Scorpia

ever going to release your father. He was too dangerous. Too many more people would have died. And so I arranged a double-cross. Two men on a bridge. A sniper. It worked perfectly and I’m glad. You can shoot me if it really makes you feel any better, Alex. But I’m telling you: you didn’t know your father. And if I had to do it all again, I’d do it exactly the same.”
    “If you’re saying my father was so evil, what do you think that makes me?” Alex was trying to will himself to shoot. He had thought anger would give him strength, but he was more tired than angry. So now he searched for another way to persuade himself to pull the trigger. He was his father’s son. It was in his blood.
    Mrs Jones took a step towards him.
    “Stay where you are!” The gun was less than a metre from her, aiming straight at her head.
    “I don’t think you’re a killer, Alex. You never knew your father. Why do you have to be like him? Do you think every child is ‘made’ the moment they’re born? I think you have a choice …”
    “I never chose to work for you.”
    “Didn’t you? After Stormbreaker you could have walked away. We never needed to meet again. But if you remember, you
chose
to get tangled up with drug dealers and we had to bail you out. And then there was Wimbledon. We didn’t make you go undercover. You agreed to go – and if you hadn’t locked a Chinese gangster in a deep freeze, we wouldn’t have had to send you to America.”
    “You’re twisting everything!”
    “And finally Damian Cray. You went after him on your own and we’re very grateful to you, Alex. But you ask me – what do I think you are? I think you’re too smart to pull that trigger. You’re not going to shoot me. Now or ever.”
    “You’re wrong,” Alex said. She was lying to him, he knew that. She had always lied to him. He could do this. He had to do it.
    He held the gun steady.
    He let the hatred take him.
    And fired.
    The air in front of him seemed to explode into fragments.
    Mrs Jones had tricked him. She had been tricking him all along, and he hadn’t seen it. The room was divided into two parts. A huge pane of transparent, bulletproof glass ran from one corner to the other, stretching from the floor to the ceiling. She had been on one side; he had been on the other. In the half-light it had been invisible, but now theglass frosted, a thousand cracks spiralling outwards from the dent made by the bullet. Mrs Jones had almost disappeared from sight, her face broken up as if she had become a smashed picture of herself. At the same time, an alarm rang, the door flew open and Alex was grabbed and thrown sideways onto the sofa. The gun went flying. Somebody shouted something in his ear but he couldn’t understand the words. The cat snarled and leapt past him. His arms were wrenched behind him. A knee pressed into his back. A bag was pulled over his head and he felt cold steel against his wrists. There was a click. He could no longer move his hands.
    Now he could make out several voices in the room.
    “Are you all right, Mrs Jones?”
    “We’re sorry, ma’am…”
    “We’ve got the car waiting outside…”
    “Don’t hurt him!”
    Alex was jerked off the sofa with his hands cuffed behind him. He felt wretched and sick. He had failed Scorpia. He had failed his father. He had failed himself.
    He didn’t cry out. He didn’t resist. Limp and unmoving, he allowed himself to be dragged out of the room, back down the corridor and into the night.

COBRA
    T he room was a bare white box, designed to intimidate. Alex had measured out the space: ten paces one way, four across. There was a narrow bunk with no sheets or blankets, and, behind a partition, a toilet. But that was all. The door had no handle and fitted so flush to the wall that it was almost invisible. There was no window. Light came from behind a square panel in the ceiling and was controlled from outside.
    Alex had no idea how long he had been here. His watch had been removed.
    After he had been taken from Mrs Jones’s flat, he had been bundled into a car. The black cloth bag was still over his head. He had no idea where he was going. They drove at speed for what seemed like half an hour, then slowed down. Alex felt his stomach sink and knew they were heading down some sort of ramp. Had they taken him to thebasement of the Liverpool Street HQ? He had been here once before but this time he was to be given no chance to take his bearings. The car stopped. The