Stormbreaker

mean, roast lamb.”
    “The chef is French.”
    Alex waited until the food had been served. Blunt and Mrs. Jones drank red wine. He stuck to water.
    Finally, Blunt began.
    “As I’m sure you’ve gathered,” he said, “the Royal and General is not a bank. In fact, it doesn’t exist … it’s nothing more than a cover. And it follows, of course, that your uncle had nothing to do with banking. He worked for me. My name, as I told you at the funeral, is Blunt. I am the chief executive of the Special Operations Division of MI6. And your uncle was, for want of a better word, a spy.”
    Alex couldn’t help smiling. “You mean … like James Bond?”
    “Similar, although we don’t go in for numbers. Double 0 and all the rest of it. Your uncle was a field agent, highly trained and very courageous. He successfully completed assignments in Iran, Washington, Hong Kong, and Havana … to name but a few. I imagine this must come as a bit of a shock for you.”
    Alex thought about the dead man, what he had known of him. His privacy. His long absences abroad. And the times he had come home injured. A bandaged arm one time. A bruised face another. Little accidents, Alex had been told. But now it all made sense. “I’m not shocked,” he said.
    Blunt cut a neat slice off his meat. “Ian Rider’s luck ran out on his last mission,” he went on. “He had been working undercover here in England, in Cornwall, and was driving back to London to make a report when he was killed. You saw his car at the yard—”
    “Stryker and Son,” Alex muttered. “Who are they?”
    “Just people we use. We have budget restraints. We have to contract some of our work out. We hired them to clean things up. Mrs. Jones here is our head of operations. It was she who gave your uncle his last assignment.”
    “We’re very sorry to have lost him, Alex.” The woman spoke for the first time. She didn’t sound very sorry at all.
    “Do you know who killed him?”
    “Yes .
    “Are you going to tell me?”
    “No. Not now.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because you don’t need to know. Not at this stage.”
    “All right.” Alex considered what he did know. “My uncle was a spy. Thanks to you he’s dead. I found out too much so you knocked me out and brought me here. Where am I, by the way?”
    “This is one of our training centers,” Mrs. Jones said.
    “You’ve brought me here because you don’t want me to tell anyone what I know. Is that what this is all about? Because if it is, I’ll sign the Official Secrets Act or whatever it is you want me to do, but then I’d like to go home. This is all crazy, anyway. And I’ve had enough. I’m out of here.”
    Blunt coughed quietly. “It’s not quite as easy as that,” he said.
    “Why not?”
    “It’s certainly true that you did draw attention to yourself both at the junkyard and then at our offices on Liverpool Street. And it’s also true that what you know and what I’m about to tell you must go no further.
    But the fact of the matter is, Alex, that we need your help.”
    “My help?”
    “Yes.” He paused. “Have you heard of a man called Herod Sayle?”
    Alex thought for a moment. “I’ve seen his name in the newspapers. He’s something to do with computers.
    And he owns racehorses. Doesn’t he come from somewhere in Egypt?”
    “Yes. From Cairo.” Blunt took a sip of wine. “Let me tell you his story, Alex. I’m sure you’ll find it of interest.
    “Herod Sayle was born in complete poverty in the backstreets of Cairo. His father was a failed oral hygienist. His mother took in washing. He had nine brothers and four sisters, all living together in three small rooms along with the family goat. Young Herod never went to school and he should have ended up unemployed, unable to read or write, like the rest of them.
    “But when he was seven, something occurred that changed his life. He was walking down Fez Street—in the middle of Cairo—when he happened to see an upright piano fall out of a fourteenth-story window.
    Apparently it was being moved and it somehow overturned. Anyway, there were a couple of English tourists walking along the pavement underneath and they would both have been crushed—no doubt about it—except at the last minute Herod threw himself at them and pushed them out of the way. The piano missed them by an inch.
    “Of course, the tourists were enormously grateful to the young Egyptian waif and it now turned out that they were very rich. They made