Scorpia Rising Page 14

  “I don’t know, Alex, old chap. They haven’t told me. The good thing is that nobody knows you’re here in Cairo. At least you’re safe.”

  “You mean, he’s safe until someone tries to blow up the school,” Jack growled. “Then he’ll be right in the middle of it.”

  “What exactly am I meant to do?” Alex asked. His face brightened. “And what gadgets have you got for me, Mr. Smithers? I’m sure you’ve got an exploding camel or something.”

  Smithers shook his head. For once, he was completely serious. “This is a very unusual situation,” he said. “And we have to be careful. All we know is that the school is a target and a lot of young lives may be at stake. Imagine if the whole place were taken over by armed criminals. Such a thing has happened before, you know. Or suppose some of these teenagers were taken prisoner . . .” He pulled out a list of ten names and laid it flat on the table. “For what it’s worth, these are the ten wealthiest students at Cairo College.”

  Alex glanced at the names. The third one down was Simon Shaw. He was the blond-haired boy he’d met on his first day. “I know him,” he said. “He was in the swimming pool.”

  “His father is Richard Shaw. He owns about half the gas stations in Australia.” Smithers took the list and folded it away. “Don’t be fooled by the fact that the son is living in an apartment just like you,” he said. “A lot of these young people don’t want people to know how rich their families are.”

  That was an interesting thought. Perhaps Alex wouldn’t be the only person at Cairo College with secrets to hide.

  “We have to examine all the security systems in the school,” Smithers continued. “Put simply, Alex, we need to be sure that it’s safe. What about members of the staff? Are there any teachers with drinking or gambling problems? Now that I come to think of it, my old history teacher suffered from both. But we want to know about anything that could open them up to blackmail.

  “And then there’s this chap Erik Gunter. Now, I’ve seen his file and I find it hard to believe that he’s turned bad. He took six bullets for his regiment while he was in Afghanistan. He spent nine weeks in the hospital recovering. He has no criminal record of any sort. But at the same time, he is their new head of security and it can’t just be a coincidence that he’s turned up now. That’s where you should concentrate your efforts. We want to know everything he’s up to. Who he meets, how much he spends . . . even what he has for lunch.”

  Smithers had brought a small attaché case with him and he opened it. The first things he took out were a pair of rather chunky sunglasses and a bright red plastic water bottle, the sort of thing sportsmen might use.

  “These work together,” he explained. “Everyone at Cairo College carries water—and you can pour about a quarter of a liter in the top part of this bottle. The equipment is concealed in the bottom part. It’s new technology, Alex, and highly classified. What it does is it uses people’s mobile phones against them. Point the bottle in their direction and you’ll hear everything they’re hearing. The speakers are inside the handles of the dark glasses and go behind your ears. But it’s better than that. You can actually activate mobile phones at a distance of up to fifty meters and turn them into bugs. Two teachers having a conversation in the yard? You’ll hear every word they say.”

  He took out what looked like an ordinary plastic light switch. “This is the same design as all the light switches at Cairo College,” he explained. “You can stick it on any wall—there’s a resin on the back and nobody will notice it’s there . . . one more switch among so many. It doesn’t actually turn anything on or off, of course, but it’s got a highly sensitive listening device inside and you can use it to hear through walls. Again, it’s connected to the glasses.

  “Finally, if you want to communicate with me, use this.” He produced an old-fashioned notepad and a ballpoint pen and handed them to Alex. Both objects felt slightly too heavy. “Anything you write or draw on this notepad will appear instantly on my computer screen,” Smithers said. “Scribble down SOS and I’ll be on my way. I’ve taken a house in the middle of the city, by the way, just off Al-Azhar Street, around the corner from the souk. I’ll give you the address or you can use the sunglasses.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “There’s a miniaturized GPS built into the left lens. You’ll find the switch on the top.” Smithers shut the case. “I’m working on a few other thoughts,” he said, “but that should get you started.” He took out the handkerchief and patted at his face. “Trouble with this country is it’s damnably hot,” he said.

  “I’m going for a swim,” Alex said. “You can come with me, if you like.”

  “No, thank you, old chap. I never swim. I once invented a miniature submarine, but it was pretty hopeless. For a start, I couldn’t fit into it. And floating doesn’t come naturally to me. But you enjoy yourself!” He got up and went over to the door. “Delighted to meet you, Jack. And take care, Alex. I’ll show myself out!”

  Alex and Jack waited until he had gone. Then Jack picked up the sunglasses and examined them. “So that was the famous Mr. Smithers,” she said. “He was completely unbelievable.”

  “You mean . . . his gadgets?”

  “I mean the size of him! But I guess it’s good he’s on your side.” Jack handed Alex the sunglasses and went into the kitchen. “I’ll make some supper,” she said. “And then you’d best be getting an early night. You’ve got to be ready for your first day at school.”

  11

  THE NEW BOY

  THE CAIRO INTERNATIONAL College of Arts and Education was only a five-minute walk from the apartment, just as Blakeway had said. When Monday morning finally arrived, Alex set off with the two Australian boys, Craig and Simon, who had offered to deliver him to the main reception. Jack would have liked to have gone too but understood that Alex would feel more comfortable with kids his own age. But she still grabbed hold of him before he went and gave him a quick kiss good-bye.

  “It reminds me of the first time you went to Brookland,” she said.

  And the strange thing was, Alex was aware of the same nervousness that he’d felt when, aged thirteen, he’d left for secondary school. His new uniform—dark blue trousers and light blue polo shirt—felt ridiculous and he had to remind himself that everyone would be wearing the same thing. He guessed it didn’t matter how old you were. These feelings never went away.

  Cairo College even looked a bit like Brookland. It was halfway down a wide, tree-lined avenue, a modern complex with a main gate and buses turning in, cars already pulling up outside, children of every age and size tumbling out, dragging backpacks and lunchboxes and peculiar class projects made out of wobbling cardboard and paper. It occurred to Alex that schools all over the world are more or less alike. After all, a classroom is a classroom, a football field is a football field . . . and Cairo College had plenty of both. Even the noise was the same: the medley of shouting voices, the first bell, the stampede of feet on concrete. Is there any other type of building that identifies itself so quickly by the sound it makes?

  What made Cairo College different was the burning sunlight, the brightly painted yellow walls (surely no school in England was ever painted yellow), the exotic plants and palm trees, and the thin scattering of sand in the main yard. The buildings had been designed so that the passageways were light and airy, opening onto different courtyards with benches and tables grouped together under wooden canopies so that everyone could have their lunch outside. There was a junior school, with about a hundred children aged eight to thirteen. But they were all contained in a single block, next to an Olympic-sized swimming pool. The three hundred boys and girls in the senior school had the rest of the place to themselves.

  Craig and Simon escorted Alex through the main gate. They weren’t allowed to continue without presenting their passes, which were electronically scanned by an Egyptian guard. Alex noticed that the same was being done for all the other students as they arrived. He was held up while his own pass was i
ssued with a photograph that made him look as if he had just been mugged. Finally, the two boys left him at an office on the other side, where he was greeted by the school secretary, a smiling, motherly woman with a thick Yorkshire accent who made him fill out a lot of forms, gave him a copy of the school regulations, and then took him into the room next door. Here, he was surprised to find himself shaking hands with the principal of Cairo College, a man in his fifties who introduced himself as Matthew Jordan—“but everyone calls me Monty.” He was a New Zealander, a shaggy, easygoing man who obviously enjoyed his job.

  “Alex, welcome to Cairo College. I hope you’re going to enjoy yourself. I guess it’s all going to be a bit strange at first, but we try to take things easy here. We don’t like bullies and we don’t like show-offs, but you don’t look like either, so I’m sure you’ll fit in fine. If you have any problems, my office is always open. Every new kid who comes here gets a mentor. Yours is waiting outside. Her name is Gabriella and I’m sure the two of you will get along. Good luck. I’ll see you around.”

  Gabriella was sixteen and, it turned out, the daughter of the Italian ambassador in Cairo. She had been at the school for three years and—she wasted no time telling Alex—she was looking forward to getting out. She already seemed to be bursting out of her uniform. Her nails were painted bright red. From the way she walked, it was as if the whole place belonged to her. She took Alex to morning assembly, class registration, and then to his first lesson. After that, he didn’t see her again.

  Monday at Cairo College . . .

  It began with four one-hour classes, followed by lunch. The college taught exactly the same subjects as an English school with the single exception that there were no religious studies . . . Perhaps it was too sensitive an area in an Islamic country. The lessons were also more relaxed and the class sizes, with only fifteen or sixteen students, were small. Like the students, the teachers came from all over the world, and maybe because they were so far from home, they all felt a need to mix in. Alex’s math teacher was from America, his history teacher was South African, and his English teacher was actually Japanese. They weren’t quite on first-name terms, but Alex thought that if he stayed at the school long enough, they could easily become so.

  Lunch was served out in the courtyard, a choice of salads, sandwiches, wraps, and pizzas. Again, because this was Egypt, there was no ham or pork. Alex wondered where he should sit, but he needn’t have worried. Craig, Simon, and Jodie were waiting for him and called him over to their table. They seemed keen to introduce him to their tenth-grade friends, and from the way they described him, they could have met him months ago rather than a few days before.

  “Tanner? That’s a Scottish name.” The speaker was a stocky ginger-haired boy named Andrew Macdonald, who was of course Scottish himself. There were quite a few boys from Scotland at Cairo College, connected by the oil industry. Alex had already noticed that they were the one national group that preferred to stick together.

  “I’m not Scottish,” Alex said.

  “That’s your bad luck. So why are you here?”

  Once again Alex went through his story. The fake name, the fake history. He still hated having to do it. He could feel it separating him from the rest of them.

  “So where are your parents?” someone asked.

  “They died a long time ago.”

  “That’s tough . . .”

  “I’ve gotten used to it.”

  “How long do you reckon you’ll be here?” Andrew asked.

  “I don’t know. They haven’t really said.”

  There were two more lessons in the afternoon, then gym, then ECAs, which stood for Extra Curriculum Activities and included everything from drama to swimming and trekking in the desert for an International Award. The school secretary had told Alex to put his name down for at least two activities, and he had chosen drama and soccer—although he couldn’t imagine kicking a ball around in the intense heat. The last class was French, which was hardly needed, as most of the students at Cairo College spoke two or three languages anyway. It was taught by Joanna Watson, the teacher whose name had been mentioned in the pool at Golden Palm Heights. Alex supposed that every school had to have a Miss Watson; permanently scowling, short-tempered, unloved, and proud of it. She was short and bullish and had threatened him with his first detention before she’d even introduced herself.

  It was at the very end of the day that Alex had his first encounter with Erik Gunter.

  The head of security appeared as Alex was leaving, letting himself out of his office on the ground floor. The two of them were suddenly face-to-face and eyed each other warily.

  “Good afternoon. You’re the new boy. Alex Tanner? Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “My name is Erik Gunter.” Alex recognized the Glasgow accent. “I’m also new here. I just started this month.”

  Gunter was younger than Alex had expected, not quite thirty. It was obvious that he had been in the army. He was incredibly fit, with the sort of overdeveloped muscles that might have been made for tattoos—not that Alex could actually see them beneath the black suit he was wearing. He had dark hair, but he had shaved it close to the skin, leaving only a shadow. He had a high forehead and glinting, sunken eyes. He wasn’t tall—in fact, he and Alex were about the same height—but Alex had no doubt that if it ever came to a fight, Gunter would be faster, stronger, and dirtier than him. He decided at once that it would never happen. If Gunter really was involved in some sort of conspiracy, MI6 could deal with him. This was one man he would leave well alone.

  “Are you a teacher here?” Alex asked. He felt a need to say something.

  “No. I look after security. Do you feel secure, Tanner?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Well, keep out of trouble and you’ll stay that way. I’ll see you around.”

  Gunter made his way down to the main door. Alex saw that he walked with difficulty, that he even had difficulty opening the door. He wasn’t slow, but his whole body was somehow lopsided, as if the different parts weren’t receiving the right signals from his brain. Nothing about him quite worked and Alex remembered that he had been shot several times in Afghanistan. Was he really the enemy? The man was a war hero—and in his own way he had been friendly enough. Alex already felt bad about spying on him.

  As far as Alex was concerned, that should have been the end of this first day at the Cairo International College of Arts and Education. He was looking forward to getting back to the apartment and telling Jack everything that had happened. But there was still one last encounter waiting for him and it was a very strange one.

  He had managed to drift behind the other students and was virtually alone as he walked toward the main gates. The guards were checking everyone’s IDs and the last of the buses was just pulling out. The sun hadn’t started to sink, but there was a pink hue in the sky and a sense of calm in the air. Alex pulled out his card so that it could be scanned. And it was at that moment that he got the impression that he was being watched. Actually, it was stronger than that. He was quite certain of it. It was like an electric shock, a shudder of something running through him as he became aware of somebody’s eyes boring into him.

  Slowly he turned his head and for just a moment he spotted a figure in a downstairs window, looking at him from behind the glass. It was Gunter’s office. Alex was sure of it. But it couldn’t be Gunter, as Alex had just seen him leave. It looked like a boy. Alex was sure he was wearing a school uniform. He glimpsed fair hair. The boy’s face was just a blur. Alex tried to make it out, but almost at once, the boy moved away and instantly disappeared, like a mirage in the desert. Perhaps he had never been there at all.

  But in that brief second, the heat of the afternoon was replaced by a shiver of something that he didn’t quite recognize, as if something unpleasant from the past had chosen to reappear. He stopped and took a deep breath, forcing himself to forget what had just happened. He was allowing things to get on top of
him. He had to focus his mind on what lay ahead.

  The window was empty.

  Alex hurried through the main gates. He didn’t look back.

  Jack was waiting for him when he got home. She’d spent the morning at the famous Egyptian Museum, looking at the treasures of the boy king Tutankhamun. In the afternoon she’d gone shopping and she’d even met some of the other parents living at Golden Palm Heights. They’d all been very welcoming. Like their children, they were displaced and needed to make friends.

  Alex quickly told her about his first day at the college. “You know, Jack, I think I’m actually going to quite like it there. Everyone’s really friendly. The school’s okay. And at least it’s not raining.”

  “That’s good, Alex. Maybe this is all going to work out after all.”

  And yet, much later that night, after he’d had dinner, done his first batch of homework, and watched half a bad film on satellite TV, Alex wondered. He had taken the smaller of the two bedrooms and was sitting at a desk with views over the back of the complex. There were no curtains and the night was very black, dotted with stars. The air-conditioning was on full and he could feel it blasting over his shoulders. He’d opened his laptop and logged into Facebook. The photograph on his profile page had been taken on a mountaineering vacation with his uncle, Ian Rider. The two of them were sitting next to each other on a ridge, both of them with ropes coiled over their shoulders. He wondered why he had chosen it.

  He had eighteen messages, nearly all of them from his friends at Brookland. The first one was from Tom Harris:Hey, Alex. Where are you, man? I’m out of hodpital and now I know whatit feels like to be shot. Hurt like hell. ThANKs for dragging me down as I’d have just stod there and let that nutter hit me a secod time. I guess he ws aiming at you. Yes? Hope this doesn’t mean you’re in troubble again. Let me know, if you can. EVEryone talking about it. Brookland on News at 10, Daily Mail, Sun ETC. Now we’re not allowed to talk to anyone. Typimg this with one hand. Two weeks off school plus counseling. Ha ha ha. TOM