Scorpia Rising

five years or ten years and then they’ll set me free.
    “But you’re never going to be free, are you, Alex? Not after what we’ve done to you. We’ve taken away the one thing that mattered to you. We’ve killed your best friend. Do you think she knew what had happened when the bomb went off? Do you think she died at once? You’ll be asking yourself that question for the rest of your life, and from now on you’ll always be on your own. No parents. No friends. No Jack. Nothing.
    “And look at you now! I can see how much you hate me . . .”
    “You’re wrong,” Alex said. “You’re nothing to me.”
    The rain was a mask, hiding his face. His eyes were dark and empty. In his sodden clothes, he was almost a skeleton of himself. He turned and began to walk away.
    That was when Julius went for the gun, his hand scrabbling through the wet grass. He lifted it and aimed.
    Alex heard him. Some tiny movement. Some instinct. He spun around.
    Julius fired a single shot.
    But Alex fired first.

22

    SELKET

    THE GRAY CHEVROLET SWEPT into the university campus and pulled up in front of the Assembly Hall. Joe Byrne stepped out into a scene of chaos.
    He had been less than half a mile away, at the Four Seasons Hotel, watching the speech on television, when the shot was fired and his evening suddenly became very unpleasant indeed. It was extremely unlikely that an assassin could have slipped into the Assembly Hall with the crowd. It was almost impossible that he or she could have carried a gun. Not if he had done his job properly. His BlackBerry was already buzzing as he stormed out to the waiting car. Of course, the journey had been endless. It would have been faster to walk.
    And now here he was in the damp and the darkness, trying to get answers to questions he should never have had to ask. It had stopped raining as suddenly as it had started, but there were still huge puddles everywhere. At least it was a little less hot.
    His second-in-command, a man named Brenner, had seen him arrive and came over to him. The man was experienced, a former marine, and he didn’t waste any time.
    “We have two fatalities, sir. I’m afraid Edwards was shot dead outside the room where the sniper was concealed. It was some sort of control center high up in the roof. And they’ve found a TV technician in one of the OBUs. Cause of death is still unclear.”
    “What about the secretary of state?”
    “She’s fine, sir. We put the usual protocol into place and got her out of the building, unharmed. She’s already back at the embassy, a little shaken up but otherwise okay.”
    “The weapon?”
    “Arctic Warfare sniper rifle. The Egyptians are hanging on to it, sir. Their man’s already here.”
    The Egyptians! Joe Byrne was looking old and tired—as if all the cares of the world had been dumped on his shoulders, which, in a way, they had. If he wasn’t careful, this whole thing would disintegrate into a who-did-what spat, with each country blaming the other. An armed assassin had walked past fifteen CIA agents and ten times as many Egyptian security men and police. That meant an awful lot of egg on an awful lot of faces.
    As if on cue, a short, dark man with heavy eyes and a mustache drooping all the way down the sides of his chin came striding toward them. Byrne recognized him at once. His name was Ali Manzour and he was the head of Jihaz Amn al Daoula, the Egyptian State Security Service. He was wearing a white striped suit and there were several heavy gold rings on his fingers. Byrne noticed that the Egyptian’s clothes were drenched and he wondered if it was the rain. It was just as likely to be sweat. For a man of his size, Manzour was seriously overweight.
    Even so, it was good news that he was here. Byrne knew Manzour fairly well. He was smart and efficient. Over a glass of raki he could also be warm and goodhumored. But right now, his stress levels were out of control. Even as he approached, he took out a bottle of white tablets and dry-swallowed a handful of them.
    “This is a disgrace,” he exploded. “This is an outrage!”
    “You told me the building was secure.” Byrne had decided to play it straight down the line. The buck stops here . . . and not with me.
    “The building was secure!”
    “There was some sort of secret staircase constructed in the walls,” Brenner said. “It led all the way up.”
    “I know nothing about this secret staircase!” Manzour exclaimed. “But I am telling you now that this