Snakehead Read online

  “For what it’s worth, he was also the last person to see your parents alive,” Brooke went on. “He was actually with them the morning they died. He was at the airport when they got on the plane for the south of France.”

  The plane had never arrived. There had been a bomb on board, placed there as an act of revenge by the criminal organization known as Scorpia. That much Alex knew.

  “Did you meet him?” Alex gazed at Jack. He was feeling completely disoriented, as if the ground had just been stolen from under his feet. She looked exactly the same.

  “I met him a few times,” Jack replied. “It was just after I started working for your uncle. He used to come around and visit. You were the one he wanted to see. I knew he was your godfather.”

  “How come you’ve never mentioned him to me?”

  “He disappeared. You must have been about four years old. He told me he was emigrating, and I never saw him again.”

  “Ash was an agent with MI6,” Brooke explained. “That was how he and your father met. They worked together as a team. Your dad even saved his life once—in Malta. You can ask him about that…if you meet. I think the two of you would have a lot to talk about.”

  “How can you do this?” Jack whispered. She was looking at Brooke with utter contempt.

  “Ash left MI6 and emigrated here,” Brooke continued. “He came with great references, so we were happy to take him on at ASIS. He’s been with us ever since. Right now he’s in Bangkok, undercover—like I said. But there’s nobody better placed to pretend to be your father, Alex. I mean, he’s almost that already. He’ll look after you. And I think you’ll find him interesting. What do you say?”

  Alex said nothing. He had already made up his mind, but somehow he knew that Brooke wouldn’t need to be told. He had figured that out for himself.

  “I need time,” he said at length.

  “Sure. Why don’t you and Jack go and talk about it?” Brooke nodded, and Damon produced a white card. He must have had it ready in his pocket from the very start. “Here’s a number where you can reach me. We’ll need to fly you into Bangkok tomorrow. So maybe you could call me sometime tonight?”

  “I know what you’re thinking, but you can’t possibly go,” Jack said. “It’s wrong.”

  Alex and Jack had wandered over to The Rocks, the little cluster of shops and cafés that nestled on the very edge of the harbor, right underneath the bridge. Jack had brought them here on purpose. She wanted to mingle with the crowds somewhere bright and ordinary, a world apart from the hidden truths and half-lies of the Australian secret service.

  “I think I have to,” Alex replied.

  And it was true. Only an hour ago, he had been promising himself that he would never work for MI6 again. But this was different—and not just because it was the Australians that were asking him this time. It was Ash. Ash made all the difference, even though the two of them had never met and it was a name he had only just heard for the first time.

  “Ash can tell me who I am,” he said.

  “Don’t you know who you are?” Jack asked.

  “Not really, Jack. I thought I knew. When Ian was alive, everything seemed so simple. But then when I found out the truth about him, it all went wrong. All my life he was training me to be something I never wanted. But maybe he was right. Maybe it was what I was always meant to be.”

  “You think Ash can tell you?”

  “I don’t know.” Alex squinted at Jack. The sunlight was streaming over her shoulders. “When did you meet him?” he asked.

  “It was about a month after I started working for your uncle,” she said. “At the time, it was just meant to be a vacation job, to support myself while I was doing my studies. I didn’t know anything about spies, and I certainly didn’t know I’d be sticking with you forever!” She sighed. “You were about seven years old. Do you really not remember him?”

  Alex shook his head.

  “He was in London for a few weeks, staying in a hotel. But he came over to the house two or three times. Now I come to think of it, he never did talk to you very much. Maybe he felt awkward with kids. But I got to know him a bit.”

  “What was he like?”

  Jack thought back. “I liked him,” she admitted. “In fact, if you want the truth, I even went out with him a couple of times although he was quite a lot older than me. He was very good-looking. And there was something dangerous about him. He told me he was a deep-sea diver. He was fun to have around.”

  “Is Ash his real name?”

  “It’s what he calls himself. ASH are his initials—but he never told me what they stood for.”

  “And he’s really my godfather?”

  Jack nodded. “I’ve seen photos of him at your christening. And Ian knew him. The two of them were friends. I never knew what he was doing in London, but he was eager to check up on you. He wanted to be sure you were okay.”

  Alex drew a deep breath. “You don’t know what it’s like, not having parents,” he began. “It never used to bother me because I was so small when they died and I had Uncle Ian. But now I wonder about them. And it sometimes feels like there’s a hole in my life, a sort of emptiness. I look back, but there’s nothing there. Maybe if I spend some time with this man—even if I do have to dress up like an Afghan refugee—maybe it’ll fill something in for me.”

  “But Alex…” Jack looked at him, and he could see she was afraid. “You heard what that man said. This could be terribly dangerous. You’ve been lucky so far, but your luck can’t last forever. These people—the snakehead—they sound horrible. You shouldn’t get involved.”

  “I have to, Jack. Ash worked with my dad. He was with him the day he died. I didn’t know he existed until today, but now I’ve got to meet him.” Alex forced a smile to his lips. “My dad was a spy. My uncle was a spy. And now it turns out I’ve got a godfather who’s a spy. You have to admit, it certainly runs in the family.”

  Jack rested her hands on Alex’s shoulders. Behind them, the sun was already setting, reflecting bloodred in the water. The shops were beginning to empty. The bridge hung over them, casting a dark shadow.

  “Is there anything I can say to stop you?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Alex looked her straight in the eyes. “But please don’t.”

  “All right.” She nodded. “But I’ll be worried sick about you. You know that. Just make sure you look after yourself. And tell Ash from me that I want you home by Christmas. And maybe this time, just for once, he’ll remember to send a card.”

  Quickly, she turned around and continued walking. Alex waited a minute, then followed. Bangkok. The snakehead. Another mission. The truth was that Alex had always suspected it might happen—but even he hadn’t thought it would come so soon.

  6

  CITY OF ANGELS?

  TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER, Alex touched down at Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok. Even the name warned him that he had arrived at the gateway to a world that would be completely alien to him. For all his travels, he had never been to the East, and yet now, following the thirteen-hour flight from Sydney, he was on his own. Jack had wanted to travel with him but he had decided against it. He’d found it easier to say good-bye to her at the hotel. He knew that he needed time to prepare himself for what might lie ahead.

  He had met once more with Brooke and Damon the night before. There hadn’t been much more to say. Alex was booked into a room at the Peninsula Hotel in Bangkok. A driver would meet him at the airport and take him there. Ash would meet him as soon as he arrived.

  “You realize we’ll have to disguise you,” Brooke said. “You don’t look anything like an Afghan.”

  “And I don’t speak their language,” Alex added.

  “That’s not a problem. You’re a child and a refugee. No one will be expecting you to say anything.”

  The flight had seemed endless. ASIS had booked him in business class, but in a way that made him feel all the more alienated and alone. He watched a movie, ate a meal
, and rested. But nobody spoke to him. He was in a strange metal bubble, surrounded by strangers, being carried once again toward danger and possible death. Alex looked out the window at the gray-pink light glowing at the edge of the world and wondered. Was he making a mistake? He could get another plane at Bangkok and be back in London in twelve hours. But he had made his decision. This wasn’t about ASIS or the snakehead.

  “He was the last person to see your parents alive.”

  Alex remembered what Brooke had told him. He was about to meet his father’s best friend. His godfather. This wasn’t just a flight from one country to another. It was a journey into his own past.

  The 747 rumbled into its gate. The Fasten Your Seat Belt signs blinked off and the passengers stood up as one, scrabbling for the overhead bins. Alex had one small suitcase and quickly passed through immigration and customs and out into the hot, sticky air of the arrivals area. Suddenly he found himself in a crowd of shouting, gesticulating people.

  “Taxi! Taxi!”

  “You want hotel?”

  It felt strange emerging from business class into this. He was suddenly back in the noise and chaos of the real world. Down to earth in more senses than one.

  And then he saw his name, being held on a placard by a Thai man—black-haired, short, casually dressed like almost everyone around him. Alex went over to him.

  “Are you Alex? Mr. Ash send me to collect you. I hope you had a good flight. The car is outside…”

  It was as they made their way out of the airport that Alex noticed the man with the poppy in his buttonhole. It was the poppy that first drew his attention. Of course, it was November. Remembrance Sunday, when the whole of England wore poppies and held two minutes’ silence for those killed in wars, would be taking place in England sometime around now. It was just strange to see any sign of it out here.

  The man was wearing jeans and a leather jacket. He was European, in his twenties, with dark hair cut short and watchful eyes. He had very square features with high cheekbones and narrow lips. The man had stopped dead in his tracks and seemed to be staring at something on the other side of the arrivals area. It took Alex a moment to realize that the man’s attention was actually fixed on him. Did the two of them know each other from somewhere? He was just asking himself the question when a crowd of people moved between the two of them, making for the exit. When the floor cleared again, the man had gone.

  He must have imagined it. Alex was tired after the long flight. Maybe the man had simply been one of the other passengers on the plane. He followed the driver to the parking garage, and a few minutes later they were on the wide, three-lane highway that led into Bangkok—or, as the Thai people called it, Krung Thep. City of Angels.

  Sitting in the back of the air-conditioned sedan, gazing out the window, Alex wondered quite how it had gotten that name. He certainly wasn’t impressed by his first sight of the city, a sprawl of ugly, old-fashioned skyscrapers, blocks of apartments that were like discarded boxes piled up on top of each other, electricity and satellite towers. They stopped at a toll booth where a woman sat in a cramped cubicle, her face hidden behind the white mask that protected her from the traffic fumes. Then they were off again. Next to the road, Alex saw a huge portrait of a man: black hair, glasses, open-neck shirt. It was painted on the entire side of a building, twenty stories high, covering both the brickwork and the windows.

  “That’s our king,” the driver explained.

  Alex looked again at the figure. What would it be like, he wondered, to work at a desk inside that office? To pound away at a computer for eight or nine hours a day but to look out at Bangkok through the eyes of a king.

  They left the highway, driving down a ramp into a dense, chaotic world of shrubs and food stalls, traffic jams and policemen at every intersection, their whistles screaming like dying birds. Alex saw tuk-tuks—motorized rickshaws—bicycles and buses that looked as if they had been welded together from a dozen different models. He felt a hollow feeling in his stomach. What was he letting himself into? How was he going to adapt to a country that was, in every last detail, so different from his own?

  Then the car turned a corner. They had entered the driveway of the Peninsula Hotel and Alex learned something else about Bangkok. It was actually two cities: one very poor and one very rich, living side by side and yet with a great gulf between. His journey had brought him from one to the other. Now he was driving through a beautifully tended tropical garden. As they drew up at the front door, half a dozen Thai men in perfect white uniforms hurried forward to help—one to take the luggage, one to help Alex out, two more bowing to welcome him, two holding open the hotel doors.

  The cold embrace of the hotel air-conditioning reached out to welcome him. Alex crossed a wide marble floor toward the reception area with piano music tinkling somewhere in the background. He was handed a garland of flowers by a smiling receptionist. Nobody seemed to have noticed that he was only fourteen. He was a guest. That was all that mattered. His key was already waiting for him. He was shown into an elevator—itself the size of a small room. The doors slid shut. Only the pressure in his ears told him that they had begun the journey up.

  His room was on the nineteenth floor.

  Ten minutes later, he stood in front of a floor-to-ceiling window, looking at the view. His suitcase was on his bed. He had been shown the luxury bathroom, the wide-screen TV, the well-stocked fridge, and the complimentary basket of exotic fruit. Alex tried to shrug off the heavy fingers of jet lag. He knew he had little enough time to prepare himself for what lay ahead.

  The city was spread out on the other side of a wide brown river that curved and twisted as far as he could see. Skyscrapers stood in the far distance. Nearer by, there were hotels, temples, palaces with perfect lawns, and—standing side by side with them—shacks and slum houses and warehouses so dilapidated they looked as if they might fall over at any time. All manner of boats were making their way up and down the murky water. Some were modern, carrying coal and iron. Some were ferries with strange, curving roofs, like floating pagodas. The nimblest were elongated, long and wafer thin with the driver leaning wearily over the tiller at the very back. The sun was setting. The sky was huge and gray. It was like looking at a television screen with the color turned off.

  The telephone rang. Alex went over and picked it up.

  “Hello? Is that Alex?” It was a man’s voice. He could make out a slight Australian accent.

  “Yes,” Alex replied.

  “You arrived okay then?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  “I’m in the reception area. You feel like a bit of dinner?”

  Alex wasn’t hungry, but that didn’t matter. Even though the man hadn’t introduced himself, he knew who he was talking to. “I’ll come right down,” he said.

  He hadn’t had time to shower or change after the flight. It would just have to wait. Alex left the room and took the elevator back down. It stopped twice on the way, letting people in on the ninth and seventh floors. Alex stood silently in the corner. He was suddenly nervous, although he wasn’t quite sure why. Finally, they arrived. The elevator doors opened.

  Ash was standing in the reception area, dressed in a blue linen jacket, a white shirt, and jeans. There were plenty of other people around, but Alex recognized him instantly, and somehow he wasn’t even surprised.

  They had met before. Ash was the soldier in Swanbourne, the man who had told him he was standing on a grenade.

  “It was all a setup, wasn’t it?” Alex said. “The training exercise. The minefield. All of it.”

  “Yeah.” Ash nodded. “I expect that must make you pretty annoyed.”

  “You could say that,” Alex growled.

  There was an eating area just outside the hotel, softly lit, with the river in front of them and a long, narrow swimming pool to one side. The two of them were sitting at a table, facing each other. Ash had a Singha beer. He had ordered Alex a fruit cocktail: orange, pineapple, and guava blended with crushed i
ce. It was almost dark now, but Alex could still feel the heat of the evening pressing down on him. He realized it was going to take time to get used to the climate in Bangkok. The air was like syrup.

  He looked again at his godfather, the man who had played such a major part in his early life. Ash was leaning back with his legs stretched out, untroubled by the trick that had been played at the beach near Swanbourne. Out of uniform, with his shirt open and a silver chain glinting around his neck, he looked nothing at all like a soldier or a spy. He was more like a movie star with his long, black hair, rough beard, and suntanned skin. Physically, he was slim—wiry was the word that sprang to Alex’s mind. Fast-moving rather than particularly strong. He had brown eyes that were very dark, and Alex guessed he could easily play the part of an Afghan. He certainly didn’t look European.

  There was something else about him that Alex found harder to place. A certain guarded quality in the eyes, a sense of tension. He might look relaxed, but he never would be. He had been touched by something at some time, and it would never let him go.

  “So why did you do it?” Alex asked.

  “It was a test, Alex. Why do you think?” Ash had a soft, lilting voice. The eight years he had spent in Australia had given him an accent, but Alex could hear the English there too. “ASIS wasn’t going to use a fourteen-year-old boy—not even you. Not unless they were damn sure that you weren’t going to panic at the first sign of danger.”

  “I didn’t panic with Drevin. Or with Scorpia…”

  “The snakeheads are different. You have no idea what sort of people we’re up against. Didn’t they tell you? They’ve already killed two agents. The first one came back minus his head. They sent the second one back in an envelope. They’d had him cremated to save us the trouble.” Ash drank his beer and signaled to the waiter for another. “I had to see for myself that you were up to the job,” he went on. “We set up a situation that would have terrorized any normal kid. Then we watched how you dealt with it.”