Now Alex brought up one leg, twisted his body around, and lashed out. The back kick—
Alex jumped over him, snatched up his bike, and swung himself onto it. In the distance a third man was running toward him. He heard the single word “Stop!” called out. Then there was a crack and a bullet whipped past. Alex gripped the handlebars and pedaled as hard as he could. The bike shot forward, over the rubble and out through the gates. He took one look over his shoulder. Nobody had followed him.
With one shoe on and one shoe off, his clothes in rags, and his body streaked with oil, Alex knew he must look a strange sight. But then he thought back to his last seconds inside the crusher and sighed with relief. He could be looking a lot worse.
ROYAL & GENERAL
« ^ »
THE BANK CALLED the following day.
“This is John Crawley. Do you remember me? Personnel manager at the Royal and General. We were wondering if you could come in.”
“Come in?” Alex was half dressed, already late for school.
“This afternoon. We found some papers of your uncle’s. We need to talk to you … about your own position.”
Was there something faintly threatening in the man’s voice? “What time this afternoon?” Alex asked.
“Could you manage half past four? We’re on Liverpool Street. We can send a cab—”
“I’ll be there,” Alex said. “And I’ll take the tube.”
He hung up.
“Who was that?” Jack called out of the kitchen. She was cooking breakfast for the two of them, although how long she could remain with Alex was a growing worry. Her wages hadn’t been paid. She had only her own money to buy food and pay for the running of the house. Worse still, her visa was about to expire. Soon she wouldn’t even be allowed to stay in the country.
“That was the bank.” Alex came into the room, wearing his spare uniform. He hadn’t told her what had happened at the junk yard. Jack had enough on her mind. “I’m going there this afternoon,” he said.
“Do you want me to come?”
“No. I’ll be fine.”
He came out of Liverpool Street tube station just after four-fifteen that afternoon, still wearing his school clothes: dark blue jacket, gray trousers, striped tie. He found the bank easily enough. The Royal & General occupied a tall, antique-looking building with a Union Jack fluttering from a pole about fifteen floors up. There was a brass plaque with the name next to the main door and a security camera swiveling slowly over the pavement.
Alex stopped in front of it. For a moment he wondered if he was making a mistake, going in. If the bank had been responsible in some way for Ian Rider’s death, it was always possible they had asked him here to arrange his own. But why would anyone from the bank want to kill him? He didn’t even have an account there. He went inside.
And in an office on the seventeenth floor, the image on the television monitor flickered and changed as Street Camera #1 smoothly cut across to Reception cameras #2 and #3. Everything was dark and shadowy inside. A man sitting behind a desk saw Alex come in and pressed a button. Camera #2 zoomed in until Alex’s face filled the screen.
“So he came,” the chairman of the bank muttered.
“That’s the boy?” The speaker was a middle-aged woman. She had a strange, potato-shaped head and her black hair looked as if it had been cut using a pair of blunt scissors and an upturned bowl. Her eyes were almost as black as her hair. She was dressed in a severe gray suit and was sucking a peppermint. “Are you sure about this, Alan?” she asked.
Alan Blunt nodded. “Oh yes. Quite sure. You know what to do?” This last question was addressed to his driver, who was also in the room.
The driver was standing uncomfortably, slightly hunched over. His face was a chalky white. He had been like that ever since he had tried to stop Alex in the auto junkyard. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“Then do it,” Blunt said. His eyes never left the screen.
In the lobby, Alex had asked for John Crawley and was sitting on a leather sofa, vaguely wondering why so few people were going in or out. The reception area was quiet and claustrophobic, with a brown marble floor, three elevators to one side, and above the desk, a row of clocks showing the time in every major world city. But it could have been the entrance to anywhere. A hospital. A concert hall. Even a cruise liner. The place had no identity of its own.
One of the elevators slid open and Crawley appeared in the same suit he had worn at the funeral but with a different tie. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Alex,” he said. “Have you come straight from school?”
Alex stood up but said nothing, allowing his uniform to answer the man’s question.
“Let’s go up to my office,” Crawley said. He gestured. “We’ll take the elevator.”
Alex didn’t notice the fourth camera inside the elevator, but then, it was concealed on the other side of the oneway mirror that covered the back wall. Nor did he see the thermal intensifier next to the camera. But this second machine both looked at him and through him as he stood there, turning him into a pulsating mass of different colors, none of which translated into the cold steel of a hidden gun or knife. In less than the time it took Alex to blink, the machine had passed its information down to a computer that had instantly evaluated and then sent its own signal back to the circuits that controlled the elevator.
“Here we are!” Crawley smiled and ushered Alex out into a long corridor, with an uncarpeted wooden floor and modern lighting. A series of doors were punctuated by brightly colored abstract paintings. “My office is just along
