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 (9 page)
It was a scorpion—the same creature that had appeared on his note.
He glanced around. Carlos was sitting, tapping at his keyboard. The librarian seemed to have forgotten him. But there were still cameras mounted in all four corners of the room. They would be watching him from the control room beside the gate. Julius put on a performance for their benefit. He took out one book, then another—as if considering which one to read—then finally lifted the wildlife volume and carried it over to a table.
He had chosen the position carefully. The table was right next to a shelf, which screened it from the cameras. Carlos could still see him. But he was fairly certain that the book was out of sight. Very carefully, he opened it. And gasped. How could this have happened? Nobody knew about the prison. Nobody could possibly infiltrate it. And yet there it was in front of him. The pages of the book had been cut out to provide a hiding place for a gun, a Mauser C96 automatic pistol with the barrel shortened to allow it to fit. Julius ran a finger over the cold metal. He had been taught to shoot when he was six years old and had killed for the first time when he was nine. But it had been a long time since he had held a gun in his own hands, and he had thought he would never have one again. For just one moment he felt an urge to pick it up, to turn around and shoot Carlos in the head. But that was crazy. He had to be careful, do this one step at a time.
There was a second note folded into the book. It was much longer and more detailed than the message he had received the night before. Julius read it very carefully. Whoever was helping him, these were serious people. He knew he couldn’t make a mistake. Finally, when he was ready, he closed the book and got up. It was half past twelve, exactly the right time. He knew what he had to do.
The subject has made no progress at all since his arrival in Gibraltar. It is clear that Julius Grief has a pathological hatred for Alex Rider that is deep-rooted and permanent. And yet, at the same time, surgery has made him identical to the object of his hate. It must surely follow that subconsciously, some of that hatred must be directed against himself. In my view, there is a very real danger that this psychological turmoil could drive Grief over the edge and that he could plunge into depression, suicide, or total nervous breakdown. Indeed, it is surprising that it hasn’t happened yet.
Dr. Flint looked at what she had just written and felt a deep sense of gloom. She had been working with damaged children for her entire professional life, but she had never met anyone like Julius Grief. On the one hand, she wanted to feel sorry for him. He wasn’t responsible for what he had become. He had been manipulated from the moment he was born—in fact, even his birth had been manipulated. He was a freak, created for one purpose only: to help his father take over the world. She had read the file on Hugo Grief and it had made her shudder. All sixteen boys had been drip-fed a diet of hatred and insanity, and all of them (apart from two who had died) had ended up in institutions like this, locked up for the rest of their lives. It wasn’t their fault.
And yet no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t avoid the fact that she had a deep dislike for Julius. She knew it was unprofessional, but at the same time it was almost instinctive. He was a horrible person. And she wasn’t fooled by him either. Although he went along with her methods—the discussions, the word association, the different psychological tests—she knew he was toying with her. And he was keeping something back. Even this morning she had been aware of it. He had tried to hide what he was thinking in his expressionless face and his flat, formal answers. But there had been moments when she sensed it, flickering in the corner of her eye like a moth in candlelight. There was something he wasn’t telling her. She wondered if she should mention it to the warden but decided against it. She was the boy’s therapist. She had to respect his confidentiality. She went back to her notes.
I recommend that Julius be put back on medication with immediate effect. Although I do not like drugging young people, I feel that in his case—
The doorbell rang. That was surprising. The warden never came back before two o’clock, and his wife was out for lunch. Dr. Flint went over to the small television screen in the hallway and saw a black-and-white image of Julius standing outside, holding a bunch of flowers that he must have picked himself in the prison garden. She was tempted not to open the door. He shouldn’t be here. It was against regulations. She remembered how he had tried to attack her in one of her first sessions with him. And then there had been the time when he had gone berserk and smashed the mirror. She should tell him to go away.
But then she reconsidered. All that had been a long time ago, and maybe he really was trying to make amends for his behavior that morning. Maybe he had come to tell her what was on his mind. The flowers were a sweet touch. And anyway, there were dozens of cameras that would be trained on him even now. There was no danger. She opened the door.
“What is it, Julius?” she asked.
“It’s a bit difficult to explain, Dr. Flint.”
“Do you want to come back inside?”
“No. As a matter of fact, I’d like you to come with me.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“We’re leaving here—together.”
He dropped the flowers and there it was, in his hand, pointing at her. Dr. Flint stared in shock. Julius Grief was holding a gun, his finger curled around the trigger, a glazed look in his eyes. It was like something out of a nightmare. First, it made no sense at all. How could he possibly have gotten a gun? And yet at the same time there was something horribly inevitable about it. Julius was managing to contain his excitement. He was in total control. Dr. Flint knew that if she didn’t do exactly what he said, he would shoot her without a second thought.
He stepped forward and suddenly the gun was at her throat and his face was close to hers and she could feel the madness as if she had been slapped with it. He was as tall as her and a great deal stronger. He was armed. For the first time since she had known him, his face had cracked into something resembling a smile. Suddenly he was no longer fifteen and the good looks that the plastic surgeon had given him were twisted out of shape. He could have been fifteen or he could have been fifty. Evil has no age. Dr. Flint was terrified. Had she really spent the last six months, twice a week, on her own with this monster?
“I’m going to walk out of here,” Julius said, and his voice was soft even if it was on the edge of hysteria. “Walk, walk, walk, walk. And you’re going to help me.”
“They’ll never let you through the gate.”
Julius pressed the gun into the side of her neck, the sawed-off muzzle pointing upward. “Then they’ll be scraping your brains off the fence,” he told her. “Shall we go, Dr. Flint? I think we should.”
They walked together like two lovers performing some strange sort of dance. Dr. Flint was looking straight ahead, her head tilted, her eyes still staring. Julius was enjoying himself. The feel of the gun in his hand was giving him strength. He loved the way the hard steel pressed into the woman’s flesh. For months he had endured her stupid questions, her endless games. Now, at last, he was the one in command.
Despite all the cameras, Julius Grief and Dr. Flint had almost reached the first gate, the entrance to the holding area, before anyone realized that something was wrong. Perhaps they thought it was some sort of exercise, part of the therapy, but then at last someone saw the gun and realized what was actually going on. At once, long-rehearsed emergency procedures sprang into life. A dozen sirens went off, their combined sound echoing all over the peninsula. Guards burst out of doorways, their weapons ready. The other prisoners were rushed, at gunpoint, back into their cells. An automated phone message had been sent instantly to the Devil’s Tower Camp, home of the Royal Gibraltar Regiment close to the airport, calling for immediate backup, and before Julius had even had a chance to make his demands, half a dozen Land Rovers were speeding out of the garrison and beginning the long climb uphill.
For a moment, everything froze. It was as if the entire compound had become a photograph of itself. Julius Grief was still holding on to Dr. Flint, one hand on her shoulder, the other—with the gun—pressing against her neck. He was surrounded by rifles and automatic machine guns. They were aiming at him from every direction. The sun was beating down, glinting off the razor-wire fence. Somewhere outside the prison, there was a brief chatter of laughter as one of the island’s famous apes swung itself off the branch of a tree and disappeared into the undergrowth.
Then the warden appeared. He was a short, muscular man with silver hair cut short, dressed in army fatigues. He had been in the control room when the alarm was sounded. He stopped in the holding area on the other side of the gate.
“Grief!” he barked. He had been in the Royal Navy for twenty years. He had the sort of voice that was used to being obeyed. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Open the gate or I’ll put a bullet in her.” Julius was loving this. He could feel the world spinning around him. “I’ll kill her. I promise.”
“Where did you get the gun?”
A stupid question. Julius wasn’t going to answer it. “Five seconds,” he called out.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“Four . . .”
The warden had to make a decision. He had no doubt at all that Grief would use the gun. He could see that Rosemary Flint was terrified. The guards were waiting for his command, but he couldn’t let them fire, not unless they wanted to kill the woman too. How could the boy have possibly gotten hold of the weapon? Was it even a real one? He couldn’t take the risk of finding out. Dr. Flint was a civilian. Her safety came first.
“Three seconds, warden.”
Right now, the boy had the upper hand. But that would change on the other side of the prison gates. Backup would already be on its way and Julius Grief hadn’t actually worked it out properly. He had nowhere to go. He was high above the main city and harbor with narrow lanes and hairpin bends all the way down. He wouldn’t be able to keep Flint close to him all the time, and even if he made it to the bottom, there was no way he could leave the peninsula. Nobody was going to let him get on a plane or a ship. The Spanish border authorities would already have been alerted. Everything was on the warden’s side. Once Grief was out, it would be easy to pick him off.
“Open the gate!” Julius shouted. His face was deathly pale. His arm and the hand with the gun were rigid. Even if someone did shoot him, he would still manage to kill Dr. Flint before he died.
“Do what he says!” the warden called out.
For another second nothing happened, as if the guards couldn’t believe what they had just heard. Then there was a click and the heavy gate began to roll aside. Julius grabbed hold of Dr. Flint’s collar and began to drag her forward, the two of them moving side by side. The guns followed them into the holding area.
The inner gate slid shut and they were trapped inside a pen with fences on three sides of them, the control room on the fourth. The warden had retreated, as if trying to get as far away from them as possible. A young guard stared at them from behind a plate glass window. Nothing like this had ever happened at the prison before.
“Julius,” Dr. Flint rasped. It was hard for her to talk with the gun pressed against her throat. “Don’t do this. It’s not going to work.”
“I would very much enjoy pulling this trigger,” Julius replied. “In fact, I’d love it. So if I were you, I’d shut up, Dr. Flint. Don’t give me the excuse.”
The second gate opened, and for the first time in twelve long months, Julius was able to see the little olive groves, the scattered boulders, and the wild grass on the other side of the walls. In the distance he glimpsed the Mediterranean, a twisting ribbon of blue.
“Off we go!”
He forced Dr. Flint forward. This was the critical moment. He knew that as soon as he had left the prison, he would have to get rid of her. She would only slow him down. But that would be when he was most exposed. The guards wouldn’t hesitate to shoot. Julius was putting all his trust in the people who had sent him his instructions—and he still had no idea who they were. If they had tricked him, if they had failed to deliver, he would be killed. But in a way he didn’t care. Better this one minute of freedom than a life behind bars.
The two of them had passed through the outer gate and now the prison was behind them. Julius Grief had been brought here in a blacked-out van, so he had never seen the view. A narrow track ran downhill past some small concrete buildings like pillboxes from the last war. The ground was dusty and covered in pine needles. He could smell pine and eucalyptus in the air. There was nobody in sight, but the letter in the book had warned him that he would have only five minutes before the Royal Gibraltar Regiment Land Rovers reached him. He had to move fast.
He swung his hand, cracking the Mauser across Dr. Flint’s head. The woman cried out and fell to her knees, blood pouring down the side of her face. Julius twisted around and fired three shots at the prison gates, the bullets ricocheting off the brickwork. He hadn’t hurt anyone, but it would give them something to think about. Certainly nobody would choose to come running out in the next few seconds, and he needed all the time he could get.
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