But not today.
The two of them were towering over the young boy and as Alex approached, he saw Clayton flick his fingers almost lazily. He hit the side of the ice cream cone and knocked it out of the boy’s hand, falling to the ground. “Oh, I’m sorry!” Clayton squealed in a falsetto voice. “Did I knock your ice cream over? Are you going to buy another one?”
“Why don’t you buy us one too?” Colin crooned.
Alex reached them before they saw him. “Why don’t you leave him alone?” he said.
Colin looked up, hesitated, then smiled. Clayton wanted to be sure there was no danger, but now he did the same, his own smile tugging at his lazy eye. This was exactly what they both wanted. Alex was on his own and outside the protection of the school. Apart from a taxi parked opposite, there was nobody in the street: no witnesses.
“Well, well,” Colin sneered. “What are you doing here, England? You got a problem?”
“Yes, I have,” Alex said. “The two of you make me sick.” He glanced at the smaller boy who was staring, wide-eyed. “Go!” he said.
The boy didn’t need telling twice. He turned and ran. His ice cream lay in the gutter, melting in the sun.
“I want the two of you to turn round and get lost,” Alex said. “And I want you to know that if I ever hear you’ve hurt anyone else at the school, I swear I’ll come back and deal with you.”
“Oh yeah?” Even before he started speaking, Alex knew that Colin wouldn’t listen to him. He still wanted to give him one last chance. But Colin had calculated the odds. There were two of them and only one of Alex. Clayton alone must weigh at least four and a half kilograms more than Alex. And there was something else Alex didn’t know. Clayton gestured and Colin reached into his back pocket and took out the flick knife that he always carried when he was out of school. He pressed a button with his thumb. A short silver blade sprang out, slanting up towards Alex’s face. Both of the bullies giggled.
Even as he had crossed the road, Alex had promised himself he wasn’t going to physically harm the two of them. He would defend himself if he had to, but he wasn’t like them. He wasn’t going to start a fight on purpose. Seeing the knife made no difference. Colin had raised the stakes but Alex was still going to play the game according to his own rules.
“You’re making a mistake,” he said.
“And you’re a loser!” Colin replied. “Why don’t you run away while you can?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Alex said.
For just one moment, Colin hesitated. Clayton was also looking worried. Like most bullies, they weren’t used to people standing up to them. But they still couldn’t see that there was any problem. Alex was unarmed. He was a lightweight. Anyway, it was too late to back out now. They made their decision.
It was the wrong decision.
Everything happened very quickly. Colin swung the knife, aiming for Alex’s chest. It seemed to the two boys that Alex did very little, but then they didn’t know that he was using basic moves from aikido, a Japanese martial art that he had learned when his uncle was still alive. Aikido is an unusual form of self-defence in that it is entirely non-aggressive. Its aim is to bring any attacker under control “without the necessity of inflicting injury” and, more than strength, it demands total relaxation in both body and mind.
The first move was called gokyo. It was designed purposely to ward off a knife attack. As Colin swung forward, Alex lightly took hold of his wrist with one hand and his elbow with the other. At the same time, he seemed to shimmer sideways as he twisted round to get out of the way. Colin’s hand with the knife rushed past him. Unfortunately, Alex wasn’t to know that Clayton had chosen that precise moment to creep up on him from behind, hoping to use his size and strength to pinion him. The knife sliced across Clayton’s arm. Clayton screamed. His hand flailed out, knocking the knife out of Colin’s hand. He grabbed hold of the wound and stood there, stunned.
Colin stared, his mouth falling open in shock. Alex waited for him to make his move. It came a second later. He had lost the knife so now he lashed out with his fist, which was exactly what Alex was expecting. His second move – tai sabaki – was also evasive. Stepping forward, he swivelled round on his hips so that the fist swept past him, inches away from his face. Alex was standing next to a lamp post. Colin’s fist slammed into the metal. Alex actually heard his fingers break. Colin fell to his knees, cradling his injured hand and howling. Behind him, Clayton was still clutching his wound. Blood was trickling between his fingers
There was only one more thing to do. Alex took out his mobile and dialled 911. “There’s been an accident in Lyon Street,” he said. “Two young guys seem to have damaged each other. Can you send an ambulance?” He hung up.
He didn’t think Clayton was too badly injured and he was quietly pleased with the way it had all gone. He hadn’t actually hurt either of the boys. Their injuries were entirely self-inflicted … and when word got out about what had happened, they would become a laughing stock and at that moment they would lose whatever power they’d ever had.
He went back to the taxi.
“What was all that about?” the driver asked.
“Just saying goodbye to a couple of friends,” Alex replied.
The taxi drove Alex straight to San Francisco International Airport. Two hours after that, he was settling into his economy-class seat on Flight UAL 8900. He wasn’t heading for Lima, even if that was where Jack’s email had come from. Johnny Feldman had said it had been bounced all over the world and Alex knew he had to go back to the last place he had seen her. That was Egypt. In eighteen hours he would be landing in Cairo.
And what would he do when he got there? Alex didn’t think of that. He sat back and closed his eyes as the engines roared and the plane jolted forward. Jack was alive. He was sure of it. He was going to find her.
BACK TO SIWA
Cairo Airport was worse than Alex remembered.
The last time he had arrived here – less than two months ago – he had been with Jack and the two of them had been met by a pleasant, smartly-dressed man from the British embassy who had whisked them through passport control and into an air-conditioned car. This time it was a completely different experience as he stood on his own at the back of the long line that stretched towards the booths where every tourist had to buy their entry visa. Half an hour later and twenty-five dollars poorer, Alex finally presented himself at passport control.
This was the moment he had been dreading. He wondered if he would even be allowed into the country. It wasn’t just that he was a fifteen-year-old boy, travelling on his own – although that was unusual in itself. He was also well known to the Egyptian authorities. As he handed over his passport to the young, scowling official behind his glass window, Alex imagined the word SPY popping up on his computer screen. And then what? The political situation in Egypt was fragile, to say the least. The authorities were constantly on the lookout for trouble. There was every chance that he would be dragged off to jail.
The passport officer tapped a few buttons on his keypad. Alex watched. He was aware of the sweat trickling down his face and hoped he didn’t look as nervous as he felt. But everyone was sweating. The air-conditioning system inside the airport had broken down. Or perhaps it simply wasn’t up to the job of cooling so many people.
“What is the purpose of your visit?” The passport officer spoke good English. He held Alex with his eyes.
“I’m on holiday,” Alex said.
“You have come here alone?”
“My aunt is waiting for me outside. She lives in Shobra Street.” It was a name that Alex had picked at random from the Internet.
“What is her name?”
“Susan.”
Alex hadn’t been expecting the question and it was the first name that came into his head. Fortunately, the officer wasn’t interested. His fist came punching down, stamping the passport. Alex was through.
Next came the shock of the city itself. Emerging from t
he airport, Alex was hit by the full heat of the sun, the stale gusts of air and the stink of petrol fumes. He climbed into the first taxi he saw, and it was only after he had closed the door and given the driver the name of his hotel that he realized it had no meter and he would end up paying two or three times the correct price for the journey. That didn’t matter. He was just glad to be away. He leaned back, the springs creaking underneath him as he was carried once again into the noise and the confusion of Cairo; the traffic at permanent standstill, the crumbling offices and apartment blocks with their washed-out advertising hoardings, the rubble and the dust. There were thousands of people crowding the pavements, some of them carrying huge bundles, some of them arguing at market stalls, many of them simply standing motionless as if pinned down by the sun.
After the calm of San Francisco, he felt utterly lost and it was only now that he began to think about what he had done. He had run away, leaving his home and crossing the entire world – and all because of an email that might have originated in Peru! Did he really think Jack had sent it? Yes. He had to believe that. It was much too late to go back.
The taxi took him to a hotel which he had also chosen online. He wanted somewhere not too expensive, close to the centre of town. Somewhere that wouldn’t ask too many questions. The Hotel Neheb was recommended on TripAdvisor as a secure base for student travellers. That sounded about right. It only cost four hundred Egyptian pounds – about thirty British pounds – a night. It turned out to be a small, whitewashed building, half covered in scaffolding, close to Tahrir Square. Alex had booked for just one day and one night. He hoped he wouldn’t have to stay even as long as that.
The reception area was small and shabby with a fridge selling drinks and a slowly turning fan. A couple of backpackers were sitting on a low sofa, smoking cigarettes and drinking Coke. There was a wooden counter and, behind it, a receptionist – young and unshaven – sitting with a number of old-fashioned keys hanging on hooks behind him. He checked Alex’s passport and then photocopied it, using a machine that wheezed as it scanned the page with a blinding green light. He took an imprint from Alex’s bank card, then directed him towards a narrow staircase. There was no lift.
Alex’s room was at the far end of a gloomy corridor on the third floor. All the light bulbs were broken and someone had left a basket of dirty laundry right outside the door. The room itself was square and basic and about as comfortable as a prison cell. It had a single bed with a dark, patterned bedspread, an outdated TV and a locked window with a view of a concrete flyover. An ancient air-conditioning unit clung to the wall. There were no curtains. As Alex went in, a large cockroach scuttled across the floorboards and disappeared under the bed but Alex was too hot and tired to care. He stripped off and went into the bathroom, which contained a sink, a toilet and shower, the three of them so close that it would have been possible to use all of them at the same time. The shower spat out a dribble of lukewarm water but Alex made the best of it, drying himself on the thinnest and roughest of towels.
Finally, he turned on the air conditioner – which whined and rattled but made no immediate difference to the temperature of the room – and threw himself onto the bed. He fell asleep almost at once to the sound of car horns blaring, police whistles blasting, people shouting and above it all, the serene call to prayer.
Meanwhile, only one mile away, a man was sitting behind a desk in an oversized room, examining the file that had just been placed in front of him. The man was short but he had a powerful presence with thickset shoulders and intense, dark eyes. His neck seemed to be melting into his collar and his black hair shone with the grease that he had used to keep it in place. He was wearing a suit that had been tailor-made for him in Paris, along with a white shirt and no tie. The man liked gold. There was a chunky gold chain around his neck and three huge gold rings, weighing down his fingers.
There was a long silence. The man was angry. He looked as if he was about to explode.
“Alex Rider,” he muttered at length.
“Yes, sir. He arrived two hours ago.”
“Why was I not informed immediately?”
The conversation was in Arabic. The man standing opposite him was younger, also dressed in a suit. But his was cheaper and fitted him badly. It clearly showed the outline of the handgun that he was carrying in a holster beside his left arm. “It wasn’t our fault, sir,” he explained. “There was a computer malfunction at the airport. The passport officer did not receive the correct information until it was too late to take action.”
The man with the gold rings swore, using a particularly filthy collection of words. “Does nothing work in this city any more?” he demanded. “This whole country is going to the dogs!” He took a deep breath. “So where is he now?”
“We don’t know, sir.” The younger man blinked and continued quickly. “But we will find him very soon. The hotels have to hand in the names of their guests.”
“I know that!”
“Some of the lists arrive later than others but we are scanning them now and as soon as we’ve found him—”
“You will collect him personally, Ibrahim. And take someone with you. Alex Rider is a very tricky, very dangerous customer. I want you to find him. Rough him up if he causes you any trouble. Don’t break anything.” The man slammed his fist down on the desk. “Just make sure you bring him to me!”
It was half past six when Alex woke up, once again covered in sweat. He had another shower and put on a fresh T-shirt. He had decided to leave the hotel. According to the Internet, a bus left for Siwa every night at eleven o’clock and that suited him well. It was better to keep on the move. He could grab another few hours’ sleep on the way.
Siwa.
The location of Razim’s desert fort. The place where Jack had died. Even thinking about it made him feel sick.
It was only a short distance to the Cairo Gateway bus station and Alex decided to walk. The city was quieter and cooler now that the evening had come, and he could grab some street food on the way. He glanced out of the window and was about to leave when the screech of tyres on the road told him that a car had just pulled in and that it was in a hurry. He looked down and saw a black SUV outside the hotel. Even as he watched, two men climbed out and disappeared through the front door. He knew at once that they had come for him. It wasn’t just the fact that they were wearing suits in a hotel where the dress code was most definitely torn jeans and T-shirts. There was something too definite, too serious about the way they moved. Police? Military intelligence? Or something worse? It didn’t matter. He had less than a minute to work something out. The receptionist would have already told them he was here. In another few seconds they would be on their way upstairs.
There was no lift. There was only one staircase. Alex could go up or he could go down. He could try to find somewhere to hide in the hotel – but where? All the doors along the corridor were closed. There was nowhere to hide inside the room. He had tested the window. It didn’t open. He couldn’t climb out and he could already hear footsteps at the end of the corridor, coming up the stairs. Somehow, he had to disappear immediately.
Thirty seconds later, the two men reached the third floor and began to move down the corridor. They pushed past an old Arab woman wrapped in a traditional cloak – an abaya – with a huge basket of laundry on her head, and continued down to the door. It was locked. Ibrahim pounded his fist on the door and waited for it to open.
Meanwhile, Alex Rider turned the corner and hurried down the stairs. The disguise would only have worked in the darkness of the corridor. The cloak was his bedspread, the basket taken from outside the room. In the shadows, his face had been invisible to the two men. Now he ran down the three floors and out through the reception area, still carrying the basket. Outside, the sun was setting but it was still light and he knew that the trick would no longer work. Sure enough, he saw the black car parked in front of the hotel. Inside there was a third man, a driver, rising out of his seat, reaching inside his jacket
for a gun. Alex didn’t hesitate. The man was half out of the car when Alex hurled the bedspread and laundry basket at him, dirty clothes spilling over his face. Alex kicked out, slamming the door. The man shouted and fell back, and at the same time Alex slid over the bonnet and ran across the road, dodging between the traffic.
He didn’t stop when he reached the other side. There were three men after him and he had only held them up briefly. He ducked down an alleyway between a café and a stall selling pancakes. Breathless and already sweating – the shower had been a waste of time – he emerged into another main road and flagged down the first taxi he saw. Once again, the car had no meter. The driver was a smiling, bearded man, missing one of his front teeth. Wooden beads and several air fresheners hung from the mirror beside his head.
“Yes, sir. Yes, sir. You want to see Pyramids? You want felucca ride on the Nile?”
Alex twisted round and looked out of the window. He hadn’t been followed. “Take me to the Gateway bus station,” he commanded.
“The bus station?” The driver’s face fell. It was only a few streets away and he’d been hoping for a better fare.
“Just go!” Alex took out his wallet. “I’ll pay you ten dollars.”
It was a lot of money. The driver grinned and rammed the cab into gear, steering it into the traffic.
The Cairo Gateway bus station was huge and surprisingly modern. It also contained shops, offices and restaurants. Alex hadn’t eaten for eight hours and he was hungry. He paid the driver and went inside, passing through a security checkpoint where his bag was searched. He had noticed a lot of soldiers and policemen out on the street and guessed that people must have grown used to living their entire lives in a state of alert. There was a row of offices – they were actually little more than booths – on either side of the entrance and he quickly found the one for Siwa. The name was advertised in English as well as Arabic. It was closed. He glanced at his watch. It was seven o’clock. The bus was due to leave in four hours. Perhaps the office would open later.