Skeleton Key Read online

  Again, nobody knew who had trained Conrad or, for that matter, who had employed him. He was a chameleon. He had no political beliefs and operated simply for money. It was believed that he had been responsible for outrages in Paris, Madrid, Athens and London. One thing was certain. The security services of nine different countries were after him, he was number four on the CIA’s most wanted list, and there was an official bounty of two million dollars on his head.

  His career had come to a sudden and unexpected end in the winter of 1998 when a bomb that he had been carrying – intended for an army base – had detonated early. The bomb had quite literally blown him apart, but it hadn’t quite managed to kill him. He had been stitched back together by a team of Albanian doctors in a research centre near Elbasan. It was their handiwork that was so visible now.

  He was working as Sarov’s personal assistant and secretary. He had done so for two years. Such work would once have been beneath him but Conrad had little choice now. And anyway, he understood the scope of Sarov’s vision. In the new world that the Russian intended to create, Conrad would have his rewards.

  “Good morning, comrade,” Sarov said. He spoke in fluent English. “I hope we’ve managed to recover the rest of the banknotes from the swamp.”

  Conrad nodded. He preferred not to speak.

  “Excellent. The money will, of course, have to be laundered. Then it can be paid back into my account.” Sarov reached out and opened a leather-bound diary. There were a number of entries, each one in perfect handwriting. “Everything is proceeding according to schedule,” he went on. “The construction of the bomb…?”

  “Complete.” Conrad seemed to have difficulty getting the word out of his mouth. He had to twist his face to make it happen at all.

  “I knew I could rely on you. The Russian president will be arriving here in just five days’ time. I had an email from him confirming it today. Boris tells me how much he’s looking forward to his holiday.” Sarov smiled very briefly. “It will, of course, be a holiday that he is unlikely to forget. You have the rooms prepared?”

  Conrad nodded.

  “The cameras?”

  “Yes, General.”

  “Good.” Sarov ran a finger down the diary pages. He stopped at a single word that had been underlined with a question mark. “There still remains the question of the uranium,” he said. “I always knew that the purchase and delivery of nuclear material would be dangerous and delicate. The men in the aircraft threatened me and they have paid the price. But they were, of course, working for a third party.”

  “The Salesman,” Conrad said.

  “Indeed. By now, the Salesman will have heard what happened to his messenger boys. When no further payment arrives from me, he may decide to go ahead with his threat and alert the authorities. It’s unlikely, but it’s still a risk I am not prepared to take. We have less than two weeks until the bomb is detonated and the world takes on the shape that I have decided to give it. We cannot take any chances. And so, my dear Conrad, you must go to Miami and remove the Salesman from our lives – which will, I fear, involve removing him from his.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He operates out of a boat, a cruise liner called Mayfair Lady. It’s usually moored at the Bayside Marketplace. The Salesman feels safer on the water. Speaking personally, I will feel safer when he is underneath it.” Sarov closed the diary. The meeting was over. “You can leave straight away. Report to me when it is done.”

  Conrad nodded a third time. The metal pins in his neck rippled briefly as his head moved up and down. Then he turned round and walked, limped, dragged himself out of the room.

  DEATH OF A SALESMAN

  They had a late breakfast at a café in Bayside Marketplace, right on the quayside, with boats moored all around them and bright yellow and green water taxies nipping back and forth. Tom Turner and Belinda Troy had knocked on Alex’s door at ten o’clock that morning. In fact, Alex had been awake for several hours. He had fallen asleep fast, slept heavily and woken too early – the classic pattern of trans-Atlantic jet-lag. But at least he’d had plenty of time to read through the papers that Joe Byrne had given him. He now knew everything about his new identity – the best friends he had never met, the pet dog he had never seen, even the high school grades he had never achieved.

  And now he was sitting with his new mother and father watching the tourists on the boardwalk, strolling in and out of the pretty white-fronted boutiques that cluttered the area. The sun was already high, the glare coming off the water almost blinding. Alex slipped on a pair of Oakley Eye Jackets and the world on the other side of the black iridium lenses became softer and more manageable. The glasses had been a present from Jack. He hadn’t expected to need them so soon.

  There was a book of matches on the table with the words THE SNACKYARD printed on the cover. Alex picked it up and turned it over in his fingers. The matches were warm. He was surprised the sun hadn’t set them alight. A waiter in black and white, complete with bow tie, came over to take the order. Alex glanced at the menu. He had never thought it possible to have so much choice for breakfast. At the next table a man was eating his way through a stack of pancakes with bacon, hash browns and scrambled eggs. Alex was hungry but the sight took away his own appetite.

  “I’ll just have some orange juice and toast,” he said.

  “Wholemeal or granary?”

  “Granary. With butter and jam—”

  “You mean jelly!” Troy paused until the waiter had gone. “No American kid asks for jam.” She scowled. “You ask for that at Santiago Airport and we’ll be in jail – or worse – before you can blink.”

  “I wasn’t thinking,” Alex began.

  “You don’t think, you get killed. Worse, you get us killed.” She shook her head. “I still say this is a bad idea.”

  “How’s Lucky?” Turner asked.

  Alex’s head spun. What was he talking about? Then he remembered. Lucky was the Labrador dog that the Gardiner family was supposed to have back in Los Angeles. “He’s fine,” Alex said. “He’s being looked after by Mrs Beach.” She was the woman who lived next door.

  But Turner wasn’t impressed. “Not fast enough,” he said. “If you have to stop to think about it, the enemy will know you’re telling a lie. You have to talk about your dog and your neighbours as if you’ve known them all your life.”

  It wasn’t fair, of course. Turner and Troy hadn’t prepared him. He hadn’t realized the test had already begun. In fact, this was the third time Alex had gone undercover with a new identity. He had been Felix Lester when he had been sent to Cornwall, and Alex Friend, the son of a multimillionaire, in the French Alps. Both times he had managed to play the part successfully and he knew that he could do it again now as Alex Gardiner.

  “So how long have you been with the CIA?” Alex asked.

  “That’s classified information,” Turner replied. He saw the look on Alex’s face and softened. “All my life,” he said. “I was in the marines. It’s what I always wanted to do, even when I was a kid … younger than you. I want to die for my country. That’s my dream.”

  “We shouldn’t be talking about ourselves,” Belinda said angrily. “We’re meant to be a family. So let’s talk about the family!”

  “All right, Mom,” Alex muttered.

  They asked him a few more questions about Los Angeles while they waited for the food to arrive. Alex answered on autopilot. He watched a couple of teenagers go past on skateboards and wished he could join them. That was what a fourteen year old should be doing in the Miami sunshine. Not playing spy games with two sour-faced adults who had already decided they weren’t going to give him a chance.

  The food came. Turner and Troy had both ordered fruit salad and cappuccino – decaffeinated with skimmed milk. Alex guessed they were watching their weight. His own toast came – with grape jelly. The butter was whipped and white and seemed to disappear when it was spread.

  “So who is the Salesman?” Alex asked.
r />   “You don’t need to know that,” Turner replied.

  Alex decided he’d had enough. He put down his knife. “All right,” he said. “You’ve made it pretty clear that you don’t want to work with me. Well, that’s fine, because I don’t want to work with you either. And for what it’s worth, nobody would ever believe you were my parents because no parents would ever behave like you two!”

  “Alex—” Troy began.

  “Forget it! I’m going back to London. And if your Mr Byrne asks why, you can tell him I didn’t like the jelly so I went home to get some jam.”

  He stood up. Troy was on her feet at the same time. Alex glanced at Turner. He was looking uncertain too. He guessed that they would have been glad to see the back of him. But at the same time, they were afraid of their boss.

  “Sit down, Alex,” Troy said. She shrugged. “OK. We were out of line. We didn’t mean to give you a hard time.”

  Alex met her eyes. He slowly sat down again.

  “It’s just gonna take us a bit of time to get used to the situation,” Troy went on. “Turner and me … we’ve worked together before … but we don’t know you.”

  Turner nodded. “You get killed, how’s that gonna make us feel?”

  “I was told there wasn’t going to be any danger,” Alex said. “Anyway, I can look after myself.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  Alex opened his mouth to speak, then stopped himself. There was no point arguing with these people. They’d already made up their minds, and anyway, they were the sort who were always right. He’d met teachers just like them. But at least he’d achieved something now. The two special agents had decided to loosen up.

  “You want to know about the Salesman?” Troy began. “He’s a crook. He’s based here in Miami. He’s a nasty piece of work.”

  “He’s Mexican,” Turner added. “From Mexico City.”

  “So what does he do?”

  “He does just what his name says. He sells things. Drugs. Weapons. False identities. Information.” Troy ticked off the list on her fingers. “If you need something and it’s against the law, the Salesman will supply it. At a price, of course.”

  “I thought you were investigating Sarov.”

  “We are.” Turner hesitated. “The Salesman may have sold something to Sarov. That’s the connection.”

  “What did he sell?”

  “We don’t know for sure.” Turner was looking increasingly nervous. “We just know that two of the Salesman’s agents flew into Skeleton Key recently. They flew in but they didn’t fly out again. We’ve been trying to find out what Sarov was buying.”

  “What’s all this got to do with the Russian president?” Alex still wasn’t sure he was being told the truth.

  “We won’t know that until we know what it was that Sarov bought,” Troy said, as if explaining something to a six year old.

  “I’ve been working undercover with the Salesman for a while now,” Turner went on. “I’m buying drugs. Half a million dollars’ worth of cocaine, being flown in from Colombia. At least, that’s what he thinks.” Turner smiled. “We have a pretty good relationship. He trusts me. And today just happens to be the Salesman’s birthday, so he invited me to go for a drink on his boat.”

  Alex looked across to the sea. “Which one is it?”

  “That one.” Turner pointed at a boat moored at the end of a jetty about fifty metres away. Alex drew a breath.

  It was one of the most beautiful boats he had ever seen. Not sleek, white and fibreglass like so many of the cruisers he had seen moored around Miami. Not even modern. She was called Mayfair Lady and was an Edwardian classic motor yacht, eighty years old, like something out of a black and white film. The boat was one hundred and twenty feet long with a single funnel rising over its centre. The main saloon was at deck level, just behind the bridge. A sweeping line of fifteen or more portholes suggested cabins and dining rooms below. The boat was cream with natural wood trimmings, a wooden deck and brass lamps under the canopies. A tall, slender mast rose up at the front with a radar, the boat’s one visible connection with the twenty-first century. Mayfair Lady didn’t belong in Miami. She belonged in a museum. And every boat that came near her was somehow ugly by comparison.

  “It’s a nice boat,” Alex said. “The Salesman must be doing well.”

  “The Salesman should be in jail,” Troy muttered. She had seen the admiring look in Alex’s eyes and didn’t approve. “And one day that’s where we’re going to put him.”

  “Thirty years to life,” Turner agreed.

  Troy dug her spoon into her fruit salad. “All right, Alex,” she said, “let’s start again. Your maths teacher. What’s her name?”

  Alex looked round. “Her name is Mrs Hazeldene. And – nice try – but we learn maths in England. Americans learn math.”

  Troy nodded but didn’t smile. “You’re getting there,” she said.

  They finished their breakfast. The CIA agents tested Alex on a few more details, then lapsed into silence. They didn’t ask him about his life in England, his friends, or how he had stumbled into the world of MI6. They didn’t seem to want to know anything about him.

  The skateboarders had stopped playing and were slumped on the boardwalk, drinking Cokes. Turner looked at his watch. “Time to go,” he muttered.

  “I’ll stay with the kid,” Troy said.

  “I shouldn’t be more than twenty minutes.” Turner stood up, then slapped his hand against his head. “Hell! I didn’t get the Salesman a birthday present!”

  “He won’t mind,” Troy said. “Tell him you forgot.”

  “You don’t think he’ll be upset?”

  “It’s OK, Turner. Invite him out for lunch another time. He’ll like that.”

  Turner smiled. “Good idea.”

  “Good luck,” Alex said.

  Turner got up and left. As he walked away, Alex noticed a man in a bright Hawaiian shirt and white trousers coming from the opposite direction. It was impossible to see the man’s face because he was wearing sunglasses and a straw hat. But he must have been involved in some sort of terrible accident – his legs were dragging awkwardly and there seemed to be no life in his arms. For a moment he was right next to Turner on the boardwalk. Turner didn’t notice him. Then, moving surprisingly quickly, he had gone.

  Alex and Troy watched as Turner walked all the way along to Mayfair Lady. There was a ramp at the end of the jetty, leading up to deck level. It allowed the crew to wheel supplies on board. A couple of men were just finishing as Turner arrived. He spoke to them. One of them pointed in the direction of the saloon cabin. Turner went up the ramp and disappeared on board.

  “What happens now?” Alex asked.

  “We wait.”

  For about fifteen minutes nothing happened. Alex tried to talk to Troy but her attention was fixed on the boat and she said nothing. He wondered about the relationship between the two agents. They obviously knew each other well and Byrne had told him they’d worked together before. Neither of them showed their emotions, but he wondered if their friendship might be more than professional.

  Then Alex saw Troy sit up in her seat. He followed her eyes back to the boat. Smoke was coming out of the funnel. The engines had started up. The two crewmen Turner had spoken to were on the jetty. One of them untied the boat, then climbed onboard. The other one walked off. Slowly, Mayfair Lady began to move away from her mooring.

  “Something’s gone wrong,” Troy whispered. She wasn’t talking to Alex. She was talking to herself.

  “What d’you mean?”

  Her head snapped round as she remembered he was there. “It was a ten minute meeting. Tom wasn’t meant to be going anywhere.”

  Tom. It was the first time she had used his first name.

  “Maybe he changed his mind,” Alex suggested. “Maybe the Salesman invited him on a cruise.”

  “He wouldn’t have gone. Not without me. Not without cover. It’s against company procedure.”

 
“Then…”

  “His cover’s been blown.” Troy’s face was suddenly pale. “They must have found out he’s an agent. They’re taking him out to sea with them…”

  She was standing up now but not moving, paralysed with indecision. The boat was still moving gracefully. Already a full half of its length was projecting out beyond the jetty. Even if she ran forward, she would never reach it in time.

  “What are you going to do?” Alex asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are they going to…?”

  “If they know who he is, they’ll kill him.” She snapped the words as if this was somehow Alex’s fault, as if it was a stupid question that he should never have asked. And maybe it was this that decided him. Suddenly, before he even knew what he was doing, he was on his feet and running. He was angry. He was going to show them that he was more than the dumb English kid they obviously thought he was.

  “Alex!” Troy called out.

  He ignored her. He had already reached the boardwalk. The two teenagers he had seen earlier were sitting in the sun, finishing their drinks, and they didn’t see him snatch one of their skateboards and jump onto it. It was only as he pushed off, propelling himself over the wooden surface towards the departing boat, that one of them shouted in his direction, but by then it was too late.

  Alex was balanced perfectly. Snowboards, skateboards, surfboards, they were all the same to him. And this skateboard was a beauty, a Flexdex downhill racer with ABEC5 racing bearings and kryptonic wheels. How typical of Miami kids to buy only the best. He shifted his weight, suddenly aware that he had neither helmet nor knee-pads. If he came off now, it was going to hurt. But that was the least of his worries. The boat was pulling away. Even as Alex watched, the stern with its churning propellers slid past the end of the jetty. Now the boat was at sea. He could see the name, Mayfair Lady, dwindling as it moved into the distance. In seconds it would be too far away to reach.