Stormbreaker

Open it.”
    Alex did as he was told. The door was marked HELIPAD. A flight of concrete steps led up. Alex glanced at Sayle. Sayle nodded. “Up.”
    They climbed the steps and reached another door with a push bar. Alex pressed it and went through. He was back outside, thirty floors up on a flat roof with a radio mast and a tall metal fence running around the perimeter. He and Sayle were standing on the edge of a huge cross, painted in red paint. Looking around, he could see right across the city to Canary Wharf and beyond. It had seemed a quiet spring day when Alex left the Royal & General offices. But up here the wind streaked past and the clouds boiled.
    “You ruined everything!” Sayle howled. “How did you do it? How did you trick me? I’d have beaten you if you’d been a man! But they had to send a boy! A bliddy schoolboy! Well, it isn’t over yet! I’m leaving England. That’s why I brought you here. I wanted you to see!”
    Sayle nodded and Alex turned around to see that there was a helicopter hovering in the air behind him.
    Where had it come from? It was painted red and yellow, a light, single-engine aircraft with a figure in dark glasses and helmet hunched over the controls. The helicopter was a Colibri EC 1 20B, one of the quietest in the world. It swung around over him, its blades beating at the air.
    “That’s my ticket out of here!” Sayle continued. “They’ll never find me! And one day I’ll be back. Next time, nothing will go wrong. And you won’t be here to stop me. This is the end for you! This is where you die!”
    There was nothing Alex could do. Sayle raised the gun and took aim, his eyes wide, the pupils blacker than they had ever been, mere pinpricks in the bulging white.
    There were two small explosive cracks.
    Alex looked down, expecting to see blood. There was nothing. He couldn’t feel anything. Then Sayle staggered and fell onto his back. There were two gaping holes in his chest.
    The helicopter landed in the center of the cross. The pilot got out.
    Still holding the gun that had killed Herod Sayle, he walked over and examined the body, prodding it with his shoe. Satisfied, he nodded to himself, tucking the gun away. He had switched off the engine of the helicopter and behind him the blades slowed down and stopped. Alex stepped forward. The man seemed to notice him for the first time.
    “You’re Yassen Gregorovich,” Alex said.
    The Russian nodded. It was impossible to tell what was going on in his head. His clear blue eyes gave nothing away.
    “Why did you kill him?” Alex asked.
    “Those were my instructions.” There was no trace of an accent in his voice. He spoke softly, reasonably.
    “He had become an embarrassment. It was better this way.”
    “Not better for him.”
    Yassen shrugged.
    “What about me?” Alex asked.
    The Russian ran his eyes over Alex, as if weighing him up. “I have no instructions concerning you,” he said.
    “You’re not going to shoot me too?”
    “Do I have any need to?”
    There was a pause. The two of them gazed at each other over the corpse of Herod Sayle.
    “You killed Ian Rider,” Alex said. “He was my uncle.”
    Yassen shrugged. “I kill a lot of people.”
    “One day I’ll kill you.”
    “A lot of people have tried.” Yassen smiled. “Believe me,” he said, “it would be better if we didn’t meet again. Go back to school. Go back to your life. And the next time they ask you, say no. Killing is for grown-ups and you’re still a child.”
    He turned his back on Alex and climbed into the cabin. The blades started up, and a few seconds later, the helicopter rose back into the air. For a moment it hovered at the side of the building. Behind the glass, Yassen raised his hand. A gesture of friendship? A salute? Alex raised his hand. The helicopter spun away.
    Alex stood where he was, watching it, until it had disappeared in the dying light.
    THE END