SEARCH AND REPORT

Point of view: Third person limited

At least they didn't have far to take him.

Two men brought Alex down from the crane, one above him on the ladder and one below. The police were waiting at the bottom. Watched by the incredulous construction workers, he was frog-marched off the building site and into the police station just a few buildings away. As he passed the conference center, he saw the crowds pouring out. Ambulances had already arrived. The home secretary was being whisked away in a black limousine. For the first time, Alex was seriously worried, wondering if anyone had been killed. He hadn't meant it to end like this.

Once they got to the police station, everything happened in a whirl of slamming doors, blank official faces, whitewashed walls, forms and phone calls. Alex was asked his name, his age, his address. He saw a police sergeant tapping the details into a computer: but what happened next took him by surprise. The sergeant pressed ENTER and visibly froze. He turned and looked at Alex, then hastily left his seat. When Alex had entered the police station, he'd been the center of attention, but suddenly everyone was avoiding his eye. A more senior officer appeared. Words were exchanged. Alex was led down a corridor and put into a cell. Half an hour later, a female police officer appeared with a tray of food. "Supper," she said.

"What's happening?" Alex asked.

The woman smiled nervously but said nothing.

"I left my bike by the bridge," Alex said.

"It's all right, we've got it." She couldn't leave the room fast enough.

Alex ate the food: sausages, toast, a slice of cake. There was a bunk in the room and, behind a screen, a sink and a toilet. He wondered if anyone was going to come in and talk to him, but nobody did. Eventually he fell asleep.

The next thing he knew, it was seven o'clock in the morning. The door was open and a man he knew only too well was standing in the cell, looking down at him.

"Good morning, Alex," he said.

"Mr. Crawley."

John Crawley looked like a junior bank manager, and when Alex had first met him, he had indeed been pretending that he worked for a bank. The cheap suit and striped tie could both have come from a Marks & Spencer "Boring Businessman" range. In fact, Crawley worked for MI6. Alex wondered if the clothes were a cover or a personal choice.

"You can come with me now," Crawley said. "We're leaving."

"Are you taking me home?" Alex asked. He wondered if anyone had been told where he was.

"No. Not yet."

Alex followed Crawley out of the building. This time there were no police officers in sight. A car with a driver stood waiting outside. Crawley got into the back with Alex.

"Where are we going?" Alex asked.

"You'll see." Crawley opened a copy of the Daily Telegraph and began to read. He didn't speak again.

They drove east through the city and up towards Liverpool Street. Alex knew at once where he was being taken and, sure enough, the car turned into the entrance of a seventeen-story building near the station and disappeared down a ramp into an underground carpark. Alex had been here before. The building pretended to be the headquarters of the Royal & General bank. In fact, this was where the Special Operations division of MI6 was based. The car stopped. Crawley folded his paper away and got out, ushering Alex ahead of him. There was a lift in the basement and the two of them took it to the sixteenth floor.

"This way." Crawley gestured to a door marked 1605. The Gunpowder Plot, Alex thought. It was an absurd thing to flash into his mind, a fragment of the history homework he should have been doing the night before. 1605 – the year Guy Fawkes had tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Oh well, it looked as if the homework was going to have to wait. Alex opened the door and went in. Crawley didn't follow. When Alex looked round, he was already walking away.

"Shut the door, Alex, and come in."

Once again, Alex found himself standing opposite the prim, unsmiling man who headed the Special Operations division of MI6. Grey suit, grey face, grey life … Alan Blunt seemed to belong to an entirely colorless world. He was sitting behind a wooden desk in a large, square office that could have belonged to any business anywhere in the world. There was nothing personal in the room, not even a picture on the wall or a photograph on the desk. Even the pigeons pecking on the windowsill outside were grey.

Blunt was not alone. Mrs. Jones, his senior officer, was with him, sitting on a leather chair, wearing a mud-brown jacket and dress, and – as usual – sucking a peppermint. She looked up at Alex with black, bead-like eyes. She seemed to be more pleased to see him than her boss was. It was she who had spoken. Blunt had barely registered the fact that Alex had come into the room.

Then Blunt looked up. "I hadn't expected to see you again so soon," he said.

"That's just what I was going to say," Alex replied. There was a single empty chair in the office. He sat down.

Blunt slid a sheet of paper across his desk and examined it briefly. "What on earth were you thinking of?" he demanded. "This business with the crane? You've done an enormous amount of damage. You've practically destroyed a two-million-pound conference center. It's a miracle nobody was killed."

"The two men in the boat will be in hospital for months," Mrs. Jones added.

"You could have killed the home secretary!" Blunt continued. "That would have been the last straw. What were you doing?"

"They were drug dealers," Alex said.

"So we've discovered. But the normal procedure would have been to dial 999."

"I couldn't find a phone." Alex sighed. "They turned off the crane," he explained. "I was going to put the boat in the carpark."

Blunt blinked once and waved a hand as if dismissing everything that had happened. "It's just as well that your special status came up on the police computer," he said. "They called us – and we've handled the rest."

"I didn't know I had special status," Alex said.

"Oh yes, Alex. You're nothing if not special." Blunt gazed at him for a moment. "That's why you're here."

"So you're not going to send me home?"

"No. The fact is, Alex, we were thinking of contacting you anyway. We need you again."

"You're probably the only person who can do what we have in mind," Mrs. Jones added.

"Wait a minute!" Alex shook his head. "I'm far enough behind at school as it is. Suppose I'm not interested?"

Mrs. Jones sighed. "We could of course return you to the police," she said. "As I understand it, they were very keen to interview you."

"And how is Miss Starbright?" Blunt asked.

Jack Starbright – the name was short for Jackie or Jacqueline; Alex wasn't sure which – was the housekeeper who had been looking after Alex since his uncle had died. She was a bright, red-haired American woman who had come to London to study law but had never left. Blunt wasn't interested in her health, Alex knew that. The last time they'd met, he'd made his position clear. So long as Alex did as he was told, he could stay living in his uncle's house with Jack. Step out of line and she'd be deported to America and Alex would be shipped off to youth prison for his crime. It was blackmail, of course, pure and simple.

"She's fine," Alex said. There was quiet anger in his voice.

Mrs. Jones took over. "Come on, Alex," she said. "Why pretend you're an ordinary schoolboy anymore?"

She was trying to sound more friendly, more like a mother. But even snakes have mothers, Alex thought.

"You've already proved yourself once," she went on. "We're just giving you a chance to do it again."

"It'll probably come to nothing," Blunt continued. "It's just something that needs looking into. What we call a search and report."

"Why can't Crawley do it?"

"We need a young man."

Alex fell silent. He looked from Blunt to Mrs. Jones and back again. He knew that neither of them would hesitate for a second before pulling him out of Brookland and sending him to the grimmest institution they could find. And anyway, wasn't this what he had been asking for only the day before? Another adventure. Another chance to save the world.

"All right," he said. "What is it this time?"

Blunt nodded at Mrs. Jones, who unwrapped a sweet and began.

"I wonder if you know anything about a man called Michael J. Roscoe?" she asked.

Alex thought for a moment. "He was that businessman who had an accident in New York." He'd seen the news on TV. "Didn't he fall down a lift-shaft or something?"

"Roscoe Electronics is one of the largest companies in America," Mrs. Jones said. "In fact, it's one of the largest in the world. Computers, videos, DVD players … everything from mobile phones to washing machines. Roscoe was very rich, very influential—"

"And very short-sighted," Alex cut in.

"It certainly seems to have been a very strange and even a careless accident," Mrs. Jones agreed. "The lift somehow malfunctioned. Roscoe didn't look where he was going. He fell into the lift-shaft and died. That's the general opinion. However, we're not so sure."

"Why not?"

"First of all, there are a number of details that don't add up. On the day Roscoe died, a maintenance engineer by the name of Sam Green called at Roscoe Tower on Fifth Avenue. We know it was Green – or someone who looked very much like him – because we've seen him. They have closed circuit security cameras and he was filmed going in. He said he'd come to look at a defective cable. But according to the company that employed him, there was no defective cable and he certainly wasn't acting under orders from them."

"Why don't you talk to him?"

"We'd like to. But Green has vanished without a trace. We think he might have been killed. We think someone might have taken his place and somehow set up the accident that killed Roscoe."

Alex shrugged. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry about Mr. Roscoe. But what's it got to do with me?"

"I'm coming to that." Mrs. Jones paused. "The strangest thing of all is that the day before he died, Roscoe telephoned this office. A personal call. He asked to speak to Mr. Blunt."

"I met Roscoe at Cambridge University," Blunt said. "That was a long time ago. We became friends."

That surprised Alex. He didn't think of Blunt as the sort of man who had friends. "What did he say?" he asked.

"Unfortunately, I wasn't here to take the call," Blunt replied. "I arranged to speak with him the following day. By that time, it was too late."

"Do you have any idea what he wanted?"

"I spoke to his assistant," Mrs. Jones said. "She wasn't able to tell me very much, but she understood that Roscoe was concerned about his son. He has a fourteen-year-old son, Paul Roscoe."

A fourteen-year-old son. Alex was beginning to see the way things were going.

"Paul was his only son," Blunt explained. "I'm afraid the two of them had a very difficult relationship. Roscoe's wife died of cancer a few years ago. After that, he didn't really get on with the boy. There were the usual teenage problems, but of course, when you grow up surrounded by millions of dollars, these problems sometimes get amplified. Paul was doing badly at school. He was playing truant, spending time with some very undesirable friends. There was an incident with the New York police – nothing serious and Roscoe managed to hush it up, but it still upset him. I spoke to Roscoe from time to time. He was worried about Paul and felt the boy was out of control. But there didn't seem to be very much he could do."

"So, is that what you want me for?" Alex interrupted. "You want me to meet this boy and talk to him about his father's death?"

"No." Blunt shook his head and handed a file to Mrs. Jones.

She opened it. Alex caught a glimpse of a photograph, a dark-skinned man in military uniform. "Remember what we told you about Roscoe," she said. "Because now I want to tell you about another man." She slid the photograph round so that Alex could see it. "This is General Viktor Ivanov. Ex-KGB officer. Until last December he was head of the SVR, the Russian MI6, and probably the second or third most powerful man in Russia after the president. But then something happened to him too. It was a boating accident on the Black Sea. His cruiser exploded … nobody knows why."

"Was he a friend of Roscoe's?" Alex asked.

"They probably never met. But we have a department here that constantly monitors world news, and their computers have thrown up a very strange coincidence. Ivanov also had a fourteen-year-old son, Dimitry. And one thing is certain. The young Ivanov certainly knew the young Roscoe because they went to the same school."

"Paul and Dimitry…" Alex was puzzled. "What was a Russian boy doing at a school in New York?"

"He wasn't in New York." Blunt took over. "As I told you, Roscoe was having trouble with his boy. Trouble at school, trouble at home. So last year he decided to take action. He sent Paul to Europe, to a place in France, a sort of finishing school. Do you know what a finishing school is?"

"I thought it was the sort of place where rich people used to send their daughters," Alex said. "To learn table manners."

"That's the general idea. But this school is for young men only, and not just ordinary boys. The fees are ten thousand pounds a term. This is the brochure. You can have a look." He passed a heavy, square booklet to Alex. Written on the cover, gold letters on black, were the two words:

POINT BLANC

"It's right on the French-Swiss border," Blunt explained. "South of Geneva. Just above Grenoble, in the French Alps. It's pronounced Point Blanc." He spoke the words with a French accent. "Literally, white point. It's a remarkable place. Built as a private home by some lunatic in the nineteenth century. As a matter of fact, that's what it became after he died … a lunatic asylum. It was taken over by the Dutch during the Second World War. They used it as a leisure center for their senior staff. After that, it fell into disrepair until it was bought by the current owner, a man called Grief. Dr Hugo Grief. He's the principal of the school. What I suppose you'd call the headmaster."

Alex opened the brochure and found himself looking at a color photograph of Point Blanc. Blunt was right. The school was like nothing he had ever seen; something between a Dutch castle and a French chateau, straight out of a Grimm's fairy tale. But what drew Alex's breath, more than the building itself, was the setting. The school was perched on the side of a mountain, with nothing but mountains all around; a great pile of brick and stone surrounded by a snow-covered landscape. It seemed to have no business being there, as if it had been snatched out of an ancient city and accidentally dropped there. No roads led to the school. The snow continued all the way to the front gate. But looking again, Alex saw a modern helicopter pad projecting over the battlements. He guessed that was the only way to get there … and to leave.

He turned the page.

Welcome to the Academy at POINT BLANC… the introduction began. It had been printed in the sort of lettering Alex would expect to find on the menu of an expensive restaurant.

...a unique school that is much more than a school, created for young men who need more than the ordinary education system can provide. In our time we have been called a school for "problem boys", but we do not believe the term applies.

There are problems and there are boys. It is our aim to separate the two.

"There's no need to read all that stuff," Blunt said. "All you need to know is that the academy takes in young men who have been expelled from all their other schools. There are never very many of them there. Just six or seven at a time. And it's unique in other ways too. For a start, it only takes the sons of the super-rich—"

"At ten thousand pounds a term, I'm not surprised," Alex said.

"You'd be surprised just how many parents have applied to send their sons there," Blunt went on. "But I suppose you've only got to look at the newspapers to see how easy it is to go off the rails when you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth. It doesn't matter if they're politicians or popstars; fame and fortune for the parents often brings problems for the children … and the more successful the parents are, the more pressure there seems to be. The academy went into business to sort the boys out, and by all accounts it's been a great success."

"It was established twenty years ago," Mrs. Jones said. "In that time, it's had a client list you'd find hard to believe. Of course, they've kept the names confidential. But I can tell you that parents who have sent their children there include an American vice-president, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and a member of our own royal family!"

"As well as Roscoe and this man, Ivanov," Alex said.

"Yes."

Alex shrugged. "So, it's a coincidence. Just like you said. Two rich parents with two rich kids at the same school. They're both killed in accidents. Why are you so interested?"

"Because I don't like coincidence," Blunt replied. "In fact, I don't believe in coincidence. Where some people see coincidence, I see conspiracy. That's my job."

And you're welcome to it, Alex thought. He said, "Do you really think the school and this man Grief might have had something to do with the two deaths? Why? Had they forgotten to pay the fees?"

Blunt didn't smile. "Roscoe telephones me because he's worried about his son. The next day he's dead. We've also learned from the FSB that a week before he died, Ivanov had a violent argument with his son. Apparently Ivanov was worried about something. Now do you see the link?"

Alex thought for a moment. "So you want me to go to this school," he said. "How are you going to manage that? I don't have parents and they were never rich anyway."

"We've already arranged that," Mrs. Jones said. Alex realized that she must have made her plans before the business with the crane ever happened. Even if he hadn't drawn attention to himself, they would have come for him. "We're going to supply you with a wealthy father. His name is Sir David Friend."

"Friend … as in Friend's supermarkets?" Alex had seen the name often enough in the newspapers.

"Supermarkets. Department stores. Art galleries. Football teams." Mrs. Jones paused. "Friend is certainly a member of the same club as Roscoe. The billionaires' club. He's also heavily involved in government circles, as a personal adviser to the prime minister. Very little happens in this country without Sir David being involved in some way."

"We've created a false identity for you," Blunt said. "From this moment on, I want you to start thinking of yourself as Alex Friend, the fourteen-year-old son of Sir David."

"It won't work," Alex said. "People must know that Friend doesn't have a son."

"Not at all." Blunt shook his head. "He's a very private person and we've created the sort of son no father would want to talk about. Expelled from Eton. A criminal record … shoplifting, vandalism and possession of drugs. That's you, Alex. Sir David and his wife, Caroline, don't know what to do with you. So, they've enrolled you in the academy. And you've been accepted."

"And Sir David has agreed to all this?" Alex asked.

Blunt sniffed. "As a matter of fact, he wasn't very happy about it – about using someone as young as you. But I spoke to him at some length and, yes, he agreed to help."

"So when am I going to the academy?"

"Five days from now," Mrs. Jones said. "But first you have to immerse yourself in your new life. When you leave here, we've arranged for you to be taken to Sir David's home. He has a house in Lancashire. He lives there with his wife – and he has a daughter. She's one year older than you. You'll spend the rest of the week with the family, which should give you time to learn everything you need to know. It's vital that you have a strong cover. After that, you'll leave for Grenoble."

"And what do I do when I get there?"

"We'll give you a full briefing nearer the time. Essentially, your job is to find out everything you can. It may be that this school is perfectly ordinary and that there was in fact no connection between the deaths. If so, we'll pull you out. But we want to be sure."

"How will I get in touch with you?"

"We'll arrange all that." Mrs. Jones ran an eye over Alex, then turned to Blunt. "We'll have to do something about his appearance," she said. "He doesn't exactly look the part."

"See to it," Blunt said.

Alex sighed. It was strange really. He was simply going from one school to another. From a London comprehensive to a finishing school in France. It wasn't quite the adventure he'd been expecting.

He stood up and followed Mrs. Jones out of the room. As he left, Blunt was already sifting through documents as if he'd forgotten that Alex had been there or even existed at all.