A woman appeared from nowhere-she must have been standing behind him-and Alex recognized Myra Beckett, the supervisor of Greenfields. Bizarrely, she was dressed as a nurse, complete with a starched white hat. The diagonal fringe of dark hair looked more severe than ever, as if it had been sliced with a single sword stroke. Her eyes, behind the round, gold gla.s.ses, were slightly crazy. Alex"s mouth was dry and he was feeling sick, but he managed to swear at her, a single venomous word.
"We"ll do it now," she said.
They took hold of his arm and rolled up his sleeve. Alex winced as they gave him another injection, a long needle sliding into the flesh just above his wrist. But this time they didn"t remove it. Beckett taped it in place and Alex saw there was a tube connecting it to a plastic box about the size of a cigarette packet, which they taped to his arm.
"This IV will continue to give you a timed injection of the drugs we are using over the next few hours," Beckett explained. "You will not be able to move or to speak. There will be other side effects. Try to breathe normally."
Alex felt a wave of a nausea. He was completely helpless. And whatever these people were planning, it wasn"t going to end in this room.
The men rolled back his sleeve, hiding the plastic box. Alex knew that it was pumping its venom, drip by drip, into his bloodstream. He tried to jerk his arm but he had no strength at all. He swore at Beckett a second time, but his voice was no longer working and all that came out was an inarticulate grunt.
Beckett leaned over him and pressed a pair of gla.s.ses onto his face. Alex tried to shake them off, but they were tight-fitting, hooked over his ears. "You can take him out now," she said.
He was in a wheelchair! Alex didn"t realize it until one of the men spun him around and pushed him out the door. They turned into a long corridor. "Wait a minute," Beckett said. She stepped forward and crouched beside Alex so that her face was close to his. "What do you think?" she asked, with a thin smile.
There was a full-length mirror at the end of the corridor. Alex stared at himself in shock and disbelief. His hair had been cut so hideously that he looked two years older than his true age and completely pitiful. The tracksuit was the color of a nasty bruise. It was one size too big and it was covered in stains, as if he was unable to feed himself. His skin was pale and unhealthy. The gla.s.ses he had been given were deliberately ugly; black plastic with thick lenses. They hung slightly crooked on his face.
The drugs had attacked his muscles, paralyzing him and somehow changing the shape of his entire body. His jaw hung open and his eyes were glazed. Alex knew exactly what they had done. They had turned him into a foul parady of a disabled person. They had made him look brain-damaged . . . but worse than that, they had removed his dignity too. In a way, it was a brilliant disguise. People might glance at him in the street, but they would be too embarra.s.sed to look twice. Beckett was taking their prejudices and using them to her own advantage.
Beckett must have given a signal. Alex was taken down the corridor and around to an elevator. After that, the extra drugs must have kicked in, because his world seemed to skip and jump.
He had the foggy sensation of being on the street and wheeled into the van.
He was in the van.
He was at Heathrow Airport! Hadn"t he been here just a few weeks ago with Sabina and her parents? The terminal lights hurt his eyes and he saw people staring briefly at him, then turning away, ashamed of themselves. He tried to call out for help, but the low, pathetic mumbling that came out of his lips only added to the impression that he was handicapped. They had no idea what was going on. They wouldn"t even begin to guess that he was being kidnapped, spirited away in front of their eyes.
Pa.s.sport control. They had provided Alex with fake doc.u.ments, of course, but it seemed to him that the official didn"t look too closely. A boy in a wheelchair accompanied by a nurse. The two men had stayed behind.
"Jonathan loves flying on big airplanes. Don"t you, Jonathan!" Beckett was talking to him, addressing him as if he were six years old.
I"m not . . . Alex wanted to tell the pa.s.sport officer his real name. But nothing resembling a word came out. Alex wanted to tell the pa.s.sport officer his real name. But nothing resembling a word came out.
And now he was in some sort of lounge.
Now being wheeled down a corridor.
On the plane. A seat had been taken out to make room for the wheelchair. Other pa.s.sengers were pa.s.sing him, carrying their luggage. He saw them glance in his direction. Each time the reaction was the same. Puzzlement, the realization that something was wrong, then pity, and finally a sense of embarra.s.sment. The drug was making his knee twitch. His hand, resting on the knee, was doing the same.
"Try to get some sleep, Jonathan," Beckett said. "It"s a long flight."
Where were they taking him? And why? Did they really think they could get away with this, whisking him out of the country with a fake ID? Jack would already know he was missing. The school would have called her and she would have alerted MI6. They would be looking for him. Every airport would be watched.
Except . . .
What day was this? He could have been kept drugged for a few hours or a week. Or a month. Alex had no control over his body, but they had left his mind intact . . . hadn"t they?
He was alert enough to realize it wasn"t completely hopeless. Everything led back to Desmond McCain. MI6 knew what had happened at Greenfields. Jack would tell them about Elm"s Cross. They would track down McCain and that would lead them to him.
They were in the air. How was that possible? Alex couldn"t remember taking off. How long had they been flying? He tried to work out where they might be going. It had been light when they were on the runway, and it was still light now. If they had been in the air for a while, that would suggest, at the very least, that they weren"t heading east. The different time zones would have brought the night in faster. South, then, or west? He couldn"t turn his head-the muscles in his neck refused to work-but as they had filed past, he had noticed that many of the other pa.s.sengers were black, dressed in clothes that were too brightly colored for the UK. They could be going home.
Africa.
Food was served-but not to him. The stewardess smiled at him sadly, as if understanding that he couldn"t feed himself. Beckett brought out some baby food and tried to force it into his mouth with a spoon. Using all his remaining strength, Alex kept his mouth shut. He wasn"t going to be humiliated by her any more than he had been already.
Hours pa.s.sed, yet Alex hardly was aware of it.
They were on the ground.
The doors were open.
And then Alex was being wheeled through an arrivals hall, and a poster on the wall answered the question he had been asking himself for the past how-many hours. A brightly dressed black woman with a huge smile, holding a basket of fruit. And a caption.
SMILE! YOU"RE IN KENYA.
Kenya! Vaguely, Alex remembered something that Edward Pleasure had told him. "He"s the part owner of a safari camp somewhere in Kenya." "He"s the part owner of a safari camp somewhere in Kenya." The words might have been spoken a century ago and on a different planet. Had he really once been in Kilmore Castle, dancing with Sabina? What would she say if she could see him now? The words might have been spoken a century ago and on a different planet. Had he really once been in Kilmore Castle, dancing with Sabina? What would she say if she could see him now?
The plastic box was still resting against his arm, and he actually felt the whole thing vibrate as the timing mechanism clicked in, sending another spurt of the liquid into his veins. He felt unconsciousness returning and didn"t even try to fight it. He was on his own, thousands of miles from home. He had fallen into the hands of a ruthless enemy and n.o.body knew where he was. Ahead of him, a set of automatic doors swung open. Alex was wheeled into the dark.
17.
A SHORT FLIGHT TO NOWHERE.
MOVEMENT RETURNED, one twitch at a time.
Alex had no idea how long he had been here, but he guessed that it couldn"t have been much more than twenty-four hours. He had watched the sun rise, not out of the window but through the cloth that made up the wall. He was lying on his back on a comfortable bed in what seemed to be a cross between a luxury hotel room and a large tent. The floor was made of polished wood. There was an expensive-looking wardrobe, a carved wooden table, and two chairs. A fan hung from the ceiling above his head, turning continuously. He was completely enclosed by a mosquito net that rippled in the breeze. But the walls were made of canvas. The windows consisted of two flaps, fastened from the outside.
Where exactly was he? From the sounds that surrounded him-the chatter of monkeys, the occasional bellow of an elephant, the constant whoops and screams of exotic birds-it seemed that he was in the bush, somewhere in the middle of Kenya.
That tied in with his memories of the journey here, even if they were still confused. There had been the poster he had seen. SMILE! YOU"RE IN KENYA. As if he had felt remotely like smiling! They had gone through pa.s.sport control, and after that the drug must have kicked in again. They had driven across a city, but he had barely seen any of it. It had been late evening. Nairobi? And then there had been a second, smaller airport and another plane, this one a four-seater with propellers. They had bundled him in, leaving the wheelchair behind. And then . . .
He had woken up here, on his own. It was dark . . . evening or night. But they had left two little battery lights on-battery, not electric. At least he could see, even if he couldn"t yet move. The plastic box had been removed from his arm and a dirty bandage stuck over the puncture where the needle had gone in. That had been the first thing he had noticed-and he"d been grateful for it. With the drug no longer pumping into his system, he had begun to recover. He could lift his hand. He could turn his head from side to side, taking in the sweep of the room. Eventually he had stood up and tottered on unsteady legs into the bathroom, behind the bed, separated by a screen. He had thrown up and that made him feel better. Then he had taken a cold shower, the water washing away some of the horror of the past day.
He had still been too weak to make his way outside. He had decided he would wait for the sun. Once again he had fallen asleep, but this time more normally.
And now it was morning. Alex rolled off the bed and stood up. He had slept in his shorts. The tracksuit that they had dressed him in was lying on the floor, a crumpled heap. He noticed that his school uniform had been brought over from England. It seemed somehow strange to see it, but of course he had been wearing it when he was kidnapped. He went over to it, feeling in the inside pocket of his jacket.
Yes. It was there. He had been carrying the black gel-ink pen that Smithers had given him and n.o.body had thought to remove it. It wasn"t as powerful as the device that had brought down the factory chimney, but it might still be useful. At the very least, it gave Alex hope. McCain had made his first mistake.
He was now moving completely normally. They had used a powerful drug on him, but it had left his system completely. Just to be sure, he forced himself to do twenty push-ups, then had another shower. He got dressed in his own pants and shirt, leaving off the jacket. Although it was early morning, it was already warm. He could feel the sun beating through the walls of the tent and the fan was having to fight against the sluggish air. He slipped the gel-ink pen into his pants pocket. From now on, he would make sure it never left him.
The front of the tent was sealed up. There was a large flap with a zipper running around the side. Well, if this was his prison, it was a very flimsy one. Alex went over and unzipped it. At once he saw the green of the jungle, confirming what he had guessed. He was in the bush. But the way was blocked by a guard, a black man dressed in jeans and grimy shirt, a rifle strapped over his shoulder. Alex realized that he must have been there all night.
The guard turned around and scowled. "You stay inside." That seemed to be the limit of his English.
"What time do you serve breakfast?" Alex asked. He had already decided. He wasn"t going to let these people think he was scared.
"Inside." The guard brought the rifle around.
Alex raised his hands and retreated. There was no point starting a fight. Not yet.
Breakfast came half an hour later: tea, canned orange juice, and two slices of toast, carried in by a second guard. Alex wolfed it down. It had been a long time since he had last eaten and his stomach couldn"t have been more empty. There was a bottle of water in the tent, and he drank that too. He had no idea what was going to happen to him. He would take any food or water he could get.
Why had they brought him here? Alex almost admired McCain. The man must have nerves of steel, kidnapping him in broad daylight, smuggling him out of England through one of the world"s busiest airports. But what was the point? McCain must have identified him as the intruder at Greenfields. He would have remembered their meeting at the castle in Scotland. Maybe he had decided to take revenge. After all, he had already tried to kill Alex once.
And yet, somehow, Alex didn"t believe it. Whatever McCain was planning, the stakes were too high. This wasn"t personal. This was business. McCain needed Alex for a reason.
And now Alex was completely in his power. It was probably best not to think too much about what might lie ahead.
Instead, Alex thought about Jack. What would she be doing now? And what about MI6? Once they"d realized he was gone, they"d have spared no effort. Every intelligence agency in the world would be looking for him. Surely someone would remember a fourteen-year-old boy being taken through pa.s.sport control, even if he was in a wheelchair. The trail would lead to Kenya and they must know that McCain had a base here.
Except that McCain would have covered his tracks. He knew exactly what he was doing. Alex was going to have to rely on his own resources to get himself out of this mess. He would just have to wait for an opportunity and take it when it came.
The tent flap suddenly opened and Myra Beckett stepped inside. She had changed once again, wearing a safari outfit-a loose shirt and long pants in different shades of brown. The clothes made her look more masculine than ever. She was carrying what looked like a leather cloth.
She wasn"t alone. A guard had come with her, but not the one he had seen earlier. This one had on dirty jeans and a black sleeveless T-shirt. Alex noticed the knotted muscles of his arms and the machete hanging from his belt. He had narrow, mean eyes. He was looking at Alex as if the two of them had been lifelong enemies.
"I heard you were up," Beckett said. "How are you feeling?"
Alex wasn"t sure what to say. Just seeing her made him feel sick again. "Never better," he muttered.
"The serum that we injected you with was my own invention, and I"m very pleased with the way it worked. It was derived from the water hemlock that we cultivate at Greenfields. The effect is not dissimilar to a snake bite, only far less permanent. Can I trust you to behave yourself? If not, we can always inject you with some more."
"What do you want with me?" Alex asked.
"You"ll find out in good time. For the moment, let me introduce you to Njenga." She gestured at the guard. "He"s a Kikuyu tribesman, as are all the guards here, and they will do anything we tell them. There are no other jobs, you see. You might like to know that the Kikuyus once fought against the British with a ferocity that made them a source of great terror. One of their tricks was to impale their victims with a spear up their backside, then leave them to die slowly on the side of a hill. I mention this only as a warning not to annoy them."
"Nice to meet you, Njenga," Alex said.
Njenga"s scowl deepened.
"Where"s McCain?" Alex demanded.
"The Reverend McCain won"t be here until later today. It is very likely that your friends in MI6 are watching him, so he had to take a more roundabout route. But he"s hoping to have dinner with you this evening. In the meantime, I thought you might like to come with me."
"Where are we going?"
"Oh-nowhere in particular." Beckett smiled, her lips barely moving. "A short flight to nowhere." She lifted the piece of leather and Alex saw that it was a flying cap. "You don"t mind another plane?"
"Do I have any choice?"
"Not really. This way . . ."
She led him out of the tent.
He was in a safari camp. The tent where he had spent the night was one of a dozen, each one surrounded by a wooden veranda and built into the embrace of a wide river that swept around them. Alex looked at the silver water rippling past, with a tangled wall of green rising in a steep bank on the other side. This really was a beautiful spot. He heard chattering above him and looked up to see a family of gray monkeys leaping from the branches of a juniper tree, using their hands and tails. Some of the mothers had tiny babies clinging to their chests.
"The monkeys are a nuisance," Beckett muttered. She snapped out an order in another language and one of the guards standing beside the path lifted his rifle and fired. A dead monkey plunged out of the tree and crashed to the ground. The others scattered. "The guards are equally accurate with guns and spears," she went on. "They keep the population down."
"What is this place?" Alex asked. He was careful not to react to what he had just seen. He knew it had been done for his benefit.
"This is the Simba River Camp, a business that belongs to Mr. McCain. I take it you know which country you"re in?"
"Kenya."
"That"s right." Another hint of a smile. It was as if she had forgotten how to do the real thing. "We"re on the edge of the Rift Valley. Simba River Camp was once a world-cla.s.s safari lodge with visitors from America, Europe, and j.a.pan. Brad Pitt once stayed here. Unfortunately, it became a victim of the global recession. The visitors stopped coming and the business went bust."
Looking around, Alex could see it for himself. His was the only tent that had been occupied. The others were empty and falling into disrepair. The path that they were following had been neglected, with weeds and wild gra.s.s breaking through. They pa.s.sed a swimming pool, but it had no water and the cement was cracked. All around, the vegetation was tumbling over itself, out of control. If the camp was left to itself for much longer, it would be swallowed up, disappearing into the bush, and n.o.body would know that it had ever existed.
They came to a beaten-up Land Rover with dirty windows and wires tumbling out of the dashboard. Njenga climbed into the driving seat with Beckett next to him. Alex went in the back. He was moving completely normally now and he was glad of it. Even on this short journey, he might get a chance to break away.
"It"s seventy miles to the next camp, and I doubt that you"d ever find it," Beckett said. She must have seen what he was thinking. "So please don"t entertain any foolish ideas. The Kikuyus are also excellent trackers. They would be able to follow your trail in the darkness, even in the pouring rain. I"m afraid Njenga would enjoy hacking you to pieces. That"s the sort of person he is. If I were you, I wouldn"t give him the opportunity."
They rumbled along a dirt track for a couple of minutes, pa.s.sing through a wire fence with a rusting gateway and leaving the camp behind them. Almost at once they came to an airstrip-a dusty orange runway that had somehow been cut through the long gra.s.s. A dilapidated wooden hut stood to one side, with a wind sock hanging limply from a pole. This must have been where Alex landed when he was brought to Simba River Camp, although he had no memory of it.
There was a plane parked on the gra.s.s next to a line of about thirty oil drums. Alex had never seen anything quite like it. It was like an oversized toy with two seats, one behind the other, three wheels, and a single propeller at the front. It had no cabin or c.o.c.kpit. A slanting window would protect the pilot, but any pa.s.senger would be sitting outside, feeling the full force of the air currents. A single wing, on struts, stretched out from left to right, and Alex saw a series of rubber tubes running all the way to the tips. These were connected to two plastic drums lashed to the side of the plane just behind the pa.s.senger seat.
It was a crop duster, but a very old one. It should have been in a museum. Alex wondered if it could really fly.
"This is the Piper J-3 Cub," Beckett told him. She had taken off her gla.s.ses and was putting on the flying cap, fastening it under her chin. She was also wearing a leather jacket, which she had brought from the Land Rover. Alex noticed that she wasn"t offering him anything to keep him warm. "Twenty-two feet long. Sixty-five horsepower engine. They used them for training during the war. Please, get in."
Njenga stood near the car. Alex was feeling increasingly uneasy, but he did as he was told. There was a metal lever between the seats connected to a control box, with two sets of wires running toward the wings. When he sat down, it was right in front of him. There was almost no room for his feet. Myra Beckett got into the front and made a few checks. She produced a pair of goggles and slipped them over her eyes. Then she flicked a switch and the propeller began to turn.
It took a full minute to blur and then come up to speed. Alex could feel the high-pitched buzz of the engine and knew that from this point on there would be no more conversation. That suited him. He had nothing to say to the woman.
Njenga moved forward and pulled the chocks from under the wheels. Alex clicked on his seat belt. The Piper rolled forward.
They taxied to the end of the runway, b.u.mping up and down on the uneven surface. At least Beckett seemed to be an experienced pilot. She spun the plane around, then raced back again, the engine straining like an overworked lawnmower. Alex wondered if they had enough speed to get into the air, but after one last b.u.mp they were up, with the wind rushing past and the ground sweeping away below.
Alex looked back. He could see Njenga standing on his own beside the car and behind him, separated by a line of brush, Simba River Camp, with the water now a silver ribbon twisting around it. The far bank rose steeply, then sloped down again, opening onto a great savannah that fanned out to the horizon. He saw a herd of antelope, startled by the sound of the engine, racing across the plain as if it were a bed of hot coals, their feet barely touching the gra.s.s. In any other circ.u.mstances, it would have been a beautiful sight. The flat African landscape, with its burned-out yellows and browns, had a true majesty. The sun was shining. The sky was a brilliant blue. Just for a moment, he was able to forget the trouble he was in.
Beckett had taken the Piper to a height of perhaps one thousand feet, at the same time tilting away from the river, heading north. Alex could see the compa.s.s on the control panel in front of her. He studied the landscape, holding up a hand to protect his eyes from the slice of the wind. They were flying over a sprawl of green, but there were hills ahead of them, gray and rocky, rising up to the east and west, then closing together to form an upside-down V. In the far distance, he made out what looked like a man-made wall, but it would have to be a very big one if he could see it from here. Over to one side, he noticed a track winding up into the hills, and an electricity pylon. Had Beckett been lying when she said there was no one around for seventy miles? There seemed to be signs of civilization much closer than that.
They flew over a wheat field. The entire valley between the hills had been planted with the crop, which looked almost ready to harvest. Alex could see thousands of golden blades bending in the breeze. He wondered how it could possibly grow out here in this heat, and a moment later he got his answer. The wall he had seen was a dam built into the neck of the valley. The plane flew over it and suddenly they were above water, a huge lake stretching out to the mountain range on the far sh.o.r.e. The water must somehow feed into the river. It would also be used to feed the crops.