Scorpia

metal staircase leading up to some sort of gantry and a whole wall lined with what looked like enormous fridge doors. All the metal looked brand new, brilliantly polished.
    As Alex watched, a woman crossed the room.The complex obviously wasn’t as deserted as he had thought. She was also dressed in protective clothes, with a mask over her face, and she was pushing a silver trolley. His breath frosted on the glass as he tried to peer in. It didn’t make any sense, but the woman seemed to be carrying eggs … hundreds of them, neatly lined up on trays. They were the size of ordinary chickens’ eggs, every one of them pure white. Could the woman be part of the catering team? Alex doubted it. There was something almost sinister about the eggs. Perhaps it was their uniformity, the fact that they were all so obviously identical. The woman went behind some machinery and disappeared. Increasingly puzzled, Alex decided it was time to move on.
    He went down the second corridor, following the direction of the man with the urn. Now he could hear machinery, a soft, rhythmic clattering. He came to a glass panel set in the wall and looked through it into a darkened room, where a second woman sat in front of a bizarre, complicated machine that seemed to be sorting hundreds of test tubes, rotating them, counting them, labelling them and finally delivering them into her hands.
    What was being made at Consanto Enterprises? Chemical weapons, perhaps? And how the hell was he going to get out again? Alex glanced down and noticed his hands, still grubby from his BASE jump. He was dirty and sweaty and he was surprised he hadn’t set off every single alarm in the building.Surrounded by these white panelled walls with the air being sucked in and sterilized, he had become the equivalent of an enormous germ and the monitors should have screamed the moment he came near.
    He arrived at another set of doors and was relieved when these slid open to allow him through. Perhaps he might be able to find his way out after all. But these doors led only to another corridor, a little wider than the one he had just left, but equally unpromising. It occurred to him that he was still on the top floor. He had entered from the roof. He needed to find a lift or staircase that would take him down.
    Suddenly a door about ten metres away opened and a man appeared, staring at Alex in disbelief.
    “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?” he demanded.
    Alex registered that the man was talking in English. At the same time, he recognized him: the bald head, the hooked nose and the thick black glasses. He was wearing a white laboratory coat hanging loose over a jacket and tie but the last time Alex had seen him he had been in fancy dress. This was Dr Liebermann, the guest he had seen talking to Mrs Rothman at the party in Venice.
    “I …” Alex wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m lost,” he muttered helplessly.
    “You can’t come in here! This is a secure area. Who are you?”
    “My name’s Tom. My dad works here.”
    “What is his name? What is his department?” Dr Liebermann wasn’t going to buy the little boy lost routine. “How did you get here?” he asked.
    “My dad brought me. But if you’d like to show me the way out, that’s fine by me.”
    “No! I’m calling security. You can come with me!”
    Dr Liebermann took a step back towards the room from which he’d come. Alex wasn’t sure what to do. Should he try to run? Once the alarm went off, it would only be a matter of minutes before he was caught. And what then? He had assumed that Consanto would simply hand him over to the police. But if they were hiding something here, if he had seen something secret, maybe he wouldn’t be that fortunate.
    Dr Liebermann was reaching out for something and Alex saw an alarm button next to the door.
    “It’s all right, Harold. I’ll deal with this.”
    The voice came from behind Alex.
    Alex spun round and felt his heart sink. It was like a bad dream. Nile, the man who had knocked him unconscious and left him to drown, was standing behind him, a smile on his face, totally relaxed. He too was wearing a white coat. In his case, it hung over jeans and a tight-fitting T-shirt. He had a grey attaché case in one hand but, as Alex watched, he set it down on the floor beside him.
    “I wasn’t expecting to see you again.” Harold Liebermann was puzzled.
    “Mrs Rothman sent me back.”
    “Why?”
    “Well, as you can see, Dr Liebermann,