parachuted into the Science Museum and taken six shots at the prime minister. It was their job to kill him. It was what they’d been trained for.
But the bullets never came. All the security men were equipped with radio microphones, and in the front row, Mrs. Jones had control. The moment she had recognized Alex she had been speaking urgently into her brooch.
“Don’t shoot! Repeat—don’t shoot! Await my command!”
On the podium, a plume of gray smoke rose out of the side of the broken, useless Stormbreaker. Two security men had rushed to the prime minister, who was clutching his wrist, blood dripping out of his hand. The photographers and journalists had begun to shout questions. Their cameras were flashing and the television cameras too had been swung around to focus in on the figure swaying high above. More security men were moving to seal off the exits, following orders from Mrs. Jones, while Alan Blunt looked on, for once in his life out of his depth.
But there was no sign of Herod Sayle. The head of Sayle Enterprises had been shot twice, but somehow he had disappeared.
YASSEN
« ^
YOU SLIGHTLY SPOILED things by shooting the prime minister,” Alan Blunt said. “But all in all you’re to be congratulated, Alex. You not only lived up to our expectations. You way exceeded them.”
It was late afternoon the following day, and Alex was sitting in Blunt’s office at the Royal & General building on Liverpool Street wondering just why, after everything he had done for them, the head of M16 had to sound quite so much like the principal of a second-rate private school giving him a good report. Mrs. Jones was sitting next to him. Alex had refused her offer of a peppermint, although he was beginning to realize it was all the reward he was going to get.
She spoke now for the first time since he had come into the room. “You might like to know about the clearing- up operation.”
“Sure…”
She glanced at Blunt, who nodded. “First of all, don’t expect to read the truth about any of this in the newspapers,” she began. “We put a D-notice on it, which means nobody is allowed to print anything. Of course, the ceremony at the Science Museum was being televised live, but fortunately we were able to cut the transmission before the cameras could focus on you. In fact, nobody knows that it was a fourteen-year-old boy who caused all the chaos.”
“And we plan to keep it that way,” Blunt muttered.
“Why?” Alex didn’t like the sound of that.
Mrs. Jones dismissed the question. “The newspapers had to print something, of course,” she went on. “The story we’ve put out is that Sayle was attacked by a hitherto unknown terrorist organization and that he’s gone into hiding…”
“Where is Sayle?” Alex asked.
“We don’t know. But we’ll find him. There’s nowhere on earth he can hide from us.”
“Okay.” Alex sounded doubtful.
“As for the Stormbreakers, we’ve already announced that there’s a dangerous product fault and that anyone turning them on could get electrocuted. It’s embarrassing for the government, of course, but they’ve all been recalled and we’re bringing them in now. Fortunately, Sayle was so fanatical that he programmed them so that the smallpox virus could only be released by the prime minister at the Science Museum. You managed to destroy the trigger, so even the few schools that have tried to start up their computers haven’t been affected.”
“It was very close,” Blunt said. “We’ve analyzed a couple of samples. It’s lethal. Worse even than the stuff Iraq was brewing up in the Gulf War.”
“Do you know who supplied it?” Alex asked.
Blunt coughed. “No.”
“How about the submarine that I saw?”
“Forget about the submarine.” It was obvious that Blunt didn’t want to talk about it. “You can just be sure that we’ll make all the necessary inquiries…”
“What about Yassen Gregorovich?” Alex asked.
Mrs. Jones took over. “We’ve closed down the plant at Port Tallon,” she said. “We already have most of the personnel under arrest. It’s unfortunate though that we weren’t able to talk to either Nadia Vole or the man you knew as Mr. Grin.”
“He never talked much, anyway,” Alex said.
“It was lucky that his plane crashed into a building site,” Mrs. Jones went on. “Nobody else was killed. As for Yassen, I imagine he’ll disappear. From what you’ve told us, it’s clear that he wasn’t actually working for Sayle. He was working for the people who were sponsoring Sayle … and I doubt they’ll be very pleased with him. Yassen is probably on the other side of the world already. But one day, perhaps, we’ll find him. We’ll never stop looking.”
There was a long silence. It seemed that the two spymasters had said all they wanted. But there was one question that nobody had tackled.
“What happens to me?” Alex asked.
“You go back to school,” Blunt replied.
Mrs. Jones took out an envelope and handed it to Alex.
“A check?” Alex asked.
“It’s a letter from a doctor, explaining that you’ve been away for three weeks with the flu. Very bad flu. And if
