Point Blank Read online

  ‚Dinner is in half an hour,' Lady Caroline said. ‚Do you eat venison?' She sniffed.

  ‚Perhaps you’d like to shower before you eat? I’ll show you to your room.'

  Sir David stood up. ‚You’ve got a lot of reading to do. I’m afraid I have to go back to London tomorrow—I have lunch with the president of France—so I won’t be able to help you.

  But, as I say, if there’s anything you don’t know…'

  ‚Fiona Friend,' Alex said.

  Alex had been given a small, comfortable room at the back of the house. He took a quick shower, then put his old clothes back on again. He liked to feel clean but he had to look grimy—

  it suited the character of the boy he was supposed to be. He opened the first of the files. Sir David had been thorough. He had given Alex the names and recent histories of just about the entire family, as well as photographs of vacations, details of the house and stables in Mayfair, the apartments in New York, Paris, and Rome, and the villa in Barbados. There were newspaper clippings, magazine articles … everything he could possibly need.

  A gong sounded. It was seven o’clock. Alex went downstairs and into the dining room. The room had six windows and a polished mahogany table long enough to seat fifteen. But only the three of them were there: Sir David, Lady Caroline, and Fiona. The food had already been served, presumably by a butler or cook. Sir David gestured at an empty chair. Alex sat down.

  ‚Fiona was just talking about Soloman,' Lady Caroline said. There was a pause. ‚Soloman is a horse. We have lots of horses.' She turned to Alex. ‚Do you ride?'

  ‚Only my bicycle,' Alex said.

  ‚I’m sure Alex isn’t interested in horses,' Fiona said. She appeared to be in a bad mood. ‚In fact, I doubt if we have anything in common. Why do I have to pretend he’s my brother? The whole thing is completely—'

  ‚Fiona…,' Sir David muttered in a low voice.

  ‚Well, it’s all very well having him here, Daddy, but it is meant to be my Easter vacation.'

  Alex realized that Fiona must go to a private school. Her term would have ended earlier than his. ‚I don’t think it’s fair.'

  ‚Alex is here because of my work,' Sir David continued. It was strange, Alex thought, the way they talked about him as if he weren’t actually there. ‚I know you have a lot of questions, Fiona, but you’re just going to have to do as I say. He’s with us only until the end of the week. I want you to look after him.'

  ‚But he’s a city boy!' Fiona insisted. ‚He’s going to hate it here. And anyway, how can pretending he’s my brother help you with your supermarkets?'

  ‚Fiona…' Sir David didn’t want any more argument. ‚It’s what I told you. An experiment.

  And you will make him feel welcome!'

  Fiona picked up her glass and looked directly at Alex for the first time since he had come into the room. ‚We’ll see about that,' she said.

  The week seemed endless. After only two days, Alex was beginning to think that Fiona was right. He was a city boy. He had lived his whole life in London and felt utterly lost, suffocating in the big green blanket of the countryside. The estate went on for as far as the eye could see, and the Friends seemed to have no connection with the real world. Alex had never felt more isolated. Sir David himself had disappeared to London. Lady Caroline did her best to avoid Alex. Once or twice she drove into Skipton—the nearest town—but otherwise she seemed to spend a lot of time gardening or arranging flowers. And Fiona…

  She had made it clear from the start how much she disliked Alex. There could be no reason for this. It was simply that he was an outsider, and Fiona seemed to mistrust anything that didn’t belong to the miniature world of Haverstock Hall. She’d asked him several times what he was really doing there. Alex had shrugged and said nothing, which had only made her dislike him all the more.

  And then, on the third day, she introduced him to some of her friends.

  ‚I’m going shooting,' she told him. ‚I don’t suppose you want to come?'

  Alex shrugged. He had memorized most of the details in the files and figured he could easily pass as a member of the family. Now he was counting the hours until the woman from the academy arrived to take him away.

  ‚Have you ever been shooting?' Fiona asked.

  ‚No,' Alex said.

  ‚I go hunting and shooting,' Fiona said. ‚But of course, you’re a city boy. You wouldn’t understand.'

  ‚What’s so great about killing animals?' Alex asked.

  ‚It’s part of the country way of life. It’s tradition.' Fiona looked at him as if he were stupid.

  It was how she always looked at him. ‚Anyway, the animals enjoy it.'

  The shooting party turned out to be young and—apart from Fiona—entirely male. Five of them were waiting on the edge of a forest that was part of the Haverstock estate. Rufus, the leader, was sixteen and well built with dark, curling hair. He seemed to be Fiona’s boyfriend.

  The others—Henry, Max, Bartholomew, and Fred—were about the same age. Alex looked at them with a heavy heart. They had uniform Barbour jackets, tweed trousers, flat caps, and Huntsman leather boots. They spoke with uniform upper-class accents. Each of them carried a shotgun, with the barrel broken over his arm. Two of them were smoking. They gazed at Alex with barely concealed contempt. Fiona must have already told them about him. The city boy.

  Quickly, she made the introductions. Rufus stepped forward.

  ‚Nice to have you with us,' he drawled. He ran his eyes over Alex, not bothering to hide his contempt. ‚Up for a bit of shooting, are you?'

  ‚I don’t have a gun,' Alex said.

  ‚Well, I’m afraid I’m not going to lend you mine.' Rufus snapped the barrel back into place and held it up for Alex to see. It was a beautiful gun, with twenty-five inches of gleaming steel stretching out of a dark walnut stock decorated with ornately carved, solid silver sideplates.

  ‚It’s an over-and-under shotgun with detachable trigger lock, handmade by Abbiatico and Salvinelli,' he said. ‚It cost me thirty grand—or my mother, anyway. It was a birthday present.'

  ‚It couldn’t have been easy to wrap,' Alex said. ‚Where did she put the ribbon?'

  Rufus’s smile faded. ‚You wouldn’t know anything about guns,' he said. He nodded at one of the other teenagers, who handed Alex a much more ordinary weapon. It was old and a little rusty. ‚You can use this one,' he said. ‚And if you’re very good and don’t get in the way, maybe we’ll let you have a bullet.'

  They all laughed at that. Then the two smokers put out their cigarettes and everyone set off into the woods.

  Thirty minutes later, Alex knew he had made a mistake in coming. The boys blasted away left and right, aiming at anything that moved. A rabbit spun in a glistening red ball. A wood pigeon tumbled out of the branches and flapped around on the leaves below. Whatever the quality of their weapons, the teenagers weren’t good shots. The animals they managed to hit were only wounded, and Alex felt a growing sickness, following this trail of blood.

  They reached a clearing and paused to reload. Alex turned to Fiona. ‚I’m going back to the house,' he said.

  ‚Why? Can’t stand the sight of a little blood?'

  Alex glanced at a hare about fifty feet away. It was lying on its side with its back legs kicking helplessly. ‚I’m surprised they let you carry guns,' he said. ‚I thought you had to be seventeen.'

  Rufus overheard him. He stepped forward, an ugly look in his eyes. ‚We don’t bother with rules in the countryside,' he muttered.

  ‚Maybe Alex wants to call a policeman!' Fiona said.

  ‚The nearest police station is forty miles from here,' Rufus said with a cold smile.

  ‚Do you want to borrow my cell phone?' one of the other boys asked.

  They all laughed again. Alex had had enough. Without saying another word, he turned around and walked off.

  It had taken him thirty minutes to reach the clearing, but thirty minutes later he was still stuck in the woods
, completely surrounded by trees and wild shrubs. Alex realized he was lost.

  He was annoyed with himself. He should have watched where he was going when he was following Fiona and the others. The forest was enormous. Walk in the wrong direction and he might blunder onto the North Yorkshire moors … and it could be days before he was found. At the same time, the spring foliage was so thick that he could barely see ten yards in any direction. How could he possibly find his way? Should he try to retrace his steps or continue forward in the hope of stumbling on the right path?

  Alex sensed danger before the first shot was fired. Perhaps it was the snapping of a twig or the click of a metal bolt being slipped into place. He froze—and that was what saved him. There was an explosion—loud, close—and a tree one step ahead of him shattered, splinters of wood dancing in the air.

  Alex turned around, searching for whoever had fired the shot. ‚What are you doing?' he shouted. ‚You nearly hit me!'

  Almost immediately there was a second shot and, just behind it, a whoop of excited laughter. And then Alex realized what was happening: They hadn’t mistaken him for an animal. They were aiming at him for fun.

  He dived forward and began to run. The trunks of the trees seemed to press in on him from all sides, threatening to bar his way. The ground underneath was soft from recent rain and dragged at his feet, trying to glue them into place. There was a third explosion. He ducked, feeling the gunshot spray above his head, shredding the foliage.

  Anywhere else in the world, this would have been madness. But this was the middle of the English countryside and these were rich, bored teenagers who were used to having things their own way. Somehow, Alex had insulted them. Perhaps it had been the jibe about the wrapping paper. Perhaps it was his refusal to tell Fiona who he really was. But they had decided to teach him a lesson, and they would worry about the consequences later. Did they mean to kill him?

  ‚We don’t bother with rules in the countryside,' Rufus had said. If Alex was badly wounded—

  or even killed—they would somehow get away with it. A dreadful accident. He wasn’t looking where he was going and stepped into the line of fire.

  No. That was impossible.

  They were trying to scare him—that was all.

  Two more shots. A pheasant erupted out of the ground, a ball of spinning feathers, and screamed up into the sky. Alex ran on, his breath rasping in his throat. A thick briar reached out across his chest and tore at his clothes. He still had the gun he had been given, and he used it to beat a way through. A tangle of roots almost sent him sprawling.

  ‚Alex? Where are you?' The voice belonged to Rufus. It was high-pitched and mocking, coming from the other side of a barrier of leaves. There was another shot, but this one went high over his head. They couldn’t see him. Had he escaped?

  No, he hadn’t. Alex came to a stumbling, sweating halt. He had broken out of the woods but he was still hopelessly lost. Worse—he was trapped. He had come to the edge of a wide, filthy lake. The water was a scummy brown and looked almost solid. No ducks or wild birds came anywhere near the surface. The evening sun beat down on it and the smell of decay drifted up.

  ‚He went that way!'

  ‚No … through here!'

  ‚Let’s try the lake.'

  Alex heard the voices and knew that he couldn’t let them find him here. He had a sudden image of his body, weighed down with stones, at the bottom of the lake. But that gave him an idea. He had to hide.

  He stepped into the water. He would need something to breathe through. He had seen people do this in films. They would lie in the water and breathe through a hollow reed. But there were no reeds here. Apart from grass and thick, slimy algae, nothing was growing at all.

  One minute later, Rufus appeared at the edge of the lake, his gun still hooked over his arm.

  He stopped and looked around with eyes that knew the forest well. Nothing moved.

  ‚He must have doubled back,' he said.

  The other hunters had gathered behind him. There was tension between them now, a guilty silence. They knew the game had gone too far.

  ‚Let’s forget him,' one of them said.

  ‚Yeah…'

  ‚We’ve taught him a lesson.'

  They were in a hurry to get home. As one, they disappeared back the way they had come.

  Rufus was left on his own, still clutching his gun, searching for Alex. He took one last look across the water, then turned to follow them.

  That was when Alex struck. He had been lying under the water, watching the vague shapes of the teenagers as if through a sheet of thick brown glass. The barrel of the shotgun was in his mouth. The rest of the gun was just above the surface of the lake. He was using the hollow tubes to breathe. Now he rose up—a nightmare creature oozing mud and water, with fury in his eyes.

  Rufus heard him but he was too late. Alex swung the shotgun, catching Rufus in the small of the back. Rufus grunted and fell to his knees, his own gun falling out of his hands. Alex picked it up. There were two cartridges in the breech. He snapped the gun shut.

  Rufus looked at him, and suddenly all the arrogance had gone and he was just a stupid, frightened teenager, struggling to get to his knees.

  ‚Alex…' The single word came out as a whimper. It was as if he were seeing Alex for the first time. ‚I’m sorry!' he sniveled. ‚We weren’t really going to hurt you. It was a joke. Fiona put us up to it. We just wanted to scare you. Please…'

  Alex paused, breathing heavily. ‚How do I get out of here?' he asked.

  ‚Just follow the lake around,' Rufus said. ‚There’s a path.'

  Rufus was still on his knees. There were tears in his eyes. Alex realized that he was pointing the silver-plated shotgun in his direction. He turned it away, disgusted with himself. This boy wasn’t the enemy. He was nothing.

  ‚Don’t follow me,' Alex said and began to walk.

  ‚Please!' Rufus called after him. ‚Can I have my gun back? My mother would kill me if I lost it.'

  Alex stopped. He weighed the weapon in his hands, then threw it with all his strength. The handcrafted Italian shotgun spun twice in the dying light, then disappeared with a splash in the middle of the lake. ‚You’re too young to play with guns,' he said.

  He walked away, letting the forest swallow him up.

  THE TUNNEL

  THE MAN SITTING IN THE gold, antique chair turned his head slowly and gazed out the window at the snow-covered slopes of Point Blanc. Dr. Hugo Grief was almost sixty years old with short, white hair and a face that was almost colorless too. His skin was white, his lips vague shadows. Even his tongue was no more than gray. And yet, against this blank background, he wore circular wire glasses with dark red lenses. For him, the entire world would be the color of blood. He had long fingers, the nails beautifully manicured. He was dressed in a dark suit buttoned up to his neck. If there were such a thing as a vampire, it might look very much like Dr. Hugo Grief.

  ‚I have decided to move the Gemini Project into its last phase,' he said. He spoke with a South African accent, biting into each word before it left his mouth. ‚There can be no further delay.'

  ‚I understand, Dr. Grief.'

  A woman sat opposite Dr. Grief, dressed in tight-fitting spandex with a sweatband around her head. This was Eva Stellenbosch. She had just finished her morning workout—two hours of weight lifting and aerobics—and was still breathing heavily, her huge muscles rising and falling. Mrs. Stellenbosch had a facial structure that wasn’t quite human, with lips curving out far in front of her nose and wisps of bright ginger hair hanging over a high-domed forehead.

  She was holding a glass filled with some milky green liquid. Her fingers were thick and stubby.

  She had to be careful not to break the glass.

  She sipped her drink, then frowned. ‚Are you sure we’re ready?' she asked.

  ‚We have no choice in the matter. We have had two unsatisfactory results in the last few months. First Ivanov. Then Roscoe in New York. Quit
e apart from the expense of arranging the terminations, it’s possible that someone may have connected the two deaths.'

  ‚Possible, but unlikely,' Mrs. Stellenbosch said.

  ‚The intelligence services are idle and inefficient, it is true. The CIA in America. MI6 in England. Even the KGB. They’re all shadows of what they used to be. But even so, there’s always the chance that one of them might have accidentally stumbled onto something. The sooner we end this phase of the operation, the more chance we have of remaining unnoticed.'

  Dr. Grief brought his hands together and rested his chin on his fingers. ‚When is the final boy arriving?' he asked.

  ‚Alex?' Mrs. Stellenbosch sipped from her cup and set it down. She opened her handbag and took out a handkerchief, which she used to wipe her lips. ‚I am traveling to England tomorrow,' she said.

  ‚Excellent. You’ll take the boy to Paris on the way here?'

  ‚Of course, Doctor. If that’s what you wish.'

  ‚It is very much what I wish. We can do all the preliminary work there. It will save time.

  What about the Sprintz boy?'

  ‚I’m afraid we still need another few days.'

  ‚That means that he and Alex will be here at the same time.'

  ‚Yes.'

  Dr. Grief considered. He had to balance the risk of the two boys meeting against the dangers of moving too fast. It was fortunate that he had a scientific mind. His calculations were never wrong. ‚Very well,' he said. ‚The Sprintz boy can stay with us for another few days. I sense he is growing restless, and a new friend might put his mind at ease.'

  Mrs. Stellenbosch nodded. She lifted her glass and emptied its contents, the veins in her neck throbbing as she swallowed.