Never Say Die Read online

  Colin was the younger of the two, sixteen with curly black hair, bad skin and freckles. He wasn’t exactly fat but he had the sort of flabbiness that comes with bad diet, no exercise and smoking. Clayton was a year older, with blond hair slicked back and a lazy eye. He worked out obsessively – in his bedroom and at the gym where his brother worked – and it showed. If Colin was the brains, Clayton was the muscle. Colin made the decisions. Clayton made sure they were carried out.

  “How are you doing, England?” Colin asked. That was what he had called Alex ever since he had learned he was from the UK.

  “I’m OK,” Alex said, quietly.

  “I gotta question for you,” Colin continued and Clayton sniggered, waiting for what was to come. “How come you got no mommy? What happened to your mommy, England? I heard she dropped you because she didn’t like you. Is that true?”

  “My mother’s dead,” Alex said.

  “Oooh! I’m so sorry!” Colin was jeering at him, screwing up his face in mock sympathy. “But now you got Sabina to look after you. Is she your mommy now?”

  Alex felt a wave of cold fury shudder through him. It would be so easy to take out these two creeps. He was a first-grade Dan, a black belt in karate. He imagined an elbow strike to the side of Colin’s head, followed by a jab punch – using the index and middle fingers – straight into Clayton’s throat. In less than three seconds, they would be writhing on the floor. He could actually feel the muscles in his arms tensing up as they prepared for action and he had to force himself to remain calm. Hitting back wasn’t the answer. If he did that, he would be as bad as them. And anyway, he was the stranger here, the freshman. It would only cause him trouble if he attacked these two kids.

  Fortunately the bell rang. Clayton flicked a hand against the side of Alex’s face and Colin sniggered. The two of them lumbered away. Alex took his things out of the locker and headed off for the first class.

  The rest of the school day was much like any other. In the morning, there were two classes of ninety minutes each, then lunch, then two more classes. In the afternoon, he had a session with his counsellor, a pleasant African-American woman called Mrs Masterson who had been assigned to him the day he had arrived. This was their third meeting and Alex had quickly learned how to lie to her, how to make her believe that everything was going well. It was only when the final bell went and he drifted back outside that he realized that he had barely spoken to anyone his own age. Once again, he was annoyed with himself. He had to make more of an effort. Surely he could do better than this?

  He had brought his laptop with him and, sitting in the sun waiting for Sabina, he opened it and connected to the school’s high-speed wireless network. It was something he’d been doing more and more recently. He liked to see how Chelsea FC were doing, picking up the scores of games he hadn’t actually seen. He glanced at a few news stories – what was on TV, stuff on social media – and even checked out the weather in London. He knew it was stupid, but it somehow made him feel less far away. He still got emails from Tom Harris, his best friend at Brookland, and Jane Bedfordshire, the school secretary, had contacted him too. He knew they were both worried about him and he always tried to answer as cheerfully as he could. There had never been anything from Smithers, from Mrs Jones or anyone else at MI6 – but nor did he expect it. They had probably forgotten about him and if they did want to reach him, they wouldn’t send anything as insecure as an email.

  It was four o’clock in San Francisco, which meant it was nearly midnight in London: too late for any new emails. However, there was one message in Alex’s inbox. It was from a company called HERMOSA. Alex had never heard of it. The message had no subject. It was probably spam and he was about to delete it when, at the last moment, something guided his hand and he double-clicked and opened it instead.

  Three words appeared on the screen.

  ALEXX

  I’M AL

  That was it. No sign-off. No image. No link. No explanation. But Alex stared at the screen as if he had been electrocuted. He sat there, utterly unaware of the other students walking past, climbing into the yellow buses that would take them home. He didn’t see or hear anything. He didn’t feel the sunshine on his neck and arms. At that moment, Alex even forgot that he was in America. Everything that had happened in the past month was wiped away.

  He slammed the laptop shut and went to find Sabina.

  FROM LIMA WITH LOVE?

  “It’s from Jack,” Alex said.

  “Alex…” Sabina looked at him darkly. She didn’t know what to say.

  “I know it is.” Alex’s voice was low. He was speaking slowly. But there was a fire in his eyes that Sabina hadn’t seen for a long time and he was leaning forward with his whole body tensed, as if he was about to break into a run.

  She shook her head. “It’s just three words, Alex. And the last word doesn’t even make sense. ‘I’m Al.’ What does that mean?”

  “‘I’m alive’. That’s what she was trying to tell me. She managed to get her hands on a computer – but only for a few moments. Someone came in before she finished typing the word.”

  “You can’t know that.” Alex had opened his laptop a second time and she gazed at the screen, trying to make sense of it. “It could be from someone called Al. It could be Alexander or Alistair or Alice. Or it could be the start of something else. ‘I’m alone.’ Or ‘I’m always thinking of you.’”

  “But it isn’t,” Alex insisted. “It’s from Jack.”

  He had found Sabina as she came out of the Art Studio. She had been talking to two other girls and without a word of explanation he had pounced on her and dragged her away. Now the two of them were sitting at one of the picnic tables near the fountain, opposite the main entrance. The campus was almost empty. The field hockey team was training on the pitch behind them and they could hear drum rolls and the wail of trumpets coming from the school jazz band, who were practising in the theatre. But the buses had left, the teachers had gone and only a few last students were still trickling out of the doors.

  Sabina didn’t know what to think. She had heard her parents talking and knew that both of them were desperately worried about Alex and had even been thinking of sending him back to get proper help, closer to home. For her part, she had been really excited when she heard that he was going to live with them in San Francisco, but from the moment he got off the plane, she had known it wasn’t going to work, that this wasn’t the same Alex she had met at Wimbledon Tennis Club one year before. Of course she understood what he had been through but at the same time there was something else. The two of them had grown apart. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Maybe it was simply the fact that they hadn’t seen each other for so long. Now she wasn’t sure how to respond.

  “It doesn’t even say it’s from Jack,” she said.

  “It doesn’t need to.” Alex tapped the screen. “Look what she calls me. Alexx with an extra X.”

  “Isn’t that a typing error?”

  “No! It was a sort of joke between us. She always did it. It’s my name followed by a kiss. It was her way of saying ‘with love’.”

  Sabina still looked doubtful. “What about HERMOSA? What’s that?”

  Alex shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve googled it. Hermosa is the Spanish word for beautiful. It’s the name of a beach here in California and an old subway station in Chicago. There’s a place called Hermosa in Mexico City. It could mean anything – it’s just the name of the account.”

  “Do you think Jack is in Mexico City?”

  “I don’t know, Sabina.” Alex sighed. “I suppose she could be anywhere.”

  “But she’s dead, Alex.” Sabina hadn’t meant to be so cruel but the words had simply slipped out and now it was too late. “You saw what happened. You were there!”

  Alex fell silent. He didn’t want to think back but he had no choice. Jack had been driving a car that had blown up in front of his eyes. He pictured it now as he had seen it then … tied up, the television screen i
n front of him, the car exploding in a ball of flame. Could it have been somehow faked? Of course it was possible. Alex had seen New York and San Francisco utterly destroyed any number of times in big Hollywood films. These days, with special effects, it was possible to do anything.

  But he had to ask himself – what would have been the point? Razim had no reason to spare Jack’s life. She was no use to him. And if she wasn’t dead, where was she? It had been six weeks since Alex had left Egypt. Why wouldn’t she have got in touch with him before now? And where was Hermosa? Mexico City, Chicago, California … none of those destinations made any sense at all.

  “I don’t know what happened any more, Sabina,” he said – and his voice was husky. “I just opened my laptop after the last lesson and I saw this message and somehow I know it’s from Jack.”

  The two of them sat in silence. Just then, a boy came out of the main door and began to walk down to the street. Alex recognized him. All sorts of different groups hung out together at EERHS. There were the artsy kids, the athletic kids, the drama kids, the nerds and the geeks. The boy was called Johnny Feldman and he definitely belonged to the last category. He was small and reedy with long, fair hair and glasses. He was wearing a zip-up sweater and skinny jeans. He and Alex had only one thing in common: Johnny had also been picked on by Colin and Clayton. Alex had once seen him come out of the toilet with his glasses crooked and blood dripping from his nose, although, following the unwritten school code, Johnny had insisted that he had “slipped”.

  Sabina called out to him and he strolled over, a surprised look on his face. “What do you want, Sabina?” he asked.

  “Can you help us, Johnny?” Before Alex could stop her, she gestured at the screen. “We just got this message. We want to know where it came from. Can you do that?”

  The boy shrugged. “That’s easy. Just look at the IP address.”

  “I don’t even know what that is,” Sabina said.

  Johnny sat down at the computer. Alex saw that he was pleased to have been invited over – and for once he was in command. “Do you mind?” he asked. He swung Alex’s laptop round and pressed a few keys. At once a string of computer code appeared on the screen. Alex tried to read it. “Return-Path … Thread-Topic … Message-ID…” It was all gobbledegook as far as he was concerned.

  “This is the email header section,” Johnny explained. “The message has been bounced around a bit. From what I can see, it was sent to somewhere in London and then redirected via SBC Global over here.” He pointed at a series of numbers. “That’s the originating IP address and it’s pretty simple to find out where it is.” Without asking, Johnny began to type, his fingers moving incredibly quickly over the keyboard. “I’m using a trace email analyser,” he said. He copied and pasted the email header into the analyser and stabbed ENTER. A map came up on the screen. “There you are!” He sat back triumphantly.

  Alex and Sabina leaned forward. It took them a moment to realize that they were looking at the centre of Lima, in Peru. The map covered an area from the National Stadium to the sea and must have been at least five miles square.

  “It won’t go any closer than that,” Johnny said. “If you want to know exactly where the email came from, you have to look for something you recognize.”

  “How about Hermosa?” Sabina asked.

  “We can try.” Johnny called up a search engine and tapped in the seven-letter word, this time adding the name of the city. The extra information helped. He was directed to a specific street. “Hermosa is the name of a shop in the middle of Lima,” he said. “It sells products made out of alpaca wool.”

  Alex was disappointed. For a moment he had thought that this was leading somewhere. But even if he was ready to believe that Jack Starbright was still alive, he couldn’t see her in a shop in Lima, selling luxury jerseys and scarves.

  “Is there anything else you need?” Johnny asked hopefully.

  “No, Johnny,” Sabina said. “Thanks for your help.”

  “That’s cool, Sabina.” Johnny got to his feet. “I’ll see you around, you guys!”

  Sabina waited until he had gone. Then she turned to Alex. “Well?”

  The three words were back on the screen. ALEXX. I’M AL. When he had first seen them, he had felt a great rush of hope. But now they had become a lifeline that was rapidly falling to pieces in his hands. “I don’t know,” he said, simply.

  “Alpaca wool,” Sabina said. “Maybe that’s what the ‘al’ means.”

  “I suppose so.” He reached out and closed the laptop. “I’m sorry, Sabina,” he said. “I didn’t mean to come running up to you like that. But when I saw it…”

  “That’s all right, Alex.” She laid her hand on his and just for a moment they were together again, the way they had been in England. “I know how tough this has been for you. I just want you to be happy again.”

  “I am happy,” Alex said. He wondered if he had convinced Sabina. He certainly hadn’t convinced himself.

  They walked home together, then went to their separate rooms to do their homework assignments. Neither of them mentioned the email again.

  The week passed, one day slipping into the next with the same warm sunshine and cloudless skies so that there was almost nothing to tell them apart. At last the weekend arrived and Liz Pleasure brought down the cases and began to pack the car for the trip to Los Angeles. Rocky, the Labrador was going too and didn’t seem too happy about it, whining and making a fuss of Alex as if he knew that something was wrong.

  Liz Pleasure felt it too. She hadn’t wanted to leave Alex “home alone” in the first place and had only agreed because it was going to be such a short trip. Even so, she had talked to their neighbour, a retired teacher, who had promised to look in on him twice a day and she had cooked enough food to keep him going for a week. She had also made Alex promise to call her if anything went wrong. Despite her misgivings, she had to admit that Alex had quite suddenly become more relaxed and cheerful. The difference was quite remarkable. Perhaps a little time by himself was what he needed after all.

  Alex was at the door when they left in the family’s Ford Mustang. Liz had taken the roof down and Rocky was curled up on the back seat. Sabina was sitting in the front, already plugged into her iPhone.

  “Alex, remember, if you need anything…” Liz began.

  “I’ll call you,” Alex said.

  “And if you change your mind, you can jump on a plane and come down any time. We’re staying at Shutters. I’ve left the name and the address on the table.”

  “Have a great weekend,” Alex said.

  The car drove off. Alex stood in the doorway for a minute. The house seemed very strange and empty. It felt as if he had only just arrived, as if he had never actually lived here. He crossed the hallway and went up the main stairs, then took the little staircase that led to his room, the wooden boards creaking under his feet.

  He had already written the letter. He read it one more time.

  Dear Liz and Edward (and Sab),

  You’ve all been incredibly kind to me since I came to America. I don’t know how to thank you for all you’ve done for me. You picked me up after everything that happened and took me into your family, and I don’t know how I would have been able to go on if it hadn’t been for you.

  I know it hasn’t been easy for you. I know I haven’t managed to fit in the way I would have liked … at home and at school. I really have tried. But I can’t forget Egypt. I can’t get it out of my head. Sometimes it’s like I’m going mad. I’m sorry about that. And I’m also sorry about what I’m doing now.

  Something has happened. Sabina will explain. I got an email and it’s made me think that perhaps Razim managed to lie to me and that Jack may be alive after all. Maybe I’m wasting my time and causing you all this worry for nothing but I know I won’t be able to sleep until I’ve found the truth. So by the time you read this I will have gone. Please, please don’t send the police after me and whatever you do, don’t tell Mrs Jones or any
one at MI6. Please don’t try to follow me. I know what I’m doing. I’m fifteen now, and anyway, if you think about all the things that happened to me last year, I hope you’ll agree that I can look after myself.

  I don’t think I’ll be more than a couple of weeks. Can you tell them at school that I’m sick? And apologize to Mrs Stevens that my essay on conscious life was so rubbish? I promise you that I will text and email to let you know I’m OK.

  Thank you again. I’m sorry.

  With love,

  Alex

  He propped the letter up on the kitchen table. He had already packed his backpack, taking just a few clothes and his laptop, before Sabina and her mother had left. He had his passport and he had five hundred dollars which he’d taken from his savings, money that had come to him when his uncle, Ian Rider, had died. Alex also had a debit card that was tied to an account controlled by Edward Pleasure. It was his own money that he would be using and unless Edward blocked the account, he would be able to support himself while he was away. He had already used the card to buy a ticket online.

  The taxi arrived ten minutes later. Alex left the house, locking the front door behind him and posting through the keys. He threw his backpack into the back seat and was about to get in when he noticed something on the other side of the street. Three boys. One of them dark and thickset. The other taller and more muscular. Colin Maguire and Clayton Miller. The third boy was very small, about ten years old. He was holding an ice cream. He looked scared.

  Alex went round to the driver. “Do you mind waiting a moment?” he asked.

  “Sure.” The driver was young, Chinese American. “Take as long as you like. The meter’s running!”

  Alex straightened up, then crossed the road. It wasn’t so surprising that Colin and Clayton should be here. They lived quite close by and Alex had often seen them in the neighbourhood. He had always taken care to avoid them.