Point Blank Read online

  ‚I’ll have a Coke.'

  ‚A repulsive drink, I’ve always thought. I have never understood the taste. But of course, you shall have what you want.'

  The waiter brought a Coke for Alex and a glass of champagne for Mrs. Stellenbosch. Alex watched the bubbles rising in the two glasses, his black, hers a pale yellow.

  ‚ Sante.' she said.

  ‚I’m sorry?'

  ‚It’s French for good health.'

  ‚Oh. Cheers…'

  There was a moment’s silence. The woman’s eyes were fixed on him as if she could see right through him. ‚So you were at Eton,' she said casually.

  ‚That’s right.' Alex was suddenly on his guard.

  ‚What house were you in?'

  ‚The Hopgarden.' It was the name of a real house at the school. Alex had read the file carefully.

  ‚I visited Eton once. I remember a statue. I think it was of a king. It was just through the main gate…'

  She was testing him. Alex was sure of it. Did she suspect him? Or was it simply a precaution, something she always did? ‚You’re talking about Henry the Sixth,' he said. ‚His statue’s in College Yard. He founded Eton.'

  ‚But you didn’t like it there.'

  ‚No.'

  ‚Why not?'

  ‚I didn’t like the uniform and I didn’t like the beaks.' Alex was careful not to use the word teachers. At Eton, they’re known as beaks. He half smiled to himself. If she wanted a bit of Eton-speak, he’d give it to her. ‚And I didn’t like the rules. Getting fined by the Pop. Or being put in the Tardy Book. I was always getting Rips and Infoes … or being put on the Bill. The divs were boring…'

  ‚I’m afraid I don’t really understand a word you’re saying.'

  ‚Divs are lessons,' Alex explained. ‚Rips are when your work is no good.'

  ‚I see!' She drew a line with her cigar. ‚Is that why you set fire to the library?'

  ‚No,' Alex said. ‚That was just because I don’t like books.'

  The first course arrived. Alex’s soup was yellow and had something floating in it. He picked up his spoon and poked at it suspiciously. ‚What’s this?' he demanded.

  ‚ Soupe de moules. '

  He looked at her blankly.

  ‚Mussel soup. I hope you enjoy it.'

  ‚I’d have preferred tomato,' Alex said.

  The steaks, when they came, were typically French: barely cooked at all. Alex took a couple of mouthfuls of the bloody meat, then threw down his knife and fork and used his fingers to eat all the french fries. Mrs. Stellenbosch talked to him about the French Alps, about skiing, and about her visits to various European cities. It was easy to look bored. He was bored. And he was beginning to feel tired. He took a sip of Coke, hoping the cold drink would wake him up. The meal seemed to be dragging on all night.

  But at last the desserts—ice cream with white chocolate sauce—had come and gone. Alex declined coffee.

  ‚You’re looking tired,' Mrs. Stellenbosch said. She lit another cigar. The smoke curled around her head and made him feel dizzy. ‚Would you like to go to bed?'

  ‚Yes.'

  ‚We don’t need to leave until midday tomorrow. You’ll have time for a visit to the Louvre, if you’d like that.'

  Alex shook his head. ‚Actually, paintings bore me.'

  ‚Really? What a shame!'

  Alex stood up. Somehow his hand knocked into his glass, spilling the rest of the Coke over the pristine white tablecloth. What was the matter with him? Suddenly he was exhausted.

  ‚Would you like me to come up with you, Alex?' the woman asked. She was looking carefully at him, a tiny glimmer of interest in her otherwise dead eyes.

  ‚No. I’ll be all right.' Alex stepped away. ‚Good night.'

  Getting upstairs was an ordeal. He was tempted to take the elevator, but he didn’t want to lock himself into that small, windowless cubicle. He would have felt suffocated. He climbed the stairs, his shoulders resting heavily against the wall. Then he stumbled down the corridor and somehow got his key into the lock. When he finally got inside, the room was spinning. What was going on? Had he drunk more of the gin than he had intended, or was he …?

  Alex swallowed. He had been drugged. There had been something in the Coke. It was still on his tongue, a sort of bitterness. There were only three steps between him and his bed, but it could have been a mile away. His legs wouldn’t obey him anymore. just lifting one foot took all his strength. He fell forward, reaching out with his arms. Somehow he managed to propel himself far enough. His chest and shoulders hit the bed, sinking into the mattress. The room was spinning around him, faster and faster. He tried to stand up, tried to speak—but nothing came. His eyes closed. Gratefully, he allowed the darkness to take him.

  Thirty minutes later, there was a soft click and the room began to change.

  If Alex had been able to open his eyes, he would have seen the desk, the minibar, and the framed pictures of Paris begin to rise up the wall. Or so it might have seemed to him. But in fact the walls weren’t moving. It was the floor that was sinking downward on hidden hydraulics, taking the bed—with Alex on it—into the depths of the hotel. The entire room was nothing more than a huge elevator that carried him, one inch at a time, into the basement and beyond.

  Now the walls were metal sheets. He had left the wallpaper, the lights, and the pictures high above him. He was dropping through what might have been a ventilation shaft with four steel rods guiding him to the bottom. Brilliant lights suddenly flooded over him. There was a soft click. He had arrived.

  The bed had come to rest in the center of a gleaming underground clinic. Scientific equipment crowded in on him from all sides. There were a number of cameras: digital, video, infrared, and X-ray. There were instruments of all shapes and sizes, most of them unrecognizable to anyone without a science degree. A tangle of wires spiraled out from each machine to a bank of computers that hummed and blinked on a long worktable against one of the walls. A glass window had been cut into the wall on the other side. The room was air-conditioned. Had Alex been awake, he might have shivered in the cold. His breath appeared as a faint white cloud, hovering around his mouth.

  A plump man wearing a white coat had been waiting to receive him. The man, who was about forty, had yellow hair that he wore slicked back, and a face that was rapidly sinking into middle age, with puffy cheeks and a thick, fatty neck. The man had glasses and a small mustache. Two assistants were with him, also wearing white coats. Their faces were blank.

  The three of them set to work at once. Handling Alex as if he were a sack of vegetables—or a corpse—they picked him up and stripped off all his clothes. Then they began to photograph him, beginning with a conventional camera. Starting at his toes, they moved upward, clicking off at least a hundred pictures, the flash igniting and the film automatically advancing. Not one inch of his body escaped their examination. A lock of his hair was snipped off and put into a plastic envelope. An opthalmoscope was used to produce a perfect image of the back of his eye.

  They made a mold of his teeth, slipping a piece of putty into his mouth and manipulating his chin to make him bite down. They made a careful note of the birthmark on his left shoulder, the scar on his arm, and even the ends of his fingers. Alex bit his nails; that was recorded too.

  Finally, they weighed him on a large, flat scale and then measured him—his height, chest size, waist, inside leg, hand size, and so on—making a note in their books of every measurement.

  And all the time, Mrs. Stellenbosch watched from the other side of the window. She never moved. The only sign of life anywhere in her face was the cigar, clamped between her lips. It glowed red, and the smoke trickled up.

  The three men had finished. The one with the yellow hair spoke into a microphone. ‚We’re all finished, he said.

  ‚Give me your opinion, Mr. Baxter.' The woman’s voice echoed out of a speaker concealed behind the wall.

  ‚It’s a cinch.' The man called Baxter was English. He sp
oke with an upper-class accent, and he was obviously pleased with himself. ‚He’s got a good bone structure. Very fit. Interesting face. You notice the pierced ear? He’s had that done recently. Nothing else to say, really.'

  ‚When will you operate?'

  ‚Whenever you say, old girl. Just let me know.'

  Mrs. Stellenbosch turned to the other two men. ‚ Envoyez lui!' She snapped the two words.

  The two assistants put Alex’s clothes back on him. This took longer than taking them off. As they worked, they made a careful note of all the brand names. The Quiksilver T-shirt. The Gap socks. By the time they had dressed him, they knew as much about him as a doctor knows about a newborn baby. It had all been noted down.

  Mr. Baxter walked over to the worktable and pressed a button. At once, the carpet, bed, and hotel furniture began to rise up. They disappeared through the ceiling and kept going. Alex slept on as he was carried back through the shaft, finally arriving in the space that he knew as room 13.

  There was nothing to show what had happened. The whole experience had evaporated, as quickly as a dream.

  “MY NAME IS GRIEF”

  THE ACADEMY AT POINT Blanc had been built by a lunatic. For a time it had been used as an asylum. Alex remembered what Alan Blunt had told him as the helicopter began its final descent, the red and white helipad looming up to receive it. The photograph in the brochure had been artfully taken. Now that he could see the building for himself, he could only describe it as … crazy.

  It was a jumble of towers and battlements, green sloping roofs and windows of every shape and size. Nothing fitted together properly. The overall design should have been simple enough: a circular central area with two wings. But one wing was longer than the other. The two sides didn’t match. The academy was four floors high, but the windows were spaced in such a way that it was hard to tell where one floor ended and the next began. There was an internal courtyard that wasn’t quite square, with a fountain that had frozen solid. Even the helipad, jutting out of the roof, was ugly and awkward, as if someone had thrown a giant Frisbee that had smashed into the brickwork and lodged in place.

  Mrs. Stellenbosch flicked off the controls. ‚I will take you down to meet the director,' she shouted over the noise of the blades. ‚Your luggage will be brought down later.'

  It was cold on the roof. Although it was almost the end of April, the snow covering the mountain still hadn’t melted and everything was white for as far as the eye could see. The academy was built into the side of a steep slope. A little farther down, Alex saw a big iron tongue that started at ground level but then curved outward as the mountainside dropped away. It was a ski jump—the sort of thing he had seen at the winter Olympics. The end of the curve was at least fifty feet above the ground, and far below, Alex could make out a flat area, shaped like a horseshoe, where the jumpers were meant to land.

  He was staring at it, imagining what it would be like to propel yourself into space with only two skis to break your fall, when the woman grabbed his arm. ‚We don’t use it,' she said. ‚It is forbidden. Come now! Let’s get out of the cold.'

  They went through a door in the side of one of the towers and down a narrow spiral staircase (each step a different distance apart) that took them all the way to the ground floor.

  Now they were in a long, narrow corridor with plenty of doors but no windows.

  ‚Classrooms,' Mrs. Stellenbosch explained. ‚You will see them later.'

  Alex followed her through the strangely silent building. The central heating had been turned up high inside the academy, and the atmosphere was warm and heavy. They stopped at a pair of modern glass doors that opened into the courtyard Alex had seen from above. From the heat back into the cold again, Mrs. Stellenbosch led him through the doors and past the frozen fountain. A movement caught his eye, and Alex glanced up. This was something he hadn’t noticed before. A sentry stood on one of the towers. He had a pair of binoculars around his neck and a submachine gun slung across one arm.

  Armed guards? In a school? Alex had been here only a few minutes and already he was unnerved.

  ‚Through here!' Mrs. Stellenbosch opened another door for him, and he found himself in the main reception hall of the academy. A log fire burned in a massive fireplace with two stone dragons guarding the flames. A grand staircase led upward. The hall was lit by a chandelier with at least a hundred bulbs. The walls were paneled with wood. The carpet was thick, dark red. A dozen pairs of eyes followed Alex as he followed Mrs. Stellenbosch down the next corridor. The hall was decorated with animal heads: a rhino, an antelope, a water buffalo, and, saddest of all, a lion. Alex wondered who had shot them.

  They came to a single door that suggested they had come to the end of their journey. So far, Alex hadn’t encountered any boys, but glancing out of the window, he saw two more guards marching slowly past, both of them cradling automatic machine guns.

  Mrs. Stellenbosch knocked on the door.

  ‚Come in!' Even with just two words, Alex caught the South African accent.

  The door opened, and they went into a huge room that made no sense. Like the rest of the building, its shape was irregular, none of the walls running parallel. The ceiling was about fifty feet high with windows running the whole, way and giving an impressive view of the slopes.

  The room was modern with soft lighting coming from units concealed in the walls. The furniture was ugly, but not as ugly as the animal heads on the walls and the zebra skin on the wood floor. There were three chairs next to a small fireplace. One of them was gold and antique. A man was sitting in it. His head turned as Alex came in.

  ‚Good afternoon, Alex,' he said. ‚Please come and sit down.'

  Alex sauntered into the room and took one of the chairs. Mrs. Stellenbosch sat in the other.

  ‚My name is Grief,' the man continued. ‚Dr. Grief. I am very pleased to meet you and to have you here.'

  Alex stared at the man who was the director of Point Blanc, at the white-paper skin and the eyes burning behind the red eyeglasses. It was like meeting a skeleton, and for a moment he was lost for words. Then he recovered. ‚Nice place,' he said.

  ‚Do you think so?' There was no emotion whatsoever in Grief’s voice. So far he had moved only his neck. ‚This building was designed in 1857 by a Frenchman who was certainly the world’s worst architect. This was his only commission. When the first owners moved in, they had him shot.'

  ‚There are still quite a few people here with guns.' Alex glanced out of the window as another pair of guards walked past.

  ‚Point Blanc is unique,' Dr. Grief explained. ‚As you will soon discover, all the boys who have been sent here come from families of great wealth and importance. We have had the sons of emperors and industrialists. Boys like yourself. It follows that we could very easily become a target for terrorists. The guards are therefore here for your protection.'

  ‚That’s very kind of you.' Alex felt he was being too polite. It was time to show this man what sort of person he was meant to be. ‚But to be honest, I don’t really want to be here myself.

  So if you’ll just tell me how I get down into town, maybe I can get the next train home.'

  ‚There is no way down into town.' Dr. Grief lifted a hand to stop Alex from interrupting.

  Alex glanced at his long skeletal fingers and at the eyes glinting red behind the glasses. The man moved as if every bone in his body had been broken and then put back together again.

  ‚The skiing season is over. It’s too dangerous now. There is only the helicopter, and that will take you from here only when I say so.' The hand lowered itself again. ‚You are here, Alex, because you have disappointed your parents. You were expelled from school. You have had difficulties with the police.'

  ‚That wasn’t my bloody fault!' Alex protested.

  ‚Don’t interrupt the doctor!' Mrs. Stellenbosch said.

  Alex glanced at her balefully.

  ‚Your appearance is displeasing,' Dr. Grief went on. ‚Your language
also. It is our job to turn you into a boy of whom your parents can be proud.'

  ‚I’m happy as I am,' Alex said.

  ‚That is of no relevance.' Dr. Grief fell silent.

  Alex shivered. There was something about this room, so big, so empty, so twisted out of shape. And this man who was both old and young at the same time but who somehow wasn’t completely human. ‚So what are you going to do with me?' Alex asked.

  ‚There will be no lessons to begin with,' Mrs. Stellenbosch said. ‚For the first couple of weeks we want you to assimilate.'

  ‚What does that mean?'

  ‚To assimilate. To conform … to adapt … to become like.' It was as if she were reading out of a dictionary. ‚There are six boys at the academy at the moment. You will meet them and you will spend time with them. There will be opportunities for sports and for being social. There is a good library here, and you will read. Soon you will learn our methods.'

  ‚I want to call my mom and dad,' Alex said.

  ‚The use of telephones is forbidden,' Mrs. Stellenbosch explained. She tried to smile sympathetically, but with her face it wasn’t quite possible. ‚We find it makes our students homesick,' she went on. ‚Of course, you may write letters if you wish.'

  ‚I prefer e-mail,' Alex said.

  ‚For the same reason, e-mail is not permitted.'

  Alex shrugged and swore under his breath.

  Dr. Grief had seen him. ‚You will be polite to the assistant director,' he snapped. He hadn’t raised his voice, but the words had an acid tone. ‚You should be aware, Alex, that Mrs. Stellenbosch has worked with me now for twenty-six years and that when I met her she had been voted Miss South Africa five years in a row.'

  Alex glanced at the hostile face. ‚A beauty contest?' he asked.

  ‚The weight-lifting championships.' Dr. Grief glanced at the fireplace. ‚Show him,' he said.

  Mrs. Stellenbosch got up and went over to the fireplace. There was a poker lying in the grate. She took it with both hands. For a moment she seemed to concentrate. Alex gasped. The solid metal poker, almost two inches thick, was slowly bending. Now it was U-shaped.