“Leave him here. It's not our job. Disposal can pick him up later.” They walked away. One of them stopped beside a wall, painted to look like crumbling stone, and pulled open a concealed panel to reveal a button. He pressed it and the wall slid open. There was a brightly lit corridor on the other side. The three men went off to change.
Alex opened his eyes.
The trick he had played was so old that he was almost ashamed. If it had been done on the stage, it wouldn't have fooled a six-year-old. But he supposed that circumstances were a little different here.
Left on his own in the miniature jungle, he had reclaimed the broken spear that he had used to kilt the snake. He had tied it to his chest using the wire he had torn out of the security camera.
Then he had covered himself with blood taken from the dead snake. That had been the worst part, but he'd had to make sure that the illusion would work. Steeling himself, he had scooped up some more of the blood and put it in his mouth. He could still taste it now and he was having to force himself not to swallow. But it had fooled the men completely. None of them had looked too closely. They had seen what they wanted to see.
Alex waited until he was certain he was alone, then sat up and untied the spear. He would just have to hope that the cameras had all been turned off when the game had ended. The exit was still open and Alex stole through, leaving the make-believe world behind him. He found himself in an ordinary corridor, stretching into the distance with tiled walls and plain wooden doors on either side. He knew that although the immediate danger was behind him, he could hardly afford to start relaxing yet. He was half naked and covered in blood. He was still trapped in the heart of the compound. And it could only be a matter of time before someone discovered that the body had disappeared and realized the trick that had been played.
He opened the first of the doors. It led into a storage cupboard. The second and third doors were locked, but halfway down the corridor he found a changing room with showers, lockers and a laundry basket. Alex knew that it would cost him precious minutes, but he had to get clean. He stripped and showered, then dried himself and got dressed again. Before he left the room he searched through the laundry basket and found a shirt to replace the one he had burnt. The shirt was dirty and two sizes too big, but he pulled it on gratefully.
Carefully he opened the door—and quickly closed it again as two men walked past, talking in Dutch. They seemed to be heading for the mirror maze, and Alex hoped they weren't part of the disposal team. If so, the alarm would be raised at any moment. He counted the seconds until they had gone, then crept out and hurried the other way.
He came to a staircase. He had no idea where it went, but he was certain he had to go up.
The stairs led to a circular area with several corridors leading off it. There were no windows. The only illumination came from industrial lights set at intervals in the ceiling. He looked at his watch. It was eleven fifteen. Two and a quarter hours had passed since he had first broken into the compound; it felt much longer. He thought about Jack, waiting for him in the hotel in Amsterdam. She would be out of her mind with worry.
Everything was silent. Alex guessed that most of Cray's people would be asleep. He chose a corridor and followed it to another staircase. Again he went up, and found himself in a room that he knew. Cray's study. The room where he had seen the man called Charlie Roper die.
Alex was almost afraid to go in. But the room was deserted and, peering through the opening, he could see that the bottle-shaped chamber had been cleared, the money and the body taken away.
It seemed strange to him that there should be no guard assigned to this room, at the very heart of Cray's network. But then again, why should there be? All the security was centred on the main gate. Alex was supposedly dead. Cray had nothing to fear.
Ahead of him was the staircase that he knew would lead up to the glass cube and out onto the square. But as tempted as he was to race over to it, Alex realized he would never have another opportunity like this. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that even if he made it to MI6, he still had no real proof that Cray wasn't just the pop celebrity and businessman that everyone thought. Alan Blunt and Mrs Jones hadn't believed him the last time he'd seen them.
They might not believe him again.
Ignoring his first instincts, Alex went over to the desk. There were about a dozen framed photographs on the surface, each and every one showing a picture of Damian Cray. Ignoring them, Alex turned his attention to the drawers. They were unlocked. The lower drawers contained dozens of different documents but most of them were nothing more than lists of figures and hardly looked promising. Then he came to the last drawer and let out a gasp of disbelief. The metallic capsule that Cray had been holding when he talked to the American was simply sitting there. Alex picked it up and weighed it in the palm of his hand. The flash drive. It contained computer codes. Its job was to break through some sort of security system. It had come with a price tag of two and a half million dollars. It had cost Roper his life.
And Alex had it! He wanted to examine it, but he could do that later. He slipped it into his trouser pocket and hurried over to the stairs.
Ten minutes later the alarms sounded throughout the compound. The two men that Alex had seen had indeed gone into the mirror maze to pick up the body and discovered that it wasn't there.
They should have raised the alarm at once, but there had been a delay. The men had assumed that one of the other teams must have collected it and had gone to find them. It was only when they discovered the dead snake and the spear with the coil of wire that they put together what had taken place.
While this was happening, a van was driving out of the compound. Neither the tired guards at the gate nor the driver had noticed the figure lying flat, spreadeagled on the roof. But why should they? The van was leaving, not arriving. It didn't even stop in front of the security cameras. The guard merely checked the driver's ID and opened the gate. The alarm rang seconds after the van had passed through.
There was a system in place at Cray Software Technology. Nobody was allowed to enter or leave during a security alert. Every van was equipped with a two-way radio and the guard at the gate immediately signalled to the driver and told him to return. The driver stopped before he had even reached the traffic light and wearily obeyed. But it was already too late.
Alex slipped off the roof and dropped to the ground. Then he ran off into the night.
Damian Cray was back in his office, sitting on the sofa holding a glass of milk. He had been in bed when the alarm went off and now he was wearing a silver dressing gown, dark blue pyjamas and soft cotton slippers. Something bad had happened to his face. The life had drained out of it, leaving behind a cold, empty mask that could have been cut out of glass. A single vein throbbed above one of his glazed eyes.
Cray had just discovered that the flash drive had been taken from his desk. He had searched all the drawers, ripping them out, upturning them and scattering their contents across the floor.
Then, with an inarticulate howl of rage, he had thrown himself onto the desktop, flailing about with his arms and sending telephones, files and photograph frames flying. He had smashed a paperweight into his computer screen, shattering the glass. And then he had sat down on the sofa and called for a glass of milk.
Yassen Gregorovich had watched all this without speaking. He too had been called from his room by the alarm bells, but, unlike Cray, he hadn't been asleep. Yassen never slept for more than four hours. The night was too valuable. He might go for a run or work out in the gym. He might listen to classical music. On this night he had been working with a tape recorder and a well-thumbed exercise book. He was teaching himself Japanese, one of the nine languages he had made it his business to learn.
Yassen had heard the alarms and known instinctively that Alex Rider had escaped. He had turned off the tape recorder. And he had smiled.
Now he waited for Cray to break the silence. It had been Yassen who had suggested quietly that Cray should look for the flash drive. He wondered if he would get the blame for the theft.
“He was meant to be dead!” Cray moaned. “They told me he was dead!” He glanced at Yassen, suddenly angry. “You knew he'd been in here.”
“I suspected it,” Yassen said.
“Why?”
Yassen considered. “Because he's Alex,” he said simply.
“Then tell me about him!”
“There is only so much I can tell you.” Yassen stared into the distance. His face gave nothing away. “The truth about Alex is that there is not a boy in the world like him,” he began, speaking slowly and softly. “Consider for a moment. Tonight you tried to kill him—and not just simply with a bullet or a knife, but in a way that should have
