Authors: Anthony Horowitz
Tags: #Europe, #Law & Crime, #Family, #Action & Adventure, #Juvenile Fiction, #Orphans & Foster Homes, #General, #People & Places, #Mysteries & Detective Stories, #Terrorism, #Fiction, #Orphans, #Spies, #Middle East
Scorpia Rising (13 page)
Did he miss it? Did he mind being an ordinary schoolboy once again? Alex felt he had passed through a tunnel. There had been a brief time when he had needed the danger, when he was almost glad to be part of the secret world of MI6. After all, that was what he had been trained for virtually all his life. His father had been a spy. His uncle, Ian Rider, had been a spy. Between the two of them, they had made sure he would follow in what had become a family tradition.
But now he was out in the light. Enough time had passed since Kenya to remind him that real life was better. Herod Sayle, Dr. Grief, Mrs. Rothman, Major Sarov, Damian Cray, Winston Yu, and most recently, Desmond McCain. He had come up against them and they were all dead. It was time now to leave them behind.
He glanced at his watch. Despite Jack’s wake-up call, he was going to be late for school—and this in the week when the principal, Mr. Lee, had announced double detention for latecomers, part of Brookland’s annual crack-down on personal discipline. One term it had been crooked ties and shirts out of pants. The next it had been chewing gum. Now it was timekeeping. It was good to have such little things to worry about. Alex buttoned up his shirt and looped his tie over his head. Then he hurried down to the kitchen for breakfast.
There were two soft-boiled eggs waiting for him on the table. Alex was amused to see that Jack still insisted on cutting his toast into Marmite soldiers. She was making coffee for herself and tea for him, and as he took his place, she brought the two cups over.
“Alex—you look a complete mess. Your tie’s crooked, you haven’t brushed your hair, and that shirt’s crumpled.”
“It’s only school, Jack.”
“If I ran the school, I wouldn’t let you in.”
She set the two cups on the table and sat down herself, watching fondly as Alex sliced off the tops of his eggs and dipped the first soldier in. “Have you got any plans this weekend?” she asked. “I thought maybe after you finished rowing, we could take off somewhere . . . get out of London.”
“Actually, I’m away this weekend.” Alex had forgotten to tell her.
“Where?”
“Tom’s invited me over. His brother’s coming over from Italy and we thought we’d get together.” Tom Harris was as much of a mess as ever, living with his mother after his father had walked out. Alex had met his brother, Jerry, when he’d first gone chasing after Scorpia, in Rome. Tom and Jerry. As Tom often said, the names told you everything you needed to know about their parents.
“Okay. That’s fine. I’ll put out a toothbrush and a spare set of clothes.”
Was there something in Jack’s voice? Alex glanced in her direction, but she seemed okay. She looked the way she always did—relaxed and a bit ramshackle, dressed in a T-shirt, jeans, and a loose-fitting cardigan. She was sitting with her elbows on the table, cradling her coffee cup and smiling. But just for a moment she hadn’t quite sounded like herself. It was as if she had something on her mind.
“Is something the matter?” Alex asked.
“No!” She pulled herself together. “No. I’m sorry. I just stayed up a little too late last night and I’m a bit tired.”
That would make sense. Jack had recently started teaching herself Italian. Alex wasn’t quite sure why, although one of the reasons might have been the Italian teacher who was twenty-nine, dark, and built like a boxer. She was certainly taking it seriously with private lessons twice a week and tapes every night.
“You’re not worrying about me, are you? I haven’t heard a thing from MI6.”
“I know,” Jack said. “It’s not that.” She shook her head. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
Ten minutes later, Alex was on his way, cycling to school on the new Raleigh Pioneer 160 that he’d bought to replace his old Condor Roadracer. It wouldn’t have been his first choice, but he’d managed to get a deal from the supplier and it was perfect for getting around London, not too flashy, not likely to get stolen. And after he’d changed the seat to an ergonomically designed Rido R2, it was comfortable enough too. Glancing around, he saw Jack standing at the door, waving him good-bye. That was strange too. Normally, she wouldn’t have left the kitchen.
But it was a beautiful spring day. The sun was shining. Alex forgot about her as he accelerated toward the King’s Road. A moment later he had turned the corner and he was gone.
Jack closed the door.
She was annoyed with herself. She still hadn’t talked to Alex about the letter she had received a week ago. It was typical of her mother to put it all down with pen and paper rather than to telephone or send an e-mail. Her parents weren’t that old, only in their sixties, but they had always been purposefully old-fashioned—as if they were determined to show that their world was better than the one that was taking shape all around them.
And now her father was ill. He’d had a stroke at the start of the spring and he needed someone to look after him. Jack’s mother did what she could. Jack had an older sister, but she was living in Florida with three young children of her own. Jack had now been in England for coming up to ten years and her mother was suggesting, very gently, that she ought to think about coming home.
And in her heart, Jack knew that she was right. Maybe it was time to go.
It wasn’t just because of her father. She had her own future to think about. Here she was in London, almost thirty and single. She had first come to England as a student with a place at St. Martin’s School of Art, planning to become a jewelry designer. She had started working for Ian Rider to pay the fees and somehow she had allowed herself to get sucked into his world. In the early days, she would live at the Chelsea house when Ian Rider was abroad, taking Alex to school, then slipping away to do her studies until it was time to pick him up. But Ian had been away more and more often until it had made sense to move in permanently. Suddenly, without ever really choosing it, she had become part of the family, almost a big sister for Alex. She had adored him from the start, even when he was seven years old. And she felt sorry for him too. She had been told that both his parents had died in a plane crash, and she could see that Ian Rider was no substitute, not when he traveled so much.
And then Ian Rider had died and everything had changed.
Had she ever wondered about her employer? He had told her he worked in international banking and she had taken his word for it, but looking back, she knew that she had been foolish. No international banker kept three different passports in his desk drawer. Jack had come upon them once, looking for a pair of scissors, and she had asked him about them. It was the only time Ian Rider had ever been angry with her.
“Never ask me about my work, Jack. It’s the one thing I’ll never talk about. Not with you. Not with Alex . . .”
She could hear his voice now and wondered how she could have been so stupid. No international bankers stayed away for weeks at a time—and certainly none of them returned with so many inexplicable injuries. Ian had been mugged in Rome, involved in a car crash in Geneva, and broken his arm skiing in Vancouver. He had joked about it, saying he was accident prone . . . until, that is, the final accident had revealed the truth.
What Alex didn’t know, what Jack had never told him, was that she had actually decided to leave two weeks before Ian Rider had set off for Cornwall on the mission that had killed him. She had even gone as far as typing out her resignation letter. She had felt dreadful—but thinking about it, she was sure she was doing the right thing. She wasn’t going to be a nanny and a housekeeper forever, and the longer she stayed, the harder it would finally be to break the bonds with Alex. She would still be his friend, visiting whenever she could. But it was definitely time to move on.
And then the news had come of Ian’s death, the funeral, the first meeting with Alan Blunt, and the almost incredible truth that Ian had been a spy, working for MI6 all along. That was when Alex had been recruited. And what had persuaded Alex to risk his life that first time, investigating the Stormbreaker computer? He hadn’t done it for his country. He hadn’t done it out of respect for his uncle. No—MI6 had threatened to expel Jack from the country, and he had agreed to help them in return for a permanent visa so that she could stay.
How could she abandon him after that? As far as Jack knew, Alex had no living relatives. She had tried to find some trace of his grandparents, but it seemed that all four of them had died young. There were no uncles or aunts. The closest relative she’d been able to dig up was a cousin living in Glossop, and she couldn’t quite imagine Alex starting a new life there. And so she had stayed. She was almost the only person in the world who knew his secret. So long as he was involved with MI6, nobody could take her place.
All that seemed to be behind them now. The last time she had seen Mrs. Jones, it had been a few days before Alex’s fifteenth birthday at St. Dominic’s Hospital in north London. Alex had just gotten back from Kenya—badly hurt—and that was when she had finally put her foot down and insisted that there would be no further missions, that from now on MI6 would leave him alone. Mrs. Jones had made no promises, but Jack had sensed that maybe she had won the argument. Certainly, she had heard nothing since.
In truth, Alex was probably too old for them now. He didn’t look like a child anymore. Jack remembered how he had once crawled up a chimney when he was training with the SAS. He wouldn’t be able to manage that again. There were probably SAS men who were smaller than him now.
But if Jack was relieved that this part of their lives was behind them, there was one side effect that she hadn’t foreseen. Alex didn’t need her so much now. That was what it all boiled down to. He wasn’t going to come home wounded with burns or bullet holes. There was no need to protect him. And the two of them were growing apart. Recently Alex had begun spending more and more time without her, with his friends. Take this weekend, for example. He’d casually mentioned that he was taking off with Tom Harris and hadn’t even stopped to consider that he would be leaving her on her own. It was the same last spring, when he’d been away for two weeks with Sabina. Jack didn’t mind. It was how it should be. He was a teenager. But she didn’t feel wanted. And that told her that—at last—it was time to move on.
All she had to do was tell Alex. She would leave at the end of the summer vacation and together they would find someone to take her place. Of course he’d be sad. He’d probably argue with her, but in the end he’d see it her way. Jack got up and set about clearing the breakfast things. She had put it off too many times already, but her mind was set. She would talk to him when he got home tonight.
“Okay. We’re going to start with a warm-up.” Grant Donovan, head of math at Brookland School, pressed a button and six geometric shapes appeared on the whiteboard. Each one had an angle marked
x
. “In three of these diagrams,
x
equals forty-five degrees,” he explained. You’ve got five minutes to tell me which, and the first person to finish gets this week’s bonus prize.”
x
. “In three of these diagrams,
x
equals forty-five degrees,” he explained. You’ve got five minutes to tell me which, and the first person to finish gets this week’s bonus prize.”
“I hope it’s better than last week’s bonus prize,” someone called out.
“The last one of you to finish gets a page of negative multiplications to take home.”
There was a general groan and everyone put their heads down.
Alex tried to concentrate on the shapes, but they were just floating in front of him, refusing to come into focus. All the triangles looked the same to him, like one of those puzzles in a “spot the difference” magazine. It had been the same in English Lit an hour before, trying to make sense of a passage from Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night.
“If music be the food of love . . .” Or was it “the love of food,” and what did it mean, anyway? He was finding it hard to think. He could see the words on the page, but they refused to come together to make sentences.
Twelfth Night.
“If music be the food of love . . .” Or was it “the love of food,” and what did it mean, anyway? He was finding it hard to think. He could see the words on the page, but they refused to come together to make sentences.
He put his pen down and ignored the triangles. There was something on his mind, and he wouldn’t be able to do anything until he had worked out what it was. He played back the events of the day. He had gotten out of bed as usual, showered, and dressed. He’d actually finished his homework the night before—nothing to worry about there. He knew his lines for the school play. No money worries. He still had plenty left from his weekly allowance.
Then down to breakfast. He replayed the conversation with Jack and in particular the moment he had told her he would be away for the weekend. That was it. She’d been upset. He’d actually challenged her about it, and although she’d denied it, he could tell from her voice . . .
Now that he thought about it, Alex realized that the two of them had been spending less time together recently. What with homework, the school play, the rowing, and all the rest of it, there were days when they hardly spoke at all. Suddenly he was ashamed of himself. Jack had always been there for him. She was always looking after him. But he’d given her the impression that she didn’t matter to him at all.
He glanced out the window. There was a building site across the road, a new block of apartments going up opposite the school. Everyone was already joking about who exactly would want to live with a view of seven hundred teenagers—not to mention the noise at half past eight in the morning and a quarter to four every afternoon. The site was empty today. The builders seemed to come in more or less when they felt like it, but Alex noticed a single man making his way across the roof in a crouching run with a bag slung across his shoulder.
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