Point Blanc (11 page)

He had more
than an hour to kill. First he went into the bathroom--more glass and
white marble--and took a long shower. Then, wrapped in a towel, he went back
into the room and turned on the television. Alex Friend would watch a lot of
television. There were about thirty channels to choose from. Alex skipped past
the French ones and stopped on MTV. He wondered if he was being monitored.
There was a large mirror next to the desk, and it would be easy enough to
conceal a camera behind it. Well, why not give them something to think about?
He opened the minibar and poured himself a glass of gin. Then he went into the
bathroom, refilled the bottle with water, and put it back in the fridge.
Drinking alcohol and stealing! If she was watching, Madame Stellenbosch would
know that she had her hands full with him.

He spent the
next forty minutes watching television and pretending to drink the gin. Then he
took the glass into the bathroom and dumped it in the sink. It was time to get
dressed. Should he do what he was told and put on neater clothes? In the end,
he compromised. He put on a new shirt, but kept the same jeans. A moment later,
the telephone rang. His call for dinner.

Mrs. Stellenbosch
was waiting for him in the restaurant, a large, airless room in the basement.
Soft lighting and mirrors had been used to make it feel more spacious, but it
was still the last place Alex would have chosen. The restaurant could have been
anywhere, in any part of the world. There were two other
diners--businessmen, from the looks of them--but otherwise they were
alone. Mrs. Stellenbosch had changed into a black evening dress with
feathers at the collar, and she had an antique necklace of black and silver
beads. The fancier her clothes, Alex thought, the uglier she looked. She was
smoking another cigar.

"Ah,
Alex!" She blew smoke. "Did you have a rest? Or did you watch
TV?"

Alex
didn't say anything. He sat down and opened the menu, then closed it
again when he saw that it was all in French.

"You
must let me order for you. Some soup to start, perhaps? And then a steak.
I've never yet met a boy who doesn't like steak."

"My
cousin Oliver is a vegetarian," Alex said. It was something he had read
in one of the files.

The assistant
director nodded as if she already knew this. "Then he doesn't know
what he is missing," she said. A palefaced waiter came over and she
placed the order in French. "What will you drink?" she asked.

"I'll
have a Coke."

"A
repulsive drink, I've always thought. I have never understood the taste.
But of course, you shall have what you want."

The waiter
brought a Coke for Alex and a glass of champagne for Mrs. Stellenbosch.
Alex watched the bubbles rising in the two glasses, his black, hers a pale
yellow.

"
Sante
." she said.

"I'm
sorry?"

"It's
French for good health."

"Oh.
Cheers..."

There was a
moment's silence. The woman's eyes were fixed on him as if she
could see right through him. "So you were at Eton," she said
casually.

"That's
right." Alex was suddenly on his guard.

"What
house were you in?"

"The
Hopgarden." It was the name of a real house at the school. Alex had read
the file carefully.

"I
visited Eton once. I remember a statue. I think it was of a king. It was just
through the main gate..."

She was
testing him. Alex was sure of it. Did she suspect him? Or was it simply a
precaution, something she always did? "You're talking about Henry
the Sixth," he said. "His statue's in College Yard. He
founded Eton."

"But
you didn't like it there."

"No."

"Why
not?"

"I
didn't like the uniform and I didn't like the beaks." Alex
was careful not to use the word
teachers
.
At Eton, they're known as beaks. He half smiled to himself. If she wanted
a bit of Eton-speak, he'd give it to her. "And I didn't like
the rules. Getting fined by the Pop. Or being put in the Tardy Book. I was
always getting Rips and Infoes ... or being put on the Bill. The divs were
boring..."

"I'm
afraid I don't really understand a word you're saying."

"Divs
are lessons," Alex explained. "Rips are when your work is no
good."

"I
see!" She drew a line with her cigar. "Is that why you set fire to
the library?"

"No,"
Alex said. "That was just because I don't like books."

The first
course arrived. Alex's soup was yellow and had something floating in it.
He picked up his spoon and poked at it suspiciously. "What's
this?" he demanded.

"
Soupe de moules
. "

He looked at
her blankly.

"Mussel
soup. I hope you enjoy it."

"I'd
have preferred tomato," Alex said.

The steaks,
when they came, were typically French: barely cooked at all. Alex took a couple
of mouthfuls of the bloody meat, then threw down his knife and fork and used
his fingers to eat all the french fries. Mrs. Stellenbosch talked to him
about the French Alps, about skiing, and about her visits to various European
cities. It was easy to look bored. He
was
bored. And he was beginning to feel tired. He took a sip of Coke, hoping the
cold drink would wake him up. The meal seemed to be dragging on all night.

But at last
the desserts--ice cream with white chocolate sauce--had come and
gone. Alex declined coffee.

"You're
looking tired," Mrs. Stellenbosch said. She lit another cigar. The
smoke curled around her head and made him feel dizzy. "Would you like to
go to bed?"

"Yes."

"We
don't need to leave until midday tomorrow. You'll have time for a
visit to the Louvre, if you'd like that."

Alex shook
his head. "Actually, paintings bore me."

"Really?
What a shame!"

Alex stood
up. Somehow his hand knocked into his glass, spilling the rest of the Coke over
the pristine white tablecloth. What was the matter with him? Suddenly he was
exhausted.

"Would
you like me to come up with you, Alex?" the woman asked. She was looking
carefully at him, a tiny glimmer of interest in her otherwise dead eyes.

"No.
I'll be all right." Alex stepped away. "Good night."

Getting
upstairs was an ordeal. He was tempted to take the elevator, but he
didn't want to lock himself into that small, windowless cubicle. He would
have felt suffocated. He climbed the stairs, his shoulders resting heavily
against the wall. Then he stumbled down the corridor and somehow got his key
into the lock. When he finally got inside, the room was spinning. What was
going on? Had he drunk more of the gin than he had intended, or was he ...?

Alex
swallowed. He had been drugged. There had been something in the Coke. It was
still on his tongue, a sort of bitterness. There were only three steps between
him and his bed, but it could have been a mile away. His legs wouldn't
obey him anymore. just lifting one foot took all his strength. He fell forward,
reaching out with his arms. Somehow he managed to propel himself far enough.
His chest and shoulders hit the bed, sinking into the mattress. The room was
spinning around him, faster and faster. He tried to stand up, tried to
speak--but nothing came. His eyes closed. Gratefully, he allowed the
darkness to take him.

Thirty
minutes later, there was a soft click and the room began to change.

If Alex had
been able to open his eyes, he would have seen the desk, the minibar, and the
framed pictures of Paris begin to rise up the wall. Or so it might have seemed
to him. But in fact the walls weren't moving. It was the floor that was
sinking downward on hidden hydraulics, taking the bed--with Alex on
it--into the depths of the hotel. The entire room was nothing more than a
huge elevator that carried him, one inch at a time, into the basement and
beyond.

Now the walls
were metal sheets. He had left the wallpaper, the lights, and the pictures high
above him. He was dropping through what might have been a ventilation shaft
with four steel rods guiding him to the bottom. Brilliant lights suddenly
flooded over him. There was a soft click. He had arrived.

The bed had
come to rest in the center of a gleaming underground clinic. Scientific
equipment crowded in on him from all sides. There were a number of cameras:
digital, video, infrared, and X-ray. There were instruments of all shapes and
sizes, most of them unrecognizable to anyone without a science degree. A tangle
of wires spiraled out from each machine to a bank of computers that hummed and
blinked on a long worktable against one of the walls. A glass window had been
cut into the wall on the other side. The room was air-conditioned. Had Alex
been awake, he might have shivered in the cold. His breath appeared as a faint
white cloud, hovering around his mouth.

A plump man
wearing a white coat had been waiting to receive him. The man, who was about
forty, had yellow hair that he wore slicked back, and a face that was rapidly
sinking into middle age, with puffy cheeks and a thick, fatty neck. The man had
glasses and a small mustache. Two assistants were with him, also wearing white
coats. Their faces were blank.

The three of
them set to work at once. Handling Alex as if he were a sack of
vegetables--or a corpse--they picked him up and stripped off all his
clothes. Then they began to photograph him, beginning with a conventional
camera. Starting at his toes, they moved upward, clicking off at least a
hundred pictures, the flash igniting and the film automatically advancing. Not
one inch of his body escaped their examination. A lock of his hair was snipped
off and put into a plastic envelope. An opthalmoscope was used to produce a
perfect image of the back of his eye. They made a mold of his teeth, slipping a
piece of putty into his mouth and manipulating his chin to make him bite down.
They made a careful note of the birthmark on his left shoulder, the scar on his
arm, and even the ends of his fingers. Alex bit his nails; that was recorded
too. Finally, they weighed him on a large, flat scale and then measured
him--his height, chest size, waist, inside leg, hand size, and so
on--making a note in their books of every measurement.

And all the
time, Mrs. Stellenbosch watched from the other side of the window. She
never moved. The only sign of life anywhere in her face was the cigar, clamped
between her lips. It glowed red, and the smoke trickled up.

The three men
had finished. The one with the yellow hair spoke into a microphone.
"We're all finished, he said.

"Give
me your opinion, Mr. Baxter." The woman's voice echoed out of
a speaker concealed behind the wall.

"It's
a cinch." The man called Baxter was English. He spoke with an upper-class
accent, and he was obviously pleased with himself. "He's got a good
bone structure. Very fit. Interesting face. You notice the pierced ear?
He's had that done recently. Nothing else to say, really."

"When
will you operate?"

"Whenever
you say, old girl. Just let me know."

Mrs. Stellenbosch
turned to the other two men. "
Envoyez
lui
!" She snapped the two words.

The two
assistants put Alex's clothes back on him. This took longer than taking
them off. As they worked, they made a careful note of all the brand names. The
Quiksilver T-shirt. The Gap socks. By the time they had dressed him, they knew
as much about him as a doctor knows about a newborn baby. It had all been noted
down.

Mr. Baxter
walked over to the worktable and pressed a button. At once, the carpet, bed,
and hotel furniture began to rise up. They disappeared through the ceiling and
kept going. Alex slept on as he was carried back through the shaft, finally
arriving in the space that he knew as room 13.

There was
nothing to show what had happened. The whole experience had evaporated, as
quickly as a dream.

THE
ACADEMY AT POINT Blanc had been built by a lunatic. For a time it had been used
as an asylum. Alex remembered what Alan Blunt had told him as the helicopter
began its final descent, the red and white helipad looming up to receive it.
The photograph in the brochure had been artfully taken. Now that he could see
the building for himself, he could only describe it as ... crazy.

It was a
jumble of towers and battlements, green sloping roofs and windows of every
shape and size. Nothing fitted together properly. The overall design should
have been simple enough: a circular central area with two wings. But one wing
was longer than the other. The two sides didn't match. The academy was
four floors high, but the windows were spaced in such a way that it was hard to
tell where one floor ended and the next began. There was an internal courtyard
that wasn't quite square, with a fountain that had frozen solid. Even the
helipad, jutting out of the roof, was ugly and awkward, as if someone had
thrown a giant Frisbee that had smashed into the brickwork and lodged in place.