"MY NAME IS GRIEF"
Point of view: Third person limited
The academy at Point Blanc had been built by a lunatic. For a time, it had been used as an asylum. Alex remembered what Alan Blunt had told him as the helicopter began its final descent, the red and white helipad looming up to receive it. The photograph in the brochure had been artfully taken. Now that he could see the building for himself, he could only describe it as … mad. It was a jumble of towers and battlements, green sloping roofs and windows of every shape and size. Nothing fitted together properly. The overall design should have been simple enough; a circular central area with two wings. But one wing was longer than the other. The two sides didn't match. The academy was four floors high but the windows were spaced in such a way that it was hard to tell where one floor ended and the next began. There was an internal courtyard that wasn't quite square, with a fountain that had frozen solid. Even the helipad, jutting out of the roof, was ugly and awkward, as if a spaceship had smashed into the brickwork and lodged in place.
Mrs. Stellenbosch flicked off the controls. "I will take you down to meet the director," she shouted over the noise of the blades. "Your luggage will be brought down later."
It was cold on the roof, the snow covering the mountain still hadn't melted and everything was white for as far as the eye could see. The academy was built into the side of a steep slope. A little further down, Alex saw a great iron tongue that started at ground level but then curved outwards as the mountainside dropped away. It was a ski-jump – the sort of thing he had seen at the Winter Olympics. The end of the curve was at least fifty meters above the ground and, far below, Alex could make out a flat area shaped like a horseshoe where the jumpers were meant to land.
He was staring at it, imagining what it would be like to propel yourself into space with only two skis to break your fall, when the woman grabbed his arm. "We don't use it," she said. "It is forbidden. Come now. Let's get out of the cold."
They went through a door in the side of one of the towers and down a narrow spiral staircase – each step a different distance apart – that took them all the way to the ground floor. Now they were in a long, narrow corridor with plenty of doors but no windows.
"Classrooms," Mrs. Stellenbosch explained. "You will see them later."
Alex followed her through the strangely silent building. The central heating had been turned up high inside the academy and the atmosphere was warm and heavy. They stopped at a pair of modern glass doors which opened into the courtyard that Alex had seen from above. From the heat back into the cold again, Mrs. Stellenbosch led him through the doors and past the frozen fountain. A movement caught his eye and Alex glanced up. This was something he hadn't noticed earlier. A sentry stood on one of the towers. He had a pair of binoculars round his neck and a submachine-gun slung across one arm.
Armed guards? In a school? Alex had only been here a few minutes and already he was unnerved.
"Through here." Mrs. Stellenbosch opened another door for him and he found himself in the main reception hall of the academy. A log fire was burning in a massive fireplace with two stone dragons guarding the flames. A grand staircase led upwards. The hall was lit by a chandelier with at least a hundred bulbs. The walls were wood paneled. The carpet was thick, dark red. A dozen pairs of eyes pursued Alex as he followed Mrs. Stellenbosch towards the next corridor. The hall was decorated with animal heads. A rhino, an antelope, a water buffalo and, saddest of all, a lion. Alex wondered who had shot them.
They came to a single door, which suggested they had come to the end of their journey. So far Alex hadn't encountered any boys but, glancing out of the window, he saw two more guards marching slowly past, both of them cradling machine-guns.
Mrs. Stellenbosch knocked on the door.
"Come in!" Even with just two words, Alex caught the South African English accent.
The door opened and they went into a huge room that made no sense. Like the rest of the building, its shape was irregular, none of the walls running parallel. The ceiling was about seven meters high, with windows running the whole way and giving an impressive view of the slopes. The room was modern, with soft lighting coming from units concealed in the walls. The furniture was ugly, but not as ugly as the further animal heads on the walls and the zebra skin on the wooden floor. There were three chairs next to a small fireplace. One of them was gold and antique. A man was sitting in it. His head turned as Alex came in.
"Good afternoon, Alex," he said. "Please come and sit down."
Alex sauntered into the room and took one of the chairs. Mrs. Stellenbosch sat in the other.
"My name is Grief," the man continued. "Dr. Hugo Grief. I am very pleased to meet you and to have you here."
Alex stared at the man who was the director of Point Blanc, at the white paper skin and the eyes burning behind the red spectacles. It was like meeting a skeleton and for a moment he was lost for words. Then he recovered. "Nice place," he said.
"Do you think so?" There was no emotion whatsoever in Grief's voice. So far, he had moved only his neck. "This building was designed in 1857 by a Frenchman who was certainly the world's worst architect. This was his only commission. When the first owners moved in, they had him shot."
"There are still quite a few people here with guns." Alex glanced out of the window as another pair of guards walked past.
"Point Blanc is unique," Dr Grief explained. "As you will soon discover, all the young men who have been sent here come from families of great wealth and importance. We have had the sons of emperors and industrialists. Boys like yourself. It follows that we could very easily become a target for terrorists. The guards are therefore here for your protection."
"That's very kind of you." Alex felt he was being too polite. It was time to show this man what sort of person he was meant to be. "But to be honest, I don't really want to be here myself. So, if you'll just tell me how I get down into town, maybe I can get the next train home."
"There is no way down into town." Dr Grief lifted a hand to stop Alex interrupting. Alex looked at his long, skeletal fingers and at the eyes glinting red behind the spectacles. The man moved as if every bone in his body had been broken and then put back together again; he seemed both old and young at the same time and somehow not completely human. "The skiing season is over … it's too dangerous now. There is only the helicopter and that will take you from here only when I say so." The hand lowered itself again. "You are here, Alex, because you have disappointed your parents. You were expelled from school. You have had difficulties with the police—"
"That wasn't my bloody fault!" Alex protested.
"Don't interrupt the doctor!" Mrs. Stellenbosch said.
Alex glanced at her balefully.
"Your appearance is displeasing," Dr Grief went on. "Your language also. It is our job to turn you into a boy of whom your parents can be proud."
"I'm happy as I am," Alex said.
"That is of no relevance." Dr. Grief fell silent.
Alex shivered. There was something about this room; so big, so empty, so twisted out of shape. "So what are you going to do with me?" Alex asked.
"There will be no lessons to begin with," Mrs. Stellenbosch said. "For the first couple of weeks, we want you to assimilate."
"What does that mean?"
"To assimilate. To conform … to adapt … to become like." It was as if she were reading out of a dictionary. "There are six boys at the academy at the moment. You will meet them and you will spend time with them. There will be opportunities for sport and for being social. There is a good library here and you will read. Soon, you will learn our methods."
"I want to call my mum and dad," Alex said.
"The use of telephones is forbidden," Mrs. Stellenbosch explained. She tried to smile sympathetically, but with her face it wasn't quite possible. "We find it makes our students homesick," she went on. "Of course, you may write letters if you wish."
"I prefer emails," Alex said.
"For the same reason, personal computers are not permitted."
Alex shrugged, and swore under his breath.
Dr Grief had seen him. "You will be polite to the assistant director!" he snapped. He hadn't raised his voice but the words came out acid. "You should be aware, Alex, that Mrs. Stellenbosch has worked with me now for twenty-six years and that when I met her, she had been voted Miss South Africa five years in a row."
Alex looked at the ape-like face. "A beauty contest?" he asked.
"The weightlifting championships." Dr. Grief glanced at the fireplace. "Show him," he said.
Mrs. Stellenbosch got up and went over to the fireplace. There was a poker lying in the grate. She took it with both hands. For a moment she seemed to concentrate. Alex gasped. The solid metal poker, at least two centimeters thick, was slowly bending. Now it was u-shaped. Mrs. Stellenbosch wasn't even sweating. She brought the two ends together and dropped it back into the grate. It clanged against the stone.
"We enforce strict discipline here at the academy," Dr. Grief said. "Bedtime is at ten o'clock – not a minute past. We do not tolerate bad language. You will have no contact with the outside world without our permission. You will not attempt to leave. And you will do as you are told instantly, without hesitation. And finally" – he leaned towards Alex – "you are permitted only in certain parts of this building." He gestured with a hand and for the first time Alex noticed a second door at the far end of the room. "My private quarters are through there. You will remain on the ground floor and the first floor only. That is where the bedrooms and classrooms are located. The second and third floors are out of bounds. The basement also. This is again for your safety."
"You're afraid I'll trip on the stairs?" Alex asked.
Dr Grief ignored him. "You may leave," he said.
"Wait outside the office, Alex," Mrs. Stellenbosch said. "Someone will be along to collect you."
Alex stood up.
"We will make you into what your parents want," Dr. Grief said.
"Maybe they don't want me at all."
"We can arrange that too."
Alex went.
"N Onaangename seun ... 'n paar dae ... vinniger as gewoonlik ... die Tweeling Projek ... sluit…"
Alex cursed when he realized that Dr. Grief and Mrs. Stellenbosch weren't speaking English, but rather a harsh, guttural language that he assumed must be Afrikaans.
The moment he had left the room, he'd cupped his ear against the keyhole, hoping to pick up something that might be useful to MI6. Sure enough, Dr. Grief and Mrs. Stellenbosch were busily talking on the other side. Alex's knowledge of Dutch allowed him to understand a few of the words spoken: unpleasant, few, usual, twin project, closes, but he could hear little and couldn't understand the gist of their conversation.
A hand clamped down on his shoulder and he twisted round, annoyed with himself. A so-called spy caught listening at the keyhole! But it wasn't one of the guards. Alex found himself looking up at a round-faced young man with long dark hair, dark eyes and pale skin. He was wearing a very old Star Wars T-shirt, torn jeans and a baseball cap. Recently he had been in a fight, and it looked like he'd got the worst of it. There was a bruise around one of his eyes and a gash on his lip.
"They'll shoot you if they catch you listening at doors," the boy said. He looked at Alex with hostile eyes. Alex guessed he was the sort of boy who wouldn't trust anyone easily. "I'm James Sprintz," he said. "They told me to show you round."
"Alex Friend."
"So what did you do to get sent to this dump?" James asked as they walked back down the corridor.
"I got expelled from Eton."
"I got thrown out of a school in Düsseldorf." James sighed. "I thought it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Until my dad sent me here."
"What does your dad do?" Alex asked.
"He's a banker. He plays the money markets. He loves money and he has lots of it." James's voice was flat, unemotional.
"Dieter Sprintz?" Alex remembered the name. He'd made the front page of every newspaper in England a few years before. The One Hundred Million Dollar Man. That was how much he had made in just twenty-four hours. At the same time, the pound had crashed and the English government had almost collapsed.
"Yeah. Don't ask me to show you a photograph, because I don't have one. This way."
They had reached the main hall with the dragon fireplace. From here, James showed him to the dining-room, a long, high-ceilinged room with six tables and a hatch leading into the kitchen. After that, they visited two living-rooms, a games room and a library. The academy reminded Alex of an expensive hotel in a ski resort – and not just because of its setting. There was a sort of heaviness about the place, a sense of being cut off from the real world. The air was warm and silent and, despite the size of the rooms, Alex couldn't help feeling claustrophobic. If the place had been a hotel, it would have been an unpopular one. Grief had said there were only six boys living there. The building could have housed sixty. Empty space was everywhere.
There was nobody in either of the living-rooms – just a collection of armchairs, desks and tables – but they found a couple of boys in the library. This was a long, narrow room with old-fashioned oak shelves lined with books in a variety of languages. A suit of medieval Swiss armor stood in an alcove at the far end.
"This is Tom. And Hugo," James said. "They're probably doing extra math or something, so we'd better not disturb them."
The two boys looked up and nodded briefly. One of them was reading a textbook. The other was writing. They were both much more smartly dressed than James and didn't look very friendly.
"Creeps," James said as soon as they had left the room.
"In what way?"
"When I was told about this place, they said all the kids had problems. I thought it was going to be wild. Do you have a cigarette?"
"I don't smoke."
"Great. I get here and it's like a museum or a monastery or … I don't know what. It looks like Dr Grief's been busy. Everyone's quiet, hardworking, boring. God knows how he did it. Sucked their brains out with a straw or something. A couple of days ago I got into a fight with a couple of them, just for the hell of it." He pointed to his face. "They beat the crap out of me and then went back to their studies. Really creepy!"
They went into the games room, which contained table tennis, darts, a wide-screen TV and a snooker table. "Don't try playing snooker," James said. "The room's on a slant and all the balls roll to the side."
Then they went upstairs. This was where the boys had their study bedrooms. Each one contained a bed, an armchair, a television ("It only shows the programs Dr. Grief wants you to see," James said), a wardrobe and a desk, with a second door leading into a small bathroom with a toilet and shower. None of the rooms were locked.
"We're not allowed to lock them," James explained. "We're all stuck here with nowhere to go, so nobody bothers to steal anything. Hugo Vries – the boy in the library – used to nick anything he could get his hands on. He was arrested for shoplifting in Amsterdam."
"But not any more?"
"He's another success story. He's flying home next week. His father owns diamond mines. Why bother shoplifting when you can afford to buy the whole shop?"
Alex's study was at the end of the corridor, with views over the ski-jump. His suitcases had already been carried up and were waiting for him on the bed. Everything felt very bare but, according to James, the study bedrooms were the only part of the school which the boys were allowed to decorate themselves. They could choose their own duvets and cover the walls with their own posters.
"They say it's important that you express yourself," James said. "If you haven't brought anything with you, Miss Stomach-bag will take you into Grenoble."
"Miss Stomach-bag?"
"Mrs. Stellenbosch. That's my name for her."
"What do the other boys call her?"
"They call her Mrs. Stellenbosch." James paused by the door. "This is a deeply weird place, Alex. I've been to a lot of schools because I've been thrown out of a lot of schools. But this one is the pits. I've been here for six weeks now, and I've hardly had any lessons. They have music evenings and discussion evenings and they try to get me to read. But otherwise I've been left on my own."
"They want you to assimilate," Alex said, remembering what Dr. Grief had said.
"That's their word for it. But this place … they may call it a school, but it's more like being in prison. You've seen the guards."
"I thought they were here to protect us."
"If you think that, you're a bigger idiot than I thought. Think about it! There are about thirty of them. Thirty armed guards for seven boys. That's not protection. That's intimidation." James examined Alex for a second time. "It would be nice to think that someone has finally arrived who I can relate to," he said.
"Maybe you can," Alex said.
"Yeah. But for how long?"
James left, closing the door behind him.
Alex began to unpack. The bullet-proof ski suit and infrared goggles were at the top of the first case. It didn't look as if he would be needing them. It wasn't as if he even had any skis. Then came the Discman. He remembered the instructions Smithers had given him. "If the balloon goes up, just press fast forward three times." He was almost tempted to do it now. There was something unsettling about the academy. He could feel it even now, in his room. He was like a goldfish in a bowl. Looking up, he almost expected to see a pair of huge eyes looming over him and he knew that they would be wearing red-tinted glasses. He weighed the Discman in his hand. He couldn't hit the panic button – yet. He had nothing to report back to MI6. There was nothing to connect the school with the deaths of the two men in New York and the Black Sea.
But if there was anything, he knew where he would find it. Why were two whole floors of the building out of bounds? Presumably the guards slept up there, but even though Dr Grief seemed to employ a small army, that would still leave a lot of empty rooms. The second and third floors. If something was going on at the academy, it had to be going on there.
A bell sounded downstairs. Alex swung his case shut, left his room and walked down the corridor. He saw another couple of boys walking ahead of him, talking quietly together. Like the boys he had seen in the library, they were both clean and well-dressed, with hair cut short and smartly groomed. Majorly creepy, James had said. Even on first sight, Alex had to agree.
He reached the main staircase. The two boys had gone down. Alex glanced in their direction, then went up. The staircase turned a corner and stopped. Ahead of him was a sheet of metal that rose up from the floor to the ceiling and all the way across, blocking off the view. The wall had been added recently, like the helipad. Someone had carefully and deliberately cut the building in two.
There was a door set in the metal wall and beside it a keypad with nine buttons demanding a code. Alex reached for the door handle, his hand closing around it. He didn't expect the door to open – but nor did he expect what happened next. The moment his fingers came into contact with the handle, an alarm went off, a shrieking siren that echoed throughout the building. A few seconds later he became aware of footsteps on the stairs and turned to find two guards facing him, their guns raised.
Neither of them spoke to him. One of them pushed past him and punched a code into the keypad. The alarm stopped. And then Mrs. Stellenbosch was there, hurrying forward on her short, stubby legs.
"Alex!" she exclaimed. Her eyes were filled with suspicion. "What are you doing here? The director told you that the upper floors are forbidden."
"Yeah … well I forgot." Alex looked straight at her. "I heard the bell go and I was on my way to the dining-room."
"The dining-room is downstairs."
"Right."
Alex walked past the two guards, who stepped aside to let him pass. He felt Mrs. Stellenbosch watching him as he went. Metal doors, alarms and guards with machine-guns. He remembered a phrase he had overheard at the office door: "Tweeling Projek". Did that mean Twin Project? What were these people hiding? Could there be something related to this strange project in the upper two floors? Turning the question over in his mind, Alex went down to meet the rest of the school.