Skeleton Key

something odd about him. He had been away from school twice recently, both times without any proper explanation, and the last time he had turned up again, the whole science block had been destroyed in a mysterious fire. Mr. Wiseman decided to ignore the situation. Alex could look after himself and he would doubtless turn up later. He hoped.
    “Don‟t be too long!” he said.
    He walked off and Alex found himself left on his own with Crawley.
    He considered what he had just been told. Part of him mistrusted Crawley. Was it just a coincidence, his coming upon Alex on a playing field in the middle of a game? Unlikely. In the world of MI6, where everything was planned and calculated, there were no coincidences. It was one of the reasons why Alex hated it. They had used him twice now, and both times they hadn‟t really cared if he had lived or died, as long as he was useful to them. Crawley was part of that world and in his heart Alex disliked him as much as the rest of it.
    But at the same time, he told himself, he might be reading too much into this. Crawley wasn‟t asking him to infiltrate a foreign embassy or parachute into Iraq or anything remotely dangerous.
    He was being offered two weeks at Wimbledon. It was as simple as that. A chance to watch some tennis and—if he was unlucky—spot someone trying to get their hands on the club silver.
    What could possibly go wrong?
    “All right, Mr. Crawley,” he said. “I don‟t see why not.”
    “That‟s wonderful, Alex. I‟ll make the arrangements. Come on, Barker!”
    Alex glanced at the dog and noticed that it had just woken up. It was staring at him with pink, bloodshot eyes. Warning him? Did the dog know something he didn‟t?
    But then Crawley jerked on the leash and before the dog could give away any of its master‟s secrets, it was quickly pulled away.
    Six weeks later, Alex found himself on Centre Court, dressed in the dark green and mauve colours of the All England Tennis Club. What must surely be the final game in this qualifying round was about to begin. One of the two players sitting just centimetres away from him would go forward to the next round with a chance of winning the half a million pounds prize money that went with the winner‟s trophy. The other would be on the next bus home. It was only now, as he knelt beside the net and waited for the serve, that Alex really understood the power of Wimbledon and why it had won its place on the world calendar. There was simply no competition like it.
    He was surrounded by the great bulk of the stadium, with thousands and thousands of spectators rising ever higher until they disappeared into the shadows at the very top. It was hard to make out any of the faces. There were too many of them and they seemed too far away. But he felt the thrill of the crowd as the players walked to their ends of the court, the perfectly striped grass seeming to glow beneath their feet. There was a clatter of applause, echoing upwards, and then a sudden stillness. Photographers hung, vulture-like, over huge telephoto lenses while beneath them, in green-covered bunkers, television cameras swung round to take in the first serve. The players faced each other: two men whose whole lives had led up to this moment and whose future in the game would be decided in the next few minutes. It was all so very English—the grass, the strawberries, the straw hats. And yet it was still bloody, a gladiatorial contest like no other. “Quiet please, ladies and gentlemen…” The umpire‟s voice rang out through the various speakers and then the first player served. Jacques Lefevre was French, twenty-two years old and new to the tournament. Nobody had expected him to get this far. He was playing a German, Jamie Blitz, one of the favourites in this year‟s competition. But it was Blitz who was losing—
    two sets down, five games to two. Alex watched him as he waited, balancing on the balls of his feet. Lefevre served. The ball thundered close to the centre line. An ace.
    “Fifteen love.”
    Alex was close enough to see defeat in the German‟s eyes. This was the cruelty of the game; the psychology of it. Lose your mental edge and you could lose everything. That was what had happened to Blitz now. Alex could almost smell it in his sweat. As he walked to the other side of the court to face the next serve, his whole body looked heavy, as if it was taking all his strength just to keep himself there. He lost the next point and the one after.