Snakehead

seaplane, a tiny two-seater with floats instead of wheels. It could land on the sea right outside the house and tie up on the jetty that Alex had seen from his room. He knew it had come for him.
    “Where are you taking me?” he demanded.
    “Ah, yes. Now we come to the rub.” Major Yu had finished eating. He sat back and suddenly the gun was in his hand, pointing at Alex. He had certainly moved quickly. Alex hadn’t even seen him draw it. “The easiest and perhaps the most sensible thing would be to shoot you now,” he said. “In half an hour you could be at the bottom of the ocean, and neither Mrs. Jones nor Mr. Ethan Brooke would ever know what had happened to you.
    “But I’m not going to do that. Why? For two reasons. The first is that I really don’t want to get blood on the carpet. You may have noticed that it’s an Axminster—from the town of Axminster in Devonshire. The second is more personal. You owe me a great deal of money, Alex. You have to pay for the damage you did on the Liberian Star. There is still the rather more considerable debt that you owe to Scorpia following the collapse of Invisible Sword. And the truth is that although you may not realize it, right now you are worth a great deal to me alive.
    “How much were you told about my snakehead? People smuggling, weapons, drugs…these are all part of my business. But I have another highly profitable activity based a couple of hundred miles from here in a facility hidden in the heart of the Australian jungle. This facility deals in the sale of human organs.”
    Alex said nothing. No words would come.
    “Do you know how hard it is to find a kidney donor even if you are rich and live in the West?” Yu pointed the gun at Alex’s stomach. “You are young and fit. I will be able to sell your kidney for a quarter of a million dollars. And the operation won’t even kill you. You will live through it, and after that we’ll be able to come back, perhaps, for your eyes.” The gun rose up to the level of Alex’s head. “Your eyes will sell for fifty thousand dollars each, leaving you blind but otherwise in good health.” The gun dropped again. “You can live without your pancreas. It will make me a further one hundred thousand dollars. While you are recovering from each operation, I will drain off your blood cells and your plasma. They will be kept frozen and sold at five hundred dollars a pint. And finally, of course, there is your heart. The heart of a young healthy boy could fetch up to a million dollars more. Do you see, Alex? Shooting you does me no good at all. But keeping you alive is good for business, and you might even get some satisfaction in knowing, when you do finally die, that you have restored the health of quite a few people around the world.”
    Alex swore. He spat out every foul word he knew. But Major Yu was no longer listening. The door to the dining room had opened again, but this time it wasn’t the maid who had come in. Two men. Indonesian, like the maid. Alex hadn’t seen them before. One of them placed a hand on his shoulder but Alex shrugged it off and stood up on his own. He wasn’t going to let them drag them out of here.
    “Good-bye, Alex,” Major Yu said. “I enjoyed meeting you.”
    “Go to Hell, Major Yu,” Alex replied.
    He turned around and, followed by the two men, walked out of the room.

17
    SPARE PARTS
    T HE PLANE WAS A two-seater Piper Super Cub PA-18-150 with a top speed of just 130 miles per hour—but Alex had already been told that they wouldn’t be traveling very far. He was sitting behind the pilot in the cramped cockpit with the buzz of the propellers wiping out any chance of conversation. Not that Alex had anything to talk about. His wrists and ankles were shackled. The seat belt had been fastened in such a way that he couldn’t reach the release buckle.
    He wondered briefly about the balding, red-necked man in front of him—paid to carry a boy to an unspeakable death. Was he married? Did he have children of his own? Alex had considered trying to bribe him. ASIS would pay twenty thousand dollars or more for his safe return. But he never even got a chance. The pilot only glanced at him once, revealing black sunglasses and a blank face, then put on headphones. Alex guessed that he would have been chosen carefully. Major Yu wasn’t going to make any more mistakes.
    But his worst mistake had already been made. He had left the watch on Alex’s wrist…the same watch that was even