One hour earlier, about forty miles east of Oxford, a school bus was preparing to leave. It was no ordinary school bus, but then Linton Hall was definitely no ordinary school.
To begin with, it was by far the most expensive prep school in the country. Its boarding fees began at £12,550 a term … but these could easily rise up to as much as £15,000 once parents had paid for all the extras, which might include piano lessons, judo, horse riding, mountaineering, hot-air ballooning, real tennis, classical ballet and golf. It was, of course, extremely exclusive. There were just three hundred boys and girls aged 8–13 and every one of them had had to pass three days of intensive interviews and exams before they were accepted. Linton Hall’s record spoke for itself. Eighty-five per cent of the students went on to one of the country’s top private secondary schools, with Eton, Westminster and Benenden high on the list. They would all have studied Latin and ancient Greek and would have a grasp of at least three modern languages, including Chinese. They would play a musical instrument. They would be able to recite hundreds of lines of poetry off by heart.
The main body of the school was an Elizabethan manor house, a gorgeous building four storeys high, with chimneys and slanting roofs. It had once been the home of Sir Christopher Linton, a close friend of King Henry VIII and, briefly, Master of the Hunt. That was almost five hundred years ago. Now the house contained several classrooms, a very well stocked library and a dining hall – candlelit at night. It was surrounded by a low balustrade and a series of hedges perfectly cut into the shapes of animals. Real peacocks wandered over the lawns.
There were a dozen other more modern buildings in the grounds. These included a state-of-the-art gymnasium, an arts and leisure complex, a science block and five boarding houses named after British poets. The grounds also boasted a heated swimming pool, squash courts and an Olympic-standard athletic track. Less visible, set on the edge of the main school area and low in the ground, was a circular building made of brick with blacked-out windows. It was known as the Hub, and it was the school’s security centre, manned twenty-four hours a day, the whole year round … even during the holidays.
Linton Hall was not easy to find. It was buried in the Chilterns, at the end of a long track that ran through farmland and over a humpbacked bridge. There was no signpost. The school had no website and entering the name into a satnav system would produce no result at all. The nearest village was called Great Kimble and, despite its name, it was actually very small indeed. None of the villagers ever talked about the school. If anyone asked for directions, they had been warned to call the police.
We want our students to have a happy, normal, carefree time while they are with us.
The words were written on the first page of the school brochure (although the brochure was only sent to a tiny number of people and each copy had to be returned as soon as it had been read). This was the whole point of Linton Hall. The children who went there were the sons and daughters of some of the richest and most powerful people on the planet. In the past, they might have been able to fit into ordinary schools. But modern-day terrorism and the threat of international crime had made that too risky, and at the start of the twenty-first century, a Swiss business group had the bright idea of creating a single location where they might all be brought together and given a first-class education in complete safety.
Two prime ministers – and many senior politicians – had sent their children to Linton Hall. Several members of the royal family had been there and it was rumoured that the future king of England would be starting as soon as he was old enough. But most of the parents could be simply described as “the super-rich”. They were entrepreneurs, the top executives in companies like Apple, Google, Amazon and Shell. The Head Girl was the daughter of one of the world’s best-selling authors. The captain of the first eleven was the adopted son of a pop singer who had sold over two hundred million records worldwide. Many of the children had come from abroad, with parents who included Russian oligarchs, Chinese businessmen, Hollywood stars, Saudi Arabian sheikhs. There was barely a parent in the school who had not been mentioned at some time or other in the press.
While Derek Vosper was reading his report on Celtic artefacts and Alex was kicking his heels in a car outside the Ashmolean Museum, fifty-two children from Years Five and Six were assembling outside the Manor House. At school they wore a distinctive uniform – two shades of blue with the word Virtus and a crest with a golden key on the top pocket. Virtus was the Latin for “excellence” and it was the school’s one-word motto. However, it was the school policy that they should wear nothing that might identify them when they went on trips outside the grounds, so they were in their own clothes, smart but casually dressed.
They were being driven to Stratford-upon-Avon for an afternoon performance of Henry V. At some schools, it might be thought that children in Years Five and Six were too young for Shakespeare, but at Linton Hall, the opposite was true. Children read their first play when they were nine and at the end of the previous term, quite a few of them had appeared in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, performed in the open air with the school jazz band providing the music.
The coach that was waiting for them was a fifty-five-seater Mercedes-Benz Tourismo, painted in the school colours but with no other identification. The driver was standing waiting at the front door.
Jane Vosper had once driven buses for National Express but had joined Linton Hall four years ago. Like all the other teachers and support staff, she had been interviewed several times and had undergone a thorough police security check. She was not particularly popular with the children, as she hardly spoke and never smiled. But the school saw her as a safe pair of hands. With her solid shoulders and her muscular arms, she looked completely comfortable behind the steering wheel of a vehicle that measured thirteen metres in length and which weighed twenty-four tonnes. The children referred to her as Mrs T because she never went anywhere without her silver tea flask. She would sip tea while they were at the theatre, the museum, on a field trip … wherever.
Of course, they were not travelling alone. The head of drama at Linton Hall was a slight, nervous-looking man in his early fifties. Jason Green had been a successful actor and writer until he had been wooed by a generous salary and the promise of long holidays, which would allow him to travel and write plays. He had been at Linton Hall for twenty years, during which time he had seen many of his boys go on to become stars. He was in charge of the expedition.
Also in the coach was a well-built, watchful man with a blank face and a crew cut. His name was Ted Philby, an American recruited from the FBI. He was wearing a suit, a white shirt and dark glasses and there was a wire trailing down from his ear to a microphone next to his mouth. All in all, he could hardly have done more to advertise himself as a hired bodyguard … which is exactly what he was. The school was looked after by a private security firm that consisted of seven full-time operatives: five men and two women. Most of the time, they based themselves at the Hub but whenever there was a school trip, they went too. Very unusually, they were allowed to carry guns. The firm had lobbied the government to make this possible – although it probably helped that one of the students was the son of the minister of defence.
When the coach left, Philby would be on board and it would be sandwiched between two identical Land Rovers with four more armed operatives, travelling in pairs. The cars would be parked outside the theatre throughout the play and the drivers would be in constant communication with the police. If anything happened, they could call for help on a special channel reserved for them. Armed backup would arrive within three minutes.
It wasn’t surprising that everything was done to a tight schedule at Linton Hall and at exactly five past one, the children – who had formed an orderly line – climbed onto the bus and took their places behind each other, rows of two plush seats on either side of a long corridor. The coach had a toilet about halfway down and every seat had a television screen. Normally, the school would transmit classic films or documentaries during long journeys but Stratford-upon-Avon was only an hour away so this time they were blank. Jane Vosper took her place with Philby beside her. As the children settled down and Jason Green began a final headcount, she drew a packet of red and yellow sweets from her handbag.
“It’s my birthday today,” she announced.
“Is that so?” The security man wasn’t interested. He didn’t much care for the school, the children or anyone who worked there. He did this job for the money. He was well paid.
“Yes. Would you like one?” She held out the packet.
“All right.” It was the fastest way to get her off his back. Philby took out a sweet and slid it into his mouth.
Jane had made sure that the red sweets were at the top of the packet. He had taken one. She watched him eat it, then chose a yellow one, just as she had been instructed. Beneath her coat, her heart was beating rapidly. It had begun.
The other security people climbed into their cars, in front of the coach and behind it. The time was ten past one. They set off.
Jason Green was at the end of the aisle, studying a text of the play they were about to see. Ted Philby stayed at the front, chewing the sweet he had been given, occasionally glancing back to look at the passengers. When he had started working there, Philby had been surprised that, despite their extraordinary backgrounds, the children who went to Linton Hall were no different from any other children he had ever met. “Brats are brats no matter how much money they’ve got.” That was what he had told his wife. Looking at them now, he saw that they were bored and excited at the same time. Mobile phones and computer games weren’t allowed on school trips but one or two of them had brought books and were reading quietly while the others chatted noisily to their neighbours and to the people around them. They were black, white, Asian – and they were wearing exactly the sort of brands of jeans and trainers as other children of their age. The girls weren’t allowed to wear jewellery and expensive watches were discouraged. They might be sitting in a very smart two-hundred thousand pound coach but to look at them, they could have come from any comprehensive school anywhere in the UK. Which was, of course, what they wanted everyone to think.
Philby glanced out of the window as they made their way down the first of several narrow, country lanes. Jane Vosper handled the coach expertly, steering it round some of the tighter corners with a sense of ease. Her silver Thermos was wedged beside her, a big, heavy thing that must have contained several pints of tea. She changed up a gear as they hit the A41, the main road that would take them all the way to the motorway. From there it was a straight run to Stratford-upon-Avon. Philby settled back in his seat. He had only ever been to one Shakespeare play and he had slept the whole way through it. He wondered why anyone bothered. It was all old stuff with no guns or car chases. He couldn’t understand half the words. He wiped a hand across his brow. He was sweating. It was unusually warm inside the coach and he was getting tired. He leaned over to Jane. “Can you turn up the air conditioning?”
“It’s on full,” Jane replied. “Is there something the matter?”
“I don’t know. I…” Ted Philby’s head fell forward. He didn’t say anything more.
Jane Vosper stared straight out of the window. The first Land Rover was right in front of her and she knew without looking that the other one would be directly behind. None of the men from the Hub would communicate with each other during the journey. They never had before. So they wouldn’t know that anything was wrong. And they would be completely relaxed. After all, they were armed. They were in contact with the police. They were on their way to a play. They weren’t expecting any trouble.
And as they turned onto the M40 motorway at Junction 9, near Bicester, not one of them even noticed the oversized helicopter that had suddenly appeared in the sky about a mile behind, like some strange, primeval monster. They didn’t see how almost at once, it began to swoop down towards them, trailing something that looked, at least from a distance, like a huge claw…
Strapped into his seat in the Vauxhall Astra, Alex Rider felt like a player in an insane computer game with the world flashing past, the houses almost blurring into each other on either side. Ben Daniels was sitting next to him, hunched forward, his hands gripping the steering wheel as if it was the car that was in control, and it was all he could do to avoid the obstacles hurtling towards him. A taxi came out of a turning and he twisted to the right, then spun back to avoid the lorry that loomed up in front of them, headlights blazing. The needle on the speedometer was touching ninety … on the wrong side of it. This was a residential area. One mistake, one lapse of concentration and innocent people would die. Alex would almost certainly be one of them.
They tore through a traffic light and, with a sense of relief, Alex saw that they had finally left the city and its suburbs behind them. The shops and the houses thinned out and suddenly they were heading north along a dual carriageway with fields on either side. While Ben drove, it was Alex’s job to read out the route that was being sent to them via the satnav screen. They were being directed towards Junction 10 of the motorway – it seemed the most likely point where they might intercept the school coach. Nobody knew quite where it was. Jane Vosper had not yet been located and the security man, Ted Philby, wasn’t answering his phone. But the route was known. Other cars were racing in the same direction, although it looked as if Alex and Ben would get there first.
“Right at the next roundabout!” Alex called out. “You want to get onto the A34.”
The roundabout was ahead of them. The M40 was signposted to the right. But Alex saw that two huge lorries had arrived at the same time, slowing down to take the turn, and they were blocking both lanes. There was no way past. Ben would have to stop, losing precious seconds. Alex watched him as he worked out the angles and made up his mind. He stamped his foot on the accelerator and wrenched the wheel to the left, mounting the pavement and skidding over the grass verge, narrowly missing a lamp post. Now the car was off the road, parallel with the other traffic. He spun round and suddenly he was shooting towards a narrow gap between two cars. He cut through with inches to spare and hit the roundabout, ahead of the two lorries now. Other cars blasted their horns as they slammed on their brakes to avoid him. The car tore round the roundabout and exited on the other side. Throughout the entire manoeuvre they had never dropped below eighty.
Ben was angry with himself. “We should have listened to you,” he muttered, as he changed up a gear. He didn’t look at Alex. His eyes were still fixed on the road ahead. “That bloody museum! We convinced ourselves that was what they were after and we didn’t think.”
“I should have worked it out,” Alex said.
“No. You’d already given us all the clues. We had the whole thing handed to us, gift-wrapped and tied with ribbon.”
“But schoolchildren…?” Everything had happened too quickly. Alex still hadn’t completely worked out what the Grimaldis were planning.
“Fifty-two insanely rich schoolchildren, Alex.” MI6 had already sent Ben a complete briefing on Linton Hall. “Don’t you see—?” Before he could explain anymore, he swore and jerked the wheel to overtake a camper van, the tyres protesting as they cut across the asphalt. After that, the traffic was heavier and he fell silent as he steered the car in and out of the gaps.
“Next left,” Alex said.
They were on a single track road now, almost empty and cutting dead straight through the Oxfordshire countryside. For the next five minutes, they travelled at one hundred miles an hour but just when Alex thought they were home and dry, Ben was forced to slow down. There was a major traffic jam ahead of them and this time there was no way to avoid it. Ben hit the brakes and a moment later they were hemmed in with cars and lorries on all sides. Alex realized that they had arrived at the junction with the motorway. The only trouble was that there was no way of reaching it.
The satnav gave him an overview. They had come to the first of three interconnecting roundabouts, a complicated system that would eventually allow them to access the slip road onto the M40. But it would take them at least fifteen minutes to get there. It was as if the whole of Oxfordshire had decided to go the same way, arriving at the same time. There were cars everywhere, the drivers staring blankly out of the front windows, the passengers bored and silent. They crawled forward and reached a wide, concrete bridge crossing the motorway with four lanes of traffic moving in two directions. He turned to say something to Ben and gasped. Without meaning to, he had looked out of the window – and there it was, in front of his eyes.
It was one of the most extraordinary things he had ever seen.
A huge coach painted in two shades of blue was thundering towards them along the motorway, with one Land Rover in front of it and another behind. That in itself was unusual. But the three vehicles were being pursued by the biggest helicopter Alex had ever seen, a huge piece of machinery that looked even more monstrous and dangerous because it was so close to the ground. It was trailing a gigantic metal hoist underneath it, the chains and cables disappearing into its belly. A circular disc with five metal bands stretched out like fingers. In that instant, Alex understood the meaning of Steel Claw. The disc was magnetic. The helicopter was going to pluck the coach off the motorway. That was the plan. In one swoop, quite literally, the Grimaldi brothers were going to kidnap fifty-two children from the wealthiest families in the world.
That was what Ben had been trying to tell him. Fifty-two ransoms. They would add up to far more than forty million pounds’ worth of gold. How much would the Grimaldis demand? The sky really was the limit.
And there was nothing they could do about it! They had arrived too late. Ben and Alex were trapped on the bridge above the motorway in traffic that had come to a complete standstill. Perhaps the other drivers had stopped to see what was happening. The giant helicopter was an amazing sight. What was it doing flying so low?
Once again, Alex saw Ben make his decision. He was in the left-hand lane. Next to him were the railings that ran along the side of the bridge and, on the other side, a long drop down to the motorway below. The coach rushed past, passing underneath them, and the sun was briefly blotted out as the helicopter followed, flying above their heads, getting lower all the time. The magnetic hoist came so close to the car that Alex almost felt it as it swooshed past. Ben’s hand shot out and he gripped the joystick concealed in the gearstick. He twisted it and the Vauxhall Astra swung round like the needle in a compass, spinning on its omnidirectional wheels so that it was facing the railings with the motorway stretching out below. Ben pressed a button on the control panel and a second later a great tongue of fire leapt out of the front of the car causing the railings to melt and fall away.
“Flame-thrower behind the radiator grille,” he muttered. “Smithers always said it would come in useful.” He gripped the wheel tighter. “Hold on, Alex,” he warned. “This may hurt.” For perhaps half a second, Alex wondered what he was going to do. Then he got the answer. Ben accelerated. The engine roared and the car leapt forward, shooting through the burnt-out railings, launching itself into the air.
They seemed to hang there for an impossibly long time. Alex saw the motorway below them, the cars speeding towards them, the whole world slanting diagonally across the windscreen. Then the surface of the road was rushing towards them. Alex wanted to cover his eyes. It seemed almost certain that they were going to be killed.
The car hit the ground. There was a terrible sound of tearing metal and a great burst of brilliant, crimson sparks. Alex felt his throat tighten as he shrank into his seat. They had fallen an incredible distance from the bridge to the motorway below and he was certain that the Vauxhall Astra had been ripped apart. The wheels screeched. The entire bonnet crumpled and a huge crack appeared in the windscreen, dividing it in two. And yet somehow the car righted itself and kept going. Ben Daniels fought for control, wrenching the steering wheel to find a gap in the traffic. Incredibly, he managed to weave his way between a caravan and a car transporter. The bridge slipped away behind them. They had survived.
They were on the motorway, racing forward with the engine screaming. The car was a wreck. The whole thing was shuddering. Thick smoke was pouring out of the exhaust.
And it was all for nothing.
As Alex straightened in his seat, his neck aching, his heart pounding, he saw that they had fallen behind. The Linton Hall coach was about a quarter of a mile in front of them and the helicopter had moved forward so that it was directly above it. Worse than that, the magnetic hoist had found its target. It was a massive, circular block of steel, suspended on a chain with several cables feeding into it. The pilot manoeuvred the hoist precisely so that it came to rest in the very centre of the roof, clamping itself to the metal surface. Even as Alex watched, the helicopter began to rise into the air, the huge blades beating down, dust billowing all around. The coach struggled briefly, as if there was really any chance of it continuing its journey. Then – it was something Alex would never forget – its wheels left the tarmac. For a few seconds it hung there, rushing forward at seventy miles an hour like all the other cars except that it was no longer in contact with the road. Inch by inch, it was jerked upwards. The two Land Rovers were still trying to protect it but there was nothing they could do. Suddenly they were on their own, on either side of an empty space. The coach was above them.
At first, Alex couldn’t take it in. It was like some elaborate magic trick. The coach, with its fifty-five passengers, must have weighed tonnes but it was levitating, in front of his eyes. He knew that the Super Stallion would have no trouble with the weight, but the magnetic hoist…? It would have to be incredibly strong to maintain its grip. But this wasn’t the time to worry about the science of what was happening. The coach was being snatched away in front of their eyes. They had to stop it.
Ben Daniels hit the accelerator one more time and the Vauxhall Astra leapt forward, the engine howling, the floor vibrating, on the edge of total breakdown. Alex craned his neck, looking through the sunroof. They were now nearly underneath the coach, which was already six or seven metres above them and rising all the time.
“What can you do?” he shouted. “What else did Smithers put in this car?”
“Nothing!” Ben shook his head.
“Does it have an ejector seat?”
“Yes!”
Instantly, Alex saw what had to be done. “Hit it!”
“I can’t, Alex!”
“Just do it!”
Ben hesitated. The coach was moving ever further into the sky. Alex ripped off his seat belt. “We haven’t got time to argue.”
“You won’t survive it! And then Mrs Jones will kill me!”
“Just do it!”
Ben let out a cry of exasperation and punched forward with his left hand, finding a button on the control panel. The sunroof flew off and at the same time Alex yelled as his entire seat was propelled upwards, bright red flames blasting out beneath his feet. He felt the rush of the wind. For a hideous moment, he thought the helicopter had dropped the coach and that he was going to be crushed. It seemed to be plunging towards him, filling his vision. But it was actually the other way round. He was the one who was rocketing towards it. Everything else had disappeared: the motorway, the Vauxhall, the other cars, the sky. This was the moment of truth. He was hurtling towards a black metal wall … the underbelly of the coach. If he was travelling too fast, he would be splatted against it like an insect on a windscreen: too slowly and he would fall back to certain death below. He stretched out, his hands scrabbling for anything that he could cling on to. He had been fired like a bullet. Was he going to reach it? The next moment he did! He saw a metal bar running across the chassis, just in front of the back wheels. The bar was filthy, thick with oil. With a yell, he hooked his hands over it. The seat fell away from beneath him, plunging back down to the road. Somehow, he managed to hold on. Already he could feel the weight of his body, putting the strain on his arms.
He was dangling. He looked down at his feet and beyond them, far, far away, the motorway. The cars were already the size of toys.
The Super Stallion rose ever higher, arcing through the air, heading west, carrying three adults, fifty-two children and one uninvited passenger into the unknown.