Scorpia (29 page)

Alex lay on his back, his shoulders pressing against the railing of the platform. The first sword that Nile had thrown had sliced into the plastic floor, centimetres from his head, and it was still there, quivering, just beside his neck. Nile had unsheathed the second sword and was balancing it in his hand. He was taking his time. Alex knew that he had no need to hurry. He had nowhere to hide. They were less than three metres apart. Alex had
seen what Nile could do. There was no way he would miss.

And yet.

Why was he so slow? Taking his time with the sword, still clutching the railing with his other hand.

Alex looked at him, examining the handsome, flawed face, searching for something in the man’s eyes.

And found it.

That look. He had seen it before. He remembered Wolf, the SAS soldier he had trained with. And suddenly everything made sense. The secret weakness that Mrs Rothman had mentioned. The reason why Nile had come second, not first, at Malagosto. He thought back to their meeting in the bell tower over the monastery. Nile had lingered at the door, unwilling to come forward, holding onto the frame in just the same way that he was holding onto the railing now. No wonder Nile had been so slow climbing up to the balloon.

Nile was afraid of heights.

But that wasn’t going to save Alex. Fifteen seconds had passed since the lights had turned red. Already the nanoshells with their poisonous cargo would be oscillating inside his heart. All over London children would be walking home, waiting for buses, pouring into tube stations, unaware of what was about to happen.

Then Nile spoke.

“This is what I promised would happen to you if you betrayed us,” he said. The smile on his face might have been forced, but there could be no doubting what he was about to do. He balanced the sword in the palm of his hand, feeling the weight before he aimed and threw. “I said I would kill you. And that’s what I’m going to do, right now.”

“Sure, Nile,” Alex replied. “But how are you going to get back down?”

“What?” The smile faltered.

“Just look down, Nile,” Alex went on. “Look how high we are.” He glanced up at the flame and the envelope. “You know, I don’t think this balloon is going to hold us both up.”

“Shut up!” Nile hissed the words. The hand clutching the railing had gone whiter than ever. Alex could see the fingers clenching tighter and tighter.

“Look at the people; look at the cars. See how tiny they are!”

“Stop it!”

And that was when Alex made his move. He already knew what he was going to do. Nile was petrified, unable to react. All his speed and strength had vanished. With a gasp, Alex pulled out the first sword, freeing it from the plastic. In a single movement he swept it up and slashed through one of the rubber pipes that fed the burner.

After that, everything happened very quickly.

The severed pipe coiled left and right like a wounded snake. Propane gas in liquid form was still being pumped through, and as the severed end whipped past the burner, it ignited, becoming at once a huge ball of flame. The pipe twisted back again and spat its deadly payload in the direction of Nile.

Nile had just managed to raise the second sword in the start of what would be his final throw. He was aiming at Alex’s chest. Then the fireball hit him. He screamed once and disappeared. One second he was there, the next he had been blown into the air, a spinning, burning puppet of a man, falling to his death one hundred metres below.

It looked as if Alex was about to follow him.

The entire platform was on fire, the plastic melting. There was burning liquid propane everywhere and it was dissolving everything it touched. Alex struggled to his feet as the flames licked towards him. What now? The burner had gone out but the balloon didn’t seem to be falling. The platform, however, would – and very soon. The four ropes securing it to the envelope were made of nylon and all four of them were on fire. One of them snapped and Alex cried out as the platform tilted, almost throwing him over the edge. His eyes darted to the machinery. The electric cables must be fireproof. The little red lights showed him that the three remaining dishes were still transmitting. More than
a minute must have passed since Nile had appeared, surely! Alex pressed a hand against his chest, expecting at any moment to feel the stab of pain as the poison broke free and entered his system.

But he was still alive, and he knew he had just seconds left to escape from the burning platform. No chance of jumping to safety. He was a hundred metres above the ground. He heard a snapping sound as a second rope began to break. The fire was out of control. It was burning him; it was burning everything.

Alex jumped.

Not down – but up. He leapt first onto the control box and then up so that his hands caught the metal frame surrounding the burner. He hauled himself up and stood. Now he could reach the circular skirt at the bottom of the envelope itself. It was incredible. Looking up, it felt as if he were standing inside a huge, circular room. The walls were fabric but they could have been solid. He was inside the balloon, imprisoned by it. He saw a nylon cord. It led all the way to the parachute valve at the very top. Would it take his weight?

And then the remaining ropes holding the platform gave way. The platform fell, taking the burner and the dishes with it, disappearing from under Alex’s feet. Alex just had time to wind the nylon cord around one hand and grab hold of the fabric of the balloon with the other. Suddenly he was
dangling. Once again his arms and wrists took the strain. He wondered if the balloon would crumple and fall. But most of the weight had gone; only he was left. It stayed where it was.

Alex looked down. He couldn’t stop himself. And that was when he saw – in the middle of the fire and the smoke, the spinning platform and the falling ropes – the three red lights had gone out. He was sure of it. Either the flames had destroyed the machinery or the dishes had deactivated themselves the moment they dropped below one hundred metres.

The terahertz beams had stopped. Not a single child would die.

Nobody was sure where the bag lady had appeared from. Perhaps she had been dossing in the small cemetery behind the Church of Forgotten Saints. But now she had wandered into what, until a few minutes ago, had been a full-scale battle.

She was lucky. The SAS men had taken control of the church and the immediate area. Most of the Scorpia people were dead; the remainder had put down their weapons in surrender. A final explosion had breached the entrance of the church itself. SAS soldiers were already pouring in, searching for Alex.

The bag lady was clearly confused by all this activity; possibly she was also drunk. There was a bottle of cider in one of her hands and she stopped
to force the neck between her rotten teeth and drink. She had a repulsive, withered face and grey hair that was long and knotted. She was dressed in a filthy coat, tied around her bulging waist with string. Her other hand clutched two dustbin bags close to her, as if they contained all the treasure in the world.

One of the soldiers saw her. “Get out of here!” he yelled. “You’re in danger.”

“All right, love!” The bag lady giggled. “What’s the matter, then? It’s like bleeding World War Three.”

But she shuffled off, out of harm’s way, while the SAS men rushed past her, heading for the church.

Underneath the wig, the make-up and the costume, Mrs Rothman smiled to herself. It was almost incredible that these stupid SAS soldiers should let her walk away, slipping between them in plain daylight. She had a gun hidden under her coat and she would use it if anyone tried to stop her. But they were so busy rushing into the church, they had barely noticed her.

And then one of them called out.

“Stop!”

She had been seen after all. Mrs Rothman hurried on.

But the soldier hadn’t been trying to detain her: he had been trying to warn her. A shadow fell across her face and she looked up just in time to
see a blazing rectangle fall out of the sky. Julia Rothman opened her mouth to scream but the sound didn’t have time to reach her lips. She was crushed, driven into the pavement, flattened like a creature in some hideous cartoon. The SAS man who had shouted could only gaze at the burning wreckage in horror. Then, slowly, he looked up to see where it had come from.

But there was nothing there. The sky was clear.

Freed from the platform and the mooring ropes, the balloon had been blown north, with Alex still clinging beneath it. He was limp and exhausted; his legs and the side of his chest had been burnt. It was as much as he could do simply to hang on.

But the air inside the envelope had cooled and the balloon was coming down. Alex had been lucky that the fabric of the balloon was flame-resistant.

Of course, he might still be killed. He had no control of the balloon at all and the wind might choose to steer him into a high voltage wire. He had already crossed the river and could see Trafalgar Square with Nelson’s Column looming up in front of him. It would be a sick joke to land there and end up getting run over.

Alex could only hang on and wait to find out what was going to happen. Despite the pain in his arms, he was aware of a sense of inner peace. Somehow, against all the odds, he had come through everything alive. Nile was dead. Mrs
Rothman was probably a prisoner. The nanoshells were no longer a threat.

And what about him? The wind had changed. It was carrying him to the west. Yes. There was Green Park – just fifty-odd metres below. He could see people pointing up at him and shouting. He silently urged the balloon on. With a bit of luck he might make it all the way to Chelsea, to his house, where Jack Starbright would be waiting. How much further could it be? Did the balloon have the strength to take him there?

He hoped so, because that was all he cared about now.

He just wanted to go home.

I
t ended – inevitably, it seemed to Alex – in Alan Blunt’s office in Liverpool Street.

They had left him alone for a week but then the telephone call had come on Friday evening, asking him to come in. Asking, not telling. That was at least a change. And they had chosen a Saturday, so he wouldn’t have to miss school.

The balloon had dropped him on the edge of Hyde Park, lowering him to the grass as gently as an autumn leaf. It was the end of the day and by that time there were few people in the park. Alex had been able to slip away quietly, five minutes before a dozen police cars had come roaring in. It was a twenty-minute walk home and he had more or less fallen into Jack’s arms before taking a hot bath, wolfing down dinner and going to bed.

He wasn’t badly hurt. There were burns on his arms and chest and his wrist was swollen where he
had dangled from the balloon. Mrs Rothman had also left her mark on his cheek. Looking at himself in the mirror, he wondered how he was going to explain the very obvious-shaped bruise. In the end he told everyone he had been mugged. In a way, he felt, he had.

He had been back at Brookland for five days. Mr Grey was one of the first people to see him crossing the school yard before assembly, and he shook his head warily but said nothing. The teacher had taken it as a personal insult that Alex had disappeared on his school trip to Venice, and although Alex felt terrible, he couldn’t tell him the truth. On the other hand, Tom Harris was overjoyed.

“I knew you’d be OK,” he said. “You sounded a bit down when I spoke to you on the phone. That was after that place had blown up. But at least you were still alive. And a couple of days later, Jerry got this humongous cheque for a new parachute. Except it was about five times too much. He’s in New Zealand now, thanks to you. BASE jumping off some building in Auckland. Just what he’s always wanted!” Tom took out a newspaper cutting. “Was this you?” he demanded.

Alex looked at it. It was a photograph of the hotair balloon drifting over London. He could see a tiny figure clinging to it. Fortunately the picture had been taken from too far away to identify him. Nobody knew what had happened at the Church of Forgotten Saints. And nobody knew he was involved.

“Yes,” Alex admitted. “But, Tom – you mustn’t tell anyone.”

“I’ve already told Jerry.”

“No one else.”

“Yeah. I know. Official secrets and all that.” Tom frowned. “Maybe I should join MI6. I’m sure I’d make a great spy.”

Alex thought of his friend now as he sat down opposite Alan Blunt and Mrs Jones. He lowered himself slowly into the chair, wondering what they were going to say to him. Jack hadn’t wanted him to come here at all.

“The moment they know you’re capable of walking, they’ll probably have you parachuting into North Korea,” she had said. “They’re never going to leave you alone, Alex. I don’t even want to know what happened to you after Venice. But just promise me you won’t let it happen again.”

Alex agreed with her. He would rather have stayed at home. But he knew he had to be here. If nothing else, he owed it to Mrs Jones after what had happened in her flat.

“It’s good to see you, Alex,” Blunt said. “Once again, you’ve done a very good job.”

Very good. The highest praise Blunt knew.

“I’ll just bring you up to date,” Blunt went on. “I don’t need to tell you that Scorpia’s plot was a complete failure, and I very much doubt that they’ll try anything on this scale again. They lost one of their top assassins, the man called Nile,
when he fell out of the balloon. How did that happen, by the way?”

“He slipped,” Alex said shortly. He didn’t want to go over it again.

“I see. Well, you might like to know that Julia Rothman also died.”

That was news to Alex. He had assumed she must have escaped.

Mrs Jones took up the story. “The platform underneath the balloon fell on her as she was trying to escape,” she explained. “She was crushed.”

“I’d have been disappointed too,” Alex muttered.

Blunt sniffed. “The most important thing of all is that London’s children are going to be safe. As that scientist – Dr Stephenson – explained, the nanoshells will slowly pass out of their bodies. I have to tell you, Alex, that the terahertz dishes were transmitting for at least a minute. God knows how close we came to a major disaster.”