Scorpia

asking him to come in. Asking, not telling. That was at least a change. And they had chosen a Saturday, so he wouldn’t have to miss school.
    The balloon had dropped him on the edge of Hyde Park, lowering him to the grass as gently as an autumn leaf. It was the end of the day and by that time there were few people in the park. Alex had been able to slip away quietly, five minutes before a dozen police cars had come roaring in. It was a twenty-minute walk home and he had more or less fallen into Jack’s arms before taking a hot bath, wolfing down dinner and going to bed.
    He wasn’t badly hurt. There were burns on his arms and chest and his wrist was swollen where hehad dangled from the balloon. Mrs Rothman had also left her mark on his cheek. Looking at himself in the mirror, he wondered how he was going to explain the very obvious-shaped bruise. In the end he told everyone he had been mugged. In a way, he felt, he had.
    He had been back at Brookland for five days. Mr Grey was one of the first people to see him crossing the school yard before assembly, and he shook his head warily but said nothing. The teacher had taken it as a personal insult that Alex had disappeared on his school trip to Venice, and although Alex felt terrible, he couldn’t tell him the truth. On the other hand, Tom Harris was overjoyed.
    “I knew you’d be OK,” he said. “You sounded a bit down when I spoke to you on the phone. That was after that place had blown up. But at least you were still alive. And a couple of days later, Jerry got this humongous cheque for a new parachute. Except it was about five times too much. He’s in New Zealand now, thanks to you. BASE jumping off some building in Auckland. Just what he’s always wanted!” Tom took out a newspaper cutting. “Was this you?” he demanded.
    Alex looked at it. It was a photograph of the hotair balloon drifting over London. He could see a tiny figure clinging to it. Fortunately the picture had been taken from too far away to identify him. Nobody knew what had happened at the Church of Forgotten Saints. And nobody knew he was involved.
    “Yes,” Alex admitted. “But, Tom – you mustn’t tell anyone.”
    “I’ve already told Jerry.”
    “No one else.”
    “Yeah. I know. Official secrets and all that.” Tom frowned. “Maybe I should join MI6. I’m sure I’d make a great spy.”
    Alex thought of his friend now as he sat down opposite Alan Blunt and Mrs Jones. He lowered himself slowly into the chair, wondering what they were going to say to him. Jack hadn’t wanted him to come here at all.
    “The moment they know you’re capable of walking, they’ll probably have you parachuting into North Korea,” she had said. “They’re never going to leave you alone, Alex. I don’t even want to know what happened to you after Venice. But just promise me you won’t let it happen again.”
    Alex agreed with her. He would rather have stayed at home. But he knew he had to be here. If nothing else, he owed it to Mrs Jones after what had happened in her flat.
    “It’s good to see you, Alex,” Blunt said. “Once again, you’ve done a very good job.”
    Very good. The highest praise Blunt knew.
    “I’ll just bring you up to date,” Blunt went on. “I don’t need to tell you that Scorpia’s plot was a complete failure, and I very much doubt that they’ll try anything on this scale again. They lost one of their top assassins, the man called Nile,when he fell out of the balloon. How did that happen, by the way?”
    “He slipped,” Alex said shortly. He didn’t want to go over it again.
    “I see. Well, you might like to know that Julia Rothman also died.”
    That was news to Alex. He had assumed she must have escaped.
    Mrs Jones took up the story. “The platform underneath the balloon fell on her as she was trying to escape,” she explained. “She was crushed.”
    “I’d have been disappointed too,” Alex muttered.
    Blunt sniffed. “The most important thing of all is that London’s children are going to be safe. As that scientist – Dr Stephenson – explained, the nanoshells will slowly pass out of their bodies. I have to tell you, Alex, that the terahertz dishes were transmitting for at least a minute. God knows how close we came to a major disaster.”
    “I’ll try to move a little faster next time,” Alex said.
    “Yes. Well. One other thing. You might be amused to hear that Mark Kellner resigned this morning. The prime minister’s director of