Scorpia Rising

24 DEPARTURES IT WAS TIME TO GO. Alan Blunt had reached his last day as head of MI6 Special Operations. He had spent the morning packing his personal possessions. It hadn’t taken him very long. In fact, they all fit inside a small shoe box that now sat in the middle of his otherwise empty desk. Of course, what he would really be taking from here would be his memories, and he certainly had enough of those. It had briefly occurred to him that he might write a memoir —it was very much the trend with politicians and departing civil servants. But of course it was out of the question. It was part of the job description that he should take his secrets to the grave. And if he tried to sell them, he might arrive there sooner than he had expected.

He took one last look outside. It was going to be a hot summer. Liverpool Street was unusually bright with the sun flaring off the plate glass windows. There was a pigeon half asleep on the ledge outside. Do birds sleep? Blunt tapped on the glass and it flew away. He had once discussed with Smithers the possibility of using homing pigeons to listen in on foreign ambassadors. Homing pigeons with homing devices around one leg. The Covert Weapons Section had put in a feasibility study, but nothing had come of it. Blunt had seen Smithers a few weeks ago, after his return from Cairo. There had been a formal debriefing. The two of them had not said good-bye.

Blunt went back to his desk and rested a hand on the shoe box. He was tempted to throw it in the garbage. There was nothing inside that he really wanted. Suddenly he just wanted to be out of here. In two days he was leaving for Venice, the first stopping point on a six-week tour of Europe. His wife was coming with him. It would be the longest time the two of them had spent together since the day they were married.

The door opened and Mrs. Jones came in. The new head of Special Operations, just as he had expected. She seemed surprised to see him, but that couldn’t be the case, because she had actually asked for a final meeting before he left. For a moment the two of them looked at each other uneasily over the desk. It occurred to Blunt that they should swing around. Her place was behind it now.

He moved back to the window and sat down in an armchair that looked antique but which was actually modern. Like so many things in this building, it wasn’t what it seemed. Mrs. Jones perched on the edge of the desk. She was wearing black, a smart suit with a silver chain around her neck. She was sucking one of her peppermints. That was bad news. Blunt knew her habits. She sucked peppermints when she had something unpleasant to say, as if to wipe away the taste of the words.

“Congratulations,” Blunt said. He had only been officially told about her new appointment that day. “I wish you every success.”

“Thank you.” Mrs. Jones nodded briefly. “Have you made plans?”

“Travel. A little golf perhaps. The BBC have asked me to join the board.”

“I know. I recommended you.” She paused, her hands resting on the surface of the desk behind her. “Before you leave, we have to talk about Alex.”

“Yes. I thought that might be on your mind. How is he?”

“I’m afraid he’s not at all well. What do you expect?”

“It was very unfortunate. The loss of that housekeeper of his.”

“Jack Starbright was more than a housekeeper. She was his closest friend. She was the only adult friend he had. Certainly the only adult he could ever trust.”

“Nobody could have foreseen what would happen.”

“Is that really true?” Mrs. Jones walked behind the desk and sat down. She had taken Blunt’s chair, and the message was clear. She was taking his authority too. “Scorpia set a trap for us and we walked straight into it. Levi Kroll turning up in the River Thames with an iPhone conveniently lodged in his top pocket. A handful of clues leading us to the Cairo International College. They took us for fools and that’s how we behaved. If it hadn’t been for Alex, the secretary of state would be dead and we’d be at war with the Americans. And all this for the Elgin marbles! It almost beggars belief.”

Blunt spread his hands. “I take full responsibility. You don’t need to worry. You can start your new job with a clear conscience.”

“I wish that were the case. But I agreed to use Alex Rider from the very start . . . and I’m talking now about the Stormbreaker affair more than a year ago. I may have had my doubts about bringing a fourteen-year-old boy into our world, but I ignored them. He was too useful to us. And in that respect, I’m as guilty as you.”

Blunt was impressed. There was a quality to his former deputy, a steel in her voice, that he had never noticed before. “How bad is he?” he asked.

“As I’m sure you know, he killed Julius Grief,” Mrs. Jones said. “That was something else, by the way. We should never have accepted his supposed death in Gibraltar and I’ve already given instructions for the whole facility to be shut down. Anyway, Alex had never had a gun before, but this time he used it. He was forced to shoot Julius in cold blood. I don’t think he can be blamed. Unfortunately, the effect on him has been traumatic.”

She fell silent for a moment. Blunt waited.

“I’ve talked to the psychologists and they say that for Alex it was almost as if he were killing himself. After all, the two of them were identical. What it boils down to is that part of Alex Rider died with Julius Grief. He shot himself . . . or perhaps a part of himself that should never have been born.”

“Maybe that was the part that we created,” Blunt suggested.

“Maybe it was. But as far as I’m concerned, the file on Alex Rider is now closed. It was an experiment that we should never have attempted.

There’s no point raking over it all now, but we were wrong—both of us. It will never happen again.”

“Is that why you wanted to see me?”

“No. There’s one other thing you have to answer for before you leave. The attack on Alex Rider at Brookland School.” Mrs. Jones waited for Blunt to respond. He said nothing. He showed nothing more than polite interest. She wasn’t surprised. “A gunman was sent to shoot Alex,” she went on.

“But curiously, Erik Gunter never mentioned it. Nor did Razim. One might almost think they knew nothing about it. And there are two other questions that have puzzled me. The first one is very simple. Why did the sniper miss? It’s true that Alex noticed him and reacted quickly, but even so, the bullet hit his desk, not his chair. It’s as if the sniper wasn’t aiming at him at all.

“And then there’s the business at the Wandsworth Park industrial estate. Alex overheard the gunman talking to the pilot of the helicopter. “It was fine. Mission accomplished.” That was what he said. Was he lying? Or was he actually telling the truth? Had he achieved what he set out to do?”

“Where are you going with this?” Blunt asked.

“I think you know exactly where I’m going. You recruited the sniper and the helicopter pilot. You arranged the whole thing. Scorpia wanted to lure