“Then perhaps it was no more than an unhappy coincidence. Unhappy, that is, for you. But I’m glad we have this time together. Although I’m afraid that both you and Miss Knight must be dispensed with soon, at least I’ve been given the opportunity to explain myself to you. You see, Alex, I’d like Paul to know about me. I’d like to tell him everything I’m about to tell you. But he’s weak. He’s not ready yet. He might even end up hating me for what I am. But you, I know, will understand.”
Drevin lowered his nose into the glass and breathed in deeply.
“I am, as you mentioned just now, a rich man. One of the richest men on the planet. I employ a team of accountants who work for me full-time all the year round, and even they are unsure quite how much I am worth. You have no idea what it’s like, Alex, to be able to have anything you want. I can walk into a shop to buy a suit and decide instead to buy the shop. If I see a new car or ship or plane in a magazine, it can be mine before the end of the day. At the last count I had eleven houses around the world. I can sleep in a different country every day of the week and wake up in yet another little bit of paradise.
“Of course, as you’ve probably been told, this wealth did not come to me in a way that you might describe as honest. Such terms are of no interest to me. I am a criminal; I freely admit it. I have killed many people personally and countless more have died as a result of my orders. Many of my associates are criminals. Why should this trouble me? There’s not a successful businessman alive who has not at some time cheated or lied. We all do it! It’s just a question of degree.
“I have been hugely successful for the past twenty years, and I fully intend to become richer and more successful in the years to come. However” – Drevin’s face grew dark – “about eighteen months ago I became aware of two small problems, and these have forced me into a particular course of action. They are the reason why you are here now, Alex. They are problems that could all too easily destroy me and which I have spent a great deal of time and money seeking to overcome.”
“Why are you telling me all this if you’re planning to kill me?” Alex asked.
“It is because I’m planning to kill you that I can tell you,” Drevin replied. “There will be no danger of you repeating what you hear. But please don’t interrupt again, Alex, or I shall have to ask Magnus to hurt you.”
He closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, he was fully composed.
“The first problem,” he said, “concerns the State Department of the United States, which decided to investigate some of my financial dealings, particularly those involving the Russian mafiya. Of course, I have been aware right from the start that they were building a case against me. I have always been a careful man. I avoid written evidence and make sure there are no witnesses who might incriminate me. But even so, it would not be possible to act on the scale that I do without leaving some trace of myself, and I knew that the Americans were squirrelling away the bits and pieces, talking to anyone who’d ever met me – and that sooner or later they were planning to bring me to court.
“The obvious solution to this seemed to be to destroy the US State Department and in particular the men and women whose job it had been to meddle in my affairs. It occurred to me that in one respect they were actually being quite helpful. They had gathered all the evidence together: a case of putting all their eggs in one basket! With a single, well-aimed missile, I could kill all the investigators and destroy all the tapes, files, scraps of paper, telephone records, computer printouts – everything! I could begin again with a completely clean sheet. The more I thought about it, the more grateful I became to the Americans for what they were doing.
“Of course, it wasn’t going to be easy. Because, you see, the investigation was based in one of the most secure buildings in the world – the Pentagon in Washington. The place is nothing more than a huge slab of concrete – and much of it underground. It employs an anti-terrorist force that operates twenty-four hours a day. Every form of monitoring device you could imagine can be found there, and since 9/11, no commercial plane can get anywhere near. The Pentagon is thoroughly protected against chemical, biological and radiological attack. I know, because I considered them all. But even a brief examination showed me that any such approach was doomed to failure.
“And now, if you’ll permit me, I’ll move on to the second problem that I mentioned. It may seem completely unrelated to the first. For a long time, I thought it was. But you will see in a minute how it all connects.”
Alex said nothing. He was aware of Magnus Payne and the men who made up Force Three watching him. He was still wondering how they fitted into all this. And where was Kaspar, the man with the tattooed skull? Even now, nothing quite added up. Alex shifted in the chair, trying to get some feeling back into his hands and feet.
“My other problem was Ark Angel,” Drevin went on. “Space tourism has always interested me, Alex, and when the British government approached me to go into partnership with them, I must confess I was flattered. I would benefit from the money they would put into the project. I would be at the forefront of one of the most challenging and potentially profitable enterprises of the twenty-first century. And it would provide me with the one thing I most needed: respectability! The Americans might view me as a criminal, but it would give them pause for thought when they saw that I was having supper with the Queen. It occurred to me that they might find it rather more difficult to drag me off to prison when I was Sir Nikolei Drevin. Or even Lord Drevin. Sometimes it helps to have the right contacts.
“And so I agreed to become partners with your government in the Ark Angel project, the world’s first space hotel. It’s above us right now. It’s always above us. And I can never forget it. Because, you see, it has become a nightmare, a catastrophe. Even without the Americans and their investigation, Ark Angel could easily destroy me.”
Drevin frowned and took a large sip of brandy.
“Ark Angel is billions of pounds over budget. It’s sucking me dry. Even with all my wealth I can no longer support it. And it’s all the fault of your stupid government. They can’t make a decision without talking about it for months. They have committees and subcommittees. And when they do make a decision, it’s always the wrong one. I should have known from the start. Look at the Scottish parliament! The Millennium Dome! Everything the British government builds costs ten times as much as it should and doesn’t even work.
“Ark Angel is the same. It’s late, it’s leaking and it’s lost any hope of ever being completed. The whole thing is falling apart. And for months now I’ve been thinking, if only the wretched thing would simply fall out of the sky. I could scrape back at least some of my money because, like every major project, it is insured. More than that, I’d be able to wipe my hands of it. I’d be able to wake up without having it, quite literally, hanging over my head. There were days when I seriously considered paying someone to blow it up.
“And that, Alex, is when I had my big idea. It’s as I told you. Two problems that came together with one single solution.”
Drevin leant forward and at last Alex saw quite clearly the madness in his eyes.
“I wonder how much you know about physics, Alex. Even as we sit here now, there are hundreds of objects orbiting above us in outer space, from small communications satellites to giant space stations such as the ISS and Mir before that. Have you ever wondered what keeps them there? What stops them from falling down?
“Well, the answer is a fairly simple equation consisting of their speed balanced against their distance from the earth. You might be amused to know that, theoretically, it would be possible for a satellite to orbit the earth just a few metres above your head. But it would have to go impossibly fast. Ark Angel is three hundred miles away. It’s therefore able to maintain its orbital velocity at just seventeen and a half thousand miles per hour. But even so, every few months it has to be reboosted. The same was true for Mir when it was in orbit, and for the International Space Station now. Every few months,
rockets which are known as progress vehicles have to push all these large satellites back into space. Otherwise they’d come crashing down.
“In fact, some of them do exactly that. The Russian space probe Mars 96 fell out of the sky on 17 November 1996 and the pieces rained down across South America. In April 2000 the second stage of a Delta rocket narrowly missed Cape Town. The world has been very lucky that so far there has been no major catastrophe. Well, almost three quarters of the planet is water. There are huge deserts and mountain ranges. The chances of a piece of space junk hitting a populated area are relatively small. Even so, most astronomers would agree, it is an accident waiting to happen.
“Are you finding this hard to follow? I’ll make it easy for you. Imagine swinging a conker on a piece of string around your hand. If you slow down, the conker will fall and hit your hand. And there you have it. The conker is the space station; your hand is the earth. It doesn’t take a great deal to cause one to crash into the other.
“And that is exactly what I intend to do.
“Tomorrow, when Gabriel 7 blasts off, it will be carrying a bomb which has been exactly timed and which must be exactly positioned within Ark Angel. Everything has been worked out on computers and the program is locked in. If you look at a map, you will find that Washington is positioned at around thirty-eight degrees north. The angle of inclination followed by Ark Angel – its flight path – is also thirty-eight degrees. This means that every time it orbits the earth, it passes directly over Washington.
“The bomb will go off two hours after Gabriel 7 has docked with Ark Angel – at exactly half past four. This will have the effect of knocking Ark Angel out of its orbit. The space station will begin to topple towards the earth. It will enter the earth’s atmospheric drag and after that things will begin to happen very quickly. The more atmosphere that surrounds it, the faster it will fall. Soon it will be tumbling out of control. Or that is how it will seem. In fact, I have secretly programmed what are known as de-orbit manoeuvres into Ark Angel. Although it will seem to be moving haphazardly, it will be as accurate as an independently targeted nuclear missile.
“Can you imagine it, Alex? Ark Angel weighs about seven hundred tonnes. Of course, much of it will burn up as it re-enters the earth’s atmosphere. But I estimate that about sixty per cent of it will survive. That’s about four hundred tonnes of molten steel, glass, beryllium and aluminium travelling at around fifteen thousand miles an hour. The Pentagon is the primary target. The building will be destroyed. All the people working there will die, and every last scrap of information will be incinerated. I rather suspect that the shock wave will destroy most of Washington too. The Capitol. The White House. The various monuments. The parks. A shame, because I’ve always thought it a rather attractive city. But very little of it will be left.”
Alex closed his eyes. Jack Starbright was in Washington, visiting her parents. Maybe she would survive the hideous explosion that Drevin had planned. But thousands of people – hundreds of thousands – would not. Once again Alex found himself wondering how he had got himself into this. Had it really all begun with a doctor ordering him two weeks’ R & R?
“And now I must tell you about Force Three,” Drevin said.
“You don’t need to,” Alex replied. He had worked this part out for himself. “You need someone to take the blame. Force Three don’t exist. You invented them.”
“Exactly.” Drevin waved his glass at the four men standing near by. “I consider Force Three to be the most brilliant aspect of the entire operation. Obviously, if Ark Angel is sabotaged, if it falls on the Pentagon, I will be the main suspect. So I had to create a scapegoat. I had to make sure that I was above suspicion.
“I created Force Three. I hired the men you see here now. Under my instructions, they committed several acts of terrorism that seemed to be directed against capitalist concerns. They blew up a car manufacturing plant in Dakota, a factory in Japan, a GM research centre in New Zealand. I also paid a journalist working in Berlin and a lecturer in London to speak out against Force Three, to warn the world about them. I then promptly had them murdered. Do you see? I was creating the illusion of a ruthless group of eco-warriors who hated anyone involved in big business – and who particularly hated me.”
“You kidnapped your own son!” Alex exclaimed. At last the events at the hospital and Hornchurch Towers were beginning to make sense.
“I told you. I had to be seen to be above suspicion. The world had to believe that Force Three were my enemy. What sort of father would allow his own son to be kidnapped just days after an operation—”
“But they got it wrong,” Alex interrupted. “They took me instead of him.” He thought back to the time when he had been held prisoner and his head swam. “They were going to cut off Paul’s finger! Did you really order them to do that?”
“Of course.” For the first time, Drevin looked troubled. Alex could see him struggling with his emotions, forcing them down. “The threat had to be credible. If Paul had been maimed, nobody would have suspected that I had anything to do with it. And when Force Three attacked me here on Flamingo Bay, I would be the victim.”
“But that’s monstrous!” Alex protested. “He’s your son!”
“Maybe a little pain would have toughened him up,” Drevin retorted. “The boy is too soft. And one day he is going to inherit billions. The whole world will be his. Is one little finger too much to ask in return?”
“It must be great having you as a dad!” Alex sneered.
“You will die very painfully if you continue to speak to me in that way!” Drevin finished his brandy. He was suddenly flushed and out of breath. “The only mistake I made was not providing Kaspar with a photograph of Paul. We knew his room number; we knew there would be no security at the hospital. How could we know that another boy – you – would decide to get involved?”
“Is that why you tried to kill me in the fire?” Alex asked.
“No.” Drevin shook his head. “We needed you alive. That was the whole point. Paul had been saved from his ordeal but we still needed someone to tell the world that it was Force Three behind the kidnap attempt. Killing you would have been no use to us at all. You were meant to escape. There was a chair in the room so that you could climb up through the ceiling and over the wall into the corridor. The fire was deliberately started away from the stairwell so that you could get out of the building.”
“But one of your people was waiting for me with a gun.” Alex looked at the man he knew only as Combat Jacket. This was the man who had shot the night receptionist at the hospital. He was gazing at Alex with watery eyes that were too small and too close to his broken nose.
Drevin was obviously hearing this for the first time. “Is this true?” he asked.
“He’s lying,” Combat Jacket said. It was the first time he had spoken. “I let him go like you said. I never went near him.”
Alex understood. He’d humiliated Combat Jacket. And the man had disobeyed orders to get his revenge. He was the one who was lying. It was obvious to everyone there; they could hear it in his voice.
Drevin shrugged. “It makes no difference,” he said, and Combat Jacket relaxed. “You may be wondering why Force Three have come to the island, Alex. It’s because I have one last use for them. The launch is timed for nine o’clock tomorrow morning. The bomb will go off at half past four in the afternoon. And as Ark Angel comes crashing down on Washington, a fight will break out here on Flamingo Bay. Intruders will have been discovered. My men will shoot to kill. And when the authorities come calling and the investigation begins, I will be able to give them the final proof that Force Three were responsible. You have described the men who kidnapped you, Alex. Tomorrow their bullet-ridden bodies will be on display.”
Now it was Silver Tooth who spoke. Spectacles and Steel Watch were also looking uneasy. “How are you going to fake that?” he asked.
Drevin smiled. “Who said I was going to fake it?”
The chatter of gunfire wa
s so loud and so close that Alex nearly toppled over in the chair. The four fake terrorists didn’t stand a chance. They were dead before they could react, blown off their feet onto the cold concrete floor. Alex twisted round. Magnus Payne was holding one of the Mini Uzis. There was a dreadful smile on his face. A cloud of smoke hovered around his hands.
“You’re insane!” Alex spat out the words without knowing what he was saying. “You’re never going to get away with it! They’ll know it was you…”
“They may well suspect it was me, but it’s going to be almost impossible to prove,” Drevin retorted. “I’m afraid I’m the victim in all this.”
“But what about me? What about Tamara? If you kill us, the CIA will come after you!”
“The CIA are already after me. What difference will another couple of bodies make? I’m afraid you and Miss Knight will be found on the beach. Accidentally caught in the crossfire. A terrible shame. But not my fault.”
“And what about Kaspar?” Why had Alex thought of him? He was the one piece missing from this crazy jigsaw. If Force Three had been working for Drevin all along, then so had Kaspar. But where was he?
“Show him,” Drevin ordered.
Magnus Payne put down the sub-machine gun. He reached up and took hold of his ginger hair. A wig. He pulled it off, then ripped at his skin. Alex should have recognized the latex. He had recently worn a similar disguise himself. He watched in dismay as the head of security seemed to tear his own face apart and the dreadful tattoos appeared underneath. In just a few seconds the magic trick was complete. Magnus Payne was gone; Kaspar stood in his place.
“The tattoos were rather painful and unpleasant,” Drevin commented. “But we had to create a terrorist leader people would remember. I’d say we succeeded, wouldn’t you?”
Alex felt utterly defeated. He remembered now his first meeting with Payne on Flamingo Bay. The head of security had disguised his voice, of course. But even so, Alex had been sure he’d seen him somewhere before. And Payne had known immediately who he was. Both he and Paul had been in the buggy when Drevin introduced them, and Payne was supposed to be meeting them both for the first time. But he had known immediately which was which. Of course. He had recognized Alex.