Skeleton Key

a holiday. I‟m sure he needs one after so much hard work. And that is the toast that I wish to make tonight. To his holiday! I hope that it will be longer and more memorable than he ever expected.”
    There was a brief silence. Alex could see that the guests were puzzled. Perhaps they‟d had difficulty following Sarov‟s English. But he suspected it was what he had said that had thrown them, not how he had said it. They had come expecting a good dinner, but Sarov seemed to be insulting the president of Russia!
    “Alexei, my old friend!” the president said. Boris had decided that it was a joke. He smiled and continued in his thickly accented English. “Why do you not join us?” he asked.
    “You know that I never drink spirits,” Sarov replied. “And I hope you will agree that at fourteen, my son is a little too young for vodka.”
    “I drank my first vodka aged twelve!” the president muttered.
    Somehow, Alex wasn‟t surprised.
    Kiriyenko lifted his glass. “Na zdarovie!” he said. They were about the only words of Russian that Alex understood. Your health!
    “Na zdarovie!” Everyone round the table chorused the toast.
    As one, they drank, throwing back the chilled vodka, as is traditional, in a single gulp.
    Sarov turned to Alex. “Now it begins,” he said quietly.
    One of the bodyguards was the first to react. He had been reaching out to help himself to caviar when suddenly his hands jerked, dropping his fork and plate with a crash. Every head turned towards him. A second later, at the other end of the table, one of the other men threw himself forward, head-first, onto the table, his chair capsizing underneath him. As Alex watched, his eyes wide with horror, every person at the table began to react in the same way. One of them fell backwards, dragging the tablecloth with him, glasses and cutlery cascading into his lap. Several of them simply slumped where they sat. Another of the bodyguards managed to get to his feet and was scrabbling for a gun underneath his jacket, but then his eyes glazed and he collapsed.
    Boris Kiriyenko was the last to go. He was standing, swaying on his feet like a wounded bull.
    His fist was clenched as if he knew he had been betrayed and wanted to strike out at the man who had done it. Then he sat down heavily. His chair tilted and he was thrown onto the floor.
    Sarov muttered a few words in Russian.
    “What have you done?” Alex gasped. “Are they…?”
    “They are unconscious, not dead,” Sarov said. “They will, of course, have to be killed. But not yet.”
    “What are you planning?” Alex demanded. “What is it you‟re going to do?”
    “We have a long journey,” Sarov said. “I‟ll tell you on the way.”
    The entire compound was lit up. Men—guards and macheteros—were running everywhere. Alex was still dressed in the clothes he had worn for dinner. Sarov had changed into dark green military dress, this time without his medals. One of the black limousines was waiting. Conrad had driven up at the wheel of an army truck. As Alex watched, two more guards appeared at the main entrance of the Casa de Oro and began to walk down the wide steps. They were moving forward slowly, carrying something between them. The moment they appeared, everyone around them stopped.
    It was a large silver chest about the size of a school trunk. Alex could just see that the top was flat metal, but that it had a number of switches and dials as well as some sort of slot device built into the side. Sarov watched while it was carried over and loaded into the truck. All the other men did the same, as if the two guards had just come out of a church and this was an an effigy of a saint. Alex shuddered. He knew exactly what he was looking at and didn‟t need the Geiger counter to confirm it.
    This was the nuclear bomb.
    “Alex?” Sarov was holding the car door open for him. Dazed, Alex got in. He knew that he had reached the end. Sarov had shown his hand and put into action a series of events from which there could be no going back. And yet even now, at this late stage, he had no idea what the general intended to do.
    Sarov sat next to him. A driver got in and they moved off, Conrad following behind in the truck.
    At the very last moment, as they passed through the barrier, Sarov glanced back, very briefly.
    Alex saw the look in his eyes and knew that he had no intention ever to return. There were a hundred questions he wanted to ask, but he said nothing. This wasn‟t the