everywhere, milling about in the sunlight. Alex was grateful for the carpet, which muffled the sound of his feet. It seemed that the guard was in a hurry. So far he hadn’t stopped or turned round. The guard reached a wooden door marked RESTRICTED. Without stopping, he went through. Alex paused for a moment, then followed. Now he found himself in an altogether grimier environment, a cement corridor with yellow industrial markings and fat ventilation pipes overhead. The air smelled of oil and garbage, and Alex knew that he had arrived at the so-called Buggy Route, a supply lane that forms a great circle underneath the club. A couple of teenagers in green aprons and jeans walked past him, pushing two plastic bins. A waitress went the other way, carrying a tray of dirty plates. There was no sign of the guard and for a moment Alex thought he’d lost him. But then he saw a figure disappearing behind a series of translucent plastic strips that hung from the ceiling to the floor. He could just make out the man’s uniform on the other side of the barrier. He hurried forward and went through. Alex realized two things at the same moment. He no longer had any idea where he was-and he was there on his own.
He was in an underground chamber, banana-shaped, curving round, with concrete pillars supporting the roof. It looked like an underground carpark and there were indeed three or four cars parked in bays next to the raised walkway where he was standing now. But most of the space was taken up by trash. There were empty cardboard boxes, wooden pallets, a rusting cement mixer, bits of old fencing and broken down coffee vending machines, thrown out and left to rot on the damp cement floor. The air smelled bad and Alex could hear a constant whine, like an electric saw, coming from a garbage compactor just out of his sight. And yet the area was also used for the storage of food and drink. There were beer barrels, hundreds of bottles of fizzy drinks, gas cylinders and, clustered together, eight or nine massive white boxes-refrigerators, each one carrying the label RAWLINGS REFRIGERATION.
Alex looked up at the roof. It was slanting upwards and the shape reminded him of something. Of course! The raked seating around Court Number One! That was where he was-in the loading bay beneath the tennis court. This was the underbelly of Wimbledon all right. This was where all the supplies arrived and where all the trash Left. And right now, ten thousand people were sitting just a few metres above his head, enjoying the game, unaware that everything they consumed throughout the day began and ended here.
But where was the guard? Why had he come here and who was he going to meet? Alex crept forward carefully, once again feeling very alone. He was on a raised platform with the single word DANGER repeated in yellow letters along its edge. He didn’t need to be told. He came to a flight of steps and went down, moving into the main body of the chamber, on the same level as the refrigerators. He walked past a stack of gas cylinders, pressurized carbon dioxide. He had no idea what they were for. Half the things down here seemed to have been dumped for no good reason.
He was fairly sure now that the guard had gone. Why would he want to meet anyone down here? For the first time since he had left the Complex, Alex played back the telephone conversation in his mind.
I’m going to meet him now. Yes… straight away. He’ll give it to me…
It sounded ridiculous, fake, like something out of a bad film. Even as Alex realized this and knew that he had been tricked, he heard the screaming sound, saw the dark shape rushing out of the shadows. He was in the middle of the concrete floor, out in the open. The guard was behind the wheel of a fork-lift truck, the metal prongs jutting out towards him like the horns of an enormous bull. Powered by its forty-eight volt electric engine, the truck was speeding towards him on pneumatic tyres. Alex glanced up and saw the heavy wooden pallets, a dozen of them, balanced high above the cabin. He saw the guard’s smile, a gleam of ugly teeth in an uglier face. The truck covered the distance between them with astonishing speed then came to a sudden halt as the guard slammed on the brake. Alex yelled and threw himself to one side. The wooden pallets, carried forward by the truck’s momentum, slid off the forks and came clattering down. Alex should have been crushed, would have been, but for the beer barrels. A line of them had taken the weight of the pallets, leaving a tiny triangle of space. Alex heard the wood smashing centimetres above his head. Splinters rained down on his neck and back. Dust and dirt smothered him. But he was still alive. Choking and half blinded, he crawled forward as the fork-lift truck reversed and prepared to come after him again.
How could he have been so stupid? The guard had seen him that first time in the Complex, when he had made his telephone call. Alex had stood there, gaping at the tattoo on the man’s arm and had thought that his ballboy uniform would be enough to protect him. And then, in the Millennium Building, Alex had clumsily knocked into him to get his hands on the mobile phone. Of course the guard had known who he was and what he was doing. It didn’t matter that he was a teenager. He was dangerous. He had to be taken out.
And so he had laid a trap so obvious that it wouldn’t have fooled… well, a schoolboy. Alex might want to think of himself as some sort of superspy who had twice saved the whole world, but that was nonsense. The guard had made a fake phone call and tricked Alex into following him into this desolate area. And now he was going to kill him. It wouldn’t matter who he was or how much he had found out once he was dead.
Choking and sick, Alex staggered to his feet just as the fork-lift truck bore down on him a second time. He turned and ran. The guard looked almost ridiculous, hunched up in the tiny cabin. But the machine he was driving was fast, powerful and incredibly flexible, spinning a full circle on a ten pence piece. Alex tried changing direction, sprinting to one side. The truck spun round and followed. Could he make it back to the raised platform? No. Alex knew it was too far away.
Now the guard reached out and pressed a button. The metal forks shuddered and dropped down so that they were less like horns, more like the twin swords of some nightmare medieval knight. Which way should he dive? Left or right? Alex just had time to make up his mind before the truck was on him. He dived to the right, rolling over and over on the concrete. The guard pulled the joystick and the machine spun round again. Alex twisted and the heavy wheels missed him by barely a centimetre, then crashed into one of the pillars. There was a pause. Alex got up, his head spinning. For a brief second, he hoped that the collision might have knocked the guard out, but with a sick feeling in his stomach he saw the man step out of the cabin, brushing a little dust off the arm of his jacket. He was moving with the slow confidence of a man who knew that he was in total command. And Alex could already see why. Automatically, the guard had taken the stance of a martial arts expert; feet slightly apart, centre of gravity low. His hands were curving in the air, waiting to strike. He was still smiling. All he could see was a defenceless boy-and one already weakened by two encounters with the fork-lift truck.
With a sudden cry, he lashed out, his right hand slicing towards Alex’s throat. If the blow had made contact, Alex would have been killed. But at the last second he brought up both his fists, crossing his arms to form a block. The guard was taken by surprise and Alex took advantage of the moment to kick out with his right foot, aiming for the groin. But the guard was no longer there, having swivelled to one side, and in that moment Alex knew he was up against a fighter who was stronger, faster and more experienced than him and that he really didn’t have a chance.
The guard swung round, and this time the back of his hand caught Alex on the side of his head. Alex heard the crack. For a moment he was blinded. He reeled backwards, crashing into a metal surface. It was the door of one of the fridges. Somehow he caught hold of the handle and as he stumbled forward, the door opened. He felt a blast of cold across the back of his neck and perhaps that was what revived him and gave him the strength to throw himself forward, ducking underneath another vicious kick that had been aimed at his throat.
Alex was in a bad way and he knew it. His nose was bleeding. He could feel the warm blood trickling down over the corner of his mouth. His head was spinning and the electric light bulbs seemed to be flashing in front of his eyes. But the guard wasn’t even breathing heavily. For the first time, Alex wondered what it was that he had stumbled onto. What could be so important to the guard that he would be ready to murder a fourteen-year-old boy in cold blood, without even asking questions? Alex wiped the blood away from his mouth and cursed Crawley for coming to him on the football pitch, cursed himself for listening. A front row seat at Wimbledon? At Wimbledon cemetery, perhaps. The guard started walking towards him. Alex tensed himself, then dived out of the way, avoiding a lethal double strike of foot and fist. He landed next to a dustbin, overflowing with rubbish. Using all his strength, he picked it up and threw it, grinning through gritted teeth as the bin crashed into his attacker, spilling rotting food all over him. The guard swore and stumbled backwards. Alex ran round the back of the fridge, trying to catch his breath, searching for a way out.
He had only seconds to spare. He knew that the guard would be coming after him and next time he would finish it. He’d had enough. Alex looked left and right. He saw the cylinders of compressed gas and dragged one out of its wire frame. The cylinder seemed to weigh a ton but Alex was desperate. He wrenched the tap on and heard the gas jetting out. Then, holding the cylinder in front of him with both hands, he stepped forward. At that moment, the guard appeared round the side of the fridge. Alex jerked forward, his muscles screaming, shoving
