Chapter Two Night-time visitors

'What the hell are you doing here?' Alex demanded.

Lacey yanked her cap straight. She glared at him fitfully from those hard blue eyes.

'Alex Rider.'

'That's right,' Alex said, angrily. 'You're supposed to be in danger. I'm coming to help you. That's a great way to welcome me. What the hell are you doing on this plane?'

Lacey's face changed very suddenly. Her eyes switched, almost as though her feelings had been shuttered off inside. The bright angry spark that had lit them only a few seconds before was gone. Her face was smooth and free of emotion. She was completely cold and indifferent.

Alex glanced away. He wouldn't – couldn't – hold that icy stare.

He looked out of the window, trying to steady himself. Trying to regain his composure and his dignity. Something about Lacey Jayne Anders made him feel that he had been forced to strip naked and crawl on the floor imitating some lowly form of animal.

'All right,' he said finally. 'Are you going to tell me or shall I just sit here and twiddle my thumbs?'

'Twiddle away, lover boy,' she hissed, venomously. 'I don't need help. I'll throw you down the sewage chute before I need your help. You're just an English schoolboy. Playing spy.'

Alex took a deep breath and clenched his fists.

'But,' she said, gazing at him with slight amusement, 'you interest me. In fact, I have a feeling we're going to get on well. Where'd you learn the karate throw?'

'I'm a third black belt in Taekwondo,' Alex muttered bitterly to the seat in front.

Lacey flipped her cap off and brushed a few strands of her from her eyes. 'Whew, they must have trained you up.'

'I was trained for years before I became a spy,' Alex said, and turned to glare at her.

Lacey laughed softly and began to unbutton her air hostess jacket to reveal a pale windcheater and denim skirt.

'Call me psychic, but I figure you don't actually like the whole James Bond thing, huh?'

Alex returned to studying the seat in front. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Lacey reach under the seat and tug out a sports bag. She rolled up the jacket and cap and packed them away.

'You planned this, didn't you?'

She held up her hands. 'Not me. The KSR sent me. I presume,' she added, shooting laser beams from her blue eyes at him, 'that you've heard of the KSR?'

'Of course. I'm a thorough worker,' Alex said, mystified with himself. He didn't like Lacey Jayne anymore than she seemed to like him – why on earth was he trying to create the impression that he was the new Sherlock Holmes?

She gave that chilling laugh. 'Well, anyway, lover boy, I was sent to make sure you got into airport OK.'

'By trying to throttle me?'

'Oh no, lover boy. That was all my doing. I just got told to look after you. It was my little … joke.'

Alex felt an involuntary shiver pass up his spine and back down again.

Lacey rose from the cramped little seat with the lithe grace of a mountain lion. She shouldered the small sports bag and nodded crisply in Alex's direction. He noted she'd reverted to the robot face again.

'Well, goodbye, lover boy. I'll meet you at the airport. Don't go wondering off or you might get lost. And there are a lot of nasty men in Kentucky … later.'

Lacey was not pleased with the situation. She did not like the look of Alex Rider. He was too good-looking, too capable and far too strong. The KSR had told her that she was to be lumbered with an English schoolboy – Lacey had expected a skinny, weedy, spotty boy with glasses and a fixation for all things technical. Instead, MI6 had sent a muscular, fair-haired, handsome young man with the looks and character to break any girl's heart and the build of a budding rugby player.

Lacey worked clear-headed and emotionless. She had the exact complex, unfathomable character that never showed on her face. She had the ability to become a human robot.

'Why have you given me a schoolboy?' she demanded, storming into the main lecture room of the KSR offices later that day.

'Is he weedy and spotty and bespectacled?' Faith Cartwright inquired frostily.

Lacey turned on her. Faith was a brooding presence in the centre of the room. She was perched on the edge of her desk, her suit crisp and starched, her hair smoothed back off her face and knotted at the nape of her neck.

'No,' Lacey admitted. 'But I don't need help, you know that.'

'The case,' Faith said, reaching coolly under the desk for a folder and flipping it open, 'takes place at the Rosary Boarding School in Eastbrook. Stolen terminals. Sounds right up your street, Miss Anders.' She glanced up and gave a smile that made Lacey gulp. 'You need another undercover officer with you –'

'Officer!' Lacey snorted. 'He's nothing more than a kid!'

'As are you.'

Lacey refused to be downtrodden. 'He's probably completely inexperienced. I'm much better working on my own, you know that.'

'In fact,' Faith said, examining her nails, 'he's very experienced. Ten years of martial arts training, superior language skills and several cases firmly under his belt. I trust you read about the Stormbreaker case? And the case of the cloning that took place up in the mountains? And of course, the infamous Scorpia case. How could anybody forget that?'

'He nearly died,' Lacey spat. She found herself jumping involuntarily to Alex's defence. 'All of you spy agencies are the same. You don't care how many people you murder so long as you get the case.'

'Two reluctant teenage spies,' Faith said softly. 'You'll get on very well. I rest my case. You're dismissed.'

Alex was tired. He had jetlag from the plane and he'd been up the night before until eleven o'clock. But something was nagging at the back of his mind. He couldn't sleep. He'd unpacked his bags and had a meal delivered to his hotel room, but he was restless, and every time he was on the verge of dozing off, something in the far corner of his brain gave a little leap. He couldn't for the life of him think what.

Finally, he gave up trying to rest and switched on the bedside lamp. Outside the luminous hotel sign glowed through the starless night sky. The heady warmth of Kentucky summer flowed through the open window from the balcony outside. The curtains rustled in the breeze.

He swung his legs out of bed and opened the small door to the balcony.

He stood outside, stretching his arms and yawning, watching the lighted aeroplanes cross the sky.

There was a chestnut tree growing near to the balcony; the side branches swept the ornate metal fence. The tree was in shadow, and the breeze was too light to even shift the branches. And yet Alex was certain that there was something moving in the tree.

The old Alex, before he'd become a spy, would have dismissed the 'something' as a squirrel or a nest of birds. But the new Alex was trained as a spy, and however hard he tried to ignore it, he was a good spy. He was trained to be constantly on his guard.

Alex knew that, while he was standing on the balcony, he had an advantage over the person (and by now he was sure it was a person) in the tree. He also knew that as soon as the person saw him there, he or she would climb down.

Alex struggled with an internal conflict. He didn't like to go looking for trouble. On the other hand he was certain that whoever was there had come for him – had come because he was staying in the hotel room. There were no other balconies close enough.

Slowly, very slowly, he let himself down over the edge of the balcony and caught one of the lower branches of the tree. He was now below the rustling thing. He was pretty sure that whatever it was hadn't seen him.

Alex wasn't the best of tree-climbers. He hung, holding onto the branch with both hands, and kicking at mid-air. The muscles in his arms screamed. He wrapped his legs around the tree trunk and eased his arms. Clinging to the tree like a monkey, he began to inch his way up, following the rustling sound.

The person disengaged itself from the tree and leapt with catlike grace down onto the balcony. For a second, Alex thought it was Lacey. Then he saw the tight muscles and chest of a man.

The man's face was covered with a balaclava helmet, and he was dressed in tight-fitting black. His hair straggled over his shoulders and reached down his back, caught up in a greasy elastic band.

Hanging, sloth-like, from the tree, Alex watched the man peer intently through the lighted window, and then move closer to the glass. After gazing through for several seconds, the man reached down and gripped the handle of the balcony door. He entered the room and closed the door behind him.

Alex swung up from the tree onto the balcony and looked through the glass, just like the man had done. The man was standing by the empty bed, looking at the sheets thrown back and the lighted lamp.

Then, suddenly, as if he felt Alex's eyes on him, he turned. Alex ducked, his heart beating ferociously fast.

The black-clad figure slipped from the door and down the tree like a cobra. Alex crouched on the balcony, breathing deeply and trying to still his leaping heart.

He knew what he'd seen.

The man wasn't dressed completely in black. On the left side of his chest was a small badge. And the badge said 'KRS'.