marched out of the room and up a flight of stairs. He was still in Sayle’s house. The stairs led up to the hall with its huge painting of Judgment Day. Alex looked at the figures, writhing in agony on the canvas. If he was right, the image would soon be repeated all over England. And it would happen in just three hours’ time.
The guards half dragged him through a doorway and into the room with the aquarium. There was a high-backed wooden chair in front of it. Alex was forced to sit down. His hands were cuffed behind him again. The guards left. Mr. Grin remained.
He heard the sound of feet on the spiral staircase, saw the leather shoes coming down before he saw the man who wore them. Then Herod Sayle appeared, dressed in an immaculate pale gray silk suit. Alan Blunt and Mrs. Jones had been suspicious of the Egyptian multimillionaire from the very start. They’d always thought he had something to hide. But even they had never guessed the truth. He wasn’t a friend of England. He was its worst enemy.
“Three questions,” Sayle snapped. His voice was utterly cold. “Who are you? Who sent you here? How much do you know?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alex said.
Sayle sighed. If there had been anything comical about him when Alex had first seen him, it had completely evaporated. His face was bored and businesslike. His eyes were ugly, full of menace. “We have very little time,” he said. “Mr. Grin…?”
Mr. Grin went over to one of the display cases and took out a knife, razor sharp with a serrated edge. He held it up close to his face, his eyes gleaming.
“I’ve already told you that Mr. Grin used to be an expert with knives,” Sayle continued. “He still is. Tell me what I want to know, Alex, or he will cause you more pain than you could begin to imagine. And don’t try to lie to me, please. Just remember what happens to liars. Particularly to their tongues.”
Mr. Grin took a step closer. The blade flashed, catching the light.
“My name is Alex Rider,” Alex said.
“Rider’s son.”
“His nephew.”
“Who sent you here?”
“The same people who sent him.” There was no point lying. It didn’t matter anymore. The stakes had become too high.
“M16?” Sayle laughed without any sign of humor. “They send fourteen-year-old boys to do their dirty work? Not very English, I’d have said. Not cricket! What?” He had adopted an exaggerated English accent. Now he walked forward and sat down behind the desk. “And what of my third question, Alex? How much have you found out?”
Alex shrugged, trying to look casual, to hide the fear he was really feeling. “I know enough,” he said.
“Go on.”
Alex took a breath. Behind him, the jellyfish drifted past like a poisonous cloud. He could see it out of the corner of his eye. He tugged at the handcuffs, wondering if it would be possible to break the chair. There was a sudden flash and the knife that Mr. Grin had been holding was suddenly quivering in the back of the chair, an inch from his head. The edge of the blade had actually nicked the skin of his neck. He felt a trickle of blood slide down over his collar.
“You’re keeping us waiting,” Herod Sayle said.
“All right. When my uncle was here, he became interested in viruses. He asked about them at the local library. I thought he was talking about computer viruses. That was the natural assumption. But I was wrong. I saw what you were doing, last night. I heard them talking on the speaker system. Decontamination and biocontainment zones. They were talking about biological warfare. You’ve gotten hold of some sort of real virus. It came here in test tubes, packed into silver boxes, and you’ve put them into the Stormbreakers. I don’t know what happens next. I suppose when the computers are turned on, people die. They’re in schools, so it’ll be schoolchildren. Which means that you’re not the saint everyone thinks you are, Mr. Sayle. A mass murderer.
Herod Sayle clapped his hands softly together. “You’ve done very well, Alex,” he said. “I congratulate you. And I feel you deserve a reward. So I’m going to tell you everything. In a way it’s appropriate that M16 should have sent me a real English schoolboy. Because, you see, there’s nothing in the world I hate more. Oh yes…” His face twisted with anger, and for a moment, Alex could see the madness, alive in his eyes.
“You
He stood up and walked over to Alex. “I came to this country forty years ago,” he said. “I had no money. My family had nothing. But for a freak accident, I would probably have lived and died in Cairo. Better for you, if I had! So much better!
“I was brought here and educated by an English family. They were grateful to me because I’d saved their lives. Oh yes. And I was grateful to them too. You cannot imagine how I was feeling then. To be in London, which I had always believed to be the heart of civilization. To see such wealth and to know that I was going to be part of it! I was going to be English! To a child born in the Cairo gutter, it was an impossible dream.
“But I was soon to learn the reality…” Sayle leaned forward and yanked the knife out of the chain He tossed it to Mr. Grin, who caught it and spun it in his hand.
“From the moment I arrived at the school, I was mocked and bullied. Because of my size. Because of my dark skin. Because I couldn’t speak English well. Because I wasn’t one of them. They had names for me. Herod Smell. Goat-boy. The dwarf. And they played tricks on me. Pins on the chair. Books stolen and defaced. My trousers ripped off me and hung out on the flagpole underneath the Union Jack.” Sayle shook his head slowly. “I had loved that flag when I first came here,” he said. “But in only weeks I came to hate it.”
“Lots of people are bullied at school—” Alex began and stopped as Sayle backhanded him viciously across the face.
“I haven’t finished,” Sayle said. He was breathing heavily and there was spittle on his lower lip. Alex could see him reliving the past. And once again he was allowing the past to destroy him.
