They came for Alex the following morning.
He had spent the night handcuffed to a radiator in a small, dark room with a single barred window. It might once have been a coal cellar. When Alex opened his eyes, the grey, first light of the morning was just creeping in. He closed them and opened them again. His head was thumping and the side of his face was swollen where Mr Grin had hit him. His arms were twisted behind him and the tendons in his shoulders were on fire. But worse than all this was his sense of failure. It was 1st April, the day when the Stormbreakers would be unleashed. And Alex was helpless. He was the April fool.
It was just before nine o’clock when the door opened and two guards came in with Mr Grin behind them. The handcuffs were unlocked and Alex was forced to his feet. Then, with a guard holding him on each side, he was marched out of the room and up a flight of stairs. He was still in Sayle’s house. The stairs led to the hall with its huge painting of Judgement Day. Alex looked at the figures, writhing in agony on the canvas. If he was right, the image would soon be repeated all over England. And it would happen in just three hours’ time.
The guards half-dragged him through a doorway and into the room with the aquarium. There was a high-backed wooden chair in front of it. Alex was forced to sit down. His hands were cuffed behind him again. The guards left. Mr Grin remained.
He heard the sound of feet on the spiral staircase, saw the leather shoes coming down before he saw the man who wore them. Then Herod Sayle appeared, dressed in an immaculate pale grey silk suit. Blunt and the people at MI6 had been suspicious of the Middle- Eastern multi-millionaire from the very start. They’d always thought he had something to hide. But even they had never guessed the truth. He wasn’t a friend of Alex’s country. He was its worst enemy.
“Three questions,” Sayle snapped. His voice was utterly cold. “Who are you? Who sent you here? How much do you know?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alex said.
Sayle sighed. If there had been anything comical about him when Alex had first seen him, it had completely evaporated. His face was bored and business-like. His eyes were ugly, full of menace. “We have very little time,” he said. “Mr Grin…?”
Mr Grin went over to one of the display cases and took out a knife, razor sharp with a serrated edge. He held it up close to his face, his eyes gleaming.
“I’ve already told you that Mr Grin used to be an expert with knives,” Sayle continued. “He still is. Tell me what I want to know, Alex, or he will cause you more pain than you could begin to imagine. And don’t try to lie to me, please. Just remember what happens to liars. Particularly to their tongues.”
Mr Grin took a step closer. The blade flashed, catching the light. “My name is Alex Rider,” Alex said.
“Rider’s son?” “His nephew.”
“Who sent you here?”
“The same people who sent him.” There was no point lying. It didn’t matter any more. The stakes had become too high.
“MI6?” Sayle laughed without any sign of humour. “They send fourteen-year-old boys to do their dirty work? Not very English, I’d have said. Not cricket, what?” He had adopted an exaggerated English accent. Now he walked forward and sat down behind the desk. “And what of my third question, Alex? How much have you found out?”
Alex shrugged, trying to look casual to hide the fear he was really feeling. “I know enough,” he said.
“Go on.”
Alex took a breath. Behind him, the jellyfish drifted past like a poisonous cloud. He could see it out of the corner of his eye. He tugged at the handcuffs, wondering if it would be possible to break the chair. There was a sudden flash and the knife that Mr Grin had been holding was suddenly quivering in the back of the chair, a hair’s breadth from his head. The edge of the blade had actually nicked the skin of his neck. He felt a trickle of blood slide down over his collar.
“You’re keeping us waiting,” Herod Sayle said.
“All right. When my uncle was here, he got interested in viruses. He asked about them at the local library. I thought he was talking about computer viruses. That was the natural assumption. But I was wrong. I saw what you were doing last night. I heard them talking on the speaker system. Decontamination and Biocontainment Zones. They were talking about biological warfare. You’ve got hold of some sort of real virus. It came here in test-tubes, packed into silver boxes, and you’ve put them into the Stormbreakers. I don’t know what happens next. I suppose when the computers are turned on, people die. They’re in schools, so it’ll be schoolchildren. Which means you’re not the saint everyone thinks you are, Mr Sayle. A mass-murderer. A bliddy psycho, I suppose you might say.”
Herod Sayle clapped his hands softly together. “You’ve done very well, Alex,” he said. “I congratulate you. And I feel you deserve a reward. So I’m going to tell you everything. In a way it’s appropriate that MI6 should have sent me a real English schoolboy. Because, you see, there’s nothing in the world I hate more. Oh yes…” His face twisted with anger and for a moment Alex could see the madness, alive in his eyes. “You bliddy snobs with your stuck-up schools and your stinking English superiority! But I’m going to show you. I’m going to show you all!”
He stood up and walked over to Alex. “I came to this country forty years ago,” he said. “I had no money. My family had nothing. But for a freak accident, I would probably have lived and died in Beirut. Better for you if I had! So much better!
“I was sent here by an American family, to be educated. They had friends in north London and I stayed with them while I went to the local school. You cannot imagine how I was feeling then. To be in London, which I had always believed to be the heart of civilization. To see such wealth and to know that I was going to be part of it! I was going to be English! To a child born in a Lebanese gutter, it was an impossible dream.
“But I was soon to learn the reality…” Sayle leaned forward and yanked the knife out of the chair. He tossed it to Mr Grin, who caught it and spun it in his hand.
“From the moment I arrived at the school, I was mocked and bullied. Because of my size. Because of the colour of my skin. Because I couldn’t speak English well. Because I wasn’t one of them. They had
names for me. Herod Smell. Goat-boy. The Dwarf. And they played tricks on me. Drawing-pins on my chair. Books stolen and defaced. My trousers ripped off me and hung out on the flagpole, underneath the Union Jack.” Sayle shook his head slowly. “I had loved that flag when I first came here,” he said. “But in only weeks I came to hate it.”
“Lots of people are bullied at school—” Alex began – and stopped as Sayle back-handed him viciously across the face.
“I haven’t finished,” he said. He was breathing heavily and there was spittle on his lower lip. Alex could see him reliving the past. And once again he was allowing the past to destroy him.
“There were plenty of bullies in that school,” he said. “But there was one who was worse than any of them. He was a small, smarmy shrimp of a boy, but his parents were rich and he had a way with the other children. He knew how to talk his way around them … a politician even then. Oh yes. He could be charming when he wanted to be. When there were teachers around. But the moment their backs were turned, he was on to me. He used to organize the others. Let’s get the Goat-boy. Let’s push his head in the toilet. He had a thousand ideas to make my life miserable and he never stopped thinking up more. All the time he goaded me and taunted me and there was nothing I could do because he was popular and I was a foreigner. And do you know who that boy grew up to be?”
“I think you’re going to tell me anyway,” Alex said.
“I am going to tell you. Yes. He grew up to be the bliddy Prime Minister!”
Sayle took out a white silk handkerchief and wiped his face. His bald head was gleaming with sweat. “All my life I’ve been treated the same way,” he continued. “No matter how successful I’ve become, how much money I’ve made, how many people I’ve employed. I’m still a joke. I’m still Herod Smell, the Goat-boy, the Lebanese tramp. Well, for forty years I’ve been planning my revenge. And now, at last, my time has come. Mr Grin…”
Mr Grin went over to the wall and pressed a button. Alex half- expected the snooker table to rise out of the floor, but instead a panel slid up on every wall to reveal floor-to-ceiling television screens which immediately flickered into life. On one screen Alex could see the underground laboratory, on another the assembly line, on a third the airstrip with the last of the lorries on its way out. There were
closed circuit television cameras everywhere and Sayle could see every corner of his kingdom without even leaving the room. No wonder Alex had been discovered so easily.
“The Stormbreakers are armed and ready. And yes, you’re right, Alex. Each one contains what you might call a computer virus. But that, if you like, is my little April Fools’ joke. Because the virus I’m talking about is a form of smallpox. Of course, Alex, it’s been genetically modified to make it faster and stronger … more lethal. A spoonful of the stuff would destroy a city. And my Stormbreakers hold much, much more than that.
“At the moment it’s isolated, quite safe. But this afternoon there’s going to be a bit of a party at the Science Museum. Every school in Britain will be joining in, with the schoolchildren gathered round their nice, shiny new computers. And at midday, on the stroke of twelve, my old friend the Prime Minister will make one of his smug, self-serving speeches and then he’ll press a button. He thinks he’ll be activating the computers and in a way he’s right. Pressing the button will release the virus and by midnight tonight there will be no more schoolchildren in Britain, and the Prime Minister will weep as he remembers the day he first bullied Herod Sayle!”
“You’re mad!” Alex exclaimed. “By midnight tonight you’ll be in jail.”
Sayle dismissed the thought with a wave of the hand. “I think not. By the time anyone realizes what has happened, I’ll be gone. I’m not alone in this, Alex. I have powerful friends who have supported me—”
“Yassen Gregorovich.”
“You have been busy!” He seemed surprised that Alex knew the name. “Yassen is working for the people who have been helping me. Let’s not mention any names or even nationalities. You’d be surprised how many countries there are in the world who loathe the English. Most of Europe, just to begin with. But anyway…” He clapped his hands and went back to his desk. “Now you know the truth. I’m glad I was able to tell you, Alex. You have no idea how much I loathe you. Even when you were playing that stupid game with me, the snooker, I was thinking how much pleasure it would give me to kill you. You’re just like the boys I was at school with. Nothing has changed.”
“You haven’t changed,” Alex said. His cheek was still smarting where Sayle had hit him. But he’d heard enough. “I’m sorry you were
bullied at school,” he said. “But lots of kids get bullied and they don’t turn into nutcases. You’re really sad, Mr Sayle. And your plan won’t work. I’ve told MI6 everything I know. They’ll be waiting for you at the Science Museum. So will the men in white coats.”
Sayle giggled. “Forgive me if I don’t believe you,” he said. His face was suddenly stone. “And perhaps you forget that I warned you about lying to me.”
Mr Grin took a step forward, flipping the knife over so that the blade landed in the flat of his hand.
“I’d like to watch you die,” Sayle said. “Unfortunately, I have a pressing engagement in London.” He turned to Mr Grin. “You can walk with me to the helicopter. Then come back here and kill the boy. Make it slow. Make it painful. We should have kept back some smallpox for him – but I’m sure you’ll think of something much more creative.”
He walked to the door, then stopped and turned to Alex.
“Goodbye, Alex. It wasn’t a pleasure knowing you. But enjoy your death. And remember, you’re only going to be the first…”
The door swung shut. Handcuffed to the chair with the jellyfish floating silently behind him, Alex was left alone.
