Ark Angel Read online

  “Well, it was very lucky for me that you should end up in the room next to Paul. I still find it hard to believe that you acted the way you did. But let me get straight to the point. I am sure you know who I am. I don’t seek attention, but the papers like to write about me, especially when my team loses. I am a very wealthy man. If there is anything that you want in the world, Alex, I can give it to you. I don’t say this as a boast. I mean it. You have done me a great service and I would like to repay you.”

  Alex thought for a moment. “There’s nothing I really want, thank you,” he said. “I’m glad I was able to help your son. But it just sort of happened. I don’t need any reward.”

  Drevin nodded. “I had a feeling you might say that, and I’m afraid I can’t accept it as an answer. So I would like to make a proposition.” He paused. “I spoke to your doctor this morning. Dr Hayward. You might like to know that I have made a donation of two million pounds on your behalf towards a new cardiology wing at St Dominic’s.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Alex said. “So long as they don’t name it after me.”

  Drevin smiled. “Don’t worry! Dr Hayward tells me that you must not return to school for a couple of weeks. What I would like to propose is that you come and stay with me, as my guest. I’d be very glad to look after you while you recuperate. I employ a full-time medical staff, so you will be in safe hands if any complications should arise. More to the point, my chef is world class. Everything you want will be given to you. Miss Starbright is also very welcome.”

  “I’m not sure—” Alex began.

  “Please, Alex!” Drevin interrupted. “There’s something I haven’t mentioned. My son, Paul. He’s almost your age and he told me that you spoke together a few times in hospital. I know he would welcome your company. Paul doesn’t meet many other boys – that’s largely my fault. I’m afraid for him. There’s always the danger that someone will try to get at me through him. What happened at St Dominic’s is proof of that. He met you and liked you, and it would be good for him to have someone else around for a while. You’d be doing me a favour if you agreed to come.”

  He paused. Alex felt the grey eyes examining him.

  “I want to offer you two weeks with more luxury than you have ever known in your life. We’ll start here in England. I can’t leave until the weekend; I have business and, more importantly, we’re playing Chelsea on Saturday and I can’t miss that. After that I’m flying to New York. I have an apartment there, and again there is some business I have to take care of. You see? Paul is always on his own.”

  He put down his cup and leant forward. Although his tone hadn’t changed, Alex could sense his energy and excitement.

  “But in just over a week’s time, there’s something you really can’t miss. We have a launch at Flamingo Bay. Have you ever seen a rocket being fired? It’s an unforgettable experience. If the weather’s right, it’ll blast off at exactly nine o’clock local time on Wednesday morning. It’ll be carrying the observation module for Ark Angel. It’s taken us three years to build. It will be the very heart of Ark Angel; the communications centre, a window like no other window in the world. Paul will, of course, be there, and I want you to be there with him. I have a house on the island and the beaches are spectacular. After the launch, you can stay for as long as you like.”

  Alex said nothing. He wanted to go. He had never seen a rocket launch and it sounded like the sort of adventure he could actually enjoy – without anyone trying to kill him. And yet…

  Drevin seemed to sense his uncertainty. “I’m sure Dr Hayward would agree that a bit of Caribbean sun would do you good,” he said. “Please! Don’t refuse me. I have to tell you, I’ve already made up my mind and I’m the sort of person who is used to getting his own way.”

  Alex turned to Jack. He still wasn’t sure. And he was vaguely aware that something was bothering him. It was something Drevin had said. It didn’t add up. “What do you think?” he asked.

  Jack’s eyes were gleaming. She had obviously been impressed by Drevin, the penthouse, the Crimean Star. “I think it’s a great idea,” she said. “A couple of weeks in the sun are exactly what you need. And I’m sure Mr Drevin will look after you.”

  “You have my word.”

  Alex nodded. “OK then. Thank you.” He took a sandwich. “But I think I should warn you: I’m a Chelsea supporter.”

  Drevin smiled. “That’s all right. Nobody’s perfect. I’ll send a driver to collect you – shall we say the day after tomorrow? He’ll drive you down to Neverglade – that’s my house in Oxfordshire. Paul is there now. I must call him and let him know you’re coming.” He glanced at his watch. “And now, if you’ll forgive me, I must leave you. I have a meeting at the Bank of England.”

  “Is that where you have your account?” Jack asked.

  “One of them.” He stood up. “Miss Knight will show you out when you have finished – and she’ll also arrange a car to take you home. Thank you again, Alex. I know you’re not going to regret this.”

  Another twist of the ring. Alex had noticed that his hands were never still. Drevin left the way he had come in.

  There was a long silence.

  “Wow!” Jack exclaimed.

  “Flamingo Bay…” Alex murmured.

  “It’s exactly what the doctor ordered, Alex.” She helped herself to another sandwich. “It couldn’t have come at a better time.”

  “Sure…”

  But Alex wasn’t sure. What was it that was bothering him?

  Yes. That was it.

  Paul Drevin was a target. That was what Drevin had said. He was always in danger.

  So why had he been on his own? That night at the hospital, four men had broken in to kidnap him. They had known he was there.

  But there hadn’t been a single guard in sight.

  THE LAP OF LUXURY

  “Welcome to Neverglade,” Paul Drevin said.

  Alex stepped out of the luxury car that had brought him here and looked around. He had seen wealth before. He had once gone undercover as the son of a supermarket magnate, which had meant spending a week in a mansion in Lancashire. But this place was something else again.

  His first sight of Drevin’s country estate had been a pretty but very ordinary gatehouse on a country lane about twenty miles north of Oxford. But even here, Alex had noticed the high walls and woodland surrounding the estate, and the closed-circuit television cameras rotating discreetly between the trees. The driveway must have been a mile long, emerging from the woods into fields so perfectly mown it was hard to believe they were made of grass. On one side was a lake with two jet skis and a Lapwing wooden sailing boat moored beside a jetty. On the other, partly hidden in a slight dip, a miniature racing circuit twisted and turned, with its own grandstand for spectators. Four of the most beautiful horses Alex had ever seen were grazing in a paddock. The sun was shining. It was as if the summer had returned.

  And there was Neverglade. It wasn’t a house but a fourteenth-century castle – with its own moat, battlements, towers and outlying church. It was built of grey stone, with dark green ivy spreading diagonally across the face. Alex caught his breath as they drove towards it and crossed the drawbridge. The castle didn’t seem real. It was like something out of a picture book. And why had it been built here of all places? He wondered why he had never heard or seen pictures of it before.

  Alex wished now that Jack Starbright had decided to come.

  She had seemed uneasy and deep in thought in the taxi home from the Waterfront, but it was only later in the evening that she announced her decision.

  “I’d love to come with you, Alex,” she said. “And I’d love to watch this rocket being launched. But I can’t. I haven’t seen my mum and dad for nearly a year, and I need to go back home to Washington DC. It’s their wedding anniversary next week, and this would be a good opportunity to take a vacation. You’re safe, and you’re going to be well looked after. Anyway, you’ve got Paul Drevin. He’s your age and you wo
n’t want me hanging around. So go and enjoy yourself. And just you make sure you don’t get into any more trouble. Rest and recuperation. That’s what the doctor said.”

  This time Nikolei Drevin had sent a uniformed chauffeur to pick Alex up – and he had arrived in a Rolls-Royce, a pale blue Corniche with a retracting hood. They had cruised out of London and up the M40, the 6.75 litre V8 engine effortlessly gliding past all the other traffic as if the roads had been built exclusively for its use. Now the car disappeared round the side of the house as Paul Drevin came out to greet him.

  The last time Alex had seen the other boy, he had been wearing a dressing gown and pyjamas. Now he was dressed in jeans and a loose-fitting jersey. He looked a lot healthier than he had in hospital – but there was more to it than that. He was more confident. This was his home, his territory, and one day he would inherit it. Alex had to remind himself that this boy was probably a multimillionaire himself. His weekly pocket money probably arrived in a security van. Suddenly Alex wondered if coming here had been a good idea.

  “Quite a place,” he said as they walked towards the front door, their feet crunching on the gravel.

  “My father had it built here. The castle used to be somewhere in Scotland. It was falling down so he bought it and shipped it here, piece by piece, and then put it back together again. Come on, I’ll show you your room.”

  Alex followed Paul into an entrance hall with flagstones, tapestries and a fireplace big enough to burn a bus. As they climbed up a majestic staircase, they passed paintings by Picasso, Warhol, Hockney and Lucian Freud. Nikolei Drevin obviously liked modern art.

  “What you did at the hospital was amazing,” Paul said. “Did you really mean to take my place?”

  “Well, it just sort of happened…”

  “If those men had kidnapped me, they were going to cut my finger off!” Paul shuddered and Alex wondered how he knew about that. The exact details of what had happened at Hornchurch Towers hadn’t been in the papers. But he assumed that for a man like Drevin, even the most classified information wouldn’t be hard to get. “They nearly killed you because of me,” Paul went on. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “There’s no need to say anything.”

  “I’m glad you agreed to come.”

  Alex shrugged. “Your dad made it difficult for me to refuse.”

  “Yes. He’s like that.” They had reached the top of the stairs. Paul took out an inhaler and puffed at it twice. “I have asthma,” he explained.

  “That’s bad luck.”

  “This way…” They walked down a corridor with ornate wooden doors at intervals on either side. “There are thirty bedrooms,” Paul told him. “I don’t know why we need so many. They’re never full. I’ve put you next to me. If you want anything, just pick up the phone. It’s like living in a hotel, except you don’t have to pay.”

  They came to an open door and went into a bedroom with windows looking out over the lake. The chauffeur must have come in through another entrance; Alex’s luggage was on the bed. The room was modern. Alex took in the plasma screen television mounted on the wall, the console with DVD, video and PlayStation, the phone with about a dozen buttons for the different services it provided, a shelf of books – all brand new by the look of them – the bathroom with bath, power shower and jacuzzi. Drevin had promised him a luxurious lifestyle and he had certainly been true to his word.

  “What do you want to do?” Paul asked.

  “You tell me.”

  “Well, we can go horse-riding if you like. We’ve got two swimming pools: indoor and out. Later we can watch a film. There’s a cinema and Dad gets all the new releases. We can play tennis or golf, or go clay pigeon shooting. You saw the lake; we can go jet-skiing or sailing or fishing or whatever. I suppose I’d better start by showing you around. That’ll take most of the day, and Dad’s having dinner with us tonight. It’s up to you.”

  Alex didn’t know what to say. “I don’t mind.”

  “Well, I’ll show you the house and then we can grab a couple of quad bikes and I’ll take you round the grounds. There are about two hundred acres. Are you hungry?”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  “Right.” Alex tried to sound enthusiastic, but somehow he couldn’t.

  Paul had picked up on this. “I guess this must be very weird for you,” he said. “You don’t know me and you probably don’t even like me. Not a lot of people do. They think I’m a rich, spoilt brat and if they come here at all it’s only because of all the free stuff. My father invited you because he wanted to thank you for what you did at the hospital. But it was more than that. He’s hoping we’re going to be friends and it’s the one thing he can’t actually buy. Friendship. But I’ll understand if you want to take your bags and get the hell out of here. Sometimes I feel the same.”

  Alex thought for a moment. “No,” he said. “I’m glad to be here. I can’t go back to school and I’m meant to be resting for the next couple of weeks, and to be honest, I’ve got nowhere else to go. So if your dad wants to treat me like a multimillionaire, I’m not going to complain.”

  “OK.” Paul looked relieved. “We’re going to New York on Sunday and that’ll be cool. And then there’s Flamingo Bay. Have you tried kite-surfing?”

  Alex shook his head.

  “I can show you how to do it. We’re on the Atlantic side so we get huge waves.” Paul had suddenly become more animated and Alex found himself warming to him. “Let’s start in the cinema,” he said. “We can work our way down…”

  Two hours later, they still hadn’t finished. Alex had seen more wealth than he could possibly imagine. This wasn’t how the other half lived. There were probably only a handful of people in the world with the resources of Nikolei Drevin. Anything he wanted he could have – from the medieval suit of armour outside the dining room to the two Polaris MSX jet skis out on the lake. He had also learnt a little more about Paul’s background. He was an only child. His parents had divorced when he was six and his mother was now living in America. He saw her a couple of times a year, but she and his father never spoke. When Paul was younger he had gone to an ordinary school, but in the end there had been too many security problems and now he was being educated by private tutors. Part of the house had been converted into a school. Alex had seen it and felt sad. There were books and blackboards, desks and computers. But no schoolchildren. No shouting. No real life.

  At five o’clock he went back to his room and dozed for an hour, then showered and changed for dinner. He had seen the grand dining room at Neverglade with its chandeliers and antique oak table long enough to seat twenty – and he was relieved that they would be eating in the conservatory next to the kitchen. This was a pretty room with marble columns, Italian tiles and exotic plants in huge terracotta pots. Nikolei Drevin was already there when he arrived.

  “Please come in, Alex. Take a seat.” Drevin was drinking wine. He had changed into jeans and a denim jacket, and Alex couldn’t help thinking that the clothes didn’t suit him. He was somehow too old for them. He was a man born to wear a suit.

  “Will you have some wine?” Drevin asked. “Or perhaps a beer?”

  “Water will be fine,” Alex replied.

  “In Russia, children drink alcohol from an early age.”

  The door opened and a young woman came in, carrying the first course on a tray: melon and serrano ham. Alex had no idea how many people worked at Neverglade; the servants had the knack of staying invisible, except when they were needed. He helped himself to iced water. Paul arrived and sat down without speaking. The servant left and the three of them were alone.

  “Has Paul shown you around?” Drevin asked.

  “Yes. It’s quite a place.”

  “I bought it when I first came to your country. The original Neverglade was a sixteenth-century manor house. There’s a story that Queen Elizabeth I stayed there and saw a production of Twelfth Night in the great hall. But I wasn’t fond of the
architectural style. The house was too dark, and it only had eleven bedrooms. It was too small.”

  “What happened to it?”

  Drevin sighed. “A dreadful accident. It burned down. This present castle rose out of the ashes – or rather, I brought it here. I liked it the moment I saw it. The only problem was that it was in Scotland. But happily I was able to do something about that. Have the two of you decided what you’re going to do tomorrow?”

  “I thought we might go for a walk,” Paul said.

  Drevin turned on him and Alex saw something flash in the grey eyes. It was very brief and he couldn’t be certain, but it was almost a look of contempt. “Surely you can think of something more adventurous than that!” he said. “Why don’t you take the horses out? Or the dirt bikes? Of course, you’re both recuperating. Paul from his appendix operation. And you, Alex” – the eyes came to rest on him – “from your cycling accident.”

  “Yes.” Was Drevin questioning his story? “I went over the handlebars and hit a fence.”

  “You must have been going very fast.”

  “I was, until I hit the fence.”

  “Then perhaps dirt bikes aren’t the best idea.” Drevin thought for a moment. His fingers were tugging at his ring but his face gave nothing away. This was a man who was used to keeping his secrets to himself. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I have a conference call tomorrow morning. With the launch just over a week away, I have to keep in constant contact with my own people as well as NASA and, of course, the British government. But in the afternoon, how would you like to race against me?”

  “On horses?”

  “Go-karts. You may have seen I have a track here. I built it for Paul, although I’m afraid he seldom uses it.”

  “I do use it,” Paul protested. “But it’s no fun when you’ve no one to race against.”

  Drevin ignored him. “I have several karts,” he went on. “You’ll find it quite exhilarating, Alex. You against me. What do you say?”

  “Sure.” Alex didn’t much like the sound of it but there was something about the way he was being asked. He’d felt the same when Drevin had invited him to stay. He wasn’t really being given a choice.