“Scorpia haven’t been very active recently,” he said.
“It’s true. They’ve been very quiet. We think they may have been involved in a piece of sabotage at Consanto Enterprises, near Amalfi, yesterday evening.”
“The biomedical people?”
“Yes. We’ve only just received the reports and we’re looking into them. There may be a link.”
“If Scorpia have turned Alex, they’ll use him against us.”
“I know.”
Blunt took a last look at the photograph. “This is Malagosto,” he said. “And that means he isn’t their prisoner. They’re training him. I think we should step up your security rating with immediate effect.”
“And yours?”
“I wasn’t on Albert Bridge.” He laid the photograph down. “I want all local agents in Venice placed on immediate alert, and we’d better contact airports and all points of entry into the UK. I want Alex Rider brought in.”
“Unharmed.” The single word was spoken as a challenge.
Blunt looked at her with empty eyes. “Whatever it takes.”
THE BELL TOWER
“So tell me, Alex. What do you see?”
Alex was sitting in a leather chair in a plain, whitewashed room at the back of the monastery. He was on one side of a desk, facing a smiling middle-aged man who sat on the other. The man’s name was Dr Karl Steiner and, although he spoke with a slight German accent, he had come to the island from South Africa. He was a psychiatrist and looked it – with silver-framed glasses, thinning hair and eyes that were always more inquisitive than friendly. Dr Steiner was holding a white card with a black shape on it. The shape looked like nothing at all; it was just a series of blobs. But Alex was meant to be able to interpret it.
He thought for a moment. He knew that this was called a Rorschach test; he had seen it once in a film. He supposed it must be important. But he wasn’t sure that he saw anything in particular on the card. Eventually he spoke.
“I suppose it’s a man flying through the sky,” he suggested. “He’s wearing a backpack.”
“That’s excellent. Very good!” Dr Steiner put the card down and picked up another. “How about this one?”
The second shape was easier. “It’s a football being pumped up,” Alex said.
“Good, thank you.”
Dr Steiner laid the second card down and there was a brief silence in the office. Outside, Alex could hear gunfire. The other students were down on the shooting range. But there was no view of the range out of the window. Perhaps the psychiatrist had chosen this room for that reason.
“So how are you settling in?” Dr Steiner asked.
Alex shrugged. “OK.”
“You have no anxieties? Nothing you wish to discuss?”
“No. I’m fine, thank you, Dr Steiner.”
“Good. That’s good.” The psychiatrist seemed determined to be positive. Alex wondered if the interview was over, but then the man opened a file. “I have your medical report here,” he said.
For a moment Alex was nervous. He had been physically examined on his first day on the island. Stripped down to his underwear, he had been put through a whole series of tests by an Italian nurse who spoke little English. Blood and urine samples had been taken, his blood pressure and pulse measured, his sight, hearing and reflexes checked. He wondered now if they had found something wrong.
But Dr Steiner was still smiling. “You’re in very good shape, Alex,” he commented. “I’m glad you’ve been looking after yourself. Not too much fast food. No cigarettes. Very sensible.”
He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a hypodermic syringe and a little bottle. As Alex watched, he inserted the needle into the bottle and filled the syringe.
“What’s that?” Alex asked.
“According to your medical report, you’re a little run-down. I suppose it’s to be expected after all you’ve been through. And I’m sure it’s very demanding, being here on this island. The nurse has suggested a vitamin booster. That’s all this is.” He held the needle up to the light and squirted a little of the amber-coloured liquid out of the tip. “Would you mind rolling up your sleeve?”
Alex hesitated. “I thought you were a psychiatrist,” he said.
“I’m perfectly qualified to give you an injection,” Dr Steiner said. He raised an accusing finger. “You’re not going to tell me you’re afraid of a little prick?”
“I wouldn’t call you that,” Alex muttered. He rolled up his left sleeve.
Two minutes later, he was back outside.
He had been missing gun practice because of his medical appointment and he joined the other students on the firing range. This was on the western side of the island – the side that faced away from Venice. Although Scorpia were legally permitted to be on Malagosto, they hadn’t wanted to draw attention to themselves with the sound of gunfire, and the woodland provided a natural screen. There was a strip of the island that was long and flat with nothing growing apart from wild grasses, and the school had built a cut-out town, with offices and shops that were nothing more than fronts, like a film set. Alex had already been through it twice, using a handgun to shoot at paper targets – black rings with a red bull’s-eye – that popped up in the windows and doors.
Gordon Ross, the ginger-haired technical specialist who seemed to have picked up most of his skills in Scotland’s tougher jails, was in charge of the shooting range. He nodded as Alex approached.
“Good afternoon, Mr Rider. How was your visit to the shrink? Did he tell you you’re mad? If not, I wonder what the hell you’re doing here!”
A number of other students stood around him, unloading and adjusting their weapons. Alex knew all of them by now. There was Klaus, a German mercenary who had trained with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Walker, who had spent five years with the CIA in Washington before deciding he could earn more working for the other side. One of the two women there had become quite close to Alex, and he wondered if she had been specially chosen to look after him. Her name was Amanda and she had been a soldier with the Israeli army in the occupied Gaza Strip. Seeing him, she raised a hand in greeting. She seemed genuinely pleased to see him.
But then they all did. That was the strange thing. He had been accepted into the day-to-day life of Malagosto without any problem. That in itself was remarkable. Alex remembered the time MI6 had sent him for training with the SAS in Wales. He had been an outsider from the day he arrived, unwanted and unwelcome, a child in an adult world. He was by far the youngest person here too, but that didn’t seem to matter. Quite the opposite. He was accepted and even admired by the other students. He was John Rider’s son. Everyone knew what that meant.
“You’re just in time to show us what you can do before lunch,” Gordon Ross announced. His Scottish accent made almost everything sound like a challenge. “You got a high score the day before yesterday. In fact, you were second in the class. Let’s see if you can do even better today. But this time I may have built in a little surprise!”
He handed Alex a gun, a Belgian-made FN semiautomatic pistol. Alex weighed it in his hand, trying to find the balance between himself and his weapon. Ross had explained that this was essential to the technique he called instinctive firing.
“Remember – you have to shoot instantly. You can’t stop to take aim. If you do, you’re dead. In a real combat situation you don’t have time to mess around. You and the gun are one. And if you believe that you can hit the target, you will hit the target. That’s what instinctive firing is all about.”
Now Alex stepped forward, the gun at his side, watching the mocked-up doors and windows in front of him. He knew there would be no warning. At any time, a target could appear. He would be expected to turn and fire.
He waited. He was aware of the other students watching him. Out of the corner of his eye he could just make out the shape of Gordon Ross. Was the teacher smiling?
A sudden movement.
A target had appeared in an upper window
and immediately Alex saw that the bull’s-eye targets with their impersonal rings had been replaced. A photograph had appeared instead. It was a life-sized colour picture of a young man. Alex didn’t know who he was – but that didn’t matter. He was a target.
There was no time to hesitate.
Alex raised the gun and fired.
Later that day, Oliver d’Arc, the principal of Scorpia’s Training and Assessment Centre, sat in his office on Malagosto, talking to Julia Rothman. Her image filled the screen of the laptop computer on his desk. There was a webcam perched on a shelf and his own image would be appearing simultaneously somewhere in the Widow’s Palace just across the water, in Venice. Mrs Rothman never came to the island. She knew it was under surveillance by both the American and British intelligence services, and one day they might be tempted to target the island with a non-nuclear ballistic missile. It was too dangerous.
It was only the second occasion they had spoken since Alex had arrived. The time was exactly seven o’clock in the evening. Outside, the sun had begun to set.
“How is he progressing?” Mrs Rothman asked. Her own webcam didn’t flatter her; her face on the screen looked cold and a little colourless.
D’Arc considered. He ran a thumb and a single finger down the sides of his chin, stroking his beard. “The boy is certainly exceptional,” he murmured. “Of course, his uncle, Ian Rider, trained him all his life, almost from the moment he could walk. I have to say, he did a good job.”
“And?”
“He is very intelligent. Quick-witted. Everyone here genuinely likes him. Unfortunately, though, I have my doubts about his usefulness to us.”
“I am very sorry to hear that, Professor d’Arc. Please explain.”
“I will give you two examples, Mrs Rothman. Today Alex returned to the shooting range. We’ve been putting him through a course of instinctive firing. It’s something he’s never done before and, I have to say, it takes many of our students several weeks to master the art. After just a few hours on the range, Alex was already achieving impressive results. At the end of his second day he scored seventy-two per cent.”
“I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
D’Arc shifted in his seat. In his formal suit and tie, shrunk to fit Mrs Rothman’s computer screen, he looked rather like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “Today we switched the targets,” he explained. “Instead of black and red rings, Alex was asked to fire at photographs of men and women. He was supposed to aim at the vital areas: the heart … between the eyes.”
“How did he do?”
“That’s the point. His score dropped to forty-six per cent. He missed several targets altogether.” D’Arc took off his glasses and polished them with a cloth. “I also have the results of his Rorschach psychological test,” he went on. “He was asked to identify certain shapes—”
“I do know what a Rorschach test is, Professor.”
“Of course. Forgive me. Well, there was one shape that every student who has ever come here has identified as a man lying in a pool of blood. But not Alex. He said he thought it was a man flying through the air with a backpack. Another shape, which is invariably seen as a gun pointing at someone’s head, he believed to be someone pumping up a football. At our very first meeting, Alex told me that he couldn’t kill for us, and I have to say that, psychologically speaking, he seems to lack what might be called the killer instinct.”
There was a long pause. The image on the computer screen flickered.
“It’s very disappointing,” d’Arc went on. “Having met Alex, I must say that a teenage assassin would be extremely useful to us. The possibilities are almost limitless. I think we should make it a high priority to find one of our own.”
“I doubt there are many teenagers quite as experienced as Alex.”
“That’s what I began by saying. But even so …”
There was another pause. Mrs Rothman came to a decision. “Did Alex see Dr Steiner?” she asked.
“Yes. Everything was done exactly as you instructed.”
“Good.” She nodded. “You say that Alex won’t kill for us, but you could still be proved wrong. It’s just a question of giving him the right target – and this time I’m not talking about paper.”
“You want to send him on an assignment?”
“As you know, Invisible Sword is about to enter its final, critical phase. Introducing Alex Rider into the mix right now might provide an interesting distraction, at the very least. And if he did succeed, which I believe he might, he could be very useful indeed. All in all, the timing couldn’t be better.”
Julia Rothman leant forward so that her eyes almost filled the screen.
“This is what I want you to do…”
There were two hundred and forty-seven steps to the top of the bell tower. Alex knew because he had counted every one of them. The bottom of the tower was empty, a single chamber with bare brick walls and a smell of damp. It had clearly been abandoned years ago. The bells themselves either had been stolen or had fallen down and been lost. The stairs were made of stone and twisted round, following the edges of the tower, and small windows allowed just enough light to see. There was a door at the top. Alex wondered if it would be locked. The tower was used occasionally during camouflage exercises, when the students had to creep from one side of the island to the other. It was a useful lookout post. But he hadn’t been up here before himself.
The door was open. It led to a square platform, about ten metres wide, out in the open air. Once there might have been a balustrade enclosing the platform and making it safe. But at some point it had been removed and now the stone floor simply ended. If Alex took three more paces he would step into nothing. He would fall to his death.
Cautiously Alex walked to the edge and glanced down. He was right above the monastery courtyard. He could see the makiwara which had been set up earlier in the afternoon. This was a heavy pole with a thick leather pad wrapped around it at head height. It was used to practise kick-boxing and karate strikes. There was nobody in sight. Lessons for the day had ended and the other students were resting before dinner.
He looked across the woodland that surrounded the monastery, already dark and impenetrable. The sun was sinking into the sea, spilling the last of its light over the black water. In the distance he could see the twinkling lights of Venice. What was happening there right now? Tourists would be leaving their hotels, searching out the restaurants and bars. There might be concerts in some of the churches. The gondoliers would be tying up their boats. Winter might be a long way off but already it was too cold for most people to set out on an evening cruise. Alex still found it hard to believe that this island with all its secrets could exist so close to one of the world’s most popular holiday destinations. Two worlds. Side by side. But one of them was blind, utterly unaware of the existence of the other.
He stood there unmoving, feeling the breeze rippling through his hair. He was wearing only a long-sleeved shirt and jeans and he was conscious of the evening chill. But somehow it was distant. It was as if he had become part of the tower – a statue or a gargoyle. He was on Malagosto because he had nowhere else to go; he no longer had any choice.
He thought back over the last couple of weeks. How long had he been on the island? He had no idea. In many ways it was just like being at school. There were teachers and classrooms and separate lessons, and one day more or less blurred into the next. Only the subjects here were nothing like the ones he had studied at Brookland.
First there was history – also taught by Gordon Ross. But his version of history had nothing to do with kings and queens, battles and treaties. Ross specialized in the history of weapons.
“Now, this is the double-edged commando knife, developed in the Second World War by Fairbairn and Sykes. One was a silent killing specialist, the other a crack shot with the rifle. Isn’t it a beauty? You’ll see it has a seven and a half inch blade with a crosspiece and a ribbed centre on both sides. It’s designed to fit exactly in your pa
lm. You may find it a little heavy, Alex, as your hand isn’t fully developed. But this is still the greatest murder weapon ever invented. Guns are noisy; guns can jam. But the commando knife is a true friend. It will do its job instantly and it will never let you down.”
Then there were practical lessons with Professor Yermalov. As Nile had said, he was the least friendly member of the staff at Malagosto: a scowling, silent man in his fifties who had little time for anyone. But Alex soon found out why. Yermalov was from Chechnya and had lost his entire family in the war with Russia.
“Today I am going to show you how to make yourself invisible,” he said.
Alex couldn’t resist a faint smile.
Yermalov saw it. “You think I am making a joke with you, Mr Rider? You think I am talking about children’s books? A cloak of invisibility, perhaps? You are wrong. I am teaching you the skills of the ninjas, the greatest spies who ever lived. The ninja assassins of feudal Japan were reputed to have the ability to vanish into thin air. In fact they used the five elements of escape and concealment – the gotonpo. Not magic but science. They might hide underwater, breathing through a tube. They might bury themselves a few centimetres below the surface of the earth. Wearing protective clothing, they might hide inside a fire. To vanish into the air, they carried a rope or even a hidden ladder. And there were other possibilities. They developed the art of sight removers or eye blinders. Blind your enemy with smoke or chemicals and you will become invisible. That is what I will show you now, and this afternoon Miss Binnag will be demonstrating how to make a blinding powder from hot peppers …”
There had been other exercises too. How to assemble and dismantle an automatic pistol while blindfolded (Alex had dropped all the pieces, much to the amusement of the other students). How to use fear. How to use surprise. How to target aggression. There were textbooks – including a manual on the most vulnerable parts of the human body, written by a Dr Three – as well as blackboards and even written exams. They sat in classrooms with ordinary desks. There was just one difference. This was a school for assassination.