Snakehead

for that fight in Bangkok? It didn’t make any sense. But then, when I was in the arena, Mr. Sukit said something to me. He said he’d kill me if I didn’t take part, and he said it first in French, then in English. Why? If he really believed I was an Afghan boy, he’d have known I wouldn’t speak either.
    “I wondered about that. But it got worse. Ash gave me an emergency telephone number. I called it and it led me straight to you.”
    Ash opened his mouth to speak, but Alex cut in.
    “I know,” he said. He looked briefly at the dying man. “You made it look good with the fake blood, as if you’d been taken prisoner like me. But then I lost two of the gadgets Smithers had given me, and that was when I knew it had to be you.
    “I told you about the watch and the belt. Somehow the battery disappeared out of the watch. I suppose you must have done that when I was asleep that night in Jakarta. As for the belt, Major Yu took that when I was in his house. But I’d never told you about the coins. Smithers had also given me coins with an explosive charge and those stayed in my pocket. If I’d told you, I guess those would have gone too.”
    He stopped.
    “When did you start working for Scorpia, Ash?” he asked.
    Ash glanced at Major Yu.
    “Tell him—but be quick,” Yu snapped. “I don’t think we have very much time.”
    “It was after Mdina.” Ash’s voice was weak. His face was gray, and he could no longer move from the chest down. One hand was on his chest. The other lay palm upward on the floor. “You can’t understand, Alex. I was so badly hurt. Yassen…” He coughed, and blood speckled his lip. “I had given everything to the service. My life. My health. I wasn’t even thirty, and I was crippled. I was never going to sleep properly, never eat properly. From that day on it was just pills and pain.
    “And what was my reward? Blunt humiliated me. I was demoted, taken out of the field. He told me…” Ash swallowed hard. With every word he was finding it hard to go on. “He told me what I already knew,” he rasped. “I was second rate. Never as good…as your dad.”
    He had almost come to the end of his strength. His shoulders slumped, and for a moment Alex thought he had gone. The blood was all around him now. There was a steady flow of it from his mouth.
    Major Yu was enjoying himself. “Why don’t you tell him the rest of it, Ash?” he crowed.
    “No!” Ash straightened his head. “Please…”
    “I already know,” Alex said. He turned to Ash one last time. He could hardly bear to look at him. “You killed my parents, didn’t you? The bomb in the airplane. You put it there.”
    Ash couldn’t answer. His hand tightened on his chest. He had only seconds left.
    “We had to test him,” Major Yu explained. “When he came over to us, we had to make sure he was telling us the truth. After all, we had just been tricked by one British intelligence agent—John Rider. So we set him a very simple task, one that would prove to us with no doubt that he was ready to switch sides.”
    “I didn’t want to…” It wasn’t Ash’s voice. It was just a whisper.
    “He didn’t want to, but he did. For the money. He put the bomb on the plane and he detonated it with his own hand. Rather more successful than his mission in Mdina. And the start of a long association with us.”
    “Alex…”
    Ash tried to look up. But his head fell forward. He was dead.
    Major Yu prodded him with his foot. “Well, as they say, Ash to ashes and dust to dust,” he remarked. “I’m glad you heard that from him, Alex. You can take it with you to the grave.”
    He raised the gun once again and pointed it at Alex.
    There was an explosion, loud and near. But it wasn’t the gun. The entire room shook, and dust and metal filings came showering down from the roof. Alex heard a shearing of metal as the crane overhead broke in half and came crashing down. The shock sent Major Yu reeling back. His arm banged against one of the work surfaces and the gun went off, the bullet smashing uselessly into a wall. Major Yu was shouting in agony, and Alex realized that the impact of the blow had shattered the brittle bone in Yu’s arm. The gun now lay useless on the ground.
    Deafened, half dazed, Alex threw himself onto the gun, snatched it in both hands, desperate to protect himself from further attack. But he was already too late. Yu had already decided to leave. The room was full of smoke. The SAS were here. Alex Rider