It was the worst place in the world.
Alex could never have imagined coming here again. He had done everything he could to keep the fort out of his mind. He had dreaded going to sleep in case he saw it in his dreams and even during the day he had felt its shadow stretching out towards him. His counsellor had told him that it would be better to confront what had happened at Siwa – but what could she possibly know, sitting in her comfortable office in a modern San Francisco school?
Well, he was confronting it now. Here it was, right in front of him – and suddenly he was seeing everything again. The wires attached to his chest. Razim’s mad eyes and the glowing tip of his cigarette. The knives and the scalpels in the brightly-lit room and the television screen that was going to make everything so much worse.
Are you ready, Alex? There’s something I want you to see…
They had killed Jack Starbright and they had forced him to watch. Standing here, with his heart thundering in his chest and his head pounding, Alex knew how much they had hurt him. He would never fully recover.
Unless Jack was alive.
It was hope that had brought him here and now it spurred him on. He had to do this – for her. Clenching his fists, he forced himself to continue forward, leaving the ruined gate behind him. His feet made no sound as they brushed against the sand. He felt the sun beating down on his neck.
He was surrounded once again by the four walls of the fortress and even though the gate was open and there was nobody in sight, he still felt trapped. Guard towers rose up at each corner and he could imagine Razim’s men with their machine guns watching his every step. A movement caught his eye and he froze. But it was only a scrap of paper floating in the breeze.
He glanced towards the chapel that stood at the far end of the compound: circular, with a white dome. It looked small, even picturesque. But he knew that this was the one building he wouldn’t be able to enter, no matter what happened.
The screen.
The car exploding.
Julius Grief laughing. Wasn’t that great! Wasn’t that cool!
Swallowing hard, Alex turned his head away.
Where to start? The entire fortress was unnaturally still and silent. It hadn’t just been abandoned. It had been completely forgotten and stood here now, a fading memory of itself. Alex needed to get out of the sun and he walked purposefully towards the nearest open door. It led into the old bakery, which had been the control centre for all the sophisticated machinery that Razim used to protect himself. The chimney, which had once risen from the oven, was now broken in half, the brickwork smashed. Alex had thrown the grenade that had done the damage, knocking out the lights and the power supply and making it possible for the Egyptian special forces to invade. Once again he heard the machine-gun fire and the explosions all around him as he padded into the gloomy interior. There was nothing here but it was cooler in the shade. Alex stood still for a moment. His pulse was still in overdrive. He took several breaths, forcing himself to calm down.
It was obvious that the entire fortress had been stripped bare. Alex guessed that the Egyptian authorities had been in. They would have taken away the TV cameras, the computers, the security lights, the huge arsenal of weapons, which included machine guns, rocket launchers and flame-throwers. What about the rest of it? The local people wouldn’t have been very far behind. Alex could imagine the free-for-all after the last government vehicle had left. Televisions, furniture, fridges, coffee machines, even the stone table that had once stood outside Razim’s home … everything would have gone, probably ending up in the many street bazaars in Alexandria or Cairo.
He went out into the sunlight. His backpack was weighing down on his shoulders but he was glad that he hadn’t left it in the cab. He turned up his collar to protect his neck. It was even hotter than he remembered. What now? He looked around him. The building where Razim had lived was over to the right but the fountain which had once given the illusion of cool was broken and still. The dwarf palms in front of the house were dead but there was a cactus garden that had survived. A clothes line hung between two trees. There was no sign of any clothes.
Why had he actually come here? What was he expecting to find? Alex had convinced himself that Jack was alive but he knew that he would need proof if he was going to persuade anyone else – and this was the only place he was going to find it. If the car explosion had been faked in some way, surely he would stumble across a clue or something that would tell him how it had been done. Even now he could see the route that the Land Rover had taken, across the courtyard and out the gate. Jack was smart. If she had somehow survived, she would have wanted him to know and he was certain that she would have left some sort of message behind.
That was what he had thought. But now that he was here, standing alone in the empty fort, he wasn’t so sure. A single bird, some sort of vulture, swooped overhead, silhouetted against the sun. It seemed to mock him. There was nothing here. He didn’t even have a lift back to Siwa.
Alex crossed the courtyard, past a well, making for the entrance to a long, narrow building with barred windows and a slanting roof made out of sheets of grey plastic. This was the prison block. It was where he and Jack had been held and it was an obvious place to start. It was also where he had seen her for the last time. I’ll come for you. I promise. He remembered the last words she had spoken to him and at the same time it struck him that it was actually the other way round. He had come for her. He quickened his pace, shaking off the sense of helplessness that he had been feeling only moments before. He had to make this journey. He owed it to her.
The prison block door was open, hanging off its hinges, and he walked into a corridor, following it past the empty cells. Ahead of him, a scorpion froze for a moment, then scurried into the shadows. There were eight cells, all of them identical, but he recognized his own from its position, two down on the right. He didn’t go in. The room with its four blank walls, barred window and wooden bunk held only bad memories. Jack had been kept a little further down, on the opposite side. Her cell was easy enough to find. It was the one with a bar missing from its window. Jack had prised it free, thinking she was escaping when all she was doing was walking into Razim’s trap. Fighting his emotions, doing his best to stay calm, Alex stepped inside. His eyes swept over … nothing. Apart from the window, the cell was no different to his own, an empty box. Even the mattress on the bunk had been taken away.
Still, he went in. He pulled himself up to the window and looked out. There was a drop of four or five metres to the ground and suddenly – a jolting flash of memory – he saw Jack falling after she had made her way out. He closed his eyes, then set about searching the room. Briefly, he examined the walls. He found nothing. The bunk was a bare slab of wood. He knelt down and looked underneath it.
And that was when he saw it. There were scratch marks on the wall, right in the corner, close to the ground. He tried to move the bunk but it was screwed into place. He could make out letters. There was a G followed by an R and maybe an N. He reached into his backpack and took out a bottle of water, splashed some on his hands and crawled under the bunk. When he was close enough, he wiped his hand across the wall, removing the surface dust. Now he could read what had been written. It wasn’t an N. It was an M. Part of a name.
GRIMALDI
The letters were about one centimetre high and might have been carved with a loose nail. Still on his knees, Alex considered what it might mean. First – the most obvious question – was this the message from Jack that he had hoped for or was it simply the name of someone who had been held in the cell before her? After all, it was something that prisoners often did. They would carve their name in the wall to show that they had once been there.
On the other hand, why would they have chosen the wall under the bunk, where it wouldn’t be seen? That suggested someone trying to pass on a secret. It was impossible to tell if this was Jack’s handwriting and even if she was responsible, what was she trying to tell him? Grimaldi could be a person or a place. It sounded Italian. What exactly would that signify … in the middle of Egypt? Alex had his laptop with him but he would need to get back to the town to get a signal – then, maybe, the Internet might provide an answer.
He heard something outside. The slightest sound carried across the desert and this was very distinct. It was a car approaching. Well, that was something anyway. It seemed that Yusuf had changed his mind and had come back to pick him up. Alex used his mobile phone to take a picture of the name, then got to his feet, dusting himself down. Before he left, he took one last, quick look around the cell. There was nothing else. He put the phone away, lifted the backpack over his shoulders and followed the corridor back to the main door.
As he emerged, blinking, into the sunlight, he saw that he was wrong. It wasn’t Yusuf. An old dumper truck with flat tyres and rusting bodywork had driven right into the fort and even as Alex watched, it pulled up beside the well. There were four men squatting in the back and two more in the front. The driver got out and Alex recognized him. It was the man he had seen in the town, the Berber with the dirty bandages around his neck.
He was carrying a rifle.
In fact, all six men were armed. Two of them had knives. The others were carrying different sorts of clubs including, bizarrely, a brightly-coloured American baseball bat. The man with the silver cross and the man with the skullcap were part of the group. Alex knew instantly that he had been set up, that they had come for him. Yusuf had agreed to bring him here and then to abandon him; he was probably well on his way back down the road to Cairo. The men he had spoken to had collected a few friends and together, they had driven out to the fort. Why? Had they once worked for Razim? If so, it was possible that they had recognized him when he returned to Siwa – but even so, he couldn’t see what they hoped to gain. Beating him up or killing him wouldn’t change anything. Razim was dead. Game over.
There was no point discussing it with them. The odds were six against one and the men clearly hadn’t come here for a quiet chat. Somehow Alex had to get back to the relative safety of the town. Whatever they were planning, they wouldn’t be able to go through with it if there were witnesses. He took one look at them as they spread out and began their search, giving each one of them a name.
BANDAGE. He was carrying the rifle and seemed
to be in charge.
SKULLCAP. Carrying a knife.
SILVER CROSS. Another knife.
BASEBALL BAT. Named after his weapon.
ANT.
DEC.
Alex didn’t know why he had named the last two after popular television presenters, except that they were both short and dark-haired and looked a bit like each other. They were carrying what looked like axe handles – fortunately, without the metal blades.
So that was the enemy. At least he had them pinned down in his mind. Alex backed into the doorway, allowing the prison block to conceal him. Already he was considering his options. He was alone and unarmed. Apart from Yusuf, nobody knew he was here. He could try to hide but the men would find him eventually. It would be better to run. What then? Even if he made it out of the fort, he’d find himself in the desert, surrounded by flat sand with nowhere to hide, ten miles from the town. The men would spot him instantly and then they would jump in the truck and run him down.
Without making a sound, he doubled back along the corridor and into Jack’s cell. He glanced one last time at the bunk, thinking of the name he had found underneath it. He was glad he had captured it on his phone … the one fragment of proof that he actually had. But there was no time to think about that now. He needed to get out of the building, fast, and thanks to Jack he knew how to do it.
Once again, he pulled himself up to the window that was missing its bar and, pushing his backpack ahead of him, squeezed through the gap. The ground was a long way down and he fell with a soft thump. He snatched up the backpack, wishing that he had brought along a weapon. Where was Smithers when he needed him? A couple of exploding coins, a miniature smoke bomb, a mobile phone with an anaesthetic dart … he would have been grateful for anything. He heard a voice coming from the other side of the building, someone giving orders in Arabic. He guessed it was Bandage. He was the most dangerous of them. He was the one with the gun.
Alex knew that, whatever happened, he had to stay out of sight. It was his only advantage. This was going to be a cat-and-mouse game and fortunately there were plenty of holes for the mouse to hide. Even so, he couldn’t just let them hunt him down. Time was on their side. They could stay here all night if they wanted, while he had no food and little water. Somehow he had to reduce the odds. They had split up and that was their first mistake. It gave him the chance to sneak up on them one at a time. And what then…? He arrived at one of the salt piles – Razim’s men had once collected salt from the desert – and scooped up a handful of the white crystals. Briefly, he considered hiding himself in the pile but he knew it was out of the question. The chemicals in the salt were too toxic. He remembered what they had done to Razim.
He reached the corner and peered round just as Skullcap appeared. He looked enormous, walking with the sunlight behind him, a dark shadow looming over Alex as he headed towards him.
Skullcap was even more surprised to see Alex than Alex was to see him. Both of them reacted at once but Alex was faster. Skullcap lifted his knife, the seven-inch blade glinting in the sun. But before he could use it, Alex threw his hand forward, his fingers splayed, as if he was casting a spell. Skullcap gasped and fell back. It wasn’t magic. Alex had been holding the salt that he had taken from the pile and had thrown it into the man’s eyes, blinding him. He quickly followed through, twisting round and bringing his right knee to his chest, then striking out with his heel, putting all his body weight behind it.
Skullcap crumpled without making another sound. Five against one. And Alex now had a knife. He grabbed it.
Alex didn’t waste a second. There was always a chance that one of the others might have heard the brief confrontation and he needed to move away fast. A flight of stone steps led up to the parapet, a wide ledge which ran high up along the inner wall, all the way round the courtyard. Alex took the steps three at a time, then threw himself flat when he reached the top, lying on his stomach with the battlements rising up behind him. Nobody had seen him. Catching his breath, he looked around. An ancient cannon stood a short distance away, facing out into the desert. The fort had been built during the French invasion of Egypt and the weapon must have been left behind by the armies of Napoleon. It was useless now, cracked and rusting and too heavy to move. Even a museum would probably have said it was without value. He also noticed a couple of old cannonballs, black and mottled, about the size of coconuts. Tentatively, he reached out with his foot and tested the nearest one. It was heavy but it moved.
Alex twisted onto his side and examined the courtyard. Lying on the parapet, he knew that he would be hidden from the men who were searching for him … even if they happened to look up. He saw one of them come out of the chapel about fifteen metres away. It was Baseball Bat. He seemed to be taking a more relaxed attitude to the search. As Alex watched, the man fumbled in his pockets, took out a cigarette and lit it. Alex measured the distance between them. He’d had an idea. As quickly as he could, he took off his wristwatch and threw it down into the sand. It was an Omega, given to him by Ian Rider, and he didn’t want to lose it, but if things went well, he would get it back later. If things went badly, he wouldn’t need it anyway. Baseball Bat didn’t see the watch fall but he heard something hit the ground and that caught his attention. He lowered the cigarette and almost at once he saw the shine of the metal band reflecting the sun. He smiled to himself and began to move forward.
Alex curled himself behind the cannonball with his back against the wall. It was more dangerous sitting up. The top half of his body was exposed and if anyone looked up, he would be seen. But this was only going to take a moment. Alex watched as Baseball Bat drew nearer, walking towards the wall. He stopped directly beneath him and reached down for the watch. Alex lashed out with both feet, propelling the solid iron ball towards the edge. At the same time, he jerked forward so that he could see what happened.
The man was leaning down, his hand stretched out to pick up the watch, when the cannonball hit him on the side of his head. In a way, he was lucky. An inch to the right and it might have broken his neck. Instead, he received a glancing blow – but it was still enough to knock him out instantly. He fell and lay still, a pool of blood seeping into the sand.
Four against one.
Once again, Alex was on the move. Crouching down and keeping as close as he could to the battlements, he scurried like a crab … all the way round the parapet, past the chapel and over to the house where Razim had lived. Then, he heard a shout from the other side. Skullcap had just been discovered, lying unconscious outside the prison. That changed things. They knew he was dangerous now. They would be more careful. And Bandage still had his gun.
Alex found a flight of steps leading behind the house and threw himself down them, glad to be dipping out of sight. Was it too much to hope that with two of their colleagues injured – one of them badly – the others might give up? Unfortunately, they seemed to be doing the exact opposite. Alex saw Bandage checking his gun. It was an old Lee–Enfield self-loading battle rifle, the sort used by the British Army in the Second World War. Alex guessed there would be twenty bullets in the box magazine – if it was fully loaded. It was clearly the game-changer here. Whoever had the gun had control of the entire courtyard and the gate. At the moment that wasn’t him. Was there anything he could do?
The four survivors had gathered on the other side of the well. Squatting behind Razim’s cactus garden, Alex could see them clearly. Bandage was rasping out orders in Arabic. Clearly, he had decided that some sort of plan was required before there were any more casualties. Sure enough, one of the men – Dec – climbed up to the parapet, taking the same steps that Alex had used. From there, he would have a view across the entire courtyard and could warn the rest if Alex made a move. The two others set off towards the bakery. They obviously thought they would be safer as a pair. Bandage positioned himself at the very centre, next to the well. He had a good view of the main gate and most of the buildings. Wherever Alex appeared, he would be in the line of fire.
Alex had to do something – and soon. Dec was moving slowly round the parapet and it was only a matter of seconds before he reached the corner from where he would have no trouble spotting him. Bandage had his back to him. Alex thought about running across the courtyard, trying to surprise him. But it wouldn’t work. He was too far away. Could he throw the knife? He examined the weapon in his hand. It was sharp but it was also heavy and might not fly straight. Anyway, there was something in him that recoiled at the idea of stabbing a man in the back.
Was there another way?
Yes. Alex took one quick look around him and set to work.
Bandage had also lit a cigarette. It was about the most stupid thing he could have done – and not just because smoking would kill him. Taking the packet out of his pocket, sliding the cigarette, finding a match … all this had demanded his attention and when the man on the parapet cried out a warning, it was already too late. He turned slowly and saw that the boy had appeared, running towards him swinging something above his head. The two men had come out of the bakery and they saw it too. At first they thought it was some kind of spiked ball on a chain, the sort of thing used by a medieval knight and they were puzzled. Where could he have found a weapon like that?
Alex had used the knife to cut a length off the washing line he had seen. Then he had looped it around a barrel cactus growing in Razim’s garden, pulling it tight. The cactus was about the same shape and size as the cannonball. It was covered in vicious, yellow spines – dozens of them – and Alex had been careful not to touch it. He knew how much it would hurt. Now Alex swung it round his head once, twice, while Bandage dropped his cigarette and fumbled with his gun. He was too late. Alex released the rope. The cactus flew free.
The green ball soared across the courtyard and found its target perfectly, hitting Bandage full in the face. It didn’t bounce off or fall to the ground. Instead it hung there, with at least a dozen spikes piercing his lips, his cheeks, the side of his nose and one of his eyes, each one of them injecting its poison into his nervous system. Bandage shouted something. Panicking and momentarily blinded, he fired the rifle but it had been pointing in the air and the bullets went nowhere near Alex. There was a scream from the parapet and the man who had been sent up there fell to his knees, clutching his stomach with blood seeping through his hands. He had taken the full force of the blast. Alex couldn’t believe his luck – but he didn’t stop to congratulate himself. He was already sprinting across the courtyard. He had just a few seconds to reach Bandage before he recovered enough to fire again. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other two men running towards him.
Bandage was sobbing. He looked as if he had an alien growth on his face and he was puncturing his fingers, inflicting more pain on himself as he tried to rip it off. In truth, he had forgotten about Alex. He had dropped the gun. Alex reached him and, leaning backwards so that he didn’t have to come too close, put him out of his misery with a single roundhouse kick. The man and the cactus went down. Alex swept the rifle off the ground and swung round just in time to bring it to aim at the two men who were only a few metres away.
They stumbled to a halt. Silver Cross and Ant. They looked at each other uncertainly. Alex gripped the gun tighter. He wanted them to believe that he was prepared to use it.
“Who are you?” Alex demanded. “Why did you come here?”
There was no answer. Alex pointed the gun at Silver Cross and took aim. “I work for Razim,” the man said, simply.
“Razim’s dead.”
“Yes. Because of you. Now we have no jobs. We lose all our money. You take everything from us.”
So Alex had been right. They had come out here – to hurt him or even kill him – purely out of revenge. He could hardly believe it. Didn’t these people ever give up? At the same time, he wasn’t sure what to do. He had no real interest in them. He certainly wasn’t going to shoot them. Perhaps he could use the gun to persuade them to give him a lift back to Siwa.
It was the younger of the two who alerted him. Silver Cross hadn’t reacted but Ant suddenly smiled. Why? Alex realized that both of them were looking past him and turned just in time to see that Bandage had recovered and was rushing towards him with a hideous look on his face, a knife in his hand. He had managed to get rid of the barrel cactus, although his flesh was horribly swollen. There was a huge bulge between his nose and his eye and his lips were twice the size they should be, with a few needles still sticking out like tribal ornaments. Alex hadn’t kicked him quite hard enough.
Alex brought the gun round, pointing it at the ground just in front of him, and squeezed the trigger. He intended to fire a warning shot, to stop him in his tracks. But nothing happened. Either there was some sort of safety catch or the old Lee–Enfield had jammed. He could only watch as Bandage took three more steps and then slashed down with the knife, aiming at his throat.
There was a single shot. Bandage screamed as his hand became a splash of red and the knife spun away. A second shot and he was thrown onto his back. Alex knew at once that he wouldn’t be getting up again. He turned to see Silver Cross and his friend dropping to their knees, their hands behind their heads, surrendering.
Four more men had come bursting through the main gate. They looked like soldiers, dressed in desert khaki and carrying automatic pistols and sub-machine guns. For a horrible moment, Alex thought that new trouble had arrived, that they had come for him too. But that couldn’t be the case. They had killed Bandage. They had actually saved him.
And then a fifth man appeared. He was short and dark, his black hair slicked back with too much oil. He was also dressed in desert khaki, although it somehow didn’t quite suit him and, Alex noticed, he wasn’t carrying any weapons. Rather oddly, there were several gold signet rings on his fingers. They certainly didn’t go with the military uniform. He stomped into the courtyard with a scowl on his face, glanced at the two kneeling men, then went over to Bandage, prodded him with his foot and sniffed. Finally, he seemed to notice Alex, who was still holding the Lee–Enfield. He held out a hand. Alex handed him the gun.
The man took it. He nodded slowly, then waved one of his fingers, close to Alex’s face.
“Alex Rider,” he said, in an almost exaggerated Arabic accent. “You are a very naughty boy.”