Scorpia

man opened the bag and took out a litre bottle of Coca-Cola which he set upright on the desk.
    “I thought you said you only had a pizza,” Lloyd complained.
    “One pizza. One bottle of Coke. You want to call my office?”
    The two agents exchanged glances. “What else have you got in there?” Lloyd asked.
    “You want to see everything?”
    “Yes. As a matter of fact, we do.”
    “OK! OK!”
    The delivery man put down his helmet next to the bottle. He produced a handful of drinking straws, still in their paper wrappers. Next out was a rectangular card, about fifteen centimetres long.
    Lloyd took it. “What’s this?”
    “What does it look like?” The delivery man sighed. “I’m meant to leave it behind. It’s like … a promotion. Can’t you read?”
    “You want to come into this place, you mind your manners.”
    “It’s a promotion. We leave them all over town.”
    Lloyd examined the card. There were pictures of pizzas on both sides and a series of special offers. Family-sized pizza, Coke and garlic bread for just nine pounds fifty. Order before seven and get a pound off.
    “You want to order pizza?” the delivery man asked.
    He was rubbing the two agents up the wrong way. “No,” Lloyd said. “But we want to see the pizza you’re delivering.”
    “You can’t do that, man! That’s not hygienic.”
    “We don’t see it; you don’t deliver it.”
    “OK. Whatever you say. You know, I’ve been delivering all over London and I’ve never had this before.”
    With a scowl he took out a cardboard box, warm to the touch, and laid it on the reception desk. Lloyd lifted the lid and there was the pizza – a four seasons, with ham, cheese, tomato and black olives. The smell of melted mozzarella wafted upwards.
    “You want to taste it too?” the delivery man asked sarcastically.
    “No. What else have you got in there?”
    “There
is
nothing else. It’s empty.” The delivery man yanked open the canvas bag to show them. “You know, if you’re so worried about security, why don’t you deliver it yourself?”
    Lloyd closed the box. He knew he should do just that. But he was a secret agent, not a pizza boy! And anyway, the pizza was only going as far as the sixth floor. He could see the lift from where he was standing. There was a steel panel next to the door, marked with the letter G and then the numbers from one to nine. Each number lit up as the lift travelled and if the pizza delivery man tried to go any further, he would see. As for the stairs between the floors, they had been equipped with pressure pads and security cameras. Even the air-conditioning ducts running through the building had been alarmed.
    It was safe.
    “OK,” he decided. “You can take it up. You go straight to floor number six. You do not go anywhere else. Do you understand that?”
    “Why should I want to go anywhere else? I’ve got pizza for someone called Foster and she’s on the sixth floor.”
    The delivery man reloaded the bag and walked away.
    “You go through the metal detector,” Ramirez ordered.
    “You got a metal detector? I thought this wasa block of flats, not Heathrow Airport.”
    The delivery man handed his helmet to Ramirez and, with the canvas bag over his shoulder, walked through the metal frame. The machine was silent.
    “There you are!” he said. “I’m clean. Now can I deliver the pizza?”
    “Wait a minute!” The fair-haired agent sounded threatening. “You forgot the Coke – and your promotions card.” He picked the two items up from the reception desk and handed them over.
    “Yeah. Thanks.” The delivery man began to walk towards the lift.
    He had known he would be stopped.
    Behind the wig and the black latex mask, Alex Rider heaved a sigh of relief. The disguise had worked. Nile had told him it would and he’d had no reason to doubt it. He had been careful to make his voice sound older, with an authentic accent. The motorbike leathers had thickened out his build and he was wearing special shoes that had added three centimetres to his height. He hadn’t been worried about his bag being searched. The moment he’d set eyes on them Alex had known that Lloyd and Ramirez were new to the game, with little field experience.
    If they had taken him up on his offer and demanded to call the pizza company, Alex would have given them a business card with the phone number. But it would have been Scorpia who answered. If they had been smart, the two agentsmight have telephoned up to the