Bulman finished his beer and crumpled the can. Alex didn’t know what to say. Too many thoughts were going through his head.
Fortunately, Jack was never at a loss for words. “Thank you for being so frank with us,” she said. “But if you don’t mind, we’d like a little time to think about what you’ve said.”
“Of course. I can understand that. You have my number. I can give you one week.” Bulman stood up. “I reckon it’ll be quite fun, Alex. I’ll come here every evening and we’ll talk for a couple of hours. Then I’ll write it up the next day while you’re at school. You can read it over for accuracy on weekends.” He gestured at the photographs. “You can hang on to those. I’ve got copies.”
He went over to the door, then turned around one last time.
“You’re a real hero, Alex,” he said. “I hope I made that clear from the start. There aren’t many boys your age who actually believe in their country. You’re a patriot and I respect that. I’m really privileged to have met you.” He waved a hand. “Don’t get up. I’ll show myself out.” And then he was gone.
Neither Jack nor Alex said anything until they heard the front door close. Then Jack went out to make sure the journalist had really left. Alex stayed where he was. He was in shock. He was trying to think of what it would all mean. He would become world famous. There was no doubt of that. His photograph would be in all the newspapers and magazines, and he would never be able to walk down the street again, not without being pointed out as some sort of curiosity . . . a freak. He would have to leave Brookland, of course. He might even have to leave the UK. He could say good-bye to his home, to his friends, to any chance of a normal life.
He felt a black anger welling up inside him. How could he have allowed this to happen?
Jack came back into the room. “He’s gone,” she said. She sat down at the table. The photographs were still spread out in front of her. “Why didn’t you tell me about the cemetery?” she asked.
There was no accusation in her voice, but Alex knew she was upset. “I wanted to,” he said. “But it happened so soon after Scotland that I thought you’d be worried.”
“I’d be more worried if I thought you weren’t telling me when you were in trouble.”
“I’m sorry, Jack.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Jack gathered the photographs into a pile and placed them facedown. “He wasn’t quite as clever as he thought,” she said. “He didn’t know everything about you. He’d only found out about three of your missions. And he said you trained in the Lake District. He got that wrong too.”
“He knew enough,” Alex said.
“So what are we going to do?”
“We can’t let him write this story.” Alex felt a hollow in his chest. “He doesn’t care about me. He just wants to use me. He’s going to ruin everything.”
Jack reached out and took his hand. “Don’t worry, Alex. We’ll stop him.”
“How?” Alex thought for a moment, then answered his own question. “We’re going to have to go and see Mr. Blunt.”
It was the only answer. They both knew it. There were no other options.
“I don’t like you going back there.” Jack was only saying what Alex was thinking. “Every time you set foot in that door, something bad comes out of it. I was beginning to think they’d forgotten all about you. This will just remind them . . .”
“I know. But who else is going to stop him, Jack? We need their help.”
“They’ve never helped you before, Alex.”
“This time it would be in their interest. They’re not going to want Harry Bulman writing about them.” Alex pushed his plate away. He had barely eaten, but he no longer had any appetite. “I’ll go after school tomorrow.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Thanks.”
He was going back. The decision had been made. But as Alex got up and helped clear the table, he wondered if in truth he had ever really left.
8
THE LION’S DEN
THE EVENING SEEMED TO have drawn in early on Liverpool Street. It was only half past four as Jack and Alex came out of the station, but already the streetlamps were on and the first commuters were on their way home, snatching their free newspapers without even breaking pace. There must have been a slight mist in the air, because it seemed to Alex that the offices were glowing unnaturally, the light behind the windows not quite making it to the world outside.
Punched in the chest.
Unable to breathe.
The pavement, cold and hard, rushing toward him.
This was where Alex had been shot, and he would never be able to return without experiencing it again. The flower seller that he saw now, standing across the road, the old woman coming out of the shop . . . had they been there that day? It had been five o’clock, almost the same time as now, but during the summer. There was the roof where the sniper must have lain concealed, waiting for Alex to come out. He had sworn that he would never come back here, yet here he was. It was like one of those dreams where you keep on running but always end up in the same place. Trapped.
“Are you okay?” Jack asked. She could see what was going on in his head.
Alex pulled himself together. “It feels strange, being back.”
“Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
“Yes. Let’s get it over with.”
They stopped in front of a tall, classical building that would have been just as much at home in New York but for the Union Jack that hung limply from a pole jutting out of the sixteenth floor. A set of rotating doors invited them in, and set in the wall to one side a brass plaque read, ROYAL & GENERAL BANK PLC. LONDON.
Strangely, the bank was fully operational, with loan desks, cash machines, tellers, and clients, and Alex wondered how many people must have accounts here without knowing what the real purpose of the building was. The entire place belonged to the Special Operations Division of MI6. The bank was nothing more than a cover. And for that matter, how many men and women would come out of those doors, never to return? Alex’s uncle had been one of them, dying for queen and country or whatever else motivated them. What difference did it make once you were dead?
“Alex?” Jack was watching him anxiously, and he realized that, despite what he had just said, he hadn’t moved. “The lion’s den,” she muttered.
“That’s what it feels like.”
“Come on . . .”
They went in.
The doors spun them from the cold reality of the city to the warmth and deception of a world where nothing was ever what it seemed. They were in a reception area with a row of elevators, a marble floor, half a dozen clocks—each one showing the time in a different country—and the inevitable potted plants. But there would be hidden cameras too. Their images would already be on the way to a central computer equipped with face-recognition software. And the two receptionists, both female and pretty, would know exactly who they were before they said a word.
One of them looked up as they approached. “Can I help you?”
“We have an appointment with Mrs. Jones.”
“Of course. Please take a seat.”
It was all so normal. Alex and Jack took their place on a leather sofa with a scattering of financial magazines on the table in front of them. Alex had come straight from school, so he was still in his uniform. He wondered what he must look like to passersby. A rich kid, perhaps, opening his first account.
A few minutes later, one of the elevators opened and a dark-haired woman in a black suit stepped out. As usual, she wore very little jewelry, just a simple silver chain around her neck. This was Mrs. Jones, the deputy head of Special Operations and the second most important person in the building. Despite the impact that she’d had on his life, Alex knew very little about her. She lived in an apartment in Clerkenwell, near the old meat market. She might have been married once. She had two children, but something had happened to them and they were no longer around. And that was it. If she’d ever had a private life, she’
d left it behind her when she became a spy—and the spy was all that was left.
“Good afternoon, Alex.” She didn’t exactly seem pleased to see him. Her face was completely neutral. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, thank you, Mrs. Jones.”
“We’re ready to see you.” She turned to Jack. “I’ll bring Alex back down in about half an hour.”
Jack stood up. “I’m coming too.”
“I’m afraid not. Mr. Blunt prefers to see Alex on his own.”
“Then we’re leaving.”
Mrs. Jones shrugged. “That’s your choice. But you said on the telephone that you needed our help.”
“It’s all right, Jack.” Alex could see the way this was going, and he had quickly made his decision. It was always possible that Alan Blunt would agree to help him—but it would only be on his own terms. Any argument and Alex would be thrown out in the street. It had happened before. “I don’t mind seeing them on their own if that’s what they want.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Jack nodded. “All right. I’ll wait for you here.” She glanced at the magazines. “I can catch up with the latest banking news.”
Alex and Mrs. Jones walked over to the elevator, and she pressed the button for the sixteenth floor. Only she knew that the button had read her fingerprint and that if she hadn’t been authorized to travel up, two armed guards would have been waiting when she arrived. She was also aware of the thermal intensifier concealed behind the mirror, as well as the early warning chemical detector that had been added recently. Even the floor was examining the soles of Alex’s shoes. The dust and residue under his feet might, in certain circumstances, provide valuable information about where he had been.
Mrs. Jones seemed more relaxed now that the two of them were on their own. “So, how is school going?” she asked.
“Okay,” Alex said. Mrs. Jones sounded friendly enough, but he had learned to treat even the most casual question with suspicion.
“And how was Scotland?”
How had she known he had gone to Scotland for the New Year? Did she know what had happened there? Alex decided to put her to the test. “I had a great time,” he said. “I really liked Loch Arkaig. In fact, I made quite an in-depth visit.”
Mrs. Jones didn’t even blink. “I haven’t been there myself.”
They arrived at the sixteenth floor and left the elevator, walking down a heavily carpeted corridor with doors that had numbers but no names. They stopped outside 1605. Mrs. Jones knocked, and without waiting for an answer, they went in.
Alan Blunt was sitting behind his desk as if he had been there forever, as if he never left. He was the same gray man in the same gray suit with the same files open in front of him. Sometimes Alex tried to imagine the head of Special Operations with a wife and children, going to a film or playing sports. But he couldn’t do it. Like Mrs. Jones, Blunt had no life outside these four walls. Was that what he had dreamed about when he was young, being locked into a job that would never let him go? Had he actually ever been young?
“Sit down, Alex.” Blunt waved Alex to a chair without looking up from his paperwork. He wrote something down and underlined it. Alex wondered what he had just done. He could have been ordering extra office stationery. He could have just sentenced someone to death. The trouble with Blunt was that either way he would have shown the same lack of emotion.
He glanced briefly at Alex. “You’re getting taller.” He sounded disapproving—but that made sense. The younger and more innocent Alex looked, the more useful he was to MI6.
There was a long silence. Alex took the seat he had been offered. Mrs. Jones sat down beside the desk. Blunt made a few last notes, the nib of his pen scratching against the page. At last he finished what he was doing. “I understand you have a problem,” he said.
Jack hadn’t said very much on the telephone. She’d had enough dealings with MI6 to know that nobody says anything important on an unsecured line. So Alex quickly explained what had happened: the fight in the cemetery, Harry Bulman’s visit, the newspaper story he was intending to write.
He finished talking. Blunt reached out and wiped a speck of dust off the surface of the desk.
“That’s very interesting, Alex,” he said. “But I’m not sure there’s very much we can do.”
“What?” Alex was astonished. “Why not?”
“Well, as you’ve often reminded us, you don’t actually work for us. You’re not part of MI6.”
“That’s never stopped you from using me.”
“Perhaps not. But it’s not our business to interfere with the freedom of the press. If this man, Bulman, has found out about your activities over the past year, there’s not a great deal we can do. Are you asking us to arrange an accident?”
“No!” Alex was horrified. He wondered if Blunt was even being serious.
“Then what exactly do you have in mind?”
Alex drew a breath. Maybe Blunt was trying to confuse him deliberately. He wasn’t sure how to respond. “Do you really want him to go ahead and write this story?” he asked.
“I don’t see that it matters one way or another. We can always deny it.”
“What about me?”
“You can deny it too.”
He could. But it would make no difference. Once Bulman’s report came out, his life would still be in pieces. In fact, if MI6 denied the story, it would only make it worse. Alex would be left out in the cold. Once again, he felt a rising sense of anger. It was Blunt who had put him in this situation in the first place. Was he really going to sit back and wash his hands of the whole affair?
But then Mrs. Jones came to his rescue. “Maybe we could have a word with this journalist,” she suggested. “It might be possible to make him see things from our point of view.”
“Talking to him would only compromise us,” Blunt insisted.
“I absolutely agree. But in view of what Alex has done for us in the past . . .” She hesitated. “And what he might do for us in the future . . .”
Blunt looked up, his eyes, behind the square gunmetal spectacles, locking into Alex’s for the first time. “Would you ever consider coming back?” he asked.
It was as if the thought had only just occurred to him, but suddenly Alex understood. Everything in this room had been rehearsed. Mrs. Jones had known he had been to Scotland. They knew exactly what was going on at Brookland. They probably even got copies of his homework. And of course, they had steered this conversation exactly where they wanted. These two never left anything to chance.
“There’s something you want,” Alex said. His voice was heavy.
“Not at all.” Blunt drummed his fingers. Then he seemed to remember something. He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a file that he laid in front of him. “Well, since you mention it, there is one thing. But it’s a very simple matter, Alex. Hardly even worthy of your talents.”
Alex leaned forward. The file that Blunt had selected was stamped with the usual red letters—TOP SECRET. But there was another word written underneath it in black ink. Alex read it upside down. GREENFIELDS. It meant something. Where had he heard it before? Then he remembered and he reeled back. He almost wanted to laugh. How did they do it?
Greenfields was the name of the research center that he was about to visit with the rest of his class. His biology teacher, Mr. Gilbert, had been talking about it only the day before.
“What do you know about genetic engineering?” Blunt demanded.
“I’ve been doing a project on it,” Alex said. “But you already know that, don’t you?”
“It’s an interesting subject,” Blunt continued in a tone of voice that suggested it was anything but. “Genetic science can do incredible things. Grow tomatoes in the desert or oranges the size of melons. There’s no question that companies like Greenfields could change the way we live. Of course . . .” He drew his fingers beneath his chin. “There are also certain dangers.”
“Whoever contr
ols the food chain controls the world.” Alex remembered what Edward Pleasure had said when they were in Scotland.
“Exactly. Anything that puts too much power into the hands of one individual is of interest to us. And there is one individual working at Greenfields who is causing us particular concern.”
“His name is Leonard Straik,” Mrs. Jones said.
“Straik is the director and the chief science officer. Aged fifty-eight. Unmarried. He was a brilliant student, studying biology at Cambridge back in the seventies. He invented something called the Biolistic Particle Delivery System—also known as the gene gun. It uses helium pressure to fire new DNA into existing plant organisms . . . something like that, anyway. The long and the short of it is that thanks to Straik, it’s become much easier to mass-produce GM seeds.
“For twenty years, Straik ran his own company— Leonard Straik Diagnostics . . . or LSD, as it was called. It all went well for a time, but like many scientists, he was less brilliant when it came to business and the whole thing collapsed. Straik lost all his money and went freelance. Six years ago he was hired as the director of Greenfields, and he has been there ever since.”
“Why are you interested in him?”
“Because of something that happened a few months ago.” Blunt opened the file. “Last November, the police got a call from a whistle-blower inside the company, a bio-technician by the name of Philip Masters. He said he knew something about Straik and wanted to talk. Given the security implications, the police passed the information to us and we arranged a meeting—but one day before it could take place, there was an accident and Masters was killed. Apparently he came into contact with some sort of toxic material and it poisoned his entire nervous system. By the time he turned up in the local morgue, he was unrecognizable.”
“An accident . . .”
“Exactly. It seemed a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
“We don’t like coincidences,” Mrs. Jones said.
“Since then, we’ve been taking a close look at Greenfields,” Blunt went on. “It’s a major operation. As well as research and development, it’s also one of the largest suppliers of genetically modified seeds in the world, using the gene gun that Straik pioneered. There are whole countries—in Africa and South America, for instance—that are dependent on them. We cannot risk having a loose cannon at the center of an operation like that. Masters knew something about Straik. We need to know what it was.”