ROOM 13
Point of view: Third person omniscient
It was raining in Paris. The city was looking tired and disappointed, the Eiffel Tower fighting against a mass of heavy clouds. There was nobody sitting at the tables spread outside the cafés, and for once, the little kiosks selling paintings and postcards were being ignored by the tourists hurrying back to their hotels. It was five o'clock in the afternoon, and the evening was drawing in. The shops and offices were emptying, but the city didn't care. It just wanted to be left alone.
The helicopter had landed in a private area of Charles de Gaulle airport and a car had been waiting to drive them in. Alex had said nothing during the flight and now he sat on his own in the back, watching the buildings flash by. They were following the Seine, moving surprisingly fast along a wide dual carriageway that dipped above and below the water level. Their route took them past Notre Dame. Then they turned off, weaving their way through a series of back streets with small restaurants and boutiques fighting for space on the pavements.
"The Marais," Mrs. Stellenbosch said.
Alex pretended to show no interest. In fact, he had stayed in the Marais district once before and knew it as one of the smartest and most expensive quarters of Paris.
The car turned into a large square and stopped. Alex glanced out of the window. He was surrounded on four sides by the tall, classical houses for which Paris is famous. But the square had been disfigured by a single modern hotel. It was a white rectangular block, the windows fitted with dark glass that allowed no view to the inside. It rose up four floors, with a flat roof and the name HOTEL DU MONDE in gold letters above the main door. If a spaceship had landed in the square, crushing a couple of buildings to make room for itself, it couldn't have looked more out of place.
"This is where we're staying," Mrs. Stellenbosch said. "The hotel is owned by the academy."
The driver had taken their cases out of the boot. Alex followed the assistant director towards the entrance, the door sliding open automatically to allow them in. The reception was cold and faceless, white marble and mirrors, with a single potted plant tucked into a corner as an afterthought. There was a small reception desk with an unsmiling male receptionist in a dark suit and glasses, a computer and a row of pigeonholes. Alex counted them. There were fifteen. Presumably the hotel had fifteen rooms.
"Bonsoir, Madame Stellenbosch." The receptionist nodded his head slightly. He ignored Alex. "J'espère que vous avez fait un bon voyage d'Angleterre," he continued. Alex gazed blankly, as if he hadn't understood a word. Alex Friend wouldn't speak French. He wouldn't have bothered to learn. But Ian Rider had made certain that his nephew spoke French almost as soon as he spoke English. Not to mention Dutch and Spanish as well.
The receptionist took down two keys. He didn't ask either of them to sign in. He didn't ask for a credit card. The school owned the hotel, so there would be no bill when they left. He gave Alex one of the keys.
"I hope you are not superstitious," he said.
"No," Alex replied.
"It is room thirteen. On the first floor. I am sure you will find it most agreeable." The receptionist smiled.
Mrs. Stellenbosch took her key. "The hotel has its own restaurant," she said. "We might as well eat here tonight. We don't want to go out in the rain. Anyway, the food here is excellent. Do you like French food, Alex?"
"Not much," Alex said.
"Well, I'm sure we'll find something that you like. Why don't you freshen up after the journey?" She looked at her watch. "We'll eat at seven. An hour and a half from now. It will give us an opportunity to talk together. Might I suggest, perhaps, some smarter clothes for dinner? The French are informal, but – if you'll forgive me saying so, my dear – you take informality a little far. I'll call you at five to seven. I hope the room is all right."
Room thirteen was at the end of a long, narrow corridor. The door opened into a surprisingly large space, with views over the square. There was a double bed with a black and white cover, a television and mini-bar, a desk and, on the wall, a couple of framed pictures of Paris. A porter had carried up Alex's cases and, as soon as he was gone, Alex kicked off his shoes and sat down on the bed. He wondered why they had come here. He knew the helicopter needed refueling, but that shouldn't have necessitated an overnight stop. Why not fly straight on to the school?
He had more than an hour to kill. First he went into the bathroom – more glass and white marble – and took a long shower. Then, wrapped in a towel, he went back into the room and put the television on. Alex Friend would watch a lot of television. There were about thirty channels to choose from. Alex skipped past the French ones and stopped on MTV. He wondered if he was being monitored. There was a large mirror next to the desk and it would have been easy enough to conceal a camera behind it. Well, why not give them something to think about? He opened the mini-bar and poured himself a glass of gin. Then he went into the bathroom, refilled the bottle with water and put it back in the fridge. Drinking alcohol and stealing! If she was watching, Mrs. Stellenbosch would know that she had her hands full with him.
He spent the next forty minutes watching television and pretending to drink the gin. Then he took the glass into the bathroom and dumped it in the sink, allowing the liquid to run out. It was time to get dressed. Should he do what he was told and put on smart clothes? In the end, he compromised. He put on a shirt, but kept the same jeans. A moment later, the telephone rang. His call to dinner.
Mrs. Stellenbosch was waiting for him in the restaurant, an airless room in the basement. Soft lighting and mirrors had been used to make it feel more spacious, but it was still the last place Alex would have chosen. The restaurant could have been anywhere, in any part of the world. There were two other diners – businessmen by the look of them – but otherwise they were alone. Mrs. Stellenbosch had changed into a black evening dress with feathers at the collar and she wore an antique-looking necklace of black and silver beads. The smarter her clothes, Alex thought, the uglier she looked. She was smoking another cigar.
"Ah, Alex!" She blew smoke. "Did you have a rest? Or did you watch TV?"
Alex didn't say anything. He sat down and opened the menu, then closed it again when he saw that it was all in French.
"You must let me order for you. Some soup to start, perhaps? And then a steak. I've never yet met a boy who doesn't like steak."
"My cousin Oliver is a vegetarian," Alex said. It was something he had read in one of the files.
The assistant director nodded as if she already knew this. "Then he doesn't know what he is missing," she said. A pale-faced waiter came over and she placed the order in French. "What will you drink?" she asked.
"I'll have a Coke."
"A repulsive drink, I always think. I have never understood the taste. But, of course, you shall have what you want."
The waiter brought Alex a Coke and a glass of champagne for Mrs. Stellenbosch. Alex watched the bubbles rising in the two glasses, his black, hers a pale gold.
"Santé," she said.
"I'm sorry?"
"It's French for 'good health'."
"Oh. Cheers."
There was a moment's silence. The woman's eyes were fixed on him – as if she could see right through him. "So, you were at Eton," she said casually.
"That's right." Alex was suddenly on his guard.
"What house were you in?"
"The Hopgarden." It was the name of a real house at the school. Alex had read the file carefully.
"I visited Eton once. I remember a statue. I think it was a king. It was just through the main gate…"
She was testing him. Alex was sure of it. Did she suspect him – or was it simply a precaution, something she always did? "You're talking about Henry VI," he said. "His statue's in College Yard. He founded Eton."
"But you didn't like it there."
"No."
"Why not?"
"I didn't like the uniform and I didn't like the beaks." Alex was careful not to use the word "teachers". At Eton, they're known as beaks. He half smiled to himself. If she wanted a bit of Eton-speak, he'd give it to her. "And I didn't like the rules. Getting fined by the pop. Or being put in the tardy book. I was always getting rips and infoes or being put on the bill. The divs were boring—"
"I'm afraid I don't really understand a word you're saying."
"Divs are lessons," Alex explained. "Rips are when your work is no good—"
"All right!" She drew a line with her cigar. "Is that why you set fire to the library?"
"No," Alex said. "That was just because I don't like books."
The first course arrived. Alex's soup was yellow and had something floating in it. He picked up his spoon and poked at it suspiciously. "What's this?" he demanded.
"Soupe de moules."
He looked at her blankly.
"Mussel soup. I hope you enjoy it."
"I'd have preferred Heinz tomato," Alex said.
The steaks, when they came, were typically French; barely cooked at all. Alex took a couple of mouthfuls of the bloody meat, then threw down his knife and fork and used his fingers to eat the chips. Mrs. Stellenbosch talked to him about the French Alps, about skiing and about her visits to various European cities. It was easy to look bored. He was bored. And he was beginning to feel tired. He took a sip of Coke, hoping the cold drink would wake him up. The meal seemed to be dragging on all night.
But at last the puddings – ice cream with white chocolate sauce – had come and gone. Alex declined coffee.
"You look tired," Stellenbosch said. She had lit another cigar. The smoke curled around her head and made him feel dizzy. "Would you like to go to bed?"
"Yes."
"We don't need to leave until midday tomorrow. You'll have time for a visit to the Louvre, if you'd like that."
Alex shook his head. "Actually, paintings bore me."
"Really? What a shame!"
Alex stood up. Somehow his hand knocked into his glass, spilling the rest of the Coke over the pristine white tablecloth. What was the matter with him? Suddenly he was exhausted.
"Would you like me to come up with you, Alex?" the woman asked. She was looking carefully at him, a tiny glimmer of interest in her otherwise dead eyes.
"No. I'll be alright." Alex stepped away. "Goodnight."
Getting upstairs was an ordeal. He was tempted to take the lift but he didn't want to lock himself into that small, windowless cubicle. He would have felt suffocated. He climbed the stairs, his shoulder resting heavily against the wall, stumbled down the corridor and somehow got the key into the lock. When he finally got inside, the room was spinning. What was going on? Had he drunk more of the gin than he had intended or was he…?
Alex swallowed. He had been drugged. There had been something in the Coke. It was still on his tongue, a sort of bitterness. There were only three steps between him and his bed, but it could have been a mile away. His legs wouldn't obey him any more. Just lifting one foot took all his strength. He fell forward, reaching out with his arms. Somehow he managed to propel himself far enough. His chest and shoulders hit the bed, sinking into the mattress. The room was spinning round him, faster and faster. He tried to stand up, tried to speak – but nothing came. His eyes closed. Gratefully, he allowed the darkness to take him.
Thirty minutes later, there was a soft click and the room began to change.
If Alex had been able to open his eyes, he would have seen the desk, the mini-bar and the framed pictures of Paris begin to rise up the wall. Or so it might have seemed to him. But in fact the walls weren't moving. The floor was sinking on hidden hydraulics, taking the bed – with Alex on it – into the depths of the hotel. The entire room was nothing more than a huge lift which was carrying him, one centimeter at a time, into the basement and beyond. Now the walls were metal sheets. He had left the wallpaper, the lights and the pictures high above him. He was dropping through what might have been a ventilation shaft with four steel rods guiding him to the bottom. Brilliant light suddenly flooded over him. There was another soft click. He had arrived. The bed had come to rest in the center of a gleaming underground clinic. Scientific equipment crowded in on him from all sides. There were a number of cameras – digital, video, infrared and X-ray. There were instruments of all shapes and sizes, many of them unrecognizable.
A tangle of wires spiralled out from each machine to a bank of computers that hummed and blinked on a long work table against one of the walls. A window had been cut into the wall on the other side. The room was air-conditioned. Had Alex been awake, he might have shivered in the cold. His breath appeared as a faint white cloud hovering around his mouth.
A plump man wearing a white coat was waiting to receive him. The man was about forty, with yellow hair slicked back and a face that was rapidly sinking into middle-age, with puffy cheeks and a thick, fatty neck. The man had glasses and a small moustache. He had two assistants with him. They were also wearing white coats. Their faces were blank.
The three of them set to work at once. Handling Alex as if he were a sack of vegetables – or a corpse – they picked him up and stripped off all his clothes. Then they began to photograph him, using a conventional camera to begin with. Starting at his toes, they moved upwards, clicking off at least a hundred pictures, the flash igniting and the film automatically spooling forward. Not one inch of his body escaped their examination. A lock of his hair was snipped off and slid into a plastic envelope. An ophthalmoscope was used to produce a perfect image of the back of his eye. They made a molding of his teeth, slipping a piece of putty into his mouth and manipulating his chin to make him bite down. They made a careful note of the birthmark on his left shoulder, the scar on his arm and even his fingerprints. Alex bit his nails. That was recorded too. Finally, they weighed him on a large, flat scale and then measured him – his height, chest, waist, inside leg, hand size and so on – making a note of every measurement on clipboards. And all the time, Mrs Stellenbosch watched from the other side of the window. She never moved. The only sign of life anywhere in her face was the cigar, clamped between her lips. It glowed red and the smoke trickled up.
The three men had finished. The one with the yellow hair spoke into a microphone. "We're all done," he said.
"Give me your opinion, Mr. Baxter." The woman's voice echoed out of a concealed speaker.
"It's a cinch." The man called Baxter was English. He spoke with an upper-class accent. And he was obviously pleased with himself. "He's got a good bone structure. Very fit. Interesting face. You notice the pierced ear? He's had that done recently. Nothing else to say, really."
"When will you operate?"
"Whenever you say, old girl. Just let me know."
Mrs. Stellenbosch turned to the other two men. "Rhabillez-le!" She snapped the two words.
The two assistants put Alex's clothes back on him again. This took longer than taking them off. As they worked, they made a careful note of all the brand names. The Quiksilver shirt. The Gap socks. By the time they had dressed him, they knew as much about him as a doctor knows about a newborn baby. It had all been noted down. And the information would be passed on.
Mr. Baxter walked over to the worktable and pressed a button. At once, the carpet, bed and hotel furniture began to rise up. They disappeared through the ceiling and kept going. Alex slept on as he was carried back up the shaft, finally arriving in the space that he knew as room thirteen. There was nothing to show what had happened. The whole experience had evaporated, as quickly as a dream.