Operation: Red Crescent – Heartbeat
Okay. Honestly, I was going to wait a week to write this up. I was going to let you guys think I had left it at that tiny little chapter with Alex dying.
I couldn't do it. One, I'm not mean enough by a long shot, and two, I had to finish the damn story now.
I meant to give you some suspense. I meant to space it out. But I gave up on my Middle East review project because I couldn't take it anymore. I had to write this.
Yes, I know that both this and the last chapter were very short. So consider them each one chapter, making today's adventure add up to one who, substantial chapter, okay?
Please read the AN at the bottom before you jump me for my existential/psychological incompetence.
Clearly, I am still not AH.
Alex floated for what felt a long time in the darkness.
It could have been an eternity, or it could have been only a few seconds. He couldn't hear anything, couldn't see anything, and best of all, he couldn't feel. Couldn't feel the anger he felt towards MI6, the pain that had been pounding every inch of his body for days now, or the desperate despair at the knowledge that he would never see Jack again.
He was no longer Alex Rider, but some blank consciousness, cleansed, renewed.
Nirvana. Heaven. Or as close to heaven as the not-quite-Alex consciousness had ever imagined.
He was flying through the soundless, thoughtless, emotionless darkness, soaring. It was a wonderful, freeing feeling.
There was something fuzzy at the back of his mind, people talking, whispering, like ghosts. He could hear only some of what they said, as if he was wearing thick ear mufflers, and they were speaking deliberately quietly. He knew they were there, though.
He wondered if they were other dead people, and in a manner that was very much like Alex, he tried very hard to understand what they were saying, to glean some clue as to what they were.
A thought that was very not-Alex-like crossed his mind then. He had left his history book on the table back at home. Jack, who would have been waiting for him – he had just stepped out for a second to put out the trash, when MI6 had grabbed him – and he could see the page floating in front of him. Something about the de-colonization of Africa, and the re-nationalization of the Suez canal for Egypt.
It had slipped through his mind then, but now it seemed terribly important. Such a stupid, trivial thing, yet it drew the not-Alex consciousness towards that page, as if there was something very important hidden in those pages.
There was a picture, in black and white, of military leaders in formation, cheering around the Egyptian president, who had defeated invading forces of France, Britain… and another much newer country, he remembered… But the Egyptian president stirred up nationalism in a French colony, and forced them to divide their resources with a bloody civil war in Algeria… And the grinning face of Gamal Nasser above the jubilant thrones... But the picture changed, showing him a pristine Egyptian coastline, colored like a recent photophraph.
"Hammas, they are experts at making things seem as they are not, and making things that are not seem as if they are," Agent Shalom was saying next to him.
He was standing on the boat, but when he turned to look, the figure speaking to him wasn't Agent Shalom anymore, it was Smithers, and he had a hand extended. There was a pack of strawberry bubblegum in his hand.
"As I remember, you said this came in handy last time," Smithers said. And then Alex was staring at that page again, floating in front of him. He tried to ignore it, wanting to go back into darkness, to go back to being not-Alex in a personal heaven of Nirvana. It had been so peaceful, so quiet.
"You didn't tell me what was on that flash drive. You aren't getting it until you double your offer."
Alex was back in the hall, peering through a crack at Omar, Yassen, and the interpreter. They were speaking in english, though the inflections sounded exactly the same as they had before.
"I am sorry to hear that. My… friends would very much regret to hear that you had gone back on our bargain."
"We're talking about-"
Alex could have screamed in frustration when the voice switched back to Arabic.
The memory faded, though the one word in Arabic stood out in his mind. He couldn't remember why it was so important, but he knew that it was…
The page remained insistently at the forefront of his thought. Grumbling, knowing he needed to solve this riddle to return to the enveloping darkness, he looked very hard, searching for a clue, but the second he tried to see it, the writing on the page ran.
What else had been on the page?
A whole two pages on the conflict in the Middle East, and some of its colonial history, Alex thought. He forced himself to focus. It was at the bottom of the left hand column on the right page, near the binding.
But even as he tried to keep track of it, the image fell apart before his eyes, and Alex cried out frustrated, as he fell back into darkness. But this time, he felt finality in the darkness. He had failed, and now it was over. There was brief disappointment, anger, frustration, and then, remarkably, relief.
The warm, soundless peace that rolled around him again, and Alex was once again that not-Alex, blank consciousness. He drew the darkness around him, and let himself slide back into that nirvana.
* * *
A sound. At first it was so quiet, Alex couldn't hear it. But it grew more and more insistent at the back of his mind. Thump. Every few seconds, perhaps ten, or twelve, though it could have been an eternity, for all he knew. Time didn't seem to matter.
Thump.
Why couldn't that sound just go away and leave him alone? Why, like MI6, did it insist on torturing him?
The picture returned, taunting him like that damn sound…
The British and the French, along with the Israelis invaded Egypt. This, however, was the dying grasp of the imperial order… the moralistic Americans joined with the Soviets to force the British, French, and Israeli troops to withdraw…
But no… It wasn't something specifically on that page. His history teacher had gone off on a tangent that day, when he had gotten to the fight over the Suez Canal, which had originally been in the hands of the British, which had controlled Egypt as a colonial holding until 1922 and remained staunchly under its influence for the century thereafter.
Thump.
Very much like Egypt, Iran, had remained under British influence, his teacher had said. They controlled Iran because they wanted the oil, and they instituted a puppet regime…
Thump.
Alex wished the sound would stop, it was making it difficult to concentrate. It was like trying to see down to the bottom of a lake when something kept ripping the water.
Project Ajax… Alex didn't know where that name came from. He tried to force himself to recall, as he had never been able to before, a history lesson.
Officially, it was an American operation. The head of MI6 at the time had been very conspicuously getting himself incredibly trashed for ten days straight while the Americans unseated the president of Iran, who had won a popular election. Even so, the British took an equal share in the blame that the Americans got. They had unseated the president because…
Thump. Thump.
Damn that bloody sound!
…because he had been throwing around 'buzzwords' that made him sound communist, and the Americans, fully in the grips of the fear of Russia spreading communism, had taken out the president and reinstated the Shah, who the people hated, because he was too liberal and basically a puppet…
Alex was struggling to bring all the pieces together. Something that would tie his current mission with a government coup in 1953, and strawberry bubblegum, and… beaches…
Thump, thump.
A jolt shocked through Alex's body, making him feel every cell of his skin, burning in agony. He screamed – he couldn't control it, couldn't help it – he screamed like a child, without control.
Thu-thu-thu-Thump, Thump, Thump. The sound was growing louder and more irritating as the pain died away. Alex forced himself to concentrate. This was crucial. But even as he tried to focus, he was distracted by the realization of what the sound was.
His own sluggish heartbeat. He felt frustration and annoyance again. Why did he have to be alive? Why couldn't he just fucking die already?
Why couldn't he be dead? What on earth could he possibly have done to deserve being dragged out of his heaven, his quiet, peaceful heaven? What deity had he managed to offend God so badly that he was being forced to live through circumstances that would kill anyone else?
The sound faltered, leaving him with silence for a time.
When consciousness surfaced again, Alex was staring at a pack of strawberry bubblegum, which warned him of its 'explosive' flavor.
He had used the strawberry bubblegum… to escape the handcuffs that had held him within the blast radius of a bomb that would ignite nuclear waste onboard a bunch of old soviet submarines.
Unsure what that had to do with anything, Alex lay that clue aside.
Project Ajax had only come to mind Yedit had been accused of selling the Iranians information… But what if it was something more? Someone who had gotten screwed when the operation had been implemented…
Another painful jolt of electricity making his whole body aware of the pain that reached to the very ends of his fingers and toes, and he took a gasping breath.
Thu-thump. Thu-Thump. Thu-Thump.
He was on the very edge of consciousness, hearing voices yelling, dark shapes moving. A vaguely familiar face appeared in his line of sight, but he couldn't place it.
Alex shut his eyes. This was important, and he was so close, the answer was staring him in the face, taunting him now.
…someone who had gotten blamed unreasonably for the fiasco of Project Ajax. Someone who would suffer from a militant, powerful, nuclear Iran.
Even in the darkness of semi-consciousness, Alex felt cold.
Britain.
MI6 had sold nuclear secrets to Iran?
Thu-thump. Thu-thump.
They had set up Yedit and sent him on this wild goose chase.
And they had tried to send him to hell with her.
He rolled over and vomited, shaking uncontrollably.
He felt the sound of his traitor heart, pumping blood once again. Its resolute pounding seemed to cry out its own betrayal, keeping him alive again his will: Kha-wan. Kha-wan. Kha-wan.
So where did Yassen fit in?
No, there was no way. It hadn't been MI6. Alex wasn't sure if it was his own refusal to believe that his own country that was capable of such a betrayal, but there was something more. He knew that MI6 hadn't organized this.
Aside from Yassen's presence, as far as Alex could tell, this wasn't really Blunt's style. It was too risky. There were too many unknown factors, too few things he could control. Mrs. Jones would never have okayed a mission like this either.
Whoever was responsible was someone that wanted to make MI6 look like they had stolen nuclear secrets.
Someone had essentially stolen Israeli nuclear weapons, and blamed Britain.
Someone was trying to set up an international disaster.
Someone was targeting Israel, and Britain would take the blame.
Where the hell is Yedit? Alex thought desperately.
And then the darkness took him again.
The sound of treachery accompanied him into unconsciousness.
Kha-wan. Kha-wan. Kha-wan.
* * *
AN: Hi, just a quick note. Before you all call bullshit on the way that Alex figured all of this out, lets be fair – he did hear exactly what Omar and Yassen were talking about. Yedit did give him a certain amount of training in Arabic. They were talking to fast for him to get everything, but I'm 90% sure on a list of Agent Shalom's favorite buzzwords she would teach a newbie… 'nuclear' probably would make the top three. In every dialect. I'm assuming Alex fabricated the entire conversation, other than that, based on whatever logic his essentially dead brain came up with.
Oh, and I'm going to go ahead and just say that the voices at the beginning were part of the reason Alex started thinking of the open textbook. That whole thing didn't just come out of nowhere.
Also, I am by no means suggesting that barely avoiding death will help you solve that impossible AP Chemistry problem. Just saying.
On another note, does anyone notice how trippy the inside of Alex's head is?