Crocodile Tears

ground.
    The doors were open.

    And then Alex was being wheeled through an arrivals hall, and a poster on the wall answered the question he had been asking himself for the past how-many hours. A brightly dressed black woman with a huge smile, holding a basket of fruit. And a caption.

    SMILE! YOU’RE IN KENYA.

    Kenya! Vaguely, Alex remembered something that Edward Pleasure had told him. “ He’s the part owner of a safari camp somewhere in Kenya.” The words might have been spoken a century ago and on a different planet. Had he really once been in Kilmore Castle, dancing with Sabina? What would she say if she could see him now?
    The plastic box was still resting against his arm, and he actually felt the whole thing vibrate as the timing mechanism clicked in, sending another spurt of the liquid into his veins. He felt unconsciousness returning and didn’t even try to fight it. He was on his own, thousands of miles from home. He had fallen into the hands of a ruthless enemy and nobody knew where he was. Ahead of him, a set of automatic doors swung open. Alex was wheeled into the dark.

Chapter 17: A SHORT FLIGHT TO NOWHERE

    MOVEMENT RETURNED, one twitch at a time.

    Alex had no idea how long he had been here, but he guessed that it couldn’t have been much more than twenty-four hours. He had watched the sun rise, not out of the window but through the cloth that made up the wall. He was lying on his back on a comfortable bed in what seemed to be a cross between a luxury hotel room and a large tent. The floor was made of polished wood. There was an expensive-looking wardrobe, a carved wooden table, and two chairs. A fan hung from the ceiling above his head, turning continuously. He was completely enclosed by a mosquito net that rippled in the breeze. But the walls were made of canvas. The windows consisted of two flaps, fastened from the outside.
    Where exactly was he? From the sounds that surrounded him—the chatter of monkeys, the occasional bellow of an elephant, the constant whoops and screams of exotic birds—it seemed that he was in the bush, somewhere in the middle of Kenya.
    That tied in with his memories of the journey here, even if they were still confused. There had been the poster he had seen. SMILE! YOU’RE IN KENYA. As if he had felt remotely like smiling! They had gone through passport control, and after that the drug must have kicked in again. They had driven across a city, but he had barely seen any of it. It had been late evening. Nairobi? And then there had been a second, smaller airport and another plane, this one a four-seater with propellers. They had bundled him in, leaving the wheelchair behind. And then …

    He had woken up here, on his own. It was dark … evening or night. But they had left two little battery lights on—battery, not electric. At least he could see, even if he couldn’t yet move. The plastic box had been removed from his arm and a dirty bandage stuck over the puncture where the needle had gone in.
    That had been the first thing he had noticed—and he’d been grateful for it. With the drug no longer pumping into his system, he had begun to recover. He could lift his hand. He could turn his head from side to side, taking in the sweep of the room. Eventually he had stood up and tottered on unsteady legs into the bathroom, behind the bed, separated by a screen. He had thrown up and that made him feel better. Then he had taken a cold shower, the water washing away some of the horror of the past day.
    He had still been too weak to make his way outside. He had decided he would wait for the sun. Once again he had fallen asleep, but this time more normally.
    And now it was morning. Alex rolled off the bed and stood up. He had slept in his shorts. The tracksuit that they had dressed him in was lying on the floor, a crumpled heap. He noticed that his school uniform had been brought over from England. It seemed somehow strange to see it, but of course he had been wearing it when he was kidnapped. He went over to it, feeling in the inside pocket of his jacket.
    Yes. It was there. He had been carrying the black gel-ink pen that Smithers had given him and nobody had thought to remove it. It wasn’t as powerful as the device that had brought down the factory chimney, but it might still be useful. At the very least, it gave Alex hope. McCain had made his first mistake.

    He was now moving completely normally. They had used a powerful drug on him, but it had left his system