Skeleton Key

difference—one that she wasn‟t quite able to ignore.
    “We found a tattoo on the man‟s arm,” she continued. “It seems that he was also a member of the Big Circle gang.” She turned to Alex. “The Big Circle is a relatively new triad,” she explained.
    “It‟s also, unfortunately, one of the most violent.”
    “I think I‟d noticed,” Alex said.
    “The man you knocked out and refrigerated at Wimbledon was a Sai-b. That means „little brother‟. You have to understand how these people work. You smashed their operation and made them lose face. That‟s the last thing they can afford. So they sent someone after you. He hasn‟t said anything yet but we believe he‟s a Dai-io, or a „big brother‟. He‟ll have a rank of 438 …
    that‟s one under the Dragon Head, the leader of the triad. And now he‟s failed too. It‟s a little unfortunate, Alex, that as well as half-drowning him, you also broke his nose. The triad will take that as another humiliation.”
    “I didn‟t do anything,” Alex said. It was true. He remembered how the thruster had finally been torn away from his ankle. It wasn‟t his fault that it had hit the man in the face.
    “That‟s not how they‟ll see it,” Mrs Jones went on. She sounded like a schoolteacher. “What we‟re dealing with here is Guan-shi.”
    Alex waited for her to explain.
    “Guan-shi is what gives Big Circle its power,” she said. “It‟s a system of mutual respect. It ties all the members together. It essentially means that if you hurt one of them, you hurt them all.
    And if one of them becomes your enemy, they all do.”
    “You attack one of their people at Wimbledon,” Blunt rasped, “they send another down to Cornwall.”
    “You take out their man in Cornwall, the order goes out to the other members of the triad to kill you,” Mrs Jones said.
    “How many other members are there?” Alex asked. “About nineteen thousand at the last count,”
    Blunt replied.
    There was a long silence, punctured only by the distant traffic sixteen floors below.
    “Every minute you stay in this country, you‟re in danger,” Mrs Jones said. “And there‟s not a great deal we can do. Of course, we have some influence with the triads. If we let the right people know that you‟re protected by us, it may be possible to call them off. But that‟s going to take time and the fact of the matter is, they‟re probably working on the next plan of attack right now.”
    “You can‟t go home,” Blunt said. “You can‟t go back to school. You can‟t go anywhere on your own. That woman who looks after you, the housekeeper, we‟ve already arranged for her to be sent out of London. We can‟t take any chances.”
    “So what am I meant to do?” Alex asked. Mrs Jones glanced at Blunt, who nodded. Neither of them looked particularly concerned and he suddenly realized that things had worked out exactly as they wanted. Somehow, without knowing it, he had played right into their hands.
    “By coincidence, Alex,” Mrs Jones began, “a few days ago we had a request for your services. It came from an American intelligence service. The Central Intelligence Agency—or CIA as you probably know them. They need a young person for an operation they happen to be mounting and they wondered if you might be available.”
    Alex was surprised. MI6 had used him twice and both times they had stressed that nobody was to know. Now, it seemed, they had been boasting about their teenage spy. Worse than that, they had even been preparing to lend him out, like a library book.
    As if reading his mind, Mrs Jones raised a hand. “We had told them, of course, that you had no wish to continue in this line of work,” she said. “That was, after all, what you had told us. A schoolboy, not a spy. That‟s what you said. But it does seem now that everything has changed.
    I‟m sorry, Alex, but for whatever reason, you‟ve chosen to go back into the field and unfortunately you‟re in danger. You have to disappear. This might be the best way.”
    “You want me to go to America?” Alex asked. “Not exactly America,” Blunt cut in. “We want you to go to Cuba … or, at least, to an island just a few miles south of Cuba. It‟s called Cayo Esqueleto. That‟s Spanish. It means—”
    “Skeleton Key,” Alex said. “That‟s right. Of course, there are plenty of keys off the coast of America. You‟ll have heard of Key Largo and Key West. This one was discovered by Sir Francis Drake.