Scorpia Rising Read online

As Grendel had argued, there would be something very calming about discussing business while cruising past some of the most beautiful buildings in Europe, particularly when the business was as dangerous as theirs.

  Sabotage. Corruption. Intelligence. And assassination. These were the four activities that had given Scorpia its name. It was actually here in Paris that it had been formed, a collection of intelligence agents from around the world who had seen that their services might no longer be needed after the end of the Cold War and who had decided to go into business for themselves. It had been a wise move. Secret agents are generally very badly paid. For example, the head of MI5 in England receives only two hundred thousand a year—a tiny amount compared with any investment banker. Every member of Scorpia had multiplied his annual income by a factor of ten. And none of them paid any tax.

  There were now twelve of them and they were all men. There had once been a woman on the executive committee, but she had been killed in London and had never been replaced. Altogether, six of them had died—one from natural causes. The current chief executive was Zeljan Kurst, sitting at one end of the table in a charcoal gray suit, white shirt, and black tie. As he had explained in London, Scorpia had recently taken on four new recruits—although they had been forced to look outside the intelligence community. There was a ginger-haired Irishman who called himself Seamus and had been with the IRA. A pair of twin brothers had been brought in from the Italian mafia. And finally there was Razim.

  Scorpia was on the way up. That was the message they wanted to make clear to the world. They were taking back the control they should never have lost.

  The twelve executives arrived individually and at five-minute intervals, some in chauffeured cars, some on foot, one even on a bicycle. Only Giovanni and Eduardo Grimaldi, the twins, arrived together, but then, in twenty-five years they had never spent a minute apart. At exactly three o’clock, the deckhands lifted the anchor. The captain pushed forward on the throttle and Le Débiteur slipped out onto the river, beginning its journey east toward the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame.

  Zeljan Kurst waited until they were on their way before he spoke. He didn’t greet anyone by name. Such matters were a waste of words. Nor did he offer anyone a drink, not even a glass of water. None of these people trusted each other, so they would only have refused it anyway. If he had any recollection of his narrow escape in London, he didn’t show it. His eyes were heavy. He almost looked bored.

  “Good day to you, gentlemen,” he began. As usual, the English language sounded peculiarly ugly coming out of his lips, but it had long since been agreed that English was the only language they would speak. “We have come together today to agree upon our tactics for an operation that we have called Horseman and that will earn us the sum of forty million dollars when it is successfully completed. As you all know, I have given the management of this business to Mr. Razim.”

  Kurst glanced sideways. As he had expected, there was a brief flash of anger in the single eye of the Israeli agent, Levi Kroll. This was the third time he had been passed over for project command. Nobody else had noticed. Their attention was fixed on the man with the silver hair and the round spectacles who had been placed, not by accident, at the head of the table.

  “I will add only that the first installment of the money has been paid into our Cayman Islands account by our client, Ariston Xenopolos,” Kurst continued. “We will receive the full amount on the same day that the so-called Elgin marbles land on Greek soil.”

  “How is Ariston?” Dr. Three asked. He was very small, like many Chinese men, and as the years went by he seemed to be getting smaller. He had recently completed a two-thousand-page encyclopedia on the subject of torture. The writing had exhausted him although he had enjoyed the research.

  “He is critically ill,” Kurst replied. “According to his doctors, he should already be dead.”

  “And if he dies before our work is complete?”

  “The money will still be paid.” Kurst blinked heavily, as if to cut off any further discussion. “But it is not just a question of money for us,” he went on. “This is a matter of great importance. We have endured two failures in a single year . . . unheard of in our long history. And I have heard unpleasant whispers, gentlemen. There are some governments and intelligence agencies that no longer trust us with their assignments. The purchase of nuclear material for Iran. A terrorist atrocity in Tel Aviv. The collapse of the banking system in Singapore. Just three recent operations that should have come to us but instead have been given to other organizations. We have to prove to our clients that we are back at full strength—and this is our opportunity! The work that we begin here today will have echoes that will be heard and felt throughout the world.”

  He nodded in the direction of Razim. “Please. Tell the committee what you have planned.”

  “With great pleasure, Mr. Kurst.” Razim licked his lips. Pleasure was not a word he used often. It was not an emotion that was familiar to him. And yet he had been looking forward to this moment for a long time, and he felt something close to a thrill to be the one holding the reins, to be in command of the entire executive body of Scorpia. “The Elgin marbles,” he muttered, his voice barely audible above the drone of the motor. “The British government has refused, time and again, to hand them back. Why? Because they are selfish and arrogant. And the question I have been asking myself for the last few months is, what will make them overcome their selfishness and arrogance? What will make them change their mind? And the answer I have come up with is a single word. Fear.

  “Somehow we have to arrange matters so that they have no choice. We have to put them in a position where they must return the sculptures . . . where their survival depends on it. But at the same time, it has to be done very delicately. For example, we could steal a nuclear device and threaten to set it off in the heart of London if they did not comply with our wishes. But this would not be easy and it might not even work. They might not believe us. They might, as it were, call our bluff. And it is not our task to turn the British into victims, no matter how pleasant the thought. It will suit our purposes more if they are hated. They are thieves and aggressors. They deserve the condemnation of every civilized country.”

  Razim drew a breath. There were twenty-one eyes in the room and they were all turned on him. Outside, the boat was cutting through the bright water, heading toward a bend in the river with the Eiffel Tower and the Fields of Mars looming up on the right. They passed underneath a bridge, the Pont d’Iéna, and a bar of shadow swept briefly across the glass ceiling.

  “I do not believe violence, or the threat of violence, is the answer,” Razim went on. “But suppose we were to arrange a trap for them. Imagine that we were to arrange a scandal so dark and so shocking that it would destroy their reputation for decades to come. No countries would do business with them. The Americans would turn their backs on them. The European community already hates them, but this would be the final straw. Nobody would trust them. Suddenly, Great Britain would be a very small and lonely island indeed. Imagine all that, my friends, and ask yourselves what the British government would do to avoid it. Do you think, perhaps, they would agree to empty one room in a stupid museum in the middle of London? Would they cheerfully send a collection of old statues back to their rightful owners? I think they would. I really think they would.”

  Razim longed for a cigarette. He could feel the pack pressing inside his jacket pocket—for today he was wearing European dress—but he dared not reach for it. It wasn’t that smoking was forbidden. It was just that it might be considered a weakness.

  “I have already put into operation a plan that will achieve all this,” he said. “It is the sort of exercise that carries the unmistakable stamp and authority of Scorpia. And from what I have been told, I think it will give everyone around this table a great deal of personal satisfaction because, gentlemen, what I have in mind involves a young boy . . .”

  He paused for effect.

  “The boy’s name is Ale
x Rider.”

  There was a moment of perfect silence. Even the engines seemed to have stopped. The last two words seemed to have had a paralyzing effect on at least half the people in the cabin.

  “Alex Rider?” Sitting next to Kroll, the Japanese man called Mr. Mikato raised a thumb to his lips and bit at the nail. As he did so, he exposed the diamond set in his front tooth. Mikato was a member of the criminal organization known as the Yakuza and had tattooed the names of every man he had killed across his body. Unfortunately, he had run out of space. “We have encountered this boy twice,” he began. “We even tried to kill him with a bullet fired into his heart. The sniper that we hired had never failed—”

  “Please, hear me out,” Razim interrupted. “I have given the matter a great deal of thought.” Suddenly he decided—to hell with it. He took out his pack of Black Devils and lit one with a solid gold lighter. Smoke curled in front of his face, reflected in the two circles of his glasses.

  “I am perfectly aware that Alex Rider has, incredibly, gotten the better of this organization on two occasions,” he said. “There was a fairly simple affair involving the creation of a tsunami to strike the coast of Australia. And before that, the late Mrs. Rothman was responsible for the operation called Invisible Sword. This was a secret weapon using nanoshells with a cyanide core. The plan was to poison every child in Britain.”

  “We do not need to discuss these matters!” There was a Frenchman at the table, a man with a neat gray beard and the long, slender fingers of a pianist. He was rolling his knuckles across the wooden surface, a sign of his irritation.

  “But we do need to discuss them, Monsieur Duval,” Razim replied. “How can we understand our one weakness if we don’t examine it?” He waved a hand. “There is absolutely nothing special about this child except that he is a child. That’s the reason why he has been so useful to MI6. Oh yes, he received some training from his uncle, who was a spy himself before he was killed. But do you really think a basic knowledge of karate and the ability to speak a few foreign languages were the reasons he managed to defeat you?

  “That’s nonsense! Alex Rider won because you underestimated him. Winston Yu should have shot him when he had the chance. And Mrs. Rothman too. Maybe they hesitated because he was so young, but that was his strength. He was the world’s most unlikely spy. It didn’t matter if it was the island of Skeleton Key or Sayle Enterprises in Cornwall, nobody looked at him twice. That was their mistake.”

  “And our mistake . . . ,” Kroll began. He had been listening to all this in growing discomfort. Alone at the table, he was allowing his emotions to get the better of him. Zeljan Kurst had noticed this. It was what he had expected.

  “Let me finish!” Razim cut him off. “I have done a great deal of research into this child. I managed to see a copy of a report prepared by a journalist last year and it confirmed what I had already found out for myself. On at least six occasions—it may be more—he was employed by the Special Operations Division of MI6. Gentlemen, I ask you to consider the implications.

  “Everyone in this room knows only too well that secret agents—spies—aren’t really heroes. The work they do is often dirty and unpleasant. They kill people who have to be killed and they do it without a second thought. They have no pity and no sense of shame. They share the sorts of secrets that nobody else wants to know. Do spies have friends? Of course not. Nobody in their right mind would want to get close to them. They cannot be trusted.

  “So what would happen if it was discovered that MI6 had recruited a fourteen-year-old schoolboy! Too young to vote. Too young to smoke or get married. But old enough to be sent to foreign countries, to get mixed up in international politics, terrorism, and murder! What would that say about that country’s government—or its secret service?

  “And let us take it one step further. Suppose the boy was sent on a mission that went horribly wrong. But this time it wasn’t something brave or clever. He wasn’t trying to save the world from some madman like Damian Cray. He wasn’t protecting British children from a lethal virus hidden inside a computer. No. This time, he was involved in something that the entire world would condemn.” As Razim spoke, some of the people around the table were becoming more alert, nodding as they followed the thread of what he was saying. “And let us also imagine that during the course of this mission, the boy was actually killed.” This brought smiles and a few murmurs of approval. “Suddenly we have a situation. A fourteen-year-old is shot to death by the police in the streets of a major city. There are documents in his pockets. Perhaps he is carrying a gun that can be traced back to London. All the evidence proves, beyond any doubt, that he was working for MI6. Think for a minute what the result of all this would be.”

  “It would be covered up,” Mr. Mikato said. “There isn’t a newspaper that would dare to print such a story.”

  “Quite possibly. But we would have all the evidence. Scorpia would have collected e-mails, phone intercepts, photographs, voice recordings. We would have in our hands a bomb that we could detonate at any time. And the result would be that the reputation of the British government would be destroyed. It would be forced to dismantle its own secret service. The prime minister would resign. And no civilized country would want to do business with Britain for decades to come.”

  There was a long silence. By now Le Débiteur had passed the Eiffel Tower and turned the corner past the Quai d’Orsay. If anyone on the boat had looked out the window, they would have seen the gardens of the Tuileries stretching out on the right bank with the Louvre Museum just beyond. They would have seen couples strolling on the paths between shrubs and fountains that had been arranged so perfectly that it was as if they had been designed by a mathematician rather than a gardener. But nobody was interested in the view. They were all focused on Razim, turning over what he had just said.

  “Let me get this straight . . .” The man who had spoken was fair haired, dressed casually in jeans and an open-neck shirt. His name was Brendan Chase and he had once been the paymaster for ASIS—the Australian Secret Intelligence Service—until one afternoon when, after a drinking session, he had boarded a plane with four hundred thousand dollars of his agency’s money stuffed into his backpack. “Somehow you’re going to persuade MI6 to send Alex Rider on a mission. You’re going to make sure that the mission goes wrong and the boy is killed. Well, I’m with you there. If you want a volunteer, I’ll be glad to fire the bullet myself. You’re then going to blackmail them. We have all the evidence. We have the photographs and the recordings. We’ll make them public unless you persuade your government to send the Elgin marbles back to Greece. Is that about it?”

  “You have expressed it with perfect clarity, Mr. Chase.”

  “Okay. But this is what I don’t understand. How are you going to do it? These photographs, for example. Are you going to forge them? They’ll have to be pretty good if they’re going to stand up to examination.”

  “I don’t intend to forge anything.”

  “So how are you going to get the British secret service to play along?”

  Razim tapped ash onto the surface of the table. His fingernail was stained yellow with nicotine. “Any forgery is out of the question,” he continued. “We have to be cleverer than that. But actually I believe that it will be perfectly possible for us to arrange all the pieces on the board so that we control the entire game. At the moment, gentlemen, we have the upper hand. British intelligence has no idea of our intentions. And the truth is, they are a great deal less intelligent than they might believe. Alan Blunt has been in charge for too long. The same is true of his deputy, Mrs. Jones. We have extensive files on the two of them and I have been examining them closely. There are certain patterns of behavior. That is to say, they have become predictable. I think that it will be fairly simple to manipulate them. We will create a trap. And with a little nudging and pushing, they will fall right into it.”

  “Alex Rider is fifteen years old now,” Mr. Mikato said. He had taken out a handkerchief an
d was fanning it across his face. He eyed the cigarette with distaste. “As far as we know, MI6 is no longer using him. Do you really believe that you can persuade them to involve him again?”

  “Certainly.” Razim dropped the cigarette and ground it out on the wooden floor. “All we have to do is create the circumstances that will steer them toward that decision.”

  “I heard that he refused to work for them again,” Dr. Three said.

  “Alex Rider never had any real choice in the matter. He never intended to be a spy in the first place, but he’s been too valuable for MI6 to let him go. What this means is that we don’t actually have to go anywhere near him. If we provide them with the right sort of bait, MI6 will do our work for us. They’re the ones we have to target.”

  “What bait do you have in mind?” the Frenchman asked.

  Razim glanced briefly at Zeljan Kurst, as if asking for his consent. The bald head nodded very slightly.

  “It has to be done one step at a time,” Razim replied. “Our first objective is to get Alex Rider out of England and into a city of our choosing. Although he won’t be aware of it, he will be entering a hall of mirrors, as if in an amusement park. Every move that he makes will be controlled. Certain doors will be closed to him even as others open up. He will be watched from every angle. But as I say, we have to start with MI6. They are the ones who will draw Alex into our trap.

  “So let’s begin with the bait. Let’s say that a dead body is found floating in the River Thames in London. The body is that of a wanted criminal . . . a very important criminal. MI6 has been searching for him for some time. And in his pocket is a letter or some other document. Of course, it’s in code. MI6 sends it to their best scientists and they manage to work out what it means. That is when they discover that an event is taking place in some distant country and that it demands their urgent attention. It is something of world-changing importance. An agent must be sent there at once.”