which were filled with pain and remorse and something that was less definable but that might have been shame.
“I’m sorry, Alex,” Ash gasped. He had to stop himself to catch his breath. “I didn’t want you to know.”
“I’m not sure that Alex is surprised,” Yu remarked.
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Alex shook his head. “I guessed.”
“May I ask how?”
This time there was no point in ignoring the question.
Yu had been about to shoot him anyway. The longer Alex could keep him talking, the more chance there was that the SAS might finally arrive. Alex could hear the alarm, but there was less shooting and it seemed to be farther away. Had the SAS been overpowered, or were they already in command and on their way? He glanced at the television screen. The little red square was continuing its journey down.
“Everything went wrong from the start,” he said, talking directly to Major Yu. “Ethan Brooke had already lost two agents. Somehow the snakehead knew everything he planned. They knew about me too. Why else was I chosen for that fight in Bangkok? It didn’t make any sense.
But then, when I was in the arena, Mr. Sukit said something to me. He said he’d kill me if I didn’t take part, and he said it first in French, then in English. Why? If he really believed I was an Afghan boy, he’d have known I wouldn’t speak either.
“I wondered about that. But it got worse. Ash gave me an emergency telephone number. I called it and it led me straight to you.”
Ash opened his mouth to speak, but Alex cut in.
“I know,” he said. He looked briefly at the dying man.
“You made it look good with the fake blood, as if you’d
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been taken prisoner like me. But then I lost two of the gadgets Smithers had given me, and that was when I knew it had to be you.
“I told you about the watch and the belt. Somehow the battery disappeared out of the watch. I suppose you must have done that when I was asleep that night in Jakarta. As for the belt, Major Yu took that when I was in his house.
But I’d never told you about the coins. Smithers had also given me coins with an explosive charge and those stayed in my pocket. If I’d told you, I guess those would have gone too.”
He stopped.
“When did you start working for Scorpia, Ash?” he asked.
Ash glanced at Major Yu.
“Tell him—but be quick,” Yu snapped. “I don’t think we have very much time.”
“It was after Mdina.” Ash’s voice was weak. His face was gray, and he could no longer move from the chest down. One hand was on his chest. The other lay palm upward on the floor. “You can’t understand, Alex. I was so badly hurt. Yassen . . .” He coughed, and blood speckled his lip. “I had given everything to the service. My life. My health. I wasn’t even thirty, and I was crippled. I was never going to sleep properly, never eat properly. From that day on it was just pills and pain.
“And what was my reward? Blunt humiliated me. I
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was demoted, taken out of the field. He told me . . .” Ash swallowed hard. With every word he was finding it hard to go on. “He told me what I already knew,” he rasped.
“I was second rate. Never as good . . . as your dad.” He had almost come to the end of his strength. His shoulders slumped, and for a moment Alex thought he had gone. The blood was all around him now. There was a steady flow of it from his mouth.
Major Yu was enjoying himself. “Why don’t you tell him the rest of it, Ash?” he crowed.
“No!” Ash straightened his head. “Please . . .”
“I already know,” Alex said. He turned to Ash one last time. He could hardly bear to look at him. “You killed my parents, didn’t you? The bomb in the airplane. You put it there.”
Ash couldn’t answer. His hand tightened on his chest.
He had only seconds left.
“We had to test him,” Major Yu explained. “When he came over to us, we had to make sure he was telling us the truth. After all, we had just been tricked by one British intelligence agent—John Rider. So we set him a very simple task, one that would prove to us with no doubt that he was ready to switch sides.”
“I didn’t want to . . .” It wasn’t Ash’s voice. It was just a whisper.
“He didn’t want to, but he did. For the money. He put the bomb on the plane and he detonated it with his own
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hand. Rather more successful than his mission in Mdina.
