Scorpia Rising Read online

  And yet no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t avoid the fact that she had a deep dislike for Julius. She knew it was unprofessional, but at the same time it was almost instinctive. He was a horrible person. And she wasn’t fooled by him either. Although he went along with her methods—the discussions, the word association, the different psychological tests—she knew he was toying with her. And he was keeping something back. Even this morning she had been aware of it. He had tried to hide what he was thinking in his expressionless face and his flat, formal answers. But there had been moments when she sensed it, flickering in the corner of her eye like a moth in candlelight. There was something he wasn’t telling her. She wondered if she should mention it to the warden but decided against it. She was the boy’s therapist. She had to respect his confidentiality. She went back to her notes.

  I recommend that Julius be put back on medication with immediate effect. Although I do not like drugging young people, I feel that in his case—

  The doorbell rang. That was surprising. The warden never came back before two o’clock, and his wife was out for lunch. Dr. Flint went over to the small television screen in the hallway and saw a black-and-white image of Julius standing outside, holding a bunch of flowers that he must have picked himself in the prison garden. She was tempted not to open the door. He shouldn’t be here. It was against regulations. She remembered how he had tried to attack her in one of her first sessions with him. And then there had been the time when he had gone berserk and smashed the mirror. She should tell him to go away.

  But then she reconsidered. All that had been a long time ago, and maybe he really was trying to make amends for his behavior that morning. Maybe he had come to tell her what was on his mind. The flowers were a sweet touch. And anyway, there were dozens of cameras that would be trained on him even now. There was no danger. She opened the door.

  “What is it, Julius?” she asked.

  “It’s a bit difficult to explain, Dr. Flint.”

  “Do you want to come back inside?”

  “No. As a matter of fact, I’d like you to come with me.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “We’re leaving here—together.”

  He dropped the flowers and there it was, in his hand, pointing at her. Dr. Flint stared in shock. Julius Grief was holding a gun, his finger curled around the trigger, a glazed look in his eyes. It was like something out of a nightmare. First, it made no sense at all. How could he possibly have gotten a gun? And yet at the same time there was something horribly inevitable about it. Julius was managing to contain his excitement. He was in total control. Dr. Flint knew that if she didn’t do exactly what he said, he would shoot her without a second thought.

  He stepped forward and suddenly the gun was at her throat and his face was close to hers and she could feel the madness as if she had been slapped with it. He was as tall as her and a great deal stronger. He was armed. For the first time since she had known him, his face had cracked into something resembling a smile. Suddenly he was no longer fifteen and the good looks that the plastic surgeon had given him were twisted out of shape. He could have been fifteen or he could have been fifty. Evil has no age. Dr. Flint was terrified. Had she really spent the last six months, twice a week, on her own with this monster?

  “I’m going to walk out of here,” Julius said, and his voice was soft even if it was on the edge of hysteria. “Walk, walk, walk, walk. And you’re going to help me.”

  “They’ll never let you through the gate.”

  Julius pressed the gun into the side of her neck, the sawed-off muzzle pointing upward. “Then they’ll be scraping your brains off the fence,” he told her. “Shall we go, Dr. Flint? I think we should.”

  They walked together like two lovers performing some strange sort of dance. Dr. Flint was looking straight ahead, her head tilted, her eyes still staring. Julius was enjoying himself. The feel of the gun in his hand was giving him strength. He loved the way the hard steel pressed into the woman’s flesh. For months he had endured her stupid questions, her endless games. Now, at last, he was the one in command.

  Despite all the cameras, Julius Grief and Dr. Flint had almost reached the first gate, the entrance to the holding area, before anyone realized that something was wrong. Perhaps they thought it was some sort of exercise, part of the therapy, but then at last someone saw the gun and realized what was actually going on. At once, long-rehearsed emergency procedures sprang into life. A dozen sirens went off, their combined sound echoing all over the peninsula. Guards burst out of doorways, their weapons ready. The other prisoners were rushed, at gunpoint, back into their cells. An automated phone message had been sent instantly to the Devil’s Tower Camp, home of the Royal Gibraltar Regiment close to the airport, calling for immediate backup, and before Julius had even had a chance to make his demands, half a dozen Land Rovers were speeding out of the garrison and beginning the long climb uphill.

  For a moment, everything froze. It was as if the entire compound had become a photograph of itself. Julius Grief was still holding on to Dr. Flint, one hand on her shoulder, the other—with the gun—pressing against her neck. He was surrounded by rifles and automatic machine guns. They were aiming at him from every direction. The sun was beating down, glinting off the razor-wire fence. Somewhere outside the prison, there was a brief chatter of laughter as one of the island’s famous apes swung itself off the branch of a tree and disappeared into the undergrowth.

  Then the warden appeared. He was a short, muscular man with silver hair cut short, dressed in army fatigues. He had been in the control room when the alarm was sounded. He stopped in the holding area on the other side of the gate.

  “Grief!” he barked. He had been in the Royal Navy for twenty years. He had the sort of voice that was used to being obeyed. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Open the gate or I’ll put a bullet in her.” Julius was loving this. He could feel the world spinning around him. “I’ll kill her. I promise.”

  “Where did you get the gun?”

  A stupid question. Julius wasn’t going to answer it. “Five seconds,” he called out.

  “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “Four . . .”

  The warden had to make a decision. He had no doubt at all that Grief would use the gun. He could see that Rosemary Flint was terrified. The guards were waiting for his command, but he couldn’t let them fire, not unless they wanted to kill the woman too. How could the boy have possibly gotten hold of the weapon? Was it even a real one? He couldn’t take the risk of finding out. Dr. Flint was a civilian. Her safety came first.

  “Three seconds, warden.”

  Right now, the boy had the upper hand. But that would change on the other side of the prison gates. Backup would already be on its way and Julius Grief hadn’t actually worked it out properly. He had nowhere to go. He was high above the main city and harbor with narrow lanes and hairpin bends all the way down. He wouldn’t be able to keep Flint close to him all the time, and even if he made it to the bottom, there was no way he could leave the peninsula. Nobody was going to let him get on a plane or a ship. The Spanish border authorities would already have been alerted. Everything was on the warden’s side. Once Grief was out, it would be easy to pick him off.

  “Open the gate!” Julius shouted. His face was deathly pale. His arm and the hand with the gun were rigid. Even if someone did shoot him, he would still manage to kill Dr. Flint before he died.

  “Do what he says!” the warden called out.

  For another second nothing happened, as if the guards couldn’t believe what they had just heard. Then there was a click and the heavy gate began to roll aside. Julius grabbed hold of Dr. Flint’s collar and began to drag her forward, the two of them moving side by side. The guns followed them into the holding area.

  The inner gate slid shut and they were trapped inside a pen with fences on three sides of them, the control room on the fourth. The warden had retreated, as if trying to ge
t as far away from them as possible. A young guard stared at them from behind a plate glass window. Nothing like this had ever happened at the prison before.

  “Julius,” Dr. Flint rasped. It was hard for her to talk with the gun pressed against her throat. “Don’t do this. It’s not going to work.”

  “I would very much enjoy pulling this trigger,” Julius replied. “In fact, I’d love it. So if I were you, I’d shut up, Dr. Flint. Don’t give me the excuse.”

  The second gate opened, and for the first time in twelve long months, Julius was able to see the little olive groves, the scattered boulders, and the wild grass on the other side of the walls. In the distance he glimpsed the Mediterranean, a twisting ribbon of blue.

  “Off we go!”

  He forced Dr. Flint forward. This was the critical moment. He knew that as soon as he had left the prison, he would have to get rid of her. She would only slow him down. But that would be when he was most exposed. The guards wouldn’t hesitate to shoot. Julius was putting all his trust in the people who had sent him his instructions—and he still had no idea who they were. If they had tricked him, if they had failed to deliver, he would be killed. But in a way he didn’t care. Better this one minute of freedom than a life behind bars.

  The two of them had passed through the outer gate and now the prison was behind them. Julius Grief had been brought here in a blacked-out van, so he had never seen the view. A narrow track ran downhill past some small concrete buildings like pillboxes from the last war. The ground was dusty and covered in pine needles. He could smell pine and eucalyptus in the air. There was nobody in sight, but the letter in the book had warned him that he would have only five minutes before the Royal Gibraltar Regiment Land Rovers reached him. He had to move fast.

  He swung his hand, cracking the Mauser across Dr. Flint’s head. The woman cried out and fell to her knees, blood pouring down the side of her face. Julius twisted around and fired three shots at the prison gates, the bullets ricocheting off the brickwork. He hadn’t hurt anyone, but it would give them something to think about. Certainly nobody would choose to come running out in the next few seconds, and he needed all the time he could get.

  He began to run down the hill. He had kept himself fit while he was in prison, not because he had anywhere to go but because that was how he had been brought up. His father, Hugo Grief, had insisted on six hours of exercise a day, starting with a two-mile run through the snow. They had learned martial arts. They knew how to kill.

  And he had taught them how to drive.

  The car was waiting exactly where the letter had said it would be, parked just off the lane behind a cluster of the date palm trees that were dotted all over Gibraltar. It was a small SUV, a Suzuki Jimny, cheap and boxlike and covered in dust. One fender was crumpled. The driver’s mirror was cracked. To look at, it could have been abandoned, but the door was unlocked and the keys were in the ignition. Julius scrambled inside. At the same time, he heard a car rush past on the lane, heading downhill from the prison. Fortunately, the driver hadn’t seen him. Somebody shouted. The guards were spreading out on foot as well. It wouldn’t take them long to find him. He slammed the door and turned the key.

  The 1.3 cylinder engine rattled noisily to life. The guards wouldn’t expect him to have a car, but they must have heard the sound and would know—if they hadn’t already guessed—that every aspect of this escape had been planned, with help from outside. Julius jammed the gear into reverse, then shot out onto the lane, the wheels spinning and sending out clouds of dust. The Suzuki was cramped and handled badly. It would struggle to get around the curves. Still, it was better than walking.

  A shot rang out, slamming into the bodywork just above the rear tire. One of the guards had seen him. Julius shoved the gearshift into first and accelerated. The Suzuki leapt forward even as the guard fired again, his second shot splintering the branch of a nearby tree. Julius was hunched over the wheel. There was another guard on the lane ahead of him. How had he gotten there so fast? As he brought his gun around, Julius floored the accelerator pedal. For a brief second the guard filled the front window. Then the car hit him and there was a sickening thud as he was thrown into the air, the gun spinning out of his hands.

  Julius was ten yards down the road before the man hit the ground. There were two prison jeeps behind him. He could see them in his rearview mirror. They were faster than the Jimny, getting closer by the second. If he hadn’t been driving downhill, they would already have caught him. Just ahead, the lane curved steeply to the right. He spun the wheel and suddenly he was on the very edge of the hillside with a sheer drop of a hundred yards. He saw the huge rocks and the sea far below. At the same time, he felt the tires slipping off the track, grit and loose pebbles spraying out. He fought with the steering wheel, forcing the Suzuki back under his control. By the time he had rounded the corner, he had put some distance between himself and the pursuing vehicles—but he had almost killed himself too.

  The next corner was easier. It bent to the left so that this time the car was hugging the cliff face, away from the sea. Even so, Julius miscalculated and there was an explosion of glass and plastic as one of the mirrors disintegrated against a rocky outcrop. The jeeps were catching up again too, and looking ahead, he could see the fleet of Land Rovers belonging to the Royal Gibraltar Regiment climbing toward him.

  There was no way down. There was no way back. The next hairpin bend and a sheer drop to certain death were straight ahead.

  Julius wrenched the wheel to the right. The driver of the nearest jeep saw the Suzuki leave the road, weaving across a patch of scrubland toward a dilapidated barn. The boy was out of control. He tried to steer the car back onto the track but instead smashed straight into the barn door, disappearing in a blast of shattering wood. For the next few seconds, the car was out of sight, inside the barn, but then it reappeared, breaking through the other side, the hood crumpled, the front window now a spider’s web of cracks. Julius Grief could only be glimpsed, staring out with a rictus smile, his light brown hair sweeping down over his eyes, his hands glued to the steering wheel.

  There was nowhere to go. The cars from the barracks had almost arrived and were taking up positions lower down the hill, blocking the way. With the rocks on one side and the drop on the other, there was no way to get past.

  Julius didn’t even try. Perhaps he couldn’t see. Perhaps he had been concussed when he hit the barn door. He didn’t even attempt to steer the car, tearing dead straight across the scrubland, rejoining the track, then continuing over it. As the horrified prison drivers skidded to a halt, the Suzuki reached the other side of the track, smashed through a barbed-wire fence, and launched itself into the void. Briefly it hung in the air. Then it plunged down, following the sheer edge of the Rock in a long, terrible descent toward the sea. About halfway down it hit a boulder. There was a single explosion as it burst into flames, somersaulted, then continued on its way. It was upside down when it hit the water. For a moment it rested there, the flames licking upward as if trying to set the sea alight. Then it sank. A few pieces of broken metal rolled down the hillside. Apart from that, there was nothing left.

  The nearest Land Rover came to a halt and the driver got out. Gradually, more guards appeared, hurrying across the grass to peer over the edge, beside the broken fence. Below them and to one side, the city of Gibraltar lay spread out, the high-rises facing the sea. The Mediterranean itself was a brilliant blue, the sun throwing a million shimmering reflections across the surface.

  “Did you see that?” someone asked.

  “Poor bastard!”

  “You think he did it on purpose? He didn’t even try to get back on the road.”

  “He could still be alive.”

  “Forget it. Nobody could have survived that. He’ll have drowned . . . if he didn’t burn to death first.”

  “Poor sod. And he was only fifteen.”

  There would have to be an inquiry, of course. The most critical question would be—how had the g
un been smuggled into the prison? One of the guards must have been bribed . . . but which one? And which organization had been behind the attempted escape? How had they even known about the existence of the prison in the first place? An ambulance was already on its way to take Dr. Flint to St. Bernard’s Hospital in the middle of Gibraltar city. As the last person to see Julius Grief alive, she might be able to fill in a few details. The warden would have to fly to London, to report at the highest level. There would be severe reprimands all around and an inevitable tightening of security.

  There were now six prisoners instead of seven. Julius Grief was dead and although frogmen would be sent to the seabed, there was very little chance that much or any of his remains would be discovered in the wreckage of the car. Well, he wouldn’t be missed. He was only a kid, but he was a mad kid. None of the other prisoners had liked him. Perhaps it was better this way.

  And nobody knew the truth.

  The trick had been played inside the old barn, during the few seconds when Julius Grief had been out of sight. As he had been instructed, he had driven into the building, smashing through a door that had been specially weakened for just this purpose. A whole team of Scorpia agents—six of them—had been waiting for him inside the barn, and as he skidded to a halt, a second, identical Suzuki Jimny had burst out the other side. But this one had no driver. It was radio controlled with a dummy Julius strapped to the wheel, almost invisible behind all the cracks. It didn’t have to travel very far. In fact, it had been a simple task to guide it across the open patch of land, through the fence, and over the edge.

  And while the guards were watching the fall and the explosion, the Scorpia team had got to work. The original Suzuki had been hastily covered with a tarpaulin and then with straw. Julius had been led to a pit constructed in the floor with a trapdoor sliding across. There was enough room for him and all the agents to bundle in together, and within seconds they had all disappeared. If anyone from the prison had thought to look inside the barn after the crash, they would have found it to be quite empty and abandoned with a few bits of old machinery, a haystack, and some moldy bags of animal feed.