Point Blank

setting. There was a sort of heaviness about the place, a sense of being cut off from the real world. The air was warm and silent, and despite the size of the rooms, Alex couldn’t help feeling claustrophobic. Grief had said that there were only six boys currently at the school. The building could have housed sixty. Empty space was everywhere.

There was nobody in either of the living rooms—just a collection of armchairs, desks, and tables—but they found a couple of boys in the library. This was a long, narrow room with old-fashioned oak shelves lined with books in a variety of languages. A suit of medieval Swiss armor stood in an alcove at the far end.

‚This is Tom. And Hugo,' James said. ‚They’re probably doing extra math or something, so we’d better not disturb them.'

The two boys looked up and nodded briefly. One of them was reading a textbook. The other had been writing. They were both much better dressed than James and didn’t look very friendly.

‚Creeps,' James said as soon as they had left the room.

‚In what way?'

‚When I was told about this place, they said all the kids had problems. I thought it was going to be wild. Do you have a cigarette?'

‚I don’t smoke.'

‚Great, another one… I get here and it’s like a museum or a monastery or … I don’t know what. It looks like Dr. Grief’s been busy. Everyone’s quiet, hardworking, boring. God knows how he did it. Sucked their brains out with a straw or something. A couple of weeks ago I got into a fight with a couple of them, just for the hell of it.' He pointed to his face. ‚They beat the crap out of me and then went back to their studies. Really creepy!'

They went into the games room, which contained table tennis, darts, a wide-screen TV, and a snooker table. ‚Don’t try playing snooker,' James said. ‚The room’s on a slant and all the balls roll the wrong way.'

Then they went upstairs, where the boys had their study-bedrooms. Each one contained a bed, an armchair, a television (‚It shows only the programs Dr. Grief wants you to see,' James said), a bureau, and a desk. A second door led into a small bathroom with a toilet and shower.

None of the rooms was locked.

‚We’re not allowed to lock them,' James explained. ‚We’re all stuck here with nowhere to go, so nobody bothers to steal anything. I heard that Hugo Vries—the boy in the library—used to steal anything he could get his hands on. He was arrested for shoplifting in Amsterdam.'

‚But not anymore?'

‚He’s another success story. He’s flying home next week. His father owns diamond mines.

Why bother shoplifting when you can afford to buy the whole shop?'

Alex’s study was at the end of the corridor, with views over the ski jump. His suitcases had already been carried up and were waiting for him on the bed. Everything felt very bare, but according to James, the study- bedrooms were the only part of the school the boys were allowed to decorate themselves. They could choose their own bedspreads and cover the walls with their own posters.

‚They say it’s important that you express yourself,' James said. ‚If you haven’t brought anything with you, Miss Stomach-bag will take you into Grenoble.'

‚Stomach-bag?'

‚Mrs. Stellenbosch. That’s my name for her.'

‚What do the other boys call her?'

‚They call her Mrs. Stellenbosch.' James sighed. ‚I’m telling you—this is a deeply weird place, Alex. I’ve been to a lot of schools because I’ve been thrown out of a lot of schools. But this one is the pits. I’ve been here for six weeks now and I’ve hardly had any lessons. They have music evenings and discussion evenings and they try to get me to read. But otherwise, I’ve been left on my own.'

‚They want you to assimilate,' Alex said, remembering what Dr. Grief had said.

‚That’s their word for it. But this place … they may call it a school, but it’s more like being in prison. You’ve seen the guards. '

‚I thought they were here to protect us.'

‚If you think that, you’re a bigger idiot than I thought. Think about it! There are about thirty of them. Thirty armed guards for seven kids? That’s not protection. That’s intimidation.' James paused by the door. He examined Alex for a second time. ‚It would be nice to think that someone has finally arrived who I can relate to,' he said,

‚Maybe you can,' Alex said.

‚Yeah. But for how long?'

James left, closing the door behind him.

Alex began to unpack. The bulletproof ski suit and infrared goggles were at the top of the first suitcase. It didn’t look as if he would be needing them. It wasn’t as if he even had any skis.

Then came the Discman. He remembered the instructions Smithers had given him. ‚If you’re in real trouble, just press Fast Forward three times.' He was almost tempted to do it now. There was something unsettling about the academy. He could feel it even now, in his room. He was like a goldfish in a bowl. Looking up, he almost expected to see a pair of huge eyes looming over him, and he knew that they would be wearing red-tinted glasses. He weighed the Discman in his hand. He couldn’t hit the panic button—yet. He had nothing to report back to MI6. There was nothing to connect the school with the deaths of the two men in New York and the Black Sea.

But if there was anything, he knew where he would find it. Why were two whole floors of the building out of bounds? It made no sense at all. Presumably the guards slept up there, but even though Dr. Grief seemed to employ a small army, that would still leave a lot of empty rooms. The third and fourth floors. If something was going on at the academy, it had to be going on up there.

A bell sounded downstairs. Alex shut his suitcase, left his room, and walked down the corridor. He saw another couple of boys walking ahead of him, talking quietly together. Like the boys he had seen in the library, they were clean and well dressed with hair cut short and neatly groomed. Really creepy, James had said. Even on first sight, Alex had to agree.

He reached the main staircase. The two boys had gone down. Alex glanced in their direction, then went up. The staircase turned a corner and stopped. Ahead of him was a sheet of metal that rose up from the floor to the ceiling and all the way across, blocking off the view. The wall had been added recently, like the helipad. Someone had carefully and deliberately cut the building in two.

There was a door set in the metal wall and beside it a keypad with nine buttons demanding a code. Alex reached for the door handle, his hand closing around it. He didn’t expect the door to open—nor did he expect what happened next. The moment his fingers came into contact with the handle, an alarm went off, a shrieking siren that echoed throughout the building. A few seconds later, he heard footsteps on the stairs and turned to find two guards facing him, their guns half raised.

Neither of them spoke. One of them ran past him and punched a code into the keypad. The alarm stopped. And then Mrs. Stellenbosch was there, hurrying forward on her short, muscular legs.

‚Alex!' she exclaimed. Her eyes were filled with suspicion. ‚What are you doing here? The director told you that the upper floors are forbidden.'

‚Yeah … well, I forgot.' Alex looked straight at her. ‚I heard the bell go and I was on my way to the dining room.'

‚The dining room is downstairs.'

‚Right.'

Alex walked past the two guards, who stepped aside to let him pass. He felt Mrs. Stellenbosch watching him while he went. Metal doors, alarms, and guards with machine guns. What were they trying to hide? And then he remembered something else. The Gemini Project. Those were the words he had heard when he was listening at Dr. Grief’s door. Gemini.

The twins. One of the twelve star signs. But what did it mean? Turning the question over his mind, Alex went down to meet the rest of the students.

THINGS THAT GO CLICK IN THE NIGHT