Scorpia Rising

be the case, because she had actually asked for a final meeting before he left. For a moment the two of them looked at each other uneasily over the desk. It occurred to Blunt that they should swing around. Her place was behind it now.
    He moved back to the window and sat down in an armchair that looked antique but which was actually modern. Like so many things in this building, it wasn’t what it seemed. Mrs. Jones perched on the edge of the desk. She was wearing black, a smart suit with a silver chain around her neck. She was sucking one of her peppermints. That was bad news. Blunt knew her habits. She sucked peppermints when she had something unpleasant to say, as if to wipe away the taste of the words.
    “Congratulations,” Blunt said. He had only been officially told about her new appointment that day. “I wish you every success.”
    “Thank you.” Mrs. Jones nodded briefly. “Have you made plans?”
    “Travel. A little golf perhaps. The BBC have asked me to join the board.”
    “I know. I recommended you.” She paused, her hands resting on the surface of the desk behind her. “Before you leave, we have to talk about Alex.”
    “Yes. I thought that might be on your mind. How is he?”
    “I’m afraid he’s not at all well. What do you expect?”
    “It was very unfortunate. The loss of that housekeeper of his.”
    “Jack Starbright was more than a housekeeper. She was his closest friend. She was the only adult friend he had. Certainly the only adult he could ever trust.”
    “Nobody could have foreseen what would happen.”
    “Is that really true?” Mrs. Jones walked behind the desk and sat down. She had taken Blunt’s chair, and the message was clear. She was taking his authority too. “Scorpia set a trap for us and we walked straight into it. Levi Kroll turning up in the River Thames with an iPhone conveniently lodged in his top pocket. A handful of clues leading us to the Cairo International College. They took us for fools and that’s how we behaved. If it hadn’t been for Alex, the secretary of state would be dead and we’d be at war with the Americans. And all this for the Elgin marbles! It almost beggars belief.”
    Blunt spread his hands. “I take full responsibility. You don’t need to worry. You can start your new job with a clear conscience.”
    “I wish that were the case. But I agreed to use Alex Rider from the very start . . . and I’m talking now about the Stormbreaker affair more than a year ago. I may have had my doubts about bringing a fourteen-year-old boy into our world, but I ignored them. He was too useful to us. And in that respect, I’m as guilty as you.”
    Blunt was impressed. There was a quality to his former deputy, a steel in her voice, that he had never noticed before. “How bad is he?” he asked.
    “As I’m sure you know, he killed Julius Grief,” Mrs. Jones said. “That was something else, by the way. We should never have accepted his supposed death in Gibraltar and I’ve already given instructions for the whole facility to be shut down. Anyway, Alex had never had a gun before, but this time he used it. He was forced to shoot Julius in cold blood. I don’t think he can be blamed. Unfortunately, the effect on him has been traumatic.”
    She fell silent for a moment. Blunt waited.
    “I’ve talked to the psychologists and they say that for Alex it was almost as if he were killing himself. After all, the two of them were identical. What it boils down to is that part of Alex Rider died with Julius Grief. He shot himself . . . or perhaps a part of himself that should never have been born.”
    “Maybe that was the part that we created,” Blunt suggested.
    “Maybe it was. But as far as I’m concerned, the file on Alex Rider is now closed. It was an experiment that we should never have attempted. There’s no point raking over it all now, but we were wrong—both of us. It will never happen again.”
    “Is that why you wanted to see me?”
    “No. There’s one other thing you have to answer for before you leave. The attack on Alex Rider at Brookland School.” Mrs. Jones waited for Blunt to respond. He said nothing. He showed nothing more than polite interest. She wasn’t surprised. “A gunman was sent to shoot Alex,” she went on. “But curiously, Erik Gunter never mentioned it. Nor did Razim. One might almost think they knew nothing about it. And there are two other questions that have puzzled me. The first one is very simple. Why did the