Stormbreaker

fourteen-year-old boy of being a spy?”
    “All we’re asking you to do is to report back to us,” Blunt said. “April first is just three weeks from now.
    That’s all we’re asking. Three weeks of your time. A chance to make sure these computers are everything they’re cracked up to be. A chance to serve your country.”
    Blunt had finished his lunch. His plate was completely clean, as if there had never been any food on it at all. He put down his knife and fork, laying them precisely side by side. “All right, Alex,” he said. “So what do you say?”
    There was a long pause.
    Alex put down his own knife and fork. He hadn’t eaten anything. Blunt was watching him with polite interest. Mrs. Jones was unwrapping yet another peppermint, her black eyes seemingly fixed on the twist of paper in her hands.
    “No,” Alex said.
    “I’m sorry?”
    “It’s a dumb idea. I don’t want to be a spy. I want to play soccer. Anyway, I have a life of my own.” He found it difficult to choose the right words. The whole thing was so preposterous he almost wanted to laugh. “Why don’t you ask this Felix Lester to snoop around for you?”
    “We don’t believe he’d be as resourceful as you,” Blunt said.
    “He’s probably better at computer games.” Alex shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m just not interested. I don’t want to get involved.”
    “That’s a pity,” Blunt said. His tone of voice hadn’t changed, but there was a heavy, dead quality to the words. And there was something different about him. Throughout the meal he had been polite—not friendly but at least human. In an instant that had disappeared. Alex thought of a toilet chain being pulled.
    The human part of him had just been flushed away.
    “We’d better move on then to discuss your future,” he continued. “Like it or not, Alex, the Royal and General is now your legal guardian.”
    “I thought you said the Royal and General didn’t exist.”
    Blunt ignored him. “Ian Rider has, of course, left the house and all his money to you. However, he left it in trust until you are twenty-one. And we control that trust. So there will, I’m afraid, have to be some changes.
    The American girl who lives with you—”
    “Jack?”
    “Miss Starbright. Her visa has expired. She’ll be returned to America. We propose to put the house on the market. Unfortunately, you have no relatives who would be prepared to look after you, so I’m afraid that also means you’ll have to leave Brookland. You’ll be sent to an institution. There’s one I know just outside Birmingham. The Saint Elizabeth in Sourbridge. Not a very pleasant place, but I’m afraid there’s no alternative.”
    “You’re blackmailing me!” Alex exclaimed.
    “Not at all.”
    “But if I agreed to do what you asked …?”
    Blunt glanced at Mrs. Jones. “Help us and we’ll help you,” she said.
    Alex considered, but not for very long. He had no choice and he knew it. Not when these people controlled his money, his present life, his entire future. “You talked about training,” he said.
    Mrs. Jones nodded. “Felix Lester is expected at Port Tallon in two weeks,” she said. “That doesn’t give us very much time. But it’s also why we brought you here, Alex. This is a training center. If you agree to what we want, we can start at once.”
    “Start at once.” Alex spoke the three words without liking the sound of them. Blunt and Mrs. Jones were waiting for his answer. He sighed. “Yeah. All right. It doesn’t look like I’ve got very much choice.”
    He glanced at the slices of cold lamb on his plate. Dead meat. Suddenly he knew how it felt.

DOUBLE 0 NOTHING

    FOR THE HUNDREDTH time, Alex cursed Alan Blunt, using language he hadn’t even realized he knew. It was almost five o’clock in the evening, although it could have been five o’clock in the morning; the sky had barely changed at all throughout the day. It was gray, cold, unforgiving. The rain was still falling, a thin drizzle that traveled horizontally in the wind, soaking through his supposedly waterproof clothing, mixing with his sweat and his dirt, chilling him to the bone.
    He unfolded his map and checked his position once again. He had to be close to the last RV of the day—the last rendezvous point—but he could see nothing. He was standing on a narrow track made up of loose gray pebbles that crunched under his combat boots when he walked. The track snaked around the side of a mountain with a