It had to be now – the middle of the night. When they had searched him, the guards hadn’t quite taken everything. Neither of them had even noticed the gold stud in his ear. What had Smithers said? “It’s a small but very powerful explosive. Separating the two pieces activates it. Count to ten and it’ll blow a hole in just about anything…”
Now was the time to put it to the test.
Alex reached up and unscrewed the ear-stud. He pulled it out of his ear, slipped the two pieces into the keyhole of the door, stepped back and counted to ten.
Nothing happened. Was the stud broken, like the Discman transmitter? Alex was about to give up when there was a sudden flash, an intense sheet of orange flame. Fortunately there was no noise. The flare continued for about five seconds, then went out. Alex went back to the door. The stud had burned a hole in it, the size of a two pound coin. The melted metal was still glowing. Alex reached out and pushed. The door swung open.
Alex felt a momentary surge of excitement, but he forced himself to remain calm. He might be out of the cell but he was still in the basement of the academy. There were guards everywhere. He was on top of a mountain with no skis and no obvious way down. He wasn’t safe yet. Not by a long way.
He slipped out of the room and followed the corridor back round to the lift. He was tempted to find the other boys and release them but he knew that they couldn’t help. Taking them out of their cells would only put them in danger. Somehow, he found his way back to the lift. He noticed that the guard-post he had seen that morning was empty. Either the man had gone to make himself a coffee or Grief had relaxed security in the academy. With Alex and all the other boys locked up, there was nobody left to guard. Or so they thought. Alex hurried forward. It seemed that luck was on his side.
He took the lift back to the first floor. He knew that his only way off the mountain lay in his bedroom. Grief would certainly have examined everything he had brought with him. But what would he have done with it? Alex crept down the dimly lit corridor and into his room. And there it all was, lying in a heap on his bed. The ski suit. The goggles. Even the Discman with the Beethoven CD. Alex heaved a sigh of relief. He was going to need all of it.
He had already worked out what he was going to do. He couldn’t ski off the mountain. He still had no idea where the skis were kept. But there was more than one way to take to the snow. Alex froze as a guard walked along the corridor outside the room. So not everyone at the academy was asleep! He would have to move fast. As soon as the broken cell door was discovered, the alarm would be raised.
He waited until the guard had gone, then stole into the laundry room a few doors down. When he came out, he was carrying a long flat object made of lightweight aluminium. He carried it into his bedroom, closed the door and turned on one small lamp. He was afraid that the guard would see the light if he returned. But he couldn’t work in the dark. It was a risk he had to take.
He had stolen an ironing-board.
Alex had only been snowboarding three times in his life. The first time, he had spent most of the day falling or sitting on his bottom. Snowboarding is a lot harder to learn than skiing – but as soon as you get the hang of it, you can advance fast. By the third day, Alex had learned how to ride, edging and cutting his way down the beginner slopes. He needed a snowboard now. The ironing-board would have to do.
He picked up the Discman and turned it on. The Beethoven CD spun, then slid forward, its diamond edge jutting out. Alex made a mental calculation, and began to cut. The ironing-board was wider than he would have liked. He knew that the longer the board, the faster he could go, but if he left it too long he would have no control. The ironing-board was flat. Without any curve at the front – or the nose, as it was called – he would be at the mercy of every bump or upturned root. But there was nothing he could do about that. He pressed down and watched as the spinning disc sliced through the metal. Carefully Alex drew it round, forming a curve. About half the ironing-board fell away. He picked up the other half. It almost reached his chest, with a point at one end and a curve at the back. Perfect.
Now he sliced off the supports, leaving about six centimetres sticking up. He knew that the rider and the board can only work together if the bindings are right and he had nothing; no boots, no straps, no highback to support his heel. He was just going to have to improvize. He tore two strips of sheet from the bed, then slipped into his ski suit. He would have to tie one of his trainers to what was left of the ironing-board supports. It was horribly dangerous. If he fell, he would dislocate his foot.
But he was almost ready. Quickly Alex zipped up the ski suit. Smithers had said it was bulletproof and it occurred to him that he was probably going to need it. He put the goggles around his neck. The window still hadn’t been repaired. He dropped the ironing-board out, then climbed out after it.
There was no moon now. Alex found the switch concealed in the goggles and turned it. He heard a soft hum as the hidden battery activated, and suddenly the side of the mountain glowed an eerie green and Alex was able to see the trees and the deserted ski-run falling away.
He carried the ironing-board over to the edge of the snow and used the sheet to tie it to his foot. Carefully he took up his position, his right foot at forty degrees, his left foot at twenty. He was goofy-footed. That was what the instructor had told him. His feet should have been the other way round. But this was no time to worry about technique. Alex stood where he was, contemplating what he was about to do. He had only ever done green and blue runs – the colours given to the beginner and intermediate slopes. He knew from James that this mountain was an expert black all the way down. His breath rose up in green clouds in front of his eyes. Could he do it? Could he trust himself?
An alarm bell exploded behind him. Lights came on throughout the academy. Alex pushed forward and set off, picking up speed with every second. The decision had been made for him. Now, whatever happened, there could be no going back.
Dr Grief, wearing a long silver dressing-gown, stood beside the open window in Alex’s room. Mrs Stellenbosch was also in a robe – hers was pink silk and looked strangely hideous, hanging off her lumpy body. Three guards stood watching them, waiting for instructions.
“Who searched the boy?” Dr Grief asked. He had already been shown the cell door with the circular hole burnt into the lock.
None of the guards answered, but their faces had gone pale.
“This is a question to be answered in the morning,” Dr Grief continued. “For now, all that matters is that we find him and kill him.”
“He must be walking down the mountainside!” Mrs Stellenbosch said. “He has no skis. He won’t make it. We can wait until morning and pick him up in the helicopter.”
“I think the boy may be more inventive than we believe.” Dr Grief picked up the remains of the ironing-board. “You see? He has improvized some sort of sleigh or toboggan. All right…” He had come to a decision. Mrs Stellenbosch was glad to see the certainty return to his eyes. “I want two men on snowmobiles, following him down. Now!” One of the guards hurried out of the room.
“What about the unit at the foot of the mountain?” Mrs Stellenbosch said.
“Indeed.” Dr Grief smiled. He had always kept a guard and a driver at the end of the last valley in case anybody ever tried to leave the academy on skis. It was a precaution that was about to pay off. “Alex Rider will have to arrive in la Vallée de Fer. Whatever he’s using to get down, he’ll be unable to cross the railway line. We can have a machine-gun set up waiting for him. Assuming he does manage to get that far, he’ll be a sitting duck.”
“Excellent,” Mrs Stellenbosch purred.
“I would have liked to watch him die. But, yes. The Rider boy has no hope at all. And we can return to bed.”
Alex was on the edge of space, seemingly falling to certain death. In snowboarding language, he was catching air – meaning that he had shot away from the ground. Every ten metres he went forward, the mountainside disappeared another five metre
s downward. He felt the world spin around him. The wind whipped into his face. Then somehow he brought himself in line with the next section of the slope and shot down, steering the ironing-board ever further from Point Blanc. He was moving at a terrifying speed, trees and rock formations passing in a luminous green blur across his night-vision goggles. In some ways the steeper slopes made it easier. At one point he had tried to make a landing on a flat part of the mountain – a tabletop – to slow himself down. He had hit the ground with such a bone-shattering crash that he had nearly blacked out and had taken the next twenty metres almost totally blind.
The ironing-board was shuddering and shaking crazily and it took all his strength to make the turns. He was trying to follow the natural fall-line of the mountain but there were too many obstacles in the way. What he most dreaded was melted snow. If the board landed on a patch of mud at this speed, he would be thrown and killed. And he knew that the further down he went, the greater the danger would become.
But he had been travelling for five minutes and so far he had only fallen twice – both times into thick banks of snow that had protected him. How far down could it be? He tried to remember what James Sprintz had told him, but thinking was impossible at this speed. He was having to use every ounce of his conscious thought simply to stay upright.
He reached a small lip where the surface was level and drove the edge of the board into the snow, bringing himself to a skidding halt. Ahead of him the ground fell away alarmingly. He hardly dared look down. There were thick clumps of trees to the left and to the right. In the distance there was just a green blur. The goggles could only see so far.
And then he heard the noise coming up behind him. The scream of at least two – maybe more – engines. Alex looked back over his shoulder. For a moment there was nothing. But then he saw them – black flies swimming into his field of vision. There were two of them, heading his way.
Grief’s men were riding specially adapted Yamaha Mountain Max snowmobiles equipped with 700cc triple-cylinder engines. The bikes were flying over the snow on their 141-inch tracks, effortlessly moving five times faster than Alex. The 300-watt headlights had already picked him out. Now the men sped towards him, cutting the distance between them with every second that passed.
Alex leapt forward, diving into the next slope. At the same moment, there was a sudden chatter, a series of distant cracks, and the snow leapt up all around him. Grief’s men had machine-guns built into their snowmobiles! Alex yelled as he swooped down the mountainside, barely able to control the sheet of metal under his feet. The makeshift binding was tearing at his ankle. The whole thing was vibrating crazily. He couldn’t see. He could only keep going, trying to keep his balance, hoping that the way ahead was clear.
The headlights of the nearest Yamaha shot out and Alex saw his own shadow stretching ahead of him on the snow. There was another chatter from the machine-gun and Alex ducked down, almost feeling the fan of bullets spray over his head. The second bike screamed up, coming parallel with him. He had to get off the mountainside. Otherwise he would be shot or run over. Or both.
He forced the board onto its edge, making a turn. He had seen a gap in the trees and he made for it. Now he was racing through the forest, with branches and trunks whipping past like crazy animations in a computer game. Could the snowmobiles follow him through here? The question was answered by another burst from the machine-guns, ripping through the leaves and branches. Alex searched for a narrower path. The board shuddered and he was almost thrown forward head first. The snow was getting thinner! He edged and turned, heading for two of the thickest trees. He passed between them with millimetres to spare. Now – follow that!
The Yamaha snowmobile had no choice. The rider had run out of paths. He was travelling too fast to stop. He tried to follow Alex between the trees, but the snowmobile was too wide. Alex heard the collision. There was a terrible crunch, then a scream, then an explosion. A ball of orange flame leapt over the trees, sending black shadows in a crazy dance. Ahead of him Alex saw another hillock and, beyond it, a gap in the trees. It was time to leave the forest.
He swooped up the hillock and out, once again catching air. As he left the trees behind him, two metres above the ground, he saw the second snowmobile. It had caught up with him. For a moment the two of them were side by side. Alex doubled forward and grabbed the nose of his board. Still in mid-air, he twisted the tip of the board, bringing the tail swinging round. He had timed it perfectly. The tail slammed into the second rider’s head, almost throwing him out of his seat. The rider yelled and lost control. His snowmobile jerked sideways as if trying to make an impossibly tight turn. Then it left the ground, cartwheeling over and over again. The rider was thrown off, then screamed as the snowmobile completed its final turn and landed on top of him. Man and machine were bounced across the surface of the snow and then lay still. Alex slammed into the snow and skidded to halt, his breath clouding green in front of his eyes.
A second later he pushed off again. Ahead of him he could see that all the pistes were leading into a single valley. This must be the bottleneck called la Vallée de Fer. So he’d actually done it! He’d reached the bottom of the mountain. But now he was trapped. There was no other way round. He could see lights in the distance. A city. Safety. But he could also see the railway line stretching right across the valley, from left to right, protected on both sides by an embankment and a barbed wire fence. The glow from the city illuminated everything. On one side the track came out of the mouth of a tunnel. It ran for about a hundred metres in a straight line before a sharp bend carried it round the other side of the valley and it disappeared from sight.
The two men in the grey van saw Alex snowboarding towards them. They were parked on a road on the other side of the railway line and had been waiting for only a few minutes. They hadn’t seen the explosion and wondered what had happened to the two guards on their snowmobiles. But that wasn’t their concern. Their orders were to kill the boy. And there he was, right out in the open, expertly managing the last black run through the valley. Every second brought him closer to them. There was nowhere for him to hide. The machine-gun was a Belgian FN MAG and would cut him in half.
Alex saw the van. He saw the machine-gun aiming at him. He couldn’t stop. It was too late to change direction. He had come this far, but now he was finished. He felt the strength draining out of him. Where were MI6? Why did he have to die, out here, on his own?
And then there was a sudden blast as a train thundered out of the tunnel. It was a goods train, travelling at about twenty miles an hour. It had at least thirty carriages, pulled by a diesel engine, and it formed a moving wall between Alex and the gun, protecting him. But it would only be there for a few seconds. He had to move fast.
Barely knowing what he was doing, Alex found a last mound of snow and, using it as a launch pad, swept up into the air. Now he was level with the train … now above it. He shifted his weight and came down onto the roof of one of the carriages. The surface was covered in ice and for a moment he thought he would fall off the other side, but he managed to swing round so that he was snowboarding along the carriage tops, jumping from one to another, at the same time being swept along the track – away from the gun – in a blast of freezing air.
He had done it! He had got away! He was still sliding forward, the train adding its speed to his own. No snowboarder had ever moved so fast. But then the train reached the bend in the track. The board had no purchase on the icy surface. As the train sped round to the left, the centrifugal force threw Alex to the right. Once again he soared into the air. But he had finally run out of snow.
Alex hit the ground like a rag doll. The snowboard was torn off his feet. He bounced twice, then hit a wire fence and came to rest with blood spreading around a deep gash in his head. His eyes were closed.
The train ploughed on through the night.
Alex lay still.
AFTER THE FUNERAL
The ambulance raced down the Avenue Maquis de Gresiv
audan in the north of Grenoble, heading towards the river. It was five o’clock in the morning and there was no traffic yet, no need for the siren. Just before the river it turned off into a compound of ugly modern buildings. This was the second biggest hospital in the city. The ambulance pulled up outside the Service des Urgences. Paramedics ran towards it as the back doors flew open.
Mrs Jones got out of her hired car and watched as the limp, unmoving body was lowered on a stretcher, transferred to a trolley and rushed in through the double doors. There was already a saline drip attached to his arm. An oxygen mask covered his face. It had been snowing up in the mountains but down here there was only a dull drizzle, sweeping across the pavements. A doctor in a white coat was bending over the stretcher. He sighed and shook his head. Mrs Jones saw this. She crossed the road and followed the stretcher in.
A thin man with close-cropped hair, wearing a black jersey and padded waistcoat, had also been watching the hospital. He saw Mrs Jones without knowing who she was. He had also seen Alex. He took out a mobile telephone and made a call. Dr Grief would want to know…
Three hours later the sun had risen over the city. Grenoble is largely modern and even with its perfect mountain setting it struggles to be attractive. On this damp, cloudy day it was clearly failing.
Outside the hospital, a car drew up and Eva Stellenbosch got out. She was wearing a silver and white chessboard suit, with a hat perched on her ginger hair. She carried a leather handbag and for once she had put on make-up. She wanted to look elegant. She looked like a man in drag.
She walked into the hospital and found the main reception desk. There was a young nurse sitting behind a bank of telephones and computer screens. Mrs Stellenbosch addressed her in fluent French.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I understand that a young boy was brought here this morning. His name is Alex Friend.”