Scorpia Rising

shouting in Arabic. Julius fired again and the man spun sideways, a flower of blood sprouting out of his shoulder. Alex saw him slump down beside his car, his face white. The driver of the van was staring out, terrified. The beeping was louder than ever. Alex held his pistol out in front of him. Julius had fired four, maybe five times. He couldn’t have many bullets left.
    There were only half a dozen cars between them now. The two of them were like duelists, trapped in a long line of traffic that stretched out as far as the eye could see, in front of them, behind them, all around them. Water was streaming off Alex’s hair, pouring down in front of his eyes. He could feel it dripping off his chin. His shoes were full of water. His clothes had turned into sodden rags. He wiped his eyes with the back of his arm, then took aim and fired for the first time. The trigger moved easily—the half inch that Gunter had described—but he was shocked by the noise as the bullet detonated, the way the Tokarev recoiled, almost dislocating his wrist. His bullet slanted uselessly into the air. A woman in a burka stared at him from behind the window of a four-by-four. Her eyes—all he could see of her—were full of outrage. He had been standing close to her when he fired. This was the middle of a city. You couldn’t start a gunfight here!
    But even if Alex had missed, the shot had an effect. Julius took flight, ducking behind the traffic, trying to find a way of escape. Alex saw him cross from one side of the road to the other, in front of one car, behind another, disappearing behind an open-back truck. There was a park over to one side and next to it a sign advertising the Cairo Zoo. He leapt over the barrier in the middle of the road, past one line of traffic. Perhaps he thought that the trees and bushes would give him shelter.
    He was in the outer lane, almost at the grass verge, when the taxi hit him. This was the only lane where the traffic was moving—heading toward the university. The taxi hadn’t been doing more than ten miles per hour, but it was enough. It struck Julius on his left thigh and shoulder, sending him spinning into the darkness. Alex saw him fall, then get up again, then fall a second time like a wounded animal. The driver didn’t stop. He might not have realized what he’d done. Or he could have seen the gun that Julius was holding. Either way, he didn’t want to get involved.
    Alex stepped over the barrier and made it over to the other side. Now he was on grass. Was it his imagination or was the rain already thinning out? It had been falling so heavily that there simply couldn’t be much more of it left in the sky. He crossed the pavement and walked onto the lawn. Julius had vanished from sight, but Alex knew he couldn’t have gone far. He wasn’t walking anymore. He was crawling.
    Alex found him stretched out on the grass, next to a flower bed. He was cradling his injured shoulder with the gun lying next to him. He had cut himself badly in the collision with the taxi—there was blood oozing through his shirt. His hair was plastered across his forehead. His eyes were wide and staring. Alex walked up to him and stood looming over him. The traffic was behind them. The university campus and the Assembly Hall were suddenly a long way away. They were on their own.
    “Are you going to kill me?” Julius screamed. He didn’t sound afraid. His voice was on the edge of hysteria. “Are you going to shoot me?”
    Alex said nothing. The Tokarev was at his side, pointing down.
    Julius drew a breath. It seemed to Alex that he couldn’t have stood up, even if he’d wanted to. “What happened to Gunter?” he asked. “Don’t tell me he let you go!”
    “Gunter is dead,” Alex said.
    “And you think you’ve won? You’ve saved the boring secretary of state and everyone is going to be all over you? ‘Good old Alex has done it again!’ But it’s not like that, is it?” Julius writhed on the grass. His shoulder might have been dislocated. There was a lot of blood, mixing with the rain. “You’re not going to shoot me,” he sniggered. “You can’t shoot me. You don’t have it in you. You’re just a goody-goody. Alex Rider, the reluctant spy. And I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. Very soon the police are going to come and they’ll send me back to prison, but—you know?—prison isn’t that bad. It’s just like being at school. And they can’t keep me there forever. They’ll wait