“Jack?” Alex dropped the chisel. It clattered against the floor.
“Alex?” Jack gazed at him in disbelief.
The two of them stood there for what felt like an eternity, then fell into each other’s arms.
“I don’t believe it!” Jack’s eyes had filled with tears.
“I got your message, Jack. I’ve been looking for you all over the world.”
“And you found me! You’re in a laundry cupboard! How did you get here?” She pulled away. “You look awful, Alex! When was the last time you had a bath?”
“Jack!”
She stared at him, then grabbed hold of him again and Alex felt an extraordinary sense of lightness as all the fears and doubts of the past couple of months were wiped away to be replaced by the knowledge that he had been right all along, that Jack hadn’t been killed and that he had found her. Apart from the strange uniform, which didn’t suit her at all, she looked just the same as always with her tangled red hair and her wide smile. She was a little thinner perhaps and, with a jolt of unease, Alex noticed an old bruise, fading beside one of her eyes. But it was her. She was alive. That was all that mattered.
“I’ve missed you so much, Jack.” The words came tumbling out. “After what happened, I thought you were—” He had to stop himself. He couldn’t go on.
“I know. But never say die. We’re together now!” She paused. “And we’re still in trouble!”
It was true. They couldn’t stay where they were. They both realized it at the same moment. It was time to move.
“We have to go somewhere safer,” Jack said. “They patrol the corridors all the time. We can go to my room.”
“What are you doing here, Jack?”
“God knows, Alex. The whole thing is a nightmare – or it was until you showed up.” She poked her head out of the door and checked that the corridor was clear. “Follow me! I’m just up here.”
Signalling, she hurried back the way she had come. Alex followed her, his head spinning. Why was she here? Why was she dressed like a nurse? How had she even got here from the South of France? There were a hundred questions he wanted to ask her but he knew he would have to wait until they were out of sight. Together, they crept past a series of doors – old offices that had been turned into sleeping quarters for all fifty-two children. Alex saw a dining hall at the far end with trestle tables and simple wooden seats. It reminded him how hungry he was. But before they reached it, Jack opened a door and ushered him into a bedroom, a little larger than the one he had visited. There was an adult-sized bed, a wardrobe, a dressing table with a mirror. This was where she was staying.
She closed the door then embraced him for a third time, holding him close and saying nothing. When they finally separated, he noticed that he had left black smudge marks on her uniform and glanced at himself in the mirror. She was right. He did look terrible: ragged and scrawny, with his hair, his face, his clothes all covered in soot from the tunnel.
“Are you all right, Alex?” she exclaimed. “I’ve been so worried about you. Ever since Siwa…”
“What happened in Siwa?” Alex asked. “I thought you were killed…”
“I know.” She was about to explain, then stopped herself. “Do you need something to eat or drink?” she asked. “You’re very thin. Who’s been looking after you?”
“I’ve been with Sabina and her parents,” Alex said. “And yes. I’m starving. Can you get me a sandwich or something?”
“Wait here.” Jack went to the door. “I want to make sure the children are asleep. Some of them are terrified, poor things. Then I’ll get you something from the kitchen. It’ll just take me a couple of minutes.” She pointed at a second door leading out of the room. “There’s a bathroom in there. There’s no plumbing but I’ve got bottles of water…” She ran over to Alex, hugged him one last time, and left.
Alex went into the bathroom. There was a sink and a supply of water in five-litre bottles. He had no change of clothes but at least he was able to wash the soot out of his hair and clear his eyes. He drank half a litre of water too, then went back into the bedroom and sat on the bed. He wasn’t tired. Finding Jack had energized him in a way he wouldn’t have thought possible. Right now, the fact that he was a prisoner in a compound surrounded by armed guards didn’t mean anything. He would fly out of here if he had to. Nothing was going to stop him.
He was still sitting there, a smile on his face, when Jack returned clutching sandwiches, fruit juice and chocolate biscuits. “This is all we have,” she explained. “There’s no proper kitchen.”
“It’s perfect, thanks.” Alex grabbed a sandwich, noticing that it was egg mayonnaise. She had even chosen his favourite. He wolfed it down. “How much time do we have, Jack? There was a guard at the door when I came in. Are there any others?”
Jack shook her head. “There’s only one way in and out of this building. They’ve had a guard sitting there the whole time. The Grimaldis brought me here to look after the children. They didn’t want to have a riot on their hands. But they don’t trust me. As soon as this job’s over, I don’t think I’m getting out of here alive.”
“I’m here now.”
“I know. I know. I still can’t believe it. Tell me you’re not on your own. Tell me you’ve got Mrs Jones and the whole of MI6 waiting outside.”
“I am on my own and they don’t even know where I am.”
“Alex!”
“I’ll work something out, Jack. I promise you. But first of all, I’ve got to know how you got here. What happened in Siwa? I know they tricked me with the film of you being killed but that still doesn’t explain how you ended up dressed as a nurse in the middle of Wales.”
“And I want to know how you found me, Alex. I can’t believe you managed to work out my email. I wanted to tell you where I was but I didn’t get the chance—”
Alex held up a hand – and a half-eaten sandwich. “We don’t have a lot of time, Jack,” he said. “You start at the beginning. Then I’ll tell you my side of it. And then we’ll work out what we’re going to do.”
“OK.” There were two chairs in the room. Jack rested one against the door to stop anyone entering. “Just in case…” she said. “Nobody has come in here yet. But if they do, you can hide in the bathroom.”
She sat down on the other chair. Alex was sitting on the bed, drinking orange juice through a straw. At last she began.
“It still makes me ill thinking about Siwa,” she said. “I felt awful because I thought it was my fault that you got captured … I mean, you only went there to rescue me and I blamed myself for getting you into trouble. And I couldn’t believe those two creeps … how horrible they were. Razim and Julius Grief.”
“They’re both dead,” Alex said.
“I heard. All I can say is, it’s an improvement.” She drew a breath. Just as Alex had discovered when he was in San Francisco, it was still painful remembering what had happened. “I tried to escape,” she went on. “I thought I was being so clever. I managed to get out of a window and I stole a Land Rover and I was driving into the desert to get help when it just stopped. There must have been something in the engine. They flicked a switch and stopped it by remote control.
“So I was sitting there like an idiot, trying to get it started again, when these men appeared and dragged me out. I tried to fight but they were too strong for me and there was nothing I could do. About five seconds later, the whole car blew up. It made me sick, realizing I had just been inside it. I mean, I’d been sitting on a bomb for goodness’ sake! After that, they dragged me back to my cell but this time there was a man standing outside the window so I couldn’t climb out again.
“I don’t know how much time went by. I didn’t have my watch and I was half out of my mind, worrying about you. But after a while the door opened and two men came in. Actually, it could have been one man carrying a mirror. Talk about peas in a pod! They were twins, obviously. But they were also identically dressed in old-fashioned safari suits. They would have looked ridiculous, except for the fact that they were clearly so dangerous. I saw that at once.
“‘Miss Starbright…?’ one of them said. He could have been introducing himself to me at a cocktail party.
“‘We are the Grimaldis.’ It was the other one who finished the sentence. That’s how they talk.”
“I know,” Alex said. “We’ve met.”
“Anyway, they said they had a job for me. They didn’t ask me if I was interested or anything like that. They just looked me over, nodded at each other and walked out. I was shouting after them, asking about you, but the door slammed shut and I was left on my own.
“There was only one thing I could do. I had to leave you a message in case you came looking for me and I’d already managed to get one of the screws out of my bed. I used the point to scratch their name into the wall.”
“I saw it!” Alex said. “I went to your cell. I found it under the bed.”
“I would have written more but I didn’t have time. The door opened again and two of the guards came in. They handcuffed me and dragged me outside. There was an SUV parked in the courtyard. They bundled me in and off we went.
“So that was how I met the Brothers Grimm. Eduardo was driving and Giovanni was in the front seat – or maybe it was the other way round. I don’t know. The two of them drove off and as it turned out, we were going to be together for the next seven hours which, I can tell you, felt like a very long time indeed. We drove all the way to Alexandria … through the desert to a place called Mersa Matruh and then along the coast. In a way, they were as horrible as Razim and Julius. If you ask me, they’re completely mad. They’re like one complete nutcase in two bodies.
“At least they didn’t hurt me. In fact they were quite polite. They told me they had been sent by Scorpia to check up on Razim and to see how things were going. They didn’t much like him, by the way. They thought they should have been put in charge. But at the same time, they were planning an operation of their own, something they called…”
“Steel Claw,” Alex said.
“Right. They didn’t tell me what it was while we were in the car but they did say that Razim had been planning to kill me – simply to hurt you – and he would have gone ahead with it if the two of them hadn’t turned up at just the right time. You see, they needed someone to keep control of a bunch of children … a nurse or a matron, I suppose. Somehow they found out that I’d been a nanny once and that was enough for them. They told Razim they wanted to take me away and I don’t think he was too happy about it. But they must have persuaded him because off I went and here I am.”
She smiled. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you again, Alex.”
“Me too.” Alex tore open a packet of biscuits. He had eaten four of the sandwiches. “Go on!”
“They took me to a boat which they had moored at Alexandria. It was called Quicksilver. I have to admit that actually it was quite beautiful … well, not the part of it where I was locked up. That was in the hold. There were two men who looked after me. One of them was Mr Stallone and the other was called Skunk. They weren’t very nice.”
“I’ve met them too,” Alex said.
“Where are they?
“One of them is here. I saw him at the train. I don’t know about the other.”
“They were both pretty mean.” Jack sighed. “I’m amazed how many really evil people there are in the world. How did they get to be that way?”
“I’ve often wondered about that,” Alex said.
“They kept me in a tiny cabin and for the next few days we didn’t move at all. We just stayed there in Alexandria. Then the twins came to see me again. They told me that Razim had been killed and that you had escaped from Egypt. In a way, they were quite amused about it. I told you – they didn’t like him. I begged them to send a message to you, to tell you that I was still alive, but they weren’t interested. The next day we left and as we slipped out to sea I had this awful feeling that I’d never see you again. I thought I was leaving my whole life behind.
“I had no idea where we were going but after a while I could tell we were heading north because it was getting cooler. Finally, we arrived off the coast of France, near Marseille, and we stayed there for ages. Giovanni and Eduardo went ashore and that was the last I saw of them until I arrived here – but I was still kept prisoner on the boat. They told me they were taking me to England and they also told me about Steel Claw. They were so proud of themselves. They were going to make millions … even if it meant terrorizing a bunch of ten-year-olds.
“About a week later, we moved up the coast to Saint-Tropez and moored in the harbour. A woman came on board. I think she was Russian or Serbian, but I never saw her because she was in the luxury cabin while I was down below. I was still tearing my hair out, locked up on my own. But one evening the younger one, Skunk, made a mistake. I wasn’t let out on the deck in case I shouted for help. But they allowed me to have a shower twice a week and he had to take me there. Anyway, he got distracted and somehow he managed to forget about me for a couple of minutes. I couldn’t believe it when I came out of the shower room and saw that there was nobody waiting for me. My first thought was to get off the ship but that wasn’t going to be as easy as it sounds. All the main doors were kept locked and there was always someone out on the deck.
“I sneaked down the corridor and the first thing I saw was an open door and a cabin with a laptop on a table. That was all I needed. If I got a message to you, you could contact Mrs Jones or someone and that would be the end of this whole horrible business. So I slipped inside and sat down at the laptop. It was connected to a local wireless network. I began to type.
“I’d only written three words when the door crashed open and suddenly Skunk was there. He slammed down the lid of the laptop. He almost smashed my fingers. He was furious. Then he hit me.” She pointed to the bruise on her face. “It was a scary moment. I really thought he was going to kill me, and he might have done if the brothers hadn’t needed me. As it was, I don’t think he ever told them what had happened. He was too afraid of them. I was taken back to my cabin and I’ve been wondering ever since if you’d got the message and what you made of it.”
“I knew it was from you,” Alex said. “It led me to you.” He shrugged. “It just took me a little longer than I thought…”
“I was so cross with myself. If I could have told you the name of the boat, it would have made everything so much easier. But I never got the chance. I was locked up all the time after that and then one day – actually, it was the middle of the night – they dragged me off Quicksilver and transferred me to a huge truck carrying olive oil into England. That’s how they smuggled me into the country … tied up and gagged in the back. They must have driven me up to one of the Channel ports and brought me over in a ferry.
“And that’s about it, really.” Jack had been talking for a while. She looked tired but she was still smiling. “You wanted to know what I was doing here. The children from Linton Hall arrived this afternoon. I had to get all their names and addresses plus their parents’ names and phone numbers. I had to give them rooms. Then I got them something to eat. A lot of the younger ones are very upset and I’ve tried to look after them. That’s what the Grimaldis wanted me for.”
She stopped.
“And now it’s your turn. What about you? I want to know where you’ve been and how you got here and why you’re on your own…”
Alex was about to reply when he heard footsteps walking down the corridor, approaching the room. They stopped outside. Alex and Jack exchanged a quick look, then moved at the same time. Alex slipped into the bathroom while Jack snatched the chair away from the door. As an afterthought, she gathered up Alex’s sandwich and biscuit wrappers too. She had just thrown them under the bed when the door opened and Frankie Stallone walked in. She hadn’t seen him since he had kept her prisoner on board Quicksilver and she winced at the sight of his face with its multiple burns.
“Miss Starbright,” he muttered.
“What do you want?” Jack stood in front of him, purposefully barring his way.
Stallone looked past her suspiciously. “Did I hear you talking just now?” he demanded.
“I was saying my prayers before bed.”
The room seemed empty. Stallone nodded. “We need you to get one of the kids up at seven o’clock tomorrow morning,” he said. He handed her a slip of paper. “This one.”
Jack took the piece of paper. “Why?”
“It seems that some of the parents are having second thoughts about paying for their little darlings. So we’re going to shoot one of them to make an example. And we’re going to film it. That should encourage them all to think again.”
“You’re sick!”
“You should be careful how you talk to me, Miss Starbright.” Stallone glared at her. The red smears where his eyebrows had been twitched slightly. “All we want is the money. If they’re going to argue about it, that’s their look-out. Get the kid out of bed. Get him dressed. Bring him outside. And if you’re very good, we won’t make you watch.”
He left, closing the door behind him.
Jack waited until his footsteps had disappeared down the corridor. When she turned round, Alex was back in the room. “Did you hear?” she asked.
“Every word.”
“Seven o’clock.” She looked at her watch. “That’s twelve hours from now.”
Alex nodded, his mind already racing ahead. “I don’t suppose there are any phones anywhere?” he said.
“All the kids were searched. They had their phones taken off them. Anyway, there’s no mobile signal here. They have Internet, I think, but I don’t have the access code.”
“There was a security man travelling with them on the coach. Do you know where he is?”
“Yes. There’s another accommodation block over on the other side. I can show you. It’s where the Grimaldis hang out. The security guy is called Ted Philby and he’s locked in a sort of outhouse just behind. Sector Five – that’s what they call it. There’s a teacher with him – and also the coach driver. But you need to watch out for her, Alex. She’s part of it.”
“I know,” Alex said. “I met her husband.” He thought for a moment but he already knew what he had to do. “We have to get the children out of here. Maybe we can get out by train. If not, there’s the coach.”
“There’s no road.”
“Then we’ll drive along the tracks.”
“In the dark?”
Alex remembered what he had just heard. Sitting here with Jack, he had thought he had time to work out a plan, but in an instant everything had changed. “We have no choice, Jack,” he said. “We’re leaving here tonight.”