flicked through the rest of the files, which covered counterterrorism, the movement of uranium across Europe, and interrogation techniques. The last file was simply labeled: STORMBREAKER.
Alex was about to read it when the door suddenly opened and two men walked in. One of them was Crawley. The other was the driver from the junkyard. Alex knew that there was no point trying to explain what he was doing. He was sitting behind the desk with the Stormbreaker file open in his hands. But at the same time he realized that the two men weren’t surprised to see him there. From the way they had come into the room, they had expected to find him.
“This isn’t a bank,” Alex said. “Who are you? Was my uncle working for you? Did you kill him?”
“So many questions,” Crawley muttered. “But I’m afraid we’re not authorized to give you the answers.”
The second man lifted his hand and Alex saw that he was holding a gun. He stood up behind the desk, holding the file as if to protect himself. “No…” he began.
The man fired. There was no explosion. The gun spat at Alex and he felt something slam into his heart. His hand opened and the file tumbled to the ground. Then his legs buckled, the room twisted, and he fell back into nothing.
“SO WHAT DO YOU SAY?”
« ^ »
ALEX OPENED HIS EYES. So he was still alive! That was a nice surprise.
He was lying on a bed in a large, comfortable room. The bed was modern, but the room was old with beams running across the ceiling, a stone fireplace, and narrow windows in an ornate wooden frame. He had seen rooms like this in books when he was studying Shakespeare. He would have said the building was Elizabethan. It had to be somewhere in the country. There was no sound of traffic. Outside he could see trees.
Someone had undressed him. His school uniform was gone. Instead he was wearing loose pajamas, silk from the feel of them. From the light outside he would have guessed it was midmorning. He found his watch lying on the table beside the bed and he reached out for it. The time was twelve o’clock. It had been around half past four when he had been shot with what must have been a drugged dart. He had lost a whole night and half a day.
There was a bathroom leading off from the bedroom—bright white tiles and a huge shower behind a cylinder of glass and chrome. Alex stripped off the pajamas and stood for five minutes under a jet of steaming water. He felt better after that.
He went back into the bedroom and opened the closet. Someone had been to his house in Chelsea. All his clothes were here, neatly hung up. He wondered what Crawley had told Jack. Presumably he would have made up some story to explain Alex’s sudden disappearance. He took out a pair of Gap combat trousers, Nike sweatshirt and sneakers, got dressed, then sat on the bed and waited.
About fifteen minutes later there was a knock and the door opened. A young Asian woman in a nurse’s uniform came in, beaming.
“Oh, you’re awake. And dressed. How are you feeling? Not too groggy, I hope. Please come this way. Mr. Blunt is expecting you for lunch.”
Alex hadn’t spoken a word to her. He followed her out of the room, along a corridor and down a flight of stairs. The house was indeed Elizabethan, with wooden panels along the corridors, ornate chandeliers, and oil paintings of old bearded men in tunics and ruffs. The stairs led down into a tall galleried room with a rug spread out over flagstones and a fireplace big enough to park a car in. A long, polished wooden table had been set for three. Alan Blunt and a dark, rather masculine woman sucking a peppermint were already sitting down. Mrs. Blunt?
“Alex.” Blunt smiled briefly as if it was something he didn’t enjoy doing. “It’s good of you to join us.”
Alex sat down. “You didn’t give me a lot of choice.”
“Yes. I don’t quite know what Crawley was thinking of, having you shot like that, but I suppose it was the easiest way. May I introduce my colleague, Mrs. Jones.”
The woman nodded at Alex. Her eyes seemed to examine him minutely, but she said nothing.
“Who are you?” Alex asked. “What do you want with me?”
“I’m sure you have a great many questions. But first, let’s eat…” Blunt must have pressed a hidden button or else he was being overheard, for at that precise moment a door opened and a waiter—in white jacket and black trousers—appeared carrying three plates. “I hope you like meat,” Blunt continued. “Today it’s carre’d‘agneu.”
“You mean, roast lamb.”
“The chef is French.”
Alex waited until the food had been served. Blunt and Mrs. Jones drank red wine. He stuck to water. Finally, Blunt began.
“As I’m sure you’ve gathered,” he said, “the Royal and General is not a bank. In fact, it doesn’t exist … it’s nothing more than a cover. And it follows, of course, that your uncle had nothing to do with banking. He worked for me. My name, as I told you at the funeral, is Blunt. I am the chief executive of the Special Operations Division of MI6. And your uncle was, for want of a better word, a spy.”
Alex couldn’t help smiling. “You mean … like James Bond?”
“Similar, although we don’t go in for numbers. Double 0 and all the rest of it. Your uncle was a field agent, highly trained and very courageous. He successfully completed assignments in Iran, Washington, Hong Kong, and Havana … to name but a few. I imagine this must come as a bit of a shock for you.”
Alex thought about the dead man, what he had known of him. His privacy. His long absences abroad. And the times he had come home injured. A bandaged arm one time. A bruised face another. Little accidents, Alex had been told. But now it all made sense. “I’m not shocked,” he said.
Blunt cut a neat slice off his meat. “Ian Rider’s luck ran out on his last mission,” he went on. “He had been working undercover here in England, in Cornwall, and was driving back to London to make a report when he was killed. You saw his car at the yard—”
