K-Unit were unusually silent. Ben Daniels was the only one of the four men who had been to the Royal and General before. He hated the creepily quiet and still environment of the place, and he worked there.
Finally Mrs Jones walked into the room and beckoned the men to follow her before leaving again. Jumping to their feet they quickly hurried after her, exchanging looks of curiosity and confusion. They were shown through an unmarked door into Mr Blunts office.
"Gentlemen," was the only greeting Mr Blunt offered before nodding to Mrs Jones who began to speak.
"Throughout the world there are many groups of criminal and terrorist organizations, the more ruthless and dangerous the group, the easier it is to recognize when they are behind something. This is because they believe they are to powerful for us to stop them and they want us to know who we are being beaten by. Despite this for almost 55% of major criminal activity, the perpetrators remain unknown. We have recently discovered a very large, very dangerous group. They are very good at not getting caught."
"How good?" interrupted Wolf, he did not like the sound of this one little bit.
"Extremely good," answered Mrs Jones, seeming unsurprised by the interruption, "We discovered them only three months ago. It was completely by accident. One of the members received a parking ticket while they were at the dentist, the car was recognized as one stolen over six years ago from a factory in Germany. The dentist was in Sussex. It is the only solid thing we have on these people and they are huge."
"How huge?" asked Snake.
"We believe their influence is as large, if not larger, than Scorpia." she sucked thoughtfully on her pepper mint before adding, "And infinitively more dangerous because we know so little about them."
Eagle whistled and muttered, "That's bad."
"Its an outrage." snapped Blunt, "We would have less trouble convicting the royal family!"
"Why would we want to convict the royal family?" Eagle puzzled, completely distracted from the original conversation.
Everyone ignored him and turned to Mrs Jones as she began to speak again, "Do you know who these people are?" handing a family photo showing a man, woman and teenage girl, each sporting a mane of red locks, to Fox.
"No, but at a guess I'd say thats the guy at the dentist?" said Ben handing the photo to the other members of his unit.
"Nearly," nodded Mrs Jones, "The man is the dentist. We believe that he is a pivotal member of this organization."
"How do we know this and what is 'this group' called?" asked Wolf, making speech marks with his fingers as he spoke.
"The name of the group is Flynn..."
Mrs Jones was interrupted by a snort of laughter from Eagle, "Flynn? No wonder you think it's these guys running the show."
"Quite," said Mrs Jones, giving a faint smile, small but the first in weeks, "Flynn is of course the Irish name, meaning bright red. It is also the name of the group."
Silence filled the office momentarily as the men possessed this information, finally Wolf asked, "So were do we come in?"
For some reason this question caused both Mr Blunt and Mrs Jones to look very guilty, Blunt's face, unused to showing emotion only managed a slight twinge but Mrs Jones blushed and looked down at her hands, "I believe you know Alex Rider." she stated.
Eagle, Wolf and Snake looked puzzled so Ben whispered, "Cub."
"You see," cut in Blunt, "he is our best agent. With such a new threat it made sense to send our best agent in. He was due back from his mission three weeks ago. He didn't return. We have had no contact from him since yesterday, two months ago. We don't know what happened to him."
"You mean you lost Cub!" yelled Wolf, who despite not liking the kid at training, had begun to respect him during Point Blanc and thought of him as a member of his unit.
"Not quite," said Mrs Jones before anyone else could interrupt, "We have a tracker on him. We know where he is, but thats it."
"Well, where is he?," growled Wolf.
Mrs Jones looked his straight in the eye and replied, "At the Flynn's Summer residence in Spain."
The tense silence that followed this remark was at last broken by Snake, "So, looks like we're going to Spain."
