Almost twenty-four hours had passed since he had called for help. He listened to the world outside. The
harsh cry of some sort of bird. The rustle of the grasshop-pers. The last drip of the water as it fell from the branches.
There was nobody out there. MI6 hadn’t arrived yet, and Alex couldn’t fool himself any longer. Something had gone wrong. The watch wasn’t working. They never were going to come.
18
D E A D O F N I G H T
T W O DAY S L AT E R , I N the afternoon, the Piper Super Cub returned.
By now, Alex had fallen into a strange mood and one that he could barely understand. It was almost as if he had accepted his fate and could no longer find the strength or even the desire to escape it. He had met the two other women working at the hospital: Nurse Swaine and Nurse Wilcox, who had proudly told him that she would be his anesthetist. Nobody had been unkind to him. In a way, that was what made it all so nightmarish. They were always checking that he had food and water. Would he like something to read? Would he like to listen to some music? Soon, the very sound of their voices made his skin crawl, but he couldn’t break free of the feeling that they owned him and always would.
But he hadn’t given up completely. He was still searching for a way out of this hideous trap. The river was impossible. There were no boats; nothing that would pass as a boat. He had followed the fence all the way around.
There were no gaps, no convenient overhanging branches. He had considered blowing a hole in it. He still had the one coin that Smithers had given him. But the fence was connected to an electrical circuit. The guards
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would know instantly what he had done, and without a map, a compass, or a machete, Alex doubted he would be able to find a way through the rain forest.
He thought about sending a radio message. He had seen the radio room in the administration building . . . it was neither locked nor guarded. He soon realized why.
The radio transmitter was connected to a numeric key-pad. You had to punch in a code to activate it. Major Yu really had thought of everything.
Alex watched as the plane hit the surface of the lake and began a slow, lazy turn toward the jetty. He had been expecting it. Dr. Tanner had told him it would be coming the night before.
“It’s your first customer, Alex,” he had said cheerfully.
“A man called R. V. Weinberg. You may have heard of him.”
As usual, Alex said nothing.
“He’s a reality TV producer from Miami. Very successful. But he’s contracted a serious eye disease, and he needs two transplants. So it looks as if we’ll be starting with your corneas. We’ll operate first thing tomorrow morning.”
Alex examined the American from a distance as he was helped out of the plane. Dr. Tanner had warned him not to approach or try to speak to the “customer.” It was one of the house rules. But looking at him, Alex found himself filled with more hatred than he had ever felt for any human being.
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S N A K E H E A D
Weinberg was overweight in a soft, flabby way. He had curling gray hair and a face that could have been made of putty, with sagging cheeks and jowls. He was a millionaire, but he dressed shabbily, his gut pressing against his Lacoste shirt. But it wasn’t just his appearance that disgusted Alex. It was his selfishness, his complete lack of heart. Tomorrow Alex would be blind. This man would take his sight without thinking about it simply because it was what he wanted and he had the money to pay for it.
Major Yu, Dr. Tanner, and the nurses were evil in their own way. But Weinberg, the successful businessman from Miami, made him physically sick.
He waited until the man had disappeared into the house that had been prepared for him, then walked down to the edge of the lake. So this was it. He had just one night to make his escape. After that it really would be impossible.
But the anger that Alex had felt had broken through his sense of helplessness. It had come like a slap in the face, and suddenly he was ready to fight back. These people thought he was helpless. They thought they’d covered everything. But they hadn’t noticed the missing scalpel.
And there was something even more important that they’d overlooked—despite the fact that it was sitting there right in front of them.
The plane.
The pilot had climbed out, dragging a kit bag with him. It looked as if he was going to stay until Weinberg
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was ready to leave. Alex had no doubt that the Piper would be incapacitated, the engine closed down and the keys locked away. And Dr. Tanner would be fairly certain that no fourteen-year-old boy knew how to fly.
But that was his mistake—to leave the plane, and everything inside it, moored to the jetty.
Alex examined it, working out the angles, thinking about what lay ahead.
They sent Alex to bed at eight thirty, and Nurse Isabel came into the room once he was tucked in. She was carrying two sleeping pills and a little cardboard cup of water.
