blunt or Mrs. Jones. I was sent to the communications center at Cheltenham. It was a desk job! Can you imagine someone like me slaving away from nine to five in a boring little office, surrounded by secretaries and coffee machines? It was miserable. And all the time I knew that my disease was getting worse and that it was only a matter of time before I would be thrown out and put on the scrap heap.

“And so I decided to look out for myself. Despite everything, a lot of the information that passed my way at Cheltenham was highly sensitive and confidential. And of course there was a market for this sort of material. So, very carefully, I began to steal secrets from British intelligence—

and guess where I took them! I went to the very snakehead that had employed my mother when she was in Hong Kong. They were delighted to have me, and quite soon I was being paid quite handsomely for my services.

“In the end I had to resign from MI6. The snakehead was paying me a fortune and they were offering me all sorts of career opportunities very quickly. I rose up the ladder until—by the early eighties—I had become number two in what was now the most powerful criminal organization in Southeast Asia.”

“And I suppose number one fell off a roof,” Alex said.

“As a matter of fact, he drowned . . . but you seem to have got the general idea.” Yu smiled. “Anyway, it was M a d e i n B r i t a i n

277

about this time that I heard rumors of a new organization that was being formed by people who were, in their own way, quite similar to me. I decided to diversify and, using my snakehead connections, I managed to contact them and eventually we met up in Paris to finalize details. That, of course, was the birth of Scorpia and I was one of the founding members.”

“So what are you doing now? Why do you need Royal Blue?”

Major Yu had been helping himself to cheese. He stopped with a piece of cheddar on the end of his knife.

“You saw the bomb?” he asked.

Alex said nothing. There was no point in denying it.

“You really are a very capable young man, Alex. I see now that we were quite unwise to underestimate you last time.” Major Yu dropped the cheese onto his plate and reached for a cookie. “I’m going to tell you what the bomb is for because it will amuse me,” he went on. “But then I’m afraid you must be on your way.” He looked at his watch. “The plane will be here any minute.”

“Where am I going, Major Yu?”

“We’ll get to that in a minute. Cheese?”

“Do you have any Brie?”

“Personally, I find French cheese disgusting.” He ate silently for a moment. “There is an island in the Timor Sea, not very far from here, in fact. Its name is Reef Island. You may have heard of it.”

Alex remembered the newscast he had heard on board 278

S N A K E H E A D

the Liberian Star. A conference was taking place there.

The alternative to the G8 summit. A meeting of famous people who were trying to make the world a better place.

“Scorpia has been given the job of destroying the island and the eight so-called celebrities who will be on it,” Yu went on. He was sounding pleased with himself. Alex imagined that must be one of the problems of being a criminal. You could never find anyone to tell about your crimes. “But what makes the task particularly interesting is that we have to make it look like an accident.”

“So you’re going to blow them up,” Alex said.

“No, no, no, Alex. That wouldn’t work at all. We have to be much more subtle. Let me explain.” He swallowed a piece of cheese and dabbed his lips with his napkin. “As it happens, Reef Island is located in what is known as a subduction zone. Perhaps you’ve studied that in geography. What it means is that underneath the sea, a few hundred miles north of the island, there are two tectonic plates pushing against each other with a fault line between them.

“Among its many business interests, the Chada Trading Agency is involved in deep-sea oil exploration and leases an oil platform in the Timor Sea. In the last couple of months, I have arranged for a shaft to be driven into the seabed, precisely over the fault line. This was quite a feat of engineering, Alex. We used the same reverse circulation system that was developed to build the ventilation shafts for the Hong Kong subway. I’m delighted to say M a d e i n B r i t a i n

279

that it was designed by Seacore, a British company . . .

once again, one step ahead of the world.

“Normally, the pipe running down from the rig would be no more than five inches in diameter by the time it hit the oil field. However, our shaft will have ample room for Royal Blue. We will place the bomb half a mile below the surface of the seabed. I will then travel to the oil platform and personally detonate it . . .”

But what was the point? Alex went through what he had just been told, and suddenly he understood. He knew exactly what the result would be. Not just an explosion.

Something much, much worse. He couldn’t keep the horror out of his voice. “You’re going to cause a wave,” he said. “A huge wave . . .”

“Go on, Alex.” Yu couldn’t keep the glee out of his voice.

“A tsunami . . .” Alex whispered the word.