Stormbreaker

Alex was in was the last but one. In addition to Mr. Grin and Nadia Vole, at least a dozen uniformed guards were making the journey. But where to? Alex didn’t dare look out the back, not with a car right behind him. He felt the truck slow down as they reached the main gate and then they were out on the main road, driving rapidly uphill, away from the village.
    Alex felt the journey without seeing it. He was lying on a wooden floor, about ten feet across, with nothing to hold on to as the truck sped around hairpin bends. The walls of the truck were steel and windowless. He only knew they had left the main road when he suddenly found himself being bounced up and down, and he was grateful that the truck was now moving more slowly. He sensed they were going downhill, following a rough track. And now he could hear something, even over the noise of the engine. Waves. They had come down to the sea.
    The truck stopped. There was the opening and slamming of car doors, the scrunch of boots on rocks, low voices talking. Alex crouched down, afraid that one of the guards would throw back the tarpaulin and discover him, but the voices faded and he found himself alone. Cautiously, he slipped out the back. He was right. The convoy had parked on a deserted beach.
    Looking around, he could see a track leading down from the road that twisted up over the cliffs that surrounded them. Mr. Grin and the others had gathered beside an old stone jetty that stretched out into the black water. He was carrying a flashlight. Alex saw him swing it in an arc.
    Growing ever more curious, he crept forward and found a hiding place behind a clump of boulders. It seemed that they were waiting for a boat. He looked at his watch. It was exactly two o’clock. He almost wanted to laugh. Give the men flintlock pistols and horses and they could have come straight out of a children’s book. Smuggling on the Cornish coast. Could that be what this was all about? Cocaine or marijuana coming in from the Continent? Why else come here in the middle of the night?
    The question was answered a few seconds later. Alex stared, unable to quite believe what he was seeing.
    A submarine. It had emerged from the sea with the speed and the impossibility of a huge stage illusion.
    One moment there was nothing and then it was there in front of him, plowing through the sea toward the jetty, its engine making no sound, water streaking off its silver casing and churning white behind it. The submarine had no markings, but Alex knew it wasn’t English. The shape of the diving plane slashing horizontally through the conning tower and the shark’s tail rudder at the back was like nothing he had ever seen. He wondered if it was nuclear powered. A conventional engine would surely have made more noise.
    And what was it doing here, off the coast of Cornwall? Not for the first time, Alex felt very small and very young. Whatever was going on here, he knew he was way out of his depth.
    And then the tower opened and a man climbed out, stretching himself in the cold morning air. Even without the half-moon, Alex would have recognized the sleek dancer’s body and the close-cropped hair of the man whose photograph he had seen only a few days before. It was Yassen Gregorovich. Alex stared at him with growing fear. This was the contract killer Mrs. Jones had told him about. The man who had murdered Ian Rider. He was dressed in gray overalls and sneakers. He was smiling. He was the last person Alex wanted to meet.
    At the same time he forced himself to stay where he was. He had to work this out. Yassen Gregorovich had supposedly met Sayle in Cuba. Now here he was in Cornwall. So the two of them were working together.
    But why? Why should the Stormbreaker project possibly need a man like him?
    Nadia Vole walked to the end of the jetty and Yassen climbed down to join her. They spoke for a few minutes, but even assuming they had chosen the English language, there was no chance of their being overheard. Meanwhile, the guards from Sayle Enterprises had formed a line stretching back almost to the point where the vehicles were parked. Yassen gave an order and, as Alex watched from behind the rocks, a metallic silver box with a vacuum seal appeared, held by unseen hands, at the top of the submarine’s tower.
    Yassen himself passed it down to the first of the guards, who then passed it back up the line. About forty more boxes followed, one after another. It took almost an hour to unload the submarine.