Scorpia

the dim light. There were circular windows on both sides but the glass was so thick it seemed to block out most of the daylight rather than allow it in. Everything was faded and dusty. Two statues – more forgotten saints? – stood either side of a cracked and broken font. There was a faint smell of damp in the air. It was easy to believe that nobody had been here for fifty-odd years. Alex coughed and listened to the sound travel up. The chamber was utterly silent, and there seemed to be no obvious way forward. The street was behind them; a solid wall blocked the way ahead. But then Julia Rothman walked across the floor. Her stiletto heels rapped against the stone, creating echoes that flitted into the shadows.
    Her movement had been some sort of signal. There was a loud buzz and, overhead, a series of arc lamps – concealed in the walls and ceiling – flashed on. Beams of brilliant white light crashed down from every direction. At the same time, five panels slid silently open, one after the other. They were part of the wall, built into it, disguised to look like brick. Now Alex saw that they were in fact solid steel. More light spilled out and with it came the sound of men moving, of machinery, of frantic activity.
    “Welcome to Invisible Sword,” Mrs Rothman announced, and in that moment Alex knew why she had brought him here. She was proud of what she had done. She couldn’t hide the pleasure in her voice. She wanted him to see.
    Alex stepped through the opening and into a scene he would never forget.
    It was a classical church, just like the monastery on Malagosto. Scorpia seemed to enjoy cloaking itself in religion. The floor was made up of black and white tiles. There were stained-glass windows, a richly carved wooden pulpit, even a few old pews. The remains of an organ clung to one wall but, looking at the pipes, some broken, others missing, Alex knew that it would never play again. The dome curved above his head, the underside painted with more saints, men and women holding the various objects with which they were associated: furniture, shoes, library books and loaves of bread. All of them had been forgotten. All of them were frozen together in a single great tableau overhead.
    The church had been filled with electronic equipment: computers, TV monitors, industrial lights and a series of switches and levers that couldn’t have been more out of place. Two steel gantries had been built, one on either side, with armed guards positioned at intervals. There must have been twenty or thirty people involved in the operation, at least half of them carrying machineguns. As Alex took all this in, a voice rang out, amplified through speakers bolted into the walls.
    “Six minutes until launch. Six minutes and counting…”
    Alex knew that he had arrived at the centre of the web, and even as he stared, his tongue travelled to the roof of his mouth and pressed the switch which Smithers had built into his brace. Mark Kellner, the prime minister’s director of communications, had got it wrong again. Scorpia hadn’t attached the terahertz dishes to any tall building.
    They had attached them to a hot-air balloon.
    Six men dressed in dark overalls were inflating it. There was plenty of floor space, and the dome was as high as a six-storey building. The balloon was painted blue and white. Once released, it would blend in with the sky. How were they going to release it? Alex wondered. The church was completely enclosed by the dome. Even so, that had to be their plan. There was a frame under the balloon with a single burner pointing upwards, and, beneath that, a platform about twenty metres square. The balloon was strangely old-fashioned, like something out of a Victorian adventure story. The platform couldn’t have been more high-tech, though, built out of some sort of lightweight plastic with a low railing to protect the equipment it carried.
    Alex recognized the equipment instantly. There were four dishes, one in each corner, facing thefour points of the compass. They were dull silver in colour, about three metres in diameter, with thin metal rods forming a triangle that protruded from the centre. Wires connected the dishes to a series of complicated-looking boxes which took up most of the space in the centre of the platform. Black pipes ran up to the burner, carrying propane gas from the tanks which were stacked next to the boxes. The balloon was almost inflated. It had been lying spread out on the ground but even