Snakehead Read online

  He jumped.

  At the very last moment he changed his mind but continued anyway, launching himself down the slope with all his strength. He thought he felt the mine shudder very slightly as his foot left it. But it hadn’t exploded, at least not in the half second that he had left the ground. Automatically, he crossed his arms in front of his face, to protect himself from the fall—or from the blast. The slope was rushing past him, a dark streak at the corner of his vision. Then he hit the ditch. Water, cold and muddy, splattered into his face. His shoulder hit something hard. Behind him, there was an explosion. The mine. Clumps of earth and torn grass rained down on him. Then nothing. His face was underwater. He pulled his head back, spitting mud. A plume of smoke rose into the night sky. The fuse must have given him three seconds before it detonated the mine. He had taken those three seconds and they had saved him.

  He got unsteadily to his feet. Water was dripping out of his hair and down his face. His heart was pounding. He felt drained, exhausted. Briefly he lost his balance, put a hand out to steady himself, and winced as he caught it on the barbed wire fence. But at least he had found his way out of here. He rolled back underneath and tried to work out which way to go. Seconds later, the question was answered for him. He heard the sound of an engine, saw two beams of light cutting through the trees. His name was being called out. He hurried forward and found a track.

  The four SAS men were in the jeep. This time X-Ray was driving. They were rolling slowly through the wood, searching for him. Alex saw that they had left the coolers behind. But Sparks had remembered his guitar.

  “Alex!” X-Ray slammed on the brakes and at the same time Scooter leapt out of the passenger seat. He looked genuinely concerned, his face white in the glare of the headlights. “Are you okay? Jesus! We completely screwed up. We’ve got to get out of here. We shouldn’t be anywhere near.”

  “I told you…,” X-Ray began.

  “Not now!” Scooter snapped. He grabbed hold of Alex. “As soon as the bombs went off, I knew what had happened. I looked for you, but we must have got separated. You look terrible, mate. Are you hurt?”

  “No.” Alex didn’t trust himself to say any more.

  “Get in. We’ll get you home. I don’t know what to say to you. We’re complete idiots. We could have gotten you killed.”

  This time Alex took the front seat. Scooter climbed in the back with the others, and they set off back down the track and out toward the main road. Alex still wasn’t sure what had just happened—how the SAS men had managed to get themselves into this mess. Nor did he care. He allowed the noise of the engine and the cool night air to drift away, and seconds later he was sound asleep.

  5

  ON THE ROCKS

  TWO DAYS LATER, ALEX had put his experiences at Swanbourne behind him. He was sitting outside a café in Sydney, the opera house on one side, the great stretch of the Harbour Bridge on the other. It was the world’s favorite postcard view, and he had seen it many times. But now he was actually in it, eating vanilla-and-strawberry ice cream and watching as the Manly ferry came grinding into the dock, scattering the smaller craft all around it. The sun was beating down and the sky was a dazzling blue. It was hard to believe that he was really here.

  And he wasn’t alone. Jack had joined him the day before, bleary-eyed with jet lag but awake and bursting with excitement the moment she saw him. It had taken her twenty-six hours to get here, and Alex knew she would have been worrying all the way. Jack was meant to look after him. She hated it when he was away—and this time he had never been farther. From the very start she had made it clear that all she wanted was to get him onto a plane and take him back to London. Yes, it was cold and drizzling there. The English winter had already arrived. Yes, they both deserved a vacation. But it was time to go home.

  Jack was also eating ice cream, and although she was twenty-eight, she suddenly looked younger with her untidy red hair, her lopsided smile, and her brightly colored kangaroo T-shirt. More a big sister than a housekeeper. And above all a friend.

  “I don’t know why it’s taking so long,” she was saying. “It’s ridiculous. By the time you get back, you’ll have missed half the semester.”

  “They said they’d have it this afternoon.”

  “They should have had it two days ago.”

  They were talking about Alex’s visa. That morning, Jack had taken a call at the hotel where they were both staying. They had been given an address, a government office in Macquarie Street, just past the old parliament building. The visa would be ready at four o’clock. Alex could pick it up then.

  “Could we stay here a couple more days?” Alex asked.

  Jack looked at him curiously. “Don’t you want to go home?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Alex paused. “I suppose so. But at the same time…I’m not quite sure I’m ready to go back to school. I’ve been thinking about it. I’m sort of worried I’m not going to be able to fit in.”

  “Of course you’ll fit in, Alex. You’ve got lots of friends. They’ve all been missing you. Once you’re back, you’ll forget any of this stuff ever happened.”

  But Alex wasn’t so sure. He and Jack had talked about it the evening before. After all he had been through, how could he go back to geography lessons and school lunches and being told off for running too fast down the corridor? The day MI6 had recruited him, they had built a wall between him and his past life, and he wondered if there was now any way back.

  “I’ve hardly been to school this year,” he muttered. “I’m way behind.”

  “Maybe we can get Mr. Grey to come over this Christmas break,” Jack suggested. Mr. Grey was the teacher who had given Alex extra tutoring during the summer. “You got along well with him, and he’d soon help you catch up.”

  “I don’t know, Jack…” Alex looked at the ice cream, melting on his spoon. He wished he could explain how he felt. He didn’t want to work for MI6 again. He was sure of that. But at the same time…

  “It’s three thirty,” Jack said. “We ought to be on our way.”

  They got up and made their way along the side of the opera house and up into the botanical gardens—the incredible park that seemed to contain the city rather than the other way around. Looking back at the harbor, the bustle of life below, and the gleaming skyscrapers stretched out behind, Alex wondered how the Australians had managed to get it all so right. It was impossible not to love Sydney, and despite what Jack had said, he knew he wasn’t ready to leave.

  Together, the two of them made their way up past the gallery of New South Wales and into Macquarie Street, where the parliament building stood, two stories high, an elegant construction of pink and white that somehow reminded Alex of the ice cream he had just eaten. The address they had been given was just beyond, a modern glass block that was presumably filled with minor government offices. The receptionist already had visitor passes waiting for them and directed them to the fourth floor and a room at the end of a corridor.

  “I don’t know why they couldn’t have just put you on a plane and sent you out of here,” Jack grumbled as they left the elevator. “It seems a lot of fuss about nothing.”

  There was a door ahead of them. They walked through without knocking and stopped dead in their tracks. There had obviously been some sort of mistake. Wherever they were, this certainly wasn’t a visa office.

  Two men were talking to each other in what looked like a library, with antique furniture and a Persian rug on a highly polished wooden floor—Alex’s immediate impression was that the room didn’t belong to the building it was in. A golden Labrador lay curled up on a cushion in front of a fireplace. One of the men was behind a desk. He was the older of the two, wearing a shirt and jacket and no tie. His eyes were concealed behind designer sunglasses. The other man was standing by the window with his arms folded. He was in his late twenties, thin and fair-haired, dressed in an expensive suit.

  “Oh…I’m sorry,” Jack began.

  “Not at all, Miss Starbright,”
the man behind the desk replied. “Please come in.”

  “We’re looking for the visa office,” Jack said.

  “Sit down. I take it Alex is with you? The question may seem odd, but I’m blind.”

  “I’m here,” Alex said.

  “Who are you?” Jack asked. She and Alex had moved farther into the room. The younger man came over and closed the door behind them.

  “My name is Ethan Brooke. My colleague here is Marc Damon. Thank you very much for coming in, Miss Starbright. Do you mind if I call you Jack? Please—take a seat.”

  There were two leather chairs in front of the desk. Feeling increasingly uncomfortable, Jack sat down. The man called Damon walked across and took a third seat at the side. Next to the fireplace, the dog’s tail thumped twice against the wooden floor.

  “I know you’re in a hurry to get back to London,” Brooke began. “But let me explain why the two of you are here. The fact of the matter is, we need a little help.”

  “You want our help?” Jack looked around her. Suddenly it all made sense. “You want Alex.” She spoke the words heavily. She knew now who the men were, or at least what they represented. She had met their type before.

  “We’d like to make Alex a proposition,” Brooke agreed.

  “Forget it. He’s not interested.”

  “Won’t you at least listen to what we have to say?” Brooke spread his hands. He looked completely reasonable. He could have been a bank manager advising them on their mortgage or a family lawyer about to read a will.

  “We want the visa.”

  “You’ll have it. As soon as I’m done.”

  Alex had said nothing. Jack looked at him, then turned to Brooke and Damon with anger in her eyes. “Why can’t you people leave him alone?” she demanded.

  “Because he’s special. In fact, I’d say he’s unique. And right now we need him, just for a week or two. But I promise you, Jack. If he’s not interested, he can walk out of here. We can have him on a plane tonight. Just give me a minute to explain.”

  “Who are you?” Alex asked.

  Brooke glanced at Damon. “We work for ASIS,” the younger man replied. “The Australian Secret Intelligence Service.”

  “Special Operations?”

  “Covert Action. The two are more or less the same. You could say that we’re the rough equivalent of the outfit that Alan Blunt runs in London.”

  “I’ve read your file, Alex,” Brooke added. “I have to say, I’m impressed.”

  “What do you want me for?” Alex demanded.

  “I’ll tell you.”

  Brooke folded his hands, and to Alex it seemed somehow inevitable, unsurprising, even. It had happened to him six times before. Why not again?

  “Have you ever heard the term snakehead?” Brooke began. There was silence, so he went on. “All right, let me start by saying that the snakehead groups are without doubt the biggest and most dangerous criminal organizations in the world. Compared to them, the mafia and the triads are amateurs. They have more influence—and they’re doing more damage—even than Al Qaeda, but they’re not interested in religion. They have no beliefs. All they want is money. That’s the bottom line. They’re gangsters, but on a huge scale.

  “Have you ever bought an illegal DVD? The chances are that it was manufactured and distributed by a snakehead. And the profits they’ll have made out of it will have gone straight into one of their other concerns, which you may not find so amusing. Maybe it’s drugs or slaves or body parts. You need a new kidney or a heart? The snakeheads operate the biggest market in illegal organs, and they’re not fussy about where they get them or even if the donors are deceased. And then there are weapons. In this century alone, there have been at least fifty wars around the world that have used weapons supplied by the snakeheads…shoulder-launched missiles, AK-47s, that sort of thing. Where do you think the terrorists go if they want a bomb or a gun or something nasty and biological that comes in a test tube? Think of it as an international supermarket, Alex. But everything it sells is bad.

  “What else can you buy? You name it! Paintings stolen from museums. Diamonds mined illegally using slave labor. Ancient artifacts plundered from Iraq. Elephant’s tusks or tiger skin rugs. A few years ago a hundred kids died on the island of Haiti because someone had sold them cough medicine that happened to contain antifreeze. That was a snakehead—and I don’t think they offered anyone their money back.

  “But the biggest moneymaker for the snakeheads is people smuggling. You probably have no idea how many people there are being smuggled from one country to another all around the world. These are some of the poorest families in the world, desperate to build themselves a new life in the West. Some of them are fleeing hopelessness and starvation. Others are threatened in their own countries with prison and torture.” Brooke paused and looked directly at Alex, fixing him with his sightless eyes. “Half of them are under the age of eighteen,” he said. “About five percent of them are younger than you—and they’re traveling on their own. The lucky ones get picked up by the authorities. What happens to the rest of them…you don’t want to know.

  “Illegal immigration is a huge problem for Australia, and the people smugglers just make it worse. The immigrants want to break in, and the smugglers sell them tickets. Many of them start in Iraq and Afghanistan. They come in boats from Bali, Flores, Lombok, and Jakarta. What’s sad is that my country used to welcome immigrants. We were all of us once immigrants ourselves. All of that’s changed now—and I have to say, the way we treat these people leaves a lot to be desired. But what can we do? The answer is, we have to stop them from coming. And one of the main ways to do that is to take on the snakeheads face-to-face.

  “There’s one snakehead in particular. It operates throughout Indonesia, and it’s more powerful and more dangerous than any of them. As it happens, we know the name of the man in charge. A certain Major Yu. But that’s all we’ve managed to find out. We don’t know what he looks like or where he lives. Twice now, we’ve tried to infiltrate the organization. We put agents inside, pretending to be customers.”

  “What happened to them?” Jack asked.

  “They both died.” It was Damon who had answered the question.

  “And so now I suppose you’re thinking about sending Alex.”

  “We have no idea how our agents were uncovered,” Brooke went on. It was as if Jack hadn’t spoken. “Somehow this man—Yu—seems to know everything we’re doing. Either that, or he’s very careful. The trouble is, these gangs operate under a system known as guanxi. Basically, it means that everyone knows everyone. They’re like a family. And the fact is, a single agent, coming in from outside and operating on his own, is too obvious. We need to get inside the snakehead in a way that is completely original and also above suspicion.”

  “A man and a boy,” Damon said.

  “We have an agent in Bangkok now. We’ve set him up as a refugee from Afghanistan planning to be smuggled into Australia. He’ll meet with the snakehead and gather names, faces, phone numbers, addresses…anything he can. But he won’t be on his own. He’ll be traveling with his son.”

  “We’ll fly you to Bangkok,” Damon continued, speaking directly to Alex. “You’ll join our agent there, and the two of you will be passed down the pipeline back here. And here’s the deal. As soon as you’re back on Australian soil, we’ll send you first class direct to England. You won’t have to do anything, Alex. But you’ll provide perfect cover for our man. He’ll get the information we need, and maybe we’ll be able to break up Yu’s network once and for all.”

  “Why Bangkok?” There were a hundred questions Alex could have asked. This was the first one that came to his mind.

  “Bangkok is a major center for the sale of false documents,” Damon replied. “In fact, we’d very much like to know who supplies Yu’s people with fake passports, export certificates, and the rest of it. And now we have a chance. Our agent was told to wait there until he was contacted. He’ll be given the papers h
e needs, and then he’ll continue the journey south.”

  There was a brief silence.

  Then Jack Starbright shook her head. “All right,” she said. “We’ve listened to your proposition, Mr. Brooke. Now you can listen to my answer. It’s NO! Forget it! You said it yourself. These people are dangerous. Two of your spies have already been killed. There’s no way I’m going to allow Alex into that.”

  Alex glanced briefly at Jack. She hadn’t given him a chance to speak, and he understood why. She had been afraid of what he might say.

  Brooke seemed to have picked up on that too. “I’d have thought after all Alex has been through, he could have made up his own mind,” he said.

  “He can make up his own mind. And I’m telling you what he’s going to say. The answer’s no!”

  “There is one thing we haven’t mentioned.” Brooke rested his hands on his desk. His face gave nothing away, but Damon knew what was about to come. His boss was the poker player, preparing to show his hand. “I didn’t tell you the name of our agent in Bangkok.”

  “And who is that?” Jack asked.

  “You know him, I think. His name is Ash.”

  Jack sat back, unable to keep the shock out of her eyes. “Ash?” she faltered.

  “That’s right.”

  Alex had seen the effect the name had had on her. “Who’s Ash?” he demanded.

  “You don’t know him?” Brooke was enjoying himself now, though of all the people in the room, only Damon could see it. He turned to Jack. “Maybe you’d like to explain.”

  “Ash was someone who knew your dad,” Jack muttered.

  “He was rather more than that,” Brooke corrected her. “Ash was John Rider’s closest friend. He was the best man at your parents’ wedding. He’s also your godfather, Alex.”

  “My…?” Alex couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. He hadn’t even known he had a godfather.