Scorpia

surface seemed to leap up. The men hesitated and fell back. Meanwhile the teenager had reached the far end of the bridge. A car surged forward out of nowhere. Alex saw the door open and the son was pulled inside.
    Mrs Rothman froze the image.
    “It seems that MI6 wanted the son back but they weren’t prepared to pay with your father’s freedom,” she said.
    “They double-crossed us and shot him in front of our eyes. You saw for yourself.”
    Alex said nothing. The room seemed to have got darker, shadows chasing in from the corners. He felt cold from head to toe.
    “There is one last part of the film,” Mrs Rothman went on. “I hate seeing you like this, Alex. I hate having to show you. But you’ve seen this much; you might as well see the rest.”
    The last section of the film replayed the final moments of John Rider’s life. Once again he was on his feet, beginning to run while the civil servant’s son hurried the other way.
    “Look at the MI6 agent who gave the order to fire,” Mrs Rothman said.
    Alex gazed at the tiny figures on the bridge.
    Mrs Rothman pointed. “We had the image computer enhanced.”
    Sure enough, the camera leapt in closer, and now Alex could see that the MI6 accent with the transmitter was in fact a woman, wearing a black raincoat.
    “We can get in closer.”
    The camera jumped forward again.

    “And closer.”
    The same action, repeated a third and fourth time. The woman taking out her radio transmitter. But now her face filled the screen. Alex could see her fingers holding the device in front of her mouth. There was no sound, but he saw her lips move, giving the order, and he understood perfectly what she said.
    Shoot him.
    “There was a sniper in an office block on the north bank of the Thames,” Mrs Rothman told him. “It was really just a matter of timing. The woman you’re looking at masterminded the operation. It was one of her early successes in the field, one of the reasons why she was promoted. You know who she is.”
    Alex had known at once. She was fourteen years younger on the screen but she hadn’t changed all that much.
    And there could be no mistaking the black hair—cut short—the pale, businesslike face, the black eyes that could have belonged to a crow.
    Mrs Jones, the deputy head of Special Operations at MI6.
    Mrs Jones, who had been there when Alex was first recruited and who had pretended that she was his friend.
    When he had returned to London, hurt and exhausted after his ordeal with Damian Cray, she had come looking for him and tried to help him. She had said she was worried about him. And all the time she had been lying. She had sat next to him and smiled at him, knowing that she had taken his father from him just weeks after he was born.
    Mrs Rothman turned off the screen.
    There was a long silence.
    “They told me he died in a plane crash,” Alex said in a voice that wasn’t his own.
    “Of course. They didn’t want you to know.”
    “So what happened to my mother?” He felt a sudden rush of hope. If they had been lying about his father, then maybe she wasn’t dead. Could it be at all possible? Was his mother somewhere in England, still alive?
    “I’m so sorry, Alex. There was a plane crash. It happened a few months later. It was a private plane, and she was on her own, travelling to France.” Mrs Rothman rested a hand on his arm. “Nothing can make up for what’s been done to you, for all the lies you’ve been told. If you want to go back to England, back to school, I’ll understand. I’m sure you just want to forget the whole lot of us. But if it’s any consolation, I adored your father.
    I still miss him. This was the last thing he sent me, just before he was taken prisoner in Malta.”
    She had opened a second file and taken out a postcard. It showed a strip of coastline, a setting sun. There were just a few lines, handwritten.
    My clearest Julia,
    A dreary time without you. Can’t wait to be at the Widow’s Palace with you again.
    John R.
    Alex recognized the handwriting although he had never seen it before, and in that instant any last, lingering doubt was swept away.
    The writing was his father’s.
    But it was identical to his own.
    “It’s very late,” Mrs Rothman said. “You really ought to get to bed. We can talk again tomorrow.”
    Alex looked at the screen as if expecting to see Mrs Jones mocking him across fourteen years, destroying his life before it had even really begun. For a long while he didn’t